Came back recently from Vegas, a great break from life woes this year.
Saw (of all things) a great exhibit on the life of Leonardo DaVinci at the Venetian Hotel (highly reccomended) and my first time ever of seeing the Blue Man Group perform (the new show advertised as: "Now with Balls!") on stage (also highly reccomended!), and wanted to at least have ONE entry before 2013 started.
Ok-
So, creative projects update:
* Faith- is fully pencilled, but not inked. I'm just too slow of an inker to do it properly.... so, I'm planning another way to finish the art and have it finished by
the end of January 2013 (if all is as planned).
* Black Canary- is going to be comic book form/ animation. I HATE the idea to no end about an unfinished video project, but at least I really learned a lot of things post-mortem on this project as a live-action. If only things had worked out better, and I'll go in-detail later this year about so many things learned on a future blogspot.
* Claim- an old long-gestated project that never got edited, I hope to edit and finish by end of Febuary 2013- March 2013.
* Spec comic adaptation project- I'm planning on working on a comic adaptation of a series of novels by a famous silver age comic book writer. More later.
* My own old comics project- Three babies that I'll share more after Faith and Black Canary are done.
Ok-
So, onto stuff that I loved/liked/or just checked out outside of real life in 2012:
JANUARY:
GAME OF THRONES. WOWZA.
Forget Lord of the Rings. Aces in all categories.... it takes a couple of episodes to figure out who is who, but I'm hooked. One good/bad thing about the show: no characters are safe from getting killed off.
Top five cable tv series in my book, for sure. The graphic nudity and violence aren't necessary, but it's HBO, so, that's their selling point.
FEBRUARY:
Walt Simsonson's THOR Omnibus. I've been a major fan of Simonson's since his short miniseries "Manhunter" with Archie Goodwin back in the day (which won a number of comic book awards back then)--- and heard that "Thor" was considered his best work by many.
My opinion?
Neither the writing nor the art impressed. I would have rather have seen a recolored expensive "Manhunter" Omnibus- but NOT colored by the rather-insane (he must have been, given his recoloring work in reprints) Klaus Janson.
Don't get it.
MARCH:
JOHN CARTER.
Well done, good but sadly not great film. I was initially wowed- moreso of how they were able to throw in so much from the books faithfully- but in hindsight... it's one of those cases where maybe the love of the detail of the books might have sidetracked making a film that could have resonated more with non-Carter fans.
John Carter books are primarily wish-fulfillment stories- and for Andrew Stanton to have tried towards designing a world away from that direction felt like it lessened what could have been a visually breathtaking film into one that was merely 'ok'.
(Not that that was the main problem with the film moving on all thrusters, but I'm also really picky visually when you've got all the money and technology in the world to take your breath away on a fantasy film and you don't.)
JIM LEE's "HUSH" pencil hardback.
For some reason, I thought I'd learn at lot from this. I like the book, but don't really feel like I got as much out of this as I'd hoped.
APRIL:
BREAKING BAD SEASON 4.
Still amazing show. No wonder Frank Darabont loves it so much.
YOUNG JUSTICE VOLUMES 1-3.
Very entertaining and impressive. There was a lot of love for this show, I can see why, now. Neat that they actually got Peter David to write a few episodes.
MAY:
AVENGERS.
Damn, I knew Joss Whedon was the only one who could pull it off.
When I'm in a nit-picky mood, I might pick on some bits feeling like it was directed like a tv show at times, from how it's staged.... but, this was a near-impossible job to pull off, and JW did it. I just wish that Emily Blunt would have been cast instead (as she initially was under John Favreau) for Black Widow, but otherwise Scarlett Jo comes off FAR better here than in the disappointing IM 2.
Best news of all: Joss Whedon is in charge of AVENGERS 2.
JULY:
TDKR.
As pleased as I was with Avengers, is as much as I hated TDKR.
Totally agree with Harry Knowles review of this disaster. I guess ANYONE can make a mess.
NOVEMBER:
Double great news-
Obama wins. Thank God. I may actually have faith in America (overall) after all.
007 rocks under Sam Mendes. Sam, come back and do a sequel!!!
DECEMBER:
Did I mention the Blue Man Group and Leonardo Da Vinci?
