« October 3, 2004 - October 9, 2004 | Main | October 17, 2004 - October 23, 2004 »
-->October 16, 2004
Eric Burns-White: And just like that, a giant, oversized, lazy boy becomes a giant, oversized, lazy man.
(From Li'l Abner. Click on the thumbnail for full sized delayed puberty!)
1952 was a historic year for Li'l Abner. Not only was this the year that Daisy Mae finally got Li'l Abner to marry her (an 18 year quest), but, as you see in the above strip, it was the year Daisy Mae got Li'l Abner to kiss her -- and have him discover that he likes the kissing, as he said. And just three months after the wedding, too! As Mammy Yokum said a couple of days before, the Yokums are widely noted as passionate lovers, and clearly this is all that was needed, as it would be roughly nine months later that Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae's son Honest Abe Yokum would be born.
Comics.com has this milestone event in their reprints today. Check it out! And note the acknowledgment that while Abner and Daisy Mae would not be running in the Sadie Hawkins Day race that year, it would indeed be held. Some traditions are eternal.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:57 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: Hey, a good investment is a good investment.
From Bob the Angry Flower. Click on the thumbnail to see full sized Genocide!)
Yeah, it's eight o'clock at night and this is my first snark of the day. I went to a movie! Why shouldn't I? You're not the boss of me! I hate you! I'm gonna wear what I want to! All the other kids do it! Don't come in my room, damn it!
First off... I still hate The Twenty.
Second off... I finally, way way late, saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. My God that was a good movie! It was absolutely perfect! The robots! The robots! And ornithopters! And the Mechanical Menace Superman once fought in the forties! And ray guns! And a cameo from a dead actor! And a plucky reporter!
Sorry. I was frothing for a moment. If you haven't seen this, your life is much sadder than mine. If you don't want to see it, I respect that, though I will light a candle for you.
So. Third off. Bob the Angry Flower.
I fucking. Love. Bob the Angry Flower. I was introduced to Bob a long time back, with Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, Idiots. Which is now a poster. Which I'm going to buy and put on my office door, until I'm told to take it down. From there, I immersed myself into the frenetic world of the angriest, and funniest, of all perennials. I love the dark humor, the joyful, if inappropriate, abandon Bob takes to projects, and the clean pen and ink work.
This is a perfectly good example of the Bobish Oeuvre. A mundane situation. Bob becoming suspicious. Bob uncovering a completely hideous thing. Bob loving it all the more. And then the line "I want one! I want this one!"
I love it. Stephen Notley gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:55 PM | Comments (2)
-->October 15, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Seriously, dude. What is it with this week and penis jokes? Did I miss a memo?
(From Yirmumah. Click on the thumbnail for full sized legal chicanery!)
I don't have much to say here. Just two things:
1. I trust the doll was to scale. Otherwise, the implication is horrifying.
2. In a strip about action figures with penises, the phrase "kung fu grip" makes me giggle like a 12 year old boy. Exactly like a 12 year old boy. For exactly the same reason.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:59 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: It's not screaming the name during sex that's the problem. Murmuring "g'night, [name of Ex]" when mostly asleep and lying next to a different girl? That gets you murdered.
(From Sinister Bedfellows. Click on the thumbnail for full sized panic!)
I don't know how to classify Sinister Bedfellows. It's a webcomic. With photos. But it's not a photo webcomic. It has no characters, yet it has a voice. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Lore Brand Comics, only Lore specifically goes for the Funny, and I don't think McKenzee has any mandate.
It's almost like a series of Koans. The photography sets a mood, and the words either reinforce that mood or set apart from it in juxtaposition. I don't go into the next day's Sinister Bedfellowing with any expectations except that I'll think "oh, cool." And that's about right.
There is the occasionally profound piece, too. Such as:
(No, this isn't a double-snark. This is a critical essay. I'm using examples from the work. It's English Comp all over again. Hey, screw you! Consistency is for squares!)
It's the subtlety of the reinforced message, the imagery, and the allusion that get me, here. (For those of you who don't know the Bible by heart, Genesis 1:27 says "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." KJV, for those playing along at home, because King James commissioned himself some pretty language.)
In the end, I can't classify this as any specific type of webcomic. I can only classify it as art.
And that's all the classification needed, isn't it?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:43 PM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: You know, I haven't had salsbury steak in years.
(From Gaming Guardians. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Websnark!)
Submitted without comment.
(Well, mostly without comment. This is a webcomic about characters who enter tabletop RPG systems. I'm a professional RPG writer. I've been nominated for an ENnie directly, and could legitimately claim involvement with a Gold ENnie winner if I were willing to lie. As a result... I get a mention for writing this thing. Life. Don't talk to me about life.)
(Wait. only reviews webcomics?)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:54 PM | Comments (3)
-->October 14, 2004
Eric Burns-White: A fast update.
The woman and the baby at the next booth? I mentioned them in the last snark?
Well, as they were getting up and getting ready to leave, the baby started to bitch. Probably because it had no chance to sleep during the meal.
"Oh you," the woman said. "Don't be a fussbudget."
Fussbudget.
There's ways to get back in my good graces almost instantly. Invoking old school Peanuts is one of them.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:47 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Wow! Irony! Who expected Irony?!
(From Sluggy Freelance. Click on the thumbnail for full sized ironic statements!)
It almost goes without saying that, due to a combination of work and fatigue and just plain dumb luck, the week I have by far the highest readership is also the week I've had the lightest output. Life can be like that sometimes. Still, I've still been lurking out there, a few stray thoughts percolating, and now sitting in a cafe listening to a CD of piano jazz puts me in the mood for writing.
Of course, the woman and her sister sitting in the booth next to mind with a six month old child who is trying hard to sleep while they try hard to get her to giggle and laugh for their amusement by mugging and making noises and saying her name loudly puts me in the mood to reconsider my stance on gun control, rather than writing, but we're going to give this the old school try anyway.
That Which Redeems is one of his longer 'epic' story arcs -- to the point that it's two separate storylines in his dropdown (consecutive storylines, no less -- can we really call it "That Which Redeems II" when it's just the completion of the storyline that immediately predated it?). And, with rare exceptions -- "The Storm Breaker Saga" leaps to mind -- they tend to go on too long. Christ only knows how close I came to stabbing myself in the temple with a fork instead of read yet another freaking Gofotron strip, back in the day... but I digress. That Which Redeems is dragging a bit, but it's generally well paced enough that I don't mind. And it has occasional flashes of absolutely brilliant humor to make us glad to be alive.
And that brings us to today. It's a single panel, that kind of puts me in mind of the cartoonists of an earlier generation. It's a site gag that takes a half second, and then just slays you. And I think it's leading to a depressing ending, so I'm glad for the chance to laugh.
(I'm hopeful, by the way, that there's a twist coming up. Because if they're intentionally setting things up for Torg's sword's power to wear off just in time for Zo‘2 to throw herself on it and die to give Torg and NotBun the power to escape, followed by the nuclear strike killing off or otherwise eliminating all the primary demons....
Well, it would suck if I called it in advance, wouldn't it?)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:16 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: On the other hand, if a girl were wearing that dress in real life, I wouldn't recognize her face then either.
(From Something Positive. Click on the thumbnail for full sized walking sex!)
I like the joke here, I should say. And I like the art. This one worked for me. It wasn't just the setup and delivery, and the little bit of angst that heightened the pleasure -- sort of like salt is supposed to heighten taste, along with slowly killing you off -- was very deftly done. So I enjoyed this one. This needs to be said.
However... I have no idea if the girl Jason brought in to drape off of Davan is supposed to be Claire, or another girl who I've forgotten, or a random girl from Jason's (former) harem, or a prostitute, or who. If Jason had mentioned her name, that'd be cool because then I wouldn't be wondering. Or if it had been more clearly someone from the regular cast....
Well, it hardly matters. The joke works, the strip is good, in all ways I'm satisfied. This is like getting an itch in the back of your brain. The only reason it drives you insane is because there's no good way to scratch it. Though I do know some people who would try.
The worst thing is, I bet it is someone from the regular cast, and I'm the only one who doesn't recognize her. Which means I now look like an idiot. Dance for us, idiot-boy! Dance for our pleasure!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:46 PM | Comments (5)
-->Eric Burns-White: Lore Sjñberg will pay for this.
(From Lore Brand Comics! Click on the thumbnail for full sized... wait, didn't we do this joke already?)
Lore Brand Comics is a weekly. So it's understandable that Lore missed Penis Joke Day earlier this week.
However, because I'm nothing if not fair, it's worth noting that Lore Sjñberg will pay for this. Dearly.
It's also worth noting that before Sexy Losers, I had no idea what 'Bukkake' meant. It's also worth noting that my sister, who does read this site, probably still doesn't know. So please indulge me for a moment while I send her a private message.
Kris? It's your brother, Eric.
Don't look the word up. Especially don't look it up online. And don't ever say the word to your kids. Just trust me on this.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:19 AM | Comments (5)
-->October 13, 2004
Eric Burns-White: And in the strip before this, there's dismemberment! DISMEMBERMENT!
(From Penny Arcade. Click on the thumbnail for full sized disappointment!)
This is probably an Ur-Penny Arcade strip. In one fell swoop (are swoops really all that fell?), we have a video game reference and implicit positive review, some Funny that depends upon the interaction of our principals, some 'everyman humor,' and profanity. Not bad for three panels and a game I've never played and never have any intention of playing, huh? Gabe and Tycho do this shit well, because they focused in on what their strip was about, and then refined the toolset to provide it. The brief glimpses of Continuity don't feel at all like Story. They just feel like an excuse to do another layer of humor, and then they move on.
If you go back through my archives and columns and the like, you'll find I have a maxim for this sort of thing. "If you want to tell fart jokes, tell fart jokes." While they don't really tell fart jokes on Penny Arcade (fruit raping jokes? Sure. Farts? Generally not), they know the kind of humor they want to do and they've absolutely mastered it. And that's why half of North America's gaming population and a nontrivial portion of the nongaming webcomics fans out there reads this strip.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:54 PM | Comments (7)
-->Eric Burns-White: Paypal presents: a double dose of Narbonic!
(From Narbonic! Click on either thumbnail for full sized RPG action! (subscription required))
So, remember yesterday when I extolled the virtues of Irregular Webcomic putting a permanent link URL right on its front page? And expressed yearning that the Manley sites would do the same? This is because the Manley sites use a somewhat... arcane... archiving method. Not arcane as in ancient. Arcane as in "eldritch knowledge that one cannot intuit sitting on the home page." But this is actually no big deal, because it's actually slightly easier to cope with Modern Tales, Graphic Smash and the like -- the first 'archive' page you go to actually contains the last block of strips, including that day's, so boom. One click, cut and paste. No bigs!
Only... yesterday, I tried and my subscription didn't work.
Bwah?
So, I did some digging, and discovered that because I changed my backup credit card information on Paypal (I had to -- the old ones expired), all of my Paypal subscriptions got zapped. So, no more subscription to Modern Tales, no more Serializer.net, no more American Elf, no more Graphic Smash, et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Well, no bigs. You just resubscribe.
Only Paypal wouldn't let me. Or anyone. Paypal, this whole past several days, has apparently been hosed.
So, because by personal policy, I don't snark stuff I can't link directly to (with exceptions based on the fact that it's my policy and I'll break it if I want to), I couldn't do a Narbonic snark yesterday despite wanting to give them money and despite being able to see the strip I wanted to snark... because I couldn't intuit the archive page I would want to link to.
Today, the sub went through. I did a Year Sub instead of a monthly this time, so this shouldn't come up again for a long time, damn it. Of course, there's all those other subs to do, but they'll wait until I snark something on them, mostly because I'm lazy.
So. I still wanted to talk about yesterday's Narbonic, but I thought today's Narbonic reinforced the point I wanted to make in the first place, and as they're on the same archive page anyway, you're getting them both. I feel justified -- I just paid these folks thirty bucks, and besides, it's advertising. And if Shaenon Garrity doesn't like a double-snark, I suspect she'll make that known. Comedically, more than likely.
The reason I wanted to do yesterday's strip was triggered by Iris's smile in panel four. It occured to me that I really, really liked that smile. And it hit me how much I enjoy the expressiveness Garrity brings to her characters. There is a very big difference between having a style, and having only one face you can design. Garrity's characters are distinctive. Dave doesn't look anything like Mell, who doesn't look anything like Helen. And that distinctiveness also shows up in minor characters -- the gamers around the table are individual. Some look similar to others, but not exact, without being cumbersome. Contrast that with, say, Megatokyo, which has gorgeous artwork but there's not much difference between any of the female faces. Or a number of other strips. I don't mean to pick on Megatokyo just because I enjoy it. Though, admittedly, I do enjoy it.
The other side of this reinforces the snark I did about Gav Bleuel's artwork. Garrity hand-draws everything in Narbonic, including shades and fills. I love this style of drawing, and it also means that every panel is unique. So even though we're seeing conversations between Dave and the same people, there is a dynamic feeling to them that cut and paste strips can't match. These people are moving, shifting their hands around, leaning forward and back, flipping their hair. They're doing nothing 'active' (I've sat around a lot of RPG tables in my time. These are not aerobic affairs), but you can't call the conversation passive. It's not just word balloons floating in space over art you can safely ignore after the first panel. It's body language.
And that's something no other static art form can match.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:43 AM | Comments (4)
-->Eric Burns-White: If anyone is wondering if a lot of people read PvP....
...let me assure you that yes, they do.
For the record, I did half as much Bandwidth yesterday as I did for the entire month of September.
That's a nice feeling, for the record. And no one parked on the lawn or spilled chips on the carpet, either.
On the other hand, I'm completely out of Sobe juices, now.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:31 AM | Comments (0)
-->October 12, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Updates on Bowling Shirts!
For the record, we've broken eleven bowling shirt orders (which vastly exceeds my original expectation, which was 'me and my mother.' Particularly when one realizes my mother didn't actually want one. Bitch.
Well, beyond making me a happy panda, this means the base bowling shirt cost is now down to the $31.95 price point. Which is likely where it's going to stay, since we'd need another ten people to hit the $26.95 price point, and I don't see that happening.
So, $31.95 for the shirt, +$4.00 for Priority Mail shipping. +$4.95 per word if you want an embroidered name. YAY!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:17 PM | Comments (7)
-->Eric Burns-White: "Hello, this the the Hyundai Department of Motor Vehicles. How may I help you?"
(From Irregular Webcomic. Click on the link for full sized branding!)
In his annotations, Morgan-Mar says that he's surprised governments haven't already done this. I guess I'm surprised too. Still, given he uses his Nigerian Treasury Ministry strips to hit every corporate Get Rich Quick scheme and internet scam, I think the juxtaposition here is hilarious.
I also want to point out an amenity that will mean nothing to any of you, but is an absolute freaking Godsend to people with websites like mine. In his navigation tool (which remains a best of breed in terms of functionality), he includes a link that's standard for Blogs and almost unknown for Webcomics: "this strip's permanent URL: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=624" Sure. This may seem obvious to you, sitting there in your chair, but there's a lot of steps I need to take to craft the fine, precision blathering you're reading here. I have to identify a strip I want to Snark, download the graphic, upload-and-thumbnail it on my site, and identify a permanent link for the thumbnail link. See, I don't want to just point you to their website: my snarks are typically about specific strips in their archive, so it makes sense to link to that archive page.
Only for the most part, the archive page URL is different from the main page URL, but in many cases the archive page isn't readily available until the next strip comes out. So, I have to trick the site into giving me a URL that I can use -- generally by going to the last strip in the archive, then incrementing it up. Generally, that will either give me the archive page or will default back to the main page for the day, but either way it's a link I can put in.
(In some rare cases, it returns a 404, and I have to delay that snark until the next time the strip updates. Only I don't tend to like snarking the archive instead of the current strip, so in a practical sense it means I don't snark that webcomic.)
Morgan-Mar takes all that away. I just copy, paste and am done. Life is good.
I am praying that when Web Comics Nation rolls out, it does something like this automatically. Praying!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:47 AM | Comments (2)
-->October 11, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Because I keep my promises... the Max Powers Snark
From PvP.I got e-mail from my friend Sean today, and he reminded me that way back when (in a snark where I compared and contrasted the characters of Jade and Miranda Fontaine from PvP), I promised a snark about Max Powers the next time he appear. Well, he appeared a while ago but I didn't follow through. But now, here it is.
Simply put, Max Powers, the perpetual antagonist and foil, is actually the good guy in PvP.
Honestly.
We were introduced to Max years ago -- he was the entirely-too-slick and entirely-too-passive-aggressive school friend of Cole, Brent, Reggie, Jase and Robbie. The one they could never stand. And here he was, launching his own magazine to compete with PvP, in the same. Freaking. Building. Cole balled his fists up and declared what has become a lament for the ages -- "DAMN YOU MAX POWERS!" And so we had a character.
As a side-note, I now use "DAMN YOU MAX POWERS!" in casual conversation. So Scott Kurtz has had an impact on my life.
And since then, there's been lots and lots of adventures Max has figured into. Max's sister Sonya showed up and became Skull's girlfriend (despite Skull's lack of genitalia). Max hired Marcy for a while. He bought Cole's childhood videogames on eBay. He took Jade out while Jade and Brent were broken up. And so on, and so forth. His very existence inspires yet more of the wackiness we've come to know and love on PvP.
Only... none of what he does is bad.
He gave Marcy a real job, where Cole used her as unpaid help, more or less -- and later on inspired Cole to hire her. He gave Reggie a job. When Jase and Robbie showed up on his doorstep after being fired, he took them in, tried to find different ways to make them profitable, and then finally threw out their couch and beer and made them clean up their act -- which worked. Yes, he tricked Jade into going out with him... but he did so when she was already upset and feeling low, and made her feel better about herself. He told Cole about the software audits -- and while Cole assumed he would then rat PvP out (and hijinks ensued), in actuality he was just chatting with Cole. Even the "naked picture of Jade" storyline wasn't any worse than any of the PvP staff would do in a similar circumstance. One could easily have substituted Brent for Max in that entire storyline and it would have fit perfectly.
Cole, on the other hand, has been spiteful, mean, jealous, angry, and crappy to everyone where Max is concerned. When Max offered PvP staff members a chance to go on television -- television -- Cole fired the staffers who took him up on the deal, and then made them go through humiliating interviews to come back. When Max bought Cole's Atari stuff in good faith, Cole was ready to renege because he didn't want it to go to Max. Cole has broken into Max's office, talked behind Max's back, blamed Max for his own mistakes and shortcomings, and in general been a total asshole where Max is involved.
The others aren't any better. Jade isn't above deceit and chicanery to get her own way. Francis has paved his road to Hell with the very worst of intentions. Marcy was willing to set off the sprinkler system and ruin the spring dance (not to mention all those rented tuxedos) for everyone. Skull... okay, Skull's a good guy, but still.
And Brent?
Brent is willing to specifically try and set up Miranda with Max, to get her out of his hair. Just like before he was willing to get her fired and used Skull as a pawn. Brent is as nasty and ruthless as they claim Max is, without Max's track record of success.
Even the other characters can't say why Max is a bad guy. Jade foisted Miranda off on Brent, because she couldn't say why "Max Powers was bad news." In fact, I don't think I can point to a single explanation of why Max is a bad guy listed anywhere in the entire comic. Not one.
The only indication that Max is bad is that he can't perceive Skull at all, but we don't know the full reason why he can't see Skull. Oh, and Max does have an ego -- there's no denying that. But again, he's not worse in any way than the rest of PvP's staff, and there are ways in which he seems to be better than most.
I'm happy this isn't a strip about Max Powers. He's not a sympathetic character, whereas the PvP staff is. But he is a good guy, nonetheless.
And that must drive Cole absolutely batshit insane. Zing.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:29 PM | Comments (14)
-->Eric Burns-White: Or maybe it's "Keenspot Founder's day." Who's in charge of days? Well, at least there are no penis jokes.
(From Nukees. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Badmouthing!)
I keep harping on Gav Bleuel's skill at characterization, but we're going to do it one more time, here. There is more character definition in these four panels than you find in a month of most webcomics. First off, we have the surface bits -- the description of King Luca. Second, there is Gav's own character definition -- we see his self-description of not wanting anyone to be happy, and his pleasure at being a scoundrel. This is of course reinforced by his considering "noble-intentioned paragon of virtue" to be badmouthing. Third there is Cindy, who we learn that, despite her own willingness to be devilish, every now and again, is capable of finding Gav's behavior "deplorable," (and she looks horrified in that panel, not amused).
And finally, of course, there's the fact that both Cindy and Gav like banter better than considerations about good and evil at all.
Nicely layered. Also, I've been informed that Nukees is 100% hand-drawn, without even using computers for fills. I'm pleased to be corrected, because like I said, I love that sort of thing. It's apparently the same with Narbonic, so the connection I drew last time remains true. HAH!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:13 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: It's Chris Crosby day on Websnark, clearly! And penis reference day. I don't pretend these two things are related.
(From Sore Thumbs. Click on the thumbnail for full sized flabbiness!)
I don't know why there's a plethora of penis jokes on today's webcomics, but they're there. And hey, we have another example of Chris Crosby going way beyond broke! This time, of course, it's Sore Thumbs instead of Superosity, which remains a webcomic that people are polarized about. For the life of me, I don't know why. I can accept not liking Sore Thumbs, as it's the kind of comic people either will or won't like. But being upset by it? It's no more about politics or video games as Jackson Pollack's paintings were about perspective.
In a way, it's about the same kind of thoroughly unpleasant, yet oddly endearing people who populate Superosity. I wouldn't want Fairbanks, Cecania or Harmony anywhere near me (Sawyer is a decent fellow, though I expect I'd get sick of him awfully fast), yet I kind of like all of them. Yeah, even Fairbanks. There isn't a one of them with a well thought out opinion on anything, but it's fun when they do well. This is why Rondel needs to be so thoroughly rotten -- otherwise, we'd have no reason to root against him. (In fact, it might be interesting to have a third game store open up -- this one run by an absolute saint, just for the dissonance.)
The appeal of this strip and the strip before -- which featured such charming terms as 'dick slot' and 'funbags' (And 'potatoes,' but that's neither here nor there) -- was in the thought balloons of their respective last panels. Something about both Sawyer -- who recognizes he has a... deficiency -- and Rondel -- who's compensating for a perceived one -- having such introspective thoughts during their posturing just hits me right. Today's punchline in particular appeals. It reminds me of a Futurama-esque style of humor, where someone makes a traditional speech ranting about destroying all humans, only to have an incidental character next to him turn and say "now, that's just hurtful, Bob."
Anyway. It's a good day to be Chris Crosby, I'd say.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:56 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Clothing is definitely not optional.
(From Superosity. Click on the the thumbnail for full sized Greenvember!)
Chris Crosby subscribes to the "if you're going to do it at all, do it over the top" theory of humor, and that's one of the reasons I like him. He's not afraid to make the alternate universes our heroes spawn in the wake of their running around space and time patently absurd, and the people who live in them equally absurd. The fact that we're now going to have three George Bushes running around the base universe -- the original George Bush, who became a baseball player in another universe which then was destroyed by aliens, and who is now frozen solid in Boardy's lab, the evil George Bush from that alien destroyed universe, who had been a baseball player and who is now the evil President, and this third, green haired, naked George Bush, who... um....
Look, I just said Chris Crosby goes absurdly over the top. I didn't say I understood any of it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Brad Guigar will pay for this.
(From Greystone Inn. Click on the thumbnail for full... sized... oh Christ....)
Brad Guigar will pay for this. Dearly.
That is all I have to say.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:40 AM | Comments (4)
-->Eric Burns-White: In Memorium: Christopher Reeve
Christopher Reeve was an avowed Atheist. But, as he once said (or so I've been told), "Even though I don't personally believe in the Lord, I try to behave as though He was watching." It's a good philosophy. One I can get behind.
Tomorrow, there will be an innumerable number of editorial cartoons showing Christopher Reeve entering the gates of a Heaven he didn't believe in, the same as when George Harrison died. He'll be wearing a Superman costume in most of them. And flying in many of them.
If there is an afterlife -- and I'm open on the subject -- and if there's any justice in the world, he won't be flying. He'll be walking. He always said he would walk again, and that's how I choose to imagine him now. One foot in front of the other, the way most of us take for granted.
But I understand why the cartoonists will put him in that costume and fly him through the air. Because I was a child when I saw him in that movie. And I believed. Just like the tagline said. I believed a man could fly.
I believed that man could fly.
There has never been anyone so perfectly suited to play Superman. Dean Cain comes close, but he lacks that certain wry sense of humor. George Reeves had the wry sense of humor, but lacked the utterly, complete lack of guile Reeve brought to the part. And besides, Christopher Reeve looked the way Curt swan drew. It's really kind of astounding.
I happened to watch Superman: The Movie about three months ago. Tivo caught it. It held up astoundingly well. And it proved conclusively that you don't need digital enhancement or redone special effects even in such a special-effects laden movie. Because when Clark Kent buckled his uniform's belt for that first time, in the Fortress of Solitude, stepped off into the air, and swept forth into the sky, he was really flying. I know that to be true. I saw it.
Christopher Reeve was never ashamed of the material. He treated Clark Kent and Clark's alter ego as a sacred trust. Even appearing on the Muppet Show he maintained a sense of respect for the material. That's more than the "Stars of Star Wars" could claim. He was always genial. A gentleman.
And then he had his accident. And we learned that when the worst adversity on Earth happened to Christopher Reeve, he maintained that geniality through it all... and proved once and for all that Superman was, if anything, typecasting. Because he believed, with all his heart, that he would walk again. As fervently as I believed he could fly. And he was gaining strength. Getting back feeling. He was working hard and exploring all options and advocating hard for the research that would set him free.
I think he would have made it. It was dumb luck that caused him to get an infection. And his weakened body couldn't take that infection well. He slipped into cardiac arrest, and then a coma, and then slipped away.
My hopes and thoughts are with his family. And with all of us -- his children, who believed he could fly. We have a responsibility to live our lives well -- to live up to his example. To live as if Christopher Reeve -- and God -- were watching, even if we don't believe in God or life after death. We have a responsibility to take up his causes and fight his fights. And we have a responsibility to face up to our own adversities with geniality and compassion.
It's a tall order. But he managed to it. Now it's our turn.
And most of all... we have to believe.
Because if we believe hard enough... we too can fly.
EDIT: Please give generously to The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:59 AM | Comments (1)
-->October 10, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Still stuck behind a suck ISP...
...but struggling along as best we can. So while this is Yet Another Mention of General Protection Fault, I'm not going to thumbnail it. Thumbnailing against the tide is too painful. Too PAINFUL I tell you!
So. I told you I was interested in what happened next, after Mr. Oshiro showed himself to be a racist. And then Nick sort of called him on the hypocrisy of his bigotry, and Oshiro went nuts. Apparently he attacked Nick sufficiently to draw blood and make a hospital trip a good idea.
So, Nick's heading to the hospital, but doesn't want Ki to go with him. Seems he doesn't want to make Oshiro even angrier. When he gets back after "things cool down," they'll see what they can work out.
Uh... huh.
The incomparable Wednesday White asked me what point General Protection Fault goes on the "You Had Me, and You Lost Me" list. Well, that list requires a pretty systemic breaking down of the elements that once had me following along faithfully. A strip of the Funny eliminating the Funny. Updates so sporadic that it's an event just to get a strip. Storylines getting so convoluted that you need a scorecard and dental records to identify who's talking. That kind of thing.
GPF, on the other hand, is suffering badly from duality and a lack of understanding of who and what GPF actually is, these days. The Nick and Ki stuff (as well as the Dwayne, Trent and slime mold stuff) underscores it, for all the reasons I've already laid out. But there's also the Fooker, Sharon, Dexter and Trudy stuff, and all of it shows promise. There is a lot about General Protection Fault that could still be great....
So no, it's not going on that list. Not yet. If the next storyline doesn't bring back the smile to my face, that'll likely be that.
But I'm now officially rooting for Nick and Ki to break up.
Seriously. I'm rooting for Ki to dump Nick for being spineless, or for Nick to dump Ki because he can't marry a girl whose father won't allow it (I'm not saying I agree with Nick -- it just sounds like a Nickish thing to do). But this couple has no chemistry, no passion, nothing that draws our interest, and nothing that makes us want to root for them. And this plotline has sunk back down into banality.
(Maybe Nick could be kidnapped from the hospital by C.R.U.D.E., seeking to harness his inventor's gene! And Dr. Not could seduce him, with the help of Powerful Mind Altering Chemicals! Nick wakes up nude in her bed, befuddled... realizes what he's done... and discovers he likes it! Ki, in the meantime, wanders the streets looking for him, only she runs into pirates! Pirates who kidnap her for a life of adventure on the high seas! And while she dreams of finding Nick once more, she swiftly takes her Geek Wet Dream role to its conclusion by mastering the crew of the ship, taking over, and entering a full on life of Pirate Queen Debauchery! Meanwhile, back at the Oshiro house, Yoshi is bicycling to the UPS store to ship some parts to Trudy when the Velociraptor he's built in the basement suddenly explodes, killing Mr. and Mrs. Oshiro instantly though with maximum pain and suffering. Shocked and horrified, Yoshi ships himself to the drop point, and he and Trudy begin a new life as mastermind and henchman. The explosion causes the Oshiro family car to be blown into a suborbital arc which lands, coincidentially, on GPF's headquarters, where most of the cast is away enjoying the autumn air but where Duncan and the slime molds are having a meeting. They die, and Nicole receives the insurance money, causing her to get together with Fooker, Sharon and Dexter and found a new, leaner company with a 21st Century sensibility. Trent, hearing all this, laughs so hard he slips and falls into an industrial meat grinder. An adorable and hilarious strip shows baby Sydney being given a hot dog, and looking quizzical at the power necktie that's sticking out of one end of it.)
(Or then again, maybe not. Sigh.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:09 AM | Comments (3)
