Golden Age Heroes
Italian cartoonist Donald Soffritti is producing this series of heroes and villains in their later years. With Emerald City Comicon just behind us, these seem somehow appropriate.
[Via Drawn!]
The Weekly Geek is a geek culture blog and podcast. We hope you enjoy it.
editor-in-chief
chris furniss
current contributors
qais fulton
jinny koh
max brooks
michael wiegand
ross rosenberg
meta
mailbag
Feed our mailbag and get your letter read on air!
feed it!recommended distractions
Recently in Comics Category
Hope for Mortal Kombat vs DC?
When I first heard about Midway's 8th incarnation of their Mortal Kombat series Mortal Kombat vs DC I was stoked. As my friends moaned and whined about how illogical it is for the Mortal Kombat cast to go up against the DC Universe I was busy imagining all the ways Batman was going to make Scorpion his blood-soaked, weeping, reptilian bitch.
My keen optimism lasted for about a day. A day which rapidly spiraled into the sad realization that in all likelihood this game would not be the game I was hoping for. Between Midway aiming for a T for Teen rating, DC being obsessively picky about what they'll allow to befall their characters, and the subsequent abandonment of the Fatalities as we've come to know and love them through the years it looked as though Mortal Kombat vs DC was going to be just about as lackluster as the Oracles at Gamephi proclaimed.
But according to Ed Boon, the brains behind Mortal Kombat, that's all a load of hogwash.
There was never any statement on our part that fatalities will be gone or that finishing moves will be gone. We did acknowledge that we won't be able to do the same kinds of outrageous moves, like tearing someone's head off and the spine being attached to it. But there are a lot of assumptions that there will be no blood in the game, that there are no fatalities in the game. It's an assumption that, because the DC characters will be in there, those features will have to be dropped. My response is that, no, we're modifying fatalities. But I have every intention to keep finishers.
That's great and all, but if you're the kind of Mortal Kombat player that I am, tearing someone's head off and triumphantly jiggling the attached spinal column as it drips blood on the viscera covered floor is the highlight of my day. Although to be fair I have been playing Mortal Kombat since 1992 and as we all know violent videogames turn you into a bloodthirsty maniac.
As far as creating a plausible storyline for how Sub-Zero is able to wail on Superman I'm still not concerned. Oh Ed claims there will be one, but let's take a moment to get a little perspective, shall we? Mortal Kombat is a game about magic ninjas using their magic ninja powers to magically ninja their way into the back of your skull by way of the front. Adding a cast of DC superheroes to that mix doesn't shatter my suspension of disbelief and to be perfectly honest, they could do away with storyline altogether so long as I'm able to rip Superman's still beating heart from his chest like I've always dreamed. Everything else is just dressing.
[Via Gametap]
Superheroes Invade Art Museum, Story At 11
This week New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled it's newest exhibit "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy." As you may have guessed from the title, the exhibit features costumes worn by actors in superhero cinema. In addition to a wardrobe that would inspire murderous jealousy in any comic geek, on display will be outfits created by today's leading couture designers inspired by the supersuits and contemporary sportswear similarly inspired.
The exhibit runs through September 1st, so any Big Apple based geeks would do well to go and have a peek. For those of us not lucky enough to live in New York City the gallery over at DVICE will simply have to do.
The Thing That Should Not Be
Every once in a while, Woot has a Photoshop contest that really brings out the funny. This week the subject was "an especially inappropriate franchise (an old TV show, comic book, classic novel, ancient myth, cartoon, movie, etc.)" Here's my favorite (and the winner!)
[link via Woot]
Golgo 13 Coffee
Nescafé will be releasing a number of limited edition coffee cans featuring illustrations from the best-selling franchise because one can't be expected to assassinate well unless one is properly caffeinated.
[link via Japan Probe]
Frank Miller: Sucking Other People's Legacies Dry
Perhaps there are others amongst you, dear readers, who felt the familiar, icy grip of The Fear when, upon watching Sin City you saw Frank Miller's name listed as a "director". Perhaps, like me, you may have shuddered at the thought of the horror that would be wrought by giving this man such a lofty title and, perhaps, you too felt ill when it was announced that he would be "directing" the film adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit.
It is unsurprising that Miller would choose The Spirit for his first solo project; after all he has a history of gallantly and self- righteously attaching himself to comics's old guard, like a vampire, riding their accomplishments and championing their causes as if they were his own and I'm sure it's been difficult now that Jack Kirby is gone.
The Spirit, then, is a gift from the gods. Here is an opportunity to take the work of one of the medium's greatest contributors and, due to the average movie-goers ignorance, shamelessly co-opt it. Congratulations Mr. Miller, they may never name an award after you, laud you for expanding the breath of what comics could accomplish, or stand in awe of your storytelling abilities, but fuck 'em right? Judging from these posters it is better to have made Sin Spirit instead. That's a legacy you can be proud of.
Omega: The Unknown
I've been a Jonathan Lethem fan since I read his first book, Gun, With Occasional Music, a futuristic detective story as written by the love-child of Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick. Lethem wrote a few more science fiction novels before writing Motherless Brooklyn, whose main character is man with Tourette's Syndrome. It is an unbelievably fantastic novel and, if you haven't read it, you should do so immediately. His latest offerings, however, have not lived up to the promise of his earlier work and it seems, at least to me, that he has discovered there's more money in writing about music lovers who may or may not love each other than post apocalyptic fiction.
That said, he has not completely left his love of sci-fi behind. As well as recently editing a collection of the works of the aforementioned Philip K. Dick, he is also writing a ten issue series of Omega: The Unknown for Marvel with art by Farel Dalrymple. The character was created by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes and ran for ten issues in the late 70s. The story is interesting because of its focus, not so much on the titular Omega, but on his child companion James-Michael Starling who are connected in mysterious ways. The first issue of Lethem's run is available, for free, online and is worth checking out.
[Via SF Signal]
Total Party Kill: Greetings. It’s Warhammer Day.
Steven is an experienced writer in the fields of comic books and tabletop gaming, and he is probably the nerdiest person on The Weekly Geek staff. That is a compliment. Please welcome Steven to The Weekly Geek! --Chris
Hey, folks! Great to be here. I’ll be updating you at least a couple times a week with things I find of interest from the wild, untamed weird lands of comic books and tabletop games (war, board, roleplay). If you know of anything you think I should check out or yap about, please drop me a line.
There are a couple announcements today which are Warhammer related; and since I’m a huge Warhammer fanboy, I figured mentioning these would make for a good first post.
Recently, the gaming world found out that Black Library (a division of Games Workshop) was dropping Black Industries, their boardgaming and roleplaying publishing arm. People freaked out, naturally, wailing about the horror of a world without Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy RPG, and the excellent Talisman 4th Edition boardgame. I should know-- I was one of them! Anyway, good news fellow nerdlings: Fantasy Flight Games picked up the licence to produce Warhammer RPGs, boardgames, and collectible card games. Read what they have to say here. Though welcome news, it comes as no surprise to me. I suspected before that FFG would be in the running for this simply because they seem to be trying to take over the world (I'm kidding FFG! No need to send Da Boyz to put me in line... 'kay?). I’ve always been satisfied with their products, so I’m thinking these properties are safe in their hands. We’ll just have to wait and see.
continue reading "Total Party Kill: Greetings. It’s Warhammer Day."
Shaky-Cam Dark Knight Teaser Hits The Web
Watch it while you still can! Heath Ledger seems to do an amazing job as the Joker, believe it or not. Really looking forward to this movie as I absolutely loved Batman Begins. What do you geeks think?
(link via [4CR])
Necronomicon #24: Flaming Catholic
A bowling pin and a hedgehog talking politics while skydiving? What will this wacky guy come up with next!
Necronomicon #23: Baby Eating Pop Stars
I apologize if the text here is too small to read, because personally I think it's pretty darn funny. That is, if you can read it. Originally published on 04-13-05.
Necronomicon #22: Al Gore
At this point in time I had no regard for screen resolution, so I apologize if reading this is a problem. If you can't read it, I assure you it is the most hilarious thing you have ever laid eyes on. Ever. Originally published on 04-10-05.
Necronomicon #21: Dumpster Diving
I was using a brush pen starting with this comic, and it was odd to transition to but in the end I felt it provided for much more interesting art. It took me longer to produce, but I pared down the schedule to relieve some pressure. Originally published on 04-08-05.
Necronomicon #18: Model Rocketry
I think I was getting really good at doing the shine on Sock's nose around this point. Seriously! This was a major turning point in my comics, when I actually started to get into the swing of drawing the characters better and setting things up. Also, magic hands! Originally Published on 09-22-04.
Necronomicon #17: Monkeys
A smack-talking killer whale? How very delightfully absurd! Buber has a point, though. Stop calling chimps monkeys. They are not. If you get the secret irony in this strip, you get a cookie. Originally published 09-20-04.
Necronomicon #16: Dreamworks Sucks
That's right. Pixar rules. Suck it Dreamworks! A webcomic just totally burned you! HOW DOES THAT FEEL, SPIELBERG?! SUCK IT. Originally published on 09-14-04.
Necronomicon #15: Khan
It's funny, a lot of these old comics have teeeeeensy tiny text. I think I figured that it looked ok at whatever resolution I had at the time, so it was going to look ok for everyone! So apologies in advance if you can't actually read this because your eyes are awful. Originally Published 09-10-04.
Necronomicon #14: EXTREEEEEEEEEME
Continuity? What continuity? Time for the funny! Originally Published on 09-09-04.
Horrible Gamer Comics
Those crazy forum communities! Over at Truth and Beauty Bombs, there is an epic thread in the making where forum members are creating horrible gamer comics from a basic template. Most of these are really bitingly funny and sarcastic, poking fun at Penny Arcade, Ctrl Alt Del, PvP and others. I think this one is my favorite.
I like to think that the gaming community can laugh at themselves, but from what I know of the web comic community, they are going to be pissed. Only goths take themselves more seriously than web comic artists.
Necronomicon #12: Toilet Ninjas
Buber has magical non-hands! Also, making fun of goths is always instant humor, right? Add a ninja and you have Internet meme material! Originally published on the web 09-07-04.
The Necronomicon #11: Closet Pirates
I... I got nothin'. What do you guys think about seeing my crazy old comic strip? Interesting? Boring? Horrible? Awesome? Awesomeorrible? Interboring?
Originally published on 09-06-04.
Necronomicon #10: Wish For More Wishes
Reading this now I realize that The Necronomicon's dialog is slightly confusing at times. I have a very odd manner of speech and I don't think that translates well to comics on occasion. Also, Phil's wish is basically what my retirement is going to consist of. I just gotta find someone to sell me Nintendo Cereal.
Originally Published 09-03-04.
Necronomicon #9: Grilling Candy
I wanted to switch up the narrative fast. The 4th wall breaking was just starting to grate on me, and after doing three other failed comic strips I wanted to get into my groove asap. I loved the dynamic of having the group live in a boarding house (much like Bloom County) and so I wanted to get back into that. For this, I gave Phil magic powers. Problem solved. Originally published on 09-02-04.
Gaming Webcomics and the People Who Love Them
Check out this old article I found lying around. Originally published in 2004 on Comixpedia (now ComixTalk), it's interesting to see what still remains the same in gaming webcomics today. It's also interesting to see how horribly dry of a writer I was back then. I also like how I am constantly quoting Tycho and not even referencing the fact that I interviewed him for this. Hilarious. Enjoy.
The mere mention of video games often evokes images of a solitary white ball bouncing between two vertically moving white paddles, with that distinctive Pong sound. Maybe it evokes images of a large gorilla hurling barrels at unsuspecting Italian men instead. No matter what you think of when you think video games, it is undeniable that games as a whole have affected our culture over the last 20 years. In the late 1970s, games like Pong revolutionized arcades, and in the 1980s, Nintendo revolutionized our living rooms with Super Mario Bros. Our generation grew up with names like Atari, Nintendo and Sega. The culture of video games has boomed in the past 5 years with the recent console wars between Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. With the increase of video game fans came an increase in people writing and drawing about their favorite video hobby: enter Gaming Webcomics, a genre that is not so easily classified. What are Gaming Webcomics, what are they all about, and where are they going?<
Gaming webcomics can be defined as any webcomic (or print comic for that matter) that is based either on the hobby of playing video games, or comments on the culture surrounding video games and their players. While there are a couple of contenders out there for the "biggest" gaming comic, the first one most people think of is Penny Arcade. With an estimated fan base of over 150,000 people, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (Tycho and Gabe, respectively) have carved their names into the annals of not only webcomic history, but nerd history as being two of the most well-known gamers around.
Since the first strip was published in 1998, Gabe and Tycho have steadily climbed to the top of the webcomic scene and helped influence gaming as a culture. Sites get "wanged" – choked with too much referral traffic – after being linked from Penny Arcade. Games have Penny Arcade cheat codes ("pnyarcade" in Star Wars Jedi Starfighter for the XBOX gives you everything in the game, you can even play with a cardboard tube in the new Legacy of Kain game, which is a Penny Arcade reference the their character Cardboard Tube Samurai).
Tycho remains ever humble when asked about this influence, stating that "...Legacy of Kain's 'Tube Reaver' mode – was both a huge surprise and a terrific honor, but it's not terribly common. We think of ourselves as having a parasitic relationship with the gaming industry, we don't think of ourselves as parallel to it like a media outlet might be. We think of ourselves as extremely fortunate fanboys who, on occasion, produce something of value to our holy pantheon." Penny Arcade has also influenced people's lives, with their recent Child's Play toy drive for the Seattle Children's Hospital, where they succeeded in putting together over $120,000 worth of toys and money.
Next in line popularity-wise would be Scott Kurtz' PvP (Player versus Player). Kurtz not only commands a large readership online, but now Image Comics prints PvP monthly. In paper form! Real Life by Greg Dean has influenced a specific video game, Final Fantasy XI: Online – Real Life readers clogged the servers in the first couple days after finding out that Greg played. All of these examples show that gaming comics have a much larger readership than your typical every day webcomic, but why? What makes gaming comics so appealing to web surfers? When asked, Tycho from Penny Arcade agreed: "…it makes sense that gamers are going to be online anyhow, and are therefore present in large numbers online."
Gaming webcomics also seem to have an odd demographic: isolated readers who do not read any other genre of webcomics. Readers of Penny Arcade may only read Penny Arcade because it talks about their favorite games, and that reader may not even be familiar with the term "webcomic". A reader of PvP may have picked up the physical comic book at their local comic shop and wanted to check out the online version. It's almost as if gaming comics are in their own little world, completely oblivious to more classic story-based strips. This is not really a bad thing, but it doesn't do anything for the current webcomic community. Gaming comics tend to link to other gaming comics, hardly ever introducing readers to new genres. Readers typically aren't usually interested in stories or comics on the web, just comics that talk about their hobby.
Gaming comics can best be classified into three basic genres: Story-based, Political Commentary, and Sprite. No, not that Sprite. Political Commentary would include comics like Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade has always been the type of comic strip that you can't read straight through: you have to stop at every strip and read the newspost that goes along with each. Usually the strip for the day is about something in the news regarding gamers, or a new game that just came out. Very rarely does Penny Arcade stray from this formula. Like all artists, however, Tycho and Gabe need to stretch every once in a while and do storylines with continuity. Penny Arcade has received a lot of criticism about this, as readers who stumble upon the site for the first time aren't really sure how to approach the comic. Some readers go to the website thinking it will be your typical comic strip read left-to-right, and see a disjointed series of inside jokes and lengthy commentaries on seemingly random subjects. Some people have accused Penny Arcade of a severe lack of humor because of this. Political humor tends to be very topical, and a reader needs to take this into account when reading strips like Penny Arcade.
Story-based comics include strips like Real Life, Mac Hall or PvP. Although they involve video games and their culture, they are not restricted to just commenting on them. PvP is about a group of people who work for a gaming magazine, offering many different storyline possibilities. Mac Hall is hardly about gaming anymore, focusing more on the relationships between characters going to college and their everyday lives. Real Life tends to be more focused, centering on one game or concept and running with it for a week or two.
The last type of gaming comic is one of the most conflicted sub-genres of webcomics ever. Sprite comics are comics that are made using "sprites" from video games. That can include characters, backgrounds, text and other elements. Some people hate sprite comics for their apparent lack of originality; creators taking screen shots from video games and putting them into a comic strip isn't exactly brilliant at first glance. Some sprite comics, such as 8-bit Theatre, have often proved haters wrong by taking characters from a single video game ( Final Fantasy for the NES ) and making them into well-fleshed out characters in consistently funny situations. Other sprite comics are created with 100% original art. Even if a sprite comic isn't about video games, it is usually considered a gaming comic by default, just for the way it is created and what it references. <
Gaming comics continue to rise in popularity, even as gaming terms such as "l33t" and "wang" become more and more passé. KeenSpace is filled to the brim with gaming comics, and even direct rip-offs of current gaming comics (approximately 76 are listed as "Gaming" not counting the "Sprite" comics). Gaming comics seem to be sticking to their own genre, never straying, and therefore neither helping nor hindering the current webcomic community. Will they continue to exist as separate entities, or will gaming webcomics and traditional webcomics one day be walking off into the sunset holding hands?
A few possible ways might be to have already existing gaming webcomics expand into other genres, away from gaming. On this note Tycho from Penny Arcade says, "Topically, we certainly deal with videogames more than we do any other subject. Calling us a 'Gaming Comic' seems fair. We have certainly covered topics as diverse as Duck Cocks or radioactive arachnids, but videogames are our passion, and the work we do more often than not reflects that." Which shows that gaming comics can spread their wings, so to speak. Another way to bring all genres together is to have more collective events, like Comixpedia's Fright Night, and invite as many comic artists from each genre as possible. Once we all know each other, then the linking starts to occur. Then, after all of that, we can all get together in one big webcomic group hug.
Aww… hugs.
The Necronomicon #8: Mister Bucket Head
I am a big fan of dada-esque humor. Stuff that is just completely random and weird. After doing comics for a while, I realized that I was also a fan of not including punchlines in my strips. Hence, Mr. Buckethead. Originally published on 09-01-04.
The Necronomicon #7: Obliviousness
Phil is stupid and Sock is smart, you see. This is, of course, a variation on the "talking muffin" joke. I was such a joke thief back in the day.
Originally published on 08-31-04.
Necronomicon #6: A Sock Approaches, Command?
Originally published 08-30-04 Ahh, the first appearance of Sock. Sock is my favorite character, cause he was so much fun to write for. He is angry, cantankerous and honest. Actually, he is probably the character in the comic most like me, which made the writing easy. Granted, they are all parts of my personality, but Sock is the dominant one.
Necronomicon #5: Sock Puppets
Remember when webcomics used to always break the fourth wall and it was new and original? You're right, that was never new or original. This comic you can actually see the characters getting their own voices. Phil is playfully stupid and Buber is cynical and ties everything together. Also, I think I drew that sock pretty well.
Nerdy Tattoos Ahoy
I have been wanting a new tattoo for some time, having already taken care of my geeky video game tattoo craving a couple years ago. I have been a huge fan of the webcomic Achewood since it first started, and as luck would have it, Ximena from The Urban Soul in Portland, OR has been offering free Achewood tattoos in her shop as a promotion! This sounded like something crazy to do. I am a fan of crazy. Qais and I hopped in the car and took a road trip, and while he came back with a sore hand and smelling faintly of nachos, I came back with this sweet-ass tat of the shirt design "What we need more of is science". Because you know what? We do. It's true. Thanks, Ximena! You are the awesomest.
