Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Lost Marvel Episode II: Civil War




Freckles Marvel was a part of Captain Marvel history, and not a once off oddity either: During the height of Captain Marvel's fame, at which point, need  I remind you, he was easily more recognizable than Superman,  she graced several covers. She had a town for her to inhabit,  supporting characters to her, and even a nifty apellation. And seemingly overnight, she banished off the face of the earth, never to be tarted up, or gritted up, or killed off. Just oblivion.

But she won't stay forgotten for long, because, I'm covering all her adventures in my series The Lost Marvel.

In this episode, we get to meet Mary Dudely in her hometown of Skunkville, where she's bragging to the local kids about her adventures with Mary Marvel. Even accountling for embelishment, I don't know if she's talking about her first apearance in Wow Comics.
That's right! I completely fuck it up!

The subject of her being an asset to Skunkville comes up, and she puts in her disgust for the town's name. That's when shit starts to go down.
"Dïsney would never buy the rights to Skunkville!"

Just off panel, 3 New Estonia supperters are killed.
A few adults come to stop the fight, trying to bring the kids to their senses and sanity prevails. Or...maybe the fight escalates.
Which side is that dog?

This is the moment Mary Batson arrives, to find, well a crazy freaking riot. She transfroms into Mary Marvel, and uses her heroic clout and godlike authority to convince the unruly citizens to settle down. Or...
The dry cleaners are all Marveltown supperters.

Mary Marvel finds Freckles in the thickest fighting, and tries to get a sense of the situation. Aware that this this kind of matter that doesn't get solved by mobs, she flies them both to the mayor, who reveals this isn't entirely Freckle's fault, and that it was a sensitive issue that was bound to explode sooner or later.
They say the name...stinks...

This is where Mary Dudely lives. A town where people will kill their neightbors over the concept of naming the city after a stink spreading rodent or a Superhero. Just something to think about when she's being overtly violent or dumb.

The Mayor tries to get policemen and firefighters to stop the riot but they are also rioting. Naturally, in the middle of  Namemania, therer's still some sane people. Criminals, who don't have a faction and just want to get theirs. Mary and Freckles split up. Mary busts ass. Freckles...
"Hey...Karash is a good name!

However, she has a good comeback.
"I mean, yeah, you screwd up, but I missed the details!

And to prove herself  capable, she uses a skunk to route out the hidden criminal, which brings to light the town is named after a LIVING stink spreading rodent. It's not even a tradition!  Then the mayor jumps in to reveal the fight is over and the town has been renamed Marveltown.
"Mayor Embezzles Marveltown emergency fund sounds a lot better.

Presumably all the Skunktown loyalists where soundly killed offscreen.  Glory to the Marveltown Spring! Halallalallala Shazam!
 I'm glad this was resolved without, you know, us having to do anything.

This Freckles Marvel...just when you think she's a dumb comic relief character she demonstrates she's somewhat capable and intelligent. And she's evolved into less of a bratty girl who wants to be a Superhero and into more of a Mary Marvel Superfan, and more-further, a person Mary Marvel would willingly visit.  But it's time we get a superlative, isn't it? Oh, we will...soon enough.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Concept art from Ultra Crush Siblings




Here's some concept art from Ultra Crush Siblings, my highly comatose project. Ironically what held me back from working on it was my lack of knoweledge on how to make it, but now that I have it, I also know better than to put the kind of effort it would take on something that would at least gain me  no money and at most cost me a lawsuit.  I'm not fully giving up on it, but I'm focused on Alpha Danger Squad now, which is going very good. But enough talk. Here's the things.


Gravemind. I planned for this to be the final boss. Wouldn't it be cool to fight the Gravemind insted of just Talking to him? Huh, Halo?


Kasumi. Dead or Alive is getting less Xbox centric all the time, but I'd have put her anyway as a guest. Sigh.

Liara. Ditto. Liara was always my favorite Mass Effect character.

Master Chief.

Buki, from the whatever-the-reception-it had- RPG Sudeki.

Flint, from Brute Force.

Fergie Fudgehog, from Square's main franchise Viva Piñata. Saying that makes me sick.

Shadow, from Kakutou Chojin, Back Alley Brutal.

Tara Vives, from Quantum Redshift.

Vince, from Voodoo Vince.

Friday, March 15, 2013

The Lost Marvel Episode I : Mo' Money Mo' Freckles





If you've followed my blog in any capacity, you know I like to discuss those rarities I feel are largely ignored. Sure, I'm certain there are other people who could tell you if Sonic is way past cool, or how silly it is that Tim Burton's wife always gets similar roles, or how enrapturing Friendship is Magic is. But I always try my best to take the road less traveled, to finds those spots that most of the Internet missed, and to attack them. 

So, I have found a case study so perfectly suited because she's tied to something fairly known, and  yet so obscure even veritable sites dedicated to covering  that completely ignore it, that I've decide to cover it throughly. I am, of course, talking about Freckles Marvel.
She's the bottom one, about to be dismembered.

Freckles Marvel was a part of Captain Marvel history, and not a once off oddity either: During the height of Captain Marvel's fame, at which point, need  I remind you, he was easily more recognizable than Superman,  she graced several covers. She had a town for her to inhabit,  supporting characters to her, and even a nifty apellation. And seemingly overnight, she banished off the face of the earth, never to be tarted up, or gritted up, or killed off. Just oblivion.But she won't stay forgotten for long, because, I'm covering all her adventures in my series The Lost Marvel.

But who IS Freckles Marvel? Well, we should first examine her origin. Let's do it, by going all the way to Wow Comics #35, the first and last Public Domain Freckles Marvel story!

First some slight backstory. Captain Marvel, as created by Otto Binder, presumably was in reality Billy Batson, a young orphan. Due to a run in with an old wizard he gained the power to become the Earth's mightiest mortal Captain Marvel(TM Marvel Comics) by yelling Shazam(TM DC COMICS). Later, he discovered he had a twin sister who gained the same power, Mary Marvel.His cast expanded to several enough related  characters for them to call the group the Marvel Family.  Then he discovered his "uncle", a world class shit head.

Uncle Marvel, Dudley H Dudley, an oportunist leach of a slob,  who tried to cash in on Marvel fame. The Marvels humored his attempts to fool them into accepting this snake oil salesman as another inheritor of the Marvel Family legacy. Our story begins in one of his trademark attempts to  find a quick buck on his company, Shazam Incorporated. Litterally.
We mourn the loss of money this company does every 3rd fiscal year.

And that's when she bursts in. Mary Dudely. Mary claims to be Dudely's niece, though he must not have seen her in a long time.
(laugh track)


Essentially, Mary strongarms Dudely into being another Mary Marvel, albeit one not imbued with any sort of power or even  average human intelligence.  However, since they can't both be Mary Marvel (because people would not be able to tell the one who can fly from the one who can't.), Uncle Marvel  christens her Freckles Marvel. On account of her freckles.
Hey, you ain't exactly Hugh Jackman there, buddy.

Her first quest quest: find the hidden inheritance of one Roger Cole.
He also glued this novelty teeth to my face.

Following the clues, Fat Sheister Marvel and Bratty Psycho Marvel find...an armed thug also wants the money. Naturally, Freckles tries  a time tested strategy.
She rolled low on intelligence.

Lucky for her Mary Marvel litterally jumps out of the foreground and helps. But getting shoved off by a gunman has only made Mary dudely even more confident. She tries jumping, probably thinking that's a good trick.
Oh, wow, I've had so many oportunities tho shoot that girl...it's like the universe is telling me something!

The ineptitude of Freckles Marvel is so great, she somehow crushes Mary Marvel under her weigh. Mary Marvel sweats off bullets and swords, but she can't  magic her way out of this one. The thief make s his getaway. They get underway to the second clue, and find the thief yet again tries to get them, this time by vehicular manslaughter. But I bet Freckles Marvel won't do anything stupid THIS time.
Being fair here, throwing a hornets nest takes some guts.


Uncle Marvel, who is only pretending to have powers to make money, thinks it's time for Mary to hang up her cape, but Mary Marvel is confident she's not over her head. That's when that stupid girl goes out and...wins against the thief.

"Hey, if YOU were an invinsible avatar of half a pantheon, you too would do things like allowing this to go on."
So it's easy to see how Freckles Marvel's adventures could have ended right there. The character's whole joke, that she was as ineffective as she was deluded, was not the stuff of solo adventures. But something strange happend when Freckles Marvel moved to Mary Marvel's comic.  Join me then, won't you?

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Unlicensed Lawyer: Pokemon rights



Okay, that is one metal Pokemon logo, Peta. Credit where it's due.

Some of you have taken to comparing the act of Pokemon battles, as seen in the multimedia success Pokemon, to cockfighting, a practice mostly illegal in the U.S.A., yet still practiced in it's most darling territory, where I happen to live. In fact, those comparisons are bordering on "not funny anymore".

I am not gonna guess what you think of cockfighting, although I'm guessing a good amount  of you think it's somewhere from "that's not nice" to "that's a barbaric ritual that doesn't belong in the 21rst century". I'm not gonna try to defend cockfighting, but I am going to become an unlicensed lawyer for Pokemon battling.

See, most of you have not considered  that Sinnoh, Johto, Kanto and the rest have different social histories from us, and most of those come from the fact that they have creatures that can shoot fire and water and thunder scattered all over the land.

I mean, think about it: We tamed the bull and put him to work fields, we tamed the dogs and used them to protect our homes: how would we have reacted  if we had somehow tamed a horse that can shoot fire or a psychic duck? Every element of our society would be completely different.


There's no guns in this world for the most part, because who needs guns when you can  summon an invincible penguin that can waterbend? Knocking  a guys Beedrill makes him be at your mercy. I bet war is not fought with hosts and swords, either.

And we would have had to do this long before we had the slightest concept of  human rights, as living in the world of Pokemon seems to be unreasonably dangerous. Maybe you've never been to a rural area and have no idea how common "tall grass" is. But in this  world, walking into it means certain death.

Like a hellish fusion of Australia and the African Bush, , walking into an untamed area  means that every animal within hearing distance wants to kill you. But whereas in Africa it might be a gagoon biter or in Australia it might be dingoes, Animals that LOOK dangerous, here even squirrels, sparrows and caterpillars  want kill you and eat your remains.
My Photoshop powers increased 10 fold since ou last match.

You where walking in the woods, minding your own business on your way to your nephew's birthday party. You didn't walk in looking for trouble, but you found it:  You are face to face with a bear, and you need to preserve your own life. But if instead of having a rifle, that even at close range might not be enough for you not to become bear chow, what if you could draw YOUR OWN BEAR, and have it fight instead? Would you consider the option? Could that even be more humane?

What if you KNEW that every 1 to 11 steps a bear will without any doubt charge you. Would THAT be reason enough to  have a defense bear of your own? Would you need six bears to survive a relatively short  trip unscathed?

What's worse is that Pokemon are no innocent victim's of man. No. Pokemon are actually proven to have conscious thought on a level where they understand  humans a good amount of the time. Sometimes they even work together to screw over wayward kids, even when it's animals you don't think that's cooperate. Don't you see? They aren't attacking because it's their natural instinct and they feel threatened or hungry. They know what they are doing: mobbing the shit out of some dumb kid because HOW THE HELL IS HE GONNA STOP THEM?
Okay, you're just a blue wrestler with a lizard for a head. You can't be claiming no animal rights.

Cockfighting? When was the last time  a rooster killed a child by shooting thunder at it and laughed?  If Pokemon are as smart or more than people, then they too should be judged by their actions equally, and be found  guilty of being...well...monsters!


This world doesn't have Pokemon fight because it's fun. They have Pokemon fight because it's the only way to survive in this world. Pokemon  subjugation by humans is the alternative to human subjugation by Pokemon. It's as essential for human civilization as  the wheel or vaccines or electricity. Did they elevate it to a spectator sports? Well, did we not do so with martial arts?

 Most of us are lucky to never having had to fight of a wild animal for sheer survival of self or kin.  Even Grisly Man , who considered being eaten by bears an honor, tried to fight back when the most obvious  possible thing that could happen to him and those  dumb enough to hang with him happened. In the Pokemon world there is only certainty that death follows those that don't have Pokemon. And most of us don't know what that's like to be passing judgment.



Saturday, March 9, 2013

Annotated Lyrics to The Ruber Song

Power!


Kids, if you are anything like I was when I was young, you've considered  working in animation. Here's a tip for all you aspiring animators: There's no deleted scenes in animation. You plan and plan and plan and then do. Improvisation costs far too much money, and any and all choices must be made before spending thousands inking leaves no one will ever see, or animating that Gay horse that's gonna get shot down by execs. What happens if you don't? Quest for Camelot is what happens.

You see, after the film had already basically been done, Warner Brothers decided it wasn't quite Disney enough. They scrambled to add songs, and edited the film to shit and really pissed off Celine Dione. And the Ruber song was born as song by Gary Oldman. Let my annotations say all that must be said about it's lyrics. If you must sing along...

Let's go back to War and Violence(Did I mention Ruber is the bad guy?)
I'm so bored with peace...and...SILENCE! (He's a regular Fender, that Ruber.)
Nights of evil, filled with fear (I think we get it, now, Rubs, baby.)
Your worst fear that's my i-dear of fun!(I don't want to mess with languages that aren't mine, but is there a rule to ending  EA words with an R in England? And should you really rhyme  a word that actually ends with R with one that is only pronounced as such?)

(talky bits)

Let darkness find it's sad ways. (But I thought YOU were gonna help darkness! You really are an asshole!)
Let's go back to the good old bad days.(The all or nothing days?)
No more foolish acts of kind-ness! (The Salvation Army killed his parents.)
Arrthurr and his kingdom...will be mine!(Okay. Wha...I thought this was all about bringing the darkness?)

(more talky bits)

Years from now, no one will bothar!
To recall yor good king Otharr!(And everyone will remember King Ruber the Crosseyed!)
Because all of this...will be mine!(Booo! Sell oout!)
THIS...WILL ALL...BE MINE!

I have a plan, it includes you!(You're gonna tell her, aren't you?)
You, Juliana will lead me to
Camelot! Where I will claim all that is miiiiine!( I lent Lancelot my lawnmower, and he's not takin gmy caaaaaalls!)
On the back of your wagons, my men will all hide!
You'll sit upfront, as the gates open wiiide!(This last two things could easilly be veiled threats of rape. Still, it's a good plan)
Now WATCH ME CREATE! MY MECHANYCAL AHMY! With priiiiiide! (WTF?)

With this potion! I got from some witches!(Some witches, you know. Not dropping any names or explaining why they gave this powerful potion to the biggest jerk in the world)
A drop on this chicken, and watch as it switches
Into a weapon I can use at will!(And when I drop it in my cock, it turns hard as metal too!)
Now this chicken! Can kill!(Bladebeak stats by movie's end: 0 kills, 3 defeats, 1 victory.)
Tadaaa! Behold! Blade-beak!(Ok, creative naming class is now closed.)

Hurry up and enter quickly! As I transform the meek and sickly! Into ironmen! With hands of steel!(But obviously not Ironmen(tm Marvel Comics) with hands of Steel(tm DC comics))

(Ruber continues to babble incoherently like a madman for a while, hile  his retarded henchmen jump into the pool of bodychangium they sing a Choir)
Bring on the darkness, bring on the gloom. (we like what he was singing early more! About the darkness and stuff)
We are the army of death and gloom.(So...you're gonna bring it, or do I?)

(Ruber again)
Only one will be revered! 
Hated, worshiped, loved and feared.("And army of death and gloom" tested badly with  focus groups)

I just want to say a few words: I, Me, MINE!

You were mistaken if you believed! Ruber was someone who'd crumble and leave! Well now I'm back! And I will be staying this timne!

I told tyou once!
I told ya twice!
Everything you see before you
Every last bit oof it!
Will! BE! MMIIIIiiiiine!
(Evil Laguhter)

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Golden Age is all the Rage: Moon Girl vs the Man Stealing Space Skanks



"Moongirl, help! They're getting on my pants!"

I've heard that the most effective sci fi stories deal with our worries. Is technology advancing too fast? Are we ready for what's to come? Could aliens really be planning  to spirit away and bump uglies with our men? I guess in 1945 Sheldon Moldoff really tapped into that latent fear in Moon Girl #1's "Invader's from Venus".


The story proper begins in the aforementioned planet, where an alien species is discussing their predicament: they are running out of men! This species naturally is distinct from earth humans in nothing. Not even unhuman colors or pointy ears. Couldn't they be bugeyed, yet hot? Queen Nameless dispatches Erica, her confidant, and a squadron of other Venunites to  earth to bring more men, lest their species die off.
Did you reuse, reduce, and recycle them?

And so the girls are off to kidnap Earth's most precious resource. They just happen to land on the current hometown of vaguely Middle Eastern Superwoman Moon Girl. There, they observe Lionel Manning, really  The Prince, the son of Hercules, as he's winning a baseball game, even though he's just the coach, and he's supposed to be sort of undercover. But when he gets back to the bus it's totalled. I know what happened!

Sadly, no. Instead, all the bus patrons have been kidnapped.The big man gets jumped at by some ALFILFs, but he tosses them like an Apple Nano at a birthday Party. He gets threatened to be shot with a raygun, but, despite having probably never been shot with a raygun by rape happy Venusians,  he dismisses out of hand as futile. This senseless bravado impresses Erica, because I guess in her planet, you just let the guy take your money and then cry about it. Then he gets shot.
 
Sure, it's a paralizing effect, but it's  proof that, as the rare male adult sideckick to a female Superhero, Prince kinda sucks. And what's worst, when Robin gets caught he doesn't let Batman stood up for a date. At least, I like to think he doesn't.

Indeed, Claire Lune, Alias Moongirl, is wondering where he is, when she gets told the bus never gets there. Naturally, she super runs into the scene of Prince getting all caught, and starts beating the shit out of people.
 "I'm not using my helping fist, either!"

After a sufficient amount of ass is handed, she regains her man(and only her man). Luckilly for any of them who did not want to become an automatic semen dispenser for life(and seriously, why baseball.? Have you even seen a baseball player? They're either fat or on steroids) Erica has  a bit of a change of heart and turns back in hope of nabbing  The Prince.


wait, I like this panel, but it needs  some updating.

There, all happy. Hrmm. So Erica, who won't say she's in love has a new plan: shoot everyone with paralizing ray until they win.. Okay, here's a plan, you dumb wench: "I'm a really hot woman, but from space: We're taking volunteers who would like to hump us all day. No fat dudes." I mean, we've established they see us from space, why not just ask? What's wrong with saying: "our socierty is dying, and will die without the charity of your dickings?"

Still, I guess  Erica is thinking with her, erm...whatever. She and her crew surprise The Prince at a dance and try to paralize ray everyone. Moongirl...well, she kind of beats the shit out of them again. It's kinda brutal, actually.
Is anyone else seeing people getting feet stuck up their ass? Or is it just me?

Agreeing to let them go in exchange for the other prisoners, Erica and her friends agree never to come back with their planetwrecker ways. Moongirls wonders about how women must be glad none of them  galaxy ho's is trynna steal their mans.

And so it ends.
 
Naw, just kidding. they come back in Moongirl #6. What else could happen?

After the previous failiure of their paralizer ray based schemes, the girls have  new and devious plan: cause an earthquake, then while we're dealing with the aftermath, return to the exact same college and steal the same guys, but with hypnosis this time. I  guess the Rawley college  baseball somehow collected the ideal genetic specimens. 
Jeezus, girls. I know getting a man is aparently hard, but  you're just being overdramatic now.


We get a few pages of Moongirl stopping toppling buildings, then she runs into her boyfriend walking behind one of the alien gogo dancers. She immediately assumes the worst (that he's cheating on her, not that he's about to be taken off planet to the semen farms.) Of course, she quickly sees other people also following women and  backflips into the conclusion Erica and her girls are involved.
I don't know, girls. You don't seem to be taking this very seriously.
Moon Girl then of course, flips them like  the pages of a particularly fragile book.
Tet a tit.
Man, i think I found the recurrung theme of this Venusians.  Erica, unleashes her secret weapon of hypnotized men against Moon Girl, which against all publication history works.  Moongirl gets grabbed by the legs and arms, tied, and thrown into a ditch deep in the earth. But not in a Wonder Womaney way where you kinda get that the guy was getting off on it.
However, Moon GIrl unties herself and digs her way out, grabs the ship before it  flies away,  frees the men, and throws the ship out of control toward space. And, then, instead of closure...
Ma! Pa! Come quick, it's SHELDON MOLDOFF!
Do not take my tone to mean I think there's nothing worth salvaging here, Oh, no, au contraire, mon petit. I totally would revamp the  Wolfgirls from Venus into something.  Just, you know, maybe give them head-tails or something.

The Tim Burton's wife game


Wigs are art.



I watched Les Miserables, and want to make a Scolding Review of it but…won’t. Even though there’s plenty to rip on on it, I simply won’t. But something wonderful came up with the movie, and I want to bring it up.
See, when strange, bighaired women came out to egg on Ann Hathaway’s character to sell her teeth(and way to cheat on toothless singing  Ann Hathaway, Hollywood), I jokingly asked my sister if Tim Burton’s wife had shown up when I wasn’t looking. But later in the movie she did show up.
And it got me to thinking…how do these appearances by TBW stack up in terms of associated elements? How Timburtonwifetastical is each of these? That’s how I came up with a system  to measure it. I call it the Tim Burton’s Wife Game.
Each element  is given a mathematical strength factor, meant to be added up to a total amount of points. You COULD play it as a drinking game, but as each of these are  usually all in evidence by the time Johnny Depp is eating her brains, It’d likely be a fast and heavy game of alcohol poisoning.  What are our factors? Let’s see.


Tim Burton directs the movie.
You don’t get much points for this because Tim’s wife is in all of his movies ever since they got hooked up.
Is TBW’s hair an unruly mess?
I thought this was a Tim Burton thing, but it shows up in a lot of her non-nepoticalapearances. And franky if she isn’t   going for the natural “just woke up” look, she’s bald or sporting a crazy hair hat. What’s wrong with just…hair?

Is she really pale?
I know the woman’s got a pasty complexion, it’s just that most of the time instead of playing around it, they go straight to making her more pale or having  highly contrasting black eyeliner.
Is the movie set in the Victorian years?
“Because I brought a whole truck full of corsets and giant black unseemly wigs and I don’t want it to seem  out of place.”
Is her character affably amoral?
I think I’ve only ever seen TBW as a straight up good character in Big Fish, where she was king of thought of as a villain. When she’s not straight up evil(Sleepy Hollow, Terminator Salvation), she’s generally not an aid to the heroes. Either way, she’s usually some kind of awful person but kind of charming enough not to be immediately hateable.
She dies a horrible death.
Perphaps due to her propensity for the other variables, her characters as a rule often die horrible deaths.This is especially true in her husband’s movies, where again, with exceptions like Big Fish, Planet of the Apes and Corpse Bride her characters have to die, and it’s generally nasty ways like  being killed by a vampire, having your neck cut and being dumped down a laundry chute or being kissed by Christopher Walken. Wait, that last one might not be horrible.
It is a musical/has songs.
Regardless of whether she sings, or just sits it out, TBW’s movies tend to gravitate towards theatricality. This means the odds are good this at least has some songs in it.

Let’s apply this on any film she’s in and see how that works. Let’s say…Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation racks a lowly.2 points, on account of small screentime. Surely she died horribly either because of cancer or because of the whole “nuclear war on robots” thing. But if it’s not in the film it doesn’t count.

Let’s go for something a little more recent.
Dark Shadows lost a lot of points by opting to be set in the 70s, and not casting  TBW as a pale flapper or something. It racks up 6 points.
Harry Potter 7-1  suceeds in gaming the system by 6 points as well. Had they not stretch the plot thin, we might have seen TBW thrown  into a magical thrash compactor or whatever it is that happened in the final movie.

The consummate Tim Burton’s wife representation, Old Tim somehow managed to game the system to put his wife as the second-to-third most important character in  musical about Victorian England murderers.  The movie pulls a bingo and wins 15 points, the highest score possible.
But what about Les Miserables?

10. My incapacity to tell what Victorian actually is keeps me from awarding the pts for Victorianism(doesn’t count if it’s in France, right?), but it’s still pretty strong.  I encourage you to use this here blank card and check out how other films in her filmography and see how they compare. And remember that one day she’s gonna get cast in a Transformer film as Black Arachnia, and you’ll remember me, who never once uttered her full name, and throw up a little blessing to my person.