Up Past My Bedtime With Harry Potter

July 15, 2011 at 9:52 am
Posted In: Blog

When my daughter was very young, I made the questionable parenting choice to take her to a midnight screening of Ang Lee’s The Hulk. (I’m not sure which was more questionable, the lateness of the hour or the lameness of the movie.) We had a great time and it was the beginning of a tradition of midnight screenings of genre event films. But I’m not as young as I was then, and these things take their toll on a middle-aged schlub like me. Therefore, I’m not going to have a lot to say this morning about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2, which I saw just a few short hours ago.

I love the Harry Potter books, having fallen in love with them accidentally while reading to my daughter. They are an amazingly satisfying read for adults as well as kids. I’ve been less impressed with the movies, though I generally like them. As the books got progressively longer and more complex, the movies were confined to their 2-and-a-half hour running time, so that they started to seem like Cliffs Notes versions of the books, only touching on the most important plot points. So even though Warner Brothers’ decision to split the final book into two movies was almost certainly intended only to squeeze more money out of their most lucrative franchise, I think it resulted in better movies too. If they had tried to cram the entire book into a single movie, it would have barely resembled the source.

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Random Thoughts

July 13, 2011 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog

Here’s a random selection of thoughts and observations that have bubbled up in my mind lately that individually do not warrant a blog post. They’re of no particular import, but if you’re looking for a way to kill a few minutes while you pretend to work, here you go.

I’m really liking Google+. I barely use Facebook any more, but for some reason G+ makes me actually want to use it. The whole “circles” concept seems so obvious, I don’t know why it hasn’t been done before. I hate the way that Facebook assumes that you want everyone to see everything you do. Once more of my friends and family are on G+, and once they implement a few more features and iron out a few bugs, I think it will be awesome.

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Cover Preview

July 12, 2011 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Blog

Since we’ve finished our first chapter, we’re getting ready to release our first two issues in print and electronic formats. Al has completed the covers for both issues, and you can get a look at them on our Facebook page. Check ’em out! You don’t have to “like” us to see them (I don’t think you even need a Facebook account), but while you’re there, you might as well!

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Hiatus Week 1: Arlene Zeller

July 11, 2011 at 12:05 am
Posted In: Blog

This week we have our very first piece of guest art, by Arlene Zeller. Arlene has been a supporter of The Specialists for a long time, and we’re honored by her contribution. I love the concept for this drawing. Here’s how Arlene describes it: “Just like a normal teenage boy would spend his time doting over his first car, Max spends time making sure his robot is nice and shiny and free of battle damage.”

Arlene is the creator of the awesome webcomic Shadows of Enchantment, which you should check out. It’s a fantasy story set in a world where the powerful-yet-corrupting forces of enchantment, which have been suppressed for hundreds of years, are starting to reawaken. Arlene’s art style is bright and colorful, with character designs that remind me of classic Disney animation.

Shadows of Enchantment updates on Thursdays. There are currently just over a hundred pages in the archive, so it’s not difficult to catch up with. Give it a look!

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Questioning Reality

July 8, 2011 at 10:55 am
Posted In: Blog

There’s no Friday Foreshadowing today, because we’ll be featuring some awesome guest art next week. So instead, I’ll try blogging, which is something that I used to do with some regularity on this site, but have recently been neglecting.

I’m in crankykpants mode today, so it will be one of those blog posts. The back-in-my-day, don’t-you-just-hate-it, kids-these-days sort of posts. But I’ll try to keep it short. Merely teaspoons of bile, not buckets.

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