Nerdy Fan Art, Circa 1983

Lifted directly from one of the issues (maybe a cover). I read Cerebus from about issue #40 to the very end (#300). It got progressively harder for me as I went along - in general, I'm not sure I'd recommend going past the end of Church & State (though there is a lot of interesting material past that point).

Joe Valenti Makes Sure His Son Will Hate Batman

You know those parents who make endless home movies of their kids at dance recitals and Little League? Well, this may be the ultimate extreme of that philosophy - Dad Valenti has re-made pieces of the Batman TV show and movie using (I'm assuming) his young son and several of his friends. It's all so darn cute! You won't believe the level of polish on this thing (crane shots, painted backdrops, dead-on costumes and a full musical score), and little Batman is pretty darn good!

Alien-Inspired Lego Art

Check out these full-on Lego dioramas (built by mryoder) inspired by the Alien films! They really capture the feel of the original scenes. Here's some more sculptures adapted by Arvo from Giger's designs. Nice!

Thanks to Geekologie for the heads up!

Be Laid To Rest Like Spock

Eternal Image is betting that there's nerds out there who'll pay big money to make even their dead bodies seem geeky by storing them in Star Trek urns and caskets (frighteningly, these aren't even the tackiest ones that the company sells). I don't know if they'll be right enough to make money, but I think they're right!

My Radio's Buzzing!

My buddy Buz McKim is going to be the historian at the upcoming NASCAR Hall of Fame! The ground's already been broken, and the Hall's scheduled to be finished in Charlotte, North Carolina by 2010. Buz always been a hard-core racing fan, his head packed with an insane amount of trivia. And now it's his job! It's like me heading up the Lucasfilm archives (though there's plenty of folks who know more Lucas trivia than I do)!

Buz also contributes to a radio show on the Sirius network called NASCAR Collector - there's free episodes archived online if you want to hear Buz expound on all things NASCAR. Enjoy!

A New Blog To Watch

John Field, classic film buff extraordinaire (pictured here with Noel "Lois Lane" Neill), has started a blog of his own! All you moldy figs click on over to John's Forbidden Planet and check it out!

I Mean, They're Not Real Spaceships

How much of this launch is due to an X-Wing's intrinsic design, and how much to poor construction? You be the jury!

Picture OTD

Image from Geekologie, a funny partner site to The Superficial and I Watch Stuff! I think this says it all, but in case you disagree, click here.

Someone Will Always Get Nerd-ier

Apparently, the serial number on the crate in the Indy 4 teaser poster is extremely close to the one on the crate packed away at the end of Raiders. According to this article, though, Lucasfilm says that it's not referencing the ark - other than to be a similar catalog number. Two fansites based on the number have already surfaced.

Man! It's amazing how quickly the scrabbling begins.

Nerd OTD

Taken at this year's Star Wars Celebration (not by me). If you really need to know more about this, go here. But overall, I think this speaks for itself.

How Big Of A Ray Harryhausen Nerd Are You?

If you're a really, really big one, you'll probably get a kick out of this Harryhausen animation reference library. It contains almost every character that he ever animated - complete with clips of each one! Enjoy, creature geeks!

Dutch Nerd Wants Police To Think He's The Joker

YAHOO! NEWS: Batman's nemesis The Joker gets his Dutch I.D.
Fri Jan 26, 10:03 AM ET

AMSTERDAM, Jan 25 (Reuters Life!) - Is The Joker, one of Batman's fiercest enemies, a Dutch citizen?

A 35-year-old man from the western Dutch town of Hellevoetsluis convinced local authorities to issue him an identity card with a picture that shows him as The Joker, Dutch news agency ANP reported on Thursday.

The man also managed to apply for a driver's license picturing him with the cartoon character's trademark white skin and dark hat.

ANP said the man was working in the security sector and had wanted to show that current rules for identity papers were insufficient.

The Joker, played by Jack Nicholson in the movie version of Batman, is probably the best known enemy of the fictional superhero.

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That's pretty incredible, but I think the guy who legally changed his name to "Optimus Prime" still has this fellow beat!

ComicSpace

Josh Roberts has created a MySpace just for comic nerds - pros and fans alike! Between this, World Of Warcraft, and the Star Trek dating service, there'll be no reason to connect with the real world again! Awesome!

Eyes Watering, Nerds Look Heavenward In Hope

ROTTEN TOMATOES: MGM Says "Not So Fast" to the End of Jackson's "Hobbit"
Posted on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006, 03:06 AM

Scott Weinberg writes: "And the "Hobbit" arguments continue! Last we heard, Peter Jackson was divorcing himself from the project because of a legal battle with New Line. So the studio said fine, we'll get someone else to direct it. And the fans were angry. But now comes MGM to the rescue?

From Moviehole: "Yesterday, the "Lord of the Rings" director told TheOneRing.net that New Line have removed him from the project. The filmmaker’s statement also reiterated in detail his stance on "The Hobbit" -- that he is not willing to have a serious conversation about directing the film until his ongoing lawsuit with New Line over what he considers improper accounting practices over "LOTR" profits is settled.

New Line's given reason for proceeding sans Jackson is that the studio's rights to the pic are about to expire, and seeing as the lawsuit with Jackson isn't moving ahead, well, the message was that New Line is.

An MGM spokesperson tells Variety today that they're going to fight for Jackson. The spokesperson states, "The matter of Peter Jackson directing 'The Hobbit' films is far from closed."

Woohoo! Flex that copyright muscle, MGM! (For the record, New Line has the production rights for "The Hobbit" and a second LOTR prequel, yet for some convoluted reason from years back, MGM owns the distribution rights for a Hobbit flick. Fingers crossed!)"

Jackson Not To Direct Hobbit; Nerds Weep

HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE (Jeffrey Wells) - According to a letter from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh posted late last night on theonering.net, New Line Cinema has parted ways with Jackson/Walsh over a lawsuit that they had brought aainst the distributor tied to Fellowship of the Ring revenues (i.e., product licensing, "differences of opinion", etc.).

The positive-minded Jackson/Walsh had been expecting settlement on the lawsuit, which would then be followed by a deal to start work on The Hobbit plus a Lord of the Rings prequel. However, according to the letter, "last week [New Line bigwig] Mark Ordesky called Ken Kamins" -- Jackson/Walsh's manager -- "and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on The Hobbit and the LOTR 'prequel'...this was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects.

"Ordesky said that New Line has a limited time option on the [Hobbit] film rights they have obtained from Saul Zaentz (this has never been conveyed to us before), and because we won't discuss making the movies until the lawsuit is resolved, the studio is going to have to hire another director. Given that New Line [is] committed to this course of action, we felt at the very least, we owed you, the fans, a straightforward account of events as they have unfolded for us."

What's really going on here, I believe, is a reflection of the this year's sea-change attitude among distributors and producers towards coddled, overpaid wunderkind types like Jackson -- big-name talents who get rich deals for themselves and their production companies, after which they go off and strain or exceed the budget, and then their sometimes indulgent, overlong film (i.e., King Kong) comes out and does moderately well but not well enough. Result: the wunderkind makes out like a bandit and the studio is left holding the bag.

Image-wise, Universal's King Kong experience with Jackson made him into the ultimate enfant terrible poster boy for indulgent, genius-boy tendencies. Jackson's middle name is "wheeee!" -- it's what makes him what he is. If you make a movie with Jackson, provision #1 in his contract is that he gets to go "wheeee!" all through the making of it. At the end of the day the film will be in some ways awesome/brilliant/ eye-popping and what the fans want, and in other ways indulgent, show-offy, overlong and flooded with fake-looking bullshit CG shots that "wheeee!" types love to create because fake CG shots are so deliriously comic-book "imaginative."

You may make a huge profit with a Jackson film and you may not, but one thing for sure is that he and his New Zealand pallies will make out like kings plus they'll all get to go "wheeee!" for 18 months or two years, on your dime.

I'm basically saying that New Line did a good thing here. The more Peter Jackson gets cut down and has to trim his sails and stop "wheee"-ing his way through movie-making, the better. I say this because I have never suffered so acutely in my moviegoing years...I've never felt so awful, so trapped, so stuck on Devil's Island- with-dysentery as I did while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy and also the first 70 minutes of King Kong. I just know that the fewer "paints" Jackson has to work with, the better his films will turn out to be.

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I don't really this has as much to do with Jackson's excesses as it does with his unwillingness to play ball and agree to make two more films before the legal dust settled. The "below-enormous-expectations" box office of 'Kong' probably didn't help, either.