Variations On A Theme

Team Edward [James Olmos] Shirts at Topatoco!

I recorded a podcast with Alex and Roger, which will be uploaded over the weekend, and this [what you see in the panels above] just sort of happened after we stopped recording. I thought it was amusing enough to share. Perhaps I thought wrong. Perhaps I thought not wrong enough, and perhaps even too right. Time will never tell and history shall not be the judge, for this is an insignificant matter and history has a lot of judging on its plate already.

If you are curious as to why I have M.A.S.K. [look HERE and HERE if you are unfamiliar] on the brain, I have been spending a lot of time watching the intros to 80’s cartoon shows on YouTube… for… research. If that fact raises even further questions, rest assured those of you that preordered HE Book 2 will soon learn the reason why. Those of you that did not may continue to wallow in dispair and confusion.

I am headed out of town to visit family, so the Friday Lo-FiJINKS comic will likely be posted late Friday night or possibly Saturday. I’m still getting used to the increased comic output schedule, but I hope you are enjoying it.

COMMENTERS: What was your favorite 80’s cartoon theme song? Which was the worst? Which was the best-worst-most-over-the-top-hair-metal-explode-a-ganza?

The New Colossus

The Royal Geeks of The British Empire:
British Knights Shirts at Topatoco!

I think the Mayor of Detroit is being a little short-sighted in rejecting a statue of Robocop in his city. From what I can gather from alarmist headlines and hearsay, Detroit is an apocalyptic wasteland governed by packs of stray dogs. The “Mayor” serves at their pleasure and only in a ceremonial capacity. A statue of Robocop right in the middle of downtown would remind the looting and pillaging citizens of the possibility of a brighter tomorrow. A future where, if you commit a crime, a cyborg will shoot you with a machine gun. And what about jobs? Since American cars get 4 miles to the gallon and blow up if you so much as look at them, one can only assume the job situation in The Motor City is pretty dier. Instead of a simple statue, the Robocop tribute could be a full on RocoComplex! Imagine it! A 400 ft. tall colossus straddling both halves of the city, with floor after floor of housing, government offices, shopping, parking garages, and a 40 story penthouse up in his helmet that overlooks the city from his visor. This could transform Detroit forever. Every day at Noon an Earth-shattering “FREEEEZE DIRRRT BAAAGGGG!” would bellow from his face, letting the city know it was safe from the canine menace below. Oh, yeah… once the people move into the RoboComplex, the wild dogs really start to tear shit up at street level.

Batman and Robin was also filmed here in Dallas. I propose a 40 ft. tall codpiece overlooking the arts district. Who do I talk to about this?

UPDATE:

COMMENTERS: What other towns need statues based on their famous movies? How about a Lethal Weapon tribute in L.A.? It could say, “I’m getting to old for this shit,” in Latin under bronze busts of Riggs and Murtaugh. Or maybe a right outside of N.Y.C. and L.A. there can be a granite tribute to Snake Pliskin escaping each city. Personally I want to see a monument to the Ghostbusters bringing the Statue of Liberty to life in Ghostbusters 2 erected on Staten Island on top of the regular Statue of Liberty. Actually it should be just at the edge of Staten Island, stepping into the water. “Your love! Keeps liftin’ me! Your love is liftin’ me, HIGHER AND HIGH-ER!”

NEW IN THE VAULT: There are 9 new hi-res mobile wallpapers in the HE Vault. They are sized for iPhone Retina displays but will work nicely with any smartphone.
[click image to embiggen]

Just Before The Dawn

Ewok Stare Shirts at Topatoco!

I know this comic doesn’t make any sense. At Shitty Movie night at Josh IRL’s house we watched Mutant Zombie Vampires From The ‘Hood, starring one Mr. C. Thomas Howell. During a particularly unsexy “sex” scene featuring Mr. Howell I yelled out Josh’s lines from panels 2 and 3 above. Those familiar with Howell’s work in Red Dawn should be somewhat less perplexed than those who aren’t. The aforementioned 98% of you that aren’t should feel free to remain confused and keep making that face. Yes. That’s the one.

MZVFTH would be an excellent Shitty Movie Night flick if not for two major drawbacks: 1) The dialog is almost completely inaudible. While this doesn’t normally affect your potential enjoyment of this type of movie, it gets old really quick. Especially because the gun shot sound effects (both of them) are played at ear splitting levels roughly 100,000 times over 90 minutes. And 2) The film does not contain the titular vampires. It seems to contain mutants which could be construed as zombies, actual zombies, and possibly even mutant zombies. But it doesn’t contain any sort of vampire. Though the characters do occasionally refer to the zombies as vampires for no discernable reason. This is just false advertising on the part of the film makers and I won’t stand for it.

Let’s get back to C. Thomas Howell. As a youth he starred in Red Dawn, a film about the Russians attacking U.S. soil at the end of the cold war and being defeated by a rag-tag group of kids, and Soul Man, possibly the only film made after 1948 to feature a main character in black-face. The old saying must be true. Once you go black-face, you never come back-face. Because after Soul Man, Howell’s career took a bit of a nose dive. He didn’t work less, so to speak. In fact the quantity of his output skyrocketed. The quality? Not so much. Though the film he is best known for, Red Dawn, is getting a big budget Hollywood remake for a 2011 release. If you ask me, they should of gone for the gusto and remade Soul Man, but this time instead of a white guy pretending to be a black man they could do a couple of black guys pretending to be whiteOMG WHITE CHICKS THE WAYANSES ALREADY DID THAT BLUGHLBLUGHLBLUGHL. Never mind.

Adventures In Self-Imposed Isolation

LAST CHANCE FOR “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY OVIPOSITOR SHIRTS”!!!
They are only $15! They will never be printed again, so get ’em while you can.

I posted a new Lo-FiJINKS comic just a few hours before this one went up, so you have have missed it.

True-ish story: I did watch the [Matt Smith] Doctor Who Christmas special instead of the Superest of Bowls and it was fantastic. I really didn’t think I was going to warm up to Smith after experiencing Tennant, but man he has grown on me like giant, crazy floppy hair.

Though I didn’t see the even one second of “The Game,” the commercials or the halftime show, I did enjoy trying to create a mental picture of the whole affair based on what was happening in my Twitter feed. The best I could tell, Rachel from Glee and Christina Aguilera sang a mash up of the national anthem and “Don’t Stop Believin,” The Black Eyed Peas have all been digitized into the Grid and replaced with even less talented robot avatars with cube shaped heads, Groupon did several ads promoting the group savings benefits of genocide, oppression, and other atrocities and apparently the Greenday Packmen outscored the Philly Cheesesteaks in terms of points. You know the old saying, “he who scores the most points within the allotted time shall be determined the winner.” Truer words, am I right?

I’m not trying to be one of those, “I’m too cool for football because I’m a hip internet type, deeply in touch with my own personal brand of irony, etc, etc, blah, blugh.” On the contrary. I understand the rewards that come with shared experience and how geeking over football stats is the same as geeking over any other sort of geekery. I just don’t understand football at all. I look at it and I see… nothing. For me a football game is like listening to someone speak a language you don’t understand while watching a crowd of people wait in line for a roller coaster. Slowly they advance towards their goal, but often there is no movement for 12 or 20 minutes at a time. I realize that I’m not the “enlightened one.” I’m the one who is missing out. It’s like Josh and vaginas. I just don’t see the appeal and I will never understand it’s mysteries.

Back to that Groupon thing… holy shit. From what I understand about TV advertising, a terrible offensive commercial can’t be shown during the Superbowl by accident. At least a few people have to sign off on it, right? So that means there are multiple individuals in the world that think it’s a good idea to show “the lighter side” of the oppression of the Tibetan people by saying it might save you a few bucks on dinner in Chicago. Stay classy Groupon. Luckily, never do anything with anyone so I can’t use your stupid service. Here’s an ad pitch for them: Hitler might have killed 6 million jews, but using Groupon we were able to get an amazing deal on a recently vacated tenement building in a Jewish neighborhood in Berlin. Thanks, Groupon!

COMMENTERS: Did you watch The One Game? For the football or the commercials? What was your favorite/least favorite commercial? Any excitement for the geek movies that aired trailers during the game (Captain America, Cowboys and Aliens, etc)? If you didn’t watch it, what ever did you do? Was it fun? Can I come next time? Feel free to make up your own Groupon ad campaign as well.

The Morning Paper

LAST CHANCE FOR “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY OVIPOSITOR SHIRTS”!!!
They are only $15! They will never be printed again, so get ’em while you can.

~~Here! Have an unfinished comic.~~ UPDATE: I replaced the comic with the final inked and colored version, but if you still want to see the rough version it’s in a free post in The Vault.

Getting the book done (as in 100% done, no more changes done) has eaten my entire life away this week. In fact I am still not fully through with my part (as I assumed I was last night). I have the proofs in hand and there are some problems to address. Combine all of that with the SNOHSHITWEREALLGOINGTODIE situation going on in Dallas right now, and this week has been rather unproductive in terms of comics. I am going to try to fill in the missing comic gaps for this week with a few Lo-FiJINKS comics and get back on the horse (is that a real expression?) come Monday.

If you would like Josh to have an expletive exclamation of some kind in panel 3, feel free to post it in the comments. If I like one, I may use it in the finished (inked/colored) version. In case it isn’t clear, his breakfast consists of Vodka, fountain Big Red w/ a slice of bacon, and pancake syrup.

Apple and Newscorp are putting the final nail in the coffin of the concept of printed newspapers by releasing The Daily, an all digital newspaper for the iPad. I love this idea. I love it so much I LURV it. I never understood why big media always seemed to argue that the death of newspaper (ie newsPRINT) and the death of journalism were one in the same. I always heard the argument of, “if no one is actually reporting and writing the news, where will the bloggers get their information from?” This always seemed like a symptom of the problem. That being big media not understanding its own role in digital culture. Yes, we still need people to research, write and distribute the news in a professional and organized way. And we still need resources we can trust more than the average Livejournal. What we don’t need is someone in a ’74 El Camino throwing a bundle of paper at our door at 5am. Keep making the news, just stop printing it.

Speaking of old media and things that need to die, some motherfucker had the audacity to put a phonebook on my doorstep a few days ago. Can you believe that shit? I ran for my crossbow with the intent of putting a bolt betwixt his ribs, but he ran off before I got a clear bead on him. I just left it there. I don’t even want to touch it. It’s just this giant, 4″ thick bound reminder of wasted resources, and living in the past. I would be shocked if the power required to send everyone in America a digital phonebook equalled the cost of actually producing a single phonebook. Bluh. The whole situation just makes me sick. I feel like an idiot for putting them in the recycle bin the same day that I get them. What a waste.

Anyway, feel free to comment on The Daily or you take on the “death of newspapers” from any particular angle in the comments.

Special thanks to Joenis for making some changes to the site design of HE that should make it easier to navigate. Check out his comic, LAWLS.