Fan Rants

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has redesigned their organizations logo and refreshed the look of their website. My heart has a special place for the CBLDF and I have been a card carrying member since 1995. This organzation helps protect the first amendment rights of comic store owners and readers.

From Charles Brownstein, the Executive Director of the CBLDF:

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a community of people who love comics and recognize the First Amendment as the cornerstone of the medium’s creative vitality.  The new CBLDF.org is designed to reflect and serve that community, with frequently updated news about comics, free expression, and the people who are taking strides to keep both healthy and strong.

Now, and in the weeks to come, you’ll find regular updates about the state of Free Expression,  and informative articles about the CBLDF’s supporters and the work they do.  You’ll also find better resources about the Fund’s history, along with tools concerning comics censorship and how to fight it.

This page is a work in progress, so we ask for your patience as we work out the kinks.  We also ask you to get involved.  We are always seeking writers, educators, lawyers, artists, and students to join the ranks of contributors who will make CBLDF.org a vibrant hub of activity in the fight for free speech.  You can contact me, Charles.Brownstein@cbldf.org, to lend your voice to our efforts.

For more than 20 years the CBLDF has stood up against those who’d censor comic books because of the grassroots effort of passionate supporters who believe in comics and free speech.  Thank you for bringing us this far.  Let’s see what we can do together to make the future of Free Expression in comics even stronger!

Thanks to MSN France (via Trailer Addict) for this wonderful Iron Man 2 featurette. You should consider this as more than a simple trailer so if you don’t want spoilers, just wait a few weeks till the movie comes out.

I am at the Bill Willingham panel right now and I am stoked. Bill has been a comic creator for just about forever. Currently he is best known for his Fables series from Vertigo Comics, a DC Comics imprint. Fables for me is a Gateway Comic, in the sense that I can give it to a non-comic book reader and they will come back wanting more and more. In fact I have done that and have no shame for it!

Today he dropped some great news (spoilers ahead).

The upcoming Fables issues will be all about Rose Red and her recovery after loosing Boy Blue. This story arc will go for 5 issues and finish with Rose leading the animals of the farm into battle.

Another excellent bit of news is that there are two busts coming out, one for Bigsby and one for Snow. Both were shown to us and look great. Also they are putting out an updated Fables Covers edition collecting the first 75 issues. This is great news as the last covers edition is long sold out.

We also got a sneak on the next Jack of Fables storyline with a cover showing the Page sisters all in Charlie Angels battle poses. The real huh moment on that cover was due to one of the sisters cradling a baby, but who’s baby is it? Bill was not willing to revel that.

One of the questions asked of Bill was which Fables characters do you like to write about the most, he said Snow and Bigsby. This shouldn’t be a big surprise to the fans of the book, but one thing did strike us as odd, he said that Snow White was to be married in an upcoming Fables issue. But she is already married to Bigsby…dang him and his vague spoilers!

There were a lot of Wizard of Oz fans in the audience and they asked if they would be seeing more of their characters soon. Bill stated that Dorothy would be showing up soon in a big way later on and other characters would continue to be seen in the books.

Sometime last year we got news out of Hollywood that ABC had picked up the writes to Fables for a TV show. Unfortunately when Bill was asked about that he said that there is no news on the TV series and in fact made it sound like there was SO much dead air about it that its like it never was talked about in the first place. Guess we shall see.

His first prose novel based on the Fables universe came out last year with Peter & Max. He said that Peter will be showing up in the Fable comics in the future. Oh, and the next prose Down the Mysterly River was sold to Tor books recently. It is actually an old book that he had published a long time ago that he picked back up and rewrote. It’s about Max the Wolf, a young man who is sent to the wrong afterlife due to his name causing him to be mistaken as an animal. So its off to the animal afterlife for him. It’s a Young Adult book and sounds interesting. It is not tied into fables, but there are some pinpoint (non official) connections.

This was by far one of my favorite panels just because I am in love with the material so much. Here are some links for fans to check out!

Fablestown message board – clockworkstorybook.net

twitter: billwillingham

Well it has been an exhausting day at McCormick Place. Not only at the convention center but around town. And we really haven’t stopped until this weeks podcast was finished being recorded around 2am this morning.

The day started out well with a good breakfast and a lovely trip on the local bus to the convention center. Okay, strike that last part…our bus had someone previously throw up on it and it was NASTY smelling. But at least the breakfast was good before that. Welcome to Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (that’s me with my arms raised)!

I ran through most of the panels we attended today in individual posts. Overall we were impressed with the various companies and what they had to offer. All the comic publishers had some type of freebie to hand out. And DC really broke the bank by handing out about 15 of their newest comics, very cool!

At the Marvel booth we were graced by their editor in chief Joe Quesada. He was busy with an interview at the time but was very friendly with the fans. Oh, and they had some booth babes handing out comics and even Spider-Man showed up for a bit!

The Dark Horse booth had a special BPRD event going on, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense from the Hellboy universe. We got honorary agent badges and pins. They also had Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy and Guy Davis, one of the major artists in his books, signing items. Great couple of guys. Another cool item they had at the booth was a mini-bust from the TV show Dexter showing Dexter looking at a piece of evidence while holding a knife behind his back. This statue will be released this fall.

On one side of the show they also had two vehicles on display, the classic Batmobile and the Delorian from Back to the Future. Very cool displays even if poor Batman looked quite cold in this tights.

Kevin entered a raffle for a custom tattoo to be inked on Sunday. Unfortunately he did not win, but the money went to charity so its still kinda a win…even if it was my $5!

After a long day of hanging out at the convention center we headed out for some time on the town. I have to say Chicago is definitely growing on me, hope to spend more time here in the future.

Coming this October to DVD, Talking with Gods: the Grant Morrison Documentary. If you’re not familiar with Grant, he has written and reworked many of the classic DC heroes like Animal Man all the way to Superman. He set a new dark tone for Batman with Arkam Asylum and recently set the DC universe with the Final Crisis storyline.

Today we got a special presentation of this upcoming documentary. On hand were the producer, director and principal photographer.

The documentary will be sectioned into three parts, focusing on his early career in the 70s, his odd ball crazy psychedelic writing of the 90s and then his recent work with DC Comics.

They wanted to do this documentary to explain how his life and history are intertwined with his comic writing. And while he comes across as a chaos magician it is really just his special view on life that makes him so appealing.

We were treated with several clips and it was like a lite appetizer before an awesome meal. Just tempting you for the later feast to come. It features extensive interviews with many top comic book creators that have worked with Grant over the years. And of course, plenty of interviews with the subject himself.

One of the surprises for the film makers was that Grant works non-stop. He has a great work ethic and is down to earth about his creations. Very committed to his work with a great aura about him.

Grant seemed bemused that someone would want to do a documentary about him. But he agreed, for one reason to put the facts right about his life. Many rumors are out there about extensive drug use, of which are put to rest.

Really looking forward to learning more about this iconic writer, October can’t get here soon enough! Oh, and for next year they have a new documentary that they just started working on: Warren Ellis – Captured Ghosts!