In the notes of the previous blog, I mentioned that we were getting into the second “volume” of character soundtracks; newer playlist for mostly newer characters that haven’t had as much fine-tuning as the original batch. Having said that, though, there’s a degree of overlap between these two “groups,” due to how long it takes some characters to finally make it onto the page. The Hero Justice Whatever Club Boys, for example, are still having their playlists fine-tuned quite a bit,...
2020-03-20 07:54:31 +0000 UTC
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You gotta understand: the Carolina Theatre has two movie screen. There's the big screen, the nice big fancy theater that feels like one of those giant, old-fashioned movie houses... and the OTHER screen, which might as well be in a closet. The Disney double feature I saw Friday night was on The Big Screen, TMNT II wasn't. One was much, much, much more comfortable and relaxing than the other.
Also, I must confess that this is now officially the ONLY Ninja Turtle movie I...
2020-03-20 07:33:35 +0000 UTC
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Back before everything totally blew apart and fell off the rails and whatever, the last Character soundtrack I’d posted was for Ichabod’s nitpicking boss Sophia, so it’s only natural that we should jump back in with her gun-totting, chain smoking, bespectacled assistant Claire. Like with her boss, this one was simultaneously a bit challenging and really freeing. On the one hand, we don’t actually see Claire that often, and when we do she’s all business, so there’s not a lot of pre...
2020-02-12 00:58:35 +0000 UTC
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IT'S A MIRACLE! I actually AM still finding time to produce some new content in the middle of all the site rebuilding! THE BLOOD SACRIFICES WORKED!
Anyway, some explanation is probably in order here. The previous few cons, I'd sort of slacked off at taking decent comic background pictures, so I went ALL OUT with the photo documentation this weekend. Every room I was in, every chair I sat down in, ever hall I stopped for a second in the corner of, every shady back...
2020-02-12 00:34:24 +0000 UTC
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Well, it’s time for another “reflections on the past year/thoughts on the new one” blog post! Actually, it’s well past time, but I’ve kind of been super busy lately with website and computer stuff. Which, ironically, is the one of the main things this blog needs to talk about. Also, I maaaay have thrown out the first draft of this blog for being too mopey and depressing. That’s a promising note to start off with, isn’t it? So let’s dive right in!
Obviously, the big...
2020-01-24 10:48:29 +0000 UTC
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Okay, last time I threw a bone to my holiday-hating friends and unleashed my bile and wrath over Christmas songs I DON’T like, so now the other shoe drops. As I said more than once in that blog, I actually LOVE Christmas stuff, music included. I fire up my massive holiday playlists as soon as Thanksgiving hits, and it’s literally the only thing I listen to for the next month. That’s not something inflicted on me by mass media or mainstream broadcast outlets or the overhead speakers of m...
2019-12-21 19:42:25 +0000 UTC
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...not that I really should have been surprised at myself for not spending money on food, I never do that anymore. I legit stuffed a cooler full of non-perishable food when I went Christmas shopping yesterday, and I'll do it again when I go BACK out tomorrow. No, the real surprising part of this was that I pulled the whole "eating camping food" trick WHILE STILL WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF MY HOUSE. I easily could have just gone home and had some real food, and I probably wou...
2019-12-17 23:07:30 +0000 UTC
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(Okay, so the PLAN was to have some free bonus blogs coming out for Christmas, mixed in with all the regularly scheduled stuff, namely wrapping up the previous Conventional Wisdom set, launching the next anime series, and some new Far Out There stuff. But the plan didn't include SmackJeeves burning down and me having to suddenly set up a whole new everything right in the middle of the busiest month of the year, and now I feel bad about giving away something for free without more pai...
2019-12-06 23:48:14 +0000 UTC
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People who don't spend a lot of time at conventions probably think I obsess too much over the state of the bathrooms, but they don't understand. They CAN'T understand. Until you've walked into a high-traffic bathroom at midnight on Saturday, when the crowds are at their drunkest and the hotel staff as officially stopped caring, when half the toilets are broken and all the paper towels are spilling out of the trash cans, when somebody's puking next to you and there's a strangely da...
2019-11-24 00:52:20 +0000 UTC
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Okay, so I have a list of all the Far Out There soundtracks with rough notes for the blog posts, and I’ve been sticking to the order of that list since I started posting these. I went and jumped WAY ahead for this one, though, because it’s character was actually appearing in the comics and I wanted to synch things up since I didn’t know when I’d get the chance again… and now I’m not actually getting the blog posted until after that appearance has passed. This is why there will nev...
2019-11-15 05:00:27 +0000 UTC
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Obviously, it's helps that I'm not "at" the convention in question, I'm just driving back and forth to Durham then sleeping at home. I WISH I could somehow get pages fully edited and posted while at the convention center.
Anyway, as befitting a tiny, one-day convention, there's not a lot of pages in the queue for this one. Editing them up shouldn't interfere noticeably with the new NC Comicon pages coming out on SmackJeeves. It almost makes you wonder why I couldn't ju...
2019-11-09 12:37:30 +0000 UTC
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Not gonna lie, though, this though continues to fester in my brain. It's pretty rare to come across a wrestling-related cosplay idea where I'm actually not quite overweight ENOUGH rather than the alternative That said, I do still have another wrestler cosplay that actually MIGHT see the light of day sooner rather than later...
Also, this is another instance where I still have no idea if anybody actually recorded out Awesomely Bad shenanigans. Well, more like I have no ...
2019-10-29 22:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Well, it’s October, the spoooooooookiest month of the year if you happen to live in a region that celebrates Halloween. In that spirit (oooooh, you see what I did there? GHOSTS!) let’s do a character soundtrack about Far Out There’s creeeeeepiet character who probably isn’t that bad at all: VENGEANCE! With a buildup like that, obviously we need some spooky music for Vengeance’s soundtrack, but what kind? Dramatic, gothic pipe organ music? Hellish death metal? Apocalyptic opera...
2019-10-12 22:03:53 +0000 UTC
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I literally had a whole page about the inevitability of Tominic's death all written out in my head, I was just waiting for it to finally happen before I actually started drawing. Good thing I waited, too. These comics took long enough to get done WITHOUT me spending time and energy on a comic I would never actually get to use. That's the danger of trying to get ahead on these types of things.
But yeah, Giant Gorg is FINALLY wrapped up! My deepest heartfelt apolog...
2019-10-10 02:13:30 +0000 UTC
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Last time we did one of these, it was for Mariska, and I was joking about how now we were digging into the really obscure and rarely seen characters. But in the time since I posted that soundtrack and this one, Mariska finally completed her YEARS LONG trip and actually showed up in the same room as Ichabod, so she just had a MAJOR upgrade in relevance. This time, though, THIS time we’re dealing with a true Side Character, a real “Oh yeah, that person exists” person: Dr. Delia Jarre. You...
2019-09-22 23:40:53 +0000 UTC
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If life operated under proper comedic timing more reliably, then the second I put the phone away and actually TRIED to play, I would have lost horribly. But no, even after my right hand re-entered the fray, I still won by a comfortable margin. That's not me bragging about being good again, by the way, just a case of playing against someone with even less Windj...
2019-09-22 21:32:54 +0000 UTC
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...and that's basically how Giant Gorg goes.
I'd HOPED to finally wrap this series up and be started on Sabagebu comics by now, buuuut I kinda sorta bit off more than I could chew on other projects again. We ARE almost done, though! Big finish coming soon, and a whole new series coming after that!
First - 2019-09-21 23:36:58 +0000 UTC
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Don't worry, past me. I'll only use that material for a Patreon comic, no barely anyone will ever see it.
But seriously, though, I'm so used to having a pad on-hand and jotting down every little thing that happens that it feels VERY weird to be in Con Mode and NOT have it right there. Like, losing my notepad is a thing that's happened, and things that happen get written down in the notepad. That's just WHAT HAPPENS, DANG IT! It's like when the internet goes down,...
2019-09-08 05:59:18 +0000 UTC
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Man, the joke for this one kind of got out of my control. The gag was SUPPOSED to be how lazy and lethargic and old I am compared to the kids these days, but now all I can focus on is the cameo kids in the back. Such scene stealers.
But seriously, who actually has the energy to RUN places anymore?
...also, I just now realized this explains SO MUCH about how late the comics always are.
2019-08-30 22:15:10 +0000 UTC
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Okay, now we’re starting to get into the truly obscure secondary characters. You know Mariska, Ichabod’s nitpicking friend? The one with the goggles? She’s got a playlist too! Actually, hers is one of my favorite out of all the Far Out There playlists purely from a personal listening standpoint. It’s also one that I’m gonna have a harder time describing than usual, since most of these soundtracks are built around a connection between the given character and a specific musical genre,...
2019-08-26 13:26:41 +0000 UTC
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Look, I just really love the whole Space Battleship Yamato-style of aliens where it's just a different skin color and some really light hair. It explains a lot of Far Out There characters, doesn't it? Admittedly, the realities of this era of animation mean I COULD be a bit off here. Depending of the lighting, some scenes make it look more like GREY skin, with the blue/green hair making it look more blue-ish than it would otherwise. But I'm not winning anime bingo other...
2019-08-19 03:46:17 +0000 UTC
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I’m absolutely thinking too hard about this one. Mid-comic writing, I just had this sudden, irresistible urge to draw Yoink riding an atomic bomb, Major Kong style. No context, no joke for it to be the punchline too, just Yoink straddling a weapon of mass destruction from a cold war dark comedy. The weird thing, well, weirdER thing, is that I actually found myself really TRYING to find a deeper meaning, like a psychiatrist trying to interpret a crazy child’s therapy doo...
2019-08-13 03:02:44 +0000 UTC
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You know what? My constant, crippling schedule slip does occasionally have a silver lining. If I'd wrapped up the Giant Gorg comics weeks ago, like all logic says SHOULD have happened, this wouldn't have been one of them. Since I bought the DVDs at Animazement, Giant Gorg has been on rotation at Anime Night, and re-watching it with other people in the room provoked some comparisons to Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and here we are!
(Incidentally, I had to give this one ful...
2019-07-28 14:47:14 +0000 UTC
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Quite a while back I did a blog about how I got into anime in the first place, and ever since then I’ve had the idea to do a sort of sequel dedicated to the stuff that specifically influenced Far Out There. I mean, anyone with eyes can see that Far Out There has a heavy Japanese influence on its art, so there’s obviously something to talk about there. Better yet, since it’s about anime, I can count this as a blog post for Conventional Wisdom readers too, so they won’t feel so neglecte...
2019-07-23 07:55:32 +0000 UTC
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Okay, of all the characters in Far Out There, Skye’s character soundtrack should be the most obvious, right? She’s a hippy chick who travels around with a space-van full of Jesus Freaks. Heck, we’ve actually SEEN her playing guitar on numerous occasions. Obviously she listens to psychedelic jam band rock, right? Well… yes, of course she does. It’s physically not possible for me to have chosen anything else. HOWEVER, we now find ourselves faced with a problem that’s basically the o...
2019-07-10 16:21:10 +0000 UTC
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*gasp* There's another anime comic? But, but, it hasn't been two whole months since the last one! Weekly Anime Comics can't come out within actual WEEKS of each other! That's not how this works! It'll bring ANARCHY! CHAOS! THE END IS NIGH!
No, but seriously, the gist of this page was written AGES ago, pretty much right after I bough the DVDs, but I didn't want to waste a chance to tie the convention comics into the Patreon stuff. AAAaaand then t...
2019-06-24 22:11:13 +0000 UTC
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As a result, Jenna’s playlist is another one that’s pretty heavy on obvious, familiar choices. Not only is the afore mentioned “Take On Me” present, but so are a slew of other “play this song to immediately indicate that your movie is taking place in the 80s” standbys. “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club, “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes, “Kids In America” by Kim Wilde, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears for Fears, “Always” by Erasure...
2019-06-23 02:30:24 +0000 UTC
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Hey, so remember how I said that that last page with all the mechas in the bar was something I’d been saving to be the big finale but needed to go ahead and use the idea early? Well, I kind of sort of lied a bit about how “final” that finale would have been. I was also sitting on this little bit of silliness to use at the VERY end as the denouement for this whole series… but now I need to kick IT out early too. Don’t worry, it’s not that I’m OUT of Giant Gorg ideas, there’s at...
2019-06-18 22:16:44 +0000 UTC
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Imagine all the gross, squicky, unsanitary, not-suitable-for-an-all-ages-comic reasons a person could have to suddenly leave a convention expressly to buy a bag full of emergency cleaning supplies. Sort through all the nasty potential details and compile a list of all the absolute worst options. Whatever you're thinking, it's undoubtedly WAY worse than what actually happened, but it makes me feel better knowing that somebody out there is imagining something even yuckier than reali...
2019-05-30 07:13:03 +0000 UTC
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Well, last time we had Stilez’s playlist, so it’d be downright weird if I DIDN’T follow it up with Tax. Obvious, anything Tax listens to is gonna have to be happy and boisterous and catchy and straightforward and… um… how do I put this… Annoying. Yeah, I tried to find a delicate way to say this, but Tax’s playlist just might be the most obnoxious collections of songs in this entire series. The bulk of this soundtrack is comprised of bubblegum rock, both the or...
2019-05-21 03:05:17 +0000 UTC
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