Weirdest Guest Of Wizard World Chicago – Rod Blagojevich Bleeding Cool Comic Book News and Rumors

WTF WIZARD!?!?!?! 

Weirdest Guest Of Wizard World Chicago – Rod Blagojevich Bleeding Cool Comic Book News and Rumors

Weirdest Guest Of Wizard World Chicago – Rod Blagojevich
Submitted by Rich Johnston on August 20, 2010 – 11:28 am (1) comments

What do you do when your political career is over, your name is a national joke and you have nothing left to live for?

You go to Wizard World Comic Con.

Disgraced Illinois politician Rod Blagojevich will appear at Wizard World Chicago Comic Con tomorrow – not to open it, but to set up his booth. Sign autographs and pose for photos for a few dollars here, a few dollars there.

Seriously, it feels like a Daily Show sketch.

Blagojevich was arrested for a series of fraudulent schemes including allegations that he wanted to sell President Obama’s vacant seat to the highest bidder – with video to back this up.

His recent court appearance saw him convicted of lying to investigators but, as jurors could not agree on the other charges, a mistrial was called. A new trial has been called on the remaining contested charges.

Bleeding Cool kudos points for the weirdest photo anyone gets.

Scoop – Where the Magic of Collecting Comes Alive! – The Lone Ranger

I always enjoyed watching the black and white TV show in reruns with my Dad when I was growing up, and now I enjoy sharing the comics from Dynamite now. This was Dad’s hero when he was a kid and he even got to meet Clayton Moore once

Scoop – Where the Magic of Collecting Comes Alive! – The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger

The legend of the Lone Ranger was born on Detroit radio station WXYZ in January 1933, the product of station owner George W. Trendle and writer Fran Striker. The program was a success from the start, and within a year was also being heard on WGN in Chicago and WOR in New York–in effect forming the nucleus of the new Mutual network.

By 1937, “Hi-Yo Silver!” was echoing nationwide. Initially sustained by the station, the program was sponsored by Silver Cup bread starting in November 1933. Bond bread took over as sponsor in 1939 except in the Southeast states, where Merita bread retained its franchise.

General Mills became the sponsor in 1941, tying the masked rider to such cereals as Kix and Wheaties until the radio series went off the air in 1955. Cheerios sponsored rebroadcasts until 1956, ending some 23 years and over 3,000 episodes of Western radio thrills and adventure.

Jack Deeds was the first actor to play the Lone Ranger, but only for the first six broadcasts. George Stenius, later a movie producer under the name George Seaton, assumed the role for the next three months. When Stenius quit, WXYZ station manager Brace Beemer took over the role for a few months, but then he left to open an advertising agency.

Finally, in May 1933, Earl Graser became the Lone Ranger voice and he continued the role until his death in 1941. At this point, Brace Beemer was recruited to return to the role. He played the part from 1941 to 1955 and became the voice most closely associated with the character.

On television, the Lone Ranger rode for more than 30 years on the networks and in syndication. The series, sponsored by General Mills (and Merita bread), premiered on ABC in 1949 and aired in prime time until 1957. Reruns were shown on all three networks: CBS (1953-1960 and 1966-1969), ABC (1957-1961 and 1965), and NBC (1960-1961). Syndication began in 1961. Clayton Moore (1914-1999) played the lead for most of the series (John Hart covered the years 1952-1954) and Jay Silverheels (1919-1980), a Mohawk Indian, was Tonto, his faithful companion.

Republic Pictures released two 15-episode chapter plays, The Lone Ranger (1938), with Lee Powell as the lead, and The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939), with Robert Livingston. Wrather Productions made three full-length films, The Lone Ranger (1955) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958), both with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, and The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), with Klinton Spilsbury and Michael Horse.

A Saturday morning animated Lone Ranger series aired on CBS from 1966 to 1969, with the Ranger and Tonto battling mad scientists as well as conventional Western villains. The animated defenders of law and order surfaced again on CBS in 1980-1981 as part of The Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour.

A Sunday comic strip distributed by King Features appeared from 1938 to 1971 and was revived from 1981 to 1984, one of the longest running of the Western strips. Charles Flanders took over the strip from Ed Kresse in 1939 and continued as the main daily and Sunday artist until the mid-1960s. Comic books, including giveaways, novels, coloring books, photo albums, and scrapbooks appeared in great numbers from the 1940s on. Artist Tom Gill did most of the interior story art for the comic books in the 1950s-60s; Don Spaulding painted some of the classic 1950s covers.

Younger incarnations of the Lone Ranger and Tonto failed to make a go of it in a WB television pilot aired in 2002. A new comic book incarnation of the masked man started in 2006 from Dynamite Entertainment.

It would be hard to overestimate the number of items licensed and merchandised in the name of the Lone Ranger, especially during the years the program ruled the air on radio and television. Items may be copyrighted by Lone Ranger Inc., Lone Ranger Television Inc., or, starting in 1954, Wrather Corp.

Quick and the Read #11 – CHOKE!!! The Return of Comic Book Reviews?!?!?!?!

Ok I’m just going to admit it now.  I suck at this comic blog.  Basically I am a lazy SOB who likes to do a little as possible and play computer games whenever I can, watch TV and read comics when I am not doing that.  Every once in a while (five days a week unfortunately) I have to go to work for a while and pretend I care so I can make money to eat, buy more comics, and pay other bills I am forced to pay.

I already get comics late through the mail/UPS, and I take way too long to read them when I do.  By the time I get around to writing about what I have read, they have already been blogged to death, and no one cares anymore.

So from here on out, no more excuses; no more grand exclamations that I am going to do things different, because we all know that is a bunch of shit.  I will do comic reviews when I do them, so let’s just all move on from here shall we?

There it is, I said it; and I feel so much better.

Now that we have that out of the way, here are a few reviews that I took some time out of my busy schedule to do.  Hope you get something out of them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #35 (Dark Horse Comics) – Wow, serious jumping the shark here guys. Last issue was way over the top with the partial nudity, and this one was barely incomprehensible.  I have to admit that I have been buying this out of habit for a while now (something that I need to change on a lot of titles).  It started out great at first, but after “the gang” had to go into hiding when vampires got popular, things started to go downhill fast.  I love Brad Meltzer’s stuff I have read on other comics (Lighting Saga being the first that comes to mind) his arc on this book was really out there (though I did like the Superman references), and hard to follow.  I was glad to hear that this title is taking a breather for a while, because I think this run has more than run its course.

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Astro City: The Dark Age Book Four #4 (WildStorm) – I am big fan of Kurt Busiek’s writing, and it was his work on Astro City that made me that big of a fan.  Astro City was probably my first try outside of the “Big Two” (or three or four, depending on who you talk to) and I have never regretted it for one second.  The Astro City stories have always been great, and this last issue of the “Dark Age” saga is no exception. Kurt Busiek is one of the greatest comic book writers of our time.   I can’t wait to read what he has for us in the “Silver Agent” series!

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Zatanna #1 (DC Comics) – I was really disappointed in this one.  Paul Dini is a good writer, I have liked his work on “Batman: the Animated Series” and on “Detective Comics” in the past.  However this book’s concept is a complete and total robbing of Jim Butcher’s “The Dresden Files” novels in my opinion.  So much so I think Butcher should sue.  Other than that the art was pretty good.  This is the only issue of this I will be getting.

Well that’s it for this time around, hopefully it won’t be almost a year before I do another one of these; but I’m not making any promises.

Quote of the day | Christine Valada, on digital royalties for creators | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

‘Nuff said.  Put up or shut up Marvel!!

Quote of the day | Christine Valada, on digital royalties for creators | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

Quote of the day | Christine Valada, on digital royalties for creators

* Posted on June 24, 2010 – 04:00 PM by Kevin Melrose

“This is certainly welcome news for DC creators, who have benefited from DC’s long-standing policy of equitable compensation over the long-term. Marvel has reproduced works in various electronic formats for years, and I can assure you that my husband hasn’t seen a goddamned dime for any such use of Giant-Sized X-Men #1 or anything else he ever created for Marvel. Meanwhile, royalties from DC for a relatively minor character got us through the worst of our past 15 months of hell. Until Marvel takes the steps that DC has to compensate the creators who made the company great, all it is doing is blowing smoke. Anyone who thinks Marvel is the better place to work is just deluding themselves.”

– photographer Christine Valada, wife of veteran writer and editor Len Wein, on DC Comics’ announcement of creator royalties for digital sales

Top 5 Reasons Why the Legion of Super-Heroes is Cooler than the Avengers

As most of you already know, DC and Marvel both relaunched two of their titles with number one issues on the same day a few weeks ago.  For DC, it was the Legion of Super-Heroes, and for Marvel it was the Avengers.

Although I have to admit I have always been a big DC fan, as well as a HUGE Legion fan, one fact became clear pretty after reading both of those issues.

The Legion of Super-Heroes is cooler than the Avengers.  Here are the top 5 reasons why:

5. The Legion doesn’t kill, period.

I am not so sure that you can say the same for some of the Avengers…

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4. The Legion doesn’t use weapons

Check out your line up from Avengers #1

You got:

1. Thor – hammer
2. Hawkeye – bow and arrow
3. Spider-Man – web shooters (borderline on that one)
4. Wolverine – razor sharp claws
5. Captain America – shield, gun, knife
6. Iron Man – high tech armor

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3. The Legion has time machines

Time sphere – check

Time viewer – check

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2. The Legion has flight rings

‘Nuff said.

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1.  The Legion never stopped being heroes.

While Marvel is trying to recover from its “Civil War” and start a new “Heroic Age” for its heroes.  The Legion, no matter what its incarnation, never stopped being heroes and a inspiration for comic fans everywhere.

Start in at the ground floor on the Comic Book Chat e-mail list!

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You can sign up here

Movie Review – Iron Man 2

Those of you that know me know that I haven’t been a big fan of Marvel Comics for a while now.  The main reason being that Marvel’s super-heroes aren’t really “heroic” enough for my tastes, or at least how I think a super-hero should be.  Whether that will change with the new “Heroic Age” that Marvel is starting soon remains to be seen.

With all that said, overall Iron Man 2 was a truly great movie!    There was action, suspense, great special effects, with some humor mixed in for good measure.  Back in the day, I actually read Iron Man for a quite a while.  I don’t remember why I stopped, but this movie actually made me want to start reading it again.

Iron Man 2 was just as good, if not better, than the first movie in my opinion.  This is really hard to pull off but I think that the fact that they are staying pretty close to the original source material (from what I remember anyway), has a lot to do with it.  This is usually the fatal mistake that Hollywood makes when making a movie based on a comic book character.  The two Hulk movies are a great example of this.  The first one strayed too far from the original material and was horrible, the second one was a lot closer, even pulling from the 70’s TV show that was popular at the time, and was so much better for it.

Even though I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, I still had some issues with it.  More on that after the jump.  I must warn you, spoilers abound from here on out.

Read more

Cup O’ Joe: Political Controversy & The Heroic Age – Comic Book Resources

The picture in the comic was taken from a REAL SIGN at Tea Party rally!!

Classic!

Cup O’ Joe: Political Controversy & The Heroic Age – Comic Book Resources

The book was getting ready to go to the printer, it was on fire already from a deadline standpoint, but the editor on the book noticed that there was a small art correct that needed to get done. On the first page featuring the protestors, the artist on the book drew slogans into the protest signs to give them a sense of reality and to set up the scene. On the following page featuring the protestors again, there were signs, but nothing written in them. From a continuity standpoint, this omission stood out like a sore thumb, but was easily fixable. So, just before the book went to the printer, the editor asked the letterer on the book to just fudge in some quick signs. The letterer in his rush to get the book out of the door but wanting to keep the signs believable, looked on the net and started pulling slogans from actual signs. That’s when he came upon this one.

Art Imitates Life..

FOXNews.com – Tea Party Jab to Be Zapped From Captain America Comic, Writer Says

I hate to give Fox News any press, but I had to comment about this.

First I was shocked that those Tea Party people can actually read, let alone read comics.  Someone had to point it out to them i bet.  Second, I have something to say to the Tea Party group.  Grow up and get the fuck over yourselves!  If something as little as this hits a nerve, maybe you should take a long hard look at what you are doing and how you are doing it.

To Marvel: SHAME on you for falling under this kind of pressure from a bunch of lunatics.  Do you think these people are really going to hurt your bottom line?  Or did the Mouse force you to do it?

FOXNews.com – Tea Party Jab to Be Zapped From Captain America Comic, Writer Says

Tea Party Jab to Be Zapped From Captain America Comic, Writer Says

By Joshua Rhett Miller

– FOXNews.com

A “tea bag” reference in a recent Captain America comic book that has angered the Tea Party movement will be removed by Marvel Comics in future editions, the story’s writer told FoxNews.com.

Writer Ed Brubaker told FoxNews.com that Marvel Comics will remove a “tea bag” reference from future editions of Captain America No. 602.

A “tea bag” reference in a recent Captain America comic book that has angered the Tea Party movement will be removed by Marvel Comics in future editions, the story’s writer told FoxNews.com.

In issue No. 602 of Captain America, “Two Americas, Part One,” the title hero and The Falcon, a black superhero from New York City, stumble upon a protest rally in Boise, Idaho. They see scores of protesters carrying signs that say “Stop the Socialists!” and “Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!”

Captain America says the protest appears to be an “anti-tax thing,” and The Falcon jokes that he likely would not be welcomed into the crowd of “angry white folks.”

Ed Brubaker, who wrote the story, told FoxNews.com he did not write the “Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!” sign shown in the edition, insisting that the words were added by someone in “lettering or production” just before being shipped to the printer. It will be changed in subsequent editions, he said.

“I don’t know who did it, probably someone who thought it was funny,” Brubaker wrote in an e-mail. “I didn’t think so, personally. That’s the sign being changed to something more generic for the trade reprint, because I and my editor were both shocked to see it.”

But the change may come too late to placate a chorus of critics who noticed the apparent jab at the Tea Party movement and who accused Marvel of making supervillains out of patriotic Americans.

Michael Johns, a board member of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, said he felt the “juvenile” dig will ultimately do more damage to Marvel’s brand than to the Tea Party movement. He also disputed the insinuation that the growing movement lacks diversity.

“The Tea Party movement has been very reflective of broad concerns of all Americans,” Johns said. “Membership is across ethnic, religious and even political lines.”

Johns accused Brubaker of “blame-shifting” and questioned why an apology or retraction hadn’t been issued as soon as the writer or Marvel executives noticed the politically charged signs.

Brubaker, meanwhile, has made no secret of his political leanings.

He said he wrote the script “four or five” months ago, which was shortly before he posted critical messages on his Twitter account regarding former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former President George W. Bush.

“Memo to Bachman and the rest of the tea crowd — We had a revolution already, it’s called an election,” Brubaker tweeted on Nov. 5.

Nine days later, he wrote: “What did we learn this week? That Sarah Palin is a lying idiot. Hey, welcome to 2008 again.”

But Brubaker was adamant that he did not intend to imply that the group of protesters in the comic book were Tea Partiers.

“I was simply using them to show the mood in the country in various places outside Captain America and the Falcon’s usual home, New York City,” he wrote. “It’s very similar to other things we’ve done in the comic, showing leftwing protest crowds back during the election season in 2008.”

A spokeswoman for Marvel Comics did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a think tank based in Washington, said the protest scene in the comic book is merely the latest attempt in a “systematic effort” to chastise the grassroots Tea Party movement.

“I was perplexed by this,” London said. “It seems to me there was a clear effort on someone’s part to undermine the Tea Party movement.”

London said the comic strip insinuates the protesters are “loonies,” and he questioned The Falcon’s reference to race.

“It involves sensitivities,” London said. “There’s no reason for something like that to be included.”

Yet Another First Gay Superhero | Bleeding Cool Comic News & Rumors

Yet Another First Gay Superhero | Bleeding Cool Comic News & Rumors

Yet Another First Gay Superhero
Submitted by Rich Johnston on November 18, 2009 – 5:48 am (22) comments

KrazyJanuary 1992

Chicago Sun-Times: The comic book, long a purveyor of childhood fantasies, has taken a step closer to the adult world as one prominent “superhero” acknowledges he is gay.

The superhero is Northstar, billed in Marvel Comics’ “Alpha Flight” as “Canada’s Most Eligible Bachelor,” and he comes out of the closet in the current issue to help fight AIDS.

“I am gay!” Northstar shouts…

February 2000

The Mirror: TWO Scottish cartoonists have created the worlds first homosexual superheroes. Apollo and Midnighter, a pair of lycra-clad gay…

December 2002

The Independent:
Coming (out) soon: the world’s first gay superhero. The Rawhide Kid, killed off by Marvel Comics in 1979, is back from the dead. And how.

January 2009

Daily Telegraph: It was only a matter of time before we had our first gay superhero. And if there is one man who can make him a success it is Stan Lee…

February 2009

Daily Telegraph: DC Comics have unveiled their first openly gay superhero – a sapphic socialite called Batwoman…

November 2009

The Sun: World’s first gay superheroes…

For the record, for the clip files, for lazy journalists (and will amend for the bits I get wrong or miss out)…

The first closet gay comic strip character was Krazy Kat in 1916, the first transvestite hero comics character was Madame Fatal in 1940, the first out gay hero comics character was Harry Chess in That Man From A.U.N.T.I.E in 1964, the first lesbian comics character was Sandy, Wimmen’s Comix 1971.

The first openly gay superhero was Gay Guy, created by John Byrne, for Candian college newspaper strip The Emery Weal, 1971.

The first mainstream gay superhero character was Northstar of Alpha Flight – who first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #120 in 1979, but creator John Byrne decided he is gay for Alpha Flight #1. 1983. The character Northstar outs himself in an Alpha Flight story written by Scott Lobdell in 1992.

The first gay superhero with his own book was Enigma by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo, initially polanned for Disney/Touchmark but picked up by Vertigo in 1993.

The first superhero team in comics was Joan Hilty’s Luna Legion appearing in Oh! magazine in 1992, and Pride High was the first gay superhero team comic book, published in 2007.

The first gay superhero couple was Apollo and Midnighter, first appearing naked in bed together in Stormwatch by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, in 1998, adding in comments later when the characters appeared in their The Authority comic.

Yes, Apollo and Midnighter are, in the debased English parlance, up each other. So what?

but they would only be properly publically outed by Mark Millar in The Authority in 1992. At the end of his run on the book, they were married on the page by Ellen DeGeneres. Midnighter wore white.

And there is no news as to whether the owners of the Spandex TM trademark will seek to defend it, after the considerable publicity given the current title!

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