Cheapjack Shakespeare: The Graphic Novel Play

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Independent,

With all this talk of comic books being turned into movies (I’m looking at you Scott Pilgrim and Green Lantern and countless others), how about one that’s being turned into…a play? And no I’m not talking about the expensive Spider-Man musical.

I’m talking about Cheapjack Shakespeare, a comedy about a summer Shakespeare company that’s falling apart as they’re “beset by infidelity, egos, ambition and a particularly ill-timed lightning strike.” Shaun McLaughlin, a reknowned comic book writer (Aquaman) and TV producer (Batman Beyond, Static Shock and various incarnations of Justice League), created the online graphic novel that debuted earlier this year. “It’s like Glee with booze and Shakespeare,” McLaughlin says.

Cheapjack Shakespeare: The Non-Musical has finalized its casting, begun rehearsals and set its premiere date for September 9th at the Alt Theatre in Buffalo, NY. Additional performances will be on September 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24 and 25.

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Shaun McLaughlin and Cheapjack Shakespeare

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

My buddy Shaun McLaughlin was a producer at Warner Bros. and responsible for some of their best Bruce Timm-related toons like Batman Beyond, Static, and various incarnations of Justice League. It adds up to over 400 episodes of prime animated entertainment, so he knows how to make something with mass market appeal.

He’s moved on to freelancing, pushing several projects through the development wormhole, including both an animated feature (with Omens Studios) and a live-action one. But when you’re in development, you get a lot of down time while you wait for people to make decisions, give notes, and update their social networks.

You could watch a lot of TV or surf the web or blog about your cat, but Shaun’s put his thumb-twiddling time to good use and come up with a nifty little project with his biz partner Gabriel Benson: Cheapjack Shakespeare.

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Charlie Brown For Sale!

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,

I know there are people out there who’d kill to have the image of Jesus appear to them on a potato chip. And there are those who get a thrill out of bumping into a celebrity - even a D-List one - at the local Costco. There’s also a group of people who’d love to live in a house that was once owned by a famous person.

As in: “I love this person so much that I want to live in his house after he’s dead.” It’s an odd fetish to have and thank goodness it’s not mine.

But if you love Charlie Brown, Peanuts and Snoopy and the Fantagraphics reprints can’t satisfy your love, there’s something that might. The Santa Rosa house on Montecito Avenue that creator Charles Schulz lived in back in the 1970s is up for sale. The two-story, 14-room house, originally built in 1949, has two master bedrooms (make of that what you will), five full baths and a powder room. There’s also a swimming pool, a cabana, a 1000 square-foot guest house (with two bedrooms and a full kitchen), and a chapel on the gated property.

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Doc Savage, Lester Dent and Hard Case Crime

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Reviews, Independent,

You might already know Lester Dent. He’s the creator of Doc Savage (which he wrote under the pseudonym of Kenneth Robeson). Doc was a very successful pulp hero (and later star of a line of equally successful paperback reprints of his pulp adventures). Sadly, the magical success of Doc in the pulps has never transitioned well to neither comics nor the movies.

What you may not know is that Dent also wrote a hard-boiled crime novel called Honey In His Mouth. It doesn’t star Doc Savage.

One of my favorite publishers, Hard Case Crime, publishes hard-boiled crime paperbacks. Some of them are new, but some are reissues of old classics that are worth rediscovering again. Their backlist of stuff is incredible and includes works by Lawrence Block, Richard S. Prather, David Drake, Max Allan Collins, Roger Zelazny and Donald E. Westlake. All their books feature great cover paintings that recall the classic hardboiled style of paperbacks from a couple of generations past.

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