Okay, I'm a little late with the Holiday blogging. My apologies, but the days leading up to Christmas and New Year's were just insane here at Marvel. Busy, busy, busy. Doubly busy for me since I was heading out with my fiancée Elizabeth to Louisiana for a much-needed vacation from 12/24 to 1/3.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to post a few things I'd really wanted to before I left. But on the bright side, it gives me three fun posts to file under the Holiday Hangover banner! Huzzah!
I got a handful of really nice Holiday cards and I wanted to post two of them here on the blog. The first, at left, is from Paco Medina, one of my favorite artists. He floored me with his work on NEW X-MEN, then rocked it on NEW WARRIORS and is now absolutely killing as the artist on DEADPOOL. Honestly, he's quickly become one of my all-time favorite 'Pool artists (alongside McGuinness, Liefeld and Brown) and this card makes me actually enjoy the holiday insanity.
We produced dozens of special, one-of-a-kind cardboard standees of select Marvel Super Hero Squad characters and now they're sitting pretty at Marvel's New York office. Check 'em out!
We get to see these every time we go to the fridge, to get water, to hit the restroom...seriously, they cheer me up like nobody's business! Enjoy!
Assistant Editor Lauren Sankovitch has been bouncing in and out of my office over the last few days, working with my fellow Marvel.com editors on a variety of things and she was cool enough to gimme her list of Top 5 Books. Check 'em out!
-Watchmen "Something new to discover/get freaked out about every time you read it."
-Pride & Prejudice "Gotta have me some Jane."
-Watership Down "Rabbits have never been this compelling."
-The Scarlet Pimpernel "Adventure! Crazy French people! Ruffled cravats! Oh my!"
-At Dawn We Slept "A faithful history of the attack on Pearl Harbor, as recommended by my grandfather, a PH survivor."
Check out Laruen's handiwork across the Ultimate Universe as she helps edit the line through Ultimatum!
I'm back! I have a bunch of responses in the bag, so I'll try and put a few entries in the can and post 'em over the next few days. Woo!
So, yeah. Mike Perkins is awesome. He started my official Marvel sketchbook with a kickass Wolverine piece, tells totally funny and great stories and draws the hell outta everything he touches. Also, he says "record" instead of CD. I do that as well and it just sounds right to me.
Top 5 Records:
"Purple Rain" by Prince
"O" by Damien Rice
"Forty Licks" by The Rolling Stones
"How Can I Sleep With Your Voice In My Head?" by A-Ha
"To Tu To Tam" by Grzegorz Turnau
Check out Mike's blog for your daily taste of Perkins.
Young Mr. Arbona is an assistant editor here at Marvel Comics. He works on DAREDEVIL, THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST and a host of other books that the kids are into these days.
I met Alejandro back when we both handled various editorial duties at Wizard Magazine. We've been pals for years and I helped him move into his swanky apartment in the Bronx. He's not only the tallest man in (and from) Puerto Rico*, but a major film buff, a master of puppets and a bit of a carpenter.
In tapping ol' Double-A to give me some Desert Island Top 5 lists, I knew he'd come at me with something different. He did not disappoint.
Top 5 Movie Cars
1- DeLorean, “Back to the Future”
2- Ecto-1, “Ghostbusters”
3- Mach 5, “Speed Racer”
4- Batmobile, 1960s “Batman”
5- Jaguar Hearse, “Harold and Maude”
I'm a little under the weather, but I'm gonna try and keep this going all week.
--Agent M
*I have no facts to base that claim upon, but Alejandro's tall. Good enough for me!
Here's a little story to go along with today's Desert Island Top 5.
Marvel.com Video Editor Jason Harvey and I were walking through Book Expo America at the Javits Center in NYC last year after filming my interview with ANITA BLAKE author Laurell K. Hamilton. We happened past a booth and I saw a sign for a book called "The Rising," a cool zombie novel I had, coincidentally, finished reading not long beforehand. We went over and saw that "The Rising" author Brian Keene was in the house, just chillin' and talkin' to folks.
Brian was friendly and funny and then when we told him we worked for Marvel, he nearly exploded with excitement. Duh, he's a huge Marvel nerd, as is evident from all the Marvel references in each of his books. Awesome writer who loves Marvel comics? He should be writing for Marvel, right? Of course! I introduced Brian to the right folks, who were coincidentally enough also at BEA and *wha-pam* beautiful things happened! Brian's first Marvel comic just came out, the totally sweet DEAD OF NIGHT FEATURING DEVIL-SLAYER and I'm hoping there's plenty more to come.
Brian's been sick as a dog lately, but he was awesome enough to send me five separate Top 5 lists! Here's the first:
Brian Keene's Top 5 Desert Island Compact Discs
1. Queensryche "Operation: Mindcrime"
2. Bruce Springsteen "Born To Run"
3. Anthrax "Sound of White Noise"
4. Dr. Dre "The Chronic"
5. Prince "Purple Rain"
So, yeah, Brian Keene rules—both in his taste in music and his skills as a writer. Go buy his books (of what I've read so far, "The Conquerer Worms" is my favorite), follow Brian on Twitter and, of course, check out www.briankeene.com!
Brian Reed writes. Quite a lot, actually. From MS. MARVEL to SECRET INVASION: FRONT LINE and many more, Brian's all over the place these days. Which I'm psyched about. He's a great writer and a swell guy and I'm glad to kick off this series with him.
So here are Brian Reed's Desert Island Top 5 Books, with his thoughts:
1) "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" - Maybe the best novel of the last 10 years.
2) "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" - If you haven't read this book, you are un-American.
3) "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" - Chuck Barris was a hitman for the CIA -- TRUE STORY.
4) "Breakfast of Champions" - I know a lot of people would take "Slaughterhouse Five" as their Vonnegut of choice, but I read Breakfast of Champions when I was 17 and it broke me in a great and wonderful way.
5) A Kindle and anything I could download (like "Slaughterhouse Five") before the boat crashed on the desert island. I love reading and imagining only having 5 books, potentially forever, is sort of maddening.
So I don't post on this blog nearly enough. That's a fact. But juggling all the content on Marvel.com, managing my Twitter feed, the Marvel Twitter feed and the Embrace Change Twitter feed and a billion other things can take up a hefty amount of time. Yeah, yeah. Whine, whine, whine.
So, I will get back to posting more posters from around the Marvel office, hopefully sooner rather than later.
But I also had an idea to do a series of blog posts on here that...well...aren't all Marvel, Marvel, Marvel. I'm very much interested in what music, movies, books, etc. people dig and figured I could get some Marvel creators and editors to talk about stuff they like. It may lend some insight into their creative process, expose we the fans up to new music/movies/books/whatever or just be kinda fun. I hope!
So while I wait for answers to come in, I'll post my (Current) Desert Island Top 5 DVDs. And by Desert Island Top 5 DVDs, I mean the 5 DVDs that you'd want to have with you if you ever got stranded on a desert island and they'd be the only ones you could watch. And yes, this hypothetical desert island has electricity, a DVD player and a TV. Duh.
1. "The Royal Tenenbaums" - To me, it's the perfect movie. Beautifully shot, cast, acted, scripted, scored, soundtracked, nuanced. I love it.
2. "Dave" - There's something about this movie, a cute political comedy starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver that mesmerizes me. I could watch it over and over again.
3. "Lord of the Rings" - Yeah, I'm cheating and counting all three as one movie. So what? It's my blog. Neener, neener.
4. "Baseketball" - That's right. What? Got something to say? It's a damn funny movie and I've probably watched it 100 times.
5. "High Fidelity" - This was a tough choice, but it's one of those movies I have and will watch more times than I thought possible. It hits the uber-music nerd in me, along with the sappy, sentimental dude. Even better than the book.
See? Not too scary. Sure, I'll probably go home, look at my DVDs and say, "Crap, I forgot about this movie!" But them's the breaks.
Okay, look for lists from Andy Diggle, Mike Carey, Brian Reed and more soon!
There's been a flurry of talk about blogs today here at Marvel. New Associate Editor Jeanine Schaefer is putting together her blog, Assistant Editor Jordan D. White wants to blog and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort's blog is causing a bit of a stir. With all that buzz, I felt I HAD to get back to bloggin'!
And with Loeb & Sale teaming back up for CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHITE, on sale this week, I picked this beautiful piece as my latest poster spotlight.
Straight up, SPIDER-MAN: BLUE nearly brought me to tears and I have zero emotional attachment to Gwen Stacy (she was dead long before I was born). Sale's work is always super-stylized and this--the cover to the collection, I think--may be my favorite cover/pin-up image. So awesome.
As an aside, there's a ruckus going on in my office over Heroclix. There's a war brewing between my boss, John Cerilli, and Marvel.com intern Nathan Smith. Can Cerilli's Devil Dinosaur-led army best Smith's crew (which includes Silver Surfer)? If I get time, I'll post pics of that later.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't get to blog yesterday. It was a rainy, steamy, BUSY day here in New York and just didn't get to it.
BUT, I did enlist the skills of Marvel.com graphics guru--and photographer supreme--Judith Stephens to help me get better photos of the posters around the office.
Now that we're past most of the Hulk posters, it's time to mix it up. And I'm going back to an early request for this fine Dr. Strange poster by the always awesome Kevin Nowlan. We actually have several of these bad boys hanging throughout the office. There's one directly outside the door of my office, one near the bullpen and at least one somewhere on the floor above mine. The love for this piece cannot be contained in one mere poster!
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