The Gravity of the Situation

Ever since he has looked heavenwards in envy, man has wanted to fly, consequences be damned.

On a random comment board, it was mentioned in passing that of all the mechanism failures that occurred on Star Trek, ranging from Holodeck Malfunctions to Warp Core Explosions, the one standing feature that remained intact during all these disaster scenarios was the gravity controls.  No matter how dire, it was imperative that everybody keep their feet on the ground.  Other Sci-fi shows with a higher budget such as The Expanse managed to expand on that concept, showing just how unfeasible it could be to survive on a gravity-free zone.  The major reason that these far-concept shows had such a stranglehold on the gravity controls is that they were mainly filmed on Earth.  (Sorry for spoiling the illusion guys!)

All this stemming from news that the latest Tom Cruise movie, Vyozov (The Challenge)’s marketing gimmick would be the first film that would be filmed entirely in space.  By a Russian crew, no less.  (Whether it’d be any good is immaterial)

This led to a discussion of realistic portrayal of living in a stimulated environment, and there were very few comics that accurately reflected what it’d be like to live in a world without gravity.  The ones that did, showed just how ubiquitous gravity surrounds us to the extent that we don’t think about it.  This page from chapter 21 of Grease Monkey by Tim Eldred shows what happens when it's not around, and how much of a mess keeping everything floating around would be.

I started thinking about this after reading the entirety of Skyward, written by Joe Henderson, and drawn by Antonio Fabela and Lee Garbett.  At first, Skyward seems to openly embrace this concept with open arms, when one day all of a sudden, gravity just seems to cease working properly.  But then this open-world policy quickly devolves into cliched territory, making for a less satisfactory read than would otherwise be expected.

There are scenes of imaginative worldbuilding such as having millionaires fitted with magnetic boots to recapture life like it was before, and people using slotted buckets to capture water from an incoming storm, but for the most part, it’s filled with flawed leaps of imagination.

One of the failed suspensions of disbelief is the inclusion of a disabled love interest who would prefer to remain in this gravity-free world where where a return to normalcy would mean being tied down.

That in itself isn’t a bad idea.  The problem is, all portrayal of him shows him as being at the same height of everyone, regardless of his missing legs or not.

Standing around like a disembodied leg guy from that episode of Quantum Leap.

Whether this fault lies at the hands of the author or the writer, I couldn’t say, but it’s safe that neither of them are sufficiently handicapped.

Segueing back to Tim "Grease Monkey" Eldred, his other online work, Pitsberg, has a much more nuanced take on amputees closer to The Expanse, where condemned miners of space minerals (there's a lot of exposition involved, but space minerals is what we're working with) have to undergo required extraction of body parts in order to reduce expenses.  And in a gravity-free zone, legs are just one of the many deemed minor unnecessary "inconveniences" to go.  As such, there's a greater variety of legless bodies in a floating environment to deal with.

For the most part, until someone is able to spend sufficient time in a gravity-free zone and have the imaginative insight to document a wider-spread alternate reality, such fantastic concepts would be better suited to the realm of short stories.

For me, the one comic that manages to succeed in this where others fail would be Sherwin Tjia’s Plummet, where a young woman wakes up and finds herself falling mid-air.

It sounds like a Mr. Boffo joke, but it’s one of the best underrated Canadian comics you’ve never read.

Being in perpetual free-fall with numerous random objects appearing out of nowhere means you’re never fully prepared for what may happen next.  One of the falling objects happens to be a section of an apartment building, which has potential for housing valuable supplies like food and clothing.  Of course, navigating inside isn’t as easy as it first seems.

Trying to eat or sleep in these conditions is impossible without proper preparation or a little luck.  And when it does come, it’s recommended to jump at the chance whenever it occurs.  Eventually, she meets other people caught in the same situation as her, some who’ve managed to build something out for themselves, others who’re just as clueless as she is, some are friendly, and some are not.  In the afterword, Sherwin Tjia writes that the format for this ambitious comic was written to be a road story.  Well, a vertical road story, always going forward, never looking back.

The best thing about this comic is while there are various theories bandied about, the circumstances that caused this is never explained.  Any potentially plausible explanation would RUIN the experience.  If you get the chance, I heavily recommend you pick it up.  Doubtless it’d be far more intriguing than whatever the upcoming Tom Cruise movie plot is.

Trumped-up Depth Charges

It's the eve of the American election - a day we thought would never come.  To celebrate the deadline of an apprehensive date, here's the last batch of Trump commentary I made on Facebook for the (hopeful) foreseeable future.  For the first time, I've embraced the rigors & pains of Election Addiction,
and have no idea how I'll fill in my free time with no new insane news to look forward to.

Trump: Yeah, well, who'd want to go out with you?!  You're a total One on the hotness scale!  A real Zero!

--An unused line for my flawed theory that Clinton & Trump were having an affair.

If you've already made up your mind about Trump, the following recaps of comments made in the past three months won't change your mind much.  However, erring on the side of caution, here's a page full of links.

"I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is corrupt. I don’t care if she lies, if she cheats, if she eats bowls of newborn chipmunks for breakfast.
She is literally the only thing standing in the way of a fascist dictator becoming President of the United States with a Republican majority congress that guarantees he can do anything he wants and nothing will be able to stop him.

Every time we think Trump hits rock bottom, he brings out a backhoe, that he only paid the contractor half of what was promised.  It's less of a trainwreck, and more like watching MULTIPLE Train Wrecks, Plane Crashes and Earthquakes converging onto a single place where an elderly man attempts to light a match around a gas leak.  There is a moral event horizon, and the shark has long since passed it.

When even Charlie "Tiger Blood" Sheen thinks Trump's gone off the deep end, that's a sign that maybe you've gone too far.  Betting pools must be having a HELL of a time trying to fill in every potential slot, and laughing all the way to the bank as the last possible thing they could ever think of happens.

EDIT - It's painful, but the election has against all logic and reason, sided with the most racist toxic Presidential Candidate over a more stable platform.  Someday, we'll look back at our shortsightedness and laugh, but not right now - it's still too painful.  More after the cut.

Stardust Vs. the World

Several years ago, a comic site posted one of the most bizarre comics that’d ever been seen. It didn’t follow the ritualistic formula of conventional S-hero comics, where a hero faces off a dastardly villain, only to be setback on their first encounter, then succeed in the next meeting with a resounding punch to the jaw. No, these stories had villains who would devise elaborate plans to take over the world by assassinating presidents, growing mutant birds, or stopping all gravity on Earth. These plans would succeed very well until Stardust would come flashing in and implement horrible bizarre punishments on these bad guys until the artist ran out of pages. The unusual Mary Stu protagonists and repetitive use of stiff poses and photoreferenced drawings made Fletcher Hanks something of a postmortem celebrity.








This led to an ambitious project by a fan who was impressed by the off-the-wall quality of these short comics and went on a personal crusade to find more stories done in his inimitable style. When compiled, comparisions to being the Ed Wood of the comics world were not far off. It’s not just that they were bad, they were remarkably bad.













The first book had a lower page count than the second, because Paul Karasik wanted to save the best stuff for last, and was worried there might not be enough material left. He needn’t have worried, since there were more pages of Hank’s hackwork, not counting the stuff that’d been redrawn to replace his stiff faces with goofier-looking protagonists, while still telling the same story.








The popularity of the Hanks characters such as Stardust, Fantomah and Space Smith (I never quite got into Big Red McLane) led to the creation of a fansite where various artists would try their hand at doing their own interpretations. Since they’d never been licensed, and any copyrights would’ve expired with the creator’s death, their images could be taken without fear of infringement. However, despite the promise of more fan tributes to come, there were never any further updates. This was a shame since the spoofed material was of varying quality and just as capturing the essence of a typical Hanks comic, which despite its formulaic premise, isn’t as easy as you think.








Of the six contributors, only T. Allen Spetnagel, Jason Axtell and Elgin Braden, are still available for online viewing via their prospective pages. M!a Paluzz!'s and Stanton Broadway's contributions are still missing. This would be one of these instances where having people compulsively save comics they read would benefit us in the long term. I’m regretting not saving the comic that gave Fantomah the jungle skull-woman a backstory with Anime-influenced art when I had the chance. I opted instead to save what I considered to be the funniest and most sadistic of the Stardust tributes.






In Andrew Greenstone’s version, Stardust is less a lone vigilante residing in a laboratory where he views crime taking place galaxies away, so he can give crooks a fighting chance to carry out their nefarious deeds before he catches up to them. Here, he’s more of a Silver Surfer archetype with an all-powerful master whose physical appearance, save for two large unblinking feminine eyes, defies all description.






Despite the similar setup, Stardust doesn't bother going into time-wasting Shakespearean monologues over how much he despises his orders, but goes straight into doing the job. Now that's work ethics! The results of which are... well, I'll let the remainder of the comics do the explaining for me.








I especially like how all the bad guys on Earth don't so much object to Stardust's genocide of the entire human race, as they do over how he beat them all to the punch first.








For some reason, I'm reminded of Calvin's fantasies where he'd play with his toys and have progressively worse and worse disasters befall his victims. That's what this feels like.







Crispy.

Rejected Garfields

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I’m a big fan of the Square Root of Minus Garfield [Sqrt(-G) for short] and become one of their most generous contributors. The only other ones to deliver multiple comics are Colin Foster, Henning Makholm, Michael Stangeland, NotTooStupid, and Quaternion.

Before Sqrt(-G), I was a big fan of the Garfield Randomizer, of which more history can be found here.

The Garfield Randomizer is a webpage that accesses the comprehensive online Garfield archives, fetching one panel at a time from different individual Garfield strips and presenting them mashed-up and reordered into surreal, dada creations. An instant online hit, screen-captures of the recontextualized comics began appearing on messageboards and blogs everywhere. Of course, it didn’t take long for syndicate lawyers to pounce.

Which is unfortunate, both for fans and for the syndicate’s ailing, unfunny property. The unanimous sentiment online was that for the first time in years, Garfield was funny again. As I mentioned in my recent revision to the Comic Strip Doctor column on Garfield, what makes the randomized strips hilarious is that they break down the rhythms and cadences that readers have come to predict. First panel set-ups become final panel non sequiturs, or a strip may have three punchlines with no setup. Each panel’s utility is boosted by its becoming a modular component.

One thing I noticed, frantically creating new strips for hours on end in a vicious giggling fit, was that there are a lot of really strange concepts buried in the Garfield archives. The comic seems like it should be funny. How could a comic that incorporated wildly bizarre juxtapositions not be funny?

Somehow, Garfield manages. And the secret, it turns out, is through overkill:

Since the Garfield Randomizer went briefly offline, there was an unfortunate crackdown on any sites with Randomized Garfields. The lone exception being the Garfield Generator, for some reason. There was a 4chan board of Randomized Garfields in the morning, and when I returned in the afternoon, the forum was gone. I've always regretted not saving more images from there when I had the chance.

So what is it about the Fat Cat that's so easy to parody, compared to other Newspaper comic strips? The answer may lie in the format itself. As Kleefeld put it:

...The structure of Garfield is generally two talking heads whose dialogue is largely not dependent of the illustrations. Thus, you can drop in any two characters standing next to each other and the gag still works. The strip's format, in some senses, isn't that far removed from the old EC comics in which the text simply explained what was happening in the pictures.

In the second place, the premise of Garfield is that Garfield doesn't actually talk out loud. So, although Garfield is responding and reacting to Jon's comments, Jon's dialogue is set up so that it's also not dependent on anything else. In effect, Jon is speaking a perpetual monologue and Garfield acts as a Greek chorus. For the purposes of these mashups, that means that the dialogue can easily be dropped in to comics with dramatic scene changes, since Jon's comments are, by design, NOT a response to Garfield's.

A lot of the other comic strips which also use the "two character banter" approach that's not reliant on actual character development or visual humor -- Blondie, Hi and Lois, Hagar the Horrible, etc. -- but Garfield's unique structure allows for a greater latitude for interpretation. You can see in the above examples that I was repeatedly able to assign dialogue to characters in other strips in a way that would not have been possible if the original required a back-and-forth set-up.

So it's actually easier to think up a Garfield comic than you think - all you need to do is find some combination adhering to the formula, and you're halfway home! Every time I send in a collection of my strips, I wind up thinking up more ideas for the next batch.























One of the ideas I got, which I expect increased traffic immensely was the Manga Garfield. The finished version is actually slightly different from how I originally wanted to end it. I'd planned to have the last panel of Garfield as the Ghost Cat from Ranma 1/2 yelling "FEED ME!!!" with "Jon's" hair standing up on end with his Golgo 13 expression. But I couldn't figure out how to airbrush Akane & her father out of the picture. Ironically enough, my lack of photoshop skills probably made for a better comic.























However, as massive as the amount of comics I’ve sent, it’s actually a fraction of the other Garfields I’ve done. I’ve compiled & collected literally hundreds of Randomized Garfields that could guarantee me as a member for life. I haven’t submitted those, because it would be unfair to the others who want to give their comic a try, and it’s more of a Math-based site than anything else. I feel slightly bad that I haven’t given anything equalling a mathematical formula. (Could you imagine Fermat’s Last Theorem as a Garfield comic?) Apart from sending one or two, just to get a feel for the site, the only “Randomized” Garfields I’ve sent are those where just one panel was changed.

Other than the Randomized Garfields, there were several Garfield I worked hard on, then decided not to send them in. Here, you’ll get the chance to see these strips, and my reasons why they were rejected.

G for Garfield





















Why wasn’t it submitted?

After gathering together various strips with the characters wearing masks, it occured to me that despite the similarity in theme, it didn’t follow up to a particularly strong finish. Sometimes just finding similar elements isn’t enough to make a comic funny, and that’s where this failed.

Originals:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2005/ga051030.gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1996/ga961029.gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1996/ga961102.gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1993/ga930712.gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1992/ga921031.gif

For Better or for Garfield









Why wasn’t it submitted?

This was based on an inspiration of one of Kleefeld’s mash-ups where he switched the dialogue of other comic strip characters around. As he put it:

Mash-Up Day is now a time-honored tradition here on Kleefeld on Comics when I can't think of anything comic-related to talk about. I take different comics and switch the text between them to see what I can come up with. (Believe it or not, it's actually sometimes easier for me to do that than come up with my own whatever to talk about.)

However, in doing these, he set a cardinal rule - he only switched the dialogue for a strip that appeared on the same day. Despite it working quite well, given Lynn’s shaky relationship with her ex-husband Rod, I felt it would be unfair to let the rule slide. Not to mention it was a strip that was rerun from 1979, further negating Kleefeld's rule.

Originals:
http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/004429.php
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2010/ga100503.gif

Garfieldz the Cat








































































Why wasn’t it submitted?

This was originally going to be a revamp of the legendary Crumb comic character, with dialogue from the most “risique” Garfield comic. However, this proved to be incredibly difficult, and the above image shows why.

Like any of Crumb’s works, his drug-fuelled characters have a tendency to ramble on and on. It makes for amusing reading, but is hell trying to reuse. Not to mention Fritz is constantly talking to other animals and is rarely by himself.

However, I was able to use this idea for another underground comic. I won’t say which one, but you should find out in about 3 months or so. (Taste the suspense!)

Original:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1980/ga800612.gif

YaoiField


























This wasn’t mine, but I found this image in a SomethingAwful forum, talking about FBOFW, of all things.

The contributor, Polyunsaturated Cats posted this picture with Garfield & Jon in their obvious Seme & Uke (Top & Bottom) roles. This brought up disturbing questions about bestiality & the like. Of course, this happened a month before Liz started dating Jon.

Once it has been seen, it cannot be unseen...

Why wasn’t it submitted?

Actually, this WAS submitted, but the moderator declined to run it, for fairly obvious reasons. He said that I was the second ever rejected comic. (He hesitated to use the word “strip”...) This led me to wonder what the first rejected comic was.

CerebusField


















































































Why wasn’t it submitted?

I was working hard at this, when it occurred to me that I was working too hard at the set-up for what was a very obvious finishing line. And it was getting long enough already. Not included are the speeches about how Garfield would never conquer the world. He came very close, but that was as close as he ever got. While he was lazing around, Manga swept in and stole his popularity, and also emptied his Swiss bank accounts when he wasn't looking. (Just fit all that in between when Garfield sees Cerebus’ “true form” & the last two panels)

Also, like Fritz, Cerebus isn’t a particularly easy character to use. Unlike Garfield, you have to be VERY selective about which panels to use. He’s not by himself that much. In the end, it lost momentum due to sheer workload.

As much fun as it would've been to see the moderator try to type the wall of Biblical text, I also felt that another comic did this theme much better.

Originals:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1984/ga840110.gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891027.gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1989/ga891028.gif

Fletcher Hanks Garfield













































































































































































This is the biggie. Not quite as brutal as The Rise of Arsenal, but it’s pretty close.

Why wasn’t it submitted?

This was one of the lost What’s Michael? strips, and I thought the tone was on par with Fletcher Hanks. I was working hard at finding the appropriate stock phrases reminiscent of Hanks’ comics, when it occured to me that this was no longer a Garfield comic. It was a Manga about a tabby cat, but apart from that, there were no Garfieldisms about it. But the idea was still good enough that I felt compelled to complete it.

I'm just sorry I wasn't able to change the text from "a flash of light... and the room becomes empty" to "a flash of dust... and the balcony becomes empty". I feared that changing the original might be tampering with the source too much.

Also, for those of you wondering about what was in the large blank spot where the teaser is, that space was originally left blank. At least this answers the question of who was that mysterious man who questioned the wisdom of cats dancing to hide their mistakes in the "first" What's Michael? comic.


Well, that's the last of my rejected comics, at least until the next batch of comics I decide aren't good enough for Sqrt(-G).

My true motivation for doing any Garfield mish-mash is not just to point out the similarities I’ve found, but also to indulge the imaginations of others. If one of my strips has done something to increase the brain cell activity of a reader, then I’ve done my job.

This is something I feel has been missing from Animated shows since the 80's. If there was one common element that Garfield & Friends, Muppet Babies, The Real Ghost Busters, Disney's Gummi Bears, and Tiny Toon Adventures had, it was the use of imagination. Nowadays, the closest we've got for that is Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is basically CalvinBall with cards. Think about it...