Possibly the Best Coat of Arms in the World

I would like to nominate as the best coat of arms in the world : Hensbroek

Hensbroek is a village in North Holland, Netherlands. "Hens" is dutch for chicken and "broek" is dutch for pants so obviously the coat of arms is a picture of a hen in pants.

from wiki (where they seem less sure as to what chickens look like.)

Hensbroek means hen's pants so why not draw a hen wearing pants?  Actually, it turns out that it's origins are "It was founded as "Heynsbroec", meaning the marshy wetland of Heyn"

An explanation in Dutch is here. I think it means that it was a swampy, marshy land where a person would not want to wear long trousers but instead wear pants (in the British sense or short pants). So, meaning "land-where-you-need-to-wear-short-pants of Hen" Presumably, the coat of arms was drawn without the historical memory of the original meaning.

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To the people of the village of De Hulk in the Netherlands I offer a coat of arms of their own. I hope they won't be too modest and start calling themselves incredible.

De Hulk, Netherlands Coat of Arms

Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein became famous making large versions of comic book panels.
David Barsalou went to the trouble to discover who Roy Lichtenstein was copying.

wiki says :

Favoring the comic strip as his main inspiration, Lichtenstein produced hard-edged, precise compositions that documented while it parodied often in a tongue-in-cheek humorous manner. His work was heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. 

Frankly, some of his "precise compositions" were composed by someone else.

Lichtenstein didn't always make exact copies of the source drawings, but in my opinion, even when he did make copies he tended to make the drawings worse.


(animated GIF comparison of Lichtenstein's In the Car to the original image below the fold)

movie notes : The Wolverine

spoilers below

movie notes : Man of Steel

spoiler alert below the fold

movie notes : Iron Man 3 (spolier alert)

below the fold contains a spoiler concerning the movie Iron Man 3

Giant-Sized

A publisher has an idea : take existing comic book titles and put out a special, extra large issue. Since it has more pages than a regular comic it makes sense to highlight that fact. So, it makes sense to add "Giant-Size" to a regular title and you get "Giant-Size Spider-man" and "Giant-Size Hulk" etc…

But one of the titles is called "Man-Thing." Oh, well, the idea is already rolling. Most kids wouldn't notice anything odd but I bet there were giggles in the office. Maybe people would buy a copy just so they can say "Sure, I have a Giant-Size Man-Thing."

Context matters

Betty and Me #16 comic book where the text out of context of the image could sound more sexually suggestive than one expects for an Archie Comic.

BozoVision

A still showing a production monitor labeled "BozoVision" in Marvel Productions Ltd (the Marvel animation studio) as seen at about the 58th minute in the movie "With Great Power... The Stan Lee Story" (2010).

The Ibsen Look

Notice the similarity in extravagant facial hair?

X-Men's Wolverine as drawn by John Byrne c.2006

playwright Henrik Ibsen c.1870

From now on I'll refer to this as the "Ibsen Look"

movie notes : the Avengers movie

1) I note that Loki's illusionary versions of himself flicker remarkably like the Princess Leia hologram that R2D2 showed to Obi Wan Kenobi. Clearly, Hollywood is under the impression that holograms will never, ever be perfected even with otherworldly technology or magic.

2) The designers of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier learned the lessons of the Death Star and installed lots and lots of guardrails.

3) a very "Marvel" movie. I never understood the idea of licensing characters and then changing all the details.  (ie an Italian Red Skull)

4) it dawned on me that Chris Evans who played Marvel's Captain America in the Avengers also played Marvel's Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies. Potential nicknames for him : Captain Torch or Human America.

5) Some of the aliens were kind of disappointing : a kind of Skrull-like chin, 2 thumbs (but on the same side of the hand. WTF. to compensate for an evolutionary inclination to stick their finger in places they shouldn't?) The alien design and armor seemed somewhat generic. Not bad but sort of a default.

Superman vs Spider-man

Joe Hildebrand on Superman vs Spider-man :
I count Superman and Superman II as the same movie. Spiderman just isn’t the same. I just can’t have an arachnid as a role model.

My response :
I can't let this stand without a response.
1) Spider-man is not an arachnid. You might try to claim that 2/3 of his name is "Spider" but that is just the letters. If you measure the number of words that make up the name spider-man you'll find that only half are "spider" but a full 50% are "man"
2) Superman is an alien! An arachnid is at least an earthly species. If Superman looked this alien would he be your idol?
3) Superman wears a cape. Some people might say the cape is faaaaaaabulous! but I say it shows Superman's narcissistic tendencies overwhelming his sense of practicality. He also wears a yellow belt that isn't a utility belt. Spider-man wears a skintight costume because he does gymnast like activities while avoiding villians. Superman is invulnerable and wears a skin tight costume because he's vain.
3a) Superman would need inexpensive Viagra and prescription-free oxycodone and a psychic to deal with the beautiful vacation lesbians that would help him quit smoking and get free money from the government for his laboratory glassware. (more keywords to get Joe more search hits)
4) Superman rhymes with pooperman
5) Spider-man can be called Spidey. Do you call your role model Superman Soupy?
6) You could plausibly get bitten by a radioactive spider, but your parents building an interstellar rocket, wrapping you up in swaddling and sending you and it to an inhabited and human inhabitable planet where you would have super powers? Not as likely.
7) While I don't intend this to cast aspirations on your character; a perv with X-ray vision could give an unknown number of people serious illness.
8) Do you want someone who can't realistically have sex as a role model? (See Man of Steel Woman of Kleenex by Larry Niven)

How Orwellian : The Pie of Slavery

from the Colossus story in Marvel Comics Presents #10 (Jan 1989).


click to embiggen

Colossus says "You in this country have free press. You can say whatever you please!"

Sounds good so far!

Colossus : "Your constitution gives you that treasured freedom. So must you slap your government in the face with pornography? Why abuse your freedom?"

As a kid I laughed when I read that. It seemed silly to suggest that free speech should be limited (besides by the illegal) by anything that is an affront to the government (and however that might be defined). I find that view of free speech more distressing now that I'm older.

At least lèse majesté is narrowly limited to offense aimed at a monarch. It is interesting that it shouldn't be respect and politeness to one's neighbors and fellow citizens that might provoke a want for discretion but an insult to a faceless institution.



and a few pages later...

click to embiggen

and Colossus thinks to himself "But... are the two countries that different?"

Colossus is a university sophomore?

Colossus : "Russia's media is suppressive, but America's is exploitative!"

So, censorship and a not enough censorship are practically the same thing? I imagine the writer, Ann Nocenti, still cackles with laughter at the thought that she is still exploiting me after all these years.

Colossus : "Americans on a picnic, eating American pie. They look so happy."
Colossus : "Are they? Are they really free?"

Perhaps not. I blame it on their grabbing the wrong pie and bringing a telepathic mutant pie of slavery to the picnic by mistake. It seems like a better explanation than blaming distant, two dimensional boobies and a lack of crushing censorship.

Altogether, the story isn't without a certain charm and I think the artwork by Rick Leonardi & P. Craig Russell is exceptional. There is a lovely economy of line.

The meat of the story is based on the abuse of government power, hardly who I would want to entrust censorship based on the degree of affrontedness the government might "feel."

the post in which I indirectly confess to being a dork

I've been buying these little superhero figures for my nephews and they, as kids, keep a mental list of which characters have been made and which characters they'd like to be made.

Interestingly, considerably less supervillains have been made than superheroes (I suppose, so as to not encourage the little ones into becoming world conquering supervillains). My nephews mentioned that there was no Modok figure in the series so I told them I could probably make one.

below is Modok as he first appeared in the comic books.

Gigantic head, a fashionable headband, sits in a comfy flying chair with his hand on his joystick, has a plan for world domination : what's not to like...

The story behind his big head is that he was working for a group of evil scientists who used him as a guinea pig in an attempt to create a "Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing" which mutated him into a guy with a ginormous head and an atrophied body who proceeded to take over the scientists organization. He also christened himself "Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing" (M.O.D.O.K.) If only he'd been a more well-adjusted person he might have called himself M.O.D.O.D. - Mental Organism Designed Only for Dancing or maybe chosen a less career limiting name that would acknowledge his ability to multitask.

Modok, in a way, was a sympathetic character. Between his stark lack of a sense of humor and his gigantic head Modok probably had a hard time getting a date. And he isn't what you'd call traditionally handsome.

Some draw him as a guy with an enormous head with his arms carelessly added sticking out from the side of his head. That bothers me.


sketch of how distorted Modok's skeletal structure would have to be.

I wasn't completely faithful to the design. I'm afraid I didn't distort it enough.

It is only about 3.5 inches tall so it could fit in with the other figures, but I imagine a larger sculpture would be easier.

While not that great it I'd say it isn't bad considering I don't know what I'm doing. My only other experience in sculpture was mediocre relief in wax a decade ago. I've learned a lot about what not to do.

It still needs work.

This is just wrong

not a photoshop