boonestoons.com Featuring the comic book and animation art of fine artist Greg Boone

Many Moons ago I worked pencilling at Jim Shooter’s Defiant Comics. I found a video on YouTube featuring my editor Pauline Weiss discussing the comic book I worked on called “The Good Guys”. That book was tough. It featured 8 real kids who had won a contest to appear as superheroes in a comic book and I had to draw all of them in likeness. It was fun and challenging. Here’s some trivia for you, Pauline Weiss is the wife of legendary comics creator Alan Weiss who worked on the “War Dancer” comic series at Defiant. Alan is the great grand nephew of the famous magician Harry Weiss we all know by his stage name, “Harry Houdini”. The magic follows the family tree!

I can’t emphasize this enough regarding it’s importance. These are books by Scott McCloud one of the biggest talents to come along in comics in decades. He actually wrote and illustrated one of my all time favorite funniest comic book ever “DESTROY!”.

Scott is well known in the comics field not only for his talent but his instructional books regarding the art, technology, history, and philosophy regarding comics. Get the books so you know the basic languages and concepts. Make sure you know them inside and out because if you can’t speak the language no one will be able to communicate with you professionally about the industry.

You can get these highly recommended books here:

I can’t think of another theme song growing up that made more people leap to their feet and do the ’shin dig’ or ‘the monkey’ and all those weird 60’s dances then the theme for the tv show “Secret Agent” aka “Danger Man”.

The show starred Patrick McGoohan as Drake an agent out to foil evil. It is a brilliant show with great actors, villains, stories.

The theme by Johnny Rivers was a hit and still a party favorite. You can’t play it once but you have to play it three times or a long version because once you get your thing on dancing to this tune you just can’t slow down.

Now don’t laugh but the girls in this were hot back in the day. It was the Go Go years. Johnny Rivers is a musical genius and this was just one of his hit songs. Warning, don’t try those dance moves without a partner around to assist you should you injure yourself.

Posted under Blogroll, FINE ART

This video is the theme song to the classic 60’s sci-fi kids show ( although more adults watched than kids ) Fireball XL-5.

It’s a show that was spawned by the great Gerry Anderson who brought us such classics as Stingray and my favorite Captain Scarlet.

Gerry Anderson did everything right on his productions. Just so much fun and entertaining. He used marionettes as his characters and darned well effective too! One of the major tributes to him is due to his use of great theme songs and scores. His puppet productions were often head and shoulders above the live actor shows! His miniatures are masterpieces to this day.

Yet back to the theme songs. This one is from Fireball X-L5 recorded by Don Spencer and Flee Rekkers. This tune was so popular when I was a kid that we would all dance to it whenever it was on. I still love this tune and don’t mind singing it now and then to myself.

Here’s another cool theme from Gerry Anderson’s Stingray show

It’s got only one lyric, but it is a rousing tune too.

Now here’s my favorite, Captain Scarlet. This was a great show and a must have. Nobody went throught the stuff Captain Scarlet went through. Not only that he had hot babes on his show and a kick butt theme song

Someone ought to make a live action Captain Scarlet movie starring Brendan Fraser or Jason Staham. That would be soooo cool and full of humor. Captain Scarlet was like Indiana Jones meets the X Files vs Doom.

Finally, this show UFO had a kick butt theme too. Very hot show!

All in all, it would do you good to get some Gerry Anderson shows on DVD as they’re lots of fun, quite historic, way ahead of their time.

Posted under Comic Book Artist

Davey And Goliath’s Snowboard Christmas!

Holy cow! I didn’t know the legendary Davey and Goliath tv show had modern day updates and not only that but Davey and Goliath get rad on some snowboards!

Anyone growing up in the 1960’s knows about animator Art Clokey’s beloved stop motion toon “Davey and Goliath”. It was a Christian based Lutheran Church show that ran on Sundays in New York and was a staple of entertainment on Sundays. It was very high quality considering the painstaking skill and work involved in producing stop motion animation. Art Clokey had two hit series at the same time, the Gumby series and Davey and Goliath. Both were beloved then and now.

Davey was a typical American boy but had a talking dog named Goliath. Goliath was on par with intelligence as Bullwinkle J. Moose and even sounded on him. Goliath often acted as Davey’s conscience when Davey wandered off the straight and narrow. Goliath was the best sidekick of conscience since the Lost In Space Robot used to follow that Dr. Zachary Smith around.

My cousins were Lutheran and whenever I stayed over their house on Saturday nights the next day was all day Lutheran. The Lutheran church was right next door and had regular bell ringing to tell the folks the time. I had other friends and family who are Lutheran and our common base of chat was often an episode of Davey and Goliath. There’s lots of trivia about the show and I’ll dig some up. Other than that, there’s a website devoted to this classic tv show and I’m going to get the DVD packages.

Art Clokey was a genius and a very nice man. He broke barriers with Davey and Goliath sometimes showing women in commanding roles, minority characters when other shows with live actors were afraid to show any due to advertising pressure.

So Davey and Goliath not only is an entertaining show but it has morals, guidance, insight, and history that is rarely found in television.

I wonder what would happen if PIXAR did Davey and Goliath in CG?

Posted under Comic Book Artist

DC Comics recalls All-Star Batman issues

This is hysterical. DC Comics, home to such hits as Superman and Batman is asking for retailers to return some of their comic books because a printing error allowed for curse words to be included in their Comics.

The errors occur in the current issue of “All-Star Batman”. The infamous “s” and “f” words appear in the book.

Now us old timers know a great advertising campaign when we see one and we know darn well none of the copies of this book are going to be returned because they’re instant collector’s issues. Much like when you find a misprint in a dollar bill or a stamp, the value shoots through the roof.

DC Comics should be proud of itself for coming up with this nifty idea.

Posted under Comic Book Artist

Leave it to me to find some way to beat the villain BEFORE the final climax of the game.

I’m sitting here half asleep and started playing Bioshock this morning and got to a point where the main villain, Fontaine, attacks me while I’m exiting the bathisphere.

Somehow, some way I blasted him with a plasmid and instead of his following the game’s programming and running into the next section to lead the game on, he gets stuck on a set piece and I keep blasting him and he totally falls to the ground numerous times and then just crouches there allowing me to beat on his noggin’ with the wrench for half an hour.

Just fun beating on him with a wrench and trying new weapons on him.

I’ve even taken a screenshot of this.

So the game stops right there with me being able to beat the living crap out of the villain non-stop for hours of bloodthirsty pleasure.

Posted under ANIMATION, Blogroll, Comic Book Artist, FINE ART, Movies

Animator Bill Melendez Dies

Bill Melendez, remembered by probably a half a billion people as the animator of the “Peanuts” specials has passed away at 91.

That’s a long time ain’t it! Animators and cartoonists generally live long lives whether they’re rich or poor. Mr. Melendez made so many people happy with his art that it’s unfathomable to think of anyone who hasn’t enjoyed his works.

I remember when the first Peanuts special hit the tv sets of America. It was a magical moment in all our lives and remembered to this day. That Christmas special said more about the real spirit of Christmas second only to the Holy Bible itself. Peanuts was hugely popular when I was a kid and the tv special cemented it.

I’ll need to devote more space to how much an influence Mr. Bill Melendez made on the animation industry and entertainment as a whole. Right now I need to chill out at this news.

Posted under Comic Book Artist

BIOSHOCK

I broke down recently and purchased the popular award winning video game, Bioshock. It’s produced by 2K.

I’d heard about Bioshock for over a year and saw the ads but made the misjudgement of not researching it. Perhaps because the advertising imagery was of something that didn’t interest me. I had assumed it was a kids game. After getting the demo I realized it was the furthest thing from a kids game.

Bioshock is an advance in the state-of-the-art video game technologies and has quite an entertaining story too. It’s a combination of Jules Verne meets Edgar Allan Poe meets modern day slasher movie horror. It’s no where near gratuitous violence but provides strategies and challenges of a cerebral level that calls for the player to be 100% on their toes and wits. The game requires actual advanced cognitive as well as basic survival equations and resonates after the game is played into normal daily activities thus elevating one’s survival solutions.

With all that said, the bottom line is that it’s fun.

Not to give too much away because the storyline revolves around uncovering a mystery. This bit of detective work goes well into the story and seasoned mystery fans will get it early on. Let’s just say you start out as a plane crash survivor that swims to safety during a murky night finding yourself on a very small island where an ominous citadel beckons you inside. After you enter, that’s when the underwater adventure begins and I do mean “underwater”. You arrive at a place called Rapture located many fathoms below the surface of the ocean and is a sprawling city that looks like someone had Frank Lloyd Wright and Jacques Cousteau on the design team. It’s retro and art deco to the max and it’s now where you’ll uncover the secret of the mad scientist who built this elysian modern day Atlantis.

The graphics are so superior you’ll often leap from your seat to avoid some attacking menace or torrent of raging water. Monsters and creatures and lethal devices are aplenty to battle, control, and befriend.

I got the PC version of the game as I’m partial to the modding additions that make game play unending in this form of entertainment. Modding is when fans who know the insides of the programming of a game make adjustments such as new strategies, settings, characters and release them so that other fans of the game can install them into their games and play variations on the game. When the Bioshock mods come out, it’ll be a history in gaming.

The game comes in formats for PC, X Box, PS3 etc.. Modestly priced and well worth the money.

In addition, the ghoulish level of this game is up there so not for kids and check the ratings.

Overall, this game is fantastic and the design and strategy is outstanding. The AI or Artificial Intelligence is simple and you can guess what’ll happen next very early on regarding the actions of your opponents. The real challenge is to make sure you’ve got your game configured for accessing the wide array of weapons and super powers you acquire along the way. Attention to detaill is mandatory and the game does help in it’s own special way.

So if you like mad scientists, mysteries, retro, sci fi, horror, ghoulishness, and lots and lots of weapons and super abilities to use on your enemies then Bioshock is for you!

Posted under Comic Book Artist