While I’m off at sea cavorting with Joel Watson, I have a guy on the side. Sorry, Joel, I never said our relationship was exclusive!
Instead of leaving you folks with guest strips, I’ve allied with Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex for a sweet week-long crossover between our strips. I’ve got Monday, he’s got Tuesday, I’ve got Wednesday, he’s got Thursday, and then we’ve both got Friday.
So tomorrow night, head over to Multiplex for the continuation of today’s story!
Man, drawing up a week of strips about Malaya and then getting the hell off the continent is a classic Willis move, right there.
How did I not see this coming?
Jason!Malaya OTP!
Malaya is now boned. Sorry Ken.
Vega will never catch a break.
That is not Vega, it is clearly Chun-Li
Alright, come on guys, seriously, this is getting old!
I think by now, we should all remember what his name is and give Dan Hibiki some respect!
I see what you did there. No it will never get old. Yes should remember Balrog’s and always call him by his real name but we won’t.
Everyone does remember his real name – if they didn’t they might accidentally call him it when it came up in the rotation.
Why would we call him anything other than Akuma?
Fun’s fun, guys, but let’s try to give Guile the respect he deserves.
really guys? show Steve the respect he diserves…
Just how hard is it to remember the name Skullomania? Seriously people…
Elsewhere on the Web I saw somebody quoting the opinion that the only thing worse than a man with bad taste is one with enough money to show that bad taste to the world.
Somehow, I don’t think this will smash any box-office records.
It didn’t. And it got pwned by Denzel’s SAFE HOUSE.
That man has the most intense face of all time. Like, he could break through cinderblocks… by looking at them. I think I’m in love.
That’s actually something that kind of threw me about the art on Jason. Between the all-teeth-mouths of your typical SP! character, the fact that his mouth opens the bare minimum, and that little line by his jaw he looks like he’s had his jaw wired shut. He doesn’t look so much pissed off as he does like Frankenstein’s monster.
Yeah, he looks like he should be in one of Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations.
You know what? I’ve decided to ship Ken and Malaya.
Where to, Abu Dhabi?
C’mon, Abu Dhabi has Nermal. How about Singapore?
No thanks, I live in Singapore and I think we definitely don’t want them.
I was wondering if anyone would spot that ref or not.
It’s the major thing I remember about Nermal other than him being annoyingly cute.
Wasn’t Nermal a girl cat?
no.
Common misconception. (I think the people making the cartoon may have been under a similar impression.) But no, apparently Nermal’s a dude.
It’s the eye lashes. The very same reason to this day, I still don’t know if Tweety’s a dude or a dudette.
Tweety’s totally a dude. Just a very cute dude.
–What, a regular classic character in a Warner Bros cartoon is gonna be female and not an old lady or fighting off her amusing rapist?
Seriously, until recently, there were like NO female characters except for those two.
Funnily enough, one of the animators/creators (might even have been mel Blanc himself) when called on how often Bugs ended up in a dress pointed out that they had never specifically stated that Bugs was a guy. Maybe he was actually female and just usually didn’t bother with dresses?
–Yeeaah, like Bugs isn’t a guy. *Eyeroll*
Is she going to wear the hipster glasses, then? Or just shove them down Ken’s throat?
They’re not actually Hipster glasses anymore. They’re these fruity lookin’ yellow things. I don’t even know how to describe them anymore, but they look really cheap.
malaya will eventually get killed off. willis can’t take so much hate… can he?
Willis coined the phrase “most epic of hatefucks”. I think he can take it.
I think he feeds on our hate, actually
Ken finally gets some development…and it turns out that it’s a love for pod-racing.
Maybe he was better off without a personality
Still, I’m rooting for you, Balrog. Defrost that ice-queen!
What Sagat needs is a hairdryer to thaw out the Ice Queen.
why use a hair dryer when dhalsim can just do a yoga fire?
Two of my favorite comics; this should be awesome.
Of course, the nutjob nitpick in me is wondering why two San Francisco retail employees decided to go see a crappy movie in Chicago.
Short answer, according to McAlpin: In the Shortpacked! universe, this is taking place in San Fransisco, in the Multiplex universe, this is taking place in Chicago.
Dave’s AWOL, so I can be his stand-in. We talked about this and decided that in the Multiplex universe, there’s an SP! counterpart in Chicago. In the Shortpacked! universe, there’s a Multiplex counterpart in San Francisco.
Anyway, Jason’s already been shopping at SP! before (in my Shortpacked! guest strip) and the SP! gang saw Transformers 3 at the Multiplex 10, so why bother addressing it now?
Who the hell is Dave?
a.k.a. WILLLLIIIIIISSSSS!!!!!!!!!
Oh, David! Okay.
Wow. That was embarrassing.
Dave’s not here, man!
Who are Cheech and Chong?
I’ll take famous comedy bits for a thousand, Alex.
Hal, it’s me, Dave. Open the pod bay doors.
I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
AAAALVIIIIIIIIN!!!
Who is Dave Seville?
“Everybody’s dead, Dave.”
“These are the Daves I know, I know, these are the Daves I know…”
Hallo Daaave… You wanna buy some pegs?
YOU’RE MY WIFE NOW
If Ultra Car can drive people to the Amazon as a joke, driving a bro and her date 2000 miles to see movie in Chicago is no trouble.
This guy looks like Jason Todd.
He’s about as pleasant, too.
That last panel is what 95% of people on the Internet think make themselves awesome.
You mean it doesn’t??? *shocked*
Malaya and Jason in the same place!?! Did a black hole just open up? No, on closer inspection that’s a portal to the asshole dimension! Pee-yoo!
The asshole dimension? Is it worse than the jerkass dimension?
A dimension of PURE DOOKY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I-AduB541w
The proverbial World Of Shit itself!
(This thread is starting to sound familiar)
No worse then the asshole or jerk ass dimension or the dimension of PURE DOOKY! Its the dimension that has A ROOM WITH MOOSE!!!
NOT THE MOOSE! I’D DO ANYTHING BUT DON’T PUT ME IN A ROOM WITH A MOOSE!
I leave you to your…. moosey fate. WAHAHAHAHAHAHA
NOT THE MOOSE! NOT THE MOOSE! ARGHHH!! IT’S IN MY EYES! MY EYES!
Oh good god, no. Are you two trying to create a singularity of hatred and apathy?
They’re watching Phantom Menace 3D. It already exists; it just needs someone to observe it.
Air Bud 14? That’s the one where the puppies team up with some capucin monkey to dig for treasure right? (not kidding)…No wait.. that’s the 12th film in the series… Air Bud 14 is probably Easter related or some crap. After all they’ve already saved Santa…twice and they’ve also done a Halloween one…so why not the rest of the holidays.
“There’s no rule that says a dog CAN’T do prostate surgery!” Oh ho ho ho.
i’m waiting for the air bud/soul plane crossover.
Malaya forgot the addendum: He tells you how much he hates things and how wrong you are to like them. That’s how you know he’s a nerd.
In my experience, it’s usually the other way around. You mention to someone that you don’t like something. That person DEMANDS to know how you can hate something they will insist they love. You explain it to them why — often in detail, because they insist it’s not enough to say you don’t like something, you have to justify the opinion — and they blow you off, accusing you of not having an open mind, or not understanding modern media or crap like that in an effort to invalidate your opinion. If you still stick by your opinion, you’re branded a “hater” who doesn’t like anything new.
That’s how you know somebody’s a nerd.
No, that’s how you know somebody’s a fanboy/girl.
You know somebody’s a nerd if you ask them who created Spider-Man and it leads to a twenty-minute rant over how much credit Steve Ditko deserves. Or if you ask them about a plot hole in Star Wars and they spend an hour going over their theory before offering to email you an essay they wrote on the subject.
No, you know someone’s a nerd if their best attempt at picking you up at a party involves cornering you and taking at least twenty minutes to try and impress you by telling you that they have the stats, including GDP, currency, and main exports, memorized for the home planet of each alien in the Star Wars Cantina scene– and then proving it by reciting it all. Even after you tell them you’re there with your boy/girlfriend.
Geek/fanboy/girl: Obsessively and enthusiastically knowledgable about something.
Nerd: Geek with poor social skills.
*Yes this is true.
Along with the social skills thing, for a long time, I’ve looked at one of the main differences between a geek and a nerd to be love vs hate. I consider myself a geek, and I don’t plan on seeing TPM in 3D. Don’t see the need. Nerds can’t resist YELLING about not seeing TPM in 3D, and how Lucas is EVIL, and raped their childhood, rargle blargle!
An even more graphic example occurred a couple years ago when my wife and I went to Video Games Live with another couple. The very fact that we went pretty easily shows we’re geeks. The guy a couple seats over from us, shouting “Sephiroth sucks!” at the top of his lungs all the way through One Winged Angel and doing his level best to ruin the concert for everyone around him? He was a fucking nerd.
From Ken’s finger-mask in panel 2, I was kinda hoping they were going to see Robo-Vac in 3D.
With Denzel!
Oh my god :U
My brain just borked with this epic crossover…
This is a crossover? Can someone tell me from where this character is from? I wanna know!
I think something was mentioned about it over at David Willis’ comic, Shortpacked!
Multiplex.
Absolutely not to be comfused with Metroplex.
Knew the crossover was coming because a CERTAIN SOMEONE talked about it last week over on their comic. XD
However, it’s still awesome to see. ^^ Unfortunately, you know a Malaya/Jason relationship would never go anywhere. Malaya would think all the stuff Jason likes is pretentious and lame and only for nerds who take movies too seriously. ALTHOUGH a relationship of hate worked for a while with Jason and the one lady whose name I forgot who really needs to forgive Jason at some point.
I believe her name was Lydia. And their relationship wasn’t exactly hate-filled, he just (at first) thought she was a bitch (and made the mistake of expressing this where Keith could hear it, and use it against him later.)
David knew I was going to!
Since I bumped my regular Monday update to Tuesday for this, I felt I should give my readers a heads up, lest they be frightened and confused.
Other than that one small cameo over the phone I don’t think Lydia is ever going to show up again. In fact, a lot of the side characters are probably never going to be referenced again.
Which is something that I can understand and makes Multiplex kinda realistic. We know when our class mates are going to leave and friends will go but you can see it coming and know what will happen to them (they finished their “character arc”). But if you work retail bosses/co-workers/customers can just vanish, never to be seen again and you keep this weird feeling that you didn’t know them as well as you should.
Jason has had a rough week what with having to see episode 1 again which is absolute torture. That whole thing with Angie was kinda annoying too.
And I feel like I need to make a joke about all Asian looking the same but the last panel shows otherwise.
What, now that Bruce Wayne is on the anti-depressants he’s working at the local movie theatre? xD
Hey, who knew Bruce Wayne was a ticket seller at a movie theater in his youth? (Sorry, the dude just looks a bit Batmannish to me- not an insult, either.)
Wow, you’re right. That’s totally young Bruce “I spent a summer learning all about the theatre industry” Wayne.
Right. Because he has such fond childhood memories at theaters.
He was never able to enjoy Pokemon after that.
But he still caught them all, just so he could identify them later, if it ever came up.
bruce wayne spent his adolescence becoming the very best, like no one ever was.
Bruce Wayne? You sure it’s not Jason Todd?
“This guy hates things, that’s how you know he has taste.” Love her or hate her, this is the most poignant thing Malaya’s ever said. It’s practically the motto I never knew I had.
Jason looks far more evil than I’m used to seeing. The eyes… those are murder eyes.
And ye gods, I just realized those two would make an appropriate couple…
Though now I have to ask…. where Does Multiplex take place? I always thought they were on the east coast, but here is implies they’re in San Francisco?
It’s normally (in my own comic) in an unnamed Chicago suburb. But in the SP! universe it’s in San Francisco.
Okay, DC has hypertime, right? I propose Hyperspace.
It’s dependent on the observer. If anybody from multiplex asks the SP! people about things, they tell them about about their chicago store/homes/whatever. When Multiplex people do the same, they talk about their places in San Francisco.
This can happen in the same conversation two people, say, Jason and Malaya are having with each other, each talking about the location that would satisfy the others understanding of where they are. Neither they or anybody listening in would notice the discrepancies.
Seriously, Malaya?
I was agreeing with everything Malaya and Jason were saying up until the last panel. Malaya’s line seems so arrogant that I can’t help but wonder if I’m being trolled in some subtle way. I know that sounds ridiculous. When has David Willis ever trolled his readers using Malaya?
Robo-Vac Begins!!! The reboot has arrived!
Does Joe think it is more authentic?
To be fair to Malaya, for all that her last line is meant as humor, I’d much rather take advice from the friends of mine that have proven capable of hating things than the one who thinks pretty much every movie he sees is really good until someone sits him down and explains the flaws. That guy (and yes, he really exists) is completely unreliable.
I actually like The Phantom Menace. It’s Attack of the Clones that’s truly horrible.
[Stares in disbelief]
Attack of the Clones is without redeeming value.
Phantom Menace has Jar-Jar and midi-chlorians, but if you can look past those, the rest of the movie is reasonably entertaining.
I mean, I’d still put TPM in the #5 spot if you rank the movies 1-6 from best to worst. But that’s because the #6 spot belongs to Attack of the Clones.
I’d put AotC at #9, after the Holiday Special and Ewok movies, personally.
I’ve had a couple of drinks, but I’m still terribly embarrassed to admit that through the whole comic and until I read the comics that I was confusing the Phantom Menace with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
i’d watch mask of the phantasm in 3d.
I’m in favour of seeing more of this guy. But only as long as he does nothing but keep that impassive face while he reasonably explains why you have poor taste.
Nothing. Else.
Oh man, you should really read Multiplex then. There was recently a story arc when he told a crying teenager why she had poor taste in life choices while keeping that impassive face.
You really should link to the permanent strip URL rather than the homepage. People who reread or archive binge even a couple weeks from now will have to track down the Multiplex strip in question based on date and stuff and it will not make for a very enjoyable reading experience.
We’ll get it updated soon. He didn’t know what the URLs were going to be when he wrote the post.
*raises hand*
Can I go back to hating Malaya now?
…a week… of Malaya…
…That settles it. I’m dead, this is Hell, and this is Satan taunting me.
Seconding this.
I had just read the announcement over at Multiplex, and promptly surfed here… oh my goodness. Hahahaha. Jason looks scary right now.
Ken’s reasons for seeing the movie are pretty much my own…Lightsabers and Podracing in 3D. I don’t care if the whole world hates it I still want to see it
Mayala/Whoever that guy is OTP!
McAlplin drawn Jason just looks dismissive and annoyed. Willis drawn Jason looks like he’s about to murder or at least beat the living daylights out of you.
On the other hand, that mood may be appropriate given the movie in question…
(Also, it’s McAlpin. Curse not being able to edit comments!)
Air Bud 14 XDDD
No, no, Malaya. Phantom Menace was the Disappointing one. Attack of the Clones was the -terrible- one.
I spy Robo-Vac The Movie! Is it being Released too?
So I’ve never read Multiplex will I be able to understand this or should I read all the strips in the Archive before continuing?
You should be able to follow it without any difficulty. (And the same goes for the three Multiplex readers who don’t already read Shortpacked.)
But read all the archives anyway.
Well, you got me for sure. Strip looks pretty fun.
Jason works in a movie theater. 9 of 10 times he hates what you want to watch and tells you as much.
That’s about all you need to know and you probably could have figured that out by this point.
Read Multiplex it’s really awesome. Since I read both of these web comics (and many more) this strip is totally hilarious. XD
You know, I just pieced something together in my head. People have done compare and contrast between Mike and Malaya since they’re both assholes. Mike is gleeful in his assholeness, it’s purposeful, and fun for him. Malaya is just BITTER about everything. She’s a downer every time she’s around. She is a black hole for joy. What the hell was this girl’s childhood like?
And, sadly, I only have two thumbs to thumb-up this. I’m SO looking forward to seeing Malaya in Multiplex! <3
Thank you, Willis. That's one great Jason Atwood.
…until reading the comments, I thought this was a crossover with Voltaire’s “Candide” and that was the aesthete Senor Pococurante, sentenced to a multiplex for all eternity.
So is Malaya and Broom Man going for a date?
Cool, Robo-Vac is getting Rebooted.
I’m beginning to think Ken is my favorite character. Her just seems so positive about things.
Anyway, I don’t get people’s problems with 2-D to 3-D conversions. All 3-D flicks look the same to me.
Well, there are two problems with the conversion process that people usually complain about. First is that the conversion makes the film dimmer. Second is that because the film wasn’t originally in 3D, it literally doesn’t add a lot of depth to the film.
I saw Toy Story 1 and 2 converted to 3D and I was unimpressed with the results. The films were still good, but I didn’t feel the films were all that three dimensional, they looked a lot like 2D films were you needed special glasses to see the picture. Like the sticker books were you needed the red tinted plastic to see the preview image they had when I was little.
I’ve never seen anybody say conversions make the film dimmer (as Fanboy says here), and it’s not true: all 3D makes the film equally dimmer. This is from of a combination of the glasses as well as the polarized 3D image. This CAN be balanced out by using brighter bulbs, but isn’t always. And it’s exacerbated by theaters that don’t change their bulbs as often as they should (to save money), resulting in a movie that’s even dimmer than it should be.
Also, Toy Story 1 and 2 were not conversions; they were completely re-rendered in 3D. It’s not the same as taking a 2D live-action film and converting it to a 3D film. One major reason the films couldn’t take advantage of 3D as much as TS3 did was that the shots weren’t done with 3D in mind, so they couldn’t exaggerate depth like they can in movies made for 3D (among other factors). But they’re not conversions in the same sense as what we’re talking about here.
The problem with conversions is that you have computers making up imagery to provide depth. Blink your left eye to your right eye. You’ll see that when something has depth, you can see a little more of a background object in one eye than the other, because of the distance between your eyes. (Duh.)
Computers don’t have that information. They also don’t know what things are shaped like, either. They don’t know that THIS block of pixels is Liam Neeson, and THIS block of pixels is a lump of rock. It infers it, and the people at the conversion house can hint it, but unless you have a REALLY talented group of people and a LOT of time — and producers who want to spend $25 million on a great conversion versus $15 million on a quickie conversion, it’s mostly a computer guessing. And they’re not that great at it.
So, like in Green Hornet, you’ll have situations where the sky behind some trees just looks flat-out wrong because the computer screwed up. Or where in Clash of the Titans, Liam Neeson’s face looks caved in really weird, because the computer screwed up. Or in a LOT of conversions, where people look like cardboard cut-outs popping out from a flat background.
With a movie that’s shot in 3D or animated in 3D, that information EXISTS in the camera. It’s perfect. It’s accurate. And with animation/CG, it can be exaggerated or manipulated for even more dramatic effect. REAL (stereoscopic) 3D looks great, even with the dimming. Conversions can look decent. There were a few great shots in Green Hornet, but mostly it was pretty crappy. Someday, maybe, they’ll look great. But every one I’ve seen has been mediocre at best.
Er, not brighter bulbs. By projecting the film more brightly, anyway. You get the idea.
In my amateur opinion, the PM conversion was pretty good…. which is to say I didn’t notice any glaring errors. It was however, pretty pointless, since in most shots you could barely tell if they did anything. At one point I actually took the glasses off just to see if one part of the screen was “fuzzed up” more than another just to make sure they had done anything. Zangeif’s going to be awfully disappointed with the pod race. Overall, it was a negative. 3D didn’t add anything worthwhile, and it managed to remind me of all the things wrong with that movie in the first place.
Well, you see, I love 3-D but have a problem with movies being shot in 3-D. My problem being that there isn’t a single one out there that interests me in terms of just being a movie. Seriously, I went to see Avatar because everyone was and found myself bored and checking my watch in the middle of it. I might be inclined to be far more discerning if someone would actually shoot a movie I want to see in 3-D. (Phantom Menace is a case of a movie I don’t want to see no matter how many dimensions it has).
You know, I’m kind of an old horror and sci-fi buff and what I’d really love to see is someone rereleasing old 3-D movies from the olden days (Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, the original House of Wax, etc) rereleased in 3-D. That would be sweet.
You haven’t seen How to Train Your Dragon? Any of the 3D Pixar movies?
You’re missing out! They’re good stuff!
I didn’t know those were filmed in 3-D. Whenever people talk about movies that are filmed in 3-D, they never get mentioned. It’s usually Avatar and a couple of other movies I have no interest in. I’m beginning to think that most people don’t know which ones are which now anyway. Maybe the people I talked to thought cartoons didn’t count.
Anyway, yes I’ve seen How to Train Your Dragon and Up.
I think that’s because animation isn’t “filmed” in 3D because it’s not filmed at all so people don’t count it — which is fair, I guess — but 3D animation is acheievd by rendering the two images from the same 3D models, so the quality of the stereoscopic image (the 3D) is equal to that of filmed live-action.
I think it’s better, even, because you can exaggerate the depth with CG models unlike with live action. (Well, one caveat with that statement: I am curious to see how many of the visual tricks Peter Jackson used in LOTR translate to 3D in The Hobbit, which is being filmed in 3D. I would think that some of the tricks would actually NOT work — things like having a Frodo ten feet behind Gandalf and using a wide open depth of field in order to trick the eye into seeing the hobbit as being both smaller and only across a table, as in the tavern scene early on in Fellowship. My guess is that wouldn’t work, because the depth in-camera would show him as actually ten feet away, not three. I think it will work beautifully on the “bigatures” they used throughout the movie, though. Coupled with the higher frame rate he’s shooting it in, it should be a stunning movie to look at.)
And bear in mind most of Avatar (the backgrounds, certainly, and many of the characters) was CG animation, not live action, most of Avatar was the same thing.
If Avatar counts, I think cartoons should, too.
I’m a little confused by your statement that that “all 3D makes the film equally dimmer.” If making all 3D films are dim, wouldn’t converting a film to 3D result in a picture that is dimmer than the original, non-converted film? Maybe you misunderstood me to say converting a film from 2D to 3D makes for a dimmer picture than filming it in 3D in the first place.
That said, it’s interesting to find out that Toy Story 1 & 2 were re-rendered. The result was still the same to me though.
I misunderstood it, because AdamYJ’s comment/question was why people don’t like 2D-to-3D conversions compared to all other 3D films (i.e. shot-in-3D films), not to 2D/non-converted films.
So your reply to that saying that conversions make the film darker made it seem that your comment — like his — was in relation to all other 3D films, not to 2D films.
Is that…Bruce Wayne?
…Gordon’s drawing of Ken looks better than Willis’.
I like Willis’s artwork better, personally. Especially for the new guy. Willis’ version looked interesting and evil, the other one just looks normal and bored.
Also, kinda threw for a loop a bit that he gave Malaya lipstick.
Lipstick? Look again.
That’s not lipstick? Is that just the inside of her mouth being bright red? Maybe it’s just a style choice I haven’t seen before. I admit I hadn’t read your comic before this point, Gordon. I didn’t notice it on any of the other characters in the strip, but looking again I see a little bit of red in Ken’s mouth in the first panel. The movie ticket guy doesn’t seem to have it though.
I consider that a dark red, but yeah. I don’t use black linework, so using black for inside the mouths is too high contrast — and, well, it IS reddish inside peoples’ mouths. Vector-based cartoons like 6teen or old Erin Esurance commercials all do the same thing. It might be a little bright there, next to Malaya’s skintone, I’ll give you that.
As for Jason, you don’t see inside Jason’s mouth in that strip only because he’s never facing the reader with his mouth open, like Malaya is (and Ken in panel 1).
Is the punchline to this Malaya discovering she’s asexual?
Wait a minute? The Multiplex version of this is taking place in the south suburbs of Chicago? That’s where I live! (Homewood to be persise) I must find this Shortpacked!
North suburbs, sorry.
I always say it’s between Evanston and Lincolnwood. (If you know the area, they’re immediately next to each other; there’s nothing in between.)
Malaya is awesome.
Go Malaya!
I can’t believe thay actually took out the phantom menace in 3D. Clone Wars was bearable, but phantom menace?
If guys hating things have good taste… Does that mean Mike has THE BEST TASTE EVER?