Get Yer Tweets Here

I haven't done anything nerdy to shake up the site lately, so I decided to add the latest tweets from my webcomic twitter feed to the front page. I used the very nice python-twitter library, which made accessing the Twitter API a breeze for me in my favorite scripting language.

I'm not a huge Twitter user, but I do post comic updates and short news bits, as well as any cool comic-related links I come across. If you want to see a pretty comprehensive list of other webcomic authors to follow - some of whom post spectacularly funny tweets - check out The Webcomic List's Authors on Twitter directory.

In a Literary Mood

I realized that I subconsciously based the titles for my last couple of comics from literature; last week's from a David Eggers novel, and this week's from a story by the insufferably racist Lovecraft (whose collection of stories I'm still trying to slog through). Could I be any more pretentious?

Blame Rock and Roll

Hey everybody - Sorry, but the new comic will be out a little late. I just joined a new band (3 girls and me, rrriot rock!), and spent the weekend rocking my face off, when I wasn't watching football (go Broncos!). Not that that is a good excuse, but I didn't have time to finish this week's comic. Please check back in a day or so, and I promise it will be out there!

Blame Iceland

We just returned from our trip to Iceland - a gorgeous and magical country by the way - so I'm afraid this week's comic will be delayed. I'll post pictures soon.

What I'm Reading: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales

I was browsing the local Barnes and Noble recently, when a compellingly evil cover illustration caught my eye - it turned out to be for an anthology of H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories. I had read and heard many references to Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos, and I was vaguely aware of his historical importance to the horror genre, but I hadn't yet read any of his fiction. On a whim, I decided to buy it and educate myself. I was soon to find that the true horror of Lovecraft isn't necessarily his stories, but rather his appalling racism.

Now, I realize that racial perceptions were different in the early 20th century. I realize that we should be lenient about non-P.C. language in well-intentioned works by the likes of Twain, Faulkner, and Dickens. But Lovecraft's racism exists deep in the fabric of his horror; stories detailing the abhorrence of degenerative miscegenation; a passage blaming "negro blood" for the horrifying countenance of characters; and perhaps most amusing (in a kind of nauseating way), a main character's cat inexplicably named N*** Man. What what what?

If one can ignore his rampant racism, one can see how his writing had such an influence on horror. While his writing can seem antiquarian and overly turgid, Lovecraft does tap into some creepy, nightmarish themes, which were probably original at the time. Raising partially sentient bodies from the dead; secrets of a noble bloodline steeped in cannibalism; and of course the monstrous, mythological horror of Cthulhu and its stable of enormous and ancient creatures - these are ideas which I have to admire for their audacity and inevitable literary influence.

But can one separate an author's distasteful and immoral beliefs from his art? I can listen to Richard Wagner while mostly ignoring his antisemitism, but that is probably because his abhorrent beliefs aren't on display in the music or libretto. It is much harder to ignore racism that loudly proclaims itself on almost every written page in a work of fiction.

Alien Hands?

The affliction in today's strip is apparently for real. How freaky is that? I found out about Alien Hand Syndrome from an Internet list of the 10 most disgusting diseases. Gross.

Mary Worth Weirdness

I am always amazed at the amount of work people put into honoring / satirizing (the line can be very thin) their favorite serial comics, such as Apartment 3-G, Gil Thorpe, For Better or For Worse, and Mary Worth. This is great because these venerable comics have survived for decades, despite the fickle and unforgiving newspaper comics business, which has trended toward favoring gag-a-day strips (which I love too) to the detriment of serial dramas. These serial strips, which tend to be unintentionally hilarious and over-the-top outrageous, are definitely kept alive by their fans.

A case in point is a bizarre website installment I stumbled across while trying to search for a good Mary Worth RSS feed (still looking, by the way). I watched, in a state of unexplainable discomfort, these oddly hypnotizing movies: 3D Lego-styled characters acting out the geriatric, judgmental adventures of Charterstone's most meddlesome biddy. They speak in appropriately robotic tones and periodically pause to gesticulate and convulse with dead expressions on their smooth faces. What insane, dedicated fan spends the time to create this brilliant mess? I will certainly be following this site, which seems to contain a lot of other comic strip snarkiness and sublty funny strip modifications, in the future.