In last week's issue of Countdown To Mystery, aka The One Good Countdown Book, artist Stephen Jorge Segovia had a little too much fun drawing Huntress.
Typical to many of the superhero comics I read every week, this little tableau throws sex and violence together in a blender and hits "puree", but that's not what caught my attention. I knew I had seen that movie before. But where?
THE SIMPSONS ARCADE GAME!
Those who had this game at their local arcade know it is pretty much the best four-player game for the preteen set ever invented, and although Marge was not my character of choice (that'd be El Barto...Let's go for it, man!), her questionable flying attack is forever ingrained in my mind. So can we agree Huntress totally copped her style? This calls for a side by side comparison:
The Village Voice website has put up a ton of photo coverage of last week's Bart Simpson Art Exhibition at Toy Tokyo's Showroom NYC. The traveling exhibit gave over 50 artists their own 10 inch blank Bart dolls to serve as their canvas. The results (such as this Rat Fink-inspired entry by Matt Groening himself) may shock you.
Great photo coverage aside, I have to object to the Voice calling their feature "Bart Simpson: 50-Plus Artistic Visions of Homer's Kid".HOMER'S KID? Oh Bart, how your star has faded. Long gone are the days of AyCarumba T-Shirts and The Bartman Music Video. At least the art world still has the kid's back.
A few more of the best Barts, after the jump.
Frozen in carbonite
Ziggy Stardust
Look at yourselves, America!
AHH! The Brothers Quay!
I try to avoid making Spider Pig jokes on this blog, but sometimes it's not easy
When someone is given as few scenes as Ralph Wiggum, seeing a steady nine minutes of him is a real treat. I feel like I truly understand him (and he me) for the first time.
Welcome to Day 2 of our coverage of everybody else's coverage of E3. Starting off, we've got a trailer for the hotly anticipated Super Mario Galaxy:
If you're in the mood for something a little more... intimate... Check out this developer talking us through a particularBEE neat level:
Hit the jump for the new Simpsons game, some Halo 3 action, a Wii trivia game called Smarty Pants, a new LittleBigPlanet video, a cheesy but thrilling Rock Band performance of Bowie's "Suffragette City", and more Metroid Prime 3.
Here's the Simpsons game:
It sure looks good, but I have to wonder: why are most Simpsons games about fighting? There's rarely any fights on the show, so it seems incongruous that that would be the go-to genre for Simpsons video game developers. Why not an adventure game that has you actually progressing through a hilarious Simpsons story, or a Bully-style sandbox game where you run around Springfield pranking people and carrying out specific missions for people? That being said, this game sho is pretty. Also keep an eye out for Matt Groening himself as the end boss, as reported by Eurogamer.
Here's Halo 3 in action:
Pretty.
And now Smarty Pants:
It's hard to tell if this will be fun or not. The only thing I do know is those chaps playing are grating. I like something as simple as the hand-raising motion to "get called on." I hope the emphasis is on trivia and not those little epileptic minigames they do a couple times.
If yesterday left you wanting more, here is the full LittleBigPlanet trailer:
From start to finish, some good (if silly) players running through a Rock Band song:
Yesterday's trailer was a little dry, but it's fun to watch this game developer walk us through a Metroid Prime 3 level:
This is the first time I noticed how good the game looks. It sure moves well, and has a lot of nice art direction touches.
Vanity Fair has a pretty cool article up telling the story of The Simpsons through quotes from some of those who made it. No Matt Groening or James Brooks, but I guess we've heardfromthembefore. Instead we have Conan O'Brien, Rupert Murdoch, Hank Azaria, and more writers and producers than you can shake a Butterfinger at. Particularly juicy bits:
Elizabeth Taylor saying "Fuck you" to Groening and storming out of a recording session after he claims her reading of Maggie's "Daddy" line is too sexual.
Groening's falling out with Sam Simon, who many attest developed The Simpsons we know and love from Matt's crude drawings.
On deteriorating quality: "it stopped being like the geeky guys from college writing the show and became people who just really wanted to be comedy writers, and wanted to be Hollywood, so they could say, 'I work on The Simpsons.' That's when Homer sort of became stupid."
Who needs the Kwik-E-Mart? The Simpsons Movie marketing department, apparently!
Back in March, it was reported that eleven 7-11's across the U.S would be re-made into genuine Kwik-E-Marts. Well, hot dog! We have a wiener! Starting today, the location near Times Square (42nd Street between 9th and 8th ave, across from Port Authority) has been Kwikified. The clerk (no, it wasn't Apu OR Hank Azaria) said the transformation would last one month. Check out Geekanerd's exclusive photo coverage below!
Don't bogart that Squishee! Do you think if you slipped the cashier a $20 they'd make one from pure syrup?
Lots more Kwik-E goodness after the jump...
Ads for Krusty-O's and Buzz Cola, both of which are on sale in the store.
The employees all wore Kwik-E-Mart uniforms in shades of light green and blue...since Apu wears his own distinctive threads, not sure if there's a basis for this outfit in the cartoon...any geekanerds out there who can prove me wrong?
UPDATE 7/02: Ooh, Snapatoa: Commenter F-Train has pointed us to James Wood's Kwik-E-Mart wageslave-wear as seen in "Homer and Apu". Compare and contrast the above uniform with this YouTube clip:
Funny stuff, but I believe the best Simpsons joke relating to a bag of ice would be if they'd actually had a bag of ice with a teddy bear head in it. "Ooh, a head bag! Those are full of...heady goodness!"
No chutney flavor, sadly...
The Buzz Cola station...twice the sugar, twice the caffeine!
On eBay, six-packs of Buzz are currently going for about ten bucks, plus shipping...in the store, they sell for 89 cents per can. Where's the Duff Beer? Too edgy for a PR stunt, I guess.
The "Official Simpsons Movie Doughnut" just had white frosting and sprinkles. What the hell? No pink doughnut like on the movie poster? Maybe they were just sold out...
For all the great atmospheric touches, they kinda break the illusion by having those giant Simpsons heads plastered around...still, whatever PR team put this all together did a pretty damn good job.
UPDATE: We're having a giveaway of some Kwik-E-Mart swag! E-mail us before 8pm on Thursday to enter!
Get your hands on the first piece of Will Wright's new masterpiece, and make some creatures that'll put Jim Henson to shame. Well, not really. But you can dream.
