Daily news and updates by Proprietor James Sime & the Isotope Staff
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Enter now for the 2009 Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics In celebration of mini-comic creators the world over, submissions are now open for the 7th annual award! Award Ceremony during Isotope's APE AFTERMATH bash October 17th (click here for more info) |
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The Isotope Communique
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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Sometimes the smallest rewards of all are truly the greatest. It's my hope that every day each and every one of you leaves the Isotope feeling just like this... (click to play) -James
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Friday, December 16, 2005
 Isotope Picked Best in Holiday ShoppingBy the Greatest City on Earth It was honor enough for the Isotope to have been recommended as a pick of the week back when we first opened the doors on our sexy Hayes Valley location by the fine citizens of San Francisco via the consumer review website Yelp... but to be chosen as one of the best places to do your holiday shopping? In a city that is world-famous for it's influential boutiques, celebrated showrooms, illustrious bookstores, distinguished fashionistas, prevailing storefronts of one of a kind mementos, and unique emporiums of the unusual? Now that's something to truly be proud of!  Thank you, San Francisco, for your amazingly great taste and for showing us here at the Isotope so much love! We are currently stocking a massive variety of sequential art entertainment perfect for every reader from every walk of life, with an additional pre-Christmas shipment of hard to find graphic novels scheduled to arrive this weekend. Don't be afraid to let our affable staff of comic savvy experts help you find that perfect comic gem for any person in your life... it's our thing, y'know, it's what we do! And, as always, the Isotope is happy to issue in-house gift certificates over the phone for those loved ones who can't come in to do their holiday shopping in person. Call us at (415) 621-6543.  Superhero School Is InW/ the Godfather Of Shockrock Sure we all love poster and album cover god Coop and his excellent sense of good, clean American fun but everytime his name comes up we can't help but think about that other Coop... the godfather of outrageous rock and roll theatrics, Alice Cooper. And now you can spend an hour hearing The Coop talk about his lifelong funnybook passion. Originally broadcast on the UK's most listened to station (BBC Radio 2) and now streaming over your internet connection, Alice Cooper offers up a passionate oral history of the comic book superhero genre with special guest stars like Roy Thomas, Big John Romita, and Stan the Man. So sit back, study your tabs for Black Juju, and relax to sixty minutes of comic book love straight from No More Mister Clean's mouth. Alice Cooper & the History of the Superhero
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Ladies and gentlemen... Bald Is Back!
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
 Want To Do Something Fun Tonight?FlavorPill Suggests Sin City @ Isotope Flavorpill, a series of free weekly email magazines that cover a handpicked selection of diverse cultural events, created locally in San Francisco, New York, London, Chicago, and LA, is featuring the Isotope's guerilla screening of Frank Miller's Sin City tonight.  Give the Isotope Events Page a read for full Sin City screening details and keep your browsers pointed towards the FlavorPill website for an amazing selection of great local events! www.flavorpill.net  Vimanarama & Skyscrapers of the MidwestWintermen, Creature Tech, and Less Than Hero Despite the controversy surrounding on-line comic reviews stirred up by AIT/PlanetLar publisher Larry Young, we here at the Isotope say that the art of worthy comic reviews is alive and well... at the last place you'd expect (if you hadn't already been checking them out, that is)... at San Francisco's art and entertainment blog SFist. SFist provides one new-to-comics reader's honest and always entertaining impressions, with none of that bothersome "I see what Marvel was trying to do here, but..." industry-awareness that bogs down so many typical comic reviews we read on-line. And best of all, these reviews are reaching a massive non-comic reading audience who is already interested in the many tangential siblings to the world of sequential comic entertainment: art, theater, politics, music, film, and the unique culture that surrounds us here in San Francisco. No doubt, my friends, that SFist is the ideal petri dish for tuning new people on to the world of comic books! We can't speak for anyone else, if more comic reviews were like this we'd frequent a whole lot more review sites. No mentally healthy person should enjoy "Skyscrapers of the Midwest," a series of books that lift you up only to throw you off a cliff. Fortunately, we don't know of any mentally healthy people, so this might be just the thing you're looking for. Each tale in "Skyscrapers" involves a glimmer of pure optimism or nobility, left alive just long enough to form an attachment...which is then crushed. The most painful story might be Going to Grandma's, in which PAGES are devoted to two kittens' evening with Grandma, carousing and feeling loved, until Grandma walks to the kitchen to get some pie and vanishes, the pies dashed on the ground and the door left ajar. "We should probably go," the older kitten says. "But I wanna wait here from gramma." "I don't think she's comin' back." "But what happened?" "I don't know." "What are we supposed to do now?" And then they get their coats on and sadly leave as our heart breaks. If you revel in the somber disappointment of trudging through a rainstorm without an umbrella, you'll probably feel a kinship with Joshua Cotter's books, which last year won an Isotope Award for Excellence in Minicomics. Just, please, don't read them while you're walking over a bridge or handling sleeping pills. Click here for more of this week's SFist comic reviews
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
 Ellis Interview w/ Ian Brill @ Publisher's Weekly It's no mystery that the Isotope staff has been enjoying Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith's series Fell. Ellis' standalone stories have carried no small amount of punch and never before have we appreciated Mister Templesmith's art as much as we do on this series. And at a buck ninty nine a pop it's a great bang for your buck. Those who get their Fell fix at the Isotope on Wednesday evenings will already know all about perpetual as time itself regular Ian Brill. Mister Brill is also known to comic industry observers for his extensive reviews at Comic Book Galaxy, his astute commentary in the industry opinion periodical Comics Journal, and for his always interesting webblog. And now he's talking to Fell author Warren Ellis about dollar ninty nine comics in the pages of Publisher's Weekly. Go give it a read, won't you?
Monday, December 12, 2005
 Of Heroes, Rock, & Sugar CookiesA Photo Essay in Godhood Iron bar bending, exploding televisions, leather pants, monster slaying, sparkly boots, muppets gone amok, gargoyle masks, guitar solos, headbanging, thunder gods, birthday spankings, cable access teevee, dancing girls, cannons that shoot sugary goodness, and space people from outer space... sounds pretty darn close to heaven to us! Do take time out of your day to witness the Isotope's sweaty, blurry, and burly pictures directly from the center of the pit at the Thor, Cookie Mongoloid, She Wolves, Space Vacuum from Outer Space show here: Thor @ PoundSF: A Photo Essay in Godhood
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Congrats out to Brandon of Pitman, New Jersey for coming up with the best sketch idea for JH Williams III during the Desolation Jones Bacchanalia, and for scoring this original piece. And without further ado, here's Brandon's original sketch suggestion followed by Mr Williams' completed piece:Here's something I'd like to see: Ingrid Bergman, smoking a cigerette at the tree of life, being drawn by Gustav Klimt while under the influence of LSD. I don't mean in the style of Klimt, but him drawing Bergman in whatever style you please.  Click to enlarge
Saturday, December 10, 2005
 Giving Us Even More Reasons To Love Isotope Customers Don't get us wrong, when it comes to coffee the Isotope is all about the nirvana-peddling ambrosia artisans at the Blue Bottle Coffee Co. and their gourmet cups of paradisaical coffee perfection. But when we hear about a viral marketing promotion this good we gotta give it up... Apparently Starbucks has at least one vehicle driving around the city with a cup of coffee glued to its roof. Those San Franciscans who go out of their way to try to prevent the owner of said vehicle from losing their caffeinated treat are rewarded with gift certificates for a free cup of coffee for being such good samaritans. It's a cute guerilla marketing idea for sure (read more about it here), but what makes us here at the Isotope so happy is that what started last Thursday as a couple folks with a strange story has become something of a tsunami of free coffee infused tales from Isotope customers. Of course, we always knew that the Isotope customers were good people, but it's truely inspirational to hear how many of you have been rewarded for your kindness. You rock Isotopians!
Thursday, December 08, 2005
 The Thunder God Strikes!December 10th @ PoundSF A champion bodybuilder, a b-movie star, and voted in the top 100 greatest frontmen of all time, Thor The Rock God will be bending iron bars, using his massive lung power to explode hot water bottles, and ruling the stage of the Pound SF as only the Norse god of Rock and Roll can. But if The God of Thunder's twin battle hammers, helmet of spikes and Scepter of Atlantis don't satiate your thirst for crazy stage antics and costumed machismo, then either the great blue monster that is Isotope favorite Cookie Mongoloid with his cookie cannon and milk gun or the silver-clad posse Space Vacuum From Outer Space are sure to cure what's ailing you. Thor @ Pound SF 100 Cargo Way (Pier 96) Saturday, December 10
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
 Mutants, Mayhem & MagnetoX-Men 3 Trailer On-Line Kelsey Grammer as the Beast? A Brett Ratner movie worth watching? The big screen introductions of X-characters Angel, Emma Frost, Jubilee, Jamie Madrox, Callisto, and Omega Red? They're certainly packing X3 with enough bells and whistles! No matter what else they might throw at us, one thing is certain: X-Men 3 is going to continue the grand tradition of Marvel superheroes trashing San Francisco. Well, that's all fine and good for your cinematic thrills Mr. and Ms. Marvel Comics... but next time we see McMillan dressed in that Fantastic Four outfit we'll show him what for!  Click here for the X-Men 3 trailer  San Francisco Gets the Comic GoodsThanks to Your Friends @ SFist Did we happen to mention before how much the Isotope loves the daily finger-on-the-pulse of San Francisco culture and entertainment blog SFist? I'm pretty sure we did, but just in case we didn't make our point clear enough... When the city of San Francisco wants to know what is happening that matters - be it great events to attend, cool locales to discover, interesting city politics to keep your eye on, delightful people to know, and a million more reasons to love the SF Bay Area - it turns to SFist. Reaching far beyond the bay with an estimated readership of 40,000 "with it" readers, SFist provides crucial reading for the culturally conscience on a daily basis. We here at the Isotope are perpetual in our evangelism of great comic reads and of finding new ways to get those comics into the people's hands and we couldn't be more excited to get to do our part to provide hand-picked sequential art goodness for the SFist staff to read, enjoy, and review in a forum that truly transcends the typical comic industry's grasp. This week they serve up great, meaty reviews of some of the Isotope's favorite books for the comics curious. Check out what the SFist team thinks about books like Bumperboy, Astonishing X-Men, Walking Dead, Desolation Jones, and Harvey Pekar's The Quitter. SFist on Comics
Friday, December 02, 2005
 Desolation Jones Bacchanalia with artist JH Williams III now streaming live: Click here  JH Williams III & Isotope TVFrom Tonight's Event Time is ticking... In a few short hours we will be beaming live our Desolation Jones Bacchanalia from the heart of San Francisco and into living rooms and offices (and yes, even bedrooms) all across the globe. No matter where you live, we're inviting you to be part of this one of a kind event. Expect your browser to be enslaved and to be transported to the land of the beautiful future right alongside Promethea and Desolation Jones artist JH Williams III. Tune in for full details on tonight's webcast at 9pm PST.
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Ring In the New Year
Ian Yarborough - Bon Vivant 
Jared Guenther - Enforcer 
Kirsten Baldock - Special Projects Director
James Sime - Proprietor 
Ian Yarborough - Bon Vivant 
Jared Guenther - Enforcer 
Kirsten Baldock - Special Projects Director
James Sime - Proprietor 
Ian Yarborough - by Fabio Moon 
Jared Guenther - by Tony Talbert 
Kirsten Baldock - by Dave Johnson
James Sime - by Ryan Ottley 
