Video du Jour: The Humans Are Dead

"This next song we're gonna do, it's not really intended for humans. It's probably... it's probably more for robots."



Thanks again to Kevin Church.

Artist of the Day: Joe Kubert

Via.

The Awesome List: Burn Notice DVD, cute Indiana Jones, Adam Baldwin in Seattle, Sinbad (the cool one), US comics scenes, and robots vs. animals

It's getting late, so I'm gonna skip the Day Watch review until tomorrow. Here's your Awesome List.

It's true!



As if there was any doubt. June 17. Write it down.

Cute Indy

This may be cuter than I want Indiana Jones to be. Except for that Marion with the monkey. That I want. (Via.)

The hero of Seattle, the man they call Jayne

Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Chuck) will be at Emerald City Comicon. I've never wanted to go to Seattle as badly as I do right now. (Via.)

Dan Wickline's Sinbad



Dan's a pal of mine and Sinbad's a hero I have a lot of affection for, so this is an easy sell. Especially when Dan describes his series this way:

"Sinbad was by far, the world’s worst sailor. He went on seven voyages and never once came home on the same ship ... To me, I don’t think he was Sinbad the Sailor until after the voyages. He learned who he was and what he can do through those journeys. The Sinbad we have here is at his confident, charismatic and creative peak. Why just save the girl when you can do it with style? Why retreat when you can charge? And he will always have a plan, even if it’s made up as he goes along."

Comics scenes

Tom Spurgeon is collating a list of US cities and their comics scenes. "Kind of a first stop on who to contact if you were planning to relocate," Tom says, "or where to go if you were planning a visit, or who to invite if you were having a show, or who you might profile if you were writing a feature article." I've always known the Twin Cities has a great comics scene and now it's documented.

He's also soliciting updates to the list.

Robots vs. crocodiles and gorillas

Lady, That's My Skull has scans from "My Brother Was a Robot," a story in My Greatest Adventure #42. As Sleestak says, "I'm presenting 'My Brother Was A Robot' here not because it is particularly good, the plot is pretty dull actually and is an otherwise forgettable entry into the annals of comic history. What makes this story worth noting at all is that it features a robot beating the crap out of some crocodiles and a gorilla. Sometimes comics just don't get any better than that." Amen, my reptilian brother.

Video du Jour: Never Trust a Klingon

Nerd music at its "finest."



Via.

Artist of the Day: Chris Reccardi

I'm in love.

The Awesome List: Last Rituals, Bond's kids, how to stop a giant monster, Where the Wild Things Are clip, and more.

Last Rituals



Bookgasm continues to turn me on to the good stuff. This time it's a mystery with "secret symbols, medieval witchcraft, and modern murder." And it's set in Iceland.

"Fraulein Stein's Monster"

Knowing how much I dig Frankenstein's Monster, my buddy Joe sent me a link to a Christian manga series that sort of features the character. He writes, "From issue 7 on, the second half of each issue is a movie the kids are making, done in different styles – disaster film, biblical epic, Star Trek, and the Frankenstein one." Gonna check it out.

Bond's kids

As much as Bond gets around, it makes sense that he has some kids running around. The Double 0 Section blog has a rundown on them, focusing particularly on his daughter, Jill, from the Italian film Naked You Die. Oh, I'm so adding that to my Netflix queue.

How to stop a giant monster

When you don't have a giant robot. (Via.)

A boy and his Wild Thing



Wanna see a clip from the Where the Wild Things Are movie? Okay.

On a related note, it sucks that I have to type out the whole name of the movie because when I abbreviate it Wild Things, it causes confusion.

Two great tastes...

Scott Sava's Blue Dream Studios -- producer of the very fine Dreamland Chronicles -- is now an imprint of IDW.

Not Awesome: Gary Gygax RIP

The best tribute to Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax I've seen. Gygax died this morning.

Gothic Classics

My review of Gothic Classics is up at the Newsarama blog.

Video du Jour: Super Obama Girl

Important voting going on tomorrow. I hope you don't mind my getting political again.

Artist of the Day: Fred Hembeck

Hembeck's interpretation of the issue that made me a hardcore comics fan was found here.

The Awesome List: Lego Batman, Tron sequel, Indy DVDs, New Bond novel, a Giant Monster love story, A Midsummer Night's Fountain, and more

Lego Batman videogame



Check out the trailer here.

Tron sequel

In 3D, no less. At least, that's the rumor.

Indy DVDs re-release

This time you can buy them separately. And with bonus features that you couldn't get on the first release. I'm not holding my breath for a commentary track though.

New Bond novel

They've released the cover art for the US edition of the new Bond novel, Devil May Care. Pretty snazzy.

Monster loves Liberty



Poor, stupid, giant monster. (Via.)

A Midsummer Night's Fountain

Charles Vess is designing the coolest fountain ever and shows you how it's done.

BPRD: 1946

Mike Mignola talks about expanding Hellboy's universe.

The Immutable Rules of the Marvel Universe

Tom Spurgeon asks his readers what elements of the Marvel Universe should be set in stone and gets a nice list that reminds me why it's such a fun place to read about. You'll find my two cents in there too.

Saturdays with Jane: The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)

Like I said before, I'm sort of into Jane Austen lately. I wanna spend some time talking about it, but I don't want it to take over the blog or anything, so I'm thinking I'll devote Saturdays to Jane for a while. That way it's additional content that doesn't displace anything else.

Okay? Okay.

Next week's Fringe Benefits column will be about the Gothic Classics comics anthology that has an adaptation of Northanger Abbey in it. You can catch that on the Newsarama blog, or I'll also link to it from here.

Just started re-reading Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor today. It's an awesome mystery, but I'll do a real review after I've finished it again at the end of the month.

Don't know if I'll review the remaining Masterpiece versions of The Complete Jane Austen. It feels weird to start talking about them in the middle of the series, but they have been very good and were my first introduction to a couple of the stories. And I did talk about the ones they've shown so far a little bit in that other post, so I'll probably at least mention them as I watch them.

Like the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice? I finally see what everyone's been talking about there. I've always liked Colin Firth okay, but never really saw what everyone else did until now. He's an awesome Darcy. The looks he gives Elizabeth are freaking heart-breaking.

I've got the Keira version at home now from Netflix and I'm actually procrastinating watching it. It'll be interesting to see if I can even get my wife to watch it at all. She's burnt out on Keira anyway and is also suffering a post-Firthian P&P apathy towards all other TV. We watched The Jane Austen Book Club last night and she enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as I did.

I loved trying to put together the connections between the movie's characters and Austen's. Jocelyn (Maria Bello) is a matchmaker a la Emma. So much so that she even breeds dogs for a living. She wants to fix up her recently divorced friend Sylvia (Amy Brenneman from Private Practice), so she invites a potential candidate to join their new, Austen-only book club even though he's never read anything by Jane.

Like Fanny in Mansfield Park, Sylvia has always been the stable element in her otherwise tumultuous family. Now that she's single again, she's shy about relationships, unlike her daughter Allegra (Lost's Maggie Grace) who always falls in love quickly. The two of them are a lot like Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility.

Then there's prim and proper Prudie (Emily Blunt) who -- like Persuasion's Anne -- has convinced herself that she doesn't care for the man who really should be the love of her life.

The guys in the movie are all amalgams of various Austen men. Sylvia's ex-husband (Jimmy Smits) has fallen from his pedestal (sort of like Darcy, but more like Edmond in Mansfield Park, who ignored Fanny for another woman). The guy Jocelyn wants to set Sylvia up with (Galahad from King Arthur), is a wealthy, but unaffected dude named Grigg whose qualities aren't immediately obvious to the woman he's interested in. That covers most of the rest of the Austen men.

Grigg's into science fiction the way the rest of the book club is into Austen, which immediately connects him to Northanger Abbey, Abbey's only experiment with genre fiction. Through the club though he comes to appreciate Austen, as do a couple of the film's other guys. I like how he doesn't turn into a total Austen zombie, but simply adds her to his repertoire. I also love how he buys a huge, collected volume of Austen's novels expecting them to be sequels. He's surprised when the club decides to make Emma their first discussion. "Oh, we're starting in the middle," he says, referring to the order in his collection. I totally connected to that guy. Except for the part where he likes reading Austen and doesn't complain about how long and boring The Mysteries of Udolpho is (like any genre geek, he decides to read it because it's so prominently featured in Northanger Abbey).

If the movie has a flaw it's that most of the other characters are (or turn into) Austen zombies. It's Jane or nothing for them and that's a bit creepy. But the movie is about Jane and why people like her stuff so much, so I'll forgive it for that. It's a wonderfully acted, smart, literary movie and if it's a bit sentimental and cheesy in parts, it comes by it honestly. Austen certainly has that quality often. And besides, sometimes I like cheesy sentiment.

Five out of five Keiras (you thought I was kidding about that, didn't you?) if you like Austen stories.

Probably one out of five if you don't.