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Unfollowing family

Unfollowing family published on 1 Comment on Unfollowing family

There is nothing more lame than following your parents on social media.

At least, that is what many people think. (mainly teenagers and full on hipsters).
Sure, when you are at an impressionable age, most things to do with parents are perceived as lame and uncool.

But there are also many people who have embraced social media or online communications, as a way to reconnect with their parents and other family members. Now you can reach out and share all things good and bad,  faster and with more details than you could via the phone or letters.
Twitter, Skype, Facebook and emails have replaced the regular call home to mum, or a letter packed with photos of the kids.
Holiday photos are shared almost immediately via Flickr or Picasa.
Family gatherings are organised through Facebook events, Google calendars or email.
Overseas calls can be accompanied with vision, via webcams and Skype.

Technology is giving us ways to share and bring our families together, even as it simultaneously provides avenues to tear things apart.

Now, if I could just create an app to allow Mum to remotely do my washing.
(What? That is not callous.She misses doing it. I just know she does….)

Satanists and the Thug life.

Satanists and the Thug life. published on

The comics I am recommending that you check out this week, are two Australian strips which are currently shown online and will soon be gathered into graphic novels.
Showing your art & story online before you publish is becoming a very common way to build a fan base for your printed graphic novel before it actually hits the shelves. It is smart marketing, if you ask me.

Now get clicking, so you can check out:

McBlack
McBLACK is a graphic novel about the daily life of the thug, assassin, arsonist and small businessman Whiteface McBlack.
He used to be a private dick, but he gave it up in order to pursue on his true calling: murder, sabotage, theft and arson.

There’s shootings, stabbings, beheadings, machete attacks, hand grenades and exploding vehicles – so this is basically your standard slice of life drama….
Or, it would be a standard slice of life drama, if your daily life brought you into contact with mutant cyborg bikers, redneck triads, a wrestler-turned-monster-truck-dealer and a variety of other heavily armed freaks and weirdos.

This comic is presented online in a full page graphic novel layout, and has a fantastic dark, noir style feel to it’s art.
It is pencilled by the talented Jason Franks and the art is perfectly inked by Dave Gutierrez. You can get the McBlack graphic novel now, over at Black Glass Press.

The Sixsmiths

The Sixsmiths is a strip about an ordinary family of Satanists who have fallen on hard times.
They are your normal, everyday, suburban family. They go to work, go to school, buy groceries and attend church regularly. The only difference is that, when they go to church they worship Satan and cannot WAIT to experience the joy of living in Hell in the after-life. The Sixsmiths, this is one heckuva comedy and one helluva family.

The Sixsmiths is the work of J. Marc Schmidt and Jason Franks (yes him again).
Schmidts art style is wonderfully simplistic and clean, which allows the storylines to not be overshadowed by the art.

Schmidt is also the author of the graphic novels EGG STORY and EATING STEVE, available from Slave Labor Graphics.
The Sixsmiths is about to be released as a graphic novel later this year.

Got a strip you think I should know about? Then leave me a comment below.

Modern Discrimination

Modern Discrimination published on 5 Comments on Modern Discrimination

What side will you be on when this happens?

Take a look around and you will see the signs of the segregation that is coming. People are picking a side and defending their chosen brand with conviction and a semi-accurate knowledge of the systems inner workings.

If we are not careful, there will soon be whole sections of cities where certain technology manufacturers are totally banned.
Teenagers will meet in secret rooms to look at the “forbidden” systems not allowed by their parents.
And the world will be a shittier place…….

Why can’t we just have one unified platform that all manufacturers use, and live in harmony for ever more?

The Dilbert redux

The Dilbert redux published on 1 Comment on The Dilbert redux

This week, my comic recommendation is a bit different to what you might expect.
It involves taking an already existing strip, then changing the text to give it a whole different outcome and punchline.
Altering other strips to give a different result is not exactly a new idea, as it has been successfully done already in strips such as Garfield Minus Garfield.

However, the reason I am recommending strip below is that it takes the extremely popular strip ‘Dilbert‘, created by Scott Adams, and it gives it a brand new lease of life. I often enjoy these redux strips better than the original.

Dilbertte
Dilbertte reflects office life better than Dilbert
Dilbertte takes the popular Dilbert comic strip and replaces the dialog, in an attempt to accentuate blandness and change the entire tone of the strip. This is by no means a bad thing. In fact, the end result can often end up being far funnier that the original strip.
For example, compare the strip above with the original one here.
Dilbertte purposely attempts to make some strips extremely bland and nonsensical, often leaving many readers scratching their heads. It really is the type of thing you have to just “get” and you must be able to revel in the stupidity of it all.
It is reduxed by Tom, who can be found lurking on twitter and posting things he should not, as @FiveThumbsDown. And just in case Scott Adams asks, we have no idea where Tom is….

Got a strip you think I should know about? Then leave me a comment below.

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