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The Walking Dead Season 10 arrives on Blu-ray and DVD 7/20

The Walking Dead Season 10 arrives on Blu-ray and DVD 7/20

The Whisperer war is upon us when Season Ten of The Walking Dead arrives on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital) and DVD July 20 from Lionsgate. The Walking Dead Season Ten , containing 22 episodes, stars Norman Reedus (The Boondock Saints, Triple 9, Blade II), Danai Gurira (Black Panther, All Eyez on Me, Avengers: Endgame), Christian Serratos (The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Selena: The Series, Twilight franchise), Golden Globe® winner and Academy Award®/Primetime Emmy® nominee Samantha Morton (Golden Globe®: 2008, Best Supporting Actress – Television, Longford; Academy Award®: 2003, Best Actress, In America; Primetime Emmy®: 2007, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, Longford), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen, Supernatural and Grey’s Anatomy). Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, The Walking Dead Season Ten Blu-ray and DVD will be available for the price of $80.99 and $70.98, respectively.
 
BLU-RAY / DVD SPECIAL FEATURES

  • IN MEMORIAM
  • AUDIO COMMENTARIES

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
Winter has turned to spring, and the collected communities are grudgingly respecting the new borders imposed upon them by the ever-brutal Alpha. But having organized themselves into a militia-style fighting force, our group of survivors is prepared for battle – though they’re keenly aware that the Whisperers, and the horde of dead they mingle with, pose a threat unlike any they’ve ever faced. Paranoia, propaganda, secret agendas, infighting – all of these will test the group, individually and collectively, with the survival of civilization in a world filled with the walking dead hanging in the balance.  
 
Featuring the six additional episodes of the extended 10th season, including Negan’s long-awaited backstory, “Here’s Negan.”
 
CAST
Norman Reedus                     Boondock Saints, Triple 9, Blade 2
Danai Gurira                           Black Panther, All Eyez on Me, Avengers: Endgame
Christian Serratos                  The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Selena: The Series, Twilight franchise
Samantha Morton                  Harlots, Minority Report, In America
Jeffrey Dean Morgan              Supernatural and Grey’s Anatomy, Watchmen
Melissa McBride                     The MistThe Dangerous Life of Alter Boys, Dawson’s Creek

PROGRAM INFORMATION
Year of Production: 2019-2021
Title Copyright:The Walking Dead © 2019-2021 AMC Film Holdings LLC. Artwork and Supplementary Materials are TM, ® and © 2019–2021 AMC Network Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Type: TV-on-DVD
Rating: Not Rated
Genre: Horror, Drama, Thriller
Closed-Captioned: N/A
Subtitles: French, Spanish, English SDH
Feature Run Time: Approx. 1005 minutes (43-51 minutes per episode)
Blu-ray Format: 1080p High Definition 16×9 (1.78:1) Presentation
DVD Format: 16×9 (1.78:1) Presentation
Blu-ray Audio: English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD, French and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Surround
DVD Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Audio, French and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Surround

NOBODY Arrives on Digital June 8 and on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD June 22

NOBODY Arrives on Digital June 8 and on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD June 22

Universal City, California, June 1, 2021 – From the writer of legendary action film John Wick, comes NOBODY, the story of an ordinary, family man (Bob Odenkirk, “Breaking Bad”, “Better Call Saul”) who will stop at nothing to defend what is his. NOBODY is available to own for the first time on Digital June 8 , 2021 and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray™ and DVD on June 22, 2021 from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.  Bring home “one of the best action films in over a decade” (Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment) now with exclusive bonus content, including deleted scenes, a look inside Director Ilya Naishuller’s style and sensibility in creating the film, and a breakdown of the stunt choreography.

Hutch is a nobody. As an overlooked and underestimated father and husband, he takes life’s indignities on the chin and never rocks the boat. But when his daughter loses her beloved kitty-cat bracelet in a robbery, Hutch hits a boiling point no one knew he had. What happens when a pushover finally pushes back? Hutch flips from regular dad to fearless fighter by taking his enemies on a wild ride of explosive revenge. NOBODY showcases Emmy®-winner Bob Odenkirk as fans have never seen him before: an average family man who becomes a lethal vigilante unlike any ordinary action hero.

The “high octane, fist-pumping thrill ride” (Inverse) stars Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen (Wonder Woman), RZA (American Gangster) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future). The film is directed by Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry) and written and executive produced by acclaimed action filmmaker Derek Kolstad (John Wick franchise). NOBODY was produced by Kelly McCormick (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), David Leitch (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), Braden Aftergood (Hell or High Water), Bob Odenkirk and Marc Provissiero (“PEN15”).

BONUS FEATURES on 4K UHD, BLU-RAYTM, DVD AND DIGITAL:

  • DELETED SCENES
  • HUTCH HITS HARD – Discover how Bob Odenkirk trained to bring his character “Hutch Mansell” to life.
  • BREAKING DOWN THE ACTION (Bus Fight, Home Invasion, Car Chase and Tool & Die Sequences) – A behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the film’s explosive set pieces.
  • JUST A NOBODY – A look at the personal beginning of the story for Bob Odenkirk and the unique style and sensibility that director Ilya Naishuller brought to the film.
  • FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH ACTOR/PRODUCER BOB ODENKIRK AND DIRECTOR ILYA NAISHULLER
  • FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR ILYA NAISHULLER

NOBODY will be available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital.

  • 4K Ultra HD is the ultimate movie watching experience. 4K Ultra HD features the combination of 4K resolution for four times sharper picture than HD, the color brilliance of High Dynamic Range (HDR) with immersive audio delivering a multidimensional sound experience.
  • Blu-ray unleashes the power of your HDTV and is the best way to watch movies at home, featuring 6X the picture resolution of DVD, exclusive extras and theater-quality surround sound.
  • Digital lets fans watch movies anywhere on their favorite devices. Users can instantly stream or download.
  • The Movies Anywhere Digital App simplifies and enhances the digital movie collection and viewing experience by allowing consumers to access their favorite digital movies in one place when purchased or redeemed through participating digital retailers. Consumers can also redeem digital copy codes found in eligible Blu-rayTM and DVD disc packages from participating studios and stream or download them through Movies Anywhere.  Movies Anywhere is available only in the United States.

FILMMAKERS
Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, RZA and Christopher Lloyd
Music By: David Buckley
Costume Designer: Patricia J. Henderson
Editors: William Yeh, Evan Schiff
Production Designer: Roger Fires
Director of Photography: Pawel Pogorzelski
Executive Producers: Derek Kolstad, Marc. S Fischer, Annie Marter, Tobey Maguire
Produced By: Kelly McCormick p.g.a, David Leitch p.g.a, Braden Aftergood p.g.a, Bob Odenkirk, Marc Provissiero
Written By: Derek Kolstad
Directed By: Ilya Naishuller

TECHNICAL INFORMATION DVD:
Street Date: June 22, 2021
Selection Number: 1961211375 (US) / 1961215236 (CDN)
Layers: DVD 9
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9 2.39:1
Rating: R for strong violence and bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use.
Languages/Subtitles: English, French Canadian and Latin American Spanish
Sound: English (Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 for Bonus Content), French Canadian (Dolby Digital 5.1), Latin American Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Run Time: 01:31:39

TECHNICAL INFORMATION BLU-RAY™:
Street Date: June 22, 2021
Selection Number: 1961214290 (US) / 1961215237 (CDN)
Layers: BD 50
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 16:9 2:39:1
Rating: R for strong violence and bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use.
Languages/Subtitles: English, French Canadian and Latin American Spanish
Sound: English (Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital 2.0 for bonus content), French Canadian (Dolby Digital 5.1), Latin American Spanish (Dolby Digital 7.1)
Run Time: 01:31:33

TECHNICAL INFORMATION 4K UHD:
Street Date: June 22, 2021
Selection Number: 1961214291 (US) / 1961215238 (CDN)
Layers: BD 66
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 16:9 2.39:1
Rating: R for strong violence and bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use.
Languages/Subtitles: English, French Canadian and Latin American Spanish
Sound: English (Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital 2.0 for Bonus Content), French Canadian (Dolby Digital 5.1), Latin American Spanish (Dolby Digital 7.1)
Run Time: 01:31:33

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine

Adrian Tomine has always struck me as the closest thing to a literary short-story writer in the comics field – our Raymond Carver, perhaps – with his tight, focused stories of real people in real worlds dealing with mundane lives and just interacting with each other. It’s the kind of work that sounds dull when I try to describe it, but is thrillingly true when done right, and Tomine generally gets it right.

So it was strange first to see that his new book last year, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist , was a memoir – I wondered if that knife-edge would still be there when writing about his own life. (It wasn’t, obviously, in his wedding-favor-cum-celebration-GN Scenes from an Impending Marriage , because if a book like that was in the typical Tomine tone, it would be a horrible sign for the marriage in question.)

And it was even more surprising to meet eight-year-old Adrian on the first page, on his first day at a new school in Fresno in 1982, declaring his undying love for John Romita. OK, sure, he was mercilessly tormented for it – that’s how he remembers it, so I’ll buy it on that level, but my memory is that eight-year-olds in 1982 liked to read superhero comics a lot, though I was not in hoity-toity Fresno – but the origin story of Adrian Tomine, as he presents it here, is basically the same as every other Gen-X cartoonist: imprinted on Marvel early, spent too much time in his own room making comics, ended up socially stunted and possessed of a massive imposter complex.

I’m being reductive, here. And Tomine doesn’t linger on that childhood: it’s the one quick sequence at age eight, and then smash-cut to 1995, when he’s on his way to his first San Diego Comic-Con. The bulk of Loneliness is made up of scenes from his professional life – moments when he’s “on-stage” as a cartoonist, at a signing or convention or publicity interview or just in public where someone recognizes him. And these moments are the ones I would have expected from Tomine: they’re all ones where things go wrong, or he’s embarrassed, where he says the wrong thing or is more clearly lonely and confused and out-of-place than he wishes he was. It could be a giant wall of cringe, but it’s all particular and grounded in the kind of person we learn Tomine is: he’s a creator, who spends his days in a chair thinking up stories. People like that always have trouble interfacing with the world: other people don’t know their lines in your story, and wouldn’t follow those lines if they did.

Tomine quietly keeps the focus on himself and his insecurities. There’s a number of places where names and faces are obscured – comics insiders probably already have a secret cheat sheet to figure out who all of those people are – so that the story is not “big name pro was mean to Adrian Tomine!” but instead stays “Adrian Tomine is insecure and obsesses about these moments, which exist in everyone’s lives.”

So Loneliness is the story of a career, but only the worst, saddest moments. The moments that you remember when you wake up randomly at 3AM, the ones that you can’t stop thinking about and that you can’t do anything about. Because it’s Tomine, it’s very specific: these are his issues, his anxieties, his worst moments.

The last thirty pages are the culmination of the book, a sequence of events in 2018 that I probably shouldn’t go into too much depth about. He presents it as what drove him to make this book, and that makes sense…but I think a lot of these moments have been in his head a long time, and he had been trying to figure out a way to contextualize them and turn them into a story and not just a list of bad moments.

It may be more personal , but it’s still an Adrian Tomine book. He doesn’t tell the reader how to feel in the end, he doesn’t contextualize it all and wrap it up in a bow. He does have a long speech, at nearly the very end, that comes close to explaining it — he even says outright “my clearest memories related to comics – to being a cartoonist – are the embarrassing gaffes, the small humiliations, the perceived insults.” But is this book his way to get beyond those moments? Or does it come out of a realization that the material that hits you the hardest is the stuff you need to do next? Or both? Or neither?

We’re not all famous cartoonists. (Tomine might even say that he isn’t a famous cartoonist, except in very specific circumstances – that’s the buried message of the first two pages.) But we all obsess about things. We all have memories we don’t want to think about but keep coming back to. Loneliness is the exploration of one life through those moments, by a master cartoonist and storyteller.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Batman: The Long Halloween Part 1 Unleashes the Batmobile

Batman: The Long Halloween Part 1 Unleashes the Batmobile

The Batmobile takes centerstage in an all-new clip from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One.

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC , the feature-length animated film will be distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Digital and Blu-ray on June 22. 

Batman (voiced by Jensen Ackles) speeds the Batmobile through the streets of Gotham City in hot pursuit of mobster Mickey Chen (Gary Chun) in this all-new clip from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One. The clip also includes Police Captain James Gordon (Billy Burke), police officer Pearce (Gary LeRoi Gray) and Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred (Alastair Duncan). Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the all-new feature-length animated film arrives on Digital & Blu-ray on June 22.

Trese, Philippine Graphic Novel, Being Adapted by Netflix

Trese, Philippine Graphic Novel, Being Adapted by Netflix

Manila, Philippines – May 21, 2021 – Netflix today released the official trailer for Trese, the highly anticipated Netflix Original Anime series based on the Philippine graphic novel created by Budjette Tan and KaJO Baldisimo, premiering on Netflix June 11, 2021.

TRESE (L to R) GRIFFIN PUATU as THE KAMBAL and SHAY MITCHELL as ALEXANDRA TRESE in episode 101 of TRESE Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2021

Netflix also revealed the English language and Filipino language voice cast of Trese. Darren Criss (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story), Jon Jon Briones (Ratched), Nicole Scherzinger (Moana), Manny Jacinto (The Good Place), Lou Diamond Phillips (Longmire) and Dante Basco (Avatar: The Last Airbender) join Shay Mitchell (YOU, Pretty Little Liars), previously announced as the voice of Alexandra Trese in the English language version.

Filipino actress Liza Soberano (My Ex and Whys, Alone/Together) will voice Alexandra Trese in the Filipino language version of the series, and will be joined by local professional voice talents Simon dela Cruz (as Crispin and Basilio), Apollo Abraham (Captain Guerrero), Christopher Carlo Caling (Hank), Christian Velarde (Nuno), and Eugene Adalia (Anton Trese).

Well-respected Filipino Language Voice Artist Director Rudolf Baldonado will direct the local voice talents.

English language voice cast:

  • Shay Mitchell – Alexandra Trese
  • Griffin Puatu – The Kambal (Crispin and Basilio), Bantay
  • Matt Yang King – Captain Guerrero, Dominic
  • Jon Jon Briones – Hank, Xa-Mul
  • Steve Blum – Datu Talagbusao, Ibwa
  • Carlos Alazraqui – Anton Trese, Santelmo
  • Manny Jacinto – Maliksi
  • Eric Bauza – Nuno the Snitch, Bagyon Lektro
  • Darren Criss – Marco
  • Nicole Scherzinger – Miranda Trese
  • Lou Diamond Phillips – Mayor Sancho Santamaria
  • Dante Basco – Bagyon Kulimlim
  • Rodney To – Aswang market guard , Man in drag

    Filipino language voice cast:
  • Liza Soberano – Alexandra Trese
  • Simon dela Cruz – The Kambal (Crispin and Basilio)
  • Apollo Abraham – Captain Guerrero
  • Christopher Carlo Caling – Hank
  • Eugene Adalia – Anton Trese
  • Cheska Aguiluz – Miranda Trese
  • Christian Velarde – Nuno
  • Bryan Encarnacion – Datu Talagbusao
  • Nica Rojo – Ramona
  • Jo Anne Orobia-Chua – Emissary
  • Jose Amado Santiago – Marco
  • Steve dela Cruz – Maliksi
  • Rene Tandoc – Mayor Santamaria
  • Steffi Graf Bontogon-Mola – Young, Teen Alexandra
  • RJ Celdran – Santelmo, Señor Armanaz
  • Elyrey Martin – Ibwa, Dominic
  • Steven Bontogon – Jobert

Set in a Manila where the mythical creatures of Philippine folklore live in hiding amongst humans, Alexandra Trese finds herself going head to head with a criminal underworld comprised of malevolent supernatural beings.

Director and Showrunner: Jay Oliva (Justice League Dark, The Legend of Korra)

Executive Producers: Jay Oliva; Shanty Harmayn and Tanya Yuson at BASE Entertainment, a studio based in Jakarta and Singapore

Written by: Tanya Yuson, Zig Marasigan, Mihk Vergara

Series Directors: David Hartman (Transformers: Prime), Mel Zwyer (Star Wars Rebels), Tim Divar (Young Justice)

Production designer and Art Director: Jojo Aguilar (Tron Uprising)

Character Design: Will Nichols (Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Editor: Christopher Lozinski (Batman: The Killing Joke)

English language casting and voice direction: Wes Gleason

Filipino language casting and voice direction: Rudolf Baldonado

Composers: Kevin Kiner, Sean Kiner, Dean Kiner (Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Original song: “PAAGI” by UDD, with lyrics by Armi Millare and Paul Yap

Format: 6 episodes, releasing all at once

Filipino band UDD, formerly known as Up Dharma Down, composed the official soundtrack for Trese, titled “PAAGI,” with lyrics by Armi Millare and Paul Yap.

Trese will premiere on June 11, 2021, only on Netflix (www.netflix.com/trese).

Guy Ritchie’s Snatch Makes 4K Debut July 13

Guy Ritchie’s Snatch Makes 4K Debut July 13

SYNOPSIS

Guy Ritchie, writer/director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, delivers another awe-inspiring directorial masterpiece, Snatch – an edgy and hilarious film about a diamond heist gone wrong, a colorful Irish gypsy-turned-prizefighter…and a very temperamental dog. In the heart of gangland, two novice unlicensed boxing promoters, Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephen Graham), get roped into a rigged bare-knuckle fight with local kingpin/villain and fellow boxing promoter Brick Top (Alan Ford). But all goes wrong when wild-card Irish gypsy boxer One Punch Mickey O’Neil (Brad Pitt) starts playing by his own rules , and the duo find themselves heading for a whole lot of trouble. Meanwhile, Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) and his stolen 86-carat diamond have gone missing in London. Head honcho Avi (Dennis Farina) hires local legend Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) to find them, launching everyone into a spiral of double-crossing vendettas and events, most of them illegal.

DISC DETAILS & BONUS MATERIAL 
4K ULTRA HD DISC

  • Newly Remastered in 4K resolution from the original camera negative, with HDR10
  • All-new Dolby Atmos tracks, for both the US and original UK audio + original theatrical US & UK English 5.1
  • Theatrical Trailer

BLU-RAY DISC™

  • Director & Producer Commentary
  • Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary
  • “Making Snatch” Featurette
  • Storyboard Comparisons
  • Video Photo Gallery and More!

CAST AND CREW

Directed By: Guy Ritchie
Written By: Guy Ritchie
Producer: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Farina, Vinnie Jones, Brad Pitt, Rade Sherbedgia, Jason Statham
SPECS

Run Time: Approx. 103 minutes
Rating: R for strong violence, language and some nudity
Feature Picture: 2160p Ultra High Definition, 1.85:1
Feature Audio: English US, English UK Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Compatible) | English US, English UK 5.1 DTS-HD MA | French, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Coming to Disney+

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Coming to Disney+

New York, NY (May 27, 2021)—Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Children’s Books, revealed today the title and cover of the eagerly anticipated sixteenth installment in the global bestselling series by Jeff Kinney. Releasing in hardcover and eBook editions, Big Shot (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 16) will be simultaneously published in 28 countries across the world on October 26, 2021. In addition, the story that started it all comes to life in the all-new animated adventure, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, streaming this holiday season on Disney+.

In Big Shot, Greg Heffley and sports just don’t mix. After a disastrous field day competition at school, Greg decides that when it comes to his athletic career, he’s officially retired. But after his mom urges him to give sports one more chance, he reluctantly agrees to sign up for basketball. Tryouts are a mess, and Greg is sure he won’t make the cut. But he unexpectedly lands a spot on the worst team. As Greg and his new teammates start the season, their chances of winning even a single game look slim. But in sports, anything can happen. When everything is on the line and the ball is in Greg’s hands, will he rise to the occasion? Or will he blow his big shot? Charles Kochman, ABRAMS editorial director and Kinney’s longtime editor, will edit the new book.

Big Shot will be supported by a major marketing and publicity campaign, including an innovative drive-thru-style book tour that Kinney conceived and produced with ABRAMS for his three previous books published during the pandemic, most recently his global bestseller Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories, the third book in the Wimpy Kid spin-off Awesome Friendly Kid series. The Big Shot campaign will also include partnerships with social media influencers, national advertising, dynamic digital content, and promotions targeting teachers and librarians.

Jeff Kinney is one of the world’s bestselling authors; Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are published in 79 editions in 65 languages and have sold more than 250 million copies globally in just 14 years. Published in 2007, the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book was an instant bestseller and has remained on the New York Times bestseller list since its publication and through the release of the fifteenth book and three-book spin-off Awesome Friendly Kid series , for more than 775 weeks total. The series is also a fixture on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and IndieBound bestseller lists and is one of the top five bestselling book series—adult and kids—of all time.

Not the usual suspects in new images from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One

Not the usual suspects in new images from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One

Among the many suspects with motive and opportunity to be the Holiday Killer is Alberto Falcone, the calculating son of mob boss Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. Jack Quaid (The Boys, The Hunger Games, upcoming My Adventures With Superman) provides the voice of Alberto.

The suspects nearly outnumber the victims of the Holiday Killer – and it’s up to Batman, Police Captain James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent to decipher the clues and find the true criminal mastermind in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One

Warner Animation recently released four new images of the various potential murderers from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One.

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC, the feature-length animated Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One will be distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Digital and Blu-ray on June 22, 2021. 

The crimefighters are forced to enlist the help of a criminal – Calendar Man – to help understand the clues and discover the identity of the Holiday Killer in Batman: The Long Halloween , Part One. David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Dune, Ant-Man, The Flash) provides the voice of Calendar Man.
A mob war roars in the background of the Holiday Killer’s murder spree, and it’s Carmine “The Roman” Falcone at the center of the crime syndicate’s activities. Falcone was an ally of Thomas Wayne in the establishment of Gotham City, but Wayne’s son Bruce isn’t as accepting of Falcone’s methods. Titus Welliver (Bosch, Deadwood) voices Falcone.
Would a Batman story be complete without an appearance by the Joker? The Clown Prince of Crime is up to his usual diabolical escapades in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One, terrorizing the public while taunting the Dark Knight. Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Knight) voices the Dark Knight’s greatest foe in the all-new film.

Born a Doofus by Adam Huber

Gag-a-day cartoons are a wonderful and mysterious art, a triumph of style and viewpoint, precise phrasing and engaging drawing, with a clear point of view and a world that can be encapsulated in four panels but expands with four new panels every day for as long as the cartoonist is inspired.

Well, good gag-a-day cartoons are like that. We also have Blondie and Garfield.

Bug Martini , though, is a good gag-a-day cartoon. It’s been running for about a dozen years, and its creator, Adam Huber, finally put together a physical-book collection of the strip this past year, gathering the first year of strips under the title Born a Doofus.

So this book starts with the first strip (October 19, 2009 ) and runs through the strip for October 18, 2010 . It also includes, in the back, about a dozen sketchbook pages about the pre-history of his “bug” main character, but the real draw is the comics themselves, which were funny and smart right from the beginning. (Huber’s art has evolved a bit – his bugs were chunkier, with smaller eyes, at the very beginning – but his writing was basically fully-formed from strip one. He may have gotten slightly denser with jokes as he went on, but that’s about it: this was really funny from launch.) I was chuckling all the way through Born a Doofus, and only avoided trying to read out a dozen or so random strips to The Wife out of my finely-honed sense that reading the words from a comic are not the preferred experience…especially to a woman trying to make dinner for her family.

But, Andy, you say. You’re linking to those strips, which are still available online. Why would I buy a book when I can just read straight through the archives, and hit another ten years of strips after that?

Aha! There is a fatal flaw in your plan: you can’t buy this book. It’s not available to you. It was funded by a Kickstarter, and you are too late. So it’s not a case of “should I get this book,” but instead a case of “you missed out on this awesome book, so sad for you.”

So I am not recommending this book to you. I am gloating that I just read it, that it is wonderful, and that you cannot have it. Oh, maybe Huber will deign to open sales of Born a Doofus in the future – check out his webstore , and live in hope – but, for right now, I have it and you do not.

(Or maybe I’m joking, and I do hope you can buy this someday, and Bug Martini will become an empire to rival Paws, Inc. Maybe.)

So that is Born a Doofus. It is funny, and I hope the stress of making it didn’t turn Huber off making further books, since he could do at least half-a-dozen more out of his archives. And maybe, just maybe, if you’re really good and the world is better than it usually is, you will be able to get a copy yourself someday. But, for now: you missed it.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists edited by Ted Rall

Any book with “new” in the title will age really badly: it’s just inherent. If what it’s trying to do is present something fresh and immediate, that will just be less compelling fifteen years later. No one can do anything about that effect.

So it’s a pretty quixotic thing to read Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists  in 2021, since it’s a book from 2006 about a world that was fast-moving at that point and has only sped up since then. Attitude 3 was the last of the series — the first Attitude profiled new political cartoonists and the second one new “alternative” cartoonists” (primarily those of the weekly newspapers that flourished in the ’90s, I think), and all of them were edited by Ted Rall, at a moment in his career when he seemed to be working more as a connector than he looks to be doing now.

(Parenthetically, Rall – as the sourest, most uncompromising and most ideologically leftist cartoonist in the US – now looks like an odd person to do something this broad and inclusive, but, again, fifteen years can change people and worlds and industries. Early-Aughts Rall is not the same person he is today; none of us are.)

So Attitude 3 interviews and profiles twenty-one relatively prominent webcartoonists of the time, mostly focusing on political/personal cartoons – things closer to the editorial end of the world, or gag-a-day in some cases, rather than the kind of webcomics that are basically long serialized stories formatted as comic-book pages presented in electronic form. Some of them will be familiar , some of them will be lost to the mists of time. (Well, they were for me; you might be intimately familiar with every single one of these and know exactly what they’ve all done in the fifteen years since. If so, you are creepy and I am unobtrusively moving away from you.)

Cartoonists I recognize/follow/enjoy include Richard Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, Matt Bors (more recently of The Nib), Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl, Nicholas Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship, and Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics. A couple of others – Mark Fiore in particular – are names I’ve seen since then. But the majority of the book was made up of cartoons and creators I’d never seen before and hadn’t heard of: my guess is that some of them are still going, in their own corners of the Internet, and some have moved on to other art-adjacent things, and most have moved on to work that’s nothing like making pictures on the WWW.

Each cartoonist has five or six pages, including a decent selection of cartoons in black-and-white – this is an issue for some, since most were in color on the ‘net, for obvious reasons – and the interview with Rall. It’s all professional and well-done and informative, but it does feel like a moment frozen in amber this many years later.

I think we’re at the wrong time to look at a book like this again. One the one hand, it’s too long for most of these people to still be doing the same work, though a few are. On the other, they were all very young then (mostly mid-twenties) and so now are mostly in the middle of their careers – so it’s too early for this to be useful as parallax to evaluate anything like their whole oeuvre.

Still, it’s a moderately heroic book, trying to gather a vast, massively-distributed world and get it between two covers for posterity. It is a serious accomplishment, and it will be there for that re-evaluation in another thirty years or so, if any of us are there to look at it again.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.