What's Better Than Spoiled Meat Paste?

And the meat paste rears its ugly head yet again (you knew that wasn't going away, right?) 

Not So New Comic Review: Guardians of the Galaxy (1991) #20

                 Well, if this wasn’t already a series of outdated 90’s fashions, it would have jumped the shark with this one.  Take Captain America’s costume as a base, add in knee pads with the Guardians’ stars, a sleeveless trenchcoat and of course, a headband, and you get one of the most 90’s things I have seen in quite some time.  Yes, the costume design is terrible, and the new character Talon is deplorable, but is this comic any good?  Let’s see.

                First, we see Vance rally the troops, and they immediately start to fight back against the nearly insurmountable odds that they faced just last issue.  As the battle is raging, Vance decides to tell everyone how he got out of his containment suit (it’s a mixture of Hollywood’s ionic blood and magic.  I’m assuming magic is how he got the bitchin’ headband, but that could just be poor fashion sense.  Everyone continues their fight, Gabrielle (one of the Comandeers) straight up murders Belle.  She was a double agent, so I get it, but you rarely see that kind of cold-blooded killing in a Marvel book.  Yondu’s magic hand changes into a laser gun and he blasts one of the Punishers as well.  He then goes all emo because apparently a laser is not the weapon of a true warrior, however an arrow that moves based on how you whistle is…oh Yondu, don’t ever change.  The Guardians basically win the battle and ask Krugarr to teleport them to the heart of the refinery so that they may do away with the society-destroying televisions once and for all. 

                In the meantime we head back out to space where Aleta and Starhawk are still struggling with one another. 

                Back to the refinery, where Charlie is rigging the Punisher tank to go nuclear and take out the whole refinery.  It just so happens that Boss Punisher and one of the Badoon are still inside the tank.  Vance guilt-trips Charlie into giving the villains a chance to surrender, which he does.  The Badoon doesn’t want to emerge, but the Boss Punisher decides to take things into his own hands and murders the Badoon and then surrenders…only to be murdered himself at the hands of Gabrielle.  Gabrielle gives Vance a lesson in how things are done in a gang war as he bitches and moans about trying to be better than the bad guys while Charlie basically decides that the only way to shut these two up is to detonate a nuclear bomb, which he does, taking out the refinery. 

 

                We make a quick stop to Mainframe’s homeworld where Martinex is whining about not being able to patrol the universe how exactly he wants to or some such nonsense and that’s it.

                We then are back in New York City in the Avengers’ Mansion Sub-Basement that is now the makeshift base of operations for the Guardians of the Galaxy.  We get the big reveal that Hollywood is actually Wonder-Man, just aged 1000 years (he can’t die so this makes sense) and membership in the Guardians is offered to Hollywood (he declines), Krugarr (he declines) and Talon (of course he accepts).  So far, the Guardians have asked everyone with superpowers that they’ve come across if they want to be a member, so far the only one that has accepted that invitation is Talon.  That doesn’t say much for your organization. 

                The epilogue revolves around Rancor again looking for answers.  She gets them from someone that can basically track an individual based on something of theirs, kind of like a cosmic bloodhound.  The alien tells Rancor that who she seeks is on Earth, and Rancor summarily kills that alien, because Rancor is pretty badass, right?  As Rancor licks the blood of the alien off of her claws (gross, didn’t she learn anything about cross-contaminating races from the Courgians?) she makes it known that her main goal is to find Wolverine!  Apparently this comic needed a little boost in sales and everyone knew that including Wolverine would do that in spades.

                Next issue:  Rancor heads to Earth, how much more blood will she lick, and who’s will it be?

Giant Head

Some people may say I have an unhealthy dislike for Kanye West, I would say that those people have made a fairly accurate assessment.

Genesis: Part Two

Sitting around our college studio one day during my sophomore year of college (my first at the Kubert School), an extremely talented and very bright classmate Hovard Johannsen (we called him Howard and he was patient enough not to murder us in our sleep when we massacred his name while trying to say it in his native Norwegian) mentioned that he could see me doing a daily comic strip containing The Masked Shrimp.  At that time it was destined for a comic book series and I had the whole thing planned out from issues 1-100, hell I had even written the first four issues and started penciling issue one. Hovard’s observation was that I was so in tune and close with my characters that I would not be content with producing once a month adventures involving this lovable band of misfits.  When the observation was presented to me I blew it off as pure speculation, and while I appreciated his recognition of my ties to my characters, I was set in my ways and probably a little too headstrong to really take what he said to heart.

Again, I still thought I would be drawing the X-Men the day after I graduated from college.  Shows how much I knew then.

I did dabble in the comic strip medium for a brief moment in my first year at the Kubert School as my dorm-mates and I considered putting together a newspaper-esque pamphlet of comic strips showcasing our talent for the school and surrounding area.  While that never materialized (I believe I was the only one that actually had strips ready to go shortly after our initial meeting) I was able to recycle some of the more generic jokes in later Eat @ Shrimpy’s strips. 

The notion that comic strips would not only be a viable, but a preferable method of storytelling did not surface until I was in my second year at the Kubert school and was tasked with the assignment of creating a month’s worth of comic strips (which make up a good portion of the first storyline you have seen on this site).  It should be noted that at the time this assignment was given out, I had just signed on to pencil a forty-eight page comic book (that of course never saw the light of day and I was never compensated for) and actually used that “assignment” in place of my scholastic one.  I started the comic strip assignment after my classmates had already moved on to the following one (a Mad Magazine-style caricature adventure which I missed out on completely).  Thanks to my teacher Mike Chen, a spark was created within me.  Something clicked when I realized that I could tell jokes, and I could break up a story into beats, where it was still a cohesive and comprehensive narrative when put together, but each day, each strip was able to stand on its own. 

It all took off from there as, instead of just doing the assignment and moving on to something else, I decided to keep writing and creating comic strips in addition to doing my schoolwork.  This continued into the following year (my third and final year at the Kubert School) where I decided to collect the finished strips in a comic book format, much like Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows was doing at the time.  At the time I had just called it The Masked Shrimp Strips so as not to confuse it with The Masked Shrimp regular series which was still very much in development. 

It was not until showing the book to my humor teacher that year, the incredibly talented Brian Buniak, that the name Eat @ Shrimpy’s was born.  A random sign in this strip that said “Eat @ Shrimpy’s” caused Brian to pause and question why that was not the name of the strip as The Masked Shrimp Strips was just an awful name, which I fully acknowledged.  From then on the name of the strip changed, which not only set itself apart from the other work I was doing with Shrimpy, giving it its own identity, but also creating a name that could be instantly recognizable and that actually has a lot to do with the plot of the strip itself.  Brian is a genius when it comes to humor in general, but the fact that the identity of the strip wasn't really born until that day proved that he was partially responsible for where the strip is now.  In fact, if it wasn't for my time at the Kubert school, I would guess that Eat @ Shrimpy's wouldn't even be here and The Masked Shrimp would be toiling away in unpublished comic book pages at the back of my closet somewhere. 

Tour Riders

Seriously, have you seen what some of these "celebrities" request just so they can grace you with their presence?  

It's ridiculous and a symptom of the greater problem of people thinking that they are owed something for the sheer pleasure of their company.

Festival Flyer

Now wouldn't you want to attend this concert (even though it's in 2013)?

Not So New Comic Review: Guardians of the Galaxy (1991) #19

                 This may be the official downfall of the Guardians of the Galaxy.  The inclusion of such a one-note, crap character like Talon may just be the death-knell for a once promising franchise.  To make that determination we need to get through the book itself though.

                The first thing we learn in this issue is that even a reverse Mohawk can’t save you from t he wrath of the boss Punisher and his blue nose of doom.  Next we officially meet Talon and learn that he is a dumb character that seems to be there just to get on the nerves of people.  He’s one of those “teenage” characters that they tried to shoehorn into comics back in the 80’s and 90’s to appeal to a younger demographic (much like Jubilee of the X-Men).  While Jubilee played more of a background role, Talon is getting shoved down our throat in the early going, even going so far as to have him beat Charlie in a fight to show how athletically superior he is.  Yondu breaks up the fight an returns everyone to their senses.

                We check in on Vance, who was injured last issue and is now under the care of Dr. Strange, Krugarr and Hollywood.

                Back on the planet Courg, it apparently hasn’t been a good time for the dog people as The Stark did leave the planet, but they left their dead, which quickly decayed and released diseases which the people of Courg, having no antibodies or immunities, quickly succumbed to.   Not only that, but The Stark came back after the Guardians had left in order to finish what they started.  So all the Guardians did in those first few issues is delay the inevitable.  This blows Martinex’s mind, and is actually a pretty powerful bit of writing, highlighting the total cost of war to the bystanders and not just the combatants.

                Back on Earth the Guardians are in the sewer, looking for a refinery, the place where the tv signal is broadcast I believe.  Yes, after all of this, the Guardians are still sticking to their primary mission which is to destroy the televisions that are taking over and killing the population of Earth. 

                We quickly travel to another planet as Valentino sets up the next story arc, which will feature the return of Rancor and her mutants.  She is on a mission and it starts here with the discovery of an artifact.  Of course being Rancor she kills everyone she comes in contact with.

                Back in the refinery, we’re getting a refresher course as to how television’s destruction of society went down and Charlie asks the question we all want to know.  So what if they destroy this refinery.  If this is a global epidemic, won’t destroying one refinery just be a drop in the bucket?  The answer, in super convenient terms is nope, there is only one refinery and it’s the one they are standing in.  Apparently the gas emitted is so potent that only a little bit needs to be used and it can all be made in one place. 

We take a quick break and head into Starhawk’s consciousness where Aleta is struggling to maintain her sense of self and her sanity before we head back to the refinery and find that the Badoon, those bastard aliens that were responsible for the formation of the Guardians in the first place, were behind both the televisions and the bankroll for the Punishers organization this whole time.  We also find out that Belle, the girl that made googly eyes at Charlie last issue was a double-agent the whole time.  It looks like the Guardians and Comandeers are outmanned and outgunned until a mysterious stranger shows up with Hollywood and Krugarr alongside him.  Who is this stranger that is shrouded in shadow yet carrying Captain America’s shield?  We’ll have to wait until next time to find out.

Next Issue:  The only costume design that could be more 90’s than Charlie’s is finally unveiled.