Spike's Cartoons and Whinging

Quick note...

All of you guys sent here by Singing Fish or wherever looking for MP3s, I took down four of the most popular leechbaits. The Futurama theme song is gone, 50 Cent vs. NIN is gone, and a couple others joined 'em.

That's because it was killing my bandwidth, and I wasn't getting anything out of it. People would search, show up, download, leave.

Nah. That's not gonna do.

And I know a few of you must be kinda confused, beacuse you've been seaching the blog entries for 'em. Obsessively. So that's the story.

The lesson learned? Stick with what's obscure.

PS: Fred Durst sex tape. Nice gut, rocker man.

Forum's Up!

Thanks to Matt, of course, and his monumental patience with me and my soul-killing, monotonous color schemes.

IT HAD TO MATCH, DAMMIT.

C'mon, let's goof off.

Giving In.

Okay, I admit it. I need a forum.

However, I've decided to be a creepy control freak about it. I'd just make myself a Talk About Comics forum, but I'd like to be infinitely more tacky and self-absorbed than necessary and have multiple miniforums instead of just one. Preen preen preen.

Can anyone recommend any good forum set-ups? Prefereably one that won't attempt tp eat me if another PHP worm comes along?

Spreading the Love: Hollywouldn't.

Sweet mother of Jesus and I thought the movies Hollywood actually wound up making were bad.

Query Letters I Love is a blog maintained by an anonymous grunt somewhere in Tinseltown, and s/he uses it to post the worst film proposals they can find. And god damn, do they get bad.

Who's up for a movie about a Native American shaman and his spirit animal army installing a puppet president? No? Can I interest you in a deformed gypsy boy, then? Howabout A game of tag... WHERE THE LOSER BLOWS UP AT 100 MILES PER HOUR!! OH NO, WHO WILL SAVE THE MAYOR'S DAUGHTER??

Atrocity Tourism: Happy Neurotic North Korean Propaganda Day!

Hope you've set the day aside to riot in the streets and throw off the yoke of the reactionary running dogs in the name of the great proletariat uprising. OR ARE YOU A STINKING CAPITALIST COLLABORATOR?

Red is so my color.

Anyway, on to the festivities.

No Movement of the People is complete without a stirring anthem to prod it along the rutted mud causeway to victory, so make sure you get the words to our official song memorized. "Fucking USA!" has been generously provided by the not-at-all gibbering and insane North Korean Government via broadcast in Japan and South Korea, so make sure to sign the thank you card I have making the rounds.

We're talking to Anal Cunt about an English-language cover. I'm very excited.

Should even a trace of unpatriotic doubt come to roost in your great socialist breast, remember to report immediately for flogging, funny hats, and mandatory propoganda. NO SHIRKERS. The posters are a traveling exhibit, and we haven't got the time or resources to draw you your very own U.S. Capitol Building being squished by giant monster hands, so get a move-on.

The day's activities finish up with a dose of inspiration at the official Democratic People's Republic of North Korea homepage. Don't be fooled by the .com address; this site is a site OF THE PEOPLE. You can tell, because of the mid-90's Geocities design ethic. NO IMPERIALIST OPPRESSOR PHOTOSHOP TRICKS HERE, GOD DAMN IT.

Be sure to visit the souvenir page and pick up some North Korean porcine and jaded.

...

SHIT I MEAN PORCELAIN AND JADE. PORCELAIN AND JADE PLEASE DON'T TELL KIM OH GOD NO NOT THE CAR BATTERY

SCABS UPON SCABS UPON SCABS

LET GO OF ME YOU SONS OF

GRAGHL

Negative First Impression Theater: Loonatics.

Yeah, I know, this is hardly breaking news. But I can't let this one slide.

As previously reported by Cartoon Brew and a handful of newspapers: The new, hip, fresh, with-it Looney Tunes.

You recognize 'em, don'tcha? See, the big one there's Bugs. And clockwise from the top is the Tasmanian Devil, the Roadrunner, Lola Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Wile E. Coyote.

They're a superhero team. They live on a spaceship in the 28th century, they have special powers, and they fight crime.

Y'need a minute to absorb that? I sure did.

To be fair, these guys aren't actually the real Looney Tunes characters, any more than Buster and Babs Bunny were Bugs. They're references; the Bugs character's name may be finalized as Buzz, for example. So cling to that if you need to.

I really just don't even know where to start with this one.

Normally, I like to watch an episode of something before I start talking shit, but I can't even imagine bothering, now. Even keeping in mind that Loonatics was conceived as a kid's show to run alongside Yu-Gi-Oh and Teen Titans, This is just thoroughly unspeakable. It's utterly charmless.

I mean... Bugs is the color of invalid urine. I can't be the only one who's noticed that, can I? Bugs is piss. He's sick man's piss. Sick man's piss in a pointy black suit.

I would suspect that one too many animators must have dropped "Razor Sharp Black Points Make for Thoroughly Unappealling Character Design 101" at CalArts, but I can guarantee this wasn't thought up by anyone who could actually draw. Some guy in a suit must have had ANNE EE MAY described to him by his eight-year-old son, and set out to earn himself a promotion. Buzzword buzzword buzzword.

It's not that I'm so emotionally attached to Looney Tunes characters that I hate to see them change at all. This isn't a case of New Coke rebellion. What's so ultimately depressing about Loonatics is how well it demonstrates a total inability to change on the behalf of executives. Animation, even with the benefit of Korean slave labor in-betweening, has become too costly to take chances. It relies on retreads, because no one's willing to risk shelling out for a new set. Never mind that "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" tanked so goddamn ferociously, or "Baby Looney Tunes" never got watched. Known properties are still wrongly considered safer bets, and condescending, superficial make-overs like this still get the green light.

Meanwhile, half the internet is trying to figure out how to give Weebl and The Brothers Chaps more money. But hey, what do they know, right?

EDIT: A trailer of sorts, cobbled together from live-action clips, scenes from Batman Beyond, and world's most obvious Mirage rip-off (the turncoat bombshell The Incredibles), can be found here. Jesus Chirst I just about clawed my face off when "Buzz" opened his mouth. Yeah, this one gets a pass.

I have them all FOOLED.

It's weird how some people think I'm all competent and stuff.

Locals, take note: I'll be a guest speaker at UChi-Con this Saturday, along with my husband/colorist Matt and m' fellow nerdbait Dirk Tiede, on the 1:00 PM Webcomics Panel. The con is free, so drop on by if you get a chance. I'm sure I'll make an utter fool of myself sometime during the panel, and that oughta be good for a laugh.

This'll be my first time as a speaker. Wild.

And my other buddy Gerry, who actually makes honest-to-Baby-Jesus'-nappies video games, will be a speaker at THE VIDEO GAME PANEL, making him much more important and relevant than me. Come for Gerry, stay for Spike.

And yeah, L&O is late. I know. I just keep on suckin'. It'll go up tonight.

Update.

Okay, so... more housekeeping.

This week, I finally finished up sending out all the mail orders I've received recently. And I mean all. If you haven't received what you ordered by Friday, email me to bitch, because my records claim that's everything. Sorry to everyone who had to wait, there's no excuse for that. You got goodies to make up for it.

Also, Sparkneedle updated yesterday, a day late. Again, sorry about that. I was accidentally trapped out in the northern suburbs this weekend when I dropped in on Capricon with my buddy Dirk as part of GoH Shaenon's nerd entourage, and I misread the train schedule and missed the last one back. Oops.

As a result, the beginnings of this week are gonna see a lot of blowback from the schedule hiccup. I want Lucas and Odessa to go up this evening, but no promises. It might have to wait until Wednesday.

And I will answer all my email tomorrow. Really.

Blargh.

Negative First Impression Theater: Elfen Lied.

Jesus Christ Almighty do I watch a lot of unspeakable garbage.

The anime series Elfen Lied, if judged entirely by the merits of its first episode, is a lot like a seven-year-old in gang colors. It's trying really, really hard to impress you, maybe even scare you. But the overall effect is just sort of sad and forced, and in the end, you don't really see the kid amounting to much down the road. You just kind of shake your head slowly, and wonder how something so completely bereft of critical self-examination can exist in the modern world. And then you shrug and get a sandwich.

I knew I would hate this series, because everyone in sight was queuing up to take turns masturbating onto its face. Every review I read wasn't just positive; they were gibbering epiphanies. The authors probably had to take breaks between paragraphs. And that's never good.

"ABSURDLY INCONGRUOUS??" WHAT IS THESE WORDS YOU KEEP USING, PLEASE?

To the show's credit, the opening number is mildly interesting, since it's obviously a nod to Gustav Klimt. It would have been nice, if branding didn't require a willowy anime chickie with perfectly spherical tits be crowbarred into every scene to the tune of an inconsolable Latin aria.

Killer floating stabby-stab pen. She does this twice. Someone on the writing staff was clearly very impressed with themselves for coming up with this little trick.

Elfen Lied is, from what I can tell, about an nightmarishly powerful psychic.

Seriously, why are the guards even given guns in the first place? Why did they even hire guards? For the salary of five of 'em they coulda just installed a motion-triggered bomb or poison gas in that head restraint and called it a day.

The first and only episode I've seen documents her escape from her containment facility. There's a lot of psi-chopping involved, and people falling apart, and ballpoint pens in eye sockets, and a security force that seems to be staffed exclusively with pressurized hemophiliacs, who are quickly promoted to blood geysers when our lovely, naked, oddly shiny heroine walks towards them with slow, spooky purpose.

You know she's special cuz she's gotta wear a helmet.

The episode hits an incredibly satisfying high point when Clumsy Girl is abruptly and unceremoniously dismissed from the mortal coil at the hands of Naked Psychic. You know Clumsy Girl, right? She gets a lot of work in anime. She's the cutsey-pie little fuck-up who likes to spill food and look embarrassed and squeak like a chew toy and TRY HER BEST, DESU.

Ha ha.

Naked Psychic, who we learn is named Lucy, chops her head off in front of a bunch of people for no real reason, and then uses her twitching corpse to deflect machine gun fire. I approve of this scene.

Ultimately, Lucy escapes her sooper-sekret facility with nothing more severe than a sniper-placed anti-tank round to the temple, knocking her into the ocean. She washes up the next day on a civilian beach, and the show's meager potential slams into a wall of crap with the force of a bullet train the moment she's spotted by Bland Protagonist.

If you listen closely enough, you can hear the show starting to suck.

She has no memory. She behaves like a three-year-old. And all she can say is "nyuu."

I understand it was an anti-tank round. I do. Really. But what the shit, Japan.

WHAT A PERFECT FREE HOUSE JUST FOR ME HOW VERY UNUSUAL FOR THIS PARTICULAR GENRE OF ENTERTAINMENT

Setting aside the 500-page thesis I could write on Near-Mute Imbecilic Hot Chicks in Anime and the Japanese Male Libido, Lucy the former psychic death machine is taken home by Bland Protagonist. He's obviously not the easily-ruffled type, since it doesn't seem to bother him that his new pet sex object has horns. (Or, uh, cat ears. Or barrettes, or whatever the fuck those are.) It also doesn't occur to him that installing buxom, half-clothed brain-injury victims that don't belong to him as wards of his no-strings-attached Phat Palatial Estate might not be considered the act of charity I'm sure he's convinced himself it is by the local police force, television news crews, or habitual sex offender registries.

Which fetish is this one, again? This is the internet, I'm losing track.

I stopped paying total attention at this point. Lucy pissed the floor around then to highlight her newfound stupidity, and some woman gets slapped right off her feet into a triple lutz by the Evil Special Agent being sent to kill Lucy with such ridiculous force that I giggled, but the rest is really just a blur.

Japan: Keepin' that pimp hand strong.

Verdict? One and a half stars. I would give Elfen Lied two stars out of five, but it loses half a star for having a name that doesn't make sense. I can only assume it sounds cool if you're not a native English-speaker. And keep in mind, I named my website Iron Circus. If I'm talking shit, something must be wrong.

The next time I psychically eviscerate a mob of prison guards, I'm gonna make this face and see how far it gets me.

Abe Todd Spreads!

Sweet Jesus, the boy's gone viral! Abraham Todd is now being featured in the fabulous and intriguing Tastes Like Chicken magazine. You can read it online here... Or, you can just wander into the closest Tower Records, Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc. and just hope you get lucky enuff to find a copy.

My goodness, Abe's popular. Must be those bedroom eyes.

Attention, Chicagoland Comic Artists and Cartoonists.

Any locals besides the ones I already rock out with on Thursday nights reading this blog? If so, drop me line, preferably with a couple of links to your work.

Me and the guys, we're trying to get something together.

You'd be paid.

Buh.

If I were an industrial engineer for an electronics company, I'd design a phone with a built-in clock that worked in conjunction with the phone's ringer.

You could program the phone ahead of time to always turn off the ringer at certain times, and turn it back on again automatically at other times.

For example, if you worked at home and didn't ever want any personal calls between nine and five, you could tell your phone that. It would turn off the ringer at nine, and turn it back on again at five. You'd only have to tell it to do that once. See how that works?

This seems like one of those things that's so amazingly obvious that it has to exist somewhere, but honestly, I've never seen it.

Illustration Friday: Friendship.

No time to paint this week, so just a sketch this time around.

Careful who you consider a friend, mkay? Mkay.

The rest of this week's entries are viewable here.