Science!

(Note: This post originally appeared in my FB account. I'm posting it here for future reference)



First, read the story, and read the comic, so that you and I can both say we read it. Let's get that part out of the way first. I'll wait. :-)



I hope by now that you've read both, and haven't skipped them and instead continued on to this sentence. If any of you respond, then I'm going to ask if you read the story and comic, and if you haven't then I'm just going to ignore you until you do.

Now, let's assume that you've read both. And now, know that I understand *and support* the benefit of vaccines, so don't get the wrong idea when I bring up a certain question that I'm about to get to. Most of the time, when people ask about new vaccines or medicines, there will be others who have what I call a "science-ism" mentality - that is, they believe that science trumps all, even debates about science, so they'll simply shout "Science!" and that is supposed to close any debate or discussion on a given scientific issue. 

However, as the cartoon itself demonstrates, it's rather easy for bad people to cloak themselves in "Science!" clothing, and cause all kinds of problems because trying to debate people who shout "Science!" is met with looks of disgust and claims of clinging to backwards superstitions and old wives' tales. Then it takes a real long time for the real science to catch up to the "Science!" and refute it, and by then, millions have been spent (and usually of taxpayer money!) and much harm has been caused, all because some doofus shouted "Science!" and no debate was allowed.



So my question is this: With so much misinformation and bad "science" out there, how is the regular layman supposed to know what to do? I'm not particularly fond of the cartoon, despite its attempt to clarify much misinformation (which it did accomplish, I will add), but it came across as condescending at times, and I don't like "scientific facts" being presented along with condescending humor, because it only adds to the "Science!" atmosphere that already causes too many problems in our society. When "science" is presented along with condescension, then that screams to me "Science!" rather than science as it should be presented. Call me suspicious, but that's how I roll, as many of you should know about me by now.

New Commission Contest! SLAVE LEIA ANDROMEDA!! YEEEAAHHH!!!

Back in your teen years, you drooled over Slave Leia!  Yeah, you know you did! 

Now is your chance to relive those long-ago teen days with this commission contest to combine your teen idol with The Mighty One herself in:

SLAVE LEIA ANDROMEDA!!

Yes, my little nerdlings, in honor of the upcoming Star Wars movie, we are hosting a contest to find the best artwork for a chance to appear in the second issue of The Mighty Andromeda - and get paid a commission, to boot!  Of course, there are rules for this contest, and here they are!

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* This is going to be a mash-up of Carrie Fisher's Slave Leia and The Mighty Andromeda.  Just to note, Carrie Fisher is short, like 5 foot 1, while TMO is 6 foot 1, so make sure that you reflect that height difference!  Also remember that TMO has very long brown hair, and blue eyes, and her curves are more abundant that Carrie Fisher's, so make sure that your art reflects that this is TMO wearing the gold bikini that made the world lose its shit!

* The finished art will need to be in a format to fit on a standard comic page, either vertically or horizontally (aka, "portrait" or "landscape").

* Along with a chance for the winning entry to appear in the pages of TMA#2, the winner will also be paid a commission of $50 USD!  WHOOHOO!!!  Free Market Capitalism works again!  :-D

* If you choose to participate, then note that what you'll be sending us at first is ROUGH DRAFT ART!  That is, DON'T send finished art yet!  Your entry will need to be in pencils, and completed enough so that we can see what scene you're trying to play out in your art.  IF you want to add some color in order to give a better idea of how the finished work might look, it's up to you, but just like the pencils, keep it loose and don't spend a lot of time on it - but again, color is NOT necessary at this stage.  We just need enough to see where your idea is going. 

* You can also send more than one entry if you wish, but just make sure they're rough drafts. 

* You will need a PayPal account in order to get paid if you win, because we ain't sending a check by mail, and we certainly ain't sending cash! 

* The winning entry, once submitted to us, will belong to the boss, John P. Araujo, - FOR. EV. VER.  That is, it becomes the property of the boss, for him to use in whatever format he desires, wherever he may desire to use it, FOR. EV. VER.  Just be aware of that, okay?

* As stated above, the winning entry has a chance to appear in TMA#2, but we don't want just any ol' artwork, we want something FABULOUS!!  So make sure you do your dang-di-doodliest best to make it spectacular! 

* As for the content of the artwork, that's up to you.  Of course, it needs to have Andromeda wearing the Slave Leia costume, but you decide whether TMO is in a scene from Return of the Jedi, or if she is at a Star Wars convention, or a comicon, or some other environment that would make sense for such a set-up.  You COULD do just a simple, straight pin-up, but while we would still pay the winning entry the $50 commission, a basic pin-up is not what we'd like to run in TMA#2, so keep that in mind. 

* Send your rough drafts to this email address: tcucomicsnerd@yahoo.com, and in the subject line, put: SLAVE LEIA ANDROMEDA CONTEST

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And them's the rules! 
The contest starts - hey, TODAY! - and your rough draft entries will need to be sent to us no later than one month from now, October 15, 2015. 

If your entry is selected, then you will have until December 15th to complete your entry, so that we have time to announce the winner on the date of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on December 18th.  We will do our best to decide a winner as quickly as possible to give the winning artist time to complete the work. 

One last note: The artist will get paid once the winning entry is in our greedy little hands.  Remember that you will need a PayPal account to get paid. 

Thanks, my friends, and best of luck to you all! 

Millennials: The most aborted generation in human history

It's been awhile since I've shown my blog some love, and even longer since I spoke on an issue, but the recent videos on Planned Parenthood has spurred me to answer a frequent question as to why I, a millennial, am pro-life.  It's a real easy answer: I am pro-life because my generation is the most aborted generation in human history - some estimates have at least a third of our brothers and sisters never having made it out of the womb.

It's also easy to explain how this happened.  Our parents, the baby boomers, were at their most fertile time during our origins, roughly the late 1970s and into the early 1990s, and they were also awash in the ideology of "my body, my choice", and flush with the "If it feels good, do it" philosophy that was going on at the time.  "Doing it", for the most part, translated into "lots and lots of sex", because holding back on your sexual urges meant that you were repressed and you needed to be free, so you just went nuts on the copulation.  They were, of course, also supposed to be using birth control, and many did, but many did not, because you know - passion of the moment often got in the way.  Also, it's theoretically possible to get pregnant despite the use of some birth controls.  So with the largest generation in human history going nutzo with the promiscuity, the logical outcome would be many, many unplanned pregnancies.  

And those "unplanned pregnancies" were us, the millennials.  Well, they were pregnant, but thanks to the new attitudes about pregnancy and motherhood, they didn't have to stay that way, and a good third of them did not!  So our generation was the recipient - more accurately, the victim - of this new way of thinking, and we are missing brothers and sisters that we should be growing up with right now.  So this is why I am pro-life - for my brothers and sisters that couldn't be here with me right here and right now.  Having to explain all this is mind-boggling to me, but I apparently need to, because many of my generation seem to think that we all should be "down" with this line of thinking as well.  Many of my generation also seem to be "down" with socialism, and that really boggles my mind, because socialism is the greatest inhibitor and destroyer of human rights in human history, so why would I be "down" with that?

Also puzzling to me is the belief that millennials should view that aborting their own children shows that they've "arrived".  Given how extensively our parents aborted our generation, why would it be a point of pride that we abort our own children?  If anything, this makes us worse than our parents, and not better, because rather than learn from our own victimization, we instead continue it with our own children.  But it's said that patterns of abuse in one generation usually continue into the next generation, so this really shouldn't be surprising. 

So I will be pro-life, for the reasons I listed above, because I think it's the best way to break the cycle of abuse begun by our parents.  If I must stand alone in this belief, then so be it.  I'd rather stand alone and be right than be in a crowd and be wrong.  I am very much a people person, but I'm not afraid to be alone if it comes to that. 

This is why I, a millennial, am pro-life.

Oh, one last note: Those unborn children that you're seeing in those PP videos?  Those aren't the children of baby boomers - they're the children of millennials!  We have become our parents!

It's Free Comic Book Day! And you get a free comic from me! Sort of!

Hello, my little nerdlings!

In the spirit of Free Comic Book Day, at the suggestion of one of our FB BFFs (Scott Markley, creator of Unconscious), the boss has approved the release of the first chapter (of a total of four) of the upcoming The Mighty Andromeda #1 (still scheduled to come out this year) to my blog!

The chapter below comes at a time before everyone's favorite busty superhero comic nerd became The Mighty One, which means that it precedes the superhuman uprising from five years ago, a landmark event in TMO's universe that ultimately led her to donning the costume and the role of a superhero. 

So read on and enjoy, and know that much more is to come when the book comes out.  A special thank-you to Martheus Wade the artist, to the colorist Andrew Chandler, and to the letterer, Justin Carmona, who along with the boss (the writer) put together the pages that you see below. 

And hey, don't forget to visit your local participating comic shop for your free comics!  And other comics!  That you'll have to buy if you want them!  But you'll buy them because you love comics!  I hope you enjoy this sneak preview, and I hope you'll be ready, willing, and able to buy the book when it comes out!

Thank you, and have a great day reading your free comics!  ^.^

Andi's back, yes she is! News and notes

Aaaaaaand….. I am back!

Hi, everyone! Well, it’s been a very restful sabbatical, but now I’m ready to hit the ground running and get back into the thick of things! I’m going to just rattle off a list of things in no particular order, just to get my creative juices flowing again. So here goes!

The Comic

Is making progress! We are nearly three chapters (of four) into completion, with only the last chapter to go! If all goes well, then we should be looking at mid-summer for when the book is ready (after a hopefully successful Kickstarter campaign, of course!). Yes, I know that this has taken longer than expected, but this is the first go-round for the boss in making a comic, so he had to learn everything from scratch. The good news is that, once he’s gotten one book out of the way, then he’ll have the benefit of experience for when it comes to future issues, which should speed things up a bit. I know that he’s gotten the script for the second issue near completion, so he’s already gotten a head start on that, and he’s also gotten one artist lined up to do one of the chapters for the second book.

From discussions we’ve had, I know that he’s gotten the storylines set up for the books after that, building up to the completion of the first story arc at around issue 5 or 6, after which, if we’re still fortunate to be up and publishing, he should be ready for the big announcement! I can’t reveal that right now, because other things need to happen first, but know that if all goes well, I shall be letting you all know what that big news is when the time comes. Just consider this my little blurb to encourage you all to help us out by buying the book when it's available, so that we can get to that end of the first story arc, and I’ll do my best to help prod the boss into making a quality product worth your hard-earned money! As for me, I am just bouncing around in excitement as the book gets closer and closer to reality! Dare to chase your dreams, my friends!

Andi the Blogger webcomic

During my sabbatical, I had discussions with the boss about what we could do to fill the time in between issues of The Mighty One, and the one idea that seemed to appeal to both of us is a semi-regular comic feature here on my blog called “Andi the Blogger (ATB)”, which will be a cartoony version of TMO (so as to be distinct from TMO as she will be represented in the book). What ATB will consist of is “illustrated” blog posts; that is, my usual blog posts written by me, and as illustrated by the boss.  This will also be a way to show my blog some love.  I've really cut back on my blogging in recent years, and I'd like to get back to it, because it was here that it all began. 

For a blog post to be made into an ATB comic, it will need to written in such a way as to inspire an illustration to go with it. We’re still working out the criteria for that, but basically, something about the blog post under consideration to be illustrated will need to justify the extra work for the boss to illustrate it.  In other words, the blog post would need to make its point better as a comic strip than if I had just written it as the usual written blog post. More details to come on that, but I like the idea a lot, and I hope you will, too.  One idea for a ATB comic page is Andi meeting and introducing various new comics by independent comic creators, but first things first - we are going to try the webcomic first, before we decide to have something like guest appearances and guest strips (especially for when I take my annual Lenten sabbaticals). 

Moar awesum pin-upz!

Also while I was away, the boss was hard at work getting more pin-ups of everyone’s favorite busty superhero comic nerd! Friends, I KNOW that you will love them! Gah! I can’t wait for you to see them! One of them will be made into a t-shirt that you will want to wear to show off to all your nerdy little friends. That t-shirt is planned to be part of an online fundraiser to help the boss learn what’s involved in running an online fundraiser, so as to help him with getting the Kickstarter set up later. I think the art for the t-shirt will be worth the price for buying the shirt, and once you see the art, I truly believe that you’ll agree. And of course, there’s other awesome pin-up artwork to show, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself by blurting out something that needs my usual build-ups as I introduce them. Patience, friends – it WILL be worth the wait!

Book reviews

I haven’t done a book review in quite some time, so it’s time for me to get back to that. First up will be Stuart Black’s 4Horsefemmes, followed afterwards by Scott Markley’s Unconscious (called “Uncy” for short). While I was away, the boss handed me a pile of their books to go through – like I needed a lot of persuasion to read comics! I won’t give away my opinions of the book yet, other than to say that I enjoyed reading them all. Plus, I always enjoy doing my part to help the independent comic creator cause.

Yes, I'm still a right-wing nutjob

The political season for the 2016 presidential election is officially under way, with two candidates having announced.  As has been the case for nearly the entire time that I've had a blog, I will be making the occasional post on topics and news stories of the day.  It's just how I roll, Sunshine, as most of you know.  :-)

I will say, though, that I think Hillary Clinton should just retire.  In fact, I think all baby boomer politicians should just step down and stop pretending that it's still the 1960s.  The 60s were fifty years ago!  That's half a century!  The world has changed since their happy hippie heydays!  Go home - you're drunk!  Getting back to Hillary, seriously man - her lies suck so bad it's not even funny.  THIS is what the Dems want as their candidate?  There's truly no one better?  Honestly?  The very idea of a Hillary presidency horrifies me to no end.  All the more reason that the GOP needs to pick a quality candidate, and not the usual "Democrat-Lite" that we've been getting ever since I came of age to vote.  Damn, I want a candidate to vote for that's a better reason than "better than having a Democrat in office!"  I'm really tired of "hold your nose" voting.  Please GOP, give me something to look forward to! 

More to come, folks.

Superheroes and Comics on TV

My current favorite superhero on TV is The Flash!  I just love it!  I haven't really kept up with the others, like Arrow, or iZombie.  Those really haven't excited me like The Flash.  I kept up loyally with The Walking Dead for a time, but I stopped watching it sometime this season.  I'm not sure what caused me to lose interest - I suppose it's because there's only so much watching of the shooting up of walking corpses that I could take.  I mean, how many ways can they show the destroying of zombies before it gets repetitive?  I think the zombie fad has kinda died off for me.  I'll discuss The Flash some more at another time.

And that's it for now, friends.  I will do my best to be more diligent about posting to my blog on a regular basis - in fact, that's what we hope ATB will encourage me to do - to post more regularly.  In the meantime, see you all on Facebook! 

Time once again for AFK for 40 Days

Yes, friends - the first post on my blog this year, and it's just to let you know that it's time for my annual AFK for 40 Days. :-P

I have not shown my poor blog much love since I've been on Facebook, but hey - at least you hear more from me there, right?  And it's not like I don't have anything to write about here; it's just not enough time!  SO much to do, so little time!  Ain't that how it always goes? 

Anywhoo...

If you're new to the world of The Mighty Andromeda, then welcome!  The Mighty One's very first comic is progressing nicely, and when I come back from my Lenten sabbatical, I should be much closer to a completed comic!  YEEEAAAAHH!!!

I know it's frustrating to not have the comic out yet, but these things take time, especially if the first one off the block is going to be amazing enough for you all to want the second one off the block.  And the third.  And the fifth.  And so on.  You get the idea - the first one needs to be as best as we can make it, because if you aren't impressed with the first book, then why should you buy the second book?  And truth be told, I think we made the first book even better because of this delay than had we rushed it to production just because we wanted to have the book out sooner rather than later. 

But yeah, like I'm sure it is with the rest of you, I'm ready for this book to come out!  :-D

Coming up soon will be the boss' "trial run" online fundraiser, which will occur while I'm away (if all goes according to plan, that is).  This test run is to help the boss to understand what is involved in putting out an online fundraiser, so that he has some experience in doing one before we put out the Kickstarter for the book.  Makes sense, yes?  Anyway, I've given him the okay to put the promotion for the test run fundraiser on my own FB wall rather than the TMA FB group, because my own wall gets more eyeballs than the FB group does - and if the fundraiser is going to work as planned, then it needs to be posted where most people will see it.  Marketing, people!

I have already given him the "blurb" to promote the test run fundraiser, so he'll have it when he's good to go on it.  So when it hits, help him out!  :-)

Okay, one last thing: Unlike in the past AFK for 40 Days, in which I was gone the whole time, this time around I will be checking my FB mail on Sundays, but ONLY VERY BRIEFLY.  With the coming of the comic being so close now, we thought that it would be best for me to check my mail at least once a week in case anything important related to the comic came up, and if it did, then I would forward it to him to handle.  So if you have anything to say to me while I'm away, go ahead and mail me there; just understand that it may be a week before I respond.  Again, the plan is to be on FB on Sundays very briefly - long enough to check my mail - and then log back off.  I won't engage in any chats or discussion threads or so forth, because I want to stay consistent with my sabbatical as much as possible, so please understand when I don't respond as usual. 

I think that's it, friends.  Please be excellent to one another while I'm away.  I hope to have happy news when I get back.  Bye, my little nerdlings!  :-)

Andi