Category Archives: anime

El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: Eerie Cuties

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We open Eerie Cuties with a segment called “EC Intro.” I had hoped would be an homage to EC Comics but instead turns out to just mean “Eerie Cutie Intro.” Quelle dommage. A kid, who sorta looks like a young Duke from GI Joe, gets chased around by two cute vampire teenagers in jailbait miniskirts who look like they should be at a convention for magical girl manga cosplayers.

The taller, raven-haired girl is named Layla. She also wears an exasperated look 24-7, to the point that I think a permanent giant sweat drop should be attached to her head next to her living skull barrette. Before you can say you’ve got a natural, natural, natural desire to meet an actual, actual, actual vampire, Layla digs her fangs into young Duke for a morning snack.

Of course, the bite is not fatal. (It’s tough to sympathize with vampires when they’re being emotionally manipulative mass murderers.) Bites only induce a temporary coma and a bout of memory loss. However, Nina, her purple-haired sister and the star of Eerie Cuties, still plays the part of the noble vampire: she never sups on human blood, only cherry filled chocolates. So while Nina is at low risk of contracting trichinellosis, she does run a high risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

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The Webcomic Overlook #98: Gunshow

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At some point in the development of human culture, we — and I speak a collective “we” as citizens of the world — decided that we did not like fart jokes. The very term “fart joke” has become short hand for humor that’s crude. Unseemly. Lazy. Far too bourgeois. Any movie that employs a fart joke is immediately dismissed as the trash heap of comedy. A movie, for example, could have a script written by Garrison Keillor. But if you, heaven forbid, put a fart joke in it, lord how the critics will talk! They will stick their nose up in the air and say things such as, “Leave your surreptitious trumpetlike rump blasts for infants and rednecks.” (Notable exception: Blazing Saddles. For some reason, the fart scene there is considered high art, perhaps because it is the best fart scene.)

The paradox, though, is that fart jokes are funny. Let out a long, mighty rip — ideally punctuated by a motorboat staccato — and you can bring the whole room down with laughter and tears of joy. There’s something primal about hearing a fart and laughing in kind. It’s an instinct hard-coded the deepest recesses of our minds. We find it funny, our forefathers found it funny, and it doesn’t depend on witticisms that need copious amounts of cultural baggage or familiarity with the language. Sarcasm may be unique to Western culture, but fart jokes are universal. It’s somewhat of a comfort to imagine that our ancestors amused themselves around a campfire by ritualistically dancing around the campfire in their facepaint and decorative shields to celebrate the gods for their blessed feast of wild boar, only to have the festivities erupt into guffaws when one of the dancers felt particularly gassy. Naturally, his wife would be standing sternly to the side, rolling her eyes.

Which brings me to Gunshow, a webcomic by the irrepressible KC Green. It’s no insult, I think, to say that Gunshow is the fart joke of webcomics. I mean that metaphorically, for the most part … though it’s pretty literal at times, too. Gun Show taps into the most primordial instincts, daring us to laugh from something as ridiculously simple as a goofy-looking face. Like the crude humor you find in those early Mel Brooks films and South Park‘s Terrence & Phillip, sometimes it takes a genius to remind you that fart jokes are, in fact, funny.

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The Webcomic Overlook #86: Boss Noodle

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Back in the early days of this site, I once ran afoul of Dave Cheung fans. The drama stemmed from a small comment I made about John Solomon’s return:

I just finished reading his “Chugworth” review, and … what can I say? The webcomic deserved John Solomon.

This managed to touch off some colorful replies from the creator and his fans. Words were said. Tears were shed. Yet, in the end, I finally conceded a tiny point. I hadn’t read all of Chugworth Academy.

Really, I’d only read the 20+ pages on the review after all (written by Solomon associate Lilith Esther), and, while it seemed like a good sample, those few incompetent, atrocious, and borderline racist panels might not be representative of the 300+ pages that Mr. Cheung put out. Who knows? Perhaps those 280 other pages dealt with Mr’s Cheung’s personal relationship with his Lord and Savior. I have no idea! I’d be a blind fool to left a few unspeakably awful panels color my entire opinion.

Still, I vowed that one day, some day, I would review Chugworth Academy in vengeance. That day will most likely never come. Chugworth stopped updating last year, and I don’t typically review out-of-date comics. Instead I’m reviewing Dave Cheung’s brand spanking new webcomic, Boss Noodle.

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The Webcomic Overlook #85: Earthsong

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Back in college, I used to read buttloads of fantasy novels. It used to be that unless there was a dragon or at least a comely lass in a silky princess outfit on the cover, I wasn’t just that interested. Also, it was a good excuse to make time with the cute and bookish brunette. My deformed bookshelves are currently fighting a losing battle to support The Book of Jhereg, Kate Elliott’s Crown of Stars books, Mary Gentle’s Grunts, some Raymond Feist paperbacks, some Steven Brust hardbacks, and others.

While my interested has waned somewhat over the years, I learned a valuable lesson: when a story is set in a strange, mystical world, it becomes very important to have characters you can relate to. My absolute favorite series was Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, mainly because you could put yourself in Simon’s shoes and witness the wonder and terror of the unfolding world through his eyes. Stories set almost exclusively in elven enclaves never appealed to me because when everyone’s alien, no one’s remarkable … and it’s hard to relate to a people whose main purpose in life is to sit around playing sitars and looking pretty.

This should have set of warning bells regarding today’s subject for the Webcomic Overlook, by the way. Everyone in the book, including the few men, are cuties, and at no point do they stop being cuties. Today, we look at Earthsong by Crystal Yates, a webcomic which is not really about singing … or even set on Earth, come to think about it.

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The Webcomic Overlook #81: Raven’s Dojo

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Hero spends about seven episodes training to fight an unstoppable villain. Hero and villain meet, and, after spending an inordinate amount of time staring at each other. They have inner monologues which last for several minutes on how they’re going to beat the other guy with their unstoppable techniques.

Finally, they fight. Which lasts for thirty episodes or so. The good guy and the bad guy trade the exact same punches for the first episode, after which the bad guy boasts over the next episode how he has this hidden technique that he hasn’t used yet. He spends the next three episodes powering up, where the heroes just sorta stand around with their mouths open. And then the villain unleashes his powerful move… which is totally ineffective because the good guy has his OWN unstoppable technique, which is, apparently, IMPOSSIBLE!

Repeat.

Congratulations. You’ve just watched an episode of Dragonball Z.

The show is quite infamous among anime circles for running, say, a string of 70 episodes with perhaps 10 minutes of actual content. Even the most diehard fans will admit that Dragonball Z was one of the dumbest things on TV. Yet, somehow, creator Akira Toriyama somehow created the most influential anime in history. Several anime, from Yu Yu Hakusho to One Piece, followed in its footsteps.

The show is a favorite on the internet, from popular memes (“Over 9000!”) to AMV’s (which range from gleefully ridiculous to surprisingly touching) to one of the most infamous webcomics of all time (which, incidentally, also inspired its own AMV).

Unfortunately, we’re not going to be talking about BUTTLORD GT. Instead, the Webcomic Overlook is reviewing a newer entrant into the burgeoning field of Dragonball Z parodies/homages/shameless rip-offs: Raven’s Dojo, written and illustrated by Raven Perez.

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The Webcomic Overlook #66: Femmegasm

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When you assemble a list of the worst names for musical artists, names like Bubba Sparxxx and the Goo Goo Dolls rise to the forefront. Bad names, both, but I think I’ve got one better. It’s hard to have a worst name than the hip-hop group that goes by the rather colorful name of Cunninlynguists.

That noise you hear is you letting out a disgruntled groan.

Nathan Rabin’s review at AV Club praises the Cunninlynguists: they have “a moody sound that puts a dark, Southern-gothic twist on the soul-sample-based hyper-soul of Just Blaze and Kanye West, while the group’s lyrics explore sensuality, spirituality, and politics with smarts and conviction.” I downloaded two of their songs, “Lynguistics” and “Love Ain’t,” and I admit that they’re quite good. Still, do you want to be the guy that has a band named “Cunninlynguists” on their iPod? Do you ever want to tell anyone you’re a fan of Cunninlynguists?

Why do I bring up Cunninlyguists in this review? Maybe today is Kentucky Hip-Hop Appreciation Day at The Webcomic Overlook. Or maybe because today I’m reviewing a comic by Pembroke W. Korgi (real name, Robbie Allen) named Femmegasm.

Trust me. This comic … it’s not what you’re thinking about.

Like the aforementioned Cunninlynguists — who, I am to understand, have “stunning English” — the comic may turn out to be pretty good. Hell, if The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo (reviewed here) taught me anything, you can’t judge a book — or webcomic — by its title.

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Er… ignore that sample panel. Femmegasm still isn’t what you’re thinking about.
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The Webcomic Overlook #62: Grim Tales From Down Below

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One day, I will be reduced to a quivering neurotic heap in need of serious psychiatric help. It’s a question of “when,” not “if.” And when I get the bill, I’m forwarding it to loyal reader Christopher. Why? Because of comments like this, which showed up in my review of Vinson Ngo’s, nee Bleedman’s, Sugar Bits:

Grim Tales From Down Below really isn’t bad in a fun way. I mean, the Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi is awful, but the nostalgic concept of having all the good cartoons fight all the bad ones is kind of neat, and reciting all of Dexter’s super-dramatic monologues in his trademark accent is fun. It moves along at a semi-brisk pace and it’s over quickly.

Grim Tales though… man. To answer an earlier question, yes, Mandy grew up, married Grim, and somehow had kids with him. And that is not NEARLY the most disturbing thing that happens in Grim Tales. And the thing is, unlike the PPG doujinshii, Grim Tales is INCREDIBLY BORING. It’s much closer to Sugarbits in that respect.

Read that again. Now ask yourself: is there anything in the world that would keep me from taking a look at Grim Tales? There are few things more alluring than cultural dreck. I may never have the guts to climb perilous cliff faces, go skydiving, or even think about braving the Moab in a flimsy little Jeep… but, goddammit, I can prove that I can survive the most mind-numbing movies, books, and comics known to man!

Even better, it seems that recently Grim Tales and the rest of the Bleedman Unholy Trinity (Sugar Bits, reviewed here, and Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi, reviewed here) has been brought back from the dead. On a chance click to the Snafu Comics site, I came to the joyous revelation that all three comics had been updated. My eyes welled with tears of morbid fascination. It was like Bleedman had given me an early Christmas present. Little did it cross my mind that Christopher’s post was not a challenge, but rather, a dire warning. Oh, if only I’d listened.

If there were a time to heed Dante Alighieri’s warning of “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” this would be the time. It only took 10 pages for me to start clawing at my eyes. 30 pages for me to start muttering, “What the hell, Bleedman. What the HELL?!?!?!” And thus began my accursed descent into incomprehensible awfulness and stupidity.

Abandon hope.

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