This is a site devoted to casting a spotlight on those comics in the Sunday pages that for one reason or another, were never collected.
Also, I'll be paying attention to other comics worthy of wider recognition.
It has not been a good week for the library I work at. After going through the surviving documents of our last flooding, we've had another leak from above again. Fortunately, nothing of value was lost, since as soon as a drip was noticed, all surrounding materials were quickly wrapped in garbage bags to prevent further rusting. Rather than the pipes, there's some suspicion that the roof might be the heart of the overhead woes.
One recent preservation activity that I applaud is trimming down some books that only had the edges of their pages affected by the water cut off, since the infected material was blank, and it would be a waste to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In addition, there were odor eaters placed at random intervals in the basement to eliminate the onset of mold. However, these filters were smellier than the surrounding batch of ruined books to such an extent that they were acting up my allergies. What we need is an odor-eater for the odor-eaters.
I'm quite sensitive when it comes to strong smells. Popular stimulants such as cigarettes and coffee are anathema to me. I'm not like most people who need a jolt of something to wake them up in the morning - just the fact that I've overslept is enough to send me into a heightened state of panic that'll override all my other needs, such as eating, reading the paper, checking out my daily links, and cleaning up. Chocolate is all the stimulant I need. (Well that, and addictive V-games, good books, comics, TV shows, movies... but that's besides the point)
When I catch a whiff of anything resembling smoke, I react like a wild animal in the midst of a forest fire by looking around in all directions trying to pinpoint the source of the blaze, and have to suppress every cell in my body instinctively screaming to get the hell outta here. This usually happens while waiting in bus lines, and I'm stuck between the desire to move away from the offending smell, and not wanting to lose my spot in line. Usually I compensate by covering my nose with my shirt collar, so I look like a cheap ninja. It says something that I'd prefer to smell my own body fluids than the alternative.
But it's not just limited to coffee & cigs. I'm also affected by strong smells as well. Perfume drives me up the wall, and when cleaning up, I can't tolerate household cleaners. I have to content myself with using baking powder as a cleanser. Apparently, it's a good solvent, who knew? Also, when one of my sister's friends came home smelling of marijuana (I'm not naming names), the cannabis which is normally supposed to invoke an air of calm and serenity actually made me feel more agitated and hyper than anything. It also made me lose my appetite, which is in direct contrast to its promised effects.
Then there's my revulsion to a certain innocuous smell that's a pretty common ingredient in gum. Just replace the letter 'L' for the offending material Fat Tony hates with the letter 'M' here, and you'll have a pretty close idea for how I feel.
For years, I always secretly hated a relative's cousin because she always smoked in her apartment, and it didn't help that there wasn't any entertaining distractions, such as TV or readable books. The only comics she had were old copies of Andy Cap, which weren't my kind of thing, and despite the food, I always felt cramped around the dinner table. So when she finally quit years ago after seeing a friend of hers with lung cancer (despite all my convincing arguments to stop smoking for health reasons - i.e. mine) I was suddenly struck with the realization that I had no idea how to approach her. I'd carried the loathing burden of hating her habit for so long I was unable to reconcile her separate from her defining trait.
If you're noticing a certain common thread through these comics, it's that they all at one time or another, engaged in smoking habits. Early on, when their distribution numbers were still struggling for an audience, they could engage in these kinds of atrocities, but once they became popular, these harmful influences had to be dropped. The only exception would be Shoe, but the blue purple martin was no longer the main character, similar to how The Wizard in The Wizard of Id was supplanted by the King of Id. Somehow, a Cigar is deemed more respectable than a cigarette, even though it probably smells twice as bad. (My assumptions - I've never dared get close to one of the things, and if I ever was, I blocked the incident from my memory)
It's no great secret that I'm a compulsive keeper of my childhood stuff. I've still got the sketchbooks full of notes about elementary things I already know. (It's the little touches like the personal notes in the margins that set off memory triggers in me, and recalls long-forgotten old thoughts) The interesting thing was as a baby, I had a hard time showing any fascination for real-life objects, even if they were something I liked. For instance, I greatly enjoyed drinking apple juice, but if you showed me a carton of the stuff, I wouldn't show any interest. But if shown an ad for apples, I would sit up and take notice. Like Madarame of Genshiken fame, I was already attracted to 2-D images before I even read any comics.
When I see these familiar items again, I can recall my exact thought process at the time, and what I was thinking when these events happened. Since I don't keep a journal, these daily events are the closest thing to someone recording my life. The ironic thing is that while I'm extremely observant of events that happen to other people, I'm essentially blind to what happens to me. I need a ghostwriter to do my biography, because I'm crap at self-describing anything that's not emotionally relevant.
Over time, when it became fashionable to "put away childish things", I did so safe in the assumption that they were safe in my memory, and no one else would find interesting; only to later regret tossing out or giving away certain items that're no longer available and hard to find nowadays. Items such as most of the McDonaldLand Fun Times, a pamphlet of aliens Binky and Donnel (Blinky and Donnell?) with Snuff the Wonder Dog on the warning labels of household items, and an educational book featuring anthromorphic representation of phone numbers Operator and 911 in the form of an undercover agent, and a telephone slinky cord with a funny hat. It was available in both English and French, and there were dancing pineapples, both the result of mishearing a request for a telephone book (Telephone booth versus Ananas). If anybody out there has any idea of what I'm talking about, please let me know - I'll be eternally grateful.
One of these cherished childhood items I've kept all these years is a Road Runner (& Coyote) Dots & Mazes book. I used to act out repetitive fantasies where I was either the Road Runner or Asterix the Gaul, and doing the same task of outrunning the competition or bashing up a Roman without any consequences. My opponent had to be very good sport about this persistant typecast role, since unlike Mario as Sherrif and Wario as bandit, I never changed my roles once.
To get an idea of how much I liked this book, even though I'd already solved the puzzles the first time around, I continued to "redo" the mazes and connect-the-dots puzzles again and again, always using the same red crayon. When I ran out of mazes to redo, I completed the answered ones at the back. And when I was done with those, I added motion lines to pictures that didn't have any.
They were so full of such wildly imaginative and detailed drawings that I didn't ever want it to stop. However, due to a certain obsessiveness of mine, like Homer Simpson constantly failing his children's mat fun pages, I would insist on redoing some certain mazes over and over until I was able to "do it right". For some reason, I had some extreme difficulty with some of the early puzzles, and missed a tiny turn in one of them, forcing me to redo it over and over until I took the right path. Even if I'd already solved it the first time around, I simply couldn't get past it and move on to the next, knowing that I'd failed in an earlier attempt. The other puzzles (whose patterns I'd easily memorized) didn't present that same level of frustration, so I was constantly frustrated with having to do the same one over and over, and not be able to move on. It was this level of obsession that led me to stop doing the puzzles again. That, and I'd worn the red crayon down to a nub, and couldn't find a suitable replacement.
The Road Runners seemed inspired in part by the Walt Whitman / Gold Key comics where the Road Runner family spoke in a rhyming dialect. I only know of this, because of a single Road Runner comic where Wile E. almost succeeded in getting his meal ticket by tiring out the Road Runners by having them participate in a friendly contest against Speedy Gonzales. In short, the representatives of the basic cartoon chase scene were almost brought down by a Mexican rip-off.
It's difficult to get a sense of sequence from these brief pictures, but there were slight story progressions through all the pages, with the Coyote's attempts to catch the Roadrunner. In fact, the last story had him actually build a maze to trap the Road Runner in, which goes about as well as you'd expect.
Though there was something in the answers page that perplexed me - the inclusion of two answers that were never in the book in the first place - namely "What is Wile E. Saying?" and "A 'Roof' Landing". My memory is a little vague, but I seem to recall seeing another colouring book in someone else's house that had additional pictures that supplemented some of the other drawings, such as the Coyote holding up a stop sign that the Road Runner breaked at, allowing the Coyote to catch the Road Runner amidst all the dust, only to find out he'd grabbed a cactus instead.
It wouldn't surprise me if some of those pages were borrowed and reused elsewhere, given the quality involved. The unnamed participant of all these nostalgic pictures gave me a lot of enjoyment, and I don't find the same level of quality in today's puzzle books.
That extra red line besides the black line in the image up there? That's me finding an alternate route, even though there was a more direct shortcut already answered there.
Last week on May 29th, my favorite single-panel cartoonist Jim Unger diedinhissleep. There was something of a minor shock almost a decade ago when I saw that an Unger died in 2003, but it turned out to be Bob Unger, who was responsible for inspiring the majority of the jokes that made up the straightfaced humour of Herman. At the time, some people were worried it might’ve been musician David Unger who died.
I seem to be part of a minority of people who care that a comedic trailblazer passed away. More than any other comic, it was from Herman that I learned about comedic timing and human speech. His characters were capable of spouting the most natural one-liners spouted by what was essentially living mashed potatoes in human form. (Obviously inspired by Don Martin's natural clowns) Amazingly enough, Jim Unger admitted that he couldn’t draw the same guy twice, which was why Herman's character design was always inconsistent. Somewhat fitting for a cartoonist who changed his appearance as often as possible. Like Michael Jackson, no two pictures of Jim Unger are alike. His sense of humour and character designs were unique, and influenced other comics, not just The Far Side, but also spiritual successors Cornered and Close to Home, though none could hold a candle to Herman’s flame.
When Jim Unger first started, he thought that he would run out of material after the first month. It’s saying something that he managed to keep up his ability of being consistently funny for almost twenty years. It's also notable that he decided to leave his strip after he felt he was becoming burnt out, though there was no sign of any slowing down or decaying humour. It seems that twenty years is the ceiling for creating quality material before declining into Cerebus Syndrome.
Then five years later, Herman returned to the newspaper on June 2, 1997 in the form of reruns, with Jim Unger continuing to create new comics for his renewed publishing. Though for the most part, this was reduced to rewording various daily strips rather than drawing new comics. And without Robert Unger’s guidance, they didn’t quite have the same spark of humour to them. Also, like some various Bloom County strips, some old comics had been dumbed down or had grammar corrected, which seemed a sin against Unger’s philosophy as mentioned in The Best of Herman book: “using bad grammar like ‘wanna’ is funnier than ‘want to’.”
As an added insult, the daily strips were colourized, which seemed less appealing than the detailed screentone patterns in the original black & white. Some forms of media were updated, while other were left untouched, such as box television sets. Also, cultural references were updated to keep up with the times, such as changing telling the husband on an exercycle from “Don’t go too far, you’ll miss Gunsmoke.” to “Don’t go too far, you’ll miss Seinfeld.”
Oh yes, there were plenty of cowboys & indian homages, back when Westerns were popular, and henpecked wives were a popular theme. (Relaying to Jim Unger’s disastrous marriages) It might've been that reliance to archaic devices that could've alienated modern readers, but that doesn't jibe with other comics & stories where old narrative elements are part of their charm.
In some cases, the new lines were a shadow of their former selves. In others, the joke was either explained or improved on. A fan could quite literally spend the rest of their lives recaptioning any random Herman comic that would fit perfectly well within The New Yorker.
Ironically enough, Jim Unger didn’t actually start producing new work for the Sunday pages until recently. Up until then, his last regulated output was limited to creating an extra for Blondie’s 75th Anniversary. (Herman’s right below Elly & John there) This is ALSO going to bump up my tag list with all these extras here, but I don’t care, since I enjoy Herman so much. I even created a Garfield mash-up comic of one of his most famous strips.
However, what I want is EVERY Herman comic published in chronological order, even the bad ones, and the inexplicable ones. I suspect that it was the recent Herman books containing multiple jokes that were already overly familiar in a new coat of paint & dialogue that put off faithful readers. I suspect that if we had a reprint project similar to the Fantagraphics Peanuts reprint, sales would be through the roof. One of the biggest deterrent to collecting every single strip was that a few more were being added late in his life, and thus, a final tally couldn't be figured out. It's just a shame that it would take the death of this fine man for this request to come through.
I also want this nonexistent album to contain the original texts that were used at the time of publication. If some of the references are too unwieldly or obscure, a footnote or alternative text can be inserted elsewhere.
Only two books containing a large portion of his Sunday comics were ever reprinted. The first one was unique in that it was done in reverse chronological order. Starting from September 27, 1981 to March 30, 1980, as so not to alienate long-time fans with their weird crude amateurish early character designs which weren’t quite as charming as their later incarnations. This was also before the Herman logo would develop the flowery curved design later.
There were some rumours of adapting his comic strip for an animated show on Teletoon, but nothing ever came to fruition, since the animation company in charge closed before anything could be produced. On the one hand, it’s kind of a shame, since it could’ve exposed an entirely new audience to Jim Unger’s works, and several of the silent Herman strips could’ve served as bumper slots in between commercials, similar to the Ducktales stills.
On the other hand, it’s doubtful they would’ve been able to tie together plots from dozens of Herman comics dealing with similar themes into a single cohesive narrative plot. What made Herman work so well was how much story could be contained within the constraints of a single panel. Free up that restriction, and you’ve got a singular stock man in any time frame trying to deal with absurd situations as best as possible. Herman works when you don’t exactly know who he/she/it is. Herman could be the executive, the doctor, the patient, the wife, the dog, the plant, the alien, or all of the above, or none of the above. WHO Herman was wasn’t important. It was what happened that was worth seeing.
“The new animated primetime series is based on the popular syndicated newspaper comic by Jim Unger, and features Herman, and his reactions to an insane world populated by lovable misfits surviving various life crisis.” - the pilot pitch
There’s an online archive of many of Herman comics available at this address, and divided by subject and theme for easy browsing, though they’re all considerably reduced in size, which ruins the humour somewhat. It's recommended that you take your time going through all of them, because after awhile, you need to take a breather after so many jokes.
Out of all of the Herman comics, this last one seems more melancholic and thoughtful than the others, and doesn’t exactly end on a typical punchline. It feels more like the Calvin & Hobbes Sunday comic where Calvin & Hobbes would “meet each other in their dreams”. It’s unknown who this was intended for, but seems a fitting finale for a man who made the world laugh.
Pogo: What is so rare as a day in June? Churchy: Well, the 29th of February is plenty rare, but the 57th of November is even rarest. Pogo: Huh! There isn’t a 57th of November. It hasn’t got one. Churchy: Well, what could be rarer than that?
The answer to the scarcity of a nonexistent date would be a golfing comic in FBOFW. We also get to see the early prototype for Michael’s planned facial hair for when he was emulating his Zonker Harris stage while at College. It’s not quite on the same level of Anthony’s pornstache, but it certainly looks better.
Lynn hardly put much stock in sports, even though her kids were regular hockey players in their youth, and was one of the few cartoonists who didn't pump out mediocre filler material of her family going on golfing outings. Here, she betrays that proud heritage with the publication of a single one-panel joke, complete with accompanying commentary strip. It may be a one-shot, but it still feels somewhat disappointing to see her pander to common taste.
Another side of rarity would be a house full of invisible bugs that was similar to those empty rooms full of ninjas. This drove me nuts as a kid, because I could only find three of the present escapees, and was wondering where all the others had gone to. It didn’t occur to me that they must’ve gone offscreen years later.
How often do you see animal fecal material talked about in the funny pages? Depends on how much the characters involved own pets, and have to clean up their mess, usually represented by the abundance of stink lines just hovering above the ground below eye level. However, given how much attention Lynn paid on doing toilet jokes during her new-runs phase, this isn’t exactly new territory. It wasn’t new material that absolutely needed to be told to fill in the blanks, which was why FBOFW’s popularity plummeted in its declining years.
Ironically enough, Mike Peters of Mother Goose & Grim fame (who Lynn is good friends with, and likes his sense of humour) once regulated about a certain criticism about Grimmy’s constant habit of drinking out of the toilet. One of his readers complained that she didn’t want Grimmy to do that, because it “might influence her own dogs to drink out of the toilet”.
As long as we’re talking about the filthy nature of bathroom habits, we might as well take a cheap pot shot from behind.
Tempting as it is to downplay the amount of gardening Elly did as opposed to her housework, there’s a fair number of strips that show her working on her flowers, or being appalled at the damage Farley did while nuzzling up in her flowerbeds. However, all that activity was later shifted over to Lawrence who was in agriculture (i.e., flowers) and was the only applicable job that would fit his “gay” persona.
You know what you don’t see too much of nowadays, next to novels with the words THE END in them? Cereal boxes containing plastic prizes in them.
Remember the good old days when there would be dozens of animated commercials for sugar cereal? Until concerned parents decried out the possibility that they might choke on the plastic toys (which is why the US can't enjoy Kinder Surprise), that these things aimed at children might cause them to get fat that got them pulled off the air. Given the current war to label sugar as a harmful substance on par with tobacco, they certainly succeeded on that front, but at the cost of entertaining slots between Saturday Morning Cartoons. I never bought any of the stuff they advertised, but always enjoyed seeing the continuing adventures of cereal mascots such as the Honey Nut Bee, Sugar Bear, Toucan Sam, Lucky, the Twik Rabbit, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, Snap Crackle & Pop, the Cookie Crisps cop/thieves, Tony Tiger, Cap’n Crunch, and the Flintstone’s Pebbles.
My library has had the worst luck lately. First, they were booted out of their main building when funding for their location dried up. Then they were relocated to a smaller building with the majority of their books shelved in the basement. Then they suffered a flooding earlier this year. Just recently, they hired some College students to help with the the final remains of the damaged books, and determined which ones were still salvageable, and which ones to throw out. Then once these student's job was finished for the month, we had another flood Monday night.
Upon first seeing the damage when I arrived, I said, "This building hates us". Indeed, it certainly seems like a certain someone (or something) out there was conspiring against us from ever having our books made available to the public. Those aforementioned College students? A large portion of the surplus budget was used to hire them in the first place. And JUST as they finished the results of the clean-up job, we had a relapse. The really depressing thing is that the library was on the verge of opening themselves up to the larger public again, after two years of renovations.
Actually, we had something of an early warning system last week when there was some leaking from the ceiling pipes that fell directly upon a select few books & DVDs on the cart rack below. Nothing too damaging, though it paled in comparison to what happened before and later. However, that little incident brought up alarm bells from the people who'd suffered the memory of the last flooding incident.
Fortunately, we'd taken some precautions after our last natural disaster. There were several organic wooden supporters (prickly to the touch) that were placed on the floor and several boxes were later placed down upon. Several new boxcases were installed slightly above water level. And the final touch - plastic sheets covering the entirety of high-risk bookshelves. At the time, I thought it was an overkill response to a leaky pipe that was quickly fixed. They'd even covered the collapsible boxes on top of the bookshelves without even bothering to take them off. At the time, I didn't like the plastic covering making it harder to reach and read my potential reading material. Now, I know better. Those plastic sheets were a safety precaution against any potential leaks, but sadly, they weren't enough. There were still plenty of boxes still lying on the floor in a few rooms that hadn't been elevated quickly enough, and as a result, a large portion of these stacked boxes were tipped over and falling onto the floor, causing the contents to spill out, causing further damage.
I spent the majority of my morning moving out hundreds of damaged empty boxes, some of which previously contained old books and magazines. The sad part was that this library was under a mandate to scan these rare books for online use so their contents wouldn't die out. One such box was labeled "Daily Graphic from 1877" that'd survived all these years only to wind up waterlogged. We also had to throw out any books that were slightly water damaged at the edges, even if the contents were perfectly okay. I also did some mopping up the floor, using a newfangled kind of plastic wringer where you squeezed the wet mop strings downwards into the pail below. It was slightly different from my experience with metal wringers, but the basic function was pretty much the same.
The only soaked boxes whose items could be confidentially said to remain undamaged were those containing metal bookends.
Unlike last time when the flooding happened, I was suffering from collective guilt (even though it wasn't my fault), I still felt impotent since there was so much activity happening around at the time that I couldn't possibly have participated. Being unable to help in any way didn't do any wonders for my morale, and waiting around just made me feel worse. But I didn't feel like that this time. THIS time I was able to help.
Ironically enough, some of the stuff that was damaged were books that were to be weeded out and recycled at a later date once there were enough of them. All my hard work at blacking out the barcodes and stamping Discarded at the front and back inside covers was nullified. If it wasn't so depressing, it would actually be kinda funny.
Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I was all set up to create a post after going on a writing spree from some sudden time off on Thursday, but that was only for a short story whose entire concept was scribbled on a scrap of paper, and took the afternoon to lay the basic skeleton structure. By the time I was all finished, I'd only managed to throw away two pieces of paper out of my pile of notes, and I hadn't even started on a blog topic yet.
I decided to use the last post for a placeholder, and was all ready to show it, when a friend introduced me to another online gaming site full of free games. Normally, I regulate myself to playing widely unavailable Nintendo games on emulators, with savestates so I don't have to replay the annoying obstacle course 100 times just to fail one last tricky jump before the end. However, some of these games looked rather addictively fun. One of them was The Asylum, where you try to treat various mentally damaged stuffed animals through means of hypnosis and therapy. (Ironically enough, I had the most difficulty with the autistic hippo and had to restart several times using the electroshock device underneath the bed) It's recommended that you play the hairy penguin last, since there are references to other patients.
The shortest "game" I ever played isn't really a game, but actually an educational scale model of the Universe according to size, and may remind people of a certain Simpsons couch scene that's inspired by the NFB's Cosmic Zoom.
The reason I keep coming back to these addictive platformers at the risk of damage to my frontal lobes and general health is because videogames are the only thing that make me feel alive. Even when I become incredibly irritated whenever I'm interrupted or make mistakes, there's nothing like the thrill of getting that elusive item after hours of searching. Solitaire simply isn't enough for me.
For the most part, playing these games is just something to occupy my time while I wait for the next Mario or Zelda game. However, waiting for Nintendo's next release when each game can take up to two years to complete simply takes too long, and I seek out gratification elsewhere in order to get my fix. For that reason, I seek out other hacks of their previous games that're extended "expert mode" versions of their games, or Indy games that rely on exploration. New Super Mario Bros. and Treasure Adventure are highly recommended. Pretty much any game that borrows the sense of joy (and frustration) from playing these gaming classics is high on my list.
Besides, their stories become more elaborate with fancy graphics and inane dialogue, while adding absolutely nothing new to the gameplay. I don't need a long-winded motivation to bash in some bad guy's head every five minutes. I just want to be able to explore and gather as much stuff as I possibly can. (Incidentally speaking, the first time I played a Mario game was on a Black & White television, and I thought the goombas were human faces walking via moving mustaches. Now there's an interesting alternate backstory right there)
I keep playing even though I know that it causes me undue stress with every failure, and takes away time and concentration from things I should be doing. All that matters is getting 100% completion on everything, no matter how insignificant. This is the kind of thing that Achievement Unlocked appeals to me, even though I get rewarded for doing the most basic things in typical sidescrollers, it eventually gets harder to get those remaining few goals in order to get the desired 100%.
For the past few days, I've been obsessed with Burrito Bison Revenge - a game about a minotaur who wants to beat up hundreds of gummi bears using various wrestling poses for daring to steal his wallet. (Don't ask about the excuse plot. Just enjoy the insanity)
The challenge comes from trying to complete the majority of the mostly luck-based missions. And indeed a lot of the missions seem statistically impossible, even if you increase your odds by buying more bears to the game. Early on, the only way you can advance is by buying certain powerups after you've earned a certain amount of money. One of the first you'll want to purchase in a hurry is the Increase money from defeated gummies option. At first, you'll have to monitor your actions early on to ensure your chances for victory. But once you've received a certain amount of powerups, you can pretty much leave the screen alone for several minutes and be guaranteed that the action will continue from the minotaur bouncing around even without your constant guidance. You can check back sporadically to use the powerups once in a while, but if you're not concerned about getting the highest score, you needn't bother.
Actually, Bison Revenge is nothing more than an improved version of Nacana Crash, which takes its character sprites from a dating simulation game. It's a game that starts out with some minor schlub standing all alone in a corner when all of a sudden out of nowhere, this cute girl on a bike crashes into him, sending him sprawling off at high speed, where he's routinely punched by any girl who dares to get close to him. (In short, just another day in Haremville) The exceptions are two boys who are in the way who either slow him down or change the angle of his movement, a long-haired brunette who blocks the next girl the guy gets next to, and a glasses girl who can end the game prematurely. The objective is to get the guy flying for as long as possible.
In a sense, Bison Revenge is the American version of Nanaca Crash that's gotten the Kirby effect where instead of some poor schlub being beaten into submission, it's now a powerful macho male figure beating up other weak creatures for money in order to get ahead.
Nanaca Crash's instructions only give a few basic pointers while ignoring any potential hints that could actually help the player, and have to find out for themselves. For instance, at the beginning, after you select your angle, you have to HOLD the mouse button until you've got your power setting. Too many novics make the mistake of only pushing once, assuming the game will wait for the next click. Also, while the game normally stops when you land in the bosom of the green-haired glasses, that's only if you're on a rebound. If you've been kicked by a girl beforehand, then you're given the biggest combo in the game. But you have to be quick - wait too long, and the game will be over at that point. I've only been lucky enough to get bounced from TWO consequentive glasses girls in a row. And then I hit a blonde guy and all that forward momentum got shot upwards instead.
Another thing that isn't apparent is that after you hit the long-haired brunette, you have a chance for a special Comic Force Field with one of the other violent girls at any multiple of every 100 meters. And you can't use her own special against herself. Too bad there isn't one for the guys, since that would be rather amusing. The girl in charge of the special attack is the same girl who crashed into you at the beginning, and I suspect she's reacting to the "love triangle" between the guy & the rival girl, and depending on who's present, each girl has a different effect.
The glasses girl gives you Double Impact, which doubles the distance for the next five girls who hit you. This includes combos as well.
The brown-haired girl gives you a Charge Blast that takes up all your pent-up energy and releases it when you're on the verge of stopping.
The blue-haired girl makes you a Parachute Death Sentence, that lets you teleport (fly) across the field over 100 people.
The blonde girl gives you a Bound Boost which doubles your bounces on the ground instead of slowing you down.
To be able to hit these elusive targets, you need to take advantage of the midair bike collisions. It may not be apparent, but there are two different cycling "boosts" that you can achieve at certain heights. If you're falling towards someone you don't want to hit, you can click the mouse to use up one of the three available red boosts. Alternatively, if you're bouncing up off the road, but want to hit a target below and to the side of you, use the blue booster to bounce down and reach your girl. Unlike the limited midair boost, this'll gradually refill its meter in midair, but only in the middle of the sky. Too high or too low, it won't register in the "sweet spot" zone.
During the course of playing these kinds of games one of two things can happen. Either I accomplish everything the game has to give me, or I grow tired from the intense repetition that's involved. Either way, it sets me up for a bout of severe depression afterwards. I only grew tired of Nanaca Crash after it became apparent that there was no possible way I would be able to beat my previous score of 14,000 Meters. The last straw was when after a particularly good combo, I was suddenly stopped due to a bad bounce. It also didn't help that the only possible "Good ending" was the same, whether it was 10 meters or a 10,000.
After achieving multiple highs from finishing everything a game has to offer, the down invariably comes, leaving me to cope with my fix and focus on other stuff that I've been putting off. And so, the cycle continues.
