EYE ON SPRINGFIELD

Springfield Remember a few months ago when everyone thought the fictional cartoon town of Springfield was in Oregon thanks to an egregious misunderstanding on the part of the media? Well, apparently tourists from AROUND THE WORLD have been flocking to the town, evidentially hoping to snap a few photos of their favorite cartoon characters in their natural habitat, at least according to some guy:

“I’ve had people from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland – they’re coming here because this was declared Simpsontown, Springfield, the town of the Simpsons, so people are coming here,” he said.

I don’t really believe this guy, but if just one person from the other side of the world spent a thousand bucks to fly to America because of a misquote, that’s one too many in my estimation.

Anyway, the guy in question put up a few tacky Simpsons statues in front of his yogurt shop, which is apparently the full extent of The Simpsons Experience in Springfield. It’s been leaving tourists disappointed, because I guess they were expecting to see full-fledged Kwik-E-Marts or something? So now the yogurt guy is proposing the city take “just five or 10 blocks” and turn it into a Simpsons-themed shopping center. Now that’ll get people excited! And by “people” I mean copyright lawyers.

[KVAL via Seattle P-I]

BONGO BEAT

Mylo Xyloto Bongo Comics, makers of fine Simpsons comics and distributor of SpongeBob comics, is branching out again with Mylo Xyloto (get it, like xylophone??), a six-issue comic book miniseries thunk up and co-written by the band Coldplay. What’s it about? Judging from the book’s cover, it’s about some TRON-like cyberbabe who can emit magic beams from her fingers or something. I guess this is the band’s attempt at doing their own Yellow Submarine? (FUN FACT: A few Bongo Comics people were working on an adaptation of Yellow Submarine but it got abandoned.) Or perhaps this whole “making music and becoming really famous” thing was just Phase 1 of an elaborate scheme for Chris Martin to achieve his true calling, making comic books. Hmm!

Here’s how co-collaborator Mark Osbourne (probably the guy doing most of the actual work) describes it:

The comic is the latest expression of a music-driven feature animated film that the band and I started developing several years ago. It is the story of Mylo Xyloto, a young Silencer on the front lines of a war against sound and color in the world of Silencia. Mylo discovers that the enemy he’s been trained to hate his whole life might not be the enemy after all.

Blah blah blah, etc. Look, if a band is making a comic book and they’re not putting their blood in the ink, then I don’t give a hoot.

[Bongo Blog]