I Book My Own Gigs (Sliders Comics: Armada).

So guys, two things: First, I’m a cartoonist. Did y’all know that? I make comic books. This blog is what I do when I’m not making comic books (or making coffee because, y’know, recession). So the fact that there are Sliders comic books is totally great. My two worlds! Combining! Far out!

Second: wait, there are Sliders comic books?

Sure! Between 1996 and 1997 Acclaim Comics (remember them? no, me neither [okay, I do, but not really]) put out a series of Sliders comic books. The intent was to ‘tell the stories that couldn’t be told,’ freeing the infinite concept of the show from constraints like “budget” and “reality” and “no, why would you ever think that having the sliders chased by a huge fucking ANT BEAST would be a good idea?”

A preposterous Ant-Beast, AND a preposterous “Arturo is Fat” joke. TWO BIRDS/ONE STONE.

The above panel brings up the question we’re all thinking: “so, like, are they good?”

The answer?

Swell, indeed.

In a word? Meh.

I mean, I should qualify this by saying that ‘mainstream comics’ aren’t really my scene. And while that make me seem like a pompous windbag— and sure, in this case, I’m going to be one— I’m really just admitting that this kind of comic work isn’t what I’m familiar with. So I won’t be able to judge it as fairly as I otherwise could. Not to mention that it’s a ‘mainstream comic’ from 1996, so I’m going to be double useless.

In any case, there’s a few of these weird comics to bust through, but a good amount of them are two-parters, so that should make it pretty easy on us. In the first of these, “Armada,” we have what’s basically a dry-run for “Invasion,” what with some interdimensional conquerers hell-bent on turning us into salt.

Hey look, here’s Rembrandt sneezing a woman to death:

The next thing he says is “Vacuum Cleaners must be big business on this Earth… heh.” BECAUSE OF COURSE HE WOULD SAY THAT.

So before I deal with this silliness, I need to get something else out of the way. The way these comics write our characters is so ridiculous. It’s like, glib punchline after glib punchline after total nonsense that no one let alone the Sliders would ever say or do.

Plus, since when was the Timer just a miniature TARDIS?

Now, I’ve read a few comic-adaptations in my day. I was a big fan of The X-Files comics that Topps put out, and I remember getting a Batman Forever comic when the movie came out. And so I feel like it’s safe to say that it’s a general problem with these things and the whole ‘making the pictures look like the real people’ thing. So if you were wondering, the answer is “No, they don’t look anything like they do in the show.” And since they also don’t act anything like they do in the show, we’ve got a problem? What are we reading? Is this unique? Is this Sliders?

Well, I don’t know. It’s fun enough to skim through. It’s 2012, and we didn’t pay money for this comic book, and we don’t really have any stake in it. I guess this shit is so fucking mediocre that it just ends up being bad again? But that isn’t to say it’s not without merit. The Zercurvians are not only Sliders, they’re also two dimensional.

And this page is totally rad.

But as rad as that idea is, it is, like many other rad ideas on the show, thrown in the middle of a bit of a mess. The first part of Armada has worse pacing than “Time Again & World.” So compounded with the fact that the characters are even less defined than Wade is in general, we aren’t left with anything to love. There’s some weird shit that happens, Quinn climbs a building, they find a spaceship, shit is weird again, an alien says “hey we found your double he was SOO NICE so we killed him,” and then they slide out—only to land on a world where ANOTHER ALIEN FORCE IS INVADING.

Conclusion? Perhaps. Thrilling? Perhaps not.

…what?

So it’s nonsense. And so is part two, more or less, but it does have this panel, which is maybe the best thing that has or will ever happen ever in Sliders history:

MOTHERFUCKING SPROOM MOTHERFUCKER

I BOOK MY OWN GIGS, MOTHERFUCKERS.

But other than that being awesome, the second part of Armada is so ridiculous I’m not even going to summarize it with anything other than “weird shit happens, on both a spaceship and a vaguely Roman world (oh wait it’s ATLANTIS? OF COURSE IT IS [WHAT?]) I guess but who cares because that shit is weird.”

And if you guessed that this dude is Quinn, then I don’t know who you are anymore.

I can’t even understand what’s going on in it. I keep getting distracted by the atrocious use on onomatopoetic typeface:

And of course, the be-all end-all of bad ideas, this panel:

WAIT. Hold on.

Enhance.

Enhance.

Enhance.

Yep. That’s an awful computer written “Noooo.” If I could have that on a T-Shirt, I would in a heartbeat. But that shit is so dumb. This whole comic is so bad. Trying to make sense of it makes me have this face:

Whoa, don’t force it, bro. You’ll pop something.

So some weird shit happens, and then the Atlanteans get to skewer some other Aliens, and the Zercurvians are defeated. Or whatever. The sliders end up on a world where erryone chunky, and this terrifying panel is forced down our eye-gullets:

I hope they got ALKA SELTZER in HELL.

So. One down, way too many to go. I’m going to run through all these comics, and try to treat them with a little more ‘critical respect’ than I treated this one. But they’re all pretty bad like this, so no promises. I’ll try to make it quick, too, but let’s be honest— who of you are REALLY chomping at the bit for me to start Season Three?

Yep. That’s what I thought.

Next Week: Holy, Holy! (Ultimatum: Rapture/Damnation)

PS: You can read all of these at Earthprime. Thanks guys!