Ultimate Ultraman Toy Collection

Shown above are a small sample of Ultraman toys from the 1960s from the amazing website Ultraman Toy Collection. If you’re lucky enough to live in California you can see some of these toys at an upcoming exhibition at the Los Angles Toy, Doll & Amusements Museum.

Lucky Star: The Last Dance!

Shown above is an out take from the latest and last episode of the season of Lucly Star. While it’s a comedy show at heart, I rather enjoyed the sentimental touches of the last episode. I hope that they do a second season, and that the show comes over to the States.

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DoCoMo 2.0: Super Sentai vs. Godzilla

This romantic commercial for DoCoMo stars Aoi Yuu and her fanboy boyfriend who dreams of attacking Gozilla while dressed up as a Super Sentai character. And here’s a cute video on the making of the commercial:

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Encyclopedia Horrifica

Joshua Gee is a friend of a friend of mine, and he’s just come out with his new book Encyclopedia Horrifica: The Terrifying TRUTH! About Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, and More. Joshua will be doing readings at the following locations:

Halloween Adventure
Thursday, October 4, 2007, 6 pm
808 Broadway @ 11th St. Greenwich Village, NYC

The Haunted History of Union County
Sunday, September 30, 2007, 2pm
The Crane-Phillips House
124 North Union Avenue, Cranford, New Jersey

Grand Theft Simpsons

Shown above is a level from the upcoming The Simpsons Game which is based on Grand Theft Auto. I love the fact that instead of just doing a lame port that EA is using the medium of video games to make fun of other video games.

Want to be an Astronaut?

This sort of job would be fanboy dream come true for me:

A chance to really shoot for the stars
NASA looking to hire 10 to 15 new astronauts

“NASA posted a hiring notice for new astronauts Tuesday, seeking for the first time in almost 30 years men and women to fly aboard spacecraft other than the shuttle. The pilots, scientists, engineers and educators that NASA recruits will train primarily for three- to six-month missions aboard the international space station. However, some could be among those who stroll on the surface of the moon as part of NASA’s plan to return human explorers to the lunar surface by 2020 aboard the shuttle fleet’s successor spacecraft.

“Yes, I think it’s quite likely,” said Ellen Ochoa, who supervises NASA’s astronaut corps as the director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The space agency’s help-wanted notice for 10 to 15 new space fliers was posted Tuesday on www.usajobs.com, the federal government’s employment Web site.”

The End

Check out this amazing set of classic film “the end” titles at Flickr.

Found via Neatorama and SwissMiss.

My Favorite Anime Pirate: Captain Harlock

To honor o’ Talk Like a Pirate Day I reckoned that I ortin’ ta write about me favorite anime shipmate, which be Space Sea dog Captain Harlock! Harlock (which be also known as Herlock) be th’ first anime series that I watched in Japanese wi’ subtitles in th’ late 70s. Prior t’ that me introduction t’ anime be through dubbed shows like Star Blazers like Speed Racer, but I be lucky as local UHF station called WNJU had a block o’ Japanese programmin’ ever’ weekend. E’en tho ‘t be science fiction, Harlock be a very odd mix o’ spacecraft an’ steampunk design. Needless t’ say I be hooked, in a pre-VCR era I made ‘t a point t’ catch ever’ episode, an’ ‘t be thanks in part t’ that space shipmate that I still love anime today.

Apollo Era Space Suit Replicas

So your a NASA fanboy and you have a spare $10,000 and you need the perfect Apollo era space suit replica, where do you go? Well the website you gotta check out is SpaceToys.com, not only do they have a full line of space suits, but they also sell full scale replicas of various spacecraft like the Apollo Lunar Module and the Mercury Capsule. So who buys this sort of thing? It’s mostly museums and science centers. Although if you’re a fanboy on a lower budget they have tons of other cool items like wall murals, autographed pictures, and a nice selection of model kits.

Found via LinkFilter.

Alex Ross Does Justice to DC

I was going through the current offerings by DC Comics, and it was one lame cover after another! Pretty much everything had that generic look to it until I stumbled on the above cover art for “Justice Society of America #11″ by the talented illustrator Alex Ross. I admit that I’ve seen his work before, but i didn’t put a name with a face and style until I saw a promotional video that was done when Ross did some amazing illustrations for the classic anime series Gatchaman.

Ross blew me away because I had grown up on Star Blazers (Space Cruiser Yamato) and although I know that Japanese version of Battle of the Planets (Gatchaman) was cool I just couldn’t get into the very dated 70s look of the show and the lack of cool spacecraft that Yamato was jammed with. But when I discovered what Ross did with the Gatchaman characters I was blown away:

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