Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Christmas Covers - December 2

Sam has leaped into a department store Santa on C. Winston Taylor's cover for Quantum Leap #3 (1992).

For each day of December until Christmas I'm featuring a Holiday-related comic book cover. (Click on the image to get a larger version.)

Come back tomorrow, and every day this month, for a new Christmas cover.


Just 23 more 'get-ups' until Santa!

(2009: Casper Giant-Size #2)
(2008: Sabrina's Holiday Spectacular #2)
(2007: Sabrina, The Teen-Age Witch #77)
(2006: Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine Series #111)
(2005: Limited Collectors' Edition #C-43)
(2004: Walt Disney's Christmas Parade #9)

(Polite Dissent's 2010 Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar)

We Glorified Apes

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Blog.

I've heard that "Two and a Half Men" is America's most popular sit-com. As a person who would like very much to get into the TV business, this distresses me. I have only been able to watch a few minutes of a couple of episodes of this juggernaut before my brain ratcheted into survival mode and told my hand to change the channel. On each occasion, it took hours to shake off the willies.

I often find most extremely popular comedies to be utterly repugnant. This does not portend well for my chances in Hollywood. So I thought of this cartoon and I really like it. This would be a funnier premise for a sit-com, in my opinion.

My turtle penthouse gag is from a collaboration with my good friend and holder of one of the best pun names ever, Richard Cabeza. Since a tortoise's shell is his home, imagine what a high-rise apartment building of tortoises would look like. I don't even want to try to draw that.

Another popular TV show that makes me wonder if I am the same species as the millions of people who cannot live without it is "Dancing with the Stars." I wrote this gag weeks ago just because I hate the show, but when it ran in the papers last week, Bristles Palin's bid for top honors on that very show was in the news. A lucky coincidence. As many other people noted, how is this person a "star"? Becoming famous because you are the unwed pregnant teen of a megalomaniac hardly endows one with star quality.

But celebrity is often unearned, that is the nature of our human world. Humans are glorified apes who happened to evolve a very powerful brain. If any other species had been genetically gifted in this same way, they'd likely make just as big of fools of themselves as we do.

My apologies to any of my readers who are fans of the shows I've trashed here today. These are just my opinions, your results may vary wildly. As well they should. I'm just another random, glorified ape making a fool of myself on an hourly basis.

A parting gag: in reference to a blog a few days ago I accidentally referred to Ziggy as Zippy in a comment on Facebook. These characters with similar names could scarcely be at further ends of the cartoon scale but it gave me the idea to combine them. I present to you here, the yin/yang hero/villain, Zigpy the Pudhead, with apologies to Bill Griffith and Tom Wilson.