Parker: The score review

Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score

In Darwyn Cooke’s third masterful adaptation of Richard Stark’s Parker series, we find Parker being enticed into doing a job so crazy, that he can’t say no to. Knocking over the entire mining town of Copper Canyon, in one night. He’s told of the job and how many men would be involved which causes him to scoff at the very idea at first, but rolling it around in his mind causes him to actually say yes to this impossible feat that seemed like a plot to a movie that would never work in real life.

Twelve men crazy enough to help Parker take on this monumental job and keep their wits about them while hiding from the law, yeah, it’s crazy. And you’re glued to this book for the entire time.

Never once do you feel like you’re not in the same room as Parker and his crew. Cooke keeps it close and intimate.

The 13 Eisner Award winner’s art mirrors Parker’s own personality in some ways, he doesn’t say much and when he does, he lets the man’s actions speak for him.

The character of Parker is one that Hollywood just can’t seem to leave alone, Stark’s master thief has been played by many actors over the years, Lee Marvin, Michel Constantin, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall, Peter Coyote, Mel Gibson, and Jason Statham.

But who could blame him? He’s a very complex but simple character that you can’t help but cheer on and hope that he makes it.

All these actors played Parker in spirit but would never allow Parker's name to be used. (until Jason Statham in Parker). Apparently Donald Westlake, (the real name of Richard Stark) was so swayed by Cooke’s adaptation that he gave him his blessing to use the moniker “Parker”.  He went on to adapt the first four books in the series, The Hunter, The Outfit, The Score, and Slayground

 “Strip it all down to essentials and draw the hell out of what’s let.” Alex Toth once said.

And Darwin Cooke’s followed that with an almost monastic Focus. His characters are simple yet elegant, you almost tend to forget how brilliant his artwork is because of the simplicity of it, he knows where to put lines, and curves. Everything is exact and nothing ever seems out of place for one moment.

He knows how to channel his art in that Toth-esque minimalist style in a way that no one has ever tried before. He has a way of delving straight into that vein that Toth started long ago in the ’60s.

And that's what makes this artwork so beautiful and so timeless when you look at it, you don't see art, you see the past, you see exactly what he wants you to see.

Parker is the proto character that other popular writers modeled their protagonists after, he‘s close to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, in that he’s this big animalistic brute that doesn’t say much. Parker is an unrepentant, thuggish, bastard and yet you can’t help but love him. And just like Stark, you’ll end up liking him for what he won’t tell you about himself.

Cybertronic Spree in concert!

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain." -Bob Marley

I left home with a friend of mine around noon on Friday and started on our trek to Spa-con, nearly 3 hrs away in Hotsprings.

Now, I have problems with anxiety and panic attacks and its hard to go about your day when you are fighting it. It was hard to get in my vehicle and start on the trip.

After a while, my anxiety started to dissolve and I began to relax, then we ran into dark clouds and very heavy rains. The air became almost solid and water as cars were pulling off the road with their hazards flashing, which caused my anxiety to creep back up. But I stuck with it and kept going, and the rain eventually died down to a drizzle.

Further on there was more rain and strong winds and then halfway thru the trip, I thought we missed our exit and had a detour that let us know that our phones stopped working. No phone calls, no texts, no google maps. Which for me was yet another trigger. Having a nonworking phone during bouts of anxiety is a very tough thing.

Luckily, I like to be prepared and I wrote down the directions just in case.

After getting to Hotsprings, I just wanted to know why our phones weren't working and being in a strange new city, you'd normally use your phone's map application or google to find your way around. I was wanting to find a Verizon store to ask them what was going on.

After asking a man at a gas station if he knew what had happened. He explained that the radio said the entire southwest area of the state was out of service with Verizon.

I was relieved to hear some news at least even though it was bad news. Eventually, service came back and I was able to connect with my wife who was in Texas.

I was exhausted and having all kinds of second thoughts about coming today, but again, I persevered and went on.

After we grabbed some fast food, we headed over to the convention center, went in and waited for the concert to start.

They say there's something magical about seeing your favorite band play live. You're not in the comfort of your home or car, but someplace better. You're not listening to a studio recording where everything can come out perfect, but you are in someplace better.
You're in a place where there are people with similar interests, people who've driven hours and hours to see their favorite musicians.

The moment the first song starts mind just cleared up. It was as if the sounds made my thoughts flutter away like a startled flock of birds and strife of the day dissipates.

I've been trying to see The Cybertronic Spree for years now. They have toured in Canada exclusively for a while and then they gradually started touring the upper east area of the USA, which started giving me hope that maybe one day I could finally get to see them.

I tried to save enough money to get up to Retro Con in Philadelphia but was never able to do it. I began to think they'd be a band that I would never be able to experience live.

That is until I heard they were coming down from the great white north, the land that they crashed landed in, and play in my home state. I was shocked and excited beyond belief! I haven't been this psyched about seeing a band in years!

The Spree started their aural onslaught with "The Transformers theme". My mind was still in denial of what was happening before me! The crowd around was feeling it too. I guess videos and pictures do not do this band justice until they are three feet from your face. They have this otherworldly power in grabbing your attention and keeping you connected with them and the rest of the audience. Yes, you were experiencing the concert subjectively, but also, because of them, the crowd also became a kind of hive mind. It was otherworldly.



Next up was the theme of One punch man, which totally caught the crowd off guard which is something this band has a special ability in doing! I could hear people behind me going, "what!!!???"

The familiar chords of the Stan Bush song, Dare was next. I've heard this version countless times and never ceases to give me chills. It seemed the crowd instinctually knew to echo Hot Rod's vocals of  "Keep Going"!

I wasn't prepared to hear them do their cover of Shuki Levy's immortal Thundercats theme. I grinned like a big old idiot thru the song.

I was so very happy about what they played after that. Hammer of the gods, for all you true Zep fans out there, or for the casual listener, The Immigrant Song. Hearing Arcee's howling vocals joined by Unicron's staccato riff is just pure magic! Also? Hearing her Valkerie like voice say, "We are your overlords", brought a boyish smile to my face. I wouldn't mind that at all!

There was a rather cute dance battle between two human girls, but sadly both were deemed, "Innocent" by Quintesson and they were promptly sent off to be torn to shreds by the Sharkticons and were never seen again.

Nothin's gonna stand in our way was just as amazing as hearing it the first time I listened to the soundtrack when I was 12. I just love how this band can pull all these emotions out of me and also rock my face off!

The Pokemon theme song got kids and teens, and adults singing along. And when you can get that from a crowd, you have something special!

The Doom Theme morphed into another Shuki Levy masterpiece which was The power rangers theme song, expertly played by the gang.

The Cybertronic Spree played their first original song Cybertronic Warrior, which I reviewed on this blog when it first came out. (I'm seeing a pattern here.) And it still rocks my socks off! It makes you want to become an Autobot wrecker and destroy some Decepticons!

Unicron's most disliked song, The Touch made famous by Stan Bush and also made famous by Hotrod, er...Rodimus Prime throwing Galvatron out of the planet eater's torso! He must not be that sore about playing it, because he slayed it on the eight-string guitar!

Weird Al Yankovich's Dare to be stupid is always a crowd-pleaser. There were guys beside that were belting out the lyrics almost as loud as Hotrod!

Right after that, they kept up the momentum with the Canadian Band, Spectre General's song, Hunger which Arcee's fantastic pipes were a highlight! She can belt it all the out to the cheap seats!

Encore where they powered down and but could only power back up by our applause. Trust and believe this dude yelled and hooped and hollered!

I must admit during the encore I screamed my throat raw for them to play The Racoons' theme song, Run with us. I even got some of the guys around me to say it too! And yes, I cried when I heard it startup. That songs still has a hold on my heart and was the main reason why I wrote a rather lengthy thank you letter to The Spree that I posted on this blog some years ago.

The last song of the night was Ray Parker Jr's world-famous Ghostbusters theme. Which the crowd ate up and got them all moving and grooving. There was a guy my age next to me, that started the show pretty reserved. Taking random pictures and videos of the band, but by the time the concert was halfway in. This guy was a dancing fool! He didn't care if he was getting eye rolls by Millenials. He was having the time of his life.

On the way home, after seeing them in concert, the experience really quietened down all my inner turmoil of the day. I erased my feelings of the day and left me with a smile on my face that just wouldn't leave!

Even as I write this, I can't stop thinking about how approachable the band was after the show. How at ease they were with their fans. They talked to us all like we were great friends that they haven't seen in awhile, and that's only happened one other time in my 20 plus years of going to concerts.

Thank you Cybertronic Spree. For coming out and giving it full throttle, and showing a small town, the time of their life!

Oh, and also for giving this shy, transformer loving dork, a perma-smile that just might stay on his face for the rest of the year!

Hellboy in Hell review

Hellboy in Hell, first released in December 2012 started right up where Hellboy: The Fury left off. Hellboy in Hell was a 10 issue series. It also marks the return of Mike Mignola as the ongoing artist for the character.

Hellboy in Hell chronicles the stories of Hellboy's journey through Hell after the events of The Fury. Hellboy, after battling and ultimately defeating Nimue, the blood queen in dragon form, he gets his heart ripped from his chest by her in her ethereal form and his soul descends into hell while his corpus breaks apart and crumbles like dried soil.

In Hell, he learns from Edward Grey that the higher echelon of perdition have gathered up their armies and fled. Causing fighting in the ranks and almost all the higher demons to be killed by their armies and slaves, a revolt in Hell chaos and fighting amongst everyone and it’s all caused by the fall of Hellboy.

Hellboy’s destiny is more of a burden here than any time on Earth. Even though he has to fight a lot of his old fallen enemies, like Eligos from the Wild Hunt and The gambling Vampire of Prague and his ex-wife, his brothers, his Uncle, and his half-sister all want the right hand of doom for themselves.

This book is exactly what the fans needed as a send away and for just seeing Mignola drawing demons, monsters and skeletons.

Weighing in at a daunting 358 pages, Hellboy in Hell is a masterful achievement in storytelling, mood, atmosphere and Mignola’s art is still amazing! He hasn’t lost a step or slacked off. He is able to show us that he can still make us lose all track of time and devour this book in one sitting.

While you read his stories, you’ll catch yourself writing down the names of various people that you meet and you can’t help but think if these people in this story were real. There are so much back story and pathos to them. They’re so believable and odd enough to have lived on this earth. But alas, they were figments of his imagination and what a wonderful one he has.

The Phantomotoi interview!

Hello everyone! Greeting from Zero studios. Sorry for not having a blog post in a while, but life gets in the way of fun sometimes. I just recently, I had the absolute pleasure to interview John Jenson aka Phantomotoi is his nom de plume on Instagram. His account is brilliant and should be seen by all retro toy lovers and toy collectors and makers. His affinity for Micronauts practically jumps out of the screen if you should visit his account. He even makes custom aftermarket parts for the figures to change them into something familiar yet completely different. 

Can you tell me a bit about yourself? 

B.A.M. (bit about me)

Hello, my name is John. I love life through loving what human beings create… ESPECIALLY toys and art (all mediums, all disciplines). I have been working in the art field since 1989 in a variety of mediums, mostly self-taught with the exception of LIVING at libraries and some college ‘art & design’ courses that were entirely traditional media (sculpture, serigraph, painting, life drawing), no ‘computers’ … yet. This was the 1980s traveling into the 90s, so good info HAD to be mined. I still read print a lot. I love the movie ‘Book of Eli’.

This led to starting our (my brother David and I) own commercial art and design business, which we carry on with currently, with disciplines in mediums changing a bit due to client demands and evolving technologies. For me, it’s been a ‘labor o’ love’ really. I love self-expression.

What made you choose the handle Phantomotoi? 

I call what I do ‘Phantomoshop’ because what I do now in the present has the potential to out-live my own existence … like a phantom, and the ideas and objects we conceptualize and create hold that energy long after our own lifespan for one reason or another. An ‘unknown reality’ in a sense. This has a lot to do with my vintage and collector toy business ‘Phantomotoi’. The ‘energy’ of the past never dies.

I ask this question of everyone, but it really is an important question. What toy broke your brain as a child? How about now? Has there been one lately that you fell in love with? 

The toy that started all of this fascination was Mego Micronauts ‘Biotron’ - the U.S. version of Takara Japan’s ‘Robotman’ that my Dad let me pick-out for my birthday at our local toy store, ‘Uncle Tom’s Toys’. It was the first time I had interacted with a toy that seemed to be ‘piloted’ by a second intelligence, much like what Gundam, Transformers and many more toy-lines and animation series would eventually grow into & out of. The scale (3.75” - tall) of the figure that fit inside Biotron’s ‘chest window’, like a ’Time Traveler’ or ‘Acroyear II’ (The chrome heads knocked me out as well!) was something that has always resonated with me for some reason. Now, Star Wars had just come out around this time, but I was not attracted to any of those toys, being disenchanted by the limited articulation and hype. Besides, once I was shown what Japanese toy and model manufacturers were up to prior to ’Star Wars’ release, anything in the U.S. just could NOT hold my attention … except for Mego Micronauts which were originally an all Japanese-toy brain-child. Currently, not much has changed. I still gravitate towards Japanese toys, art, and culture. I have a massive fascination for the age of their genius.

Biotron aka Robotman

You are a true underground renaissance man. Toy collector, toy creator, artist, musician, you wear many hats. But what is the one that calls to you the most? 

Art or music?

That’s funny… my Dad used to ask me the same thing. It seems to work like this for me … the noises we (Brothers Jenson) create and the objects we make are a direct derivative unto each other… much like the ice cube is to water. One is a direct reflection to the other, only in an alternate state. I NEED to create an amalgam of these two states for what it is that I’m currently doing … otherwise, it doesn’t seem to gel. In many ways making your own music is the only therapy that can I can find to tame the human insanity. So, crank those JAMS and bust-out the epoxy resin!

Who is your biggest inspiration?

My biggest inspiration for ALL of this is my family, brother Dave, sister Antoinette and Dad. My Mom is an excellent dreamer and creator. I love to watch her hands while she crochets. She is also ‘Microkath’, the maker of all the micro-scale accessories for the ‘Phantomophigure’ toy-line that we have been developing and exhibiting since 1995. Without my family, NONE of this would have come to fruition.

what gets you out of bed when you've felt creatively dried up on occasion? 

When I don’t feel very inspired, I grab a Microman figure, put on some tunes and phreak-out!

Do you and your brother work closely together when it comes to art? Walk me through that process. 

Zee brothers Jenson. Dave and John

My brother Dave and I have been in the creative arts and music since 1993 … owning an art/design/illustration business together, publishing and showing large bodies of work, mostly in the commercial arts and print/publishing field, contributing many projects to several publishers, including Northlight publishing co. who was a leader in art & design ‘How-to’ books back then. Ahhh, ‘print’. Now, we have Youtube. ‘How’ times have changed!

So, the process of those ‘Brothers Jenson’ goes something like this:

Recognize the design-conundrum at hand, agree on a worthy concept that might show a ‘sliver’ of potential, execute towards a shared vision of solution and balance mutual critique through concept to project completion. Most importantly, HAVE FUN and LAUGH FREQUENTLY! Our parents were always supportive of our ideas … as long as we were NOT sitting around, watching the television or moping around being ‘the pessimist’. They did not tolerate ‘boredom’, telling us at a very early age ‘you make your own boredom’. Copy that. I think I’ll make my own ‘EXCITEMENT’ instead!

I have to ask you about the band Clutch. Do you have a favorite "old favorite album" and "New Favorite" of theirs? What was the first album that you bought from them? Neil Fallon has been called the Charles Dickens of Hard Rock. What are your thoughts on this?

I LOVE CLUTCH. I have been fortunate to have seen them LIVE 5 times, 3 when headlining. PURE POWER! Mostly definitely one of my favorite bands. The first album I got was ‘The Elephant Riders’ and my FAVE albums (there are two) are ‘Blast Tyrant’ and ‘Robot Hive/Exodus’. I got a body-full o’ goosebumps just TYPING those album titles!! Great stuff. Neil IS the Charles Dickens of Hard Rock! Indeed! I like when his gifted ‘word-smithing’ boils all that b.s. down to NOTHING! ESCAPE from the PRISON PLANET!!

You can find more on Phantomoshop, Phantomophigures, Phantomotoi and Brothers Jenson @

brothersjensonpresent.com  &

phantomoshop.com

Also his instagram account @phantomotoi

A confessional to StardonE

I know that in the end, a compliment or a good review does not help the musician write more great songs, but it's high time that I bring a certain subject to light or a certain song, rather. 

Your song "Space Romance" is one of the most brilliant songs that I have ever heard! For lack of better form of description, it hurtles me back in time to when I was 11 years old during Christmas and I got Voltron and two Saw Bosses . It was an epic Christmas that year....but yeah, the shimmery synth effect in the song is the thing that fills me with nostalgia. I don't know why or how...but it does. 

StardonE has created a time machine for me. Every time I want to visit the past, I just play this brilliant song.

Linke to Space Romance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niSkaBraMlI

https://soundcloud.com/stardonemusic