Worn out from opening presents and eating turkey? Here’s a good time killer. cityrag posts links to THE 50 GREATEST CARTOONS as picked in Jerry Beck’s 1994 book of the same name. Enjoy!
[Link via the Boing Boing]
A very Merry Christmas to you all.
His team snared the animal using a line baited with small squid and shot video of the russet-colored giant as it was hauled to the surface.
The squid, a young female, “put up quite a fight” as the team attempted to bring it aboard, Kudobera told the Associated Press, and the animal died from injuries sustained during the capture.
Giant squid, the world’s largest invertebrates, are thought to reach sizes up to 60 feet (18 meters), but because they live at such great ocean depths they have never been studied in the wild.
Oddly enough is you Google “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, the Beat is the fourth result. That explains the comment explosion currently going on. Heck, we should give the people more for their money. We’re going to let it run its course.
We’ve been stealing liberally from Cartoon Brew lately, and here’s another one, KAMUC, an online comic by Dreamworks animator/story artist/designer Gabriele Pennacchioli. VERY nice.
Pennacchioli has been posting a panel a day since July, so you have to start at the bottom and work your way up.
As y’all probably heard, Alison Bechdel’s FUN HOME, which has been named Graphic Novel of the Year by many people, was selected by Time Magazine as the top BOOK of the year. It’s a stunning achievement for Bechdel, and a nice little cherry on top for the year which saw our graphic literature accepted, respected and even read. What’s nicest about it is that Bechdel has been plying her craft for a long time, to a loyal (and sizable) audience, but with only the barest minimum of recognition from comics’ “mainstream.” Turns out she knew what she was doing all along.
Gay People’s Chronicle catches up with Bechdel for her reaction to the honor:
“I don’t know quite what to say about the Time magazine thing,” she admitted. “I guess I’m a bit speechless.”
“I’m very happy about it, obviously,” Bechdel continued. “It’s a great thing for queer stories, and for graphic novels, to get that kind of mainstream recognition.”
She is, however, still surprised.
“I’m still a bit flummoxed by it. I mean, Fun Home is an odd little book,” she concluded. “Go figure.”
Another kerfluffle we haven’t really had a chance to investigate is the Archie redesign. Basically the other day Archie announced they would be trying a LIMITED experiment with an updated look for the Riverdale gang, one designed by artist Stephen Butler. The Wall Street Journal investigates with an article whose title is taken from a Newsarama poster:Gee Whiz! ‘Archie’ Gets a New Look; Does Betty Resemble an Olsen Twin? Sadly we don’t make enough money to subscribe to the WSJ, but we can quote the lede:
After 65 years, Archie, Betty, Veronica and friends are, for better or worse, growing up.
The publisher of “Archie” comics plans to experiment with changing the way the characters look to make them appear more sophisticated, and the news has already drawn heat from loyalists in Web forums who have seen the new incarnations.
Reaction around the web has best been summed up as the blog cliche, mouth throwing up.
Now we like Butler just fine — we may have even hired him back when we worked at Disney, or something. Archie made a tryout page of Butler’s pencils available to us, but stressed that they were not perfect — the girls are too thin. But it is the look they were going for.
Click for a larger version.
Now, we don’t know how Archie sales are these days, or whether the franchise has any appeal to today’s younglings. Certainly, the romantic misadventures of high school students in comic form have great appeal. (*cough* manga *cough*). This tryout page is a little more manga-esque than the cover more widely circulated, but the storytelling has nothing to do with manga. Certainly it’s clean, comforting cartooning. Will it appeal to kids? It’s only a four issue test, so we’ll all be watching closely.
We were tooling around MySpace when we ran across a bulletin from Rich Tommaso about the upcoming graphic novel bio of legendary pitcher Satchel Paige.
Yes, it was going to be delayed a year, but now Hyperion Books has decided to release James Sturm’s and Rich Tommaso’s “Satchel Paige Striking Out Jim Crow” this summer!– I am very excited about this news and I hope to have some advance copies ready for MoCCA this year!
Tommaso posts a promo piece as his picture. As we recall, Hyperion is also putting out a Harry Houdini bio by James Strum and Nick Bertozzi. We haven’t heard too much about this series of books of late, but we’ll probably hear more as 2007 ramps up, and they are certainly something to look forward to.
§ Don McPherson’s Eye on Comics review site posts his 2006 Glass Eye Awards. Interesting picks, like GRAY HORSES for best OGN.
§The Dove: The Evolution Of Beauty has been making the rounds showing how makeup, lighting and a hell of a lot of Photoshop can make an ordinary woman a teeny glamour gal. According to the above story, the model is a cartoonist named Stephanie Betts. We couldn’t find ay online reference to her work, but what the hell.
Betts, a cartoonist, not a professional model, was reluctant to pose. But after seeing the great distortion, going from Stephanie to super glamour girl, she’s proud she joined the campaign.
Betts says, “It’s a powerful message that sends young girls to not believe everything they see. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a size 1, because the models were popular. Now it’s sickly images of beauty. We need to change that and this campaign will help.”
We never had a chance to comment on PULLBOX, the new comics downloading site started by Devil’s Due’s Josh Blaylock. Basically, you pay a buck to download a comics. Devil’s Due, IDW and Jim Mahfood are making some of their comics available through it. Certainly it’s a ludicrously simple idea and we’re surprised no one thought of it before. We want to give Blaylock a shout out here. He’s really been one of the few comics publishers to push the needle in recent years. He hasn’t always succeeded, but at least he’s trying new things. Anyway, here’s a press release on a gift card initiative, another simple but sound idea.
Hot on the heels of the PULLBOXONLINE.COM announcement. Pull Box announces the availability of gift cards in multiple denominations, perfect for the last minute emergency holiday gift!
In addition, PULLBOXONLINE.COM announces the addition of the “Desperadoes” series from IDW by Jeff Mariotte and John Cassaday as well as the soon to be added creator owned series “Night Club” by Mike Norton and Mike Baron.
As mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, as well as comic book industry online journals such as Newsarama.com and Comicbookresources.com, PULLBOXONLINE is perfect for new readers unaccustomed to perusing comic stores, not to mention the more traditional comic book fan, desiring to sample new comics at a discounted cost, or tired of chasing down missing or out of print issues.
The site currently holds a fantastic roster of titles including the top selling Family Guy graphic novel, Hack/Slash, and Voltron from Devil’s Due Publishing, Zombies: Feast and CVO from IDW Publishing, Jim Mahfood’s GRRL Scouts and Stupid Comics, and many more exciting products.
Surf PULLBOX ONLINE today and see just how easy it is!
If The Scotsman is to be believed, a graphic novel of Robert Louis Stevenson’s KIDNAPPED is all the rage, and it’s being given away free to encourage reading.
IT is one of the best-loved stories to come out of Scotland. Kidnapped has captivated generations with its gripping tale of high drama in the Highlands and the Capital.
Now, Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic is taking centre stage in Edinburgh’s first ever city reading campaign, which will see more than 15,000 copies of the book given away in the new year.
Writer Alan Grant and artist Cam Kennedy, the comic book creators best known for their work on Judge Dredd and Batman, have joined forces to transform the 19th-century blockbuster into a stunning graphic novel.
According to the story, a “Scottish language version” of the wee bookie is also being given away. Och, but we’d love ta see that, unless it’s just Alan Grant reading it aloud.
This unauthorized still from PIRATES OF THE CARIVBEAN 3 show Cap’n Jack Sparrow and his dad, played by Keith Richards cavorting with a little person. In a Rolling Stones t-shirt. Lame. The pic has been pulled down from several sites, but here ya go.
First look at the Silver Surfer from the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, via USA Today
With computer-generated imagery techniques similar to those used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, the slippery Surfer, voiced by Doug Jones, “will look somewhere between gun metal and fluid metallics so you can see the body motion, the breathing, the muscle tone, the mood,” says Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad. The Surfer’s mood is key to the story. After striking a deal with the evil Galactus to save his planet, the once-human Surfer wreaks havoc throughout the cosmos. “He is a highly emotional being, trapped inside fluid metal,” Arad says.
Just because. This Filipinocomic based movie has gotten a good rating, and apparently that leads to savings!
Thursday, ipina-review naman ang pelikula sa Cinema Evaluation Board (CEB) for a possible tax rebate. Sixteen board members reviewed the movie. Fourteen graded it an A, two gave it a B. Almost unanimously, Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh passed with an A grade—meaning, it gets a 100% tax rebate!
Yay!
Cartoon Brew points us to Screen Novelties News which has a harrowing tale of the restoration of the original Rankin/Bass puppets used to make RuDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER.
The puppets were in bad shape, having been used as Christmas decorations/playthings for the last 30-odd years in the home of a former Rankin/Bass employee. Santa’s legs were both broken, as was Rudolph’s neck(!). Rudolph’s nose bulb was torn out and the cavity had been stuffed with red candle wax. All of the lead armature wires inside the puppets were corroding and half of Santa’s mustache was missing. We even heard tales of a photo of Rudolph sticking his head out of a bowl of Christmas candy. There was a lot of cleanup and restoration to be done.
One wonders at a world in which these cultural icons could be found sitting in someone’s house, serving candy canes, but that was then. Many photos of the restoration process in the blog.
Many catch up links today as we hit the road, and doubtless most of you already have as well.
Book Seven has a name. Tremble.
UPDATE: As for what we know and theories about Book Seven, here from MuggleNet is a list of things that WILL happen in DEALTHLY HALLOWS:
Character Information
* We will find out something “incredibly important” about Lily Potter
* We will find out who R.A.B. is
* We will discover more about Dumbledore’s past
* We will discover where Snape’s loyalties lie.
* Something will be revealed about Petunia Dursley, although it will not be that she is a Squib
* Viktor Krum will return (World Book Day, 2004 interview)
* We will see a reappearance of Dolores Umbridge – “It’s too much fun to torture her not to have another little bit more before I finish.” (MuggleNet/Leaky Interview)
* JKR has said, “There is a character who does manage, in desperate circumstances, to do magic quite late in life, but that is very rare…”
Plot Information
* Harry will face Voldemort for the final time
* Harry will be attempting to find and destroy Voldemort’s remaining Horcruxes
* Harry will return to the Dursleys’ during the school vacation, but the magical protection Dumbledore arranged will expire on his 17th birthday when he comes of age
* Harry will visit Godric’s Hollow
* There will be a reappearance of the two-way mirror
* We will see the wedding of Fleur and Bill Weasley
* The fact that Harry “has his mother’s eyes” will prove to be an important plot point
* At least one character will die
Other
* The last word is expected to be “scar,” but may change
* We will finally learn the full reason why some people become ghosts when they die and others don’t
* The final chapter, which has already been written, will detail what happens to the characters that survive
* There will be no more Quidditch matches
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