Fizzit

How Not To Treat Girls, Featuring Firestorm

2011-09-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing that made me extremely happy with the new Firestorm book...

...it's that being part of Firestorm still makes the guys lousy with women.

Reboot or not, some things are universal when it comes to Firestorm.

For further examples of Firestorm's most unfortunate super power, click here.

Space Elves Invade!

2011-02-18T00:21:00.000-08:00

Was just going through some old backups today, and stumbled upon these photos of my old Warhammer 40k Eldar army. This would've been about 5 years ago around the time I stopped playing. From memory this was around about 8,000 points in 3rd Edition (for those of you that know of such things). A bunch of this stuff's no longer game-legal, but still cool (my entirely converted Harlequin army, and my Warp Spider army which I miss the most).

This is a bit (well, very) grainy due to being taken on actual film, but here's the entire army:

I tried to convert most of my character models. I especially like how this one came out, with the head and left arm from one model transplanted onto another:

Guardians:

From the moment I first saw a Falcon grav tank, I wanted to fill in the gap at the front. Eventually I did.

I loved Warp Spiders so much I made an entire army of them. Yes, I painted a spider web on the back of each model.

Ahhh Swooping Hawk exarch, how I loved you in 3rd Edition

Although it must be said, he would fail and die just as often as he would rip a squad apart. More often, actually.

Jetbikes never really did it for me, but I do like this one:

Some of my Exarchs (squad leaders for you n00bs). I named them all using Sumerian.

I'm a big fan of drybrushing

...and then there were my Harlequins. Every model is converted in some way, I basically used the project as an excuse to use any model that I thought was cool.

Death Jesters with Bright Lances:

...and a few group shots to round things off

DC Universe Not-Quite Online

2011-01-23T22:13:00.000-08:00

Is this thing frustrating or what? Installed yesterday, needed a 2.6g patch straight away. Play game for an hour today, now downloading a 5.4g patch. Crazy. I would post screenshots of my Firestorm-themed character, but this download is taking foreeeeeevvveeeeeeerrrrr. Maybe tomorrow :'(

[Edit] Hey what do you know, this thing actually works. I present to the world:

Fireblight (it's a disease that affects apples, but it sounds kinda Firestormy)
This was the initial costume:

and this is where it is now:

So far it's entertaining enough. Onwards! (assuming there's not another 5gig update tomorrow...)

40k Dreadnought Drop Pod Conversion - Extreme Version

2011-01-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

The goal: convert a Space Marine Drop Pod so that it holds a Dreadnought with it's base.

Credit where credit's due, the bulk of this conversion was taken from an excellent tutorial on The Magnet Pro blog. Go read the article here. No seriously, go read it. I'll be doing a bunch of stuff he covers there, and because I'm lazy I won't be restating the reasons why. The one downside to that method is that while the Drop Pod will take a Dreadnought, it won't take one with the base attatched. This bugged me on two fronts: 1, I'm lazy and can't be bothered with magnets; 2, I like the idea of having everything self-contained in the Pod, so that the first an opponent sees of the Dread' is when the doors swing down and it wanders out. So I came up with the following.

(ok, last chance to read that article)

Part One

Space inside the Pod is at a premium, so to get some extra space we lower the floor.

The back two floor supports (either side of the door in the left pic) need to be cut back to line up with the bottom of the door. The other 3 supports can be cut to fit the Dreadnought base.

Put in the doors as normal. When the tiny floor pieces are attatched, the supporting bits of the base should be trimmed back so they line up with the top part.

Notice that only one door has the internal facing glued on. This is important. We need the spare door parts for later. From here on out, the one complete door will be The Front, and the 2 doors opposite will be The Back.
You also might notice I removed the bottom from 3 of the doors- seemed like a good idea at the time, but really not necessary (and it creates gaps that are impossible to fill later).

Part Two

Now for the fins that form the walls (such as they are). First up, cut the red part out of all 5 fins.

We're going to be shifting the central column up a bit (more room!), so the 5 fins also need to be flattened off (finished one below left, cuts marked on right)

As with that other tutorial, two of the fins need the bottom parts removed. I've taken it a step further and removed the support piece on the right.

Put those two fins to one side.

On the other 3 fins, remove the fancy piece lining the wall. Be sure to leave just a little piece at the bottom- it will be getting removed later, but we'll need it to be able to glue the fin in the right place (cuts marked in red, finished piece at bottom).

Continuing with the 3 fins, make an angled cut along the part that would normally be the ceiling. As I mentioned earlier, the central column is moving up, so to make it look good be sure to measure out the space for the panel. Incase you missed it before, get rid of that bump one the side.

Ok, central column- Glue the two main cylinders together, then turn it upside down. The gun attachment is going on top of the Drop Pod. Glue on the side panels- visually they should face the same way up as a regular pod, but technically speaking they're upside-down on the cyliner (confused?) Don't attach the front panel (remember which part is the front?). Take the 3 fins, and assemble as normal EXCEPT that the central column lines up with the top section of the fins.

Once that's set, slide the gun placement in and glue.

Give it a bit of time to set, then remove the little part we left on the wall.

Now here's a slight twist on the original method. Instead of gluing the last two fins on the side doors, stick them both on the front door like so:

The final step is to glue the remaining panel from the central column to the front door.

It will require a bit of sanding and/or cutting to get a good fit. Be sure to line it up so that it actually clips into the central column when closed.

Part Three

So, we've raised the roof and partly lowered the floor (you didn't think we were done with that, did you?). Now to get some extra room around the sides.

Get the 4 inner door parts that weren't used earlier. Cut the sides off, then cut the side pieces where the bend is (you can throw away the walkway part).

Turn the long pieces sideways and cut about half the plastic off the top- the part we're mostly interested in is the front with all the little circles.

There's a lip just inside the long pieces we've cut. Line that up along the front of the Pod door and glue. The sloped end should be lined up with the top of the door.

Repeat for both sides of all 4 doors. As you can see on the right, that just created a whole bunch of space (don't worry, we'll fix it)

Take the smaller pieces from the inner doors, and cut them so they are flat- we want the detail, but we don't want a lip on them. Glue them to the bottom of each side of the door.

Finally, grab some plastic card (I used 1mm thick, but it shouldn't matter). It will take a little bit of measuring, but make endcaps for the doors.

Yeah so obviously the front door breaks the symmetry of the pod, but it's really not that noticeable. Doing the same trick to that door wouldn't have left enough for the 2 fins to securely bond to (I suppose you could reinforce with putty but like I said, I'm lazy...)

Part Four

Time to finish lowering the floor. If you hold the base up to the light, you'll see a faint mould line around where I've marked below- cut the centre out along this.

Take the left-over floor from part one, trim up the sides and flatten off the bottom. Also get rid of that pesky lump in the middle since we need all the space we can get (cover it with something flat so it doesn't look horrible)

Glue the floor to the base section. If you're picky you might like to fill in the gaps around the side with something. Personally I think it'll be hidden just fine by black paint.

If you feel so inclined, line the inner doors with textured plastic card. I only did the side doors, as the back ones I'm gluing closed (which you don't have to, but it just felt right)

Part Five
So that's essentially it! There's a few cosmetic things I added:

We don't need the seating assembly, so I stole part of it (don't worry, there's plenty of room)

Given that the bottom of the Pod has been cut out, there's all these little fan bits just going to waste...

Putting them on the tops of the doors makes the whole thing look a bit more official.

As a result of having the side doors sick out, they don't want to stay closed. A little rod sticking out of either side on the front door is enough to hold them closed (see, that's why we made sure the front door slotted in to the central column earlier)

Just incase you're one of those people that likes to leave destroyed vehicles turned over on the battlefield, better do something about the mess we made of the bottom. Hey look, it's more bits from the seating unit that we're not using...

This last bit is possibly unneccessary given the extreme lengths used to create room, but I figured every bit counts.

Plastic base vs 80grade sandpaper ftw.

Part Six

So we just butchered a Drop Pod kit- does it actually achieve it's purpose?

Hey, the base fits!

The doors even close!

As you can see, there's a fair bit of room to move, so hopefully most weapon combos will work.

Once again, a final tip of the hat to this blog, without which I wouldn't even have considered this insanity. I hope this is useful to someone out there :)

I Can Has Ninja?

2010-12-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

Last week one of the small art galleries here (and I do mean small) ran an exhibition for what I regard as the coolest self-published comic in New Zealand- Ninjet.*

So, Ninjet is about a ninja cat. I would link you to content, but ninjet.com is currently dead, so I won't. What I will do is show you the art I picked up, penned by the enigmatic, singularly-monikered ninja cat mastermind, Drake ;)

This right here is one of my favourite pages (printed version on right)

I've had this blown up as a poster on my wall for a few months, so it rocks to actually get the original!

It wasn't actually part of the exhibition, but Drake being the cool guy that he is let me have it.

This one was on display, and it rocks:

I can't show you the published version, my copy of the issue is hiding somewhere in the depths of a comic box and doesn't want to be found.

As anyone familiar with me would expect, this calls for more framing of artwork. I'm still planning for the first picture, but the 2nd one I did yesterday:

A closer look at the logo- that's actually a badge I laid in there

And just incase you're wondering where all the purple came from, one of the covers:

It's replaced my Phil Jimenez 52 JLA splash on my bedroom wall, so it's in an honoured position ;)

*(not that I'm in any way an expert on the local indie comic scene, since by and large indie comics bore me so I tend to avoid them. They usually try to be too clever for their own good, or aren't as funny as their authors think they are).

The Boys: Dark Knight Parody

2010-11-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

If you're anything like me you walked into the local comic shop, saw this...

...and laughed your arse off. I've never actually read The Boys, but I picked it up just for the cover (and technically speaking, I still haven't read an issue of The Boys yet heh).

Because I like cool things, and because I couldn't find one by someone better at such things than me (read: anyone), I made my own desktop version, with the original Dark Knight cover.

(My screen resolution is 1920 x 1080 btw)

The Greatest Book In The History Of Books

2010-11-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

I'm serious with this title- if you have aspirations of becoming a writer, or a publisher (or hell, even a book binder) you need to give up now. You are obsolete. THE most amazing book ever has now been published:

I spotted this in a bookshop today. I don't know how long it's been out, but it is AMAZING. There's only about 8 pages, but the amount of effort that's gone into the design is stunning...

...and that's not even considering how they managed to mass-produce something like this. The Bat-signal in the above picture also LIGHTS UP. Each page of course has the main pop-up, but there are numerous smaller flaps on each page.

I didn't post a pic, but one of the best mini pop-ups is of Wonder Woman's Invisible Plane.

Firestorm even gets a couple of appearances, including this one:

(by Anti-Monitors ribcage)

The best page is the last though, and not just because this is amazing...

...but also because there's a mini JSA WITH A TABLE:

One other thing that sets this apart from anything else in the history of forever, is the detail that's put in to the BACK of each pop-up:

(hey look, it's Firestorm again)

If you like cool things, at the very least you need to have a flip through it in the shop. It's also an amazingly low price of $40NZ.

More Framing Crazyness

2010-10-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

As mentioned previously, I picked up a very cool page by Nicola Scott at the recent con. Blackest Night Wonder Woman #2 pg 7 to be precise ;) Since I see no point in buying something unless it's gonna get hung on the wall at some stage well, no time like the present.

I like my framing jobs to have something to do with colour schemes used in the costumes of the characters featured, so with Mera being there that lent itself to some greens.

Since the art is all pencil, I went with the light green so as not to overpower it (which was tough because I love the middle shade). For contrast I was torn between a gold or light orange (more in keeping with Aquaman than Mera really)

I've never done anything in metallics before, so gold won out (plus it plays into Mera's crown and trident).

The next problem with the page is what's actually NOT there- some of the panels run right to the edge of the working area and therefore don't have a defined edge of their own. Also, due to not being inked, there are crosses used in the negative spaces outside the panels (to let the inker know they should be black).

So right off the bat, you can see your basic rectangle mat is going to leave a lot of dead space visible, which I think would detract from the art itself. Solution:

Measuring out the the panels is time consuming, but I've done it before and I like the result (plus anyone that's followed this blog for a while knows I like doing things the hard way). With that, the finished product:

I was a little worried how the gold would play out in terms of being overpowering, but I think it works alright. Very happy with the end result.

Auckland Geekery 2010

2010-10-26T16:14:00.001-07:00

The major sci-fi convention for the year took place this weekend. 3 days, some 45,000 attendees, and a bunch of tv, movie, comic, and animation guests that pretty much make it essential for me to fly up for it and give people all my money. Without going in to too much boring detail, a rough breakdown of my weekend:

The comic guests
My major achievement for the weekend was managing to ask writer Daniel Way if he did sketches. Haha, ooops. (for the record he does, but "they're $400 and they're terrible") In my defence, he arrived 20 minutes late and I was in the swing of hitting up the other artists for sketches so it was kindof a reflex action. I think he was a little irked though *blush*

This is what $200 will get you from Darrick Robertson:

He basically lets you name your price and he'll spend the appropriate amount of time on it. From his appearance a couple of years ago I knew he was a Firestorm fan, and I had always been kicking myself for not getting a commission back then. It's big too, love it.

Georges Jeanty came out with this nifty headshot:

I've already got a bunch of sketches from past appearances by Nicola Scott, so I just picked up this page from Blackest Night Wonder Woman #2

As always it was a majorly tough decision to pick something out, and I came so close to dropping a small fortune on a new Teen Titans page.

James Tucker was over with animation guests since his forte is design for the likes of the Batman and Justice League cartoons, but he was still doing sketches. Additional characters were only an extra $10 on top of the base fee, so I got Firehawk added in to my usual Firestorm request:

The acting guests

Main drawcard for me this year was Michael Shanks and Torri Higginson from Stargate. Last year I had the brainwave of getting action figures signed by SG guests, so I carried on with that. Torri loves signing figures, so that was cool. Also printed out my own photo of Shanks as Hawkman, which is unusually organised for me.

Michael Beihn from Terminator & Aliens was there- I wasn't planning on getting his autograph, but I really enjoyed both his panels so figured that was worth $30.

The main highlight for me was brunch with Michael Shanks. Was a good chance to hear some things I wouldn't have otherwise. Obviously he's well versed in doing this kind of thing, but he seemed really cool, even sticking around at the end to take photos with everyone even though it messed with his schedule for the rest of the day

He requested no flashes and my camera's kinda crap, but a big thankyou to the person I got to take the shot, as she managed to get a pretty decent result.

Assorted coolness
Tron is coming, and it had a strong presence there

Lifesize (or thereabouts) cardboard model, which rocked. Got a bunch of free posters too. Damn I hope it turns out to be good.

Weta Workshop had it's usual stand, now with District 9 models

There was an (I think) American artist selling prints of his work. He had a few large posters (70" high) as backdrops for his stand. I picked up the Farscape piece:

Had to wait until the end of the show to pick it up, but I pounced on it as soon as I saw it on the first morning.

Comic purchases

My main achievement was knocking off my Invisibles, Hawkman, and Vigilante collections so now I can bind them. Yay.

VIP panels

Noone seems to know who was gracing the front of the Silver Pass heh

As with last year, spending a bit extra to see a 2nd panel with some of the guests (combined with a smaller audience) proved to be the way to go. Former Dr Who Sylvester McCoy playing the spoons on the entire front row of the audience was a highlight, as was Michael Shanks' amusement at all of us being stuck at the con until 6pm on the final day just to see him, and then struggling to come up with any questions.

Very cool 3 days. Next April sees the con return to my home town, with Darrick Robertson, David Hewlett, and Katee Sackhoff already booked.

Comic Art and Death Metal

2010-10-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I was randomly browsing the comic art on eBay, which is something I almost never do (normally I just go with keyword searches like, um, "firestorm" heh). Very lucky that I did, as an hour or so earlier artist Vincent Locke (Sandman, among many many others) had listed one of his works. The "buy now" was $50 more than the reserve price, but I pounced as soon as I saw it.

The artwork in question is the final preliminary cover sketch to the album "Live Cannibalism" by Cannibal Corpse (The cover itself was ultimately done in watercolour paints). A bit of history for the uninitiated to come, but first of all the art in question:

Final version:

So you're probably thinking "geez, that's a bit gory". Well, yes. Cannibal Corpse have always delt with rather horrific subject matter (it's called "Brutal Death Metal" for a reason you know). Vince Locke has provided album art for the band since the beginning. Several of the albums have been very controversial, both in part to the lyrics, and the album covers. This has attracted attention from US politicians, church groups etc (all the typical groups that you would expect to get offended really). Even here in New Zealand the early albums were apparently banned for a while, although the two independant record stores in my city had their albums readily available so it wasn't much of a ban to be honest. By Cannibal Corpse standards the cover is rather restrained I think- certainly it's not as blatantly in-your-face as the likes of Tomb Of The Mutilated (do NOT google that cover if you are easily offended. And yes, I realise just by me saying that your curiosity pretty much leaves you with no choice but to have a look :p).

As for the actual significance of this to me- I've always been in to heavy metal, but it was primarily the more mainstream acts like Def Leppard, Living Colour, Skid Row etc in the late 80's/ early 90's. After finishing high school I went to university to study classical music. One of the guys there started introducing me to the underground metal scene. His favourite band was Cannibal Corpse, so they naturally wound up being one of the first Death Metal groups I heard (this was around about 1994). I've been hooked on extreme metal ever since, and Corpse have remained a favourite to this day. So it's pretty cool to pick up artwork from a band that I like and that helped me start down the musical path I'm on. Plus, y'know, Vincent Locke isn't half bad either ;)

Old Random Casting Stuff

2010-10-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much a nothing post, purely for my benefit. I was trying to explain to someone today about using hot glue (or Thermo Plastic if you want to sound all fancy) to cast costuming pieces. I jumped on here to pull up a few references, and discovered that I never actually finished off where I was going (nothing unusual there in regards to my blogging habits). So for my own future reference, here's a bunch of pics that round off what I started with this, only with the middle part missing (y'know, the actual clay sculpting and mold-making. I remember taking pictures, but as to where they are now...).

Hey, you can actually see the sculpted leg in the background here! That would be awesome if I'd actually planned the shot like that ha!

Binding- That Other Method

2010-09-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

So far I've completed 12 volumes in my ongoing quest to bind my comic book collection. I figured it was time for an update, both because I have a bit more of an idea what I'm doing now, and because my current mission has required a change in approach.

As you may recall, I was sewing each individual issue on to tapes to form the book block. I'm very happy with the results I've been getting and will be using this wherever possible. I'm currently binding my Spawn collection (120 issues, plus the relevant minis and crossovers), which created one major problem. Unlike DC and Marvel, Image group all their ads at the back of the book. This means that in order to cut out all the ads, you're left with half the issue being loose pages. While I've been able to work around the occassional loose page in the past, trying to do that with 50%+ of the pages would require a ton of time and effort, and probably wouldn't look that good in the end. Which brings us to the other method of sewing your book together.

Instead of sewing each issue through the middle, the whole lot get sewn down the side, like so:

It's a very common method, and if you send books to a pro it's probably what they'll do. It's much faster (I can prep and sew 30 issues in an afternoon), and can be done by machine (not that I have one) so it's not as labour intensive as the other method. There's one immediately obvious flaw to it- by sewing through the margin you are losing part of the page. Not an issue for older comics that printed with margins on the page, but with comics these days you can count on missing things, particularly with double page spreads. Also unlike the other method, this one is essentially irreversable. Rebinding it would mean even more page loss. Still, it's the best/only method for sewing loose leaves together.

This is a little workstation I threw together for binding. The bit on the right is for opening out comics and piercing the spines.

On the left side, I've drilled holes so that I can pierce the margin of a comic, but still have it all supported.

The holes are an inch apart. I've actually found less info on this method online, so as always the way I'm doing things is a combination of info from various sources, and guesswork.

I have a little guide on the base to line up where the holes will go, as well as a top sheet to guide the spacing. Then it's time to get mutilating.

I find it hard to gauge how far in to make the holes- too little space and it will be prone to pages ripping out, but there's the gutter loss issue, so...

With that done, it's time to remove the staples. I figure it's smarter to remove the staples last, since they hold the book together while I punch the holes ;)

That leaves the comic in two parts- the pages with ads on one half, and the pages without.

I leave as much of the book intact as possible- no point in cutting pages in half if you're not removing content, and plus it seems logical (to me anyway) that the uncut pages will be stronger/less likely to fall out since they're essentially getting bound in two places. But then, like everything I'm doing here, it's just a guess ;) Time to remove those pesky ads!

I'm actually keeping the parts I remove, and I plan on binding the letter collumns into their own volume, since Todd ran a pretty entertaining show.

As I prep the issues, they get put on a couple of hat pins, so that there aren't loose pages all over the place

With all that done, it's time to sew. Remember to follow the same direction that the holes were made, as going the opposite way is next to impossible. I'm just looping from one hole to the next here- there may be a better/stronger way but I haven't found it yet.

Even following the direction of the holes, you're gonna need tools to help. I have no idea how many issues should be getting bound together- in this case they're getting broken up into 15-issue groups.

It shouldn't require a huge amount of force, but it's much easier on the fingers.

Just like that, we have a finished book block:

Note: don't borrow your mother's needles to do this, because they will get beat up

With two blocks done, the next step it to put them together. A bit of glue just to secure things...

...and then a vice to secure them

Obviously glue on it's own isn't going to be enough, so the two parts need to be sewn together.

Also, a bit of extra glue never hurt anybody ;)

That's that. From there, it's entirely the same process as before to make the cover etc. The only difference being the lack of tapes, so it's up to the cloth to hold everything together (which sofar hasn't been a problem).

Next update I'll show a little trick I learned with making the covers. Until then, try not to stab yourself in the finger (trust me, it hurts).

Random Thoughts And Discoveries

2010-08-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

JSA All-Stars:

I have no idea who she is, where she came from, or how long she's existed, but I'm very happy to see Anna Fortune continue on with the JSA. Maybe it's the art of Freddie Williams, but she looks damn cool. Having a gun that fires magic bullets doesn't hurt either.

Brightest Day:
So far I'm not that in to the series, although atleast now it seems to be heading somewhere. What caught my eye last issue though, is (predictably, I know) the White Lantern redesign of Firestorm.

That is AWESOME. I would kill to get hold of the original art for that (hell, even just a scan would make me happy), and it's not often I can say that (outside of covers and the like, which we all know you need a ton of money for).

Hercules- Twilight Of A God:
This jumped out at me unexpectedly while browsing the shelves.

Holy crap, is that the Silver Surfer? WTF? That's one hell of a reinvention, and while it's probably someone pretending to be him, it still looks intruiging. I'm being strong willed and holding off reading it until the final issue (#4) is out next month.

Just as an aside, does anyone else recognise this scene from a certain movie?

Yeah, I'm strong willed enough not to read it, but not strong enough to avoid flicking through it.

Iron Man:
These have probably been out for months, but I only just noticed them (it's not like Dr Pepper has a high profile in New Zealand):

In the last week I've managed to track down #s 1, 3, 8, & 9. I have no lofty ambition to collect them all, but they're kinda cool.

Voltron:
My local comic shop never got back to me about getting a copy of the Voltron miniatures game when it appeared in Previews, but the wargaming shop got them in anyway. Score!

Apart from the figures being in need of a repaint (which was expected), the only thing I don't like about this set is the big V's Blazing Sword.

Seems a little more bent than I remember ;) It's fixable, but annoying that I should have to.

How Did This Thing Even Look Good On Paper?

2010-08-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

There's a new line of Star Wars figures that came out recently (they were embargoed here until August 6th, don't know about the rest of the world). Apart from being some of the best looking Star Wars figures yet, they come with the added feature of being playable in a game. Potentially interesting, lets have a closer look.

I bought Bossk. He's the best bounty hunter, and I will hear no arguments against him :p

I haven't bought a SW figure in years, but yay for including a stand. Anyway, the game: each figure comes with their own card with a bunch of stats on it.

Also included is this die.

Both players pick figures, then player 1 rolls the die. You take the point value for the corresponding icon rolled, with the highest value winning. The losing figure is discarded.

That's right, the figure you just paid $20NZ for got discarded on the back of a single die roll. If you're player 2, chances are you could lose without even rolling anything for your shiny new toy. Of course, the marketing gurus that came up with this expect you all to have a bunch of figures so you keep playing until last man standing, but any way you look at it this is totally lame.

Spawns Of Future Past

2010-08-09T02:05:00.000-07:00

So recently you may've heard about the whole McFarlane/Gaiman Spawn legal carryon. There's been excellent coverage on a blog here. The purpose of this post is to refute a couple of points made by others in the comment section, since I can't post pictures over there. So to begin...

Lambtoons: "The only artwork for Dark Ages Spawn that looked remotely like Medieval Spawn was McFarlane's variant cover to #1 which only showed an extreme close up of the face"

I respectfully disagree, and I'll show you why. Below left, Medieval Spawn as originally presented. On the right a revision of the original design, making it a bit edgier. In the middle, the cover to Dark Ages #1 (regular edition), featuring what is supposed to be a different character.

I've circled some common elements. Now I'll grant you, spiky legs/shoulders/forearms are a feature of your standard Spawn costume. There are two major reasons why I think they are similar enough for one to be derrivative of the other:

1) The face plate. Yes, it's the standard Spawn-type face, but that presented as a metal faceplate to me indicates a connection (no not just on it's own, I mean as a sum of the costume). Are they a bit different? Sure they are. However, to my mind this was merely an evolution in the design, due in large part to a desire to make Dark Ages edgy and, well, dark. If you look at the changes in the way Al Simmons Spawn has been presented over the years, his design underwent many changes, as did the mood of the comic. With the evolution of various titles like "Hellspawn", "Curse of the Spawn", "Spawn the undead" etc which significantly increased the dark atmosphere of the original concept, I do not believe it is a big stretch to look at the middle picture and think something along the lines of "damn, they just made Medieval Spawn look a whole lot tougher".

2) The chest design. This is the standard design for spawns also. However, where I see the similarity is this- the blue armour, white edging, and red centre. 99% of other spawns we've seen have black clothing. In this case, we have two characters. Both presented as knights. Both from seemingly similar time periods (semantics aside). Both in BLUE armour, with white and red markings.

It's my contention that the above two elements, when combined with each other, and when taken in the larger context of the overall presentation of the suit, are similar. Which is where the problem lies. As someone who collected Spawn for over 10 years or so (including a ton of cards and toys), Dark Ages at the time, and still now, looks to me like merely a grittier update of the Medieval Spawn armour.

Also worth noting, the Dark Ages Spawn costume evolved quite rapidly in the course of the comic, to where, if memory serves, it looked quite different. However, the above costume from issue #1 was also used on the cover of issue #2. Whatever evolution took place, I believe it's initial presentation was close to that of Medieval Spawn. Which is what the court case was about- is DAspawn derivative of Mspawn. In his first few appearances (atleast visually, I'm not inclined to re-read the series, if I even still have it), the answer has to be yes, in my opinion. A character will develop his own feel over time, but in his initial presentation, I see Medieval Spawn, not a distinctly different character.

Lambtoons: "No one who collected the series and read it was given the wrong impression that they were selling Medieval Spawn repackaged"

I'd actually argue that's exactly what they were doing, atleast at the start. It makes commercial sense- package something in a way that's recognisable. Medieval Spawn was a popular character despite (or perhaps thanks to) only appearing in 3 (?) issues. To make a new product instantly entice readers, having him look similar makes total sense. Once people step through the door, then you can turn the tables on them and present your ideas. Certainly all the publicity leading up to the first issue, as I remember it, did little to dispell the idea that it was Medieval Spawn. Now, once the series got going, maybe it quickly became apparent it was a different character (I don't remember). But in the initial stages, I stand by my assertion.

Just in closing, I'd like to make clear this is not a pro-Gaiman/anti-McFarlane thing on my part, I just happen to agree with the Judge's ruling. I've read maybe a half dozen comics by Gaiman post-Sandman. I still have a strong affection for Al Simmons, despite having walked away from Spawn several years ago (I'm about to start binding my Spawn collection, and considering picking up all the missing issues just to complete the Al Simmons story). Just thought I'd throw that out there, since experience teaches these things can easily become about which side you're on. I'm on the side of good comics.

Jason Rusch, Stick In The Mud

2010-08-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

Someone's falling to their death! Quick, ideas!

Hmmmm, Air Bag.

Better? Yes.

Fun? Not so much.

How Not To Treat Girls, Featuring Firestorm

2010-07-31T21:38:00.001-07:00

It's Wonder Woman's special day, with the Justice League in attendance.

Here's the lesson:

Yes, it's nice to compliment the bride, but if you have the track record with women that Firestorm does, it may just be better to shut the hell up. People will read things into even the most innocent of comments.

John Constantine, International Man of Excitement

2010-07-03T00:54:00.000-07:00

I had no idea, but...

...apparently I qualify as exciting according to this. Who knew?

Edit: hmmm, two posts in a row that are almost identical in the language used. Spooky coincidence, or ongoing theme? You decide! ;)

I Have No Idea What This All Means...

2010-06-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

...but a Blue Beetle card in actual Spanish is pretty groovy.

Apparently Argentina goes nuts for superhero cards. Who knew?

2010-06-19T02:07:00.000-07:00

Ever wished you could have your favourite heroes in peg form?

Now you can

That's kinda cool.

Book Binding, The Recap

2010-06-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

Incase you're late to the game, over the last week I've been binding my Power Girl collection into a hardcover book. Get caught up here:
Day 1: getting ready
Day 2: binding
Day 3: making the cover
Day 4: attatching the core
Day 5: finishing touches
Update 1: other method

So here's a few thoughts.

The board I used to make the cover this time has been great. It's been sitting free for a couple of days now, and is still as straight as when I made it. Compare that to the cover I did for my first book...

...and you'll see the difference it makes.

Still on the subject of covers, the method I used to make it this time worked better too. For the first project, the boards got glued to the core, then covered in paper. This time, I made the cover completely, then glued it to the core. Worked out much better, as this allowed me to get everything straight, and get everything measured out properly. The first book will only open this much:

Whereas the new one opens like this:

I thought a size comparison might be interesting. Here's 20 loose comics next to the 20 bound comics:

Even pressed down, the book still comes out on top

Cost breakdown:
Cover boards: $3.50 (4 books per $14 sheet)
Paper for cover: $3.50 (2 books per $7 sheet)
Thread: $2 ($4 for 10 metres, I've gotten 2 books done, with a little left over)
PVA glue: $1 (rough guess, it's cheap)

So that's $10 in materials. The cloth and tapes are only a few cents so not really worth figuring in to that.

Next project I think will be the 25 issue run of Ghost Rider 2099. It's actually proving tricky to find complete runs in my collection- seems there's always one issue of something that crossed over with another title and I'm missing it (for example, found this morning- my Hawkman collection is incomplete because I'm missing one issue of JSA to complete the Black Reign story). Binding 52 is on the cards sometime soon as well, since I would like to collect Firestorm, Silver Surfer, Spawn and others in as big chunks as possible, so I need to find out how far I can push the whole home-binding thing (52 makes a good sacraficial lamb- it was cool at the time, but not a high priority to read again).

Victory Or Death! But Hopefully Victory.

2010-06-10T02:05:00.000-07:00

Book binding project Day 5 (4, 3, 2, 1), and today things will either wind up awesome or be a screaming faliure.

There's one final step to finish things off completely, but now that the core is joined to the cover, we have an actual book:

It even stands up, as by some miracle I made the cover straight.

But sure, anyone can make a book look good on the outside, does this thing actually open in a way that's readable?

Woohoo!

It opens up in the middle great too:

With everything as it should be, there's just the final cosmetic finisher: the cover and end sheets to hide the inside covers. I thought red card would go well with the gold cover, plus it ties in to PG's costume (and is more interesting than plain old white). For this we'll need a sheet of card that's twice as wide as the book (minus a little since it doesn't need to go right to the edge.

I figured I'd go with comic size, plus a little extra. Fold the card in half, and then spread out some glue.

To avoid breaking everything, prop the book open. In this case I had the help of Y: The Last Man vols 1-3.

Important note: don't get confused about which side of the card you glued ;)

Repeat for the back of the book. Now it looks presentable. The final step is to glue about 1/4" of the first page (and last page) to the cover sheet, both to hide the inner workings, and to add a final bit of strength to the whole contraption.

Just like a bought one, only more satisfying.

So yeah, this turned out awesome. I didn't take a pic of it, but the book will actually open out completely flat, and without showing any signs of being under stress. I much prefer the method of making the cover that I used this time. I was a bit iffy about binding 20 issues but it looks really cool, a nice solid volume (I just know that at some point I'll have to try binding the entire run of 52 into a single volume. I need help, and I don't mean with the binding...).

Tomorrow I'll do a review of the whole process,a few thoughts, comparisons with my first project etc

Hey, It's Almost An Actual Book Thingy

2010-06-09T01:45:00.000-07:00

Day Four (3, 2, 1...) of turning my Power Girl collection from Near Mint into whatever condition allows for multiple holes punched in the spines.

So yeah, while yesterday I said I was waiting overnight to finish off the cover, it turns out I lack patience. I figured a few hours was long enough, so I took the liberty of folding over the edges of the paper.

Not a particularly challenging step, and self explanitory. Back under the weights to rest in peace for the remainder of the night. Incase I forgot to mention it before, there needs to be a gap between the spine and the covers, so that the book will actually close ;)

So now we're in to Day 4 proper, and with the cover finished, it's time to connect everything and make it look like the real thing. The first move is to position the book block along the spine, and then glue the material to the front cover.

I'm actually trying a slightly different method for the cover this time. I might review what I think works better once it's all done.

Once the glue's been worked in a little, the tapes get glued. Conventional wisdom suggests that you trim the cloth and tapes to be 1 or 2" long but a) this is all that holds the book together and I'm nervous, and b) I like to overdo things.

I was using scrap black card to smooth them out hence the blackish tinge to everything, it's not actually something important ;) Repeat everything for the back cover, though of course the core will need to be proped up, since closing the front cover at this stage will cause one or two problems...

Then it's more weights (I knew all my spare Rage cards would come in handy one day), and leaving it until tomorrow. Only one more thing to do and it's done!

Waiting For Glue Really Sucks

2010-06-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

Comic Book Binding* Day 3 (Day 2, Day 1)

Today, I get to survey my handiwork and (hopefully) have it not all fall apart.

Hey, looks like that glue was useful for something after all. There's always a slight issue with removing the surrounding wood/paper from the clamps (by "always" I mean the 2 times I've done it, but I can't really see any way around it). A bit of gentle pressure releases the actual comics, and you're left with this:

The inner 1/4" of the cover to #1 is eventually going to get attatched to the cover sheet, so all that mess of material will be well hidden.

With the core of the book completed, the next step is to make it look like, well, a book.

Measure out boards (just regular cardboard) for the front and back covers to be slightly bigger than the comic. It needs to be think card- I used the thickest I could find from the art store on my first project, but it wasn't think enough it turns out, since there's been some warping already. A visit to the stationary supply store in the weekend was more successful. A strip of card also needs to be cut for the spine. Frustratingly, I couldn't measure that up until after the block had dried and was removed from the clamps. That's annoying, as we'll see later.

You then glue the boards to a cover material- paper, cloth, leather etc. I found a cool metallic paper that also has a cloth feel to the back of it, it's very flexable but very strong. With the boards in place, stick some weights on it, and leave it overnight to dry. Yeah, that's the annoying part I mentioned earlier, since from here on out things are entirely at the mercy of glue drying times. It would've been nice to've gotten this set up while the previous step was drying, but until it was dry I wasn't willing to set the spine width in stone. It's not like you can change things once it's done. Oh well.

Tomorrow, a combination of finishing off the cover and if I'm lucky, attatching the core to the boards.

*I'm sure there's an obvious joke about binding Power Girl, but for everyone's sanity let's not go there ;)

Should've Paid More Attention in Sewing Class

2010-06-06T19:48:00.000-07:00

Destroying Power Girl comics, day two!
(Day 1 here)

Yesterday I prepared all the signatures for binding. A "signature" is a grouping of pages for binding- a regular comic with staples is a single "signature". If you look at any hardcover book, you'll be able to see the pages grouped into signatures, apparently in lots of 16 pages or so (something like that anyway, I haven't checked personally). With everything set up, it's time to do the actual binding.

To make sense of what I'm actually doing, things will ultimately be bound like so:

Each signature gets sewn around the tapes- this is what we're actually binding to and will be holding the finished book together. 3 tapes is the recommended amount based on the tutorials I've read, but since I'm doing 20 issues all up, I thought I'd add a 4th for extra strength to be on the safe side.

Before getting to the above though, the signatures need to have some holes punched in them.

At the top and bottom of each signature, there needs to be a hole about 1/2" in (this measurement varies depending on what you read, but around about). After that, it's a matter of spacing out the holes depending on how many strips of tape you're using. Open each signature up, lay the middle over something soft to allow a needle through, and get stabbing!

When it comes to sewing, I'm using a strong linen thread designed for carpet repairs etc. Tie a knot in one end, then enter the bottom hole. Note that when it comes to stitching around the tape, you go around them, not into them.

Then it's through the other side.

Once you've finished one signature, place the next one on top. Those extra holes at the top and bottom are where the signatures get sewn together.

Then you sew the 2nd signature around the tapes, exiting the hole at the opposite end, and connecting the next signature (so each new signature gets joined at the opposite end from the last one).

One thing I had trouble with on the first project was keeping everything tight as I went. With the constant opening of the comics as you sew, things have a tendancy to move. Solution: clamp the top signature from the middle, to the workbench. That way you can open it, but nothing moves.

After a few hours (I think I just spent about 3 or 4 on it), you get this:

All it needs now are the covers. Yeah, if only it was that simple ;) That is the major part done though.

Just going back to joining the signatures for a moment- when you reach the end of one, before starting on the next one, you need to tie a knot to the previous join below it:

That way even though only every second signature gets joined directly, they all wind up tied together at each end.

Even though I've now got a funky looking "block" (technical term for all the bound signatures), how it this thing actually going to be strong enough to do anything with? Glue!

If I was a professional, I'd have one of those proper book press things, but since I'm not, I make do with clamps, and lots of them!

Things need to be tightened up, so place the block between some wood and clamp it. Next I'm going to stick some cloth to the spine to really give it some strength.

There needs to be plenty of cloth on each side, since this will be the first point of contact to the covers once they're added. A decent amount of glue for the spine, and then...

After working the glue and cloth in to the spine, clamp it up and leave it to dry overnight. If all goes well, tomorrow I'll be left with a near-indestructable book block.

More to come...

Crazy But Cool

2010-06-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

**warning: contains mutilation of comics. Not for the faint hearted**

At one of the conventions a couple of months ago, there was a guy that had a really cool thing for Mike Allred to sign- a bound hardback copy of the entire X-Force/-Statics run. He had a couple of others with him too, and they looked fantastic. His interest in collecting lies in obtaining complete runs, and then getting the comics all professionally bound.

Since then I've thought about it a fair bit. I found an online Valiant community that's basically gone nuts and they've all bound up their collections, producing a handy guide to the various comics you might want to add in to a run to get the full story (ie crossovers with other books). So it's gotten to the point where I really wanted to do this. The local book binder is in the next city over from where I work, and doesn't open on weekends, so that kills that option. Binders in other parts of the country have pretty poor websites, if they have them at all- the most likely looking place to go has a website but no email, and I don't really want to just discuss this over the phone, since I had a bunch of questions and ideas.

In my searches, I came across many websites covering how to bind things yourself (the best one being here). Not really knowing if this was a good idea or not, I decided to try it. I chose to sacrafice the 7-issue run of TAKION by DC. I love it, but if anything went wrong well, it's easily available on ebay for around $5, so no biggie. Suprisingly for a first attempt, it turned out great. I didn't bother taking pics and stuff since I was not entirely sure what I was doing, but with my next project I'll be documenting the steps as I do them. So, on that note, I present:

HOW TO TOTALLY DESTROY YOUR POWER GIRL COLLECTION

With the Gray/Palmiotti/Connor lineup leaving the title with #12, I figured collecting their take on PG would be cool. I decided to add in the 4 issue JSA Classified story, and the 4 issue Terra mini since it's the same creative team and Terra ties in to the PG regular series quite nicely.

First step is to remove the staples.

The pages are all getting sewn together, so they'll only get in the way. Next up is to go through and find those pesky double sided 4 page ad inserts.

These are the easiest types of ads to remove- you can just pull them out and discard them (provided they're not glued in, which annoyingly they sometimes are). If I'm going to the trouble of binding all this, I want to eliminate as many ads as possible.

One thing I found with the first project, is that when you flick though the finished book the back cover of each issue gets in the way of the front cover of the issue following it (either static, or because they're both a bit thicker than the internal pages). This is annoying as it obscures the cover, plus it's another couple of ads I could do without.

I came up with the solution of joining the covers together in pairs- binding loose pages isn't really an option (as far as I know at this stage), so it's a of matter connecting things in a way that will let them be sewn in.

Here I cut off the back cover from #1, leaving a small part to be glued to #2's cover.

Cover #2 I cut off cleanly, so that it could be glued to the inside of the strip from #1.

It does leave a slightly unsightly join on the back, but it's not obstructing any actual content and should be atleast partly hidden in the margin once bound.

The pages for issue #1 then sit in between the two covers. The pages for #2 now have no cover, but this will not be a problem once they are all bound together.

I had to think a fair bit about the next part. DC has a current fixation with inserting previews for other comics. In the old days (that being the 80's for me), such a thing would've been inserted in the middle, and no problem to remove. These days, they're at the end of the story pages, so printed as part of the overall volume. Much more of a problem to remove, since it actually involves cutting them out if you want to get rid of them (which I do!)

They also like to add glue between the last story page of the comic, and the first page of the preview. I have no idea why, since it's all printed exactly the same and bound by staples, but it means there is ripping involved to remove it, which will leave you with a loose story page.

Thankfully, this is offset by the previews being 5 pages long (which equates to 3 sheets, plus the cover). An even number of sheets means everything can be tied together (an odd number and I'd be screwed). The one change that takes place is that the loose page (that was glued) gets bound on the opposite side from how it printed in the comic (conveniently, there's an ad on the back of the page, so it doesn't matter). It's just a matter of trimming off the tatty glued part of the page, since that will now be the outer edge...

...and attatching it to the cover using the same method I did for attatching the two covers previously.

That just leave two more sheets to cut up the same way and glue.

Then they sit between the other two pages to form a little mini-signature (a "signature" being a grouping of pages to be bound. If I wasn't cutting out pages and being clever, then each issue would be a signature on it's own)

Some of this may seem a little confusing, but the reasons for doing various steps should become clearer as things progress. It took a fair while to get my head around all this the first time.

Obviously, if you like your comic collection to be in anything resembling mint condition then you'll recoil in horror at this whole idea. Personally, while I do bag all my comics and look after them, that's primarily so that 20 years from now I don't have to re-buy something I want to read. I'd much rather they be accessible so I can pull them off a bookshelf and flick through them at will, rather than having to dig each issue out of a box and unwrap them before reading. Although having said that, I'm not about to go binding my Silver Surfer vol 1 collection or anything. I'm not quite that crazy.

Stay tuned, I'll be posting at the completion of each step. Up next: sewing everything together.

A product line full of possibilities

2010-04-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

I don't generally go for lewd content here, but having the printer at work spit out a label for a 12 " Talking Woody, for $69, is just too damn amusing to ignore.

Once I Was a Comic...But Now I'm a Book About Tigers

2010-04-21T22:45:00.000-07:00

Doing some stuff in the book department at work, I came across the above titled book. It's a book about tigers, printed on recycled paper, which may give you an idea about how disturbing this is about to get. Down the side of each page is a little story, an excerpt of which follows...

Hi!

Neat.

They must be Adventure Comics, because they're about to go on an adventure.

Poor thing, it's going to get flipped through by every kid that sees it. Goodbye "mint", hello "fine".

Oh sure, like that would really happen ;)

Yay!

...then 20 years later regretted it and spent a fortune on a CGC copy.

Wait, what? The kid did what?

This is like that movie "From Dusk Til Dawn" that all of a sudden turns into a horror flick halfway though.

Look at the crazy comics, they're STILL SMILING! Perhaps it's better they don't know.

!!!!

For the sake of everyone's sanity, I'm going to leave it there, because who needs to see more of that.

Brush or Pen? Both!

2010-04-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

One of the really interesting things at the recent conventions here was the tools the artists were using. 3 of them (Agnes Garbowska, Mike Allred, and Francis Manapul) were using the same ink pen, and I'd never seen it before.

It's a nifty little cross between a brush and a pen, using bristles but running off an ink cartridge. Which of course means you can do everything from detail to thick lines, and vary the weight of a line like you can with a brush, but without the hassle (and mess) of dipping from an ink well.

I wasn't the only one taken with this. The 3 of them combined could probably have sold a couple of dozen of the things, with the number of people asking them what it was they were using. Mike Allred put me on to the above Jetpens website, so I quickly put in an order (side note: don't visit "jetpen.com" by mistake, it is... disturbing). They arrived a couple of days ago (can't get them locally), so today I had a bit of a play, doing this in around 30 minutes:

It's really cool not having to change pens, or to fill in a think line using a thin tip. If your hand's not steady doing the thin lines then it really shows, had the shakes a few times. Doesn't seem like it will take a heck of a lot of practise to get used to though, the above came out pretty good for a first attempt.

Only 6 Months To Go...

2010-04-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

Well, that's the current convention season done and dusted.

As with Chchgeddon, I spent way more time than I probably should've with the comic guests, especially Mike and Laura Allred who were super cool. Mike deciding to do sketches (which he doesn't really do anymore) made my friggin week- majorly stoked to get one done, plus it was fun watching him do the others. (see previous post for pics)

I also splashed out on a Madman page:

Even though it took a freaking HOUR waiting in line, meeting Steve Blum and getting a couple of Guyver dvd covers signed was cool. It's my favourite anime, and as it turned out was the first voice job he got, so I think both of us were chuffed to relive the Guyver memories (he was Guyver 3).

There were some nice new stalls to look at this time too, the volume of dealers was a vast improvement on recent years.

Media guest wise, they were a bit hit-or-miss for me. The Star Trek panel with Dominic Keating, John Billingsley and Rene Auberjonois was interesting, the only low point being the inevitable "can I have a hug" question from the audience (such people need to be beaten).
Maybe it's just me, but John Billingsley and Bonita Friedericy together on stage wasn't as amusing as they seemed to think it was, but then I haven't watched them on anything so had nothing invested in it.
James Kyson Lee from Heroes was actually much better then I expected. I'm kind of cold on Heroes these days, but he was interesting enough.
Marion Ramsey (Police Academy) didn't bring anything to the table and was pretty much a waste of space. I didn't see her first panel in Christchurch, but the other 3 times she was on stage, she sang 3 Tina Turner songs. Quite why she thought we wanted to hear that I don't know, although she seemed to get a decent crowd reaction.
Michael Winslow had pretty much the same material as Auckland last year, but he's still cool enough that it wasn't a big deal.
Chaske Spencer (Twilight) didn't draw as big of a crowd as I expected. Considering he was the only guest on the Friday, he spent much of the afternoon at the signing table doing nothing. Maybe it got better for him the other 2 days. His panel showed why it's not so great being in something that attracts a young audience- I only saw a bit of it, but the questions were all painful to hear...

So that was that. I'm not totally sold on Wellington being a big enough event to support a 3 day show. It was kinda cool having the Friday to hit the stalls and buy stuff, and then worry about the guests on the other 2 days, but it's certainly not essential.

Onwards to Auckland in Oct/Nov!

Brief Interlude For Coolness

2010-04-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

Currently in the middle of the Wellington Armageddon convention. Will give a bit of a rundown after the final day tomorrow, but for now just wanted to show off a couple of sketches I had done today.

The first is by Agnes Garbowska.

Her stuff's super cute, she has an issue of Spider-Ham coming out from Marvel in the next month or two.

The second sketch, which is what I'm most excited about, is by Mike Allred.

Mike's retired from doing convention sketches, and the previous week at the Christchurch con turned down all requests. This week I guess he was just in the mood for drawing, he got through 4 requests today. Lucky for me I was hanging around early on, since I wound up buying a Madman page (pics to come later). His wife Laura commented in the afternoon that she still couldn't believe he was doing sketches, so that's how rare they are. I love the character to it.

Framing Armageddon

2010-03-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

Following on somewhat from yesterday's post about my convention purchases, today I framed my Wonder Woman page by Nicola Scott. That is, after walking the city trying to find a frame big enough...

As I've shown before, I like to get creative when I'm cutting the boards for a frame. This time I almost did it the traditional way, but as soon as I sat down to do it, I was hit with inspiration. I had a lot of dead space between the picture and the frame, so why not drop in the Wonder Woman logo.

I think it came out great. It took a little over 2 hours to do, but was worth the effort.

Just to be extra clever, I changed the bevelled edge on the red card to an undercut so it slotted in seamlessly with the yellow card.

Who said frames have to be boring.

Armageddon 2010. Round 1. Fight!

2010-03-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

Round 1 of the two-week convention double header is done and dusted. Got home today (Tuesday) from Armageddon in Christchurch over the weekend. Now you may say "but hang on, it's the same guests at both cons". Well yes, but with one notable exception: Nicola Scott was only attending this one (actually there's a couple of actors only attending the upcoming con, but who cares about them ;)). So yes, although it was a good excuse to bum around Christchurch for a few days, I essentially made the 40 minute plane flight to see Nicola. It was worth it.

This is what fun looks like the night before:
...and no, I wasn't stalking the event, my hotel was 3 doors down from the con.
As was the case last year, the local comic store slayed their counterparts in the Wellington and Auckland cons again, with the sheer mass of their $1 bins. I wound up having to mail my stack of comics back to myself, and it clocked in at a feather under 5kg (11 pounds for those that still use an archaic measuring system :p). No way in hell I was getting that back on the plane via my carry-on bag. While it was slim pickings as far as knocking things off my wants list, I managed to pick up an almost complete run of the first 40 issues of X-O Manowar.

Comic guests this time were Nicola Scott, Mike Allred, and Francis Manapul. All were really friendly and engaging to talk to. I wound up not watching any of the acting guests (I'll see them next week), instead talking to Nicola and Mike a whole lot, and watching Francis draw.

For the first time, the con supplied free cards to get signed by the comic guests. This was an excellent move, both as something for passing kids to get signed, and (as Mike Allred observed) a nice little exclusive for the NZ shows for those of us that care about such things.

I hit Nicola up for a sketch first:

I got her to do Jason last time she was over here, so now I have a Ronnie Firestorm to go with it.
Then it was over to Francis Manapul:

Pretty damn cool. When I wasn't bugging Mike and Nicola (which I did a whole bunch heh), I was watching Francis crank these out. Awesome to watch, and for a totally insane $40. He has his girlfriend over with him, Agnes Garbowska (she works for Marvel), she had assorted prints of her work which is really really cute. Amazing coincidence, but she had a Blackest Night picture with Firestorm in it. Sold!

Mike Allred doesn't do sketches anymore which is a bit of a bummer, but he had plenty of art on offer. I picked up a cheap page from the Spaceman one-shot:

I haven't read the comic, but I really dig this page (images were ultimately laid over a painted background). His wife (who colours Mike's work) was there also, she was really nice. That's 5 comic pros at one table, and they were all really friendly and easy to talk to. That's not always the case, so I wound up spending more time with them than expected. They probably all secretly hate me by now ;) Although, I did buy Mike a packet of Tim Tam biscuits, after Nicola started raving about them (I won't bore you with the details), so that's gotta count in my favour ;)

Back to Nicola Scott, and the majorly hard decision for the weekend- what pages to buy. Seriously, I spent ages flipping back and forth through her folder. So many great pages. I had gone in planning to pick up 2 or 3 Secret Six pages, but wound up with just the one:

A nice little playful scene between Deadshot and Jeanette, with a great Ragdoll panel. The reason I only got one S6 page was because I found this beauty:
Pages 2 & 3 from Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #1. Brilliant. I've been wanting to get a double page splash for a while, nice that it's one of Nicola's and that I bought it direct from her. As an after though, I also asked for another sketch, since she was sitting there doing nothing:

Great eyes.

Onward to next weekend. I have a couple of Madman pages I'm considering picking up, but most of the next con will be spent watching the actors do their thing. Well, that's the plan anyway...

Better Luck Next Time

2010-03-25T01:03:00.000-07:00

I really don't like to be negative on this thing. There's too many negative blogs out there, but I feel bummed enough to want to comment.

I love Moon Knight. He was the favourite character of my best friend in high school, so I got to read his collection, and I've built up my own over the years after I found him to be pretty darn cool. I own MK original art. I want to read an ongoing Moon Knight title. The problem is, the current one isn't very good.

I noticed a problem with issue #5, in that it took 3 minutes to read, literally. I know this because I was on the train, and I started reading it just as we entered a tunnel. The tunnel takes 3.5 minutes to go through, and I'd finished the book before we left the tunnel. Bummer. Maybe every issue was like that and I just didn't notice, but I figured it had to be a one-off. So today issue #6 arrives...

The following is the title page getting you up to speed:

The sort of thing you'd take about a minute to read through. It's 436 words. Which leads me to the problem. The following 22 pages contain just 502 words (see, I care about Moon Knight enough to actually do a word count). That's 502 including various "aarghs!" from the fight scenes, but minus the "wham!" sound effects.

Now, the artist is doing a hell of a job. Really nice stuff. And you get to see it all too, because there's multiple pages with little or no text. It's your typical cinematic approach to writing comics which is good for some things, but not for delivering value for money. By way of comparrison, in the new X-Factor Forever #1, Louise Simonson hits 500 words about halfway through page 7. Writer Gregg Hurwitz has actually told a decent tale in this series, it's just that it's a screenplay for a movie, not a script for a comic book.

So yeah, this was the long way of saying Moon Knight's dropped.

Things You Shouldn't Say To Orion

2010-03-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

Would You Like A Bag For That Bag?

2010-03-08T23:48:00.000-08:00

Got a cool thing at the comic shop yesterday. I assume these are everywhere, but it's cool to have for completists like me since it's got Black Lantern Firestorm on it.

Seems a bit late in the Blackest Night run to suddenly be putting out bags, but it was free so I'm not gonna argue. Not exactly something that's easy to store as part of a collection though.

Great, now everyone will want one

2010-03-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend we had a comic reference pop up in my local Sunday newspaper, and it was actually mildly amusing. What's the world coming to?

Help save the planet

2010-03-06T19:41:00.000-08:00

ok, not really. I need a bit of help. I'm trying to find any comic characters (sci-fi, anime etc will do too) that have a planet as part of their costume, or logo, or whatever. So far I have the Kree warrior uniform:

Then there's Mogo. Not so much a uniform as an actual planet, but close enough:

I suppose based on that, Ego The Living Planet would count too, but he's a bit elaborate for my needs. Oh yeah, I guess following that train of thought there's also Unicron:

Captain Planet sucks, so he doesn't count.

Anyway, if anyone out there can think of any others, name-drop in the comments please.

Bonus Content:

Someone might want to drop google a line.

Mentioning the Skrulls when you search for Kree could start a war.

Assorted thoughts

2010-03-01T00:02:00.000-08:00

Just a few brief things I've found interesting/amusing over the last month.

I took a punt and added Blackest Night: Flash to my pull list when it was announced, since Geoff Johns making the Flash + Firestorm connection seemed obvious. Issue 1 was a bust, but the final 2 issues paid off. Only a brief appearance in #3, but it rules:

Barry fighting off Firestorm with a Firehawk ring construct is brilliant.

Slightly more puzzling than brilliant, is the question of just what the hell happened to Power Girl's boob window in the last issue of JSA All Stars.

I'm sure it was there last month...

Issue 4 of Realm Of Kings: Royal Guard had this interesting little sequence:

hmmm, fire-guy gets his containment field breached, and explodes. I'm sure I've seen that before somewhere...

Finally, just because I love me some tough-guy talk:

From Secret Six, naturally.

Also thought I'd mention incase I'm not the only one that almost never reads any sort of Previews type thing (either in print or online), the ORIGINAL X-FACTOR lineup is back, seemingly carrying on close to where it left off, with Louise Simonson back writing it. I am stoked, as that comic remains my all-time favourite. Will it live up to my memory of the original? Probably not, but I'm just glad I'm going to have back 5 characters that I used to really care about, in a form I recognise (that is, without the past 15 years of X-men baggage and assorted tinkering). Thank goodness for those little preview pages in the back of comics, or I may well never have found out about this.

So Much Work, And Nobody Even Dies

2010-01-12T23:36:00.000-08:00

Just got hold of the original art for Firestorm v2 #45 page 12. Aside from a couple of great Hyena shots, I found this one panel really interesting purely for the amount of editorial guidance that went in to it:

First of all, we have the letterer Carrie Spiegle needing to add one of those line thingies (technical term) over the E in CAFE (all red markings are by me to highlight)

Next, the point on Felicity's speech bubble was lengthed. I've roughly drawn in where it originally went, as it's twinked out and doesn't show on the scan. I guess it looked a little too much like the woman in the background was talking, although you'll notice they didn't exactly follow the editor's suggested look (in blue).

The note in the margin reads "lenthen point to Felicity"

Finally, there's a note to change the hairstyles on a couple of figures. The margin note reads "More black in both Ronnie & Ed Raymond's hair, also fix Ed's hair style". Both figures in question are circled.

One small problem though. While that's certainly Ronnie on the left, on the right it's Doreen, not Ed! Ed is the figure with his back to the camera. Editor Janice Race missed that the figure on the right is wearing a skirt, so we're left with a very masculine head on a woman's body.

That's pretty funny.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

2010-01-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

Another bit of comparisson of the printed page vs the original art. This is from Bloodhound #5 (by Kirk & Riggs), in a scene where Jason has an attempt to merge with Bloodhound rather emphatically denied. From the comic:

Original:

At the risk of sounding like I have something against colorists, I really prefer it in black and white. Could've been interesting if they still did all the lettering on the page though ;)

Manhunter in 30 seconds

2010-01-03T23:29:00.000-08:00

Chris over at the ISB is running his annual "30 second" event, which means more bad art from me. Hooray!

This time around, it's the "Trial By Fire" arc from Manhunter, in which Shadow Thief is put on trial for the murder of Firestorm.

Previous years efforts here and here

If you've got it, share it

2010-01-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

Following on from my last post (it's almost like I planned it...), this seems as good a time as any to point out that my entire art collection is all scanned and online right here!

36 pages of both classic and modern Firestorm, an entire issue of Moon Knight prelims, convention sketches, and a bunch of other pages from Blue Beetle, Aquaman, Birds Of Prey etc.

Despite what it tells you when you register a paid account, the pages do not quite display on a 1:1 scale. Shag over at Firestorm Fan has full size scans of various pages on his site, so consider that the place to go for the proper article. As an online collection all in one place though, ComicArtFans serves it's purpose very well.

It won't be up to date for long though, I just won two more Firestorm pages on ebay ;)

Sometimes high tech isn't better

2010-01-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

Just had some more Firestorm artwork arrive (4 pages!), a christmas present for myself if you will (well that's my excuse, really it was just because a dealer was having a sale). Of particular interest (well, to me anyway) is the first panel from #6, page 18. As it appeared in the comic:

Cool effects and all, but here's what was actually there originally:

Heh, that's an awful lot of lines and white dots to have a colorist come along and cover up. The printed panel is certainly effective, but I think I prefer the original art (by Batista & Green).

Sailing The Sea's of Geeks

2009-10-27T23:35:00.000-07:00

So this year was my first venture to Auckland Armageddon, and what a time to go. Totally awesome 3 days. I flew up from Wellington on Friday, and once settled took a walk to the event as a test to see how long it was going to take. 25 minutes as it turned out, with a McDonalds nicely placed in the middle (or so it seemed. Don't go to Greenlane McD's for breakfast, all the incompetant people work at that time and you'll be standing in a 2 person que for 10 minutes...).

SATURDAY
I rolled up to the event at 8am (doors opened 9am), to be faced with an already-massive line. That didn't last long for me though, since it turned out 95% of the people waiting didn't have tickets, so I pretty much got near the front of the ticket-holders line and when the doors did open us smart ones walked straight in. Shortest line-up of ticket holders I've ever seen, I guess it's trendy in Auckland to not plan ahead.

The venue was HUGE. Such a good setup for the event. Plenty of fun stuff to do outside too.

Hey, almost like Disneyland:

Stuff to do inside too:

Everyone probably took a photo of this, and why not since it rules:

First order of business for the day (other than running around looking at all the cool stuff) was the comic guests who arrived at 10:30. Nicola Scott had to cancel last minute, which I was initially bummed about since she was the one I most wanted to see (she was cool at the Wellington event a couple of years ago). Wound up not being an issue, as the 4 guests they had was plenty. I actually hadn't noticed the Matthew Clark (Outsiders/ Doom Patrol) was attending, but he did and I wound up dropping $370 on his art. First up a Firestorm sketch:

That's such a cool drawing, one of the best Firestorm pieces I have. He also had a huge stack of art with him, and I couldn't resist. Picked up 2 pages from Doom Patrol #2:

Amusing side note: I had these layed out in my hotel room, and today when I checked out the lady on reception, who had happened to clean the room, commented that my "art was very beautiful". Ugh, it killed me to admit that it wasn't me that did it ha (I can draw like that in my dreams maybe...)

I got a bunch of comics signed, here's one from each:

(L to R: Sienkiewicz, Clark, Rucka, David)
Peter David was also selling his scripts which damn it, not enough writers do because I love that stuff.

Bill Sienkiewicz's page prices were a bit steep for my budget, but I still forked out $150 for a sketch:

Sweeeeeeeeeeettttt. And with that, my budget of $500 for the weekend was blown already. Still, the comic stuff is what I came for. Having said that, I didn't attend any of the comic panels, opting instead for the Stargate panels. Bill would've been cool to hear, but I don't follow the other 3 creators so wasn't too worried (plus, y'know, Stargate Atlantis)

I suppose this is as good a time to say it as any: I would go gay for Jason Momoa. He was really really cool. Very likeable and funny. My camera sucks, but if you didn't fork out for a gold or silver pass, this is a little of what you missed:
Jason and Joe Flannigan playing off each other was great (as was Paul McGillion, but my shots with him didn't come out). Real chemistry between them all and possibly the best panel I've seen.

If you're ever in a small panel setting with Michael Winslow, DO NOT leave halfway though and then come back a few minutes later like one woman did, because he will make jokes about you the whole time you're gone.

Oh hey, I mentioned the queue earlier, which apparently was 2 hours long for most of the day. I can believe that, since this was taken around midday:

...and that was nowhere near the main entrance. Crazy bloody Aucklanders :p

Sunday & Monday
Queue problems were sorted by opening the gates early. I rolled up at 8am to find noone waiting (which was actually a little disconcerting at first). Was cool though, I sat in the outdoor area and had breakfast.

Yep, ghost town

This year I thought it could be cool to get the actors to sign things other than the standard glossy photo. There's Stargate toys, so I went with those:

I'm not organised enough to try finding Farscape toys (if they exist), so I went with the comic instead, which was a good choice since Gigi Edgley didn't know about it:

aaaand I went with a couple of standard photos to round things off

Make a decision already

2009-08-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

Left

Right

Left

Right

Left

Right

Do Black Lanterns get magical reversing costumes, or can DC not make a simple decision?

Fabric paint and too much spare time

2009-08-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I pretty much don't need to say anything, do I?

Below is the template I made, incase you also have no life and want to make one. You're on your own when it comes to drawing out the fingers though.

A Firestorm by any other name...

2009-08-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

This has been bugging me for a while. The excellent Transformers Animated toy line (and probably the tv show) has come up with these two characters:
Jetfire

and Jetstorm.

I'll say that again incase you didn't quite catch it. jetFIRE and jetSTORM. In and of itself, no big deal. I certainly remember the awesome-looking Jetfire from the G1 days of Transformers in the 80's, and Jetstorm was probably there too. No, what makes this suspect is that their main ability is to merge into a single robot:

Coincidence?

Convention time again

2009-03-31T01:11:00.000-07:00

Armageddon has been and gone for another year. Since I'll be busy during the upcoming Wellington event, I travelled from Wellington to Christchurch. Just a brief post this time, I wasn't really in the mood for mass photo-taking or other fan-ish things, so don't have much to say. My hotel room sucked and I got entirely too little sleep :\

The comic guest this year was Darrick Robertson (Transmetropolitan, The Boys). Very cool guy, really chatty and easy to talk to. I hit him up for a sketch, requesting a Firestorm pic as always . Turns out he's a big Firestorm fan too, we had an enjoyable discussion about missed opportunities with Ronnie Raymond. Someone at DC needs to let him loose on this, because he totally said he'd like to do it, and I'd like to see that. So, the pic:

Love it.

Also attending was manga writer/artist Queenie Chan. I asked her for a Firestorm sketch too, ha. She was a bit reluctant, having not drawn any superhero stuff before, but I had come armed with reference material, and said she could do it however she wanted. I went in expecting a head shot, and she came up with this:

Way beyond the call of duty for a free sketch. Making it doubly awesome, when she had finished it (in pencil) Darrick grabbed it and asked me if he could ink it. Like I'm going to say no to that. Really interesting to see the way he embellished it, while following what Queenie had done. I LOVE the head, it has a real character about it.

The comic stalls were better than they've been in Wellington the last couple of years, helped in particular by the local store (Comics Compulsion) bringing in a bunch of their $1 bins. I got to browse them in relative peace for about the first half-hour on Saturday morning, then it was pretty much all go. Lots of young kids pulling out X-men and Spider-man comics (among others), always good to see. I wound up with 66 comics total, costing $140. The buy pile:

I ended up posting this back to myself, as it weighed just under 5kg and there was no way I was getting that all in my carry-on luggage on the flight back.

As with every year, I went in with a budget of $500. Last year I blew that by a fair bit, thanks mostly to Nicola Scott. This year I only spent $150, the only non-comic purchase being a photo print of Beast Boy (Teen Titans) for Greg Cipes to sign. Probably a good result for me though, given the added expense of having to travel.

Sexy Time Week: Backlash

2008-12-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

I'm rounding out Sexy Time Week with a look at Backlash, an adult comic by Caragonne and Beachum. It was serialised in Penthouse magazine (US edition) as part of their Penthouse Comix imprint. This episode is from the Feb 1996 issue.

Errr, nice ass. I guess that's what one should say when faced with something like that, heh. It's a given that things are going to revolve around naked people, but how about the actual plot?

Lesbo-Feminists! Gyno-Traitors! Oh the horror!

Heh, they said "penetrated"...

That would be the high tech bike they mentioned. I haven't read the rest of the series (honest), but that panel right there is all the action (violence related atleast) you're gonna get this issue. That may or may not be a bad thing depending on what you want from your porn comics.

Our troubled heroine needs to get things off her chest*, and stops by the local church for confession. Here's as good a time as any to pause and admire her costume.

That's taking the dental-floss g-string concept to a whole new level, it's a wonder she can walk.

Not content with just listening, the priestess has a confession of her own. Dark sense of foreboding anyone?

Hey, I don't go to church, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work. Maybe I need to start going...

Can I get a "yay, lesbians"?

Yes, yes I can.

Don't be fooled though. This is a grim and gritty tale of the future!

As opposed to Jaguar God, this writer actually makes an effort to atleast make things a little interesting. Or at the very least, they know what caption boxes are for.

Just in case you were in any doubt as to how large Backlash's breasts are:

One explosion, a lesbian scene, and a little bit of plot advancement. Mission accomplished, agent Backlash!

*yes, I actually managed to refrain from adding a bad joke there. I'm amazed too.

Sexy Time Week: Can't Sing, Can't Write Comics

2008-12-06T18:33:00.000-08:00

.....aaaaand we're back. Today, it's a look at the oh-so-awesome Jaguar God #4 from Verotik Comics, the adult line overseen (and in this case, written by) one Glenn Danzig.

The series premise being that there's a primitive jungle land overseen and protected by the mythical Jaguar God, who manifests as a barbarian cloaked in Jaguar skins. Your basic excuse to have naked jungle chicks, and people getting hacked up with axes. That's an idea I can get behind, but will it be any good? The readers seemed to think so:
On with the show!

In this tale, Spanish forces led by some 3-armed dude have invaded the jungle and are enslaving/killing/torturing the natives.

Don't forget, this is an adult comic. There's not just going to be nudity, there's going to be "adult situations". How will the male captors handle being surrounded by all that girl flesh?

Cue explicit rape scene where 4 guys try to have their way with one of the slave girls. I'll spare you the visual evidence, and just skip to the rescue by our hero!

I'm all for rapists getting cut in half, tbh

Conveniently, the men get to wear clothes or loin cloths. The women just have to stay naked and strike revealing poses. Come to think of it, this jungle must be in Brazil, because the girls all have the wax jobs to prove it. Pubes do not a good comic make.

So anyway, Jaguar God runs around killing people for a few pages, then it's time for the boss fight.

Have a read of those awesomely descriptive captions. I'm so glad they thought to describe what was happening in the pictures, because I couldn't figure it out on my own.

That's that, and it's all over bar the letters page, which is just as 'good' as the comic.

Behold, the "real world" goodness of the Jaguar God!

Yeah, DC and Marvel would be totally jealous of all the artists causing the several-month delays between issues. Having a different artist every issue (and 2 in this one) had absolutely nothing to do with scheduling ;)

This thing really is crap on so many different fronts. Weak plot (why would Jaguar God let dozens of his people be slaughtered, but intervene when one of them gets raped?), very skimpy dialogue, captions mirroring exactly what the artist is showing you. Not to mention the typical idea of "adult" comics meaning you get to show all sorts of things happening to women, rather than coming up with interesting stories that happen to involve sex related stuff.

Sexy Time Week: Inter-lude

2008-12-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'm sick with a cold, and it's summer. Go me. "Sexy Time Week" will return shortly with a terrifying look at the mind of Glen Danzig, but in the mean time, I found this old DC editorial piece quite amusing:

Sexy Time Week: Of back doors and demons

2008-12-02T11:18:00.000-08:00

Etrigan's such a naughty Demon. Of course, it's entirely possible I'm reading the innuendo into it myself. My brain's kinda screwy like that...

Sexy Time Week: Remember to wrap up, kids

2008-12-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

A public service message brought to you by the JLI circa 1993.

Yes Booster, he clearly means aids. It's the type of thing most guys throw into casual conversation.

Eeeek!

Gotta love Bea sticking up for her skanky friends ;)
I don't quite understand what Ted's feeling better about, but never mind.

Sexy Time Week: Choose your name with care

2008-11-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

After yesterdays post, I've retroactively decided to make it the kick off for what I'll call "Sexy Time" week- a look at some of the more adult angles in comics and related stuff.

Today, Etrigan and Hitman have a meeting.

Ahhh, I love The Demon when a decent writer's handling him (Garth Ennis in this case).

Sexy Time Week: A great moment in translation

2008-11-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

From the first episode of the anime Gravion:

The show's pretty crap, but that's classic.

Some things should not be done in silhouette

2008-11-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

The end result is not always what's intended...

Spawning Hype

2008-11-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

So there's this book called Spawn that's been around a few years. You may've heard the massive hype that's been going on for months about a "relaunch" of sorts. Or you may live under a rock, and not heard it. Whichever, I thought I'd take a look at the "bold new direction" that was getting kicked off with Spawn #185.

I used to love Spawn. I stuck with it from the beginning (well, technically #16 was where I jumped on) up to #120 before I chucked in the towel. There's probably more issues in that run that I found frustrating than issues I truly loved, but I still have somewhat of a soft spot for the character. Old fans were being invited back for the new story, and I figured I'd see what it looked like to someone who's had a 65 issue break from the comic.

First thing to check out, the recap of recent events on the inside cover:

My scanner may have decided to render that almost unreadable, but that actually sounds like a story I'd love to read. If only that was the relaunch.

The comic proper gets going with a 7 page, almost text free, sequence showing Spawn returning to Earth from Hell. Then he sticks a finger in his eye.
Damn contact lense. If felt so good, he has to do it again, this time with the whole hand.

And hey, if you're gonna do that, may as well rip off your head while you're at it.

Interesting...

Presumably at that exact moment, a comatose patient known as "Patient 47" wakes up. This guy right here:

The main mystery of the issue (and presumably the arc) is introduced here. While the hospital staff rush to attend him, we find that some less than desirable people have been watching, waiting for him to wake. We get the hint that he's important (new Spawn, anyone?), but that's pretty much where things are left.

The final sequence deals with Violator, doing his usual tough-guy ranting about being "pissed off" etc (*yawn*), when he stumbles across Headless Spawn (wait for the toy!)

Classy!

So yeah, impressions: I'm left feeling pretty "meh" about it. For a start, it was very light on the text- 12 pages which were 95% visual, and the whole thing felt like it read in 5 minutes. Never a good thing in my book. The story itself? It sets a couple of threads off (who is Patient 47, what's happened to Al Simmons), but really it just touches on those. For a relaunch, there's nothing to grab you and draw you in to the book. Spawn's major failing as a book (atleast when I read it) was always the god-damned eternity it took for the story to advance and answers to be given, and as a returning reader, I really can't face the prospect of having to go through all that again. The whole idea that I liked in the recap is also somewhat done in, with the appearance of the big V, and a preview of next issue showing an Angel hunter. Seems like status quo to me.

Predictions: Spawn has died, eventually passing the mantle to Patient 47. He'll fight Violator, and the angel, and the shady guys will try to manipulate the new Spawn. "New Spawn" will be on a quest to find out why all this is happening to him. All of which was done 185 issues ago. I may be totally wrong here. Even so, like I said, there was nothing in this "relaunch" to grab me, shake me, and scream "you must read the next issue!". If you're a Spawn fan, I hope you enjoy it. Me, I think I'll pass.

Fantastic at what exactly?

2008-11-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Sure, it's a good book and all, but what the hell is Mr Fantastic doing with his thumb?

These are a few of my favourite things

2008-11-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

A public service announcement courtesy of this blog and the ABC Warriors, should you be in need of some new listening material.

Entombed

Severe Torture
Massacre
Hate Eternal
Coldwar
Meads Of Asphodel
Brutal Truth

Sunn 0)))

Cattle Decapitation

Yes, there really is a band called Cattle Decapitation. They're vegetarians. Go figure. The comic missed an obvious joke though, by failing to mention Bolt Thrower.

How Not To Treat Girls, featuring Firestorm

2008-11-16T13:00:00.000-08:00

Ronnie and Doreen's relationship has stalled. Time for a heart to heart.

So far, so good.

It's not going to last though, is it?

Intentional or not, Ronnie can never seem to control that most subtle of Firestorm powers...

...the ability to look like an asshat to his girlfriend.

Mini toy review: Grimlock

2008-11-15T15:08:00.000-08:00

I've been trying not to buy any of the Transformers Animated line. I love the look, and knowing me, if I buy one I'll want to buy them all. My resistance has finally caved though, with the arrival of Grimlock!

Dinobots are awesome, I had to. Plus he's so cute. Err, in a manly dinosaur kind of way...

He's part of the "Activator" line, so he can jump to robot mode at the push of a button, which I'm sure would've kept me amused for hours as a little kid. Hell, I've already played with the function enough as it is.

His T-rex form is also really cool. It creates a bit of a problem though. Afterall, in robot mode, that head's gotta go somewhere...

Yeah, standing up on his own is not really going to happen. Not falling over aside, his articulation and poseability is excellent. Hey Grimlock, how big was that Decepticon you caught?

Groovy. As with most smaller scale Transformers these days, his joints are of the plastic ball/socket variety, designed to pop apart if you put even a fraction too much strain on them, which even with my casual 'play' to see how it moved, had this result a bit too often for my taste:

Overall, a really cool looking figure, but a little lacking in a few key areas (Standing up and not falling apart). Not a problem for me, since it's just going to sit on a shelf for the rest of it's life, but something to consider if you're planning on taking the fight to Megatron.

Firestorm Hates Captain Atom, part 3

2008-05-31T22:26:00.000-07:00

Captain Atom and Firestorm just don't get along. Will the threat posed by the Manhunters in Millennium Week 4 be enough for them to put their differences aside and work together?

Fat chance. It's time for Captain Atom #11, by Bates, Broderick, and Smith.

Making this one more interesting than just your standard Cap/Stormy slap fight, is the fact that this is the 'new' child-like Firestorm who understands very little about the world. His simplistic nature means the Manhunters were able to convince him they were his creators, allowing them to use him to interfere with the good guys. Cap is on a mission to stop a nuclear bomb, but faces a bit of a delay...

The initial skirmish is surprisingly brief. Captain Atom gets in a good first punch, but Firestorm retaliates by encasing him in a metal sphere. Cap tries to blast his way out, but Firestorm is able to regenerate the shell as quickly as it's destroyed, resulting in a stalemate. An effective strategy, which it's fair to say the old Firestorm wouldn't have thought of. Score one for the newbie.

All that's left, is to do what they should've done long ago, and talk.

Cap figures out quickly that the Firestorm he's dealing with isn't too bright (well, moreso than usual, atleast where these two are concerned). Assuming it's the result of brainwashing, he tries to reason with him by using stories from his past. He starts off with his childhood and how his love of flying developed.

He succeeds in showing Stormy that the Manhunters preventing manking from reaching it's full potential would be bad. However, FS still has doubts that the Manhunters would deceive him. Time for a story about Cap's early days...
...where he had to disobey orders to save a couple of soldiers. There's a slight hitch to this plan though. The Manhunters gave Firestorm a full briefing on Captain Atom's history, leading Flame-head to call bullshit on his silver foe.

Liar liar, pants on fire. Or lungs full of nerve gas. Something like that, anyway.

In a last ditch attempt, Cap tells one final story, this time about the real events behind his origin.

...aaaand Firestorm gets the lesson that he should trust his instincts. So he does, and lets Cap go. They race off to stop the nuke from hurting anyone, then it's time for some bonding.

Awwwww, they end up as friends. Yay.

Afterthought

2008-05-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

Just a brief addition to my post about body casting. I've filled the leg cast with expanding foam.

The spots of foam bursting through the tape are where I had to cut so I could get the nozzle right through the whole thing. It wound up taking the whole can.

Once I'd filled it, I stuck a cardboard tube (from gift wrap) down it, to make a bit of a gap down the length of the leg. Expanding foam needs air circulation to cure properly, so I thought it might be a good idea to create a void (I didn't leave the tube in there). The foam fully hardened in around 24 hours.

Identity Crisis vs Identity Crisis

2008-05-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

...wherein we combine Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer, with Identity Crisis by Kate Donovan, in the hopes of making Identity Crisis (the former) better.

Body Casting For The Simple Man

2008-05-24T01:26:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around a bit with costume creation recently. Reading various tutorials on the net, I had a go at doing a bit of the Guyver suit, purely as an experiment to see how it all worked. For a first attempt, having never sculpted with clay, or cast a plaster mould or anything, it came out ok. I just did the forearm gauntlet.

I'm not a big fan of working with harmful chemicals, so I cast it using hot glue rather than fibreglass. Obviously it will require some practise to refine the casting method, but I've seen results on the net that show it's feasable.

I had been planning to post pics of the process I used, but I didn't take any as I went, and I had to destroy the sculpt in order to demould it (the cured (and varnished) clay softened while it was in plaster over night, apparently I did something wrong), so that was that. But, I've started another project, and this time my camera was close by.

For a part to be wearable, you need a cast taken from your body. Every tutorial I read involved using resin bandaging. Problem: toxic vapor. Solution: paper and packing tape instead. I had no idea if it was feasable before I tried it, but it works, and here's how.

The basic idea is to wrap a limb in paper and then reinforce it with packing and duct tape. You need to tape the edges to your skin initially, to stop the paper moving as you apply the packing tape. I don't use any special sort of paper, just some ancient computer rolls I've had lying around for a good 20 years. One layer of paper is enough.

Round and round we go- it's as simple as that. I use duct tape for extra support around critical areas (eg kneecap), and any places that feel like they might be a bit weak. Use plenty of tape, it's all that will be holding the form once it's taken off the limb.

Time to cut it off. I put a strip of duct tape along the line I'll be cutting, to strengthen the edge.

It pays to draw some horizontal lines across the tape, to make it easier to match the pieces up to reasemble the cast. Cut it off, and be careful!

When it's off, you'll be left with this (hopefully blood free):

Then it's just a matter of using the lines to reassemble it.

I made all this up as I went along, so maybe there's a better way to do it, but I think it's a good idea to also duct tape around the ends, and along the join. And there we have it:

It's not perfect, but good enough for the job. The only thing left to do is fill it with something so that you can work with it without it turning to a crumpled mess. After some thought, I came up with the idea of expanding foam (sold in spray cans at hardware shops). It works pretty well, much less time consuming (and cheaper) than trying to use plaster or something. Once cured, it's strong enough to handle pretty much anything.

Continued here.

Normal Transmission Will Resume Shortly

2008-05-23T23:44:00.001-07:00

Erractic posting on this blog is nothing unusual, but this whole "Moments In Death Metal" thing (upcoming: Iron Fist) is taking entirely more effort than I was expecting. Between that, actually reading comics, and watching Ghost In The Shell : SAC, I've been finding little time to actually post content. Things should be a bit more regular shortly (I hope).

Anyway, in the meantime, I've been adding to my toy collection recently, including $140 in purchases today alone. I completed the Iron Man movie series:

The Limited Edition version (far right) had been going for $25 at Toyworld, and there was no way I was paying that for it. Eventually a department store got them in, and I picked it up for $18. That prompted me to buy the Mark 2 and Removeable Armour versions. I don't know why anyone buys things at Toyworld, they're so much more expensive then everywhere else. I'll only go there for the occassional item that noone else is carrying.

At the card shop today, the new JLA figures were in, I got Hawkgirl to add to my JSA lineup.

(sidenote: the sooner she leaves JLA and goes back where she belongs, the better. Better wait until the JSA gets rid of half their roster though, or she'll never get any face time).

Also in at the card shop, the Manga-ised version of Power Girl:

Heeeeeee, it's so cute. Expensive, but cute. As you can see, I've made a little Power Girl shrine.

I've bought a bunch of Hotwheels Batmobiles too, might post pics at a later date.

I'd pay $50 for one

2008-05-22T02:41:00.000-07:00

Some absolute legend of a guy has built his own Iron Man suit. Amazing.

(click picture for link)

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Overdoing

2008-05-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

I've come up with a bit more wall space recently, so it was time to frame another page. I've previously talked about this excellent Blue Beetle page by Casey Jones. After my successful experiment with matting a Birds Of Prey page, I felt like having another go at something unconventional. Pretty quickly I came up with the mad idea of cutting out Beetle's chest emblem into the mat. Yes, it would've been easier to paint it on. No, I don't like easy things. Result, pre-frame.

The first thing I wanted to try was following the panel alignment, which I thought might look cool. I could've done with 1mm or 2 of extra space, it wound up a closer fit than I'd planned, but it works well enough.

Then on to the icon for the black matt. I found a giant image of it via google, resized it to fit, then printed it out. The old-school carbon paper cheat of scribbling pencil on the back was used to transfer the image to the card, then it came to the pain staking task of cutting it all out.

I didn't time it, but I think I spent a little over an hour on this. It was actually pretty straight foward once I got the hang of it, just required a bit of planning before each cut to make sure the edge was sloping the right way, and that I wasn't going to run over another part with the blade.

It initially didn't fit the frame quite right, the top of the icon was obscured. I cut 5mm off the bottom (of the matt, not the art!), and hey presto, it looked perfect.

The finished product hanging on the wall.
Left to right: Vigilante (Todd Smith), Blue Beetle (Casey Jones), Mantra (Robb Phipps), Firestorm (Nicola Scott)

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

2008-05-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

Continuing on from last week's encounter, where X marked someone for death but they escaped. Thankfully for those of us that like violence, they came back. What will happen?

Let's get it on!

Not long to go now...

Dear god, I love that man.

I feel I should be saying something witty with these pictures, but really, they have it covered on their own.

Incase you were wondering, that was the sound of his neck breaking.

Aaand he's down...

Aaaand now he's dead...

X Omnibus volume 1 by Dark Horse is out this month. It's awesome, buy it.

How Not To Treat Girls, Featuring Firestorm

2008-05-11T00:05:00.000-07:00

Special Mother's Day edition!

Ah stepmothers, gotta love 'em.

I..... I Don't Think I'll Sleep Tonight

2008-05-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

You can get anything on eBay. Even a Firestorm figure that's been set on fire.

And you can be charged $300 for a figure that is worth $20 in un-burnt condition.

If anyone needs me, I'll be over in the corner, crying silently...

Eye-uhn mahn

2008-05-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm totally stealing a post from Chris Haley here. Now, you may've heard about the upcoming release of Iron Man replica helmets cast from those in the movie.

Very awesome, but very expensive. What alternatives might there be on eBay?

For the very cheap among you, there's the cardboard variety.

Then things get a bit more serious (and pricey). Here's an official helmet based on his first appearance:

Another officially licensed helmet (not movie related):

This one's a bit dopey looking:

Then there's an unoffical one with light up eyes

And a homebuilt kit based on the movie. It has no back though, so don't get too excited:

That's pretty close to the sort of thing I'd pick up (see my Guyver helmet). I'll be waiting until the release of those official helmets though, in the hopes someone makes a few casts from one.

Not content with just the mask? Try these:

But hands down the best Iron Man mask on eBay was this:

That's awesome.

Fun Vampires Of Doom

2008-05-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of talk recently about comic "Events" such as Final Crisis. I've mentioned in various blog comments that I dislike events, and wish I could just read the titles I like without the outside universe impacting on them. There's several reasons for this. I've touched on one of these indirectly in the past, namely the fill-in artist when a title's main artist gets recruited for the event title (or even the writer, which may've just happened with Blue Beetle?). Today, it's the #1 reason why I've been turned off events- 90's Ghost Rider.

GR was the first American comic I ever seriously collected. I'd been a long time devotee to 2000AD, and would buy stuff from Marvel & DC, but I never found anything I had to keep reading until Ghost Rider #1 appeared on the shelf. I was hooked, and the book treated me well for a couple of years. Then the inevitable consequence of a book being popular began to take hold.

Ghost Rider #26 & 27

Ghost Rider gets his obligatory crossover with the X-Men, in a 3 part crossover (with X-Men #9). This was harmless enough at the time, since I also collected X-Men. It's only a year later that, looking back, I could see there was a problem on the horizon, and that problem would begin in proper with...

Ghost Rider #28 &31

On the strength of Ghost Rider's popularity, Marvel decided to lauch some similarly horror-themed titles- Spirits Of Vengeance, Morbius, Darkhold, and Nightstalkers. Understandable, and not a bad idea, but it wound up turning into a blatant cash-grab. See, these titles were all destined to tie in to one another quite regularly. GR #28 kicked off a 6 part story that was continued in the first issue of each new title. We got two standard issues of Ghost Rider in the middle, then the story was concluded in #31. That's cool for creating a buzz for new titles, but no good when you're:

A) buying GR from a bookshop that doesn't carry the other titles, and

B) aged 15, with your only income being pocket money from your parents. Even if A hadn't been a problem, there's no way I could've suddenly added 4 new titles to my buying habit.

Still, this wouldn't be happening often, right? So I could handle missing out on one storyline, and for the next 7 months, this wouldn't enter my head again. Then the shit really hit the fan.

Ghost Rider #39

A new character explodes on the scene, and things get awesome. The problem? This issue is part 1 of a story that concludes in Spirits Of Vengeance. SoV was actually pretty cool, I had managed to pick up a handful of issues on a visit to a comic shop in the next city over, but it was too far away to go regularly.

Ghost Rider #40

"Midnight Sons Massacre", and we have a special tie-in with the other horror books. Two stories in a row I don't get to finish, but that won't happen often, will it???

Ghost Rider #41, 42, & 43

OK Marvel, your starting to friggin kill me here. The previous 2 issues were essentially worthless, and now you're telling me there's a 6-part crossover with Spirits Of Vengeance? Really?? Alright, I'll suck it up for now because I love Ghost Rider, just stop it soon, ok?

Ghost Rider #44 & 45

...and by this point, I'm done. The "Siege Of Darkness" storyline, which features a crossover with 7 other titles!! The previously mentioned 4, plus Dr Strange, Marvel Comics Presents, and Midnight Sons Unlimited. It's a 17 part story. Are you fucking kidding me? #44 is part 2, and #45 is part goddamn 10!!! As if 7 straight months of crossovers isn't bad enough, here's the kicker that pushed me over the edge: Ghost Rider dies, but he doesn't die in his title. I've just bought 45 straight issues, and they go and kill him somewhere else???!

Dropped!

...and then something odd happens. They replace GR with Vengeance...

Ghost Rider #46

I saw this when it came out, but refused to buy it, I was waaay too pissed off. A couple months later, and I saw #46 & 47 going cheap, so I bit the bullet and bought them. And you know something? They were brilliant! An added bonus- they didn't cross over with anything! Self contained issues, oh the bliss. The bad will subsided, and I came back into the fold. GR was suddenly delivering everything it hadn't been for months, and it was with a totally different character to boot. I had 4 issues of bliss, then it happened:

Ghost Rider #50

Billed as the "Return of Ghost Rider". Well ok, that was always going to happen. Worth picking up since I'd been enjoying recent developments, and the aggravation had lessened. So I sit down to read it...

...AND IT'S PART TWO OF A CROSSOVER WITH SPIRITS OF VENGEANCE!!!!!!!!

*anger rises inside*

So here's the deal: yes, GR is back, but he was really ressurrected in SoV. It's not a crossover as such, but this does mean that he died in some other title, and came back in another.

Over the 2 years, it works out as 12 issues that required you to read 29 additional books in order to get a complete story. Marvel's behaviour on Ghost Rider is the major reason why I want nothing to do with crossovers, events, or anything else that affects the books I like.

Moments In Death Metal, vol 1

2008-05-08T00:46:00.013-07:00

I've had this idea for several months, but haven't had the time to work it out until now. It occurred to my that, while admitadly I'm not the most wordy person out there, I am an experienced musician, and there had to be some way to tie that in to comics. This is the result- as often as possible, I'll be taking a scene from a recent book, and setting it to music. I'm calling the series "Moments In Death Metal", since that sums up the general musical approach that will be taken. Further explanation below, but here is the first edition, starring Moon Knight #11.

The opening atmosphere is sampled from "Le Cerf Malade" by My Dying Bride. Everything else is written and performed by me.

Being a first attempt, there were lots of challenges to overcome. Ulead Gif Animator is a pretty good tool, but when exporting to video, it ignores all your timing setting and comes up with it's own. I know how to handle it now, but it made the timing of the words a bit off on this one. It was time consuming enough finding a gif program that could do what I wanted, so I had to settle.

I haven't done any recording in a couple of years, and it shows. I know there's a setting I had to make the vocals clearer, but I can't remember it. My guitar playing has been suffering from neglect for a similar period of time, but I figure forcing myself to come up with half a dozen riffs every week or two is good practise. It was fun, and hopefully noone's going to sue me for turning part of a comic into (sortof) moving pictures. Guess I'll find out, heh.

It will also be interesting to see what kind of compression Blogger puts on videos, if it screws with the sound too much I'll host it elsewhere. Guess I'm about to find out...

Well ok, the mix didn't survive too well, plus it cut off the final few seconds *investigates options*

Free stuff

2008-05-07T02:38:00.000-07:00

No actual content tonight, since I went and saw Iron Man again. Yep, just as good the second time.

Anyway, in the course of making yesterday's post, I came across a bunch of free eComics that Dark Horse has here.

And while it's not overly great or anything, it would be remiss of me to not link directly to the X eComic.

Here Dark Horse, Have Some Of My Money

2008-05-06T02:02:00.000-07:00

Public service announcement re: Dark Horse comics

I was having a look around Borders today, since I had a 30% off voucher. Their selection of trades, while big, isn't particularly exciting, so I was having a hard time finding something. Then I found this:

Dark Horse have begun collecting their superhero universe! This thing came out in January, somehow this is the first I knew about it. Almost 500 pages, collecting the debuts of the entire line (which was released in 4 groups of weekly comics), and one of the main (possibly the only? I forget) crossovers.

Granted the entire line lasted a shade over 2 years, so yeah they had their share of crap, but there were gems, such as my beloved X, and Ghost. Barbed Wire was shitty, but managed to be made into an equally shitty movie starring the always shitty Pamela Anderson and her shitty fake boobs. I'm about halfway through the first storyline, much of it I haven't read before, and it's been fun.

488 pages, $24.99US. Full colour too, though it's in standard new-release paperback novel size, not your standard comic trade size. I just looked it up, and it's paved the way for this (end of this month):

Awww hell yeah. Plus vol 2 in about 3 months, which is brilliant, because this series has been next to impossible to complete. You can probably tell from my irregular X Marks The Spot series, but if you like comics with attitude and plenty of tough-guy talk, you need to check these out.

I'm stoked to've found this. Even better, it was stickered at $55, but it scanned up at the US price (someone screwed up, and the cashier didn't notice), so with 30% off I got it for around $17 which is freakin sweet. I leave you with the opening page, which begins the story behind the cause of everyone suddenly developing super powers...

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

2008-05-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

So far, the examples of X dispensing with his justice have been relatively tame. Now you're going to see him carve his message into someone's face.

Specifically, that guy right there.

Lesson time, because the crooks don't read the monthly comic:

Hmmm, y'know, he's not as intimidated by that as he should be...

Uh oh, someone just broke the law again.

He's marked with an 'X', but the bad guy makes it out of there. What will happen when they next meet?

Art In Close-Up: Birds Of Prey #107

2008-05-03T21:34:00.001-07:00

Time for a closer look at the second of two BoP pages I got from Nicola Scott at the recent convention.

Birds Of Prey #107
Page 13

Pencils: Nicola Scott
Inks: Doug Hazlewood
Writer: Gail Simone
Letters: Travis Langham
Colours: Hi Fi Designs

The full pages:

Nicola Scott does layouts on the back of her pages. This time I reversed the roughs (except for the full page shot, oooops!), so they're facing the same way as the finished page (obviously, being on the back means they face the opposite way normally).

I got this page primarily for the gorgeous shot of Ice in panel 4. It's also got a really interesting layout. How the heck do you artist people come up with ideas like that?

Panel 1:

Panel 2:

Hats off to whoever coloured this, because that middle transition shot of Catman made no sense to my eyes before I referred to the printed version. Being all tucked up like that, my eyes had it as being some sort of helmet in Catman's hand.

Panel 3:

Panel 4:

The original looks so much better than the coloured version imo. The colourist washed it out a bit too much for my taste. I love the expressions on the faces of Ice and Huntress.

Panel 5:

I framed it this afternoon. It may not stay there too long, that wall gets a bit of sun, and I normally just have a print there, since it's expendable. But, I really wanted to have a decent look at it, so I'll just keep an eye on it.

Guest Appearance: Firestorm in Countdown (pt 2)

2008-05-02T21:02:00.002-07:00

Continuing a look at recent Firestorm appearances in Countdown, here's issue #8:

Darkseid has a Firestorm heroclix!

Back to our assembly of heroes, Atom is busy travelling through Karate Kid's body, when he feels himself getting pulled out. Guess who?

Actually a pretty good use of Firestorm, since he's capable of seeing at the atomic level. Someone knows their Firestorm powers.

Firestorm, on the other hand, doesn't know his heroes.

Trying to lecture Ray Palmer on doing the right thing? Not really necessary.

OMG, Iron Man rules!

2008-04-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

Damn that was an awesome movie. Robert Downey Jr was perfect for Tony Stark. Loved the dancing pole in his private jet. I was worried it was going to drag a bit, being over 2 hours long, but it flew by. I need to see it again, but that just may be the best superhero movie ever.

And since I'm making a largely irrelevant post, I may as well add to it...

This week in comics sucked for me. I just dropped JLA and Birds Of Prey (and Brave & The Bold) last week, so that meant no comics for me this week :( We're a week behind the USA, incase you were wondering. I suppose on the bright side I saved $15 on the two comics I dropped, but it sucks coming home empty handed.

I'm on holiday and had been trying to post daily for the 3 weeks. I've been close, the last couple of days are a bust though. I'm working on something (very) different that I hope to be a regular feature, but it's taking longer to organise than I expected. Should be all systems go by the weekend though, fingers crossed. It should rock your world.

How Not To Treat Girls, Featuring Firestorm

2008-04-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling lazy today*, so I'm gonna hand things over to Ronnie's step mother. Take it away, Felicity.

"Holding back a part of himself"? Yeah, that would be the part of him that's seeing another woman...

*lazier than usual that is

What If... #41

2008-04-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

Going through my stack of purchases from last week's convention, I made a startling find- an issue of "What If..." that's actually good. No, I can't believe it either. To mark this momentous occassion, I present to you:

What If... The Avengers Had Fought Galactus? So big a question, it required 43 pages. And seriously? I had a tough time limiting the amount of scans to just those here- lots happens.

This reality is a bit different- the Fantastic Four died in the crash of their rocket ship. This has a flow-on effect to other heroes. Human Torch never cures a homeless Namor of amnesia, and with no Namor, noone revives Captain America from his icy sleep. The Avengers in the above picture are pretty much it, with the inclusion of Iron Man.

The story begins with some strange occurances in the sky- first the atmosphere appears to be on fire, then it becomes a sea of floating rocks. Eventually The Watcher reveals himself to the Avengers as being the one behind it. He's created these illusions to try and hide Earth from the Silver Surfer. It doesn't work though, and it falls to Iron Man to try to stop the herald before Galactus is summoned.

The Surfer's taken out, but too late!

Avengers vs Galactus, round 1.

Galactus does everyone a favour and knocks out Hawkeye, because really- that was just embarrassing. Iron Man had a good run at the Surfer though, so lets give him a try.

Retreat! Retreat!

Galactus: 2 Avengers: 0

Regrouping at Avengers Mansion, team leader Goliath makes a dramatic decision:

All Avengers together for the first time ever. This should be awesome. Let's see who turns up.

Thor! And he brought a friend. Who else is coming?

Wait, what do you mean that's it? That's all the Avengers, together, for the first time? Wow, that's really lame.

Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer has been cruising around the city, observing people. It would seem he's having a few doubts about his job.

We'll check in on him again a bit later, because now it's time for:

Avengers vs Galactus, Round 2.

Their previous encouter not having gone so well, the heroes elect to target their foe's machinery instead.

Not a bad idea, though comparing the damage Thor is doing to the damage Hawkeye is doing? Yeah, arrows are a pretty lame super power. Galactus summons some robotic help, calling down the Punisher from his ship.

That alien suit is pretty tough, and makes short work of Quicksilver. But thankfully for everyone (especially Hawkeye) the Hulk turns up.

It seems the Watcher had telepathically sent the "Avengers Assemble" call to the Hulk. In further non-watching activity, the Watcher sent Iron Man up to Galactus's ship to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier. Iron Man lasts 3 panels before he's zapped by the ships auto-defenses, so that ends that.

Time to check back on the Silver Surfer. He's still debating his purpose, even saving people from falling debris caused by the battle. Do the Avengers try and talk to him, maybe building up his new found good will? No, they piss him off.

So begins an epic fight between SS and Thor.

Speaking of Thor, it's a good job he brought a friend along, because Hercules is the only one that's any good against Galactus.

That's awesome, though possibly below the belt. The rest of the team are total lame ducks, and all get knocked out.

But wait, what's this? An ex-Avenger has heeded the call. It's the mighty Swordsman! Errr...

heh, Galactus made a funny.

With everyone being trashed, The Watcher makes a decision to grow a pair, and intervene.

It looks impressive, and admitadly Galactus gets thrown through a building, but when all you've ever done is watch, well, how good are you really going to be in a fight? About 3 panels worth of good. Then comes the really interesting part:

Galactus fricking eats the Watcher. Holy shit!

Oh yeah, and there's that fight between Thor and the Silver Surfer, where Thor does what someone should've done 20 pages ago and actually talks to his foe.

It's all too late though. The fight's over, the Watcher's eaten, and Galactus has spared the planet. Time to depart, though the events have made the Surfer curious.

Galactus takes the body of the fallen Watcher back to his brothers

...and you have to ask yourself- just how awesome would it be if Galactus abandoned his planet eating ways, and instead embarked on a quest to hunt down and eat all the Watchers?

Because I think that would rule.

Hi, I'm From Japan. Please Show Me Your Panties.

2008-04-25T00:55:00.001-07:00

I've been giving the manga a bit of a go lately. Currently I'm reading Rahxephon, having gotten it cheap. It's ok, nothing spectacular. The editorial at the end of volume 1 was a touch concerning though:

What was I letting myself in for with volume 2?

Well ok, I guess that's not too bad, it's not over the top or anyth...

errrrr...

Was I supposed to notice that one?

Hey, 3 in one panel:

Even when the heroine is in mortal danger, her dignity isn't safe...

But not to worry the special agents will save everyone. Quick, don the camel toe suits!

Ha! Can't flash your panties when you're not wearing any.

I'm rapidly forming the view that I'm gonna just stick with American comics...

X Marks The Spot... Of DEATH

2008-04-24T16:49:00.003-07:00

...or at least a severe beating.

What's wrong with this picture?

Hey look, their bodies make an 'X'. I sure hope they don't accidentally summon that X guy.

Oooops!

You just saw your man taken out, you're in your underwear, really- why would you go for a gun?

Take note of that mirror, it's important.

Can you guess what happens next?

Ok, so that wasn't too hard to see coming. Interrogation over...

...but X leaves a lovely parting gift for the couple.

Talk about a mood killer.

Free stuff is good

2008-04-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

Weeeee, my Iron Man watch arrived today. Just had to mail in my receipt from buying the toys, and got it free.

I have to use the last hole for it to fit on my wrist. For some reason they appear not to've considered the 30 year old age group.

Art In Close Up: Birds Of Prey #110

2008-04-22T00:32:00.001-07:00

Today I thought I'd take a closer look at one of the pages I bought from Nicola Scott over the weekend. I've just framed it and replaced the Andy Clarke Aquaman page that was over my bed.

Birds Of Prey #110
Page 10

Pencils: Nicola Scott
Inks: Rodney Ramos
Writer: Tony Bedard
Colours: Hi-Fi Designs
Letters: Travis Lanham

First up, the full pages:

Yes, there are indeed 2 versions of the original art. Nicola does layouts on the back side of her pages. I asked her about it, and her process goes something like this: layout in blue pencil on the front of the page. Then she turns it over and fills in more of the detail, perspective lines, etc. Then it's back to the front, and doing the final pencils. The idea is that it gives her a clean page to do the finishes on, and she finds it faster to get to the finished pencils (assuming I'm remembering that exactly right heh). It adds a really interesting aspect to her pages, I spent ages just going through the stack of pages she'd brought with her, flipping them back and forth to compare images. I don't know if this is a common practise, but of the couple of dozen pages I own from various artists, these are the only ones done like this.

Panel 1, and it's the money shot of the page. Great action, and it's what screamed "buy me" when I laid eyes on it.

The colourist got to flex their muscles a bit on the glass shards.

I forgot to mention it, but obviously the roughs on the back are facing the opposite way. Which is actually pretty impressive, considering that means the page gets drawn essentially twice, but in opposite directions. From my own experience, there are times (rare though they may be) where I've drawn something that I thought was awesome, then flipped it over and viewed it from behind, and it looks terrible. That's the difference between me and someone who knows how to draw...

Panel 2, complete with dumbass thug holding his gun sideways:

Note the perspective lines running from the bald guys head to the gun. I love details like that, and you usually don't get to see it.

Panel 3, someone's about to get their ass kicked.

The main point of interest here is that you can see the panel was originally planned as a close up head shot.

It's now hanging on my wall:

I normally just cut two matts conventionally, but I was feeling adventerous. I wanted something that played on the Huntress's costume. I cut the purple matt on the bottom the standard way. The white matt overlay is one piece of card, with the idea being that I wanted the white stripe down the middle to match her suit. All the edges are sloped the correct way, and it took about an hour to lay out and cut. If you're framing stuff, go out and buy a proper tool, it's so much cheaper than getting it done professionally.

Guest Appearance: Silver Surfer in Guardians Of The Galaxy, pt2

2008-04-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

Picking up from last time, the Surfer continues the story of how he became The Keeper.

Zenn-La having been destroyed, SS hung around in the ruins of the planet, sulking. Which is quite understandable. Eventually he decides that Galactus has been responsibile for everything bad that's ever happened to him, and damn it, he's going to make him pay!

Emo Surfer takes on Galactus, with predictable results. He has his board destroyed, his silver coating removed, and the power cosmic stripped. The only thing that saves him are the quantum bands.

I don't think I mentioned it last time, but Eon had given SS the bands and made him "Protector Of The Universe" *cue trumpets*

He's left drifting in space close to death, when he's found by a Watcher, who's not much of one, because he saves him.

Once removed from the universe, the Watcher sets about teaching him about the Quantum Bands powers. It's all very zen, as he's told that the power cosmic lies within him. SS, being the stubborn bugger he is, takes many years to convince but eventually he restores his own powers and recoats himself. A quick name change later, and it's time to go annoy Galactus some more.

So that's his back story. Back in the present, the Guardians find Galactus, and try to distract him while SS goes down to the planet. Fortunately there's only one city on the planet, which he teleports to a nearby world. Apparently this takes up all his energy, but then this happens:

...so I guess it didn't.

Giant Silver Surfer proceeds to kick galactic ass

...which is made all the easier by Galactus electing to make excuses rather than fight back. Who would've thought an all powerful god would be such a whiner? SS is about to kill him, when the ever-rational Eon steps in.

Then, in a moment that would've undoubtably spawned Galactus/SS slash fic had it been written 10 years later, the Surfer "feeds" Galactus. A new partnership is spawned, and the Giant Purple One's planet eating days are put behind him.

Armageddon, Day 2

2008-04-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday is always much quieter than Saturday, meaning I get to sleep in and not worry about arriving early. I got there at 9:30 and walked straight in. Not sure why I was that early as I didn't really have any plans until an hour later, but it did give me a chance to take some photos.

There was a Warthog from Halo, made by Weta Workshop. I've never played Halo and probably never will, but it was cool enough to warrant a few shots.

This is the room I mentioned previously where Marv Wolfman's panel was held, along with the air con unit that was but a black sheet away*

The anime area that yesterday was a sea of people, was much calmer today. I wound up buying some manga since they were going for $10 each. A good chance to try new stuff cheap, and I appreciated not getting squashed ;)

This was the general layout of the event:
aaaand a little shift to the right...

The media guest area moves every year. This years layout was good in terms of keeping the line of waiting people out of the way, but I must admit I liked the feel of the layout more last year. It was in the middle of the floor and made the guests seem more accessable and part of the event, rather than off to the side (if that makes sense). Just my 2 cents.

I wound up going over budget, so didn't end up paying for any autographs. It's all Nicola Scott's fault. Marv Wolfman and Nicola came in a little earlier than their scheduled 10:30 start. Marv had a bunch of his comic scripts for sale, which is a brilliant idea and more writers should do. If artists can make extra money selling their pages, why not the writers? I got scripts for the first 2 issues of the Raven mini, plus the issues that go with them. $40 in total, and I'm really looking foward to checking them out. Expect a post about this in the future.

As for Nicola Scott, I caved and hit her up for a sketch. I watched her do a cool Deadshot rendition for someone, then asked for a Firestorm pic (who else?). I'd come prepared with reference materal, which she needed. I'm always unsure if I should ask for a character the artist is familiar with or not, but it was worth a shot. It turned out awesome, all being done in grey marker:

I love watching pros draw, totally worth the $50 she was charging. So yeah, with the 2 Birds Of Prey pages I got yesterday, I wound up paying Nicola $250. Ouch, that's a lot when you say it like that, but I got some really really cool art for it. I even managed to have a bit of a conversation with both of them, so yay me ;)

At 11:30 was a 30 minute panel with Christopher Judge (Stargate). He was a lot funnier than I thought he'd be, and I enjoyed it. Earlier in the morning I saw a summary of recent SG1 events in the lead up to the screening of "Ark Of Truth". Let me just say that getting the last couple of seasons on DVD is now top of my list, because damn that looked awesome.

Noon saw a panel with all the animation guests + Marv Wolfman, since we had Hynden Walch there (Starfire from Teen Titans) and the Titans were on the agenda. It was a bit awkward for the first 20 minutes, I guess noone had any questions, but it got better. There were a few too many "oh, do this voice" type requests for my taste. They're not trained monkeys, people. But I guess that goes with the territory. Spike Spencer's really not a fan of Shinji from Evangelion, which I find quite funny ("effeminate whiner"- he's right).

After the panel I went and got an Eva picture signed

Spike added facial hair and glasses. He'd done the same to the poster used as his backdrop, and written "I'm a man, damn it!" on it. More Shinji hating, which is never a bad thing ;)

At 2pm was something we haven't had here before: a panel with every single guest- actors, animation (well, still actors really), wrestling (hey, also actors!), and comics. Some very funny moments, and overall a good idea that hopefully will become a mainstay. Just so long as nutjobs don't insist on interrupting proceedings so they can hug all the guests, like 4 twits did today. Yes I'm a grumpy old man :p

I also got a Hynden Walch autograph:

I called it a day at 3:30. Expenses for the weekend:

Anime- $80
Comics- $140
Manga- $30
Signatures- $20 (for the two cartoon photos, signed for free)
Marv Wolfman & Nicola Scott- $290

Total spent: $560. I blew budget by $60, but my $500 target is only arbitrary anyway and purely to stop me buying everything that looks cool. Looking at that list, I think it would be a good idea if Nicola Scott in particular didn't come back ;)

*It may sound like I'm criticising this, but I'm not really :)