Tuesday, June 23, 2015

WHO CARES WHAT RACE SPIDEY IS

Oh yes, I have this blog I am supposed to update and throw cartoons up on. Well, lemme see what I can talk about... Oh. I have it...

So about five or six years ago, I wanted to make a Phantom Of The Opera-style character for AMPUTHEATRE. He is after all one of the classic monsters, and he for sure needed a representative Slasher in my horror fighting game opus. Trouble was that the actual Phantom doesn't really have any abnormal powers. He's just a music teacher with a scarred face, and AMPUTHEATRE already has a wildly uneven beef-stroganoff-face-to-GQ-looker ratio.

So I delved a little bit into Phantom folklore, and found out that Tony Todd once portrayed him on Broadway. At this time, Bill Cosby was making headlines for NO, NOT THE RAPES; he was approaching any podium that would have him and order black kids and black performers to stop swearing, pull up their pants, and quit embracing the thug life. So an African-American phantom determined to educate the inner-city youth on Shakespeare clicked with me...

And Fantome is one of the better characters in the game, I feel; his move set is cool and his man-catcher theater hook is quite iconic. Plus I got to make a black villain without falling on obnoxiously overdone stereotypes. Which is nice.

So what I want to ask myself today is this: Would I have conceived Fantome if Andrew Lloyd Webber said "NO; THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA IS WHITE, HE'S ALWAYS BEEN WHITE. TONY TODD CAN'T PLAY HIM, FUCK OFF"...? I can't say for sure.

Shorter Stan Lee: We made Spider-Man's costume full-cover so he could be any race, BUT HE'S WHITE. Does it genuinely matter?

...Why are so many of you comic book fans so creatively incarcerated and weirdly conservative? You swallow so many notions about these goofball stories, like rings that can affect anything except yellow things, a pair of glasses making Clark Kent indistinguishable from the train-hefting man-god, and the fact that DEATH FLAT-OUT DOESN'T WORK IN COMICS because these costumed cretins just come back twelve issues later.

Creativity will always blossom, just give it a chance. Make a black Spider-Man.

Hell, they made Jesus a white dude...

Friday, February 13, 2015

Cheez-Its are EVIL

...Hello there, Deep Fried visitors! As I currently stuff myself with Hot & Spicy Cheez-It crackers (my wife is trying to kill me) I thought it best to kind of tell everyone what's been up lately.

Hopefully you guys are enjoying the cartoons. I get a few likes here and there- and thanks to sweet people like you, I'm earning a decent chuck of change from it. It's good to be doing it again... I always told myself I shouldn't due to the dichotomy of being an artist who builds figures of no sociopolitical slant who then turns around to draw something the complete opposite. But [back of palm to forehead] perhaps my own demons have always proved the worst.

Hope you Northeasters are surviving this cold all right. I wanted to hold AMPUTHEATRE today (it being Friday the 13th and a national holiday) but too cold fuck it... Wanna see what else I've been doing?




...Fairies! Each of these stand 2" high. They've got their own section in the Etsy store and I'm wanting to make their section as robust as the Dragons shelf in the Hungerford studio. Go buy all of these. It's important.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Perky & Slick 2015-1-30: "Grammy Awards"

New Perky & Slick! Support this comic with as little as $1/month on their Patreon page! (Yeah, I know it's late. S'matter? I can't have a bad week; where's that written?)


Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Perky & Slick 2015-1-20: "Why Don't You Draw Mohammed"

This week, an answer as to why Mohammed never appeared in P&S, followed up with a COUNTER-question! Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Perky & Slick 2015-1-12: "Hebdo Von Frankenstein"

This week, can Kirby DeLauter Von Frankenstein's monster speak sense to the crazed mob? Read it embiggened here and support this comic with a pledge as small as $1/month on their Patreon page!

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Friday, January 2, 2015

Movie Review: "The Sacrament" (2013)

Happy New Year, everyone! Hey, let's hope 2015 is going to be better than what came before, eh...? I know! I doubt it, too!

One of my wife's top topics is the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, so with one final Holiday evening of a self-imposed Nothing To Do (no really: final! I gotta get my ass in gear), we saw "The Sacrament", which has been on both Netflix and several Best Horror Films of 2014 lists for a while now. Putting aside my trepidation of director Ti West, we fired up the XBOX and let Magnet Films and producer Eli Roth do their thing: Recovering drug addict Caroline has holed herself up at a drug-free retreat called Eden Parish. When she invites her fashion photographer brother Patrick to check it out, he arrives with Sam and Jake from VICE Magazine because there's clearly a story in here. There's also armed guards, an abused little girl, and an enigmatic religioso called Father whose paranoia kicks in by the arrival of the journalists- all of which turn Shangri-La into Shit Outta Luck in just shy of twenty-four hours.

West creates an excellent atmosphere. The first half oozes with dread, and the second is nail-biting terror- exceptionally difficult to pull off in bright daylight since the climax occurs at morning, but damn. He also gets solid, creepy performances out of my actors, and this "found-footage" movie doesn't feel found-footage: there are quick edits and crisp cinematography that really captures the feeling of hiding in the woods from fuckers out to kill you.

So what is my problem with Ti West? I don't think the guy is particularly creative story-wise. The Sacrament is an almost by-the-numbers Cliff's Notes of the Jonestown Massacre; all West left out was a selfless congressman. (Back when politicians did their jobs, it was Leo J. Ryan, California-D, who braved one assassination attempt to personally rescue the cult members and died to a second.) West has said that this film is his most horrific one yet, which isn't too hard when quoting cult leader Jim Jones directly. My wife has seen documentaries on Jonestown, and pretty much kept piping up "Yep! THAT happened!" "Yeah! The 'Please Help Us' note; THAT happened, too!" "Yeah, Jones TOTALLY said that!" throughout the viewing. Which is fine, but I can't really call it original. Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of The Lambs were all inspired by Ed Gein; you don't end THOSE movies with nipple belts weighing on your mind.

But, for those unwilling to see real photos of a field in Guyana where you can't see the grass for the corpses (until 9/11 happened, Jonestown held the record for most killed American civilians), The Sacrament shines as a means of awareness towards a terrible tragedy. And one day, Ti West will receive a unique, innovative screenplay to direct, and that horror film is going to knock it out of the park. 5/5 cyanide syringes.


...Oh, and I have a great idea: how about we, as a society, stop goddamn saying that obnoxious accusation of conformity known as "You drank the Kool-Aid!" Really. Not because the drink was actually Flavor-Aid, nor because of sensitivity to the survivors- for the record, there were a lot of last-minute epiphanies and they were all answered with bullets to the head. I mean, feel free if you want to keep using it, but consider this: willingly drinking poison was the fifth insane thing these people did. What does that say about you!? "Well, I can see why you thought this guy in dark glasses was the Nazarene; I have no problem with you selling all your shit to build him a compound in East Bumblefuck, Whereverthehell; I completely understand leaving your home, your career, your family, and everyone you know to live there in a tent with tropical insects; and I'm totally down with letting strangers have their way with me sexually and violently! But you lose me on the cyanide! Dude! You have so much to live for!" So the next time the rest of society gets in line for an iProduct or votes for the candidate you dislike and you just have to say something, do us all a favor: bray like a sheep...? 

Besides, Kirk fucking Cameron, a man who does not believe in evolution, said "You drank the Kool-Aid!" to his fellow Christian Christian in his execrable Holiday movie (ha, ha!) Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas, for not Jesus-ing everything up as much as he did. HE said it. There is FOOTAGE of him saying it. That automatically means it is no longer cool or funny. You don't want to be like Kirk Cameron, do you? Stupid question!

You KNOW there's a off-radar compound and a mass suicide bubbling up in this asshole. Give him ten or fifteen years.