mastemind rodak weekend

[davemerrill]

Friday it was super cold and we had dinner at the Counter. Saturday we went to a bookstore in Oakville and I traded in a bunch of books for THE ADVENTURES OF HOLLY HOBBIE, a hardcover YA novel about a modern 13 year old girl who finds her lost father in Guatamala with the assistance of the ghost of her ancestor, American Greetings corporate character Holly Hobbie. We got a bunch of cheap VHS in the basement of an antique shop including the Enoki Films version of "Thumbelina" with dubs by Jim "Force Five" Terry. And music by "Bullets"! No big dinner plans as I had to go into work. And it was super cold. Yesterday I went to the Anime North staff meeting, we went out to the Wally World and bought snacks and value priced video games, and then Donald and David came over and we watched the dvd of STAR CRASH Donald gave me for Xmas. Letterboxed, full Dolby sound, remastered picture, disc of extras and interviews... way more than this picture really deserves, but then again there are people who think this film is one of the most entertaining movies of all time. FOURTH DIMENSIONAL ATTACK! Also: very cold.

There is a new ZERO FIGHTER page up, still an establishing shot so don't get all het up about it. And as an extra added comic attraction here's my re-mastered comic strip about the villain from "Space Giants", THE MASTERMIND RODAK!!

Comments

Bullets?

[mpceccato.livejournal.com]

Wow, "Bullets" scored other things as well? The only time I ever saw that name were select episodes of "Doctor Snuggles"!

Re: Bullets?

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

They did the music for a bunch of direct-to-video American releases of Japanese cartoons, including the awful Jim Terry dub of "Crusher Joe".

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

I like it. Rodak has his Fletcher Hanks dialogue down pat.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

So, did Starcrash make any more sense in this new edition? I swear, I was watching the previous release (retitled 'Female Space Invaders') and I just didn't recall it being THAT messed up and chaotic.

I still love how the effects person seemingly mis-understood the concept of 'grebbley up' a model by gluing various bits of plastic model kits on, where he just took entire sprues of parts and just *blap* stuck them in place.

and Rodak...man, I would watch the heck out of a short of Rodak and Dr. Gori sitting at a Dennys.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

The models look even worse now. You can practically see the maker's stamp on the plastic cups in some shots.

The film itself is still nonsensical; apparently they were rewriting it even as it was shot, and Corman trimmed it down for US release. Yes, the US release, filled with interminable scenes of characters walking down hallways, walking across snow, walking across Italy - THAT's the tight, economical cut. Caroline Munro's acting is... well, anybody's going to look restrained next to Marjoe Gortner, but she's almost sleepwalking through this movie. At no point do you buy her as a space pilot, a freewheeling outer space adventuress, or anything other than costumed uncomfortably.

[(Anonymous)]

I wanted to say, Dave, that in addition to always liking your comics, I always liked your lettering, too. Don't ever make the mistake Jack Chick did, of switching from hand lettering to fonts!

--Carl

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

I will second this notion, and add that I am so glad you stopped doing that nonsensical thing where you didn't put the vertical line in your 'E'.

What was up with that? It was so...so...hipster and fakey and surprisingly hard to read!

Command Ship! I order you to stop time! Hello? oh crap.

(the logical implications of stopping time, see...)

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

See, I always hated my lettering; I even switched to the Speedball C-4 pens that Schulz used and I was still never happy with it. It's sloppy and switches at random between upper case and lower case, and sometimes I rule lines out and sometimes I don't. It's all over the map. Ben Oda, I'm not.

I'm using a font (Tahoma) for Zero Fighter. It seems to work for me, the font's really clean and the artwork... isn't. Anyway the originals are really quickly dashed out on copy weight paper that wouldn't take a Speedball pen well at all. I'd have to letter on a separate sheet.

I like to think I was doing the no-vertical-in-"E" thing before I saw it in the "Robotech" logo, but that might not be true. At any rate it was adopted more out of laziness than anything else.