Round 1 of our March Madness Webcomics Tournament ended last night at midnight, and we have the updated brackets showing who moves on to the next round– and who they battle next.
We now move on to Round 2! The next 16 contests will start going up Monday morning, with four each day. Again, voting will end on Saturday at midnight, so we expect some last minute vote getting at C2E2 this weekend– hey, what’s a trip to Chicago without ballot stuffing voting irregularities?
Will Axe Cop beat Dr. McNinja? Will Theater Hopper and Multiplex make it to the next round and go head to head? Only you can tell us!
Thanks to everybody’s who’s voted so far, and we hope you vote in the next rounds!
It’s always nice to see comic artists getting respect in places outside of the clubhouse, and so they were as the eighteenth annual Spectrum awards for excellence in science fiction and fantasy art were chosen Saturday evening. Spectrum is widely considered one of the most influential art awards in the genre.
This is disturbingly depressing– this is what we have to look forward to in movie theaters this summer:
Four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children’s book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.
And it gets no better in 2012:
Here’s what’s on tap two summers from now: an adaptation of a comic book. A reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a sequel to an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a TV show. A sequel to a sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a young-adult novel. And soon after: Stretch Armstrong. You remember Stretch Armstrong, right? That rubberized doll you could stretch and then stretch again, at least until the sludge inside the doll would dry up and he would become Osteoporosis Armstrong? A toy that offered less narrative interest than bingo?
And what’s truly horrifying? I looked at his list of titles and he missed a bunch. There’s at least one movie with $200 million dollar budget based on a game that springs to mind. Not a computer game, mind you– a board game.
Hell, I’m expecting a movie version of Minesweeper any day now. (Having said this, I just looked on YouTube, and lo and behold…)
Luckily, no one’s made a movie of Hungry Hungry Hippos yet, although now that I have committed this to pixels, somebody inevitably will make it.
I’d say this is just a movie phenomenon, but really– how much streamlining is going on in the comics industry themselves? Both DC and Marvel seem to be streamlining everything down to seven major brand lines each, leaving precious little room to breathe and make something new.
The worst takeaway from the article:
The good news is that the four-quadrant theory of marketing may now be eroding. The bad news is that it’s giving way to something worse—a new classification that encompasses all ages and both genders: the “I won’t grow up” demographic.
Does that sound like the current hardcore fanbase of comics to you too?
Due to several changes and additions going on as well as just general maintenance, ALL PULP will be inactive from this post until Monday, March 14th, 2011! Catch up on your favorite ALL PULP stories until then and come back Monday to see what ALL PULP has in store!! but for now we are….
TIPPIN’ HANCOCK’S HAT-Reviews of Things Pulp by Tommy Hancock THE SEA GHOST #1 (ONE SHOT) Written and Illustrated by Jay Piscopo Nemo Publishing Group
This is my third review in as many days of a Jay Piscopo work. The previous two reviews had words in them like ‘nostalgic’, ‘cutting edge’, ‘reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons’, etc. They were both digest sized graphic type novels that read extremely easily and were filled with great, fun stuff. The third item I’m reviewing from Jay is a straight up comic book spotlighting a character from Piscopo’s CAPT’N ELI universe and opened it expecting a totally different experience than reading the previous two works.
Thankfully for me, I was dead wrong.
THE SEA GHOST is a human given great powers by an undersea race in an effort to save his life. He fights during World War II as the Sea Raider, but after some tragedy, takes on the role of The Sea Ghost. He is well established in this role, working with his children as a hero as this comic opens.
I could get fancy and say all sorts of cool things about how Jay achieved what he wanted to, according to his own piece in the book, about a great homage to characters, especially Space Ghost. That feel is definitely here. But I think I’ll simply say that this story is just plain FUN. I opened it and swore I was looking at a Gold Key comic from when I was a kid. And that is a COMPLIMENT! I enjoyed the ‘independent’ comics even then because the styles were so different and experimental. THE SEA GHOST harkens back to that as well as back to the great Silver Age books where literally anything could happen. The Sea Ghost can investigate a strange ship and get sucked in and be on another planet and it works! (That happens, by the way). The focus is definitely on the Ghost in this issue, but there are cool threads and supporting characters that pepper this thing like bullets from a Tommy gun. I particularly want to see more of a trio of characters who show up toward the end!!
THE SEA GHOST is a rollicking tale that has a ton of stuff in it, but also stays very true to the ‘undersea’ nature of the character as well as evokes comic tales of times past, the ones that were full of wonder and excitement and just had the intention of telling one heckuva tale.
FIVE OUT OF FIVE TIPS OF THE HAT-This one hit with me on all cylinders.
As you’ve seen if you’ve been following the site at all this week, we’ve taken sixty-four popular webcomics and are putting them head to head in a single-elimination tournament. As a result, it’s been a very busy week here at ComicMix, and we have less than 40 hours of voting in the first round, so we wanted to point to some of the highlights.
The contest getting the highest vote totals right now is Gronk vs. Zeke Is Hungry, which is seeing a lot of love from their respective Twitter followers. The most one-sided blowout so far has to be Maakies vs. Erfworld, where Rob Balder is beating the heck out of Tony Millionaire.
At this point, there are a couple of upsets in the works, with young upstarts beating out long established strips. While one or two people pointed out that some of the match-ups are a little odd, we couldn’t find any better way to select matches than a random selection process. Is it fair that either Penny Arcade or Hark! A Vagrant! will be knocked out in the first round? Maybe not, but one was going to be knocked out by the end of the tournament no matter what happened. It’s a testament to the strength of the entire webcomics community that there are so many good strips out there that I personally have been tearing my hair out over many of the choices (who can choose between some of these, both are just so gooooood… but of course, that’s what makes this exciting) and that there are so many good strips that we didn’t include that we may have to do another one of these next month. How does April Armageddon sound to you?
But wait– we aren’t even done with the first round of this month’s contest. So if you haven’t voted, your chance is right below!
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