Friday, July 27, 2012

Spider-Man & Pop Tarts

Yep, you read that right, I was out last night on my way to see The Watch, and we stopped to pick up some snacks for the movie, and I happened across these...



How cool is that?

Thursday, July 26, 2012

I still miss Calvin & Hobbes

...here's why:


From the desk of Nick Fury


This is just too funny! It also reminds me of a story I wrote in memo form many, many years ago.

I’m seeing Spideys!


This is so totally very cool. The window washers at a children’s hospital in London dress up as super heroes to lift the children’s spirits. You just gotta like that they are doing this, it’s really totally awesome.

Friday, July 20, 2012

The world according to Rush

Normally I stay out of politics on this blog, but as this has a funnybook slant (and was entertaining) I couldn't resist.


Wednesday, July 18, 2012

I'm Spider-Man

Ten years ago, when the Sam Raimi Spider-Man first appeared, and no one in the fast food franchise world wanted to touch toys tied into a comicbook movie, It was Carl's Jr./Hardee’s (a pair of sister chain that are predominately on the West Coast) that took the chance and went with Spidey toys with their Kid's meals.



Well, as we all know now, they did quite well, for when the follow-up film came out in 2004, it was McDonald’s that had the toys.

Well, any way. I recall that back in ’04 my good buddy John (“I may be dead, but I still own the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) Carbonaro sent me a T-Shirt that was worn by the Carl's Jr. & Hardee’s employees during the Spidey promotion.

That first T-Shirt looks like this (yes, I still have and wear it)!





Well after a couple of rounds of fast food toys from the likes of McDonalds and Burger King, Spidey has returned to Carl’s Jr. and well, there is a new T-Shirt.


And, yep, I wear this one too. Now I just need to get a set of the Carl’s Jr. Toys.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Travelin’ Spidey

So I was given this copy of the AAA monthly newspaper by my brother Ron, and it looks like it is going to be a Spider-Man Summer.



Green Arrow online Comic

This just in, apparently the CW network is going to have a Green Arrow TV series this fall, and you can go online to download a free comic from Comixology.
If you missed the Arrow promotional comic book – taking place between Episodes 1 and 2 of Arrow – as it was given away at Comic-Con, you still can have a chance to read it.
Here is the link for where you can get a hold of it from DC (on comixology).

If you don’t already have an account there, you can easily set one up (for free, even). We just did, and while the comic revamps the origin of  Green Arrow, it looks pretty good, and we just might check out the TV show as well.

Steam Punk Spidey

My buddy Fred Schiller, recently blogged about Spidey and posted several images of a Steam Punk version done by an artist named Denis Medri. I wanted to re-post those images here.








He also posted  several images of some silhouettes of kids as superheroes by . Here is the one of Spidey-Kid:




Wicked-cool, eh?

The Avengers are here to help!


I'll let them help me anytime!

Monday, July 09, 2012

The Amazing Spider-Man is #1


Well folks, in spite of my own tepid review, Spider-Man has ascended to the top of the Box Office heap. He not only had the largest Tusday opening ever, but now he has passed Ted for achieve #1 status for last week.

1. The Amazing Spider-Man: $65,000,000
2. Ted: $32,593,000
3. Brave: $20,162,000
4. Savages (2012): $16,162,000
5 Magic Mike: $15,610,000
6. Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection: $10,200,000
7. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted: $7,700,000
8. Katy Perry: Part of Me: $7,150,000
9. Moonrise Kingdom: $4,642,000
10. To Rome with Love: $3,502,000

How cool is this?

Mmmm, Chocolate


Behind the scenes of The Rise of the Dark Knight

Check out this very cool and enlightening 131/2  minute clip of scenes from the Rise of the Dark Knight. It includes commentary form the cast and crew of the film.

Saturday, July 07, 2012

What if James Cameron had made Spider-Man

Back in 1992 I had heard that, in five years (’97) James Cameron (Aliens, Titanic) was supposed to have made a Spider-Man film. Like you all I thought this would have been wicked cool. My son would have been five at that time, and I figured that by then, he’d be old enough to have appreciated such a movie. Well as it turned out, that film not only never got made, but it took another five years for there to have been movie about my favorite hero. Ultimately that turned out better (not only because my son was now 10, and thus better able to appreciate such a film, but — according to the the following — wound up being a much better movie than the one that Cameron had apparently planned.


To return, for a moment, to the possibility of a Cameron film, and one of the reasons that never came about involves the tortured and convoluted film history of Spider-Man. As best as I recall, here is how that went. When it was announced that Cameron was going to direct a Spidey film no less than five other companies each claimed that they had the rights to make a Spidey film. These included:
  1. The folks who made the original live action Spider-Man TV show
  2. Cannon films (by then owned by Pathé Communications)
  3. Menahem Golan and
  4. Yoram Globus (each of whom were the principals behind the now sold Cannon (A.K.A. Golan - Globus films) and each was claiming that they had the retained the rights (Globus at  Pathé  and  Globus  who was now at 21st Century). 
  5. James Cameron
Well As Marvel attempted to sort through all of this tangled mess time passed — a typical Hollywood story. Meanwhile, to make matters interesting, Some years earlier, a legal dispute had erupted over the ownership of the James Bond book and film Thunderball Kevin McClory who had co-written (with Ian Fleming) an earlier Thunderball film treatment sued and won (among other things) the right to make a version of the film 20 years from the release of the original (that film wound up being Never say Never Again (’83) starring Sean Connery. As it turns out Never Say Never was an MGM film, and MGM was by then owned by Sony. which now owned all of the dangling Spidey-Rights save for the ones by Columbia — which coincidentally enough — owned the film rights to Bond, which didn’t want to relinquish Spidey. 


It was at this point that MGM/Sony said, fine, since we have the rights to Bond, we’ll simply make a new Bond film on your off years (Columbia was producing one every other year or so). 


As you can well imagine, this nearly gave the execs at Columbia a collective aneurysm, as Bond is arguably the most profitable film franchise in history. Eager to make a deal, they offered MGM/Sony virtually anything it wanted, which turned out to be the rights to Spider-Man. Columbia agreed “knowing” that it had gotten the better part of the deal because no one wanted to actually see a superhero film. Yeah, right. Well, as we all know, Spider-Man became the fastest-rising film in history currently standing at the 13st highest-earning film of all time (no Bond film cracks the top 100, with the highest-grossing Bond film, Quantum of Solace, only reaching as high as #183).


Needless to say, all of this Hollywoodland wrangling ate up five additional years, allowing my son to then be 10, and (as I said), old enough to better appreciate the film.

Friday, July 06, 2012

The Mighty Titan is coming


We all have our pet causes (Mine include the CBLDF, MoCCA, The Hero Initiative, & the Red Cross), and I know that you all have yours, still I want you to consider checking out the viedo below,and considering giving some of your hard-earned cash to my good buddy Joe Martino so he can launch his next comicbook project; The Mighty Titan.

Now I know that a lot of folks want you to help them launch their pet project, but for Joe, this is something more. You see, a while back Jooe had cancer, and he beat it...twice (which is why I keep telling him that he's a mutant, but that's a story for a different time).

Anywho. The Mighty Titan deals with a very powerful superhero who, in his "regular" life has cancer, This is the story of what that means, how it affects him (and, well, Joe), and what comes next. It is a powerful and compelling story, and I highly recommend that you all kick in to help Joe get it off the ground.

Thanks.

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

My latest Marvel Work

OK Kids, you might already know by now, but the Official Index to the Marvel Universe that I’ve been contributing to for the past three or four years, has finally been canceled. Volume #1 covered Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men) I worked on Spidey entries. Volume #2 covered Avengers, Thor, and Captain America (I worked on Thor & Cap). With Volume #3 covering Wolverine, Punisher, & Ghost Rider (I worked on Punisher and Ghost Rider).

Well, with the collecting of the Punisher entries into this bound volume, that's wrap for that series.


Next up is this History of the Marvel Universe comic where I helped frame some of the history.

Hopefully I'll get to do some more work for Marvel soon.

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

The Man Who Walked Away From Spider-Man

I was just turned on to this article about Steve Ditko which apparently appeared in today's NY Post

Ditko has long been thought of as the J.D. Salinger of the comics world. He has not given a formal interview since the 1960s — and even back then, he would often respond to a journalist’s questions via mail. Only a few public photographs are known to exist of him, the last taken in his dingy Hell’s Kitchen studio 53 years ago. He lives a rigorously private life, refusing to appear in public, to autograph work or to take a casual snapshot with a fan, should one somehow manage to track him down.
I became a Spider-Man fan because of Steve Ditko's art and Stan's writing. I've always wanted to talk to Steve, but understand that I probably never will.

More's the pitty.

Happiness


Monday, July 02, 2012

Avengers Assembled

Since Disney decided to not give us a Fast Food Toy set for the Avengers film we decided to build our own set: from the best parts of those that preceded this film (Thor, Iron Man 2, and The Incredible Hulk — all from Burger King), for Captain America, we’re going to grab the figure from the 2010 Marvel Heroes toy line (McDonald’s); and finally, in the cases of the Black Widow and Hawkeye — since there were no fast food figures for either of these characters — we’re going to cheat and pull in their respective action figures from Marvel’s movie Avenger toy line.

Oh yeah, perennial villain, Loki, is from the Thor Burger King toy set.

Non “Funny” Funnybooks on the Rise

We’ve been reading comics since around 1961. It is — as we’ve often said — our preferred form of entertainment. In fact, the guy we’ve been ...