Well boys and girls, this is Authentic Geek, and when I promised you tales of creators upcoming creations, I hope you weren't expecting any juicy tidbits from teeny-boppers like Alex Meraz or Peter Facinelli, cause I ain't into that teen-vampire make out fantasy shit. Instead, I've gathered for you some incidental gossip about geeky fan favourites: animator Scott Morse, crazy cartoon creator extraordinaire Doug Ten Naple, and counter comic culture's loudest screaming lunatic Eric Powell.
Scott Morse was not only one of the happiest creators I met, with a permanent kiddish grin plastered to his face and little cartoon-twinkle in his eye, but also one of the most generous; when we asked him for a sketch and handed over my girl-friend's book, he proceeded to take both blank pages available to him and create a full scene with character, props, and scenery, all free of charge! Scott is currently working as a "story artist" at Pixar, which means he's a writer with a fancy title so Pixar can hire more writers while avoiding union regulations, on their upcoming Cars 2 project which he feels is genuinely a better film than the first. Yeah, that's all I got here...go watch Cars 2 I guess...
When I was deciding whether or not to make the more than 600 kilometer journey from Saskatoon to Calgary and attend this Con, the straw that broke my cartoon-camel's back was the appearance of Doug Ten Naple at his first ever Canadian Convention. Doug is the creator of the cult classic smash hit16 bit video game series Earth Worm Jim as well as numerous insanely imaginative creator owned titles published with Image comics including Iron West (Alien Robot Zombies Vs Cowboys with help from Big Foot), Gear (Cat armies vs Dog armies using giant Insect mecha), and Tommysaurus Rex (10 year old boy, Tyrannosaurus Rex pet "dog"), to name but a few of his works. Doug was incredibly friendly and also looked like one of his own cartoon creations with a tall-lanky frame and shoulders slouched at awkward angles from hunching over art-tables for a living, all wrapped in an over-sized black zuit suit jacket. Currently, Doug is working on the initial stages of a very "hush-hush" television production in the states that is going to feature puppets and stop-motion animation. For anyone who is familiar with Ten Naple's cartoon creations you, like me, can only guess at the wondrous wackiness that is about to explode from that man's mind!
Finally, I was able to dish the most prolific gossip-goo from a short conversation I had with the unmistakable, un-sung hero of underground comix Eric Powell. Eric has made quite the independent name for himself over the past decade with the creation of The Goon, a comic series about a mob enforcer named Goon who takes over his mob and wages a war on Lonely St. against the undead armies of The Zombie Priest. The Goon has everything a depraved mind could dream of laughing at; hoards of ridiculously stupid zombies, re-living/un-dead reverse zombies (guy needs to eat zombie flesh to survive), giant squids attacking cars, and old ladies pooping themselves in the gutter while selling cinnamon dental floss necklaces with cat eyeball jewelry. Currently Eric has quite a few titles on the horizon: issue #2 of Chimmichanga is right around the corner after suffering publishing delays due to extreme illness on Eric's part in February, a new mini-series starting the aforementioned re-living/un-dead zombie named Buzzard is on the way, and finally a sequel to the amazing, and in my opinion greatly under appreciated, six-issue mini series Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities, a series where Billy the Kid is coerced into helping a family of "circus-freaks" on mystical adventures, is on the horizon! All most excellent news for the black-humored masses who've been sadly starved on the comic shelves lately.
Till next time, Face Front True Believers,
- Big G -
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