Holding things aloft

Everyone of us is pretty familiar with the concept of rose-tinting the childhood. And today I think is a day to look back into the past and throw buckets of pink paint over what I used to think was the best animated series of all times:

Watching this might explain my tendency to hold aloft random objects when I was a kid. It might just be a magic one, you know. Luckily for He-Man it was a sword, though. Mine turned out to be a potato on a stick, which is now sitting somewhere in my basement, hidden under a pile of refuse.

Nothing beats the run towards the camera ending with a punch in the viewer’s face, except for maybe this somehow even funkier intro to She-Ra. It’s good to see a female main-cast, that doesn’t go down the Princess Peach path with superpowers that feed right from the foul bowl of idiot-man’s stereotype-ideas of where women draw their strength from. Namely severe mood-swings that enable Super Princess Peach to trigger the superpower of crying right after burning down something by being really, really angry.

Okay, before I declare She-Ra the symbol of womens’ empowerment and hold aloft my mighty She-Ra DVD boxset, do remember that I did pour a bucket of pink rose-tint over all of this. So much that I surely deserve a He-Man viewer-punch.

Videogames!

Yes, we love videogames. Well, one of us more than the other, but essentially the two of us of T&F love videogames! They’re great! Not all of them, of course. Most of them are rather dull. But some are really nice. Out of those that are nice, there are some which just seem to steal your time and brain capacity, but there’s this small fraction of games that are actually inspiring.

Do not worry, this will not mark the point at which this blog turns into one of the countless videogame-review blogs, this merely marks the point where I will out myself as a Metal Gear Solid fan and cannot keep the urge back to say: Oh my god, there’s a METAL GEAR ONLINE BETA across Europe from the 17th of April onwards to some point in May. I forgot the exact ending date because I’m still too excited about the downloadable beta.

So, if there are any T&F readers out there with a PS3 and who’ll want to team up my PSN name is: MrSchnabel. If you have hobbies like alcoholism or general apathy, why not combine it with a nice session of shooting T&F in the face? Videogames are easily combined with multiple drug addictions and/or states of mental emergencies.

Although, if you are in a manic phase and coke addicted AND you have a headset, please understand if I decline your friend request. Everyone else is pretty much welcome.

From Manchester to Liverpool.

Back in October 2007 when we created Tumble and Fall, Oliver East found one of our strips on the forum of the Comic Journal and he liked it. He liked it so much, he went onto our blog and read through the post of us whining about all this “networking stuff”. Oliver then put one of our strips up on the Manchester Comix Collective, calling out for sympathy for our little comic blog.

Now, half a year later we thought we should return the favor and create a little strip that tries to mimic his unique drawing style. Just as a way of saying “Thanks for the support. Much appreciated!”. As it turns out simply posting a sentence that contains Trains are…Mint quadrupled our daily hits and after Oliver posted about the strip on his blog it quadrupled again (the octupled normal daily hit number equals about 8 by the way, unless guys fall into the google trap when looking for “how to stay awake forever” or “secrets” and end up on this blog). So, it seems like Trains are…Mint are in the process of making it big*.

In December we were among the lucky ones to get our greedy hands on a preview version of Trains are…Mint 5 and almost got into a catfight with Banal Pig creator Steven Tillotson in the process. Luckily Oliver was there to calm the situation down in his comment section with, I hope I recall the words correctly, “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT”.

A week or two ago we received the complete version of Trains are…Mint 5 and our first impressions were all quite true (great artwork, funny narrative, not going into too much detail here as you could just go back to that post we made then, so we don’t have to write lengthy paragraphs nobody will ever read because they are too bloated with information of the written kind and no picture in between as you would expect from a bloody comic blog, so when I close this bracket let’s not discuss this as I’ll drawn the line, in bracket-form, right here).

The most interesting parts, especially in expectation of No 6, are when Oliver gets self-referential. You get the feeling if Oliver isn’t careful, he might just digest himself. “Digesting oneself is not really a good thing, is it?”, you ask while sipping on that little bit of brandy you pour yourself into your crystal-glass every night before descending into the filthy world of internet blogs. But you are quite right, it isn’t. But these are the moments in which reality and comic-reality merge and everything begins to vibrate a little. And this is the reason why I am very much looking forward to Trains are…Mint 6 as well. I just want to know how the protagonist in the comics copes with Oliver’s success drawing exactly these comics.

But, please, do see for yourself! It’s still available over at www.rollingstockpress.co.uk

And yes, “octupled” is a word.

*Big in the independent comic scene equals being able to pay for the next project before cutting down on food.

Trains are…tumblin’

As much as we’re trying, we have to admit that we do not actually like trains. If you’re outside one they’re fast and deadly, inside one they’re boring and slow. What we do like about trains, though, is that walking along train tracks inspires Oliver East to release a comic called Trains are…Mint.

We did receive our copy of Trains are…Mint 5 and we will give you our thoughts on it tomorrow. Today however you’ll get a little strip called:

To Tumble and Fall watching the trains go by

Oliver, I hope you do not mind your unauthorised guest appearance.

We’re back!

Okay, let’s not waste too much time. We’re back! No more useless posts about how busy we are not doing this non-profit, non-professional, non-progressive blog of ours! We are back and we’ll be posting regularly again! Now with 75% more exclamation marks!

To Tumble and Fall – Making a Comeback!

More to follow over the course of the next week…

Soon, soon…

We know this blog has become a little bit of an Apology-Blog lately. I think you might be aware of the fact that we’re too busy to continue T&F at the moment, so today, we will not discuss that but rather look into the near future and say that there will be new T&Fs soon. Or rather soonish.

In the meantime, we did put all of the Tumble and Fall strips on separate pages that you can browse through. They are on the top right corner of this page. Where it says COMICS & ESSAYS. Or was it the other way around? Not sure right now, just click something in the top right and hopefully you’ll end up on the comic-pages. Have fun!

No more “Perry Bible Fellowship”?

Shocking news really! According to this the Perry Bible Fellowship will end! Or maybe it already has. Attempts to get on to the blog were in vain. Which gives the impression that the blog has been axed. Or maybe too many people are trying to get onto the site for reasons of premature nostalgia or pre-end bemoaning and depression?

So, “Why oh why!” you ask? According the link above, creator of PBF, Nicholas Gurewitch gave the following reason:

“I’m making this decision for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I want to do other things besides be a cartoonist.”

Anyway, Tumble and Fall is sad to see PBF go, but at the same time we are looking forward to whatever else lies ahead for Nicholas Gurewitch. We’re pretty sure it’s going to be great.

UPDATE: Ah, there it is again! The blog is still up. So, what are you doing here, if you can be over there? Hm! Hm!

UPDATE II: Looks like I have been a little misinformed. The original article has been edited. PBF does not end. It just switches from daily to monthly updates. Yay!

Something a little different

Yes, it’s true, we haven’t been in contact for a while and yes, we did promise to keep in touch. We’re sorry, we are just busy! It’s got nothing to do with you! Really, we meant it when we said ‘Let’s stay friends!’ Honest! Maybe, you could just give us your mobile number and we get back in touch? Hm? You gave us your number already? Sorry, I think we lost it…

But before you scribble it down again for us, take a look at this little essay we wrote. It’s called:
The Sociology of Identity
Ha! There you were expecting an apology for the long absence and a nice little comic strip, but no no no, you get no apology and an extra superb essay. Wow! And it’s even got the word “Sociology” in it, your favourite kind of essay, isn’t it – with the word “Sociology”, we remembered that right, didn’t we? Or was it “Social Anthropology”? Hm, doesn’t matter, check out some mega-awesome quotes:

“This implies that no such external mediator or analysis could ever reform social institutions, as every thought and action is part of its own system.“

What? What implies what? Tell us more! MORE! – We got you now, don’t we? This might actually make you feel a little too excited, but while we are at it: The essay even features a super-genius quote by none other than Theodor W. Adorno and yes, it’s okay if you just shrieked a little in front of your computer. It’s the excitement, we know the feeling.

Anyhow, if you want to know what “[...] is the easy way out to transfer the accountability for the own longing to level down universal complexity to the lowest common factor to the fictitious mass media lobby” then just click on the given link underneath the new page index with the catchy name ESSAYS.

Enjoy! Oh, and in other news: We’re still unbelievably busy but hope we’ll have more time for the blog and the comic in the coming days / weeks.

Woops, what is this?

See, there we were, enjoying Christmas time. We watched all the movies, ate all the food, lay on our backs watching down on our growing bellies and then there was this strange time between Christmas and New Year’s, which was spent moaning and whining about how fat we have gotten and that we do not fit into our New Year’s dresses or suits anymore – then New Year’s. Our bodies magically compressed into non-fitting dresses / suits, shooting rockets into the sky, scaring off any potential alien from visiting good ol’ planet earth and then slipping the body-masses back out of the dresses / suits. Phew, what a year! That’s so 2007!

So, back to work. Still not working out in the free time. Thinking about picking up smoking just to be able to give up something. Bringing back Christmas presents that were overly expensive in the first place and getting a money refund instead. One week of Christmas-present fun should be enough, really. Keeping things is overrated. Well, back to work again, but something is not quite right. We think we forgot something and we cannot quite put our finger on it. What was it? There was something, definitely… but then we received a mail “Blabla48 would like to be added as one of your friends!”.

Oh yeah! We have got this internet presence we neglected for about half a month! Damn, we knew there was something! And it did not even stop at myspace. We found out we also have a blog…

Anyway, we are sorry you did not have the opportunity to read our blog instead of something more useful, like the small print on your credit-card statement or your television manual. Or useless statistics indicating that January is the most depressive time of the year, peaking on the 24th of January, the year’s favourite day for passing out of life voluntarily. We are sorry.

But be sure, we are here and we will offer comfort to those looking forward to the 24th of January as their time of departure off to another plane of existence, or heaven, or nothingness, or whatever you think awaits you “on the other side”. I mean, look at the coming year! There is going to be a new Star Trek movie! How great is that? And maybe, maybe there are finally going to be Hover-Boards as well! That’s right, Hover-boards! You wanna stick around for those, don’t you?

Well, well, we will try to post more regularly from now on for the fact alone that we want to post more quadruple alliterations like “Well, well, we will”. Thanks a lot for checking the page and sorry for not posting too much!

Time for a break.

T&F will take a little break to watch Christmas Specials, eat Rotkohl and just lay there and enjoy the time off. We strongly suggest you should do the same!

Take care, don’t drink and drive, be nice to each other and check back next year when we are back as well!