rubbercat.net

September 24, 2023

podcasts I’ve enjoyed lately

On the subject of podcasts, best wishes to Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House.

September 2, 2023
A single-panel Lockhorns comic. Loretta is looking at her smartphone and says to a friend 'Leroy's now on TikTok, so I'm doing a lot of doomscrolling.''

9/1/2023

It’s been well-documented that the Lockhorns are millennials. Even though this is word salad (can one doomscroll TikTok?) I appreciate that this is one of the few legacy strips making an effort to keep its non-aging characters continually updated, as opposed to… whatever was happening in Guy Gilchrist’s Nancy:

Nancy comic strip where Aunt Fritzi watches The Andy Griffith Show

9/1/2017

Nancy comic strip where Nancy and Sluggo just list a bunch of bands from the 60s, 70s, and early 80s and say 'OUR generation's music was the best!'

8/2/2015

August 29, 2023

Bruce Tinsley Watch

Decided to check in on Mallard Fillmore cartoonist Bruce Tinsley. Last time I checked, about three months ago, his seldom-used Twitter account had been hacked by a Bitcoin spammer. Well, now the account has been suspended:

A screenshot showing that the @mallardfillmore account has been suspended from Twitter.

Tinsley’s in his 60s and presumably in ill health, he shouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit. Why isn’t King Features Syndicate doing anything about this?

August 22, 2023

12/10/2007

As mentioned before, I’ve been on a quest to watch all 28 Blondie movies. I’ve made a page to put all my reviews so they’re all in one place. Also, I can include images. Currently I just have 15 more movies to go.

July 18, 2023
A Star Wars-themed Hot Wheels car. It features Moff Gideon, played by Giancarlo Esposito. The type of car is a '71 El Camino.

Nicely played, I get the reference 😉

July 11, 2023

My thoughts on the new Facebook app “Threads”

Screenshot of a Bluesky post by yours truly. The text reads 'I think it will be 'I think it will be funny when threads federates and the celebs get to mingle with guys from the stormfront pleroma instance'
July 8, 2023
Dennis the Menace comic. Dennis and his dad are at what appears to be a malt shop. Dennis says 'I like the places that only serve dessert!'   Family Circus comic. Billy is walking into the house, sweaty. His mom has a shocked expression and asks 'Its hot as WHAT out today?'

Dennis is being out-menaced by, of all people, Billy from The Family Circus. Shameful.

July 5, 2023

Blondie Watch

Something I came across when looking through early Blondie strips that I found kind of amusing is this short-lived feature called the Husbands’ Back Fence Club where readers were invited to send in their complaints about their spouses. Just a few months after Blondie and Dagwood’s big wedding and already the comic has pivoted to Battle of the Sexes, ball-and-chain type stuff. Here’s the first two strips in full:

Blondie comic strip. Male neighbors discuss their wives near a back fence. The last panel features complaints sent in by readers.
06/24/1933

Blondie comic strip. Again, Male neighbors discuss their wives near a back fence. The last panel features more complaints sent in by readers.
07/01/1933

And the rest of them, cropped:

More complaints from husbands, but this time there's complaints from wives too.
07/08/1933

Even more complaints from husbands.

07/15/1933

This one only features complaints from wives.
07/22/1933

Husbands complaining about their wives.
08/05/1933

July 3, 2023
Concept art for a carousel themed around Blue Sky Studios at a Malaysian theme park.

I’m gonna keep posting on Twitter until I can’t, which by the looks of things might be sooner rather than later. Who knows how long Bluesky will last, but I’m on there now as well. As always, check out this page for all the places I’m at on the computer.

June 20, 2023

A birthday cake featuring a Naboo starfighter. It says Happy Birthday Dave, except Dave has been crossed out and rubbercat.net has been written in its place.Today is the 20th anniversary of the first post I made here on rubbercat.net. I was a kid back then and it’s a little crazy to think that I’ve had this website for more than half my life. I’ve never mentioned this before, but the main impetus for creating it was that I’d been using the name Rubber Cat Productions in my zine and I feared all the URLS would be taken by the time I became an adult, so in addition to having a creative outlet I’d have some future insurance against that. Who knew they would just add new TLDs? As the internet continues to collapse, it is nice to have a space that I can control, free of the whims of social media and pressures of capital. Thank you for reading.

May 31, 2023
Link stands on the ground. A large title says HYRULE KINGDOM.

Spending most of my free time playing the new Zelda game, which has been an incredible experience. I love exploring caves and the underground depths. I am keeping a diary of my progress on my game blog.

April 29, 2023

Blondie Watch

Before she married Dagwood Bumstead, Blondie’s name was Blondie Boopadoop. That’s what Wikipedia says, that’s what King Features Syndicate says, that’s what the Library of Congress says. But… was it? Out of curiosity, I looked into it, and while “Boopadoop” had been used in official promotional material dating back to 1930, I have yet to find it used in an actual comic strip. A few caveats: my search was by no means exhaustive (it would be nice to have the collection IDW put out) the OCR might have missed something, or maybe there are some gaps in the archive. I would assume “Boopadoop” came from creator Chic Young, or at least had his approval, but it’s odd that he apparently never put it into the strip, so while it’s offical enough, it’s not 100% Comic Strip Canon. Not that the strip was necessarily super-strict about continuity, mind you, just ask the Woodleys’ missing children.

Below are some of my findings; it’s interesting that some of the comic strip’s storylines would also play out in the letters section.

Wedding announcement of Dagwood Bumstead and Miss Blondie Boopadoop
Belleville Daily News Democrat, August 18, 1930

Response to the previous wedding announcement from a lawyer to the Bumsteads claiming it is false
Santa Fe New Mexican, August 23, 1930

An ad announcing the newspaper will start carrying Blondie
Lebanon Daily News, October 8, 1930

Wedding announcement of Dagwood Bumstead and Miss Blondie Boopadoop
The Windsor Star, March 12, 1932

Wedding announcement of Dagwood Bumstead and Miss Blondie Boopadoop
Tampa Bay Times, December 20, 1942

April 23, 2023
Scan from an old comic book of the header image for the Ask the Answer Man column

Scan from the letters section from an old comic book. Q: Does Commissioner Gordon know that his daughter is Batgirl? Sandra Garrett. A: Yes.
Steel #1 (1977), via 13th Dimension

Maybe things were different in 1977, but in most Batman stuff I’ve read or seen it’s implied but never outright stated that the commish knows a secret identity or two, so I laughed at how blunt this answer is.

April 20, 2023
I think a lot of tech people never chatted with SmarterChild on AIM and it shows
April 14, 2023
An executive gives a presentation at the announcement of Max.

I watched the announcement that HBO Max is rebranding as just “Max.” I get it, on a basic level people don’t associate HBO with kids and family stuff, and they might reasonably assume HBO Max is just HBO and not all the other stuff they also have. I’m not sure renaming it “Max” fixes those issues, and dropping HBO – the 50-year old brand people already associate with “TV you have to pay for” – from the name of your streaming service seems like corporate malpractice. The most inexplicable decision to me is ditching the color purple in favor of blue. Everyone uses blue. Purple was fairly unique, it was key to the service’s identity, and it’d create continuity with the old service so millions of subscribers don’t go “wha happen?”

When they were talking about family shows they showed a graphic of Cartoon Network’s Summer Camp Island in the background, kind of a dick move considering they unceremoniously purged it from the service last year.

March 14, 2023
A single-panel poltical cartoon by Henry Payne. The title Regulate Everything Everywhere All At Once in written in the style of the logo for  Everything Everywhere All At Once. Joe Biden is running through an office throwing papers labeled Regulate Oil, Reg Autos, Reg Gas Stoves, Regulate Washers, and Reg Light Bulbs at bewildered office workers in cubicles.

Presumably Payne would’ve made a cartoon based on whatever movie won Best Picture, so I’m going to take a stab at the other nominees:

All Quiet on the Biden Front: Biden napping while a tank labeled Inflation crushes taxpayers

Top Gun Malarkey: Biden about to crash a fighter jet labeled The Economy into a mountain

EPAtar: The Regulation of Water: Na’vi versions of Biden and AOC standing on a beach, talking about the need to protect the environment with burdensome regulation, unaware that a massive tidal wave labeled Red Wave is about to wipe them out

The Failmans: Biden sitting on a couch saying “Great movie, son!” as Hunter shows him a pornographic home video

The Banshees of Bidensherin: Biden looking distraught as he cradles a dead donkey labeled Democrat Party in his arms

Wokeness Talking: Biden dressed as a Mennonite woman saying things like “there are more than 2 genders”

DisasTár: Biden conducting an orchestra with the various instruments labeled Debt, Crime, Critical Race Theory, Wokeness, etc.

Triangulation of Badness: People on a cruise ship vomiting after seeing a Biden 2024 poster

Evilness: Biden dressed as Elvis during his comeback special saying he’s bringing back inflation

March 7, 2023

Mallard Fillmore Watch

A Mallard Fillmore strip in which Mallard offers an unhoused man some money.
Mallard: Here you go... maybe buy yourself a nice cup of coffee.
Man: Coffee? But that's only a twenty.
3/5/2023

Mallard Fillmore voluntarily giving a generous handout to someone less fortunate??? Has the world gone topsy-turvy?!?