THE RACK: Three Days of the Con, Part 23

Comments Off | Posted: July 27th, 2012 | Filed under: The Rack


Danny goes off at the Con.

SIGNS AND MEANINGS: Back In The Saddle, Part 06

Comments Off | Posted: July 24th, 2012 | Filed under: Signs And Meanings


Ashley is informed of some things.

THE RACK: Three Days Of The Con, Part 22

Comments Off | Posted: July 19th, 2012 | Filed under: The Rack


Some people talk to an audience.

SIGNS AND MEANINGS: Back in the Saddle, Part 05

Comments Off | Posted: July 17th, 2012 | Filed under: Signs And Meanings


The bar doesn’t have the right glasses and a familiar face returns.

WANDER: OLIVE HOPKINS AND THE NINTH KINGDOM #1 is now on sale!

Comments Off | Posted: July 17th, 2012 | Filed under: Wander

Wander: Olive Hopkins and the Ninth Kingdom #1 is now on sale through Comixology!. Read the preview above and then give us two dollars of your money! That’s less than half the cost of a Subway™ $5 Foot Long™ Sandwich®!

WANDER: OLIVE HOPKINS AND THE NINTH KINGDOM #1 debuts tomorrow…

Comments Off | Posted: July 16th, 2012 | Filed under: Wander

…and we need you to help us out! If you like what you’ve seen so far from the Wander site and haven’t taken the opportunity to show other people the promotional post explaining the comic’s concept, Grace, Josh and myself would really appreciate it if you did. The more people that see it, the more likely they are to go and buy the comic when it hits Comixology at midnight tonight. (Or, you know, at a reasonable hour tomorrow.)





The first issue of an unknown comics property is a bit of a gamble for creators and readers alike. As creators, we’re hoping that you’ll enjoy the work enough to continue supporting it. As readers, you’re hoping that you enjoy the work enough to justify your dollars (or pounds or yen or what have you.) Since we’re all on the same page, we’d like to ask for your help in making Wander into something that, if not exactly a blockbuster, can support itself in the marketplace.


We’ll have a post up tomorrow with links to Wander #1 in the Comixology shop, rest assured, but every bit of signal boost we get early on will help us. We very much appreciate your support and hope you enjoy the series as much as we’re enjoying making it.

THE RACK: Three Days of the Con, Part 21

Comments Off | Posted: July 13th, 2012 | Filed under: The Rack


Danny gets the surprise of a lifetime in a new THE RACK!

SIGNS AND MEANINGS: Back In The Saddle, Part 04

Comments Off | Posted: July 11th, 2012 | Filed under: Signs And Meanings


Ashley meets her cubicle neighbor.

THE RACK: Three Days of the Con, Part 20

Comments Off | Posted: July 6th, 2012 | Filed under: The Rack


Lydia gets an apology of sorts.

WANDER: My New Comic Book From Monkeybrain!

2 Comments | Posted: July 3rd, 2012 | Filed under: Wander


The comics internet exploded yesterday with news about Chris Roberson and Allison Baker’s new Monkeybrain Comics publishing concern. I am fortunate enough to be part of their initial wave of titles with my new series Wander: Olive Hopkins And The Ninth Kingdom, debuting on July 17th through Comixology. Here is a link to a promotional strip for the series.

(For the record: Yes, I know how lucky I am to snag someone as talented as Grace Allison to do the art, and Josh’s letters (no, he didn’t do the promo strip, that was all me) really make a complete package.)

SIGNS AND MEANINGS: Back In The Saddle, Part 03

Comments Off | Posted: July 3rd, 2012 | Filed under: Verbal Masturbation


It’s a glamorous life.

WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING: Magic Mike

2 Comments | Posted: July 1st, 2012 | Filed under: What I've Been Watching | Tags: , ,

 

1.
For a short while there, it looked like I was going to be the only male in a fairly packed theater for the screen of Magic Mike that I attended.  Magic Mike is Soderbergh’s inversion of the story we all know from films in which The Plucky Female Stripper (Or Dancer or Waitress) With A Heart Of Gold Finally Makes It, and I imagine the inverse of my situation was true for women who wanted to attend a screening of (God help them) Showgirls in the 90s. (For the record, some dudes showed up about 3 minutes before the film started, which is a shame; I probably could have made a few bucks from those 60-somethings in the very back.)

2.
Magic Mike is about male stripping the way that Altman’s M*A*S*H is about a surgical unit. It’s a framework in which Soderbergh explores power and money and what some men do with it and what others want to do with it. Don’t get me wrong: the dancing sequences take up a healthy portion of the film’s running time, as well they should, but they’re very much secondary to the story, which is fine. You get the impression that stripping is very much secondary to the characters’ real life, a means to an end.

2b.
Speaking of working towards that end, there’s a scene where Mike is talking to a loan officer in a bank that is just blunt and cold and it’s so much of what I like Soderbergh for. If you were to ask me to pick one scene from the man’s filmography that showed “his” style, that moment would be a close second to the “conspiring to conspire” scene in Traffic.

3.
One of those things that gets a bit lost in Soderbergh’s auteur “makes-the-movies-he-wants-fuck-the-system” reputation is the fact that it’s obvious how much he likes certain actors and wants to push them in the right direction. Channing Tatum has an easy charm, of course, but this is the first time I’ve seen him in a film where the director was confident enough in his abilities to just let a camera rest on him. I was in no way surprised to find out that he’ll be in Soderbergh’s upcoming drama The Side Effects starring Rooney Mara and Jude Law.

3b.
I’m about 80% sure that Matthew McConaughey was just told to be himself and they’d make the rest work around him.

3c.
Cody Horn is going to go places. Olivia Munn can’t act, really, but she’s very good at exactly what she’s doing here, and I can definitely see why someone would want to take many, many pictures of her.

4.
The daylight scenes (and indeed any shots that don’t take place in the club) are shot in a slightly-sepia, low-contrast mode while the evening scenes are lurid as hell. I’m not always a fan of Soderbergh’s heavy-handed cinematographic storytelling — it’s the only big flaw in Haywire for me — but it works perfectly here.

5.
Basically, what I’m saying is that you should go see Magic Mike. It’s a much better film than the trailer intimates. The fact that the movie uses the 1970s Warner Brothers studio intro at the very beginning tells anyone who appreciated how bravura movie companies were at the time that they’re definitely going to see something that straddles the line between commercial and “art” perfectly.