Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc From: [ah 804] at [FreeNet.Carleton.CA] (Kipp Lightburn) Subject: [FANZINE] KNOTTED #1 Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 19:47:13 GMT ___ ___ __ __ _______ _______ ______ | / \ | _____ | | ______ \ | / \ | \ | | | | \ |_ / | | | | | | |___ | \ \ | | |_ | | | | | \ | \ | | / | | |____ |___ / | \ | | | | | / | \ / ----------------------------------------------------- EditoR: Kipp Lightburn [[ah 804] at [freenet.carleton.ca]] ContributorS: - Gary St. Lawrence(The Saint) [[s--i--t] at [express.ctron.com]] - [s--ir--m] at [hurricane.seas.ucla.edu] - Andrew Cameron [[al 889] at [freenet.carleton.ca]] DeadPooL: The Lipton Cup-a-Soup Guy (Soup..warm..hug..Mom) (wretch..spew) StuntS: David Hasslehoff's gut Pick of the Ish: Sin City: A Dame to Kill for #1 ----------------------------------------------------- EditoriaL KnotS --------------- Let me just start off by telling you something I've just found out, (though this may be old news to all of you). There WILL be an X-Men live action movie coming out, and the only actor that has been approached, has been Harvey Keitel(Reservoir Dogs, The Bad LT., Thelma and Louise). Apparently he's being eyed for the part of Wolverine. I don't know about this.... Can you see Keitel with Wolverine's hairdo? Did you enjoy reading 'Understanding Comics' by Scott McCloud? Well if you did Kitchen Sink press is apparently releasing an 'Understanding Comics' T-shirt.... and the jolly fat pig of capitalism wandered on. More movie news, Jim Owlsey's 'The Shade' will be in your friendly neighborhood cinema. Who's going to play 'The Shade' you ask? Well lets just say its a Beverly Hills cop. Hmmmm.. 'Batman: Mask of the Phantasm' The animated movie, apparently is going to be bloody (All the sega genesis Mortal Kombat fans are rejoicing now). Some of the fight scenes are supposed to be pretty brutal, and hey, at least the animated Batman looks like he belongs in the costume.... and can turn his head. Michael Keaton's costume was more like a full body neck brace. (Anybody seen it? Want to write us a review?) Oh heaping amounts of joy, Image is going to release (or has, depending on when you read this) Wetworks. Other Image news, (Sounds funny saying IMAGE NEWS), did anyone else read the half assed attempt Keown made at PITT #3. In case you missed it, it was an ashcan format comic packaged in with HERO magazine. IMHO it sucked. Never has a vacuum cleaner looked so nice... Marvel has nabbed John Kricfalusi (Ren & Stimpy) to do comics for them. Characters so far: He-Hog, the Atomic pig, and George Liquor, American. Who will own the rights to these? Marvel or Kricfalusi? *** *** Well, this one is kind of short, but hey, good things in small packages right? Anyhow, there isn't a way of subscribing YET. I'm still looking for a distributor (So if any of you have ideas drop me a line). Right now the best I can do is posting it on all the comic related areas in the net. If the submissions pick up, I'm looking at doing both electronic AND hard copy versions, the only costs involved would be for postage involved in snailmail. As for submissions, we'll print up pretty much anything comic related. If you simply want to review what you're reading thats cool, or absolutely anything else... of course no artwork though. At least not unless I go hard copy.... send all submissions to: [ah 804] at [freenet.carleton.ca] Ciao Baby. ------------------------------------- **************************************** **From: [s--ir--m] at [hurricane.seas.ucla.edu]** **Subject: image comics commentary ** **************************************** Regarding the current growing popularity of the Image titles and artists: Why the hell are people so obsessed with these paltry stories??? In my humble opinion, it takes more to make a good comic book than posed drawings and great fight scenes. Flip through any given image comic from homage studios, extreme studios or any other Image comic and you will most probably come upon either a scene of a team in attack position, fighting an enemy team or warrior, or quite frankly scowling for no apparent reason. Did someone somewhere just decide that in order to sell a comic every other page must be a fight scene that takes up both pages and have as few words as possible? Did the Comic Authority decide that the number of spoken sentences in a comic book cannot exceed three per page, and each sentence must not contain words of greater than eight letters or three syllables, whichever comes first? Must every character have some sort of psychological problem or have a mysterious relation- ship with another character in another book, mandating a crossover at some point in the near future, thereby requiring everyone to shell out either the three bucks for each of the books, in addition to a special limited crossover series that's on special paper with a hologram in a bag and introduces some powerful new wisecracking superhero who will soon get his own comic book despite the fact that he's only been around a whole two weeks???? What the hell is happening to comic books today? Has everyone completely lost their minds or is Image just in a profit binge, pulling money out of little kids' pockets who don't know any better about what real comic books (see Watchmen and Dark Knight) and real authors (see Gaiman, Moore and Miller) entail. In the meantime, the X-books are degenerating into crossovers every three months and introducing new characters and giving them their own series' just to maintain profits. But then again, who needs stories - I'd rather have a good gory fight scene where no one dies but everyone gets repeatedly beaten and the bad guys rarely, if ever, win while the good guys get great press. ------------------------------- ************************************************* **These next two articles come from 'The Saint'** ************************************************* From: [s--i--t] at [express.ctron.com] W.I.T.* (What I Think ...) Dialling for Dimwits By Gary St. Lawrence You'll have to pardon me if I sound out of sorts. I'm feeling a little ill. You see, I just happened across the Home Shopping Network and one of their episodes on comic books. Tonight's particularly infuriating "fantastic offer" from HSN was, of course, focused around Batman, presumably because there is currently no other single "hot item" for them to hype into oblivion. Believe it or not (I hope you're sitting down), HSN was hawking Batman #500 (you know, that pathetically over- printed die-cut piece of crap that your dealer still has plenty of copies of and is still selling for cover price? The one that brought us the new Batman nobody this side of Rob Liefield can stand?) for ... urgh, there's that pain again ... for $79.95! But wait! Before you scoff. Keep in mind ... it was signed, which is always clear reason to super-inflate a price by 1,600 percent of market value (I suppose you can find someone who isn't selling it for $5?!?) Isn't there some law or regulation in the Consumer Protection Act that can put a stop to this blatant touch tone travesty? I figure this is how it started: Someone at the Home Shopping Network, some time ago, must have overheard some kids at a comic book convention talking about getting certain books signed by the artist or writer who did them. He probably also overheard the kids say how the book became more valuable after the autograph. Sadly, whomever that grossly naive person was, missed the mark like Oliver Queen on his first day on the island. The way the Home Shopping Network skyjacks prices on comic books simply because the book's second assistant to the assistant coffee gopher signed it, is the sickening travesty. The fact that there are simpletons out there who are stupid and gullible enough to buy these ridiculously overpriced "bargains" is just a shame. If you're reading this column, you've seen what I'm talking about. They have some kid in his early 20s -- obviously HSN's resident comic book "expert" (most likely because he was the one who most looked like Rob Liefield) -- droning on and on about what a bargain and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it is to shell out the cost of a major kitchen appliance for a comic book that isn't even old enough for the acid in the paper to start yellowing it. Not only do these clowns schlep ONLY the latest fanboy drool fests, but the idiot who hosts the segment doesn't even know what he's selling, let alone why. Something I find particularly insulting is that each episode features someone from the industry professional pool (strangely though, always from DC Comics) who sits there and hurls this carney barker barf right along with him. Don't Jerry Ordway and Curt Swan realize how insulting it is to see them on television, taking advantage of the cranially rectumized, pumping sales for material they know isn't worth a fraction of what is being charged as the "exclusive HSN bargain price?" Do they have such whole contempt for us, the people who made them famous, as to not care that they're bilking stupid people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars? Apparently not. They've both done return appearances. During the week that the four die-cut "Reign of the Supermen" books came out, introducing the cyborg, kid, steel and Son of Krypton Supermen, HSN was there, shamelessly offering "incredible deals" on the set of four, autographed by each book's artist and writer ... for only $159.95! Amazing. I bought the same books that same day, and only paid $20.70 with my discount. Of course, I got two copies of each of the four die-cuts and two each of the newsstand versions, but I did have to wait three long, grueling months before I got them all autographed. And I did have to pay $3 to get into the convention where I got them autographed. Funny thing though ... I still can't seem to sell them for more than $4 a pop, autographs and all. Sheesh. Those HSN guys must be incredible salesmen. I'd like to hear HSN's justification for their prices. I mean ... I have several "big ticket" books in my personal collection -- books that are in the four-digit column of Overstreet's Price Guide. I paid cover price for most of them. And now they're worth a lot of dough. But those books are nearly all between 15 and 30 years old, and they're landmark issues in which something significantly universe-shattering occurred. HSN's "prize stock" consists of nothing that's more than three months old and ... let's face it ... something considerably short of spectacular in their contribution to comicdom. In fact, as I'm writing this. HSN has, for only $69.95, you can buy: Cable #1 (lists for $3.50) X-Men #1 (new series - lists for $2) X-Men 2099 #1 (lists for $1.75) Uncanny X-Men #300 (lists for $3.95) X-Factor #71 (lists for $7) Now, basic math tells me that's $18.20 at the maximum guide list in Wizard #27. This means the people who bought that crap spent $51.75 for the four signatures (Brandon Peterson, Art Tibier, etc.). Shouldn't this clue you people in that HSN believes the value is in the signature (they emphasize that word every time they use it) instead of the actual comic book. And given that the only items in their "prize stock" is the latest fanboy drool material, it should tell you that they're concerned with flash, and I'm not talking about Barry Allen or Wally West (and certainly not Jay Garrick). People, you're getting screwed! Not that I'd ever want to make waves. But I would certainly endorse a nationwide letter-writing campaign to HSN to express our displeasure with their operation. I would even dare say that there's got to be some legal eagle out there who can nail these thieves on a misrepresentation wrap. After all, they're selling cheap crap at incredibly high prices, promising that the books' values will mushroom as "rare collector's items." Now, given that every single book they've sold hasn't even doubled in market value, I'd go further still and say that they're lying to viewers who are apparently too ignorant to realize that what they're buying will never be worth what they paid. Still, there is the "Caveat Emptor" angle. If the buyer doesn't beware, he's got no reason to complain when the hook is firmly embedded in his lip. But, then again, there is what P.T. Barnum said ... -------------------- From: [s--i--t] at [express.ctron.com] TERROR TOTS: Strazewski, Fricke aren't kidding around By Gary St. Lawrence Created by: Len Strazewski & Paul Fricke Licensed by: David Galanti And you've always thought that your kids were hard to handle! How'd you like to take on a quintet of reincarnated Chinese monks -- three-year-old tykes who've retained complete memory of not only their own ancient identities, but those of the trio of despicably evil villains who've followed them through the time stream. Len Strazewski and Paul Fricke have thought about this, apparently While in a ... creative ... state of mind and brought you the result: Terror Tots, a limited distribution ashcan of their own making, with hopes for publication. Quentin, Megan, Zachary, Bradley and Newton -- five adorable little scamps who just happen to be the living embodiment of "good" in the never-ending battle of good against evil. The villains, The Black Lama and his cronies The Yak and The Monk, have been reincarnated as a trio of shadow-shrouded five-year-olds, who have retained all the memories and experiences of their previous lives as well. Their struggle carries them from ancient China, where the five pre-Terror Tot holy men were killed by their enemies, to modern day suburbia, where the villains appear in the form of the three menacing sandboxers. Fricke's art in the Terror Tots 300-copy ashcan is crisp and cute, reflecting the preciousness of it's five nursery school ninjas, yet incorporating a dark foreboding going back to the their origin. The quickly-paced story in the first issue whips along nicely, packing the amount of story found in most annuals these days into its 12 black and white pages. Strazewski, currently writing a pair of the hottest titles Malibu Comics has to offer - - Prime and Prototype -- said he ventured into Terror Tots with Fricke almost as a joke between the two creators. Terror Tots was conceived when Paul Fricke asked me the musical question, `How can we become millionaires like the Turtle Boys?' I thought for a minute and said, completely without knowing why, "TERROR TOTS!" Strazewski said. "After that, we just free-associated the whole thing." Strazewski, enroute from one convention to another and speaking at the Nashville Airport Admirals Club, confessed that the Terror Tots do have actual counterparts in the real world. "The kids are modeled after every tot I have met in my life," he said with a chuckle. "And since I don't really like young children, you can see how they are terrible." He pauses, and recants, "Although I do like my Godchild Carrie Augustyn and my neo-nephew and neo-niece James and Margaret Foley, who may be closer to being the actual models for Terror Tots." Fricke created all the visual looks of the individual characters in Terror Tots and came up with their the names. Strazewski said he hopes Terror Tots will catch on, as this was the plan all along in creating the ashcan. "Our original plan was to do the ash can as a sample for potential licensing and to have something to sell at conventions," he said. "We are shopping for a good licensing agent and hope the characters have some potential." Strazewski said the second issue of Terror Tots will be available probably in January, shortly after the New Year and before his February birthday, either in ashcan or series form. He hopes for the latter, and feels fairly confident that that will be the case. "The response to this has been so good that we are considering seeking a publisher," Strazewski said. "We've had some interest expressed from one pretty good company." --------------------- The Saint. --------------------- ***** From: [al 889] at [Freenet.carleton.ca] (Andrew Cameron) Subject: On Rob Liefeld I too hate Rob Liefeld and all of his garbage, though I did buy most of his books when he was so hot. I got NM for the X-Tinction Agenda, NM 100, X-Force (I even bought two copies, shame on me) and Youngblood 1-5 or whatever it wr. I have dropped his stuff, however, sick of seeing the gushing praise and idiotic questions of 13 yaer-olds in his letters pages. My one liner: Liefeld is such a hack, he makes hairballs look like good writers. A dumb one-liner, but I tried. al889 "weasel" Andrew Cameron ******** Well thats about it for the first one, any questions, comments, or letters send em in. Submissions come to the same address... ******** -- [[Kipp Lightburn - [ah 804] at [freenet.carleton.ca]]]