Hunting Of The Snark: Aren't You Glad That ODDBALL COMICS Isn't "SUPERDICKERY"?

[Scott Shaw!]

Dennis Mallonee just sent me a link to this "stupid cover" design of mine -- an upcoming issue of Heroic Comics' FLARE -- over at Superdickery:

http://www.superdickery.com/other/281.html

After checking out a few of the site's "columns", I practically feel like some kinda highbrow! I have no problems with the comics he's spotlighting, but man, those snarky captions! Who writes this thing, David Spade?

Aloha,

Scott!

P.S.: Would SOMEONE here puh-lease set Mr. Superdickery straight about ODDBALL COMICS and fish-in-the-face covers? -- SS!

[MDG]

Yeah, I've looked through this site, and, while it's kind've amusing, he doesn't come up with anything much wittier than you'd hear bantering with someone as you go though long boxes of back issues at a comic show.

And even though I'm embarrassed by how funny I find this:
http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/3.html

it's done better here:
http://dialbforblog.com/archives/136/

MDG

[Scott Shaw!]

...He doesn't come up with anything much wittier than you'd hear bantering with someone as you go though long boxes of back issues at a comic show.

Yeah, especially if you were trading quips with Beavis and Butthead.

Aloha,

Scott!

[Gaz]

Scott, it's a simple fact, if it's on the site, it's going to be mocked, that's what the site's there for. If you don't like that (and I can understand why you might not enjoy it) then don't go there, easy. I honestly can't understand people who feel the need to seek out snarky things that annoy them, and then proceed to snark about them. It's counterproductive, isn't it? :confused:

[Scott Shaw!]

You miss my point, Gaz. It's fine if Mr. Superdickery wants to feature a cover that I designed on his site, but making fun of something that's already satirical in nature strikes me as being wasted effort (if any effort was involved.) And when I read that he doesn't "get" the fish-in-the-face, well, that's a clear sign of a real novice when it comes to the subject of silly funnybooks.

But after crusing his "Superdickery" site, which plays around with much of the same material that I do in my ODDBALL COMICS column -- you DO read my column here, don't you? -- I discovered that he only provides the most elementary of snarky remarks. Nothing actually clever, or putting the cover in context with social phenomenon, or identifying artists or publishers, or story synopsis -- just mean-spirited commentary. (This is a guy who seems to think the word "dick" is funny, too.) In comparison, I'd like to think that ODDBALL COMICS not only takes the high road on such matters, but that I provide some actual legit content in addition to the pointing and snickering.

>Hunh, hunh<

So I've got that going for me...which is nice.

Aloha,

Scott!

[Gaz]

You miss my point, Gaz. It's fine if Mr. Superdickery wants to feature a cover that I designed on his site, but making fun of something that's already satirical in nature strikes me as being more than a bit wasted effort. But when I read that he doesn't "get" the fish-in-the-face, well, there's the sign of a true novice on the subject of silly funnybooks.

But after crusing his site, which plays around with much of the same material that I do in my ODDBALL COMICS column -- you DO read my column here, don't you? -- but he only provides the most elementary of snarky remarks. Nothing actually clever, or putting the cover in context with social phenomenon, or identifying artists or publishers, or story synopsis -- just mean-spirited commentary. In comparison, I'd like to think that ODDBALL COMICS not only takes the high road on such matters, but that I provide some actual legit content in addition to the pointing and snickering.

So I've got that going for me...which is nice.

Aloha,

Scott!

I read the column sporadically, a few at a time, usually, haven't done it for a while, actually. But the out-of-context aspect is part of their joke. The "BatBoner" one isn't funny if you put it in context, because of linguistic trends at the time, but it is funny without it. You play to Chris Guest audience, and they to the Farrelly Brothers fans. Both are equally valid. Funny is subjective, but unless it's someone getting seriously injured for real, then I won't judge someone for making jokes I don't get.
Besides, the whole site is tongue in cheek, from what I've seen. It's about pointing out how silly this wacky medium can be, and often was/is.

Put it this way. I read your column if I want to learn first and smile as I do so. I read the other kind of thing if I just want something to make me laugh after a bad day.
Diff'rent strokes, if you know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

[Scott Shaw!]

"Boner"?

>Hunh, hunh<

Aloha,

Scott!

[Buzz Dixon]

And even though I'm embarrassed by how funny I find this...
http://dialbforblog.com/archives/136/

MDG, unlike the author of that page, I don't think it was an "accidental" boner. I think it was fully crafted knowing exactly what the word's other meaning was.

What I find most interesting is that with a dozen or so panels, the entire story is adequately summed up. There's more plot in these few excerpts than in three issues of a typical comic today!

[bartl]

Dennis Mallonee just sent me a link to this "stupid cover" design of mine -- an upcoming issue of Heroic Comics' FLARE -- over at Superdickery:
Now you've done it. I'm going to have to take all my exclamation points, and put them into a savings account, now.

[bienvenu]

This is the first time that I've heard a negative comment about the Superdickery website.

It's been repeatedly mentioned and linked on every message board that I frequent, and the consensus has always (100%) been that it's a hilarious site.

The guy has a fantastic sense of humor and is skilled at delivering one liners.

His comment on your cover clearly states that he understands that it's a send up of silver age cliches. He's just unfamiliar with the fish in the face cliche, or using the fish gag as the punchline in a "last straw" type of joke.

By the way, the only place that I've seen the fish in the face sited as a silver age cover standard is on your website. Mr. Evanier may have mentioned it while plugging your site, but other than that I've never heard it mentioned.

[telle]

Superdickery has jumped the shark.

[Sijo]

In a (slightly) related note: I just had the chance to read a Trade Paperback collection of old Superman "Imaginary Stories" like the ones we often talk about here. As you know, I've always had a soft spot for the Silver Age Superman Family, even if I could never take them seriously. So, I looked forward to really enjoy the book. However, a few things spoiled my mood.

First, it turned out I had already read most of the stories included. I guess I should've expected that. But to drive the point home, the issue included the original ads for OTHER imaginary Superman stories I had NOT seen!! (Lois as a Superwoman on Krypton? Luthor as Jor-El??) How's that for teasing!! :eek:

And then there was the fact that some of the stories were oddly tragic. Captain Marvel as the last survivor of a nuclear war, Superman's death at Luthor's hands, Bruce Wayne adopted by the Kents only to lose them to a gunman as well, and most painful of all, "The Three Wives of Superman" with Supes marrying Lois, Lana and Lori, in order, after each dies by very contrived circumstances (that Supes could've prevented, he learns in the end, throwing salt in his wounds.) Gee, I didn't realize these stories could get that negative. Not exactly the cheerful stuff I was hoping for... But hey, at least I got to remember the wonders of that era, not to mention enjoy again the art of people like Schaffenberger! :)

Anybody know where I can find more of these DC Imaginary Stories to read?

[MacQuarrie]

This is the first time that I've heard a negative comment about the Superdickery website.

It's been repeatedly mentioned and linked on every message board that I frequent, and the consensus has always (100%) been that it's a hilarious site.

The guy has a fantastic sense of humor and is skilled at delivering one liners.

His comment on your cover clearly states that he understands that it's a send up of silver age cliches. He's just unfamiliar with the fish in the face cliche, or using the fish gag as the punchline in a "last straw" type of joke.

By the way, the only place that I've seen the fish in the face sited as a silver age cover standard is on your website. Mr. Evanier may have mentioned it while plugging your site, but other than that I've never heard it mentioned.
Meh.

It's occasionally funny, seldom "hilarious." But nobody ever asked my opinion, so I kept it to myself. Superdickery is one of those sites that people send to me with the declaration that it's the funniest thing in the world and that I will (a) die; (b) rupture an internal organ; or (c) urinate on myself, due to the uncontrollable spasms of laughter certain to be provoked by the contents of the page. Such declarations are usually punctuated with LOLs and smiley faces. Invariably, the site in question is at best mildly amusing.

Frankly, I think Typo Lad's "What Were They Thinking?" (http://www.livejournal.com/users/typolad/) does a much better job of mocking individual panels and covers, and Scott's scholarly approach is far more entertaining. But that's just me. I don't think HomeStarRunner is the funniest thing in the world either.

[Scott Shaw!]

Jim, I've always wondered why Typo Lad has never dropped in here to join the various discussions on all things Oddball. Tell your pal to consider himself officially invited.

Not to sound defensive, here are a few reasons why ODDBALL COMICS is very different from other similar sites:

-- I've been collecting this kind of material all my life; that's around fifty years of Oddness.

-- Being a cartoonist, my commentary and observations are "informed" , allowing me to point out aspects of the comics' writing and artwork that only another pro would even notice.

-- I've personally known many of the artists who've drawn these comics and often pass on their opinions and "insider" facts about their lives.

-- I've been presenting ODDBALL COMICS, in one form or another, since the 1970s. That's four decades of looking at this stuff, and I keep noticing new Odd aspects all the time.

-- I've produced ODDBALL COMICS trading cards, a calendar, and soon, in January and February 2006, a live slideshow for eight performances at Hollywood's Acme Theater.

-- My ODDBALL COMICS column here at Comic Book Resources is approaching its sixth year of existence, with nearly 1,100 comics in its archives.

-- I've rarely, if ever, referred to this material as being "stupid".

-- I actually LIKE the ODDBALL COMICS I spotlight!

Aloha,

Scott!

[Gaz]

Jim, I've always wondered why Typo Lad has never dropped in here to join the various discussions on all things Oddball. Tell your pal to consider himself officially invited.

Not to sound defensive, here are a few reasons why ODDBALL COMICS is very different from other similar sites:

-- I've been collecting this kind of material all my life; that's around fifty years of Oddness.

-- Being a cartoonist, my commentary and observations are "informed" , allowing me to point out aspects of the comics' writing and artwork that only another pro would even notice.

-- I've personally known many of the artists who've drawn these comics and often pass on their opinions and "insider" facts about their lives.

-- I've been presenting ODDBALL COMICS, in one form or another, since the 1970s. That's four decades of looking at this stuff, and I keep noticing new Odd aspects all the time.

-- I've produced ODDBALL COMICS trading cards, a calendar, and soon, in January and February 2006, a live slideshow for eight performances at Hollywood's Acme Theater.

-- My ODDBALL COMICS column here at Comic Book Resources is approaching its sixth year of existence, with nearly 1,100 comics in its archives.

-- I've rarely, if ever, referred to this material as being "stupid".

-- I actually LIKE the ODDBALL COMICS I spotlight!

Aloha,

Scott!

Which is great, and almost always compelling, but very rarely, to me, laugh-out-loud funny. It's more "huh, I never knew that" and "that's kinda wacky, but cool". Which I DO enjoy, it's just a different wavelength. Just like I can read an in-depth retrospective on 50's B-movies, or I can watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. Both could be entertaining, but for very different reasons. That's all that's going on here.
(BTW, Mac, hasn't Typo actually contributed to Superdickery? :confused: )

[Scott Shaw!]

Gaz, it's truly a shame that you live in all the way in Scotland, because I think you'd get a much bigger kick out of my live presentation of my Oddball Comics slide show, performed annually at San Diego's Comic-Con International, WonderCon and ocassionally, other comic conventions here in the USA. I show around 200 cover-images in approximately an hour and a half (in other words, it's VERY fast-paced), arranged by cover-theme, and with a fraction of the commentary I provide in my columns. It's geared to the average person who happens to dig comics, but the hard-core fanboys love it, too. I'm always tinkering with its content, but the last version I performed (at SDCCi '05) had a roomful of hundreds of people laughing so hard that I was afraid someone was gonna hurt him/herself, or at least necessitate a mopping-up crew to clean the seats and floor in the show's aftermath. Not only are my comments much more pointed, but with the cover images blown up to the side of a barn, they gain an entirely new, even more surreal quality. I also show entire runs of what I consider to be my favorite Oddball series of all time, including PSYCHOANALYSIS, BRAIN BOY, TALES CALCULATED TO DRIVE YOU BATS, THE CLOSE SHAVES OF PAULINE PERIL, KONA -- MONARCH OF MONSTER ISLE and best of all, HERBIE. Plus, you get to see plenty of fish-in-the-face and crotch-centric covers, too!

Of course, if some local convention in Scottland, er, Scotland wanted to invite me to guest-attend and perform my show...

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

All the same, thanks for the kind words.

Aloha,

Scott!

P.S.: Did ANYONE here catch my ODDBALL COMICS show at SDCCI this past July? -- SS!

[bienvenu]

Scott, you really are coming across as being defensive. I apologize if that's a mistake on my part.

You have no need to defend your work. At the risk of quoting Wolverine, you're the best at what you do. Everyone here knows that.

Superdickery is a totally different concept from yours. While you provide a comprehensive and loving jab at the silliness of comics from a professional's perspective, he does a snarkier take delivered with one liners.

I can enjoy and appreciate both of your sites for the different types of entertainment that they provide.

[Buzz Dixon]

Which is great, and almost always compelling, but very rarely, to me, laugh-out-loud funny. It's more "huh, I never knew that" and "that's kinda wacky, but cool". Which I DO enjoy, it's just a different wavelength. Just like I can read an in-depth retrospective on 50's B-movies, or I can watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. Both could be entertaining, but for very different reasons. That's all that's going on here.
I'm good friends with Bill Warren (another Hawaiian shirt enthusiast!) who wrote the definintive scholarly tome on 1950s sci-fi films, KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES! :cool:

And he loathes MST3K. :evilangry

I, on the other hand, love both his 2-volume film history and their TV series. :)

But I no longer wear Hawaiian shorts... :confused:

[Scott Shaw!]

Scott, you really are coming across as being defensive. I apologize if that's a mistake on my part.

That's okay, bienvenu, I probably AM a bit defensive, especially considering that another site about weird comics is using a cover that I designed -- and that issue of FLARE hasn't even been published yet!

(Hey, at least I didn't refer to that other site as "Superdickless" or some other unnecessarily rude variation of "Superdickery", doc!)

Aloha,

Scott!

P.S.: "MST3K"? Nah, that's informed, smart and -- at least during Joel Hodgson's regime -- funny.) I perceive it to be more like VH1's "I LOVE THE 80's"...which is enjoyable despite the usually-uninspired "easy shot" snarkiness by most of the guest non-celebrities. -- SS!

[Sijo]

Again, on the themes of "nostalgia" and "snarkiness":

I just started watching I Love the 80's: 3D! on VH1 (I didn't even know about it- I only found out because I followed Bartl's advice and set up a My Yahoo! page with its own TV programming chart. Thanks, Bartl!) I love these VH1 nostalgia shows (for those of you who have never seen them, they're TV specials were minor celebrities -and even more obscure comedians- talk about and lambast stuff from the last few decades, from Show Business to Politics. Despite that, it is clear that they love this stuff, which is why I can enjoy their put-downs. It isn't so much the jokes themselves (after all, ALL jokes ridicle someone or something) as the attitude they are made that really matters. There IS a difference between making fun of something because you think it's silly and another if you do it because you hate it.

And also on this theme: Anyone else here has seen X-Play on G4TV? It's a video game review show, one of several on the game channel. The twist is that it has an "attitude"- putting down everyone and everything, including many of the games they review. I imagine they do this to attract the segment of angry young video game players, but the thing is, they lay it on TOO thick. It's put-downs from beginning to end. Yes, I know that's the idea, but since they never give it a break, it gets old pretty fast. Not to mention that you can tell that the people in it are SO desperate to be in Show Business, that several episodes involve comedy skits that barely have anything to do with video games- and are unvariable morbid. So, why do I watch this show? Well, for one thing, as I noted recently I just tend to leave the TV on while I work on my PC, on a channel whose programming I mostly enjoy, such as G4- and they rerun the show endlessly! For another thing, the game reviews ARE fair (even if listening to it you'd think they hate everything except Grand Theft Auto) and finally because the writing and acting in the show IS good -certainly better than in the rest of the G4 tv shows, whose hosts need to learn how to look natural when reading cue screens- it's just a shame that the X-Play crew hasn't learned to pace themselves; they should take a note from professional "snarky" comedians like Dennis Miller, and know when to sound likeable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Play

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

SUPERDICKERY has a section called "STUPOR POWERS" that focuses on many outlandish super-powers, some of them belonging to heroes from obscure comic book companies; Several of these heroes have been spotlighted in ODDBALL COMICS!

The list includes the following:
* TIGER-MAN (This guy came from the old Atlas-Seaboard line of comic book titles of the 1970s; He debuted in the black-&-white magazine THRILLING ADVENTURE STORIES #1; then moved on to his own comic book title, which lasted three issues; This feature had art from ERNIE COLON & STEVE DITKO [Today is Mr. DITKO's birthday]; SUPERDICKERY billed this guy as the "WORST SUPER-HERO EVER"; This guy has not appeared in any ODDBALL COMICS column, but he SHOULD HAVE!!!)
*The BOUNCER ("YOUR FAVORITE PIN-UP" & ODDBALL COMICS alumnus was chosen by SUPERDICKERY for having a STUPOR POWER; SUPERDICKERY also commented on his STUPOR POWER by singing the chorus of the 1980s-Era GUMMI BEARS cartoon; This guy starred in five issues of his own title; One of his stories was published in the back pages of Charlton's mid-1950s revival of The BLUE BEETLE!)
*SPACE CHICKEN MAN (This guy was the star of SATURN AGAINST THE EARTH, A series from the pages of David McKay's FUTURE COMICS; His costume resembles a SPACE CHICKEN; Also worthy of ODDBALL COMICS coverage!!!!)
* FATMAN, The HUMAN FLYING SAUCER (Another ODDBALL COMICS alumnus)
* RAINBOW BOY (This guy appeared in the pages of HEROIC COMICS; His STUPOR POWER was the ability to shoot a rainbow from his behind)

I have another hero that should be spotlighted in STUPOR POWERS: The LIGHTER-THAN-AIR super-heroes called AIR MALE & STAMPY, who starred in the pages of SNAPPY COMICS #1 ( www.comicbookresources.com/oddball/index=date=2000-08-03 )

You can E-mail to: superdickerywebmaster@yahoo.com


Thanks;

J.A.P.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

TESSIE The TYPIST is seen on a SUPERDICKERY page that showcased the cover of GAY COMICS #22, which shows her blowing her birthday cake right on SKIDSY's face!

www.superdickery.com/seduction/24.html


Does this issue deserve ODDBALL COMICS coverage?


J.A.P.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

The GREEN LAMA is the latest STUPOR HERO to be showcased in STUPOR POWERS:

www.superdickery.com/stupor/52.html


J.A.P.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

Here is a cover that has Captain America fighting vampires in WW2:
www.superdickery.com/propaganda/58.html



J.A.P.

[dan bailey]

hmmm ... i noticed awhile back that superdickery hasn't been updated since, i think, novemember, & now i see it fell victim to hacking just a few days ago.

all right -- which one of you minions of scott shaw! is the guilty party? 'fess up, now.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

Nobody here ever hacked into Superdickery!


Are we right?


J.A.P.

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

This thread is now part of the Classic Comics forum, so give us your ideas for it!


J.A.P.

[Cei-U!]

Why did this thread need to be revived, other than to serve as a commercial for another website?

Cei-U!
I summon the confusion!