Shitty Comic Contract Make Hulk Smash!

TokyoPop is possibly the biggest manga publisher in the US. Evidently, they're also evil.

It's been covered quite well by this gentleman here, so I won't attempt to go over it again. Below is my cliffs notes version:

• TP is graciously allowing anyone the chance to get their comic published. To start, just provide them with a fully finished 24-36 pg comic. It's that (cough cough) easy.
• You just have to sign their contract, which promises they'll pay you if they like your work.
• If you make the edits they request.
• If you agree that it's cool for them to leave your name off the credits.
• If you sacrifice the ability to control the future story arc.
• If you agree not to take any profits from merchandising or outside sales.
• If you relinquish all rights to your characters forever.

And all this is written in the tone of an asshat. If you don't know what that tone is, click the link above. It's contained therein.

But its all good. They'll pay you a cool $20/page for the privilege. I thought the deal the Writer's Guild agreed to was great, but this? This is just charity. Pure and simple.

Oh and that right there? That was sarcasm.

Catch the Wind: A Presentation by Beau Bergeron

Pretty much since college, I've been very lucky to be surrounded by incredible people. People who never seem to stop moving, whose creativity and optimism are so much a part of who they are that you become inspired just by standing next to them.

Beau Bergeron is one of those people. He made this for a job interview, and projected the whole thing on his shirt. It is awesome. You should watch it.

The Ballad of Sir Jurie

Place not ye faith in Hippocrates,
poor healer at best twas he,
I say to you sir,
tis no better cure,
Than that served by great Sir Jurie.
-From The Ballad of Sir Jurie

In my quest to try new things and break out of my creative comfort zone, I recently grabbed a Mini Munny. I discovered Kid Robot when I was interning with these people in NYC. There was at least one collectible, blind-boxed, designer-painted vinyl figurine on every desk. It was awesome.


I wussed out on buying a DIY vinyl for a few months, until a couple members of the old ICG crew picked them up. I decided it was high time I reminded myself why I'm not an Art Director.


I picked out a white MM, and was overjoyed to discover my "mystery accessory" was a bat. I immediately scrapped the lava monster design I'd been thinking of (I may do it later) and started thinking about what I could do with a Louisville Slugger.


I hate baseball, so making a ball player was out. I briefly considered painting him to look like a proctologist. But I would have had to make a white lab coat, and I really didn't want to sew anything. Eventually, I thought it would be entertaining to make a knight, with a bat instead of a sword. When it came time to the name, I guess I was still on that doctor kick though, and I dubbed the little goof "Sir Jurie".


I learned a couple of things:

1) Sharpies are not your friends. Using them is a one-way ticket to Smearsville. Population: you.

2) If you don't paint well on paper, there's no reason to believe you're DaVinci on vinyl. My spray-painting went surprisingly well (I haven't touched a can since college). The paint markers? Not so much.

3) Munnys are theives. I was excited cause a MM is only 10 bucks. Then I bought a can of metallic spray paint, two paint markers and a can of fixative. All in all, the shiny little bastard put me out about $25. A lot of this stuff I'll use over, but I was foolishly thinking I'd be done with just the metallic paint and a six-pac of sharpies. (See item 1)


Overall, he ain't bad for my first attempt. I kept it simple. After I had so much trouble just painting the black and brown, I decided to skip highlights and shadows. The metallic base is really what makes it, so I didn't want to give myself any more excuses to screw it up. I ended up changing the visor at the last minute because I didn't have faith I'd be able to do the sketch justice. Then I changed it again when I totally fucked up the alternative. But I am really happy with the "tail hatch". That and "X-Calibur" crack me up.

Pure Genius

Thanks mostly to the brilliance of Isaac Pagan, our IKEA genius ads are up on Ads of the World.

You can find them here.

And of course, they're always here.

Today's childhood sucks.

You kids today, think ya got it all. Well, maybe ya'll have cellular phones tucked into ya diapers, but there's one thing you don't have: real toys in your cereal. Let Uncle Benny tell ya what it was like in the good ol' days.

Back in the day, all the cereal boxes had prizes inside. Real prizes, not crap about "send in 300 boxtops and we might give ya sumthin in 6 weeks". We didn't wait six friggin weeks! No sir, if there was a prize you got it the day you opened the box. A physical plastic toy, hand-glued and painted by poorly fed orientals only a few years younger than you were.

I just bought a box o' Cheerios. The box said there was a SPEED RACER TURBO CAR INSIDE! I opened the box, and here's what I found:


Right from the start I can tell- childhood today sucks. Back in 91', I once opened a box o' cereal and got a painted figure o' Ducktales. That masterpiece of plastic was like a tiny version o' Michaelangelo's David that was then painted by DaVinci.

But whaddya kids get? A single color piece o' plastic. Inside the first bag, it's shrink wrapped with- I still can't believe it- directions.


In my day, cereal toys was awesome cause they was free. Mom paid for it, the Chinese built it, all you had to do was play with it. That's how it was in my day. You kids have it that good? No, your toys today come with stickers. Like this:


I don't care if you can hire pirates to download your free iPods off the interwebs, today's childhood sucks.

My favorite part is how the stickers are on the flip side of the directions. So ya can't look at both at once unless you have a sticker stuck to your sweaty little sausage finger, losing all it's stickiness as you try and figure out where the hell it goes on your car. Don'tcha look at me like that, ya know I'm right.

If it was just that the stickers didn't stick, I coulda understood. If it was just that the patterns didn't line up no good, well, that's how it was in the old days too. And if the wind up motor got stuck and it barely moved, I mighta said "yeah, these kids today got it pretty good". All that stuff is tradition. Builds character.

Then THIS happened:


I know I put the sticker on right. It's the only way it fits, and I checked them directions twice. But I don't know if I should complain, cause that's exactly how it looks on the box:


In my day, they had the decency to put in a little effort and lie to you about it. I guess they just can't spend the trouble on youngsters these days. Makes ya wonder who won the war.

Now here comes the icing on the cake. Them Hollywood advertising people can't even be bothered to put their own logo on the toy. No, they gotta have you do that for them:


I don't know how much them child-laborers get fed these days, but it's too much.

Look, I know you kids think your life is great. You've got that free porn you can load down whenever you want, and all the phones have texturing now. But let me tell ya sumthin: If ya ain't got real toys in ya cereal, ya'll got nuthin.

My advice? Don't spend all your efforts putting upside-down stickers right-side up on plastic pieces o' crap. Start working on a time machine and set it for 1985. Cause today's childhood sucks.

An Open Letter to George Lucas

Dear George,

If you F*CK up the new Indy Movie like you did the first three Star Wars movies, I hope an army of Fedora-wearing Ewoks pee on your lawn.

Love, Me.

Inspired by this news.

101 Words of Awesome, daily.

It was a brilliant idea. Brilliant.

He'd create stories of exactly 101 words each, written daily. Putting down exactly 101 words was no great chore, the hard part would be in the telling. Something short, but still sublime and wonderful. He’d label them as “fiction for the attention-deprived”. Most would be self-contained, but a few might be ongoing tales. It was practically made for the blog format. And if it did exceptionally well, the stories could even be sold in book format.

It was quite a shame someone beat him to it.

At least the post about it was only 101.