Comic Con, London-style?

Well, if the people over at Kapow Comic Con have their way, they'll be bringing the San Diego Comic Con on over to the foggy shores of London. Too bad it takes place about a week after Comic Con's little sister, Wondercon, takes place in San Francisco, and roughly three months before the SDCC itself takes place in San Diego. 


Maybe it will work for all those people in Europe unable to get to the States to see the original, but then again, maybe the talent involved won't be showing up in numbers large enough to make a difference. 


I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? Oh, and Wondercon tickets go on sale this Wednesday, just as a reminder. Comic Con ticket sales have been suspended for now due to some technical glitch. 

Spider-Man Broadway Musical's First review

So, some people were treated (I guess you could say that) over the weekend to the first showing of the new Broadway musical, "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark". The NY Times has their first impression up over here. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of flaws with the play, including five halts of the play to fix technical difficulties with the flying rig apparatus and a cut back on a good majority of the "special effects". 


Frankly, if it was me paying $140 a ticket, as some people did for Sunday's performance, I would be demanding my money back. Well, first off I wouldn't pay $140 for a ticket to a show. Honestly, that's price is about $100 more than I would be willing to pay to see a stage performance by unknown "talent". Especially from a play that has costume design like this:

Let me just say, I hope this fad of Broadway stage plays trying to adapt big budget movies into mindless dreck dies when this $65 million (and counting) turkey crashes and burns on takeoff.

Lil Robocop

So I found this to be a fairly cool thing for a parent to make for their kid for Halloween. Not only is he in a Robocop costume, but they run around Detroit taking pictures in various places. Pretty funny stuff, and cool too. But the story doesn't just end there.


It seems that a certain Mr, Robocop himself (Peter Weller) saw the Lil version of himself and was cool enough to send him an autographed photo in the mail. In case no one knows what Peter Weller has been up to lately, he currently has been filming a few episodes of "Dexter" in between his day job as a professor at UCLA where he's also finishing his dissertation for his PhD. in Roman and Italian Renaissance Art. Very cool of him to take the time out of his schedule to do something like that just because.


Here's a pic of Lil Robo from the link I posted above.

The Green Lantern Movie's Version of Parallax?

Well, it looks like this image below is more than likely what Parallax is going to look like in the movie. Too bad the rest of the movie looks horrible so far. Yeah, yeah, I get it, the movie hasn't been released yet and we've only gotten the teaser trailer stuff, but if you compare it to Iron Man when the Iron Man teaser came out...well, Green Lantern is severely lacking in quite a few departments. 


The teaser has a comedic tone rather than an action tone. This is what a lot of people (myself included) feared was going to happen when it was announced the Reynolds was going to be Hal Jordan. Jordan isn't a wise-cracking superhero. He's an older, washed-up test pilot that only has a job because his girlfriend's father owns an aviation company. Instead, it looks like the movie is going to try and portray him as a knock off of Maverick from "Top Gun" (please save all homoerotic allegories from Top Gun until the end of the rant). 


Parallax was something that wasn't brought to light in the comics until about 40 years into the Green Lantern run. Starting off with it almost makes me think that Warner Bros. may be trying to bring it's more current storylines (Blackest Night, etc.) to the screen sooner rather than later. Which would be a huge mistake. 


Anyway, I digress. Here's the image I promised earlier:

All righty then. There you have it. Hopefully I'm wrong about the movie, but I guess we'll all find out next summer.

Taiwanese 3D news guys at it again.

My favorite news guys over in Taiwan are at it again. Their animations really make me laugh, but educate as well.

Enjoy.

The Japanese Tradition - Chopsticks

Nice. Plus a little PSA as well.

They have a few more videos like this one about sushi.

Some Words on Copyright Infringement

Ever heard of Cooks Source Magazine? That's okay, neither had I until today. Turns out that their editor, Judith Griggs, thinks that anything published on the internet is Public Domain. Even if it has a copyright symbol attached to it. 


The shitstorm coming down on this company and this woman is absolutely hilarious. Check out their page on Facebook and see what people are planning to post in response to Crook's Source blatant plagiarism and multiple copyright infringements.


Enjoy.

Modern Art Movement Really a C.I.A. Front?

Yup. That appears to be the case. It turns out that the C.I.A. funded the modern art movement as a way to show that Communism was not as free and expressive as they were proclaiming to be. One of my favorite quotes from the article:

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.

Wow. So from the 50's until the 60's a lot of art was actually funded by C.I.A. decision makers, and not the elected government officials. They funded it like they would any other weapons program. Seriously, if that doesn't put some kind of fear into you, you might want to check for a pulse. 

Yet Even More Cap Pics

While we've seen a few of these before, there are a few new ones that have come up including my new favorite of this one right here:

Seriously, The Powers That Be should just crop this pic and make it into a poster. That's how bad ass it actually is. Here are a few more pics:

Derr Red Skull pre-transformation.

Cap's main squeeze.

Cap in helmet.

Hydra bad guys.

Some kind of weird plane. Can't really tell who is aboard.

Cap all sweaty at seeing a girl for the first time.

This looks like Cap's transformation tank. 

Enjoy.

"Marvel Cinematic Universe"

At least that's what Joe Quesada is calling it. Basically, it's the Marvel comics movies set as comic books, but set in the movie continuity. Does anyone else's head hurt yet? 


So what that means is if you're not familiar with say, Captain America in the comic books, you don't have to go scouring over 60-70 years of comic book backstory (unless you really want to). Instead, you can just follow the movie version of how Cap came into being....but in comic book form. 


What this really means is that Marvel's West Coast branch office will start pumping out comic book scripts from some Hollywood industry people. If that's a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen. What it does mean is that Marvel is finally trying to tie their movies into bringing more people into the fold (not a pun) of comic book readers without having to intimidate the newbies with decades of continuity. 


Sure, Marvel tried this before with the Ultimates universe with limited success, but by tying into multimedia this way, they may actually be able to pull it off this time and increase readership in the process. 


For those of us that have seen the slow decline in readership and sales, this is actually something to welcome. Tell me what you think below.