Woo Hoo!

I walked past the Dannevirke Public Library today and was pleased to discover a fairly well stocked Graphic Novels section (!), including The Sandman, V for Vendetta, a bunch of Batmans and Daredevils and...

A Girl Genius book.

I haven't checking which one it was yet but suddenly I felt so proud of the people who are doing that webcomicry stuff. Go you!

It'd be tought to choose just one character... I'm leaning towards Mr. Glass right now.

Snakes on a Plane, really doesn't seem that enthralling. I mean, not as a movie. For some reason we've all latched onto it (is it just because it has Samuel L. Jackson? He is pretty damn awesome after all) but I'm not likely to go see it at the cinema (given my budget allowed me to see one moive in the last six months...).

It's made for some neat running gags and little in jokes that aren't fundamental to a strip, which is nice. That sort of whimsy that the internet does so well. But, like those Chuck Norris and Vin Diesel jokes, it gets old remarkably quickly. Mr. Brazelton gets it right in his blog with this Theater Hopper comic, the film didin't actually match pace with the spreading of the meme and now it's just a bit sad.

Of course, that doesn't stop me grinning when I see the latest Popcorn Picnic (which I can't directly link to for some reason...), a fill-in-the-blanks contest to win a Samuel L. Jackson character drawing from Mr. Shadoian. Regardless of Snakes on a Plane, Jackson is cool and having some 'to spec' cartooning done would be briliant.

There seem to be two ways to win (two winners or one but two paths?), one being the most accurate to Jackson the other being the funniest. See you in the winners circle.

The Art of Substitution

Over the... months? How long has that site been going? Anyway, over the last period of whatever, Websnark has been well known to create clever little names for various things that happen in and around comics. Some of the best known would be Cerebus Syndrome and First and Ten. As I understand these terms, they both refer to a shift from gags and whimsy to more depth and seriousness in a comic. However, one is said to have acheived Cerebus if the result is good and succumbed to First and Ten if it becomes laborious and tiresome.

Neither of those would apply then to what's been happening with Yirmumah.

Yirmumah barely had a plot before now (in the short space of time when I've been reading it anyway) and could at times seem like a journal comic. Sometimes it made silly gags, like the bunny who says Fuck, and other times it used recognized characters in a funny situation.

Then, all of a sudden, we get Origins. A biker who reads the bible and gets into brawls with the seeming intention of knocking the stuff he doesn't like about himself into submission. All the stuff that led him away from his girls.

I think what makes this into a new 'syndrome' is the fact that it doesn't draw upon the characters that have been used before. It isn't like a journal comic, although it has the same feel as an autobiographical piece (I'm fairly sure Mr. Coffman never smashed and burnt a phonebooth because his daughters were being kept from him though*). It something entirely new but put into the same space a readers used to find something quite different.

It would be like Mr Kurtz over at PVP deciding to do a nuanced epic tale of sky ninjas searching for the last rain dragon but putting the comic onto the PVP website and ceasing to run strips about those magazine workers we've grown to love. Only I think that particular transition wouldn't go down as well as Yirmumah's experiment.

It would be interesting to find out if the readership has gone along with Mr. Coffman on this. I get the impression they have, but it seems like such a gamble in retrospect.

The only complaint I've seen was on the LJ feed here. A reader says that the story had been good up until this transitional comic, and I agree. That piece doesn't match the tone of what has gone before, though the shift into the 'present/future' does rematch that tone. The problems are things like 'Heck's Angels' and 'many adventures/many a locale' which undercut the serious detail that we had seen previously. Glimpses of those adventures leave the reader feeling a little cheated, missing out on something that looks promising. I was going to say that we could ahve jsut about skipped it completely, but that would have left some in the dark about how respected or useful Deacon became. It's a toughy.

Incidentally, Yirmumah might want to think about reorganising its archives somewhat. It was really tough to browse through for comics I wanted to link to...

*Just wanted to say that I think there is a strong biographical thing going down, but I'll just leave that to settle and then take a look at it.

My homeboy.

[Teaching training going well, thanks]

I'm sure you are all aware that I'm from New Zealand. And that I'm more than willing to shill any connection to this country in the realm of webcomicry.

Which is why I was delighted to find out about Cheshire Crossing. Yes, the update schedule looks like something that will take some getting used to, but the conceit that (unfortunately?) begins somewhat similarly to Lost Girls is just too appealing.

Obviously that's not the Kiwi connection.

But the 'asylum' where the girl's have been brought? Is run by Ernest Rutherford. Check out his wiki page and then come back saying 'thanks for the brainiac New Zealand!' I felt kind of chuffed, even if he probably thought of himself as British but from a distant part of Britain.

One thing that concerns me is the association with fiction. As you can (hopefully) tell from the wiki article, Rutherford was a very real and influential man. But every other charatcer I've seen in Cheshire Crossing so far is fictional. Now, Rutherford has leant himself to stories about other worlds and strange things happening due to his atomic research (the title story of this collection is great, but the whole book is decent too) but I feel a little uncomfortable with how he has been brought in so far.

Now, I'm only about halfway through this first issue (I think) so it'll be interesting to see what happens with Rutherford. But I'll be watching.

Um...

Nothing cracked me up today. No stories on my regularly checked list had anything that made me sit up and take notice.

And I've been too busy with assignments to think of what to say in a review of a new (to me) comic.

So... This is jsut to let you know I am trying to update daily. But today was a bust.

A Comparison

So, apaprantly there's some new game that involves zombies? Or something like that? Frankly, it's not important. What is important is that both Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del appear to be making jokes in reference to it.

At first I thought they'd both just decided to go on Zombie benders, like you do, but then I actually realised what Gabe was saying in the Penny Arcade comic and the Ctrl-Alt-Del suddenly made more sense. Yes, that means I totally accept a comic which devotes a period of time to an injured friend of the main character and his attitudes and reactions to potential dates and then simply changes to watching some zombies go shopping. Nothing strange or abrubdt (... how the hell do you spell that word?) there, no.

Anyway, I just like the way it's been done from the two comics. Penny Arcade has given us the oppourtunity to see a popular recurring character in a fresh light. Suddenly his anger seems a little more based on history. And, frankly, don't you just know you're going to ask Mabel to dance next time you manage to get your clammy little fingers around the handle of some sort of firarm? Pop guns and Oozinators are acceptable. The comic almost doesn't need the beginning bit with Gabe and Tycho trying to fend off zombies by hurling cellphones. Though it does get a little Alanis Morrisette gag in there. Obviously they've used that to provide a little setting and context, but I would have totally gotten just the final panel with a Daed Rising display in the window behind Frank.

Ctrl-Alt-Del have started a little storyline with its version of events and I particularly love the way its coming from the zombie perspective. It reminds me of the sort of humour Shaun of the Dead came with, seeing the normal things that get shaken up, but never quite vanish, in the middle of a plague of the walking dead. So a zombie flicking through a catalogue while his friend gets bored is such a true telling of mall shopping that a chainsaw is really the only plausible next step. And then, who doesn't love making fun of the speed of zombies? You could run up, smack them in the half-flesh face and run away again without risking anything worse than dead skin coming off onto your palm. I hope the story has a couple more in it because I'm liking it.

Anyone seen any other Dead Rising, zombie/mall comics?

Drawing from the Amores might have been interesting. Isn't there a new adult webcomic portal now?

Unfortunately I missed Maroon ending about a week or so ago. I really enjoyed checking in on that one, because it always seemed to be willing to try something a little different. It wasn't about bringing the funny, but it did seem to carry a bittersweet overtone most of the time, as you can tell by the last sentance in it.

So that's sad. But then we find that Derik Badman has moved on to a new project, one that looks to update more often and draws upon the Metamnorphoses by Ovid, called Things Change. As a guy with a degree in Classical Studies, this makes me happy, though I am sad to see he doesn't expect gods and monsters to go tromping through the comic (Why not Derik? Why not!?).

Given his willingness to take time and create a gentle rhythm that carries you back over and over I think this will be a good one to watch. It certainly makes a change from the 'fit in all the gags and still have enough energy left for a rimshot' pace that is more typical for webcomics. The inspiration should also lead to wonderful artwork, as we can see appearing in the echoing images of the first strip.

Let's watch.

Monkeys and Hitlers and Vikings, oh my!

I wonder about disclaimers like this one from Rob and Elliot. Would it relly matter if this comic was or wasn't aprt of an 'official' continuity? I'm assuming that iMonkey's are fairly interchangable, as their mass produced store display would suggest. So, if this one diued and they got a new one, would we notice if they didin't tell us?

I know it's 'funny' (hah, they say they don't have the balls but here the comic is!) but it just makes me wonder a little. But thenn, I tihnk too much sometimes.

--

I love how crazy scifi/fantasy Goats is now. I didin't really know about it until it was already going crazy so I don't know how the trasition went down, but just having the concept of Gigahitlers available for my everyday conversation now is going to make me a very happy camper.

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Doesn't it always happen? It does at Cat and Girl, anyway... I bet Hagar is about ready to bury an axe in some skulls.

Got the cartoon on VHS a month ago. Great stuff!

I like Dilbert and I don't care who knows it.

I've seen some pretty mean jokes about Dilbert in various places and, although they certainly deserve to be made, I think there's a feeling thatdilbert isn't really good comics.

But I don't know how you can pass stuff like this up? Seriously, the dog is putting the boot in after carefully pushing over the guy. Classic.

The last few days have made me really glad I read Dilbert and Scott Addams' blog makes more more interested. It's funny, sure, but it usually has some really tricky things to think about. He phrases questions to really ge thte mind working and I love it. I even used one of his more serious books in a philosophy essay last semester.

So. Enjoy the cubicle drone humour. I do.

No excuses but one thousand apologies.

Man, what a week (ish) to get overwhelmed with my own stuff. I am in the early stages of training to be a teacher and discovering its even more intimidating than I had anticipated. And being stuck without resources due to a missing order form. Incidentally, this will likely mean I'll be missing some updates during my in-school experience in a month.

Anyway, it couldn't have come at a more momentous time. I'll just run through the things I wish I'd noted during the time off and had a chance to think about and talk about.

PVP won an Eisner.
Yirmumah's D.J. won the Comic Book Challenge.
Eric Burns stepped away from that Modern Tales thing and hopefully will be getting order in his life back soon.
Least I Could Do had Fraggles(!).

Once again, I'm sorry I've missed out on posting for so long and don't have a chance to really talk about those events. Suffice to say that they are all amazing acheivments (or noteworthy events anyway) and there's going to be a lot to look foreward to next week, (including, hopefully, a proper review of a new comic I've been reading).