“I vould like…to feed your fingertips…to de wolverines.â€
Apr 06
Unless you have some kind of life-in which case, God bless you-you’ve probably followed the sordid tale of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak. And if you’re like me, and you REALLY have no life, you’ve followed the minor drama surrounding the leak amongst “noted” online film geek bloggers and writers, some of whom were pretty quick to leap up on their crippled, emaciated high horses and proclaim they’d not be covering the leaked film, even as they prepared to review unproduced scripts and post obscurely-sourced toy packaging images to offer an early glimpse of what Destro will look like.
(I mean, I love the grey area-I live in it, and I dance in it, and it’s fun as hell-but let’s not pretend that somehow the leak is some egregious sin against the Hollywood gods, when anyone who reads CHUD, Ain’t It Cool, or HitFix on a regular basis must clearly glory in the illicit thrill of reading about a movie that isn’t out yet, or seeing things they’re not technically meant to be seeing. As must those who write the articles and posts about said illicit content.)
So then FoxNews.com columnist Roger Friedman allegedly downloaded the flick and reviewed it, earning instant ire from Drew “Moriarity” McWeeny, who demanded that Friedman be fired, which he then was. Coming from someone who sorta feels okay thinking sometimes that Dan Didio at DC Comics should be fired, I realize this is weak sauce, but DAMN. Talk about using unfounded moral superiority to overreact to a largely meaningless situation.
That’s all background, because all of it is just some louder-than-usual white noise buzzing around the geekier portions of the internet. What I’m interested in are the reactions of Fox marketing and PR, and how woefully inadequate they’ve been in dealing with this situation. Fox seriously dropped the ball here, and I’m about to tell you how, so fasten your safety belts and place your seatbacks and tray tables in the upright and locked position.
A Muppetational Comic
Apr 03
I recall being a pretty big Muppet fan as a kid-I have a beat-up copy of some book called Kermit’s Garden of Verses, a book of poetry ostensibly written by Kermie himself and featuring artwork of all the characters; in the back, I wrote my own poem about my dad, which is not as good as Kermit’s deathless verse, but I tried.
But it was in college that I rediscovered the Muppets and picked up on the layers of satire, heartfelt storytelling, and subversive humor that have always coursed through the best Muppet projects.
The new Muppet Show Comic Book by Roger Langridge from Boom! Studios has all of the above in spades. Langridge has done a remarkable job taking something that doesn’t seem like it could ever translate seamlessly into a comic book and, well, seamlessly translating it into a comic book.
The comic preserves the sketch + story format of the original show, with one or two-page gags interspersed with scenes in an overall tale about Kermit missing the swamp. The bits are smart-ass, occasionally dark, and consistently funny. Kermit’s story is endearing and sweet, a bit of a coda to the first Muppet movie, in a sense.
I love how Langridge has translated the Muppets themselves into cartoons; it’s so neat to see how expressive their faces become when they’re disconnected from the “reality” of felt and plastic. Their reactions are often priceless, and I can’t get enough of the man’s Gonzo. (THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID) He draws the furry little.whatever as this tiny, crazed maniac with these bugged-out eyes. It fits the character perfectly and in fact takes him to a new level.
If you like Muppets, if you have kids who like Muppets; if you like comedy comics; if you have kids who don’t know squat about the Muppets but SHOULD know squat about the Muppets; if you like good comics; if you have a heart and/or a brain and/or a pancreas, BUY THE MUPPET SHOW COMIC BOOK.
SAM THE EAGLE SAYS SO.
The Dream eComics Reader?
Mar 11In my idle moments–all three of them–I spend time contemplating what it would take to provide me with the ultimate eComics reader.
I’m not thinking of webcomics, per se–I’m speaking of this huge stack of material I’ve "obtained" from the "internet." Also, the many PDF electronic comics now available from publishers like IDW, Slave Labor, and others.
Right now, I use my laptop and I tilt it on its side like a book, and I turn the screen orientation sideways, and it’s such an intriguing deception that I have actually FOUND MYSELF REACHING UP TO MY MONITOR SCREEN AS THOUGH TO TURN A PAGE THAT DOES NOT EXIST IN REALITY. Scary, I know!
This, though…were this to happen…damn. This would be, as they say, "teh schizz."
(Mock-up from Gizmodo via CNET)
Holy Shit – Indiana Jones Story Notes?!
Mar 09
Via the Pulp 2.0 blog, Mystery Man on Film has an insane kind of holy grail PDF–a transcript of five days’ worth of brainstorming featuring George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan breaking the script for the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. 126 pages of George & Stevie riffing with Larry Kasdan probably taking furious notes.
I cannot believe this exists. I can’t wait to read it.
Chip Zdarsky (Hearts) Comics
Mar 04I’m sure you’ve seen this already, but just in case you haven’t, Chip Zdarsky (hearts) comics and is a genius.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love comics, but that’s mostly due to the fact that I can’t remember anything that happened to me before the age of eleven. There are flashes of events and feelings, of course, like seeing Uncle Alan and Crazy Carl wildly swinging knives at each other on our front lawn, or the sense memory of my mother’s wine & corn dog breath as she would lick my face to wake me for school in the afternoons.
[not for the easily offended, the squeamish, or those with a puritanical boss hovering over their shoulder in the workplace and reading every word that passes over their screen]
