More throwback stuff: King Vermin Xmas cards from the previous decade.

Merry Xmas. Here's two cards I made for the holidays, the first from 2004 and the 2nd from 2005.

I know. I know.

Grinding to a halt. (And apparently dusting off some old stuff.)

PAGE ADDED: Baseball card collage art. Maybe I'll do some more of these.

Not much to report. Lookin' to get a Goons gig in for late January. I miss playing out.

I want to say that it's been BATMAN: ARKHAM ORIGINS keeping me from doing anything productive but that's not true. Just some other stuff. I did get the game but stopped playing it because it was too hard. Not challenging hard, but frustrating 'we-forgot-to-really-test-the-mechanics' hard. That's my opinion. So I stopped playing it. There's been a bunch of other stuff and it has kept me emotionally drained and in no mood to draw comics about me pointing at my butt.

However, "Robots With Coffee" seems to be somewhat popular and I'm using that to do silly things like interview NASA robotic engineers. Please please please read the interview. I hope it's as funny as it is informative.

I wrote the first chapter for a novel. Or a book. Or a novel-book. There's a tornado on my personal horizon so when the dust settles I'll be back at...something. Join me on the twitters to the right there and you'll know more.

-paul

PS I do blog more, just to talk about my goofy Transformers hobby. You'll see some Robots With Coffee action and actual TF comics pages with new dialogue. Check it out.

PPS! BONUS! Remember when I appeared in the hit comic book THE BOYS? Of course you do.

Hired Goons - lyric video

Very little to report. I don't have the budget or the volunteers to make actual videos. Here's a lyric video for Hired Goons' STUPID SEXY FLANDERS.

This is good practice for something later, I'm sure. -paul

Album reviews - Pelican, Carcass, Alice In Chains

Hola. Here's a quick wrap up of albums I bought somewhat recently. Details after the jump!

Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here - I don't remember it. Check out the previous album instead.

Carcass - Surgical Steel -  Pretty good. It's blasphemy to question how necessary this is, and some of it would feel "more of the same" if "the same" weren't 15 years ago, but I bought it and there's some really good cuts on here.

Pelican - Forever Becoming - Really awesome. Not a total surprise because all their stuff is pretty much awesome, but I was worried. Worry not: this is another amazing album by Pelican. The end.

Okay, longer reviews after the jump!

The Paul Show #97 - next commissioner of baseball

Apologies. But you know this job is a dream come true for the guy.

Haven't done much in a while. WAAAAY behind on The Voice. Will get to that soon. Cooking up some music. Looking for a new guitar player for Hired Goons.

New stuff soon.

Another writing thing for Bugs & Cranks.

Here's a bit I wrote for Bugs & Cranks. Just a silly thing. I write for them once in a while.

Added: Macy & The Mooses archive.

I'm starting to, I don't know, organize my strips and have some sort of list of separate strips on this blog. So, recently added: All the Macy & The Mooses strips. These are strips about my niece Macy, as a toddler, as she describes her adventures with a moose. There's only about a dozen. Enjoy!

Hellfunnies (Paul Show #96) - Just TWO of every species? Think about that.

First up, UPDATE FROM PREVIOUS POST:

I went back and beat Ratchet & Clank (2): Going Commando. I stopped chasing the ultimate weapon at the end of the rainbow, bought some of the lesser weapons I had avoided, and went to what was the last level that I couldn't fathom getting through, and JUST AVOIDED COMBAT with most of the henchmen. I had to fight a few of them (clearing certain rooms to operate puzzle games) and got to the big boss. And it was easier than fighting legion of respawning and really tough henchrobots. So, whee, I beat the game, even though I stated it was too frustrating to finish. It IS pretty fun, an improvement over the first Ratchet & Clank, but Up Your Arsenal is still miles ahead of Going Commando. But I beat the game, so neener neener.

Here's the latest strip. Apologies to anyone who takes this source literally, but this is something that ALWAYS bugged me. Teachers in catholic school never got around to saying what happened to Cain after he killed Abel. There's Adam & Eve, and they have Cain & Abel. Cain kills Abel. Then...where do the rest of our lineage come from if Adam & Eve are the first humans, and they have one son? Trying to make sense of it on Wikipedia. No, don't tell me, because you know what I think of this already.

Minor stuff. Didja know I'm on Twitter?

I'm on Twitter. It's where my random thoughts are popping up lately.

Working on some strips. Added two new pages (one new page, a photoshopped 2nd page) to The Voice, see link on the right.

Owe you a review of the new Alice In Chains.

Clearing some stuff out of the home.

People are enjoying Robots With Coffee for some reason. Thanks.

A review of the Ratchet & Clank video game series coming soon.

Talk soon,
-paul

Really Short Album Reviews - Queens Of The Stone Age, Man Or Astro-Man?

I bought some albums from a few bands I like, that I should mention don't have too much in common, yet all don't exactly blow my mind this time around. Here's a few thoughts.

MAN OR ASTRO-MAN - Defcon 5 4 3 2 1

I mentioned the Analog singles the band released a few months ago. I really enjoyed the tracks; I was excited that the 'leftover' song on each single was just as good as the material that was going to be re-released on this album. Surely the rest of the material must be THIS good?

Ummmm, I think they gave us the most exciting tracks. There's a lot of singing on this album. I'm used to one or two songs maybe per album, and then half of that is a cover of a theme song or some other non-Ventures influence of theirs. I counted five songs with singing (not counting the computer voiced "All Systems To Go). "New Cocoon," the last song with singing, even does the "....self....put you on a shelf" rhyme. Yes, rhyming "self" with "shelf" and then we all have to think about what "put you on a shelf" really means. How often do you hear that phrase outside of song lyrics? How often do you use it yourself?

"Defcon 4" and "Defcon 2" are low frequency, almost chiptune background music entries. They remind me of the 'experimental' tour-only release, A Spectrum Of Finite Scale. Defcon 4 just fades out after almost two minutes, but if it faded out any early it wouldn't have mattered. For this we don't get the amazing "Dr. Space" from Analog Series 1? Both Defcon 4 & 2 would make great video game menu background music.

Aside from the singing and those two indifferent songs, the rest of the material is pretty good. "Codebreaker 78" is the one tune especially that wasn't on the first two Analog singles that really stands out; the material from those singles are also the high points.

I think what kind of brings me down is that toward the album you get "Electric Arc," which is four minutes, has singing, and a lot of build up with a big rockin' sound in the 2nd half, and then you get the spacy "Defcon 2" followed by the last four minute long "New Cocoon," and then the last surf inspired bit they're known for to close it out. That stretch could have been broken up and I wouldn't have gotten drowsy during that part of this album. So, the track listing did me in. There's material that I heard that I liked, I had high hopes, I really wish they put the 'leftover' tracks from the singles in the place of Defcon 4 & 2, but it's their album. I'm glad they're back.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE - ...Like Clockwork

I love QOTSA, but at the same time their albums are mostly hit & miss with me. I really dug the S/T, Songs For The Deaf, and Era Vulgaris, but I don't care for Rated R and Lullabies To...whatever. So, every other album, that's the pattern for me with Homme & Co.

I think "sedate" is the best way for me to describe this album. It is not a hard rocker. There are some jams ("I Sat By The Ocean," "If I Had A Tail"), there are some riffs ("My God Is The Sun"), but almost no bite. I think maybe because his singing is the sweetest that it's ever been, nothing cynical or rough drips out of his singing even when the strings are strummed hard. Is it fair to say it's dreamy? Dream-like? The closest thing to meaty rock stuff is in the middle but it's surrounded by somber and trance-like tunes. Overall, pretty good, but it also might put me to sleep.

The Paul Show #95

The Paul Show #94 - hello to the NSA!

The Voice / some other stuff.

Page 6 of The Voice has been added to The Voice page. But it's below the update as well.

Some album reviews, coming soon.

Still doing Hired Goons, BUT I will be starting a new band. A NEW BAND, I TELLS YOU.

Here's the latest action packed page of THE VOICE. Click on the image.

The Voice update: I am updating it.

We're at five pages of The Voice. Look to your right and click on the link to read it so far. For every page I draw, I need to draw nearly another page for Keith Chaos to provide some sort of animation for our storyboard/cheapo animation. We have a reading of the script on Saturday, so that should be fun.

The Voice - prelim pages.

The latest project I'm working on at my own pace, but interested in fully finishing, is The Voice. Maybe it'll have a different title than that popular show, but it'll be obvious in the first chapter of the comic. And then Keith Chaos of Undercard Films wants to animate it. Well, keep your fingers crossed. I have a habit of getting ahead of myself before the wishy washy delusion of grandeur crashes long before the project leaves the ground.

So I will be taking my TIME with this, because though Keith will be filling in the gaps (and it will be 'animated' in the sense that Everyone Loves Gears is animated) I don't want to overfill panels with dialogue and rush sequences or 'scenes.' This might take a while as a result, which is fine. I tend to rush my 'projects.' I don't want to analyze how I draw or do things so I'll just leave it at this: I'm going to draw this script I wrote a few years ago, then we will use panels as an extended storyboard with recorded dialogue to make webisodes or what I hope is close to an 85 minute cheaply animated cartoon.

Strips will be posted as I finish them. Click on the link above to see it as it occurs.

The Paul Show #93

It's a great album. Maybe I'll write about it some other time.

The Paul Show #92

The Paul Show #91

Half a strip.

Here's a commentary. Was going to be a Heckler strip but they didn't like the reference to rape. So I took out the 4th panel and now it's just a three panel commentary about the recent "girlfriend hoax."

I wasn't saying rape is funny. I just thought it was odd that SO MUCH has been done to investigate this story after the fact, and the same football team and/or its school either covered up or just threw a rape charge under the rug. Whatever. Prioritize.

Robocop 2 'live' blogpost from 2 years ago

A few years ago, I stayed up really late and watched Robocop 2. I had seen it before as a teen and enjoyed it? Watched it because I liked Robocop? But like a lot action sci-fi films of the 90's, something about it seemed out of place. MORE after the jump.

Macy & The Mooses! Returns!

-paul