New Seasons of Legion and Batman Begin Tomorrow!

I swear that I have not been looking forward this much to a new season of Saturday morning cartoons since I was a kid. Tomorrow brings the season premieres of The Batman and Legion of Super-Heroes on Kids' WB.

Legion cemented its place as one of the best super-hero cartoons ever with its season ending two part adaptation of the Legion's classic battle to stop the Sun-Eater. Every comics fans even passingly familiar with pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Legion lore knew where this story was going, but watching it get there was a hoot.

My only problem with Legion is that we still haven't seen my favorite Legionnaire, Wildfire, not even in the climactic struggle with the Sun-Eater. I hope this means that the producers have plans for him somewhere down the line.

I also hope that we see more of Matter-Eater Lad.

The Batman is my favorite of all the filmed adaptations of the Dark Knight's adventures so far. Most Batman series or movies have picked up with Batman firmly established as Gotham"s Guardian, complete with Robin and a pretty chummy relationship with Commissioner Gordon and the police. This show, on the other hand, shows us Bats at very early stage of his career, hunted by the police and as distrustful of them, and just about anyone else, as they are of him. We've actually gotten to see the character grow and progress over the course of four seasons. The series overarching story arc has concerned Bruce Wayne learning to trust others enough to let them into his life and work with them. First, he forges a tentative relationship with a police detective, then gains the trust of the commissioner. Next, he takes on a sometime partner in Batgirl before taking in fellow orphan Dick Grayson not only to work with him as Robin but to live in his house. Finally, at the end of last season, we saw him move into the wider community of super-heroes as he joined the Justice League.

From the promos I've seen for the new season, it looks like we're going to be seeing a certain Man of Steel guest starring on The Batman this season. I think it would be cool, don't you, if old Kal-El was reluctant to join the League and it was Bats, of all people, who manages to convince Supes of the advantages of being part of a team.

Gallery Hop

So, next weekend, I, and the group of cartoonist of which I am a part known as Sunday Comix, will be having a gallery show at the Gallery Upstairs over the Surly Girl Saloon in the Short North. It's for one night only, but that night is the night of the monthly Gallery Hop, September 1st, so we should get a few people coming in, and I might even dupe some gullible fool into buying one of my pieces. (Yeah, right!)

Anyway, now that Blogger allows the uploading of videos directly from your computer, I thought I would test out that feature by presenting here a video that I made which previews the pieces that I'll be showing next weekend.

Hope to see you next Saturday!

Tribute to Tom Snyder

The great Tom Snyder, one of the great voices, styles and personalities in the history of talk shows, died last Sunday at the age of 71.

Here he is interviewing three members of the cast of the 1950's classic "The Adventures of Superman": Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen); Bob Shane (Inspector Henderson); and the lovely Noel Neill (the one, true Lois Lane), as well as Gary Grossman, author of the book "Superman: Serial to Cereal", which details the Man of Steel's filmed exploits from the Fleischer Studios cartoons through the Filmation TV cartoons of the 60's.

By the way, I have a copy of that book that I purchased way back in 1977 or '78, and a couple of years ago I got it signed by Ms Neill herself.

Re-Living My Childhood via YouTube

Video "Week" continues, because, quite frankly, I just don't feel like writing anything. If I did feel like writing anything, it would be rant about how I hate horses, which would certainly not endear me to my niece Tamara, (They're stupid, ugly, smelly beasts and if I never see another damned one it'll be too soon...) and really has nothing to do with anything, especially not why I took a month off from updating this blog.

Ok, I'm ranting, so let's take a deep breath and turn to You Tube.

YouTube's great for reliving your childhood, especially if, like me, you spent 86% of that childhood plopped in front of a TV set. While poking around the site recently I found the following old commercial for what was at the time my favorite breakfast cereal, endorsed by what is, to this day, one of my favorite cartoon characters.

I really miss Pink Panther Flakes. I love the way they turned the milk pink.

Impotent...er...IMPORTANT Announcement!!!

On the second day of this year's Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (its friends call it SPACE), I led a panel on the subject of on-line comics with Ryan Holgerson, Andrea "Sam" McEnaney, and Jared Koon. Even though I organized and moderated the shindig, I'm pretty much a newbie to the whole world of on-line comics, and actually had the least to contribute. I manged to learn quite a bit during the course of the hour, including several sites where I could post my comics. Later in the week, I signed up for all of them, and now Wasted Potential will be posted weekly not only on my WP blog, but on ComicSpace, Drunk Duck.com, and WebComics Nation. ComicSpace contains the entire saga so far, while Drunk Duck and WebComics Nation pick up with last week's episode. I will also be posting Pop Darts on Comic Space soon.

Now there is NO excuse for not following the mildly amusing exploits of cartoonist Norman Burns and his friends!!! The web is mine, and I'll know if you don't read it, so you better surf over there now, sparky!!!

SPACE Wrap-Up: Day One

The Eagle has landed!

The Ray has returned!

And there was much rejoicing!

Greetings, denizens of cyber-space-land, I bring you glad tidings from SPACE (the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo) to which I boldly went this past weekend, armed only with a couple of hundred copies of Wasted Potential: Fit 2 Print, the mini-comic collecting the Wasted Potential and Pop Darts comic strips that ran in Columbus Alive! and The Atomic Tomorrow.

Except for greeting friends at their tables shortly after arriving and a late day trip around the room to do some trading of comics, I spent most of Saturday at the table. I didn't even get to the Day Prize presentation. (Of course, I announced the Day Prize winner earlier as soon as Dapper Dave Sim himself revealed the recipient's identity on his blog.) I didn't want to go because I was kind of on a roll. I had my sales pitch down and was at my most congenial and beguiling, managing to sell more books on Saturday than I had at any of the previous seven SPACE shows. (Of course, I was only charging 50 cents a book, so I made just about enough to buy myself a pizza.)

After the show closed on Saturday, Mike Lucas and I checked out the new Half Price Books location across from the Graceland shopping center. I picked up an old mass market paperback reprinting classic Steve Ditko/Stan Lee Dr. Strange stories in full color. (That's somewhat unusual, as most mmpb comics were in black & white.) I really like the mass market paperback format for comics. My collection is pretty small because they're really hard to find, but I'll pick them up whenever I come upon them.

After grabbing a bite at the G-land Subway, Mike and I went to a place called MoMo2, where the "SPACE Launch Party" was to be held. We didn't see anyone we knew and decided the place was too loud and annoying, so we split.

I had a couple of Mike's Hard Lemonades, and went to bed.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you how Sunday went.

SPACE Is This Weekend!!! HUZZAH!!!

The 8th Annual Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, held once again at the spacious Aladdin Shrine Center in the Small Press Comics Capitol of the Known Universe, Columbus, Ohio, begins in less than 24 short hours. The show expands to TWO (2) big days this year, so there's plenty of chance for you to get out there and see what all the buzz on the street has been about.

When you show up, be sure to check out my table, where I shall be offering for public sale for the first time anywhere Wasted Potential: Fit 2 Print, a mini-comics collection of all the Wasted Potential strips that have actually appeared in for real newspapers (although calling The Atomic Tomorrow a "for real" newspaper is kind of stretching the truth just a wee bit.)

If for some reason, you can not make it to the comics event of the year and still wish to own a copy of this limited edition collector's item classic, simply e-mail me at wasted_potential1965@yahoo.com and I shall enlighten you as to how we may work together to make that happen.

I'll have a full report on the show next week.

Good News/ Bad News

The Good News (at least for fans of comics artist Chris Ware and his comic book series Acme Novelty Library, as well, I presume, for Mr. Ware himself): Tonight Showtime debuts the video version of the acclaimed National Public Radio documentary This American Life (Good News for fans of the show and for host Ira Glass). One of the segments, an unusual childhood memory, is visually accompanied by animation by Ware. TV Squad did have a link to the video, but said segment is currently "unavailable."

The Bad News: The oddest of a collection of oddballs, Calvert DeForest, a.ka. Larry "Bud" Melman, the odd looking, odd sounding, odd acting and just plain damned odd little man transformed by his appearances on Late Night with David Letterman into the most unlikely Pop Culture icon of the 1980's, died Monday night at the age of 85, reports Mark Evanier on his blog News From ME. For more on the death, and life, of this comedy savant, check out his Wikipedia page.

Day Prize Winner Announced!!

On his very own blog, independent comics artist/writer/publisher, creator of the long-running comic Cerebus, and full time nut Dave Sim yesterday announced the recipient of the 2006 Howard E. Day Memorial Prize, more popularly referred to as The Day Prize. Said winner shall receive a nifty commemorative plaque and an even niftier cheque (Sim's Canadian, after all) for $500 at a ceremony to be held during the 2007 Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (organizer Bob Corby doesn't mind if you just call it SPACE) on Saturday, April 21, 2007.

So, without further ado....this year's Day Prize Recipient is:

ChemistryBy Steve Peters (published by Awakening Comics)

Congratulations, Steve. I'll see you---and you, my loyal readers---at SPACE!

One Month Until SPACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, does everyone know what today is?

No, not the first day of Spring! Today is exactly one month before the fabulous, frantic and fun-filled 2007 edition of the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, referred by hipsters and those in the know as SPACE. The show expands to two days for the first time this year, meaning you will have the opportunity to wander breathlessly about the vast multi-purpose room of the Aladdin Shrine Center on Steltzer Rd in Columbus, Ohio, admiring and, we hope, purchasing, the work of a variety of independant comics creators, on both Saturday, April 21 and Sunday the 22nd.

The show will also features numerous panel discussion, held in a secluded room off a dimly lit back hallway, as well as the presentation of the Howard Eugend Day Memorial Prize, or simply The Day Prize, by erstwhile Cerebus creator Dave Sim.

With only a month left, my own preparations for the festival must now kick into high gear. I am in the process of organizing two panels, and I am planning to publish a collection of the Wasted Potential strips that ran in the Atomic Tomorrow and Columbus Alive! as well as the Pop Darts strips from TAT. Despite all the running around and banging of my head against walls that all of that entails, I shall endeavor to still find the time to post here my prodigious and eagerly anticipated wisdom.

Good day and I look forward to seeing you all at SPACE.

Marvel Comics' Mighty Joe Robertson: An Overdue Appreciation

Much has been made of Marvel's Black Panther, introduced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Fantastic Four #52, being the comics' first Black super-hero. (He is sometimes referred to as the first African American super-hero, though this is incorrect. The Panther was T'Challa, a prince of the fictional African land of Wakanda, and not any kind of American. The first African-American hero is most likely The Falcon, introduced by Lee in Captain America and artist Gene Colan some years later) I believe, however, that the most important Black character introduced during Marvel's Silver Age was, in fact, Joe Robertson, a supporting character in The Amazing Spider-Man, where he served as city editor of The Daily Bugle, the fictitious newspaper for which Spidey took photos in his Peter Parker identity.

No fanfare or alliterative cover blurbs accompanied the character's debut in, coincidentally I'm sure, ASM #52. His first appearance in that issue lasted all of two panels and he was not even formally introduced to Peter Parker until two issues later. Following this rather unceremonious, to say the least, introduction, "Robbie," as he was known around the newsroom, soon became a mainstay of the wall-crawler's supporting cast. he was most often portrayed as the voice of reason gently countering Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson's frequent anti-Spider-Man rants.

You may be asking yourself what's significant about such a fairly minor character. If he were introduced in 2007, the answer would be "nothing." But you must remember that the character came on the scene in 1967. I was a time when Black characters in any entertainment were a rarity and positive portrayals of such characters nearly nonexistant. I remember watching a show on the cable channel TV Land a while back in stars of Julia, a sitcom that aired at about the time we're discussing here, reported recieving death threats because their show dared to feature an African American woman as its title character.

Thus, when you consider the media landscape into which Joe "Robbie" Robertson quietly stepped, you can begin to see my point. Here, almost unnoticed in the putative "children's" medium of super-hero comic books, Lee and artist John Romita were presenting to their youthful readers one of the few positive characterizations of an African American male available in any medium. He was no criminal or junkie, as Black men were most often depicted, if depicted at all, in the media of the day. Rather, he was an educated professional, avuncular family man. His job at the Bugle put him in a position of authority over white people, including the comic's titular star, which believe was a first for a Black character in any medium. Moreover, Robbie is treated as a friend, confidante and, most importantly, equal by Jameson, the newspaper's rich, white publisher.

Unfortunately, when histories or analyses of the Black characters in comics are written, Joe Robertson generally goes unmentioned. Much like the way character himself is portrayed in the comics, Robbie's impact on the medium was quiet but powerful.

Random Bits of Randomness

Here are some other stories that, as they say on TV, we are following here in the Word From On High newsroom:

As far as I know, Captain America, much like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, is still dead.

Van Halen, whether or not they really belonged there, could, for the most part, not even be bothered to show up to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The eponymous Van Halen brothers and original lead singer "Diamond" David Lee Roth skipped the shindig, leaving only lame substitute Sammy Hagar and the other guy in the band who's name no one ever remembers (and I remember the name of the "other guy in Wham!") to accept the accolades.

Viacom is suing Google and its recently aquired subsidiary YouTube for copyright infringement. I want to find out more about this story before I formulate any opinions for public consumption.

I'll have my full American Idol update for the week in a day or two, but I think it's safe to say that Sanjaya Malakar, who belongs in Idol's Top 12 as much as Van Halen belongs in the Rock Hall of Fame, is safe for another week. His vocals may have been weak and totally overwhelmed by the band and background singers, but at least he remembered his lyrics onstage. Look for one of the three or four amnesiacs to check out tonight.

More and these stories and others as they develop.

Captain America Is Dead! Long Live Captain America!

Captain America is dead.

Yeah, right.

Issue #25 of Marvel Comics' fourth relaunch of its Captain America series in the past decade features the assassination of Steve Rogers, the super-heroic personification of patriotism, as he is to stand trial for defying the U.S. government in the course of the publisher's latest ill-considered, universe-changing, company wide crossever non-event known as Civil War.

I don't believe it.

A long history of heroes dying and being subsequently resurrected has left me a bit cynical. In an attempt to placate old cranks like me, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada is quoted on CNN as saying that he has instructed all his writers that a character's death should "mean something," by which I presume he is attempting to assure us that this is a permanent change and not just a short term publicity stunt. Of course, he goes on to say that a character's resurrection should also "mean something," which doesn't exactly slam the door shut on Rogers someday popping up alive and well again.

While the "death" of Superman was blatantly a grab to increase sales, as well as delay the inevitable wedding of Supes and Lois Lane to coincide with the same event on the then current TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and Kal-El was never meant to stay dead, most writers and editors who craft stories in which heroes are killed off generally truly intend that the character shall remain dead henceforth. However, as in the recent case of the Hal Jordan version of the hero Green Lantern, writers and editors who follow them will inevitably give in to the whining of the aging fanboys who make up the vast majority of comic book readers these days and bring the deceased heroes back to life.

Meanwhile, it's a pretty sure bet that even without Steve Rogers to wear the star spangle chain mail, the Captain America identity will continue with a new, or at least different, character picking up Cap's mighty shield. I'll bet it's going to be Bucky Barnes, Cap's sidekick from the 1940's who was retroactively killed off by Stan Lee when he returned Cap to active duty after a decade of lingering in limbo with 1964's Avengers #4 and who has been, I am given to understand, recently revived himself. I find it somewhat ironic that for many years, the semi-official position of Marvel concerning the death of heroes was "Only Bucky stays dead." Now that that commandment has been broken and the Buckster breathes once more, it probably won't be too long before his former mentor returns to the ranks of the living.

One other thing that bothers me about Cap being offed is the way Marvel is doing it. Having the so-called symbol of America gunned down by a Jack Ruby wanna-be on the steps of a courthouse is about as lame as having Superman beaten to death by some random monster coming out of nowhere rather than meeting his end at the hands of one of his longtime nemeses such as Lex Luthor or Braniac. Somewhere the Red Skull must be having one hell of a hissy fit. Which, of course, is all the more reason to eventually bring back Cap and kill him off proper-like next time.

It also bothers me that the mainstream media outlets, not just the panting fanboy sycophants who dominate the comics industry press, always buy into the hype whenever one of the major comics publishers decides to give their sales a temporary bump by killing off a character. Dozens of news outlets the world over from CNN to the BBC and Newsweek have covered this story as if a.) it matters to anyone other than those aging fanboys I mentioned earlier or b.) Cap, or at least Steve Rogers, was actually going to stay dead, which I guarantee you will not happen.

Of course, this is the same American news media that accepted uncritically every last one of Bush and Cheney's seemingly endless succession of bogus justifications for invading Iraq, parroting each new lie even as the previous one was exposed as false.

To the Columbus Dispatch: A Call For a New Comics Page!!

The Other Paper also reports this week that The Columbus Dispatch will be cutting staff and cutting some syndicated features, which, Dispatch associate publisher Mike Curtin explains, are readily available right here on the Interweb, in favor of more locally oriented features. Specific examples sited are the stock listings and the Op-Ed page.

What about the comics page? All of the comics the Dispatch carries, from Pearls Before Swine to Peanuts, are available on-line. Not only that, but this city is home to a plethora of highly talented and unfortunately unknown cartoonists, myself included, who would jump at the chance to be seen in the town's largest daily paper. The Dispatch could ditch its generic, cookie cutter comics page that looks like that of every other daily paper in every other city in America in favor of something truly one of a kind with a distinctly local flavor. And if it succeeds, soon papers across the country will be spotlighting local cartoonists and the Dispatch will be hailed for leading newspaper comics into the new century.

Mr. Curtin, I urge you to have the vision and courage to do this. Be a man and print my comics!!

Somewhat Belated Hype: Wasted Potential Now On-Line!!!!

Given my penchant for shameless self-promotion, it amazes me that I have not yet used this, my most public forum, to announce to the world that I have finally and at long last placed my acclaimed and beloved comic strip Wasted Potential on the wonderful World Wide Web. Let me therefore correct this egregious oversight forthwith.

Yes, eager appreciators of fine sequential art, Wasted Potential, the finest semi-autobiographical weekly comic strip ever, is now available for one and all to view, absolutely free of charge and a bargain at twice the price, on the Internet. You may have noticed the section on my sidebar here entitled "My Other Blogs." Well, simply click on Wasted Potential, or click on the name of the strip anywhere in this very post, and be taken to the world of wonderment that is Wasted Potential. Three classics of modern humor currently reside there and a new strip will be posted every Sunday, usually shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon.

Also on the web is Pop Darts, the short lived strip of Pop Culture spoofery which ran alongside Wasted Potential in the late unlamented (by me, at least, but don't get me started on that rant) The Atomic Tomorrow. I only did ten of these strips, only six of which appeared in TAT, and the entire run of the strip appears on the blog The Complete Pop Darts.

I urge you, then, to follow the many helpful links scattered throughout this entry or to the right over there and experience sequential art enjoyment such as you have never known.

Day Prize Short List Announced

I have just received an e-mailed bulletin from Mr. Spaceman himself, Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo promotor Robert "Bob" Corby (who needs a haircut. I saw him today, and while the top remains nice and smooth and shiny, the back's looking a little shaggy.) Dave Sim, former writer and artist of Cerebus and administrator of the Howard Eugene Day Memorial Prize, has announced the short list of nominees for the 2006 Day Prize. So, without further ado, or comments about Bob's grooming habits, the nominees are:

1.) Abominable

Lunchbreak Comics

Pat Lewis

5326 5th Ave. #24

Pittsburgh PA 15232

www.lunchbreakcomics.com

$5.00

2.) Beaver

Eight Ball Graphics

Jim Coon

174 Madison St.

Cortland NY 13045

Ebg.bizhosting.com

$2.00

3.) Being Different

Michelle Arcand

434 Colorado Ave.

Kansas City MO 64124

$1.00

4.) Chemistry-Comic & CD Soundtrack

Awakening Comics

Steve Peters

17 N. York Rd. #3

Willow Grove PA 19090

www.awakeningcomics.com

$3.00-Comic; CD-$7.00; Both-$8.00

5.) Guitar Solo

Mike Dawson

17 Berkeley Pl #2R

Brooklyn NY 11217

mikedawsoncomics.com

$3.00

6.) One Horse Town

Lunchbreak Comics

Pat Lewis

5326 5th Ave. #24

Pittsburgh PA 15232

www.lunchbreakcomics.com

$2.00

7.) Potlatch #5

“Too Much Matheson”

Angry Dog Press

Chad Lambert-writer

Tom Williams-artist

2982 Calusa Dr.

Hamilton OH 45011

Possuatlarge.com

$6.95

8.)Under the Midnight Sun

Dusty Neal- Artist

Christopher Studabaker-Writer

2708 South County Home Rd.

Bluffton IN 46714

chiristopherstudabaker@yahoo.com

Since it was Dave's turn this year to wade through all the crap submitted and whittle it down to the short list shown above, his business partner, the one name wonder known as Gerhard is tasked with the selection of this year's winner, which will be announced during a ceremony at this year's SPACE, which expands to become a two day show this year and will take place on April 21 and 22. The Day Prize presentation will be on Saturday the 21st.

I'll have more details about this year's SPACE as it gets closer.

"Wired" magazine Champions Web-Based Comic Books

Okay, I know I'm about eight months late here, but I just got aroung to reading the very interesting article on digital distribution of comic books in the May 2006 issue of Wired magazine, and I wanted to pass it on to my readers. (I know I have one or two left somewhere out there.) There's definitely much in the article for comics publishers to think about, although they appear to be going to some lengths to avoid doing so, according to author Mark McClusky .

You know, given that the topic of this article is very similar to what Scott McCloud was going on and on about in Reinventing Comics, I'm surprised that he was not quoted or asked to comment. It's not as if Wired has never heard of him. When I looked for this piece on their site by entering "comic books" into the search field, several of the articles that came up in the results either mentioned or were about McCloud.

Speaking of McCloud, by the way, someday I'm gonna have to get around to reviewing his latest book, Making Comics.

Reaction to New Betty and Veronica

Archie Comics seems to be hedging their bets a little with their revamp of Betty and Veronica. Apparently, the new look is scheduled to last only four issues, then the publisher will sit back and gauge reader response (aka sales figures) to determine whether to do more stories in that vein, and, in an interview published on-line, Archie editor Victor Gorelick assured Newsarama that, "There will always be the traditional 'Archie' look." Well, since their digest line consists mainly of reprints and they've got sixty plus years of that stuff sitting around, I would think so.

One things for sure, the news of the "new look" has accomplished something that seemed nearly impossible: it's actually got people talking about Archie comics again, both in the comics press and the mainstream media. While a blurb on the Publisher's Weekly site is not surprising, the story also made news in Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail.

They say any publicity is good publicity, and I hope Archie Comics subscribes to that notion, because a lot of the initial reaction is not what you would call positive. Most it is along the lines of what I described as my initial reaction in my post on Saturday. There are a lot of people asking "Is nothing sacred?" and excoriating Archie for screwing with a piece of their childhood, and many, many comparisons to the 1980's New Coke fiasco. Of course, most of the people expressing this outrage probably haven't read an Archie comic since they were kids, and a few of these whiners even admit this.

While I'm opposed to changing the long standing Archie art style, I'll take a wait and see attitude on the story. However, after seeing these pencilled preview pages posted at Silver Bullet Comics, I'm not hopeful. You can't tell much because these are just the first few pages and the story hasn't really begun. In fact, these pages seem to be largely exposition for the benefit of the new readers that Archie is hoping this stunt garners them. However, the problem is that it reads like exposition rather than the thoughts of a teenaged girl. Maybe the writing gets better once the plot gets rolling. One can only hope.

Archie Comics To Get New Look

This May's release of Betty and Veronica Double Digest #151 marks a major and radical change for Archie Comics, one of the only three comics publishers whose roots extend back to the so-called "Golden Age of Comics" of the 1940s. With that issue, the venerable purveyor of harmless teen humor drops the cartoony "Archie style" of art that has become their trademark in favor of a more realistic rendering style, courtesy of artists Steve Butler and Marvel Comics veteran Al Milgrom, and longer, supposedly more realistic stories.

My first reaction upon reading about this in this week's issue of Comic Shop News was that they couldn't do this. It just wasn't right to trash sixty years of tradition and throw out the cherished childhood memories of millions of comics readers. Then I remembered the last Archie comics that I actually read, and my reaction changed to "It's about damned time!" While I love the Archie art style, which has been a major influence on my own cartooning style, the stories themselves have been bland, unfunny, and irrelevant to the lives of real teens, while the characters remain largely locked into their original 1940s stereotypical modes of behavior and dress. (Archie still wears a bowtie? And just what the hell is that thing on top of Jughead's head supposed to be, anyway?) A move even into the 1950's, let alone the 21st century, is long overdue. As always, however, the final proof of whether this is the right move for Archie Comics will be the stories themselves and, ultimately, the sales figures.

You know, I've always wondered why Archie Andrews could never chose between Betty and Veronica, and the cover of Betty and Veronica Double Digest #151 brings that question to mind once again. Betty has always been portrayed as much nicer than Veronica, and on that cover she's shown to be a whole lot more attractive as well. This does not make Archie look very good, as it seems that the only thing Ronnie has going for her is that she's rich.

More on Archie Comics and Betty and Veronica's new look:

Decade By Decade with Archie Comics (The A.V. Club)

Archie Comics Gets Horrible New Look (Table of Malcontents)

Columbus Dispatch Debuts Lame New Comic Strip

This is what you get when you let people vote: George W. Bush's second term and horribly unfunny, crudely drawn crap like Pearls Before Swine replacing Fox Trot in the daily comics section of the Columbus Dispatch beginning this past Monday. And, for the love of God, do NOT even get me started on the People's Choice Awards.

Of course, it didn't help that in the cases of the new Dispatch strip and the 2004 election, the alternatives from which the voters had to chose were fairly lame. Apparently, there just aren't any funny or well drawn daily comic strips, or Democrats qualified to be President of the United States, out there any more.

According to the article that accompanied Swine's debut, Dilbert "cartoonist" Scott Adams is a fan of the strip and endorsed it on his web-site. I can understand that, as Swine creator Steven Pastis' childish doodles make Adams' own mindless scribbles look like Rembrandt by comparison.

Pearls Before Swine is further proof, if any were needed, that the American newspaper comic strip is an artform that is on its last legs and, furthermore, that the Dispatch editors, and apparently a plurality of its readers, wouldn't know a good comic strip if it bit them on the ass.