Read how the Mile High Comics Collection was found (via Boing Boing)

This really puts the teeth into the old saw, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” It runs to 17 installments, and is worth reading about one comic collector’s travails in the 70s.

Carson Fire of Alfheim has some new artwork of the mermaids — Leukothea, Prymno (the eel), Psekas (the tiger fish), Thoe (with the froggish tendencies) and the merfolk equivalent of Mr Magoo — up for sale. They’re clothed, btw.

In response to some flack from recent visitors about the, ah, endowment of the mermaids, Carson has made explicit his conception of mythological creatures as “beautiful grotesques”. Neither his elves, nor his merfolk — or anything else for that matter — are classically beautiful. Even Filis has been seen to have her anthropid moments.

The problem could be that the level of grotesqueness is in between the acceptable levels of minimal/none (classically beautiful) and extreme misshapenness (classically ugly). Which results in people feeling uncomfortable — the mermaid bosom is too large to be feasible, but small enough to be explained away. There’s a reason why it’s called the ‘excluded middle’.

If this is the case, then the only thing one can do is get over it and enjoy the story.

Monday’s Alfheim is quite the flashforward, with elves playing poker and faeries in catsuits either kibbitzing or looking bored.

Carson’s been planning costume changes for the characters for some time, and the “romance” wallpaper donation drive gave us a few hints.

It’s also interesting to see how long has elapsed between Airek, Leukothea and the babies first boarding the boat and coming back to pick them up. Including Airek’s children — who are clearly several years older now — is a simple yet profound way of indicating how much time has elapsed on the other side of the Bermuda Triangle (or wherever they’ve been!)

And then there’s that Captain Zoom outfit future Airek’s wearing, which seems to dovetail with the faeries’ catsuits. Did I mention them already? Rowrr.

Freefall has been running for a long time, but the interesting thing is that Florence has discovered that the robots on Jean are using the same neural architecture as she and the other Bowman’s Wolves do. As a result, they play, have unusual interests, and there is the possibility that they may have “sabotaged” the factory ships that actually worked properly.

But now the mayor has learned that Florence works for Sam, and that she is an artificial being. Unfortunately, the mayor apparently has assumed that “it” is just another robot.

I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen when word spreads among the robots of the mayor’s insulting behaviour to Florence: delivering direct orders, hauling her out of the shower and all that. Either she thinks the company Sam keeps is as bad as he is, or she really doesn’t connect that Florence is a living, intelligent, feeling being that doesn’t enjoy being treated like a piece of property.

The strange thing, however, is that nobody has even noticed that even one of the 451 million robots is behaving strangely. With that number of autonomous machines running around, surely one would have been caught out by now.

If there is one defining theme in the varied strips of The Perry Bible Fellowship, it would have to be the concept of…

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Today’s edition of Pastel Defender Heliotrope was a real shock. I mean, Heliotrope’s making the classic ultimate sacrifice, but Fuschia… Fuschia’s making a sacrifice even more profound.

If you haven’t already, hie thee over and read the archives.

According to Jennifer Diane Reitz, Pastel Defender Heliotrope has only two more strips to go.

Like her previous webcomic-turned book, Unicorn Jelly, the story has been a roller-coaster through a grand idea, or set of ideas; unlike UJ, however, PDH has more closely resembled Sir Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000; or, Woman’s Destiny in that the ideas were more important than the interactions of the characters. I’ve been trying to write an essay on the themes explored by UJ and PDH (and to a lesser extent To Save Her) but keep getting long-winded and losing my point.

There’s the common crux of the “magical girl” who has uncanny powers and acts as an interface between the traditionalist present and the oncoming iconoclast future. While this imagery is worth discussing in itself, there also seems to be another, deeper theme:

Neither gods nor man alone can uplift us; both must work together, though it may change both.

I’m still not sure what that might mean, however.

XKCD is Randall Munroe’s “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, illustrated with simple stick figures; the ideas, which are often rarefied, hold sway. This is a world where Led Zeppelin engenders a revelation; where getting your grades in alphabetical order on your report card is more important than passing; where you put SQL code into your son’s name — and those are just recent geeky ones.

Speaking of geekiness, Randall went to a park in Cambridge a week ago and met a few people. Actually a lot of people. Actually a metric holyshitload of readers, all of whom had worked out the coordinates from this comic where one character had a dream, went to the place at the time, and nobody showed up. Obviously a different splay of the spacetime continuum.

I think I’ll make a bookmark for this one.

One of my favourite comics, Carson Fire’s Elf Life, is making a modest return from well over a year of tottering on the abyss; the last story strip back in 2005(!) had Filis’ shoulder angels heading into the town church.

Currently, the story has jumped to after the apparently disastrous wedding, where we know:

• Valencia was battling a madness, which was once Glynhial’s shoulder angel;
• Filis had challenged the Frothian general Phlint to a duel;
• Airek was seeking Great-Grandfather’s permission to marry Leukothea, once queen of the mermaids;
• Ar-Roogah, Baughb’s “bad-luck barbarian”, got new glasses;
• Glynhial made Filis Queen of the Faeries;
• The goblins Artemis and Mondrian were attempting a parley;
• Natully Vanooten, bride-to-be, wasn’t as sickeningly sweet and stupid as she appeared;
• Robin Hood, who apparently run into Baughb in his evil phase, was here thinking she had to kill him;
• Evil Baughb’s goons Monsoon and Bernie were lurking;
• etc.

You can see why it got skipped, aside from eye problems and financial worries.

Now, apparently, Glynhial is or was trying to redo Frederica’s rather battered shop when the Sprite crashed into it, levelling the whole place and setting up a striking revelation about what broke Glynhial’s bottle. Unfortunately, the local constabulary appear to have other ideas about manic faeries on the loose.

But what’s surprising is how battered Filis is looking after the wedding. I was expecting her arm in a sling, but an eyepatch?

Anyway, because of all of this, I am preparing to set up the Elf Life Guide again. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do it, but I have a few ideas.

One more thing: If you didn’t like Winger, that doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy Elf Life. Not that such will stop you, since the level of political tribalism in the US often beggars my imagination.

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• Only two more Pastels left
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