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    Thursday, January 7th, 2010
    dr_hermes
         		11:19p
    Today's mystery guest

    Tom Smothers, right? Ken Berry? Redd Foxx..? Ah, I'm guessing, I got nothing.
    dr_hermes
         		10:02p
    Surprise Package
     Once in a while, these turn out to be pleasant and whimsical. But, let's face it, for the most part these pictures are atrocities that cannot be unseen. It's just fair to say.


    ( ??" )
    dr_hermes
         		9:58p
    dr_hermes
         		9:46p
    "The Face In the Tombstone Mirror" - TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN
     If you're a fan of Hammer or Universal horror films (or the genre in general), it's worth finding a copy of this and sitting through it for a half hour. (I found it in one of those "50 Movies in a Box" sets) In 1958, Hammer produced this as a pilot for a series that didn't sell. Too bad, this episode looks great and the series had the writing team of Catherine and Henry Kuttner with Curt Siodmak as director.. sounds promising.

    __

    According to the introduction, hosted by the floating head in a crystal ball from the Universal INNER SANCTUM flicks a decade earlier, this would not literally follow the Baron and his Monster in their agita every week. The premise is that the Baron's name has become so synonymous with the shocking and forbidden that any creepy spooky story deserves to be known as one of Tales of Frankenstein. Fair enough.

    This time out, we do start with Baron F up to his usual shenanigans. He's played by Anton Diffring, seemingly a good choice. Diffring had that sort of blase Euro-snooty attitude and cold pale eyes that seems perfect for the part but (to be honest) he doesn't put much energy in his acting. Most of the time, he seems to be thinking of something else, lunch perhaps. The Baron is in a terrific-looking set errr castle, full of spark-crackling equipment and bubbling retorts, bringing his Monster to life. The darn thing immediately attacks him but is stunned as they wrestle against some electric apparatus. Frankenstein discouragedly decides the creation needs a good brain, a brain belonging to a decent, intelligent man.

    Gosh, the very next day a dying sculptor and his wife come to ask Frankenstein for his help as a doctor. What luck. Rather cold-bloodedly, the Baron lets the man die, then digs up the poor stiff and extracts the brain to pop into the Monster's skull. But things never go well, as the late sculptor's wife finds out and tries to reason with the Monster...


    __

    Don Megowan is not bad at all as the Monster. Watching this a few times, I thought he brought a nice mixture of brute power and bewildered pathos to the role. He doesn't have Karloff's knack for just the right gesture but few actors did. The scene where he spots his reflection in a mirror, which he immediately smashes, is well done. Megowan played a number of creatures and robots and whatizits in various films, and aside from just height and bulk, he had a good sense of body language. (He's pretty rough with the Baron here, smacking him around and throwing him through a window.)

    The Monster's make-up looked disappointing at first, but it grew on me. It's very much in the Universal image (without the neck bolts and forehead scar) but the face is swollen and lumpy; it looks like the face of someone who has had major surgery in fact. It's credited to Clay Campbell.

    __
    mister_neil
         		3:21p
    Well, that didn't take too long...
     This post shall also go by the name "Oops, Shawn Did It Again".

    I've had to delete a lot of YouTube atheist channel subscriptions, because any time there's a DMCA abuse censorship case or fear of retribution, my subscriptions page gets flooded with mirror videos, and it's really annoying. You know, I kind of also want to watch my Angry Video Game Nerd videos and Classic Game Room videos. I don't like it when they get buried by twenty mirrors of the same pointless video.

    In any event, one of these mirroring campaigns actually caught my attention for a change. It turns out that VenomFangX, who recently returned to the internet after being grounded from it due to the last series of incidents (seriously, his website said that his PARENTS shut him down), has only been around long enough to get himself back into trouble and over the same shit as last time. Apparently he filed a number of DMCA take-down notices to YouTube users, among which is one DPR Jones, friend of Thunderf00t (in my opinion, he's kind of like Thunderf00t Lite).

    Aside from being Thunderf00t Jr., DPR Jones also happens to be a lawyer, and he's wasted no time in issuing the same ultimatum as last time. Shawn has ten (nine now, actually) days to shut down his YouTube channel, or else a legal suit could potentially be brought against him.

    Now, there are some roadblocks here, namely that DPR Jones is a citizen of the UK and Shawn is Canadian, and this is a case over US law. It's hard to say if a case like this will even be heard in a federal US court. Nevertheless, this is not a situation that Shawn wants to find himself in, and he's already started playing the "I didn't know any better" card from last time.


    Not only does this have nothing at all to do with whether or not Shawn's actions are punishable by law, his excuse of feigned ignorance doesn't hold up, because we've already gotten a retraction and apology out of Shawn, and here it is.


    Oh dear, I do apologize for the mix-up. That seems to be the WRONG VIDEO! I don't know how I got them mixed up. Here's what I actually meant to show.


    Now, as should be plainly apparent by now, Shawn is just trying the same trick he pulled last time. He filed a bunch of notices without regard for the consequences (or perhaps assuming that there wouldn't be any) with the full intent of erasing his own embarrassing history from the internet.

    DPR Jones has assured everyone that there will be no compromise, and if Shawn fails to evacuate his YouTube video channel, erase it, and so on, he will seek immediate action against Shawn.

    And so the game of chicken begins. If Shawn remains true to character, he will offer about a hundred apologies and then beg to settle in the last hours.

    Should be fun. Let's watch.
    aberranteyes
         		8:22a
    Happy birthday, [info]nora_chan!

    Current Mood: chummy
    Current Music: Soulive, "One in Seven"
    dryponder
         		3:37a
    Print Sale!

    Hi Internets,

    You may have noticed a significant decline in output from me over the last 6 months, as most of my sites and projects are on indefinite hiatus. This is because it has been a rough year (not just for me, I know).

    I’m spending these early days of Twenty Ten catching up on commissions, pinups, and coloring gigs that have fallen by the wayside over the last few years while I dealt with some health and financial troubles. As I complete these overdue commitments, I’m not going to be taking on any new gigs, so to keep the bills paid, I’ll be selling these high-quality 8 x 10” prints for $25 each plus $5 shipped in the U.S. (The shipping price only applies once for purchases of multiple prints, email for info on international orders.)

    If you have any interest in my work or in the possibility of owning one of these pieces, please contact me or PayPal me directly at deantrippe(at)gmail.com, just include in the comments section which of the prints you’d like and if you’d like them personalized. Thanks so much.


    Dynamic Duo


    The Girl Wonder


    Supergirl


    Superman


    World’s Finest


    Mary Marvel


    JLA


    Superman & Lois

    Thanks.

    qcjeph
         		1:49a
    Long Songs
     Here's a .zip of "Long Songs," widely regarded (by 10 people) as the best Deathmøle album. It does have my favorite song I've ever written on it ("Pelicans").

    Klicken Sie Bitte
    Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
    dr_hermes
         		11:43p
    Wait a minute. Sssh...
    ....did you hear something?

    dr_hermes
         		10:02p
    Today's mystery guest

    Distinguished looking fellow, maybe a judge or a doctor. Probably very stuffy and boring, eh?
    dr_hermes
         		10:00p
    The guy next to Jesse Owens?
     Am I mistaken, or is he Japanese? Man, the Nazi theories of Aryan supremacy took a licking at THAT Olympics.

    dr_hermes
         		8:20p
    Surprise Package
     As the name implies, these are a series of images hidden behind the cut. Some are adorable and charming, others are abominations in the nostrils of the Lord. Only one way to tell, eh?



    ( ? )
    dr_hermes
         		8:15p
    Get those Hobyahs OUT of here!
     I hate those things.



    This was a pleasant little jolt to the old memory cells. I found this in a book of folk stories and fairy tales, and immediately remembered reading it as a small child. Quite unsettling to be starting school and finding this yarn. (Our family dog was the sort that burglars were afraid of... because they might trip over her in the dark and hurt themselves.) If you haven't met the Hobyahs before, I have to say they don't make a good first impression.

    __

    __
    mister_neil
         		1:18p
    I love Rebecca Watson
     Yeah, I know she's married now. I died a little that day.

    Anyhoo, check out this video, where Rebecca talks about how Brit Hume can overcome being a douche bag.


    Isn't she wonderful?
    mister_neil
         		12:25p
    Total Insanity
     You know what's crazy? I'm doing five Crossoverlord pages at once. You know why? Because I keep making the Dasien/Green Avenger fight longer... and longer... and longer... It's CRAZY. And I can't ask anyone else to get in on this, because they're all busy. Even Dan, who is secretly my dream artist, if I ever had the money to pay someone else to draw Dasien.

    Seriously, if I found myself with hundreds of thousands of dollars, I'd throw him some cash and tell him to draw his little ass off. He not only drew one of my layouts EXACTLY the way I told him to, he went above and beyond on his last page, which is partially why I feel the need to try harder on the upcoming pages. He's raised the bar.

    But I'm digressing a little. So, I've got five pages in front of me in Photoshop. I'm in the middle of doing the hard lines (drawing over my original sketches), and it's coming out great, but it's taking SOOOOO long. I can't believe I'm doing this much work in a day and expecting to have it done by the weekend. I'm lucky I have a day off like that that I can sit, eat pizza rolls, listen to Adam Carolla, and just DRAW.

    Fortunately, the vast majority of these are just Das and Abby, so my coloring time should be cut way down. My coloring always suffers on pages where all the characters are in the same scene. I HATE THOSE PAGES!!!!

    And of course, I always have to be the one to do weird angles. You'll see what I mean in the first panel of the next comic. I have this low shot craned upward, and the action is coming down. I'm kind of getting back at myself for the last few pages I've done where I've done mostly talking heads.

    I also have to pose a lot of this stuff out. There's one panel where Dasien is pulling on Green Avenger's cape, and her posture is possible, but it's totally weird. I had to pull out the full-body mirror to make sure it wasn't too awkward. It works, and it looks REALLY cool, but it's one of the stranger poses I've ever done.

    And yeah, you guys are thinking, "What could this possibly be?". You'll see.

    I had a lot of this sketched out over the last several months, but I've also been re-staging a lot of it to bring it up to my own expectations. In fight scenes, I've always been a little disappointed in my own skills, but this is actually coming out fairly close to how I envisioned it. The compromises have been fairly low.

    So, I suppose I should get back to work. Keep your eyes on Crossoverlord in the next couple days and throughout the month. Al and I will mostly be trading art duties this month, and there might be one or two other artists (Ben just did one this past Tuesday), but it's mostly just the two of us this month.

    Variety will pick up again in the next month or so.

    http://www.drunkduck.com/Crossoverlord
    zegas
         		9:45a
    Fiffe interviews Ty Templeton
     Untitled-16

    I recently got the opportunity to interview one of my comic book heroes over at the new Comics Journal website. The interview will be broken up into 4 or 5 parts, and will run daily until Friday I believe. It's gonna run in segments daily until Friday, I believe.

    Part One: http://www.tcj.com/?p=2549

    Part Two: http://www.tcj.com/?p=2593

    Also, I made a supplementary post with tons more artwork over at my web site: http://michelfiffe.com/columns/ty_templeton/index.html

    So please check back every day (or on Friday) to finish reading Ty's unique take on everything from the industry, religion, music, and comedy. Ty's been a huge influence on me since I was kid, reading his Justice League off the spinner racks in the 80s. He's just gotten better and better and it's kinda scary how good he is. The interview is valuable for the world of comics, but it was a personal thrill for me to conduct it.
    aberranteyes
         		7:56a
    "...and there, in the cracked and spiky glass, we get our first good look at his face."
     Happy birthday, [info]sandoz_iscariot!

    Current Mood: chummy
    Current Music: KRS-ONE, "Get! Your! Self! Up!"
    Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
    dr_hermes
         		10:56p
    DRUMS OF FU MANCHU (1940)
     _

    It seems like I think every serial I watch is one of the best I've ever seen, but that's probably because I've been looking for serials that were highly recommended... so they really ARE good. It's not like I'm sitting through a marathon of BRUCE GENTRY, PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO or HOP HARRIGAN without breaks. Anyway, I had read and enjoyed all of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories over the course of a year or two (as well as his Sumuru books), and was really looking forward to watching this chapterplay.

    It certainly doesn't disappoint. DRUMS OF FU MANCHU is remarkably faithful to the tone and mood of Rohmer's books. Chapter Five, where the Devil Doctor and his Dacoits assault an isolated mansion in a thunderstorm, while inside Nayland Smith vainly tries to warn an intended victim of the danger, is just like a chapter from the early books brought to the screen. We have an evil, ageless Chinese super-villain invading Western society with his army of vicious assassins, his beautiful heartless daughter and his trademark of bizarre torture methods. He even is accompanied by the Council of Seven of the dreaded Si-Fan, meeting in ceremonial robes around a dragon-emblazoned table.

    Fu Manchu is opposed by staunch British Foreign Office agent Nayland Smith and his friend Dr Petrie, as well as a burly younger man delegated to handle the rougher fistfights... in this case, Allan Parker. The Devil Doctor is after some artifacts, a scroll hidden in a Dalai plaque and a shard from an ancient temple, which will give him the sacred scepter he needs to claim authority from Genghis Khan himself and thus launch an all-out holy war in Asia. (Sounds a lot like the book and film versions of MASK OF FU MANCHU, both great in themselves.) So the sides are drawn up, the hot potato is thrown from hand to hand and the fun starts.

    One thing I loved about this serial is its visuals. DRUMS looks like a 'B' horror film, very atmospheric and shadowy; since the first half is set in California rather than the foggy streets of London, heavy rainfall and thunderstorms set the proper mood. The Dacoits are all as sinister as you might hope, skulking around in the shadows with their bolos and poison dart blowpipes, flinging an inordinate number of daggers into peoples' backs.

    ( read on, lots more )

    _
    dr_hermes
         		10:14p
    So, I heard from Miss Rasmussen
     She's back doing post-graduate work at the University of Oslo, and sends everyone her love. Agnetha says she has been a complete macrobiotic Vegan diet, with lots of distilled water and homeopathic vodka. She claims to never have felt better, but I don't know...




    She just doesn't look quite herself.
    dr_hermes
         		9:55p
    Free men from conquered nations

    See, the first Blackhawk comics I saw were from the early 1960s. I just didn't see the point of the team. They seemed interchangeable with the Challengers of the Unknown... normal humans fighting aliens, monsters, mad scientists etc. But there were seven Blackhawks, so none of them got much of a chance to shine except the leader himself. Why did they each fly a jet? Why did they seem to be a military group fighting crime? I just wasn't taken with the comic.

    Years later, though, I found issues of MILITARY COMICS (later MODERN COMICS) and BLACKHAWK from the WW II era, and the team came to life with purpose and intensity. They were a group of air pirates, men who had escaped from countries which had been conquered by the Axis, and they fought back against the aggressors with a vengeance. No harmless gas guns or gimmicks, either... these guys carried Tommy guns and 45s and used them. They were not super-heroes, they were soldiers with a mission.






    The Blackhawk strip first appeared in MILITARY COMICS# 1, August 1941, a product of the Will Eisner studio (although he doesn't seem to have had as much to do with their creation as did Bob Powell and Chuck Cuidera. Reed Crandall soon became the artist most identified with the strip in its glory days, with his solid realistic style (he was the Norman Rockwell of comics, that's his cover with Blackhawk holding up the hawk). It's hard to recapture today the emotional power that the strip's concept must have carried at the beginning of the war. One nation after another had fallen to the Germans, and Japan was spreading its conquests in the Pacific. The future looked very dark and uncertain. The idea of men who belonged to the conquered nations banding together to fight back was a potent one.

    After the war, the Blackhawks went after Communist agggression with the same grim determination, and the stories up until the mid-1950s are still dark and fatalistic and exciting. Then DC bought the property from Quality, and Blackhawk quickly became as I mentioned earlier... a copy of the Challengers of the Unknown, but with accents and jets. Since then, the Blackhawk characters have been through a lot of abuse and reincarnations and debasement. But luckily, their original comics still exist to be enjoyed, safe beyond tampering and improving.

    __

    __
    dr_hermes
         		8:53p
    Today's mystery guest

    Bit more obscure than usual, but then you guys always surprise me with your knowledge. This fellow loaned his name to a famous fictional villain.
    aberranteyes
         		7:52a
    Happy birthday, [info]cadhla and [info]cassildra!

    Current Mood: chummy
    Current Music: Aterciopelados, "El Album"
    dr_hermes
         		12:15a
    How funny life is
     {maybe read this in Willie Nelson voice]


    Monday, January 4th, 2010
    dr_hermes
         		11:59p
    When you're out of Bud, tough Schlitz
     Yes, the essential food groups. Meat, vegetables. Fruit. Beer...



    I once had a friend try in great detail to convince me that pizza contained all the nutrients needed to support life. Carbohydrates in the dough, vitamins in the tomato sauce, protein in the pepperoni. But I think she was just hungry and wanted to stop at Angela's anyway.
    dr_hermes
         		11:54p
    Today's mystery guest
     It's the Human Fingerprint!!

    No, wait, that's not it...

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