More apes, monsters, and jungle girls after the break.
Michael Ausiello's got the complete rundown of which Fall shows are premiering when. The one I'm looking forward to most though is the new Hawaii Five-Oh, debuting on Monday, September 20th.
Took David and his cousin to McDonalds last week and made sure to snap a picture of the Happy Meal for The Aquaman Shrine. As Rob rightly observes in his post, that is indeed a ball of hard-water for Aquaman to toss around.
Continuing to work my way through Calvin's list, I've had a hard time with this item. I have a lot of favorite memories. I mean, even if I could get them narrowed down to just two: how am I going to choose between my wedding day and the birth of my son?
And even if I could somehow eliminate the wedding (which I can't), David's birth still doesn't feel like a fair choice. Why would that be a better memory than our trip with him to Disney World as an infant when he wore a cute little lion costume to Animal Kingdom? Or his first birthday when he devoured his first cake and then rolled up the paper plate and tried to eat that too? Or preschool days when I would draw his favorite dinosaur on his lunch bags? Or any of the many, many bedtime comics we've read together? Or the times we've spent playing Fossil Fighter on his DS? Or how fun it's been introducing him to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings? Why not the time I'm about to spend with him tonight; tucking him in and snuggling a bit before lights out?
The thing is, I don't choose to view life as a collection of memories where I have to pick out favorites to dwell on. This might sound cheesy (and I hope it's not preachy), but every new moment is a new memory and I'd much rather have that one be my favorite than to be nostalgic for days past. I love remembering good times, but never as much as I enjoy whatever's going on right now.
From today's Minneapolis Meet-Up for Read Comics in Public Day. I took a couple of other photos too that you can see here.
If I Lived In Maryland and this Democrat cleared the primaries and was the Senatorial candidate, I swear to God I’d vote Republican.
I apologize for not getting anything posted yesterday. Diane's mom's funeral was last night and that took up most of the day.
I was able to get a couple of articles written this week though. One was this report on the newest addition to the Twin Cities' awesome convention schedule: the Minneapolis Indi Xpo.
The other was this week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs in which we look at all the cool comics coming out in October. Seriously, there's so much awesome stuff in there that I get a headache trying to pick favorites.
The season opens with Will and Holly’s exiting a pylon. Just inside, we can see Rick’s back as he works. Will’s got a new shirt for the season, as usual, but that’s not the only thing immediately different from the previous seasons. The kids are growing up.
Will’s hair is shorter and he looks more like a young man than a teenaged boy. Holly’s also maturing; she’s taller and her face has more definition. That’s normally not worth mentioning in a show with child actors – of course they’re going to grow up – but it is with this show because the only timeline that makes any sense has them escaping the Land of the Lost while looking younger than this. Intentional or not, it’s our first hint that this is an alternate reality from the one in the first two seasons.
As Will and Holly take a break, they wonder whether “that new pylon” is going to help them get out of the Land of the Lost. Since the pylons were presumably all mapped in Season Two, the existence of a new one is another clue that this isn’t the same reality we’re used to.
Yet more clues and a Bold New Direction, after the break.
Kyle Latino's undersea webcomic has begun.
After the break: giant monsters, Tracy villains, Atomic Robo, Mysta of the Moon, and Peppermint Patty kicks some bootie.
Art Show: Would Someone Get This Big, Dapper Carpet Out of My Way?
By Katie Shanahan. I just fell in love with her stuff a few days ago, so this post is going to be a bit Shanahan-centric.
After the break: Batman, a warrior woman, Thor and Co., the Hulk, Daisy Kutter, Steampunk Star Wars, and Fett... Boba Fett.
The thing that kills me is that a sequel and a prequel for Watchmen are being sought by people at DC in the first place. This doesn't seem to me like out of the box publishing thinking; this seems to me like sad, typical all the way in the box corporate media thinking. I don't want a prequel to Lawrence of Arabia, I don't want to see a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird and I like Watchmen just the way it is as a singular expression of potent pop culture, thank you.
This is too late to do anyone any good, but I still wanted to share the art from this MIX promo. The kick-off party was last night at Big Brain Comics and the Xpo itself was today. I went to both and took a lot of pictures (and bought a lot of comics), so I'll do a report for Robot 6 in the next few days.
As I've mentioned before, I struggle with how much personal information to share here (more specifically, how much you may be interested in), but the reason I didn't get this up sooner was that my wife's mom has been really sick for about a month. That's created a bunch of extra responsibilities for everyone of course. Responsibilities we've been happy to fulfill, but it's still been rough.
Anyway, Diane's mom passed on today. It's a blessing - she was ready to go - but still... She was a bright light in our lives and it's going to be very different from here on.
In better news, with MIX done, it's time to start thinking about FallCon. I'll be exhibiting there and if things go as planned, I hope to have some exciting news by then.
Art Show: No jacket, Adam. You didn’t think it through did you?
After the break: Sandmen, Shang Chi and Friends, Wonder Woman, magic, creeps, and a space barbarian.
This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs was an interview with the creator of Moonstone's new clunky-robots-vs-space-invaders series, Zeroids. He also pays homage to lots of other stuff like zombies, space vampires, sorority girls, and buddy movies. And he promises even more in upcoming issues: giant monsters, space pulp, and the like. This is going to be a crazy fun series, so click through and learn more about it.
But Mike Maihack has a friend who sure looks like me.
After the break: Black Canary, The Sandman, Atomic Robo, Sherborg Holmes, a giant robot, and That Darn Kirk.
...it's full of new Atomic Robo. None of the other websites you follow do that.
After the break: bats, Snowbird, Frankenstein, Scud the Atomic Hellwretch, DC fliers, Saturn Girl, and a crocodalien.
One last post for the day. I could've put this in the Art Show, but it deserves it's own post. It's a giant lion-bot fighting an enormous cephalopod by Jason Copland. From a project he and I are working on.
More info coming sooner than you might think.
After the break: Sheena, Frankenstein, the Creeper and Zatanna, Thor, a warrior-angel, a giant robot, and all Hell breaks loose in space.
Elsewhere... Comics Documentaries and Tripping through Intestines!
I don't know if Spurgeon planned it this way or not, but shortly before Warner Brothers announced its documentary about the history of DC, he gave this Five for Friday assignment: Name Five Extended Moments In Comics History You Wish Had Been Documented On Film As They Were Happening.
2. Marvel explores new genres during the Bronze Age.
But after seeing some of the other responses, I'd change No. 5 to Jack Kirby: The DC Years.
Should there be a double standard on tripping-through intestines?
This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs was a response to Robert Kirkman's GQ interview where he suggested that dark, complicated plots for superhero comics are okay in Invincible and other creator-owned comics, but not for corporate-owned ones. Some great discussion follows because I have awesome readers.
This week's been threatening to get away from me since it started and yesterday it finally did. So there'll be a couple of more posts than usual today to make up for it.
As a guy who loves jungle stories, but is sensitive to the racism in many of that genre's tropes, I found this article extremely helpful.
Maybe this is just me, so tell me in the comments if it bugs you too, but there's something that'll turn me off a fantasy novel every single time, even when the cover is as gorgeous as this one by Dan Dos Santos. From the Amazon Product Description for The Questing Road: "Acolytes to a dark god have crossed the gulf between worlds to abduct an innocent tariling..."
The italics are in the description, but they also highlight the word that stopped me cold. I've got no idea what a "tariling" is and I hate having to read the rest of the blurb to find out. Reading a blurb should be about discovering if I want to buy a book, not solving a mystery. In this case, I gather that a tariling is a cat-like creature (though the blurb likes the word "felinoid"). Couldn't it have just said that right up front?
I guess there must be an audience that enjoys being plunged cold into a world where everything has to be deciphered from the get-go, but I'm not part of it. I appreciate a fully realized world with its own languages and cultures and creatures to discover, but I prefer to be introduced to the strangeness gradually, not playing catch up from the first page. Or the cover blurb.