🎨 Artcow Iconoclast / Jonathan Mack Sweet - The Chris-Chan of Arkansas

[Adamska]

I don't quite get the racism behind the bunny thing yet, although I have my guesses. What stuck out to me is the whole "[J-word] Junction" name.

Also, the main character - are those supposed to be merit badges on a hat and a yellow cape?

edit: I'm guessing the racism with the bunny thing comes from the bunny's color, combined with some slang or slur I'm not familiar with.

Aye, the term you're looking for is "Jungle Bunny", which combined with the bandanna, the color, the gold teeth, and that name rolled into one ball of racism that is forever stuck inside my brain now.

And yes, I believe it represents the time he was in Boy Scouts or something. He used to wear them when he was in college.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

He wore Boy Scout stuff in college? I've never seen anyone else do that. I asked earlier in the thread, but I wonder what rank he made it to? In order to get the highest rank, Eagle, you have to coordinate and participate in a service project for the community or other people. It can be anything like restoring a park to coordinating a book drive for a library of a new school.

Back to the bunny thing, the page it's on has another derivative of the J-word in it. See if you can spot it.

Iconoclast's explanation (or excuse) for the racism is something to the effect of we're too sensitive nowadays, and stuff was a lot more politically incorrect in "the good old days" or something like that, IIRC. I think he drew a comparison to old cartoons like Looney Tunes or similar.

 

[Scribbler]

He wore Boy Scout stuff in college? I've never seen anyone else do that. I asked earlier in the thread, but I wonder what rank he made it to? In order to get the highest rank, Eagle, you have to coordinate and participate in a service project for the community or other people. It can be anything like restoring a park to coordinating a book drive for a library of a new school.

Back to the bunny thing, the page it's on has another derivative of the J-word in it. See if you can spot it.

Iconoclast's explanation (or excuse) for the racism is something to the effect of we're too sensitive nowadays, and stuff was a lot more politically incorrect in "the good old days" or something like that, IIRC.

It's the flowers, isn't it?

Yeah, as he sees it, his racism isn't that bad and we are too soft and overly sensitive about it. He's wrong, as usual, but you know him. Anyone who disagrees with him is a filthy liberal scumbag.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Yeah, as he sees it, his racism isn't that bad and we are too soft and overly sensitive about it.

I also recall him saying something like the racism is so silly that it's obvious it's a parody or satire or humorous. In other words, I believe he also meant that "it's too absurd to be taken seriously."

Spoiler

Yup. It's on a sign hidden in the flowers.

 

[atomik fyre]

He wore Boy Scout stuff in college? I've never seen anyone else do that. I asked earlier in the thread, but I wonder what rank he made it to?

The emblems on his characters hat aren't merit badges, they're pins (aka buttons or pin-back badges, whatever you call them where you come from.) And yes, I believe that he actually does, or did wear all those pins on an actual hat. He's mentioned this as something that he thought upset Ashleigh about his "look" the one time they met, his humorous novelty pin collection on his hat. I can only guess what kind of jokes were on these hilarious buttons. I'm guessing "Pobody's Nerfect," "You Can't Tell Me What to Do, Only the Voices in My Head Can," and the ubiquitous '90s "Mean People Suck / Nice People Blow."

I don't know if he wore any Scout stuff while in college, the only thing we've really seen him w/ is a high school photo of him w/ a Webelows scarf around his head. I doubt he made it into the actual Boy Scouts and topped out at the highest level of Cub Scouts. Once again, this was a high school photo, so he really should've been in Boy Scouts and nearing end of his time there.

 

[The I Scream Man]

You know, all this talk about Boy Scouts has got me thinking: has there ever been a time in Sweetie's life where he genuinely excelled? Come on, even the most forlorn and hopeless of us has had some point in time where we were the man (or woman), right? Am I just overly optimistic? I really can't think of anything, and that's so sad.

 

[Shadow Fox]

You know, all this talk about Boy Scouts has got me thinking: has there ever been a time in Sweetie's life where he genuinely excelled? Come on, even the most forlorn and hopeless of us has had some point in time where we were the man (or woman), right? Am I just overly optimistic? I really can't think of anything, and that's so sad.

Well, he did take that awesome foot-long shit he had to take a picture of and plaster up on his website. I think it's pretty safe to say that's not something many of us can (or would) brag about.

 

[DrChristianTroy]

Gallagher, Yakov Smirnoff and Sinbad are A-List to this guy? Does he think all of America is Branson or something?

EDIT: "Get rid of the boring Indian artifacts in the ASU Museum; put in some tourist attractions like two-headed goats and tilted rooms and a few skulls. Skulls are cool." I think Sweet and Tyce need to hook up.

Well Gallagher's current shows are wicked racist and aimed at the state fair crowd. Shit sounds right up Sweet's alley.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Well, he did take that awesome foot-long shit

I remember unexpectedly seeing pics of turd on that one site he made. I had blocked it out of my memory, more or less, since I last posted about it:

And why the hell would someone take a photo of a turd in a toilet and put it online?

 

[Meowthkip]

The irony that such an intellectually uncurious man who has no ability or inclination to investigate anything wants to be a reporter just struck me. I knew he was incompetent; we all knew that. We all knew he'd never be a reporter, but the sheer magnitude of the irony of who Sweet is vs. who he wishes he could be only just now dawned on me and I am almost writhing on the floor in laughter.

He's as much of a reporter as Mallard Fillmore is.

 

[Ca Ira]

I think Sonichu is drawn better. As far as the racism, Chris' comic is racist but it seems less malicious.

I think that the extreme simplicity of Chris's prejudices is what stops them from getting under my skin. Chris's horror of gays doesn't seem much more complex than "Homo Male = Bad"; Sweet's screeds about sterno-drinking gangstas indicate a more developed prejudice.

You know, all this talk about Boy Scouts has got me thinking: has there ever been a time in Sweetie's life where he genuinely excelled? Come on, even the most forlorn and hopeless of us has had some point in time where we were the man (or woman), right? Am I just overly optimistic? I really can't think of anything, and that's so sad.

Even Chris was the Level-Up King once.

 

[Holdek]

He's mentioned this as something that he thought upset Ashleigh about his "look" the one time they met, his humorous novelty pin collection on his hat. I can only guess what kind of jokes were on these hilarious buttons. I'm guessing "Pobody's Nerfect," "You Can't Tell Me What to Do, Only the Voices in My Head Can," and the ubiquitous '90s "Mean People Suck / Nice People Blow."

"Who farted?" "I'm with Dingus "

 

[ToroidalBoat]

What's with the cape thing the character wears (who I presume is a self-insert of Iconoclast and has the same name he does IRL)?

 

[Trombonista]

What's with the cape thing the character wears (who I presume is a self-insert of Iconoclast and has the same name he does IRL)?

It's either a symbol that he's the hero or a fart absorber. Probably both.

 

[John Titor]

What do you guys think is a better comic? The Belch Dimension or Sonichu?

Chris is unintentionally more adept at concepts like "negative space" and panel spacing than Iconoclast is. That and I don't remember how often Chris juxtaposes photos with drawing. It's not as cool as Icky-kins thinks it is.

 

[Le Bateleur]

It's either a symbol that he's the hero or a fart absorber. Probably both.

IIRC, Sweet actually wore the cape when he was younger, possibly at the same time that he pushed around a decorated shopping trolley.

He still wears the hats decorated with badges, referring to them as his "trademark". Back in December he recounted a visit to a Santa's grotto where he bumped his head on a doorframe and one of the pins on his hat cut into his head.

 

[Chan the Wizard]

Did he actually get his degree? I'm trying to understand the timeline and don't understand when/if he actually graduated.

He gets reprimanded for plagiarism, kicked off the paper and refuses to attend counseling which causes the school to kick him out. At one point he says graduate student, but going by age he would be too young (unless he was a prodigy...) and he was still living in the dorms which is reserved for undergraduate students. I don't see when he actually graduated.

As a former copy editor at my university's paper, the whole thing is just really bizarre. There's some serious paranoid delusions going on that need to be addressed by psychiatrists. And while I didn't even try to read that chicken scratch outline of the routine, no one is going to accuse a contributor of plagiarism without significant cause to do so.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

IIRC, Sweet actually wore the cape when he was younger, possibly at the same time that he pushed around a decorated shopping trolley.

Iconoclast used the hat with pins (and a cape?), while CWC dressed up in "The Classic" and "the medallion" (now the "Tomgirl" thing). It's like they have to loudly advertise that they're not normal, kind of like how some species of animals have to advertise that they're not good to eat with bright colors. There's nothing wrong with being odd per se, of course, but I wonder why they have to be so "loud" about it.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Ho-leee ....

From the Welcome to Lemora! site. I don't know the official date that this was posted, but it seems to be in celebration of Belch Dimension issue #25, released in 2007:

page 28. The plot to destroy a rival with a fake photograph of them in a compromising position was first used in "Eve Bade Adam Eat", which was the fourth story in Sweet's 2002 anthology Almasheol. Sweet admits that it was inspired by a "half-cocked" revenge scheme he had. "I put together a fake photograph of ASU's president naked in bed with a little girl, and planned to send it to [Scott] Mitchell with a note saying 'From a friend'," said Sweet. "Once he was stupid and greedy enough to try to publish it [in The Herald], the eds would have no choice but to bounce him out on his ass. However, I didn't want [Bonnie] Thrasher to trace the photo back to me. I knew she was hateful and insane, but not stupid. Even if I took every precaution, wore gloves, and posted the letter from another town, the old bat would still smell me on the envelope. So I scrapped the plan--call it cowardice, call it taking the moral high road, I don't know--and burned the photo.

(emphasis added)

The eye-popping perversion of the sentiments above give way to the laughable irony below:

Mitchell's over in Texas now, at the Fart Worthless--I mean, Ft. Worth--Star-Telegram. He's a copy editor. A...copy...
editor. I'd like to sit him down and ask him: Was it really worth it, Scooter? Sure, you rose up in the ranks faster than any other Herald staffer in thirty years. You made Herald editor in a year, and all you had to do was sell me out, cost me my job, turn all my friends against me, and force me to leave school. Ten years later I'm writing books and starting my own company, and what're you up to? Still editing copy. Cripes, a monkey could do your job. You're not even worth the price of the bowl of beans it would take to muster up the gas to fart on you and set you on fire."

Writing books that don't sell, that is. Which, of course, a monkey could do.

On the following page, he makes the connection between one of his murderous characters and Bonnie Thrasher.

It's strongly implied that Rhea Borstein was a suspect in the murder of Johanna Ralston two years before, and that she has a history of murdering or arranging the deaths of staffers she feels are a threat to her. Sweet confirmed this in his Jul 2 blog entry: "Like her real life-counterpart, Rhea Borstein is a demagogue and a bully. Presumably she's never been questioned about her tactics, although I'd wager she has her fair share of enemies. The thing is, she surrounds herself with an equal number of enforcers and blind followers, so she's next to impossible to take down. She's the High Priestess of the Gospel of the Magic Phantom Sketch--a sacred testament only her prophet Mitchell has ever seen, yet which the brainwashed leftist acolytes believe in the existance of without question. It's really amazing how stupid they are. I mean, hell, you can teach a chimpanzee sign language, but not get a liberal to have an independent thought. They're smarter than most liberals I know. I say let chimps publish The [ASU] Herald. The paper's quality would probably improve dramatically."

He backs up his vitriolic comparison with empty-headed liberal bashing.

 

[Shadow Fox]

Ho-leee ....

From the Welcome to Lemora! site. I don't know the official date that this was posted, but it seems to be in celebration of Belch Dimension issue #25, released in 2007:

Of course, that begs the question of where he got the picture of the naked man and little girl to use in his shoop in the first place.

Ten years later I'm writing books and starting my own company,

He backs up his vitriolic comparison with empty-headed liberal bashing.

That's our Sweetie! /canned laughter

Reading him refer to himself in the third person like he's being interviewed is both hilarious and cringe-worthy. This is USI manifested in (hairy, gassy) human form.