Greetings!

I decided to fly to and attend South By Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX, very last minute this year, and as soon as I landed I begged Ben to allow me an opportunity to recollect every moment I could via Semantink. Thank you, Ben.

Below is a roundup of my first few days at SXSW, the rest is yet to come as I fly out of here on Friday.

Austin Convention Center

The first thing you notice when you step inside the Austin Convention Center during SXSW is that you’ve stepped inside the Convention Center. There are no annoying staff members or volunteers standing outside telling you which door you must walk in, please expose your badge, no outside food or drink, etc. This is a noticeable difference to Wondercon and San Diego Comic-Con, among other comic or pop-culture related conventions.

The staff and volunteers (2,000 in number) are friendly and actually helpful, welcoming and warm. They will go out of their way to make the experience positive for you, as long as your intentions remain in similar upbeat spirit. Case in point, Sunday I was hungry for a healthy snack, but the line at the fourth-floor Starbucks stand was incredibly long, even by convention standards. I snarked about it, and a woman beside me told me that there was a snack bar in one of the exhibit halls. I ventured over, the doors were open, and low-and-behold there was indeed a snack stand with NO ONE in line WITHIN the doors of the hall. For a moment, a volunteer halted me, said I needed an Interactive Badge to enter. I spouted reasonably about my plight of hunger, the emptiness of the hall, etc. He looked side to side, and, conspiratorially, agreed to let me pass for the moment — “but hide your badge.”

I enjoyed my snack with ease.

The Festival contains three components: Film, Interactive, and Music. Film and Interactive began on Friday, March 11, while the main axis of the Music portion begins later the following week. There are certain badges that get you access to all three areas, certain others that get you into the parties and whatnot, and still more layers beyond (press, filmmaker, etc.). I purchased a Film badge at the end of January, a plane ticket the next day, and found some very generous friends-of-a-friend to house me for the week.

The skies over Austin

The first thing you notice when you step out of the airport in Austin is the blue sky, the second thing is the undying sunlight. Not a bad escape from the consistent weather of San Diego. Riding in the cab from the airport to downtown was a quick trip, and at times I stared out the window and the theme to Friday Night Lights played through my head in a continuous loop.

Night One introduced me to the night life on the outskirts of downtown. Highlights included cheap pints at Clive Bar followed by a few riveting rounds of IPAs and Connect Four over at Icenhauer’s. Locals of the Rainey District appreciate the barely-a-mile distance from the heart of downtown, and can walk home on the safe sidestreets where one can find homemade tacos or sausage sandwiches at the end of local residents’ driveways during festivals such as SXSW.

Registration was a breeze, a simple system set up in advance as you register and submit your photo online. You walk up with a green card filled out, hand it to the folks at the window, and wait for your name to be shouted along with the rest of the festival-goers.

Friday had a minimal amount of events, activities, and crowds. Most of my day was spent exploring Austin in the area surrounding the Convention Center. The Macallan Lounge opened up at 2 and I enjoyed a dram of the Macallan 12, washed down with a Sobe beverage at the next tent over. I sat on eht grass in Brush Park and watched filmmakers and promoters tape and stick posters to the pillars at the Convention Center and light posts on the sidewalks — everything wrapped in plastic to make removal of said promo items a quick unraveling at the end of the whole affair.

Macallan Lounge with Faulty Autostitch.

6th street (a portion of which known locally as “Dirty Sixth”) is a mess of drunken antics, and driving through this street is shut off around 7 PM each night, a smart thing when you consider drunk pedestrians and likely drunk drivers would make a terrible combination.

Buffalo Billiards held the opening night party for Film. It’s a gigantic game-filled bar with two floors and a balcony overlooking 6th street for the smokers, real saloon style. The food was free, as were the well-drinks, so good times came fast and easy for most folks.

There’s a joint called Cafe Crepes where I held my own private breakfast almost every morning, and the Fedex Food truck provided free lunches all weekend.

For as broad as SXSW has become, reaching across multiple platforms and pleasing several different groups of interested people at the same time, logistics aren’t as much of a nightmare as one might think. The volunteers are generally intelligent enough to do more than simply point you in a direction, and the varying locations and theaters make for simple movie lines — though I think there might be one to many. Each screen has the following lines: Film Badges, Film Passes, Advance Tickets, SXXPress Pass. Seems pretty minor, except that there are sometimes three screens in one area, or perhaps even in the Vimeo Theatre within the Convention Center, leading to a very crowded hallway with an inevitably angry crowd of a few people who won’t make it inside. The line for the Paramount Theatre (which seats 1200) wrapped around a city block’s worth of buildings AND crossed Congress St. If you were across the street, first position, you were probably number 500 in line. The balcony in this theater is amazingly steep, and the sound gets worse the higher you go, but it’s still worth it once you’re inside.

I’ll give a full review of the movies I saw later this week, but here’s a list so far, along with a few special photos or videos:

Cast of Source Code.

Source Code — Great new Sci-Fi Thriller, smarter than the average flick. Highlights of the Q & A included Jake Gyllenhaal stammering when a woman asked about the time travel connection between Donnie Darko and Source Code. He then came around and replied that the idea of parallel universes and multiple little births and deaths every day are philosophical ideas that are intriguing enough to want to make a movie about.

Being Elmo – Touching embrace of the man behind Elmo, inspirational if a bit heavy-handed. Elmo made an appearance at the Q & A and Kevin Clash, the man with his hand inside Elmo, was generous with time and answers to questions, a man with a big heart and clear drive for his passion, which is puppetry.

The PeeWee Herman Show on Broadway — Film of the stage version of his show, mostly funny, nostalgic. Paul Reubens showed up dressed as PeeWee but speaking as Paul, so the contrast with his outfit was a bit odd. He explained where PeeWee’s dance came from (a dirty joke his grandfather would tell where the punchline involved moving one’s thumb from their ass to their mouth). He also refused to divulge the plot of the new Judd Apatow PeeWee movie no matter how much we begged.

Conan O’Brian Can’t Stop — Don’t want to stop watching the relentless, energetic footage. Conan arrived and showed how fast his mind worked when he would spout jokes instead of answers to any questions from the crowed. (Highlight from the movie is when he goes off on Jack MacBrayer’s southern “hick” background.)

13 Assassins — Takashi Miike’s latest takes a bit to speed up, turns into a bloody celebration about the end of the Shogun Era. No Q & A, but the bloodbath that makes up the third act of the film is as intense as a Braveheart battle sequence, with better swordplay.

Cast and director of PAUL.

Paul — Hilarity with geek references aplenty. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost made for an incredibly hilarious Q & A that was even funnier than some of the lamer bits in the film. Kristen Wiig and Jason Bateman really shined in this movie. They redefine how to swear.

All but 13 Assassins had entertaining and thoughtful Q & A’s (Miike had to stay behind in Japan because of the recent quake).

Looking forward to more enjoyment and a fun-filled week, will be reporting to you again soon…

Joe

In a couple of weeks MYTHOI #2 will be hitting the digital shelves of Semantink.com — as well as a few other vendor sites.  I know there has been a bit of confusion as to the method of release for MYTHOI thus far, so I wanted to take this time to set some things straight.

When MYTHOI #1 came out last September (yes, I realize that was nearly 10 months ago) the plan was to release an issue every two months until we had put out all 60-issues.  Well, shit happens.  The biggest critique we got from the first issue was that it was to jolting — in other words, the audience was thrown into the middle of something they didn’t understand and therefore didn’t care about.  I can see where the critics were coming from and looking back I think there are a few things I as a writer could have done differently but hindsight’s 20/20 and I refuse to sit around sulking.

In response to this critique, Benjamin and I developed the Birth saga: a series of short comics, 12 pages in length, that gave the audience background so that they could be slightly more invested in the jumpoff point (MYTHOI #1).  Originally these origin tales were to come in each of the five arcs, revealing pasts with the present and while I still think that could’ve been awesome, it’s hard to get an audience to invest in a company, writer, artist and book who have absolutely no credibility to speak of.  So, Birth came to be.

Now the Birth series came out better than I could’ve hoped.  Jed knocked the art out of the park and I’m quite pleased with the stories themselves.  The trade paperback for the Birth series is available for pre-order now at Semantink.com.  However, as pleased as I am with it, it took a lot of time away from the series proper.  Issue #1 leaves us with a dead President, a handful of crazy slave-werewolves, a psychotic bishop, a child vampire, a purple-eyed body thief and a giant air dragon — for ten months now people have asked me, generally the same question, what happens next?

With the Birth series complete, I am very pleased to announce that we are back to the series proper and barreling forward full steam ahead!  MYTHOI #2 will continue the tale we began almost a year ago, adding a few more characters you may recognize from the Birth series while developing our first of five arcs.  Jed is, once again, doing a fantastic job with the art and we’ve got a few more people working on the book as well:  Gary Jonez has taken over as colorist and Semantink’s own Benjamin Glibert is now lettering our series!

So what does all this rambling mean?  It means that there will be no more breaks, pauses, inserts, deadlocks, breathers, letups or layoffs for MYTHOI.  Starting in July, you will be getting an issue every other month for the next 59 digital issues of this series, 12 more trade paperbacks, 5 story arcs and 1 epic adventure.

Thanks for the patience everyone.

James

PS: MYTHOI #1, as well as the entire (Free) Birth series can now be found at Drivethrucomics!

Happy Father’s Day folks!

I’m sorry to interrupt your usually scheduled Writer’s Block column, but since this month Semantink is officially one year old, I thought I would do a state of the union column. So, let’s take a look at what’s going on here at Semantink!

MYTHOI: I have a few pieces of news regarding our flagship title. First, if you were not aware, our first TPB, Birth, is now available for pre-order. This is collecting the entire MYTHOI Birth series, as well as an entirely original MYTHOI story featuring Heath and Catherine, the Werewolves that you met in MYTHOI #1.

While I am mentioning Birth, I would be remiss if I did not point out that MYTHOI writer James Ninness is letting his inner philanthropist out, and donating all money that he receives for the Birth TPB to charity! You can get all the details over at James’ Blog.

Finally, MYTHOI #2 will be out soon! Keep your eyes peeled, this issue is going to blow you away. Jed Soriano really knocked this one out of the park. If you are behind, don’t worry, you still have some time before issue #2 comes out to catch up, so go read the Birth series (they are free online), and then get your digital copy of issue #1!

THE UNDERGROUNDS: Our weekly web comic continues to get great readership, so thanks to all of you who make a point to check this out every week. If you haven’t gotten a chance to find out what happens when you mix monsters and coffee, or if you have just fallen behind in your reading, you an always check out our UNDERGROUNDS archive.

So what’s next? Well, we have three (!) new properties that will be coming out in the later half of this year, and they are going to blow you away. One is a comedy, one is a western, and one is a fantasy book with a good amount of steampunk, because who doesn’t love steampunk? More details as they become available.

Also, if you are in the San Diego area and want to rap comics, the fine folks of Semantink host a monthly meet up group in Mission Valley. Stop in, get some java, and rap comics. We are having one today! You can check out details here.

We will also be representing at San Diego Comic Con next month, and at Ape in October. If you are in the area give us a shout out!

So that’s it for today folks. Have a happy Father’s Day, and stay tuned for more big Semantink news in the next few months!

Hey Folks,

Ben here to let you all know that Mr. Wolff will be taking a rant break for the foreseeable future. I’m sure that you are all wondering why we must go rantless on Thursdays, so please allow me to fill you in on the dark events that transpired to bring us sadder hump days. You see, Mr. Wolff is well known for having a collection of the finest looking ladies at his beck and call, and there are some who take great umbrage at our blogger’s menagerie of beauty. It was for this reason that Mr. Wolff’s harem was shanghaied by a cadre of Sasquatches. Upon finding his home disheveled and covered in man-beast hair that was not his own, Mr. Wolff went into a rage, punted the nearest midget a full city block and vowed vengeance against the yeti-kin that would deprive him of nook nook. And so, Mr. Wolff has embarked upon a journey to of ho retrieval and monster whumpery.

No one is sadder about the loss of Mr. Wolff than I. Without him my week will far be less angry, and there will be way fewer pictures of scantily clad celebrities on my computer.Throughout his brief time with us here at Semantink, Wolff has taught me so much, most of which I can’t really talk about in mixed company. If you are a newcomer to the site, or have never gotten a chance to read the writings of Mr. Wolff, I encourage you to take some time and go back and read his excellent work in our blog archive. I also thought that today we could go back and remember some of Mr. Wolff’s finest rants…

Cosplay: In Mr. Wolff’s first full length rant, he touched on the potential for greatness from hot she-cosplayers. He also showed the ugly (and fat) side of cosplay, and showed us all that not everyone was meant to participate in such events. How could we forget this?

Mr. Wolff later found this man and beat him with his own wig.

My favorite line from this rant has to be:

“…my heart is racing and I feel an urgency at the tips of my fingers as if somewhere, an overweight, under-sunned,  gap-toothed, overly-hairy, cankled beast dressed as Super Girl has just killed a child by merely making itself visible.  Damn you poorly-costumed villain.  Damn you to Cosplay Hell…”

Heroes: Mr. Wolff would often focus his rants on the entertainment industry. Movies, books, TV, all were fields he felt (and rightly so) qualified to rant on. In a television-centric blog, Mr. Wolff learned us all on what shows we should be watching, and in the case of Heroes, what shows we should be skipping.

The look in her eyes says “I don’t want to be here”.

I doubt anyone could explain what’s wrong with Heroes as eloquently as this:

“Heroes is like a beautiful woman with a tight premise, supple characters and a nice, round potential — but the crazy b*tch keeps puking on herself!  All she does all day is stick her finger in her butt, smell is and wipe her face leaving a streak across her brow.  Then she throws up on her chest, rubs it all over her body and blows snot out her nose while laughing, snorting and growling uncontrollably.  The potential is there, but she keeps f*cking herself up!!  Somebody please put this b*tch out of her misery.”

Well put Mr. Wolff, well put.

World of Warcraft: In one of his most controversial blogs, Mr. Wolff took on MMORPGers everywhere by ranting against the popular World Of Warcraft. There was a great ammount of vitriol from fans about this post, but in the end, Mr. Wolff made his point. WoW is stupid. Don’t play it, and you won’t be stupid. Continue your basement dwelling ways and risk turning out like this:

Sadly, this paladin will never succeed in his quest to lose his virginity.

I think Mr. Wolff summed it up best:

“…let me just say that I do not condemn WoW, or WoW players.  I don’t think you’re all stupid, useless bags of flesh, rotting in a pile of your own feces — but most of you are.  Grow up, move out of your mother’s basement, get a real job and try finding a member of the opposite (or same if that floats your boat) sex and try, just try, to discover what people did before Warcraft.  Or just trick yourself into thinking your character has some tangible meaning in life and die — I don’t really care.”

It’s like the man drinks thrice distilled wisdom, and then is kind enough to spit it at us.

Sports Illustrated (swimsuit edition): Despite all of his macho talk, Mr Wolff showed that he had a soft side, and a deep respect for women, in this touching piece. He made sure to include the faces of every model he referenced, and even found out their names. Mr. Wolff has been called misogynistic before, but in this blog, he showed the world how much he cared about the opposite sex. Would a misogynist show this?

Thanks Mr. Wolff.

Mr. Wolff even offered us all this generous warning:

“Whatever you do, do NOT go to Sports Illustrated where you would be forced to see a lot more of these “beautiful” models in very little clothing at no cost to you.  And if for some ungodly reason you do go to the site, don’t look at the site alone, like I am or you may be tempted to think impure thoughts and take of your pants. In the dark.  Like me.  Right now…”

God Bless you, Mr. Wolff.

Thank you all for joining me on this bittersweet day of reminiscing. I’m sure that you all are wondering what will be filling in our blog on Thursday moving forward. I will be toting my Comicopea blog over to Thursdays. On Sundays, we will be featuring the works of some of our Semantink writers. I already have some work from MYTHOI writer James Ninness. And one day, if and when he is needed, Mr. Wolff could come back for a guest appearance or two, but not any time soon, Those Sasquatches are some elusive bitches.

Greetings all!

James Ninness here.  WonderCon is just a few days away and Semantink is packing our bags for San Francisco!  Once there, we’ll be giving away some very pretty cards for all WonderCon attendees that give them not only the link to the MYTHOI Birth Series (which has, and always will be, free), but as a special treat, a secret link to a site where they can see issue #1 of MYTHOI proper — absolutely free!  To get the ball rolling, Semantink will be giving you a sneak peak at the character cards they’ve put together each day with a look into the characters themselves, written by your’s truly.  To kick things off we’re gonna get started with the oldest of the group: Wiglaf!

Wiglaf was actually the last character to join the MYTHOI crew.  In the first rendition of the story, Taros, Vito, Yuki and Touch were joined by a pair of Aztec lovers who turned to stone, one during the day and one at night — very Ladyhawke.  Honestly, i pussed out and got rid of them because it was a pain in the ass moving whoever-the-stone-character-happened-to-be around.  Enter: Wiglaf.  I stole Wiglaf from a much more dramatic piece of fiction called, Beowulf — the poem, not the movie.  In that tale Wiglaf was a cousin of Beowulf and the only living relative when Beowulf died.  He was also the only person who remained at Beowulf’s side when he faced the Dragon that attacked the Geat-Land.  In our story, Beowulf is a bit different…

I’m not going to tell you what happened, you have to read that for yourself (FREE), here.  Suffice to say that Wiglaf’s journey is a road to redemption.  In the course of MYTHOI, we will see Wiglaf hunt his children across the globe, each of whom represents (or has represented) “death” to various cultures in history.  God may never forgive Wiglaf for what he’s done, and Wiglaf knows that, but it won’t stop him from trying.

Thanks for stopping by guys.  Hopefully I’ll see you at WonderCon!

James Ninness

Greetings readers! If you have been checking out our site this week, you might have noticed that we have begun running our blogs in a slightly different manner. I know that change can be scary, so I just wanted to give you a run down of what you can be expecting from us here at Semantink every week:

Every Monday you will get to read the newest strip in our web-comic, THE UNDERGROUNDS. You can also find an archive of all posted UNDERGROUNDS strips at the-undergrounds.com.

Tuesdays still give you Sgt. Angle and his weekly Cinegasms column, dealing with all things movie.

On Wednesdays Akatzen regails you with his weekly Book Report delving into the world of books that don’t have pretty pictures.

Mr. Wolff still owns Thursday with his Hump Day Rant.

Friday sees new Semantink blogger Dr. Cellus delve into all things paranormal on his blog Cognitive Alchemy.

Saturday gives you Admiral Eo’s Soft Shoe Diaries, wherein the good Admiral looks into the world of theater.

Sunday, you will be stuck with me as I talk comics in my weekly Comicopea column.

Not a bad line up right? Well our new blog schedule is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of news here at Semantink. Over the next few months, our site will be getting a bit of a face lift courtesy of the fine gentlemen at SanBox Inc. All of the content that you love will still be here, but the whole place will be prettier and easier to navigate.

For our MYTHOI lovers, I have some great news, our latest issue of the MYTHOI Birth series, TAROS will be out this week. Here is the cover art to the upcoming issue to whet your appetite:

April is going to see the last issue of MYTHOI Births, TOUCH, hit the internet. As always, MYTHOI will be brought to by the electrifying team of James Ninness and Jed Soriano.

The MYTHOI Birth series coming to a close means two things, 1) MYTHOI proper will pick up again in June with issue #2, and 2)the MYTHOI Birth graphic novel will be available around the same time. All of our MYTHOI issues are available for digital download, but this graphic novel will be the only place you can find the whole Birth series collected in in one place. The GN will be chock full of original content as well, so make sure you pick up a copy when it comes out!

This fall we will be launching two new series, THE HEAVEN’S and SIM-I. THE HEAVEN’S will be written by James Ninness and illustrated by spectacular newcomer Turbo Qualls! THE HEAVEN’S is a steampunk power struggle set on the alien desert world of Terra. Joe Pezzula will be writing SIMI-I, the madcap tale of a super intelligent monkey trying to evade vaporization. I will have more information and pretty picture-tude on these soon.

Next month is also the start of convention season for us here at Semantink. We will be at WonderCon and Wizard World Anaheim in April, The Phoenix Comicon in May, the world famous San Diego Comic Con in July, and the Alternative Press Expo and Long Beach Comic con in October.

So, to make a long story short (too late), 2010 is an exciting year for us here at Semantink, and I just want to say thank you for being a part of it. Keep an eye out here for more details on our upcoming projects, and if you have any questions you can always drop me a line.

Benjamin Glibert

Today is the fifth and final day of our inside look at THE UNDERGROUNDS. The past few days we have gotten a chance to meet the baristas that work at THE UNDERGROUNDS. Today you get to meet one of the regular customers that frequents THE UNDERGROUNDS, Van Helsing!

I also wanted to share with all of you this piece that artist Daniel Touchet came up with that shows you all of the “scare-istas” that work at THE UNDERGROUNDS (as well as one cranky regular customer). Enjoy!

Over the past few days, you have had a chance to learn about the writers involved in THE UNDERGROUNDS, but today I want to introduce you to the artist involved with bringing the strip to life each week, Daniel Touchet.

Daniel Touchet was reportedly born with a crayon in his hand. Despite the complications you might think that would cause, Daniel turned out just fine, and of course had a predilection towards fine art. Daniel is also very proud of his collecting abilities, with a DVD collection that is somewhere in the thousands and a book collection that is almost as large. While THE UNDERGROUNDS is Daniel’s first professional work in comics, he has been drawing on any piece of paper he could find for years.

Thanks for stopping in the last few days to become acquainted with THE UNDERGROUNDS. The first strip will be on the semantink website March 1st, so make a date with your computer this Monday. If you missed any of the introductions from earlier in the week, you can check out the links below.

Dracula

Frank

The Wolfman

The Mummy