Neilalien : A Doctor Strange Fansite : A Comic Book Weblog  

Happy Birthday to Stan Lee!

Stan Lee

Source: Stan Lee Meets Doctor Strange

Posted 28 December 02006 - Permalink

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Sweet Alex-Toth-drawn Question story from Charlton Bullseye #5 is online [Scans_daily]

Interview with Marvel animated movie music composer Guy Michelmore [Marvel.com] [upcoming Dr. Strange movie main title theme mp3!] [thanks readers!]

Writer Mike Carey likes the horror, writes new Werewolf By Night one-shot, wants chance at Dr. Strange [Comic Book Resources]

The Satanic Cosmology of Jack Chick [10 Zen Monkeys]

Marvel is what happens when "art moves on" and leaves DC behind, with their simplistic paternalistic Superman [Joey Q talkin' trash]

Brian K. Vaughan joins Lost writing staff [Comic Book Resources]

James Brown is dead [New York Times]

Posted 27 December 02006 - Permalink

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Ditkomania continues by Dave Sim, discussing Dr. Strange, Mr. A, finished Dr. Strangeroach illo [Blogandmail #91, #92, #93, #94]
Link update: "Doctor Strangeroach" commission by Dave Sim

Co-writer Brian Reed talks the new Illuminati miniseries [Newsarama]

What makes comics look more foolish to non-readers? Stan Lee's recent appearance on the moronic game-show Identity, or comics fans in a fit over it? [A Puissant Liter of Mongoose Blood]
Identity should have made it really hard and used Ditko instead [Querldox]

How I helped Spider-Man save Santa Claus (with Marvel Heroes Comic Book Creator, software out this week) [CNET News.com] [Official Site]
The above reporter had more fun than expected, and heck, this product might light a ten-year-old's imagination to create comics and learn some basic storytelling skills- but does any computer-entertainment observer think that the ability to drag-and-drop a small selection of Marvel clip art into limited panel grids and print it out for $30 is competing in any real way with the experience of *playing* Marvel characters in Ultimate Alliance or a Marvel-like character in City Of Heroes?

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According to revisions earlier this week to the The Juggernaut Bitch!! Wikipedia page, and this review of comic fan flicks at Bureau 42, Marvel has recently started going after the funny spoof video online, and YouTube has taken it down.
Reminders: [Wizbang Pop!] [Independent Tigerweekly]

The video continues to live online, and probably always will, for the observant and Google-skilled to find.

Marvel should find a way or a license or something to treat the *source* of X-Men: The Last Stand's only memorable line a bit better. Beyond the usual (must-actively-protect-)trademark/copyright stuff (but is this a protected parody like a Saturday Night Live skit making fun of Spider-Man?), and maybe the creator-fans have already received the ultimate props with the line being in the movie- this situation just feels like the same type of animal as the recent Firefly-fan backstab- and something that we're likely going to see a lot more of in our user-content-created-YouTube and viral-marketing world: the corporations take what's good from what's created out of fan love, and then turn around and kick said fan love in the nuts.

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Blogging appears unlikely over the next week. Happy Holidays, Neilalienistas!

Posted 22 December 02006 - Permalink

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Joseph Barbera, half of legendary animation team Hanna-Barbera, has died [Monsters And Critics] [Update: AP at CNN.com]
[Update: New York Times]

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Reports that The Oath #3 is hard to find in places [Fortress Of Fortitude]
It's forcing people to read old stories of the Golden Age Doctor Strange!

Dr. Strange sketch [by Bigseek]

A call for more Dr. Strange homoerotic fanfiction [Jencendiary]
Why write stories about Gambit and Wolverine when Doc's got an Asian houseboy?

Great massive essay about the philosophy of "What If" and the six categories of What If stories [A Trout In The Milk]

A mildly anti-fannish rant: caring more about the quality of the experience than if it holds up to 'allegedly dispassionate logical analysis' and looking for things to dislike [Bruce Baugh]

Marvel's Handbook legacy: no artist credits [Polite Dissent]

Archie and Riverdale get a new look [Newsarama]
And surprisingly, it's not manga-esque like what's so hot right now and how Sabrina The Teenage Witch was a while back.

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Musing on why people seem to act like psychopaths online, and what can be done about it [Kottke]
Comicbook message boarders and blog commenters take note:

I don't think most of the people that demonstrate antisocial behavior in comment threads are actually psychopaths or sociopaths (there is a difference) in real life. Rather, interacting via text strips out so much social context and "incidental information" that causes some people to display psychopathic behavior online and fail to develop an online moral sense.

Meanwhile, comicbook websites that host message boards and have user profiles, weblogs with comment sections, and social networking sites take note: If John McCain has his way, you will be responsible in a big way for what happens on your site if someone posts something that someone else thinks victimizes the children [McCain's War on Blogs at Think Progress]

Meanwhile, perhaps for the 'cyberspace behavior = meatspace behavior' ('maybe they really are psychopaths', 'the internet may not be that (identity-)transformative a medium except for giving antisocial shut-ins a world stage') counterpoint: Amazingly on Orkut, Indians are organizing themselves by caste [Salon (reg req'd or there's an easy ad to click through)]

Posted 18 December 02006 - Permalink

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The New Avengers: Illuminati #1 (starring Dr. Strange) preview [Mile High Comics First Look]

X-Men: First Class #4 preview (Doc's only on the cover so far) [Mile High Comics First Look]

Thanks Sanctum for the FYI!

Posted 16 December 02006 - Permalink

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Alan Moore's Pr0n Essay [excerpt at Comic Book Resources] [Arthur #25 (free PDF download there; cool to have it available for free, but the essay is noncleverly divided across PDF Parts 1 and 2 so you'll have to download both)]
"Bog Venus vs. Nazi Cock-Ring: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography." Ah, some light weekend reading. "In this month's issue of Arthur Magazine, comics writer Alan Moore has authored a 12,000 word essay on 25,000 years of pornography, profusely illustrated with appropriately bawdy imagery." Sexually-open cultures like the Greeks gave us Civilization, and sexually-repressive cultures like the late Romans gave us the Dark Ages- so enjoy your Lost Girls.

Classic "Meanwhile..." guest editorial in DC Comics March 01985 re: superheroine treatment [Dance Of The Puppets]
The six D's are Dependence, Deemphasis, Demoralize, Deglamorize, Depower, Death.

Posted 15 December 02006 - Permalink

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If you see Dr. Strange windows [1] [2] at the San Francisco MoMA, then your journey to the dark side is complete, my pretties...

Mike Wieringo anecdote re: drawing Stan Lee Meets The Silver Surfer [Wieringo's Blog; no apparent permalinks- entry 311, 6 December 2006]

Stan's plot was incredibly brief in length... and so I had to do a lot of extrapolation for the 10-page story... but that gave me a little taste of what it must have been like back in the early days of the "HOUSE OF IDEAS" when the stories published then were more often than not the result of a short phone conversation between Stan and his artist about the overall theme of the book they were working on-- and the artist would then draw the story in its entirety from that conversation. What a different working world it was then compared to now-- where the writers control the everything about the story in stiflingly detailed complete scripts.... the number of panels per page, shot selection, lighting, pacing and even wardrobe. There's very little left for the artist to contribute beyond bringing the writer's vision to life on the printed page.

Jack Kirby interview clip (intro by Harlan Ellison) from The Masters Of Comic Book Art documentary is online [YouTube]

Above two links sponged from this Escaperisms post.

Neilalien sci-fi fave The Surrogates positively reviewed [The Hurting]

The zing-smacky artistic vocabulary of superhero comics and costumes can create cognitive dissonance vs. "superheroes ain't Art" and Comics Journal ensmartening [A Trout In The Milk]

Posted 14 December 02006 - Permalink

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Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, has died [AP at CNN.com] [thanks Shawn!]

(1) Should Bill Finger get Green Lantern co-creator credit or did he just supply early scripts?
New Light on The Green Lantern: The Ultimate (well, at least the Penultimate) Interview with Mart Nodell on the Emerald Gladiator and Other Things by Roy Thomas, from Alter Ego Vol. 3 #5 [TwoMorrows Publishing]
Bill Finger Wikipedia entry

(2) Did Nodell create the Pillsbury Doughboy? Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #47 says False. Obit above says "he was on a design team that helped develop" Poppin' Fresh.
Update: David Letterman just made a joke in his monologue about the creator of Poppin' Fresh passing away. He was cremated at 400° for 20 minutes.

Dr. Strange might want to eliminate super-scientists Reed Richards and Tony Stark [Reporting on Marvels and Legends]
If Wong's funko "nor can magic recreate what science has already accomplished" line in The Oath #3 is true.

The Question Guitar [VicSage.com]

Lots of great illustrations from old children's books [Children's Book Illustrators Gallery at Nocloo.com] [jump right to the Gallery] [via Metafilter]

Adorable, hopeful tale of young adult (and a girl too!) actually aware of and enjoying young-adult author (and comic book geek) Tamora Pierce's Marvel superhero work on new White Tiger miniseries (and inspired to make comics herself too!) [Comics Should Be Good]
White Tiger flaunts author's fondness for strong women [Fort Wayne News-Sentinel] [via Tamora-Pierce.com fansite]

Listen for the "Chanukah: A Time for Superheroes" special soon on National Public Radio near you [Ferret Press/PANEL Weblog] [linkable Georgia Public Broadcasting page]

Nicolas Cage becomes comic book skeleton [ContactMusic.com]
It sounds like the actor pulled a Christian Bale/The Machinist for the upcoming Ghost Rider movie and got hooked on running after deciding that the Johnny Blaze alter-ego should be skeletal.

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Comic Weblog Updates hasn't updated in a while. Hrm. It appears that Blo.gs' stagnation and decline since Yahoo acquired it has entered a new chapter. The Blo.gs manual ping page announces that "We have combined the blo.gs and My Yahoo! ping interfaces", which probably broke everything out there that was using Blo.gs in an automated way (like CWU), and pinging Blo.gs through other places like Ping-O-Matic doesn't seem to be working either, so all those scripts like CWU's will probably have to be tweaked. Although the problem looks bigger than that, since using that Blo.gs manual ping page leads only to Yahoo error pages at the moment, and currently only Yahoo 360 blogs are on Blo.gs' Updated Recently list. Neilalien actually got lucky for once with something meta like this (or when something like this breaks)- his link is stuck in amber near the top of CWU's page. ;) Anyway, here's to hoping that big comicsblogosphere resource and traffic-source CWU (and the rest of the once-nice non-RSS-based pingtrackerweb) gets fixed soon, and that Yahoo hasn't gone all corporate and Yahoo-blogs-only with (the once open source) Blo.gs- or that CWU can replace Blo.gs with something else for its ping info if Yahoo has gone that route.

Posted 13 December 02006 - Permalink

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Peter Parker pecker panel Oops: Peter Parker pecker panel pulled [Sequentially Speaking] [via The Beat]
"Please be advised that Marvel Comics' SPIDER-MAN REIGN #1 (OCT062135D), which ships to retailers today with a T+ (Teens & Up) rating, contains an image that may be misinterpreted by some readers as inappropriate. Marvel apologizes for any inconvenience this may create for you and your customers."

Misinterpreted? Naw! Can't a man eat grapes in bed?

Now that's skepticism: Love for a panel from Strange Tales #129 [Dave Ex Machina] [thanks Sanctum!]

Neat analysis of Bone cover design and evolution [Comics212.net] [via Drawn!]

Memo re: superhero comics: There should be more kicking [BeaucoupKevin]

Posted 12 December 02006 - Permalink

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Info re: March's Marvel Masterworks Doctor Strange Volume 3 nicely all in one place [Marvel Masterworks Resource Page] [thanks chasdom!]
Reprints Doctor Strange #169-179 (cover of #179 only, since it was a reprint ish) and The Avengers #61.

Steve Ditko's 01993 Dark Horse 29-page The Safest Place In The World one-shot worth checking out [Ditko Comics]
Note that this is also reprinted in black and white in Avenging World.

Posted 11 December 02006 - Permalink

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Eye of Agamotto by Maleev in New Avengers #26 Dr. Strange in New Avengers #26 "spotlighting the return of Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch" [Newsarama] [page 4 art only; Doc and Wong answer the door] [page 5 art only; funky Maleev Eye of Agamotto]

Full report re: last week's Marvel Then And Now event at UCLA [Comic Book Resources]

Heroes is season's top new show [ICv2]
Retailers drool: If even a fraction of the show's 15 million viewers buy a potential print collection of the show's accompaniment online comics, the book will be a big hit comics-wise.

Anxiety, The Secret Identity, And The Ten Basic Superhero Plots [A Trout In The Milk]

Posted 9 December 02006 - Permalink

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Dave Sim blogging Steve Ditko, Dr. Strange, Dr. Strangeroach [Blogandmail #84; #85]

Dr. Strange and his badass battle cries [Scans_daily]
Update: Wow, that "By the Hoary #%*-ing Hosts!" line in The Oath #3 is quite popular online [The Nerduary]

Author Deborah Eisenberg thinks that post-9/11 superheroes represent the childish consoling self-deception of disproportionate American power unambiguously used for the benefit of humanity [Bookninja]


Congrats to the great Progressive Ruin on three years of comics blogging!

Posted 8 December 02006 - Permalink

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Doctor Strange: The Oath #3 out today [Diamond Comics Shipping List]

Update: Agents of Atlas #5, also out today, has a flashback including "a very powerful magician", looks like the Ancient One wearing the Eye of Agamotto [Mile High Comics First Look, page 4] [thanks Roger!]

Update: The Marvel Holiday Special one-shot anthology, also out today, has a Wong/Fin-Fang-Foom team-up!
Update: "How Fin Fang Foom Saved Christmas" posted online in its entirety [Newsarama]

Some other radar pings out today: Essential Defenders Volume 2, Meltdown from Sean Wang (Runners), the Neilalien-fave Silencers TPB is on sale for the holidays.

Update/FYI/Warning: Essential Defenders Volume 2 was solicited to be Defenders #15-39 and Giant-Size Defenders #1-5 [Marvel.com], but apparently it's out with Defenders #15-30, four Giant-Size Defenders, Marvel Two-In-One #6-7, Marvel Team-Up #33-35 and the treasury-sized crossover with Howard the Duck [Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages Message Board] [via Defenders Message Board]

Must-see: Scans of Bernie Krigstein's powerful classic "Master Race" (from 01955, EC's Impact #1) are online [La Biblioteca de .G.] [via LinkMachineGo] [Krigstein Wikipedia entry] [Impact Wikipedia entry]

Justice Rats: Funny Superfriends/Mallrats mashup [YouTube] [via Progressive Ruin]

Posted 6 December 02006 - Permalink

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Preview of this week's Doctor Strange: The Oath #3 [Mile High Comics First Look]

Okay hotshots, tell Neilalien who's on the cover of The Oath #3!

Posted 4 December 02006 - Permalink

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