Some Friday Morning Links

Some Friday Morning Links

Aug 08

* All sixteen babies who played Aaron last season on Lost had a reunion picnic. WARNING: INTENSE CUTENESS ABOUNDS.

* Robotika writer/artist Alex Sheikman offers three pages from a Chaykin/Wrightson collaboration.

* Chris’ archenemy, Cory Doctorow, has a new free novella online. It’s got a Creative Commons License, so Chris is gonna rewrite it to be about a geek blogger who meets another geek blogger in a parking lot and beats the shit out of him with a crowbar.

* Caleb Monroe posted this interesting theory on comics as “seed culture” a few months back; I missed it then, but it makes incredible amounts of sense.

All Trek Comics Are Belong to Us

All Trek Comics Are Belong to Us

Aug 07

The GIT Star Trek Comics DVD collection has me a little excited, I must admit.

BAD ASS.

Animating Buffy: Words With Jeph Loeb Circa 2002, Part 2

Animating Buffy: Words With Jeph Loeb Circa 2002, Part 2

Aug 07

As a follow-up to the Buffy Animated magazine story I posted the other day, here’s some interview bits that got hacked out of the story for space considerations. Would that the Official Buffy Magazine had always been 223 pages long…then it would have all fit. I’ve tried to reconstruct the Q&A as best as I recall it.

The Shitty Watchmen Sequel Contest

The Shitty Watchmen Sequel Contest

Aug 06

It was a comment by Tom Spurgeon in a news round-up, about Titan putting out some Watchmen-related movie books, that got me thinking:

Although they’re not comics as such, they’re likely to be attractive to a lot of retailers that primarily carry comics because of the original comic’s sterling sales pedigree in those stores, and the fact that there aren’t sequels or an ongoing series to push along with the trade if you do business that way.

Ah, but…what if?

What if there WERE a Watchmen sequel project planned, now that the movie’s on its way and no huge corporation can resist a good IP flagging in the name of profits?

Hence, The Shitty Watchmen Sequel Contest.

Your task: To develop the absolute WORST possible pitch for a sequel or tie-in comic to this beloved decades-old graphic novel classic. Something as insipid, humorless, and shallow as the original was inspired, clever, and intricate.

Animating Buffy: Words with Jeph Loeb Circa 2002, Part 1

Animating Buffy: Words with Jeph Loeb Circa 2002, Part 1

Aug 04

As I’ve mentioned enough to seem like a clinging namedropper, I used to write for the Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazine. I think I mention it a lot because it was really cool and really fun and maybe the best job ever right out of college, but maybe I mention it so much because I’m desperate to hang onto a slight wisp of geek cred that’s well past its sell date.

This is a piece I wrote in 2002 for the mag after it was sold off to Titan over in the UK; I freelanced for them for a good while, before moving on to other things. As long as I don’t get a C&D, I’ll post occasional bits like this until I run out of them. Inspired by the YouTubeing of the Buffy Animated demo reel (or part of it?), here’s a piece I wrote about Buffy Animated when it was young and possible, featuring quotes aplenty from exec producer Jeph Loeb.

Tomorrow: The interview leftovers that never saw print.

Just as the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so also is the road to television success paved with the ink and paint-drenched corpses of pathetic cartoon spinoffs. Usually, that’s because those who did the spinning couldn’t leave well enough alone. When Fonzie and the Happy Days gang became a cartoon, did they need to hang out with a time-traveling babe in her spaceship? Or when Laverne and Shirley got animated, did they need to join the army–with a talking pig as their superior officer?

Fortunately, when Buffy the Vampire Slayer joins the ranks of live-action shows adapted to animation, there will be no time-traveling babes or talking pigs–well, unless you count Anya or the late, lamented Principal Flutie. Buffy Animated will rely solely on what has made Buffy so successful in live-action for the past six seasons–humor, horror, and heaping gobs of character.

“As with everything with Joss [Whedon], it begins with character,” says Jeph Loeb, who shares executive producing duties on Buffy Animated with Whedon. “He’s interested in telling a story–and it’s generally about Buffy–about how Buffy feels about a particular subject. From that comes the metaphor–which monster, demon, vamp or situation best allows us to exploit that character moment?”