Tom Russell: October 2006 Archives

Something's been bothering me for a long time, and that something is called Tubby Tompkins.

Tubby, for those of who are not in the know, is the pudgy sidekick/antagonist of "Little" Lulu Moppet. He's an extremely selfish and lazy little boy with a weird fixation on trying to arrest his playmate's father. I'm sure that some people can read all this in a psycho-sexual context, but perhaps that's taking it a little bit too far.

Anyway, I was reading some old Little Lulu comics recently, and I was struck by what an absolute bastard Tubby is. And I think I've found out why: his first name is actually Tubby.

His parents actually went so far as to name their son Tubby, I guess in an effort to encourage him to be overweight and lazy. They can't have been nice people.

Then again, Jughead P. Jones is an over-eater (even if his metabolism prevents any weight gain), extremely lazy, and borderline misogynist. But he had a real name: Forsythe Pendelton Jones. (Which might be an act of cruelty in and of itself.)

Countless internet searches and careful readings of the text have revealed no "real" name for Tubby Tompkins; I even asked Kurt Busiek, who also hadn't seen him called anything but Tubby, though he admitted that he was "no expert on things LULU."

If any of the site readers can settle this definitely one way or the other, I'd be much obliged. :-)

==Tom (Mary says hi!)

The first episode of Ned and Sunshine, the Zombie Sitcom. Zombies are a geek interest, right?... right? :-)

November 4th I'll be attending The Second Annual Snap! Comics Arts Festival. I should have a few video shorts chronicling the event, which is centered around creators from Michigan and the rest of the Midwest. If I'm lucky, I might even get to do a video interview with a certain mainstream comic book writer currently residing in Michigan... fingers crossed, and no guessing, because I don't want to jinx it before I even get to ask the man. :-)

==Tom & Mary

Well, I finally read Civil War # 1-2 (waiting for the next printing of # 3), and I have some thoughts on what I've read. The standard spoiler warnings apply, but also be warned that this is a long article, nearly five thousand words long.

In the first couple sections, I make some points about crossover stories in general, before I plunge into Civil War itself. You can certainly skip ahead, but I do come back to the points made in the beginning sections; that's why they're there. :-)

So here we go!

Yesterday, I participated in this year's 24-Hour Comic Day Event. My completed comic is available here:

http://turtleneckfilms.blogspot.com/2006/10/skunkenstein.html

I should warn you, I am only capable of drawing three things: skunks, bears, and penguins. So, this one is about skunks: it's cute and cuddly, so be warned. Though it does feature the risque name of Boopsie Goodmusk.

Maybe next year, some penguins.

==Tom (Mary says hi!)

Civil War has come highly-recommended to me by some, and strongly-lambasted by others. I'll probably try to pick up the first couple of issues this week, but I'm a little hesitant, and there's three reasons why.

Spoiler warning

Hey folks! I'm Tom Russell, and Hutch has been kind enough to appoint me Marvel Contributor. Most of my knowledge about Marvel is centered around the sixties and seventies, and I've got a huge chunk of comics from the nineties as well. I'm a big Spider-Man fan, big on the Silver Age, big on Busiek, and I hate the X-Men. (I'm not big on Claremont, either.) I'm endlessly fascinated by the work of Steve Ditko, and I appreciate the bulk of Kirby's work. I prefer Artie Simek to Sam Rosen, and I've looked at enough of both men's work to be able to tell the difference (most of the time).

I stopped reading superhero comics around 2000/2001 (thanks in a large part to Howard Mackie), and am just now getting back to them. And, now that I have been awarded the honour of Monitor Duty's Marvel Contributor, I'm going to be buying a lot more Marvel and a lot less Uncle Scrooge. :-)

I'm fairly opinionated, and my opinions are sometimes controversial. I welcome opinions counter to my own; discussion is healthy and enlivening. In that spirit, I'd like to share with you a video I did (the first of many) on the Lee-Ditko Spider-Man, in which I argue against the Peter-Parker-as-Everyman myth.

I hope this provokes some discussion. Though I'm here nominally as the Marvel Guy, I'll also be doing some videos on DC's Silver Age-- particularly the Weisinger Superman-- which I'll also share with you.

And it just so happens that I was uploading a video about Monitor Duty when this opportunity came along. So here's that, too.

Enjoy!

==Tom Russell (Mary says hi!)