Watcharama

The fact that this makes me laugh so hard is explained by (1) the amount I've watched Futurama and (2) the amount of times I've seen the Watchmen trailer.

(via Gorilla Mask via Topless Robot)

Victorian Marvel Action Figure

The League of Marvels.

More pics here, here and here.

(via Topless Robot)

Dr. Manhattan and the Watchbabies

I pulled this on some site somewhere but now I forget where.  Might have been io9.com.  Right this second I am too lazy to look it up so that I can credit the artist or the referring site.  Bad blogger.  But wicked art.  Update: It was from io9.  Artist: Alex Pardee.

Explorer Force!

I just realized I haven't posted Explorer Force, a fun superhero comic by fellow improviser Mike Short.  

The Amazing Obama-man

I know there is something witty and snarky to write about this, but I honestly just think it's cool.

Good reads

After playing "When will UPS drop by today?" for three days, I received a lovely collection of comicbooks yesterday (thank you!).  I of course dived in pretty quick.

The Umbrella Academy written by Gerard Way, art by Gabriel Bá.

Darn fun.  Gooky.  Goofy.  But dark and moving.  Reminds me a lot of Doug TenNapel's work.  And very very pretty.  Your basic superhero team story.

The Alcoholic written by Jonathan Ames, art by Dean Haspiel.

One of those heart breaking works.  Very funny and truth full.  Ames is a regular at The Moth (in fact I am pretty sure I saw him there 3 years ago) and it shows.  

Both are great.

Calvin and Jobs

Click on pic for readable version and head to Gizmodo for more.

Charles Schulz's Sandman

By *docShaner.

(via Neil Gaiman's Journal)

Y: The Last Man

Like many things in life, I arrived at comicbooks relatively late. I didn't read as a kid and it wasn't until college. The advantage of this was that I tended only to read things that were being recommended by people who'd done all the filtering for me. But I also learned to read them in book form (as opposed to individual issues). Beyond Dark Knight Returns (which I somehow found in my hands in high school), I believe I started with Sandman The Doll's House. So I came at comics from a point of literature.

This is both good and bad. On one hand, I didn't have to be convinced that comicbooks could be more than fluff. I knew that they could be as powerful as any novel or movie or whatever. The bad side is that I expected them to do that.

Y: The Last Man is a series that ended recently. It began in 2002 and I had been told over and over that I had to read it, but as always I held off until the series came to an end so that I could read it all in one shot. (I also learned that I like series that have an end and don't keep going on and one, being passed from one author to another. This got me in a bit of problem since it meant that I stuck with Cerebus until the bitter end (or bitter 2nd half as it were), but I am drawn to the idea on one authors vision.) Y: TLM, created and written by Brian K. Vaughan, is about a world in which a plague as killed every male on the planet save one young man (Yorrick) and his pet male monkey (Ampersand). (Vaughan is obviously drawn towards verbal puns/double meanings, especially in names. It becomes slightly overly clever at times but at least he sticks with it and makes it a motif.)

Well, I do love monkeys. And apocalypses. And speculative fiction (if this, then what... how does society respond and restructure itself... all the jazz). So Y: TLM was right up my alley. Vaughan does an admirable job. It is interesting watching a man explore what a society of only women would become. (I do so wonder what a woman's take on the same story would be.) Sometimes I felt the series fell into the trap of just presenting these ideas and not actually exploring. At other times I worried that it became too focused on Yorrick and the rest of the world was just an obstacle. But this is actually the book's strength.

See, Y: TLM, is actually a love story. That aspect can get lost in everything else, but in the end that is what it is. A simple "getting back to my true love" story. And I love those. I do wish that some of the more powerful elements of Yorrick's emotional growth had more of an impact. I would catch myself thinking "Oh, I'm supposed to be shocked/moved here more than I am." Perhaps the light tone of so much of the book under cut the more powerful moments. Or maybe the long list of red herrings Vaughan scatters through the story. But when the last pages are turned, the accumulation of events add up.

Did it live up to the hype? Maybe. It didn't come close to the emotional impact of Sandman The Kindly Ones.

But, hell, what does?

(Vaughan has gone on to write for the tv series Lost and thank god for that. He has also managed to slip a few references in - Ben's extending baton for one.)

I could use a superhero right about now

I saw Hancock yesterday, and while it was a seriously flawed movie (which I knew going it), it did get me thinking more about the state of the superhero genre movie. The movie with all of its mistakes and failures, does try to do some things somewhat new (a least for movies) that makes it good starting point or focus point to discuss how things are changing… especially in this summer of good superhero movies (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight) and adolescent power fantasies (Wanted).

So I had fully planned on writing a nice long rambling essay on the topic. But my life has been preempted by a home repair crisis. I am going to try to work on it between waiting for phone calls from contractors and such… if only so my mind doesn’t fixate on the hellish week ahead. I'll also be watching the below Dancing video over and over.

Sigh.

That's crazy

Three things this morning:

1) If you slow down Jeff Goldblum, he sounds drunk.
(via Alden. Ford.)

2) SPOILER
Calvin and Hobbs performs The Happening:(via Alden but from somewhere else)

3) I misplaced my phone. Or it fell out of the big whole in my bag that I discovered today. Couldn't wait a few more weeks, stupid phone? Sheeesh.

I wish Cronenberg was on the list

For those you don't know, Spore is the next game (or perhaps "game") by Will Wright (and team), maker of TheSims (and SimCity... and SimAnts... man, I loved SimAnts). It has gotten video game geeks and the industry at large all atwitter with anticipation.

Like TheSims in is a "sandbox" game, in that there aren't really goals. It gives you a bunch of tools and such to play with. In Spore you start with a single celled creature, swimming in the muck. Then you evolve. As you evolve, you (the player) get to craft your creature into whatever you want. Forming your creature like Playdoh, attaching parts and coloring it. You want to have a creature with three legs and claws? Fine. How about arms that come of its ass? Will do. Something with a head twice the size of the rest of its body? Yep. Nigh infinite possibilities. And all full animated. How does a seven legged, three armed, spiked butted creature walk? Fight? Love?

It doesn't stop there. From creature it evolves into a society. Tribes to civilization. Develop a society, create technologies, go to war. Eventually travel to space... and explore the universe. So everything from a single sell to the universe. Compelling, yes?

(PapaSix pointed out that for a game about evolution, it teaches a pro-intelligent design message. I'm looking forward to that debate.)

Now, a lot of folks are saying this will be bigger than TheSims. I doubt that. The people who say that are people who follow computer gaming blogs and read gaming magazines. Geeks, nerds, what have you. Me. TheSims is so successful because it basically is playing with dolls. Dress them up, give them furniture, play house. Spore, on the other hand, appeals to people who's school notebooks were filled with drawings of space creatures and space ships and the like. You know, the people who now read gaming blogs.

Both games to appeal to people who like to pull the wings off flies. Or build bathrooms with out doors. Or beings without anuses. So theres that.

Anywhozits, in a marketing genius move, EA is selling just the creature building portion part of the game, cleverly named Spore Creature Creator. Yeah, it's $10 demo. To create some buzz, they're holding a celebrity creature building contest. Celebrities will build a creature, they'll but them up on the web and the unwashed masses (people who read gaming blog) will vote. A lot of the names of on the list are gaming bloggers and the like (celebrity is a flexible concept). But some...

• Stan Lee
• Richard Branson
• David Lynch
• Ellijah Wood
• Kevin Rose
• Mark Cuban
• Curt Schilling
• Kent Nichols
• Robert Scoble
• Veronica Belmont
• Carlos Santana
• Bijou Phillips
• Brian Crecente
  
• Flight of the Conchords

I have to say, I am very curious to what Lynch does. And Flight of the Conchords.

(via Kotaku)

Lessons of Oklahoma!

• It may seem like everything is going you way, but it's not.
• If you say you have a surrey with a fringe on top, you better damn well have a surrey with a fringe on top.
• Pornography is bad. Sometimes it could even kill you.
• Persians are sneaky, deceitful, and randy. But still okay.
• When confronting an arch-rival, why not try to convince him to commit suicide. You never know. It might work.
• Wolverine dances real pretty.
• If you are trying to make a not-so-tough choice and you inhale a special elixir, don't expect to get a real clear answer.
• In fact, it will probably put you to sleep out in a corn field. You will enter a horrible dream scape filled with prophetic images.
• Best not to trust anything branded as an elixir.
• To win the girl, sell everything you own at discount prices. Use the money to eat her pie.
• If your arch-rival tells to stick something in you eye, don't.
• To kill a farmer, you must become a farmer.
• Sure, cowmen and farmers can be friends. Especially when covering you murder.
• Oklahoma became a state due to enthusiastic spelling.

Sick

I'm a touch sick today. I think it is just the fact that it has been brutally cold and all moisture has been sucked out of my body. I don't know where it goes when it is this cold. But clearly my body it trying to lube myself up with mucus.

To sooth my soul PapaSix link me to The Comics Curmudgeon. Basicaly just some simple daily commentary about newspaper comic strips. Fun stuff.

Jen Wang

Someone recently directed me to comic artist Jen Wang. I am in love. If anyone is looking to get me an expensive gift that would make me swoon, try getting me one of her originals. The above picture is "Post-mortem mate." Also be sure to check out the beautiful "Dance of the Flight Attendant."

(via Boing Boing)

The Preacher coming to HBO

(Okay, people. Stop leading me to cool stuff today. I need to get to work, not write 300 words only to be torn way to post in the ol' blog.)

Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion's brilliant comic book Preacher is being developed for HBO.

If you are unfamiliar with Preacher, it is the tale of Jesse Custer, a down-and-out Texas preacher, who is possessed by Genesis, the bastard child that came from the coupling of a demon and an angel. Genesis had escaped from being imprisoned in Heaven. (You see, God abandoned Heaven.) The possession grants Custer with huge power, perhaps to rival God himself. Including the ability to command people to do whatever he says. A memorable seen early on has Custer telling a sheriff to "Go fuck yourself." And the sheriff does. He has to... um... cut it off first, but he does.

Custer goes to search for answers with the help of his old girlfriend Tulip and the heavy drinking Irish vampire Cassidy. Along the way they cross the Saint of All Killers, secret Papal organizations, scary Deliverence-esque family members, a Kurt Corbain-esque youth (if Kurt had been less talented and hadn't succeed in his shotgun suicide and only had horribly deformed his face... getting the nickname Arseface... and then become a happy optimistic fellow), and the totem spirit of John Wayne.

Imagine Buffy meets The Davinci Code meets Kerouac meets The Hills Have Eyes meets The Prophecy, written by Hunter S. Thompson, The Marx Brothers, and Thomas Aquinas, and directed by Tarantino.

Thank God (or whoever) that this is being sent to HBO.

Beautiful Harvey Comic covers

I remember being young young and being drawn to the art of Harvey Comics more than I was drawn to say Disney or Archies or superheroes. Does that make me... um... less manly? Whatever. The art is still gorgeous. Dan Goodsell and A Sampler of Things has post a handful of them from the '60s.

(via Boing Boing)

Rockstar's Bully swings both ways

If you aren't familiar with the video game Bully, then you obviously don't care about video games. But perhaps you should.

Rockstar is the studio that makes of the the Grand Theft Auto games. Yes, the car stealin', people killin', prostitute beatin' games. They have long been the target of attorney Jack Thompson of Florida who believes that video games are a great corrupter of our children. Now something to consider is that the GTA games are rated M (Mature). There may be an issue of retail locations selling the games to minors, but that is the same issue as theaters letting kids into R rated movies.

Personally I think that Thompson's crusade against Rockstar is actually a good thing. Because their games are good. They are innovative and are pushing the boundaries of what sort of stories video games can tell and how they can tell them. I believe that video games are at the same point comics were at in the '50s. Rockstar is the EC (Entertaining Comics). EC and the controversy surrounding them had a lot to do with bringing comics into the realm of "Art." Creative folks are often drawn to those things that are considered taboo. Kids growing up with EC were drawn to them in part because they were hated by 'adults.' In the late '50s and the '60s and the '70s, underground comics became and experimental arena for exploring what the art form could do, allowing it to mature. By the '80s all of that began to blossom. In the '90s, comics began to really come out of the shadows, suddenly exploding with the seminal work Maus: A Survivor's Tale. Now books like Persepolis are looked at not so much as a comic but a valid for of storytelling.

Hopefully it won't take 40 years for video games to get to same place.

But back to Bully. In Bully you play Jimmy Hopkins, a teenage boy who finds himself at a new boarding school, Bullworth Academy. To quote Rockstar's description:

"Jimmy has a whole year at Bullworth ahead of him, working his way up the social ladder of this demented institution of supposed learning, standing up for what he thinks is right and taking on the liars, cheats and snobs who are the most popular members of the student body and faculty. If Jimmy can survive the school year and outsmart his rivals, he could rule the school."

Jack Thompson is on an anti-Bully crusade, which is somewhat entertaining since Bully is an anti-bully game. And the game had to change its name in the U.K. to "Canis Canem Edit" and some stores have refused to stock it there. It was still a gutsy move on Rockstar's part making the game in the first place. In a world where the word "Columbine" immediately conjures images of video game related school shootings, shooting were the killers were picked on and outcasted, any game were you play a kid reeking revenge (even if the character never picks up a gun... well, he does use a baseball bat) is bold.

But all of that is a pretty standard. There are other ways that Rockstar continues to push the envelope. For example, as GayGamer.net points out, there are at least four boys that you can make out with.

These aren't played as a joke, just as a part of the game. It is presented no different from how it is with making out with girls. And Bully isn't the first game to do this. The Sims and Fable also come to mind. But Bully having it is special in part because the Rockstar's games reach an audience that might not come into contact with positive (or let's say neutral) portrayals of homosexuality (well, in this case, bi-sexuality). It will be interesting when games tackle the issue of homosexuality in a more realistic way, but I still find it heartening that Rockstar included this. Open ended games are now allowing folks to play games the way they want to. If a gay 15 year old boy plays Bully now, in 5 years he may design a game with a gay storyline, using video games to tell his story. Bully might just make him (or her) think of video games as a possible medium to tell whatever story that he feels is important to him.

One small step for video games toward "Art."

Strip Generator

I've been playing with Strip Generator a bit lately. I've had the site book markets for some time now. I love the Eastern European styling and the simplicity of it. Last night I went a bit crazy at it. None of these will make any sense to anyone besides the tiny audience they where designed for: My Halo 2 / Bungie.net Trolls. But I just feel like sharing anyway.
Enter the Weggie, Yes or No, In a Corner, Split, Deer Watchin', Art for the Heart, Split Again, Assault Blues, Stand in Line.

And some that were whipped up by my fellow Trolls.
Dual Mags, Get the Net, Me and My Shadow, Mothership.

BE MORE FUNNY!

That last post was just sad and self-indulgent and reeked of self-pity.

Listening to NPR yesterday and learned that in Papau New Guinea one of the biggest sex filled day is the celebration of the Yam Festival. I guess it is okay to have sex with anyone, regardless of martial status. That is how they celebrate the yam. How do we American's celebrate the yam? We don't! It MAYBE gets sideshow billin' on Thanksgiving. Do we have any tubers that we celebrate with sex with strangers? NO!

On the other hand, the radio report was about the rampant spread of AIDS in Papau New Guinea. Win some, lose some.

What else have I learned recently? Red Envelope is selling leather beer holsters. However they're all sold out.

I had something up on Overheard in New York, and of course I had a typo.

Saw X-Men 3 (oops. Sorry. X-Men: The Last Stand). Heh. It was loud, poorly written, but servicible. But explain to me this: If you are just planning on killing the kid, and can lift the Golden Gate Bridge, why not just drop it on him? Or at least ram in into his room?

Ghost Rider trailer. I enjoy watching Nicky Cage hit his head or catch on fire... but beyond that it sure looks like Spawn on a Motorcycle. And that is no Snakes on a Plane.

I went to Trader Joe's in Manhattan. It was wrong. Not the same as on the West Coast. Not at all. It looks right... but it feels just wrong. It's like Zaibar's on Mel Rose. It made me very sad.

But I bought same very tasty rice crackers. Love their rice crackers.

TV season is in hiatus and the summer movies are looking bleak. Lookin'forward to Superman Returns and Pirates 2. And I am sure I will relish The Break Up. Unless it has a happy ending. No happy ending for you!