The Dude is From Circumstances

Based & Flubber-pilled

Jul 28, 2023

Hi. I’m Danny. I write comics and I recently took a day job at a retro video game store.

In Honor Of The New Blur Record…

…here’s an old Blur song.

The San Diego Comic Book Convention

Funny thing about living in San Diego: everyone else has their cute little regional conventions with names like Strawberry City Comic Con, while we’ve got the beast that is SDCC, illegal hotel wraps and all.

(I literally just found out they were illegal, that shit tickles me)

It’s the biggest show, but also the weirdest, in a way. It’s the one where nobody gives a shit about comics and the comics people don’t even want to go to it. Me, I think it’s a blast. The spectacle’s fun and I like to spend money and see my homies.

Forget doing any sort of business, though. I don’t know how to do that. Everyone I know in comics is way busier than me, so I just bought shit and tried to go to some interesting panels. The best one this year? Probably this one:

I was there all four days, but I didn’t feel like I spent a whole lot of time at the convention? Time gets a bit strange during SDCC. Chalk it up to a mix of walking around for hours, alcohol consumption, hangovers, whatever.

It was also a weird show this year. AS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, the actors and writers were on strike, so most of them didn’t show up to SDCC. It seems like the autograph hounds and Hall H warriors maybe stayed home too? Either way, the vibes were strange. The panels I checked out were practically deserted, and I got into a ramen restaurant in East Village without even having to wait. IS COMIC CON OVER? HAS THE BOTTOM FALLEN OUT OF THE NERD REVOLUTION???

So yeah here’s some of the shit I bought:

Looking forward to SDCC 2024, which I assume is being held in a hotel basement like it’s 1970 again.

In Other News, I Failed Again

Long-time fans might remember that I had a Zoop campaign for Just Another Swamp Song going last month.

Did you miss out? Don’t worry, it didn’t get funded!

This one got about halfway to its relatively meager goal, which is embarrassing because this was the one where I went out on a limb and asked some more established comics friends for help promoting it. So I failed AND I brought people down with me. HELL YEAH.

Sadly, I can’t totally blame social media algorithms for this one (though they were certainly a factor). My goal was too high, my intended print run too ambitious, and I asked readers to pay too much for a 24-page comic book. I’m a dumbass for forgetting that Zoop presents the product as a pre-order thing rather than the Kickstarter thing where the product is a “reward.”

But the book’s still already done. I’ll just run it again on Kickstarter with more realistic numbers (a goal of -$100, with a print run of zero) after we do a campaign for Elizabeth’s next book. Zoop was easy to work with, but that KS brand recognition is powerful. We can’t all expect Axe-Wielder Jon numbers on a niche crowdfunding platform.

Flubber Is The Weirdest Movie I’ve Ever Seen

Lately Elizabeth and I have been on a Robin Williams kick. Not just the highlights (Good Morning Vietnam, Insomnia, One Hour Photo), but also the lowlights like Old Dogs and Flubber.

Flubber is — no joke, no hyperbole, no irony — the weirdest fucking movie I’ve ever seen. I strongly encourage you, dear reader, to watch it. I don’t want to give anything away, but here are a few things things:

There’s a completely insane subplot about Robin Williams’ JARVIS-like computer assistant being in love with him, secretly ruining his life, and then basically dying and giving Robin Williams an AI daughter
- (The reason I compare it to JARVIS is because there’s a lot about this movie that looks and feels exactly like the first Iron Man movie)
This dipshit works at a failing university, but developed an advanced AI and a functioning flying car that he seemingly never bothered to patent. AND YET he thinks he can win back his girlfriend by using his latest invention (green goo that bounces) to rig a college basketball game
As seen in the above video, the bad guy swallows a Flubber and it explodes out of his ass, killing him

The movie makes absolutely no sense, and not in the “I didn’t like it or think about it” kind of way. I loved it, and I thought about it.

Patch Adams Is Also Weird

For years, I was under the impression that Patch Adams was a feel-good movie about a doctor who wears clown shoes to help his patients laugh through the pain. The kind of schmaltzy stuff your mom might like but is too treacly and earnest for someone who knows who Werner Herzog is. The kind of movie your whole family goes out to see on Christmas Day, y’know?

Boy, was I the hell wrong.

Written by Steve Oedekerk (Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, all that Thumb Wars parody shit) and directed by Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor), Patch Adams was made by guys whose biggest claims to fame are crude, stupid comedies. You can tell because the One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest-esque first chunk of the movie shows off all kinds of wacky mental patients, each with their own gimmick. It’s a real chunk too — we spend so much time in the asylum that you kind of forget he’s going eventually to wear a red clown nose and heal our wounds… but also our hearts.

Eventually, Patch Adams (a real person, by the way) decides that he’s not really depressed. He realizes he loves when he makes people laugh, and he hates when orderlies and psychiatrists don’t seem to give a shit about the patients. The thrust of this movie is pretty much that one tweet format you see a lot. “Men will literally ace med school and try to upend the concept of Western medicine instead of going to therapy.”

From there, it becomes a bit Good Morning Vietnam, with med student Patch being a real cut-up while upsetting doctors and uptight classmates. That’s all fine, but then he ends up establishing a commune where he practices medicine without a license and convinces his uptight classmate/girlfriend to loosen up a bit, which — no joke — DIRECTLY LEADS TO HER MURDER.

This movie ends with Patch Adams delivering an impassioned speech to the state medical board to convince them that yes, he was right to practice medicine without a license, and to not kick him out of med school. It works! EVERYONE CHEERS!

Patch Adams is insane and also deeply irresponsible. I highly recommend it to everyone. Bring the kids!

Other movies… I saw Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners for the first time and now I’m obsessed with Detective Loki. Seriously. Jakey G is incredible in that role. Easily one of my favorite movie detectives. Up there with Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe.

Let me take a second to talk about The First Slam Dunk. I never really read the comic or watched the anime series, so please believe me when I say that this cartoon is legitimately the greatest sports movie I’ve ever seen. Just heart-pounding, exhilirating stuff.

Spooktacular?

Werewolf Jones & Sons Deluxe Summer Fun Annual is everything I hoped it would be. Dicks, depravity, bad dads, Owl getting his beak shattered. I went to a Simon Hanselmann spotlight panel at SDCC before I bought the book and the turnout was criminally sparse. Just in case you thought that Comic Con was about the comics again. On the bright side, it apparently happened just before a Raina Telgemeier panel in the same room LOLOLOLOL

Also, I went and joined up on the Achewood Patreon and Chris Onstad is still absolutely killing it.

Not gonna pretend like I don’t still read capeshit, too. Peacemaker Tries Hard is some of the funniest shit going in the mainstream, and I’ve been reading the first WildC.A.T.S. trade (the OG Lee/Choi stuff) before bed. JIM LEE ROCKS

Danny Unpronounceable