One of the highlights of last month’s WonderCon was the panel announcing Felicia Day’s latest foray into New Media. She, along with producing partners Kim Evey, Wil Wheaton, Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt, and Mike Richardson, has created a new YouTube channel with a full slate of geek programming.
This new endeavor, Geek and Sundry, launches new shows TODAY!
What’s great about the programming lined up for Geek and Sundry is that it’s not your typical fare. It’s not just geeks sitting around giving snarky reviews of comics, or doing convention coverage, or rating cosplay. It contains shows that aren’t necessarily geeky on the surface, but cover topics and have a sensibility that appeal to a geek audience. In addition to airing Season 5 of The Guild and Dark Horse motion comics coming soon, we can also look forward to:
- The Flog—As in Felicia’s blog. Get it? It’s Felicia Day doing whatever Felicia Day feels like doing; everything from milking a cow, to operating a forklift, to flying on a trapeze! I’m looking forward to it, because Day is charming and totally game, and she seeks out stuff to do that—chances are—we’ve all wanted to try at some point. Total wish fulfillment.
- Table Top—Produced by and starring Wil Wheaton, this show provides a novel look at table top RPGs as Wheaton and his celebrity geek friends sit around playing a different table top game each episode. This is a great idea for those (like me) who don’t know the first thing about RPGs. Rather than simply reviewing games, Wheaton and Co. will actually play a game so that the viewer can be drawn into the joys of tabletop gaming by seeing it in action. Also, it doesn’t hurt that it’ll provide a rotating cast of some of our favorite geeks.
- Sword & Laser—Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt produce and star in this video adaptation of their popular genre book review podcast (Sword = fantasy, Laser = sci-fi). I’m looking forward to this one, both for recommendations on new books to read, and because Veronica and Tom have great chemistry as hosts, and while podcasts aren’t my favorite format ever, I’d definitely be more inclined to enjoy Sword & Laser as a regular web series.
- Written By a Kid—Produced by Kim Evey, Written By a Kid takes the Axe Cop formula one step further by creating live-action and animated shorts based on stories told by children aged four to nine, and as we all know, kids tell amazing stories. I can’t wait to see what the directors involved come up with!
- Learning Town—Paul and Storm have what looks like a children’s show on the way called Learning Town. And that’s really all I know about it, because their trailer just had Paul and Storm standing against a white backdrop not really saying much. But it’s Paul and Storm. Doing a children’s show! This I’ve gotta see.
Felicia Day knows how to use the internet. Yesterday, she hosted a Google+ Hangout “subscribathon” for Geek and Sundry, bringing together high-profile geeks to encourage people to subscribe to the channel, and as of this writing Geek and Sundry has 106,949 subscribers (by comparison, Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Channel, also featuring an entire slate of upcoming shows premiering today, has 45,235 subscribers). Clearly, Day owns New Media. The truly great thing about Geek and Sundry is that all of the shows seem to come from a genuine, unironic, fun place. These aren’t geeks trying to be hipper than thou. These are wonderfully dorky and earnest people doing geeky things, and we love them for it.
Check out Geek and Sundry today! And don’t forget to subscribe!
Teresa Jusino dreams of a day when all television channels are geek channels. She was selected as one of the Top 11 Geek Girls of 2011 at the Geek To Me blog at Chicago Redeye, and her “feminist brown person” take on pop culture has been featured on websites like ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. Her fiction has appeared in the sci-fi literary magazine, Crossed Genres; she is the editor of Beginning of Line, the Caprica fan fiction site; and her essay “Why Joss is More Important Than His ‘Verse” is included in Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them, which is on sale now wherever books are sold! She is Geek Girl Traveler when she travels. 2012 will see Teresa’s work in two upcoming non-fiction anthologies, and her “Moffat’s Women” panel will be featured at Geek Girl Con in August! Get Twitterpated with Teresa, “like” her on Facebook, or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.
