Robert Gryfft Reviews MS Paint Adventures

Hi, everyone. Long time no see.

Sorry I haven't had much to post lately--I've been working on a handful of different projects, so the blog has kind of gotten short shrift. But I, like everyone and his brother, have been reading MSPaint Adventures lately, and so has fellow blogger Robert Gryfft of Air Theremin. Gryfft is a screaming raving fan of MSPA, and he has graciously allowed me to share his gratuitous frothy fangushing review here on TWIW.

WARNING: Like MSPA itself, Gryfft's review contains F-bombs.

Tweet Dreams

Yesterday, Book of Biff creator Chris Hallbeck posted the following on Twitter:

This morning I woke up from a dream about twitter. #whatdoesitmean

And sure enough, after reading that, I myself dreamed about Twitter last night. I dreamed about retweeting a Theater Hopper strip for Wednesday's Pick of the Day; I forget exactly what the joke was, but in classic form, TH cartoonist Tom Brazelton was making fun of his inner Iron Man fanboy. I then dreamed about reading a webcomic titled "Terry and John's Guide to Time Travel," in which the titular characters attempt every bad time travel idea in the book. The particular strip I read featured Terry going back in time to try to eat his past self alive.

What the crud, subconscious.

Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Movie

Scott Pilgrim is making some noise.

At a Glance:

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin
Director: Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead)
112 mins
PG-13
TWIW rates: 4/5

Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novel recently released its sixth and final volume, concluding the story of young-adult slacker Scott Pilgrim's battle for the heart of Ramona Flowers against her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Scott McCloud calls it "the funniest comic book on the planet right now." There's a Scott Pilgrim video game for PS3 and XBox, and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation" on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. And this past weekend, the Scott Pilgrim movie hit the box office.

23-year-old Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a loser. He's unemployed, plays bass in a noisy rock band, lives in a tiny apartment with his "cool gay roommate" Wallace (Kieran Culkin), and has recently started dating a high schooler. But all that changes when he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the literal girl of his dreams: as a courier for Amazon, she keeps showing up in his subconscious because of a convenient subspace portal running through his head. But in order to date Ramona, he must first defeat her seven evil exes. Not only does he have to deal with the same messy relationship history that we all must in meeting someone new, but he actually has to fight out that history in a string of escalating boss battles.

Like the comics, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World captures the ethos of our generation. Scott and Ramona Flowers navigate a sea of "It's Complicated" histories, grappling with the interpersonal relations of young adults who never emotionally graduated from high school. Characters speak in a vernacular of humor based on repetition, repetition, and jokes about how lame jokes are. Scott's battles with the evil exes are peppered with tongue-in-cheek, cheesy pun-liners like "You were a little bi-curious? Honey, I'm a little bi-furious!"

The movie is also steeped in video-game culture, up to the 16-bit pixelated Universal logo with accompanying bleep-and-bloop soundtrack. Contemporary movies often take their action-scene cues heavily from video games (e.g. Clash of the Titans), but SP uses video gaming as a framing device for its love story: battles are laden with pop-up score counters and special power-up modes, and defeated enemies burst into showers of coins. When mistaken for a band member and asked "What do you play?" one character responds, "Legend of Zelda, Tetris..." and a running gag has Scott explaining the history of Pac-Man as a pick-up line. With its audio-visual mash of digitized SFX, comic-book popups, and rock music, it's visceral and entertaining. And director Edgar Wright knows how to use a framing device to tell a comic story: what he did with zombie flicks and buddy-cop movies in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, he does again with video games in Scott Pilgrim.

So there's style. But does it bring the substance? To a degree. It keeps the plot, premise and characters simple, but Cera transcends his usual role of awkward slacker; he projects a Scott who, when given a second chance, steps up to admit his past screw-ups and set things right. As in the comics, Scott is an idiot who learns from his mistakes: a hero with a hair more nuance to him than one would expect. Winstead as Flowers brings a fitting measure of reserve to the table for a character with seven evil exes. The exes themselves rock their performances with outrageous energy; Indian guy Matthew Patel breaks out into bollywood dance-fighting, actor/skateboarder Lucas Lee delivers tough-guy panache, Vegan hipster Todd Ingram exudes arrogance, and sinister music mogul Gideon Graves plays his evil-concealing nice-guy facade to the hilt.

The movie stays as faithful to the comic books as a movie can. It faces the same challenge as Watchmen: condensing a large body of work into two or three hours and arranging the plot into a coherent cinematic presentation. And while Watchmen staggered under a slavish devotion to the source material, Scott Pilgrim enjoys considerably more success in striking the balance. A few elements such as the Katayanagi twins (evil exes 5 and 6) and secondary characters' backstories get short shrift, but the film actually bests the comic in its effective foreshadowing of main villain Gideon Graves. As a result, the film actually has a more fulfilling climax. Certain plot elements are changed slightly or rearranged to fit the cinematic medium, but all but the most diehard Pilgrimite will be pleased with the result.

The big question is, of course, is it worth your eight bucks? I can honestly say it's an entertaining production and a quality movie. Those outside of the comic-con crowd may have accessibility issues with it, as it appeals heavily to the viewer's inner dork, and in some instances I found the pervasive sexual jokes off-putting. However, the action rocks, the humor is laugh-worthy, and Scott is (more or less) a worthy hero for this generation. If you're looking for some quality fun for the dork within, you won't go wrong with Scott Pilgrim.

The Weekly Wrap-up with Wes Molebash

If I were giving out some kind of award for building community, I would probably award it to Wes Molebash for what he's done with his latest comic, Max vs. Max. Several times a week, he posts a question to start some conversation, such as "What are the signs of a 'bad' webcomic?" or "Is it OK to read your Bible while sitting on the toilet?" People get talking, interaction happens. It's simple and effective.

But I'm writing this post to tell you about another of Wes' traditions: The Weekly Wrap-Up. Every Friday, he posts a run-down of posts from other blogs, comic strips he's enjoyed, the Tweet of the Week and/or Comment of the Week, and an inspiring (usually cartooning-related) video link that he's found. It's pretty cool, simply because it's a way of supporting cool stuff--it's a way that Max vs. Max points to stuff outside its own site and is like, "Hey, check this out."

And that's a good thing. You know I do the Pick of the Day thing on my Twitter, to share cool comics with you, so no surprise that I think it's a cool idea. When you share a cool comic, everyone wins. (I do tend to share strips from the same handful of comics, though. It's not a perfect thingy.)

I have some other thoughts on that, but for now it's about time to wrap this post up. For now, just wanted to give a shout out to the cool things that Wes is doing over at Max vs. Max. Check it out!

Heck Yes, Space Archaeology

It's no secret to long-time readers of this blog that my favorite part of CAD is the "Ethan McManus: Space Archaeologist" side-series. In these alternate-universe adventures, the fate and decisions of Harrison-Fordian hero Ethan McManus are placed in the hands of the internet at large. In every storyline, there is action, humor, and horrible gut-splattering disaster. And it's tremendous fun.

On Monday, a brand-new installment kicked off, picking up from the last adventure with Ethan crash-landed on a hostile, unfamiliar planet. CAD cartoonist Tim Buckley always seems to put forth an extra effort on the art for these things, and the alternate reality affords him storytelling laterality and opportunities not present in your usual CAD. It's fun, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and it appears that the first two episodes allowed Buckley to iron out the kinks in the choose-your-own-adventure format.

Am I looking forward to this? No question.

Today's comic presents the readership collective with the first crucial choice, so head over, get up to speed, and cast your vote for Ethan's course of action. His fate rests in our hands--and if we end up killing him off, at least it'll be an entertaining ride.

The Ultimate Crossover

'nuff said.