Geek with Family

The Hellboy Animated production crew keeps a blog. I’m pretty geeked to see this thing. The blog posts the latest character designs, concepts and background art for the series of 75 minute movies. The first movie is finished or close to it and the team has already begun the second feature. The outlook is hopeful for these direct to DVD movies to capture Mike Mignola’s vision better than the Hellboy live action movie or the animated, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, from Disney’s catalog.

Continue reading Hellboy Animated Movies Production Blog

Popularity: 12% [?]

Warren Ellis finally gets to have some fun at Marvel Comics with his new Next Wave. I just picked up the third issue and the "Director’s Cut" of the first issue (I’m not a completist, I just missed the first printing, getting in on the second issue). Next Wave is a pirate super-hero team of real, forgotten Marvel characters (Captain Marvel, Boom Boom, Bloodstone and Machine Man (I have loved Machine Man ever since he crushed coal into diamonds in his purple robot hands 20-some years ago)) and a new parody character (the Captain or he could be too obscure for me or a combination of different Marvel Captains). The team used to work for H.A.T.E., but Boom Boom stole their parent corporation’s (Beyond Corp.) marketing plan and the team had to go rogue to save the world from H.A.T.E.’s Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction (UWMDS). It’s all in the marketing plan, you should read it, an eye-opener.

Continue reading Warren Ellis’ Next Wave for Marvel Comics Kicks

Popularity: 4% [?]

When I was an adolescent I would tag along with my mother while she ran her errands. As she shopped for staples I resigned myself to the grocery store’s entertainment aisle. I would check out the latest mass-market novel releases searching for any movie adaptations usually by the overworked Alan Dean Foster. This was the only way I could experience many of the movies at the time like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Aliens and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. They would always rush these books to market so you would be lucky enough to read the director’s cut with various scenes dropped from the theatrical release. Second to these novelizations were the “limited edition” poster magazines with their fold out wall coverings, production shots, actor profiles and special effects secrets. When forced to make a choice I would always pick the novel over the magazine because it contained more content, but I would study the poster rag so I could successfully visualize the scenes and characters of the film that I would not see until its release on HBO.

Continue reading Sacrifice the Star for the Satellites - Devouring Blind Licensing

Popularity: 7% [?]

A sensitive, clockwork knight; an innocent, prepubescent, heir to great weapons of unwieldy and unimaginable power, a hermit scientist/wizard, a washed up mercenary, and a busty thief all thrown together against the faceless shadows of evil and their monstrous henchmen. Battle Chasers, Joe Madureira’s jump into creator owned publishing, pulls all the most loved themes from Japanese RPGs into the pages of a comic. And did the comic industry ever need this genre explored! RPGs are so analogous to comics that comic creators should be kicking themselves in the pants for not thinking of this sooner. I can’t wait until the rogue’s gallery of Battle Chasers take their first ride in an airship, call upon spirits kept in precious gems embedded in weapons and armor to vanquish an enemy boss or grow tired of the endless random battles that they must endure just to build some experience and earn some cash. I anticipate that every Square or Capcom plotline and original inventive device will be exploited by the folks at Image. But who cares? Battle Chasers is still well worth the $2.50 simply because it is completely unoriginal, it gives the fans what they want–familiarity.

Continue reading A Plot So Common It’s Like Coming Home - Familiarity in RPGs

Popularity: 6% [?]