The Insanity of Fourteen

Connie of Slightly Biased Manga recently made a request for Fourteen to be licensed. However, I have to admit to a cardinal sin - I don’t actually like most of Kazuo Umezu’s works. Other than Drifting Classroom, which was a romping pace of ever-increasing outlandish horror in an apocalyptic setting, none of the other stuff I’ve seen have matched that intensity. I cautiously bought the first volume of Cat-Eye Boy, even though it didn’t seem too promising upon first sight. I was willing to give the man’s early work a chance to see how his storytelling evolved. Sadly to say, I was less than impressed with the collection of short stories, and never bothered ordering the second volume to find out how “The Band of One Hundred Monsters” ended.

I’ve had the opportunity to read some of Kazuo’s other works from scanlations, and I’ve got to say that Fourteen is one of the stupidest comic I’ve ever read.






































I always thought that if this Manga was licensed for an American audience, it would be retitled “Chicken George”, since most of the beginning action focuses on this creature. Even though it starts out with a fortuneteller making a prophetic proclamation that “It will all end at fourteen!”, the scene suddenly shifts to a chicken factory where a mutated chicken breast is growing an eyeball. Naturally, the scientist in charge decides not to lop the eyeball off and sell it, but take it home with him and cultivate it until it grows into a humanoid-sized being that proclaims itself as the manifestation of animal revenge on humans.

Cute little bugger ain’t he?

Shortly after growing vocal chords and absorbing knowledge at an inhuman pace, he declares himself as a doctor, and vows to rid the planet Earth of all humans. He’s even smart enough to create a chicken capable of speech, though why he’d bother teaching a chicken hatred human language is something that’s never explained. Like most Kazuo Umezu Manga, this is something you’re better off not thinking too much about. This also shows one of Kazuo's illustrative tics - nobody can ever make a speech without pointing their finger at someone. However, Chicken George’s plan to wipe out all humans hits a slight snag after running a computer stimulation that defies his calculations.

Nice to know where her priorities lie.

If Stephen King suffers from verbal diarrhea, then Kazuo Umezu suffers from visual diarrhea. Most of his chapters end on a single typically unremarkable panel of shock, then the next title page has a close-up of the previous panel, then another version of the last panel. This makes for easy transition between chapters, but also feels like a lazy attempt at filling up panel space. Not to mention that dialogue is not the most Kazuo’s strongest suit. A typical exchange between Chicken George and his prisoner goes something like this:

Chicken George: I thought I knew the truth! But now that I know the truth, I must confess that the truth of the truth has left me in shock! Now, I must tell you the truth so that you won’t be so shocked when the time comes! Now I'm going to tell you the truth! And the truth is...

Cut to cliffhanger page zoom-in title page

Chicken George: The truth is...

Prisoner: (covering ears) No! I don’t want to hear the truth!

See how annoying this is? Before Chicken George can even reveal his secret, he’s found out news that revenge of the plants have started, which is why green-skinned babies have been being born all over the world, causing panic among the public. Naturally, there’s a conflict of interest when the President’s newborn son winds up with green hair. Normally, this wouldn’t seem out of place compared to the colour of the majority of Anime/Manga characters who have different hair styles in order to differentiate themselves from each other. But this is the part of Japan that thrives on monotony between their people. As one of my favorite mangled sayings go, “The hammer that sticks out gets nailed in.”

During all this, Grand Master Rose appears on the scene. He’s an effeminate man who wants to be eternally young and beautiful forever by using a special cream made out of the hormones of young children. As ruler of the world economics, there’s nothing he’ll stoop to to keep his beauty. Not to pleading to use the President’s baby as an ingredient for youth, nor even accepting Chicken George’s help. (Further complicating matters is Vice President Gorman, a woman who looks and schemes suspiciously similar to Grand Master Rose, so it’s easy to mistake the two for the same person) In exchange for giving a recipe for immortality, Chicken George wants enough funding to afford a rocket that’ll be the equivalent of Noah’s Ark. This amounts to nine quadrillion dollars, the economy of the entire world for two years.

On a minor note, one of the scientists on their staff looks remarkably similar to Filgate from Cerebus.















Meanwhile, the President’s green-haired baby boy, America seems to have a special rapport with plant life. (Yes, the President named his son America. Apparently all the other good names were taken) America’s made close friends with a dandelion and a cactus, and weeds seem to sprout up inside the White House. Then all of a sudden, the 2-year old begs his father not to order an old dying tree to be chopped down. Normally, the President would comply with his son’s wishes, but decides to ignore it for the better good. This is a reoccurring theme of Kazuo Umezu - untrustworthy adults who don’t listen to children who know better.

DAD! Don’t cut the dying tree! All the plants will die!
Of course I won’t. Now get off to bed.
DAD! The butterflies are attacking us!
“Uh huh, that’s nice. Now leave me alone - what’s that flapping noise - oh God the colours!”

So because the President ordered the tree to be chopped down, all the plants worldwide begin to die off. The authorities are absolutely shocked, and don’t want the public to know (they were still reeling from the green babies) so how did they decide to cover up this incident? Implant artificial plants in place of the dead trees while distracting everyone with a sensationalistic newscast of a Hollywood movie on the airwaves.


















I’m sure you can already see the fallacy of this entire operation. While this would be perfectly suitable for keeping people’s attentions in their homes, how would they keep them riveted 24/7 without the audience getting bored, going to the bathroom or getting some snacks, and catching a glimpse of plant-replacement people? And what about people who don’t own TV sets? Sure, they could walk over to their neighbors, but I’m sure they might notice a large construction company replacing all the foliage along the way. That's not even taking in account of countries where electronics aren't even available.


















However, Grand Master Rose feels that having special effects isn’t enough to capture the attention of the public, so he decides to use an actual hotel for the disaster, while having actors display the rescue operation. Meanwhile, Chicken George observing the deaths of all plant life, sees the newscast, and even though he’s of different species, falls in love with the action girl. Because he’s conflicted with wanting to save the animals and wanting to be with the female celebrity, Chicken George decides to erase his memory so he can be with the woman he’s loved since an hour ago.






































However, even though Chicken George's memory's been erased, his notes are still around, and he somehow managed to download his thoughts onto a computer that somehow has psychic powers if he thinks hard enough. The immortality serum is implemented, but even immortality doesn't last forever. It's soon discovered that the formula has a tendency to self-destruct the host when they reach fourteen years of age. Further compounding their despair is the news that because of all the environmental crisis done to the Earth, the planet only has three years to live.

Upon receiving data that the world will end, the President displays a sense of guilt over their wrongdoings that feels more like self-proposed righteousness. But it’s not just America - everybody over the world wants to admit the end of the world is their fault, when they’d be more likely to blame somebody else. Their only chance for a future is to send their children into space, which is a good thing that Chicken George hasn’t launched his Noah’s Rocket yet. And he’s decided to have it shaped like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, because hey, why not? As one of the Laws of Anime goes, *ANY* shape, no matter how convoluted or odd-looking, is automatically aerodynamic.





































With the Earth in danger, the decision to choose which children are worthy of survival isn’t going to be decided by their parent’s bank accounts, but on three principles: the children's health, intelligence and luck. Only the luckiest children who survive the conveyor belt from hell will be accepted into the space program. Then all of a sudden, nymphomaniac aliens appear out of nowhere and start raping hundreds of humans, young and old by sucking their moisture through their mouths, hands and genitals. This is less erotic than you’d think.






































Then, just as suddenly as they arrived, the entire invasion is called off. Like everybody on Earth, the aliens wanted to preserve their race, and were desperate to do anything to continue their line. They were absorbing human body fluids in an attempt to change either’s DNA, and were unable to do so. However, before leaving to find another planet that’ll support their lives, the aliens took the Earth’s “spirit” as fuel for their engines. This has the result of speeding up the rotation of the planet, causing multiple volcanic eruptions, further damage to nearby buildings and decreasing property values. This sudden influx of natural disasters has just further increased the panic of the people, and now everybody wants to get off the planet by any means necessary. This is my favorite reaction to the sudden increase of the Earth's revolution:






































With most of the children having escaped into the stars, the action switches to the drama taking place on the Tyrannosaurus rocket and the other rockets. If you’ve ever read The Drifting Classroom, what happens next is that Manga in cliffnote form, with adult guardians doing the brunt of the damage, a cloned girl of Grand Master Rose and another reincarnation of Chicken George. (He’s died at least twice around this point, and I’ve given up trying to make sense of what’s happening around here) After a particularly awful cliffhanger, we switch scenes to the last moments on Earth. Apparently, when humans are on the verge of death, they transform into monsters and attack anything in sight. This is not a metaphor - they literally develop fangs, horns, and other grotesque features. Amidst all this madness is one final plea for the President to pass one last law during his last term.






































After the last apocalyptic days on Earth, we switch back to the madness on the Dinosaur rocket which involves retrieving Chicken George’s corpse from the outside of the ship. (Don’t ask - I’m just as confused as you are) A hundred or so pages later, we switch back to Earth where we’re graced with the presence of anthropomorphic cockroaches giving flattering eulogies to the wonderful creatures known as human beings. These cockroaches somehow evolved to the point where they could speak and read human language and even decipher their last days written in the President’s diary. This is clearly a case of implanting human traits since actual insects wouldn’t be that interested in a species that’s been trying to kill them since the beginning of civilization. Besides, bugs have had millions of years of evolution for the chance to communicate with us. Why would they start now?






































Strangely enough, this sequence somehow manages to tie into the end, which built upon the whole premise that the universe was dying because of humanity's arrogance. I won’t spoil the ending for you, save that it fits the entire demented childlike logic that’s been happening since the beginning. ANY attempt to guess the ending upon reading the first volume is akin to determining the migrational chart of a Bohemian Waxwing using a fishing tackle box. Any hypotheses made would be widely off the mark.






































This whole Manga is very much a consecutive series of did not do the research in stereo. The only real reason to keep reading it is because of consistent ludicrous lines spoken every dozen pages or so.



























































Another major fault is Kazuo’s insistence on using archaic devices totally out of synch with the time period, and are closer to a man perpetually stuck in the 60's. This would be acceptable if this were created in the 80's when such machines were still commonplace. However, this story takes place in the future, and the Manga was created in 1990. Some erroneous examples include:

1. Every world power communicates via radio headsets that allows their hands to stick out. Here's those pointing fingers again!





























2. Showing said radio headsets in profile when viewed from another angle. It looks like they're hiding their heads inside these transistors.






































3. Computers that print out punched-out hole data. Seriously.






































Not to mention some off-model characters. Just look at the proportions of the head in the second panel.










The stiff artwork also means there's some ridiculous poses used to convey action. People are always kicking straight ahead, leaving no room for a knee to bend. Here, an assassin clutching a knife is machine-gunned, then the hand holding the knife somehow leaps towards the victim before it too is shot away.


















My only real regret is that, as Kazuo Umezu’s last Manga, the omnibus collection only goes up to 13 volumes, and doesn’t stop at the legendary 14, which is a recurring theme throughout the book.

Calvin & Jobs

When I heard the news that Steve Jobs had died shortly after his retirement, the first thing that came to mind wasn't the fact that he was responsible for rebranding Apple from an out-of-touch computer company into a marketforce. Nor did the fact that he was a founder for Pixar animation a decade before Toy Story was released even cross my mind.








No, the first thing that I thought of was that there would be no more Calvin & Jobs comics.


































This is the typical thought process of someone obsessed with comics to the exclusion of all else. Go figure.


































These tributes to Calvin were my first introduction to a guy I wouldn't have known, since Bill Gates was a more familiar figure in the computer world. Much like how MAD downplayed Princess Diana's reputation in their pages, I wasn't very shocked when princess Di died in a car crash. MAD has a tendency to downplay celebrities to the point of tedium.

Steve Jobs' been compared to Edison in terms of inventing things, it only seems fair to bring up a MAD documentary of Edison that had a minor disagreement about perfecting the telephone. "The proper way to invent something is to produce something that hardly works! Then make it a little better... another minor improvement here or there... Then like so, and like so again!"

Throughout his lecture, Thomas held up different phones throughout the ages from a hand-cranked phone, to a candlestick phone to a rotary phone. "Why pay once for this when you can make them pay for each of these along the way? That's the science of making a fortune!" Since Steve Jobs left four years of blueprints before leaving, chances are Apple will trickle those plans out through the next decade.











It seems to be a common recurring theme for ambitious men to suddenly die after they've accomplished their life mission and have nowhere else to go. Charles Schultz died one day before his last Peanuts Sunday. Jack Layton succumbed to cancer after winning a near majority for his party. A month after Yasser Arafat died, Ariel Sharron lasped into a coma that he has yet to recover from. These men only stay alive long enough to do their job for as long as possible. On the other end of the spectrum are men who work tirelessly, and succumb to their labors.









Now that Steve Jobs' no longer around, any future Calvin & Jobs strips would be very reminiscent of Calvin Minus Hobbes comics. One-sided delusional conversations with an invisible entity that nobody in the audience can see isn't quite as fun. Especially if you can't understand what the precocious crazy kid is so excited or upset about.









There have been three apples that changed the world: The one that Eve ate, the one that dropped on Newton’s head and the one that Steve built.

Eggheads

I just found out from the Comics Reporter that today, October 5th is Bil Keane's birthday. While he's mostly known for producing The Family Circus, he briefly branced out in trying another comic strip from 1981-83 called Eggheads. If you've never heard of this, there's a very good reason why.






















This was a joint project between Bill Keane and his son, Jeff, who was the model for Jeffy in The Family Circus. You'd think that being immortalized as a little kid for life would be enough to demoralize your children from ever entering the business, but if you're part of a million-dollar industry, those numbers start to look more attractive. Bill wrote the jokes, and Jeff drew the comic. The end result was everybody looking like Charlie Brown, and always doing backwards flops in response to horrible puns. I've done my best to spare you the brunt of the majority of the awful jokes. Trust me, they're pretty bad.


































Following in the footsteps of Peanuts, a lot of celebrity figures are name-dropped, which tends to date it more than Peanuts does. At least you're hardly likely to know who Willie McCovey, Leonard Bernstein or Ned Sparks are, long after their legacy days have passed.


































In addition, the usual reaction in the last panel is falling over backwards, either off the screen or banging their heads against the panel. In fact, it's the (extremely) rare strip where the characters don't react to a stupid joke.






















While the variety is a welcome reprieve from the constant repetitive tic of Fainting Goat Syndrome, it also robs the strip of the only interesting action happening on the page. The writing's not exactly the biggest draw here, since everybody talks in the exact same set-up:
1. Say one sentence
2. Short question or answer
3. Punny misunderstanding















In this comic below, the joke's so bad it takes awhile for it to be noticed. Much like how accident victims are in a state of shock before the pain begins to register. It's not healthy to read too much of this at once, since you'll be identifying with these bystander victims before long. This is why we need quality humour. We shouldn't be responsible for causing delayed reactions that may cause unintentional damage when the joke finally kicks in and they groan in pain. (Whether the audience remembers an actually funny joke is something else entirely)

Delayed reaction shot.

If it's any consolation, Bill Keane's son is primed to take over the role of Family Circus, and not Eggheads. Eggheads could be considered a warm-up exercise, but considering that it's been almost 20 years since it's inception, Jeff might be a little out of practice, which would be considered a selling tactic for keeping legacy strips in circulation. As long as it's safe and stale, it'll remain on the newspaper comic page until people tire of seeing precocious round-headed children. Given how much fuss is made over removing any favorite comic no matter how bad it is, this could take awhile.

Slctv Cnsrshp

A recent remixed Garfield comic had all the vowels removed. It was very reminiscent of a previous strip I submitted where I erased all the letters containing Garfield's name. (Embarrassingly enough, my submitted version missed two L's that I'd overlooked, and an L the administrator didn't notice either) As with anything relevant, I was reminded of a similar comic strip:




















This kind of thing is not unlike the Torah, which dispenses with all hints of vowels completely, making interpreting their texts immensely difficult, unless you're already versed in the Hebrew language. With only the shape of the words, and not the vowel notations, you're heavily pressed upon recall for which sounds go where. This is made even trickier if you're not fully versed in the language. However, this kind of thing is more useful for me elsewhere. I've had plenty of practice putting together bits and pieces of missing words, thanks to some defective Close Captioning.









When I was still watching TV with an antenna (positively antique - I didn't get cable until the turn of the century) care had to be made so that the angle of the receiver would have good reception for the majority of the channels. Otherwise, it would be impossible for me to understand what was happening, since the captioning would be a complete mess, the picture would prove useless, and audio was no help. Even if the reception turned out to be perfect, there was still the threat of the VCR tape itself becoming corrupted from overuse. I found that I could prolong the tape's use by taping over later hours that hadn't been used yet, and taping over random intervals instead of pinpoint hour times. This made rewinding to past shows an immense chore, but was worth it to prevent having even a single sentence left out.

And even then, that wasn't a guarantee. Sometimes, the show itself would have wonky captioning where the words would hardly show up at all, or they'd come at slow write-as-you-hear intervals similar to the news channels. What would make this even more irritating would be shows where the captioning was inconsistent, but the commercials were perfectly okay. There's a sponsor who knows where their priorities lie.

















Very often, missing little snippets of dialogue or conversation is a great hindrance in jumping into a conversation. Too often, I'm confused about the nature of the dialogue. I have no idea what these people are talking about, their rapid-fire pace makes it extremely difficult for me to find a lull or break to jump in; and very often, these people won't always be facing me when they talk, so I can't read their lips from the side. It's equivalent to watching two different TV shows on two televisions from across the room, and only getting bits and pieces of what's going on. The ping-pong nature of the dialogue means that I'm constantly playing catch-up in trying to decipher their latest words, and only catching the last snippets of their words. And this problem is multiplied if it's taking place in a noisy environment, like a party, and other people decide to join the mix. As such, any attempts to intervene without help is a losing cause. This is why it's extremely necessary for me to have an oral interpreter present for group gatherings, since any attempt to engage otherwise would only end in confusion.

However, it's not enough that people face me and speak s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly in a preferably quiet environment. I also need some natural gestures to help guide me through the conversation and have certain key words highlighted. A lot of words look invisible on the lips, and sound too similar to each other. Emphasizing the first letter of each important word is a big help, but also using hand gestures to animate and illustrate verbs that might otherwise be difficult to understand. For example, somebody said that they were something that I thought was either "Shaft her", or "Chapter". But by holding an invisible steering wheel and turning slightly, I understood what he was saying was "Chauffeur". It's these little movements that help me better understand what's being said. Alternately, they could simplify it by substituting "driver" instead.
















Indeed, with Close Captioning, a lot of sentences were trimmed down or reduced to cut down on speed-reading time. (Because people watch TV to relax, not to do H-work) There were a lot of subtleties on Sesame Street that I missed because not everything that was said was shown. And trying to read a Muppet's lips is no help either. It's equivalent to reading Old-school Anime character's mouths.









Because I relied on the decoder so much, I became so attuned to its use that I resented shows that I wanted to watch, but couldn't, because they weren't close captioned or subtitled. So it was a complete surprise when a movie was shown on the big screen at my school, and I asked if captioning was possible, because maybe everybody else might also want to know what was going on. I found out that day that people normally prefer to see movies without annoying black bars at the bottom of the screen obscuring the action. It was a real eye-opener for me, but it left me feeling very much out of the loop, because I still couldn't tell what was really going on without reference.

Another area I have difficulty in are words that sound completely different from how I think they're pronounced. For the longest time, I thought anxiety was pronounced Anhk-I-Eh-Tee, instead of Ang-Zy-Eh-Tee. Likewise, I pronounced Epilogue as Eh-Pile-Oh-Goo, instead of Eh-Pill-Log. It's not the kind of word that comes up often in casual conversation.

While not being able to watch as much TV as I can because not everything is close-captioned or subtitled is a great deterrent at keeping me off my duff, it still feels like a disservice because I'm left out of some mainstream entertainment the rest of the world enjoys in my absence. One instance was where a Facebook friend recommended the British series Are You Being Served? Upon his recommendation, I started watching a transcript on Youtube with transcribed audio, but the results were laughably awful. At the 0:50 mark, the following dialogue is "spoken":

"Insurance against African nations. The seller was better look the other way pedophile made."

When in actuality, what was really said was,

"I'm sure it's against staff regulations. Still, I'm always prepared to look the other way."

Part of the reason it's so lousy is because it's transcribed by Google, which takes the most commonly heard sounds, and chooses the top searches, rather than deciphering them properly. As a result, since it's interpreted by a computer rather than a human, all we get is babblespeak. So far, Youtube captioning is still in its infancy, though I've been told that early captioning on TV was also a mess before it became more widespread nowadays.


















As long as we're on the subject of captioning, I might as well mention another pet peeve of mine - DVDs where the main movie/show is captioned/subtitled, but the special features are left alone. It's like the companies don't even bother to give special attention to the hard-of-hearing since "they wouldn't be interested". Well, we'll never know if they're not transcribed, will we? It's the rare features that go out of their way to make sure everyone is included, and those ones I am grateful for, even if the special features are nothing more than self-congratulatory interviews of the cast members.

At least they're not as bad as DVDs that just flat out refuse to caption any of their shows. What makes this more painful is if any of these shows were Close Captioned on TV, but aren't captioned on the DVD itself. I can't enjoy the David Suchet version of Poriot, Degrassi the Next Generation, and a bunch of other shows I foolishly thought would be available later. The greatest recent offender is FlashPoint, which had captioning for the first season DVD (special features included!) but was completely absent in the second season DVD. I have to catch the second season on reruns so I can catch up on what's happened.

Another annoying feature of Close Captioning is when the text is several seconds below the spoken lines. It's like having the sound be out-of-sync with the actor's lips, and it reduces my enjoyment of the show. The worst offenders are channels where the captioning is not two or three seconds behind, but are 10 seconds behind the pace. This means that I have to memorize the actor's movements beforehand, and then choreograph them with the words later. This usually isn't too bad when there's only two characters on the screen, but it play havoc on my memory when there's a brisk back-and-forth conversation between three or more people, with no clue to who's speaking next. This is also another feature of interpreting - I'm usually always two or three seconds below the conversation, and usually have to act quickly to play catch-up if I want to contribute to the conversation. If I wait too long to say my piece, I'll lose my turn during the heat of the moment.

















This is why comics is my medium of choice. The only inherent danger of not understanding what anybody's saying can be attributed to ink smushed across the page, word balloons improperly placed, the artist's failure to get the writer's script across, or lousy panel layout. But at least the lines are there to be seen, and reread at our leisure. If I want to know what somebody's said, I need them to retrace their words, and chances are they'll never quite capture the naturality of their first time.

For as much as people complain about comics not being able to compete with movies, they should be concentrating on what comics can do that movies can't. Until these annoying setbacks in enjoying DVDs is resolved, comics will be my drug.

Addendum - I have no idea if Blue-Ray resolved this problem, but I have no desire to get one, when DVD works just as well, and I can stop the DVD and resume from my last playspot.

AngloMan

Superheros (or as I like to call them, S-heroes, since they’ve been labeled with everything including Science heroes, Specials, and serious threats get S-ranks) have been a persistent staple of the comics world ever since Superman bashed a getaway car against a rock. The staunchest defenders of Superhero comics claim that there’s literally no genre that Superheros can’t be part of. A Sci-fi Western that’s reminiscent of Star Trek & Star Wars? Superheroes! A Medieval Fantasy with Steampunk overtones? Superheroes! A Sports Drama with a soap opera cocktail? Well, maybe not that last one. The inclusion of Superheroes in everything in the American comics market meant that for anything done in a comic that wasn't about S-heroes was basically an indy comic.

So it was a surprise when at the height of the Quebec Referendum (or as Josh Freed put it, the Neverendum) that an attempt was made to satirize the political events by caricaturizing politicians as muscular men willing to slug out for their issues.




















Written by Mark Shainblum and illustrated by Gabriel Morrissette, AngloMan was done on the presumption that the political going-ons would be considered too unbelievable if they were being written down as fiction. An excerpt from a foreword reads;

“We couldn’t make this place up! DC Comics would reject it in a second! Universal Press Syndicate would laugh at us! Hell, even MAD Magazine would probably slam the door in our faces!”

Even so, there are allusions to S-hero archetypes so as not to completely alienate readers. For instance, AngloMan’s costume is modelled after Captain America’s, with a bilingual Stop sign for a shield, and lives in The Fortress of Two Solitudes. His rebelious sidekick, West Island Lad insists on calling it the AngloCave, much to AngloMan’s annoyance. The female partner Poutinette sometimes shows up to help, with a gun that shoots greasy french fries, though she usually works on her own.

Capitaine Souche (based on former PQ leader Jacques Parizeau) gets his power by calling out a secret number, 101, at which a bolt of lightning falls from the heavens and transforms him, and he has an origin reminiscent of Batman where he was traumatized by his parents not getting any customer service in French.

I guess you had to be there.

There’s a LOT of inside jokes that’d be completely alien to any outsiders or people ignorant of the Canadian political system. One of the recurring characters in the first book, The Northern Magus is based on Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was best known for saying “Fuddle-Duddle!”



















However, the webpage description of NM is slightly incorrect. It should read:

Height: He knows.

Weight: And he ain’t telling.

Group Affiliations: Himself

Powers and Abilities: There is literally nothing the Northern Magus can't do. He’s a Secret Master of the World, and virtually everybody has done his bidding at one time or another. Angloman may or may not have been set upon his mission and granted his abilities by the Northern Magus. Whether for ultimate good or ultimate evil, we can only guess.

Although AngloMan made his debut in the Montreal Mirror and had two stand-alone books telling longer stories, his exploits have never been fully collected. Part of the reason for the lack of popularity might be the obscureness of the subject material. It could be the scratchy artwork where it was difficult to decipher what was going on, let alone who was being caricatured. Without reference notes explaining the historical themes happening at the time, a lot of the humour is lost.

Another major reason this didn’t catch on is because the face of politics keep changing every year or so. Today’s leaders may not be the same respectable people tomorrow. Not to mention a constantly rotating cast means that chances of seeing any old favorites would only happen if they were caught up in a recent scandal. As such, the odds are not good.

Or maybe it’s because the jokes simply weren’t that good.

Quality satire is difficult to get right, especially if it doesn’t resonate with the public. It didn’t help matters much that people who might’ve been interested in S-heroes wouldn’t enjoy Angloman’s foray in Quebec politics. As much as they enjoy convoluted storytelling, they’d be totally lost without understanding all the references. Not to mention everything was in black & white.

And political cartoonists wouldn’t enjoy S-heroes peanut butter getting their chocolate suits all dirty. At least in the first story of the second book, it showed the fallacy of a Superhero registry system better than Marvel’s Civil War.


































Naturally, Angloman being a Captain America archetype (and rational Superhero) is reluctant to give away his real name. However, he’s assured that he’s protected by the “Loi sur la confidentialé des secrets imbeciles en ridicules”. After being reassured by the confidentiality agreement, he starts filing out the rest of the overly complex form requirements.


































Having failed to meet the requirements, Angloman's forced to wait for his turn and wait for his number to come up:


































I didn’t bother to save too many of the comics that appeared in the newspaper, since the majority of them went over my head. I only kept the ones that had personal significance or relevance to me.




















The ironic thing about the comic below is, of the select Angloman comics that’re available for online viewing, they’re all abysmally small, with some random lines of text or art being whited out. This doesn't make a very compelling argument for preserving the comics if we can't read them properly.



















For those of you wondering who the old bald guy with glasses that Dilbert’s shooting at among his victims in his postal rage, he’s Ben of the Canadian comic strip created by Daniel Shelton. He’s a family strip about an elderly couple, their children, and their grandchildren, and is based on what the author feels like he’ll (hopefully) grow up to be when he’s within retirement age.