Comic Book Resources

Happy birthday, Alan Moore and Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse and Alan Moore

This is probably the only day of the year you'll see those two names together in a headline.

Today marks the 56th birthday of the writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, From Hell and countless other influential and entertaining comics. It's also the 81st anniversary of the release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, and the date The Walt Disney Company celebrates as Mickey's birthday (despite his actual first appearance in Plane Crazy some six months earlier).

Wes Anderson discusses possible Fantastic Mr. Fox spin-off comic

I've been hearing a lot of good things about Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, the animated movie about fox and his family fighting evil farmers. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently there's a comic called WhiteCape in one of the scenes that Anderson is considering turning into a real comic.

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Straight for the art | Jon Vermilyea's He-Man

from Jon Vermilyea's He-Man and the 13 Trials of Eternia

He's done comics with Frank Santoro, made videos with Animal Collective, and forever redefined the way we look at Kool-Aid and breakfast foods in his buoyantly bizarre comics for MOME, but now cartoonist Jon Vermilyea is tackling something near and dear to the hearts of nerds everywhere: The Masters of the Universe!

Behold He-Man and the 13 Trials of Eternia, a gorgeous silkscreened 11" X 8" booklet featuring the Herculean labors of the hero also known as Prince Adam and illustrated in Vermilyea's inimitable day-glo style. Only 21 copies of the book were produced, and by god I'm getting my hands on one of them if I have to sell my soul to Skeletor.

(Via Sean Belcher.)

This weekend, it's King Con Brooklyn

King Con Brooklyn

Here's an event that makes me wish I lived close to New York City again: King Con Brooklyn, a comics and animation convention being held Saturday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

It has a great name, and boasts an impressive lineup of largely local guests, including Harvey Pekar, Al Jaffee, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, Brian Wood, Alex Robinson, Molly Crabapple, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Colden, David Gallaher, Steve Ellis and Matt Loux.

In addition, there's a programming schedule that includes workshops, a DC Comics/Zuda portfolio review, creator spotlights, and panels devoted to kids' comics, European comics, digital comics, animation and Marvel's publishing plans.

The convention will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn.

Straight for the art | J. Bone's Great Pumpkin-inspired cartoons

The Great Pumpkin, by J. Bone

The talented J. Bone uses the holiday classic It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as the springboard for a couple of hilarious and, of course, well-drawn gags. (Warning: In the second cartoon, Charlie Brown employs off-color language!)

Poor, poor Linus ...

Fabio as Thor: I say thee nay!

Thor, God of Thunder

Comics creator Colleen Doran points out that apparently at one time the model Fabio developed his own Thor cartoon, with himself as the model for the Norse god. "I know posting this will out me as someone who looks at Fabio’s official website," she writes

She has more images from the "dead in development" cartoon over at her site.

xkcd: The Movie!

Well, kinda. Animator Noam Raby and musician Olga Nunes have teamed up to create "I Love xkcd," an animated musical version of webcomic god Randall Munroe's xkcd strip "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel." (Which itself was a riff on the aforementioned basic cable network's jingle-based ad campaign.)

Raby's actually done this before, previously taking a crack at Munroe's look at when computer love goes bad, "Letting Go." Look for both movies to make their IMAX 3-D debut this holiday season.*

(Via Ezra Klein.)

* Do not actually do this

Straight for the art | Planet Hulk DVD cover by Alex Ross

"Planet Hulk" box art, by Alex Ross

I somehow missed it on Friday when USA Today's Whitney Matheson unveiled the Alex Ross box art for Marvel's Planet Hulk animated feature, which hits stores on Feb. 2. Follow the link to see the full image, and watch the trailer here.

Peter Bagge's Bradleys are heading for FOX

Move over, American Dad

Could Buddy Bradley be the next Bart Simpson? That's the tantalizing possibility presented by Fantagraphics' Eric Reynolds today, as he revealed that writer/artist Peter Bagge has signed a deal with the FOX network to produce a pilot for a potential prime-time animated series based on the Bradleys, the less-than-functional family at the heart of Bagge's series Neat Stuff and Hate. The show would reportedly focus on Buddy's teen years at home.

This caps off a rather high-profile few months for Bagge (ahem, Professor Bagge) , a period that has seen the release of his political-strip collection Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me from Fantagraphics and his long-suppressed Incorrigible Hulk story in Marvel's Strange Tales anthology. No word yet on whether he plans to have Mrs. Bradley pose for Playboy.

D'oh!: Marge Simpson poses for Playboy

Where's Nelson Muntz when you need him?

TMZ ruined a lot of people's mornings today by revealing that The Simpsons' blue-haired matriarch Marge will appear on the cover of the November issue of Playboy. "Sexy cartoon lingerie" will feature in her non-nude pictorial, or whatever you'd call it, inside. That sound you heard is your childhood dying.

Link via Topless Robot, whose reaction--"I'm going to get a large glass of scotch now. I'm not sure whether I'm going to drink it or pour it in my eyes, but if a f*cking jet engine falls out of the sky on to me on the way, I won't mind"--is typical of many Simpsons fans. (Go grab a copy of the awesome new Treehouse of Horror issue to cleanse the palate, gang.)

Gigantor to guard Wakamatsu Park in Kobe, Japan

Gigantor statue in Kobe, Japan

The Mainichi Daily News reports on the construction of a statue of Tetsujin 28-go, or Gigantor, as he's known in the states, in Kobe, Japan. The statue was dedicated this past Sunday.

Happy 40th Birthday, Monty Python!

"And there was much rejoicing": Terry Gilliam art from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

It was forty years ago today that the world got slightly sillier: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of the seminal sketch-comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus on October 5th, 1969. Greatly beloved by nerds everywhere (God only knows how I'd have gotten through middle school without my two-cassette copy of The Final Rip-Off), the troupe—comprising John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin—has a deeper comic-book connection than simply the shared interests of many of its fans. For starters, there's their send-up of Superman in the sketch "Bicycle Repair Man," which takes a Twilight Zone twist on the Superman concept and plays it for laughs:

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D23 | Saturday pictures and report

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my wife and I are in Anaheim for Disney's inaugural D23 Expo. Our Saturday started a little later than our Friday, as we thought we should take advantage of the opportunity to sleep in on at least one of our days out of town, and the first presentation we wanted to see wasn't until 11. So we made it to the Anaheim Convention Center a little later than we did on Friday.

From what I could tell, Saturday was a whole lot busier than Friday, as the weekend attendees (and more kids, as Geoff Boucher noted) came out. The leisurely pace of Friday was replaced with longer lines and thicker crowds. I should add that it's still a long way from the chaos of Comic-Con, but there was a noticeable difference between the two days.

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Straight for the art: Baker's 'Dexter'

Scene from Baker's 'Dexter'

Kyle Baker did an animated cartoon for Showtime based off of their popular live-action series Dexter, and he's got the screenshots up on his blog to prove it. No word on when this goes live, but I'm stoked to see it. (found via Beaucoup Kevin.)

Sony returns all television rights to Spider-Man

The Spectacular Spider-Man

Just days before Disney announced its purchase of Marvel, Spectacular Spider-Man Executive Producer Greg Weisman was informed that Sony had returned all television rights to the wall-crawler.

The move, "in exchange for some concession vis-a-vis the live-action Spider-Man features," apparently took place  in late July, just before Comic-Con International.

The news came as producers were waiting to learn whether a third season of The Spectacular Spider-Man would be ordered. The animated series, which debuted in March 2008 on The CW's now-defunct Kids' WB! programming block, moved to Disney XD for its second season. Episodes from the first season also stream on Marvel's website.

It's unclear what this, and the Disney-Marvel deal, will mean to the future of the show.

"A number of folks at Marvel have said kind things about the show in the past," Weisman tells IGN.com, "but as you can imagine they have a LOT on their plates right now, so no one's talked to me about any potential pick-ups since the world turned a bit upside-down. What hasn't changed, I imagine, is that we're still waiting to hear whether Disney XD even WANTS a new season. If Disney XD decides they don't want any episodes, it's no longer likely that we'd shop the series around to XD's competitors. So any decision begins at XD, I would think. And before you ask, no, nobody at Disney has talked to me about the series. "