animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

We’ve all been quite busy lately. Mr. Murray is working studiously in sunny Pennsylvania; Mr. Dorison recently got married and has his own (NSFW) comic; Mr. M resides far away from us in the precipituousness of Seattle, with a comic of his own; Ms. Babcock and I are both wrestling with the demons of not-too-far-off Ph.D.dom (and she her comic as well); Ms. Schnelbach is furious on her own work, novel, and future plans; and Mr. Gniewek is telling tall tales in other locales at the moment, as well as gearing up for a big move of his own.

Regardless, I feel the need to poke my head around here once more, albeit in a different capacity. Inspired by the illustrious Raina Telgemeier, of Smile, X-Men: Misfits, Comics Bakery, and All-Around Awesome Person, I’ve decided to revive the stagnant SAC Blog to prime myself for the joys of the fantabulous funitude of the “holiday” season. The Telgemeister¹ mentioned on some-or-another social networking site that she is the proud owner of many, many animated Christmas specials. As I do not believe I’ll be viewing many specials this year (due mainly to a drastic uptick in the ratio of work needed to finish my dissertation vs. time left to do so) I feel the need to at least talk about them.²

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Lee French, the Sequential Art Collective’s resident self-admitted “fanboy” is taking a month off of rambling to collect his thoughts about life, the multi-verse and everything for future rants and raves. This week, Matt. Murray, executive editor of the SAC Blog and author of our regular Monday Media Madness feature fills in with a ramble about an animated coming out party for a certain princess of Paradise Island.

by Matt. Murray

Warning: May contain “spoilers” for the recently released Wonder Woman animated feature from Warner Premiere.

In this week’s Alphabet of the Arcane, Mr. M. described Wonder Woman as the booty “that launched a thousand issues” referring to her status as the go-to sex symbol for a certain comics publisher. For over 68 years, she’s been the pre-eminent female force in DC Comics, starring in numerous titles and presiding in their Pantheon as one of the company’s “Big Three” heroes (with Batman and Superman). However, until Tuesday March 3rd, 2009, she has never headlined her own animated venture – while Batman and Superman total no less than 40 individual cartoon projects between them.

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In this special post, Matt. Murray – author of the regular Monday Media Madness column – celebrates Friday the 13th with a look at a freaky series just released to DVD and its relationship to a long dead, recently re-animated comic series.

by Matt. Murray

Tuesday February 10th marked the long-awaited release of Tales from the Darkside: The First Season to DVD. Running from 1983 to 1988, Darkside was the pinnacle of syndicated horror entertainment in the 1980s, a time when no less than five other genre shows were choking up the UHF dial after midnight on weekends. Featuring adaptations of stories by the likes of Stephen King, Clive Barker and Harlan Ellison, occasionally iconic performances by actors such as Jerry Stiller and directorial experiments from special FX guru Tom Savini, Darkside entertainingly filled a void in televised horror anthologies that was left by the canceling of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits two decades prior. It also opened the door for a new crop of programming that included the 1980’s Zone re-launch, Monsters, Freddy’s Nightmares and eventually HBO’s Tales from the Crypt.

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