Cartoons (comics in newspapers and "graphic novels")

My headphones are dead. They've been a bit funny for a while now, but today they are officially dead.
I have to turn my head almost sideways to hear out of both ears equally, and even that doesn't always work right.
So I'm going to have to get some new ones. But I don't have any cash.
So I need a job. I finally broke down and have decided food service wouldn't be so bad after all (well, compared to doing nothing at all, anyway). I got an application at Dairy Queen because:
1. It's ice cream, so I think I'd like it better than, say, McDonald's.
2. I was feeling kind of sympathetic because there were only two people working and they had a lot of customers.

In other news, Neil Cicierega is still hilarious...
He's the guy who is responsible for the The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny song, as well as the Potter Puppet Pals Flash cartoons. I've just discovered he has a new series of live-action video things wherein he and two other guys... do stupid stuff. It's pretty funny.


So now I'm going to talk about cartoons!
I'm not going to make any effort to explain these, so I suggest you look them up on Wikipedia. I'm just going to tell why I enjoy them.
Cartoons I like:

Dilbert
"Wait a minute. You're not allowed to like that cartoon. It's sophisticated humor. It's funny because it's true, and you wouldn't know because you've never been in a large office environment."
Well, pfffssht. Don't you be telling me what kind of cartoon I can enjoy. I think it's hilarious.
I've been getting a Dilbert cartoon in my email inbox (it's something you can sign up to get for free) for nearly two years... I still love it. It's just a really weird sense of humor; I don't think I've seen it anywhere else. I think it's only gotten better over the years, too. Occasionally he (Scott Adams, I mean) will kind of get a bit boring/unfunny for a while but it never lasts long.
I think the characters are really interesting, because they're ridiculously over-the-top, yet they seem so real at the same time.

Calvin and Hobbes
This is probably the greatest cartoon ever written. I've read every single one of them, and I wish Bill Watterson would still write them, but... that's his business, I suppose.
It's an interesting cartoon, because while a lot of times people will try to put their own views and opinions into their characters, Mr. Watterson doesn't do that at all. Calvin has a worldview that's twisted and bizarre; I doubt there's anyone on earth who agrees with him at all. So why read it? Because cartoons aren't supposed to be philisophical, they're supposed to be funny! And Calvin and Hobbes certainly does that right.
The funny thing, though, is that it does get philisophical at times; you'll think, "Haaang on, he has a point there!" even though it's a really strange and ridiculous idea.
The whole setting and all the characters are really different, too. It's completely unlike any other cartoon; it really stands out.
Bill Watterson himself is a very interesting person as well. I like reading his comments and notes in the tenth anniversary book. I thought what he had to say about licensing was really cool.

FoxTrot
Out of the cartoons I've mentioned here, this is probably my least favorite, but that isn't to say that I don't like it, of course (it still made the top three). Bill Amend recently discontinued his daily cartoons, which is sad, because I had always thought his dailies were consistently more funny than his Sunday cartoons, mostly because he had interesting ongoing storylines (which only ever run in the daily cartoons since a lot of papers only get either the dailies or the Sundays, not both). But oh well. It's still fairly good, although I do think it used to be better.
It's a bit inconsistent, too. I think it's funniest when Jason and Marcus are the featured characters, as they're so ludicrously nerdy. I find those cartoons much more interesting than the ones involving any of the other characters (which tend to be a slightly different kind of humor and involve less interesting subjects, such as golf, which I think should be forbidden from syndicated cartoons forevermore). They're what make the cartoon really stand out, although I suppose if compared to cartoons on the Internet (which are usually very geeky/nerdy) it's nothing special. Still, it's older than webcomics as far as I know, so....


Now, comic books!
I don't think comic books / "graphic novels" get nearly enough credit these days. They're kidn of viewed as being nerdy and for people who never grew up (or are still kids). I think they're a fine form of media, though, that should be grouped together with everything else. There are comic books for kids, and for adults, and ones that are serious, and ones that are more lighthearted. They're just as diverse as anything else.
Now then. Here are my favorites:

Fullmetal Alchemist
This is one that's clearly meant to be taken seriously (although there are some goofy, humorous things that pop up every now and then, but it's just like most other serious things, really). It brings up some strong points, particularly regarding the value of human life. Even though it takes place in a fictional (and very fantastic) world, and I don't think it's meant to be allegory or satire, there are lots of interesting parallels you could draw to real life. It's never anything specific, though.
For example, there's this big war, and while a lot of times war in books/movies/comic books/whatever is cheapened or even glorified, this one seems real. It's awful, and nobody wants to be fighting in it. It causes a lot of pain, trouble, and hardship. It's... a war. That really stood out to me because it's so different from how things are often portrayed in fiction ("These are clearly the good guys, and they're fighting people who are clearly the bad guys, so it's a good cause.").
I really like the unusual setting, too, as well as the story itself. It's pretty suspenseful.

Ultimate Spider-Man
Spider-Man may have been interesting when it was new, but it's pretty clear some things needed to be redone. Reading the older comics, I can see how they would have been cool at the time, but by today's standards they're really bland (for starters, the art is really simplistic compared to what people pull off nowadays).
Also, there's the whole issue of culture and technology, since it takes place in the real world... things just aren't the same as they were forty years ago. So while Amazing Spider-Man is still ongoing (it's on issue who-knows-how-many-hundred now), there are weird inconsistencies. It seems to have been only a few years since the first comics, and it's just unreasonable to think that so much happened over such a small period of time (you could probably add up any time there is reference to how long something lasted, and it'd not make much sense), and looking at the technology and culture differences (as I mentioned before), it's clear that it's been way more than "a few" years.
That's probably why they came up with Ultimate Spider-Man. It's the same basic story (which was always very solid), but modernized. I don't mean they threw a bunch of trash in there, I mean it's... Spider-Man, if he were real... today. It just works. And any time there was something that was dumb the first time around, they fixed it. So I think it's really nifty.
The one thing I'm disappointed about is how at one point they got a new penciler, and the art style is different. I think I liked it more before, but I guess I'll get used to it.

Case Closed
This is something I recently started reading. A friend recommended it a long time ago, but I couldn't read it because I'm cheap and only get stuff from the library, and the library where we lived at the time didn't have it (well, I think they had a few random volumes later in the series).
These books started in 1994 and are still being written (which, yes, may end up causing the problems I mentioned when talking about Spider-Man if Mr. Aoyama doesn't hurry up and finish it soon).
I like them, because they're mysteries, which you don't usually see in a comic book. I also like it because while it has a somewhat similar tone to stories such as The Hardy Boys, it makes no effort to be believable. There are things in there (particularly the inventions Dr. Agasa makes for Jimmy Kudo, the main character) that are pretty unreasonable, but it's... fiction. It's not like other mysteries that try to take place in a really real world but fail miserably.
Anyway. I haven't read so much of this, but I like what I've read so far!


Another thing I started recently, based on another friend's recommendation, was Bleach. I've only read the first volume but I thought it was pretty nifty. I'll probably read more but the next ones are checked out at the library.

I think that's it for today, then.
I got one the things on my list done!

:::Source=
:::Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
:::20.09.08
:::STOP.