In anticipation of next week’s festivities, I present Nothing To Hide, a five-pager that sees Archie, Betty and Veronica uncovering the mystery surrounding Driftwood Island.

The gang have noticed an unusual amount of traffic to and from the secluded island which, with the exception of seagulls, is normally uninhabited. Having dealt with his fair share of crime rings and saboteurs, Archie’s innocent inquisitiveness turns into raging paranoia as he suspects a secret society has set up camp on the island. He leaves the girls behind to investigate. They disregard his warnings, and that which has been seen can never be unseen.

Betty and Veronica don’t seem particularly fazed by seeing Mr. Weatherbee, Miss Grundy and Cheryl Blossom in the buff. I can only suspect that their indifference has to do with Betty spending time on a farm somewhere, and Veronica’s father being the leader of the Riverdale chapter of the Hellfire club.

Speaking of which, I love how the worldly Mr. Lodge shrugs the whole thing off. The filthy rich have secret cravings that you or I will never fully comprehend.

“That should be enough right there, but I also think Brian’s fighting a phantom argument against members of the 2003 blogosphere when he stresses the importance of the DM in terms of the overall sales landscape.” – Tom Spurgeon

“Such is life as a has-been “luminary of the Comics Blogosphere”". – Johnny Bacardi

Apropos of nothing, wonderfully creepy image by Jim Rugg for Sleazy Slice #3 (link NSFW).

My memory’s shot and my Herriman biography is buried somewhere, so I’m not 100% certain that the famed cartoonist used to go by ‘Jake’ on occassion, though that character certainly looks like him. Now I’m wondering who ‘Jerry’ is.

Another Monday, another Herriman pick-me-up from the pages of Don Marquis’ the lives and times of archy and mehitabel.

“Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film” – Werner Herzog (Quote cribbed from the always-excellent Kung Fu Fridays)

Somehow I am not able to receive any channels that may be showing the Oscars, which is just as well. J. was nice enough to call me and let me know that the only award I had any real interest in, Best Animated Feature, was given to Wall-E.

There was a big to-do a few weeks back when Kung Fu Panda swept the awards presented by the California animation industry, the Annies. Considering that Wall-E is considered by many film critics as one of the year’s best movies, animated or otherwise, this was a considerable upset.

I believe Kung Fu Panda was the most innovative mainstream animated feature to be released since Toy Story but, outside of animators, very few people would agree. On my first day at work after viewing it, I commiserated with the co-workers who had seen it, and we were amazed at what the Kung Fu Panda team were able to pull off. Stretch and squash is a cornerstone of animation, but it’s so difficult to achieve in computer animation that for most of their films Pixar have used characters with limited pliability, if only to work within the supposed restrictions of the medium. I still remember seeing traditional animator Brad Bird demonstrate to Pixar staff, many of whom had only ever worked within the narrow parameters of computer animation, that with enough effort they could push things even further. With Kung Fu Panda, Dreamworks shattered those barriers and made it look fantastic. It was like the first person to run the four-minute mile. It inspired us to attempt to make the same attempt, despite whatever obstacles the technology placed in front of us.

And I guess that’s why I’m not surprised that Kung Fu Panda won at The Annies. Shame the Academy didn’t agree.

Character design by Nico Marlet.

Happy Birthday to the silent power behind I Was Ben!

Archie lets Betty, Veronica and Midge know he’s available for the Switch Dance, expecting only one of them to take him out.

You wouldn’t think it at first glance, but this six-pager is almost subversive in the way it upends Archie tradition, and not just because Archie is dating one more girl then usual. Not only do they acknowledge Archie’s strange predilection for double-booking, but in this case Archie has an out. He can gracefully decline two of the offers without trouble. Yet he’s overcome with a destructive compulsion to up his game.

The other truly strange aspect of Three Queens And A Joker is its structure. The reason I chose this story at all was because it reminded me of what Grant Morrison attempted to achieve with Final Crisis, of all things. The dance is represented by a rapid succession of panels that only show a fragment of what’s going on at any given time, as if every other panel went missing.

Typically, this kind of story gets the set-up out of the way quickly in order to shift into the slapstick, that is, Archie’s attempts to juggle multiple dates at once. Here, we don’t even get into the dance until page five, and Betty, Veronica and Midge only appear in two panels apiece. The story trades on our anticipation of the girls’ reaction to Archie’s womanizing without actually showing it.