Rob O'Bonobo

Page from Greatish magazine.

Superheroes are a virus, and I'm infected.

Mask up.

greatish.substack.com

Dinosaur Walks into a Wall

Possibly my favorite doodle ever. A dinosaur walking into a wall.

The death of the Monoculture means soon all jokes will be inside jokes, like that time Corbin bought too many fish fillets from that one guy.

Birth.
I don't get these references.
I get some of these references.
I get all of the references.
What are these new references?
People are missing my references.
No one gets my references.
I don't get these references.
Death.

Note to headline writers: Weird AI and Weird Al are indistinguishable in most modern typefaces but mean two very different things.

To clarify outside the character limit. I'm not talking about the comics form, but the book format. The young audience reads online, paper is expensive in comparison to pixels, and the vertical scroll, when used well, isn't conducive to reformatting. Without original work, the medium will end.

Disney and Webtoon's Partnership Is Leading to a Massive New Comics App Digital comics is getting a major new player as Disney prepares to invest in the webcomics platform.

If Marvel starts publishing Vertical Scroll comics, it's likely to lead to the end of the comic book form as a popular medium. Unlike webcomics, which could take any form, but were often easily formatted into books, Webtoons don't fit the format without revision. The beginning of the end.

Oh and I still have every issue of Transformers up through 57 bagged and boarded. Those same copies.

One is a retcon, the other is revisionist history.

This cover is the reason I read comics. Seeing it on the stand. Buying it. Buying the previous mini-series in a pack at KayBee toys. Ordering a subscription from the ad in the back. This is it. Ground Zero.

It only feels like magic when someone else is doing it.

James Gunn and Dan Harmon are better when they are constrained. Community>Rick and Morty. Superman>Peacemaker. Not because of freedom, but because of constraints.

MHO

Every hobby-based podcast I try to listen to, I want them to discuss the thing they made.

Every hobby-based podcast I try to listen to, they want to discuss how to make money on the thing they made.

I don't care how you make money. I care how you make art.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and they never finished it.

Money can't buy happiness, but you can subscribe to it. Rates rise yearly as do the number of advertisements. But what else can I do? Make myself happy?

The future is unwritten, but I think we can get ChatGPT to autofill it for us.

Knowledge is power. But power is not knowledge. It's kind of a "square is a rectangle" situation.

Very sad to hear that Christopher H. Bidmead has passed away. His name will always be burned into my mental pantheon, not just for his time as script editor on the classic series, but for the novelizations of his stories that I read and reread again and again in the time before VHS and DVDs.

Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them. Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!” Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.” Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face. Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.

Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑

A wonderful visual storyteller and an incredibly nice guy. Loved working with Don on Defenders.

"Hamlet:
Denmark being one o’ the worst.

R:
We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet:
Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison."

-When everything clicks into place, and then a second later you mess it up with old patterns.

There's also one that dropped exclusively on HBO Max and of course the very recent Last of Us Part 2, so ... Into the Pascaliverse!

Mercutio died laughing. Be like Mercutio.

$15,000, which is roughly one share (one eight billionth) of the $123 trillion that exists, as long as everyone else has one share as well. I think you'd be surprised at how quickly prices would come down.

She doesn’t need a hero, she is the hero we need. 🤩

screengrab of a portion of new yorker interview with former simpson's writer john swartzwelder: Mike Sacks: How much time and attention did you spend on these scripts? Another “Simpsons” writer once compared your scripts to finely tuned machines—if the wrong person mucked with them, the whole thing could blow up. Swartzwelder: All of my time and all of my attention. It’s the only way I know how to write, darn it. But I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.

hi this is my favorite writing advice, it's from former simpsons writer john swartzwelder (i think about the crappy little elf all the time) www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...