Sometimes we try...

I know that things are difficult when you're struggling day after day to make your dreams come true. Recently my wife had a job opportunity at a company that would have been a dream job. She tried for it, and God knows we do need something like that. Sadly things didn't go as we wished.

I do believe that she did her best. I couldn't be prouder of her. She tried her best.

Sometimes we can't get what we want at the moment. As much as we want it to be otherwise. We try, we struggle, we lose. Thing is that we have another day to try, struggle and lose again and again and again... Until one day. That's the day that we try, struggle... and WIN. One day it will happen. Yes, things are bad now-a-days, with almost no income and debts, but who knows. My wife is a great writer. I believe that one day she will be published and she will be an acomplished writer. I believe in her dream as much as I believe in mine. One day we will live using our art to express ourselves, to entertain you, and to be what we have always dreamed: Winners!

Until then, the best I can do is to hold my dear wife and let her know this:

Honey, I'm proud of you, no matter what. You'll always have me, win or lose. Thank you for trying.

Ultimate Avengers

Hey, true believers!

I just got Ultimate Avengers the other day. A few months ago I saw a preview of this movie online, and I've been excitedly waiting for it for some time now. I'm a huge fan of Captain America and my expectations were high for this movie to be good. Running about 71 minutes, it is kinda short, but considering the price (about $13.00) I think the lenght is not bad.

Now is the good enough for being Marvel Comics' first feature lenght animation? Well if you're expecting animation quality like a Disney feature like Beauty and the Beast, then you have your expectations WAY too high. The quality of the animation falls in between great to (sometimes) Saturday morning cartoons quality. The characters deasigns are great! Captain America 1940's design is one of the best in the whole movie. I also love the Wasp costume design and Iron Man's armor. The voice actors do a great job bringing to (larger than) life Earth Mightiest Heroes.

Some spoilers ahead:

The story is based on the Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. At the end of WWII the Nazis are about to launch a nuclear weapon against Washington D.C. The technology was acilitated by a shape shifting alien race who helped Hitler rise to power and started the war. The United States Super Soldier, Captain America manages to stop the weapon sacrificing hmself and presumed KIA over the North Atlantic.

60 years later, General Nick Fury and his agency, SHIELD, finds the body of Captain America frozen and in perfect condition. Fury, with the help of Dr. Bruce Banner, has been trying to recreate the Super Soldier serum. Figurng that they had a dead body to make test with, Captain America wakes up and finds that his old life is gone, but his country still needs him. A menace from the past is rearing its ugly head and the only way to defeat the alien race from destroying the Earth is to unite a group of heroes (Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man, Black Widow, Wasp and the Hulk) with Captain America as their leader, but they may be doomed to failure, if they can learn to work as a team.

Personally I loved it. Granted, it has flaws but it does have a lot of good things going for it. The story is solid, especially how each character interacts with each other. You feel Bruce Banner's pain having his life destroyed by the Hulk. Captain America has a great scene as he is walking in modern day New York, showing him as a man out of time.

The DVD has a few good extras, the funiest one shows voice actors auditions for the parts. There is also a very good mini-documentary about the history of the Avengers, and interviews with George Perez and other great talents from the history of this series. There is also a first look at Ultimate Avengers 2.

This is a good piece for your collection. Now I'm looking forward for the next Marvel features, Iron Man and Dr. Strange

'Nuff Said.

Into the Wind

I love the wind. Sometimes I can have my imagination soar above the skies in a display of speed and color. The sensation of the wind blowing on my face as I feel the tug on my arms is one of absolute freedom. My kite is in the air and I'm the master of the skies.

I can control the movement of my kite and respond to the force of the wind. At this moment I feel free. No more worries, no more fear, just the sound of the wind against my kite. A symphony of triumph, pain, sadness, happiness, sorrow, power, and glory all rolled up into one majestic cry.

And once again I am free. Free of bad thoughts, free of sadness, free of all fears. It is just me and nature in pure harmony.

In this time on my life, where things seems to be the darkest, I feel that I can survive.

I love the wind...

As much as I love games, comics, movies, etc. there is one thing that I love a lot, and it is one of the most simplest pleasures in my life. Just watching my kite fly is a thrill. The kite that I own is a Nexus by Prism. This is a great beginners stunt kite. Here is a video from last year while I was at Bolivar Peninsula close to Galveston.

This is one of my favorite hobbies.. It sure beats the heck out of fishing!

During the weekend...

Hi there!

Well, this was an interesting weekend. On Saturday I went to Austin to be with the Austin Screenwriters Group. This group meets every 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month. In here you can have your script read and recieve a critique on your work. This is very valuable as a writer since you are getting feedback on your work. I recommend this as a great learning tool. For those of you who live in the Austin area and want to become a screenwriter pleas visi their website.

On other things, this was sure a wet AND cold weekend (for Texas anyway). With temperature on or about 30 degrees there was nothing much to do during the day, but to stay home. That translate to watching movies and reading!

The book that I read was Stephen Kings new novel, Cell. What else can I say but Mr. King has done a trully terrifying tale about the end of the world. this tale is dedicated to Richard Matheson (I am Legend) and Geaorge A. Romero (The Dead series of movies). This is a fine tale of survival horror with great characters, suspense and gore.

The action starts very fast. In fact all hell break loose in page 5! The etory is about an art teacher who has gotten a dream job working for Dark Horse comics. Less than a few hours of hitting the jackpot the whole world comes tubling down due to a phenomenon, known as the Pulse, a strange signal is generated inside cell phones and all who are using the devices turns into a crazed zombie-like creature, tearing and attacking whoever, or whatever, is in front of them. And considering how many millions of cell phones exist around the world, we have an event that may well be the start of the end of the world. Clay, the artist, and a group of survivors tries to escape from Boston, but with each passing moment Clay is reminded that he must return to Maine to find out about his wife and to deal with the nightmarish thought that his 12 year old son has a cell phone. And to make the situation worse, these creatures are evolving.

This sure was a page turner. I even finished it in one day! I guess being a zombie fan made me enjoy this book a lot. But even if you're not a zombie genre fan, you will enjoy this thrilling horror masterpiece.

On the movie department, me and my wife got to rent Doom with the Rock and Karl Urban. Ok... first things first. If you want to watch great cinema then go and rent Citizen Kane or one of the great movies. This movie is without any shame an action flick full of cliches, bad acting, sub-par dialog and no story development whatsoever. If you seen Aliens (a real classic) then you know the plot. A bunch of marines go to a horrible location in a bug hunt. Now if your just looking for a fun flick, then this will work for you. It has monsters, gore galore, zombies, and the most coolest thing in the movie, a five minute First Person View sequence just like the video game. For me this sequence was worth the experience of watching this movie. It feels just like the video game, from the weapon reloading to the hero shooting at his own reflection on a mirror. I recommend this movie for this sequence alone!

The other DVD was Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabitt. Being a fan of all the Wallace & Gromit shorts I was delighted with this one. It is a shame I missed it at the theaters. This is such a charming movie that I think all the family can enjoy. Wallace and his best friend, Gromit are pest control specialist who deals against the threat of rabbits eating all the vegetables in town. But when Wallace has an idea to eperiment with the rabbits to make them hate vegetables, things go rather bad when he unleash the Curse of the Were-Rabbit!

I just hope this one wins the Oscar this year!

Now this week is going to be interesting. the Ultimate Avengers is coming out tomorrow, Tuesday. It looks good so far and I've been wanting to see a good Captain AMerica animated movie for some time now. Let's see how this one comes out.

See you all later!

Changay - Making a Comic Book in Puerto Rico

Hello there!

Sometimes it is funny when you go online and find a few things that brings a lot of memories. I remember a time in the early 90's when I was back in college at the Univerity of Puerto Rico, Arecibo campus (UPRA). I remember meeting somebody at the Radio studios inside the Communications department. His name is David Alvarez, he was doing a recording for a class project and he was there with another student name Jose Alvarez (no relation between the two of them) Jose was a very talented PR person, who at this time I think he may have gotten into politics.

David was a cartoon artist and he wanted to do a comic book. His cartoon Zacha y Anyelín was published at a local newspaper in his home town, Manatí. Funny thing was that I used to be a fan of the cartoon, butI didn't realized that he was the artist until a few weeks later. I told David that I wanted to be a writer and I was working on a Sci-Fi epic. David invited me to a reunion with some other collaborators who wanted to creat a studio named G.A.P. (Golden Artist Productions).

The day came that they all made a reunion to brainstorm ideas about what to publish. Let's just say it didn't go as planned. Some of the other artist wanted to do a serious super hero comic, David was more inclined for toons, and I? I didn't have an artist yet for my Sci-Fi epic. The reunion became a heavy argument and at the end the nameless artist (I want to keep his name secet... to protect the guilt... I mean innocent) yelled "All who want to be on my group, come with me!" Four guys went with this person, leaving David Alvarez and David Martinez (a very gifted inker) alone in one corner.

Alvarez asked me if I wanted to go with them since I could find an artist for my epic Sci-Fi thing. I thought about that for a couple of seconds. I looked at David and out of respect, since he was the one who invited me into this, I told him that I wanted to stay... maybe I could be of use.

The next week, he invited me to visit his studio. It was a very small room, on his grandmother's house, inside the garage. In there both Alvarez and Martinez showed me some characters that they were creating. The character was named Changay (in spanish "gay" rhymes with guy). There were a lot of great characters, both heroes and villains. The idea they had was to make a comic strip, but I believed that this could be much more. Ideas came by, lots of brainstorming sessions came and went. The first issue of Changay came in 1994 (if memory serves me well) and it debuted at the 809COLLECT Comic Con at San Juan, Puerto Rico. In that convention, we met Colleen Doran and Jo Duffy, who made a great impression on me and gave me a lot of pointers on writing.

On Issue #1 I served in helping with the plot, since the story is what David & David had before I joined the group.My credits as writer started from issue #2 to #6 (last issue). It is funny, since my writing style is not in the humorous, David A. and David M provided most of the jokes. I did come with a few of them, but the humor was all them! Changay was the union of serious storylines, with very funny toon comedy.

Julie, a young and idealistic scientist creates a battle armor to fight against the raging crime wave at Pheonix City. Her bosses, a group of scientist named Isaac, Gutierrez and Alfa Chevere, wanted her to prove her experiment. She says that a common man could be a hero. And she finds her common man in Arturo Mozambique, a foul-mouthed black bird who works for the Electrical Company alongside his pal Trigoberto McKein (who later in the series he's revealed to be the grandson of WW II superhero RocketTiger).

Arturo, thinking that he was chosen to go on a hot date with Julie, fails all the test that the scientist put him through. The scientists decides to pull the plug on Julie's experiment. While Arturo is dressing up on his civilian's clothing, a very depressed Julie is cleaning the mess in her lab, when she activates one of the test... a death trap! At the last moment Arturo saves Julie, that was proof enough for her that her common man could be a hero! Julie decides to fund the expriment for herself (thankfully, her dad is a very wealthy business man). Little does she knows that her hero, Changay, will face the greatest criminal mind in Pheonix City... The evil Muckarom.

There you have it, that is the Reader's Digest version of the first issue of Changay! During that time, we all had a lot of good things, bad things and all in-between happening to us. I've met one of Puerto Rico's most famous cartoonists Vicente Aviles and one of my dearest friends and colleague animator Reynaldo Leon.

This was a great time for me and I do miss them all. We were just a group of friends and at the end we became a band of brothers. To David A., David M., Jovany, Yoani, and Reynaldo: You were the best in my life.

I hope to see you one day soon.

In the meantime, I'll be working on my new stories... and who knows... Maybe there are more Changay stories to tell. God knows, I left it on one hell of a cliffhanger!

-Edward Santiago
AKA Lord_Galvatron
Screenwriter
and Writer of Changay

PS. I'll give more details about our work later on and give you more stories on how we did Changay, and why the character name is spelled CHANGUY in english. This is NOT over yet!

Changuy is copyright David Alvarez

Holy Terror, Batman!

Frank Miller is king! All hail Miller!

I just read today that Frank Miller is writing a new Batman story in which his new enemy happens to be none other than Osama Bin Laden! I gotta say that he must be the bravest comic book creator living now. To do something like this, he gotta have a lot of cojones! Holy Terror, Batman! will be published later this year.

For those of you who don't know who Frank Miller is (and I hope there are not a lot of you who don't know), Miller is probaly one of the most gifted comic creator in history. His works includes the legendary Daredevil run of the early 80's, which gave us Elektra, Ninjas and Daredevil's mentor Stick. It also added The Kingpin as Daredevil's arch enemy. Before that the Kingpin was part of Spider-Man's rogues gallery.

He also worked on Ronin, a storty about a Feudal era Samurai transported into the future, I believe this was the basis for Samurai Jack. His most famous work happens to be Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, in which a 50 year old Batman comes back from retirement. Miller is also know for Sin City, which he co-directed the movie with Robert Rodriguez, and 300, basis for the new movie by Zack Snyder in which 300 spartans fight against an army of thousands.

Holy Terror, Batman! sure sounds like one to read.

If you want to read on overview of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns go here. Be warned... Lot of spoilers!

BTW - Batman and art is copyright DC Comics.

I'll be back later to have a few more comments!

See ya later!!!!

A hard day at work!

Sheesh! I'm having one hell of a day at my job. Sure sucks a lot, but I'll manage with my insanity intact! Thank God for lunch breaks!

Anyway... I'm just winding down here for a while, having a lot to think about. First, I got to find a better job. Second, my wife needs a better job too. Am I seeing a patter developing over here, or is it just in my mind? I dunno.

Sometimes I think that life can be unfair. Having to deal with depression can be a factor in this too. I guess that you must believe that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter what. If I don't, then I'll be lost. It is a simple as that, right?

On to better things:

I'm planning to do a major rewrite to my first script. There are many things that I'm planning to change. Hopefully this will improve the script. One of the problems that I'm facing is dialog. It seems that all the characters sound the same, which it is not cool. I also want to make some changes with some of the characters and the way the story goes. Hopefully I'll start later this week.

The title of the script is The Key and the Guardian. The story is about a criminal psychologist, Dr. Mike Robalo. He is an expert on studying criminal behaviour regarding the occult. His expertise leads him to debunk these "occult" angle from the committed crime. One day he recieves a call, his father, who he hasn't spoke too since his mom divorced him, is dying of cancer. Mike goes back to his home town, Heaven's Gate, to bury the hatchet with his father. The reason why he deson't speak with his father is that when Mike was a child, his father filled his head with stories about demons, monsters, and the occult. His father, Albert Robalo, used to tell him that his family are the key and the guardians to the gates of hell, and their responsibility is to guard these gates so they will never open. The reponsability is handled from father to child, generation to generation. Since the curse started on Roanoke Island during the 1500's.

Mike never believed this, but he will find out that all those stories his father told him are true. And it may be too late to save the human race from becoming demon fodder.

I'll give more details later... I only got a few seconds left!

Time to go!

PS. as a parting gift, here are a few screenshots from MTGO 3.0!!!

Sweetness!!!!!! Pics taken from Gamespy

See ya later!!

Valentines and other stuff

Hi, people!

Here I am, killing time on my lunch break. Usually I'm just writing biographies on my characters for my screenplay, but I left my notepad at home.

If you're wondering, yup, that's me. This photo was taken in the late 90's back home in Puerto Rico. That used to be my old bookshelve inside my room. Notice the Star Wars novels and other books. Also check the ZZ Gundam model I built. It is inside the Gen 13's Rainmaker coffee mug. Damn, this brings lots of memories. I miss them all.

Right now I have like 20 minutes to go. Hopefully enough time to write down a few things.

Funny. I never kept a diary in my whole life. More funny is one that everybody can read. I guess I got to get used to that.

Well, right at this moment I'm at my job. It is a small print shop & sign place. It's not much, and it helps pay some bills. But God knows I need something better. having a college degree and getting paind $9:50 an hour it's not right.

Hence, that is why I want to become a filmmaker. It has been my dreams all life long.

I'll give more details about my first script later. Right now I want to get one thing straight. I'm not a perfect beign. I am human, unlike my namesake. I have done a lot of mistakes in my life, some I have got over with, some I still live with them day by day. I think the worst one I have done is that sometimes I'm very blind to the needs of the person I love the most.

Today in Valentine's Day I want to get this in RECORD:

Baby Princess, I love you with all my heart, and please forgive me for not seeing your pain earlier today. Sometimes I think too much about our situation. When that happens, I'm trying to fix a problem, but I tend to ignore everything else. For that I'm sorry.

Please forgive me for putting too much on you.

I love you.


There. It is done.


Soon I'll be adding a few things here, there, and everywhere. I'll give you all some insight on my work and a few other things!

See ya later!!!

To quote Obi-Wan: "Hello there!"

This is my first Blog... I guess everybody is making one, so here's for joining the band wagon!

Well, let's start whith who I am. My name is Edward. You can call me Eddie or Ed. I'm a graphic designer working for a mom and pop printshop and I'm trying to become a screenwriter. I've writen a comic book titled Changuy back in the mid 90's in Puerto Rico. I used to have a website called Crossroads at the Outer Realms, but I stopped doing it ever since 9/11.


I've finished my first script and I'm on the rewrite process. Hopefully I'll be able to work out more screenplays soon.

Well, I'm a geek. There, I said it. I like Transformers. I like Star Wars. I love movies. I love video games, I love Magic the Gathering, I love books... I love a lot of things.

If you play MTGO (and if you do, you know what MTGO stands for) you can find me as Lord_Galvatron.

I'll keep posting from time to time.

See ya all later!

-Eddie