Category: Comics

John Byrne Splash Pages for Marvel Team-Up

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When I was a kid one of the comics that I purchased each month was Marvel Team-Up.  It always felt like a bargain – almost a buy one get one free deal- since Spider-Man would appear with at least one other Marvel hero or villain.

I especially enjoyed John Byrne’s run on Marvel Team-Up.  Divisions of the Groovy Kind recently posted several of Byrne’s splash pages from that run and they’re worth a look!

Brad Bird “The Spirit” Pencil Animation Test

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Steven Paul Levia recently posted a pencil test created in 1980 by Brad Bird [The Incredibles] and others from Cal Arts and Disney for a proposed movie featuring Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Here’s what Mr. Levia has to say at his Youtube post:

In 2008 as Frank Miller’s live action feature film based on Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” was being released I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on the time, back in 1980, when I became involved with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz (producer of the first two “Star Wars” movies) in trying to get into production an animated feature based on “The Spirit” In that piece, which you can read here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncate… I spoke of a pencil test “trailer” for the our proposed film that was made by Bird along with several classmates from Cal Arts, most of whom were working at Disney at the time. Quite a few people who read the article contacted me about seeing the film. I did have it on an old VHS, but it was deep in storage at the time plus as I did not really own the film, I told them they would have to look elsewhere to find a copy. Later, I found the VHS and put it aside. Recently Andrea Fiamma, an Italian journalist writing on the subject for the website Fumettologica,” asked again if the film could be seen. As it is a small piece of animation history, I’ve decided to post it here.

MegaCon 2015 Report

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Yesterday was a good day.  I spent it hanging out at MegaCon with my best bud, John Beatty.  That’s John in the photo above trying out some Star Man shades.

MegaCon started out as a comic book convention but has morphed into a comic book / celebrity / cosplay convention that gets bigger and bigger with each new year.  Reportedly 30,000 people came through the doors yesterday.

My goals for the show were to get Darwyn Cooke to sign two Parker novels, pick up Chuck Dixon’s Winter World novel, try to get sketches from a few artists, meet Lee Weeks and hang out with Big Beatty.  I had Friday and Saturday budgeted to get everything done.

The drive to Orlando went smoothly.  Big J and I loaded up and headed to the convention.  We had a couple of hours before the show opened which gave us additional time to catch up.  I walked the convention floor (which was HUGE) to get the lay of the land.

Justin Orr was there, but hadn’t brought sketchbooks — he’s doing a Kickstarter for a new huge sketchbook later this year — and he wasn’t able to take sketch requests.  Jason Walker was just getting to his table.  I set up a sketch with Elliott Fernandez. I got to speak with Gene Gonzales, Joe Pekar and Frank aka The Voice of MegaCon briefly.  Mitch Hyman gave me a couple DVDs (one for Beatty) of his movie, Bubba the Redneck Werewolf.  I got Darwyn Cooke to sign my two Stark novels and picked up Chuck Dixon’s Winter World novel.  Everything I planned to do over the course of two days was done in one!

I then spent the rest of the day hanging with Big John and Lee Weeks (who is such an amazing talent and cool guy who even does magic tricks).  John Higashi invited Beatty and I to join him, Jason Walker and James Howell for dinner at Logan Steak House after the show and we did.  It was a great meal with friends I don’t get to see near enough.

I drove Beatty back to his motel and decided to avoid the morning traffic and head home.  MegaCon 2015 goes into the books as the year I was able to get everything done in one good day.