Posts Tagged ‘what?’
3 items.
What is there that I could possibly say about this one? Clearly it is very high concept. If you don’t get it, well I guess it’s just not for you.
Would it help you to know that my brother helped with this one? I blame him.
There’s something that is at once horrifying and hilarious about the idea of giant birds, at least, that is true for me. Birds in general are terrifically ungainly and the thought of one of those preposterous beasts made gigantic is almost too much to bear. Apparently, however, there was a real threat from the skies for our evolutionary ancestors, something that may have been passed down in genetic memory to create monsters like the Roc. The other alternative is simply that human beings are remarkably awful at judging the size of objects in the air. With nothing to compare objects to (no trees, foliage, people, or hot-dog carts) it is nearly impossible to accurately estimate the size of most things in the air. There have been studies that prove this.
The Roc depicted in this comic is rather small compared to some of those told in various Arabic tales. There is good reason, I assure you. I simply couldn’t fit anything larger in that frame. Hurk. Traditionally, Rocs were said to be so large as to be able to carry off a whole elephant in their talons, which is damned incredible.
And now a few things: I have to say thanks to my brother, to Liz, to Andrew, to William and to Alex for always giving me valuable input, ideas, and assistance wherever and whenever needed. I also would like to thank everyone that reads the strips and shares them with friends. If not for all of you, I would be toiling in obscurity. I am keenly aware of how much everyone has done to help promote this comic and for that, you can be sure that I frequently torture myself psychologically in an attempt to produce comic material for you to enjoy, smile at, and hopefully, laugh at.
T-shirts, as I said, have arrived and Alex has kindly modeled them for you all to see here. They will be available starting sometime next week, there are only 50 for this first printing, and the Facebook group will get first wind of what’s going on. If you don’t get a shirt and you want one and if we sell out quickly, we will surely be printing more. Buttons have not yet gone to the printer but I believe we will send them out this weekend.
Front Design
Back Design
Alex Modeling the shirt!
Back Modelin'
15 Comments
Another God strip! Hooray!
An all powerful deity with human emotions was always something I found particularly funny in the Bible. There are many times where God is described as being angry or jealous or (as in the case of the New Testament) loving. I’ve talked about this before, but I find it hard to believe that a being with the power to create, animate, and infuse spirit into his creation would ever feel as we do. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. In the Old Testament, you get this sense that God is essentially a kid with an ant hill and a magnifying glass, just tormenting people for the fun of it. I mean, the Book of Job? What’s that all about?
I don’t think it’s wrong to believe in a God or anything like that, but ascribing such incredible flaws to a being we probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend is a bit myopic. Sure, it’s nice to think that he’s just like us, but that’s also really silly.
That said, that sort of God does make for an excellent comic character. Especially when he’s sulky and draping himself over things.
This is a weird strip, I’m not sure what to say about it specifically, really.
This comic features two of my favourite things: Tengu and Engrish. I’ve been wanting to find a place for some engrish in the strip for a long time and when I got the idea for this Tengu character, the lines practically wrote themselves. I have to say, it was incredibly difficult not go whole hog and have him speak entirely in Engrish.
As far as Engrish goes, I got some wonderful results for the poster by using Yahoo’s impossibly bad babelfish translator. The site is fiendishly awful for acquiring any sort of purposeful information from other languages. If attempting to translate something using it, please be aware that it spits forth only venomous lies and misinformation. However, if you like to use things improperly (as I do) for hilarious results, you would be wise to try translating something from english to japanese, taking the japanese results and translating them back to english. I believe William made some awesome Facebook statuses this way.
That said, please do not correct my Japanese. I do not speak the language and I didn’t even try to get anything right. The more wrong it is, the funnier it is to me.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
Japan is an interesting place, rife with strange creatures, some terrifying, some meant to be terrifying but that are actually hilarious. The Tengu falls into the latter category. There are a great many different kinds of Tengu, originating in different time periods from many different people and for gods only know what reasons exactly. These humanoids began their mythological lives as terrible bird demons and somehow became ridiculous red faced men with long noses and bulging eyes. Not what we would call a respectable and impressive retirement.
