DTZ at Expozine 2011 in Montréal!

Citizens of Montréal!  Please note that Jon Chad will be at your 10th annual small press, minicomic and zine fair, expozine this weekend (11/26 - 11/27)!  He will have copies of all three issues of Drop Target, so if you are in the area, swing on by and pick one up.  He'll also have tons of his own cool comics for sale.  We'll have to see if he returns with any pinball stories from Montréal... last time I was up there, I couldn't find ANYTHING!

Pinball Violence in Movies No. 2

Sigh...  Violence is never the only answer, you guys!  Especially when pinball is concerned!  Unfortunately, we arrived at another piece of American cinema that uses a pinball machine as a punching bag.  I present, the end of Superman II:

I won't go to much into this one, since many of you have seen Superman II, but at the end of the movie, Clark Kent returns to a diner after he gets his powers back.  Earlier, at the same diner, he was hassled by this guy named Rocky(?).

Well, with his powers back, what's the first thing on Superman's mind: REVENGE!!!!  He lays down some well-calculated insults on Rocky, "I've never seen garbage eat garbage before!" and then swaggers up to him like a boss.  Rocky takes a swing at Supes (like a Grade A Chump) and breaks his hand.  Superman lands his sorry butt in a plate of food and then throws him across the diner into a Buckaroo (?) machine!

Pinball is one of the most American things I can think of, so I thought Superman would put more of an effort out there to safeguard it!  Oh well!

You can watch it HERE.

STERN + DTZ!!!

Hey Everyone (and welcome anybody that is here by way of Stern),

The good people at Stern Pinball have kindly asked us to share some of our pinball love on their website!  As you know, we are ALL ABOUT getting pumped about pinball, and we really appreciate the chance to share that enthusiasm with a wider audience.  We're going to be cross-posting some stuff from this blog and issue 1, as well as brand new content and finds!  As of now, we're shooting to post something there once a week!  Don't worry, loyal DTZ goers, we'll still be posting here a bunch too!  Alec and I have been really busy with teaching and book projects, but we're planning on really digging in our talons to this stuff over the winter!

You can read our first post at Stern HERE.

STERN factory tour!

Oh man, Jon and I really, REALLY wanted to go to Pinball Expo this year, but with our teaching schedules it just wasn't in the cards this year...  The expo event that we were the most excited about checking out was the Stern Pinball factory tour.  Luckily, Darian Glover did go on the tour, and whipped up this excellent video of the trip.  It looks like it was a lot of fun...  Maybe we'll be able to go next year!

Harry Potter Pinball Wizard T-Shirt!

If you have been enjoying the Harry Potter Pinball dream machine playfields I have been drawing for Drop Target, then man-oh-man do I have the T-shirt for you!

This awesome Harry Potter Pinball Wizard T-shirt was designed by Ashley Hay and is available for a measly $11 on TheYetee.com   It's only available until 10/20 (about 40 more hours!) so if you want to score one for yourself, you'd better apparate over to there right away!

Thanks to Drop Target reader Don for letting me know about the shirt.  I ordered one and it will be my official pinball shirt from now on!

Max's Carcassonne Pinball Adventure

The "Dream Machine" in Drop Target #3 was created by our Belgian pinball friend Max de Radiguès, who many of you no doubt recognize from our installments of "Zeros to Heroes."  After spending a year living (and playing pinball!) in White River Junction, Vermont, Max has returned to his homeland of Belgium, where he is still playing pinball!

Recently Max traveled to Carcassonne, France to visit his cartoonist friend Pierre Maurel.  While in town, Max and Pierre taught a series of comics workshops at local schools.  As an added bonus, Pierre tracked down a local pinball enthusiast who agreed to show the guys his pinball collection.  Here is Max's description of their trip out to his house:

It's in a farm a little outside Carcassonne. The guy is from Luxembourg and owns something like 30 machines (he had more than 40 but sold a couple of them). They are from a lot of differents time periods... He also as a huge slot machine collection. He just like to fix them. He doesn't really like to play... 

So they're all in his barn covered with blankets, dust and random stuff...  He buys most of them in Belgium and Luxembourg and sometimes Holland and he as a few machine on free play for his clients (he rents rooms for tourist...)  He's getting divorce and looses the house so god knows what will happen to that treasure...  Wish you could have been there !

Below are some photos from their visit - what a collection!  Hopefully they'll end up in good hands.

Sorry it has been quiet around here lately.  We have been spending most of our recent "Drop Target Time" sending out orders to all of our readers! Jon and I have a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline though, and we'll be sharing some of it with you all soon!  Until then, keep flipping!