If it's not one thing it's another. I finally make it through the frustration of practicing and performing Brigadoon with the community theater and get ready to return to my comics, and then I contract strep throat! Ugh... I'm too sickly to even hold up a pencil, let alone draw with it. Hopefully I'll be in better shape soon so I don't have to delay my work too much more.

Also, Heather and I were forced to watch Twilight last night at the behest of a coworker who claimed, as do so many that it's "OMG TEH BEST MOVIE EVAR!!!!!!1111!!!1!!"

I'd like to say that it hurt, but really, I felt like I was just slipping into a coma while watching it. No doubt because the "plot" (and I use the term loosely here) plods along like molasses going downhill in January, with crutches. And it doesn't help that the entire thing is filmed in what I now refer to as Pasty-Vision: The amazing new cinematic technique in which all Caucasian characters appear so pasty white as to almost be transparent and every other object is either pale blue or shrouded in a pale blue aura. Look, I understand that the vampires are supposed to be deathly white, but it sort of ruins the idea if EVERYBODY looks undead!

Don't get me wrong here and say that "You're a guy, so you just don't understand romance stories." Far from it! I LOVE the genre of supernatural romance/action stories! Heck, one of my favorite comics/cartoons of all time is InuYasha! This, however, just feels like the movie representation of a badly-written Mary Sue fanfiction. And I'm going to assume the books are no better. The characters are all absolutely lifeless (no pun intended) with dialogue and long pauses that struggle to be more awkward and unnatural than each other throughout the film. Bella is an irritatingly brooding girl who can NEVER be happy: "I hope everyone is nice to me at my new school." "Oh my gawd! Everyone's being nice to me! NOW what will I be upset about? Life is so unfair!" and Edward is one of the creepiest stalkers I've ever seen, even for a vampire! "I like to watch you sleep." I'm sure you do, Edward. You know, there are websites dedicated to that sort of thing. He does, however, deliver the two greatest lines of the movie. "You know nothing" and "If you're smart, you'll stay away from me." Truer words were never spoken.

I find it funny that Edward's family is supposed to be perfect (you know, despite being undead and incestuous) and that Bella's family as well as everyone else is lower than pond scum even though we see no evidence of it. My favorite part was how Bella constantly treats her father with disdain despite the fact that he does everything he can to keep her safe and happy. Oh, but wait! He doesn't know how to talk to a teenage girl? BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!!! However, back to Edward's perfection, halfway through the movie, after we've seen him glitter like a fairy on crack, admired his music collection and heard him play the piano which must prove he's a tortured artistic soul, and discovered his ability to give girls orgasms just by looking at them and asking them about the weather, I finally broke down and screamed "FOR GOD'S SAKE, JUST GIVE THE GUY A HALO AND WINGS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!" Seriously, I understand the concept of giving a main character lots of desirable attributes, but he has NO FLAWS! Well, none aside from looking kind of like Frankenstein's monster, but that's more the actor than the character.

The thing I kept thinking throughout all of this movie was that, in InuYasha, the interactions between InuYasha and other characters are far less awkward and more natural than those in Twilight and yet InuYasha is supposed to be psychologically and emotionally traumatized. Meanwhile, every conversation Edward and Bella share sounds like it's being read off of a script-format fanfiction with every other sentence missing.

This movie sucks.

Matt Garner,
Toastmaster General

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Commission Pricing

Digital Black-and-White One-Character Images: $5
-Additional Characters: $1 Each

Digital Color One-Character Images: $10
-Additional Characters: $2 Each

Original Planet Z Comic Pages

Pages from Issues 1 & 2: $10 Each

Pages from Later Issues: $15 Each