Guest Post by Chris Braak

I sat down with Azita Ghanizada, to talk to her about her upcoming television show Alphas–premiering on SyFy this Summer.

Tell me about the new project.

Alphas is a new series created by Zak Penn and Michael Karnow. Zak was one of the writers on a couple of the X-Men movies, on The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers. The show basically follows a band of ordinary individuals with extraordinary abilities, who use their abilities to solve X-files type crimes, and the group is overseen by a non-alpha, who is played by David Strathairn who is a tremendous actor.

Can you tell me a little about your character?

Rachel is a young girl who has the ability to hyperintensify all of her senses and she has the ability to delineate them. So, she goes into these kind of trances and if she needs to use her super-sonic sound, she can sharpen that one sense and sort of loses touch with her other senses.

Is it just the regular five senses, or does she have, like, super-kinesthetic awareness, too?

Oh, no not like that. Not yet. Right now it’s just the regular five. At this stage were just kind of discovering the various basic abilities that these alphas have. Like one has the ability to push people, and one has this super fight or flight, like he can become super aggressive and move cars and throw people off of buildings.

So, how did they get these powers? How did they come about?

They’ve always had them. They were born with them. These people have just been burdened with these abilities, they’re just something that they’ve discovered at an early age. It’s affected them from an early age and it’s shaped who they are since childhood, and some of them suffer these extreme anxieties and depression, and that’s why this doctor is there to nurture both their superhuman and their human aspects.

Now. I must ask you a question about Philadelphia. So. What do you think about Philadelphia?

I spent every summer in Philadelphia when I was younger. My closest cousin grew up in Philadelphia at the time, and we would come and visit them for a few weeks in the summers, and they would come and visit us for a few weeks in the suburbs of Washington, DC. This was in the mid-80s, and my cousins were in North Philly, and there were a lot of fun neighborhoods, up around Aramingo Avenue. I definitely learned to play stickball and get Italian ice, so those are fondest memories of Philadelphia, Also seeing sneakers that they’ve thrown up on the wires.

Is that not a thing that happens in other cities?

No, in other cities they definitely do not rob you and throw your shoes over the power lines.

Last week, Sega released their deceptively named Dreamcast Collection, a compilation of four Dreamcast games on one disc… something that certainly doesn’t qualify the package to be dubbed a ‘collection’, considering the mass amount of titles released on the beloved, long deceased system.

Seriously Sega. Where is Jet Grind Radio? Ikaruga? Powerstone? Rez? Grandia 2? Skies of Arcadia? Shenmue? To quote a character from Arrested Development, a show that, like Dreamcast, died before its time…

COME ON.

I get it. Ikaruga is a money maker on Xbox Live. But the other titles ignored titles? The Dreamcast Collection easily could have been like the awesome Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. And you include Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure, two games that are available on Xbox Live, that folks regularly purchase. What’s the deal here?

Don’t get me wrong. I love me some Crazy Taxi, and Sonic Adventure is a good time. These are good games. It’s just odd to have four titles, label this thing a collection, and not include so many other choice picks from Dreamcast’s small but awesome library.

Rant aside, a retail disc with Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi is nice, especially if you don’t have XBL. I’ve got a copy from Sega to giveaway to one lucky reader. Just leave a comment regarding what Dreamcast game you would have liked to see on the disc. I’ll pick one of you at random at the end of next week.

Dreamcast Collection [Sega]

In April of 2008, David Wilborn began Urban Jungle, the story of one man living in a world of animals… and I mean that literally. I’ve been reading Urban Jungle for a few years now and the comic never fails to bring a laugh. David was gracious enough to agree to an interview and chat about how he creates comics.

Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been cartooning?

Well, like a lot of cartoonists, I’ve pretty much been drawing and creating characters as long as I can remember. My dad was a computer programmer back when they used those big reams of track-feed paper, and he used to bring home the used batches for me to draw on. I went through reams and reams of the stuff.

The first character I remember creating was named “Midget Man,” who was basically a football helmet with tennis shows sticking out of the bottom.

Is cartooning something you always saw yourself doing?

I always wanted to be a cartoonist “when I grew up.” I recently realized that I wasn’t going to get much more grown up than I am now, so I’d better get cracking on it. The fact of the matter is that there has never been a time when I haven’t been drawing and cartooning for myself, and it’s nice to get it out there and find out that at least a few other people appreciate it.

Have you done any other comics besides Urban Jungle?

I drew several comics for my college paper, The Daily Cougar, at the University of Houston. My first was called Harrison, which was the story, not surprisingly, of a college student. It included a roommate with a bomb for a head, and a robot that transformed into a Cushman (those little golf carts that maintenance guys drive). It makes me cringe a bit when I look back at it, but I definitely started to learn the ropes of cartooning on the strip.

I also co-created two comics, A Little Moore and The Smarties, with my college roommate David Eastman. He was really the brains of these strips and I did the drawing. Both were created under the Pseudonym “D.T. Moore” and drawn in a different style to hide the fact that I was drawing more than one cartoon for the paper.

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Philly Mini Golf pictures via MentalFloss

Come May, the Academy of Natural Sciences will launch a brand new exhibit, Fore! The Planet: A Putt-to-learn Adventure. Scheduled to open on May 21st, the interactive exhibit invites guests to putt their way through 18 holes of indoor mini golf that will test their knowledge of science and the environment. That’s right. Mini golf in the museum.

The questions and features in the exhibit were created by the Academy scientists, based on their research. From dinosaur extinction to bat sonar, pollution to recycling, there’s a lot to learn about.

Interesting fact, unlike the other traveling exhibits that pop up at the Academy, this one was created by the museum, and has already gone to several other places, “including the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Canada, Omaha Children’s Museum in Nebraska, San Diego Museum of Natural History in California, and the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, WA.”

For more info on the upcoming exhibit, visit the Academy’s official website.

Environmental Mini Golf @ the Academy
May 21st – September 24th, 2011

Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 299-1009
www.ansp.org

Here’s your fun Philadelphia fact for today:

“Many of the American maps published in the eighteenth century and the very early nineteenth give degrees of longitude measured from a Philadelphia meridian.” That’s right. The Prime Meridian, the main line of longitude, used to go through good ol’ Philadelphia, according to a 1942 edition of Geographical Review.

Part of the reason had to do with the fact that Philadelphia was once the nation’s capital, but another had to do with David Rittenhouse. That name’s probably familiar to you (Rittenhouse Square, David Rittenhouse Labs on Penn’s campus), and according to my less meticulous research on Wikipedia, Rittenhouse “was a renowned American astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman and public official.” He had an observatory in Philadelphia somewhere around 7th and Arch Street, and set up a meridian mark pointing due north from it to assist in observing the passing of Venus.

Following his lead, many maps made between 1749 and 1816 featured Philly as the Prime Meridian, but alas, it didn’t last forever.

In 1850, Congress passed an act that said Washington, D.C. would be adopted for all astronomical purposes and Greenwich in the United Kingdom would be used for nautical purposes. Further, in 1884, a bunch of people got together for an International Meridian Conference (the 19th century equivalent of Comic-Con) and decided all glory would go to Greenwich, who was awarded the title of Prime Meridian.

So while we may not be the Prime Meridian anymore, -75° W will always be home for us Philadelphians.

[Source] [Picture Credit]

This time in the Comic Roundup we look at the newest Image sensation Morning Glories, get a little queasy reading Crossed Psychopath and see if the kids are all right in The Teen Titans.

Morning Glories #7
By Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma

Every few years a creator owned book comes along that becomes the critical darling of the moment. The Walking Dead, Preacher and Fables are just a couple examples. You almost have no choice but to check them out because everyone is telling you to. The latest title to join that illustrious list is Morning Glories. Is it worth all the attention it has been getting? Several sell outs and reprints of the first 6 issues would seem to say yes.

Issue #7 is the beginning of a new storyline and a perfect jumping on point for new readers. The focus here is on Zoe as we see her life before coming to the academy and what is cost her. It is a good comic with great dialogue from Spencer and solid visual storytelling by Eisma. What I like best about the book is that it is a great mash up of concepts. Take one part Lost, one part Dawson’s Creek, mix in a blender and you get Morning Glories. Mysteries abound in the book; nothing is laid out in front of you. Plus you have some great characterization thrown in to make it all the more intriguing.

Morning Glories is a book that rewards you for repeated readings. It is one of a very short list of titles that I plan to read both the monthly and the trades. It is a title worth all the attention it has been getting and I hope it has a nice long run.

Final Grade: A-

Teen Titans #92
By J.T. Krul and Georges Jeanty

The Teen Titans is a book I have a long history with. I’ve been there for every version of the team (yes, even the Jurgens issues) and I have seen the ups and downs the title has gone through. I had given up on them after Geoff Johns left the most recent incarnation of the book and wasn’t sure I would ever come back. Well, this month The Titans crosses over with Red Robin, a book I read and love, and I am pleasantly surprised by what I found.

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Bambi was Disney’s fifth animated feature, released in 1942 during the height of World War II. The film was actually a commercial failure for the studio upon its initial release. But a re-release in 1947 after the war fared much better for the film.  Now 69 years old, the film hits Disney Blu-ray and DVD today in a Diamond Edition combo pack and proves that Disney films are truly timeless pieces of art.

This release is truly a sight to behold. The transfer looks gorgeous; it’s impossible to tell this film is indeed nearly 70 years old. As for the restoration of the title, while you can seen the paint and layering to the cells, they have touched up and evened colors out a bit; which should be a happy medium for the purists out there like myself and the people who could care less about seeing brush strokes. The DTS-HD track, while not a Master Audio track, is still well done and a great update.

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