So San Diego Comic-Con is over, and there were lots of big announcements and blah-blah-blah Star Wars blah-blah-blah Batman v. Superman blah-blah X-Men Apocalypse blah-blah. You already know all about all of those, so I ain’t gunna get into ’em.
These are the things that happened at Comic-Con that I really enjoyed:
Junior Braves of the Apocalypse
A friend of mine had a comic book signing at Comic-Con. I still can’t get over that!
A FOOL DOES SOMETHING AWESOME: Congratulations to Michael Tanner, AKA the retired GREEN FOOL (on the right with the…
The opening segment of Conan O’Brien’s week of shows filmed at Comic-Con was undoubtably the best part:
Joss Whedon’s Twist
Now that Joss Whedon is no longer the shepherd of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he has time to do projects for himself for a change! First up: an original comic book about an original character:
Joss Whedon’s Twist
Joss Whedon had (unsurprisingly) my favorite single quote of the whole weekend when he described the book:
Basically deals with the most important moral question facing us, which is, why isn’t there a Victorian Female Batman?[1]
Steven Universe Extended Theme Song
There was a Steven Universe panel. And this happened:
I made the mistake of watching that during my lunch break at work last week. Fortunately no one else was around, so I didn’t have to explain that I was crying about a cartoon.
Marceline Sings!
There was an Adventure Time panel, which also contained Rebecca Sugar, the creator of Steven Universe. See, she worked on Adventure Time before starting Steven Universe, and she wrote a bunch of the most memorable songs for them. And she’s written a new song for Marceline. Whose voice actress, Olivia Olson, also just happened to be on the panel. So, y’know, she helped out:
Ash vs Evil Dead
I do believe this speaks for itself. Let me know if you’re confused about anything:
Wrongplayed
And, of course, one of my favorite Instagram accounts: Wrongplayed, that purposefully (and hilariously) misidentifies the various cosplay of the con:
Tweeter of the Month: @audipenny
Perhaps the most laugh-out-loud Twitter talent out there right now, Audrey Farnsworth crafts tweet jokes that seem to start out in a safe, predictable way, but quickly veer off into bizarre surrealism. She is a brilliant mixture of mundane and insane. I absoluterly LORVE this kind of humor. It reminds me a Jack Handey in a very palpable way. It was hard for me to pick just a couple of tweets from her, so here are six:
I'd love to stay but I've got that flu of where if you keep talking, my arms turn into shovels and I just start digging
Album of the Month: Alcohol & Isolation by Three Ninjas
Old-school, howling, angry, depressed, authentic country music. None of this pop-country crap that has dominated the country music scene for the last 30 years. I wrote about this album a little while ago. And I went to its album release party on Tuesday night. Here’s a photo of that:
And here’s a sample song. Take a wissen; it’s good stuffs:
Also, if you manage to track down a physical copy of the CD, there are GOBS of bonus songs at the end! DO IT!
Game of the Month: Adventure Time: Card Wars
There was an episode of Adventure Time a while back where Finn & Jake played a holographic parody of “Magic: The Gathering” called “Card Wars.” Well, since this is the 21st century, someone went ahead and made a real version of the game so you, too, can play it! It is surprisingly fun, and the voice actors recorded a metric tonne of lines for it. It does a surprisingly good job of capturing the feel and rules of the game as played in the episode. Cons: it’s not free, and it’s micro-transaction based, so unless you’re willing to pony up the cash it’ll take you a long time to build up a powerful deck. Also, there’s no multiplayer, which seems weird since the episode was about a two-player card game. Oh, well. FLOOP THE PIG!
Link of the Month: Christmas A-GoGo
We love Christmas. We love Christmas songs, but not the usual stuff. See this blog in Nov and December for daily posts of weird & wondrous seasonal tunes.
Tweeter of the Month: @loadedsanta
There are a few “joke” Santa twitter accounts, but this one is probably my favorite, from the POV of a very inebriated Santa Claus. Some of my favorite examples:
K so any kid who asked for a PS4 Santa changed it to "wooden train"
Christmas Special of the Month: Adventure Time: “Holly Jolly Secrets”
Even though Christmas is never mentioned by name, all of the trappings are there in this two-part episode from the 3rd season of Adventure Time. We get some great backstory on the Ice King, and there are some real heart-felt moments. What’s that? The 3rd season of Adventure Time isn’t available on DVD or BluRay? Well, don’t worry; it comes out in February and you can pre-order itnow!
Tweeter of the Month: Rob Delaney @robdelaney
A comedian who had a banner 2012 and became more famous for his twitwit than his comedy routines. His tweets about the 2012 election got more hits than those from the candidates themselves. I especially enjoy the personas he takes on, like the “Cool Dad” and the “420NO” anti-pot activist:
#Teens: Hitting a pot pipe tonight won’t get you “high.” It’ll put you 6 feet under. #420NO
Album of the Month: Five Letters from Far Away by Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount
The third full-length album from JM+FFD is another stunner, full of some of their most epically spacey songs yet, and some of their most rockin’. It is going to be released this Friday 1/4/13. Wait… if it hasn’t been released yet, how can it by my Album of the Month? Because I was given a PREVIEW COPY last week! That’s right, I got my grubby mittens on the album before it was released to the general public. And Carrie & I have been listening to it basically non-stop. You can listen to a 5-song preview yourself at the JM+FFD Bandcamp site, but you’re gonna hafta wait until Friday before you can get it for reals. And it is worth the wait.
Game of the Month: Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d you steal our garbage?!!
Even putting aside that this is perhaps the greatest title of a video game ever, this is a very funny game. It seemed somehow familiar to me, too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it for a little while. Then it hit me: the gameplay is based heavily on Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link! The story was plotted by Pendleton Ward (creator of Adventure Time) himself, and some of the dialogue is a hoot; there is a section where you’re trying to locate Princess Bubblegum’s missing pantyhose, and you talk to a marshmallow kid who then goes on and on through several screens of dialogue about how disturbing it is that you’re talking to a kid about pantyhose and now he’s gonna grow up crazy because of it. Also, Finn calls pantyhose “gam buckets” at one point.
Way back almost four years ago I posted a cartoon short created by Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time, called The Bravest Warriors.
Well, the the last almost-four years Mr. Ward has had great success with Adventure Time, and now he has refined the Bravest Warriors idea a little bit and—guess what? It’s going to be its own series!
Here’s a look at the updated Bravest Warriors. Enjoy!
@audipenny
Alcohol & Isolation by Three Ninjas
Adventure Time: Card Wars
Christmas A-GoGo
@loadedsanta
Adventure Time: “Holly Jolly Secrets”
Rob Delaney @robdelaney
Five Letters from Far Away by Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount
Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d you steal our garbage?!!
