I’ve been slowly working my way through the Comic Cavalcade Archives. I’m determined to read the whole thing, but I have to take it in small doses. Partly the target audience is much younger than me, partly the storytelling (and art) I’m used to is much different, and of course partly it’s a very different time. It was the middle of World War II, and half the stories involved fighting Nazi spies or, in some cases, wreaking havoc in Germany itself. (The Ghost Patrol should have been able to take Hitler out on their own, but they seemed more interested in sabotage and practical jokes.) The original setup for Wonder Woman was that she left Paradise Island to help America defeat the Axis!

The Golden-Age Flash hunt continues. I’m now up to three issues of All-Flash with an issue of Flash Comics on its way. So far I’ve discovered that the Turtle didn’t have a costume the first time he appeared. He was just a guy in a green suit who used slowness against a guy who was used to moving fast. Next up: the original Thorn. I’ve bid on a lot of eBay auctions, expecting to win only a fraction of them. Everywhere else I look online, people are selling collector-grade books at much higher prices. I just want to read the original stories, write down who appears, and scan the occasional panel that I’m going to clean up anyway.

Amazon has finally put a discount on the Golden Age Flash Archives vol.2, so I’ve pre-ordered it. While there I looked around on my wish list and noticed that the Mirrormask DVD page (which still shows the wrong date) is recommending, “Buy this DVD with Serenity (Widescreen Edition) DVD ~ Joss Whedon today!” That seems like an appropriate pairing!

Twenty years seems a long way away, but Sony are probably just scheduling it that far off because during the Great iPod Content Uprising Years of 2013-2024 people aren’t going to have much time for things like actually watching films, what with gathering together in places where the iPodPeople can’t get them and shooting them in the brain and all that stuff, and it’s only after the Man-Droid-iPod Peace Treaties of 2024 that anyone gets back to the serious business bringing out DVDs of long-forgotten movies.

“Alternately,” he adds, “I suppose it could be an Amazon.com typo and MirrorMask could be coming out on the last day of this year. That would be nice.”

The MirrorMask theater listing looks like a tour schedule, with the film opening in a few more cities each week. Unfortunately, at least some theaters that have it now won’t have it by next weekend, so we’re going to have to catch it again one night this week. Then we’ll seek Serenity again on the weekend. Somewhere in there we’ll find time for the other movies we wanted to see.

We’ve got a more thorough review of Serenity planned…

Word is that if the movie does well enough this weekend, Sony is considering giving it a wider release.

The Beat has a nice run-down of the film [archive.org]. The AV Club has interviews with Gaiman and McKean, and Time magazine has an interview with Gaiman and Joss Whedon, who has his own film coming out this weekend. (Gonna be busy!) Neil Gaiman’s own blog links to more press.

Oh, yeah, one more thing to do this weekend: Stop by a bookstore and pick up Anansi Boys, which apparently hit #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Somehow, despite reading about all the signing tours, I had it in my head that it didn’t come out until next month. But Gaiman is one of the very few authors whose books I buy in hardcover instead of waiting for paperback.

The good news: Those theaters include Edwards University in Irvine. (I’m not sure where the Landmark Nuart Theater is, but it’s the only one in LA.)

According to Neil Gaiman, the amount of business it does during the first week will determine whether it gets a wider release.

With Serenity opening the same weekend, we’re going to be awfully busy…

It’s been twenty years, and newspaper headlines still oscillate between “Wham! Bam ! Pow! Comics Have Grown Up!” and “OH MY GAAAD THIS COMIC NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN HAS CONTENT NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN IN IT!” articles. Bizarre.

(Ironically, the people complaining don’t seem to care much about the content—they just wanted to get the Spanish-language books off the shelves.)

Early autumn, eh? With a new novel released on the last day of summer? I don’t know how the numbers stack up on Neil’s name recognition vs. the average “art house” movie—which is how the studio seems to be treating it—but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Columbia/Tristar tries to capitalize on the publicity for Anansi Boys.

Of course, it also wouldn’t surprise me if they said, “Huh, he writes books? I thought he was a screenwriter.”

MirrorMask came about when Sony noticed that while Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal didn’t do very well in theaters, over the years they’ve become strong, steady sellers in the home video market. So they went to the Jim Henson company and asked if they could do a fantasy film in the same vein, on a budget. So Lisa Henson called up Neil Gaiman by way of asking for Dave McKean, and explained the situation: They only had a $4 million budget, but they wouldn’t have any studio interference. They went on to say they knew they couldn’t afford Neil to write the screenplay, but could he at least come up with a story, at which point he said (Edit: corrected quote) “If Dave’s directing it, I’m writing it.”

The story (what we know of it) is reminiscent of Labyrinth as well as Gaiman’s Coraline and Sandman: A Game of You: A teenage girl, Helena (who wants to run away from the circus and join the real world!), dealing with parental issues (in this case her mother being in the hospital), dreams her way into another world. At least, she thinks it’s a dream. But she realizes that, whether it’s a dream or whether it’s real, she still needs to complete the quest set before her.

Most of the sets and non-human characters are being done with computer graphics, which means they can really let loose. If you’ve ever seen Dave McKean’s work (he did all the Sandman covers, among many, many other projects), you know what to expect. The clips they showed look exactly like Dave McKean illustrations set in motion.

There was a screening the night before (with scenes switching into bluescreen action from time to time), with one of the Sony execs reportedly saying, “That was like Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast… on acid… for kids!” (Edit: more quotes are available)

They kept the shots with actors to a minimum, probably to keep the story under wraps, but what was there looks good.

Current plans are for an art-house release sometime next spring, if post-production is finished by then. I know I’ll be in line.