3rd Mario Galaxy 2 "Let's Play" video!

Lexi and I completed another Mario Galaxy 2 video! We're going to try and get a new one up every day since it is so quick to make them!

Jason

Ep2 Mario Galaxy 2 video!

Lexi and I made another video already, check it out!
Jason

Our first "Let's Play" video!

Today I made my first "Let's Play" video of Super Mario Galaxy 2 with the help of my daughter, Lexi. The video is too big to embed to this post, so I added it as a link. Since this is my first try at this, I'm sure later on I'll figure out how to add the videos to these blog posts.

Check it out and tell me what you think.

Zombies in Hatman?

So, now that all 3 parts of "Revenge" have gone online, I can freely discuss some of my thoughts about this story. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I wrote "Revenge" in more than one setting. I had the idea for the Venom parody story and Man-Hat creation from the start but didn't know what to do after that, so it sat incomplete for a while. Then I thought about what if we could do something akin to zombies, but in the "family friendly" 3twins way. And I came up with the idea of the Man-Hat shooting mind control candy out into the city on Halloween night that would turn the trick-or-treating kids into zombies.

I'm actually not 100% happy with my final version of the script for this because I think the zombie aspect kind of didn't reach its full potential. Part of it might be that I'm not the biggest fan of zombie movies, so I didn't want to dwell on it much in the writing and the other part, may have just been lazy writing. Ultimately, I think that I wanted to present the Cider-Man character so much that I shoved the story into that box and didn't let it breathe.

I think maybe what would have been the best for this story as a whole, in retrospect, would have been to prolong the dark Hatman stuff and explore that in a more Hatman centric way, more truly like the Black Spider-Man story was. But I think originally my fear was that we would be called to the floor too much for copying that story. One of the things I strive for is to attain originality in our parodies, to pay more homage than just hash out the same thing. That said, I would like to have explored a darker Hatman or Hatman as the villain more and maybe concluded the whole story with the creation of the Man-Hat and left him as a character looming in the night until next year Halloween.

I know I'm being kind of hard on myself about this as the writer, but we don't have many viewers, so we don't get any criticism, and therefore, we should examine our stuff more critically, I guess. All in all, I am happy with the finished product. I feel fortunate that we were able to get in on the ground floor of Tillian Wagner as a comic book artist. Her stuff definitely has a different feel and it has really grown into it's own style, especially with the upcoming comic she's working on for us currently. It's neat to be able to see her art grow, and I hope those of you out there that do follow our stuff will enjoy it as well.

Jason

The Spectacular Cider-Man?

So, if you've watched part 2 of "Revenge of the Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man" you know that a new superhero was introduced, The Spectacular Cider-Man. This is the character I spoke of as the idea that Steve and Andy didn't think would work. He is only briefly in part 2 but part 3 will feature him much more prominently. I think Tom Cox did an excellent job with the Russian accent as well as the characterization. In case you're concerned that we're creating far too many superheroes, I ask you to save that critique until after viewing the final part of this story next week.

As you may be able to guess, the image to the right is the cover for part 3 of this story. It is a parody of Web of Spider-Man #1 and the character of Cider-Man is obviously a loose parody of Spider-Man. However, the vaguely similar costume and similar sounding name is where the correlation between the two characters ends. I assure you we are not ripping off Spider-Man in any way.

I really can't wait until next week when part 3 goes online. I hope you all enjoy Cider-Man and I really look forward to any comments on him after it goes online!

On another note, I'm currently working on an outline for the next installment of the Pumpkin Head/Hatman Halloween saga that will be titled "Son of the Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man." It is still in the early stages, but what I can tell you is that it will have something to do with the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and of course, the Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man character. How much, I can't say. Besides, this story had "something" to do with the Pumpkin Head character, even though it was brief!

Until then... Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!

Jason

Newest Hatman & Indigo Issue: Indy-Goo

Indy-Goo? 

Well that's the parody title for our parody cover of Scooby-Doo. I have wanted to parody this poster for a Halloween issue since the first appearance of Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man (aka BGPHM). Now that we finally have this parody, I'm very pleased with it. Props to Jennifer VanMeter for her artwork! :)

Something special is included in this issue of Hatman & Indigo. As with several of our other issues this one has a variant cover (also drawn by Jennifer VanMeter). As with the first BGPHM issue we have a parody of a two page (front and back covers) Spider-Man issue. So if you're lucky you will stumble across the secondary cover (its a random chance).

As always, enjoy the issue, and send us your feedback!

~Andy

Pod Casts

For now we don't have very many installments of our PodCast - KudeeCast, but Jason plans on having a new installment on a regular basis. Also we are working on something new for Star Fetched. The animation process takes a very long time. Most of the animation on 3twins.net has been executed by me, someone who knows nothing about animation. If you watch the Midieville Shorts, starting with The Marvin and Gidju Saga and ending with Duel part 1 you will see that I did learn some things along the way, however it is still a very long arduous process. All this being taken into consideration we decided to rewrite the pilot of Star Fetched into an audio drama. Once we re-record all the character audio and remix the effects track, it will sound more like a classic radio serial, complete with a non-interactive narrator (unlike the Narrator from Hatman & Indigo who is an actual character). We will be offering this new version of Star Fetched as a pod cast along with KudeeCast. If Star Fetched does well as an audio drama, you may see the return of Midieville in a similar fashion.

~Andy

Mad Hatter

Today, October 6th, is official Mad Hatter day! Andy asked me to blog something about the Mad Hatter today, but I can't really think of anything to talk about. I guess I could tease that the still upcoming Ion Bunny #4 features our version of the Mad Hatter. If you recall Ion Bunny #2 directly followed the events of Hatman #19 and The Mad Hatter fell into Ion Bunny's rabbit hole, mistaking him for March Hare.

Our version of the Mad Hatter has the power to bring his riddles to life. The person who is to solve the riddle is stuck in it until it is solved. The last encounter with the Mad Hatter caused Ion Bunny to leave his home in an attempt to escape the madness that surrounds the Hatter.

In Ion Bunny #3 we took a little detour in the saga of our fluffy yellow pal, and explored Christmas shopping in the mall! Ion Bunny got in a fight with the mall Santa and ended up having to fill in for him.

In Ion Bunny #4 we will get a sneak peek into the day to day life of our favorite grump, when he tries to find a new place to live. But, the Mad Hatter is angry because Ion wouldn't be his friend. I can't give you a date when we will see Ion Bunny #4 online, but it is close to completion, so I hope it will be before the end of the year. What will the Hatter do to get back at the bunny? Will the Hatter find a friend or will he dive deeper into his insanity?

Jason

My thoughts behind "Revenge: part 1"

So, before I start out, I would like to make sure that anyone reading this has watched our newest audio comic, Hatman & Indigo 44: The Revenge of The Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man. So, if you haven't please click the link pasted over the title of the issue and come back here afterward.

Okay, I'm now going to assume that anyone reading this has watched it, if not SPOILER ALERT!!!

Several ideas went into what eventually became "Revenge: part 1." We had discussed the idea of having an evil Hatman doppelganger show up and possibly call him "ManHat." I personally wasn't opposed to this idea, but I did think that if we were to have a villain named ManHat, he should be in the same vein as Batman's The Man Bat and Spider-Man's Man-Spider, essentially more hat than man. Being the non-artist that I am, I drew up the image attached to this post (top right) to help explain my idea of what I thought he should look like.

We couldn't agree where to put him or what his origin would be, but we all liked the idea. Andy was the one who came up with the idea that Pumpkin Man's revenge could be a new villain, instead of just another story where Pumpkin Man came back. We all thought that was pretty original. It wasn't until I was watching an episode of Spectacular Spider-Man with my daughter that I got the idea for the story. The episode was one where Spider-Man got the venom symbiote (I'm sure we're all familiar with that, it was shoved into the Spider-Man 3 movie). I thought to myself, "Since the symbiote took on the powers and characteristics of Spider-Man and amplified them, what would that look like if it happened to Hatman?" Hatman's primary ability is that he can pull anything he wants out of his hat/head, so I thought that maybe it would be that he would have arms that came out of his hat and did this, instead of him having to reach in with his own arms. Also, to set him apart visually, I thought it would be neat if he were a darker gray and had an orange tie, cape and hat ribbon/mouth. To see if this would look good, I took an image of Hatman that Steve had drawn for Hatman: issue 28 and recolored it (pictured to the right).

Then I thought that we could alter the evil doppelganger idea into this "Venom" parody idea and show Hatman get mean. Granted it goes by fairly fast in the comic, but I had another idea that I'd been itching to use for years and I knew it would work out, even though Andy and Steve didn't have much confidence in it. But for that, you'll have to wait 2 weeks until Revenge Part 2 goes online (Andy says he's confident he can get it online October 16th)!

Most of the time when we write Hatman scripts we will write the entire story all in one setting, but sometimes, we will start one part and then either not be sure exactly what to have happen, or be so creatively drained that we have to take a break. The former was the case with this story. I wrote part 1 of "Revenge" and didn't exactly know what I was going to do, I had an idea, but it wasn't enough to build a full story on. So, Part 1 actually sat on its own for about 6 months.

Next week we change gears for a little bit because 10/6 is Mad Hatter day, so we will be featuring the Mad Hatter!

Jason

Hatman & Indigo 44! What happened to issues 42 and 43?

Hatmaniacs,

After our long hiatus we finally have a new Hatman & Indigo issue ready for your viewing pleasure. However you may notice there are two issues missing in the story sequence. Who is Dr. Beakman? What happened to Indigo? Why didn't they finish this story? All these questions (and more) will, eventually be answered. It is best to enter into this newest issue as if issues 40 and 41 never happened.

Enjoy!

-Andy