The December issue of HyperHobby magazine has a special treat for old school anime fanboys: A special supplement cover that features Cyborg 009! For those of you who may not know it Cyborg 009 started as a manga in 1964, there was an anime film in 1966 and a series in 1968 but the 1979 anime series really put the show on the map. Here’s the black-and-white intro from the first series, which still hold up pretty well: Read more…
I was blown away to see that MTV 80s icons Blondie, Joan Jett and Cyndi Lauper have all been turned into Barbie dolls! Of course back in the 80s the animated TV series Jem gave Barbie a run for her money — while Barbie struck back with Barbie and the Rockers it was never quite cool as Jem. Too bad the licensing folks Mattel didn’t approach these 80s rock legends a bit sooner! Here’s Debbie Harry as Blondie doll which comes out in December: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 31, 2009 in Videogames
LEGO Rock Band comes out next week (November 3rd) and this trailer looks like a great deal of fun. Part of me would love to see a TV show based on this opening title sequence, maybe not an entire Pixar film but a seven minute short with the right director would be amazing. Here’s a “Final Countdown” trailer from last week: Read more…
In the 70s Aurora had an amazing line of horror themed model kits which I haven’t looked at since the Carter administration. Well the vintage Aurora kits are back! And man I forgot how silly they were: When you’re a kid everything seems so much more serious — but after looking at this cover art for the Monster Scenes Dr. Deadly Model Kit I couldn’t stop laughing. Yeah you’ve got the poorly attired doctor doing something, well what is he doing? Well it must be evil, but the best part is the added touch of his little pet to the right. That bunny looks completely silly, it reminds me of the Monty Python killer rabbit sketch: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 30, 2009 in Comic Books
After months of looking at preview art I’m happy to see that The Marvelous Land Of Oz #1 will be hitting comic book shops next Wednesday. It was an act of bravery for Marvel to not only tackle such a well known property — but to bring in illustrator Skottie Young to do it. What I also love is that Marvel isn’t doing the old bait-and-switch where Skottie does an amazing cover and the insides of the book are done by a lesser talent in a hurry. The inside of Oz is 100% Skottie and I like what I’m seeing here: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 29, 2009 in Science
Shown above is the breath taking footage of NASA’s Ares I-X test rocket from yesterday. As usual NASA kicked ass with the six minute flight of a next generation space craft. Sadly for NASA everything went well, so now just a day later nobody in the mainstream media even mentions this story which got very little mention yesterday. Had the rocket blown up the chattering classes would be hard at work on this story this minute and for weeks to come — and this is a symptom of a larger problem. The mainstream media isn’t covering the real story which is that NASA is dying from negligence. Read more…
The internet as we know it today started began with ARPANET which was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Forty years ago on the evening of October 29, 1969 the first data travelled between two nodes of this new computer network. The idea of two computer talking to each other was quite cutting edge in that era. This video shows an interview with Charley Kline and Bill Duvall who were just two young programmers playing with tech back in the day! Read more…
This beautiful video was done by the London office of Google — it does an amazing job of showing off the last 11 years of Google. Two things are striking to me about this video: First the quality of the animation is great, I don’t associate beautiful art direction with the stripped down geeky look of Google. Second it’s shocking to see that Google really has defined the net for the last few years, things they only introduced a few years ago like maps are found everywhere. Although you look at other aspects of the company like Blogger and see that they don’t always hit the mark over time. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 29, 2009 in Comic Books
For the October 29th release of Weekly Shonen Champion the publication features a nice illustration of Tezuka standing next to his manga creation Black Jack. This is the 80th year of Tezuka’s birth (born on November 3, 1928) which nicely fit in with the 40th anniversary of the magazine: Read more…
If you came of age reading science fiction in the late 60s, 70s or 80s you may have come across the illustrations of Don Ivan Punchatz who sadly just passed away. Punchatz’s illustrations were best known in the fantasy and science fiction genres and graced quite a few paperbacks, although his work covered other genres and he even did a cover or two for Time magazine (which is as good as you can get). Videogame fanboys however might best know him for his package art for the original Doom game (shown above), although his paperback cover art for the Isaac Asimov Foundation triology was my first encounter with his artwork: Read more…
First a disclaimer: My opinions do not represent 99% of computer users. Because of my career I’m part of that geeky 1% of computer users who by the nature of their job needs to download and try out new software on a regular basis. Most users really do live in the browser and MS Office, but I’m the guy who’s installed Tweetdeck, has all three major browers up and running and Xobni running inside of Outlook. Read more…
Editor’s Introduction: Journalist Amber Love shared with us these touching photos of Wonder Woman Day which took place this past weekend. The event took place in both Portland and New Jersey — these photos are from the Jersey event which was hosted at Comic Fusion. To me the folks in these photos are the real superheroes — fans and pros like yourselves coming together to pitch in for a good cause. By the way in these photos you’ll see several shots of Joe Sinnott — the man is a living legend of comics, if you don’t know him do yourself a huge favor and check out his bio and you’ll be amazed at his life story. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 27, 2009 in Videogames
3D Dot Game Heroes is an RPG game for the Playstation 3 which is due out on November 5th in Japan. This title which is designed by From Software takes place in a classic retro gaming RPG kingdom whose king declares that his world should be in 3D to celebrate the defeat of a demon lord. What I love about this title is that it pays tribute to old school videogames while breaking the third wall of the medium by incorporating the medium of the medium into the plot of the game: Read more…
Kazuo Umezu (楳図 かずお) is the the godfather of the Japanese horror manga genre. A new film has been released in Japan which profiles the author/artist who got his start in 1962 and is still active. Umezu is best known for such works as The Drifting Classroom, Makoto-chan and Reptilia. The Drifting Classroom was turned into a live action film in 1987. Here are some samples of his wonderfully gothic work: Read more…
While looking at the coverage of the launch of Windows 7 in the Akihabara district of of Tokyo when I came across the coolest feature of the new operating system: The unofficial Windows 7 anime spokesmodel! This moe character design features a girl with dark blue hair who sports a clover symbol which is made up of the official Windows colors: Read more…
When your child grows up to watch the second (or third?) reboot of Star Trek they’ll know that it all started when you first put them into their very own Star Trek Uniform Onesie. There are four options available: cadet gray, science blue and command yellow. However we strongly urge you to not dress your child in operations red: Read more…
Some Stanford students have put together a autonomous running robot car by hacking an Audi TTS. The car was designed so it can race to the top of Pikes Peak in 2010, however the robot car reminded me a great deal of KITT from the 1982 TV series Knight Rider: Read more…
If there are characters that deserve the title non-action figures it would have to be he characters from Family Guy. Sure GI Joe has to go out and fight Cobra, but the Griffins would be more at home attacking a pizza. This Family Guy Mini Figure Boxed Set contains Peter, Lois, Brian, Chris, Megan and Stewie and will be in out in November: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 24, 2009 in Comic Books
There are two things I love about this cover for Marvel Divas #4 by Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic: First the coloring is wonderfully done, but more amazing yet our divas aren’t forced to be clad in bikinis when fighting those devilish looking creatures! Granted the Marvel Divas look slightly supermodel thin, but this feels like an improvement from other covers I tend to see. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 23, 2009 in Television
Sadly Soupy Sales has passed away, born as Milton Supman he earned his nickname Soupy from his childhood. During World War II while serving in the Navy he entertained his shipmates by telling jokes and playing crazy characters over the ship’s public address system. After the war he became a disc jockey and used his material from the Navy to eventually launch a long lasting career during the golden age of television. A generation of children grew up with Lunch with Soupy Sales which launched in 1953 and lasted until 1966. Soupy did everything else from game shows to voice acting in cartoons in his life, but his pioneering work from that golden age of television put him into the hearts of baby boomers who thought of him as family.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 23, 2009 in Science
In this video Bethany Cobb does a great job of explaining how astronomers search for planets in orbit of stars. In the full video she further explores NASA’s Kepler Mission and its search for Earth-like planets in other solar systems. Here’s a previous video with Cobb talking about the expanding nature of the universe: Read more…
For the fourth year in a row Portland, Oregon will celebrate Wonder Woman Day and use the day to raise funds for three local domestic violence prevention-intervention agencies. The popularity of the day has inspired Stacy Korn, co-owner of Comic Fusion in New Jersey to do an east coast event by having local artists do sketches for charity. I have to say that I love the idea of taking Wonder Woman who is an icon of strength and equality — and using her to raise awareness for a good cause: Read more…
The thing that makes this commercial for me is seeing Sally from the Peanuts gang scratching records — and of course having Snoopy, Marcy, Peppermint Patty and Lucy back up J-pop star Kaela Kimur (木村カエラ) singing her Hot Pepper song pushes this advert to the next level. And so what is Hot Pepper? It seems to be some sort of food website which is sponsored by Recruit which is a job placement service. Read more…
Shown above is the breath taking footage of NASA’s Ares I-X test rocket from yesterday. As usual NASA kicked ass with the six minute flight of a next generation space craft. Sadly for NASA everything went well, so now just a day later nobody in the mainstream media even mentions this story which got very little mention yesterday. Had the rocket blown up the chattering classes would be hard at work on this story this minute and for weeks to come — and this is a symptom of a larger problem. The mainstream media isn’t covering the real story which is that NASA is dying from negligence. 
The internet as we know it today started began with 
While looking at 
