#his brand of comedy is more of being 'comically serious' while i write from a slightly more absurdist angle

[gamebunny-advance]

NSR Comic Ideas I'll Probably Never Get To

My brain worms often prevent me from doing the things I actually want to do, so here's a list of NSR comic ideas that live in my head that I just can't bring myself to actually draw. These aren't full scripts like I've written in the past, but more like general outlines.

Draw them yourself if you want, but tag/credit me if you do. It'd be fun to see other interpretations of these prompts.

Since they're mostly gag comics, I've split them into "Set-Up" and "Punchline" in-case you want to write your own punchline or don't want to spoil the joke with the misguided hope that I will someday bring these to life. Some also have "Extended" parts which I think functionally don't need to be there, but may add context or additional jokes at the risk of dragging it out.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy them, and hopefully someday I'll be able to make at least 1 or 2 of these real. If there's a particular one you really like, let me know and it might inspire me to actually do it~

Preview:

Game (Neon J. teaches 1010 a new game.)

Clothes (1010 discuss the concept of nudity.)

Simulation (Kliff plays a 1010 dating sim to gather intel.)

Shorts (Tatiana urges DJSS to reconsider wearing shorts to work.)

Singing (Kliff sings to himself in the hideout.)

Chill (Gigi reveals that he has ice powers.)

Wall (Kliff and Tatiana have an argument that turns violent.)

Magazine (Neon J. tries to find the culprit of a smuggling.)

Trade (Kliff makes a trade.)

"Game" (Warning: Violence)

Set-up: Neon J. offers to teach 1010 how to play a new game. They all agree.

Punchline: NJ throws a gun on the table and declares the game is "Russian Roulette."

Extended: The winner turns out to be Blue (as per the chess poll), but he is traumatized by the events. It turns out to be borderline pointless, as the losing 1010s are immediately restored by the factory. The 1010s attack Neon J. in retaliation.

"Clothes" (Warning: Suggestive)

Set-up: Green holds a meeting to discuss if the concept of "nakedness" applies to the 1010's considering that their "clothes" could also be considered "skin." White is annoyed at the prospect of such a pointless discussion, but the others make their cases. Two camps form: team naked (Red and Green), and team not-naked (Blue and Yellow). Team naked believe the skin theory, and team not-naked believe that functionally they can't be naked. Additionally, Blue believes that their clothes are technically made of skin since they're 80% recycled materials.

White refuses to participate to break the tie, so to settle this Green proposes the "underwear test," claiming that if they look more or less naked while wearing underwear will determine if they are functionally naked or not. If they look more naked with underwear, then they weren't naked before because the underwear would draw attention to their nudity. If they look less naked, then they are naked because now they're more covered up. He convinces White to model for them since he hasn't done anything to help move the conversation anywhere (the sooner they settle this, the sooner they can do something else). White agrees and models some underwear, but all the 1010s determine that he just looks stupid.

Punchline: Green bursts out laughing, revealing that this was just a drawn-out revenge plot. White destroys him and their "Days since White has Destroyed Green" board is reset to 0.

"Simulation"

Set-Up: Kliff hobbles into the sewer looking half-dead and is intercepted by Zam, asking what happened to him. Kliff explains that he was doing research for the upcoming 1010 battle. To meet that end, he discovered that they released a dating sim that was supposedly programmed with the 1010 A.I.'s input, so he figured that there might be something useful in it that he could use for a battle strategy.

"Ellie says: Please don't pirate games from independent developers!"

When asked why he didn't just use a guide or play through for his research, he claims that although each 1010 only has 2 routes (good and bad) plus an ultimate ending for playing all routes, the A.I. adapts to the player, so the information would only be useful if he played as though he was Mayday or Zuke.

Punchline: The content of the game was so expansive and the story so moving that he was burnt-out emotionally and mentally. When he recalls the final ending, he starts crying, mimicking Mayday at the end of the 1010 battle.

"Shorts"

Set-Up: DJSS was recently hired onto NSR and has been pulled into a meeting with Tatiana. Tatiana tries to convince DJSS that wearing shorts is inappropriate dress-code, stating that "There are children here." Offended, DJSS starts pointing out the obvious biases in her request, citing that Neon J. doesn't technically wear pants and Eve accidentally interrupts their meeting in her usual outfit. Tatiana acquiesces on this condition, "Don't come crying to me when you come to regret your choices."

Punchline: DJSS leaves the room in a huff, and begins muttering to himself. At that moment, Yinu and Mama are passing by as Yinu points out that DJSS often talks out loud to himself. DJSS and Mama stop to try and make small talk while Yinu zones out of the conversation. She starts looking at DJSS's leg hairs and grabs onto them. DJSS thinks that she's trying to get his attention, but she suddenly yanks them out, causing him to let out a physical scream which bursts out of NSR tower to be seen by the citizens miles away. When we return to NSR tower, DJSS has toppled over from the pain, and Mama lightly scolds Yinu as they walk away from the scene. DJSS manages to pull himself back into Tatiana's office, crying. To which she replies, "What did I just tell you about crying back to me?"

Extended: It is revealed that this is why DJSS wears platform shoes: to keep Yinu from reaching his leg hairs. He also switched to velcro shoes just to be safe.

"Singing"

Set-Up: Kliff is singing Vs. SAYU to himself in the meeting room. He's embarrassed, but can't help himself because the song is too catchy. He at least finds relief that no one can hear him in there but suddenly notices that someone is peeking in through a crack in the door. It's Zam who was secretly recording it on his phone.

"Ellie says: Don't record people without their permission!"

Zam apologizes and slowly closes the door and begins to talk away before Kliff bursts through the door and begins chase. Zam manages to get the phone to Ellie, who gets the phone to Mayday, who is confused about what's happening. Kliff managed to get back to the game room, but he's too late.

Punchline: Mayday plays the video and says, "Wow Kliff... you've got a really good voice." Zam (who is a little beat-up from the chase) agrees and says, "But he never comes out to karaoke with us." Kliff is confused because he thinks the fact that he was singing one of NSR's songs is embarrassing, but Mayday laments that it's a really catchy song, and she does the same thing sometimes.

"Chill"

Set-Up: It's a hot day in B2J's hideout. Mayday laments the heat when Gigi passes by and puts his hand on her forehead. To her surprise and delight, his hand is really cold. She asks him if he was just holding a cold drink, but he reveals that he's half-ice elemental, so he has a naturally low body temperature, explaining that's why he's always bundled up. Mayday asks if she can hug him, since she thinks a frosty hug would be amazing right now. He's a little hesitant but agrees. Mayday feels relieved from the heat, but Gigi starts sensing murderous intent from somewhere. He notices a darkness flowing out from the meeting room and sees Kliff peering out. He urges Mayday to stop, but before she can do anything, Kliff accidentally falls over into the room from leaning on the door.

Punchline: Mayday wonders why this happened and concludes that Kliff must have been jealous. As Kliff tries to say that "it's not what it looks like", Mayday says, "You're jealous that I'm hogging Gigi all to myself. You can have a turn too." Gigi and Kliff internally monologue about how dense she is, but hug each other anyway to keep up appearances.

Extended: As they hug, Kliff realizes that it actually does feel pretty good. And the next shot has Kliff apparently monopolizing Gigi from the others as the latter wonders how they got to this point.

"Wall"

Set-Up: Tatiana and Kliff are arguing about something when Tatiana suddenly slams her fist into the wall, narrowly missing Kliff's head. Flustered, he says, "You can't win by trying to seduce me!" She replies, "This isn't seduction you moron." Before they can do anything else, they both hear a "Ker-thunk!" as Neon J. has situated a table with a sign reading, "Get wall slammed by Tatiana! $5 [Or the rough equivalent in ringgits]" and a small line has already formed. Tatiana questions this as Kliff slips away from the scene. Neon J. declares that he takes any business opportunity he sees. She's about to tell him to stop when the crowd starts looking disappointed.

Punchline: Tatiana begins wall slamming various characters including:

Mayday, who squees about being wall slammed by Kul Fyra.

Eve, who Tataiana tells could just ask her to do this for her.

Kliff again, who wasn't done with their earlier argument and had to pay Neon J. double since he "got the first one free".

Extended: After all the wall slams, Tatiana is exhausted and Neon J. tallies their profits from the day and gives Tatiana her share. It is also revealed that the "table" was actually a 1010 with a board on his back covered by a tablecloth.

"Magazine" (Warning: Suggestive)

Neon J. has called a meeting for the other 1010s to discover which one of them brought a dirty magazine into the house. They ask where he found it, but he claims it doesn't matter and he just wants to know who it belongs to.

Punchline: The 1010s look to each other but remain silent. Neon J. expresses disappointment that they would disobey orders twice, but they claim that they can't determine who it belongs to without more information. Neon J. then correctly deduces that they all own copies of the exact same magazine, just hidden in different places. They are all grounded for 2 weeks.

Extended: In an attempt to make it easier to identify the culprit the next time this was to happen, Neon J. decides to give each 1010 a different fetish, so he can just match the content to the 1010. To his dismay, this just leads to them finding a magazine which miraculously contains all 5 fetishes.

"Trade"

Set-Up: Kliff sits on a bench in front of a fountain. An individual wearing a trench coat and hat obscuring their face sits next to him. Without looking at the individual, Kliff asks, "Do you have it?" They slide him an envelope. Kliff briefly examines the contents (seemingly a document) which can't be seen by the viewer. After tapping them back in, Kliff sets a USB drive on the bench. The individual takes it. "That should patch up most of your vulnerabilities." Kliff says. "Yeah. Most." The individual says with a square text bubble, revealing himself to be Neon J. As Kliff stands up he says, "I need a reason for you to keep coming back, don't I?" Neon J. is left alone holding the drive before squeezing it in frustration and curses under his breath. Kliff makes his way back to the hideout's meeting room where Mayday is waiting with a stern expression. She asks, "Did you get the goods?" Kliff tosses the envelope onto the desk and says, "I always come through, kid." Mayday examines the contents and smiles to herself.

Punchline: It is revealed that the document is a signed pin-up of Kul Fyra which Mayday excitedly hangs up in the room.

[threewaysdivided]

for the ask game: 💥🤔📚

if we can only do one, your pick :)

(Fanfic writer ask game)

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

I've talked about some other changes in a previous ask, but I think Danny Phantom could have been improved by either re-writing the episode Memory Blank or at the very least, cutting a couple of the jokes. The base-premise is potentially interesting but it was definitely one of the ones where the show did characters dirty for the sake of jokes.

If I had to leave it mostly as-is, I would at least want to ditch the two random insert jokes where Danny "remembers" using his powers to peep in the girl's locker room. Not only is the base joke a gross, sexist "boys will be boys" gag, it also just feels really jarring and almost out of character for Danny in particular. That's not to say that Danny isn't canonically chauvinistic in other ways at times, but this one doesn't jive with how he reacts to similar situations (and behaviors from Tucker) in other, more character-centric episodes. The abrupt musical punctuation feels more like a sudden insert of Fairly Odd Parents humour and I would say it's probably only there because this kind of "adorkable misogynist" punchline is a common staple in both Butch Hartman and Steve Marmel's comedy styles.

Ideally though, since the main purpose of the episode is to give Danny his marketable DP insignia, I would rather do a full re-write around all three trio members actively trying to design a logo for Phantom. Rather than doing Danny and Tucker dirty by making them into boring butt-monkeys who live empty lives without Sam (and doing Sam dirty by making her seem like a weird stalker who changes Danny's suit without his knowledge or consent) we could have had an episode that let the icon have actual symbolic meaning for the whole of "Team Phantom". It's sad that one if the most iconic symbols of the show ends up being tacked onto a character assassinating goof-story when there were so many ways it could have been great.

🤔 Would you ever want to write something canon if you got the opportunity?

Going to go with a soft no on this one.

For one thing, I believe the best stories happen when someone has a specific story to tell, and at the moment my Deathly Weapons fanfic is the main story I feel the need to make exist. As a mystery nerd, I guess I could maybe do a decent detective story involving Batman or Gotham, but on the other hand I don't think it would be the kind of story Modern DC wants to sell.

From a practical point of view, I also think the things and stories I find the most fascinating within the Danny Phantom fandom would probably be too tonally serious to "fit with the brand" of official canon material. (Although it has been awesome to see some of the Phandom olds getting ascended to the level of official canon creators with the AGiT comics!)

As for Young Justice Animated I think I'm one of several fans who wouldn't mind being tagged-in (or at least a fly on the wall) if DC/Warner Bros ever decided to give it the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood treatment, kick Greg Weisman's Whedon-worshipping incel ass out the door and let some of the prominent staff who were dropped after Season 1 have a do-over to continue the story they were actually setting up. I think there was a lot of potential in that initial cast, and there were some really cool character-centric standalone episodes that could have come from things like digging into Artemis and Jade having a diegetic connection to Alice In Wonderland while living in the same city as Jervis "Mad Hatter" Tech. But as it stands, I found Weisman's multi-season vandalisation of his colleagues' work to be so egregious that I ended up blocking both the main series tag and his name for the sake of my blood pressure. Look, even when he's not writing like the kind of man who probably fantasises about impregnating his colleague's daughter, the Nostalgia-Critic-level incompetence at basic narrative coherence is just exhausting.

📚 Is there a fanfic or fanfic writer you recommend?

Many!

For today's tasting, I would like to recommend Developmental Milestones and the broader Cor Et Cerebrum series by @audreycritter. Actually, let's just make that a general rec' for all Audreycritter's DC stuff.

I really like their interpretations of the Batfam and Superfam. They do such a good job of capturing the humanity of these characters in their non-cape moments, and I love their approach to dialogue. I think it speaks volumes to the strength of their character-writing that, despite not being a reader who generally goes in for Original Characters, I have become deeply obsessed with their on-call OC Batdoctor Kiran "Dev" Devabhaktuni. He is indeed the light of my life. Developmental Milestones is Dev's focus story but plenty of others put the focus on the canon DC roster if you prefer.

Go enjoy seeing Bruce get yelled at by a deeply affronted, potty-mouthed British Doctor with a heart of gold, though he'll stringently deny it.

Thanks for playing!

[lethargicwizard]

Alright I think enough time has passed but nevertheless; Spoilers for Black Panther Wakanda Forever!

to start off I really enjoyed the film, I know "MCU writing" has become something of a meme recently with how formulaic it can be and how you can practically predict how the dialogue will go for most of the movie but Wakanda Forever's themes of grief and loss along with how it carries a more mellow/serious to even melancholy tone over the better part of its run time makes it a very refreshing change from what I usually expect from Marvel. I'm not saying to abandon that style entirely but save it for the more snarky characters in the Marvel gallery.

while I am and always have been of the firm belief that you should never just make characters a different race or ethnicity as opposed to creating original stories and characters the talokhans are the exception that proves the rule, they have an interesting and fleshed-out backstory that makes them feel unique and original as opposed to if they just copy and pasted on Mayan designs to the original Atlantans, I'm a sucker for the sort of tribal futurism that has become indicative of this series making them feel like what might happen if you left an isolated Mayan civilization alone till the present day. The fact that they went through the trouble and chose to create a brand new underwater civilization as opposed to the same overused trope of Atlantis is delightfully refreshing and the fact that they based it off Tlālōcān the Aztec/Mayan (present in both mythologies) paradise realms for those who died violently from phenomena associated with water is just a cherry on top. As far as antagonists go I think they're top-notch, the fact that they are a very clear foil to Wakanda itself and don't so much feel like villains as they feel like people trying to protect their way of life also considering the relationship between Black panthers and Namor as well as the respective kingdoms they rule over in the comics they seem like the obvious choice, not to mention the fact that no one would believe that any force from earth could touch Wakanda aside from a nation of equal standing. The city of Talokhan itself is an absolute masterpiece and not just for the iconic tour scene accompanied by "Con la brisa" but for being the only underwater civilization that makes use of three-dimensional architecture given the fact that they are in a medium that allows for it: which gives me the pleasure of awarding it the

"Greatest Fictional World-building/ Fictional Architecture Award"

not to mention that that was undeniably harder to film given that it had to be filmed underwater. And to that end, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a slice-of-life comic run detailing daily life in Talokhan or in Wakanda for that matter. However, my absolute favorite thing about the Talokhans was that they were able to recreate the same magic for the Latine community as the original Black Panther did for Black people back in 2018 giving Latine and indigenous actors a chance to be on the big screen and shine with all their glory, plus a new hand sign out of it.

Characters:

Shuri: Her journey through the film was an incredible ride watching her deal with grief, wrath, and heartache throughout made her standout and not feel like she was just in T'Chala's shadow, watching her stumble and slowly but surely become her version of the black panther was great. The fact that she still jokes around and still has fun in the movie feels very relatable since life can't slow down for grief and healing and sometimes little sparks of joy leak out in sadness, I think her journey as queen and as a protector and i look forward to seeing it all

M'Baku: Once again an absolute joy to have on-screen, his comedy, shit talk, and lines are second to none and in general just heightens the quality of the film. His range as a character surprised me this time while he's always been belligerent but honorable his ability to empathize as well as the respect and recognition he shows towards Okoye and Shuri in this film gave me another layer of respect for his character, Winston Duke's performance was all around top notch.

Namor: This rendition of the character is without question my favorite, and while that's not really saying much coming from someone who's always thought of Namor as one of the most yee-yee head-ass characters to ever exist from the dumb ass Hermes feet to usually wearing some scale covered briefs/speedo/ male striper wetsuit, I enjoyed his design this time around. The boxer briefs, armbands, footwear, collar piece, and piercings do so much for his design to be unique and so him (at least in this origin). Tenoch Huerta does a magnificent job as the character capturing his infamous condescending nature yet still making him charismatic and enjoyable making him feel sympathetic and caring as a leader. As far as his moral affiliation and alignment goes I never thought the anti-hero title suited him all that well at least in this rendition of the character, both he and the black panthers fill this odd niche as leaders of nations for how they fit in a moral scope since they are always juxtaposed from what they feel and what they need to do for the sake of their people. Above everything else, my favorite part about Namor in this film is his fight choreography; as much as I loath the foot wings (the wing loading you'd need on those alone...) the way they allow him to kick off the air like a platform is one of the coolest locomotion choices I've ever seen giving him this sense of agility and maneuverability that is unparalleled in universe and in any other media, not to mention his intelligent use of his speed, strength, and velocity in his unarmed combat makes his style feel fresh, unique, and tailor-made for him. Also, he makes the second example for my thesis that water-themed comic book characters are significantly better with facial hair.

(i loved Okoye, Attuma, and Namora too but there wasnt much else i could say about them still love them, their performances and their actors tho)

All and all I love this film quite a lot so much so that I'm actually considering buying this upon release, that after credit scene and memorial to Chadwick Boseman simultaneously feel like a kiss on the forehead and a punch to the gut and I almost cried several times in. this film

[kirinda-ondo]

You know him, you either love or hate him (or are moderately confused by my sudden dive into this hyperfixation); we're talking about Orko because I have a lot of feelings.

As a disclaimer, I am not gonna claim to be some kind of superfan. I am not aware of every single iteration of the lore and all of its secrets. I don't know anything about the DC comics. I'm only halfway through the 2002 series as of me writing this. I am not someone you want to have discussions on the wider Masters of the Universe.... universe with. However, after watching Revelation, the entire Filmation He-Man (and some of She-Ra, cause he was there too), and going on a deep dive of storybooks, annuals, and minicomics courtesy of He-Man.org and the lovely people who submitted their scans there, I do feel pretty qualified to at least talk about Orko.

So, with all that being said, I'd like to get into a little bit of backstory, if only for my followers who came to this blog for completely different things and are wondering where the hell my love for this funky little wizard dude came from all of a sudden. Truth is, Orko is actually one of my earliest faves! Mind you, I only had limited access to Masters of the Universe as a kid, only seeing a couple of rented VHS tapes and later getting my hands on a small pile of the Golden Books from Goodwill, but apparently it was enough for Orko to  imprint himself into my brain. However, also due to my limited exposure, he kind of got shifted to the back of my head as I got deeper into other things. I still knew for a fact I liked Orko a lot though, even if I couldn't quite remember why anymore.

And then Masters of the Universe: Revelation dropped on Netflix. I'm not gonna get into my opinions of that show lest I open a flood of irrelevant discourse (for those uninitiated, it is a bit... divisive, to say the least). However my feelings on the matter did encourage me to go and watch the original and well, holy shit I love Orko more now than I could have ever comprehended as a kid. He is THE quintessential underappreciated comic relief character I tend to gravitate towards, and then some.

But before I get into that, let me back up a bit and explain. Orko is a Trollan, a race of magical little dudes that are basically floating sweaters with hats and covered up faces. Out of these Trollans, Orko is an incredibly fucking OP archmage. Like, they straight up call him Orko the Great, he's so powerful. But then, he gets caught in a freak storm that whisks him away from his home dimension and into Eternia. Immediately, he runs into a young Prince Adam, who is trapped in a swamp/tar pit and needs rescuing. Orko, being the upstanding lad that he is, uses his magic to save him but in the process loses the item that allows him to focus his magic to the swamp (in the 80s version, it's a medallion, but in the 2002 series, it's a wand). Worse yet, the magic (and dare I say the very laws of physics) in Eternia works pretty much the opposite as it does in Trolla, so he's been incredibly nerfed.

So basically, Orko is trapped in a topsy-turvy world away from friends and family, a world with magic he is fundamentally incompatible with. Ouch. He's not completely screwed, however, as he is rewarded by the king and queen for his heroism and appointed... the court jester. Double ouch. He surprisingly doesn't seem to mind though. He genuinely does enjoy entertaining people, even when his tricks only ever work like half the time because he's basically a Mac program trying to run on a Windows computer.

It's not all horrible though, as he does quite literally get adopted by the royal family  and thus sort of become the entire palace's weird son/little brother (despite being older than many of them. He's very, very child-coded largely for the purposes of being a stand-in and example lesson to the actual children watching). But also, more importantly, he becomes one of the very select few to know that Adam and He-Man are one and the same.

But outside of secret-keeping, he is actually a pretty valuable ally to have against Skeletor and his dudes because even though his magic is kind of screwed up, when it does work, he's still one of the most powerful mages on Eternia. In various materials, he's created floods, a second winter, and hell, he can literally explode himself and still be perfectly fine. He's also really clever and can weasel his way out of a number of situations. In one episode, for instance, he manages to convince someone that he's He-Man and Adam is his "assistant" in order to free him from captivity so the day has a better chance of actually being saved.  He's also got the ability to just be really frustrating and incomprehensible to the point that villains who capture him sometimes either don't want him or don't know what to do with him anymore, which is honestly really funny. In an episode of She-Ra, the villains tried to scan his brain but because the inner machinations of his mind are that much of an enigma, he got diagnosed a weirdo and broke the entire machine. Absolutely delightful.

However, there's a lot more to Orko than just comedy and bungled magic. He's actually surprisingly complex!

See, going into this, I expected Orko's whole situation be played entirely for laughs while the sadder implications of his existence go entirely unaddressed. Coming off the heels of characters like Cobalt and others I enjoy, I'm used to this sort of treatment by writers. But they actually don't do that. The depressing subtext is for once, actually TEXT, which was INCREDIBLY surprising to me. We actually get to see another side of him, a side that hates that he can't be taken seriously no matter what he does, a side that is well aware of all the trouble he causes and feels like a burden to those around him. He actually runs away on multiple occasions, fully believing that he's unloved and everyone would be better off without him, even if that couldn't be further from the truth (a point which the Sorceress hammers home with multiple straight up magical video presentations, and in the 2002 series, a literary adaptation, of why he is loved and important).

Underneath all the hyping himself up that he does, there's a lot of insecurity. He's someone who desperately wants to be loved and respected and feels that without funny magic tricks to entertain people, he has no inherent value (which is incredibly relatable if you are also known by people as The Funny One). At one point he agrees with the notion that he doesn't feel like much more than a pet, which is absolutely heartbreaking. Even when he gets the ability to go back and forth between Eternia and Trolla, his feelings of inadequacy now extend toward his family, worrying that his own uncle, the one who taught him everything he knows and greatly contributed to him being Orko the Great back home in the first place, wouldn't be proud of him. Being on Eternia highkey wrecked his shit, man.

However, even when given the opportunity to go back home for good, he always chooses to stay because he's loyal as hell. Even if he needs some reminders, he does know he's needed not just in the fight against evil, but just because his friends and newfound family genuinely love him. It's heartbreaking, but also incredibly wholesome. I did not even remotely expect a comic relief character like this to get this much depth and respect from the writers, especially not from the incredibly campy and cheaply animated 80s series. I am genuinely so unused to this.

But I think that's also what separates him a bit from his fellow Silly Kid Appeal Characters That Kids Fucking Hate ala Snarf Thundercats or Scrappy Doo. He not only makes a concerted effort to be an actually useful ally, but he's also in fact very self-aware of his status as one of these characters. He knows he screws up a lot but he actually tries to accept responsibility and fix it. It makes me wanna root for the lil dude. Now I understand if someone isn't a fan of the brand of humor he brings to the table, or feel like he's simply a distraction from the Cool Buff Dudes Fighting Each Other, but I hope you can see why he might also be a really appealing character to other people, both kids and adults alike. I mean, he was popular enough to be embedded into the canon despite originating from the cartoon and not the toyline for a reason, after all.

Orko is a fun, entertaining, but also complex, heartwarming, and relatable character. I know there is a faction of people that would disagree with me, but I don't think you need to change him all that much or make him a super serious character to be more appealing. He's already got a lot going on that a writer could easily work with. It all just depends on where you decide to focus. Take a lesson from the show and accept that he's fine just the way he is.

[rachelbethhines]

Vintage Shows to Watch While You Wait for the Next Episode of WandaVision - The 60s

So the 60s is the era that Wandavision pulls most heavily from for it’s inspiration. So much so that one could make the argument that each of the first three episodes are all set in the 1960s. Episode one pulls from the early 60s with multiple Dick Van Dyke refences, episode two is very Bewitched inspired, and episode three is aesthetically very similar to The Brady Bunch which started in ‘69. As such it was hard to narrow down the list for this decade and I had to get creative in some ways. 

1. The Andy Griffith Show (1960 - 1968)

The Andy Griffith Show gets kind of a bad rap now a days for being, supposedly, a conservative’s wet dream. People claiming it as such have apparently never actually seen the series. Oh yes, it’s very much set in white rural 60s America and will occasionally present the obliviously outdated joke, but the story of a widowed sheriff being the only sane man in a small town full of lovable lunatics, who prefers to solve his and others problems with negotiation and hair brained schemes as opposed to violence has far more in common with modern day Steven Universe than whatever genocidal fantasy fake rednecks have in their heads.  

As the gif above shows Andy Griffith was very subtlety progressive for its time. Andy was a stanch pacifist, pro-gun control, treated drug addicts and prisoners with respect, and all the women he would date had careers, ect. and so on. It’s not a satire making any sort of grand political statements but the series had a moral center that was far more left than many realize. 

But if it’s not a satire, then what type of comedy is it? 

The Andy Griffith Show excels in what I like to call, ‘awkward comedy’. See everyone in Mayberry is far too nice to just come out and tell a character they’re making an ass of themselves, so therefore whoever is the idiot punching bag of the episode’s focus must slowly unravel as everyone looks on in helpless pity until said character realizes the folly of their ways and the townsfolk come together to make them feel happy and accepted once more. Wandavision takes this polite idyllic awkwardness and plays it up for horror instead of laughs.  

2. The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961 - 1966)

The creators of Wandavision actually met with Dick Van Dyke himself to pick his brain and learn how sitcoms were made back then. Paul Bentley also took inspiration from Van Dyke in his performance of the sitcom version of Vision, while Olsen stated Mary Tylor Moore had a heavy influence on her character of Wanda. But more than just being a point of homage, The Dick Van Dyke Show was hugely influential in modernizing the family sitcom and breaking a lot of the unspoken traditions and ‘rules’ of the 50s television era. It’s also just really, really funny.  

3.The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962 - 1965) 

Bit of a cheat here. Alfred Hitchcock Presents actually started in 1955 as a half hour anthology show, but in ‘62 the show got a revamp and was extended into a full hour tv series. I knew I wanted The Twilight Zone to be covered in my episode one recap, but ‘The Master of Suspense’ couldn’t be forgotten. While The Twilight Zone reveled in the surreal and supernatural, Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the thriller genre and made real life seem dangerous, horrifying, and other worldly.   

4. Doctor Who (1963 - present day) vs Star Trek (1966 - present day) 

Just like how westerns dominated the air waves during the 50s, science fiction was the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the 60s. From Lost in Space to My Favorite Martian, space aliens and robots were everywhere. So naturally I had to name drop the two sci-fi juggernauts that still air to this today. If you thought that the rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek was bad then you’ve never seen a chat full of Whovians and Trekkies duking it out over who is the better monster, the Borg or the Cyberman. But which one has the more influence over Wandavision?

Well Star Trek owes it’s existence to sitcoms. As with The Twilight Zone before it, Star Trek was produced by Desilu Productions and it’s co-founder and CEO, Lucille Ball, was the series biggest supporter behind the scenes, lobbying for it when it faced early cancelation. As with all things sitcomy, everything ties back to I Love Lucy in the end. However despite that little backstory, it would seem that the series has very little to do with Wandavision itself beyond being quintessentially American. 

I would argue that Wandavision owes much to Doctor Who though. Arguably more so than any show mentioned in this retrospective. Time travel, alternate realities, trouble in quite suburbia, brainwashing, people coming back from the dead, ect... just about every trope you can find in Wandavision has also appeared in Doctor Who at some point. As a series that can go anywhere and do anything, Doctor Who was a pioneer of marrying genres in new and interesting ways. 

5. Bewitched (1964 - 1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965 - 1970)

It’s hard to pick one series over another because they’re essentially the same show. A mortal man falls in love with a magical girl who upends their lives with magic filled hijinks as they try their best not to have their secret discovered by the rest of the world. And both have their fingerprints all over the DNA of Wandavision. 

There’s only two core differences; Samantha and Jeannie have completely different personalities, with Sam being confident and knowledgeable and Jeannie being naïve and oblivious, along with their relationships with their respective men, Sam and Darrin being married and in love at the start of the series and Jeannie chasing after Tony in the beginning in a will they/won’t they affair, finally only getting together in the last season. 

6. The Munsters (1964 - 1966) vs The Adams Family (1964 - 1966)

Fans of these two shows are forever sadden that there never was a crossover between them. Because they’d fit perfectly together. Both shows are about a surreal and macabre family living in American suburbia and disrupting the lives of their neighbors with their otherworldly hijinks. Sound familiar?     

The main difference between the two shows is the way the characters viewed their placement in the world they inhabit. 

The Munsters were always oblivious to the fact that didn’t fit in. They just automatically assumed everyone had the same personal tastes as them. Whenever they encountered anyone who behaved strangely around them they would write that person off as being the odd one rather than questioning themselves. As such the main cast was structured like a stereotypical sitcom family who just happened to be classic movie monsters. 

The Addams were well aware that they were abnormal and they loved it! They lived life with in their own little world and didn’t care what anyone thought of them. As such the characters were far more colorful and quirky as individuals but there was little in the way of refences to other horror franchises beyond just a general love of the twisted and strange. 

7. Green Acres (1965 - 1971) and the Rual-verse (1962 - 1971)

So the MCU is not the first franchise to bring viewers an interconnected universe to the small screen. Far from it, as sitcoms had been doing this for decades, starting with the ‘rualverse’. Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres were all produced by the same company and were treated as spinoffs of each other, complete with crossovers and shared characters and sets. 

Of the three, the last show, Green Acres, has the most in common with Wandavision. A well to do businessman and his lovely socialite wife settle down in small town America on a farm in order to get away from the stresses of city life, only to find new stresses in the country. Eva Gabor, herself a natural Hungarian, plays the character of Lisa as Hungarian making her one of the few non-native born Americans on tv screens during the cold war. Despite her posh nature and original protests to the move, Lisa assimilates to the rural life far easier than her husband, Oliver. Who, as the main comedic thread, can’t comprehend his new quirky neighbors’ odd and often illogical behavior.  

8. Hogan’s Heroes (1965 - 1971) and Get Smart (1965 - 1969)

So as comic fans have been quick to point out, it’s looking like both A.I.M. (Hydra) and Sword (Shield) will be players in the story of Wandavision. To commemorate that here’s two shows to represent those opposing sides. Although in truth, neither series has anything else in common with each other but I need to condense things down someway. 

In Hydra’s corner we got Hogan’s Heroes. A show all about taking down Nazis from within. 

I love, love, love, ‘robin hood’ comedies where a group of con artists try week after to week to pull one over the establishment. The Phil Silvers Show, Mchale's Navy, and Top Cat, just to name a few examples are all childhood favorites of mine. However while those shows had a lot of morally ambiguous characters, Hogan’s Heroes has very clear cut good guys and bad guys, cause the bad guys are Nazis and the show relentless makes fun of the third reich as should we all. In fact I was watching Hogan’s Heroes while waiting for the GA run off election results. Fortunately my home state decided to kick out our own brand of Nazis this year. 

For Shield, we got the ultimate spy spoof, Get Smart. Starring, Inspector Gadget himself, Don Adams, as the bumbling Maxwell Smart. Get Smart, is a hilarious send up of Cold War espionage but the real selling point of the show, imho, is Max and his co-worker 99′s relationship. You can cut the sexual tension in the air with a knife all while laughing your ass off. 

9. Batman (1966 - 1968)

First was Superman and then came Batman. Yet while Superman was a serious action show, Batman was a straight up comedy. Showcasing that superheroes could indeed be funny. 

Also shout out for Batman being the only show on this list to have an actual crossover with it’s competitor, The Green Hornet. 

10. Julia (1968 - 1971)

Since episode two features the first appearances of Herb and Monica, let’s highlight the first black led sitcom since the cancelation of Amos ‘n Andy over a decade earlier. The show focuses on single mother and military nurse, Julia, as she tries to live her life without her recently decease husband, who was killed in Vietnam, as she tries to raise their six year old son on her own.  

The series is cute. It’s more of a throw back to earlier family sitcoms where there’s no fantasy and life lessons are the name of the game. It’s the fact that the main character is a single black woman is what made the show so subversive and important at the time. 

Runner Ups

There’s much good stuff in the 60s, so here’s some others that didn’t make the cut but I would recommend anyways. 

Car 54, Where Are You? (1961 - 1963)

I call this the Brooklynn 99 of the 1960s. Bumbling but well meaning Officer Toody longs to do good in the world and help anyone in need, but often screws things up with his ill thought out schemes. He often drags his best friend and partner, the competent but anxiety riddled, Muldoon into his escapades. 

Mr. Ed (1961 - 1966)

The grandfather of the sarcastic talking pet trope. 

The Jetsons (1962 - 1963 and 1985 - 1987)

Hanna-Barbera often took popular sitcoms and just repackaged them as cartoons with a fantasy theme to them. The Jetsons has no singular show that it rips-off but is rather more a grab bag of sitcom tropes that feature, robots, computers, and flying cars. 

The Outer Limits (1963 - 1965) 

The Outer Limits was The Twilight Zone’s biggest competitor in terms of being a sic-fi/horror anthology series. 

Gillian’s Island (1964 - 1967) 

The only comparison to WandaVision I could think of was that this is a sitcom about people being trapped in one place. But by that point I was running out of room on the list. Still it’s one of the funniest shows on here. 

So yeah, this took longer than expected cause there’s a lot, here. Hopefully the 70s will be easier. Which I’ll post on Friday. 

[elegantcoffeedream]

Seth Rogen, Hollywood’s Favorite Comic Stoner, Says It’s Time To Take Cannabis Legalization Seriously

Seth Rogen, Hollywood’s Favorite Comic Stoner, Says It’s Time To Take Cannabis Legalization Seriously

Weed Whacking: Rogen, who launched his cannabis company, Houseplant, in 2019, says the biggest myth about legalization is that it is not a serious cause.

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Sitting in his home in Los Angeles just after noon on a Monday, with a bright shaft of sunlight filling the room, Seth Rogen lights a joint.

“I don’t make any illusions as to how weed fits into my life,” says Rogen. “I’m a person who smokes weed all day, every day.”

For some people, smoking a joint in the middle of the day would derail focus and productivity, but the 39-year-old Rogen describes marijuana as an essential tool to his everyday functioning—like eyeglasses or shoes. (His father told the New York Times that the “miracle of marijuana” helped his son deal with attention-deficit disorder.)

Cannabis has been a constant co-star for the actor, screenwriter, director and producer known for hits like Superbad and Pineapple Express, but pot is also a business partner as Rogen and his childhood best friend and writing partner Evan Goldberg cofounded the Canadian cannabis brand Houseplant in 2019.

High Life: A decade before launching Houseplant, Rogen cowrote and starred in the stoner comedy Pineapple Express.

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Audiences have been laughing with Rogen for 20 years as he’s played nearly 100 roles in film and television where he is either getting high, about to get high or helping someone else get high. But with Houseplant, he’s proving that he’s taking weed seriously as a business venture and as a platform for criminal justice reform. Rogen says it’s now time for Americans to take cannabis more seriously, too.

“It really bothers me that people downplay its importance and downplay how meaningful it is to some people's lives,” says Rogen. “There’s always been lies that have been told to control weed, it’ll make you go crazy, it’ll make you lazy, it’ll do this and do that. Right now, I think the biggest lie is that it’s just not important, and there are more important things to be talking about.”

Rogen says cannabis is deserving of a reckoning as a relevant topic worthy of a national discussion. And it’s certainly getting that now, as 18 states have legalized adult use, 37 medical use. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with Sens. Cory Booker and Ron Wyden, introduced a draft federal legalization bill, and cannabis is slated to grow into a $100 billion industry by 2030. Stoner jokers no longer seem able to contain an industry with annual sales that will soon rival coffee.

“Over the last couple years, I’ve spent as much time working on this company as I have on films. It’s as exciting as anything I’ve ever worked on.”

“It’s important because the entire reason it’s illegal is based in racism and we're all living with the lies of racist men from 100 years ago,” says Rogen. “Truthfully, there is no reason that weed is illegal other than to control minority populations.”

Rogen hits his joint, rolled with Diablo Wind, a sativa strain with 26% THC, and continues: “It is a huge part of American society and culture,” he continues. “It's a huge thing, and it’s disappointing how slow the country has been to evolve.”

While there are seemingly an endless number of celebrity-backed weed brands, some are clearly leveraging a famous face to sell bud while other celebrities are involved in the companies. Rogen falls into the latter camp.

“Over the last couple years, I’ve spent as much time working on this company as I have on my films,” says Rogen. “It’s a direct reflection of mine and my partner's creative sensibilities, and it’s come from a lifetime of putting thought into weed and loving weed. It’s as exciting as anything I’ve ever worked on.”

Superbud: “For me, I like to open like a tin and find as big a bud as humanly possible and go over to my wife and say, ‘Well, look at this,” says Seth Rogen.

Courtesy of Houseplant

Last week, Houseplant announced that it was ending its partnership with Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth after three years and will focus on expanding its footprint in the U.S. Houseplant’s products will stop being sold north of the border by the end of September. Houseplant CEO and cofounder Michael Mohr, who is Goldberg’s cousin, says the company plans to relaunch in the Canadian market at some point but its attention for now will be on the U.S. market.

Today, Houseplant only sells cannabis in California, where it launched sales in March 2020. Its menu of products includes seven strains—all of which Rogen has tested himself. Houseplant will launch prerolled joints and a THC-infused seltzer in the coming months. And soon, the company will look to expand to other states with an eye on Nevada, Illinois, Michigan and New York.

Houseplant is still a startup. It has two distinct businesses—Houseplant, which sells cannabis, and Housegoods, which sells pottery, ashtrays and lighters, designed by Rogen. (He throws clay in his garage studio and creates impressive pieces.) Both sides of the business each bring in revenue in the seven figures, but under $10 million.

Rogen says legalization is inevitable but still part of him seems to bristle at the fact that his schtick is being adopted by an ever-expanding roster of characters who don’t love weed as much as he does. The philosopher jester even takes a swing at Charles Koch, the billionaire philosopher king of the libertarian movement who recently announced that he will be spending $25 million by the end of next year to support marijuana legalization.

“I’m sure if I were to sit down with the worst people on the planet, maybe we’d find out we both like pizza or something,” says Rogen. “It's always disappointing when you find your interests are aligned with someone you find to be despicable. But it’s showing the collapse of the lies and is an indicator that it’s impossible to move forward in a way that you consider to be remotely based on facts or reality and not think weed should be legal.”

Rogen’s goal with Houseplant’s products is refreshingly simple in an industry awash with brands pushing pot as a cure-all wellness product. He says he wants to sell some of the best stuff out there. “When I say it’s actually the weed that I smoke all day and night, it’s true,” says Rogen. Houseplant doesn’t grow its own, but rather curates bud from small-batch, high-end indoor growers across California.  

High Design: Housegoods sells upscale ashtrays and vases designed by Seth Rogen.

Courtesy Houseplant

Some of Hollywood’s elite have purchased his home goods, including Charlize Theron, while Lena Waithe, the creator of Showtime series The Chi, has purchased Rogen’s cannabis. When asked what sells better, his company’s flower or pottery, he doesn’t hesitate.

“Weed is better, for sure,” says Rogen. “Honestly, no one would buy a vase if you could go to jail for it.”

As for his reputation being intertwined with cannabis, Rogen, who smoked a joint with Conan O’Brien during one of talk show host’s last episodes before retiring, says he’s proud.

“It’s something I’ve always championed and something that I'm very happy to be associated with—it’s something that is an intrinsic part of my life, my day-to-day functionality,” says Rogen. “Of all the things to be tied to, I’m fucking thrilled that it’s weed.”

[cosmicmoved]

NEW MUSE ADDITION!           this shouldn’t be much of a surprise bc i’ve been talking about this for a bit but i’ve decided it’s time to add my scammer/swindler muse back to the blog. let me introduce you all to JUN, a professional pain in the neck! (: i haven’t written up his proper backstory yet but this is a revamp of an old oc that i totally scrapped. they have similar names and certain backstory points are similar but i’d much prefer to think of him as a brand new character. read on under the cut for more about him! i haven’t added him to the muse page yet but i’ll do that later! (side note that this will probs be the last male oc i’ll add for a while, unless i end up dropping somebody else for some reason, bc i don’t like that there’s such an imbalance on the blog rn)

hi, first i just wanna say...you won’t be able to tell from all of the shit i’ve written under here bc these are mostly just quick and basic facts but jun is generally better suited to like...heavier plots, i guess?? on account of him being a criminal? i DO DEFINITELY wanna write casual stuff for him too but my point is that i really don’t want him to be treated like a dumb haha comedy muse just because he’s annoying. i’ve had issues with ppl reducing muses of mine to dumb comic relief-type characters without my permission in the past and i want to be clear that, even though i write this guy with a sense of humour, that doesn’t mean i also don’t take him seriously as a character either. i WOULD like to write proper plots for him and i want him to be an interesting & hopefully complex character so please try to keep from flanderising him. i don’t think that comedy & drama need to be kept separate. i think you can absolutely write serious plotlines and drama and all that shit while keeping a sense of humour about a character (’: basically, i want to make jokes about him and that’s okay to do but please don’t turn him INTO a joke. he’s still a criminal and good at scamming people! anyw....onto the trivia!

he was born as jun shinozuka on the twenty-eighth of november, 1996 (i.e; he’s twenty-three next month) and in yokohama, japan. he moved to the US with his brother when he was like eight. he moved with his older brother, mamoru, to go live with his aunt and uncle after his mother died. he never knew his dad.

he doesn’t tell people his surname, preferring to go by a mononym for the sake of seeming mysterious. his real name is actually pretty easy to find out. he still keeps in contact with his brother so you’d really just have to find him and you’d have your answers. but he doesn’t appreciate people referring to him by his full name because it ruins the fun /:

jun wasn’t an especially well-behaved kid and he had trouble sitting still & focusing in class while his brother got good grades and was generally very well-liked by his teachers. growing up, he had an awful habit of just bullshitting all the time but he got really good at it after a while. since he kind of concluded lying was the thing he was good at it, he decided that he might as well find a way to make a career of it. this lead to his career in the scamming business. the irony is that his brother, always the exact opposite to jun, is a police detective. he knows jun’s up to shady shit but he doesn’t know all the details.

his habit of lying, again, started when he was a kid because he thought it’d be a good way to get people to like him better. people would pay more attention to him and think he was cool & interesting on his own, rather than him having to live in his brother’s shadow all the fuckin time.

that isn’t to say jun hasn’t been arrested bc he has. just not for the conman stuff. he usually gets arrested when things go wrong, e.g; he once got arrested for ‘destruction of public property’ bc he broke the sign of a streetsign pole when trying to hide from a bunch of guy he’d pissed off and tried to throw it at them. yeah. anyway, his brother HAS bailed him out before because he’s a warm-hearted guy and he loves his lil bro, even if jun only ever thanks him by insulting the police and trying to leave by way of climbing out windows.

he comes off as kind of an idiot most of the time but he’s actually very good at his job. his #1 mode of operation is selling junk to people while claiming that they’re something much more valuable but he is not beyond selling shitty or unreliable information to people either. in his defence, he’s not forcing anybody to listen. it’s their issue if they want to believe him. he’s also willing to work on bigger scams with people for a higher profit but he tends to stick to smaller schemes because he’s mostly a one-man deal.

although he’s undeniably a criminal, he tries to avoid taking advantage of people TOO much.....like he doesn’t target vulnerable people or anything because he’d just feel super guilty about it and that’d force him to rethink his whole life trajectory and he’s not about to unload all that on himself. thinking is for losers. no thanks.

100% the kind of guy who thinks kids' breakfast cereal is an any time meal

he’s really annoying! it’s okay if your muse wants to kick his ass! because he’s annoying!

he’s kind of a shameless flirt, esp w/women.

jun is basically incapable of holding a serious conversation about feelings and shit like that. he’ll just make lame jokes to steer you elsewhere. 

it’s ok to bully him.

[woohooligancomics]

A Personal Racism Issue. Can I Get Your Advice?

I'm at a bit of a loss... so I'm hoping some of you hooligans might be able to help me out. This weekend I'm tabling a gaming convention with a friend of mine (and I'll leave his name out here for reasons that will be apparent -- I'll call him X). Admittedly, I'm a comedian and a cartoonist, so a gaming convention is slightly off-brand, but I'm hoping there will be a good cross-section of people who also enjoy comedy, and at the end of Friday I've already collected 5 new subscribers to our newsletter, the Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate.

This came about when I got an unexpected call from X about a month before the event and he mentioned in passing that he'd already booked a table for this event. I offered to share the booth with him, because I want to attend more cons and I thought I could handle the 5hr drive. I've tabled about a half-dozen cons so far, this would be his first. And although he's a relatively new friend (a year?), I didn't have the impression he was racist -- at least not overtly or knowingly so... I wouldn't associate myself with anyone who identified as "Alt-Right", I think that should be apparent from my work, of which X is aware. Dunking on these racists was part of all three of my most recent YouTube videos, and a comic I published in 2016 which appears in my recent Woohooligan Vol 2 (page 29) that I now have on the table at the event thanks to our recent Kickstarter.

What I didn't realize until I arrived at the event, is that X is selling t-shirts labelled "Fantasy Lives Matter". There are about a dozen of them, roughly half of his t-shirt designs, so for example a picture of an orc with the text "Orc Lives Matter", another for Elf, Dwarf, etc. I hoped at first that it would go unnoticed as people often don't read the text and just check out the artwork. I've already noticed one girl at the table this morning was put off. She asked me, "are you a Black Lives Matter person or an all lives matter person"? To which I responded "black lives matter... I haven't had that specific conversation with X, though I suspect he's the same"...

Apparently I was wrong, which, I realize in retrospect is what I should have expected, because I think the majority of people would have picked up on the poor taste of trivializing serious problems faced by real people. I want to say I think most people would have picked up on that faster than I did actually, since I think I'd seen these graphics before (I mean, months ago), and it just hadn't clicked in my mind, despite all the work I've done.

I tried to have a brief conversation with X about it, which went nowhere good...

Me: Hey, X. This girl just left, put off by the FLM designs... she asked if I was BLM or ALM.

X: [rolls eyes] Yeah that was my dad's big problem too, thinking people would be offended, and if they are, fuck 'em. I'm saying "all lives matter", even fictional ones.

(That last sentence is a huge problem for me, for reasons I think should be obvious.)

Me: "All lives matter" is intended to shut down people trying to address serious problems.

X: People don't know how to address problems... and to be honest, some of those people running in with the police deserve what they're getting.

(We're way into not-okay territory here and I've invested a huge amount of time and a notable amount of money in this event, and knowing now that X apparently has difficulty staying awake while driving on the freeway, I'm also concerned about his safety if I decided to just leave suddenly... but at this moment I'm not ready to get into what seems like is likely to devolve into a screaming match in front of everyone at the con.)

Me: the BLM movement only exists because there's a huge amount of injustice built into the system. When everything else is held equal, a black person on average receives 2-3 times more jail time than a white person, and that should never happen.

(I don't have reference for that specific figure on-hand -- please check my work and leave a link if you have one, whether I remembered it correctly or not. Thank you.)

X: [basically murmurred agreement]

I don't want to make any excuses for his diminishing of real-world problems, I think it's bad... I'm conflicted about how to address this problem for myself... I plan to publish photos of myself at the con, and the signs for those designs will be in the background... do I black them out? If I do that, am I enabling him?

I don't *think* he realizes what the problem is... I don't *think* he's deliberately racist. On the way back to the house from the convention he offered to buy me dinner at a shawarma place (I'd never had it -- it was good -- it actually reminded me of some southern cafeterias, although the seasoning and the decoration were a little different.)

The waitresses wore hijabs and he was familiar them (had been there many times), and treated them nice enough... though I will say that some of the things he says seem fairly insensitive in a general sense. For example, he makes a lot of objectifying comments about women, including for example, one of the shawarma waitresses, "[damn she's hot]... and great tits". (Of course, he's only seen her breasts 100% covered -- not even cleavage -- so it's a little odd to me to hear someone be so overtly objectifying of someone who's entire outward image is one of "I am not here for you to ogle".) And the whole day at the con was similar -- frequent mentions of "she's smokin' hot" or "that red head" or "I've never wanted to give wood to an elf so bad", which I tried not to encourage. (I like porn too, but my interest in potential partners isn't based on their looks.)

These are things I hadn't noticed in previous phone or online conversations. So I'm a bit conflicted... He's open enough to be friendly with the shawarma waitresses... but he's also interested in them to the point of sexual interest in women who're being very careful to be NOT sexy. So how confrontational should I be about "fantasy lives matter"?

I don't plan to share a table with him again if he's going to continue promoting them... I would hope he would eventually figure out that the phrase is likely to reduce his sales, even when a person might agree with his sentiment, because they don't want to buy a shirt that's going to get them into verbal fisticuffs with people. But this being his first event, and saying that he's already plunked down $1400 into it, it seems to me unlikely that he'll learn that soon. Though in honesty, it always feels like cold comfort to me when someone is doing the right thing only because they realize some kind of financial reward for it.

So should just not sharing tables in the future be where I leave it? Is it okay to accept that, "he's not a deliberate racist, just kind of an insensitive jerk" and just limit my involvement? As an autistic person who knows what it's like to be ostracized for being unintentionally insensitive, am I being too harsh if I say I feel like this is too much? Does that make me a hypocrite? And what about the fact that there are now photos of me in the act of affiliating myself with the creator who promoted "fantasy lives matter"?

Regardless of how it may impact my image, I'm trying to figure out what course of action will produce the best results for everyone -- that hopefully anyone who can become a better person will, regardless of how it impacts my image. Obviously I always have to think about my image, we all do, but that's a secondary concern. I feel like I should be willing to sacrifice my image if the alternative is being hypocritical, cruel, or even just unwilling to evolve or better myself.

Thanks for reading and helping me with this. I appreciate any advice you have.

- Sam

(Now I need to get about 6 hours sleep, because I spent too long composing this blog and have to be up early for the event tomorrow. Thank god my diabetes didn't trash my energy today, and fingers crossed I have the same luck tomorrow.)

UPDATE 9/17/2018

Maybe I should have waited until the end of the event before writing this blog, but the subject distresses me and I wanted to talk about it sooner than later. At the end of Friday, neither X or I had sold anything at the event. Saturday morning, X printed off about 4 shirts as samples to lay on the front of the table (good marketing), to show people that, "hey these pictures on the poster in the back go on t-shirts". It worked and over Saturday and Sunday, he sold at least a half-dozen shirts, most of them "Fantasy Lives Matter" shirts. So while there are some people who are offended by them, there are apparently also a large number of people excited by them (I think exclusively white people that I saw, although most of the attendees looked pretty white to me as well). ::sigh::

Over the course of the event, 27 new people signed up for our Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate mailing list. I know many of those people were either indifferent to the FLM shirts or some may have even been excited by them... but I have no idea how many people may have simply avoided conversation with me all-together because of them.

I still have no plans to share another table with X. It's weird to me, because he's really sensitive about other things, like he kept profusely apologizing for falling asleep in the car because he apparently suffers from pretty bad road hypnosis. He's made the hour drive before, but I was concerned about him making the drive after a full day manning the table at the con. Meanwhile I also discovered he's got a huge chip on his shoulder about (of all things) shaking hands.

X: I hate it. I don't like people touching me.

Me: You know people are about 30% more likely to buy from you right?

X: You may be right, but I don't care. It was originally a symbol of distrust. Do you know where it came from?

Me: Yeah, it was originally a way of showing that you weren't armed, but it's evolved into a symbol of trust.

X: It's evolbed into a bullshit thing we do for no goddamn reason!

So to recap: shaking hands is tragic evidence of the decline of civilization, while Black Lives Matter is deluded and don't know how to address problems, and "many of them deserve what they're getting anyway".

I just can't fathom how a person can have that set of priorities when they go out of their way to eat shawarma and so forth and don't appear to be outwardly racist in any other way that I can tell.

His FLM shirts outsold mine by a wide margin, and frankly I don't care... or rather, I find it disheartening... and I'm not about to deliberately associate my work with it in the future. All people need justice, and if you think it through, you should realize that "all lives matter" is the actual meaning of "black lives matter". Saying "all lives matter" as a response is like saying of the condition of slaves, "slave owners have problems, too!" It takes air away from the importance of addressing a great deal of injustice in our country and I don't want to contribute to trivializing that in any way. Even if I stood to gain financially from it, I wouldn't do it.

I'm still not sure what else to do, beyond just not sharing con tables with him again, and would still appreciate hearing any thoughts you have on it. Thanks.

- Sam

[jennabillman701]

Designing in Response to Mental Health:

After class on Wednesday, Tatiana sent through some links of designs which responded to mental health issues. 

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/category/design-plus/design-mental-health/#3

Simon Hanselmann on Dealing With Addiction, Depression, Darkness + the Bleak Comedy of It All Through Comics

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/simon-hanselmann-on-dealing-with-addiction-depression-darkness-the-bleak-comedy-of-it-all-through-comics/

Hanselmann’s career surrounds his particular brand of surrealist, sharp-witted humour; augmented with a darkness that draws from his own deeply personal experiences, but which has clearly touched many people. 

His most recent book series sees the characters spiral deeper into familiar drug use, mental illness’, relationship struggles, and general chaotic life-choices. 

“As an artist, I’m so close to it, so it’s hard for me to say (why his series has had a huge appeal). But it’s the honesty, maybe. I’m writing honestly about being young and depressed and stuck in these drug bubbles. I don’t hold back, and people connect with that — they know the characters, or they know someone like Werewolf Jones in real life.”

I think the way Hanselmann has depicted these issues is a great example of how to balance serious and playful. However, I think this may be because of the appreciation of the mental issues. Hanselmann mentions how he struggles with mental health, so I think hearing these issues from someone who experiences them first hand helps with the appreciation and respect expressed in terms of seriousness. 

_____________________________________________________________

Navigating the Dangers of Mental Health as Magazine “Trend”

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/navigating-the-dangers-of-mental-health-as-magazine-trend/

Mental health has become a common read among magazines recently. As common as this magazine “trend” appears, mental health is dangerously impacted by this. While magazines are a great way to open conversation, express various experiences, and respond to challenges being faced, there is danger of “romanticising mental health problems, or even excusing or glamourising unhealthy behaviours.”

Again, this could be a case of appropriation vs appreciation? Needing to remember to respect the background of the issue. 

“Likewise the focus on self-care is positive, but it’s important magazines don’t place sole responsibility for their illness on sufferers.”

“The topic of mental health is proving a rich creative territory for magazine publishing, but a thorny one too. As they navigate their way through, it’s crucial mag makers don’t just harvest this ground, but replenish it too.“

_____________________________________________________________

In Defense of Emotional Design

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/timothy-goodman-on-his-many-many-feelings/

Timothy Goodman is an illustrator who shares personal stories as a form of activism. He is best known for his sharpie style and catchphrases like, “Even my feelings have feelings.” He is committed to his “social experiments” that turn pop-psychology emotional probings into colourful websites. These social experiments started in 2013 with 40 Days of Dating, a project in collaboration with design Jessica Walsh exploring perplexing realities of modern dating. Similarly, another social experiment was 12 Kinds of Kindness, a self-fashioned 12-step program that he and Walsh developed to become kinder and more empathetic people. 

When asked how it feels to have his personal “musings’’ so public, he responded that he just wants to create art that people can connect to...

“I think so much of the time we make art for ourselves or for other people in our communities to see. With so many of the stories I’m trying to tell, I’m trying to make things for actual people. I think sharing your personal stories is sort of activism; when you connect to other lonely people in the world, I think there’s a service involved that is really powerful. I want to continue to use my work as a vehicle for that.”

When asked why he thinks emotion is necessary when designing, Goodman responded:

“If I can’t connect to someone seeing my work on an emotional level, then I don’t know why I’m doing it. How do you interact with a great film or a great book or a great album? You’re connecting with it emotionally. So why wouldn’t I make my work in the face of that? I don’t know why we define graphic designers in such a small box. I just don’t know what the point of that is. There are so many ways for people to interact with one’s work.”

“I feel like as an artist it’s almost our job to shine the truth back on people.“

[loversclubbing]

Boys (Reddie)

Word Count: 2,136 Trigger warnings: transphobia, panic attacks, implied alcoholism Tags: trans!richie, reddie, first kiss Dedicated to: @reddiestenbrough, for being an absolute Gem and sticking with me through every single stage of writing this fic and being pretty much solely responsible for my happiness recently 💚 Also available: Here

Everyone kind of knew the Richie situation, even if they were too polite to say so. Richie never spoke of it, always turning the topic of parents into a joke about Eddie's mom. It was impossible not to notice, however, the way that he walked home through snow in the winter, the way his clothes were never mended and sometimes not even washed, the way he'd joke about every inappropriate subject except alcohol. They'd all caught on when his dad stopped showing up to parent teacher conferences, school plays, and birthdays that he wasn't around anymore.

As with many situations, it was all okay until it wasn’t. Richie was in good spirits, cracking jokes and screwing around, and it seemed to Eddie that nothing was significantly worse than usual. That was until he showed up one day dressed up to the nines with a face like thunder. It felt like a scene from a movie, where he walked down the hall and every face turned to stare.

Richie Tozier, the Richie Tozier, nerd of the year, the boy who never shut up about the length of his dick, was wearing a dress. His long-ish black hair was tied back with a pastel pink ribbon, his face smeared with makeup (that he seemed to have struggled against), and his feet clad in pink sneakers.

In fact, if it weren't for the soda bottle glasses magnifying his tear-filled eyes, he would be totally unrecognisable.

Eddie knew about Richie's past. He, Stan, and Bill had been sworn to secrecy the summer after fourth grade, the first time they went swimming at the quarry.

Richie had told them how, aged 7, he’d stopped living as a girl and his parents had to move the family from Nebraska to Maine to keep Richie safe, because people are evil, especially if you're anything outside their idea of normal. He arrived in Derry in the middle of the third grade with an awkward haircut and an even more awkward personality. He was introduced to the class as Richard, and nobody, not even the teachers, knew that he had ever been anything else. It had to be that way, but through a combination of trust and fear that the water would turn his white underwear see through and expose his big secret, Richie came clean. It hadn't really been mentioned after that, and the longer Richie lived as a boy, the more confident he became. It was the safety and security of being true to himself that turned him into the wise cracking asshole he is today.

Well, not today. On this day in particular, there wasn't a hint of the rude comedian. He was a shell, quiet and anxious and on the verge of a total breakdown.

Eddie didn't know what to do other than grab Richie’s shaking hand and pull him into the boys’  bathroom. Stanley and Bill followed nervously, shooing away all their giggling and jeering classmates. Once in the bathroom, he checked that all the stalls were empty and starting telling everyone what to do.

“Stan, watch the door from outside. Don't let anyone in until I've got Richie sorted. Bill, run to my locker. The combination is 5-12-32. There’s a pair of red galoshes and some jeans. Bring them here, as quickly as you can.”

At that moment, he turned to Richie and his tone changed. Instead of being in full on leader mode, his voice became softer and his movements more gentle.

“Rich? Richie, dude, I need you to listen to me. I have a spare shirt in my backpack, and Bill’s bringing some pants and shoes. Okay?” Richie didn't nod, so Eddie continued. “I have baby wipes as well, I can get the makeup off you. But you gotta calm down first, okay? I can't help you until you're breathing normally.” “Sorry.” Richie gulped, the tears he'd been blinking back beginning to spill. “I’m sorry.”

Eddie looked to Stan in the doorway, making fearful eye contact. Richie Tozier didn't cry. Richie Tozier had three emotions: ridiculously positive, intensely angry, and terrified. This was none of those things- this was sadness, distress, pain. Richie Tozier didn't feel pain. Richie Tozier was unbreakable.

And yet here he was, broken.

Bill stumbled back into the room, passing the clothes to Eddie. Eddie smiled gratefully, and gestured for Bill to go stand outside with Stanley.

“Richie? It's just us in here. I've got clothes you can put on, and then we can sort out the makeup, okay? I need you to try and calm down first, though, I can't help you while you're crying.” “Sorry.” “You don't have to apologise, okay? But I have to help you and I can't do that quite yet.”

Richie sniffled and threw his arms round Eddie, sobbing and sniffing into his shoulder. Eddie pulled the taller boy closer into him. He was trying the ignore the intrusive thoughts of how many germs were in the snot streaming from Richie’s nose onto his shoulder. Things like this were the reason Eddie brought spare clothes, but obviously he didn't need them as much as his friend today.

After a few minutes, Richie's tears calmed down and he pulled away from the hug. Eddie found himself missing the contact.

After a deep breath to steady himself, Richie untied the laces of the pink sneakers and tossed them carelessly to the side. He smiled weakly as Eddie passed him the jeans and slid them on under the dress. He pulled the ribbons from his hair and slid his glasses off his face, and pulled the dress off over his head. Keeping his head bowed to avoid eye contact, he took the blue shirt from Eddie’s grip and pulled it on with shaky hands.

Eddie glanced out of the window and acknowledged the rain, pulling off his canvas sneakers to replace with the galoshes. He got sick easily, and rain seeping through his shoes always ended up giving him a cold. He didn't mind giving away the sneakers until Richie had his regular shoes back.

When Richie's outfit was all on, he spoke again, his voice still sounding a little cracked and broken. “You can look now.” “Thanks.” Eddie shifted his gaze from the window back to his friend, and it was heartbreaking to look at. With his hair down and regular(ish) clothes back on, he looked more comfortable. But the smeared makeup had taken on a kind of grim comedy, and Eddie clocked for the first time that Richie’s nails had been painted a pearly pink and were digging into his palms with force. Eddie’s breath caught in his throat, but he knew realistically that it was the wrong time to panic or cry. Richie was his priority right now.

“Mind getting a little closer?” Eddie asked, rifling through his fanny pack. Richie silently moved forward so the knees of their crossed legs were touching. “Thanks. I'm gonna take off the makeup now, is that alright?”

He was careful to say the makeup, not your makeup. He didn't want to make it seem like the girly stuff was a part of Richie. The shaky boy nodded and Eddie carefully dabbed at his face with a baby wipe that he’d pulled from his fanny pack. The room was eerily quiet as he gently removed all the makeup, so Eddie started rambling.

"These wipes are hypoallergenic so you're not gonna break out or whatever. They smell pretty good too, I mean not that you smell bad or anything but, you know, it's nice." "Cool." "I used to have another brand that smelled great, but they weren't hypoallergenic and they made my face sting so my mom changed which ones she got. It's important to have wipes, y'know? Like, what if you spill something and you need to clean it up? They're overlooked." "Eddie?" "Yeah?" "Shut up."

Eddie smiled a little, because this was the first time ever that Richie was telling somebody else to stop talking.

“Can I see your hands? I need to use some antiseptic where your nails have dug in.” “Is the makeup gone?” “Totally. You wouldn't know it was there.”

Richie reluctantly placed his hands palm up on Eddie’s knees. They were shaky, but no longer to the point where Eddie couldn't work on them. He dug into his fanny pack again, taking out two pre-packed antiseptic wipes, two cotton pads, and a small bottle of acetone. l

Taking Richie’s left hand gently into his own, Eddie tore open the first wipe packet with his teeth and started wiping away the grime and hints of blood from his palm. When he glanced up, he noticed that Richie was staring dead at his face. Eddie offered an encouraging smile, and the corners of Richie’s mouth turned up in response. He pasted some small band aids over the crescent moon shaped gouges, and repeated the process on Richie’s right hand. He then poured the acetone onto the cotton pad and started clearing off the nail polish. They both stayed silent while he did, listening to each other's breathing to keep calm. A few minutes later, Richie looked just like he always did.

“Thanks.” Richie murmured quietly. “No problem man.”

It felt odd to not be flinging insults back and forth. That wasn't the only thing that felt strange. Seeing Richie like this was scary- he was quiet, he was emotional, he was afraid. It hurt seeing him that way.

There was an unspoken agreement among the Losers that Bill was their fearless leader. Beverly was the mother of the group, Stanley was the logic, Ben was the brains, Mike the emotional support, and Richie was the comic relief. When he wasn't cracking jokes, the world seemed to lose its balance.

This wasn't like the serious moments where he’d initiate a group hug, or speak quietly to Bill until the leader stopped tearing himself apart about Georgie. Eddie knew Richie was capable of turning it off when the situation called for it, but this didn't feel switched off; it felt like the light had been forcibly torn out of him. There were no words for it, nothing he could think of to say. Eddie felt like he was forcing himself to hold back tears.

His voice cracked as he called “Stan? Bill? You can come back in.”

The other boys walked in- Bill looked as nervous as Eddie, but Stan was totally normal.

“Nice shirt, Trashmouth.” he said, smirking at the slightly-too-small bright yellow shirt that read ‘I WAS A PARTICIPANT IN THE 1988 DERRY SUMMER FAIR HALF MILE FUN RUN!’ Richie’s eyes lit up at the insult. “Thanks, I borrowed it from your mom last night.” “Not likely, little boys full of shit aren't her type.” “Awwww, Stanley, no need to project your mommy issues onto me.” “Fuck you, Tozier.” “That’s Eddie’s job.” he winked, and Eddie spluttered, blushing for a few seconds before rolling his eyes and pulling Richie into the tightest hug of his life.

Bill, being Bill, dropped to his knees and joined the hug, holding the boys as close as he physically could. Stan also edged down to join them, gently draping his arms over the huddle of trembling preteen boys, because despite the image he tried to present, he cared deeply about Richie, as he did all his friends, and seeing Richie in that state had shaken him somewhat.

They stayed that way for almost thirty seconds, before Stan came up from his awkward squat and shook his hands off.

“I love you dearly, and I’m glad you're alright, but that floor is fucking disgusting and I think I just knelt in piss.” “What level disgusting? Eddie’s mom’s face, or Eddie’s mom’s underwear?” Eddie gasped, swatting Richie on the arm. “Dude!”

Richie just responded with a shit eating grin, and jumped to his feet, signalling that it was time to leave the bathroom. Stan and Bill walked out side by side, and Richie hung back for a few seconds with Eddie. He turned to face him, and the cheeky smirk slipped from his face again.

“Thank you for this. I mean it, sincerely. I didn't want any of you seeing me like that.” “I get it.” “You don't. You can't, but thank you. Of all the loser hypochondriacs in the world, I’m glad I found you.”

Eddie looked almost ready to protest, but Richie quickly silenced him with a peck on the lips.

“I-I-I-” Eddie tried to form a coherent sentence, but was too busy acknowledging the fireworks in his stomach and the smirk on Richie’s face.

Before he had a chance to respond, Richie bounded out of the room, hollering “Don't be late for geography, Eds!” as he went.

Eddie waited for the blush on his cheeks to die down before following.

[wozman23]

Ode to Ghostbusters

In celebration of Halloween, I watched Ghostbusters for the first time in a while, and it just further backs up my theory that it is one of the greatest pieces of cinema in history. I can’t exactly recall when the first time I saw it was, probably sometime in my early childhood. At that point I was probably just beginning to understand what movies are, and what they could be. But from then, Ghostbusters has always stuck with me. First off, I think it’s important to pinpoint what exactly Ghostbusters is, or isn’t. Springing from the mind of Dan Aykroyd - who I’ve always thought was superior to Chevy, Belushi, and the other early SNL players - it’s easy for most people to label it a comedy. However, I think there’s far more complexity to it than that. First and foremost, it’s got ever-present horror element thanks to the paranormal, and the overall presentation of an action movie. Sure, a few members of the cast, namely Bill Murray and Rick Moranis, provide some comedy. The scene with Moranis fumbling around and uttering “Maybe I’ve got a milk bones” blew my still-forming mind. It’s probably one of my earliest memories of an actor being funny. Outside of John Lithgow slapping a Sasquatch, or Drop Dead Fred wiping dog poo on furniture, I can’t think of another scene that has stuck with me from those days. Bill plays his typical sarcastic, non-nonchalant role, and Moranis plays the nerd brilliantly. Yet Ghostbusters is never truly set up as a comedy movie. The heroes don’t really follow the path of traditional comedic heroes. They’re action heroes, who overcome external foes. Both writers, Aykroyd and Ramis, known for years and years of great comedy, pay relatively straight parts. Hudson follows suit later when he’s introduced. Really only one of the four Ghostbusters is cracking jokes and providing comic relief. So, as much of a nerd I am about comedy, I take umbrage with it being called a comedy.  Ninety-nine percent of the movies I enjoy are comedies, but I wouldn’t lump Ghostbusters in with The Jerk, Billy Madison, or Elf. Ghostbusters is far more hybridized than just a single genre, and deserves more credit for that approach. I chose to watch it on Halloween because to me its an action-horror movie, that just happens to have a good bit of comedy sprinkled in. In anticipation of rewatching it, last night I watched the mini-documentary about it on Netflix’s The Movies That Made Us, which provides some terrific insight from Aykroyd, and some cool tidbits surrounding the picture’s filming and release, like the outlandish idea of the original script Aykroyd concocted, involving a more sci-fi approach and space aliens, and the legal hurdles of securing the name “Ghostbusters.” If it were based in space and called Ghostbreakers, who’s to say how it would have turned out. But one thing is clear: the final product succeeded because it evolved into exactly what it wanted and needed to be. It was grounded in a very real New York, with elements of fantasy. A gelatinous green slob of a ghost, creepy dog gargoyles, and a giant marshmallow man in a sailor outfit - no one ever questions the authenticity of those elements. Everyone just threw caution to the wind and were all-in with every detail. It’s just understood that, even if people are skeptical about the existence of the supernatural itself, all of that is rational in the world of Ghostbusters. With a cast well versed in comedy, they could have easily poked fun at the entire premise, yet they never do. Ray and Egon are as serious as it gets, and even Peter straightens up when there are real problems at hand.

I don’t remember much about the sequel. I think I’ve only seen it once, and I know it’s not as universally praised. (I might watch it again tomorrow.) I’d always held on to hope that we’d get a proper third entry, but those hopes were pretty much dashed when Ramis passed away. Having watched the female reboot, which I was optimistic about considering I love Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon, its reliance as more of a traditional comedy, with punched up with silly jokes and physical gags, really shows you that the original’s success clearly wasn’t solely due to its comedy elements. (And while were on the subject of the other uses of the property, the 2009 video game was another instance where the IP was treated right, thanks largely in part due to direct involvement from Aykroyd and Ramis.) One of the other great things about the original is just how well many of the special effects hold up. Yeah, the stop motion dogs look a little rough, but the proton streams and ghosts still look pretty cool over 35 years later. There’s a lot of great insight in the Netflix episode about how this all (barely) came together as well. Lastly, the music is phenomenal. It’s as 80s as the 80s can be. Ray Parker Jr’s theme is infectious. About it’s only blemish is that weird “I hear it likes the girls” line. What is that about?... All the other music is great as well, whether it be unsettling ambient background noise, the orchestral accompaniment, or the licensed tracks like Mick Smiley’s “Magic” or Alessi Brothers’ “Savin’ the Day.” I remember rewatching The Real Ghostbusters, the cartoon, some years ago with friends (shout out to fellow Ghostbusters nerd, Muggz) probably around the time of middle or high school, and I’d always joke when the theme song kicked in. It was used gratuitously. The first dozen seconds are ominous, so I’d always kid around that it was the “bad music” kicking in. You knew something weird was afoot. But then the song would immediately transition into the classic Ghostbusters theme, the “good music,” and you knew they guys were going to be pull through. And that’s exactly what Ghostbusters is: this unsettling thing made by comedians that doesn’t make a lot of sense at first, but quickly blossoms into something great.  Everything about the film is simply iconic: the suits, the proton packs and traps, the firehouse they occupy, Slimer, Ecto-1, the music, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man (which for most of my childhood I assumed was just a real marshmallow brand). I remember Disney movies from my early years, as well as a few Robin Williams movies, but nothing really goes toe-to-toe with just how hard Ghostbusters committed to its fantastical idea. It’s sense of self is unrivaled. And I’ll cross streams with anyone who tries to write it off as a silly comedy. P.S. Why did Danny and Billy eventually start going by Dan and Bill? Seems stupid to me.

[robotnik-mun]

Robotnik Retrospective Part Five: A Robotnik by Any Other Name

It’s that time again folks! Hello and welcome to another edition of The Robotnik Retrospective, where we delve into the depths of SatAM Robotnik, providing insight into why I like the guy so much and all the things that helped to contribute to that, both from within the series itself and without. Having thoroughly covered the in-series aspects of the character, we are now going to veer beyond his origins and take a look at this model’s utilization in other major adaptations within the franchise. In doing so we are going to take a look at how they impacted my perception of the character... as well as address a rather sizeable elephant in the living room. If you follow my blog enough, you’ve likely already guessed as to what THAT could be.

Because no matter how stringent a lot of us tend to be about this sort of thing, we cannot help but take something or the other from other adaptations, especially if those adaptations go into directions not covered by the source- especially when they can fill in the gaps that we might appreciate seeing covered, or various other details we might find fitting for the character. Adaptations can serve as a nifty way to enhance a character!

And with that said, let's get a move on!

On of the great and frustrating things about growing up with Sonic in the 90s? Brand confusion. There were so many versions of the character and his story running around it could be hard to keep track of, and with the advent of the internet it only got worse. Which was the ‘real’ Sonic? The one in the games? The one in the show with Scratch and Grounder? The one in SatAM? The comics in the US or across the pond in the UK? Yeah, the early days were something else, and for a lot of people it could get real confusing. Many fans like myself didn’t really do all that much to differentiate between the adaptations and mediums- Robotnik was Robotnik whether he looked like this, this, or this. Sonic was Sonic, robots were to be fought, and everything else was gravy. Of course, there were always those who liked to scream very loudly about who the ‘real’ Sonic was, but most of us didn’t really care.

I already detailed how that began to change once Sonic Adventure came along and SEGA decided they wanted something a bit more concrete for their setting, but in those days? It was pretty much jungle law. It could be a great thing, and it could be a horribly frustrating thing. The early 2000s in particular could be a pretty nasty time once SEGA decided to put more emphasis on storytelling and pushing a unified vision of Sonic, as you had game purists clashing with people who had preferred the spin-offs getting into a pissing match with one another.

War stories aside though, the nature of Sonic’s franchise during the Pre-Adventure Era was such that there were many many different takes on Sonic available, and as I had estasblished with the Adventures model of Robotnik, this meant that designs introduced in the animated adaptations would be re-utilized for comics meant to tie into the games and shows. The strangest of these adaptations, without contest, had to be Sonic Underground.

Sonic Underground was a very weird chapter in the franchise, with a premise so out there that many half-jokingly wonder what kind of drugs were being inhaled or injected when it was thought up. In some ways a spiritual successor to SatAM, Sonic Underground once more operated under the premise that Robotnik already ruled Mobius and Sonic was fighting to remove him from power. This time however, Sonic was helped along by a pair of siblings, Manic and Sonia, used magical musical instruments to help fight, and of all things was a *prince* whose mother was a queen on the run from Robotnik, who feared a prophecy involving all four that would topple his empire.

The premise alone is so out there that it leaves one to wonder if maybe this was meant to be a different show entirely and simply had Sonic slapped onto it for brand recognition (astoundingly enough though, this WASN’T the case... which is honestly a lot weirder than if it had been another show altered for a quick tie-in). Sonic Underground was notable for being the first western made Sonic show to feature Knuckles... and for being the ONLY Sonic show to never use tails. Infamous for it’s crazy premise, weird designs and shoddy animation, Sonic Underground is a somewhat contentious subject in the fandom- much like everything else really.

Is it bad? Personally... I don’t really think so. There’s a lot wrong with it, but it has things that I feel make it an okay show. Definitely not irredeemably awful. But I digress, we’re not here to analyze Sonic Underground- just a single part of it as it pertains to Robotnik, which is namely the Underground incarnation of Robotnik.

As I said, Underground was in many ways something of a successor series to SatAM- it included much of the original writing staff for that show and re-used mainstays of the series such as Robotropolis and Roboticization, and of course, re-used the design for Robotnik to serve as the basis for the Robotnik of Underground’s setting. So, how did this version measure up?

Well...

Not all that well, sadly. While still a global dictator, this Robotnik’s behavior was decidedly of a more comedic bend than his predecessor. Even more short tempered, bellicose and vain than SatAM’s Robotnik, this Robotnik was much more often subjected to physical comedy buffoonery, and his case wasn’t helped by his voice actor Gary Chalk (who had previously voiced Grounder in AoSTH). Now, Gary Chalk is a very talented and experianced voice actor, but the performance he gave for this Robotnik was less “Menacing Dictator” and more “Pompous Windbag”- and I suspect that was the point.

Other points against him where that unlike his SatAM self, this guy’s reign over Mobius was dependent upon the nobility paying taxes to fund his operations, and that even though he had personally wronged Sonic and his siblings, the emotional impact of his actions were blunted by the fact that they didn’t treat him with the same level of hostility and fear as his predecessor was often treated. His more comedic-by-comparison traits similarly undermined his credibility- he was at once the supreme dictator of Mobius who none the less was often much more thoroughly humiliated than his predecessor, putting him in an awkward middle ground between a comedy villain and a more serious kind of villain that didn’t really work that well.

Adding to that, this Robotnik had absolutely no backstory. While SatAM Robotnik wasn’t exactly a deep well of details when it came to his past, at the very least there was a context to him- he was once the leader of the Kingdom of Acorn’s military and a trusted friend and advisor to the king, who used his influence over the robot army he had constructed to keep the peace to conquer the kingdom from within. In Underground however, there is nothing provided, nothing to contextualize how he came into power to begin with or how he exactly relates to the hedgehogs. At times I’m not even sure his robotic arm is even really robotic, given that there have been times that *flesh* was seen underneath...

At this point you probably think I wholly dismiss this incarnation of Robotnik or that I disdain it. Well, surprise surprise, but I don’t. There are in fact interesting aspects to this version. While him ruling over people through somewhat more legitimate means made him less threatening than his SatAM Predecessor, it IS on it’s own an interesting and unique twist on things that Robotnik is able to rule via the consent of the nobility, allowing them free reign in return for paying for his various schemes while the commonfolk fit the bill. Similarly, Roboticization being dolled out as a punishment for transgressions rather than the default fate for anybody who is captured by the guy is an interesting use of the concept. And hey, I rather enjoy the wide variety of robots and vehicles that this Robotnik got to use. Also, for all about him that was taken lightly? He did get at least one *really* cool moment in the series- blackmailing Knuckles into helping him by essentially holding all of Mobius hostage, declaring that if he couldn’t rule Mobius then he would rather see it destroyed. That’s actually a pretty legit awesome moment there, and it’s the only thing that I ever took from him.

So yeah, I wouldn’t say that this is a ‘bad’ depiction of Robotnik- it has its merits, but in the end he just didn’t capture my attention the way his predecessor did, nor did the bulk of his actions impress me in the same way.

Which brings us to the REAL meat of this section- Archie Comics.

One thing I’ve mentioned in this retrospective and elsewhere is that my timing when it comes to Sonic has always been rather weird. The first game I played was Sonic 3, AFTER I had already seen Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog on TV. My first encounter with Amy and Super Sonic came from an issue in Fleetway. My first episode of SaTAM and first encounter with Robotnik was the Doomsday Project, and my first issues of the Archie Series? Was the last two issues of the Endgame Saga.

Boy, what a time to come into things, eh?

As I once said, for the longest time I didn’t really ‘process’ continuity when it came to Sonic. Since this comic featured Sonic and the Freedom Fighters and the familiar model of Robotnik, I just viewed it as an extension of the show, and lemme tell you... it blew my mind away. This comic featured things like Robotnik framing Sonic for killing Sally and ended with what remains one of the coolest looking fight scenes in the comic, with Sonic pushed to the very brink and nearly dying as he strove to take down Robotnik once and for all, ending in a final victory for Sonic and the Freedom Fighters!

I mean, how could I *not* be impressed?

I later got the Director’s Cut version, and it became even better as it expanded his evil deeds and set up and finished the final fight in an even better way. That was some seriously kickass stuff, my younger self thought.

What I didn’t realize at the time though, was that all that stuff I had seen? Was ultimately an outlier. Or that my ability to discern quality storytelling was soooooorely lacking.

See, because I lived overseas, my early exposure to Archie came in bits and pieces each summer for a while. As such, I really had no idea what the earlier books were like. See, while Archie was indeed made to tie into SatAM, the original miniseries was published *before* SatAM, and as such while there were designs and general characters and used from the show, the actual tone and characterization of the series aligned more to the Adventures cartoon then it did SatAM, and the things that WERE included were based off earlier production materials. Sally for example was an orange furred blonde in the miniseries before having her hair and fur switched to pink and black, Antoine took several issues before he finally got his trademark accent (and was evidently envisioned as being *British*, and Rotor was initially addressed with his early name of ‘Boomer’ and retained his design and color scheme from the SatAM pilot episode.

Naturally, this meant that while Robotnik in Archie had the same design as his SatAM counterpart, his personality was more aligned to the Adventures model. It’s kind of funny actually, because it’s the opposite of what happened over in the UK with Fleetway- there, Robotnik would eventually take on the design of the Adventures incarnation, which had been for a comedy show, and went on to become one of the most terrifying incarnations of Robotnik out there.

Fun little bit of irony, isn’t it?

Anyway, the point is, for the longest time I was quite unaware of the fact that in Archie, Robotnik had spent the bulk of his career as a comedy villain, and it was only after his death that some of his nastier deeds were elaborated upon. For most of his time within the comic though, Robotnik was a comedic villain- a petulant manchild with a major league hate-on for Sonic. As time went on he would go on to be less and less comedic... but he never really reached the same levels as his Archie counterpart in terms of personality *or* dialogue. This Robotnik was very talkative and tended towards a more casual tone of voice even when fighting Sonic and company. Even his better moments in the book (such as the Mecha Madness Storyline) didn’t really help to give him the same kind of gravitas or presence that his predecessor possessed. Not helping matters was the fact that multiple writers handled him, giving him a shaky and unsteady voice throughout much of the book. Even picturing his dialogue with Jim Cummings’ voice speaking the lines didn’t really help. It was only with Endgame that Robotnik truly began to show the same kind of menace as his source.

However, this Robotnik DID have something else going on for him- a greatly expanded backstory. Here we learned that Robotnik was an ‘Overlander’, a member of the enemy faction during the Great War who defected over to the Kingdom of Acorn and with his insight into Overlander tactics helped deliver victory to the Kingdom. It was further revealed that he was from a prestigious family called ‘The House of Ivo’, that he had a brother called Colin (who himself was a ranking member of the Overlander army and the father of Snively), and that during the Great War he sabotaged the Roboticizer before its first use, resulting in Sonic’s own father Jules becoming the first Robian.

As you can imagine, I ate it up, and gleefully applied it to the SatAM Robotnik, because honestly, at some level I still conflated the two. Yep, I was really, very much influenced by all the details that the Archie comics provided for Robotnik and all too eager to make use of them. Who could be responsible for so much that brought me joy, eh?

That sound your hearing? Is the sound of an elephant firmly planting itself in the room. I mentioned that I would be addressing said elephant in the last retrospective post, and for those of you that know this blog, you already know who I’m talking about.

The guy responsible for all these developments was Ken Penders.

Yup. Ken Penders. That fucker. I don’t really need to go on about him- I’ve said more than enough about the guy in general, and I don’t need to elaborate on it really. I deeply dislike Pender as a person, as a writer, as an artist... just in general really. No more needs to be said about that, as I’ve said MORE than enough elsewhere on this blog.

However... for a time, I was once a fan of his, and I really, truly loved everything that he had done, both for Robotnik and for Sonic in general. It would be dishonest for me to pretend otherwise. At some level I saw the comics as being an extension of SatAM, one that happened to include things from the games, especially including Knuckles and giving him more to do. Best of all worlds. Hard to believe given how often I criticize the man and his works, but its all true. I loved his stuff and it became a huge part of why I loved Sonic and why I liked Robotnik as a character, even as I began to differentiate the various continuities from one another and began to grasp that each one was contained to the self. I did not care. Even as I got older and began to notice certain discrepencies in the stories I liked so much, I still did my best to take them and make sense of them, creating my own take on familiar stories and bits of lore and forming it into something more logical and whole (even in the  fanboy days I thought the canonical end to the Great War was a weak one). Yep, it’s safe to say that I owe a lot of what I liked in Sonic to Penders.

Then, the lawsuit happened. That he would pursue legal action over characters that were clearly Sonic characters did a good deal to sour me on the guy. Then, by the grace of my good friend Fini-Mun, I was directed over to his forum and his twitter... and that was when it dawned upon me that this man, who I owed so much happiness to, was a horrid, horrid person. After that I began to delve around and learn the full scope of his antics, and it was here that I really began to open my eyes. I was now able to re-read his works, and I was now able to realize something that many people before me had already known but that I had refused to accept- Penders was a terrible, terrible writer. His dialogue was dull and stale, his plotting was drawn out and aimless, he was overly reliant upon exposition, while character development was often done with little build up and rarely built upon. To say nothing of his over reliance upon references to other franchises to act as substitutions for actual worldbuilding, and his disastrous and utterly baffling attempts to insert ‘real world’ subjects into the book.

Sadly, even my beloved Endgame was rife with this- the plot ultimately moves along due to happenstance, and Sonic is only triumphant due to events beyond his control. It became clear that if Sonic had done literally nothing, then the outcome of the storyline would have been more or less the same, ending in Robotnik’s death and with Sally alive and well. It dawned on me that save for a few neat fight scenes... Endgame on the whole kinda sucked. Kinda really, really sucked.

Except for this- this was awesome, at least. 

Last cool thing out of Endgame, I promise.  

So, what does any of this have to do with Archie Robotnik? Well as I mentioned, the events of Endgame and the backstory material that Penders provided for him really helped to enhance my enjoyment of the character and Sonic on the whole... and in slowly peeling away the layers of Penders’ mediocrity, a new picture began to present itself, a final nail in the coffin that was my enjoyment of the man’s work.

Divorcing my negative feelings regarding the lawsuit and the revelation of just how bad a lot of his writing was from an objective standpoint, his various statements and actions soon made it clear that he had little real respect for Robotnik as a character, along with the franchise that he was meant to be working on. Killing off Robotnik in Endgame might have seemed like a daring move, but evidently Penders felt that it should be a permanent arrangement and even fought to keep Robotnik dead in the aftermath of Endgame, claiming that it would ‘allow for new challenges’. Problem is that Robotnik, or Eggman or whatever you call them is the principal villain of the series and by default must be a constant. To this day, I still think the fact that it was Robo-Robotnik who returned rather than Robotnik proper was done as a compromise to appease Penders and allow him to have his precious 'moment’.

Point of order though, there was something suspicious about this to me. Curiously though despite his insistence upon Robotnik dying and staying dead, he never seemed all that eager to do away with the villains he had created for his Knuckles the Echidna comic, The Dark Legion. Even after the comic was canceled Penders continued to try and build up the Legion as a major threat, despite having previously used the failure of a miniseries to justify the killing of a major character he didn’t know (Princess Sally, and that wasn’t the only excuse he gave), even seeing fit to have Dark Legion characters survive into the world of Mobius: 25 Years Later. Not at all helping his case was the discovery of his opinion that the Dark Legion could ‘eat Eggman and any of his incarnations for breakfast’, when asked about the Dark Legion going over to Eggman’s employ during Flynn’s run.

The real breaking point though came when I discovered that not only had he permanently killed Dr. Robotnik off, but twice tried to replace his role in the book with cheap knockoffs of his own creation.

The first one, naturally, debuted in the Image Crossover Super Special, one of the most notoriously awful books in the entire Sonic line and easily deserving in the place of Top Ten Worst Issues. The Image Crossover was a bizzare concept, namely the heroes of the then nascent Image Comics Universe encountering the heroes of Archie’s own Sonic comic. Strange, but it could be workable. Unfortunately, the Image Crossover would not only fail to truly exploit its premise, it ultimately served as little more than a glorified commercial for Penders’ own intended Image Series, The Lost Ones. The villain of this book, introduced without any context or build-up or foreshadowing of any kind was this guy- Dr. Ian Droid.

Before you ask, no, that name isn’t a slam on Ian Flynn, it’s just a stupid pun. This guy’s name was never uttered in the book itself, nor his precise origins, but on his message board it would be revealed that Ian Droid was indeed a counterpart to Dr. Robotnik (specifically stated him to be another version of Robo-Robotnik), and eventually the utimate menace of 25YL-THIS guy would be the one to pilot the Robotnik mech seen in Locke’s visions, which kicked off Locke genetically modifying Knuckles to begin with.

Yep. That’s right. This incredibly generic looking refugee from the 90s was meant to be a legitimate counterpart to the incredibly distinct looking and behaving Dr. Robotnik, a copy of a copy (Robo-Robotnik) and the ultimate menace of everything. Oh, but even better? He was also the main villain of the Lost Ones. He didn’t do squat there either! But yes, you heard me right- Ken Penders tried to create a character owned by himself, and then through his connections at Archie, tried to make this character into a legitimate, in-universe equivalent to a character he didn’t own, belonging to a franchise he didn’t own, all so that he could try and promote his goddamn failure of an independent comic. And not only was he meant to be a counterpart, but the ultimate threat of the book. This guy, who literally has no distinct design or personality features at all. Even his freaky square pupils were lifted off of Galactus!

Oh yeah, incidentally, that giant Robotnik mech? First debuted in Sonic Live, being made by dozens of Robotniks from other zones. 

Yep, that’s right folks- the big, super evil weapon that Locke saw his son fighting? The thing that would ultimately kickstart the Big Epic Storyline of Knuckles and gradually damn near overtake the entire Sonic comic line under Penders? Had its origins in Sonic Live, easily one of the absolute worst books in the entire franchise (not unlike the Image Crossover), another one that justifiably tends to rank high in the ‘Worst Issues’ lists people tend to make. This thing is so awful, it basically caused the Knuckles series to happen! 

What could have possibly motivated Penders to think that ‘Ian Droid’ was a good idea is something that is unknown to this day, beyond the warped need to try and use the Sonic franchise to boost his own projects even back when he was still on the book. 

As I said though, there were *two* attempts at this, and Droid was only the first. The second time around, Penders would display *slightly* more savvy by crafting an explicit connection between his creation and Robotnik/Eggman... and in doing so, even further highlighted the utter redundancy of the addition. 

In his last run on the book, a gold plated clone of Gamma called “Isaac” would show up and reveal himself to be from the Pre-Xorda days of humanity, acting as a caretaker for his master... Dr. Ivan Kintobor, born June Sixth of 2006 AD. Yep. Born 6/6/6. Oh and also he was the one who dissected a Xorda which caused them to destroy the Earth, which in turn caused the creation of Mobius. 

Yeeah, you can see where this is going. Penders was very clearly setting up for Ivan Kintobor to become a new, major threat... despite Eggman already being in the picture and more than established as the central villain of the series. Mercifully, Penders left before he could implement whatever he was building Ivan Kintobor up to, and when Flynn came on board he immediately nipped that one in the bud.

The point I am trying to get at though? It becomes very clear that Penders had very little respect for Robotnik as a character, or for the games that the book was made to promote, or the show that it had been made to tie-in to, and this knowledge has all but shattered my ability to fully appreciate this incarnation of Robotnik, particularly since in the long run, his list of truly cool deeds is incredibly limited. Similarly, knowing that the man responsible for that would think of the book’s main villain, an incarnation of the franchise’s principle enemy, was so disposable that he could just replace him with “my version but better” twice over, as well as view them as being inferior to villains he himself created? Is intolerable.

It’d be like if someone at DC earnestly managed to kill-off Darkseid...

.... and then immediately tried to replace him with THIS.

“Darkthornn”.

The key difference though is that when Liefeld made that mardi-gras colored mockery, he used him exclusively for his own book rather than trying to make him an in-universe counterpart for Darkseid or trying to replace the guy with his own creation.

So yeah, in the end? Penders did a lot to flesh out Robotnik, and for a while I was cheerful to use it as my own... but knowing his mentality and how many of the little details were really badly written (in particular, the nauseating fact that the Overlanders were little more than a straw humanity to contrast Penders’ straw Utopian mobians) has soured my once rather deep enjoyment and desire to utilize this version’s details. It feels like a validation for a man who ultimately saw the franchise on the whole as a personal stepping stone for his own ideas. If anything good came of it though, it has in fact made me doubly appreciative of the SatAM incarnation of Robotnik.

Penders however wasn’t the only one to provide some interesting ideas for this Robotnik. Karl Bollers never really got to write in-depth for the character, being the one to usher-in Robo-Robotnik and his ascension to Eggman. I’m not going to cover him given that he’s really a separate character entirely and technically ceased to be SatAM Robotnik-based, but I’ll say this much- while it was a confusing as hell means to re introduce Robotnik and later Eggman’s SA design into the comic, I actually did kind of like the concept, that of a Robotnik from another Zone who had managed to triumph and, bored with victory, left his own Zone to re-live the thrill of conquest on another Mobius. Driven more by amusement than anything else, it’s a unique motivation for a Robotnik/Eggman. Also, I thought the Roboticization touch thing was a cool idea.

Moving on though, Bollers DID add a few details regarding Archie’s Robotnik that helped to enhance the character and ultimately my perception of the Robotnik that spawned him.

One of these was the revelation that in the past, Robotnik had a mentor, a kindly fellow called Nate Morgan.

Nate Morgan’s proper origins actually begin with SatAM, where an unused character by that name was envisioned as a wizard allied with the Freedom Fighters.

The Nate Morgan shown in the concept art however had very little to do with the character Bollers introduced. This Nate Morgan, in the past, served as a teacher and mentor to Julian, and allowed him to assist in secret research that would eventually lead to the creation of the power rings. Betrayed by his student, Nate would be exiled from Overland and wander into the Kingdom of Acorn, where his technological expertise would be used to raise the Mobians out of the medieval era stage of development they were in, and he would later go on to be a close advisor to King Max and mentor CHarles Hedgehog, before a conspiracy from Kodos and Naugus would force him to go into self-exile.

Like many things in the comic, Morgan was not a very well utilized idea, but for his concept alone I appreciated him all the same. I enjoyed the irony of the idea that someone like Robotnik could be mentored by someone as kind and gentle as Nate, and appreciated the connection he gave to Charles beyond them both working directly for the King. There was potential for stories in there regarding both Charles AND Julian, particularly regarding how Nate might have responded to seeing the damage his two students did to the world and how it would impact him, knowing that their knowledge sprang from him to begin with. Either way though, I appreciated the way this guy enhanced Archie Robotnik AND Chuck’s backstories.

The other thing was a really just a minor gag, but one I got a lot of mileage out of- namely the four robotic replacement bodies under Robotropolis, built by Robotnik Prime and later utilized by Robo-Robotnik, which served as a means to upgrade Robotnik’s design to Eggman’s.

This panel just amuses and intrigues me on *so* many levels, because it leaves open soooo many questions about how this Robonik’s vanity operates. Only one of those bodies could be considered conventionally attractive, and that one lumpy looking fella is even *uglier* than how Robotnik normally looks. Otherwise? They’re all just variations of Robotnik’s features of being bald, fat, and possessing extensive facial hair. I just find it fascinating that, given the chance to have an entirely new body, Robotnik only made one that could be regarded as an idealization of himself while making the rest different takes on his usual features. In particular, with the hindsight of realizing that he surely based the 'Eggman’ body off of his own grandfather, it made me wonder if perhaps this Robotnik deliberately chose to grow out his mustache in direct homage to the man. It’s a shame they never came up or were used again, but oh well, they were pretty memorable for all the single panel that they showed up on.

While never directly relating to “Robotnik Prime” properly, there were a few other things that I enjoyed for the intriguing possibilities they presented- and one of them was none other than M.

M didn’t have a lot going for her, but her existence did make me wonder what would motivate Eggman to specifically create a ‘daughter’, and to specifically give her the features that he did. The implications intrigued me, particularly in the way that they could reflect off of Robotnik Prime’s own backstory, aligning with a few ideas I had held for the SatAM version. I won’t get into details, but Mecha ended up having a bit more of an impact with me than you might think, regardless of how little real use she got.

And finally, there was one of my favorite Bollers contributions- Hope.

Hope’s character presented an intriguing concept- the White Sheep of a family with a heavily checkered past in general and an ESPECIALLY horrible reputation thanks to the actions of her uncle (and his counterpart). Notable for being one of the few Overlander characters in the book to sympathize with Mobians, Ian Flynn later got a lot of mileage out of her by revealing that, much like her half-brother, uncle and great-grandfather, Hope had inherited the Kintobor affinity for machinery and the scientific genius to go with it. Determined to restore her family name after her uncle and brother had dragged it through the mud, Hope was a really great idea and a great character. She never interacted with her ‘real’ uncle, but her existence and antagonistic relationship with the rest of her family none the less served as wonderful story fodder all the same. Helping matters was the fact that, by a wonderful coincidence, Hope managed to strongly resemble the long dead Maria Robotnik despite debuting before her. 

In conclusion? My relationship with the Archie Robotnik is a complicated one with a complicated history, with my forgiving attitude of ‘good idea, bad execution’ clashing with and ultimately losing to ‘realizing the guy writing for him didn’t give a crap really’. Though I will not deny that this one’s existence greatly enhanced my enjoyment of SatAM Robotnik and, once upon a time, I was all too willing to use the precise details of his life and conflate them with SatAM Robotnik, and at one point I might have even called him my favorite. With the realization of how poorly handled his characterization was and that his only real time to truly shine (in a convoluted and poorly explained story) came only in the same arc as his death, along with understanding the dismissive and self-serving motivation of Penders, that is no longer even remotely the case.

Ah well. Mecha Madness was still cool. 

However, the bottom line is though that these two re-interpretations of SatAM Robotnik, Underground and Archie alike, were none the less unique takes upon the doctor, spinning interesting new interpretations of his character to fit the new worlds that they were a part of. While neither of them really matched the original deal, they were both memorable in their own right, and that is more than enough.

With that, we move on past the other models of Robotnik that existed, and prepare to veer into the next retrospective. The subject of which is a... personal favorite of mine- criticisms of the doctor, and my counterpoints to those criticisms. Fun times ahead, lemme tell ya.

[limejuicer1862]

F WORD WARNING 

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these fiction writers you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

  Ian Woodrow

  I got into comedy when I lived in Manchester in the early 2000s. I was a contemporary of the likes of Jason Manford and Sarah Millican. They went on to fill stadiums while I went on to live in Wakefield. I didn’t perform onstage for a while after moving here for a new job, though I did perform comedy in the virtual world of Second Life for a while, which was quite fun. Then, about four years ago I got invited to see a mate from Manchester (Tony Kinsella, aka Bolshy Bard, who was performing with Bard Company) do Jackanory one time. Halima, who runs Jackanory, got wind I’d done comedy before so asked me to do a slot at an upcoming show which I was happy to accept. Since then I’ve done Jackanory a few more times, plus a couple of benefit gigs at The Red Shed, and some other general open mic nights around Wakey. Then, just over a year ago, I started my own comedy open mic night, Jockularity, which runs at Jolly Boys Real ale Cafe in the town and is Wakefield’s only monthly comedy night. I also do a comedy cooking blog, It’s Not Big, But It Is Clever, which is another outlet for my humour (though it is a serious cooking blog with actual recipes that work), but that’s taken a bit of a back seat of late as I’ve been not writing standup material at home of an evening instead of not writing blog updates. During the day I’m a Clinical Scientist in the NHS, so as well as being a smart arse doing comedy in my spare time, I also pretend to be a smart arse for a living. As far as comedy goes, family commitments mean I’ve no ambition, nor have I the time, to go any further afield for gigs. I may have the odd foray somewhere not too far away, like Leeds maybe in the not too distant future. Links My comedy night, Jockularity, is on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JockularityWakey/ and Twitter @JockularityWfMy cooking blog can be found here: https://swearyfood.blogspot.com/This is a flyer for Jockularity This is me performing at the Red Shed last year as part of We Shall Overcome

The Interview    1. What inspired you to  start performing comedy?

  My wife and I bought our first house in Swinton, near Manchester, and a local pub started doing a comedy night. They had some top headline acts but also some open spots on and I thought “i could do that”. I spoke to the guy running it, a comedian and actor called Toby Hadoke, and he arranged to get me an open spot at his weekly gig called XS Malarkey, which is often voted one of the best nights in the country. I largely died on my arse (to use the comedy vernacular), but the few laughs I did get were like heroin and I was hooked.

 2. Who introduced you to comedy?

Toby, as mentioned above, and some of the other people who ran gigs around Manchester at that time. Besides that, the standup that got on TV in the 80s and 90s was a huge influence in giving me the kind of mind that comes up with one liners and wisecracks. The earliest comedians I remember that truly spoke to me were Billy Connolly and Dave Allen. Jasper Carrot’s style of satirical material from his show in the 80s had a big effect. Jo brand I always loved, Jack Dee, Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle, Joan Rivers, the list is endless. The Newton quote about shoulders of giants rings very true, except even with that greatness to stand on, I’m still fucking severely myopic.

 3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of bigger acts?

There was a lovely camaraderie within the comedy circuit at the time. In the green room it’s quite egalitarian, so just hanging out with the bigger names was somehow calming.

 4. What is your daily writing routine?

Dreadful. I’m incredibly lazy. I see that I’ve got a gig coming up (which mounts to the monthly open mic night I run in Wakefield at the moment) and try to produce a few minutes of topical material from recent news stories. I post one liners to Facebook when they occur to me and I try to use some of these in hammering out a routine

 5. What motivates you to write?

It might be a bit of a cliché, but seeing what’s happening around me. The world and home political situation at the moment is so completely crazy, a lot of material  almost writes itself. In fact, there’s so much of the news that is so utterly bonkers that it wouldn’t make something like The Thick of It because it would have been deemed too ridiculous.

 6. What is your work ethic?

Shoddy at best. I’m trying to form good habits and write more prolifically, spurred on by submitting material to radio shows like Newsjack on R4, but it’s a steep and slippery entropy slope to climb up. I’m a lazy fucker

 7. How did the comedy you saw when you were young influence you today?

I’ve already mentioned a lot of the sort of thing that gave me my sense of humour. In terms of written work, Hitch Hikers Guide was a major milestone, showing me it was possible to use science to make people laugh. On film there was Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Carry On films, Monty Python, The Airplane series. On TV there was Fawlty Towers, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image and of course The Young Ones.

 8. Who of today’s comedians do you admire the most and why?

I’ll lose my seat at the table of the liberal elite if I don’t say Stewart Lee. That he keeps getting primetime work is a testament to him, and also shows it’s possible to be intellectual, funny and (relatively) popular. I don’t get out much to see stand-up, but it does seem that TV is saturated with comics on panel shows, mostly white males, and largely interchangeable. I do like Katherine Ryan, Frankie Boyle, Kevin Bridges and even Jimmy Carr. Armando Ianucci is also a comedy genius and I’ve got a bit of a man-crush on Adam Hills. And, yes, I realise they are, bar one, white males, but only one of them is English and one of them is disabled.

 9. Why do you do comedy?

It’s all about the laughs. I’m not crusading to change people’s minds about issues with a finely honed knob gag about Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson. Sure, they are dicks, but me saying that in a different, but more amusing, way isn’t going to change make you think differently about them.

 10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a comedian?”

I’d say, to appropriate a corporate slogan, just do it. Find a local open mic night and give it a go. I’d also say don’t do it unprepared and don’t so it drunk. Write a routine, but make sure it’s original and practice it for days, if not weeks, before the show. Don’t rattle off a barrage Hicks, Kay, Lee or (God forbid) Manning material, find your own voice.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

Well, as I said above, I’m fucking lazy. I’ve got long-standing attempts at a sitcom, a couple of novels and a few sketches that will almost certainly never see the light of day, at least not before I retire. I’m on the periphery of the Wakefield spoken word circuit (and met some utterly wonderful people as a result) and I’ve been fleetingly tempted to write some poetry, but it’s not really my style. I could turn a finely crafted piece of satirical verse on the current status of the UK political situation, or I could just call jacob Rees Mogg a wanker. I know which would get the bigger laugh.    

Onto Writing Comedy Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Ian Woodrow F WORD WARNING  Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/jonah-hill-joins-the-five-timers-club-on-a-uniformly-funny-saturday-night-live/

Jonah Hill joins the Five-Timers Club on a uniformly funny Saturday Night Live

Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, Candice Bergen, Drew BarrymoreScreenshot: Saturday Night Live

“I guess the worst part of the play was their confidence in it.”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [movie, Netflix, directing] star!

It’s be nice to think that Jonah Hill has fully stepped out of his pigeonhole at this point. A couple of Oscar nominations, co-lead in an hit Netflix series, writer-director of a promising new coming-of-age movie, Hill has emerged from the Apatow star factory still straddling the line between serious artist and broad comedy movie star. (Sort of like James Franco, except that people actually seem to like Hill’s directorial debut and no one—as of this writing—has accused Hill of being a sex creep.)

That dichotomy showed up in Hill’s monologue, as SNL legend Tina Fey ushered new Five-Timers Club member Hill into the selective lounge set, where fellow FTC members Candice Bergen and Drew Barrymore celebrated his entry by showing an old sketch where Hill’s character admits to doing some serious damage to a toilet. Protesting that he does more than toilet humor now (“But that’s where you shined!,” enthuses Bergen), the disappointed Hill can only endure an all-ladies Five-Timers welcome, since, according to Fey, Bergen, and Barrymore, all the male members have turned out to be, well, sex creeps. (Steve Martin will just play his banjo “without consent.”)

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Saturday Night LiveSeason 44

Fitted with the coveted FTC smoking jacket, Hill is disappointed to find that the new female leadership has refashioned it into something like a kicky boldero number. It’s a neat little way to incorporate Hill’s evolving comic persona while still trading on the downtrodden victim vibe he carries with him, especially once Kenan pops in to remind everyone that his record-breaking seniority carries its own privileges. “This is my show. I let you in here sometimes,” he responds to Hill questioning his presence in the Five-Timers lounge.

Over at Vulture, AV Clubber Jesse Hassenger recently did a ranking of the relatively rare phenomenon of SNL hosts’ recurring characters, and placed Hill’s Borscht Belt six-year-old Adam Grossman near the top. I get it. For one, the field isn’t exactly littered with gold (glad I’m not the only one sick of the Omletteville guy), with most of the bits weathering even faster than those done by the actual cast. But Grossman keeps working as well as he does because of a character throughline, as the garrulous little guy keeps tossing out his inexplicable Catskills schtick to his unlikely Benihana co-diners alongside a series of guardians indicating the unstable family life that’s somehow spawned such a weird creature. Here it’s forbearing nanny Leslie Jones, sighing deeply as she weathers Adam’s insult comic “I’m just kidding” one-liners as Grossman attempts to puncture any tension his borderline racist material generates by proclaiming his age (complete with specific and funny awkward hand gestures). It’s never been my favorite sketch, but Hill (who created the bit alongside Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, based on a bafflingly tracksuited child diner Hader once sat with) is into it, and he suggests the merest hints of the defensive mechanisms that are powering Adam’s transformation into a hacky joke machine, which always lends just enough shadings to the idea. Leslie kept breaking, but, then again, so did I.

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Weekend Update update

There was a certain elegance to the way SNL kept weaving themes through its political material tonight, with jokes about Trump’s “caravan of scary brown people” terror tactics, and the importance of voting on Tuesday reinforcing each other throughout. Jost and Che were on, each landing their material confidently. On the caravan (of desperate asylum seekers that are a thousand miles away), Jost noted how Trump’s sweatily named “Operation Faithful Patriot” (where American troops are needlessly stringing barbed wire for a piece of election eve fear-mongering theater) sounds like a company that makes “reverse mortgages and catheters.” (Fox News commercial viewers get that.) Che followed up on the race-baiting scare tactics by urging that the old white people being hyped about the looming but nonexistent threat should be more worried about the less-easily-scapegoated specter of their grandkids stealing their pain pills.

On the election front, Che continued his role as Update’s resident “slow your roll” skeptic, confessing that, while he does intend to vote (on Tuesday, November 6, kids), he’s not going to buy into any “final notice for democracy” panic. Joking that, if final notices were actually final, his college debts would actually be paid, Che, as ever, positions himself for the long view, an edgy place to be in a time of national crisis (see, there’s that panic), but one consistent with his stance as a (black) guy who’s been living in a dangerous situation his entire life. For Jost (white guy), the jokes were less pointed, but not bad, as he noted that things are pretty dire when ice cream is taking a side, and that it has to be a complicated feeling when Oprah knocks on your door, only to present you with a pamphlet about Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams instead of a new car.

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Pete Davidson has become such a strange star on SNL, his very public statements about his battles with mental health and substance abuse and the recent ongoing saga of his tabloid-fodder relationship with now-ex Ariana Grande have made Davidson more of a personality star than anyone I can think of in SNL history. Pete’s never been the most polished sketch guy (although he’s improved), and his Update pieces as himself have always been his best showcase, especially since he’s sharpened up his material beyond the adorable stoner little brother schtick he started out with. Here, with newly-dyed hair and the elephant of his recent, much-publicized breakup hanging over his head, Davidson delivered a solid series of political takedowns in advance of the Tuesday midterm elections. Sure, they were all cheeky appearance smack (NY Republican Peter King looks like “a cigar came to life,” Florida candidate Rick Scott looks like “if someone tried to whittle Bruce Willis out of a penis”), but, for a young comic staking out political material for the first time in his life, it’s funny stuff. And since SNL has made hay all season long about Davidson’s rising media profile, his genuinely sweet and decent-sounding appraisal of ex Grande was both de rigeur and unexpectedly touching.

Melissa Villaseñor made the leap to the main cast this year, but hasn’t had much opportunity to show off her mimicry skills or her comic chops much on the young season. So, taking a page out of Heidi Gardner’s playbook, she debuted a specifically targeted character piece on Update, with her “Every Teen Girl Murder Suspect on Law & Order.” Honestly, it’s such a specific Gardner niche at this point that I was surprised to see Villaseñor in the chair, but Melissa did fine, as her Brittany—ostensibly there to talk about young adult literature—squirmed and equivocated about what happened to her friend Logan at that “big alcohol party.” Not to harp on the comparison, but Brittany wasn’t as immediately memorable as any of Gardner’s similar turns, even if Villaseñor delivered on the premise with a uniformly strong performance.

Just when I think I’m tired of Kenan Thompson’s Big Papi, he pulls me back in. It helps that there’s a reason for his appearance tonight, as, you know, the Red Sox won the World Series again. (That’s, like, what, four in 15 years, right? Huh. Cool.) Petty sports partisanship aside, Kenan’s performance as retired and beloved Boston slugger David Ortiz has never been the problem. Kenan’s Ortiz, with his nonsensical endorsements, gap-toothed ebullience, and food obsession, is an all-time belly laugh, his infectious enthusiasm for baseball, food, his spokesman deal for the concept of spokes, and simply being Big Papi is impossible to hate. (Presumably even for Yankees fans, whose team got clobbered in the ALDS 3-1, including a humiliating 61-1 loss on their home diamond.) But the jokes don’t change much (as in, at all). Thankfully, it’s been a while, the Sox won the series, and it was nice to see the big lug again. Mofongo all around.

Best/worst sketch of the night

Look, some of you are going to clamor for a “worst” tag on Kate McKinnon’s teacher sketch. You’ll point to both its unexplained weirdness and its languorous pace, and how it never quite announces its authority as something that should appear as early in the show as it did. Well, shush. This was great stuff, not as much for the sketch itself (it really could have used more writing punch to match McKinnon’s performance), as for how it represents the sort of oddball conceptual idea Saturday Night Live desperately needs to encourage. The premise of someone acting weird while other people comment on it is hardly new SNL territory, but, as McKinnon’s overly dramatic drivers ed teacher sprawls on the classroom floor and rambles on about her predicament and its meaning, it was like a cool drink to realize that the sketch wasn’t going to go out of its way to hammer the premise home with explanations for the slowest possible viewer. It was just weird for weird’s sake, and McKinnon, accusing her charges at laughing at her “like this was some episode of Friend,” worked within the framework of the sketch to craft an enigmatically loopy character whose comic integrity isn’t over-explained. There is room on SNL for a lot more shades of humor than its current template generally allows.

This week’s branded content sketch, on the other hand, was pretty unnecessary, even if some of the performances livened it up a little, as another NBC property got some free advertising. Not watching interminably long-running televised talent shows as a rule, I’m not particularly invested in how the celebrity judges were impersonated here (although Kyle Mooney’s perpetually amazed Howie Mandel got a laugh). But at least the joke that there are only a very few possible narratives to every contestant’s journey on such shows took the piss a bit, and Cecily Strong, Kenan and Leslie, and Jonah Hill all sang their hearts out as the contestants who are probably terrible—but then are shockingly not terrible!

Also not terrible but not that surprising was the newscast sketch, where Cecily Strong’s weatherperson is nonplussed by boyfriend Hill’s decidedly unwelcome on-air proposal. Hill manages to create a nicely realized character is his unimpressive suitor, unwisely wearing a green shirt in front of Strong’s green screen and even more unwisely busting out a proposal rap. And the bit even has a decent turn, when Strong reveals that her refusal was only because she’d planned an elaborate on-air proposal of her own. I kept waiting for the reveal that Strong’s too-perfect twist was only in the downtrodden Hill’s head, but the sketch decided to let the improbable duo have their happy ending, so that’s nice.

“What do you call that act?” “The Californians!”—Recurring sketch report

Adam Grossman, Big Papi.

“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report

With SNL’s resident guest Trump Alec Baldwin otherwise occupied (and pointedly joked about), the show opened with the always more-profitable tack of doing Trump without Trump. With Kate McKinnon adding Fox News talking head and smirking white supremacist Laura Ingraham’s glint-eyed provocation to her long list of current right-wing a-holes (“No, you’re an a-hole,” McKinnon’s Ingraham responds to her viewer mail), the sketch ran through the usual roster of weekly outrages. Finding ways to satirize the news at this point is a thankless task since reality is so far beyond satire that our pals at The Onion can essentially just transcribe stuff. Here, the jokes leant on hyperbole to make comedy out of Fox and friends’ (and Fox And Friends’) daily klaxon blare of racist bullshit designed to make white parents vote against their self-interest. Like Trump’s ginned-up, racist, Hail Mary, pre-midterms caravan, which Cecily Strong’s appropriately wild-eyed Jeanine Pirro’s claims contains such terrifying, non-white figures as “Guatemalans, Mexicans, the Menendez brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, Thanos, and several Babadooks.” Similarly, Kenan Thompson’s cowboy-hat-wearing disgraced former Sheriff David Clarke showed footage of the caravan in the form of a swarm of migrating crabs. “And those are humans?,” gently presses McKinnon’s Ingraham, to which Clarke replies, “Basically, yeah.”

Unlike Baldwin’s uninspired Trump, which serves as a crutch for some very one-dimensional writing as a rule, the satire here is more layered. There are the performances, which are uniformly great. (McKinnon and Strong don’t need more praise at this point, but they are both outstanding, nuanced comic actresses). And the sketch casts a wider net, encompassing Ingraham’s fleeing sponsors (and the reason why), leaving her thanking warm ice cream, nurse’s sneakers, and White Castle. (“A castle for whites? Yes please.”) And, divorced for now by Baldwin/Trump’s absence, the cold open works to lay the groundwork for some recurring satirical themes for the rest of the show. There’s GOP voter suppression, here prodded along by Ingraham giving non-white voters the wrong advice. There’s Fox’s feverish efforts to mock the very idea that Donald Trump is a bigot. (“Except for his words and actions throughout his life how is he racist?”) And there’s the transparent propaganda of Trump’s latest “brown people are coming at you from below” propaganda, with McKinnon claiming that Trump’s try-hard gung-ho operation is actually named “Operation Eagle With A Huge Dong” and bragging that there will be “five armed soldiers for every shoeless immigrant child.”

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Hey, there’s a midterm election coming up on Tuesday, so vote in that. Pete Davidson ended his amiably goofy Update stint by urging everyone to vote, as did musical guest Maggie Rogers (via T-shirt), and, in the Vote Blue campaign ad, so did a roster of very fucking nervous Democrats. While polling shows that maybe, perhaps, enough Americans are motivated, pissed, and goddamned terrified enough to actually go out and vote on Tuesday (yes, this coming Tuesday, you) to put some checks in place against Donald Trump and his GOP accomplices in dismantling democratic norms, environmental regulations, and civil rights of any kind, well, we’ve seen sweaty Democratic overconfidence explode in our faces before. That’s the message here, as the person-on-the-street interviews parroting optimistic election messages all veer into a series of forced grins, shaking hands, binge-drinking, eyes-averted mumbling, and, in the case of Heidi Gardner’s tremble-voiced suburban mom, hair-trigger panic. “Get inside until Tuesday!,” she snaps at her frolicking children, while Hill’s anxious doctor tries to take comfort in the fact that Nancy Pelosi predicted a big victory on Colbert, and Leslie Jones grits her teeth in her stated faith that “white women are going to the right thing this time.” Pitch perfect stuff, right down to Aidy Bryant hauling off to slap teenaged son Pete Davidson when he jokes about forgetting when Election Day is. (It’s Tuesday. November 6. Check here for all the necessary info you need to vote. On Tuesday.)

“HuckaPM” continued SNL’s baffling comedy position that literally every woman involved in the Trump administration is secretly ashamed of her role in, well, every shitty thing Trump and the Republican Party does. You know, despite the fact that there is no evidence to that in the public or private actions of any of them, including (or especially) the sketch’s target, White House Press Secretary and sneering daily mouthpiece for whatever bigoted nonsense dribbles out of Trump’s Twitter account in the middle of the night, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Still, this sketch works because of Aidy. Good god, is Aidy Bryant great at physical comedy. Even if one can’t follow the show’s premise that there is some glimmer of humanity in Sanders’ soul somewhere, Aidy sells the hell out of the idea that only a sleeping pill loaded with quaaludes and “what Michael Jackson’s doctor called ‘one-and-dones’” can knock Sanders out after a day of claiming that “CNN spelled backward is ISIS” and that Trump’s caravan boogeymen includes ravenous chupacabras with a trio of outstandingly timed and committed falls. Sometimes performance overcomes everything else.

The off-Broadway show short film trafficked in a sort of joke that never doesn’t work on me, so I’m going to allow myself to be pandered to. The main joke—that an actor-written topical revue is not very well written—is fine. (I loved how at least two of the numbers shamelessly aped Hamilton). But I’m just a sucker for jokes where scathing review blurbs are read out as if they’re raves by an enthusiastic voice-over guy, and these had me laughing. “This is helping no one,” and “Whose parents paid for this?” were good, but the New York Times critic’s economical “Jesus Christ!” got me out loud.

I am hip to the musics of today

Maggie Rogers came out flat in her SNL debut. Like, vocally, very flat for her first song of lilting, pretty pop. It was the sort of wobbly beginning that could knock a fledgeling performer right off her pins, but, to her credit, Rogers came back stronger in the second number. It helped that that song was more uptempo and didn’t highlight a delicate introductory vocal, but, still, props to Rogers for pulling it together. As Adam Grossman might bellow, “Redemption song!”

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Most/Least Valuable (Not Ready For Prime Time) Player

Ego Nwodim got a line. Keep plugging, new kid.

Otherwise, in an exceptionally strong night for the female cast, Kate wins it by a whisker, edging out Cecily and Aidy.

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“What the hell is that thing?”—The Ten-To-Oneland Report

While it’s no “Whiskers R We,” “Wigs For Pugs” ably carried on the ten-to-one tradition of doing adorably weird stuff with animals, as Hill and Cecily Strong played a couple of clearly mobbed-up entrepreneurs whose pug toupee business is in no way “a front for something.” Mainly, it’s just pugs in wigs, with a succession of very chill pugs getting carried out in their hairy finery, but sometimes that’s enough. And Hill, Strong, Aidy, Mooney, and Kenan (as a guy making pug beards) are thoroughly committed to their characters in a broad yet deadpan way that adds another level to the premise. Pugs in wigs. What more do you need, people?

Stray observations

Kenan’s Clarke cites his caravan sources as “the crows from Dumbo,” echoing Clarke’s description of his current state as “unpopular with my own people.”

McKinnon’s Ingraham refers to Baldwin as “disgraced former actor Alec Baldwin” and shows a clip from “Canteen Boy” to explain.

Che claims that the country would be doing better if red state parents would stop “sending all their liberal kids to coastal cities to do improv.”

Pete Davidson, addressing his new blue hair, claims he looks like “a guy who makes vape juice in a bathtub,” and “a Dr. Seuss character who went to prison.”

Melissa Villaseñor’s teen suspect finally breaks down, telling Jost that she only stabbed her dead friend as a joke, “but Logan took it the wrong way and started bleeding.”

Big Papi for Apple Watch: “You gotta watch your apples or a monkey’s gonna steal them, man!”

Vote on Tuesday.

The Red Sox won the World Series.

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Source: https://tv.avclub.com/jonah-hill-joins-the-five-timers-club-on-a-uniformly-fu-1830206395

[michaelpatrickhicks]

Interview: Hunter Shea, author of Jurassic Florida

Hunter Shea has been a favorite of mine for a few years now, earning my attention rather quickly with his weird western novel Hell Hole [review]. The fact that Hunter is one of the most reviewed authors on this site speaks both to my love for the man's work and also just how damn prolific he is. I haven't read all of Hunter's books just yet, but it's pretty damn close. Over the last few years, Mr. Shea has become inextricably entwined with creature features, oftentimes of the cryptozoological nature, and his particular brand of horror is all about fun. While the monsters are certainly important, the human element is equally well-crafted and vital to the success of Hunter's works.

This summer and fall, Kensington Books is releasing Hunter's One Size Eats All trilogy. Like last year's Mail Order Massacres, each title will be a stand-alone novella tied to one another by a common theme. First up is Jurassic Florida, which released this past Tuesday (you can read my review here). To mark this new release, Hunter was kind enough to join the High Fever Books blog for a few questions. Welcome to the blog, Hunter! 

Favorite beer and favorite scream queen or Final Girl?

Oh man, favorite beer? It’s like asking me to pick my favorite child. For many, many moons, it was Sapporo, but lately I’m digging 914 by Yonkers Brewing. Love their place on the Hudson River, too. As for my favorite Final Girl, if we’re going old school, it’s Julie Adams from Creature From The Black Lagoon for damn sure. In more modern times, I would have to say Sharni Vinson as Erin in You’re Next. That little waif of a woman was a total bad ass.

It looks like your first published book was 2011’s Forest of Shadows, and over the last seven years you’ve built up a hell of a catalog of titles. How long were you writing prior to becoming a published author and tell us a bit about your writing process. What allows you to pump out so many consistently good and entertaining books so quickly?

I got bitten by the writing bug in the mid-90s. I spent years working on short stories, tried my hand at a couple of novellas, then dove into the deep end and wrote a romantic comedy as my first novel. I just wanted to see if I could sustain that passion and momentum for a whole book. Once I proved to myself I could, I wrote another, this one a pretty dark comedy. All of it was prep work to write my true love, horror. I didn’t want to do it until I felt I was ready. Forest of Shadows took years to write because my kids were babies at the time, and years sitting in one editor’s hands (Don D’Auria) before it got accepted. But it was worth the wait. When I’m working on a book, I try to write at least 1,000 words every day, trying to double the output on weekends. That way, I know I can get a book done and edited in 4-5 months. Novellas I attack like a sprinter. They key is to just sit my ass down and write. There are so many distractions out there, but if you want to be a working writer, you have to learn to ignore them. There’s no shortage of ideas, just time to get them all out of my head.

You don’t just write about the paranormal and cryptozoological, but you actively seek it out. In your Monster Men YouTube series, you’ve discussed all things supernatural and have taken the occasional visit to a haunted cemetery or two. Where did this fascination come from, and have you had any encounters with the supernatural? Tell us about your monster hunting!

Growing up, one of my grandmother’s was a psychic. Not the kind that had people pay her money to read their palms or tell their future. My grandfather said she would hold séances and he’d seen their table levitate a couple of times. By the time she was just grandma to me, she looked a lot like Mrs. Butterworth. She was an amazingly sweet lady who never talked about her gift. Cut to my getting married and my wife and I moved into what we now know is a haunted house. We see a boy walking around from time to time. Not like a pale ghost, but an actual boy. You get this very calming feeling when he’s around. It’s hard to describe. I’ve had several other odd experiences, including one the night my father passed, that make it impossible for me not to believe there’s more to death than just THE END. I haven’t done much monster hunting simply because there aren’t many monster sightings in lower New York. LOL But, I have gone on many, many UFO hunts in Orange County, NY.

Jurassic, Florida just came out earlier this week and revolves around the sleepy little town of Polo Springs coming under attack by enormous prehistoric iguanas. What do you have against iguanas? What made them the perfect monstrosity to base a story around in your latest creature feature?

I hate reptiles. I love animals, just not snakes and lizards. My kids have been asking for a pet iguana since they could talk. I tell them they are free to get as many iguanas as they want when they move out. My editor and I wanted to do this big, Bert I. Gordon inspired novella with giant reptiles. Watching Floridians get eaten by them just seemed like a lot of fun (no offense to Floridians – I get joy out of all people being terrorized by prehistoric beasts). Now I can tick killer giant iguanas off my writing bucket list.

Jurassic, Florida is also notable for being the first in a series of novellas for Kensington Books that are united under the One Size Eats All banner. Last summer you wrote the Mail Order Massacres novella series for them. How did these trilogies develop? What’s the creative processes like in bringing these works to life?

I have a great editor there, Gary Goldstein, who, like me, is just a big kid warped by comic books, B movies and bad television. We had so much success with the Mail Order Massacres series that we wanted to tackle a new one, but shift it from comics to nature gone wild. The original series title was Hunter Shea’s Don’t Fuck With Nature, but naturally we were turned down on that one. Gary and I trolled for stories on the Internet for inspiration. Living in NY, we read a news article about how rats were becoming resistant to rodenticide, so in comes Rattus New Yorkus. Another story about swarms of tiny iguanas got us to Jurassic Florida. The Devil’s Fingers came from I think Gary seeing a horrid picture of what they look like. Once I saw it, I ran with it. Those things look like they’re either from outer space or hell.  

Over the course of your career so far, we’ve had books about Loch Ness, Orang Pendek, a megalodon, the Montauk Monster, chimera fish, and so, so much more. How do you decide what creature to feature from book to book? When you set out to write, does the creature come first, or do you develop a story around the creature first and plug in a threat? Do you have a list of cryptids you’re working your way through?

It’s crazy how I’ve fallen down this cryptid hole. And I love it. I’m a huge fan of cryptozoology, so yes, I do have a list. I always start with the monster and flesh the story out from there. Even though they’re creature features, getting the humans just right is most important to me. People don’t walk away from Loch Ness Revenge wanting more Nessie. They want more Nat and Austin and Henrik. That makes me happy. Plus, I’m just having a ball writing about all the beasties that have fascinated me since I was a kid.

What’s your personal favorite cryptid (and why)? Is there a creature you haven’t written about yet, but that you’re dying to tackle in the future?

Growing up, I was a huge Nessie lover. I wanted to move to Scotland and just live on the Loch. Back then, I loved any aquatic creature. My fascination went from sharks to whales to Nessie. Now, to me, the most fascinating cryptid and backstory belongs to the Mothman, hands down. Everyone should read John Keel’s book, The Mothman Prophecies. We are talking some wild, weird stuff. It wasn’t just about a winged creature terrorizing people. We’re talking ghosts, UFOs, men in black and so much more. I really have to get my butt to the annual festival this year.

You’re perhaps best known for writing really fun, humorous, off-the-wall works of horror that are high on action and adventure. But you’ve also got a few works that are more serious in tone, like We Are Always Watching. In the fall, Flame Tree Press will be releasing its first wave of horror titles, including your novel Creature, which sounds like it’s one of your more serious works with its heroine, Kate, suffering from an autoimmune disease. What can you tell us about Creature and how your own life inspired this book?

I love character driven stories, and Flame Tree gave me a golden opportunity to explore some dark and scary issues. It was very difficult to write because so much of it is drawn from my own life. My wife has a series of autoimmune diseases that have nearly taken her life more times than we can count. I took all that fear we’ve experienced and laid it out on the page. Sure, it’s set in a cottage in the Maine woods, but it’s not a teen slasher romp. I want readers not just to be scared by the antagonist, but to also understand how tenuous their own health and lives are. Nothing is more frightening than that. People who loved We Are Always Watching I think- I hope - will devour this one.

Creature also sees you working again with famed horror editor, Don D’Auria. You worked with him previously when you both were with the now defunct Samhain Publishing. How was it working with Don again? 

I love Don. He was the only editor I sent my very first book to because I only wanted to work with him. And by some magical twist of fate, here we are years later, not just editor and writer, but friends. Don is great because he values the writer’s vision. If he’s chosen to work with you, it’s because he loves your work and trusts your instincts. He’s just there to tighten things up for you. It’s incredible creative freedom. With Don, I can try my hand at just about anything, so long as it hits certain marks and has characters people give a crap about. Without that, you have nothing.

Do you prefer writing the pulpy creature features, or the more serious horror novels like We Are Always Watching? Do you find one style to be more rewarding?

The more serious toned books are much, much harder to write and like all things in life, more fulfilling. It’s just a different experience. I almost feel like when I write the creature features, I’m a kid who can’t believe I get to do this for a living. When I step into a book like Creature, I have to put my big boy pants on and be an adult. Both are extremely satisfying in their own ways.

What comes next for you? Pimp away!

After Jurassic Florida, the next in the series, Rattus New Yorkus will come out in August, followed by the series ender, The Devil’s Fingers in October (just in time for Halloween!!!). Right now, I’m working on a ghost writing project that is a whole new world for me. Once that’s complete, I have a new novella for Severed Press to work on that people who dig The Thing will salivate over. Then it’s on to my next book with Don and Flame Tree. Speaking of that, I have to get the synopsis over to him!

Where can readers find you? Share you links!

It’s all at www.huntershea.com. On Instagram, you can find me @huntershea2017. Feel free to visit me any time! I actually respond to folks when they reach out to me. :) 

FLORIDA. IT’S WHERE YOU GO TO DIE. Welcome to Polo Springs, a sleepy little town on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It’s a great place to live—if you don’t mind the hurricanes. Or the flooding. Or the unusual wildlife . . .   IGUANAS. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE.  Maybe it’s the weather. But the whole town is overrun with the little green bastards this year. They’re causing a lot of damage. They’re eating everything in sight. And they’re just the babies . . .   HUMANS. THEY’RE WHAT’S FOR DINNER. The mayor wants to address the iguana problem. But when Hurricane Ramona slams the coast, the town has a bigger problem on their hands. Bigger iguanas. Bigger than a double-wide. Unleashed by the storm, this razor-toothed horde of prehistoric predators rises up from the depths—and descends on the town like retirees at an early bird special. Except humans are on the menu. And it’s all you can eat . . .

Buy Jurassic Florida on Amazon

[njawaidofficial]

Michelle Wolf on Her WHCD Roast: I Wouldn't Change a THING!

https://styleveryday.com/michelle-wolf-on-her-whcd-roast-i-wouldnt-change-a-thing/

Michelle Wolf on Her WHCD Roast: I Wouldn't Change a THING!

Michelle Wolf performed a roast at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner. 

While she had some amazing burns against a lot of people, a lot of the focus — and criticism — was on a short segment in which Wolf took aim at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Now, Wolf is speaking up about the criticism. And she wouldn’t change a thing.

In an interview with NPR, Michelle Wolf says that she is glad that she said what she did at the WHCD.

And, after discussing some of the logistics of speaking at the correspondent’s dinner in contrast with a normal roast or especially a stand-up gig, she talks about the backlash.

“I wasn’t expecting this level, but I’m also not disappointed there’s this level. I knew what I was doing going in.”

It’s good that she was prepared.

“I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to cater to the room. I wanted to cater to the outside audience, and not betray my brand of comedy.”

Artistic integrity is important.

“I actually, a friend of mine who helped me write, he gave me a note before I went on which I kept with me which was, ‘Be true to yourself. Never apologize. Burn it to the ground.'”

Wolf talks about how the WHCD has changed in recent years.

“I think a lot of it and what I’ve seen in the past is they poke little fun, they kind of poke fun at deeper dives in news media.”

Notably, some people were outraged at Stephen Colbert in 2006 for “getting too political.”

But there are many people who feel that George W. Bush should be sent to the Hague for war crimes, so they’d say that some political commentary is getting off easy.

“They’ll go kind of table by table pointing at people and making fun of them, in a way that I think used to be fun because the dinner used to have the president there, it used to be we’re all poking fun of each other, the president’s going to poke fun at us, we’re going to hit back.”

Donald Trump is notoriously thin-skinned, and it is difficult to imagine that he would enjoy even a lighthearted roasting if it touched on certain subjects — such as his alleged wealth, or his multiple business failures.

“Now it seems like it’s a much more serious environment and to kind of not go after the big issues and just have a little fun in the room seemed just not as exciting to me.”

Though Wolf is hardly the first to go after Sarah Huckabee Sanders, her lines about the Press Secretary received the most scrutiny and backlash.

“I mean, I’m honestly – I wouldn’t change a single word that I said. I’m very happy with what I said, and I’m glad I stuck to my guns.”

She suspects that perhaps people were shocked at her words because of her gender.

“Yeah, I mean, I think I don’t know maybe I’m projecting this, but I think sometimes they look at a woman and they think ‘Oh, she’ll be nice.'”

She says that she is not nice.

“And if you’ve seen any of my comedy you know that I don’t — I’m not. I don’t pull punches.”

Good for her.

“I’m not afraid to talk about things. And I don’t think they expected that from me. I think they still have preconceived notions of how women will present themselves and I don’t fit in that box.”

The interviewer asks Wolf what she has to say about people who heard her lines about Sanders as an attack on her appearance.

“I think they didn’t pay attention to what was said.”

For the record, her criticism for Sanders was over the fact that she lies to the American people for a living and over the fact that he’s pretty hostile when she does it.

“Yeah, I mean, if there is two people that I actually made fun of their looks on Saturday it was Mitch McConnell and Chris Christie.”

She referred to Christie as a “barrel” and said that McConnell was having his neck circumcised.

“And no one is jumping to their defense. I made fun of Mitch McConnell’s neck and I did a small jab at Chris Christie’s weight and no one is jumping to their defense.”

In the mean time, what she actually said about Sanders’ appearance was that she has a “perfect smokey eye.” That is a literal compliment.

“I think one of the things about being a comic is getting to actually, as a woman, I have access to hit women in a way that men might not be able to hit them with jokes. I don’t mean physically hit.”

Of course.

“But you know, because I’m a woman, I can say things about women because I know what it’s like to be a woman, if that makes any sense.”

Honestly, the most important things that Wolf said had nothing to do with the Press Secretary.

She pointed out that Trump has the support white nationalists, and pointed out that it was an oddly soft word to use to describe nazis.

(Wolf compares it to calling a pedophile a “kid friend”)

She also reminded the world that Flint, Michigan still does not have clean drinking water.

Honestly, good for Wolf for speaking her mind, at the dinner and on NPR.

And no matter how much backlash she receives, her roast made a great advertisement for her upcoming Netflix special.

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