Michael John Magee suggested it, and I feel magnanimous, so let’s do a reader-submitted round of Magic: The Election 08. It’s been way too long since I did a reader-submitted anything, and they’re fun.

Submit your ideas to me in email (it’s there on the sidebar, folks). If you have a specific image(s) for the card(s) in mind, I need that too.

Bear in mind the MGK Fake Magic Election Design Bible:

1.) The color wheel is as follows:

Blue: Democrats
Red: Republicans
White: Religion/Law Related Stuff
Black: Douchebaggism
Green: Environmentalism and, I dunno, other things that are green, there’s room there to add things I guess but stay in the general philosophical area

2.) The major traits of import are Democratic, Republican, Douchebag, Bullshit, and Media. (I am flexible, and if somebody comes up with a really good new trait that deserves to be widely referenced, I’ll mention it here.) No card should have more than two traits unless you have a really good reason.

3.) Cards that directly reference Barack Obama should be multicolor blue/white/green hybrid mana. Everything else is fair game for hybrid mana, gold multicolor cards, et cetera.

4.) Stick to existing keyword mechanics. Don’t create new ones.

5.) Stick to events of the 2008 Presidential campaign. Anything before the Iowa primaries: no. Random Dick Cheney or Larry Craig jokes: no (unless they’re really, really good, and let’s be honest, that well is pretty dry). Et cetera. Doing new versions of cards I’ve already done is fine (a lot of people complained that Barack Obama was underpowered).

5. and most important) Remember that the element of masterful parody is refusing to overplay it. I’m not going to waste my time on things like “Say POW POW POW: John McCain gets +5/+5 until end of turn.” That is the parody magic card equivalent of making Disaster Movie or Meet the Spartans. You do not want to be that person. Remember that your entries should, generally speaking, look like actual Magic cards; they will be funnier that way.

6.) In answer to Zenrage: keep it fairly clean.

I’ll put up the ones I like best on Monday.

…but, in response to that old “D&D Alignments With Comic Characters In Motivational Poster Form” post from way back, I’ve updated the “handy introduction” page (EDIT: it’s at right on the sidebar) to better reflect the Greatest Hits nature of it.

All right; my connectivity issues have, for the most part, been sorted, so expect posting to the site to be back to what one normally expects here in these parts. My fine guest writers have been invited to continue as feature contributors, which is a nice way of saying “they’re allowed to post when they feel like it,” because I’ve enjoyed having their writing here and would like to continue to semi-host them, and I figure more readable content on this site is always welcome.

Now, off to Photoshop Pele bicycle-kicking a buffalo in the nuts!

Thanks to the power of begging, I now have two female guest bloggers this month as well. Please everybody give a warm welcome to Karen Whaley and Wendy White, who will bring a unique perspective to mgk.com for a month. And possibly also curtains.

With that, I hereby proclaim the guestblogger selection done and finito. I’d like to thank everybody that applied; I received a good many applications and it was not easy winnowing down applicants to those I felt were the best suited (both in ability and style) to write here.

Well, Will beat me to introductions, but it’s worth mentioning that after receiving a bunch of applications (I was truly flattered at the number), both he and Dan Solomon are now guest-blogging here. I’m currently looking over my schedule and expected connectivity for the next thirty days (I feel like I’m Morgan Spurlock! Minus the annoying wife), and deciding whether or not to add one or two more to the roster.

Incidentally, I’d also like to mention that I haven’t gotten one application from a girl woman lady person. Surely there must be someone lacking an Y chromosome (EDIT: that was a very impressive typo, really) who wants to write for me for free?

Thanks to the fuckuppery of Canada’s largest telecommunications giant being entirely willing to screw around with third-party internet providers, I am without home internet access for the next three or four weeks. This sucks ass, especially because I had a couple of Photoshop projects I wanted to do that I now cannot thanks to not having net access. (This is also the reason the last week has been rather slow here.)

I refuse, however, to let it totally drive my site into the doldrums, so I’m going to just issue an open casting call for guest bloggers in the interim. If you think you can provide one or two articles per week (that are more than just a single-sentence hyperlink post) mail me (the email is right there! On the sidebar!) and send me a sample of your writing.

And don’t worry, I’ll still be posting stuff as well. Netcafes and wifi leeching have their uses.

A new feature, where I comment on good comments! To be featured whenever I feel like it, or am bored, or really whatever justification I invent and you will wholeheartedly accept.

Required Name Here, from yesterday’s Hillary post:

also, dude, youre kinda leaving out the part before and after these paragraphs, where she points out that women and blacks are the backbone of the party, and you cant disenfranchise that.

Except that “disenfranchising” involves the invalidation of votes, which, bleating to the contrary, hasn’t happened. Sometimes, your candidate loses. That’s not “disenfranchisement.” Before I go any further on this, I also want to reference Dan Solomon, also from the same post:

For this election to turn out well, the party needs to unify. You don’t get that by saying unify now, assholes to Clinton supporters. They have to feel welcome in the Obama campaign, and they have to stop seeing Obama supporters as their enemy. We have to let this shit go.

This is an entirely fair comment, but honestly: the problem isn’t Obama supporters at this point, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. You know how I know this? Because every political blog of note has asked the same question already to Hillary supporters. That question is, “well, what do you want Obama, as the presumptive nominee, to do for you?” And the answer from Hillary supporters is always the same: they want her to be the nominee and presumably the President. Fine and dandy that they do, but they can’t get that, and everybody knows it.

Seriously, it is time for Hillary supporters to explain what they want beyond Hillary as president, in hard policy terms. Of course, the problem is that most of what they want in policy terms, Obama already provides, and so this election has always been about demographics and personality appeal.

Now, then… the top 50 characters list from earlier today what I did:

Brandawg: Maybe you could indulge me by explaining Scrooge McDuck.

Scrooge McDuck is probably one of the greatest pulp-adventurer comic heroes of all time. Once you get past the “talking duck” part, you’ve got a brilliantly realized adventurer; famously miserly, of course, but an adventurer, explorer, taskmaster, family man (only having rediscovered the joys of family late in life), notorious braggart, civic-minded individual and closet sentimentalist.

Seriously: Carl Barks’ Scrooge comics are simply some of the best work ever done in the medium. They’re accessible to all ages without being simplistic or patronizing to kids. If you haven’t read them, you should.

John Seavey: Darkseid…I think you misspelled “Thanos” there. Darkseid is poetic, but very one-note. He’s evil for evil’s sake, just grinding endless darkness and the defeat of the human soul.

I disagree. You’re going with the simplistic analysis of Darkseid, which is understandable because a lot of writers write shitty Darkseid (see: Loeb, Jeph). But I go with Marc Singer on this:

Thanos lays bare its psychosexual death drive, and brilliantly, but Darkseid is a more mature, more psychologically stable, and therefore far more threatening figure: imagine a Hitler who’s both physically intimidating and not the slightest bit insane. Darkseid is what Hitler wanted to be, the visions he sold to himself in his sleep made real. A walking dream, or nightmare, of total control.

Thanos is more approachable as a character, precisely because he questions himself – a very human trait. But Darkseid is comfortable with his own evil, down to the bone. And that’s why Darkseid is scarier and more interesting; because he’s more alien.

itbox: I don’t agree with V’s inclusion on the list.

It was a tough call between Evey and V, but ultimately I went with V precisely because V’s motivations are more enigmatic; he’s not a cipher, as you say, but rather a riddle nobody’s cracked yet.

CandidGamera: Deadpool, again, and no Ambush Bug.\

Just because Ambush Bug broke the fourth wall before Wade doesn’t make him a better character. Ambush Bug is a walking punchline; Deadpool is fully realized.

Multiple people, but WillF: No Judge Dredd?

Wanted to find room for him, along with Captain Marvel, Lucifer, Thorn, Usagi Yojimbo, Luke Cage, Hunter Rose and half the cast of Maison Ikkoku, but I just couldn’t find the space. (I understand why Wizard combined Maggie and Hopey from Love and Rockets into one entry on their list, albeit probably for different reasons than they did.) Let’s just say they’d all make top 60, probably, but not top 50. I wouldn’t include Julian Hundred yet, and I wouldn’t include Nexus at all (always found it wildly overrated).

Finally, Dan Brown wanted to know about Dr. Octopus being the best Spidey villain. Doc Ock is the best Spidey villain because he’s Peter Parker’s opposite number: a scientist who suffered an accident which gave him great power, which he decided to use entirely for his own gain. I wouldn’t include him on a top characters list per se, but he’s better than the fucking Green Gobshite.

I’m moving to new digs today, and my home net access won’t be solid until Friday at the earliest, so posting over the next week will likely be lighter than usual.

And we’re back, after a massive overload. I feel loved. The issues ongoing re: server load are being dealt with, but suffice it to say people really, really like their Atari.

While I am discussing site issues, one more thing I wanted to generally consult with my readership on: tags. I like tags, but there are essentially two ways to use them. One is a smaller set of general tags and a tag-list in the sidebar. The other is the set of general tags plus an enormous set of descriptive tags (like, say, “Dr. Doom Loves My Little Pony” or “The Bigwig And The Three Junior Executives”) and no sidebar tag-list because it’s too unmanageable to bother with. Does anybody have a marked preference one way or the other? I’m considering ditching the sidebar for more descriptive tag sets, but I’m concerned about navigability of the site; of course, if nobody uses the tag sidebar, then it’s not an issue.

In case you haven’t noticed, thanks to the help of Stefan Rivet: the remix of Teen Titans #44 is now up on the site.

To those of you who have asked me if I’m ever going to do another comics remix, the answer is: yes, and I’m about halfway done one right now actually, but my schedule is a lot busier than it used to be. I’m hoping to have it up next week, but no guarantees.