01.24.2009
WHAT ELSE IS IN MASSILLON OHIO (Part 3)
Plenty of snow and sub-zero temperatures! Had an appointment at the Job and Family Services office in Canton, Ohio last week to take care of some business for my uncle. Couldn't have picked a worse week to spend in Ohio. They had a major snowfall the day before I arrived, more snow falling during my first few days there, and sub-zero temperatures for the rest of the week with highs only in the single digits. My sister, Cyndee, flew up for a couple of those days too, so we were a couple of Florida folks completely out of our element.
If you've been following the Massillon posts, you'll know that my uncle has transitioned to the Rose Lane Health Facility in Massillon. One of my other tasks this trip was to close out his apartment. That kept Cyndee and me busy with packing, shipping items, donating other items, and cleaning up in general. Finally set my uncle up with his iMac over at Rose Lane, and was glad to find a strong WiFi signal there. Uncle Ned is happy to be "snatching the internet out of the air" as he calls it, instead of owing the cable company a hefty bill each month.
With his iMac, his new flat panel TV and his new cell phone, my uncle is not only more high-tech than the other residents, he's more high-tech than the majority of the staff too. Good thing his room is smallish or everyone would be gathering there to use his gadgets!?!?
12.25.2008
Q: WHAT'S THE EASIEST WAY TO KILL THE PUNISHER??
A: Bring him to the big screen 3 separate times and make sure that each attempt is embarrassingly worse than the previous one!!
I never saw a shred of promotion for the movie, critics are trashing it, the folks behind the film are distancing themselves from it, the opening week box office is abysmal, and within days the multi-cinema near me had reduced the showings to just one late night screening per day. That should be enough red flags for any reasoning person, but I felt some sense of obligation to see it, and I figured I might be able to enjoy at some level anyway since I like a good violence romp from time to time.
So on my first free evening in quite a while, Christmas Eve, I chose to spend it at Punisher: War Zone.
Including me, fourteen people chose to spend their Christmas Eve with Frank Castle. Over the course of the movie I watched five of them walk out, never to return. Ouch!! I was hoping to balance the good and bad points of the movie here but alas, I saw no good points. I didn't even enjoy the violence since it was all derivative and borderline silly. If you want good violence go to John Woo and other great action directors whom this film tried and failed to emulate. I just sat it out and started hoping that there would at least be a Stan Lee cameo so I would find a moments enjoyment, but even Stan dissed the Punisher.
If the three strikes rule is in effect, this should be the last attempt to bring Frank Castle to the screen. Start checking the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart in a few weeks. I think that's where it's headed.
I recommend John Rambo over War Zone for an action movie night. Certainly my fave of the recent action hero flicks, and available to rent/buy.
By the time the climactic battle scene rolls around, Stallone is channeling Sam Peckinpah! Not sure if it was purposeful, but the John Rambo finale had lots of similarities to the Wild Bunch finale almost 40 years prior. It was kind of like a "What if Sam Peckinpah were still around and making action flicks with digital effects!?!?" It received my "Achievement in Violence" award this year!!
12.01.2008
MASTER OF KUNG FU checklist is active!
Finished scanning the MOKF material for the Marvel 3 section and kind of interesting to revisit those books that are now 30 years or more behind me. Other than the 5-page Destroyer/Thanos story that I drew as a tryout script (That's in the Logan's Run checklist within the Marvel 2 section if you're interested.), MOKF was my first color comics work for Marvel. I had mixed feelings when I finally got the call from Archie Goodwin offering me MOKF 55. The regular artist had missed another deadline, and Marvel needed 22 pages of pencils in a week. No way I was going to turn it down, but not very happy to have to hack through a story like that at a time when I was struggling to become a better artist.
I met my deadline, and as the regular artist continued to miss his deadlines, Marvel continued to call for rush fill-in pages or rush fill-in issues. I guess they knew I was young, hungry and willing.
It wasn't until issue 71 that Marvel finally gave up on that artist and offered me the monthly title. By issue 76, inker Gene Day had come aboard at my urging and I was finally starting to feel a certain comfort level with the book. (You younger readers might not know Gene Day, since he died way too young in 1982. He was an excellent Canadian artist who stayed on to pencil and ink Master of Kung Fu after I left the book, and he also drew some great Star Wars pages for Marvel. Very happy to have met and worked with Gene.)
Another point of interest in the MOKF run is the first professional inks by John Beatty on a couple of covers shortly before I left the series. Some correspondence turned into John's traveling up to Connecticut to crash at my place for long periods of time and practice inking over my pencils. Once the Kung Fu covers were published he was in high demand, but since he owed me, I bagged Big Beatty to ink my pencils on practically every project I took for the next decade or so.
I'm swamped!
Justice League Unlimited coloring, Core Batman Live Trace and coloring and Mattel Batman: Brave and Bold inks and colors are all coming in at once so I'm looking at some working holidays for sure!
11.20.2008
MARVEL 2 checklist is active!
Busy with licensing as usual. Still trying to get up to Ohio from time to time, and when I'm not there I'm attempting to manage things for my uncle from here via phone or internet.
The Marvel 2 checklist gallery, Logan's Run - Marvel Team-Up, doesn't contain any titles with long runs by me so it was fairly quick to set up. The Marvel Tales covers featuring the Punisher appearances in the Spider-Man series are the only sizable gallery. All Marvel 2 titles have content now.
Seen the Up trailer yet?
I think Pixar is heads above the other 3-D animation studios, with superior scripts, characters and state of the art computer graphics. I only wish they could crank those movie gems out at a faster pace. Up next is "Up", and if you haven't bookmarked the Apple Movie Trailers site yet, you should. An "Up" trailer is posted there and the expression on the boy scout's face when he hears the word "no" is worth the trip.
I also suggest the Ice Age trailer while you're at the Apple site. Per usual, it's a Scrat the squirrel episode having him once again protecting his beloved acorn. Those trailers are always great, and for me better than the full length feature.
An archives note!
I imagine some folks are rediscovering this site little by little. There was a long layoff before the rebuilding and it's still a work in progress. Plenty more gallery work to be done. If you've been away for a while, I'm archiving the news items, and placing links on the right sidebar. (May have to scroll to see them?) A couple of months worth are there now, and I'll continue to add some as this home page grows too long. Late coming visitors can catch up there if you like.
11.03.2008
Host test.
Switching over to a more reliable host tonight (at least that's my hope!?!?), so posting this just to let me know when I'm accessing the new servers.
11.02.2008
What else is in Massillon Ohio? (Part 2)
(For Part 1 see the Sep. 28 entry.) Rose Lane Health Center is also in Massillon. After a setback and a hospital stay, my uncle was sent to Rose Lane for some rehabilitation time. Fortunately I was able to be there to get him settled in and take care of all unfinished business back at this apartment. We spent Halloween at the facility, but that didn't mean it was boring. Click thumbnail pics below...
I managed to bring in some clothes and other items from his apartment, a few bags of snack foods, his cell phone, some writing supplies, and anything else that they allow him to collect there. That's all done while hoping it will be a short stay though. Wanting to hear soon that he's cleared to go back to his apartment.
10.27.2008
More Checklist galleries now active!
The G. I. Joe and G. I. Joe Special Missions galleries have quite a bit of content between them, and they're up now. The remaining galleries in the "Marvel 1" section were light in comparison, so I completed those as well. All of the Marvel 1 checklist section, Captain America through Iceman, is active now.
Preparing for freezing weather!!
No, not here in Florida! Back to Ohio again in the morning to lend my Uncle Ned a hand. (If you don't know who that is, scroll down to the Sept. 28 item update.) He's been back in the hospital, and now headed for a rehab and care facility. I'll do what I can to help with the transition over the balance of this week.
10.20.2008
7:00 PM... Minor update
Added some text to the 'Commissions' Read Me page.
A few new galleries in Commissions.
The 'Sketches' gallery in the Commissions section is active, and contains a mix of commissioned drawings and some art that I created specifically for eBay auctions. All are of course from a few years back and beyond since I haven't had time for commissions in recent years.
The'Variant Sketchbooks' gallery is active too. Remember that I had 25 variant copies of my sketchbook printed so that the inside front cover would have space for an original sketch. I got around to the first 11 of the limited run of 25 before I was swamped with licensing work. The remaining 14 are on my long list of things that are waiting for my attention. Not exactly sure how soon I will return to the variant sketchbooks, but I will, and I'll certainly post something here once they're at auction again.
Today's movie recommendation!
Finally got an opportunity to see CJ7. I'm a big Stephen Chow fan for many years, and thanks to Daniel Rous in Paris for hipping me to Chow's work back in the 90s with movies like 'Forbidden City Cop'. If you follow Stephen Chow, it's not exactly in the vein of Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer or his other Kung Fu-style comedies. He's made a kid's movie this time, but it's very well crafted, it's poignant, and most of all, it's funny. It's yet another take on the "ET" theme, but still made fresh by Chow's humorous style. I'm a big fan of the Pixar movies and I enjoyed this kid-flick equally as much! Trailer and more info at Sony Pictures' CJ7 site.
10.14.2008
Anyone looking forward to the Punisher movie in December?!
If you are and haven't browsed over to punishermovie.com yet, it has a couple of movie trailers, a clip of one of the gun fights and a short music video. Look for a few shots of Jigsaw in the more recent videos. Ray Stevenson seems a good choice for the lead, but I'll reserve judgment on the film itself until December.
10.10.2008
Some content in all Licensing galleries!
Been working to change over the existing galleries under Licensing, and build some new ones as well. All Licensing galleries are updated to the newer style gallery, and all 'Full Size' popup image windows are updated to a different underlying script. All galleries within that section now contain some samples of style guide art.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold
Also finished up my part of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold style guide this week. That animated series is now scheduled to premiere on the Cartoon Network on Nov. 14th. The long list of supporting heroes and villains rumored to guest star on that series make it sound fairly interesting. Here are some...
Heroes...
Adam Strange, Aquaman, The Atom, Batman, Black Canary, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Deadman, Doctor Fate, Fire, Firestorm, Flash, Green Arrow, The Green Lantern Corps, Guy Gardner, Justice Society of America, Jonah Hex, Kamandi, Huntress, Metamorpho, Red Tornado, Plastic Man, and Wildcat.
Villains...
Black Manta, Calendar Man, Cavalier, Clock King, Gentleman Ghost, Gorilla Grodd, Kite Man, Kanjar Ro, Ocean Master, and Zebra-Man.
