When Eric and I got back from Novi, we stepped right into the end-of-the-school year craziness. We worked out tails off to post the con coverage that we did, but some things had to wait until time became for available. I’m sorry to the people that had to wait for reviews, but it could not be helped.
So here is my review of ELLIUM: RISE OF THE FALLEN by Jason Moser, Matt Krizan, and Scott Licina of Asylum Ink. This is a graphic novel that they produced into a frame motion DVD (I think that is what it’s called). Basically, it works like a Hollywood story board film. We see the still frame artwork panned over in various ways, sometimes layered with other art, and there is an original score playing as you read the word balloons that pop up. The DVD itself contains four stories and some extras
The summery on the back cover reads:
“Prepare to enter a futuristic world of espionage secret societies and the occult. Where the true powers behind puppet governments are secrete factions, each vying for control of humanity with only the members of ELLIYUM to stand in there way!”
The secrete organization story is very well played here. The reader/watcher never really gets the whole story on who or what ELLIUM is. This made me want to get more of the story, which is whole point, right? The plots of the stories range from the realistic (Diamond Mine) to the fantastic (Blood Read Snow), but all have the X-Files feel with a horror edge. Now I’m not a fan or horror, but this book succeeds in not letting the “horror feel” overpower a good story.
I found the artwork to be a cleaner lined version of Ben Templesmith’s work in 30 Days of Night. It added to the story without be distracting and succeeds in creating the perfect setting for the story.
Check these guys out here and talk to your local comic shop about getting their stuff in.
The video interview I’ve been working on first is with the great David Petersen. You can look at my first Motorciy post for my entire David Petersen/Mouse Guard love where the video is also posted. But, if you’re just here for the video….here it is.
I’m finding that I should have bloged my Con experience each when I got back to the hotel, pic could have been loaded later. Anyway, when we rolled into the hotel at 12:04 and got all our crap into the room, I needed a beer. He head down to the hotel bar and meet a just by the name of Jay Fife. He was very friendly and he talked with my group of three while we played a game of eight-ball. The games were over, my beer was gone, and I was dead tired, so we said good night to Jay (who told us to stop by tomorrow and he would give us a free sketchbook). I don’t know if it was because I was tired or because, in the past, when people at the con tell me to stop by their table for free stuff, it’s crap. Jay was very nice, but I honestly wasn’t expecting much. (If you are reading this Jay, sorry man) Boy-Howdy was I wrong. I would put Jay Fife in my top 5 artist to keep my eye on. His stuff is amazingly dynamic is scope and wide in sequence. I saw him sketch some beautiful women then turn around and do a superhero cow for me (long story). I would see Jay doing art with big boys Greg Land, Greg Horn, and Alex Ross. Yeah, that’s right! Jay could hang with Alex Ross the Greg’s with and you wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
Check out Jay’s Site and tell him you heard about him from HeroesTV.com
Wow what a weekend! I went to the Motorcity Comic Con with a few friends of mine on my very first assignment as a net journalist. The plan was to update my blog at the end of each day, but the free wi-fi connection at the hotel was less than okay. It was like being back on a 56k line! Loading pics from the weekend would have taken forever, so I ‘m dong it now. So what follows here are my event of day one.
The weekend started by meeting Dick Ayers Silver Age comic legend who’s artistic style helped define the Marvel Universe. He worked on such titles as Sgt. Fury, Avengers, Captain America and just about every Marvel title. He and his wife were very kind until my cohort Eric (pictured) slammed Dick’s hand in the door of the hotel shuttle van. Dick’s hand unusable for about half a day, but he got better. Now we have the quote for the weekend, “Dude! You broke Dick Ayers!”
Eric and I had the pleasure of meeting Billy Tucci, creator of Shi and publisher of Crusade Entertainment. He is currently working on Hero For Hire for Marvel, and he was great. Billy first made it big in the mid 90’s when Todd McFarland and Rob “The Knob” Lifeield who the bad-boys of comics. Publishers tried to tap that same feel with Billy and it didn’t work, and I can see why. He was an amazingly nice man who was kind enough to sign a whole lotta stuff that will be sold to support children’s cancer research. There are not enough good things to say about him, great guy.
Here’s Eric and I with Bruce Jones. He’s a comic writer on Nightwing, Warlord, Batman/Scarecrow and Vigilanti along many other DC and Marvel titles. Good guy, good writer. He was kinda quiet at first, but when two large men with Scandinavian root descend upon you, people kinda take a moment before they realize we’re not going to shake them down for their Little Debbie snack cakes, but we got him talking. The Hulk is one of my favorite characters and he’s written lots of Hulk stories. Good guy to talk with.
Not a great pic (sorry), but here is Dave Finch, artist on Moon Knight and cover artist on The Avengers, Fallen Son #4, Aphrodite and many other projects. His stuff is awesome! Even if you’re not a comic book fan, you would look at his stuff and go “wow”. He was there with his lovely wife and they were kind enough to sign an entire box of comics for our charity drive (THANK YOU SO MUCH). I first saw Dave’s work on a book call Ascension. It was a mid-90’s comic about the angelic wars in heaven. Fun stuff and his warrior angles cemented my mind’s eye of what Archangels should look like. Fun guy who loves his fans.
Here we have David Peterson, remember that name because he’s going to be big…and I mean Brad Bird, Peter Jackson, George Lucas big. He has an amazing book called Mouse Guard that will knock you on your ass. Not kidding, read Eric’s comic review of Mouse Guard here! He was very kind and let us do a video interview that will be up as soon as we figure that out (we’re new at this). I would not be surprised if you see a Mouse Guard movie in the next 5 years. David Peterson is one of those creative minds that you meet once, maybe twice, in your life. If I wasn’t just a high school teacher and had a few million to invest, I’d invest in this guy. I would triple my money in 10 years, maybe more. Run, don’t walk, to your local book/comic store and get the Mouse Guard hard cover. You’ll thank me.
Here’s he Video inerview!!
This is Jason Howard. He’s co-creator and artist on The Astounding Wolf-Man from Image Comics, artist on The Pact #4, a writer for Sketch Magazine, and a cool guy. His new book, The Astounding Wolf-Man, was one of the book you could have picked up on Free Comic Day. If you didn’t, ask your local comic shop is they still have some issues to hand out. If they don’t, buy one. It’s very worth the cover price. He was great to talk with and was kind enough to do a sketch for my local comic shop as a gift to us.
Children and geeks who watch cartoons of teh mid-90’s, remember the show Reboot? It was a toon based inside a computer and hit just as the internet was becoming a household tool. Well This guy is Jim Su and he is one of the people responsible for Reboot, and has a very cool book coming out called Corzonia. His new project is based on two warring undersea cities of Atlantas and Corzonia, and the art is great! I also have a video interview with Jim that will be up soon. Check out Jim’s blog here or Beach Studios here
The very fun Matt Delight (right) is a guy you want to hang out with. I can’t find this card right now (I know I have it!) but he was very fun, and so was his friend who’s name escapes me right now. I do remember that Matt’s friend runs a dance party in Detroit every month that looked like a blast. As for Matt, Goggle “Matt Delight” and you’ll come up with his stuff. I’ll post his link as soon as I find the card.
The only press I saw at the Motorcity Con was us and the local CW station. They covered Con celebs (no CW love for the comic guys, especially the inde people) and pimped their station by giving promo posters for Smallville and Supernatural. Funny this is, they screwed up. We came into the Con on Sunday and signs were posted all over saying “Adam West, TV’s Batman, is not at the Con. CW News made a mistake”. Obviously the CW news reported that Adam West was at the con and people started coming in looking for him. Oops! You would see those kinds of mistakes with HeroesTV.com coverage!
This is Gema, art teacher by day and comic writer/publisher by night. She has a great looking book called Clayshaper about a living clay rat. It looked like it would be great for middle school aged reader. She also had some great “Make your own comic” workbooks that I might be getting for my class. I know Eric has all her contact info that I will link to when I get if from him. Gema was a great gal to hang out with. She tore-up the karaoke bar on Saturday night, pics posted soon
Blurry pic, don’t know why. These are the two ladies who ran the HUGE Dukes of Hazard display. They’re two Canadian woman who have loved the Dukes for years and collected tons and tons of stuff. At some point they looked around the house and went “Aw crap, I got a lotta Duke stuff. What do I do with it?” Well I’ll tell ya what they did. They make a website and became the largest purveyors of Duke lore in existence. They now travel to Cons and share the love. You can check out their site here.
In part two I will cover more of what happened the second day of the Con. I do have a couple to DVD’s to review (that might take a bit), I’m working on getting my video interview up a running, and then of course the night life coverage. Also check out Eric’s (Stongbad’s) con converge. He was able to get things up quicker then I was.
The news dropped yesterday that Thomas Jane has blackout out of the Punisher 2 because Lionsgate could not get their crap together. After the tirade of e-mails and phone calls from geeks around the world, they came out today with the announcement that they will be backing Frank Miller (Sin City) and his movie about Will Eisner’s The Spirit
If you don’t know who Will Eisner or The Spirit are, shame on you and click here for your education in cool.
It’s Con season again!
This is the first year that I will attend cons as a web reporter for HeroesTV and we’re hoping to expand our readership out into the larger geek culture. NBCs HEORES is still the bread and butter of the site, but diversity and variety will keep a site going. To accomplish this, I’m attending the two biggest comic conventions in the Midwest (MotorCity and Wizard World Chicago). I have hope if getting to San Diego, but rumors are that it’s getting too big to handle.
So tell your friends and neighbors to visits my blog, Strongbad’s blog, and HeroesTV for all the con updates and keep the comments coming.
Last week I got the soundtrack to Evil Dead: The Musical. Ever since then I’ve been on a bit of a Bruce Campbell kick. I was glad to see that he was the best part of Spider-Man 3
Check out this interview with Bruce per Wizard Magizine
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/004474862.cfm
