Comics Time: Humon Edition

I love internet comics. You may recognize this cartoonist, Humon, from her personifications of countries that appear in Scandinavia and the World, which is hilarious and highly recommended. She does do other things from time to time, including an entire book illustrating the different sexualities found in nature called Animal Lives. The Humon Comics homepage is linked to the badge up top. Below I've included her best illustration ever, clearly, from a series on mythology and folklore in her native Scandinavia.

Gnome Collector

Press Secretaries love to Garden

On May 10th, 2017, the US Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, took questions about the firing of FBI director James Comey. The unorthodox press conference happened outdoors, and began when the press secretary "emerged" from nearby bushes. This story can be found on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and numerous other news outlets. The story, of course, influenced memes, monologues and sketches about Sean Spicer hiding in the bushes, afraid of the press.

This includes the genius "Garden Spicer" by Lisa Kadonaga from BC, Canada.

a little DIY garden deco

Not to be outdone, one of my favorite online cartoonists, Lar DeSouza from Blind Ferret Media posted his own cut-out shenanigans. I like his better, for obvious reasons.

Three Feet Tall and Horrifying

Gnomes as the monster in horror stories isn't a new or fresh idea. I wrote about it before on this blog. In 2004 the creator of the failed Chaos Comics wrote a one shot comic for Avatar Press, about killer gnomes.

Brian Pulido founded Chaos! Comics in 1994 and helped jumpstart the "bad girl" comics era. His characters Lady Death, Chastity, and Jade were joined by London Night's Razor and Shi, Image Comics' Witchblade, Dawn, and Dark Chylde, Neil Gaiman's Angela, and IDW's Danger Girl in creating a new era of scantily clad, highly sexualized, exploitative femme fatales. The art style affected comics for the next 20 years.

After Chaos Comics went under in 2002, Brian Pulido began writing for other publishers, and dabbled in film. Killer Gnomes was one of these projects. The comic came first. But in 2009, he wrote and directed a short film called There's Something out There, which follows the plot of the comic book. 

Killer Gnomes starts with the main character bringing home a garden gnome which comes to life and protects the garden with extreme murderous efficiency.

more comic time: Legend of Bill

I can not believe I haven't seen this online comic before! Legend of Bill is an epic fantasy comic farce. It reminds me of Hagar the Horrible, the Wizard of Id and Dave the Barbarian. The comedy is funny and well done, even if it feels like its been done before. The coolest part of these comics, unlike other cheap barbarian gag strips, is that it tells a story.

Even though bumbling barbarians are hilarious, this post is on a gnome themed blog...

Which is perfect for the Legend of Bill Gnome Syndicate section. Its about gnomes...  spying gnomes. The CIA of gnomes.  I am so excited for this. Cheap gnome jokes with a serialized storyline. Awesome!

The main characters of this side strip are Gnome 12 and Gnome 13. Apparently syndicate gnomes only have numbers, like the MIB. Gnome 12 seems to appear only in the Legend of Bill cartoons, Gnome 13 appears to be the main protagonist of this Gnome Syndicate cross-over. Other characters include Gladys, the Todd, Miss Keebler, Agent Shirley, Kirby, and Chief Perry.

Definitely a cartoon to read and follow.

Update: 

Apparently this comic is in some kind of limbo. The website is down? In progress? Being Built? Anyway, the website is linked above and on the Links Menu. Dave Reddick, the artist/writer, has his website here. but even he links to the same website. 

Drinking does not require any senses

See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil  is a Japanese maxim from the 17th century. Not only is it a symbolic philosophical teaching tool, it is also an example of word play. The idea is a lesson in morality, basically, be of good mind, body, and spirit, do good always, etc, or pessimistically a statement on how ignorance is perceived as bliss. Instead of monkeys, the above cartoon uses gnomes to not only speak to the blissful act of self indulgence, but also to puns and word play.  

By the way, remember Ottmar Hoerl, the German artist? He also did a gnome model of this very same maxim. Check out this and other works here

OH THE HORROR!

So, I was searching the interwebs, as I often do when bored. Sometimes I find interesting things. Today, as I wandered around the internet I found an independent comic site. There are a lot of these on the web. Some are stupid web comics with kindergarten drawings of angry faces, or stick figures with adult content, pretty lame and unfunny. But occasionally I run into good things like Mike Maihack's CowShell graphics, or Peterson and Nicholle's Jesus Christ in the Name of the Gun. Today I found Angry Gnome Comics!

Since this blog has a theme, I bet you saw something like this coming.  Although, aside from the name, Angry Gnome Comics has nothing to do with gnomes as far as I can tell.  Horror comics are pretty awesome, and this one seems to have plugged into the horror pulp magazine vibe, especially with their short story collaboration books.  This is refreshing, as it seems like contemporary horror comics are all about zombies, or vampires.

Personally, I like my horror comics to have a sense of humor, like the Goon.

comic time

The Travelocity Gnome is a cold blooded killer, apparently.  Gnomes dont like to be pushed around. This is from Ryan Paigelow's Buni comic.

Comic Time

I dont think I need to write anything regarding this. Its funny.

Smurfs and Marxism

1980s cartoons, at this time, are looked fondly on by people my age who used to watch them at a time when Saturday mornings were dominated by kids' programming. There were no channels dedicated to 24 hour cartoon broadcasting. Major networks showed cartoons either after school hours, or between 7am-12pm on Saturdays and Sundays. 

Revisiting these shows now is a terrible idea. The writing and animation were poorly done, rushed throwaway stories more interested in selling merchandise than actually putting out quality stories. However, the premises of these shows were often pretty creative science fiction and fantasy plots. It wasn't all space-age police forces saving the universe, or transgalactic warriors in disguise. Sometimes we got to watch villages of friendly stuffed animals doing good things. I bet you can guess my favorite show from the '80s......

Smurfs, of course, fit right into this blog's theme. Think about it: they are small (3 apples tall), live in the woods, are communal, are all dudes (have you seen a female gnome?), and wear pointy hats. 
Smurfs are very gnome-like. It would not surprise me to learn that gnomes were the inspiration for this property to start with. 

Here are some things I learned while researching smurflore....

1. Smurfs are Belgian. which is like being French, only more manly. The dude who created the smurfs, Peyo, published them as a comic book. This proves again that everything cool comes from comics, like Batman, Opus the Penguin, Transformers, etc...

2. Peyo may have created the smurfs as a social commentary on Marxism. I'll write more about this in a second.

3. Smurfette is not the only female smurf. Apparently there is a second one called Sassette. I had no idea.

Of course, the fact that there is one female (two I guess) in a village of 100 or more men brings up all sorts of questions that are usually asked by perverts and people who think way too much about children's programming. My answer to all that is... you're an idiot. 

First of all, the whole idea behind Smurfette is sexist to start with. She was created in the story by the evil sorcerer Gargamel to mess with the smurfs and bring them misery. Because, you know, what can bring more misery to a group of guys than one needy, annoyng woman?  There is a whole bunch of stuff here for a feminist to go nuts over, like... in order to accept Smurfette, she had to first be physically altered by Papa Smurf from a brunette with a big nose, to a blonde with pleasant facial features including longer eye lashes. 

Second, there are never any new smurfs. They don't seem to procreate, they don't need to, because they seem to never die. And really, it doesn't matter, birth and death are unnecessary to the smurf universe. These things wouldn't further the Marxist theme in any way. 

Speaking of Marxist plots... 

J. Marc Schmidt writes in Socio-Political Themes in Smurfs (an honest-to-God political science essay by some Aussie high school teacher),

"I am not accusing The Smurfs of being some kind of subversive kiddie propaganda - although if it was, would it really be that much worse than the spate of 'toyetic' cartoons of the same decade that only existed to sell plastic toys? In any case, this essay should be seen as the highest kind of praise. What other children's shows would address the issue of Marxism in such a way, and at such a pivotal point in the history of the Cold War? The Smurfs should be praised for using metaphor and the device of the fairy tale to introduce children to political themes. If Peyo was a socialist, however, he was obviously not the sort who had much time for the version of it practiced by the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc police states. He was a utopian. There is a distinct lack of any kind of army or police in the Smurf Village. On rare occasions when it is necessary, they form their own civilian militia to fight off threats. Otherwise, it is the absolute opposite of the police state".

I think that sums up what I want to get across, without really doing it myself. If you watched the show yourself, you'd know that the smurfs lived in a communal situation, a kibbutz if you will, a hippie commune. Furthermore, everyone has a name followed by the name 'smurf', kind of like the Russian 'comrade' precedes one's name. Everyone in the smurf commune has a job, which defines them. Handy is the handyman, Painter is the artist, Farmer farms and Tailor tailors, Baker bakes, Poet poets and Grouchy grouches. Everyone works for the good of the group, they also all wear the same clothes (makes Tailor's job easy). 

The fact that Peyo made them all male, I think, is more about highlighting the homogeny of the group, rather than any message of gender superiority. Basically, the themes of community, and equality are more important to Peyo than gender representation. Although, later on it appears to be necessary to introduce female characters in order to explore other plots and themes restricted by the lack of diversity. Hence, Peyo created Smurfette. 

The Communist agenda can be best seen through the story of Finance Smurf. This smurf discovers commerce and capitalism (basically) and sets up the first bank of Smurfdom. To sum up... the entire experiment collapses, and the smurfs decide that the greed and misplaced value towards currency is not very smurf-like. Finance Smurf is never seen again.

I found one of those local papers once, you know, one of those underground college-type magazine papers. It wasn't that remarkable. I cant remember what it was called. But there was a comic inside that was awesome. It was three panels long and had some guy walking through the woods. He looks down at his feet and says "ew" he has stepped on dead smurfs. An army jeep rolls up and the guy in the jeep tells him to watch his step. Those smurfs are patriots. They were trained insurgents sent by the government to invade and overturn Papa Smurf's communist regime. This cartoon was so cool, I ripped it out and kept it. But I couldn't find a copy to post here. You'll have to do with my discription. Apparently the fact that Papa Smurf wears red is way too much of a coincidence. He also looks like Karl Marx.