Freedom To Lead

Shepard Fairey, creator of OBEY GIANT and lately, made even more famous for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster, has conjured up another piece of illustrated portrait poster in his typical starkingly stylistic method. While the aforementioned Obama poster was created in support of Obama's presidential camppaign (and arguably, it did more than its predicated part), this latest piece, a strikingly colorful portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, with dove imagery at her heart, propaganda-esque sun-rising background and “FREEDOM TO LEAD” as the slogan, actually serves to, in Shepard's own words, "to raise awareness of her on-going house arrest and the oppressive nature of the military regime ruling Burma". Prints of this poster are available for download and purchase at the OBEY GIANT site at thirty five bucks and the proceeds from the sale will go to benefit the Human Rights Action Center and The U.S. Campaign for Burma. For more on the background of Aung San Suu Kyi's ongoing predicament, check out The U.S. Campaign for Burma, Human Rights Action Center (where a letter template addressed to both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, written to effect the passing of the Renewal of the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act )and Causecast.

Robert Downey Jr Is Sherlock Holmes

Coming your way later this year, are the Sherlock Holmes Double Bill, with Guy Ritchie at helm on the serious re-imagined version featuring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson, respectively, while the whacky version will reunite Sacha "Brüno" Baron Cohen and his Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby co-star Will Ferrell as Holmes and Watson in an unsurprisingly comedic version. Check out the first character poster featuring Robert Downey Jr as Holmes himself.

Thomas The Fucking Angry Transformer Tank Engine

In another homage to and in the vein of all things Transformer in light of the disastrous disaster movie sequel, Thomas The Tank Engine gets a little overtly anthromorphic here. Courtesy of glennz.

No New Tale To Tell, 31 Years On My Way To Hell

...Happy Birthday

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies And The Literary Circle At Large

“One day I was talking to my agent about the publishing industry and one of us said, ‘You know, the only thing selling right now is Jane Austen and vampires. We could do this book and call it Jane Austen Sucks.’” - Michael Thomas Ford. The same Michael Thomas Ford, as introduced in his wiki entry as "a gay writer of primarily gay-themed literature" and incidentally, the author of the upcoming novel, Jane Bites Back, the first of a three-book series about Jane Austen living as a modern-day vampire. So they did ditch the aforementioned godawlful title, after all. Not that there's much room for improvement, given the subject. Anyway, the opening quote is just an entry note on an undoubtably peculiar yet gradually emerging mentality amongst the publishing industry. Surely, crossover between peers and now genres are almost certain to be a success depending on the fanfare of the subject materials but we need not be reminded of the body count of the bastard son that neither parent would ever give their blessings to. Well then, at least Jane Austen has been dead for almost two centuries and probably more used to turning around in her grave given her upcoming turn as a vampire herself. And this title we have at hand are much more literal than one would have expected. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Quite possibly, that title itself is already a cash generator. First published in April 2009 by Quirk Books in America, the, somewhat quirkily mashed-up fiction fantasy combining (in an extremely literal way, much like its title) Jane Austen's classic 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice with modern zombie elements. How could it possibly work> Writer, Seth Grahame-Smith says it best. “You have this fiercely independent heroine, you have this dashing heroic gentleman, you have a militia camped out for seemingly no reason whatsoever nearby, and people are always walking here and there and taking carriage rides here and there,” he said. “It was just ripe for gore and senseless violence. From my perspective anyway." Featuring the "dashing heroic gentleman", Fitzwilliam Darcy, Monster-Hunter and "fiercely independent heroine", Elizabeth Bennet, well-versed in the sophisticated ways of Martial Arts and Zombie-bashing together with her four fellow sisters, and the stars of this show, an entire legion of our dearest departed undead zombies. And yes, mashed-up genre crossovers might be the way to go, judging by the warm reception towards this self-styled Zombie Classical. Ever the silent predator hiding in plain sight waiting for its potential preys in this cruel jungle deprived of originality and creativity, an undisclosed Hollywood studio had already won the bidding battle for the filming rights. Hell, even the cover is a "zombification" of William Beechey's 19th century portrait.

Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science

"When comic books and economics collide, Ecocomics is Ground Zero. And we have charts." That's the tagline of this blog of particular nifty and gradually interesting reads. Covering dismal topics blurring the thin fabric between reality and comics, ranging from Superhuman Escort Service (okay, superhuman sex industry); the impact that fictional countries (such as Wakanda, Latveria and Kahndaq) can have on world economy; detailed analysis (complete with charts!) on Batman's Rogue Gallery chances of getting the job done (what Heath Ledger famously said in The Dark Knight, "It's simple. We, uh…kill the Batman."); and attempts to answer the question on who is the richest comic book character! Some crazy excerpts below... Now, let's assign the probabilities. I'm going to assume that each Batman rogue has a 2% chance of killing Batman alone (and this is being very, very generous and neglecting the individual skills of each rogue for simplicity). You would then think that adding villains to the scheme would increase the probability of killing Batman by 2% with each new rogue. Except, this ignores the economics law of diminishing returns, which states that as you increase the factors of production, the marginal benefit of those factors decreases. Usually, this applies to outcomes which are continuous (such as production of goods) rather than binary (to kill or not to kill Batman), but we can apply diminishing returns in this case to the probabilities. The theory is that as you add villains, working together will prove more difficult and planning more arduous. Therefore, the probability of getting Batman will increase, but by a marginally smaller amount with each villain added. Thinking of probability as output, let's assume that in each state, p = 2*y^0.9, where p = probability of killing batman and y = number of villains involved in the scheme. Hence, we have a diminishing returns function. If there is only one villain involved in the scheme, the probability of killing Batman is 2%. If there are 2 villains involved in the scheme, the probability becomes: p = 2*(2)^0.9 = 3.73% (the probability increased by 1.73 percentage points) If there are three villains involved, then: p = 2*(3)^0.9 = 5.38% (probability increased by 1.65 percentage points) And so on and so forth. Now armed with the knowledge of probabilities and utilities, let's conduct an analysis of whether it makes sense for the Joker to team up with Two-Face and the Scarecrow. We must analyze the expected utility of each scenario (teaming up and working alone). First let's calculate the expected utility of working alone for the Joker. The equation is: EU = p * (Uk) + (1-p)*(Unk) where EU = expected utility p = probability of killing Batman Uk = utility of killing Batman. Unk = utility of not killing Batman We know that for the Joker, the utility of killing Batman alone is 10 and the probability of killing Batman by himself is 0.02. Hence: EU = 0.02*(10) + (0.98)*0 = 0.2 Hence the expected utility of the Joker killing Batman on his own is 0.2. Now, we analyze the expected utility of the team-up. We know that the probability of the Joker, Two-Face and the Scarecrow killing Batman is 0.0538. The utility would be 3.33 each. Hence: EU = 0.0538*(3.33) + (0.9462)*0 = 0.179 Hence the expected utility for the Joker of the trio killing Batman is 0.179.

Johnny Depp Is The Mad Hatter

Yes, it's Tim Burton's magnum opus, Alice In Wonderland, set ten years after the original adventures with Alice almost a full-fledged adult now. And yes, that's Johnny Depp alright. You would kinda half anticipated a probable romance between Alice and the good ol' Hatta by looking at that cast.

Tekken 6's Alternate Outfits By Famed Mangaka Revealed

It was long announced that following Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection's crowd-pleasing alternate outfits for almost every characters, Tekken 6, hitting the third-gen home consoles and PSP, promised to be bigger and better by inviting more high profile Managka into the fray. And the first reveal (conveniently sourced from Japan's Gamespot site) is quite a kicker, featuring Clamp, the famed all-female Mangaka group, taking on the main protagonist/antagonist, Jin Kazama. Comfortably glam by the standards of Clamp, the indisputable larger-than-life brought shades of Lars Alexandersson's in-game alternate superhero-esque outfit to mind but surpassed it by having that uniquely cold, blue-blooded Mishima's villainous aura to it. Aptly so since Jin is officially turning heel this time round. Speaking of Lars Alexandersson, word is another high profile Managaka, Masashi Kishimoto of Naruto had a run on the alternate costume for him. Courtesy of sdtekken.com, we have a scan of it.