Thursday 7 May 2009

Villainous Heroes of History

Bizarro is brought to you today by Budget Family Cruises.

Like pirates, vikings were ruthless killers, thieves and slave owners. Their main source of income was sailing to another country, killing the men and stealing everything they could find a use for, including their women. And yet, we have made pop culture heroes of them.

In spite of their lack of positive social contribution, I love to do viking cartoons. Drawing their ships, outfits and horny hats is a kick and there is something about infamous amoral hellions that makes for a seemingly never-ending pool of humor.

Viking gags run in my family as I am married to the step-granddaughter of Dik Browne, the creator of Hagar the Horrible, which conveniently also makes her the stepdaughter of his son, Chris Browne, who took over the strip after Dik passed. All told, CHNW is related to five professional cartoonists, including her bio-dad (Ralph Smith, editorial cartoonist and former syndicated dude), an uncle (Chance Browne, Hi and Lois), and me. I'm pretty sure that's the record.

Free Digital Comics from the US Goverment

More Free (Digital) Comics!

The library at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has put up a Government Comics Collection. These are scanned copies (TIFF files in a PDF wrapper) of comics produced by the United States Federal Government. Some of the creators represented include Milton Caniff, Will Eisner, Scott Adams, Peter David, Al Capp, Walt Kelly, Charlz Schulz, Eduardo Barreto, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Joe Orlando, Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Dr. Seuss. There are 167 comics in all!

FCBM5 Day 7

It's day seven of the Fifth Annual YACB Free Comic Book Month!

Our next selected entry is from Billy Hogan. The five comics that Billy listed are:

1. Superman
2. Watchmen
3. Planetary
4. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
5. Powers

And his other thing of interest is David Weber's Honor Harrington novels.

I'll be sending Billy the fourth issue of the old First Publishing Crossroads series, featuring a meeting between Grimjack & Judah Maccabee (from Nexus).

For Billy's bonus comic, I'm sending him the Donald Duck Halloween comic.

Billy's comics should be in the mail within a week. Enjoy!

There's still time to send in your entry for the YACB Free Comic Book Month; details are here.

Current FCBM Statistics:
16 entries
16 free comics sent so far
24 days remaining