September 22nd, 2009 by Neal

Check it out, more on Wide Awake, the webcomic/future film I keep yammering about.

DO EET!

September 10th, 2009 by Neal

My friend Eric has a book out today, The Shield, and it features the DC Debut of another accomplished friend guy I know will be stomping the masthead with a boot all over in the next few years, Brandon Jerwa. Maybe that’s a crappy metaphor. I conjure the image of a dragon kick and Dan DiDio with that. I more mean he’s gonna leave footprints… in a metaphorical sense of… AH HELL, his work rocks. Read it!

The pair, who I have already talked up because of WIDE AWAKE (coming soon to a theater near you, methinks) are now in charge of a brand new comic, so get out there and get some. If the above preview doesn’t sell you, or if you’re too lazy to read said preview, check out this one page. That was enough to sell me on the book, knowledge of the writer regardless. Haven’t seen the sheer joy of flying done like that in a comic in some time, and the dude is just using gravity.

Also, if you’re still up and about, there’s a signing at Olympic today, so get on, kids! Git!

September 8th, 2009 by Neal

Psst! Yeah, you.

Get online, right now, and pre-order some tickets to WHITEOUT.

Why? Here are a few good reasons.

1) Hot gal. Cold weather. You do the math.
2) If you’ve read the graphic novel, you don’t even need number two.
3) Check out the graphic novel. See 2.
4) The movie is the responsibility of Greg Rucka, my favorite working comics writer today. And I read way too many comics, kids. I’ve spent more time reading comics than you’ve slept. Or rather, I’ve slept more than you’ve lived. One of the two. Shit.
5) This.
6) If you don’t go, you won’t have the indie cred of having been there for the first movie, before they make the Queen and Country, Atticus Kodiak, and the Drama spin-off movies. Like, remember that guy who went to Dogma and was like, “What’s Clerks?” Yeah. Fuck that guy! Don’t be that guy!
7) Tom Skerrit’s moustache alone can solve any existential quandary. And he’s a TERTIARY CHARACTER IN THIS FILM.
8 ) There are no Transformers, no GI Joe characters, and no fucking blue Ferngully Avatar characters in here. Just woman vs. nature and a bunch of assholes who need to be stomped. Fuck yeah. And I don’t want to spoil anything… but ASSHOLES GET STOMPED!
9) Because lists suck, and I will write more lists if I get the impression everyone, and I mean every single person I know, did not go and see the flick twice.
10) If you go, everyone will get universal health care. Shit you not. I guarantee it in blood. I asked the magic 8-ball, and it’s never been wrong.*

*timeframe for this not guaranteed.

It opens this Friday, suckers, and I couldn’t be more excited. GO!

May 11th, 2009 by Neal

I’ve been asked in letters and by folks what I thought of the new Star Trek movie, but I’m too busy working to put my thoughts on paper right now. This is why:

But beyond that, I’ll probably put down words later. In brief? It can’t really be said in brief. Basically, there were many, many things that annoyed and perplexed me, and a few things I liked. So far the bad outweighs the good by about 2/1 My inclination is to enjoy new takes and new examinations. James Bond is a prime example. But Casino Royale worked because it was a practical new imagining. It still felt like a Bond movie. The new Star Trek movie is like the Casino Royale reboot, but in a bad way. Take cerebral, diplomatic wargames based around an ensemble cast, and turn it into an action flick with character work for two characters (some of which works, some of which is garbage), and you have Star Trek.

I have yet, two days later, to feel like I’ve seen a Star Trek film. I feel like I watched a summer movie, and an action movie, and an action movie with cool moving parts and a few moments of character, but it felt more like watching Transformers or Terminator than watching Nemesis or First Contact.

Nemesis is where I hoped the new movie would be, a movie where you can go, “Ah, flaws here, here, and here that suck, but a Trek film, for sure. Maybe they’ll get it as good as First Contact next time.”

And, as was pointed out to me, the movie blows so fast that you might miss little subtleties. But then, isn’t impression nine tenths of the law?

I sound negative, and that’s not what I want to come across as. But there are just a few things that make Star Trek Star Trek I felt were fundamentally missing in favor of things designed to (and that point of fact did) please most people.

I’ll go into more depth later.

But one thing I’ll say up front, putting a fucking Nokia ad product placement in the goddamned movie alone was almost enough to make me turn against Abrams. But there were a few good things. More on that later. Back to work.

May 7th, 2009 by Neal

I’m a little late to the party on this one, though I was there for the beginning of it. I just forgot I’d be on a plane and everything, so I hadn’t had a chance to post this yet.

My friends Eric Trautmann and Brandon Jerwa introduced me to Wide Awake in its initial stages, and since then I’ve eagerly awaited the culmination and where the comic would go. The concept (which I won’t spoil for you, you have to read the story) is an awesome one, and Amanda is a character I already want to knuckle into and visit with weekly.

I thought it’d be a regular comic book series, but Eric and Brandon are actually going in a novel direction, a direction that I want to experiment in myself, so I’m watching (and hoping) their project goes really, really well. I’m one of those guys that can read something on the internet or on the computer and enjoy it, as well as buy a regular copy, and I do believe it’s where we’re headed, kicking or screaming or not.

To that end, Wide Awake, their concept, is being developed as a weekly project, starting up soon, whereby you get six pages of story a week for free, and then, in a year, if you dig the story, they go from there, evolve it, transmute it, use a little alchemy and find a happy medium. It just sounds like an awesome concept, and if you can bookmark a webcomic every day (as I know most of you do), imagine a free comic every week. Warren Ellis succeeded in his attempt, and it’s my hope that Eric and Brandon will surpass his ingenuity and bring the world to its damned knees, becuase this is the kind of serialized storytelling I miss. I mean, just crack open the paper and read Garfield to see how low the weekly awesome has fallen.

We need more weekly awesome, and I think it’s here. Newsarama agrees.

But don’t take my word for it, just read it and see.

Get a cool wallpaper, here diminished by my smallor-izing and stealing of it, at the website:

And if you can’t do any of that, then please, any time you see someone misspell the name Trautmann or Jerwa, stab them in the face. That’s completely ancillary, of course. I just see they do the same thing with Eric’s name in print as they do with mine.

I am not Niel Baily. Nor is Eric a Trout-Man, from what I can ascertain. At least… I hope?

But even if he does have gills I am unaware of, these boys can write, so hit it up!

April 27th, 2009 by Neal

Okay, folks!
Preliminary alarm bells. Get yer butts out of your seat, because it’s time for word of mouth.

Greg Rucka, author of the Atticus Kodiak series of novels (as well as many and varied other words of worth), releases his new book tomorrow. Booya with the cover:

It promises to be potentially the last Kodiak novel, and if you’ve been following him as I have, this is like losing a friend, in that creepy way that you think you know fictional characters when they’re expertly rendered.

If you don’t get your butt out there and try this book out (provided you weren’t going to anyway), you are on this board:

That’s right, punk. You’re on notice.

And if you haven’t bought it by the end of the week, you go on the dead to me board. That’s right. Right under the cast of Friends. Dante could not provide a worse hell than a room filled with Chandler, Rachel, and Judas Iscariot.

And your life will be a little worse off, too, because you won’t have as much of the awesome your tank can take in. Provided it can handle that much awesome in the first place, which I doubt. It may take two sittings to read the book so you don’t die of heart failure or a tragic case of no more socks. And yet you will be inclined to do so anyway. Tread carefully. Make sure you have paddles nearby.

But seriously, folks. Tomorrow. Do it. You want proof I am not insane?

Go here.

Go!