Most adults have heard the famous General Sherman quote on war being hell, but we have no measuring stick to judge its veracity. Director Tom Petch attempts to give us one through his film, The Patrol, which examines the lives of British troops in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, as they fulfill their role as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. It’s a war film for a modern world, where viewers have become weary of fighting other nations’ wars and trying to police the international community.
The following is an interview with Vince Brusio, writer of the new comic book Autopsy: Feast for a Funeral #1, which was made in collaboration with (and fully licensed by) famed death metal band Autopsy. The band, which was formed in 1987 by Chris Reifert and Eric Cutler and has long been considered a pioneering band in the death metal and Doom/Death genres, has previously ventured into other mediums (with contributions to the 2005 music documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and Hellbent for Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook); however, Feast for a Funeral marks their first foray into comics. Now, Brusio and Autopsy are joining forces and taking the world by storm, as cast members in this year’s premier episode of Showtime’s Shameless can even be spotted wearing Feast for a Funeral t-shirts.
In this interview, Fanboy Comics Managing Editor Barbra Dillon chats with Brusio about the inspiration for the comic book, the creative process of working with Autopsy and artist Mats Engesten, his other upcoming projects, and more!
This interview was conducted on May 13, 2014.
In sports, execution is often everything,
There are certain situations in all sports where everybody in the stadium knows what’s coming next, yet the play is so flawlessly executed by an individual player or an entire team that it doesn’t matter that the opposition knew what to expect. The Vince Lombardi Green Bay Packers were not a team that fooled you. They were so well coached that it was hard to stop them, even when the other team knew the sweep was coming right at them.
Amelia Cole is back! In print, that is. She has been living her life as the new Protector of the unknown world digitally through Monkeybrain Comics for quite some time, and now IDW is unleashing Amelia Cole and the Hidden War on the printed world, and it is magical. Collecting the next six issues of Amelia’s ongoing adventures, Hidden War introduces us to Amelia’s exhausting, day-to-day exploits as the new Protector of Otysburg, taking the job after Hector the Protector was ousted from the position in the first volume, Amelia Cole and the Unknown World. Amelia often finds herself at odds with her employer, the Magistrate, due to her strong-willed nature and insistence to help people who don’t know magic, as well as those who do. Amelia takes the side of good, plain and simple. She views the whole city as worthy of protection, but between the Magistrate’s annoying, secret errands and her own efforts to keep Otysburg’s denizens safe, Amelia’s pushing herself to her limits, and it’s wearing her out. Or is there more going on below the surface? A more sinister plot flickering around the edges, waiting for the right time to make itself known? I’ll leave that for you to find out.
"I've been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And, since I've done all the old ones
‘Till they've all been done in
No, I'm just looking
And, I'm gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an Original Sin"
So sang Taylor Dayne in the theme to the ill-fated 1994 film adaption of The Shadow starring Alec Baldwin. The movie may have been a flop, but the song still rests comfortably in my iPod.
It’s a cat . . . no . . . wait . . . WAIT . . . it’s a dog? It’s from space . . . maybe? Wait, what?
Bee and Puppycat is the latest cartoon-based comic from KaBOOM! Studios, and it will undoubtedly walk the successful path of its predecessors, simply because of its loyal existing fan base. With an adorable style that I can only describe as Adventure Time meets magical girl anime and its branded, sometimes offbeat, humor, Bee and Puppycat is the perfect starter comic for kids.
Paragon #2 continues the story of Ben, a young man who, in Issue #1, slipped into an alternate reality in response to his depression from his father’s death. He struggles to cope with renting a room from the new reality’s version of his father and suffers strange side effects from his months of participating in drug trials. At the same time, Ben begins to heal a little by talking about his father’s death with his new landlord.
This is the second issue of Innovation, an indie sci-fi anthology that presents four different stories that are all connected through the future tech company Radical Development Scientific Laboratories Inc., or R.D.S.L as it is more commonly called. Wes Locher, who created Innovation, writes each of the four short stories, as well as letters the book, and he is joined by four unique and very different artists. The whole concept is an intriguing one, and the interlocking motif of the machinations of R.D.S.L. ties even the most seemingly disparate stories together in a mysterious, almost unsettling way. Issue #2 has an especially cohesive feel to it due to the fact that all of the stories take place in the R.D.S.L. compound, on various levels of this elaborate, high tech facility. There is a sense that all of these stories could be happening simultaneously and that the repercussions of one story may affect the outcome of another story later on in the series, or that mistakes or problems may not even be realized or discovered until much later, because the facility is so heavily compartmentalized. These are the exciting thoughts and ideas that Locher sparks as he continues to develop this complex, highly technological, and morally ambiguous futurescape.
Each year, the Fanboy Comics staff greatly looks forward to The Saturn Awards, which honor the best in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. This year, The Saturn Awards will be celebrating their 40th anniversary, highlighted by a number of special awards to the best and brightest of their fields. For a full list of the honorees, please see the official press release below.
Are you a huge fan of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, or Gene Roddenberry? Are you willing to boldly go where no one has gone before . . . when it comes to theatre? Then, you will not want to miss Sci-Fest, Hollywood's first one-act play festival that celebrates all things science fiction. Taking place now through June 1, 2014, Sci-Fest is being held at The ACME Theatre (135 N. La Brea Avenue) in Los Angeles and features two rotating weeks of new and classic, mind-bending sci-fi plays with amazingly taltented performers from sci-fi favorites of the big and small screens.