Back of the Envelope

Yes, it's on time for once. Now that I've got the rough draft of Eyes in the Shadow finished, I can get back to regular blogging. Of course, there's still a lot of revising to do. Anyway, on with the webcomics.

Sluggy Freelance — Pete's decided to take some time off in order to rest his hand, so there are only a couple of comics this week. Still, some nice character interaction, even if it's really sad that Torg failed to invite Zoe to their celebratory get-together at the zombie themed restaurant. What's going on there? I know Torg's still upset over the death of Alt-Zoe, but it's really hurting his relationship with regular Zoe. He should just come clean. Other than that, it's sketches for filler.

Day by Day — Damon gets upset with the president of Pepsico, which also owns stock in the company he works at, so he quits. At least until Jan's father manages to convince Pepsico to divest its stock and Damon to return.

Scary Go Round — So Riley's a multiple-abductee. Of aliens, that is. She aims to prove it to Tim, but Shelly ends up being taken instead.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — So Mike was testing his roommates to see if they could stop him. It turns out that his deal with Satan was to play host to him for ten minutes. Needless to say, neither Roger nor Dave are happy about it. Dave, at least, has no intention of making any kind of deal with Satan, even if he threatens Blue. I think Dave has the right idea. Satan's threats are no more believable than his promises. Making a deal's a mistake no matter what Satan threatens or promises.

General Protection Fault — Sharon's birth mother turns out to be on the FBI's most wanted list. After some hacking, Sharon tracks her down, only to be foiled by a little deception. I'm pretty sure that's Trudy's mom, making Trudy and Sharon sisters, but I haven't gone back through the archives to make sure.

Schlock Mercenary — Pranger double-crosses Kevyn, only it turns out it's a triple-cross, and Pranger was only trying to lure Phica into a falses sense of security so he could be captured. And now everything goes crazy. What fun! If we're lucky, both Tagon and past-Kevyn will survive.

This is crude, but very funny, commentary on Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. From the brilliant mind of David Willis, who's now decided to do Shortpacked! full time.

So I'm a day and a half late again. I'd make this a Monday regular, except that the Webcomic Update's one of the few things I post on the weekend, and it makes more sense to keep on the Sunday to Saturday arc, which is what most of the webcomics follow, albeit irregularly.

Sluggy Freelance — Uh oh. Pete Abrams, the artist of Sluggy Freelance, has busted his hand. This week he managed to continue producing the comic with his off-hand, but the artwork looks like it was produced by somebody's off-hand. Probably a four year old's. I'm exaggerating a little. Some parts actually don't look bad, but it's still not up to Sluggy quality. Hopefully he'll find a solution soon. On topic, we advance events by a month, and Torg and Gwynn are out to get jobs. Torg working a nine-to-five job? That's just wrong. The question thing is, why is Torg sticking around anyway? I thought he was going on a quest, probably to find either Oasis or Bun-bun.

Day by Day — Let's see, who gets the rough side of Chris's tongue this time. There's Reid, Kerry, Newsweek, Dan Rather, and Keith Olbermann. Especially Newsweek. As they printed an untrue story that resulted in deaths, I think they're getting off lightly.

Scary Go Round — The living folks aren't the only ones with new jobs. Natalie the dead French girl has gotten a job as a Grim Reaper.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Pete's not the only webcomic artist unwell. Maritza's been under the weather all week, doubtless due to her pregnancy, and she's only produced two comics, in which we see that Margaret's as self-involved as ever (hint: it's not all about you!) and Mike's acting evil.

General Protection Fault — We meet Sharon's adoptive parents, and she discovers the name of her birth mother.

Schlock Mercenary — While past-Kevyn's dealing with Pranger and a ticked off Tagon, future-Schlock has stowed away on Pranger's ship. He's already causing trouble, but I hope it's good trouble--helping Tagon and Kevyn--rather than what happened the last time he stowed away and messed up Kevyn's time travel, which was bad trouble.

All right, this is two days late. Sorry about that, but at least it isn't a week late, as I've been known to do before.

Sluggy Freelance — Riff's baby-sitting gig isn't going as planned so he calls in Torg. This may not be the best idea he ever had. They try to get her to sleep by driving her around, and manage to get arrested.

Day by Day — Up for mocking are pie-throwing liberals, Fabio, Arianna Huffington, Senator Voinovich, Gingrich's and Hillary's Healthcare plan, and President Bush's nicknaming abilities.

Scary Go Round — Tim's elected mayor. He's having trouble settling into the new job, and Shelley's having trouble finding a new job. Oh, and we see that Riley's kookier than we realized. Well, she's gotta be to live in a place like Tackleford.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Well, the Roomies have the first meeting of "Nobody's Organization for the Eradication of Satan." I think that name's a little bit overambitious, but we finally get some quality sharing of Satan's activities and maybe a bit of insight to go along with all the inter-Roomie bickering. Unfortunately, Mike's still not planning on sharing everything with everybody, and it looks like Dave and Roger are in for a post-meeting revelation.

General Protection Fault — And they're back in the real world. Ki doesn't quite remember seeing the Gamester, but she manages to convince Nick to leave the Mutex alone for a while. It won't be easy for him to stop tinkering, but it is for the best.

Schlock Mercenary — Past-Kevyn's off to save Tagon. Unfortunately, he has to let Pranger call the shots, and that's problematic as Pranger's pretty untrusting and not properly respectful of protecting the lives of Kevyn and his friends.

Sluggy Freelance — Zoe manages to keep the cloners from finding Aylee before they clone a race of man-eating shapeshifting aliens. That's probably a good thing. Meanwhile, Torg and Gwynn are having trouble living with Min, and even Riff earns her wrath by the end. It's a good thing that Mr. Middleman's finally come up with a job for Riff to keep him out of trouble. Or maybe to get him into it.

Day by Day — Air America, Karl Rove, Bob Fertik, Ward Churchill, and baby boomers are the topics du jour, although there's some fun Sam and Zed interactions as well.

Scary Go Round — Mayor and Quorn each get a giant balloon in their likenesses, and Quorn's nearly destroys an animal sanctuary before Tim saves the day. Now, what do you think the odds are of Tim winning an election he had dropped out of?

College Roomies from Hell!!! — And we're back! What do you know? Dave has finally told Margaret about Chester. It's about time, too. She didn't take it too well, although it didn't go as bad as it could have. And now Mike's gathered all the Roomies together, probably to discuss their Satan problem, but there's still some bad blood among them.

General Protection Fault — Yay, the team beats Warmonger thanks to Sharon's newly discovered superpower. Now Nick plans to get them all home, but the Speck hitches a ride with the Gamester.

Schlock Mercenary — While past-Kevyn's planning to save Tagon, future-Kevyn intends to save the galaxy. Petey's gathered together every last military force in the galaxy, half of whom wants to destroy the other half, but they have a bigger problem--whoever's planning to destroy the whole Milky Way.

I guess I was kind of heavy on the Webcomics today. I'm not planning on doing this regularly, but I've got to admit, I like the alliteratioin.

College Roomies from Hell!!! is back with a new storyline, "Oh NOES!" I have no idea what it's going to be about (okay, I do have some ideas--they still have to convince Dover not to fail them), but I thought I'd point that Dave has finally told Margaret about his soul-link with Chester. She didn't take it well, although not as badly as we first thought.

Alright, maybe I should explain here. Chester is Dave's cat, but he's not an ordinary cat. You see, Satan stole Dave's soul, and when he got it back, the dead cat lying next to him got a part of it, bringing it back to life. Now there's a link between them, so that they feel each other's emotions. There may be more to it on a subconscious level, but that hasn't been fully explored. Dave's been keeping this a secret from Margaret, since Chester is very affectionate with her, and Dave's been worried that Margaret would take it poorly if she found out he's getting some emotional feedback from that.

Anyway, since he's finally worked up the courage to tell her about Chester, and her reaction wasn't that bad, I think their relationship has reached a milestone. But I'm still holding firm to my prediction that they won't actually be getting together right away. After all, there's still Blue.

My first week of blogging I talked about some of my favorite webcomics. Since then I've been covering them in my Weekly Webcomic Update. My criteria for the webcomics I highlighted was that they updated daily and consistently, they were in good taste, and that I really liked them. Since then I've relaxed the daily update requirement, and webcomics that update weekdays only are now part of the Weekly Webcomic Update. I thought I'd relax that requirement a bit more, and recommend a few less frequent webcomics. These comics update three times a week--the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule is quite popular with webcartoonists--and while that necessitates a slower pace, they are all quite good. These won't be added to the Weekly Webcomic Update, but I do recommend that you check them out. Incidentally, this is still not a complete list of webcomics I read, just some of my favorite three-days-a-week comics. (MWF) indicates that it updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while (TTS) indicates it updates Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. As before, the link I give is to the first comic, since I firmly believe you should start from the beginning.

Nukees by Darren Bleuel (MWF) — You wouldn't think a bunch of nuclear engineering grad students at UC-Berkley would be much fun. Well, it does help that one's a mad scientist wannabe, another thinks he's a king, and the third is completely nuts. If you're looking for a webcomic with a giant robot ant controlled by an insane AI, this is it. The artwork in this one gets better with time.

Misfile by Chris Hazelton (MWF) — One of the great theological questions of all time: what would happen if an incompetent angel were to mess up a couple of files in Heaven's archives? Like, say, misplace a couple of years of a high school senior's life? Or perhaps put a guy's file in the girls' filing cabinet? Now the victims of his carelessness have to help him earn his way back into Heaven so he can fix the mistake. Okay, I admit, this one's a little shaky on the theology, but the car racing details seem spot on. (Of course, I know a lot more about theology than I know about car racing.)

Megatokyo by Fred Gallagher (MWF) — Two Americans lost in Japan. One's a hopeless fanboy while the other's an insane l33t gamer. The female cast includes one rising and one fallen voice actress, a temperamental game accessory, and one really creepy girl. On top of that, this comic has beautiful artwork, emotional drama, Rent-a-zilla, and ninjas. What's not to love?

8-bit Theater by Brian Clevinger (TTS) — This is a sprite comic, meaning that the artwork's cut and paste from a computer game. Doesn't sound like it'd be very good, does it? It's also one of the funniest things you're likely to find on the Internet. Just accept that nobody has real names, and you'll do fine. There's Black Mage, who's smart but evil, Thief, who's smart but greedy, Fighter, who's an idiot, and Red Mage, who's the ultimate twinker (a player who manipulates the rules of the game for his advantage).

Shortpacked! by David Willis (MWF) — Now that David Willis is done with It's Walky!, most of what his energy is focused on Shortpacked!, a webcomic based on a toy store. As this takes place in the same universe as It's Walky!, some characters have migrated over to the new comic, apparently tired of their saving-the-world stint. Aside from the delusional toy store owner, who wants to take over the world, and the occasional parodies of action figures, I don't think the world will be in much danger in this comic, but you never know. Meanwhile, David is also doing an It's Walky! prequel and a sequel. You know, I think he just doesn't know when to stop.

This was originally posted at 3:12 pm on Dec 6, 2004. I'm reposting it, and deleting the original post, in order to eliminate the trackback spamming this post routinely receives.

You know, the real world is getting impossible to parody.

If you've been following Sluggy Freelance, you'll know what I'm talking about right away, but if not, here's a bit of background (WARNING: Spoilers for those who might want to read this story and be surprised, but this whole post doesn't make much sense without discussing the N.U.K.E.):

The Dimension of Lame, as it is dubbed by Torg, is an alternate version of our world which is, well, lame. It has no weapons or violence, nor does it have drugs, alcohol, meat, or anything good to watch on TV. It's a paradise, but a boring one. When the Dimension of Pain, a world ruled by sadistic demons, invades, they are totally helpless, technologically and psychologically unable to fight back. Their only hope is Torg, a pretty normal guy from our dimension and the main character of Sluggy Freelance, who finds himself stuck in the Dimension of Lame, which he finds annoying, where he's the only one who can fight the demons (having a magic talking sword helps). Fast forward a few months, and the demons have taken over the pathetically weak US and the EU fears that it is next, so in their desperation, they launch a nuke at the US. The nuke is targeted right where Zoe, Torg's love, is hiding, so he rushes back to rescue her, hoping to find cover for them both by diving through the portal to the Dimension of Pain. Unfortunately, the N.U.K.E. is not what Torg thinks it is:

The 'n.u.k.e.', or 'Notification of Unified Kindness' Envelopes was an old way to deliver a polite yet stern message to a country by dropping hundreds of thousands of polite yet stern messages.

But the incidental damage was too great and it was universally banned. Until this day. Lady Gwynn [another character, from the Dimension of Lame] recalls the historical account of a N.U.K.E. survivor.

"Terrible thunder. Paper cuts impending. Litter unimaginable."

The demons themselves don't find the N.U.K.E., which has the message "We love you! But please don't come overseas. Hugs, The E.U.", very impressive. One of the demons comments, "You know, the argument is weak but the repetition's compelling!" Fortunately for the Dimension of Lame, the demons are more interested in pursuing Torg than invading the E.U. If you're interested in the whole, six month long story, start here. Or take my usual advice for reading webcomics, and start from the beginning. (Expect it to take a week to read the whole thing--Sluggy is big!)

Anyway, this silly bit of parody doesn't sound so silly much like parody any more (from Jim Robbins in The Corner, although it's been all over the Sluggy forums as well):

A massive airdrop of paper birds to promote peace failed to halt violence in Thailand's restive south, with a spate of new attacks targeting soldiers and local officials erupting on Monday.
...
Encouraged by the government, Thais across the country _ Cabinet ministers, office workers, schoolchildren and even convicts _ folded more than 130 million birds to promote peace in the south. Approximately 30 million will be delivered by land.

While meant as a morale-boosting measure for victims of violence, Sunday's origami airdrop resembled a festive treasure hunt with prizes offered for some specially marked birds. People who collected large quantities could trade them in for items ranging from cartons of milk to bicycles.

You know, it sounds about as effective as it was in the comic. The odd thing is, I do believe that love can overcome hate, that it can break down defenses and turn people to redemption. However, the sort of love that does this is a strong, bold love, personal and confident, a tough love, not the impersonal, weak love--more of an abstract friendliness, really--dealt out by airdropping love notes.