Back in 1964 Stan Lee’s original vision for the Fantastic Four was about giving superheroes human foibles. The Human Torch was a hothead, and Ben Grimm was emotionally distant, etc. While those characters books may seem quaint by modern standards, it was a revelation compared to the morally perfect good guys, and totally craven villains that had existed before then.
Cut to 40 years later, and we’ve come full circle. Beyond even the gritty realism of post-modern comics like The Watchmen, we’ve now infused foibles into full-on cartoon characters, turning the ramrod heroes of our youth into drug addicted jerk-offs. The king of this kind of stuff is The Venture Brothers. It’s the tale of a boy adventurer (think Johnny Quest) who is entering into his forties with a trail of failures, two idiot sons, and an addiction to uppers. As sad as that sounds, it’s also one of my favorite things in the whole wide world, finding humor in the mundane while mixing and re-mixing nerd cliches in constantly surprising ways.
It’s also a type of humor that I thought was almost impossible to duplicate. But it seems like someone else has figured out the formula. Perhaps not to the same level, but they do seem to have their hearts in the right place, and it’s definitely laugh out loud funny in parts. They’re also excellent and skewering the ridiculousness of internet culture.
They call themselves For Tax Reasons, and I’m going to keep my eye on them.
Here’s their first major offering. It’s called “IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR“.
This virtual reality sphere is a pretty good idea. Certainly a nice step towards the holo-deck that is our right as humans living in the 21st century.
But then you realize that you actually need to walk to use it… It’ll never catch on.
via the far too British Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!
This thing is truly an abomination. If the robots do rise up and kill us all, I can no longer blame them.
It also doesn’t use Dan Castellaneta’s voice. Instead it has a “sound alike” who doesn’t sound a thing like him.
Thankfully this monstrous hunk of plastic is only available in England.
Noted science fiction author David Brin wrote a eulogy for the Legendary Arthur C. Clarke in his diary on the political site Daily Kos.
But there was another Arthur C. Clarke. The one who sent David Bowman careening through the monolith, helplessly bound for transformation and deification. The author who gave us CHILDHOOD’S END. One who frets that we may not be wise enough to survive the next few generations of tense immaturity, let alone worthy of joining more advanced communities of mind.
And so, we have a recurring theme of intervention — quasi-divine — receiving outside help to achieve our potential. (And wasn’t Clarke’s law that a sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic?)
In this mix of both fizzing optimism and dour worry, Arthur always struck me as similar to two other giants, both Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, who also surveyed very wide horizons, from alluring to disquieting.
What none of them ever did — and especially not Arthur — was give in to despair. The notion of change never lost its fascination. His works appeared always to say “what was will not always be, so get ready.” Yes, the past deserves honor — it got us here — but the future is what draws us forward.
Clarke was 90 when he passed on. A true founding father and legend of the genre.
When it comes to adolescent awkwardness, nobody does it better than Michael Cera.
Besides starring in Arrested Development, he was also in Juno, and SuperBad, so it seems like the rest of the world has discovered him as well.
If you’re familiar with the comic, it’s really genius casting… Fingers crossed on this one.
Here he is playing against type, and managing to still come off as a nerd:
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