Of the strange things that have happened to me, that I've become friends with so many of my formative creative influences is the strangest. 3 hours ago
Today is (obviously) Halloween, but we got the party started yesterday. In the afternoon, we took the kids to the annual Halloween Carnival at the neighborhood park, and Georgia was able to put on her full costume for the first time. Georgia has wanted to be a cat for Halloween this year since about five minutes after Halloween last year, and Allison has been working on making it for weeks. I think it turned out great, personally.
After the kids were off to bed, the grownups put on our costumes, and got ready for the costume party we were hosting. Sonrisa Trippe had spent all day working on the Tardis door, to go along with her Amy Pond costume, and I think it turned out amazingly well. Dean Trippe was Batman (naturally), and as for me and Allison…?
Allison makes a fetching Princess Leia, don’t you think?
As for me, I kept telling everyone I wasn’t dressed as Captain Kirk, I was dress as Captain Roberson, dammit.
But I wasn’t the only member of Starfleet in attendance. Robert Wilson IV and his wife Tiffany drove down from Dallas to join in the fun, though they’d opted for a more Old Skool look than my New Movie version. Still, we’re all one big happy Starfleet, as Khan said.
All in all, we had a fantastic time. Thanks to everyone who came! And today we’re finishing the decorating of the Halloween cookies, mutilating a pumpkin–erm, making a jack-o-lantern, that is–and going door to door begging for candy. What could be better than that?
Julian West has made a video for my old friend Chris Cannon’s “Night Falls,” a track off his album vine street, which you can download for FREE. Give it a listen, and then go check out the rest of the album.
So I give you, for the first time I think, Hulk the Druid (a celtic primeval force of nature), Captain Amerigo (from the New World), Thor himself, and an unknown mysterious clad-armored gladiator known as Iron Man . Tigether they are The AVENGERS, EARTH’s FIRST HEROES and they fight evils and undead armies. How does that sound?
My pal Jason Chalker, whose work I’ve praised before, has a fantastic Tron-related t-shirt design that’s up for voting over at Threadless. Go vote for it, already, so I can buy it as a shirt!
Over on the Bleeding Cool site, the cover and description of the long-awaited next installment of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century has been posted. Behold the awesome:
CHAPTER TWO takes place almost sixty years later in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. The vicious gangster bosses of London’s East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars on the edge of psychological disintegration and developing a taste for Satanism. Alerted to a threat concerning the same magic order that she and her colleagues were investigating during 1910, a thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London’s hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the antichrist.
And speaking of Thomas N. Perkins, he’s just released a new art book for the iPad and iPhone that’s available through the iTunes Apps store. There are details on Perkins’ blog, and speaking for myself I can say that I paid full price for it and thought it was worth every penny. Just jam-packed with awesome!
I have the redoubtable and ridiculously talented Thomas N. Perkins to thank for pointing out this gem.
There’s a blog for the short set up by the creators, largely in French, if you want more information.
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Just a quick note to say that my new prose novel, FURTHER: BEYOND THE THRESHOLD, is now available for purchase, in print, Kindle, and audio editions.
Here’s the description, from the Amazon listing:
Captain RJ Stone just awoke from a cryogenic suspension after disappearing twelve thousand years ago on Earth’s first unified interstellar space mission. He finds himself in a place known as the Human Entelechy, a myriad of worlds and habitats spread across three thousand light years that is linked by a network of wormholes with Earth at its center. Quickly caught in the middle of politics and intrigue he knows little about, Stone becomes the captain of the FTL Further, the first spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light. The crew’s first mission: investigate a distant pulsar for the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence. What they find, however, may be their undoing. Bestselling author Chris Roberson’s ambitious science fiction series drops a stranger into a strange time, combining world-building, humor, and action on a galactic scale. Among unfamiliar stars, RJ Stone’s second chance at a maiden voyage will propel listeners beyond the far reaches of space and imagination.
Absolutely my favorite and most inspiring image I’ve seen in a while.
I love how unpretentious and no-bullshit it is. It’s a plain desk, with a plain chair and a plain side chair, all of which are beat up from use and covered in ink. It faces a corner, one that’s covered in unorganized comics. It’s inspiring to see the desk that held the home of creation for countless characters was so practical. Nothing fancy about it. Just a place to sit down, shut up and do the work.
Trailer for ARJUN: THE WARRIOR PRINCE, an animated coproduction of Disney and ATV Motion Pictures. Here’s a rough translation of the dialogue from the trailer, courtesy of Cartoon Brew.
“Have the mothers of earth stopped giving birth to brave men?”
“Is there an archer (who can accomplish this)? Is there?!”
Drona: “Yudhishtira, what do you see?”
Yudhishtira: “Ten mango trees, three Bo-trees and one Audumbar tree.”
Drona: “Move aside! Arjun…?”
Arjun: “My eye sees only the eye of the bird, teacher.”
Drona: “Then release the arrow!”
“If you have to break the Pandavas, then first attack… Arjun!”
Draupadi: “Give me your word – that you will take vengeance for my humiliation from all the Kauravas!”
“Create the chakravyuha (circular formation)!”
Drona: “Get ready for battle!”
“Forget about victory and defeat – focus on action and you will fear nothing.”
Promotional ad for the Mackenzie Queen collection by Bernie Mireault, 1990.
Mireault is best remembered for The Jam or his collaborations with Mike Allred, but his Mackenzie Queen is a forgotten gem of 1980s indie comics. WELL worth hunting down in back issue bins.
Samsara takes the form of a guided meditation that will transform viewers as they are swept along a journey of the soul. Through powerful images photographed in 70mm and a dynamic music score, the film illuminates the links between humanity and the rest of the nature.
Just finished reading Nick Edwards’s DINOPOPOLOUS, published by Blank Slate Books in the UK. I strongly urge everyone who enjoys things that are awesome to hunt down a copy, immediately.
“In the first half of the 20th century an American couple from Kansas named Martin and Osa Johnson captured the public’s imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, far-away lands…Photographers, explorers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo…They explored then unknown lands and brought back knowledge of cultures thousands of miles away through their films, writings and lectures.”
I’m pretty late to the party on these two, having just stumbled upon a mention about them this morning. I’m fascinated, though. They’re like “Nick and Nora Charles on Safari.”
