The News Blog of Comics Culture
Up until now, Hugh Jackman has been able to keep his love of musical theater and his love of slicing people with his claws separate, but don’t think those of us who share those twin loves haven’t fantasized about WOLVERINE: THE MUSICAL. Now, Erik Beck from Indy Mogul and Mark Douglas, from Barely Political, have made our dreams come true..sort of. If the SPIDER-MAN musical takes off, this one could really work, we think.
Technorati Tags: Wolverine Week
Well, here’s a comics double play — the new DC referencing song from Art Brut in a homemade vid that shows Jeff Lemire’s cover for the new album. Enjoy.
Shot In The Back Of The Head from Moby on Vimeo.
Like it says. David Lynch directed an animated video for the new Moby song.
Or should we say cartoonist David Lynch, whose “The Angriest Dog in the World” ran for several years in various LA alt.weeklies, and comics supporter Moby have collaborated on an animated video. See, we can find a comics connection for ANYTHING.
PS: “The Angriest Dog in the World” is still being produced, but for the subscription portion of Lynch’s website. See, he’s even figured out how to make money from webcomics!
Via Diamond, a PSA for Free Comic Book Day by…Hugh Jackman, with a WOLVERINE trailer following.
Also coming: A more generic “Support comics” PSA from Jackman.
First off: Can Hugh Jackman get any dreamier? He’s certainly not afraid to be associated with musical comedy, so comics are no reach for this leading man. It’s a really nice coup for Diamond.
Second: Back in The Dark Ages, for decades, comics folk thought that a “Milk Board” — an industry advocacy arm that would put together promotional efforts featuring celebs who said they read comics — might help raise the profile of the medium to the general public. In fact, entire organizations were formed to work towards this milk board, before petty differences or inertia would inevitably end the efforts.
And now, it’s almost like the Milk Board came to us.
So, once again….yay us!
SECRET IDENTITIES, a new superhero anthology by Asian creators examining various aspects of Asian culture and stereotyping, has been putting out videos to promote the book…here’s the latest one.
The book hits stores next week.
Kramers Ergot in Brooklyn from james gaddy on Vimeo.
Print magazine presents a video on the Brooklyn stop of the KRAMERS ERGOT tour.
Cartoonist/Nickelodeon Magazine editor Dave Roman writes to say that JC Roberts (brother of Scott Roberts) animated a music video based on TEEN BOAT, the mini-comic series created by Roman and John Green. It features a new wave song written and performed by yet another cartoonist, Abby Denson(who also appears as a character in the video).
A new stop-motion entertainment in the manner of the now-seminal Twister Toyfare Theater, Credits: Animator and head writer Alex Kropinak, co-writers Jon Gutierrez and Sean T. Collins, voice actors Ben Morse and Ryan Penagos.
The “Next Door Neighbor” webcomics anthology has been running at SMITH Magazine for some time, with contributions from everyone from Harvey Pekar to K. Thor Jensen and back again. Chronicling tales of nightmare neighbors — and we’ve all got one of THOSE — the series is edited by Dean Haspiel. Babelgum, an online video site, now has a nice piece on Haspiel, NDN and the Deep Six Studio up.
We all have a next-door neighbor and a next-door neighbor story. With this realization in mind, comic book artist, Harvey Pekar collaborator and founder of webcomix collective Act-i-vate, Dean Haspiel approached storytelling site SMITH magazine. The result: a yearlong anthology of diverse, shocking and heartfelt true-life webcomix published biweekly by both emerging and celebrated writers and artists. We visit Dean, and contributors Joan Reilly and Joe Infurnari, at their communal workspace deep in industrial Brooklyn and discuss the importance of place and community – real life and virtual.
You’ll have to go to the link to watch the video.
Catching up on everything that piled up in our inbox while we’ve been otherwise occipied, here’s the official video of Gaiman/Colbert from Monday…with bonus Tom Bombadil.
Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman
The evil tycoon asks for a “bailout.”
We know you already saw this but, you know, we are thinking of the archives.
JON HAMM FOR DR. STRANGE!
[Via Funny or Die.]
This is one of those days when we had a HUUUUGE Kibbles ‘n’ Bits post we’d been working on all weekend that just got eaten by the browser, so screw it. Moving on, since we’re on a musical comedy kick, we’ll reiterate our love for the films of Busby Berkeley — we had a long post about the surreal, disturbing madness of Berkeley’s choreography back on the Old Beat, but to summarize: If Berkeley were still around, he’d be David Lynch. (We also fretted that Berkeley was the kind of cult interest that the Internet wasn’t much bothered with, but thank God, YouTube has come along since then, to keep the spirit alive.)
Anyway we had the chance to share our Busby-holism this weekend at Lincoln Center when choreographer Kriota Willberg presented a program called “Under The Influence of Busby Berkeley,” which showed videos over the years that exemplified such traits as aerial patterns, multiple girls, and of course, focus on the female anatomy. Under Kriota’s lively. erudite guidance it was a too-brief spin through Bollywood, cartoons, The Big Lebowski, dancing cigarette ads, birth control, hip hop, and much more. Since Kriota is married to cartoonist R. Sikoryak, there were a few cartoon types in the audience, but we shan’t out them so we can keep it a secret club.
This presentation needs to be either taken on the road or put on the Internet or something. The show started with an analysis of Berkeley’s fetishization of Ruby Keeler’s floating face seen above in “I Only Have Eyes for You” from DAMES, and ended with Michel Gondry and the Chemical Brothers, below. Let’s get this Monday started right.
Revel In is a video company devoted to making videos of cool, people, and underground legend Spain Rodriguez certainly qualifies. There’s a nice historical context to the interview as well, with archival material on Crumb and the entire underground movement.
Spain’s CHE just came out from Verso.
A video of Peter Bagge’s new band, Can You Imagine?, from the Fantagraphics store party.
Painter/cartoonist Dave Cooper and animator Nick Cross have created an animated video for Danko Jones for the song King Of Magazines. The act is on Bad Taste Records.
We’re not exactly sure where this meme began, but first it was these rascals (images in cut to prevent vertigo):
The legendary Strand bookstore in NY now has Strand Bookstore: TV. You can watch videos of various presentations, including Chip Kidd talking about Bat-Manga.
[Link via Kai-Ming Cha.]
ALAN’S WAR, the US edition of an award-winning French graphic novel by Emmanuel Guibert, is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. Here’s a video of Guibert’s drawing techniques.