Pack Rat will always fight the enemies of love. We promise to Shine On.

I offer you a few of my favorite new eweb finds. They have tremendous re-visit value. And if laughs were some kind of plastic explosive, they would be dropping bombs left and right.

First up are the comic book kids of Questionable Content.  They’re like every indie punk rock listening, ironic t-shirt wearing, body piercing, withering glance giving hipster you know, except they only exist for six panels of comic goodness a day so they are actually funny and not, you know, immensely depressing. It’s fun to play “non-mainstream” bingo with the many band references, and the creator/writer/illustrator Jeph Jacques gets that the “counter culture” his characters inhabit is a bit insipid and so dishes out the skinny-jeans cool with a generous helping of self-deprecation.

Questionable Content and image copyright Jeph Jacques

Next is the brillance that is Dr. McNinja. Has so much information ever been conveyed in one name? Maybe Bronze Medalist Patty McShitsalot, but that’s about it. The brain child of comic artist/author Chris Hastings, Dr. McNinja heals with one hand and kills with the other. He is aided in his many random adventures by a man-child with a SERIOUS moustache named Gordito (the man, not the moustache) who rides around on a dinosaur, and Julie, his gorilla secretary. Unlike Questionable Content (which is drawn as a fully contained story every day), Dr. McNinja is published in issues (like a paper comic book), with new pages of each issue coming out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. He is currently working on the mysterious case of “Death Volley.” Get caught up immediately.

Dr. McNinja and image copyright Chris Hastings

And Finally, the video you’ve all been waiting for, even if you weren’t aware that you were waiting for it. I would go so far as to say that I’m not sure how I ever lived without it, it’s THAT good.  The song is called Shine On and the music video is by L.A. musician Chris Dane Owens. You need to see it before we can talk about it. I’ll wait. Take your time–you have to see the whole thing to really appreciate it. P.S. definitely worth watching in high quality. You may even want to see it direct from his website, which has it at the highest quality.

Right? RIGHT?! I seriously can’t get enough. I heard about this while reading The New Yorker blog, of all things, and I have to say that  this video is probably the best piece of information that I’ve ever gleaned from The New Yorker. Chris Dane Owens is like some alien time traveler, alternating between a parallel, magical universe and 1984. There is so, so much to love about this video (unsurprisingly directed by a wiz in the special effects biz). And it’s astonishing how much one well-placed ’stache can actually up someone’s masculinity. Here are my top ten favorite Shine On moments (but don’t hold me to them. Every time I watch this video I find more to love).

10. The Karate Kid moment (1:30 into the video)

9. His unexplained, un-introduced posse (1:36 & 3:06). What happened to the bandanna guy?

8.  Slashing sword=massive boat explosion (1:51)

7. Push it out! (1:59)

6. Some how it all leads up to his chest lighting up… (2:20)

5.  And then, the whole thing is just too overwhelming for him… (2:25)

4. Which causes him to mince his way into a fire. (2:34)

3. RANDOM CROCODILE! (I think their budget may have run out on dragons)(2:43)

2. Classic, classic slow-mo jump off the cliff (CLASSIC!) (2:49)

1. Love has enemies (4:10)

You’re welcome.

Pack Rat has a suggestion: Let the Wookie win.

Those of you out there who have earned your nerd badges are going to roll your eyes about today’s post, since I’m more than a decade behind the times. But, better late than never, right?

Today’s case study in obsessive makery is Simon Jansen, a New Zealander who has spent the last TWELVE years, painstakingly re-creating Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope into what he calls asciimation. Jansen has animated still images that replicate the original Star Wars using ASCII art. ASCII art (which resembles stripped down typewriter art) takes the American Standard Code for Information Interchange and instead of using it to transmit information, turns the code symbols into images.

Working on one shot at a time, Jansen creates his mini masterpiece in a simple text-editor, akin to Microsoft Notepad. Like standard animation, Jansen makes his ASCII creations come to life by displaying frames of ASCII one after the other at a given rate.

Unlike other forms of animation, he is limited by the few ASCII codes he can incorporate. And, if the entire video is viewed front to back, you might catch some of Jansen’s other limitations.

Technology has now out paced him: when Jansen began his project, he started his drawings using a Courier font, which has now become obsolete. “Unfortunately, now the standard font is Courier New, which is why the animation isn’t quite as I intended. It makes it look a little too stretched, vertically.”

Apparently Jansen’s not losing any sleep, though, worrying about perfection. He was recently featured on Make magazine’s blog for his other side project, a jet-powered beer cooler.

In addition, he’s working on his half-built R2D2, and a custom mini bike he’s building from scratch. Which explains why, after more than a decade, he still hasn’t finished his Star Wars asciimation.

At this point in his film, Luke has just rescued Princess Leia from her cell on the Death Star, Han and Chewy are running from the Storm Troopers, and Obi Wan is on his way for that fateful meeting with Darth Vader. But Jansen feels no pressure. “[I don’t add to it] very often. You have to be very bored to do something like this.” And, when asked when he expects the film to be completed, he replies, “Don’t hold your breath waiting!”

 To view the original video, visit http://www.asciimation.co.nz. To see a version with audio, check out it out at www.youtube.com 

photo copyright Simon Jansen

Pack Rat Magazine is the dandy highwayman you’re too scared to mention

A big fat congratulations are in order for Marek Bennett, comic strip author/artist, and friend to Pack Rat Magazine. Those of you who have been visiting our site from the beginning will remember the interview we did with Marek about his Comics Workshop for kids. And now Marek’s work has received the recognition it deserves. He recently won the Xeric Grant for comic book self publishing. Read the press release below for more info. Well done, Mr. Bennett, kudos to you from your friends at Pack Rat.

“Mimi’s Doughnuts” Wins Xeric Award

Prestigious Self-Publishing Grant Goes to New Hampshire Comic Strip

Henniker, New Hampshire — The weekly comic strip “Mimi’s Doughnuts” has won a coveted Xeric Grant for comic book self publishing. With this award, creator Marek Bennett will self-publish a trade paperback anthology of the past four years of his comics.

The Xeric-funded anthology, entitled Breakfast at Mimi’s Doughnuts, will collect the best of the strip’s first two hundred episodes, plus several pages of original artwork and special features. Bennett plans to release the collection in the spring of 2009.

“Mimi’s Doughnuts” follows the lives of an extended family that runs a small neighborhood doughnut shop in fictional Claymont, New Hampshire. Bennett bases the strip loosely on his wife’s childhood growing up at family doughnut shops and diners in Claremont, New Hampshire.

“The characters and stories are mixtures of people and places we’ve known, people and issues I encounter in my teaching, and new ideas that come up every day,” says Bennett. “It’s the perfect setting to address so many of the issues facing small towns all over our country today.”

Past storylines use humor to deal with serious topics like diet, politics, littering, real estate development, lung cancer, domestic abuse, and global warming. Often, real-life stories and adventures find their way into Bennett’s comics. In 2007, while Bennett’s family rescued over thirty stray kittens from an abandoned house in Henniker, his comic strip characters found themselves also rescuing feral cats.

Bennett has drawn “Mimi’s Doughnuts” since 2003. The strip currently appears weekly in New Hampshire and Vermont newspapers. Bennett also offers quarterly mail-order ‘zines of his comics, with subscriptions available at his website. Bennett’s popular Comics Workshop programs for elementary- and teenaged artists run all Summer long at several locations in New Hampshire. For more information, visit Bennett’s website at: www.marekbennett.com.

The Xeric Foundation of Northampton, Massachussetts, supports independent self-publishers in the comics industry through competitive grant programs. The Foundation was established by Peter Laird, co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For more information, visit: http://xericfoundation.org.

Pack Rat Magazine enjoys the phrase “pirate’s booty” because, tee hee, booty.

So here’s a fun fact about me. I love weird humor. Like really weird, totally left field, never see it coming in a million years kind of jokes. But not like Aqua Teen Hunger Force kind of humor. Even I have my limits. Things like The Onion, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, The Colbert Report; these are the kind of things that get me rolling in the aisles. Enter Married to the Sea. Written by Drew and Natalie Dee, these daily comics are bizarre, sometimes in the extreme. I assume that the graphics are public domain images/old brochure type art that they just scan and then add funny captions to, but it’s possible that they draw the images themselves. I haven’t been able to find any info one way or another. I think it’s funnier to assume that they are stock images, it gives the whole thing a twisted New Yorker “caption cartoon contest” feel about it. Anywho, here are a few of my favorites below.

Pack Rat Magazine won’t tell your heart, your achy, breaky heart.

I found this sweet site full of uplifting comics that I wanted to share with you. Called Bird and Moon, the title comic describes a night when one lonly bird rendevous with the moon and finally finds a friend. Author and illustrator Rosemary Mosco is based in Toronto and claims she’s new to the comic world, but she handles sequential art like a pro. Even for someone like me (who fears and avoids birds), her comics are refreshingly minimalistic and touching.

The moon has to go home, and I’m sad too!