The following article is provided by Rolling Stone.
By PATRICK DOYLE, Tayo The Little Bus English
"I
had to fall apart a bit," says Florence Welch of "How Big How Blue How
Beautiful," the first Florence and the Machine album in four years. In
the period leading up to the album, Welch, 28, endured a rough breakup
with her boyfriend and was partying too much. Not only did Welch
translate her hard times into her most emotionally intense album yet,
she also quit drinking during the sessions. "I had quite a monkish
existence," she says. "I cycled to the studio, cycled home, read, ate,
went to bed. It was like convalescing. But it really was magic."Please Pick Me
You played a killer set at Coachella, and also broke your foot. What happened?
Well, I told everyone in the crowd to take their clothes off. We'd been
doing that at our shows, and my guitarist had been giving me shit for
not taking off my clothes. So I was like, "Fuck it, I've got to
do it!" and started taking off my shirt. Then I was like, "I've got to
get down [into the crowd], with everyone else who's getting naked." I
just did a particularly hard, fast jump offstage, and I was just like,
"Fuck!" I managed to jump back on the stage, and that's where my
security guard found me, collapsed behind a speaker in a bra. Tayo the little bus
"Pororo, the Little Penguin," with his yellow helmet and orange goggles is now coming to you in taxis.
Starting Tuesday, 20 of these so-called "Pororo taxis" are running on the streets of Seoul.
From the outer decorations to inside car accessories, Pororo and his
friends have taken over these cars, much to the delight of Korean
children.
No wonder, Pororo is also deemed the "children's president."
"Pororo is so cool "
Passengers can ride with this popular animation character for a test period, until May of next year.
"We came up with this idea, when we were thinking about how to
increase the people's use of taxis, even if it's by a little bit."
The fares for these Pororo taxis are the same as other "regular" taxis
in Seoul, and because there are only a handful available, reservations
can be made online.
Pororo is just the latest animated TV character to be featured on public transportation in the capital.
"Tayo the Little Bus" has been, literally, running the streets of
Seoul since March, and with its huge popularity, the one-month test term
has been extended until the end of this year.
And the "Larva" character is plastered all over a train on Seoul's
subway line two, entertaining the eyes of passengers since the beginning
of this month.
Seoul Mayor, Park Won-Soon [ ] says the coming-of-life of these
characters is a way to "decorate" the city-- and of course, please the
little ones.
Connie Lee, Arirang News.
Tags :tayo the little bus english, Gani the Teacher!
RINGTRUE with Yemi Adebowale: Email: yemi.adebowale@thisdaylive.com; cell phone: 07013940521
Ihave always maintained that most of our federal lawmakers, whether PDC
or APC are just after their selfish/sectional interest and clearly not
the interest of the nation. Most of them play bread and butter politics.
But honestly, I need to amend this position a bit by adding that the
APC guys are more useless. I became more convinced about this amendment
after watching Senator Kabiru Marafa pummeling Senator Tayo Alasoadura
on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting called by APC senators to
deliberate on the remaining principal positions in the Senate - Senate
Leader, Deputy Senate Leader, Senate Whip and Deputy Senate Whip. On
this shameful day, some other senators also exchanged blows, which
resulted in the effort to end the crisis between the warring factions of
the party ending in a deadlock. Alasoadura could have been killed in
the process as he was dazed and almost fell. Some other guys had to
quickly rescue him. The scene left me depressed. They simply behaved
like touts. I am sure that many other Nigerians were also depressed by
the scene.
The last four weeks have been horrendous in the Senate with supporters
of Bukola Saraki (Senators of Like Minds) and that Ahmed Lawan (Unity
Group) throwing caution to the wind. The Lawan group became extremely
violent and desperate after losing the battle for the Senate Presidency
to Saraki. From the fire I saw in the eyes of the pro-Lawan members,
these guys are really desperate and capable of doing anything to achieve
their aims. Many will understand what I mean by taking a second look at
how an angry Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi stormed out of the venue (midway
into the meeting) on Tuesday and threw the doors open to journalists.
The emergency meeting called by the senators failed because of the hard
line posture of the two factions on the remaining principal positions.
For the Saraki group, The Majority Leader has to be Ali Ndume and the
Chief Whip has to be Senator Roberts Boroffice. The Lawan group is
insisting on Ahmed Lawan as Majority Leader and Sola Adeyeye as Chief
Whip.
This drama during the APC senators’ peace meeting was replicated in the
House of Representatives during plenary on Thursday. The faction loyal
to Femi Gbajabiamila set the House on fire over the vacant principal
offices. The Dogara group wants the four positions; but the Gbajabiamila
group won’t let go. As a result, the legislators battled each other
like Lagos Motor Park touts. Speaker Yakubu Dogara narrowly escaped
being lynched.
APC’s zoning arrangement for these principal offices failed because the
party’s NWC and NEC also failed to do the needful. The leaders of the
party could not enforce the zoning arrangement because they have
obviously compromised. They have allowed personal and sectional
interests to over-ride party and national interests. They are thinking
more about their pockets than the nation. Above all, the stock in trade
of majority of APC members is obviously treachery. I guess they are
reaping the reward of treachery. Clearly, the party is a time bomb
waiting to explode. This party of strange bedfellows looks certain to
put Nigeria in a bigger trouble than the PDP. There is clearly no party
discipline. The National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun
has also lost it. I am sorry to say that Oyegun is just a passenger in
the bus. He has failed to provide effective leadership, especially over
the leadership crisis in the National Assembly. I don’t think he has the
ability to lead the party. This national Chairman takes instruction
from vested interests that want to maintain their stranglehold on the
party’s structures. Oyegun has no moral right to remain in office.
Back to the recalcitrant APC lawmakers. Let’s face it; a lawmaker does
not have to be a Principal Officer of the National Assembly to
contribute meaningfully to the development of this country. A lawmaker
does not have to be a Principal Officer to make meaningful contribution
to lawmaking. A lawmaker does not have to be a Principal Officer to
motivate quality legislations. It should not be a do or die affair. The
APC legislators are apparently after these principal positions for
material gains. They are thinking more about the windfall that comes
with it. They are thinking more about the influence that comes with the
positions; the power to be used for their selfish interest. The truth be
told, APC legislators have brought great disrepute to these hallowed
chambers. They have consistently defiled the Senate and the House in the
last four weeks. It goes to show that APC legislators are incapable of
managing power. They can’t be trusted to rise above sectional and
personal interests. They do not regard the interest of the masses of
this country as being uppermost. For them, it is just about money, power
and positions. Their lust for power is already weighing down the
National Assembly. So, this is the Change they promised Nigerians? May
Allah save us from these hypocrites masquerading as progressives. But I
must add a caveat here. Few of the APC legislators are really patriots;
but too few to impact on the majority who are rascals. Some of the few I
consider patriots are Lanre Tejuoso, Shehu Sani, Razak Atunwa, Adamu
Aliero, David Umaru and Gbenga Ashafa. They should take steps to call
his colleagues to order.
Buhari’s Tale of Empty Treasury
When President Barack Obama of the United States assumed office for his
first term, he inherited $3 trillion debt, a collapsed banking sector
and mortgage industry from George W Bush. Rather than making noise,
Obama hit the ground running to tackle the crisis. This has not been the
case with our dear President Muhammadu Buhari who has wasted the last
one month doing nothing. It has been one excuse after the other. He is
now telling the nation stories about the “virtually empty treasury” he
met. From Yakubu Gowon to Olusegun Obasanjo, has there been any new
government that admitted inheriting a glowing treasury? The story has
always been the same. Buhari knew quite alright that the financial
situation of the country was not rosy before he contested. He even said
it on many occasions during his campaigns that the nation’s economy was
in tatters. I thought he had a good idea about how to turn things
around. That was why Nigerians voted for him. Please, Buhari, Enough of
excuses. Get down to work. In this part of the world, new governments
often do not speak well of their predecessors. How can Buhari say that
the treasury he inherited was virtually empty? What about the $2.78
billion in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and over $1 billion in the
Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)? These are part of our treasury. It seems
Buhari is just out to criminalize and paint Goodluck Jonathan as a
pillager of Nigeria’s treasury.
The most frightening aspect of Buhari’s remarks about the Jonathan
administration was saying federal civil servants were being owed
salaries. The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Anastasia
Nwaobia on Tuesday in Abuja stated emphatically that no single federal
civil servant was being owed salary. Nwaobi declared: “There is no
agency or ministry owed by Federal Government.” Yes, the Jonathan
administration did not meet the expectations of Nigerians in many areas.
Yes, there were so many alleged cases of corruption during his tenure.
However, I think Buhari should stop exaggerating the limitations of the
Jonathan administrations. He should get down to work.
We need to remind Buhari that he has wasted the four weeks. Four weeks
after assumption of office, his administration still lacks policy
direction. He is yet to come up with a blue print on how to tackle
challenges in different sectors of our economy; something that ought to
be in his bag even before commencing campaign for the Presidency. He is
still struggling to make basic appointments after almost one month in
office. We need to remind him that Boko Haram terrorists are still very
much around, killing and maiming Nigerians daily; Buhari promised to
eliminate them within “few months.” We are still waiting for him to hit
the ground running as promised. I hope we won’t have to wait for four
years for this to happen.
Governors Should Cut Security Votes/Ludicrous Appointments, Not Salaries
Some governors across the nation have been grandstanding about the cut
they authorised in their salaries. They create the impression that by so
doing, they are being prudent and reducing the cost of governance. This
is obviously a cosmetic action when compared to the billions of Naira
they take home as Security Vote. Okezie Ikpeazu and Nasir el-Rufai are
some of the governors that have slashed their salaries. One of the
things eating deep into the purse of our states is this unconstitutional
Security Vote. Imagine a governor who pays himself N500 million monthly
as Security Vote, turning around to say that he has reduced his monthly
salary by a miserable N500,000. They should simply cancel security
votes, stop frivolous contracts/expenditure and reduce travels.
These governors who claim to be interested in cutting cost of
governance have started making all sorts of ludicrous appointments. All
sorts of aides are being appointed just to satisfy their cronies.
Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom State has already appointed a
Special Adviser, Religious Affairs. I don’t know how this will impact on
the traumatised people of Akwa Ibom State. Okezie appointed three media
aides. Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima appointed four media
aides, including two for social media. Shettima also has two Special
Assistants for Special Duties. The Borno governor went further to
request for 40 Special Advisers, but the Borno State legislators reduced
it to 20.
Mike Okiro and Citizen Kaase
For those who have not been following the story, citizen Aaron Kaase, a
staff of the Police Service Commission recently wrote a petition
bordering on alleged fraud and abuse of office against Mike Okiro,
Chairman PSC and former Inspector General of Police. Kaase alleged
“certain misrepresentation of facts to the Bureau of Public Procurement
(BPP) with a view to swindling the government to the tune of N275.5m
through PSC” by its Chairman.” Okiro has since been quizzed by the
anti-graft agency. For now, citizen Kaase’s petition remains an
allegation.
The news now is that Kaase is alleging that his life is under threat
because of his petition and has written to the current Inspector General
of Police and the DG of DSS to save his life. He alleges that an aide
of Okiro is responsible for the threat. Citizen Kaase wants special
protection. IGP Solomon Arase should swiftly investigate Kaase’s
complain and provide him maximum security. As clearly stated by his
lawyer, Kenneth Achabo, “there are so many unresolved murder cases in
the country and Kaase is not ready to be part of the statistics.”
Citizen Kaase must not die.
A Word for Abiola Ajimobi
Oyo State is fast turning into another failed state in the South-west.
As at yesterday, the state’s civil servants were being three-month
salaries. Just like Osun State, Oyo workers are gradually turning into
beggars. Obviously, Governor Abiola Ajimobi has not shown any ingenuity
in the management of the state’s finances. Oyo has no business owing
civil servants if this state is well managed. Its IGR can fund at least
50% of its budget if properly pursued and the fraud in the collection
drastically reduced.
This is another clear case of mismanagement. This governor has been
unjust to the people. Most civil servants in the state go to bed without
food. I am sure that the governor has excess of food and drinks on his
table. This is wicked, irresponsible, insensitive and unjust. He must
make payment of salaries a priority as directed by FAAC before funding
his grandeur projects. It is pertinent to remind Ajimobi that
sovereignty belongs to the people. Ajimobi has to shape in or be shipped
out.
MANILA, Philippines – Binuksan na sa publiko ang Ayala Bridge matapos ang tatlong ulit na pagkakaantala nito.
Ayon kay Manila Vice Mayor Isko Moreno, bagama’t partial opening pa
lang ito dahil tig-isang linya lang sa northbound at southbound lane ang
bukas sa mga motorista, malaking tulong na rin ito upang maibsan ang
masikip na daloy ng trapiko sa ibang lansangan.
Sinabi ni Moreno na sa Hulyo 23 ang kabuuang pagbubukas ng tulay dahil may ilang bahagi pa ng tulay ang hindi pa nasesementuhan.
Paalala pa nito, hindi pa maaaring dumaan ang mga truck at bus sa tulay.
“Nananawagan tayo sa ating mga kababayan na magagamit na po nila ang
Ayala Bridge pero nananawagan kami na sana magdahan-dahan lang po at
may mga barrier pa pong nakalagay sa magkabilang gilid,” ani Moreno.
Matatandaang Abril 21 ang naunang target date para buksan ang tulay
na iniurong ng Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) sa Hunyo
11 na hindi rin natuloy dulot umano ng pag-ulan.
SEOUL, Apr. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — A total of 150 Seoul town buses will be transformed into ‘Logi,’ a famous cartoon character that looks like a cute little bus from the Tayo the Little Bus animation.
The Seoul city government and the cooperation for town buses will wrap Logi prints on 150 buses. Some 15 buses will be also adorned with LED eyes.
Choi Pan-Sul, the New Politics Alliance for Democracy member for the Jung-gu district in Seoul, said that two lines with Tayo-wrapped buses established in March 2014 saw their average number of customers and earnings increase compared to earlier periods.
The first passengers to ride the city buses inspired by “Tayo the Little Bus” last month wave their hands at the Seoul Plaza in Jung District, central Seoul. [NEWSIS]
For many children in Seoul, seeing Tayo and his friends sprawled across the city’s buses might just be like a dream come true.
The bus project, featuring characters from the animated television series “Tayo the Little Bus,” was initiated on March 26 as a one-month event to mark National Public Transportation Day. But thanks to its enormous popularity, especially among kids, the Seoul city government decided to extend the operation until May 5 and increase the number of buses with Tayo and his friends from four to 100.
“We have heard a lot of requests to increase the number,” an official from the transportation division of the Seoul Metropolitan Government said, “because sometimes parents and their children spend a lot of time trying to get [to the areas] where those buses come and go. So we decided to expand the Tayo buses to reach different neighborhoods.”
He added that other regional governments had also asked if they could operate the same buses, though intellectual property rights issues prohibited the project’s expansion.
“Tayo the Little Bus,” an animated series presented by Iconix Entertainment, follows the adventures of Tayo, a little blue bus, and his band of friends.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon added on his Twitter account that the city was also considering introducing a subway train designed after “Larva,” an immensely popular cartoon show for kids that features a pair of red and yellow slugs.
“The city is also working on doing something for ‘Pororo the Little Penguin,’” he said.
The Tayo buses - Nos. 370, 2016, 2211 and 9401- operate in the same way as regular city buses, stopping at each station. Parents and children can use the Daum map to check run times and the real-time locations of each vehicle.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government said more than 400 people hopped on those buses every day - a significant increase compared to previous periods. It also noted that it plans to add various features, including destination announcements using the voices of Tayo characters.
Seoul said that it costs about 3 million won ($2,840) to paint each vehicle. Mayor Park said the idea for the Tayo buses came from a request via his Twitter account last year from a Seoul resident and mother.
Zootopia is a seemingly unconventional Disney
animated feature released during the would-be off season. That’s what
makes it interesting and potentially exciting.
Walt Disney
DIS-0.61% dropped a trailer for Zootopia yesterday.
It was a barebones teaser, with just the premise being laid out via
Jason Bateman narration with just a bit of character introductions
offered on a white screen. With no hint of plot or conflict, this was an
announcement teaser for a film that wasn’t really on many peoples’
radars. It takes place ina worldwithout
humans, whereby animals of all kinds are now fully anthropomorphized.
It’s odd that they had to explain that as (for example) the 1970′s Robin Hood needed
no explanation. But maybe Disney was tired of having to answer all of
the horrifyingly disturbing questions concerning the Cars/Planes universe (note:Planes: Fire and Rescue is the best Planet of the Apes sequel
ever made). What is interesting is that the film isn’t a grand
adventure saga or sweeping fairy tale epic. It is basically a crime
comedy, a “reluctant partners” story about a fox (Jason Bateman) who is
framed for a crime and the bunny (Ginnifer Goodwin) who must bring him
in and presumably discovers the truth and helps clear his name. If that
doesn’t sound like a typical Walt Disney animated feature in this
day-and-age, that’s because Zootopiais a rare in-house Walt Disney Studios animated “B-movie.” Zootopia comes out on March 4th, 2016, and it is not remotely the would-be main event for Walt Disney next year. They’ve got Finding Dorycoming June 17th, 2016 and then they have the (presumably) sweepingPolynesian-set period piece adventure Moanafor
November 23rd, 2016. Of those three, you can probably guess which one
is least likely to get a Best Animated Feature Academy Award nomination
come early 2017. It’s been awhile since Walt Disney put out what you
could consider (by their standards) a B-movie cartoon. Just in terms of
recent history, this goes back to around 1995, where they had the
glorified DTV offeringA Goofy Movie in the spring before the big summer release (Pocahontas) and the Pixar spectacular Toy Storyover Thanksgiving.
But that doesn’t mean that every would-be B-movie is a glorified TV adaptation akin toReturn to Neverland or The Tigger Movie. Back in 2000, the big event wasDinosaur while Disney unleashed the offbeat and unconventional (and famously troubled)The Emperor’s New Groovein
mid-December. That brings up another important point: The would-be
second priority feature in the box office food chain sometimes becomes
the top dog in terms of quality. Quick, do you preferDinosaur or The Emperor’s New Groove? That’s what I thought. And while I may be in the minority opinion, I’m the freak who loves Ratatouille but lovesMeet the Robinsons even
more. Now to be fair, over the last twenty years, the majority of
so-called B-movies (which for the record is my own simplistic labeling)
were theatrical pictures that barely went to theaters or came from other
production houses. They were films like Gnomeo and Juliet, Planes, and Mars Needs Moms. Obviously the Robert Zemeckis-produced or directed motion-capture films were not cheap, but few will argue that A Christmas Carol was more of a priority for Walt Disney in 2009 than Up.
Having said that, the positioning of A Christmas Carol in early November did (I have long argued) real damage to Walt Disney’s The Princess and the Frog which was prevented from opening wide on Thanksgiving weekend like itdarn well should have. But generally the various animated projects don’t clash with each other. It’s not likeThe Wild caused any problems forCars back in 2006. What’s interesting aboutZootopia is that it is indeed a pure Walt Disney production released outside of the prime season (early March, just asThe Wild was
in mid-April), which is rather unusual for the so-called off-season
release. Disney hasn’t released a big-scale in-house animated production
in the off-season sinceMeet the Robinsons back in March of 2007. Truth be told, Disney spent much of the last 10-15 years (post-Lilo & Stitch, pre-Princess and the Frog)
in a place where the Walt Disney animated feature itself was a
glorified B-movie companion to the year’s Pixar release, with the likes
ofChicken Little and Boltbeing presented as “the one that gets Disney its luster back.” Yes,Chicken Little was
a big release and a solid hit ($314m worldwide on a $150m budget) in
November, 2005, an attempt to score big with CGI animation and establish
a new mascot character outside of Pixar and the princess line-up.
It says something that Disney is strong enough in the aftermath ofFrozen and Big Hero 6to
again strong enough to offer an A-level Disney, an A-level Pixar, and a
B-level Disney animated feature in the same calendar year.
And the reason that this “matters” beyond my own curiosity is that the
so-called B-movie allows that much more variety in terms of the kinds of
animated stories and kinds of animated characters Disney can create.
The likes of Zootopia doesn’t necessarily have to be a grand
and sweeping adventure in the classic Disney tradition or what-have-you.
It can be a crazy word-play based comedy like The Emperor’s New Groove, a dazzlingly creative and heartbreaking time travel adventure like Meet the Robinsons, or it can be a delightful throwback like Winnie the Pooh. Zootopia may
not be the best or grandest Disney animated feature in 2016. But by
virtue of its lower profile status and its existence as one of three, it
has the freedom to be a little offbeat, a little quirky, a little out
of the conventional Disney wheelhouse, as for that matter do the other
two films by virtue of the same volume. Maybe Zootopia will magically end up being better than Finding Dory and Moana. All due respect, when is the last time you quoted Dinosaur?
Bruce Timm’s is returning to DC animation with Justice League: Gods and Monsters, and wow, he is not screwing around.
In the weeks leading up to its release, Machinima is giving us a
three-part prequel webseries, the first of which is now online. It’s
called “Twisted,” and features a new Batman (Kirk Langstrom) on the hunt for Harley Quinn. If that title doesn’t tip you off, it’s not for kids.
Ready yourself for dismembered bodies, corpse art, a bizarrely
revealing Harley Quinn outfit, and hey, why not the most brutal
incarnation of a movie Batman we’ve ever seen, and check out episode
one:
What the heck did I just watch?
Justice League: Gods and Monsters is set in an alternate
universe (in case you couldn’t tell), and as far as we know, is separate
from the loose chronology of the more recent DC animated movies.
In this world, the Justice League is a crimefighting organization
with notoriously brutal methods of maintaining the peace. Each of the
core members also has a radically different origin story. As you saw,
this Batman is doesn’t exactly have a “no kill” rule. Instead, he’s a
scientist named Kirk Langstrom who accidentally turned himself into a
vampire while trying to cure cancer. Superman is the son of General Zod,
and was raised by a family of Mexican immigrants. Finally, the mantle
of Wonder Woman was taken up by Bekka, a comic book character who
married Orion, one of Darkseid’s sons.
What is it about?
Gods and Monsters is set in the aftermath of a series of
suspicious deaths of well-known scientists, which casts suspicion on the
Justice League itself.
If you’re interested in learning more about this alternate universe,
you’ll want to check out the next two episodes of the Machinima series,
as well as a four-issue prequel comic book series that will be released
alongside the film.
And when is the movie out?
The movie will be available on Blu-ray and VOD on July 28, 2015. A Comic-Con premiere seems fairly likely.
Cartoon Network wants a second lease on life for “Ben 10.”
The cable outlet, part of Time Warner’s Turner, plans to introduce a
new version of the popular animated series, which debuted in 2006 and
chronicled the adventures of Ben Tennyson, a ten-year-old boy who
discovers an alien device known as the Omnitrix that gives him the power
to change into various aliens. Cartoon Network Studios will produce the
new series, which will debut on Cartoon Network international channels
in the fall of 2016 and in North America in 2017. Man of Action
Entertainment, the original production team behind the series that
includes creators Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven T.
Seagle, will serve as executive producers nd John Fang will be supervising producer.
“’Ben 10’ is a worldwide phenomenon for 10 years running, with more
than 230 TV episodes produced. There hasn’t been an original production
since 2012, but the overall popularity of the character has continued
on,” said Rob Sorcher,
Cartoon Network’s chief content officer, in an emailed response to
questions about the project. “This demand from audiences around the
world is the driving spark behind the relaunch. So we are creating this
iteration for an entirely new generation of kids.”
The effort provides a map, of sorts, to buried treasure lying deep
within many media companies. Content aimed at kids can live on well
after its original air date and its time in syndication. The audiences
for such fare often “age out” of it within a few years’ time, but new
generations of the industry’s youngest viewers can easily catch on.
Viacom in March, for example, launched its Noggin
subscription-video-on-demand service that largely depends on old series
like “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bear” to lure audiences to its $5.99 per
month offering. Likewise, some PBS stations continue to offer the
landmark series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in some format, even
though the famous host passed away in 2003.
To be sure, revivals are becoming more popular in all many corners of
the media world. NBC plans to offer a retooled version of 1990s sitcom
“Coach.” And Netflix has unveiled plans to launch”Fuller House,” an
update of the ABC sitcom “Full House.” What the animated series have in
their favor: cartoon characters can carry on for years without aging,
and dependence on actors is less obvious than it is with scripted
programs.
Media outlets like Turner have a more powerful incentive to keep
popular cartoon franchises alive. The merchandise associated with them
is often worth billions. Cartoon Network said toy and game efforts
associated with “Ben 10” have generated $4.5 billion in retail sales
around the world.
The original “Ben 10” played out over the course of four linked
animated series as well as a handful of animated movies. The older
episodes will be “rested” in the U.S. during launch phase, said Sorcher.
He also suggested Cartoon Network would work to make the series
appealing to viewers who were fond of watching video on the go via
mobile devices. “The last generation of kids were the first digital
natives. This generation is the first mobile natives,” he said. “You’ll
see that reflected in our content plan.”
The relaunch of the series comes as Turner has vowed to beef up
youth-skewing networks like Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang by
creating content that can be used in both U.S. and international
operations and also be tapped to strengthen digital means of
distribution. Last July, Turner named Christina Miller, an executive
with experience developing consumer products and digital operations, to
oversee the three outlets.
Cartoon Network vowed the new “Ben 10” would feature “many new and
fan-favorite aliens,” and depict Ben traveling the country with his
cousin Gwen and Grandpa Max during summer vacation. For the series,
however, whatever break it enjoyed seems to be over.
A reboot is a delicate thing. When a once-profitable franchise
of characters becomes stale, outdated, or overly complex, there will
always be voices calling for the slate to be wiped clean: to take the
characters back to their basics, retell their origin stories, make them
contemporary. But all too often, those rebooting efforts are laughable,
pandering failures. Ultimate Marvel was the rare exception. It was a
compendium of stories that saved the company that launched it,
revolutionized the comics medium, and became the foundation of the
multi-billion-dollar Marvel cinematic empire.
It began as a Hail
Mary maneuver. Ultimate Marvel was a publishing experiment launched by
Marvel Comics — the superhero-comics company that had invented the
Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and countless other icons — during its
darkest hour. The idea was simple: Launch various comics series where
all the famous Marvel characters are young again and just starting their
superhero careers in the modern day. Give the series flashy titles like
Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men and make sure no
reader will have to go back and read decades’ worth of comics to
understand what’s going on. Return to core principles. Make these icons
fresh again.
There were many reasons the initiative could have failed, but it
instead succeeded beyond its creators' wildest dreams. Indeed, the world
of Marvel movie adaptations — including this summer's megahit Avengers sequel and upcoming Fantastic Four
— owe more to the Ultimate imprint than any other single Marvel Comics
initiative. And yet, 15 years after the Ultimate line’s birth, Marvel
just killed it. Last week, a five-issue miniseries called Ultimate End debuted, and when it's done, there will be no more Ultimate Marvel.There is little mourning, even within die-hard comics fans who once loved the imprint.
What happened? Why dispose of something so successful? To find the
answers, we must look at the secret history of Ultimate Marvel. It's a
story of desperate ambition, shocking triumph, and fevered imagination.
But it's also a cautionary tale: one about pushing limits too far,
holding on too long, and learning to accept the forces of entropy. Here,
then, is the tale of Ultimate Marvel, one of entertainment's greatest
reboots — but also living proof that all reboots can become victims of
their own success.
***** “When I got hired, I literally thought I was going to be writing one of the last — if not the last
— Marvel comics,” says now-legendary comics writer Brian Michael
Bendis, who wrote the first comic of the Ultimate line and will be
writing the final one, too. When he wrote that first issue in 2000, the
once-venerable Marvel was in chaos. “It's so the opposite now, that
people don't even know.”
Here’s some context to understand the red-alert disaster the comics
industry had become by the eve of the Ultimate experiment. In 1993,
annual combined comics sales across all publishers had been close to a
billion dollars; in 1999, that same number was a microscopic $270
million. In 1989, Batman was the most-talked-about movie in America; by 1999, the disastrous Batman & Robin
had squirted a stink on the very idea of a cinematic comic-book
adaptation. Marvel especially was feeling the burn: It went through a
humiliating Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the late '90s, saw wave after wave
of layoffs, and executive leadership was shuffled every few weeks. In
1999, after years of comics-publishing dominance, the company lost its
top spot in industry market share and watched its rival, DC Comics, take
the throne.
There was a wide array of causes for Marvel’s woes — the collapse of a
comics-as-collectible-items bubble and multiple defections by top
artists, for example. But one ailment was obvious to any brand-new
reader who bought a Marvel comic for the first time: There was so much
backstory that the stories were almost incomprehensible.
Ever since Marvel’s first comic in 1939, nearly every superhero story
it published had to fit into a shared, ongoing universe of characters
and events. There was some fudging of time frames (Spider-Man was
introduced as a teenager in 1962, and by 1999, he was only in his 30s or
so), but every story was built on the back of every previous story, and
all stories were interconnected: Iron Man might talk about some battle
that had occurred in X-Men, Mr. Fantastic would remember things
that happened in comics published 20 years prior, and there were regular
companywide “crossover events,” where all the heroes would fight the
same evil at the same time.
If you’re confused by that description, don’t worry — so was everyone
else. Sixty years of continuity had set an insanely high bar for
understanding what was happening in a Marvel comic, even if you were a
die-hard fan. (To be fair: DC also had this problem.) What's more,
everything in Marvel looked and sounded behind-the-times. In a world
where geek audiences were flocking to watch the sleek, leather-clad, hip
(by 1999 standards) action of The Matrix, Marvel’s stories were
alienatingly ridiculous. In the pages of Marvel’s flailing comics
series, you might see the Avengers — wearing uniforms of clownish purple
or baby-blue — fighting wooden-dialogued villains with names like Kang
the Conqueror and Lord Templar. Spider-Man was a married stiff who spent
years trying to solve the mystery of whether or not he was a clone. And
the characters were all so old: The phenomenon of ongoing
continuity meant the original X-Men hadn’t been teenagers for decades. A
pop-culture empire lives and dies on young-adult interest, and Marvel’s
was fast receding.
Enter Bill Jemas. He was a relative outsider to the comics world
(he’d gotten his law degree from Harvard before spending most of his
career in the collectible-trading-card industry) who was put in charge
of Marvel’s editorial direction in 2000. He hated what Marvel had
become: a place that was “publishing stories that were all but
impossible for teens to read — and unaffordable, to boot,” as he put it
to me. But Jemas had an idea, born of a suggestion he says the CEO of Wizard,
a comics-industry magazine, gave to him: “turn our middle-aging heroes
back into teens.” In other words, he wanted to launch a reboot.
Of course, that could have been a suicidally horrible idea if
executed poorly. (Imagine some 55-year-old veteran comics writer penning
a Spider-Man title where Peter Parker wears a backwards baseball cap
and yells “Bodacious!” after hitting Green Goblin with a skateboard.)
The company needed fresh and relatively young talent writing such
stories. Luckily, Marvel had a charming, freshly minted editor-in-chief
with great respect in the indie-comics world: Joe Quesada, who quickly
sought out writers from outside the Marvel family. Quesada (who could
not be reached for an interview) also had the virtue of being a devoted
company man: Jemas recalled that Quesada would’ve preferred to “tell
stories about new heroes, e.g., Peter Parker’s nephew,” rather than do a
reboot, but went along with the Jemas plan nonetheless.
While Quesada was headhunting, Jemas struggled to find the right way
to conceptualize his new initiative (at that time tentatively titled
“Ground Zero,” a name that fortuitously was abandoned). Comics companies
had tried to jettison decades of storytelling before, and it usually
ended in failure. Do you create a story where some cosmic event resets
the clock on 60 years of continuity? DC had done that with its “Zero
Hour” event in 1994, and it only ended up making everything more
confusing for readers. Would you send your best heroes into another
dimension, where they were somehow rejuvenated? Marvel did that with its
“Heroes Reborn” event in 1995, and sales were abysmal (as were
relations between executives and creators).
He opted for an extremely simple premise: There would be a new
Spider-Man series and a new X-Men series, in which all the characters
were still young. That’s it: No explanations about why, no complicated
in-continuity sci-fi justifications about interdimensional travel,
nothing. Just stories where the most basic archetypes were in place —
Peter Parker getting spiderlike powers after a spider bites him, the
X-Men being superpowered mutants in a world that fears and hates them,
Wolverine being grumpy, and so on — but where the characters were all
starting out in the world of 2000, beginning a new continuity.
And Jemas had a firewall against failure, too: Marvel would continue
to publish the existing Spider-Man and X-Men series, the ones with
hundreds of issues of complicated, old continuity. They — the so-called
“mainstream” Marvel series — would be unaffected. The rebooted tales
would simply exist in another fictional universe — and if those stories
didn’t sell, Marvel could just cancel them without affecting existing
mainstream continuity. There was no reason not to give it a try. Jemas
and Quesada don’t recall how they hit upon the name “Ultimate” for the
branding, but it came up at some point and stuck in their minds. They
aimed to launch Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men by
year’s end. But as the months wore on, the talent hunt was getting dire.
“Honestly, I kissed a lot of frogs,” Jemas recalled.
That’s when Quesada made a fateful phone call to Brian Michael
Bendis. At the time, Bendis was a struggling freelance indie-comics
writer/artist whose biggest claim to fame was a mediocre-selling
historical drama about a serial killer from the 1930s. “My normal was,
I’ll sell 2,000 copies of a comic, get a check for $400, and then hustle
to do caricatures all weekend to make some real money,” Bendis
recalled with a laugh. So he was shocked when Quesada got in touch and
told Bendis to pitch a back-to-basics Spidey story where Peter Parker
was a teen and everything was a blank slate. Apparently, one of the
previous auditionees had written a word-for-word adaptation of
Spider-Man’s 1962 first appearance, but with modern décor. Bendis knew
he had to avoid that approach: “When you do that, it just dries it up.
You’re basically a cover band, at best.”
Instead, he won the gig by writing an elegant script that read more
like a TV pilot than a '90s superhero comic: There were no thought
bubbles of internal monologue, no rushed exposition, not even a costume
in the first issue. And it didn’t feel self-consciously “modernized”:
There was no shock-value violence, and the 30-something Bendis wisely
went easy on teen slang (though there are some snippets that haven’t
aged well, e.g., “See you on the flipmode”). The first issue was 45
pages long — more than twice the length of an average comic — which
allowed for realistic pacing and Mamet-esque conversational dialogue.
Peter is 15 and speaks in the awkward tones of a bullied child. His Aunt
May and Uncle Ben are kind, aging hippies who charm the reader by
calmly joking with each other. Peter’s bitten by a genetically modified
spider (in the mainstream version, the spider had been radioactive, but
Bendis knew genetic tinkering would resonate more in 2000), and is
genuinely confused and remorseful when he hits a bully and knocks the
boy out with his strange new powers. None of it felt cartoonish and
overwrought like mainstream Spidey.The now-famous final page is a
single panel of Peter realizing he can stick to his own ceiling. He
dangles upside-down, face forward, and mumbles, “Whoa — cool.” In the
context of the whole issue, it’s a moment of earned, simple wonder.
