Sometimes I’m amazed at the things people will put themselves through just for our entertainment.

Take for instance the good folks over at Progressive Boink who must have suffered through every version of comic book hell to compile this post presenting The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings.

Accompanying each of these artistic masterpieces is insightful commentary such as this…

Case in point #40 on the list

… and we can now formally announce God Shop – Debuting online in 2008 from Tokyopop, co-written by my eldest daughter, Meggan, and myself.

Imagine that you could “rent” the powers of a god for a day, what powers would you want and what would you do with them? Would you use them for the good of others, or to make your own life better?

Well far away at the edge of the universe is a special store that let’s you do just that – rent the powers of the gods – the GOD SHOP.

All you need to do is find the special “token” that lies somewhere on your world. Once you find it you will be transported to the GOD SHOP and asked a simple question. Depending on your answer you will be allowed to enter through one of two doors. No matter which door you pass through, you will be given the powers of a GOD, but be careful what you wish for, and how you answer that question.

And of course there are rules to follow – there are always rules – especially when it comes to something like messing around with divine powers. Break those rules at your peril.

We’ll be posting updates as the project progresses, so stay tuned for more.

My Robert E. Howard geek meter just went off the scale…

Just when you think that acceptance of the graphic novel as mainstream literature, and teenagers going mad for manga has finally taken comics mainstream – things like THIS happen.

I didn’t have too many expectations for WizardWorld Texas going in, but it turned out to be a great road trip and one of the most fun convention experiences to date. The crowd seemed even smaller this year, but there was a much more positive buzz around the place than I’d experienced over the last two years. From talking to a few retailer friends, sales were up, and so was traffic in the Artist’s Alley area. At least one friend had sold all his sample books he’d bought with him by the middle of Saturday afternoon.

I’ll be writing up a more detailed article on the convention for Comicopia at some point, but personal highlights included:

– The road trip – four hours each way with four writers constantly bouncing story ideas off each other.
– Getting to meet a few more artists whose work I admired, and discovering a few who I hadn’t been aware of before.
– Getting invited to the DC Comics dinner and getting to hear some behind the scenes stuff and appreciate why certain decisions were made.
– The moment when the metaphorical light bulb went off above every writers’ head at the the dinner table in response to something DC’s executive editor Dan DiDio said about writing iconic comics characters.
– Seeing Matt Sturge’s face when we discovered a radio controlled K-9, and mine when he offered to buy me a radio-controlled Dalek.
– Dan Wickline’s work-shop on writing licensed characters.
– The moment at the end of the road trip when we realized that we needed to keep the creative energy flowing.

A post on the excellent downthetubes blog reports that Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro has signed on to write and adapt a big screen version of the 1960s British fantasy/action drama The Champions.

The Champions was one of my all time favorite genre shows –

While The Champions has been available on DVD in the UK for a while it has yet to get a US release. Hopefully this news may doing something to resolve that…