Next we have a cool Secret Sats poster image from the team at CN, with a couple of my personal favourite cryptids lurking in the shadows... 
and a cool Doyle pose from the in-house design team, too! He's turning out to be a very popular supporting cast member. 
Lastly, here's what the Globe And Mail had to say about the Canadian launch of the show. It's the only Big Newspaper I read on anything approaching a regular basis, so I'm naturally pretty jazzed.
Kudos to Ruben Procopio at Masked Avenger Studios for this gorgeous Zak Saturday statue, with paint by Kat Sapene . Muchas Gracias!
I've had a bunch of requests and questions regarding Secret Saturdays merch, so I thought I'd post a kind of F.A.Q. response. The Mattel toy line and the console games aren't due out until late next year... it takes longer to manufacture this stuff than you might think. In the meantime, Cartoon Network has a T-shirt available. Keep your eyes on their site for more speciality items in the future (and don't be shy about writing them requests!). The only other currently available Secret Saturdays stuff are the DC Cartoon Network Action Pack comic books in which the Saturdays will continue to appear. Hopefully that's enough to satisfy the kids (or kids at heart) with the Saturdays on their Christmas list.
Janet Hetherington wrote up a nice article for Animation World News based on our interview last week, and it's got a few little details possibly not covered in all the other Secret Saturdays inteviews I've done lately. Anyway, I think it's a good one.
Just got back from Kitchener after catching one of the last of this years' flicks in the Waterloo Festival For Animated Cinema, and, wow, Keiichi Hara's Summer Days With Coo was just what I was looking for! A great 'boy and his monster' story with plenty of funny, scary, and tearful moments... like E.T. with traditional legend replacing Science Fiction. It's no secret how much I love yokai (and Kappa in particular) so I went in fairly excited. I'm very happy to say that the film exceeded my expectations. It's impossible to avoid comparisons to Miyazaki considering the subject matter and ecological/ anti-development undertones, but the fact that this film holds up well under that comparison is saying something. From MAP, director Hara says, "Summer Days with Coo is very special to me. It was more than 20 years ago that I first read the original story and a great many things have happened between then and the realization of this film. Throughout my career, the concept has always been in my mind and I am very happy that I have finally had the opportunity to direct it as a film..." Official movie website here with loads of artwork. I sure hope this becomes available on the North American marketplace soon so I can share it with my kids.
I finally saw Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer last night and was utterly thrilled with the funny, gory, old-school monster movie (Rated R, kids). It successfully combines monsters, humour, and psychotherapy... the three things that followers of this blog know have dominated the last year of my life. Watching the film was like closure for me! Kudos to Canadian writer/director Jon Knautz, and the wonderful creature effects by Form and Dynamics. And it was great to see Robert (Freddy) Englund in a campy, yet nuanced, Vincent Price-style role as the Professor/Demon Host! One reviewer described it as Hellboy meets The Evil Dead, which is pretty apt. So if you dig those, and you only plan on seeing one horror flick this Halloween season, Jack Brooks should be it.
Just heard the good news... "The Secret Saturdays premieres on TELETOON on November 7 at 5 pm with that episode repeated on Sunday, November 9 at 8:30 am ET/PT and then
My favourite classic monster is Dr. Frankenstein's creature, as you might have guessed. In fact, I've built a lifesized one myself recently, and not out of paper, either. I hope to get him working (with small scale motion detector stuff) in time for All Hallows... I'll let you know how it goes. Cool Frankenstuff here...
I'm in complete agreement with Kevin McCorry that the 1955 WB short Hyde and Hare is an under-appreciated gem. I quote, "Hyde and Hare is an atypical Bugs offering. In stark contrast to nearly all of Bugs' other cartoons, good does not win over evil. Evil seems to prevail, and the heroic rabbit seems to succumb to it. He falls from grace... He is transformed out of his familiar, noble image and into the look of a ghastly, savage beast." Creepy Halloween animation it most certainly is, and scarier than anything good ol' Gossamer was ever in!
Time to start musing about the Monster Month! I can't think of a better way to kick of All Hallows than with this stunning piece of spine-tingling art by my hero Roy Crane. Michael Price posted a wonderful interview with Crane last year. I liked this little chestnut: "I don’t worry about the violence. It’s good for children to read something about violence to prepare them for this world we live in. What literature doesn’t have violence? The Bible is full of it. And there was that girl who went through the looking glass, Alice, and the Queen threatening to cut off everybody’s heads!"
Here's a short list of some early reviews for the Secret Saturdays...
It's finally here! This Friday, October 3rd at 8pm, my new animated series The Secret Saturdays debuts on the Cartoon Network! Bam! Pow! Grrrr! Please give it a peek and let me know what you think, OK? Another little interview here at the Comic Book Bin...
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? My sharp-eyed daughter was perusing an online game site called Games2Girls when she came across Weirdville, a boring little game featuring a sorry-looking Jetcat knock-off, and quite clearly ripped off from my Oddville comics. I guess I should be either annoyed or happy that someone thought my comics were cool enough to 'borrow' from, but this just leaves me blah. I like a so-bad-it's-good bootleg as much as the next guy, but this is just plain bad bad.
Here's a neat review of the Secret Saturdays Pilot over at Comic Vine. G-Man watched the show with his 5-year-old daughter, and records both reactions. He also raves about the awesome Press Kit sent out by the Cartoon Network (see above), and has set up some sweet character pages. Definitely worth a look...
Just heard the good news that D3 and High-Voltage software will be producing a Secret Saturdays console and handheld game for Wii, Playstation, and Nintendo DS! Don't get too excited just yet, though... these things take time to get right. I just couldn't wait to tell my Monsterama pals!
The new Tutenstein TV movie is ready to rip! From Worldscreen... Tutenstein: Clash of the Pharaohs, the first feature-length movie based on PorchLight Entertainment’s hit TV series, will make its debut on Discovery Kids in the U.S. this fall, with its international premiere at MIPCOM Junior. For more info (and spoilers!), hop on over to Animation Magazine.
I'm proud to announce my involvement in the cool Metal For Monsters project instigated by Blend Creations, and featuring a horror-ful host of crap-hot creators! From the press release... Having a kid changes everything, even the way you read the newspaper. While taking in the latest atrocities inflicted upon young children throughout the world, owners of online jewelry boutique BlendCreations.com, Vivian Cheng and Eric Jean-Louis, hugged their little "monster" Jack and vowed to do something for his international monster cohorts. And since they are designers, not lobbyists or Peace Corps activists, they called on nine of their talented artist peers to draw their way toward a $10,000 donation to UNICEF. The resulting collaboration is a line of twenty limited-edition stainless steel pendants upon which comic-style monsters are laser etched. Starting on October 1, one hundred copies of each of the twenty designs will be offered for $81 through the website MetalforMonsters.com. Almost 20% from each sale ($16) will be donated to UNICEF. From the renowned to the contented fringe, artists include: S. britt, Stefan G. Bucher of dailymonster.com, Jon Burgerman whose clients range from The Science Museum to Sky, Pepsi, Sony and KidRobot; Anna Chambers; Justin Hillgrove of impsandmonsters.com; Adam Koford, a creator of the Laugh-out-Loud Cats comic; John Martz, editor of the popular illustration blog Drawn.ca; Jay Stephens, creator of the Emmy Award winning animated creation TUTENSTEIN; and Brian Taylor of candykiller.com. Get your mitts on Bathead and Spooklops while they last, and feel good about helping out children in need at the same time.
I did a little interview over here for Racattack Force. You know, in case you're interested.
