Slamm Dunk #43

This cover is a fan favorite, illustrated by popular guest cover artist Jake Bixby.

Click to enlarge!

Apartment One Power Rankings

While you wouldn't need to know this 'less you lived here, we have "power rankings" at our apartment. It's really easy to fall out of place in the rankings, especially if you're away from the apartment for a noticeable amount of time. Anyway, pictured below are the current rankings, as posted AND frequently updated on our refrigerator.


Last night and tonight I drew and cut out some appropriate avatars for each of us. For those keeping score, I am "Joe" and I am the piranha plant with the black beanie.

Unreleased: Pulmonary Dog Pound

Here's the opening/cover page to an as-yet-unreleased Dudu Blaq & Dirty Earl short, Pulmonary Dog Pound. Enjoy, and maybe we'll get to see the rest someday!

Neo-Human of the Week: Oil Bambara

Oil Bambara, pictured above, is a particularly crafty member of the Neo-Human elite. Dressed as a genie, this oozing cyclopean beast tricks an otherwise sweet young girl into committing arson across town thanks to his hypnotic pot of oil. With the pot clutched tightly in hand, she spills its contents in buildings and razes them with glassy-eyed nonchalance. If I were to wager a guess, I'd say Oil Bambara weighs 127kg and is made of pure burning evil.

Quote: "You cannot escape from my world of fire!"
Inazuman to Oil Bambara: "Oil is your weapon, and your weakness! Your body is made of oil! I will use my powers to blow it up!"

It's Rocky!

As some of you know, I am a daily watcher of Canaan's devil dog, Rocky. Though th' devil in him may run to his roots, he has proven a mighty artistic muse since I first moved here. Now that I finally have Photoshop once more and am rediscovering the joy of scanning and coloring things, I can upload the pile of Rocky drawings that has accumulated for the past 11 months or so.

Here is the first, a subtle yet bold announcement:

Streets of Fire: The Sorels

Oh yes, this would appear to be Streets of Fire fan art, technically speaking. I truly am a man of no shame. Depicted here is breakout singing group The Sorels as they perform "I Can Dream About You" in one of my favorite scenes.


You can download a larger version here, if that is your cup of tea.

Nekome Kozou

I'm a little late on getting around to these, but I finally picked up the first Viz release of Kazuo Umezu's Cat Eyed Boy, which is an awesome read just as pretty much everything else I've read by Kazmandu is. What really impresses me, though, is the design of the cover and insides of the manga. I wish I could scan the whole 360 degrees of it, but rest assured that once I have the second volume, they'll each make a formidable pair of bricks on my shelf.


I also really like this image below, which I recklessly stole from Same Hat, and wouldn't have minded seeing on one of the covers. That logo looks especially rad, but man, you gotta see the spine on these Viz editions. Totally worth the use of my Borders gift card.


Anyway, you should pick these up at Amazon, because the price is right, they're thick as hell, and if you're interested at all in this type of comic they're worth supporting.

R.I.P. Electronic Gaming Monthly

It had to happen sooner or later, but the news of EGM's demise was still pretty crushing, to be honest. I've been reading that magazine since Sonic the Hedgehog was a fresh face on the cover; not quite the beginning, but close enough. Even when it went through a stint of having alternating Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat covers exclusively, it was still the best thing on the rack. It certainly served to show me, for the first time perhaps, that a game magazine could be more interesting than the (admittedly awesome at the time) console-exclusive gee-whizzery of Nintendo Power or the braindead zombie cartoon ramblings of Gamepro.


You can download a PDF of issue #1 here

There have been better magazines over the years—I was big on Gamefan's enthusiasm, for instance—but I don't think any gaming publication has enjoyed the consistency of EGM. I was always fond of their personalities and individual but cohesive styles of writing, and thought the majority of their major features were pretty impressive undertakings. On the videogame side of things, EGM probably had a bigger hand in getting me interested in writing for a publication than anything else. While some of the competition was perfectly happy to remain in permanent stasis, EGM grew up with its readership and the words reflected that, even if I didn't agree with them all the time.

On the Internet side of things, I tended to consider 1up a pretty reliable source when it came to opinions on new games. But most of all, their podcasts got me interested in creating something similar with my friends, which has been a lot of fun. But beyond all of that, I think the saddest thing is that EGM isn't going to get to leave the industry with a final hurrah. Rather, they're forced to let out one last bubbling fart with a cover story sporting a hideous closeup image from the latest licensed Wolverine game. You can practically hear the party poppers exploding from here, can't you?

Jeff Green's blog post on the 1up firings sums it up kind of depressingly and certainly doesn't make me want to visit UGO's version of whatever the site will become. Instead, I'll just pour some booze out for another great mag gone to the graveyard.

A Solemn Reminder

Unearthed from the Dudu Blaq/Dirty Earl junkyard.

The JLR Album of the Year

Okay, this is one of the final posts on 2008, this time on the subject of music, and then I'm moving on. I'm not going to get into a big musical list, or even a small one, frankly because I'm just not that great at writing about music. It's not my department, ya dig? I can tell you how some sounds went into my ears and how I enjoyed the result, but I can't tell you stuff like "this track has a brief but melancholy burst of strings reminiscent of the early 70s work of Barry Quasar, but without the almost crucially alchemic blend that his late brother Theodore's tambourine provided." Even writing like that in jest makes me feel apologetic.


So without going into every single thing about the album, I'd have to say the one that got the most plays was Chad VanGaalen's Soft Airplane. I first learned of this man's many melodic talents after bumping into an embedded YouTube of his "Molten Light" video (I think here at first, but the video seems to be down), which has some great, haunting animation. Turns out he's a ding-dong animator, and has a lot more where that came from available on the Internet.

I thought that one song might just be a fluke whose potency was amplified by the awesome video, but countless listens to Soft Airplane have proven me wrong over and over again. I like the whole thing from beginning to end, which is more than I can say for most records, so if you get a chance to give it a spin or watch his videos, do so.

I'm going to be flying out of Louisville in a bit, finally ending my extended break and returning to the streets of rage known as Hoboken. See you there.

Sonuvagun!

Here is perhaps the final entry in my don't-have-a-scanner-here-so-I'm-capturing-small-sketchbook-drawings-via-my-cell-phone-camera-then-photoshopping-them series. It is the country's great hero Son of a Gun and he is very proud and fierce.


I briefly entertained doing a top 10 movies of '08 list, not unlike what I did with games, but I think I'm going to scrap those plans. Frankly, I haven't seen everything I wanted to see in 2008 yet, and the list I've cobbled together might not be too different from something you might see elsewhere.

There are some oddities, of course, like Neil Marshall's Doomsday. That would be in there, for sure. Hellboy II, I would likely include that, as I enjoyed it a lot. There would probably be a Rambo here or a Rambow there, on that I cannot be budged. Comedies like Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express would puncture and enter its inner sanctum. I am certain The Dark Knight would rear his head, that was a very good movie. I would feel naked and cold if I didn't include Let The Right One In, and throwing Slumdog Millionaire directly behind it would warm me up, too. You might even see Wall-E there somewhere around the middle.

I think that's ten. I guess that's my Top 10, then.

Boogers

I'm kind of bummed that The Twilight Zone isn't still running on all cylinders, but I suppose these kibbles wouldn't be as savory each year if they were more plentiful throughout. By some foul twist of fate, I managed to miss "Time Enough At Last," but made up for it by catching "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which never gets old. It's almost time for me to leave home once again and go to my other home, which, much to the chagrin of many of my longtime readers, means that I'm not only not homeless but doubly so.


I'll probably be stopping back in here once or twice before I depart on Sunday, but for now I'll leave you to dwell on some boogers.

The Masks

Hello, 2009

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you are really awesome this year.