I heard it on the grapevine that this comic blows.
Monday, July 19, 2010
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63 comments:
First, XD but really good job linkara
Uhhh I feel distinctly ill, that was just bad. Not even bad enough to be funny, just a bad comic.
I can't agree more about your point with 3d effects. Most of the time there is no reason for it, other than to hide the glaring plot holes. Comics and films are a two dimensional medium and if someone wants to do it in 3d they should start working on hologram projects and stop messing about with ugly and pointless glasses.
The comic feels like the sort of thing sold as part of some promotional offer. The "buy these raisins and get a free comic" sort of thing that got out of control when the cartoon / advertisement / breakfast cereal / toilet paper became remotely popular. As such this was what I would expect from that sort of production. It was un-inventive, bland as chewing cardboard and as you pointed out the 3d wouldn't work.
Long story short about that, you were right. The counteracting images were too far out of sync. Another reason could probably be the colour, if the range is slightly different between the filter and what's printed they don't cancel each other out. But that's technical stuff that could have been fixed by a proof read.
That means the editor would have to do his job, rather that make pointless comments on sound effects.
As for the review; you rode out to meet the battle head on, and despite coming back wounded you defended your honour and did, indeed, make this review entertaining. Not a mean feat given what you had to work with. It felt a little forced at times but I can forgive that.
In summery, a comic that should never have been made, reviewed to your usual standard. Nothing spectacular but still good fun.
Thomas
AKA Mountain King
Wow, that place has more traps than your average Scooby-Doo haunted mansion. In fact, I was suprised that you didn't use that, but the Frankenstiens Son clip was still hillarious.
Weird as hell, I actualy had my old 3-D glasses with me at this time.
Good video, bad comic, good jokes from your part, bad 3-D from the comic.
Wow, I wasn't really expecting much from this comic, but ineffectual 3D? That's just pathetic.
From looking at the pages, I have to agree that it's probably because the red and blue layers are spaced too far apart for stereoscopic vision. But I'm baffled how no one caught that problem before it was printed! D:
My Firefox crashed twice while trying to watch this but I don't blame it since it just wanted to spare me the blandness in comic form.
I never heard of California Raisins before, what was the idea behind making talking dried fruit into heroes?
I despise 3D. It's gimmicky, for one (there is never ever ever a good reason to have a movie or comic in 3D), and for another it almost always looks terrible (this is especially true for the two-colour kind, but even the newer one that uses vaguely transparent glasses looks awful). Movies filmed specifically to be 3D always (always) are filled with moments where shit leans at the screen in an entirely inorganic manner. And converting a normal movie from 2D into 3D tends to result in a movie that has no real business being in 3D anyway, and either way the effect just doesn't look good.
Also, it makes my head hurt, but that's prolly just me.
The 3d actually kinda works if you back up far enough. The way the pictures move helps too.
It's still painful to look at, but that's party because of the plot.
Great stuff, Big L. In my opinion this was your funniest yet.
That titlecard is the best part of this review. I immediately laughed out loud at that. Just look at your expression.
I still have yet to see Avatar, because:
1. It's James Cameron; he has a good reputation
2. I have an open mind
3. At least it's probably better than The Last Airbender movie.
I think that round henchman was actually a chocolate chip cookie.
Wow, that's a blast from the past. I actually have the California Raisins special on tape. I also have a special done by the same people called "Claymation Christmas Celebration." I don't remember if the Raisins were actually in it, but it was done in the Claymation style.
Never did see the cartoon, but that was pretty short-lived.
As for the comic itself, if the 3-D doesn't work, it really drags down what looks like a standard, non-offensive tie-in comic.
And personally, I don't much care about the 3-D fad in movies, either. I just want a good movie. All the flash and dash doesn't mean anything otherwise, and I'm told a lot of the 3-D in some of these movies isn't very good, either.
- Jason
I had my glasses with me, and I shouted "THE 3-D DOSN'T WORK" in unison with you.
Don't even get me started on 3-D in general, I just hate it. It either takes too much away from the story or dosn't help the story at all. (Seriously, I saw Avatar in 3-D a few months ago, and it only lifted off the screen slightly. If their going to bother with the 3-D aspect, they should at least bother to shoot a mistle at you every once in a while.) Actually, the only way I can see 3-D being entertaining is if there were a 3-D Channel Awesome webcast of some sort.
Loved the review!
Serj said...
I never heard of California Raisins before, what was the idea behind making talking dried fruit into heroes?
The same as anything else. The commercials were unique for their time, and it took off with people, even if they didn't rush out to buy raisins, California or otherwise. I think using "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" and having singers who did a passable version of Motown's finest helped a lot.
There was merchandise, a TV special that parodied "Behind The Music" (including heavy metalist Lick Broccoli, complete with bad Mick Jagger impersonation, who became the lead villain for the cartoon series), and a guest appearance in Claymation's Christmas Special. They even put out a couple albums. Seriously, my DAD was into them for a while and still has the cassettes and some figurines.
Blackthorne also put out a 3-D version of the Transformers (despite Marvel still making the series) which only lasted three issues. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't that good, either, but the 3D worked better there than it did in this comic, where going by this video only a few panels actually worked.
Having 3D-Glasses in the shelf outside my room (they were bundled with something that came with the Shrek 2 DVD). I was wondering if it was the glasses, my color blindness (deuteranopia, so issues with some shades of red and green makes 3d ackward), the fact that I need glasses anyways or being a picture of the comic that caused it not to work. Glad to see it wasn't just me.
As far as I could see, there was nothing meant to pop out. Everything (even the sidewalk) had the blue lines on it. Either this is why it doesn't work, or indidcation that it wouldn't be good if it did...
Perhaps when he was a pattie he was blind. Every mammal infant (which is humans, dogs and cats, but not the point) I know of is at birth. Though that raises the question of how the "poops a lot" part that is ALSO shared works with a burger, or the idea nursing the young and... yeah).
3D is awesome, but only when you don't have to wear glasses. This was a pretty hilarious review.
Oh god. i used to collect those little figurines when I was a kid. These characters were unfunny on the "show" which I believe were just commercial shorts shown between time slots on Saturday mornings. I have to agree with Mountain King, you had to work very hard to make this funny, and while it was an entertaining review, they made it hard for ya. Not as good as Cable #2, but still better than reading One More Day, eh Linkara?
Short one today. Well, not much plot to go through, eh?
I seriously considered running to the basement and grabbing a pair of gel samples to look through. (I may have tried to make 3-D comics when I was a kid. You'll never know.) But then you tell me it doesn't even work?! This comic didn't endear itself to me in any way, but that's the last straw, man. ;)
I do find the 3-D movie craze a bit much. Though with the occasional quality film, it can be nice. Coraline, How to Train Your Dragon. It can give the shot a little extra depth, rather than "oooo, things are popping out at you".
Young Frankenstein! Yesss.
Thank you for you (as usual) dead on take on this asinine 3D craze.
Also, thank you so much for the reference to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. That really did make my day.
serji, how long as this been going on. I've actually been having problems with the site for the better part of the week and i've been trying to narrow it down since it used to work fine. could you also tell me what sort of setup you have. in my case I'm running windows 7 professional 64 bit have updated my flash player I'm using the latest version of Firefox, I've cleared cookies, rebooted and even scanned for viruses. in my case it only happens when viewing the videos on the site, I can view his video's elsewhere (such as at blip.tv itself) and I can view spoony's and all of the TGWTG embeded video's on there site, but here I get a script error shortly after starting (but still after the add)
LMAO! Great ending! And great job eviscerating this 28-page roll of toilet tissue. Good Lord, people in the '80s and '90s would try anything for a crossover. This is just pathetic. Thank you for tearing this thing down, Lewis.
So, Lewis any plans to da any other Blackthorn comics. *coff*Xeno-Men #1*coff*
My eyes are burning after watching that with 3d glasses on.
The reason why 3D effect isn't working is the distinct lack of shading. Your brain processes some slight variations in color as a "shape," so grayscale images are already dubious for 3D processing. Straight BW outlines with just a little pattern shading is simply too abstract for the optical lobe to process as a 3D object, which makes using 3D in this comic even more stupid.
"3D" is a gimmick simply because it is trying to reinvent the wheel. Artists have spent centuries developing techniques to fake depth, and so 3D looks amateurish in comparison.
A 3D comic about an ad campaign trying to get people to eat more raisins? Oooh boy. Just wow.
What's weird is that I bought Kingdom Come literally the day before you released this vid. Sometimes with you I get the feeling of a reverse stalker thing going on. :D
As for the comic, why does a comic about talking food need to be in 3-D?
"Heroic Raisin" sounds more like an Xbox Live gamertag... Quick--someone make it happen!!
Good review, but pretty hard to watch.
I despise the red-blue 3D effects, it causes actual pain if I'm not using the stupid glasses (which I happened to have relatively nearby).
I did want to comment that I'm surprised that the raisins (who seem to have been have been based on African-American features, with the mo-town theme) were threatened with nooses at one point. I would have thought someone might have caught that somewhere along the line.
Big Burger? Fast Food Henchman?
Who wrote this comic, Morgan Spurlock?
Good job, Linkara. You succeeded in making this boring 3-d garbage funny!
About why there are grape-related literature in a world where there are all kinds of different foods...
It's obvious that in that world exists a serious apartheid issue, where, not only do they have toilets for raisins, toilet for hotdogs, etc. but they also have literature for raisins, and so on, so forth.
So, while Big Burger may be the villian, he's an equal-opportunity villian, hiring hotdogs, croutons and candy, without caring much about their flavory background --sure, he does insult them, but it's just because he still has to fight with years of racial indoctrination, you see--
In fact, I bet Big Burger simply hates the raisins for being a racially exclusive group of sorts, and, he wants to take over Raisinville because, translated into our world terms, it would be like having a town called "Caucasiaville" or something like that. He ain't having that if he can do something about it, through the powers of eeevil, or whatever.
And, you are better off not asking about the growth and reproduction of hamburgers. Things happen kinda like in Twillight, you see.
It took nearly two months but I finally caught up with your newest post. I love your reviews and all the effort you put into them. The time and effort really shows.
This comic was terrible and you did a good job of making the review funny. Props to you.
I wish I could leave a long detailed review about the video, but other than telling you how much I look forward to your reviews, I'm at a loss.
This video i had to pause a few times because i laughed so hard!
I 100% agree with you on 3D! I'm glad i'm not the only one who sees it as a sham like it is! Thank you!
Also when they had the fries and "potato", I was so expecting an Aqua Teen Hunger Force reference, since you had Frylock and you could have had Meatwad! Also an easy Mayor Macheese reference!
So until Superman gets back from his walk across Anmerica, and sees Diana's new outfit and he calls her Wonder Girl by accident, MAKE MINE LINKARA!
Evil croutons! AHHHHH!!
Great review Linkara and thanks for doing something different/bizarre this week.
and good god that claymation is hideous!
Wow, Linkara, really? You're now reviewing comics about cartoon characters like the California Raisins? Aren't these books aimed at children? It's especially baffling considering there are still SO many utterly bad comics out there (Like One More Day or Cry For Justice) that deserve to burn for their disrespect of the audience. When are you getting to those?
I'm also surprised that you didn't mention that the Raisins are based on the Temptations. Cuz, you know, they're old, wrinkly black singers! I always found the premise disrespectful and couldn't figure out their popularity. And you missed the chance to make a joke about the Michael Jackson raisin (from one of the CR commercials) Now THAT was WTF worthy!
And finally, no more Lord Vyce subplots? Overall, while this episode wasn't bad, it wasn't as fun as the rest.
Man, I never forgot about these guys... mostly because I have watched Claymation Christmas every year for the last 20 ^.^;
Hey, speaking of Will Vinton Studios and 3D, you guys should have seen Coraline in 3D. The combo of super competent 3D and stop motion was really engrossing.
(I am just assuming most of you did not see it in theaters because, like, no one did, but it was really fab trust me)
Hmm...they should've just stuck with the commercials. XD
That was a sad comic, but I still have a soft spot for those shriveled grapes, what with the nostalgia and all.
I agree with LoneWolf. I had a design project for school where I had to make a 3-D image, and that was a bit of an issue. The other thing I noticed is that everything was offset the same, i.e. the blue on the raisins was offset by 12 picas, and offset by 12 picas on the background as well. When I did the 3-D project, the further the blue was offset, the "closer" it becomes. The closer the offset, the further the object appears to be.
I got this from "Best Pracice: The Pros On Adobe Photoshop" by Toni Toland. Also, if anyone is interested, look up Robert Demuth, an artist who does 3D images on Photoshop.
I just have to start by disagreeing with all the 3-d bashing. It's true if something is bad making it pretty won't help it, and something that's good doesn't really need to be pretty per se. but TV and Film are visual media, and lokking good is at least a small part of the equation. Well done 3-d looks pretty awesome. It's just that most things don;t use it to it's potential.
Funny review. For some reason seeing the credit "California Raisins is owned by the California Raisin Advisory board" just cracked me up and was to me the funniest thing in the whole video. I don't know why since it's a fact. I'm just weird I guess.
You know, I actually liked Superman for Tomorrow
It should be however noted that it was the only comic staring Superman to be ever released over here besides Kingdom Come
Well, regarding the procreating food thing...
Maybe Big Burger was the product of a brutal gang rape. A loaf of bread, a slice of meat, a tomato and some lettuce all brutally violated his mother. In a classic case of society blaming the victim, Burger's childhood was a depressing example of hatred and discrimination.
He managed to make it big once he grew up and left his hometown, but he was scarred for life by his horrific treatment, and would have a lifelong hatred of the locals. The California Raisins were the most prominent example of this, and by vanquishing them, Big Burger would hopefully be able to finally put his psychological demons to rest by the symbolic conquest of the entire town.
I mean, didn't they deal with Big Burger's henchmen by rolling them up in the glue pad and dropping them into the sea? In the Ottoman Empire, whenever a new Sultan came to power, they would get rid of their predecessor's slave concubines by sewing them up in sacks and tossing them into the Bosphorus. So you see the moral standing of the so-called heroes of this story.
So, when put in the proper context, the comic becomes a dystopic tragedy of the highest order. We could see Big Burger as a parallel to Winston Smith from 1984, totally defeated by the merciless society he had hoped to bring down.
So I might have had 3-D glasses if I'd bought Black Dossier, which I would have given I'm a massive LXG fan, but of course I can't, because they aren't being sold in non-American countries!
Sorry about the rant it just bugs me, great review as always Linkara.
@TheEnglishman, I live in Britan and I picked up a copy of The Black Dossier recently, I got it from Amazon so perhaps you could do the same (also occasionaly seen copies in Forbidden Planet, no doubt imported).
Anyway, great video as always Linkara :)
Setzer: So Big Burger is the bastard son of 100 condiments? ...would his clawed glove be made out of Sesame Seeds?
Oh brother, the California Raisins. I actually remember an entire period in the 80s when Will Vinton was considered "arty" and "the future". Of course this was during a period when most animated shows were...meh. (yeah, I know many loved that era but to me it really didn't begin to get good until Tiny Toons came out in '89.
This latest episode not only brought me back to the days when folks knew who the California Raisins were, but also to the early days of Atop The Fourth Wall. I didn't see any references to the current underlying plot-line, but I think it is a good thing in this case. After all, this is "where bad comics burn", and shouldn't become "The Adventures of Linkara: Comic Hero!" I am sure that Lord Vyce will be back soon enough, with something suitably evil.
As to the review itself: classic. Linkara does a spiffy job tearing into this comic. I must say, however, that occasionally I thought he was a little nit-picky on some points. After all, this isn't a super-hero comic, and shouldn't be held to quite the same level of "realism". That being said, there was still a lot going wrong.
The plot was weaker than my will to lose weight when faced with a good slice of cheesecake. The jokes were stale, overused things. The characters weren't just stereotypes, they were dull stereotypes. In all, as you young folks say, it was "full of fail".
Eagerly awaiting the next installment!
The 3d... *kinda* worked for me when I used glasses, some bits were more forward or back than others (possibly because it was shrunk from the original page size), but there were other bits that didn't fit at all and even had the red/blue on the wrong side of each other than the rest of the page in a few places.
Lousy job, good review :) I liked the 3-d music joke.
The ONLY 3D effect I've ever have work on paper was and old issue of Nintendo Power where they promoted the Virtual Boy.
"Hey Rudolph! Come on and guide my slay!"
If it makes you feel any better, I don't remember the California Raisins TV show, but I do distinctly remember having little plastic California Raisins toys.
I too despise 3D. It was kind of cute when the TV sitcoms did it as a gimmick in the 90s, but when it's touted as some great innovation? No.
So, the Raisins roll the villains in a big carpet of flypaper and toss them into the river?
Isn't that attempted murder? No wonder they didn't call the police.
I'm interested in seeing Big Burger's origin in the California Raisins prequel, " Grape Eater. "
" The Burger is dead! I hereby proclaim you Big Burger! "
...Did anyone else have flashbacks to the Fighting Foodons, while watching this review?
I find it very funny that you reviewed this comic this week, and the new Deadpool issue has a 3D cover. Coincidence?
I put the video in full screen and tried it with some 3D glasses and no it didn't work either.
While entertaining as usual, I hope to never see another 3d comic like that ever again. Those pictures physically made me ill and gave me a minor migraine. Keep up the good work but for the love of all things epic never review another comic like that again.
Is it a bad sign when the only thing a comic does is remind you that you need more fiber in your diet?
Good stuff Lewis!
The 3D music joke left me in tears.
Absolutely hilarious review, Linkara.
Urgh. I definitely agree with you about 3D. Most of the time, it's just plain POINTLESS.
Though I will admit that I'm slightly biased against 3D anything -- something about the combination of 3D glasses with my own everyday glasses makes my eyes and head literally ache. It never seems to work as well for me as it does for other people, either, so I don't even get the "Ooh, Pretty!" benefits.
I know they apparently survived, but did anyone else get the impression our 'heroes' just tried to drown their enemies by binding them up and throwing them in a lake?
See, that way, no one's left to challenge their ownership of the house and that's why they're not bothering to call the police.
Also, isn't big burger a chain of fast food places? I'm surprised there wasn't a lawsuit over this.
This comic is offensive to Christians and raisins.
The 3D worked for me - like Sean et al, I watched it from a distance, which is really the best way...
(but, as ZeroSD pointed out, there were places where the colour was reversed).
Englishman - I found Black Dossier easily at my LCSs. There were many copies in at least one of them.
I don't live in the US... but I don't live in the UK, either.
- Mik
P.S. Apart from all your usual reasons for hating it, having part of the comic on its side with one panel vertical is especially egregious in a 3D comic. They rely on the images having the same orientation.
- Mik
That was a very, very bland comic. Ironically, even though the art was bad, that is the best claymation i have ever seen. And I've seen a lot.
I interviewed this comic's publisher, Steve Schanes at Blackthorne, for a San Diego Reader cover feature about his earlier Pacific Comics company, onetime home of Dave Stevens' Rocketeer, Groo the Wanderer, Mike Grell's Starslayer, Bernie Wrightson, Jack Kirby (Captain Victory, Silver Star), etc - Schanes says the Raisins comic outsold them all, going into multiple printings and keeping Blackthorne afloat long enough to do comics on GI Joe, Star Wars, Transformers, etc (those comics are even worse than the Raisins!). If you're curious about how their Jack Kirby and Dave Stevens comics ended up devolving into the California Raisins, the article is at http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/bands/2007/sep/08/pacific-comics-the-inside-story-jay-allen-sanford/
This comic is in 3D because of raisins.
Ow! Ouch! Not the face!
Sugar Cubes, the henchmen are not croutons, they are Sugar Cubes
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