Local comic geeks go from web to television
By Matthew Terry
Lance Writer
October 24, 2007
 There are music review television shows, movie review shows, and even video game review shows but not a single comic book review show. That was true for a while until Sept. 12 when The Comic Book Syndicate aired for the first time.
The owners of Rogue’s Gallery Comics in Windsor on Chatham West, Shawn Cousineau and George Rizok, as well as their good friends Mike Poirier and Danny Palanca created the show initially as a webcast on YouTube and MySpace. The Comic Book Syndicate reviews comics, “geek” movies, and other pieces of pop culture relevant to their target audience—specifically comic book and movie fans in Windsor. From Captain America’s death to a debate on Star Wars while in costume, they cover it all.
“I want to do the show as if comic books is not just a niche market but as if it was as big as football,” says Poirier. “I feel that there are five forms of storytelling: oral, written, cinema, theatre, and sequential art/comic books and no one of those should be marginalized.”
The show itself was just a matter of happenstance. “Shawn and I were speaking in the shop one day,” Poirier explains. “I had only been to the shop a couple of times and Shawn was tossing event plugs out to me and I said, ‘Whatever you do I want to film it.’ From there, it just kind of snowballed. I knew Danny from before, I’ve worked with him on film, and we came up with the idea of a comic book review show. I pitched it to Shawn and it kind of just took off from there.”
A good thing it did, too. The show is a good mix of humour, informative debates about all things “geek”, and personalities. They maintain a failing relationship with the fourth wall too, which is quite refreshing in such a formalized genre. It is definitely worth the jump from YouTube to television.
Next week’s episode is a Halloween-themed one, costumed and all. “One of us is dressed up as a comic book character, one of us as a comic book and movie character, and one strictly as a movie character.” In combination with their own personalities, it’s needless to say that it will make an amusing episode.
The Comic Book Syndicate airs Friday nights at 11pm and Saturdays at 6pm and 11pm on Cogeco channel 11.
For more information about the Comic Book Syndicate and to watch episodes online, visit them at http://www.comicbooksyndicate.com/
|
