Random Happenstance

"It's the Great Disaster, Charlie Brown"


I may as well 'fess up right now: Charlie Brown isn't actually in this one, I just loved the title. Sorry. Click to enlarge, last week's strip is here (or further down the page...) and a big thanks to Doomkopf for their Countdown to Final Crisis coverage. Taking a bullet and saving me three bucks a week...









Since Countdown retold/reset/mangled up a new origin for Kamandi, there's been a lot of write-ups on him lately. Comics Should Be Good! has a good one here, for example. Jack Kirby's original Kamandi was set in the future of the DC Universe, as seen in an issue where Superman's costume is found. Now, it's set in one of DC's 52 earths, and apparently, the stupid and unlucky one. It also may or may not get blown up as well, that was a bit unclear, but again, I'm not really reading Countdown, sorry.

I've complained before that I don't like the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity change of Kamandi, with the Great Disaster averted, growing up to be Tommy Tomorrow. He's OMAC's grandson, and to my mind, it's not too big of a leap to see Thundarr the Barbarian as Kamandi's grandson. I really liked Thundarr as a kid, even though I always wondered where the hell they were riding off to at the end of each episode. They weren't on a quest, or really going anywhere, and every new place they went was just as dangerous and crappy as the last. And this last paragraph is a stark reminder that I really, really want that set of Thundarr action figures from a few years back.

On the subject of action figures, let's talk about "Tuftan." Now, his friends are from the Stan Winston Realm of the Claw line of a few years ago, when the action figure aisle was thickly packed and companies tried new things and a lot of figures went on steep clearance. (That has to be how I got them, I'm afraid I'm not a cat person, sorry.) One is Zynda and the other Sabyr, and these reviews from OAFE just made me wonder where the hell all of their accessories, and the bases, got to.

As for "Tuftan" himself, well, I don't remember. I know I bought him for like $2.50, and I'm 90% sure he's from a video game. He's not very poseable, and the legs are immovable pegs, except one that pops off due to a fall. Still, the paint is very nice, and I like his little tiger whiskers.

But the best thing about Tuftan, Talky Tawny, whoever he is; is that I bought him right about the same time we moved into our house, and more-or-less ever since he's been perched on a ledge in the window over the basement stairs. Tuftan's one of the few action figures I have that's been out of that basement for any extended period of time, and has also survived the occasional header off the ledge. He's been good luck and has kept the house safe, except for the basement, which is apparently out of his jurisdiction, and what do you expect a tiger-guy to know about plumbing anyway?

The "Fellowship" shot came out of...well, happenstance. It's snowed here quite late this year. Even this morning. Climate change, my pale white ass. If there was such a thing, would my seasonal affective disorder be so bad? (I'm joking, of course. Climate change is real, and anything with the abbreviation SAD has to be a joke.)

Now, I read the Lord of the Rings books as a wee little kid, and then quickly moved on to Robert E. Howard's Conan or Michael Moorcock's Elric, i.e. books where things happened. I liked the movies much, much more than the books, because even allowing for the occasional dramatic panaroma shot they can gloss over the endless hours of walking, walking, walking...hey, didn't they have horses in the books? I remember ragging on the first movie for the conceit of trying to cross basically an entire continent, with a party including four hobbits and a dwarf, or five midgets, on foot. Yeah, no hurry, guys. They would've made better time riding the human characters...

But if I was forming a Fellowship, hey, who would you rather have, Pippin, or Trapjaw? If you say Pippin, you are only lying to yourself. And it only occurs to me right now, about a month too late: I have two Battle Cats, rescued from a yard sale. Why did I only use one? They were in the same bin!

And the dwarf and the...ogre-y thing are both from Shadowrun: Duels, and I don't remember their names. The dark elf girl may or may not be from the same game as Tuftan, but has way more articulation, so she's from a different company. God, I'm helpful. I used to work in a mall, and bought a ton of toys on clearance with my lunch money.

Deathlok and Frankenstein are both Marvel Legends like Nightcrawler and Deadpool, and we all know Timmy. Deathlok's from a very 70's horrible future (set in the far-flung year of 1990!) and I think I had Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke's Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein in mind as well. And even the most useless reanimated semi-corpse would be preferrable to Samwise...whatever his name was. Before the hate begins, I did like the Lord of the Rings figures that I bought, and Toy Biz produced the hell out of that line: try and tell me a character that didn't get a figure there. I didn't buy a ton of them, but I kinda miss seeing them on the racks.

And if you can identify Pool's new sword, that would be impressive. And disturbing. Pool and Kurt have (at least) next week off, since we'll probably have some strips looking at some guys that are in a movie this summer...no, not you, Hulk. I did one Hulk panel and don't think I could do another that didn't sound like Toyfare's version.