Saturday,
March 10, 2007
This was in the spring of 2007, not long before the final
Harry Potter book was
released. Excitement was, shall we say, in the air.
Monday, June 4,
2007
In 2007,
everyone and his
dog was signing up for Facebook. I...wasn't.
Click on the comic if you want to go to the relevant page and
read the rest of the strips in the sequence, which I glibly named
"Faceless."
Saturday, July 14,
2007
I do have an urge to do this to students occasionally. I
don't
really want to fall
into a bottomless abyss afterwards, though. And yes, in case
you've been living under a rock for the last half century, this is
a
Lord of the Rings
reference.
Tuesday, July 24,
2007
This is here for the sake of Mr. House's T-shirt, which derives
from the webcomic
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja and
can actually be purchased
here.
Saturday, July 28,
2007
Yep...this was the Summer of the Potter. I've got to say:
I spent a
lot of
time on that bogus cover in the title panel. I also drew tiny
versions of the cover
four
times, including once as a cover-within-a-cover.
Obsessed? What, me? Naaaah.
Hallowe'en
2007
Any second now, someone is going to say, "Jinkies!" I'm
really not sure what's up with the "slang" in
Scooby-Doo. Is "jinkies" code
for an appalling curse word?
Wednesday, November 21,
2007
...because I
wanted to
make a random reference to
28
Days Later, that's why.
Monday, December 31,
2007
At this point, I believe I was finished
Buffy and had moved on to
Angel, but I certainly did feel
Marie's pain.
Wednesday, January 2,
2008
One hundred and forty-four hours. Think about that for a
minute,
Buffy fans.
Saturday, January 12,
2008
Mushroom!
Mushroom!
Saturday, July 12,
2008
This comic makes it onto the geek page simply by virtue of the book
Casey is reading, Terry Pratchett's
Jingo. I spent an awful lot of
time replicating a teeny version of the cover.
Wednesday, July 30,
2008
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
first appeared online between July 15 and 20, 2008. I heard
about it early on and, as you may be able to tell, liked it quite a
lot.
Saturday, August 9,
2008
The Dark Knight had come
out earlier in the summer, and
everyone was saying
that...damn...line.
Saturday, December 13,
2008
Admittedly, the allusion here is to
It's a Wonderful Life, which came out
in 1946, but it still counts as a geeky reference, or so I
claim.
Friday, January 9,
2009
There are numerous comics involving Barbara dressed as Sherlock
Holmes, but this one is the first of them all.
Saturday, February 7,
2009
I must have been on a role.
This allusion is to
The Day the Earth Stood Still, which
came out in 1951.
Valentine's
Day 2009
Oh, come on...you know perfectly well that it doesn't even count as
a webcomic if there's not at least one
Star Wars reference.
Saturday, March 7,
2009
The
Watchmen film was
coming out, and I was galvanised to action, as I was with
Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows and
Dr. Horrible's
Sing-Along Blog. It seems to be the way I'm made.
Saturday
, May 30, 2009
I claim this counts because it contains a slightly anachronistic
reference to the Blue Screen of Death.
Monday, June
1,
2009
The Comics Curmudgeon is real
and still going strong, bless his little cotton socks.
Wednesday, June
3,
2009
I did
two comics on the
CC. Also, cyber-stalking! Yay!
Saturday, August
8, 2009
At this point,
Futurama
was still technically cancelled. I missed it. It's
possibly also worth noting that considering Weird Beard's
deep-seated geekitude, it is highly probable that he is engaging in
obfuscating ignorance here.
Saturday, September
5, 2009
The
Harry Potter reference
has earned this comic a place on the geek page.
Hallowe'en
2009
This Hallowe'en banner demonstrates my undying...love...for the
Twilight series. Now
have an
enlightening video.
Monday, October
26, 2009
Baldwin's
Dr. Horrible
costume has propelled this comic onto the geek page.
Wednesday, October
28, 2009
It's not exactly a pop-culture reference, but it
is a reference to Nietzsche.
Random bonus: Casey is dressed as Mr. Incredible, who
could conceivably be regarded as an example of the
Übermensch. It's Nietzsche references all around.
Hurrah!
Saturday,
October31, 2009
Casey and Marie are dressed as Mr. Incredible and Alice in
Wonderland throughout the Hallowe'en plotline this year, but it's
fun to see them in their full glory in this strip, which ends the
sequence.
Friday, November
13, 2009
Here
West of Bathurst has
a reference to
TV Tropes, which has a
referenceto
West of Bathurst, which has a reference to
TV Tropes, which has a...
Wednesday, November
18, 2009
I actually associated much of my Ph.D. with Frodo's trip to
Mordor.
Monday, December
21, 2009
I staunchly maintain that
Die
Hard counts as a Christmas movie. I tend to have a
hard time convincing people who believe that Christmas is a magical
wish-fulfilment fantasy, but ah well.
Wednesday, December
23, 2009
I was apparently in a reference-happy mood in December of 2009.
It does amuse me to picture a giant prize nigiri.
Monday, February
1, 2010
This comic begins a short
Alice
in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass sequence.
Click on the strip to get at the rest of it.
Friday, February
5, 2010
I believe I was watching
Stargate
SG-1 at the time myself. For some mysterious reason,
it made it into the strip.
Valentine's
Day 2010
If the Blue Screen of Death can make it onto this page, the Rube
Goldberg Valentine's Day Thingy deserves a place as well.
Wednesday, February
17, 2010
What took you so long, obligatory Douglas Adams reference?
Monday, April 5,
2010
What took you so long, obligatory
Firefly reference?
Saturday, April
17, 2010
I drew this one after my first ever trip to the SF convention
Ad Astra. I even cameo
in the comic; I'm the one with the yellow bag and the oddly complex
tights. With the exception of Barbara and the Victorian
silhouette, everyone in that panel is a real person; the steampunk
couple are acquaintances of mine, while the tiny Batman was running
all over the hotel on the convention's second day. The
swordsmith in the third panel is real as well, as are all the
posters on the walls.
Friday, May 21,
2010
I said this page wouldn't include the
Doctor Who comics, but I've provided
the first one so that you can click on it if you want to go to the
Doctor Who page and
seethe rest of the geekiness.
Saturday, May
29, 2010
This is sort of a companion comic to the Blue Screen of Death
strip, so I've included it here just for kicks. The whole
"core dump" thing does happen to me a teeny bit too frequently.
October
2010
I drew this for the
2010
SpecFic Colloquium. It referenced lots and lots of genre
categories.
Saturday, October
16, 2010
Mark Reads Harry
Potter is exactly what it says on the tin. I find
it quite, quite amusing.
Saturday, October
30, 2010
Mark Reads Twilight is
awesome as well in an entirely different way.
Wednesday, February
2, 2011
This comic references two distinct types of detective fiction and
can thus be used as a teaching tool. As well, it contains
funny hats.
Sunday, April 3,
2011
This comic appeared not long after the death of Diana Wynne Jones,
one of my favourite authors. The title panel is drawn in the
style of the cover designs of several of DWJ's recent novels (as
well as some reissues of old ones). If you look closely, you
can see many
WoB plot and
character references in this panel. The book being alluded to
here is
Howl's Moving
Castle, which is pretty fantastic.
Monday, July 4,
2011
Marie is here reading
Diane
Duane's So You Want to Be a
Wizard, a great YA fantasy that deserves to be more widely
known, as do its sequels. And yes, the series predates
Harry Potter by something
like a decade and a half. I believe Duane has lately been
working on reissuing the earlier books in the series with updated
references and technology, a practice of which I do not
particularly approve. Perhaps I am simply reacting negatively
to my students' baffling resistance to reading anything written
before 1995. There's no reason young readers can't enjoy
books set when their parents were children. I mean, I did.
Okay, continuity is a little off in the series, as Nita and
company are apparently aging at the rate of about a year per
decade, but I'm sure kids are capable of figuring out what's going
on. I shall stop ranting now. Read DD. She's
awesome.
Wednesday, July
6, 2011
Here's the second DD comic, which is also on the
Doctor Who page, but ah well.
Sometimes, geekeries overlap.
Friday,
July 15, 2011
This panel contains references not only to the release of
Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows 2 but to
A Very Potter Musical,
a Very Potter Sequel, and
Potter Puppet
Pals.
Friday, September
16, 2011
The College could also count as Wonderland or the land through the
looking glass or Hogwarts or maybe even Oz. Perhaps it's all
the Other Worlds of kids' lit bundled up into one.