I'm Moving

Over here

http://abysscomics.wordpress.com/

Seeya there!

The Abyss

What is the Abyss? I'm taking my comics off the internet and into a print magazine. Why? Because (whisper it so the internet doesn't hear) reading comics on the internet takes 90% of the enjoyment of reading comics and fucks it down the toilet.

I recently have had the pleasure of reading old issues of Zap Comics, Blimp and Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories. These were comics from the 60's and 70's featuring R. Crumb and the like. They are fantastic. And, if you'll pardon a brief moment of wankdom, they are exactly what comics should be. You should be able to roll comics up and shove them in your bag, you should be able to read them on the bus, read them in your back yard or on the toilet. Yes, you can do that with a laptop and wifi (except roll it up and shove it your bag, I assume) but I've come to realise that this isn't the point.

Don't get me wrong, I love the internet. I do, it's just not the best place for comics. Scott Kurtz will tell you different (because he wants you to buy his book on webcomics). Then again, Scott Kurtz, while undoubtedly successful, has one of the blandest comics on the internet. Were he to arrive on this blog the first thing he would say to refute this is that he gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day, what do I get? Not as much as that, sure.

But does the amount of hits you get on the internet matter? In Net Land, yes. In reality, no. The fact that he gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day is inconsequential. All it really shows is that just because a fly swarm buzzes around a pile of dogshit doesn't mean it's a steak dinner.

And this is my problem. The internet, for comics, is a safety net. You're in a creative half life where (bar the odd troll) most people will say that you're the fucking best ever just so they can get a link. Contrary to what most people think the internet isn't full of hate filled trolls, mostly it's full of link hungry cuddlefish just out to either 1) Lick arse to spam their own blog or 2) uh Lick arse to spam their own blog. And if that's what it takes to be a web success, then fuck it, you can keep it.

I can't end up like 98% of webcartoonists begging for donations or talking to myself on my forum, because if that ever happens, I've instructed my wife to shoot me.

I wrote to my favourite cartoonist a few months ago and he wrote back with a very concise answer.

"If you're any good, do it for real".

Putting comics on the internet, no matter how much we want it to be, isn't "for real". So fuck it, I'm going to put it out there. See what happens.

I'm still going to be online, it's just that 95% of my comics won't be. They'll be in your local comic book shop, music shop, pub, club, head shop and whatever store I think should/will stock it. It'll be free.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.

Looseville

No comics for a while. A rather big project that myself and the Otter Man have been working on has moved on a stage further. Keep coming to Looseville though, there'll be comics and sketches there real soon. Plus, I'll be throwing some shit up here too.

Lucky you, huh?

Can I have another Internet please? This one is Boring.

The Irish Blogosphere just got a little bit more boring today as everyone who's anyone is again banging on about the fucking recession. Economic treason this, robbing cunts that. Hasn't this all been said a million times before by a million other people with the exact same results i.e. a lot of steam off the Comment Section Brown-Nose Monkey Brigade but fuck all in the real world.

This recession is everywhere. It's on the radio, it's on the TV, it's on the newspapers and now it's on every fucking blog in the country worth reading. God damn. I go online to escape from that shit not read the same thing that's in the papers except with 'cunt' thrown it. Yawn.

And what's all this talk doing?

Fuck. All.

Unless people actually go out and do something about these treasonous cunts, these robbing cunts, then all it is is talk. Boring, circular, do nothing talk that's the equivalent of throwing knobs of your own shit at an oncoming train.

And do you know what's weird? Blogs that stemmed directly from the recession i.e. The Unemployed, manage to avoid all this bombastic, rise-up-people-rise-up shit to the point where it's one of the few things left on the Irish blogosphere these days that isn't gleefully munching on it's own arsehole, that and the ever entertaining Arse End of Ireland.

There's a good few more but I won't bother my arse listing 'em. You know who they aren't at any rate.

Clearasil - May Cause Confidence

Huh? May Cause Confidence? The kind of confidence that rapists have?

Now show me your pussy.

Try this lads. Please. Walk up to a complete stranger in the cinema, ask them an unusual question to put them off their guard, score with her, leer at her like it's a bad porno and .... then? Well, in the ad, the girl looks almost charmed. Maybe they go to the cinema together. Maybe they fall in love and get married. Maybe this ad is flashback from when they retell this story to their grandchildren.

Or in real life, the girl would've started screaming until the cops arrived to cart your ass off to the fucking Gard Pound.

Bullshit ad logic.

Watching Miami Ink on DMAX

Is making me want to have a tattoo. Don't tell my wife. Wife, if you're reading this, don't... don't tell... yourself. If you let me have a tattoo, I'll let you have a scooter. Deal?

Snuff's Enough

First of all, as a human being, I feel sadness that another human being i.e. the real life human being, Jade Goody has terminal cancer. Full stop.

As for Jade Goody, media construct I feel nothing but revulsion. Why? Because we, as a society, have finally reached rock, rock bottom.

I was flicking through the channels the other night and I came across this "Jade" show on Living TV. I had heard of it, of course, but up until then I had never seen it. Jade looked terrible. Balding and sick, of course, but still talking to camera about her blood transfusion and how her bones aching made it hard to get up in the morning. Then, ad break. Car commercials, food commercials, insurance commercials. Sexy women slinked across the screen trying to sell shit you'd never want or need. Then I turned it off. I couldn't watch anymore, I couldn't.

Because that's when the veneer of this sham fell right off.

This show, this media spectacle, isn't about helping to save lives, it's chronicling, for posterity, the death of a young woman for our perverse enjoyment. Don't for a minute believe anything else. This is no different from having a woman in a bikini walk next to a car accident with a sign advertising beer to the passing rubberneckers.

The scum in the tabloid press love it. "Brave Jade" they say, "Poor Jade". In January of two years ago they were saying "RACIST JADE IS A NASTY FAKER". In the copy of that article (the Sunday Mirror) said

"Goody didn't only put on a display of ignorant bigotry. In that horrific verbal assault on Shilpa, she revealed herself to be a disgusting, domineering bitch too."

This year they have her on the front page, all soft focus. Brave Jade, Poor Jade, because that sells papers for the tabloids this week. If they thought gloating about her impending death would sell papers then they'd run that and don't think they wouldn't. Remember those words. Disgusting. Bitch.

Living wouldn't be running the show if hordes of people weren't watching it. The ad revenue certainly helps the 'grief' they must be feeling. If the Mirror, Sun, Daily Mail and Star knew it wouldn't sell papers buy the fucking skip full then this story would be page 5, half page boohoo column, at best. Look at Terry Pratchett. Suffering from Alztheimers, an equally horrible disease, but where's his front page? Where are his hourly updates on Sky News? It's because he didn't entertain Michelle from Essex by getting his kebab out on national TV and abuse an Indian woman and that's that.

Jade the media construct is a commodity that those in the media will squeeze every last cent out of before she inevitably, tragically dies. We allow them to by our interest. We rubberneck and disguise it as 'concern' but rubbernecking it certainly is.

Will more women get smears because of this? Probably. They almost certainly have. How about in 6 months? In 3 years? In Jade's name? Probably not. But it'll do for time being. That'll be our excuse as we look on, as we voyeur. It's helping people, right?

With the money she's made from this I hope her kids have some bit of her fortune left to keep them going. If there's any left. Her new husband (jailbird Jack Tweedy) has been put in charge of it until they're old enough.

We'll see how that goes.

I'm sure we'll hear about it if it doesn't go well.

We'll buy the papers and watch the documentary.

Groovy

I've been listening to this all day.

Leeeehet the Sun Shahne...

At the risk of upsetting Laura Izibors many internet blog buddies (there's literally 500000 in Dublin alone), I'll keep this brief, the following isn't really about the lovely Ms. Izibor, it's about Tony Fenton.

Dear Tony/ The Tonester,

"Let the Sun Shine", while a perfectly nice song, has already been played into the fucking ground on the Hibernian/Aviva ads for nearly 10 months now. I understand that "Tony in the Truck going to Limerick" can't go on another minute without knowing "what the song off the ad is", but this doesn't mean you have to play to death a song that was already played to death last year.

Thank You,

Love the show.

Alan Moloney.

PS: What's the song off the Cadburys eyebrow ad? If you could play it 5000-6000 times before next Tuesday that would be really great.

Similarities

Have a look at this ad, from Haribo.



Now, have a look at this hugely popular Will Ferrel sketch.



Tsk tsk Haribo.