“40 Years of Rocky” – The Poster is Here. The Movie is Coming!
40 Years of Rocky is something we can all get behind. Right?
Eduardo Risso Presents the Cast of 100 Bullets!
Click on the photo above to get a bigger and better look at Eduardo Risso’s riff on the major players from 100 Bullets.
100 Bullets created by Brian Azzarello (writer) and Eduardo Risso (artist) is an Eisner Award-winning comic series that ran for 100 issues. Here’s the sysnopsis….
100 Bullets features a mysterious agent named Graves who approaches ordinary citizens and gives them an opportunity to exact revenge on a person who has wronged them. Offering his clients an attaché case containing proof of the deed and a gun, he guarantees his “clients” full immunity for all of their actions, including murder.
If you’ve never read 100 Bullets, you owe it to yourself to seek it out!
Cooke & Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition Volume 1 is Available for Pre-Order Now!
Darwyn Cooke created the art above for Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition which collected Darwyn Cooke’s first two Parker books, The Hunter and The Outfit…
…in a tremendous, special, oversized hardcover edition — with an additional 65-pages of content — encased in a beautiful slipcase!
Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter graphic novel debuted in July 2008 to instantaneous popular and critical acclaim. It made the New York Times bestseller list and won coveted Eisner and Harvey awards. The second graphic novel, The Outfit, was released in 2010 and was met with similar response, and won the 2011 Eisner for Best Writer/Artist.
The Hunter and The Outfit tell the story of Parker, Richard Stark’s classic anti-hero, as he returns to New York to settle the score with his wife and partner in crime after they betray him in a heist gone terribly wrong. After evening the field and reclaiming his prize, the Outfit decide to do some score settling of their own… and learn much too late that when you push a man like Parker, it had better be all the way to the grave.
Also contains the short stories The Man With the Getaway Face and The Seventh.
I had ordered a copy of The Martini Edition when it was published in 2011, but it arrived damaged. When I returned it for a replacement, I was sad to learn The Martini Edition had sold out.
Until now. (Actually April 28, 2020.)
IDW is reprinting Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition. It’ll have a different cover but the same contents. I’m betting this edition will sell out quickly. I’ve put in my pre-order. If you’re interested, I wouldn’t wait long before doing the same.
Chaykin, Byrne, Toth, Simonson and Many Others Cover the Comic Reader!
Back in the prehistoric days before the internet comic fans had very little information about future comics. The Comic Reader was one of the first (perhaps the first) continually published fanzines that gave fans interviews with comic creators, previews of coming comics and actual covers and story-lines.
Pete Doree at his site The Bronze Age of Blogs has posted a gallery of The Comic Reader Covers. If you click over, what you’ll see are from the likes of Simonson, Chaykin, Grell, Buckler, Byrne, Toth and many others.
The “Fantasy Island” Poster & Trailer are Here! Not What I was Expecting!
The poster and trailer to Fantasy Island are here. The poster is pretty “meh” but that trailer was a surprise. Definitely not the Fantasy Island I was expecting or grew up with… and that’s a good thing!
“Rambo: Last Blood” Blu-Ray, DVD and 4K Pre-Order Available!
On December 17, 2019, Rambo: Last Blood will be released on Blu-Ray, DVD and 4K. This is just in time for Christmas, Chanukah (or if you prefer, Hanukkah), Kwanzaa, or surprise gift giving. If you’d like, you can pre-order using this link.
Mike Mignola’s Wolfman!
Here’s a vintage drawing by Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy. I love how he took the classic Universal Monsters Wolfman as the basis for his werewolf. Although I usually prefer the Curse of the Werewolf design, I wouldn’t mind seeing a story about this guy.
Source: Cool Comic Art.
Of Mice and Minestrone: Hap and Leonard: The Early Years by Joe R. Lansdale is Coming!
Of Mice and Minestrone: Hap & Leondard: The Early Years, by Joe R. Lansdale has been announced for May 14, 2020. Fans are already putting in their pre-orders. Any book by Lansdale is cause for a celebration, but H&L tales call for a special party. Here’s what we can expect…
Pull up a seat and sit a spell. Master storyteller Joe R. Lansdale has cooked up a passel of tales for you about the unlikeliest duo East Texas has to offer.
Hap Collins looks like a good ol’ boy, but from his misspent youth on, his best compatriot is Leonard Pine―black, gay, and the ultimate outsider. Inseparable friends, Hap and Leonard attend family gatherings, climb into the boxing ring, get in bar fights, and just go fishing―all while confronting racism, righting wrongs, and eating copious, delicious food.
Chock full of Lansdale’s unique blend of humor, ferocity, and insight, Of Mice and Minestrone delivers five never-before-seen (plus one perhaps familiar) Hap and Leonard stories, a selection of the boys’ favorite recipes, and an introduction from New York Times bestselling author Kathleen Kent.
So come discover the legends of Hap and Leonard, created by Joe R. Lansdale his own self, and featured in the by Hap and Leonard TV series starring Michael K. Williams (The Wire), James Purefoy (The Following), and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men).
“The Big Combo” Poster by Tony Stella
How cool is this Tony Stella poster for The Big Combo?
The “Grand Isle” Poster and Trailer are Here!
The Grand Isle poster and trailer are here! This is the first Nick Cage movie I’ve thought looked pretty good in years.
Walter (Nicolas Cage) and his neglected wife lure a young man into their Victorian home to escape a hurricane. When the man is charged with murder by Det. Jones (Kelsey Grammar), he must reveal the couple’s wicked secrets to save himself.
The “Hell on the Border” Poster and Trailer are Here!
The Hell on the Border poster and trailer are here! With this cast, I wish it looked better. Maybe it will surprise me.
This epic, action-packed Western tells the incredible true story Bass Reeves (David Gyasi), the first black marshal in the Wild West. Having escaped from slavery after the Civil War, he arrives in Arkansas seeking a job with the law. To prove himself, he must hunt down a deadly outlaw (Frank Grillo) with the help of a grizzled journeyman (Ron Pearlman). As he chases the criminal deeper into the Cherokee Nation, Reeves must not only dodge bullets, but severe discrimination in hopes of earning his star—and cement his place as a cowboy legend.
Things You Might Not Know About Lon Chaney Sr.!
Lon Chaney is my favorite silent movie star. (Take that, Chaplin fans!) Hopefully you will enjoy that Jane Rose and Mental Floss present 9 Transformative Facts About Lon Chaney Sr. as much as me. Here are three of my favorites…
1. LON CHANEY SR. WAS KNOWN AS “THE MAN OF 1,000 FACES.”
Unlike many of Hollywood’s leading men, who trade on their good looks and recognizable faces, Lon Chaney Sr. made his name by donning a series of disguises and elaborate makeups, completely changing his appearance from film to film. Chaney, an early character actor, gravitated toward bizarre and distinct roles—playing a series of criminals, toughs, circus performers, clowns, pirates, ghouls, and vampires. His ability to disappear into his roles soon earned him the moniker “The Man of 1,000 Faces.” It also made him the subject of a popular joke at the time: “Don’t step on that spider! It might be Lon Chaney!”
3. SOME OF LON CHANEY SR.’S MOST MEMORABLE FILMS WERE MADE WITH DIRECTOR TOD BROWNING AT THE HELM.
Chaney had been working in movies for more than a decade before he began his frequent collaborations with director Tod Browning, who is best known for putting Bela Lugosi on the map with the 1931 film Dracula (and most infamously known for directing the 1932 movie Freaks). But when they did finally come together, it was a meeting of macabre minds. To begin with, Chaney and Browning had several things in common: Both had experienced past brushes with personal tragedy (Browning had been the driver in a car accident that killed actor Elmer Booth; Chaney’s first wife had tried to kill herself); both came from a Vaudevillian background; and both had a penchant for spectacle and the grotesque.
Among Chaney and Browning’s collaborations were the 1925 silent version of The Unholy Three, in which Chaney plays a sideshow ventriloquist masquerading as a kindly grandmother; the 1927 film The Unknown, in which Chaney plays a fugitive masquerading as an armless knife thrower, who later blackmails a surgeon to amputate his arms in order to win the woman he loves (the film is one of several in which Chaney and Browning concocted a bizarre character and built an entire film around it); and the 1927 film London After Midnight, in which Chaney plays a vampire-like figure. Tragically, this film is also famous forbeing lost; the last known copy was destroyed in a 1965 MGM vault fire.
7. LON CHANEY SR. HATED PUBLICITY.
Chaney was a mysterious presence both onscreen and off. He disliked hobnobbing with the Hollywood set, going to premieres, giving interviews, and/or signing autographs (except for fans behind bars—Chaney was a self-taught penologist, or student of prisons and convict rehabilitation). He once boasted that he would “fix it so no one will write my autobiography after I’m gone.”In fact, details of Chaney’s life were so scarce that actor James Cagney had a difficult time researching the part of Chaney for 1957 biopic Man of a Thousand Faces. While he was no doubt genuinely reclusive to an extent, Chaney’s reticence may have in fact been the smartest publicity move of all, as his mystery only added to his allure.
“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” Poster by Tony Stella
Check out this cool Terminator 2: Judgment Day poster by Tony Stella.
Things Learned from Martin Scorsese’s “The Set-Up” Commentary
Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 21 Things We Learned from Martin Scorsese’s The Set-Up Commentary.
The Set-Up is one of my favorite films (not favorite boxing films, favorite films period). If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and search it out.
And now, for three of my favorite commentary items (beware of spoilers)…
15. One of the elements that appealed to Wise with the story is that the fight at the heart of the film isn’t some championship bout… it’s just a regional, late on the card fight.
20. He says traditionally this kind of film sees the protagonist not surrender, they get their self-respect, and morally everyone feels uplifted, but it happens here in a different way. The ending in the alley sees his true redemption as he pays the price but is now allowed out of the hellscape his life had become. “It’s really a happy ending,” says Scorsese about Stoker having his hand crushed with a brick by crooks holding him incorrectly accountable “in a truthful way. And maybe there’s a hope to that, a hope for the weaker ones in the world.”
2. The film opens with a clock face showing 9:05 and Wise closes the film with the same clock roughly the length of the film later.
Steranko’s “At the Stroke of Midnight” Presented in Black & White and Color!
Jim Steranko can do it all.
Thanks to Doug at Black, White and Bronze we get to see a great example of Steranko’s writing and art. The complete story is At the Stroke of Midnight and it’s presented in both the black & white and color versions.
Check ’em out!
