Comic Geek Music

Check out a band I have been a long time fan of, Ookla the Mok, they put out some great comic book geek music and they're right from here in Buffalo NY.

Here's their latest single: Bizarro World

Head over to www.thefump.com to download

Avengers vs. X-Men Sadly not an X-Men Story

Every year in Marvel comics there is a major event, Secret Invasions, Civil Wars, Skrulls, Kree, something and at the heart of all those crossovers 90% of the time are The Avengers, Marvel's premiere super hero team. This year Marvel brought in its mutants to the big event of the year the X-Men are finally a part of the big years crossover.

I personally am a huge X-Men fan, so when I heard that this was going to be the event of the summer I was incredibly excited and could not wait to start reading this story. Round 4 recently came out and its clearly a filler issue between big events. It was needed to establish characters places and give some insight to what the major players Hope, Wolverine, Captain America and Cyclops are doing.

The Avenger vs. X-Men books carry the main story, the side book that highlights specific fights has been going into details of one on one battles. The last book showcased Gambit vs. Captain America and Spider-Man vs. Colossus, neither fight was that spectacular and the Spidey vs. Colossus fight was down right bad.

In each teams respective books normally we would see a continuation of the continuity of the universe that's happening right now. In the Avengers books we are, we're seeing history of The Iron Fist connection in New Avengers. In Secret Avengers we had the away team in space to take on the Phoenix in a suicide mission. In the Avengers book we're seeing how this is tied to the Kree and one of its members may end up betraying the Avengers.

However over in the X-Men books we're not all dedicated to the current story, in X-Factor they're not even touching up on it and I might forgive that book but in X-Men #28 they had a story of Pixie fighting Skrulls. The book is called X-Men yet they aren't doing stories dedicated to the biggest X-Men story in years! Its the return of the Phoenix force and we don't get any thing tied to it? Bizarre. In Uncanny X-Force no Phoenix, in Wolverine, no Phoenix, how can we have all these main X-Men books and not tie to the major event of the year.

In Astonishing X-Men we are going to have a gay wedding between the B List character Northstar and his boyfriend, this should be a big event and it seems to be a trend that's happening in comics recently. Archie had a gay wedding, DC is going to have a current hero come out of the closet and Marvel is going to have a gay wedding in issue #51. An event like this should not be happening during the Avengers vs. X-Men story line, it should be its own stand alone type of thing and more than the X-Men should attend the wedding showing support from all the superheros for this event.

Being an X-Men fan I'm very sadly disappointed that the X-Men are being treated as the side characters in an Avengers story especially since that story completely revolves around The Phoenix force. The Avengers again are the golden children of the Marvel universe and the X-Men continue to be hated and feared by the rest of the world.

Rob Liefield seems to Never get Better

So I missed getting Uncanny X-Force #1 and then I go online and see that there are numerous versions of the book with different covers, and one is done by the man who was one of the original creators of the team Rob Liefeld, and all I can think is; HOW DON'T I HAVE A JOB IN THE COMICS INDUSTRY, HOW AFTER YEARS OF DRAWING HAS THE MAN NOT GOTTEN ANY BETTER. This is just terrible, I will most certainly not be getting this cover.

The X-Men and Me

Its no secret that I'm a fan of comic books, my dream is to one day be a freelance artist for a major company where I can do some stuff here and there, preferably for one of the two major groups. For those outside the comic loop the two big companies are Marvel and DC. Marvel is the home of Spider-Man, X-Men, The Avengers, Captain America and The Hulk to name a few. The DC 'universe' as its called is the home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern, as well as a whole slew of others.

10 Super Cool Dogs

Okay I have to say, my dog Sawyer is pretty cool; he's part wolfhound and part black lab, and he's been accused of also being part hell hound or demon dog. He's the only dog I've had that you can see his breath when he gets excited and pants and its fifty degrees outside! If you go to my You Tube page that you can get to from the side bar, you'll see some pretty cool Sawyer videos. Also, he's named after the character from Lost, not Tom Sawyer.

X-Men Cell Phone wallpaper

Guess who's got a new wallpaper for his cel phone.

Marvel.com has some great hidden art on their site.

http://marvel.com/images/710697./from/content.story.12097

Wolverine's best opponent.

Because every comic fan should have this as your desktop wallpaper at least once.

Wolverine vs. a panda    'nuff said

http://tinyurl.com/y23kbtd

Justice League Earth?

Okay wow, I continue to work on my art, and I worry about using to much reference material because I don't want to be labeled the guy who copies other peoples stuff. I NEVER TRACE, but I use Google all the time for different poses and such.

I've seen stuff on a show and said, ooo that would be cool. But I think its safe to say whoever drew this cover of the Justice League of America recently watched the "Life" special on Discovery channel. Paused his DVR and did a screen shot. I thought the chameleon they showed was cool too, but this guy must really have loved it.

Wizard World 2010 part 2

Last year my plan was to head to Wizard World and be a part of one of the biggest comic book events of the year. Due to complications beyond my control, I didn't make it, I had a whole video series up on You Tube entitled the Road to Wizard World and everything, but it just didn't happen at that time, which is probably a good thing.

Because this road trip turned out to be pretty fantastic, but it did require some research in order for it to get there. There is a formula to every great road trip film and we followed the formula as best as we could making sure we fulfilled key moments that needed to take place in order for the road trip to reach its full potential.

We had the main character on a quest, the best friend, the comic relief, and having two characters have a romance. We had one character left behind at home, a disaster slightly averted, we stopped at the casino to gamble $5 because then we filled that quota. Most of this wouldn't have even been possible if we had gone last year as the participants would have been different and age requirements would not have been met.

So we make it to Wizard World, and in my head I expected this gigantic mecca to comics and pop culture, however it wasn't, but thats fine because that fills the formula of road trip rules - #3 the trip turns out to be something you didn't think it was.

The show was definately geared more towards pop culture and celebrities than it was comics, the comic book portion was a bit small but the celebrities and the ease of getting to them far made up for the lack of books and comic all stars.

We walked in and immediately were in awe of some of the art we got to see and they had on display it was so cool, giant prints framed and just looking fantastic.

Alex Ross prints, Jim Lee, just great, great stuff.

We took not 20 steps and there was Mr. Ernie Hudson, Winston of Ghostbustuers and only about 100 different things from movies, and TV including The A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, and so much more. I wanted so much to walk up to him and say "Tell him about the Twinkie" but I contained myself. I had hims sign my copy of The Crow and he talked about how it was a very emotional time for him and that he'll never forget that day. He was so nice, so and down to Earth and just not snobby celebrity at all.

The rest of the day just got better, between talking to the legendary Honky Tonk Man for 20 minutes or so about the Twilight movies, his life and his daughter and how she's talking to one of the actors in the twilight movies. Meeting Melody Anderson aka Dale Arden from the 1980 cult classic Flash Gordon, her I gushed over and told her I must have seen her movie about 100 times, and I did the little 'go flash go' and she gave us a little behind the scenes knowledge of the movie, that football scene that took place wasn't originally in the script. We met Hacksaw Jim Duggan, The Iron Shiek, Bushwaker Luke and Virgil all the legends of wrestling that I grew up with so cool, Duggan had hands like a catchers mitt and he couldn't have been nicer.

Another fantastic person we got to meet that day, movie star Doug Jones. He's been in so many huge projects and major motion pictures its just ridiculous. Pan's Labrynth, Hell Boy, Men in Black, Benchwarmers, Legion, heck he was Mac the Night from the old McDonalds commercials! He was just so nice, talked to us, was greatful for us loving his movies, and even gave big hugs! What a guy, truly just a nice person and was having a great time being there.

So while this was a fantastic trip, I'm looking it as the dress rehearsal, we are going to head back up to Canada in August and truly make a great road trip movie. In fact we are thinking of actually making it a You Tube movie, so stay tuned, who knows you may be in it.

Wizard World 2010

Last year you may remember a series of videos up at You Tube called The Road to Wizard World. I had them up at Buffalo.com as well, but due to a series of events we were unable to go to the comic convention.

Well this year we are on our way. As a matter of fact, this morning, as in right now.