Hard NOC Life 216: Marvel’s Fantastic Phase Four and ‘Venom’ Too

Dominic, Britney, and Keith break down Marvel’s Phase Four announcement video, as well as the trailer for Sony’s Venom sequel. Later, Keith talks to his Secret Identities partner Jerry Ma about his new Kickstarter project, The Monkey King.

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NOC Exclusive Interview: Comics Creator, Jerry Ma

Heyyy! It’s Kuya P back again with another NOC EXCLUSIVE! I recently sat down for a conversation with my pal, Comics Creator, Jerry Ma! No stranger to the NOC, Jerry is dropping a brand new comics project today for Asian American Pacific Heritage Month called, The Monkey King: A Chinatown Odyssey! Find out all about it and how you can show support for this amazing project!

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SIUniverse Celebrates Lunar New Year at The Met in NYC

A little over two weeks ago, I had the honor of leading a comics workshop with my SIUniverse partner Jerry Ma at the world renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Part of their annual Lunar New Year festival, Jerry and I helped small children and their families use inspiration from the museum’s rooms of Asian art to create their own superhero characters.

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Jerry Ma’s Legend Kickstarter Has Some Amazing Friends with Benefits

Earlier this month, I told you about a new Kickstarter project from my Secret Identities partner Jerry Ma. His epic martial arts comic was introduced to the world the day before New York Comic-Con, and in only a matter of days, the project was fully funded! So what do you do when you reach your goal so quickly? You aim for stretch goals! And since this is the final week of the campaign, Jerry is hoping to get to his fourth and final goal of $10,500, and he’s enlisted some of the top artists in comics to help him get there!

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Epic Props Kickstarts New York Comic-Con Week!

If you haven’t heard, this Thursday is the kickoff to another New York Comic-Con. In addition to hosting the very first East Coast BGNOC, I’ll be on a few panels and hanging out at the Epic Proportions booth (#2010) all weekend! Speaking of Epic Props, my boy Jerry Ma just Kickstarted his own martial arts comic, so see below for how to contribute and where to find me at NYCC.

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Epic Props’ NY Comic-Con Schedule and Exclusives

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

The countdown begins, and I’m super excited to announce the guests I’ll be having at my booth for New York Comic-Con this weekend!

It’s always a pleasure and honor for me getting friends to come do some signings, but this year just seems to have some more excitement for me.

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May the Fourth Be With You: Last Day to Preorder this Epic Tee

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

So… it’s about that time of year again.

I’m getting ready for a few comic conventions I’ll be attending this year, and originally I wasn’t  planning on making any new tees. But… this one just kinda came naturally to me. So I had to make it.

I’ll be bringing this design with me to the New York Comic-Con later this year in October. And there, I’m only going to be bringing about 36 of these in total with me. And those 36 will be spread out from sizes Small, Medium, Large, XL, and XXL. Meaning just like 6-10 of each size. But for this design only, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to open this design up for pre-order.

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R.I.P. Francis Tsai

Last night, the SIUniverse family was rocked when we learned we had lost one of our own. Francis Tsai, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2010, passed away after a long battle with the disease — just one week after celebrating his 46th birthday. In 2009, Francis became part of the SIUniverse by illustrating the story “Taking Back Troy” in the first Secret Identities volume. Though ALS slowly took away his ability to draw with his hands, he never let the disease stop him from creating art. First, he trained himself to draw using his feet, and when that was taken from him, he pioneered special technology using his eyes to create art.

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Epic Props Dispatch From NYCC: Evolution of a Vendor Booth

Want to see how a vendor booth goes from being a bunch of cardboard boxes to an elaborate thing of t-shirt selling beauty?

Today is the first day of New York Comic-Con, and Epic Proportions is once again taking up some prime real estate in the Jacob Javits Center. If you are going to be at the show, come by and say hi at Booth #2010. We even have DC Comics superstar Bernard Chang at the booth for the whole show!

Click through to see the evolution of the Epic Props Booth.

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Epic Props at New York Comic-Con Booth 2010 with Bernard Chang

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

Its that time of year again! One of my favorite times of the year!

Once again I’ll be at New York Comic-Con at the Javits Center at Booth 2010. The same location as last year and the same size booth! Meaning, its another 10×20 corner booth. Which might not mean a lot to most people, but this is a BIG deal for me.

And I have some really cool news too!

My good friend Bernard Chang will be joining me at the booth the entire con!

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Megatron/Soundwave Art Print Available at NYCC

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

Okay, so this took me much much much longer than I ever expected.  I remember sitting at my desk at work and trying to think of something fun to draw.

When it hit me to have Megatron holding Soundwave as a cassette player listening to music; honestly, I was so proud of myself. I thought it was such a badass idea. [Ed. note: Having “Awesome Mix” on Laserbeak is a nice touch.]

Then I had to draw it. And holy cow, was this grueling!

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NYAFF Poster Art Show: The Wrap-Up

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

So the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) has come to an end, at least for me. This year, I helped put together the poster show which was a LOT of work.  More than I expected, to be perfectly honest. But it was worth every sore muscle and second that was put into it.

As usual Goran, Rufus, Samuel, James, and Grady put on an amazing event. It was just so much fun to be a part of. I’m just going to let these pictures do the talking for me.

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Announcing the New York Asian Film Festival Poster Art Show

You may recall back in April, we let you know about the Old School Kung Fu Film Fest in New York City. To coincide with the films shown, the festival’s organizers commissioned the homey Jerry Ma — of Epic Proportions — to curate a little art show with world renowned artists interpreting their own movie posters for each of the films shown.

Well, this weekend, those pieces of art (and more) are going to be presented at Lincoln Center as part of the New York Asian Film Festival! Featuring the work a slew of NOC-friendly artists, including Larry Hama, Bernard Chang, Jef Castro, Ken Knudtsen, and John Jennings!

Check out the official announcement after the jump.

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More Game of Thrones Buttons from Epic Props

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

If you read my blog with any regularity, you would HAVE to know about my strong love for Game of Thrones.

I’ve been slowly drawing these 12 characters all digitally in Photoshop. And now, I have this 12 button set to show for all that work.

I’m pretty pumped about these.

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What are You Doing this Weekend?

This year, Easter Weekend is a busy one in the geekosphere. Two big cons are happening on each coast, and an old school kung fu film fest is happening in the Big Apple. And each of these events will feature some of your favorite NOCs.

So click through and make your plans to spend time with some of us this weekend.

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NOCs of the Roundtable: Favorite Asian Bad Guys

This week on Hard N.O.C. Life, I’ll be interviewing our buddies Stephen and Patrick from the National Film Society. They just premiered their Kickstarted webseries Awesome Asian Bad Guys to packed houses last week during CAAMFest in San Francisco, and I was lucky enough to have them on to talk about the series. In addition to the NFS guys, I’ll also be speaking with Yuji Okumoto, aka Chozen from The Karate Kid II.

All this talk about Awesome Asian Bad Guys got me thinking about which iconic Asian villains are most beloved by the NOCs. So we assembled around the old roundtable and shared our own Awesome Asian Bad Guys.

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Game of Thrones Buttons from Epic Proportions

by Jerry Ma | Originally posted at Epic Proportions

So Comic-Con isn’t until June [Special Edition: NYC] and October here in New York.  But I couldn’t help myself. I’m obviously a BIG BIG BIG Game of Thrones fan. So I have been wanting to draw and then press these buttons for literally like two years now.  But since this obviously isn’t like… real “work,” it just had to keep getting pushed back until I had some free time.

Which I finally got.

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Unidentified is Now Available to Own on DVD/Digital

233We talked about it last week, but today is the day you can own the creepy and comedic sci-fi thriller Unidentified on DVD and digital. Just click here to find out all the different ways you can purchase or download the movie for yourself.

In the meantime, we’re going to be giving away a 19” x 13” collage, color print of the Jodieman Universe of characters drawn and signed by the artist Jerry Ma! If you’re lucky, maybe we’ll get Parry and Eddie to sign it too!

All you have to do is RT the following tweet, and if we can get to 100 retweets, we’ll send the print to one of our lucky followers.

Check out the synopsis itself after the jump, as well as the official trailer and a special behind-the-scenes peek at one of the signature moments of the movie.

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Remembering Dwayne McDuffie

Dwayne McDuffie is one of the most important figures in the history of the comic book industry. Perhaps that’s hyperbole, but I don’t think so. I know that his work has left an indelible mark on me, and the world is a lesser place without him in it.

I didn’t know Dwayne McDuffie personally. I only met him once. Briefly. It was in San Diego in 2009. The fellas (Jerry Ma, Jeff Yang, Parry Shen) and I were at Comic-Con to promote Secret Identities. Dwayne was on a panel moderated by Jeff, and the five of us were able to chat for a bit afterwards.

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Walter Simonson’s Ragnarök Tees from Epic Proportions

If you haven’t heard, there’s a little independent movie that just opened in theaters this weekend called Thor: The Dark World. Last month, friend of the blog Jerry Ma had these exclusive t-shirts — featuring artwork by legendary Thor artist Walter Simonson — for sale at the Epic Proportions/SIUniverse booth at New York Comic-Con. Now that the con is over, Jerry’s offering limited quantities of these shirts for sale at epicprops.com.

simonson ragnarok 1Featuring artwork from Simonson’s upcoming Ragnarök comic with IDW Publishing, why not grab one of these shirts before heading to the multiplex and feeding your eyeballs the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? You could always opt for a different shirt in Epic’s line of “Signature Teesfeaturing some of Walt’s artwork, including his take on the Norse God of Thunder, too.

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Secret Identities Revealed

Six years ago this month, five people gathered in a Brooklyn living room to pore through stacks of manuscripts and art portfolios in order to decide on what to include in a little project that would eventually go on to be known as Secret Identities.

To commemorate the occasion, Keith (@the_real_chow) welcomes his SIUniverse partners Jeff Yang (@originalspin), Jerry Ma (@epicprops), Jef Castro (@pointnquestion) — and a special cameo appearance by Parry Shen (@parryshen) — to reminisce about Secret Identities and Shattered

Look for SIUniverse to represent on both coasts next week as Keith and Jerry will be holding it down at New York Comic-Con (BOOTH 2010!) and Jeff will be in Los Angeles for the opening of Marvels and Monsters at the Japanese American National Museum.

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Meanwhile, on The Internet

Apparently, while the Nerds were all consumed with Star Trek last week, other stuff was happening on the Internet. So here’s a brief rundown of things you might have missed because you were too busy exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilizations. But first, let me get a little self-congratulations and self-promotion out of the way.

Welcome Pop Candy readers! And a big thanks to Whitney for giving us a little plug in her USA Today column. We hope you all enjoy the NOC community and join us as we look at “pop culture with a different perspective.”

Okay, that was the congrats, now here’s the shameless self-promo.

IWTWAEOver the weekend, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center opened its traveling Asian American history banner exhibit “I Want the Wide American Earth” at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles — after spending the last three months on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. In honor of the exhibit’s West Coast opening, the Smithsonian APA Center unveiled an online digital comic I edited that features key moments in Asian American history illustrated by some of the top names in the comic industry, including Bernard Chang, Ming Doyle, GB Tran and my SIUniverse partners-in-crime Jerry Ma and Jef Castro.

You can see the comic online here. A downloadable version is still forthcoming.

So there’s that. And after the jump is other stuff on the web you should be reading:

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