2...

Reason #2 to read Perils On Planet X: THE PRINCESS!!

3...

Reason #3 to read Perils On Planet X: THE PIRATE QUEEN!!

4...

Reason #4 to read Perils On Planet X: BEASTS!!

5...

Reason #5 to read Perils On Planet X: SPACE!!

PERILS ON PLANET X: Counting Down

Starting this Friday, February 1st - the epic interplanetary adventure webcomic from yours truly and artist Gene Gonzales - Perils On Planet X, Chapter One: "Captives Of The Corsair Queen!"

Only at: http://www.perilsonplanetx.com/

Wednesday Cover: THE ROOK

Someone at Warren really liked this cover image - the first is from The Rook #4, published in 1979, and is painted (according to the Grand Comics Database) by Nestor Redondo. The second is from just three issues later (#7) and features time-and-space-hopping hero Restin Dane battling what appears to be the same critter, this time painted by Jordi Penalva!

Work In Progress

So far, my New Year's Resolution to finish up all my stalled comics projects is going pretty well - in the last few weeks I've written new Gravedigger and Perils On Planet X script pages, set those two features up as weekly webcomic sites (HERE and HERE), and started on the script for a Femme Noir graphic novel to be illustrated by my partner-in-crime, Joe Staton... and it's still January!

Once I get those done, *maybe* I can finally get back to Captain Midnight - both the comic and the novel I started last Summer - assuming I still have a publisher.

If your comics diet lacks sufficient quantities of essential pulp, please check out - and bookmark - the websites for the above-mentioned, forthcoming weekly webcomics Perils On Planet X (with Gene Gonzales) and Gravedigger (with Rick Burchett):
 
Both weekly comics debut at the beginning of February! Thank you for your support... and please tell your friends!

IN LIKE FLINT in HD

I'll be placing my pre-order for the Twilight Time Blu-ray release of In Like Flint as soon as it becomes available tomorrow afternoon. 

The company did a great job with the first Derek Flint film, Our Man Flint, which I received last week. While I had some minor issues with the picture quality of the video transfer (shame that 20th Century Fox didn't provide Twilight Time with a better master), the new supplements were worth the price of the disc all by themselves. John Cork and his Cloverland crew did a terrific job on the new retrospective featurettes, and it was cool to see my online blog "buddy," Matthew Bradford (alias "Tanner" of the great Dounle-O Section blog) onscreen as one of the talking heads.

As much as I enjoy the first Flint film, I have a slight preference toward its sequel. It's not really as good as its predecessor - and somewhat more overtly comic - but it was the first Derek Flint adventure I saw as a teenager (on the WCSH 6 Sunday morning "Great Show" movie). At the time, I was just becoming the James Bond/superspy fan that I am today, and In Like Flint was really the first of the Bond imitators/spoofs I ever saw.

Wednesday Cover: BATMAN & THE SHADOW

From 1975 and artist Mike Kaluta... the Dark Knight meets Walter Gibson's cloaked crimefighter, The Shadow. This issue was a warm-up - and introiduction for 70s kids - to The Shadow's own DC comics series.

Last Poster Standing

Two posts in one day, each spotlighting new action movie posters... we know I'm looking forward to Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback vehicle, The Last Stand, mostly because it looks like big, dumb fun. And that's why I'm posting this - because the poster's comic book art style really pushes my buttons, and promises exactly what I want from this flick. The original teaser poster was okay, but I friggin' love this one.

Bullet To The Head

I'm looking forward to Sylvester Stallone's upcoming crime/action flick, Bullet To The Head. I'll admit, though, that I'm mostly intrigued by the fact that it's the first feature film that Walter Hill has directed since 2002's Undisputed (which, I have to say, I've never seen). I am generally a fan of Hill's films, though, especially stuff like The Warriors, The Long Riders, 48 Hours, Streets Of Fire, Crossroads, Johnny handsome, Trespass, Last Man Standing and Extreme Prejudice.

And yeah, I like Stallone a lot, too. Bullet To The Head, based on a French graphic novel called Headshot (or, more precisely, Du plomb dans la tête, which roughly translates to "Lead in the Head"), by Alexis Nolent (aka "Matz"), hits theaters on February 1st.

Wednesday Cover: PLANET STORIES

I recently re-read Leigh Brackett's The Secret of Sinharat - a/k/a Queen Of The Martian Catacombs - and am now moving on to The Ginger Star. Both stories feature her interplanetary antihero, Eric John Stark, one of the most fascinating characters in space opera. Every time I dig into Brackett's work, I find myself awed, humbled and inspired... and that's good.

PERILS ON PLANET X and GRAVEDIGGER Update

We're still fine-tuning some features, but both the Perils On Planet X and Gravedigger webcomic sites are now live. Feel free to check them out and bookmark them now!

Perils On Planet X will launch on February 1st, with page one of "Captives of the Corsair Queen," the first chapter of the "Hawke of Terra" story arc. There will be a new page every Friday.

Gravedigger will launch three days later, on February 4th, with the opening salvo of "The Scavengers." There will be a new page every Monday.

I'm very excited to be bringing these properties out to the public again; they've both been locked up in my files for far too long. I hope that they'll find appreciative audiences.

PERILS ON PLANET X & GRAVEDIGGER Return

Finally, after more than a decade of trying to pull my comics projects Perils On Planet X (an interplanetary swashbuckler in the Flash Gordon tradition) and Gravedigger (a hardboiled crime caper inspired by the Gold Medal paperbacks of the 50s) together and out to the readers, I'm pleased to announce that both projects - which originally started life together as online comics on the long-defunct AdventureStrips site - are returning to the Internet as weekly webcomics.

This is something I'd been thinking about for a long time, and thanks to my amazing wife, Brandi, who figured out how to set up proper webcomics sites, I'm finally able to get these comics back online. 

Perils On Planet X, with art by the exceptional Gene Gonzales, will debut on February 1st, with a new page being posted every Friday. Although the previous webcomic version was drawn by Jon Plante, this version is expanded and completely redrawn by Gene, with colors (on the first chapter) by Ian Sokolowski. The plan is to serialize the entire graphic novel (around a hundred pages or so) online, and then collect it in a print version upon its completion. We already have six month's worth of pages completed - and six months' more drawn and lettered - so maintaining the weekly schedule won't be a problem.

Gravedigger, by Rick Burchett and yours truly, will debut on February 4th. We'll be posting a page a week every Monday, starting with the original Gravedigger story, "The Scavengers" (which hasn't been seen online or in print for years) and then serializing the new one... "The Predators." As with Perils On Planet X, the plan is to collect both storylines in a graphic novel format once they are completed.

When we get closer to the launch, I'll announce the website addresses and provide links.

Wednesday Cover: PLANET COMICS

Over on my Facebook profile over the last month or so, I've been posting a lot of cover art from the Planet Stories pulp magazine and the Planet Comics comic book series. Both publications have been a source of inspiration to me as I worked to finish up my own "planet comic," Perils On Planet X.

This cover, for the 71st issue of Planet Comics, is one of my all-time favorite comic book covers. How can anyone resist the combination of damsel in distress, rifle-wielding space man, and 12-foot tall, green-skinned alien Viking satyr?

DVD Late Show In 2013

After some erratic posting in the last third of 2012 (missing half of November and all of December entirely, somehow), a new review appeared today at my DVD Late Show website: the new Warner Archive release of 1989's Superboy - The Complete Second Season.

Before the end of the day, I'll be posting a review of the recent Scorpion Releasing DVD of Greydon Clark's 1983 teen comedy, Joysticks, and on Friday, I'll have looks at Severin Film's new Blu-ray of the manly merc adventure The Wild Geese and Warner Archive's pre-Code torrid tropical melodrama, Red Dust, with Clark Gable & Jean Harlow.

My goal is to try to settle into a  Monday-Wednesday-Friday update schedule at the Late Show, as long as I have review discs on hand. On my desk at the moment are plenty of DVDs and Blu-rays to get me through January, including Outlaw Brothers, Ashanti, The Definitive Document of The Dead, Godzilla Vs Biollante, A Cat In Paris, Captain Cornelius Cartoon's Cartoon Lagoon Vol. 1, Overtime, and more.

I've been writing and posting DVD (and later, Blu-ray) reviews under the DVD Late Show banner since 2005. That's over 700 reviews, so far. I'm going to try and get at least a 100 more done this year... as long as the discs keep coming and people still find my reviews informative and entertaining.

A New Year Resolution

I have only one (compound) resolution for 2013: get my shit together and finish everything.

For the last few years, I've stalled out on pretty much every creative project I've started, and as I'm not currently working a day job, that means I've accomplished virtually nothing in a very long time. There are a lot of reasons for my lack of productivity - some of which I'm not even sure I understand - but there comes a point when you just have to get shit done. I've reached that point.

I am determined to finish my part (the writing, primarily) of every comics project that I've promised to do over the last few years. This consists of the Perils On Planet X miniseries/graphic novel with Gene Gonzales, the Gravedigger: Hot Women, Cold Cash graphic novel with Rick Burchett, a Captain Midnight one-shot with Richard Clark, and a new Femme Noir graphic novel with Joe Staton. I can't control their schedules in drawing those projects, but I can at least get my part done and stand ready to letter and handle the production on the books when they complete the art.

The hardest part of all this is believing that I can accomplish my goal; which is ironic because all of those talented artists listed above seem to believe in me. Even after years of me missing promised deadline after promised deadline, they have all - to a man - expressed their willingness to still draw these books.

And then there's the fans - yes, I have fans, even though that concept is still utterly incomprehensible to me - who keep asking when the next Femme Noir is coming out or sending me notes on Facebook to tell me how much they're looking forward to Perils On Planet X or Gravedigger. I'm tired of disappointing those folks.

But most of all, there's Brandi, who always believes in me despite how well she knows me. I can't bear to let her down.

So... here's 2013. One way or another, I'm making it my bitch, because I don't just want to finish the projects I've already started; I want to move on to new ones. Skorpion with Rick. A retro super-hero graphic novel that I want to co-write with my pal Jim Chambers. A couple of novels that have been percolating in my brainpan for a while now.

And I can't move on until I clear my desk....