"Oh What a Beautiful Morning"

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There's an old webcomic that finished a few years back. It's called Breakfast of the Gods and it's about the cereal mascots you remember from your childhood, and older. I just found out about it and read it in about an hour or so. When you get a chance you should check it out. It's dark, and bloody, not at all for the kiddies, but it's well done.

The navigation can be a little wonky. But at the top of each page is the pull-down to go to the start of each book and at the bottom is one to go to each page in a given book. The one on top is out of order, so don't read book three before book two.

Enjoy

"For Noone"

This guy makes a great point and draws really funny. I recommend him alot.

"Tales of Brave Ulysses"

I bet you thought this post was going to be about Agon didn't you?

This is just another quickie link post. I'm sure many of you have already seen this, because it was linked from Penny Arcade, or you are just cooler than I am. but in case you have not...

This the web page of a man who is writing a short story a day. Monday though Friday. Hard enough as it is, but he has limited himself to the use of 101 words per story. There are some masterpieces in there, you've got to read them to believe it.

"Alley-Oop"

I've found a few links that I can only classify as odd mutations of classic comic strips. There has to be a "sexier" or marketable way to say that, but odd comics is what I've found, so odd comics is what you get:

First we'll start with one you've almost for sure heard of. It's been around since at least early 2006, making it ancient in Internet terms. Take the thought and word bubbles out of Garfield comics, and what do you get? An oddly surreal, and somewhat sad portrait of a man and his cat. There are pages of them here, but they are not all strictly in the same vein.

Along a similar line, we get this: Garfield minus Garfield. Talk about sad. Jon Arbuckle becomes a almost tragic figure and I find it hard to read more than a few of these without really feeling sad for the man.

My newest favorite is Marmaduke Explained. It needs no further explanation, which is part of its charm. Be careful, there's some dirty words on this one.

The best, and most time wasting by far is The Nietzsche Family Circus. Revel in the randomness. Spend hours wondering if it is secretly planned, or truly as random as they say.

There's still a quiz down below, get on it people! I want answers!

"Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"

Steampunk Volume Two: a little bit farther from the core world.

First things first, I called the last Steampunk post Mad Dogs and Englishmen because that is the title of the issue of The Invisibles that the picture I used is the cover for. That sentence was the sentence of the most poor construction ever seen on this blog; until the one following it.

It's also a song title, so I get to use it and not break my naming convention. The cover is sort of "on the line" Steampunk, and so is the issue. A rebel cell leader from our time (which was the 90s) sends an astral projection of himself into the 1920s to meet with a rebel cell of that time. What makes it sort of Steampunk is that even though it is the 20s, the bad guys have rayguns and cloning, and enjoy a little gas mask fashion.

Not Steampunk enough for you huh? Well then you are going to hate this post. Like I said in the last volume, I feel that Steampunk is less of a strict setting, and more of a flexible genre. It is about the aesthetic look, and also the rebellion. There is an interesting forum thread over on Story Games if you're interested in what a dozen or so gamers think. One of the things that comes up a few times is the Star Wars crossover appeal. This is a world where the decadence of the republic, lead to a takeover by a powerful empire, which now must be brought down by a plucky group of heroes with little more than their wits, their growing faith in a hero, and some sweet gear.

I've found some great Star Wars meets Steampunk stuff:

This guy has put some extraordinary thought into creating action figures in the Steampunk setting. He's done Justice League and The Avengers, but his Star Wars stuff seems to get the most linkage.

This fellow has done some drawings that really help imagine Star Wars differently. My clear favorite is his Han and Chewie.

The best Star Wars/Steampunk site though is this one. The Grainy quality of the pictures and the overall feel of this site is great. Sort of a what if Star Wars universe had been interacting with ours since the 1800s and particularly since the second world war.

Along with that World War theme, keep scrolling down this page. You'll see some great stuff that covers all types of Steampunk designs, and then, near the bottom, you'll find the horrors that would have awaited us had Nazi scientists been more devoted to Steampunk style transformers, rather than rockets.

So what happens when you follow a timeline forward that started with Steampunk? Well that last link gives you an idea. You get kind of a retro futurist thing going on. Like the Jetsons, or Warren Ellis' Ministry of Space, or this cool t-shirt site. Alternative history is a favorite of mine. My friend Mark and I will regularly play the For Want of a Nail game at Denny's. Alternative history and Stampunk are compatible genres, as long as you keep that whole small group against the oppressor mindset.

This site is dedicated to people in the past's view of the future. Is it strictly Steampunk? No, but it is a great way to look for ideas to set your next Steampunk-ish story.

Well that's all the time I have today...

Did I promise you Rayguns? [checking] I did. Oh well! Watch out for Volume Three: Things that make you go poof!

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen"

Steampunk Volume One: The stuff you know.


My friends Jeff and Dave have begun discussing Steampunk more often. Steampunk, for those of you that don't know, is a media genre. It shows up in TV, movies, novels, games, comics, and more. Basically you can describe it as science fiction set in the 19th century, but it is much more than that. Some purists will claim that in fact steam must play a role, or that the setting must be British, during the time of Queen Victoria. But as a genre I find to be more inclusive than dismissive. If you want to wear a bowler hat, a leather apron, and build musical instruments that run on the power provided by a bicycle; or strap on a jet pack and fight the Nazis; or build an airship and help Watson and Holmes then dammit, I say good on you. Steampunk can be set in the modern world, the future, or even farther in the past, before the steam engine.

One of the basic themes of the genre seems to be the triumph, or downfall, of man. That's lowercase on purpose. One man, whose life is changed by the Steampunk devices he creates/carries, faces off against adversaries, who normally outnumber him, and at least conventionally "out gun" him. These adversaries are almost always in a secret society who mean to keep mankind down. Our hero then faces off against them and depending on the story; triumphs, with the help of his own sweat and blood (and his raygun) or fails, crushed beneath the weight of the oppressive secret oligarchy. But in the epilogue, somehow manages to pass his secret knowledge, and possibly a treasured device, on to the next generation.

The works of H.G. Wells, and Lovecraft often find their way into the background, if not the foreground of many modern Steampunk stories. In fact, the unnamed Time Traveler, from H.G. Wells The Time Machine is about as perfect a template for a Steampunk "hero" as you can get. He is smart, an inventor or scientist, and yet still an amateur at such pursuits. He is impulsive, inquisitive, and likely to get in trouble for a woman. When he returns from his first adventure, he writes everything up, like a good scientist, and then, alone, but better prepared, he begins another adventure.

I dig on Steampunk, and have been thinking about it a lot this last week because of this post over at the Aviary. So without further ado, I give you, the first batch of links!

Of course, Wikipedia is a great source of information on Steampunk but I've also found...

Now Dave already mentioned this one in the comments of Jeff's post.

Some Steampunk enthusiasts like the technology side of a little more than the fashion. They have formed a different live journal community: The Clockworkers Guild.

Another handy group here at The Steampunk Workshop.

If you needed any ideas for the look of you robots, cars, or odd alien races, you could do a lot worse than to take a peek at Stephane Halleux and crib from the best!

A great overall blog, covering film, creations, art, and whatnot is Brass Goggles. He's looking for help running the site if anyone catches the bug!

I've got more for later, including some ray gun stuff, some alternate timeline stuff, and hopefully some more on the literature that started this trend in the first place.

BTW, the song title and picture today are a little more obscure than usual. I'll fill you in next Steampunk post.