OK, now I am really happy that Futurama is out of cold storage and running strong with two direct-to-DVD movies, even though The Beast With A Billion Backs (or Futurama Meets Day of the Tentacle, as I call it) left me feeling a lot less happy than after Bender’s Big Score. With the second movie still fresh, we now have a sneak peek at the next one on the list - Bender’s Game, as, usual a pun, this time on the award-winning sci-fi book, Ender’s Game.

Although we can’t really tell if there’s any inspiration for the movie from the book, we have indeed seen (and heard) a ton of references to Dungeons and Dragons, The Lord of the Rings and the recent Beowulf movie. Bender’s Game is scheduled to hit DVD retail shelves sometime at the end of this year. Hot diggety daffodil! Now if only someone would make another Futurama game. (sigh)

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Oh yeah… Duffman…!! Well this is the dream come true story of the female comic artist from Canada, N. Matsumoto aka spacecoyote who drew a Japanese manga version of The Simpsons. She submitted the artwork at www.deviantart.com on January 5, 2007 under her DA account spacecoyote. As you can already see the amazing artwork in the images shown above, this work made to the top pages of DA within days and even faster then that the artwork was circulated throughout the internet. Soon it ended up on the digg.com as well as ABC News Australia and various other blogs and websites.

This was just the beginning of a never ending glory. Soon enough the big people sitting at the Simpsons end noticed her artwork and contacted her. Bongo comics, the brain child of Matt Groening offered her to work on a manga style version of the Simpsons. Also she was contacted by 20th Century Fox to work on the upcoming relaunch of Futurama! Woo hoo… this article is actually about many news, but its more about the success story of a simple girl, who is an artist at heart.

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This artwork doesn’t represent her awesome talent, so do make it sure to check out her DA gallery which has amazing comic artworks. Matsumoto has already done the manga versions of Futurama and a pencil portrait of Sideshow Bob. Also make sure to check out her website and her own comic strip (all the links have been provided at the end of the article).

Talking about the art and talent, many people are using her artworks as their own over the net. Well you will find numerous avatars and signatures made out of her artworks, but worst are those people who are using her artworks as their own. So, if you see any of her artworks under somebody else’s name, don’t let yourself being fooled and do raise a voice against the art theft. All the artworks drawn by Matsumoto are her intellectual property and she deserves a proper credit given to her. This also means a request to the readers of TAP who will be reading this article and saving these images on their systems. If you ever decide to use her artworks, don’t forget to give her the whole credit.

Congratulations to spacecoyote from me and the whole angrypixel team for making it. Some of us do end up painting our dreams in the sky. Mmm…..sky….

N. Matsumoto’s personal site
N. Matsumoto @ DeviantArt
N. Matsumoto’s webcomic - “Saturnalia”