Sunday Comics Debt

Political Windbags Windfall

2012-01-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

With all the hooplah over Newt Gingrich's self-imposed portrayal of "family values", I'm surprised that no one's bothered to remind the public about the man's past behavior when Gingrich was dealing with his own martial problems around the same time he was attacking Bill Clinton for having "relations" with an intern. Remember, this is the same man who believes in not allowing gays to marry because it would threaten the sancity of marriage.

There was a time when Doonesbury was cleverly written (if boring) satire of current events, but lately, it's become somewhat lackluster compared to its heyday. I was always disappointed that Gary Trudeau never portrayed Obama as a stethescope back when he was championing for Health Care. Heck, even a floating medical light would've been preferable. Now Obama's regulated to the corner of invisible Presidents along with Jimmy Carter, because he's become too intangible to portray. Even Feiffer couldn't manage more for the latter than a floating cloud in the form of a smile.

So with a flagging Democracy who's supported the SOMA/PIPA bill (before it was shot down due to an internet blackout*) because they were getting backing from Hollywood sponsers when no other corporations would bother sponsor them, it would be high time for the Republicans to make a strong stand and portray themselves in a flattering light. (While diverting attention away from their biggest supporters)

Only problem is, of the two representatives who've bothered to gain enough support and media hype, neither Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney are suitable candidates for the head of the party. Their actions and manners have been regulated to shouting matches, and the whole result is so embarassing that I don't even want to look. The whole point of a debate is to present a proper counter-argument to an otherwise convincing soundbite, not to let your opponent self-destruct on their own issues alone. Where's the sense of fighting and fair play there? I'd rather have a worthy opponent defeated by reasonable logic rather than have them self-implode from their own inepitude. It's cases like these that make the other side look good by default, and that's no way to run a country. Similar to how it was better that Hitler was kept from being assasianated, because doing so would've made him a martyr, and he was already doing such a good job self-sabotaging his own plans, the allies felt it was more benefical to keep him alive. So too do the Democrats come out ahead by letting these two hotheads fight over similar territority.

What's strange is that for all the outrageous misdemeanors and deeds that they've done, people still feel that they're the best choices, because of their name recognizeability. (The worst part may be that Sarah Palin wouldn't even rank among the worst choices) But considering the amount of damage they're doing to their brand name, you'd think they'd rethink the whole "no publicity is bad publicity" angle.

Or maybe it's not that amazing after all. Like Doonesbury, MAD was capable of producing timly comics that could remain relevant years later. I don't know when this was published (probably around the S & L scandal) but it's still timely today.

It'd be hard to read all these descriptions and not have a name come to mind. I was planning to post these later this year, but the recent insanity of the campaign trail has has forced me to show this earlier than I ever thought.

A minor artistic quibble - I was often confused when I saw that the rats behind the title letters didn't quite line up with the lyrics. The first four were exact matches, but after that, they were only sporadically related. Turns out they work if you follow them via how they'd look via a double-page spread, and not numerically.

If you've ever wondered about the unfeasibility of the political system, most politicians are actually lawyers who've gone on to better business and publicity. That's how they start getting their funds and arguments - from their experience in court. Does politics begin to make more sense now?

So far, the wisest course of action is not to vote for anyone with any significant value, but to vote against the most reprehensible choice, as so portrayed in this comic by Barbara Brandon, Where I'm Coming From, which is basically the Black female version of Feifer. (Whatever happened to her anyways?)

This is not a case of choosing between the devil you know and the devil you don't, but making the choice between whether you want manure shoved down your mouth, or being forced-fed high quality fertilizer. Remember when nutbars such as Ross Perot were forced to form third parties since neither side would support their views? The only problem with that strategy was that the voters couldn't take them seriously, since there was no chance of them ever getting voted into office. Sounds perfectly reasonable compared to the current nuts currently on the job.

*Though that didn't stop the FBI's assault on Megaupload, though that was an entirely separate organization two years in the making, which gave a definite scare to other file-sharing programs.**

**And now there's ACTA, the European global equivalent to SOMA, which is threatening on a wider scale.

Sitting Positions

2012-01-26T15:09:00.000-08:00

Recently, there was a feature in the Globe & Mail of renown cartoonist Kate Beaton in various reading poses.

Quite naturally, this reminded me of a similar comic I read with a similar outcome:

However, I can't quite categorize this as outright plagiarizaiton, since it's been over 20 years since it was published and likely to be forgotten, and Kate Beaton had the prominency to do a wide range of multiple poses within a free panel border.

I can identify with the shifting seating spots, since it doesn't take much to make me uncomfortable. I can't simply relax unless my stomach's pressing against the table, and my backrest is at a comfortable angle. Alternately, I feel relaxed when I lie flat down on the floor with a stack of papers to read. As long as I'm pressing firm against a solid object, I'm calm. Otherwise, I'm an emotional mess. I was thought of weird because I always carried my heavy backpack around with me in High School, never once bothering to put it down. The fact is, I liked feeling the pressure of the books along my spine. Carrying them gave me assurance that I had everything I needed and didn't have to double-back to my locker (which would've gotten broken in anyways) for supplies. I need to feel pressure on myself to put myself in a comfort zone. (The backpack also doubled as a shoulder rest while sitting on the bus)

For years, I thought the rough calluses on my knees were a natural phenomenon, until I was involved in a nasty fall and wound up scraping my knees as well as my front tooth. (to this day, my teeth are still slightly out of alignment, which drives me up the wall because I can no longer swallow food symmetrically) While I was peeling off the layers off my bloody joint, I was surprised when informed that knees were supposed to be smooth. Apparently my years of sitting on my knees for comfort wound up as a factor for my crusty skin covering. This was a hidden plus, since it meant that after the accident, I would have a clean knee, even if the other was still flaky.

Then a month or so later, my knees became rough again. My need to feel comfortable outweighed my need to look presentable. Go figure.

Likewise, I have some odd reading habits. For instance, I can only read certain books in certain areas. I prefer to read my comics in the bathroom where I can take my time and relieve myself at the same time. I've found that I can't pee properly unless I've got something handy to read on the toilet. Otherwise, I remain constipated. As for prose books, I save those for when I ride public transportation. I find the vibrations on the bus and train to be very soothing, and help me concentrate while focusing on the dull prose of the pages. When the vehicle stops, I'm in a state of agitation until it starts moving again. Traffic jams are a nightmare, since there's multiple starts and stops before I even get to my destination. Then there's the other danger - if I'm on a particularly comfortable seated spot in the shade, the rumblings can lull me to sleep. I've almost missed several stops that way.

This is why I don't want to apply for a driver's license. There's too many visual distractions along the way that demand my immediate attention, and there's a very real danger of road rage if I happen to miss my timing upon not catching the sweet spot of a consequentive run of green lights. Not to mention the constant trial of taking care of your car with cleaning it up, windshield wiper fluid, paying for gas, engine trouble, and any other dozens of repairs that'll eat up valuable traveling time. Better to leave all that undue stress to the bus driver who's more qualified to handle such distress.

Even so, I'm still annoyed that the fare hikes keep increasing every year. I'm aware that the transportation funds are still absymally low compared to other cities, but it's beginning to gnaw at me.

Achille Talon / Walter Melon in English

2012-01-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

In my Mathematical Equivalence of Comics, I introduced a a two-page example for the typical European page, using Achille Talon as a base. I've now updated the previously untouched pages with a rough translation so we can see what he and the brush salesman were talking about.

For the uninitiated, Achille Talon is a fat man in a buttoncoat who's a pretintious blowhard who thinks he's more sophisicated than he really is. There's no subject too outrageous or mundane that he won't hesitate to ramble on at length at, regardless of whoever is unfortunate enough to listen. Usually, his dastardly neighbour Lefuneste (Bitterbug in English) is often the intended victim of his rants, of which he delights paying back whenever he gets the chance, which is often. He also has a tendency to spout nonsensical words, such as his trademark "Hop" and "Bof", which I've taken the liberty of converting to "Yup" and "Bah". These kind of sounds are prevalent in multiple BDs, and usually require some imaginative writing to find an English equivalent. They're similar to Anime characters using "no da" from Fushigi Yuugi, and "nyo" from the Digi Charat mascots.

The TVtropes page has the following description of the character from the author which goes as follows: "he knows everything and improvises the rest of it. Apart of this, he's generous, petty, pacifist, aggressive, progressist, bourgeois, selfless, jealous, intrepid and a bit of a coward. In sum, honest and brave just like you and me..." His style of speech was a big influence on my way of talking, even though I couldn't understand a word he was saying. I could get the underlying tones of what he was talking about and implement my own interpretations of what he might've been saying.

However, despite its cartoonyness, it's held back by the multiple wordplay and French puns that litter throughout a typical work. The names themselves are more complicated than a typical Asterix comic, where the main character's name mostly remains the same. Achille Talon is a pun on Achille's heel. Hilarion Lefuneste is hilariously fatal/disastrous, and also describes his glasses as well. Virgule de Guillemets (Magnesia) translates to Virgule of the commas. It suffers a bit from being too French, and while its strongest point are the one-two page gags, there are also album-length stories that are weaker in execution. It requires complete mastery of French to properly give an accurate version, and can't simply be done with a simple google-translate check. In fact, there was a comic where an accountant complained to Achille Talon that the translation fees for his comics were twice compared to the usual rate. (Thanks goes to LeChatVert to helping out with the translation.)

Commercial distribution of this comic has been less than stellar, given its uphill struggle to present an unknown property to the wider world. Only one book, Magnesia's Treasure was released in English. This sample from the anniversary shows a rare example of the typical wordplay that's so prevalent in the comic. Can you spot the differences?

There was an animated adaption of the character, but he bore so little resemblance to the actual comic that they might as well have been two totally different properties. It had as much in common as the movie Constantine did with the comic Hellblazer. If their likeness hadn't been used without permission, it could've been sued for copyright infringement. If I'm going to do any future English versions of this comic, they're likelier to be the shorter, more slapstick ones than the overly verbose ones that Achille is best known for.

You're on your own here. I'm not helping you with this one, save that the last word is "ME!"

Disney's Gummi Bears

2012-01-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

The Gummi Bears was a surprisingly bright spot for Saturday Morning Cartoons. It had a cast of likeable characters, intriguing storylines and well-produced animation worthy of the Disney brand. Quite a feat for a show that was thought up on the spur of the moment from Michael Eisner eating a certain brand of candy. Most properties with stronger background material usually don't fare so well.

The Sunday comic that spun off from it is less inspired.

From these samples, it's clear that the majority of the writing that was heavily focused for the TV show were abandoned on the comics page, which was more concerned with getting the character designs right rather than focus on making actually funny jokes.

The humans don't even get a chance to make an appearance. This is the only comic that even mentions one of the antagonistic ogres, and we don't even get to see it from the neck up. Judging from the shape of the feet, it's not one of Duke Igthorn's henchmen.

While the rare strip would be divided into panels, the general output would be a wide-screen single panel strip. There was also a daily comic that had a similar format, but I barely remember anything about it. This shows just how unmemorable this kind of licensed comic was.

The only other saving grace of this strip are the extras, in the form of an easy puzzle, and a bit of trivia. I later found out from an American newspaper that there was an extended version that had an additional section that was normally cut off.

There was a time when Disney would sporadically re-release their old movies back into theaters, usually to compete against rival animated features such as Don Bluth films. For the longest time, Snow White could only be seen at the movies until they finally released her on VHS and later, DVD. Now they're applying a similar strategy for their animated shorts and TV shows, briefly making collected versions available for a limited amount of time, then putting them back into the vault to be preserved for later.

The problem with that formula - nobody else knows that these animation classics even exists, save for Youtube uploaders. Back in the 80's when Disney was actually in danger of going out of business and being taken over from other corporates, they did everything to sustain their viability by showing as much of their clips as possible. In fact, The Gummi Bears was a major risk to the company's future, back when they were willing to do anything to stay afloat and relevant. (Better to go out in a blaze of glory rather than languish in obscurity) Now that they've literally become too big to fail and are now actively snatching up other companies as a safeguard feature, they've forgotten about their struggle to keep afloat by reminding their audience about the quality of their past achievements. I have a special place in my heart for the lamented Roger Rabbit inspired show, Bonkers. (The Lucky Piquel episodes, not the Miranda Wright episodes*)

While the Adventures of the Gummi Bears is still available for purchase online, you'd never know it given the lackluster advertising given to it and other classic collections of The Disney Afternoon. Have you seen the latest ones for their DVD commercial openings? If you have, check your medication, because there haven't been any. For a company that regularly releases and re-releases their features onto multiple platforms over time, you'd think that this kind of business model would be something they'd want to emulate for future customers. Nope. They'd prefer if their audience got their inspiration from the movies instead, since they're shorter and faster to digest in comparision. At least that's my interpretation given the lack of support for their old stuff. (Nevermind their new stuff)

At least they're not wallowing in nostalgia like some certain companies I could name (you know who you are), but they're fooling themselves if they believe they'll be able to sustain their popularity from their revival in the 90's alone. Revisionist history can only take you so far. (On a related tangent, Canada's one of several countries that've agreed to delay abolishing the leap second for now. That's some long-term thinking right there)

*No relation to Phoenix Wright.

Titled Smurferies

2012-01-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

The latest collection of PapercutZ's Smurfs has been released, and it's been awhile since I complained about the last one, so they're due for another round of nit-picking. The 9th book The Return of the Smurfette is a mixture of short stories featuring the Smurfette in minor roles and one-page gags that were part of an album-length collection. Rather than focus on the translation issues, I'd rather focus on the titles for the one-page jokes.

When I saw the first set of Smurfette stories, I was dismayed to see that they left out the descriptive 'Smurf' titles above the comics. I found this strange because a single page joke was shown in a previous book (The Smurfs and the Howlibird), and THAT one had a title above it.

These scans are taken from Marvel's limited 3-issue comic run, back when they were still remotely interested in producing material aimed at children. Half of a typical issue were slimmed-down single-page jokes, while the other half was attempts at doing crude imitations as drawn by Dan Decarlo (yes, THAT Dan Decarlo). Somewhat appropriate for the man who worked on Homer the Happy Ghost. If only there were taller and leggier versions of the Smurfette, he might've stood a chance.

Dan Decarlo may have been a prolific cartoonist, but he was no Peyo. His attempts at the off-model Smurfs wouldn't even earn him a job for a ghost artist for Studio Peyo. To further add insult to injury, the cover page and the interior title panel were the same image, only reversed. If you've ever wondered why so many Manga artists were reluctant to release their works over unless they were left unflipped, you'll notice a certain artistic shift. Certain mistakes become glaringly obvious when they're mirrored.

But the real crime was taking the original Smurf material and cutting them up. To make the comic more condensed, they moved some panels around, and in some cases, compressed them. As a result, a lot of the pacing and timing leading up to the finale was lost. It was as if Marvel thought their audience wouldn't be able to appreciate the European model of four layers of panels instead of the traditional three.

As an example of the Animated series toning down the violence, they left out Farmer Smurf kicking away the scarecrow, and Grumpy Smurf being cropped out of the admiring crowd.

I don't recommend reading the Marvel issues other than as a historical curiosity to see just how badly they mangled their attempts at mimicing the Smurf property. If you insist on indulging in visual sadomasochism, I suggest the oversized Smurfs Treasury, where you can enjoy all three issues with a wraparound cover that's more attractive than the interior. If you don't mind chopped up and pasted comics and bootleg-style drawings heavily scribbled from the plots of the TV series, this is the kind of product for you!

To further confound the issue, while the majority of the main feature of single-page jokes in the PapercutZ version had no titles, the remainder of non-Smurfette-related jokes had titles on them. In this case, Marvel put some more effort and imagination with these titles, though they didn't have to try too hard. One exception was this, which was titled "More Romeos and Smurfette", which was a blanket statement for a few more Smurfette-related comics.

Also, a minor tip - when the nameless Smurf is engaged in rising emphasis on getting dismal fortunes, the cries of dismay should become increasingly larger, not large and then medium in comparision.

"There are none so Smurf as those who will not Smurf" In a rare case, I actually prefer the new translation to the older version.

This is another too literal translation. "Whatever is well-Concieved can be clearly explained." I much more prefer the simpler title here:

"Strike the Smurf while its still Smurf" The title for the below one comes from an unpopular Beetles song (but popular Newgrounds animated video), the Maxwell Edison Story.

Unlike the TV show that replaced taking a hammer to Brainy Smurf's head with him getting thrown out of the village whenever he got too annoying (which was often), it seems to have been left intact in this case. One wonders why this was left mostly intact, when it could've simply been skipped over, and what an innoculous kid who enjoyed the show must've thought when seeing the insufferable genius getting a well-deserved beatdown.

Also, if anybody knows the original blog that posted this example of an earlier version that allowed the presentation of a Black Smurf, let me know so I can give a proper link.

Oh, and this was retitled, There's no Smurfcounting For Taste, which is certainly better.

Obscure Archie Characters

2012-01-15T15:18:00.000-08:00

Recently, Kevin Keller, the Gay teenage army brat's just gottenly married to a medical doctor.
I have to admit that I'm surprised that he's managed to last this long. Usually, most new characters who're introduced into the Archie universe make a strong debut, then their appearances taper off until they fade away. Such as Jughead's baby sister, Jellybean.

Obviously Kevin must be filling a niche audience that hadn't existed before. Otherwise, Archie comics wouldn't have gone to the trouble of producing his own title. With the exception of a few minor complaints from conservatives, the overall reception has been surprisingly positive. (Though some feel that he's too vanilla a personality, but in the world of Archie, that's practically a given)

Kevin's lucky enough to have maintained his popularity. Most others aren't as fortunate to stay on as long as he has. A list of some minor characters who weren't strong enough to have enduring roles can be found here. This Sunday comic is a rare occurance for showing three of them who were prevalent at the time: Anita Chavita, Aerobic Liz and Crystal the New Age Girl. Remember any of them? Yeah, me neither.

From what I can tell, they're arguing over a certain Elvis stamp, and whether he should've been portrayed as the young rock star or the bloated parody he later became known for. For comparision, it's reminiscent of fans crying foul over which portrayal of Michael Jackson is the TRUE Jackson. Since the manchild changed appearances constantly, your preferences would be left up to chance.

Mrs. Hagley is probably the closest the faculty has to a senile teacher. She's also possibly older than Mrs. Grundy, which is quite an accomplishment in itself.

As a result, she's not used very much, and Mrs. Grundy's mostly taken over her role, which is a shame, since the woman doesn't have too many friends her own age. Mr. Weatherbee doesn't exactly count, since he's effectively her boss, and she can hardly complain about upper management to him.

Then there's Mr. Krosskut (AKA Mr. Wood) whose appearances are so rare I've only seen him twice. If his name hadn't been mentioned here, I wouldn't have known what he was called. (For the record, he's misspelled with one 's' in the minor character list)

From what little I've seen of him, he handles the woodshop class, and much like Ted Danson from Damages, "looks like Frankenstein".

Frobisher... I mean Mr. Krosskut's not the only scary stone-faced adult on the staff. There was also Patton Howitzer, the ex-army drill sergeant who was the temporary substitute Principal when Mr. Weatherbee was incapacitated, and was so strict in comparision that practically everybody wanted the old Principal back. Weatherbee eventually got better, but Howitzer stayed on, filling the Vice-Principal role, where all the tough decisions could be made without anybody daring to give a contrary opinion.

Mr. Grimley was one of the more enjoyable and intriguing new additions to the faculty, since he would often interview the students of Riverdale High on their plans for the future, leading to bouts of arguing with their career plans and coping with his failing ulcer. One of his first sessions was with Betty Cooper, and we all know what a paragon of virtue she is.

Run. Run far away and never look back.

In the entire man's career, I think there was maybe ONE student who didn't leave him with a hole in his stomach. My memory's a little rusty, but I think it might've been Dilton Doiley. The session started out like any other typical meeting with the man feeling the pangs of pain and a sudden craving for his favorite Pepsi-Bismol, but eventually lessened when he explained the rationale behind his foward-thinking thoughts. In the end, he wound up making a lot of sense, and actually made Mr. Grimley feel better about himself.

Later issues would have him engaging in driving lessons, which was no less therapeutic in comparision. One such lesson had him driving an actual tank Mr. Howitzer drove over for a national celebration.

Myself, I welcome the day when the sexual orientation of a comic character isn't a defining element. The real test of Kevin Keller's legacy will be when his stories are available in a digest without commentary, since that's where the typical reader is likely to read from their collection of Archie stories.

Hostess with the Mostess

2012-01-11T19:19:00.000-08:00

Just recently got news that Hostess, best known for the overly offbeat Ads that were prevalent in comic books is going to file for bankruptcy. Next to the Beach Bully, Sea Monkeys and X-Ray goggles, they were the most known (and parodied) element in comics. It's the end of an era where ubiquitous comic advertising was something targeted towards children (which they were). Nowadays, the latest ads are more likely to contain sublimal information towards buying computers, cars and other appliances that're likely to be a little beyond the child's interests and price range. (Unless they nag their parents to buy them, and they share similar interests)

The ads may have been maligned in their time, but there's no doubt there's some fond memories of their widespread attempt at convincing people that these were really Fruity Delights in Every Bite! These things were literal MacGuffins / Deus ex Machinas / Chekhov's Guns. There was no problem so unsurmountable (or inexplicable) that couldn't be solved with the application of a carefully placed or thrown Moon Pie wrapped in thin plastic. Need to acquire some immense valuables of indeterminable worth? Hostess Fruit Pies! Need to stop rampaging mechanical rhinoceroses impervious to weapons fire? Hostess Fruit Pies! Need to stop Osama Bin Laden? Hostess Fruit Pies! (Okay, that last one's a parody, and more recently redundant, but still)

People may laugh at Hostess' childlishly obvious attempts at advertising, but their ability to tell (and sell) a complete product and story in a single page resonated strongly with the general population. A website's even gone through the trouble of making a business of selling copies of the advertisements, though the quality of the samples is quite low. (Which makes sense, since they'd hardly want to let browsers download and print the pictures themselves) Think about that for a moment - they're selling old advertisements of a product, rather than the actual product itself. That's how popular they are. Never underestimate the appeal for nostalgia.

I could've easily fallen for their product placement if any of said Hostess twinkies were available in any of the stores I shopped around, but since these were American sweets not available where I lived, I didn't fall prey to this kind of marketing. I certainly wasn't going to order out for some expensive cake snacks with shipping charges when I had perfectly good alternatives elsewhere. They also would've been more effective if I'd seen any of these ads in any comic digests, rather than the comic books they were more likely to be seen in. I think I maybe saw the infamous Spider-Man Vs. Chairman comic in an issue of Electric Company.

Seanbaby has a collection of his scathing takes of has all the examples found in S-hero comics, though there are several oddities found in other children's comics such as Archie and Richie Rich that aren't as fondly remembered. Probably because they weren't too different from what could actually happen in their pages. In other words, children's comics were filled with the kind of inheirent weirdness that wouldn't look out of place there, while S-hero comics have become increasingly darker by comparision.

Quick trivia question - which comic character appeared in the most Hostess ads? You would think that popular characters such as Batman and Superman would be fierce contendors. Nope. Superman's appeared in 10 ads, and Batman in 15. Spider-Man is a close contendor with an impressive 21 ads, but he's narrowly beaten by Casper the Friendly Ghost's total of 24 ads. Think I'm exaggerating? Check for yourself and scroll down to the 'C' section.

Manga Movie Techniques

2012-01-10T10:30:00.000-08:00

When Japan was regaining their foothold after WWII, they started looking to entertainment as a means of escapism. For the most part, that realm of cheap entertainment turned out to be comics, which led to the Manga explosion we all now know and love. Unlike America, getting a television was considered a luxery, and other than comics, their most common outlet was the movie theater. In A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi attempted to imitiate these techniques himself. Some of them were failed experiments, such as spending too much time on one scene, while others such as panning couldn't be replicated properly without losing something in the transition. But there were more successes than failures, and many of the old-school cinematic techniques from back then are still used to this day.

One of the most popularly used ones is where a face is superimposed against the background. This can be either used to show what the protagnist is seeing, or a dramatic closeup of a certain individual who'll be important later. In the former, it's an effective way of simultaneously showing both the background and the character's reaction to what they're seeing. Usually in American comics, we would be subject to the event as shown from the backside of the character's profile, or given two different panels of the same situation. Here, the two have been meshed together into one indivisible entity.

A very common use of the typical Shojo Manga page is collages of emotional dissonance across the page. If they're reflecting someone's inner tumoil, they can show what they're thinking with the help of flashbacks to previous events, or emotional conflict. Alternately, they can show multiple events happening across an unspecificied amount of time.

The closest American equivalent would be those montage scenes of crime happening simultaneously. Given the American comic's upbringing originating from an extension of Pulp magazines, (as evidenced in Gerald Jones' Men of Tomorrow) this kind of occurance was very common.

People may complain about comics being influenced by outside media, but it's been that way for ages. Superman didn't start being vulnerable to Kryptonite until the radio show. By the same token, Mangas were influenced by movies, and in turn, movies influence Manga. The first Naruto Vs. Sasuke fight was reminiscent of Neo versus 100 Agent Smiths, and a clownfish was visible in a fishtank around the time Finding Nemo was released.

If you've ever wondered why movies have failed to do proper Manga adaptions, part of it stems from being unable to understand the source material. A bigger element is the lack of understanding the underlying origins of a popular medium. Movies were originally extensions of theaterical plays (hence the name Movie Theater), with slightly different camera angles, which is why so many black-and-white classics and sitcoms have such limited sets. They're the result of a fixed camera (the audience) being shown at a consistent angle for subsequentive takes for the duration of the film. Using actual scenery would cost money, and risk bringing the studio heads' attention on an element that would be cost-prohibitive. Until somebody got the idea that the camera could be moved around and sets didn't have to be so restrictive, movies became more flexible and experimentative.

Since comics operate on a different level of storytelling from movies (though there are similarities, such as storyboards), and because Manga was so completely different from what everybody else was used to, there was a cultural divide with people thinking they'd perfectly understood one element, when they'd only seen a piece of the whole. In their attempt to capitalize on Manga's success, Hollywood has overlooked the humane factor, which was available when Manga was being shaped around movies being produced around that time. That narrative factor is something that's been lost in the wake of overreliance on special effects.

Or maybe they're too lazy to do an actual script that'll appeal to both the fans and new viewers. Outside of the original artists/writers being able to condense the entirety of their 8,000 page comic into a neat 98 minutes and credits, you'd be hard pressed to find screenwriters who'd bother to pump out a half-decent script that wouldn't sound hackened and not rely on pop culture references that won't sound dated three years from now. (Which is also why movies of popular Shonen Mangas such as DragonBall / Naruto / Bleach / One Piece have very little tie-in to the main story and are only tangentially related to the overall plot, but that's an argument for another topic) As a result, most live-action movie adaptions tend to fall on their face when trying to attempt copying something outside their field of experience. And that's perfectly fine with fans who're content to let Manga be done properly in their home country. (Though that's also an oversimplification - fans also get equally upset in finding Anime overtones in movies that only pay lip service to their influences)

However, even Manga isn't free from its own faults, since due to the nature of supply and demand, comics are ubiquitous as a languagein Japan that isn't present anywhere else. Comics are used to explain EVERYTHING, from instruction manuals, to mechanics, to calculus tutorials to how to read the dang things. As a result, the need for handy-dandy narrative comics being available in a hurry means that the artists will have to take some shortcuts in an attempt to keep up and pump out as much material as possible. To act any other way in a cutthroat business would be suicide. (Not Karoshi - that's just overworking) In many cases, they'll often resort to using visual shortcuts which only becomes obvious once you take some time to reflect.

Way way way way WAY back when I was still starting up this blog, I casually made the subject heading of a common theme in movies and TV shows, where a character will throw something to another person, and they'll catch it. It can range from anything from advertising soda pops or car keys. Basically, anything that can be thrown over a distance across the room.

However, when I started doing some research on whether this particular trope was common in Manga, since they're particularly adept at conveying action directly lifted and influenced by Movies / TV shows, I had trouble finding many instances. I thought for sure that there was something like this that happened in Hikaru no Go, but couldn't find it. (I might've been thinking of the author's notes on doing promotional advertising for a water bottle that Waya was picking up)

Jiro Taniguchi is a well-kenown and respected Manga artist, even though some people feel that his realistic depictions of everyday life is somewhat stiff. Summit of the Gods is a Manga about man's need to climb insurmountable mountains, the need to express himself through such arduous tasks, and early on, a climber helps his partner out by throwing a pickaxe in his face.

If his partner hadn't caught it, he could've been the victim of a very unfortunate accident. (Or the perpetrator of a perfect murder in the vast wilderness) In another similar event, there's a pivotal scene in Banana Fish where Cain throws an uzi several floors up, and Ash manages to catch it single handily.

Jerry Seinfeld could hardly manage to throw a package of rye bread up a window, and George could only manage with the help of a fishing rod. For a semi-realistic Manga about mind-control drugs and gang warfare, this particular scene stood out for me. Now, since these are fairly young protagonists and have had more experience at this sort of thing, maybe they're more used to this kind of thing than middle-age Yuppies, but I'm willing to guess that even trained guerrillas would be hard-pressed to recreate such an impossible task even with years of training.

Another pasttime event that everybody in Japan seems to enjoy is lying down on riverbanks.

However, even this idyllic scenario can be hillariously overused. In this page from Psychic Academy, everybody's squatting on the floor of the apartment building roof, but because of the perspective, it looks like they're sitting at an incline.

If we rotated the camera angle to a lower position (as evidenced by this handy-dandy MS paint picture), we'd see that they're actually sitting flat across on bare concrete. You'd think chairs would be more comfortable.

I once read a Yaoi (maybe Shonen-Ai) Manga about Angels floating in the air lying on cloudbanks, and they were acting like they were on a riverbank. There are probably other instances of such visual mix-ups, but I haven't found them yet. Stock poses are a common staple, since they're easy to use, and implement in any given scenario, though it cuts down on the usage of original body language. How many instances are there of somebody landing with one foot to the rear, and one hand in the front? Or making a speech by spreading their arms? Count them all up, and you'll become intoxitated in a drinking game.

Adamant Library Blues

2012-01-05T07:52:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling a little depressed lately. Don't worry - I'm not suicidical or anything, I've just lost my raison-d'etre since I've been given an extended sabbatical due to my workplace being flooded over the holidays. I helped move the boxes of books from upstairs to the basement, and vice-versa. It wasn't much, but it gave me something to do. Now I'm equally upset over not knowing the extent of the damage, or how much water's been I don't know if the water level's a thin puddle over the floor, or if the whole basement's been submerged. It's extremely frustrating, because some of the books were old rarities, some from the 17th century, and they hadn't even been scanned yet.

I'm told that the cause was an electrical discharge from the heating system that overloaded, so I know I'm not responsible, but I'm still recieving guilt by association. I won't be able to go back until they've checked the wiring and everything to determine whether it's safe to come back, and that'll take another two weeks before the building's ready. The ironic thing was that the basement was considered secure because it had a regulated air chamber that protected the books from rising above room temperature.

You'd think that having all this extra free time would be equally liberating, but it's not like that at all. I need some kind of outside influence to help fire me up. I get more inspirational ideas while I'm away from the computer screen and not concentrating on my current writing. (It helps that I'm not distracted by the dozens of games I've downloaded there) Then, it becomes a struggle to try to retain all those random ideas flowing around in my head and try to write them all down before I'm hypnotized by the alluring glow of the screen monitor.

On my last day of work, I didn't particularly feel like going that day, since I was feeling extremely exhausted, having gone to bed extra-early the night before. Once I got up the next morning, I went through the usual routine of dragging myself out of bed, taking a shower, getting dressed with the clothes I'd prepared the night before, eating breakfast cereal, checking my email and various internet sites before turning off the computer and venturing outside. It was a good thing I'd decided to leave slightly early that day, because it was slightly icy from last night's rainfall. (Not quite 1998 Ice Storm levels, but still)

I have a slightly unusual gait that's extremely reminiscent of Marvin the Martian's style of walking - I shuffle my feet across the ground. Why bother raising my legs if they're not going to travel that far? Okay, so I've been told that's kinda lazy, but it comes in handy while traversing over fields of slippery ice slightly obscured by snow. I'd prefer to be overly cautions rather than risk not knowing where my feet are at all times.

So I managed to get on the bus ride to the train station the usual 15 minutes early, got up to the terminal, and chose a comfortable spot to read my book. THEN and only then did I think to take a look at my cellphone as a slight distraction. Imagine my surprise when I found out I'd gotten a message from my social coach who'd gotten me this job telling me to call her back ASAP since work would be cancelled tomorrow. The reason I missed this vital piece of information was because she doesn't have an internet connection outside of work, and I don't check my cell phone messages very often, because I don't recieve very many texts from people I know. (Also, she called when I was asleep)

In my mind, getting to my library job overrided all other concerns. If I oversleep, I'll usually forgo my breakfast in order to catch the bus, since the slightest derivation from my usual routine sends me into an intellectual tizzy. I'm incapable of calming down until I've arrived at my destination and started making up for lost time.

Once I saw that piece of information about today's cancellation, I stared at my surroundings, and noticed that there weren't that many people at the terminal compared to other days. I'd just assumed that I'd gotten lucky, and managed to beat the rush. I make it a habit to be first out of the gate when the bus/metro doors open since I'm extremely claustrophobic around people, and get extremly annoyed at how slow crowds are in front of me. Even a single person can cut off my escape route to point "B". It also didn't occur to me that while it would be easy for me to get to work via public transportation, the same couldn't be said for my co-workers who'd likely come by car.

I hesitantly started backing away from the station, and notified my social coach and my parents of my dilemma. However, the response I got from them showed they'd misunderstood my situation. Both assumed I'd already gotten on the train and were going to my workplace to pick me up. When I read that, I thought that maybe I should go back on the train before it left (it wouldn't come for another five minutes) so they wouldn't feel like they'd gone to so much trouble. My social coach was even willing to go the extra distance just to make up for my misunderstanding, and who was I to deny her the experience?

Then it occured to me that I shouldn't bother misleading anyone, and risk going on a trip for nothing. After some back-and-forth dialogue of 'notifying the other', since my cell phone texts didn't show who else I responded to, I was eventually able to convince both sides that I wasn't going anywhere, saving everybody a great deal of trouble. This was helpful, since it gave me time to wind down back home, especially since I needed to go to the bathroom, and was planning to relieve myself at work.

Too bad I didn't check my messages before I used up a train ticket. Just to rub salt into the wound, I found out that the train services would be FREE! during the Christmas holidays, which coincidentally was when the library would be closed. Typical benefits that I can't take advantage of.

(And NOW I've just found out that I've got a sudden meeting with my social coach this Friday - on my cell again!)

A Cold Day in January

2011-12-31T21:46:00.000-08:00

The 1988 calendar was my first FBofW calendar. I have no idea if there were any earlier calendaes before then, since all my searches only result in the latest calendars being sold. On its own, it serves as a good introduction to the Patterson houshold.

With the advent of Global Warming mucking up the usual weather paterns lately, the prospect of dressing up in as little protective winterwear doesn't seem as preposterous as it once did.

These calendars also had mini illustrations in the dates page. Many of these for this year were reprinted in subsequent book collections. (It's all Downhill From Here) However, for some reason, many of them didn't fit the thematic format of the month. I'm only posting this one as an example, since it captures the mood of the year-end party. In future months, I'll refrain from posting the redundant extras (to save image memory space) unless it has some relevance.

1992 was also around the same time that April would later make her appearance. Since it could take around two years for a calendar to be released, the cartoonist had to prepare the character design well ahead in advance. As a result, we don't get to see April's earliest inception this month. (Try again in March) For a serial strip that relied on consistency, the artist couldn't afford to stray too far from the planned character designs. This was just one of several reasons why Lynn Johnson felt burnt out around the beginning of the 21st century (the biggest factor being the death of her mentor Charles Schultz) and resorted to doing future calendars using old strips on autopilot.

Before then, the later calendars had all-new illustrations in the dates area that served to give some silent commentary similar to the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strips.

On some occasions, some months would have jokes that would be single-panel variations of previous jokes. Although I enjoy the snowman's reaction here, this is still just a slight variation of this strip. (And later, an expanded Sunday)

This was one of the elements that would inspire me to do my Mathematical Equivalence of Comics post. (Still one of my proudest accomplishments) There's still several comics observations I have in mind that I hope to publish once I get the chance at getting around to them. Putting the calendar pages at the beginning of each month should make it easier to free my mind up on what subject to talk about on a given week.

Metaphorical Library Trials

2011-12-29T20:12:00.000-08:00

The Bibliothèque Nationale is the biggest library in the Monteal area. It houses an impressive four floors of media, for research and entertainment purposes. Recently, they've even devoted an entire month to the mechanics of Manga. The amount of reading material is enough to fulfil the curiosity of anybody on the lookout for wisdom. Of course, the most common areas I traverse are the shelves that contain stuff that I’m interested in, which happen to be the comics section. It’s also one of the most heavily populated areas of the library, and there are numerous patrons taking advantage of the lounge chairs with a pile of reading material handy. There’s a whole wing devoted to French BDs, and a smaller area that houses some English comics. (That’s not even counting the children’s section which is on a different floor entirely) Still, there’s enough material available to ensure my multiple visits to this library. That, and I can only take out ten comics at a time, due to the restrictions of the loaning period. Although I can borrow a maximum of 15 items, only 10 of them can be about the same subject material, and I can only take out 3 DVDs at a time. (Pay attention to this part. You’ll be quizzed on this later) However, since I can borrow entire TV series for three weeks, without having to worry about marathoning the contents in a week, I can afford to take my time. Even so, I keep finding myself returning to the Bibliothèque Nationale at least twice a week so I can take read the other comics that I haven’t had a chance to before.

However, as much as I’ve been praising the merits of the system, that still hasn’t stopped me from running into certain problems there that I normally don’t encounter at other libraries.

The whole reason I bothered to study to be a librarian was so I wouldn’t feel embarassed at having to ask for help on where I wanted to look up certain books. (That, and I hoped that I might be able to find some children’s books I encountered as a child) Along my educational path, I learned about having to deal with unexpected disasters such as problem patrons. These are the kind of people that you won’t find on your final exams. They’re members of the public who react outside the boundaries of library settings, and dealing with them requires innovation and lateral thinking. One such example involved a flasher who would brazenly expose himself to anybody unfortunate enough to catch his attention. He would wantonly open his coat without discrimination. Upon facing the head librarian, he proudly displayed his natural bathing suit to the woman. She looked at the man, inspected him from head to toe and calmly said, “I’ve seen better”. The flasher glumly walked off the grounds and never came back.

I only bring this up because there are occasions where even the best programmed system can encounter situations that no amount of preparation can adequately prepare for. Outside the entrance of the Bibliothèque Nationale are two guards who monitor the comings and goings of the populace, to ensure that no valuable materials get taken and that everyone goes through the ‘enter’ and ‘exit’ doors properly. If the detector goes off, they stop whoever’s going through, and ask them to check their luggage to ensure that nothing important gets smuggled out.

Normally, I wouldn’t think too much of such a system, since I wouldn’t expect myself to get caught trying to sneak something out without registering it first. If I wanted to, I would read it in the library first. (That’s one less book I’d have to take out, leaving me room for more) However, due to a little glitch, I somehow managed to get stopped several times while trying to leave. At first, this confused me, since I’m normally a morally-abiding citizen (within reason) and would never think of trying to blatantly break the law. The cause of the detector going off? A book I took out of another library.

If you’re not aware of the typical library anti-theft system, I’ll give you the reader’s digest version. There are magnetic bar codes inserted inside library books that will go off if they aren’t deactivated. However, the library that I borrowed the offending book from was one that I was working part-time at, and hadn’t bothered to install their scanner. Because this library didn’t get much repeat business since they were under renovation, they saw no need to invest their funds for something that would have limited practical uses. As a result, every time I tried to move past the heavily guarded detectors at the Bibliothèque Nationale, their books would alert another library’s anti-theft system.

Even when I knew beforehand that these books would set off the alarm, I couldn’t convince the librarians to take the books beforehand and ‘legally smuggle’ it to the other side. I had to get ‘caught’ first, then prove that the rest of the stuff in my backpack was safe, then I could safely move out and catch the metro.

The second incident that happened was something that sounds very Kafkaesque. Normally, when I want to reserve a book or DVD at a library, I make an request to hold onto it, especially if the item’s recently available. Recently, I saw from the online database that a potentially interesting show, The 4400, a concept that sounded similar to Heroes (though not quite like Misfits) had two copies of the first season available that day. Naturally, I made an online request to reserve it for me, and expected to find it waiting for me when I came for my next visit.

However, upon arriving, I found that not only wasn’t my request not kept, it was outrightly declined. Why? Apparently, according to the library’s system, it can only reserve items that have already been taken out. Because one DVD was already borrowed by another patron, and the other DVD was still in the library, I wasn’t eligible. Okay, so I thought, “If the other DVD’s available, I should be able to find it first, before anybody else gets the wise idea of taking it out before me.” So I went to the section where their DVD section is a disorganized mess. While their movies are categorized by subject, you need to flip back the covers just to see the titles, and nothing’s in alphabetical order. It’s a wonder anybody manages to find anything there. Though that might be part of their strategy - forcing their patrons to check out the similar items on the shelves encourages them to see other shows they might’ve not considered otherwise.

After a fruitless search, I was wondering whether some nameless patron was walking around one of the other floors, holding my copy of the DVD that was rightfully mine, just taunting me with the knowledge that he could’ve taken it out anytime he wanted, but wanted to continue torturing me with the slim hope it was still in the library somewhere. That was when I found out the awful truth - no patron had it - it was still on the library returns shelf.

The Bibliothèque Nationale is so large that when an item is returned, it takes three days before it’s put back into circulation. That means that as long as it’s still in the reserve shelves, it counts as ‘being in the library’.

So, not only CAN'T I reserve a DVD if it’s available, I ALSO can’t take out said DVD if it’s available. My only hope at seeing this show is to reserve the DVD when BOTH discs are taken out and thus AREN’T available. (I also have to pray that the third DVD which is still being processed doesn’t happen to make itself available at the same time the other DVDs are taken out)

Now, I’ve saved the most recent event and best one for last, which was the inspiration for this post.

I just went to the library to pick up a reservation of the second season of Babylon 5, which I was only slightly interested in, since I understood it got better after the first season. That, and it was written by the same guy who wrote The Real Ghostbusters cartoon. I managed to find my reservation in the corner where they were kept. Unlike other libraries which kept their reservations behind the counter, our reservations were available for easy picking. Easy, that is, if you could find it, since they were colour-coded by the date they were set aside, and the number you were registered under. After looking through every shelf containing my identification number, I finally found my DVD under the last shelf, which naturally was the first available shelf. However, just before I went to the self check-out lane, I decided to access my account and see if I could slim down my reservations some. In addition to only taking out three DVDs, I could only reserve three DVDs at a time. (Remember the restrictions I mentioned earlier? This will become relevant soon enough) Naturally, I saw that my earlier reservation was still online. So I got the idea of removing my request for Babylon 5, since I already had the item I wanted in my hand, and submitted another DVD request. Satisfied, I went to the self check-out center to register my items and leave.

Then things got complicated when I was notified that my DVD was requested by somebody else, and could only be notified by the library clerk. No problem. I’d just have to stand in line and have them do the job for me. So I stood. And waited for my turn.

Below is a rough summary of the dialogue that ensued:

Librarian: You can’t take this out. This DVD is reserved for somebody else.
Me: Yes, but you don’t understand. I canceled my request before I could take it out. I had no idea that by doing so, I would be voiding my request. I’m simply asking for the simple courtesy of mending a little mistake I made.
Librarian: I’m sorry, but the next person is waiting for his reservation. You’ll have to wait your turn.
Me: I came all the way down here for this DVD! And now you’re telling me that you won’t even go to the effort of taking maybe thirty seconds to reverse my cancellation?!
Librarian: You’re holding up the line, sir.

I was exasperated. Naturally, I thought that since it took a few minutes for my requests to come through, it would take a similar amount of time for my redundant cancelations to register. After all, this was a system where it took three days just to put a book back on the shelves. The whole process of canceling my reservation happened much faster than I anticipated. I had no idea that there were other people ahead of me who wanted to see the same show that I did. In my mind, the number of interested people begins and ends with me. I pleaded with the guy behind the counter to reconsider his decision, maybe even hand over the DVD case so I could make a stronger argument, but he held fast to his convictions.

Exasperated but not quite defeated, I went to the Information desk to see if they could help change his mind. (I also wanted to change my notification of when my reservations came in from telephone calls to emails, since I’m deaf, but that was a complaint for later)

It took me an extraordinary amount of repeating my story several times before my complaint was fully understood. Part of the problem was that the library and its librarians were mostly French, and I wasn’t making things much clearer because I was quite upset. (Even the Bibliothèque Nationale website is dominantly French, and every time I try to convert it to English, it’ll revert back to its home language when I try to use one of its useful links) Eventually I managed to get across that I had unknowingly canceled my reservation five minutes before I took out the very item that I wanted to take out. Fortunately, the Information guys were sympathetic to my cause, but were mystified on where to find the DVD I wanted. In the time it took me to explain my dilemma and them to comprehend my complaint, Babylon 5 had already been swallowed up into the vast expanse that made up the Bibliothèque Nationale reserves. I offered to lend my eagle-eye expertise at finding the proverbial needle in their haystack of happy returns, but they declined on the grounds that they couldn’t let the public behind their nationally guarded secret revival procedure. Potential spies could steal their techniques, and some of the magic might be lost.

Sorry to disappoint everybody hoping for a happy outcome, but it is the nature of Kafkaesque stories that things never end well.

I later asked the guys behind the Information desk if this situation was a frequent occurrence in their line of work. They had to admit that they’d never encountered this kind of thing before. That’s the problem with fool-proof plans - inevitably, some idiot will find some fatal flaw in a system that no rational thinking human could possibly think up.

“All people are idiots. I am a people, therefore I am an idiot.”
- Me

New Year's Evolution

2011-12-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

Starting next year, I thought I'd do something slightly different with this site.

On a recent episode of The Good Wife, a member of the jury mentioned that she had a blog that registered an average of 45,000 visitors a day. For a site about buttons of all things. Granted, her numbers were probably inflated due to the fact she updated at least twice a day just to jot her thoughts down, and to sound impressive in Hollywood terms, but they're still much larger than my figures, which are too embarassing to mention in comparision.

I've noticed that most of the more popular comic blogs have a particular theme that they return to that ensures repeat readers, which is something that I'm sorely lacking. Mike Sterling has Swamp Thing, his Sluggo Saturdays and End of Civilizations. Dorian Wright has WildCat, his Gay Previews and Flops. Chris Sims has Batman and his Anita Blake / Tarot reviews. Neilalien had his Doctor Strange and daily updates. Valerie D'Orazio had her autobiographic traumatic experience as an S-hero writer. K-Box has his chart of monthly Spider-Man sales. Kleefeld has daily updates and his Garfield mash-ups.

Apparently, doing various short essays of slightly obscure Sunday comics isn't enought to guarantee repeat visitors. Not to mention that my mini-essays aren't considered long enough to attract a loyal and devoted number of return readers, especially since I only update at least twice a week, if I'm lucky.

I determine whether enough time's passed between the last time I raised the subject material in a previous post. I change subjects with pretty much every entry, because I don't want to get tied down to any one specific comic field, and my mind has a tendency to wander all over the place, depending on the latest news feed, whatever I've eaten that morning, or the general mood I'm in. One day I'll feel like posting an ambitious parody script, the next, I'll feel like blogging about an obscure comic I've just read.

Part of the reason my interests range so widely from Sunday comics to European BDs to Children's books to Manga is because I'm attracted to anything that has a good combination of words and pictures. Usually I scan various comics with the intent of creating a future post on them, and then completely forget about them until I chance upon them later. As a result, I have a very sporadic and eclectic range of tastes that may not be to everyone's liking, especially since people tend to favour one medium over another. I realize that this rapid switch in subject material might be offputting to casual readers who're expecting lighter fare, and therefore, gives them less of a reason to return.

Therefore, I've decided to have a consistent theme for the next year. At the beginning of each month, I'll be displaying the interiors of the various For Better or for Worse calendars that I've kept over the years. One month at a time. Many of these have never been collected before, even with the omnibus collections. Hopefully, this might spur other people to feel the need to share their personal calendars. I've only got five For Better or For Worse calendars, because for other years, I had other calendar choices. For some reason, it could be extremely difficult to find the proper cartoon calendar I wanted. The sad irony is that once For Better or for Worse calendars stopped being hard to find (in their home country no less), they started showing only reruns of Sunday comics, instead of single panel comics.

Whether this will actually increase my numbers remains to be seen. I don't expect an immediate pick-up just from posting a few pages here and there, but eventually, the months will accumulate, and people will start paying attention and start coming back on a regular basis. Hopefully, I'll even get some regular commentary for some of my entries. I'm more likely to be inspired by the feedback of my audience who bother to voice their opinions. I'm a stimulus-responsive kind of guy.

Late Hanukah Party

2011-12-24T23:32:00.000-08:00

Normally, I like celebrating Hanukah, because it usually comes a little earlier than Christmas. In a rare instance of synchronicity, we wound up celebrating the festival of lights rather late this year. Unlike Christian holidays, Jewish holidays operate on a lunar calendar. The earliest date was on November November 28, 1994, and the last time that Hanukah came close to Christmas was on December 24, 1997. I hoped to share the 8th candle burning on New Year's with our relatives for our New Year's party, since it was such a rare event, but things got too chaotic and unwieldy for my taste, and I forgot to take the chance to share the event with my French family members who I don't associate with much since I have trouble understanding them and vice-versa. (I never bothered to learn the language)

Our gift-giving had declined somewhat compared to previous early years of celebration where we would have a completely different gift for every day that we lit the candles. Afterwards, I would participate in the dreidel song, which I would spin around with great enthusiasm until I fell down from sheer dizzyness. (Pretty much anybody on the autistic spectrum enjoys the spinning motion, and the fact there were three stanzas of this silly song, I I could whirl around to my heart's content) Nowadays, we're lucky enough if we manage to remember to light the candles consequentively, since we're so often preoccupied with other stuff on our minds. This year, our gifts have been a package of Chocolate Hanukah gelt in the form of Canadian currency that's been rationed to two coins a day whenever we bother. The actual giving of the major gifts would come once everyone was gathered together under one roof, which happened to be last Friday.

In a surprise coincidence, my sister arrived on the same day that we got a sudden outburst of snow, around a month that had been relatively snow-free since our brief snowfall back in November. At the time, I thought for sure that the snow would multiply in increments like it did 'round this time of year. However, due to the unseasonably warm temperatures, it looked less likely that it would be a 'white Christmas' by the end of the year. As I mentioned to my sister in a previous get-together where the weather was a torrental downpour, causing flash puddles (like flash floods, only smaller) everywhere, I quoted a familiar passage that only she would've understood; "I mean, say it was snowing so hard we couldn't make a fire". (If you don't know where that came from, I pity you and your canned ravioli)

When I was little, I used to believe that if I pressed the pages of my Chickadee magazine against my bedroom window to a certain page overnight, it would snow the next morning. This was my superstitious method in making sure that there would be a snow day, and hopefully, school would be cancelled and I'd be able to romp around and play in the excess white stuff. Now that I'm older and more boring, I look forward to days when I no longer have to play dress-up in order to brave the elements and double-glare of snow blindness.

When my sister Chantal who I nickname Chant, (because she talks so much) finally arrived, we started talking about various things around the kitchen table, such as how using typewriters wasn't a requirement for getting a job. It was generally only expected for secretaries to use them. The other end of the spectrum for using typewriters was to spiff up term notes to impress the teacher with your well-written assignment. And they HAD to be well-written, since any attempts at correcting any mistakes with white-out meant that you'd have to roll the page up, apply the fluid, wait for it to dry then realign the page back into its proper place and hope it wouldn't look too off-kilter for the next letter. As a result, making the slightest error could result in extreme frustration, since it often meant having to redo the whole page over again, especially if your teacher expected good page design. Spelling mistakes, punctuation and grammar were a writer's worst nightmares, and must've been a relief just to finish a composition, since the pressure would finally be over with... until the next essay. No wonder people preferred to write instead, though even that was no guarantee. I know of a well-written essay with precise grammar and spelling that was flunked simply because it was written in three different pen colours.

Not to mention that because of how typewriter keys were designed. If they were pressed too lightly, the letter wouldn't appear on the page, or be skipped entirely. This might've been the real purpose behind those 'hunt and peck' typists who have no knowledge of the Qwerty code. They want to push the keys hard enough so they'll appear on the page, even if the carbon paper is low on ink. I also suspect this might've been the inspiraton behind the writer's challenge at creating an entire novel without using single letters so they wouldn't have to spring for a new typewriter. So what if the sentences were unnaturally clunky without ever once introducing someone or something with an 'A'? Once the royalty payments came through, then they could afford a newer model.

I used to play with an old electric typewriter by trying to copy the exact words from this little extra doodle in a FBoFW book. The first few lines were relatively easy enough, but I kept messing things up in trying to duplicate the Asdfkj kind of random button-mashing done here. The 'j's hidden in the row of iiiis was really tricky to get past. Eventually, I just gave up because I always kept messing up in the row of EEEEEs, because there was an 'F' slipped somewhere in there.

The conversation then veered into how we learned to use the computer keyboard. I learned how to type thanks to a very basic computer program that started with typing out words with the four letters on my left hand, (A, S, D and F) in various combinations, then moved on to my right hand (J, K, L and ;) then expanded from there. To get an idea of how old the program was, the screen was black and green. Our first home computer wasn't that old, but it had an on/off switch at the back, Printmaster page designs, WordPerfect programs and an impressive 2000 MB of RAM. The only problem was that in order to use the files properly, you had to type certain commands using a combination of F-number keys, shift tabs and letters. You needed an instruction manual just to be able to save a shopping list there. Oh yes, this computer didn't have a mouse either.

I was reminded of a story about how the alphabet was first introduced in computer language. Originally, if you wanted to type a word, you had to do it in binary code. That meant that for every sentence, you had to do it with a series of ones and zeroes, which is only slightly less annoying than doing it in morse code. Fortunately, a woman found the whole procedure too ridiculous to contemplate and too lazy to type out the numbers herself devised a program that would remove the numbers from the equation entirely, and have the computer do the work itself. It's thanks to lethargic people like these that we're able to enjoy writing as a part-time activity as opposed to the diligent slog it was back in the days of good penmanship.

Then for some reason, we started talking about floppy discs that were found while cleaning up. my parents were worried about the content within them, becuase none of the more recent computers were compatible with them, and they didn't want to throw them out in case they held any incriminating information. At first, I thought they were talking about the flat square black discs with holes in them. I was later corrected that they were the more recent square ones that looked transparent, and had miniture circular CDs inside them. I had to leave the room once they started opening them up, because it was too emotionally uncomfortable for me. In fact, I often equate computer repair to brain surgery, and have the same reaction as normal people do in the presence of exploratory operations. Unlike the human body which has specific tasks designed for your innards and every organ serves a single function, the computer is nothing but a whole memory, and the thought of interfering with even a single microchip feels like proding at a piece of the old grey matter itself. That's potential information that may never be gotten back, and it always fills me with queasiness. If my sister hadn't bothered to check the spare computer in the basement to see if it held a floppy drive, the euthanasim might've been carried out. (The fact it was being done with scissors didn't make it any easier)

Shopping for the family is always extremely difficult, since we have a tendency not to wait for others to give us stuff we want. My Dad is always the hardest one to shop for, since he purchases everything he needs beforehand, and has very few wants of his own, save for anything involving Tennis stuff. I preorder most of the comics that interest me, so the only books that're left are items on the backlog that sound interesting, and the hope that they haven't been sold out yet. I was fortunate enough to find several online sites selling the remaining volumes of the Suikoden III Manga to fill the holes in my collection. I casually - but not quite casually - mentioned the details of these links to my Mother in the unsubtle hint that she might order them for me, since she's normally reluctant about ordering anything for me without permission.

When she finally decided to get around to ordering the items, she wanted to take advantage of Amazon's discount shipping rate by finding as many as many discount books to add to the limit rate. If she ordered over a certain amount, the shipping for all the books would be FREE!
It was extremely difficult for me to find several books that I'd personally want to keep for my personal collection, since I still had a stack of personal books lying on a shelf that I hadn't gotten around to reading yet. Unfortunately, the various books I wanted all came from different locations outside of Canada, so she actually wound up losing more money, and had to cancel some of the extra books we'd ordered. (I didn't want most of them anyways)

While my presents were taken care of, my Mother was wracking her brain on what possible gift she could possibly give my sister for a present. I casually tossed out the suggestion that maybe she would like to have the Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection, since Chant often lamented that she didn't have her own books to read after she moved away from mine, and into a small apartment with her fiance (now husband). However, I felt that this would be too elaborate a gift, given the hefty $150 price range. For that kind of money, I could also afford a Far Side collection, which had several comics that were never collected. But even the allure of maybe 100 'new' Far Side comics couldn't stunt the blow to my wallet.

Upon further reflection in the upcoming weeks, my mother thought that a DVD collection of The Big Bang Theory would be a more suitable present. Chant had seen a few snippets of the more funnier aspects of the show, and Sheldon (the smartest guy), had so many parallels with my Aspergic tendencies that were spot-on, even though their depicition of nerd culture left me with revulsion. Of course, the hard part would be for Chant and Derek to find time to actually watch the episodes in the first place. They've still got bunches of Wii games that they still haven't gotten around to finishing yet. I gave my mother the green signal for that option, since I couldn't think of anything else.

Well, when we finally got around to giving out the gifts we'd given each other, there were some unexpected outcomes.

I lent my sister the first book of Pooch Cafe, along with multiple library books I knew she'd like, secure in the knowledge that she'd easily blaze through them within the span of a week. My sister gave my mother a Kindle, which would help with her increasingly bad eyesight, and my father, a subscription to National Geographic. (Never mind that there's already hundreds of the magazines spread throughout the house with their yellow spines that's hardly been read twice) Because of my financial crunch, the only thing I could offer was cleaning up the house before company came for New Year's, including the bathroom tubs, which seemed to please my mother greatly. (This is not an exaggeration)

Then it was time for us to recieve the gifts in turn. I got the Suikoden III Mangas as expected, though I was a little annoyed that one of the volumes was a hardcover book, which would interfere with the page-turning enjoyment, but I considered that a minor inconvenience compared to actually reading the rest of the story. Then my Dad gave two boxes of Maple tea for my sister. I later found out that my sister also ordered my parents a package of the very same product for my parents as well. This tied in very well with the next gift which brought shrieks of joy across the table.

To my utter amazement, my mother had followed through on my suggestion and actually ordered the massive Calvin & Hobbes collection. Apparently, Mom was still upset about not taking advantage of the Amazon shipping last time, and upon seeing it on sale, decided to purchase it just to feel good about herself. Spending more money to save money seems to be a popular holiday pasttime. My sister gleefully ripped open the fragile plastic covering and tried to wrench out a single volume from between the tight cardboard covering. That was when Chant's husband dropped the bombshell - he'd already ordered the very same collection for his wife.

In a sense, this answered a nagging question in my sister's mind. She wondered what the heavy package under her arms she was carrying from the car into the apartment could possibly be. This also left us with another moral quandary. My sister had already opened the package and tainted any possibility of returning it. Not to mention that Derek (Chant's husband) was now pressed for time in finding a replacement gift, not to mention returning the C&H book before Christmas Eve. That was when a suggestion was thrown in my dirrection - what would I think about having my personal Calvin & Hobbes collection? I objected on the grounds that I still had my own books, and didn't need extra duplicates lying around. Not to mention that I'd already made a copy of Calvin's first appearance from a library book.

I also didn't like how unwieldly the volumes were, compared to the original books, not to mention the pages were too shiny, and could blind you if the lighting wasn't perfect. I hate having to tilt my reading material at a specific angle just to be able to enjoy it. I shouldn't be held hostage to my pages based on the light source - it should be the other way around!

However, once it was pointed out that I didn't have the extra poems and stories that were available in the omnibus collections, I started backing down from my original position. Frankly, I didn't put up much of a fight. As a result, you are now looking at the reluctant owner of a perfectly good Calvin & Hobbes collection. On the minus side, my sister's surprise present for Christmas is now ruined now that she knows what it is.

For anyone who wants to try using my Chickadee page for creating their very own White Christmas, print out the following image below, press it against the window overnight, and let the magic do its work. (It had a 70% chance of success when I was little, and I take no guarantee of the efficiency of the product. Satisfaction is not guaranteed)

Alternate Tintin Interpretations

2011-12-22T11:28:00.000-08:00

With the Tintin movie opening in America's movie theaters tomorrow, we'll face the answer to the question that's plagued long-standing oponents and faithful followers of the series for years - will the property be a hit or a miss with Americans? I've often heard the argument that Americans can't identify with the boy simply because he's too much of a boy scout. But Astro Boy and Superman are also considered boy scouts in their own right, and no one disputes their popularity, even though they've fallen out of favour recently. Perhaps their fears stems from Tintin not having any powers, save for cunning, resourcefullness, and nigh invulnerability in the face of danger. Who could possibly identify with such an improbable character?

Quebeccers were fortunate enough to have a sneak peek at the movie, due to Montreal being the comics capital of Canada. Since it's more French there than anywhere else, they've got plenty of French imports that would be difficult to find elsewhere. Early reviews were mostly on the negative side, many of them from The Guardian for some reason. The fandom is equally divided between two camps of the old guard and the potential new audience. I haven't seen the actual movie itself, save for a few scenes sneaked here and there from the trailers alone, but even though what I've seen fills me with a weird sense of glee, I still have reservations about seeing an American version of the Belgian reporter. I wasn't that crazy with the Nelvana animated series, even though it was extremely faithful to the source material, because it still didn't feel like an accurate rendition of the Tintin books which I took (and still do) great pleasure reading from.

With such an iconic and popular property, it's inevietable that there would be warped versions of the boy reporter. And indeed, Tintin has been used for practically anything. From Iraq-stylized commentary, to Left-wing anarachist revolutions, to Lovecraft homages to Prison Break parodies to S-hero stories. However, no one else does elaborate satires of the Belgian detective than the country that spawned him. Herge was extremely protective of his property, correctly feeling that nobody else other than him would be capable enough of presenting accurate versions of Tintin.
Not that's stopped others from trying!

One such cameo appearance was late in Joanne Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat, where the titular cat and his owners come across a familiar figure while traversing the continent of Africa. In an interesting role reversal here, the Rabbi's cat got his power of speech from eating a parrot, only to unexpectantly lose it later after taking the lord's name in vain too many times, and encounters a dog who was capable of talking to his owner, but gradually lost his ability to do so once Captain Haddock appeared on the scene.

I have to admit that as much as I admire Sfar's creative output and wealth of subject material, his actual stories and art style leaves me cold. Fortunately, there's still plenty of other works to purvey even if once particular storyteller doesn't match your tastes. Hevy Metal is famous for having loads of European material betwen its pages of scantly-clad female covers. One particular story that popped out was Raul Fleetfoot. (Strangely enough, his name was reverted to his native language, Raoul Fulgurex in later translations)

Raul is part of an organization of inspectors who're assigned to infiltrate comic stories and make sure that things are going according to the script. They do their best to make sure the story stays on target and doesn't deviate from the plot. Think of them as real hands-on editors. They have to be capable enough to deal with the same dangers they might encounter while following the protagonists. Anything ranging from sudden typhoons to canibalistic pygmies to sudden pitfalls to immediate cancelation.

However, things start to unravel when the lead investigator falls in love with the female protagonist of a pulp fiction story he's involved with, and saves her from assassination from a generic tough guy. As punishment, he's reassigned to the high-risk section where he's in put in charge of a certain individual...

It should be pointed out that this investigator is something of an idiot. He means well, but always puts his own needs ahead of the company's, and by the end of the series, he has trouble following complicated concepts, even when they're explained in point-note form. He might've not initially appeared this way, since even at the beginning, he was somewhat bright, but as the series goes on, he becomes more reckless until he's a disaster magnet just by showing up. He doesn't even have to do anything, but just stand there and events will spiral out of control.

It's only when we see the Tintin character here that we see he's an unflattering portrayal of the boy we like so much. Here, he's less of an idealistic youth and more of a cynical coward who already knows the cards are stacked in his favour, and won't hesitate to run the other way once faced against the slightest hint of a threat.

Raoul Fulgurex also has the best ironic use of a racial caricature of the offensive Chinese villain. I won't reveal it out of fear of revealing the surprise. Personally, I feel that the second story is the weakest overall, since it's just a straight parody of King Kong. The Heavy Metal version also has a significantly censored version of the giant ape's huge... red... schwong that's naturally covered up by a carefully placed screaming balloon while the hairy beast's on a rampage. (This doesn't really count as a spoiler)

However, things start getting back to lunatic levels in the third and final book where the executives become dismayed at the quality of the stories they're in charge of nowadays. They're reduced to the level of Foreign films, where there's long stretches of time, sparse dialogue and almost no action happening. As a result, they decide to "spice" things up a bit, so their services will be back in demand again. They plan out their clandestine meetings in a certain wardrobe that should be quite familiar to long-time readers.

To accomplish this, they intentionally sabotage the very boring stories that're they're rebelling against. This means that the people in charge are now doing the very thing they were trying to stop in the first place. And just in case things weren't confusing enough, time travel is also involved. For this reason, a cameo appearance of Valerian (of Laurie & Valerian fame) pops up near the end. The in-joke may go completely over the heads of anyone who isn't already familiar with these two, but the basic gist is that these are time / space travellers from a future Earth.

There's even a gallery of the various people who pop up in these adventures in the albums. Like so many portrayals of large casts, they're easier to appreciate when you're more familiar with the source material. Anyone interested in reading these stories can find them in Heavy Metal issues January 1992, January 1994 and September 1996 respectively.

On the other side of the coin, we have what's considered to be a modern-day Tintin in the form of an anxious young boy named Jules from The Adventures of Jules by Emile Bravo. I've done my best at doing an amateur scanlation of the relevant pages to make the material more comprehensible. Any mistakes made are Babelfish's and mine. The following pages are from the second book where the titular character notices a certain newspaper article while seated next to a familiarly-clothed old man.

In order to save Jules' pet from euthanization, Janet's mother, Gredulin Wilkins, a renown scientist bypasses authority by proclaiming a few little white lies to ease the process along.

Shortly after the kids leave the train station, trouble strikes when the scientist suddenly disappears, along with Jules' pet guina pig.

As a result of a misunderstanding, the police are on the lookout for the missing scientist, and an accomplice who's none other than Jules' pet guina pig, which is why the children are stiffling their laughter in the page below. This might be considered a slight spoiler, but the mad scientist who's photo was visible in the newspaper had something to do with Gredulin's sudden disappearance.

The resulting fallout from the questioning leads to the final exchange between the reporter and the policeman here:

Even if Tintin tanks in the U.S., it can take solace in that it drew in a high level of international numbers and $1.45 million in Quebec theaters. That might not sound like much compared to the blockbuster numbers that're usually bandied about, but multiply that figure by maybe 50 states, and you'd get a more respectable figure that make studio heads spin. It's a little unusual that a movie created in America was first shown overseas before being shown in its home country. But when you consider that the subject material is more popular practically everywhere else, it sounds like a wise business decision. All that's needed is to wait and see if supply will create demand for the original source material, namely the Tintin books which is where the real magic takes place. I'm willing to guess the answer will be "yes".

Load-Bearing Husbands

2011-12-19T13:25:00.000-08:00

In today's Blondie, we were treated with a general reminder of the true meaning of this month's holiday season:

However, as is typical with legacy strips, this was just a watered-down and condensed version of a previous comic. Until I scanned it, I didn't notice that the woman in the pentultimate panel was also visible in the background in the first panel. (Or third, if you're counting the nonexistent throwaway panels. Fourth, if you include the title panel)

Just to round things out, here's a longer-term version of a similar event, leading to a different conclusion. I particularly like the various levels of set-up before the rousing finale. It's a wonder that these men who're being used as their wives' personal shopping carts don't wind up dropping their presents more, let alone become blind from having their view obscured by Xmas patterns dancing before their eyes.

When I was a kid, I used to try to carry every single item mentioned in the Ernie & Bert Book where Ernie would show the latest container he'd relocated everything that led to rationalizing Bert wearing a pot in place of his cowboy hat, because it was holding his fish, which had no room for crayons in the fishbowl, which previously had soap in the crayon box... you get the idea. If I dropped any of these, I would start over from the beginning until I got it right. It was only made easier by having my sister play the second party by putting the kangaroo doll on my back, which was the main tipping point that led me to restarting from square one. Only when I reached the end could I safely let everything fall on the floor. In Dagwood's case, he could be excused by having plenty of experience in balancing the entire contents of the fridge on his arms in order to create his legendary Dagwood Sandwiches.

Sunday Comic Covers

2011-12-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you about the recent expecience I just had a few days ago.

I was looking through a random Anime video store that was going out of business, checking the shelves for anything worth taking out. There were some live-action movies that I wasn't that interested in renting, and could easily find elsewhere, so I started browsing the back shelves of the store, looking at the old-school video games that were in stock. In this case, this included N64 and PS2 games. Even though I kept thinking "why bother?" in the back of my head, when I was living in an age where emulators made hunting rare games redundant, I still couldn't help myself from looking. After all, there might be something worth looking at.

Then I pulled out a random shelf out of a random corner of the shelf and was faced with an amazing surprise. There were rows upon rows of Gazette Sunday comics in reasonably good condition, each with a typical children's drawing in front of them.

I could've used a paper bag at that moment because I was hyperventilating like an old rusty ventilation system, and probably attracting the attentions of the other patrons there, but I was too excited to care. This was the kind of collection I'd only had dreams of finding in dusty corners of basements or garage sales. And here was a whole slew of comics from the early 80s available at my fingertips! Half of this stuff I had never seen before, which meant there was a very good chance at filling in some gaps in my collection and my memory. These were comics that hadn't seen the light of day in years and they were available at my fingertips! Not to mention that this could be additional potential material for my blog. This would put a large dent in my budget, but it would be worth it!

I took two huge stacks of comics out of the box and carried them, looking for a flat surface to lie them down on so I could sort them through and organize which piles were comics I already had, and which I didn't. I'm very good at organizing things, but I need a consistent system for it to work. Within the confines of the Anime store, it was surprisingly difficult to find a suitable clear table. The first platform I used somehow had too many loose clothes lying around, and every time I kept moving them, they just seemed to keep getting in the way. I didn't want a single fabric to disturb the underlying surface of the comics, not to mention making a mess I'd probably regret later. If the pile grew too high, there was the danger of it tipping over, and I didn't want that. There would be plenty of time looking in the insides, but I needed to separate them first.

Then to my great horror, while cleaning up my surface area, I accidentally knocked over a pile of my comics on the floor. When I looked over the counter, ammongst the boxes and bags, they'd mysteriously disappeared. A passing girl who'd seen the incident take place pointed to under the counter where they'd bounced off a backpack, but when I looked there, all that could be found were a bunch of magazines in different subjects, as well as various ads. None of my comics could be found anywhere. When I stood back up on the table where the pile of comics had previously all been metitilously organized, this pile of paper was sloppy, dishelved and random. In addition, for some perplexing reason, there were a few Reader's Digest books in the mix. I was wondering what was going on. The books had all been perfectly organized before...

...and then I woke up.

Yeah, sorry to ruin everybody's expectations, but chances are you probably figured out what was happening long before I did. Besides, I wanted to convey the kind of frustration I constantly have over not being able to find most of the childhood comics in question. Most of the other comics have had recent archival collections, but there's still a wealth of comics from when I was growing up that I'll never be able to experience again, because they'd have to go through the early stuff first. Not to mention it won't be the same, since they'll be divided by their individual series, and not grouped together into an unique pattern in the Sunday pages.

There was one Broom Hilda comic I dimly remember that had Gaylord seeing a flying saucer, and making admirable remarks about it to the green-skinned witch. Then the UFO landed, and out popped a robot-like alien holding a mechanical device while Gaylord looked noncommittal and Broom Hilda looked surprised.

From this brief description, it's obvious that Gaylord was remarking on how we would benefit from the Alien's advances in science, technology and philosophy. Then the actual alien revealed itself to be nothing more than a salesman hucking out mediocre wares. Even though I know that's the most logical outcome, I still want to see the actual comic itself so I can determine it myself for sure.

While readers might feel cheated in the same sense that Jason Fox was when he found a whole cache of Christmas presents under the tree that he'd missed, I've grown accustomed to this kind of thing. It was just that this dream had a larger sense of scale and build-up than previous searching dreams I had. I can take some solace in the outcome, because I remembered one of the covers that was briefly shown.

It had Snoopy looking sick on his doghouse in the pouring rain thinking, "I'm telling you, I AM innocent!" However, considering that he looked like he'd eaten too many cookies, he probably wasn't as innocent as he claimed.

When the Gazette Sunday comics were released, they were always accompanied with a children's drawing that graced the cover of the Sunday comics in a format similar to a pamphlet. There were multiple interpretations of the comic characters, which was always interesting to see, and several of them proudly displayed the kind of pleasure that could only be obtained by reading Gazette comics. They're not quite on the same level of the alternate covers from the Covered site, but they're still pretty well done.

It was considered a great honor to see their artwork made public, and there must've been a lot of submissions. The output eventually slowed down to a crawl when they changed their format from a comic-book sized release to a half-page newspaper spread of several pages. Even two drawings at a time didn't save them, and they disappeared alltogether in 1989 and never showed up again. They became even more redundant when the comics were compressed onto two-three newspaper pages, which reduced the quality somewhat.

This is how I'm able to categorize the comics I've read - by the shape, dimensions, size, and even the paper quality of the Sunday comic in question that I read, I'm able to find the relevant comic amongst dozens of hundreds of single panels and similarly-themed jokes.

I once erroneously made an attempt to try to sell some extra copies of these Sunday comics at a comic book store to value their worth. The man behind the counter politely said that they were only worth the paper they were printed on, and therefore only held value to the person who'd want to read them.

Bill Watterson may no longer have to worry about finding Pogo collections in old dusty corners of the bookstores, but I have no physical equivalent for Sunday comics. (I sometimes still have dreams of seeing a book of collected Calvin & Hobbes sketches or unreleased strips in bookstores every now and then) Incidentally, if Lord Morpheus' library of stories that were thought up but never completed actually exists, I know I'll be headed straight to the comics section. Good old section 741.5, or whatever filing system Lucien uses.

With the passing of every year, it becomes less and less likely that I'll ever find any more copies of old Gazette Sunday comics (or any newspaper comics for that matter) from the 80s that'll jog my memory. Yet I still live in the vain hope that I'll somehow be able to find a hidden stock of treasure buried in somebody's basement somewhere...

Too Cheap for my Skates

2011-12-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Recently, I found out that I had an overdue DVD that I'd forgotten to return to the library. The mistake was something that could've been easily overlooked. I took out the fourth Monk DVD, because the version that I owned was a Chinese bootleg version, and thus, didn't have the special features that I wanted to use to field test an interpreter in her final stages of her crash course. Naturally, because I always kept a Monk DVD lying near the TV, I didn't think much of the extra disc lying around. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

Once I found out that I had to pay $4 for the fine, (a dollar for each day) I started going into panic mode. While most people would find these rates reasonable compared to having a membership at a video store (no weekly membership, no paying for your rentals, and no deductables. Well, unless you don't count your taxes, since they're invisible funds) I still felt slighted by the mistake. I felt that this whole mess could've been avoided if I'd gone to the trouble of looking and thinking harder. I have a tendency to go on autopilot too often, and not considering the wider implications of my actions, or inactions. As I often like to say, I don't think - I spontanously respond.

So I went back home, found the missing DVD, and also picked up a package of ramen noodles (four for a buck!) that I thought would lessen the financial crunch. One of the nicer loopholes around this time of year is that the library sets up a charity fund drive so that people who're late with their returns can contribute a can of non-perishible food in a grocery cart for the poor. I rationalized that this was a good deal that could work in both ways. The single ramen package could easily double as a small spaghetti meal if the noodles were soaked long enough, and put into another plate, while the remaining water would serve for the soup stock. It was an easy recipe that I often used to maximize my resources. In return, I wouldn't have to pay too much for taking out a video I'd already had a copy of. It was win-win!

However, once I got back to the library and waited in line again, I took another look at the small print of the food drive. It was for books and magazines only, not for videos and DVDs. Upon reading this little piece of information, I started clutching my stomach which felt queasy all of a sudden. I was willing myself to bring up the courage to face the inevietable - paying the actual money for the fine. I'd brought along a fiver just in case the librarian wouldn't accept my generous offer, but it still felt like a low blow. The librarians noticed my discomfort and asked if I needed to sit down because my expression looked so uncomfortable. I politely declined their offer, knowing that I'd have to complete the task sooner or later. (I couldn't risk the fine increasing on a daily basis) The librarian behind the counter was somebody different from the one who notified me of my overdue video, so she had no idea why I looked in danger of passing out.

I regretfully handed over the overdue DVD, then wrenchfully pulled out a $5 bill out of my pocket. For one brief moment, I thought about bargaining with the librarian if handing over the ramen noodles might reduce the fine a little. But I knew this was nothing more than a false hope. Besides, I was too uncomfortable to argue. Then, just to sink the final insult in my already fragile armour, instead of the typical dollar in change that I was expecting, I got four quarters instead. This might not seem like much of a difference, but I like to have a certain amount of currency handy on my person. The only bills I had on me when I got word of the fines were $20 bills, and that seemed too large to pay for such a miniscule fine.

If I'd handed over the $20, I wouldn't think that I had a tenner and change. I would think that I was out $20, and I paid an obscene amount for a small sum. Therefore, I'd have to work even harder to make up for the money I lost. Wherever I go, I try to make sure that I have the right kind of bills for the kind of stuff I buy. It's a psychological thing. No matter how much money I have in the bank, I always act like I'm on the verge of bankruptcy. If a certain food item I enjoy has a sudden increase in price, I'll either wait for months until it's on special, or purchase it once I feel I've earned enough to justify indulging myself a little. I simply can't enjoy certain items knowing how much they set me back. I'm not one of those people who believes that the quality of food is indicative to the abhorrent price of the meal. I'll gladly pay for knock-off merchandise, even if they taste awful, at least I saved myself some money. Since they're lousy, that means they have a longer shelf life. I'd rather be rich and miserable than poor and miserable.

While all this might sound unusual, this isn't that far from most people's experiences while shopping. A study found that penny-pinchers are reluctant to spend money since they felt lousy while doing so. In fact, tightwads experienced actual physical pain while paying for money, while shopaholics experienced pleasure while paying. In several cases, "the evidence suggests that frugality is driven by the pleasure of saving, as compared with tightwaddism, which is driven by a pain of paying."

It's why I admired Vladek Spiegelman, Scrooge McDuck and Groucho Marx for their rentless hoarding of funds long after the Depression period ended, since they resisted any cheap attempts to fritter their valuable money away. After all, you never know when you might need it for something important later.

However, all this pales in comparision to the ultimate cheapskate, which was the topic of a Financial Post article by David Menzies. Here, Chris (all names have been changed to protect the guilty) is somebody who sounds too wonderfully weird to be true. Special attention should be paid to the Halloween section where Chris seemed inspired by a Donald Duck cartoon. If any of these kids had a pair of scissors or equally sharp tools on hand, they could've made out with an extra 25 cents and a suddenly very irrate man.

Portrait of a Cheakskate

I had never seen my pal Chris move with such lightning-fast speed, nor with such uncanny agility. Yet, his explosive display of athletic prowess had nothing to do with a sporting pursuit and everything to do with saving money. A fraction of a penny, as it turns out.

Chris had invited me over to his abode so we could watch some TV. As I strolled into his darkened living room, I flicked the light switch to the upright position and plopped into the couch. In that precise nanosecond, Chris flew out of his seat and leapt over the coffee table like some jungle cat. I thought he was going to clock me. The focus of this Olympian-quality hop, skip and jump was the light switch. Chris whacked it back down into the OFF position with such speed and force it was reminiscent of a Michael Jordan slam-dunk.

So, there I sat in the semi-darkness, somewhat stunned, the only illumination being the eerie blue light emanating from Chris’s 14-inch TV screen. But I didn’t bother asking Chris why he turned off the light. I already knew. Chris is the ultimate cheapskate. He tosses nickels around as if they were manhole covers. And wow, can he scrimp.

I would never make light of folks who must embrace thrift in order to make ends meet. Be it those on social assistance, students, the working poor, starving writers… Living beyond one’s means is a prelude to financial disaster. But Chris isn’t hurting for cash. He earns a six-figure salary. He comes from a wealthy family. And he lives mortgage-free thanks to a tenant who illegally rents part of his house.

Being financially secure, you would think that Chris and his wife, Jan, would live it up from time to time — like shopping at Wal-Mart and Sears. Chris and Jan prefer the pre-owned stuff at Goodwill. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once penned: The rich are “different from you and me.” Cheapskates are not like you and me, either.

And oh, the behavior exhibited by the cheapskate. For example, it must be pitch black before Chris turns on his aged car’s headlights — twilight, fog, and snow do not rate. When making a turn, he will only signal at the very last second. After all, a replacement headlight bulb sells for $8: signal light bulbs sell for $3/pair. The family can easily fit into their economy car because they are so skinny (due to miniscule portions of watered-down food.) They all sport odd-looking hairstyles, too. Why go to a barber when you can cut around a bowl? Hair by Tupperware; diet by C.A.R.E. But wait, there’s more: videos are obtained from the public library (free). Straws and tea bags are reused at least three times. Used plastic milk bags are recycled as sandwich wrappers.

Whenever Chris’s daughters have a birthday party, it is actually a “non-party.” The venue is the playroom at his house as opposed to some kiddy party palace. The showstopper comes with the delivery of a single-topping pizza (no tip for the driver). As is standard practice, the pizza parlor pre-carves the pie into slices. But a knife-wielding Chris likes to further subdivide the pie, transforming a 10-slice pizza into a 30-slice one. The only downside is that guests go home hungry.

Nothing brings out the true colors of a cheapskate more so than Halloween. For shelling-out last year, Chris was elated after obtaining a bag of 150 lollipops for $1.48 — less than 1 cent per treat. And since he did not have 150 trick-or-treaters drop by, Chris needn’t stock up this year. Chris’s solution to UNICEF boxes? He drilled a hole in a quarter and affixed some fishing line to the coin. This allows Chris to plop the quarter into a UNICEF box and then yank it out again.

My family can’t bear to go on outings with Chris’s clan anymore because such events are seldom enjoyable: Chris and Jan’s daughters constantly pester us for a meal or a toy. Chris and Jan, meanwhile, conveniently feign deafness whenever their daughters go into beg-mode.

Still, last April, Chris did something completely out of character. He gave my son a small Easter egg. Given this chocolate probably retails for 59 cents, I was shocked. In fact, Chris had a box brimming with about 100 Easter eggs. "What's wrong with this picture?" I pondered. Later, I learned the awful truth. It turns out there was a community-run Easter egg hunt, specifically for young children. Chris and Jan entered themselves in the hunt, beating out toddlers for almost every hidden egg. Other parents looked on in stunned silence.

To this day, Chris has not disposed of the Christmas tree he purchased four years ago (on Christmas Eve when prices were slashed). The remaining needles are now reddish-brown, so every December, Chris simply spray-paints his tree green again.

When Chris and Jan go to a movie, it is always on a Tuesday when tickets are discounted. Nothing beats the value of a double feature for just $7. (It’s not an official double feature — Chris and Jan tend to sneak into an additional film at the multiplex.)

When it comes to sneaking, a hardcore cheapskate embodies the stealth skills of a covert CIA agent. Every Canada Day, a nearby town puts on a huge fireworks demonstration, but the $2 admission fee is $2 too much for Chris. One year he sneaked his family into the grounds by physically removing a barrier. This year, when security was beefed up, he parked his car several kilometres away from the park; Chris, Jan and the kids observed the pyrotechnics taking turns looking through a pair of binoculars.

His social calendar, meanwhile, is pre-arranged on one basis only: free admission. Skating at a nearby rink is during the last half-hour on Sunday; a trip to the museum takes place on a Friday night.

When an ice cream truck tours his neighbourhood and kids joyfully converge for a cone, Chris and Jan run into their house. Not to get money, but to supply their daughters with a spoonful of No Frills vanilla ice cream served in old plastic containers that previously contained No Frills pudding.

It gets worse. We once went to a delightful petting zoo (free admission). It is expected that attendees will at least buy some feed for the critters. A vending machine dispenses a handful of feed pellets for a quarter. That’s too rich for Chris. The solution? Chris dropped to his hands and knees and actually crawled around, catching pellets falling from the mouths of goats and geese, redistributing the feed into the hands of his kids.

Food was my motivation for penning this story. Recently, I was working late. Most of the restaurants were closed. I happened to see Chris and Jan, on their way home from shopping. They displayed a pair of scrumptious-looking sausages they had obtained from a butcher shop. I was practically salivating. “Oh, I’m so hungry,” I moaned. Nothing. “I could really go for those sausages,” I hinted. (As an aside, we have entertained Chris and Jan on several occasions — unreciprocated, of course.) “Those sausages smell sooo good and I’m sooo hungry, I’d even buy one off you.” Ka-ching!

“Two-fifty”, responded Jan. Chris quickly interjected, speaking in their native tongue. At first, I thought Chris was rebuking Jan for having the temerity of charging a friend for food. I was beginning to rethink my opinion of Chris. “Two-fifty — each”, emphasized Jan. I later visited the butcher shop, I discovered that Chris had inflated the price of each sausage by 21 cents.

The ultimate act of cheapness came recently when I convinced Chris he should obtain a pair of ice skates so he could actually skate with his daughters. Chris spent weeks going to secondhand shops. Eventually, he obtained a pair of used skates for $3. Sure, there’s a downside – namely, the skates don’t fit properly. But talk about perverse irony: The country’s number one cheapskate has indeed lived up to his moniker by purchasing cheap skates.

And no, I am not worried about making new enemies with this piece given that Chris and Jan will never see it. Actually pay for a newspaper? Don’t be ridiculous.

- David Menzies.

Pogo Noir

2011-12-11T16:39:00.000-08:00

As promised, here’s the second half of the Calvin influence. The previous example might’ve only been used for a few math strips, but this should leave no doubt of where Tracer Bullet originally came from.

This becomes even more evident when faced with the use of shadows and the narrative wordplay on the first page. Bill Watterson once mentioned that he bought his father a Pogo book with the intention of giving it as a present to his father. Only, when he cracked it open to see the contents, he wound up keeping it, and his father never got the gift. That was probably Pogo's Peek-a-Book, since it has this, and the previous story. In fact, this comes right after Mother Goosery Rinds. Fantagraphics may have gotten the rights to reprinting the newspaper strips, but there’s nothing about Walt’s Kelly’s other stuff. It’s amazing he was able to pump out this extra stuff in addition to his dailies and Sundays.

With the untimely arrival of a dame arriving through the door (as all noir pulp novels are won’t to do), we’re presented with one of the most rewarding scenes ever - totally black screens. This shortcut allows us to fill our imagination of what seductive form this vision of loveliness could possibly look like. Could it be Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah having suddenly lost her distinctive French accent? Could it be Miz Beaver in a scandalous low-cut outfit?

No such luck. This is a children’s funny animal book, remember? Even though it has all the distinctive trappings of Noir fiction, Walt Kelly was too much of a prude to admire the female figure. In art sessions, he was known to hold his hat in front of him while sketching nudes.

Even though the client has all the sex appeal of a jumping bean, our interepid detective decides to have a little fun with her at his expense.

Interestingly enough, even though he's named on the title page, he never right out declares his actual name in the comic itself. That's covering all the bases I guess.

Blacksad this certainly ain’t.

It’s at this point that the internal monologue goes completely off the rails and into Frank Millar territority. It’s not quite getting a kick out of violence, or the pushing the limits of a failing body, but more into the realm of a ranting hobo. You’re better off ignoring it completely, then going back and rereading it once you reach the end, since it’ll have more relevance then.

One wonders what a long-term Tracer Bullet story would be like, if the private dick was totally oblivious to the surroundings while on the case.

Amusingly enough, this isn’t the only private dick alligator around. Well, it might be, depending on how much you discriminate between alligators and crocodiles.

Stockpiled Ammo

2011-12-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

One of the fondest surprises is finding comic treasures in unlikely places in your own abode. I found a stash of Alan Moore’s Violator comics that I always thought had been recycled since my Mom took them away from me because they were “too violent”. I found an old newspaper Sunday comic in one of the most common places for losing things - under the couch. It was slightly folded, but I still remembered the “noise” made from the comics, even though I hadn’t read them in years.

In this case, I was given the task of cleaning out my sister’s old filling cabinet full of her old art and school stuff that she didn’t want to bother looking at again. Some people are a little sensitive about revisiting their early material, since they’re understandably wary of wanting to view their work again after a long time. (In my case, I worry that I won’t be able to do justice to my early writing, and my best stuff’s behind me) Here, I found an AngloMan comic that I’d long since forgotten that was used for a Media project. In view of the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre (one day late) that led to a severe creation of gun laws, it seems like an appropriate contribution. It seems really normal nowadays, but there was extreme pressure at the time, and it almost didn’t get passed in the first place.

With Stephen Harper being rather lenient with the long-gun registry and undoing years of gun control, this becomes even more relevant. (Oh, BTW, that link up there no longer works, but you can see said relevant eagle here)

I thought a Conservative majority would be good for two reasons. One - it would be a refreshing change of pace, and end years of uncertainty living in a minority government. And if things turned out to be not as welcoming as promised, it would spur the opposing parties (i.e. the Liberals) to step up their games after years of confidence running the country on autopilot.

Secondly, if the Conservatives turned out to be just as corrupt and controlling as their opponents, we would be able to take charge ourselves and demand better from our government. Brian Mulroney’s stint wound up cripling and dividing the then-Conservative party, leading to a Liberal surge for the next 15 years.

Indeed, after years of being warned that the Conservatives “had an agenda” with nothing to show for it, hairline fractures are finally starting to appear on the surface of the unblemished Conservative base. Criticisms that had been silenced when Harper was a minority are beginning to show themselves, and complaints are finally rising to the surface.

However, things are no longer looking as rosy as they once appeared. With the NDP in disarray without Jack Layton’s influence, and the Liberals being reduced to a skeleton crew, this projected outcome appears to be less and less likely. Without a strong alternative to the current ruling power, let alone a strong personality that can bring politicians together, we’re in for a long declining slog.

I didn’t mean to be so depressing, since humour is more my kind of thing, but given the current state of affairs, I don’t know how long I can afford to stay silent. To make matters worse, I know that something is wrong, but I have no idea how to go about solving it. This isn’t like one of those heroic quests where you’ve got a clear-cut bad guy to go after, and have various weapons to pick up along the way. Here, there’s no guidebook, let alone a helpful roadmap to show you which path to take. It’s all open-ended, and it’s up to you to figure out how to solve things in the face of overwhelming opposition and convincing arguments that can be brought down by reasonable logic.

One of the best self-defenses the Government has is an unapproachable element that makes approaching said laws and regulations such a bureaucratic wall of red tape that it’s almost impossible to understand the underlying mechanisms without help.

All that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
- somebody, maybe Edmund Burke?

Pogo Math

2011-12-06T13:50:00.000-08:00

Back at the beginning of this year, (where does the time go?) I approached the announcement of the release of Fantagraphic’s Pogo collection with great reluctance. I was extremely dubious of them ever releasing Walt Kelly’s work, given how often they’d been pushing back their release date. At the time, I vowed that if they actually followed through on their promise, I would show two Pogo comic shorts that were an obvious influence on Calvin & Hobbes.

When the launch date came and went, I was mystified when I heard accounts of people being in awe with the impressive package, even though I hadn’t seen the actual product in question. It hadn’t been preordered at my comic shop, so I had no clue whether it’d been delayed through that particular outlet. I didn’t want to post the pages until I saw the book in person.

It took going to several bookstores until I found it buried somewhere in the humour section of a large bookstore. It was extremely tricky finding it, because the comic selections were all over the map. There was one corner that sold Manga, several shelves further away selling Graphic novels, children’s Manga on the other side of the store, and French BDs smack dab in the middle. The humour section was on another floor, sandwiched between Entertainment and Poetry. If you’re trying to sell a new comic, it’s a better idea to have similar products together in one location, don’t you think?

Considering the amount of dialogue and detail a typical strip contained, Pogo must’ve been the closest thing to overstimulation a child in the 50s could receive. Pogo is so chock-full of multiple characters and bizarre speech patterns that it’d take a lifetime to sort it all out. And that’s before the political caricatures entered the picture. Of course, it wasn’t without its little problems - all of the animals of Okefenokee swamp are extremely gullible and easy to fool - even the villains. There was a similar plot of Pogo being kidnapped and held hostage by two predators, and somehow bluffing his way out of their clutches - within the time span of months.

It’s probably easier to appreciate the intricate details of Pogo once you understand the basics. Pogo Possum is the vanilla main character and straight-man. Albert Alligator is the well-meaning oafish blowhard who’s always snacking on Pogo’s wares. When you’ve got the kind of rapport the two have between them, you can better understand their relationship, even if you’re annoyed at how often Albert keeps mooching off Pogo’s groceries. How does the possum get a chance to eat when everybody’s taking his food away? (I’ve just realized that this is another Calvin influence, when Hobbes declared double rations to award the mutiny)

These are the kind of violent lyrics that tended to be used all the time before Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales were watered down in order to appeal more to children and gory-sensitive adults. A study found that some rhymes were more violent than TV shows. What child wouldn’t want to hear about the old lady in a shoe beating her kids, or babies falling from treetops?

The history behind some classic rhymes can be rather disturbing. Some other obscure examples can be found here.

Naturally, Pogo objects to this kind of thing, so he offers some alternatives. This sarcharine nonsense is the kind of thing that gives children’s entertainment such a lousy reputation. They sound cute, and that’s all they’ve got going for them.

This sounds like a variation of those Meow Mix commercials. It'd probably be a big hit with cat enthusiastics. (Albert's probably accidentally swallowed one at some point)

Patience. We’ll get to the Calvin & Hobbes influence soon enough. For now, enjoy these mangled poems.

Not much to say about this one here.

We now get to the the meat of the comic, and why people have fond memories of Pogo in the first place. For all the bumbling around with funny animals and wandering plots, it's the Funetik Aksent that most readers remember. Some still fondly recall the nonsensical lyrics to the Christmas carol, Deck us all with Boston Charlie.

To everyone who worries about dropped potential plot points, no need to worry about the third wish here - Pogo never bothers getting a chance to make use of its uselessness.

I like how the question of Bigamy doesn’t even enter the picture. These other reasons are certainly more imaginative. This is also the sort of maddening trick question that shows up all the time in Professor Layton games.

I like to think there's an extraordinarily long pause between the first and second panels here.

I told you we’d get to the influence sooner or later. We can clearly see where Hobbes’ mathematical ability comes from.

Here, we also see how Calvin's Dad invents new rationale to explain his outlandish stories. Or maybe that's an inheirent trait of everybody who likes manipulating young developing minds.

As with all things Pogo, the subject invariably veers away from the original topic, and has to be mentally wrenched back onto track.

The answer to the man + 40 wives x 40 cats x 40 kits question, if you didn't know it already, or bothered to look it up, cheater.

I’m not going to help you with this last one. You can easily work it out yourselves, though that’s a lot of cats there.

Bonus question - if it takes a mouse to feed a kitten, and two mice to feed a cat, how many mice will it take before the women start screaming their heads off?

AngloMoon

2011-12-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

With the recent sales success of the second volume of Sailor Moon back on the shelves, it seems that any fears that the 20-year old property might be unsuited for a resurrection were unfounded. Turns out that there's still a strong potential female market in an overwhelmingly male dominated territority. Strong sales of the first volume of Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight also showed the same, despite the Manga company cutdown last year.

While growing up, I used to be on the lookout for any acknowledgement of mainstream entertainment slowly acknowledging Anime's influence. Star Trek used to be more subtle in their Easter-egg knowledge, but it wasn't until the mid-90s that it became more blatant. Tuvok's finger mediation ritual in a Voyager episode blatantly ripped off Rei's signature "Fire Soul" move. Deep Space Nine had one-eye headsets similar to the Saiyanjins. Now, I can see Ghost in the Shell allusions and Oh my Goddess! drawings in Flashpoint, and I don't get as much of a thrill as I once did, but the impetus is still there.

Sailor Moon had a larger fanbase in Canada, since it showed at more respectable airtimes on YTV at 12:00 and 3:30 respectively. While the material tended to be childish, it was still enduringly appealing. The fact that they were long-legged wide-eyed babes in short skirts didn't hurt either. There was even a brief Air Farce skit that had two Navy men bending over the side of the boat to see something in the water, revealing their buttcracks. When they bent over for the third time, the title logo for the Anime popped up.

When the announcement for licensing Sailor Moon was first made, I thought that I would refresh some people's memories of a webcomic's forgotten side project where Sailor Moon & her friends held up a bank. At the time, the artist said it was an attempt to write a 4-page project for his school club. The old filler comic had the basic plot of "a villain and their henchmen rob a bank, a hero crashes through a skylight, then a huge Mech suddenly appears". The artist put it up, then said it would be deleted forever. However, it must've made quite an impression, since it's still available for online viewing, so that left showing that one out.

Instead, I thought that I might as well show a little-known (let alone seen) tribute from the pages of Angloman. Or more specifically, the second book. The actual setup isn't that important, since it involves West Island Lad taking some time off by going to the mall, and seeing an attractive girl arguing with her boyfriend. Of course, things never stay quiet for long, and the tedium is interrupted when a giant robot bursts onto the scene.

For the three of you who understand the references, and the large majority who are largely clueless over Matzoh Girl's theme, it's because there was some controversy over selling Jewish foodstuff on Passover.

At the time, there was a big kerfluffle over Matzoh being sold in Montreal. Why? Because they were imported from America. This wasn't out of some displaced brand loyalty over the pride of their domestic market being overtaken by outside forces. Nor was it from some infested bugs or virus travelling via these boxes. No, what they objected to was that these Jewish products were being sold only in ENGLISH.

To go into the burecratic nightmare that involves Bill 101 and the Francophone fear that they're being repressed by the English language would take up more time and space than I'm willing to devote my time to, and detract attention from enjoying the comic. Besides, I'm saving that for when Papercutz releases their version of "Smurf of One and Half a Smurf of the Other".

For the unaware, Eaton is a Canadian department store. For the unilingual, Eat is "Manger", and On is "Sur".

For the confused, West Island Lad spraypainted a flower in the upper row there. If you've ever tried to throw a rose, and was surprised when it limply fell three feet ahead of you, this is a pretty rational explaination. Also, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss moment in the 7th panel where the Gap gets renamed.

A Sailor Mercury moment here. As much as I liked these references, I was also embarassed and disgusted by how out of sync the proportions were compared to the traditional Anime models. This kind of influence has gotten better with the latest generation having grown up with actual Manga, and not shoddy knock-offs, but this kind of thing still bugs me.

For all their efforts, they're rewarded by a burecratic lawyer who denies any involvement, and asks for compensation regarding a clerical error. He also showed up in the first Angloman book when the titular heroes defended a crumbling Olympic Stadium that suffered significant damage while trying to save it from a disgruntled fan riding a Mecha (yes, another robot) that looked like Bonhomme de Carnivale. Despite the premise of using iconic Canadian icons, this somehow manages to wind up less awesome than it sounds. Canadians are kinda weird that we have several iconic landscapes / mascots, but we don't really advertise the heck out of them like other countries we could name. (OK, the United States) We define ourselves as Canadians as "not being like Americans", which is strange considering how similar our culture / entertainment is.

Fill in the Blanks

2011-11-30T18:33:00.000-08:00

There was a recent Adrian Tomine interview where the cartoonist mentioned abandoning several of his comic projects because he was more concerned with real-life issues. Daily interruptions can sometimes be a major influence on someone’s work, but too many of them can be very offputting and reduce their drive to continue going down a certain storytelling path, especially if the road in that direction puts up more barriers than they knock down. In the end, we have to ask ourselves whether the story we’re writing is really worth telling.

However, we shouldn’t be too overly concerned over Adrian’s dumping several potential series. I’ve found that I’ve preferred some of his earlier stuff when he wasn’t trying too hard. One such example was a silent two-page comic telling an obvious story. By just looking at the pages, it’s clear what’s happening within the span of the panels.

Usually, I have a horrible time thinking up one-liner punchlines to single-panel comics. There's either too little or too much variety that I can think of, and I usually wind up being too literal. I'm always amazed at the number of people who're able to give multiple contributions, when I can't even think up one. I'm better able to give a revised script if there's more than one panel, since I can give the semblance of a story happening within the confines of the pages. The more panels there are, the more I can fill in the blanks and flesh out the elements throughout.

As a result, I wound up writing two different versions of the same script - one that would accurately describe the action on the screen, and another that would be a satirized take, similar to MAD’s Murder the Husband / Story drawn by Jack Davis. Other readers are welcome to do their own take on the comic, but it'd better not be too close to mine.

Page One
Title: Advertising Gimmick

Panel 1
Sorry to bring you in like this, Ma’am.
If you could just go over what happened one more time.

Panel 2
Well, there’s not much to tell. I last saw my partner a few months ago.

Panel 3
We were working on an icon that would best represent our company.
How about a penguin with an anchor?
Maybe something less challenging.

Panel 4
We traveled everywhere, looking for inspiration in the unlikeliest places.
A giraffe with a ladder?
Needs work.

Panel 5
Until one day...
Waitaminute - that’s it! A dog holding the product on his nose!

Panel 6
He hit upon the perfect combination that could possibly work.
I bet we’d make a killing with this, what’d you think?

Panel 7
I stayed over at his place, ironing out the bugs in our project.
That idea’s mine, bastard!
Urgl...

Panel 8
I left at night, leaving him sleeping comfortably on the table.

Page Two

Panel 1
The next morning...

Panel 2
Hah! It's pointless! They’ll never find the body. Never!

Panel 3
When he didn’t show up to work for the meeting, it fell to me to continue my half of the presentation.
...therefore, this should capture our audience’s attention. Agreed?
Agreed.

Panel 4
Within days, our product became the hottest selling stuff being sold around the world. You could hardly pass a street without seeing it being advertised somewhere.

Panel 5
I only wish that he was still be around to appreciate how his efforts had borne fruit.

Panel 6
That’s the last I ever heard of him. What more can I possibly say?

Panel 7
She’s not falling for it.
You can come in now!

Panel 8
How could you say all that with a straight face?! I knew you were ambitious, but I never thought you’d go that far!

Panel 9
No, it can’t be you... you’re dead!

Now, here’s the alternate version!

Page One
Title: Lovebird Confessional

Panel 1
Okay lady, calm down. You’re safe now.
Now, why don’t you tell us what’s bugging you?

Panel 2
It’s like I’ve been saying. I want to admit to committing a murder.

Panel 3
For years, I’d been trying to have sex with the cute nerdy guy at work.
Want to make out on my desk?
Later, I’m thinking.

Panel 4
I lured him to several suggestive places to subtly hint my forward advances.
Why did you want to have lunch here?
Oh, no reason.

Panel 5
Then all of a sudden...
Hey, I just thought up an amusing VTM recorder joke to send to The New Yorker!

Panel 6
I got a devilish thought in my mind to seduce him at his place later.
I better write it down before I forget!

Panel 7
But my anticipation quickly turned to disappointment.
Five seconds??? That’s it???
I’m sorry!

Panel 8
I then buried his entire apartment in his backyard so no one would notice!

Page Two

Panel 1
The next day...

Panel 2
You’ve got to be kidding me! Who puts pictures of adults on the back of milk cartons nowadays?

Panel 3
With no one else present to give his presentation, it fell upon me to take over his lousy job.
And now, for my next slide, a doggie with a square on his nose!
Oooh!

Panel 4
As an attractive saleswoman, I managed to pass all his side projects that’d been toiling under obscurity. Despite being rejected submissions of New Yorker cartoons, they were a smash hit in the advertising world.

Panel 5
Even as I accepted awards from stealing his ideas, the guilt kept gnawing at my core.

Panel 6
And that’s exactly what happened. Really. Why would I lie?

Panel 7
She’s starting to crack.
Bring in the surprise witness!

Panel 8
What’s the big idea telling everybody you killed me? We only went out once, and you broke off our date halfway through!

Panel 9
No... get away... your face, it’s hideous!

Telling Right from Left

2011-11-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I helped give some feedback to a new interpreter who'd been assign to replace another High School interpreter who'd suddenly quit. We started out with relatively easy stuff, such as fairy tales, whose stories I already knew. But since this was a crash course, we had to quickly introduce her to harder and faster stuff to bring her "up to speed." One of the hardest tricks is not to repeat everything verbatim, but to stay a little behind what's being said so there'll be some leeway time to think about how to best present the message. If a sentence is spoken more than once, summarize it up by only saying it once. If a sentence is hard to lipread or understand, reword it so it'll be more comprehensive. It also helps if both parties view a video beforehand, so they're not caught off guard when it's shown during class. Equally important is some context given over what the topic material is going to be about. A student expecting History, and getting Math instead may be confused why all these numbers are being bandied around without any dates given.

One early piece of advice I gave was when the interpreter was doing a video dialogue between two people on opposite sides of the screen. In addition to using relative terms (saying 'she says', instead of 'I said') another mistake made was that the interpreter didn't bother to look behind her to see which side was talking. Normally, when you're switching from one dialogue to another, you move your head and hand movements to one side, then switch to the other. The only problem was, when the person on the right talked, the interpreter pointed to the left, and vice-versa. As a result, I was constantly having to remind myself which side was which, and not paying attention to the content of the message.

This also reminded me of another internal problem I have - I have great difficulty in telling the difference between left and right. (It's good to know I'm not alone in this)

One of my earliest instincts that I didn't think the same way as everybody else was when I was 'mirroring' the instructor in gym class, and wound up copying her exact body movements as if she were doing them from her POV, and not like a mirror. Somehow, I managed not to bump into my classmates.

Even though I use the right side of my body more than my left, whenever I'm told to look to my right, I usually have to hold up my hands, figure out which is my left, and then make my move. When that happens, I feel like Papa Bear in the last stage of The Bike Lesson.

Well, I know my sides small bear.
My right is here, my left is there.
Or is that right? How can that be?
Left side, right side, let me see...
Left hand on the left hand side...
Right hand on the right hand side...

It's far easier for me to follow directional arrows than waste time trying to figure out where I should turn. A lot of people claim that it's no different from telling the difference between up and down. However, that only works if you're on a flat plane, and not in space. Up and down remain constant when you're bound by gravity. But left and right get switched around all the time depending on which direction you're facing. To make matters more confusing, "your left" and "my right" are the same thing.

That also prevents me from going the route from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close where a man losing his power of speech tattooed responses all over his body. Putting reminders on my body a la Memento would only work from my side, and not from whoever's watching me.

At least it's not as bad as in The Boy who Reversed Himself by William Sleator. In that book, the directions are Ana and Kata, which lie somewhere between above and below our space, and can allow you to pass behind locked objects. To further confuse things, prolonged exposure to the forth dimension makes the explorer experience a state where left and right become indistinguishible from each other. The actual mechanics of fourth-dimensional hopping is never quite specificied or explained, but the basic gist is fairly straightforward. Imagine a stick figure on a piece of paper. If you turn that paper over, that stick figure will be reversed. Now, take that concept to a human being, and you can understand how a forth-dimensional being can have complete control over lower dimensions. No wonder Mr. Mxyzptlk likes teasing Superman so much.

Online Subtitles

2011-11-26T18:35:00.000-08:00

One of my greatest laments was that I couldn't watch certain movies or TV shows simply because they weren't close-captioned or subtitled. To make things even more unfair, some shows that were once captioned on TV weren't captioned when re-released on DVD. I couldn't re-watch Poriot on DVD, because it wasn't captioned by Mobil Corporations. I couldn't watch Sandbaggers, which was the influence for Greg Rucka's Queen & Country. Hell, I couldn't even watch Transformers, even though I collected plenty of their toys. (I later sold said toys at a garage sale with the boxes intact, because I was getting annoyed at how Bruticus' chest plate kept falling off, Sixshot was getting harder to transform, and one of Astrotrain's slots was showing the thin wire. I understand these toys are now selling for plenty more than I originally sold them, but I'm fine with that - I had my fun with them. It's my childhood comics I can't find that continue to torment me.)

According to a source, DVDs are phasing out on captioning, while ALL Blu-rays are now being outfited with subtitles. The reason is that closed-captioning is slowly becoming obsolete. New technologies like High Definition require special HDMI wires. These wires prevent closed-captioned encoding from passing through. That could explain why even torrents of old TV shows that were once captioned don't show up on TV - we're dealing with incompatible technologies.

Now, it seems that's all changed with the advent of having captioning available for videos that normally don't have captioning. All that's needed is to go to either open subtitles or podnapsi to get a .srt subtitle extension file. Look up the the relevant TV show by episode name or season, choose which language you want (preferably English), and then download it. (Be careful not to mistake the various ads sprinkled around the site for the actual download link, which should be in blue text) It shouldn't take very long for it to download, since they're very small (under 100 KB), but it's that tiny piece of coding that spells the difference between understand ing and incomprehension.

Once that's out of the way, put said .srt file in the same folder as the video you want to watch. Open the Media Player you want to use (I prefer VLC), press play, then go to the video menu at the top, select "Subtitles Track", and open the .srt file you downloaded. The video will start showing words telling what the characters are saying.

This also works for DVDs that don't have captioning / subtitles either. Just open the DVD on your computer Media Player, and patch the subtitle file through using the same options as described above.

If this is too much effort for you, there's supposingly already a piece of free software called Boxee TV that'll allow us to do all the work for us, and save what little energy we'd need to dredge up to look and search for said relevant TV subtitles. While this was originally developed for a computer, the actual device can also connect to a HDTV too, and be controlled by remote control. Saving that, the only way it could be done even easier would be if somebody else did it for you. This is the future of technology people - everything will be control by handy-dandy point-n-click items at our fingertips. Only the people who know how to fix these thingies when their insides run out and can't be repaired by replacing their batteries will be able to save us. Nintendo had the right idea for their Wii controller.

As an added bonus, the subtitles remain onscreen even when I click the fastforward option! Like the Far Side comic, I'm a hummingbird who can only watch movies with the action greatly sped up. It's not that I have a short attention span, it's just that so many movies and TV shows have a tendency to follow the same old formulas so often that any pretense of suspense or novelty storytelling gets tossed out the window in favor of conformity. (TVtropes has ruined this for me.) The whole experience becomes a lesson of endurance in waiting for the damn thing to end. Some shows I've watched were so wretchedly bad that I had to pause the screen several times and brace myself for the next onslaught while trying to kickstart my brain back into a higher gear. Sure, I could've stopped anytime I wanted to, but I wouldn't know how it ended. Going through the show at twice the speed cuts the torturous time in half.

Of course, it's not exactly perfect. Some DVDs that already have captioning or subtitles can get corrupted or wonky results if you try to add the .srt files . (and why would you?) You get lines completely out of sync, or lines that flash across too briefly on the screen. The worst offenders are subtitles that only display themselves in ALL CAPS, WITH NO INDICATION OF ANY CHANGE OF TONE, BACKGROUND NOISE, OR SHOUTING MATCHES. IT'S LIKE WATCHING A DOCUMENTARY OF WORKER BEES ON MAXIMUM VOLUME.

This kind of thing is a real lifesaver, especially considering that it allows me the chance to catch up on the latest shows that I accidentally missed. Especially since the latest tapings of The Good Wife kept showing up half-an-hour later, and because of the programming, I only taped half of the lawyer drama, and wound up missing a viable chunk of quality subplots. While most people could simply resort to streaming videos, that option simply wasn't feastible for me until now.

It also helps cut down on my worries, since I don't have to wait two-three months for the reruns. I don't have to vigilantly watch the TV times in vain, hoping that it'll come back when I'm not paying attention. I just need to download the relevant episode via Bitorrent and patch the subtitles on. The bitorrent thing's the only hard part - waiting for the thing to fully download until it's finished.

The only real downside to this whole thing is that I'm now open to a whole range of movies and TV shows that I'd once shunned because I couldn't understand them. Now that option's no longer on the table, I now feel obligated to play catch-up on various majorly hyped stuff that'll keep me backlogged until the end of time. Watching these things at doubleplus speed isn't fast enough - I need to see these things at tripleplus speed.

Of course, even with this added incentive, there's still the need for better captioning on Youtube videos. There's plenty of old commercials I fondly remember that I'd like to see again. As long as there are disastified customers who can't hear properly, we won't be content to sit back until we can understand what's happening. Even then, we still can't sit back and relax - we have to make sure that the quality of the captioning is up to par. We're the only couch potatoes who won't take passive watching lying down.

Adam's Snowman Trilogy

2011-11-23T18:50:00.000-08:00

Well, after an unusually long period of uneventual weather, it's started snowing again. Every year, Canadians live in perpetual denial that maybe, just maybe we won't get caught in a torrential downpour of snow that'll blanket our entire nation, and despite the proclaimations of Global Warming, we're still caught by surprise every year. Very often, we feel like the Coyote in the first minute of the Roadrunner cartoon, Freeze Frame. We know it's coming, but we still live in the dismissive hope that it might not come this year. It doesn't matter if the days are getting colder. Some particularly stubborn people refuse to admit the truth until the calendar says so for the first day of winter (December 21st), even as they're wading in hip-deep snow in their khakis. We're still clinging onto the memories of Summer, unwilling to believe that the season's changed, and wanting to embrace the fleeting moments of warmth, even if we have to parade around in our shorts to prove it. It's only until the first flecks of snow starts to fall that we decide now might be a good time to put our winter tires on, which everybody who wasn't a full-fledged procrastinator, had already done.

The difference from other forms of precipitation is that unlike rain, which tends to evaporate fairly quickly, even with multiple puddles around, there's little chance of snow disappearing anytime soon. What's worse, the lingering white stuff have a tendency to multiply in the forthcoming days, with more flakes coming from the heavens to punish us for whatever misdemeanors we were completely unaware of, and have no idea what we've done to deserve this.

Back when Adam was still being drawn by Brian Basset, there was a brief annual tradition that started with his kids making an unusual snowman on the front lawn.

This was followed up the next year with a more ambitious project, showing the househusband's true motivations in completing his chores. As much as he lamented his job (as opposed to working for something that actually paid), there were instances where he began to slouch off his daily duties in favor for the simpler pursuits of life, such as lazing around. This often resulted in Adam delegating his cleaning, and having his kids for doing the chores for him. This would be understandable as a way to decrease division of labour, since his family was responsible for a lot of the messes that happened in the house. Not to mention that the few perks, such as enjoying his TV shows, baseball games and sleeping in were constantly denied him, which explained why he was so cranky all the time. With his Pyrrhic victories, he was a perpetual loser, all his carefully prepared plans come to naught.

Obviously, his children didn't agree with his policies, which led to the finale presented here. Unsubtle criticism through their medium aside, you've got to admire their artistic drive. Certainly nowhere near Calvin's cannibalistic snowmen, but just as damaging.

If this trend had continued, one wonders just how far his children would've gone to get on their dad's nerves.

Whose Maus are You?

2011-11-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

(With apologies to Art Spiegelman, Jose Aruego and Robert Kraus)

Whose Maus are you?

Where is your mother?

Where is your father?

Where is your wife?

Where is your brother?

What will you do?

Shake my mother out of the cask!

Free my father from the 'cause!

Find my wifey and bring her home.

Wish I had a brother so I could beat him some.

Now whose Maus are you?

My mother's Maus, she loves me so.

My father's Maus, he was a beau.

My wifey's Maus, she loves me too.

My brother's Maus...

Your brother's Maus?

My brother's Maus - he's brand new!

Adult Family Circus

2011-11-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

Earlier last week, the cartoonist of the Family Circus, Bil Keanne passed away. There was an outpouring of respect and praise from various factions who admired the man’s work. Among those, Zippy the Pinhead’s one of the more surprising acknowledgements of respect, even as Bill Grithith parodied the Family Circus in his nigh-impentrable strip.

However, for everything’s that’s been said about him, there’s one particular aspect of his work that I notice hasn’t been mentioned – his collaborative cartoons done for Emma Bombeck. The following scans are taken from Just Wait Until You Have Children of Your Own!

The reason I didn’t make a contribution upon the news of his death was because I’d already made a tribute earlier with one of Bil Keanne’s past forgotten failures in branching out his distinctive style of round-headed kids.

I was never much of a fan of the Family Circus for many of the reasons its detractors pointed out. It could tend to be too sarcharine, the jokes oftentimes didn’t seem that funny, and the inclusion of religion didn’t always help. However, there’s no doubt the man put care into his craft, even if he resorted to “shortcut” strips by letting his “son”, Billy fill in the Sunday comics with childish drawings and logic. It’s possible that the iconic circular panel was inspired by Norman Rockwell’s background figures in the Saturday Evening Post.

Doing some of these comics involving teenages could’ve given Bil Keanne a chance for him to flex a few muscles that would’ve been sorely out of shape from capturing childish antics all the time. It can’t have been easy for the man to constantly dredge up old memories of “kids say the darndest things” long past his children’s golden years, and even having to rely on their grandchildren for source material.

There was a MAD article that made the claim that cartoon characters were losing their audience by not growing up with them, and remaining stagnant. It’s interesting to wonder what the Family Circus might’ve been like if Billy, Dolly, Jeffy, and P.J might’ve been like if they’d been allowed to develop personalities and tastes beyond their starting years. We’ll never know for sure, but it’s nice to think that there’s an alternate cartoon universe where this kind of thing would regularly happen.

Creative Sports Scores

2011-11-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

Near the climax to the second Back to the Future movie, there was a moment of comprehension when Biff Tannen was listening to the radio and realizing that the sports commentor's results were mirroring what was already printed in the Sports Almanac. Rather than focus on the rising tension, I'd like to have some brief words about the lost art of this unique descriptive scoring system.

I'm not much of a sports fan, save for the few worthy Sports Mangas out there. (I'm still a big fan of Eyeshield 21) However, I do enjoy a good descriptive passage when it conveys a visual meaning behind the scores, and the teams that're facing off each other. Depending on the configuration, there can be dozens of such possible combinations.

I have no idea if this tradition is still carried on today, but it certainly seems like the kind of thing where you'd have to reuse certain words over and over again after a certain period of time. There's only so many ways we can utterly defeat the other side, and even the entire range of various violent synonyms can only last so long before they run out. Even the Eskimos only have so many words to describe snow, and it's not even really that much.

Remembering to Remember

2011-11-11T00:08:00.000-08:00

Today marks another anniversary for Veteran's Day, Rememberance Day, Armistice Day, and whatever else November 11th is known for. Now would be a good time to take another look at the highly acclaimed Charley's War, the "Best World World One comic". Even if there's not enough compensation given to the artist's family or the writer's efforts. Here's to all those fallen soldiers who died trying to capture those last few miles in the world's bloodiest game of Tug-of-war.

World War II may get the bigger publicity, due to its status of bigger involvement, a sequel that was better than the original, alluring villains (Which has better visual appeal - the high soldier cap or the German helmet?), and ending with a bang. But it's the first World War that's becoming increasingly forgotten, and the last veteran of that war died this year. Apart from historians, there's nobody left to tell the story. In a few years time, it'll be the anniversary of the first war, and who'll be around to remember?

To most people, trying to understand the implications and origins of WWI is a daunting task, especially since there's very few movies about that time period. To change things up a bit, here's some sobering statistics from War in the Trenches.

I always enjoy looking at Jacques Tardi's art, because all of his people look like lumpy sacks of potatoes.

Persepolis Introduction

2011-11-09T04:22:00.000-08:00

Just recently, I found out a investigative background was going to be given for the legendary comic group known as L'Association. I very often equated this being the European equivalent of the founding of Image Comics, only with more sophisicated work, rather than deriative S-hero teams. (Image may have moved away from this stereotype, but this early stigmata is still on many people's minds)

When I first heard about l'Associciation's founding members getting into arguements around its founding members, I did what any faithful fan of Liefeld and Spawn did - I willfully turned a blind eye to these happenings, feeling slightly disappointed, and hoping that things weren't as bad as they first appeared. It would've been a shame if such influential and motivational artists who strived to change the current comic's market turned out to be squabling crybabies unable to reconcile or compromise their original visions.

Strange thing, willful blindless. It can make us look the other way when we don't want to see certain inconvenient truths. However, it was this paragraph that jumped out at me:

David B. also refers to the crucial role he played in inspiring Satrapi to create her first comic and in having it published at L’Association. “When I was helping Marjane conceive Persepolis, I was helping her in practical terms,” he remembers. “I provided criticism and guidance and Menu wasn’t around. Menu asked me to write an introduction for the first volume and what happened to it? It probably didn’t square with his haughty discourse, his foundational ‘philosophy.’ If you look for it now, you won’t find it—it is only included in the German-Swiss edition. This is the issue I have with his discourse: the appropriation it makes of the work of others.”

One thing I could never understand was why David B.'s introduction and drawings weren't included with Persepolis, since that kind of cross-publicity could only lead to being led to other similar work. (The drawings don't hurt either - something I'd like to see more introducers add with their reccomendations) I was lucky enough to have a library that had an early version of Persepolis complete with the persian covers, that had the very introduction David B.'s talking about here. After reading the results, I'm wondering what exactly Menu found distaseful about it. The content is more of a history lesson than an overt political tone. My French and Babblefish is very weak, but I've attempted a rough translation as best as I can. It's extremely difficult, since most of it is really just a brief history lesson. I'll continue doing more revisions as necessary until I'm satisfied.

Page 1

When the Arabs invaded Persia in 642, the decisive battle conquered the country and overthrew the Sassanid dynasty. The defeated Persians adopted Islam, but an Islam that was underground, esoteric and revolutionary: Shi'ism.

With the death of Mohammed in 632, his family was removed from power in favor of the Prophet's escorts, Ali, his son and cousin, and Hussein, son of Ali, married a princess belonging to an ancient Persian Sassanid family, were murdered one after the other, and power stayed in Sunni hands.

Through Ali's fidelity and Hussein's obvious loyalty, they preserved the Sassanid lineage and Persia's glorious past. Thus, religious holidays are based on Zoroastrianist festivals.

The permanence of Shi'ism was ensured by a hierarchy of Imams after Hussein, who followed one another until 874, the date of the twelfth Imam, when Muhammad al-Mahdi, disappeared. His supporters say he has a <<mystic>> reign and he will reappear before the day of judgement.

The Arab invasion and occupation was the prelude to a long seige. Persia would cease to exist as an independent nation for more than eight centuries.

Page 2

Iran was dominated by the Ghaznavid Turks in the 10th century, the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century, and the Mongols who founded the Ilkbans dynasty from the 12th to the 14th century. At the end of the 14th century, Persia fell under the Timurid domination. However, under these multiple masters, Persia expressed the vitality of its culture and language. The emblem is the <Book of Kings>> written by Ferdowsi in the 10th century, Turkish ruler Mahmud of Ghanzna. It tells the story of kings and heroes of Persia since the beginning of the world. This Persian epic would radiate throughout Asia and influence the Turkmen and Uzbek Khans, the Mamelukes Sultans and Ottomans, and the great Ilkban Mongols of India.

Even though it was a Shi'ism Turkish dynasty, Persia owes its revival to the Safavid in the early sixteenth century. They fought continuously against the reign of the Ottoman Turks. In 1795, after the Napoleonic Nadir Shah's period of inactivity, another Turkmen tribe founded the Qajar dynasty.

Persia was then caught in a power struggle Russia and England. During the 19th century, the country became a buffer state between the two powers. The first annexed the Caucasus and Central Avie, and the second was in Afghanistan and Tibet. The discovery of oil and the First World War accelerated the seizure of British involvement in the economy.

In 1925, an officer named Reza Khan, seized power and overthrew the last Qajar shah. He accelerated the westernization of the country and greatly upset the religious ballance of power and the country was officially given the name of Iran.

Page 3

During the Second World War, the north was occupied by the Soviets, and the south by the English; and the American newcomers, requiring Iran's aid for the war on Germany. Faced with the Shah's lack of enthusiasm, they deposed him and replaced him with his son Mohamed Riza.

In 1953, the CIA organized the first coup against Mossadeq, the prime minister who challenged the distribution of oil profits by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The Americans submited the country to a blockade of oil exports. Mossadeq was overthrown and Mohamed Riza who left the country, took back the throne. He remained in power until 1979, the day when he fled the Revolution.

All this is just background details. Marjane inherited this history, and she's responsible for creating the first Iranian comic book.

David B.

Collection Request: Ernie / Piranha Club

2011-11-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

Lately, there’s been a renaissance of reprinting classic comic strips, including legacy strips when they were starting out, and before they became deadwood, such as Blondie, Archie, and The Family Circus. These collections show us why they were once worthy of being on the comics page. In addition, there’s also been major collections of serial strips such as Dick Tracey, Little Orphan Annie, Terry & the Pirates, and Modesty Blaise. Likewise, obscure titles that have been long overlooked, such as King Aroo, by beloved children’s artist Jack Kent have been licensed. And that’s not even including artsy strips such as Krazy Kat, Polly & her Pals, and the upcoming Barnaby and Pogo collections.

However, I’d argue that there’s another section of newspaper comics that’s being largely ignored. Namely, the more recent strips that’re still going on strong, such as Broom Hilda, Pooch Café, and the titular Ernie. (More on this later) Part of the problem may stem from that these strips are still ongoing, and haven’t reached their natural ending yet, due to Author Existence Failure, or knowledge of how to package all the recent (and past) strips into one convenient package that’ll satisfy customers in the long run. There’s the risk of not collecting everything if the author doesn’t have a finishing point or retirement plan in mind, which is why its easier to collect past comic stories early in the cartoonist’s height of popularity so they’ll remain fresh in their reader’s memories.

One strip that I’m surprised has never quite caught on is Bud Grace’s Ernie, even though it has a similar level of quirkyness similar to Bloom County. Part of it might stem from the name, which sounds like half of a Sesame Street dual cast. The titular character is a guy with a large nose who looks like a blonde version of Adam. The comic has a very diversive (and weird) cast of people.

Because Ernie was such a milquetoast, it was practically inevietable that he would be overshadowed by the more zanier residents of the suburbs he lives in. After several years, the focus of the comic shifted from Ernie to his sleazy Uncle, and it was later retitled The Piranha Club. Uncle Sid who, like Popeye, took over the spotlight from the main character, and unlike Popeye, has all the ethical qualms of Quark from Deep Space Nine. Once the focus shifted to Uncle Sid away from Ernie, Ernie became somewhat less of a perpetual loser, and even recently married his girlfriend. (Ernie still has a perpetually large schnozz though.)

So far, I’ve only ever seen ONE Ernie book collection, Ernie out of Control, which in its introduction said that it was likely to be the “only Ernie collection to ever be released, and if found, should be snatched up since it was a rarity.” This is one of these instances where I was too cheap to buy myself a copy when it was available at the bookstore in the vain hope that maybe the artist was overexaggerating his claim, since I thought that maybe I might get it as a birthday present, or a larger collection would be released in the future. Wishful thinking. It’s been over ten years since I last saw it available (I don’t think anybody else picked it up), and have yet to see any future volumes available.

Surprisingly enough, it seems to be more popular and well-known overseas, where it’s likely to be seen by a wider audience. According to Wikipedia, it’s “highly popular in the Scandinavian countries Norway and Sweden, where it is published in a bimonthly comic book. It is also one of the most popular comic strips... in Estonia and Latvia (if not the most popular). It is published in Scandinavia's (two) largest newspapers. It is also syndicated to Japan's Daily Yomiuri along with Calvin and Hobbes.”

Read that again - even Japan knows about Ernie's existence, and the fact that it’s good enough to stand next to Calvin & Hobbes should be proof of quality enough. Even if the later strips have fallen in quality, the imagination and energy of these early comics can't be denied.

Some of the more memorable strips that I can remember include:

Ethel, the kindly old lady who cooked up strange and unusual recipes left a bag of cookies in the hallway, and warned Spencer, a bratty boy, not to eat any of them. Ignoring her warnings, he quickly stuffed a cookie in his mouth, asking what kind they were. "Chocolate?"
"No."
"Vanilla? Mint? Caramel? Almond? Peanut butter?"
He kept asking and shoving cookies in between breaths until Ethel gave the final ingredient; "Dog Milkbone", which left Spencer staring with bug eyes.

At a scientific convention, a scientist deducted that the sun would explode in a hundred billion years. This lecture brought a horrified “HOW LONG?!” from Ernie.
"One hundred billion years."
"Whew! For a moment there, I thought he said one hundred million!"
(Actually, we may not be that lucky to survive that long...)

A surreal week-long story that started out with Ernie lying in bed and feeling something crawling up his leg. He was wide-eyed in terror, wondering what it could possibly be... and when the mysterious thing popped up from underneath the covers, it turned out to be Mr. Squid, the puppet mascot of a squid fast-food restarant. Upon seeing the talking animated puppet, Ernie deducted that he must be dreaming, and proceeded to pinch himself. When he yelped out in pain and didn’t wake up, that set off a debate between Ernie and the sock puppet squid over the the best method to figuring out if he was dreaming or not. Somehow, the conversation took a turn for the weird when the squid suggested that Ernie knock himself out with a frying pan, since pinching himself wasn’t strong enough. This wound up with Ernie waking up in the kitchen telling his dream to Ethel and Spencer. I can't recall what Ethel said, but it might've had something to do with something she cooked that didn't agree with Ernie.

This, and The Far Side are probably the only comic strips in existence that even bother to mention the usage of squids in them. With such outlandish comic stories that last for about a week or so, with amusing dialogue and unique plots, it’s curious why this hasn’t gotten more critical acclaim. Part of the reason may be because so many of Uncle Sid’s plots are too outrageous for the typical newspaper comics page. Uncle Duke only gets leeway because his scams are loosely based on reality. With the last volume of Bloom County coming out, and the weaker successor Outland in the works, Ernie could be a serious contender if a comic publisher would dare try to take a risk in their hands. Bud Grace himself switched careers from an atomic physicist to cartoonist after all.

Scary Sundays

2011-10-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

Around this time of year, its traditional for cartoonists to take the opportunity to have their characters observe the triumvirate of year-ending holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. (And to a lesser extent, the New Year) However, since there's a delay of six weeks before these comics are printed, they're planned in advance long before the holiday season. When they're sketched, inked and drawn outside of their respective months, it can be schizophrenic to the cartoonist if they're not in the festival mood already. Lately, some artists have even rebelled against the system by refusing to do any holiday-themed strips and just focus on the characters and story and not bother with the timetables.

With that in mind, the Family Circus had the following Sunday comic:

It merely consists of the father sitting around the campfire and telling horrifying stories that're scaring his children. That's the joke. Unless there's something in the throwaway panel to the side that I'm missing, it feels extremely out of place for what's generally known as a typical family-friendly strip. Even the invisible gremlin "Not Me" looks fairly mischievious in comparison.

Next up, Adam regulates a nightmare he had, which sounds pretty horrifying in its own right.

Now, these would be perfectly acceptable comics to be shown around Halloween, right? Only, that's not when they were published. The Family Circus one was shown in August, and Adam in July. Nowhere close to the month of October, and not even a few days later in November when that could've been forgiven for being a little late. It's these kinds of out-of-the-blue strips that make you stop and wonder what was going through these cartoonists' heads at the time.

Archie out of Context

2011-10-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently discovered the glory and perverse fun that is Archie out of Context. This is equivalent to the guilty pleasure of SuperDickery and unintentionally sexy covers. There's scenes of child abuse, slash pairings, double entendres, lingering liquids, X-rated movies, outrageous statements, and the truly perplexing.

The funny thing is that these wholesome comics have some risique elements that wouldn’t be obvious to the target audience. It’s only when you read the actual comic in question that you find out that they’re actually pretty tame and not as scandalous as you would believe. Revealing the story behind the panel drums up interest in what could potentially motivate these characters into such compromising positions? It’s like those “falls down on girl’s breasts” theme in Harem Manga squared. There’s a perfectly reasonable explaination for it, but it’s really complicated.

For an out-of-context Archie panel to work, there must be several things working for it:

It must be an actual comic that’s been published – no photoshopping.
There should be just enough detail to allow the reader to fill in the blanks.
It must be hillarious.

Since I’m not as obsessed with S-heroes as other comic bloggers, and prefer different comics that mainstream audiences are likely to enjoy, this is something I can contribute to with full knowledge of the subject. Hopefully, the Archie corporation won’t object to this in the same vein that they removed Slightly Improved Archie, which resulted in closing the site down. My favorite is still Jughead struggling to close a door against an elephant trunk and screaming, “REPUBLICANS!”

Although Betty’s been portrayed as being something of a psychotic flake, Archie’s pretty nuts himself.

This puts the Jughead / Reggie rivalry in an entirely new light.

Jughead looks very nervous about what Coach Kleats has in his locker.*

Nope, nothing potentially creepy about Coach Kleats right here, even though he’s emulating Mr. Kimura from Azumanga Daioh.

One of the most popular themes is interest between Betty and Veronica. I wonder why?

Veronica turns Betty down with a well-reasoned logical retort.

Amazingly enough, this isn’t the only comic to make use of a nudist camp. The other one shows more skin though.

This was one of the most controversial pages to appear in Archie comics, and not for the reasons you think.**

Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?

Archie was questioning whether Veronica was wearing a pair or not. Why else would she lie like that?***

There's only so much loose morals can succumb to, before prudes decide to punish their children for it. Or not, depending on your interpretation.

Reggie looks pretty shocked at being caught taped doing his “favorite activity”.

I think this one pretty much speaks for itself.

With all the controversy that comics have gotten for pandering to the lowest common denominator, there's a certain strength in giving audiences what they want and simultaneously denying it from them. Audiences want to be surprised, but they also don't want the same old thing all the time, which drives executives nuts, since there's never a "sure thing". Editors could fire up writers' imagination by forcing them to think up the most intentionally shocking scenes they could think of, then tell them to dilute their strength by showing them in context that'd make it pale in comparision. (This doesn't mean that the shocking scene would only be a prelude to a more horrifying scene, but that it'd be less scandalous than upon first assumption) Somehow similar to how movie trailers selectively show "exciting" scenes that are actually pretty dull in execution. I'm pretty sure there's a MAD article about that. The trick would be making the rest of the story worth reading after getting past the "scandalous" parts.

Archie's been doing this for years, so they must be doing something right.

* A Basketball uniform. And no, it's not role-playing.
** Reggie was talking about natives here, and naturally, some people got a little upset.
*** Boots. What were you thinking?

Spy Club

2011-10-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

Spy was looming over me, daring me to say anything to commorate the event. However, there wasn't really much to say. With a pineapple bomb lodged between your teeth, you can only speak in consonants.

Project Joke and Laughter was already in place to take down multiple companies at the stroke of midnight.

I know this because Spy knows this.

Then I realized that all of this - the guns, the bombs, the poisoned pens, the boomerang ties, the squirting acid flowers, the killer kazoos, the wooden clubs, the booby traps, the secret decoder rings...

All had to do with the Lady in Grey.

In my old life, I was practically a sleepwalker. For days, I couldn't stay awake. I couldn't stay awake. I couldn't stay awake. With hypersomnia, nothing's real.

Every workday's the same as the last. Tedious meetings that went nowhere. Uninteresting coworkers spouting the same tired old lines. Junk mail selling the same old stuff. Even my diary was a cruel parody - every week could've been copied and pasted, and nothing would've changed.

On a long enough timeline, the expiration date for everything drops to zero. Even the sun will only last for another five billion years, if we're lucky. With planned obsolence, we don't even bother making products last longer than two years anymore. Once they become obsolete, they were chucked out because a certain part wasn't available, even if all the other stuff still worked. Its become easier to just buy the 2.0 version, since it has more bells and whistles attached to it.

I prayed for anything exciting to happen; a car crash, a train crash, a plane crash - anything that'd help relieve my tedium. I'd even settle for a bicycle accident.

Then one day, a strange man with in a long trenchcoat approached me, handed over a folder and said, "Here, look casual. I'll be back later." And as soon as he arrived, he abruptly left.
The whole incident was so bizarre that I wondered if I hadn't dreamed it up. In my current workplace, carrying large stacks of papers was considered practically normal, so I didn't really stand out.

I kind of got my answer when the mysterious man showed up again later.

Thanks for the help. I'll be leaving now.
Do you mind telling me what all this is about?
Sorry. That's on a need-to-know basis. And he left again.

However, I wasn't going to let him leave without satisfying my curiosity. Besides, I was on lunch break, and could use a change from the fish paste sandwiches. I caught up to him in the lobby where he continued to feign innocence with me.

I'm sorry, have we met before?
Don't lie to me! You handed me a folder without any explaination, and I'd like some answers! If you don't tell me what all that was about, I'll call the police right now.
He looked around, eyeing the speculators and passer-bys, then said, "It's too crowded here. Here, meet me at this cafe.", and discreetly handed over a card.

By the time I read the address, he'd disappeared into the recesses of people.

I decided to take him up on his offer, since I didn't have anything better to do and no one would miss my presence for the next slide presentation.

Why were those papers so important?
Oh, the actual content of those things don't really matter. If you'd bothered to check them, you'd find out they were blank.
Then why -
- you were nothing more than bait.
I felt indignant and excited at the same time. "Bait for what??"
Well, if you must know, I was being pursued by a man known only as El Hombre Siniestro. Thanks to you, I was able to extradite him back to Cuba. By now, he'll be nothing more than a pale memory.
"Glad I could help", I sarcasically replied.
Truth be told, this was really just a test to see if you were applicable.
Now I was a little curious. "Applicable for what?"
What we do is recruit perfectly normal people and assign them roles to help us with our esponiage business. People never really notice the lowly man working at the bottom of the totem pole, so you'd fit in perfectly.
You've really got to work on your sales pitch.
And you've got to work on your drooling. You're dripping all over the place.
I casually wiped my mouth, trying to sound as bored as possible and failing. "Interested? Who's interested?"
Keep in mind that this is no easy feat. This is the kind of job that demands unwavering loyalty in the face of all opposition. That means you have to follow all orders without complaint. Think you're up to it?
I've done nothing but do people's requests' all my life.
Good. Then I'm going to give you an order, and I expect you to follow it to the letter.
Name it.
I want you to kiss me as hard as you can.
What?
I want you to - wait, you weren't hitting on me were you?

After that embarassing setback, we decided to never speak of it ever again. This led to the first two rules of Spy Club:

The first rule of Spy Club is,
You do not talk in Spy Club.

The second rule of Spy Club is,
You DO NOT talk in Spy Club.

After our first session, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt in my life. I hurt and bruised all over, and lost at least two times. However, winning or losing wasn't really the point. I was now part of an organization bigger than myself.

The human body is a wonderfully resilient thing. You can live without blood or oxygen for about a minute before bouncing back. You can drink a pint of blood and a gallon of snot before you start feeling sick. Bleeding cuts and sores get healed over, broken muscles and bones repair themselves, and if you're hurt too badly, it shuts down and reroutes blood from non-vital body parts to the more important organs.

This was really great. We should do this again sometime.
Agreed. I'll be in touch.
What's your name though? I can't keep calling you 'Spy' all the time.
You can call me Spyer Burden.
Sounds made up to me.

Spyer was full of useful tidbits of trivia, such as,

Did you know that if you mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate, you can make napalm?
Really?
No, not really. What you wind up with is an undrinkable mess. It's that kind of misinformation we spread around, so the public feels like they're in posession of some hidden knowledge, when they're actually failing to create proper bombs and such, which helps cut down on terrorism tactics. That's what this spy business is all about.
I thought it was driving around in cool cars and hooking up with hot babes.
That's just the perks of the job. Don't let it distract you.

You wouldn't believe how much crap people throw away without thinking. I've been stealing - borrowing lots of old office supplies out of the trash bin. Obsolete computer software without their RAMs have plenty of useful material that can be reused. Would you believe that gold is a common circuitry conductor? If you collect enough of these, you can make a small fortune.
Really?
Jeez, you don't learn, do you? The amount left is so neglible it wouldn't even amount to anything, and the information it contains would be more valuable than anything you could buy.

Next lesson - never believe anything anybody tells you. This includes me. Don't trust anything until you cross-reference what you've heard with multiple sources. Then double-check those same sources to make sure they haven't been tampered with by biased researchers.
How can I tell the difference?
A good rule of thumb is, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. What's really difficult are those who mix lies in with the truth. In most instances, just take everything with a grain of salt, otherwise you'll wind up double-guessing yourself all the time.

The trick is to convince people they're rulers of their own fates and not remind them they're actually cast adrift in a universe that doesn't care about them. To combat this, a helpful guideline of rigid rules helps give them the feeling of being in control. Once they're trapped in that mindset, it becomes almost impossible for them to break the pattern, even though all their instincts scream otherwise. Social experiments have proven over and over again that people are not interested in doing heavy-duty thinking. They want somebody else to take care of it for them, so they can focus on the stuff that really matters to them, such as memorizing their TV shows and video game cheats.

Third rule of Spy Club,
If someone dies, goes limp, or craps out,
the Spy is over.

For some reason even though our rules seemed very reasonable, they were very off-putting to a lot of potential members. As a result, the only repeat customers were me and Spy. I should've felt silly doing these violent actions with only one other person present, but I eventually grew accustumed to it. Let the outside world burn for all I cared, as long as me and Spy could scheme circles around each other to our heart's content.

No matter how grandoise our plans were, we always managed to find some way around it. I would devise elaborate devices that were capable of crushing a human skull, and Spy would somehow manage to find a potential flaw I'd missed. Likewise, Spy would come after me with an unstoppable killing machine, and I'd suddenly see a hole in his defenses.

"What're you doing? It looks like fun."

Then the Lady in Grey showed up, and she ruined everything.

Fourth rule of Spy Club,
Only two Spies at a time.

It was difficult to explain the rules without breaking the first two, but we managed by handing out a photocopy that Spy had lying around. Once she'd gone over them twice, she wanted to get started. I opted to be her first opponent, since it was her first time and all. That was when I discovered that she was far more efficient in her abilities than I'd ever prepared myself for. I found myself facing utter defeat within five seconds. Spyer didn't fare much better - he went down in the span of six seconds.

Even with both of us unfairly ganging up on her, she still managed to easily ward off our offenses. It no longer felt like a friendly game, but a one-sided grudge match, which we were hopelessly outmatched. She was constantly distracting us with her techniques, strategy and good looks. If it weren't for her sheer silk stockings and her plunging neckline showing tons of cleavage, we might've stood a chance.

I opted to add another rule along the lines of, No women allowed in Spy Club. However, Spyer didn't agree, saying that she was a welcome spark to our routine, which was getting stale.
We were now at an impasse. Spy started seeing the Lady in Grey more often, while I started seeing him less. I shouldn't have minded, but I suspected he was really trying to figure out her techniques and not just checking out her privates.

Fifth rule of Spy Club,
Hats and glasses are mandatory.

I didn't like how much attention the Lady in Grey was getting compared to me, and displayed my displeasure with my latest string of operations all aimed at Spy. Spyer started retaliating in kind with what he'd picked up from the Grey Lady.

Eventually, these continued successes and failures began to take its toll in what was originally intended to be a fun game between two bored people. Spyer began to grow resentful of my continuous sequences of wins, even though he won as many victories as I lost. Our Spy games became more progressively violenter than they'd been in the past, and I found I had to follow suit. Sure, I could've played it safe and asked him to tone it down, but that would've been admitting defeat, and having Spy lose his respect for me was the last thing I wanted.

Then I found out that I was being framed at work for selling company secrets to our competitors. The evidence against me was overwhelming - I was the only one who had access to the information in question. I was the only one with my fingerprints all over the keyboards. And shortly after the deals were made, a large amount was deposited in my account.

I would've betrayed the company on my own anyways, but still felt lousy that I was blamed for it. I didn't even get the satisfaction of doing the job. This time Spyer had gone too far. It was time to hit Spyer back where it really hurt. It was time I did some research of my own.

And I used to be such a nice guy.

Unfortunately, I was beginning to find out that Spyer was a much better esponiage agent than I'd ever given him credit for. Any attempt to find information about his past history led to a dead end. His address and fiances seemed practically nonexistent. He had perfected the art of being a non-person so completely that it was like he didn't even exist.

In fact, of the few legal documents of his that I could actually find, all his physical descriptions wound up sounding a lot like me. I began to see the inheirent logic in his plan - he was grooming himself to eventually take over my role. Well, two could play at that game. I could create just as many false identities as him. That should throw him off the track.

However, I'd grossly underestimated the extent of his information-gathering skills. No matter how carefully I encrypted my files, no matter how many false trails I left lying around, no matter how many times I doubled-back to make sure I wasn't being tailed, he always managed to be one step ahead of me every step of the way.

I began to grow excessively paranoid. Spy's information circle was far greater than I'd ever anticipated. While going through his files hidden in a triple-locked safe laced with an explosive trigger, I found out that Spy had already outlined a profile on me before he even recruited me.
He knew more about me than I knew about myself, while I knew practically nothing about the man before I signed on. What had I gotten myself into?

I decided to dig deeper. What was the name of the guy he was tracking down? El Home Sinistro or something?

Sixth rule of Spy Club,
Spies will go on for as long as they have to.

Finding out information about El Hombre Siniestro turned out to be more difficult than I thought. It was like chasing a ghost. There was practically almost nothing known about the man, save that he relished doing unspeakable cruelties to random people. Spyer Burden had certainly done the world a great service by getting rid of him. However, apart from a few obscenities, I couldn't find any concrete activities that he'd done. Even his deportion back to Cuba was practically nonexistent. One troubling detail that I noticed was how much he looked like Spyer.

Armed with my discovery, I approached Spyer Burden with newfound confidence. Now that I knew where he was coming from, I could face against him with the intent of putting him down once and for all.

Spyer, there's something that's been bugging me.
The products are perfectly legal. Until the companies start complaining about their stolen trash, they can't link their stuff to us without proof.
That's not what I wanted to talk about. I did some research on the guy you were chasing after the day you came to me, and apparently his modus operandi is very similar to your policy.
We all learn from each other. That's how we stay the best - by anticipating the other guy's moves before they even make them.
Okay then, can you explain how you deported him?

That's confidential information.
I know, but there's no mention of his name listed anywhere.
We wanted to keep his location under wraps. It would look bad if his transport route showed where he was going.
You could've used multiple decoy trucks.
And alerted multiple sleeper agents to help him escape? No thanks.
Maybe, but it doesn't account for the lack of a paper trail showing any boats or planes going into Cuba.
Well maybe we moved him to another country that wasn't restricted by an embargo, you ever think of that?
That's what I thought, until I got my hands on a picture of the man in question, and I noticed that El Hombre Siniestro looks suspiciously like you.

What are you saying?
I should think that it's pretty obvious - you ARE El Hombre Siniestro! You changed your identity by taking care of the agent who was tracking you down. And now you're trying to replace me by usurping my role in the workplace for your own devious means.
Which are?
I don't know. Maybe you're going to spike the water cooler with laxatives. Maybe you're going to double-staple every folder in the company. Maybe you're going to burn the building to the ground - but whatever it is, you must be stopped before you even start!
I've already done all those things under your name.
WHAT?!
Calm down. There's a very good reason for all of this. The reason El Hombre Siniestro is so difficult to track down is because he doesn't exist. He's nothing more than a former alias that I created.
I suppose you're going to tell me that you're an alternate personality created from my repressed rage at an increasingly customerist society?
No, I'm the dominant personality. YOU'RE the alternate personality!

Seventh and final rule of Spy Club,
If this is your first time at Spy Club,
you have to Spy.

I was visibly shocked at this kind of news. How could I possibly be a mental condition when I clearly remembered so many vivid images of my past? What was extremely depressing was that other than Spy club, all I could recall were the endless days of drudgery at the office, waiting for the day to end.
You only remember your boring past because I filled it with endless days of drudgery at the office, with you waiting for the day to end.
How did you -
I know this, because Spy knows this.
I stared at him incredulously. He was repeating the exact same stuff I'd been thinking. He must've been planting sublimal messages without me noticing.
Everything you know, I already know. Everything I know, you already know.
I countered back the only way I knew how; "Well, maybe I just memorized the wrong stuff so I could lure you into a false sense of superiority and catch you off guard?"
You're not that smart, and I'm not that dumb.
This seems like an extremely complicated scheme with such little payoff. Why go to all this trouble then?
It became extremly boring to have no one else match my intellectual capability, so I decided to create a persona equivalent to playing chess with myself. Haven't you ever wondered why you had so much trouble staying awake? It was only after I fed you the fantasy of the boring office worker really being a secretive undercover agent that you showed any signs of interest. That's how were you able to implement so many complicated aspects of spying in such a short time.
I thought you were a really good teacher. What about the female spy? She picked up the game faster than either of us!
Which is why you've become redundant. Now that she's shown up on the scene, I don't need you anymore. I've finally found a worthy rival, while you're nothing more than a scapegoat.

I grew red-hot with livid anger. How dare this man demean my past efforts? Well, Spy was going to find out that this spy wasn't going to be so easy to put down!

...At least, that's what I thought when I lunged at him and fell flat on my face.

Looks like the sleeping pills are finally taking effect.
That's impossible! I switched the cups around! And only YOU took a drink!
you're not very bright, are you?
Those were the last words I heard before I blanked out.

When I woke up again, I found myself tied to a chair with a grenade in my mouth.

Back again, are we? I suppose it's time to reveal my grandoise plans. Project Joke and Laughter is already in place and is unstoppable. At the stroke of midnight, all the companies that you've sent the corporate secrets to should already be infected with the malicious virus that's invading their systems right now. By lunch tomorrow, the market will be in a state of chaos trying to keep their customer service up and running, and for the first time, people will have to learn how to adapt in a world of faulty gadgets.

I wasn't really paying attention to what Spy was telling me. In the back of my mind, I somehow already knew what he was talking about. I was more concerned with getting out of my predictament. It looked pretty hopeless so far, But what Spy hadn't anticipated was that with all our past fights, I'd had to replace multiple bones and internal organs after some of our more violent sessions. I was purchasing dentures in bulk since I went through them so fast. All it would take was slipping my false teeth out of my mouth and spitting the grenade in Spy's general direction. Too bad he noticed before I even got the chance to interrupt his little speech.

You're STILL trying to resist?
Of course! I am beautiful, unique, and no flake. I'll do anything to protect my identity!
Really? What's your name then?
Well, it's... hang on, it'll come to me...
Where do you live? Who are your parents? Do you have any friends?
I have lots of friends!! There's that black guy in accounting... and the janitor...
Admit it - you're nothing more than a figment of my imagination. The sooner you accept that truth, the easier it will be for both of us.

I was falling into confusion and despair. The events of Spy Club had drowned out everything else that happened in my life. I couldn't even remember the last time I went to the bathroom, since it was so boring in comparision. The only thing left for my was Spy Club, and even that had betrayed me.

Hang on a mo - what was it he'd said? The purpose of a spy is to intentionally spread misleading information to the public. And he was recruiting people off the streets... therefore, I was one of the masses he was trying to decieve!

I suddenly saw a way out of this.

The first rule of Spy club is you do not talk in Spy club.
What are you doing?
The second rule of Spy Club is you DO NOT talk in Spy club.
Get back! I'm warning y-

And just like that, Spyer Burden suddenly fell silent, falling upon his default mode of obeying orders. Once engaged in the ritual of Spy Club, he couldn't break free from his loyalty to the rules, and that gave me all the advantage I needed.

Now that he was no longer free to spread his scandalous lies, I could focus on my counterattack. Before he could get his bearings, I reached over and shoved the grenade inside his mouth. He tried to mumble something in protest, but with a pineapple bomb lodged between your teeth, you can only speak in consonants.

I watched with a satisfied smirk as a bright flash replaced what had once been Spy's head, and raised two fingers in truimph. I figured I stood a better chance with the Lady in Grey now. Judging by Spyer Burden's attempts to impersonate me, I might be able to pull it off.

I was all set off to leave when I felt a strange sensation in my lower chest. For some reason, a wet spot was showing up, and a sharp point seemed to be poking out from it. I twisted my neck around to see where it'd come from, and was shocked to see Spy with his head ducked between his shoulders.

Of course - I'd forgotten that I knocked out his teeth just as much as he'd broken mine. He must've spitted out the bomb, then ducked his head within his trenchcoat to deflect the blast.

This wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

With a cry, I groggly stumbled towards Spy with a knife hidden in my pocket. Both our eyes were unfocussed, but victory would go to the one who landed the final blow. Every knife wound at my former friend felt like a stab in my gut. He was a lot more resilent than I'd thought. Every time I thought I'd finally beaten him down, he rose up like a Phoenix. Likewise, everytime I felt too tired to continue, I would find some hidden resevoir of renewed strength.

I lost count of how many times we went at each other, but figured it was somewhere in the triple-digits range.

When I woke up, I found myself lying sprawled on the ground in a puddle of blood and mangled limbs. I looked around for signs of Spyer Burden, but couldn't see him anywhere. This was impossible - he couldn't have crawled away from the scene without a trace! Instead, I saw another figure. It was difficult to disconcern from my hazy view and swollen eyes, but it was umistakably the Lady in Grey. She was riffing through my suitcase and saying some cryptic words along the lines of, "finding a cure", and "selling to the highest bidder", but I couldn't hear her properly.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking," I sarcastically replied. "You should see the other guy..."

The Grey Lady heard my wavering voice and stopped whatever it was she was doing. Then she walked over to my comatose body and said the three most painful words a woman could say to a guy in my condition;

I win again.

Then she walked out the room without even casting a backwards glance. While I was enjoying watching her ass as she walked down the stairs in high heels, I heard a familiar voice behind me. Spyer Burden had seen better days.

I'm not quite sure another woman's the answer we need.
I couldn't help but smile. "Are you still up to adding another clause to our Spy Club rules?"
How about we Spy for it? As soon as I start feeling better, I'm going after you with a vengeance. I'm thinking of a Rube Goldberg inspired deathtrap that you'll never see coming.
Not if I stop you first!

I love the smell of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate in the morning. It smells like... victory.

- Spyer Burden

Marvin

2011-10-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Before Tom Armstrong became better known for creating a baby comic, he made his first debut with a collaboration with Tom Batiuk. (Yes, THAT Tom Batiuk. Apparently, there are things in cartoonists' pasts that are more interesting than the strips they create) However, since I know practically nothing about John Darling and don't have any scans of him, we'll have to settle for the baby.

Marvin was also the first instance I ever got of a comic being further condensed. While most comics are normally shown without the title page and throwaway panel, my newspaper outdid themselves by removing several panels that weren't necessary.

In other cases where the other panels were mandatory to the punchline, they were squished together. As far as I know, no other strip suffered as much as Marvin did, but it was one of these things that help spurn the additive/reductive element of comics.

There's been some speculation that Marvin was inspired by Garfield, since it shares some striking similarities -both feature a small destructive creature that eats a lot and only communicates by thinking. Since Marvin was debuted around the time that Garfield started to take off, it's not unreasonable. The difference is that one is a baby, and the other is a cat. For some people, there's not much difference, save that babies eventually grow up, unless they're cartoon babies.

Now there's a scary thought for you - babies' faces frozen in the shape of famous dictators. I have to admit that when I saw Marvin's face in the last panel there, I thought he was impersonating Frankenstein. I wasn't very immersed in politics, let alone American politics. I didn't even know we had a Prime Minister until Brian Mulrooney got caught up in multiple scandals. At the time, I thought he was a nice guy. (I was young!)

The Garfield comparision is even more pronounced when you take Cousin Megan in consideration. She's clearly the closest thing to competition that Marvin has. From these few examples, we get the sense she's clearly more ambitious than her cutesy outlook implies.

However, a cursuary check on TvTropes showed that she hadn't shown up again in years, and was only briefly mentioned in a recent strip.

There was some controversy when Marvin started changing, not just in his character design, but also when he started expressing actual human speech and interacting with his parents without resorting to baby talk. In addition, he started standing up and walking as opposed to crawling around. But there was a strip that showed he was capable of this much earlier.

For those curious where the title image of Marvin running in his baby stroller comes from, this strip looks like a good originator as any.

Making Xkcd Better or Worse

2011-10-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Sometime back in April, I made an interpretation of a Tetris game that I felt was a fairly accurate revision of the newest Xkcd strip.

Shouldn't have pressed "down" so soon.

However, I felt slightly discouraged when I found out that a similar strip to mine had already been posted. As a regular contributor to another parody comic strip, I should've been aware that ideas were likely to overlap, but it still bugged me.

I only recently discovered Making Xkcd Slightly Worse via a Square Root of Minus Garfield comic. I was reluctant to check it out, because I'm always afraid of trying new things. Either I'll hate it upon my first chance, or I'll become too addicted to the latest new toy and find out I can't live without it. It's why I was so nervous about using the internet in its early days, because I worried that I wouldn't be able to tear myself away from the daily distractions. However, since it was another revised parody strip, I decided to give it a shot.

Sure enough, my fears were acknowledged - once I got started, I found it extremely hard to stop. Actually, I found browsing the forums to be a better indicator for judging the quality of the comics, because I could see many of them at once, which saved on download time. Not to mention the mouseover text was out in the open, which meant I didn't have to constantly move my mouse over the picture to find the hidden joke. Sadly, some of the strips on the forums have disappeared, and even the comic archive didn't bother to make any copies, so until the original contributors bring them back, they'll be lost to the annals of time.

Most of these comics started out as concepts of ruining the joke, excluding a single element/panel or combinations of various strips that were just as, if not funnier than the original. Even Randall Munroe seems to have been influenced by some of these strips.

After reading so many comics in a row, it was inevietable that I would feel inspired to try a few strips of my own. I felt very much like the guy in this comic - I stayed up all night and couldn't stop until I'd gone through every single comic until I got a general idea of the parameters involved. Some jokes got reused multiple times, while others only appeared once. One particular favorite were variations on the on the That's what SHE said! jokes. I didn't even know the basic setup, let alone why it why such an innoculous line wound up sounding so funny, but I think I managed to find a good combination from three different strips.

For all intents and purposes, this backfired in more ways than one.

In the meantime, I created a few more Xkcdsws that I thought would be fun. However, the backlog seems to be even longer than for SromG, and Xkcdsw doesn't update every day, which takes longer for my turn to come up. I was told that my comic would be released on July 23, but apparently that's for the Webpage date, not Calendar date. It's currently at April 20th, and I'm getting impatient at ever getting to see my comics get posted, so I figured I might as well save myself some aggravation and just post the stuff up, image memory be damned.

I also made a slight variation to a comic that had already been done better.

"Somehow, this doesn't seem as glamorous as TV made me believe."

I also made two varations of a similar joke, with a different punchline:

While on a webcomic binge, I combined two similar concepts from two different sources, the second being Cyanide & Happiness. I'm sorry to say that Black Hat's reaction looks more like he's running away, than actually being blown back. If you have him facing right, it'll look closer to my intended use.

This one was inspired by a punchline from an Xkcdsw comic. The question of who's actually dreaming is never called up.

That sentence made him stay up all night long.

And now, for my magnum opus, taking elements from 25 different strips. I doubt anybody'll be able to beat my record, though they're welcome to try. This was my most ambitious Xkcd project, trying to find sentences that would have warped meaning for the original comic. Only one panel was borrowed from an Xkcdsw strip - all the others were actual lines quoted in the main webcomic. There were at least three revisions, with me replacing one carefully chosen sentence with another. The ones that were in the first draft included the following; I've never seen so much blood!, You're my lovely cutie pie, and Those mysterious wood chips? Bonus points if you can accurately guess where they originally belonged.

If I were any more ambitious, I would've made the memes rhyme.

Template
Colider, Gyroscope, Contemplative, Internet
Hamster ball, Talking, Balls, Kama Sutra
Black Hat, Cat, Turned on, Photoshop
Map, Spoiler, Compiling, Pencil
Politics, Vibrator, Blockier, Like you
Diet Mentos, Flying Car, Jurassic, Vista