Four-Color Critiques #3: The Dude Is From Circumstances
May 09I remember an afternoon at my first job when I discovered the Dysfunctional Family Circus, a notorious early net project in which Family Circus strips were scanned and recaptioned in the most surreal, offensive, and hilarious manner imaginable.
I seriously spent hours (while at WORK, mind you, being paid poorly to attend) getting lost in the site–I had to read them all, that day, immediately. I laughed myself to tears in silence.
I had a similar experience more recently with Achewood. Busy as hell, totally uninterested in webcomics beyond Penny Arcade, and then out of nowhere–WHAM. I read about it over at J. Caleb Mozzocco’s site (if he was late to the party when he wrote about it, I’m SUPER FUCKING LATE myself). I started reading, and I never stopped. Hours upon days lost to reading and laughing myself to tears. In silence.
That’s the kind of experience Achewood is, to me–solitary, unique, and sort of astonishing.
Gears of Ghostbusters War 2
May 09Anybody that gets Spike TV, but isn’t interested in Ultimate Fighting, may finally have a use for it – tonight on Game Trailers TV, they’re showing exclusive first look footage of Gears of War 2 and more importantly, the Ghostbusters video game. Hell, I may even live blog it. Just so I can say I live-blogged once.
MARK PLUG!
May 08This week’s episode of The Sound of Young America podcast has Mark Evanier in the studio to talk about his new book Kirby: King of Comics. This is a double threat, as you should already be listening to TSoYA anyhow, and any chance to learn a bit more about Jack Kirby is always a good investment. Check it out.
Grok #2 Wants You!
May 08That’s right! That thing we did? That really cool thing? We’re gonna do it again.
The first issue of Grok, our PDF ‘zine, was packed with awesomeness and the second outing should be no different. Therefore, we need clever people such as yourselves to contribute.
To reiterate the basic mission statement: we want an electronic magazine dedicated to sharing stories, examinations, and opinions of geek culture. That means stuff like fun essays, fiction and the like focusing on the nerd experience. For further explanation, wander your little eyeballs to the sidebar on the right. And for examples of the kinds of ideas we’re looking for, peruse the dang issue.
Each issue also has a theme — #1 was pon farr. For #2, it’s all about…SECRET ORIGINS.
(Insert spine-tingling music and/or whooshy Lost flashback sound effect here!)
Also, this time, we’re also looking for artists to contribute. Otherwise, we’ll just be including more photos of Matt drinking from the punchbowl. No, seriously.
So what’s next? Well, if you’ve got something you want to write (or draw/paint/composite), drop a line to fangirl@earthlink.net. We’ll pool these ideas together and let you know if it’s a go (this is mostly just to make sure we don’t end up with a bunch of same-y articles/stories). Copy deadline is June 9 and the issue will be out in July. It should be released before that OTHER big thing that happens in July and will surely make great plane or between-panels reading material.
