Archive for May, 2008
15 items.
The genesis of this strip started almost immediately upon finishing taking my daughter to the Naruto movie last year. At the time, I had never seen Naruto and had no idea what it was so instead of hearing “chakra”, I kept hearing “chocolate” and would tease my daughter endlessly that MY chocolate was stronger then hers.
But I could never figure out a way to put that “joke” into comic strip form.
Well, at least not until Wednesday night as it suddenly occurred to me that Roy could be in a celebrity cook-off cooking some kind of chocolate dish.
And now you know…
The REST of the story…
Currently listening to Spinal Tap’s “Hell Hole” from VH1’s The Big 80’s – Big Hair 1 & 2 CD…
-Chris
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Man, don’t you just hate it when a web cartoonist resorts to throwing a lame ass reference to another popular cartoon strip in a desperate act to get attention? Yeah, so do I.
I thought long and hard about making this strip because I didn’t – and don’t – want to be perceived as the type of cartoonist that carefully plans jokes involving other web cartoon characters or creators in an attempt for them to check out my site and possibly link my strip to theirs. That’s been done and overdone so many times in the past.
So, why did I ultimately decide to do this particular strip? Well, for one, I thought it was too good to pass up and two, I thought the reference MIGHT not be SO obvious. Of course long time readers of that OTHER, JUST TURNED TEN YEARS OLD strip would be familiar with a certain panda that likes to eat another certain character from that same strip. But for others who may NOT read that OTHER STRIP… maybe the reference is JUST subtle enough that they would wonder about it and do a Google search. Hey, stranger things have happened…
Or, I could just be a hack with little to no credibility to my name whatsoever.
In any case, if you’re a fan of THAT OTHER STRIP, I hope you get today’s joke and appreciate the reference. And, if you so happen to JUST be the ARTIST of THAT OTHER strip and somehow found out about this strip today, well man, I’m a fan and I hope you get a chuckle out of it as well.
-Chris
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Here’s hoping everyone is having a great Memorial Day weekend – at least for those of us here in the States anyway. If you’re not in the U.S., here’s hoping you are having a good weekend as well. I have spent part of my holiday weekend trying to get half of my studio a little better organized. I was finally able to make time to get the wire rack shelves I bought a month or so ago up on the wall and clear some room around my work area.
Once I get the OTHER half of the room cleaned and re-organized, I’ll post some pictures. For right now though, it’s going to be a bit busy tomorrow during my “holiday”. I’ll be working on my two t-shirt designs for Heroes, trying to layout my three mini-comics I’ll also have at Heroes and then working on a very special strip for Wednesday.
And I still need to draw two program covers for a web designer’s convention AND a CMX Suite strip as well. So I’ll be locked up in my room tomorrow. Might have time for a few ribs, burgers or dogs on the grill though! 
Have a good one!
-Chris
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Since I started the week off by getting my wife mad at me for making fun of her favorite canceled show (Moonlight) on Monday, I figured I’d end the week by making my daughter mad at me by making fun of HER favorite Manga character, Naruto.
If you have ever seen an episode of Naruto, then you will fully understand – without a doubt – the last panel.
-Chris
Hey folks…
As you can see from my left sidebar, I just made some updates to it. I added a new “Appearances” section listing my very first two comic book convention appearances EVER!!! I’d like to give a great big thanks to Fleen for giving me a very brief mention on their blog today. Thank you very much Fleen! Every little bit helps when you’re out there trying to make a name for yourself.
And I’ve already been listed as an “official” artist on the Heroes Con India artist list. I’m near the bottom a few links under DIGITAL WEBBING, so that’s exciting as well.
I’ve already purchased my banner stand for my new adventures in Comic Book Convention vendorship so I’m really excited about that. I should get the banner and the stand in about a week – plenty of enough time for Heroes!
Stay tuned for more!
-Chris
…is hard to find!
As a cartoonist, it’s funny how you can sometimes be so caught up in the drawing or writing of a strip that you end up failing to see an obvious flaw. It’s not until you have had a chance to put the strip away and walk away from it for a bit that you are then able to see a very obvious flaw. While you’re working on the strip, the decisions you make seem to be extremely obvious and logical but after that time away from the strip, you can look at it with fresh eyes and say “what was I thinking???”.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about the first panel. It has suddenly occurred to me that the word balloons could flow a little bit better. As it stands right now, the “I simply must know” dialog seems to be oddly placed or, depending on how you read the strip, seems equally out of place.
I should have had some of the dialog from the woman on the right be in the same area of the table – that way you get a much better flow of left-to-right dialog flow but I didn’t want to cover up too much of the table so I opted, instead, to put all the dialog above rich lady number two.
Ah well… the things you miss at 1:30 in the morning…
:-/
-Chris
Saw “Narnia: Prince Caspian” last night with my daughter. It was a really good follow-up to the first one but I always enjoy seeing cool, fantastical creatures like half men/half horses (what they are really called escapes me at the moment) and things like that.
This strip is a little late as I had a freelance project given to me late Thursdsay afternoon. I had to have four full color illustrations done and printed by Saturday afternoon AND still somehow get this strip done also. Well, I managed to get the strip inked and scanned but held off on the dialog until this morning because, after Narnia, I wasn’t feeling all that well. Whatever it was, it’s gone now but man, I tell you, the amount of rain we have had in Virginia this Spring has really been aggravating.
If you ever movie to Northern Virginia, please be aware that during the Spring and Summer, we have only two kinds of weather… EXTREMELY DRY (and hot and humid) or EXTREMELY WET. Seems this year, the powers that be have deemed it to be an extremely wet season (but also a very cold on too) so maybe my body is extremely confused and I was feeling the effects yesterday.
In any case the strip is done and this afternoon, I am placing my order for my Capes ‘N’ Babes comic convention banner! Really excited about that!
-Chris
As you can see in the tag line, today will be the last day that some of my favorite “CMX Suite” strips will run. You can sort of consider them my own personal guest strips. Also, if you found the “CMX Suite” reprints this week to be enjoyable, you can find brand new ones appearing every Tuesday at Community MX.
And since I forgot to add my full review of Speed Racer to Wednesday’s blog, I will do it right now.
First, let me say that when I first watched the previews of Speed Racer on iTunes and on TV, I was worried that it was going to end up being another version of Dick Tracy. For those that never saw Dick Tracy, the movie was pretty cool to look at but didn’t really have any substance. And that’s what I thought Speed was going to be… pretty much nothing but eye candy.
And, for the first half hour or so, it looks very much that way. But if you can get past that first half hour and stay with the film, I think it is actually a pretty nice film. I can understand what the Matrix brothers were going for. The cartoon was always very campy and fantastical and so they didn’t try to make the movie be realistic. It was – quite literally – a cartoon come to life. And the racing scenes are an absolute joy to watch! I would LOVE to see this film again on an iMax screen.
But back to the review…
For long time fans of the cartoon, you should notice a few subtle nods towards in the movie. One of the most obvious was the older announcer in the yellow suit. That was Speed. Then there is the nod towards the modeling of the bad guy’s car when we first get introduced to Racer X. It wasn’t as long as the monolith car (the one made of gold) but it was obviously modeled after it. And the race in the desert was an obvious nod towards one of the best episodes in the Speed Racer cartoon series – the Transcontinental Race. Even the teams that raced in that part of the film were a nod to the crazy and wild groups that were sometimes featured in the cartoon – although none of them were directly taken from the TV show.
Some might argue that Snake – the bad guy in the desert racing portion of the movie – was taken from the cartoon series (the leader of the car acrobatic team) but if there was one part of the film I was mildly disappointed about, it was in the depiction of that character. If it was actually supposed to be Snake from the Car Acrobatic Team, I was very disappointed in the way they portrayed him. For me, Snake in the cartoon series was always sort of like an anti-Racer X. He was ultra cool and ultra bad ass but in the movie, he was cowardly and wimpy. That certainly wasn’t the “Snake” from the cartoons.
But Mathew Fox WAS Racer X. Mathew Fox is old enough to have grown up watching Speed Racer as a kid so it seemed to me that he took great care in trying to capture the monotone and harsh nature of Racer X. If you were a fan of Racer X, watching Mathew Fox’s interpretation on him is a joy to watch on the big screen.
The same really should be said for Emile Hirsh’s depiction of Speed as well. He definitely captured the innocence – and the determination – of Speed. That’s not always the easiest thing to do. And, this may be weird to say but if they decide to make a Spider-man 4 without Tobey Maguire, Emile Hirsch wouldn’t be a bad choice for Peter Parker.
I mentioned the fact that there were lots of scenes or parts of the film where the Wachowski brothers were obviously tipping their hats towards the cartoon series but one thing I’m really glad that they decided to do was to keep the spirit of the cartoon alive. They very easily could have gotten rid of Chim-Chim or decided to re-write or re-name, re-write or completely ignore Inspector Detector but they didn’t. They definitely made an effort to keep those characters in the movie in order to stay “true” to the cartoon series.
But if you’re hoping for a “Days of Thunder” version of Speed or, really, even a “Transformer-esque” version of Speed, you will be greatly disappointed in this movie. It’s certainly not Speed on the NASCAR race circuit. And although I think it would be interesting to see a Michael Bay version of Speed Racer, there wouldn’t be a Mach 5 or cool blades coming out of a NASCAR style car or a bullet proof windshield or the cool sounds of the jacks as Speed races along the side of a mountain. For me, THAT’S the essence of Speed Racer and I thought the movie really captured that spirit.
-Chris
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Hey everybody…
I’m on a bit of a deadline right now so this post will be brief. I saw Speed Racer last night and will give a more detailed review of it a little bit later but for now, I just wanted to say that it vanquished all the fear I had of it. And I’m really glad I saw it on the big screen instead of waiting for it to come out on DVD.
Also, if you’ve been coming here for a while now, you might notice the new paint job we did on this ol’ site. Hope you like it. If you do, please feel free to comment. Also, please don;t hesittate to click on that donation box in the right hand corner and find out more information about getting the “official” Capes ‘N’ Babes sketchbook PDF!
-Chris
I have a little bit of an announcement to make.
I am a few days away from presenting the debut of Capes ‘N’ Babes 2.0 (essentially a re-design of the blog). But I have found it incredibly taxing to try and balance working on three strips a week AND trying to finish up the re-design so my once healthy buffer of strips has easily vanished like the proverbial dust in the wind.
So, in order to get caught up with my regular Capes strips AND finish the last remaining issues with the site re-design, I am presenting some of my favorite full-color “CMX Suite” strips I originally created for Community MX. These are strips some of you may never have been exposed to or even knew about.
If you enjoy these strips and would like to see more, my “CMX Suite” strip runs every Tuesday on the Home page of Community MX. You can also visit my Archive page as well.
I hope you all enjoy the new site design which will debut SOON! I promise…
-Chris
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