Monday, May 1, 2017

Comics Go Hollywood: Free Comic Book Day Edition

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Comics Go Hollywood: Free Comic Book Day Edition
Publisher: TwoMorrows Publishing
Date: 2008
Writer: Mike Manley, Danny Fingeroth, Roy Thomas, John Morrow, Peter Sanderson
Editor: John Morrow, Danny Fingeroth, Robert Greenberger, Jeph Loeb
Cover: Mike Manley


Not actually a comic, this is a magazine printed in standard comic book dimensions as part of Free Comic Book Day 2008. TwoMorrow Publications produces books and magazines on the comic book industry and the history of comics, and this volume is a sample of articles from across their line of publications. The theme here is the intersection between the movie and comics industries.

There is an introduction to storyboarding by Mike Manley, which gives some insights into how he broke into storyboarding for some of the DC animated features.


Next up is an interview with writer Jeph Loeb, focusing mostly on his work on the TV series Heroes. Danny Fingeroth conducts the interview.

A second interview feature sees Roy Thomas interviewing Gerry Conway about the script that they collaborated on in 1984 for an X-Men movie that didn't end up happening. It includes a nice synopsis of the plot, and provides a funk look at what might have been.

John Morrow gives an overview of Jack Kirby's contributions to film and TV, including his work on Thundarr the Barbarian.

Last up is a retrospective on the character of the Joker over the years written by Peter Sanderson.

This was enjoyable reading, and I learned quite a bit that I didn't know. Even the article on the Joker, a topic which has been discussed quite a lot over the years, provided some insights that were new to me. I'm not a fan of either Heroes or the DC animated universe, so I probably missed out on some revelations in the articles concerning those, but they still held my interest. The interview about the old X-Men script suffered a bit from Thomas and Conway not remembering some of the details that might have made the story better, and the Kirby article probably could have been expanded considerable from the couple of pages it got here.

All of the articles had accompanying bits of classic artwork from the respective properties under discussion, but the print quality on the artwork reproduced here varied quite a bit in quality.

Still, this was a good read for anyone with an interest in fandom or comics history, and it did leave me with a good impression of the types of articles I can expect to find from TwoMorrows' books and magazines.

Rating: 7/10

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