#422 – Good Sportsdaemonship
We were interviewed by UnleashTheFanboy.com, go check it out. Thanks go out to Edward for getting in touch and for his kind words.
We were interviewed by UnleashTheFanboy.com, go check it out. Thanks go out to Edward for getting in touch and for his kind words.
If you’re just joining Exterminatus Now, you’ve found us mid shit/fan collision, so you may want to backtrack a little.
Lothar and Raye’s visa collection (see newspost here for details) is still open if anyone else wants to help.
I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The people who’ve donated to me and Raye for her permanent leave to remain are so generous and kind it makes me forget I’m a misanthrope. What you’ve given us will greatly help us pay for the Leave to Remain. You’ve done more than enough.
I just wanted to reassure people, nobody would have been kicked out of the country because of this. We could pay for this. It just really helps us and lifts a little bit of the burden and stress associated with it.
If anyone else wants to help, the donate button is there. But don’t give us anything if you don’t want to. Seriously. If that $5 is going to pay for a magazine, a pair of socks, whatever DO NOT GIVE IT TO US. Use it for yourself.
Thank you.
We’ll post this again for those who missed it. Raye and Lothar want to thank all those who’ve donated so far.
Hello guys, Lothar here.
So as you may not know, my wife Raye moved from America two years ago to live with me. She’s now coming to the end of her fiancée visa which means we now have to apply for her Indefinite Leave to Remain, which basically means she can stay in the country as long as she wants. This also means she can leave the country to visit America without running the risk of not being let back in.
The problem? The application costs damn near £1000. Which is a bit of a financial burden. Long story short? We’d greatly appreciate it if you have any spare cash you don’t have a particular use for, if you would be so kind to donate it to use to help us pay for this. Whatever you can spare will be fine. And don’t feel bad if you can’t, we only ask it if you can. Any help would be fantastic and you have our eternal thanks.
Please send PayPal donations to realityabyss@hotmail.com. Or click the button.
Need a currency converter? www.xe.com
Thank you.
Lothar.
First, make sure and read Lothar’s post below, I forgot this would stack on top.
A handful of commenters have wondered if they’ve seen references to Pixar’s Up in recent comics. I’m not so much “denying the accusation”, since it’s no secret we make homages and references and take inspiration from many pop culture sources, and I don’t believe there’s any shame in that. I’m happy to say “Yep, you got the reference!” when people pick up on them. But the Up parallels only became apparent to me when they were pointed out, and being an interesting set of coincidences, made for interesting trivia, so I thought I’d discuss it just for funsies.
#1 – The cerberus’s heads resemble the antagonist dogs, Alpha, Beta and Gamma.
Pixar and I both used a doberman pinscher, a rottweiler and a bulldog as our bad guy dog breeds, and probably for similar reasons. Dobermans and rottweilers are among the first breeds that come to mind when you think “big mean dog” (whether justified or not; calm down puppylovers). Pit bull terriers would also be high up on that list, but they have less distinctive features. The breed seems to vary a lot and it generally looks more nondescript than the recognisable shapes and facial markings of dobermans and rotties, so those dogs make for a better basis for caricature. I also quickly realised that the similar black-with-tan markings would translate well into markings on a unified beast.
Bulldogs have less of a bad rep, they’re generally pretty docile, so why did we both choose bulldogs for our third evil dog? Probably the simplest reason is the distinctive look. Easy to caricature and make different from the other two. But also perhaps to act as the comic foil in the trio. Bulldogs are naturally kind of goofy looking, and both Gamma and the third cerberus head display the silliest behaviour of their respective trios (the bulldog being the first head to take interest in Morth’s ball). There are plenty of other choices we could have made to fill the distinct-look/silly-role: a toy poodle or pomeranian would certainly have been amusing. But bulldog has the benefit of retaining an air of toughness about it so doesn’t look too out of place next to the big dogs.
In addition, my bulldog head was kind of an oblique reference to Winston Churchill. The British Bulldog, WWII, get it? (Ohhh yes.)
Actually in early sketches, the centre head was going to be a wolf. But I ultimately opted for domestic dogs, since Hound daemons are always depicted with collars, and the Hound’s war themes suggest dogs trained for human conflict. The wild nature of the wolf didn’t fit the very human idea of warfare.
#2 – Muntz’s pack and the cerberus are both comically distracted at a critical juncture by a thrown tennis ball.
I completely forgot about this scene in Up, had to go looking for it to remind myself. So it wasn’t a conscious reference on my part, but could it have been unconscious influence? Well, in the comments, Silversword posited that the EN scene may have been written prior to Up‘s release, so I went looking for the dates. Up came out in May 2009, although I didn’t see it until it was out on DVD, in late 2009.
And here’s a post from the EN writers’ private admin forum from January 2009 (edited for future spoilers):
The fact is, exploiting a mean dog by playing into its puppy instincts is an old gag. Pretty sure Bugs Bunny’s done it a couple times. Foghorn Leghorn’s probably done it to that dog he was always antagonising. It’s an old cartoon trope.
Funny thing, I briefly thought about colouring the ball like Luxo Jr’s star ball before deciding to go with a simple tennis ball.
And not that anybody pointed this out, but:
#3 – Both Up and Bookend of Unimaginable Power include a character inappropriately named “Kevin”
Well our Kevin dates back to 2007, so there. And the explanation here is that Kevin is just kind of a dorky name. Sorry, Kevins of the world. Look, I’m sure it suits you fine, but not so much evil Patternari daemon eyeballs, or giant, flightless (not to mention female) cryptid birds.
Hello guys, Lothar here.
So as you may not know, my wife Raye moved from America two years ago to live with me. She’s now coming to the end of her fiancée visa which means we now have to apply for her Indefinite Leave to Remain, which basically means she can stay in the country as long as she wants. This also means she can leave the country to visit America without running the risk of not being let back in.
The problem? The application costs damn near £1000. Which is a bit of a financial burden. Long story short? We’d greatly appreciate it if you have any spare cash you don’t have a particular use for, if you would be so kind to donate it to use to help us pay for this. Whatever you can spare will be fine. And don’t feel bad if you can’t, we only ask it if you can. Any help would be fantastic and you have our eternal thanks.
Please send PayPal donations to realityabyss@hotmail.com. Or click the button.
Need a currency converter? www.xe.com
Thank you.
Lothar.
It’s no secret that I (and Eastwood, and ocassionally the other two) poke around TVTropes, and keep tabs on our page there. As a rule, I try not to add to it myself -that doesn’t really feel in keeping with the …spirit of the place. By and large, I just try and stop people putting in links to the old, abandoned comicgenesis page. Seriously, you can stop it with those now.
However, every now and then I feel the need to nudge somebody back onto the right track – Word Of God priveledge and all that.
So in that light, I hate to break it to you, but……Ok, no, I am quite happy to break it to you – Wildfire is and always has been an amalgamation of a Dirty Pair (Flash) homage merged with the antithesis of Rogues most defining character traits (intellegence -> scatterbrained, arrogant overestimation of skill -> understated incredible raw aptitude, precision -> recklessness, highly apathetic -> infuriatingly eager, and so on), and I am both amused and dismayed that at least one person considers her some kind’ve backlash to people asking for female characters. Sorry, guys, but the “you should have a girl join the team!” backlash went and passed years before Wildfire appeared in the comic – though interestingly, two years after she was designed. You’d be surprised to know just how far we work ahead, and how much further back we pull ideas and characters to work with. Also I apologise to your eyes if you clicked on that second link. Old art makes me cry even when it was good at the time, and that….not so much.
Anyway. This has been your semi-informative info-dump of the arbitrary time period. Enjoy!
The gods don’t always take a direct interest in the doings of mortals. We prefer to depict them as detached and disinterested, and certainly the actions of our main characters are beneath their notice. After all, you may be aware of the anthill’s existence, but you don’t follow the lives of individual ants, do you?
But we’ve made an exception for Morth, since he’s actively trying to gain notoriety and a promotion (Even then, it seems he mostly deals through middle-management – Kevin). The activation of the artefact, and the manifestation of the greater daemon (a vanishingly rare occurence in modern times) must have glowed hotly enough to attract these two cruel deities’ baleful attention. At least for a moment. Now they’re probably watching cartoons.
And that’s just for Ash and Haberley.