Top Hat Sasquatch

Lately I’ve become preoccupied with being a comics creator. You know, writing and drawing cartoons and other funny stuff. Much of my time has been spent sketching and writing notes. Lately I’m concentrating on the digital side of art. I’ll scan my inked sketches and attempt to color them. They’re pretty crude but I’m learning.

The rest of my free time has been spent observing artists I admire. One of my biggest inspirations these days is writer and illustrator Roger Langridge. He’s best known as the man behind The Muppet Show and current Popeye series. Langridge has such a fun vibe to his work while also being technically precise. Some people say he reminds them of legend Carl Barks. I cannot disagree.

Recently Langridge posted this inked sketch on his blog. The individual who commissioned the work was not me but it easily could have been. The piece combines a favorite subject of mine, The Muppets, with the vintage Marvel Comics series I avidly collect, Marvel Team-Up.

Since I started collecting comic books in the early ’80s, I’ve been in love with Marvel Team-Up. I preferred the tidy, self-encapsulated storylines. There was no need to religiously follow each issue like you do with episodic series. The issues paired Spider-Man (usually) with another random hero in tights. It was a great way to sample the Marvel legion.
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I was about negative six years old when The Muppet Movie came out, but it’s always been my favorite movie. Even now I go back and forth between this and Jurassic Park when it comes to my Ultimate Favorite Movie Ever™, but I’m sure after the Blu-ray is released on August 13th and I rewatch it a million times, it’ll come out on top.

Kermit, does this film have socially redeeming value?

I sincerely hope Disney shoves this movie down the throats of all the young kids who may not have caught it on VHS or DVD. It’s a classic buddy movie, road movie, and well…Muppet Movie, and the humor, music, and heart still hold up after all these years. Featuring a steller soundtrack (referenced in this hilarious Onion article), a bunch of cameos, and some great one-liners, I kind of want to stop this sentence and just go watch it.

Go preorder it on Amazon!

Via Blu-ray.com

I lumping hate Monopoly. It’s long, it’s boring, and I never win, but my love of Adventure Time is much greater than my hatred of Monopoly. That’s why I’ll probably be playing it sometime soon just so I can use Finn on a raft or Lumpy Space Princess in a car as my game piece. Collecting properties in the Land of Ooo sounds fun, and using Treehouses and Castles sounds way better than houses and hotels.

Adventure Time Monopoly is available on Amazon now and hopefully will be in my hands in a few days. We’ll see if the art and humor of the show makes the game fun again. I’m crossing my fingers.

Via The Mary Sue. Ps – The Mary Sue is right, how did an Adventure Time Candyland not happen first? That would be ridiculously appropriate.

The Top Hat Sasquatch team reads a lot of blog posts every day, and some slip through the crack or just don’t warrant their own post. That’s where Missing Links comes in. Every few days we collect the best links we’ve come across and pass them on to you.

‘Gravity’ Teaser Trailer: Alfonso Cuarón Strands Sandra Bullock and George Clooney In Space
I've been hearing about this movie for ages now and from the awesome poster and trailer, it looks like it's going to be one of the most unique movies of 2013.

United | We Love Fine
The winning T-Shirt design in We Love Fine's X-Men contest. An awesome shirt.

‘The World’s End’ International Teaser Trailer: A Sci-Fi Conclusion to the Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy
'The World's End' is my most-hyped movie of 2013 by a long shot. Edgar Wright is one of my favorite directors and I can’t wait to see the final chapter in his Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End).

‘Ender’s Game’ Teaser Trailer: A Landmark Sci-Fi Novel Finally Comes to Theaters | /Film
I'm such a bad geek, I still need to read this book.

LEGO Master Builder Academy Level 4 coming!
Even though Steampunk is kind of lame and outdated now, these LEGO Master Builder sets look really cool.

I promise I don’t care about a TMNT movie produced by Michael Bay and starring Megan Fox, but since I’m completely obsessed with the Turtles I’m at least keeping an eye on the news. Set photos recently pegged Arrested Development’s Will Arnett as playing the whiny cameraman Vernon Fenwick from the 80s cartoon, which is actually kind of cool casting. Still, Megan Fox?

For a movie that is already shooting and supposedly comes out next summer, there is a surprising lack of casting and plot details. The no-name actors that were revealed as being the Turtles could be voices or motion-capture only, but no one has said. Weird.

I was checking IMDB to see if anyone else had been announced and saw this plot logline that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. If this is official, it kind of explains Bay’s dumb comments about the Turtles having extraterrestrial origins in the movie.
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