What does Superman sing into the Miracle Machine to defeat Darkseid? (click to make bigger)

Also: if you came here from Dr. K, Perpetua, Vulture or DYFL, first of all: Thanks! They’re awesome and so are you. Second of all, we’d love for you stick around a bit and check out the comics, which tell the tale of LA homicide detective Frank Gorman and his new partner FELIX, a robot who used to be a cash register. This is the first one.

SPECIAL ALTERNATE SEVENTH PANEL:

There’s another one over at Lil’ Gardner & Robot Jesus.

In response to Mike Sterling’s question: (Warning: incoherent ramblings about 17-year-old comic books, plus goopy adolescent nostalgia)

I liked Youngblood because I was twelve. Actually, I guess I was only 12 for the first two issues, but the point is the same: I liked Youngblood because it felt like it was made for me. I started reading comics because of the Batman movie in 1989, and I stuck with mostly Bat-stuff and, for some reason, Darkhawk, until 1992 when Youngblood came out, and it just hit me exactly where I wanted to be hit. Partly it was hype, sure, which I was pretty susceptible to; partly it was the idea of this brat kid (and his brat kid pals) thumbing his nose at Marvel and making his own comics; but mostly it just seemed so cool. It felt like something completely new, even if, even then, I recognized the characters as thinly veiled Marvel & DC knockoffs (though the full extent of Liefeld’s Fourth World scavenging didn’t sink in until I read the Joe Casey-scripted remastered version this year). I loved that Liefeld and the rest of the Image guys were creating this new universe out of whole cloth; it felt to me like the beginnings of the Marvel universe must have felt for 12-year-olds in 1963. When the Youngblood guys showed up in Savage Dragon or WildC.A.T.s, it was truly epic to me. I obsessively read and reread this Amazing Heroes issue that had a “jam interview” with the Image guys, hoping to glean just one more ounce of insight into their new projects. Their excitement felt genuine, and fueled my own.

But none of the Image guys were more excited than Liefeld, and that excitement came through on the page to 12-year-old me. I know it sounds phony when somebody like Mark Millar talks about how cool Liefeld’s art is (or, god forbid, compares him to Kirby), and I know how much fun it is to make fun of his terrible anatomy and the Levi’s commercial, but jesus, when I was twelve? I spent hours staring at those pages. It felt like Marvel and DC were Kansas, and Youngblood was Technicolor Oz. The qualities that make Liefeld’s art and writing so bad to an adult are exactly what make his stuff manna for a 12-year-old. Youngblood was just pure adolescent id spewed across the pages of a comic book. It took itself ultra-seriously, but it was also gleefully incoherent. It felt like a 12-year-old smashing together everything he loved about Marvel and DC, with no regard for anything beyond his own immediate pleasure. It felt like the comic I would have made if I had the resources Liefeld did; in fact, it was the comic I spent hours trying to recreate, coming up with my own characters that were knockoffs of knockoffs, learning how to hide feet behind strategic rock outcroppings. This was 1992: Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Kathy Ireland and Vendela in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, Batman Returns, losing the region spelling bee, an election I barely understood, spending all my time in the gifted class drawing terrible comics, leaving childhood behind and becoming a teenager. I wore my socks in a really weird way until this dude I thought was my friend made fun of them. Youngblood was loud and garish and ugly and violent and stupid and it wanted you to know that it thought it was the greatest thing ever. Of course I loved it.

Howdy Registered Weapon fans! Gardner here. If you’d like to see what I do when I’m not co-writing hilarious cop comics, check out the premiere of T.I.’s Road to Redemption tonight at 9 p.m. on MTV. I’m a “story producer” for the show, and I believe my fingerprints are on a few of the scenes in the first episode. Hey, the LA Times likes it!

Now I’m not disputing that the introduction of image wasn’t an important event in comics. The people at Marvel realized that creators were a hot commodity and not just random faces to be put to work in the factory duplicating artwork of other great creators in years gone by. They were going to tell their stories as sloppy and as poorly drawn as they wanted to, but they were doing it on their own terms. And that is something to be admired. But Liefeld’s work was not exciting. It was dumb.

Every character unless “black” or “alien” had the exact same hair. The two black guys on the team had the exact same haircut. All of the characters were rip-offs of existing characters. All names were taken from something that at one point had been cool, but now bastardized by Liefeld’s own feeling of self importance. Bedrock, Die Hard & Shaft for christ’s sake! Die Hard? That’s like that whole “Extreme” fad in the 90’s. Oddly enough I’m not referring to Rob’s crappy comic imprint. How does one Die Hard? I didn’t want this book or these characters to Die Hard, I just wanted them to die.

In closing I would just like to say that I’m sorry Gardner, head master of the I Love Rob Liefeld fan club. Sorry that you couldn’t afford better comics or realize when something was crap as a child.

I bet you ate paste too.

- Dave

Howdy loyal readers (and traitorous bastards as well)–

First of all, thank you for joining us here, and a special double super thanks to those of you whoe have linked to us or mentioned us to friends or subscribed or joined the mailing list. It’s been a great first month, and it’s all thanks to you guys. And just FYI, we’re working considerably ahead of schedule, so there’ll be uninterrupted Registered Weapon goodness for months and hopefully years to come.

Here’s a small token of appreciation for reading: two brand-new wallpapers to adorn your desktop. One is a look at an alternate-universe RW video game, and the other utilizes our first T-shirt design.

What’s that? T-shirts, you say? We’ve had a few requests for t-shirts, mainly from my mom, so we thought we’d go ahead and whip up a design. But here’s the conundrum: Do we go with a print-on-demand service like CafePress or Zazzle? Or do we screenprint a batch of shirts and hope we sell them? The upside to POD, for us, is that it doesn’t cost us anything; the downside is that the shirts are more expensive for you. We would love to do a run of professionally screenprinted t-shirts, but screenprinting outfits require minimum orders and such, so for it to be cost-effective we need to know how many people, if any, are actually interested in adorning their chests with Frank and FELIX.

We’re not asking you to send money, and this isn’t a binding contract or anything, but here’s the question: Would you maybe be interested in buying a T-shirt utilizing the design below for around $15, sometime in the near future? If the answer is “YES!” please email us at registeredweaponATgmailDOTcom and say so, and also let us know what size/color you would prefer, were such a shirt to be offered. Thanks!

Gardner