"Vigilante justice has come to Seattle, and the caped crusaders drive a Kia."

This is probably the most fascinating news article I have ever read.

I'm doing 24 Hour Comic Book Day tomorrow!

Tomorrow (Saturday, October 2nd) I will be participating in 24 Hour Comic Book Day!

http://www.24hourcomicsday.com/

The idea behind the event is twofold. Creating a comic book in a single day to see what deadlines can do for creativity, and having a social appearance for interaction with fans and other creators.

Well, I won’t be making a new comic from scratch. I’ll be working on Jimmy and the Hammer (though I may wander off and work on the Moongazer a bit). And I likely won’t be there for the full 24 hours. But I should be able to do enough that I can get ahead again.

But the second part is what really appealed to me. I will be hanging out all day in the Lets Draw Stuff chatroom at: http://www.letsdrawstuff.com/draw along with many other talented creators. And the genius of it all is you can come watch us draw, hang out, talk with us all, and have a generally awesomesauce time!

So once again, come hang out with me and watch me create the strip, tomorrow, October 2nd, at http://letsdrawstuff.com/draw ! I’ll be there as much as I am awake for, but I should be there at least from noon to midnight. I’ll also be twittering my experiences throughout the day, so if you can’t make it in person, be sure to follow me on twitter: @jathevan.

See you tomorrow!

Another advertising fail

Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but this ad seems WHOLLY inappropriate for children.

I now want Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Why? Deadpool is a confirmed character. I'm not much of a comic buff (or like them more than any adult should), but I know enough that he is awesome.

"Deadpool's teleportation device will comically malfunction if you spam his teleport move. Also, he breaks the fourth wall by beating his opponents with his health bar."

via EventHubs

Reptil is not a superhero

As you likely already know. I like comic books a lot. Perhaps more than any adult should. As such, I pretty much look the other way at the bizarre superpowers some people have. Mild precognition and the proportionate strength of a spider? Sure. Near unlimited healing factor so powerful it has at one point regrown an entire body (including the adamantium skeleton that had to be surgically added) from a single cell? A bit of a stretch, but these are superhero comics. Bizarre superpowers come with the territory.

But there's a point where it get to be too much, even for me.

I'm refering to Reptil. His superpower is the ability to turn any part of his body into any part of any dinosaur. You may think that he would use this for awesome purposes like turning all of his body into all of a t-rex, or switching his arms for velociraptor arms, his head for a triceratops head, plus a spiked tail and pterodactly wings ALL THE TIME. He does not.

He does not. His most common form is "little kid with raptor arms" which seems terribly impracticle. The only time he really deviates from this is when he puts stegosaurus blades on his feet so he can ice skate. or get tyrannosaurus eyes for good eyesight. I AM NOT KIDDING.

It was okay, because the character had been created for the Super Hero Squad Show, wich is for elementary school kids, so it kind of got a pass. But now Reptil is coming to comic books, in a mainline avengers title. FOR ADULTS.

Marvel: WHAT THE HELL?

ECCC is this weekend!

Emerald City ComiCon is finally upon us: this Saturday and Sunday!

Drop by and see me at booth K-09. I'll be handing out prints of the Comic I did last Friday at Jimmy and the Hammer. I'll also autograph things or do sketches if you ask.

And my silly webcomic is not at all the only thing to do here! Want to meet Stan Lee? You can do that. Want to make fun of Rob Liefeld's inability to draw feet? You can do that. Want to watch Lou Ferigno wrestle a bear? You'll have you youtube that, but if you just want him to sign something, that's totally doable.

Some other things I highlighted on my map:
-Booth 314: Atomic Comics. This is the local store where I buy my comics every week. The owner, Shane, is a great guy, and he WILL hook you up with some cool stuff at a reasonable price.
-Booth 102: Halfpixel. Scott Kurtz of PvP, Brad Guigar of Evil Inc., Dave Kellet of Sheldon, and Kris Straub of Chainsawsuit and Starslip. These guys LITERALLY wrote the book on webcomics, and their How to Make Webcomics panel last year is what inspired me to start mine. They're doing another panel on Sunday, which is a must see.
-Booth 202: Topatoco. 13 creators of some of the most successful webcomics including: Jeff Rowland of Overcompensating and Wigu, Jon Rosenberg of Goats, Chris Hastings of Dr. McNinja and Kate Beaton of Hark a Vagrant.

There's SO much stuff this year, if I circled every cool thing, the map would just be incomprehensible black circles everywhere. I'm so excited and you should be too.

See you there! Excelsior!

BEST GUEST EVER

If you were on the fence about attending Emerald City Comicon, I am about to sway you over into attending.

The one and only Stan Lee will be there. If you don't like this man, you have no soul. Not only did he create almost every Marvel hero you've heard of, he's single handedly revolutionized the movie cameo industry.

Full deets at http://www.emeraldcitycomicon.com/ .

Excelsior!

Thanks a lot, ComicsAlliance

I don't know if there are any hardcore Joss Whedon fans that read this so the post may be irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. I don't care. I need to rant.

First, some background. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a TV show that ran for 7 seasons. Years after its cancellation, it retained a dedicated cult following, so the show was continued in comic book form. The "Season 8" comics are considered canon to the show and are all directly overseen (and sometimes written) by Joss Whedon, the man behind the show.

Season 8 has been running for 30 issues, which is about 2 and a half years. Throughout these issues, there has been a mysterious masked villain named "Twilight" cavorting about causing trouble. It's been hinted at (or perhaps even explicitly stated) that under this mask is a character we all know from the tv show. Dark Horse (the publisher) informed us that the mask was coming off in issue 33, coming in March.

Earlier today, Dark Horse released their solicits, basically a list of upcomic comic books so Comic shops can figure out ordering numbers, for April. The solicits contained cover art for issue 34, including a certain character on the cover. This lead to people asking Dark Horse in interviews if the character was, in fact, Twilight unmasked. Dark Horse eventually confirmed that it was.

Today, in my RSS feed, I see an article titled "_____ Revealed as New Buffy Villain" (only with the character's actual name) from ComicsAlliance. Without even clicking on it, I had learned the dramatic reveal. With the surprise now spoiled, I clicked through from my google reader to the site which contained a spoiler-filled article, complete with pictures, that ran in its entirety on the front page of the site with no spoilers.

It is worth noting that later in the day, after being called out, they did rename the article, removing the offending name from the title and from the snippet included in the RSS feed, though a picture was still included.

But still. Season 8 has been one of the best comics out, because unfortunately, most comics these days are fairly predictable. And the identity of Twilight is a huge plot point, that, taken the correct way (by, you know, reading the comic), would have been a HUGE shock.

They have cheated me out of the joy of a great reveal.

The proper way for a NEWS blog to handle this would have been to aknowledge that the information is out there, provide a link for those interested in knowing, but not put it there in your post, so those who don't want plot spoilers won't see them. That is EXACTLY how Whedonesque, a Joss Whedon fan blog handled it. Because the fact that it WAS revealed is news. Who it is, is nothing more than plot spoilers. A news site wouldn't post the end of Blackest Night or Siege. Why is this okay?

It's roughly equivalent to looking foreward to a movie, monitoring the movies progress throughout the whole process from script to execution over the years of development, then some jackass tells you the end when you're standing in line at the theater. I'm thoroughly disappointed, and ComicsAlliance is that jackass.

And they refuse admit their mistake. They said "A spoiler is a reveal of something that is intended to be a surprise, and they clearly don't intend this to be a surprise". Really? An identity kept secret for TWO AND A HALF YEARS isn't suppossed to be a surprise?

I have unsubscribed from your site ComicsAlliance, and I don't intend to visit again, for fear that you will ruin something else.

The moral of the story is this: Don't be an asshole.

EDIT: My rage has subsided. While I'm still upset about this awesome story being spoiled, I realize that it was just a series of mistakes all around. I've resubscribed to ComicsAlliance, as they put out far more good content than bad.

I cause the trends!

Kris Straub over at Chainsawsuit did a joke on Thursday about Iron Man being an alcoholic.

Sound familiar? Maybe because I did one on Monday.

I'm not at all accusing Kris of stealing the idea from me. I would be incredibly surprised if he even read my comic. Not to mention his joke is probably better. Just pointing out a funny coincidence.

Coincidences are funny. Just like superhero alcoholism!

It's all so clear now!

When Heroes first came on a few years back, I loved the show. Why wouldn't I? It's a superhero tv show and I am a huge comic book nerd. But at some point my interest in the show started to wane, even to the point where I no longer watch, and while I tried to explain my thoughts on the matter a couple times, I could never quite put my finger on it or vocalize my opinion on the direction the show had taken.

Enter Hijinks Ensue. In just six short panels, he managed to sum up most of the main problems with that show these days. Joel Watson, the creator, will be at Emerald City ComiCon next year along the creator of some strip called "Jimmy and the Hammer". Be sure to swing by this March and say hi to both of us.

EDIT: Just found this hilarious chainsawsuit that was topical.

A public service announcement for those who don't read comic books but are still nerds.

The Dr. Horrible comic book hits stores today. Go buy it!

Free Comic Book Day was today...

...and you missed it. It was a blast and you all should go next year!

I picked up a bunch of free comics, including Avengers, Wolverine, Simpsons, Clone Wars, and a special 25th Anniversary reprint of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Number 1. I also got some classic Punisher trades, and two Wolverine graphic novels, so now I can read up and see just how inaccurate the movie was.

But the fun part of it for me was dressing up in my Rorschach costume. Picture time!

Myself, Batman and a mini Boba Fett

Some Stormtroopers from the 501st were there to keep out the troublemakers.

Me vs. Batman, who will win? (Hint: totally me.)

Jango Fett and a Clone Trooper were also on hand to keep us safe.

All in all, a fun event as always. Probably the best FCBD yet. Next year, I'll see you there!

You can check out Atomic Comics' website for more pictures. As of this writing, they're not up yet, but they should be soon.

Free Comic Book Day is Saturday!

...and you should totally go.

I'm going to recommend Atomic Comics in Tacoma. Anyone in line before 10 AM, not only gets their free comics, not only gets the in line early prizes (generally posters and graphic novels), but they also get to see me in costume! FUN FUN FUN!

I'd also like to point out that this post is in no way a last minute cop out to make sure the blog has 4 posts this month. It's not even a last hour cop out! I have 68 minutes to spare. I'm AWESOME!

The Oscars suck.

Okay, let me start off by saying I'm glad the Joker won best supporting actor. But The Dark Knight was clearly the best movie of the year, and it didn't even get a nomination.

Slumdog Millionare is currently rated 35th on imdb's top 250 films (though it got a bump from the oscar win) so it's clearly a good film. Dark Knight however, is rated 6. According to imdb, only 5 films ever have been better than Dark Knight. According to this list, Slumdog isn't even as good as The Matrix, while Dark Knight is just slightly better than Schindler's List.

Not to mention that Dark Knight has widespread popularity - it opened to universal acclaim and has a worldwide box office take of over 1 BILLION dollars, not to mention DVD sales. Slumdog Millionaire is a film that I had never heard of until it was nominated.

The last time a film got this much box office take was Titanic, a terrible POS movie that its fans would defend at the time, but now in retrospect admit was pretty terrible. Then, the Acadamy gave into the clear voice of the public and gave it 11 Oscars, including Best Picture (though none for the TERRIBLE acting).

Slumdog Millionare on the other hand, did not have a widely sucessful release, in fact, it was almost released straight to DVD. It's opening weekend it made only 360,000 placing 24th in Box office take that weekend. Let me repeat: It opened in 24th place. At this point, The Dark Knight was in its 18th week in theaters and still solidly trounced it.

Can it really be the "Best Picture" if nobody cares enough to watch it?

Now, as I said, it's clearly a good picture to make imdb's top 250. And if Slumdog had narrowly defeated Dark Knight I'd be fine (actually I'd still be pissed, though not enough to do an in depth, researched blog post). But the fact that what America and the world have shown to be the best WASN'T EVEN NOMINATED.

I'll tell you what this is: it's comic book discrimination and I will not stand for it.

Hulk smash puny cell phones!

Hey, if you are a telemarketer, and you are reading this, go away. I don't want to buy your crap, and anyway, even if I did, I'm too poor to.

Now that they're gone, let me point out something awesome I realized a bit ago: My cell phone number is 5-HULK-12. Which is appropriate, because my birthday is May 12th, and I like comic books more than any adult should.

On an unrelated note, one of my New Years' Resolutions was to keep the blog alive with at least 4 posts a month. January accomplished.

Check out my skills of an artist!

So, this evening I was messing around with Photoshop CS4, because I've had it for a while but never really tried anything with it. So on a whim, I decided to take pictures of celebrities and photoshop them into superheroes. While the first few were fruitless, I finally had some degree of success getting Elizabeth Banks to look like Ms. Marvel. Yes, it has its flaws: it's pretty clear which parts are original, which parts are drawn, and which parts are photoshopped in, and there are quite a few parts with bumpy edges I was just too lazy to make smooth, but on the whole I think it looks pretty good.

Once I finished, I decided to post it here for several reasons:
1) Nothing else is happening on the blog
2) I think it turned out far better than any other piece of art I've ever made and wanted to brag
3) So you all can criticize me in the comments and remind me I'm not so special after all

Do you guys have other things you'd like to see photoshopped? Lemme know, I'm always up to a challenge. If I can make a dolphin with a Dan Marino head, I should be able to do anything.

Source images:
http://images.askmen.com/photos/elizabeth-banks/83880.jpg
http://www.comicsbulletin.com/rage/images/051120/msmarv001colv6final.jpg