patokon blog

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] Everybody loves Harley! Right? She’s quirky and funny and petite (depending on who is pushing the pen) and gothish-ish and very naughty. She’s able to make us sympathize with that madman, The Joker just as Robin made the Batman more accessible. She was born in the 80’s animated Batman show and animated-world Harley is always much more fun than the “canon” comics Harley. So why did I buy Harley Quinn #0 written by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiatti after I was so disappointed with the last time she had her own series? 4 names – Timm, Cooke, Hughes, and Kieth (that’s how you spell it!). More than anything I wanted to see how BruceTimm would interpret Harley’s recent costume. A page of that right there would be worth the cover price to me, a die-hard Timm fan. Darwyn Cooke is one of my all-time faves and has earned mega-respect from me for his Parker adaptations. Adam Hughes ...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] I don't know why I keep trying but I'm going to try to convince you guys to buy some digital comics again. WHY? 1) I love good comics 2) These are GREAT comics and they are ON SALE!! (some are SEVERAL hundred pages for a few 100 yen) 3) Also, if you use the Comics by Comixology app, they are quick and easy to buy through your iphone or ipad and you only have to buy them once to read on all your devices. I'm serious, guys! No bull$#!%. Here is the link to the sale: http://www.topshelfcomix.com/news/925 My advice: 1. Go to the site. 2. Click on any title that is on sale. 3. Click on the PREVIEW button and read a few pages to see if it is interesting to you. 4. REPEAT until you've explored every title. My recommendations: We Can Fix It http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/we-can-fix-it/720 Far Arden http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/far-arden/636 Splendor in the Snow http...

Okay, I'm about to post some crazy $#!% so hang on to your ballbags. When living in Tokyo (and probably any other part of Japan), you get the opportunity to add a bunch of slashes to your skill set. Where in NYC, most of the people you meet are waiter/dancer, waiter/screenwriter, waiter/actor, most of the people I know are teacher/artist, teacher/voice actor, teacher/writer, or teacher/singer. Though according to my various targeted CVs I am a translator/interpreter, an artist/animator/illustrator, a writer/proofreader/editor/copywriter, and/or a teacher/lecturer, I've also been called upon to do voice work, motion capture work, and good-ole fashion acting. It started when I was asked to translate the script for a short animated segment and then was asked to do a test voice for one of the characters. The director, Yusaku Furuya  liked my portrayal and I ended playing a bucktoothed trailer trash yokel (my kinda guy) who joins his friend on a roadtrip a...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] Since my kindergarten class where we had a guest teacher with a monkey puppet that spoke only French, I've been interested in the French language. My interest never went as deep as my interest in Asian languages, but deep enough that I have several dozens of books in or about French. My first French movie exposure was the stylish thriller DIVA . The opening opera scene still gives me goosebumps just due to the amazing singing of Wilhelminia Wiggins Fernandez . It would be another few years before I got to see Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita . A few years after that I saw the fantastic comedic horror (or horrific comedy)  Delicatessen , and the classic slapstick spy comedy, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe .   I really enjoyed these two genres of French film, the comedy and the action thriller and always looked forward to finding new works by these actors and direct...

I created an infographic designed to persuade people who see comics as a genre and not a medium for telling stories of any shape, size, or texture. My contention is that comics can achieve with the combination of pictures and words, an experience unlike no other. This is my first run at the subject and I hope to revise this piece in the future based on any feedback I receive.

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] 10. The music is crazy addictive. From the opening song to Vaughn's big hit "Getting Rid of Britta" to Abed and Troy's version of "Somewhere Out There". Here's a bit from the song "Night Caps". A teaser, if you will.  "All my boys and all my peeps. Yeah! All my boys and all my peeps. Yeah! All my boys and all my peeps  like to wear night caps when they go to sleep!" And it only gets better. I already bought the soundtrack on iTunes. http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/community-music.../id391832272 9. You love Chevy Chase. SNL. Caddyshack. National Lampoon's Vacation, Fletch. Funny Farm (yes, I said Funny Farm). He hasn't been this awesomely crazy in a long time. When he did his signature move in the Kickpuncher episode, I was so happy I peed a little.  8. You hate Chevy Chase. You will love hating him even more as Pierce Hawthor...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] If you love comics, or merely find them curious, you're sure to be somewhat fascinated with one of the unique features of sequential art - sound effects. The curious thing is that the earliest SFX were based on words that were already based on sounds that the words' meanings represented. RING sounds like something ringing just as GONG sounds like you just banged a gong. Get your SFX fix by following @ComicBookSndFX for tweets of entries from the Comic Book Sound Effect Dictionary (coming soon) or you can follow the English - Japanese version @AmeComiSFX that was previously only available at Tokyo's Comiket. Just remember...KRA-KOW!! is more than a place in Poland.

KER-WHAMMM!!! Recently started tweeting entries from the Comic Book Sound Effect Dictionary (@ComicBookSndFX). I'm adding new entries and I hope to publish an updated version in the near future! Follow it or...SPA-KOWW!!

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] This comic is the total $#!%! If you like hard-boiled or film noir or heist movies or bad-ass mofos who know how to get the job done, then you just might fall in man-love with Parker. He's plans jobs, as in heists. He's one of the best. Even so, there are always factors that can make a job go south. Richard Stark's bad-ass bad guy Parker was introduced in " The Hunter ", and in " The Outfit " he's back. With all the money he spent on his new face, he needs a new job, badly. Even though there are a few details he doesn't like about the armored car job that falls in his lap, he needs the dough. The first half of the book tells how that job went. And it went bad, but it was all good. For the reader anyway. The second half deals with The Outfit, a NY-based mob that wants Parker outta the way. WAY outta the way. Darwyn Cooke's art makes Stark's...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] What is OTR? OTR is the most awesome thing ever! Remember the scene in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie gets his secret decoder ring and can't wait to decode his first message? For my generation, listening to radio drama wasn't big on our list of entertainment, but seeing Ralphie decode that message (however disappointing) was kinda cool. Little did I know, years later I would become quite the fan of OTR (Old Time Radio). I guess it might have been just a matter of time since I had listened to a few recordings of The Inner Sanctum, which was always good for a scare, I was a fan of Bogart's Sam Spade early on, and I was already into comic strips from the thirties and forties. As I grew older I would try to catch reruns of Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, and other shows which I didn't even know had started on the radio. Well, thanks to the magic of the INTERNET, I b...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] Random YouTube vids that are awesome. This is some good $#!%! Funny! And though ridiculous, I found myself clicking on every chapter! Street Fighter: The Later Years http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLrWgVPeCzI Where Zangief decides to restart the street fight tournament to get back his mojo. Chun Li was always my fave, but in this Guile steals the show. This is just too amazing. Italian Spider-Man It took me a while to realize it wasn't always real Italian. Because I'm a fan of Italian 70's flicks, this was a happy happy surprise. Shout out to Yojimbo for throwing this masterpiece my way. If you don't totally love this series, then you don't know how to enjoy a good crappy movie. A curse on you!

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] Since I was a little, little kid, I was fascinated by monsters. I don't know what touched it off, but being scared was one of my favorite pastimes. I realized early on that of all the classic monsters, The Wolfman was my favorite. Lon Chaney, Jr. , son of make-up master "Man of a Thousand Faces" Lon Sr. , played Larry Talbot, a poor sunovagun who... you know the story. He gets all hairy and loses all reason, acting only on primal urges. Hey! Just like puberty ! Frankenstein's monster was butt-ugly , Dracula was evil (and old ), but Wolfie was a sympathetic character much like the Hulk , who struggles with the awful realization that he might be a vicious blood-thirsty killer. Also, he was cool!! If I had to choose which character to play, would I want to be stoo-pid monster, aloof and snooty vampire, or wild animal-man? Let me think... oh yeah, WILD MAN!!!!! But that...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] I'm hoping that "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" doesn't disappear from theaters quite yet. I love the premise - guy must defeat all seven of girl's exes in order to win her hand. I love Michael Cera, Dork Genius. I love the idea that the film lives in a comic-booky, 80's nintendo-ey world where sound effects and old school emoticons run rampant and where (according to the director) people break into fight scenes instead of musical numbers to express emotion. I live in Japan so I'm not sure when I'm gonna see it, but I already tried the game and it was the $#!%. I'm more of a board gamer/role-player kinda guy, but I used to rock an Atari 2600 and though I have a Wii, I'll never forget my old nintendo famicon. I almost bought one last week in Aki ( akihabara , the otaku mecca sometimes known as Akiba, but actually really truly pronounced Aki...

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] check this $#!% out mascot : The $#!% In my first CT-O (check this $#!% out) post, I would like to introduce our mascot. Literally and figuratively, this mascot is The $#!% !!! Now to get on to some cool $#!% I'd like you to check out. I spent the last week in Kumamoto where I went to an exhibition on Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born, Irish-raised world traveler who decided to become a naturalized Japanese citizen (also gaining the Japanese moniker Yakumo Koizumi). He also wrote several books on Japan which are probably some of the best guides to the Japanese mind you'll ever hope to find. Though most of his observances are of a Japan long gone, it's not hard to draw parallels to the modern Japanese way of thinking. Here is a quote from " Kokoro ". 'A male servant long in my house seemed to me the happiest of mortals. He laughed invariably when spoken to, looked a...

Of the genre combinations, this is not one that readily comes to mind (such as the ever popular Slasher/Romantic Comedy crossover). My favorite crossover might be Horror/Comedy with SF/Horror a close second, but some really great SF just happens to have Western themes. (This is a repost of an old blog post that had somehow gotten corrupted. I actually don't have a whole lot of SF/Western items to add though). Check out my top ten. It was originally five, but then I remembered 5 more:   10. Westworld (movie/tv) - About a theme park that uses A.I. androids to show guests "a good time" in different worlds created to simulate space travel, ancient Rome, the Age of Chivalry, and the wild west. Unfortunately, a good time means being massacred by androids. Some great moments in this flick and Yul Brynner is the baddest android gunslinger badass ever, but takes too long to get going. This could use a remake, but avoid the sequel like the Black Death if you know what's goo...