Shannon Cottrell

Playing in Uncle Scrooge's gold depository on opening night of "Entertainment System" at iam8bit.

See also:
*Entertainment System at iam8bit (Pics)

Were you the type of kid who raced home from school to catch DuckTales? Did you have the theme song memorized? Did you spend hours playing the video game? Then maybe you should head down to iam8bit's Echo Park headquarters and go for a swim through Scrooge McDuck's pool of money.

For "Entertainment System," the latest retro-gaming themed art show from iam8bit, the group created a real life representation of the vault where Uncle Scrooge would dive head first into a sea of coins. "We are huge fans of the DuckTales game," says Noah Lane, the senior project coordinator at iam8bit, referencing the 1989 adventure game based on the series. "We've been researching and working on it for months."

The Echo Park firm worked closely with Capcom to bring the vault to life. Capcom, the video game company responsible for a slew of hit games, was behind the original DuckTales video game and recently announced DuckTales: Remastered. The new version of the old game will be available for multiple systems later this summer.

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Liz Ohanesian

Team Bent-Con prepares to march in Sunday's L.A. Pride parade.

See also:
*Bent-Con: Bringing LGBTQ Comics and Genre Entertainment to Los Angeles
*Sean Z. Maker: Founder of Bent-Con, the LBGT Pop Culture Convention
*Bent-Con, the LGBT Pop Culture Convention, Is Trying to Grow Bigger

"I'm a little overwhelmed because I didn't think so many people would come up to our booth," says E. Salvador Hernandez near the end of a sunny afternoon at Los Angeles Pride, "but they have been."

Hernandez is the art director for Bent-Con, the city's premiere LGBT pop culture convention. He's wearing a Groovie Ghoulies t-shirt, referencing a punk group who took its name from a 1970s cartoon series. Throughout the afternoon, other members of the convention team have been wandering in and out of the booth. There's Bellz, whose bright orange hair is pulled back with the sort of cat ear hairband you typically see at anime conventions, and Jenna Pitman, dressed in a gothic black corset.

Zach Phoenix, who cosplayed Doctor Who's eleventh Doctor earlier this morning, still kind of is that character. In the afternoon heat, he took off the shirt, replaced with pants with shorts, but left the bow tie, suspenders and fez in place. There are others milling around the booth as well, a guy dressed in all black, another guy in a Star Wars t-shirt. Behind them is a wall full of comic book-styled art, along with Bent-Con pamphlets and assorted geeky odds and ends. If this wasn't the sort of crowd you were expecting to see in West Hollywood during Pride weekend, maybe you weren't alone.

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Liz Ohanesian

Jody Wheeler, Sean Z. Maker and PK Eiselt of Bent-Con outside of L.A. Glaneur

See also:
*Sean Z. Maker: Founder of Bent-Con, the LBGT Pop Culture Convention
*Bent-Con: Bringing LGBTQ Comics and Genre Entertainment to Los Angeles

Almost three years ago, Bent-Con came to life in Silver Lake. Since then, the pop culture convention dedicated to LGBT media has moved around town and grown immensely. This year, the event will take place on Veteran's Day Weekend, November 8-10, at the Burbank Marriott Convention Center. On Saturday afternoon, though, Bent-Con returned to the old neighborhood for some art and fundraising. Convention president and founder Sean Z. Maker, who L.A. Weekly recently profiled for this year's People Issue, described it as a "full circle moment."

Bent-Con: Live Action Figure Draw and Fundraiser took over L.A. Glaneur, a small Santa Monica Boulevard boutique with a reputation for hosting art and fashion events. The models, naked save for their expertly applied body paint, stood perfectly poised despite the afternoon heat. The artists crowded together in front of them, sketchpads in hand, easels in place, as they set to work on pieces that would go up for auction later that evening.

This was, as Maker says, a "test drive" for an addition to the Bent-Con's programming schedule coming this November. Last year, Bent-Con offered cosplay drawing, where artists could exercise their sketching skills with models dressed in costume. That was a hit. Judging from Saturday's turnout, figure drawing has captivated the crowd as well. Maker says that this year they will be adding figure drawing sessions inside one of the convention's hotel suites.

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Image courtesy of Adult Swim

See also:
*Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick and the Cult of 'The Venture Bros.'
*The Venture Bros.: Convention Do's and Don'ts for Fans

At long last, The Venture Bros. are back. This Sunday, season five will make it's much anticipated premiere. More than two years have passed since the rousing conclusion of the show's fourth season on Adult Swim.

Although it didn't take long for word to spread that the popular animated series was picked up for fifth and sixth seasons, it did take a while for new episodes to come to fruition. In the meantime, the team behind the show released a music video and exposé for the Venture compound's house band, Shallow Gravy, and a Halloween special.

Recently, we caught up with Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, the masterminds of the Venture universe, to talk about the things you might not necessarily know about the show.

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Four Days at Dragon*Con

See also: *Dragon*Con vs. San Diego Comic-Con: Which Convention Should You Attend?
*Stan Lee Has His Own Convention Now: Stan Lee's Comikaze

A good documentary can do more than entertain or educate the audience. These non-fiction films can be a wealth of inspiration too. They can lend insight into the creative process or impart some wisdom from famed creators. More often than not, they show that making awesome things happen is never easy.

Below are five nerdy and inspiration pop culture documentaries. From a behind-the-scenes look at one of the world's biggest film franchises to the story of a legendary comic book creator, these movies are filled with humor, drama and few good lessons too.

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Liz Ohanesian

HUSH presents "Unseen" at Corey Helford Gallery

There is no single process for HUSH. The U.K.-based artist mixes methods as he applies a combination of paint (acrylic and the spray can variety), screen print and ink techniques to his canvases. In the end, the results are exquisitely layered paintings that people sometimes confuse for collage work.

Saturday night, HUSH unveiled his latest show "Unseen" at Corey Helford Gallery. The effort involves 22 pieces, including large paintings and smaller studies. This was his first show with the Culver City gallery, which has come to prominence in the past few years for showcasing some of the brightest talents in the pop surrealism and street art world. HUSH himself falls into the latter camp, and he worked on a few street pieces while he in town.

HUSH's love of street art goes back to his youth. "I did a bit of graffiti," he says of his formative years. "I wasn't a big graffiti artist."

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Liz Ohanesian

Vintage video games at BlasterCon

Tucked into a corner of the Warner Center Marriott, a mid-sized room has been transformed into The Cantina. For three days beginning Friday, the place was open 24 hours a day as part of a new fan convention called BlasterCON.

The Cantina was lined in retro video games: Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Gauntlet and so many other coin-op classics you might remember from the heyday of arcades. There was a stage in the front of the room prepared to host a bevy of musicians. Some of the artists on the schedule played music inspired by science fiction and fantasy. One guest makes music with Game Boys. The house band was called Science Fiction Jazz.

BlasterCon chairman Todd Whitesel remembers when the BlasterCON team started working on this room. "It felt like that scene in Xanadu, where you're in the derelict warehouse and the potential of the space suddenly starts occurring to you," he says.

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Liz Ohanesian

Geoff Johns and his dog hang out at Golden Apple on Free Comic Book Day

Have you walked around a comic book store or convention and wondered why so many people are wearing Green Lantern t-shirts? Geoff Johns might have something to do with that. The comic book writer helmed the series for nine years. He reintroduced Hal Jordan as the famed superhero with Green Lantern: Rebirth. The story was successful, so much so that he and artist Ethan Van Sciver continued to build this universe with the story Sinestro Corps Wars.

"A couple years into our run, we introduced the concept of an emotional spectrum," Johns says while sitting in a meeting room at Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood.

The premise of the "emotional spectrum" is simple, as Johns explains it. You have Green Lanterns. They're identified by a color and are the embodiment of "power and courage." So, why not have other Lanterns who were also identified by colors and emotions? John gives a brief breakdown. There are the Red Lanterns, "people and beings who lost somebody, who were driven by revenge." There are Blue Lanterns. They are motivated by "faith and hope" and live by the motto "All could be well."

"It wasn't the colors that made them different," says Johns, "but the emotions that they were driven by."

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Shannon Cottrell

By Liz Ohanesian

See also:
*How a Star Wars Art Show Came to Be
*Elvis Mitchell Picks the 10 Best James Bond Openings
*Skyfall Review: James Bond Now Has a Superhero-Style Origin Story

Plasticgod's small, block-y paintings stand up on a top shelf inside Little Tokyo gallery/boutique Q Pop. There's Jaws, the large villain from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. There's a girl done up in gold, reminiscent of the opening title sequence from Goldfinger. In the middle is Bond, James Bond. It's a painting of the Roger Moore incarnation of the famed spy, dressed in the yellow ski suit that marks 007's infamous jump off a cliff in The Spy Who Loved Me. Hanging from the painting and over the edge of the shelf is a Union Jack parachute.

On Saturday night, Q Pop celebrated half-a-century of big-screen James Bond adaptations with a group art show inspired by the film franchise. The collection in "James Bond: 50 Years of 007 Art Celebration" was voluminous. Art was squeezed into every nearly every corner of the shop. There were paintings and prints, a small selection of DVDs and other themed gift items and a slew of golden guns carefully placed across the shelves.

See also: James Bond: 50 Years of 007 Art @ Q Pop Slideshow

Q Pop owner Christopher Mitchell played a selection of Bond themes over the sound system. Some people arrived dressed in Bond-like tuxes. One man stood in a corner, petting a plushie as though he were Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the Bond villain and obvious inspiration for Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers universe.

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Teen Titans Go!

See also:
*ThunderCats to Appear at San Diego Comic-Con Before Cartoon Network Premiere

Teen Titans are heading back to Cartoon Network beginning tonight. This time around, though, the young DC superheroes are up for a different kind of adventure. Teen Titans Go! is an animated comedy centered around Beast Boy, Cyborg, Robin, Raven and Starfire. Sure, the episodes will be as action-packed as anything that started out life on comic book pages. The source of those action sequences, though, might be a tad unexpected.

The famed characters first made a splash on Cartoon Network back in the early 2000s with an eponymous cartoon series that lasted for five seasons. That incarnation of Teen Titans was helmed by Glenn Murakami and, while the show had its humorous moments, it was primarily an action series. Years after the show ended, the crime-fighting team popped up in shorts that ran during the network's Saturday morning programming block, DC Nation. The New Teen Titans shorts inevitably lead to the latest Teen Titans vehicle. However, Teen Titans Go! has become its own entity. The voice cast of the core characters remains the same, but the show has new adventures, a new look and even a revamped theme.

We caught up with the creative team behind the new series.

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