Jazz in Print

A good friend of mine will be writing reviews and such for Melbourne newspaper The Herald Sun. His mini-review of Wolverine will be going live in about half an hour's time, but here's the lead-in article (Jarrod's in the yellow t-shirt). The photo is of the three involved in Classic Comics. If you're in Melbourne, this is the place to go to (and buy my TMNT comics)! Click the pic!

First Letters

Teasity-tease-tease! Tales of the TMNT #59 and #61

Introducing (sorta), my new favorite character. Anyone who does anything creative knows that you sometimes become a little overly protective/attached to certain things you come up with, and, well, this character is mine... perhaps purely because of the last two panels. Paul and I didn't really even discuss the look of the character, he just did it and she turned out perfect. Everything about her is spot on! Anyway, here's a little more...

I crack up every time I see these two panels.

Here's a full page just to hold you over until June.



Also, as noted in the title of the post, here are some teasers from #61, with art by Andres Ponce! Love the nod to #36 too! More on all that later!

Get this shit offa me. I iz pissed!

Der Fastcar ist norty!

Leo: I can haz volleyball?
Don: You are in my base, ruining my carpetz.

Huey Lewis.

Street Pizza

Support This Cause...

Everyone knows there is a new live action Ninja Turtles movie coming. Everyone here knows I write some of the comics every now and then too.

Now, I had nothing to do with this I swear (I SWEAR IT MIKE!), but I woke up the other day to see this:

http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=27055

Support this! Make noise! I would kill a man... woman... animal... WHATEVER! Make it happen!



I love you...

...please?

Recent Albums I Am Currently In Love With

The Real (Ghostbusters/Slim Shady) Tales #61 Cover

Description in previous post with my own ign'ant and vaguely hilarious fuck up. It's uni assessment time. Gimme some slack!

Final Cover for #61

I am keeping this for hilarious posterity .

Tales of the TMNT #61

Available for pre-order in Diamond Comic Distributors' June catalog, "Previews" V19 #249

Ship Date: August 24, 2009

Format: 32 B&W pages, full color cover, standard size comic

Retail Price: $3.25

Cover art by Andres Ponce & Steve Lavigne; script by Tristan Jones, art by Andres Ponce

"Sometimes They Come Back" - Rising talent Andres Ponce (Firebirds, Noble Causes) and acclaimed writer Tristan Jones team together to bring you one of the most action packed comics of the year! Continuing on from the critically acclaimed "Tales of the TMNT" #56 and #59, the Turtles battle an enemy they never dreamed could create the chaos you'll find within this book! Gangs, robots, road rage, crazy Australian mercenaries, and as if that weren't enough... the long-awaited return of the malevolent MOUSERS! NOT. TO. BE. MISSED.

Back!

Happy Easter! I just got back home after being on the move for a while (uni assigments and work... same old, same old). I've been working a fair bit out of my university email account, so if you've emailed my regular account and haven't heard back, give me a day!

I was talking to Dan Berger, Andres Ponce and Paul Harmon a week or so ago about some marketing strategies and here's one I hope everyone will get involved with.

We're going to start creating banners for Tales, so when they hit Previews, we'll update the banners, so new fans will know when to go and get their preorders in. Here's the one for #59, which follows up the Hun story that just came out a couple of weeks ago. So, take this, put it into your message board or forum signatures or whatever and just help get word out. All the talkin' is done for you peeps! We'll be rolling out a couple of others soon too, but for now, here's the starting point. Thanks in advance to everyone who helps out!

Also, another review has gone online for #56! Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/cloqb7

Hiatus

Sorry for the delay in relatively meaningful posts. I've been pretty under the hammer thanks largely to a rather serious situation at home and the sudden deluge of assignment due dates at uni.

I just presented a seminar on Jean Piaget and his theories regarding cognitive learning (Ross, you probably know what I'm on about) which had me working pretty solidly, and also had to present one on the traits of good action/adventure genre films (used Raiders as a model, natch!).

Couple of bits and pieces that have come about that I'm excited about -- after all the Resident Evil retreads, one of my favourite games of all time is finally getting the make-over it deserves; Silent Hill. I'm a massive Silent Hill fan, but reconnecting the PS2 to play what has become a horrendously dated (but still very effective) title is getting kind of old. I always felt the original Silent Hill was hampered by its PS1, and ever since the second one came along I'd hoped there'd be some sort of revisit (Silent Hill 2 was probably the best experience in cerebral horror I've had), so I'm hoping that with everything that's hit the series since, this redo will be something special.

Brother bought Castlevania Judgment (isn't it Judgement?), been having a tonne of fun on that (I don't care what Castlevania fans say, at least this isn't another boring Metroidvania title!) and we picked up Dragonball Z Burst Limit on the PS3 for like 20 AUD! Could be us just passing the time with other fighting games until the TMNT one hits, but both of these have been a lot of fun (thankfully now that my assessments are out of the way for a while I can play them a bit more).

Saw Friday the 13th remake. Good, but far from great. In all honesty, it didn't have the wow factor it should have had. I liked the new Jason. Really liked the new Jason actually. There was one slightly baffling part where Jason manages to jump onto the roof of the house that had me in stitches for a while... who knew Jason was a ninja?
The main problems with it, in my mind? The ludicrous predictability of the whole thing and the fact that, outside of Jason running, this film didn't really bring anything new to table. It felt exactly like the very movies I thought it was trying to revamp. I'm holding on to hope that Nightmare does better than this. Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy is a very positive sign, and what I'm hearing about the story is even better!

Ghostbusters 3 is continuing to move ahead. Woot!

I'm booked into a hotel in San Diego now, something very shmick at a very, VERY reasonable price. Very excited to see that Egon will be the Mattel SDCC exclusive too! Andres Ponce told me the other week that he's pretty much all set to go, so I'm excited to meet the guy finally. I'm not going to show it, but I saw the inked version of the cover to #61 and it looks unreal! Steve Lavigne's colored version will probably be up on the official TMNT website before long, so keep an eye out.

Awaiting my government stimulus package. Aussie government is going to be giving me 1000 dollars for being a student. Double woot!

Been hitting the gym pretty solidly lately too, did myself some damage last week, but all worth it. I'm finally back to a level of fitness and weight I'm comfortable at. Got pretty unhealthy for a while there, and I've been determined to get back into a pair of jeans I was wearing after San Diego in '07, which I can now do, so I'm happy! Running farther and lifting more weights than I could before then too, meaning I'm healthier and in better shape than I was when I was in good shape!

Anyway, gotta bail, got some work to do and jobs to find!

Nice Project

Project Fanboy gave Tales #56 a nice little write up! Always love seeing that people are still surprised that there is a comic book. That REALLY needs to change!