I first became aware of my anxiety at the age of 12, or more specifically, the first day of junior high at the age of 12. The first thing said to me, as we filed into the cafeteria was, “Out of my way, 7th grade faggot,” and that’s all it took.  It was  the insult that broke me.  I spent the rest of my time without a locker (out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to memorize the locker combination), with fear of being rejected, and with fear of doing something I don’t already know how to do.  Pretty much from those formative years and beyond, anxiety has been a ruling factor daily.  As I join the rest of America and give in to taking a happy pill for sweet relief,  I ask myself, “What IS my problem anyway?” I wasn’t molested, my childhood was fine, is it chemical?  I never really examined the effect my diet has on my mental state, and it always consisted of high-fructose, high corn syrup count. Could that play a part on my fragile mental state? Maybe, but I am not giving up my sugary breakfast cereal, or at least not until they stop releasing these delightful and kooky retro designs.

General Mills released  two popular series of  their mainstays in their retro splendor this year, so it didn’t take long before Quaker Oats got in on that action and released their own throwback cereal with the popular Cap’ n Crunch. Just look at that lettering! My how it jumps out at you. I have always been a fan of the good Cap’n. He is a great cartoon character (Created by Jay Ward’s studio, home of Rocky & Bullwinkle), and he has a great cereal.  I can eat Cap’n Crunch every day. In fact, I have eaten most of this cereal already, one angry fist full over the sink at a time.

However, I can’t think of any other cereal that shreds the inside of your mouth and makes you as thirsty as a bowl of Cap’n Crunch,  but I can live with that and you can too.  I am just saying, plan accordingly.

Also, I should add, I take great offense to Quaker Oats offering “collectible cards” as some sort of prize. Come on, that doesn’t count. I gotta cut them out myself. I don’t have time for all that. I’ll give credit where credit is due though. I do like the framing treatment, and I did learn a lot about Cap’n and his nemesis, Jean LaFoote. ( Cap’n is 4’11 and 102 lbs!)

Nostalgia  literally means “the pain from an old wound”. Well, according to Don Draper it does, and while I look ahead to the future and fixing my problems in the easiest fashion possible, I don’t mind looking back if it means we get cool cereal boxes.

I am but a bitter curmudgeon.  I pretty much hate everything I am supposed to hate as well as plenty of things that I shouldn’t.  I rant and rail against most modern institutions and pine for the days of yore that I didn’t even experience first hand.  I mean, come on, if you don’t see how much worse pretty much everything is today, then you aren’t paying much attention. In fact, you are probably texting somebody right now, you @#$!

Of course, every now and again, particularly when I have been drinking, I let my guard down and give in to Pixar. Sure, they have never created anything as good as ‘Dumbo’, but I will give credit where credit is due, and I more or less, enjoyed every one of the films they’ve produced. Sure, some more than other (Cars being others) but, like it or not, they are the only animation studio that matters anymore.

I really liked Toy Story, despite the crude animation and, let’s face it, somewhat bland designs. I mean, like, they work fine in motion, but when you see your 57th pair of Buzz Lightyear jammie jam jams, the appeal is certainly gone. Kudos to the fine folks at Golden Books for being the patron of the modern masterpiece known as ‘Toy Story 3 : A Little Golden Book. ‘

Masterfully hand illustrated (delightfully off-model) by Adrian Molina, this book leaped off the end cap at Wal-Mart (Yes, I do indeed, suck) and into my shopping cart (with one wobbly wheel.)  The colors are a lot more vivid than my scanner gives them credit for.

Oh my! Look at those squat proportions. Look at those large eyes with large pupils! If I had to define cartoon appeal, this would be it. Could you imagine if the whole movie looked like this?

I am pretty sure this scene won’t be as funny in the film. Look at that Buzz Lightyear.  I want him tattooed on my face.

This is my favorite illustration in the book.  Great lighting on this scene. I love Woody’s eyes. He sorta looks Dave Cooperesque here. (Meant as no slight to Adrian Molina. He is truly a rare jem of a talent, and only 24 years old too, ugh!)

I love this composition.  Your eyes register the toys instantly, but the viewer still ‘reads’ the grime and trash, without looking cluttered and ugly. Why, even the garbage truck oozes with appeal!

How adorable! I want to crawl inside this book and live there forever.

In our conservative age of design, I think Disney and Pixar deserve extra credit for allowing what’s essentially the biggest property in the world to appear this far off-model. I think it’s good for kids, as it gives them the notion that there is more than one way to draw a slinky dog.

This book gets my highest possible recommendation.  Available at all Wal Marts and wherever fine pieces of art are sold.

Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there. I guess I was too busy reading comics to notice you coming to this blog. Y’ see, it’s hard for me to do much else but read funnies after getting back from Heroes Con.

Travelmates/bedbuddies Brad McGinty, J. Chris Campbell and I met up and made the trek up to North Carolina- Oh wait, is Charlotte in North Carolina? I’ll have to ask our Father-figure slash roomie and all out organizer-for-us, Rob Ullman, when I get a chance. At any rate, we made the trek up to the greatest comic convention in the world, Heroes Con.  What makes it so great, you ask? Some nerve! Well, I mean like, besides the fact I get to see my favorite people in comics and/or world, I get more comics than I can shake a limited edition light saber sword at. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself.

We came rollin’ up in my ’97 Corolla on Friday morning and decided to bite the bullet and park in a 20 dollar parking lot. I mean, like, dudes. We hadda lot of crap to carry, and I doubt you’d mistake Brad, J.Chris and I as people from your gym. (Rob Ullman, maybe, but still.) As it turns out, we didn’t move my car for the weekend so we got to slip out on Sunday sans paying for parking. Looks like we won this round, Heroes. Haha!

Friday was a bit slow on sales for all of us, well, everyone I talked to, but honestly, I didn’t notice. I don’t even think I was behind the table all that much,leaving my good friend Shannon Smith to man the table we shared as I was making the rounds and seeing what’s new with all my comic buddies. “Not much” was the resounding consensus. Comic people are so modest. I was pleased and surprised to see so many of my Athens pals (Robert Newsome, Patrick Dean, Joey Weiser, David Mack and Drew Weing) also seated in Indie Island. No wonder this show feels more like home that my hometown show ever does. Burn, Dragon*Con, burn!

That night Rob, J.Chris, Brad, Shannon and I met up with another good friend and favorite person in comics, Ben Towle, and had a costly dinner at some Chinese restaurant. Well, costly for us poor folks. We discussed comics(duh) and the breasts of our waitress and how they were all hanging out and stuff. Later on, we had a screening of Brad’s brilliant cartoons in the Dollar Bin suite. It always sounds funny to say, but sometimes I forget just how brilliant Brad really is. His cartoons slayed, and unlike last year, security didn’t squelch our party down plans, and party down we did,man! We drank like it was going out of style, just like comics books. We all woke up with hangovers the next day and ahead of schedule. Oh well, what can you do?

After a little hair of the dog, we got it together with some bagels and coffee and hit the convention. We got to see our pal, Ashley Holt, which of course, was really nice. Homeboy is smart.  Also, I got to spend time with my sister Sally Bloodbath and her boyfriend Matt Wiegle which was also very nice. Jeez, I need a thesaurus. Sales were pretty darn good, and I musta done, like, zillions of sketches.

That night we made our annual trek to Phat Burrito where I got to spend some time with Sally, Matt, Liz Ballie, Jackson New Jersey’s very own Meghan Ansbach and her boyfriend Lee. We mostly discussed records, n’ things, which was a welcome change from the 34 hours of comic talk. Ah, who I am kidding? We talked about comics too. Also, during the course of the evening, Brad, J.Chris, Rob and I had a beer with Tom Spurgeon and talked about the Atlanta comic scene. Surprise, surprise. I had only negative things to say about it. I read Comics Reporter daily, so this was a highlight of the show for me.

Later on that night, I got a chance to smoke a little grass* with my man P. Cleland and another unnamed cartoonist.
*Just kidding. We’d never really do anything illegal on the top of a parking garage.

Sunday is my shopping day, so shopping I did. I bought some weird, wacky comics for a dollar a piece, like this weird Daffy and Roadrunner comic (all the Looney Tunes birds,together at last!) and some peak Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge comics, because I can’t come home without duck books. Speaking of which, Boom! Studios was there with there new Disney comics, which I am a big fan of, especially the Euro duck stuff. Man, that’s some cartoony goodness! I love it. Love it, I say. We need more like that. I heard a DuckTales book is around the bend.

It’s always depressing packing up after this show, and this year was no different. I would say though, without a doubt this was my best year at Heroes. The con was stress free, and I sold a metric ton of crap. What more can I ask for? This is sleep-away camp for nerds that never went to camp.

Welp, that’s about it- Oh wait, I’d love to mention a few more fine people. Warning: more plugs than Steve Carell’s hairline up ahead.
Ken Dahl, M.K. Reed, Evan Dahm, Pale Rider crew, Gabriel Dunston, Chris Pitzer, Dean Trippe, Jason Horn, Van Jensen, Rob Venditti, Travis J. Hill, Jamie Walker, Boom!, Tom Bancroft, David Mack, Dollar Bin Podcast (Adam,Ted, Brian, Kris, Devin, Brandon), Mr.Phil, Martin Steenton, Andy Ruton, Heather McKinney, Stephanie Gladden, John Miller, Chris Schweizer, Duane Ballenger, Rich Barrett, Erakis Pemeza, Shawn Daughhetee, Scott Elingburg, Justin and Jason Gammon and Jamie Ouzts extra special thanks goes out to my man Dustin Harbin for inviting me to be part of Indie Island. See ya next year, sucker.

Tune in soon for more news on the next Rashy Rabbit!

Beauty surrounds us every day, Sometimes you just have to stop and take it in. Just kidding. Everything is ugly and awful. This wasn’t always the case, though. Once upon a time, you could go to your local Shell station to get a tank of gas for a nickle and a free masterpiece. Case in point, this!

I picked this up at a local antique store- Eh, what the hell, I’ll give ‘em a plug. I was at Rust N’ Dust in Chamblee GA, and I picked this up as well as a Batman comic with the first appearance of Poison Ivy on the super-cheap tip. Zzz, right? This pamphlet from 1960 on collecting rocks really grabbed me. I guess you can see why.

Every figure, every line is masterfully drawn. All the staging, all the compositions are captivating. The ‘shaky’ lines, the tasteful spot colors gives this drab subject a touch of whimsy, which would no doubt be missing if ‘How To Collect Rocks’ happened to be published anytime after mid-century.

I really dig the way this unknown artist (man, I wish I knew who did this) handles wrinkles and drapery.

Treasures don’t always come from the musty ground like this booklet suggests, my friends, sometimes it comes from large corporations from an era where they felt they owed us something for our patronage. No, thank YOU, Shell.

“I thought everything came together nicely in the end, but that sort of thing is only possible with an excellent beginning and middle.  Yep, that’s my bit of wisdom for the day. “

-Kevin Bramer Mini comic maven and critic.

READ FULL REVIEW HERE

I guess the deep and debilitating depression started in my adolescence. In fact, one might say that I have been suffering from teenage angst for the last two decades. That will change, for I will soon be (more) medicated thus enjoying all my Morrissey records less and less. Is it any wonder why I celebrate my upper-middle class childhood through sugary cereals of days gone by? Of course not, the adult world is crushing me alive and you too.

General Mills saw this and decided to rectify this injustice to all of us and returned the cereal of our youth back to us in their beautiful boxes that the Good Lord intended. Well, sorta.

Available for a “limited time” exclusively at Target, General Mills is offering all their mainstays (Trix, Honey Nut Cheerios, Regular Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms) as they might have appeared in generations better than our own.

I picked up Trix and Lucky Charms. Sure I wanted them all, but sometimes life is hard. Also, the rest aren’t kooky enough for me.

Just look at the leprechaun!  What a mighty painting. Can people even still paint like that? I guess we’ll never know, thanks to the x-treme photoshop sunglass wearin’ Lucky that adorns modern boxes these days. Does everything really need to be “cool”? Of course it doesn’t. Especially not leprechauns.

This is the Trix box that jumped (hee hee) off the shelf and into my basket first in my local Target. What a striking design. That’s right, you don’t need every color in the rainbow on your box. Let the beautiful rabbit design do the work, and I promise we’ll do the rest – by which I mean, buy the damned cereal. I won’t even assault your eyeballs with what passes as the Trix Bunny now ah’ days.

Oh, and speaking of every color of the rainbow, unlike Pepsi, with their sublime return to retro form, General Mills tries to have it both ways. Sure, the boxes are great, but cereal itself? It suffers from the modern mentality that more is more. Just look at all the colors in these cereals! I said LOOK. Yuck. Plus, they appear on the boxes, creating an anachronism if I ever seen one- and believe you, me, I have.

Of course they taste delicious, but that’s beyond the point.

The days when a child would be entertained by a leprechaun marionette clipped from the back of a cereal box are far behind us, but I’d take that over the internet any day, especially after the meds kick in.

Ours is a troubled time, what with the economic collapse, needless wars, and a serous lack of Warner Bros’ studio stores. Here we are in another stupid decade and nothing has changed. Oh sure, our internet is fast now, and cell phones are pretty cool, but the cold hand of nostalgia strangles the life out of me more and more each day. Oh, how I harken back to the halcyon days of yore in our country where a man, or prolly a woman (being as that men didn’t shop for groceries), could go into a store and buy a soft drink adorned with cartoon hillbillies.

Pepsi Co. heard the cry for a simpler time and answered with ‘throwback’ Mountain Dew. As you no doubt already noticed, the can looks pretty much the way it did back in the, well, whatever decade it was invented in.  It sure is breathtaking. Sure, I could have gone without the nagging reminder right there on the can: this beverage is for a limited time. But, beggars can’t be choosers.

The packaging isn’t the only thing that’s different about this ‘throwback’, soda, heavens no. Pepsi turned back the clock and used actual REAL SUGAR in this soft drink. Huh, I wasn’t aware they weren’t using real sugar now, but, it’s still a nice sentiment on their part. The taste? Pretty good. I can appreciate a good yellow soda, and this is one. Honestly, it could taste like cough syrup and circus peanuts, just so there is a hillbilly on the can. The south will rise again, dudes!

From what I understand, this liquid gold is fairly hard to come by.  So if you see them in your local grocery store in your jerkwater town, you better stockpile them and buy all that you can, ‘cos they are going  faster than the decay of our once proud culture. Once Armageddon hits (any day now), the one with the most ‘throwback’ Mountain Dew will rule the tattered country.  Those of us left will have to flee to the mountains and live like hillbillies, and I, for one, cannot wait.

Since the conception of the zoetrope, man has been interested in animation cartoons. Since that time, there have been a lot of cartoons, and a lot of snacks  that have been adorned with the images of beloved cartoon characters. Case in point:The Flintstones, modern stone age family. Long past are the days when the only Flintstones themed food you could find at your local grocers was cocoa pebbles, and, in some markets,fruity.  The Flintstones brand went on to dominate the children chewable vitamins market and went on to monopolize orange sherbet in a tube. Fast forward to now: I walk into the grocery store, pretty much ready to buy any cartoon related snack food, and often am met with resistance from the man (I.E. Kroger).

Where Kroger drops the ball, the Chevron on 10th and Spring St. picked up the ball, and uh, dribbled it to the field goal?  Anyway, whilst on business in town, my wife found these “Flintstone Chews” and purchased them, knowing my proclivity to candy graced with the images of classic circa 1957 to 1982 Hanna Barbera characters. She is also aware of the fact that I have braces, and should not eat this kind of candy, but I digress.

(bland, and blurry packaging)

Strangely, there is no year or date anywhere on this rather generic bag, in fact, at first glance, I wasn’t sure if this was an officially sanctioned Flintstones product, or rather, some shoddy product without the ghost of Joe Barbera’s and William Hanna’s former fart-catcher’s approval. I didn’t see any circle c’s or little tms anywhere on the blando outer packaging.In fact, King Henry got top billing. I opened the dang ol’ package and was ecstatic to learn, this is the real thing. I thought it was classy to go with the 4 color printing process, as well as the bold visual choice to limit the pallet. The font choice was excellent and hand done, well at least on the word “chew”.

I was a little puzzled, perhaps a bit confused that the character’s on the label(Fred, Dino and Pebbles) were at random and didn’t coincide with the flavor. I feel as though the stone age schtick should been down to the flavor, but the flavors are in fact, not listed at all.  The flavors, from what I gather are pineapple or banana, uh, blue, and I think that there was an orange one in there- Maybe green too. Truth be told I ate them a few days ago. I guess the kissing cousin of this candy would be Laffy Taffy. I dunno, maybe, it’s kissing third cousin would be Starburst, particularly the not very good Starburst flavors.

The golden days of television cartoons may be sadly behind us, forgotten and buried in a shallow grave with our grandparents, but the characters still entertain generations today, with somewhat decent candy.

Hey, gang! Guess who’s seeking out retail therapy by buying crap shaped like cartoon characters? That’s right, el-me-o, as my Spaniard friends might say.

This time, I found myself shoplifting at Publix. I was picking up some 100 dollar eye drops and had some time to kill. That’s right, 100 dollar eye drops. No joke here, folks. Hey Obama! Weren’t you supposed to get me free eye drops? Thanks for nothing, pal! I’ll take what’s mine now, thank you. Anyway, I had some time to kill when I heard this salt and pepper set calling my name from a seasonal end cap. It was love at first sight, err, sound, err-something.

As I mentioned before, I like Snoopy enough.  I mean, I love dogs n’ junk – and I like the way Snoopy dances and believes in capital punishment. All and all, though, I am desensitized to all merchandise featuring Snoopy. I mean, like, they make Snoopy breast pumps for fucks sake, but I digress. It seems to me that the higher life forms of the strip have been sorely merchandised in the last two decades. So when I see anything Charlie Brown, I stand up and take notice.

Admittedly, another salt and pepper shaker isn’t really much of a necessity in my household. I already got a Trader Vic’s  tiki dude set as well as a Donald Duck and the esteemed Professor Ludwig Von Drake to dispense salt n’ pepper on me eggs, but come on! Did I mention it’s Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt?  Oh, please merciful father in hell, please stop me before I start collecting Salt & Pepper shakers!

(Stop me from collecting this crap.)

Oh yeah, I am supposed to be reviewing these stupid things. That way I can write it off on my taxes as a business expense.  The sculpts are good, yet not particularly inspired.  I would have preferred a more dispirited expression on Chuck or a homicidal grin on Lucy’s mug. What can you do, though? Not buy them? HA! Oh, you.

Another head-scratcher is why Lucy is the salt shaker and Ol’ Chuck is the pepper, as dictated by the holes in the top? I mean,think about it. Lucy has black hair. Black hair = black pepper. Doyee! Say, why do salt shakers have more holes than pepper shakers? I guess that’s like asking why does rain fall from the sky? Some things man was never meant to know.