Saturday Morning Cartoons make better Comics
So what Saturday morning cartoons did you watch?
I loved He-Man but never She-Ra.
Voltron but never Thundercats.
Snorks but never, ever the whiny Smurfs.
Later I would wonder what drew me to those particular cartoons. He-Man is obvious – why would I watch some lady run around when I could watch a shirtless man and his cat friend? I mean, DUH.
Voltron had better animation and I liked the pink chick. Thundercats had too much action and the weird combination of people merged with cat characteristics really freaked me out.
The Snorks were just more, I don’t know, edgy. They constantly faced certain death when their little snorkel gill things got plugged up or tied in a knot. The Smurfs just bickered and I guessed face some kind of danger by that wizard Gargamel – even though he sucked at magic.
Now, had I known the Smurfs were a comic? I may have had more love for them.
The Savage Critic takes a look at a certain smurf storyline, King Smurf. You gotta love any post that starts out – “This is the story of the day the Smurfs became terrorists.”
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Now go read some Garth Ennis!!
Sheer Awesomeness
No, really -
(link ripped off from Warren Peace Sings the Blues - good find!)
New York Times Graphic, uh, Books
The NYT has started a graphic books bestseller list.
Cue the freak outs.
Via Journalista: Everyday is like Wednesday and Comics Reporter
My favorite, and most thought out, reaction comes from Brigid Alverson at MangaBlog.
And, of course, The Beat.
The whole thing makes me chuckle, especially the book vs. novel debate. Who. cares. Really, I mean, it’s not like we’re sitting around scratching our heads going ‘what are they talking about – books? graphic books -I don’t know what that means‘. I could see if they called them graphic carrots or something but novels=books=tomes= Yay, I got to use my thesaurus today!
I don’t know about the hard numbers so I guess I just trust the NYT to get it right and the bloggers who know these things to tell me when it’s wrong. I also don’t know about when comics went ‘mainstream’ or if they even really have. It seems to me that the literary river, much like everything else, is so full of tributaries that there may not even be a mainstream anymore.
Video Monsters
It seems like, lately, I’ve been talking fandom or really the expression of fandom to everyone. From the dinner conversation where I tried to explain Lolita fashion to my mom, to a message board debate on this piece of Twilight fanfic. I love looking at cosplay pictures, I’m so amazed at the skill and dedication these people have in recreating their favorite characters. A coworker recently told me about machinima.
Then, driving to dinner a few days ago, my husband and I heard this NPR piece about vidders. I listened as talented artists explained their craft in ways I had never thought of. I love what the internet has done for fans. We can talk to each other, we can talk to creators, we influence how something is made. It’s “wikinomics” gone hypercolor, I think. These vidders, fanfic writers, cosplayer and machinimas create something out of something – rearraging worlds and ideas. It’s beautiful to me. It’s also somewhat illegal. Which is where our debate started. Mainly with these words from Lim, a vidder:
“We all speak the language of television, we all know the basic symbolism. Rain means redemption; an open window means a new choice or opportunity.” and “The media seems to think they own the things they’ve pumped into my brain in 27 years. It seems to me ludicrous that television spends so much time and so much money carefully colonizing my mind. But it is my mind.”
I took the stance that I could argue in court – duh, I’ve seen enough Law and Order episodes to know how to make a case in style – that she’s right. That her manipulation of copyrighted images is something born from her own mind and therefore is her intellectual property.
My husband – who does not watch nearly enough Law and Order to even begin to know what he is talking about and doesn’t say it with enough flair anyways – takes the stance that she is ripping off the characters. That even if she, say splices them into a video that looks somewhat like a warped “Take on Me” tribute – uses these images to define herself as a fan, how she feels about these colonies in her mind, how she uses them, judges them and worships them – well, they are still someone else’s creation and that person DESERVES TO BE PAID.
What do you think?
Friday fun
I’m off to Denver! Enjoy these great covers my friend Rod sent me – I love when people send me weird stuff!
