Imagine a movie made based on the Archie comics.  Now imagine that the filmmakers incorporate every stereotypical dramatic teen movie plotline and play it up to the max.  That’s Riverdale.

I would pay to see this movie in the theatre.  Also: excellent casting for Jughead.

Again, note: this is a fake trailer, as heart-breaking as that is…

The Boston Globe has a huge gallery of classic comic strips — reimagined by Ward Sutton as if they had been drawn by a Tea Partier named Joe Smith. I guess Sutton didn’t want his real name on these strips?

Above are three of my faves, but there’s about 20 of them here. I also love their rationale:

The newspaper comics page: some find it to be innocuous, even at times irrelevant. But there’s a growing concern among a certain segment of the country that the comics page is out of step with mainstream values, if not an outright cesspool of treasonous, pinko propaganda.

They offer these strips in the interest of “fairness and balance.”

(Click to see full size.)

I love this re-imagining of two disparate supervillains retold in the style of Calvin and Hobbes. It makes me very happy.

(from here, thanks, Ryan!)

Now, before you go thinking I’m anti-tattoo, I’m not.  No, I don’t have any, but that’s because I haven’t found anything I like enough to have etched permanently onto my body.  Hell, I’m not even that attached to my name, let alone anyone else’s.

Over at this foreign website (too lazy to figure out what the language is — I’ve been extremely poor at posting this summer, don’t start knocking me now!), there are dozens of photos of people’s ink.  Cartoon ink.  In their skin.

Hey – I like spandex superheroes as much as the next (semi-normal) person, but you won’t catch me getting Wolverine etched all over me:

This time, she’s tackled the world of the French Revolution. Not very funny, you think? You would be wrong.

There are several more, here.

As Beaton writes, “The utter madness of it all lends itself to great comedy …. in a lot of cases, the comedy we get comes from great tragedy.”

I agree.

Beaton has a degree in history, and her comics reflect that. They all have something to do with moments in history, or famous people (from Beethoven to to an imagined exchange between Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe). I liked this one of the Brontë sisters:

And this one, of Canadian Prime Ministers:

Funny stuff.

Who hasn’t tried to recreate at least one of Calvin’s snowmen?  Unfortunately, the results are almost always disappointing.  Take heart, however.  We can always enjoy the strips themselves.

Here’s a great collection of most, if not all, of the Calvin & Hobbes’ snowman strips.

Excellent blog that I’ll be checking regularly, called Covered. It’s a series of classic comic book covers, each presented as an original (like the 1987 Uncanny X-Men, above) as well as reinterpreted by a different artist (such as Aaron Conley’s take, below). Some of the covers are similar, others are wildly different — all are worth a view.

Full story here.

I will be posting more on this topic, once I’ve had a chance to think it through.  You see, Marvel’s greatest strength in recent years has been it’s ability to translate various properties into cinematic success (Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hulk, etc), while DC has had immense difficulties.  The primary reason for DC’s problems has been the interference run by higher levels of corporate structure, as DC is owned by Time Warner.

Will Marvel begin to suffer the same fate?  I hope not, especially since the announcement of the Avengers Initiative.

There’s a great short story over at Strange Horizons that I just finished reading. It’s called “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs” and it’s by Leonard Richardson. A sample:

“Humans won’t pay to watch dinosaurs ride motocross bikes forever,” said Tark. “I’m gonna branch out. Target shooting. I’ll be like those tough guys in the action movies. Is my chin strap tight?”

“It’s fine,” said Entippa. The dinosaurs straddled their bikes. “What movies are you talking about? Like the Rogue Raptor schlock? I admit that giving Rahnarsh a gun would help the camp value somewhat—”

The starter’s pistol went off and the two dinosaurs hit their throttles. They rocketed ahead of the pack and shot up the first of a series of packed dirt ramps.

“I’m talking about the humans!” shouted Tark. “Vin Diesel, your Bruce Willis. Your Hulk Hogan, going back a few years.”

“You gonna dress up in a little camo outfit?” said Entippa. “That’s chimp work, dude.”

Tark hit the ground in a slide that left his tail an inch above ground. His feathers sucked up mud. “I pictured something very tasteful,” he said, “with some cows in a meadow, and then I shoot them.”

It’s not that lengthy, and it won’t take to too long to read, but it’s enjoyable.

And, if you enjoy the dinosaurs-with-guns theme, check out the comic book I grabbed an image from, above. It’s called “Why Atomic Robo Hates Dr. Dinosaur” and you can find it all here.

(I linked to the short story via Boing Boing, but I found the comic book all on my owns!)

Here’s a taste (ha! pun!)

Read the whole tale here. I chuckled pleasantly a number of times.

Click on the image to see it full-sized. It’s a comic drawn by Tim Kreider, whose work I just discovered. He draw s a weekly cartoon called “The Pain – When Will It End?“. Or, should I say, he drew. Because he’s on hiatus.

Luckily, he has extensive archives at his website. Check them out — I implore you! They are funny and political in a way that so many editorial cartoons lack the cojones to be these days.

Because they are often topical, sometimes the archives feel a bit dated. But, sometimes even years later we’re still fighting the same culture wars we were back then, and the comic still applies. I also find his “artist’s statement” about his cartoons to be well worth my time. Like this one, which starts out “I have had it with the fucking Christians.”

I learned from this interview (fun read) that he also has an enemies list. Now I want an enemies list!

You may also like his contribution to the New York Times’ “Happy Days” blog, in which he talk about having been stabbed in the throat (seriously!) and how it made him happy for a whole year, but didn’t fundamentally change his life:

Once a year on my stabbiversary I remind myself that this is still my bonus life, a free round. But now that I’m back down in the messy, tedious slog of everyday emotional life, I have to struggle to keep things in what I still insist is their true perspective. I know intellectually that all the urgent, pressing items on our mental lists — taxes, car repairs, our careers, the headlines — are so much idiot noise, and that what matters is spending time with people you love. It’s just hard to bear in mind when the hard drive crashes.

I’m adding this guy to my bookmarks list. Also, he likes Miriam Toews!

As a stereotype — a fan so obsessed with his own fandom that he eschews all other fans as inferior — the Comic Book Guy is dead-on. But couldn’t there be other types of comic book fans? Perhaps some comic book fans are also regular people, not deeply-absorbed, overweight nerds who dream of working in a comic shop?

You wouldn’t know if from the onscreen portrayal of comic book fans, though — at least according to a brief list compiled by, uh, Den of Geek.

With video clips, they show how comic book fans are portrayed as socially maladjusted losers, more interested in the bright, flat colours of their inky worlds than in out-of-reach things like girls.

This was my favourite clip, though there are some other goodies:

Ah, the incomparable Simon Pegg. When you find out at the end what the kid was looking for, go back and re-watch the clip. It makes Pegg’s rant even funnier. This clip is from “Spaced” which I’m now going to have to seek out and watch.

(via Slashdot)

A great many of Archie’s (mis)adventures revolve around the love triangle with Betty and Veronica.  Which of these two beauties he should eventually end up with is a topic Archie fans constantly debate (I vote for Betty).  After 65 years of indecision, it appears as though the question of who Archie eventually ends up with will soon be answered.

In August, Archie #600, entitled “The Proposal” hits newsstands.  My money is on Betty.  Feel free to place your bets here.

(Slightly more info can be found at the Archie Blog.)

Ah, man! I totally forgot about Bob The Angry Flower. Great comic strip. No storyline or arc, just a weird anthropomorphic, misanthropic flower, and his crazy adventures that make no sense. Unless laughter is a sense.

Enjoy!