Greetings, Boglins!

I have to admit that I’m a wee bit off this week.  I feel a little disjointed, so to that end my thoughts are kind of a jumble.  I have ideas, but not enough to flesh them out to carry full articles on their own.

But never fear, my fellow Spwugnerians!  I can actually make this work for me.  In fact, it allows me to do the kind of articles I’ve found myself rather enjoying as of late.  So I bring you another installment of random bits that I affectionately refer to this week as “Bleeps, Sweeps, and Creeps”:

Iron Man 2

Got to see this over the weekend with DKM Marlink and a few other friends.  First, we watched the first film at my house, all the while making snide remarks about how Terrence Howard was going to be replaced later that evening when we got to the theater.  First film still holds up remarkably well.  It has to be one of my favorites, despite the weak third act.  As for the sequel?  Wow.  More of the same, and I mean that in a good way.  Downey Jr. proves once again that the talent is actually his and not from the drugs he lived in for years.  Cheadle was a great substitute for Howard in the role of James Rhodes.  Just a fun flick all over.  My only complaints were that the middle started to feel like it was plodding along (same complaint I had for The Dark Knight).  Plus, Mickey Rourke’s character kinda shows up in a blazing show-down, then takes a back seat for most of the film until the end.  Despite both flaws, the movie got back on its feet by the third act, which was a vast improvement over the first film.  Those who haven’t seen it – stay until after the end credits.  Just like Nick Fury’s spoiled surprise cameo at the end of the first Iron Man, there’s a cool little surprise at the end of this one (SPOILER ALERT: It’s Batroc the Leaper!*)

Farscape

I picked up the complete box set to the hit Sci-Fi (not SyFy) series Farscape about a month ago, and I’ve been pouring myself into it furiously.  I’m almost finished with the first season, and I’m impressed with just how well this show still holds up.  There’s definitely a reason why it was my favorite TV show during its run.  I’m falling in love with these characters all over again (I plan to ask them to marry me next week).  One of the things I like so much about the show is how much it captures the essence of what made the original Star Trek so great – a perfect mixture of straight-up action with episodes of weird crap happening to our main cast with a dash of some light sexiness.  Best feature on the DVD set so far?  Commentary by the creators and the two main cast members on an episode where they spend the entire running time explaining just why the episode is so abysmal.

Super Mario Bros. Galaxy 2

It’s almost here!  Are you ready?  Did you play the first one?  Weren’t the frikkin’ purple coin challenges hard?  How long has it been since you last played the first one?  Do you even remember whether or not you own a Wii?

Corkscrewed Over

Busch Gardens in Virginia, also known as Busch Gardens Europe, also known as The Belgians Were Bored With Just Being Known For Waffles So They Bought the Largest Brewery in America and This Park Got Thrown In For Free, also known as The Park That Had a Really Cool 3-D Ride in Ireland When Not Compared to Anything in Florida but Decided to Ditch it For a Non-3-D Borefest That Could Double as an Extended Promo for British Airways.

That’s a Reynolds Wrap!

Burt Reynolds has been cast as an ex-spy in the incredibly awesome TV series Burn Notice.  My greatest hope is that his cover name is Turd Fergeson.  And he wears a big cowboy hat.  ‘Cuz it’s funny.

Speaking of wrapping up…

The Don’s RADAR appears to be jammed.  Halle Berry.

*It’s totally not Batroc the Leaper!

Hallo again, you Spwuggy kids, you!

The three of you who read this column probably noticed the lack of updates last week. The short version is, when the temperature in the computer room is over 85°F, I don’t risk overheating the system by turning it on. Luckily, the responsible central air unit has been fixed, and we’re now back in business!

Let’s get right down to it with a newish feature I’d been wanting to implement since I first started writing for Spwug: MORE PURTY PICKCHURS. If my focus here is supposedly on webcomics, shouldn’t this column be more visual too? I kept putting it off because I had no working tablet or scanner. Finally, I had enough of waiting and started drawing in Photoshop.

After an hour of very painful hand-crabbing from gripping an ancient, unresponsive mouse, I remembered why I had put off drawing on the computer. But it was too late to stop, and you can now reap the dubious rewards of my agonizing labour! Everyone loves MS Paint-style pictures, right? So, let’s get started.

There’s a little television show called Stargate Universe. I doubt anyone here has heard of it. It’s not like geeks ever come to Spwug or anything. But if you have heard of this TV series that I understand is “science fiction”, you probably know that it’s not doing too well compared to its predecessors in the Stargate franchise. Fan and critic complaints range from too much drama, to not enough action, to “Syfy Channel sucks” (a very valid complaint), to excessive shaky-cam, to “Where the heck are all the aliens?!”

I agree with all of the above plus some. If my housemate didn’t keep recording this show on the DVR box, I wouldn’t have watched it past the first few episodes. But instead of just griping, I’ve decided to offer up some suggestions to make the show better. Get your pencils out and take notes, SGU writers. There’ll be a test on this later!

1: More alien action, please! In two seasons so far, we’ve had, what? Labrador Retriever-sized spiders in two episodes. A sandstorm that may or may not have actually been sentient. Neither one showed any sign of anything resembling intelligence compatible with that of the human characters (despite the fact that human intelligence also seems to be a lacking quality in the show, so you’d think they’d understand one another). Though I have this theory that the spiders weren’t REALLY bloodthirsty monsters trying to eat the faces of the stranded humans. They were just lonely and wanted new friends.

Then there was T-Rex’s doughier cousin for about fifteen seconds. I still don’t get why Scott wasted ammo and time shooting at the thing when he could’ve just escaped through the Stargate. Maybe the dino reminded him of his shameful Weight Watchers days.

The only intelligent aliens of note so far have been the anorexic “blues” that keep trying to steal the ship Destiny away from its human crew (who, it could be argued, stole the ship from the ascended Ancients who made it). They really haven’t done anything else of interest so far, unless you count competitive non-eating.

2: The military and civilians aboard Destiny should be allowed to decorate the ship, or at least their respective quarters. Seriously, now. Every single scene aboard the ship takes place in a setting of drab greys and the occasional blue-grey light. No wonder all anyone does is fight and/or cry. I’m surprised half the crew hasn’t committed suicide already. A little colour goes a long way, folks. Maybe some throw rugs and dried flowers. A splash of paint, a few family photos lining the halls, and you go from stranded victims to homeowners of the biggest and most fashionable estate known to mankind!

3: Dr. Nicholas Rush needs to decide which team he supports. I mean, come on, Nicky-baby! This sympathetic-villain-in-one-episode, antihero-in-the-next stuff was old last season. At least he and Colonel Young are no longer at each other’s throats every five minutes. (Kudos for the next pic go out to housemate Thoradin, whose idea of a D&D setting for Young and Rush was far more amusing than my original pic of Rush shouting about how he was going to hijack the ship’s systems to obey only him and then give everyone onboard the puppies he and his dead wife never got to have.) For some reason, this scene works best in my head in stick-figure format.

4: The final suggestion doesn’t need pictorial accompaniment. To save the Stargate franchise, Syfy should go back in time, NOT cancel Stargate SG-1, NOT cut its budget, and watch the money come rolling in. But we all know Syfy can’t do anything sensible, time travel or no. This is why The Lost Room still has never moved beyond a pilot miniseries.

Did you pay attention, Stargate Universe writers? I may have just saved your show there.

That’s it for this week. Tune in next time, when we may or may not have more hand/mouse-drawn pictures. It really depends upon how masochistic I’m feeling. You’ll just have to come see to find out!

Here I say my farewells to the webcomic 8-Bit Theater, which recently ended its nine-year run in a manner most anticlimactic. That’s right–the sprite comic that even people who don’t like sprite comics read is done. It’s all over but the shouting, folks. And the epilogue that creator Brian Clevinger has promised is forthcoming.

But Nuklear Power, Clevinger’s site with its host of other webcomics, still chugs along. There’s the Eisner-nominated Atomic Robo, Warbot in Accounting, and How I killed Your Master, all written in whole or part by Clevinger and visually rendered by various skilled artists. I’m not actually going to go into detail about each comic hosted on Nuklear Power, mainly because I was never a huge fan of any of them aside from 8-Bit Theater. And even 8-Bit gave the impression over the past few years that Clevinger was bored of it, just putting out new pages to finish what he started. Which, don’t get me wrong, was pretty darn commendable of him to still finish the story even if he’d lost interest! Too many artists will just wander away from a comic, leaving it hanging when they get bored/busy/distracted instead of giving the audience a proper ending (remember last week’s article?)

Nuklear Power is one of the oddities in the webcomic world, one of the few sites where someone’s success as a webcomic artist actually helped launch a career outside the boundaries of that webcomic. Aside from Atomic Robo’s success in the physical and digital realms, Clevinger has been living The Dream for comic book fans everywhere, writing material for mainstream comics. As he stated in a blog post from April 25th: “Interesting note: I’m the first webcomic-er to do a full mini-series for the Big Two, and now the first to get a gig that takes place in mainstream continuity.” This was posted in relation to the news that Clevinger is a writer for the soon-to-be-released Marvel comics The Infinity Gauntlet (a revamping of that series) and World War Hulks: Wolverine vs. Captain America.

Going from creator of a parodic sprite webcomic to a writer of Marvel comics. Whether you like Clevinger’s work or not, you still have to admit that’s an amazing leap!

I doubt I’ll be sticking around to see where his other works go. They’re not bad comics; they’re just not my personal cup of cocoa. You may well visit the site and fall in love where I just shrugged and moved on (Atomic Robo is a good example of my “shrugging” at something nearly everyone else seems to love, so check it out!) In my case, once the 8-Bit Theater epilogue is concluded and the story is shelved for good, Nuklear Power will probably end up shoved into my rarely-opened bookmark folder of sites for webcomics that have ended. I’m sure I’ll drop by once or twice a year to see if anything that catches my eye has popped up, but for now, I’m saying my goodbyes. Thanks for the memories, 8-Bit Theater! It was a great ride while it lasted.

Don’t you hate it when something you love just…stops with no resolution? Webcomic fans know this pain all too well. Your favourite webcomic is chugging along, picking up fans right and left, in the middle of an epically epic storyline, when suddenly…a month goes by with no updates. Then two months. Then six. The artist puts up a brief blog post that says, “Being swamped by work/school/family, but we’ll be back soon!”

A year later, the site is inhabited only by crickets. It sits there, unchanging, for many more years, or until the server deletes the page. The webcomic is only ever again mentioned in forum discussions where people ask, “Whatever happened to such-and-such comic?”

In the spring, a young geek’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of loss. Let’s look at a few of the fallen, and sometimes missing, friends that I would have loved to see get a proper ending. We’ll be doing this again later, by the way. I have a pretty long list of comics I used to read that stopped without ending, and they make for great nostalgia columns, eh? Plus, there are other unfortunate webcomics being abandoned all the time….

5ideways by K. Sandra Fuhr – This supernatural apocalyptic thriller started off with a strong story and intriguing characters in 2005, only to taper off with updates as Real Life continued to eat away at the artist’s free time. By 2008, the comic was officially on hiatus, and the site sat largely untouched until November 18, 2008, when a “5ideways will return soon” graphic was tossed up on the front page. “Soon” was a bit of a stretch, sadly, as there have been no updates since then. However, the extremely talented creator didn’t just up and abandon webcomics completely. If her name sounds familiar, that’s because you may already have read/be reading her other works: Boy Meets Boy (completed), Friendly Hostility (completed, and reviewed here), and Other People’s Business (ongoing, and blurbed about at the bottom of this page).

Absurd Notions/Why the Long Face, both by Kevin Pease – The first, running from 1999 to 2007, focused on the work and play misadventures of a group of young-adult friends with varied hobbies (though they all seemed to enjoy tabletop gaming) and the occasional bout of mad science. You know, what has since become a staple of webcomics. The second ran from 2003 to 2007 and focused on the creator’s musings about life in general. Both trickled to a halt around the same time (with Absurd Notions in the middle of a story). Sometime in 2008 or 2009, I asked Pease about further updates. He mentioned that he didn’t intend to drop his comics completely, but it looks like if that’s still true, we’ll be waiting a while longer for updates. A certain Spwug webcomic writer can keep hoping!

Chrono Trigger Rip-Off (at least they’re honest!) by Mark and Tom (and possibly someone else; it’s not too clear) – Sprite comics are reviled by art elitists for not using original art, but I LIKE sprite strips. LOVE them, even. I love sprite art and everything you can do with it. I love sprites being used for tributes and parodies of the games they come from. This webcomic did all that. Sprite comics are all over now, and the whole “Video game sprites cause mayhem while behaving in naughty ways that are totally out of character with how they behave in their canon” thing is done and overdone, and often done wrong. Chrono Trigger Rip-Off isn’t exactly a unique entity now, but back when I found it (likely pre-2001, but the archives only go back to January of that year), sprite comics were a fairly shiny new concept for me. I got a lot of good laughs out of this comic and enjoyed the fact that it even had a plot. And while there’s nothing unique about the strip by today’s standards, I still regret that it died out in 2004 with its story unfinished.

RPG World by Ian Jones-Quartey – You just can’t talk about unfinished business in webcomics without invoking the granddaddy of them all. RPG World went from a superstar of webcomics to a lesson in how NOT to end a story during its final battle. (The lesson is: DON’T STOP UPDATING DURING THE FINAL BATTLE.) Remember that? This webcomic started off strong in 2000. It updated regularly, the story kept getting better and better, Cherry’s butt kept getting bigger and bigger, the audience grew steadily–even friends who otherwise never read webcomics read RPG World. Every breath was bated as the story blazed into its climax. Beloved characters were killed. World-altering secrets were revealed. The final boss was confronted. The heroes geared up for the greatest fight in history. And then…nothing. In 2005, the comic ground to a halt. It tried to defibrillate itself with fillers and side stories on very sporadic occasions until June 2007. Finally, the artist admitted what the audience already knew; he had no intention of completing the story. He was too busy, he’d lost interest, didn’t like seeing his old art, etc., etc….

Recently, he put out the word that he felt bad for leaving the audience in the lurch and wanted to find a new artist to take his scripts and finish the story. I’d dearly love to see that, but since then, there’s been no word on finding a new artist. The site has been dead for so long that I don’t know if anyone who could help even saw his request for a new artist. But if you’re interested, please contact him at his site. I selfishly want to see RPG World finally completed! And if you want to know what eventually helped take Ian’s time away from the comic, watch this show called The Venture Bros. that he’s worked on for a few years. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. I think it’s about siblings who become business entrepreneurs. Also, something about butterflies. Maybe they fund a living butterfly museum together or something. I don’t know. (And if you think I’m being serious here, let’s talk bridges.)

Well, that’s enough out of me for now. I still hope to someday see these old loves of mine completed, before being shoved back in the shoeboxes of the Internet. If there’s a webcomic you enjoyed that ended prematurely, let me know. I’m seeking more stalled comics for future installments!

Did you miss webcomic reviews after the untimely death of my last computer? So did I! Luckily, I’ve been workin’ hard on getting new review notes compiled since then, and I now have some fruits of my labours. So let’s jump right in on this Review After the Fact….

Maybe you’re a gamer, but you find most gaming comics too vulgar or violent or absurd. I don’t share this problem, but I’m sure someone has it out there. So, if you’re looking for a less R-rated gaming comic, would you be interested in reading the archives of one that manages to be family-friendly while not dumbing down the content in the slightest? Then keep reading!

As many of you already know, CrispyGamer.com recently decided to shoot itself in both feet, then the head for good measure (or overkill; I’m not sure where the brains of that operation actually were located when all this was going on). Staff canned, CEO gone, and, most importantly to this article, comics unceremoniously terminated. One of those was Aaron Williams’ Backward Compatible.

I’m a huge fan of his work. You might be familiar with some of his other online-offering titles, such as Nodwick, Full Frontal Nerdity, and PS238. He also wrote for the acclaimed comic North 40, published by Wildstorm, and is also working with Marvel on an undisclosed project. This guy is a true professional artist in every sense of the words (and a real dang friendly dude!), and it shows in his work. The art in his comics is sharp and clean, and the lettering makes it clear that at least one person out there who publishes online stayed awake in English class.

Backward Compatible focused on the daily work lives of a small group of fictitious Crispy Gamer staff, based on actual people. The focus wasn’t on an ongoing story or characterization (which makes my job here much easier); it was all about episodic, topical gaming humour. That’s the meat of it, and it was tasty meat indeed. Take a look at a few prime examples of what made Backward Compatible so entertaining. Guys, I kid you not, I had over a dozen favourite strips saved to potentially post here for this review. Every single one was so funny, I couldn’t choose. I took the geek way out and rolled a die to determine the winners. The rest will be posted at the end of this page as links. I just couldn’t leave them out!

We all had these same thoughts about Fallout 3 (click to enlarge):

Let’s make fun of the Syphilis–I mean Syfy–Channel’s bad decisions–that NEVER gets old! No, I’m not being sarcastic there. Why, oh WHY do we have crap like Man-Thing airing as original Syfy programming, but The Lost Room is STILL in freakin’ limbo?! Here’s a novel idea, Syfy: if you want us to stop mocking you, STOP BEING STUPID. (Whew. Think I may have eaten a tangent for breakfast. No more citrus for me!)

A requisite World of Warcraft comic? Don’t mind if I do!

If this existed, I would play the heck out of it:

Are you keen to read more yet? Then hop on over to the very first strip and start reading! Backward Compatible only ran from January 2008 to January 2010, so you can expect to get through the entire archives in several hours or less. Not a bad way to spend an evening at home, eh? The current fate of the comic is unknown, but it’s likely that the archives will eventually be removed from CrispyGamer.com, so don’t wait! Act now to read the sheer comic genius that is Backward Compatible before time runs out! And if you need a little more convincing, here are the other comics that didn’t make it into this review:

Even the Pope was not amused by the “pre-downloading” concept of Left 4 Dead 2.

The second panel of this one says pretty much everything I’ve ever thought about those ridiculous Mac-which-is-actually-still-a-PC vs. PC ads.

What it would actually look like if illegal hunting was influenced by video games. Epic LULZ abound!

More Syfy mockery! That stuff is always in style.

Yeah, I could see why some people wouldn’t want to play a Zork MMO.

Why Gordon Freeman never speaks. (Where is our Half Life Episode 3, anyways?)

The…interesting…weaponry of Left 4 Dead 2.

You just keep telling yourself that, Mac. I own over a half-dozen Nintendo consoles, but no Apple products.

Snark Trek.

See now why I had so much trouble choosing? Go read more for yourself! Don’t worry. Unlike Crispy Gamer and Backward Compatible itself, I’ll still be here next week when you’re done.

Greetings, Toxic Avengers!!

Valentine’s Day is coming up.  So, in honor of this day of hearts and cupids I should probably do some kind of article commemorating fatal romances in movies, dictating the top love triangles in comics, or listing the love ballads everyone says they hate but secretly love.

I’m not gonna do any of that.

Instead, I’m going to veer completely around that holiday of pinks and purples and make a beeline straight for the twenty-four hours (almost) everyone in the U.S. will be observing (theoretically) the day after: Presidents’ Day.

For my contribution to the day in which we acknowledge the efforts of our leading forefathers, I turn to a medium that – in this day and age – can almost be considered as American as baseball and apple pie.

Comic books.

Presidents have been portrayed in comic books almost as far back as the beginning.  From George Washington penning for an (extremely) early version of The Daily Planet to last year’s run of Obama appearances, every age of comics through the years has had a commander-in-chief show up at some point.  In some cases, especially during times of war, having the president appear in a comic book was a way to rally the morale of Americans, as well as to add some weight to a particular hero’s efforts.  If FDR was responsible for helping Captain America obtain the shield he’s known for today, it must be just and right.

But as much as comic creators like to herald our national leaders, they also sometimes throw our presidents into comics to serve in a satirical sense.  The result is that often our leaders are portrayed in a negative light.  The reason for this is simple: comics, like any other entertainment medium, are just as often used to deliver a message as well as entertain.  It is not uncommon for comic book writers to infuse their own views on politics, society, and pop culture into their stories.  Richard Nixon tends to be a perfect example of this, as you’ll see shortly.

So, here are a few of the more notable moments in comic book history when our nation’s presidents made an appearance, for good or for ill:

Richard Nixon: Watchmen

Might as well start with what is most likely the most well-known appearance of a U.S. president in comics history.  Unfortunately for ol’ Tricky Dick, his role in the award-winning series only expounded upon the less-than-stellar reputation he was forever stuck with after his resignation in the shadow of the Watergate scandal.  In Watchmen, Alan Moore creates an alternate 1985 where Nixon is still president, using him as a tool to portray a country that thinks it is invulnerable.  Moore’s take on how Nixon would eventually lead the country to nuclear war was his commentary against “power politics” and “Reaganism”, a statement that continues to resonate with anyone who picks up this powerful graphic novel.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Captain America

FDR appears to have been quite the busy guy in comic books… retroactively.  While not part of the original canon of these books, over the years FDR was retconned into playing a major role in a number of major comic book moments.  Not only did he play a major part in the creation of the Justice Society of America and the All-Star Squadron over at DC, in Marvel’s Captain America issue 255 he makes a cameo appearance to present Cap with his current, iconic shield.

Ronald Reagan: The Dark Knight Returns

Another negative portrayal of a U.S. leader, this time from the pen of Frank Miller.  Miller’s tale also takes place in an alternate reality.  This time, a much older Batman comes out of retirement to reclaim Gotham from being overrun with crime.  Coming out right around the same time as Watchmen, Miller wasn’t afraid to take the founder of “Reaganomics” head on (unlike Moore), portraying him as a slippery-tongued oaf who had only his own best interests at heart.

Ronald Reagan: Legends

Reagan again, only this time, the actor-turned-president was portrayed in a more sympathetic manner.  A semi-successful mini-series that told the story of a Darkseid operative turning the American public against superheroes, Legends featured a Reagan who was a little more reasonable in his decision-making.  Though he initially had to reluctantly issue an order to restrict superhero activity, The Gipper immediately rescinded that edict after the Martian Manhunter saved his life from an assassination attempt.

John F. Kennedy: Action Comics

Kennedy’s appearance in Action Comics issue 309 is distinctive for a couple of reasons – not only does play a major role in the story by teaming up with Superman, he also ends up being one of the few people the Man of Steel trusts with his secret identity.  Sadly, the timing of this issue couldn’t have been worse, though it is part of the reason why this appearance is so notable – Action Comics 309 came out a week after JFK’s assassination in Texas.

Now, before I get comments and e-mails about the bajillion examples I missed, keep in mind that I couldn’t list every single instance of one of our leaders making an appearance in a comic book.  After all of my research, these were the ones that kept popping up the most.  And, for the most part, I think they serve as worthy representatives of a comic book tradition that really shows no signs of letting up for as long as we have presidents in these United States.  And I’m sure that we’ll continue to see them portrayed both sincerely, as well as satirically.

Or we could just get Lex Luthor as president again.

The Don doesn’t get sworn in.  He gets sworn at.

It’s Tuesday evening again, and time for yet another tea session with yers truly. If you’re anything like me, all those last-minute holiday tasks you thought you’d already knocked out are suddenly smacking you hard in the face, and you don’t have time to read reviews or rants.

But maybe you’d just like a little bit of quickie holiday cheer? Well, Santa Marlink is here to help! Here’s a few webcomics that are currently running holiday-themed strips and/or storylines:

Basic Instructions instructs us on how to be gracious with our gifts and non-murdering of others during the holidays (use the “Recent Instructions” column on the right to find gift-related comics).

The Draconia Chronicles gives its annual presentation of how the Tigers and Dragons (and certain sneaky Foxes) put aside their differences–more or less–and celebrate the holidays.

Kevin and Kell, presenting the Domain version of the movie A Christmas Story.

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria answers letters from Santa and tells the story of “How the Osama Stole Christmas!”

Penny Arcade gives us another classic tale: “How the Illithid Stole Lolthmas.”

Sluggy Freelance shows how “FUNderful” the holidays are(n’t) in a city where a constant state of cheer is required by law year-round, and eggnog is administered via injection. So merry!

West Corner of the Park hopes you have a punderful Christmas!

I know other comics usually do a little somethin’ special for Christmas Day, but I can’t predict the future. Yet.

And if holiday atrocities are more your thing, check out the culinary crimes against the season over at the “Cake Wrecks” blog!

Back to last-minute shopping for me (I should instate a rule that if you don’t tell me you’re giving me a present until AFTER December 5th, you don’t get one in return). Don’t let the holiday humbugs bite! (Too hard.)

This post is coming to you in the midst of “technical difficulties.” By which I mean, my computer has currently forgotten how to boot up, and while praying the backups of my three seven-year-old hard drives are mostly up to date, I’m trying to figure out how to navigate my significant other’s non-ergonomic keyboard and smaller monitor. Please report any typos or other errors to 1-800-EAT-CRAP, okay? Thanks!

Not having access to my own files, I’m having to write this without any notes. Which, let’s be honest, I was gonna do anyways. But now I have an excuse!

This past Saturday, I got to experience my first art/fan jam, for fans of the webcomic The Draconia Chronicles. Now, I know Donnie Sturges (writer) and Danny Valentini (artist) outside of the comic. We’re all buds; we hang, we be chillin’. I know where they live and I watch them sleep. So it was pretty much a normal Saturday of hanging out for me, just with a few extra strangers present. About a dozen of us artists, friends, and fans assembled at a local restaurant, where we talked shop and drew pictures until the dirty looks of the restaurant staff could no longer be ignored (I kid–they knew in advance we’d be there all evening). Donnie and Danny even gave us a sneak peek at the next couple of pages in the comic and dropped a few hints about future events…niftin’, eh?

Normally when I’m in the company of other webcomic fans, it’s as an audience member at a panel during some convention or other. We don’t really interact with one another. We’re too busy asking questions of the artists. Once the panel’s done, we all go our separate ways and don’t really ever get to know one another. This was the first time I’d ever been able to associate with my fellow fans in such an open setting. Instead of quietly listening to the artists talk for the hour or two most panels run, we were all speaking to each other (and usually all at the same time). I saw fans that I typically see at Draconia panels, such as the Überfan who has every page of Draconia printed out and saved in a folder (complete with the comic’s title and credits on the cover, written in the Daedric runes from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion). But this time–and for the first time–it was one another we were interacting with, rather than just the artists.

More than one person commented that this fan jam was better than a convention panel. We had food, new friends, and none of the embarrassment of raising your voice in a busy panel room and asking a question that had just been answered five minutes before. Plus, ya gotta love not having to buy a convention pass in order to mingle!

I’ve seen jams hosted by other artists, and now I can totally see the appeal. If you’re looking for a good way to interact with your fanbase that doesn’t involve packing up your car and driving fifteen hours to an overpriced hotel, and doesn’t involve fighting with convention staff to respond to your emails as to whether or not you have a confirmed panel room…yeah, definitely consider looking into a local meet-up. They’re low stress (at least for us fans!) and a heckuva lotta casual fun.

Tune in next time, when I may or may not have tossed my computer into a ravine.

When I do webcomic reviews, it’s mostly to show my love for a comic that I feel doesn’t get enough exposure.* But what about when a comic I love is already popular enough that I probably can’t tell you webcomic fans anything about it that you don’t already know?

*That doesn’t mean I’ll never write reviews for comics I don’t like. But for my past reviews, I’ve just gone through my regular reading list of comics–and I don’t tend to keep reading things that have stayed past their welcome with me. That said, I actually do have a review in mind for a webcomic that I gave up on, but as it’s only a few months old, I’m giving it half a year to improve before I make with the frowny-faces. Fair’s fair.

Originally, I planned to just leave off reviewing these ceWebrities of webcomic fame and only mention them in terms of comic news and what-have-you. Still, though, I couldn’t escape the desire to blow these guys’ horns. In order to satisfy myself without beating too many deceased equines, I’ve settled on a compromise: the mini-review.

This time, I’m singing the praises of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius (with colourist Cheyenne Wright), a success story in print as well as online. Girl Genius has in the past been nominated for the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards, the Eisner Award, the Hugo Awards, and the Eagle Awards; it’s won a Hugo and numerous WCCA categories. The Foglios themselves are no strangers to art fans. Phil Foglio is probably most famous for providing his uniquely-styled illustrations to the MythAdventures series of books by Robert Lynn Asprin, as well as creating former Dragon Magazine comic series What’s New with Phil & Dixie (which you should really check out on the Foglio’s website, along with Girl Genius and the equally-entertaining Buck Godot!) See? There’s some serious talent behind this print-comic-turned-webcomic-turned-print-comic! That alone should be enough to persuade anyone who’s heard of Girl Genius but never checked it out to take a look.

But we all like pretty pictures, right? And I did say that Phil’s art style is unique…extremely unique. If you’ve seen his work before, you’ll instantly recognize it again. Combine Phil’s art with the colouring talent of Cheyenne Wright, and you’ve got a lovely little vision of sequential art to massage your eyeballs. Let’s take a look at the art of Girl Genius, in which the Foglios’ love of Victorian-era dress and culture and steampunk are allowed to roam freely. (Kaja invented the term “gaslamp fantasy” to describe the comic’s less punky, but no less steamy, setting. I don’t mean “steamy” in the saucy way, either. I mean it in the “Water plus heat equals steam. The world can be saved by steam!” way.) Girl Genius takes place in a version of Europe where mad scientists known as “Sparks” run rampant with their minions and twisted creations. When the heroes of your comic are mostly inventors with tenuous grips on sanity at best, problem solving tends to take on new and amusing levels of meaning. Let’s pull out that art and allow me to illustrate (hehe) with a recent storyline:

The disembodied voice in the second panel talking about tours is the voice of the mostly-insane castle/fortress/mad laboratory the characters are currently trying to repair…so that its homicidal behaviour is directed against, well, pretty much anyone OTHER than the guys doing the repair job.

But the life of a Spark is not all fun and games and dissecting of brains. When you muck about with the very forces that hold our world together, you’re bound to run into a bit of backlash. One of the Sparks, a prince named Tarvek, ends up with the contagious lethal disease Hogfarb’s Resplendent Immolation, which apparently turns its victims all sorts of pretty, pretty colours before death (which may involve spontaneous combustion, or may just lead to a literal meltdown of the body). And also makes them delirious. But really, who notices the difference when the infected is a mad scientist?

And how do you treat a terminal illness? Well, if you’re ALSO a Spark, the solution is easy: you hook yourself up to the sufferer to stabilize him (which also gives you his symptoms), move his brain into a nice safe jar or something for storage, then kill him, drain his blood, decontaminate it, and then bring him back to life, at which point he’ll be good as new! Simple, huh? I wonder why doctors never use this treatment in our world….

Hijinks ensue, of course, and our heroine Agatha Heterodyne ends up catching the disease herself. Which rather complicates matters, as she was the one who was going to be treating both Tarvek and rival noble Gilgamesh Wulfenbach (who did the hooking up of himself to Tarvek in order to stabilize–and rationalise–him). Oh, you wacky Sparks! But this also brings out the “romance” part of the comic’s tagline, “Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!” Our two rich boys are both gunning for Agatha’s affections, which means putting her health before theirs:

If you’ve fallen behind (or, gods forbid, never started) reading, how can you not want to read this comic after all that? Have you no sense of adventure? Have you no love of romance? Have you no obsession with MAD SCIENCE!?

Well, now, even without doing character bios and exposition of the overarching plot and whatnot, this Girl Genius “mini-review” was still a bit longer than you’d expect a “mini” to be. But that just shows you how enthusiastic I am about the work of the Foglios and Wright!

Greetings, Banana Splits!

There comes a time in every child’s life when they must put away childish things and become an adult…

…or they can say “To Hell with that” and continue to have fun by going to conventions like Nekocon.

Guess which one I did this past weekend?

To be fair, I was there in an official capacity, as my partner-in-crime Danny Valentini and I were invited to the convention again this year to be guests.  Supposedly, we do this web comic together called “The Draconia Chronicles” that grows in popularity every year.  Now, I would just chalk this up to rumor for now, because everyone knows that there are no such things as web comics.  That’s just a story parents tell their children at night to scare them so that they won’t grow up to get online degrees.

You should know the drill by now – I do a quick recap of my weekend at a convention, you skim over it feeling unfulfilled, then we both reluctantly agree that we need to see other people as we give back all the items we borrowed or gave to each other.

I’m still waiting to get back my copy of the “The White Album.”

As con Fridays go, this year’s Neko offered pretty much the standard fare – I show up at the convention center about two hours before the Opening Ceremonies.  Heading up to the “Con-Ops” room, I procure my Guest badge.  After some spirited conversation about topics I have no recollection of discussing, I make a dotted bee-line for our table in the Artists Alley.  I say dotted because one can never just go to where they are going at a convention.  Invariably, there will be many stops and restarts as you run into old friends for a quick chat, pose for pictures, stop to take pictures, notice something shiny, pause to ponder the secrets of the universe, stop because you’re chewing gum, or hesitate because the all-powerful con gods sent a messenger to you with a gift consisting of this confection called “Pocky”.  And no, I don’t mean the owner of Spwug.

As I survey the landscape of the cavernous region known as the Artists Alley, I catch up with more fellow AA (not Alcoholics Anonymous) commoners as I wait for my cohort to arrive.  I also wait for time to slowly transport me into the future, for that is where the Opening Ceremonies await me.

When the Hour of Trying to Fool People Into Thinking You Are Someone Important in Front of a Medium-Sized Crowd is finally at hand, my recently arrived partner-in-crime and I make our way into the even more cavernous region where the Ceremonies are to take place.  After a series of horrible attempts at humor that are the reason my parents gave me up for adoption, Danny and I – fully convinced that no one knew who the heck we were – remove ourselves and head back over to “Con-Ops”, where we trade our silly old Guest badges for shinier and cooler “Neko Bazaar” badges.  With renewed vigor, we return to the first cavernous area of which I had already mentioned previously.  From there, we set up our table, and begin the attempt to peddle our wares for the rest of the evening.  And that, little Christopher, is how babies are born.

Saturday finds us arriving early, long before noon’s rising sun can greet us.  We have a panel to host and candy tied to strings so that we can lure entice the con masses to our little panel room.  We are able to capture accrue a respectable number of individuals despite our outlandish buffoonery on display.  In fact, I do believe that a couple of them even stop screaming long enough to ask us questions about our web comic.  I call that a success.  Then again, I call not getting maced in the face when I ask a woman the time a success.

From there, we return to our temporary abode in the Artists Alley for more shilling, more debauchery, more talky-talky…blah blah blah…  You’re already asleep, so we’ll skip ahead…

Two in the afternoon!  We have another panel!  But our princess is in another castle!  Dejected from finding yet another one of those stupid Toadstool weirdoes (where do they all come from?  Do they multiply like rabbits?), we make our way back to the same room our last panel was in.  In a strange case of déjà vu, the room looks exactly the same as the last time we were in it.  In fact, maybe this really is the first time we are in it, and the first time really wasn’t the first time, but instead a strange message from the future telling us what lie in store for our fates.

Nope, same room, different panel.

This time we are joined by real artists and writers as we try our best to sound like we know as much as they do about making web comics.  I think we have them fooled right up to the point where I mention something about the right amount of tension needed on a loom when interweaving the threads of a web comic.  I’m not sure where the audience got the pitch forks and torches, but it makes for an exciting conclusion to what I think was a successful panel.

As my counterpart and I make our escape back to the Caverns of AA, we easily slip back into our respective roles – he’s the DJ and I’m the rapper.  Sales seem to be going well on our new “Men of the Quadratic Equation” calendar, as well as a few other items we have somehow managed to fool the commonfolk into believing have magical powers – mainly some Shamwow!s, as well as a few pounds of Mighty Putty.  Throughout the afternoon and evening we get several con-goers who stop by claiming to be fans of our web comic.  But, I know the truth.  After being visited by them as often as I am, you tend to recognize evil spirits when they show up to haunt you and ask you for favors.

It is at this point that I also have a vision that my wife is in an 80s glam-pop band.  I shiver from the delusion, then down a couple burgers that are really cookies.  My life is strange.

The greatest highlight of Saturday has to be in the evening when we go to dinner.  It isn’t often when an evil spirit actually tries to get you drunk so that they can take advantage of you.  Joke’s on him, though.  I would have said yes sober.

Sunday seems to be a blur.  No, I mean every Sunday seems to be a blur.  I think my brain just hates living in my cranial cavity so much that it just decides to shut down every seventh day as a middle finger to me and my ancestors.  I can’t fathom why.  I mean, it isn’t my fault that the Waltons aren’t real.

Now that I think about it, I do seem to recall some events took place on Neko’s Day of Sun.  We have a final panel wherein we are usurped by dark forces who yank the proverbial rug out from under us by yanking the actual rug out from under us.  I think we still manage to do a fairly adequate job of teaching the wailing masses how not to create or develop characters.  At least, I pray to Bill Cosby that we did.

A few more hours of trying to prove to the con folk that we are not wax statues and the con is officially over.  As my main squeeze who is not my wife but is really the artist who draws the web comic I scribble words for and I break down and cry our set-up at the table in the AA Caverns, we say our goodbyes to a few of the fellow artists who were crazy enough to talk to us.  We make our way to the bar in the hotel that is across the way from the convention center.  I remark as we head over that a way looks an awful lot like grass and asphalt.  Once inside the bar, a friend buys me an apple pie – except that this pie is really liquid and I have to drink it instead of eat it.  But hey, in today’s economy everyone has to make sacrifices – even our American icons.  I heard that baseball is currently just gardening in order to save money.

With the evening now upon us, we make our way to Olive Garden.  There, a free meal awaits all of us who were sneaky enough to convince the staff that we were Guests Neko Bazaar attendees.  But first we stand outside the restaurant to play a game called “Parking Lot-to”.  The object of the game is to stand out in the parking lot until the number of people in your party matches the number called.  Our group makes it to the bonus round, where we win some fabulous prizes – including our meals, as well as a copy of the home game.  I can’t speak for those who are still in the parking lot after we are seated, though I’m told that “manicotti formaggio” is Italian for “convention stragglers”.

I’m glad I ordered the chicken alfredo.

The Don would like to give his heartfelt thanks to everyone at Nekocon for their gracious generosity and hopes to be invited back next year!