Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Happy Belated Lincoln's Birthday

A day or two ago you may have seen this feature of mine in your local paper:



Click to make it bigger.

It was only one oddly-shaped piece of this week's installment of The Goods, a bounty of games, comics, puzzles and more that's distributed by McSweeney's and Tribune Media. Upcoming contributors will include Carson Ellis, Laurie Keller, Jon Klassen, Sean Qualls, Jon Scieszka, Bob Shea, Lane Smith, Dan Santat, and Mo Willems.

UPDATE: Fellow President's Day contributor Brian Biggs just posted his maze over at his site. Go look at it! It's hair-raising! You'll understand why it's hair-raising if you go look at it.

Not getting The Goods in your paper?

Oh my gosh I'm so sorry.

Well, maybe write to your paper's features editor, then, and request it. You can direct him or her to this link.

14 comments:

Seth Christenfeld said...

Is there any chance that the Abraham SuperLincoln picture might be released as a print? It's the kind of thing I'd kill to have on my wall.

Dan Santat said...

HAHA! I love the answer on this image

Mark Dominus said...

That is pretty awesome, but unfortunately your octopus has nine arms instead of eight.

Adam Rex said...

Say, that wouldn't be one of the things wrong with this picture, would it?

Brian Biggs said...

All the neat famous illustrators!
I heard that that loser Biggs is in it too.

Adam Rex said...

Yes, that loser Biggs is in it, too. But I couldn't list you as an UPCOMING contributor since you were in the same issue as me. Though I expect we'll both do this again, right? I want to do this again.

Here's Brian's contribution:

http://mrbiggs.com/news/2011/02/a-maze-for-mcsweeney/

Mark Dominus said...

I guess. I was completely happy with the claim that there was nothing wrong with the picture and that it was TOTALLY AWESOME until I saw that there were nine arms.

Adam Rex said...

It works on many levels, Mark. For the record, I think any comprehensive list of things wrong with the picture would have to include:

-Octopus has 9 arms
-Lincoln never actually superhero
-Can't breathe on the moon
-Can't hear an octopus shout on the moon
-Octopuses can't shout
-Canada has never been there
-Colors on distant Earth reversed

And probably some other stuff I'm not smart enough to think of.

Adam Rex said...

I was thinking of seeing what I could do with this image on Zazzle, Seth, so keep checking the blog for updates, I guess.

At the very least I wanted to adapt it into a t-shirt.

Erik Brooks said...

Nice! As a contributor now and then, you know very well that that McSweeney's was pointedly onto reviving the broadsheet comics format with the PANORAMA (issue #33). A cool idea to try and farm this out into the greater newspaper world. I hope it flies!

Mark Dominus said...

None of those things are wrong. They are all GLORIOUSLY RIGHT. Except that the octopus has nine arms. You can't make an octopus more awesome by adding an extra arm. That just looks like you can't count.

I like it anyway.

Unknown said...

What's so great about Abraham Lincoln? Maybe this is the Confederate sympathizer in me speaking (genetically speaking, 100% of me should be one), but looking at him objectively, he:

* Suppressed freedom of press, going so far as to imprison his political opposition
* Declared war against a peaceful nation (the bloodiest war in US history)
* Practiced deceitful political campaigning, issuing promises favorable to the audience regardless of whether he planned to keep them or not (okay, I'm really scraping the barrel with that one, who doesn't do that?)

In conclusion, granted, he pulled a lot of strings to free the slaves and reunite the nation, which sounds kinda neat, but despite his admirable big ideas, he probably caused more harm in his time than good. Unless it turns out without his intervention slavery wouldn't have dissolved, and with that in mind, it may be fair to say he made the right mistakes.

Anonymous said...

Abraham Superlincoln and 9-tentacled space octopus t-shirt? Honestly I'd be easily suckered into buying one. Or 8.

Bill Peschel said...

"Declared war against a peaceful nation"

Except for that whole firing-on-Fort-Sumter thing, you're 100 percent correct.

And, yes, Lincoln maneuver South Carolina into doing something stupid that launched a fervent patriotic response in the North, which goes to show what a great politician he was. That alone makes him deserving to be shown battling an octupus on the moon.