Messages

556

Discuss Anything / Re: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take on Gridlock in "Operation Blue Line"

« on: February 18, 2015, 05:21:45 PM »

Wow. Jessica and I just watched that while we ate. That was total bullshit since the real Turtles live in New York, not LA. Their ninjutsu skills seemed spot on, but none of them had weapons and where was Splinter? Also, how come I had never heard of this badass villain named Gridlock?

Anyway, good find. I had no idea that existed. Which I suppose makes sense since it was obviously a local LA thing. Interesting that they got what sounds to be the actual voice actors, with the possible exception of Michelangelo. As we were watching it, we were wondering whose idea it was to make this video about LA's new transit system and market it to kids. What were they thinking?

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Discuss Blog Entries / Movie Review - Sword of the Valiant [1984]

« on: February 18, 2015, 09:38:07 AM »

Read it here!

558

Discuss Blog Entries / Re: News Update & He-Man Commercials

« on: February 18, 2015, 03:09:14 AM »

Oh man you'd be a blast in our lab. Imagine you and this machine meeting, the universe as we know it would come to an end..

Because of the radness overflow, right? Totally.

I just watched the first episode of season one. The way Skeletor manages to lure the guards away from the palace is unbelievably smart. Oh man, that was really close! I just couldn't figure out why He-Man has an Iron Cross on his chest..

Seriously though, it's a good laugh..

Since we have like a billion things we want to watch, we don't have time to watch every episode of a long-running cartoon series, but I compiled a list of what people consider to be the best or the best worst episodes of both He-Man and G.I. Joe, so that's what we've been periodically watching.

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Discuss Blog Entries / Re: News Update & He-Man Commercials

« on: February 16, 2015, 05:12:14 PM »

I really need to find these series somewhere and contract the flu or something. This would make excellent watching..

Dude, seriously, it's fun shit to watch. He-Man and G.I. Joe are such good stupid fun. I think most He-Man episodes are on YouTube in good quality.

[EDIT: Shit, I accidentally edited your post instead of quoting you. I fixed it, but now it says I edited your post. Now conspiracy theorists are going to start thinking that I'm actually you.]

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Discuss Comic Pages / Re: Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 32 - By the Power of Satan

« on: February 16, 2015, 05:02:43 PM »

I love this page. I was wondering how the glove would activate, and this scenario is not one I had thought of.  Keep us readers on our toes.

Here's a bit of trivia for you. For a long time, back when this comic was called "Shinobi Fist: Legend of the Badass Ninja" we were going to have the glove activate when Eddie says "Shinobi." So during this scene, after he wakes up, Sam would have said something along the lines of, "Hey, that's a rad glove. It kinda makes you look like Dude Shinobi." And Eddie would have responded with, "I don't look like Dude Shinobi." But of course, upon saying "Shinobi" he would undergo the transformation into a magical ninja (without the satanic element, since we hadn't decided on that yet). Then Sam would have exclaimed, "See?! You totally look like Dude Shinobi!" Har-har. We would have also made it so that for awhile he thinks the activation word is "Dude Shinobi." It would have taken him awhile to figure out that it was just "Shinobi."

Once we decided to change Eddie from a "normal" ninja into an infernal ninja, that's when we decided to re-think how the glove gets activated, and we came up with this.

Another bit of trivia. When we decided to add the satanic element to Eddie's glove, we briefly considered calling the comic something like "Demon Fist: Legend of the Badass Ninja" but we discovered that there's already a comic called Demon Fist, so there went that idea.

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Discuss Comic Pages / Re: Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 32 - By the Power of Satan

« on: February 16, 2015, 02:04:03 AM »

I guess if you're really worried about the timing of certain bits you can always move them around a bit before you move to a final printed version.

True. This whole comic could be thought of as a work-in-progress up until we released the final print version. Although we're going to try to avoid retcons, if we think of a change that's in the best interest of the comic, and wouldn't require too much effort, then we'll do it. Hopefully we'll show a bit more restraint with this than George Lucas.

562

Discuss Blog Entries / Re: News Update & He-Man Commercials

« on: February 16, 2015, 01:59:25 AM »

Hahaha! My favorite is actually the first one. Such perfect logic.

563

Discuss Comic Pages / Re: Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 32 - By the Power of Satan

« on: February 15, 2015, 03:56:25 AM »

No the story is definitely developing well this way. You could've swapped things to make this come up sooner, for example by showing the bounty huntress part after this page but people would just end up wondering what Eddie is doing with the glove (apart from going to school on fire). However the stage is sort of set now, things are already happening and you can keep the action coming without pausing too much by introducing all the other characters.

We also wanted to insert the bounty hunter stuff earlier in the issue in order to break up all the mundane John Hues teen drama stuff. And like you implied, the longer you wait to introduce new characters, the more annoying it is for readers to be taken away from the characters that they're already invested in and the more resentful they'll be toward the new characters. Along those same lines, we probably made a mistake to devote so much of the first issue to Viper, since that probably gave the impression that he's a more prominant character in the comic than he actually is. He's undoubtedly an important character (as evidenced by him having a spot on the About the Characters page), but not always a prominent one.

And there's another reason that the bounty hunter stuff had to happen before Eddie activated the glove, which will become more apparent in a couple weeks.

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Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 32 - By the Power of Satan

« on: February 14, 2015, 10:13:04 AM »

When we launched this comic back at the start of last March, this moment seemed so far off, like an unattainable pentastar on the horizon, distantly flickering with hellfire. But now here we are. Eddie McCarthy has finally been satan ninjafied.

I could understand if someone were annoyed that it took us over fifty pages to get to this point, but like I said before, we wanted to give the story the time it needed to develop properly, instead of rushing things. I (very) briefly considered having Eddie find the glove right after the front-yard scuffle (the winged ninja would have dropped it in his back yard instead of in the woods), but that wouldn't have had nearly the same impact without Eddie suffering through the party scene. Hopefully you agree that we made the right choice.

Two pages to go and issue 2 is a wrap. Well, sorta. Jessica's then going to take a week or two to go through the issue and spruce up the rougher areas (and finally put in Eddie's poor neglected posters).

565

Discuss Blog Entries / Re: The EverDead - Adam Dravian's "Rock Star" Years

« on: February 12, 2015, 06:31:56 PM »

I don't think horror rock really caught on where I'm from, but I'm checking out the album right now..

I'm not sure if it really "caught on" anywhere. During horror rock's heyday in the early 2000s, there were a few mainstream bands that flirted with the genre, like Good Charlotte (ugh) and AFI, but pure horror rock bands were obscure underground bands like The EverDead, Cancerslug, Blitzkid, and Calabrese. Of course, the most popular horror rock band of the time were the resurrected Misfits (minus original singer/song writer Glenn Danzig, and thus essentially a completely different band), who were popular enough to play large packed shows, but the rest of us would be lucky to pack a small gig. Blitzkid, Calabrese, and Cancerslug stuck it out long enough to develop big cult followings, but The EverDead became inactive just as we were getting to the point of posing for pictures with fans and signing autographs.

I nearly dropped my just-cooked dinner laughing after hearing Jessica's contribution haha!

Hehheh. She did a great job. I figured some of our comic's fans would appreciate that, even if my music isn't their thing.

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Discuss Blog Entries / The EverDead - Adam Dravian's "Rock Star" Years

« on: February 12, 2015, 10:12:14 AM »

Read it here!

567

Discuss Comic Pages / Re: Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 31 - Metal Healing

« on: February 10, 2015, 05:09:52 AM »

Adam wanted it to be a tape at first, but I suggested a record for a couple reasons. He probably has both.

I just feel cassette tapes are much more '80s. I know records were still around, but they weren't the rad new thing. Eddie definitely has both.

Was one of the reasons having an excuse to draw awesome album covers?

I'm sure that had something to do with it. It's also because of movies like Trick or Treat, where a heavy metal record is played backwards and causes evil shit to happen.

Sorry you had to backtrack.  I of course went to watch Quite Riot videos after I posted.

Heh. We watched the video for "Cum On Feel the Noize" a couple weeks ago, and Jessica was so annoyed with how repetitive it was. Just the dude in his bedroom trying and failing to turn down his blasting music. It didn't bother me as much. I'm more bothered by the way the song's title is spelled (although to be fair, it's a cover song and that's how Slade originally spelled it).

I'm glad to know you have a little Soul in you Jess.

She's got some. I'm the souless one.

568

Discuss Anything / Re: Karate Kickstarter

« on: February 10, 2015, 05:00:13 AM »

I do plan on helping to build the Satan Ninja game(s) some day  when the comic gets to that point. I've done quite a bit of research on modern game engine architectures and such...

I probably shouldn't be talking about this too much publicly, but we totally gotta make that happen. It's really just a matter of finding the time. Someday...

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Discuss Comic Pages / Re: Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 31 - Metal Healing

« on: February 08, 2015, 11:40:20 PM »

The title of this page must be a reference to Marvin Gaye's song, and is especially appropriate since Eddie put himself as far away from sexual healing as he could manage..

Actually, I wasn't familiar with the Marvin Gaye song, so I just now looked it up. It's totally not something we'd listen to, but at least now I get your reference.

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Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 2 - Party Like It's 198X - Page 31 - Metal Healing

« on: February 07, 2015, 07:32:19 PM »

You can't see it all that well in this shot, but that Demon Hammer album cover is awesome. Jessica intends to do a full color version, but we made it black and white for now so that we could post the page up without delaying it further. Once she gets a chance to finish the full-color version, we'll be sure to post it for your viewing pleasure.

On a similar note, the posters are still being worked on. For now Eddie's room'll just have to look like a barren jail cell.