Favourite Internet Pastime #4: Catch Rich Johnston with his Pants Down

Fake Captain Marvel PromoIf you head to Rich Johnston’s column at Comic Book Resources (I’ll spare the link for now), you’ll see a story on a new Captain Marvel Animated Series, entitled SHAZAM! He even has a leaked piece of promo art (shown right)!

“With the successful release of “300” and the upcoming release of “TMNT” later this month, there is no doubt that Warner Bros. is enthused about comic book adaptations -just not DC’s for 2007.
“So how about next year?
“This is an image from the upcoming Captain Marvel cartoon for WB.”
Rich Johnston, Comic Book Resources

Except of course, for the fact that it isn’t. It’s actually an illustration my buddy Jim Zubkavich put up on his Live Journal last week, with his signature photoshopped out and a logo dropped on. What does buddy Jim have to say about this?

“Some crazy fanboy Photoshopped out my sig and made up a mock promo pic as if it was a real WB animation piece! That’s hilarious. I’m flattered and confused at the same time. The rumor is marked as ‘green’, meaning it’s apparently been confirmed. So strange.”
– Jim Zubkavich

Yeah, a ‘green’ rumour that’s totally untrue, that is strange isn’t it? I bet that’s the first time THAT’S ever happened. Oh that Rich.

Jim Zubkavich, in addition to being one of the dudes in charge of Udon (his official title is “whip cracker”), also just collected his webcomic The Makeshift Miracle into a very handsome graphic novel available in better stores everywhere. Or, you know, at The Beguiling too. Actually, if you’ve got nothing better to do this evening, Jim’s Blog is full of great stuff to read, including “The Most Unprofessional Letter Ever Sent To A Publisher” and “The Worst Things I’ve Ever Seen In Art Portfolios”, both of which are awesome and I’ve been meaning to link to for a little while now…

Now I’m gonna go run and get a screen capture before they change the story, it’s just too good.

– Christopher

References: The Makeshift Miracle

8 Replies to “Favourite Internet Pastime #4: Catch Rich Johnston with his Pants Down”

  1. “Yeah, a ‘green’ rumour that’s totally untrue, that is strange isn’t it? I bet that’s the first time THAT’S ever happened. Oh that Rich.”

    Yeah, it’s almost like it’s.. a rumour… funny that.

  2. Rich- Three words, sir: Scott Kurtz Dazzler. You’re not terribly difficult to prank, and your correction was… interesting to say the least. Because the image you’ve got online isn’t the one that Jim drew for fun–his signature is removed and someone else plopped a logo on it. As someone who has supported you in the past, honestly, you could do a lot worse than to fess up to your mistakes and do a little more background checking before asserting what you do. Friendly advice…

  3. Chris: Rich tried a bit of revisionist history by saying “(a)nd I also told you it was going to get a lot of press attention” regarding Cap #25 while linking to his column where he said there “Might well be a bit of press attention.” Of course, when debating the issue on whether Marvel could have known that the issue would even definitely have the exclusive they pre-arranged with the NY Daily News two months before, he has said Marvel wasn’t guaranteed that coverage…with that coverage being what led to a large majority of the outlets chasing the story. So…without the exclusive (according to Rich on one side of the debate), they wouldn’t have had this mountain of coverage and Marvel couldn’t guarantee ANY mainstream press coverage…but (on the “patting his back” side of the debate) he just knew there’d be a lot of press attention.

    If he can pull that off without feeling the need to admit inconsistency, good luck on this one. 🙂 And that’s from someone who still will read his column faithfully. 🙂

  4. Hello! Cut the man some slack, already! If he gets some faulty info, at least he has the good sense to acknowledge it and move on, and not lead the country into some senseless, useless conflict.

  5. Background checking like emailing DC and Warner Bros? The cartoon is wrong, the substance of the piece isn’t. The correction is there, the link is there, the fess is there…

    Kev, indeed I provided the link to people could see what I actually wrote. True as well, despite what people may tell you, there was no cast iron guarantee that article was going to run in that paper, that day. Proper news has a habit of getting in the way of feature news…

Leave a Reply to Kevin Huxford Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *