Author: Sharkey

My favorite comic shop has been suffering from the economic downturn, so I’ve been doing my best to head in there every week or two. It’s been years since I stopped going religiously, due to a combination of laziness and a lack of viable purchase options. Prices these days are fucking crazy. No wonder the industry is dying, almost everything on the shelf was between four and five bucks.

The price is bad enough, but then there’s the quality. Most of what I had been purchasing were back issues, completing unfinished stories like Orson Scott Card’s Iron Man. Since I’ve exhausted any lingering curiosities, I’ve been left with only the new comics shelf. I stood there for about an hour, leafing through various stuff, and damned if almost every book isn’t split up between multiple artists. I hated that shit when they’d occasionally use it back in the nineties, and now it’s the Goddamned norm. You get ten pages of the good artist and twenty more from a couple of hacks who weren’t worth crediting on the cover. That doesn’t even take into account the shittiness of most of these stories. It’s like they don’t want you to buy anything.

If you’ve got any suggestions on new comics to pick up, leave them in the comments. Hopefully there’s something worthwhile.

Just a sidenote, I had forgotten that most comic shops give you your wares in a black bag, like you’d just purchased a bunch of pornography. I chuckled when I realized that I’d probably rather have random passersby thinking that I’d bought a bunch of porn than a stack of comics.

This was cut, but the Ewok smacking himself in the face with his own bolo stays in.

George is such a giant-chinned asshole. This article pretty much confirms what we already knew, that he sold out any artistic integrity for a lucrative merchandising vehicle. I’ve heard a lot of people argue that Han dying would have been too sad because his character was too awesome, but those people have their heads up their fucking asses.

The problem with the original trilogy is that it is unfinished as a story, the set up for the characters to change as people is pushed aside for asinine twists and a mega-happy ending. How much better would the film have been if they’d rescued Han, only to have him sacrifice himself during a raid on an Imperial base? To have him ditch his scoundrel ways and take part in a greater good would have been a nice completion to his character arc. That in turn could have progressed both Luke and Leia’s roles, while giving a sense of believable danger to the movie. It’s not like Han was worth a damn anyway, he spent most of his screen time engaging in Stooge-like behavior and bantering with Goddamned Threepio.

Luke could have been handled differently too. He had changed from a whiny bitch to a slightly less-whiny bitch by the start of the third flick, why not take a note from that clip and continue Vader’s mental torture, constantly goading Luke to turn towards the dark side? With the guilt over Han’s death weighing on him, desperation as the rebellion is torn asunder, and a lack of guidance as his powers are growing, you could see Luke making the transition towards the “quick and easy path.”

But that’s just it, there’s no consequence to Jedi. Nobody really important dies in any meaningful way. Yoda dies of natural causes, and only serves to give us some exposition. Vader dies the hero’s death, in a last-minute character change, by the way. Unlike Luke, there wasn’t any foretelling of his shift to the light side and his betrayal of the Emporer. He seemed pretty willing to murder his own son in Empire, what changed in the time between him torturing his daughter and watching Luke whine as Palpy shocked him? Up until that point, I had assumed that killing Luke (if he denied the dark side) was part of the plan. But none of the good guys die, even Lando defies the stereotype and makes it out unscathed. It takes the tension of the previous flick and just throws it out the window.

I didn’t mean to ramble on about it for so long, I just hate what that movie represents. Lucas is partly responsible for a generation of people who are more accustomed to mediocrity in movies and other media. Solid story elements and well-developed characters were thrown out and replaced with marketability, and we swallowed it. And as the years passed they kept introducing more and more shit into our diet, so that now we’ll watch damn near anything. The people who defended Jedi are the same sons of bitches who enjoyed the last season (really anything past season 1, in retrospect) of Lost. But that’s an angry, drunkened rant for another day.

Holy fuck-me-upside the head with my childhood’s dick! Hulu has every episode of The Mysterious Cities of Gold.

I already have a rad set of the series on VHS, complete with 80’s Nickelodeon commercials mixed in, but it’s nice to be able to watch Mendoza go to town on some sharks with an oar whenever I feel like it.

Killbot is in town, which is a rare treat since he moved abroad to get (and has since finished) his Masters. He, Billy Ray and myself had lunch at a local shopping center where hundreds of huge palm trees are strategically placed to surround every bit of your shopping experience. As we were walking back to the car, a young kid of about eight ran up and hugged one, and loudly proclaimed “Hey guys, look, a tree!”

I swiftly retorted: “It’s the Young Adventures of Captain Obviouuus!”

I’m player-hatin’ on third graders, man.

The world moves to the beat of one less tiny drummer today, as Gary Coleman has died at the age of 42.

…I really hope he didn’t die a virgin. I mean, if it was an *ahem* mechanical issue, he could have just found a particularly slutty gal and just crawled his whole frame in there, thus losing his flower through technicality.

I like that I spent more time pondering his sex life than I did mourning him in this post. I think Gary would have wanted it that way.

So life has been pretty empty since Nick Gurewitch ceased production of the Perry Bible Fellowship, but there’s a slight ray of sunshine. Nick was tapped by Marvel Comics to create some strips for a Strange Tales hardback. In this interview, Gurewitch states that he’s not done with PBF, he just doesn’t have time for it these days. Sounds kind of familiar.

Here’s his Wolverine comic strip, in case you don’t feel like reading through the interview.

The other day my good friend Heywood was over and said “Holy shit man, you have to play this game at Adult Swim, it’s the gayest game in history.” Robot Unicorn Attack did not disappoint. Dash, my friends, dash your queer little hearts out. That’s the best part of the game, aside from the kickin’ tunes by Erasure. I was astounded that Heywood didn’t remember this early-nineties hit; apparently I had a much gayer upbringing than he did. Play the game, and then watch the honest-to-God music video. No joke, this was the fucking video for the song:

Like you needed to ask, the lead singer/backflipping genie Andy Bell is completely gay. He also caught teh AIDS not long after this video was released, which is unfortunate. Erasure really did nothing but pump out annoyingly catchy tunes that made you feel extremely swishy for nodding along, as evidenced by “A Little Respect,” which will be totally ruined for you by that link if you didn’t hate the song already. I’ll never hear it in a supermarket without thinking of Bell’s high heels and tighty whities again.

I can still vividly remember the time I had dinner at a friends house when I was a kid, and spent a few minutes describing the show ‘Growing Pains.’ I was really confused when my friend’s parents flipped out at the mention of the character ‘Boner,’ since I had no fucking clue what it meant. But I made damn sure to find out, and solidified yet another memory of learning genitalia-related terminology. My favorite (or least favorite) being the time around age five when I took a nasty spill on my bike, which ended up with me falling spread-legged onto the center bar. That’s the day that a kindly old woman taught me the word testicles. I peed blood for a couple of days, but my vocabulary was influenced for life.

It saddened me to learn that one of my English-of-the-nether-regions teachers has vanished. Andrew Koenig, the aforementioned ‘Growing Pains’ character and son of Walter ‘Chekov’ Koenig, is missing. Apparently the actor (who also played the Joker in this) has been suffering from depression and disappeared somewhere in Vancouver weeks ago. I can’t think of a better way to send positive vibes to his unknown location than to start off a shitty pun-fest based on the situation. So keep an eye peeled for any wayward Boners throughout Canada, he could pop up anywhere.

Your turn, go!

Awesome, Heidi Montag fucking snapped! Damn work and school, keeping me from important news about this walking trainwreck:

This story is kind of sad and pathetic now, because who’s going to hire her when she’s so dramatically different from the (semi) famous person we used to recognize? At least, not for anything serious, I’d certainly hire her to stand next to her old posters to freak out guests at my Halloween party. But the true comedy is going to come in about ten or fifteen years, when all of those plastic parts start to sag and buckle under the strain of whatever consumption problem she’s bound to develop, whether it be heroin or bon bons. She’s going to put Jocelyn Wildenstein to shame at this rate.