Friday Night Fights: Weird Pete vs. World of Hackcraft

From Knights of the Dinner Table #129 (2007). Story and art by Jolly R. Blackburn. (click pic for larger)

A classic? Foom!!

Emoticondom

This Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by Unlimited Choices Consortium.

I'm not a fan of using a lot of emoticons when I email, but I do use the original happy face fairly frequently. Email does not imply tone of voice, so the two-stroke smile – I don't bother with the nose dot. : ) – is not only a simple, helpful communication tool, it is often necessary to let your reader know you were kidding. My humor has caused misunderstandings in emails before and I've offended people without even knowing it. If the pissed off party doesn't immediately write back and tell you so, you've got a loose cannon wandering around town drawing a target on your chest, as you skip and whistle down the street without a care in the world.

Of course, if you're skipping and whistling down the street on a regular basis and you're older than 11, unclear emails are probably not your biggest problem.

I am not, however, a fan of the electronic, digital, Pixar-style emoticons that move and wink and stick out their tongues and wear funny clothes. Those things make me feel as though the page is crawling with radioactive insects that have escaped from some evil laboratory at Disney. (FYI: all labs at Disney are evil.) Others are welcome to embrace these gremlins, but I avoid badly-designed things in my own life and don't want people sneaking them into my field of vision without even asking.

It occurs to me that last paragraph sounded like Andy Rooney. Shoot me now. Perhaps that's why almost all of my posts fall into the "cranky comments" subhead.

By the way, anyone know what emoticon you use when you feel like this?

Retired Rockers

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Senior Scooters of Saratoga.

When I was a kid, rock stars were young, rebellious, and if not good-looking then at least taut-skinned. It was important that they were the opposite of your parents. No one over 35 was even drumming in a band, much less the front man. Now, Rolling Stones concerts have a large disability section up front for the senior scooter and wheelchair crowd, four of whom are on stage. Keith Richard has enough extra skin on his face to build a puppy. Mick Jagger is beginning to look like my chain-smoking, hard-drinking Aunt Ruby.

As a guy who is well over forty but still incredibly cool, I cheer these wrinkly roll models with one hand and cover my eyes with the other. I hope I'm still rocking it when I'm Jagger's age, but I hope I don't have to swing from the rafters from a bullwhip to get my jollies.

Batman RIP Sells

Disclaimer: obsessing over Diamond Sales Figures is bad for your health, bad for comics, and most likely contributes to global warming.

Lost in all the hubbub over the fact that Final Crisis #1 fell short of Secret Invasion #2 (though I'll get to that in a moment...) is that fact that the first 2 chapters of "Batman R.I.P" sold surprisingly well, right up at the 100,000 mark. Whatever disappointment DC might be feeling over Final Crisis numbers should be tempered a bit by this fact.

I'd chalk up the good sales on "Batman R.I.P." to the confluence of: Batman fans + Morrison fans + Tony Daniel fans + Big-ish Event fans + pre-Dark Knight movie excitement. "Batman R.I.P." could trn out to be this year's "Sinestro War"; maybe DC will learn that these minor-sized big-ish events will work for a better long-term strategy than the massive Crisis crossovers.

The other big sales surprise was the strong showing for Avengers/Invaders #1, proving that just about anything that Alex Ross is involved in is Direct Market gold.

As for the Final Crisis numbers: it's debuting at about 100,000 units less than Infinite Crisis did, which has to be disappointing. This is the first time that Marvel & DC have had their big event crossovers go head-to-head, so there was bound to be an effect. (We should also note that FC came out the last week of the month, so there are no re-order numbers included in the total, while SI came out the first week of the month so there is like a boost from re-orders there.)

It will be interesting to see the June figures: will Final Crisis take the same size drop that Secret Invasion did? Will Batman remain strong? How will Trinity do? (I think it was a mistake to start the weekly Trinity at the same time as Final Crisis; they each draw attention away from the other, and an eight-month break between weekly series was warranted.)

Cannot Tell a Lie

Today's cartoon is brought to you by Delayed Reaction Rationale, Inc.

Funny how everything good about America during Clinton's administration was said to be a result of the Reagan/Bush era, and that everything wrong with America in the early '00s was blamed on the Clinton administration.

The one solace I had after election day '04 was that perpetrators of our doom would be in office to take responsibility for the poison fruit of their labors. Now, our ass is so far into a crack that there is pretty much no doubt who wedged it there.

Hot Fried Babes

All proceeds from today's Bizarro cartoon will benefit the Tots for Tots campaign.

I like potatoes. I'm not afraid of them, I don't buy into the Atkins nonsense that carbs will kill you. Fried potatoes will kill you, but it's the fat and cholesterol in the oil, not the potato doing the lion's share of the work. Animal flesh has plenty of that stuff, too.

I eat tons of carbs every day (plus some plant protein), in the form of natural, whole plant foods, and I have no weight problem, no cholesterol issues (the good or bad kind), plenty of energy and health and very low blood pressure. Every single other person in my family battles these issues, so it isn't just genetics.

But I do love me a French fry. I eat them on occasion – not daily, of course – and man, there are far worse-tasting things you could put in your mouth. If I met a French fry woman like the one above, I might leave my wife for her. If I found out French women taste like fries, same risk. Don't tell CHNW.

By the way, the Atkins diet is reported to make you lose weight and though I've never tried it, I have observed that Atkins himself weighs much less now.

Twittering Comics Again

If you've been paying attention to the blue box over at the top of the sidebar, you may have noticed that for the past six months or so it's been static. No more! I'm once again Twittering the comics I'm reading; bite-sized reviews no more than 140 characters. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/davereadscomics