RETOONING ROUND 4: THE 3RD REVENGE

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I was hoping to get at least 2 or 3 consecutive posts into my 14-or-so part epic before deviating to a side project, but I just got this absurdly fashionable new digital camera the other day and to be perfectly honest I'm terrified to take it out of the box until I get the whole thing covered in protective clear plastic sheets. Like any rational human being, the last thing I want to do here is destroy the device's intrinsic sexiness by slathering a greasy thumb print all over the viewing screen thingy, so I've really got no choice but to present a camera-free, scanner-intensive post this evening.

That can only mean one thing my friends - it's time for some retooning.

Oh, and just for the record, I realized the other day that the "14" estimate in my proposed "14-or-so part epic" on the subject of refurbishing my old speaker storage cabinet is nothing short of a gratuitous exaggeration of the truth. If that epic (and it WILL be epic, I can assure you of that) makes it past part 5 I'll see to it that a pig actually does fly AND I'll stop sending Phylicia Rashad naked pictures of myself on a bimonthly basis.

Keep those fingers crossed all you want Mrs. Cosby, it ain't gonna happen.

Back to the matter at hand... I sincerely doubt I'll ever top the retooning effort I put forth a few months ago (an entry that met with ravenous critical acclaim, as evidenced by the whopping zero comments left on that post by my loyal readers), but I think I've come up with a pretty decent batch here today, especially considering the fact that I only had 4 days worth of newspapers to work with (normally I pick and choose the best targets out of a couple weeks worth of casual comic browsing).

As always, the rules here are simple: Get your hands on a decidedly unfunny newspaper comic strips (this shouldn't be difficult, as these type of comics make up roughly 97.8% of the so-called "funny" pages), erase the captions with a normal pencil eraser, then fill in the caption spaces with something that might actually be considered somewhat humorous. The possibilities here are endless... well, at least until the whole of the newspaper industry collapses upon itself and takes the comic illustrators of the world down with it, at which point the possibilities will instantaneously become quite limited, so get in on this hot hot comic-modifying action while you still can.

We'll begin our retooning adventure today with that lovable little scamp Dennis the Menace - a young man whose un-funniness has sullied the reputations of literally millions of newspaper puzzle pages and Dairy Queen cups over the past half century.



An unfortunate twit of a human being once told me that Dennis the Menace brings out the kid in all of us. Well I don't know about that, but he certainly brought out the sex-joke-obsessed middle schooler in me. God bless you, Dennis!



For those of you wondering at home: No, the mental image that comic now provides could not be any funnier. Thanks for asking.

We'll now be moving along (with substantially less laugh-soliciting success, I assure you) to everyone's favorite four legged troublemaker, Marmaduke. Now, I'd always been under the impression that every Marmaduke comic followed the same formula: Marmaduke is knocking something over or has already knocked something over, mustachioed man or waifish woman screams "Marmaduke!", and... that's it. Repeat for 50 or so years, and/or until gratuitously wealthy.

I'm sure you can imagine my surprise upon learning that this isn't the case at all. As you'll clearly see below, sometimes instead of knocking objects over Marmaduke just oafishly rubs himself against people, and almost always the people involved say something other than simply "Marmaduke!" I know, I'm as shocked as you are.



While I normally revel in being proven entirely wrong, I think I'd honestly prefer the comic to be constructed in the manner that I always thought it assumed. Wouldn't it be a grand showing of creativity to always have the caption be the same word? I mean really, how long could a comic strip writer keep something like that fresh? A week, a month, perhaps even a decade? I'm not sure, but I know I'd read it every day to find out.

Witness this very old dog's new trick: Mind blowing trisyllabic versatility.



As you can clearly see, in panel 1 we have the murder mystery-esque "...Marmaduke?!?!", followed by the timeless classic "Marmaduke!" that we've all come to know and love, and then my personal favorite, the simple and understated yet confusing and excellent "Marmaduke." The last one's a curveball. You throw something like that in there once every 2 months or so just to make sure the readers are still paying attention. It's called good journalism, look into it.

In our final stop tonight, we'll be paying another visit to the Family Circus. They're our first repeat customer in the world of retooning, but what can I say? The fam makes an easy target.



This modification hit a little close to home for me, and I'm sure it would have hit close to home for Mother McHanslaw's army of cats as well were it not for the fact that they're incapable of reading and (on a somewhat unrelated note) unwilling to stop throwing up all over the goddamn house.



I couldn't agree more.

A SCANT 8 MONTHS OVERDUE, GOOD RUBBISH PROUDLY PRESENTS RETOONING: ROUND 3

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I've found myself in uncharted waters over the past few weeks as I actually have several completely finished projects lying around my house just waiting to be immortalized as Good Rubbish posts (it should come as no surprise to regular readers that normally I find myself scrambling to throw some awful piece of shit together at the 11th hour just to have something to write about). Despite this fact, I didn't have much to do this past weekend so I thought I'd get a little proactive and build a new post from scratch just for the hell of it. Couple this mindset with the fact that I haven't done a retooning post in almost 9 months (seriously?), and the fate of this week's Rubbish post was all but sealed.

For those of you who don't remember the rules of this vile one person game we call Retooning (originally introduced to me by the late Seamus O'Tilliger, may he rest in peace), all you have to do is take a normal pencil eraser and remove the captions from any of your local paper's decidedly unfunny comic strips, then write in your own captions in their place. Believe me when I say that it truly is oodles of fun for the whole family... and by "oodles of fun" I actually mean "mildly entertaining," and by "the whole family" I actually mean "you and that ratty tube sock you just befouled 5 minutes ago."

I think it's time we move on.

Our first retooning strip comes to us from the world of Fred Basset - one of those endearing comics of yesteryear (a la "Blondie" and "Prince Valiant") that makes people in their 30's and 40's feel all nostalgic inside for an era that they never actually lived in.



As much as I hate to use poop jokes in consecutive retooning posts, I was really left with no other options here.



I really need to work on my poop drawing skills at some point in the near future - if I'm going to keep using this as a fallback joke I might as well learn to illustrate the stuff properly. Maybe I'm a bit too critical of myself, but that looks a lot more like a severely charred squirrel to me than anything else.

Our next subject comes to us from the world of Bound and Gagged. I really didn't know anything about this unapologetically generic strip, so a decided to do a little bit of research on them. A cursory look over their wikipedia page has led me to conclude that I have no interest in allowing this comic strip to babysit my children at any point in the near or distant future. Simply repugnant to say the least... how this sort of trash gets printed in a daily newspaper is absolutely beyond me.



I must admit that this comic solicited a half hearted chuckle from me in its original state, if for no other reason than for the fact that the perp in question appears to either be one of the ghosts from Pac-Man or Richard Nixon with a form-fitting lycra bag wrapped around his face and jowls. Still, it wasn't nearly funny enough to exempt it from the wrath of retooning.

Now watch closely... erase those jowls, then do a little bit of cut and paste work, and what do we get left with?



Why, it's a piece of social commentary that Spike Lee himself would be proud of. Hooray!

note: Many thanks to the University of Minnesota for their contribution to this fine post

Our final retooning subject comes to us from the frightfully unfunny world of Crankshaft, though it should be mentioned that the crotchety old man often featured in Crankshaft is in fact SO unfunny that he occasionally crosses over into "so awful it's fantastic" territory - a land typically dominated by strips from Marmaduke, Cathy, and The Family Circus. It's a rare occurrence, but it does happen from time to time, and I feel it should be mentioned that I find this quality in him somewhat redeeming.

Anyway, I found this comic last week in the Denver Post:



There's a lot to look at in this strip, so if you'd like to look at a little larger version of it before proceeding you can click here.

Now, I'm not going to accuse "Tom Batiuk" or "Chuck Ayers" of hanging out at raves or under bridges all the time, but something must have inspired them to draw their flight attendant in the manner that they did. Just look at those soulless eyes, her ineffectual, malaise-riddled facial expressions - clearly this woman is a basehead. Plain and simple.

She reminds me of a feminine version of one of my favorite baseheads of all time, the homeless guy from 1996 Oscar snub Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinkin' Your Juice in the Hood:



Please note that I would have normally noted the cheeseburger-wielding basehead from Menace II Society as my inspiration for this retooning effort, but linking to clips from that movie would have almost certainly stepped over the line that separates "funny" from "earnestly disturbing."

Anyway, my inspiration in tow, I moved around a couple of the cells on that crappy Crankshaft comic to serve as a fitting tribute to all the great drug addicts of the cinema:



Once again, if you'd like to check this one out a little closer up you can click here.

Good Rubbish is a site for the whole family, and obviously this cartoon was always intended to be run in the newspaper, so I decided to use "$#@*!" in lieu of the slang word for "dong" that usually goes at the end of that quote. Upon further review, I really shouldn't have started my mess of exclamatory characters with a dollar symbol, as it kind of looks like she's saying "man, I will suck your shit," which is definitely not the intended message I wanted her to be getting across, but whatever. What's done is done. Just like this post.

Tah!

RETOONING ROUND 2 : THE REVENGE

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Well friends and neighbors, the drab weather in Denver this past weekend coupled with my sudden spike in employment-related responsibilities left me with little time to tinker with Rubbish material, so I suppose now would be a good time for an 11th hour retooning post to appease my dwindling and discontented readership.

In case you missed the explanation that came along with my last retooning extravaganza, retooning is the process of erasing the captions from newspaper cartoons (99.8% of which are entirely incapable of entertaining anyone who hasn't consumed a large quantity of paste or paint thinner in the past 12 hours) and replacing them with new captions. The desired end result is the creation of something funny out of something that was once unfunny, but as you'll clearly see from the examples I'm about to provide, the desired end result is not always achieved.

Example 1 of an unfunny cartoon comes to us from Heart of the City, a comic strip that I'd never heard of before I cut it out of the paper. This strip may be a lot of things (mildly cute, unabashedly sentimental, schlocky, etc), but funny is not one of them. Also, I'm personally appalled by the lack of respect that this kid is showing for the fallen soldiers that lie behind him. I mean, he's not even saluting in the general direction of his dead GI Joes, he's saluting off into God knows where while staring at God knows what... for all we know he could be saluting the flag of Iran while staring at two men with thick beards making out with each other. Unacceptable.



After erasing half of the original caption, I thought about my next course of action for roughly 3 seconds before scribbling down a bunch of nonsense. I believe my final product reflects my level of work I put into this modification, and honestly I couldn't be prouder of what I accomplished here:



I really like how the addition of a box of poop has made this child's salute look more like he's wiping sweat off of his brow in a "phew, that was an ordeal" sort of manner. I wish the addition of a box of poop had that effect on all things, though to be honest I haven't introduced a box of poop into that many real world situations, so maybe that is what normally happens and I'm just unaware of it. Who here wants to see me beat this joke into the ground a little while longer? Well too bad, I'm moving on anyway.

Up next we have a fine selection from The Family Circus, though before I lay out my modification of the most notorious of all comic strips, I feel I'd be in significant error if I didn't first point out that the single greatest parody of The Family Circus that man could possibly create has already been minted by whomever crafted this astounding piece of work (later forwarded to me by the infamous Artimus Mangilord):



In case you're wondering, the comic is referencing the deity Cthulu, who just happens to be running for the office of President of the United States this November. You can learn more about him here, and find out his stances on various key issues here.

Now that all the fine print's out of the way, here's the lovely Family Circus cartoon that I decided to modify:



Aww, isn't that just the most adorable fucking thing you've ever seen? Makes me want to fill a bathtub with marshmallow Peeps and just lay in there, and maybe have a good cry. Yeah... that'd be nice.



If Good Rubbish were a sitcom on UPN (which it should be), this would be the part where the audience would go "ohhhhhh!" (not to be confused with the major network "awwww" or make out session induced "wwwoooOOOOO!"), then the show would cut to commercial and when it'd come back everyone would act like the joke never happened, because the producers would know that they crossed the line a bit there, but they didn't want to let a good zinger like that go unused. Yep, that's what'd happen.



Watch me mail this one in...



HOORAY!!!

Alright, this last one didn't actually come from the comics page, but rather the kid's page which I make a point of it to read every week (what can I say? I find their word search to be the ultimate bathroom companion). I'll leave you to these before and after shots in silence, as I don't believe there's anything that I could possibly say that could contribute further to the message that these comics bring to our troubled world.





Truer words have never been spoken. Be sure to tune in next time when I turn a canoe into a really spiffy urinal trough. Wait a second, that would actually work... hmm...

THE ART OF RETOONING

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In the beginning, Good Rubbish was intended to be nothing more than an online showroom for my repurposing and art-like projects, but that narrow field of content was destined for a hasty demise. Soon I started crafting hideous t-shirt designs, then relaying anecdotes from what remains of my personal life, before bottoming out with my first ever "look at these here funny picchers I done took" post (though that entry was actually 2+ years in the making, so I doubt it'll ever be duplicated).

Well my friends, it's a new morning in the world of Good Rubbish (there are some who call it Grubbishiapolis, but I choose not to associate with those people due to the fact that their sense of humor is horrible), and as such it's time to unveil a new subset of somewhat-consumable crap (hopefully this will be the last time I do such a thing... I'd hate to imagine what would happen to this poor site if I started spewing political commentary and sports talk).

This new and delicious subset falls under the heading of "retooning", an admittedly unoriginal concept that was first introduced to me by my good friend Seamus O'Tilliger (RIP) in 1998 following a high school after-prom celebration. All it involves is using a normal pencil eraser to remove the captions from newspaper comic strips, then writing in new captions that (unlike the original captions) are actually funny. As Shipp said to me on that fateful night, "come on man, Rex Morgan MD is just a couple letters away from being Sex Organ MD... it's pure comic gold."

I hadn't slept in about 28 hours when he told me this, but I really doubt that my resulting dementia had any effect on my interpretation of the situation... his logic was irrefutably sound: that was comic gold. I've retooned comics from time to time ever since, though hopefully doing it for this blog will bring my caption creating prowess to new, previously unforseen heights (I think you'll agree after reading this post that I couldn't get any worse at it, so I've got that going for me).

Anyway, you may be wondering to yourself why someone would want to do this to newspaper comics... actually, I sincerely doubt that anyone could be so mentally deficient as to wonder about something like that, but it's not a difficult question to answer just the same: Almost every single comic strip that's regularly printed in legitimate newspapers across the United States (and the Onion does not qualify as a legitimate newspaper, though it's at least as good of a news source as the Fox News network) is incredibly unfunny.

Family Circus blows, Dennis the Menace is dreadful, Rhymes With Orange? More like Rhymes With Fucking Sucks. Barring only Bizarro, F-Minus, and the occasional Doonesbury cartoon, newspaper comics unilaterally eat caribou penis. It's an undeniable fact. Thusly, if they are going to make anyone laugh (which of course is a comic's intended purpose), they need to be altered. When you think about it, by retooning you're doing the comics a huge favor.

(by the way, if you're interested in reading a truly insightful commentary on the merits of the comic strip "Garfield", I'd highly recommend this article by internet mogul Maddox, Chairman and CEO of the Best Page in the Universe).

I think we've all had enough of my blathering by now, so let me show you what this fantastic art form can do:



Alright... I really shouldn't have chosen this one as an example, because now that I look at it again this comic is actually kind of funny. Bad mustache day... I like that. Well, I retooned it anyway, which produced this:



Get it? See, cause he was all upset about his mustache, but then his wife asked him what was wrong and he was all like 'your face, you filthy tramp'. Get it??? He hates his wife, and he's really fucking old!! HAHAHA!!

Crap, that was awful. I really shouldn't have led into this retooning concept with that particular comic... the first guy's line was definitely way funnier than mine. Mother of God that's a depressing revelation... hopefully this next comic will bring redemption to the McHanslaw Manor:



Alright, this one's a TEXTBOOK example of your modern comic strip... it's crap like this that makes me wish my Sunday comics came with a complimentary foghorn. Horrible.

Here's the basic formula: Unfunny action + unfunny comment = nationwide syndication. Well done Bound and Gagged, your continued success speaks poorly upon the American publics taste in bathroom reading material.

For this retooning, I used a classic approach in which the new caption has almost no relevance to the image it's attached to, but somehow it all works out... or maybe it doesn't work out at all. Yeah, this one really didn't work either, but I like it.



If you can't read what that says, don't bother asking. It's really not worth your time, I promise you.

Well now, this has been a fabulous waste of time, now hasn't it? I hope you've enjoyed your first journey into the world of retooning, though that seems incredibly unlikely. Regardless, I doubt that I'll do these all that often as they require me to use a scanner, which for whatever reason I find to be an incredibly archaic tool (sort of like the fax machine, whenever I have to use either of those I feel like I'm about to drop a deuce in a chamber pot before tying my goodwife to a wooden pole because she oversalted my turkey dinner). This won't be the last time you'll hear from retooning on Good Rubbish though, I can assure you of that... so, you know, if you're going to stop reading this blog anytime soon, now would probably be a good time to do it.

Regards,

Enron