Saturday, April 25, 2009

Con of Canada

Howdy from the 2009 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, which is (it says right here in the program book) "The largest annual pop-culture event in Western Canada." Given the crowds today in the hall, I can believe it. I must have spent ten minutes just fighting my way through a line of folks queued up to buy autographs from Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in some of the Superman movies. Many other media celebs are present, along with a stellar list of comic book creators, artists, writers, sculptors, animators...

...oh, yes. And me. I'm here, doing — you may find this hard to believe — panels. Had three good ones today. Expect to do two more tomorrow.

If you aren't already planning to be here tomorrow, it's probably too late to arrange a trip. But if you are here, you're probably going to have a great time. Everyone I saw in the hall today seemed to be having one.

• Posted at 11:51 PM · LINK

Stone Strips

The blog of Ger Apeldoorn offers up some nice examples of the Flintstones newspaper strip of the sixties. By way of clarity, it should be noted that while Gene Hazelton was the primary artist and supervisor of this and the Yogi Bear strip, they weren't all drawn by Gene. Just about everyone good who worked at Hanna-Barbera at the time worked from time to time on them, including Pete Alvarado, Willie Ito, Bob Singer and Harvey Eisenberg. Several of the samples Ger offers were drawn by Eisenberg. Also, for much of their runs, both strips were lettered and inked by Lee Hooper.

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This time up, it's an amazing short film by Adam Berg...a commercial for Philips Carousel, which is a new, wider-than-widescreen TV set. In this film about a police shootout, nothing moves except the camera. I have no idea how they did it, either.

Watch it below and/or go to this site to view it in a fancier version.

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK

Word-A-Day

In case anyone asks you what constitutes "torture," here's the definition that most nations accept. The United States did too before George W. Bush and his mob decided they could redefine it to exclude whatever they wanted to do.

• Posted at 12:07 AM · LINK