Barb Lien-Cooper & Park Cooper

Author: Park Cooper

  • WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DARK SHADOWS (Part TWO): How To Watch Dark Shadows

    WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DARK SHADOWS (Part TWO): How To Watch Dark Shadows

    Okay so: Dark Shadows. The 1966-1971 gothic soap opera. Maybe you are thinking about watching it.

    Here’s some stuff you need to know.

    You have two options:

    1. Start at the very beginning. NOT RECOMMENDED UNLESS YOU ARE INTO 1960s SOAP OPERAS IN THE FIRST PLACE. OR unless you are not used to scary/supernatural stories in the first place. If you are not used to scary/supernatural stories, then yeah, maybe you di want to start with episode 1. (But if either of those don’t sound like you, then come back and watch the first 209 episodes later, after you’re totally hooked.)

    2. RECOMMENDED for some people : You might want to consider starting with the vampire. The vampire is where practically everyone, at the time, started paying attention.

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  • WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DARK SHADOWS (Part One)

    WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DARK SHADOWS (Part One)

    Okay, Barb and I have been talking about ourselves, but now we need to talk about Dark Shadows.

    NO, not the 2012 Tim Burton movie. We try not to talk about that (although if it attracted some new fans to the real Dark Shadows— and it did– then fine, whatever). No, I’m talking about the TV show it was based on, from 1966 to 1971, the world’s first gothic daytime TV soap opera, Dark Shadows.

    Barb got me into Dark Shadows.

    Barb loves Dark Shadows. And, now that she got me into it some years ago, so do I.

    When I was growing up, I saw ONE episode of Dark Shadows on TV– as a re-run. It was during what’s called The Leviathan Storyline, which happens to be the one where a Lovecraftian monster dude not entirely unlike Lovecraft’s story “The Dunwich Horror” –but who can turn himself into a normal human-lookin’ dude as long as he can get back to a specially-prepared saferoom back at his lair place– is trying (reluctantly) to help an ancient evil cult take over the world (starting with the New England town of Collinsport).

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  • Married Geek Couple #2: Barb Interviews Park Some More

    Married Geek Couple #2: Barb Interviews Park Some More

    Barb Says:

    It’s that time again.

    Time to study phrenology?

    Time to get your teeth cleaned?

    Time to Spin the Wheel of Morality?

    No!  It’s time to interview my husband again!

    Barb (to Park): Last time, I asked you about kids’ books. This time, it’s time to talk about other Geek culture subjects:

    Barb: What were your favorite cartoons as a kid, and why?

    Park: Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, because it actually was pretty well-written and acted dialogue-wise, and had lots of guest-stars from the rest of the Marvel Universe.

    —Battle of the Planets, because anime and style.

    –Warner Brothers cartoons, because hilarious.

    Barb: I got you a “Battle of the Planets” action figure set (still in box) and a t-shirt you wore until it was just threads.

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  • Practice Autobiographical Post: Park and his Mom

    Practice Autobiographical Post: Park and his Mom

    Recently here at Wicker Man Studios, our publisher, Rodolfo, suggested that we needed to talk more about ourselves and help people better get to know us. So, Barb and I will be doing a series of postings about ourselves entitled “Married Geek Couple.”

    But to practice, over Thanksgiving, while my mom was doing stuff in the kitchen, Barb suggested I go talk to my mom and ask her questions and get answers—because knowing about my mom is a part of knowing about me. So I just started asking my mother whatever questions came to mind, and here’s the results of that:

    My mom, in this century
    My mom, in this century, with some Texas bluebonnets

    Park Cooper: Tell me about Papa’s [Mom’s father, my maternal grandfather] baseball team.

    Dian Cooper: Ohhh. Papa was a great baseball pitcher. He always played baseball. Every job he ever had, he was hired because he was the best baseball pitcher.

    Park: You mean like working for the oil field company baseball team.

    Dian: And in the army. He played baseball in the army.

    Park: His glasses didn’t interfere with that?

    Dian: That was before he needed glasses. He was gassed in the oil fields, that’s what happened to his eyes.

    Park: How did that happen?

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  • Interview: BFF Games And Their Boardgames!

    Interview: BFF Games And Their Boardgames!

    Park Cooper here, of Wicker Man Studios, interviewing Andreas Müller of BFF Games. I first became aware of BFF Games because I jumped into the Kickstarter for their game Hidden Leaders, a fun game that brightened up months of the ongoing pandemic for my wife Barb (my co-partner Wicker Man Studios) and I. Hidden Leaders is a fantasy-themed boardgame where you draw and play cards to influence the realm of the kingdom to one of four outcomes, playing as one of six leaders (such as Lemron, Pavyr, Cyra, and Enned, just to name four that we’re about to mention during the course of this interview). Each of the six leaders (whose identities are hidden to the other players until the end of the game) want the kingdom’s war to come out in either of two possible ways—so there’s a certain amount of guessing (especially early on) about what your opponent even wants to happen… BFF Games also did a successful Kickstarter expansion, and are about to start a Kickstarter for a prequel game, titled Yield.

    Park Cooper: So let’s see. I watched a video about how y’all came to make Hidden Leaders– But I have questions.

    So– the world was the world that y’all role-played games in? Is that right?

    Andreas Müller: Sort of, yeah. So the game was invented based on the world we all did Larp in (live action role play) but once we got our artist on board (Satoshi Matsuura from Japan) we made changes to the world to take his art into account. You could say, we merged our world with his art.

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  • WMS November Newsletter 2023

    WMS November Newsletter 2023

    Hi there! Sorry not to post on the official first week of the month, but there were a couple of other things I wanted to do, as you’ll see.

    Let’s see: I want to point out some stuff that got posted here but which didn’t actually get put in a newsletter until now:

    –First up, I made a book trailer for our graphic novel Hungry Ghosts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKrJZh4VH9Q

    –I finished posting my old interview with writer Steven Brust– I’ll let you look at that yourself: https://wickermanstudios.com/blog/

    –I also did a fun interview with the creators of BITEMARK, a nailbiting manga that is also published by Lucha Comics, just like Wicker Man Studios’ HUNGRY GHOSTS: https://wickermanstudios.com/2023/10/11/interview-bitemark/

    –Also, comics legend Keith Giffen passed away. His daughter and son-in-law posted online asking for remembrances and interviews, so I hurried and got mine up. There’s no images, but I feel that that’s appropriately somber: https://wickermanstudios.com/2023/10/12/keith-giffen-2006-interview/

    –Finally, here’s footage of our very own Barb Lien-Cooper, being interviewed (and getting just a few words in edgewise during a panel) about her comic Gun Street Girl (see here: https://wickermanstudios.com/2015/04/15/gun-street-girl/ ) as part of Austin, Texas’ Staple! The Independent Media Expo! from 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XM-FwXBgyE

    Okay, now that that’s all done, here’s my feature presentation, as it were– every Halloween season, Barb and I try to watch as many scary/intense films and stuff as we can, which we call PARKTOBER. So here’s this year’s report!

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  • Author Interview: Steven Brust, FINAL PART

    Author Interview: Steven Brust, FINAL PART

    Okay! So here we go with the THIRD AND FINAL part of this three-part interview that I did with fantasy author Steven Brust back in 2011! Here’s a link to Part One and Part Two of this interview, in case you missed them:

    https://wickermanstudios.com/2023/09/06/author-interview-steven-brust-part-one/

    https://wickermanstudios.com/2023/09/13/author-interview-steven-brust-part-two/

    All right, here we go!

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  • Keith Giffen 2006 Interview

    Park Cooper: You’re clearly a very busy man, what with BOOM as well as the DC/Marvel work…

    Keith Giffen: I try to fill the day, yes.

    PC: The cover of Jeremiah Harm announces that it’s “From Keith Giffen, the mind behind Marvel’s ANNIHILATION and DC’s 52!” That really interested me for a number of reasons…

    KG: A bit of overblown hyperbole there.  The big four are the minds behind 52.

    PC: Still, it proudly proclaims “There’s a great MIND behind this comic!” I feel there’s been such emphasis on art in the last 10 years… and on intellectual properties… but this statement says “Isn’t it great to have the WRITER of intellectual properties?!?”

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  • Interview: BITEMARK

    Interview: BITEMARK

    Hi, Park here– today I’m bringing you an interview I did with Michael Stinson and Devan Muse, the respective writer and artist of the graphic novel BITEMARK, a tale involving werewolves and young women. BITEMARK is published by Lucha Comics (itself an imprint of The Shooting Star Press), which published and did the Kickstarter for Hungry Ghosts, which was written by Barbara and myself.

    So, here’s me and writer Michael Stinson and artist Devan Muse, the creative team behind the werewolf manga BITEMARK:

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  • Author Interview: Steven Brust, Part TWO

    Author Interview: Steven Brust, Part TWO

    OKAY SO HI.

    You’ve probably noticed that I/we stopped sending these out every week. Yeah, we decided to move to a new format– they’re not going to be every week anymore– they’re going to be monthly… MOSTLY.

    HOWEVER! First we’re going to clear the decks as far as this Steven Brust interview goes! So here’s part two, and part three WILL be later this month, just to make room for other stuff! There’ll be one more thing this month, too, but MOSTLY it’s going to be a once-a-month update– the slight reversion to more-than-once-a-month this month is mostly just to finish what we started.

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