Top Ten: Webcomics I'm Reading

[Allow me an off cinema moment as a breather from the middle of a constant stream of movies for jury duty at the Nashville Film Festival. Once I'm back next week I'll hit Oscar Predix and Summer Movies full tilt boogie.]

Over a year ago I did a little comic strip riffing on Martha Marcy May Marlene and though I'd originally planned to follow it up with weekly strips, the idea kept morphing. I'm now trying again with little actressexual musings like "Tilda in a Box" and "Jurassic Memory". I hope you're enjoying but I'm doing it for me. I have to go where the muse takes me and lately I've really needed to draw. I search for webcomics semi-regularly and I've noticed there are only a handful of movie-centric ones. Each medium has its inescapable obsessions: TV is littered with cops, lawyers and doctors and Webcomics seem to mostly spin 'round animals & video games.

Do you read any? Past comments suggest that you don't but I remain stubbornly curious. Appropos of nothing other than this current moodswing, I thought I'd sing the praises of ten illustrated story thingies on the web. It's hard to know where the best ones are because they don't get much media coverage... or at least not where I personally know to look.

TEN FAVORITE WEBCOMICS OF THE MOMENT

Runner's Up: Questionable Content, Sandra & Woo, Diesel Sweeties, Hanna is not a Boy's Name, and Poorly Drawn Lines

10 The Fox Sister (Thursdays)
I just started reading this one but the artwork is amazing and the color even more so. The mythical story involves a young Korean girl whose family was killed by a demon fox who then took the form of her big sister. For those who like a little extra resonance there's apparently an undercurrent of commentary on the rise of Christianity in Korea though I haven't gotten that far yet...

9 more after the jump

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Link Be a Lady Tonight

Film.com Excellent piece on the online coverage of Lynne Ramsay's no-show on Jane Got a Gun. There's just so much default anti-woman rhetoric online. Crazy that this rarely ever improves.
Slant Magazine Our friend Kurt recently visited Las Vegas and its glorious gawdy movie memories came with
AV Club Might HBO let people buy HBO Go without a cable subscription? That's such a good idea. A ton of people I know have dropped cable (too expensive) altogether since they use their computers more than their TVs. I would if I could, too.
Film.com strong list of 50 best opening sequences in movies ever. Love the inclusion of Cabaret, La Dolce Vita, and Manhattan. Bonus points: you don't have to click 50 times or even 5 to see the whole list.

MovieLine the opening credits of Oz: The Great and Powerful. I knew these would show up soon. Best part of the movie, easily showcasing charm, creativity, and wit.
CHUD "Hey girl... NO GIRL, PUT DOWN THE GUN!" Ryan Gosling is quitting acting for awhile
Empire Robert Redford could join the Marvel Universe starting with Captain America 2. (He would'a made such a great Captain America back in the 60s)
Timothy Brayton adss another toughtful thumbs up review to No's increasingly large critical pile. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Best movie of 2013 thus far. 
Coming Soon Wentworth Miller conitnues on as a screenwriter post Stoker. He'll adapt the thriller novel Scare Me. 

Art & Toons
Wimp.com a really amazing video about early animation process at Fleischer Studios. It's so crazy how much factory like manpower and technical innovation went in to things that are so computerized now.
i09 a neat very short animated cartoon on Marvel iconography from X-Men to Captain America

And... How webcomix make money, illustrated with 8 bit animation - thanks to Drawn for pointing it out

Webcomics and New Movies

I've been aiming to launch my new Actressland series for months and despite the first strip, it will be an ongoing narrative rather than stand alone gags (usually). If only there were more hours in the day?! So, my mind has been on webcomics. Here's a couple of recent strips on movies I enjoyed.

Hijinks Ensue is a funny geek-oriented comic with lots of sci-fi and pop culture referencing. Here's the first part of their piece on Skyfall 

For the punchline click over to Hijinks

Joe Loves Crappy Movies is generally good for smile and occasionally it's very clever. That said Joe's taste is super narrow; no jokes about anything that's not a blockbuster. I love the recurring homages to cupcakes though, like this one... 

 

Other webcomics that feature movie-related moments regularly or are movie-themed: Multiplex (about a group of movie theater workers); The B-Movie Comic (Honestly, I can't follow this one); For the Reels (parodies); Theater Hopper (very long running biographical series that recently ended) ; The Chicken and the Egg (parodies); Hark, a Vagrant! (more obsessed with literature than film but always hilarious)
. If you know of any others feel free to share them in the comments! 

Linkland Express

The Onion "Katie Holmes Glad She Can Finally Practice Scientology in Peace." Hee!
The Advocate has a historical interview piece on the making of the gay drama Making Love (1982) a landmark movie for Hollywood. I had NO idea that Kate Jackson was originally set to play Meryl Streep's role in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Crazy huh?
My New Plaid Pants Gratuitous Harrison Ford. I totally forgot to celebrate Mr. Indiana Jones while the rest of the internet was doing so. Like most people who were alive during the 70s and 80s I kind of love him. JA's post has some really fun young Harrison photos. How have I never seen Frantic?
First Showing Daniel Radcliffe will star in Horns, adapted from Joe Hill's novel 

EW has a gallery of the "50 best movies you've never seen" but I've seen 20 of them so they lie! That said some of those are awfully good pictures like the two Lukas Moodyson films Together (2000) and Lilja 4Ever (2002) and the recent Fish Tank (2009). My 30 unseen do include a few I've always meant to watch.
PopWatch The Eisner Awards, aka the comic book Oscars were given out in San Diego. A big day for Marvel's blind superhero Daredevil who was always pretty great in the comics but was pretty terrible when he hit the big screen...
Battle Pug was the winner for best digital comic so that one is easy to check out.
Salon Andrew O'Hehir revisits Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, two films he had issues with, on the eve of the release of, well, you know...

Spielberg and Zanuck on the set of JAWSFinally, RIP to legendary film producer Richard D. Zanuck who died on Friday at the age of 77. I can't even remotely say that I love his filmography given that Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) -- two pictures which caused me great personal pain via their Oscar and Box Office might -- are chief among his hits. But I have to tip my hat for his efforts to champion a then unknown Steven Spielberg in the 1970s. Perhaps it was Spielberg's destiny to become the world's most popular filmmaker and no one person could have changed that. But if anyone could be thanked for getting Spielberg started beyond the man himself, it would be Zanuck. He basically launched the young filmmaker with the one two punch of Sugarland Express (1974) and mega-hit Jaws (1975), Spielberg's first two theatrical releases.

Oscar Trivia Confusion: According to the New York Times, Zanuch also holds a peculiar Oscar record. He's reportedly the only son of a Best Picture Oscar winner (his father was legendary film producer Darryl F. Zanuck) to win Best Picture himself (for Driving Miss Daisy). But according to the IMDb, Zanuck Sr. never won the Best Picture Oscar though his AMPAS track record is nothing to dismiss given that he has three Irving Thalbergs. 

Learning to Love the Lantern Again

I'm pretty sure I've told y'all at some point or another that Green Lantern was a childhood favorite as superheroes go. I wore a Green Lantern t-shirt proudly. Before the shitty movie was a reality, that is. Recently I've taken to only wearing it on laundry days. My beloved worn shirt mutated into a Tee of Shame.

Last week, wanting something comfortable for a long days travel to Utah, I wore it. As I was walking through the Phoenix airport on layover an adorable little toddler pointed right at me while yanking on his father's pant leg and squealed: 

IT'S GWEEN LANTEUHN!"

I smiled and for the first time in ages didn't think 'Person on Street thinks I have terrible taste in movies!". I suddenly felt warmly toward the power ringed hero again.

I returned from Utah to discover that Green Lantern had come out of the closet (see liplock above). No, not Silver Age brunette Hal Jordan but Golden Age blonde lantern Alan Scott. He wears the ring in "Earth 2" a parallel universe. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with comic books, the ring of power changes owners periodically, and comic books are all fucked up with alternate realities anyways since heroes never age and their histories keep changing).

As much as a gay superhero movie would be a fun novelty, I hope they never make a Green Lantern sequel or reboot. Not that it wouldn't also be fun to see Ryan Reynolds making it with another man, even a ringed projection of another Green Lantern

Sorrry. My mind is its own power ring. It manifests my wishes...but even if Ryan Reynolds were Alan Scott and not Hal Jordan, if he's smart he'll never reprise the role.

On an unrelated but perfectly symmetrical note, please enjoy the awesome comic strip by the talented Anthony Holden which is embedded after the jump. It's a dance party!

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