Brian Bendis...

...is the man. In my job, I'm lucky to get to do some really cool stuff. And today, I got to interview Brian Bendis, one of the top writers in comics. Anyone who knows me knows I love the comic books, so this was a real treat.

I've spent the week working on a pilot for a new webshow for GameTap.com, called "Hey, Kids! Comics!" I've wanted to do a tv show about comics for about three years now, having come up with the idea and developed it with my friend Elise Belknap as a half-hour tv show back when I was just a guy working for an independent animation studio, with absolutely no contacts in that part of the television business. So naturally, it didn't go anywhere.

Flash forward to now. I'm no longer just a dude working for an animation studio - I'm the guy producing the animation, for GameTap. I was privileged to be the producer on a project called "Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider", which I'll write more about in another post. This week, my fellow producers and I are engaged in a little competition to see who can produce the best pilot for a new show, and rather than do something animated - which I did last year with my associate producer Chris Jordan (we won) - I decided to take a crack at my comics show, and redeveloped it as a five-minute web show. New and noteworthy books of the week; the big rumor of the week with comicbookresources.com's Rich Johnston, writer of the long running column "Lying in the Gutters"; and an interview to be conducted over Xbox Live, while playing Halo 3 against the one and only Brian Michael Bendis, writer, gamer, raconteur. I emailed Brian and asked him to be on the show, and he generously agreed to appear.

Today was the day of the interview. We finally got around to pulling out the GameTap TV Xbox 360 and plugged it in, only to discover that we couldn't log on to Xbox live due to the corporate firewall at our offices. It took some serious pleading with security and IT to open up a port for us to use, and finally, an hour before the cameras were scheduled to roll, we got on. We played a test game in multiplayer mode. And then we called Bendis. The idea was to do a private, one-on-one match in Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, while the host of the show asked Brian penetrating questions about the Halo comic and the upcoming Secret Invasion series from Marvel. Sounds great, right? Totally unique tv. Unfortunately, because of some limitation in the firewall, we couldn't engage Mr. Bendis one on one. We tried all sorts of things, all while Brian waited patiently, listening to us get frustrated on his speakerphone. Finally, we opted for a straight, on-camera interview. It went really well. Bendis gives a good interview, and he's an engaging subject. I'm looking forward to editing it together tomorrow.

But really, the whole point of this post is that Brian Bendis is a mensch. In the comics world, he's a rock star, and could behave like one. But he doesn't. He's a genuinely nice guy, and his mother deserves kudos for raising him right.

Thanks, Brian!

Cleve-town Rocks!

It turns out that my seemingly bizarre instinct to call Cleveland "Cleve-town" isn't bizarre after all - it's perfectly natural. I did a little Googling, and came up with the following link:

http://www.citynoise.org/article/5938/by/little%20ukraine

It turns out Cleve-town isn't Cleveland's only nickname - according to the article in the link above, it's also referred to as "the Forest City, Metropolis of the Western Reserve, C-Town," and "America's North Coast."

All of those are fine, but me? I'm sticking with Cleve-town.

Thanksgiving in Cleve-Town

We spent Thanksgiving in Cleveland, Ohio, where my wife's mother and grandmother live. I have what can only be described as an irrational need to call Cleveland "Cleve-Town." It just seems like a natural nickname for the city, although I saw absolutely no evidence that anyone in Cleveland calls Cleveland "Cleve-Town." Neverthless, I am 100% certain that both Cleve-Town's hipsters and hip-hoppers do, in fact, call Cleve-Town "Cleve-Town." And if not, they should.


Cleve-town.

About the name of the blog....

I know, it's not very interesting. But I'm starting this thing two minutes before I have to leave to pick up my kids. I'll think of a better title.

It has begun...

What the world needs now? Another blog. This one from Elliot Blake.

I'm sure this will crack the internet in half.