Despite my gruff and incredibly manly exterior, the Webcomic Overlook is, in reality, a big softie. I am big on cute. I get weak at the knees over kittens and puppies. This may be why I am a sucker for Diana Nock’s adorable webcomic with the unbelievably precious title, The Intrepid Girlbot.
Joe Casey’s Officer Downe (Left), Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja (Center), and Beachhead from G.I. Joe (Right)
So everyone, it seems, is going wild over the prospective Axe Cop/Dr. McNinja crossover. You know what? It works. The former is an innocent take on random adventures, and the latter is more self-conscious. But they deserve each other, and I imagine that the crossover will work, more or less. It will definitely, by default, be better than the Spawn/Batman crossover. Plus the Snakes on a Plane-like logo is money in the bank.
Plus, the discussion on the Something Awful forums led to talk about favorite collaborations, which led me to Lizzy, the epic tale of love, magic, and centaurs created by Emmy C. and Anthony “Nedroid” Clark.
Best of luck to Malachai Nicolle and Chris Hastings. You’re going to need it to top this gem.
Nostalgia. It’s a terrible thing. It makes you feel old, and creates the illusion that everyone’s missing out by not growing up the same.
Nothing gets your nostalgia running quite like music from yesteryore. This is why the Sirius XM Corporation manages to suck money out of my wallet every month. Everyone’s got their own era, but my formative years are hard coded in the “90′s on 9″ station. Oh, sure, the format’s awful. The range is too wide: it goes from Salt N’ Pepa “Let’s Talk About Sex” to Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle,” which were before and after my time. The music selection’s not ideal, either. Let’s just say that the audiences for alternative and hip hop and Celine Dion never really crossed paths. But when it gets it right, it gets it right. The moment Red Hot Chili Peppers or Collective Soul or, heck, Marcy Playground hits, I’m immediately transported to a world when MTV videos were poetry, flannels were a fashion statement, and personal hygiene was optional.
I know what you’re thinking. “Go to bed, OLD MAN!” That’s the risk of waxing nostalgic: unless your audience is nearly the same age as you, you inevitably sound like Grandpa Simpson, rambling on and on about absolutely inconsequential items that no one wants to listen to. Ramble on too much, and people get tired with the implied arrogance on elevating one’s memories of yesteryear over those of others. This is why there’s a bit of a backlash against Baby Boomers these days: we are pretty damn tired with your incessant Beatles deification and your Woodstock worship and your general cultural hegemony.
But in the end, we indulge in reminders of our past because, in a way, they’re a nice reminder of the days when everything was possible and there was no limit to the future.
With Byron Wilkins, his personal nostalgia trip is located somewhere in between. I’ll give you three guesses which era he’s going to flashback to in his webcomic, entitled 1977.
So what do My Cage creators and former Zuda contestants Melissa DeJesus and Ed Powers have on their minds? Other than Aerosmith and Run DMC. Webcomics, of course. They drew the following strip (EDIT: featured in the Sunday, July 18, edition in the funny pages of a newspaper near you) to help calm the sometimes turbulent waters between print cartoonists and their web counterparts. From their blog (which also lists the characters and URLs to the webcomics referenced in the strip):
Well, it’s because after years of debate between web and syndicated cartoonists, we thought we’d do like our friends Run DMC and Aerosmith in the classic video for ‘Walk this Way’.
Really? Well, maybe not. But that ‘rap and rock’ analogy would make Scot Kurtz kinda like ‘Fresh Prince’ and that comparison makes me happy.
Personally, I would’ve gone with Snoop Dogg’s tribute to Johnny Cash in “My Medicine” (ft. Willie Nelson), but the Aerosmith/Run DMC analogy works too.
After writing 127 large reviews, I become very self-aware that I’m repeating the same references over and over again. It can’t be helped. Writers are only human, after all, and the big moments stick out so prominently in our memories that we relate our new experiences quite often to similar experiences in the past. This is why “The Sports Guy” Bill Simmons will always refer to Karate Kid and Rocky IV and why Roger Ebert will always mention “uncanny valley” and “meet cutes” as if he invented those terms.
One reference I’ve considered retiring was Jeff Smith’s Bone. After a quick search, I discovered I’m mentioned that comic in reviews of Order of Tales, The Meek, Ding!, Sequential Art, Subnormality, Gunnerkrigg Court, and Sugary Serials.
“What’s with this guy?” you’re likely thinking. “Has he only read one comic in his life, ever?”
True, Bone is one of my favorite comics of all time… the high standard for traditional cartooning and fantasy storytelling. However, I should probably let off on the references, lest you get sick of the hero worship.
That said, Ursula Vernon’s Digger makes it very, very difficult not to fall back on that chestnut one more time. Here’s the tale of the tape: Digger‘s heroine bears a resemblance to a plush toy. She’s thrust into a strange world far away from her own. The strange new world features cartoony talking creatures of various shapes and sizes, and she’s thrust into a tale that turns out to be more cosmic than it seemed at the onset.
I’d be a fool if I didn’t start, uh, gnawing at the bone for a gratuitous Bone comparison.
First off, apologies for the lack of updates lately. I did say summer was going to be a fairly busy time for me, and that part has delivered with impunity. I’m still about halfway through the next webcomic I’m reviewing, so that might be out late this week or the next.
Secondly, I’d be lax in not pointing out this excellent article written by Bryant Paul Johnson of Teaching Baby Paranoia, which he composed after he taught at a webcomics summer camp program.
The piece goes through some comic layout basics. Some tips are no-brainers but others are revelations. He even directly addresses the single-panel comic, which is at odds with Scott McCloud’s standard definition of sequential art:
Word and Pictures; Comics without Time: This combination (most often referred to as a cartoon) is the most common of these demi-comic examples. It’s the combination that we see in magazines (the New Yorker), on t-shirts and greeting cards, or in political cartoons.
So, is it a comic? Yes. The reader is left to infer the sequence of events that led us to that moment captured in time (and/or the sequence of events that lead us from it).
Why is the figure in the cartoon talking like that to his dog? Why is that public figure depicted wearing a hat and coated in oil? Because much of the narrative of a cartoon is left to the imagination of the reader, this is the category most often “misinterpreted.” In the case of certain comics (particularly those published in the New Yorker), puzzling out their meaning is part of the appeal.
(h/t Robot 6)
Happy Fourth of July, American readers!
I understand the loss to Ghana in the World Cup may have dampened your spirit, but buck up. Because England did MUCH, MUCH WORSE. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
And speaking of the English, let’s not forget that today’s the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration Independence, thus freeing the country from the British Empire to pursue our own destiny. I like to imagine we’re the rebellious kid of the British Empire. There’s a lot of things our country’s done wrong, but there’s a lot of things it’s done right, too. Politics may be a mess these days, but you got to remember: that’s what this country fought for. Eventhough there are people out there who don’t agree with you, the one thing we can agree on is that they have as much a right to express themselves as you do.
Hell, pretty much the entire Bill of Rights is pretty damn awesome.
Remember to re-enact American history, eat a hot dog, and watch some fireworks. There’s a reason the Forefathers selected July to sign those documents Jefferson drafted up: because summer is party time!
