The Penguin

pretension 1 [pri- ten -sh uh  n] noun the laying of a claim to something. a claim or title to something. Often pretensions. a claim made, especially indirectly or by implication, to some quality, merit, or the like: They laughed at my pretensions to superior judgment. a claim to dignity, importance, or merit. pretentiousness . the act of pretending or alleging. an allegation of doubtful veracity. a pretext. pretentious [pri- ten -sh uh  s] See more synonyms for pretentious on Thesaurus.com adjective characterized by assumption of dignity or importance, especially when exaggerated or undeserved: a pretentious, self-important waiter. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious. full of pretense or pretension ; having no factual basis; false.    (From dictionary.com ) As you know, I've struggled with comics as my medium of choice - mostly due to their perception (yeah yeah, I know...blame sokeyi...

Creationism is a funny thing. Even more than Flat Earthism, it personifies Karl Popper's definition of pseudoscience , in which all evidence is bent to accommodate a presupposition (true science, meanwhile, crafts a hypothesis and then tries like hell to disprove that hypothesis). I grew up a Creationist, reading Creationist dinosaur books by the venerable Duane Gish ; though I now reject Creationism as not even remotely connected to reality, I still have a bit of a soft spot for its loopy tenacity. Creationism comes in as many flavors as American Christianity, but I'll attempt to provide a broad-brush definition of the Young-Earth Creationism I grew up with: in the modern American sense, this is an attempt to conform scientific understanding of life to a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. It amounts to a wholesale rejection of mainstream evolutionary theory; Big Bang theory and the age of the universe (and by extension the age of the earth); and places the Chri...

Hello there, gentle readers. As you may have gathered, I'm a dinosaur nut, the Terrible Lizards being the first thing I could draw reliably well. While I love drawing dinosaurs, I've found my technique getting a bit stale lately; it seems like I'm quite a bit behind the times in terms of dinosaur science and our understanding of these creatures. Much of this is cultural baggage left behind in the wake of Jurassic Park , but there's also a fair amount of aesthetic prejudice - that is, "I want my dinosaurs to look or act like this" - and God help any scientist who suggests otherwise. It's the Cool Factor: we want our 'Raptors deadly intelligent, hyperfast, scaly, and able to disembowel a sauropod in minutes flat; our T rexes must roar triumphantly through elegant, shrink-wrapped faces; our Ceratopsians and other large herbivores must be essentially bison or rhinoceras-like. Anything else offends our sense of dino-propriety. What do you mean, Deinonychu...

Pictured: A Weary Sigh. Yes my friends, in an age where Star Wars will soon have more sequels than Friday the 13th, the  doltish nephew of Jurassic Park begins its own inbred dynasty. Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom is set to be extruded into theaters June 6th. A few predictions: large rubbery-looking things will scream at each other; the rubberiest, screamiest, most epileptic one that opens its mouth the widest and with the most CGI drool-strings wins the Raddest Dino contest. There will be more eeeevil-eyed, crocodilian theropods with gaps between their snaggly teeth so wide it's a wonder the edible humans don't slip out between them. Characters will justify the creatures' unnatural behavior and really dumb designs with pretentious explanations ("She's been raised alone without social contact", or, "We designed the dinosaurs for entertainment", or, "They don't have dental insurance"). And yes, more amateur scientists will gr...

That's right, Furious Reader: it's that time again. Time for Rick's Tips for Comic Book Creators. Below are some thoughts I've scraped together over the years I've been slugging away at this whole comics thing: 1. Draw, you fool. Feeling guilty that you drew something unrelated to your comic? That's because you're stuck in "comics rut". Break out. Draw whatever you want. Draw something abstract, something weird, something normal, something everyday. Do some life-drawings of your attractive friends, or better yet, your unattractive friends. Draw outside, draw inside. Sketch the DMV. Doodle in the margins of legal documents (birth certificates are a particular favorite). Draw with paint: this revolutionary new concept is called, "painting". Sculpt something; it ain't drawing, but who cares? Make music, animate, write, read. But most of all draw. The sketchbook is the single most cobwebbed tool in any comic book creators' ars...

Image from American Psychological Association ( apa.org) Just like all of you, Gentle Readers, I'm struggling to come to terms with the number of school shootings occurring in this country. I'm not going to wade into politics here; blame whoever you want - the gun lobby, lax mental-health support, the free availability of assault-style weapons, the breakdown of the family, whatever - just don't blame the victims. Something needs to change, and it's not our attitude toward violence: we cannot become numb. We must fight this rise in savagery by whatever means are available to us. It's a bad cliche that human beings are inclined to violence. From the beginning of our history, and quite a ways before that, we've been maiming and killing each other as casually as batting our eyelids. Everything from war to crime and punishment, on down to domestic abuse and self-harm, we're infused with bloodthirstiness and a savage intent to create pain. While we ...

(I wrote this article for a coworker at my print shop. He liked it but said he couldn't use it, due to its frankness; I here reproduce said article for your enjoyment and edification). You see it all the time: the Discombobulated Print Customer. They enter the print shop, confident and smiling, ready to pick up their print order...and in about ten minutes come out the door with a bag and a lost expression, trying to figure out how their booklets ended up with every other page backward and still costing $300. This customer will go home, sit at the kitchen table, and flip aimlessly through their pricey and useless booklets. Slowly their expression darkens. A real acid feeling has settled in their stomach. The print shop might have explained everything in detail, but it roughly amounts to: “Sorry not sorry, it’s your fault, give us money.” The customer doesn’t have the first clue what went wrong, they only know they feel ripped off. That print shop just lost another customer. If...