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We’re giving away a limited edition Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle!
We are kicking off our holiday giveaways with a bang! We’ve teamed with our friends at shoot it! to bring you this Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 limited edition console, a $400 value. The bundle includes a custom Xbox 360 console with exclusive design, a 250GB Xbox 360 hard drive, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, a pair of black controllers, and more. It hits stores on November 10th, and we’ve pre-ordered one that we’re giving away to one of you. Be sure to check out the giveaway rules to see how to enter!
Weekend Reading: Axa, Star Trek, Alan Moore and Joe Kubert
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Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials
Happy happy joy joy, another weekend has arrived and the internet is packed with stuff to keep us all occupied and indoors, at least until game time on Sunday. So whether you like the good girl stylings of Enrique Romero, spoilers from the new Star Trek movie (now out on DVD), or need to see a picture of Joe Kubert’s enormous drawing table, it’s like a pirate’s treasure: all down below. Let’s begin…
Enrique Romero: Pete Doree over at The Bronze Age of Blogs has a great post up about Enrique Romero, artist on two classic British newspaper strips: Axa and Modesty Blaise. No offense to Pete’s solid writing cred, but this one’s all about the art. Images might be a little NSFW, depending on where you work.
J.J. Abrams: Lance Mannion has a few spoiler-laden comments on the Star Trek movie now that it’s out on DVD. “Now, obviously I have more invested in Star Trek than is healthy for a reasonable adult. But geek that I am, I am not religious about it.” He doth protest a smidgeth to mucheth, but he writes so well on the subject, you’ll get sucked right in. Bonus: dialogue excerpts from OST.
Adrian Raeside: You don’t think of cartoonists as explorers, but Canadian editorial cartoonist for the Times Colonist in Victoria, BC, is the grandson of Charles “Silas” Wright, a member of Robert Scott’s famous expedition to the South Pole. Adrian retraced his old relatives footsteps and wrote a book about it: Return to Antarctica. His paper runs an excerpt.
Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Axa, Star Trek, Alan Moore and Joe Kubert
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Rolling into the second five-issue arc, “International Flavor,” Chew‘s John Layman and Rob Guillory offer a sneak peek of what’s to come with the cover of issue #9.
Vampires with a thing for Hawaiian chicks? Tony Chu’s retelling of Lilo and Stitch? Sometimes it pains me more to see these covers, knowing that I’ll have to wait an entire four months before I will actually discover what the story entails.
In the meantime, I highly suggest that you pick up the first trade book on your way to purchasing Chew #6 when it hits your local comic book shop this Wednesday—it makes for a great holiday gift (even more so if you need to catch up on the series)!
Writer-Director Luc Besson (he of The Professional and The Fifth Element) will be adapting the graphic albums of Jacques Tardi (the brilliant French illustrator and storyteller). Now there’s a mash-up made in geek heaven.
Besson is currently in post-production on Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec, or The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Dry-White for us language heathens. And how extraordinary are those adventures? Glad you asked! Adele is a reporter in WWI Paris who ends up battling mummies, monsters, weird cults and pulpish scientists. If this sounds a little La Femme Indiana Jones, you would not be incorrect. This is the first movie in a proposed trilogy.
The film is based on a series of albums by Tardi. The albums have been published in Europe since 1976 and there are 9 in the series so far (the latest in 2007), so there’s a lot of material to pull from. I don’t read or speak anything other than English, but if you’ve got a touch of the bilingual, there’s an extraordinary fan-site on Adele that’s worth checking out. (If you’re a poorly-educated rube like me, you can still marvel at the pictures.)
In Besson’s movie, Former French weather girl turned actress Louise Bourgoin (The Girl From Monaco) is playing the title role. Variety once wrote of Louise that she has “a bod kissed by Aphrodite.” Let’s hope that bod can kick monster-butt. Angelina Jolie has raised “female butt-kickin’ action star” to a high-grossing artform so Louise and Luc have their work cut out for them.
Click to continue reading Good Luc: Besson Meets Tardi!
Buffy Season 8 Comic Book Gets Web Series
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Posted by Robin Paulson Categories: Dark Horse Comics
Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets a second chance! Well, sort of.
Not to be confused at all with the rumored Buffy reboot by the rapacious Kuzuis, it has been reported that Joss Whedon‘s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic books will be translated into a motion-comic web series.
No word yet as to whether or not original cast members from the television series will appear, but casting director Jeff Shuter is already looking for voice actors to fill familiar and new roles. If you sound like Sarah Michelle Gellar or D.B. Woodside, this gig may be for you—check out the complete cast list after the jump (they’re looking for non-union).
While this good news comes after Dollhouse‘s cancellation, I have my doubts.
Click to continue reading Buffy Season 8 Comic Book Gets Web Series
Read More 
| Sci Fi Wire
While promoting his latest film Fantastic Mr. Fox, Jason Schwartzman was swiftly quizzed on the upcoming film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series.
“I saw the first 20 minutes of it and I’m very proud to be a part of it. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen in my entire life. It’s really funny, it’s really emotional, there’s a lot of romance—but the action sequences, I’ve never seen scenes quite like these. They’re really beautiful.”
Let’s hope that it lives up to his words! Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are also set to star in the film, which is directed by Edgar Wright of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead fame.
Read More | MTV
Weekend Reading: Webcomics, Fritz The Cat, E-Man and Batman!
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Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials
Back again with more cool stuff from around the internet. Whether your tastes run to Ralph Bakshi’s version of Robert Crumb’s Fritz The Cat, webcomics, E-Man or inappropriately sexual licensed Batman products, the internet proved a bounty of great stuff this week. Let’s take a look.
Webcomics: I love webcomics - and some day we’ll all just call them comics, right? - and I love the sites that cover them. Which means I love Floating Light Bulb. In addition to coverage of webcomics, there are lots of great insights into using them as a business, plus stuff on Google, Twitter, and more. Also, this person is smarter than me. A highly recommended site to bookmark.
Here’s a taste from a recent post. This past week featured an interview with Kez who does the webcomic War of Winds. The interview’s focus is all about webcomic creators attending conventions, hand-selling, meeting fans and making fans. It’s about the “creator as small businessperson” model. Kez also breaks down how much money can be made via her website v. conventions. “I completed one short 54-page comic as a printed side-story, which has sold well. While I didn’t start out with that story from a business stand-point, I ended that way. Out of the 50 copies I had printed, I have sold 42, gave away 2, have 3 left to sell, and 3 that were mis-printed. I bought each for about 7 dollars, sold them for $10 each, and made a profit of over $100. I will be printing more books shortly, as books sell the best at conventions.” It’s great to see someone talking hard numbers like this, instead of theory. Much, much more at the link.
Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: Webcomics, Fritz The Cat, E-Man and Batman!
Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner of Comic Books
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Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Television
Patrick McGoohan’s classic TV series, The Prisoner, is the definition of the word enigmatic. It was also an outrageous, surprising, and completely original show about identity, spies, surveillance, and more all built around a simple premise: what happens to a spy when he retires. In the case of The Prisoner, that spy, played by McGoohan, is drugged and taken to an island resort called The Village from which there’s no escape - though oh how he tries. He’s given a number (Number 6) instead of a name and he’s never quite sure who’s doing this to him: his former bosses or something more sinister. Cameras around the Orwellian Village monitor his every move as he tries to turn the tables on his captors in a giant game of spy chess. Each episode has more plot twists than a season of Lost, and while Number 6 doesn’t win, he never really loses either. McGoohan co-created the series, starred in it, wrote and directed some of the episodes. His fingerprints are all over it.
Produced in England from 1967-1968, The Prisoner ran for 17 episodes with a final episode that didn’t answer all the questions posed by the series, and good luck getting any from the temperamental McGoohan (he passed away earlier this year and took many of his secrets with him). There was no second season. No spin-off. No subsequent movie. But a lot of solid geek cred, including a couple of catchphrases for those in the know, like “I’m not a number! I’m a free man!” A very good overview of the series - with clips and more - can be found over at Palafo.
Click to continue reading Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner of Comic Books
Rating: ****
Another amazing issue that will have everyone’s jaw drop by the time people reach the end. Sometimes the conclusion to a comic book story does not live up to the way it started - that is not the case here. Grant Morrison hits a big home run with the conclusion to his Red Hood story arc. The only drawback for me once again is Philip Tan’s artwork. Some of the artwork in the panels seemed rushed and murky, but Morrison saves the day for me with this amazing story. I read the preview that was released and I couldn’t wait to read this issue. After reading this issue, I’m now salivating for more.
Eduardo Flamingo proves to be a very dangerous character. When we last left off in the story, Flamingo had taken a shot at the Red Hood. The shot doesn’t kill him, which causes Flamingo to try harder to finish the job by shooting the side of Jason’s face off. He also tries to pull the mask off of Scarlet’s face (if you’ve been reading the title you know her face is attached to the mask).
Batman and Robin escape from the trap that the Red Hood put them in and they try to assist Hood and Scarlet in taking down Flamingo. Morrison writes a great line for Robin when they confront Flamingo, “I was expecting scary, not gay.” Very funny. The character appears to die at the hands of the Red Hood, but this is the comic book world, and we know that he probably isn’t dead.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Batman and Robin #6
Let’s visit the photo archives again, shall we?
Years ago, I had the occasion to journey to a comic book store in the Bay Area - somewhere around one of the cities near San Francisco. I had been attending a convention near the San Francisco Airport. After the show was over, I had some time to kill and some friends drove me out to a comic book store where Jean Giraud (aka Moebius!) was putting in an appearance. How could I resist that?
I don’t remember why Moebius was in town. He wasn’t at the convention, which was a Star*Reach event for retailers and publishers only. I just know that he was there - the creator of Lt. Blueberry, The Airtight Garage and dozens of other great things. And, fortunately, I had my camera with me, my then-trusty 35mm decidedly non-digital Pentax. I stood in line, I shook his hand, and he signed a giant poster for me (as he did for everyone else in line.) Here are a couple of shots from that day. My memory is that this is Comics & Comix in Palo Alto, but if anyone can confirm or correct that, the world would be a better place for all of us.
And yes, I realize the photos are better than the story, but look over there: It’s Moebius!
[Artwork: Photo of Jean Giraud/Moebius. Photo © Tom K. Mason]
Now that GM is shutting down their Saturn division, let me tell you how comic books helped me get a really nice, reliable car. Years ago, my old car went on life support and, reluctantly, since I could no longer count on my friends to keep picking me up by the side of the freeway, I had to get another one. I hate buying a car more than I hate trying to get a hotel room for Comic-Con International in March. So I needed a plan.
At the time, I was intrigued by the ads for Saturn cars. They were owned by GM but had a separate factory somewhere near Davy Crockett’s family home in Tennessee, used their own parts and built their cars using a team that wasn’t connected to GM corporate. Also, the happy TV commercials showed their smiling employees enjoying picnics in the park. It was, they claimed, a different way to make a car.
Click to continue reading Comic Books And Saturn (The Cars)
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