Daily Panel | The Prince and the Tortoise

From Ramona Fradon and Chris Duffy's adaptation of the One Thousand and One Nights story "The Prince and the Tortoise" in the Fairy Tale Comics anthology.

Belly Dancing Wonder Woman

10 movies I loved in 2010

So here they are. My ten favorite films from last year. Not necessarily the "best" in any objective way, but the ten I unabashedly dug the most.

Number 10



The other Leonardo DiCaprio movie that invites more than one possible interpretation. I like this one more though because though everything wasn't spelled out, it didn't need to cut away just before a crucial moment to deliver the ambiguity. We got the complete story. How we interpret it is up to us.

Number 9



Iron Man 2 got a lot of flack for not being Iron Man. And its critics are right that it isn't as tight a movie as the first one and feels like it spends a lot of time setting up The Avengers. But it was very entertaining in the process and though I never felt like Tony was actually going to die, I was engaged by the mystery of how he was going to survive. Which really, is as much as any adventure series with a recurring character can do. Besides, if nothing else, the film brought Scarlett Johannson as Black Widow and that's Top Ten worthy all by itself.

Pass the Comics: Son of Sinbad

Ransom of Shipwreck Shoals



Joe Kubert draws this story about the Son of Sinbad (who doesn't seem to have any other name than that) who goes after some lost treasure of his dad's in order to rescue a gorgeous slave girl. [Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Art Show: Come with me to the Casbah

The Swords of Shahrazar



By Michael W Kaluta. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Steam Queen



By Ted Naifeh.

Dame White



By Craig Wilson. [Art Jumble]

Black Canary



By John Bolton. [Stormantic]



By Evan "Doc" Shaner. This one's from my own collection. I bought it from him at SpringCon this year.



All I know about the cosplayer is that her name is Molly, that she's apparently a cat lady who's not afraid to talk about the effects of nail care on certain bodily functions, and that she gets quadruple points for the awesome, blue leggings.

Art Show: Never Too Many Cookes

Dragon-in-the-Box



By NC Wyeth. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Red Sonja



By Darwyn Cooke. [Comic Art Fans]

I'm not so sure she's a Federal Agent



Artist Unknown. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

After the break: Much more Darywn Cooke (including Black Canary, Death, Wonder Woman, and Padme). Also, an alien robot and an apocalyptic archer.

Art Show: Neptune Rex

The Kelpie



By John Duncan. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

The Indigestible Triton



Artist Unknown [Pulp of the Day]

Megachompadon



I'm not sure who the artist is, but this is a design from the Mosterpocalypse collectible miniatures game. 

Lamp on the Beach



By Pierre Alary.

The New Guinea Contract



By Anthony Carpenter.

Jungle



Another background from Disney's Tarzan. [Animation Backgrounds]

Giant Wasp



Another design for Monsterpocalypse.

Hulk Angry!



By Christian Cornia. [Art Jumble]

Black Canary and Huntress



By Andie Tong. [Romeo's Tumblring]

Mary Marvel



By Bruce Timm.

And Now the News: Hooker with a Heart of Gold

Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys



I appreciate a good pirate band at the local Renaissance Festival. I'll even buy their CDs if they're cool enough. But that's not what this is. This is 43 pirate songs by folks like Nick Cave, Lou Reed, and Bryan Ferry. This is something that just went into my Amazon shopping cart.

Asgarda



Not sure how real this is, but it's a story about a Carpathian tribe of modern-day Amazons. And that is the coolest sentence I will type this week. [Boing Boing via Rose and Isabel]

Ghost Town Gallery



Ransom Riggs has a great collection of photos from what's left of the old mining boomtown of Bodie, California. It's spooky and exciting and full of cool history. I wonder if Rosa May, a town whore who died after nursing some men through a pneumonia epidemic, was a distant relation.

20 Movies That are Better Than the Books



There's only one movie on the list that I've also read the book for, so I can't speak to most of the entries. Especially since the write-ups for each don't go into detail about what makes the movies better. But I do agree with that one entry. As much as I enjoyed Tolkien as a teenager, Peter Jackson's movies are an improvement.

Arabian Nights movie

It's doubtful that the new Arabian Nights movie in the works will ever make that list. The description does make it sound pretty lowbrow. Instead of Scheherazade's cleverly saving her own skin with a series of stories, she'll be the damsel-in-distress as an unnamed hero teams up with Sinbad, Aladdin, and the genie to rescue her.

I think that there could be a way of making that plot work on its own terms, but as an adaptation, particularly seen from a feminist viewpoint, that completely sucks.

I had to laugh when /Film described it as "Rob Leifeld’s version of the story," and was further amused (though also slightly horrified) when they noted that that had already been done and linked to the Adventureblog as proof. I still stand by my assertion that Dan Wickline's story in Zenescope's Sinbad series was a lot of fun, but I do get the Leifeld comparison in regards to some of the art.

Christmas is coming

And I totally want this shower. Hint hint. [Brother Cal]

The Return of Futura



Finally, I'm very excited that Sleestak is going to be posting some more Futura comics. As he describes it:

Futura is the story of a secretary kidnapped by aliens in order to provide superior genetic material for their dying race. Futura, however, rebels and escapes her captors, vowing to make her way in the cosmos while fighting to bring down the evil masters of the galaxy.

He's also indexed the links to his first eight entries in the saga, so go get caught up!

Adventureblog Gallery: Mad Monks and Mermaids

I'd totally play an RPG called Mad Monks and Mermaids.

Time for Survival



By Virgil Finlay. (Today I'll be breaking my usual rule about not posting multiple images from someone else's single post. Apologies to Golden Age Comic Book Stories, but there's too much cool art in that post and I can't pick just one work. I was lucky to narrow it to two.)

Your 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Picture of the Day



By Alphonse de Neuville.

Seal of the Damned



Also by Virgil Finlay.

Your Marvel Classics Comics Cover of the Day



By Gene Colan.

Exploration Team



By Ed Emshwiller.

Rasputin



By Jeremy Vanhoozer. (More Rasputin at DrawerGeeks.)

The Awesome List: Hobbit news, Transporter 3, and Jessica Biel paints with all the colors of the wind

"An American legend comes to life"

That was the tagline for Disney's Pocahontas. Now it's sort of true thanks to a series of photographs Annie Leibovitz took of Jessica Biel in the role.

Also hot and in the link: Gisele Bundchen as Wendy, Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan, and Tina Fey as Tinker Bell.

Not so hot: Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, and Whoopi Goldberg as Aladdin, Jasmine, and the Genie.

The Hobbit

So, Guillermo del Toro is apperently in talks to direct the The Hobbit. I'll get excited when everything is signed, but what's more interesting to me right now are a couple of things in the Hollywood Reporter article about the deal.

First, they refer to "back-to-back installments of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit," which -- if that's not just reporter Borys Kit's guessing -- suggests that they're actually splitting the story into two movies rather than doing The Hobbit and then a lamer sequel that bridges the gap between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Second, I've been curious about why Peter Jackson's not directing it himself and Kit spells that out too: "Because of other commitments that included The Lovely Bones and Tintin, Jackson could not take on writing and directing roles, opting instead to become an executive producer with approval over creative elements of the pair of films."

Makes perfect sense and I should have realized that without having to have been told.

Transporter 3?

The original site this came from is in French, so I can't tell if it's rumor or fact, but apparently there's a Transporter 3 in the works and it has a director now.