Geekanerd Spotter: Invincibility Star Street Art

This entire condo complex has an invincibility star! Does that mean that the people who live here will never die, as long as they don't leave their rooms? But what kind of life would that be? Actually that may be a scenario all too familiar to both you and me, dear reader.

And speaking of you, regular readers have certainly noticed by know that our posting schedule and regular features have slowed way down recently - a bit of excusifying after the jump...

The slowdown in production is mainly because I, AHR, am residing outside of NYC for the fall, and accordingly my nerd powers are only operating at about half capacity. You see, LIKE SUPERMAN, I draw my powers from a localized source, in my case the Manhattan/Brooklyn area. I'm currently in Charlotte NC, which has at least one amazing comic store, but sadly not as many amazing nerd events to keep me inspired.



That said, the NYC Weekanerd Event Calendar and our Twitter/Facebook feeds still get updated all the time. Geekanerd proper will still be updated with feature articles, though on a slower schedule for the next few months.

If you have any feedback, holla: tips@geekanerdblog.com

Some Facts About Godzilla

If you missed Nerd Nite last friday, one of NYC's finer nerd lecture series, you missed some important information about Godzilla, and how not to die by his massive scaly claws.



Luckily for you, the musical portion of the lecture, by fake scientist Shyporn Teerakulstit, is available for viewing on YouTube. Double points for sampling Simon Says, which has nothing to do with Godzilla by may be the coolest single riff of music ever composed. It was in Charlie's Angels.

Incidentally, this was the first Nerd Nite I'd attended, and it far exceeded my expectations. The next one is in September, and it'll definitely be on the Weekanerd sidebar. Highly recc'd.

Photos: MoCCA 2009 Star-Studded Explosion!

The calm before the storm...the first day of MoCCA 2009 got off to a late start, so I got to snap a picture of the floor mostly free of attendees. Since MoCCA's usual space caught on fire last year, this year's Art Festival took place at the Regiment Armory in Murray Hill, a gigantic high ceiling auditorium space that made the show feel less like a small press fair, and more like a major convention.

That's not to say there weren't plenty of indie creators and publishers at the show, but I was particularly struck by how many big name creators were there as well. It seems MoCCA has continued to gain traction as a place where indie creators come to be discovered as well as a way for more major presses to promote their new, more artsy releases.

Comic stars, fresh talent, awesome sketches, and neat tablecloths, after the jump...


PART 1: Big Names

Adrian Tomine signing at the The Drawn & Quarterly booth. Growing up in Berkeley, I was a fan of local sensation Tomine since I was a teenager, and Shortcomings was my favorite book of 2007. He was taking meticulous care in his autograph dedications, it was awesome just to watch him do the lettering!


Seth, creator of Palookaville, was looking very dapper during his Drawn and Quarterly signing.

Writer Joe Kelly and artist Rodney Ramos were giving away and signing copies of Bang! Tango at the Vertigo booth. I mentioned that I loved the Free Comic Book Day edition of Four Eyes, another of Kelly's books, and he pulled out the second issue and gave me an autographed copy of that as well. Sweetness.

Brian Wood with DMZ aplenty at the Vertigo Booth.

David Mack had Kabuki titles and original art for sale, as well as his recent kids book, The Shy Creatures.

I am of course a huge fan of the Act-i-Vate gang, represented at their booth by Molly Crabapple and Dean Haspiel.

Becky Cloonan was selling advance copies of Pixu (review coming soon!) and promoting her webcomic KGB with co-author/artist Hwan Cho.

Evan Dorkin was promoting Beast of Burden, his upcoming book with Jill Thompson.

Tara McPherson was signing her illustration work as well as her awesome line of Kid Robot toys.

Action Philosphers artist Ryan Dunlavey was just about dwarfed by his booth's immense signage!

Part 2: Webcomics

The boys of Dumbrella.

Oh. Man. Randall Munroe of xkcd had the most consistently big crowd I saw all day. This dude must be like, a millionaire!

Ryan North! I had no idea he'd done these amazing instructions for time travel that have been making the internet rounds. He was selling poster versions that you can put you and post inside your time machine in case of emergencies.

Ben Rosen of White Cat, with his neon killer sign.

These buttons feature "Admiral Snackbar", a fastfood mascot featured in The Rack by Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie. I'm a big fan of puns, particularly Star Wars puns, and apparently so is Benjamin Birdie. Suffice to say, I bought one of these.


Part 3: Art and Stuff!

Cute overload....Mice doing martial arts by Stephanie Yue.

Some pretty brilliant t-shirt designs by Joanna Mulder (talk about an awesome geek name).

Okay; this is the best thing I saw all day. I'm sorry. I love creator-owned work, I love innovative, experimental comics that push boundaries, but I will always have Star Wars deeply implanted in my heart and soul, and these mini-anthologies of Star Wars comics are freakin' OUT OF CONTROL. I bought the first one, Harvest Is When I Need You Most. Just think about that title. That is beautiful. Each story is a wonderfully thoughtful and funny take on the Star Wars universe, and I may have to go buy the other two tomorrow. These are edited by Shelli Paroline, who autographed my copy along with a little picture of an Ewok.

This is a mural by Michael DiMotta, the colorist of my new favorite DC title, Ink. Turns out DiMotta is an extraordinarily talented penciller as well, and this double tryptic of animals was actually painted as mural for a school. Lucky kids!

More Michael DiMotta. Man, this is good stuff. Be sure to check out his homepage for high-res images of this print and much more.


Artist Jerry Ma was sketching at the booth for Secret Identities, the first ever Asian Superhero Anthology (which I recently covered for Midtown comics). This was just his "warm-up" sketch, so I think we can safely assume his sketches throughout the day were pretty badass.

This print by Lucy Knisley caught my eye, for obvious reasons. I asked when she did it, wondering if she drew it before or after the zombie explosion of the last few years, and it turns out she did it specifically for the convention, and turned it out just two days before the show! I should probably go back and buy this.

Nathan Stapley and Scott C at the Doublefine booth. I have to say I had no idea Doublefine, a studio I know best for creating the brilliant Psychonauts videogame and the upcoming Brutal Legend, did comics as well. But they do! Like I didn't have enough stuff to check out...JEEZ. Also they gave out free stickers.

Here's JoeGP, creator of the Talking Guinea Pigs webcomic. I'd never read it before, but I liked the art and writing so much on my initial flip-through, I had to buy one of the hard copies. He also drew me a sketch which I will post tomorrow at a more reasonable hour.

These two creators win best tablecloths of the day...

Martina Fugazzotto, recipient of last year's Friends of Lulu Kim Yale award, was displaying her awesome sex-positive sex-ed comics on an equally awesome psychadelic tablecloth.

Box Brown, author of Love Is A Peculiar Type of Thing which came out last week and looks great, had this exquisite 1970s Disco Peanuts tablecloth. Every Charlie Brown is happy when he's dancing to disco music! I asked Brown if he had a particular affinity for Peanuts, and he responded with an enthusiastic yes, adding that any comic featuring a character with a perfectly round head is a big draw.

That's just Day 1, folks! And there's even more on Geekanerd's Flickr.

Mr. Wonka! Just Punisher of Coddled Children

As much as I hate posting anything with a shelf date of more than 1 month, this was simply to good not to rave about. This amazing piece of design, this fictional relic...it's everything I love in visual form.

1. It's a Geek/Americana mashup (if you can consider 70s Penguin book covers Americana, and I do)
2. It's Engrish.
3. It's cute.
4. It works on many levels (this is not only the best scene in the movie, but it's a metaphor for the ENTIRE MOVIE, which I never realized till now. Omg.)

The time traveler responsible for this is Spacesick. He has tons more of the "I Can Read Movies" series on his webpage, and tons of just all around great design on his Flickr, like this:



This was a threadless t-shirt design but it lost! What the hell! People just don't get the wereburger joke.

See The Galaxy! New Posters Mix Star Wars Planets with Depression Era Advertisng

There are few things I enjoy more than mash-ups that combine old timey Americana with geekanerd iconography. First it was comic cover artists copping from Norman Rockwell, now it's WPA Posters meets Star Wars. Zazzle has produced a line of officially licensed Star Wars posters based on the WPA's "See America" poster campaign. What's that? You've never heard of the WPA, the jewel of FDR's New Deal? Here's the original poster that the Hoth version was based on...


Tatooine and Courescant after the jump....


I couldn't find the original version of Courescant...seems like it must be based on a New York poster, but no sign of it on google image search. Oh well. Why does Couruscant need a tourism campaign anyway? Ain't no recession in Courescant! If those guys want credits, they PRINT some! Or mine some. Program some? What's a credit?

UPDATE! Reader "Andrew" tipped us to yet more old timey travel posters...these set in the Firefly universe. They don't seem to be directly referencing any WPA posters, but the influence is unmistakable. Awesome stuff. You can see and purchase all five at the Quantum Mechanix store.

Geekanerd Spotter: The Batmobile

There's a carwash outside Geekanerd HQ, and today some mofo pulled up in the goddamn
batmobile.
Can you believe this? My god. If it wasn't for social anxiety disorder, I would have run down and gotten the full story from the driver. Let us just assume he's a really, really big Batman fan, and is very confident in his fandom.

ITEM! Obama Makes British Prime Minister Watch Star Wars

So about a week ago, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown came to the White House to talk to Obama about, I don't know, the economy, probably? The details of their meeting do not concern us, but what does, is the contents of the world-leadery gifts they exchanged.

Brown gave Obama some a pencil holder made out of a Historically Important Boat, while Obama gave Brown a "specially ordered" AFI 25 Greatest American Movie DVD Set.

Okay, now before we all start hemming and hawing about how incredibly lame it is to give someone a freakin' DVD in this day and age, bare with me. The important thing about this gift is the movies that were included in the set, according to the Daily Mail (verifiable accuracy not included):


Please note #13 on the list...little movie called STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE.

THAT'S why Obama didn't give him the movies on Blu-ray! This whole "25 DVD Set" is just the first step in a plan to make all the world leaders watch Star Wars, which as we all know, is not currently available on Blu-ray.

I think basically Obama must be a closet Star Wars fan (he was fifteen when New Hope came out, nuff said?), and is surreptitiously trying to get all the other world leaders to watch the movies again so he has someone to talk about them with (his kids are probably into like Twilight or something).

How I think Gordon and Obama's next meeting might go, after the jump...



Just one question remains...was it the Special Edition?

Bergen Street Comics Opens In Brooklyn's Park Slope

We at Geekanerd have been so consumed with WATCHMOCOLYPSE that we missed an even more important event this Friday; the opening of a new comic shop in our very neighborhood! And not just any old comic shop, but one with leather seats, exposed brick, and original art on the walls. Rocketship may finally have some competition for all those Best Comic Store in Brooklyn awards.

I had a chance to speak to Tom Adams, the owner of the shop and "comic evangelist" who NY comic nerds may recognize from his previous job at Midtown Comics. He said the store will offer $20 back for every $100 you spend, they'll be doing Free Comic Book day in May and Dollar Comic Book Day in April, and they'll be having a grand opening party on March 13th. You can get updates on the store via Twitter, Facebook, a in-progress website.

More photos of this newly minted store, after the jump...


The new releases are at the back of the store...I picked up the new Buffy, but didn't have time to check for any of my favorite smaller titles. Next Wednesday will be the real test.

Come on, how many comic stores actually INVITE you to sit down and read the merch, much less in a nice leather chair? For those who don't want to zoom in, that's Scott Pilgrim #1 on display, coupled with the Annotated Pilgrim. Genuine class.

The pages on the wall are original inks of Brahm Revel's Guerrillas, which is currently being put out by Image Comics.

Here's Tom The Owner, racking up the Marvel Section. From the store's Twitter: "All day and night genre-racking our books = Heaven."

Hey, where's the storefront and awning? Well, I was so looking forward to reading my Buffy comic*...I kinda forgot to take a picture of the outside. But as of Saturday 3/7, the awning just said "COMICS" in big gold off-center letters, so presumably there's more to come.



*And it wasn't even a very good issue >:(

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: The Star Wars Force Trainer In Action

Here us your Gnerd editor, AHR, using the Force. I've been waiting my whole life for this.



You may be wondering, when can I own this? July 23rd, 2009.

For embeddable video of this life-changing experience, check out our YouTube Channel.

Legos and The Art of Minimalism

Old and Busted:
Gigantic Lego Representations of Famous Icons


New Hotness:Minimalist Lego Representations of Every Day Items.

Christopher Niemenn is currently in the lead for Best Blog Post of 2009 with "I Lego N.Y.". Here's the story; Niemann is in Berlin and feeling homesick for NYC, so as he plays Legos with his kids he sees bits his favorite city in every little block.

I never though of Legos as little mini Rorschach tests before, but now I can't think of them any other way. Hit the jump for a few examples of what we at Geekanerd saw in the toybox of Google image search...





A Left 4 Dead medpack.


Krang! Ahh!

A Mondrian inspired sculpture next to a big piece of tofu.


Bart Simpson lying down beside a Hundred Grand candy bar.

This would probably work even better if we had some actual legos to look at.