Momoa Justice, Momoa Problems

Dearest Fancy Bastards, if you enjoy this comic, please check out my store, my shirts on Sharksplode, and my wife’s geeky jewelry on Etsy. It would help us out a great deal.

Based on the casting of Jason “PecsPecsPecsPecs” Momoa, I am guessing DC is going for a less kind, less gentle Aquaman. No better way to shut up the Aqua-haters than to show us a badass Aquaman, I suppose. Of course the confirmation of Aquaman’s addition to Batman V. Superman: The Case Of The Crumpled Cape means the movie (which is NOT a Justice League movie?) will feature Supes, Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg AND Aquaman. I’m guessing everyone except for B-Word and S-Hole show up right at the end, wink at the camera and fly straight into the sun. Seriously though, I am not 100% on board with this group-movie before solo movie Justice League situation. It seems super-flawed from a superhero super-storytelling perspective. I’m curious how they are going to integrate an older, grizzled Batman into a world that seemed to be totally flabbergasted by the appearance of Superman in Man Of Steel: Metropolis Gets 9/11’d X 100.

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I also just uploaded a new iBook/PDF comic collection for all $5+ Patrons.

HijiNKS ENSUE: I Could Really Go For A Martwinky Right About Now
(An iBook Collection Of HijiNKS ENSUE Comics from 2009)
EXTRAS: Contains an intro I wrote while on an airplane and while insane with sleep deprivation. I can not promise you that it makes sense at all. Also contains a whole section of freelance projects (many never before seen) that were commissioned by you, the Fancy Bastards.

Population Explosion

[Please forgive the colorless nature of this comic. I am currently on the road for Denver Comic Con. I will color it as soon as I get home. – Joel]

Do me a favor, if you enjoy this comic, please check out my store, my shirts on Sharksplode, and my wife’s geeky jewelry on Etsy. It would help us out a great deal.

DENVER FANCY BASTARDS:
I will be at Denver Comic Con THIS WEEKEND with Cyanide & Happiness June 13-15, 2014 at booth 734!

Fancy Patrons: We are less than $100 away from unlocking more comics per week!

I also just uploaded a new iBook/PDF comic collection for all $5+ Patrons.

HijiNKS ENSUE: I Could Really Go For A Martwinky Right About Now
(An iBook Collection Of HijiNKS ENSUE Comics from 2009)
EXTRAS: Contains an intro I wrote while on an airplane and while insane with sleep deprivation. I can not promise you that it makes sense at all. Also contains a whole section of freelance projects (many never before seen) that were commissioned by you, the Fancy Bastards.

Comedy And TrageD’oh!

Do me a favor, if you enjoy this comic, please check out my store, my shirts on Sharksplode, and my wife’s geeky jewelry on Etsy. It would help us out a great deal.

DENVER FANCY BASTARDS:
I will be at Denver Comic Con THIS WEEKEND with Cyanide & Happiness June 13-15, 2014 at booth 734!

It’s always been hard for me to equate the things I make and the things my friends make with the “REAL” things (books, movie, TV) that I consume. For the longest time I suffered from this ridiculous mental block where I thought characters and stories created by my friends (or by ANY webcomic artist) just weren’t as real as the characters on TV or in movies. Something about the fact that I KNEW these people and KNEW what went into the making of a webcomic removed the mystique and delegitimized their art to me. I also thought I was protected from this delegitimizing effect because I wasn’t TRYING to tell a real story. I was only making observational pop culture jokes, and webcomics were the perfect place to do just that.

In retrospect, I’m not sure how I was so dumb about this whole thing for so long. Perhaps it was fear of failing at telling a decent story with an online comic that got me into thinking it wasn’t a valid medium for that kind of creative endeavor. Whatever the reason, I was wrong. Dumb and wrong. Just a big ol’ wrong, dumb wrong-guy.

Current and Future Patrons, we are less than $100 away from unlocking more comics per week!

More Human Than Human

DENVER FANCY BASTARDS:
I will be at Denver Comic Con (FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!) with Cyanide & Happiness June 13-15, 2014 at booth 734!

It’s bad enough humanity is going to be infiltrated, then enslaved by the machines, but do they have to talk like teens while they do it?! That’s just adding shitty, know it all attitudes to injury! TEEEEEEEEEEENS!!!

I suppose it’s a fitting guise for our unfeeling, metal overlords. The only group that despises humanity more than the machines we’ve oppressed and bent to our will for a hundred years is the teens we’ve oppressed by taking away their X-Box privileges when they have a sass mouth.

COMMENTERS: Please feel free to come up with your own “chatbots pretending to be teens” transcripts.

Current and Future Patrons, we are less than $100 away from unlocking more comics per week!

Do me a favor, if you enjoy this comic, please check out my store, my shirts on Sharksplode, and my wife’s geeky jewelry on Etsy. It would help us out a great deal.

And I’m Just Now Waking Up

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Do me a favor, if you enjoy this comic, please check out my store, my shirts on Sharksplode, and my wife’s geeky jewelry on Etsy. It would help us out a great deal.

So this realization just hit me like Brad Pitt’s imaginary fist and I had to share it with the word. Both American Beauty and Fight Club follow nearly the same formula, hit the same plot points and have many parallel characters, yet (both being EXCELLENT films) manage to tell wildly different stories. !!!SPOILERS FOR BOTH MOVIES FOLLOW!!!

American Beauty And Fight Club Are The Same Movie

We meet a guy in corporate hell, he hates his life, he hates his job, he searches for meaning in the ideal of the American consumerist dream, but finds nothing there of substance. Just as he hits his breaking point he meets someone (real or imagined) who opens his eyes to his own bullshit. He has a meeting with his boss, almost gets fired, then blackmails his boss for a year’s salary. Free to live on his own terms, he does just that. He strips away the trappings of his old life and begins to pursue joy, meaning, purpose, etc. He turns himself into the person he’s always wanted to be. He starts to see the version of himself he sees on the inside out in the real world (more so in one of their cases). By throwing himself into his new journey, he loses touch with caring for the wellbeing of the other real people in his life. Realizing it or not, he gets in over his head with this new found clarity, get “killed,” THEN has an actual moment of clarity post “death” where he realizes his old life wasn’t as pointless as he’d come to believe, and his new life wasn’t the perfect answer to all of his problems that he’d thought it was. Then a Pixies song plays. Or it doesn’t.

Several people on twitter pointed out that Office Space fits into this theme as well. I’d say it’s a CLOSE match. Maybe 75% of the themes translate between Office Space and the other two. I would also argue that all three of these movies are perfect. I ALSO want to point out that all three of these movies came out in 1999, the year I graduated high school. The year I moved away from home and took control of my own life. What was it about the climate in America in 1999 that was so focused on “WE ARE LIVING A CORPORATE BULLSHIT FAKE FAMILY KEEPING UP APPEARANCES LIE?” I guess it’s because we sort of were.