Pads & Panels

Pads & Panels’ Bill Jones and Matt Peters caught up with World Wrestling Entertainment’s Monday Night RAW announcer Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler on the verge of his first match at WrestleMania. As The King prepares to take on fellow announcer Michael Cole, he talks about going into his first WrestleMania, getting a couple title shots, his favorite announcer to work with, and his passion for comic book art. The interview took place Saturday, March 19, at Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) at McCormick Place in Chicago. A special thanks to The King for taking time to do the interview after a long day of signing and illustrating.

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Chicago Bears Lance Briggs gets charitable

By Bill Jones
Photos and Reports by Matt Peters and Thomas Braaksma

Right now, Chicago Bears Pro Bowl linebacker Lance Briggs has to have only one thing on his mind – an NFC Championship showdown with the Green Bay Packers in Chicago this Sunday. But as the Bears were still working to clinch a spot in the playoffs in December, the avid comics fans held a weekend of charitable events in Chicago to bring in comics and cash for CHA, the armed forces and underprivileged children in the city.

Matt Peters stopped by The Chicago Comic Vault Dec. 11 for Briggs’ Comic Book Day, where comics readers and football fanatics packed the building to capacity and spilled out the door waiting for the appearance of linebacker. When he finally arrived, it was to tremendous applause of the crowd, and Briggs took time to shake hands with everyone in attendance. (more…)

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So, while we were off at PAX East in Boston, leaving the site hanging for a week, our one-year mile marker just passed us by. We officially launched the site, branching off from AMP Magazine, on March 24, 2009 with a review of Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures Episode 1. We have since made 529 total posts (including this one), approved more than 1,000 comments on those posts, deleted 303 spam messages, created 1,613 tags and spent countless hours playing, writing, posting and promoting the site, as well as heading to the post office to mail prizes to you, our readers.

But frankly, these are just a bunch of numbers. And if there’s any number I’m proud of most, it’s “3.” Over the course of the year, the site has not always been without turbulence, behind-the-scenes crap that I prefer to keep off the site, leaving our focus on games and comics. We’ve grown to a staff of eight, but over that time we’ve gained and lost a few writers for various reasons – most flash-in-the-pan contributors, but one a long-term writer who I never expected to leave. The site moves on, though, thanks to the help of great people like Tom, Eric, Jason and Chris, who saw something here and decided to contribute their talents. I also don’t know where I’d personally be without Sarah on board, helping to edit my own work and constantly stealing DS games from the pile and then reviewing them. (more…)

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Pads & Panels got not one but two mentions around the web yesterday, a couple days after Mitch Clem kindly dropped word about our contest in his blog.

First, the Daily Iowan, the newspaper of my alma mater, The University of Iowa, ran a story on us, which can be read in the online edition. (more…)

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Thanks again to everyone who helped make our launch week successful. Please take a few minutes to help us out and tell a few friends.

We wanted to acknowledge the participation on our site and thought we’d post some of the comments we received this week and answer certain questions and requests. Keep it up. We love to hear from all of you, and hope to do these comment posts on a regular basis. (more…)

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The latest site to elbow its way into the overcrowded sea of media coverage on the internet is set to hit March 24 right here at padsandpanels.com

We know that there are a lot of choices out there, and we don’t expect readers to dump all their favorites for us (though it is an idea), but we promise to work hard to give readers a unique site that will provide some of the best coverage you’ll find anywhere of games and comics, through interviews, reviews, product features, news, commentary and more. We’re ready to do the work and hope you’ll come back March 24 to give us a try, then add us to your RSS feed, leave comments and pretend to be an upstanding part of our community when we offer great contests.

Speaking of which, to help give everyone a little extra incentive to check out the site (as if it were needed), we’ll be launching March 24 with a review of Wallace & Gromit: Fright of the Bumble Bees (hint: we like it). Telltale Games has been kind enough to give us, not one, not two…but three download codes for the entire four-episode Wallace & Gromit series. Entering the contest will be as easy as checking out the site, completing the one-step registration and posting some comments.

We’ll continue running cool contests (we’ve got some comics and other swag to give out) and post at least one review, interview or commentary (in addition to news) every single day of the week until the end of April. That’s some serious content flow. So we look forward to seeing everyone back here and hearing your thoughts. Until then, our “About” page is up now to help everyone get acquainted with the site and staff. It includes our mission statement, history, staff bios and rating system.

You can check it out here.

Feel free to email us any time at

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