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When someone is comic-ly consistently excellent as John Allison is -and he truly is excellent, folks- updating his ScaryGoRound web-comics, Bad Machinery and more recently, Giant Days , 4 times a week (!)  with excellently written witty and sharp cartoons, it is easy, as readers, to slip into a state of take-it-for-granted-ness.

It becomes part of your daily routine, click on the comic via your Facebook page  or just accessing it via the bookmarks/favourites bar. Sometimes it can take the artist doing something a little different and seeing them operate outside of  the parameters you’re used to, to make you appreciate their brilliance. I always enjoy it when Allison riffs away with the odd superhero or pop-cultural-y referential cartoon on his Tumblr blog, and recently he’s treated his readers to 2 in the space of a week.

The first comic features the Hulk going clothes-shopping, and the second is a tribute to that monolith of superhero- television programming, Smallville (oh, the memories!). As Allison helpfully reminds:

Smallville, you may remember, was a show about Superman. It ran for 43 seasons.

They’re both pretty brilliant. I can imagine it’s nice now and again to take a break from the day job- regardless of how much you love the world and characters you’ve created- and mess around with other stuff. Of course, Allison’s messing around is a few notches above what you and I would do- his art is always lively and zesty, and there’s a warm humour in both these shorts that seems to come from a genuine affection of the source material coupled with the recognition of the more ridiculous apsects of super-heroics that we all like to poke fun at. More would be a fine thing.

You should go follow his Tumblr immediately.

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1 COMMENT

  1. Very cute strip.

    Death’s Head II?!?! Hahahahahaha who the hell even remembers that character anymore?!?

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