Description

The Weekly Pop Culture Audio Podcast Featuring In-Depth One On One Interviews and Discussions From The Entertainment Worlds Of Genre Fiction-
Comic Books, Novels, Television, Film, Video Games And More. Created In 2005 By Chicago Radio/TV Host John Siuntres

Word Balloon Live

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Monday, November 17, 2008

Gene Ha On the Return Of Top 10

Top 10 is back! The Wildstorm series is two issues into the new story arc, written by Zander Cannon and drawn by Gene Ha. On this edition of Word Balloon, Gene runs down many behind the scenes design details, of Top 10's characters, plus we'll take a detailed look at a preview page of issue #3, and the various easter eggs in the scenes depicted. Comparing the writing styles of the series creator, and current writer, Gene reminds readers that Zander Cannon was providing layouts and inks for the first twelve issues of Top 10, and was Moore's artist on the follow up Smax mini series. "I think Zander isn't quite as gritty or innovative as Alan was, but I think he's actually a bit better with dialog. Alan usually described his action in the dialog, whereas Zander trusted me enough to draw the action clearly enough. now watch Alan going to find out about this, and will hate me (laughs)." Ha says Moore has been briefed on the direction of season two. "It would killed us to find out that Alan hated what we were doing continuing the series. Zander sent him a detailed description of the plot we were doing, but never heard back. ...but i called him after I started drawing it, and he said he really liked what Zander had sent him." When asked where Officers Smax and Toybox were in the new story, Gene assures readers they will be back, later in the series. Ha is on board for the first story arc and then has a secret Vertigo project coming up. Gene also shows us an interesting convention sketch motif he likes to experiment with. He gets a writer to describe a single image story scene, and Gene will bring it to life. click on the images above to see what we're talking about.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Cracking The DC Vault , With Marty Pasko

On this edition of the word balloon podcast, writer Marty Pasko discusses his work, writing the text of The DC Vault from Running Press. Like last year's Marvel Vault, The Museum In A Book, features a history of the company, incredible art, and wonderful replicas of DC merchandise, from Jr Justice Society decoders, and membership certificates, to promotional tie-ins, plus cover roughs, ashcan issues, an all-star artist jam poster with work from Bob Kane, to Carmine Infantino to Dave Gibbons numerous sketches and memos from the kill list of the original Crisis On Infinite Earths, to Mike Carlin's plot diagram for the Death Of Superman. In this audio interview, Pasko provides an historic commentary spanning the eras, with tales about the genre trends that sandwiched the super-hero eras, the company dynamics from the early days of All American/National Periodicals, to it's current status as an arm of Time -Warner Inc, and observations about DC founder Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Julie Schwartz, Bill Finger, Whitney Ellsworth, Frank Robbins, and Jennette Kahn

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The Loeb Report Vol 2 Part 2

Jeph goes into behind the scenes details of his upcoming Buffy the vampire slayer story, which ties into the ideas of the aborted Buffy animated series. As ultimatum begins this week we wrap up our current Loeb report, where Jeph discusses more detail of the ultimates vol 3, the Ultimate Captain America annual which gives the origin of the ult universe Black Panther. We also take the wayback machine to the marvel writer's summit that spawned civil war , and hear Jeph's version of how Mark Millar's story came to life