Superdogs, The Dark Knight Rises filming schedule, John Watkins and more!

- One post of mine that gets frequent attention is "Who Owns Superman Ice Cream?", which questions the legality of Kroger's name for their red, yellow and blue ice cream.  Unless there's been an upswing in desire for a dessert treat based on the philosophy or Friedrich Nietzsche ("God is Dead Cookies and Cream", perhaps), it's probably something that Warner Bros. and DC Comics know about but decide to look the other way.

I was shopping for, well, meat the other day, and I came across the above package of hot dogs - "Superdogs" with Superman's "S" shield logo stamped right on the package.  It's not even a variation of the logo, it's the exact comic book S that we see on the Man of Steel.  Interesting stuff.

- The "Captain Mal" art by Sammy Gomez that I won at a screening of "Serenity" made it on to i09's website a few days ago, under the heading "The Coolest Firefly Art in the 'Verse".  It was not only awesome to see the art I own online with a link back to this blog, but there were lots of other great pieces of art on display as well.  And it all made me miss Firefly/Serenity even more.  Sigh.

- "Smart Alex" McKinley wrote a nice blog about the Mr. Massive/X-Plosive Comics Kickstarter project that my friend Artboy_X is heading up.  I've never met Alex before and I have no idea who he is, but he had this to say about, well, me:

Mr. Massive, by Michael Oeur and Jeff McLelland, chronicles the adventures and misadventures of a boy who uses his superpowers as any typical boy would- particularly if he never had an Uncle Ben Parker telling him, "With great power comes great responsibility." Given Jeff McLelland's previous work on a variety of comics including Teddy and the Yeti, the zaniness of his "stupid" Youtube show Franks and Beans, and the premise of Mr. Massive, I think it's safe to say we'll see hilarity ensue.

To hear someone I don't know talk about Franks and Beans makes my head spin a little bit.  I don't even mind that he spelled my name wrong (it happens, I understand).

- Great day in the morning, "The Dark Knight Rises" is almost upon us.  As you can see from the above Post-Gazette photo, the bat-logo shone upon downtown Pittsburgh recently in anticipation of the start of filming, which begins...any day now!

The website onlocationvacactions.com printed a comprehensive list of just where the movie will be filming - apparently, the studio sent letters to homeowners in the area to keep them aware of what would be happening (so they won't, you know, call the police if things start blowing up a half a mile down the road), and someone decided to put it online, much to the appreciation of you and me.

Here's part of it - go here for the complete list: http://www.onlocationvacations.com/2011/07/16/the-dark-knight-rises-filming-locations-in-pittsburgh-august-10th-20th/comment-page-1/

In the coming weeks we will be visiting all of the businesses and entity in the area effected but our proposed activity in order to ascertain the best way of minimizing are impact. We are also working with building managers in the area to facilitate tenant access to properties. Our goal is to make this a positive experience for everyone involved and we would like to address your individual concerns, no matter how small. Please do not hesitate to call us with any questions at our cell phone numbers listed below. 

Throughout our preparation, filming and restoration periods, Security guards, Pittsburgh Police Officers and production assistants will be visible during our film shoot to insure public safety as well as address any immediate concerns you may have about the filming.

If what is on the website is an exact transcription of the letter that actually went out, I think I'll gouge my eyes out in response to the grammar.  "Minimizing ARE impact"?!?  Perhaps they meant that recently released Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antwaan Randle El would be rampaging the streets of downtown Pittsburgh.  Perhaps.

- Paul Tucker recently finished our short story, "John Watkins: Phantom for Hire", and it is fan-friggin-tastic!  We're currently making a few small adjustments before we try to get it in front of some faces.  Paul has a really great blog where he's broken down much of his process for this story, and you owe it to yourself to check it out at http://tuckercomics.blogspot.com/.

- And now, a few non-comic related items.  First, as you can see in the screenshot above, I made it into the trailer for a movie.  Not just any movie, mind you, but a movie with an embarrassing title; one that I have to preface with "it's not a porno" every time I tell people about it.  It's actually a Saturday Night Live movie - or at least it has a number of actors from SNL in it.  It's called...sigh..."A Good Old Fashioned Orgy" and it's going to be released in September.  I was an extra on the set in Wilmington, North Carolina in 2008.  Here's the trailer!

- Lastly, congratulations to friend of the blog (that's not entirely true) Sidney Rice on his signing of a $41 million contract with the Seattle Seahawks, losers of Super Bowl 40 to Jerome Bettis and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  The Seahawks come to Heinz Field the second week of the season - September 18th - and I wish him the best of luck.  But I hope his team loses...badly.  I do.

News on The Baltimore Comic-Con, Batman/Avengers movies, Brink and more!

It's time for new about things!  Hooray!

- The Baltimore Comic-Con recently updated its website with a list of guests, including some of my favorite creators like Scott Snyder, Geof Darrow, Chrissie Zullo, Walter Simonson...and me (I'm on my own list of favorite creators?  How gauche).  The convention website not only listed me, but everyone I was planning on taking to the show with me as well.  I got four passes, but at the time I filled out the application I wasn't sure on what I'd do with the last one, so I just wrote down "George Newman", not knowing that it'd eventually be published (perhaps in the convention program, which would be fun).  George Newman, of course, is "Weird Al" Yankovic's character from the movie UHF:

Unfortunately, though, Weird Al will not be appearing at my table at the show.  Unless he reads this, thinks it's a funny joke, and decides to show up as if to say "I get it...and I approve".  In which case, there's a seat waiting for you, Al.

- I got a confirmation e-mail for the Saturday, August 6th filming date for "The Dark Knight Rises" at Heinz Field.  The grammar is atrocious as expected (apparently an apostrophe can be used...whenever) but there was some good information included in this mass mailing.  The scene being filmed is described as the "kickoff scene" which could be literal or could refer to this being the opening shot for the movie (though I doubt it).  We're encouraged to make signs and bring them (presumably as long as they don't say things like "BRUCE WAYNE IS BATMAN" or "watch Franks and Beans!"), colors to wear are black and gold, and the scene in the movie will take place in late fall or early winter.  So, yes, at the beginning of August we'll have to wear winter coats.  I'll update everyone on how many die of heat stroke on the set.

- Sean Kleefeld wrote a pretty cool blog (and took the above picture) about his experience for the recent "Avengers" casting call in Cleveland.  It sounds like, while there were fewer people to show up, it was pretty similar to the Dark Knight casting call in Pittsburgh.  Kleefeld writes, in part:

There seemed to me a refreshingly diverse mix of people there. I figured it would be heavily fanboyish and, while they were clearly represented well, there were all sorts of other people too. Obviously, the aspiring actors and actresses with resumes in hand but also a range of folks who just heard about this and thought it might be interesting and/or fun. Plus, one thing that I'm ashamed to admit hadn't occurred to me prior to going, someone mentioned that he was guessing about half of the attendees were simply out of work and needed a job of any sort.

Read his full blog here!  This movie will soon film for four weeks in Cleveland and for one week right outside of Pittsburgh.  Maybe I'll manage to sneak on as an extra at some point, if only because both Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion (of Firefly/Serenity fame) are both involved in the project.  And then we'll all become best friends and they'll bring the show back as a result of that new friendship.

- Paul Tucker is knocking our John Watkins: Phantom for Hire story out of the park.  Above is a panel from a recently completed page.  This is what happens when you smoke, kids.  You die.  So don't do it.

- Brink, the webcomic I'm currently lettering (by James Emmett and Daniel Erenberg), has recently updated with several new pages!  Check it out and follow along here!

- And finally, here's a picture of a sack of potatoes.  Enjoy.

Google Images has been kind, FUBAR v.2 cover, stats and more!

- Blogger is kind enough to save viewing statistics for this blog, and I am obsessive enough to check them all the time; the stats tell me nothing other than how many views specific posts have in a given time period and what countries the views come from, which is juuuust unintrusive enough for me to be okay with.  These page views, for the most part, seem to follow a predictable trend, with new posts getting the majority share (but fading away after a week or so) with a few time-tested posts continually getting hits.  Sometimes, though, a post from three months ago will all of a sudden pop back up on the radar and top the list in a given week.  This is thoroughly confusing.

Case in point: I've had, what, seven different posts with art from my Thing sketchbook; one entry (the third, I think?) keeps getting more hits than any other.  I think the big reason for this is because, as someone else pointed out to me, some of the sketches show up pretty early on in Google Images searches, which I think is extra cool.  The wording is sometimes tricky, but I've found that searching for images of the Thing with the keyword "cigar" somewhere in there brings a bundle of familiar sketches, like the one above from Chuck BB.  I've seen images from the sketchbook as high as on the sixth page of results, which, when considering how many thousands of images of the Thing there are out there, is fairly surprising.

- Speaking of statistics (YOUR FAVORITE SUBJECT!), the month of June still has a few days left in it, and it already is my most-viewed month since Blogger started keeping record of such things (according to this graph, it looks like a total of zero people viewed it in May of 2009).  November, 2010, directly after the New York Comic Con, held the previous high, but woo!  No more.  Thanks, everyone, for reading my stupid ramblings!

- One of the big reasons for this jump is because of the "Accordion Theory" comic strip, which has quickly become one of my most-viewed posts.  It seems that Yahoo! Images is bringing the strip up very early when people search for "Weird Al" Yankovic, which is great - especially since the man is getting a lot of publicity lately for his brand new album, "Alpocalypse", which came out on Tuesday.  It's a tremendous album, and you should totally buy several copies of it.  My goodness, look at the cover!

And holy crap, buy it buy it buy it!  And marvel and how incredible it is.

- You know what other cover is cool?  The just-released cover to the much-anticipated FUBAR volume 2, due out this fall.  Danilo Beyruth drew this one just as he did the cover for volume 1, and as with that one he knocked this out of the park.  Really, how awesome is this cover?  Very awesome.  That's the answer.  It is.

- Your friend (and mine) Paul Tucker is hard at work on a new story featuring John Watkins, Phantom for Hire!  Here's some thumbnails...see if you can guess what's happening!  I can, but...I wrote the script.

- Lastly, happy birthday to friend and Franks and Beans co-creator Larry, whose exact date of birth I always manage to forget, but hey, it's around here some time.  I hope he enjoys the Dukes of Hazzard parody porno DVD that I bought for him, which is sure to bring laughs and laughs.  And boobs.

Oh, hey, we (and I think eight other people) went to Kennywood amusement park last week, and I filmed the Thunderbolt roller coaster while riding it.  Watch it, and hold your hands up when the car goes down the hill.

Andromeda Jones by Whetzel and Gallo, X-Men: First Class review, the Mourning Star and More!

- A little while ago I posted a pinup of Andromeda Jones by Chris Whetzel that I had forgotten about for a number of years.  I decided to actually do something with it and, if nothing else, have a finished piece of art, so I shipped it off to Alan Gallo to ink it...and he came back at me with just a fantastic rendering.  The original file wasn't of optimal resolution, but Alan really kicked it's butt completely.

The next step is to get it colored, which will hopefully happen soon.

- I went to see X-Men: First Class on Friday, and like a lot of people I was pleasantly surprised with how good the movie actually was.  There's one trailer that compares it to The Dark Knight, which is just a ridiculous claim, but it was still very enjoyable and right up there, in my opinion, with the second X-Men movie (which was the last even remotely good one before Friday).  It's a shame that Marvel is doing next to nothing to promote this movie.

I did go through the entire movie thinking that the "Azazel" character was just a renamed Belasco, but Newsarama tells me that he was actually from the comic, as well.

- Paul Tucker has been going over in some detail the process he went through to put the new "Oh! The Horror!" cover together on his website, including thumbnails, the title design and the above pencilled piece.  If you haven't yet, check out Paul's site at http://tuckercomics.blogspot.com/.  It's great.

A few days ago, I got the second volume of Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star in the mail, and I am extra excited to break into it.  I bought the first book at a tiny comic festival in Olympia, Washington when I spent a summer a few years ago in nearby Shelton.  I absolutely love the first volume, which was nominated for an Eisner award.  It still doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, so I wanted to mention it here.

I bought the book for $13 from Bodega Distribution and got free shipping!  Anyone who's reading this (BOTH OF YOU!) should literally run right out and buy it today.  I mean, literally.  Put your shoes on!

- And lastly, because I apparently have to end with some kind of Franks and Beans reference/update, have you ever said to yourself, "where can I get a copy of that 'beard arrow' thing that I saw on that episode of Franks and Beans, my favorite irreverent Internet sketch comedy show of all time?"  I'm just saying, lots of words are said every day and eventually, even if at random, those words will be uttered in the proper sequence.

Regardless, on the main Franks and Beans website I've uploaded a few things recently, including the famous "Beard Arrow" graphic from the extended episode "Irony", as well as the great "Cha-Ching!" graphic from our most recent episode, "The Education Lottery Lottery Education", which is a more clever name than you could have come up with.  For real.

More Horror

Artist Paul Tucker and I are currently working on a new concept titled "John Watkins: Phantom for Hire", which is right now just a short story exercise that threatens to take up more of our time in the future, as it's been loads (just loads) of fun to this point.  Paul even went so far as to draw a mock cover for the character, an homage to old EC Comics horror books that carries the title "Oh! The Horror!"  Interestingly, what I like most about the image is the furniture - that's not to say that everything isn't great, but just take the time and look at couch and endtable set!  Seriously, I love it.

I have no idea if this cover will ever be used for anything, which is why I wanted to get it up here for more people to see.  It's too swell for me to keep all to myself.  The title, by the way, is a reference to a short-run book that Paul and I put together a few years ago under the same name.  It contained three short stories, and...oh, I'd show the cover to it if I still had the image on this hard drive and not hiding away on a DVD-R in the closet.  Oh well, the best I can do is this picture from the New York Comic Con, with the book next to the Teddy and the Yeti paper heroes and the Franks and Beans DVDs.

That's a robot holding a sword in the desert underneath the title on the cover - that's how cool it is.

I currently have one single copy of this book left with me from the orignial print run.  One!  It traveled back from the Motor City Comic Con all alone.  The person who buys it at the upcoming Baltimore show goes home with a prize, no joke.

"Weird Al" Yankovic now has a copy of "Accordion Theory", new FUBAR, Franks and Beans and more notes!

As I've mentioned a few times in the past couple weeks, the above "Accordion Theory" comic strip was created because of a new "Weird Al" Yankovic coffee table book that's set to come out in 2012.  There was a call for photos and artwork from fans, and since I don't have any uniquely good pictures and I can't draw a decent portrait to save my life, Adrian "Bago" Gonzalez and I put together the short strip you see at top.

The file has since been submitted to the publisher, which was one leg of the journey, but I also had an opportunity to see Al on tour this past Sunday at the new Stage AE in Pittsburgh, and I knew that I might be able to directly give the man himself a copy.

The show itself was unbelievable beyond the fact that Al and his band always put on a high energy, fun performance.  I managed to situate myself in the absolute front, pressed up against the stage, and - get this - I got to sing into the microphone twice during the show.  It was a really incredible experience all around and it's something I'll remember for a long, long time.

After the show was over, I had a chance to talk with Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, Al's drummer and all around good guy.  I've met Jon a couple of times after shows, and he's always very friendly and willing to chat.  I'm also pretty convinced that the submission e-mail address goes directly to him, as he does a lot of archival work of Al's career and has a big online presence, so I managed to hand him a print of the comic along with the high resolution file on CD.

A handful - maybe 30 or 40 - of fans stuck around after the show long enough to say a few words to Al (it was nice of him to take the time after probably exhausing himself on stage for 2 1/2 hours), and I was able to ask him really fanboy-ish questions like "Why was the single version of 'UHF' put on your Essentials album instead of the longer version?" and "Is Victoria Jackson really crazy, or it is all an Andy Kaufman-like stunt?", and perhaps more importatnly, I was able to get him a copy of "Accordion Theory".  I have no idea if he's read it.  But man oh man, he got a print.  He even signed one for me, which you can see above.

This is the best picture I could manage to get while Al was signing stuff.  From our expressions below it looks like I'm giving him a speeding ticket or something.

And here's just a random picture from the show.  That "Fat" costume is great...but I'll bet it's pretty disgusting inside at the end of a touring season.  That's guitarist Jim "Kimo" West at the bottom left.  Fingers crossed for the coffee table book.

I knew it was a good sign when, the day after I posted the comic strip up for the first time, I checked the statistics on it and 27 people had viewed it overnight.  The number 27 is one that gets referenced a lot in Al's songs.  Oh, and after the show was over, I stopped at the casino next door and won exactly 27 dollars, no kidding.

A few more notes before I go:

- My good friend Paul Tucker and I are working on a new short story about a dead guy who solves murder cases.  Okay, that's an oversimplification, but Paul has really run with the concept and has taken it to greater heights than if I were the only one in chage.  The below panel is just some test art from Paul - it doesn't actually appear in the story, but it's gotten me to change a few things and incorporate some of the concepts of the panel itself.

Paul has been working on refining his craft for a number of months now, and the results should be obvious.  He's really got that old-time EC Comics look down.

- I'm beginning some work on a new FUBAR project; I won't give it away just yet (because I really am just getting started), but it involves the below comic strips and, well, zombie, of course.  It'll be different and, hopefully, exciting.  The Baltimore Comic-Con should be bunches of fun when it rolls around this August.

- Lastly, I took one of the Motor City Comic Con pictures into Illustrator and made a mock postcard for Franks and Beans.  Since we all love Franks and Beans (WE ALL DO), I thought I'd post it here as well.  That guy in the top right corner still makes it all work.