Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 23, 2009 in Animation
I personally blame Gia Manry for the American popularity of Spice and Wolf — oh I’m sure other fans were into the show, but the first time I heard about it was when she did a review of the light novel back in the day. Without me realizing it somehow Gia had planted the seed and now every where I turn that’s all that anime fans seem to be talking about. Well now Gia can claim victory as Funimation has capitulated to wolf fandom and released the first season on DVD…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 23, 2009 in Comic Books
Issue #7 of Chew just came out today and I really love how this book is is evolving over time. What’s great about Rob Guillory’s work is that he does a nice job of having a cartoony look with a fast paced action focused story that keeps you going. The setting of this issue reminds me of Pulp Fiction — down to including a Samuel L. Jackson character: Read more…
The amazing thing about Peanuts is that it represented the life’s work of Charles Schulz, and as such the character designs changed over time. As a side note while his character designs were very graphic, they’re incredible hard to draw — Schulz’s draftsmanship was brilliant. Next year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the comic strip and to celebrate Dark Horse will be releasing Peanuts Then and Now Figure Sets showing the characters as they first looked in 1950 and then as they looked later in the series. Here’s good old Charlie Brown as he appeared in 1950: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 22, 2009 in Pulp Fiction
There’s only a few days left before Christmas, but if you’re still doing your shopping please consider supporting your local independent bookstore or comic book shop. The recession has hit these folks hard and they need your love more now than ever before. Of course if there’s only a big chain bookstore near you, please go there as you’ll be helping the publishing business as a whole as well as giving the gift of reading. Read more…
This is the Gary Moore television show from 1953: Here he’s doing an amazing segment which features the hot toys of that era. Moore had an amazing career — he started out working in radio in 1937, went on to television ten years later in 1947 and kept going until 1976. Found via Ira Gallen of tvdays.com.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 22, 2009 in Comic Books
In January of 1966 artist Jim Mooney and writer Dave Wood introduced a new concept for the existing comic book series House of Mystery. They came up with a teenage boy Robert “Robby” Reed who uses an old fashioned telephone dial to become one of many superheroes. This classic kitsch series became known as Dial H for Hero and ran until 1968, but was picked up again by DC Comics in the 80s and just a few years ago in 2003. Well the good news is that it looks like DC will be re-issuing the series as a book in April of next year. Read more…
Just when I had thought that I had seen every Mobile Suit Gundam goodie along comes another trinket to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the classic anime series. In this case we’ve got a collection of ballpoint pens that are shaped like the various weapons the mecha suits carry into battle, and at $11 the set is pretty cheap in terms of collectables: Read more…
Unlike Star Trek or a Quentin Tarantino film I’ve got to admit that I don’t have any emotional investment in James Cameron. Yes I grew up with his films and enjoyed them, but I never really loved them. From my point of view his weakness is that he tries to pull at your heartstrings with characters you just don’t give a damn about. Read more…
On paper it sounds like a good idea: Why not take the Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and make a graphic novel out of it? And that’s what BOOM! Studios has been trying to do for about seven issues of this comic book and they just can’t get it right. I’ve been looking at the previews for a while and something has always set me off about them. Then it struck with this latest issue — this isn’t a graphic novel based upon the novel, but a bad xerox copy of Blade Runner which was the famous film which was based upon the novel. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 19, 2009 in Science
As a child of the 21st Century I had a clear set of expectations on what the future would look like thanks to watching too much many science fiction television shows. Now of course even as a child I had a clear understanding of what was and wasn’t going to be possible in terms of technology: For example anything you’d see on Star Trek was pretty much off limits — as the show took place in the 23rd Century. So while I knew that interstellar travel, transporter devices and even time travel might occur — sadly for yours truly that would happen after I was history. Read more…
