Happy New Year!!

The post New Year’s 2010 appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

The post Seems Like Yesterday appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

My comic strips aren’t meant to be autobiographical, but sometimes they are…

My computer totally crashed, and it was bad. I ended up taking the opportunity to update to Win7 64bit and buy some more ram, and another huge hard drive. Unfortunately, my scanner doesn’t play well with Win7. So the next several comic strips were drawn directly in the computer. It wasn’t until quite a few strips later that I learned how to fudge the scanner driver to work in my system. You can totally see me go off model in a lot of these scanner-less comic strips (well…more off model than usual…).

The post Computer Crash appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

The post Teacher appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

Don’t you just hate it when this happens?? You feel sick. Miserable. Coughing. Aching. Sneezing…and all that other stuff they talk about in the NyQuil commercials. But you’re much too tough to go to the doctor. Who wants to go waste a day at the doctor’s office anyway? You have to make an appointment. You’ll have to tell the receptionist what’s wrong with you.

“Um…yeah…everything’s coming out…bad…”

“Can you be more specific sir?”

“Um…no…”

You know they all start laughing at you the moment they hang up the phone.

Then you arrive and you have to fill out a bunch of paper work. You could have your leg chopped off and they’d look at you and say,

“Please have a seat and fill out this sheet with any changes in your insurance.”

“My leg is missing!”

“Yes sir. I can see that. We have quite a wait here in front of you. Please have a seat.”

You laugh, but I’ve totally had this happen to me. Well…fine…it wasn’t my leg…

Your moment finally arrives and you get to see the doctor. Only, you don’t get to see the doctor. You get to see a nurse first. She’ll ask you to sit on the little bed, then she’ll want to take your blood pressure, look in your ears, and take off your shirt. Hmmm…wait…you know now that I think about it that sounds like a pretty good date…

But just when you think the nurse really likes you she’s gone and there’s some old pompous man with a white coat and a fancy degree. And then, it happens. It always happens. You explain what you’ve been suffering through for the last week at least, but all of a sudden the symptoms seem to have disappeared. It’s like the germs got stage fright or something.  The doctor just nods his head while you try to convince him that you’ve really been sick.

“I was throwing up! There were colors!”

“Mmmhmmm… is that right?”

The patronizing look from the MD is too much for you. You watch in agony as he scribbles something into his little folder no doubt labeling you some kind of hypochondriac. As a last resort, you try desperately to muster up some coughs, a sneeze, ANYTHING! But no…the virus knows exactly how to play this game. It wants you to appear totally and completely healthy as long as the man with the meds is there.

The doctor says you’ll be just fine. And so you leave. And vow never to return. But the germs will get you again one of these days. And as you leave the doctor to his little room and his smug smile you know in your heart that sooner or later you’ll be back. And you know that in a few weeks time, the bill will arrive with the fees for this “consultation.”

Blah. I hate you all. And your little coats too.

If you enjoyed this rant, you’ll love this:

http://www.raccoontoons.com/2weeks.html

The post Doctors Visit appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

For the record: I love Transformers. I always have. I always will. But I’m not talking about the movies that came out recently. I’m talking about the 80′s. The real deal. I own all the original cartoons on DVD…twice. The 1987 Transformers movie was the stuff that dreams were made of, and starred Orson Welles in what would be his last performance. Transforming robots. That’s magic right there. But then came Michael Bay…

Michael Bay had a chance to do something awesome. But he didn’t. Instead he took what was probably the worst script of all time and made it even worse. I was a film major, so yeah, that’s right, I’m totally allowed to say this. Transformer fans everywhere cringed when he was named director, but even we didn’t know how bad these movies were going to be. And don’t go and tell me that they’re good. Don’t argue with me and say, “Oh, what are you talking about? That first one was great!” Because you know what? It wasn’t great. It was greatly awful. Forget that I’m a die hard child of the 80′s. From a film standpoint alone, it was awful. No character development. The transformers are secondary cast members. The deceptions don’t even HAVE characters, and when Jazz died, I didn’t care. I mean really! Jazz is supposed to be awesome, and I didn’t even care! Way to endear the characters to me Bay. Nice work. Oh and everyone knows that Jazz never died in the 80′s. Moron.

Michael Bay really ruined his chance to make an awesome live action Transformers movie…and in doing so, he collectively tore into the souls of Transformer fans everywhere and blew chunks on our childhood memories. No. I’m not even exaggerating a little. And if I ever see you on the street Michael Bay, I’ll probably punch you in the face…or at least call you an idiot.

The post Stupid Hollywood appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

Ok. I know a lot of you are going to hate me after this. But I have a confession to make. I’ve read the Harry Potter books, and I’ve watched all the movies, and… -get ready for it- I think I might actually prefer the movies to the books. I know, I know, blasphemy you say. But I remember when I read the books, there were all these things that seems unnecessary as far as the story structure goes. Several times I remember thinking, “Man, I wish she’s just get on with the story instead of going off on this ‘house elf’ tangent.” Sometimes I honestly believed the author was just writing to try and fill pages to make the books longer.

Now, before you all leave my site and never come back, let me clarify by saying that I really did enjoy the books. I think the stories are great. I think the characters are great, and I think the author did a great job of strengthening the characters within the stories. I just think there’s an awful lot of unnecessary filler in there. Maybe it’s because I’m not really into the fantasy genre as a whole, and that’s kind of the style there.

Now when I watched the movies, I got really excited because they cut out a lot of the fat. The screenwriters cut out all those things that I wanted to cut out while reading the books. I thought they still stayed true to the stories (with just a few glaring omissions), and I felt the movies really kept the pace alive. I enjoy both. But the films have stuck with me much more.

It’s ironic really. Because I was out of the country for a couple years when Harry Potter mania stuck. At first I really avoided it altogether. I finally watched the first two movies at the request of a friend. I thought they were alright. And then some kids pushed me to read the books, which I also enjoyed. Then the movies grew up a little, and they really won me over. So yeah, there ya’ go. Don’t hate me for my opinion, but feel free to comment below.

The post Movie Line appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

Raccoon Toons is indeed on facebook! There’s a link to your right. Click it. Become one with it. You know you want to.

It is labeled under the old website name “www.mattandmichael.com” so don’t be confused when you get there. I would change it, but facebook won’t let me because facebook is lame like that. Lame.

Either way. Be a fan. Do it. Do it now.

Thanks for the support!

The post Be A Fan appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

The post That’s Random appeared first on Raccoon Toons.

The post Bailout appeared first on Raccoon Toons.