Smashing September Calenders!

It's a new month! Which means it's time for a new set of wallpapers! And this month, Smashing Magazine has a gorgeous set.

Some of my favourites this month:
S for September - Gorgeous! My favourite this month! Luka, do one for every month!
Prelude (I love wallpapers with a single hue or color scheme)
Upside Down World Map (again, nice colors and concept, but I didn't like the typography)
Neon House Spirit (nice minimalistic color usage)
Field of Gold (great image and placement, but bad typography)
Curiosity and the Rose (love the image!)
Smashin September (very bold, interesting typo)
Septypo (nice colors and typo)
September Colors (the colors, hah)

And the world got a little bit closer...

The greatest description for a song, ever:

31. Boney M – “Rasputin”

Possibly the greatest disco song that uses both Serbian and Turkish folk songs to outline the romance between a hemophiliac Russian queen and her mystic lover/advisor —who was famously murdered and castrated, and whose penis has its own Wikipedia page —by a group of Caribbean transplants living in West Germany and singing in English. Ever.

From here.

The perils of working for Dracula

..or, the greatest Dracula comic strip ever!



Click on the 'ol image above to read the complete story!

Awesome Spidey!

This is hands down the most awesome spidey comic on the web yet! Clickity-click on 'ol wall-crawler below to bask in it's awesomeness!!

Someone shares my love for the Watchmen movie..

I was going to post a rant about my "love" for "visionary" director Zack Snyder's "adaptation" of the Watchmen comic, but really, could I say it any better than THIS and THIS?

Bane is a Metallica fan!

Yes, that's right, he digs Metallica!



That's right, he's singing Enter Sandman!

Or not?

Either way, you should take out a moment and head towards original post.

The bigger the badasses, the harder the boot up your @$$

After a lot of research and bloody back-breaking hard work, MTV finally unvieled their list or the top 10 movie badasses of all time. A list that I followed closely as they teased us with one name after another.

Here's the list:
1. Dirty Harry
2. Ellen Ripley
3. John McClane
4. Mad Max
5. Walker (Lee Marvin from Point Blank, not the Texas Ranger)
6. Sarah Connor
7. Pike Bishop
8. Khan
9. Boba Fett
10. John J. Rambo

Were it up to me, I'd have added Leon the Professional, and Mr. Smith (Not "Mrrrr Aaaaannnddndddeerrrsssoooon", but the Shoot 'Em Up guy) in there someplace and taken out Mad Max perhaps. I must confess, with some shame, that I haven't yet seen the movies with Dirty Harry, Walker, Pike Bishop, Khan, and Boba Fett, so I can't really comment on them.

Coming to the point, while that list isn't too bad, not everyone was happy with it. Here's someone I firmly believe should have topped the list:



...except for one slight technicality - he wasn't in a movie.

Red - Proudly shoving a boot up your dumbass.

Towards a great comic collection...

Comic fans will ove this. The Comics Reporter recently published a fantastic article - The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs


From the list, what I already have:

8. A Little Stack of Archie Comics (I have 3 actually, so that is as little as possible)
10. Several Tintin Albums (A buncha single albums, and some of those 3-in-ones)
15. At Least One Comic Book From When You First Started Reading Comic Books (I would say i seriously started reading and collecting comics when I got a set of 30 South African editions of Batman n Supes, and First Publishing's TMNT 4-isse GNs. Still have them.)
17. Some Osamu Tezuka (This is a cheat, I got a friend's copy of Buddha vol 1)
21. One Run of A Comic Strip That You Yourself Have Clipped (When i was a kid, i used to clip and collect Phantom n Mandrake newspaper strips. I dunno if i still got them.)
22. A Selection of Comics That Interest You That You Can't Explain To Anyone Else (Wierd category, everyone can lay claim to this)
24. As Much Peanuts As You Can Stand (A whole lotta digests, and the first two of Fantagraphics's The Complete Peanuts series)
29. Several copies of MAD (Tons of digests and lotta them Indian editions)
30. A stack of Jack Kirby 1970s Comic Books (I have a Jack Kirby's New Gods trade)
31. More than a few Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1960s Marvel Comic Books (Two Essential Spiderman trades)
33. Some Calvin and Hobbes (I have pretty much most of the strips, in about 8 books)
38. A Stack of Comics You Can Hand To Anybody's Kid (Would no. 8 fall into this?)
39. At Least A Few Alan Moore Comics (League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen, Top Ten)
41. A Few Comics About Comics (I have the third Animal Man trade)
43. Some Frank Miller Comics (DKR, DK2, Year One)
44. Several Lee/Ditko/Romita Amazing Spider-Man Comic Books (Two trades of Essential Spiderman)
48. An Array Of Comics In Various Non-Superhero Genres (My Faith In Frankie, Sandman, Fables, Bone, a trade each of Aliens and Predator etc)

Speaking of epic...

The mantra for the new era: "Comparing movies to LOTR is out of style. Now everything is the next Dark Knight."

Yes, CinemaBlend.com EiC Josh Tyler hits it right on the head.

Monstorous trees, anyone?

While talking about Blizzard's Diablo III, Lead Designer Jay Wilson made this really interesting comment on the state of designers in games:

I don't know anybody who isn't trying to hire background people. Part of it is that there's so much background to create, and part of it is that most people would rather create a big, giant monster than a tree. But boy, what we wouldn't give for some good tree creators! People who love to create trees are worth their weight in gold!

A very intersting observation, and quite true too. Heck, who'd pass up the opportunity to create a race of six-legged blue-skinned aliens or six-headed fire-breathing demons in favour or a deciduous forest or a flower shrubbery? I know I wouldn't...

The Plagarism of Greg Land

I was online searching for some reviews of Uncanny X-men #500, which featured art by Greg Land and Terry Dodson. As is the nature of the internet, one link led to another and I soon landed up at this blog post over at JimSmash.

Now, I wasn't ever particularly a big fan of Land's photorealistic art, as it was quite obvious at times he was just tracing or photosahopping images. So I tended to ignore his work. However, looking through the insane nuber of swipes and traces that Land has done (and most of it from magazine images and other copyrighted material), I'm more than a little horrified that he continuously gets work. It's not even like he's highly consistent in his referencing, as seen in this hilarious blog, comparing his Sue Storm renderings.

Marvel had also, way back in October '06, come out with an Original Artwork Policy, which lead to a discussion on the CBR forums, attacking Greg Land's work and his ethics. There were a few morons supporting Land, blind to the overwhelming evidence ponting to the contrary. Geek that I am anyway, I read all 34 pages of it.