Female Dwarf expansion released!

I am happy to announce that the Expansion Pack items have now been added to the Female Dwarf figure! You can access the new items at the usual place.

The last remaining body template to be updated is the female Brick. After that, I'll need to clean up all the bugs, and hopefully duplicate some of the components into other slots. For instance, I'd like to make the Standard Coats available on the Overshirt and Undershirt layers, and vice versa, across the board.

And after that, I'll probably be done with HeroMachine 2 for the foreseeable future. We're in the midst right now of figuring out what's next; my guess is that we'll probably focus for a while on putting out much smaller, one-off versions like the Rock Star Edition and Real Life Edition. Think of things like a smaller HeroMachine with just one pose featuring exclusively Powered Armor, or Old West items, or Modern Teenager clothes, that kind of thing.

On the plus side, such releases can come out much more frequently. There are also business advantages, since such mini-applets are entirely self-contained and can be easily shared on other web sites, unlike the full 2.5 which spans hundreds of files and six subdirectories. On the down side, you'll be limited to just the items in that applet, so you'll have a situation where there might be items you'd love to see in the full version that just aren't available, and vice versa. It's almost like going back to the original HeroMachine 1, where if you chose the Martial Artist pose you couldn't have guns.

But, if there are specific items that people in general are clamoring to have in the full release, we can probably schedule another Expansion to include them.

Anyway, enjoy the female dwarf Expansion, and as always, please comment in the Bugs post if you come across anything weird.

Hippie Grodd?

I don't know what Grodd's been smoking there in Gorilla City, but he certainly doesn't look like a mind-controlling, world-dominating super-intelligent ape to me in this picture:

Gorilla Grodd, Hippie

But whatever it is, I bet he got it off of Angar the Screamer. That's the kind of crossover I think any self-respecting love child can endorse. Peace, happiness, and evil; the sixties live again, my friends!

Write Your Own Caption Contest!

UPDATED: This contest is now closed, and the winner is Hades! You can see the final panel here; thanks for the great entries, everyone. If you want to try again, Caption Contest 2 is now underway!


How would you like to show the world how smart and witty you are, be entitled to call yourself (in whatever minor way) a comic book writer, AND win your very own drawing, all at the same time? Thanks to the Miracle of Science, now you can!

Here's how it works.

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Mashup 1: The Mosquitoes are TERRIBLE!

Welcome to the first edition of the Monday Mashup! Each week I'll take one bag of ten random comics I purchased for ten cents apiece at Half Price Books and, by scanning one panel from each, try to create some sort of story that almost makes sense, if you don't think about it too hard. I don't know if this'll work, but here goes!

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Geek gone wild

I had the best comic-book-geek weekend. First I went to "StapleCon", a convention here in central Texas for independent comic book publishers, where I met some outstanding talents working to make their dreams come true. It was as inspirational as it was costly, since of course I couldn't resist buying one of everything. Plus, I got a lead on a new gig just in case this UGO thing doesn't work out:

Lord Vile Henchmen Wanted

I also got a book signed by Mike Baron, which was pretty cool. But that wasn't the end of my comic-buying adventure, my friends, oh no! For I still had money in my account, and there's nothing more dangerous than a geek with disposable income. So after the convention, my friend and I headed to Half Price Books to trade in a huge stack of old sci-fi novels that had been gathering dust. I put my box on the counter, and spied from the corner of my eye a gigantic stack of comics being bagged by one of the Book Dudes.

"Excuse me," I said politely, "but can those be purchased now or do I need to wait until you've processed them all?"

"You can look through the bagged ones, they're in lots of ten for a dollar," he said.

"A dollar apiece?" I replied, thinking that wasn't a bad price, since on the top of one stack was a Number 1 issue of "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs", one of my all time favorite comics.

"No, a dollar for the whole stack of ten," he corrected me.

Blink. Hang on, ten for a dollar that's ... no, wait, don't tell me ... "Hey Dave," I finally said to my math-major friend, "how much is that apiece?"

Voice heavy with despair for the future of our math-illiterate nation, he said "That'd be ten cents apiece, Einstein."

My eyes goggled at the large stack already bagged, and the even larger stack still waiting to be processed. "I'll take 'em all!" I heard myself say.

"Even the ones I haven't done yet?" the Book Dude said. At my nod, his face beamed. "You're my new favorite customer!"

And so, awash in the glow of geek gone wild, I returned triumphantly to my home with this enormous box of comic books:

Box of comic books

The "Bone" and "Concrete" collections didn't come with it, those were separate. But still, that's a big stack! Unfortunately my wife wasn't quite as impressed with my geeky haul as I was. "Didn't we just sell a ton of books to make more shelf space?" she asked shrewdly.

Instantly my brain went into husband overdrive. Superman can have his super-speed and ice-breath, I'll take quick thinking any day of the week. It's the one indispensable survival tool for any married man. "Yes, but these ... aaaahh .... these are for ... um ... work! Yes, work, that's it!"

"You mean the same way it's for work when you stare at good looking women, so you can 'draw the human form better'?"

"Exactly!"

So as you can see, I had a problem. A gigantic, enormous, profound, disturbingly massive stack of comic books that I need to figure out some sort of work-related use for. And so, starting tomorrow, I will be introducing a new feature here on the HeroMachine Blog -- Mashup Mondays. Each week I will take one panel from each of the ten books in the randomly collected bags. I will try to assemble those panels into an order that almost seems like a story. It may suck, it may be funny, it may accidentally unlock the secrets of the multiverse, I don't know. But it will definitely make it seem like those books are, in fact, needed for work, which is all this husband is really looking for at this point.

Get a little captain … in your comics

If I can take pride in one thing about this blog, it's my documentation of the ability of comic book creators to find inspiration in the objects lying around their drawing tables, from Ramen to calculators. And also in showing how various characters are actually based on beer. And in my math skills, because that's more than one thing, despite my opening sentence. I blame all the alcohol and Ramen on my desk.

Nonetheless, I think you'll agree that "Captain Fear":

Captain Fear

is nothing more than the non-drunken brother of another, more famous Captain, who has been known to actually make people fearless in barrooms across this great nation:

Captain Morgan

Clones, twins, or just two guys who have the same tailor? I report, you decide!

(Captain Fear image and character ©1985, DC Comics, Inc. "Who's Who" Volume 4. Captain Morgan image and character ©2007, Captain Morgan Rum Co.)

Fruntsh!

Just like a drummer can create a wide range of sounds by hitting different varieties of the same instrument with a stick, super-heroes can do the same by pounding on different parts of an enemy's body with varying limbs. For instance, if you snap a demon's spine with your hand, you get “Fwak-tchh”, but doing it with your foot gives you "Fruntsh":

Fruntsh

Making beautiful music like this isn't as simple as it seems from the outside; you've got to know the acoustic properties of a whole slew of enemies' body parts, and how they interact with your own arsenal of weapons. I'm pretty sure the characters in "Battle Tide II" (Deathstrike Headsmasher and Crushnuts Bootiewhooper, or something like that) had to take, like, at least a semester of music appreciation before they were allowed into Battle, much less Battle II.

(Images ©1993, Marvel Comics UK Ltd., “Battle Tide II”)

Villain with a slice of lime

I like a villain who starts out cold and refreshing, and finishes smooth. A villain who looks great as-is, but even better with a slice of lime. A villain you can kick back on the beach watching the sun go down with while swaying in a hammock. A villain like Dos Equis ("That's DOCTOR Double X to you, pal!"):

Double X

My favorite part of this beer-themed villain is that the actual Double X is an invisible energy being given life when the original Single X went nutso. Invisible friends? Check. Maniacal leer? Check. Insanity? Check. Yeah, this guy is definitely based on beer. Other super powers? Powerful projectile vomiting, devastatingly inappropriate remarks to nubile coeds, and the ability to crash on anyone's couch at a moment's notice.

(Character and image ©1985, DC Comics, Inc., from "Who's Who" volume VI.)

Comics in schools

I've loved comic books since I first learned to read, and part of what motivates me to keep working on HeroMachine is the hope that in some way I am helping to keep that same love alive in others. I believe comics as an artistic medium is the equal to any of the arts, from traditional paint on canvas to sculpture to written fiction. The combination of images and words juxtaposed in sequential order on the page is a powerful one, uniquely capable of bringing ideas to life. Of course the majority of what we in America enjoy in our version of comics is the boot-to-the-face, giant mutated apes fighting Nazis in zeppelins over the skies of New York variety, and I'm fine with that.

But the medium is capable of much more, capable of not only entertaining us but of serving as a vehicle for powerful events and emotions. I can't count the number of people I've known who hated reading before they picked up their first comic book. I'm not ashamed to admit that comic books have shaped a lot of who I am and how I think; I still cherish an old "Captain America" issue where Cap talks about how the United States isn't a piece of cloth or a symbol to wave around, it's an ideal, a set of principles, and the people who are willing to hold to them no matter what.

So I was delighted to read this New York Times article about how a comic book about the Holocaust is helping a new generation of Germans open a dialog about that awful chapter in their (and our) history, enabling people to talk about it in a new, open way that was not possible before. Comics have the power to change hearts and minds, and it frustrates me sometimes that in America, they are still largely regarded as just "kid stuff". Our regard for the medium has evolved tremendously since I was young -- a lot of college courses now incorporate graphic novels -- but I'd love to see them used seriously in all age groups, as in this example from Germany.

Not that I'm giving up my face-kicking giant mutant gorilla Nazi-fighting pulp any time soon, mind you, but there's definitely room for both kinds of comics in our culture!

Name no longer unrevealed

In the Marvel Universe, major companies sometimes contract with various super-powered individuals to represent them (i.e.Tony Stark and Iron Man). I think I found the guy on Hugh Heffner's payroll:

Prism

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that his name will eventually be revealed as "Richard Cranium".

(Image and character ©1989, Marvel Comics, "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Update '89".)