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lavaside rahi

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  1. lavaside rahi
    For those of you who weren't aware, The Three Virtues podcast has just posted an interview with Dark709! Well actually, the interview has been up for almost three weeks now, but I only discovered it was up yesterday. It's great fun to listen to if you haven't already - it's nice to finally hear the dude's voice, and it's funny just for all the awkward, breathless pauses as Eljay and Kahi try to avoid having a heart attack while talking to the most famous BZPower comic maker ever. (On a side note to the TTV cast, I really enjoyed Alena in this interview - in past interviews I found her somewhat distracting, but here I think she really managed to anchor the interview, perhaps because Eljay and Kahi had so many awkward pauses...)
     
    But there was a very specific part of the interview that really intrigued me, and that was when Dark was asked about what might make for a not-so-good comic series. Here's the quote of his answer:
     

     
    Now there's a lot to go into here, so I'll start with a bit of a summary - there is some good advice about how to work with a serious comic series, but there's also some assertions about the forum I don't entirely agree with. But starting with where Dark ended during this exchange, I think there is some good advice: have some decent graphics (which I'd say works for you if you're doing a humor-based series as well) and be consistent with your updates - you are telling a story, so you got to make sure you actually tell it, lest people get bored waiting for the next part.
     
    But the part that raised doubts for me was where Dark said that storyline-based comic series haven't fared well on BZPower, which didn't seem to fit my experience of the comic forum. Dark backs up his statement by saying that the most popular comic makers on the forum are those who do humor-based series. This is indeed true, but I think it might have more to do with some of the elements that define humor and storyline-based series.
     
    When you're focused on a plot, you're telling a story - and every story has a beginning, a middle, and (most importantly for my argument here) an end (whether such a series actually makes it to the end is a different question altogether, and after telling one story you could jump right into another). But in a humor-based series there generally isn't a definite end unless you impose one on the series. As long as you can match your characters to one humorous situation after another, you can do a strip comic series pretty much forever. So it fits that the longest-running topics on the comics forum would be humor-based series.
     
    But then there's the question of popularity. I do think Dark has a point about the issue of complexity in comic series and how newcomers can get confused with the storyline and inside jokes - this is something I had to deal with when I retired and decided to get more serious about looking at other people's series. But I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. You do narrow your audience when you introduce complexity, but there are people who demand a serious plot-focused series and are willing to invest the time to read it. Ask your parents if they understood the Bionicle storyline when you were following it - most likely they're going to say no, because they didn't take the time that you took to get to know the characters and what was going on. So yes, you might be sacrificing some popularity in doing a complex story, but you also earn some really dedicated, hard-core fans.
     
    But having said all these reasons for why serious series are generally not as popular as humor-based ones, there's still the basic question: is it true? Does history really show that plot-focused, humor-less comic series just don't make it here?
     
    I think I may have found evidence otherwise. Looking through the most popular topics on the forum (in terms of replies), I found several series that were very storyline-focused. Now, there's those series that are heavily story-focused but have a fair amount of humor, like Dark suggested: Generic Quest (50 pages of posts) and Legends of the Matoran (20 pages). But then I found some series that seem to have virtually no humor, and were still popular: The Mercenus Chronicles (31 pages), The Fourth Wall (22 pages, almost double the number of comics), and The Legend Of Destr (17 pages). However, all these examples are defunct series - probably the best example of an active storyline-based series I could think of was Cloud 9, which has little humor but is gaining in popularity - the topic only has five pages so far, but that's not too shabby for a series that's less than a year old. None of these series seemed to have comics being posted every other day like Dark suggested you have to do, but they did all have pretty good graphics, ranging from solid to stellar.
     
    ...And then I found it. The series that seemed to contradict everything Dark said about what a serious storyline-based comic series has to do. That's right...I'm talking about Nosferatu. It is a series that is completely focused on storyline, with almost zero humor (in fact, they were really quite dark), the graphics are...well, they're okay for their time but they're still a little amateurish (like I'm one to talk... ), and over more than a year he only made 53 comics - not bad, but not exactly every other day. And yet, it's the 20th most popular topic in the comics forum (14th in terms of views!), with 40 pages of posts. I'd say that's faring pretty well. I guess the question then becomes whether there was something unusual about Nosferatu's success, but I don't feel like I'm in a position to knowledgeably answer that.
     
    I get where Dark is coming from here, but I think his interpretation of the comics forum reflects a fairly narrow viewpoint of the forum. We're all guilty of that to some extent, the trick is just to realize there's a whole other side to the forum that you, the casual comic reader, just frankly don't know about. I'm still trying to find that other side of the forum, and I've barely hit the tip of the iceberg. But like I said, there's some good advice from Dark and the interview is still great to listen to. I definitely recommend it, as it gives a good look into someone who is still one of the most dynamic figures in the comics forum.
  2. lavaside rahi
    I figured it was about time for another round of these...I present the #160s!
     
    ---
     

    This was an exciting comic to make, but I grant I would probably do it a little differently today. Now I thought it moved the story along pretty well and some of the backgrounds are excellent - I worked hard to get the angles right, and it shows (although those angles where they're on top of the monorail are off - it looks like they're thousands of feet in the air, which would be rather unlikely). I think this is really where my backgrounds started to shine.
     
    I'm a geek about mass transit, so I tried to replicate the experience of a real urban transit system as best I could. The "42S" mentioned in the eighth panel is based on the real-life (but now decommissioned) 42S line in Pittsburgh, where my family was living at the time (I was living on my own in Albuquerque at this point) - if you're familiar with Pittsburgh, you might recognize those neighborhood names - Beechview is where my family was living.
     
    My one regret with this comic is that I think I made it way too preachy at the end there, with UM's little speech. In my mind I wanted to establish the difference between UM (noble, righteous, moralistic) and Larry & Tarry (slightly less so - more pragmatic and maybe a little cynical) but looking back on it now this makes me cringe. There were much more subtle ways of getting this point across.
     

    This was a fun one, if just for the duplicated image at the bottom. Though it occurs to me I should have also flipped the bottom image horizontally, so that it really would have looked the same from UM's perspective.
     
    I thought about doing other "Lessons in Comic Making" strips, but I never seemed to have any good ideas for what topic to do next. Oh well.
     

    Oh yeah, this was awesome. B) After coming up with the occasional acronym, I decided I had to go all out and just deliver a whole slew of them. I think N.E.R.D.S. is my favorite, but B.U.R.P. and O.O.P.S. are good too. The others are okay, but those three are my favorites. They all took a surprisingly long time to come up with (well, I think B.U.M. was a quick one).
     
    I think this comic holds the distinction of being the only comic without any of my characters in it. If not, it's the only one without any of my or any Bionicle characters. Of course, that was made up by the fact that Jon Stewart (whose sprite needs a little work, I admit), Stephen Colbert, and Barack Obama are in it.
     
    If there's one thing I'd change about this comic, it'd have to be that last panel. Don't get me wrong - I'm not ashamed of putting Obama in my comic (on the contrary, I'm immensely proud of my portrayal of him), but the dialogue is off. If you read it, it sounds like he's talking about bringing change, then proposing an action which would keep things just the way they are. You could read a serious political statement into that, which was not my intention. So please, don't read anything into that. It's just sloppy writing.
     

    What's funny is that when I made this comic, I hadn't seen The Room yet, but if you're familiar with Tommy Wiseau's accent, then that is exactly what I was going for with Kyeti there. Your tearing me apart, Me-lee-sa! Oh hai Larry!
     
    I'm pretty sure that line in the second-to-last panel is ripped off from an early Calvin and Hobbes strip.
     

    This is way more true than I care to admit.
     

    Oh man, I was on a raging roll with this one. Political cartoons so frequently disappoint me. I enjoy political humor (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are idols of mine) but editorial comics are so frequently bland and just plain awful. Everything Larry & Tarry say here is totally me - I hate it when cartoonists feel the need to label everything in sight (yeah, throw subtlety out the door why don't you?) and they always have the worst metaphors and puns imaginable. And some of them are just impossible to understand. Politics could be so much more interesting to the casual bystander if cartoonists could be original and entertaining. [/rant] Okay, I'm better now.
     

    In case you weren't around BZPower for this, the forums were shut down for weeks (I can't remember why, some kind of hack or glitch or something) and when they finally came back, all the posts made in the last six or so months had to be deleted. It was so weird to finally come back only to find a past version of BZPower waiting for you. Hence the time travel idea.
     
    I am immensely proud of my 2001: A Space Odyssey tribute (by which I mean rip-off) here. Once it occurred to me that I could expand the dark brown areas of my mask to make it look like wrinkles, I could do an "aging" process pretty easily. There's that one point where I added some white hair and softened the eyes, but mainly I focused on the amount of dark brown. I don't think I've seen aging sprites in a BZP comic - if you have, let me know where I can see it. I'm curious to see how others did it.
     

    Not a whole lot to say about this one. Learning my lesson from the last Birth of UM comic, I toned down the preachy in this one. Here it's just the mystery and the escape from the police. Though I grant by this point in the series I felt like I might be dragging the story a bit, hence the attempt to really focus it starting with the next part.
  3. lavaside rahi
    Continuing with the list theme I attempted on April Fools Day, I thought I'd tackle a new one: the best comic makers who, for some reason, no one seems to remember these days. Let me emphasize that this list is completely biased. I only chose things that I held an interest in, and as you probably already know, my perspective of the comics forum has been fairly limited for most of the time I've spent here. Plus there's probably going to be some dispute about whether some of these guys are really "unremembered". So I totally welcome hearing about your favorite comic makers no one remembers in the comments.
     
    #5: Skye Green
    Okay, so technically not a comic maker (as far as I know), but just overlook that for a moment. Because Skye Green came up with a pretty unique idea: Skye Green's Quest (far) To Guest (star). Essentially, Skye Green would try to guest star in every comic series on BZPower and post the comics on his topic. Sadly, it didn't get very far. But it was still an awesome idea, so you gotta give him kudos for that.
     
    #4: Motago
    Back in the day, Motago was pretty big, so there's probably a few people around who remember this guy. Motago was a Razor comic maker who made an animated series (which was a pretty big deal at the time) called The Motago Show. This wasn't his only work - my favorite stuff from him was a series of MNOLG2 edits (taking a screen shot from the game and editing it to make it funny), but sadly the images have been lost to the deepest digits of the internet. Fortunately, you can still see the Motago Show on this Brickshelf folder. Sure, it seems simple now, but like I said it was a big deal when it first came out and its still got good humor.
     
    #3: JuJu
    Dark709 may have popularized the movie trend in the comics forum, but JuJu was the guy who actually started it all, with The Mask Of Sleeping, which was followed up with a sequel, MOS 2: Broken Dreams. The animation is incredibly smooth and way ahead of its time for BZPower, and the story is awesome. If you want to watch it, the links are broken but easy enough to fix: just click on the links, and when the "Page Not Found" page comes up, replace the word "pizzerias" in the URL code with "majhost", and you'll be set.
     
    #2: Bionicle Dragon
    BD, oh BD, where have you gone? Even today, Bionicle Dragon remains easily one of my favorite comic makers of all time. He just had it all: an awesome sense of humor with smart, witty jokes and clever use of slapstick, he knew how to make a comic look good, and he constantly churned out comics. He worked in a lot of stuff (I had the honor of working with him for a time in The Comic Land Files), but for me his definitive work will always be Crazy Bzpers. If you're searching for comic making genius, look no further (again, the links are broken but have the same issues as JuJu's stuff - just replace the word "pizzerias" in the URL code with "majhost").
     
    #1: Leppy
    Seriously, why don't people bring up Leppy more often? If BZPower was a physical place, I'd say we need to commission a statue of this guy. Maybe someone should create an award in his name. Now to be fair, a lot of people seem to remember him for creating Dark709's Comics: The Game, which was a huge deal and a massive undertaking, and it's totally freaking awesome. And it's only one of the games Leppy created, and they're all pretty good (Binky Island is another favorite of mine).
     
    But few people seem to remember what Leppy did for comics. Firstly, the Razor 360 Kit, which completely changed the way I used Razor. Granted, when Leppy came out with the 360 kit Dark's Chimoru kit had already been out for a while and was gaining in popularity, so Leppy's contribution to Razor may have been somewhat muted by the fact that fewer people were using Razor. Shame, really. But that's not all: Leppy also made comics. Specifically a delightful little series called Moronicle, which has some of the best slapstick humor and (naturally) some of the best use of the Razor kit I have ever seen (again, the links are broken but easy to fix - just replace the word "pizzerias" in the URL code with "majhost"). They were completely awesome and always made crack up. Truly, Leppy was a multi-talented dude, and for this he scores #1 on this list.
  4. lavaside rahi
    Well, it's that time of year again. When BZPower undergoes another onslaught of April Fool's pranks, catching those unaware of the date off guard and causing those aware of the date to post "O Rly? " in just about every topic on the forum (personally I find those posts rather annoying, but I accept them as a part of the holiday). Now I couldn't come up with any good April Fool's prank myself; I don't have a comic series anymore and it seemed needlessly cruel to announce that I was returning to the comics, even for an April Fool's prank (by the way, go check out Varaka's new comic series).
     
    So this year I thought I'd do something else: honor the best April Fool's pranks Artwork III has given us and pay tribute to them.
     
    ...And that's when it occurred to me that there just aren't very many notable pranks in the forum. In fact, after all my research, I could only come up with two. There's plenty of April Fools comics, but genuine pranks seem few and far between.
     
    ...Ah, screw it. I'll do it anyway. Here's my tribute to the two greatest pranks of the Artwork III forum (if you know of any others, please let me know).
     
    - The International ComicContinuity Disbands - (3L)²: Live, Learn and Lawsuits™, starting here
     
    Last year, Kahinuva announced that there was just too much arguing in the ICC, and the group was disbanding. To make it official, Kahi removed the ICC from his signature and his comic topic and the Mask of Existence topic was closed (and for some reason never reopened...). The other ICC members played along, and Philbert Flakes announced an new continuity called the International ComicContinuity II, which attracted genuine interest. But what really made the prank wonderful was that it lasted an entire week. Yep, just to really seed doubt that this wasn't a hoax, the ICC remained disbanded for an entire week. Finally, on April 8th Kahi posted a comic announcing that he was retiring...only to then announce that the whole thing was in fact a joke. Kudos to you, sir.
     
    - Dark709's Retirement - Dark709's Comics Version 4.0, starting here
     
    We all remember this one. After five years of making comics the most popular comic maker BZPower has produced was finally going to hang it up. The remainder of the third movie would be posted as a narration and a final animation would be posted as a farewell to his fans. The statement was released on March 29th and confirmed by Superkid. For three days, well-wishers flooded the topic with goodbye messages, in post and comic form. Truly, it would be a sad day for us all...Dark posted the farewell animation...
     
    ...And we all got rickrolled.
     
    Now to be fair, there was plenty of speculation and a lot of people recognized it as an April Fools prank right away (all the speculation posts have since been deleted). For my own personal part, I was mostly convinced it was a prank, but the sheer amount of speculation (plus the confirmation of the announcement on the part of figures like SK) did give me pause at moments - and once you give pause to a particular line of thought, the prank has already succeeded. For me, the best part of this prank was the sheer scale of it - the joke itself was fine, but the best pranks are the ones that spur other incidents, like a line of dominoes, and Dark's fame ensured that this would happen. There must be only at least a dozen comics that were made in relation to this event - it overshadowed anything else that happened on the forum (heck, did anything else happen on the forum that day?). It was a defining moment in the forum, and I dread the day when Dark actually retires, if just for the scores of "O RLY?!?" posts.
     
    UPDATE:
    I think we've got a new one to add to this list. There's also a second component of this prank over here.
  5. lavaside rahi
    Just a quickie announcement, I decided to rename this blog! The "rahi Roars" pun was cute, but I felt like it was time for a name more fitting to the theme of this blog. So there you go.
  6. lavaside rahi
    Taking a break from the creator commentaries to go back to a more general topic - one I've touched on before but never with much depth, and that's the shortage of female comic makers on this forum. Prior to writing this, I looked at the personal profile of everyone who had started a topic in the comic forum that had been posted in the last 20 days - of the four pages of topics, only four people claimed to be female. This was actually slightly better than I was expecting - Miraka was the only one I knew of doing comics recently. But it was still a disappointing statistic.
     
    After all this time here, there are only two female comic makers I'm familiar with (I know that there have been way more than that, but there's only two I know of). The first is, of course, my old partner Lady Ervai. She was (and most likely still is, I just haven't had contact with here in a while) a very talented drawer who just brimmed with originality (or "weirdness" as she referred to it). I was very fortunate to have her as a partner in my, err, formative years.
     
    The second is the previously mentioned Miraka of Alternate Reality Inc., a series she started a couple of weeks after she joined BZPower. She is - and I can not emphasize this enough - insanely talented. Every other comic maker I know started off with really childish stuff - I did, Dark709 did, T-E did...silly, goofy, very poorly-drawn stuff. Not Miraka. She started her series with a level of humor and graphical skill I have never seen from a beginner. In the six months since she's started she's earned a well-deserved status in the comic forum.
     
    Now I don't want to come off as sexist; I know you can't determine an entire gender based on two examples. HOWEVER, I can't help but shake the feeling that we're missing out on a lot of great talent and potential when the vast majority of the comic forum is one gender.
     

     
    This is one of the last comics I did before the finale series, and I still stand by nearly all of what I said. When you have so many male comic makers, female characters seem to fall in one of two categories: they're either 1) the girlfriend of the main character (numerous examples of this - Chilly of Gavla, L'evia in mine) or 2) they fall into the "girly" stereotype of being love-struck teens who say "like whatever" all the time (Zacku of Dark709's comics is probably the best example). There's nothing wrong with using a character who falls into one of these categories of course, it's just that...well, those are the only two categories.
     
    The one part of that comic I'd probably take back is the comment about BZPower being "such a male-driven site". The majority of the site seems to be male, but I can find females playing significant roles in other parts of this site. I've seen plenty of females in the Artwork I forum and we have the likes of GaliGee in the library forums. Why doesn't the comic forum have that?
     
    I'm going to leave the rest to the comments forum. Thoughts? Arguments for/against? Solutions for getting more girls into comics?
  7. lavaside rahi
    And now, the #140s:
     
    ---
     

    If one comic can sum up Ultra Matoran and Larry and Tarry's personalities, it's this one. It's amazing how the shortest comics can sometimes be the most effective.
     

    The ad at the top was appearing constantly at the top of BZPower forum pages when I made this comic, so I knew fans would know what I was referring to.
     
    Taifu started posting after being gone for a really long time, so I decided to celebrate his return. Although it seems the guest star room is starting to turn on me...a sign that I was getting bored of it?
     

    After getting my hands on a Wii, I just had to make a comic about it. So I ripped off those awesome Wii commercials, with those two guys who travel from house to house, showing everyone how flippin' awesome it is.
     
    Man, that car is horribly drawn. How I got marginally better at drawing these things I'll never know.
     

    I was in a slump when I made this comic. I wasn't making any headway on the movie, and all around I was feeling rather unmotivated. It was about this time when I also found out that I seemed to be part of a dying breed, what with all the other Razor comic makers not doing much work. A tad depressing.
     
    But like I said in the comic, it was just a generational shift. I knew there were still great comic makers on BZPower, I just wasn't making the effort to get out and discover them yet.
     

    *gasp!* Oh, the Tintin special! Oh, this was a delight! I just adored Tintin as a kid, and I knew I had to do a tribute at some point. I originally had a series in mind, but I didn't actually have a story drawn out in my mind. And instead of taking the time to come up with a story, I really wanted to get out something on the day of Tintin author Herge's birth. Of course, this comic is open-ended enough that I could have likely come up with a decent story, but I was too lazy. And anyway, I think this comic by itself works well enough as a tribute.
     
    Most of the references in this comic are pulled directly from Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure, the definite Tintin stories.
     

    Ah yes...the Birth of Ultra Matoran series. This was very interesting to work on. Knowing now where this series was going, it's funny to think it started off with an Indiana Jones parody.
     
    Pontikos is the name of an actual small island somewhere off Greece (I chose it pretty much at random), though somehow I don't think it has jungles and a Mayan-style pyramid. I'm also not sure why I settled on calling the central object a vase, because it looks more like one of those double-handle cups, or a trophy of some kind. I guess the "Cup of Iktinos" didn't sound mystical enough...but at least I had Umae point it out. I also tried to work off my knowledge of art history in those panels with the ancient art. The Mesopotamia one is rather off, but I think the other two are a little more faithful.
     
    I recall this comic raised some questions about the setting of the comic series. This hadn't been much of an issue until this comic, given its numerous references to life on Earth. I think Superkid eventually came up with a good answer for how the Bionicle and Earth worlds could interact, but at the time of the comic my reaction was more along the lines of "Just go with it." For me, the comics just shift from the Bionicle world to Earth (and vice versa) as it suits the needs of the comic.
     

    And the hero is born...by the way, does that third panel remind you of the cover of Myst or what? I only just noticed that...
     
    Iktinos was in fact one of the main architects who designed the Parthenon. That's research, baby.
     

    It's funny because it's true.
  8. lavaside rahi
    And now - the #130s:
     
    ---
     

    Of all the comics I've done, this is definitely one of my favorites. It's just so delightfully zany. I came up with a whole rationale of how the physics of this world would cause LR to explode if you popped his speech bubble, but this nice thing about the comic is that you really don't need to understand it. It's just weirdness for weirdness' sake.
     

    I made this comic before I found out there's actually a wiki for BZPower comics, or that some people actually took the time to write a page about me. I can't tell you how flattering that felt.
     

    The epic conclusion of the Voya Nui series, which admittedly is pretty rushed. Seems like anytime I do a series, I get halfway into it, get bored of it, and desperately try to finish it off, which I do either by not finishing it at all, or rushing the last part.
     
    I love the fifth, sixth, and seventh panels here. I really took advantage of the atmosphere the Bionicle comics captured in those shots.
     

    These were fun. At some point, I was getting really bored of guest star comics, so to spark my interest in them again I decided to make the Guest Star Room. And it worked pretty well...for a while. It was nice to have a setting and some easy repeating jokes (e.g, the plasma TV). And having a "standardized" setting made it easier to work with the bios the guest stars gave me; it allowed me to explore their characters a bit more than I would have otherwise. Eventually though I even got bored of the Guest Star Room, which was about the moment I stopped accepting guest stars.
     
    I love the eighth panel. That sinister grin with the TV knocking over the lamp is just priceless.
     

    At some point, I realized that LE wasn't sending me nearly as many stories involving Kopaka. I asked her about it, and we decided her character just wasn't that much into him anymore. So I made this comic - which just happened to fall on International Kopaka Day (less successful than Tahu day, but still a lot of fun).
     

    The classic dilemma of Snow Days. People who have to go to school love 'em, and everyone else seems to hate them for disrupting their daily routine. I'm firmly on the relaxed, "Yay no work today!" side. I have no idea which side Jphyper falls on, but he was an easy target, so...
     

    Have you noticed how common plasma TVs in public are these days? New school buildings will use them to show off pictures of campus, fast food restaurants put the menu on them - instead of, oh, I don't know, using a friggin' sign on the wall. Would probably save a few grand, but hey, what do I know? [/ranting social commentary]
     
    As for the comic itself, this has all of the hallmarks of a good guest star comic. Use of unusual guest star ability, comical use of guest star's name, and harm inflicted upon comic author. It's got it all.
     

    I live in Albuquerque, which is in the desert. It's not desert like Phoenix, it's the "high desert", which means the elevation is high, so it gets cold at night (except in the summer) and sometimes we can actually get snow in the winter. But it's still a desert, which means very little water. So you can imagine why it seems a little odd that newcomers plant lush, green lawns in front of their house and don't even use it except for decoration. [/ranting social commentary]
  9. lavaside rahi
    And now, the #120s!
     
    ---
     

    What a mess this comic is. Which is a shame, because there's some really good ideas in here.
     
    LE had the idea of doing an "alternative ending" comic, and she came up with the idea for both versions of the ending. In presenting it however, I really botched it. I should have released two separate comics, one with one ending and one with the other. In fact, I decided to fix this mistake - so, to see what should have been all along, here's the two comics: Version 1 and Version 2. Which do you prefer?
     

    This was my first comic after the Comics Forum became a separate forum for the general artwork forum, which is something a bunch of drawers, sketchers, etc. had long been clamoring for. Unfortunately, it came with a fair amount of "Comics aren't real art - you just use sprites!" attitude, which I hated beyond comprehension. I think I'll do a blog post about this at some point, but it's hard to write about without getting angry enough to smash your keyboard.
     
    Anyway, I like the thought of portraying the general artwork people as sprites - that which they seemed to most hate. Yeah, taste it you snobs. Although I wish that joke was better told now.
     
    And the idea behind VC going "Whoa, how'd I get here?!" in the first panel is that he suddenly appeared in my studio without knowing how he got there. ...Why I didn't just explain that in the comic is beyond me. Man, my comedy was off back then...
     


    I'm pretty fond of this series. I loved using the Bionicle comic backdrops for Voya Nui - it was a nifty way of marking the location and it was my way of honoring the great artist they hired for the comics that year. By stealing his work. And the characters allowed for some good jokes and a decent plot. Heck, I should have probably done more installments - but copying those backgrounds and trying to fit your sprites into them actually requires a surprising amount of work.
     

    Now Comic 125 is missing from the list, but this time I actually have an explanation for this - it was a holiday comic. And not just any holiday - it was International Tahu Day! For those who weren't there, ITD was a holiday planned in secret by a bunch of members here on the forums - one guy thought of it and PMed his friends, who PMed their friends, who PMed their friends...eventually it got to me. And boy was I excited. We changed our avatars and banners to one portraying Tahu and posted on the forum a bunch that day. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, when we tried to repeat the idea with other Toa, it started to fall apart - fewer people were interested and eventually the whole thing stopped. But it was fun while it lasted.
     

    I actually did cut the rattler off a rattlesnake once. A rattlesnake once wound up on our porch and my dad decided we had to kill it before it got to one of my little siblings or our cat. So we killed it (sad, I know), and at some point I decided I wanted to keep a souvenir from the experience, so I got a sharp knife and cut off the rattler. I still have it in a box somewhere.
     
    ...Please don't call PETA.
     
    I also wanted to show my appreciation for Leppy Razor 360 kit here. That was probably the single biggest thing to happen to the Razor kit since its creation, and it changed my comics forever.
     


    Ah, Ko-Kong. Another "What would have been..." moment for my comics.
     
    I got the idea of doing a parody of King Kong after seeing the Peter Jackson adaptation (which, despite its many flaws, was still pretty entertaining). I consulted with LE, and she had the idea of making Kong a large, beastly Kopaka (cause Kopaka likes LE, get it?). I had a great idea for the end of the series, which was based on The Producers - in order to cash in and make as much money from the opening of the Kopaka showing on Broadway, LR purposefully releases Kopaka so that the show gets crashed. I loved the idea, but sadly that was the only good idea I had for this series. And faced with the prospect of actually having to tell a story to get to that final funny scene, I couldn't bring myself to actually continue with it. So it ended here.
  10. lavaside rahi
    Oh, finally! Man, I hate these extended forum shutdowns. And there's always a little period after the forum gets back up when people are only starting to come back, so there's fewer people around.
     
    Oh well, onward! The #110s:
     
    ---
     

    I think it's worth explaining a little history of this guy...Dark Lugia was a guest star and a big fan of the comics, who actually fed me a lot of ideas I could use for my comics (I don't think I actually wound up using many of them, but it was still a very nice gesture). He was interested in becoming a permanent guest star - well, at this point I had six permanent guest stars (seven if you count LE, but given that she was a co-author I thought of her as something more than a PGS), which was a little more than I could handle. So I told Dark Lugia I would consider it if he would help me out with the comics. So he sent me ideas. And I did seriously consider making him a PGS - and told him so - but never quite got around to it. At some point Dark Lugia stopped coming to BZPower, so it was too late...
     
    So Lugia, if you're reading, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lead you on or anything like that. I'm just lazy.
     
    I don't really have a whole lot to say about the comic itself, just that I love the goofiness of the whole thing. The time-turner was a nice little twist.
     

     
    Ah yes, this comic was what started my character's fetish with Dalu. I really don't know where I got that idea, I guess I just thought it would be funny.
     
    Might as well say this now: If you're looking at that green/red dude with the gray mask and thinking "I don't remember seeing him on LR's character sheet", that is Bob, an old character of mine and one of the aforementioned six permanent guest stars. Bob's personality is that he likes candy and is insane...and that's pretty much it. He was an early fan of mine, and when he asked if he could be a PGS, I was still new to comic making so I couldn't think of any reason to say no (which is why I was more cautious later on when Dark Lugia asked). Now I regret putting Bob in - he was both in name and personality almost a complete copy of Dark709's Bob, so he was a pretty unoriginal addition to the comics. Basic rule of thumb: if your character's personality can be summed up in three words or less, you're just not creating real characters. Eventually, after Bob stopped coming to BZPower, I quietly dropped him off the character sheet along with Rahi Protector, another PGS who I accepted too quickly and had a much larger role in the movie than he ever did in the comics.
     

     
    I'm only throwing this one in because I love that opening line. Can't get enough of that golden crisp! Man, that commercial was annoying.
     
    I notice Comic 116 is missing from the list. I have absolutely no explanation for this. Not one. Sorry.
     

     
    Probably the only good thing that came out of my case of the chicken pox was this comic. And yes, it fell on my birthday...suck.
     
    I was also a big fan of Binky Island at the moment, which was a game here on BZPower that starred several old comic stars. I think Leppy (the guy who had his own awesome comics and made the Dark709 game) might have been involved in it, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Everytime you killed one of the little bad guys on the way, they made this adorable little "Ow!" sound. It was sheer bliss.
     

     
    Sadly, this was the last part of the Private Eye series, simply because I could not figure out where to take the story from here. I ran into a total dead end with this one. I made part of the next episode in the series, where LE shows Private Eye LR more family pictures (including the "black sheep" of the family who had become a Nazi general - I remember that just because I wondered if I would get in trouble for depicting a Nazi swastika in a comic) and decided that LE was just being paranoid. But if I did that story it would mean this whole thing with LE had just been pointless filler, so I realized that it wouldn't make any sense. I just could not figure out where to go from here. Finally I just threw in the towel on this series.
     

    I'm not really sure what the point of this comic is. I think I started it out as a serious idea and then it just...didn't come out that way. Huh.
     
    That first panel is dialogue from the video game The Simpsons Hit & Run (again, the royalty check has yet to be sent) and the fourth panel is actually an idea I was seriously considering for a mini-series (an X-Files spoof, maybe?).
     
    And a little regional dialect - those hills with the flat tops that everyone else calls "buttes" are called "mesas" in the southwest. Not sure why I thought that was important enough to have in a comic; I guess I wrote "mesa" then realized a bunch of people wouldn't know what that is. And this is why my commentary must be so fascinating to read.
  11. lavaside rahi
    Because I love poking fun at the guy, here's Dark709 as Elvis.
     
    Originally, the line Dark says was going to be "The King is Still Alive" but then this rather unfortunate comment popped up. Dark may have stated that he wasn't bashing anyone, but the "It's about time we had another good wholesome comic series around here" line bothered me. Since when have we ever had a "wholesome" comic series on BZPower?!? Because it certainly isn't Dark's (that's not to say it's bad, but "wholesome" definitely isn't the word I would use).
     
    I dunno, maybe I'm looking too deep into this. For me it just cast a shadow over what was otherwise a very happy moment for the comics forum (by the way, go check out SUPERKID'S NEW COMICS!!!).
  12. lavaside rahi
    Recently I did an interview for The Three Virtues podcast, where I was asked some questions about the history of the forum. Realizing I am one of the oldest people in the Comics Forum today, and wanting to fulfill my narcissistic desires (hey, it is a blog), I decided to write a bit about general trends in the Comics Forum - subjects that are too general to fit into any specific topic on the forum itself. I don't know if there will be anymore blog posts along these lines - I think I'll wait and see what the reaction to this is.
     
    ---
     
    When I started getting popular, the comic community on BZPower (which had yet to become a separate forum yet) was pretty segregated; a surprising fact if you consider the comics forum of today. From my perspective, it seemed to be divided into two central camps: the Razors and the Raygs (not to downplay the significant number of Chibi and RZ users, but back then many of the elements that defined them were the same that defined Raygs, so the groups were often intertwined - for simplicity's sake, I will refer to that community here as the "Raygs").
     
    The two central figures in this story were Dark709, the undisputed king of the Razors, and The Editorialist, who the Raygs frequently looked to. These were the superpowers who (to my knowledge) never interacted, but their followers could be seen fighting the occasional proxy battle - a Cold War of Comics. Though the superpowers themselves never spoke ill of each other - I once interviewed both of them when they were at the height of their popularity; here was their response when I asked each about the other:
     
    "He is very good at Sprite Comics. His humor is much more low key and not as crazy as mine, but he has very good comics, and the witty humor is great." -Dark709
     
    "Dark709 and I started out about the same, Razor sprites and humor based on insanity and obsessions. Recently I changed sprites and have been changing my characters to not JUST be obsessed creatures. Dark709 and I, I think, take care of all kinds of humor of BZP. He takes care of insanity...I take care of the rest." -The Editorialist
     
    The differences between the two sides went well beyond the sprites they used. The fact that these two central figures inspired such devotion and loyalty meant that a fair amount of people copied off of one or the other, so the elements that separated Dark and T-E wound up separating Razors and Raygs as a whole. The basic difference was that Razors relied heavily on slapstick comedy, while Raygs were more likely to use more social commentary and situation comedy. That's not to say that Razors never made intellectual jokes and that Raygs never did slapstick (far from it - Raygs were still very likely to be seen using slapstick), but the initial battlelines were drawn. From there, a number of smaller elements could be incorporated into each side: food obsession jokes became the standard of Razors, biting social critique could be seen in Rayg series. When Dark started making his movie, those who followed him starting making their own. Raygs didn't need movies to tell epic tales - there were already a number of serious comic series in the forum that used the far less comical looking Rayg sprites.
     

    Dokuma's views of Razor sprites weren't particularly sympathetic...
     
    I was firmly in the Razor camp (in some regards I never left it), so trends that defined the Raygs managed to pass without me noticing. There was some overlap between the two groups, but the divide was there. There was even some open hostility between the two groups - I recall Raygs talking about how stupid Razor comics were, with childish jokes and tired gags like food obsession (which, I'm sorry to admit, was a stereotype that was often well-earned). While I don't remember any Razors speaking openly about Raygs, I myself thought of many Raygs as aloof (particularly given comments like the one above). They also seemed to be a rowdier bunch, far more willing to poke at the system and make jokes at Pohukai's expense, something I don't remember many Razors daring to attempt.
     


    My evidence for the "edgier" humor of Rayg series - by Nuparurocks and Dokuma of Project Klinkerpoop
     

    ...And the zaniness that was your typical Razor series - by Toa Jetice.
     
    When I did those interviews with Dark709 and The Editorialist, Dark had already made the Chimoru Kit, which was rapidly gaining popularity among the Razors, though there were still some who had yet to convert. Those interviews marked the last time I would actively pay attention to what was going on in the Forum for a long time; I started focusing solely on my own comics and a few old favorites. It wasn't until I finished my own comic series that I resurfaced - now that I didn't have to worry about making comics, I could take the time to enjoy what other people were doing.
     
    When I came back, I found that all the old battlelines seemed to have fallen apart. There were no more Razors left, and few people were still using the Rayg kit. Chimoru and the RZMIK had become the de-facto norm (although this new-fangled Xanistkit was gaining ground), and while many Razors converted to Chimoru and many in the RZMIK group had been close to the Raygs, the generational shift meant that the divisions were gone. Most importantly, the elements that defined the two sides had blended; Chimoru users were no less likely to use serious comedy or slapstick than their RZMIK fellows. RZMIK users who had used more edgy humor could be seen using Chimoru (Nuparurocks is the best example of this).
     
    Individual talent is and has always been the most important factor in the Comics Forum, but when I started out the kit you used said a lot not only about you, but who your fans were. It's surprising to see the situation today, where the kit you use plays a far smaller role than it did back then. At some point while I wasn't paying attention to the forum, these two sides intersected and all these elements became more intertwined. The battlelines are gone, and I'm still trying to figure out how we got to where we are today.
     
    (As a disclaimer, let me point out that mine is just one perspective - one from a deliberately Razor point-of-view. If you are familiar with this subject, let me know your thoughts on this matter! I would particularly appreciate any knowledgeable viewpoint which contradicts anything I've said here - my recollections are as flawed as anyone else's and should not be taken as the sole truth on the matter.)
  13. lavaside rahi
    And now, the #100s:
    ---
     

    I started using backgrounds around this time, but for this comic it was to mock people who used the standard grass/blue sky background. Oh yeah, and overuse of Dark709 eyes (which I really should have actually used here, but for some reason didn't). In making fun of zany guest star comics, I made a zany guest star comic.
     
    The "You also haven't taken advantage of my sheet!" line is meant to make fun of some guest stars (not Toa Jetice, but others) who wanted me to use everything they gave me.
     

    Oh, the Private Eye series. Oh, what might have been... I don't actually know much film noir, just the cliches of it.
     
    I think this is the first time I extensively used backgrounds in a comic, and I'm pleased with how it came out. Some things I would improve if I was making this comic today (those bar stools make me flinch now, and the dead body needs to look more...well, dead), but for an initial foray I'm happy with it (I like those little salt and pepper shakers and that top-down view in the last panel is way ahead of its time for me).
     

    This was another genius script Jphyper sent me. My younger brother (the Nuju one I mentioned earlier, not Ben) was really into Yu-Gi-Oh at the time, and I took great delight in knowing this comic annoyed the heck out of him.
     

    This was LE's idea. I had to get braces too, so I know the pain only too well...
     

    This must be my favorite of the three Private Eye comics, just cause of that great dialogue in the alley. I also liked the idea of pulling LE into the story.
     
    That "mansion" in the seventh panel irks me today. Well, it's a start...
     

    And rounding off this set of comics, the first comic of 2006! I like the idea of a "Year in Review" comic; I should have done more...
     
    And I think this is the first (possibly only) time I mentioned Three Kakama Productions in my comics. For the record - Kakama Rahi is my favorite.
  14. lavaside rahi

    The Comic Families

    By lavaside rahi,

    In the first post, I compared the Razor-Rayg war of old to the Cold War, but recently a different analogy came to me: Warring Comic Families.
     

     

    (This has some basis in truth - I really did ask Dark to post in my topic when I was starting out - of course, he did it no questions asked.)
     

    ("Then we are agreed. The traffic in kits will be permitted, but controlled, and Dark709 will give up protection in the AII Forum – and there will be the peace.")
     

    (Superkid is in Razor here to show he isn't entirely going along with the Family... )
     
    ---
     
    Back to more seriousness, Gavla made an interesting comment on the first post:

    I'd say there is some truth to this - and I don't want my first post to come off sounding like everything today is lovy-dovy with everyone holding hands singing Kumbaya...but group fights are usually far more personal and narrowly directed than the more far-reaching kit wars, and so they're often harder to spot - so given that I've only recently started paying attention to the Forum, would probably explain why I don't have a whole lot to say on the topic. I'd be curious what others have to say, though...
  15. lavaside rahi
    Thanks for the comments on the last post - I was feeling particularly bored today, so I thought I'd just right to the second post - today, the #80s:
     
    ---

    Ah, the Taifu vs. Larry series. My way of blatantly stealing Looney Tunes jokes. I love the "Hey, that was the Lawwy!" line at the end. Classic.
     

    One of the kookiest guest star comics I've ever made. That multi-colored text of Angela's took forever to make, but obviously I forgot to put it in the third panel.
    I'm not sure where I got the pictures in the last panel, but I'm sure at least one of them came from the Strawberry Shortcake website.
    I'm still pretty hard on Disney (which I distinguish from Pixar), but they've improved somewhat since this comic was made. But only somewhat...
     

    If this seems like a particularly "...Whaaaaa?" inducing comic, this was a script pitched to me by Kyeti. Unfortunately, he only sent me this one script and never bothered to finish writing the series. So remember: don't start a series until you know how it's supposed to end.
    I've never watched Dragon Ball Z, so I didn't know how the yellow hair was supposed to look. Even if I had watched it, I probably still wouldn't know how it was supposed to look.
     

    *whistles* Lotta stuff in this one...
    I'm not sure why LE keeps switching to her Rahkshi form and back. At the end she says it's a transform glitch...maybe I was confused if LE was still a Matoran or had become a Rahkshi full-time, and this is referencing that.
    Little bit of trivia: in the shot of the audience, those two people in the middle of the front row are supposed to be my parents. I would probably draw them very differently today...
    Another bit of trivia: The "Hey nommy no! Hey nommy no!" line at the end is from Tintin and the Picaros.
     

    LE deserves credit for both of these comics. Having now traveled through customs, I'm not sure why Kyeti didn't just declare his coffee beans.
    Man, look at those binoculars in the first comic. Highly realistic. It's as if Tarry's eyes are popping out his head!
     

    Again, LE gets credit for all of these. I made a reference to Living the Sprite Life in the second one, but I hadn't ever looked at the topic - I was just familiar with the name and thought it'd work well in a "We're in the money"-type song.
    I never switched to Chimoru, but given the lack of Razor Toa Metru sprites out there, I had to make an exception for this last comic.
  16. lavaside rahi
    Credit for this idea goes to Kahinuva - course, I did have a few moral qualms to deal with, namely that DVD commentaries can often ruin a movie for me; like sausage, learning how it's made can ruin the magic of the final product. However, I'm feeling bored, so I went through with it.
     
    I'm only going to pick out my favorites as I go through my old works. I'm starting with the #70s, just cause I feel like that's when my comics really started to come into their own (plus I'm too embarrassed to show my earlier work now). To follow along, (re)read the comic first, then the comment below.
     
    ---

    And my love affair with acronyms begins. Although to this day, "D.U.M.B." is easily the best acronym I have come up with, because it actually says something about the institution it refers to. Note that killer background in the last panel - this is what passed as a lot of work for me back then.
     

    It's pretty weird to look at these now, given the total lack of backgrounds and the overall sloppiness of the whole thing. You can also see that Larry/Tarry were still somewhat stupid back then, but they were starting to show their smarter sides...
     

    I love the story of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast, and really the last comic was just an excuse to get to this one. To this day, I still get chills when the radio reporter cuts off after the aliens fry him - if you haven't heard it yet, I highly recommend it.
    Also, note those highly realistic black UFOs in the last panel. Take a good look; those things must have taken tens of seconds to make. VC made a slightly different version where he selflessly added himself to the last panel. It's actually a lot funnier that way...
     

    This one's just weird. In trying to work a guest star into the ongoing radio station story, I work in a not-so-subtle message about the communist ways of BZPower (a subject I touched on in a much later comic) and Arro's characteristic of attracting girls. Back then, when guest stars would send me their bios, I made the mistake of trying to work everything they said into the comic. Hence, the mess you see before you.
     

    Nuju-Master of Stars is my younger brother. No, not that brother - Ben's my other younger brother. My youngest brother. But no matter which brother it was, dish night would be a topic of great argument.
    Hunter of Visorak was a big fan of mine's who did his own series, which was unique because he never, ever used sprite kits.
     
    ---
    Tell me what you think - if people like what they see, I'll post more of these. If no one comments, I'm going to figure interest in this is just too low to make it worth it.
  17. lavaside rahi
    Well, I think it's about time for another one of these! On to the #150s!
     
    ---
     

    *squeals with delight* Man I was excited about this comic. The coloring, the action, the killer dialogue...this is where I would show Larry and Tarry's kicking-butt-and-taking-names side. I mean...MAN do I love this comic. Woo!
     
    Though in retrospect I could have done away with that intro. There's some decent jokes in there (I think the "It's one of my FAVORITES" line comes from those South Park DVDs where every episode starts with Matt Stone and Trey Parker saying that the episode is one of their favorites), but it takes away from the action and drama of the rest of the comic.
     
    Also as you can tell from reading the rest of the series, the Birth of UM storyline was as much an excuse to explore Larry and Tarry's origins as it was to explore UM's, and in the end it became more about Larry and Tarry. I guess I just cared about Larry and Tarry more. Or, more likely, I just wanted to show the gritty, kicking-butt story more than I wanted to show the mystical story. Ideally I would have found a better balance, but there you go.
     

    In case you couldn't tell, LR was having a dream.
     
    Given the length of Comic 154, I'm just going to link to it.
    Hole. Lee. Shmokes. If it wasn't for that standard guest star room background I don't know if I ever would have managed to finish this comic. I mean...Holy cow. It's by far my longest comic.
     
    I'm pretty sure the idea of the guest star room control getting mixed up with the neighbor's garage door opener was Jphyper's idea, so kudos to him there.
     
    Geez, there's just so much in this comic. I guess the thing I like most was that I made fun of a bunch of guest star cliches here, namely Star Wars fans and violent guest stars (I still get a chuckle out of the "Not another one of you creepy violent types" line). Though the best guest stars are the ones that give you more to work with, and there's a few of those in here, namely BioNinja and Sura-Z (seriously, how fun is Sura-Z's thing? That is awesome!), and referencing my indifference to Philipnova was fun to write, even if it was sad in its truthfulness.
     

    Not a whole lot to say about this one...I like Ricardo's body design here - I knew I wanted him to look somewhat alien but still fit in with the Razor sprites, and it worked pretty well. And I like all the background flourishes, like the bulletin board in the ninth panel and the bridge in the fourth (foreshadowing!). The binocular view in the twelfth panel is definitely a throwback to Tintin.
     

    Really don't have much to add here...Originally, I had an idea that the professor would turn against UM after being captured, but after I took an anthropology class from a guy who was only the funniest, coolest teacher I ever had, I decided I just couldn't make the professor a bad guy.
     

    I like the idea of Larry and Tarry being Robin Hood-like figures here, trying to help this neighborhood that's on hard times.
     
    Ah, and the introduction of Tarry's love...Though I'm really not sure why I felt the need to insert Susanna. I think the idea was to differentiate Tarry from Larry a little, with Larry being slightly more cocky and Tarry being a touch more gentle (only a touch though, their personalities are still pretty close), giving the edge to Tarry when it comes to Susanna's love. Introducing Susanna also added some drama to the series, which was welcome.
     
    But I'm still not completely sure I made the right choice with giving Tarry a girlfriend...I mean, I don't regret it, but I wonder if it muddled up the relationship between Larry and Tarry - they're two parts of the same whole, you can't really have Larry without Tarry or Tarry without Larry. But I had also wondered what exactly the relationship was between Larry and Tarry - at times I thought of them as twin brothers (and they do get referred to as "twins" by other characters once in a while), but at other times I wondered if they were just very close friends, or even (prior to introducing Susanna) if they were gay. Ultimately I decided it was a question best left unanswered, but inserting Susanna into the mix just seemed to confuse me that much more.
     
    It's amazing how much time I can spend thinking about these two characters. They're like real people to me, there's just layers and layers of personality to them for me, and I only barely tapped into that with what I did even across all of my comics.
     

    Well, enough of that serious stuff, back to something silly. Boy, did I enjoy making this comic. I had found a decent fire kit on the internet, Jphyper had sent me an idea about Kyeti being windblown into something (given that he was made of crystal), and I decided it had been a while since I had given SK and VC a spot in a comic. All these factors combined into a comic that was just goofy fun.
  18. lavaside rahi
    And now, the #90s:
     
    ---
     

    This is VC's first appearance in the comics, and I decided to get the whole junior/old-timer feud started as soon as possible. In real life, our relationship was friendly, but the junior/old-timer feud was based on a real-life event - when Hunter of Visorak (mentioned earlier) started his series, VC posted some criticism of his comics which I felt was a little harsh at the time. VC had ended his post with the comment "Take it from an experienced comic maker like myself." When I responded to him, I pointed out that I was an experienced comic maker too by saying "Listen Junior, I've been making comics here longer than you have." I was joking, but understandably this didn't immediately come across as a joke. Hence, our friendship was born.
     
    Looking back, I feel like I emphasized this feud too much in the storyline, but I did get a few good story ideas out of it - namely, having the VC-LR feud playing a role and ultimately being resolved in the finale series.
     
    I really did steal from other comic makers at the time, though I think Dark709 was far and away my main target. I gave credit in the front post, but I still took stuff without his approval beforehand.
     

    I think the script for this one came from Jphyper (LE's brother; the one obsessed with Kanohi masks).
     

    This was done after Hurricane Katrina as a special comic encouraging people to donate, which is why Lady Evil appears in the comic (at the time, she only appeared in the movie). I actually created this with a sort of "Comic Relief" deal in mind, where I would get other comic makers to make their own comics encouraging donations as well. However, no one else really made anything, so the idea bombed. I guess I didn't have enough clout to pull off that kind of collaboration at the time.
     

    Ah, an old favorite of mine, which was pitched by Jphyper (although in this one, I wrote the script). The original "Who's on First" skit is just two guys (Abbott & Costello), so the main trick was figuring out how to adapt it so that four people could do it.
     
    I really am a Padres fan and they actually did go to the playoffs when this comic came out, but I think they were eliminated in the first round. Just as they always are...
     

    I like the idea of the BBC contests having receptions before the voting starts. Poor T-E...
     
    And yes, the last three panels are totally stolen from an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. I have yet to send Stephen Hillenburg the royalty check.
     

    Ugh...I'm no more of a fan of TV news now than I was then, but now I know better than to get preachy about it on BZPower. There's a time and a place for that kind of commentary, and it's called The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
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