Sean Murphy

2073: Kilogram

http://www.explainxkcd.com/2073

I finally made it back out of the house to see a movie. I wish I’d enjoyed the movie more.

Fantastic Crimes of Beastly Grindelwald or Something Like That suffers from some altogether too common pop-cinema ailments. Unmotivated action, Flanderization, and tokenism top my list, but I should also point out that it felt long and by the end I didn’t really care what happened to key characters, and those are more likely to dampen the spirits of movie-goers.

Unmotivated action is pretty easy to understand. It’s when you don’t think a character would do a thing, and the story never gets around to explaining why the character did the thing.

Flanderization is when a character in a series begins as a well-rounded, interesting person with quirks, but as the series progresses they are defined only by their quirks. It gets its name from Ned Flanders of Simpsons fame. Fantastic Beast’s Queenie Goldstein captivated us in the first film with her mind-reading, her smarts, her cooking, her effortless beauty, her kindness, and yes, being a little ditzy. This film mostly just gave us ditzy. It was pretty disappointing.

Tokenism is when a demographic is represented by only one character in the film, and it’s made worse when that character falls into one or more negative stereotypes. The only Asian woman in the film, Nagini, played by Claudia Kim (you may remember her as Doctor Helen Cho from Age of Ultron) happens to be cursed to turn into a giant serpent. Because serpent-ness is an Asian thing?

The good news is that everyone on screen did brilliantly with what they were given. Even when they weren’t given very much, they acted it to the nines, and did everything they could to make it work.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald doesn’t quite fall past my Threshold of Disappointment because I wasn’t expecting much. It doesn’t clear my Threshold of Awesome, however, which leaves it in far too ordinary a place for something with “fantastic” right in the title.

Jump to a Random Strip in the Archives! | Buy This Original Art | Archives | E-mail Dave

The post Swapped, p3 appeared first on Ctrl+Alt+Del Comic.

Comic for Friday November 16th, 2018 - "No high five" [ view ]

On this day in 1998, Kell tried to convince R.L. that despite Ralph's terrible scores on his employment application, he's still right for the job... [ view ]

Today's Daily Sponsor - No sponsor for this strip. [ support ]

The origin of the Power Booster Rod!  Sort of.  I kind of like the PBR being, you know, just a stick that has magic powers for no real reason.  I loved its absurdity.  And so even while giving it this origin point within Jason’s home universe, I make a point to establish that the PBR was already pretty weird.  It’s just there, already sparkly, randomly in the middle of a back alley in London.  I let myself have it both ways.

just like your mom

Hey gang!

This past weekend, I met a few employees from Reddit, and they talked me into starting a subreddit for DRIVE. So, voila, check it out:

reddit.com/r/drivecomic I'll be honest. I haven't...loved...the Disqus system on the DRIVE site. So! In anticipation of designing the new DRIVE site in the upcoming months, I thought we'd try Reddit over Disqus. Reddit is the fifth-largest website on the internet, and most (all?) of us have interfaced with it once or twice, at minimum. The up-vote system is brilliant, and there's a broadly understood segmentation of ideas/conversations under different "Posts".

So! It's a process: We'll try this out, and see how folks like it. In the meantime, feel free to chime in at the subreddit...and see what you think!

(Free to $5+ Patreon backers!)

Miss Match has been nominated for a “Nemmie” award, but she’s going to have to beat off some stiff competition! Meanwhile, Captain Heroic tries to infiltrate the awards show by impersonating a villain. The simmering romance between the two supers comes to a boil in this episode of Evil Inc! Get your 27-page eComic right now!

The post Evil Inc eComic #46 — Best Nemeses appeared first on Evil Inc.

Not a ton to say about this page, other than it’s a little weird that it looks like Sydney could just be walking through an alley in New York and not on a pulsar Dyson warpgate station. I mean, you can’t see the sky all the time.

Admittedly I’m a little disappointed with my alien architecture skills. Ideally this whole place would look more like the interior of the Death Star, but on the other hand, there’s no reason some of the surface of the station or the buildings couldn’t be built out of stone. The accretion disk around the pulsar is full of crap that can be mined, like asteroids and whatnot.

The material the station is built out of manages and harnesses the gravity of the pulsar so that the surface of it is livable. That also hugely affects the density and speed of the crap in the accretion disk, so it’s not like it’s a maelstrom of death traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, but there’s still plenty of stuff out there to mine for building materials. Even if there weren’t, it’s a massive trading hub. You can get just about anything in the universe at Fracture Station.

I didn’t see that anyone got the second alien on the previous page, but there were some outstanding guesses. Apparently a pile of tentacles with an eye on top is sort of a common thing for the special effects guy to make for a show.

Someone on the Grrl Power facebook page got it though. It’s from this old ass TV show called “Under the Mountain.” It was imported from New Zealand, and broadcast on, of all channels, Nickelodeon. Remember this was a show based on Cthulhu mythos, but I guess Nickelodeon nabbed it because the main characters were a pair of kids who, I don’t exactly recall, used magic stones to wish the monsters home or something?

There was a movie remake of it a few years ago starring Sam Neil. I don’t recall much from it, but it probably has special effects than the show, which are old-school Doctor Who level mostly. Plus the only videos I can find on it are… poor.

Anyway, it really stuck with me all these years, I think probably because it was the first truly macabre thing I’d ever seen. I was 9 when it was produced. Not sure when it was aired in America, but the creatures in that show were definitely my first tentacle monsters.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.

The post 1242 appeared first on Looking For Group.

Comic for Thursday November 8th, 2018 - "Total consumption" [ view ]

On this day in 1995, Kell called Kevin to tell him that Coney is a big hit with his parents. At first they couldn't accept a bunny as their own... [ view ]

Today's Daily Sponsor - No sponsor for this strip. [ support ]

Congratulations to Buckley from WA, who wins this month’s raffle prize – a signed copy of Wrong again, God boy.

On November 23, Jesus & Mo celebrates its 13th birthday. Help them celebrate by becoming a Patron:

LIMITED TIME PATREON OFFER
From now until that date, anyone becoming a $4 per month patron (or raising their existing pledge to $4) gets sent a signed, dedicated A5 J&M print of their choice – an ideal Xmas present or gift to self (say which comic and who you want it dedicated to in an email or Patreon message). This is a limited time offer which ends on Nov 23.

Become a Patron!

New comic!

Speed lines... I know I'm using them incorrectly for manga purists, but meh... I think I got the point across.

I like the weapons breaking the frame on the first two panels.

My knuckles hurt due to the weather changing around me so I'm going to stop typing and see you guys later.

In the good old days when Great Britain famously had 220 capital crimes, one of them was–you guessed it–attempted suicide.

Meet Sunkist. She is a one-and-a-half old Terrier mix. She is a very sweet and friendly girl. She gets along well with several of the dogs here at our shelter. She loves to run and play, and will walk beside her human around the yard, and knows how to sit and shake hands. Sunkist is still waiting on her family. She has been at the shelter 142 days. Submitted by the Humane Society of Morgan County Georgia.

Looking for a healthier diet for your dog? Consider The Farmer’s Dog: Real Food, Made Fresh, Delivered

“Our girl is back. She’s lost more than 10 pounds, jumps into bed with me every morning as soon as my husband heads out for work, and plays like she’s a puppy again. No limping, no yelping, just the happy girl she used to be.” Kaitlin & Maddy, California

Get 50% off when you buy through DogPerDay. Click here to check it out >>

The post Sunkist the Terrier Mix appeared first on DogPerDay ~ Cute puppy pictures, dog photos, cute videos, holistic pet care.

The post 1240 appeared first on Looking For Group.

A repeat of yesterday’s below-comic news, as it only went on there at like 2pm:

There’s a special Halloween page of Welcome To The Fuck Zone (NSFW!) up today over at Slipshine!  Any Slipshine subscriber can go check that out, any of the 32 previous WTTFZ pages, or any of the, what, ten full-length Pornographique stories?  Sure.  Ten.  I’ll say ten.

Anyway, there’s costumes!