This is the only book I've ever read that works the fossil record, the extinction of the dinosaurs, Cro-Magnon man versus Neanderthal man, AND Adam & Eve and a global flood. Sure, why not. It's the crossover fanfic version of history!

Tags: ufos

It's "suspiciously similar" comics day today at Stupid Comics as we tackle one of the vital issues facing Americans today - the way a 4-page backup story in an issue of "Super Duck" from the 50s borrowed from a newspaper strip. You'll be hearing more and more about this as the November elections draw closer, because it affects us all! And yet, so far NONE of the candidates from ANY party have even MENTIONED this. I blame the news media, myself.



Why, I've never SEEN such a blatant ZIGGY ripoff!!

Don't miss out on the controversy and the cataclysm at Stupid Comics!

In other news, both Will Elder and John Philip Law - the star of SPACE MUTINY! - passed away. Two men who brought much laughter into our lives. TCJ has posted a link to Kurtzman and Elder's famous "Goodman Beaver" story which features the Archie gang as sybaritic decadent yuppies, which was the subject of one of those harsh Archie lawsuits. Anyway you can now read the entire thing here (scroll down) thanks to TCJ and the miracle of failure to renew copyright on old comic stories. Hooray for public domain, is what I say.

Erstwhile TV newsman Ted Baxter's alter ego Ted Knight dusts off the singing jacket and croons a few tunes for you today at Found Sound, while Behind The Blue Door delivers on its promise of cartoon kissing action!!!

There! That's five or six minutes of your day taken care of.

Tags: found sound

I ran out of "D" words. The Jonathan Ross BBC thing on Steve Ditko will be screened in Toronto on June 18th at the library where we went to the pulp show last weekend. June 18th is a Wednesday so I might have to leave work early or something. Anyway, it's part of the launch party for the new book THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO, which is hand-lettered with teeny tiny printing, punctuated with harshly-rendered images of half-black, half-white people suffering the tortures of a non-Objectivist lifestyle. No, just kidding, it's a real book. Link: http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/newBK.html

Just a short note to tell you about three panels I'm involved with at Anime North - not this weekend, but next weekend!

ANIME HELL - Saturday 8-10pm International B&C - returns to Anime North with one hundred and twenty minutes of questionable content, murky audio, and confusing ambiences! Trailers, short films, educational movies, forgotten anime clips, amateur films, odd commercials, and things that will make you say "what the hell was THAT?" all combine into a kalidescope of crazy that pummels your cerebral cortex into submission. Special surprise guest hosts!

SENSATIONAL SUPER ROBOTS OF THE SWINGING SEVENTIES: 1-3pm Sunday International B - Return with us to the grooviest decade of all as a parade of brightly colored giant super robots rampage through the popular culture of two hemispheres! Join Mazinger Z, Grandizer, Voltes V, Combattler V, Daitarn 3, Zambot 3, Steel Jeeg, Danguard Ace, Getta Robo, and all your other favorite super robots as they battle aliens from space and monsters from the depths of the Earth, burning all the while with the fires of justice! An educational presentation.

TOTALLY LAME ANIME: 6-9pm Friday International 'B' - Professional translator and all-around 'good guy' Neil Nadelman takes us on a mind-altering journey down a dimly-lit tunnel filled to the gunwales with some of the worst, least entertaining, poorly-animated, questionably-concieved animation ever produced. Who made this stuff? Were they brain-damaged, or just visually impaired? Learn the shocking facts about Totally Lame Anime... before it's too late!

See you there!

It's archived here. Purportedly InsaneJournal is a lot ballsier about not kowtowing to anonymous, unproved complaints involving bogus threats of legal action.

Those who wish to witness that which shall not be named are also encouraged to visit this site.

Mister Kitty got an email from "Mister Satan" himself, who revealed that MySpace posts he'd made mentioning That Which Shall Not Be Named were deleted without warning.

This strikes me as petty, harrassing, chilling-effect muzzling of free speech, and something should be done about it, darn it.

I suggest taking a trip BEHIND THE BLUE DOOR!

New post about whatever happened to a remake of an old anime show, at Let's Anime!

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/

Also, fans of the parody dubbing scene of the '90s will be intrigued as Sherbert Productions returns to set the record straight in the comments of my Livejournal from last January!

http://davemerrill.livejournal.com/475053.html

And what have we been up to this weekend? Saturday was the pulp show down at the Toronto Public Library, so we trotted on over there and checked it out. I got some old pulps for cheap, had my sense of outrage given a good workout at some of the prices - Item: Set of 8, mass market paperbacks circa 1981, the Family D'Lambert series by Stephen Goldin based on manuscripts or notes or grocery lists of E.E. "Doc" Smith - price, $100. That's right, a hundred smackers for fake "Doc" Smith paperbacks from the 80s, seen in the Goodwill for fifty cents each. Most of the dealers were cranky, no-change-havin' motherscratchers who were more than willing to try and sell me Ace doubles for seventeen bucks. Not today, pal. The pulps I did get weren't in great shape, but they have nutty illustrations, which is all I'm buying them for. I also got a late 70s kook paperback entitled BEYOND STAR WARS, a ersatz Velikovsky trying to shoehorn myths and legends into scientific fact, bookended with references to The Force in order to tie it into the popular film. Essential for your fake Star Wars collection AND fills in those holes in your UFO kook-book shelf! Later that evening we saw SPEED RACER, which I enjoyed very much, probably more than I should have. The Scotiabank was just about empty; their debit/credit card machines weren't working so every transaction was CASH ONLY. It's like going back to the stone age! Bad for them but I like seeing movies in non-crowded theaters.

Today we went drapes shopping, saw some awesome fabric printed with 40s teen characters emoting badly translated English (hint: to denote "love", don't use the heart that has a knife through it), got some Italian for an early dinner, and now it's laundry time. Kind of rainy out there today.

Next week I have to drop some discs off at City TV, got to get a haircut, buy some cel paint, get ready for Anime North - it's coming down fast!

Just got back from the SPEED RACER:
















it's awesome.

And the LJ is... still up!

Let's sum up: a week ago I made a post about a STUPID COMICS update and I mentioned the 80s B&W comic THE QUADRO GANG. On Thursday I got the email discussed here: http://davemerrill.livejournal.com/497586.html

You'll notice that nowhere does it indicate what copyright has been infringed. The procedure for filing a counterclaim involves making MY personal address, telephone number, and other personal information available to the anonymous complaintant.

So basically the gist of it is, that anybody, anywhere, at any time, can accuse you of copyright infringement on your LJ, and LJ will back them up, and any recourse on your end involves giving some unknown person your personal information. Now I understand LJ needs to take this sort of thing seriously, but there ought to be some kind of mediation or appeal that doesn't involve me giving personal data to somebody whom I already know bears me a grudge and is kind of obsessive.

I have until midnight tonight, and I haven't decided whether to delete the entry, or say to hell with it and file a counterclaim, or just do nothing and see if LJ will really delete my entire journal - which is backed up offline, by the way - on the say-so of the author of THE QUADRO GANG. Or at least I'm assuming it's the author of THE QUADRO GANG, who knows? Since the author of THE QUADRO GANG has a history of hurling legal threats at anyone who dares to mention the name of her comic online, it's a fair assumption, I suppose. It's discussed here: http://www.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=4443 - one assumes TCJ won't fold as quick as LJ...

While I understand why somebody might want their past to remain buried, at the same time I really dislike being threatened with legal action for mentioning the name of a professionally published and mass-distributed publication. I don't like being accused of copyright infringement when I've done no such thing. I also don't like the threat of lawsuits being used to muzzle what's clearly free speech. If the author of THE QUADRO GANG had bothered to email me instead of hurling vague legal threats, I would have probably removed all mention of THE QUADRO GANG. Instead, as a result of their actions, a lot more people are talking about THE QUADRO GANG than ever would have before.

So if you wake up tomorrow and this LiveJournal ain't here, you'll know what the deal is.

The big news is that this LiveJournal has been totally deleted and it's gone forever, and that's how you're reading this! Oh wait.

No, haven't heard nuthin' from nobody. Nobody's emailed me to clarify how I've violated their copyrights, LJ has not let me know their feelings on accusing people of breaking the law by posting names of comic books, nothing. Though anecdotal evidence is really indicating that mentioning The Quadro Gang is what sparked this whole kerfluffle, apparently mentioning it anywhere online garners baseless legal threats.

So what this all means is we can still make fun of "Twist" comics.

Speaking of making fun of comics, there's a new STUPID COMICS up right here!



But come, Doctor! We are men of science! Surely you don't believe in all this superstitious nonsen---AAAAUUUGGGHHHH!!!!