FeedFlix: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Netflix

FeedFlix crunches your Netflix data and offers interesting data about your Netflix account, warts and all.

The good? My average movie cost (including rentals and instant watch) comes to $0.11!




The bad? A good friend told me he had no interest in the new Battlestar Galactica since he despised the original. After telling how I, too, loathed the original, but really enjoyed the politically subversive new incarnation, he decided to give the show a chance.

Later in the same conversation with the same friend, he was telling me how much he loved the new Dr. Who. My dislike of Dr. Who is well chronicled. My friend wisely pointed out that shouldn't the same logic I used for BG apply to the new Dr. Who?

I know when I've been out maneuvered and besides the first three seasons of the new series are available through Instant Watch through my Roku player.

So here's my current Instant Watch stats.



Guess when Brandy and I started watching Dr. Who?

I've officially had to eat crow regarding the new adventures of the good doctor. We're now in the midst of season three and officially hooked!


The ugly? I now have quantitative evidence of how much time I waste watching DVDs and Instant Watch. Never a good idea to stare into the abyss. It's frightening in there!

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #10

From Smarmy

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

One of the countless Barney parodies, Smarmy (1993), created by Joe Preston and Ian O'Keefe, recounts the disturbing tale of a sexually-deviant purple dinosaur who becomes a scout master.

Click on image for full sized version.

From Smarmy

Words by Preston Art by O'Keefe


Preston and O'Keefe previously teamed far more successfully in "Soul in the Hole" for my 2001 Blackbird Comics anthology Modern Perversity.

From Smarmy

from "Soul in the Hole"
Words by Preston Art by O'Keefe


I published Preston one more time in Wild West Show (Mojo Press, 1996).

From Smarmy

from "Letters From Arizona" Wild West Show (Mojo Press, 1996)
Words by Preston Art by John Lucas and Martin Thomas

Judge Says Fox Owns Rights to Watchmen

The battle over the Watchmen film continues with this victory for 20th Century Fox in a federal district court in California. According to the linked NY Times article, the reviewing court has  determined that Fox likely does have the underlying film rights. I'm not an entertainment attorney but the question of who owns the rights to a property does seem like something that should be squared away before you start building sets. As from the beginning, the end of this is going to be Warner handing over some percentage of the film to Fox--the overseas rights, maybe. I like how the article encapsulates Watchmen as a story about the "underside of life for superbeings."

Close enough.  And rumors that Rick is the shadowy puppet master behind all this to ensure Watchmen never sees the light of day are unconfirmed. But totally true. 

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #9

From Davey's Magic Christmas

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

I first met Tom Stazer when we were both working in the trenches at Blackbird Comics. He had already established a cult following for his hilarious sf parody Spaced (no relation to the Pegg and Wright TV series) and the funny animal series Lionheart (no relation to Richard I). For Blackbird he produced two issues of his post-modern anti-consumerist fable Crazy Bob. (if any of my publishing friends are listening, all three of Stazer's titles deserve to be collected.)

Tom and I became friends which included him sending me one of the most disturbing and funny Christmas mini-comics/cards of all time. With his kind permission, I present Davey's Magic Christmas in it's entirety.


Click on image for full sized version.

From Davey's Magic Christmas

From Davey's Magic Christmas

From Davey's Magic Christmas

From Davey's Magic Christmas

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #8

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Legend states that sometime in 1970s cartoonist Michael T. Gilbert ran across an old, coverless comic book featuring Mr. Monster. Unable to find anything about the obscure character, Gilbert decided to modernize the monster-hunter feature for Vanguard Illustrated #7 (Pacific Comics, 1984). Throughout the next two decades, the often-humorous and always interesting Mr. Monster stories appeared in various publications from Eclipse, Dark Horse, Atomeka, Fantagraphics, Caliber, Image, and Tundra.

While with Tundra, Gilbert planned for three Mr. Monster titles that employed the talents of George Freeman, Scott Deschaine, and Tom Buss and others: Mr. Monster Monster Attacks(1992), Mr Monster Presents Crack-a-boom! (published by Caliber, 1997), and Mr. Monster's Gal... Friday (published by Image, 2000). As with most things Tundra, the company went under before the latter two could be published.

Back cover by Buss

For the 1994 San Diego Comic Con, Gilbert produced a b&w ashcan promoting all three titles with teasers from several stories. The Mr. Monster Ashcan Comix No. 1 was signed and limited to 200 copies.

Layout by Gilbert Art by Buss

Layouts by Deschaine Art by Gilbert

Layouts by Gilbert Art by Freeman

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #7

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Published sometime during the late 90s in Bastrop, TX, the mini-comic Jumbo Shrimp #1 was apparently meant to be a companion piece to the full sized comic Jumbo comics short stories(sic) #5. Since I don't have the big Jumbo, I don't know if this mini was an excerpt from the main book or additional stories.

Timothy Markin & Mark L. Stinson

Typical of most small press anthology titles, this small comic offers some slice-of-life, gratuitous sex and violence, and just some odd stories. None of it produced particularly well. Contributors include Rick Howe, Timothy Markin, Mark L. Stinson, Bobby Tran Dale, and Jim Conatser. The whole shebang appears to be edited by painter Liam Brooks (I can only assume the cover was painted by him. No credit is give).

Bobby Tran Dale

Jim Conatser

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #6

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Over a three year period in the 1990s, artist Chris Cilla and writer Greg Petix (of the Weird Lovemakers) produced the daily strip "Swonk" for The Arizona Daily Wildcat. The cartoons were initially collected in The Pocket Swonk and the Howling Swonk.



But what is a swonk? The duo attempts an explanation.



Um.. ok...

Like many college strips, the subjects range from college life to politics to life observations.





And like most strips, the humor is hit and miss.

As with many of us raised in the seventies and eighties, their works were heavily influenced by Marvel comics of the era, as evident by the back covers of each volume.






Eventually, the duo compiled a third collection, "A Moon, A Girl... Swonk."

Boldly Going in to a new book project

A few people already know about this, but now that contracts have been finalized and signed, I'm able to officially announce that the "new book project" I've referred to a few times over the last few weeks is:

STAR TREK: A Comics History

The book will be published by Hermes Press and is scheduled for release in May 2009.

The official press release about the project will be issued on Monday and the book will be listed in the February edition of PREVIEWS.

Folman Does Lem

During a screening of the Swedish vampire picture Let the Right One In we caught the trailer for Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman's animated picture about the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon War.



I'd never heard of it before and will certainly catch it once it hits theaters here in Austin. But now I'm even more interested because, according to io9, Folman also wants to make a movie out of Stanislaw Lem's outstanding dystopia The Futurological Congress, the tale of astronaut Ijon Tichy's visit to the the futurist gathering of the Eighth World Congress and his subsequent visit to the overcrowded world of 2039. I first read it as a college freshman in part because I had read and enjoyed Lem's essay on Philip K. Dick in his book Microworlds, but I wasn't prepared for how well he managed to pull off this pastiche of both Dick and Jonathan Swift. It immediately became one of my favorite novels, and one that is hard for me not to recommend to others.



Like Bashir, Congress will be filmed using a mixture of live-action and animation, similar to the rotoscoping technique used in Richard Linklater's excellent A Scanner Darkly.



Finally, I can honestly say that somebody is making a science fiction movie that I'm actually looking forward to.

That Was The Year That Was. Part One.

It's that time of year again -- the existential suspense redolent in the air over whether your uncle will get blindly drunk at Christmas again, whether the country will survive until January 20th, whether you'll get lucky on New Year's Eve. The usual swirl of late December concerns. And in that swirl are the year-end "ten best" lists as well, compiled by movie, music, book and other critics. The erudite Mr. Klaw and Mark London Williams thought it might behoove them to compile a similar top-tenny sort of rundown for graphic novels and comics and split it into two parts. Here are numbers 10–6 of the list.

That Was The Year That Was. Part One.

Our final five selections will be announced in the January 1 column.

Bettie Page Passing

I just received this note:

Friends and Colleagues,

I am profoundly saddened by the passing of Bettie Page this evening. Millions of her fans worldwide have felt truly inspired by her. But, what I regret is the loss of a friend, who was, most of all a warm, joyous and disarmingly honest woman. Whether in photographs or in real life, it was Bettie's joie de vivre, which animated me and her fans over the last 58 years. There's never been anyone like her, nor will there ever be. She'll be remembered with love and affection always.

Warmly,
Mark


bettiepagemovie.com
--
Mark Mori
Producer/Director
"Bettie Page Reveals All"
Single Spark Pictures
142 West End Avenue, 21st Floor, Suite M
New York, NY 10023
212.877.0802

I never actually met Bettie. We exchanged a few emails through her agent and her responses were always polite and cordial. She always spoke highly of my family in general and my grandfather in specific. Her legacy to not only my family name but to the world of pop culture is incalculable.

A very sad day indeed.

Venture Brothers Third Season DVD

As if I couldn't get more excited about the March DVD release of the third season of The Venture Brothers, I saw the sensational Atari 2600 packaging!




Think these boys know their market or what?

(Thanks to Cullen Bunn for the Twitter shout.)

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #5

While "researching" the latest Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom contains many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.


A wordsmith very familiar to these environs, Mark Finn first plied his trade from within the wilds of the Waco, TX indie comics scene. He along with John Lucas, Micheal Washburn, William Traxtle, Bill Haney, and the other denizens that made up Absolute Comics produced several quirky comics throughout the nineties. Finn and Traxtle co-created Punk, the anarchy-fueled, humor-driven adventures of the title character and cast of quirky characters. Mid-decade, Finn produced a series of "micro-comics" starring the supporting actors. Klops! relates the tale of the Punk's addled brained one-eyed sidekick and his adventure to find Punk some beer. Hilarity and chaos ensue.

Actual size

Finn supplied the script, letters, and the breakdowns. Washburn finished the art with an ink assist by Traxtle.

"Prop 8 - The Musical"

Jack Black as Jesus? I'm down with it despite the typecasting...

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #4

(Actual size)

While "researching" the latest Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom contains many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Today we're finally leaving Texas publications with Garret Izumi's Fremont, CA production Fish Dog Bird. The spiral-bound, palm-sized book collects 23 of Izumi's philosophical illustrations, all printed on fine art paper.

from Fish Dog Bird

This signed copy is #98 of an unspecified amount.

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #3

While "researching" the latest Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom contains many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Today I'm showcasing one of my favorite artist's earliest published works. I believe that Book of Dreams (Peripheral Press 1993) featured World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo-nominated illustrator John Picacio's first cover.

The 30 page chapbook contained writings by David Somoza, a four page comic book short story by Fernando Ramirez, and Picacio's first published sequential story "When The Angels Fall."

From "When The Angels Fall" by John Picacio

Picacio and Fernandez would produce stories for two issues of their own standard-sized graphic anthology Words & Pictures. Picacio generated the covers for both.

Words & Pictures #1 Fall '94

Words & Pictures #2 Spring '95

Picacio created his last published sequential story (Chet Williamson's "Chip of Fools") for Weird Business (Mojo Press, 1995).

Since then he's become a popular, award-winning cover artist and book illustrator.

On a more personal note, Brandy and I were blessed with an original John Picacio piece for our wedding invitation.

Whitten-Klaw Wedding Invitation April 1, 2001

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #2

While "researching" the latest Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom contains many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of my unusual collection.

Today's selection comes courtesy of musician/artist Isaac Priestley. In 1994, Priestley produced the mini-comic Drug Abuse Is Fun! under his Hand of God Productions.

Judging from the one issue (#2) I have, the title and covers are the best parts.



Priestley relates the well worn tale of 90s Austin slacker culture, where everyone sat around talked about being in a band.

Rushpunk?!?!

For a comic titled Drug Abuse Is Fun!, there is an amazing absence of drug use. Given the time, place, and people that Priestley writes about, marijuana use should be commonplace.

Thankfully for Priestley in the ensuing 14 years, his art improved dramatically.

Page from the webcomic Progressions

C.O.U.S.: Reflections from Rick's Collection #1

Too Much Coffee Man #1

While "researching" the latest Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom hides many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I'm taking you through a tour of my unusual collection.

I begin with the reason for the research and perhaps one of the most widely distributed mini-comics of all time. The caffeine-fueled hero, Too Much Coffee Man appearing in a self-titled mini-comic, premiered at the 1991 Dallas Fantasy Fair as a promotional tie-in for Shannon Wheeler's first collection Children With Glue.

Too Much Coffee Man #2-3

Wheeler would eventually produced five TMCM minicomics and evolve the character into a mini-empire complete with a newspaper syndicated strip, a regularly produced comic book, a pop culture magazine, four collections, an animated Converse commercial, merchandising paraphernalia galore (mugs, coffee, t-shirts, and even toilet paper!) and most recently, an opera. The combined sales of the five issues would reach into the tens of thousands.

Too Much Coffee Man #4-5