Nick Davis's Blog, page 121

First Look – Marvel at The Avengers promo movie poster first superhero group pose

Figured it was a day of movie posters so I would treat you all to this too… Spotted at the Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas, The Avengers first promotional movie poster with a full group shot. Interesting to note that Captain America's outfit is less military looking and Hawkeye seems to be wearing the Ultimates version of his costume. Good things a coming… Avengers Assemble!

First Look – Marvel's The Avengers promo movie poster first heroic group pose

Figured it was a day of movie posters so I would treat you all to this too… Spotted at the Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas, The Avengers first promotional movie poster with a full group shot. Interesting to note that Captain America's outfit is less military looking and Hawkeye seems to be wearing the Ultimates version of his costume. Good things a coming… Avengers Assemble!

Awesome vintage Captain America movie poster by artist Paolo Rivera

I came across this today, a vintage Captain America poster by Paolo Rivera it is 99% hand drawn and an amazing retro movie poster that even I remember seeing when I was kid. Great piece of promo art and you can read more about its creation on Paolo blog – The Self-Absorbing Man: Captain America First Poster here.

Awesome vintage Captain America poster by artist Paolo Rivera

I came across this today, a vintage Captain America poster by Paolo Rivera it is 99% hand drawn and an amazing retro movie poster that even I remember seeing when I was kid. Great piece of promo art and you can read more about its creation on Paolo blog – The Self-Absorbing Man: Captain America First Poster here.

Ninja Stylin – unique custom shirts for the Ninja in your life

Ninja Girls Only

Totally Ninjas

<<Click here for more details>>
Ninja Girls Only

Kunoichi

<<Click here for more details>>






Ninja Girls Only

Everyone Loves Ninja Girls

<<Click here for more details>>
Ninja's Only

Everything is more fun

when you add Ninjas

<<Click here for more details>>

Unique custom shirts for the Ninja and the Kunoichi in your life, available in all sizes from S-XL Please click the link under the shirts for a larger image and details how to order them for your Ninja today.

Also every Ninja shirt brought pays for a page of artwork for my next book Fabula Zero, a mashup of comic book and prose story telling. Another cool reason to buy your unique Ninja shirt today, not only do you get to show your Ninja-cred you get to help Fabula Zero published!

Found in the Archive – XV88 Tau Broadside Battlesuit designed to bring the rain

Okay this is the last look at my photo archive for my small Tau Cadre and we are going to finish off with the XV88 Broadside Battlesuit; designed to bring the rain on the Warhammer 40,000 battlefield. This heavy suit straight out the pages of a mecha manga packs a twin railgun and missile pods, and with the help of the Tau Scouts can bring the hurt to anything within its range. Simply too cool…  Anyway, this suit was painted in the same way as the rest of my Tau Cadre using the same colors to give the army a solid uniform feeling. If you are interested in knowing what paints I used click the tags at the end of this post for my other posts of photos from my Tau army.

Inside the Box – Savage Dragon, New Avengers, Fear Itself Spiderman & Fearsome Four

Welcome to Inside the Box. Every week I give you a quick rundown review of all the books inside my box from my local comic book store Chucks Comics. Find out what book stays, what book goes and what book gets banished after the first read. Fairly poor pickings this week, but this is fairly typical for my box in the second week of the month.

Savage Dragon #171 by Erik Larsen with Nikos Koutsis & Mike Toris – I don't know how Erik does it, but Savage Dragon has continually been one of the best books in my box since I started to pick it up. After handling the transition from Dragon to Malcolm, the story starts to slowly pick up pace with a look at family; and cause and effect. What really makes a son of a super-villain become a super-villain? Genetics or circumstance, the answer is inside! Angel explains why she is a benefit to her school, Malcolm encounters a family member he has never seen before and both kids find out what happened to Dad; which I think is setting us up for the next arc. Very good stand alone tale and shining example of a good solid comic book.

Marvel – The New Avengers #13 by Bendis, Deodato & Chaykin – I think this is the last issue of the Nick Fury Flashback to the original Avenger intuitive members. The issue flip-flops between present day new Avengers and the Avengers of the 50′s; concluding both arcs that revealed new nest of HAMMER Loyalists and a insane Nazi Captain America. A stolen relic that branches both stories is finally recovered and we find out everything has something to do with the infinity formula. Which brings us to a fairly predictable ending which I wont spoil for you. I am enjoying the New Avengers team dynamic they are a little more down to earth than the more cosmic Avengers, and this book is still a keeper.

Fear Itself – Spider-man 2 of 3 by Yost, McKone & Cox – The fear in this book is palpable as Spidey gets run ragged trying to save the citizens of New York against themselves. We are treated to an inspiring monolog from Jonah Jameson basically kicking the Web-head back to his senses. Very well done, you can feel everything falling apart and the desperation of Spider-man as he tries to keep everything together. A worthy event tie in limited series and I am hanging in there to the end… Bravo!

Banished from the Box – Fear Itself Fearsome Four, really Howard the Duck? Who at Marvel thought I know we will bring Howard the Duck back into our mega-summer event that will make this issue fly off the shelves. I don't get it when there are much more worthy titles that have been canceled how we get this tripe jammed down our throats. Total waste of She Hulk, Swamp Thing, Frankenstein and Darkwing. Fear Itself Deadpool is just an incoherent unfunny mess, I'm not a huge fan of the Merc with a Mouth, but this is a Deadpool book at it's very worse. Two event tie in series, both a complete waste of time.

See you all next week!

Sigmartyr Vol.2 – A Stikfas Action Webcomic Updated

Sigmartyr the Stikfas Action Web Comic has been updated, and the epic story continues here – click here to view

Setting the easy set up pool, just how hard can that be?

Sunday was spent setting up our new 15ft wide pool. An easy task, made easier by it being one of those Intex Easy Set up pools; all you need to do is inflate the ring and then fill it full of water. How hard can that be?

Well, in borrowing those words from Top Gear I found out and little did I know the epic quest this Sunday task would be. The day started easy enough, pick up the Krystal Clear (sounds like a stripper name) saltwater system, and the 120lbs of salt. The only issue was the salt was in one store, and the filter system was in the other, so I made myself a nice little 10 mile circuit to get both items. At the same time I also decided to get a Lawn Mower, which mean't I could no longer be accused of breaking the Neighbors machine; being a English and leaning towards a viable efficient machine I choose an Electric Mower… Yeah zero man points, but much kudos for the planet.

Okay get everything home, and first thing to do is mow the lawn. Simple enough assemble the lawn mower then plug it in and trip the breakers in the house. Run down to the basement, switch them all on, and find an outlet that isn't already overloaded. Hey Presto the mower works! Now those who are not familiar with these might machines you have to have a cable playing out the back to keep supplying it with power. It was as this point I remembered why I enjoyed the Neighbors gas mower so much, more freedom of movement and no cable to worry about running over. After awkwardly starting I got into a rhythm and soon the back and front were done… Now the pool…

Start up simple, unpack simple, spread out easy, positioning fairly hard to do by yourself but I did it okay, spent 40 minutes ironing out the wrinkles in the pool floor, pump air into ring with bad choice of hand pump and then add water. Those of you who were following my twitter will know this all happened around 2pm.

Go inside wake Jean up from her all night cooking marathon, get a sudden over heat attack which cost me 30 minutes on the couch with a wet towel over my head. Check pool filling up nicely, time to figure out the pump filter system. Now the odd things about pool filters it all seems like easy plumbing until you try to put it all together, then you feel fairly dim and you put it all together in an odd backwards no logic to it fashion. Pipe A to outlet B connected to line E sort of stuff. Still set up easy enough once I abandoned all rhyme and reason.

Then the hours pass, constant monitoring the pool and a bloody hell its actually quite big isn't it moment as it slowly started to rise. Around 6pm I notice a disturbing lean, which 20 minutes later got fairly dramatic and I thought the pool was going to collapse. Cut the water, consult the wife and the decision was made to move it slightly closer to the house on ground that was a little less uneven. Now we had to empty the pool which involved collapsing it and then causing a small flood into our back alley. I predict I dumped a good $40 worth of water rate money before the pool was empty enough for me to drag the 10 yards onto better ground. Whilst doing this I felt something pop in my back, but kept going… So near now so no use complaining about a slight twinge!

Reposition pool, spread it out again, iron out wrinkles, re-pump air into ring with now annoying badly chosen air pump. Fill up with water, calculate it will fill a 8 inches an hour and might be done by midnight. Reconnect filter system and then monitor for lean and leaks. Again followers of my twitter on Sunday got the play by play of this exciting event, and eventually around midnight the wife volunteers to monitor it; while doing another over night cake bake and I go to bed falling asleep almost as I hit the pillow.

Wake up around 4am in horrendous back pain… Tough it out for 30 minutes before the Jean comes up stairs to see what the moaning is about. Back seems to be spasming, and Jean fetches one of my three remaining muscle relaxers to help me ride the spasms out. Turns out she got a Percocet, (must of got fed up with my macho I can deal with it growling) which I took and promptly pass out for the next 7 hours. Wake very groggy and everything I look at is like staring down a tunnel, and I'm moving in slow motion in a marshmallow environment in a silly Gerry Anderson puppet fashion. Jean reappears to take my phone off me as I discovered the delights of swipe on it, and gives me what she promises to be muscle relaxer this time, and also informs me she got in contact with my work while I was unconscious.  Oh and the pool is now full completing around 2.30am

Take the pill slip into sleep for another two hours and wake up feeling much better about my back. With Jean's help we get the salt into the pool, set up the pump to go, and the pool will be open tomorrow. In the end the pool set up turned out to be a mighty task indeed, one worthly of Thor himself, and it took team work to complete. My back is still sore, but with luck I will be able to take advantage of my pool tomorrow evening…

Pool party my house this Saturday!!!

Introducing Project Fabula Issue Zero and Exposition the story mashup begins

Sadly the Kickstarter funding for Project Fabula fell through. I am a little disappointed, but I'm going to move forward with a smaller version of the planned publication to show what I intended to do with Fabula.

For Project Fabula Issue Zero I've chosen my story from the 3C anthology The Cruelest Month called Exposition. Which is a tale of what happens to Jack a comic book writer with an extreme case of writers block. When Jack's characters start to appear out of thin air he finds himself caught up in action right out of the pages of a comic book. This is a story full or Superheroes, Dastardly Villains, Evil Henchmen, Giant Robots and Ninjas. The question is; is Jack on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Or are these events more real than he realizes…

The prose story was a lot of fun to write, and a perfect story to convert into the storytelling Mashup that Fabula is, as it naturally lends itself to prose and comic book action.

I've teamed up with up and coming artist Bill Young for this story and the aim is to bring Project Fabula Issue Zero to publication for Baltimore Comic Con, in just over 78 days from now. Below is a preview of the character concepts for Captain Avenger, Doctor Dark, Mechaniod, the Spik & Spak twins and the Metacarpal Ninjas.