Don't forget to check out the classic Fred The Clown strips at the bottom of the page. Updated every Tuesday to Friday.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Remembering Eddie Guerrero



A year ago, one of my favorite wrestlers Eduardo Gory Guerrero Llanes, better known as Eddie Guerrero passed away. Leaving us, his fans shocked. He might not have gotten the public attention as much or in the way wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin did, but he was personally the one who changed my way of viewing matches. Smark fans call it "workrate". As an entertainer, he was top notch. Even though I have followed his career moreso than the average fan, I will not pretend to be an expert and give a detailed career retrospective. I just miss the man and his performance that entertained me like so very few can.

When WWE Raw aired a montage video in remembrance to him last year, I nearly cried, my eyes literally welling up. They had chosen such an apt song with Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" to reflect the life of Eddie. So today one year has passed since his death, I scoured YouTube to find a copy of the song. To those who missed it, you can now listen to one powerful and haunting song.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Talent Spotlight: Joshua Middleton

I really cant speak much about Joshua Middleton as there are very few things I know about him except that I like most of his works. Scouring the internet to find more info about him has been a futile effort for the last 3 years. It is rare for such artists to have gained enough popularity and spawn many fan sites and still maintain such a discreet amount of info on one's life floating in the web. I guess I should commend him for that, heck you can find more info about me, a simple nobody if you google my real name compared to this young star of a talent. I do find that little bit of trivia amicable, as it just shows that his work speaks volume moreso than his actual person.

So let me just go on about him from what little I know. I know he started as one of the few actual newfound talents of the now deceased publishing company Crossgen working on the comic Meridian as its first and original artist. Controversy already hit him early in his career over an online review/preview of his very first issue there. I dont know much about the details as I wasn't really impressed with his early works and didnt really paid attention to him or any news pertaining to him. From what I heard, another controversy followed him immediately again when he became one of the first to defect from the publisher that gave him his first break. Like before, I'm not much help with the details for my earlier mentioned reason. I won't put much stock on hearsay as to actually side or put judgment to the character of anybody involved in that brouhaha.

Back then, I wasn't really even aware of the publisher called Com.X either, but when I accidentally stumbled upon previews of what was supposed to be Middleton's first creator owned work there called "Sky Between Branches", that was when I was first floored on how amazing his work really was. His earlier works on Meridian was already decent, but nothing really impressive in my eyes. So I thought to myself that time, that maybe his defection from Crossgen may have been warranted, if only for the obvious improvement that I was seeing.

He definitely got my attention that time. Then he disappeared for months again. That was until Marvel Comics EIC Joe Quesada (who is also an artist whose work I follow) announced a collaboration between something written by him and drawn by Middleton. The announced work was NYX, a title though still unpublished at the time, was already steeped in online controversy from previous talents assigned to it. Again, I didn't care as the preview art shown later on blew me away. I told myself that I would definitely follow that work and I did. He definitely delivered with his work on that title. One would have thought his art style wouldn't fit with the gritty street level story of the book, but it did in my opinion. The book was going great, even if a little bit slow to come, it didn't matter to me. That was until he left after the 4th issue and went exclusive with DC Comics. The title never felt the same for me again and so I dropped it after issue 5. The title ended at issue 7 from what I heard.


At DC, he did the 4 issue mini series "Shazam/Superman: First Thunder". A very solid work for him but seemingly less extravagant, I felt he went for a more reliable approach there instead of the more playful ingenuity that I have associated with him. I still liked it though.

After that last major project, like many other fans, I thought he seemed to have disappeared again. Apparently not as he was doing various things like a cover for Street Fighter, a short story for the Wildstorm Winter Special and many more covers for Runaways, American Virgin and a various other titles. As pretty as those are though, I can't honestly wait to see another major comic work from him again. If you still can't tell by this point, I really do like his work.

If you are interested to see more samples of his works, an online gallery can be found if you click here.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Happy Halloween!!!

This sadly marks the end of October. It was fun having a theme but I guess all good things must end. To the small audience I have gained as of late. Thank you. This however doesn't mean the end of my freaky ramblings, new stuff will still be posted and I promise that I won't deviate much from the image and interest that have come to develop as this blog's identity. So stay tuned for more fun stuff and random thoughts from your one and only Genetic Freak.



I bid you all a Happy Halloween!

Evil GrinEvil GrinEvil Grin