Fellow Muttpop artists: Gobi, Bill and Fabien have donned themselves the Catfish Deluxe and are doing a live art performance on Friday 29th and Saturday 30th at 6pm at the Angouleme International Comic Festival in France. Angouleme the biggest comic convention in Europe (think of it as the San Diego Comic-con in a castle!). Those lucky enough to attend can watch the character designers behind Tequila, El Panda, Red Demon, Dr. Destruction and King Katch work their doodling magic live and on stage. Sadly Jerry and I will not be there... but we're sure the Catfish Deluxe will put on a helluva show!

For more details and information CLICK HERE. Some teaser illustrations can be seen below!

I have just received confirmation from our distributor, DKE Toys Distribution, that the solicitation for the latest Frank Kozik X Muttpop collaboration, Tequila Ocran Ocinatas goes out tonight. That means that beginning tomorrow, your favorite Designer Toy retailers will be able to order Ocran Ocinatas from DKE. We figured that Ocran Ocinatas was an appropriate way to start 2010. I hope he was worth the wait!

Today No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle comes out in the US for the Nintendo Wii. I'm really looking forward to playing it. Suda 51 created an amazing universe in the first game and I am very happy that we'll have another opportunity to play in it one more time. From a stylistic standpoint, there are very few games as cool as NO MORE HEROES. It's got a great sense of humor, beautiful character designs, and a very refreshing take of the West Coast. As with what our artists do on Lucha Libre, it often takes an outsider's eyes to effectively distill the beautiful qualities of an environment. Even though Suda 51 and Grasshopper Studios are in Japan, they really got the tone of the West Coast with its mix of Surf, Punk, and Urban style. And, unlike some of the wackier fashionable choices you often find in Japan videogames (*cough* Squaresoft *cough*)... Grasshoppers Studios found a nice mix between the bolder design choices of Japan, geek culture, and general fashion. To me, the No More Heroes cast of characters are some of the coolest and most refreshing designs since Kojima's Metal Gear Solid. The characters are eclectic, beautiful, and yet somehow feel like they organically belong to the same universe. It's a delicate balance that is rarely found. As a showcase of the strong design found in the first No More Heroes Game, I've chosen some of my favorite character designs from the amazing Creative Uncut resource library. I've also included a trailer to No More Heroes 2 below.

With the release of Suda 51's NO MORE HEROES 2 on the Wii a day from release, I can't help but feel the tinge of nostalgia for the good ol' Beat 'Em Up Arcade games. For you little kids out there, there was once a time when arcade games reigned supreme. Yeah, you had your NES or Sega Master System, but the capabilities of those system paled in comparison to the stuff you'd find in the arcade. I clearly recall the first time I saw my first 'Beat 'Em Up' game. I couldn't BELIEVE what they were able to get away with!

I was in some bowling league at the Panorama Bowl... but I could care less about bowling. I sucked (and so did the majority of my bowling team), so I'd frolic through my 10 frames of bowling quickly enough to play a few arcade games before my mom came to pick me up. As with most bowling alleys at the time, Panorama Bowl had many of the latest and greatest arcade games. But there was a whole new level of buzz the day that DOUBLE DRAGON showed up. At the time, that game was all kinds of nasty! Your girlfriend (that you see the bad guys PUNCH) was dressed pretty raunchy. You could SMASH dudes with your knee. You could even pick up a baseball bat (a FREAKIN' bat!) and start wacking guys in the stomach. It was 9-year-old heaven. I couldn't watch a single Rated R film... but I could get away with beating the digital crap out of pixel thugs at the Bowling Alley arcade!

Let's ignore the fact that I was so intimidated by DOUBLE DRAGON that I'd end up watching OTHER people play more then play it myself.  I found the confidence to play an occasional game during a rare instance when nobody was around. And during those times I played, my adrenaline was going so hard that I could barely play. DOUBLE DRAGON was the start of a series of Beat 'Em Ups.

I remember BAD DUDES came out right after Michael Jackson's BAD album. It was super lame, but somehow we were all suckered into it because it had ninjas and your character screamed, "I'M BAD!!!" after beating level bosses.

FINAL FIGHT was the game that took Beat 'Em Ups to a whole new level. The graphics were INCREDIBLE. And every character was beyond cool. I had a huge man-crush on Guy (kind of still do). Guy was freakin' awesome. The way he moved screamed bad-ass. Then you find out he's some sort of ninja... and anything 'Ninja' in the 80s was automatically placed in the 'Cool' Department. For me, there's few arcade Beat 'Em Ups that rival FINAL FIGHT in terms of utter-bad-assery. I remember really digging things like the first Ninja Turtles Arcade game and getting blown away by the epic 3-4 screened X-men arcade cabinet... but, as a game, none of those really felt as awesome as FINAL FIGHT.

The Beat 'Em Up successfully made gaming a communal experience. It was fun playing alongside a friend or stranger. And there was so much going on that it was really fun to watch other people play as well.

The genre found quite a following on the 8-bit consoles with various incarnations of Double Dragon. While they weren't bad, they didn't really stand up to the arcade experience (although I LOVE the cover art to Double Dragon II... shown below). RIVER CITY RANSOM was the first game to expand the conventions of the beat 'em up game into something richer and deeper for the home console gaming experience. But it's graphics (although stylistically PERFECT for the limitations of the 8-bit NES) couldn't really compete with what was being offered in the Arcade.

It's nice to see that the Beat 'Em Up genre lives on in games like NO MORE HEROES, MADWORLD, and GOD HAND. Brings the old gamer in me back to my time as a 9-year-old at the Panorama Bowl!

DOUBLE DRAGON

BAD DUDES

FINAL FIGHT

The cat's out of the bag: Muttpop co-owner and Lucha Libre co-creator Jerry Frissen is partnering up with Sean 'Cheeks' Galloway on a new French comic series from Soleil called DOCTOR STEEL. Many of you may be familiar with Cheeks beautiful art work on the Teen Titans chapter in DC's Wednesday Comics. He's done a variety of covers for various Marvel and DC comics. Sean's also got some beautiful toys and comics based on his BASTION 7 universe. He's probably best known for the character designs he's done on a variety of animated projects including the HELLBOY ANIMATED SERIES and the SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN animated TV show. Yup, Cheeks is a busy dude. But, somehow, someway, he's found time in his always busy schedule to work with Jerry on DOCTOR STEEL! I've had the fortune of being the middle-man on this project... cleaning up Jerry's English scripts for Sean Galloway to work his magic on. From, what I've seen, this is going to be a beautiful project.

DOCTOR STEEL is Cheeks and Jerry's unique take on the Pulp stories of yesteryear. Expect plenty of fist fights and blimps in this one. Sean blew us away with his gorgeous teaser image (seen below)! Soleil's publishing this one for the French language market. I'm not too sure what the US publishing plans are... but we'll be sure it's out for you to enjoy.

As they say: you are what you eat. I'd argue that the saying holds true beyond the realm of nutrition and into gaming. You want to see what my gaming taste is like? Well then, take a look at my Playstation game collection. I don't have a Playstation 3, but a quick glimpse at my library of Playstation 1 & 2 games makes a clear indication at my 'sophisticated' palette! In case you have a hard time reading the game spines in the photo, games are as follows:

PLAYSTATION 1 GAMES: One Piece Mansion, Parappa The Rapper (this one's actually my buddy's... I regretfully sold my old copy), Um Jammer Lammy, Heart of Darkness, Metal Gear Solid, Strider 1 & 2

PLAYSTATION 2 GAMES: GrimGrimoire, Odin Sphere, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Katamari Damacy, We <heart> Katamari, Gitarooman, Rez, Space Channel 5 Special Edition, Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero 1 & 2, Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, Street Fighter 2 & 3, Okami, God Hand, God of War 1 & 2, Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 (the original Special Editon versions), Zone of Enders: The 2nd Runner, Gradius V, and that black case is a used copy of Contra: Shattered Soldier (super bummed I couldn't find a copy with that awesome Ashley Wood cover :-(  ).