Yeah, it’s time for another Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash. In today’s out of order (not to mention out of control…) installment, we see that things weren’t always as green, clean, and pretty in the Turtles’ city as we’d been led to believe! The idea for this one kinda jumped into my head as I watched the TMNT Season 2 DVD (the screencaps used for the comic come from Episode 18: “Return of the Technodrome”), seeing as how there are ass shots of April all over the place. At first I thought it was me — okay, I’ve got a crush on April O’Neil, but it’s not like you don’t 😛 — but now I’m thinking some of those artists got off on drawing April’s hot body in that form-fitting yellow jumpsuit, because every excuse they get to draw her ass you’d better believe you’ll see her ass. And she’s always doing flirty things, too, which the Foot Soldiers and the Rock Soldiers inevitably fall for… and now I’m pretty much explaining the thought process that went into this comic. Alrighty then.

Oh, and speaking of Turtles, Mikey’s TMNT.com — a great source for TMNT info, news, and media — has gotten a new layout in recent weeks, so go check that out! Also, Bess Hudson‘s Gorey Turtles drawing series boasts fun for the whole twisted family.

Oh, and as you may have noticed, the link to Scary-Crayon’s Cafepress store has been added to the sidebar, so if you ever feel like visiting and ordering up some merch, there you go! I ordered a few items myself and they look pretty good — expect photos sometime in the near future. Anyway, that’s all for now. Ja ne, minna-san!

Today’s Hot Flash isn’t just random weirdness, folks — as you can see here on the Official TMNT Web Site, Playmates is indeed releasing a “Raphael versus The Yeti” set. As far as unlikely matchups go, it’s not entirely without precedent — the Turtles have had adventures with yeti and bigfoot type creatures in both the old comics and the new show — but memories of working in KB Toys and a visit to eBay all but confirmed suspicions that the new “yeti” is merely a repaint of the Blizzard figure from the old Primal Rage line. And remember how Leonardo already went up against a T-Rex (which we touched on in Hot Flash #15)? Yeah, that’s a repainted Sauron (or Diablo) — so essentially with these sets you’re getting two rehashes, given that the included Turtles are more or less the Fightin’ Gear figures repackaged with different armor and — get this — fewer accessories. It’s hella weak.

Yes, I’m 24 years old and the reusing of action figure molds angers me.

Oh, and if you missed Saturday’s update, don’t forget to check out the second part of the Protégé de la Rose Noire review! Until next time, then.

The second part of our Protégé de la Rose Noire review is up! Admittedly, it’s a lot more straightforward than the first part, probably because most of the insane and comment-worthy stuff happened in the initial review. Oh well! Hopefully you’ll still be somewhat entertained by the antics of those wacky Twins. And if you think they’re as cute as I do, this one’s got more images. 😉

And before we go, a couple plugs. If you look at the bar, there’s a new addition — Krazy Larry (a comic I really liked but hardly ever sees any updates these days) has been replaced by Interrobang Studios, a new site with a different strip for every day of the week! (Excluding weekends.) They’re just getting started, but they’ve already got some great content and more on the way, so get over there now you can say you read them FIRST when they’re hella popular and stuff.

Also, Dyslexic Penguin‘s button is new and improved, so go visit that site too! And apparently something happened with Hazard Labs, which has now become Snipe Hunt Media. I’ll get around to updating their button soon enough. They don’t have a whole lot of new content yet, but I guess you could wish them luck with the new site or something.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Seeya next time!

Okay, so we don’t have the second part of the Protégé de la Rose Noire review for you today (patience, minna-san!), but we do have Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #53 to entertain you for all of fifteen seconds. For those of you unfamiliar with the event to which the comic refers, check out this news story. And doesn’t that look like something Rattle would do? He’s not a smart snake, but he knows what love is.

First, a reminder — you can buy Scary-Crayon apparel at our Cafepress store! If you care to, anyway. I’ll have more links to the store on the site soon enough. And maybe even folks modeling it. So if you think you’re sexy and you buy something, SEND PHOTOS! I’ll post ’em. Yep.

Anyway, today’s update is the first part of our full Protégé de la Rose Noire review. As noted in the article’s introduction, you really should check out the piece on The Illuminated Lantern about the Black Rose’s complex history if you’d like to learn more about the titular heroine, because it really is interesting stuff. I do find it a bit strange that the more recent Black Rose flicks basically take a classic HK film icon and render her absolutely stark-raving batshit mad, though! I mean, we Yanks know that Batman’s pretty nutty, but we’d probably call foul if a new film depicted him trying to hack his latest houseguest to death.

Also, as noted several times in the piece, I think this article contains (at least) the first documented online usages of the term Castraticon, meaning “castration robot”. Good lord.

And that does it for this update — join us next time for the second part of our Protégé de la Rose Noire review! Ja ne, minna-san.

P.S. If you’ve got any Twins CDs you don’t want, please let me know. 😉

We’ll address those in reverse order. First off, happy birthday to ME! You know, one of the trickier things about managing the site and the blog is that a lot of my comments actually get sent to moderation — because when I start using HTML and whatnot in my replies the system thinks I could be a malicious user. But since I posted them myself, I rarely think to check the moderation queue for my own posts, and generally I don’t discover them until some other comment (usually something from a spambot) comes under fire. Case in point: Scorn asked me what folks could do if they wanted to celebrate my birthday, and I responded with this — which unfortunately I didn’t discover in the queue until this morning! Ah well, So obviously it’d be a little late to send stuff now, but if you want to send things to wish me a belated birthday, you’re more than welcome to do so. And of course, donations to the site are always welcome.

Speaking of which, thanks Molly. 🙂 Alligator Juice is a worthy read as well! I particularly liked the recent article entitled Beware of the Bus, though unlike Mols I totally advise the lot of you to go on a lengthy Greyhound bus ride at least once in your lives. Oh, the stories you’ll have to tell when you return!

So onto today’s updates. First, there’s Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #51, which takes us back to the SNES game Tuff E Nuff for a look at desperation moves in the distant future. It kinda came off the top of my head, but I hope it’s mildly amusing for what it is. And then there’s Hell Nooooo Nurse!, a feature which I’d actually hoped to get posted elsewhere but apparently wasn’t good enough for them so I’m posting it here. Which is no big deal, really, since that’s how Scary-Crayon got started! Seriously, I had so many articles that I’d submitted elsewhere and that nobody wanted to post that I thought, “Fuck it, I might as well start my own site and post the shit there!” And, as you see, I did. Perhaps that explains the site’s lack of popularity — and admittedly, the humor here isn’t mainstream even among its genre audience — but I hope you find it to be worth a few yuks.

And now I’m off to try to do something fun for my birthday. Ja ne!

I realize I’m probably a little late to the ball with today’s article — the puberty connection in the first film was pretty widely noted, and when, after writing the piece, I did a quick web search to see just how many people had emphasized the webbing/semen comparison, this review turned up — but hopefully I took it far enough for it to still be an amusing piece. He’s jizzing on people! As I write this the search terms spider-man and “jizzing on people” don’t yield any Google results. Soon, they will.

Also, here’s a digression I excised from the article but am still very much interested in addressing, so I put the question to you here: Are you aware of any comic book heroes whose actual spit constitutes one of their superpowers? I can think of a few villains, and there are characters who spit fire and energy beams and the like — and the Fly used his spit to terrifyingly memorable effect — but that’s not what I mean. Granted, I have seen video game and cartoon characters whose loogies and even boogers are used for good — the Toxic Avengers, for example — but these characters are supposed to be gross. Any ideas here?

Anyway, Spider-Man is gross. ENJOY. Seeya next time!

P.S. As subtly noted in the previous article, my birthday is this coming Tuesday… so if you’d like to make me happy by buying stuff or making donations or sending presents that don’t explode (ask me how!) or simply commenting or sending e-mails to that effect, feel free. 😉

But first, a heads up! As mentioned in today’s article, there’s a new product in the Scary-Crayon store! Some of you may recall the Feaster Bunny, that wascally infant-munching wabbit that first appeared in our Easter Hot Flash chowing down on the baby Jesus and was later seen devouring the offspring of pregnant vegetables in ST@N’s guest comic. Now, ladies, you can wear his sacreligious first outing on your crotch with the Feaster thong! HUZZAH!!!

As you see above, in addition to tacitly promoting cunnilingus and featuring blasphemous imagery, the Feaster thong also refers to an actual Biblical verse — so if you figure that you’re going to Hell anyway, you might as well go in wacky Scary-Crayon style! Only $10.99, kiddies.

But I digress — the real reason we’re here is for today’s update, in which we plunge into The Infernal Realm of Paid Surveys. Oh, the article starts off normally enough, but then it quickly plunges into an epic quest of soul-searing damnation. All hope is lost for me, dear readers, but perhaps this tale of my adventure in darkness might supply you with the knowledge necessary to approach a light that I will never see. Read on — read on! — and take heed of my song.

And finally, a couple of plugs. Pop Arena has moved and is now settling in at its new domain, so y’all should definitely head over there with house — er — domain-warming presents! Greg’s newest article is an actual interview with one of the Burger King kids of old, so he can actually boast of having true journalistic integrity now. Also, Shin of Twisted Kaiju Theater threw us a bone with a mention last week, so I’d like to return the favor! Apparently Shin’s currently doing a crossover of sorts with the highly popular NYC-based Alien Loves Predator, so go check that out.

And that’s all for now. Ja ne, minna-san!

Okay, I just kinda threw this together on a late night Friday whim, and you’ll definitely hear about it again (as well as see images promoting it in the sidebar), but here it is — the first ever Scary-Crayon online store! It’s on Cafepress. So far there’s not much there — ten types of shirts, but they’ve all got the same basic design, which consists of this image —

— centered on the front (6″ x 6″) and this image —

— centered on the back (10″ x 10″). Shirts are various prices, with the Ringer T and the Ash Grey T-Shirt being the cheapest items at $16.99 a pop and the Sweatshirt being the most expensive one at $23.99. Given that most of the stuff reviewed on the site costs less than a fiver, it seems expensive as hell to me, but only $2-3 of that would be going to support the site — so if you just want to support SC, it’d probably be cheaper for you to click the Paypal donation image found at the end of every article and set your own amount. But if you want to support the site and get some nifty SC apparel out of the deal, now you can!

Anyway, whether you support us by donating via Paypal or buying shirts or sending encouraging e-mails or leaving comments or linking to us on your sites or weblogs or on forums or simply by visiting and enjoying our content (or not), thanks for visiting Scary-Crayon, minna-san — we really appreciate it. Hopefully you’ll continue to find the site to be mildly amusing and occasionally thought-provoking! 🙂

ADDENDUM: Two new items have been added to the store — the even cheaper $11.99 Value Tee and the Scary-Crayon Dog T-Shirt! Sugoi!

First things first — apparently the site was down for an unknown period of time yesterday evening. It didn’t have anything to do with me, and I don’t know what caused it, but whatever was the problem has been fixed now. Still, my apologies.

So I was at the store today when, as I stood in line at the register, I saw a sign asking me to donate money to help out the victims of Hurricane Katrina. That in itself wasn’t surprising or offensive — after all, I guess they need money, and the same sort of thing happened when the tsunami hit late last year — but what did kinda irritate me was that this particular plea included a list of exactly what supplies could be purchased with the donated funds. Why? Well, according to the sign, for $5 the organization in question could afford to buy shampoo and toothpaste. For one child. For one day.

Read that again. What the fuck?! Consider that one can find entire bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste at dollar stores across America — so what the hell are they doing? Yes, these people have lost their homes and possibly members of their family, but is giving them luxury bathroom products really going to improve the situation? I’m not even sure why they’d include that information in the first place. On the one hand, I could see it guilt-tripping people into giving more money — because apparently $5 and $10 donations can’t buy shit — but in my case it made me not want to give them a single red cent because these organizations obviously don’t know how to shop around. And you’d think they could get a discount on this shit!

I remember seeing similar stuff last year too, though — if I remember correctly, $5 could pay for a 4″ x 3″ box of nails to help build new homes for the tsunami victims. I sure hope those were some fucking great nails.

Hey, folks! In today’s Scary-Crayon book review, we take a look at Walter Mosley’s Futureland, a collection of science fiction stories in which racial conflict and racism are pervasive and inescapable. It’s a difficult book to review — it was a difficult book to read — and I know that I say this every time an article takes a serious turn, but this is probably the most serious piece on the site. Hopefully the tone of the review and the ideas expressed therein won’t turn you off to reading SC in the future!

On a side note, I kind of like having articles like this on the site. I mean, sites that deal exclusively in wacky and apparently pointless humor are cool, but I kinda like being able to point to articles like this when SC’s detractors call the site a waste of space or berate me for wasting time recording Beatles song parodies and writing creepy poems about wanting to photograph pretty girls. I also like the apparent contradiction that the presence of these articles presents! On one hand, we’ve got admittedly juvenile humor and cutesy drawings of Wolverine giving Nightcrawler a handjob (WARNING: don’t click that link if you’re at work); on the other, we’ve got discussions concerning the meanings of racial descriptors and thorough book reviews. Scary-Crayon is an enigma.

Anyway, like I said in the review, I’m not sure what to make of Futureland. So whether you’ve read it or not, if you’ve got any possible interpretations, anything to say about the subject matter, etc., feel free to comment. And that’s all for now — ja!

Yep, it’s here — the third and final installment of Scary-Crayon’s Tales of Seduction by U-Jin review. I know that some of you out there have been waiting eagerly for this one, so I hope you enjoy it. But how could you not, with Toyama no Benbei? He’s the greatest rapist ever.

Also, I don’t know how often y’all check the SC blog independently of the other content, but I’m hoping to start posting to it more often regarding things in pop culture that I find to be worthy of comment — the last two entries, for example, addressed the Billboard Music Awards and an actual television show that consisted of a group of people eating dinner. So if you find my commentary to be at all amusing, I advice you to bookmark the blog’s RSS feed. Incidentally, that would also keep you up to date regarding the site’s more substantial updates! Definitely an advantageous thing to do if you like ’em crayon stuff.

Finally, another pic of Ej Ojo Rojo‘s Penelope Cruz. So hot. 😀

So I was flipping through the channels tonight when I came across a show that consisted of a group of people sitting around a table while eating dinner. I fucking kid you not. Nor did they start hurling food at each other or do anything that would’ve made the show remotely engaging — they did stand up a few times and make goofy faces at each other like the assholes they’d have to be to think that their eating dinner was an interesting enough premise to carry a television show — they just fucking sat there and ate dinner.

Somewhere, I thought, people are so fucking bored, and have so little to do in their lives, that they are, at this very moment, sitting on their couches watching other people eat dinner on TV. Amazing.

I turned off the television in disgust and went upstairs to read a book.

Okay, apparently I’ve never paid much attention to these things before — did everyone else know that these awards are based on sales??? I just watched them present an award for the bestselling male artist in some category, as if that isn’t its own reward! Seriously, fuck that — they should give an award to the artists who didn’t sell shit, so then maybe those guys could get a little exposure and recognition too. Fucking popularity contest.

Oh, and who knows more about blood, sweat, and tears than the Osbournes? Probably some starving old musician playing NYC’s subway terminals who’s devoted his life to his craft and never came close to achieving the fame your husband garnered from biting the heads off of live bats on stage. Fuck you too, Sharon.

Hey folks — not a lot to add tonight, but the title of the article says it all: Thomas Wayne was an asshole. My list is hardly exhaustive, so feel free to add any other reasons you come up with. Ja ne.

Greetings, crayon fans! It’s time for another Foodstuffs review — this one of Fluker Farm’s Chocolate Covered Crickets. I think this review turned out a lot better than I expected, mostly because of the luck of the draw — I’ve seen, broken apart, and eaten chocolate covered crickets before, but none of them were quite as hideously photogenic as the candy used for this piece. Squeamish readers beware.

Also, as you’ll see, there’s a URL on the button — that’ll take you to the Fluker Farm website, where you can see that they’ve got a host of bug-related wares for fishing, feed, and whatever the hell else people do that requires the use of living and/or dead insects. Feel free to poke around the site even if you’re not in the market for crickets and mealworms, though, as some of the stuff on there is downright weird — not the least of which being that, if the photos on the staff page are legit, at least two of the women working for the company are pretty damned hot. There’s also shit like geckos with sunglasses and humanoid lizard creatures playing poker. Yep.

Seeya next time, minna-san. 🙂

So I’m back. Can’t say the trip went all that well — and I’m bloody exhausted and will probably need a few more days to recover, ugh — but eh, it’s done and it’s left me with some more things to think about, so that’s good I guess. Anyway, you’re not here to read about my exploits — you’re here for SCARY-CRAYON WACKINESS — so let’s get on with that! Today’s quick update marks the return of a SC featurette that’s been awol for the summer: A Crayon Haiku #33. Gotta love that wacky Japan.

Fun fact: The very first Crayon Haiku was one of SC’s debut pieces back on January 25, 2004! Someday knowing that tidbit is going to win someone a nice chunk of cash in Jeopardy’s “Obscure Entertainment Websites” category. Hell, it might even be the answer to a Daily Double. 😉

And for those of you who didn’t get enough of the immortal Penelope Cruz in our writeup of El Ojo Rojo, here’s another pic. There’s more where that came from! Ja!

Hey all — sorry for the paucity of updates as of late. I dunno if you were aware of it (I try to relegate discussion of that sort of thing to my personal blog), but I’ve been making plans for a big out-of-state move, and I’ve basically been going crazy with that and haven’t had much time to write wacky zaniness for the site. Apologies! Hopefully I’ll make up for it with not one but TWO articles this weekend. Okay, that might be pushing it, but I’m gonna try my best. 🙂

In the meantime, here’s the note I left on the broken copying machine at work a couple of weeks back. I’m so silly. 😉

Anyway, hope y’all have been well and continue to be so in my absence. And if you’re hankerin’ for more SC goodness, there are always older pieces in the section archives! Ja ne, minna-san!