Recently in Comics Category
I have the ability to turn urine into ammonia and toilet water into bleach. I am a very not good assassin. I can't be called bleach because of the anime thing. So I'm Ammonia. My theme music would be taken off the Alan Parsons Project album Ammonia Avenue but probably not the titular track.
So I watched about 4 minutes of Spider-Man 3 last nite and saw him riding a 1977 Puch Newport moped! So I googled, and look what's on ebay:
Here's the listing. It's actually a prop moped and doesn't work. Which is too bad, since if it had been a fully restored, for the film, moped it would be worth 500-800 easy plus the Doc Ock value sending it through the roof.
I love the Threepenny Opera. I guess they did a new one, and looky, Wallace Shawn did the translation. This song is now amazing and sad and great and I've watched this 13 times today. Cyndi's hair is very 80s, and I know I'm stating the obvious but wow.
edit yeah its kinda horrible, but thats what i like
I just got the original US recording from 1954 which features a young Bea Arthur. There's a good cover of What Keeps Mankind Alive by William S. Burroughs floating around as well. I'm quite upset there doesn't seem to be a recording of this new version, especially since the new lyrics don't sound heinous and I'd love to hear what they did to Jealousy Duet.
Before wikipedia was around, if you googled spiders, this was like the 2nd result.
It makes use of some clever web stuff, and is basically an alt or dare I say "what if?" post 9-11 scenario where Al gore is president, detainee's get amazon wish lists, and slashdot is relevant. also, ecstasy bombs. I enjoyed it back in school, but doesn't look like it was ever finished. still worth a gander. over really good webcomic serial is When I Am King which won all sorts of awards, and the author was just using it as a tool to learn html and illustrator. if camel/man sex acts offend, do not read.
There are still nerdy Foxtrot strips on my Mom's fridge from my youth.
i interviewed this guy at comic con. Later on I found out he is the editor of Cthulhu Sex magazine. Ever wonder about the road not taken?
First off watch the first 30 seconds of this:
Now looky here at the blog for Castlevania: Dracula's Curse the blog for the movie based on Castlevania III (Sorry Sam, #2 is still left in obscurity.) So it seems Warren Ellis is writing it and James Jean is doing the art direction. It's going to be animated, but the above makes me think probably not in an Eastern/Anime style, but who knows. I really like the quaity of the animation in the trailer above, but I'm sure Mr. James Jean (which sounds really funny when said aloud. Well kinda funny) will be able to do a great job.
Eric, Sam, care to fill anyone in on the Ellis and the Fables?
James Kolchalka may be a media super star. He's from Vermont and has great comics about elves and monkies'n'robots (which had a video I saw on the SciFi Channel one summer) and recently did a music video on a Game Boy Camera which has got some press and goddamn kotaku.
Well, nothing against Mr. Superstar and his Twinkle Twinkle Ringo Star but to drink from the cup of hubris, world (who doesn't have expanded basic cable) feast your eyes on my year old opus from Cinematech: Game Boy Camera DJ BATTLE.
Shooting this required a DVCam deck and a hacked original GBA with video out and needing an external powersource, meaning the GBA was very very tethered. Some things in order of apperance:
Now, some of you clods out there might tend to disagree, but this is the greatest comic of all time, period. The book version is also delicious. I recommend all of you who still use Old Fighting Techniques to upgrade immediately. In fact, let's go over a case study: The Crocodile Hunter was a pretty hard dude; he wrestled every manner of critter and even charmed little children who should've known better via his crazy-sounding Australian bullshit. But, in the end, his Fighting Technique was not Unstoppable. At least, not Anti-Ghost Sting-Ray Unstoppable. (Sorry to use your untimely demise didactically, Stevie, or should I say, "Mr. Hunter," but you understand.) Hope that clears everything up. You're all very welcome.
Yesterday's Mandy: Moore, Please entry (I didn't think to call it that until this morning, hindsight is a bitch) was supposed to be more of a review of Comic Life than a tribute to my BFF, Mandy, but I got so into it that I worked on it till 6:20, and if you know me, you know I stay late at work for nothing. NOTHING! Perhaps that in and of itself is my review. It's so much fun that it will make you stay late at work.
Basically, as soon as you open it up and take a gander at the interface, you already know how to use it. I mean, a computer wizzz like me knows how to use every application in the world after a quick looksee, but I'd venture to say that any goon out there can figure this one out. Here, Download your free 30 day trial, you goon, and see for yourself.
Look at the stamps. Cooooooool!!!!! (I'm sorry to see Wallflower Girl didn't make the cut).
"Remember kids, calculators AD. We make advertisements."
With all this comic-y goodness and ComicCon coming this week (and tearing my life asunder in the same way E3 did) I thought I jump on the funny books bandwagon and give ye all a look at the ads that shipped with alan moore's sublime kitsch of 1963 which are worth hunting down in their own right.
But, Wait, Kids! There, Is, More, There's, Plenty, More.
Also Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is the best comic I have ever read, and I will devote more time to it when I am more sane and less insane or less sane and more insane. But in a nutshell, hyper ocd memoir of butch lesbian in rural Pennsylvania whose father is a closeted gay. I don't want to use the word shame, but with Jimmy Corrigan (The Smartest Boy In The World) winning the Pulizter, and also so with Maus doing the same dealy.. well, this comic is better than both. Not as epic as concentration camps or shattered 5th walled as Mr. No Frog Legs, but personal, well written, well paced, and bittersweet. Like being raped by my doctor.
It's a memoir but I found it under lesbian fiction.
Confused? Here is how it goes...
"A young boy—bookish, awkward, a dreamer—goes to see Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro, and falls in love with the idea. A costumed hero who masquerades as a timid milquetoast, then bursts forth to battle crime and injustice with superhuman skill! Plot thickens: the boy loses his parents, shot dead in a mugging gone wrong. The crime is senseless, random. The boy’s life is shattered. He vows revenge, not on the thug that did his father in, but on crime itself. He vows he will become…
Hold on. Here’s the part you might not know. The city is not fictional Gotham but real life Cleveland. The boy is not millionaire Bruce Wayne but working class schlemiel Jerry Siegel. His father Michel, who immigrated from Lithuania in the first decade of the century, was murdered while closing his Woodland haberdashery in 1928. The police never found his killer. Ten years later, Jerry Siegel and his high school buddy Joe Shuster wrote and illustrated the first true “superhero†story for Harry Donenfeld’s Action Comics. This is not Batman’s secret origin, it’s Superman’s."
More of this and other early comic book related goodness at http://www.robmacdougall.org/ Historians don't get nearly the Rock Star status they deserve. Rob MacDougall you are a historian rock star.
Ever stay up late at night, your brain spinning, trying so desperately hard to remember, what was The Thing's religion? Or Phoenix's? Well, worry no more. Here is a disturbingly long list of comic book character's religions.
The Religious Affiliation of
Comic Book Characters
Ah, and...
The Thing is Jewish
Phoenix is Episcopalian
Spoilers for V for Vendetta
First off, I liked V for Vendetta, the film.
Second, I love the comic/graphic novel/sequential art doo-dad.
Third, The Pist's LP was named after a great line from the comic.
Now, let's look at this movie. Please note that this is a rant. Or stream of conciousness. Or maybe bullshit.
Sometimes in life it's hard to keep your eyes open. You walk in small concentric circles starring at your feet, and wonder why everything looks the same. You ball your fists into your eyes and say "but I can't see anything inspiring". Its time to quit being such a baby. Pry those little fists away, blink, and look up. Its time for an ART KICK! This means it's time to go look at other peoples art. Really look at it. Get jealous. Get excited. Here are some good places to start your ART KICK IN THE FACE!
This is from our friend eric's brain:
Frank Miller Has the Crazies
Ugh.
For those of you out of the know, there was once a great comic book author by the name of Frank Miller. You’ve probably heard of him if you’ve ever asked that friend of your’s who’s really into comics for a place to jump into the world of tights and flight:
“Dark Night Returns. I know it’s a superhero comic, but give it a try. You’ll love it.â€
We’ve all said it and we all mean it. Frank Miller has produced some of the most defining works of genre literature in the history of sequential art (fuck off, I like the term). From his revolutionary noir storytelling in Sin City, to his reinvention of superhero morality in Dark Knight Returns, this dickhead has blown a lot of overweight, acne-scarred minds.
And then he stopped.
