Joe Blevins's Blog, page 11

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 22: A whole bunch of Nancys

How does Nancy get her hair to do... that?
The beloved Comics Outta Context may be gone forever, but there is still at least one comics account on Twitter that has continued to delight me throughout 2024. Obviously, I'm referring to Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller , maintained by the indispensable Johnny Callicutt. Each day, he will post panels or even full comic strips from the super-long-lived comic strip Nancy. What's great about the account is that it pulls from different eras -- from the early days when the strip was known as Fritzi Ritz and focused on Nancy's adult caretaker to the more recent strips written and drawn by Olivia James. But, as the name indicates, the focus is on Nancy's peak decades when the strip was done by the great Ernie Bushmiller (1905-1982).
The simplicity of Nancy makes it perfect for the kind of parodies I do, so here are a bunch of those all at once. var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 21: A Pink Flamingos Christmas!

"It's going to be a lot different with a baby around."
As I've said in the past, I read about Ed Wood's movies long before I ever actually saw any of them. The same is true for John Waters' movies. Thanks to books like Cult Movies (1981) and Midnight Movies (1983), I'd read detailed descriptions of John's work, but the films themselves were difficult to access in suburban mid-Michigan in the 1990s. This was pre-streaming and pre-DVD. The internet was primitive in those days, too, but I eventually found someone in a newsgroup selling crude VHS bootlegs of the Waters movies. They were of abysmal quality, but they were better than nothing.
Today's nativity-themed comic adapts some memorable dialogue from Waters' most famous film, Pink Flamingos (1972). In the film, two lesbians, Merle (Jackie Sidel) and Etta (Pat LeFaiver), buy a baby on the black market from the villainous Marbles (Mink Stole and David Lochary) and name him Noodles. TRIVIA: The purloined baby is portrayed by Max Mueller, the real-life son of Pink Flamingos cast member Cookie Mueller. The baby's name is a punning reference to Mueller's Pasta, famous for its egg noodles.
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2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 20: The biggest traffic ticket I ever got

"I hope nobody notices my missing door!" is a weird thing to say out loud.
Let me tell you about the most expensive traffic ticket I ever received. 
It was the early 2000s and my sister Catherine had just moved to a small town outside Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I live a few hours away in Illinois, and I decided to make the journey to her house for Christmas by car even though I hate to drive and have zero sense of direction. Sure enough, I got badly lost several times on the way but finally arrived in Indiana, shaken but intact. I stayed (in a motel) for a couple days and tried to enjoy the holiday festivities, but I was dreading the trip back.
My fears were justified. When I got back on the highway and had been driving for maybe 30 or 40 minutes, I suddenly realized that it had been a while since I'd seen a posted speed limit sign. I had no idea what the speed limit was, so I just tried to keep pace with traffic. Well, around that time, I noticed a police car nearby and decided to slow down to 55 just to be on the safe side. The officer who ticketed me later said this was my big mistake, the thing that told him I was up to no good. He tailed me for several miles but then pulled off to the side of the highway. I thought he'd given up on me and was relieved. I should not have been.
I kept driving, still going about 55. A few minutes later, this cop came roaring back into traffic with his lights flashing and (to my memory) siren wailing. In my rearview mirror, I could see he was weaving through the cars trying to catch up to somebody. I assumed there was an emergency somewhere. Turns out, the emergency was me. When I pulled over, the police officer stepped out of his vehicle and approached my car, citation book in hand. He seemed to be in a bad mood. I knew I couldn't have been speeding, so what was my big crime? Expired tags.
Now, here is where my version of the story diverges from the cop's version of the story. According to the cop, I knew perfectly well that my tags were expired, and I had sneakily tried to avoid him so he wouldn't notice. He'd known from the start that I was doing something underhanded, but it had taken him a few minutes to figure out exactly what. That's why he'd pulled over the first time. Eventually, he cracked the case: I was a fiendish criminal mastermind who had knowingly tried to drive though the great state of Indiana with Illinois tags that had expired a few weeks previously.
My version of the story was that I'd recently changed apartments and had forgotten to forward my mail to my new place. Therefore, I hadn't gotten a reminder from the state of Illinois that my tags had expired at the end of November. Besides, it's not like I was hurting the state of Indiana. The officer did not believe my story at all and wrote me a substantial ticket, the largest I'd ever received. I was really strapped for cash in those days, so it stung. For the next decade and a half, I vowed never to drive in the state of Indiana again. When I wanted to visit my sister, I did so by Amtrak.
But that's a whole other story .
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2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 19: Meanwhile on 'Three's Company'

She zinged you pretty good there, Stanley.
I was alive for the entire run of Three's Company from 1976 to 1984, but I didn't really watch the show until it was in syndicated reruns. It was one of those sitcoms that would be on every weekday after school. That puts it in the same basic category as The Brady Bunch and Happy Days. I didn't necessarily seek these shows out; I simply watched them because they were on TV. That's how it was in the pre-internet, pre-streaming days. Choice was barely a factor in entertainment. 
Looking back, I wonder what percentage of the jokes on Three's Company went sailing over my head. I'm pretty sure one episode was about a "call girl," and I had no idea what that term meant. I certainly could not have understood the many, many impotence jokes directed at poor, beleaguered Stanley Roper (Norman Fell) by his wife Helen (Audra Lindley). It's possible that Three's Company introduced me to a lot of risque topics.


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2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 18: Have I posted this before?

I don't hate juice in real life.

I've been blogging for so long now, I have no real recollection of what I have and haven't posted to Dead 2 Rights. It's all a blur. But I was going through my archives recently and found this one that still made me laugh, so I'm posting it now. It's another one based on a tweet by Comics Outta Context. I have a bunch more of these. 

Here's another:

RIP Margaret Thatcher. Unless you didn't like her.One more: Okay, now I'm done. var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 207: (Yet) Another Deep Dive into the Huffman Files

Emails! I get emails! I get stacks and stacks of emails!
In these strange, sad weeks following the death of my friend Greg Javer, I've found some comfort in the knowledge that Woodology—the study of Ed Wood's life and career—will carry on without him. It'll carry on without me someday, too. Greg was the most prominent contributor of material to this series, but he was far from the only one. Over the years, people like Bob Blackburn, James Pontolillo, Keith Crocker, W. Paul Apel, and Philip R. Frey have sent films, texts, photos and more my way. I'm grateful to all of you.
One of my more persistent emailers is a true zealot named Rob Huffman. He regularly supplies me with press clippings and other oddities that he's found in his research. Sometimes, I feel a little guilty that I can't always respond to his emails in a timely fashion. There are only so many hours in a day, you know? But I thought that you and I could go through some of Rob's recent finds together. How does that sound? var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 17: The Elf on the Shelf Isn't Fun at Parties!

Don't be that guy.
Each family has its own Christmas traditions. Was The Elf in the Shelf a tradition in your home growing up? The book didn't come out until 2005, so it was way past my time. On the other hand, the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer animated special premiered in 1964, so it should have been a major part of my childhood. But my dad didn't approve of that one for some reason. He didn't like the special's depiction of Santa Claus, I believe. So we rarely watched it. It doesn't pay to antagonize your parents at Christmas.
A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas were welcome in the Blevins household, however, as were such films as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and various versions of A Christmas Carol. Again, though, my dad couldn't tolerate the musical version, Scrooge! (1970), so that one was was verboten. Even today, I'd feel guilty about watching it.
As for today's comic, it was another one written especially for this project. I don't really know much about The Elf on the Shelf, so I wrote him as a petty, pedantic jerk.
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2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 16: SQUAWK! SQUAWK!

We now enter the 9th Circus of Hell.
Just like Jim Davis' Garfield, Bil Keane's Family Circus is one of those long-running newspaper comic strips that has inspired dozens and dozens of parodies already. I've certainly done my share. Above is just one example. There's something about Family Circus that invites parody. It's so wholesome and old-fashioned and corny that, if you're a cynical person like me, you feel almost honor-bound to subvert it in some way. You want to drag it through the mud. That's what I'm doing here, turning a typical FC panel into some kind of mini horror movie.
 Here's another example, this one a bit more melancholy.
All dads must feel like this sometimes. Including yours. And mine.
And one last one before I go.
Out of the mouths of babes, huh?

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2024 Fun Comics Advent Calendar, Day 15: Fargield

Garfield is not here to amuse you.   Garfield parodies are, let's say, extremely common on the internet. This is another one. What can I say? I have a weakness for the classics. Jim Davis' comic strip has been running so long and has become so ubiquitous in our culture that it's only natural for people to want to subvert it somehow. That's just how people's minds work. Naturally, I've done some Garf-inspired stuff over the years, and not all of it has been posted to my blog. Here are a couple more examples:
His logic is airtight. Can't argue with that. It's Garfield Lacking Garfield.
Okay, that last one is clearly inspired by Garfield Minus Garfield. I don't know if they've done that exact strip already, but I just wanted to do my own version. I just liked the image of the flea counter sitting on the countertop. var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 14: CHEESE!

Show those pearly... uh, grays.
How's your Advent going? Mine's going okay, I guess. I haven't been religious in years. Maybe I never was. I went to church a lot as a kid, but it wasn't my idea. My mother was Catholic, which meant we were all Catholic. My dad didn't grow up in any particular religion, but he converted to Catholicism to marry my mom. Took classes and everything. I remember spending some of the most boring hours of my life at a church in Flushing called St. Robert Bellarmine. Mostly these were Sunday masses. But there are a few extra holy days scattered throughout the year when you have to go to church on, like, a Tuesday night or something.  
I remember that one of these extra masses happened the very same night the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol was airing on TV. I didn't want to miss any of it, so I was extremely anxious for that mass to end. If I recall correctly, we got home just as the movie was starting, so I didn't miss much or any of it, thank God. The ghoulish looking fellow in today's comic reminds me a bit of the ghost of Jacob Marley. This is yet another comic panel I found through Comics Outta Context and repurposed.
P.S. Has a professional photographer ever told you to say "cheese"? Is that something that happens in real life? var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;