Geek a Week is an art project created by comic artist

Len Peralta Len Peralta is a Cleveland-area graphic artist, illustrator, cartoonist, and podcaster who is known for zombie-themed caricatures and collaborations with nerd celebrities. His Geek a Week project, which involves weekly podcast interviews over ...

. Started in March 2010, Peralta's goal was to create illustrations and text for cards from a hypothetical collectible card game, creating one card each week. He sought to meet many

geek The word ''geek'' is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In the past, it had a genera ...

icons across numerous disciplines, including computing, movies, television, music, and Internet culture, then subsequently creating that person's or group's respective card. Though not his initial goal, Peralta and

ThinkGeek ThinkGeek was an American retailer that catered to computer enthusiasts and "geek culture". Described as a " Sharper Image for sysadmins", their merchandise has been likened to "toys for adults, novelties designed to appeal to both your inner ch ...

published the set of cards in blocks of eight after Peralta completed the initial 52-card set.

History

The idea of Geek a Week arose while Len Peralta assisted in helping

Trace Beaulieu Trace Beaulieu ( is an American comedian, puppeteer, writer, and actor. He played roles on ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (''MST3K'') Beaulieu uses his own contacts, including fellow ''

Mystery Science Theater 3000 ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (abbreviated as ''MST3K'') is an American science fiction comedy film review television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV (now WUCW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1 ...

'' alumni, Kevin Murphy, to make further plans for personalities to meet with Peralta, such as for

"Weird Al" Yankovic Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic ( ; born October 23, 1959) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, record producer, actor and author. He is best known for creating comedy songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specifi ...

. Some personalities that Peralta had met before or during the project helped to make further introductions;

Paul and Storm Paul and Storm are an American, Arlington, Virginia-based comedic musical duo, consisting of Paul Sabourin and Greg "Storm" DiCostanzo. They are best known for their humorous songs about geek culture and for amassing an internet fan base. They ...

was able to connect Peralta to

Adam Savage Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American special effects designer and fabricator, actor, educator, and television personality and producer, best known as the former co-host (with Jamie Hyneman) of the Discovery Channel televi ...

. Other featured personalities contacted Peralta directly after seeing other nerds highlight their appearance on the cards; for example,

Felicia Day Kathryn Felicia Day (born June 28, 1979) is an American actress, writer, and web series creator. She is the creator and star of the web series '' The Guild'' (2007–2013), a show loosely based on her life as a gamer. She also wrote and starred ...

became interested after seeing both

Wil Wheaton Richard William Wheaton III (born July 29, 1972) is an American actor. He portrayed Wesley Crusher on the television series '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'', Gordie Lachance in the film '' Stand by Me'', Joey Trotta in ''Toy Soldiers'', an ...

and

Jonathan Coulton Jonathan William Coulton (born December 1, 1970), often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American folk/comedy singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are " Co ...

announced their cards on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. Several of those that participated felt the project was a positive medium for the geek culture; Savage called the project "the kind of innovative ambition that's awesome when you see someone do it", while Yankovic believed that the project would help other people of the geek culture "realize that there are more people like them, and here are these successful ones, and perhaps that will inspire them to greater achievement". Len peralta paul and storm wootstock 2010

Len peralta paul and storm wootstock 2010

After arranging contact with the personality, Peralta would often interview the person, offering the audio as a podcast. He would then work with the personality for the card's artwork, incorporating elements that the personality was known for, amalgamated with popular culture imagery from film, television, comics, and video games. For example, Yankovic's image is similar to that of

Galactus Galactus () is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Formerly a mortal man, Galactus is a cosmic entity who consumes planets to sustain his life force, and serves a functional role in the upkeep of ...

playing off the phrase "Devourer of Worlds", referencing's Yankovic's food obsession. Wheaton requested to explore duality in his card, and Peralta realized this by given Wheaton's illustration the idea of an evil twin. Savage, initially unhappy with his initial drawing, felt that Peralta's first iteration was "too harsh", and later poised for Peralta via webcam, holding the ''

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

''-inspired mask and pose that Peralta drew. The text of the card was created by Peralta, with editing help from collaborators, including Paul and Storm and

Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...

. Personalities were often pleased with the pairings that Peralta created when left to decide on his own. Day, appearing as Chell from the video game '' Portal'', praised Peralta's art, in that "he paired me with just the right thing to make me excited to see myself". Aaron Douglas, drawn as The Comedian from ''

Watchmen ''Watchmen'' is an American comic book maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987 before being collected in a single-vo ...

'', stated that "I love that you can be badass and a geek and I think that Len nailed it". Gaiman, depicted as "The Vault Keeper" akin to ''

Tales from the Crypt Tales from the Crypt may refer to: * ''Tales from the Crypt'' (album), by American rapper C-Bo * ''Tales from the Crypt'' (comics), published by EC Comics during the 1950s ** ''Tales from the Crypt'' (film), a 1972 Amicus film starring Ralph Ric ...

'', believed his match was very appropriate as "there's probably little that's more iconic than one of the old EC Comics horror hosts".

Physical production

Early in the project, Peralta has received some requests to actually produce the card set as a physical product, an idea that he kept in mind during the course of the year. In late February 2011, Peralta and

had arranged to print the full set in blocks of eight; Peralta will create four more cards with "secret geeks" to round out the number to 56, creating seven sets for purchase. Alongside the initial sales of the cards, special auctions on

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

were created featuring not only cards from the set autographed by the personalities depicted, but other memorabilia from those people, such as road spikes from Savage's ''

Mythbusters ''MythBusters'' is a science entertainment television program, developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internation ...

'' or honey made from Gaiman's private

apiary An apiary (also known as a bee yard) is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept. Apiaries come in many sizes and can be rural or urban depending on the honey production operation. Furthermore, an apiary may refer to a hobbyist's hives o ...

. Money from the auctions was donated to the charities Child's Play and

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

Follow-up projects

Following the success of the first "season" of 52 cards, Peralta decided to create a second series of cards, announcing the set at the 2011

DragonCon Dragon Con (previously Dragon*Con and sometimes DragonCon) is a North American multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place annually over the Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. , the convention draws attendance of over 80,000, f ...

"Geek-a-Week Reunion" panel event along with several personalities that were already featured in the first set. The series was backed through a

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

crowd-sourcing campaign in September 2011, aimed to produce a smaller run of cards in a "Geek-A-Week 2.0" series, offering incentives such as autographed cards for funding the project. The Kickstarter was successful, and an additional 15 cards were produced. Peralta successfully repeated the Kickstarter process in May 2012 with a third season of 15 cards, this time focused on specifically on "Legends of Video Games".

External links

*
Len Peralta's homepage

References

{{reflist Mass media about Internet culture Trading cards Kickstarter-funded products