Muppet Legend Jerry Nelson Passed Away

Jerry Nelson, the man who brought to life several of my favorite Muppets, has passed away. He was 78 years old. Jerry had an amazing career, first joining the Muppet World in 1965 to help Jim Henson puppet Rowlf the Dog on The Jimmy Dean Show, and up till recently still being involved in Muppet projects; he reprised the role of the Muppet News announcer in last year’s The Muppets movie and still recorded the voiceover work for the Count on Sesame Street.

Here are some of the Muppets that Jerry performed over the years:

• Mr. Snuffleupagus
• Emmet Otter
• The Two-Headed Monster from Sesame Street
• Kermit the Frog’s nephew Robin
• The Count, who has inspired generations of people to audibly count out things
• Gobo Fraggle
• Camilla the Chicken

But one of the best–if not forgotten–characters that Jerry brought to life was poor Mr. Johnson, who always had the misfortune of dealing with Grover’s various career stops over the years. These still make me laugh to this day.

New York Comic Con 2011 Sketch Book: Uncle Travelling Matt by Katie Cook

One of the best parts of going to any comic comic book show is the chance to get sketches or original art. I was lucky to get this awesome picture of Uncle Travelling Matt from Fraggle Rock at the New York Comic Con 2011!

It’s by Katie Cook, who we’ve mentioned before. I thought it was awesome that she had this for sale in her portfolio, since we all know I’ve been on a bit of an Uncle Travelling Matt kick now and again.

Matt’s sitting down–excitably–to a pizza. Under normal situations, I’d be happy for pizza. I would be doubley excited to see him hanging around a pizza parlor.

What kind of soda do you think he’s drinking? I think I would assume that he would be a big drinker of ginger ale. It fits his character very well.

I don’t remember him eating pizza on the show, but this clip does the trick. He’s so right about barbecue gender politics, with the ladies on one side and dudes on the other.

 

 

 

Great Covers #1

I kind of got bored doing the Splash Page Saturdays feature, but was looking for quick things to blog about on Saturdays, so how about cool covers? Check out the alternate cover of Archaia’s Fraggle Rock #1 by Jeremy Brown.

This cover has Uncle Traveling Matt, a Fraggle who ventured outside of their caves to explore “outer space”, which is what Fraggles consider the human world. Occasionally he would come to visit, but mostly he was featured in segments like the following  where he would send back postcards to the Fraggles about what he had discovered.

So its only fitting that his comic book cover has him exploring the outer space social construct known as the comic book store. I can only imagine the remarks he would have had, like the people who buy the books but never read them, or the fans who go online to complain about everything.

Uncle Traveling Matt was one of my favorite Fraggles, due in part to the ridiculousness of his scenes and that I had a really awesome stuffed toy of him that went on many adventures with me as a child. He may have been a stuffed animal, but he came with a functioning backpack and a plastic safari hat.

Now that’s awesome.