Taylor Swift Comic Book Drops In July!

Yesterday was 666 posts on the old Atomsplit site Atomsplitters that’s a ghoulishly exciting factoid, but entirely not the point of today’s post.  The point of today’s post is Taylor Swift’s Fame comic from Bluewater Productions is coming out in July. I’ll be interested to read the Taylor Swift story up until the present. I’m not the biggest Taylor Swift fan in the world, but she’s got some good tunes like You Belong With Me, Love Story, and my favorite Whit Horse. One of the things I like most about her is how she was out hitting the streets passing out her demos when she was 11 years old and getting no interest. That can break you down, but it didn’t break her down and now she’s on fire. That’s pretty awesome how tenacity pays off sometimes. But the thing I like most of all about Taylor Swift is the prank she pulled on Keith Urban when her whole band came out dressed as KISS and while Urban was playing I want To Kiss a girl. Swift was Ace Frehley and it was totally awesome!!! Check it out!


Atomsplit @ Dragoncon 2010!!!

Atomsplit will be at Dragoncon this year! We hope to see all you Atomsplitters out there. Keep your peepers peeled here because ass we get more details closer to the date we’ll be filling you in with more information.


The Show 03

Grandpappy says…The Who were awesome last night!


The Show 02

Atomsplitters don’t pick up hitchhikers!!!


For Those About To Rock

Two pieces of AC/DC news dropped this week and i thought they were pretty interesting especially since I’m a huge fan of AC/DC! The first bit of news is that AC/DC will be performing at the Download Festival at Donington Park. Donington Park was where the AC/DC Live DVD was shot during one of their famous Monsters Of Rock performances. I wonder why AC/DC is playing at the Download Festival since they don’t put up their music for download anywhere. The next bit of news is that AC/DC will supply the soundtrack for Iron Man 2!!! That’s awesome. Now I really want to see it. Do any of you Atomsplitters remember Maximum Overdrive the Stephen King movie? AC/DC did the soundtrack for that too , and not only that they were in the movie for a second in the beginning when the bride went haywire.I wonder if AC/DC is going to be in Iron Man 2. I’m going to keep my peepers peeled just in case.


The Daily Batman

I came across this site in some Twitter feeds.

This guy has a site where he puts up a comic book, cartoon, photo, etc  image of Batman everyday.

It’s pretty cool.

Check it out here.


Spider Woman Motion Comic

I’m really digging the new Spider Woman, Agent of S.W.O.R.D  motion comics. I got an iTunes “you might also be interested” alert for a few weeks ago and went ahead and purchased the Season subscription. So each episode gets downloaded to my iTunes when it’s ready.  The art is awesome and it works very well with the After Effects layered style animation. The voice over is great too. As are the sound FX.

I tried those B&W Batman motion comics a while back and they were good, but way too short. This Spider Woman series is a great 10-22 minute length per episode.  I like to watch them on my iPhone while at the gym doing cardio on the bike or treadmill. -DJD

You can find the motion comic on iTunes here.

Discovering Bill Mantlo’s Fate

On vacation a few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Wizard magazine in the Ingles grocery store in the Georgia Mountains.

As I read it in our awesome cabin on Fighting Town Creek I was surprised to see a big article on one of my favorite comic book writers of all time, Bill Mantlo.

Bill was the writer of The Micronauts, ROM Spaceknight, and other Marvel titles in the early 80s. He also created Cloak and Dagger.  But his first 12 issue story arc for the Micronauts really blew me away back then. Of course Michael Golden’s awesome art helped ;-).  I used to come home after school checking the mailbox to see if the new issue of my subscription had arrived yet. I was able to collect two original pieces of the art pages too in the past few years. Imagine my thrill at that!
As the years went by and I got out of comics for awhile (and into bands) I lost track of where Bill had gone in the industry. A few years ago I remember doing web searches for his name to see if he was working in comics and nothing came up.
When I started reading the Wizard article I was saddened to hear that Bill has been struck by a car in 1992 in NYC while rollerblading. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and suffered severe head trauma and two weeks in a coma. He’s been institutionalized ever since and is not expected to fully recover.

I also learned that in 1988 he left comics and became a full time Public Defender in the Bronx. He was going to school for that while he was working for Marvel.

A sad happening to a really cool person who provided the world with a lot of good reading adventure times.

I’d like to thank Wizard for writing that article. And now if you google Bill Mantlo you get a nice Wikipedia article and all kinds of info. If you get a chance, ebay and buy Micronauts 1-12 and I think you’ll experience what a cool writer he was.
- DJD


SHAZAM Acronym

I was startled this weekend when I walked into my home office to work on Atomsplit Episode 12 and glanced at my Classic DC Golden Age covers calendar on the wall.

It was set to August and the cover is Captain Marvel No. 6 Jan.

What startled me was at the bottom was the statement of the acronym evidently that “SHAZAM” stands for.

S - Solomon
H- Hercules
A - Atlas
Z- Zeus
A- Achilles
M - Mercury

I was shocked when I realized that after my whole life of being a comicbook fan I had NO idea that “SHAZAM” stood for the collected acronym of Greek Gods names!

Did YOU know that? I doubt few people do.

It prompted me to google Shazam and I ended up on the Wikipedia page where I clicked over to the awesome Shazam 70s tv show that I vaguely  remember (along with the Isis show) as a wee wee lad.

I must admit I’ve always been slightly interested in Shazam / Captain Marvel. And was even more impressed when he played a key part in DC’s Kingdom Come.

But all these years I never new that SHAZAM actually stood for something!

Wikipedia to Shazam

Wikipedia to Shazam 70s TV Show

- DJD


Skate Farm

I just got done reading my buddy Barzak’s awesome comic series called Skate Farm which is about a group of skaters who stumble upon a set of high tech skateboards designed by aliens. The problem is everyone wants the skateboards and that’s where the story begins! Skate Farm is filled with awesome drawings, some hilarious dialogue, and great pop culture references. Every time I read it I see a pop culture reference I had missed before and laugh out loud again. If you’re looking for some fun great comics to read go read Skate Farm. I got it from Amazon, but you can get it from the site or at your local comics retailer and if you dig it pass a note on to Barzak I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.