It’s time once again for our Friday comic book cosplay feature, spotlighting the best superhero (and villain) related costuming from the cosplay community.  We’re casting the spotlight onto those cosplayers who we think deserve special recognition for coming up with the best costumes, whatever the budget, and the photographers who capture them for posterity.

Gamma Squad is committed to giving a voice to the cosplay community that thrives in groups like our friends at TheSuperheroCostumingForum.com. Each week we spotlight our favorite costumes and each month we host a cosplay contest. We’ll be picking a theme for each month and inviting cosplayers, costumers and photographers to submit related pictures of their work to our Flickr group to be considered. We’ll then pick our top choices and post them on Gamma Squad for the adoration of all.

The theme for the upcoming month is:

• Super Villains and Diabolical Foes
  

For now, enjoy this week’s selection!

Read the rest of this entry »

Trackers Earth, Mike Mignola, and Dark Horse Comics are opening a B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) Training Camp for children aged 9 through 17 in the Portland, Oregon, area (which is also home to Dark Horse Comics, publisher of Mignola’s Hellboy comics featuring the B.P.R.D.). Registration is open now for the five-day program in July at a cost of $292 for the 9-10 age group and $398 for 11-13 and 14-17 age groups.

And check out what these lucky bastards will be learning, according to TrackersPDX:

• tactical training
• survival in any environment
• martial arts and self-defense specific to praeternatural entities
• hand to hand weaponry (foam swords, bows and more)
• investigation and forensics
• folklore & mythology
• potion and charms 101
• telepathy training
• gadgets of the occult: EMF detectors, polarized lenses and other paranormal investigative gear
• comparative analogy and physiology of monsters
• construct your own quality foam swords and training weapons
• meet the artists of the comic book that documents the adventures of the B.P.R.D.
• Bureau history and paranormal research

So kids these days have awesome Hellboy-themed summer camps they can proceed to not appreciate, and my neighborhood had “beat the smallest kid with sticks” competitions. On the bright side, I have developed awesome defenses to stick-based attacks.

[Sources: TrackersPDX via BleedingCool and TheMarySue; Image credit: tir-ri (Riikka Auvinen)]

We occasionally light-heartedly josh Dark Horse Comics around here for their tendency lately to turn out collectibles instead of publishing comics, but the House of Richardson does actually have some great stuff hitting shelves.

Mike Mignola recently broke out what’s up for Anung Un Rama in 2012, and how he’s going to top Hellboy in a lucha libre match with Frankenstein’s Monster (no, seriously):

• We’re finally going to see a resolution to that whole “he’s got a stone hand that’s going to end the world” plotline that’s been popping up occasionally during the series. Mignola has promised to wrap that up for good this year in the main Hellboy miniseries for 2012.
• “Pickens County Horror” will embroil the B.P.R.D. with what we desperately hope are hick vampires.
• “The Transformation of J.H. O’Donnell” gets into how Dr. O’Donnell went, well, bonkers.
• And finally we’ve got “B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth: The Long Death”, which sees John Arcudi return to the series.

In short, it looks like a great year for Hellboy fans. Check out the full interview over at io9.

Yes. Balls are touching.

Beasts of Burden started out as an Eisner-winning short story “Stray” in The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings. The story can be read for free here.  Then writer Evan Dorkin and illustrator Jill Thompson turned it into a great series, even pairing up with Mike Mignola to do a Hellboy oneshot.  Is that Hellboy holding a pug to the right?  Yes.  Yes it is.  ALL ARGUMENTS INVALID.

Now Andrew Adamson (director of Chronicles of Narnia and Shrek) will be producing a CG-animated feature film based on the paranormal-event-investigating dogs (and one cat) of Burden Hill.

Strange Weather Productions’ Aron Warner and Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson will co-produce, with Jeff Fierson and Keith Goldberg serving as executive producers, respectively. Reel FX (all three Open Season movies) are slated to bring the BoB characters to CGI life when and if the time comes. [ComicsAlliance]

It’s too early to say if this will really get made, but let’s just pretend like everything’s okay even while mom is setting a bathtub full of clothes on fire and dad is blackout drunk again.  That’s always worked all right in the past.  Perhaps I’ve said too much.  Anyway, there will be all-new Beasts of Burden adventures to read about in the upcoming Dark Horse Presents numbers 4, 6, and 8.  There will be.  There will.

10. Hulk #34

Writer: Jeff Parker    Artist: Carlos Pagulayan

I’m right there with ya Rulk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Awhile back we reported on a Guillermo Del Toro interview where Del Toro said Hellboy 3 wasn’t filming yet because Ron Perlman didn’t want to sit for six or seven hours in a makeup chair every day when he doesn’t have to deal with that to star in the awesomely-badass “Sons of Anarchy”.  Perlman tells a different story in a long interview at io9. After discussing Season of the Witch and Del Toro’s upcoming H.P. Lovecraft adaptation At The Mountains of Madness, Perlman talked about Hellboy 3:

How can we convince you to sit through 7 hours of make up every day to make Hellboy 3?
All you have to do is convince to Guillermo to say yes to making the movie.
That’s funny, because whenever people ask Guillermo when he’s going to make Hellboy 3 he always says that we have to convince you!
Yeah he’s blaming me and I’m blaming him. I know it’s kind of like Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis, or Abbott and Costello. Hellboy 2 was not an easy shoot. Both of us walked away very tired and very beat up. But a lot of time [has passed] and lot of water has gone under the bridge, I’m well healed — and just knowing what his idea was for the third installment of the trilogy and how epic and theatrical and powerful a film it would be, it’s got to be made. I really feel like its got to be made. It would be a great disservice to the first two films if you don’t see how they wind up.

He went on to say the third movie would show Hellboy facing his destiny as a destroyer of mankind, and (this shouldn’t be a spoiler after this much time has passed) we’ll get to see if those twins Liz is carrying grow horns and start fires. (Don’t all babies do that? Little bastards.) You can read that whole interview at io9.  After the jump is the audio from another interview with Perlman: his great, candid, swear-word-filled appearance yesterday on the Opie and Anthony Show.  Bonus: Louis CK was also in studio.  If I could just listen to this clip while being massaged by a unicorn, all my dreams would come true.

Read the rest of this entry »