This Week’s New Comics: July 4, 2012
This week’s list of new comics in stores is sponsored by Manhattan Comics and Comixology. Buy new comics now!
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The Mix : What are people talking about today?
Emily S. Whitten: Making Lunch Breaks Everywhere More Fun Since…Now?
What I’m about to tell you may seem shocking, given that you all must think my entire week is taken up by laboring over each of my beautiful, wonderful, perfectly polished and amazingly insightful columns (really, they’re good enough for framing, every one), and that’s 100% true. But I’m an excellent multi-tasker (it’s one of my secret superheroine powers, along with the Gift of OCD), and so at the same time as I am cogitating about, compiling, and composing said columns, I’m also magically working a regular 9-5 – or sometimes 10-6, Odin and all his Asgardians bless flex-time.
So, like some of you other folks out there who are concerned with paying the bills and all that nonsense and thus have desk jobs, I sometimes spend my lunch time stuck in front of my office computer with just a few free minutes to obtain sustenance and enjoy a mini-vacation from Work. Sometimes I think to myself, “Hey, now would be a good time to catch up on the news, maybe see how that health care reform thing is going to affect me or something.” And then I laugh at such a silly idea, and I go read webcomics.
Just in case this is something you’ve never tried on your lunch break, let me tell you that it’s infinitely better than reading the news, and studies (to be cited when I make some up and post them on respectable-looking science websites) have shown that it improves both your mood and your good looks. In fact, if you read webcomics at every lunch break, by about three weeks in you’ll be a Happiness Guru and also look like Angelina Jolie or one of these other fine ladies. Which is maybe too bad if you’re a guy, but them’s the breaks.
Since I’m a veteran webcomics-at-lunchbreak reader, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of my favorites with you. These aren’t necessarily super-secret cutting edge webcomics – some are quite popular and you’ve probably heard of them before, and some have even been around for years – but really, the internet is so big and full of things, I have to think at least some of you haven’t encountered some of these before. Maybe? Anyway, they’re some of the ones that make me happy so I wanted to share.
So here’s a little bit about each one, and, to help you avoid Archive Panic, three random favorite entries for each so that you can quickly see whether they might be your kind of thing. Enjoy!
XKCD is “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” but I don’t think that does it justice. Randall Munroe somehow manages to encompass every topic at some point or another while keeping a coherent tone, and even has some ongoing characters and mini-storylines going in what is, essentially, a bunch of one-shot comics. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me nod in agreement, sometimes it’s profound and makes me think, and sometimes I even learn math and science-y things from it. Win! Make sure you hover your mouse over the comics for added fun.
Three favorites:
Hyperbole and a Half is a blog by Allie Brosh; and, okay, it might not exactly be a webcomic in the traditional sense. But it is a series of stories told with graphic accompaniment (of the amazingly-funny-in-Allie’s-hands MS Paint variety) and it’s extremely hilarious, so I’m putting it on the list. It pretty much consists of Allie sharing about her life and childhood; and if that sounds rather mundane to you, give it a read and you’ll be in for a surprise.
Three favorites:
The Alot is Better Than You At Everything
This Is Why I’ll Never Be An Adult
The Oatmeal is a site which features both comics and quizzes, and which you may have seen in the news lately. I mostly go for the comics, but on the other hand I have also fallen prey to quizzes like, “How Many Justin Biebers Could You Take In A Fight” (16!) which are fun too. The art is sometimes grotesque but conversely also sometimes adorable, and the comics are often insightful (oh, professional web design; how I remember all of your myriad headaches) or educational (Nikola Tesla facts, yay!).
Three Favorites:
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
8 Ways to Prepare Your Pets for War
A Softer World is sort of hard to describe. It pairs photos with a few lines of text to great effect. I’d call it quirky but that might imply it’s always fun, which, honestly, it’s not. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s poignant, sometimes it’s joyful, and sometimes it’s bleak and sad or nonsensical or twisted or downright disturbing; but maybe that’s what makes me like it? Whatever the case, it’s always interesting.
Three favorites:
I can contain it, if I have to.
Oh! Oh man, we should bring an old-timey lantern!
The DM of the Rings is summed up succinctly by its author – “Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign.” I’ve never really played D&D but I’m fairly familiar with it, and that (and/or a decent understanding of human nature) is really all you need to get a laugh out of this one (and the accompanying notes, which are also a fun read). It’s kind of tricky to pick “favorites” since this one’s a tightly continuous story, but here are three anyway.
Three Favorites:
pictures for sad children is cynical and sort of bleakly terrible but also sometimes funny and pretty addictive for some reason I can’t really explain. it starts out with a story about “PAUL: who is a ghost.” and it’s sort of sequential but not always. and then it changes to one-shot comics that aren’t really connected. and it is kind of written in disjointed sentences, and the author mostly doesn’t know what capital letters are. give it a try.
three favorites:
later you will regret putting trash in your ears
The Non-Adventures of Wonderella is all about Wonderella, who’s, you know, kind of like Wonder Woman, if Wonder Woman were a bit more…human? Rude? Boozy? Valley girl? Interested in shopping? Politically incorrect? Whatever you call her, Wonderella’s having fun in her own way while (sometimes) saving the day, and it makes for fun, if sometimes absurd, reading.
Penny Arcade is mostly about video games and gaming, with frequent geek culture commentary, and features the dry and self-deprecating wit of its two completely awesome creators. It’s been around for yearrrrs but that doesn’t mean it’s old news. It always makes me smile.
Three favorites:
The Adventures of Twisp and Catsby
Bonus Comic!
Which isn’t actually a comic. Okay, I’m cheating here, but for those of you who are able to watch YouTube at work (read: not me, WOE), here’s a fun video thing you really need to check out on your next lunch break.
I’m a Marvel…and I’m a DC started out as a video parody of the Mac/PC commercial, and evolved into its own awesome collection of stories and series videos. For more sequential stories, check out the After Hours and Happy Hours playlists or other playlists; or just tool around the videos that strike your fancy, because they’re all awesome.
Or, just check out my favorite (of course) <a href=”
Rorschach and Deadpool.
Hope I’ve brought a little joy to your lunch hour! And of course, there are a lot of other great webcomics out there too, including a bunch I’m sure I haven’t heard of. What’s your favorite? Tell me in the comments!
And until next time, Servo Lectio!
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold, Bourne on the Fourth of July
Michael Davis: #TheBlackPanel 2012
A shameless plug.
San Diego Comic Con, Friday, July 13th (Friday the 13th? Really?) 10:00-11:30.
The Black Panel— Michael Davis (The Littlest Bitch) returns to moderate the wildest panel at Comic Con, the Black Panel! Expect industry insight and outrageousness when Shaquille O’Neal (NBA On TNT, Shaq Entertainment), Jamie Kennedy (The Jamie Kennedy Experiment), Missy Geppi (President, Geppi‘s Entertainment Museum) Reginald Hudlin (Django Unchained), E. Van Lowe (Earth Angel, the sequel to Boyfriend From Hell), and Steve McKeever (President Hidden Beach Records) as they field questions from the audience. The most entertaining and informative Q&A you’ll ever be a part of. It’s African American pop culture and then some! Room 5AB.
This ain’t just for black people, folks. Every year, it’s the don’t-miss panel of the San Diego Comic Con.
WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold Babbles Like A Brook
The Point Radio: Win A Set Visit To THE HOBBIT & More
If you are joining us at ComicCon, we’ve got the details on how you can win a trip to where THE HOBBIT was filmed, plus VIP treatment at the World Premiere in New Zealand! There’s also more with Danny Bonaduce and Barry Williams on their close encounter with BIGFOOT, and you’ll never guess which 90s Cult Classic Movie is headed to Broadway!
The Point Radio is on the air right now – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or mobile device– and please check us out on Facebook right here & toss us a “like” or follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.
Celebrate “Amazing Spider-Man” writer Dan Slott’s birthday at Manhattan Comics
The Amazing Spider-Man comes out in theaters tomorrow– and it also happens to be the birthday of Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott! Celebrate it at Manhattan Comics with cake, signings, and sales!
Dan will be at Manhattan Comics, 10 E. 23rd St., 2nd floor, New York, NY between 12 and 1 PM tomorrow, July 3rd. Stop in and say hi!
REVIEW: “Redshirts” by John Scalzi
It is simply impossible to declare a novel “not funny.” Humor is so personal that all any person can really do is declare whether he laughed or not.
And so I’ll say this: John Scalzi‘s new novel, Redshirts
I’ve read all of Scalzi’s novels to date, and grumbled about all of them, which proves something, I suppose. (Probably about me, and probably nothing good, either.) I’ve come to realize that I’m engaging in the common but fruitless effort of wishing that Scalzi was a different writer — or that he were interested in writing different kinds of books — than is actually the case. He clearly has it in him to write “serious” SF of weight and rigor — the mostly-successful novella The God Engines (see my review) shows that, as does his best novel, The Ghost Brigades (which I covered in a more cursory manner) — but it’s also becoming clear that he doesn’t want to be a “serious SF writer,” that he’s more in the vein of Keith Laumer, James H. Schmitz or H. Beam Piper, writing zippy novels set in mildly generic universes with wisecracking heroes who always win out in the end. (I didn’t review his first novel, Agent to the Stars, but I did also cover Old Man’s War, The Last Colony — and then a follow-up on the Old Man’s War-iverse in general — The Android’s Dream, Zoe’s Tale, and then last year’s Fuzzy Nation, so the really devoted reader can trace my history of looking for things in Scalzi novels that I should not expect to find there.) Thus, Redshirts — a novel set in a deliberately generic medium-future setting, with plenty of elbows to the reader’s ribs and references to SF media properties that we are all already familiar with [2], that almost but not quite turns into a giant fuzzy-dog story along the way — is exactly the novel we should have expected from Scalzi, and the reaction to that novel (it’s already hit the New York Times bestseller list) bears that out.
Which is all a long way around saying that Scalzi’s work is deeply resistant to criticism (if not entirely invulnerable to it) and that I, personally, am not well-placed as a critic to do justice to Redshirts in the manner it deserves. (Which would either be an excoriating attack on its flabby second-handedness — though that would also be entirely missing the point; it’s second-handed on purpose — or a loving appreciation written either entirely in Klingon or in quotes from famous TV sci-fi shows, a la Jonathan Lethem’s “The Anxiety of Influence.”)
Redshirts is a slobbery sheepdog of a novel, eager to show off its good nature — it’s a quick, easy read, full of snappy dialogue delivered by characters without too many attributes to confuse the reader and delivered, for the most part, in little-described interior spaces, so as to keep the narrative from being cluttered up by action or description. It’s set in a very Star Trek-y future — very original series Trek, to be precise, for maximum audience identification with the premise and the least amount of friction for Scalzi’s few twists in the tale.
The year is 2456, and the Federation Universal Union has just assigned young Ensign Andrew Dahl to the flagship, Enterprise Intrepid, where he soon learns that junior and low-ranked crew members — whom we know as “Redshirts,” though Dahl doesn’t — die at an unusual rate, and because of exceedingly unlikely events, during “Away Missions.” Dahl, and his fellow not-terribly-well-characterized Ensigns [3], do not want to die, and so they try to figure out why this is, eventually turning to the creepy loner Jenkins (who lives, alone and hidden, in the Jeffries tubes cargo tunnels deep within Intrepid), who has a theory So Crazy that it just might be true.
That theory is amusing, and would be even more amusing at about 2 AM in some convention party, anytime in the past forty years. But it doesn’t lead — in my opinion, of course — to anything really funny afterward, just another succession of scenes of not-well-characterized people shooting mildly-witty dialogue at each other in some more undescribed rooms for another hundred pages until the novel ends. The first half of Redshirts isn’t frightening or ominous enough — and God Engines is proof that Scalzi can do really ominous danger-on-a-starship, when he wants to — and the second half isn’t as big or funny as it should be, either. (It resembles, more than anything else, a rewrite of one particular Star Trek story.)
Redshirts is content to be amusing and pleasant, rather than digging any deeper. It is not a failure in any possible sense of the term, but it may leave some readers wanting more, particularly if they’re long-time SF readers who have seen Redshirt‘s Phildickian premises used more evocatively and subtly by other writers. If you just wondered what a Trek redshirt might have thought about his predicament, and aren’t expecting much, you will enjoy Redshirts. If you hoped for a more complicated, interesting answer to the predicament of high-casualty crewmen, I’d suggest instead looking for the excellent (and mostly ignored) novel Expendable
[1] There are also three “codas” — related short stories — which add another 90ish pages to the book. They’re in different modes, though, and none of them are funny — none of them seem to aim at being funny, either. They’re the best writing Scalzi does in this book, and that plus the example of God Engines implies that Scalzi is deliberately tuning his novelistic output to a particular market.
[2] My reaction to the use of these as “jokes” is approximated by this T-shirt.
[3] Scalzi eventually has a clever in-universe explanation for this; Redshirts is quite cleverly designed to be precisely the way it is, though one must wonder if spending that much energy emulating mediocrity is really worthwhile.
Monday Mix-Up: My Little Death Dealer
This week’s Monday Mix-Up comes to us from zedew, who brings us a tribute to the late great Frank Frazetta and his most famous painting of all, Death Dealer, the inspiration for more paintings, a line of novels, and various comics. And now we have this vision, seen through the prism of My Little Pony… yes, it’s My Little Death Dealer.
Somehow, I don’t think Molly Hatchet will be using this as an album cover. Although if they did a kids album… hmm.
What he’s not telling you: the blood on the axe? It’s Strawberry Shortcake.
via BoingBoing: If Frazetta was a bronie.
Mindy Newell
Mindy’s taking the week off to help with some significant family emergencies regarding both her parents. We wish them both a speedy recovery, and look forward to seeing Mindy’s return next week.
Archie Digital Exclusive: Comic Con Chaos!
Comic Con is just around the corner, and Archie and the gang are all set for whatever adventures (or misadventures!) may come their way. Which one of the girls will win the Cosplay Costume Contest? Can Chuck Clayton strike a publishing deal for his new comics? And just how will the gang crack the Crooked Comic-Con Caper?! Explore the expanses of the convention floor with creators like Dan Parent, Fernando Ruiz, Alex Segura and Bill Galvan!
RECOMMENDED NEW PULP READING FROM SUPERHERO NOVELS
SuperHero Novels included a nice selection of New Pulp books as part of its Recommended Reads section at http://superheronovels.com/2012/06/30/live-in-the-link-age-07-01-12.
