Chicken Wings: Did I ever tell you I wanted to be a pilot?

Hold on. I suddenly got a hankering for hot sauce.

Mmmmmm, Ok. That was delicious. Now then. Here’s a great new comic for the first full day of summer. Chicken Wings is not about Monday night football with the guys like you might think. It’s actually the TV show Wings staring chickens. Without the relationship melodrama. For those that don’t recall, Wings was a sitcom about a pilot, a mechanic, and their manager and secretary who worked at a small airport in Nantucket. Monk fans may be interested to know that Tony Shalhoub was a frequent the show as the all important cab driver, though my favorite character was the dopey mechanic Lowell portrayed by Thomas Haden Church. I watched it again recently and I seem to remember it being a lot funnier when I was a kid. But then the funniest character was Lloyd and his humor doesn’t really follow my interests any longer. Chicken Wings, on the other hand, is fresh and witty and contains quite a few more jokes that are funnier if you’re a pilot or work at a general aviation airport. There is also a complete lack of blond women in denim overalls. Early 90′s fashion. Yikes.

Dresden Codak: I feel so insignificant

The day has broken and I am seeing the world for the first time. All that was before were scribblings in the dark and the cackling of fools.

Behold. The web comic need not be a quick laugh and crude scrawling. It can be more. I used to think I had a wild imagination and crazy dreams. In truth I am as pedantic as the old man who guards the tubing seeking to tap my wallet for the benefit of little more than the Walls. But there is hope. Where xkcd is my gateway to modern science or Hark, A Vagrant! is a gateway to the past, Dresden Codak is my gateway to creativity and philosophy. For 10 years I have longed for that leather-patched professor sitting in some local coffee shop discussing Faust and Calvin with all who dare to sit at his table. Dresden Codak does not meet that need, but it stirs a hunger that was long dismissed.

Sock Puppet Army: IRL for English majors

EDIT: Holy expletive deleted Batman! Apparently Aldernon Nick Hamilton took my critiques to heart because just 24 hours later the site is clean and mean and a bit easier to navigate! Actually, much easier to navigate. The archives even work now. Although Hamilton hasn’t added his name to the about page yet, it would seem a change is in the future. SWEET.

Unfortunately in today’s environment this is not limited to English majors, so many of you know the scenario. You just graduated college, your eager to start your career and six months to a year later you find yourself  jobless and penniless. And where is the quickest place for a college grad to make a buck? Why, it’s your local neighborhood restaurant!

Sock Puppet Army follows a recent grad named Jack as he begins his slide into the depths of the restaurant biz. It’s very much an insider joke kind of comic, but for everyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant SPA nails the experience. I’ve been our of the restaurant business for three years now so going through the nearly four months of archives has dredged up an array of old memories. To be fair, no one ever gets out of the restaurant biz, they just get out of the fight and sit on the sidelines. Or switch teams depending on your perspective. I was a server and bartender for just long enough to get comfortable so I don’t have the grizzled 1000 yard stare every time I hear the words keep the change. I still look back on those days fondly, which is probably why I enjoy SPA so much, because once you get past the server solidarity there’s not much left to like about this comic.

Ellie on Planet X: Dr. Suess’s 80′s Saturday morning time slot

Oh hello. What brings you here? Friday? No, it couldn’t possibly…Oh. Oh my. Well I really hadn’t prepared anything. No, wait. There is one thing I’ve been holding back. It’s a bit on the, well, childish side. A cute little comic called Ellie on Planet X. More of the whimsical child and less of the obtuse.

It’s on the list of new web comics for 2010 and it quietly slipped under my radar until recently. The jokes are simple and well delivered, often focusing on the absurdity of the situation. But what is this situation we find ourselves in? Well, I’ll tell you. The author, Mr. James Anderson, is of the firm belief that he works for NASA’s Mission Control  on a secret project which until recently was under complete control of one Dr. Strang. A mad scientist of the sort that believe in teaching children by bringing them to the subject at hand, including history. Many of the missing doctor’s projects have been locked away likely never to be seen again, but one project has been closely monitored for the last 30 years and finally paid off eight years ago. Unfortunately we’re only just now receiving the data. Anderson has the important job of chronicling this data for the masses.

Sam and Fuzzy: Is mostly about ninjas and demons

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT ALL ALONG.

Happy new years from Faceplant!  May your year be full of enough movies, video games, comics and books to drive a man insane.  What?  You want more than that in 2011?  Food?  Absolutely not!  Get back to your computer screen and start searching for something awesome THIS INSTANT.  Okay, well, you can read this first.  See?  Compromise is what 2011 is all about.

I was going to bust in the new year by doing something a little out of the ordinary for me:  reviewing a movie.  I’m not much of a movie watcher, but I figured a new year means to get into new things, so I plopped down in front of the tube and browsed my Netflicks ques for something worth reviewing.  To make a long story short, I ended up turning off GI JOE about 22 percent of the way in, because it was awful.  So instead I’m going to review Sam and Fuzzy, a long running comic by creative mastermind Sam Logan, which chronicles the adventures of a sociopathic bear-thingie, and the sad sack, weakling twig of a man who is stuck with him.  Which is totally what GI JOE should have been like.

Oh Goodie!: sex, drugs, and rock and roll without the drugs

Meet S.P. Burke

Some of our readers may recall that I promised to discuss S.P. Burke’s Oh Goodie! after meeting him at the Cincinnati Comic Expo about a month ago. He was kind enough to answer several questions I had about him and his work so we will actually have artist quotes today. So, pop in your Fugazi album paint your fingernails black and enjoy!

Now, I’m not about to pretend to be any sort of hipster or elitist. I enjoy a variety of music, but I have never benefited from living in a town with a large happenin’ music scene. Burke, while he may be no hipster either, has had the benefit of living in Chicagoland and experiencing the many great and wonderful things that city has to offer. One only has to read his currently unspooling rocktober sidetrack starring Eddie Van Helsing to see he’s got the pedigree.

Fortunately for us he is in the process of compiling that experience in comic form.

Spacetrawler: The exploitation of Earth on a multi-national level

When it comes to sci-fi epics there are a number of formulas we have come to expect over the years. A bunch of abductees becoming vital members of a spaceship’s crew is not one of those formulas. And yet, that is where we find ourselves in Spacetrawler. Creator Christopher Baldwin is an author and illustrator for MAD magazine, yeah apparently that thing still publishes. Spacetrawler kicked off in January and is Baldwin’s third serial webcomic following Bruno and Little Dee. Oh, he also did a bit of experimenting with Bad Mile and Water Street.

Hark! a vagrant: History without the dust

Now I’m sure there were a lot of history buffs who read my XKCD review and said “Physics and math and linguistics are all well and good but what about history?” Good news! There’s this super lady in Canada. She draws a history comic called Hark! A Vagrant.

Of course being a comic, it’s not your dry 1789 this and Magna Carta that. There’s a lot of liberty taken with the characters that make up the history of the world. Like XKCD there are many instances I find my self curled up reading Kate Beaton’s comics with a copy of Wikipedia close at hand. A dying fire keeping me company and revealing the mysteries of the text.

Rooster Teeth comics: Diversification isn’t always good

Are you a halo fanboy? Do you own every Halo game from Combat Evolved to a pre-order of REACH? Then you’ve heard of Red Versus Blue. You’ve probably played griffball. Have you read the Rooster Teeth comic from the creators of RVB? Oh, well then you can skip a couple of paragraphs. For the fortunate ones, let me just say, lay off this one. It’s just awful. You remember when you were a kid and your dad would give you the paper when he was finished with it? You’d quick flip to the comics section and read all your favorites like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. Then after you had you perused all your favorites you dwindle down to the likes of Marmaduke and Dennis the Menace. The Rooster Teeth comics fall squarely in the latter category. There are some occasional one liners but you read it because it’s Tuesday or Thursday and you’ve read all your favorite comics for the day.

PFSC: Sylvia Plath meets the surrealists

When I entered college in the fall of 2002 I was not in a position to understand why anyone would commit suicide. It seemed to me to be the single most foolish thing a human being could do.

The following fall I read The Bell Jar and suddenly the world became a dark and dreary place. Leaving the world behind didn’t seem so foolish. It wasn’t for me, but it suddenly made sense why someone would think it might be the answer. Pictures For Sad Children had a similar effect on me when I read through the entire archives in a week last winter.  It is for that reason that I must strongly urge everyone I meet to avoid doing that very thing. By all means read PFSC. Just read one a week while vacationing on the beaches of Fiji. In the evening, with a Mai Tai. You know, just to put a little perspective on your good times.