If you’re not a big literature person you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is a very funny cartoon. It is by Rod McKie. I read Patricia Storms’ BookLust and Patricia was interviewed by Rod on his blog, The Cartoon Fiend, which is how I found this. (whew)

I’m not sure what’s cooler, that there’s a searchable database of indexed Calvin and Hobbes comics, or that is hosted at transmogrifier.org.

(click through to Oliver Christianson’s revilocartoons for the full size image)

(I got it from Pharyngula, of course.)

Why being into cats is essentially the same as being into psychotic tweakers.

I laughed so hard at this Eric came over to make sure I was OK.

(go to BookLust to see the big comic)

Patricia Storms does cartoons and talks about books. She did a strip about Johnathan Lethem and Michael Chabon as superheroes that was bizarrely funny and got a lot of blog pass-around, but I prefer her one-panel stuff (and her cats). This particular comic has been sitting in my bookmarks for months and it makes me laugh outrageously every time I see it. I lurve her.

(go to the Bug Bash site and see the big comic)

Something Awful: Fashion SWAT: Comics SWAT

Why is it I had never stumbled on Something Awful before? Huh.

Dr. Thorpe: There are certain nerds that complain that comics aren’t taken seriously enough as an art form. In this edition of Fashion SWAT, we’re going to show you why those people are idiots.

Zack: One of our readers suggested that we apply our discerning sense of style to the outlandish costumes of various super heroes and villains. Thanks for the idea, Johnathan! This issue we’re going to “Biff!” and “Pow!” our way through more than a dozen of the most ridiculous hero costumes you have ever seen.

Of course they picked mostly comics from the 80′s and Rob Liefeld, which is kind of making it easy. When you’re done with this go read the other Fashion SWAT stuff. Or waste an day on the whole site. Its all great.

And since I’m talking about comics today I’ll also link to Ferrett’s explanation of what the Silver Surfer is all about.

If you’re really into comics and have any awareness of people’s social reactions at all, your skin begins to crawl when you consider explaining the Silver Surfer to non-comics fans.
‘Well, he’s…’ you stammer, after trying to change the subject. ‘He’s a big silver guy who surfs through the cosmos on a galactic surfboard, solving cosmic crimes. It’s kind of like Murder, She Wrote, except Angela Lansbury looks more like Jill Masterson’s final appearance in Goldfinger, and, um, she surfs. Through space. And fights Drax the Destroyer. Stop looking at me like that.’

In proof that I have become simultaneously a very bad goth AND a very bad comics fan, I know almost nothing about Roman Dirge’s Lenore comic strip. Ooops.

But my friend Jet is more up on these things than I am, and via his livejournal he forwards Learn to draw the Roman Dirge way and Learn to dance the Roman Dirge way.” Even though I am completely ignorant, this cracked me the hell up.

Ooooh! There’s a Watchmen movie and least the teaser GIF on the site bears a strong resemblance to the comics of the same name.

Between this and the fact that people are actually liking the Constantine movie (surely a sign of the apocalypse), perhaps things are looking up for comics movies. After Elektra (sob) I suppose they can’t get much worse.

(I got it from metafilter.)

News in Science – Tintin had dodgy hormones – 09/12/2004

TIntin, intrepid reporter, looks like a teenager because of a hormonal problem and too many knocks on the head.

Analyzing the apparent medical problems of comic book characters: always funny.

Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 is out in trade paperback (or at least Volume 1 is). This is Gaiman’s retelling of the marvel comics universe 400 years back.

I missed this series when it was out in comics because I have massive unresolved guilt about buying comics and never reading them (I still have huge stacks of unread comics from years and years back. So guilty. So so guilty). I haven’t even read it yet. Adding to wishlist.

I just finished reading Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude. It was a good book, although not quite what I expected. I had been led to believe it was a book about comic books, something like the Marvel or silver age equivalent of Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay (which if you haven’t read you should run out and BUY RIGHT NOW because its a great book). Lethem had written a really fabulous essay on Random House’s web site about comic books, about the emotional differences between Marvel and DC characters, and about how growing up with comics has influenced a whole bunch of writers of a Certain Age (my age, actually, which is probably why the essay, and novels about comics, resonate so much with me). The essay has incredibly deep paragraphs like this:

On the other hand, a prime run of the classic Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four, or the Byrne/Claremont X-Men, if not quite Proustian, is a genuine reading experience. The ensembles suffer, reflect, change. And suffer again. If Mad Magazine is a child’s primer in irony, Marvel is its equal in angst. (The first romantic loss for a lot of guys my age was Gwen Stacy’s death at the hands of the Hobgoblin in Spiderman #X [tk].) Marvel’s universe is loaded with tortured and ambiguous figures, like Black Bolt and The Vision and Warlock, who refuse to decant into pop art. Opaque at first, they deepen with exposure.

I mean, like, whoa. Between the comics essay and the fact that I had read Lethem’s first novel a long time ago (Gun with Occasional Music, a terrific surreal SF/Mystery) I figured Fortress would be right up my alley.

Well, its a good book. But its not really about comics. And its not a surreal SF/mystery. Jonathan Lethem apparently went literary in the intervening years between Gun and this book, which is a fine thing, if you like that kind of thing. This is a book about being a white kid and growing up in a very black neighborhood in Brooklyn, about race relations and drugs and violence and pop music — and being suddenly granted superhero powers. Its tremendously well written — it has a really strong sense of place and time, at least in the first half where he describes the block in which the narrator grows up. The second half is weaker, and the superhero plot device feels kind of out of place, a sort of magical realism stuck in the middle of an all too hyper-real reality.

Overall: If you like literary novels its worth a read. I’m glad I read it. But I’m still looking for the great comics novel (besides Kavalier & Clay).

Yeesh. I never even really read Spider-Man (I was an X-Men fan) and I still got 80% of the questions on this quiz right. Of course I suspect that when you hang out in comics stores your entire life you just sort of pick up Spidey stuff whether you want to or not.

Because this seems to be a week of exposing to the world exactly how incredibly nerdly I actually am, today I will forward links to the The Marvel Directory and the Unofficial Who’s Who in the DC Universe. Note the inherent superiority in design of the Marvel directory, thus reflecting the superiority of the Marvel Comics universe as a whole. (oh, am I going to get nasty email for that. :)

(I got the link from MetaFilter)