Comics - You Should Know Why I Posted This

Even better than surprise Fred Willard in a movie: surprise Fred Willard in a comic.

Comics - Carol of the Waa

(Click to read the rest of the comic and hear the carol)
I was kind of debating whether or not to post this, since to really get it, you need to know a little bit of Brawl in the Family's past.  But I just enjoyed it so much that I had to post it, regardless.  For Christmas this year, BitF is parodying various Christmas carols, and today's strip takes on Carol of the Bells with Waluigi, who occasionally takes over the strip.  I was hoping that there would be a youtube video made that I could post here (since there was one made of yesterday's strip, a Frosty parody starring King Dedede), but no dice.  If one gets made later, I'll update this post.
Edit:

Comics - MLPFIM and Shortpacked

Shortpacked endorsing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic absolutely made my morning.  Thanks, Mr. Willis.

Hark! A Vagrant - Javert

While I'm not a big fan of Les Mis, the blending of it with Rent definitely made me laugh today.  If you check it out, just be aware that the other strips in this series are straighter Les Mis fare.

Comics - Classic with a Twist

So this Sunday, My Cage blends The Catcher in the Rye with Calvin and Hobbes, and frankly, I wouldn't mind if this became a recurring theme (that is, the mixing of newspaper strips with literature).  Especially if smatterings of the cartoonist(s)'s life was worked in (i.e. panel four really only works if you know how Bill Watterson felt about comics "selling out").

Comics - Macbeth

(click for full-sized Banquo's ghost)

Once again Hark, a Vagrant! has inspired me to post about the current comic.  The artist has taken to doing a series of comics on a subject, usually a piece of literature, and this time she's tackled Macbeth.  And each one made me laugh out loud for real (as my husband can confirm), even though I've never actually read or seen the play, and everything I know about it is from pop-culture osmosis.

Snake and Bacon?!

So there I was, watching the first couple of episodes of The Flight of the Conchords, trying to see if I like it enough to watch on TV, now that I have HBO and all that, and there's this one character who I swear I've seen in something else.  So I hopped over to the IMDB like I always do in that case, and learned the actress was Kristen Schaal basically, the only thing I knew her from was Valentine's Day, although I don't remember who her character was.  But as I was looking over her list of roles, a title jumped out at me: Snake 'n' Bacon.
Y'see, back in my high school days, I stumbled up Snake 'n' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, a collection of comics by Michael Kupperman, and just had to buy the book, even though the comics were pretty weird.  Although I lost my copy, most of the comics are pretty well-etched into my brain.  (I should still buy another copy, though.) So seeing that, some ten years afterwards, this apparently got a TV show, I just didn't know what to think.  A little investigating revealed that it was merely a pilot for Adult Swim that didn't get picked up, which is too bad.  But the entire thing is up on Adult Swim's site (and it's only like ten minutes, so there you go).
Frankly, it doesn't quite capture what made the comics so funny, but it's sort of faithful to them (as far as I can remember, anyway).  That's probably why it didn't get picked up.  But here's the middle section of the show for you to check out:

Oscars Preview

(Click for full-sized Lio)

This, right here, is the downside of Sunday comics needing to be made in advance (I think it varies from comic to comic, but it's usually a couple of months). I mean, who would have guessed The Secret of Kells would steal Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs slot, hm? Not me, and not Mark Tatulli. The rest are spot on, though.

I'll be tweeting the Oscars as I watch, which you can check out here. I'll also be posting those tweets here later.

Comics: Hark, a Vagrant

(Click for Full Size Gorey covers)

Hark, a Vagrant is a relatively new addition to my list of webcomics, and it's definitely one of the more unique ones that I read. While most of the strips are pretty amusing, today's strip, where the author imagines scenarios based on the covers of several books illustrated by Edward Gorey, just made me laugh out loud. The actual strip has five different books, but the one above made me laugh the hardest, and kept me smiling whenever I thought of it today.

Comics: January blues

(Click for fullsized bonus Shortpacked)

This one actually went up a few weeks ago, and I meant to blog it then, because I had just been to my closest Walmart (not the greatest one, but they've been working on it lately), and they were in the process of moving all the toys in the toy section around, so I definitely knew the feeling here. This was the same trip where I first found the SSC dolls that had the Berryfest Princess description on the back, but I didn't buy any because I was actually on the trail of something else, and since it wasn't at Walmart, I didn't want to get anything else. This was mostly because I was also visiting Target that day, and I figured they would have the dolls there, too, and I wasn't one hundred percent sure I wanted to get dolls anyway. I'm not a huge merchandise collector, really, although I love to go around to stores and just see what's available. Anyway, long story short, Target didn't have the dolls, later on I decided I wanted to get them anyway so I could scan the image on the back and post here, and so it was back to Walmart I went, though not that same day. By the time I got back there, the rearranging was mostly done, though it took me four times around the toy section to find where the SSC dolls were. Like I said, that Walmart is working on being a better store than they have been, but they're not quite there yet.

Good Sunday for Comics

Taking a moment from working on finishing my NaNoWriMo novel to read the comics.

My Cage explains why Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz are the same story.

From Over The Hedge. Mostly posting this because a. it made me laugh, and b. Sue Sylvester is played by Jane Lynch (and yes, she's generally the best part of the show).

Dinosaur Comics - Midas Touch

(Click for full-sized Retelling of King Midas)

I have been meaning to add Dinosaur Comics to my list of webcomic links for a while now (like a couple of years), but I always felt I had to read the whole archive first, and after reading through a few months at a time I would forget about it until someone linked to it again.  But this comic, originally from last November) clinches it: I'm adding Dinosaur Comics to my links list right now.  Seriously, I have not laughed this hard at anything in a good long time.

Comics: Still Your Fault

Click for fullsize Looking For Group.

I'm mostly posting this because the line "I made you a diagram.  Still your fault," made me laugh more than Looking For Group usually does.

Merry Christmas

Click for full-sized Unshelved!  And have a merry Christmas.

Some tidbits I've been saving

I have had that professor, seriously. We were all begging him to be more specific about a certain assignment, but he refused to give us anything more than the base description (it was a core course, so all the sections were exactly the same, regardless of who taught it). And then after the assignment was graded, he berated us for doing it wrong. -_-

Trolling the Jim Hill Media archives, I found this little sidenote in an article from 2004, and thought I'd share it:

Speaking of Disney & money ... There's a fascinating story about that "Mission to Mars" movie. The Walt Disney Company actually let the first director that they hired for that film -- Gore Verbinski -- go because he wanted "M2M" to be a special effects extravaganza. A film with no less than 600-700 effects shots.

Disney wasn't willing to spend the money necessary to to make that version of "Mission to Mars." So they let Gore go and replaced him with Brian DePalma. Who significantly pared down the scope & proposed cost of the project so that his version of the film would only feature 240 effects shots.

Long story short: Brian's low budget version of "M2M" failed to really wow audiences. So -- the next time that Disney hired Gore Verbinski to direct a motion picture -- they let him have all the special effects shots he wanted.

That picture turned out to be much more popular than "Mission to Mars." Maybe you've heard of it? "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"?

I was actually looking in the archives for a story I figured I read there, that gave a brief synopsis of how the Tinker Bell movie (then occasionally called "Tinker Bell and the Ring of Belief") was going to be about.  Turns out I was thinking of an article on a completely different site that was linked through Animated News.

I was thinking about 'what might have been' because the movie that did come out, while probably better than the one planned, felt a little lackluster to me, and all because of one particular plot point.  Now, the meat of the movie is that Tinker Bell, brand new fairy on the block, wants to go to the mainland (London) with the nature fairies, but since she's a tinker fairy, she can't, so she tries to make herself be a nature fairy instead.  However, it's never explicitly stated that she can't go.  All that's really said is that tinker fairies don't go to the mainland.   I mean, if there had been a scene where she asked if she could go and was turned down, then maybe I wouldn't feel so 'meh' about the rest of the movie, or even if there had been a reveal later, a kind of "All you had to do was ask" scene.

And personally, I just don't buy the whole "Tink was the only tinker to ever think of using 'lost things' to make things" bit.  I do, however, believe that Fairy Mary was able to quash any other tinker fairy who tried to, though.  Heh.  But I am glad for the version that we got, because if the original version had come out, there wouldn't have been any Vidia in it, and that would have been tragic indeed.

Comics - It's so easy...

(Click for Full-sized We The Robots)

I definitely know the feeling.

Comics Conundrum

Was it somehow planned that these two comics would run on the same day? It seems ironic, especially since in my local paper, One Big Happy comes before Non Sequitur. So don't blame Mr. Foley, Ruthie, it was all thanks to Danae.

Shortpacked and my life

(Click for full-sized Shortpacked!)

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction when my fiancé decided to grow a mustache, with similar results. That's pretty much how he looked, too. I made him shave it off (the rule was, when he was back home he could have it, but not while I'm around), so maybe Amber will do the same.
Speaking of my fiancé, he flew in last night, so I'll be seeing him soon. And tomorrow he'll no longer be my fiancé, but my husband. Whoa...

Moomin Comics

As promised, here are a few of the strips from the first two volumes of the Moomin comics:

This is the one I described in the earlier post, except I forgot that Sniff was the one peddling the elixir, not Moomin.


I kind of want to make a Pirates of the Caribbean reference, but I can't make it come out right. The pirates go one about the rum for a few more strips, if that tells you anything.


I just like the middle panel.

I also particularly like the little turn of phrases that occur from time to time, such as rich Aunt Jane describing herself as a "millionairess." And when questioned on her crush on Mr. Brisk, the Mymble responds, "He's a he-man...but I don't think he sees me as a she-miss."

You had to be there

Ah man, today's Dominic Deegan so makes me want to make an "Option Side" joke, but the only people who would get it are people who went to a KND board I don't go to any more. But I can't not make it, so I'm posting it here anyway. Thus, my commentary on this strip is "They should have known better than to go to the Option Side."

I guess I really should explain that. You see, on that board there was thread for adding your own captions to screenshots from the show, and a running joke started about a resort with a "Clothing Optional" side, which quickly got shortened to Option Side. This was apparently the only reason these characters went to the resort ^_~. And there you have it.

Also, I'm saddened that The Committee Song from Babar the Movie is only available in French and Finnish on Youtube. The comments on today's Skin Horse make me want to post the opening lyrics over there, but I can't remember them. If only I still had my old computer...I had all the lyrics written down there.