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The Great Showdowns, exclusive excerpt from Scott Campbell's terrific new book

Mark Frauenfelder at 9:00 am Tue, Oct 30, 2012

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Here's Scott Campbell with a few words about his wonderful new new book, The Great Showdowns, which depicts cartoonified iconic scenes of conflict from beloved movies.

Ever since the beginning of time, there has been struggle in the world. From Triceratops versus Tyrannosaurus Rex to Tom versus Jerry. We deal with it in our day to day lives and we like to watch it on the big screen and on our small screens in our homes. The Great Showdowns began as a little series of 10 candy sized paintings for the annual show at Gallery 1988 called Crazy 4 Cult and continued each year until the Great Showdowns site was created where it has kept going indefinitely.

These little paintings depict various moments of tension from some of my favorite films, presented as happy little characters just standing there sort of enjoying themselves. They are all smiling because they are probably very excited to be included in such a great collection. I liked imagining all of these moments at a party together just mingling and reminiscing. Some moments depict the main protagonist vs the antagonist, while others just include characters versus a situation. Han versus Greedo is an obvious showdown, while Bruce Willis versus the little smiling shards of glass from Die Hard is a little less obvious, but just as memorable. Sometimes, both the protagonist and antagonist are showing down against something together. Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves handcuffed together versus the massive smiling wave from Point Break, for example. I love films and I cannot deny how much they have influenced who I am today and what I create. Reliving these moments often rekindles special feelings of nostalgia for me and I hope everyone else. It is an ongoing project and we shall see where it takes us! Great Showdowns are for everybody!

The Great Showdowns




Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • Boundegar

    These make me feel so clueless.  I was able to identify…  the Moon.

  • Lloyd Cogliandro

    Pretty sure it goes:
    The Big Lebowski
    Die Hard
    Ghost
    John Carpenter’s The Thing
    A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune)

    The second one threw me for a while. If I’m wrong, I’d love to know what it is.

  • Monkey_pants

    Yay! Scott C. is awesome, I’ve been a fan of his for years!

  • i_prefer_yeti

    Radical! Love Scott C – my wife and I are the proud owners of the lebowski, the bruce/glass, the office space/copier, and one other that I’m forgetting right now. Super fun stuff!

    • Mark_Frauenfelder

      You mean you own the original watercolors? Cool!

      • i_prefer_yeti

        Yah! Our friends gave them to me for my birthday. Scott usually has a table at APE & is just about the nicest dude on the planet. Missed him at this year’s ’cause I heard he was at NY Comicon.

  • DreamboatSkanky

    Fun!  I hope the graveyard showdown from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly is in there.