Sunday, November 30, 2008

Updated: Comic Fans In Need: Donate to Help Carla and Lance Hoffman


A few weeks ago, the fires in Montecito, California took the home, possessions and nearly the lives of Carla and Lance Hoffman. The couple is currently in critical condition and news reports indicated that theirs were the most serve injuries as result of this particular fire. This story is well known and documented well here and here. On the off chance that you didn't hear about it, please consider donating to the Lance and Carla Fund at this address:


The Lance and Carla Burn Fund

Santa Barbara Bank and Trust

1483 East Valley Road

Montecito, CA 93108-1248


We were able to make our donation last week and even persuaded a coworker at the place that pays the bills and our mother to pony up as well. Every little bit helps.


We had hoped to blog about it a while back, but we have a personal connection here and sometimes it's hard to verbalize when the personal is involved. We know Carla and wish her and her husband Lance speedy recoveries. Although we do not know Lance, we are sure that if Carla chose to spend her life with him that he's a stand-up guy.


Carla is a manager at Metro Entertainment in Santa Barbara, CA, which just happened to be our local comic book shop for 2 years before we headed out to the desert. Metro is the friendliest and most helpful local comic book shop that we've ever encountered. In fact, nearly 2 years later we are still receiving most of our books via mail order from Metro. One of the reasons we like Metro so much was that Carla was ever-helpful, constantly offering suggestions on great books to read. Sometimes we agreed on this storyline or that, and other times we disagreed. But it was always entertaining chatting with Carla. If I recall correctly, we agreed that Cable and Deadpool was best on the pages without Cable. Little things like that add flavor to memories. The last time we saw Carla was about 6 months ago.


We wish a speedy recovery for Carla and Lance and the return of some semblance of normal as soon as possible. We hope you will consider helping them get on their feet. Metro is also accepting donations for the couple if you happen to be in town.

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Saturday, November 29, 2008

Batman Dead?


Yeah, right.


Besides the obviousness of this as a PR stunt, there's no doubt in our mind that the cash cow that is the Bruce Wayne Batman will not be eliminated by cash-strapped DC Comics. A few weeks ago DC "cancelled" Robin, Nightwing, and Birds of Prey (particularly offensive to Mister Fanboy, in addition to jettisoning Manhunter) while at the same time teasing about a new non-Bruce Wayne Batman coming from within the ranks of the Bat-family. Whatever. Lazarus Pit anyone?


But wait, if we may be all MPD about it, isn't that exactly what happened when the Steve Rogers Captain America died and Bucky Barnes took his place as Cap? It worked there, why not here?


We suggest the reason that the Captain America identity switched worked was because Steve Rogers, although an important part of the Captain America mythos, never transcended the actual hero as an individual. The intertwining of Batman and Bruce Wayne on the other hand is so integral to the whole motivation of the character. To take away one, how can the other survive a healthy, long time (in the publishing world, that is)?


But then again, there are many who know, swear and scream that Steve Rogers is not dead. Perhaps he's hanging out with Jean Grey.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

UPDATED: And Now For Something Completely Different


UPDATE: The missing #6 term - hot sweet potato tits - has now been added to the story. Where's my Newberry Award?
It’s been a while since I’ve felt all that creative, which accounts for the sheer lack of posting lately. But tonight, I visited Tits List, one of my favorite places to go on the net. From time to time Tits McGee, said sites web madam, sorts through the search terms that led people to her site. The list this go-around was:

1) fucking my mom's tits all night long

2) undead tit photos

3) big christian tits

4) bring it on sex tits

5) my favorite tits
6) hot sweet potato tits

7) pissing fatty

8) vaginal hump day

9) tits in my pants

10) titty parade

I was so inspired by the list (which oddly lacked a #6) that I wrote you a short story with each term in the list, in order. I hope you enjoy it.

As I turned the corner I heard a man in the bar say, "I was fucking my mom's tits all night long." I was stunned. Not so much because someone was fucking their mom's tits all night long -- which is just ewww- but that someone was saying it so matter-of-factly. I mean, if I was fucking my mom's tits all night long, I wouldn't be telling anyone, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

On my left were a table of goths. In high school, goth kids always kind of reminded me of demon mimes – you just can’t take them seriously. The goths were looking at pictures of women’s breasts on one of their I-Pods. One particularly surly one remarked that the pix were nice, if you liked “undead tit photos or big Christian tits."

I hustled away before we moved into necrophilia territory. I’m open-minded, but I do like to sleep at night.


But then again, this club was filled with all kinds of fun and clearly disturbing degenerates. Bondage gear was de rigueur, except for posers like me. Over in one corner I heard raised voices. An oafish man who looked entirely out of place in the bar was bearing down on a small woman in her early thirties. He cursed up a storm. The woman calmly looked at him and snarled that if he didn’t leave her along she would take him out. Angry beyond belief for reasons that were not clear to me, he exclaimed “bring it on sex tits.” Moving with unbelievable speed the woman grabbed a beer bottle, smacked it in half on the table like you see in the movies, and pounced on him in a way that said die motherfucker, die. Note to self: Never call a woman “sex tits.” Thankfully, Security was on them in no time, dragging the bloody and cursing combatants out of the club. Whatever kind of tits are your favorites, my favorite tits do not belong to women wielding weapons, regardless of the provocation. Unless it's a James Bond movie. And with that, I am sure you would totally agree.


As I moved out to the outside deck, which inexplicably had a beach volleyball court that served no purpose other than that of a very large ashtray, I headed to the bar and got a drink. Since I was feeling a bit peckish, I went to a small hole in the wall to order from the kitchen. Not your typical "hole in the wall," but a real wall where a trannie named Tits took your order. "I'll have a hot sweet potato, Tits," I said before I was handed a backed sweet potato oozing with butter. Yes, real butter. I was in heaven.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman of mythical proportions in the corner pushing her body between two potted pants, crouching and clearly peeing. This pissing fatty – a behemoth of a woman dressed like a Valkyrie and showing way too much skin – then fell into the puddle of her own piss. Wow, I thought. This is going to be a fun night or one where I will regret ever leaving the house.

Perhaps it was the sight of her peeing, but I now needed to pee badly. If I could have held it would have. I knew the bathroom would be disgusting and likely a place where, let’s call it shenanigans of various sorts, took place. But I had to pee and I couldn’t pee in the plants, Helga was blocking the way. So into the bathroom I went. Eyes forward, head slightly down and breathing through the mouth, I made it to a urinal. I looked forward and saw “Wednesday is vaginal hump day” etched into the metal sheet covering the wall. What did that mean? All sorts of off ideas popped into my mind. I remembered this commercial from the 70s where it said “Wednesday is spaghetti night.” That random memory made me laugh and brought me back to the task at hand. After finishing my business I went to wash my hands and hurried out the door and back into the club.

While I waited at the bar for another drink, I was next to two older women dressed in full biker gear. But instead of talking about Harleys or drunken bar fights in Sturgis or Hollister, they were talking about their grandchildren. This was just one of those places, were all sorts of people congregate. The night was looking better. But then I was yanked back to reality when one of the women loudly exclaimed that her ass was getting “flabby.” It was like I have “tits in my pants.” Okay, I heard enough. Time to move along.

On the stage, women and men/former men somewhere on what I call the “pre-and post-op continuum,” were lining up while the crowd hooted and hollered. The emcee, a large black man in drag doing his damnedest to channel Pam Grier in Coffey, announced a “titty parade.” At that point, tops came off, except from the drag queens without real fake breasts. The “titty parade” left the stage and soon after a conga line snaked through the bar with more than a few men and women from the bar joining in the festivities. Of course, I was one of them. Nights like tonight are the reasons that you go out at night, just to join the fun and the freaks.

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Monday, November 03, 2008

VOTE


If you live in the US, don't forget to vote tomorrow. If you don't, you know you're a slacker.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Wow. We Do Not Approve

Rarely are we disgusted. Rarely are we offended by comics. Rarely are we disgusted by violence. Rarely are we offended by violence in comics. However, we saw this image from Avatar Press' first issue of Crossed and it pretty much damn near freaked us out:



So, what's up with our reaction? For one, it is worth knowing that we knew nothing about this upcoming title beyond the solicitation in Previews. It so shocked, no disturbed us, that we did a bit of sleuthing and found this article on Newsarama. Okay, interesting premise ... but the images of people being thrown alive from what appears to be a moving plane, we could do without. Flying is disturbing enough, we just don't need this kind of imagery floating around our grey matter at 30,000 feet. Some of you might be freaked out at the more obvious murder angle, or perhaps violence against women (or the elderly, or anyone else for that matter). Others may cheer for violence in all it's forms. Even we wonder how this differs from the senseless violence not shown, but usually understood, in many of the superhero books we crave. Another caveat: We've always liked Garth Ennis's writing, but this seems to have gone too far for us. Not our cup of tea. Still, it does point to the diversity of markets for graphic fiction that something like this could be published. So, what say you? Where does this fall in your acceptability continuum? Perhaps we are getting old. Sigh.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Comic-Con 2008 Goodness

It's day 2 and we are already whipped. Here's a smattering of what we've seen so far, and takes into account Thursday and most of Friday. Note that we have only attended one panel yet - the X-Men Panel and, quite frankly, didn't learn all that much.

Isn't that Natalie from Facts of Life?

Doogie!

A Kabuki fan who has it going on!


Screw you Tony Stark!



S'annataz yxes!

G'Kar sporting some shades.

Poor Han!

T'was the Nighmare Before Christmas in Lilliput!





Run Nick. It's the Skrull Queen!


Where's Destro?




David Mack, the most innovative artist working in comics today, and some slacker who really should be let go from the Mister Fanboy editorial staff.



Lou Ferrigno getting ready to regulate!





Gail Simone signing for us. Our dear friend Amy Reads will be very, very pleased with a special treat we got for her from Gail. She loves your blog Amy, by the way.


Barbara Gordon before the fateful meeting with the Joker.




Paris Hilton is looking goood.



Two members of the Trinity. Jesus is nowhere to be seen.





Iron Man from the Marvel booth- it's the movie's version of an early Iron Man so he's not an asshole (yet).




Gary Busey makes a con appearance.


A Black Widow fan.


The Bat-Cycle with the robin sidecar.

A bad image from the upcoming Watchmen film.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Comic-Con Bound


As we write this, we are stranded in the airport, bound for San Diego. We will make it there tonight (supposedly), though too late to go through registration tonight. That means we'll have the privilege of waiting in line with thousands of our new best friends tomorrow morning. Sigh. Nonetheless, we'll try our best to post our pix during the con with as many (lamely) witty captions as we can muster - that is if we feel like lugging our way-too-heaving laptop through the convention hall.
We can tell you that we only brought 29 comics to get signed this year, over a 50% reduction from last year. That will free us up for more panels and pop-culture goodness. We hope to issues from the following titles signed: Sword, Spider-Woman: Origin, Girls, Wonder Woman, Manhunter, Secret Invasion, Kabuki, White Tiger, Ultra and more that we can't recall at the moment. Airports completely sap all energy away from us for reasons we can't explain. It's like they pump anesthesia into the air conditioning. If it sounds like we are babbling, it's because we are: We are waiting for out laptop to charge and are sitting on very uncomfortable industrial carpet ... On that note our ass hurts and it's time to move to a pleather chair.

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Marvel's Con Signing Schedule


It took some sleuthing, but we found it. Click here for the schedule.

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Gearing Up For the Con


Greetings faithful readers from your not-so-faithful editors. Shame on us. We know, we've slacked. We wish there was a good excuse, but suffice it to say life, work, travel, etc. have intervened. However, in the last week our mind has turned almost exclusively to comics.

For one, in years past when we went to Comic-Con were were a little unprepard. We knew which issues we wanted to get signed, but sometimes they were diffiicult to locate. Our filing system alphabetically seperated each title in one of two categories: ongoing or limited and cancelled series. That proved to be unworkable. So, about two weeks ago we merged those two cetergories into one. Then we downloaded a free copy of Comic Collector Live, a free software which tracks and organizes your collection, and allows collectors to purchase and sell to each other, among other features. Although we found the software a bit clunkly, it was still useful. Perhaps after more time using the program, it'll become more workable. We've yet to try any of the features beyond the organization of the collection. Now we have a grand total of 4125 comics, a respectable # but nothing that will win us any awards. It took us, on average, 3 hours to do 4 longboxes. What really slows you down are variant covers - do you have them or not? Noting signed comics is truly a pain, though we have relatively few of those so it wasn't all that overwhelming.

Comic-Con 2008 is completely sold out, so if you don't have your tickets yet and you are planning on heading down to San Diego, it's probably not worth your trouble. In all the years we have gone, we have yet to notice folks trying to pawn off tickets. Logistically, that would be difficult unless the person is selling the laniard and pass. This isn't like a Grateful Dead Show where you can just hope for a "miracle."

The Programming Schedule is up and complete. Click here to find out more. For our money, Sunday's pretty lackluster this year, so perhaps we'll plan a trip back to the Zoo, Wild Animal Park, Sea World or various museums. We've already got all day Monday as well, so it'll be a nice change of pace from moving like cattle through the convention center. Also be sure to check out the film pages too to help plan your visit.

Our signing plans aren't complete. Although DC and Marvel haven't yet published their signing schedules as far as we know, we've got our last batch of David Mack comics to get signed. This will get us through the present and all the random past issues we have acquired over the years (one of the positives of organizing the collection) Mack, for our money, is the most innovative artist working in comics today and a genuinely nice guy. Check out his Kabuki series, as well as work on a recent New Avengers cover. Mack will be at the Image booth.
Also at Image will be the Luna Brothers, creators of Ultra, Girls, and the Sword, some of the most originally and engaging comics of the last 5 or so years. We'll be sure to get some of their work signed too.




This year we got a hotel closer to the con. Last year we were out at the Sheraton. Although a nice hotel and on the free shuttle line, it was very far removed from the action. This year we happened to make reservations at the Sofia Hotel, an historic hotel about 8 blocks from the convention center. We're really looking forward to taking advantage more of the downtown core during this trip.

Now for the bad news: We're 75% sure that we won't be attending the con in 2009. Why? The cost of hotels. Between our flight and membership, we spent about $200. Our hotel- to be sure one of the most reasonable con hotels out there - is running $165/night + tax. After 5 nights, that really adds up. We're looking at international travel next year for about the same price. Depending on exchange rates, we may avoid Europe and look to Peru, Costa Rica or some other great opportunity. The con will still be there in 2009. All of this wouldn't be necessary if there were more competitive hotels in the mix. We firmly believe that the Con needs to move to Las Vegas, and not because we live there, but because of the amount of convention space (allowing the Con to grow) and the availability of rooms. Sure it'll be hot, but that's what air conditioning's for.

That's about all from us. Look for pictures from the Con, and perhaps even posting directly from the convention floor as Wi-Fi is free there this year.

Thanks for being faithful readers.
Regards,

Your Slacker Editor Mister Fanboy










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Monday, June 16, 2008

Special Effects Pioneer Stan Winston Dies


You know his work from Terminator, Aliens, Jurrasic Park and more. Truly an innovator. Read a story from the LA Times here. Sorry, no snark today.

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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Catwoman Book to Be Put Down?


We found this little of giblet of craptacularness on Newsarama today buried in their coverage of the New York Comic-Con:


"I heard a rumor online - is Catwoman getting cancelled?" DiDio: "That is true, actually." He added that doesn't mean you won't be seeing the character in the DC Universe.


If it's true, that just plain sucks. It's a great book that's solidly written and drawn. Whereas I think most of DC's uber -events suck, because I find them long-winded, confusing, and unsatisfying, it's little books like Catwoman that are in the trenches dealing with more personal issues that are so much more gratifying. Perhaps that's why my pull list has been heavier on the Marvel side than DC for the last few years.


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Thursday, April 03, 2008

Secret Invasion Mini Haiku Review




Skrulls here and Skrulls there

Heroes Beside Themselves

Ignore Snarkers Read

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Sunday, February 17, 2008

I Want One




Sorry for the lack of posts. There's was an infinite crisis at work that involved a secret invasion of sorts. On the plus side, I was one of the very few who managed to nab a hotel room for Comic-Con. Anyone going? I mean, besides the 125,000 of you.

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Sunday, December 23, 2007

Best of 2007


In our attempt to mimic the ideas of others (see Amy's list over at Arrogant Self Reliance), and our need to be just like the very vapid VH-1, we present our very own Best of 2007 list. Why, because it's the end of the year and it seems the right to do. Not to mention we've had way too much nog.


Best Album: Sonic Youth Daydream Nation 2 Disc Reissue

Best Novel: An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

Best Nonfiction Author: Simon Winchester

Best Movie (tie): No Country for Old Men and the Simpson's Movie
Best Performance in a Movie: Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men

Best Discovered DVD: Lady Vengeance

Best New Television Series: None

Best Ongoing Television Series (Drama): Battlestar Galactica

Best Ongoing Television Series (Reality - Tie): Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance

Best Ongoing Televisions Series (Comedy): 30 Rock

Best Comic (DC/Vertigo/Wildstorm- tie): Birds of Prey and Fables

Best Comic (Marvel/Icon- tie): Daredevil, Powers, and Kabuki

Best New Comic: The Luna Brothers' Sword (Image)

Best Reliable Comics Writers (tie): Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Luna Brothers, David Mack, Gail Simone, and Bill Willingham

Best Artist Working in Comics: David Mack

Best Mainstream News Organization (tie): NPR, Newshour on PBS, Washington Post

Best Media (Indy): The Huffington Post

Best Bullshitter: Pres. George Bush

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Monday, November 26, 2007

Gail Simone's Wonder Woman Profiled in the New York Times


We clicked on the New York Times website this afternoon and lo and behold, we find a feature on Gail - one of our fave comics writers - front and center. The article focuses on both Gail's career and her taking over the sometime troubled (my opinion) Wonder Woman title. To read the article, click here. It will appear in tomorrow's edition of the paper.
One reason we love Simone's work is that it is pure and unabashed fun. Topical yes, but not mired in the grit that so many of our other fave comics seem to wallow in. It's great to just enjoy yourself -and we do- when we read her books. We loved her runs on Agent X and Birds of Prey, which she has since sadly moved on from. We truly dig Welcome to Tranquility. And her first issue of Wonder Woman, bodes well. We tried for years to get into the title and haven't been able to in the past. If anyone can do it, it's Gail.

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