Triptych: Everything Is Regular

"Regular Show #2 Cover" by MyNameIsMad

"Regular Shirt" by Joel Jackson

"Super Regular Bros." by Matt Sinor

Triptych: Red Bull Blaster

"Iron Mega" by Corey Lewis (who also does the great Sharknife comic)

"8-bit Posters: Mega Man" by Brandon Riesgo

"Sponsored Mega Man" by Ricardo Chucky

Triptych: Sherlock'd

"Sherlock Comic" (t-shirt) by HareBrained

"Inspector Holmes" (t-shirt) by Creative Outpouring

"Holmes Family Crest" by SyntheticPH

Triptych: Simon Petrikov

"The Finntastic Four!" by J.J. Harrison

"Adventure Time 8-Bit" by Napat Shinawatra

"Finn and Jake" by Ivan Barriga

The Rabbit Samurai: 25 Years of Usagi Yojimbo

"Usagi's Yo-Jim-Bos!" by Atomic Rocket

I was about nine when the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon hit the Saturday morning airwaves, a prime age to appreciate all the subtle intricacies of an animated series about four mutated, ninjitsu-trained reptiles. The TMNT cartoon series was a major part of my childhood, as it was for anyone my age, but it was nevertheless very much a show for kids, with its primary-color palette and radical quips. I watched it religiously for a few years, but by the time I turned twelve, I had grown out of it.

One of the most mindblowing moments of my young life was discovering, in my local comic book store, that TMNT did not start as a brightly-colored, jovial, weekly 22-minute toy commercial, but as something much darker and more surreal. Eastman & Laird's black-and-white TMNT series for Mirage Studios was truly bizarre (I still have a handful of TMNT books kicking around, specifically issues #22, #23, and #25 - the first two books detailing a logic-defying journey through time and the latter involving a giant swamp monster named Bloodsucker.) The overt violence and irreverence of Eastman & Laird's original series (which they continued to release alongside the Bowdlerized, neutered cartoon and accompanying tie-in comic series, making me wonder how many kids were traumatized when their parents bought them issues of the more adult series by mistake) and just the sheer subversiveness of the original concept and its execution spoke to my twelve-year-old self like nothing else. A large number of major and supporting players from the cartoon first appeared in the comic in dramatically unfettered form: Casey Jones, April O'Neil, Splinter, Shredder, Baxter Stockman, Fugitoid, Leatherhead, The Rat King and others. And the topics dealt with - evolution, time travel, Japanese-American culture, vengeance, and the dark side of family - were barely even touched upon in the animated series but formed the foundation of the original comic.

"Usagi Yojimbo" by Jesús Alberto Garza López

There were two guest stars that showed up in Eastman & Laird's TMNT series that defined my comics-reading path for the following decade. The first was Dave Sims' Cerebus The Aardvark, who showed up in issue #8: I would later slog my way through the thousands of pages of Cerebus, which were bound up into sixteen or so phonebook-thick volumes, between the ages of 17 and 22. But in the interim, from the ages of 13 to 17, I graduated from TMNT to another anthropomorphic mutant trained in Eastern martial arts: Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, the rabbit samurai, who encountered the Turtles from time to time in his own book and theirs - and became a regular player on the animated series to boot.

While I have read many comics in my lifetime, those three creator-owned books have in many ways become definitive of my early experiences with the medium. TMNT was my first glimpse into the subversive potential of independently-published books, tempered by enough inherent nonsense that it was palatable to my unsophisticated tastes. Cerebus, years later, appealed to my burgeoning young-adult cynicism: while on paper the series was about a swashbuckling aardvark in a traditional, swords-and-sorcery milieu, in execution it was about a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, pathological misanthrope dealing with increasingly complex matters of philosophy, character and faith. But Usagi Yojimbo hit me in the years between the two, and perhaps had the deepest impact, given the wry, self-aware sincerity Stan Sakai infused into his leporine hero.

"Usagi Yojimbo" by Torren Thomas

If TMNT showed me that comics could be subversive and Cerebus proved that they could be greater than the sum of their parts, Usagi Yojimbo was evidence that they could be serious, meditative and, believe it or not, educational in a non-patronizing way. Up to that point in my life, most comics that I had read were about people punching each other with ever-increasing intensity. While Usagi Yojimbo hardly shied away from violence (in fact, the contrast between the unmoderated gore and the cartoony style in the series was and remains a startling one) the tone was thoughtful and presented feudal Japan in a very faithful manner. Over the course of the series, Usagi Yojimbo explored Japanese cinema (in particular, the films of director Akira Kurosawa, the Zatōichi series, and kaiju monster movies), Japanese mythology, and naturally, Japanese history.

In Usagi Yojimbo, Sakai somehow managed to create a comic book series that was more effective in conveying the Edo period than any number of textbooks. And in his rabbit ronin, Miyamoto Usagi, he crafted a character that could simultaneously stand alongside the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, go toe-to-toe with a pack of bandits and dismember them handily, or sit by a koi pond and recite meditative poetry. He is a practitioner of Bushidō and possesses a strict moral code; he has a hair-trigger temper, but prefers to clout interlopers with his sheathed weapon and will only draw it in the most dire of circumstances. In short, for a rabbit in a funny-book, Usagi Yojimbo was a pretty complex guy.

Usagi Yojimbo has been running for over two decades now, and has become a staple of the medium. While he's not exactly a household name, he is nevertheless highly influential: he introduced a generation of comic-reading kids to ideas and motifs that were barely touched on in other books. And the fact that it's still ongoing, after two and a half decades, is a remarkable achievement on Sakai's part. It's no wonder Usagi Yojimbo is considered one of the greats.

Probably Should've Just Said No.

A comic about Monster Party by Zac Gorman. I've mentioned how effed-up Monster Party was here before, and this comic sums it up nicely.

Triptych: Minimalist Avengers Posters

"The Avengers" by Amogh Ravindra

"Minimal Avengers" by Paul Sizer

"Avengers Poster REDUX" by W0op-W0op

See Us As Ourselves

"Costume Quest" by Zach Gorman

Boy, I sure do love Hallowe'en. And there's no game Hallowe'enier than Costume Quest! Zach Gorman of Magical Game Time nails it, as he always does.

Take note: You can pick up Costume Quest for $7.49 on Steam right now, or as part of the Double Fine Bundle, for %14.99, and get Psychonauts and Stacking (two other fantastic Tim Schafer games) thrown in. Buy them here.

Review: The Dark Knight Rises

"The Dark Knight Rises" by Ben Whitesell

So I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, finally. As an end to the trilogy, I thought it performed more than adequately; as a Batman movie, I found it slightly underwhelming and, more than anything, populated with some very odd (though not necessarily negative) creative and narrative choices.

Any discussion of The Dark Knight Rises has to look at how it fits in with the first two films in the trilogy. Batman Begins was a revelation when it came out in 2005: there had never been a superhero movie that dealt with its subject matter in such a direct, gritty and realistic manner. Nevertheless, it was still a comic book adaptation, and while Christopher Nolan brings heavy overtones of the crime, drama and thriller genres into the mix, it can't escape that. At the end of the day, the release and rounding up of criminals from Arkham, the sinister and yet somehow comical treatment of the Scarecrow and his fear toxin, and the fight between Batman and Ra's al-Ghul on the train as it hurtles towards Wayne Towers are all traditional superhero movie trademarks. Batman Begins may be more graphic novel than comic book pulp, but it is still very recognizably a Batman movie, for better or for worse.

If Batman Begins shows what could be done by approaching comic book source material from a mature and even-handed perspective, The Dark Knight proves that something truly great could emerge from the same. The Dark Knight is a crime thriller masterpiece that ranks alongside Heat, The Untouchables, and Once Upon A Time In America in terms of scope, character portraiture and directorial brilliance. Heath Ledger's Joker is one of the finest cinematic villains in history, and Aaron Eckhart manages a genuinely grotesque and sympathetic Harvey Dent\Two-Face. Bale's Batman is no longer simply the tried-and-true millionaire orphan turned vigilante; he's presented as a virtually unstoppable wunderkind, a one-man army, reliant on military tech and invasive cell-phone monitoring software to wage his war against crime. The film deals with so many themes that it's impossible to identify them all here: chaos vs. order, law vs. anarchy, vigilantism and perception and identity, to name a few. On a more surface level, The Dark Knight is just plain cool, filled with jaw-dropping effects and consistent levels of action, and is highly quotable to boot.

If anything, The Dark Knight Rises bookends the trilogy by really showcasing The Dark Knight. It has more in common with Batman Begins, in that it has a very comic-book feel to it, as opposed to The Dark Knight's hyper-realistic crime drama trappings. Selina Kyle and Bane somehow seem less epic than the Joker and Two-Face; this was always going to be Nolan's difficulty in a followup to The Dark Knight, and he acquits himself with a certain amount of grace, but the two characters simply don't carry the same weight in the film-world that Nolan has established in the series.

"Donkey Rises" by BazNet

Plus, as I said, there are some strange creative choices that were made here. Some pay off, some fall short, and some still have me trying to wrap my head around them. For example, the vast majority of the film takes place during daylight hours. This really threw me off. Batman is typically associated with darkness and the night, and seeing him trading punches with Bane during the day felt wrong, somehow. One might choose to look at this way: the first film took place during dusk, the second film almost entirely at night, and the third, at dawn. This is what I assume Nolan was intending, but no matter how you break it down, a guy running around in a bat-suit in broad daylight is a lot less impressive than it is in the middle of the night.

I think the most surprising thing of all is just how little of Batman there is in the movie. Bruce Wayne doesn't suit up until at least 40 minutes into The Dark Knight Rises' 164 minutes running time. His re-introduction, after four years of real-world time and eight years of Gotham-time, is well-executed, showcasing the Batmobile, Batpod and new vehicle The Bat in one extended, exciting chase sequence. Then he disappears for a while, shows up and punches a few more guys, tracks down Bane, fights him, and then... disappears until the end of the movie, practically. Without going into enough detail to spoil anything, it's not like his disappearances aren't justified, within context, but the end result is still a Batman movie with a very limited amount of Batman to show for itself.

If there is a central theme to The Dark Knight Rises, it's that of pain. Suffering is Bruce Wayne's primary role in this story. He is wracked with guilt and regret over the death of Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent, and has sequestered himself from the world for the past eight years. He is a man consumed by pain. Bane, for his part, sees pain as a necessary part of growth, and he does not hesitate to inflict it on everyone around him, including Batman. It doesn't quite resound with the kind of impact Nolan seems to be going for, unfortunately; Bruce Wayne's tribulations in the latter half of the movie not only take him out of the heat of the action for a very long stretch, but also don't quite work on an emotional level. I watched him suffer, heal and rise victorious with a dispassionate eye; I never really felt invested in the process.

"Pixel The Dark Knight Rises" by Munty

I don't want to give the impression that I didn't love this movie. I loved it. Not as much as The Dark Knight, but a lot more than just about every other movie I've seen so far this year. Take Tom Hardy's Bane. If not for Heath Ledger's historic turn as The Joker in the previous film, I would have been blown away; as it is, the Bane of The Dark Knight Rises was a far cry from the venom-enhanced Mexican wrestler of the of the comics. If the Joker was a force of chaos, anarchy and manipulation, Bane comes across as a master strategist and terrorist, a man with genuine ideals who happens to be both an extremist and an iconoclast. His version of chaos differs from the Joker's; the Joker wanted to destroy for the sake of destruction, but Bane wants to raze civilization to the ground with the express intent of starting anew. He is a populist and a revolutionary. Hardy's decision to voice him like an old, white aristocrat was brilliant and clever. He has more conviction than anyone else in the entire trilogy besides, possibly, Michael Caine's Alfred and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake, and he has the intellectual resources to see a plan executed. On a somewhat tangential note, I find it interesting that Nolan has presented central villains in all three of his Batman films which are writ-large corruptions of traditional criminal tropes: the Scarecrow is a secret psychopath, taken to cartoonish extremes; the Joker is a perverted take on the mobster and crime boss archetype; Bane is a terrorist with the personality of a cult leader.

Looking at this escalation of antagonist types, Nolan's choices fall into place a bit more than if they're simply taken on their own. It's hard to imagine any other classic Batman bad guy taking Bane's place in The Dark Knight Rises, and while we're always going to wonder what Christopher Nolan might have done with the Riddler or Oswald Copperpot or Mr. Freeze, chances are that one of those villains would have felt like a step backwards (I personally would have loved to see some of the second-stringers of the Rogues Gallery showing up, namely Deadshot, Hush or Black Mask. Oh well, it's not like Warners is going to let this cash cow go, even if Nolan is no longer on board. So there's always hope.)

All in all, The Dark Knight Rises completed the trilogy in a satisfactory fashion, even if it didn't rise to the dizzying heights of its predecessor. I'm looking forward to watching it again - at home, with subtitles on, so I can catch some of the more muffled of Bane's lines.

Showcase: Power Glove Love by JoshLn

[JohnLn on Society6]

Showcase: Movies By Shirt (Superhero Edition)

[Movies By Shirt]

Triptych: Time For Adventures

"Adventure Time: The Game" by Mike Gaboury¹

"The Ice King" by Eric Ridgeway²

"It's Adventure Time!" by Mike Krahulik³

¹ I've posted about Mike's imaginary-but-he-keeps-working-on-it-so-maybe-eventually-real Adventure Time game before; these level samples make me yearn for the real thing all the more.
² Serious Ice King is serious.
³ One of the covers for "Adventure Time #5" by Penny Arcade stalwart Gabe. I particularly like this because it's just Finn and Jake hanging out at home, playing with BMO. Adventures are great and everything but sometimes you just wanna chill out at home playing videogames with your friends.

Double Triptych: Agro!

(Click for full-size)
"Little Nemo and the Tall Man" by Niko Geyer¹

"Go, Wander, Go!" by Luiz Felipe²

(Click for full-size)
"My Little Colossus" by Blondeyetti³

"Shadow of the Patapon" by Vitor Caneco⁴

"SOTC" by Maitaboris

"Shadow of the Munny" by Matthew Ellison⁵

¹ Who doesn't love Little Nemo? The pairing of Nemo and a Colossus is genius, for the record.
² A Shadow of the Colossus\Mother 3 mashup. Nothing more to say except I like how well this captures the tone and spirit of both games. And the querying "Is there a bug on me?" question mark over the Colossus' head.
³ I am not a brony. I honestly do not get that weird little niche subculture of 20- and 30-year-old dudes who are really into MLP:FIM. That said, I thought this pony Colossus was some fine work, from the mossy patches to the glowing section on the rump.
⁴ I've never actually played Patapon, but this looks about right.
⁵ I've been getting back into vinyl custom figures lately and I came across this in my internet travels. Very nice work.