The Year In Film In One Image

You know, we at Geekanerd could have done one of those big "Best Films of 2008" articles, but why bother when this Village Voice cover sums it up in one image. This is really all you need to know about 2008. Here's hoping 2009 offers more surprises.

Nerd Icons Rendered As Bento Boxes

People love eating things that look like things. Anna The Red makes bento boxes that look like nerdy cartoon and video game characters. This Wall-E and EVE is incredible, though I'm very upset about the exclusion of M-O. Look, they've already got the little compacted trash cubes!

More Miyazaki toons than you can shake a chopstick at (sorry), plus Portal and Rabbids, after the jump...

That adorable chubby mouse from Spirited Away, plus his little bird pals and those dust things.

Tootaroo!
No Face and company...this one is particularly perfect.

A box full of Rabbids...okay so this one isn't that pretty, but there are must cuter cookie Rabbids on their Flickr page. DAAAAA!

This is a triumph. Again you can see details on Flickr, as well as Anna's blog. There are several other series represented, and Invader Zim fans will definitely find a lot of stuff to like.

Like this...

Panel Discussion - Scans From Astonishing X-Men, Rage of the Red Lanterns, Joker HC, and More

Celebrity Casting Corner Pt. 1 - Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #1
Never have I seen better ringer for Ed Harris than Inspector Slipper from this steampunky X-Men tale. And well cast, I say--the man's got quite a face. As fun as it is to spot celebrity likenesses in comics, the excitement is multiplied big time when you can find the exact image the artist used as reference!

Cute OverloaaaAAAHHH OH GOD NO - Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns #1
My goodness. What is going on at the DC Offices? Did their medical plan stop covering anti-psychotic perscriptions?


A Moral Confusion - Avengers: The Initiative #18

Why is it that all of these superheroes that "don't kill" have no problem exploding Skrulls all over the place? Because they aren't from Earth? Because they have wrinkly chins and green skin? Seriously, they don't even look that different from humans... It makes me very uncomfortable in a very political way.

Achievement In Joker Creepiness - Joker

How do artists keep finding ways to make the Joker seem creepy? Lee Bermejo has him dig into a plate of shrimp the same way he does everything...with perverse, life-threatening glee. *shudder*


Celebrity Casting Corner Pt. 2 - Kick Drum Comix #2
It's nice to see that EVE is getting some work post-Wall-E. It must be hard out there for old cartoon characters, sitting around waiting for direct-to-DVD sequels and crappy movie tie-ins and praying for another Roger Rabbit.

Futurama Alert! - The Avengers: Initiative #18
Well don't these wisecracking heads in jars look familiar! Any Futurama fan should be looking around for Nixon.

A Fitting Weapon - Joker
Only the Joker would think that sticking shards of glass in his fingers so he could razor slap people is a good idea.

Best Use Of A Repeated Panel - Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns #1
Okay so this is not exactly a repeated panel, but the fact that everything in the panel remains the same except for the head exploding really hightens the sense of surprise in this split second turn of events. In other news, we're all very upset that fuzzyhead Green Lantern didn't make it out of this issue. He was our favorite.

Best Case of Hat Hair - Joker
How frustrating for Harley Quinn that she can't put that Jester hat on without looking like this until her next shower.

Best Acting - Bot-E, Kick Drum Comix #2
She just does surprise so well!

Best Geek Jack-o-Lanterns of 2008!

Sure, it's one thing to invest hundreds on an elaborate costume honoring your favorite icon of geekdom... but it's a whole 'nother deal when you're elbow-deep in pumpkin innards carefully carving that same icon into a decaying gourd. Here we honor the 2008 masters of negative space with the top geek pumpkins of this past Halloween!


UPDATE 2009! Here and here are a new crop of pumpkins designed by your own Gnerd editors, including Left 4 Dead zombies, Larry David, and Ponyo!


First of course, the most popular costume... ALSO one of the most popular pumpkins!

Image Courtesy of CraigG144

Now if only I had found this costume, I would have won Bingo!

Image courtesy of sage_82

Star Wars, Portal, Cylons, and so much more after the jump...


Another Wall-E... much simpler, but its simplicity adds to the cuteness of the character

Image courtesy of mrboma

An awesome Wario and Boo
Images courtesy of grantsewell

Some one's got Secret Invasion on the brain...

Image courtesy of lensbs

Of course it wouldn't be a geek Halloween without Star Wars!

Image courtesy of pixelelated

Image courtesy of Metal Chris

Image courtesy of Simon Davison

Image courtesy of garcher84

Here's The Adorable Gizmo and his pal Batman (my favorite Batman RIP title so far)

Image courtesy of ktsaltishok

Here's an impressive combination of the latest in LED and pumpkin technology

Image courtesy of MAKE

This is a simple pumpkin, sure... but the connotations of this image are far more terrifying to any geek than anything else Halloween has to offer...

Image courtesy of penner42

If you weren't aware of Geekanerd's obsession with all things Portal, then you've been under a rock for a year (or you haven't visited this blog... either or)

Image courtesy of wickerman

Image courtesy of prettypinkninja

This one's for AHR

Image courtesy of bluedot11

And lastly (and probably leastly), here was my pumpkin... It was a design I did in high school during a major Bond phase... unfortunately I didn't have time to flesh out my own Joker design this year-so I went back to this oldie... but it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately this photo is at a bit of an angle, but you get the idea.

Did The Dark Knight Really Win the Summer of '08?

Summer is officially over, and what an awesomely geeky summer it's been! Giant green men, slightly-less-giant red men, robots, rich narcissistic superheroes, rich emotionally-traumatized superheroes... something for everyone! But which geek movie came out on top?

I think it's official, right? Dark Knight has definitely won the hard fought, Geek Movie Summer cage match. Not only has it been carelessly barreling through previously untouchable records, it will go down in history as arguably the finest comic book movie yet. Even the MTV movie awards (held early in the summer) anticipated the coming cultural landmark and created a new category with which to award the summer's runner-up, Iron Man: "Best Movie of the Summer... so far". Yet despite the unstoppable juggernaut that has been the Dark Knight, it's Marvel that's going to end up on top. And DC should pay attention and take notes.

While the Dark Knight was busy smashing records (and winning hearts), Marvel was busy laying the groundwork for a future empire. This summer marked the beginning of a bold experiment for Marvel... a fully autonomous "Marvel Studios." Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were the first films completely produced under Marvel's banner (relying on Paramount and Universal for distribution and marketing only). Marvel is treating the movie business the same way they do their comics; a unified editorial board that oversees all the projects coming and going.

This is an extremely novel approach to making movies-and one that is sure to be criticized. But in the end it's going to win the day for Marvel. The filmmakers are given the same freedoms that Marvel's comic writers and artists are used to, but they have to conform their "vision" to fit within the greater Marvel Movie Universe. And this is what your average comic geek movie viewer craves. We geeks love our continuity. But it'll have benefits the reach far beyond the geek audience.

"Clearly, we got into the business of doing these movies ourselves because we believe in our vision for these movies," says Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, in an interview with Newsarama, "and we believe that the success that we’ve had over the years is based on our instinct and our abilities to translate our characters. Now to be able to do that completely unencumbered.... It’s nice to have full control to bring these characters to life the way we think they should be."

It is nice. But granted, even if none of the movies they ever produce can match the individual success of The Dark Knight, is that such a bad thing? So far, DC's film offerings are completely self contained. And The Dark Knight especially so. There is no room in the TDK universe for Superman, Robin, a Justice League-nothing that makes the DC universe the DC universe. Hell, TDK is so aggressively insular, there's hardly even room for another sequel. Even the Nolan brothers have expressed concern as to how they could follow up a film like TDK.

While DC is building fences around its intellectual properties, Marvel is openly inviting their properties to play in each other's yards. Some cynics thought the Robert Downey Jr. cameo in The Incredible Hulk was a play for more ticket sales-but we geeks knew better. It wasn't a cheap ploy-but instead a brilliant maneuvering to create the sense of a greater universe. One in which Tony Stark could wander into a bar with Bruce Banner, and take a call from Nick Shield about Hank Pym's latest discovery. To make matters more exciting, they're using this character crossover to build up to the eventual Avengers movie... which has geeks every where salivating.

Now I'm a DC guy-always have been. I enjoy a Marvel title here and there (Bendis' Daredevil is some of the best superhero writing I've ever read) But I don't care too much about the Avengers... at least, I didn't before. But after Iron Man's Sam Jackson cameo and then TIH's Robert Downey cameo-you can count me in! And they're going to introduce Ant Man, Thor, and good ol' Captain America in their own movies. All in the same universe. By that point, I'll be chomping at the bit to see the Avengers.

Now DC is planning a Justice League movie. And yes, I'm excited because I love the Justice League. But you know what? Is there any chance it'll be good? The poor writers will have the herculean task of squeezing origin stories for Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and the Martian Manhunter into a story that gets them to team up with a DIFFERENT Batman and Superman... one that doesn't fit into either the Superman Returns universe or the current Batman movie universe. That's the kind of thing that'll' bug not just the stickler comic geek audience, but also confuse the hell out of the general public. Warner Bros already had a hell of a time convincing people that Batman Begins was, in fact, not the same Batman from the Burton or Schumacher films (and thankfully so).

So Marvel has established for themselves, an incredibly easy way to branch out into all of their remaining intellectual properties. Sure, today it'd be a hard sell to get people to see a Hawkeye movie... but imagine after a half dozen semi-successful/successful Marvel movies, including The Avengers-you'd just have to say "he's the next member of the avengers, kids!" On the DC side, is there anything you could tell a kid to get him into a theater for The Green Arrow?

So even though DC may pop out a genre-re-defining masterpiece like TDK... does that make it any easier for them to utilize any of their other countless properties? Whereas, the time and effort Marvel spends now creating an expanding universe, will give them the ability to easily market any of their characters or even recreate any of the existing movie properties that don't currently fit in.

"The summer of 2008 has been a huge, huge victory for us so far, and tells us that people enjoy where our instincts are leading us so far." -Kevin Feige (pres. of Marvel Studios).

I just hope DCs paying attention. I'd really like to enjoy The Justice League.

Robot Day: Tracing the Lineage of Wall-E's Robot Pals

Geekanerd loves Wall-E! Even me, the resident Pixar cynic. The first third of the movie is a masterpiece, a MASTER. PIECE. Between that and the credit sequence, let's give them the Oscar, why not. I spent most of yesterday evening geeking out about my favorite moments, watching clips on YouTube, pouring over the amazing BuyNLarge viral site, and crying over the mere memory of several scenes.

As a product design nerd, I love that they didn't over-anthropomorphize the "modern" robots, ie all the robots except Wall-E himself. The art designers gave them tons of personality while still making them realistically look they were built for only one service. They're not androids, but true blue mass manufactured robots.

While the Johnny 5/Short Circuit comparisons have already well chewed over, here's our attempt to trace the robo-influences of some of Wall-E's friends...

Until Auto started talking, I thought it actually might be GLaDOS. Still alive indeed, seven hundred years in the future! Red eye against white circle with a black line down the middle...it's all there, people. But as Sarah pointed out, GLaDOS' look is in turn a rif on HAL 9000, and Auto's eye is clearly a DIRECT reference to his iconic red light. Portal only came out a year ago, so there's probably no way Auto could have been influenced by GLaDOS...how about that short before the movie, though, with the magic hat? That was Portal. It just was.

More after the jump....


I wouldn't be at all surprised if the PR-T cosmetic bot was designed with a nod towards the IT-O Interrogator droid from Star Wars. Both are floating orbs with multiple arms, and given that the PR-T droid we meet in the movie is malfunctioning, their functions may not be all that different either.

Eve is harder to pin down, but the resemblance to Apple products in general is pretty clear. I think more than anything she/it reminded me of the Mac Mouse, in it's smooth, seamless white ovaltude. But the face and gun reminded me of something as well; the Robosapein toy robot from Wowee, which me and Albo saw at Digital Life last year.

Anyone else see anything in Wall-E that reminded them of another famous robot?