Author Archives: AFDStudios

You're Going to Die VI

If you’re just tuning in, our goal is to write our own Choose Your Own Adventure where every choice is twofold, with one leading to further adventure and the other to a gruesome death. Here were our choices from last week:

Oh, you’re going to tell daddy over my dead body! You spring into action, grabbing a handful of those cheap office pens, just in case you need to throw stuff at him. You begin to notice your age as you pant towards the brat, but you’ll be damned if that stops you! You whip a pen at him, missing completely (unless you were actually aiming at Sue with the lazy eye from accounting, but you know you weren’t).

He looks back to see if that was you, makes an obscene gesture, and picks up the pace. If you don’t do something soon, you’ll have to listen to your boss lecture you for 15 minutes about conducting yourself in the office! 15 friggin minutes!!! You take every pen in hand, and throw them with all your might. Nailed him!

He turns around again, probably to make some stupid remark, when he runs right past his dad’s office, and down a stairwell. You hear him make a large amount of shrieks and shrills, as any annoying child is prone to do when they’re making a big deal out of some broken bones. Oh wait, this is bad! Now he’s going to tell his dad you made him fall! Unless he broke his mouth. Can you break a mouth? You’re not sure, but you bet that kid just found out.

Do you:
A – Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth?
B – Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around?

Such unchecked violence! At this rate we could be on cable. We had some great entries, seriously well written. I loved the Zombie approach from borntobealoser, but since we did such an adventure with “Zombocalypse Now”, I thought we should try something different. Thus, we’re going with logosgal’s!

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"My Humiliation" is a weird name for a bull

(From “Baffling Mysteries” number 9, 1952.)

"Feral" means "Big Hair"

Marvel can teach us many things about the wonderful world of being feral:

  1. Metal is out, because feral animals don’t smelt.
  2. Claws come out from between the fingers, not from the tops of the hands, because that’s how it happens in nature. To feral things.
  3. No clothing. I mean, when was the last time you saw a beaver in a yellow spandex costume? No, wait, don’t answer that.
  4. Except for loin cloths. Loin cloths reek with feral-ness.
  5. Hair takes on the shape of whatever hat you would be wearing if you were not feral. Only more so. Thus we have the ten-gallon-hat shaped pit viper of the lower Colorado River Valley. It’s both feral and an excellent rancher.
  6. Being feral means your lower teeth are enormous.
  7. Feral things drool. A lot.
  8. Going feral can turn your deltoids into mushroom caps. So don’t do it, kids.

I think we can all be thankful that comics still has so much to teach us. Thank you, comics!

Note to DC Comics: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons figured this out TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO.

(via Steve Bunche.)

META: HM3 ads

I just updated the HeroMachine 3 app page to support Google Ads. It seems to work but the code is weirding me out, so if you see anything not behaving correctly, please let me know.

I believe I have it set up where if you go to the widescreen view, the ad disappears so you can see the entire canvas, and then it comes back when you return to the default. Again, if not, holler.

Movie Iron Man vs. Movie Batman. Who wins?

Our Versus poll today comes from Facebook commenter James Wickenden, and pits the two most iconic comic book movie characters against each other. Both are multi-billionaire inventor/crusaders who employ clever technological goodies in their fight against crime. So which would win in a head-to-head battle?

It’s clear that the Iron Man armor employs a superior battery of weapons and defensive capabilities. It’s essentially a one-man army corps. Batman’s tech in the movies is effective, but lacks the raw firepower Stark Enterprises brings to bear. So from the standpoint of raw power, I give the edge to Iron Man.

Whenever we have a poll involving Batman, the conversation inevitably turns to “Will he have time to prepare”, with the assumption being that if the answer is “yes”, the result is “Batman wins”. But the movie Batman doesn’t seem to have the same supernatural ability as the comic book version — he gets outthought and outfought by Bane up until the bitter end, while movie Stark seems to always be the one who’s one step ahead of the game.

The caveat to that is that in the “Avengers” movie, Tony had to rely on Hawkeye’s tactical abilities to swing the tide of combat. I think movie Batman would be at least equal to movie Hawkeye, so in combat tactical ability, I’d go with Bats.

For me, the tiebreaker comes down to the fact that Batman’s girlfriend get killed, while Iron Man manages to hang on to Pepper Pots through three movies now. That’s pretty good. So I’d vote for movie Iron Man if it were me, but I’m curious as to which way you’d go, and why. So please comment and tell us your thinking!

[polldaddy poll=”6510336″]

META: I get spam

Maybe if you stopped associating with Nazis you’d be in a better mood.

I'm no witch and I'm pretty sure *I* can interpret it …

(From “Baffling Mysteries” number 9, 1952.)

Character Design Challenge 99: Wingin' It

There’s no WAY I’d take this case!

Your Character Design Challenge this week is to create the most awesome illustration possible featuring any item from the Backplane-Wings set. You could create an angel, or a bird-themed character, or a sea-faring monarch with teeny tiny wings on his ankles (as if anyone would believe that!), or a big flying mech, or an aircraft, or a sadistic vampire in his bat form, or anything else you can think of so long as at least one Wing item is present in the illustration.

I’ll pick my personal favorites when the week is over, with the one I like best being featured in the right column for the week. The rules otherwise are the same as always:

  • All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine forums, ImageShack, PhotoBucket, or whatever);
  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • The image cannot have been used in any previous HeroMachine challenge;
  • Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his “Bayou Belle” character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.
  • Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this). See this post on how to get the direct link for most sites.
  • All entries must be in by next Monday, when I’ll choose my personal favorites.

No limit on entries this week, so knock yourselves out. Just make them good!

Caption Challenge 128 results!

Many thanks to everyone who entered our last Caption Challenge, which tasked you with writing the best headline for this comics panel:

Here are the ones that I personally found the funniest:

  • Mark: When a mob boss tells you to get off his lawn, you listen.
  • fuzztone: You gotta mouse? We gotta solution.
  • ProwlerKnight: They should’ve bought some girl scout cookies
  • Mark: No child will ever be trapped in here again, once we fill this old well with lead.
  • Jawsabi: This is WAY better than laser-tag!
  • Twiggy: The New Orleans mob decides to deal with Hurricane Isaac their own way
  • Jake: Not everyone appreciated the Kenny G concert.
  • McKnight57: In the mob, a 21 gun salute happens BEFORE the burial.
  • Herr D: Dick Tracy never found out what happened to “Crawls” McGee.
  • The Occupant: And I thay it’th Duck Season!
  • spidercow2012: Don Vito said to clean out the rain gutters, so…
  • X-stacy: And that’s when I found out everybody really was a critic.

And my overall favorite? Fuzztone! The idea of a Mob-run extermination agency tickled my fancy and the line’s well written.

Thanks everyone! I’d love to hear about your favorite(s) in the comments, so if you’re computer-bound on this holiday (or stuck at the airport like me), chime in.