All-American Girls
The theme of this update is American characters; not necessarily characters who live in the United States so much as those created and/or produced in the United States. I don't know if you've noticed, but the website is kind of skewed toward characters from Asia, especially Japan. Also, in a truely American spirit, this is possibly our most multicultural update yet; we've got representatives of the five major ethnicities (black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander), plus a Judeo-Christian angel, a punk, and a coupla goths! Hurrah for the melting pot!
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Mars Needs Women | |
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The difficulty with being a Matt Groening fanboy is that his creations, while funny and inventive as anything you can think of, aren't particularly heavy in the pretty girl department. My dear comrade TP Drawer has a special fancy for Marge Simpson, but I wasn't able to share that with him. Thankfully, along came Futurama (also known as "Science Friction," or "Cy-Fry") which gave us Amy Wong, the Martian-born intern with the sweetest face in New New York, and rarely a thought in her pretty little head. Oh well, not everyone can be Marilyn Vos Savant. |
Pop Art | |
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At Spümcø, they make cartoons for MEN!!! And that means lots of cartoon violence and lots of hot girls! Unfortunately, although Jimmy the Idiot Boy managed to score himself a spot on the recent program The Ripping Friends, his oh-so-delectable girlfriend Sody Pop has not yet made it to television, aside from a few cameos in a Björk video. Sody's a smart girl who loves to party and absolutely adores Jimmy for reasons unknown; apparently he's a fabulous lover or something. Whatever, she seems delighted with any stupid thing he does, so I'm certain she'd love to have babies as dumb as their daddy. You'll notice Sody is the first girl I've drawn to have stretch marks. That's my little attempt to emulate the Spümcø "ugly stuff drawn beautifully" theme. I don't think it worked, unfortunately. |
Talk To Storky | |
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I Feel Sick: A Book About A Girl is a comic about what happens when one's brain is rerouted into patterns not one's own. Devi, the girl in the foreground, can not hope for meaningful contact with others, and has literally nothing to live for but her work. Tenna, the girl in the background, can enjoy life on many other levels, perhaps the pleasures of the flesh for example, which deeply annoys and offends Devi. The whole book is a metaphor for how frustrating it was creating Invader Zim for the unappreciative suits at Nickelodeon, which will help you to imagine their personalities: essentially, Devi is Zim and Tenna is GIR. |
Iiiiit's SHOWING! | |
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A blurb from a special guest writer... "Salut, tout le monde! C'est moi, Jacque LeLean, le skelette Français! Mon ami Beétlejuice et sa petite amie Lydia ont un announcement passionnant! Vous que tout connaît Beétlejuice est gross... mais regardez maintenant, parce que Lydia grossesse! Oui oui!" |
Quinn Quickened | |
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I had a hard time deciding which superheroine character to use for this batch, since there's so many supergirls to choose from... I wanted one with a great costume with a strong idiom behind it (as opposed to that "random military garments" fad that swept the superhero comics world in the mid-nineties), and gosh darn it, the only person I could think of to fit that bill was Harley, who's probably the most overdone supervillain since Catwoman. Oh well, I got a really cute picture out of it, and just as a bonus I put in the most unflattering portrayal of the Riddler ever drawn. |
Keiki Delivery Service | |
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Have you noticed that the best Disney movies are the ones with NO SONGS WHATSOEVER? Sure, The Little Mermaid made a mint by aping Andrew Lloyd Webber, but that really should have been a one-time thing. Thankfully, Diz has caught on to how old it's getting, and is now either getting listenable '80s pop stars to write their songs (C'mon, give us a Momotaro movie scored by Peter Gabriel!) or restricting the songs to background noise. Lilo & Stitch is one such movie-- and damn is it cool. Plus it features Nani (not "Noni" as I'd assumed earlier, oopsie), who's not just really cute for your average normal, but has the kind of legs that would have R. Crumb running for his tissue box. Now that's the kind of female role model I can support. |
Occam's Razor | |
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There aren't that many popular video games made in the United States... the best-known ones are first-person shooters, which I loathe, or infinite reinventions of the same damn football game. However, there's one Stateside creation which was popular enough to get its own TV show-- Maniac Mansion! And the game had no less than three cute girls starring in it! However, since no one remembers Sandy or Wendy, we'll stick with Razor, the lead singer for the punk band "The Scummettes," who was going into the mansion for reasons I'm not sure of. If she liked Dave enough to help him, why didn't he just forget about Sandy and date Razor instead? Yet another Lucasfilm-caliber plot hole. |
How Sweet It Is | |
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Be in awe, for this pale, plump, delicate creature has the strangest name of any character we've ever featured on PG-13: stranger than White Mage, Q-Bee, Two By Four, and even Mistress Fire-Hazard. Are you ready? She goes by the name of Too Much German White Chocolate Woman With Almonds. Boy, is that fun to say! Anyway, Too Much German White Chocolate Woman With Almonds is a friend of Too Much Coffee Man, and his sullen companion Too Much Expresso Guy, and mostly what they do is bug her until she gives them almonds. However, you know what they say about pregnancy and caffeine... |
Fire & Icing | |
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This picture was drawn very quickly as a gift for Jolted Bunny's birthday... practically at gunpoint. The girl may not look familiar right now, but she may become another of PG-13's stars in the future. You'll learn to love her, I promise. |
A Minor Slip Of the Tongue... | |
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Another birthday gift, this one for a regular contributor and fan favorite, the omnific Stephen Sandford. A while ago, when I was in the midst of a rash of drawings of Lovin & Akira as celebrity couples, he offhandedly remarked he'd like to see them drawn as Potchari and Shige, the gag-inducingly happy couple from Flying-Suit Reiko. Done and done! (Although I waited about a year to draw it, just to throw him off. I'm so sneaky.) |
Dante's Inferno | |
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Presenting Angel Pie, that winged soul of the common clay, in a particularly hot-blooded moment. Actually, if you've visited the website she calls home, you may find this picture familiar, as I drew it as a gift. This version was drawn first, because I assumed she knew enough not to smoke. Silly me, she was smoking, so I redecorated the final image to better reflect her personality. Some of you may question whether she should be included in this group. Although her creator (the aforementioned Stephen Sandford) isn't quintessentially American, I feel Angel Pie represents a quintessentially American archetype, and thus warrants inclusion anyway. Plus I really didn't want to start another archive with only one picture. |
Roll Your Own #1: The Can | |
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Remember the Dysfunctional Family Circus? I sure do. I missed it so much I started a caption-it-yourself game on my own message board. Sure, it doesn't get updated as often as DFC did, but it's still the same principle. Whoever submits the best dialogue (as determined by a jury of peers, not including myself) gets it put into the official picture when it's colorized. This episode's winner was Sliptide213, and his dialogue appears in the picture. Some other runners-up:
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