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Jacula – from shock comic to glam rock

Published on November 23, 2021Leave a comment

It’s 1974, you’re a Dutch glam rock band and you want to be different: what do you do? You take your inspiration from the pulpiest of pulp comics and create a hit out of it:

Jacula was originally a Italian fumetti comics series, published from 1969 to 1982, translated into Dutch from 1973 to 1978. Fumettie are cheap, pocket sized black and white comics printed on the worst grade of paper. Cheap and disposable entertainment, full of lurid sex and violence, made by anonymous and interchangeable writers and artists, with nothing to recommend them. Jacula is a bog standard example. Set in the 19th century, Jacula is the “queen of vampires” and travels all over the world, fighting other vampires and getting involved in horror situations, with of course at least one or two sex scenes per story. While over time there has been a re-appreciation of the fumetti, with the realisation that at least some of those anonymous creators were genuinely good at their work, I can’t say Jacula would excite anybody, at least not the issues published in Dutch. The stories are plodding, the artwork is pedestrian and there’s little to shock, no edgier than a Hammer Horror movie.

A selection of gory and sexy Jacula covers

It probably sold thanks to its covers. Always better than the interior artwork, with a big helping of bare tits and the occassional bloke’s arse, lots of blood and horror, they’re doing a good job selling the much more staid interior. Maybe that’s what inspired Dutch glam rock band Lemming to create songs of it and from Lucifera, a similar series. Not bad songs either. They fit in well with that groovy age of seventies horror, that also included the fumetti that inspired them, as well as the various low budget horror movies filmed cheaply in central Europe. Watching this clip now gives me an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. These sort of cheap shlock comics are no longer being published in the Netherlands and even in Italy itself seems to be mostly gone. As for the band, they released one album in 1975, disbanded sometime in the seventies, reunited in 2002 and released one more album in 2008.

Monopoly Mermaid Monday

Published on October 4, 2021Leave a comment

“You can imagine what it smells like”

Published on September 19, 2021Leave a comment

“British comedian does a bit on trans people” is a phrase that normally strikes fear in the heart, but Joe Lycett here is funny without punching down.

What I like about it is that it’s neither making fun of trans people or the idea of being trans, nor doing easy dunking on transphobes, but that Lycett takes the time to explain these concepts in between the humourous bits. Most of the humour here is aimed at the commercialisation of Pride and how much of it only focuses on the “g” in LGBT at the expense of the other letters and how some of these letters, like trans people feel under attakc by the right wing press, but not as much as they are under attack by “my mum’s friend, Linda”. It’s well thought out and sympathetic and it’s so rare to see this. Going through the rabbit hole of Youtube recommended clips of Channel 4 comedy panel shows and stumbling over this was a very pleasant surprise.

How to change the oil on your Super Cub: an anime tutorial

Published on April 28, 2021Leave a comment

“So what was episode four of Super Cub about?”

“Well, Komagu got herself a part time job couriering documents between her school and another one in a different town and we spent most of the episode watching her ride her Super Cub between the two. At one point she got caught in the rain and had to buy a raincoat that cost her a day and a half of salary, roughly. Oh, and she learned to change the oil on her bike”:

Gods I love this series. Twentytwo minutes of the most mundane shit possible, sold entirely through body acting and animation. It’s not even particularly spectacular animation that’s on display here, just solid craft. Nothing that makes your eyes go pop if you’d watch it on a monitor at an anime con, but when you give it a chance an episode is over before you notice. If you like Yuru Camp, you’ll love this.

Risu: “I’m still okay” knock knock “I’m not okay” — Hololive showcase

Published on April 22, 2021Leave a comment

Posted because I fell from my chair, laughing when I watched this earlier today. What happened when squirrel girl Risu stole mamah Moona’s piggy bank to count the coins in it:

It’s fairly normal for popular media franchise to be exported from Japan to other Asian countries, establishing branches there. And while Hololive’s foray into China wasn’t succesful, it was a logical move considering the potential size of the vtuber market there. Much more unexdpected was the establishment of an Indonesian branch, rather than say a Korean one. Ayunda Risu is one of the three first generation Indonesian Hololivers and she’s just as she appears here, a mischievous squirrel. Her generation mates are Moona Hoshinova, whose piggy bank she stole and Airani Iofifteen, heard late in the video offering seasoning to Moona to make squirrel satah. The first generation of Indonesian Hololivers all live together you see, with Moona being the mother and Iofi the father and Risu as their unruly child. A setup that works well, producing hilarious videos like this. What also makes HoloID stand is that before the English language branch of Hololive was established, these three were the sole Hololivers regularly streaming in English, often doing trilingual streams even, using Japanese, English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Clip created by Holoclip.