Texas, 1975. Cuts off kinda abruptly at the end there -- sorry about that.
corporate-sellout.com
If You Can Read This, You Can Read This
corporate-sellout.com
If You Can Read This, You Can Read This
Hi, I'm Thad. I build websites.
This blog's been up in one form or another since 1999. In that time I've written about topics ranging from comic books to video games to copyright law to creators' rights to Frank Zappa.
I also write eBooks and narrate audiobooks. Here's where you can find them:
Today my fiancée bought a Kinect at Fallout Games, our local independent gameseller.
I tested out the Rally Ball game on Kinect Adventures. The main takeaway: it doesn't really play like any kind of real ball game at all.
Most notably, in this game, bouncing the ball off my face or crotch is okay!
Uploader SteveSparx just says "Germany, 1978" -- not sure if it's the same show as the Yo' Mama recording I posted a week or so back, but it's the same tour, at least.
So the Daily Show website, at long last, finally automatically plays the extended version of interviews instead of making you navigate to a separate page to find them and then skip through the first part you just watched. A thing people have only been asking for since, oh, about 2006.
Now if they can just get it to work without Flash crashing twice and playing the same Jack-in-the-Box commercial three times, they website will finally provide a superior viewing experience to just pirating the damn thing.
Well, let's take a break from the political bullshit for something completely different: a Hendrix tribute featuring Adrian Belew. Performed 9/18/77, the seventh anniversary of Jimi's passing. Fox Theater, Atlanta, Georgia.
Not the best-quality recording, but what the fuck; still pretty damn cool.
Well, in a lucky capper to Jack Kirby's birthday week, I found a copy of Kirby: King of Comics, by Mark Evanier, at my local Barnes and Noble for about 75% off.
It doesn't appear to be in stock on the B&N website, but check your local store; maybe you'll get lucky too.
Sure is purty. It'll look great next to my copy of The Art of Ditko.
Because there's no other way to close out my Zappa/Republican Convention theme week.
Next week: Tipper Gore.
You know, I seriously considered just calling this post "Busiek and Mignola's Final Fantasy" and then opening with a "Before you get excited..." but ultimately decided that would have just been mean. (As it is, it's already misleading to say "Busiek and Mignola", as Mignola was just doing the covers.)
Can't remember what made me think of it -- maybe it was when I was going through my searches and saw a bunch for both busiek and final fantasy -- but I recalled that Busiek had alluded to a cancelled Final Fantasy project. Now, Kurt's been damned active over on FormSpring, so I figured I'd ask him about it -- but then I figured hey, maybe I should actually do some research first.
Didn't find much, but there was a bit of discussion about it in a CBR thread called Series that Never Saw the Light of Day -- which is also where I first heard Mignola was the cover artist, and Dell Barras (who I'm not familiar with) did the interiors.
Busiek showed up in the thread and explained a bit about the series and what happened to it: it was for Hollywood Comics, a Disney imprint that "either never got launched or was killed off almost right away".
Most interestingly, he gave a short explanation as to when this was and which Final Fantasy(s) he was adapting:
This was so long ago that when I was first assigned the project, I did a story outline, and the people at Squaresoft liked it a lot, but said, "Uh, well, this is good, but we're about to do a new version of the game, can you revise it to be about FINAL FANTASY 2 instead?"
It required a top-to-toe restart, because the characters in FINAL FANTASY are footsloggers, ordinary soldiers and adventurers, while the characters in FF2 are princes and leaders and such, which makes for a whole different kind of story.
But yes, it was based on FINAL FANTASY 2, though Dell Barras's interpretation of the Japanese designs maintained basic designs but spun it into a very, very mainstream-American style.
That'd be the American FF2, of course, AKA FF4. I'm sure it would have been fun -- and featured better dialogue than the original SNES translation of the game.
Anyhow, after finding out those tidbits, I decided to ask Kurt this:
How far along was the Final Fantasy adaptation (or adaptations, since you had to switch games partway through) before being scrapped?
The first version was a detailed outline. The second was a complete script for all four issues, I think, plus lettered art for at least one and penciled art for one more. Four nice Mignola covers, too.
Niiiice.
Wonder where all that stuff went and whether anybody has it now. All I've seen is this ad, in the above-linked CBR thread (and presumably from the FF1 period):
I haven't been able to find anything else, even any of the Mignola covers, which is a pity -- but hell, one more thing to add to my "things so obscure you can't find them on the Internet" list. (Course, if anybody can prove me wrong, do feel free to shoot me a link...)
(Update 2015-01-04: I now have the covers to issues #2 and #4; you can see them in the post Mignola Final Fantasy Covers. I still haven't seen #1 or #3, or any interior art.)
But via Robot Mutant here's a Joseph Dellagatta FF piece homaging Mignola, anyway:
More of Frank explaining precisely how he feels about televangelists -- this time in the form of a Beatles medley!
It's interesting to notice just how much Zappa's turns of phrase have crept into my own lexicon. I'm fairly confident I use the phrase "ignorant cracker" far more than the average person.
Updated Favorite Searches. If there are two essential truths you should always remember, they are these: alan moore still complaining and popeye bad ass. Words to live by, my friends. Words to live by.
Playing: Oh God, you'd think I have ADD or something. Recently I have played Crackdown, Last Story, Xenoblade, Sonic 2 Delta, and Mottzilla's patch for BS Zelda. One of these days I'll probably even share some thoughts on each of them.
Reading: Rule 34 by Charles Stross.