The Geek’s Grimoire is a blog run by a buddy of the show. Check it out by clicking on the banner above. And here is a sample of some of the geekery you should come to expect below:
It all started in a department store.
Pittsburgh, some time in the early 1980s
My brother and I have arrived at (probably) K-Mart. Both of us have fresh allowance money in our pocket, so we head directly to our favorite part of the store: the toy department.
Within moments, we’re in the action figures aisle, searching for the Star Wars figures. Unfortunately, Star Wars is already falling out of favor, and the only action figures that we can find already exist in our collection at home. As awesome as Darth Vader is, we really don’t need a third one.
Immediately adjacent to the Star Wars figures, something new and interesting has appeared. These newcomers are military action figures. They’re a bit different from our usual sci-fi toys, but they are about the same size, so they’ll fit in with our existing armies. After a little deliberation, we each select a toy and head for the checkout.
Little did we know, our young lives had just changed.
Present day
So, what was that pivotal purchase?
Over the next decade, my brother and I would invest a large quantity of our allowance in GI Joe action figures, vehicles, and even the occasional comic book. When the TV show surfaced, we immediately became devoted fans, and our backyard was filled with cries of “Yo Joe!”
My love for GI Joe faded into the fog of memory for quite a while, just as Star Wars had, until the Cartoon Network produced GI Joe Resolute. The cartoon that I had grown up with had grown up as well, and it was good.
Today, I’ve returned to the GI Joe universe. I’m a regular reader of several ongoing GI Joe comic books, I’ve got a handful of GI Joe action figures on my desk, and I’m re-reading the original Marvel Comics series. All because K-Mart was out of new Star Wars figures way back when.
I wonder how different life might have been if they’d had Zuckuss in stock…
Here is a pretty nifty site where you can check out and buy all of your favorite classic movie posters with a slight twist . . . they turn them all into zombies!
I am crossing my fingers for a Night of the Living Dead one . . . no wait . . .
As sent in by our buddy Travis (who had drawn awesome Cyclops drawing he sent us) of Beneath The Surface/End Of An Age fame . . . he is also famous for his pickle trick, but that is a story for another time!
Seriously, this is 40 minutes of some pretty damn good stuff . . .
Okay, so this has been out there awhile, and I saw it a couple weeks back . . . but I think about it often, and I just have to share the creepiness of it to maybe get it out of my head. Seriously, do yourself a favor if you love weird or creepy things and watch this all the way through.
Alan Moore stops by the studio to talk with the Weiners . . . no wait, we just read a book he did for Avatar Press called Neonomicon, which is a followup to the story The Courtyard! The issue inspires the Weiners to get a bit raunchy . . .
Weed has a large stack of comics he wants to show you (and something else, in the alley, away from other eyes) including Secret Six, Unwritten, Thanos and Brightest Day. Steege forgets to talk about Red Cliff this week, but instead talks about Dinner Party Download, Dragon Age and his Bloodbowl party!
Travis talks about Inception and his love for everyone involved (luckily for you, no real spoilers), Bo touches upon Tiny Titans and the last collection of The Sword. John couldn’t check anything out this week other than news from .SDCC, and hits some of the hot topics and announcments form the con!
Posted by: John on: July 25 2010 • Categorized in: Comics, Movies
Check it out fast, it might just go missing soon with all the studios and Youtube cracking down on this . . . but this one has been on awhile . . . strange, maybe AMC is being smart about the whole thing and realizes that this will be the best exposure they can get! The show seems like it is going to be a good adaptation, things are changed, which should keep it fresh, but it seems to also remain true to the formula for the most part (at least in this short clip). And the little girl zombie is creeeeeeeeeeeepy!
So Weed just sent me an email with the subject “this looks fucking awesome” and the attached story . . . and if he writes something like that, you know it is gonna look fucking awesome!
Two great tastes . . . will they taste great together?
The guys check out Pat Lee’s Widow Warriors from Dynamite Entertainment, and wonder what all the fuss about Pat Lee is about . . . then find out he might want to run for a political position for how dirty his past is!
Batman checks out some X-Box Three Hundred Sixty Degrees games: Batman Arkham Asylum and Star Wars Force Unleashed, which starts up a discussion about game difficulty. Steege cannot stop talking about Red Cliff (International Version), and gets excited about Breath of Death VII on X-Box Live Indie, and then a ittle bit about his new MP3 player.
Weed doesn’t Skype in because he is a big doo doo face!
John gets excited about Stuff of Legend: The Jungle, Daytripper #8, and the book from William Harm called Dead or Alive (not beach volleyball, but zombies in the old west). Bo checks out some more Star Trek and some Timothy Zahn Star Wars books but his heart is captured by Cormac in Hawks of Outremer!
Continuing the week of featuring online comic strips, here is a great parody one called Garfield Minus Garfield, where Garfield and his dialogue is literally erased out of scenes, which leads to some creepy and disturbing comic strips!
Just in case you consider yourself a great geek or nerd, and haven’t been directed to this website before (or stumbled into it in a drunk internet search), this is one of the best comic strips on the internet. Mixing math, pop culture, science, logic and hilarity all the strips. Check it out, and for fun, if you don’t know what XKCD means, go look it up . . . internet searches are fun!
Oh, and don’t forget when you are looking at the strips on the site to leave your mouse over the comics so the ALT text appears . . . it is like free hilarious commentary (or a bonus jokes!)
Posted by: John on: July 17 2010 • Categorized in: Books
I recently had the pleasure of checking out a book that combines two of my loves: blueberry muffins and big band music! But that is a tale and blog post for another time. Instead I am going to let you know about a pretty well done horror book that blends the western and zombie genres in a very intriguing way: Dead or Alive from author William Harms.
Dead or Alive follows two brothers, one as awnry as they come, and the one just trying to reign in his brother’s terrible misdeeds so they don’t end up in jail, or worse yet, dead. After losing their family farm several years back, and their father to suicide, the brothers have been migrating from one work farm to another, trying to scrap by a living, but things always run afoul for the two. Finally fed up with the way their life is going, the two brothers end up robbing a stage coach, killing several men in the process. Escaping after the cash grab, they stumble into some trouble, and unwittingly, bring it upon a small town . . . yep, as you can guess, a good ol’ case of the undead!
The little bit I have read about William Harms has led me to believe he is known for being a horror writer, but I will be damned if this guy should not be writing Western tales. The plotting and feel of the book for the first half is nothing short of nailing what the genre is all about, especially when you throw in some of the wicked characters that make the brothers’ lives a living hell (although who is to say two murderers don’t deserve what they got coming).
That all being said, the novel in the middle 50 pages or so for me hit a real dry spot, right when the breakout of the zombie plague begins to hit, and had me worried that a great book I was really enjoying was going to fall flat once the new element was introduced. It did for awhile, and I honestly wondered if it was the same author handling this section of the story, as everything I loved from the beginning seemed to go missing. But as quickly as the book took a down spin for me, it soared right back up to deliver punch after punch of what I can only describe as great horror story action!
So, with the rough patch aside, this is one book I can recommend to fans of both the zombie genre and the classic Old West tales, and it being a very enthusiastic recommendation at that! I will be checking out some of the author’s past work, and look forward to checking out future stories, including his 39 Minutes comic book coming out from Top Cow.
Score: 3.95/5 (For John’s enjoyment of the series)
Recommend for: Fans of Old West stories and zombie tales, fans of the movie Ravenous
Posted by: John on: July 17 2010 • Categorized in: Video Games
Big bummer that 1 vs 100 is canceled . . . I liked playing it every so often, it was a lot of fun. But a very nice way for him to go out in a humorous manner.
And to quote Jesse “shows that he is a class act. Hopefully he’ll appear in some more things game related or not.”
