Monthly Archives: November 2008

IDW loves the homage

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IDW has done many variant covers for quite a few of their published (comic) books. One in particular has gained quite a bit of fanfare over its creativity

Seen above on the left is a variant cover for All Hail Megatron #1. It was drawn by Casey Coller and is an exclusive to a UK comic book store called Apocalypse Comics. Apparently the brilliant idea for this homage to the classic ‘The Killing Joke’ cover (above, right) came straight from Apocalypse Comics themselves. Casey got the opportunity for this after winning a TF fan-artist contest on IDW’s message board. He has since done work on both covers and interior pages for some Transformers books. Casey was apparently going through some stuff when he was commissioned for this piece. You can read more about that here, if you so desire. It should be noted for non-Transformers fans, that the camera is actually a Decepticon named Reflector. He is comprised of three different robots; Viewfinder, Spyglass, and Spectro.

All that aside, it appears that IDW is taking another stab at a classic cover homage with one of their Star Trek books. I believe this book is an alternate reality (a sort of ‘What if?’ style of book). This one seems a lot less creative and on the money, as it were, as The Killing Joke cover, but judge for yourself. Click to enlarge.

 

The original cover (on the right) is, of course, the classic Uncanny X-Men 141. This issue marked the Days of Future Past storyline. Here is a blurb on the book:

In November, we’re kicking off an all-new STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION series. This one is set in the Myriad Universe, Pocket Books’ new line of “what-if?” tales. The comic is called STAR TREK TNG: THE LAST GENERATION. Details will be forthcoming, but for now, here’s J.K. Woodward’s variant cover for the issue, and his inspiration for the image. Full art and colors by JK.

Spider Rent

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While writing out my rent and utility checks, my girlfriend, whom I was on the phone with at the time, instant messaged me this article. It details the email correspondence between a bill collector and someone she is tasked with to pursue on a late bill. I rarely laugh out loud while staring at this monitor by myself, but in this case, I had more trouble stopping myself from laughing.

Thanks to Brenna for the link!

[Edit – Crazy: I posted a bad link. Fixed it.]

[Edit 2 – Crazy: Looks like News.com.au got an interview with this guy. Link.]

Coraline

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I was surfing around and came upon this article at Wired.com. Basically it is the video posted above, which is an interview with Neil Gaiman. A book he wrote, Coraline, is being made into a stop-motion animated movie. Not only that, but its being filmed in 3-D by the director from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. It looks interesting and I’m pretty much game for anything by Neil Gaiman. I recently finished an excellent novel written by him called American Gods. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy, sci-fi, or mythology.

I’m also a huge fan of stop-motion animation, so this movie looks to be right up my alley. It looks like Coraline will be released in February of 2009. I’ll be checking it out for sure.

Link Dump 2008.11.14

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This linked dump started many months ago and I never finished compiling it. Rather than start over with a new one I just updated the old draft with the current date and some newer links after the originals.

Famous Marvel Buildings and their real-life equivalents – I saw this and thought it was neat. This guy went to the addresses of some buildings such as the Baxter Building (Fantastic Four), The Daily Bugle (Spider-man) and Strange’s Sanctorum (Dr. Strange) and took a picture of the actual buildings residing there.
Link.

One of the books I’ve been reading fanatically has been the Immortal Iron Fist from Marvel. ‘The Last Iron Fist’ story is now one of my all time favorites. Brendan linked me to some line art that had been done for the book. Neat stuff.
Link.

Swimsuits appearing at the past Olympics and tested by NASA – I thought this was pretty neat.
Link.

Fanboy has made it into the dictionary.
Link.

The back of Yulia Tymoshenko’s head. This is a really prominent politician in the Ukraine. She apparently is known for her style. Her current hair-do involves a thick braid wrapped around the back of her head making it look like a crown. Its actually pretty neat, but I don’t see how that can all be real hair judging by the constant thickness of the braid throughout its length.
Link.

And now to reaffirm my masculinity:
The expanded beard chart.
Link.

My Little Pony Customs. This is some really impressive kitbashing. I think my favorites are MyLittleStormtrooper (pictured above) and My Little Alien.
Link.

Barack Obama has released a flickr set of photos from election night. It really gives a personal view of events as they happened from his end of the spectrum. Its a fascinating set of photos.
Link.

Adventures in Stuffing

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No. I didn’t actually stuff anything, but I did make some stuffing.

Allow me to elaborate.

I had some leftover fish and chips from Sunday. There was not a lot there, but it would be enough if I made a little something else. This sounded like a perfect opportunity to make some Stove Top Stuffing I had bought at the market a few weeks ago and just never had the chance to make. I realized my measuring glass never made it out of the Brighton House with me, but fortunately I had a full set of measuring cups. I measured out the water and put it on to boil, put in the half stick of margarine and let it sit for a bit. As I added the contents of the packet, I couldn’t believe how much was coming out of the single pack. I tried it mix it as best I could as it just got thicker and thicker. I let it sit for a bit longer while I checked the box. As it turns out, a single packet is actually six servings.

Talk about getting served.

I ate an entire bowl of stuffing, since I had eaten the fish and chips while I was making the stuffing. The bowl seemed like a lot to me, but there was still at least twice that left in the pot. I put it in a container and threw it in the fridge for later. Not sure how I’ll reheat it without a microwave, but it sure was easy to make on the stove.