View Martial Law



HOME

PROM BLOG

8/24/06

Sucks to be Pluto

On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided, after much debate, to reclassify Pluto as a “dwarf planet.” It seems that Pluto didn’t meet the new objectives established by the IAU for full-fledged planetary status.  Sure, it orbited a star, and was massive enough to be a sphere by its own gravitational force.  But it failed in the third requirement: it couldn’t “clear the neighborhood”; that “neighborhood” being taken up by the dwarf planet formerly known as Charon-the-moon-of-Pluto.  All-in-all, another sad case of failing to keep out the undesirables.  When interviewed the IAU stated, “we gave Pluto three weeks.  And this was its last chance.” 

Poor little Pluto.  How can it show its face around the solar system?  What will it do?  Post its resume on Craig's List?  Anyone requiring a trillion-ton gas-giant (okay, gas-dwarf) please e-mail Pluto@myspace.com?  I really don’t think so.

For seventy years no one had a problem.  There it was, minding its own business – keeping to itself in the back of the solar system – then WHAMMO – Hello Dwarf Planet!  (And by the way – it prefers “astronomically challenged.”)  It wasn't hurting anyone! Wasn't harboring any vicious, world-conquering alien armies like some planets we won't mention.  It just wanted to be left alone.  It's getting so a planet can't even orbit anymore!  

And what about kids?  Kids loved Pluto.  Not as much as Uranus.  Sorry.  And now, with less than two weeks before the school season starts, millions of kids get to say, "hey, page nine is wrong!" Final exams will have to be rewritten, planetarium shows junked.  (On the other hand, think of the industries that will spring up just to re-edit planetarium shows…) 

So, what do we learn from this?  The world's astronomers need to get laid.  They need to put away their Hubble telescopes, and go to the mall, take a gym class, something.  But please, don't take your problems out on poor little Pluto.

10/10/05

Look, look - a new strip! Hah!

9/16/05

So, how do you like this new policy of one strip a month? Pretty good, huh? Well, if you wrote to me more often telling me to update more frequently it might have an impact. Then again... Basically, I've been a complete web-comic slacker over the entire summer. Someday this will change. Not this week, of course.

Well, I might as well tell you about a new site Hot Web Comics!, which has been kind enough to list Prom, Young Christo and Total Losers in it's database, so that you can now access these strips along with 8,000+ other fine webcomics. And some of them are even good! (Okay, Nick - can I edit my listings now?)

8/9/05

Hey! That Karl Rove joke was just so freakin' funny, I thought you'd all enjoy it, if I let it run for a whole month! Just kidding. (Although, from the steady stream of hits over the past month, you'd think I had new strips up here, daily.) Actually, exhaustion and work caught up to me during July, and new strips lost out in the process. But there's lots more Total Losers goodness coming your way over the next few weeks. And probably more Karl Rove jokes to boot! And maybe even more Young Christo, if I can find ten minutes to spare!

Congratulations to John and Carrie (and Amanda) Jaffe on their new edition - baby boy Ethan! John runs the pre-eminent PR firm - Jaffe Communications - in New Jersey. So, if you're looking for solid PR (particularly if you need help with an up-and-coming franchise) John's your man. Course he may be somewhat bleary-eyed over the next few weeks. But check out his website, anyway- with awesome disco music, no less - at www.Jaffecom.com.

7/20/05

Karl Rove jokes!

Hey! If you haven't checked out the double-conch artwork at Neil Molinaro's site, here's your chance. I don't even understand how Neil takes these pictures, but there's no special effects and they're just wacky kewl. And here's a sample below to whet your appetite. Dig around on his website and see if you can find Santa Claus! It's worth the effort! (Someday I'll post the pic Neil took of my son dressed in his Superman costume! Awesome stuff...)

7/14/05

Just wanted to say hi to my nieces Lacey, Lia and Lindsey! Having a little visit in Slingerlands, NY! (Lacey and Lia were recently on tv upstate for their awesome skateboarding skills.

6/14/05

Hey Hey - are you looking for an incredible, original, one-of-a-kind rock fountain to put in your office or back yard to really up your feng shui potential?! Then you should check out Adam Distenfeld's Brooklyn Rockwerks - where he creates original sculptures/fountains out of living stone. Check it out at www.brooklynrockwerks.com.

Hey Hey Hey - Here's a response to a question no one was asking: Where'd Young Christo go?! Well, there's lots of YC coming up, don't worry. It's just that, frankly, I have to actually draw new strips when I'm working on YC - as opposed to just coming up with new gags like I do for Mark and Sid. (Yes, in case you hadn't notice the art on TL doesn't change too much.) Unfortunately, I don't have quite as much time as I did back in the Prom days for creating new art, so you end up seeing much more of the boys there - than YC. But! Trust me - there are plenty of YC strips coming! I just have to find a few minutes to work on 'em! In the meantime, re-read the old strips right here at the Young Christo Archives!

6/10/05

Total Losers hits the big 50! Woo Hoo! Check it out!

And you can see the first 49 strips (or most of them anyway) while you're at it, too...

5/27/05

Old PopImage compadre - and writer/comic strip artist extraordinaire Adam Ford - has rebuilt his website with all new zines and a few new comics to boot! Check out the updated site at www.labyrinth.net.au/~adamford. Also, I should mention that Adam does "diagrams" (diagram art?) - which is just about the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. And he gets them published in diagram journals, no less! He's got a few up on the site. You can check out one of them right here - "Extraction of "Prominence" Feature." Yow!

5/15/05

watch Saturday Night Live last night? Because the man, the myth, the legend - TOM CARROZZA - was scheduled to make an appearance! (He was supposedly sitting next to Will Ferrell in a bar scene.) I stayed up till about midnight - but, honestly, I'm an old old man now - and sleep overtook me. (And my VCR's crap.) Sad sad sad. Anyway, Tom's been probably the funniest f-ing human in NYC for the last 20 years or so. Pretty much every improv performer and comedian worked with him at one point or another (including yours truly - although he still hasn't put me on his "friends of Tom" page yet! Oh well...). For more info on Tom's upcoming performances, check out his website www.tomcarrozza.com!

5/3/05

Yes, there actually is a "Time Traveler's Convention" - and it's this Saturday at MIT! Supposedly, Mussolini, Jimi Hendrix and Hari Seldon are going to be making an appearance. (Little "Foundation" joke there, folks...sorry.) For more information check out the convention webpage. Hope to see you there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there,

Young Christo really does return this week! Come back Thursday to see YC take his first temp job ever!

4/28/05

Thanks to everyone who submitted! The five copies of Volume 1 have now been given out!

4/27/05

Quick Blog Traffic Test! The first five people that send an email to Prom (Click Here) get a free copy of Prom: Volume 1! No shipping or handling - just free, free, free. No strings attached. Include your name and address - and we'll send you your free copy of Vol. 1!

4/16/05

24-Hour Comic Day News! Yes, this weekend is 24-Hour Comic Book Day - and for the second year in a row - Prom won't be involved! Well, I won't be doing a 24-hour strip here. But! If you live in the central Jersey area - head on over to Wild Pig Comics II where you can watch Girls With Slingshots creator (and Prom Remix artist!) Danielle Corsetto drink way too much coffee and get intense hand cramps doing her own marathon strip! Danielle's contribution last year ended up in the 24-Hour Comic Day book compilation! Don't forget to bring lots of donuts for Danielle and the other artists shacking up Wild Pig.!

Congratulations to long-time Prom supporter Dylan Brody for winning the prestigious 2005 Stanley Drama Award for his play "Mother May I!" For more info, check out Dylan's site at www.dylanbrody.com.

New "previously" button! You might've noticed a little red spaceship over there under the new Losers' strip (there's also one at the bottom of the strip on the homepage). I'm trying a new way of archiving for people who don't want to have to scroll to the bottom of all the archive pages. If the new pages get enough hits, I'll move both Total Losers and YC over to that style....

4/11/05

Well - the Prom Blog has officially become the most frequently traveled page here at Prom HQ - beating out even the Home Page by a small margin. Not a big surprise in this era of hardcore blog traffic. As such, I'm now featuring the new strips (as well as, occasionally one or two kewl recycled strips) right here on the blog page.

Other item of note - after 2+ years, I'm finally getting around to loading up the "good art" versions of the first 46 strips. Unfortunately, it's going to be one strip at a time - since there's a bit of reformatting to do. These are the vaunted strips right out of "PROM: VOLUME 1" - with much cleaner art and better backgrounds. A new version of Strip #3 has already been reloaded - so check it out! And yes, there are still a few copies of VOL. 1 left. Just pop on over to the Vol 1 page to order your own copy.

4/5/05

The Prom Festivities Page returns! It must be prom season, because we're getting fifty hits a day for "prom stuff," "prom couples," "prom t-shirts," and of course "congratulations Danielle on becoming Prom Queen!" (Danielle Corsetto will be happy to hear about that one!) - among many many many others. So...even though Prom (the webcomic) officially ended back in October, we're going to do some prom stuff here anyway.

Check out the Prom Festivities Page - and put a copy of our neat "We had our Prom on Mars" buttons right on your website! Just like the one up there on the upper left hand corner!

Send in your incredibly farcical and grosteque prom date pictures and we'll put 'em in the Prom Date Gallery section!

And if you drop us an e-mail requesting copies of Prom: Volume 1 to hand out at your prom - we'll send 'em to you! (But you have to send back pix of people at the Prom reading the comic. Particularly the Prom King and Queen would be nice.)

So check out the Prom Festivities page for more info...

3/23/05

Total Losers takes over the home page for a few days, while I regroup and do some new Christo art. Lots of good Christo strips comin' up. So keep watching this space.

Big question lately has been: did I jump on the Christo bandwagon simply because of The Gates? And now that The Gates is over - am I going to end the strip? Well, the answer to both is no. As I said earlier, I had the idea for Young Christo - or a strip like YC - years ago. Certainly, the news about the NY project had my creative juices bubbling and brought a lot of the ideas I had up to the surface. But honestly, I never thought The Gates would get the media attention (as well as parodies, ridicule and, in some cases, scorn) that it did. I certainly had no intention of creating some short-lived strip to take advantage of this week's "zeitgeist." Although, I can imagine to some of you that probably looks like exactly what I did do.

Again - "Young Christo" is not specifically about Christo (the real artist). "Young Christo" is about ART. And the suffering, pain, embarrassment, rejection, etc. that good (and bad) artists go through in the process of creating art - especially when they're driven to that process in ways they themselves can't understand. (Kind of like creating webcomics for free!) In retrospect, I probably would've done myself a better service by naming the strip something like, say "Art." (I certainly haven't gotten any search engine hits for "Christo"!)

But I made my bed, so I'll sleep in it. "Young Christo" it is. At least, until I get sued. Hopefully, "Young Christo" the web comic will be around long long after The Gates are but a memory...

Blog Archives. In case you haven't noticed, I started archiving the blogs for the first time ever. Seemed like this page was getting a little too long. So, 2003 & 2004 now have their own pages.

Questions, comments, blood and thunder, email 'em to me at abernstein@promonmars.com.

3/10/05

Thanks to all for the kind feedback (and hits) for Young Christo. YC's going to be hanging around for the foreseeable future. (Look for a young Bob Dylan to be making an appearance in about 2-3 weeks...) See - The Gates come down but YC just keeps on truckin'...

Looks like there's going to be a fancy-shmancy PROM NEWSLETTER coming out within the next month or so. It's going to be an html e-mail thingie with real live strips, comics (and webcomics) news, links to cool sites, free stuff, etc. Sign up for your copy of the newsletter right here.

And speaking of cool strips, Mike Sivak (of Trilobyte fame) and James Retarides put together Once Upon a Time in New Haven, Connecticut - a heartbreaking, brilliantly told story of drugs and juvenile delinquency. It's the best webcomic I've seen so far this year. Check it out right here at PopImage. (And this is the kind of comics/links you'll be seeing in the upcoming newsletter.)

2/14/05 - New Strip: YOUNG CHRISTO!

For the immediate future Prom's going to be running two - count 'em 2! - new strips - Total Losers - and the brand-spanking new strip: Young Christo! YC has been bubbling up for about 10 or 15 year's now - waaay back when Christo (the real one) was doing the Running Wall. (And how cool was that, huh?) What with the new Gates project in New York, this just seemed like perfect timing. YC will likely run about ten strips or so. Drop a line if you like it - or even if you don't: abernstein@promonmars.com.

And for more info on Christo, his collaborator Jeanne Claude, and the Gates project itself, check out christojeanneclaude.net.

And Happy Valentine's Day! (And happy birthday, Jack B.!)

2/3/05

Congratulations to Prom Remix contributor Danielle Corsetto for signing on with Bill Jemas' new licensing and entertainment company 360ep! 360 is representing all licensing for Danielle's strip Girls With Slingshots! And if you still haven't checked it out - what are you waiting for?!

1/18/05

Happy New Year! Okay, so it's already three weeks into the year and it's not so new anymore...

TOTAL LOSER's incredibly long "turning the living room into an office" sequence officially ends today. Huzzah! Free at last! Free at last! Now, we can get back to the jokes!

Re: Will Eisner, RIP. For those of you that haven't noticed, I write reviews columns infrequently over at good, ole' Popimage. Last week, I wrote a few lines about growing up reading the comics of Will Eisner (who recently passed away). If you're looking for a primer about his works, you could do worse than start there... 

RETURN TO TOP