Fri - March 5, 2004

Reviews, Interviews & Comics by Mike Russell


A list of stuff I've written and drawn.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This list is no longer updated. For the list that is updated, please visit this page on our new site.



For THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

"Comics Fight Their Way Into the Mainstream" -- A day in the life of Excalibur Books & Comics in Portland, Ore. I also illustrated the piece, with digital color by Chad Essley. (March 4, 2004, page D10)

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For THE BOSTON GLOBE:

"A Scanner, Artfully" -- a comic-strip interview with director Richard Linklater.

"The Not-So-Secret History of 'Aeon Flux'" -- A full-page, full-color comic strip examining the appeal of the cult-hit MTV cartoon. This saw print just before the release of the live-action "Aeon Flux" movie. (Nov. 27, 2005)
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For THE OREGONIAN:

CulturePulp: Click here for the comic-strip archives.

Movie reviews:
Click here for the Rotten Tomatoes review index.
Click here for the CulturePulp movie-review archives.
Oscar Rant: 'The Incredibles' should be eligible for Best Picture (Feb. 5, 2005)
Oscar Rant: 'Sideways' is totally overrated (Jan. 29, 2005)

DVD reviews:
"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (with sidebar) (Feb. 4, 2005)

TV reviews:
Spike Lee's "Sucker Free City" (Feb. 12, 2005)

Book reviews:
"Consider the Lobster" (Jan. 8, 2006)
"Batman Begins" again (and again, and again....) (June 19, 2005)
"Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams" (May 1, 2005)
The "Sin City" comic-book series (March 27, 2005)
"Eyeing the Flash: The Education of a Carnival Con Artist" (Jan. 9, 2005)
"The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place" (Dec. 5, 2004)
"Persepolis 2" by Marjane Satrapi (Sept. 12, 2004)
"In the Shadow of No Towers" by Art Spiegelman (Sept. 12, 2004)
"Colors Insulting to Nature" by Cintra Wilson (Aug. 8, 2004)

Interviews:
Jet Li (Sept. 24, 2006)
'Fearless' director Ronny Yu (Sept. 24, 2006)
Edward Norton (May 28, 2006)
'Bone' cartoonist Jeff Smith (April 21, 2006)
'Farmer' John Peterson and 'Real Dirt on Farmer John' director Taggart Siegel (Feb. 1, 2006)
Shane Black (Nov. 13, 2005)
Joss Whedon (Sept. 24, 2005)
Bruce Willis (March 11, 2005)
"21 Dog Years" author and monologuist Mike Daisey (Jan. 7, 2005)
"Shaun of the Dead" masterminds Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (September 23, 2004)
"Napoleon Dynamite" star Jon Heder (July 4, 2004)
David Carradine (April 17, 2004)
The Rock (April 2, 2004)
"Jersey Girl" director Kevin Smith (March 29, 2004)
Viggo Mortensen (March 5, 2004)

Features and Columns:
"Mr. Do and Mr. Don't™ go to PIFF" -- A handy visual guide to etiquette at the Portland International Film Festival. (Feb. 11, 2005)
"Channeling Trivia" -- inside the IFC "Ultimate Film Fanatic Challenge."
"Derided by photo jockeys" -- My emotional experience as the subject of a FARK.com Photoshop thread. (Dec. 17, 2004)
"Taking the 'Chucky' dare" -- critics were banned from a Portland, OR preview screening of "Seed of Chucky." We went anyway. (Nov. 19, 2004)
"Writer-slash-actor" -- Hangin' with the original Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen.
Bill Plympton's "Hair High" -- reports before and after an Aug. 1 screening of the film.
"Best and worst disaster movies" -- Sidebar to a movie review (by Marc Mohan) of "The Day After Tomorrow." (May 28, 2004)
"The Indie 15" -- Collection of mini-profiles of Portland-area independent filmmakers. Co-written with Karen Karbo and Marc Mohan. (May 16, 2004)
Observed: "Clinton's killer kung-fu" (April 16, 2004)
Observed: "Quantum Spirituality" (April 2, 2004)
"Cellulouid Superhero Smackdown!" -- An A&E cover package detailing the history of comic-book movies -- in the form of a comic strip. Digital shades and colors by Chad Essley. (April 2, 2004)
Scene and Herd: "Oscar Night Revelry" (March 5, 2004)
"Comics rule Hollywood" -- Feature about the 2003 glut of comic-book movies. (June 22, 2003)

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For THE DAILY STANDARD:

"The Browncoats Rise Again" -- I take a long look at "Firefly" fandom -- and Universal's positively bizarre marketing plan for the "Firefly" movie, "Serenity."

"The Fan Films Strike Back" -- Thanks to digital cinema and the Web, geeks are filming their own "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" stories. And they're pretty close to making something better than the junk their heroes have been dishing out lately. (May 14, 2004)

"To the Crack of Doom!" -- A Lord of the Rings "Trilogy Tuesday" war journal. (Dec. 19, 2003)

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For BOOKSLUT.com:
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For IN FOCUS magazine:

Interview: George Miller (November 2006)
Interview: Christopher Nolan (October 2006)
Interview: 'Superman Returns' writers Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris (June 2006)
Interview: J.J. Abrams (April 2006)
Interview: Judd Apatow (December 2005)
Interview: Harold Ramis (November 2005)
Interview: James L. Brooks (February 2005)
Interview: Robert Zemeckis (November 2004)
Interview: Trey Parker and Matt Stone (October 2004)
Interview: Will Ferrell (July 2004)
Interview: Wolfgang Petersen (May 2004)
Interview: David Zucker (September 2003)
Interview: Stephen Frears (August 2003)
Interview: Jonathan Mostow (July 2003)
Interview: "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton and co-director Lee Unkrich (May 2003)
Interview: Chris Rock (April 2003)
Interview: Lawrence Kasdan (March 2003)
Interview: Marvel Studios producer Kevin Feige (February 2003)
Interview: "American Beauty" and "Road to Perdition" director Sam Mendes (January 2003)
Interview: Screenwriter John Logan (December 2002)
Interview: James Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (November 2002)
Interview: "The Ring" and "Scream 3" screenwriter Ehren Kruger (October 2002)
Interview: Master Japanese animator Hiyao Miyazaki (September 2002)
Interview: M. Night Shyamalan (August 2002)
Interview: Barry Sonnenfeld (July 2002)
Interview: "Sum of All Fears" and "Field of Dreams" director Phil Alden Robinson (June 2002)
Interview: "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (April 2002)
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For THE PORTLAND MERCURY:

"Living in a Republican World" -- A co-authored satirical guide for those who want -- nay, need -- to conform. I also drew the illustrations. (January 30, 2003)
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For ODDJOB:

"The Future Lens" -- four-page backup story that appeared in issue 4 (Winter 2000) of ODDJOB. Ty and Ian Smith let me hijack their characters to ask a simple question: If you're looking through a window that tells the future and you see your friend's head blow up, is there any way to stop that from happening?
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For THEFORCE.NET:

"Jaxxon's 11" -- Internet comic strip spoofing the 1970s Marvel "Star Wars" comic books (and starring the strangest character from those books -- a six-foot-tall green rabbit named Jaxxon who fought alongside Han and Chewie). Illustrated (and co-written) by David Stroup. (BTW, if you're so inclined, you can download high-rez PDFs of all the pages right here and make your own comic book.)
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For HAIRLESS PRESS:

"Santa's Lil' Gimp" -- A spoof of children's Christmas books written by Gregory P. Dorr. I provided the pen-and-ink illustrations.

"Hudson Van Curen" -- A comic strip about a very angsty and naive young man, his occasional girlfriend, and his talking-bird sidekick. It ran in varying formats and publications at the University of Oregon from 1990-92.
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For WILLAMETTE WEEK:

"Two-Fisted John McLoughlin" -- Satirically offensive "Manifest Destiny Superhero Comic." Created for Willamette Week's "Big Strip-Off" cartooning contest.
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For AIIIE! Comics:

"The Whisperers" -- An eight-page horror story about a guy who keeps hearing the same vague mutterings coming out of every vent and air duct. My first collaboration with the great Scott Allie, who wrote the story; it appeared in issue 10 of his terrific horror anthology "Sick Smiles."
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Repackaged (and quite possibly expanded) reviews for THE DVD JOURNAL:

Aquamarine
Blade: Trinity
Constantine
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
Derailed
Domino
Doom: Unrated Extended Edition
Eight Below
Elektra
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Failure to Launch
The Family Stone
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Fat Albert
Find Me Guilty
Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
Hard Candy
Hide and Seek
Hoodwinked
Hoot
Hostage
House of Wax (2005)
Hustle & Flow
The Ice Harvest
The Island
Just Like Heaven
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Ladder 49
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Libertine
Lightning in a Bottle
The Longest Yard (2005)
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
Mindhunters
National Treasure
The Notebook
Ocean's Twelve
The Pacifier
The Pink Panther (2006)
Poseidon
Rebound
Red Eye
The Ringer
Roll Bounce
Rumor Has It...
RV
Sahara
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
Seed of Chucky
Shall We Dance? (2004)
Shaun of the Dead
The Skeleton Key
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Star Wars: Clone Wars, Volume One
Star Wars: Clone Wars, Volume Two
Stick It
Two for the Money
Underclassman
Unleashed
The Venture Bros.: Season One
White Noise
The Woodsman
X-Men: The Last Stand


Posted at 03:25 PM    

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Thu - March 4, 2004

Comics Fight Their Way Into the Mainstream


By M.E. Russell
Illustrated by M.E. Russell and Chad Essley
The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2004 (Leisure & Arts, page D10)




Portland, Ore. -- A scene in the movie "American Splendor" takes place inside the Cosmic Comics store in Baltimore. Joyce (protagonist Harvey Pekar's future wife) is having a mini-meltdown as vainly looks for the latest installment of Mr. Pekar's autobiographical comic of the movie's title. Her greasy, tremulous co-worker flees the store after one too many head-clutching outbursts, leaving Joyce alone in the shabby little shop where comics are papered over the windows.

It's vintage Hollywood, which routinely sees the comic-book culture in terms of two stereotypes: There's the bag-of-neuroses-brimming-with-spleen (Joyce and Harvey Pekar) or the bloated übergeek -- a pompous misfit with a mind for sci-fi and a body for whaling -- exemplified by the Comic-Book Guy in "The Simpsons."

A truer picture can be found in Portland, Ore., at Excalibur Books and Comics. Located in one of the city's blue-collar hipster neighborhoods, it is the Rick's Café Americain of comic-book retailing. Thanks to its proximity to three comics publishing houses (Dark Horse Comics, Oni Press, and Top Shelf), the store counts a disproportionate number of writers, artists and editors among its customers. But Excalibur also caters to kids and eccentrics, regular-guy readers and collectors.

Excalibur was founded in 1974 by Peter Fagnant, 50, a bespectacled, bearded, ponytailed Yoda figure who still runs it with Debbie, his 28-year-old daughter, and two other employees. Debbie grew up in the store and collects "Wonder Woman" and romance comics like "Heartthrobs" and "Young Brides" that date from the "Golden Age" of comics -- roughly 1938 to the mid-1950s.

In appearance, Excalibur is a far cry from the scruffy Cosmic Comics. It looks more like a library or a hospital, with clean white walls, bright light and its merchandise neatly organized according to type: new releases; rentable animation DVDs; new releases; all-ages comics like "Archie" and "Bone"; Japanese comics; "alternative" comics, which contain romance, crime and slice-of-life stories (including, yes, "American Splendor"); local work; "adult" comics; genuine rarities such as 1934's "Famous Funnies" #1, which Mr. Fagnant recently sold to a customer for $3,400; and much more.

Every Wednesday is "New Comics Day" at Excalibur, when fresh material comes in -- and the denizens of the comic culture come out. On a typical day, 70 or 80 customers will leaf through the new titles. This particular "New Comics Day" began as it always does, at 10 a.m. with a pallet containing 2,000-3,000 new issues and other merchandise -- total retail value about $6,000 to $9,000. What might surprise the uninitiated is how many of this week's comics have nothing to do with superheroes. Indeed, these days DC and Marvel find themselves sharing shelf space with big challengers like Dark Horse and Image — plus a host of smaller studios, upstarts and self-publishers ranging from genuinely talented independents to hopelessly deluded hacks. Fully a third are anthologies of daily newspaper strips ("The Norm," "Liberty Meadows," "Lil' Abner"), adaptations of TV shows ("Powerpuff Girls"), slice-of-life autobiography (Robert Crumb's "Dirty Laundry") and works showcasing New-York-cool art cartoonists ("Blab!").

The staff will spend the next hour sheathing over 2,000 comics in poly bags. This caters to collectors -- Excalibur's core customers -- and, equally important, it lengthens shelf life. Unlike other retailers, comic-shop proprietors can't return their unsold inventory. Nothing is on consignment. They must buy all their books outright, usually through wholesaler Diamond Comics Distributors, which controls the bulk of the comics-distribution market.

Excalibur opens at 11 a.m., and by lunchtime on this particular Wednesday, it's apparent from the assembled customers that comics appeal to a wider range of readers than popular prejudices would have us believe. There are women on the tragic side of hip -- Goth and depressed-looking, with artfully distressed "I don't care" looks that actually take work -- a few young men in their 20s, a guy in a business suit, people with tattoos.

Meanwhile, Excalibur employee Shawn Brooks is holding forth on the genre. "A comic book is a bundle of contradictions," he says. "It's a book, but it's not; it's a magazine, but it's not; it's art, but it's not; it's reading, but it's not." He breaks the store's readership into different subsets: the obsessive collectors who thrive on the "puzzle-building" -- gathering complete sets of back issues -- and a growing group of people who genuinely enjoy reading the stories.

As we're talking, we're joined at the counter by Jefferson Smith, 30, a Portland lawyer and political activist. He's buying a fairly thick stack of comics that includes Superman, X-Men, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and Batman. He read them voraciously as a kid, but started picking them up again six months ago. "I always wanted to be a hero," he says. "I started [reading them] again when I was discouraged about what was happening in the country."

"Comics are escapist — that's obvious," Mr. Brooks continues. "But there's also, depending on what you read, a surprising amount of depth. That shocks and surprises a lot of people." He argues that comics are actually more immersive than movies, "because it's words and pictures together — it’s all-encompassing entertainment."

The comics subculture is growing, fed in part by the Internet allowing fans to find each other. In 1970, 300 people attended the first San Diego Comic-Con, held in a hotel basement; since then, according to promotional literature, it's grown into the nation's most important comics-industry convention — with 70,000 people attending last year.

The subculture's also growing because the production values have gotten better. Mr. Brooks makes a point I'll hear a lot over the course of the day: Thanks to a renewed interest in good writing, combined with better illustrators and digital pre-press technology, comics are enjoying an upswing in quality.

Later that afternoon, as customers hover at the new-comics rack, untaping the plastic bags to peek inside, Peter guides me back into his office. The walls are plastered floor to ceiling with the semi-forgotten history of pulp fiction -- a color Xerox the cover of "Amazing Fantasy" #15, the first Spider-Man appearance, for example. In mint condition, this comic would fetch five figures today. There are also a couple of dozen covers from "Dime Mystery Magazine" and various jungle-girl comics from the '40s and '50s, books with titles like "Sheena" and "All Top" and "Rulah" -- all of them depicting white girls in fur bikinis shown in varying degrees of peril.

On the shelf behind him is a copy of "Seduction of the Innocent," the 1953 book by Frederic Wertham that led to congressional hearings on the deleterious effects that comics were having on teenagers. According to a 1998 article by Kenneth A. Paulson of the Freedom Forum, "Wertham's 'findings' included his assessments that Batman and Robin represented a homosexual fantasy, Wonder Woman glorified bondage and crime comics led to juvenile delinquency."

Around 5:30 p.m., a half-dozen comic-book professionals converge on the store. Among them are Pete Woods, who works on Batman comics, and his wife and fellow pro, Rebecca. They share a studio space with artists who work on "Superman," "Superboy," "Wonder Woman," "Daredevil," "Fantastic Four," and other major titles. Both think American publishers need to do a better job courting a female readership. "I don't want to see a woman bound and gagged on the cover of a comic," Rebecca says. "I want to see some more empowering things." I mention that this week's issue of "Robin" features, well, just such an image on its cover and, inside, and one of the same woman being shot while tied to a chair. Rebecca moans.

They're soon joined by Brian Michael Bendis, a fireplug of a man who's arguably the most prolific and successful writer working in comics. Bendis currently writes "Ultimate Spider-Man" and "Ultimate Fantastic Four," among other titles. I mention one of the rueful jokes of the comics industry -- that because of its isolated distribution network, most of the people who come into comic-book stores draw comics themselves. The entire audience is in the room with the entire industry, like some bad coffeehouse poetry slam. "Oh, yeah," jokes Mr. Bendis. "Sales would double if DC and Marvel got rid of their comp lists." Everyone laughs.

"You know, it's like music," he continues. "It's impossible to figure out how to do it for a living, but if you get to, you are such a die-hard. I mean, all these guys here, this is their life --there's nothing else that we're gonna do. This is it. We were doing books and we weren't getting a dime for it for years. And if there was no comic-book industry, we'd be going to Kinko's, folding 'em in half and putting staples in them ourselves. I know this for a fact because we were."

M.E. Russell is a writer and cartoonist in Portland, Oregon.

© 2004, Wall Street Journal. Reprinted with permission.

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