Cythusly's weblog

Continuing my post about what web comics I read on a regular basis. I decided I’m going to do a couple at a time as I have time, probably about once a week until I run out of webcomics.

garfield minus garfield – Jim Davis/Dan Walsh (5 days a week)

What happens when you take Garfield out of the Garfield strips? You see a very manic depressive Jon Arbuckle. And it’s hilarious. The strips artwork are the classic Jim Davis Garfield strips with Garfield edited out (hence g-g.) Not much to say other than I get quite a few kicks out of reading this comic, every day it posts I range from a hearty chuckle to almost falling out of my chair laughing.

Ctrl + Alt + Del – Tim Buckley (3 days a week)

I’ve been reading CAD for a few years and I really love it, and it’s been a love-love relationship. I love the stories and humor Tim weaves. There’s a few different characters and plot threads, there’s the main story – that has Ethan, a gamer who is not too bright sometimes, his friend/roommate Lucas, also a gamer, the smarter of the pair, also Lilah, a girl gamer. There’s a larger cast than that, and they even have an animated series! The characters are lovable and genuine. Check it out.

-Tyler

I have most of the web comics I read on a regular basis posted under the ‘webcomics’ link on my side bar, but I felt they needed a little more attention and I realized I have been really neglecting my updates of this site (most of the stuff I write about doesn’t belong here so they go other places) so I figured I’d kill two birds. One stone. Or post. Whatever.

Now the cool thing about webcomics is that they’re comics… free on the web. I read quite a few on a regular basis and I’m going to break them down, on regularity of updates. I won’t be grading them or anything, as anything I read is already so freaking awesome it’d be off any pre-established ranking system thus meaning I would be forced to create a new one – and I’m lazy.

The Devils Panties – Jennie Breeden (6 days a week, Sunday nude drawing class pictures)

I’ve been reading this comic almost as long as I’ve been reading webcomics and I love it. Jennie’s art style is pleasing, she’s very talented but where the comic really shines is the writing – she takes stuff that has happened to her, or around her in her real life and just translated it to a 3-5 panel comic that always proves to be utterly hilarious. She’s a cool person, her webcomic deserves a little more attention, she’s got an actual book she puts out (something up with publishing lately, I think) that also warrants some attention. In addition to all that, if she wasn’t overworked enough, Jennie stopped doing her blog but started a vlog on youtube that is great – she’s so cute when she geeks out!

PvP – Scott Kurtz (5 days a week)

Kurtz is a funny man and it’s been great seeing his art progress. Every time his comic updates it’s like a little Christmas for me, they’re always funny and the art is great with crisp, clean lines and no colors (that doesn’t bother me at all, infact, I actually prefer it as just inked lines.) I recently mentioned Scott along with Mike & Jerry aka. Gabe & Tycho respectively, a few months back in a post about D&D and apparently they’re going to be recording a new session with Wil Wheaton – yes, THAT Wil Wheaton. I can’t say enough about PvP; it’s a great comic, I love how easily followed the continuity is and watching Kurtz’s art style evolve over the years.

I’ll post more later, this is all I had time for before class only 3 more days left!

-Tyler

Music I listened to while writing this post: ▼

I was just surfing around for new movies and came across one that interested me as a lover of music and music history: Cadillac Records. Check out the trailer.

I guess it was released on the 5th of this month and I’m actually really surprised I missed any news on this one (thanks to school probably, that or a crippling WoW addiction at the moment). Chronicling Chess Records it stars Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess, Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, Eamonn Walker as Howlin’ Wolf, and Beyoncé Knowles (meh) as Etta James.

Holy fucking shit! This really looks great. I’m really not a fan of Beyoncé Knowles at all, but I’m willing to be optimistic with this one.

Chess Records began as a small store in Chicago called Aristocrat Records. Leonard Chess and his brother Phil bought out the company and renamed it Chess Records. Leonard and Phil would bring in artists they would find and have them sit in with their session musicians, many of them accomplished artists in their own right. Many of the above artists had recorded with Chess, blues musicians and even The Rolling Stones, from England, before they were the “bad boys” the bad version of The Beatles.

An amazing number of well known artists recorded with Chess in the 50′s and 60′s, among my favourites are Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, & Etta James. It was the home for the Chicago Blues, an electrified version of the Delta Blues.

I will be seeing this as soon as finals are over next week. I’m a gigantic music nerd, and Chess was around at the beginning of R&B music, back before it was overproduced tripe, back when it meant something to rise up from nothing and become something. Back when the music was… amazing.

-Tyler