We’re finished with the anime series Ergo Proxy. The ending was pretty good, with the usual grand speeches and battles and massive explosions.
One of the change-of-pace Ergo installments had a mocking parody of Walt Disney in a scratchy black and white movie, gesturing like Hitler.
[flv:/Video/OCT07/ErgoDisney.flv 448 252]
Long before Ergo Proxy, even before Astro Boy, the first anime to reach America, one of Bob Clampett’s Beany and Cecil cartoons made fun of Disneyland.
When I saw yesterday’s ‘Crankshaft’ I knew it would draw negative responses, and it has, as noted in Editor and Publisher; although so far they’re limited to the blogosphere.
There does seem to be an implicit reference to sexual assault in this cartoon, and I just don’t see anything about that being funny. Also, older women are prime targets for purse snatching, so the pepper spray is justified anyway. But Crankshaft is an unpleasant character, more often portrayed as pathetic than sympathetic, so I guess in that context this gag makes some sense.
I’m surprised by how little the style of this famous cartoonist changed from his college days, of which this panel is one example. Thanks to Heidi MacDonald for the tip.
When I was a kid, it bothered me that most people were more interested in the ads in comic books than in the stories. Most of what was sold was junk, of course — the notorious X-Ray Specs for example — but once in a while a legitimately interesting product was offered. So, in acknowledgment of that, here’s an ad from a 1967 Marvel comic book. It’s the Digi-Comp 1!
If not exactly the first home computer, the Digi-Comp 1 was a working binary counting machine. Here’s a Digi-Comp 1 in action, counting from 0 to 7 in binary. It’s even done twice, in case you miss it the first time. 😉
Exciting, huh? But compared to the comic book ad the Digi-Comp 1 must have been a disappointment. First, there’s nothing electronic about it, and the atomic symbol would seem to imply it’s nuclear in some way. But at least the Digi-Comp 1 is described accurately as being a “mechanical analog of a binary computer.”
I hope the person who wrote the ad copy didn’t use a Digi-Comp 1 to figure out the price, because it’s listed first at $4.99, then in the coupon at $4.98. Oh well, they didn’t claim “down to the penny precision!”
The Digi-Comp 1 has, as you might expect, something of a cult following. Original units are often auctioned in eBay, and there is a replica of it available at Minds on Toys.
