[Via Kanye West]

Catching up on everything that piled up in our inbox while we’ve been otherwise occipied, here’s the official video of Gaiman/Colbert from Monday…with bonus Tom Bombadil.

Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman

The evil tycoon asks for a “bailout.”

We know you already saw this but, you know, we are thinking of the archives.

JON HAMM FOR DR. STRANGE!

[Via Funny or Die.]

This is one of those days when we had a HUUUUGE Kibbles ‘n’ Bits post we’d been working on all weekend that just got eaten by the browser, so screw it. Moving on, since we’re on a musical comedy kick, we’ll reiterate our love for the films of Busby Berkeley — we had a long post about the surreal, disturbing madness of Berkeley’s choreography back on the Old Beat, but to summarize: If Berkeley were still around, he’d be David Lynch. (We also fretted that Berkeley was the kind of cult interest that the Internet wasn’t much bothered with, but thank God, YouTube has come along since then, to keep the spirit alive.)

Anyway we had the chance to share our Busby-holism this weekend at Lincoln Center when choreographer Kriota Willberg presented a program called “Under The Influence of Busby Berkeley,” which showed videos over the years that exemplified such traits as aerial patterns, multiple girls, and of course, focus on the female anatomy. Under Kriota’s lively. erudite guidance it was a too-brief spin through Bollywood, cartoons, The Big Lebowski, dancing cigarette ads, birth control, hip hop, and much more. Since Kriota is married to cartoonist R. Sikoryak, there were a few cartoon types in the audience, but we shan’t out them so we can keep it a secret club.

This presentation needs to be either taken on the road or put on the Internet or something. The show started with an analysis of Berkeley’s fetishization of Ruby Keeler’s floating face seen above in “I Only Have Eyes for You” from DAMES, and ended with Michel Gondry and the Chemical Brothers, below. Let’s get this Monday started right.

Revel In is a video company devoted to making videos of cool, people, and underground legend Spain Rodriguez certainly qualifies. There’s a nice historical context to the interview as well, with archival material on Crumb and the entire underground movement.

Spain’s CHE just came out from Verso.

A video of Peter Bagge’s new band, Can You Imagine?, from the Fantagraphics store party.

Painter/cartoonist Dave Cooper and animator Nick Cross have created an animated video for Danko Jones for the song King Of Magazines. The act is on Bad Taste Records.

We’re not exactly sure where this meme began, but first it was these rascals (images in cut to prevent vertigo):

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Stan Lee on YouTube. That’s how to start the day.

The legendary Strand bookstore in NY now has Strand Bookstore: TV. You can watch videos of various presentations, including Chip Kidd talking about Bat-Manga.

[Link via Kai-Ming Cha.]

ALAN’S WAR, the US edition of an award-winning French graphic novel by Emmanuel Guibert, is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. Here’s a video of Guibert’s drawing techniques.

This old A-Ha video may seem familiar…but keep watching.

Ted Rall sent us a link to his first cartoon, “Obama’s First Day.”

Rall wrote, drew and designed the characters for “President Obama’s First Day,” a tongue-firmly-in-cheek look at liberal Democrats’ fantasies of how an Obama Administration would instantly change things for the better. The animation was done by David Essman.

“There are some great Flash-based edittoons out there, but they take a different approach than I do. I see each animated cartoon as a skit, as a mini TV show,” Rall said. “I hope people enjoy watching ‘Obama’s First Day’ as much as David and I enjoyed making it.”

We enjoyed that cartoon but along the way we discovered this one, “Presidential Election Meets Pokemon McCain Vs Hillary & Obama,” which is like…

…maybe the greatest thing ever in history. Or at least since Lasagna Cat. Or this:

Should his enemies ever see this, it could be curtains for the webslinger!

Thanks to GR for the link.

Yow! You’ll never believe it but that Kinsey girl on MySpace was really a Marvel viral video campaign! The final video launched last night and shows Kinsey (played by Megan Sherlock) finding out her brother has been replaced by a Skrull. The videos were written by Marvel’s own Jim McCann and Ben Morse, and directed by Sam Walker. Filmed over the course of a weekend, and uploaded over a month, the videos detailed Kinsey’s anxieties about going to the prom and other teen-aged pursuits before morphing into a tale of alien invasion.

Marvel was internally so pleased with the results that Kinsey has been written into the Marvel U. and will appear in Marvel’s first original webcomic, written by Ivan Brandon and with art by Nick Postic and edited by longtime webcomics mole John Barber. The webcomic launches today, we’re told, and will be ongoing.

Say what you will about Secret Invasion and “viral marketing”, Marvel’s marketing for this mini-series is at least bringing comics “events” up to speed with the new media atmosphere. We’re told Marvel teamed up with MySpace to get one Kinsey video featured on the video front page, garnering over 200,000 views. From reading the comments on Kinsey’s page a lot of people were following along just to sympathize with her prom plight and not just to find out about Skrulls. The jury is out on whether any of those 200K viewers will translate into comics readers, but you gotta give Marvel some points for fighting fire with fire.

But that leaves Marvel_b0y out in the cold. A Marvel insider, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of fanboy panties, said that “Marvel_b0y has been dealt with. He’s not Kinsey’s brother.”

Our guess? A viral campaign that didn’t go quite as well as planned. This one can be chalked up to as flinging stuff against the wall. Some of it sticks, some doesn’t.

UPDATE: The webcomic is now live at the Marvel site.ringtone free sanyo 4900sanyo ringtone 5400 free8500 ringtone audiovox freeringtones phone american cell indianalltel phone 6235 nokia .99 ringtonesringtone 5125 free tracfone forringtones polyphonic uk a800 freeabsolutely pcs free ringtone sprint Map

Prada Animation - Trembled Blossoms from kwest on Vimeo.

Pretty pretty.

Via YouTube Craig is profiled by the local paper . . . and we get a sneak peek at his adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN: THE DREAM HUNTERS. This is a preview scene from “Lurid Chief” Wayne Alan Harold’s upcoming DVD profile of Craig, titled SOUND INTO IMAGE: THE ART OF P. CRAIG RUSSELL.

Wow, there are more free things than EVER on the internet! What is the use of playing softball in the park or brunching with the girls when there is so much cool free shit?

First off, some that is NOT FREE, repeat NOT FREE, but it is pretty affordable: yesterday’s news BOMBSHELL: TEZUKA ON THE WEB! Japanese bookstore Papyless will make 448 stories from manga forefather Osamu Tezuka available, including ASTROBOY, BLACK JACK and NEW TREASURE ISLAND. Starting March 18th it will cost 105 yen, or about one dollar, to read a volume over 48 hours. You can buy it for keeps for 315 yen per volume. Hopefully with a little Googling and Paypaling we can finally read NEW TREASURE ISLAND which was to manga what D. W. Griffith was to filmmaking, technically speaking.

Technorati Tags: Dr. Goldfoot, Tezuka

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Speaking of PW AND videos, we have a new area for multi-media content, and one of the first is a video of last fall’s Think Future panel on “Harnessing the Power of Graphic Novels”.

PW’s Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald explored the issues around the category with some of comics’ influential players. Joining the discussion were John Cunningham, DC Comics, Dan Frank, Pantheon, Rich Johnson, Yen Press, Joe Quesada, Marvel and Bill Schanes, Diamond Comic Distributors.

You can view the video here.

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Y The Last Party - Q&A with Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra

MySpace is hosting a few videos from last months Y; The Last Party blowout at Meltdown in LA. This video features Joss Whedon, Mark Waid, Don Murphy, R. Eric Lieb, a monkey, and the live Q+A with co-creators Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra!

Monkey!

Well, between the company we do most of our work for going up on the auction block and our beloved Cafe La Fortuna shutting down, we’ve been reeling from shock after shock in the last few days. Now we find out that Stage6, DIVx’s video site is shutting down:

I’m Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service. I’m writing this message today to inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you’ll be able to view and download videos until Thursday.

I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many Stage6 users, and I’d like to take a few moments to explain the reasons behind our decision.

Yes, it seems hosting videos is an expensive business for which there is no real profit model. Hello, YouTube!

Now why does this interest us? Well, you see DIVx produced and Stage6 hosted all the videos we did at the last two San Diegos, including great moments with Evelyn DuBocq, Tom Spurgeon, Gerard Butler, Scott McCloud, Rosario Dawson and the Turds. We’re attempting to download and archive the videos, although we don’t have much time — Thursday! YIKES! Hopefully we will find a new place to host them. I mean, it’s not like you don’t have enough San Diego videos floating around out there. We just like watching our state of coherence deteriorate over the five-day period, and the commensurate increase in the big dark circles under our eyes.

Dan Clowes on Mythbusters. (People sensitive to the sound of chalk on a board are advised to view with caution.)

Jules Feiffer on The Naked Brothers Band.

[Thanks to Randall Kirby!]

Technorati Tags: Daniel Clowes, Jules Feiffer

If you can stare at your computer for 77 minutes you can watch The Mindscape of Alan Moore on AlterTube.

Even more excitingly, if you are in London you can see Alan Moore AND Melinda Gebbie at Gosh! this Saturday, 2/2:

Gosh! The London Comic Shop is proud to announce a signing by celebrated creators Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie to mark the long-awaited UK release of Lost Girls. The signing will take place in-store at Gosh! Comics, 39 Great Russell Street in Central London (opposite the British Museum) on the 2nd February 2008, from 2:00 to 5:00 in pm. Moore and Gebbie will be signing copies of the three-volume hardcover slipcase edition of the book, which will be available to purchase at the price of £49.95*

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