Category Archives: Comics
Forgot About Bay
By Michael Bay
What the fuck is this fucking shit? Avengers crushes the record for opening weekend gross? They took the record that I earned with my blood, sweat, and cinematic seminal fluids from me?
You come at me, Michael Bliz-ow Bli-zay, the one summer I take off to gather my strength to make a comedy and prep for Transformers 4: a World without Shia, and you think I wouldn’t notice?
You think you’re the fucking king of summer, Avengers? You think Bliggity Bay get soft?
Now you want to run around, talking about breakdancing robots tearing each other arms off, like I ain’t got none? You think I sold them all, just because I’m well off?
Think you can talk that shit like it won’t get back to me? Like I’m not everywhere?
Motherfuckers think you can forget about Bay?
War, it is.
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The Watchmen Thing
I am a comic book fan.
I’ve been reading since I was six. I still have that issue of Uncanny X-Men with Wolverine and Gambit on the cover that started this whole mess.
I have many, many, many opinions on the whole Watchmen debacle.
I don’t think they should do it.
All right, so maybe just the one opinion.
I’m going to attempt to elucidate this opinion for you here without swearing non-stop or turning into an entitled fan.
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Arkham City’s Ending: “The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same…”
Batman: Arkham City’s major flaw was repetitive, uninspired boss fights which culminated in a final confrontation with the Joker where you punch him a lot. The conclusion, where a Titan-infused (Think Bane’s venom formula) Joker takes you on one-on-one, didn’t do justice to the rest of the game’s atmosphere and “strike from the darkness” gameplay. The sequel Arkham City seems to have taken heed to fans’ complaints. Not only do the boss fights vary, but writer Paul Dini gives a story so conclusive that it will keep the series from falling into the same repetitive, “nothing ever changes” cycle the comics that inspired it suffer from.
It’s going to get real spoilery in here. Go buy this game. Beat it. Explode into your Robin underoos. Come back and read this.
The Strange Case of The “Shut Up, Little Man!” Phenomenon
When evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, he intended it for one, very specific purpose: to describe how ideas or behaviors could spread within a society and change over time through the process of natural selection.
The premise of memetics (or the study of memes) was a simple one: ideas that are interesting and novel tend to flourish and propagate, while the bad ones disappear into obscurity. These “good” ideas are then passed on to other people, who modify them as they try to understand them. They, in turn, bestow their own version of the idea onto others, and the cycle begins anew. And so it has gone for thousands of years.
But then audio cassettes, camcorders, and the Internet were invented.
Suddenly, anyone could reproduce exact copies of their voice, writing or image with very little cost or difficulty. There was no mutation, only replication. The tools of mass media were now in the hands of those who consumed it. It was no longer an organic evolution of ideas. It was a revolution.
Dawkins went out the window.
Flash forward thirty years. Today, our concept of a “meme” is usually a grainy video we watched online this morning of a teenager shattering his pelvis in a parkour accident, or perhaps a painfully addictive looping animation of a singing cat with a Pop Tart body zooming through space.
In filmmaker Matthew Bate’s provocative new documentary, Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, we’re given a front row seat to the birthing pains of what is now known as the “viral” pop-culture phenomenon, back in the early days of pre-online America.
The Time Garfield Soared (By Dying In An Apocalypse)
Jim Davis’ Garfield is the rice cake of newspaper comic strips: bland, manufactured by machines, and devoid of all nutrients and artificial sweeteners. It is there to fill you until you get to Foxtrot or Get Fuzzy elsewhere on the page. Amidst the decades of lasagna jokes, there was a week when Jim Davis got deep as a fucking well.
That may be exaggerating, but when the rest of your work has never pushed any boundaries other than perhaps offending The Society Against Seeing Spiders Smashed With A Newspaper, anything of substance like a large leap up.
This brings us to October 23, 1989 wherin Garfield wakes up in a wasteland, left to wander the Earth alone much like a Stephen King gunslinger.
Sexy Sexism in Comics; Also, Sex. Part One!
I love comic books. And I love women. In fact, I’d say that they are my two favorite things to look at and spend money on.
Just kidding. Who buys comics anymore AMIRITE?!!
There’s been a lot of rumbling lately about the problem of sexism in comics. I’ll be the first to admit it’s an issue, but it’s kind of unfair to single-out comics when it comes to sexism. (refer to Dolce and Gabbana ad, above)
“But Ryan”, you may say, “Just look at the way women are drawn! And what about the fact that women are always given the defensive powers, rather than offensive? Also its sort of hard to to believe you after you referred to women as “things” in the first line?” And to you I would say: THAT WAS A TEST. You passed. Now claim your prize by reading on, as we look at what’s wrong, what’s right, and what we (read: everyone but me. I’M writing a BLOG) can do about it. Buckle up, true believer-ettes, it’s gonna be a sexy, bumpy, sex-bumpy ride.
Today’s installment: COMICS ARE SEXIST
A Breakdown of Hidden Meanings in Penny Arcade’s New Webcomic, “The Trenches”
Approximately three weeks ago, the creators of the popular video game webcomic Penny Arcade announced they were forming a partnership with Scott Kurtz, the rival creator of another popular video game webcomic called PvP.
Together, they would be collaborating on an exciting new online project. This experiment promised to break boundaries, rewrite narrative tradition and usher audiences into a new age of art and illustration.
After countless speculation, this undertaking was soon revealed to be… another video game webcomic.
A webcomic called The Trenches.
Thus far, a total of five entries have been released under the Trenches’ relatively young banner. In the following essay, it is my aim to examine and illuminate the profound metadata woven throughout these few digital pages and show the astonishing complexity that this webcomic already challenges us with.
Some of you may balk at this article. You might claim it is too early to provide any formal analysis of a work that’s still in its relative infancy, let alone this one. I respectfully disagree.
I will demonstrate not only that The Trenches stands apart from its predecessors, but that by sheer richness of content, it surpasses all others in the pantheon of webcomics and, I daresay, can stand proudly amongst the grand output of all contemporary human culture.
Let us begin.
Comic #1: “Isaac” (8/9/11)
In “Isaac”, we are given a brief (but telling) first glimpse of our protagonist, Isaac Cox. At a glance, this might appear to be a simple (if somewhat unmemorable) character introduction and nothing more. Man drives up. Man faxes resume. Man gives blithe joke to fulfill requirements of 3-panel structure.
I implore you to look again. Read the rest of this entry
Nonstop Karate
Chad Quandt
Adam Kornya
Kyle McVey
Joey Reinisch
mattloman
Nick the Goat
Aaron J. Waltke
ryanadamwells
