Attack of the Bacon Robots
Mike “Tycho” Brahe and Gabriel “John” Holkins
Fantagraphics, Jan 2006
$79.95 US / $94.95 CAN

There are words that come to mind when one is privileged to “paw” through a tome such as the new high-concept, print-exclusive production from the gentlemen at Penny’s Arcade. Words like “rich” and “cream-tainted.” Words like “leather interior.” Words like “#88/500.” Words like “weighs as much as a neonate.”

But, to quote Wilde, it’s not the cover I judge; it’s the book. Attack of the Bacon Robots is a delightful surrealo-humanist romp through fields of neurotic bliss, as viewed by a feline railroad baron (Twisp) and a pale-eyed Satan (Catsby). The allusion to Sartre is obvious, and a little trite, but it doesn’t distract from the page-turning joy of the first section, “The Penguin Bespoke.”

Holkins and Brahe follow that quasitraditional narrative with an homage to Scott McCloud’s Modern Tales: the Mesopotamian epic “Twisp and Catsby Kick a Rock.” It’s printed in infrared-reflective ink on fifty pages of solid black, so this reviewer hopes you’ve got your goggles ready — you deserve it.

The pop-up section (pages 72-109) is in extremely poor taste.

The book returns to visible light and flat pages in its coda, “To All The Loves We’ve Won Before.” The auteurs sketch their titular heroines in ASCII art, arranged from a twenty-page list of critics, bloggers, parents and fans who have published assessments of their work. Each name is paired with a piece of bold, profane advice, and I was amused to find our editor Lance Sharps near the bottom of page 127 (for the record, no, he doesn’t, or anyway not at the office).

Holkins and Holkins have done rather a U-shaped turn since their days as t-shirt peddlers. Some less objective reviewers might be tempted to put this one down to a desperate grab for artistic credibility, but I prefer to ask: who let the bacon out?

Attack of the Bacon Robots receives nine thumbs out of twelve.

Welton Colbert, an eighty-year veteran of the sequential art service industry sector, has taken an unusual step for a man his age–through his collaboration with post-hipster Ryan Estrada, he’s brought his reviews of many a webcomic to the cathode screen. Modern Humor Authority was delighted to speak to him, having long admired his laser-sharp critical eye and startling technological savvy.

As per our subject’s request, this interview was conducted via Dictaphone.

MHA: Thanks for taking the time to “kick the seat down” with us, Mr. Colbert. We at Modern Humor Authority found ourselves with something distinctly in common with you–both our magazine and your review column have been crudely parodied in Comixpedia, that edifice of scorn. Do you, like us, intend to put a stop to that practice via accion judiciaire pursuivant?

WC: ComicsMedia? Is that where they end up? All I know is they go on the computer. I tried to find them once, and all I saw was something called “Recycle Bin” and something called “The Start Menu” I don’t know why these kids today need such fancy appliances to get their news these days. I don’t know why they can’t learn things the old fashioned way. On the street. Why, all it took was a trip down the right dark alley, a little grease in the palm of the right shoe shine boy, or a password whispered into the correct nondescript doorway, and you’d learn anything you needed to know. Back then, if we wanted reviews, we’d go to old Crazy Earl. You could always find Earl because he’s be standing in the middle of an intersection holding an upside down cardboard sign that said “The Devil is coming”. Also he’d be screaming at the top of his lungs. And wearing half a watermelon as a hat. And not wearing any pants. Why, we’d just yell out the name of the comic we wanted reviewed. We’d say “Hey Crazy Earl, what did you think of today’s Katzenjammer Kids”? And old Earl would reply “THE DEVIIIIIIIL.” Easy peasy, Japanesey. No pointing, clicking, or….. judi…aisure… pursu…vimation….. ization….. necessary.

MHA: Ah, we apologize. We had assumed your French-Canadian last name indicated a passing fluency in the language of the Academie.

WC: I thought they were called Freedom Canadians now?

MHA: Your wit scalds like a knife. Can we assume, then, that you’ve had no electronic contact with your throbbing, nubile Internet fanbase?

WC: I carry a taser, so I’m ready for some ‘electronic contact’ the next time I see one of those little bastards.

MHA: Intriguing! You share with me–er, this publication–an interest in electrostimulation?

WC: I thought he was one of the overrated super villians. When I was at Golden Comics, I created a villain named “Senescent” but it never caught on. I was never sure why. Maybe because I never made any of my deadlines and the book never got published and 3 weeks later I got fired for stealing office supplies.

MHA: Seriously, people get so worked up about that. They’re just paperclips, you know? It’s not like we’re going to run out.

WC: Paperclips, stapler, mimeograph machine, boss’s car….. people get so wrapped up over the most unimportant things.

MHA: If we agreed any more heartily, we’d have cirrhosis. And speaking of digestion, your reviews are always fine food for thought; your style is delicate and flitting, characterized not so much by focus on your subject matter as a departure from it. Is it true you honed this approach during years of seclusion with J. D. Salinger?

WC: Well, there’s a funny story about that, Regis. It’s no secret that the elderly are disciminated against when it comes to television. For example, everyone knows that we can’t remember more than one word at a time, and yet they keep making all these shows with a whole bunch of words in the title. But we have fought back by creating a very clearly defined system of referring to our programs with one word names. Ask your grandma what her favorite game show is, and she’ll say “Wheel”, or “Millionaire”. Ask what her favorite drama is, and she’ll say “Angel”. A few years ago, she wouldn’t need to remember the “touched by a” part. This system worked very well, until they invented some Zombie show that was named “Angel” and it messed with our whole system. Then they came with some John Millionaire show, which meant if we wanted to be understood, we had to remember to say “Who wants to be a” And now there’s a rash of incidents where senior citizens are being forced to remember things! What these people don’t realize is that we can only remember a certain number of things. So for every time we need to remember to say “of Fortune” to distinguish our program from “The Third Wheel”, we have to forget something else. Why, I knew a guy who remembered to add “Everybody Loves” to Raymond, and he forgot the names of his grandchildren. Worst case I heard of was a woman in Sacramento who had to remember “she wrote” and forgot about ice cream.

MHA: … Wait, what?

WC: No thanks, I had one before I left.

MHA: On the subject of leaving, it’s rumored your retirement years ago set off a bit of a fire sale within the belly of that ageless dinosaur, Newspaper Syndication. Take us back to that day. What were the children saying?

WC: Well, the rule of thumb in the newspaper business is that you don’t quit until you’re dead. And even then, your kids are expected to take over. Most contracts have the ‘first born son’ clause right in there. If you never get married, you’re expected to adopt, and if you get turned down for that, there’s this guy Jimmy in the copy room who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you a black-market Russian baby in about 2 hours.

MHA: Seriously? Because Isobel and I have been talking about kids, and there’s, well, difficulties, on her end, well, both our ends, technically my end, okay, but if you know someone… let’s just say there could be some PageRank in it for you.

WC: Yeah, but you never know what you’re gonna get stuck with when you go that route… have you seen that Little Billy? He can’t draw for crap.

MHA: Since you bring up the savant progeny of Keane, have you ever considered reviewing newspaper comics? Your focus so far has been surprisingly edgy.

WC: The newspapers today! Talking heads in tiny boxes! Pah! Why, back in my day, a Sunday comic took up an entire page. I remember a time when some of them took up the entire newspaper. Some Sunday strips were was so long, it was Monday before most readers got to the part where Nancy and Sluggo went for ice cream.

MHA: A controversial statement–but one nobody can oppose. On another topic, your penchant for poseury is well-documented. As the new year breaches, will we see a “Colbert Unsheathed” calendar for sale?

WC: These kids today will put their comics anywhere. Calendars, computers, tie pods, paper…. why, people forget why comics were invented. When we first started, the only place comics were published was on sandwiches. See there was this stand up comedy restaurant in Iowa called the Comic Cafe. They served these sandwiches that were so hot, you had to wait 60 seconds before eating them. The people complained that they were bored while waiting to eat, so the cook starting using food coloring to print little funny picture-stories on the bread. The people would spend 60 seconds reading the picture-story, and then it was safe to eat the sandwich. So they named it the Comic, after the restaurant. But the Comic Sandwiches were so much funnier than the stand up Comics, that they were all fired a few weeks later. The cafe changed format into a nudie bar, and that’s where we got the name ‘Comic Strip’.

MHA: Dear God. Can you say anything in less than a hundred words?

WC: You kids today and your short attention spans. You can’t say anything if it’s more than three words, and even then, you need to convert all the words to letters, like LAL, OGM, and BYOB. Back in my day we used our language to the fullest. We had to carry a 47 page script in a plastic binder everywhere we went just to remember how to say “hello”. Why I know a guy in Sacramento who started ordering a cheeseburger in 1932 and hasn’t finished his sentence yet.

MHA: And so–in the deep and reasoned fear of becoming that cheeseburger–we bring this interview to a close. Thank you for sparing us some of what little time you have left, Mr. Colbert.

WC: WHICH BUTTON DO I PUSH……. HELLO……… HELLO?……… HELLO?……………

It is done. Charges dropped, hands clasped. The tears on the pavement evaporating rapidly under city streetlight. In the early hours of a Los Angeles morning, the former plaintiff and defendant renewed a professional bond.

This is the result. At first, the final panel drew my ire, but I realized that the false Modern Humor Authority had come full ouroboros, grasping its tail and crushing all past affronts with a snake-like clench of its shovel-like teeth. I couldn’t help but chuckle silently at the fate of my comic strip counterpart — said body-shaking chuckles giving way to besorrowjoy-wracked catharsis.

I no longer have a ghost.

I’m preparing for a trip to Southern California, cutting a family visit short. The nature of the event in Encino demands my presence; I dread the necessity, but a dim neural recess tells me I should have known better in the first place.

I go in the name of Modern Humor Authority, and I go to finally lay to rest an old demon that haunts me, as it does the rest of the staff here.

That is but two pages of three-hundred-seventy. I have been in consultation with a lawyer, but I insisted in preparing the document myself, much as a noble Gaelic knight might have forgecrafted his own sword of battle.

There, in the rising embers, I too am hewn.

Websnark
Written by Eric Burns, Wednesday White
Intermittent

Look, we all know how difficult it is to write expert critical analysis. I should know. I’ve been a member of the Authority for about six years now, and it hasn’t been easy putting up with the day-to-day shit. Lance dominates the espresso machine, filling it with his own foul “Maple Ginger Chai” concoction that stinks up the break room until the afternoon. James has a habit of listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music full-blast as he writes his columns. And fucking Isobel doesn’t give me the time of day after the Halloween party last weekend. So don’t tell me how hard it is to come up with scalpel-sharp insight into bleeding-edge pop culture every couple of months. It’s hard, I get it.

So what’s the deal, Websnark? This once-inveterate webcomics opinion site used to hold sway over an entire internet nation. The MHA staff used to actually giggle with delight over how tight Eric Burns’ webshit was. Have you ever heard Rootberg giggle? It’s fucking nauseating.

Shit, I mean, what the fuck?

Now Websnark is about three things: some Star Wars RPG sourcebook, The Adventures of Sergeant Major Tony Stark, and Gossamer Comics. And those are all things Eric’s involved in. Can you imagine if MHA suddenly got all crazy-incest like that? Andrew Carlssin has been dying to have one of us review his bodice-ripping novella In Majesty’s Shade: The Blighting of the Crowns. But you know, we’re not about to do that. It makes us look like self-promoting jerks. Also I’ve read it, it sucks ball-ass.

Wednesday’s kinda holding down the fort here, I think. Yeah, I’ll say it. I mean, her writing is kinda a little too conversational for my tastes, but everybody’s got a style, I guess. And she lives in Britain or something, that’s respectable. Wednesday, if you’re reading this, I travel to London with my dad sometimes, so if you’re around, let’s like, hook it up or something. You know, like a professional-type deal where two writers meet and discuss the state of the ethos or fuck-all-whatever.

So there it is. I guess these other guys were afraid to say it, but you can count on the Lemon to lock it down. Websnark, you’re on notice or some shit. Get back to reviewing webcomics you didn’t write, and maybe you can dig yourself out before you turn into Entertainment Weekly, or some other American self-congratulatory wastehole.

The Lemon’s watching you.

MegaTokyo
Written and drawn by Piro Gallagher
Updates like a mule-train leader, cruel smile on his lips, carrot dangling, crop at the ready

It’s impossible to talk about Piro “Fred” Gallagher’s MegaTokyo without discussing the way people talk about Piro “Fred” Gallagher’s MegaTokyo. And how is that, indeed? The discourse has ranged from that fateful first plug at Penny Arcades to the depths of the MT fora themself, now a virtual tar mine — but one that holds the lure of gold. Even respected webcomic artist Eric “Wednesday” Burns has taken the time to plug MT in his personal blog.

But there’s one thing all those comments had in common — the English language. When the bounds of the Anglonet became too tight, MegaTokyo burst forth like Zeus from his own forehead, into German, Spanish, French, Norse, Norse again, I think, Esperanto, Music and Computerlish. Boundaries collapsed other boundaries; the reader is reminded of the proverbial slippery domino. MegaTokyo had a whole new world to talk to, and the world had a new MegaTokyo to talk about — with itself.

Isn’t that why we’re here, after all–to talk about webcomics? And when a webcomic can cause a magazine that talks about webcomics to talk about the way people talk about webcomics, we at Modern Humor Authority are neither too proud nor too humble to recognize a metamasterwork.

Thank you, MegaTokyo. If we’re lucky, our conversation will continue long after your content has ceased.

MegaTokyo receives eight stars out of infinity.

“Doom” Starring The Rock, Karl Urban Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

Even the credits of the motion picture based on the ultra-violent video game from id Software explode onto the screen drenched in tough, manly syllables. Doom. The Rock. Urban. Andrzej. It’s the onomatopoeic collision of two gelignite-infused typewriters, ink ribbons fraying, keys splaying in mindless defiance to the mindful.

Doom delivers on the high-tech violence most Halloween audiences will be looking for. I suspect this is the mode in which the studio will make the bulk of its money. But science fiction has long been the refuge of the most potent societal commentary — to understand today, we must look to the future.

Thus it is impossible to disregard the strongest of the film’s subtexts. Doom is a powerful metaphor for the plight of the modern woman. The savior of femininity here is the hypermasculine Rock, whose yo bro macho talk bends so far back onto self-parody that its presence is laced with orthogonalism — a fully-contained yin and yang of a single color rather than black and white.

Unlike the video game, the demons that erupt onto the scene are the result of human genome decoding, not portals into Hell. The monsters are unleashed from within men — who themselves could be considered aberrations of womanhood from birth, as all humans begin in the womb as physically female — leading to an obvious parallel with the life-altering fear of conception. Freud would weep tears of joy.

Doom deftly shows us that pregnancy is the great differentiator, changing a woman’s role into that of mother, a place where no man can follow. The Rock confronts these fears head on, with a “Bio-Force Gun,” its destructive energy spewing in the same color as the fluid used to demonstrate tampon absorbency in commercials. The message is clear: confront this fear, and purge it from existence.

It’s a fascinating take on how fear of femininity can loom — or doom — a modern woman. In the end, even the Rock must succumb to his darker nature, and becomes “demonized,” settling into the role genetically encoded into each of us as humans: to become parents. But when he changes, so does the framework. We are all monsters of a sort, bred for breeding. They are us, and we them. Through the Rock’s acceptance, we become less afraid ourselves. The skin of the world has been peeled back, but what were once nightmare creatures are now a symbol of family, a sense of completeness.

The demands of the working world are biologically confusing for women, and although Doom’s violence may be initially offputting, I urge audiences of both genders to watch with eyes open. Anything less and you may miss one of the most profound statements about the role of the fairer sex, in this decidedly Modern society.

White Ninja Comics
by Scott Bevan and Kent Earle
Updates Tuesdays and Saturdays

I speak four languages, which is more than you’d expect, really. The English and French you have probably already guessed, but what about German? I’m fluent. Latin, too, and I can actually speak it. Most people who can read Latin can’t.

And I read a book on Esperanto.

The threatened way you’re feeling now is the reaction many people seem to have to Bevan and Earle’s White Ninja Comics, which at three years of age and three hundred twenty-five installments is practically an electronic institution. That it eschews (see? Eschew. Look that up, Jackson) color for line art and punch lines for subtle epigrams is the only thing most readers will take away at first, but in that taking, they leave a great deal behind.

Of course, the vast majority of webcomic readers are still lamentably male, so this focus on surface is only to be expected. Why plunge for depth when one can bob about, brightly colored, like a dead whore in a life jacket? And that’s not a threat, so don’t try that restraining order shit again.

There are men out there who actually appreciate depth in a comic, you know. Men who don’t just pretend to understand your cosmopolitan vocabulary words so they can steal them for their own reviews (and, unveränderlich, use them wrong). Men who aren’t so blindingly stupid as to sleep with another woman when you all three work in the same office! Yeah, I’ll bet she got art lessons in Oslo. You know what else she got there? Chlamydia.

White Ninja Comics is a cheating, lying son of a bitch.

That’s “putinfilico” in Esperanto.

It has been brought to the attention of the Modern Humor Authority staff that an old colleague — former colleague as of this moment — has been shaming us publically for at least the past six months, in a venue I was not aware of. I can scarce bring myself to type his name here; perhaps I should not until I have had a chance to contact our lawyer. Suffice it to say that the same person helped us procure our domain name two years ago, and parodied Modern Humor Authority — and myself to a great degree — in his own webcomic. I had become fond of that “Lance Sharps” cameo. Now I can only look at it with great distress, as a sign of betrayal to come.

And a betrayal has indeed occurred.

What I had believed was a professional friendship has become, apparently, a source of great amusement for Kristofer Straub and countless readers of his preposterously cruel “satire” of the MHA offices. Comixpedia even links back to this site, brazenly, which is how I finally made the connection. For shame, Mr. Xerexes. Why was I not informed? What made you believe Straub’s attempt to pass me off as a junior Scott McCloud would not incur my eventual ire? I feel boundless shame.

Comixpedia’s “Modern Humor Authority” webcomic is a travesty, and a direct affront to James, Andrew, Isobel, Todd and myself — at the very least, no permission was given by MHA for even that use of our name.

Our Canadian origin will not protect whom I consider a thief of intellectual property. Modern Humor Authority is incorporated in Southern California, so it would appear that any case pursued would fall under United States jurisdiction. I will be contacting our Encino-based lawyer tomorrow. Mr. Straub, I advise you do the same.

Death Cab for Cutie Brothers on a Hotel Bed 4 minutes, 31 seconds

Anyone who has heard Death Cab’s 2003 effort Transatlanticism is aware of the sumptuous aural feast Ben Gibbard is capable of setting the table of one’s ear with. Ambient traffic noise is used to delicious effect in A Lack of Color, its subtle careening vehicular dissonance mirroring the accidents a soul weathers after a lover’s tiff.

But with Brothers on a Hotel Bed, the trio has broached a subject uncommon to modern emopopfolkrock: incest. And I’m not sure I would entrust the delicate topic to any other band. Soothing piano over reverby, oppositely-doubled glissandoes introduces us to this uncomfortable region of lifespace, where siblings share sleeping accommodations.

The lyric is, as always, inspired: turned your way and saw / something he was not looking for / both a beginning and an end standing in to describe the recursive nature of erotic brotherly love. But the song is by no means sexual — its clinicism is required for the listener to ease themselves into this world.

It is a world few souls inhabit, and I feel richer having experienced it through the tear-streaked windshield of this Cab.