Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 30, 2010 in Science
In this video planetary scientist Joel Levine states his case why we need to explore Mars. Levine feels that the geography of Mars makes the case for exploration — if we really want to understand our Earth and the idea of extraterrestrial life exploring the red planet is the best place to start. I think that given the state of NASA as geeks we really need to get our voices heard to accelerate this as a priority for our space program.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 30, 2010 in Comic Books
Looking at this first issue of Officer Downe I’ve got to say that at first glance I was not blown away with the cover — however once I looked inside the book my sirens were going off. The illustrations by Chris Burnham remind me of a cross between classic EC comic books, Gary Panter’s work for RAW magazine in the 80s with just the right touch of French comic book art. The story by Joe Casey is sort of an American take on Judge Dredd, and it also reminded me a slight bit of the first Mad Max movie (which is a good thing). This comic is a one shot published by Image and is due out in July. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 29, 2010 in Fandom, Star Trek
John Krietzer assembled this stunning radio controlled version of the Enterprise A! When I first looked at this video I expected a brief voyage at best, but I was quite tickled to see the Enterprise taking a full tour of the galaxy — err the park: Read more…
This prologue trailer from Sega for the Iron Man 2 videogame looks terrible. It sort of reminds me of everything I hate about bad Dreamworks computer animated films: the voice acting is terrible, the animation is stiff and the humans have this very creepy not quite human feeling to them. My gut tells me that Iron Man 2 will be a great deal of fun, but my guess is that the videogame might be a bit rusty.
So I found myself at my local Asian grocery store and looking in the corner of the ice cream section I spotted a pile of GeGeGe no Kitaro ices. I went ahead and tried the iced bar and after doing a bit of research it seems that it was actually “milk flavored” — although it wasn’t ice cream, but more like an Italian ice. It also turns out that in Japan there is a soda flavored version as well. Here is the entire package design: Read more…
Patrick Stewart (better known to us Star Trek fanboys as Captain Picard) will be showing off his acting skills in Hamlet which will play on most PBS stations tonight at 8pm (check your local listings for Great Performances). Stewart will be playing Claudius, however Dr. Who fans should also take note of this production as David Tennant will be playing Hamlet. In the clip above Stewart talks about making Shakespeare appeal to today’s audiences. And below is a clip of Stewart sharing his feelings on tech issues like Twitter and the iPhone. Read more…
Bandai is releasing a limited edition of 100 official Luffy straw hats. Now these aren’t just any old hats made to make a quick yen — these hand made hats will be crafted fourth generation milliners who live by the Inland Sea in Japan. The hats will be shipping in mid-June and sell for ¥4980 each, although my guess is that the competition will be pretty stuff from the many other One Piece fans. Read more…
What you’re looking at is page 48 from the 1987 JCPenny catalog which showcases many popular cartoons from the era! The first two on the top are characters from Brave Starr (Marshall and Tex-Hex), in the middle row we’ve got Thundercats and on the bottom are the Transformers. And the the robes on the right all glow in the dark! Nope it doesn’t get any more tacky than this… Read more…
Sengoku Bushô translates to The Lords of War — and this memory stick collection features ten different samurai who honor their master by carrying up to two gigs of memories. By the way it’s important to note that these aren’t just cartoon samurai, in fact they’re based on historical figures. Included in the set are the likes of Hanzou Hattori, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, Kenshin Uesugi, Masamune Date, Nobunaga Oda, Shingen Takeda and Yukimura Sanada. Although a hazard of being a digital samurai is that often you’ll be decapitated, only to have to be put back together again: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 27, 2010 in Comic Books
As a creative professional one of my favorite forms of inspiration is to visit Japanese bookstores and look through the most recent manga and magazine covers. Unlike the United States there is still a strong market for illustration — and even better yet the variety of styles that you see is just amazing. So I’ve put together a gallery of covers that have caught my eye over the last few months to share these gems. Shown above is the cover for Gee Not which started life as a web comic. I love how the main character and her cats are surrounded by a colorful variety of colorful pachinko machines — another nice touch is how the typography is boxing her in as well. Below is the cover for Ctrl + T which is a book cover for a collection of manga by several artists: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 26, 2010 in Star Wars
Docomo has a new viral ad campaign out that features Darth Vader. The ad campaign which was done with permission from Lucasfilm seems to encourage users to send out messages surrounding the theme of Who Is My Boss? The campaign is being supported through billboards and here are some more screenshots of the website: Read more…
Tragically the Talking TARDIS Cookie Jar doesn’t actually talk — however it does produce Dr. Who approved sound effects. Although if you’re looking for a more authentic experience make sure to fill your cookie jar with traditional English biscuits to enjoy with your tea and favorite Time Lord of choice.
Whenever I see a Mini Cooper it always brings me back to the film The Italian Job — the original from 1969 with Michael Caine of course as opposed to the remake from 2003. So this wonderful set of six Mini Cooper USB 4GB drives caught my eye right away. I can see why the design of this car is so popular in Japan — the mecha design of the automobile almost has a moe quality to it. In fact I’d dare say that it’s the closest a car can come to being cute — the drives are available in black, blue, British Pavilion, green, ivory and a rally auto : Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 26, 2010 in Comic Books
I’ll never forgot those magic moments as a child when The Six Million Dollar Man featured an episode with Bigfoot. Up until that point you might get to see a blurry photo of the guy in an In Search Of… episode, but that show managed to weave Bigfoot into the plot without feeling silly. Eons later kids just don’t care about Bigfoot: Add a zombie, a werewolf or a vampire to any media property and you’ve got a hit — but sadly our Sasquatch friend tends to be overlooked. But now that’s changed with the publication of Proof #1 which comes this Wednesday. Now only does this book start Bigfoot, but instead of him being some inarticulate creature in this book he’s got a great deal of personality: Read more…
Your jealous office mates will accuse you of having yet another toy, however this R2-D2 USB Cleaner isn’t just a plaything as it can destroy any dust bunnies found within a parsec of your PC. This tidy droid stands at just a bit under four inches tall, plugs into any USB port on your computer and should be shipping in August.
This interesting video features David Eagleman giving a chat on what do if the internet were to go down. It’s part of a larger lecture on Six Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization. At first this concept seems laughable to me because the internet as we know it was originally designed by the military (arpanet) to survive multiple points of failure. However after having seen events like 9/11, Katrina and now the chaos caused by a single volcano bringing Europe to a standstill the notion of war or global power outages seems less absurd.
Wait until you get a load of these. Custom Toy artist, Sillof, recently completed his latest series of custom figures, entitled Samurai Wars, in which he took the cast of Star Wars, and re-imagined them as characters in a Akira Kurosawa masterpiece. The details on the figures are absolutely fantastic, from Obi Wan’s eye patch to Vader’s burnished iron clad armor — it’s clear that a lot of work went into these. Read more…
What did geeks play before Dungeons & Dragons? Well for this geek and his nerdy buds our board game of choice back in the day was Risk! Oh sure in games like Monopoly you could become the next Rockefeller — and games like Battleship let you destroy an entire navy. However Risk! appealed to our inner Napoleon who was intent on world conquest. Of course it’s with a bit of irony that the game was in fact invented by a Frenchman: In 1957 film director Albert Lamorisse released La Conquête du Monde (The Conquest of the World), in France. Shown above is a new re-release of the 1959 version of the game which came to the United States thanks to Parker Brothers. Read more…
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Apr 23, 2010 in Comic Books
I absolutely loved this. In a recent episode of the YouTube video series Crazy Sexy Geeks, fashionconsultantTim Gunn joined comic book historian, Alan Kistler, as they took a look at some of the questionable fashion worn by our favorite superheroes and heroines over the years. While I know that Tim Gunn probably doesn’t frequent his local comic shop, the man has always struck me as having impeccable taste, so I was really interested to hear what he had to say. It may seem a bit short, but this is only part one of what looks to be a three part series so keep an eye out for those in the coming weeks. Read more…
Of all the PC games I played in the 90s, very few stand out in my mind as having revolutionized their genres, but Doom easily makes that list. I have fond memories of wading through level after level of demons and beasts with little more than an arsenal of guns, and strategically placed health packs. I still find myself playing the occasional first person shooter, but few games really capture the magic I experienced that first time, and thanks to the Doom 3 mod community, I finally have a chance to relive those fond memories. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 22, 2010 in Comic Books
These five beautifully illustrated covers are from DC Comics, and the one thing that they all have in common is that they’re aimed at mature audiences. In the past mature signified sex and violence, but I feel that with these covers that it also implies grown up art tastes. I bring this up because so many of the superhero covers I see from DC look like clichéd coloring book covers — it’s almost as if DC was looking down at their younger readers who I think are much more hip than they give them credit for. Shown above is the cover for The Unwritten Vol. 2: Inside Man by Yuko Shimizu and below is Unknown Soldier #22 illustrated by Dave Johnson: Read more…
Feast your eyes on these wicked new chopsticks from Kotobukiya. Fans of the Sengoku Basara anime series, as well as Japanese history buffs like myself, might recognize the designs. Believe it or not, they’re actually fashioned after the swords and blades supposedly carried by the likes of Masamune Date, Keiji Meada and Yukimura Sanada — warriors who fought during Japan’s Sengoku era — with some amount of historical accuracy. I’ve always had a fascination with Samurais, so these are right up my alley. The chopsticks, estimated to cost about $9 a pair, won’t be hitting stores and online retailers until sometime in July. For more information, check out Kotobukiya’s US website. Read more…
The Blammoids! seem to be catching on quickly — the first set is due out this month and features Batman, the Joker and some other well known DC characters. Shown here is a preview of the fourth series which is due out in December and will feature Flash, Etrigan the Demon, Brainiac, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Reverse-Flash: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Apr 20, 2010 in Comic Books
So I find myself looking through the dozens of previews that DC Comics has lined up — and I see cover after cover of the same old mediocre prancing over posed lackluster superheroes. But alas one jumped out at me, it’s the cover for Batman: The Widening Gyre which goes on sale in September. The first thing that hit me is that the draftsmanship of the drawing itself is just stunning. There’s a great deal of action going on, yet the drawing style is very loose but not cartoony. And then there’s the color and specifically the texture of the drawing which is so much more sophisticated than the typical coloring book job you see on almost every other DC Comics cover. So of course I go to check out the illustrator and the artist is the master himself: Bill Sienkiewicz.
