Comic for Thursday October 2nd, 2003

"18 Degrees of Crap" Wednesday - October 1st, 2003

I forgot to mention this little bit in my last post so I figure I should throw it up right now. Throw up... heh... I amuse myself. Okay on with it... Before The Kelly and I went on our merry way last Saturday to watch Underworld, we spent Friday night at home watching something that quite remarkably did a great impression of a movie only to fail in almost every which way to Timbuktu. I refer to the garbage known titled "The 18th Angel". Evangelion? Oh no my friends. Far from it.

The movie stars Rachel Leigh Cook in a role that could've, should've ended her career. I mean I thought she was okay in She's All That. I mean uhhh... I heard she was okay in that... yeah. Ever see someone in a low budget film overacting badly? Chances are that was the angle RL Cook was aiming for and she succeeded brilliantly. The other protagonist in the movie is a "That Guy". "That Guy" is a term coined by The Sports Guy and stands for an actor who everyone knows and is in every other obscure role and movie, but no one knows their name. "That Guy" in this movie is usually seen portraying that zany over the top bad guy in kid movies. He reminds me of Joe Piscopo.. and that's never a good thing. Especially in a horror movie.

The plot of the movie proceeds as such. There is a sect of Satanists who go around masquerading as a secretive sect of the Catholic religion. They have been waiting for hundreds of years for signs to appear that will herald Lucifer returning to the world. Quite understandably one of the signs is the advent of human cloning. Good point, but human cloning in this movie means creating human "blanks". We're talking humans with no souls and therefore are comatose and have faces that makes Freddy Krueger's look like a walk in the park. I wish I were kidding.

Anyway the Satanists believe that they now need to create 18 angels and then Lucifer will pick one to be reborn in. So they go around killing "beautiful" kids (cause obviously Lucifer won't come back to humankind unless they pick someone "beautiful, like an angel". Real line from the movie.) They then take their faces off to put on the meat grinder head human blanks.

Enter Rachel Leigh Cook, innocent Catholic School girl. For some crazy reason unknown to me, the Satanists just happen to have a satellite church in Boston. The main baddie sees RL Cook and reasons the best way to nab her angelic face is to hypnotize her mom and have her jump off a building. Of course!!! RL Cook is distraught. She snaps at her dad and loses interest in her schoolwork. She needs guidance, she needs help, she needs to... MODEL!!! Yup. Stage 2 of the Main Baddie's evil scheme is to lure RL Cook to Italy by getting her to become a professional model. Of course her dad, played by That Guy, puts his foot down. The Satanists try their best to explain how letting your underage daughter fly off to Italy for a few months with no parental supervision is perfectly normal. However, there's no need to fear because the Main Baddie happens to have access to ancient music documents and he has his people contact That Guy and offer him a job in Italy to transcribe the music. Wouldn't you be just a little suspicious?

So fast forward to Italy. RL Cook is thrilled to be in Italy. Not only does she get to be a model, but she also gets to go horseback riding in nothing but a nightshirt with the local stable boy. While she can't understand just why her dad is upset at this, she also doesn't find it strange that they are staying next to a creepy church which is never open to the public. Predictably it is called the 18th Church in Italian.

A lot of other side story crap happens which involved RL Cook being dragged by her neck by two horses and only coming out of it with a coma. The lady who owns the house they are staying at dies at the hand of a pack of really pissed off cats. On a side note her son just happened to be one of the 18 angels who had already gotten his face taken. RL Cook is then kidnapped from the hospital miles away, because it would've been too easy to just snatch her from the house conveniently located within walking distance to the 18th Church. That Guy runs into the Church,  fights the Stable boy (a Satanist in disguise) and ends up torching the whole place. Luckily he manages to save RL Cook from the fire.

We learn though that she dies from the injuries sustained from being dragged around from the neck by two horses. But Wait!! There's a heartbeat!! That Guy celebrates with a hug to his beautiful daughter. She decides that now would be a best time to try and stab him in the back with a scalpel. She decides against it as the camera zooms in to show her eyes glow a la the Thriller video. End movie.

This movie definitely breaks into my all time list of horrendous movies. It woulda topped The Musketeer except for the fact that I actually paid money to go see The Musketeer. Ugh...

I also have a live action Dragon Ball movie to watch that Rob was kind enough to lend me. It looks pretty horrendous, but at least it'll be funny in a campy sort of way.

Moving on, I had originally planned to push forward the story a little bit more with this strip, but I ended up liking the sketches I made of Kelly being flung through the air that I used them for the focus of the comic. I might beef up the next comic as a result, but we'll see. The only panel I have a problem at all in this strip is P 3. there isn't really anything wrong with it, but I just don't really love it. Just blah.

I guess Lord Hawk doesn't have a problem knocking around chicks. Yuki is taking offense to this and as you can see he's pretty pissed. Of course I'm sure that would be the reaction for anyone watching a guy hurling lightning bolts at chicks. Next week we'll get to see if Kelly was right about Yuki worrying too much about throwing the Hyourinken and thus failing the Engetsuzan. I'm sure she is, but will it be enough to defeat Lord Hawk? A disappearing sword versus a lightning bolt spewing spear. Who are you betting on?

River is hip to the Flyball.