Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Up and Atom

These days I don't have as much free time to check out the the standard comic news site as I used to. Thanks to the sharp eye of Franklin's Findings I now know that DC Comics is planning on releasing an Archive edition of the old Charlton heroes. I'm really pleasantly surprised that DC is publishing reprints of their more obscure, less popular material, like The Doom Patrol, Challengers of the Unknown, Enemy Ace and Supergirl, to name a few. Now that I have a job, maybe I can even begin to buy a few.
posted by Steven at 7:31 AM

 
April Fool's - The Aftermath

As David Fiore hints at, my April Fool's post was originally written to emulate his style and was supposed to appear on Motime yesterday. Due to unforseen circumstances, all entirely my fault, this was not to be. The funniest part about my post is that the only sentiment for which I was sincere was in my appreciation of Family Circus. When David says he enjoys Family Circus, it's funny. When I say it, it's the Truth. In a similiar vein is The Hurting's overview of Secret Wars II. How can anyone make fun of gold, especially when there's a skyscraper made of it?

In case you missed it, Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog has the complete rundown on the "comic blogosphere's" assorted pranks. I'd like to point out a few favourites. Gambitfan1987's Progressive Ruin went all out, but as usual, the best part was a small detail. The Ultimate Comic Blogroll reversed everyone's blog title, which prompted Gambitfan1987 to reverse his title to make it stick out in its normality. Killer. I was so inspired by the simplicity of Gambitfan1987's prank that I temporarily changed my own blog title to Mxyzptlk so that when it appeared backwards I would go back to the Fifth Dimension, or something equally geeky and off-putting.

The one that put me over the edge and nearly made me choke was Pop Culture Gadabout's take-off on a post at Franklin's Findings.

Kraka-Thooooom!
posted by Steven at 8:31 PM

 
Free Comic Thursday - The Greatest Comic. Ever.

Dearest friends and colleagues, I have reached a conclusion concerning the validity of spandex-clad four-colour adventuring, one which has dramatically shifted the very paradigm upon which I have devoted my life's studies. In the plainest language possible, superheroes ain't all that.

For years now I have been brutally victimized by short-sighted activists for the sequential arts who insist on pushing their purely subjective tastes upon me. All this time I have considered their whimsically demented advances as the sole province of the ignorant hipster. No more! All these wasted years searching for a modicum of intelligence within superhero comics while knowing deep within my soul that such fancies do not exist. Mature thought cannot be contained within that frail form, nay, in any comic but one, and one alone. I refer you to that circular piece of comic genius, Bil Keane's Family Circus, a work of art which I dealt with once before, but which no doubt fell on deaf ears. And could there possibly be a better time to re-examine this masterpiece then now, only days after the announcement that later this year the complete run of Family Circus cartoons will finally begin publication, as well as all of Keane's earlier formative strips as compiled by the Bil Keane museum?

I will admit, before the past year I had not read this fine piece of literature, or rather, I had not read it since before the advent of Thel's new haircut (As an aside, Thel is the "yummy mummy" of the Family Circus, and it took many hours of solitary meditation in my bonsai garden in order for me to look at Thel's shapely figure without succumbing to the affliction known as the Male Gaze. Say no more!). As you are aware, David Fiore has been wrestling with the ramnifications of The Unknowable Other as presented in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, a concept he has coined as "Not Me", the antithesis of the existence we find within our own skins. A snippet from his blog.

Rose is surely right to argue that we tell stories (even if it's only to ourselves) in order to prove that "the Me" exists; however, that same process poses a constant threat to the "Not Me", and it's important to remain aware of this fact.

Maestro Bil Keane understands this all too well. In his strip, "Not Me" is not simply an intangible concept falling somewhere outside of the human senses, but is portrayed as a character in its own right. Which is not to say that "Not Me" is made entirely manifest within Keane's narrative, no. Keane uses the unique properties of the comic medium to keep "Not Me" on an entirely different plane of reality from the rest of the family. Known, but ultimately unknowable. This specter, "Not Me", is not merely a scapegoat for Jeffy's vandalism, but is imagination set free to roam invisibly within Keane's quaint suburban household, seen only by us, the reader, though even we cannot completely confirm its presence. To make "Not Me" any more real would endanger its very existence. To make it any less so would endanger ours. I would say more on the subject, but I must keep at least a few thoughts for my upcoming dissertation.

In fact, Family Circus has what is quite possibly the world's largest and most devoted group of scholars and critics. Not for these stalwart souls the dusty tomes of academia. No, their muse is Family Circus, and their method of delivery is via reviews on Amazon.com. For example, one of the many reviewers for Keane's seminal work, What Does This Say, has this to offer.

There can be no doubt that Keane is constantly exploring new depths -- and new surfaces, as well -- a point that has eluded his Phallo-Nietzchean critics up until now. It will be hundreds of years before this book will be understood by the general public -- and there are perhaps five intellectuals, worldwide, who understand it now, most of them at the Sorbonne and therefore unintelligible.

Take that, Comics Journal!

If you value your humanity, you will expose yourself to the wonders and glory of the Family Circus. Of especial interest are the ham-fisted homages perpetrated by lesser mortals as posted on the Family Circus website, placed there more out of pity then anything else. Keane has tried to help these poor lost souls by regularly "ghosting" a someone else's strip, thereby bringing them unimaginable, and undeserved, exposure. Case in point, the infamous Family Circus/Zippy The Pinhead crossover. Family Circus was even a participant in the Great April Fools Switcheroonie of '97, in which 40 newspaper cartoonists, without warning, traded slots for the day. Bil Keane contributed his mighty drawing style to Dilbert, as well as referencing the event in the next day's panel, while the decades-long narrative which Family Circus had achieved was very nearly derailed by that day's guest-artist.

Please disregard everything I have said previously on this blog about gaudy superheroes and their ilk. In the coming weeks I will open your eyes and minds to the splendor that is Family Circus, starting with how the representation of Billy's path as a simple dotted line is indicitive of Humankind's inability to shed its own dark past as touched on in Emerson's acclaimed The Dialect of Phantasmagoria. This may seem to be in violation of the dictates of the unjustly obscure Belgian philosopher Albert Merjsters, but when examined more closely, we can see the many similarities, not least of which is the visible made indivisible, if you catch my drift. Also, did the Family Circus pet canine Barfy make a pre-emptive appearance in my second favourite romance novel, Caldwell's The Lighthouse Keeper of Scarsdale Cove? We shall never know, for that book does not exist, nor does Emerson's The Dialect of Phantasmagoria or Albert Merjsters. In fact, the vast majority of material presented on this blog in the last few months have been fabrications and lies, and not one of you have stepped up and taken me to task. Who is responsible for such misleading obfuscation and irresponsible chicanery? The answer is simple, my friends.

Not Me.
posted by Steven at 2:48 PM

 
Jeepers Creepers

CBC's experiental shorts show Zed has a creeptacular little video called The Cat With Hands. I find that even when filmakers mix live-action with stop-motion animation for purposes that aren't horrific, the shaky dissonance of the merge often makes the viewer uncomfortable anyway, so it's nice to see someone take that eerie feeling and make it work for them.
posted by Steven at 1:26 PM

 
Keep On

"My rationale was that no matter how bad I might come across, I couldn't suffer by comparison." - Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on taking his future wife to a screening of Crumb on their first date.
posted by Steven at 3:32 AM

 
Pay attention, Humanoids. Maybe you'll learn something.

"I tell you what I’m really interested in doing is to somehow have a syndicated comic strip about me. Everything I do would just backfired. You call it The Brain and have all these different wrestlers from the past or future involved. It would be a neat cartoon like the Wizard of Id." - From an interview with legendary wrestling manager, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.
posted by Steven at 12:11 AM

 
Mission to Mars - Part 3

I have learned many things from my dear friend and life partner, former bible college student turned atheist ukelele superstar Douglas Nagy (Check out his song Loki, which describes the many ways Thor's nemesis has plagued humanity, cackling introduction by yours truly). I have learned 47 of the 150 yellow belts of Nagitsu, which consists of only elbows, knees and headbutts. I have learned to love Beta Ray Bill. And, I have learned the fine art of haggling.

When it came to my turn, the owner of Mars went comic by comic, placing them in piles according to price. With each title came a moment of indecision. A copy of Jonah Hex which looked like it had sat there for years, plainly marked at $1, was priced at $3. He explained that this title was quite popular. A comic starring Betty Boop with half its cover torn off? A collector's item at $5. The first issue of Fangoria, found folded in half under a cardboard box and two dozen Omega Men comics with no protection? A steal at $50, though he did toy with the idea of making it $250. I didn't really care enough about most of the comics I had brought up to bother putting up a fight, so I concentrated on those I did, namely the Archies and a couple of DC Digests. At first he wanted $2 apiece for the coverless Archies, and $5 for the Digests. It took another twenty minutes for the two of us to come to an agreement which, admittedly, only one of us was really very happy with.

All in all, if that's how your tastes run, I can't recommend Mars highly enough. And if you choose not to support such fine independent businesses as Mars, well, I don't want to hear any complaining when the robots take over. Beep beep boop.
posted by Steven at 5:47 PM