Monthly Archive: October 2008

Years ago, I was at a comic convention where Jimmy Palmiotti told a story about the most vocal fan he ever encountered: A fellow who apparently was constantly sending letters and posting to message boards about how he read the latest thing Palmiotti had done and it sucked, sucked, sucked. At first he was annoyed, but then Palmiotti realized, hey, this guy buys and pores over everything I ever write or draw. This guy is my biggest fan. So he sent him a Christmas card that year.

Tim Buckley, creator of Ctrl-Alt-Del, must have a really impressive Christmas card list. (Just look at the comments on this review for an example.)

Ctrl-Alt-Del follows the misadventures of Ethan, whose hobbies include gaming, slacking, completely misinterpreting normal human interactions, flashes of engineering brilliance, and forming gaming-related cults. The vibe is sitcom-esque—imagine Friends if everyone played video games, Chandler was a robot built out of an Xbox, Ross had a pet penguin, and Phoebe was the main character. (It really plays better than it sounds. Kinda like Friends, actually.)

Buckley also produces an online animated series which can be downloaded via subscription, or purchased on DVD. There are three compilation books available at the CAD Store along with shirts, magnets and posters. And Buckley has organized an annual massive LAN party called Digital Overload in Providence, RI.

Notable moments:

From the very beginning, CAD set itself apart from the pack, though this distinction eventually disappeared.  
Ethan invented the gaming holiday, Winter-Een-Mas. The holiday later became a tradition. 
Ethan also established a gaming religion.
Early storyline breaks feature Chef Brian, a humanoid acid trip who cooks.
The recent “serious” storyline.

Drama: Low moving towards moderate. Early strips are disconnected and included some cartoon-style violence. Recent strips have seen several more serious plot arcs and dramatic situations, broken up by non-continuity video game parody strips.

Humor: Appeals to the 18-25 male demographic. Heavy in the video game jokes and geeky sitcom-style plans that cause hilarity to ensue.

Continuity: Moderate to high. Plot arcs will run for several weeks, and be broken up by stand-alone bits. The earliest comics stand alone the best, and set the stage for the running gags and character arcs in the later ones.

Art: Buckley has been criticized for his characters looking similar, though that’s a criticism of his style; you’d never have a problem telling them apart. Panels tend to be a bit static

Archive: Six years of four-panel comics (1000+ strips) plus several months of daily black-and-white “sillies”.

Updates: The main comic updates Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Sillies update daily. Buckley is excellent about keeping his update schedule.

Risk/Reward: Buckley’s recent increase in continuity is a very acquired taste for the audience—if you like it, then it’s easy to get into the “I must keep reading so I know what happens next!” trap. If you don’t, then you can obviously pick up and drop the comic at your leisure. Though the lives of the characters can and will obviously go on for some time, Buckley is very good about wrapping up individual plotlines and creating points where the story stops for a while. It’s fairly safe to assume that if he decided to abandon the comic, there’d be a passable ending.

Bones McCoy might not be a magician, but someone at Paramount is casting a spell over the internet as the studio unveils several new photos from the upcoming Star Trek reboot. The photos were divvied out by the company to different Web sites, and are also featured in the recent issue of Entertainment Weekly. The magazine has an exclusive cover depicting James Kirk (Chris Pine) and Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto), the stars of the upcoming film.

This is the second time this year that Paramount has deliberately distributed production stills online for their movies. Earlier this year, Paramount assigned different character portraits from G.I. Joe to carefully chosen Web sites, including IGN and Latino Review.

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Even super-heroes need to take a little R&R every now and again. The Hollywood Reporter announced today that Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis and Malin Akerman are joining Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman and Vince Vaughn for Couples Retreat. The Universal backed comedy is directed by Peter Billingsley and scripted byFavreau.

The story centers on "four couples who go to a tropical island resort, with one couple working on their marriage and the others sucked into the resort’s couples therapy." Bell is playing Bateman’s wife, Davis is playing Favreau’s and Akerman is Vaughn’s. Faizon Love will be the fourth male lead, though no female counterpart has been announced.

Nearly every person attached to Couples Retreat has some sort of past or current involvement in a superhero franchise. Kristen Bell recently starred in NBC’s Heroes and is expected to continue on a recurring basis. Malin Akerman plays the Silk Spectre in Watchmen. Jon Favreau directed and starred in Iron Man and its upcoming sequel, as well as played Foggy Nelson in Daredevil. Jason Bateman was recently seen in Hancock. Faizon Love was briefly featured in 1993’s Meteor Man. Kristin Davis recently appeared in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D. Even director Billingsley had a bit role in Iron Man.

Vince Vaughn is the only one left on the super-hero sidelines. While he’s starred in some geek friendly projects such as The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the actor lacks a super-hero franchise to call his own, which begs the question: what super-hero project should Vaughn get involved in, if any, and who should he play? Give us your suggestions!

The third part of IESB’s interview with Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman has hit the internet. The studio bigwig unveils a great amount of information, both concrete and speculative, about many of Fox’s hottest properties. We’ve got the breakdown below:

Independence Day 2
"We would love to do it," Rothman states. "It’s really a matter of [original director] Rolan [Emmerich], it’s up to Roland. He knows that we’d love to do it. I don’t think there is a script but there have been a lot of ideas .. any day that Roland wanted to do [ID4 2], we would be very excited to do it because I think, yes, that story definitely can and should continue."

Predator 3
Rothman says he’d be open to a reboot without Arnold, but is skeptical of a third film starring the governator. "Just give [Arnold Schwarzenegger] my number," Rothman says. "Tell him as soon as he gets the state budget signed to call me."

Silver Surfer
Any chance of a Silver Surfer film within three years? "Yes," answers Rothman, "We are trying to do a stand alone Silver Surfer movie."

The SIMS
"It’s in development," Rothman reveals. "It’s being developed closely with the game maker. I know the guys who make the game are working hard on developing the script but it hasn’t gotten up to my level yet."

X-Files
Surprisingly, Rothman is open to a third film. "It’s really up to Chris, David [Duchovny] and Gillian [Anderson]," Rothman says. Regarding the recent film’s poor box office numbers, Rothman defends it by calling it "the film that Chris wanted to do. He was determined to do a stand alone film, a film that wasn’t dependent upon the mythology. His interest in making the movie, was in the characters and in their relationship, not the mythology."

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
"[The film] is pretty dark," says Rothman of Wolverine‘s tone. He also continues to say that Deadpool plays an "integral part" in the movie, and that the CG work being used is "state of the art." As for the prospect of a Deadpool film, "we will have to see."

For information on other films, click the link to read the full interview!