This is the teaser trailer for the pilot of Fallout, English producer/director Tupaq Felber's adaptation of Peter Bagge's Apocalypse Nerd which Felber's currently pitching to the BBC. It's officially described as "A new 6 episode comedy-drama, exploring the edges of genre and style with the unique voice that distinguishes the best of television today. Fallout is the story of Douglas and Gordon, two friends battling their quarter-life crisis, who come home from a weekend in the woods to find the world has come to an end. ... Weird, funny, heartwarming and then a bit more weird. Fallout is to Cult British TV what global annihilation is to human kind: the next big thing."
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying HOLY CRAP GIMME. I hope to hell the Beeb picks this up (and then promptly re-airs it on BBC America).
• Gift Guide: At RevolutionSF, Rick Klaw includes Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons in his "Geek Gift Guide": "The incredible three hardcover boxed set celebrates one of art's funniest and most disturbing cartoonists. ... I promise every geek would be thrilled to find this under the tree. I just hope Santa doesn't throw out his back out delivering this massive collection."
• Gift Guide: Love & Maggie presents a "Los Bros Hernandez Chistmas Shopping Guide"
• Review: "[Gilbert] Hernandez is one of the four or five greatest cartoonists in the world, and it's satisfying to see him work through any plot with any restriction he'd like to place on it. The Troublemakers feels like a movie for more than its story: it's either all exterior information or nearly so, it has opening credits, it has a three-act structure, it uses a wide-panel 'shot' throughout. ... Attaching a world of significance to forms recognizable to most of us as pulp isn't a new thing, but I don't think any of the filmmakers famous for it have done it any better than Hernandez." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
• Plug: "Popeye Vol 4: Plunder Island: Prior to Fantagraphics’ awesome collections of E.C. Segar’s awesome comic strip, this was the only storyline from Thimble Theater I’d ever read before…in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Does that mean it’s some sort of classic? It should be; it’s fantastic. Anyway, the latest collection is $30 and 170 pages, and, like the first three volumes, it’s beautifully designed and so big and sturdy that it’s practically seaworthy." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama
• Plug: "This is it. The crown jewel in the Popeye crown. If you only buy one volume in the series, blah blah blah. Seriously, hopefully you've been collecting all the Popeye books, because it's one of the greatest comics ever, but this volume contains what must surely be E.C. Segar's finest hour, namely, the 'Plunder Island' storyline, where in Popeye and friends search for treasure and come afoul of the Sea Hag." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6
• Plug: "I've been in long time love with Femke Hiemstra. Her smoky and detailed fantasy landscapes are often coupled with outrageous characters, from vegetables to the floating head of Marie Antoinette. ... [Y]ou can pick up a copy of her splendid book, Rock Candy, which would make a perfect Christmas gift for the art lover or art lover to be." – J.L. Schnabel
• Plug: "The charming blend of original and well-known fairy tale characters into one slightly dysfunctional castle household only gets better as it progresses." – School Library Journal, on Castle Waiting Vol. II
• Mutual Appreciation: We love comedy genius Graham Linehan, and he loves us, as evidenced by the set dressing on The IT Crowd (not to mention interviews he's given); apparently he makes it explicit again in the bonus features to the 3rd season DVD set of the show, which we've yet to see, according to the DVD review at Den of Geek
• Things to see: Ted Dawson of Three Men in a Tub presents E.C. Segar's original art for the August 28, 1938 Thimble Theatre (which will appear in our final Popeye volume in 2011; via The Comics Reporter)
• Things to see: Eric Reynolds comments on this link forwarded by Jason T. Miles: "I love knowing that there was a day in Fanta's past when they could call Kevin Nowlan on the phone for a last minute design job!"
We don't have any new books or comics in comic shops this week, but I noticed that Gilbert Hernandez's The Naked Cosmos DVD/minicomic from Bright Red Rocket is back in print and available from comic shops starting tomorrow!
Also, as of yesterday The Drinky Crow Show, the animated series based on Tony Millionaire's Maakies, is available as part of Adult Swim's made-to-order Custom DVD system. The "builder" Flash interface doesn't seem to want to work on my computer, so I can't verify whether all the episodes are available, but they're promising to roll out the entire Adult Swim library "in time for the holiday" — hopefully this will include Michael Kupperman's Snake 'n' Bacon pilot too.
Exciting news here... Our own Peter Bagge has a development deal with FOX for THE BRADLEYS and the network has just ordered a pilot. The only details we can reveal just yet are that Bagge has a pilot script deal with FOX for an animated prime time series featuring The Bradleys (i.e.: the pre-HATE era when Buddy Bradley was a teen and still lived at home). We'll reveal more news when we can...
Who do you think should voice Buddy, Babs, Butch, Mom & Dad?
Esther Pearl Watson appears on KERA's Think to talk to Art&Seek host Jerome Weeks about her "hilarious and poignant" graphic novel Unlovable. Click here for the streaming video (screen capture above).
• Review: "You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!... collects all the [Fletcher] Hanks material not included in the first book. Hanks' hyperactive, colorful, robust, and crazily disproportionate art is perfectly matched to his over-the-top storytelling... There are few artists, from the Golden Age to today, that so deftly blended goofy dialogue with terrifying violence and surreal situations; for better or worse, Hanks was a real original. [Grade] B+" - The A.V. Club
• Review: "[Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti] is a brutally funny and disturbing attempt to push some buttons, either uncomfortably or comfortably mired in taboo. The aesthetic of freaks, geeks, nerds and ugly men and women, all with dark pasts, dirty fetishes, sociopathic tendencies, and murderous habits all play out over 120 odd pages of frenetic cartoon violence, sometimes sexual, sometimes suicidal, sometimes offensive, but always funny." - Geek Pie
• Review: "Explainers [is] a veritable Bible of middle class American dysfunction... [Jules] Feiffer reveals the depths of his subject not only through the dialogue — which are filled with psychological, social and politic depths that few cartoonists have ever plumbed — but also through an amazing skill to capture the body language so crucial to human communication... Explainers is 500 pages of startling truth captured in sequential squiggles on paper, a real masterpiece worth delving into." - John E. Mitchell, North Adams Transcript
• Profile/Review: Robert Birnbaum of The Morning News proposes "a Mount Rushmore of American illustration" consisting of Bill Mauldin, Jules Feiffer, Ed Sorel, Seymour Chwast, and David Levine, adding "American Presidents is a 128-page compilation that assembles Levine’s survey of American leaders and their coteries and skewers them with delightful results. It should be a required text in American history courses—Levine’s images powerfully expose the venality, duplicity, and hypocrisy of the upper reaches of our government."
• Interviews: Inkstuds presents a two-fer of audio talks with newly-minted Mome contributors: first up, it's Noah Van Sciver (whose comics "read like they came from the mind of a crazed hobo. Seriously, they are great"); up second, it's T. Edward Bak (described simply as "great")
• Plug: "Olivier Schrauwen is one of my favourite new cartoonists, and one of the best artists to appear in recent issues of Mome." - Richard Cowdry, Love the Line
There's been a bit of confusion with the schedule but Michael Kupperman's star-studded Snake 'N' Bacon TV program definitely makes its debut TONIGHT at 12:45 AM on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim -- that's less than 3 hours away for you East Coasters. And as if you need more reason to stay up late, it's followed by a spiritual cousin, the excellent British comedy show The Mighty Boosh. If you like things that are funny and good, for gosh sakes, it's your lucky night! The only way it could be better is if they were also showing The Drinky Crow Show, but I guess you can't have everything.
