§ Has the world been significantly alerted that a cartoon version of James Kochalka’s highly profane SUPERF*CKERS is actually being made? This video shows some of the process.
§ Ben Towle talks about reference for cartoonists and demonstrate his costume studies for the ’80s, taken from MEATBALLS.
§ Johanna digs up Archie Sales Figures for 2011—what, no comparative chart???
§ If you’re going to insult people, own it and don’t be a wimp.
§ Will we show how out of touch with 4chan we are by linking to this field guide to “rage faces”?
Yes.
§ Bob Wayne and John Rood put on their monthly chat show, with observation on, among other things, the strength of the market for graphic novels starring Batman:
Wayne: On Batman, I think we’re being pulled forward by several things. A portion of this is consumer interest in Bane and people wanting to read key Batman stories or give them to their friends. There’s an overall enthusiasm and excitement going into the third of Chris Nolan’s Batman movies. The other part is that the Batman titles that we’re publishing are running on a very strong creative edge right now, in particular with the story arcs and ideas that Scott Snyder is doing with Batman.
§ Jim Rugg recalls the time when there was a Wizard Magazine and Tom Palmer Jr. was the only writer there allowed to look at Chester Brown:
But the magazine wasn’t pure evil. It introduced me to alternative comics in a monthly column written by Tom Palmer’s (my favorite Neal Adams’ inker) son, Tom Palmer, Jr. The column was titled Palmer’s Picks. One of my favorite Palmer’s Picks anecdotes involves Paul Pope and Chester Brown. Palmer profiled Pope’s work in issue #40.
Every time we forget how limiting the Wizard Era was, we remember that only one writer was allowed to write about Paul Pope and Chester Brown. Yikes.
§ The increased visibility of the MAD Magazine blog on the new DC website is one of its great virtues. And for an ancient magazine run by fuddy-duddies, some of it is pretty sharp.
§ Old video games were HARD, scientists say.
§ ’90 nostalgia alert! Guy in Portishead names album after a Judge Dredd term!
Inspired by the comic book series of 2000 AD Judge Dredd and titled Drokk, which is a swear word used in the comic, Barrows plans to release his new project on May 8th. Working with Emmy award winning composer Ben Salisbury, the album features the two musicians interpretation of Mega-City One, the metropolis where Judge Dredd is based.
§ VERY interesting Frank Santoro interview with Zack Soto that also covers the difference between pacing in print and webcomics.
§ Damn! Comic book movies are killing Ewan McGregor’s career!
§ Final (we hope) John Carter wrap-up: DAMN, a flood of stories on why JOHN CARTER is the biggest disaster to hit Hollywood since Lindsay Lohan are really the BIGGEST DISPLAY OF SCHADENFREUDE in recent history! Seriously? Does someone hate Pixar? You can barely hear the wailing of the Warhoons over the grinding of the axes. Even normally reliable people like Beat pal Stephen Zeitchik are succumbing to vague postmortems. As some of the comments here have noted, JOHN CARTER was written off as a failure looooong ago by Disney, as shown by the total lack of merchandising. This was not a sudden “Oh dear we have a disaster on our hands!” wake up call, but a long-planned write-off.
But ya know, what do we know. We loved SPEED RACER and THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, too, two similar flops that have gone on to be cultish faves for small audiences.
Plus, well, I wanted to see a movie someday about the kaldanes and the rykors.
“I will show you,” he said, and lay down upon the floor. Then he detached himself from the body, which lay as a thing dead. On his spider legs he walked toward the girl. “Now look,” he admonished her. “Do you see this thing?” and he extended what appeared to be a bundle of tentacles from the posterior part of his head. “There is an aperture just back of the rykor’s mouth and directly over the upper end of his spinal column. Into this aperture I insert my tentacles and seize the spinal cord. Immediately I control every muscle of the rykor’s body—it becomes my own, just as you direct the movement of the muscles of your body. I feel what the rykor would feel if he had a head and brain. If he is hurt, I would suffer if I remained connected with him; but the instant one of them is injured or becomes sick we desert it for another. As we would suffer the pains of their physical injuries, similarly do we enjoy the physical pleasures of the rykors. When your body becomes fatigued you are comparatively useless; it is sick, you are sick; if it is killed, you die. You are the slave of a mass of stupid flesh and bone and blood. There is nothing more wonderful about your carcass than there is about the carcass of a banth. It is only your brain that makes you superior to the banth, but your brain is bound by the limitations of your body. Not so, ours. With us brain is everything. Ninety per centum of our volume is brain. We have only the simplest of vital organs and they are very small for they do not have to assist in the support of a complicated system of nerves, muscles, flesh and bone. We have no lungs, for we do not require air. Far below the levels to which we can take the rykors is a vast network of burrows where the real life of the kaldane is lived. There the air-breathing rykor would perish as you would perish. There we have stored vast quantities of food in hermetically sealed chambers. It will last forever. Far beneath the surface is water that will flow for countless ages after the surface water is exhausted. We are preparing for the time we know must come—the time when the last vestige of the Barsoomian atmosphere is spent—when the waters and the food are gone. For this purpose were we created, that there might not perish from the planet Nature’s divinest creation—the perfect brain.”
§ Finally, DDGB, you cad!
It really is bizarre – there were so many news articles in the weeks leading up to John Carter’s release discussing all the reasons why the film was going to bomb, and now there are a ton of articles asking “why did it bomb”? Not blaming it all on the media, Disney certainly dropped the ball multiple times and in many ways as well, but this will make a fascinating case study once we all get some perspective.
I’m confused by Ewan McGregor’s comment that he prefers “original stuff” to comic book movies. The movie Trainspotting made him an international star, and that was an adaptation, just like comic book movies are.
So what’s the problem?
Re: John Carter. Is it possible Disney needed a write off?
What sucks about this john Carter debacle is it’s a good film and I’d like to see some of the other books adapted. It certainly has the potential to be a generation’s STAR WARS.
And what really sucks is not seeing Lynn Collins reprise her role as Dejah Thoris.