I may not be current, but I know awesome when I read it.

Popping in to announce another milestone in my ongoing quest to understand what everybody on the Net is talking about: Order of the Stick is the sweetest, funniest, most adorable comic about unholy death and destruction, like, ever in the entire history of stuff.

As you were. I have archives to catch up on.

OK, I can start posting again…

…I’ve caught up on all ten chapters of Ursula Vernon’s Digger. Really, I need to stop discovering wonderful webcomics that’ve been running for years; compulsive archive-reading does not mesh well with the amount of sleep required for coping with fashion vendors. Especially the ones who change their retails on 1500+ units, and – whoopsie! – somehow forget to tell the ticket printers before shipping. There are days, in this job, when you seriously consider the ‘Is everyone else crazy? Or is it just me?’ dilemma. Long before noon.

Anyway, Digger. It is one of those media which naturally lends itself to listing off the goodies – Heroic wombats! Vampire vegetables! Oracular slugs! Metaphorical pigeons! Pirate shrews! – but as you can see, in this case we’d be here for a lot longer than it’d take you to just travel to page one and get hooked.
Because you will. Oh, yes, you will. This thing is almost hypnotically addictive, gorgeous art, literate wit and all. What I love most about it, though, is that every single one of the fantastic elements are so firmly grounded – even the Shadowchild. Vernon is not writing fantasy for the sake of it; nor is she being clever for the same reason. Her characters speak from solid convictions about interesting ideas; their damage – and a lot of it is severe – is nonetheless real, their varying degrees of strength in the face of it no more and no less than natural consequence.

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Meanwhile. This weekend. In a weird way reading Digger has given me some help with my own fiction-writing blockage…Thinking about starting, that’s OK. Even fun. But actually starting…over the last year I’ve realised that the problem is that it’d mean going to a place of total honesty within. And that in turn means confronting some things that – I don’t – really – want to. Mind, I’m not saying I have any baggage on the scale of Vernon’s characters to deal with. I mean, pretty sure there are no shadows of malevolent goddesses on my brain, or anything.

Just…everybody has an Unknown, and mine and self don’t really get along so well. So following Digger and company as they deal with theirs has been a treat in more ways than one. Perhaps that’s part of what I want to write about – why my subconscious is so insistent I get on with this sci-fi story. It’s a vivid reminder that considering reality does not make one mad, no matter how mad the reality may seem; that in fact confronting one’s fears, doing something active about them – while it may or may not make things easier – is one hell of a lot better than just sitting around brooding. In a way, I’ve been just sitting around inside my head since I was a teenager, and it’s high time I got out and explored a bit.

Right then, this is me, doing something. Sitting down and sketching out my ideas – since, as you may have noticed [/self-deprecating sarcasm] I’m one of those anal types that can’t function unless I know where the story’s going from the outset  – and then going back and editing the first few chapters a bit, and then posting them here. And then I have to go on, or I look like an idiot. A pretentious idiot, to boot. And being thought pretentious may be the only thing that bothers me more than being thought crazy.

It’s, like, the License to Ramble meme. What’s not to love?

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

So the other day, charmed and curious, I commented to this post of  kalquessa ‘s…and…

Blogging in Shakespearean English, feminism in Watership Down, Pearls Before Swine, Philistine Pollyanna, detective fiction.

OK, self, the moral here? Try not to be so dang memorable next time. Or at least, try it re: favourite bands, or chocolates, or something.

Peering through the cyber-trees, trying to find the forest…

So about midway through the short sabbatical from writing to concentrate on dealing with some other stuff, I check back and realise the cliffhanger’s another oddly prophetic comic strip. I am sort of enjoying how the PBS posts have become markers for these little breaks in the process…it seems so appropriately random…but, uh, everything’s fine, folks. I just thought the strip was amusingly reminiscent of the way train whistles make me feel sometimes. Really.

Anyway, here I am back in the saddle again, ready to supply all your pointless rambling needs! The long-awaited Mythbusters post – look, I’ve been away, humour me for a sec, OK? – is in the pipeline, also another edition of the Occasional Christie. I just need to do a little cranial housekeeping first. Two weeks sans snark outlet has left it seriously cluttered up in here…

Sometimes, it’s a little scary how much you can relate.

Twilight of the Foobs

–I couldn’t let the grand (sort-of) finale go unsnarked, could I now? The below originated @ the   group:

Well, hey…at least April got away clean. Of course, in Lynn’s mind she never really mattered much anyway, not being ‘a real person’, so why not?

John and Elly’s last recorded communication to each other, after thirty years of being the featured characters in a real-time comic strip, is a generic cliche. Not, mind, the one in the title; that was covered yesterday, by a recently-introduced minor character who barely rates a mention in today’s wrapup. How, uh, sweet. Or something.

More Foob follies

As I, ah, may have just mentioned in a previous post, comic strip For Better or For Worse and this formerly devoted fan have long since divorced due to irreconcilable differences. With the coming of the Settleocalypse, aka the engagement of Liz and Anthony, it has become difficult even to muster up much interest in the doings of characters whose lives are so determinedly irrelevant to mine.

Or for that matter anyone born after 1950…check that. Anyone who isn’t Lynn Johnston, or who hasn’t had the misfortune to get tangled up in her hell-or-high-water scramble for the Perfect Family She Never Had. Really, you can’t blame one poor innocent decade for the mess this woman’s psyche is in at the moment. Even if it did contain Queen For a Day.

Today, however, the temptation to mark what will surely go down in history as a milestone of Foob snark is too great to resist.

We will pass over lightly the overarching obsession with engagement rings, as embodied in the astonishingly awful bon mot ‘the token that says I’m taken!’. We will skip quickly past the icky psycho-social implications inherent in that being your uppermost idea (as indicated by Liz’ thought bubbles) while embracing your beloved mere hours after the proposal. OK, mere hours after he conceded that he couldn’t see any real objection to you sharing his living space at an opportune time in the near future…but still.

No, it has become clear with the publication of today’s strip that snarking on any of the above, however tempting, is really irrelevant; what Johnston has been trying to get across all along is that the ring itself has magic powers. Yep…barring Warren having had an unfortunate encounter with a pale guy in a sweeping cape last week, there’s no getting around it: a half-carat token on the hand of an engaged woman quite literally emits powerful Pushy Ex-Lover Repellent Rays, guaranteed to reduce him to a quivering mess more generally seen when the Dragonball Z gang finally goes nuclear on some alien butt.

Somehow, I’m not totally shocked by this development. (I am kind of bemused when I think of the amount of comic-book angst this revelation could’ve avoided, but that’s another essay altogether.)
Given that an entire week past the procuring of this amazing device was devoted to strip matriarch Elly and her buddy Connie revelling in their self-authored legends as Strong, Noble, Self-Sacrificing, Long-Suffering Women who…well, did pretty much the same stuff as millions of other Boomer moms who didn’t happen to be avatars for a comic strip creator who has decided that the world owes her some credit, damnit!…anyway, it about figures that this same creator would consider engagement a superpower.

And clearly, given the epic (also insanely detailed) LOTR-style saga that is wife- and motherhood in this context, it only escalates from there, as the rings become heavier and heavier until finally simply existing in female form is an act worthy of earth-shattering heroism. One shudders to imagine the devices used to enhance for instance toilet training, in the Patterverse; and woe betide the husband who lets his dinner grow cold. I’m thinking that’s the point at which she gains the ability to grow an impenetrable metal skin on contact.

Yes, it’s funny, but it’s the kind of nervous laughter you hear after a crisis, when you’re trying to lighten the mood but just as aware it isn’t working. The dichotomy between the real world and the facsimile Lynn’s trying to create is becoming downright disturbing. Even – especially – if, as is probably the case, she believes that she’s merely written a harmlessly zany, over-the-top Standard Male Reaction gag.

Heart of iron

Overheard at a crosswalk the other day, while waiting with a couple other women: “What’s Iron Man about, anyway?” “I dunno…but it sounds sooooo cool!”

I submit to you, Gentle Readership, that the above is the classic definition of the perfect summer blockbuster.

This may be a case of preaching to the converted, since the film took in $100mil over this past weekend and I’ve only just downloaded the trailers, but on the off chance you’re still pondering…yeah, this one’ll live up to the hype. They got it right – and possibly only in the world of comic book movies is there so vast a gap between the simple statement and the execution thereof.

It helps that the story of Tony Stark is to begin with one of the most fun, and likely not coincidentally least angsty, sagas in the Marvel pantheon. The story is simple: billionaire playboy industrialist has an epiphany after an assault that leaves him with a dicky heart, stops making weapons and instead designs a reallyreally cool suit of armour that allows him to fly and shoot repulsor blasts and oh yeah, fight crime as….dun-dun-DUUUUUUNNNN…Iron Man! Yay!

Short version: It’s Batman with less brooding and more…well, more honkin’ cool red-and-gold flying armour, is basically what’s going on here. Did I mention the repulsor blasts?

Seriously, once I saw the armour I knew everything was going to be OK. Actually, I had a strong suspicion long before that, when I first heard that Robert Downey Jr had been signed on as the lead. Want a handle on the movie, even shorter version? That would be it. Downey openly admits he begged for this role.
Besides, as a co-worker who’s squarely in the favoured demographic pointed out to me this morning after seeing it last night, your Eric Banas and ‘Jean-Luc Picards’ are all very well, but to make a real movie, you need real actors. (Of course, she then spent the afternoon googling pictures of that same R. Downey, so make of that what you will.)

Everything’s in place for a supremely rewarding comic book experience – and don’t laugh at that until you’ve tried it. There’s only a rare few media moguls out there who still understand that superheroes are one of mankind’s most fundamental ways of rewarding ourselves.

Foob Friday

I figure I’ll shamelessly milk for all the column ideas I can give everybody a chance to respond to the meme below this weekend. Meanwhile, the big engagement announcement over on the comics pages has inspired the rant below. Apologies for the length; it’s been coming on for awhile…

Dearly beloved,

We are gathered here today to witness the final nail being pounded into the coffin containing the remains of the once-beloved For Better or for Worse. The comic strip that once helped thousands, including yours truly, understand that there was real humor and pathos and sometimes even joy to be found in the hum and drum of daily life…until realization set in that it was the daily life itself the author was actually celebrating, not the release. Not the flight of imagination and adventure, but the comfort in suppressing it.

The whole thing becomes a rather sad testament to the pitfalls of artists allowing too much of themselves into their work. The occasional transcendent genius – or pathetic monster – aside, most of us really aren’t all that interesting.

Certainly FBoFW creator Lynn Johnston isn’t, very much anyway. She might have been, had she had the vision and courage artistically to rise above what’s been an admittedly fairly tough real life. Her first husband was a dashing biker dude who left her alone with small children to raise; her second (the model for John Patterson, the strip’s paterfamilias) just recently walked out after apparently carrying on behind her back for quite awhile. Her relationship with her grown children, the models for the fictional ditto, is strained at best.

So it’s possible to be sympathetic to her clear desire to find safety and security for her creations, probably more so than if she’d decided to pull a Funky Winkerbean and have them all become bitter recluses who read the obituaries for fun. On the other hand…for awhile there things just looked really promising, y’know?

For the past five years or so, Johnston has been systematically pruning back every interesting facet of the Patterson clan’s lives….well, the kids’ lives anyway, since they were the only ones who had them in the first place. The parents, Elly and John, were always semi-annoyingly saintly, so didn’t have as far to devolve. They just sit round and discuss their saintliness a lot more, these days, occasionally breaking off for a ‘comically’ sloppy supper or drippy dinner (seriously, these people’s eating habits would make a preschool janitor cry).

Naturally, having been raised in the suburbs by these paragons of middle-class virtue, their children Michael and Elizabeth – with an occasional nod to April the Perpetual Afterthought – were the brightest, most promising offspring going. This is where the problems began in earnest, since kids like these no longer daydream of settling down to be just like their parents. They almost literally can’t, anymore, given the sheer ubiquitousness of portals to the global village (which portals are interestingly absent in Patterworld, where even the teen characters are never seen wearing an iPod or using a computer for anything other than email. That Johnston is still going on in interviews about The Time I Introduced a Gay Character a Couple Decades Ago says volumes she never intended.)

So anyway, up to a point, they didn’t conform. Michael, for instance, apparently turned out a Sensitive Artiste, though all the samples we get read like Serious Novel parodies he might in real life have written in HS. Going with it for the sake of residual affection, however, readers were rewarded with a kinda charming take on a young journalism major facing reality. He wrote some stuff, he got it published random places, he became a grunt at a magazine. Meanwhile Elizabeth had become a teacher, and headed out to a remote First Nations community to Make a Difference. As I say, promising stuff. The legions – self included – who had grown up with these characters now eagerly awaited their adventures as they followed us out into the wider world.

Then…they didn’t. Michael re-encountered and married his grade-school(!) steady, a pharmacist (pay attention, this’ll be on the test) who promptly gave up her own plans and dreams in lieu of blatantly trapping him into fatherhood…she got the pills mixed up, she said. Even the other characters didn’t buy that one – but the readers clearly were supposed to cheer for child production, no matter how screwed-up the circs. This is about where I realized this strip beloved for honesty had done the dirty on me finally and irrevocably. That it should feel like a real friend’s betrayal is foolish I admit, but there you are.

Still, there was Elizabeth, who was always more interesting anyway, fulfilling her dreams out in a remote First Nations community, teaching and learning and even falling in love with a handsome Mountie. We knew they were meant for each other, because Elly herself had introduced them after noticing his door read ‘Constable Wright’. ‘Wright = Right”, get it? No? Yeah, sometimes I have trouble remembering why I loved this strip so much, myself.

As it turned out, though, that was the apex of a very looooong arc. From there the downhill slide has resembled the first snowmobile ride I took as a kid, only with less (if any) exhilaration and more in-your-face bland, cold whiteness. Nobody in Patterworld, it became clear, was going to be allowed to have adult relationships, much less lives, outside their circle of constant content. One by one the girlfriends and boyfriends fell by the wayside, shallow cheaters all – quite literally; either Johnston has no idea of the complexities of a real YA relationship or she’s just a lazy storyteller, both work OK. At any rate, in this universe you better have picked out a winner in kindergarten, because you’re stuck with ‘em for, well, better or worse.

That was the thing, though – it was all for the better. They were all winners, because they had remained in the ‘burbs and espoused their virtues. This is not a strip that was ever particularly subtle in re: character development, and lately the lack has become almost, well, comic. Everyone who isn’t a Patterson or doesn’t share their virtues is a harridan, visually and audibly…unless they’re an adult male, in which case they’re just a despicable cad whose only redeeming virtue is that they love Elizabeth.

Enter Anthony Caine. Elizabeth’s HS steady. Who always gave the impression he was one of those [Insert More Interesting Character Here] placeholders who accidentally made it to print. As more and more of Johnston’s Grand Design was revealed, however, it became clear that he was, in fact, the Ultimate. The guy, his creator herself shamelessly insisted, who was overlooked now, but boy, would he make a splash on your arm at your 20-year reunion. Did I mention his creator has also shamelessly admitted to being “a child of the 50’s”?

So…exeunt handsome Mountie, dashing chopper pilot, charming college rogue. None of them – as Elizabeth’s parents made clear to her in a strip that changed my hurt to active hatred – would be ‘there for her’ the way they should be. This was illustrated for the really slow readers in a further series of strips wherein Elizabeth

1) Gets word of Anthony’s divorce back in the ‘burb;

2) Abruptly develops a crushing case of homesickness almost literally out of the blue;

3) Makes plans to hightail it back to Casa de Patterson ASAP; and

4) Becomes furious when Constable Right points out that just possibly she might have discussed their future with him beyond a blithe ‘Oh, I kinda figured you’d wanna move 600+ miles south to be there for me!’ as she was packing.

It was her intent all along, Johnston later explained, to use Elizabeth’s story to illustrate the reality of young people who think they want adventure, only to discover when the crunch comes and they have to commit that they can’t handle the stress of leaving the nest for good. That this was by no means the only reality available, that she had it in her power to help inspire a generation to think and plan and dream on a scale they – certainly she – had heretofore never been able to conceive…well, yeah, not so much with that. Safety first, kids! If you never light a fire, you never have to deal with putting it out!

No worries about fire re: Anthony, that’s for bloody well sure. In his strenuous efforts to seem as safe and non-threatening as possible he comes off as a horrific caricature of the Modern Sensitive Male, for all the world as if he were the mascot for a seriously unimaginative anti-feminist lobby. If this is truly Johnston’s take on her dream man, I feel sorry for the woman. Clearly she’s been messed up even beyond what she’s shown the world. Which is a lot.

In a nutshell: Anthony married another despite making it very clear to her and everyone else that he was still attracted to Elizabeth. Then he couldn’t think of anything better to do with his beautiful, sophisticated French wife than dump her into a split-level while he went off to be an accountant at the local used-car lot. Then he got upset when she didn’t seem thrilled with the prospect of the kid he whined her into having. (Later, after she’s run off – all but wearing a big red arrow reading ‘Scheming Bitch Right Here, Readers!’ – we learn that brave strong Anthony has coped with single fatherhood by building a literal pen for his daughter in the basement.) Oh, and she thought he’d look better with facial hair, so he grew a grotesque moustache that actually makes him look 75.

We know all this, because upon making his dashing re-entrance into Elizabeth’s life by literally saving her from the Cad du Jour, he sat her down under a tree…and promptly started whining “Wait for me! I have no home!” Verbatim, very-pre-divorce quotes. Just to recap: this is his reaction seconds after the woman he loves has almost been raped. Our Hero, ladies and gentlemen. Always there for her, yes indeedy.

Thus began the long, stately Bataan Death March towards the Lizardbreath/Granthony axis. See, despite being destined and all, they can’t do anything as foolish as actually have chemistry together; maybe take a little delight in exploration and discovery. No, both have been Hurt and must needs Take it Slowly, which would still be OK, except by this point in her imaginative journey Johnston has been reduced to borrowing the concept of ‘caution’ from State Farm Insurance. Throw in a precocious two-year-old to ‘comically’ interrupt the merger negotiations with ‘needs’ (most of which brilliant educator Elizabeth solves by handing her ice cream), and you have some idea why the entire Comics Curmudgeon community has been reveling in this relationship for years now.

When, that is, they’re not exulting re: Michael’s deathless prose. See, somewhere in here he’s written a book called Stone Season – no, I am not making this up – and it’s apparently a masterpiece of CanLit (you can tell, because it’s set in post-WWI Saskatchewan). Sure, you scoff now, but just wait till it runs all the major prizes. Just as soon as Johnston gets around to arranging that little ‘accident’ at the Convenient Gathering of Every Other Literary Talent in Canada.

Meanwhile, of course, he’s been neglecting his wife and kids to serve his ‘muse’ – oh yes, Johnston’s idea of the writer’s life leaves no cobblestone unturned on that dark and stormy night. Speaking of which, fleeing their burning apartment during one, our Sensitive Genius here went back for his laptop rather than help his family down a rickety fire escape. I forget whether the strip where he called his stroke-ridden old grandpa ‘crazy’ (to his face) when he didn’t react appropriately to the news of publication came before or after this sequence, but you get the idea. (And no, Johnston has never said any of this was intended to show Mikey as simply young and foolish.)

Yes, kids, Men are Scum. Except Anthony, he is Kind and Good and will Never Let You Down. Primarily because he, uh, can’t get it up to begin with, but that is Not the Point! The point is that you should be happy to be stuck right where you are, waiting patiently for that one little frisson of excitement at your twenty-years’ reunion, because there is joy and pathos and humour to be found in everyday life, damnit! Haven’t you been paying attention? Well, if not, I’m gonna keep mentioning Charles Schulz and churning out the reruns until you do!

…God help us all, I think she means it.

The unbearable lightness of being green

Public-service announcement: I’m still feeling a little badly over that Kalan Porter gag from last week – not the others, so much; it’s hard to envision anything that could get me worked up over for instance JayDee. Were they to invent a Preppy Minivan-Riding Idol Winner repellent spray, I’d keep an impressive stock in the hall closet at all times, believe you me.

Kalan, on the other hand…well, Hurray is still on the iPod rotation, lo these many weeks later. My attitude toward music is much the same as toward books; the ones that find a perfectly matching slot in my psyche, they’re the only ones I keep. So I guess I still do care…just enough to wonder whether what might be, already has been or not.

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In other news: I never did find that good book. Although LaVyrle Spencer will do quite nicely for brain candy, thanks, and That Camden Summer edges up to the point where I muse about it being retold by someone who could do the characters real justice.

Still, though…if there’s anything we have around here, it’s standards. ‘Up with edification’, this is our motto at Shoe Central; primarily because we have spent the past month’s Net time immersed in the results of laxity in this vital area. To wit: the decision by Marvel Comics to divorce Spider-Man.