A Septic Spiel of Spooky Scares, Super Heroes, and Strange Stories from Miles Beneath the Crud of New Jersey!
Good things come to those who wait, right? Obviously, that’s not guaranteed, but judging from what I’ve witnessed, it’s often proven true. Things I’ve only dreamed of as a kid have materialized. I’ve flexed with Hulk Hogan and I live in a world where there’s a Wonder Woman feature film. Life is good. In many respects, it keeps getting better. How’s that, you ask? Read on! Continue reading Battling For Metropolis…In My Backyard!
If you aren’t familiar with Des’ work, he’s got a retro ’40s style that blends so well with all kinds of superheros and hot pinup girls that he loves to draw. It was extremely hard not letting it turn into The Chris Farley Show, but I think I did nervously say “That was awesome” at least twice during the show.
We talked about how he made it to where he is today as an artist, which was mighty interesting, especially in comparison to other artists who “just started drawing.” We also went back and forth on our favorite superhero costumes and also came to some solid conclusions on Star Wars and the Batman franchise. It was a fun conversation, so download it! IT’S FREE on iTunes and it will provide you with a fun diversion on your way to work. Or just click the Nerd Lunch logo and listen NOWWWW!!!
Gotham is now truly in New Jersey. Next Thursday and Friday, The Dark Knight will be filming on Broad Street in Newark. Both City Hall and the Military Park Station will be utilized. New Jersey’s largest city will receive over $40,000 for the use of City Hall. Newark residents and shop owners are being told to expect extensive delays around the city and downtown. The Dark Knight Rises has also filmed scenes in Pittsburgh and New York. The next Batman installment will hit theaters in July 2012.
Many mainstream news articles about The Dark Knight Rises filming in Newark mention that Gotham was based off New York City, and while that is probably true, there is also documented proof that Gotham was once (and sometimes still is) considered to be in New Jersey. Read the previous Sexy Armpit post about Gotham City being in New Jersey:
When I read that the Asbury Park Boardwalk would be holding a Bat-Fest, Egghead, Bookworm, not even Mad Hatter could stop me from getting there. On Saturday August 20th, an entire day of events dubbed “Bat-Fest” promoted Jersey born bat-producer Michael Uslan’s new memoir The Boy Who Loved Batman. If you’re male and you like Batman, then that title should sound like a familiar story.
The Batmobile is constantly maneuvering the streets of Gotham and isn’t used to cruising around down the shore, but on Saturday it made the trip from Gotham to Asbury Park on autopilot. That’s the kind of clout that Uslan has, after all, he was the man responsible for bringing all the Batman movies to the big screen. Both the 1966 and 1989 Batmobiles were on display courtesy of John Brown of Gotham City Supercars for fans and beachgoers to take pictures with. Seeing the 1966 Batmbobile has been fairly common lately since it shows up at a lot of pop culture conventions, but the ’89 car isn’t always around, so I was excited to see it. The sleek ’89 model was parked beside the boardwalk and was in mint condition and driveable, unlike the shell that sits outside Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great Adventure.
Chicks dig the car, but they also like romantic rendezvous on the beach, and there was a little bit of that also. Going to watch movies on the beach has become a popular event in many shore towns, and Asbury Park presents many of them. Bat-fest capped off with a showing of the 1989 Batman movie introduced by Michael Uslan himself. I thought Uslan’s intro was insightful as he compared the Gotham City in the film before it’s 200th birthday to Asbury Park, a once crumbling city that has recently made quite a comeback.
Once I thumbed through Uslan’s book at The Sundry Times store on the boardwalk, I knew I wanted to read it. The first thing that struck me was the high quality pages and lots of color photos. What can I say, too many words intimidate me! I was able to speak with Michael at the end of the festivities and he took time answering my questions and signed my book as well.
Uslan isn’t just some guy who wanted to be a Hollywood movie producer. His heart has always been with comic books and superheroes. He once had a collection of nearly 30,000 comic books that he has since donated to Indiana University’s Lilly Library. You can take a look at Uslan’s IMDB profile and you’ll literally be amazed at how many comic book related projects he has produced throughout his career (Batman, Swamp Thing, and The Spirit to name a few) Uslan also created and produced one of the cartoons that I watched before leaving for school as a kid: Dinosaucers! I’ll be reading his book after I finish a couple of others and I can’t wait!
The Boy Who Loved Batman is available through Chronicle Books, Amazon, and book stores:
http://www.chroniclebooks.com/theboywholovedbatman
The Official Site of The Asbury Park Boardwalk:
http://apboardwalk.com/
I say screw all the people having a blast in San Diego right now! I’m content waiting a few months for the 2011 New York Comic Con! Originally, I had plans to publish my review of The 2010 New York Comic Con shortly after it happened in October, but for several reasons I held out. The Internet is blitzed with all kinds of content and updates about both the New York Comic Con and it’s big brother on the west coast so I figured I’d wait it out a bit. Then before I knew it, months began to pass. I had my review on the back burner to drop it when no one was expecting a review of an event that they’ve already heard about months prior. My theory was that geeks, fanboys, and even your typical everyday Joe Schmo ALWAYS want to read about Comic Con. If you continue reading this, then you have proven my theory correct.
MORE? That’s what last year’s New York Comic Con offered. Demos, Artists, Dealers; there was more of everything. Even though I’ve never been to the San Diego Comic Con, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that the New York show’s reputation pales in comparison. I’m actually glad that the New York show hasn’t gotten as out of hand and ridiculous as SD because I would start to fear going to the Con rather than wait in baited breath all year for it. Ultimately I just want to walk around the floor all by myself.
What’s the allure of the con? Is it the crazed fans dressing up in their favorite characters costume? Or maybe the stars that come out to promote the blockbuster movies that will be hitting theaters and DVD in the near future? In the midst of all the glitz and glam of the Con, we cannot forget the comic book artists. The main reason why the real hardcore comic fans go to this is to meet, interact with, and perhaps even have a custom piece signed by their favorite artist. To me, that’s the biggest thrill. Most of my time at Comic Con is spent in Artist’s Alley drooling over their portfolio albums.
While some of the costumed characters walking around the Con were employed by exhibitors, others are simply fans who seem like they just want to get some attention and their photos plastered all over the Internet. To the attendees who are just looking for attention, you’re really just clogging up the Con floor! And to the cosplayers who are loyal to the art of cosplay or just obsessed with a certain character – you are definitely worthy of making the local tri-state TV news broadcast. I commend their creativity and the time and effort they put into it!
This satirical RPG is set in a “post apocalyptic wasteland,” aka the Tri-State Area. The game features several New Jersey locales in addition to other points of interest in New York and Pennsylvania. The game map depicts The NJ Turnpike, Newark, Edison’s Laboratory, a Radioactive Wasteland, The East Orange Marketplace, Newark Airport, and Atlantic City.
Almost 8 months ago I was super excited when I first read about Spider Man slinging his web over to star in his own show on Broadway. There are times when the word impulsive just can’t begin to describe how over excited I get upon hearing news like this. Momentarily I become a little kid again without even thinking of previous disasters like the 1966 musical, It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman. I wasn’t even on Krypton let alone Earth when some genius let that outrage make it to Broadway. How could Spider Man be as bad as that? We’ve come so far since then, haven’t we? With 3 blockbuster films, an animated series, comics, and toy web slingers, could there possibly be another way of running this Marvel property into the ground? Why yes, as a matter of fact, Spidey on Broadway! Looking back, I have no idea how I didn’t see this disaster of epic proportions looming on the New York City skyline.
Why the f-ck did I even want to get tickets to this piece of trash anyway? First of all, no offense to the Marvel maniacs out there, but I’m a DC loyalist and have been since 1982. I still enjoy many Marvel characters and their films, but I have always enjoyed the DCU more. I would never EVER want to see any of the DC characters in a musical on Broadway, so hopefully if some marketing guru from DC Entertainment tosses that idea around…GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD IMMEDIATELY and then someone give that m-therfucker a swirlie.
So, yeah, I’m coming clean. I did something stupid. I bought tickets the moment they went on sale. Originally my excitement was high for no good reason other than sheer boredom and a lust for fanboy stimulation. There also seemed to be a bit of mystery involved since no details were available yet. Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark (dumb title) was set to premiere on January 16th, 2010. With no info available, I incessantly called Ticketmaster since the transaction wasn’t even appearing in my account history. There was no record of me even purchasing tickets to this crapshow. After several calls, I gave up. (I loathe Ticketmaster by the way.) A few months later, the Internet was buzzing with bad press about the budgetary issues, production problems, and set design perils that the Spider Man musical had run into. This almost sounded as bad as the time those mynocks latched onto the Falcon and started chowing down on those power cables.
The premiere date was pushed to the end of February. I hoped that the new date might give the producers enough time to get their shit together, but truthfully, I started to get fed up when I received an e-mail from terrible Ticketmaster. They wanted me to call them to EXCHANGE the tickets for the new date?!?!?! WTF? Shouldn’t they have just sent me tickets for the new date? I purchased the tickets and now I would risk losing the seats that I bought? That is pure bullshit, but like a shmuck, I called and exchanged the tickets like they asked. The employee who answered had no idea about anything I was referring to. She even snickered when I told her for the second time that I was calling about the Spider Man Musical. Clearly none of the Ticketmaster employees are made aware of postponements or cancellations. When she asked for an order number, I couldn’t even give her one because the transaction didn’t even exist and I was never given an order number, nor did it show up in my account. I was super pissed now. Finally, she figured it out, but the same seats I purchased were no longer available! They gave me seats at the end of the same row, which I settled for.
Today, more articles were published all over the Internet about Spider Man being postponed until Fall of 2010. Many of the news pieces reported that Ticketmaster would be offering refunds at this point. Earlier today I received an automated message on my phone from Ticketmaster stating that I was able to call them for a refund if I desired. If not, I would have to wait for a new sale date to exchange the tickets yet again. As soon as I got home, I called Ticketmaster and asked for a refund. Wouldn’t you know that the jackass who answered the phone had absolutely no clue about anything I was referring to. I told him that I received an automated call and that I was requesting a refund since the show would be postponed for a third time. I’d say it took a good 3 minutes of holding and listening to the same stupid music until he came back and asked more questions. By the end of the near 14 minute conversation full of needless back and forth, I got my refund. Now all I have to do is make sure it actually goes into my account or I’m suing Tickemaster for $200 bucks!
If you’ve been following the continuing debacle of the snowballing Spider Man Musical budget, you probably have a pretty good idea how I arrived at my decision. As of today, the budget is apparently in the realm of $50 million dollars and growing. Maybe I was sucked in by the thought of Edge working on the musical score for the show, or the idea that Mary Jane would be played by Evan Rachel Wood. Why don’t they just take those ideas, and before they shove them up their asses, put them to good use in either another feature film or an animated DVD movie? Considering that ticket sales for plays and musicals have been slumping for the past few years, the question here is…how many of you would be eager to go and shell out $100 bucks per ticket to see a Spider Man musical?
Chris Bolton, co-creator of the SMASH online comic, regularly posts pics of fans wearing the SMASH t-shirt from around the country. In their latest post, NJ was represented!
“Our own Aunt Katie reported seeing a Smash T-Shirt on a kid in a McDonald’s in Sayreville, New Jersey! How random is that? I couldn’t find Sayreville on a map of New Jersey with “Sayreville” marked by a giant, red-neon sign (not too good with the maps and the map-finding and the finding of things on maps).”
Haven’t the guys from Smash ever heard of Jon Bon Jovi? Please forgive them and head over and check out Chris & Kyle’s SMASH, the adventures of a 10-year old costumed super hero! More importantly, Magus, his arch nemesis is on par with Darkseid’s kickassery.
