I recently just finished reading Dark Horse's reprint collection of Koike & Kamimura's "Lady Snowblood" manga. The cover design is a very snappy homage to Tarantino's "Kill Bill" poster design...which is very fitting since the "Lady Snowblood" movie series were a huge inspiration for the "Kill Bill Vol. 1". In fact Lucy Liu's character is Tarantino's reinterpretation of Lady Snowblood.But enough about all those references. This is the series that started it all! Published in Japan from 1972-73, it's a rousing read that celebrates Koike's narrative mix of historical detail and violent fiction. With a deadly female protaganist, Koike explores the fascinating relationship between sexuality and violence. The stories and art are a bit scattered in the first 2 volumes but gets really good in volumes 3 & 4 as Lady Snowblood mission of revenge becomes the focal point of the story.I love Kamimura's interpretation of Lady Snowblood. From the very first page illustrated, he captured the perfect mix of vulnerability, beauty, lust and ferocity. With every panel of Lady Snowblood shown, you can understand how the people of Snowblood's world fall in love with her beauty...and yet there's still that glimmer of bloodlust in her eyes!One of my small quibbles with Kamimura's art is he doesn't render everything in the comics with the same affection and passion he obviously has for Lady Snowblood. Despite all that, it's a read I highly recommend.

I'm looking forward to the new Kanye West album coming out on September 11th. Kanye seems super annoying and arrogant in his interviews...but as long as he's making good music, I can't complain. I first opened my eyes to Kanye's talent when he produced Talib Kweli's "Get By". Never in a million years would I have imagined that he'd become the "superstar" artist that he now is.His first major single, "Stronger" samples some Daft Punk. I dig the song and love the video's references to the 80s interpretation of sci-fi and Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira". I also included Daft Punks original song so you can see how "Stronger" compares to what it sampled.Kanye West's "Stronger"Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby" (Thank's to BONGO for the "education"!)

Man, we're really starting to be on the roll with the Muttpop Toy coverage! Here's the latest pics of Kozik's reinterpretations of Mini Gobi. Two of them are inspired by Kozik's designs for Red Demon and Dr. Destruction. Guess which one!

Here's something you didn't know about me: I have a crush on Samus. Now, before you think I'm a complete geek, let me explain! When the first Metroid game came out, I was a 9 year old boy with a HUGE obsession for robots and cyborgs. I was the perfect age for things like Transformers and Go Bots. In fact one of my clearest memories is receiving the original Megatron Transformer figure at my Kindergarten graduation.I instantly fell in love the the robotic/cyborg design of Metroid's main character (Samus). I hated the game (it was way too hard and confusing)...but I'd obsessively study the Metroid instruction manual for every beautifully rendered full color drawing of Samus. Samus had all sorts of cool weapons like missiles and bombs. Samus could transform into a ball. Samus also had that mysterious ninja quality my OTHER favorite characters had like Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.One day, a videogame-loving friend revealed to me Samus' biggest secret of all: Samus was a girl! I couldn't believe it. There was NO WAY a girl could be so cool. But then he had me come over to play Metroid, type in the "justin bailey" password and "BAM", there she was with her long green hair and skinny pixelated body. I was super confused...but I was also in love! :-)I'm looking forward to Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii. I hope it's another wonderful adventure featuring my biggest video game crush!

You asked for it. We give it to you!Here is a glimpse at four possible poses Fabien came up with for the King Katch figure. We decided to go for a pose that is both dynamic and relatively stable. There have been significant changes to King Katch's overall look since Fabien began developing poses for the character. Fabien is currently working on changing his King Katch turnaround design to better reflect how King Katch ended up looking in the pages of Lucha Libre.

Man, we are so lucky to have such an amazing team of artists working on the Lucha Libre comic! I recently was checking out Fabien's Blog and was taken aback by all of the amazing stuff he has posted. There are a TON of gorgeous character designs and a nice collection of Summer Movie spoofs that I assume were published in the French Tcho Comic Anthology Magazine. It's all in French, but no matter what languages you can read it's easy to take in the beauty of Fabien's work! In addition to designing Mini Fabien and Mini Kozik, Fabien is the artist behind Tikitis. His King Katch designer toy will be available through Muttpop in 2008.