Fun With Scissors Updates 3

More cartoon collages have been replaced:

Gravity Girl

Yogi Bear and Boo Boo

Sylvester

Beaky Buzzard

Daffy Duck

The Little Man

Igoo

Kwicky Koala

I'm Featured at Cryptomundo

I was recently honored to have my recent visit to the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine reported on Cryptomundo .

Cryptomundo is THE online resource for up to the minute news and analysis of all things cryptozoological. My thanks again to Loren Coleman for the mentions, and for welcoming us to his museum.

You can read about my visit here and here .

Fun With Scissors Updates 2

The following cartoon character images have been replaced now as well.




Wally Gator

Mightor

Country

Jezebel Jade

Batfink

Fangface

Henery Hawk

Wilma Flintstone

Fluid Man

Fun With Scissors updates 1

The slow, tedious, and sporadic process of replacing all of the image files in my "Fun With Scissors" posts has begun. As of today, the following cartoon characters have all had their images replaced and are ready for viewing:





Hardy Har-Har

Baby Huey

Olive Oyl

Revs

Gossamer

Alan Chan

Fancy Fancy

Sherman

Miss Prissy

Bucky

Pixie and Dixie

George of the Jungle

Chilly Willy

Brak

Fun With Scissors - part 121

A few years ago I began a series of quick collages of various cartoon characters under the banner of "Fun with Scissors." The last entry was posted at Christmas 2007. I'm not continuing the series right now, though I do plan to revisit it again in the future. I'm posting this portrait of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, which was created as a commission a couple of years ago, because I discovered by accident that some of my collages have been floating around the internet with the watermarks removed. I then revisited a couple of the original posts to discover that when I'd eliminated by Transmit account, the files I stored there were removed as well, and now the original posted images don't link to anything. Starting now, as time permits, I will begin to replace those thumbnails and the corresponding dead links with larger images which will all include the watermark.

I don't have a problem with people using these collages. One of the reasons I started doing them was that, for some of the secondary characters, there are no quality images available on the internet. Use them, but please let me know, and please give me credit when you do so. Removing the watermark is about as uncool as you can get.

The International Cryptozoology Museum

Yesterday, my son and I drove just under three hours up to Portland, Maine in order to visit the just opened International Cryptozoology Museum . Located at 661 Congress Street, the small museum was a real treat for my son and I. Containing the collection of renowned cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman, the museum, even in its formative stages had some really cool pieces, including a 5 1/2 foot mounted coelacanth, dozens of casts of sasquatch foot prints, yeti and orang pendak prints, models, a what cryptozoology ISN'T display and Loren Coleman himself.

I didn't take very many pictures because I ended up spending most of the time talking with Loren who was very gracious with his time, even signing my son's own bigfoot cast, and taking our picture with the lifesize sasquatch model in the lobby. I didn't take many pictures myself, and should have handed the camera over to my son who devoured the place down to the minutae while Loren and I spoke.




















The slightly fuzzy photo my son took of Loren Coleman, myself and bigfoot. I think that cryptids have an innate power to make photos of them appear slightly out of focus.


















Some of the many models and figures on display of extinct animals still being sighted today, as well as representations of former cryptids now proven to exist such as the giant panda, gorilla, komodo dragon, okapi, and giant squid. The large pteranodon was a prop for a movie. I can't recall which one.


As you can imagine, dedicating a museum to cryptozoology provides a bit of a conundrum. When the animals remain unproven, it limits what you are able to display. Obviously you can't have a mounted Loch Ness Monster, or Yeti on display, so these unproven animals are represented by many many models, figures, and tourist souvenirs as well as by plaster casts of footprints, hair samples, and paraphenalia from expeditions which found convincing evidence.


















Various lion skulls and models. The saber-toothed tiger, the American lion, and the African lion.




















There were also some Jenny Hanivers on display such as jackalopes, furred trouts, monkfish, and fiji mermaids including an impressive prop from tv biopic "P.T. Barnum" (1999) which starred Beau Bridges.



















































Along with all of the various casts, there were also hair and even fecal samples.























































One of my favorite items at the museum was the lifesize model of the dead Cadborosaurus which was removed from the inside of a whale in October 1937.

The trip was well worth the drive and Loren was a wonderful host. My son, the amateur cryptozoologist was definitely thrilled by the museum, and in meeting "THE cryptozoologist." I can't wait to go back.

Watch 'Super Hero Squad - "Night In The Sanctorum"'

For those of you who missed my first episode of SUPER HERO SQUAD - "Night In the Sanctorum" it is being rebroadcast on Cartoon Network tomorrow morning at 8:30 EST, or you can watch it here .

Be warned. It's aimed at boys ages 6-9 meaning that there are several scenes of belching.

The Brave and the Bold: Milestone

Available to pre-order for sale in February is THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: MILESTONE, a trade paperback collection of last summer's pairings of Milestone characters with DC heroes in issues of "The Brave and the Bold." The collection also includes issues of comics starring the Milestone characters from the mid-90s. I wrote the two XOMBI stories. This book makes a great read. If this book is successful, it could lead to the reprinting of the entire run of XOMBI.

Stop by your comic book store to order.

Here's DCs solicitation information:


Written by Dwayne McDuffie, John Rozum, Kurt Busiek, Matt Wayne and Adam Beechen; Art by Denys Cowan, Howard Porter and others; Cover by Howard Porter

Don't miss the first meeting of Static and Black Lightning, Blue Beetle and Hardware, The Spectre and Xombi and more titanic team-ups from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #24-26, plus stories from HARDWARE #16, STATIC #12 and XOMBI #6.
DC Universe 160pg. Color Softcover $17.99 US
On Sale February 10, 2010

Available For Pre-Order

Available to pre-order now for purchase in January, is CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #45 which features the second part of "The Lost King of Africa," a THE SECRET SATURDAYS story I wrote. Also for purchase in January is THE WEB #5 with the back-up feature I write, THE HANGMAN. This issue the Hangman encounters the Jackal, a villain who will cause him some major trouble over the next few issues.

You can pre-order these now by visiting your local comic book store.

31 Days of Halloween - Finale

For a while it looked like we were going to be rained out, but the weather turned in our favor except for some pretty strong winds which kept me from hanging the candle filled plastic Jack O'Lantern buckets from the trees and eliminated the use of a fog machine. You can see what the winds were like from the picture of the tiki torches below.


























As usual, the kids need to rush off trick or treating kept me from getting many good photos of the yard in all its glory. We have a crescent shaped driveway. Both entrances were flanked by two pairs of tiki-torches with skulls mounted on them. Within the crescent was the bigger than actual size skeletal horse and rider, with the other giant human skeleton off to the side.



















The driveway was outlined by clouded jars containing candles (which were constantly being extinguished by the high winds), then forming a path to the Jack O'Lantern' at the front door. Flanking the door this year was an all new set-up of 16 graves and six ghosts (two ghosts were carry overs from the last two years ) lighted with green and blue lights, with a third, red light coming from the upper floor of the house. A new Nosferatu was meant to stand on the balcony over the front door, but didn't get finished in time. I had to jettison the old Nosferatu when I moved last Spring for lack of space.





















The ghosts (except for the animatronic beheaded bride) are made of plastic wrap and packing tape, with a couple of clothing embellishments made from transparent plastic shower curtain liners. The organ player had an internal skeleton, hair made from fishing line, and arms that could move, powered by the wind (unfortunately the device rigged to catch the wind to do this, broke early on) so that he's appear to be playing the organ. The organ itself was a free find that someone had sitting on their driveway free for anyone willing to take it away. I'd hoped to transform it into a pipe organ but became too busy to do so.




















I don't have any real good pictures of Mark, the scuba diver who swam too close to a shark, but he's a scuba diver ghost with one arm, and part of his torso bitten away, trying to swim away from a ghostly shark emerging from the ground and swallowing his leg. This ghost took the most damage and will most likely need to be rebuilt from scratch next year.















































The grave stones are all made entirely of cardboard, most using Fed Ex boxes as devised by Dave Lowe . I hand cut all of the letter from slightly thinner, compacted cardboard and glued them in place before painting and then aging with a spray on mix of paint I call "moldy grave." It sounds labor intensive, but actually took very little time overall. I did end up with some serious carpal tunnel problems, but they turned out really well, and for 16 graves the total cost was $4.00 which I paid for a can of "mismixed" gray paint at Lowes.















To finish everything off, I had two different sound mixes playing, one was appropriately spooky organ music. The other ghostly sound effects. The whole set up went up over a period of less than four hours and came down last night in about 45 minutes. I spent maybe $60.00 total, and most of that was for packing tape.

31 Days of Halloween - Please Stand By

Due to technical difficulties, photos of my yard display will not be posted until tomorrow, or Monday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

31 Days of Halloween - Happy Halloween!

It's not quite over. I still have one post left which will go up late tonight showing what I concocted for the yard this year. I also have a few things to give away to some randomly drawn people who have left comments here throughout the month, though I probably won't get to that before mid-week at the earliest.

I'd like to thank everyone who stopped by throughout the month, particularly those people who left comments. I'd also like to thank everyone who participated in the extremely successful Countdown to Halloween this year, particularly Shawn Robare and Jon K. for the much needed work on the Countdown to Halloween blog. Stop over there tomorrow for an announcement regarding next year's countdown.

This month turned out to be a particularly busy one for me, and not much of that business was directed at Halloween or the countdown, unfortunately. I'd fortunately prepared all of my posts with the exception of two collages which weren't completed until the past few days, and my daily movies, before October even arrived. Otherwise I would have had pretty sparse offerings this year. I have had few opportunities to even periodically check out the blogs of all the other participants, let alone leave any thoughtful comments. The good thing is that I enjoy Halloween all year long, which gives me plenty of time, and plenty to do in catching up with everything everyone else has offered. I promise to look through everyone's countdown posts as soon as I'm able to.

Have a safe and fun Halloween, everyone, and thanks again for helping make this one so great.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31 - Riddle

There's no new riddle for today. Thank you everyone for participating in guessing, or trying to guess the riddles.



Answer to yesterday's riddle: Drac racing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31

Today's collage portrait is Lon Chaney as the man in the beaver hat in LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1927). Lon Chaney created his own make-up for this role.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30 - Movie

After an amazing, highly promising trailer, two years of waiting, and nearly a month of having the DVD in my possession but holding off until the end of the month, I finally got to watch "Trick R Treat" (2007). This highly anticipated anthology movie weaves together four stories and a prologue all set in the same town on the same Halloween night. The stories involve a killer school teacher, a prank gone wrong, a young woman looking for a date to a Halloween party, and a cranky old hermit's encounter with Halloween incarnated in the form of a creepy trick-or-treater.

I can't think of a movie that embraces all of the trappings of Halloween to the level that this one does. It's like an R-Rated "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Practically every frame is filled with jack o'lanterns, trick or treaters, costumes, masks, candy, orange, black, and Autumn leaves. You can practically feel the chill in the air and smell the smoke of fireplaces being lit for the first time since the previous winter. Anyone who loves the holiday will wish their town celebrated Halloween like the town in this movie does.

The movie itself though is pretty uneven. The prologue is not really much of a story and it's incredibly predictable. The story of the teacher has it's moments, but is too scattershot a narrative and not overall a satisfying tale. The one involving the prank is probably the most satisfying story in the movie. The one about the girl looking for a date is also pretty weak and has a predictable ending. The final story with the goblin trick-or-treater is probably the second best story and ties into the prank story as well. I think that going the traditional anthology route and separating the narratives, rather than intertwining them would have made for a more satisfying movie. The narratives don't line up very well intercut together and jump all over time, something not helped by the comic book captions which either read "earlier" or "later." It feels like way too much is going on at once, and stretches the credibility of the movie by having all of these various ill-fated Halloween stories happening all in the same town on the same night, (and of course with no consequences on the following day). There's also periodic flashes of comic book imagery, like Creepshow, but with no point whatsoever, since comic books have no relevance to the movie itself, even as a wrap around element.

I could nitpick other things, such as the tale about a school bus within the prank story, which defies logic. There's no way anyone could have known what happened on that day, since no one lived to talk about it. I was also distracted by how much the pumpkin goblin character looked like Michael Jackson. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the movie. I just don't think this is the be all, end all of Halloween movies. I also liked the trailer better, which surprisingly is not included on this incredibly bare bones DVD release.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30 - Riddle

What is Transylvania's national sport?



Answer to yesterday's riddle: Electri-city.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30

Today's collage portrait is Elsa Lanchester as THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935). The make-up was created by Jack Pierce.

This is one of the very first collages I did, around 2001. For what it is it's not too bad, but it doesn't really look like Elsa Lanchester. I was hoping to create a new version of this image this year, but ran out of time.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Movie

An incredibly stunning visual treat, "Haxan" (1922) is a multi-part silent documentary on the history of witchcraft through the time of the film's making. Beginning with an exploration of devils and pagan gods, and ending with a a segment equating hysteria and mental illness with similarities to alleged symptoms indicative of witchcraft, the long middle segments follow a narrative thread depicting traditional stories of witches as wise healers as well as flying, devil associating, black arts practicing hags which leads into the mania of the Inquisition and its obviously one-sided witchcraft accusations and tortures which could not be defended against by anyone accused of being a witch, or aiding a witch. The two end segments are the weakest portions of this film, with the middle section being visually arresting and emotionally engaging. Everything from the art direction, costumes, and mise en scene is gorgeous and lends the movie an air of realism, as if someone went back a few centuries to document these events on film. The scenes depicting the witches interacting with devils and flying over the countryside in particular are just gorgeous and strange to behold.

This movie is well worth seeing, especially this time of year. There's also a shorter version of the movie which replaces the title cards with voice over narration by William Burroughs. I've seen this movie three times now, but haven't tried that version of it yet. I can see how an audible narrator would be preferable in certain portions of the movie, particularly the beginning, but could also see how it would be a distraction and could take away from the strength of the visuals on their own terms.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Riddle

Which city is the Frankenstein monster's favorite?




Answer to yesterday's riddle: They both make people shiver.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29

Today's collage portrait is Vincent Price as THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971). Trevor Crole-Rees was the make-up artist on this film.