I never thought nature could so be ill

As to grace a tiger with a drill

To dig all day must be a thrill

Except for the worms getting in your grill

-Lil Darwayne, 19th freestyle naturalist

So, did you guys hear?

Scooby and the gang were caught running a racket where they dipped children in gold paint.

They were medal-ing kids.

YUK YUK YUK YUK YUK!

Kinda bored, so I thought I’d share some photos I took at a Taiwanese night market we went to when we were in Taipei back in 2010. It was an absolutely surreal kind of experience the likes of which you would never see here outside of a comic convention—walll to wall people crammed into a narrow alleyway lined with shops, choking your senses with light, sounds and smells.

It’s like one of those crazy marketplaces you’d see in a movie, only instead of finding ancient cursed talismans or mogwais stuffed into old pine boxes, you find the most delightful knockoffs:

IT’S A ME….PARIO. LET’S A YO?

SKI MASK COPS

And my personal favorite….

I think these dudes got Multiplicity and Batman confused.

ALSO this was the best shirt I saw:

Some of the shops were little more than a hole in the wall, with barely enough room for one person:

For some reason shopping areas fascinate me a great deal, more as a reflection of the culture they represent than anything. I’m sure most people would look at this and be like WOW WHAT A SHITHOLE and go galumphing off to Neiman Marcus or whatever to choke in some shitty perfume fumes and gnaw on a $100 sweater, but I find it’s got a lot of character to it—even if it is pretty much the result of having absolutely no space to expand.

This was the “food court” area, which was basically a separate pavilion full of stuff I couldn’t even begin to guess on. We didn’t have a guide or anything so we didn’t try too much but man everything smelled DIVINE except for the stinky tofu.

Anyways I’m rambling but basically I’m saying the night market was amazing to explore and I want to go back some day

HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOY THE PHOTOS I also have some from trips to Hong Kong so I may put those up sometime if people are interested

amomentofarchiesonic:

Where does one start with the problems here?

Oh my god I could go on ALL NIGHT about these particular issues of Knuckles.

The artwork breaks my heart for a lot of obviously apparent reasons, but apart from VECTOR GROPING SWAN TITTIES and MIGHTY GROWING POPEYE ARMS and A BILLION SHITTY KNUCKLES CLONES, I KNOW that this dude is actually a competent artist!

It’s Chris Allan, who did most of the run on Archie’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic! I don’t know what the hell happened, but I’m hazarding a guess that he got a gig on the book and saw it was talking animals and just applied FREAKISH MUTANT TURTLE proportions to everyone and called it a day because the editorial staff apparently didn’t give enough of a shit to give him some direction that would result in ACTUAL ARTISTIC CONSISTENCY WITH PRIOR ISSUES OF THE COMIC.

But personally I don’t think even good art could have salvaged those stinker issues. YES LET’S WRITE A STORY ARC ABOUT KNUCKLES TRYING TO GET IT ON WITH A LADY, THIS WILL SURE INTEREST OUR CORE AUDIENCE OF YOUNG CHILDREN.

No WHOOPS you just confused these children for life, now they’re drawing swan tits

Sorry guys I get very passionate about how AWFUL these comics were, so don’t be surprised if I start fuming about it now that I’ve discovered this wonderful tumblr account!

So earlier last year, I set the stage for a comicing disaster of operatic proportions, and I have no intention of leaving you folks hanging. Let’s get on with it!

“REALAWORLD CHAPTER 1: THE MYSTERIOUS DAZE OF NIGHT”

We can already tell from the title that this is gonna be a good one. Let’s take a look at the cover, shall we?

A more accurate depiction of the suffering within this book would be to have NiGHTS pinned to a cross. Let me just say, I think this is actually a pretty good cover (once again supplied by Spaz), EXCEPT for that AWFUL CG coloring. I don’t know why but that shit was rampant on Sonic comics around this time, as if there was an editorial mandate on taking decent cover compositions and running then through some CG mud. Or perhaps it was intentional on the artist’s part?? The use of bright, garish colors is not unlike that of the poison dart frog or the common hornet, trying to warn us of the grim realities that await us should we wander too close. Whatever the case, those warnings were not heeded, and I paid dearly as a result.

And now, so shall you.

Let’s not dwell on the mundane bits for too long: the comic opens up with our heroes Elliot and Claire getting ready for their HOT DATE with one another, and apparently they decide to whip into full-blown exposition of what happened in NiGHTS 1-3 in what I hope is their attempt to alleviate pre-date jitters. I refuse to post the rest of this spread because it’s most shots of feet and it’s too early for dumb shit like that.

BUT IT WAS ALL A DREAM…..man, what did those crazy kids eat???

Oh silly me it was the prank of Reala, the evil dream jester that also feels the urge to narrate his lil heart out.

For those who give a damn about a recap: NiGHTS kills Wizeman in the first 3 issues of the comic and almost dies in the process. Claire and Elliot saves NiGHTS’ life and somehow it transports him from the dream world to the real world.

Now I showed these pages in full for two reasons; first off, there are still coherent backgrounds present. Secondly, the art is still recognizable as Spaz, though you can start to see the bits of Sam Maxwell leaking through—mostly in the form of those awful bits of oil slick shading, and half-assed, inconsistent details like Wizeman’s hand on that Reala page. Sadly, these 3 pages are about the only decent stuff you’ll see—from here, Maxwell’s taint sets in quickly.

So now we cut to NiGHTS flyin’ around the real world all like WHOA THIS IS TIGHT these dudes are skydiving and then

AUGHHHHHHHHHH

One of the skydivers is so taken aback by the sheer horror of the walleyed flying anime fan that he turns a terrible shade of citrus and attempts to kick himself in the face.

Next we get an expert display of heroism from our hero:

I think it would have been great if NiGHTS had the inverse reaction and cut everyone else’s chutes so they could catch up with Toby.

MEANWHILE

Elliot and Claire are getting pretty bored of being in their own comic. I would be too if my school looked like a baby vomited pea soup. ALSO: check out that CEILING BASKETBALL HOOP AND THE AMAZING LEVITATING SMURF CHILD stuck on the wall in panel 3. Holy shit.

AND MEANWHILE NIGHTS IS ON A GODDAMN RAMPAGE

I love how this dream being is loose in a world he doesn’t understand, and one of the first actions he performs is to barrel headfirst into a skylight and scream at whoever may be in earshot. I know the intent is to make him horribly naive, but I think he’s just got some form of Nightopian Rabies, if that mouth in the last panel is any indication. I’d also like to draw your attention to the line about giving NiGHTS “A BELLYFUL OF BLAST,” which I tout as the worst possible expression that has ever been invented for use in any written medium.

GOOD THING THAT COLOR GRADIENT WAS THERE TO STOP ‘EM

I think my favorite detail is how this buff terrorist dude seems to lose half his muscle mass between panels 2 and 3.

By this point you can tell which stuff was Spaz breakdowns and which stuff was Sam Maxwell having an artistic breakdown. I do not mind mediocre comic art as long as there is some function and consistency to it, but this book is a quality control nightmare. I don’t know how extensive Spaz’s breakdowns were for this book—the first three pages were most certainly the most closely followed, but from there either Spaz just gave up when he found out who would be doing the finishing work, or Maxwell just flat out did not give a shit about coloring inside the lines as it were. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter, as there are patches here and there that look more like Spaz, and then it immediately reverts to Maxwell’s primordial goop.

And this is to say nothing of the coloring, which looks like a lime took a shit over most of the backgrounds. But given that it was Ken Penders providing the coloring, I am not at all shocked by his predilection towards green—if you know of his later Knuckles stories in the Sonic comic, you know what I mean.

And much like NiGHTS, this is all I can stomach posting for now! I’ll get the rest of this issue up at some point to punish you all further. Until then:

So I finally beat the Sonic portion of Sonic 360 tonight, after having “borrowed” it from a friend for three years—he doesn’t want it back EVER and has refused to take it back.

I’m sure the internet has already said more than its fill about this game, but I must say I feel privileged to take part in a hobby that can consistently take simple ideas and turn them into something virtually unprocessable by human logic. I have witnessed the digital equivalent of a violent train wreck, and have voraciously devoured every detail of the grisly, mangled forms heaping out of it before the authorities have even had time to dispatch emergency vehicles. When Sonic awkwardly screams out for Princess “I’m A Gangly Anime” Elise, I am reaching out for him, desperate to know his touch in hopes that by osmosis I can analyze the digital fingerprint left by his creators, in hopes that I too may experience the emotions heaving out of their sobbing forms as they hastily delivered this game into the world, wet and shrieking with dismay, knowing all too well it would never be whole.

It’s okay, Sonic 360. I’m here for you.

Shhhh.

TIME TO SHOW OFF WHAT A HUGE GODDAMN GREMLINS NERD I AM

(not pictured is my dartboard Gizmo magnet and the huge Gremlins 1 poster hanging on my wall)

I really enjoyed Cara Bean’s Gremlins comic a lot! I grew up seeing Gremlins 2 first, so I never got to have the privilege of being emotionally scarred by Gremlins 1, so I find people’s firsthand accounts interesting as hell! Even better is how the comic goes into how Gremlins was one of the films that led to the inception of the PG-13 rating, a fascinating tidbit of cinema history!

Also I posted my favorite panel from the whole thing, where I just imagine the kid whsipering the line in the most traumatized tone possible. SO GOOD!

Behold the comics I plundered from SPX. I shall now sit atop them like Smaug on his pile of gold. Okay okay time to plug all this rad stuff—

Vattu: The First Day and Warriors by Evan Dahm: I adore this man’s inkwork and worldbuilding skills so muuuuucccccchhhhh

Sorcery 101 by Kel McDonald: I’ve been meaning to start reading this for a while and I’m awful at checking websites so I needed a book of it in front of me. I ENJOYED IT VERY A LOT.

Question Hound’s Puzzletorium and Midnight Surprise by KC Green: No one can ever say a bad thing about KC ever. EVER. I give him six out of five Shreks.

24 Hours by Eric Feurstein: This one was a Red Dead Redemption comic I mainly picked up for my brother’s amusement. It’s pretty hilarious and I need to check out more of this dude’s stuff.

Cat Rackham Loses It and Turtie Needs Work by Steve Wolfhard: RATTA TAT CAT. THAT IS ALL.

Monster Pulse and SWEET MONSTER PULSE TOTE BAG by Magnolia Porter: Magnolia’s stuff is a DELIGHT, her monster designs are the best. ALSO THANK YOU FOR DRAWING THAT ADORABLE GLENN IN MY BOOK :’)

Quatro Monstro Anthology by These People!: This is one of the few things I have not gotten to read through since I got back, but it’s a bunch of monster stories and the artists are really cool so CHECK IT OUT

Kindling Preview by Deanna Echanique: (hey deanna i forgot who’s doing the writing for this so lemme know so i can add it) Deanna’s pencilwork on this is amazing and if she rushes the inking i will stab her. >:|

Monster Country #2 by Eric Lide: My tablemate Eric rocks the hell outta comics with ridiculous characters and monster girls. HIS BLOODLINE IS THAT OF THE ANCIENT BADASSES.

Space Case Sally #2 by Ashley Quigg: Another super hard working friend of mine who drinks ancient potions to keep her linework clean. CHECK HER OUT OKAY

Octopus Pie Book 2 by Meredith Gran: seriously if you don’t know what this is go away

Tiny Hamilton and 8 Scary Things by Jared by Anne and Jerzy Drozd: These two work on some of the most adorable stuff :’) ALMOST MAKES UP FOR THE PEACH FAYGO JERZY INFLICTED ON ME LAST WEEKEND.

Tortoise and Hare by Mike Luckas: ANOTHER SVA PERSON! Mike’s work is insanely polished—his inks and colors and top notch and he’s got a great grasp on action stuff! (also holy crap Mike, HARE’S BOSS CRACKED ME UP SO MUCH)

Apple and Sparrow - Clover Cadets by Kasey Van Hise: Kasey’s another one of my bestest buds and I’d totally get on her case because it’s what I do but this comic has the most adorable bee in it so she gets a reprieve this time

Caper Con Carne by Hanni Brosh: Another one of my best buds who pulled out all the stops to get this book out in time for SPX and it came out BYOOTIFUL. Cryin’ onion is tops.

The Gremlin Movie Incident by Cara Bean: God, my biggest regret of SPX was that I bought this when the artist wasn’t around! I have a good idea I probably would have gotten into an INSANELY long-winded conversation about the Gremlins movies with her. I’m actually gonna gush a bit more about this one in a separate post.

Teddy Comics by Emily Huff: ADORABLE PARROT COMICS :’)

Margaret Flying by Alison Wight: This girl stopped by our table and traded minis with us! I haven’t gotten a chance to read this one yet either, but I skimmed it real quick and it’s really nicely done! Check out her stuff!

Also the last thing I got wasn’t comics, but these ADORABLE roach earrings from Kelsey Werner! I actually thought they were charms when I got them and I don’t wear earrings BUT WHO CARES I’m inventive and can find a good use for ‘em anyway cuz they rock.

SO YEAH I’m tired of typing now, back to being sad about SPX bein’ over :’(

SPX was super rad, I just wish it was longer (LE SIGH). Tim, Eric and I all had a blast, and I’d like to thank everyone who stopped by, especially all my online friends who stopped by to meet my hideous self in person for the first time—sorry if I drooled ranch dressing on any of you!!

Okay now NERDY PHOTOS OF MY SWAG INCOMING

ME.

TIM SPARVERO.

ERIC LIDE.

COME FIND US AT SPX….IF YOU DARE.