Author: Glenn Hauman

Why just read The Anchor, when you can be in the actual comic?

Westfield Comics and BOOM! Studios have announced a contest where one lucky fan will be drawn into an issue of The Anchor, the new series by Phil Hester and Brian Churilla published by BOOM! Studios.

To enter the contest, send an email to anchor.me@westfieldcomics.com saying why you should be drawn into The Anchor. Entries should be no more than two sentences and 100 words or less. The contest begins Monday, January 11 and ends on Monday, January 18.

Each entry will be judged by both BOOM!’s editor-in-chief Mark Waid and Westfield’s Content Editor, Roger Ash. The winner of the contest will be announced on Sunday, January 31 with the winner to be drawn into a forthcoming issue of BOOM!’s The Anchor. For a complete list of rules, go here.

What is it with Stuart Townsend and characters with swords? First, he leaves the role of Aragorn early in the shooting of  the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and now we hear that he’s out of the role of Fandral in the adaptation of Marvel’s Thor. AP cites that old standby, “creative differences”. Fandral will now be played by Joshua Dallas, who was in the Doctor Who episode “Silence in the Library”.

I can think of a few possibilities:

His swordsmanship isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Director Kenneth Branagh thinks having Townsend leave the production early is some sort of a good luck charm (see LOTR).

From the Los Angeles Times:

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked the Northern California city of
Eureka on Saturday, snapping power lines, toppling chimneys, knocking
down traffic signals, shattering windows and prompting the evacuation
of at least one apartment building.

All right, which of you geniuses ignored the “Do Not Touch” sign?

Art Clokey, whose bendable creations became a pop
culture phenomenon through countless satires, toys and revivals, has
died at age 88.

Caretaker Chrisanne Wollett Clokey says Clokey died Friday in Los Osos on California’s Central Coast.

Clokey is best known for the creation of Gumby, the green clay character with his horse friend Pokey. Clokey first molded Gumby for a surreal student project at the
University of Southern California called “Gumbasia.” That led to his
making shorts for the Howdy Doody Show and several series through the
years. He said he based Gumby’s swooping head on the hairdo of his father, who died when Clokey was nine.

Clokey also created the moralizing and often satirized claymation duo Davey and Goliath, which became the direct inspriation for Adult Swim’s Moral Orel.

Eddie Murphy restored Gumby’s popularity in the 1980s with
his send-up of the character on “Saturday Night Live” as a
cigar-smoking primadonna. Other late-night revivals followed, including appearances on Canadian late-night television with Gumby being portrayed by comic-book artist Ty Templeton. Apparently, Ty’s portrayal of Gumby ended when he mentioned that one of the books he spent time walking through was Portnoy’s Complaint.

Gumby had a brief career in the comics, starting in 1986 with Blackthorne Publishing, then later Comico and Wildcard Ink.

Yes, you read that right. Gawker, the website that spends an inordinate amount of time picking on the famous, the near famous, the near to the famous, and the need to be famous, has actually defended science fiction convention goers:

The show takes a lazy jab at nerds in Boba Fett, Storm Trooper, and
Star Trek costumes, making theories ranging from reasonable hypothesis,
to outside the box ingenuity, to television inspired, to the completely
ridiculous.

Please. The whole segment is just an excuse to make fun of nerds.

I think we have to redo the Geek Hierarchy chart now.

Sweet Christmas. Daaaamn.

A few thoughts:

• Archie, you already can’t choose between Betty and Veronica.
• The first person to say anything about Archie chasing strange pussy gets punched in the neck.
• I don’t envy Archie Comics the amount of bigoted hate mail they’re going to get from a certain segment of the populace. And I applaud them for doing it. There are some people that deserve to be pissed off.
• On the other hand, maybe they’re hoping to increase sales because they’ll be bought for bonfires.
• This could be a very interesting story. Not to be confused with Stories, the 70’s one hit wonder best know for the song “Brother Louie”, which applies very well here. In fact, all you have to do is change Louie to Archie and see how little things have changed in 35 years:

She was black as the night

Archie was whiter than white

Danger, danger when you taste brown sugar

Archie fell in love overnight



Nothing bad, it was good

Archie had the best girl he could

When he took her home

To meet his mama and papa

Archie knew just where he stood



Archie Archie Archie, Archie
Archie Archie Archie, Arch-I
Archie Archie Archie, Archie
Archie Archie you’re gonna cry



There he stood in the night

Knowing what’s wrong from what’s right

He took her home to meet his mama and papa

Man, he had a terrible fright



Archie nearly caused a scene

Wishin’ it was a dream

Ain’t no diff’rence if you’re black or white

Brothers, you know what I mean


Archie Archie Archie, Archie
Archie Archie Archie, Arch-I
Archie Archie Archie, Archie

Archie Archie you’re gonna cry

PR after the jump.

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