Ponder and Enlightening for 06/21/14

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This is the newest Ponder and Enlightening comic! Click here to start with the first comic!

"We're on the Island of Danzig Toys" or "Where Reindeer Dare"

Hey a new comic! I haven't done one of those in a while. This one is an idea I had today. I googled every combination I could think of to see if anyone has made a Misfits/Rudolph and Hermey joke, but found nothing. I'm sure it's out there, but I made my own version anyway.

I always thought his name was "Herbie". Huh...

80s commercials

Spike is usually a fish...

... Don't Say Anything At All.

Here's a cover of a song from one of my favorite online comic strips "Nothing Nice to Say". In said strip there is a band named The Negative Adjective. This is one of their songs. You can view the original strip here: http://mitchclem.com/nothingnice/307/

Maybe 20, tops...

HIMYM - a genuine concern of mine

Andy! Andy! Andy!

Sethifus Tries His Hand at Drawing!

Double it, you still get zero

I saw this movie sitting on the shelf at my local library and thought "I like Groucho movies, I like Sinatra songs, I'll watch it!" And I did.

It was fun. The story is kinda boring. It's about Sinatra thinking some money he won betting on horses or something was stolen from his girlfriend's bank. This sucks because he only made the bet because she wouldn't marry him because he was poor. Something like that, I don't know, it was hard to pay attention.

The reason I recommend this film is because Groucho Marx is in it. I love the Marx Brothers, and while this movie is not as good as any of the Marx Brothers movies (in my opinion), Groucho's part is pretty close to the characters he portrays in said Marx Brothers movies. His delivery might be a little slower and a smidge less energetic, but it's still Groucho! I missed Groucho, and it was nice to see him in a new-to-me movie. He also has this odd character trait of delivering appropriate quotes from books and plays and such. Odd... but not uncomfortably so.

I also enjoyed both of Sinatra's songs. The first sung with Groucho (!) and the second with Jane Russell. Good stuff.

If you're a fan of Groucho Marx or Sinatra song styling's, check it out.

Bloom County and Iowa City

A few weeks ago Princess Melawesome and I visited my cousin Meryl Irwin in Coralville, IA. She showed us around nearby Iowa City, IA.

At the Iowa City Public Library we happened upon several Berkely Breathed original cartoons!






I've been a fan of Breathed's work for as long as I can remember (through my Dad, Hemry). So this was quite exciting for me. Almost as exciting as the time I met him and had him sign a book for me and one for Hemry!
Meryl then took us to a comic shop and a book store .The store also had some Breathed originals on the wall. (I didn't realize there were originals, so I didn't take any pictures. Poo.) When I got home I found out that Breathed lived there for a while and based Bloom County pretty heavily on Iowa City. The boarding house that most of the characters from the strip is based on an actual house in the city (which I'll find when we visit Meryl next), and the Bloom County radio station's call letters are those of an Iowa City station, and the Bloom Picayune is based on an Iowa City paper.

But I ramble...

The Prairie Lights Bookstore was the basis for Bloom County's Prairie Lights Newstand!

So that was a welcome surprise at the end of a long, wonderful trip to the Dakotas and back. I hope to visit other comic strip-related points of interest. If and when I do, I'll make sure to blog about them.

Oh, for the strip at the top of this post to make sense, it helps to be familiar with Opus the Penguin from the Bloom County, Outland, and Opus comic strips and my strip Ponder and Enlightening (the strip of which this site is, in fact, a spin-off!) The penguin hilarity begins HERE!