Mr Papa Mister

he/him | married | over 50 | pacific northwest | comics | books | art | science fiction | fantasy | mythology | left of center

[liberalsarecool]

Say what you will about Hunter Biden, he can talk in honesty, defend his lifestyle choices.

Trump and MAGA couldn't string a sentence that says who they are to save their lives.

[mellointheory]

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

[the-haiku-bot]

Who makes the porn bots.

Where do they come from. What do

they hope to achieve.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[mellointheory]

and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.

do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?

[the-haiku-bot]

My voice repeats what

you all say: I love you I

love you I love you.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[solkorolevaa]

[thenewborndeity]

This. This is the first time. The only time. That it was not an echo. It was not found. Oh god.

[thirdtwin3]

"Consequences" 03.15 (1999)

[shoebutton]

Justice League Action | Missing the Mark | @dckids

Featuring Mark Hamill as the Joker, Mark Hamill as the Trickster, and Mark Hamill as Mark Hamill. With a special guest appearance by Mark Hamill.

[thestuffedalligator]

I’m going to level with you. I have listened to The Devil Went Down to Georgia for most of my life. We were a country music household, this was a staple of my childhood along with Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks, and that one Chipmunks country album.

I have no idea what “Fire on the mountain run boys run/The Devil's in the house of the rising sun/Chicken in the bread pan picking out dough/Granny does your dog bite no child no” means and at this point I’m too scared to ask.

[dementian]

For once I can be of assistance.

Each of the lyrics comes from an old-time hickory song for fiddles, and is a lyric from that corresponding song.

"Fire on the Mountain" --> "Fire on the Mountain, run boys run"

Fire On The Mountain - Fiddle Player POV

"The House of the Rising Sun" --> "The Devil's in the house of the rising sun"

House of the Rising Sun

"Ida Red" --> "Chicken in the bread pan peckin' out dough"

Ida Red - Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

"Granny Will Your Dog Bite" --> "Granny does your dog bite? 'No child, no'."

FTC #149 Granny Will Your Dog Bite

And for your furthered education, The Mountain Whipporwill.

Mountain Whippoorwill (aka How Hillbilly Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize)

[impossiblepackage]

this is the key part of the song, that a lot of people miss. people have this misconception that the contest between Johnny and The Devil is about who is the better fiddle player. but it isn't. its about who is the better fiddler.

in a time before things like radios and record players, every time you heard music was because there was somebody in the room with you playing an instrument. and many, many, many social events involved dancing, which requires music. so, if you're planning any kind of gathering in the american south or appalachia, you need to find a fiddler. and the fiddler's job is to play music that everybody knows and likes and can dance to.

the mistake The Devil makes in his bet with Johnny is that he misinterprets the contest as being about technical ability, so he has this big flashy song. he plays fast and impressively with a band of demons playing unfamiliar instruments in unfamiliar rhythms. he's definitely more skilled at playing than Johnny, and thinks he has it in the bag.

but Johnny wins because the contest is about being the best fiddler. the song uses these lines mentioned above as a shorthand for saying that Johnny is playing these songs. Johnny launches into a set of the most popular songs, played well, and that's what gives him his big win. A good fiddler knows all the hits, and can read the room to know what to play next. The Devil loses because he completely fails to read the room, and doesn't know the right songs.

[jordanbolton]

“The Driver” by Jordan Bolton

Prints and zines available on my Etsy

Subscribe to my Patreon to get early access to new comics alongside much more!

[grickle14]

The wild, wild West.

[myjetpack]

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

p.s. I'm coming to Germany soon with my new book of science cartoons. Details at www.tomgauld.com

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Mary Marvel - Cover art by Jack Binder (1946)

[tomoleary]

Félix Meynet — Le Divan Japonais (circa 2019) Source

“Interprétation de l'affiche de Toulouse-Lautrec par Félix Meynet. (Interpretation of the Toulouse-Lautrec poster by Félix Meynet.)”

Source

[tomoleary]

Homages by Félix Maynet Les Tuniques Bleues (Blutch and Chesterfield)

Lucky Luke

Spirou et Fantasio (Marsupilami et Spip)

Johan et Pirlouit

Les aventures de Jack Diamond

Blueberry

Blake et Mortimer

Gil Jourdan

The Spirit

Valérian et Laureline

[biglawbear]

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

[biglawbear]

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

[biglawbear]

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

[biglawbear]

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

[three--rings]

Certainly there are many messages within Lord of the Rings, but you have to think that Tolkien would have been happy that this message in particular was still being conveyed all these years later.

[lucybellwood]

An Indulgent Rant After a Frustrating Meeting

I've been doing this for sixteen years. I've seen with my eyes that giving people art, letting art move, letting stories breathe, allowing them to travel: it changes people. Those stories go places and lodge in people's hearts in ways you can't predict. That can't happen if you keep it all close to the chest, behind a paywall, locked in bureaucracy. It can't happen if you're afraid. If you operate from a place of ownership and grasping and the fear that there might be money left on the table. We want a piece of this, they say. We want to make sure we get our share. You wouldn't have made this without us. True. Of course. But who will move the story? Who will connect with the audience? Is it you? I don't think so. That's why you hired me. If you give someone something freely with intention, it carries gratitude in it like a seed. It's nonlinear. I've been saying this for years.

The "money left on the table" isn't thousands, or even hundreds. Often it's a loss! I pay to print comics to put out into the world because they will go places I can't. People will find their way back to me. If my life changed because of one college student's weird photocopied tall ship-themed zine I found in a bookstore in 2005, who knows where my work will go and what it will do.

It infuriates me to run up against this mentality because it is so hard to share anything in the world today. It is so hard to get stories into the hands of people who need them. You have to give everything a fighting chance—print it out, leave it in the library, share it on social media, post it on your blog. Yes, publish it. Put it in a book. Put that book up for sale. Of course. Of course. I want to eat. I'm not a fool. But if people don't find the story, they won't want to buy the book. That's how it works.

I'm tired of working in a system that operates on that fear. It feels juvenile. "What if someone steals my idea?" "What if someone reads my work and doesn't pay me for the privilege?" GREAT. SOMEONE HAS READ MY WORK.

I don't know how to sit in the seat of this power while also championing the fact that artists must be paid. Our work has value, but much of that value is slantwise. It doesn't come in linear channels. So yes, pay me, but also trust me. Trust that I know what I'm doing. Trust that art moves in mysterious ways. Trust in the story. If it is good and true, people will value it. They will bring that value back to you.

[uncaaj]

Scanlation: A Ducky Palindrome

This comic has been around my Tumblr feed basically since I got into the fandom. Thanks, @sarroora​. At long last, I have finally found the comic and given it the BlueJay scanlation treatment. I hope you enjoy this rather topsy-turvy comic with art by one of my favs. Thanks @min​ for hooking me up with the scan.

INDUCKS Code: I TL 2940-3 Writer: Marco Bosco Artist: Claudio Sciarrone

SUMMARY: Things get a little weird as the duck family explores a fun house hall of mirrors.

[dirtyriver]

Pure genius.

[mattymouse16]

The best magicians don't reveal their tricks.

[vintage-tigre]

[browsethestacksofficial]

Plop! #020

Art by Robert Johnson

DC Comics (1976)