Webcomic: The Shadow Hero

Go to: Tor, by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew (via Heidi MacDonald)

Ad: Subaru Forester "Attack on Titan" TV Commercial

Go to: Robot 6

Webcomic: Deep Dark Fears

Go to: Deep Dark Fears by Fran Krause (via Lauren Davis)

Webcomic: Ainulindalë

Go to: Evan Palmer, Dude (via Lauren Davis)

Webcomic: Chief O'Brien at Work

Go to: City Cyclops, by Jon Adams (via Lauren Davis)

If you can teleport from anywhere on the ship, why even have a transporter room?

Video: Every Major's Terrible

Go to: SFU Choir (via Robert Gonzalez)

Inspired by Randall Munroe's xkcd strip: Every Major's Terrible

 "I'll just put you down for Liberal Arts." Ha ha! Actually, that hits a little too close to the mark. DAMMIT!

More NonSense: Creation and Reproduction

Pádraig Ó Méalóid's interview with Alan Moore has unsurprisingly produced some backlash. Here's commentary by Marc Singer,  Marc-Oliver Frisch.

Julia Wertz on how her alcoholism informed her autobiographical webcomic The Fart Party.

Orion Martin racebends the X-Men, and links to one of my posts.

Chris Sims weighs in on the controversial legacy of Stan Lee.

Bully takes a look at the fantastical technology drawn by Jack Kirby.

Dave Girard on the rise and fall of QuarkXPress. Will Adobe make the same mistakes with InDesign?

Joe Mullin remembers the history of the Sony Betamax on the 30th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios, which dramatically expanded the right to fair use.

Webcomic: Night Shift

Go to: Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

2013 Comic Reviews

Index of all 2013 comic reviews:

Bikini Cowboy Vol. 1
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Vol. 5
Avatar The Last Airbender: The Search Parts 2 & 3
March: Book 1
Mind MGMT #8-12
Give My Regards to Black Jack Vol. 1-3
K-On! College
Avatar The Last Airbender: The Search Part 1
Julio's Day
Honey and Clover Vol. 10
Honey and Clover Vol. 9
Honey and Clover Vol. 8
Mara #2 and America's Got Powers #5
Mind MGMT #7
Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake #1
Superior Spider-Man #1
The Massive #7 and Mara #1
47 Ronin #1-2

Social Critique: What Kind of Princess Do I Want My Daughter to Be?

Go to: Slate, by Mike Dawson (via Heidi MacDonald)

Blog: The Silmarillion Project

Go to: The Silmarillion Project by Aaron Diaz (via Lauren Davis)

While Tolkien made more than a few missteps regarding race and gender, the “everyone is white” trend in adaptations is a symptom of other people ignoring what’s in the texts. Additionally, all of Tolkien’s writings are presented as if they’re written from a limited and flawed historical perspective (LoTR and The Hobbit were “written” by Hobbits, etc). The position of my adaptation is to present what “actually” happened- the events upon which the flawed or biased history is based. Just like with real historians, the presence of women and people of color, and their achievements, are frequently ignored.

I’m never going to contradict what’s written, but I’m definitely going to use all of the tools at my disposal to emphasize the importance of those who don’t always get their rightful share of historical credit.
- Aaron Diaz

Cartoon: The Daily Planet Files

Go to: Another Brittney Williams by Brittney Williams (via Kevin Melrose)

Video: The Flight

The Flight from Inbal Breda on Vimeo.

Go to: Bredaland by Inbal Breda (via Lauren Davis)

Bikini Cowboy

Created by L. Frank Weber

Originally released in webcomic form, what anyone needs to know about Bikini Cowboy is encapsulated within the title. It’s about a woman who wanders the wild west wearing a yellow string bikini, along with the requisite cowboy hat and boots, while carrying a surfboard. It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole comic was originally conceived around that image. The getup by itself isn’t all that remarkable, but the protagonist morphs into a truly baffling presence just by being placed in the American frontier of 1812, more than 130 years before the term “bikini” (which is mentioned in-story at one point) entered the popular lexicon. The comic has a lot of fun playing off the premise without actually bothering to explain anything. The reader just has to go with the flow.

Like the more established Jeff Smith and Ben Caldwell, creator Luke Weber draws in that classic big-eyed cartooning style often employed in Western animation and children’s book illustration. His individual character designs aren’t as idiosyncratic or as varied, but they all  posses that graceful elasticity of form, movement and expression essential to the style. And like his more famous colleagues, he’s really good at transitions and wordless panels that track a person’s body language and other nonverbal cues. Much of the comic is devoted to this kind of filmic pacing and goes a long way to enliven this 377-page graphic novel. Atypically, Weber forgoes applying a more finished look by drawing everything with rough pencils which are then overlaid with gray washes. It imbues everything with grit and dirt. While I’m not sure if I wouldn’t have preferred to look at colour pages, the approach doesn’t clash with the setting’s arid environment. The book’s one glaring weakness is its numerous typos and misspellings accompanied by some slapdash lettering, something that might have been avoided with more judicious editing.

Weber’s art doesn’t objectify the titular character, “Whisky” Jill McKay, but exploits the shock value of her anachronistic appearance to hook the reader. She’s first shown as a shadowy figure emerging from the desert and walking into a frontier town. It’s only when Jill enters a saloon and sidles up to the bar that her bikini-clad fashion is revealed. As if to further confuse the reader, Jill then orders an energy drink from a completely befuddled bartender like that’s supposed to be a thing in 1812. The story really gets going when she rescues an orphan boy named Rod McCloud from his abusive guardians. And then things take an even odder turn when Jill claims to be a witch, while Rod admits to possessing psychic powers.

Nothing overtly supernatural happens, at least not until the end, but the narrative contains numerous magical realist elements. Jill’s bikini identifies her as belonging to a certain coven of eccentric witches. She takes Rod under her wing because she thinks he might be some kind of messiah, and somehow useful to her nebulous quest. An ominous cloud starts following the two wherever they go. Rod is bedevilled by terrifying dreams. There are constant Biblical references being cited, particularly from the Book of Revelations. But what primarily propels the plot forward are Jill’s attempts to stay ahead of a ruthless marshall hunting her down not just for numerous alleged crimes, but because he’s also an ex-clergyman who's seriously offended by Jill’s ultra-modern behaviour.

Towards the end, Bikini Cowboy elects to preserve the sense of the mysterious. Jill remains very much an enigmatic figure, and the issue of Rod’s strange abilities has been quietly set aside. The comic prefers to ground the story using the personal relationship between Jill and Rod. Neither are particularly complex characters on the surface. Jill has a lot of gumption while Rod is a cheeky kid. They start out as an awkward hero-sidekick pairing. But they have an easy and amusing camaraderie that comes from a place of developing affection and trust.

The story’s pacing also betrays its serialized web-based format. The book’s biggest fight actually occurs at the midway point, and the conclusion is kind of abrupt, which leads me to suspect that Bikini Cowboy was published after Weber decided he had enough material for a graphic novel. So while he has Jill McKay proverbially riding off into the sunset, there's just enough ambiguity to allow for her return in a sequel, if she proves popular enough.

Spirit on the Martian Plains

Frtom xkcd by Randall Munroe

Go to: Universe Today, by Ken Kremer

... Jan. 3, marks the 10th anniversary since the safe landing of NASA’s renowned Spirit rover on the plains of Mars on Jan. 3, 2004.... 

Spirit survived three harsh Martian winters and only succumbed to the Antarctic-like temperatures when she unexpectedly became mired in an unseen sand trap driving beside an ancient volcanic feature named ‘Home Plate’ that prevented the solar arrays from generating life giving power to safeguard critical electronic and computer components. - Ken Kremer