My Apron does read "Cooking Elemental"

So aside from firebreathing ovens of doom, things go well. You may be noticing a difference in quality between previous strip's inkwork and this one. This is because I finally realized I had a copy of Painter Classic lying around, and I decided to give the whole digital inking thing a go-at-it. I think it looks pretty damn sweet. And with a little practice maybe I can speed things up.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about soap operas. And, well, I felt it only fair to take a look at the other side of the issue. Not "why soap operas are good," but rather, "the Geek's version of a soap opera." Quite simpy, Comic Books. And you can't tell me the two don't have similarities, or at least they do in my mind. Ok, granted one contains more spandex than the other, as well as crazy superpowers, but there are similarities. Let us take a look at possibly the greatest Comic Book Hero, ever: Batman.

Charming young Billionaire Bruce Wayne, having witnessed his parents horribly murdered at a young age, dresses up as a bat late at night and hunts the streets of Gotham City for villanous scum and general evil doers in a desperate measuer to seek some kind of justice/revenge/inner piece. Ok, so if nothing else we've got a common factor of angst. Lots and lots of angst. And we all know, angst sells almost as well as sex. And speaking of sex, both your average soap opera character and the dark knight get about the same amount. We all know sex happens on soaps, not so much on camera, but don't even try to think that Bruce isn't getting his fair share too. I mean, as Batman alone, the dark brooding loaner, he's gone through at least half a dozen loves: Selina Kyle, at least one new girl each movie, Talia (daughter of Rash), depending on who you talk to Barbara Gordon, and those are just the ladies that come to my imediate mind. And if the Bat gets the action, just imagine what the Playboy Billionaire Bruce is getting? Surely you didn't think that he didn't keep up that end of his double identity did you? But aside from the angst and the sex, I think the one thing that draws a connection between soaps and comic books is quite simply the convoluted and often contradictory plot lines. Now, this is found most often in series that have been around forever, and most classic books characters have had at least a dozen of their own series, and the events in each series being unique to that specific series. Don't try to apply that which happened in Detective Comics to what happenes in Ledgends of the Dark Knight let alone The Animated Series. If fact, I think the break it up into multiple series just to help keep things straight. Trying to make everything that's been written in a comic series since 1940 is like trying to follow Days of Our Lives which has been going on for 40 years. This is something I feel no television show should be allowed to do.

But that doesn't mean that comic books aren't a wonderful source of entertainment. Just as, I suppose, soaps are. There must be something keeping them on the air.

I am not Batman.

Welcome to the Comedity. Don't step on the Penguin.
Garth (Sunday - March 6, 2005) -23:27:07