Roberson's Interminable Ramble

Moving House

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:24:00 +0000

I'm in the gradual process of switching from Blogger to Wordpress, and while the chrisroberson.net domain isn't going anywhere, some of the changes are going to break the RSS feeds and such that are already set up. If you're following this anywhere but at http://www.chrisroberson.net/ramble.html, you'll want to point your feed reader to the new RSS feed, http://www.chrisroberson.net/?feed=rss2.

The actual URL of the blog itself will probably change away from "ramble.html" as well in coming days, but I'm still working out the bugs. For the moment, you can see the new posts by visiting the root of http://www.chrisroberson.net. (And please excuse the mess, as the look and layout is still being tweaked considerably.)

Lords of Light!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:51:00 +0000

Sean "Cheeks" Galloway shares this awesome illustration of one of my favorite cartoon trios, Thundarr the Barbarian and his pals Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel.

I think we're about overdue for a Thundarr revival, don't you?

Weekend Pulp

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:33:00 +0000

Here are a couple bits of pulp for your weekend.

First up, and keeping with the inadvertent Green Hornet fixation, is a Kato teaser from the incomporable Francesco Francavilla, presumably tied into the forthcoming Dynamite family of Green Hornet titles.

Also on offer is this terrific design sketch for a Doc Savage statue by Ruben Procopio, forthcoming from Electric Tiki. As Ruben notes, the base of the statue is, fittingly enough, Doc's Fortress of Solitude.

Wes Anderson on Spider-Man and the Super Bowl

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:43:00 +0000

Two video parodies that imagine what would happen if Wes Anderson (who I just realized is probably my favorite filmmaker of the moment) took on some new projects.

What if Wes Anderson directed Spider-Man 4?

What if filmmakers directed the Super Bowl?
The other director-parodies here left me pretty cold, but the Wes Anderson bit that starts at 1:11 almost made me want to watch the Super Bowl, which is saying something. (Normally I just watch the commercials.)

The Art of Dan Christensen

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:52:00 +0000

I've got the Marvel Smartass blog to thank for pointing out the work of Dan Christensen, an American-born illustrator based in France. Dan has a style that's refreshingly his own, but one that occassionally reminds me of people like Seth, Andi Watson, Paul Grist, and even Jay Stephens from time to time.

Since we were discussing Green Hornet the other week, here is Dan's take on the characters, from his portfolio of Golden Age & Pulp characters.

And keeping with the <> + <> motif, here's his take on Yellow Jacket from his Superhero Alphabet (the A to Z of characters displays exceptionally good taste in superheroes, though I'd quibble that "Z" should have been Scott McCloud's Zot).

There's more great stuff at Dan's blog, including samples of some sequential stuff. Check it out.

Trailer for Gorillaz's Plastic Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:13:00 +0000

Here's the trailer for the forthcoming Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, due out in March. More atmospheric than anything, but some compelling visuals.

I love the way that the island looks like a disused and long-abandoned Gerry Anderson set, in which things are about to go wrong.

Beaglemen and Were-terriers

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:47:00 +0000

Kate Beaton's latest Hark, a vagrant strip is particularly resonant, not with me personally but with a character of mine that I hope you'll all come to know and love--Spot, the were-terrier.

That's Spot on the left below, from the teaser story in last fall's House of Mystery Annual (which should be appearing online in its entirety before too much longer).

Robot 6 Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:03:00 +0000

If you don't get enough of my blathering here or elsewhere online, Robot 6 has posted a new interview with me conducted by Tim O'Shea, in which we discuss Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, iZombie, the Harvey and Terrytoons cartoons, and much more.

The Ventures Vs. The Quests

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:25:00 +0000

(via) Behold artist Matt Synowicz's X-Men #100-inspired vision of a confrontation between two families of adventurers: the Venture and the Quests.

Who wins when the Ventures battle the Quests? We do, that's who.

Axe Cop!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:57:00 +0000

(via) This may be the single greatest thing I've ever seen.

Malachai Nicolle is a five year old kid from Washington who loves Dinosaurs, Ben 10, video games of all kinds, and anything involving bad people getting destroyed.

Ethan Nicolle is a 29 year old comic artist/writer living in Los Angeles. He is the writer/artist/creator of the Eisner Award nominated Chumble Spuzz.

Together, they have created what may be the perfect comic: Axe Cop!

Axe Cop!

AXE COP!!

Seriously, y'all, check out Axe Cop. I'm not crazy about the Flash interface, but if you click on "Non-Flash" in the upper right corner you'll get a static version (and "Download" just points to the image file, which is also nice). There are five episodes so far, and they're all packed with crazy awesome.

MacGruber

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:03:00 +0000

They're making a feature film out of MacGruber? How did I not know this?

I'm withholding judgement on this one for the moment. Will Forte's MacGruber bits have been some of the only consistenly funny sketches on SNL for a while. Will it work at feature length? Mmm...

Dynamite's Green Hornet

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:06:00 +0000

I've raved before about Dynamite's various reinterpretations of classis pulp and radio characters, like the Lone Ranger and Zorro. Since it was announced that they would be tackling the Green Hornet next, my immediate responses were (1) "Damn, why can't I be writing that?!" and (2) "I can't wait to see it." There'll actually be two Green Hornet projects from Dynamite, as I understand it, a kind of "Year One" approach scripted and masterminded by Matt Wagner with character designs by John Cassaday, and a modern-day reinterpretation based on the screenplay for Kevin Smith's abandoned film version of a few years back, with character designs by Alex Ross.

Yesterday, as part of his ongoing "Pulp Sunday" series, Francesco Francavilla posted a teaser illo he's cooked up for the former, which was too good not to share.

And if you haven't yet seen Ross's redesign for the modern-day book, here's a glimpse.

Both of them promise to be good, pulpy fun (and worthy successors to Ron Fortier's Green Hornet from NOW Comics). Count me in.

Imperial Propaganda

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:03:00 +0000

Over on his blog, Cliff Chiang shares this fantastic recruitment poster, one of three he did for the new Star Wars Galaxy 5 trading card set.

About the approach, he had this to say:

This enlistment poster was actually based on an old war bonds poster. While using Nazi propaganda would’ve been appropriate, it was actually more engaging for me to try and create posters that cast the Empire as saviors of the galaxy, especially on the heels of the Death Star 9/11 short.

XKCD's "Children's Fantasy"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:58:00 +0000

XKCD points out the downside for the kid heroes of all those fantastic adventures.

Tips for Better Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:07:00 +0000

(via) I like this a lot. Directed, designed, and illustrated by Rory O’Sullivan for Langara College'sRethink College project, apparently. Lots of terrific advice, cleverly presented.

Wizards

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:10:00 +0000

Over the New Years weekend, Georgia and her cousins John and Henry find a hole underneath a tree, which John insists is the home of a wizard. Georgia makes clear her stance on the existence of wizards.

Georgia, Up a Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:38:00 +0000

This kid? This kid right here? LOVES climbing trees.

Georgia, Up a Tree
Originally uploaded by monkeybrainbooks

What Time Is It?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:33:00 +0000

Soon.... Soon...

More glimpses of the forthcoming awesomeness (sadly not embeddable) can be found here.

The Book Designs of Jim Tierney

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:01:00 +0000

I have a post on Super Punch to thank for pointing out the simply amazing work of Jim Tierney, an illustration student at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Check out the following images, which were part of his senior thesis at school.

More great stuff at Tierney's site, and some interesting process insight and sketches at his blog. Publishers take note. Hire Tierney NOW, while you can still afford him.

With One Magic Word...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:30:00 +0000

I've been reading a fair amount of CC Beck Captain Marvel comics lately, and thinking a lot about what makes those old comics work so well. And what has made that character not work in just about every instance since, with isolated exceptions. Jeff Smith's Monster Society of Evil is about the closest that anyone's come in the last few decades, but even that doesn't quite work for me, as gorgeous as it is to look at.

I've flipped through the occasional issue of the new DC kids' title Billy Batson and the Power of Shazam, but they haven't really grabbed me. And then last night I saw this gem on Mike Norton's blog. I knew from his deviantArt page that he was taking over the art on the book, but I think this is the first issue for which he's done the cover, as well, the forthcoming issue #15.

Okay, that I like. I've always felt that the Marvel Family work best in a more iconic, more "cartoony" style, but without venturing too far into "goofy," and I think Norton's style here strikes a nice balance. I'll definitely be checking out the book once he takes over the art reins (with issue 13, I believe?)

In tangentially related news, I was surprised to find the following image on Amazon the other night, while searching around for something else entirely. It appears that the Justice League Unlimited toy line has done well enough that it has continued long after the show went off the air, and now has expanded to include characters who never even appeared on the show. Other DC characters, reimagined in the style Bruce Timm established for the JLU character designs. For example... the Marvel family:

I don't buy action figures, as a rule, but I'm sorely tempted to make an exception for these. It's a shame that the various attempts to get a Marvel Family cartoon off the ground in recent years have all failed.

And if you want to see how Captain Marvel could really work in animation, check out this opening from a recent episode of Batman: Brave and the Bold, which has emerged in the last year and change as the absolute best interpretation of the DC characters in years.

OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:55:00 +0000

I've been a fan of OK Go for a while, and have been meaning to check out their new album. Yesterday a post on Metafilter pointed out an interesting open letter from the band about the reasons why the new video from the album, "This Too Shall Pass," is not embeddable on YouTube. Well worth a look for anyone interested in how large corporations might go about monetizing "free" internet content.

Helpfully, Damian ends the open letter with the embed code for the video from Vimeo. So there.

And the song and video are dandy, too. Check it out.

Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:52:00 +0000

It's funny, because it's true.

Alex Ross' Super-types

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

For reasons I can't quite explain, I had an image in my head for most of the last week, and couldn't for the life of me remember where it was from--a series of small sketches by Alex Ross of various Superman-type characters. I've been thinking a lot about superheroes in general, lately, and in particular about books like Kurt Busiek's Astro City that use new versions of superhero archetypes rather than the more familiar corporate brands, and maybe that's what got me thinking about those Ross sketches. But by Saturday, when the image wouldn't leave me alone, I decided to hunt it down.

I'm already rereading KBAC (that's Astro City for the acronymically-disabled), so I knew it wasn't in the back-materials of any of the hardcover or trade collections there. I worked my way through the collections of Marvels, Kingdom Come, Earth-X, et al, and while I found loads of great stuff (and decided to finally sit down and read the whole "Universe-X" series from beginning to end, so on it goes onto the To Read pile), I didn't find the sketch. Likewise in Mythology, the collection of Ross's DC-specific art. Then I started working my way through various magazines and interviews, though I was beginning to lose hope.

Finally I struck gold in issue 223 of The Comics Journal, published in May 2000. This wasn't quite the image I was remembering, but damned if it wasn't pretty close. The following ran along the bottom of a two-page spread in the middle of the Ross interview.

The only explanation given for the sketches is on the following page, where they're described as "Costumed do-gooders galore. Note the inclusion of Chris Ware's God among so-called do-gooders." Not particularly helpful in answering why Ross did these sketches in the first place, but pretty much in keeping with the general tone of the editorial comments accompanying the interview, which seem to go to some length to justify to the TCJ readership why they'd be interviewing Ross in the first place.

As I said, though, this wasn't quite the image I was thinking of. What I was remembering was sketches of the heads of Superman-types. Then I remembered one more place I hadn't thought to look, and hit paydirt. It was in the Wizard's Alex Ross Millennium Edition Special (well, I think that's what it was titled, though from the type-treatment it's pretty hard to tell), published in 1999.

Better still, this one was accompanied by a quote from Ross explaining what the image was for.

The fact that the same characters are included in both the full-body and the headshot sketches seems to indicate that the former probably served the same purpose, helping Ross work out the details of Samaritan's costume.

And, because there's something wrong with me, here are the TCJ sketches reorganized in the order that Ross probably had them in originally, if the Wizard headshots are any indication.

All I can figure is that I'd filed that information away somewhere in my hindbrain, and in the process of rereading the first few years' worth of Kurt Busiek's Astro City the last couple of weeks, I sparked an association.

So what kind of Superman-type did Ross end up designing from scratch, after revisiting the hairstyles and costumes of a host of predecessors? Take a look for yourself.

Ten Years

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:25:00 +0000

Ten years ago today, I successfully tricked Allison Baker into marrying me. In the decade since, we've bought a couple of houses (and sold one), started a publishing company, each changed jobs once or twice, and created a human being.

(Photo by the lovely and talented Mike Fitelson)

I realized the other day that ten years is a quarter of my life, so far, and counting the three years we lived together before getting married, Allison and I have been together for a third of my life. It seems both longer than that and all-too-brief, at the same time.

Here's a dandy "trailer" for our wedding video, cut by director and screenwriter George Huang as a gift for our first anniversary. Watch it fast before Sony and/or Lucasfilms has it yanked down from YouTube for its unauthorized use of the music.

It's been a fantastic decade together, and I'm hoping for many more still to come.

(Photo by Ellen Datlow)

Wes Anderson's stop-motion acceptance speech

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Roberson) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:23:00 +0000

(via) Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of my favorite movies of 2009, and a strong contender for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. (And for a year that contained gems like Up and The Princess and the Frog, that's saying something.) And it's already started racking up awards, including the National Board of Review's "Special Filmmaking Achievement."

I think it's only fitting that the acceptance speech that Anderson sent to the NBR should be in the same medium of the film the award is recognizing, don't you?

If you haven't seen The Fantastic Mr. Fox yet, by all means do. And pick up the soundtrack, while you're at it, which has been on a continuous loop in our family car for the better part of the last month.