13-year-old Assassin on a Skateboard

Speaking of Jim Rugg, I thought I would post the original covers of his Street Angel comics. They really caught my eye when I first saw them a few years back, and I thoroughly enjoyed the violent yet hilarious contents, (occasionally also touching) about a young street urchin with deathly martial arts and skateboarding skills fighting off legions of ninjas.

Street Angel #1

Street Angel #2

Street Angel #3

Street Angel #4

Street Angel #5

Printed by Slave Labour Graphics, 2004.

Cover Versions

Found this neat blog called Covered. Artists and illustrators rework their favourite comic covers in their own styles. Looks like a lot of fun to do. Some go for a straightforwardish copy, clearly admiring the style of the original, and some have a distinctly non-comic style to make things interesting.

Tales to Demolish, original version

New version by the frickin' genius Jim Rugg, creator of Street Angel, one of my favourite comics of all time. I would recommend seeing more of his stuff here.

The Amazing Spiderman 345, 1991, original cover

New version, Joe Lambert

Green Arrow 2, original version, 1983

Cover version, Dash Shaw

So yeah, here's that link again... Link!

Cereals, Cakes, Cuteness

Thought I would introduce you to a triumvirate of blogs that offer a fresh perspective on everyday things; namely cereal, cake and cute animals.

First up, Tim just told me about The Cereal Critic. This blog involves a guy writing discursive yet biting reviews of breakfast cereals. His thoughts are right on the money as far as I'm concerned. This is also an eye-opener for me since I've never felt myself able to be adventurous with new cereals. How can you try anything new if that means you're committed to eating an entire box of something that may end up tasting like burnt cardboard in amusing shapes? Here is the dude's review of Froot Loops:

"Toucan Sam is jesus. Toucan didn't need to walk on water though to impress a bunch of sandal wearing hippies, he just flew over the water because he's a bird. Look how badass the stripes on his beak are. and he's blue, blue is the best! Look how froot is spelt - just like you've always wanted to spell it. I once heard someone say that all the colours tasted exactly the same. Yeah, they're all a flavor called "perfect". 11 stars."

Secondly, I'm sure you all must know about Cake Wrecks by now. Dreadful, dreadful cakes made by "professional" bakers. You'll be amazed at how many ways there are to get a cake wrong. Garish, gross, weird, badly spelled, accidentally wildly inappropriate, etc etc.

Thirdly, this one basically involves a guy yelling at cute animals. They vex him, with their shamefaced attempts to affect us with their adorableness. Plus it's called Fuck You, Penguin. However, while I enjoy this blog on a satirical level, I also just love it for the SUPER-CUTE pictures of animals. I'm a sucker for the adorability factor, I admit it. On the same theme, here are a couple of pictures of baby sloths in a box.

Will Make You Want to Go Book Shopping

Friends, I have just discovered a great new online source for fantastic bookjacket design. It is called:

The Book Cover Archive

Their collection of the best modern design is ever-growing, they have a thousand as of now, and includes such useful information as designer, photographer, art director, publisher, and (this is the bit which makes my heart sing) cover font identification. They also have some interesting links to other book design-interested sites. Most of all, it is a feast for the eyes just to browse through the pages, if you have an interest in reading, or in looking at what you are reading (you know what I mean).

The Plague, Albert Camus. Designer Helen Yentus

I was hard-pressed to choose my favourite examples from the ones on display, so I just picked a handful that I've actually read (some with these covers, some with markedly more rubbish ones).

1984, George Orwell. Design Shepherd Fairey

The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allen Poe. Design Coralie Bickford-Smith

The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 1, ed. Lee Gutkind. Design Rodrigo Corral

Vintage Hughes, Langston Hughes. Design John Gall

Mcsweeneys Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Editor Michael Chabon, Art Director John Gall

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. Design Chin Yee Lai

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer. Design Gray318

Mcsweeneys Quarterly Concern, Issue 13. Design Chris Ware

Eichmann and the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt. Design David Pearson

The Whole Story and Other Stories, Ali Smith. Design Gray318

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. Design Gregg Kulick

Books V. Cigarettes, George Orwell. Design David Pearson

A Million Little Pieces, James Frey. Design Rodrigo Corral.

Ali Smith, Supersonic 70s. Design Katie Gibb

Animal Farm, George Orwell. Design Shepherd Fairey

A bookjacket archive "For the Purposes of Appreciation and Categorization"? Yes, OK.

"You're sexy like a chocolate strawberry."

To start off, this will make no sense to you unless you have seen the movie Role Models. If you have seen Role Models, you will go "Oh my goodness, I cannot believe they went to the trouble of creating an entire interactive website for Sturdy Wings!?"

Sturdy Wings

Yes they did. They even went to the lengths of creating a separate blog for the uber-creepy ex-drug addict founder of the Sturdy Wings program, Gayle Sweeny (played by Jane Lynch, who is always excellent at being creepy and revolting). There are many videos of all-new uncomfortable Gayle material on the site, including her interviewing some new "Bigs".

Role Models is a pretty great movie, by the way. I thoroughly enjoyed it, snappy dialogue, bromance, horrible embarrassment, sappy emotional scenes and all. Let us relive our favourite lines:

Ronnie: Suck it, "Reindeer Games"!
Danny: I'm not Ben Affleck.
Ronnie: You white, then you Ben Affleck.
Wheeler: You are white.
Danny: That's true, I am white.

Gayle Sweeny: You know what I used to have for breakfast? Cocaine. Know what I had for lunch? Cocaine.
Wheeler: What did you have for dinner?
Danny: Was it cocaine?

Gayle Sweeny: Well, well, well. If it isn't Mr. Bullshit and Dr. I'm-full-of-shit.
Wheeler: In what way are we full of shit?
Danny: Which one of us has the Ph.D?

P.S. "You're sexy like a chocolate strawberry" is Seann William Scott's character's best chat-up line. It could work. Why not try it out? (P.P.S. Is it truly necessary for Seann William Scott to have an extra 'n' on the end of Seann?)

E.T.A. I removed the video because it was annoying me.

Giant Deformed Ewok

If you live in the same house as me, I have already shown this to you, but I think you ought to watch it again in any case.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

This works because Star Wars is lodged in the brains of all of us, whether we like it or not, but some of us are more familiar with the material than others. I personally have a totally hazy grasp of the timeline of Star Wars, and sometimes I mix it up with Dune, which I have not seen/read. No, actually, this works because it's super cute and the animations are hilarious and a perfect fit with the dialogue.

What up

Long time no blog, and my many readers have been insistently baying for more words of wisdom. Not really.

I've been distracted from blogging by doing some zining, and after all a zine is like a blog only a lot more low-tech, so I don't feel guilty. More about zine stuff in a day or two. My laptop has also been on the fritz; there was a lot of spyware lurking around, apparently, and various other problems, so Mum's computer guy replaced the hard drive for me. Works a lot better now, but I lost the reams of art-related bookmarks I was collecting, each one a gem waiting to be blogged about. So I felt that I had nothing much to say, bereft as I was at the loss of the best wishful-thinking collection of fascinating internet maybes of my life. Tragic.

This blog, actually, has just hit 100 posts, which I feel pretty good about. Took ages to get to 100, but it's a nice round number to achieve. Since we're at 101, it somehow feels like a good time to bring up this blog's hot button polling issue, namely, what colour are the Stumptown mugs?

Delicious beverages served in mugs of a mystery colour at Stumptown Coffee, Portland Oregon.

Here are the results of the poll:

RED: 13%
BROWN: 46%
REDDY-BROWN: 40%
BROWNY-RED: 0%
I DON'T KNOW. THIS IS STUPID.: 0%

As we can see, no one thought the poll was stupid, which is a very encouraging sign showing a decrease in voter apathy. However, most of you thought that the mugs were BROWN! Which is stupid because they are clearly RED! How completely ridiculous. I have taken about a million photos of these mugs, because I wanted to capture their prettiness but my camera was being intractable as usual, and I very clearly remember perceiving them as red. Honestly, if you all want to go through life seeing things in shades of brown and grey, then I just feel sorry for you.

Apparently I still feel strongly on the mug issue. This may be made obvious by the fact that I had to bring it up again at all. Oh well, the poll thing was pretty fun. I may put up another one if I come across another burning issue. Back with another post, one which actually has something to say, soon. Happy 101...