Ian Nichols, my friend and artist on The Tick, is filming and streaming some video of his drawing board for all to see. Starting pretty soon - February 26th and continuing on Wednesdays, Ian will be sitting down and drawing different characters and subjects and letting the world get a look, too. These will be streamed on a bunch of different platforms and archived on YouTube. Check out this video of the announcement, with The Tick!
Ian often gives the drawings to someone who shares the video as it's streaming, so you could get some really great art out of the bargain, too.
I guess Ian has two YouTube channels. Why would someone do this? Is one a burner account? Anyway, here's a (much longer) video of The Tick and Caped Cod from about a year ago:
If anyone's interested in the process of drawing comics, I hope you'll check out Ian's videos. It's a good behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make comics.
OTHER TICK NEWS!
There are a few other items to pass along, if you're interested in reading more about The Tick. First, New England Comics is reprinting the 2019 convention issue (this'll be...the fourth printing??) just for their Massachusetts-area stores with a new cover by Ian Nichols.
The issue is limited to 1000 copies and, from what I understand, hasn't gone on sale yet. Why not, you might ask? I...do not know. Please sell them, NEC. I would like to get a few copies, myself.
The 2020 Free Comic Book Day Tick Special has been announced, and here's a look at the cover, once again by Ian! This image will actually stretch across both the front and back cover, which I think is really exciting! This one has a lot going for it, including Thrakkorzog, the Ninja Hedge, the Terror, a...cave? Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing this cover.
Lastly, the Amazon Tick complete series is on sale...in Australia. It is a legitimate release. Did I get a copy? Yes. Is it formatted so that I can actually watch it? I don't know. But I'm glad to get a DVD copy of this show in any case. I hope that there's an official US release (in HD, hopefully) to follow soon.
The first half of The Tick season one is now streaming on Amazon! I hope that you've all had a chance to watch it (maybe more than once?). It's been incredible for me to see it all take shape, as someone who's right on the periphery of this thing, so I can only imagine how unbelievable this has all been for those directly involved in the production.
What's surprised me more than anything is the sheer scope of Amazon's promotional push for this show. The Tick is being advertised on billboards, in subways, on television, online - seemingly everywhere. It's very interesting to see this project that I've been a small part of show up in a lot of mainstream places over the last few months. Let me put it this way - my mom has seen ads for the show, so you know it's a big deal.
For today, I wanted to take a little bit of time and talk about some of the promotional items that Amazon has released for the show. A lot of this comes from Comic-Con in San Diego, so thankfully I was able to get a little bit of a head start on getting all of the items you see above. But there have been other Tick items released in the last few weeks and I've managed to get my hands on some of them. I didn't realize how much was out there until I tossed it all together. Let's take a peek at what we've got!
One of the biggest items is the backpack/swag bag that was given out in San Diego. Maybe "Team Tick" members wore these around the city to hand out different items. It's pretty similar to a lot of the comic convention bags you'll see at any given show, except this one is 100% Tick branded.
Here's a view of the back and the arm straps.
I had to search online to find this guy - the t-shirt. When I went through the Tick activation site at SDCC, they were out of shirts and I had to go for the tote bag instead. This guy is a full XXL size, so I won't be wearing it any time soon. These were printed on site once you finished the scavenger hunt.
Here's the aforementioned tote bag, which does look pretty good compared to the shirt, I think. As with the shirt, there were a few different slogans you could choose to have printed on it. If you're wondering "does this mean you have to get every different iteration of every printed item?", the answer is, "I hope not". That way lies madness.
There were two slightly different phone cases handed out in San Diego: one for the iPhone 6 and 6s, and another for the larger iPhone 7. This is one of the coolest looking items, I think, and also one of the least functional.
The promo winner at Comic-Con was, not surprisingly, the antennae headband. I saw a lot of people wearing these throughout the show.
The hat is also something you can wear on your head, and I saw some people wearing it, but not as many as the headband.
I think I've managed to grab all of the little handouts from SDCC, either in person or online afterwards. Near the top are the, I guess, hygiene products, including moist towelettes, sunscreen, deodorant (really) and tissues. The rectangular shaped box in the middle contains something, but I have no idea what it is. I have no plans to open it, but it's nothing obvious. Perhaps it will remain one of life's mysteries.
At the bottom of the picture, you can see two handbills advertising the show and different promotions associated with it. I picked these two things off the ground and the one on the left shows some wear, probably from 10,000 people stepping on it before I got to it. Directly above is the RFID-chipped elastic wristband that everyone who went through the outdoor site had to wear. At the very top are two different business card-sized ads, one about costuming and the other about...punching.
I'm particularly happy that I managed to get this item. This temporary tattoo (I think) was part of the bathroom setup at the interactive zone outside of Petco Park. If you flushed the toilet, one of these plastic bubbles rolled down into a basket. I was lucky to get one with a blue cap (there were all different colors in the enclosure) to fit with the theme.
Soon after Comic-Con, Carl's Jr. ran a small promotion with their extra-large-sized drink cups. Carl's Jr. is run by the same company that owns Hardees, except one is on the western part of the country, and the other is on the east. As far as I can tell, Hardees strangely did not have the promotion (not in my general area, anyway), so I was lucky to have someone grab these and mail them to me.
This is the other side of the cup!
A few days ago, I saw a picture of X-Men actor Oliva Munn wearing a clearly-branded Tick jacket with antennae on the hood. Who wore it better?
Uh, okay, probably Munn. But I was able to grab this once I saw it pop up on eBay a little while ago. It took me a few days to figure out just where it came from. It turns out that Amazon sent these as part of a press packet to reviewers of the show. Is it a bribe? I don't know, but it sure is soft.
The second part of that packet was the actual show on DVD. It came in this neat-looking booklet.
The booklet has images from the series posters and a short writeup about all of the main characters.
Near the back of the booklet, there are short bios for the actors and producers of the show. Notice that Griffin Newman is, for some reason, referred to as "the Moth".
There are a few items that I'm still on the lookout for, some of which I'll probably never get. There was a drink koozie with a screen printed image given out at the activation site - I could have gotten that instead of the tote bag, but I think I picked the better of the two.
As you can see in the picture directly above, members of "Team Tick" - those hired to work the event - all got event-specific t-shirts to wear. I've yet to see any surface online since Comic-Con. I should have made an offer to one of the workers before the show ended, but I didn't realize they'd be so tough to find (and "sell me your shirt!" is a weird conversation starter). I have hopes that I'll be able to get one at some point - I know I'll be on the lookout for someone wearing it at the New York Comic Con in October, where the Tick will have a presence as well.
A week before the first handful of episodes were made available to stream online, Amazon had a premiere in New York City - where the show is filmed - and the setup was just incredible. I had some friends attend, and the pictures they posted looked really fantastic. Among some of the props outside of the theater, where they screened the first three episodes, were "Tick Tacs", blue-colored takeoffs of the popular breath mints. From what I gather, they were there for the taking (if you could get behind the velvet rope). I also saw branded popcorn bags and lots of props which were probably not removable. Needless to say, I'd do just about anything to be able to grab some of those, but I have to imagine that it'll be very difficult to do so.
I think my whole point in posting this is to say "wow, look at all of the neat promo items Amazon is putting out for The Tick!" Hopefully my astonishment is made clear enough, because I'm really quite taken back by it all. Now I'm off to do another futile search for a Team Tick shirt!
Well, it's that time of year once again where I show off some of the stuff I have. I guess I do that more than once a year. I'm okay with this. Anyway, my birthday has come and gone as it seems to do, and I got some neat things. So you get to see them! But first, check out this sketch of The Tick and Arthur from Rob Croonenborghs! I thought that this was pretty cool.
First up on the docket is the Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot hardcover collection from Dark Horse Comics. I'm excited to break into this as I've actually never read the story before and it's, if you can believe it, one of Frank Miller's stranger co-creations. I wonder if the '90s cartoon is out on DVD? Hmm...four seconds of Amazon research tells me that it isn't. I wonder why?
It was recently announced that "Weird Al" Yankovic would be the new co-host and band leader of IFC's "Comedy Bang! Bang!" beginning in season five. This means, of course, that it's time for me to catch up on the series so far, and I got the first two seasons that I'm pouring through. It really is a fantastic program. It's weird and irreverent and it suits my sense of humor just fine.
Also in the stack is a book all about old comic book ads, "Mail-Order Mysteries"! It shows the actual products behind many of the more ubiquitous ads that showed up in comics. It does not disappoint and seems oddly tailor-made to me specifically.
Lastly you'll see "Save the Cat", a book on screenwriting for jerks like me who will one day probably sell out and write a screenplay. If I haven't already.
Next up, we've got some more DVDs, including the second volume of the Conan the Adventurer series, the complete Planet of the Apes tv series, and the first season of very Clone High alumni heavy "The Last Man on Earth".
Just as I predicted, I'm getting sucked into the amiibo fad and now I own two. I keep telling myself that I'm stopping with Pac Man. Who knows if this is true? I also picked up a new audiobook set in the "Ender's Game" universe. "Ender's Game" was such an incredible book and everything afterwards just slowly and unfortunately went downhill. I guess I'm still trying to recapture that initial wonder.
Oh, and I spent all of last month stalking Larry with a fake Twitter profile before revealing it to him with a birthday cake from (of course) Dairy Queen. Revenge isn't the only thing that's best served cold. Ice cream cake is. Because it's made of ice cream. You get it.
Is it weird that I post pictures of some of the stuff I got for Christmas? Maybe. But here's what I got for Christmas. I like it.
I got some great comics this year. The Gaiman/Williams Sandman prequel was collected just in time for Christmas. I'm now caught up on the Hellboy library editions. I'm very excited to read the comic adaptation of Don Quixote. And WOOOOOAH, I got the Complete Calvin and Hobbes hardcover edition, which must weigh about 50 pounds. It's really impressive.
Your pal (and mine) Larry got me some great Thing items. First up are these two figures. The first one is from Japan, and the second is part of a kid's memory game. Both are awesome (and both come apart!).
Larry also went above and beyond when he found these two gems from the 2005 Fantastic Four movie. Thing hands and Thing feet!
Check out this sticker on the Thing feet box. Was it necessary? You can see the feet in the box, and it says "THING FEET" just inches away, in big, capital letters, at the bottom of the box. The artwork doesn't fit the rest of the packaging, either. But how cool! Somewhere out there, there's a roll of these "Thing feet" stickers.
While everyone else is moving away from DVDs to digital downloads and streaming services, I am apparently doubling down on discs with bizarre additions to my collection like the Dr. Katz complete series.
I got a WiiU a few months ago, and now I have a few more games to play, plus my first Amiibo. What's an Amiibo? Why, it's a huge racket that forces you to buy toys to go along with your games. And here I am, falling for it! I think I'll get the Pac Man Amiibo next.
My Steelers sideline shirt from 2004 is nearing the end of its life. So here's my new gameday shirt, which maybe I'll wear for another 10 years or so. Let's get a picture now while it's still black.
And then there's my haul from the yearly Gallery 1988 sale. These aren't technically Christmas presents (since I bought 'em for myself), but they came in December and they are great. So we're listing them. These two Weird Al prints are from separate shows, but they obviously follow a theme. I buy a few each year in hopes that the many Weird Al prints don't sell out before I have a chance to buy them all.
Saturdays at Comic-Con are often the busiest days of the entire event. It has a feeling of "let's squeeze in as much as we can before it's all over". Sunday, in contrast, is pretty mellow and relaxed.
I was nervous about this particular Saturday weeks in advance, though, because it was announced that "Weird Al" Yankovic was going to make a rare Comic-Con appearance in the form of a panel at the Horton Grand Theater.
The Horton was a new offsite location for Comic-Con in 2014, and it took some obvious cues from Nerd HQ and its intimate celebrity panels. Nerd HQ does everyone a favor and distributes tickets to its panels before the events, so there's very little time spent waiting in line, a staple of Comic-Con-run panels. As the Horton Theater seats only a few hundred people, I had nightmares of waiting in line overnight just to get the chance to take in this panel, which was at the top of my list for the entire show.
Comic-Con, though, chose to hold a random drawing for tickets on Saturday morning, much in the same way it gives out tickets to autograph signings and certain (LEGO) exclusive offerings. I had never waited in line for a random drawing, and I found the entire concept a bit suspect to begin with, so there was a lot of trepidation over whether it would even be worth it or not to try and get tickets for this event.
I'm glad I gave it a chance, because it obviously worked out, and it was much more painless than I imagined. Of course, I say this as someone who was able to get one of the few tickets available, but overall I think that Comic-Con has a good system in place when it comes to events like these.
I got in line about an hour before the doors officially opened for Saturday, and by this time the line was already stretched out of the convention center, down the stairs, across the street and onto the sidewalk near the water. Some people thought better of it and left when we didn't seem to be moving by 9:15, but soon after we were steadily on our way to the entrance.
Once inside the autograph pavilion, the lines split up further depending on what event you wanted to go and see. There were quite a few people who wanted to try for the Weird Al tickets, but still, I would say that before 10:00, it was my turn to grab a ticket.
The system is so low-tech to the point of being ridiculous. Comic-Con volunteers hold a cloth bag with generic "keep this ticket" tickets inside. You pick one, and if there's a stamp on the back (for me it was an image of a frog), you win. Luckily, if you get a ticket with no stamp, you can get in line once again, which by this time only takes five or so minutes to get back to the front. Even luckier, my wife pulled a winning ticket. Luckier still, each winning ticket gets you two event tickets, so we were all set, and not much worse for the wear.
At this point, I decided to press my luck, and I got back in line for the Weird Al autograph session, which required a different ticket. My wife took off for the George R.R. Martin line, and - wouldn't you know it - we both got tickets to those. I'll talk more about the autograph session in a bit.
The tickets to the event came in an envelope and looked like the picture above. For me, it was pretty cool to get a specially printed ticket with the Comic-Con logo on it, and I was even happier that we were able to keep our tickets after we entered the theater - they were checked, but not collected and not even torn. So I got a nice keepsake from the event that I was somehow able to keep in good shape all the way back home.
The Horton Grand Theater was a few blocks from the convention center, and it's obviously designed for small performances, either theatrical or musical. It sat probably 300 people. There was a lot of nervous energy in line as we waited to enter the building. Once inside, there was a poster with the Mandatory Fun branding on it, as seen above. I wonder who walked home with that thing. I'm sure someone claimed it.
Once inside, my wife and I got seats about six rows from the front, as assigned on our tickets, which were great. After a few minutes, the event organizers asked to see if there were empty seats, as they would then let in the "stand by" hopefuls, otherwise known as the teeming masses who took a chance and waited outside the building. There just so happened to be two seats in the very front row, and I grabbed them up quick.
Al and the host, comedian Jonah Ray, came out a few minutes later, after a video introduction, and the crowd, of course, went wild. Keep in mind that this was a matter of days after the Mandatory Fun album was released, and almost right after it was announced that the album had reached #1 on the Billboard charts (Al's first, and the first comedy album in about half a century to hit that mark...which is a really big deal!). Everyone was excited to be there and especially happy to be one of the few to see the event in person.
The panel itself was a lot of fun, though nothing revelatory transpired. Jonah Ray might have been the most excited person in the hall, and that led him to talk...and talk...and talk about how much he enjoyed being there. That's great, and I probably would have felt similarly, but I suppose he didn't realize (or didn't care) that no one in the hall was there to see him. Seriously, I hate to gripe about it, but rather than moderate the panel, Ray wanted to interject his own opinion into everything that Al said and every question that was asked by the audience. Now I know a lot about Jonah Ray, I guess.
About half way through the panel, a Q&A session broke out, and I was able to leap out of my seat and in front of a microphone, which was placed not too far away from where I was sitting. The session was as strange as you might expect, with some people asking the almost requisite "do you remember me from..." questions to one lady telling Al that she sat on his lap at some point back in the '80s.
From my time at the Toonseum, I had learned that Al had recently been given the ACE award (Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinaire) by the National Cartoonists Society. I knew that he had always been a fan of Mad Magazine, but I didn't have any clue that he did any drawing of his own, so I was able to ask him about it. The end of my question was something like "I'd like to know why don't we see any of these drawings...and can I have one?" The last part was a joke, of course, but it got me the meanest look you can imagine from the staffer who had earlier asked us all what our questions were going to be. This in itself was pretty funny.
Someone sitting on my side of the auditorium, near the back, managed to record sections of the panel (about half altogether), including most of the discussion between Al and Jonah Ray:
You can pick me out in my trusty gold Steelers hat near the beginning, as seen below. You could probably also see me by my enthusiastic fist pumping:
The panel ended after about 50 minutes...but it wasn't Al's last appearance of the day. I had mentioned earlier that I had also gotten a ticket to a signing event. This event was to take place before the panel. And even though I've got probably too many things signed by Al in my possession, I thought it would still be fun to get in line, say hello and get an autograph if I could.
Earlier that morning, Shout! Factory made the announcement, obviously with Al's Comic-Con appearance in mind, that they were releasing a 25th anniversary Blu-Ray edition of the movie UHF later in the year. I caught it, purely by chance, on Twitter, and as I knew that Shout! had a booth at the show, I decided to seek them out and see if they had anything - I was thinking a postcard or flyer announcing the release - that I could grab to get signed.
This was around 10:30, so the convention hall had already been open for quite a while, but I walked down to the main floor and found the booth, only to see an incredible UHF poster print resting against one of the sides of the booth. I looked the guy working the book in the eyes, pointed to the poster, and said, "uh, what is this?", fearing that they'd be on sale for, like, a hundred bucks.
HOWEVER! It turns out that I really hit it big. The first 50 people to ask ask about Weird Al were given a wrist band to an exclusive poster signing later in the day, right after the panel at the Horton theater. This was not announced! It was pure luck that I was there at the right time.
HOOOOOWEVER!! I was an idiot and was worried about getting back into the convention hall in time to make the signing. This wasn't completely unfounded, as it is difficult to walk from one side of the hall to the other at Comic-Con, and I was coming from outside and blocks away. So I asked the guy if I could forgo the wrist band and just get a copy of the poster, which, I figured, I could take to get signed at the event that I already had a ticket for.
The guy looked at me like I was crazy, and to his credit, I kind of was. The posters were on hold until the signing event, so I couldn't get a wrist band and still get a poster, but I could, he told me, get a poster with no chance of getting it signed later.
I took him up on this proposition and, a little bit later, went up to the autograph pavilion...only to see literally hundreds of people waiting in line to get Al's autograph. Realizing I had made the (terribly, horribly, inexcusably) wrong choice, I nonetheless waited at the back of the line for about 15 minutes...only to not move at all. I was one of the very last people in line, it seemed, and in the time I was waiting, only about three other people showed up to stand in back of me.
At this point, I had almost nothing to lose, so I went back to the main floor and the Shout! booth and asked if I could make the trade, once again, of the poster for the wrist band. It just so happened that there were still about six wrist bands left, so my monumental stupidity didn't end up costing me on this day. And it's a good thing, too, because the signing was really great!
After the panel ended, I beat a hasty retreat back to the convention hall. I, of course, understood that Al had to travel the same distance, but I imagined him taking a secret underground route or something reserved for celebrities and was thus anxious about getting there in time. Not to worry, though, as I was about 20th in line and it was still about 15 minutes before Al walked in.
Convention security did, as it turned out, kind of sneak Al in through the back. Probably for the purposes of crowd control, the signing wasn't advertised, so there were a lot of stunned people standing near the booth when "Weird Al" Yankovic came walking in to sit behind a table. A lot of people (innocently enough) tried to sneak in line only to be told of the wrist band policy.
Being first in line sometimes has its benefits, but I find that there are sometimes more benefits to being back a bit, as was the case with this signing. The first three or four people in line got a poster, said hello, got it signed and were on their way. As the signing progressed, everyone loosened up a little bit, and soon people were chatting away with Al, getting their pictures taken, shaking hands, asking questions, the whole bit. Al started personalizing the posters after the first half dozen or so, too. I know that not everyone likes to have autographs personalized, but this was one item I was happy to get my name written on.
Shortly after Al arrived, he was joined by another special guest - UHF director (and Al's longtime manager) Jay Levey! Not everyone knew who he was, but listen, people: he played the lead role in the "Gandhi II" spoof from UHF! This was a big deal!
The line moved fairly quickly and the crowd of onlookers grew. The overall mood was pretty low-key throughout. Check out that oversized UHF print behind Levey...I also wonder who walked away with that.
I've been looking to give Al a copy of the UHF "Six Panel Cinema" that Jeff McComsey and I worked on a few years ago for a while now. I took it to his Washington, PA concert in 2013, but didn't get a chance to see him after that show. So when I heard about his Comic-Con panel, I thought that I might was well lug it to San Diego with me in case I was able to toss it at him from me seat or something. It was a gigantic stroke of luck that this just happened to be the day that the Blu-Ray was announced. So many things came together - what were the odds that I'd get to meet Al in this context and actually have the UHF print with me? But it worked out and I was able to give him a copy, which both he and Levey seemed to enjoy. This was - of course - a big thrill for me.
Other things of note:
1) I was wearing my Transformers "Dare to Be Stupid" t-shirt on this day. Both Al and Jay noticed it and hadn't before seen it; "Dare to Be Stupid" is a song of Al's that made it onto the 1980s Transformers movie soundtrack, hence the reference on the shirt. I told Al where I bought it (the locally-based 80sTees) and he pulled out his phone to search it out.
2) This is probably the best picture that I'll ever take with Weird Al. I should have played the lottery this day. So much was going my way.
3) McComsey's Six Panel Cinema later took a trip to the first page of Reddit, at which point Al tweeted a copy of the UHF entry to his (literally) millions of followers (if you'd like to buy a print, you can do so here).
4) The poster, thankfully, made it back to Pennsylvania with me safely. I bought a protective sleeve at the show and it has stayed in there ever since. I realize that this is a pretty rare Weird Al collectible, but I'm just happy to have this memento from what turned out to be a pretty good day.
5) The poster had what turned out to be the front artwork for the Blu-Ray release of the movie, which is out and available to purchase now. It is very similar to the previous DVD release, with a notable exception: it includes the entire Comic-Con panel as a special feature (I wish it also included footage from the signing event, which was filmed in its entirety). It's a more professional feed than what was on YouTube, which is nice...and I also make a couple appearances on it.
6) Mandatory Fun won Al his fourth Grammy award, which continues quite a year for Mr. Yankovic, and he's also announced the dates for his upcoming Mandatory World Tour. He'll be in nearby Greensburg on May 31st. I'll be there, too. You should also come.
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