Simpsorama Review

To start I'll say I passingly enjoyed the Family Guy crossover. It was an episode of Family Guy. It had Family Guy writing. Half the time jokes hit, half the time they don't. When they don't, who cares? It's just Family Guy. Maybe the next line will be better. I mean, pretty much none of the Simpsons characters said anything funny, mostly because they all just reiterated their primary Flanderized schticks (Apu and Wiggum come to mind), but there were plenty of forgettable Family Guy laughs.
 Simpsorama, however, is Zombie Simpsons. With Zombie Simpsons writing. This is trouble. Seeing these two shows I love so much get unceremoniously dragging through the mud, I feel like the Grinch suddenly realising I care. So I've decided to walk through this episode in detail, partly for catharsis, and partly to definitively discuss what I dislike about Zombie Simpsons.

Rest assured that I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.

- The Futurama music kicking in with the "Simpsorama" title is cool in a cheap thrill, spectacle kind of way.

Tagline: A show out of ideas teams up with a show out of episodes.
Well, it certainly is apt [Apt!], but the wording feels a little clumsy to me. And I don't think merely pointing out these things is as clever as some comedy writers seem to.

- The couch gag has Homer and Hedonismbot moaning a lot. It's long and uncomfortable.
- Chalmers shoots Skinner with a spit wad for... some... reason. What?
- Nelson reiterates his father issues schtick (a symptom of a long running series).
- Next it's Milhouse's turn to say some things. The formula for this joke is that he makes a claim about himself and is immediately undermined by happenstance. It suffers from sloppy timing and being slapsticky in nature.

Skinner: Let me guess, you forgot to bring something.
Bart: I am shocked that you think I forgot.
Bart's response is oddly delivered and written, repeating Skinner's opinion back at him, as if we need reminding what it was. It's like there's just a huge lack of trying with this script writing. Hell, I'm pretty sure Bart has used that faux-innocent "Mrs K, I'm offended" attitude plenty in the past without regurgitating what we already know he's being accused of. Unnecessarily wordy dialogue is a shocking plague on this entire ordeal and Zombie Simpsons in general.

- Marge sixth senses her sandwich being desecrated. It's reminiscent of "Why'd you shudder just now?" which both plays a lot better and makes much more sense.
- That joke formula pops up again as Mr Burns says a thing and is immediately undermined by happenstance. This is a tired sitcom convention.
- And the very next scene opens with Kent doing it as well. He states a thing and immediately undermines himself.
- Bender makes some Bender noises as he falls out of the storm. I like Bender.
- Bart uses his Cartoon Facial Expression 101 half-down-eyelids-of-unimpressedness to make a snarky comment about America. Delivery is uninspired even for deadpan.
- Homer's reading a book with a funny-in-an-obvious-way title. The explanation he comes up with for the noise downstairs is far too stupid, but at least he doesn't seem to be a jerkass anymore. Y'know, for the most part.
- Homer mistakes a mirror (on his stairwell wall that he uses constantly) for a painting watching him, and Bart spends words to flatly (complete with eyelids) explain Homer's point of confusion. None of this is worth Homer's nonsensical punchline.
- Homer and Bart waste a bunch of time being afraid and not getting to Bender.
- Bart-does-the-same-thing-the-dog-just-did gag.
- Lengthy shot as the camera follows a rope across the basement ceiling to reveal Bart ridiculously hanging upside down as bait. [Think harder, Homer!]
- Bender emerges in shadow and Homer whacks him. Bender wastes no time in spouting his catchphrase, which Homer acknowledges. Unfortunately, being "meta" in very obvious and unsubtle ways isn't a free pass to clever writing.
- For some reason Bart's face fails to emote as he gives another weird delivery, this time antagonising Homer.
- Homer and Bender then literally take turns batting Bart around for way too long.
- Homer does a slow, tiresome "Oh. My. God." In my experience, this rarely plays well in what is meant to be a quick, snappy comedy setting.
- Bender belches fire at Moe's. Fanservice doesn't count as a joke.
- John DiMaggio makes some "dingity-dings" that clearly should have been "bippity-boops", but it's still worth a smile.
- Moe calls Bender "Blade Rummy". Now, I'm sure someone in the writers' room came up with that on the spot and was super proud of themselves, and good on you for it, but puns just don't play well in a scripted format. Save it for some form of social gathering.
- Bender is upset that he has no emotions. Futurama did it!
- Pin Pals shirts for no reason. Are people really suckered in by that "OMG I KNOW THAT THING" mentality? This is the Epic Movie brand of humour.
- Bender says "D'oh!" Meh, it was alright.
- Hah! Bromance. Current and hip, right? What a humourous and charming why does everything have to have a stupid name this isn't a romantic comedy. Ahem. It's just a lame variant on the old robo/romo joke.
- Next up, No-Fun Lisa with unimpressed eyelids out in full force is here to deliver the most egregious sequence of "meta" humour ever committed to film. She and Bart suggest that whoever designed Bender just lazily stuck an antenna on a drawing of Homer. Hey, guys, the kind of crap you jibe and joke about in audio commentaries doesn't cut it in an actual script. This isn't funny. It doesn't even make sense. This isn't like the Homer and Krusty situation. They just have the lightbulb head in common. That's literally it. Bender has no muzzle, no stomach, thin limbs, three fingers, footcups, etc. Lisa concludes by remarking "A little lazy, if you ask me" and Bart gives a smug knowing nod. Oh, you little rapscallions!
- Bender's impressive futuristic feat and "the Gs look like sixes" are perfectly fine gags.
- Getting very tired of characters expressing distainful attitudes with those half-down eyelids.
- John DiMaggio makes a wacky noise!
- Professor Frink rehashes some fifteen-year-old Futurama humour. [Try turning him off and on!]
- Lisa's question about the three laws is clunky at best.
- Homer now says multiple lines in his always hilarious loud-whisper-discreetly-filling-you-in-about-something voice. This never once becomes grating or tiresome, nor does it ever make me aware that I'm sitting here conciously waiting for a piece of dialogue to get done being said.
- Don't really care to wonder if Leela making a video call to the past makes any sense.
- So, the Family Guy crossover was largely about the two shows exploring each other, and the plot conflict was centered around their two mainstay beers. In contrast, this crossover is about ...rampant mutant rabbits. 'Cos that's a huge part of Futurama.
- Farnsworth explains some plot.
- Bender expresses outrage at the idea of stealing and is immediately undermined by himself. Jokes!
- We get a wordier version of Zoidberg's joke from the Futurama game. [I'm making a cameo!]
- Fry, Leela, and Farnsworth are sucked into the past, Bender gets shot in the head, and then his wound inexplicably and bafflingly heals on screen, Wolverine style. What? What were they even going for with that? Does being kind of easy to miss automatically qualify as funny now, regardless of how out of nowhere or inconsistent it is?
- Krusty calls Bender and co. freaks, and is immediately undermined by the freakish company he keeps.
- Oh, look who it is, Seymour Asses haplessly chucked in in some kind of forceful attempt to appeal to fans with something beloved, without any regard for why it is so. Seymour is special because of the story that encompasses him. Throwing a drawing of him up any old place with soppy music is a cheap grab for aduration by recognition. It has no meaning.
- Marge and Leela have an introduction scene because the female characters always have to interact in crossovers since they naturally have so much in common. All those, what, vaginas and whatever? Eitherway, they share a completely banal back and forth, Marge making a lame faux pas about Leela's eye [What's with the eye?] and Leela, instead of taking the joke in literally any other direction, disappointingly and predictably takes her turn to also misspeak in an even more laboured way about Marge's hair. [Awful, awful hair.] I again get that feeling of sitting around waiting for a piece of dialogue to be over so something else can please happen. But it keeps going with awkward uncomfortableness (which I don't think works in animation) and a shoehorned missuse of Leela's "Oh, Lord" catchphrase.
- The next exchange between Lisa and Farnsworth has a nice Futurama feel. [The hard part was getting the brain out!]

Bender: Kill all humans. Kill all humans.
Homer: Start with Flanders. Start with Flanders.
Drop the repitition and you may have had some impact. Even then, it's another uninspired mash-up joke. Did you guys know Homer doesn't care for Ned all that much? (endlessly reiterating tired concepts, symptom of a long (long) running series)

- Next, Fry gets one of his three lines and it's a pretty alright moment. Unfortunately, this is probably the only time he speaks to Bart (and I don't think he ever interacts with Homer) and that is so depressing I think I'm gonna cry.
- Now Professor Frink gets to do an immediately-undermining-myself joke and we hit unimpressed-eyelids critical mass with a stupid static shot of everyone staring disparagingly at Frink's hypocrisy. This has got to be one of the most overused and uncreative comedy beats of our time. Someone should have left a note in the writers' room that the novelty of Simpsons and Futurama characters being in the same frame isn't actually a good enough supplement for an interesting script.
- So Farnsworth says some plot, Marge and Homer eat up some very unamusing seconds exclaiming literally the very previous thing that was just revealed. I have to stress what afwul writing this is for a fast paced comedy.

Lisa: What a surprise, it's Bart.
And now Lisa (with eyelids) does the exact same thing! Why did she need to stick "it's Bart" on the end of that sentence? The line might be better if it was something like "What a surprise, Bart is the [some humourously worded description of Bart being ancestor to the creatures]." But no, she just says "It's Bart." I know it's Bart! I can plainly see! Tell me a funny!

- Bart makes a lame I'm-very-obviously-being-meta remark about doing the same jokes a thousand years later.
- The stupid split-second Scruffy suicide does not play at all. There's a lot of odd comedic timing throughout this episode and Zombie Simpsons at large.
- The Simpsons are sucked into the future and Marge needs to do a headcount and actually point and say numbers out loud before she can notice Maggie is missing. This serves to use up time because they evidently have nothing better to fill it with.
- Extended repeat animation sequence of Homer twisting the necks off the Bart mutants. It's funny because he's treating it like a mundane task. You can tell by his eyelids. And, ohp! What's this? He picked up the real Bart next! What hijinx!
- The atheist prayer gag is all fine and good I suppose, but a niggling part of me just wants to scream out that atheism has no rituals or dogma.
- Hedonismbot shows up and [sigh] isn't very funny. He even makes a pun. The problem, I think, with things like Hedonismbot or Randy is that all the magic they have evaporates as soon as the writers become aware of their popularity and use them intentionally. Randy's appearances in the Comedy Central era always had an air of "Hey guys, look, it's Randy! That funny character John does that you all like!" to them.
- Leela seems oddly off model. I think her top may have shrunk in the wash. Also her face.
- Lisa (eyelids) says she can manipulate Bart, Bart says she cannot, and is immediately undermined by ...things completely unrelated to Lisa. Odd. Classic misdirect?
- Chief Wiggum spits an extra "Happy?!" at Lou, because padding.
- LISAISSNIDETOBARTWITHEYELIDS!
- Sure toss in a holophonor.
- Madison Cube Garden is flung into space and everyone is happy. [This man wants to hit the ball too, and he does.] The Simpson children don't seem phased that they are in space.

Homer: I'll treasure it forever.
Bender: Lie detected.
This moment feels so laboured and uninspired and like it's a completely uncreative idea (long running series, etc.). [Now would you unhook me already? I don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment.]

- Bender is tossed in the basement and we get a Zombie Simpsons clawing-desperately-at-your-heartstrings ending.
- "My name is Kang, and this is my sister, Kodos." "Hello!"
- Closing has some nice sight gags, but Peter over the Gracie Films song was better.

Also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?

Matt Groening Required Viewing

If you're looking to familiarise with Matt Groening's phenomenal animated sitcoms but it seems too mammoth a task, this is my personal recommendation on how to get all the essential nutrients while skipping the fluff.

The Simpsons (170 episodes out of 569)
[S1 E01] Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire
[S1 E03] Homer's Odyssey
[S1 E04] There's No Disgrace Like Home
[S1 E06] Moaning Lisa
[S1 E07] The Call of the Simpsons
[S1 E09] Life on the Fast Lane
[S1 E12] Krusty Gets Busted
[Season 2]
[Season 3]
[Season 4]
[Season 5]
[Season 6]
[Season 7]
[S8 E01] Treehouse of Horror VII
[S8 E02] You Only Move Twice
[S8 E05] Bart After Dark
[S8 E06] A Milhouse Divided
[S8 E08] Hurricane Neddy
[S8 E09] The Mysterious Voyage of Homer
[S8 E10] The Springfield Files
[S8 E11] The Twisted World of Marge Simpson
[S8 E12] Mountain of Madness
[S8 E13] Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious
[S8 E14] The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show
[S8 E15] Homer's Phobia
[S8 E16] Brother from Another Series
[S8 E18] Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment
[S8 E22] In Marge We Trust
[S8 E23] Homer's Enemy
[S8 E24] The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase
[S8 E25] The Secret War of Lisa Simpson
[S9 E01] The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson
[S9 E03] Lisa's Sax
[S9 E09] Realty Bites
[S9 E17] Lisa the Simpson
[S9 E22] Trash of the Titans
[S10 E03] Bart the Mother
[S10 E07] Lisa Gets an "A"

Futurama (53 episodes out of 140)
[S1 E01] Space Pilot 3000
[S1 E02] The Series Has Landed
[S1 E03] I, Roommate
[S1 E04] Love's Labours Lost in Space
[S1 E05] Fear of a Bot Planet
[S1 E06] A Fishful of Dollars
[S1 E07] My Three Suns
[S1 E08] A Big Piece of Garbage
[S1 E09] Hell Is Other Robots
[S1 E10] A Flight to Remember
[S1 E12] When Aliens Attack
[S1 E13] Fry and the Slurm Factory
[S2 E01] I Second That Emotion
[S2 E03] A Head in the Polls
[S2 E04] Xmas Story
[S2 E05] Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?
[S2 E06] The Lesser of Two Evils
[S2 E07] Put Your Head on My Shoulders
[S2 E09] A Bicyclops Built for Two
[S2 E10] A Clone of My Own
[S2 E13] Bender Gets Made
[S2 E14] Mother's Day
[S2 E15] The Problem with Popplers
[S2 E16] Anthology of Interest I
[S2 E17] War Is the H-Word
[S3 E01] Amazon Women in the Mood
[S3 E02] Parasites Lost
[S3 E04] The Luck of the Fryrish
[S3 E06] Bendless Love
[S3 E07] The Day the Earth Stood Stupid
[S3 E10] Where the Buggalo Roam
[S3 E11] Insane in the Mainframe
[S3 E14] Time Keeps on Slippin'
[S3 E15] I Dated a Robot
[S3 E17] A Pharaoh to Remember
[S3 E18] Anthology of Interest II
[S3 E19] Roswell That Ends Well
[S3 E20] Godfellas
[S3 E21] Future Stock
[S3 E22] The 30% Iron Chef
[S4 E01] Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch
[S4 E02] Leela's Homeworld
[S4 E03] Love and Rocket
[S4 E07] Jurassic Bark
[S4 E09] Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles
[S4 E10] The Why of Fry
[S4 E11] Where No Fan Has Gone Before
[S4 E12] The Sting
[S4 E15] The Farnsworth Parabox
[S4 E16] Three Hundred Big Boys
[S4 E18] The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings
[S6 E07] The Late Philip J. Fry
[S7 E26] Meanwhile

3x22: Through the Looking Glass

28. Screenshot Comic #1

A few years ago on IMDb's Lost board there was a little fad for a while where someone would make a comic strip template out of Lost screenshots and a bunch of people would take it and insert their hilarious captions. The dialogue for this first one jumped out at me pretty much as soon as I saw it, except for the third panel, which took a while to figure out, but I'm pretty happy with how it ended up. I'm glad I thought of something that actually uses Ben's pose, instead of just ignoring it and telling the story through dialogue.
 Also, the M&M's are peanut.

742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, Minecraftia

Block with Greatness

My first night in Minecraft was spent by the soft, warm light of cooking sand, squatted in a hand-forged hole in the side of a hill. Over the coming days, this hill was slowly leveled and in its place sprung up a home of most stirdy brick. Already, life was quite comfortable, and I knew the next thing I wanted to do was start a large building project, as was the style at the time.

Lollipop Lane

I chose this subject because, it being a symbol of something I have great passion for, I figured I'd be less likely to become disenchanted and abandon the build. Plus, I could do a bunch of fun quotes and stuff.

"That should do it."

A perfectly cromulent quote.

The first step was to decide on a place to set up and turn it into a large area of flat grassland, and what better construction site than my own front yard? As I set to work steam rolling the neighbourhood, I found I suddenly had a lot of mind-numbingly repetitive time to contemplate the future. I figured I was gonna need a lot of wool down the line to dye pink, so I started making a habit of punching every white sheep I could see, as well as brown and light gray ones for the roof and driveway, respectively.

A Car Hole

Most of the land I wanted to clear out consisted of hills that didn't stray too far from sea level, but there was one mountain, which I sliced down the middle, completely mining away one half, and making a huge natural staircase from the other.

"My doctor says I have the wrists of an 80-year-old."

Soon enough it was time to place blocks. Taking in my hand more stacks of white wool than was probably ever necessary, I set to work, using the screencap included above as a reference image.

"Lisa's window is the next one."

Naturally, a lot of time at this point was spent standing around thinking, plotting and planning, placing blocks and taking them back again, seeing how things looked and staring at empty spaces to try and figure out the best possible design. This was definitely the most fun part of the project, by far the most involving, and is pretty much what makes any Minecraft build worth doing. Hence the Creative mode eventually making it into the full game.

"That's okay, the box is empty."

Once it was all done up in white wool the house looked a lot like one of Doc Brown's unpainted models. The only difference being that I had all the time in the world to paint it. And painting it meant lots of roses. Also bonemeal.

Bare Backside

At first I was going exploring for roses and using bonemeal to make pink dye, but before long, version 1.6 came about and suddenly I could grow my own roses where ever I pleased. And with that, Skeleton hunting by night became a long-term quest, while my days were spend scrounging up some clay, frying up some cactus, and keeping on the lookout for those brown and gray sheep.

"Remember, you can always find east by staring directly at the sun."

Once I got some pink dye going, I started taking out the white wall blocks and pinking them up, but then I realised I could get up to 4 wool from a single piece of dye by colouring and shearing sheep. So most of the white wool I'd already gathered ended up going in the incinerator.

The incinerator (on the right).

Eventually the only thing left to colour was the roof. By this point about 1% of the job had been done using brown sheep, but I was going to need a better method. Unfortunately, there wasn't one around, so I decided to put the build on hold until a more efficient method of gathering brown wool was implemented, whether it be wool regrowth on sheep, animal breeding, or a way of farming cocoa beans.

"We need some more vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice-cream!"

A little while later, 1.9 prerelease 2 became available, and as it turned out, sheep breeding was the way of the future. However, it turned out all sheep were born with white wool, so it was back to waiting, for the moment. It wasn't until the sixth 1.9 prerelease that I was delighted to hear that baby sheep had been updated to inherit the wool colour of one of their parents.

The Simpsons' House in Minecraft

I immediately started trying to round up a pair of brown sheep, which didn't take as long as I was expecting. Miraculously enough, two spawned together around the back of the Simpsons house. Since I was still in 1.8, I couldn't use wheat to lead them around, so I quickly captured them in a ring of fence and then, with some difficulty (those passive mobs are wily buggers), funnelled them into a pen closer to my home.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

And so MineCon went down in Vegas, and at last the official release of Minecraft was here. I started a wheat farm and set to work breeding up a storm. The end was in sight now, but I soon learned that wheat grows very slowly. And here I thought my days of Skeleton hunting were over.

And that's the end of the story.

"Just don't look! Just don't look!"

We're Gonna Skip and Hold Hands

27. Big Brother

Why is there reality TV? Jersey Shore of all things has just started showing on 7mate. The promos boast hot tub promiscuity and general trashiness. Somehow I don't think this is what they had in mind when television was being invented. Part of me wants to talk at length about reality shows and why I do and don't like Big Brother, but another, more reasonable part just wants to say that The Mole is awesome and then never think on the subject again. So I will. The Mole is awesome.
 About the strip: I'm really happy with how the staging turned out. The view of the action is from the PoV of the diary room camera, which allows for some interesting shots of the character as he moves around in a static frame. This along with the BB watermark in the corner sets up the final panel, which is inspired by all those wonderful Simpsons stand by cards, particularly this one.
 The more I think about this premise, the more absurd it seems. Somehow this guy has made it onto Big Brother without ever realising he would be constantly filmed. Also, the diary room camera is the only one in the entire house that isn't hidden in any way, so it doesn't even make sense that he takes a little while to notice it. However, one thing's for sure: Greg is not loving himself sick.

Make It Up as We Go Along

25. IMDb's Lost Board

Back when Lost was still going on, I used to spend a huge amount of time on IMDb browsing the show's message board. As is the case with most forums, it didn't take long for an extremely tight-knit clique to form, and with it came a veritable laundry list of in-jokes and memes. One day I went to the (dead as it'll ever be) Via Domus board on GameFAQs and started posting a bunch of those memes in a thread. As of today, the thread is 338 posts long and locked because I ended up forgetting to bump it often enough.
 Why this ever became a Masterpiece, I don't know. It certainly doesn't meet my current quality standards, but I'm not about to go and change the numbers on all the ones after it, so here it is. In an attempt to compensate, I'm including the next Masterpiece in this same post.

26. LOST is Lost

These two Masterpieces kind of go hand in hand, anyway; this one is also inspired by the Lost board on IMDb. I suspect that the particular thread I ripped this dialogue from might have just been someone trolling, but people say similarly stupid things pretty much constantly on this here innernet of ours, and it still captured everything I was looking for. It even had that horribly tortured pun I've come to loathe so much.

Well There's Your Problem

24. MythBusters

I really love MythBusters. It's interesting, entertaining and generally a whole lot of fun. But there is this one flaw that I fear will irk me until the end of time. They go into that one room with a whole bunch of crazy crap on the walls, and start asking each other questions and acting ("acting" being used quite loosely here) like they don't know the answers. When they're out in the field actually doing something, they'll explain things to the camera almost constantly, and it's great. But then they (particularly the Build Team) always return to the Acting Room for one last review of their results.
 I don't know that there's much more I can say here without echoing the strip, except that I miss the original Buster.

"This is a Quote from the Episode"

18. The Amazing Race

I love it when a joke can be delivered in an extremely efficient manner. A single panel, minimal dialogue, and a large visual element to the gag. It makes everything feel very slick and witty. Insanity Streak is a good example of a comic strip that does this as much as possible.
 I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I probably came up with this while watching The Amazing Race. Frank (who appears to have both eyes on the same side of his head) was named after the main character of the show Franklin.

The Many Adventures of Mark the Manatee and Associates

Mark the Manatee lived on the bottom of the ocean, which was kind of odd because manatees don't usually live on the bottom of the ocean, but Mark was unique, so he lived down there with the jellyfishes and the carpet sharks and the underwater rhinoceroses.
 One day, Mark found a treasure chest. He tried to open it, but it was locked. So he tried kicking it and it flew open 'cos it wasn't really locked after all. Inside the chest was a dictionary. Mark decided to look up dirty words, 'cos he thought it would be a better use of his time than what he had planned for the day, which was grocery shopping. So, after a full day of looking up words like "vagina" and giggling immaturily, Mark decided to go to bed.
 That night, Mark the Manatee had a dream about bath mats. He dreamt that when people stepped on them, it hurt them and they needed to be saved. When he woke up, he decided to dedicate his life to liberating bath mats. Mark got in his special boat that took him to the surface. When he unsubmerged, he noticed a kite in the sky, which made him forget all about his mat crusade. Mark jumped up and grabbed onto the kite, which had been abandoned by its owner.
 Mark the Manatee rode that kite to Mexico, and when they got there, Mark said "Gracias!", but the kite didn't understand him because it was Cuban, so it just flew back to Cuba, where it waited for its next dictator to die, apparently, according to Farce of the Penguins.
 But anyway, back to the story. After he was unable to find Speedy Gonzales, Mark the Manatee realised that Mexico was not all it was cracked up to be, so he decided to head north, to New Mexico. When he got there, he went to the set of Kid Nation, but then he remembered he was a manatee, so he wasn't allowed on the show. But then, Mark ate the leader of the Red District, and everyone was happy. As a reward, they made Mark the new leader of the Red District, and he became allies with the Blue District. Together, the two districts did all the things that Red & Blue like to do together, like look good on superhero costumes.
 After a while of being awesome, Mark the Manatee decided to leave Kid Nation, and travelled to Nevada. On his way to Las Vegas, Mark accidentally discovered Area 51. But before he could run away, scientists in white coats mistook him for an alien and captured him, 'cos manatees is butt-ugly.
 The scientists locked Mark up in a cell to be studied later. Just when Mark feared that all was lost, Wizard Whitebeard, or Dumbledore, or maybe Gandalf ... anyway, some wizard (but probably Dumbledore) appeared and sprung him out of his cell.
 Once he was free, Mark went to Vegas and won a fortune in a game, his life would never be the same. Soon after, Mark the Manatee bought a mansion in California, and kissed his money every night before bed.

THE END

Also, he got a racecar.  

A few years ago a minor fad hit Aussie networks in the form of late-night quiz shows. The least terrible of these shows was probably the localised version of Quizmania, which aired well after midnight.
 One night I was lying in bed watching Quizmania, and I don't recall exactly what the quiz was, but the answers that had to be guessed were all four-letter words. So people were calling in to make their guess and one guy said "Mark". And now you see where this is going. I made Mark a manatee pretty much solely because of the alliteration, and from there on, everytime someone called in with a word, I incorporated it into the story.
 Before long the narrative arrived at a natural conclusion, so I jumped out of bed and jotted it all down while it was still fresh in my mind. As of now I have no memory of which words the story was shaped around, but "bath" and "kite" are two likely candidates. The content and themes of this story are largely a product of its time, with multiple references to things I'd seen in the previous week or so.
 This was actually written several months before I started making Masterpieces. I just remembered that I had it lying around and figured I'd put some literature on deviantArt.

From New York, the Greatest City in the World!

8. David Letterman

I used to watch a lot of Letterman a couple years ago before GO! and the other new digital channels were launched. Now there's usually something better on. I chose the Presidential Speeches line mostly because it was the first thing that came to mind. Possibly ironically, I always found the preceding clips a lot more interesting than the Bush related ones.
 I like the way the gold lettering here just trails off aimlessly as it becomes increasingly obvious that it's not going to fit. Also, I think if I'd made this one today I would've given Dave that Jennifer Aniston tie instead of this shocking purple thing.

Destiny is a Fickle Bitch

6. Smokey the Turtle

Just a stupid doodle. You see, there's a turtle, and he's smoking a cigarette. Underwater. Hilarious. It's possible SpongeBob already did it. Also Futurama. Also, he looks kind of like Kif Kroker.

7. Lost Season 5

"Have you ever stopped to think that these delusions that you're special aren't real? That maybe there's nothing important about you at all? Maybe you are just a lonely old man that crashed on an Island. That's it. Goodbye, John."

My prediction of how this scene was going to play out. Can't really say it was all that accurate. The sky, for example, was sadly not purple, and I don't think Locke had I knife (at least not anywhere visible).
 This Masterpiece marks the first appearance of the basic character design that I've used in pretty much every strip since. As a result, it's very rough. A lot of things are crooked and uneven, lines don't always meet up neatly, and their hands are very angular. They also have feet, which were soon deemed unnecessary.
 One last point of criticism: that "OK" is meant to come after Jack's dialogue. That might be a little unclear since I don't think I placed it low enough.