Almighty Kfish: Any thoughts on the cancellation of Hellblazer?
I, personally, am looking forward to the PG-rated adventures of John Constantine! I cannot wait for John Constantine to start talking like a mid-90s Pete Wisdom and call baddies “ruddy plonkers.” Also, when he defeats the Devil with the power of friendship, and then he and Superman go out for waffles and talk about their women problems. “How do I tell Wonder Woman – who I am dating – that I do not get the point of her invisible plane?” “Oh, Supes, you plonker, you don’t know nuffink, cos my lady Zatanna, she wears these fishnets all the time and then when it is time for romance, she takes them off!” Seriously, who will not love this?
Andrew Miller: Or – for something off the wall – a discussion of why Western pop-culture audiences find tropes taken from medieval Japan – ninjas, samurai, etc. – appealing, while tropes taken from other times and places – India before the English, sub-saharan Africa, the Aztec Empire, etc. – find so little traction. I have a pet theory it has to do with Japan being the one place where European imperialism was felt the least, but I wonder what your thoughts are.
Well, Western fascination with Japanese culture started out as a fad in the 1880s and never really stopped. That was when samurai first became popular with western audiences, and ninja followed shortly thereafter. This is mostly for two reasons. Firstly, samurai and ninja translate fairly simply to Western audiences because you can – inaccurately – just make them into knights and spies, both of whom were popular fiction tropes even back when Japanese concepts were first introduced. Secondly, your imperialism theory is fairly accurate – because Japan was never really conquered in the colonial era it remained exotic, whereas, say, the Mughal Empire were just the guys the British beat up and took India from, and it’s hard for imperialist cultures to really get impressed with the guys who they defeated. That was really why Japan became such a fad in the first place.
Miles: My group of friends have really enjoyed Through the Ages, if you have time for a Civilization-type game.
I don’t mind Through the Ages, but it’s not a “Civilization-type game.” Through The Ages is a tech-tree game, which is not quite the same thing. A proper civ-game has exploration, military conflict, a reasonably complex economic engine and a tech-tree. Through The Ages has a great tech-tree mechanic which is ninety percent of the game, then a very simple economic engine to power the tech-tree, dumbs down military conflict to “make sure you have roughly the same number of troops as everyone else, because the game favours the defender overwhelmingly” and has no exploration whatsoever. Oh, and of course it’s just yet another Euro that you win only by getting victory points, and although I don’t get offended by VP-racing like some gamers do, a proper civ-game should offer up more options for victory than “get the most VP.”
I much prefer the new Sid Meier’s Civilization boardgame (the one by Fantasy Flight) for when I want a proper civ-game experience. It is, to be sure, a bit clunky in terms of its rules because it tries to adapt virtually every aspect of the computer game series into a boardgame, but: it has a good tech-tree, exploration and board control is absolutely vital to winning, the military race matters a great deal, and it has multiple victory conditions. Also, it does the “each civilization gets its own distinct special powers” thing, which I am always a sucker for because I love variable player powers in games – they offer up so much additional headspace. So that is usually my civ-game of choice. (If I want something quicker and lighter than SMC for a civ-game, I will generally go for Olympos.)
Thornae: I’d like to add another vote for the webcomics thing – what are your current weekly reads?
Nothing earth-shattering – I tend to read webcomics in chunks-at-a-time rather than weekly. XKCD, Penny Arcade, Girls with Slingshots, and Chainsawsuit (which is the funniest comic Kris Straub has ever done, by far) are about the only comics I read as-they-come. No, wait – I admit that I sort of hate-read Menage a 3 regularly. I love Gisele’s art – it’s a near-perfect marriage of classic Dan DeCarlo-style blending-of-good-girl-art-with-Archie-storytelling and anime tropes – but the fact that every single character in the comic is a terrible person and the strip doesn’t seem to get that just blows me away. I mean, I admire the strip’s dedication to normalization of the broad range of human sexuality, but Gary is a pathetic, unlikeable wimp, Didi is apparently completely amoral, Zii is incredibly irritating, Yuki is basically the worst person in the entire world, and if Dillon were straight his neverending gay crush on Gary would be even creepier and predatory than it already is, and believe me I could go on at length. But the art is lovely, so I keep reading it and hating myself for it – and it’s not because it’s porn, because it’s not even very good at being porn because the decision to avoid showing genitals is distracting.
(Also, if the sound of someone blowing a guy is “mf mf mf mf” then – I dunno. All I am saying is: I have received my share of oral sex, and I would not say that “mf mf mf” is onomatopoeiacally correct.)
Al: Ever had to give a best man speech? Any good stories about it, or advice to give?
I’ve never been a best man, but I have made speeches at a few weddings as a friend of the couple, and it’s not really a forum to show off how dazzling and brilliant you are as a speaker, frankly. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Think of two or three good anecdotes in the neighborhood of “embarrassing, but not mortifying, just funny/cute” (you can invent details out of whole cloth if they make the story better, because nobody will challenge you on this), chain them together, say that you’re happy to see them together and explain why, raise your glass, done.
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“…he defeats the Devil with the power of friendship”
MGK, you plonker, that’s the Doctor number 11 what done that.
Also, if the sound of someone blowing a guy is “mf mf mf mf” then – I dunno. All I am saying is: I have received my share of oral sex, and I would not say that “mf mf mf” is onomatopoeiacally correct.)
It is if your primary, if not only, experience with oral sex involves porn rather than personal experience.
I’m just saying.
I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to say a best man wedding speech is about the bride and groom; there’s a room full of drunken people to bear in mind as well, who often appreciate at least a litte in the way of speaker’s ooomph.
That said, drunk people laugh very easily, and get bored very quickly, so the “get it done quick” model is definitely the best option.
It’s got kinda a techno-beat, though. Perhaps they just give the kind of blow-jobs you can dance to in this comic?
I’ve yet to meet anyone say they just read Menage a 3. Everyone, myself included, hate-read it. Maybe someone in these comments will break that streak.
When I was still reading it (I think the “tricking someone into oral sex is funny and cute and not rape” plot broke me), I defended it by pointing out it’s occasionally very funny.
Gisele’s a pretty shameless content farmer. A very skilled and professional artist, but she’s got, like, four webcomics going and they’re all cheesecake plugs. I’d imagine, before the internet, she’s make a living as a graphic designer and pin-up artist and that’ll be that. At this point, I think MA3 (which I also occasionally hate-read… damn, this women is good as what she does, which is generate page hits) exists solely to advertise the actual, real porn based on MA3.
Why bother with this Menage a 3, when one could read Trudy Cooper’s Oglaf? Its art quality is top-notch, and although it’s not always about sex, it’s consistently and inventively funny.
I read Oglaf, but it updates sporadically so basically what I mean to say is “every so often, I think “hm, Oglaf, anything happening there” and I find out that there have been about a dozen new strips done in the six months since I last checked it, and I enjoy them, and then I don’t read it for another six months.
Oglaf updates regularly on Sundays, although there’s no telling how many pages a given installment will be, or even if it will be part of an ongoing story, feature recurrent characters, or just depict whatever Trudy this is funny this week. (For real pain, her epic Platinum Grit has been stuck on hiatus for years-years, I tell you!)
Yeah, Oglaf updates with atomic regularity – it’s just only once a week.
Platinum Grit… damn. what hurts about that you can’t give up on it, because she really has gone years on-end and then BAM update! The current hiatus still hasn’t been as long as the longest one, so there’s always that glimmer of hope….
Man, just thinking about Platinum Grit is depressing me. Quality in every sense of the word, and I have no idea if it’s ever going to wrap up now.
+1 on Menage a 3. At this point, I want to throttle just about every character, and not in a pervy, sexy way. But the art, so good!
The thing that summarizes Ma3 for me is that the character page calls out Matt as a “bastard” out of all the characters in the strip, when to me, Matt is probably less of a bad person than anybody else.
I mean, he’s a fairly bad person. But he’s the only one who seems to have regrets or to wish he was a better person.
I’ll take the challenge and say I read Ma3, not hate-read…just read. It’s ok. Really, I read it after I’ve caught up on Eerie Cuties and Magic Chicks during an insomnia bout and then go to read the next thing.
I don’t think Constantine would be permitted to do some of that stuff in the DCnU. Didio would consider eating waffles to be a Stephanie Brown reference and that’s the kind of thing that gets their entire animation line-up cancelled.
My sister is living over in Japan, and she says that people are always surprised when she tells them how huge sushi is here. It’s ironically not that big a deal in its home country.
Oh, and – as others have said – Oglaf updates weekly. However the length of those updates can vary a lot. It’s actually a little strange to see a comic that does multiple page updates in the same day.
The only webcomics I really read consistently are David Willis’ Shortpacked and Dumbing of Age. Otherwise I tend to let them pile up and read a bunch at once… if I get back to them at all. I don’t think I’ve read a lot of better known strips like PVP and Penny Arcade in over a year.
Thanks for the reply! I appreciate the different perspective on Through the Ages.
I really enjoyed Platinum Grit so far too and wish for more updates.
Over the past couple of years it’s become clear to me that XKCD is more about presenting ideas than making a point with those ideas. Strip #1133 is a textbook example of this–it’s a mildly interesting concept, but it says nothing to me except that Randall Munroe has a lot of time on his hands.
Penny Arcade is a skillfully-produced comic about topics that frequently do not interest me and occasionally make no sense to me. One day I realized that I was reading the site’s blog for the sole purpose of getting the joke of a strip, and decided I do not need to be reading it.
Menage a 3 and Oglaf both have copious amounts of sex, but Oglaf also happens to be funny, which is a sorely underrated quality in webcomics.
What I tend to do for webcomics like Oglaf or Wonderella is to organize them into bookmark folders listed by their update frequency. That makes it much easier to keep up with them than checking every day until you decide you are bored with waiting.
The same applies for webcomics without a set update schedule. Dumping them into a “Whenever” folder means I’m not trying to wrack my brain about that great comic that almost never posts on time that I saw once.
As long as we’re recommending NSFW webcomics, I think Go Get A Roomie should get a mention. It has its issues (more than half the cast seem to be magical hippies who don’t need jobs), but it’s a regular dose of cheesecake with gorgeous artwork and reasonably non-bastard characters.
I would also posit that the popularity of Japanese references in Western pop-culture has at least a bit to do with the relative amount of pop-culture it produces. Now, this may well be due to the relative lack of imperialism stifling their culture, but I think it is still a factor. We tend to pay attention to Eastern cultures in rough proportion to the number of flashy action flicks and/or fun kid’s cartoons they produce.
I am honestly not sure whether or not you’re being sarcastic about Hellblazer.
Don’t do best man speeches while drunk and / or cocaine.
I’ve sat through several of those experiences and they are god awful agony.
Also, realise that you aren’t just talking to the bride and groom and the small group of friends, but also her great-aunt and some work collegues and a whole heap of people who might not find the time (say) that the bride urinated through the sunroof of her ex-boyfriend’s BMW and then took off with his stash as funny as you do. Keep it short, punchy and relatively clean.
I think the fondness for Japan has at least a much to do with its economic/political ties with the US and the perception it’s a modern nation rather than one where everyone’s a Bedouin or a Hindu mystic or an Untouchable, etc. So it’s culture has more cachet. I think interest in Japan has gotten stronger along with its economy: Back in the sixties, Japan was seen mostly as the nation that made cheap knockoffs of American goods and it got more attention for Godzilla films than samurai.
Hellblazer cancelled in favour of a PG Constantine?
This makes me a saaaad panda.
I’ll take your “mf mf mf” comment a step further and opine that while generally sound effects can add a lot to, say, a Hulk vs. Thor fight, they should never, ever, ever be used in sex scenes. There was a series called “Housewives at Play” that gilded each ‘erotic’ moment with “SQUIF! SQWUCK! SPLORP!” noises, and years later I still bear the mental scars.
SQUIF! SQWUCKLE! SPLORP!
…sexy Rice Krispies!
The Hellblazer thing seems to be the latest in DC’s attempts at folding unrelated properties into the main universe and just assuming that all fans of one kind of comic will automatically troop loyally over to Batman after a few guest appearances by their former favorite. See also: Milestone, Wildstorm
My own webcomic holy grail updates daily, in color, with super-sized Sunday strips and sci-fi humor, and hasn’t been late in more than ten years. Sure, the art in early strips of Schlock Mercenary was rough, and the humor took some time to develop, but I tend to think it’s been hitting its stride for a while now, and brings occasional moments of real emotional torque. I think you’d like it, MGK. Some of your readers, too.
Gary is a pathetic, unlikeable wimp
I hate to say it, but +1. Seriously, 90% of Ma3 plotlines would be 90% shorter if Gary would just get a spine transplant. Anyone with more dorsal starch would do. Shinji Ikari, Hanataro Yamada, Crona Gorgon… I’m not picky.
I shouldn’t admit this here, but I actually enjoy MA3. Then again, I’ve known real-life analogues of all of the characters (ahem, and I’ve been a few of the characters, ahem.)
Webcomics that I read, that haven’t been mentioned above
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
Hark, a Vagrant
Little League/Batman and Sons
At least two-thirds of MA3 readers are only into it ironically. Giselle Lagace is making fucking bank off of hatereads.
@Matt, or anyone else
I’m not going to read the responses for a few days, but could some of you explain your rationale for not liking MA3? The author isn’t the second coming of Shakespeare, the characters tend to come across more as archetypes than people and the art isn’t smutty enough to engage hardcore pervs or wankers, but it doesn’t seem to warrant actual hate (IMHO).
I actually like Didi and Zii now, and even Amber (Gary’s mouth-rapist) mostly. Even Sonya can be funny to watch when she’s on the prowl. (And Gary can be taken as an archetype of uncertainty or something, an aspect of the nerd id.)
But yes, hate-reading is about right for the the Giz&Dave-verse. Their strips develop pretty slowly sometimes, and the characters can occasionally get pretty awful to each other, so it’s often unsatisfying.
I was reading close to 20 webcomics a month ago, but I didn’t write the list down, and I think I’ve forgotten a few.
I mostly enjoy MA3, but hate Yuki more than I can easily put into words. The “abusive girlfriend” trope is one I wish had ended years ago, and I absolutely loathe characters created to slot into that.
MGK, we need a Rob Ford post, STAT!! 🙂
Further to above: just checked Torontoist, and thanks! 🙂
Back when I started to get into webcomics, one of my favorites was Cool Cat Studios, which Lagace wrote and drew; I recall it updating sporadically, but it was cute if a bit lightweight. Then T. Campbell started writing for her, and it went to shit in nothing flat. Of course, people do change and occasionally improve over time, so I just went and checked out both Ma3 and Campbell’s latest stuff, and respectively a) I guess it must pay the bills, and b) yep, still crap.
Thanks for the info. guys. It hasn’t really changed my opinion, but I can see the disconnect.
Oh yeah, people need to give more love to Scandinavia and the World.
http://satwcomic.com/best-guy-wins