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The great comic shop of Kowabunga Comics had the writer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, John Jackson Miller, in their shop to sign books and do some general talky-talky. John is an extremely kind man who was willing to talk with fans for hours about his work, comics, and general geeky things. The main topics he talked about were his start in comics, Knight of the Old Republic (of course) and the new Star Wars comics crossover, and a very little bit on his upcoming projects. I’ve broken each section up into sections wit bullet points to make for easy reading. Enjoy!

JJM’s Start in Comics

* First comic John ever owned was Star Wars #1 from Marvel, which he still owns. He did point out that it’s not the one worth tons of money, so don’t go e-mailing him to see if he’ll sell it.

* His mother was a librarian who not only never threw his comics away (how many people have that story?), but made him keep all his comics in impeccable order. How’s that for an awesome mom?

* John has a bachelors degree in journalism and a masters degree in Soviet studies.

* He starting writing comics as a kid and he traded his works with his friends. John said the equivalent of this today is web comics.

* His first job for Marvel comics was the Crimson Dynamo miniseries the  back in 2003. This book made great use of his Soviet studies degree since the Soviet Union fell just before he graduated. When you read Crimson Dynamo, you’ll see tons of references to Soviet history, culture, and political goings-on.

* His success on Crimson Dynamo lead him into his run on Iron Man were Tony Stark became the Director of Defense. This is when we see Tony solidifying his connections with the US government, which would later lead to his talking over of S.H.I.E.L.D. John’s run on Iron Man is known as the “Tom Clancy” time on the book because of how realistic everything is. The only piece of the John’s Iron Man that is unrealistic is the Iron Man armor itself.

* After John was done with Marvel he blazed a path into Dark Horse Comics.

JJM rides the Dark Horse:The meat and potatoes of it!

* John’s first book for Dark Horse (DH) was an issue of Star Wars: Empire where Darth Vader is solving a murder mystery. From there he moved on to Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR)

* KOTOR is set 4000 years before the Battle of Yavin seen in the motion picture Star Wars: A New Hope.

* John said that he has created “The Fugitive in the Star Wars Universe”. This is referring to the old TV series that was made popular again in the 90’s by the Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones movie.

* The story follows the worst Jedi apprentice ever named Zayne Carrick. Zayne is accused of a mass murder her didn’t commit, hunted by just about everyone, and all of this happens during the Mandalorian War. Which means it’s like The Fugitive taking place in WWII and out hero is being hunted by the Axis and the Allies.

* On a side note, John mentioned that it’s tough to ride in an elevator with guys in Mandalorian armor.

* There is a new crossover event coming to the Star Wars books called Vector. John didn’t say much about it, but the story takes place in all the Star Wars comics. That’s a story spanning 4125 years of Star Wars history. Now there is no time travel in the Star Wars Universe, but John did assure us that they have come up with something very cool to get us through all those eras. He also assured us that even though Vector has a part in every Star Wars comic, it doesn’t throw off the existing stories for those who do not wish read all 12 issues.

*I tried to pull a few Vector spoilers out of John, but to his credit the man was a steel trap. I couldn’t get a thing.

Upcoming Project

* Twenty-five years after “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Indiana Jones is back! The movie is out May of 2008 and it stars Harrison Ford Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, John Hurt, Ray Winstone and Jim Broadbent. Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by David Koepp, produced by George Luca, yep the gangs all here.

* I’m happy to say that John Jackson Miller is writing the comic adaptation. The only thing I could get out of John was that it’s a comic about Indiana Jones and that means there will be a whip and a hat. As stated before, John keeps his secrets well. He made it very clear that he could not discuss any piece of Indy 4 other than to say he was working on the comic adaptation.

* John did say that Dark Horse comics will be putting out an Indiana Jones Omnibus that collects the comic adaptations of the first three films as well as some new Indiana Jones adventures in their young readers line.

Well that about covers it! It was great to talk with John about his body of work and his obvious love of the comic book medium. ThePullBox looks forward to his future work and wishes him the best of luck.

So, tonight was my G4 spot on conspiracy theories from Heroes. While they had asked me to prep three topics, we only got to talk about Adam Monroe… it’s okay because that was the big one for this week’s episode. I got good feedback from the tech guys at G4 and on my myspace… so I think it went ok, at least it went better than out walk through an 1/2 hour previous to live broadcast. Kevin and Blair rocked! Thanks G4 for having me and Heroestv.com on the Post show!

Lou Ferrigno is 56 today and when a person starts to attend Comic Conventions on a regular basis, you learn one truth very early. Lou Ferrigno is notorious for being one of the biggest dorks at the Con, just ahead of Rob Leifeld, but I’ll save that for another time. What we have here is a recounting of last May’s Motorcity Comic Con. The story was originally posted on my personal blog, but as a birthday treat to Lou, I’ll post it again.

When we arrived at the Con, our press liaison, Valerie, told us that there were many people willing to do interviews for ThePullBox. She assured, in fact, that many of the Con guests were happy to do it. When we asked with whom we could talk, the first person she mentioned was Lou Ferrigno. We knew she was mistaken. Lou doesn’t talk to anyone, well not unless they pay him $20 of an over sized Mr. Universe poster from 1974.

I met a Novi cop last weekend (don’t ask how) and he told his Lou Ferrigno story from the 2006 Motorcity Con. The cop was working the Con detail, making sure, everything was on the up-and-up, and he tried talking to Lou. Keep in mind this the guy was in full uniform so there was no mistaking that he’s a public servant. Lou asked the cop for $20, the cop said, “My wallet’s in the squad”, so Lou brushed him off to talk to the 1970’s ex-porn star at the table next to him.

I digress: So Eric, ever the optimist, says he wants to ask Lou for an interview. So, we walk over to Lou’s table, where he is starring off into space wondering why he’s alone in the world, and Eric says, “Hi, I’m Eric with ThePullBox.com“

“Okay“ Lou mumbled

“We were told by Valerie, the press liaison, that you’d be willing to do a quick interview for our fans“ said Eric.

“If you pay $20 for a picture I can sign it, but I’m not going on camera” Lou responded

I jumped in with, “Would you be willing to just answer a few questions that we could post, no camera involved?”

Lou had to make the hamster’s wheel he calls a brain start to turn so he could understand this concept and responded:
“If you buy some of my stuff I can answer a question“

A question? Like one question?!? Not a couple, or a few questions!?!? I felt like asking him how to synthesize a mentholated alkaloid just to watch him have a fracking brain aneurysm!

So we walk away getting exactly what I expected, Lou Ferrigno still being a knob. The kicker is the CW station that was at the Con (the only other press I saw) must have paid their $20 because they got to talk to him. We snapped a picture of this and Lou shot our camera operator a mean look. Well, it was more like look devoid of any higher brain functioning. By the way, we’ve seen Lou try to rip a camera out of a guy’s hands for taking his picture without his permission.

Then (yes, there is more) later that that night at the pub, Lou decided to try and be a nice guy by getting up to the karaoke mic to gather the attention of the room so a guy could propose to his girlfriend. Now I’m happy for the couple, but Lou’s way of getting everyone’s attention was to yell, “EVERYONE SHUT UP! I HAVE A VERY HEART WARMING THING TO SHOW YOU!” and when the billiards table didn’t immediately respond he said, “YOU IN THE CORNNER, SHUT UP AND LISTEN!” That went over well….

Now, I was going to let this go and do the Christian thing, but a source called “The Dude” paid his twenty-bucks or was a part of the CW crew and reported this on Superherohype.com:

“I was at the Motor City Con in Detroit today, and Lou Ferrigno was there. We got to talking, and he revealed something he shouldn’t have. Basically I asked him about if he knew anything about the new HULK film, he did confirm he will be in the movie, but he will play a “big important” part in the film. I looked at him, then he said something about playing a villain, I couldn’t really hear over the loud noise. I asked him again, and he said he didn’t want to get into trouble, whatever that means.”

I call B.S.! Lou has no acting ability at all! That’s why all his rolls were either B-Movies, dubbed over, or walk-on cameos. No one would make him the major villain in anything. If he is in the new Hulk movie, then I hope we see the Abomination eat his steroid infused heart.

First off I have to say that taking part in the IFL seminar was not my idea. The IFL’s marketing director, by name of Marie Camaya’s, idea. She’s a very nice and pretty girl who conned me into getting my ass kicked by professional fighters for two hours while someone took pictures. Secondly, keep in mind that I’m not a fighter. I have been studying martial arts for awhile, but MMA is far from what I’ve been doing and I was just not ready for the IFL level. Fortunately for me, neither were the seven other poor saps that were also taking the seminar.

The seminar was held partially in one of the many conference rooms at Wizard World Chicago and part on the convention floor. Both had been outfitted with a mat as to not injure ourselves when we fell, or were thrown down. Notice I wrote “injure” and not”hurt”, because when Carlos Newton decides to drop you…it hurts. Which brings to just who was running this show.

First was Carlos “The Ronin” Newton who has created his own style of jiu-jitsu, which he calls “Dragon Ball Jiu-Jitsu” and is not only one of the top grapplers in the world, but has also taught linguistics at Toronto’s York University, and is a student of Japanese culture. He’s also the one who beat up on me the most.

Then there was Gideon Ray, who is has eight years and over 40 fights to his name. The man knows what he’s doing and, in my opinion as a professional educator, was an excellent teacher. Gideon is exactly the kind of guy you want to learn from.

There’s the staff, now back to the seminar. We started with some very simple step moves (e.g. how to move from a punch) and steadily moved to more complex grappling moves. We did standing choke holds, take downs,knee submissions, ankle submissions, and an elbow submission. All of which were very fun to learn, but not so fun to be a victim of, but I was often the demonstration guy, hooray for me. Luckily for me, the guy I was partnered with was not very good and by the time he got to the point when the maneuver hurt, time was up and we moved on. The highlight for me was more the lecture portion of the the seminar. Gideon let everyone know that a large part of fighting knowing your body position compared to your opponent.

The most impressive physical display was when Carlos decided to give us a lesson on using the body’s powerline (creating a straight line from your arm to your leg) to life a guy by the neck and holding him there. Everyone had to get lifted, and yes, it hurt.

All sarcasm and and joking aside, it was a great time and I learned a few things that took my martial arts instructor by surprise. The IFL can my seen on regular broadcast television on every Monday on MyNetworkTV from 8-10 pm. Thank-you to Marie Camaya, Carlos Newton, and Gideon Ray for the great time.

Check out The Pullbox MySpace page for all out convention pictures