Long time between posts - Golem Part2 is now complete! Check it out

Golem:Small Town Massacre installment 02x02 link

Don’t you just love it when all the kids come to the UN to play. So many puffed chests and so much propaganda… it’s bloody brilliant! Haven’t heard anything new or earth shattering (or earth repairing) yet, but we’ll see.

Oh, to those of you who read these from one of the mirrors, you missed Tuesday’s exciting conclusion to our latest bit of continuity. You can catch it on the main site, here.

Newest content from GOLEM:SMALL TOWN MASSACRE - 02x01

For those that spent yesterday living under a rock (or otherwise occupied), Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment for a whopping $4 billion. I’m feeling some mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, we’ll likely see a lot more Marvel Comics movies… the kind that are made with serious funding… which is, in theory at least, a good thing. On the other hand, Disney is already so very, very big.

…and while they have historically happily harvested harrowing tales and humorous homilies (Excelsior!!!) from the public domain, they are the fire-breathing, flesh-rending leader of the battle against the public domain with their never-ending battles to extend copyright terms here in the States and abroad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in the concept of copyrights to allow the artistically inclined to be able to profit from their works and support their families, but Disney’s extensions have reached the point of obscenity and far exceeded the original intents of copyright law. Oh well, the battle rages on, I suppose…

So, I’ve not read any comics since the story was announced, but I strongly suspect there will be a lot of these sort of strips today. I almost passed, but my sense of whimsy got the better of me. The moment I read the story, I had a picture of a bloody Mickey/Wolverine rending flesh from the bloody corpse of Jeffrey Katzenberg… and it made me giggle. Had to tone it down a bit though, as I try to keep Slightly Off-Topic family-friendly.

I actually learned this particular ditty at MYF (Methodist Youth Foundation) winter camp… that and the pioneer song! I used to love going to the Winter and Summer (weeklong) MYF camps. I’d always get to bring a camp, and there wasn’t much in the way of churchiness to it. There’d always be activities, fresh air, some sort of reading (thought-provoking but never from the bible… we read The Lottery one night) and free time… lots of free time!

I remember the year we decided to teach the girls to play AD&D… it did not go well…

In any case, what is the most bizarre children’s song that you were taught as a child?

A super short Kingdom snapshot - THE TARGET.

Kingdom:3 Finding the girl… this snapshots a little on the heavy side. One more shorter snapshot to come.

Click the image to delve in.

That would be this Ardra Comic. Clearly, I have no financial or professional relationship with those guys… just a fan… and I think the t-shirt is pretty cool!

Okay, back to Penguicon. I would seriously like your input, so let me know who you’d like to see (keep in mind that the only weapons at my disposal are 3 nifty guest “free passes” and a shot at a one expenses paid Guest of Honor slot). Think about what panels would be interesting to you as a reader or a creator and let me know. Together, we’ll make this the greatest Penguicon EVER (wow, that’s actually an incredibly high bar, but I’ll do my best). Thanks.

Dave

“If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will … wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all,”

Oh, L’il Kim, you’re so silly! If you want to be a recurring character in the comic strip, you just have to ask. There’s no reason to run around shouting things and making people nervous.

Hey, if you’d be willing to leave the county for a day, The News Guy would love to do an interview. We can’t let him travel in to North Korea though because we’ve heard how you treat journalists there. But say the word and we’ll meet you in Hong Kong for noodles and a Coke.

On second thought, make that noodles and an Evian. You do not need any caffeine in your diet!

On a lighter note, it seems that Randall Munroe caught the same viewing of Wargames that I did. At least we went in totally different directions with it. Of course, his is funnier. I hate when that happens.

So the new iPhone was announced yesterday, the 3g S. Aside from the new firmware which all phones will get, it has a faster processor, up to 32 gb storage (!!) and a better camera. All of these features are, of course, very nice, but nothing compelling enough to make me throw my 3g out the window and rush to upgrade.

But then again, this is the 3rd generation iPhone, and it’s not really about greasing the converted for a few more quid. It’s about refining a design enough and seeing if you can’t entice some new users over to the Apple side.

So, what I think *is* compelling is that they are keeping the current 3g iphone in production and lowering the cost to $99. Now *that* is a sweet deal. Yes, it’s still tied to AT&T, but this really is the greatest phone I have ever used! As per the costs of the AT&T plan, they do stick you with a mandatory data plan, but I’m paying less for the family’s three phones at AT&T than I ever did at Verizon or Sprint, so I don’t see a problem there. I can also get a signal in my lab with AT&T which I never could with the other two, so for me, at least it works. In any case, the cost of entry for an iphone has just gone down a rather substantial notch, and that is a beautiful thing…

…now if I could just manage the thing from linux…

KINGDOM short story 2: Click the image to read.

So the Zune HD has been announced. I’m sure the Zune fans are very excited by the news, but gosh, you’d think they could have made it look a little less like the Apple product…

And yes, I will admit that I have an iphone (I’ve mentioned it before), but I’ve had a lot of mp3 players in my time. I remember my Rio Karma. It was a great player except for the fact that you had to smack it every few days in order to get the hard drive to spin up and it took FOREVER to transfer your music to the thing. Simple lcd display and joystick control, but it fit the hand, and I liked it. I replaced it with a series of iRiver players. I like iRivers. Very nice file management, most of them play off files, and they’re nice to look at, but iRiver has stepped away from large capacity players and only supports a player for… about an hour before dropping a new one on the market.

When I finally broke down and bought an iPod, it was for the very simple reason that it had a large enough hard drive and was cheaper than the other options (Cowen, etc). I actually never liked the click-wheel interface, but it worked as advertised and was easy to rip and transfer music to with iTunes. I upgraded to the iphone so that I only had to carry one device around (though I gave up storage space which means I have to manage playlists (ugh)… I would LOVE a 60gb iphone, but a hard drive is a battery drainer).

The built-in HD radio in the new Zune is a neat feature, but I can’t imagine it being enough to convince me or others to start carrying a second device again. Going against the iPod Touch, I expect a lot will depend upon whether they’ve gotten IE mobile to be a decent browser experience. Mobile Safari is a tough act to follow (though I suppose if the Zune had… you know… flash support, that would probably go a long way). I’m not sure I can be made to care about the HD (720p) output capabilities of the Zune HD. They are marketing as the perfect integration with the Xbox 360, and if I already had an xbox 360, why would I be playing files on my TV from the Zune?!? That’s just another set of cables to manage, thank you very much.

In any case, I’m open to surprises, so maybe this third iteration of the Zune will just be super fantabulous. I guess we’ll find out in the fall.

And thus in our sixth chapter of Narutard Theater, I appeal to the legions of frothing fan girls out there to come to their senses. I know you all want to believe that Sasuke is dreamy and noble, but he is clearly a fellow that has decided the best solution to any problem is to stick a kunai in it’s back. This is, generally speaking, not the path of a noble warrior, and very few who start upon it are ever able to return. So do me a favor… just let it go, okay? There’s nothing I hate more than being surrounded by a gaggle of Sasuke fan girl discussing how they just know he’s truly a good guy, but he’s just misunderstood. Yeesh… I get chills just thinking about it.

So, I’m in the middle of putting together book one… which is a LOT of work. A lot of strips need tweaking just to fit the layout and still be legible. In the case of Narutard Theater strips, I have to put together a proper legal blurb citing that the characters are used as parody only and that they are owned by… well… whoever actually owns them. I’d like to get the actual blessing of the folks involved, but I that doesn’t happen too often for parody, I expect. I imagine there’s a good chance that Wizards of the Coast might give me their blessing for Dungeons and Dragons Theater as the strips are used to frame commentary on the state of the game and such. In any case, as far as a print bonus, what would you prefer to see:

1. Enhanced commentary on the strips
2. A few “bonus strips” tossed in
3. A few of the early strips redone in color and the current drawing style
4. Some combination of the above (be specific)
5. Other (be specific)?

Thanks for your thoughts on the matter.