Every bus heads full-speed toward the edge of the cliff. All but one falter, and tumble to their doom. The last one flies across the chasm, landing heavily, the passengers screaming but alive. Then we do it all again next year
I’m super-pleased to announce some neat new things for the holidays! Quick links:
Here is the first bunch of photos from the Classy Photo Contest! Thanks to everyone who entered. These in particular are the entries that attempted to reproduce a single comic panel. I’ve juxtaposed each with the panel it is attempting to reproduce.
This first one depicts a panel from my short story “Treachery!” (shown here in minicomic form; reprinted in my hardcover book Beards of our Forefathers). It is certainly the classiest sort of murder around! Gather in the parlor, the butler did it, &c. The description submitted with the photo reads:
So strongly possessed was I by the urge for a friendly round of blind-man’s-buff with my loving wife that I did not trouble myself to change out of my shirtsleeves or even to put down the latest by Mr. Malki !. I knew all that nonsense about someone killing my father was an ephemerality.
This one, of course, is from Comic #378, In which Children suffer. Extremely strong entry; top marks for costume creativity! The description provides a helpful 80s-teen-movie-style epilogue to the comic in question:
The Diver went on to lifeguard at different YMCA. He still hasn’t shut up.
One of the Children became the first zombie president of the United States.
The Bear was acquitted of all charges after jinxing the prosecution… He never did receive his Coke.
This entry from Claire, recreating a panel from #601; The Discovery that Changed the World, has everything I like in it: Cheetos, chopsticks, and attention to typographic detail. Claire writes:
I attempted to grow a beard for more accurate panel recreation but was met with little success and faking a beard isn’t really my style.
I must say I will never eat Cheetos any other way EVER again. I am going to carry around chopsticks expressly for the purpose of Cheeto consumption.
I think I should have gotten a larger bag, but I am just glad I still have a black jacket.
Claire also contributes this entry from #607; The Peaches That Were Left, but admits:
I meant this as a joke originally, because really! the panel is just a hand holding two fruit. Now I encountered a problem since it’s not peach season and where I live there are none available. But I got as close as I could, and close isn’t that close.
Here, from Andrew, is a panel from #387; In which Baggage is emblazoned. This is hopefully the only time that sticker has ever made its way into real life. Andrew writes:
“I’m TIRED of being upstaged by more talented MOD fans. I guess I just have to make my submissions more DISTINCTIVE somehow…”
Andrew, let us know if you ever lose that suitcase. I’d like to know if the sticker actually works.
This one’s super great! It recreates #191; In which a Tiny Dinosaur factors, which has the distinction of being the specific comic incredulously described by Jesse Thorn during my 2008 Sound of Young America interview, during which I had a throat infection and so spoke with a certain gravitas I have never since been able to match. The submitter of this photo writes:
The handsome fellow in the photo is my brother and that is his dinosaur, Diny (pronounced DYE-nee). Fun facts about this photo:
The scowl on my brother’s face was because I told him, “Imagine they’ve found Roderick’s body and it’s all Diny’s fault.” Also, he was incredibly bored.
The ‘sword’ is two-toned because it can retract. This means that you can flick the sword to extend it, which is very fun to do.
Diny has not told anyone to commit a crime (that I know of). In fact, he is a good, law-abiding stegosaurus.
Super fond of troublemaking big siblings dragging little brothers on boring adventures. Top marks.
Vanessa sends in this recreation of #238; In which Education is Vital. I am not sure that this is entirely historically accurate, but I am willing to make some minor exceptions for anyone who can balance on a cardboard unicycle. Vanessa writes:
Fact: our neighbors came out and watched us try to set up our delayed-timer camera on top of an IKEA magazine on top of a rubber tote, on top of a kitchen chair.
+5 bonus points for weirding out the neighbors. That was the point of this entire contest.
Also from Vanessa, recreating the most popular Wondermark comic of all time, #657; The Negotiator. “He who is without sin among you,” she writes, “let him be the first to throw rock-paper-scissors.” Vanessa, I say to you: DONE.
This is a very strong entry, recreating #507; In which Leopold is located. The word balloons are a nice bonus touch, and also note the attention to detail on the footwear. The cat in particular is striking an extremely accurate pose. By way of explanation, the submitter writes “In the live action version, Leopold was played by a much smaller man.”
Another quite strong entry (even the pots look basically correct) from the same submitter, recreating #372; In which Events end Poorly. Captioned, of course, “YOU FAILED THE TEST JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN JR”
Judge John Hodgman, Jr. is the name of the cat. And why not. I myself have a cat named Mall of America, after John Hodgman’s life-changing article in The Areas of My Expertise. Still: um, run?
Now then! I have my favorites, and of course we will show some of the other category of Classy Merchandise Photos later. But first: let’s have a vote! (If you’re reading this on a feed and the voting box doesn’t appear, click through to the post.) Here are the contenders:
If only Judge John Hodgman, Jr could have kept himself from jumping on that chair before the photo was taken he’d be a lock
This Thursday, the 17th, is my Machine of Death magic & variety show in Hollywood! It’s totally free to attend, and in addition to magic, music, and entertainment we’ll also have fine friends Kris Straub, Kevin McShane and (via Skype) Ryan North on hand. More details here!
We’ll also be doing a canned food drive for the LA Food Bank at the event. Every donation of a unit of canned or nonperishable food (including canned meats such as tuna and staples such as peanut butter and cereals) will earn you a raffle ticket, and we’ll be giving out some cool MOD and Wondermark prizes at the event, including T-shirts, signed books and more.
More details at the MOD site here, or we also have a Facebook invite here! (updated with correct link)
The Super-Stupendous Machine of Death Magic & Variety Show
Thursday November 17th, 8pm
The Fake Gallery, Hollywood (4319 Melrose Ave, 90004).
Admission is free. Drinks and snacks will be served.
Hope to see you there! But even if you can’t make it in person, tune in to our livestream at machineofdeath.net on the night of the event. I declare that it will be…MAGICAL
I saw this truck on the highway the other day. I don’t know what it was carrying — probably cameras and broadcasting equipment — but it was covered in ads for the local Fox afternoon show. It’s a blurry picture, taken with the camera balanced on my steering wheel in what was probably the safest move happening within 50 yards. So it’s a bit hard to read, but at the top it says “EXCITING. DIFFERENT. FRESH.”
None of those words mean anything. I mean, the dictionary gives definitions for them, but I’m left scratching my head wondering how any of them could possibly apply to a local Fox afternoon show. What is exciting about it? What in the world could possibly be different about it? Is it an hour or so of recycled headlines, celebrity trivia, animal-shelter stories, and vacuous banter? Oh, it is? How fresh!
Having worked in marketing for many years, I have a particular sore spot for ad copy that attempts to be arresting by simply stating adjectives without context. You might as well say “Good!” and just leave it at that. A smiling man in a suit and time-lapse photography of a street are hardly shattering the boundaries of “fresh,” I think we can all agree, but the saddest part about this ad is that someone looked at the creative brief for what the copy was supposed to be like — “exciting, different, fresh” — and then just used those words instead.
And why not? Who is watching a news show at five in the afternoon? People without jobs? Stay-at-home parents? Retired people? In the eyes of marketers, none of these audiences justify breaking any boundaries to court. So the safest approach is to create a veneer of excitement. A better word would be “activity.” In practice this means lots of graphics that swoop in and around and clang together with sound effects, and perhaps one of the female hosts wears a low-cut top. There is no reason at all to attempt anything fundamentally daring, such as ignoring a celebrity scandal. For outrage must be feigned at all costs! But certainly let’s all play-act at being renegades.
Then I saw the side of the truck.
“Expect the Unexpected.”
Okay. When I turn on the television at five in the afternoon, I will expect the hosts to stare blankly into the camera. Then, one by one, I will expect them to open their mouths and release an ink-black cloud of locusts. The locusts will swarm the studio and systematically devour the sets, the backdrops, the desk and the seat cushions, while the hosts begin to sing in an ancient language, a song from when the earth was still large and dark. It will be a song of growth, of transition, as the locusts continue to turn painted chipboard and thin wooden paneling into so much biological waste. When the locusts finally fall silent, the fading bars of the song having stilled their wings at last, the hosts will slough their loosening skin and become beings of pure light, gathering the locusts into a cyclone of energy and gravity, compressing their chitinous bodies into a perfect sphere of unimaginable mass. I will expect them to build a pyre for this sphere out of the ruins of their studio, and as it begins to smolder with a pale purple flame, I will expect these luminous creatures to shimmer, slowly and at a frequency difficult for the cameras to detect, into the fiftieth dimension. For the briefest of instants — barely a thirtieth of a second — we will glimpse past the horizon of human understanding, before we are all wrenched back to the present like being dropped heavily from a rope into a pit of warm pudding. For the perfect silence of a minute and a half, filtered evening sunlight will illuminate a miasma of dust motes slowly settling to the floor of the vacant studio. The purple sphere will darken as all humankind ponders the mysteries that have been revealed to them for an instant and then taken back forever. Then, and only then, will there be an extremely loud commercial for Tempur-Pedic mattresses.
Here is a new shirt based on my Rules poster!
Here it is! The unisex shirt is a white ringer; the ladies’ cut is solid navy. I’ve also taken care to print the ladies’ shirts on a 50/50 cotton/polyester blend — it’s the same fabric as my “Revolution” shirt and will probably be the softest shirt you own.
WHAT REVOLUTION SHIRT, YOU SAY?
Why, this one! In this picture Tiffany is putting an “L” to her forehead to indicate “Listen, did you know that you save $5 automatically when you buy any three shirts from TopatoCo? Shirts such as…”
“…Steam-Powered Heart, or even…”
“…Engineering: Like Math But Louder.”
It’s a very complicated gesture, you see.
SPEAKING OF PICTURES — Classy Photo Contest winners will be announced next week! Thanks so much for your entries, they are delightful.
Buy the new “Take it Apart” shirt at TopatoCo!
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