M.P. Fitzgerald's Blog, page 3
January 15, 2024
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December 26, 2020
Post-Apocalyptic eBook Giveaway!
Three authors, three page-turning books. Fill your Kindle up with an apocalypse far better than 2020
September 16, 2020
What Happened to Dead Philosophers in Heaven?
Dead Philosophers in Heaven: one of the wittiest, well-made comics on the internet… and it’s gone. As of right now, http://www.dead-philosophers.com/ shows a blank page. It appears that the owners of the site, Matt and Nick, are no longer paying for their server. So, What happened to Dead Philosophers in Heaven?
I have a few theories.
When I talked to Matt Russell (the co-founder of the comic) a few years ago about webcomics, he mentioned his busy life. Back in 2017 (when they last updated) he was working on a doctorate on top of being a father. As for Nick Gibbs (the other co-founder), I believe that he had a residence at a UC. This may not be the most dramatic end to a comic, but it is likely that they are just too busy with their personal and work lives to work on a philosophy comic. It happens. And with things like COVID-19 ravaging the world, it is possible that two chaps in academia had to make a tough decision on what they pay for, and unfortunately, an irreverent webcomic staring Camus was probably bottom of the list. Matt does have a family to feed.
[image error]One of the few comics still circulating on Tumblr
This is a pretty common ending to webcomics. This very site used to be solely dedicated to comics for years, before I pivoted to post-apocalyptic parody novels. Being in the webcomic game since 2009, I’ve seen a lot of webcomics disappear without a trace. Especially gag comics, like Dead Philosophers in Heaven. From my own experience, burnout and writer’s block is very real. Coming up with new gags every week is not sustainable if you want any semblance of quality. Most webcomics cease getting updates, get a second (and shorter) wave of updates, and then fade into the ether as web registration expires.
I again, just want to be clear that this is all theory. I have not been able to get a hold of either as the emails I had for them were attached to their site, and are likely not working now. I have also tried their Facebook, but are still waiting to hear back.
Where can I find the Dead Philosophers in Heaven comics?
Right now the best resource I have found to read the comics is Wayback Machine, with the archive here. I do not know of any mirror site or any other place that they were submitting their comics. That said, occasionally I find their more popular comics on Tumblr, and Pinterest respectively. A quick search for “Dead Philosophers in Heaven” on either site will pull up a few.
My search for the comics, as well as a concrete answer for why this very beloved comic disappeared is ongoing. If you have any insight as to what happened to Dead Philosophers in Heaven, or know of a better archive for the comics, leave a comment for others and I will update this post accordingly.
The post What Happened to Dead Philosophers in Heaven? appeared first on revfitz.com.
August 3, 2020
Post-Apocalyptic Pirates!
Mother FUCKING Land Pirates. Land. Pirates.
With a clipboard and an iron will to burn everything in their path, Arthur and Rabia set out into the United Wastes once more. This time they have the entire U.S. Army and the IRS to topple if they want to end Boyd’s schemes to enslave the entire wasteland. No big deal.
With plans going astray, and “t”s failing to be crossed, the duo finds themselves at the steps of the highest octane lunacy in post-apocalyptic America: Land Pirates— a convoy of mutant cars and radiated swashbucklers just as likely to eat you as look at you. The good news? They hate the government more than even Boyd’s slaves. The bad? Arthur McDowell is the government.
Will the duo successfully make a deal with the devil and convince the fleet of Land Pirates to join their underground railroad, or will they find themselves on the menu? M.P. Fitzgerald’s savage sense of humor grips every adrenaline-filled page to this continuation of The Happy Bureacrcay series.
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June 14, 2019
Fear and Loathing in the Wasteland
It’s mother-fucking tax day in post-apocalyptic America!
Armed
with red ink, and a suitcase full of only the most high powered drugs,
Arthur and Rabia return to the savage United Wastes. Their mission?
Nothing less than taking down The Colonel’s slave operation.
But
when they find themselves separated, Rabia uncovers an IRS plot to
assassinate Arthur. She could reach him in time if she weren’t bogged
down with protecting a wasteland child on top of everything else.
Arthur, of course, is just bogged down with himself. Like always.
M.P. Fitzgerald ups the ante on dark humor and page-turning adventure in this hilarious return to The Happy Bureaucracy series. Love, action, revenge, and irradiated SPAM. The duo has a full plate of fear and loathing in the wasteland to deal with.
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January 25, 2019
A lovely interview with Vitaly S. Alexius, creator of Romantically Apocalyptic!
With the launch of my own post-apocalyptic parody novel about the IRS surviving World War III, A Happy Bureaucracy, I was itching to talk to one of my biggest heroes in the genre. It is no exaggeration when I say that Romantically Apocalyptic opened my eyes to the possibilities of storytelling in mixed media. I only needed to see a single comic strip to be hooked to the often idiosyncratic, deeply intelligent, and belligerent whimsy of Zee Captain’s adventures.
Romantically Apocalyptic’s creator, Mr. Vitaly S Alexius (which is the coolest name ever) is a madman, magician, and futurist. His comic has been read and loved by many and in a sea of mediocre webcomics, his shines like a hurricane lamp through the fog.
[image error]The only currency that matters. From romanticallyapocalyptic.com
Vitaly S Alexius makes the wasteland fun. Its desolation something to be admired like a sunset rather than a bleak landscape to be loathed. I had to pick this man’s mind.
My Interview with Vitaly S Alexius
[image error]Vitaly S Alexius
Fitz: The strips in Romantically Apocalyptic are beautiful. You often combine sunsets with ash and snow-covered ruins and death. It is honestly apocalyptic scenery porn, and these scenes can be greatly enjoyed on their own, even before the other elements of the comic, like dialog or plot, come into being. How long on average does it take to create these strips, and what draws you to depicting destruction so lovingly?
Vitaly: Each episode can take anywhere from a week to a few months, depending on the amount of details.
On average an episode can take about two weeks, unless other artists are helping me.
RA hires many freelance artists from all around the world from Siberia to USA to Korea for such, as by myself episodes often take a very long time to execute.
Fitz: That makes a lot of sense. Romantically Apocalyptic contains just about every form of conceivable media. Photographs, illustration, cosplay, prose, audio-logs, music, and even animation can all be on the same page. When I first found it years ago my first thought was that it was the exact kind of thing that Scott McCloud proselytized about the possibilities of webcomics. Is “webcomics” even the right word for it at this point? How do you classify Romantically Apocalyptic and are there any kinds of media left that you want to play with?
Vitaly: It’s a multimedia graphic novel with light novel elements interjected into it.
I’m currently experimenting with fractal mathematics – integration of 3d fractals into scenery and also lots of cinematograph animations, planning to expand more into Adobe After effects when I find the time (Taking care of a one-year-old daughter can be very time-consuming).
Fitz: The comic is not just singular in its eclectic use of media, it is also genuinely jovial and absurdly whimsical, two things that are rarely found in post-apocalyptic storytelling. What has informed your sense of humor?
Vitaly: The humor in Romantically Apocalyptic is inspired by my childhood in Soviet Union stemming from books such as 12 Chairs.
Fitz: I’ll add that to my reading list, honestly after reading a bunch of Dostoevsky seeing a lighter side of Russia would be nice (any side of Russia beyond Dostoevsky is light compared, however). What ultimately attracts you to the wasteland?
Vitaly: The atmosphere of my comic is inspired by me growing up in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union Empire: Soviets left plenty of abandoned “Brutalism style” monuments, nuclear missile silos, factories, planes, ships, tanks, entire mining and industry towns all over Siberia and Eastern Europe. The collapse of USSR created fantastic, gigantic, derelict structures covered in moss and waterfalls that I’ve seen with my own eyes when I lived there and when I traveled across Siberia around 2004 (to take photos of various abandoned places).
Fitz: You are honestly the first creator I have interviewed with firsthand experience in that kind of desolation! You are also singular in that Romantically Apocalyptic is the only post-apocalyptic story I know of that takes the time to show the apocalypse through the eyes of the stuff that mankind has left behind. In it, we see the plight of a birthday cake candle fight off entropy, the unrequited love between a homeless man and a sentient bench, and the earnest anxieties of a refrigerator watching its food spoil. Is this just all played for laughs or is there something more to be said about our garbage inheriting the earth?
Vitaly: It goes far deeper than that.
The Native Americans have a belief called Animism. A religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.
Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork and even words—as animated and alive.
In the Universe of Romantically Apocalyptic ANNET (the global network AI system) made Animism real by imbuing, propagating every atom in the Universe with microscopic supercomputers, giving every concept in the Universe sentience, intelligence and human feelings.
Every object, every concept is an app and can be avatarized by a human user for interaction: forests, lakes, stars, wind, directions, space, time, death, life, table, shoe, sandwich, etc. In RA verse all material and immaterial phenomena have agency, a sentient Avatar managing them.
The machine life in RA are echoes of human dreams, human wishes, human desires and dreams that spread, evolve and multiply, eventually eclipsing, bending the rules of the Universe itself, altering space, time, etc.
It creates a good exploration of a post-singularity world ruled by absurd, purpose-focused machine intelligence.
Fitz: Frankly that is the sort of mesmerizing ideas that mainstream media fears to take on. What is your favorite thing about being an indie creator and what has been your biggest challenge?
Vitality: Favorite: Meeting my fans around the world at comicons and working for myself from home.
Challenge: Continually self-publishing (printing) my own books in Canada, particularly during downturns of Canadian economy.
Fitz: Speaking of which, please tell me that there is a physical book that I can force my friends and family to read!
Vitaly: There is! Four of them in fact, as a bundle deal with lovely prints and free shipping worldwide.
You can get it at https://shop.rom.ac/
[image error]Consume.
…And don’t forget to check out M.P. Fitzgerald’s own post-apocalyptic parody, A Happy Bureaucracy!
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The post A lovely interview with Vitaly S. Alexius, creator of Romantically Apocalyptic! appeared first on revfitz.com.
January 14, 2019
A Happy Bureaucracy!
If Mad Max meets Terry Gilliam’s Brazil with a heaping dash of Hunter S. Thompson’s distilled madness sounds like a thing that you can groove to then A Happy Bureaucracy is
the uncut primo shit you have been looking for! Coming out January 15th
on Amazon Kindle, this fever dream novel has all of the bleak humor
that a clown cemetery cannot deliver.
When the bombs fell and the weather forecast became
permanent nuclear fire, when flowers of destructive fusion blossomed
leaving death in their wake, the least important question was
immediately asked: who’s going to collect all of the taxes?The IRS was the only institution to survive the human holocaust, and
Arthur McDowell is a steadfast tax auditor craving the safety of the
desk job due to him. However, his dreams will be put on hold as the IRS
plans a census into new irradiated territory and he is forced to work
with freelance Enforcer, Rabia Duke, who’s diet of drugs is hand to
mouth. This will be a suicide mission, and neither is keen to see the
other survive.The denizens of the wastes have much to fear. Radiation, roving gangs
of psychopaths, and starvation, but the thing they should fear most is
bureaucracy……a happy bureaucracy.
Get your copy today on Amazon!
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December 28, 2018
My Interview with Benjamin Wallace, creator of Duck and Cover!
As my own post-apocalyptic parody, A Happy Bureaucracy, is just around the corner, I wanted to celebrate by talking to one of the best in the genre, Benjamin Wallace!
Benjamin Wallace is a trailblazer in the post-apocalyptic parody genre. Though the wasteland has been lampooned plenty of times in comic form it never really got the attention that it deserved in prose. Benjamin Wallace’s Duck and Cover series changed that. Benjamin is an honest fan of the post-apocalyptic, and his love for it is obvious when you read his books. Check it out:
Logan walked over to a large map on the wall, grabbed a pen and started marking towns and settlements…
“Hope, Hopeful, Last Hope, Hopefulville, The Town Of New Hofeyulvilleness, The Town of Hope, Hope City, New Hope, New Hope, New Hope…”
From Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors.
Benjamin Wallace interjects his lighthearted wit into a world that should be full of terror. Below are his insights into the apocalypse and exactly what makes it so attractive to readers.
My Interview with Benjamin Wallace
[image error]Benjamin Wallace.
Fitz: Throughout the Duck and Cover series you are not shy about pop culture references. Bands like Gogol Bordello (a personal favorite of mine) or movies like A Boy and his Dog and Zardoz (also favorites) are name-dropped in a single chapter. What would you say was the biggest pop-culture influence on the series and how does it inform your writing?
Ben: First and foremost it would be the Mad Max series. When I started looking for the humor in the apocalypse, I knew the best place to find it would be in the survivors. I don’t think there’s been another time in history where the general population was less capable to live with the lights off then now. A lot of the basis for the humor was really in exploring what we’d try to hold on to from the “old world” and how people would try to rebuild. Our only frame of reference would be the movies we’d all seen. And, lucky for me, most of those movies aren’t very good. Enjoyable, but not very good.
Fitz: Your characters are often disappointed as the apocalypse that they learned about in said movies does not match the more mundane one presented to them. This irreverent and smart tone honestly reminds me a little bit of Douglas Adams. Unlike a lot of post-apocalyptic parodies you find a way to not get too knee-deep in the darkness of the genre and the comedy is genuinely light-hearted (considering the setting, at least). Is your sense of “glass half full” sense of humor reflective of your own philosophy on life?
Ben: I’d like to say I’m cheery and light-hearted but I probably throw as many middle fingers in traffic as the next guy. But, the upside of things is a great place to find a joke these days. The news is hyperbolic doom and gloom. Stand up comedy is just insults for applause or mining the darkest subjects possible to be edgy. No one’s expecting fun and happiness anymore. Especially not in a post-apocalyptic world.
Fitz: While we’re on the subject, why write a parody of the post-apocalypse and not a more serious take on the genre?
Ben: Did you see Connery’s thong in Zardoz? The genre was just asking for it.
Also, aside from growing up on Mad Max and Warlords of the 21st Century, I watched an awful lot of Zucker, Abrams and Zucker. Bringing the two together was something I always wanted to do.
Fitz: Unfortunately I have seen Connery’s thong. A quick note for the readers: if you have ever wanted to see a mustachioed Sean Connery utter the words “Stay in my psychic bubble,” without a hint of humor, then Zardoz is your jam.
Anyways, there is a scene in the first book where it is revealed that most of the new wasteland settlements are named “New Hope”. This is a joke that I think only a very well educated person in the genre could make. What is it about the apocalypse that attracts you to it?
Ben: The post-apocalyptic world is a pretty liberating landscape. A sandbox with no authority. No rules. That frees characters from a lot of restrictions a contemporary setting would put on them so I can push the nonsense a little further without it seeming too ridiculous. But, honestly, everyone would call their town New Hope and believe they’re the only ones who thought of it. Committees suck.
Fitz: You have been in the indie game near its start. What would you say is the biggest challenge that indie-authors face? Are you optimistic about the future of the scene or are you worried about its prospects?
Ben: Balancing productivity with marketing is my biggest challenge. Trying to write the next several books while still trying to sell the previous ones clutters the headspace a bit. But there’s still more potential in the indie world than ever before. Audiobooks are growing. Stigmas are all but gone. And I’ve always enjoyed the idea that my success or failure is up to me and not the whims of the market. From what I see the community is stronger than ever and those in it take it very seriously. Which is a nice change from several years ago.
Fitz: Where can we find your books and do you have any other projects that you are excited about?
Ben: My books are available on Amazon. And many are now available on Audible as well. I’ve got a big year planned with a lot of new releases in the post-apocalyptic series and others. I’m also doing my to best make sure my newsletter doesn’t suck and would love it if people followed my there. There’s a free book in it for them.
[image error]You can get your own copy of Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warriors here!
…And don’t forget to check out M.P. Fitzgerald’s own post-apocalyptic parody, A Happy Bureaucracy!
[image error]
The post My Interview with Benjamin Wallace, creator of Duck and Cover! appeared first on revfitz.com.
December 17, 2018
Utopia Pending
I am proud to introduce a positive Sci-Fi collection of twelev short stories. Utopia Pending!
As someone who writes in the post-apocalypse my mind is always wading in a future of nihilistic doom and radioactive penguins. Don’t ask about that last one.
The thing is, despite my love for the Wasteland, my favorite thing is Star Trek. The unabashed optimism and belief that deep down we, as a species, have it in us to create a future where we strive to be better. Maybe I am cheesy like that, but honestly, despite my dark humor, I am a disappointed optimist at heart.
So when I was approached to take part in a short story collection that explored the bright possibilities of the future I jumped on it. With the earth’s temperature rising, nationalism spreading, and young, disenfranchised generations losing hope, I wanted to end this gloomy year on a high note.
Twelve speculative fiction writers, including myself, have created twelve vastly different futures for you to dive into. From space-age to the return of the wild, from virtual reality to endless summer, from a software-powered paradise to a world without any power at all. No two are alike and all are a breath of fresh air from the terrible strifes of the 24-hour news cycle.
The best part? You can get these twelve stories for only 99c or free (if you are in Kindle Unlimited).
As this is the launch, every buy helps to make this collection more visible, and please, leave a review when you are done reading. I know I have been hitting this one a lot lately, but every review helps us like nothing else.
Forget global warming, nuclear proliferation and mass starvation. Forget the doomsayers. The future is (almost) here – and it’s just great! The human race has created Utopia, and if everything’s not perfect, it soon will be.
Or will it? Twelve speculative fiction authors have created twelve wildly different visions of what our Utopian future looks like, and how we got there. From space-age to the return of the wild, from virtual reality to endless summer, from a software-powered paradise to a world without any power at all.
Is a perfect world really possible? Does Paradise have a price – and would we be prepared to pay it? Would we even like it once we got there?
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