STEEL RESERVE

All kidding aside,

it starts fights, and it should be

printed on the can.

The Planeteers Part 1.

The Planeteers Part 2.

Well here it is, my first post of October. I went through a couple ideas, and this one came to me two nights ago. I finally had the chance to see the Happening from start to finish and it really was just as terrible as I had imagined. I’m not really sure why they didn’t flog M. Night Shyamalan in public for that. Anyways, it worked for the movie but at the same time, I wanted to see more of a villain present than just some blades of grass blowing in the wind. I know we’re supposed to blame the plants in that movie but it’s easier when you can put a visual image to it. So I started thinking of who would be angry at the Earth, and could control the wind. I instantly thought of Linka, the Russian girl from the Planeteers and maybe in time she would shrug her duties and kill everybody with the wind. I made a few images where her image was superimposed in scenes from the Happening, but I couldn’t conjure too much of a story around it. Instead, I took the angle of a Behind The Music type special on what exactly happened to Captain Planet and the Planeteers. I know I wanted to portray them in a tragic light. Looking back on this one, I don’t feel this one is that funny, but hey you win some and you lose some. I do like the touch of AJ Benza returning to host the show because I used to very irritated by that show when it was on the air and it would always zoom in on him at the end saying the line about fame being a bitch.

Sean Connery Goes On a Myshtary Date.

This comic was rather spur of the moment. I really wanted to use Sean Connery in one of the comics, and there really isn’t a better portrayal of him than his portrayal of Henry Jones Sr. in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. His accent had the best inflection in that movie and with that in mind is how I wrote the script for this strip. You might immediately think that I could have benefited from use of  a spell check but the words are spelled wrong on purpose, so you would read them the way Sean Connery would read them phonetically. As for Sarah Palin, well it would be pretty hard to have only one comic about her. I realize, looking back on the project that with the exception of the Sarah Palin beauty queen Meet The Feebles looking puppet, I could have substituted anyone in the female lead. But since I did find that picture and it’s just so creepy bizarre, it had to be Sarah Palin again. I’m sure it will not be the last time you see Connery as well.

Shelley Duvall freaked out by the aliens.

Most of this comic was started off another. I was thinking of doing one involving the huge bombshell that Mackenzie Phillips (daughter of Mama’s and the Papa’s John Phillips) dropped this week about her incestuous life with her father. At one point staring at photos of her, I made the conclusion that she’s so far gone she almost looks like a bizarro version of Shelley Duvall. Then looking at Duvall photos, I uncovered an Enquirer article from last month that is the script for this particular panel. With the exception of the first and last frames, the words are taken directly from the article and to not be held responsible for libel, they are in quotations. Like that will save my ass, ha. Anyway, if we are to believe the words of the Enquirer – all of this alien mumbo jumbo is happening to Shelley Duvall. She really has gone off the deep end. Now if I did a straight comic of the article, and just put up pictures of aliens, it would be kinda ho hum. But I wanted to put a real random spin on it, and I thought of putting Kanye West in the mix. I didn’t get to do anything during the whole Taylor Swift week because I’d rather let the world go ahead, and I’ll catch up later. Another upshot to using him is his current incarnation? is very space age. He’s still playing a lot with neon colors, space age sounds, and of course the glasses. So he seemed, in my eyes anyway, to be a likely candidate for being an alien. Panel #5 with the little Kanyes all around was trying to tie in the movie Bug w/ Ashley Judd. I didn’t have a picture of Shelley all super sketched out, and even at that it would be hard to jump to the conclusion that she’s being tormented by figments of her imagination bugs. So we have mini Kanyes a la Meet Dave. Panel #4 is actually not Shelley Duvall, but a picture that came up on the search engine of somebody impersonating her with some giant teeth. Great work. Then the Shining pic at the end was all me, that had nothing to do with the article. I think my favorite part of this strip is having all the “aliens” and “little green men” crossed out to say “Kanye West,” which can be a serious issue if it gets irritated.

Yoga Problems, Inc. Part 1.

Yoga Problems, Inc. Part 2.

I will be the first to admit that this makes no sense at all. Though I spent an equal amount of time on this one, from the last – yeah, it just don’t make sense. I’m not even entirely sure I no where this entered the stream of consciousness. I think I wanted to do something with the Street Fighter II characters after the fighting stops. Kinda like a Behind the Music type thing. Then I thought, well some of them should work together. Blanka should be an electrician, and Zangief should do home demolition. But then that kind of flopped, so it became generic problem solvers. Judge Smails was my first choice of somebody with a problem and once he was so introduced, the comic went on full Caddyshack tilt. And yes, everything that Zangief says is in Russian. You may not speak it, but I’ve left you with some keywords (they didn’t translate) that will give you the gist of it.

Brave New High School Musical Part 1.

Brave New High School Musical Part 2

This comic is the longest that I’ve labored on particular comic. It went through massive revisions and I even had to map out a plot line. I don’t really know how the idea came to me. I think I just wanted to make something built out of Huxley’s “Brave New World.” It was a book that I had the chance to enjoy in community college English but I was too preoccupied with failing the class to read it. I came back to it a few years ago and now I like it a lot. Anywho, I wanted to juxtapoze new characters into that story, or keep the same story and match that with new faces and a snide remark. I went with the latter. I realized as I was first putting it together that it wasn’t really about high school all that much, nor was it a musical. This is true. The musical part, however, was something that I could piece together. I originally thought of doing some songs that everyone knows for a soundtrack, but that would be very un-John Williams of me. Instead, on the top of each panel is the name of the original music that will play during that scene. It sounds like it would be a good soundtrack.  I kept as many elements as true to the book that I could. I left out Helmholtz, cuz well he really wasn’t that interesting. I don’t think this is my best work, but I’m putting it out there because it’s completed.

Steven Seagal - Jack of All Trades

Steven Seagal has really always been in my life, since I first watched Under Siege. The Cannoli Conspiracy used to do a thrash song called “Steven Seagal” that was really just a bunch of noise and the verses were all character names from his movies. Most of this strip was inspired by just looking at his wikipedia page and seeing just how multi-faceted he really is. I knew about a few of these, but I had no idea about the sheriff thing. Steven Seagal – Lawman debuts in December. You can see previews of it up on the AETV.com website. It looks amazing. The one thing that I really wanted to add to this strip, but didn’t was the aftershave. His wiki page boasts that he created his own aftershaved called “Scent of Action,” which is amazing. However, no images could be found of it anywhere on the net, and apparently it wasn’t a top seller. But in synopsis, Steven Seagal, I salute you.

Tim Gunn Advises The Prez

Jon Gosselin is a Jerk.

Back to back days over there at the TLC Channel. Yesterday the Duggars got the horns, and today Jon & Kate get hit. This might not make sense to a lot of you out there, but there is a hip hop group called the New Boyz. Kinda has that old skool feel ala the Cool Kids. Their hit single is catchy and infectious and it is called, “You’re a Jerk.” This is most of the first verse and the chorus of the song.  It’s not too much to look at lyrically, you really have to hear the song for yourself, and once you got it down, rap along with it. As for the Gosselins, well I used to be on team Jon cuz team Kate was just too psycho. Now I’m indifferent and I really don’t care about either of them. Bunch of jerks.

Another one for the Duggars.

There’s a lot of hate and animosity directed towards the family. I hate to be only the next person in line to jump on the bandwagon but seriously this is out of control. The TLC producers are probably hemorrhaging money at the cost of changing the name of the show each time. I contemplated adding a second page to this. Something to the effect of Sally Struthers reprising her role in helping poverty stricken countries but this time asking for donations to change the way of life for the Duggar kids. I mean, the girls can’t ever wear jeans. You can’t kiss someone until you are married. Holding hands is allowed with the supervision of a chaperone. TV and internet usage is very restricted. No kid goes to college. So instead of money I was thinking along the lines of giving them a care package – like a NWA CD and a chain wallet. But these were ideas that did not come to fruition. So that is that. This is probably my most vitriolic comic, but I laughed pretty hard at a couple points so I guess it gets the job done. Or as Gavin Rossdale would say, “it puts the dog in the basket.”