MARVEL'S AGENT CARTER S1E5 “The Iron Ceiling” (review) AT FORCES OF GEEK

From the cold open to a young Dottie in ‘Russia, 1937’ to an appearance from Dum-Dum Dugan (Neal McDonough) and his The Howling Commandos, Marvel’s latest Agent Carter is something Jack Kirby himself would be proud of.


Ramping up the action, our strong leading lady Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) is entrusted with her first mission — but will our cover girl have her cover blown by the arrogant (and over-the-top sexist) Agent Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) or Agent Souza (Enver Gjokaj)?

In Russia — spoiler warning — they have a Black Widow training program, and the origin of Dottie’s (Bridget Regan) exploits in the last episode. Does it surprise anyone that the Russians used a clip of Walt Disney’s Snow White promising to ‘keep house for you’ to teach the kids English in this all-girl Russian Fight Club? Here we see a younger version of the immersion seen in Showtime’s The Americans flashback sequence!

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A Stacey/Clay review! XO

MARVEL'S AGENT CARTER S1E4 “The Blitzkrieg Button” (review) AT FORCES OF GEEK

Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) remains by his side and on the case. This episode gets a little deeper into the mystery behind the stolen Stark weaponry.

Peggy continues to struggle maintaining her cover as a double agent, all the while carrying out mundane tasks of taking the office lunch orders and still being treated as a secretary in the office.

Agent Carter assists Jarvis (James D’Arcy) by ambushing a warehouse deal with mysterious bad guy Mr. Mink’s lackeys. Peggy reluctantly offers Howard her room as a temporary hideout while she retrieves a particular weapon from the S.S.R. lab at his request.



Chief Dooley (Shea Whigham) is off to Germany to follow up on leads tying Nazis into the Stark weapon case, and questions a Nazi on death row. We may be getting a subtle Boardwalk Empire nod here, the Ratzi’s Colonel’s last name is Mueller — the same as Michael Shannon’s false name on the period drama!



Dooley finds out that the battle in Russia he was researching had already occurred by the time the Nazis had arrived, and that everyone was already dead. He learns later that Howard Stark’s name is on a flight manifest a couple of days after the battle had taken place, deepening the conspiracy even more.

Carter’s desk mate Agent Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) heads down to the docks in the hopes of getting some clues on who called in the stockpile of Stark’s weapons at the end of the last episode. Sousa encounters a couple of vagrants playing a nickel bet card game and suspects that one of them must have seen something.

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Stacey Rizoli is an artist, gamer, comic book fan and feminist living in Boston, MA. Her homegrown Red Queen Crafts produces paintings, signs and hand-made custom flower accessories. She hates the cold weather but keeps warm by staying in and playing video games.  Follow her @redqueencrafts

AGENT CARTER reviews S1 E01, S1 E02, S1 E03 - [GUEST POST] STACEY B. RIZOLI at FORCES OF GEEK

Congrats, Stacey! These are great!

As a long time comic lover, and female, I am very pleased to see that Agent Carter has found a home on ABC.

This show is the perfect balance of action, wit, explosions, social commentary, and touch of humor.   

Personally, I think Agent Carter was an unexpected choice of characters to carry a series from Marvel, with all of The Avengers movies I would have bet money that a Black Widow and/or Hawkeye would have been the next side project (which I would definitely support, for the record)  but I can safety say that this show has far exceeded my expectations.

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BOSTON COMIC CON 2014: NOTES FROM THE IMAGE COMICS PANEL by David Brooke

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Honored to moderate this one!

A Beginner’s Guide to Finding Your Nerdy Niche in Time for Boston Comic Con 2014 - INTERVIEWED AT BDC WIRE

“Even if you’re entirely unsure which types of comic characters you relate to, the experts can tell you where to start. Clay Fernald, who hosts the League Podcast and has covered comics extensively for Forces of Geek and DigBoston, says that most comic clerks and fanatics are happy to make recommendations.

“I have a huge stack of books that at any time I could just hand to someone and be like, ‘You should read this,’” he says with a laugh.

Currently, that stack includes Mark Waid’s “Daredevil” comic, Scott Snyder’s “American Vampire,” and “Sex Criminals,” by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, which follows the escapades of two people who learn that having sex gives them the ability to stop time.

[READ MORE AT BDC WIRE]

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"You'll poke your eye out" - DC Comics Releases First Look at FOREVER EVIL #4

Courtesy of - Alexander Nagorski, DC Entertainment

 

This Christmas Eve, see the Dark Knight like you’ve never seen him before.

In FOREVER EVIL #4, Batman must deal with the guilt of Nightwing’s identity being revealed. And even if Dick Grayson returns from the Crime Syndicate alive, will his life be forever ruined now that his deepest secret is out?

Meanwhile, Batman and Catwoman come face-to-face with Lex Luthor and his growing army in the halls of Wayne Enterprises. But what are these two teams doing there? And how does Bruce Wayne have a yellow ring?! Are Batman and Luthor fighting for the same thing or against one another?

“If the Crime Syndicate attacks — how would the villains react if they actually won? If the villains won, and they won in this way, would everyone go along with it? I don’t think they would, because everyone wants something different,” writer Geoff Johns recently said. “At first glance, Lex wants to be as beloved and respected as Superman, though there is a far greater secret in his life that pushes him to strive for success in everything he does, which we’ll learn more about as the series progresses. Lex Luthor is the main character of the whole thing, and that becomes more and more clear as we move forward. In particular with issue #4. So, like Lex, we’re exploring these villains and contrasting them against one another and asking — what would it take to put them in the role of good guy?”

“There’s a lot of fun to be had between Lex and Bizarro. There’s fun to be had between Batman and Catwoman, and when those characters collide,” Johns continued. “Some of the Syndicate members, as twisted as they are, they’ve been fun to write. Power Ring — trying to conceive a character that was everything that Green Lantern usually wasn’t, and amplifying that. There’s a mythology with his ring that we’re going to dive into that explores a very different look at what a Green Lantern could be — if it’s somebody that’s based on a weak will, and a weak sense of self. We see that with Power Ring and how he’s behaving, and we’ll see more of that as we reveal more about him, and the source of the ring.”

Attached for inclusion in your coverage, please find a sneak peek at some of David Finch’s interior art for FOREVER EVIL #4, which shows Batman revealing the Bat Cave to Catwoman for the first time, as well as Ethan Van Sciver’s variant cover for the issue, which depicts Batman using the powers of his yellow ring against the Crime Syndicate’s Power Ring. Please credit these images as courtesy of DC Entertainment in your coverage. For more information, please visit DC Comics’ official press blog.

    

"We Could Be..." THE ROYALS: MASTERS OF WAR - DC COMICS [ART PREVIEW]

Courtesy of

Pamela Mullin Horvath, DC Entertainment

Today, Vertigo announced THE ROYALS: MASTERS OF WAR, a new 6 issue limited comic book series written by Brit Rob Williams (ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, Low Life, Judge Dredd: Trifecta) and illustrated by Simon Colby (The Authority, Judge Dredd: Year One and Trifecta).

The year is 1940. As the War heats up and the Blitz destroys London and kills thousands, the Royal Family looks on. But in this reality, the Royalty of the day have special abilities and the purer the bloodline, the greater those abilities are—and history is about to be transformed when England’s Prince Henry decides to intervene.

“Imagine Downton Abbey crossed with the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan and you’re getting somewhere close to what THE ROYALS: MASTERS OF WAR offers,” says Williams. While Colby describes it as “an everyday tale of everyday squabbles, amongst everyday folk. Except the everyday folk are super-powered royalty, and their squabbles take place against the backdrop of the biggest conflict the world has ever seen.”

THE ROYALS: MASTERS OF WAR arrives in February 2014.

http://www.vertigocomics.com/blog/2013/11/22/the-royals-masters-of-war-art-reveal

    

New Client - Trifecta Editions

Happy to be working for Trifecta Editions and my good friend David Buckley Borden.

Here is a crosspost from the Trifecta Tumblr.

Interview with David Buckley Borden, Artist and Landscape Designer

Watershed Down Map, Digital Media, Fall 2013

David Buckley Borden is a graduate of the landscape architecture masters program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Until recently, he worked as a designer within the Urban Studio at Sasaki Associates and now works at Ground Inc, a boutique landscape architecture firm known for its artful landscapes. David is a landscape designer and artist, and recently worked with us to create a print and postcard pack.

Nurse Log Section, Mixed Media Series: Ink, graphite, colored pencil and carbon transfer on paper, 8.5 x 11”, Winter 2013.

How does your landscape architecture practice influence your art?

Most of the ideas behind my art stem from my landscape architecture practice. This includes the underlying ideas and concepts but also the drawing techniques. If landscape architecture is my work, art is my play and I often play by experimenting with landscape drawing conventions: the scaled map, contour lines, cross section, offsets, line weights, annotation, etc. More importantly, the artwork is a creative exploration of landscape architecture related interests: landscape history, ecology, geology, land use and just about anything related to “the great outdoors.” 

Granite Love Letter, Landscape Installation Proposal, 8 x 10”, Winter 2012.

Tell me about your recent artwork.

Some say I’m obsessed with New England…and its true! I love exploring North American landscapes, especially New England and Eastern Canada. Sure, I enjoy a road trip and hiking through the woods, but most of my explorations are on paper—in drawings I make in my Cambridge studio. And, many of these creative explorations start with books. I rely on an ever growing list of authors who write on the topic of landscape from a variety of perspectives: Howard Mansfield, John Stilgoe, Richard Forman, Peter Del Tredici, J.B. Jackson, and of course Eric Sloane. It’s actually shameful that I don’t spend more time outdoors, but I am working on that…

New England Camouflage Preference Map, Mixed Media, 9 x 12”, Winter 2013.

And your maps?

While in graduate school I was drilled with “rigorous map making.” The rigor almost killed maps for me but common sense and creativity prevailed. I now enjoy exploring and expressing ideas through making maps. In particular, what I call “NTS” (not-to-scale) mapping. These maps are for exploring places…but not in the spatial sense—more along the lines of cultural landscaping, the meaning of place, and regional identity, specifically the identity of New England. When asked where I’m from, I sometimes respond that I’m from the state of New England. New England is my home range and my favorite map-making muse.

Massachusetts’ Premier Ecological Engineer, Silkscreen Print, 8X10”, Fall 2013.

Tell me about Fort Buckley.

Fort Buckley, also known as Fort Chauncy, is what I jokingly call my live/work space. My wife and I live in an apartment on Chauncy Street in Cambridge where I have a small studio space. I also use the apartment as a place to display and sell my artwork. So, Fort Buckley is one part studio space, one part DIY gallery, one part creative cocoon, but all parts home. ‘Fort Buckley’ has also developed into my creative battle cry. I dig all sorts of creative ditches for other folks, but the Fort is really the space where I pursue my own creative interests…it’s a fort of creative self-indulgence. 

Battel for Boston Harbor, Digital Collage, 18“ X 18,” Fall 2010

As someone with both business and design experience, you have a unique background …what’s your take on the business of art?

I’m a big believer in the economics of sustainability. Sustaining art, like anything, requires resources. There’s time and money out there, you just need to develop the networks and the infrastructure to find and capture it. I am a believer in the practice of being a “working artist.” It’s not easy, but I love the whole experience of art: creating it, discussing it, sharing it and even selling it. Art and craftsmanship have some unique economics as well. For example, I am a big fan of giving art as gifts. When you purchase art as a gift for someone, you are really giving two gifts with your purchase. First, you are gifting the piece of art to the recipient, but you are also giving the gift of financial support to the artist. 

Masshole Classic, Silkscreen print, 9 x 12”, Fall 2013.

Tell me about your new prints available from Trifecta Editions.

The print, titled “Masshole Classic” stems from a long running drawing series in which I play with the derogative expression of “Masshole” and a variety of Massachusetts’ soil horizons, both real and fictitious.  This print features a generalized Cape Cod soil profile that includes almost nothing but sand and rock.  The original sketch can be found in my notebook for a soils class with Peter Del Tredici, but over the past couple of years it’s developed into a series of drawings. Now, thanks to Trifecta Editions, it’s a limited-edition print.