End of the Year
(Click on the pics to see the full comics)
Let it be known that when a trend makes it to Edmonton and is subsequently parodied in End of the Earth, said trend is dead. RIP fried chicken.
As I write this, the vinyl fad is still going strong, the last heartbeat of the dying music industry. HMV bit the dust in 2017 (sort of replaced by Sunrise Records, a Bizarro version of HMV with an even crappier selection of music) and now I have no reason to go to the mall except to squirt myself with cologne samples from the Bay when I have an important meeting to attend to that day.
Those hats, and variations of, have cropped up here and there in this dismal year. I am proud to state that Canada stayed awesome, mostly, in 2017.
There is no Mighty Ducks 4 (get on it Disney), but I can report they made a third one. This is a take on the so-called Mandela Effect. In the fourth panel where I mock the typical Reddit conversation, the last comment is my personal take on the Edmonton subreddit.
Sometimes I draw a comic so vile, so enraging, the internet directs its wrath at me. In this case a men’s rights activist stumbled upon this comic and preceded to post it on a men’s rights Reddit page where I was subsequently attacked on Twitter. One Twitter user I blocked 3-4 times, each time popping up under another pseudonym to harass me. Cuck me once, shame on you. Cuck me three times … won’t get fooled again.
2017 was also the year it became unfashionable to attack the Oilers. I still think a hockey card set highlighting all of the dismal moments in Oilers history has some merit. Just because the team are contenders again it doesn’t mean we have erased the history of jerseys being tossed on ice.
By the time you read this most of you will have seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi (no spoilers!), but at the time Rogue One was still rattling around my brain as my favourite Star Wars since Obi Wan told the doomed Anakin that he has the high ground. ANYWAY, I feel that we as a culture didn’t obsess over Darth Vader’s castle the way I did after seeing this movie. Think about it, he lives in a castle on the planet where he attacked his wife and was mutilated by Obi Wan. Darth could live anywhere in the galaxy but instead he lives in his lava castle, wallowing in grief. That’s metal.
For the record, Terry Jones was cool with my depiction of him Miley Cyrus-ing a wrecking ball into the coliseum. Hmm, 2017 was also the year the city gave up on the ol’ hockey barn, damning it to its likely demise. Also, anybody know what happened to Nicky Fordinski? His commercials are surprisingly hard to find on YouTube. It was like he never existed at all.
Goats, avocado toast and Twitter trolls: Edmonton’s 2017 summed up in a single comic.
Oof, little did I know that after this comic went live Derek Fildebrandt would find himself caught in a firestorm regarding the apartment he rented out on Airbnb while claiming housing allowance. He was also accused of ‘double-claiming’ meals, a hit-and-run and illegally killing a deer. Alberta politics: yee-haw!
Not much to annotate here, other than I want to say this is one my most unappreciated comics.
Edmonton lost a lot in 2017, but we also gained a beach, which may or may not return when the ice melts again. I really do think we should name it David Staples Beach in honour of the Edmonton Journal columnist who popularized the landmass.
Oh, there was also a civic election in 2017, but we all forgot about it because Don Iveson won in a huge landslide and it lacked a ‘sky-train lady’ candidate. We came close with Henry Mak, which is too bizarre for me to try and describe it here.
