Ohtis: it’s music!

I don’t normally transcend nerdiness on this blog, but since there’s actually a very cool tie-in here, I figured “Why not?!”

Ohtis is a little band out of Bloomington, IL and a real good listen for anyone who’s down with some poppy Folk Rock. Their most recent, self-released effort is entitled “If This Country Had A Heart, That’s Where I Was Born” (a title that really appeals to this Midwestern born-and-raised blogger) and features album art by my good buddy Seaby Bess.

Seaby, as long time Loudest Monkey readers will remember, is the man responsible for my ridiculously rad blog logo.

So ok, yeah, this post is a bit of shameless promotion for a friend (who’s now playing with Ohtis, as well) and the band (which I’ve just heard is performing at this year’s South by Southwest), but I’ve been binging on the available tracks at their MySpace music page and figured you all could use some tunes to go along with your blog reading (Also, for Ohtis bloggy goodness to accompany the tracks, head to http://ohtis.com/!).

And hey, if you like what you hear, grab the tracks over at Amazon or grab the disc at Undertow Music Collective’s site.

Ok, that’s it for now, time to get back to those comics!

So…long time, no blog…

Ok folks, I know…I know…I haven’t been keepin’ up on the whole blog thing of late. Well, as the mass amounts of big books start hitting comic shop shelves this summer, the editor must become a writer as well. Here’s a little link-a-thon of what writing I’ve been doing that’s kept me from the ol’ Loudest Monkey…

Wizard Universe’s first original list feature of my tenure, Top 25 Cars from TV and Movies. This was a blast to put together with Assistant Editors Carolyn Fowlkes and Josh Wigler! Hopefully a good read too!

A few “Going Solo” columns….
Things got a little Ye’oldey with Thor: Ages of Thunder.
More Fraction goodness with the new Invincible Iron Man.

And, Rockin’ our Secret Invasion roundup with Kevin Mahadeo…for issue #2!

Anywho, there’ll be a lot more blogging to come, so fret not…all seven of you who were sitting at home thinking, “WTF is wrong with this Gibbons, bloke?!” (Yep, all seven of you live in Britain!). I’ve got some good stuff coming up—including the first ever semi-annual Loudest Monkey coloring contest!—so stay tuned!

Huzzah! 10,000 page hits on The Loudest Monkey!

Hey, I know there’s big name blogs out there that would scoff at this achievement, but heck—I’m excited!

Thanks to everybody who continually checked in and helped make this happen! Thanks to folks who linked and blogrolled me as well! It’s just been a bit over a month, so I’m pretty pleased to make a dent like this (small though it may be) on the blogosphere.

Now, I’ll keep up the postin’, you keep up the readin’ and let’s get this sucker up to 20k!

Damn good looking or just a time traveler?

A week or so ago, Dr. Hot Read’s Andy Serwin stumbled across a familiar face in an old Thor issue from back in 1972…MINE!

Prepare yourselves, this may blow your mind!

Here’s the issue for reference (Check your collection! Perhaps you can see this oddity in your own home!):

So, flipping through the comic, Andy came to this ad spread on pages 24 and 25…

Keen-eyed readers will spy this incredible spectacle immediately, but there at the top of the page in the center is what appears to be an illustration of me, Jim Gibbons—The Loudest Monkey himself!

Let me give you a quick comparison of some pictures, just in case you haven’t been shocked enough at this point…

Are you minds not blown?!

So, this means one of three things…
1) At some point in the future, I will travel back in time and become the inspiration for a series of fake facial hair because my ’stache and burns are so “exciting” and “romantic.”
2) I’ve inadvertently become a living homage to 1970s facial hair fashion.
3) I am, in fact, exciting and romantic.

I’m pretty sure the correct answer is Choice 3, though I’d be pretty okay with Choice 1 as well! Either way, get a fake mustache, a van dyke and some sideburns and you can look as impressive as I do at any time!

Me? I look impressive ALL THE TIME!

Staying sane…

It may come as no surprise coming from the guy who’s caricatured as an ape on his blog, but I think engaging in some immaturity from time to time is important: keeps you sane in a world that can be all too serious. So, yesterday when I received a copy of Nintendo Wii’s “Bully: Scholarship Edition” (Thanks, Wizard Managing Editor Mike Cotton!), I decided to make the stupid/immature but also entertaining/fun decision to stay up until 3 a.m. and check it out (I missed the Playstation version, since I’ve had a Nintendo as my “home” system since the original). Playing the game was a blast—though after a few hours my arms were tired from throwing Wii-punches to beat down bullies and homeless guys (Yes, I believe the game may be staining my soul)—but what this whole little vignette all boils down to is the simple fact that I’m tired as a dog (one of real tired kinds) and blogging has to take a backseat to sleeping tonight.

So, I’ll leave you with this for tonight:

A coffeemaker can just as easily be used as a teakettle, seeing as its sole function is to heat water. Half of you are saying “Duh!” but I know the other half is saying “Holy Crap!” Until recently, I was in the latter half and now I bestow this simple wisdom upon you all!

Big day of comics tomorrow, folks! I’m hittin’ the hay!

Get your time machines, we’re heading to ‘1985′

Hey folks!
So, it’s been a long Monday, but I loves ya’ll so I figured I’d post some bloggy goodness for you (Side note, all my blogs are high on fiber and will help your “passage” so you can continue flinging the poo with The Loudest Monkey!):

I read the first two issues of Mark Millar’s upcoming 1985 this weekend (yep, that’s one of the perks of being a comic book journalist—advanced PDFs of books) and my initial curiosity about the book named after a year not renowned for major events has now turned to excitement. I grabbed the book free of preconceptions, simply looking to pull back the shroud of mystery around the book I knew little to nothing about before reading. So, what did I learn? It’s about 1985! (Insert your *Gasp* here) Yes, the year! Check out the preview we ran for a little more of a tease.

No, seriously, check it out quick.

So, Red Skull in the window, Mole Man looking guy chatting up the neighbor; it looks a little crazy and the first two issues remain mysterious, leaving me to bask in the craziness for months until I get my hands on the third issue. Still, Tommy Lee Edwards’ art is just gorgeous and filled me with nostalgia for the time period while reading (Ok, I was only one year old in 1985, but you catch my drift) and the slow teasing out of this idea of comic book characters in the real world through the eyes of a tween is pretty interesting. In the end, that’s what really hammered this book home for me: little dude and main character Toby.

Millar always draws me in with his plots, but he’s never written a character I connected with more. I swear, it feels like he somehow tapped into my childhood and created this character partially from me. Toby seemed that familiar to read. He wasn’t entirely me, otherwise he’d have been more that goofy-looking, peachfuzz-faced and awkwardly tall kid with glasses, but the character rang true. He’s that kid who’s more interested in his comics than his life and he’s looking for his comics to enter his reality because it’d be way more interesting and an enjoyable reprieve from the same monotony relatable to nearly anyone who was ever 13-year-old comic reader. He’s an escapist, and every comic fan can relate to that and whether or not that Skull in the window is real or not, he’s sure something is up.

That was me at 12 or 13. I remember running around my mostly under-construction neighborhood back in suburban Atlanta, being sure that mystic forces were leaving TVs on inside these “For Sale” houses instead of lazy painters working on their final coat and that the “strange” influx of crows on my street had to be black magic and not the presence of trash-filled, construction dumpsters in every fourth driveway.

Reading 1985, I could really relate to Toby and, more than any amount of alien invasions or superpowered slugfests, that drew me into the series. I could step into the main character’s shoes in a way that, try as I might have, I just couldn’t with last week’s Kick-Ass. Now, that may simply have been due to the fact that Kick-Ass hero Dave Lizewski listens to the Goo Goo Dolls, or that my pudgy ass back when I was 13 would have been better suited to the semi-delusional, daydream tendencies of Toby than squeezing into a wetsuit underneath my clothes everyday (though I did look smashing in my swim team speedo—a dream of pale, undeveloped fleshiness). Either way, the gorgeous art and relatable character has me excited to see more of 1985 just to spend more time following the young hero’s adventures, and the continuing mystery behind the book is a bonus as well.

Send me comments aplenty on WUMB…

If you don’t have a Wordpress login and want to leave me a question or comment (without emailing me) then head over to the Wizard Universe Message Boards (aka the WUMB) and join the community and the conversation.

And so it begins…

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, comic fans and movie aficionados, readers one and all, welcome to the very first post of The Loudest Monkey!

Seeing as this is the start of things, let’s begin at the beginning: I’m Jim Gibbons, Wizard Universe’s News Editor, and if you’ve clicked the “blogs” link and decided to check out this probable demonstration of my inevitable complete immersion into the internet resulting in my own insanity, well thanks! It’s gonna be a blast!

Now, you may be wondering where a blog on a comics, entertainment and pop culture Web site gets off calling itself The Loudest Monkey, and unless you’re a zoologist or just knowledgeable of the animal kingdom, you’d be right to wonder.

Commence “clever blog title” explanation!
A gibbon is an ape that is known for its extremely vocal nature—the loudest shrieker in the jungle, if you will—I’m Jim Gibbons, and thus the name was created.

Ok, yes, a gibbon is technically an ape and not a monkey (lack of a tail signifies this for those of you taking notes), but “the most oral ape” just sounded a bit too perverse. So, the blog is The Loudest Monkey, good clean fun for everyone!

“What’s the theme behind a blog with a name like The Loudest Monkey?” I assume you might be asking yourself. Marvelous question!

As we carved out some blogs for Wizard Universe with a clear purpose—for example check out, team captain of Thursday Morning Quarterback, Andy Serwin’s recommendation blog Dr. Hot Read or David Paggi and Kiel Phegley’s jaunt off the mainstream with Indie Jones when you’re done here—I pitched The Loudest Monkey as an offbeat title to a blog for myself, Editor-in-Chief Scott Gramling chuckled at the name and here we are. So, I plan to have the potential directionlessness of a blog with a jungle-themed title allow me some free license to have one heckuva fun time on the interweb! Hopefully, one you’ll enjoy as readers as much as I foresee myself enjoying it as a writer.

Among the fun…
• Views, reviews and commentary on comics!
• Collections of my favorite quotes and comments from the Wizard Universe Message Boards!
• Answers to questions from readers like you about Wizard Universe, Wizard HQ and your hairy host!
• A rundown of the week’s top stories that you might have missed from WizardUniverse.com!
• And more…pictures, videos, things of other importance and probable hilarity!

On a serious note, let me say that when you’re reading this blog you can always expect the utmost honesty and sincerity from me. You won’t catch me ragging on a lot of books when I review or discuss things here, because frankly, there’re plenty of great comics out there so why would I waste my time writing about ones I don’t care for? I’d rather have a good time writing about a book I really dig, but that doesn’t mean there’ll be any pretense about it. If I say I like it, I do and you can trust me on that. I can’t answer every question submitted to me, but when I do answer I won’t bullsh– you, I don’t have the time. I’ll goof around and joke plenty, but when it’s all hashed out, I’m an honest fella and I can’t blog any differently than that.

Ok, lastly, I have to give a huge thanks to my good friend Seaby Bess for drawing the Loudest Monkey logo featuring the monkeyed-up caricature of me! I asked, gave some vague description of what I had in mind and he delivered—big time. And did it all out of the good of his heart for an old buddy, asking nothing in return: yep, he’s a rad dude! His artistic talents are musical as well, Check out the MySpace music page for his band Seaby and the Rules. Thanks again, Seabotron!

Alright, that’s it for this round folks! Thanks for stopping in and I’ll see ya next time!