Ad - KFC commercial

Here's an ad for KFC from Christmas 2001.
Very random, if features once again Jason Alexander!



What the...?!

FanFilmFriday - The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special

For this week, to stay on the subject, I'd like to post this lil' fanfilm of Lobo simply called...
The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special!

This is the closest we'll ever get of a live action Lobo movie to be honest.

Made in 2002 as an American Film Institute's studies exercise, it was directed by Scott Leberecht.
Lobo was portrayed here by a cetain Andrew Bryniarski.
(with Tom Gibis as the Easter Bunny and Michael V. Allen as Santa Claus)

It was actually based on a stand alone one shot comic of the same name.

The plot::

The Easter Bunny is fed up with the attention Santa Claus receives over Christmas so he hires Lobo, the Main Man to kill him.

With a simple budget of barely 2'400 $USD, it originally premiered at the AFI in May 2002.
And it looks fantastic!
I mean look at that, this is as good as Lobo will ever look live.
I'm sure Hollywood would totally scr*w Lobo if they got to him in an eventual real movie or a TV show (like Smallville or something).

Check it out, and if you already knew it, watch it back again:



So badass!
Fraggin' awesome!

VGR Blue Stinger

It's been a long time since I last posted up a survival horror game review.
(heck! I still haven't finished Resident Evil 5 as a matter of fact!)

Blame it on me playing a lot of them simultaneously at the moment.

I launched not long ago a game play of Blue Stinger and simply couldn't put the gamepad away....

VGR: Blue Stinger

From Climax Graphics/Activision/Sega

Played on Dreamcast

Also available on /

Type Survival Horror

Year 1999

Haaa, Blue Stinger. I can't think of this game without smiling.

Released as one of the Dreamcast's launch titles, and developed by the little creative team of Climax Graphics. It was also funded (and in Japan, published) by Sega as a killer app to sell their 128-bits console.
Blue Stinger was even released in some places, outside Japan, days before the Dreamcast was even available in stores!

It is a survival horror like there's been many other on the system after that.
But this is one was clearly more action oriented than designed around "horror" properly said.

What is this title about?

It all started with a shooting star...

In a brilliant and pretty random storytelling fashion, the game opens up with a cinematic cutscene, starting out 65 million years ago, no less!

It was the era of the dinosaurs.
Then, a meteorite crashed near the Caribbeans and ended up an entire species across the globe. It was the extinction of those giant lizards.

Flash forward, "present day", in the year 2000.
And island was found where the meteorite struck originally.
Dubbed "Dinosaur Island". The Kimra Corporation founded various installations, including genetic laboratories and biotech research facilities on this island.

Ballad of the last rescuer~

2018.
You are Eliot G. Ballade, member of the Emergency Sea Evac' and Rescue team. ESER for short.
(the game loves acronyms, be prepared to see a lot of them!)
While Eliot was with his friend Tim enjoying his vacations and fishing in the ocean, another meteorite falls from the sky right on top of Dino Island. After a mysterious explosion, a dome of energy emerges and completely seals the island off the rest of the world.
Tim gets trapped inside the barrier, while Eliot's stuck with the island inside the dome.
Suddenly, a mysterious spirit-like creature takes the form of a Nephilim (a fictional creature). It helps Eliot get ashore.

What is this Nephilim, where does it come from and what are its intentions?

No time to get any answers, because Eliot finds bodies everywhere, everyone appears to be dead on the island. Some kind of monsters are roaming free on the land.

Dogs of War.

But you're not alone on this island!
Eliot meets this captain of the HMS Sienna, also stranded near the Kimra complexes.
With this Dogs Bowser who is actually a resident there, Eliot sets up to find what really happened on the night of Christmas on.....Dinosaur Island!


More action-adventure than horror/thriller, Blue Stinger is a survival horror unlike any other!

Fun, colorful.
It is also one of these very rare Christmas themed games.
Yes, you read me right!

Like Christmas NiGHTS before that, but unlike any other of these games either.
You see, Christmas as so very little to do with the plot. It just "happens" to take place at that time, like Die Hard in a way. Which just provides the settings with "Merry Xmas" posters, Christmas trees inside the market, though no snow around. (it is the Caribbeans afterall!)

The whole game looks lovely.
Almost cheerful because of that.
Christmas music jingles around the "once-populated" area, lots of lightning instead of the gritty settings of your usual Resident Evil...

The characters look nice enough, but the animations are sort of stiff (it's is an early Dreamcast title!). But the backgrounds entirely in 3D look like what Code Veronica would also switch to later on, look great! The environments are amazing and full of details!

What about the gameplay itself?

Come to daddy!

It is more action focused than your usual tension filled horror games.
You control Eliot, or Dogs, in fully explorable 3D settings. From a behind the shoulder perspective. (a gameplay change which Capcom would use and perfect in more recent Resident Evil games)
There's a lot of exploration and backtracking to do around the island.
Labs, markets, apartments, caves, parkings, etc.

Our characters respond to the stick perfectly, though they do run a bit awkwardly.

When unarmed (at the start of the game, or by using your short range weapon), the game sort of feels like a beat 'em all. Eliot karaté-punches his way through the monsters, Dogs is all about the heavier wrestling/sumo/etc. fighting styles.

There's literally dozens of weapons, covering a large and unexpected range of weapons. From the usual pistol, minigun, sword, triple-barreled shotguns, to the heavier rocket launchers, napalm launchers and even more difficult to get/more expensive/secret weapons like the laser gun, demolition gauntlets and a lightsaber!!

You can buy items, such as food and ammo from vending machines all over the place. Usually near saving machines and maps of the island.

To do so you need to collect money.
And that's where the fun begins!
The game is clearly designed to make your way through the masses of creatures you'll find there.
Most are designed like The Thing from John Carpenter's classic. These monsters here can be punched through, so they never present much trouble if you're prepared to face them.
Once defeated, they'll explode in a rain of blood, with a bunch of money flying out of them.
Which is great.
I mean, money was originally used in games to censor blood in retro games, while modern games normally went with blood for realistic purposes.
Having both is so unreal.. (something No More Heroes would copy much later)

Monsters respawn every time you come back, which money you'll quickly make big amounts of money pretty fast.
The smaller monsters, flying insectoids and running bugs don't give money, so they also don't respawn.
There's various giant creatures, huge bosses to defeat all over the game. You'll have to spend your ammo carefully depending on your foe.

The game meant a lot for Sega, so it doesn't come as a surprise to see Ryan Drummond (the original voice of Sonic on the Sega Dreamcast) as Eliot and Dogs Bowser voiced by Deem Bristow (aka the original Eggman).

Later on our heroes are joined by the mysterious Janine King, member of KISS (Kimra's security) who happens to be an expert shooter (she is voiced by Lani Minella). Janine is a non-playable character that helps our characters at various points of the story.

The voice acting might sound a bit silly, but it's actually pretty good in my own opinion. It is the characters that are over-the-top.
It's a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, with Dogs complaining about stuff all the time, Eliot hitting on Janine constantly despite the situation.

The whole game sort of feels like a movie.
A B-movie to be exact.

It has a great "action movie" soundtrack, the music really give this game a unique feeling.
According to the mood and places you'll visit, you'll hear more epic tunes, supermarket jingles, etc.
Even the sound aspect is worth mentioning, with great sounds made for each special effect, from the grunts to the footsteps.
It all sets up a great atmosphere.

All in all it is a very long game for the genre.

It is also the kind of experience you wanna revisit.
The game offers various unlockable features in true Resident Evil fashion.
From the usual unlimited ammo to new weapons, alternate costumes for our cast (above pictured costumes notwithstanding, the Santa suit is from a specific portion of the story) and some other funny modes ("big eyes",..).

It's a big epic crazy story featuring colorful characters and locations.

It all comes full circle in an epic conclusion like you rarely see usually.
 

Sadly, the adventure ends on a

To be continued

note, after the credits...

Overall, it's a fantastic experience and highly recommended title for all Dreamcast owners.

Simple and fun to play. Clunky animations and way to run aside, it's a charm to play~

Developed by (the sadly closed now) Climax Graphics studio, it's a very fun and quite original sort of free roaming Survival Horror set on a large open world you open gradually.
It certainly takes the genre into new heights and direction.
Instead of the usual gloom, gritty and dark Survival Horror, it is more fun, closer to an Action/Adventuretitle.

The goal here is quite simple. Explore bio-labs, tons of rooms and bigger open places on island, collecting keys, ID cards while going through hordes of monsters.

To do so you'll have plenty of crazy weapons to play with.

It is sort of like the Dead Rising of the Dreamcast.
I can't make a better comparison, gameplay wise.
Tons of monsters to fight, big open spaces including markets, a movie theater, etc. You regain your health by eating and drinking stuff. The story is quite over-the-top, not taking itself too seriously, and the game will have you run around all over this place, to help survivors and often under a countdown depending on the situation.

ブルースティンガー

The original Japanese release deserves its own separate paragraph at the end of this present review.

The game was originally quite different from the western title we all know it now.
You see, it used an original cinematic styled camera system, kinda what you have in all classic Resident Evil games.
Instead of the 3rd person behind the character's shoulder, it was presented using a fixed view which changed dynamically. Closer to what Capcom did with Resident Evil: Code Veronica if you will.
But this posed a lot of troubles in action segments.
So Climax redid the whole presentation of the game for the American and European release, presented as the definitive edition of the game.

Enemies let also more money and the difficulty was made a bit more progressive too.

In a way, it's a pretty different experience with its own feel.
If you can, I recommend trying this one too, but it isn't the best and ultimate version of the game, the Pal/Ntsc-US is.

This Japanese version is fully dubbed in English. Besides Japanese subtitles, it's all the same as the other game (voice, menus, etc in English). My Pal port was only tweaked for better views and challenge.

I give it:

 2.5 / 3 Quacks!

Japanese Blue Stinger:

Dinicartoons - Jingle Belle animated!

Here's something I planned to post for Christmas..but totally forgot to do so...

Back when Top Cow acquired the rights to Jingle Belle from Paul Dini (which, since then, went on to Image Comics), Dini was quite interested into developing his own brand of cartoon characters, be it in the funny pages or beyond.

Thus were born the Dinicartoons.
For the occasion, a bunch of Jingle Belle "flash" animated shorts were produced for the official website JingleBelle.com and a few of them can still be found on youtube these days.
Here's all three of them you'll be able to watch...

"Jingle Belle in Gloria"

Jingle Belle contributes to the annual choral gathering... much to the dismay of the conductor.

"Jingle Belle in Picture Imperfect"

Parents are paying good money to have their childrens' photos taken with Santa, but Jingle Belle gets into the act.

"Jingle Belle in Santa's Throne"

Jingle helps her dad bring cheer to tiny tots at Christmas.

By now, you've probably gotten I'm a huge Jingle Belle fan^^

I find these shorts pretty fun, if only more had been made/released on youtube...

Anyways, that is all as far as Christmas blog posts will go for this year, I promise. That's enough already.

Jingle Belle is copyright Paul Dini. 

Uploaded courtesy of the creator.

ComicPanelsOfTheWeek: Singing time

..and one more for today!

(Click for bigger pic)

Nightwing & Batwoman © DC Comics

Drawing - On The 25th Day Of Christmas

...On the twenty fifth day of Christmas...
 

...And the last one for this year!
Abby, the bee-girl cartoon character I "improvised" with the help of the folks watching me on deviantArt.

I wish you all Happy Holidays!~


It's in colors on dA as well:



Abby Xmas 2011 Pic by *theEyZmaster on deviantART


Abby!
====

Character © EyZ Comics 2011.

Epic Random Xmas Comics 2011

[massive post ahoy! I know this is just gonna mess with my blog's layout...]

Time for another one of these as promised!

"I wish you all a Merry Christmas 2011 and a HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012!"

This is another one of my random Christmas comics, if you missed the previous years, follow these links:

2007-09 Epic

2010 Epic

Hope you enjoy the new one!

Characters © Respective owners
CoolApe Ape © CoolApe.org

CBR Jingle Belle: Naughty and Nice

 

It's that time of the year again!

And what better book to talk about than Paul Dini's own creation, Jingle Belle!
A book for all ages.

I reviewed this comic for New Readers.. as well, check it out if you want a more in-detail analysis.

Comic title: Jingle Belle: Naughty and Nice 

Story by Paul Dini
Art by Stephen DeStefano
Lettered by Sean Konot & Stephen DeStefano
"Little Matchstick Girl" Illustrated & lettered by Barry Caldwell
"Jingle Belle Conquers the Martians" painted by Lawrence Marvit
Chapter one illustration by Bill Morrison
Chapter two illustration by Lynne Naylor

Published by Oni Press
From 1999-2000
Lineup Jingle Belle
Format: Trade paperback collecting Jingle Belle's original stories from 1999 and 2000 (one shot miniseries), a short story from Dini Double Feature #13 and an all-new exclusive color story.

Jingle Belle is an original creation by renowned comic book legend Paul Dini.
A cartoony elf girl Dini created in '99, that has seen various stories published periodically since then every year.
Most of her stories are either one-shot Christmas specials, original graphic novels or like this one, the previous ones collected in trade paperback releases.

"Naughty and Nice" collects her first two years worth of material, where she was defined under the pen of artist Stephen DeStefano.
The other characters weren't as clearly set in stone as Jings', but even so, the outlines were placed which would be explored in other tales.

Jings' is your typical Dini character.
She was designed by Dini, she's just this fun loony girl like you probably seen in cartoons from the 90s (Batman: The Animated Series or Freakazoid).
But what does an adventure of Jingle Belle consist of...?

A long time ago, Santa, yes the Santa Claus, saved the elves leader Queen Mirabelle from the clutches of an evil tyrant named the Blizzard Wizard.
This Saint went on to become a legend across the world, a giver of gifts and the protector of the North Pole.
He eventually married Mirabelle.

1999.
Jingle Belle is the rebellious daughter of Santa Claus.
While her father spends most of the year thinking about the children of the entire world and preparing for that very special night, Jings causes havoc and mischief all around her.

The stories in "Naughty and Nice" are self-contained tales of the mischievous gal.
There's a light sense of continuity in the stories following one another, but anyone can pick up this or any other Jingle Belle story, they aren't meant to be complex or hard to get.

This book is mostly composed of two bigger tales by Dini & DeStefano.
Jingle Belle is a good kid at heart that only wants to have her parent's attention once in a while....which is quite the difficult task when your dad's Santa Claus I presume :P
Meanwhile the Blizzard Wizard is carefully preparing his revenge on Claus....

The TPB also contains various one page-stories here and there, as well as some pin-ups you might expect from a Dini character, including art by various artists such as Evan Dorkin, Alex Ross, Sergio Aragonés, Jill Thompson & Coop!

All stories and Jingle Belle content's usually in black & white.

Finally, there's a bonus color tale, painted by Lawrence Marvit. Which makes a nice bookend story.

Overall, the perfect recommended gift for comic fans and children alike!
It's a very nice ans sweet comic book which I recommend for anyone!

Kids will no doubt like the fun stories that seem pretty self-conscious of traditional Christmas stories. It's just a fun bright book!
Adults will enjoy the cartoony art style and the style very reminiscent of 90s cartoons classics like Animaniacs or Tiny Toons. (which Dini worked on actually)

Jings is one cute and fun leading character. She bounces from one story to another, from one artist to another!

Of course some might not like the fact it is in black & white, but I'm rather fond of this comic strip look of Jingle Belle. It suits the characters. (also, with all the snow around, it's not like colors would have given anything more to the story graphic-wise)

The book also has an introduction by Eddie Gorodetsky (TV writer and producer behind such shows as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air & Saturday Night Live).

Check it out!
There's also many more Jingle Belle comics to be read, this is as good a starting point as any!

I give it:

  2 / 3 Snoopys!

ComicPageOfTheWeekend: Happy Holidays from the House of Ideas!

This one's from the recent Christmas Special One-shot!
Love when DC does these usually, glad to see Marvel do one this year :)

(Click for bigger pic)

MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2011 © Marvel Comics

ComicPanelsOfTheWeek: Santa Doom

(Click for bigger pic)

Fantastic Four © Marvel Comics

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!
Hope you're all having a great time!
Enjoy your holidays, I sure will!

Nathan Fillion sure is enjoying his own break!

Take care,

- Eyz

Drawing - On The 24th Day Of Christmas

...On the twenty fourth day of Christmas...
 

My own characters; Bruce (the echidna on the left) and Quack (the platipus on the right)!
I had to draw these guys at some point, right?

I went on, and went further with this pic.
The guys deserved a colored pic, I drew them so very little this year :/


MIA Xmas 2011 Pic by *theEyZmaster on deviantART
 
==M A D E I N A U S T R A L I A==
MiA: Made in Australia © EyZ Comics 2011.

ComicPageOfTheWeekend: Because you demanded it...the most requested villain of all!

(Click for bigger pic)

The Incredible Hulk #378 © Marvel Comics

Community: Annie's Christmas Song

Merry Christmas to you all!~

I wish you a smexy Christmas! :'3
With Alison Brie from NBC's Community:



Been loving this song since the show's mid-Season Finale Christmas Special~

She's got a great "Harley Quinn" type of voice :P
The song is actually quite catchy

Drawing - On The 23rd Day Of Christmas

...On the twenty third day of Christmas...
 

I'm not really sure who asked me for this one
Drawing © Eyz.2011
Character © Capcom

CartoonShort - George Liquor Xmas

Here's a little animation by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi! (Ren & Stimpy)

John K. & co wishes you a Merry Christmas too!~

(Well...although this is from 2007 actually, back when Flash animations were awesome...and I am not them, I'm just re-blogging this for no purpose besides enjoying this video...oh well, you get what I meant anyhow...)



> Hohoho God Dammit!

It's the Xmas Holidays! - Alison Brie sings Santa Baby

Finally!
Winter Holidays break! WOoooHOOoo!

And what better way to celebrate that than with a "Christmas Song"...



Alison Brie sings Santa Baby in a reality show!
Ha!

<3

Drawing - On The 22nd Day Of Christmas

...On the twenty second day of Christmas...
 

asked for Bomberman, so here he is!

I'm taking YOUR ideas, all your ideas, into consideration!
Just drop them on this NEW poll~

Drawing © Eyz.2011
Character © Hudson Soft

AwesomeCommunityScene - Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas' opening title

And here's the opening to the Community Christmas special from Season 1.
Easily one of the best Xmas specials I've ever seen! Top notch stop-motion quality, lovely songs and memorable episode all in all~

A must!

Check out the opening credits from that episode:

Drawing - On The 21th Day Of Christmas

...On the twenty first day of Christmas...
 

Ash J. Williams aka the great Bruce Campbell!
I remember someone asking me for Bruce... (was it you Frob?)
So here he is as a Ash disguised as Santa!
(how so very meta, heh?)

I'm taking YOUR ideas, all your ideas, into consideration!
Just drop them on this NEW poll~

Drawing © Eyz.2011
Character © ?