Mouse Guard is the New York Times bestselling series of graphic novels in a classic square children’s hardcover book format by author-illustrator David Petersen. Petersen has stacked up awards for his series like no other comics creator, including for Mouse Guard: Black Axe, the Harvey Award in 2014, for Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard Volume 1, the Eisner Award in 2011, for Mouse Guard: Fall: 1152, two Eisner Awards in 2008, for Mouse Guard: Winter: 1152, the Eisner Award in 2008, and for Mouse Guard: The Role Playing Game, the Origins Award in 2009, among others. A movie with Fox was in pre-production before the Disney-Fox merger cancelled it. Now fans of the internationally popular series can purchase fully customized miniature figures from Crazy Bricks featuring Petersen’s fantastical characters.
Tag Archive: Kickstarter
Review by C.J. Bunce
Originally self-published via Kickstarter as With Kind Regards from Kindergarten, a new steampunk children’s chapter book arrives at bookstores this month from Insight Kids, renamed The Clockwork War. Bookended by a grandmother trying to persuade a hesitant granddaughter to give kindergarten a try, in the style of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, Kline creates a fantasy tale about an orphanage, two friends, and a giant oak tree to nudge the granddaughter along. Addressing those time-honored angsts of childhood: bullies, advertising, commercialism, roaches, the lack of monsters under one’s bed, plastics, progress for progress’ sake, soot and smog, and henchmen, author Adam Kline assembles a clockwork fantasyland in a fable style pointing young ones to the inevitable lesson that at some point everyone must “rise to the occasion.”
Karlheinz Intergarten and Leopold Croak begin their story under the tutelage of Miss Understood and her orphanage, both fast friends with active imaginations. Miss Understood will be likeable for kids, full of mixed-up (but apt) sayings like “the early nerd gets the worm,” “all’s well that smells well,” and “money can fry happiness.” While playing in the giant oak tree during a storm, Leopold is struck by a lightning bolt, and loses his imagination. Lonely when Leopold no longer wants to play, Karlheinz (Karl) leaves town to become apprentice to a clockmaker, whose companion is a clockwork mouse named Pim. Many years later Karl becomes a brilliant clockmaker in his own right, and when his mentor dies he returns with Pim to the town of his youth to find it dying and polluted, driven into the ground by the richest man in town: his old friend Leopold, who has lost sight of fun and friendship and focuses only on his corporation and his moneymaking, popular line of electronic toy girl dolls. He has seemingly forgotten the needs of his real daughter, who is perched above town away from all others, allergic to everything but cucumber tea.
“Some rats are evil, Pim,” sighed Karl. “I won’t argue that. But they’re almost never born that way.” And this is true–of rats, of cats, of dogs, and everything else. It’s especially true of people.
A clockwork fly and mouse, a hungry dog, cats’ fear of any loud noise, a giant thug, a pirate ship, and a dragon all come together under Karl’s guidance to teach lessons to both Leopold and the granddaughter at home hearing the tale. Kline pulls themes and styles from a variety of classic and modern sources, from Pinocchio to Edward Scissorhands, from Aesop’s Fables to the Grimm television series and Mouse Guard, and from The Invisible Man and Hugo to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
One thing missing from the latest round of Star Wars toys is the miniature catalogs that were included in playsets and vehicles back in the 1970s and 1980s. These were not only features of Star Wars toys. Other lines, such as LEGO brick sets, included similar booklets. As a kid you either learned about the next round of Kenner toys from commercials tucked between Saturday morning cartoons or the big deal for all kids each year–the Sears and JC Penney Christmas catalogs.
Along with the inserts and catalogs, kids would learn about new toys from other sources, like advertisements in comic books, magazines, and even local newspapers. It’s these advertisements that Star Wars fan and chronicler Philip Reed has collected for his next book about toys. Now fully funded is his latest Kickstarter campaign, A Galaxy of Action Figure Savings–a companion to last year’s Collect These Figures and Accessories–a 96-page hardcover book loaded with more newspaper ads, toy photos, commercial screenshots, and images of related marketing materials.
We’ve read Reed’s eighth of now nine books on the history of toys, last year’s Collect These Figures and Accessories, an unofficial overview interspersed with trivia and close-up photos of marketing materials and the actual trilogy tie-in toys spanning 1977 to 1986. It’s easy to spend hours gawking at these artifacts of the past again, comparing prices, and studying those items that may or may not have made it to store shelves. But fair warning, comparing the costs of action figures to today’s prices is a bit depressing.
If you happened to watch the men’s or women’s cycling races at this year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, you know cycling can be exciting (and dangerous!). We don’t know if the latest technology in cycling will result in top racing speeds, but the coolest design we’ve seen since the Montague Hummer folding bicycle was introduced in 2002 is the new Cyclotron. The hubless “smart bike” is inspired by the Tron video game, especially the lightcycle style from the 2010 movie Tron: Legacy. If only it came with a Daft Punk helmet!
The Cyclotron is the idea of a company called Cyclotron Cycles, and the result is a successful funding campaign with 132 backers that raised more than $50,000 via Kickstarter this past July. Funders are still welcome to participate, with bike order options between $1,330 for a 12-speed and $2,990 for the deluxe 18-speed model still available. Not only is the design state-of-the-art, so are the extra features.
It’s made from ultra-lightweight “space grade carbon fiber” with spokeless, airless, 6,000 mile capable wheels that actually can store your groceries or supplies as you travel. What?!? The website has the details. The Cyclotron has an electronic gear box and chainless drive train. Integrated smart lights and Halo LED wheels will make you visible at night like no other bike (and you’ll look very cool, too). It has a bike laser lane projector to alert those around you. And if you don’t like the futuristic lightcycle look (gasp)–they offer decals to change the look altogether.
Check out the Cyclotron in action:
Just how big is the Veronica Mars movie that was funded by fans via Kickstarter last year with more than $5.7 million in contributions? Kristen Bell posted on her Twitter feed last night the new full-length trailer for the March 14 release, and when I clicked on it I was viewer number 301. It now has more than 675,000 views, in just a day. That’s just those active followers of Bell & company. It’s the first big genre news of the year and is further proof Hollywood should have stepped up and made this happen so fans didn’t need to. The ultimate proof will be seen in March, when we get to see actual box office numbers.
Unlike the first trailer, this new preview is smartly edited, showing watchers enough of the story to remind us why we liked Veronica, her dad (Enrico Colantoni), and her friends from day one. There’s plenty of Dick (Ryan Hansen) and Leo (Max Greenfield)–in fact they get some of the best moments in the trailer. Even Jamie Lee Curtis and real-life Kristen Bell hubby Dax Shepard have cameos. And a Neptune High School class reunion is a great excuse to bring back the rest of the regulars, including Percy Daggs III, Krysten Ritter, Tina Majorino, and Francis Capra.