The more I think about it, the more I really do want to do a Who Fan Comic. I'm definitely thinking I'll go with my John Smith and the Common Men idea. Mostly to play with the idea of dropping Ten in the middle of the Beatlemania era, and having fun with 60's music in general (this has to somehow involve Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and a dead drummer)

I also am really fond of the idea of Ten and Susan interacting. I especially enjoy the idea of Susan having some little secrets she's keeping from her Grandfather, since from what I've seen of her in the old serials her character never really developed much beyond the naïve ingenue.I want to keep that innocence, but play up the idea she has a life on Earth beyond school and the TARDIS.

I just did this little drawing to see how well I can capture Tennant's likeness. Ever since I started following Rich Morris' comic blog and his numerous fan comics featuring the Doctor, I've been thinking of trying my own hand at it. I did try that one time way back when. I'm kind of tempted to brush off that old idea I had at the time and use Ten for the Doctor, though I'm not sure how I'd end up working out the story.

Plus, I've gone and aquired loads of other ideas since then. Right now I'm getting a rather fun idea about John Smith and the Common Men a beat band mentioned as being Susan's favorite from 1963. So maybe the Doctor finds himself stuck in that time (and trying hard to avoid his original self) and starts the band with a couple other aliens stuck on Earth as well? Which ends up being quite interesting when Susan sneaks off one night to go see them play unbeknownst to her Grandfather.

And now a thousand fanfics get launched from one line in this thing.

As I said Tuesday, I downloaded a stage recording of Evil Dead: The Musical, and I'm actually quite impressed with the show. A lot of the humor of the show comes from pointing out the inconsistencies between the two Evil Dead movies. Overall I thought the show was funny as hell and I'm definitely putting it on the short list for showing at Fencon. Maybe double bill it with Horrible Turn

Between Netflix and the internet, I've just about given up on actually buying movies, but the Star Trek Two disc Target exckusive with the Enterprise model was just too awesome to pass up. I've got it sitting on the shelf in the living room, and probably will be watching the movie tonight.

On a semi Trek related note, it turns out Frank Miller's pretentious cinematic abortion wasn't the first time they made a movie of the Spirit. They cast Sam "Flash Gordon" Jones as our hero and DS9's Nana Visitor to play the leads.



I've downloaded it, and I'm still debating whetehr it gets on the Fencon list.

I really hate missing the chance to see Evil Dead the Musical when a local theater group put it on for Halloween. mnelson even mentioned that the cst from that show and a production of Rocky Horror up in Lewisville did a karaoke night for charity, which would have been truly awesome to see.

Well, thanks to the Manchester Mourge a copy of a 2003 production of the show is now available for download on rapidshare. The blogger says the video and audio is of at least watchable quality, if not the best. I'm in the process of downloading right now and seeing what it's like.

One of the guys in ORAC clued me into THIS TV. It's a mostly old movie station playing on one of the digital subchannels (here in Dallas it's playing on WFAA 8.3) The couple of times I've caught it, they had on just some old TV movies I wasn't too interested in. Though I too a close look at it's schedule and saw they had a block of old sci-fi films planned for this weekend. If this is part of it's regular shcedule plan, it kind of reminds me of the old Sci-Fi Saturday showings they played on Channel 27 back in the 80's and 90's.

I'm really tempted to bring my covnerter box into the computer room and hook it up so I can use my Media Center program again. Saturday morning they are playing Starchaser: The Legend of Orin one of my favorite animated movies of all time. Yeah, it's a cheesy Heavy Metal ripoff of Star Wars, but I still geek out about it. Ohh! I see it's been released on DVD

If nothing else, I really should look into getting a flatscreen TV to use as a monitor and hook it up to the antanea. THIS TV does sound like a good station to have playing in the background while I'm drawing on a Saturday afternoon.

Sunday: 11-4
Monday: Off
Tuesday: 9-5
Wednesday: 2:30-10
Thursday(Thanksgiving): Off
Friday: 6-3
Saturday: 10-6

So I get shorted on Sunday, but get to make up that time on Black Friday, oh yay.

As I said earlier, I offered to moderate a panel at the Dallas Webcomic Expo. They accepted and I got put on "How not to get burned while laying out. (panel placement/layout)" They don't have me listed yet, but I talked with the guy running the panels about it.

What's odd is that I looked up the other guests on the list and took a look at their comics...

Boomer Cardinale - Tubularman
Jonathan Caustrita- Tiki Coladas
Cyrus Mortazavi- Off Campus
And for comparison, my comic- Sargasso Soul

Now, this panel is supposed to be about the panel placement/page layout/design aspects of webcomics, and the three guys in the discusssion are all 4 panel gag-a-day cartoonists. I've got nothing agaist the artists or their work, and I'm sure they'll have points to be made. It just strikes me that you'd want a slightly wider variety of artistic styles being displayed to give people a better sense of how to do this. I pulled out some of my books on comic art and theory to brush up on the subject. Plus I bought a tabletop paper tablet to help illustrate some ideas. Hopefully this panel will work out okay.

...that may (or may not) happen in Sargasso Soul:

1. We actually see Lenore as a mermaid in her natural habitat.


2. Serena transforms into a mermaid


3. The rest of the story of Daphnis and Thyrsis gets told.


4. Lenore and Chris have sex.


5. Betrayal by one of the characters.


6. A cameo by Jenny Everywhere.


7. More nudity of both female and male characters.


8. More experimenting with perspective and background.


9. More ninjas!


10. Zombie Pirates


11. Ninjas vs. Zombie Pirates!


12. Crossovers with other webcomics


13. Stick in random characters and references to webcomics I've done in the past (many of which are no longer online)


14. More Classical mythology references


15. Use Public Domain Golden Age comic book characters in the story.

The current comic page I'm working on is one of the most technically challenging ones I've attempted. I've got several characters standing on the promenade of a shopping mall. I was modeling the space after the Houston Galleria, which features a lot of open spaces and arching skylights. It's complicated to draw, to say the least, and I really can't say I've been that strong on perspective drawing anyway. The last time I really tried something like this wasn't half as difficult (and what detail I did have ended up getting hidden behind word balloons) so this page is pushing the envelope for me a bit.

I guess I need something challenging like this, cause I have to admit my interest in the comic is waning a bit. Worse yet, I was toying around with doing a super hero comic, and any time I have some bright and shiny new thing to draw it tends to divert my attention. So I'm probably better staying focused on the current project than flitting about from on idea to the next and never getting anything accomplished.

It seems the city of Arlington has revived the Caelum Moor sculptures. The Stonehenge-like sculptures that started life as part of a business park on I-20 and ended up getting dismatled after massive complaints by Fundamentalist whackjobs claiming the park was a magnet for Satanists/Wiccans/Zoroastrians/What have you.

One of the original nutters behind the attack against the sculptures has put out a tract. All about his battle against these evil slabs of pink granite.

The installation is now located at the park on Randol Mill Road East of the Stadium. Maybe this Spring it might be an interesting trip out there to take a look at this thing.

As per tradition, the_blue_fenix and her husband hosted the annual ORAC Halloween party. fyrdrakken came along with me since she didn't have any other plans that evening. Much fun was had, especially the evening film watching with the MST3K version of Manos: the Hands of Fate and The Dunwich Horror. After some thought about Dunwich, I've come to the conclusion that the main reason they never refered to the monster in the movie as Cthullu is that nobody in the production had an idea of how to pronounce the name.

fyrdrakken linked me to ursulav's LJ where she talked about When did Tinkerbell become a Skank? (with some truly awesome commentary) which lead me to mari_redstar's journal, where she's talking about Disney Princessey mechandise for some non Disney Princesses, starting with Leia from Star Wars.

That got me thinking of Disneyfying some other Princesses of Science Fiction, she'd already mentions Dejah Thoris of Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars series. Which got me thinking what other noteworthy Sci-fi princesses were out there?

Elaan of Troyious from Star Trek. She's a ruler of a planet, so that's close enough in my book. Plus she has such a distinctive look she's perfect for inclusion.

Astra of Atrios from Doctor Who. A Princesss so awesome even Romana wanted to be like her.

Hmm, I need at least two more, Disney always has them in a group of six (usually Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Jasmine, Ariel, and Belle) Can anyone think of any other Sci-fi francises with Princesses?

Go Watch Castle, NOW The first five minutes are truly awesome...

Not much going on at work. Things are okay and managment has moved Greasy Turd to the salesfloor, where is ability do absolutely nothing will obviously not hinder his successs at the company.

Oh well, here's some links...

Io9 lists the 25 scariest science experiments ever conducted obviously Josef Mengle, and the Russian Zombie Dog head get mentions, but it's the creepy mind control technologyof recent invention that's what really can make you into a Luddite and swear off technology forever.

Amelia Earhart's Final Resting Place Believed Found Evidence suggests that Earhart's plane may have ran out of fuel and had to land on coral reef near a deserted island called Nikumaroro. Apparently a partial skeleton was found on the isalnd in 1940, which suggests she might have died soon after becoming a castaway.

And because it is seriously awesome: a clip from a fan made Doctor Who anime (which is going straight to the Fencon video room once it's finished)

Twicon has switched their main page to a static page with the following comments about their two 2010 shows:

TwiCon Vegas/Toronto 2010 is "vamping" up our convention!  Are you a Twilight fan?  How about a True Blood fanatic?  Can't stop watching CW's new Vampire Diaries?  Love to read JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series, or other vamp pop culture books?

TwiCon is bringing the vamp pop culture phenomenon to Las Vegas/Toronto!  Offering new programming and stars from today's hottest vampire movies, television series and books, TwiCon 2010 is truly the most exclusive convention for the Edward, Sookie, Elena, and Brotherhood fan. Stay tuned as we announce registration dates, attending celebrities and special guests, new programming and tons more with our new and improved website!

Sounds like they are going more cross genre in 2010, which actually intrigues me enough to consider a return trip, depending on what they offer next year. I also notice they have scheduled their show before Creation's Twi-tour show is the last weekend in July, and Twicon happens in mid June, which makes for an interesting dynamic. I also notice Creation has a Dallas Twi-Tour stop planned for November of next year, which is really tempting for Skippy to make a return appearance :)

It's been a relaxing day off. I got the grocery shopping done this morning, I got anotehr page of the comic uploaded, and I even started the cast page and added a bio for Lenore, complete with a full color picture. I did learn today that Comic Genesis will be doing some cleaning up of some comics with tagboard (like my old comic) so I emailed the admin to see about regaining access. One of the reasons I quit using my Comic Genesis site was the fact that I'd lost the password (and worse, the email address linked to it) to the page.

mnelson linked to the Lewisville Community Theater production of Rocy Horror , which I am quite tempted to head out and se this evening. I'm wondering how it will rate to the Collin County Community College production from a few years ago...The Rocky Horror Puppet Show Check out this Youtube clip to get an idea of what they did.

Ohhh! An Anti-Palin book with an almost identical cover will be released the same day as her biography
This may be the greatest thing in the history of the world, ever: The Nation is releasing a book of essays slamming Sarah Palin for being the rollicking jalopy of folksy horseshit that she is titled, Going Rouge, An American Nightmare, on the same day that Palin’s autobiography titled, Going Rogue, An American Life, hits the bookstores. The two covers are strikingly similar, featuring similar fonts and photographs, with the biggest differences between the two being that The Nation’s book has dark storm clouds on it’s cover and won’t be filled with indecipherable gibberish capable of making a sane person want to stab themselves in the eye repeatedly with a rusty spoon. This is so amazing that I sincerely want to perform unspeakable acts of freakery upon Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, just to show my appreciation.

A friend in ORAC linked to the Band from TV Amazon page. It's a band made up of Hugh Laurie (House) and Greg Grunberg (Heroes) as well
as Jesse Spencer (House) and Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) doing a charity album of various rock standards. Since the money is going to charity, and Hugh Laurie is pretty good singer, it's defintitely worth checking out.

Here's Hugh doing one of his musical numbers from A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Io9 has the first glimpse of the new TARDIS interior. looks a bit more quasi-Victorian with a flash of art deco.