Comics I Don’t Understand

Archive for the 'Doug Bratton' Category

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Cidu Bill on Dec 7th 2011

Presumably, the key is knowing who or what that is next to the chocolate-coated candy person.

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Doug Bratton, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, comic strips, comics, humor, m&m's | 24 responses so far

Most Carefully-Pronounced Comic Strip of the Day

Cidu Bill on Oct 7th 2011

Filed in Bill Bickel, Doug Bratton, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, comic strips, comics, humor | 15 responses so far

Aquaman

Cidu Bill on Aug 9th 2011

Specific joke here, or is Doug just having fun with his art?

Filed in Aquaman, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Doug Bratton, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, comic strips, comics, humor | 17 responses so far

Return of the Synchronicity

Cidu Bill on Jul 8th 2011

Darth Vader in two stunningly arbitrary comics today (I was amused by both of them, though in truth I have no idea what’s going on in the first one)

Filed in Bill Bickel, Brevity, CIDU, Darth Vader, Doug Bratton, Guy & Rodd, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Star Wars, comic strips, comics, humor, synchronicity | 15 responses so far

Timothy Carignan: Context: Fleshy, the hairless cat, got a hold of an Elmo puppet. He’s been pestering everybody with it. At the beginning of this strip, he’s using the puppet to try to lure a mouse from its hole.

Observation: In panel 2, “Elmo” is waving to the mouse. A nice friendly wave.

Question: In the last panel, is the puppet beckoning him out, or making a rude gesture? It’s hard to tell because Elmo doesn’t have fingers.

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Doug Bratton, Elmo, Monty, Oscar the Grouch, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, comic strips, comics, humor, synchronicity | 6 responses so far

The Deranged Stalker’s Journal of Pop Culture Shock Therapy

Cidu Bill on Dec 5th 2010

The other day, I was in the library and I happened to be leafing through Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. For those of you who don’t know, this book is essentially a collection of his short science fiction stories, held together by the premise that there’s this crazy tattooed dude, and each of his tattoos comes alive and segues into the short story. Or something like that.

I guess the point of the exercise was to give the thing the illusion (as it were) of being a unified novel rather than just a collection of short stories because, you know, who would want to read a collection of science fiction short stories by one of the greatest-ever writers of science fiction short stories?

Anyway, as pointless as I thought the Illustrated Man conceit was, it didn’t take anything away from the stories themselves.

Just a couple of minutes after I left the library — literally, since the post office is right down the street from the library– I received my copy of Doug Bratton’s new book. It’s a collection of Pop Culture Shock Therapy strips, held together by the premise that they’ve all been taped into the journals of a deranged stalker who’s obsessed with Doug Bratton. Or something like that.

Okay, honestly? The premise doesn’t work for me. No more than that tattooed dude did, which I dare you to say five times fast.

That being said — sorry, Doug, I know you put a lot of work into giving us something extra — the collection itself is well worth the price. If you’ve been visiting Doug’s web site, you pretty much know what to expect. If you’ve been visiting this website, you should pretty much know what to expect as well, because PCST has been well represented in the weekly LOL postings (and is no stranger to the CIDU postings either): Doug lampoons superheroes (especially Batman, by far comic strip writers’ favorite spandex-wearer), Disney characters, other comic strips, cartoons, Sesame Street, and more. This book would make a nice addition to your collection of comics compilations, or a good holiday gift for a like-minded friend who might not be familiar with this strip.

With the caveat that many of the comics are not child-appropriate (in addition to the fact that readers under a certain age might not get a lot of the jokes).

For the sake of family harmony, I should probably tack on another quick plug for Creepiosity. If your house has two bathrooms, there’s no reason not to buy both of these books.

And here’s today’s trivia question: What do Creepiosity and the film Parenthood have in common?

Filed in Bill Bickel, Creepiosity, David Bickel, Doug Bratton, Illustrated Man, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Ray Bradbury, book reviews, books, comic strips, comics, humor | 18 responses so far

Shock Therapy and Creepiosity

Cidu Bill on Nov 2nd 2010

Doug Bratton’s book is being published today. I can’t tell you much about it, because his publicist was supposed to send me a review copy and she never got around to it, but I imagine it’s a whole bunch of Pop Culture Pop Therapy strips, and we know they’re funny, and Doug entertains us with new strips just about every day which we get to read for free, and I met him and he’s a nice guy, so why not buy a copy? The guy’s got to make a living you know?

And speaking of books published by Andrews McMeel that I was promised a copy of but never received, my baby brother’s book Creepiosity is in its second printing. The biggest difference from the first printing is that I finally got my photographer’s credit in the back of the book, so I can drop my lawsuit.

Filed in Bill Bickel, Creepiosity, David Bickel, Doug Bratton, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, books, comics strips, humor | 6 responses so far

Is this Doug’s contribution to our recent discussion?

Cidu Bill on Oct 19th 2010

(originally published in 2007, but reprinted today)

Filed in Bill Bickel, Doug Bratton, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Robin, comic books, comic strips, comics, humor | 24 responses so far

NYCC

Cidu Bill on Oct 11th 2010

As always, 50% more crowded than an average New York City subway car during rush hour. I heard that next year they’re going to hire oshiya to shove more people onto the main floor.Got to meet Pop Culture Shock Therapy’s Doug Bratton who, when I mentioned that my wife’s a Batman fan, signed the above-pictured print for her (which reminded her that she’d meant to wear her David Willis Batman t-shirt for the occasion). It’s always fun to be able to connect a face and a voice to a comic you read every day. so far everybody I’ve met pretty much fits my expectations. Gotta wonder what they think about me. They probably expect somebody who looks and acts more like a troublemaker.

There would have been photos here, but I had the foresight to charge up my camera battery the night before the show — and then the absentmindedness to forget to put it into the camera. So I was carrying around a dead Canon SLR all day. A shame, because Comic Con is nothing if not a massive photo op.

No Power Girls falling out of their costumes this year — but honestly, the photo I most wish I’d been able to take was at the food court, Dumbledore carrying a plate of General Tso’s chicken.

Lots of costumed guests getting stopped by other guests wanting to take their pictures. Made me think about how much it must suck to get all dressed up and nobody wants to take your picture.

Not that being in great demand is probably a bed of roses. Harley Quinn had just sat down to eat when she saw me, (powerless) camera around my neck, and she jumped to her feet, mallet in hand, and said “Sorry.” I mean really, “sorry”?? Yes, she had a kick-ass costume, and I would have taken her photo if she weren’t eating — and, you know, I had a real camera — but she doesn’t owe anybody the right to take one.

This year, the Comic Con was combined with the New York Anime Festival (because the organizers decided the event wasn’t crowded enough), so of course that was another class of costume wandering the floors. At least twice, I passed Asian girls wearing very short skirts, with nothing else about them that said “anime.” And I had to wonder… were these very lazy attempts at anime costuming, or just, well, Asian girls with very short skirts. I’m not really sure how Occam’s Razor applies in a case like this.

As it happens, I was in Boston earlier this year when a really big anime festival was taking place, and I found myself waiting in the T station just below the convention center as it was letting out. Now, that was a show: monsters and anime girls just milling about in the real world waiting for the train. But I digress.

Filed in Bill Bickel, Doug Bratton, Dumbledore, NYCC, New York Comic Con, anime | 2 responses so far

Comics Wii Don’t Understand

Cidu Bill on Jul 14th 2010

Why not just Lego?
Just for the record, this comic appeared several months ago. I saved it until today for fairly obvious reasons.

Filed in Bill Bickel, Doug Bratton, French Revolution, Lego, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Wii, comic strips, comics, humor | 19 responses so far

Worst Endings Ever, and Sunday’s Lost Finale

Cidu Bill on May 21st 2010

Sunday night, Lost ends.

I’m hoping for a good send-off — the writing has certainly improved over the past couple of seasons — but realistically I don’t think there’s any way they can tie everything together in a way that makes any sense: they spent too much time throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, and the toilet down the hall. Maybe they’ll just streamline the ton of series mythology, ignoring 95% of it. Maybe they’ll try to fit all the pieces together and end up with an X Files type mess.

Or a Battlestar Galactica style “Yeah, we really have no idea either.”

Or maybe the writers actually had a plan all along (though isn’t that what they said about the Cylons, until they didn’t?), and we’re in for a glorious, stunning finale.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

A couple of years ago, we discussed worst-ever television endings. There were 68 comments and to spare anybody from repeating themselves now, I’m tacking this onto the old discussion rather than starting a new one.

August 30, 2008:

So Grandpa Jim will remain on death’s door for eternity. How uplifting.

This monstrosity made me think about the worst television endings ever. I doubt there are many Star Trek fans who wouldn’t name Enterprise’s finale as one of the worst ever. Quantum Leap was another stinker.

Of course, a great many television series simply go off the air and don’t have finales at all — and some go on for too many seasons and stink so bad by the end that any finale is a mercy killing (I’m sure some of you are thinking FBOFW falls into this category, so I’ll save you the trouble of pointing that out) — but the question before us here is: Worst television finale ever (or to put it in a more trendy way, worst. television. finale. ever.)

Filed in Battlestar Galactica, Bill Bickel, Doug Bratton, Enterprise, For Better or For Worse, Lost, Lynn Johnston, Pop Culture Shock Therapy, Quantum Leap, Star Trek, X Files, comic strips, comics, humor, television | 117 responses so far