"Have a face full of science, you big lummox!"

That unfamiliar tingling and numbness in the arm suggests it may be time to give the drawing, videogaming and computering a complete rest for a week or two, the upshots being I shall likely spend that time watching subtitled films and television shows, not spamming up followers' inboxes with daily updates of a drawing of someone's elbow near a desk or whatever, and missing this week's Themed Art Blog, which I would usually be bummed about except the subject is 2000ad blandstrosity Shakara, which is a strip that has alienated me from day one despite the herculean art from the one of a kind Henry Flint. It's a truism of the comics form that a good story cannot be undone by bad art (though Alan Moore's collaborations with Rob Liefeld tested this part of the theory to destruction) while a bad story cannot be saved by good art, and lord knows there's plenty of examples of this: Camelot 3000, Batman: Hush, Superman: For Tomorrow, so many mangas of the OEL and Asian stripe that I cannot recall them all - and I would put Shakara on that list.
I don't blame writer Robbie Morrison for putting food on his plate, he seems like a nice guy, but Armored gideon did exactly what Shakara did twenty years ago in the pages of 2000ad and even that strip realised before the first story was over that the premise needed to go somewhere else other than "impressive black and white artwork with spot colours like red about a big indestructible monosyllabic robot - who can actually speak full sentences when the mood takes him - moves towards a showdown with his evil twin but in the meantime clatters big demons." Don't get me wrong, I liked Armored Gideon, especially the artwork by Simon Where He Now? Jacob, but that strip went places, the last memory I have of it being the main character hunting down and killing escapees from the pages of 1970s 2000ad strips like Invasion, Shako and Angel by turning the strip he was appearing into the 1970s equivalent with art to match (at least a full decade before this was so commonplace it became the basis of Deadpool stories), while my most recent memory of Shakara is of him shooting space dinosaurs again and then asking some grotesque parody of the female form to hold him close so he can cry about his imminent death, which I couldn't care less about even though it meant an end to the strip.
I don't even think I dislike it, I just find it impossible to relate to or care about and would find equal - probably more - enjoyment if 2000ad employed Henry Flint to illustrate Manowar albums for nine years and then printed that instead, so apologies to my fellow Themed Art Bloggers that I shan't be joining them this week, though I do hope you check the blog out regardless, and also Matt Timson's blog where he has a cheeky stab at it even though he should be working on paying jobs for US comics like the big talented sellout he is.

I shall return when I return, but wish you the best of health in the interim and a jolly Easter should you be so inclined to celebrate it, which I hope you do as Jesus is a nice guy once you get to know him and learn to pay no mind to the assholes he hangs about with these days.

Watching:

I fear a political career will shine a negative light on my drug dealing

And so another Wednesday rolls around and the creative freight train slows to a crawl again. It'll pick up tomorrow, no doubt, and in the meantime, here's someone doing a typical Cookstown parking maneuver out the front of a shop not 30 yards from my flat:


I HAVE BEEN WATCHING:

Tell that bastard I'm not here - I'm gonna go to the sink and take a shower

Hello again, I do hope your Wednesday went well. I personally had a very sedate day today caused by crippling tightness in the fingers of my hand. My GP has diagnosed RSI so I'm looking forward to explaining that one "honest, it's excessive drawing what done it." A bit depressing, all the same, that I don't think I get that much done yet I'm still getting a gammy wrist out of it. I reckon it's got to do with my wonky blood like what Miley Cyrus has - giving up the booze probably did crazy things to my blood sugar.
Not that I'm counting the days until Lent ends so I can eat a small mountain of chocolate and then go on a bender that I have already arranged with mates or anything.
I note in the news that the government is both cutting spending on health while earmarking 75 grand to send text messages to recovering alcoholics to keep them from falling off the wagon, because when you seek the solace of oblivion that comes with alcohol, what will snap you out of it is receiving an anonymous message reminding you how alone you are that only computers that probably live in the future care to think of you enough to remind you that what you are doing is harming yourself and incidentally, doesn't this remind you how much better off dead you are?
Counting the days.

Watching:

if you want to pollute any more water, you'll find plenty where you're going -- UP THE RIVER!!

Drawing grossly misshapen monsters is such great fun - I get to pretend I'm doing dodgy anatomy on purpose.

It's when I'm trying to emulate the slightly brilliant Jesus Redondo's style that things get a bit more tricky...

Watching:

There's a difference between telling us about a guy who likes nipple play and a guy who makes hats out of babies

Yaaaaay. Another page in t'bag. I'm not fast or that good, but I am persistent.
I also seem to finally be coming around to the idea of solid blacks a mere 81 pages into the GN. Persistent, and I get there eventually - two whole virtues in my favor! Now all I have to do is master dressing myself and be less of a right-wing nutter who tells the world he likes games based upon nothing more than a central premise of killing communists.
To counter that unfortunately 100 percent accurate impression I offer my unashamed love of the Jeff level, where you're forced to take a break from mass murder, globe-trotting and graverobbing exploits to carry the poor, gutshot, utterly doomed cameraman companion of your slightly plain ex-girlfriend during the course of Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves through one of the stages of the game while your current girlfriend shrieks at you to ditch him and have it on your toes instead, and she's entirely right to point this out as the sensible option but for the fact that the role you play is that of a man who is at heart a decent human being and as you're playing his role, you're not to make the easy decision but the right one and to see it through come hell or high water. Helping Jeff slows you down, you're not rewarded for it, and you fail to save him in the end, but it's a great touch in an already great game that helps distance it from the usual genocide-simulators by forcing you to commit an act of decency because you should rather than because the character you're aiding is important to the story. There's an unsurprising level of hatred for the scene among gamers, but as a Naughty Dog fan since Jak and Daxter, it's a not entirely surprising sequence given that trilogy's payoff to the question of what happened to Jak's parents (NO SPOILERS) being an oddly "WAT?" moment that blurs the line between pathos and twisting the knife.

Watching: