It's Here! Amazing Arizona Comics Quarterly #1!
Amazing Arizona Comics Quarterly is ready to print and ship! For a limited time, you can order here, at a reduced price of only $2.50! This is the first standard comic sized edition of any Amazing Arizona Comics story in print! See Cupid's attempt to take back February 14th! Feel the wrath of the Fair Weather Fan! Know the truth about Arizona's first superhero! It's all here . . . and it'll keep coming quarterly from KaraokeFanboy Press!
Amazing Arizona Research
Last week, I posted pics from Stewart's Petrified Wood, a trading post just outside of Holbrook on Route 66. This week, behold the dinosaurs of the Petrified Forest Center! Two gift shops await you at the entrance of the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, each with a pair of dinosaurs locked in some sort of perpetual face off! In the case of the green dino in the third picture below, that face off is literal, as his head is all but gone. The chipped facade of the fourth image was also visually interesting, as if time has been slowly skinning these poor patriarchs of prehistory.
Cool Cosplay
I get to see a lot of cool cosplay at the cons I attend, and rather than post endless slideshows of fat Batmen, I like to feature one great costume at a time, ideally revealing the wearer's creativity, originality, and most importantly to me practicality. It doesn't get any more practical than this: a yellow hat + a yellow trench coat = comics' greatest gumshoe, Dick Tracy! (From last year's WonderCon!)
This Week's Intake
This Week's Intake
My wife and I saw 300: Rise of an Empire last weekend. I knew very little about the film -- only that it's spun from Frank Miller's 300 graphic novel (and of course the first flick). Apparently Frank isn't finished with Xerxes, the comic root of Rise of an Empire, and now that the movie's out, I see no incentive for him to finish. We know how the story ends, and the character beats along the way, and even if his story takes a different direction, it'll only be supplemental to the movie now at best. Honestly, whatever Frank has illustrated should simply be included on the DVD as a behind-the-scenes storyboard special.
Fanboy tangent aside, I actually really liked the flick and was impressed with the gravitas of lead protagonist Themistocles, though Artemisia is the beloved dark horse for all of her sensual sneering throughout the film. Hers is a compelling origin for a villain, much more sympathetic than, say, the Penguin's shunning by society or something. Truly, the best actor in the movie was the slow motion effect -- freezing the actors in iconic combat poses that look like the moments a comic book panel would capture. The Marvel movies would benefit from this fanboy service -- rather than lingering on an adapted moment past the point of believable viability, like the panel-capture moment in Daredevil of Elektra's death, a slo-mo pause in the midst of fast-paced action would be more breath-taking and memorable.
Again, knowing very little, I just Googled a few reviews of 300: Rise of an Empire (mostly to get the characters' names spelled right) and apparently the reviews aren't very favorable. Anybody expecting to see a textbook accurate film inspired by an unfinished comic about a shabbily recorded part of Greek history will definitely be disappointed in this movie. If you want to be entertained, and behold how potent those stories of Greek lore must've been to survive oral retellings for thousands of years, enduring to this day, check this out. As a guy self-publishing a comic that boasts subtexts in reality, I appreciated the movie's ties to the ground beneath its characters' feet. That was, after all, what they were fighting for.
Fanboy tangent aside, I actually really liked the flick and was impressed with the gravitas of lead protagonist Themistocles, though Artemisia is the beloved dark horse for all of her sensual sneering throughout the film. Hers is a compelling origin for a villain, much more sympathetic than, say, the Penguin's shunning by society or something. Truly, the best actor in the movie was the slow motion effect -- freezing the actors in iconic combat poses that look like the moments a comic book panel would capture. The Marvel movies would benefit from this fanboy service -- rather than lingering on an adapted moment past the point of believable viability, like the panel-capture moment in Daredevil of Elektra's death, a slo-mo pause in the midst of fast-paced action would be more breath-taking and memorable.
Again, knowing very little, I just Googled a few reviews of 300: Rise of an Empire (mostly to get the characters' names spelled right) and apparently the reviews aren't very favorable. Anybody expecting to see a textbook accurate film inspired by an unfinished comic about a shabbily recorded part of Greek history will definitely be disappointed in this movie. If you want to be entertained, and behold how potent those stories of Greek lore must've been to survive oral retellings for thousands of years, enduring to this day, check this out. As a guy self-publishing a comic that boasts subtexts in reality, I appreciated the movie's ties to the ground beneath its characters' feet. That was, after all, what they were fighting for.
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