Synchroneity

For a long time, one of my dream projects in finding an artist suitable enough to do personal requests to combine two similarly themed characters meeting each other at the same time, and being surprised at what they see.  So imagine my surprise when upon doing a random image search that I found someone else had done something remarkably similar.


In addition, Luis' artwork is suitably cartoony enough for my liking and appeals to my taste.  Also, while my idea was for the characters to be standing across from each other (something to make it easier for the artist to differentiate on drawing styles between the two), Luis was able to integrate both characters interacting with each other.  My personal favorite is probably the faceless argument between Rorschach and The Question:

It's nice to find out that someone else's had a similar idea to yours and improved upon it.  (Though it can sometimes feel a little discouraging as well)  The whole thing started out from a silly illustration between Hellboy and Etrigan.  Though my initial thought was that it would be a meeting between Etrigan and Firebrand from Gargoyle's Quest.  Two powerful demons that are well-reputed for being incredibly difficult to control and destroy.  I suppose the fact that I'm not heavily invested in S-hero comics might have something to do with it.

As a bonus, here's the two of them in sprite form.

While the most obvious choice for this kind of setup would be something along the lines of Captain Picard of Star Trek: Next Generation meeting Professor X of the X-Men (especially since both were played by the same actor, Patrick Stewart), I opted for slightly more obscure comic figures:

Don Martin's Captain Klutz and Domino Pizza's Noid.  Two ridiculously costumed men who constantly set out to do their missions.  (And fail)

Right-Wing political duck Mallard Fillmore and Noir anthropomorphic detective Inspector Canardo.  Two birds that are constantly shown face on, and look awkward when seen in profile.

Two short creatures that look nothing like the typical races they're supposed to portray: Alf, a furry alien creature, and Cerebus the Aardvark with an extremely short pig-like nose.  Note the similar tuft of hair!

As a bonus, there's a fan drawing of Alf drawn Cerebus-style here.

Some others I wanted to include, but couldn't for lack of finding appropriate images:

• The Medical Hologram Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager and The Sturgeon General from Martha Washington (Give Me Liberty) arguing over medical ethics with The Doctor looking exasperated, while The Sturgeon General just calmly wags a single finger, probably talking about "cleanness".
• One of MAD's Black Spies from Spy Vs. Spy carrying a briefcase and looking behind him to see a Plague Doctor carrying a medical kit and looking just as surprised as he is.
• Roy Rooster from Garfield & Friends in the role of Cornfinger from Orson's daydreams of being Double-Oh Orson, and Steelbeak from Darkwing Duck.

But all that's merely just a warm-up.  What I'd really hope to accomplish is a drawing of Brooke Shields of the infamous Jeans commercial inflated to 50-foot Woman proportions, knocking down buildings in pursuit of screaming young blonde boys in red striped shirts with the caption:

Avoid Noid’s Boid Toids. Oi.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I’ve been working on a particularly long essay involving European scanlations. In the meantime, Mike Sterling recently posted an entry about one of my favorite childhood commercial icons that people seem to want to forget; the Noid.
















The Noid is kind of a weird character in that he’s on a constant quest to destroy every pizza out of existence, but for some reason, always fails with trying to break Domino’s pizza boxes. Like Wily E. Coyote, every tool the Noid uses backfires on him in a hilarious way. Good thing he never advanced further than lifting up the edge of the box and eating the pizza itself. (Then again, considering the size discrepancy, the Noid could just as well comedically burst his stomach before finishing his first pizza)

While looking up speedrun videos of the Yo! Noid game on Youtube, I was surprised to find out that it was originally based on a game involving a Ninja and his falcon; (Masked Ninja Hanamaru) which explained why the Noid was collecting scrolls with his yo-yo.













Notice the difference?

Like Super Mario World 2, Yo Noid! used another game template to boost its popularity. Unlike SMB2, Domino should’ve used another game to steal their template from, since Ninja Hanamaru was notoriously difficult, and the gameplay was particularly unforgiving. It was only after seeing the Youtube videos that I found out that by randomly jumping and hitting certain areas (like Wonderboy in Monsterland) you can make hidden scrolls appear. This is only compounded by the fact that these levels are timed, so you can’t go willy-nilly hitting everything in sight. And these things have to be hit twice - one to make them appear and again to show their contents. Not to mention that there’s several warp spots that’re invisible to the obvious.

Even with all these faults, I thought it’d be a good time to post some relevant historical information about the origin of this wacky character. These pages were found in an old issue of Animation Magazine. The Wiki page hints at a controversial hostage issue that’s also mentioned here: