Comic retailer Joe Ferrara, owner of the awesome shop Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz, Calif., will attempt to “set a world record for a solo performance by an individual in a club setting without repeating a song or using sheet music or lyric sheets.” He starts at 10 a.m. Sept. 14 and ends at 10 p.m. in the Rock Room Lounge at the Shadowbrook Restaurant in Capitola, Calif.

From the press release:

September is National Prostate Cancer awareness month. “The average woman has a working knowledge of the facts about breast cancer,” says Ferrara, a three-year survivor of prostate cancer. “The average man knows almost nothing about prostate cancer. I hope to change that.”

The event promises to be a challenge. “I know over 400 songs,” says fifty-nine year old Ferrara. “I play folk, standards, soft rock, show tunes and classic rock so material is not the problem. However, I’m only allowed a five-minute break every hour! I plan to save them up and only take four breaks but we’ll see if Mother Nature has other plans!” Ferrara hopes folks will take a few minutes out of their day to help him set the record. “Come for five minutes or five hours it doesn’t matter. Request a song and even sing a long”, he says. “Just come have a good time. I can’t set the record without an audience.”

Information about prostate cancer will be available during the event. Members of the Santa Cruz County Prostate Cancer Support Group will also be in attendance to answer any questions

More information can be found on the Atlantis Fantasyworld site. You might recognize the shop, as it was featured in the film Lost Boys.

More details here.

– Stephen DeStefano shares a Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend commission.

– The Hugo Awards were announced this past weekend in Denver.

– As were the Doug Wright Awards (though not in Denver).

– Tom Spurgeon talks CCI with David Glanzer.

– Alley Oop turned 75. I didn’t even know it was still around.

– A Matt Bors’ cartoon makes it all the way to Gitmo and the hands of Salim Hamdan.

– Own an iPhone? Like comics? Bookmark this site.

– It’s not comics, but I liked this MTV story about fan reaction to Diablo III screenshots and the developers explanations as to why they did what they did.

– Arvid Nelson and Jesse Falcon join the Comic Book Club this Tuesday.

– io9 picks the VP candidates. Yes, it’s comics related.

– Cartoons for grown-ups.

– Trent Reznor thought about turning Year Zero into a graphic novel. Instead, he’s talking to HBO.

– Mike Sterling presents “Things not to say to a comic book shop employee.”

– Where were you?

Compiled by JK and Chris.

Isaac Hayes dies at 65.

What better way to welcome a new graphic novel about a band touring after the end of the world than to throw a party featuring bands, the creators and prizes? The Beguiling in Toronto is putting together a gig featuring the creators of Apocalipstix, Ray Fawkes and Cameron Stewart, along with local bands Terror Lake and DAME.

Full press release after the jump …

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• Hugh Jackman’s appearance at the tail end of this afternoon’s 20th Century Fox panel sent the 6,000-seat Hall H into “pandemonium,” according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz blog and EW’s Popwatch. Jackman, there to promote X-Men Origins: Wolverine, left the stage momentarily to shakes hands with Wolverine co-creator Len Wein. (The panel apparently was delayed because scaffolding supporting drapes collapsed in the rear of the room.)

• On Tor.com’s new blog, David Moldawer reports that in this morning’s “75 Years of Doc Savage” panel, producer Michael Uslan “let slip” that there’s a Man of Bronze movie in the works.

• As predicted, Twilight devotees were out in full force, jamming Hall H for the Summit Entertainment panel. MTV Movies blog says that, “Thousands of fans stretched nearly a mile, many of them lining up Wednesday evening.”

• This is either some strange harmonic nerd convergence, or a WTF moment: Watchmen director Zack Snyder tells MTV’s Splash Page that My Chemical Romance — fronted by Umbrella Academy writer Gerard Way — will cover Bob Dylan for the movie’s soundtrack.

• Scott Robins, who used to write the All-Ages blog, is covering Comic-Con for Good Comics for Kids. Welcome back, Scott.

Benderspink seeks out Red 5’s Zombies of Mass Destruction

Production company Benderspink continues its comic-book roll, picking up the film rights to Red 5’s new horror/action series ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction #1.

Created by Underworld screenwriter and Marvel’s New Warriors scribe Kevin Grevioux, ZMD is the story of a government weapons program in which zombies are dropped into war zones at night to infect the enemy population. To control the spread, the walking dead are engineered to be photosensitive and dissolve with the rising sun. But when one fails to self-destruct in the Middle East, an elite team of soliders must infiltrate hostile territory to stop a growing zombie army.

Benderspink also has set up Y: The Last Man and Drafted at New Line, Pencilneck at Lionsgate and Pet Robots at Disney.

The Ticker

• Producer Andrew Lazar wants to film Jonah Hex in New Orleans, for a potential 2010 release. [Times-Picayune]

• Screenwriter David S. Goyer says he and director Christopher Nolan have “talked loosely” about a villain and theme for a third Batman movie. [MTV Movies Blog]

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The Observer’s Mark Kermode spotlights Tank Girl and Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett, England’s “greatest graphic art rebel.”

• A resolution will be introduced next week in Columbus (Ohio) City Council recognizing the career of Bone creator Jeff Smith.

• James Jean points out that the Watchmen trailer provides a glimpse of the Vargas-esque portrait of Sally Jupiter (above) that he created for the movie.

• Genre-book publisher Tor has relaunched its website, which now features a blog — with contributions by the likes of Bruce Baugh, Irene Gallo and Jim Henley.

• The New York Times looks at efforts to adapt Neil Young’s Greendale concept album into a theater piece and a graphic novel — the latter set for release next fall from Vertigo. There’s also a glimpse at Cliff Chiang’s character sketches.

• Colleen Coover and Takeshi Miyazawa show off photos of their artwork now gracing the windows of Challengers Comics + Conversation in Chicago.

• I can’t resist a list: Mental Floss has “26 Important Comics,” from Action Comics #1 to Maus, and PETA runs down the “Top 10 Animal-Friendly Super-Heroes.”

Entertainment Weekly talks with Alan Moore about the upcoming Watchmen movie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, his upcoming novel Jerusalem, and his love of The Wire and South Park:

Don’t you have the slightest curiosity about what Watchmen director Zack Snyder is doing with your work?
I would rather not know.

He’s supposed to be a very nice guy.
He may very well be, but the thing is that he’s also the person who made 300. I’ve not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn’t particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that’s not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but…I wasn’t impressed with that…. I talked to [director] Terry Gilliam in the ’80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ”Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, ‘I wouldn’t.”’ And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can’t.

Related: Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl) says Watchmen’s ending stays true to the comic

This isn’t really comic-related (although I did find it on Ben Templesmith’s blog), but if you’re into things like barbarians, zombies, buxom women or Perestroika, you might like this music video by the Russian metal band ANJ:

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

Seriously. It’s called J-Stache, and according to Billboard, “Oates is portrayed as a modern-day family man and finds himself enticed back to the rock star life by his mustache, which is voiced by comedian Dave Attell.”

The cartoon does not have a home yet, but could end up on a network or on the Web. More from the story:

The pilot, which Primary Wave estimates will be between six and 10 minutes long, is being storyboarded, and the aim is to have it completed in the next two months. It will portray Oates opening a new wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that focuses on mustachioed musicians.

Suddenly, a dying David Crosby appears and with his last breath warns Oates of a mysterious secret group of mustache wearers bent on killing other mustache wearers. As actor Tom Selleck attempts to escape from the latest murder scene, Oates summons his own mustache with a fist pump that simultaneously changes his clothes from conservative attire to pink pants and white boots.

This has Adult Swim written all over it.

EW.com talks with rapper/actor Method Man about his eponymous graphic novel, to be released next month by Hachette. The comic — conceived by Method Man, scripted by David Atchison and illustrated by Sanford Greene — stars Method Man’s alter ego Peerless Paine, a “murder priest” who battles the demonic spirit Lilith.

The website also has a 10-page excerpt of Method Man.

Sean T. Collins shares the wealth once more.

Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took*

In this interview with Digital Strips, which is mainly about his current problems with Platinum Studios, D. J. Coffman reveals he’s working with the band The Flobots on a webcomic. Called Vote for Change, the plan is for stories to be inspired by Flobots fans:

Welcome to the Flobots webcomic Beta launch– I call this the “beta” launch because there are still some things I want to add to the site before a bigger public push. Currently there are three updates up now, and the story will begin running daily, M-F this Thursday, June 12th.

I’ve met with Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit from the band and we have many ideas we’d like to infuse into not only the stories here, but also the overall experience. The stories here are inspired by you, from tales the band hears while out on the road, emails we receive– they all go into a big melting pot of creative energy that we’ll remix and inject into the Flobots comic. The end result will be stories that not only entertain but make you think, feel, move and inspire you.

The webcomics site can be found here.

*From the Flobots’ very catchy song “Handlebars.”

The L.A. Times blog Extended Play recently spoke with Bryan Lee O’Malley about the music in the Scott Pilgrim series:

For those who want to play along at home, O’Malley writes out lyric and chord changes, and it’s easy to picture a bratty, Screeching Weasel-influenced pop-punk song. Sample lyric: “You’ve been out partying with guys I’ve never met / Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, killing brain cells and killing me.”

But while the song is only three chords, and O’Malley writes that it’s “kind of crappy,” there’s more than punk rock to Sex Bob-omb. Just look to name of the band’s lead singer, Stephen Stills. Did O’Malley hear the band as more Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young than Mr. T Experience?

“Yeah, and nobody seems to notice that [Stills] is banging on an acoustic guitar and singing about his tortured relationship. I think they’re a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. He’d be like Gram Parsons, but the rest of the band won’t let him slow down.

“I thought of early Uncle Tupelo, when they were really smushing punk and country into one weird arrhythmic monstrosity,” O’Malley continued.

In the past, O’Malley has shared “soundtracks” for each book (the fourth one is here), and the one reprinted on the blog for the first book includes stuff you might expect (Plumtree’s “Scott Pilgrim,” Guster’s “Ramona”) and some that just pleased me to no end as an alt.country fan, like Old 97s and friggin’ Cuff the Duke. That’s cool.

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Jamie S. Rich, the writer of Cut My Hair, The Everlasting and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, Love the Way You Love and You Have Killed Me, all from Oni Press. He also edits Madman Atomic Comics and writes movie reviews for DVDTalk.com.

CONDEMNED TO ROCK ’N’ READ

Comics nearly lost me once. Rock ‘n’ roll found me and brought me back.

We had pretty much broken up. I lived in a town with no comic book store, and like most teenagers, I was finding other things to occupy my time than what had made me happy only a short time before. I was still too much of a nerd to get into anything that was really and truly bad for me, so it wasn’t drugs or sex or crime that took over for my four-color addiction. It was movies and literature and, most importantly and passionately, music. Like most misfit adolescents, that music tended to be on the more cultish side–strange, dark bands that sang about strange, dark things. Being into those kinds of bands was like learning the password into a whole new social circle. Unlike comics, which had largely been a solitary hobby for me, listening to the Smiths and Depeche Mode and the like provided me with a dual outlet: I could listen to my music alone or I could listen to it with friends and get two totally different things out of it.

Since this was the late 1980s, one of the bands we all really liked was Love & Rockets. In obsessive music circles, much like obsessive comic book circles, knowledge is a top commodity. The things you know that nobody else knows determines your coolness. Then, I was the guy that knew that the band had stolen their name from the Hernandez Bros.’ comic book. I had a handful of well-read issues and a couple of the early Jaime collections that I could show around and use to impress my friends. One of those issues was Love & Rockets #24 (Fantagraphics Books), which I remember because the cover of that comic is still one of my all-time favorites. It’s of Ape Sex, Hopey’s band, up on stage, taken somewhere from the back of stage right. You see the performers, and they look like they can really play, but more importantly, you see the audience. There’s all kinds of different people in there, including a girl’s legs sticking up over the stage and some dude leering at them. Another guy is in the background flipping the band the bird. All you see is the arm, the hand, the finger rising up above everyone else’s heads.

I hung onto my Love & Rockets even as my interest in the X-Men and Spider-Man waned because of covers like that one. I could look at it and see something that was recognizable to me, an existence that, even though far removed from my own (where I lived in Southern California might as well have been a galaxy away from where Hoppers would have been), touched my own. I could know those people. I could maybe be one of those people. They were interested in the same things I was, and from what I could tell, so were the Los Bros Hernandez. Love & Rockets was, as far as I know, the first comic to include a soundtrack in every issue, listing the tunes the guys were listening to when they created their comics. It’s a practice that has since been adopted by the likes of Paul Pope, Jim Mahfood, Chynna Clugston and even me. Whenever I see one of us criticized for doing it, the accusation is usually that we are being self-serving and conceited about our own musical tastes; really, though, we just want to be like the Hernandez Bros.

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Artist Renee French covers The Stranger’s Official Guide to Sasquatch 2008 — a music festival held this past weekend in Washington featuring The Cure, The Flaming Lips, R.E.M. and Modest Mouse, among many others.

Via

– Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba finish up Casanova:

– Kerry Callen shares his theory on how to create a famous super hero.

– Variety reports that Dick Sutcliffe, creator of Davey and Goliath, passed away. I used to love watching the show on Sunday mornings before being dragged to church.

– Check out pictures from An Evening with Paul Pope at the Wexner Center in Ohio.

– Ben Towle breaks down how different artists draw water.

– Pass me the Bat-salve, Robin.

– The Canadian feminist blog Shameless has added a comic column by Tiina Johns called Comics Are For Everybody.

– Berlin makes the Wall Street Journal’s summer reading list.

– Ryan Kelly’s Lucifer art gallery.

– Marc Mason reviews the first episode of ABC Family’s Middleman adaptation.

– Tommy Lee’s life to become a cartoon. As if it isn’t already.

Topless Robot selects the “10 Worst Album Covers by Comic Artists,” shredding their claws over such works of art as Neal Adams’ cover for Trixter’s debut:

A highly influential Avengers and Green Lantern/Green Arrow artist—and certifiable crackpot, thanks to his “expanding Earth” theory—Adams did quite a bit of album artwork in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, but mainly for “WHO?!” musical acts like the Mighty Groundhogs and Bill LaBounty. Somewhere in between his failed Skateman series and failed Mr. T and the T-Force series (which both sounded like such can’t-miss concepts!), Adams accepted forgettable pop-metal band Trixter as a client, penciling the cover for their first self-titled album in 1990. Though their lone minor hit was called “Give It to Me Good,” Adams apparently never got that memo and accurately portrayed the group as huge tools.