Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everybody!

Jackass 3

Photos tomorrow only on The Aquaman Shrine!

Justice League Movie Watch 1: Wonder Woman

It's all over the internet(so it must be true!) that Australian actress Teresa Palmer has been cast as Wonder Woman in the upcoming Justice League live-action movie. Apparently she will wear a wig for the role.

Ms.Palmer only has a handful of credits, like The Grudge 2 and December Boys. I haven't seen any of those so I can't speak to her acting ability.

I guess going with unknowns is a good idea creatively; it sure is financially, since just shooting a Justice League movie is probably going to cost $200 million when all is said and done.

Now, normally I would of course be obsessed with any JLA movie, since, well...its a JLA movie! My favorite comic book come to life on the big screen! Add to the fact that, as far I've heard, Aquaman is part of it, which means this will be his live-action movie debut, and the first time as a bona-fide "Aquaman"(since his appearances on Smallville still show the character in his formative stages).

But add to all that, when I was at DC I was told that the potential marketability of my proposal could be tied in to the JLA movie--that it might be more likely to get greenlit if the buzz around the movie is good--if, say, JLA turns out to be more like Batman Begins, and not like the craptastic Catwoman. So as my title indicates, this will be the first of many JLA movie-related posts to come.

As it was is in comics for many years, as joes the JLA, so goes Aquaman...

30 Rocks

Trace and I don't watch much specific TV anymore, but the two shows we do make it a point to catch is NBC's 30 Rock and The Office.

I watched the pilot of 30 Rock when it aired, and I think like a lot of people, went "ehhhh." It was ok, but considering the talent and the premise behind the show, I was a little disappointed. So I didn't watch it the following week.

Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I went back to it in about a month to see if it had gotten any better--and boy, it had. The show was amazingly funny and sharp and fast and timely; I had wondered what the hell happened in just a handful of episodes?

Ever since then I've caught it every week, and watching the show now is such a pleasure that I find myself recording each one and watching it over and over several times during the week.

The show is so fast that it takes numerous viewings to catch all the jokes, and its unflinchingly honest about human nature and society and the culture all the while being very silly and over the top.

People like to say(about a lot of things, not just TV) "they don't make 'em like that anymore"--well, they do, every Thursday at 830.

Glub Glub

Photos coming October 31st only on The Aquaman Shrine!

Bob Dylan, Pitchman

"I'm driving in the flats in a Cadillac car/The girls all say 'You're a worn out star'"--Bob Dylan, "Summer Days"

Apparently, our man Bob has shot a commercial for Cadillac, where he not only appears, ala Victoria's Secret, but actually delivers the pitch!

I used to really get bothered by rock stars in TV commercials, but its become so standard that I don't much think about it anymore. I used to equate it with Selling Out, but then I realized they're not mutually exclusive. You can never do a commercial but still have your music be formulaic hackwork. At the same time, you can sell a beloved anthem to an accounting firm and still make Time Out of Mind, "Love & Theft", and Modern Times.

And just the idea of someone as idiosyncratic and...well, old as Bob Dylan being used to sell something makes me laugh, it just does. If this is how Bob wants to earn a little more scratch, then more power to him.

Someone once wrote in to his Theme Time Radio Hour show and asked what he thought about Sheryl Crow using a Buddy Holly song in an ad for a shampoo. The listener didn't think too much of it, but Bob said he thought it was cool, since when was the last time you heard Buddy Holly anywhere? He figured if that commercial got one person to go search out Buddy Holly records, then it was worth it.

He then added, "have you seen any of those ads for Victoria's Secret?" What a jokerman!

My Transformation Into The Sea King, Part 2

Just FYI, photos of me in the suit will appear on The Aquaman Shrine on--when else?--October 31st.

Blogs with daily updates are a harsh mistress.

My Transformation Into The Sea King

Well, the Aquaman costume arrived today, and I nervously tried it on. Luckily, it fits--its tight, no doubt, but it actually does fit my massive shoulders and huge biceps, thank god. Trace, once she got done laughing, helped me zip up the back since its mostly just a one-piece jumpsuit.

And luckily, the super-cool "A" belt helps(a little) cover up my very non-superhero-ish gut. Its a very cool suit, the guy who made it did a superb job, and now I'm ready to make a complete jackass of myself on Saturday!

The Never-Ending Tour

According to an informal count, Bob Dylan's show tonight in Dayton, OH, is show #2000 of the "Never-Ending Tour."
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I'm just going to sit back and pause to think of what a staggering achievement that is. Bob Dylan is currently sixty-six years old and doing around one-hundred gigs a year. Playing half that many shows in a year would be an amazing physical achievement for anyone. For someone that age to still be out there is simply amazing, and a testament to the man's committment to be a working musician.

Sure, I've found ticket prices to be getting a little high in the last few years, but at least for the money you've got a decent chance of seeing an amazing show. The Rolling Stones charge in some cases thousands of dollars for a single ticket, and even then you get to go to your local Huge-O Dome and watch them play essentially a warmed-over greatest hits collection. Just last week, Bob had unannounced guest Jack White come out and sing "Meet Me in The Morning", a thirty-two year-old song that has never been played live before, ever. He still cares.

And on top of 2,000 shows in nineteen years(the unofficial start of the NET was in 1988), he's released seven albums of new material--all of them top-notch to one degree or another, plus a dozen or so one-off songs for soundtracks, starred in two movies(one a documentary, one whatever the hell Masked & Anonymous was), wrote a memoir, appeared on 60 Minutes and Dharma & Greg(!)did an album with the Wilburys, gave a half-dozen major print interviews, did live appearances at the Grammy Awards, Woodstock '95, won an Oscar, and lots more!

When you look back over that list, its informative to see how phony the "the press won't leave me alone" arguments people like Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan use are. This guy--a living legend--has done this much in public in just the last two decades, and yet he still managed to keep a second marriage and a sixth child relatively secret. You can still be in the public eye and have a private life if you really want to.

So hats off to Bob, may he play another two thousand shows, if he wants...

Enough is Enough

Ok, I've been wanting to get to this for a while but never got around to it, so I'll talk about it today before I forget completely.

On Oct 1st, Columbia Records(a subsidiary of Sony Music, a subsidairy of ConHugeCo. LLC)released yet another Bob Dylan "greatest hits" collection, this time just called Dylan--3 CDs covering at least one song from every album(I think). It also came with three "bonus" live songs in some special edition or something.

Ever since I first started buying Dylan albums(summer of 1990), I have been a good little soldier, and bought every officially released Dylan recording Columbia ever thought to release.

So far, they've released Greatest Hits Vols.1(1967), Vol.2(1972), Vol.3(1994), The Essential Bob Dylan(2 CDs, 2000) and then The Best of Bob Dylan back in 2005. And even though the last two releases featured no new and/or unreleased material, I bought 'em because I am--was--a completist, and I like looking at my shelf and seeing every single Dylan release, period.

But enough is enough. To release a third greatest hits package in under seven years, and this one costing a lot money, is just too far for me. Sure, they threw in those three live tracks to entice people like me, but I've heard clips of the on iTunes and they're hardly his most essential, transcendant live performances. The man does over one hundred concerts a year, with about fifteen songs per show--you do the math. Just in 2006 alone, they had over fifteen hundred performances to pick from, and they give us three? Three?

I understand that Bob is constantly gaining new listeners--his last album, Modern Times, hit #1 on the charts(and at sixty-five years old Bob is the oldest music artist ever to do so), so I know Sony wants to introduce these new fans to his classic, groundbreaking material.

But would it have killed them to do a standard 3 CD version for new fans, and a 4 CD one for us die-hards, with a generous sampling of the mountain of live performances and/or studio outtakes they have stored up? Even after five or six Bootleg Series releases, studio gems like "Caribbean Wind", "Yonder Comes Sin", "Sign On The Cross", and "Coverdown Breakthrough" remain unheard(er, officially).

And there are at least a dozen unreleased songs from his last few studio albums--that no one but no one has heard--with titles like "Shirley Temple Don't Live Here Anymore", "32.20 Blues", "No Turning Back", and "The Girl From The Red River Shore"(which Time Out of Mind session player Jim Dickinson called "the best song done at those sessions"(!)) that us BobCats would fork over a fortune for, guaranteed.

So for the first time--and hopefully the last--there is an official Columbia Bob Dylan release I'm not getting. I don't like my collection not being complete--its like a row of teeth with one missing--but enough is enough.

And hey, you know what? Bob's early-80s song "Enough is Enough" should be released too!

Target Comics

I think Marvel should go ahead and slap an old-school "Target Comics" moniker on the covers of the books they put together exclusively for them.

They must sell well, since just today I saw the third wave of them on sale--I scooped up a copy of each title, six in all--Spider-Man, Spider-Man Family, X-Men: First Class, Spider-Man/Power Pack, IronMan & Hulk, and The Avengers.

I've said a couple of times before, on this very blog--bravo, Marvel. I love the whole exclusive-line thing, and getting kid-friendly comics where the kids are is exactly the right move to make. I'd love to see DC, Dark Horse, Archie, etc. do the same.

Fighting Weight

Ok...a couple of days ago Trace and I got invited to a costume party at our friends Dan and Anna's house. I've only been to one costume party before(I went as Joel from Mystery Science Theatre 3000--a simple costume if there ever was one), so while I knew we wanted to go, I didn't know if I could find a decent costume in time.

There was only one choice--Aquaman. Not only would it provide some more fun content for the Shrine, but with all the AquaStuff going on right now, I felt like the planets were all aligning just right. If I was gonna go to this party, I wanted--needed--to go as Aquaman.

Problem is, Aquaman costumes are nigh impossible to find. Superman and Batman are always available, and over the years adult-size costumes of Spider-Man, The Flash, and even the Green Lantern have become easier to find. But Aquaman was still an uphill battle. I checked ebay for several days, and nothing. Every so often you see full-size, adult Aquaman costumes on sale there, but now--nothing.

Then, suddenly, a professional costume maker was selling his whole line of superhero suits on ebay--Superman, Batman, Robin, Flash, Captain Marvel...and Aquaman!

Not only does the suit look nearly perfect(orange shirt, green tights, gloves, even fins and the "A" belt), but it even came with a full-size trident. A friggin' trident!

Anyway, I snapped it up. Problem is, while the suit is made of lycra and stretches, it is made for people 5'8"-6'(no problem) and 170-195 lbs(problem).

I haven't weighed myself in a while, but last time I checked I was around 210 lbs--too much, with dropping a few always on my "to do" list. But I'll be damned if I let a few extra pounds ruin my chance--my best chance--to go to a costume party as my hero.

So...the party is in ten days. Can I lose just enough in those ten days to make it? I'm not going to do anything unsafe, but I'm going to try my best and lose as much as possible and hit that magic "195."

It starts tomorrow, future updates to come...

Stop the Presses!

If there was one thing that my (Great) Uncle Fred always thought was funny, it was... putting "googly eyes" on stuff. That was #1.

But if there were two things that Uncle Fred thought was funny, the second was fake newspaper headlines.

I had forgotten all about these papers until I saw this picture a few days ago. I'd kill to have them again.

Caught!

...that's what this photo looks like to me, though of course I'm not doing anything untoward here.

Not sure what book I'm reading, but that is Avengers #215 on top of the pile.

As you can see, all the books are bagged. I took my comic reading very seriously back then.

Joy, Thy Name Is Mego

I'm not 100% positive that the joy in my case is the result of the Mego Robin doll I was playing with(far left), but there's a good chance it was.

I wish I still had that Superman shirt, too. Johnny would look adorable in it.

Score!

This was one heck of a Mego-themed Christmas; as you can see I got both
the Jokermobile and the Mangler from Santa that year.

Had I kept them mint-in-box instead of playing with them, I'd be typing this from a bigger house.

Beer Ahoy!

I went digging through some old photos at my parent's house last night looking for an old pic of my Dad and that I intend to use for my newest blog, Hey Kids, Comics!

I didn't find that one, but I found a bunch I've never seen before or at the very least, don't remember having seen, so we're stopping the namtab art archives for a few days so I can run them.

This pic of me was taken by my Great Uncle Fred(that's not an adjective; he was my Dad's uncle so that made him my Great Uncle, but all of us just called him Uncle Fred)--he had a huge beer/soda can collection(Uncle Fred collected a lot of things) and he loved taking photos, so naturally he put said collection and his photogenic Great Nephew(both an adjective and an accurate description)in a picture together.

And you know, I wish they still made Batman-on-white t-shirts nowdays. I still think it looks cool.

Zoo Posters, Part 1 - 2003

I'm jumping around a bit here, but I recently found these in some folder buried deep on my hard-drive and thought I'd show them off.

Sometime around the summer of 2003, I landed my first--and only--agent, who I thought would lead me to a whole other level in my career--bigger clients, bigger assignments, the whole deal.

One of the things my new agent wanted from me were more advertising-centric samples, and since I had just finished a whole series of animal portraits, I came up with a fake ad campaign for the San Diego Zoo using those pieces. These are probably the best two of the bunch.

I like the bold lettering and simplicity of design--animal, logo, bam. I was happy with them then, I'm happy with them now. I think the animals look dignified and impressive; the posters are loaded with respect for the subjects.

I never got around to showing these to my agent, since after just a few weeks I noticed he didn't seem to be doing much with the flood of new material I was producing, like he asked for. At a certain point I decided he wasn't getting anything else, until he had done something with what I had already provided.

By Christmas, I was regretting my decision to take this guy on, and I spent the first few months of 2004 desperately figuring out a way to get rid of him without upsetting any current jobs. All of the work that had come in was coming in through ispot page, which I had done on my own, so basically he was getting 25% of the money from work he had nothing to do with.

Having had many problems with clients paying up before, I wanted to make sure there was the least amount of money owed possible to me before I cut him loose. After one more giant screw-up on his end, I got sick of the whole thing and wrote him a email firing him. I had simultaneously sent him a certified letter saying such(as was stipulated as necessary in the contract), as well as having changed my ispot contact info back over to me exclusively. I felt like I had performed a coup, taking back my own career.

Since then, I've never considered getting another agent, and there's been a handful of times when a new client has asked me if I have an agent. When I told them I rep myself, their response is always a variation on "good for you."

Missing Pieces, Part 2 - 1992

I received a pretty positive response from my instructor and my fellow Kubies when I turned in my collage album cover.

I remember being a little surprised by that since it was so far afield from what everyone was there for, but now I think maybe people--my friends at least--were just happy to see me doing something different and fresh, instead of the pretty lame, warmed-over attempts at comic book art I had been doing before.

So for my next assignment, I decided to create a companion piece to the album--in this case, a single one-page ad for the Missing Pieces album, and even in this small span of time I can see a big jump in figuring out what the hell to do with these collages.

Instead of the smorgasboard of imagery of the cover, this ad has one central image--Bob--and the other elements support him, instead of fighting for your attention. Also, the colors are bolder and, to me, more interesting. And instead of using the same cut-out lettering that I did for the album, I used some different letters, making for an easier-to-read title, which I also think is better:


Of course, I did commit the one crime that I've hated seeing in other places--using a picture of Young Bob to sell an album by Current(aka Old and Wrinkly)Bob. I've grown to hate it when I see a picture of 1965 Bob used on a greatest hits package or something; as if he still looks that way, but at the time I wasn't aware of that so I'm stuck with a picture four decades out of date.

Rumors, Part 1 of Many More to Come

The rumor mill is moving at full speed in regards to this supposed new Dylan album wiht Rick Rubin. I just read online that there are rumors concerning the album title and some songs. This from the Uncut magazine website:

The record has the tentative title of Anchor, and the three tracks so far worked on are: "What Angel Fell", "Hard Lines" and "Coming In From The Cold."

Now, I didn't have any problem believing the veracity of the new album rumors, even though there have been a few times before when a new album has been mentioned, but it all turned out to be fake(Coup DeVille and Stormy Season are at least two non-existent Dylan albums), because the initial news came from one man--producer Jackknife Lee--and if it wasn't true, at all, Columbia Records would go to him and tell him to knock it off. Since that hasn't happened, I'm assuming the whole story is true.

But this new rumor is more troublesome, since it seems to antithetical to how we know Bob to operate in recording an album. Supposedly the sessions haven't even started yet, yet there's already a proposed album title? And those song titles sound a little like what a fan would imagine Dylan songs would be sound like.

Bob is never predictable, so everytime a new album's songs are listed, the titles are always a surprise--"Sugar Baby"? "Nettie Moore"?

In any case, I'm still holding out hope that 2008 will indeed see a new Bob album...

The Beginning

Ok, today we set the Wayback Machine even further, back to 1992 during the last half of my third and last year at Kubert.

I had been struggling all three years in a fruitless attempt to keep up with my classmates, most of whom drew much better than I and loved nothing more than doing comic pages. I, on the other hand, threw myself into the more design-oriented projects we had, but that was pretty much one class per week out of ten. I knew deep down I was never going to draw comics, but I had yet to figure out what I would do.

Then one day in one our of classes(I forget which one it was), we were given the assignment to do design a record album sleeve. Not looking forward to producing another weak assignment, off the top of my head I asked our instructor(a nice, young laid-back guy named Stu) if we had to draw it--could we try some other style, like maybe collage?

I wasn't even sure why I said that, since I had never done a collage piece before. Luckily, Stu said sure, go nuts. And I was off. In my head, at least.

That night, I sat down on my bedroom floor and proceeded to have the most fun, creative few hours I had ever had at Kubert. I knew I wanted to do a made-up Dylan album(having just "discovered" him the previous year, I was immersed completely in All Things Bob at the time) and I went wild. I pulled weird photos, juxtaposing them against each other, throwing all kinds of paint and marker on it, even finding some parchment paper and burning the edges with a lighter(where'd I get a lighter?). The hours flew by. (click here to see the piece a little better)

Before I knew it, it was around ten o'clock; I had worked about four hours straight on the thing and never took a pause. I sat back and looked and what I had wrought; I dug it. A lot. I wasn't sure what any of it meant, exactly, but I felt like for the first time I had found a style that spoke to me, and that I could bring some excitement and enthusiam to. I had plans to watch a TV show with one of my fellow Kubies next door, so I left the piece on my bed and left.

A few minutes later, I came back to get something, and one of the other Kubies who lived next door, a nice guy named Nathan who had a very weird, electic drawing style, was coming out of my room. He had seen the piece out of the corner of his eye and went in to look at it.

He looked almost shocked when he saw me, since to that point I was Mr.Superhero Comics Guy(like most of us Kubies) and I don't think he expected anything like this from me. He said, quitely "That piece is really, really awesome."

It was the first positive review I ever got. I knew I was on to something.