I've been playing around with Slide, a website that allows you to share images, create slideshows, and stick them on your blog. Kind of like YouTube, except for pictures/images instead of movies. You can download a toolbar for IE that allows you to bulk upload images and get a Windows screensaver which syncs up with whatever you upload. Here's a quick slideshow I created with no theme, just a smattering of random images from comic book covers and posters:
USA Today has an article about the Fantasticar that will appear in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Even though the first film had its flaws, at least director Tim Story knows enough to keep the Fantasticar design to the basic roots. Conceptual designer Tim Flattery said: "He wanted something that looked less like a predator and more friendly. That's always been the Fantastic Four theme." According to the article, the Fantasticar keeps my favorite Kirby gimmick: "the Fantasticar is powered by a proton accelerator, can hover, fly at 500 mph and break into separate flying machines." Yay, now let's just hope that Ben Grimm still calls it a flying bathtub.
The Fantasticar looks great in this pic, but Jessica Alba looks pretty damn good, too. Almost makes me forget The Actress Who Should Have Been Sue Storm. Nuff said.
Gamespot has an online video show called Button Mashing. It's basically a game show where they get players to compete against each other on a series of videogames. This particular episode had players squaring off on NES RC Pro Am Racing (loved that game to death), The Warriors, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The winner, Homer from Pleasanton, CA, got a big surprise at the end: he got to fly to LA and challenge Jack Black! Black is funny to me no matter what he does. He goes down in flames on Fight Night but redeems himself on Project Gotham Racing 3. Black actually conquered PGR3 on the Platinum level, spending months on the achievement. Then he took a picture of himself, giving the finger to Bizarre Creations: "I was so mad because it was too hard...I hate you designer!!!" The Black section of the video starts at 14:30 minutes if you want to skip to that point. Nuff said.
External Link:
Button Mashing at GameSpot
I just finished listening to a delightful podcast over at Indie Spinner Rack, where they interviewed Dave Sim in episode 49. It was a good look back at Sim's 300-issue Cerebus run, plus we got some insight into what he's been up to since the book ended. You might be amazed to find out (like I was) that Sim really wants to unleash his inner "Stan Drake" and do a photo-realistic newspaper style strip. Sim definitely has the chops for this type of work, if you take a look at this newspaper strip sample from the life of his friend, Sue Ta (a Canadian actress). It's a very funny interview, and you must listen to the podcast even after the interview is finished, because there's a great tribute song at the end. For DC fans there's some behind the scenes gossip about the deal Neal Adams got on those Adams hardbound collected editions of his DC work. Nuff said.
Marvel's New Thunderbolts seems destined to be an instant hit. How could any True Believer resist buying a series with an A-list of villains (Green Goblin, Bullseye, Venom, etc) written and drawn by A-list talent (Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato)? Newsarama has covered this thoroughly in the past few days, and today they have an interview with Deodato that features some preliminary drawings. Sounds pretty nifty, although I noticed that Taskmaster and Lady Deathstrike (who were shown on the last page of Civil War #4) are not listed as appearing in the debut issue, Thunderbolts #110. There's a new character called Penance, who you see in black and white in the image above. I immediately thought of Dan Simmons' character The Shrike, 
who is a major figure in his "Hyperion Quartet" (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion). The Shrike is an inhuman, almost god-like figure, with metallic spikes covering his entire body. Penance looks eerily similar, although he has only two arms and his helmet doesn't have the jutting spikes.
Somehow the whole "A-list of villains" thing reminds me of Fantastic Four #347-349. When Walt Simonson ran into deadline problems, he called in his buddy Art Adams to draw three fill-in issues. One thing led to another and the FF were temporarily replaced by an all-new FF, featuring the most popular heroes of the day (Spider-Man, Grey Hulk, Ghost Rider, and Wolverine). These issues sold like hotcakes and they were very well done. Lots of fun, but Marvel knew these characters had no business teaming up. On top of the cover it says "The World's Most Commercialest Comic Magazine!" New Thunderbolts will be fun to read, but I can't imagine Bullseye putting up with Norman Osborne for very long. Nuff said.
Robby (the good one) is celebrating the accomplishments of Ira Schnapp over at Dial B for Blog. Robby's ten-part serial covers not only Schnapp's life but the history of DC comics as well, going from the pre-Action Comics #1 days to the Silver Age. Schnapp created the logo for Action Comics, refined the classic Superman logo, and did many classic DC House Ads, which anyone who has read any DC comic from the 1960s will recognize instantly. It's clear that Robby absolutely loves them, as he Photoshops them on a regular basis. Schnapp's birthday is Tuesday, October 10th, the day that Robby will finish this excellent series. What's disturbing is that one of Robby's blurbs mentions this may become "The Last Issue of Dial B for Blog"? Say it ain't so, Robby! Nuff said.
Blog Newsarama tipped me off to this amazing set of message board posts by Paty Cockrum (wife of Dave Cockrum, co-creator of the 80s X-Men, Starjammers, etc). An outspoken lady, to be sure--she gives her some strong opinions on Joe Quesada, John Byrne's recent troubles at DC, Grant Morrision's X-Men run, etc. There's also an interesting speculation about Excalibur getting yanked away from Chris Claremont. Apparently, Claremont was laying the groundwork for Magneto's early mental illness, saying that Xavier himself had caused it. But forget about this stuff, what I really liked to read was Paty's memories of the 70s Marvel Bullpen:
Roy Thomas was great! He was sometimes brilliant...he was sometimes infuriating! Once I wrote a fan letter to him on a roll of toilet paper cuz I told him the story he had written was only fit for the toilet... and then I rolled it back up and mailed it off in a box and he told me he unrolled the toilet paper and read every word of it. Later we did a merchandising project in which we did a comic story or two on a roll of toilet paper for kids to read while they were on the john!!!
Huh, I think I remember seeing the Marvel toilet paper. Didn't one of them have the Hulk? Hulk Smash! when you take a big shit. Nuff said.
This week's All the Rage has a particularly juicy tidbit for fans of the Claremont\Byrne X-Men. A fan discovered that a sketch pad he bought from Byrne contained plot notes for several issues of Uncanny X-Men. Future issues that extended way beyond the point when Byrne left the series! No matter what people think of Byrne today, I still think his contributions and collaboration with Claremont on X-Men, Iron Fist, Starlord, Marvel Team-Up, etc., produced some of the best superhero material ever made. Here's one event that never happened, involving Mariko, Wolverine's Japanese girlfriend:
Sabretooth attacks Mariko as a way of getting to Wolverine. He brutalizes her beyond imagining. (Nothing sexual. This is sheer animal violence.) He leaves her for dead, torn and bleeding in an alley.
Click on over to Labour Day Rage to see the what Wolverine would have done next. Nuff said.
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