I’ve been a big fan of Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” for as long as I can remember. His “outside the box” comics of silly reactions that monsters, animals, insects, aliens, and even vegetables might have in reaction to us human beings pulls me out of my reality tunnel and makes me laugh, and sometimes more importantly, is a reminder not to take everything so seriously. Now a DVD set of “Tales From The Far Side”, an animated series that appeared on TV in 1994, is available.

“Almost everyone has seen a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon in a newspaper or on a T-shirt, mug, calendar, or greeting card. But if you weren’t watching CBS on the night of October 26, 1994, you missed Tales From the Far Side, an award-winning animated short film that you’ve probably never heard of. Yes, that’s right: the Far Side was animated. Twice. And it’s brilliant.

The first short film premiered as a Halloween special in 1994, where couch potatoes and animation buffs like me saw it and were never able to forget it. The program was never broadcast on television again, but it did make the rounds at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, where it took the Grand Prix. Three years later, a sequel (aptly titled Tales From the Far Side II) never even made it to television.

Both short films are comprised of a series of vignettes in the visual style of the print comics, with a haunting musical accompaniment by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell (who has featured some of the scores from the soundtrack on his disc Quartet). The tone ranges from the slapstick to the macabre, humorous to depressing, and even has some live action cow action thrown in there.”

(via Fantasy Magazine)

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“With Hollywood hitting up comic books for blockbusters, a new comics publisher is looking to India for ideas. “The world is increasingly realizing that India is a source for creativity and great ideas, not just a back office to execute them more cheaply,” said Gotham Chopra, part of the management team at Los Angeles-based Liquid Comics.

One of the first projects for the publisher will be bringing its Ramayan 3392 AD (pictured) - a colorful, 21st-century re-imagining of Indian literary epic the Ramayana - to movie theaters. Liquid has teamed up with Mandalay Pictures and 300 producer Mark Canton for the film, which has a planned release date of 2011. Liquid sprang from the ashes of Virgin Comics, a shuttered enterprise from Richard Branson and the Chopra family that was meant to hammer the dense narratives of India and Asia into graphic novels for the American mainstream and beyond. Chopak and other members of the Liquid management team undertook the buyout of Virgin Comics to continue the quest at the new company.

Chopra talked with Wired.com about Liquid’s birth, a new wave of Indian comics artists and the challenge of bringing an ancient Sanskrit epic to the silver screen.”

(via Wired)

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“Neil Gaiman’s imaginary worlds are indisputably dark, often chillingly macabre, and always fun to visit. His characters are spooky but charming, like Death, the beguiling goth girl of the groundbreaking comic series The Sandman; the Other Mother, the soul-snatching matriarch of the young adult bestseller Coraline; and Aziraphale and Crowley, the angel and demon frenemies of the popular satire Good Omens. Gaiman chatted with Goodreads about his latest spine-tingling book, The Graveyard Book, his sources of inspiration, the Hollywood rumor mill, and what he has on his Goodreads currently-reading shelf.”

(via Goodreads. h/t: SF Signal)

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“Of all the places that should have comic books, I think libraries should be at the top of the list. Sadly some still haven’t caught on and I’m left not getting to read the stuff I want. So much for finding everything I want at my local library.

As a general rule of economics and pop culture, when comics become more popular the access to comics becomes easier. There are online comic stores, regular comics stores, and now digital comics available in electronic formats. As much as I enjoy this new access to comics, I’m not interested in buying everything I want to read. If there was a place to borrow books for free I’d use it for comics. Oh wait, there is, it’s a library. The only problem is that the libraries I visit only seem to stock comics sparingly.

I’m a working stiff. I’m not rolling in money or time. If I was I would buy the books I want to read and sell the ones I don’t enjoy. That involves money to buy all the books and time to setup online auctions, travel to the post office, confirming the buyer, etc; like I said, time and money are two things that I do not have in excess - even though I make an effort once a week to share my thoughts in this article once a week. Anyway, my local library should be able to help me in this situation. They should be able to provide access to comics and graphic novels for me to try. But they don’t. I’ve even tried libraries out of my neighborhood and out of state.”

(via Pop Syndicate)

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“This week’s Watchmen festival is finally wrapping up for me. I’m done. How much Watchmen can one guy take? Upon arriving, I thought this was a Comic Book Festival, but I was sadly mistaken. This was an awesome Watchmen commercial that I actually got to walk around in. How exciting is that? As soon as I got off the train, I saw every person on the street was carrying a big Watchmen bag. They had Watchmen posters, and Watchmen toys and photos with their favorite Watchmen characters. Not everyone who wanted to see the Watchmen panel were able to get it, but the creators of the movie and the entire cast were there. And they talked about the movie!!!!

I found all the money the studio spent promoting Watchmen at Comic Con to be ridiculous. These are nerds. It is like trying to sell guns to the NRA. You know how the studio could market The Watchmen to nerds? Go to a remote town in Alaska and find a nerd. Then just walk up to him and whisper, ‘There’s going to be a Watchmen movie.’ At that point, every nerd in the world will know. They have some sort of communication device.”- Fear The Reaper’s feedback on Comic Con via Suicide Girls

Now we know one of the reasons why Moore wanted nothing to do with the movie. Here’s an excellent interview with him from Entertainment Weekly:

“About two years ago, Warner Bros. announced that 300 director Zack Snyder would be adapting that gold standard of comics, Watchmen, into a feature film. The response was nothing short of orgiastic - from just about everyone except Watchmen’s own scribe, Alan Moore, who remains ambivalent about all the hoopla. The 54-year-old writer and co-creator of such seminal and erudite works as From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (both of which were adapted into eagerly anticipated movies that failed to match the quality of Moore’s source material) has a tangled history with the entertainment business. Even in a time when comics creators are more influential than ever (heck, The Spirit producers even gave comics great Frank Miller the helm), Moore simply wants to be left alone.”

(via Entertainment Weekly)

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“When “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” hits the big screen on July 11, it won’t just be comic book aficionados salivating over the lush, fantasy-world storyline.

Fans of Celtic mythology, too, will recognize the name of the film’s principle villain, Prince Nuada, a character loosely modeled after an important figure in the ancient folklore of Ireland. The film is peppered with other references to the myths of the Celtic tribes, who lived on the Emerald Isle beginning in 700 B.C.

The story behind Celtic mythology and the whimsical tales themselves would make for several interesting movies in their own right.”

(via Live Science. h/t: TDG)

(Trailer for “Hellboy II”)

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