Legion of Super-Heroes / Peanuts mashup

A friend of mine pointed me to a hilarious mash-up of Peanuts and the Legion of Super-Heroes. I was startled by how well the combination worked and at how skillfully the creator(s) handled it.

The whole title is "You're a Good Man, Charlie Taine." There aren't many strips, unfortunately, and the last, best, and most intricate of them has the words "The End" instead of a "Next" link, but it's worth reading them just to experience what's there, at least if you're a casual or serious Legion of Super-Heroes fan.

Check it out.

Click here to read the full post with comments.

New Year's resolutions

Happy New Year, all.


This strip is from Lio, one of my all-time favorite comic strip series--it's a clever, funny, occasionally dark series that is more likely to make me laugh than just about any I read. I guess "read" is a questionable term, since Lio is what the creator calls a "pantomime strip," containing no dialogue (although it does make frequent use of signs, notes, etc., so it's not entirely wordless). I usually keep up with it on the Seattle Times site here since it's pretty easy to navigate to the past couple weeks of strips if I miss a day.

Anyway, a few quick New Year's resolutions:

1. Be more patient. This means especially with my sons and wife, but also fellow drivers, people in general, etc.
2. Write my next book. I've got notes and concepts for a sequel to Devil's Cape. Now I just need to get cooking and write the darn thing.
3. Blog more frequently. I've been posting more frequently since early December, but before that, this site got pretty dusty for a while. I'd like to change that.
   
4. Game a little more. I don't want to go crazy here (and gaming and writing sometimes seem to tap the same creative well, so I have to be careful not to let gaming take away from my writing), but I would like to get together with the guys and throw some dice around and talk in funny voices more often.
   

Click here to read the full post with comments.

And the laugh riot that is Funky Winkerbean continues ... again

When I was a kid, a pipe burst in my closet and I got a lot of flooded stuff, including a box or so of comics. Shortly after Dina and I married, I had another leak of some sort that ruined another couple of comic boxes in our apartment.

Both of these occasions sucked. Ruined comics = bad times.

A whole store filled with ruined comics sounds absolutely terrible. Almost as terrible as the "keep my head above water" punchline.

Click here to read the full post with comments.

He zigs, he zags...

I take it back. I was rooting for poor Wally, but am annoyed at the whole fake-out here. Because, you know, the whole idea that Wally is playing a video game with an avatar that looks so much like him as to be perfectly indistinguishable from the "real thing" is just annoying. Bleh. I liked the Comics Curmudgeon's take on this (third item). He's referring to other depressing developments in Funky Winkerbean, including a band leader losing his hearing and a character dealing with cancer.

Click here to read the full post with comments.

And the laugh riot that is Funky Winkerbean continues

On the one hand, I salute Tom Batiuk's continued willingness to address real-life drama and pain head-on. On the other hand, I pretty much prefer to turn to the comics to escape depressing news. I've felt like poor Wally has had death's hand on his shoulder ever since he was called back into active duty, especially with the arrival of little Wally and all. When Tuesday's strip had him proposing that, instead of calling the baby "little Wally," they should call him "old, original Wally" and the baby "new, improved Wally," I had a feeling that they were leading up to a clearer distinction of "dead Wally" and "orphaned Wally" instead.

But I hope he pulls through.

And I'll be back to read the strip again tomorrow, which I guess is what Batiuk wants.

Click here to read the full post with comments.

DM of the Rings

This whole series of strips is absolutely hilarious, particularly to anyone who has played in role-playing games in general and D&D in particular. The irreverant take on The Lord of the Rings series had my laughing out loud. Very funny stuff.

Check it out.

Click here to read the full post with comments.