Food Fighters

NEW SHIRT!!!
Han And Chewie “I Know” shirts are live at Sharksplode! [based on this comic]

Seattle Fancy Bastards! I am coming for you this weekend! Read more HERE.

I’m approaching The Hunger Games the same way I did Harry Potter. See and enjoy the movies first THEN read the books and find out about all of the stuff that would have pissed me off about the movies. So far it’s working, because I really liked the movie. The lead character, the archery girl, has a real cunning and agility to her. An almost feline quality. A “catness,” if you will. [pause for applause] Thank you, thank you. I’ll be encasing myself in concrete now as to preserve the look on my face when I made the most perfectly crafted joke anyone has either spoken, written, read or heard aloud. Also because it will kill me, which should satisfy those of you that think I should die for that joke. I regret nothing. Except for drowning to death in concrete.

I wasn’t a complete Hunger Games virgin going in. I knew the basic premise and I had read a bit on Wikipedia to familiarize myself with some of the more fleshed out concepts of the world that would no doubt be left out of the cinematic offering for time and pacing reasons. I felt like the end result was a nice tight narrative that did a clever job of introducing you to its world while not smothering the plot. It was obvious that many characters that certainly had larger stories in the books had drastically reduced roles or were even relegated to background glimpses (further Wiki’ing confirmed this theory). You could see little threads of plot all over the place that the film wouldn’t have time to even address, much less resolve. I think that’s a good thing, because it gets casual observers like me more interested in reading the books and getting a full view of the world building within.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD: Regarding Mr. Kravitz portrayal of Cinna the stylist, there were some fucked up allusions going on with his wardrobe creations. The clothing was supposed to represent the district the tributes hailed from. District 12 is a coal mining area, where both Katniss and Peeta’s father’s were killed in a mine explosion, so Cinna dresses them in coal black clothing and SETS IT ON FIRE!? I’d say that isn’t appropriate or sensitive in the least, but these kids are being lead to their deaths in a child murder contest for the amusement of the home viewing audience, so what do I know? I was surprised at the amount of actual child murder that they showed. I was really expecting them to pull a few more punches and gaping blade wounds. The opening “scramble for supplies” scene was actually pretty disturbing to watch. Right about then the concept of children killing each other sinks in, followed by the concept that it is essentially for entertainment (as well as propaganda, control through fear and intimidation, etc). Back to the coal fire: did anyone else get the impression that Cinna drew inspiration from Centralia, the Pennsylvania town that’s been on fire for 50 years (or 150 by his time)? Maybe district 12 isn’t far from there.

My only real gripe with the movie (knowing a bit more than the average person about the book’s plot, but not nearly enough to get all that upset), the idea that hunger was a central theme of the story just didn’t come through at all. I never got the impression that anyone was starving. Poor? Sure. Starving? Not really. These kids are pretty and plump and muscular and heathly. When presented with multiple feasts, at no point does anyone gorge themselves like a person that has been living off of rations would. I get that they are terrified and tramatized, but the word “HUNGER” is in the freaking title of the movie. It seems like one of the most important themes of the book was just kind of swept under the rug. Also, the movie basically says that Katniss is faking her love for Peeta to garner favor with the audience, but gives the impression that by the end she is actually in love with him. This seemed odd, so I looked it up and, yup, she’s a faker and she totally and in cold blood breaks his heart at the end of the book. I guess they want us to be more sympathetic to her, but honestly in the situation she was in survival is the only thing that mattered. Also, just to clarify, the three finger salute means “Hey The Capitol! Read between the lines jackwads!” right?

COMMENTERS: Did you see The Hunger Games? What did you think? Were you a fan of the books already? PLEASE MARK ALL COMMENTS WITH SPOILERS AS SUCH.

CHECK IT OUT: My daughter drew another Tiny Titan and it’s up on my Tumblr.

Star-Crossed

UPDATE: This comic is totally a shirt now!!!
Han And Chewie “I Know” shirts are live at Sharksplode!

Seattle Fancy Bastards! I am coming for you this weekend! Read more HERE.

Notice how every other alien’s dialog is subtitled in Star Wars except for Chewie’s? That’s because every word out of his mouth was a declaration of love, and only one person can understand the truth in his heart. He was more than Han Solo’s co-pilot. He was his co-partner. Of course the films DID take place “a long time ago,” so some predjudice is to be expected. Why do you think Chewie didn’t get a medal at the end of A New Hope? Interstellar bigotry, that’s why! Sure, they called themselves “Rebels,” but more than the Empire they are rebelling against love.

Basically Brokeback Mountain is a modern day retelling of Star Wars. Two cowboys (smugglers) hide their true feelings by assuming “normal” lives except for on their long, secluded retreats (deep space runs in the Falcon), and even go as far as to marry women they don’t really love (Leia and Malla) to keep up appearances for fear of reprisal from their community (the Rebels). It really is a tragic story of love, denial and persecution. Also there’s this winy kid who gets his hand cut off. Spoilers.

COMMENTERS: Doesn’t the Star Wars Trilogy make SO MUCH MORE sense now? If you agree with my groundbreaking new understanding of the greatest film love story of all time, feel free to elaborate in the comments. What were the clues? Why was Han really so anxious to get his reward and get back to the Falcon? He wanted to start a nestegg for he and Chewie. Why was he so apprehensive about giving the Falcon to Lando? Because that was the only place he was able to be himself with his partner!

Consecration

NEW SHIRT!!! There are a lot of misconceptions about THE PENTAPPLEGRAM. Did you know ancient druids used it to ward off kernel panics as well as for human sacrifice?

Josh has his new “The New iPad” for mere moments before he discovered that it was capable of wireless upload speeds faster than the download speed of his fiber optic home internet. That shit is, in a word, bananas. Of course super fast, go-anywhere data doesn’t matter much when a couple of hours of video streaming eats all of your allotted bandwidth for the entire month. I’ll never get used to the constant “two steps forward, three steps back” mentality of the big telco companies. Everything is always unlimited and nearly free until it A) gets good and B) a lot of people start using it.

Of course I see the correlation between higher quality service and more users to need for more infrastructure, employees, etc, but early adopters like me get to sick back and watch our bills go up as our services get whittled away. Remember when long distance phone service used to be a thing? At least that was an antiquated telecommunication concept we were able to move past and stay past. Now nearly every service provider for any kind of data (wired, wireless or otherwise) is reverting to the ancient AOL days of metered bandwidth, and it’s bastard offspring – throttling. In a few years, we aren’t going to have wired anything (and that includes Satellite TV). We’re going to have a home broadband antenna that brings in our TV, Internet and mobile data through one fat wireless pipe. And a few years after that we aren’t going to have an Internet, or cable or phone lines. It’s just going to be The Network. It’s all just data. At least that’s what NEEDS to happen. At the rate the telecoms are backpedaling, we’re going to be asking our moms if they can get off the fax line so we can dial up our iPhones to log into Prodigy. We promise it’s for school and we aren’t looking at any bad BBS’s or anything.

Obviously this comic was envisioned at the same time as the Pentapplegram shirt. They were intended to be companions, released on the same day. As soon as I finished, and launched the shirt I had the idea for the “Where’s Carl?!” comic and shirt and this one had to take a back seat for a few days. Just clearing that up in case the time line confused anyone. No? No one? No one would ever care about that? Just me? Cool.

COMMENTERS: What’s the pre-info age service that you used to not be able to live without that you barely even remember now? Did you have a prepaid long distance card? What about a prepaid wireless phone with a 30 minute monthly plan for something like $50? Both my parents had carphones for a number of years and we used them CONSTANTLY. It’s so foreign to think of a time when a phone was locked to a location. “Is she at home? No answer. Try her car. No luck there either? Did you page her? She doesn’t have one? Ok, then THERE IS NO WAY TO CONTACT HER AT ALL PERIOD.” Barely makes sense, right? From at 15 to age 18 I pretty much lived and died by my pager. I can hardly imagine a dumber device now.

Hanging Brain

NEW SHIRT!!! Where’s Carl?! Shirts based on this comic are live at Sharksplode!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my thing. Just like any red-blooded American boy I loved me some G.I. JOE and just like any advanced sentient machine boy from a war torn planet in a distance galaxy I loved me some Transformers, but Ninja Turtles was my thing. I ate, slept and breathed Ninja Turtes. Two of those I did quite literally. I horribly disgusting Ninja Turtles cereal, which was basically Chex with rejected Lucky Charms marshmallows, and a Ninja Turtles sleeping bag. If they had sold green canned air with tops in a choice of four primary colors, I’m sure I would have inhaled nothing but. [Side note regarding the Turtles Cereal: They got away with it just being Chex by referring to those pieces as “Ninja Nets.” You know… all those nets they were always throwing around. I think Donatello was the one with the net. Or maybe that was Zeppo.]

They’ve pit me against an anthro-animal comic. That’s basically me against furries. I’ve already lost.

From ages 7-10 I spent a good 2/3 of my day as a Ninja Turtle. I had 3 close friends and we each adopted a Turtle persona for recess, which we kept for several years. There wasn’t any fighting over who would claim which turtle. It was just clear. I was bossy and an insufferable know-it-all, so I was Leonardo. Cody was the most violent and we all agreed his wild flailing of the limbs most resembled actual karate, so he was Rahpael. Rob was the smartest and the most sensitive, so he was Donatello. And… fuck me in the sewer lair, I don’t remember who was Michaelangelo. That’s going to bother me. Anyway, we played TMNT at recess every day. We kept up our story lines and picked them up where they left off each day. We wore various bits of costumes at home, and tucked plastic weapons into our belt loops. I even had a blue Leo mask with a green snout on it that smelled like the inside of a tire. We watched the episodes hundreds of times. I had 6 VHS tapes with 2 or 3 episodes each that came from Burger King and played them to the point of ruin. Each and every birthday and Xmas from those years was nothing but Turtles wall to wall. One kid would get a new vehicle or playset and the rest of us would assemble it and place the decals while he enjoyed a piece of cake or a round of TMNT 2 on the NES. One year, Rob (Donatello-Rob from earlier) got the Sewer Lair Playset (probably the rarest turtles playset next to the Technodrome… NO ONE had the Technodrome), and we treated it as if his parents had just given him a car with machine guns mounted to the hood. I eventually got the Turtle Blimp (probably the rarest vehicle in the line), so my status as Leonardo, Chief Intolerable Asshole of the team wasn’t revoked.

I say all of that to say this: I don’t know if I care if Michael Bay fucks up the Ninja Turtles by making them aliens instead of mutants. Sure, that would basically shift the entire original purpose of characters (regular, ordinary creatures are elevated to extraordinary status through an accident of science), but that doesn’t really have any effect on how much I enjoyed them as a child or how fondly I remember them today. You might call fowl, but this is different them George Lucas going back and altering/invalidating my memories through meddling with existing films. And it’s different than Michael Bay taking a steaming cyber-crap all over Transformers since that franchise has never payed any real attention to it’s own continuity (SHUT UP WILLIS! I’VE DONE MY HOMEWORK!) to begin with. I think the only reason people my age were mad at him for Transformers is because he was making the first official live action version of the series. Ninja Turtles already had two great live action movies (we do not speak of the third one… what third one?), which almost perfectly encapsulated the spirit of the franchise in the 80’s and early 90’s and brought to life the version of the Turtles that I grew up with. Sure they were cheesy, but so was everything else back then. And if you’re still upset, remember that the movies strayed pretty far from the cartoon origin story by making Splinter and Hamato Yoshi two different beings. Do you remember the scene where the rat learns kung fu? That shit was ridiculous. [UPDATE: is has been ~~pedanted~~ pointed out to me NUMEROUS times that the first movie followed the origin from the comics and it was the original cartoon that deviated plot-wise. Well, that just further proves my point that nothing is sacred in the TMNT franchise, so any changes made to the origin are fair game.]

The thing about Ninja Turtules is that unlike almost every other franchise from the 80’s, it never went away. It would go off the air for a year or two at most before it came back with a new incarnation. There were multiple cartoon shows, some continuations, some reboots. There was a live action show, For a while it was about alien Triceratopses, and one of the most recent cartoons took place over 100 years in the future. The only thing Bay talking about changing is literally THE ONLY THING that hasn’t already been changed. The weird thing about Ninja Turtles is every kid who was 8 years old at any point between 1987 and 2012 could have grown up with them, but not necessarily the same ones you did. Hell, I haven’t even mentioned the comics. I say let Bay do his worst. My bandanna is still blue, my katana is still plastic and my memories are intact. Cowabunga, you Fancy Bastards.

COMMENTERS: Feel free to weigh on on the aliens vs. mutant debate. Which Turtles were YOUR Turtles? What was your favorite Turtles toy/ coolest one you never owned? Mine were the rubberized figures released after the first movie. They were more flexible and had realistic skin. What was the weirdest Turtles tie-in product you ever saw? For me it was the “Ooze” fruit pies. I probably ate 100 of them, but damn do they seem toxic in retrospect.

UPDATE: My friend Paul gives his pitch for how the alien turtle thing could work and not make his inner 8 year old weep. He wants to believe SOOOO badly.

Where’s Carl?!

NEW SHIRT!!! Where’s Carl?! Shirts based on this very comic are live at Sharksplode!

Where’s Carl? NOT where you told him to be, that’s for damn sure. That kid is exactly where he is NOT supposed to be (where ever the most zombies are), doing exactly what he is NOT supposed to be doing (which is anything but staying nearby and surviving) with EXACTLY who you told him NOT to be with (basically anyone that aren’t his parents). That Carl is a scamp and a half!

The Walking Dead season 2 ended last night and my spoiler free review for the entire season goes thusly: There were five boring episodes then one cool thing happened at the end of number six, then five more boring episodes followed by two rather awesome episodes. Looks like AMC’s whole “give us double the episodes for half the money” strategy didn’t really pan out. You could probably edit the entire season down to six quality episodes, but as it stands there was hardly three hours of good story telling or interesting action in the whole season. There was too much time filling, too many arguments over the same issues, NOT ENOUGH ZOMBIES, too much of every character saying the same thing over and over again, episode after episode, NOT ENOUGH ZOMBIES, too much time standing around the god damn farm, and NOT ENOUGH ZOMBIES.

If you want a high quality print of this comic, you can get it HERE. Might look nice as a print triptych with my Calvin & Hobbes/Serenity comic and my Calvin & Hobbes/Game of Thrones comic. Just sayin’.

If there is interest, I will consider a T-shirt as well.

COMMENTERS: How do you feel about this season of The Walking Dead compared to the first? Were you satisfied with the ending and where they seem to be going with season 3? NO MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS. IF YOU MUST POST SLIGHT SPOILERS PLEASE MARK YOU COMMENT AS SUCH VERY CLEARLY.