Featured Gallery Music Motion City Soundtrack’s Justin Pierre Survives Dustin Downing

August 12, 2011 - 11:02 am

Prior to interviewing Motion City Soundtrack’s Justin Pierre, we decided to put him through the Dustin Downing “School of Candid Photography. “Pierre was open minded enough to play along as we hoisted him onto the balcony of a 2-story abandoned building and had him borrow various reading material from the stash of a Sunset Strip homeless man. Although the dismount from the disheveled building was not pretty – picture Downing with Pierre on his shoulders in a manic frenzy of trying to avoid rusty nails and a wrong step on a cement staircase – the photos turned out rather stellar. We’re happy to say that Pierre survived, was able to grab some much needed hand sanitizer and arrive safely back at his hotel.

Kicking it by the pool at The Grafton hotel, Pierre told us about the band’s upcoming 4 Albums, 2 Nights, 7 Cities tour that they will officially kick off in Los Angeles on August 19th and 20th at the House of Blues. He also discussed doing the voice of a 12- year old boy in the animated series “Godkiller” and being called a “good weirdo” by Margot Kidder at Comic Con.

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Art/Design Gallery Angouleme is the Anti-San Diego

February 7, 2011 - 8:30 am

What do we know about big American comic cons?  We know they are held in convention centers, deafening places filled with bright lights and berber carpeting.  We know they are dominated by huge media companies.  We know they are filled with socially awkward fanboys.

Well, Angouleme International Comics Festival, the largest comics con in the Western hemisphere and the crown jewel of the French bandes-dessines scene, is nothing like that at all.

Picture if you will a charming medevial town, filled with cheese, fine wines and sexy fire-eaters.  In this town there are a number of comic-filled tents.  And the comics they showcase are the most experimental, badass, lavishly printed, dirty, existentially questioning, silly and odd comics in the world.  Except for one tent filled with superheros, which is tiny and sort of shoved into the corner.  That’s what Angouleme is like.

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Comic Books Featured A Cynic’s Guide to New York Comic Con

October 15, 2010 - 9:31 am

Molly Crabapple at NY Comic Con

I’ve been a creator at New York Comic Con since 2005.  From first fateful NYCC, during which I dealt vodka shots and launched my sequential art career, to last week’s Javitz Center insanity, I’ve seen the sweaty highs and lows of The Second Greatest Comic Con.  Here are the lessons I’ve learned.

1.) Comic Con happens at Afterparties

Every year I go to the Javitz Center, I marvel at the solid crush of humanity. Cross-dressing Hit Girls, aged Lolitas, the omnipresent storm troopers.  The convention floor is a perfect theatre of geek awesome.  But, for a creator sans table, its not where the con is at.  Comic-Con for us has more to do with the 72 hours of drunkenness that start at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s legendary Thursday night bash, progress through Friday and Saturday’s boozing (often sponsored by DC, MTV, or Darkhorse), and end with us pouring our woes to raconteur and alcohol connoisseur Jimmy d’Aquino of Comic News Insider.

While free top-shelf liquor is a potent lure, afterparties are the best chance to get an honest appraisal of the industry one works in.  You find out which imprints are being gutted, which writer got his book optioned.  Sometimes parties even give you the only proper food you’ll eat all weekend.  Which brings us to point #2

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Comic Books Gallery Chicago Comic Con: Characters of all Kinds

August 27, 2010 - 2:40 pm

“It’s a strange existence,” actor Jake Lloyd bluntly tells the Chicago Comic Con crowd about working the convention circuit. Lloyd, best known as playing young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), has largely grown out of acting and moved onto other endeavors (film editing) hence why talking about a childhood role can be so awkward. Yet Lloyd remains an avid Star Wars fan and will be forever connected to what comic con fans love: iconic characters.

Chicago Comic Con

The tens of thousands of attendees who poured into the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center August 19-22nd in some way were all looking to embrace the heroes and villains they grew up with. And this includes attending panels with actors like Jake Lloyd, buying dirt-cheap vintage comics, picking up a T-shirt, or recreating the characters themselves in costume. Regarding the latter, homemade Iron Man and War Machine costumes were just a sample of the incredible cosplay seen at “The Con.” A female take on a beat-down Kick-Ass also remains ingrained in my mind with her all too real make-up job.

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Comic Books Gallery The Girls of Comic-Con

July 28, 2010 - 9:15 am

While The Con of Ages is now over and we’re home safe from the crowds and the smells, there is much to fondly look back on. Everyone can agree on one specific, delightful aspect of this event: costumed laydeez. Whether it’s the legions of Sailor Moons or the armies of Harley Quinns, there’s something irresistible about cute girls in costumes, especially when said costumes look like they took several days to make. As far as I’m concerned, the more DIY and elaborate the look, the better. After all, Comic-Con comes once a year.

(The ever-present naughty schoolgirls are also acceptable.)

To bring you this gallery, I spent much of my Friday and Saturday looking for dressed-up girls to document. Like shooting fish in a barrel, you say? Not so! It’s not easy to locate, stop, and pose amidst thousands of humans, all out on missions of their own. Still, my camera and I persevered. Enjoy!

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Film A Family Portrait with ‘The Walking Dead’

July 26, 2010 - 7:51 pm

Walking Dead

Comic Con 2010 is over and I have cast my vote for the fictitious “Bad Ass Mamma-Jamma Booth of the Year” award. Since I am the only voter in said academy, the winner is booth #2010! AMC television’s The Walking Dead set (a six-episode series based on the comic book written by Robert Kirkman).  It’s not every day you can take the kids out for a stroll and pop in somewhere to have a lovely photo taken with your choice of:

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Moody Mondays Moody Mondays: Eisner-Nominated Ben Templesmith

July 26, 2010 - 11:08 am

Ben Templesmith

Ben Templesmith is an Eisner-nominated Australian comic book artist, known for many things, among them Fell, written by Warren Ellis, and 30 Days of Night, written by Steve Niles. He’s also known for his love of tentacles, zombies, and making very special faces in photos. I spoke with Ben at the Image booth while he was hard at work on a sketch for someone’s future tattoo, and asked him for his top five songs for a Moody Monday.

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