Archive for July, 2008
13 items.
Hopefully, somewhere in Philly, Brad Guigar is relaxing from the “ordeal” known as San Diego Comic Con, has fired up his computer, clicked on his computer, started up Firefox, scrolled down to his web comic bookmark list, found “Capes & Babes” and got a tremendous chuckle out of today’s pun.
Brad, you’re still the “King of puns” but it was still a lot of fun coming up with the idea for today’s strip. On a side note, I actually came up with the idea of “Annette Tome” and “Tori Telling” almost at the very start of the whole “Heroes Con” story arc. I even wrote it down on my big wipe board next to my drawing table just so I wouldn’t forget about it.
-Chris
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So, how many of us have been where Roy has been? C’mon now… don’t be shy. Raise your hands…
Anyway, saw “The Dark Knight” yesterday afternoon with my daughter. I’ll just add to the big huge choruses of “Love it” that have already been shouted. But here are a few things you may or may not have heard before – no real big spoilers here so if you haven’t yet seen it, you have no fear of reading what I’m about to type.
Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker:
A week or so before the movie opened, two local DJ’s on the radio were arguing about Nicholson vs. Ledger as The Joker. One of the DJ’s opinion is that Ledger – no matter how great his performance – could NEVER be compared to Jack simply because of the great career Jack has had over the years. To me, that was a little crazy. That’s like saying a rookie Cal Ripkin Jr. could never be compared to Brooks Robinson. As a rookie, that’s true – Cal couldn’t compare to Brooks. But 20 years later, can you say the same thing? No way – so for me, that was a shaky premise to base your opinion on.
Now, I may be in the minority about this but I was never a tremendous fan of Jack’s Joker. When the original Batman movie came out, I thought Jack would have been a great Joker if the movie came out 15 or 20 years earlier when he was younger and thinner. In fact, I even thought the guy that played Jack’s character in the Bruce Wayne flashback would have been a better Joker. Jack got that part because of his crazy smile and his previous portrayals of “crazies” like his character in “The Shining”. No, for my money, a better Joker back then would have been William Defoe. If you don’t believe me, go rent “Streets of Fire” again and watch the climatic fight scene at the end of that movie. THAT vision of Defoe’s character screaming in frustration has always stuck in my mind as “the perfect Joker”.
But what Heath brought to “The Dark Knight” was a very Hannibal Lector kind of flavor to The Joker. And, at various points in the movie, there were very similar feelings of “what’s gonna happen next” that I had when I first saw “Silence of the Lambs” even though this was “supposed” to be JUST a superhero movie…
The neat little twists on the casting of this movie
The most obvious being Jake Gyllenhaal’s sister playing the role of Rachel this time. But what about Eric Roberts and Aaron Eckhart? After all, Aaron played the love interest to Eric’s sister in “Erin Brokovich”… And even though they didn’t share the screen at the same time, you had the president from “The Fifth Element” and Gary Oldman in the same movie. Those were all nice little twists but that’s not what caught my attention the most. The thing that struck me the funniest was the casting of Nestor Carbonell as the mayor of Gotham. If you all don’t get the irony of THAT, then shame on all of you TICK fans out there!!!
Nestor Carbonell played Batmanuel in the VERY short lived live-action version of The Tick – the obvious SPOOF version of Batman! C’mon people! Where’s your geek-cred when you REALLY need it?
Harvey Dent’s makeup
Not only was the makeup incredible but the anticipation as to when, where and how they were going to show it was fantastic as well. Remember that feeling of dread and anticipation I mentioned earlier? This was especially true in Harvey Dent’s case and the way Christopher Nolan built up that tension of Two-face was fantastic.
Speaking of Harvey Dent…
I just finished listening to The Major Spoiler Dark Knight podcast with Scott Johnson’s guest appearance and I just wanted to point out one thing when they were mentioning Two-face’s suit (this is about as much of a “spoiler” as you will get)…
Guys, if you recall in the movie, his suit wasn’t “split in half” until AFTER he dealt with Eric Robert’s character and the car crash/explosion. THEN his suit became “split”. So I took it that that was the result of the car flipping over on Harvey’s side and ruining that part of his suit. That would also explain how he might be able to survive that climatic fall. If he can survive a car explosion…
Gary Oldman
Man, it is still so weird seeing him play not only a good guy (yeah, I’ve seen Harry Potter) but also a more “normal” person. And, quite frankly, it’s pretty refreshing too. Needless to say, his Commissioner Gordon is absolutely fantastic – just as it was in the first film.
Christian Bale’s “Bat voice”…
I’m not sure what people don’t like about this. I liked that from the first movie and liked it even more this time around.
Micheal Cain’s “Alfred”…
Even stronger then the first time around. And I loved the little story he had leading up to “some men just want to see the world burn” speech.
Well, I could go on and on and on but then the comic would never get posted for today so I’m cutting this short by saying The Dark Knight simply was fantastic.
-Chris
Whooops!
Got in to work today and realized that although I had uploaded the strip to the server last night, I forgot to actually make a blog post about it so the strip never appeared after 12 midnight last night.
Well, here’s the blog post. Sorry ’bout that.
On a HUGE side note, I should mention that Danielle would never, EVER do something like this but Roy can sometimes be such a pain that you really DO want to hit him with a slingshot. And if you all don’t know who Danielle is (yeah, riiiiiight!), you all should, first, be ashamed of yourself and then, second, go to Girls with Slingshots and then, third, and the strip to your bookmarks.
Hopefully, the next time I see Danielle, I won’t have a slingshot aimed at my head.
-Chris
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Or… IT’S NOT MY FAULT! IT’S… NOT… MY FAULT!!!
And what I mean by that is, the strip was done and ready to be posted online at 11:30pm last night but thanks to our lovely Northern Virginia mid-summer thunder showers, my Comcast internet cable connection was off-line.
So, I had to wait until I got into work this morning to post the strip.
On a somewhat bitter-sweet note, today also marks the one year anniversary of my mother-in-law passing away. I always felt very fortunate that I got along tremendously with my in-laws. I still enjoy spending lots of time and joking around with my father-in-law but it was my mother-in-law who got my very first marker set for Christmas. And I was extremely honored when my father-in-law asked me to be a pallbearer for her. Mom (I always called her “Mom”), we all miss you very much but we also know you’re in a better place. Peace and love. Always.
-Chris
Let me start off this post by saying that I actually do have a lot of love for Philly. I liked the Phillies when they were a big baseball powerhouse during the very early 80’s with Pete Rose and crew… I love the Philly Phanatic… was a fan of Dr. J… but I was never quite an Eagle fan (although I did enjoy the movie “Invincible”). That being said, I’m just having some more light-hearted inter-city Washington DC vs. Philly fun. Hope you Philly fans aren’t TOO upset.
Now, with that out of the way, this strip is way too late (at least for my tastes). As a rule, I prefer to have the strip done by midnight (or just a little after midnight) before a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. But my daughter has been away for 19 days during her People-to-People Student Ambassador trek to Australia and New Zealand. She got back at midnight on Saturday and we had friends over on Sunday to help celebrate her return. So, instead of working on getting a buffer for the strips, I immersed myself in welcoming her back. As much as I enjoy doing this strip, if there’s ever a choice between my kids or the strip, there really won’t ever be “a choice”.
Also, please check out the new donation art box in my header. I have some new donation incentives on my Donations Page. One thing that I will soon be implementing is something that Danielle Corsetto inspired me to do… if you have been enjoying Capes & Babes (and from my stat numbers, it seems more and more of you are finding out about Capes & Babes and passing the word around – so I thank you for that) but if you have been enjoying the Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule but would like to see MORE super hero/comic book/ comic book shop humor, please make a donation to the site. If enough people make a donation, I’ll do a full week of strips.
If that sounds appealing to you, please drop me a line or add a comment to this blog and tell me so. And remember, if you make a donation to this site – FOR ANY AMOUNT – you will get something for FREE! If you want to know more information about that, please drop me an e-mail at: capesnbabes (at) gmail.com. The full e-mail address is always located directly under the strips.
Thanks everyone!
-Chris
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***A little edit here: Just wanted to mention that I got a nice little plug from Tommie over at Road Crew Comic. Go check it out (and Tommie’s comic too) by clicking the link.***
Some more fun at “Randy Lugar’s” expense. I mean, seriously, what’s up with that guy and portfolio critiques at conventions?
If you are a fan of Web Comics Weekly, you’ll know that Brad, Kris, Dave and Scott have been discussing this subject in-depth. Me? I’m just having a little bit of fun with the subject as I really do see a lot of different sides to convention critiques.
The thing is, if you’re going to ask a “pro” to look at your stuff, you should be prepared for something you don’t want to hear. The absolute worst you can do is to try and defend your work – I think that’s really want puts pros off at looking at people’s portfolios during a convention. If you’re defending your work, then you really weren’t looking for a critique. You were looking for validation and praise.
The best way to deal with a critique is to be completely open to anything and everything a pro is telling you. You can certainly tell or try to explain to them what you were trying to do in a certain panel or page – that’s a lot different then “defending” your work. So, for example, I believe it’s perfectly okay to say “I was attempting to do X-Y-and-Z. What would have been a better way to do this panel, strip or page?”. That’s completely different then saying “I was following one of Wood’s ‘21 panel that always work’ so it’s gotta be right”. That’s defending your work and not be open to getting a critique.
Know what you want (in terms of advice) before you approach a pro at a convention. I think you’ll get much better results.
Unless they have a huge sign behind them that say “I don’t do portfolio critiques”.
Then you’re pretty much screwed.
Listening to “You can call me Al”…
-Chris
Boy, lots to say today. First kids, here’s the important reason why you should always build up a buffer of strips if you want to do this cartooning thing “professionally”: Monday evening, while playing my normal game of volleyball at the gym, I dislocated my left pinky. Fortunately, I draw with my right hand so if I had dislocated any finger on my right hand, I would have been royally screwed. Now, even though I’m out of commission from playing volleyball or baseball for a few weeks, I can still draw.
Second, for all of you Philly people out there that might take a bit offense to today’s strip, please bare in mind that I live 20 minutes outside of “the murder capital of the world” known as Washington DC, so it’s only poking a little bit of inter-city rivalry/fun at Philly. It’s all supposed to be in good natured fun. And if Brad Guigar himself thinks today’s strip was funny, well hey… maybe you can too! Don’t shoot the messenger and all that, you know? 
And lastly… man-o-man, what a friggin’ all star game! I got home from my own baseball game tonight thinking that I got home just in time to see who might have won the MVP. That was at 11:00pm. Little did I know that I actually got home in enough time to see the REAL game! It was actually kind of refreshing to see “secondary” all-stars make such a huge contribution to the game! Yeah, I’m disappointed that the National League lost yet again but secretly, I was so hoping for a 16th inning – just to see what kind of craziness would have happened. I tell you, unless the expand the all-star rosters to include more pitchers, AND if they keep this silly rule of World Series home field advantage, one of these days you will see a position player have to come in a pitch an inning or two. THAT will be GREAT!
Anyway, hope you all get a big kick out of today’s strip!
I’m going to bed!
-Chris
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The saga of Roy and Marc at Heroes Con 2008 continues…
Now, for those of you that have attended previous Heroe Cons, you know that there is no actual “Web Comics Nation”. Instead, Heroes Con has a section of their convention floor called “Indie Island” and that’s a cool name and concept. Still though, I think “Web Comics Nations” has a nice ring to it as well and would be a cool section for any major comic book convention.
What do you all think?
Currently listening to “Good Two Shoes” by Adam Ant…
-Chris
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Boy, this is really difficult. I DID want to title this particular blog 100 STRIPS!!! since I reached that web comic milestone today – but I also didn’t want to take away the fact that this strip today was the culmination of something completely inspired by Danielle Corsetto and a real brief Twitter feed response. So, I also wanted to give proper credit to her – ESPECIALLY since she was so kind enough to mention me on her home page and send a load of traffic my way.
For all of you Girls with Slingshot fans, I thank you and I hope you appreciate Capes & Babes and find it worthy enough of your attention every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
With that being said, today DOES mark my 100TH STRIP!
When Capes & Babes went online November 12th, 2007, the initial goal was always to get to 100 strips. Now the secondary goal is to get to 200 and put a book together. I’ve already crunched the dates and the numbers so it won’t be possible to have 200 strips (and a book) done by Baltimore Comic Con in September. So, instead, I’m shooting for the Pittsburgh Comic Con next year as a place setter for the first Capes & babes book.
Many of you might know that even though Capes & babes debuted in November, I have been doing a weekly comic strip for a web site called Community MX for the last five years. Well, I thought those past five years would have provided enough experience in order to do Capes three times a week, but let me tell you, it’s a world of difference doing one strip a week to doing four strips a week (as I am still doing “CMX Suite”). But in the past year, I really think Capes has pushed my cartooning, story and joke telling to all new levels. I hope everyone out there that has discovered Capes & Babes agrees.
So, next year, besides trying to get a book together, the secondary-secondary goal is to make Capes & Babes weekly daily.
That is, if I can EVER get back to having a buffer again.
Thanks again everyone who has made or discovered the first 100 strips of Capes & Babes. Marc, Joey, Roy and I all thank you.
Sincerely,
Chris Flick
This is just a quick post as I’m about ready to head to my men’s baseball game tonight. I’m not going to say one way or another if I actually saw a bearded dude dressed as Sailor Moon while at Heroes Con. You’ll have to visit the Con next year to see if something like that actually exists.
Listening to Mika’s “Grace Kelly” from his Life in Cartoon Motion album…
-Chris
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