Exciting animation news from Emerald City Comicon

For me, the biggest news from Emerald City Comicon (ECCC) this year was that you don't have to actually go to ECCC in order to attend ECCC. Thanks to their partnership with FlipOn.TV, for just $15 you can watch live streams of most of the events all weekend long, as well as a roving crew wandering the floor. Thus, I was able to "attend" two panels I was very interested in, without having to battle the hassle, exhaustion, and cost of the event: Jhonen Vasquez's solo panel and the Titmouse Productions panel (which included Vasquez).

Titmouse (the production company for Venture Bros, Metalocalypse, Black Dynamite, Superjail and many more) aired a teaser clip for a new show called Disco Destroyer, about a 70s rock hero with long blonde hair, sunglasses, and an eight-track player embedded in his chest. The show feels like a riff on Black Dynamite, with a lot of classic 70s "Blaxploitation" elements, paired with a gorgeous, retro-70s animation style.

Liquid Television has a peek at some of the early character design here, if you're curious. I'm looking forward to it!

In bigger news, they announced a new Jhonen Vasquez animated project is in the works: A Squee short. Vasquez is working on the script, which is planned to clock in at around 10-15 minutes. He gave a rough outline of the plot: Squee is sold by his parents to "a McDonald's kind of place" which "uses children for meat."

And to double the excitement for Vasquez fans, he added that the original idea behind a Squee short was to use it to raise funds for a Johnny the Homicidal Maniac "feature." Vasquez clarified that it would not be a theatrical release, but it sounds like they are planning to make it a longer work. All details at this point are very sketchy, to be sure, but enough to make Vasquez fans very happy indeed.

Image courtesy Flickr/health_bar