WWC Scratch

Sadly, Beemsville is a late scratch from Wizard World Chicago this year.  It’s the first time I’ve missed the con in five years.  This year was going to be purely consumer and spectator mode anyway as I have no projects and no real plans in the comics realm.  Crap.  Now I’m depressed.

Anyway, the combination of a family commitment, expenses with the house move, and some pending travel plans all combined to make it a no- go.  I’ll still be reading reports from the Con to see how it unfolds.  It’s only two weeks after San Diego and things are tight all over; hopefully WWC isn’t too diminished.   So I don’t get to go to WWC, one of my favorite weekends of the year, yet ironically it looks like I’ll be attending the annual Farm Progress Show next month.  Life is strange sometimes.

Maybe next year we can take the kids.  For now how about a link to last year’s photos.  Maybe that will cheer me up…

SD Comic-Con Stuff

No, we don’t have any live reports from the annual Comic-Con International in San Diego, the yearly media event wherein Hollywood courts Geek Nation like a sexy babe, rappers and rockstars release comic book tie-ins in hopes of resurrecting flagging careers or boosting CD sales, and Marvel and DC try to drum up excitement for their latest mega-crossover event.  This Con is huge, and by all accounts as well attended as ever, despite the current economic situation.  And thanks to the always entertaining G4 Network, reporting daily from the Con, you don’t have to be there to get a taste.

Now true Comic Book fans will tell you that there’s not enough about actual comics at the Con, which has arisen as a direct consequence of the success movies and TV shows driven by comics.  A fitting bit of irony there.  But just try googling Comic-Con for news and see how much of it is actually about, you know, comics.  Beemsville will wait to listen to several of the excellent comics podcasts to try to get the real scoop, but as always a few of the hundreds of press releases and announcements caught my interest.

• Digital Comics application for the iPhone
• Boom! Studios has a number of media tie-ins, including the Incredibles and the Muppet Show, joining the ranks of small publishers trying to sustain themselves in this fashion.
• X-Men Noir has been successful enough to warrant a sequel, and the idea sounds like something to check out with a title I haven’t read much of lately.

We hope to be at the Chicago Con in a couple of weeks, as per usual, and it will be interesting to see if everyone spent all their marketing budget on San Diego.  But for now, here’s an excellent Inspector Gadget video in the spirit of the Con, courtesy of G4.

Zac’s New Art-blog

Fellow Kung-Fu Master and Beemsville ally, Zac A. has begun a new blog chronicling his art.  Click here for the goodness evilness.

For those who don’t know, Zac is a professional freelancer, mostly doing colors for comic books.  He’s done some work for the big boys as well as some  independent books.  The blog has some recent samples of his evil powers.  Zac will flat school your ass in Illustrator.  He also does his own pencils, a lot of cool sketches, and is working on a concept for a web comic.  

One aspect of Zac’s work I’ve always enjoyed is his warped sense of humor, which often comes out in his sketches and other artwork.  So check him out.

Now if I could only get him to do a custom header for Beemsville…

Movie Review: Watchmen

Directed by Zach Snyder, starring Malin Ackerman, Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Patrick Wilson. The great Alan Moore, comics scribe emeritus and the writer of Watchmen has famously sworn off all movies associated with his work. Word is this happened around the time of the release of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. No one can really blame him.

Maybe Moore should reconsider this stance for Snyder’s cinematic version. The movie is a loving and uncompromising attempt to replicate the look and narrative of the original graphic novel. And as anyone who’s ever read and appreciated the comic would attest, this is no mean feat. The movie painstakingly recreates nearly all of the memorable scenes and sequences from Dave Gibbons’ original artwork down to the panel level, and Snyder does not flinch from the bleak, the violent, the disturbing aspects of the text. It’s all here: from the Comedian’s misanthropic behavior, to Rorschach’s bloody origin, to Dr. Manhattan’s atomic blue penis. No compromise on the visuals; very little compromise on the narrative. Even Alan Moore might approve.