Neilalien : A Doctor Strange Fansite : A Comic Book Weblog  

Consider helping legendary comics writer Len Wein rebuild his collection of comics he wrote, lost in house fire [Let's Rebuild Len Wein's Comic Book Collection]

Dateline: Silver Age: website posting newspaper headlines from old comics
"Sleep victim" headline from Strange Tales #116 [Dateline: Silver Age] [thanks Dave!]

Different Steve Ditko illo by Scott Kowalchuk [Scott's Snazzy Sketchblog] [thanks Christian!]

Posted 29 April 02009 - Permalink

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Greg Bell's artwork for the cover of the original Dungeons & Dragons box set was swiped from Dan Adkins' artwork in Strange Tales #167 [Grognardia]

Dungeons and Dragons and Strange Tales #167

Redux: More Marvel in D&D: Bill Willingham art in classic Dungeons & Dragons module Descent into the Depths of the Earth includes Spider-Man face, Captain America shield, Iron Man helmet [Grognardia]

Redux: When the swipee swiped: Dan Adkins page from Doctor Strange #169 shown to be a swipe [Lady, That's My Skull]

Posted 28 April 02009 - Permalink

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Be sure to check back in with Mightygodking's month of ideas for Doctor Strange!

See what happens when Neilalien misses a week of blogging due to life busyness and gorgeous New York City spring weather? Doctor Strange fans start having dreams about him!

Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday 2 May! [this year's FCBD comics]

Posted 27 April 02009 - Permalink

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Author JG Ballard has died [BBC News]

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Doctor Strange Preview: New Avengers #52 [Comic Book Resources]
Preview: Hulk #11 [Comic Book Resources]
Both books feature Doctor Strange, out this coming Wednesday.

Top Ten Coolest Comic Book Locations [Pop]
Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum is #4.

Composer Andrew Boscardin on the New Comics 'n' Jazz Craze [Seattlest]
His new album Four-Color Heroes is inspired by and dedicated to Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert and Steve Gerber.

Grim estimate: No single sold more than 100,000 copies in March 02009, first time since March 02001; Q1 comics sales down 5% [ICv2] [Not bad, considering the current economy]

The incredible rise of Manga [Scotland's Sunday Herald]

Which Movie Studios Control Which Marvel Characters [Screen Rant]

Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will [Wall Street Journal]
Ah, Comic Sans. Nauseatingly ubiquitous, irrationally despised.

The New York Times is doing a new weekly sales list: Graphic Books Best Seller List
This is awesome! Go comics! But you know the drill:
Recap of recent dust-up: New mainstream list of comics sales flawed by potential equal-treatment of bookstore sell-through numbers (books actually sold to patrons) and Direct Market sell-in numbers (the number of nonreturnable books the DM buys but might just sit on a shelf unsold to patrons) [The Beat]
But the comics industry is using more inventory-tracking and point-of-sale technology all the time to get sell-through numbers for the DM.

[The list is] a nice boost to show that superheroes aren't the only game in town... The shift from sell-in to sell-through as an indication of success is going to shake things up, and it isn't always going to be pretty, but it could leave a stronger foundation in its wake.

Posted 19 April 02009 - Permalink

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Eye of Agamotto papercraft Template to make your own Eye of Agamotto out of paper [Tektonten Papercraft]

New Ditko Once More available now [Ditko Comics]

Lovenote to Doctor Strange and some of his artists; time to take out the old stories for re-reading if Doc's a loser in the current books [Stormantic]

Hilarious: Uncomfortable Plot Summaries [Postmodernbarney]
BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.

Earth X reveals the Marvel Universe's amoral atheistic nature, just as Kingdom Come reveals the DCU's Judeo-Christianity [The Hurting]

Copper comics by Kazu Kibuishi [Bolt City] [via Comics Reporter]

Another hero bites the dust: H.P. Lovecraft was a raging racist [OVO] [via Robot Wisdom]

Neilalien was quite surprised over his Easter weekend travels to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the unfinished version that was leaked online, being exhibited quite publicly (think something akin to a large electronics store playing it on a wall of flatscreens). It was interesting seeing the actors wearing jumping wires, and the incomplete CGI and actors responding to nothing-there-yet. They'll still get Neilalien's cash opening weekend.

Posted 14 April 02009 - Permalink

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Blue Hat Man Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died [Grognardia] [ICv2]
He had to file five lawsuits against T$R. From the comments: "D&D had two Walt Disneys, and now they are both gone." (Gary Gygax died last year.)

Another article on the Bendismantling of Doctor Strange [Robot 6]

Re-remembering the legit argument that singles give creators publicity-flow and cash-flow vs. two years in a cave doing a graphic novel, in this new age of Diamond benchmarks [Comics212.net]

Isn't it about time we boycotted the looting of Kirby and Ditko? [Kleefeld on Comics]

Massive annotations and commentary on Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #1 [Mindless Ones]

Star Trek: Red Shirt Cologne For Men [Sci-Fi Genre]
Perfect tagline: Because Tomorrow May Never Come. [spotted at Progressive Ruin]

Howard the Duck and Steve Gerber re-examined as the movie is finally released on DVD [Slate]
Via Comics Reporter: "You sort of have to have been reading and paying attention to comics before [0]1986 to know just how much that movie eviscerated the comic book's reputation."

Posted 11 April 02009 - Permalink

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Looks like a massive wonderful month of Doctor Strange plot-ideas and meta-discussion is forming [Mightygodking makes its case in a 'Why I Should Write Dr. Strange' series]

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Steve Ditko's steadily-growing-in-fame 02007 essay "Toyland"- his stern response to Joe Quesada's "These toys [Marvel characters] are meant to be broken"- now posted online by Batton Lash with permission [Big Hollywood]

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Doctor Strange by Colleen Doran More Doctor Strange by Colleen Doran: this time a very Brunner-influenced pin-up from her high school days [A Distant Soil]

Marvel Starts Push on Products for Females [ICv2]
Marvel has no recognizable solo female characters to pull this off [Robot 6]

Batman vs. Doctor Who [The Hurting]

Posted 6 April 02009 - Permalink

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Doctor Strange credit card retailer promo poster

Above: Doctor Strange credit card retailer promo poster from 01992! [big thanks to Progressive Ruin]

But what to Doctor Strange are mundane considerations of earthly currency??

Doctor Strange conjures money in Strange Tales #151

Above: Doctor Strange in Strange Tales #151. Neilalien's not so sure that Doc's a positive for the economy as a whole re: the supply of money and credit.

But is Progressive Ruin familiar with this rarer retailer promo poster from around the same time?

Where's my money, honey?

Posted 4 April 02009 - Permalink

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Mad science and secret codes in the TV series Fringe [Ars Technica]

Update: Fringe code cracked [Ars Technica]

Posted 3 April 02009 - Permalink

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Question by Cully Hamner Hot sketch of the Renee Montoya Question by Cully Hamner [Doktor Kamisama]

New Steve Englehart interview [Mania.com]

Mania: You made Doctor Strange into more of a dark fantasy/horror title as opposed to a super hero title, even having him battle Dracula. Was there any pressure from the editors to make Strange more mainstream with the other heroes?
SE: Not at all, and that comes back to an earlier answer. We had complete creative freedom, with no editorial edicts. Roy or whoever might suggest an idea, but he never insisted on it. His famous words to me were, "If you can turn the book in on time and make it sell, you can keep doing it; otherwise, we'll find someone else who can." And that was it. So since I did that, to the extent of having STRANGE sell so well as to go monthly for the only time in its life, I could do whatever I wanted. And I did.

Evil Skull The Hall of Cliche Super Heroes vs. The League of Cliche Evil Super-Villains [Threadless t-shirts] [via Robot 6]

The historical context argument doesn't excuse how Will Eisner drew Spirit black sidekick Ebony White [The Empire Strikes Black] [Ebony White Wikipedia page with more info]

Lee/Ditko's Amazing Spider-Man #33 eased the troubles of an 11-year-old boy [Mark L. Van Name]

An Ode to Optimus Prime [Bam! Kapow!]
Optimus Prime was definitely a father-figure and morality-teacher to many boys growing up in the 80's.

Out this week: Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye #1! [Diamond Shipping This Week] [Grant Morrison Seaguy interview and preview at MySpace Comics]
Doctor Strangeness this week: Mini-Marvel toon Doc in Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular #1; a little Dormammu (and some kind of 'Quinn force'- an homage to Sorcerer Supreme scribe David Quinn?) in Dr. Doom: Masters of Evil #3. Neilalien was able to resist buying those for now.

Posted 2 April 02009 - Permalink

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