“Right now I feel like I could take on the whole Empire myself!”

As someone that’s watched the film a few times, this line is quite sad with the foresight that Dack has mere minutes of screen time until his death.

I was in Target last week and came across this amazingly cool Dack figure!  I had no idea they’d finally produced a figure for this hero to expendable pilots everywhere!  It’s even on retro-packaging, including the “Free Boba Fett” offer!  So very cool.

Here is Dack’s other well known line:

“Luke, we’ve got a malfunction in fire control. I’ll have to cut in the auxiliary.”

So, what can we learn from Dack?  If you ever have a problem with “fire control” while flying, get the hell out ASAP!

Check out the trailer below for the original.

If you can’t see the embedded video above, please click here.

Thanks to my good friend Billy Penn for sending this my way.  For details on Ivan Guererro’s production of this “pre-make” trailer, click here.

Over on THE UNIQUE GEEK, they’re doing their own version of a countdown called 40 Days Of DragonCon 2010.  They’ve got podcasts, interviews with track directors, tips for the con, editorials, and pictures from previous years.  Be sure to check it out and subscribe to their RSS feed.

Here are just a small handful of my pictures from previous Dragon*Cons.  Each year I typically take about 400 pictures of celebrities, friends, costumes, and generally interesting stuff.  To see all my uploaded pictures, check out the ONCE UPON A GEEK Flickr gallery.

Patrick Stewart

The cast of Stargate Atlantis

Brent Spiner – Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation

James Marsters of Buffy, Angel, and Torchwood

Peter David – writer of comics and Star Trek novels

Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica, Burn Notice, Chuck, Victoria Secret and more!  Oh yeah, I’m in the picture too.

Adam Baldwin from Firefly and Chuck!  Also in the picture is our good friend Ed!

Erik Estrada from everything awesome, with Shag and Serv!

Alan Ruck from Spin City, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Star Trek: Generations, and more!

Dirk Benedict from Battlestar Galactica and the A-Team!

George Perez, artist extraordinaire of Crisis on Infinite Earths, New Teen Titans, Infinity Gauntlet, Avengers, and much much more!

And of course there are the zillions of fan costumes!  Here just a handful from 2009…

And finally, Serv, Terry, and myself pimping ONCE UPON A GEEK at 4am!  Promotion much never stop!

If you are going to Dragon*Con, drop me a comment or e-mail.  We know somewhere around two dozen people going.  The more the merrier!  The con is always better with friends!

Thankfully comic companies were generous with giveaway pins and also sold some nice quality cloisonne pins. Cloisonne pins are small decorative pins worn on the lapel of a coat or shirt collar. Typically these pins are made from metal and enamel.

Below is a collection of my pins that relate to Marvel Comics and other independent comic publishers…

Here are the pins shown above:

• On the left-hand side in the middle are two Spider-Man plastic pins.  I still wear the Santa Spidey during the Christmas season.
• Next to Spidey is a Ghost Rider plastic pin with reflective gold paint.
• Above that is a unusual Hulk cloisonne pin.  It’s labeled “Marvel Mania Hollywood”, but I got it from a bus driver in Orlando.  Not entirely sure what this pin is about.
• Towards the bottom on the left-hand side are cloisonne pins of Doom 2009 and Daredevil.  In the middle is a cloisonne pin of Gambit in standard X-Men blue and gold
• At the top right you’ve got the Evil Ernie “Have a Psychotic Day” button from Chaos! Comics.
• Beneath that are cloisonne pins of the Malibu Comics logo and Diamond Comics logo.  Finally next to those is Valiant’s Shadowman cloisonne pin.

Next up are geeky movie or TV related pins…

Here are the pins shown above:

• In the top left-hand corner you’ve got a Star Wars Episode I pin from Random House to help promote reading.
• In the bottom left-hand corner you’ve got a pin promoting the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition in 1997 that was distributed to movie theater staff to wear.
• In the middle top and bottom are two Star Wars Fan Club items from the late 1970s.  You’ve got the metal C-3PO pendant (which doubled as an earring for me in the 80s) and a Star Wars Fan Club patch.  In case you didn’t know, patches were huge in the 70s.
• In the middle bottom is a Darth Vader cloisonne pin.
• The top right-hand corner features a Superman: The Animated Series pin promoting the show on the WB network.
• In the middle right-hand side is a neat Rocketeer “Thrill Club” pin.  Cool look and shape to this pin.
• Finally in the bottom right-hand corner is another pin that came with the Press Kit for the 1989 Batman movie.

Finally we’ve got a few Doctor Who related pins…

Here are the pins shown above:

• The Doctor Who Fan Club of America pin is temperature sensitive.  When I first got this pin I would try all kinds of crazy temperature experiments (i.e. putting it in the freezer, under a hot light bulb, etc).
• In the top right is the small Ice Warrior cloisonne pin.  I’ve always had a weakness for the Ice Warriors.  I hope they bring them back in the new series soon.
• And finally the red question mark pin.  I wore this pin more than any other.  It wasn’t obviously from Doctor Who, so I felt I could wear it without singling myself out as a Whovian.  I also like the idea of demonstrating my inquisitiveness.  It certainly drew some attention over the years.

That’s it for my geeky pins.  If you’d like to share a geeky pin of your own, please do so in the comments!

Found on EgoTV

My thanks to Cary from THE UNIQUE GEEK listserv for directing me to the R2-D2 and Cyberman mash-ups!

I hope all the geek-dads out there had an awesome Father’s Day!  Mine was fantastic and lasted the whole weekend!  Had some good solid family time, got to wander the aisles of a bookstore at my own pace (one of my favorite things to do!), ate an enormous Sonny’s BBQ feast for dinner Saturday, watched some geeky shows/movies at home, had a special home-cooked lunch on Father’s Day, and generally had a great time.   What a fun stress-free weekend!

I received several really nice “normal” Father’s Day gifts.  However, I gotta share this one geek-related item I got…

It’s a Darth Vader shaped coin bank from my 10 year old step-son.  The attention to detail is AMAZING!  It’s darn-near statue quality detail, but made out of plastic.  It stands about 7 inches tall, 11 inches if you go to the top of the lightsaber.  Now the only thing I gotta wonder is if I should read anything into receiving a Darth Vader present on Father’s Day… hmmm….

Anyone else get some cool geek swag on Father’s Day?

I spend a lot of time reading to my children.  I’ve often said to them, when you read a book the pictures come alive and move in your mind.  Well, for the first time I can read my children a book where the pictures really do move in the book itself!

Star Wars A Scanimation book from Workman Publishing is featured on the New York Times Children’s Bestseller list.  Written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder (Gallop!, Swing!, Waddle!), this super-cool book contains some of the most memorable Star Wars scenes brought to life through a unique process.  By turning the pages, the book takes scrambled artwork overlaid by a striped clear sheet and produces the illusion of motion.  Remember the “moving covers” on the Robin III: Cry of the Huntress mini-series from 1992?  It’s sort of like that, except these are REALLY cool.  Check out the video below.

How cool is that?!?!?  There are 11 different scenes in all.  It includes Obi-Wan battling Darth Maul, the Millennium Falcon zooming away from an exploding Death Star (my personal favorite), Luke riding a galloping Tauntaun, Yoda twirling his green lightsaber, Jango Fett flying away, the red and blue lightsabers of Luke and Darth Vader clashing as they battle, and several more.

This book is really amazing!  I’ve looked at it numerous times and I’m still floored by it.  My wife and children are blown away by the images and fascinated by the process used to create the animation.  I’d recommend it to any Star Wars fan and/or  parent.  It retails for $14.95 and is available from Workman Publishing.  My thanks to the folks at Workman for sending me a copy to review.

Remember VH1′s Pop-Up Videos?  Can you imagine a Pop-Up Video for Empire Strikes Back?  Well, someone else did.

Building Empire is an amazing fan-made film providing tons of behind the scenes facts about Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.   For example, have you ever heard about the abandoned Wampa attack subplot in Empire?  It’s covered in this film, including very rare photos.  Here is the description from the YouTube page:

In an ambitious effort to collect all material from Star Wars : The Empire Strikes Back, into one insightful project, author Jambe Davdar has presents ‘Building Empire’. The result of eight months hard work, this labor of love provides an extensive look at the making of Episode V.

It incorporates many rare alternate takes, production audio, on-screen facts, cast and crew commentary, re-created scenes, storyboards and behind the scenes footage to give you the must-have companion to the second chapter in the original Star Wars Trilogy.

The entire film has been uploaded to YouTube.  Check out the first part below.  Click here to be taken to YouTube where you can find the rest.

If you enjoy this, he also produced Returning to Jedi and is still working to complete Star Wars Begins.

My thanks to the guys at TWO TRUE FREAKS for directing me to this.

Here are the titles I read and some quick thoughts on them (and they do contain SPOILERS):

Star Wars Adventures Digest – Han Solo and the Hollow Moon of Khorya – This is one of Dark Horse’s all-ages original graphic novels printed in digest form.  This series of digests is best described as the modern day successor to the old Marvel Star Wars issues.  This particular digest focuses on an early mis-adventure of Han and Chewie.  It’s a fun read!  While it’s all ages, it can be enjoyed by an adult.  You get 70+ pages of story for $7.95, so it’s not a bad price by today’s standards.  You might also be able to find it in your local library (like I did).  Finally, it has Hoojibs!  Hooray for HOOJIBS!

Marvel Adventures The Avengers: Mighty Marvels Digest – I picked up this all-ages digest reprinting issues #20-23 from the library.  With so much drama going on in the Avengers lately, I thought it might be fun to pick up a light-hearted Avengers comic.  These issues were written by Marc Sumerak, who writes the fantastic all-ages Power Pack digests from Marvel.  While these weren’t exactly the Avengers I’m used to (i.e. Storm is on the team), they were straight-forward enjoyable stories.  I’d recommend this to any Avengers fan burnt out on the stories in the main Avengers titles.

New Mutants #4-11 – I love me some New Mutants!  The original series is one of my favorites from the 1980s.  I’ve been excited about this relaunched series since it started, but I’ve let the issues stack up unread.  Well, no more!  I needed my fix of Sam, Roberto, Illyana, Amara, Xi’an, and Dani.  I’ve enjoyed these issues for the most part.  They aren’t incredible or necessarily memorable.  However, if you are a fan of the original New Mutants, this is a decent read.  And we got Doug and Warlock back too!  I’ll be sticking with this series.

X Necrosha; X Necrosha: The Gathering; X-Force #21-25; X-Men Legacy #231-233 – Sure enough… you buy one X-title and you inevitably get sucked into a crossover.  X Necrosha seemed to be Marvel’s answer to Blackest Night — zombies of former heroes and villains attacking the living characters.  I decided to give the crossover a try and found myself enjoying it.  While I’m sure Blackest Night was better written, I found myself enjoying parts of X Necrosha more than Blackest Night.  Maybe it was just the continuity bogging me down in Blackest Night.  Not sure.  Regardless, I’m glad I read the entire crossover.

X-Men Second Coming Prepare (free giveaway from Marvel) – I got sucked into one X-crossover, not gonna let it happen again.  This free giveaway for X-Men Second Coming was entertaining, but I’ll pass on all the crossover issues.  Thanks.

Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1-5; Siege: Young Avengers – I dig the Young Avengers in general, but some stories are better than others. This Dark Reign limited series was okay.  Interesting idea pairing them up with the equivalent of the Young Masters of Evil.  The Siege issue was completely forgettable.  Seriously.  I read it this week and had to flip through it again just now to remember what happened.  I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Avengers: Children’s Crusade limited series starring the Young Avengers.  It features the return of the original creators, writer Allan Heinberg and artist Jim Cheung.

Siege #3-4 – These were okay.  While I wasn’t thrilled about Loki supercharging the Avengers, it was a nice touch (Loki was the reason the Avengers came together the very first time).  I also enjoyed the happy ending featuring the heroes of the Marvel universe all getting along for the first time in four years.  The broken bonds from Civil War can now begin to heal.  I think the journey from Civil War to Siege was really interesting and I’m impressed that Marvel had the courage to do such a long, status-quo-shattering storyline.  I hear lots of people complain about Brian Michael Bendis’ writing.  For me personally, I don’t typically mind his style.  However, I will freely admit that the dialogue in Siege #4 was pretty bad.  The characters just didn’t read like themselves.  Also, did we really need the gate to Asgard on top of the Avengers tower?  I mean c’mon, we just got rid of Sentry’s ridiculous looking thing, now we gotta have the Asgard Christmas tree topper?  Ugh.  Oh yeah… HOT DAMN!  Sentry is dead!!!

Siege Embedded #3-4 – I picked up this series because it was being written by Brian Reed.  I enjoy his work and I wanted to get the full Siege experience.  I also like the character of Ben Urich.  While there was really nothing wrong with this series, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Civil War: Frontline.  I probably won’t pick up another Frontline/Embedded type series.

New Avengers #63-64 & New Avengers Finale – Good issues. I’ve always been happy with the New Avengers title.  It’s been very different from a traditional Avengers book, but I dug it.  The finale was a good send off for this series.  Looking forward to the relaunch.

Dark Avengers #15-16 – I’m actually sorry to see this series go.  This book is about terrible people posing as Avengers.  I don’t typically like books about people this despicable, but this series just worked.  The final issues were good and I look forward to Mike Deodato’s work on Secret Avengers.

Mighty Avengers #35-36 – Once this title changed to Hank Pym’s team, it just never clicked for me. There were definitely moments that were great, but overall I’m glad it’s over.

Avengers: The Initiative #34-35 – After the first year, this series seemed to struggle to find its footing.  It wasn’t until Dark Reign that it got good again.  While I enjoyed it, I won’t be picking up it’s successor Avengers Academy.

Siege Epilogue: Sentry – Fallen Sun – Even his death couldn’t save this comic from sucking terribly.  Seeing the major heroes of Marvel sit around and say nice things about Sentry was a hard read.  And Rogue? Seriously?

Secret Avengers #1 – A good read and an encouraging start to this series.  Looking forward to it.

Avengers #1 – Another encouraging start.  Kang better come off as awesome and genius in this storyline or I’ll be disappointed.  Also, I could do without the text pieces in the back.  I heard Bendis talk about these text pieces on Word Balloon, but I’m still not interested.

Avengers Assemble – This was a Handbook of the Marvel Universe-type book.  The Phone Ranger… seriously?  It’s characters like this that give Marvel a bad name.  At least most of DC’s ridiculous villains came from the 1950s.  This guy was invented in the 1980s by Kurt Busiek.  Ouch.

Iron Man/Thor (Free Comic Book Day); Iron Man: Supernova (Free Comic Book Day); Invincible Iron Man #1 (reprint as part of Marvel’s Greatest Comics line) – I picked up three Iron Man comics during Free Comic Book day.  Both Iron Man/Thor and Iron Man: Supernova (guest starring Nova) were somewhat silly.  They would have made good all-ages Marvel Adventures comics.  I was actually disappointed in the Iron Man: Supernova issue because I was looking forward to learning more about Nova.  Unfortunately, Nova was written in such a way that he could have been replaced with any character (or left out entirely).  Seriously.  He didn’t contribute at all.  The reprint of Invincible Iron Man #1 was pretty good.  I can see why Matt Fraction is well-liked on the title.

Breakdown #1-6 – I picked up these issues from a $1 box in my LCS.  They came out in 2004 and were written by the awesome Chuck Dixon.   This was part of a line of books called Aftermath Comics by Devil’s Due.  They were attempting to launch their own shared universe of superhero titles (like Ultraverse or Valiant did in the 1990s).  Other creators working on Aftermath Comics included Marv Wolfman, Joe Casey, and Ron Marz.  This book was promising and I would have enjoyed reading more.  Unfortunately, the line of books didn’t catch on and it was shut down after this six issue series.

Titans #21-22; Justice League: The Rise and Fall Special; Green Arrow #31-32; Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal #1-2 – All of these were written by the up-and-coming J.T. Krul.  A while back, J.T. wrote the really great Blackest Night: Titans mini-series, as well as a few other Titans-related comics.  After reading those, I had really high hopes for him.  Now… I’m not so sure.  These Titans issues were fine, but not great.  The Green Arrow issues were actually kind of boring.  I’m waiting for Krul’s Green Arrow relaunch to make a final determination.  Rise of Arsenal #1 & #2 were okay.  While I was sickened by what happened to Roy’s daughter, I found it interesting to read about how he was coping.  From what I understand, issue #3 (which I haven’t read yet) is the single worst written comic in years.  Wow.  That’s saying a lot.  I’ll give Mr. Krul a couple more months, but I’m out if it doesn’t get dramatically better.

Flash Rebirth #4-6; Flash Secret Files & Origins 2010; Flash #1-2 – I was just glad to be done with Flash: Rebirth.  It took a year to tell this six-issue story.  I understand the artist was suffering heart problems, however, I was just sick of the story due to the hype, the delays, and that it was pushing the focus away from Wally.  I wasn’t looking forward to the monthly series either, imagining that these would be Flash stories that could have starred Wally, but instead the creative staff was shoving Barry down our throats.  I’m pleasantly surprised to report that issue #1 & #2 were very good and were truly Barry stories.  You can’t change out Barry for Wally in these stories without changing the nature of the story.  Nice job, Geoff Johns.  I didn’t think I could enjoy a Barry Allen series, but I am so far.

There you go!  Have you read anything good lately?  Feel free to share in the comments.

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