Hey gang! So I’ve decided to try doing a daily blog post for the month of  October, and we’ll see how it goes after that. Each day I’ll post either something I saw I thought was funny, cool, or a side project I am working on, or whatever. There are a lot of things I’d like to comment on but there’s just not enough there for a strip (and I usually only have time to draw the one strip each week).

So first up: any JLI(Justice League International) fans out there? I just had to show off my new Booster Gold figure as possibly the first figure ever who can do this pose:

With wave 2 of the Justice League International out this completes the set of 8 thought I still hope they will do more! If we ever get a wave 3-4 here are my picks:

Wave 3:
Guy Gardner
Power Girl (in the shiny yellow-white costume with short 80s hair)
Dr. Fate
Metamorpho

Wave4:
Dr.Light (the goodguy/girl one)
Mr. Miracle
Elongated Man
Sue Dibney(can’t have EM without Sue!)

Lots of folks seem to be debating these two series online, mainly about whether or not these series are depicting women appropriately. I’m gunna steer clear of that, as I don’t read either series and actually at the moment from Marvel/DC i read only the Captain America TPB’s at Marvel, and the Green Lantern boks + flash & Booster Gold at DC.

No, I’m going to just point out the character rosters, since an issue of each title came out this week with very similar covers, and the only reason I noticed them was because of their character choices.  First up is Gotham City Sirens #4:

Here we’ve got Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn. All A-list DC women for sure. Then you have the Marvel Divas #3 cover:

Honestly, first thing I thought was - loser patrol. Black Cat is MAYBE a B-list character. But the rest are at least C-list heroes. Firestar from New Warriors who got to be an Avenger for about a week, Photon who’s really only known as “that girl who used to be Captain Marvel”, and teen-romance-comics-character-turned-superhero Hellcat(I guess they thought two Marvel cats equals one Catwoman?).

If you want to make an awesome all-female Marvel team, there’s tons of big characters to choose from. Black Cat can maybe stay. Add She-hulk,  Spider-woman & Storm… or even Mystique, Emma Frost or Jean Grey would be better.

I’m guessing they chose most of these characters just cuz they were available. Maybe would’ve better been called “Marvel Women Who Aren’t Doing Anything Better at the Moment”.

SPOILERS!!!

Okay so, who saw the premiere of this last night? I never realy thought I was a big Stargate fan but, I guess I have seen all the episodes heh.. so my thoughts:

Generally, it was okay. Not stellar. Not terrible. Yes, they tried to make it more Battlestar Galactica-ish. But actually not as much as the commercials make you think, and I think most of that dark stuff is only in this first episode. Looks like the show will be pretty standard Stargate stuff from here on. Though the camera work needs to improve… hold still dangit!!

Other thoughts
-After just saying the show is not too BSG-ish, I do have to say main character Dr. Rush is so far just a slightly less evil Gaius Baltar, he looks like him, he sounds like him, and he does selfish Baltar things. Actually I think that’s why everyone is so suspicious of him…maybe they’re all BSG fans.

-There is a HUGE plot hole in the first episode. Basically they need to close off a door on their space ship, or else they will lose all their air and die. Problem - the button is on the other side of the door, so whoever pushes it will die on the other side. So the Senator heroically gives his life to do this. Why is this a problem? Because they set up earlier in the episode the fact that they happen to have a massive supply of baseball-sized remote-control flying camera-balls on board! Could THAT not push the button? HELLO!? It wasn’t even that urgent a problem, they had hours to at least try it out!

-The one actor I recognize from another show (Christopher McDonald as the Senator, from Star Trek TNG episode Yesterday’s Enterprise) gets killed, boo!

-Sex scene for no reason. it was useless, added nothing, you don’t need to waste time with this crap in Stargate (we don’t need in in Star Trek either, but that’s another discussion)

- Also overall, I felt there was about 1 hour of material stretch out across two hour here. easily could have gotten all this done in hour one, and spent hour two actually doing some Stargateting.

So, even after all that, the experience was not terrible enough to stop watching YET. As long as they fun it up some in coming episodes, and people stop fighting all the time for no reason, it could turn out okay. And there seems to be more Richard Dean Anderson next ep. So yay!

Hey all,

Well haven’t exactly been keeping up with the Octoblog as often as I wanted, hopefully this’ll make up for it! My boss just came back from a business trip to Japan, visiting with all our video game and manga partners (my day job is as a comic book, manga, and art book editor don’tcha know?). And when he returned he brought me some wicked Japanese goodies!

You guys will be most impressed with this, a vintage Japanese Transfomers 45 rpm vinyl record from 1986! Mint condition! As i can figure, it features two songs from the the 3rd season of Transformers in japan. Now I just ned to head visit my one friend who actually owns a record player!

Then, possibly just as cool, an actual Mega Man E-tank! Well, really it’s just a novelty soda meant to look like it… was part of the promo for Mega Man 9. Thats a Japanese copy of the Mega Man Megamix manga in the back there…we’re publishing that in January.

This is just a little side project I’ve gotten to work on a couple times.

The WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) has two magazines, one for adults and one for kids. The WWE Kids magazine is full of games and fund articles & such. I’ve been asked a couple times to provide artwork for the magazine. Here’s some samples!

I’ll admit I’m not a big WWE fan (I was back in the 80’s when it was Hulk Hogan, Jake the Snake, Ultimate Warrior & such). And I’ve actually already forgotten all the wrestlers’ names from the sandcastle pick above…

Still, this series of projects is kind of special for me, since it was the first published project where I was hired as an illustrator just because someone liked my work. I’ve done lots of other published stuff, but it’s either been helped along through my position at UDON, because I’m known in the TF fan community, non art stuff, or collaborations(inking or coloring or whatever).

I still would never want to be an artist full time (much more fun to tell other artists to draw faster heh…), but it’s great to do these side things sometimes.

I just did and interview with the Mega Man Network(MM news site) about all the upcoming Mega Man projects UDON has coming in the next few months. Namely:

Mega Man: Official Complete Works art book
Mega Man X: Official Complete Works art book
Mega Man Megamix manga series
Mega Man ZX manga series

They’re all pretty cool projects that were fun to work on. Or should I say “…be workING on” as some of them are still in production! Follow this link to read the interview, and learn a bit about my real job!

This video is so crazy that I feel everyone of my readers must watch it, heh. It’s a TF parody of the intro song for the anime Lucky Star. Thought that’ snot really important. Just watch and let your brain melt.