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Elf-Help 33.

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Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work

Courtesy of Joel Johnson, Wally Wood's 22 panels to spice up talking heads scenes.

Visit Joel's site for all 22 panels.

Lost Findings

Spotted a couple reviews of Getting Lost:

From The Lost Blog:

"All in all, this is a book for the more hard-core LOST-obsessed fan who could talk for hours about the subject around the water cooler, not for the populist viewer who may only catch every other episode of the show or just watches it due to a Josh Holloway crush. For those in the former group, I think that with the variety inside this book, there is something for just about everyone."

From Lost-n-Found:

"This book is literally packed with varying points of view of not only what is happening on the island, but also of the different things that may influence the writers. The essays range from whimsical to down right confusing, but all in all, the book is a relatively easy read."

Haven't picked up Getting Lost yet? You can read Adam-Troy Castro's essay, "The Same Damn Island," in BenBella Books' The Best of Smart Pop Volume 2 sampler.

The Matriarch's Big News

Pretty big news: The Matriarch, the epic story of single-mother and super hero Sherry Benning, has landed at a publisher.

Specifics will follow when appropriate. Here's a few links to previous posts in the meantime:

Pencils
3 finished pages
A little more on the Matriarch
Super heroes

Another Helping of Elf

Elf-Help will update next week in its regular Wednesday/Thursday timeslot.

We've been slowing down of late, but it's kind of a good thing: Elf-Help artistic duo Martin Morazzo and Carolina Cesare are working on a mini-series debuting early in the new year. If you like their work on Elf-Help -- and why the heck wouldn't you?! -- keep an eye peeled for their secret new project.

Martin and I are also cooking up something a bit more serious in the fantasy genre as our follow-up to Elf-Help.

I'll keep you updated, of course.

mind your elders

For those keeping score at home, the amazing Alan Gallo has finished penciling and inking all of issue #1 of Old School. Astonishing quality delivered on time -- the guy's got the makings of a pro, and I'll be glad to be able to say I knew him way back when.- :)

Getting LOST

Got my contributor copies of Getting Lost recently, and I've already read about half the essays. My favorite so far is Adam-Troy Castro's contribution, "The Same Damn Island," which makes a pretty convincing case for the islands on Lost and Gilligan's Island being one and the same place (there are Others: Jungle Boy, Dubov, and the Japanese Soldier; supernatural goings on; similar character archetypes, etc.).

Anyway, this should be showing up in stores any day now, or you can order via intarwub from any of the places below.



Amazon.com
BenBella Books
Chapters.ca
Amazon.ca


For those coming from the link in the book itself and interested in my previous Lost ramblings, here are the appropriate entries:

Logic of Lost * Lost=TV * Dave=monster * Others=Elves * LOST: choose-your-own-adventure * Underwater hatch * Lost in Lost * Getting LOST

Down Dangerous Passes Road

For any Edmonton-area folks checking in, I humbly recommend a Fringe play called Down Dangerous Passes Road (if you head over to the photo section of the site, you'll see pictures of my brother variously squatting, getting choked, and playing it cool).

The schedule is...

Friday, Aug 18 @ 8:45 pm
Monday, Aug 21 @ 2:00 pm
Tuesday, Aug 22 @ 11:15 pm
Thursday, Aug 24 @ 6:45 pm
Friday, Aug 25 @ 12:00 noon
Saturday, Aug 26 @ 5:00 pm

...but I think the first show is already sold out! Tickets are $10 at the door, or you can call the Advance Ticket Hotline at 409-1910.

Ace and Alan

This happy fellow is Ace, the star of Old School, a comic series I created with Alan Gallo.

We've only got four more pages to go before issue #1 is completely penciled and inked, and Alan has really mastered the characters and started taking them to some outrageous places.

Ace in particular gets hit with some pretty emotional stuff, and ends up looking like this by the last panel of the last page:



Things don't get any easier for him next issue, but at least he gets to do more punching, which he finds therapuetic.

Elf-Help 32

Tune in as we plunge toward the climactic conclusion!!

Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson interview

The latest Fanboy Radio podcast features Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson talking about their upcoming Wildstorm series, The Boys. Very cool and informative interview.

Here's the blurb on The Boys:

Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan), co-creators of two of the most thought-provoking comics of the last decade, introduce their first original collaboration for a new monthly series: THE BOYS — a dark, twisted look at super powers, super-people, and the men and women who make sure the world's "heroes" never go too far.

With a quarter-million super-powered beings in the world, someone's got to watch what's going on beneath all those masks and capes. In a U.S.A. uncomfortably like our own, that task falls to The Boys, a government-funded group of operatives dedicated to keeping the "supes" in line.

Nostalgic

Expecting a copy of Mike Meinhardt's short film, Nostalgia Boy, any day now. The movie's website is better than most of the short films out there, so I'm expecting good things.

Synopsis:

"Nostalgia Boy, a dreamy-eyed eighteen-year-old super-hero, is addicted to memories. He has even outfitted his lair with audio-visual equipment in order to capture this obsession with his past."

Cinema—The New Cathedral of Hollyworld

"After one hundred years of tinkering, film has arrived as an alternate form of transcendence, replacing in interesting and strange ways the once venerated position held by the institutional church. Or, to put it another way, the medium of motion film has finally received its birthright: born right around the time Nietzsche declared that God was dead, film has now matured to the point that America is now accepting cinema as the culture’s chief myth maker..."

Religion has returned to make something of a challenge to film in the years since this metaphilm article was written, but it still contains many fascinating insights. God is dead -- long live cinema!

Twilight Precinct

Pathwalkers