Random of the Day: Don’t Stop Believing

Had someone who is much cooler and in tune with things send me this.

It seems to straddle the line between “random” and “awesome.” Would that make it “ransome” … “awedom” … “randawe” … ?

Anyway, without cheating, how many movies can you pick out?

Nerd talk: Fanboys vs. Zombies #1

Does this cover look familiar? It’s one of eight (yes, eight) different covers from the first issue of the short-run Fanboys vs. Zombies from Boom! Studios.

And here I thought the whole Zombie craze was dying … though, if you think about it, killing Zombies is never as easy as it sounds. Unless, of course, you follow Rule #2.

But, anyway, back to the cover. Look familiar? It should, especially if you are either a certain age, or certain stripe of geek. Consider:

That’s right: they’re borrowing from a holy grail of nerdom: Star Wars. (And this is before we had to identify it as A New Freaking Hope.)

There’s supposed to be something fun and playful from borrowing from the past to expose the present. That’s what pop culture does, I guess. Even the story seems familiar: friends descending on a fan convention only to come across the undead …

Oh yeah … this:

It would be funnier if I didn’t already have the book … now it’s kind of sad. Just like the cover: it’s a little humorous, but a little played out.

Maybe zombies are a metaphor for popular culture …  it always comes back from the past with a look of horror, mixed with a dash of campy.

DVD’oh!: Sea Wolves

A friend of mine loaned me a copy of the 1980 war film Sea Wolves recently and I was struck by the cover. Can you spot the incongruency?

Top billing goes to, in order, Gregory Peck, David Niven and Roger Moore. However, in the illustration, the order is Roger Moore, Gregory Peck and David Niven. Granted, Peck is standing out front, but if you look at the combination of words and pictures, you would think they match up.

I used the term “incongruency,” in the opening paragraph because it’s not really a “mistake,” it’s just a quirk. Obviously, Peck gets top billing and because we read left to right, his name goes to the left. And of course, being the top billing, he stands in front of the other two actors … in this case the center.

It reminds me of the original DVD cover of The Big Lebowski, where the names a pictures don’t seem to match:

I don’t really have an insightful observation about this clash of marketing priorities, but there seems to be something there. Maybe it has to do with our cultural norms of words and pictures. Some sort of battle for supremacy between the printed word and the image. Why can’t we all just get along?

What about you? Have you noticed any similar mismatches?

Ghostbuster Rhapsody

I don’t read this title, but the cover alone makes me want to take a peek.

The great thing about popular culture is its ability to take iconography from the past and mix it with another element and make something wholly different, yet familiar with all who know. It’s the “all-who-know” part that’s interesting, because in mixing that familiar element, the artists is assuming something about that particular audience; namely, that they would “get it.”

This cover, from Ghostbusters: Ongoing #3 (out tomorrow), definitely echoes one of the greatest songs in the history of rock-n-roll. I assume that the story has little to nothing to do with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but the cover does.

Now, the trick is figuring out the age, financial status, musical taste, movie habits, reading habits, knowledge of the target audience. One thing we do know about the audience is their familiarity of the Ghostbuster franchise, which was NOT originally a comic book, but a movie, then a sequel, then a cartoon (and now a rumored third chapter).

Comment your assumptions below, while you listen to the original.

 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World of Commericialism

I didn’t see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in theaters, but I saw it on DVD and enjoyed it. I seem to enjoy it more every time I see it.

It’s that second life of a media text that can often propel it into the stratosphere of cult favorite or make it languish in a sea of also-rans. One sign of a text’s long-term prominence is its ability to be grafted with other, more established texts.

Which brings me to these Scott Pilgrim shirts. Two short-run t-shirt companies featuring Pilgrim in their recent offerings.

Ript Apparel, as you can see above, has Scott as Spock, flashing the “Live Long and Prosper Sign. “Nowhere Bad, whose design is below, has Scott as Dr. Who, taking on the universe.

Both designs are cool, but reading through the comments, the reviews seem generally mixed. Most of the complaints, though, have to do with the pairing, not against the Scott Pilgrim character itself.

Which brings me to the action figure. After all, what better way to commemorate someone who took on the world than through an action figure? I saw these at the local comic book store (the one with action figures, not the one in the city, as the boy distinguishes the two).

So while the book series ran from 2004 to 2010 and the film is over a year old, the commercial culture seems to just now be catching up.

And that seems to be a sign that Pilgrim is pretty much here to stay … at least for a while longer.