It was December 19th 2009, 6:30 pm and snowflakes were falling on West 34th street in New York City. However, the snowstorm outside was nothing compared to the storm brewing on 7th floor of the Manhattan Center. Ring Of Honor Wrestling was in town for “Final Battle 2009” and while the fans got revved up for the last ROH show of the year I was getting ready for my first ROH show ever.
This past Saturday Hulk Hogan announced that on Monday January 4th 2010, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling will go head to head with World Wrestling Entertainment by broadcasting their show iMPACT against WWE’s RAW. While I applaud their effort and confidence, this could be the biggest mistake in the company’s history. They are going up against an established product that has already defeated it’s competition in that time slot. (Competition with a much greater budget and talent pool I might add) This article is for Ms. Dixie Carter, the President of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. It is not meant to be malicious or tear you down. It is merely meant to state facts that will hopefully help the company you and Jeff...
This August I took a trip, a very long one. I traveled from Westchester County to Sheapshead Bay in Brooklyn during the rain. Why did I do this? The opportunity to visit an alien world was too much to pass up. The world I’m speaking of is Pandora, the setting for James Cameron’s epic 3D motion picture, “Avatar” and what a journey it was. “Avatar” is the story of a paraplegic soldier who is caught in the middle between humans and the Pandoran natives, the Na’vi. James Cameron has created a living, breathing world with native cultures, species, plant life, and languages and in a couple of weeks will be transmitting it to us in state-of the-art 3D.
“This looks like a job for…the Undertaker?” Well it will be in March, 2010 when Titan Publishing (publishers of the UK Transformers comic and Spider-Man Movie Tie-In Magazines) launches a new comic book called “WWE Heroes” based on the Superstars of, you guessed it, World Wrestling Entertainment. Details are vague but the comic appears to be about a war between two forces called the First Born and the Shadow King, that has been going on for centuries and has somehow spread into the world of the WWE. Now before you cry foul, it should be important to note that the worlds of professional wrestling and comic books aren’t as far apart as you think and can actually learn a lot from...
She’s just too good to be true. A girl who is into heavy metal, horror movies, and a model? A girl like that only exists in our dreams…or is Suzi Lorraine. Straight out of New Jersey, Suzi has modeled all over the world in magazines like GQ and Esquire. Suzi is also an accomplished actress and writer, whose had articles published in magazines like Gorezone and Horrormania and just co-wrote her first feature, a horror comedy called Won Ton Baby. Want to know about it along with what brought Suzi to the “dark side” of entertainment. Click below.
Bob Budiansky has had a pretty good career. He was an accomplished penciller on Ghost Rider, created the character Sleepwalker, and served as editor on such titles as Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and the entire line of books starring a little known character named Spider-Man. He was responsible for a couple of significant initiatives bringing many (including myself) into comics. The first initiative of note was creating the wildly popular Marvel Trading Cards that so many others and I collected in the nineties. And in the eighties he was a significant architect of The Transformers, writing both the comics and biographies on the packages of the toys.
Leave it to Neal Adams to leave his mark…again. The legendary artist who redefined the look of Batman (and comics overall) has put his distinct stamp on the fledging medium of Motion Comics, with Marvel’s Astonishing X-Men: Gifted. Gifted is Marvel’s first foray into turning a regular comic book into a Motion Comic and considering the praise this storyline received, thanks to creators Joss Whedon and John Cassidy, expectations were high, so Marvel turned to someone they knew would not only respect the work but make it groundbreaking, and who better than Neal Adams and Continuity Studios.
I love revivals. The idea of taking a long forgotten character or concept and reinventing them for a new audience is intriguing. After all if something was successful before why can’t it be now? While wandering around the Big Apple Comic Con, I stopped by a display of action figures from the sixties. Gary Schaffer and Eric C. Hayes ran the display and had finished production on a graphic novel for the toys known as “The Outer Space Men.” Intrigued by the art and the idea I purchased a copy of the book and found myself pleasantly surprised by what I read. Eric and Gary, along with Rudolf Montemeyer, and Marc Borstel had taken these bendable toys from the sixties and built a story around them.
At a press conference this afternoon in the mall of Madison Square Garden (the Mecca of WWE) Hulk Hogan announced he would join Vince McMahon’s top competitor, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. No start date has been set but the plan so far is for Hogan to come to TNA and play an undefined role once he finishes his upcoming “Hulkamania” tour of Australia. The news surprised many, not only because TNA has the funds for Hogan’s price tag, but also the Hulkster’s history with members of TNA Management.
One of the best parts of going to conventions is discovering out of print classics. One such classic is “The Raven Banner: A Tale of Asgard”. Written by Alan Zelentz and illustrated by Charles Vess, “The Raven Banner” was originally published in 1985 as the 15th installment of Marvel’s original graphic novel line. These graphic novels were original works and were published in a storybook sized format, rather then the dimensions of a standard comic book. And the quality showed, especially in “The Raven’s Banner”.
