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§ At age 94, voice actress June Foray, won her very first Emmy! It’s about time! Foray has been in the animation business since 1943, when everyone’s grandparents were born, and since then has voiced Rocky the Squirrel, Witch Hazel, Jokey Smurf, and a zillion other characters. She won her Emmy for a voice on Garfield and is probably the oldest person ever to be nominated and win an Emmy.

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§ The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe – REDUX is one of those projects where indie artists redraw some superhero thing—in this case the Marvel Handbook, which was a fascinating thing 20 years ago or so. Here’s Tony Esteves’s Yellowjacket that reminds us that…well, Yellowjacket was once a woman.

§ Rockstar vs Stalker

§ Apparently the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to be directed by Michael Bayhas been put on hiatus while the studio tries to decide if it is a good thing or not:

With the high profile box office failures of films like John Carter and Battleship, Hollywood studios are becoming extremely cautious.  The latest example of Tinseltown austerity is Paramount’s decision to suspend work on the Michael Bay-produced reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Paramount has already postponed several blockbusters including G.I. Joe Retribution (see “Paramount moves ‘G.I. Joe: Retribution’ to 2013”) and the Brad Pitt zombie epic World War Z that were scheduled to debut in 2012.  Now it is stopping the production of the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that was slated to debut in December of 2013.   The studio shut down the G.I. Joe film because it was dissatisfied at the way the film was looking (see “‘G.I. Joe’ Needed Work”), and it appears that the same dynamic is a work (albeit at an earlier stage of production, the Joe movie was postponed just weeks before it was to debut) with the TMNT film.  Word is the Turtles movie is undergoing a major rewrite.


Personal to Paramount: no, it is a very, very BAD idea.
§ Paul Gravett went to Kapow! last month and wrote about it:

May’s crowded schedule and Kapow!‘s price-hike for entry may partly explain why attendances, estimated at 5,000 each day, appeared lower than last year. According to Shane Chebsey, publisher of Scar Comics, “The buzz was not quite as intense as in 2011, but I am guessing that is because the first show is always a little special. Scar Comics’ takings dropped by around 40%, which I put down to a much higher fanboy attendance than last year, when lots of people attended who had never been to a comics show before and came for the movie and TV aspects.”


§ The first ever Denver Comic Con was a success over the weekend if newspaper reports are to be believed:

This first annual convention was a family oriented celebration that contained plenty of activities for both the children and the children at heart. A building manager for the convention center expressed his excitement over this event by stating that this was the first time that he had truly looked forward to one center’s events. Between the costumes and the celebrities, he himself felt star-struck.


§ The Ray Bradbury-Julius Schwartz-Al Feldstein Story — Part 1

§ Starter set: 5 Graphic Novels to Convert Nonbelievers. It’s a pretty basic list— WATCHMEN, SANDMAN, MAUS…if those don’t do it, nothing can.

Therefore, in celebration of Book Week, The MindHut suggests keeping the following five graphic novels or series in your library at all times. If your hesitant friends can be swayed at all, chances are you’ll be able to do it with these classic, fantastic examples of the comic medium (and with almost no superheroes!… not that there’s anything wrong with them)

§ Disney’s Matterhorn ride has been spruced up with added snow and a new, louder abominable snowman. In addition the seats are now individual 3 seaters per sled instead of the previous method of jamming two people into one seat, which, in our experience anyway, was usually a gateway to a new, unexpected intimacy.

1 COMMENT

  1. Really happy for June Foray. I followed the development on Mark Evanier’s blog and this is welcome news.

    My younger brother and I grew up reading the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe. We used to quiz each other with questions like, “what’s Boomerang’s real name?” or “What issue did the Rhino first appear?” Really fun stuff at the time. We poured through those things.

  2. A correction: Michael Bay is lined up as PRODUCER on the new not-TM-just-NT film, not director. Jonathan Liebesman is (was?) set to direct.

    On a less-nitpicky note, great to hear about Foray’s Emmy. She is simply the greatest.