Tom Spurgeon on the power of Dollman. I don’t know a thing about Dollman — maybe he’s like a Russian nesting doll, with the ability to become smaller and smaller — but Spurgeon suggests that the hero’s power is mostly his name.
Not Much of a Punchline
The Easter Island heads are a cartoon cliche. Google the phrase and marvel at the variations. It turns out the heads have bodies, which I didn’t know. It’s a good start on a joke. But if this photograph is typical of the unearthed bodies, it feels like a wasted opportunity; a lot of work for a so-so punchline.
You Didn’t Know?: The Easter Island Heads Have Bodies | Geekologie.
My Futility Closet
Futility Closet is a brainy, eclectic blog, which should probably be re-titled Mark’s Futility Closet. It has nothing to do with cartoons, but it might. You never know. Sooner or later all topics — odd patents, bizarre crime, improbable history — are bound to cross it’s threshold.
Greg Ross, who stocks the closet, and is likely a closet member of Mensa, loves puzzles of logic and riddles of math. Four subjects in which I’m extremely good at being extremely bad.
Sometimes, however, he offers a post that even I can appreciate, front to back.
Probably Not the Harp
I have to post this second James Morrison video because Youtube wouldn’t let me watch it without a jarring advertisement that WOULDN’T QUIT, no matter how much I shouted, or clicked around the ad, on the ad, or anywhere on the screen because I didn’t see an obvious killswitch and the BUY THIS USE THIS assault had my ears by the lobes, refusing to let go.
I was like the sweaty red-faced guy in the movie who punches a bomb’s keypad at random, hunting for the code that will kill the bomb, except my situation was worse because the movie bomb was still ticking and mine had already blown into a thousand jagged sound bites, shredding my ears with shrapnel.
So here I am, taking a deep breath, waiting for my ear drums to heal.
James Morrison — if that’s his real name, and not some alien garble impossible to pronounce with the human tongue — is inhuman. Or superhuman. I let out a grunt when I saw him at the piano. Come on. Give me a break. It’s hard on the ego of a so-so trumpet player/cartoonist to watch him play a trombone along with his trumpet, and to play it so well you can’t tell if he’s a trombone player doubling on the trumpet or vice versa. But now he’s at the piano. I know he plays drums. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him play sax.
Is there an instrument he can’t play? Does he, finally, have a limit, like every other musician on this planet, when it comes time to solo?
Yes. Absolutely.
Without a doubt.
Most likely.
Possibly.
I haven’t seen him play a double-reed instrument. Nor a violin, guitar, bass or harp.
But I haven’t seen all of his videos.
Trompet
Can you spot one of the world’s greatest trumpet players in this video?
The Further Adventures of Mark in the Present in the Future
Years ago, I had a short-lived comic at Strange Horizons.
I liked it because it had my name in the title. Anonymity is the usual notice of a magazine cartoonist. Now I was eponymously anonymous.
Now I’m wondering if there should be further further adventures.
Mark Heath cartoons 