Friday, February 29. 2008
Several years ago someone discovered that if one removes all the speech bubbles from the comic strip Garfield, it becomes oddly surreal and much more interesting than originally intended. Garfield shows little emotion, behaving exactly as a real cat would. Without Garfield’s verbal provocation to justify it, Jon’s harried interactions with him become somewhat disturbing, oftentimes even depressing. This, to me at least, is a huge improvement over the original concept of the strip. You can see a bunch of examples of this treatment here.
More recently, someone has taken it a step further and removed Garfield from the strips altogether. This modification moves Jon from the role of the more traditional “cat owner,” walking around talking to his pets as if they understand him, to that of a somewhat disturbed individual struggling with loneliness and desperation. In the prior modification, Jon’s unprovoked pessimism seems out of place because Garfield is standing there smiling all the time; without Garfield being present at all, however, it ramps up to new levels of disturbnicity, bordering on schizophrenic. This is a significant step forward, making the strip into something I actually look forward to seeing, despite the blatant copyright violations involved in it being presented to me. You can view and subscribe to them here.
These two modifications got me thinking…
Since the removal of speech bubbles improved the strip so much, and the subsequent removal of Garfield even more so, I feel it’s up to me to take the strip to the pinnacle of interestingness:
There you have it: confirmation that the removal of elements results in a better Garfield experience. The more elements you remove, the better it gets. I’m not sure of the logic behind this, but I suspect that it comes down to the fact that Garfield really sucks.
Wednesday, January 16. 2008
Tonight I picked up volumes 1-3 of Wildstorm Comic’s’s Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash. Wildstorm needs to hire a proof-reader worse than Geek Monthly does, because this appears on the very first page: “Take it from me, there’s nothing you can do can take away the nightmares once you’ve lived through them.” To quote a very wise man: “Doesn’t anybody there read this sh*t?!” I’ve finished one of them so far, but can’t say that I’m very impressed. Licensed comics suck, I guess.
Last night we watched the season premiere of CBS’s fan-saved miracle child Jericho, which airs Tuesday February 12th. I really, really loved the first season of Jericho and was a little irked that they canceled it, but I wasn’t about to mail any nuts or anything. I’ve been pretty excited for the new season to start, so I jumped at the chance to see the first few episodes before they air. Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say about the season premiere because I was completely distracted by the fact that the show now has that cheap video look that Dr. Who, Torchwood and American soap operas tend to have. Everything is lit too strongly and looks like a set. I know CBS was strapped for cash, but was this really necessary? We’ll be watching episodes 2 and 3 this evening, so hopefully I can get past the look. I’m really not sure why it bothers me so much, though.
Thursday, November 29. 2007
Back in April, I drew this:  Click for original
Then earlier this month this happened:
Santa’s ‘ho, ho, ho’ runs into opposition as being offensive
Coincidence?
Sunday, August 26. 2007
According to /Film, Kevin Smith is slated to direct at least one episode in the final season of Battlestar Galactica. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I love Kevin Smith, and I love Battlestar Galactica, I’m just not QUITE sure that these two loves ought be combined.
This does, however, give me an excuse to make another comic, and to point out that I will be posting them here from now on rather than over at comics.nyquil.org. (I don’t make them nearly often enough to warrant a dedicated site for them. Plus, nobody knows comics.nyquil.org exists. Here, at least, people might see them.)
Without further ado, here’s how I imagine this merger of loves:
Sunday, April 22. 2007
Talking about Zack Snyder reminded me of something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while.
Zack has been working for some time on the long-languishing comic-to-film translation of the Citizen Kane of comic books, The Watchmen. Now I’ve been against these types of translations from the start. My feeling is that it’s a perfectly good comic, people should just go read it. There’s no need to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen it up.
Fortunately for me, out of the many people who tried, Terry Gilliam said it best, calling it “unfilmable,” essentially guaranteeing that I won’‘t see it ruined. And let me tell you, when Terry Gilliam says something is unfilmable, I say you best listen. He knows a thing or two about difficult shoots. Anyway, every time I’d hear something new about Watchmen, I’d get uneasy, but would very quickly be comforted by the fact that yet another name has decided to agree with Terry and backed out.
The thing is, though, since Zack got involved, the backing out part hasn’t happened. This had me very worried for a very long time. Then I saw 300, and remembered back to several years prior when I read Frank Miller’s comic and deemed it unfilmable, and thanked my lucky stars no one would ever try to make it into a movie. Then I remembered back to when I scoffed at someone remaking Dawn of the Dead. “They’re just throwing their money away,” I said. “I won’t go see that.”
Well, in both those cases, Zack greatly surpassed my expectations. He didn’t just make “passable” movies out of those two properties, he made really darn fine films. I’ve now dediced to “let go; let Zack” and trust that he knows what he’s doing, and have actually begun to get a little excited about seeing The Watchmen on the big screen.
Zack is going to do it. There’s a good chance it might be good.
I take comfort in that fact.
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