Archive for the ‘Comics’ Category
Freakangels Window
If you saw my post on ‘No Hero’ and were curious, some more ‘Warren Ellis/Avatar Press’ goodness. And Its free!
Wrestling Gone Wrong & Act-I-Vate
Two great websites that I’ve neglected to put onto my blogroll so far - Wrestling Gone Wrong is pretty self-explanatory one would think, while Act-I-Vate is a ‘webcomics collective’ featuring some truly great talents. While I haven’t had a chance to go through all the content they have, I would happily recommend ‘Kelly’ by Dan Goldman, though be warned that it is a truly fucked-up piece of work and ‘Lily McKenzie’ by Simon Fraser
Justice League: The New Frontier
I may not have bought it yet but it is pretty good and well worth the buy. It has gotten the tone of the book down pretty well, though unsurprisingly enough, lacking the space for the subplots that made up the book, it feels a bit … emptier. On a tech note, for some reason the film goes into black and white every so often. Try and ignore it:
Fucking Censorship
For a large variety of reasons, both personal and practical I hate whenever I see censorship in pretty much any form. Given my own inclinations towards liberalism and what would be called ‘political libertarianism’, and more generally for the practical reason that, in my experience, whenever there is censorship of items, it generally tends to be becuase the people calling for the censorship don’t ‘get’ the item in question I tend to assume that censorship is often a knee-jerk reaction to the unknown or frightening rather than something that’s neccessary.
Two recent news items that I have seen in the last 24 hours have left me feeling rather angry and raging against the stupidity of the so-called ‘moral majority’. The first one is reported here where Joe Duffy (Ireland’s resident fuckwit Jerry Springer) gets himself in a tizzy over the fact that Batman comics aren’t always suitable for children while the second one is about a British law that makes it illegal to view certain kinds of pornography, even if the pornography itself is not illegal.
With regards to the Batman issue in question (its one of the ‘All Star Batman and Robin issues which I’ve talked about before), I find that I can agree to a small extent with the mother who called in, because the issue in question, and the all-star Batman series in general is not suitable for children and Titan books, the comics publisher who is reprinting this material for the UK market should look at the content of the issues more before deciding to advertise the books to children. However, what got me rather annoyed, was the assertion by the guest from the rape crisis centre who blatanly asserted that people like me, who have been reading comics for years, and have been exposed to comics like ‘All-Star Batman’ are dysfunctional rapists waiting to happen. Now obviously, outside factors do play into rapists, and violent or abusive individuals will always find certain materials more stimulating. But, to suggest that because the Joker (in this case) date-raped a woman and kills her after showing misogyny in general, that I, or any other reader of comics, will do so is absurd. And yet, after Joe Duffy talking about this on his show and not finding anybody intelligent from the comics community to defend the books (the guys who were on his show defending comics, to put it mildly, didn’t do a good job), the impression that people have of the books will not exactly be the best. As a friend of mine put it on Gmail Chat today, and I’m quoting here:
yeah, but know in kitchens all across ireland, idiots who actually listen to duffy and value his opinion uncontrollable laughter are thinking that all those who read comic book readers are rapists
Now, this is probably going to go nowhere (I hope) but given the growing interest in Manga and French comics (but Manga especially) here in the English-speaking world,how long will it be before we see some ‘parents group’ jumping on this bandwagon?
But, what can one expect when in the Uk, the government has made it illegal to look at porn of a certain kind, even if that porn is not illegal? It’s that kind of ridiculous double-speak laws that make one fearful of the idea that we are moving to a society where these sort of knee-jerk ‘concerned citizens’ control us all. Whats most insidious about that law is that its going to make people who are perfectly decent individuals criminals in the eyes of the world simply because theire sexual interests diverge from the mainstream. The intellectual coherence of the arguement against ‘extreme pornography’ has all of the mental coherence of the homosexuals = future pedophiles or ‘Goths = future Columbine case’ arguements one hears every so often. Whats also interesting is how around 10 minutes in, the person being interviewed points out that the illegality of these images means that possession of these materials mean that people could be open to ‘legal revenge’ after a break-up in a relationship. Furthermore, they point out that the language used, comparing these people to peadophiles or murderers is grossly over the top. Anyway, have a look or listen to both of the links I provided.
‘Grindhouse’ - possibly the best cinema experience?
As I’ve already talked about a bit, I went to see ‘Grindhouse’ last night. Now I know the film didn’t do brilliantly as a double feature, but the only thing that proves is that people are fucking idiots. I cannot remember the last time I was at a movie where the audience burst into applause at various points during the films. Now personally I can’t recommend both films enough, though ‘Planet Terror’ is clearly the better of the two and you really need to watch the whole thing as the single film experience, and preferably in the cinema to get the full value of it. There are a few things that I should mention though:
Battle Pope! Not the Real Pope! Battle Pope!
While this cartoon isn’t quite as funny as the comic, mainly because it’s been toned down a bit, it’s still good for a chuckle:
Cock Load - Cock Load - Battle Pope - In the Beginning
Cock Load - Cock Load - Battle Pope - Genesis of an Ass-Kicking Read the rest of this entry »
Is Garfield Dead?
Came across this ‘Garfield is dead’ flash movie somewhat randomly today.. its a flash movie that is based off a series of ‘garfield’ strips form 1989… they’re rather dark as the feature Garfield being left alone in the house after everyone has moved away, which one would assume resulted in Garfield starving to death…
Interestingly enough,it’s lead to a group of people believing that given that the strips end with Garfield retreating into his imagination that it implies that all the Garfield strips since about 1990 (when Garfield would have starved to death) are now the result of Garfield’s ghost which is trapped in the house and refuses to realise that he’s dead.
Which is a load of bollocks really, but it’s a cool idea. And the strips are wonderfully dark….
While the strips I’m uploading are in colour, the b&w one’s that the flash movie uses are somewhat better so I’d advise people to take a look at that first…
And while we’re on the subject of depressing comic strips - this is actually worse I think and this is another great example of ‘is that actually real and written by the real author’ style comics where Walt Disney has Mickey Mouse trying to kill himself
UpdateThis site has a lot of the information about the strips as well as a really cool animation that is very similar to the actual strip and its story Read the rest of this entry »
America Jr.
I had heard about this webcomic before but never actually had a look at it. But today,having nothing better to do with myself and wanting to have a day where I didn’t do college related stuff ofr the first time in well … ages, I had a look through all 300 odd strips. (Well technically,I tried to do college stuff but was really not into it and decided to give myself the day off). Anyway, they’re pretty good, granted the last few strips befroe it went on a break (where it currently is at the moment) were a bit lacking in imagination, and the insistence they have on archiving all the weekend filler strips (even though most of the time its the same strip saturday and sunday and those same strips keep being repeated … ahhh) is a bit annoying. But the whole thing is pretty funny. Anyway, here’s some samples so take a look.
Gutsville #1 - the full issue
One of the best single comic issues of last year recently became available online here. It’s always good to see such unique and talented voices like Frazer Irving and Simon Spurrier *make it* across in the U.S comic scene. And that final page … Genius.
