2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 1: Meanwhile, on the Starship Enterprise...

Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (both Jewish!)

Two Decembers ago, I posted a series on this blog called The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar. It was 25 continuous days of brief, bite-size articles about Ed Wood, his life, and his films. The idea was to do the blogging equivalent of an advent calendar: lots of little presents instead of one big one. I think my modest experiment yielded some fun results, and I wanted to try something similar but not exactly the same this year.

A Heathcliff parody.

Many people think that this blog is only about Ed Wood, and that's admittedly a fair conclusion to draw. There is a lot of content about Eddie on this site. But it's not the only thing I do! If you go to the Dead 2 Rights main page, for instance, you'll see the logo at the top, and underneath it are several clickable labels: Ed Wood Wednesdays, Happy Days, Comedy Classics, Comics Fun!, and Best of D2R. Notice how Eddie is only one of those.

This December, I wanted to shine some light on the oft-neglected Comics Fun! part of the blog. What is this? Well, I've been obsessed with comics and cartoons from early childhood, and I've been making them since I was able to hold a crayon. In junior high and high school, I used to draw silly little cartoons on notebook paper and pass them around in class, much to the annoyance of my teachers. My characters included Iffy the Troll, The Apple Scruffs, Margin Man, and an unfortunate family called The Melties who were all made from wax and yet who insisted on going outside on sunny days.

Unfortunately, I've had basically no art training apart from what I got in elementary school, and my drawing skills are minimal to nonexistent. My handwriting is a complete disgrace, and it's rare for me to draw anything with pens or pencils on actual paper these days. But I still want to make comics and cartoons. So my usual method is to patch it together from photos and artwork I've found on the internet. Occasionally, I'll take an existing comic strip and merely change the dialogue or the caption. If the artwork I want simply doesn't exist, I'll "draw" it very crudely in Microsoft Paint. (Yes, Microsoft Paint!)

After years of posting this material on the internet, I've learned that people do not enjoy my comics very much. Their typical reactions range from total indifference to mild dislike. A few years ago, I submitted some of what I considered my "best stuff" to an editor once and received a swift but polite rejection. And yet, I keep creating this material. Why? Because I find it funny. This is stuff that amuses me. These dumb, poorly-made comics and cartoons keep accumulating on my hard drive, and I can't bring myself to throw them away.

And so, until Christmas 2024 finally arrives, I will be sharing some homemade comics each day with my readers. That comic strip at the top is the first example. Basically, I saw a screenshot of a Star Trek video game that had been posted to Facebook, and I turned it into a little tragicomic saga about Kirk and Spock's working relationship. Enjoy or don't. Totally up to you.

Journey to the dark, dank heart of my 1980s sticker collection

"The mummy's ready for his mystical journey!"

Where were you during the sticker craze of 1982-83? Me, I was attending Springview Elementary School in Flushing, MI. And, yes, like a lot of kids my age, I got caught up in the fad. There was even a store called Happyland at the local mall that sold pretty much nothing but stickers. For a few months there, that store was the center of the kid universe. Then it went away and no one even noticed.

Recently, I discovered my old sticker album from those days. Well, to call it an "album" is being generous. As you'll see, it's just a bunch of loose pages of typing paper crudely stapled together. But it's an excellent indicator of my tastes during the early Reagan years. I was obsessed with cartoons, comics, video games, and movies. Other than my near-total lack of interest in video games other than Tetris these days, very little has changed in the last 35 years.

Anyway, out of some misplaced nostalgia, I've decided to scan the entire thing so that we can all peruse it together. I think it provides valuable insight into who I was back then and what pop culture was like. Page 1, for instance, is dominated by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), but there's a little Pac-Man thrown in there, too. I guess that ghost is supposed to be Inky, but he's the wrong shade of blue. Or maybe he's just a pixelated Fry Guy from McDonald's.

E.T. and Pac-Man stickers

I don't claim to have had great taste as a kid. My love of cartoons and comics knew no bounds, as evidenced by these stickers representing Ziggy and The Smurfs. Hey, I wish I could say I was a 7-year-old hipster, browsing through record store shelves for the latest Plasmatics and Husker Du albums. But it's not true. I read Ziggy and watched The Smurfs. Come at me, bro. It should be noted that all the stickers on this page are puffy stickers. Those were the best kind for some reason.

Ziggy and Smurfs stickers

If cartoons and video games were great on their own, then surely the combination of the two was doubly intoxicating. Which brings me to my utter fascination with Nintendo's Popeye arcade game from 1983. Oh, did I love this game, but I only got to play it at the local roller skating rink. And I was lousy at it, which meant my quarters were soon gone. You have to understand that Popeye himself was my favorite cartoon character, and I consumed as much Popeye media as I could back then. Bonus: these stickers are made from some kind of felt-like material. They're still soft and fuzzy all these decades later.

Also on this page: the wizard mascot from Mystiks, which were these weird, animal-shaped stickers filled with some kind of color-changing oil. If I remember correctly, these were sold only one at a time rather than on pages. It was kind of a big deal to get one of these. The flat, unchanging wizard stickers just came free with the sticker you were actually buying. Sadly, this album does not contain any of the oil-filled Mystiks. Just this lone wizard. "I'm a sticker too!" he pleads. Yeah, right. Go to bed, old man.

Popeye video game stickers.

Did I tell you my love of Popeye was intense back in 1982? I have at least three pages of these stickers, featuring Popeye, Wimpy, Olive Oyl, Swee'Pea, and Bluto. I only scanned one page, though, because the other two are just copies of these same designs. I must have gotten a pack of these.

Popeye stickers

And it's right back to the video games. These are some awesome Donkey Kong puffy stickers. The main sticker even has googly eyes. Who knew Mario was on his way to one of the mightiest franchises in video game history? And who's that woman he's rescuing? Peach? Daisy? Nope. It's Pauline. And this wasn't her last game by a long shot. But, sticker people, she was a brunette, not a blonde.

Donkey Kong stickers

This sticker album also shows how I was growing and maturing in those days. It may be a stretch to call Masters of the Universe more "grown-up" fare, but remember that just a few pages back, we were dealing with Ziggy and The Smurfs. This is a fairly lame representation of the franchise: the logo, Man-At-Arms, He-Man, Skeletor, Beast Man, and two crummy weapons. Barely enough to fill up a page. Ultimately, though, it's stuff like Masters of the Universe that would lure me away from stickers.

Masters of the Universe stickers

Would you believe it? More puffy stickers based on a video game. Go figure. Bet you didn't see that twist coming. These are from Q*bert, another game I only played at the local roller rink. (The joint had a real catchy name, too: Roller Skating. That was the name.) But how often did I get there? A couple of class trips per year? Maybe a birthday party?

Q*bert stickers

Pac-Man, on the other hand, was everywhere. Grocery stores and pizza parlors had Pac-Man cabinets. There was a Pac-Man TV show in 1982-83. We even had a miniature Pac-Man home version. He had a level of ubiquity that Q*bert couldn't touch. These stickers specifically say "Pac-Family." There was no game with that title, but Pac was a family man on his show. (These designs are a little different, though.) And what have we here? More googly eyes!

There are a few randos in here as well: a hockey player, a rocket ship, plus a couple of stray Muppets. The Fozzie sticker makes no sense. It's Halloween, obviously, and he's dressed as a clown. Which tracks, I guess. But he's talking to a pumpkin-headed ghost who looks just like him. And he's saying, "Halloween sure is fun!" like it's some kind of secret. Shrug. (By the way, that "HOT SHOT" scratch 'n' sniff sticker used to smell like cinnamon. Now it just smells like paper. Time, time, time. See what's become of me.)

Pac-Man and Muppets stickers

This next page is sparse but very indicative of its time. It contains three large stickers depicting video games of the era (from top to bottom): Centipede, Frogger, and Defender. I never played Defender even once, and Centipede hurt my hand. You played that one with a track ball, and your skin would always get trapped between the ball and the arcade cabinet. Ouch! Maybe that's why I stuck this one to the page upside-down. Frogger, on the other hand, I played a lot. It's a game I still think about because I live near a very busy street, and crossing it on foot is tricky. My strategy is to make it to the center island and from there to the other side. I don't just play Frogger now; I live it.

Centipede, Frogger, and Defender stickers.

Not much to say about this next page. It's mostly just more randos, including your standard-issue Terrifying Clown from the Depths of Hell™. The one licensed character on this page is Snoopy. The only thing really remarkable about these stickers is that they're (mostly) the shiny, reflective kind. Those were sort of neat, I guess. Not as neat as Masters of the Universe or Popeye, but still kind of eye-catching. I honestly don't get the stickers down at the bottom. They're a bunch of strange props: an old-timey phone, a boiling cauldron, a piggy bank. Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better.

Random shiny stickers

More of the dregs here, I'm afraid. Fairly generic-looking aliens and spaceships. Snoozers. I do like the idea of giving a child a "Pretty Bright!" sticker, though. "Hey, kid, you're fairly intelligent! Not a genius by any means but certainly adequate!" At the bottom of the page are these strange "Penny Power" stickers. I have no idea what these are or where they came from. Google didn't tell me jack squat.

Aliens and Penny Power stickers

Oh, but things turn around in a big way here! Even by the age of 7 or 8, I was already a nerd for old-timey, long-dead comedians like Abbott & Costello and W.C. Fields. So I can remember being ecstatic with happiness at finding these Laurel & Hardy puffy stickers at a drug store one afternoon. Curiously, these designs are based on a 1966 animated series from Hanna Barbera. I can't say as I ever saw that show, but I do remember Stan and Ollie turning up on Scooby-Doo. Also on this page: more Penny Power nonsense, plus Felix the Cat, a panda bear, "I Love My Dog" (we always had dogs in my family), and a now-dormant peppermint scratch 'n' sniff.

Laurel & Hardy stickers, plus Felix the Cat and more!

And now, the end is near, and so I face... Hello Kitty. Look, back then, I was a sticker junkie. I'd take whatever I could get. Even Sanrio stuff. Remember Happyland? That place was like Sanrio Heaven. It's only natural that some of that stuff would filter into my collection. Maybe the American flag helps balance it out. There's some more interesting stuff on this, the final page of my little sticker album. See that Smurfs sticker down there, for instance? It's another scratch 'n' sniff, but this one actually still smells like peanut butter. I'm not kidding. Don't believe me? Smell your screen.

You might notice some Hi-C/Return of the Jedi stickers, too. Turns out this was part of a whole promotion. I somehow wound up with arguably two of the lamer stickers in this collection. Wonder what happened to the rest? Anyway, thank you for taking this voyage with me down Memory Lane. You have a real nice rest of your day.

Hello Kitty and Return of the Jedi stickers

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Plan 9 Odyssey, Part Three by Greg Dziawer

If you can remember when computers looked liked this, maybe you played the Plan 9 video game.

Plan 9's unsuccessful video game

In 1992, the release of Rudolph Grey's seminal biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. ushered in a new era of recognition for filmmaker and author Ed Wood. More than a decade after The Golden Turkey Awards, Ed's reputation was finally taking a step beyond the reductive "worst director of all time" moniker that had, until then, shaped his limited public myth. 

When Grey's book inspired the 1994 Disney-produced biopic Ed Wood, with Hollywood superstar Johnny Depp in the title role, Eddie's posthumous renown doubtless reached its pinnacle. Sixteen years after his tragic, untimely passing, Ed Wood had finally become an object of mass pop culture interest.

Timing, they say, is everything. In late 1992, during the interim between the book and the film, a bizarre video game based upon Eddie's best-known "worst" film, Plan 9 From Outer Space, reached the market. Much like the movie that had inspired it, the game was largely panned by critics. In the pages of Computer Gaming World, for instance, writer Charles Ardai declared that the game "attains a degree of cheapness that even the movie didn't reach, which is quite an accomplishment." Ardai, who went on to co-found the internet service provider Juno, was an avowed non-fan of Wood's original film as well, calling it "pitiful and headache-inducing."

Developed by a now-defunct British software company called Gremlin Graphics and published by Konami—yes, the company behind Contra, Castlevania, Frogger, Metal Gear, Dance Dance Revolution, and much more—Plan 9 from Outer Space is a satirical, fourth-wall-breaking, point-and-click game. Not my cup of tea, honestly. 

A typical screenshot from the Plan 9 game.

For the record, the player assumes the role of a detective hired by a gruff, cigar-chomping producer who looks exactly like Tor Johnson but does not act or talk like him. Other Tor lookalikes populate this world, and there are cameos by Bela Lugosi and Vampira, too. 

The goal is to search through 70 various locations in Hollywood, including bars and cemeteries, and find all six reels of Plan 9 from Outer Space. Apparently, these reels have been purloined by Bela Lugosi's embittered stand-in, who wants to insert more footage of himself into Plan 9 and even colorize the entire movie! (Incidentally, a colorized Plan 9 is now widely available on DVD and BluRay from Legend Films.) As in other point-and-click games, there's not a lot of visceral, blood-pumping action here. Instead, as you make your way through the game, you'll find clues, read onscreen text, collect items in your inventory, and interact with various hostile weirdos. A tombstone in the corner gives some standard options, including HIT, TALK, and OPEN.

One notable aspect of Gremlin's Plan 9 from Outer Space game is that it contains crudely digitized clips of Ed Wood's original film. In the primitive days before streaming video and cinema-quality cut scenes, this was something of a novelty.

Gremlin dug its own grave with this one.

Ultimately, Gremlin released its Plan 9 from Outer Space game across three platforms: the Commodore Amiga, the Atari ST, and MS-DOS for IBM personal computers. Unfortunately, two of these systems, the Amiga and the ST, were released in 1985 and were on their last legs by 1992.

On the plus side, the Atari and IBM editions of the game actually included a VHS copy of the movie! That was definitely a rarity. But even that didn't compensate for Plan 9's limited graphics, repetitive soundtrack, and unsatisfying gameplay.

Needless to say, Gremlin's Plan 9 from Outer Space fell through the cracks a quarter century ago and is only barely remembered today. The game is intentionally designed to be frustrating—Ardai complains of the "little creature" who steals items from the player's inventory—and I find it difficult to navigate. A review from the January 1993 edition of Electronic Games magazine provides some good tips for playing Plan 9... before panning the game!

Fans of Ed Wood, especially those who enjoy point-and-click games, will naturally be tempted to play Plan 9 despite its poor reputation. Luckily, you still can! Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can play it here online. Chances are, you'll get stuck before finding all six reels. If that happens but you want to see more—the game includes little knowing details and images from Wood's movie that must have been utterly baffling to the average gamer at the time—you can watch others play here, here, and here.

Enjoy! And God help us in the future!

Tsk, tsk, tsk: The allure of the scolding pop culture editorial

That thing you enjoy? Well, you shouldn't. Shame on you!

I think I have discovered the truest gauge of success in  America today. You know that your movie, TV show, book, album, game, or podcast is a hit when someone is inspired to write a scolding, humorless pop culture editorial (or SHPCE for short) about it. You'll recognize it instantly when it happens, because the article will be called "The Problem With ______" or "The Trouble With ____." Generally, the objections will be one or more of the following.

• The thing isn't as good as it used to be. This used to be a much more common complaint, but it has waned in recent years. Why? Well, it requires someone to actually wait a few years, rather than a few weeks, before writing a SHPCE. Where's the fun in that? If you want to get on your high horse and complain about something, you don't want to actually wait around and accumulate years worth of actual evidence, do you? Hell, no! By that time, hundreds of other TV shows, movies, books, and podcasts have already come along and stolen the national spotlight away. The choice, then, is clear. You have to write your SHPCE while the PC in question is still hot. If, by some chance, the PC object in question is still at peak popularity after several years, then you can write this kind of story if you really insist on it. It's an Internet classic, after all.

• The thing is just derivative of some other, better thing that came before. Now, this takes a little more research, but it can be quite satisfying if you have enough evidence to support your thesis statement. Of course, you can apply this to TV shows or movies or whatever you'd like, since everybody's always copying everyone else anyway, but it really works best for music. Pop music does a lot of the work for you, since much of it is really derivative and lazy. As evidenced by the the recent "Blurred Lines" lawsuit, pop musicians don't really even try that hard to keep their influences hidden. It's not difficult to take whatever's at the top of the charts currently and find something from ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago which sounds just like it. I mean, have you heard "Uptown Funk" a few dozen times yet?

• The thing has some logical loopholes or plot inconsistencies, rendering it worthless. I'm not sure why, but this seems to be the especial domain of Cracked.com and about half a million different hyperactive YouTubers. An army of Comic Book Guy wannabes (except slimmer and better groomed), Cracked's ever-snarky writers seem genuinely outraged when fantasy films with completely impossible plots somehow fail to conform to rigorous fact-checking and logical scrutiny. Time travel doesn't work that way, they tell us! Elves would never say something like that, they want us to know! Even if the central premise of a work is complete, made-up bullshit involving magic and super powers, the plot needs to be airtight. Or so the angry nerds of the Internet would have us believe.

• The thing may seem good now but will have problems in the future. Oh, this is just perfect for first-season TV shows. If a show is just starting to gain momentum, here's how to let the air out of the tires pronto. What are they going to do when so-and-so grows up, for instance? Huh? What then? And that running joke seems hilarious now, but will it seem hilarious after 40 or 50 episodes? Can the show possibly keep all its narrative plates spinning? Probably not. And it'll probably get cancelled before they've resolved everything anyway. You might as well just give up on this show now.

• (by far the most popular and definitely the one you should use) The thing is somehow sexist, racist, classist, ageist, homophobic, xenophobic, or in some other way prejudicial (often in a sly, non-obvious way) and will, therefore, cause any viewer, listener, or reader to become prejudiced as well. Ah, now we're cookin'. This right here is the heart of any good SHPCE in 2015. There is no horse higher than this one. Netflix's The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is deeply offensive to Native Americans. The podcast Serial promoted stereotypes about immigrants. And Mike Judge's Idiocracy? Well, buddy, if you've ever even watched that movie, you've more or less endorsed Hitler's final solution, because that's what that movie was really all about. I learned all of these things through deeply-impassioned, progressive-minded SHPCEs. Thank god, right? I mean, without the guidance of these enlightened editorial writers, I might have been swayed by the evils of popular culture and become a gay-bashing, woman-abusing Nazi plantation owner. It's a good thing I clicked on that BuzzFeed link, huh? That was a close one!

And there you have it. You may think of the pop culture you consume as mere entertainment. Your favorite TV show or game or whatever may just be a little day-brightener for you. But the authors of SHPCEs know better. It's racist and derivative and just all around evil. In short, you should not be enjoying that thing you enjoy. And, frankly, you should feel ashamed of yourself for ever having enjoyed it in the first place. There. Now don't you feel just terrible about yourself? Good. Mission accomplished. Once again, the Internet has saved the goddamned day.

And now, I'll conclude this little post with a completely chauvinist, reactionary, regressive, repressive song. Shame on me.