§ Grant Morrison MEDIA week! At io9, he talks all about Batman and Robin.

And at Splash Page, rapper MF Grimm interviews the Scottish raconteur.

§ Many people are under the mistaken impression that comic books are for children. This isn’t the case.

§ Michael May picks out some promising comics from the September Previews. John Rozum is writing something fro DC again? Good news!

§ At the exact same time that the world’s best selling musician was pulling a Schrodinger’s cat on Twitter, Rich Johnston was interviewing Rantz Hoseley about Longbox. Now that we have a little distance, it’s time to link to this discussion of whether e-distribution spells certain doom for comics shops or not:

BC: So do you see yourself as the new Phil Seuling? Or is there danger of you being the new Marc Alessi?

RH: someone said I needed to invest in black turtlenecks. I’m happy to be an evangelist for LBX, but it’s about comics||& anything that really GROWS the market, gets new readers, gets the excited… that’s KEY||Our COO took his 13 yr old daughter to HeroesCon & she was very much “dad, I don’t want to, comics are dumb…”||& yet, an hour later, she’s back at the hotel with a huge stack of comics, laughing aloud, & asking ‘are there more?’||reaching THAT audience, making it easy for them to find stories they love, introducing them to what’s out there…||THAT is a HUGE part of our focus, & why LongBox is exciting for me speaking as a creator, parent & fan

§ Also at Robot 6, Brigid Alverson wonders why Archie is on iPhones, and just how many 7-year-olds own iPhones anyway.

Brigid Alverson: Why does it make sense for Archie to move into iPhone apps—does it extend your audience?

Steve Oswald: It definitely extends our audience, especially overseas. We hope that many people who haven’t picked up an Archie comic in a while try out some of our free downloads and see how great our books are.

§ Also in re online, Joey Manley at Comicspace is trying an interesting experiment in seeing which ad network has the best ROI to sell T-shirts. He’s testing Google Adsense, Facebook and Project Wonderful. He reports results on a regular basis and it’s getting some interesting feedback from readers as well.

§ Josh Neufeld writes: How to be an Obscure Alternative Cartoonist Specializing in Real-Life Topics.

§ Guillermo del Toro warns this won’t be your grandpappy’s HOBBIT

Asked about the film and what he wants to avoid with it, Del Toro said: “What I want to do is make the best movie I have ever done. What I want to avoid is to make some fastidious tracing of lines that were established by the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. We’re trying to be respectful of it, and what was shown in the trilogy is canon, but we are gleefully exploring new creatures, new set pieces, new territory and new avenues.

“As with everything, there is always something new to get excited about.”

Do you really need to know any more?

CLIVE BARKER will hold a brief conversation with GRANT MORRISON before the signing.
WHO: GRANT MORRISON
WHY: Signing Batman and Robin and his latest Hard Cover Book
WHEN: WEDNESDAY, JULY 1st, 2009
MUSIC PROVIDED BY: iheartcomix.com & DJ Franki Chan
DRINKS: ASAHI & TIBETAN TEA
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM @ MELTDOWN
7522 SUNSET BLVD., L.A., CA, 90046

We missed the news, but apparently, last week it was revealed that the new Batman is Dick Grayson (finally) and the new Robin is Batman’s strange illegitimate kid, Damian. (With a name like that, only trouble can ensue.) What could follow that up? Why, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely on BATMAN AND ROBIN, of course. Morrison talks at length about the series in a new IGN interview, and to the surprise of no one, it sounds like this new series will be something worth going to the shop for every month:

IGN Comics: It sounds like that goes back to what you were trying to do with Final Crisis, where you cut out all the quieter moments and just got down to “the drums and the bass”, as you called it – the meat of the story.

Morrison: Yeah. I went to see Crank: High Voltage when we were in Los Angeles. I had just watched that, and I thought everything else just looks like slow motion, really. I wanted to get that effect into the comics as well. To me that was just a great action film, and every action film after is going to have to try and move at that speed. I really wanted to get that into Batman and Robin. Again, the stories are really easy. There aren’t big multi-layered Gnostic parables this time around. Like I said, it’s like a really bad trip cartoon.

Many more entertaining sound bites in the link.

Poking around the other day, we found this demo trailer for a docuomentary-in-progress about Mr. Mystic himself, Grant Morrison. It a production of Sequart, which plans to publish several critical studies of superhero-ish comics material, including Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy from Comics to Screen, Teenagers from the Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes and Grant Morrison: The Early Years. According to YouTube:

Sequart and Respect! Films are prodcuing a documentary about legendary comic book writer Grant Morrison. Morrison has written virtually every major comic book franchise, from Batman to Superman to X-Men, and created many new properties, including the seminal comic book series THE INVISIBLES. This documentary is the first in depth look at his life and work in film, and features unresricted access to the man himself.

A significant amount of material has already been shot, with more shoot dates to come. Look for the film to be released sometime in 2010. It is directed by Patrick Meaney, shot by Jordan Rennert and produced by Amber Yoder.

If you would like to become a producer on this project, send an inquiry to sequart@gmail.com

Wizard has the scoop on Grant Morrison’s new dimension-spanning head trip, and The Weekly Crisis has laid it all out on the web for you. It’s a seven-issue miniseries for DC, each issue taking place on a different Earth called The Multiversity. However, the issues interconnect and reflect one another. Earths that will never be the same be explored include Earth 5 (Fawcett) and Earth Charlton, where we’ll see the Watchmen in their original guises as the Question and so on. Quoth Morrison:

I thought it would be interesting to pick up on that sort of crystalline, self-reflecting storytelling method, so the mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I’d construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!

Right. And:

There’s a very different kind of murder mystery at the heart and the whole thing can be read backwards, forwards and sideways.

Well, we’re excited. Freed from the weight of a tentpole line-encompassing x-over, this is something Morrison should have a lot of fun with. And when Grant Morrison has fun, so do readers.

Speaking of fun, the original link has the funniest graphic ever, but we won’t steal it here.

Nasa has discovered a giant hand crushing the stars out in space:

Red represents low-energy X-rays, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are colored blue. The blue hand-like structure was created by energy emanating from the nebula around they dying star PSR B1509-58. The red areas are from a neighboring gas cloud called RCW 89.

Subliterate Cinephile does the math, and finds the corresponding panel from, I believe, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Although the post blames Grant Morrison — just because it’s funnier — he actually didn’t come up with this one…it was Wolfman/Perez.

(Thanks to DWF and Franklin for emailing the link.)

You may have seen that IDW recently published a book (see above) called GRANT MORRISON’S DR WHO, collecting some of the scribe’s work on the DR WHO comic from back in the 1980s (hence the use of Doctors number six and seven).

Well, that was the past. But what about the future? MTV Splash Page talked to Morrison about his desire to do work with the iconic British character in the future.

“If I was going to do it, I’d probably do the television version,” Morrison said. “That would be the thing to see. ‘Doctor Who’ for me was always about drama. It was about actually watching it on the television, and the fact that in Britain it was kind of a Saturday night ritual thing was a very primitive, sitting-around-the-campfire kind of feeling. I think that’s the aspect that I always liked: the fact that kids would be terrified, but at the same time, parents would watch it, and they would be able explain to the kids what it was they were terrified about.

Morrison’s feelings on the show seem to echo those of new showrunner Steven Moffat. Maybe that’s a good sign. We’ve already heard the “Neil Gaiman to write an episode” rumors for months now. Could Morrison be the next comics scribe to take a shot at David Tennant (assuming he’s still the Doctor) and his next companion?

posted by Mark Coale

Or talks to God or whatever. IGN-UK has a big interview with him which has tons of pull quotes on everything and anything. We’ll quote the bit everyone else has, but you have to read the other parts, too:

I’ve been listening to people talk about ’saving’ the ‘industry’ for over 20 years while comics have continued to be published and have, in fact, become better, to the point where the only conclusion I’ve come to is that comics are best ’saved’ by sealing them in Mylar bags! Everything else is just messianic inflation. Just do good books and stop trying to be the savior of a whole medium that’s been doing okay without you and will continue long after you’re gone.

Yes, I think Kirkman’s right, in that I’d like to see more of our creative community unleashing their wild imaginations onto the page and less of the obvious ‘movie pitch on paper stuff’ that’s come about recently as a result of comic creators chasing the Hollywood dollar but I don’t have a problem with writers and artists working on Marvel and DC properties if they enjoy it. I’d rather read a good Green Lantern story by someone who cares than work my way through a ‘creator-owned’ project that’s been created solely to appeal to lowest-common-denominator movie executives.

Otherwise, he’s possibly being slightly disingenuous by issuing this ‘call to arms’ at a time when, to be honest, I can’t think of any significant comic book writer for Marvel or DC who doesn’t have creator work on the go. Apart from Geoff Johns, who’s told me he much prefers writing DC superhero books, everyone else - me, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, JMS, Garth Ennis, Matt Fraction, Brian Bendis, Kurt Busiek, etc etc - seems to be hard at work creating new properties, so I’m not entirely sure where the problem lies.

Vintage Grant Morrison in an interview with A. David Lewis at PWCW:

GM: Yeah! Because it’s the obvious, isn’t it? Again, this isn’t a mystical concept, because I’m not a mystical person sometimes. I got into magic to see if it was real. If someone says, “Ok, a demon will appear if you do this spell,” I just say, “Bullshit.” So, I did this spell, and then the demon appeared. So I had to revise my vision of what the world was and how it worked. Again, that’s another element of magic for me, trying to figure out, why do these things happen—what are we doing to our nervous systems to make us believe a demon has entered the room? It became to me about the actual “nuts and bolts” of it, not the fantastic thing or the mystic thing or the names of angels. I became interested in what’s actually going on.

PWCW: But you tried it out, and a demon did appear?

GM: Yeah!

PWCW: Wow.

This much quoted interview with Grant Morrison reveals that paying attention to too much DC continuity isn’t all that profitable. We’ve been out of town, but we understand the fan reaction to FINAL CRISIS #1 has been an outcry against continuity gaffes — not all of it Morrison’s fault:

NRAMA: Within a few pages of issue #1, you’ve shown us that you’re building upon the foundation that was laid by everything from Identity Crisis through Countdown. In regards to the more recent material, such as Countdown, did you have a hand in planning that out, did you tell editorial where you needed things to be for the start of your story, or did you modify Final Crisis to pick up from where things were?

GM: Well, the way it worked out was that I started writing Final Crisis #1 in early 2006, around the same time as the 52 series was starting to come out, so Final Crisis was more a continuation of plot threads from Seven Soldiers and 52 than anything else. Final Crisis was partly-written and broken down into rough issue-by-issue plots before Countdown was even conceived, let alone written. And J.G. was already working on designs and early layouts by the time Countdown started. There wasn’t really much opportunity, or desire, to modify our content at that stage.

Although the 52 writing team was asked to contribute to Countdown, we were all seriously burned-out by the demands of the weekly schedule and I think we all wanted to concentrate on our own monthly titles for a while, so whenCountdown was originally being discussed, it was just a case of me saying ‘Here’s issue 1 of Final Crisis and a rough breakdown of the following six issues. As long as you guys leave things off where Final Crisis begins, we‘ll be fine.’ Obviously, I would have preferred it if the New Gods hadn’’t been spotlighted at all, let alone quite so intensively before I got a chance to bring them back but I don’t run DC and don’t make the decisions as to how and where the characters are deployed.

Later on, Morrison makes the same case again, in a fine example of adhering to the continuity of earlier in the interview:

To reiterate, hopefully for the last time, when we started work on Final Crisis, J.G. and I had no idea what was going to happen in Countdown or Death Of The New Gods because neither of those books existed at that point. The Countdown writers were later asked to ‘seed’ material from Final Crisis and in some cases, probably due to the pressure of filling the pages of a weekly book, that seeding amounted to entire plotlines veering off in directions I had never envisaged, anticipated or planned for in Final Crisis.

The way I see it readers can choose to spend the rest of the year fixating on the plot quirks of a series which has ended, or they can breathe a sight of relief, settle back and enjoy the shiny new DC universe status quo we’re setting up in the pages of Final Crisis and its satellite books. I’m sure both of these paths to enlightenment will find adherents of different temperaments.

Now before you write in to tell us all about how horrible it is that Orion had died of a subdural haematoma to the left frontal orb on one page and the right orb on another, we agree with Tom where continuity is concerned: we’re just not that into it.

The story of researcher’s attempts to get monkeys to move robotic arms was one of the very first things we ever blogged here on the Beat V 1.1, in a post now long lost, and they are still at it! Last a week a monkey in South Carolina made a robot in Japan (where else) walk using only its brain waves. Scientists hailed the experiment as a breakthrough.

Another expert, Nicho Hatsopoulos, a professor at the University of Chicago, said that the experiment was “an exciting development. And the use of an exoskeleton could be quite fruitful.”

A brain machine interface is any system that allows people or animals to use their brain activity to control an external device. But until ways are found to safely implant electrodes into human brains, most research will remain focused on animals.

There are a couple of ways we see this playing out.

#1: Helper monkeys are trained to operate their master’s exo-skeletons with their little monkey brainwaves.

#2: Monkeys become resentful, use brain waves to control army of murderous robots which rampage across Japan, resulting in amazing mecha- battle. Love robots come to the rescue, order restored.

Now which outcome do YOU prefer?

Fear them!

Okay, that headline is a little misleading, but according to this piece a tiny part of the monkey brain is able to process sight and sound simultaneously which could shed light on both ventriloquists and synesthesia, the neurological condition in which two or more senses are intertwined. Confusing?

“Our results show that there are interactions between the sensory pathways that occur very early in the process, which implies that the integration of the different senses may be a more primitive process and one not requiring high-level brain function,” Groh said. “This means that visual and auditory information gets combined quite early, and before the ‘thinking part’ of the brain can make sense of it.”

The implications for Jerry Mahoney here are clear, since the enjoyment of puppets may not require high-level brain function.

PS:

Technorati Tags: monkey

It’s true! Scientists have discovered a NEW mineral in the Serbian wilderness:

Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral and enlisted the help of Dr Stanley when they could not match it with anything known previously to science.

Once the London expert had unravelled the mineral’s chemical make-up, he was shocked to discover this formula was already referenced in literature - albeit fictional literature.

“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide - and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.

“The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite.”

Sadly, the mineral cannot be called “Krptonite” since it has nothing to do with the existing mineral kypton. Instead it will be known as Jadarite. Scientists say the mineral does not glow and is harmless, but WE know better. Expect a parade of supervillains staging raids on the world’s only known deposits.

[Thanks to Maclaine and all who sent me the link.]

UPDATE: DC’s official PR in jump
(more…)

While we were researching our Easter post, we came across several bits of art from WE3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, probably the greatest mainstream comic of the past three or four years. And we wondered, what was Frank Quitely up to? And lo and behold, Newrarama catches up with Frank Quitely.

And then we wondered, hey what ever happened to the WE3 movie? And LO AND BEHOLD, film ick reviews the script at length:

Grant Morrison has adapted his comicbook miniseries We3 into a feature script for New Line, and I’ve been lucky enough to read a copy. Luckier still, it’s amazing. It’s even better than the source material. In fact, this is the single best unproduced script I have ever read. Yep. And I really mean it.

What’s so great? The answer to that, if I’m really going to cover it, is very long. I’ll do my best, though, and I’ll share whatever I think is fair to share from the script - so expect some minor spoilers, certainly as regards the first two thirds of the plot.

It seems that Grant Morrison is taking more steps in his transition to Hollywood script-guy with a story Variety likes to call Comicbook author to write ‘Area 51′:

Paramount Pictures has hired comicbook author Grant Morrison to pen the feature adaptation of vidgame franchise “Area 51.”Christine Peters will produce through her Par-based CFP Prods. with Penn Station’s Dean Georgaris and Michael Aguilar, along with Stan Winston.

[snip] Set in the U.S. government’s most top-secret military facility, storyline revolves around a hazardous materials specialist who is called in to investigate a viral outbreak that could be extra-terrestrial in nature.

Yep, sounds like that’s in Morrison’s comfort zone. the story notes that Morrison’s Arkham Asylum has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, and mentions that his WE3 screenplay is still in development at New Line.

A new race of albino millipedes has been discovered living in the Grand Canyon.

Two albino millipedes have come out of their cavernous hiding places to represent an entirely new genus of these leggy organisms.

Scientists spotted the millipedes in caves on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. One species was found in a cave on the South Rim and the other in two caves on the North Rim.

“We knew the millipedes likely represented two distinct species because the two populations were separated by the Grand Canyon,” said biologist J. Judson Wynne, a cave expert at Northern Arizona University who also works for the U.S. Geological Survey. “The fact these two species belong to an entirely new genus was a great surprise to us.”

No word yet on whether these are “flesh eating albino centipedes” +2 against elves, or “acid spitting albino centipedes” +1 at night.

PS: if you like cryptozoology, support Loren Coleman.

The danger is still real.

Regular readers know we have always been manatee-friendly here at The Beat. These peaceful, lovable behemoths of the seas may lack cutes, but they make up for it in sheer can-do spirit as earth’s most unlikely sea mammals. Although thought of as an ocean-going beast, manatees actually favor drifting tranquilly through the brackish estuaries along the Florida coast, often resulting in that merriest of cries, “Honey, there’s a manatee in the sewage outlet!”

It comes as no surprise, then, that Conan O’Brien has leapt on the manatee bandwagon, with a recurring gag now turning into a web phenomenon:

On the Dec. 4 show, the manatee appeared in a skit about college mascots as the “FSU Webcam Manatee.” As it ended, O’Brien ad libbed a reference to “HornyManatee.com” - and thus a website was born.

The next evening, O’Brien informed his audience that after the previous night’s show, he was contacted by NBC Standards and told the network would have to buy the rights to the then-fictional site. NBC purchased rights to the domain for $159 for 10 years.

The quickly formed site includes “Manatee on Manatee” action, as well as pictures of a “Manateen” and a “Voyeur Manatee.” It’s all a harmless spoof of Internet pornography, and O’Brien claims it has received over three million hits.

He’s encouraged fans to submit their Horny Manatee creations to conanhornymanatee.com - and has been flooded with responses of graphic novels, paintings and photos of people in manatee costumes.

We would dearly love to see these sex manatee graphic novels, but in the meantime, here is the website, doubtless already a haven for furries who like water sports.

For those of you who require actual cuteness in your animal totems, here are baby pandas. Take that, Warren Ellis.

[Panda link via MK Reed]

UPDATE: Boing Boing has a further report, saying that Wilson has enough money to live out his last few weeks, as reproducing a note from him, which we’re going to quote.

Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days.

To steal from Jack Benny, “I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don’t deserve them either.”

Because he was a kind man as well as a funny one, Benny was beloved. I find it hard to believe that I am equally beloved and especially that I deserve such love.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that my love is with you.

You have all reminded me that despite George W. Bush and all his cohorts, there is still a lot of beautiful kindness in the world.

Blessings.

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson is the writer of the Illuminatus books, among other things, and without him you wouldn’t be enjoying many of your favorite comic books right this minute, Certainly, Grant Morrison, to name but one prominent example, owes a sizable and often publicly mentioned debt to the grandfather of all mystical, many tendriled conspiracy theory cabals.

Now Wilson is dying, Douglas Rushkoff reports, and in dire straits financially.

In case the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, Bob is the guy who wrote Cosmic Trigger - still the best narrative on how to enter and navigate the psycho-spiritual realm, and co-wrote the Illuminatus Trilogy, an epic work that pushes beyond conspiracy theory into conspiracy practice. Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce.

But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

Boing Boing has some more on this, with an update stating that enough money has been raised for next month’s rent and more. There is a Paypal account for those who want to help out. Don’t let one of our founding fathers die in poverty.

[As a public service, we here at the The Beat are pledged to keep readers up to date on real-life events that prove that writer Grant Morrison is in possession of secret knowledge which he is slowly revealing to the world at large by spotlighting weird things that we imagine would be really cool if they appeared in Grant Morrison comics. We call this feature “Morrison was Right!”.]

Manatee spotted near NYC:

A manatee has been seen in the Hudson River near Manhattan.

The gentle behemeth, estimated at 10 feet long and close to 1,000 pounds, is far from home. Most manatees live in Florida and sightings even in Virginia are considered rare.

Watchers tracked this one last month as it swam north — first near Delaware, then Maryland, then New Jersey. Saturday, it was seen at 23rd Street in Manhattan, then later at 125th Street in Harlem.