Pop Culture Roundup June 6, 2007

Comics scribe/TV scripter Paul Dini chats with comics artist Adam Hughes.

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A Q&A with "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" scripter Don Payne.

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Comics scripters Gardner Fox and George Gladir have been honored for their contributions to the medium's history. From the press release:

Gardner Fox and George Gladir have been selected to receive the 2007 Bill
Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The choice was made
unanimously by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer and historian Mark
Evanier.

The Bill Finger Award was instituted in 2005 under the supervision of comic
book legend Jerry Robinson. The awards committee is charged each year with
selecting two recipients, one living and one deceased.

"Each year, we ask ourselves who, among all the fine writers who’ve
contributed to comics has a body of work out there deserving of greater
recognition, " Evanier notes. "Gladir and Fox not only have that but both men
laid down important groundwork on which other writers could and did build .
. Just like Bill Finger did.”

Gardner Fox received a law degree in 1935 but instead opted for comics,
writing his first stories in 1938 for the pre-Batman Detective Comics. He
was also the first writer after Bill Finger to contribute to Batman’s
adventures and was responsible for several components of the character’s
mythology. Perhaps more notably, he created or co-created a bevy of
important characters in comics’ so-called “Golden Age,” including The Flash,
Hawkman, The Sandman, Starman, and Doctor Fate, and he launched what some
call the first-ever superhero team, The Justice Society of America. In the
late fifties and sixties, he worked on the revivals of most of those
features, including the Justice League of America, and also co-created new
characters such as Adam Strange. In his amazing career, he wrote an
estimated 4,000 comic book scripts and also found time to author more than
100 novels, many of them under other names. Fox passed away in 1986.

George Gladir has been a full-time comic book writer since 1959, when he got
his first assignment from Archie Comics. At first he wrote mainly one-page
gags for Archie’s Joke Book, but he quickly went on to write stories for the
many Archie titles, including Archie’s Madhouse, the book in which he
created “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” drawn by the legendary Dan DeCarlo. In
the early 1960s, he simultaneously started writing for Cracked Magazine,
MAD’s most successful competitor. He became Cracked’s head writer, and over
the next 30 years wrote some 2,000 pages for the magazine, many of them
illustrated by Hall of Famer John Severin. In addition to still writing for
Archie, George recently co-created (with Stan Goldberg) Cindy and Her Obasan
a fantasy adventure about an American 10-year-old and her Japanese fairy
godmother.

The Bill Finger Award remembers William Finger (1914-1974), who was the
first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him
the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that
character but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, this year's blue-ribbon selection committee included
writer/historian Jim Amash, comics and animation writer Paul Dini, writer
Tony Isabella, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con on Friday, July 27.


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A biopic on EC Comics/Mad magazine publisher William C. Gaines is planned.

"Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines"...will revolve around the banding together of an anti-establishment group of comic book creators, led by a reluctant Gaines, as they produce their controversial yet hugely popular line of comic books like "Crypt," which later led Gaines to face Senate subcommittee hearings over accusations of perpetuating juvenile delinquency.

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Dial B for Burbank spotlights Shadow pulp illustrator Edd Cartier.

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A series of Marvel Legends action figures from the latest Spider-Man film is planned.

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