Fetch A Pail Of Water

Groverfield T-Shirt and MORE in the HijiNKS ENSUE STORE!

Actually it was Microsoft that emailed me about being able to watch Jack And Jill on my Xbox. At first I thought it was a threat. Like if I didn’t sign up for Xbox Live Gold they were going to somehow forcibly push Adam Sandler’s most recent unforgivable curse into my home. I immediately started digging through my pockets to see how much cash I had on hand. Maybe it I crammed it in the heat vents on my router I could convince them to stem the foul tide they were threatening to unleash on my otherwise unsullied by Sandler home. Even if Microsoft are contractually obligated to offer Jack and Jill to Xbox users as some sort of assisted suicide outreach program, the option to initiate the stream should be buried a hundred submenus deep, hidden behind dozens of “Are you sure” buttons, “do you realize what’s going to happen if you keep replying in the affirmative” check boxes and perhaps a dragon. A dragon with a thousand flaming dicks. I’m all for freedom of choice, but sometimes you have to save people from themselves.

I’m trying some new things with my art and posting a bit of the experimenting and progress on my Tumblr. Go follow that thing if you follow such things. Also, I posted this comic with no bubbles since I thought the fire was pretty.

I don’t care about arbitrary webcomic popularity contests, but David does and I don’t want him to win. So go vote for me, or anyone else besides David.

COMMENTERS: Adam Sandler used to make some extremely funny movies in the 90’s. Now it’s like he just wants to watch the world burn. Who else (movies, music or otherwise) used to produce high quality entertainment but traded it in for big money and watered down mass appeal?

Get Off My Lido Deck!

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this “Fighting Time Lords” shirt! Wiblum Wablum Tempus Wempus!

MAN, it feels good to be drawing comics again. After a week of guest comics, and two weeks of Fancy Photo Comics I am pleased to be back putting pen to pixels. Still, I thought it best to transition from thinking about NOTHING BUT JoCo Cruise Crazy for the last month with a cruise-related comic.

The old people on the cruise (Snorks, as we called them) seemed to be on vacation solely to have different shit to complain about. They said some truly and remarkably horrible things. Many of them racist. Most of the dialog above is a direct Snork quote with slight to extreme embellishments. Honestly I don’t really remember which Snorkisms were real and which we made up any more. By the end of the week we were hearing a bunch of heinous and terrible stuff as well as coming up with a bunch of heinous and terrible stuff. It’s all sort of blurred together. Or rather blended in a tall frosty glass with a pretty paper umbrella, a wedge of pineapple and not an ounce of regret.

After a week of listening the elderly spend thousands of dollars to be upset, we sort of came to a collective conclusion. Being old is just shitty. Life, after a certain point, is complete shit and just gets shittier every single day until you die. Being awake hurts. Getting dressed hurts. Taking a crap hurts. Taking a shower is a near impossibility, hurts, and you are likely to die while doing it. This is why the extremely old get so upset about minor problems. If the one thing in your entire shitty life that is going to provide you a glimmer of happiness for 5 minutes (say, a blueberry muffin with breakfast) isn’t perfect, or isn’t available, then you pretty much have no reason not to eat a bullet right then and there. Guys, can we all agree to check out around 75? Or can we at least focus all of our medical technology and resources on developing a system of tests that tells you, within a month or so, that EVERY SINGLE DAY from a certain point onward is going to be shittier than the day before it? Then we would at least be able to make informed decisions.

Super special thanks to Wil and Atom for (from what I can remember, at least) writing half of this comic. I will leave you with a few other all too true Snorkisms:

“I took pictures when this [buffet tray] was empty! And when this one was empty, AND this one! They don’t got their SHIT together!”

“I really like this theater better before you changed it. Why did you change it?”
“I didn’t personally change it sir, so I’m not sure.”
“Well I liked it better. You shouldn’t have changed it.”

“They [the staff] tell you one thing when they really mean the other! You gotta take whatever they say AND DO THE OPPOSITE!”

“You gotta tell him [the drink waiter] that your gonna have to talk to his manager! It’s the only way they’ll listen!”

COMMENTERS: What’s the damndest thing you ever heard an elderly person say, shout, demand or otherwise enOLDen on some unsuspecting bystander? Were you on the JoCo Cruise or any other cruise? Do you have any Snorkisms of your own?

The Final Problem

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this “Fighting Time Lords” shirt for you.

@sizemore twatted a tweet so good I had to ask for permission to make it into a comic. Luckily he obliged, and thus you have the only ending to House that I will ever accept.

Before the pedanti-squad gets their pedanties all knotted up, I do know that once during season four of House “it” was, in fact, Lupus. I’m actually quite glad House is ending. It’s really the only formula driven, procedural show I’ve ever appreciated. I think the blame for that appreciation falls squarely on Hugh Laurie. He has remained consistently captivating for eight years. Even when the plot was faltering, the sidekicks were boring or the case was too fantastic to get emotionally invested in HE was the grizzled glue that held it all together. Despite my stubbley crush on the pill popping, leg limping wonder doc, I firmly believe the writers and producers of House have taken that character absolutely everywhere he could possible go. He has gone through various stages of addiction, recovery, self-destruction, and re-recovery more than a few times. He’s taken the same physical and emotional journey through the peaks and valleys of self loathing and self discovery over and over and to have him continue to circle around the depths of the human condition for 1 or 2 more years would be abusive to the character and the audience.

In all honesty, the show could have ended after season 4 and I probably would have been fine. They might have even checked out with a little more integrity at that point. The subsequent seasons have veered into territory so implausible that the ideas might as well have been borrowed from rejected Nip/Tuck scripts. Still, they somehow managed to real in the crazy and keep things interesting without resorting to too much sensationalism.

The problem with House is that it has always asked the audience to suspend disbelief in order to allow for a character that in any sane world would have long since died by his own actions or those of someone who has spent any length of time in his company, or at the very least been completely abandoned by anyone and everyone he had ever worked with or known personally. The show has explored each of these ideas multiple times, but the consequences never seem to stick. No matter how smart he is, no matter how many lives he’s saved, House would have been fired from PPTH in the first season and had his medical license permanently revoked. It gets harder and harder to ignore this fact as the show goes on since he starts committing felony after felony and goes essentially unpunished. Even after he basically attempts to murder his girlfriend/boss and her entire family he gets a truncated prison sentence, a slap on the wrist AND his old job back. I think the writers found it harder and harder to reset the show back to its basic premise after each consecutive escalation of insanity. If it were to continue any longer, house would have to assassinate the president with a tank, then somehow be elected president himself.

OK, I would totally watch that show.

COMMENTERS: What show that you enjoyed just went on at least a season too long? When should it have ended? I bet more than a few of you are going to say Supernatural season 5. For me it was Heroes, after season 1 and Nip/Tuck after season 2. I would also have accepted a straight up cancellation of LOST after season 3, since none of the unanswered questions up until that point were EVER answered in the remaining 3 seasons.

ALSO: Check out what I made for Josh’s 30th birthday.

You can now purchase a super high quality 11×17″ print of any HE comic by clicking the “Buy A Print” button between the “Previous” and “Next” buttons in the navigation menu. If you don’t see it, try refreshing your browser cache.

Built Like A Dick Wheelhouse

NEWT FOR PRESIDENT!!! GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU BITCH!!!

My friend Corn Mo tweeted something that inspired this comic. Philip K. Dick is certainly a prolific sci-fi author, but he does dance around four or five core concepts in most of his work. It’s not surprising that the issues he wrote about (paranoia, the definition of reality, the machinations of the supposed puppet masters behind the curtain, what it means to be human, the threat of war, etc) were the very things that plagued his addled mind. He also had a penchant for overly verbose titles. Had Radiohead’s OK Computer actually been inspired by Dick, I assume it would have been titled Alright, Computer. Let’s Do This Thing. Let’s Get This Show On The Road.

I’ve said before that the concept of a Blade Runner sequel doesn’t offend me. That’s a rich world and I’m sure there are more stories to be told. The idea that Deckard (Harrison Ford) would be in the sequel, however, makes me want to [ZOOM/ENHANCE] SHIT MY LUNGS OUT OF MY FACE. What a great way to completely invalidate one of the most important ambiguous movie endings in all of geek culture. Of course we all KNOW Deckard was a replicant, but the slight nagging voice in the back of our collective minds that says, “Was he? Was he really?” is part of the film’s appeal. I don’t want to see 70 year old Deckard in the sequel hooked up to 100 car batteries with a USB mod-chip plugged into his ear. Doesn’t he realize he’s going to get his IP permanently banned from Repli-net Live?

Of course, Blade Runner is one of those movies with so many OFFICIAL DEFINITIVE FINAL DIRECTOR’S cuts that you can’t even really discuss it in mixed company without first checking Wikipedia and synchronizing your memory watches. Did your version even HAVE a unicorn? No? Then we should probably talk about something else. So how’s about that local news item with the murder and whatever?

COMMENTERS: Is there a Dick story that you would love to see adapted rather than a a sequel to Blade Runner, or did The Matrix Trilogy cover (lift) essentially every original idea that Dick ever proposed (it did). Will you support a Blade Runner sequel WITH Harrison Ford?

Black Magic Woman

Wizard Pride T-Shirts at Sharksplode!

My friend Dave saw The Woman In Black and experienced a “muggle heckler” as pictured above. Some people are just so clever, they have to share it with a room full of strangers who’ve paid money to concentrate on something else.

I am never going to be able to look at Daniel Radcliffe and NOT see Harry Potter, but I don’t think that means I won’t be able to take him seriously in other roles. I will just have a harder time concentrating on whatever it is he is doing on screen that does not involve horcruxes, hippogriffs and Hagrids. Emma Watson, on the otherhand… well she has that new short haircut… and the soft skin… soooo sooooft… sooooo skinnnnnnn… [eh hem] Yeah, I think her career will be just fine. Then there’s Rupert Grint. Look, Rupe, I know a lot of guys at comic conventions all over the country and I’m sure I can get you brought in as a guest to a few of them. Have your mom call my people.

Oh, and I did something very bad on my Tumblr.

COMMENTERS: Do you think the Harry Potter kids will be taken seriously as actors beyond their magical personas, or will they get shuffled off into convention circuit oblivion? Who do you think is the best example of a child star overcoming their “big” role? Which actors were you never able to see as anything but the role that made them famous?