Man is His Sushi

Coming out of nowhere, Abhay Khosla takes on Dracula:

Dracula's dry cleaner must die

This stuff just bypasses all the rational centers of the brain.  I couldn’t tell you why it’s funny and wouldn’t advise trying this at home.  (Surrealism isn’t as easy as it sounds.)

Edit: It’s five parts, all of which are up now.  The first is the best.

 

Zot back on Earth

Over ten years ago I reviewed Zot!, Scott McCloud’s superhero comic, which was then being reprinted.  Frustratingly, Volume 4 never appeared.  Finally it has, in a transmuted form: all the black & white issues have been reprinted in one volume by Harper. 

Hope vs depair: Zot and Terry

Those missing stories, “the Earth stories”, are amazing.  McCloud simply isn’t a good superhero writer; he obviously loves the genre, but he can’t take it seriously à la Kirby or transcend it à la Moore. 

In the Earth stories he takes a sharp turn right out of the genre: Zot and his friends are trapped on Earth, away from Zot’s colorful homeworld and its supervillains, and the comic settles down into suburbia and ruminates on the horrors of high school… which turn out to be more involving than any of the superhero stories. 

Each issue concentrates on one person, and the theme in every case is isolation and despair searching for community and a reason to continue.  Even Zot– conceived as an avatar of optimism– has a hard time, finding out that his idea of superherodom doesn’t solve many problems on Earth. 

I think what I like most about these issues is their quiet, honest moodiness.  They deal with the problems of a teenager and they don’t really offer any solutions.  If they did, they’d be a cheat: a teenager can’t stop cliquishness, bullying, homophobia, or parents divorcing.  They offer mitigations instead: love, friendship, dreams, personal integrity.  There’s no promise that these things will make you happy; only that they’ll make the journey easier.

Anyone who was unpopular in high school will probably relate to these stories.  Which makes me wonder, what did the popular kids feel?  What’s their comic?  Maybe University²?

 

Grice comics

Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics must be reading some linguistics.  He recently had a comic on the Great Vowel Shift, and now he has a two-comic series on Paul Grice’s conversational maxims:

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001271.html

Prove me wrong if you can: I’d venture to say that these are the only comics to date to focus on Grice’s conversational maxims.  (I think Stan Lee was planning a 4-issue Power Man miniseries covering Grice as well as speech acts, but John Romita couldn’t figure out how to draw a kick-ass presupposition.)

Here’s an explanation in case T-Rex’s isn’t clear enough:

http://www.zompist.com/xurnash.htm#Implicature

 

Ask Zompist: Improved Garfields

Bob, what’s your take on Garfield minus Garfield (http://garfieldminusgarfield.net )?

I mean, it’s the only webcomic in my feed reader (well, okay, xkcd I can’t avoid, and there’s ELER, which is moribund).

—John Cowan

 

 

Bob

It’s cool, but I prefer the original bit of messing with Garfield: erasing all of Garfield’s text but leaving him in the picture.  I can’t improve on Neil Gaiman’s description: “ a perfectly paced, rather sad strip about a man whose life is wasted and a cat who says nothing”.  It doesn’t always work (mostly because of the annoying facial expressions), but it’s a brilliant idea. 

By the way, for those who don’t check zompist.com any more, I’ve got two new comics reviews up today.

 

Ex-D&D strip

Probably the Order of the Stick will always be considered a D&D comic.  But it hasn’t been, for quite a while.  By by rough count, the last ten strips contain about five D&D references, total.  It’s basically a fantasy comic that occasionally uses D&D jokes.  (He’s actually using anachronisms and pop culture references more than D&D.)

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  On the other hand I’m looking forward to Chainmail Bikini starting up again.

 

Common People

Another crib from jwz, I’m afraid.  But this (from Chris Sims) is made out of win.

Original Jarvis Cocker video here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=F39RS3I0D0Y

 Surprisingly good William Shatner / Joe Jackson cover here.

 

The 40 worst Rob Liefeld drawings

I don’t think I’ve knowingly read a single Liefeld comic, but I still found this hilarious.   

http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html 

The increasingly exasperated text is great too:  ”Check out Spider-Man swinging in on a jungle vine.  Jesus Christ Liefeld drew a dog’s hindquarters on him.  Just straight-up a dog’s ass and legs.” 

 

Chainmail Bikini

I forget if I’ve plugged Chainmail Bikini before:

http://www.feartheboot.com/comic/default.aspx?c=16

It’s written by Shamus Young (who did the equally hilarious DM of the Rings) and drawn by Shawn Gaston.  Unlike Rich Burlew, who is pretty much just telling a comedy-laced adventure story now, Young still fills the comic with D&D jokes.  Part of the fun is the little comment by Young or one of the players at the end of each panel, offering somewhat cynical advice about gaming.

 As a world creator and sometime DM, I particularly like Young’s comments that emphasize the disconnect between the DM’s and the players’ understanding of and interest in the plot, to say nothing of the world.  Young points out that if you ask the players to summarize the story, their version will be completely unrecognizable (and leave out all your carefully worked out names).