Author Archives: AFDStudios

Peace, love, and crunching

You're Going to Die III


This is one of my favorite things we have ever done on this blog. I love these stories and the tales of death in each and every option.

If you're just tuning in, our goal is to write our own Choose Your Own Adventure where every choice is twofold, with one leading to further adventure and the other to a gruesome death. Last week featured:

It’s another boring day at your stupid office. You spent most of the morning catching up on all the Internet you missed while sleeping and now you’re behind. Your stomach is growling because the banana you bought had a weird brown lump on it. You know you should get back to work, but you also know that you’re hungry and don’t care about your job at all.
What do you do?

  • SEARCH FOR FOOD in the drawer that you haven’t used since you started here 2 years ago.
  • CHECK EMAIL to see if your boss sent any super-long emails you can read to pass the time.

We chose:

SEARCH FOR FOOD in the drawer that you haven’t used since you started here 2 years ago.
You open your desk drawer and, underneath a stack of sexual harassment zero-toleration handbooks and porn magazines, find a bag of beef jerky. The brand name is “Jack’s Links” …which doesn’t sound quite right, buy hey, beggars can’t be choosers and you need something to lay down on top of that scary-looking banana you ate earlier. You rip open the bag and dig in. Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad! Kind of an odd color for beef jerky, but it’s really quite delicious. You get through about two thirds of the bag when you pull out a piece that’s got a tattoo of a heart and anchor on it.


Do you:

A. Scream and run away in horror, or

B. Shrug and continue eating.

All of the entries were great, you should do yourself a favor and read through them if you haven't already. But I'm going with borntobealoser's suggestion, so here's what would happen with each of the choices:

A: Scream and run away in horror:

“OH LAWD!” you scream, as your body bolts upright, and pieces of Jack’s Links fly in every direction. Before anybody can even ask you what’s wrong, you’re running around like a headless chicken. Just ahead of you is Jimmy, the boss’ annoying little brat. In your panic you randomly remember that it’s “bring your son to work day” here at the office. You decide that this piece of information isn’t very useful to you at a time like this, and continue your mad dash. Unfortunately, nobody told Jimmy that it wasn’t “bring your skateboard to work day”, and you end up putting your foot onto Jimmy’s discarded skateboard. Down the flight of stairs you fly, grinding down the hand railing. If you didn’t still have the taste of human in your mouth, this would be pretty cool. You end up in the main entrance to the building, and due to lack of control, you burst through the front doors. Out on the street, construction workers are laying down cement. “Huh, roadworks. I wish the boss had warned me, I’ve just had my car detailed.” you think to yourself as you continue speeding on Jimmy’s skateboard. Unable to stop, you speed past the barriers the workers have erected, and skid into the quick drying cement, and instantly become encased in rock. From the floor above, you can see that Jimmy has been filming the whole thing. It gets hard to breath, and in your dying breath, you sincerely hope he uploads the footage to Youtube. Your life, and adventure, end here.

B: Shrug and continue eating:

Meh. Whoever this guy was, he didn’t have a great taste in tattoos, but he did have a GREAT TASTE. You finish the bag off, and lick you fingers. You scrumple up the Jack’s Links packet into a ball, and proceed to throw it into the waste paper bin on the other side of the office. It runs along the ridge of the paper bin twice before finally falling in. Hey, this is great! You think you’ve just invented the latest sport: waste paper golf. You’re surprised nobody has ever done this before. God, you’re an absolute genius. You’re about to scrumple all of your important legal documents into balls to continue your newfound sport, when Angeline walks into the room and sits in her cubicle. You know Angeline is like, really into you, because she was totally checking you out at the last Christmas shindig. Well, either you, or the tall, handsome guy standing next to you. Nah, it was definitely you.

You’re now conflicted. Do you:

A: Continue honing your paper ball throwing skills.

OR

B: Walk over to Angeline, and give her your best pick up line.

Now it's your turn! Write up the results of Choice A (paper ball throwing skills) and Choice B (try your pickup line on Angeline), with one ending in death and the other presenting us with two options from which to choose. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Just Cause contest results

Many thanks to author Ian T. Healy for putting together the "Just Cause" contest. Here is his write-up of his choices.

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Truth to power, baby!

As if you needed another reason to hate the Nineties

In 1996, the two big comics publishing companies realized they could suck their customers dry with poorly conceived projects elevate their characters to a whole new level by doing what was essentially a series of mashups. In a hybrid effort labeled "Amalgam Comics", they merged characters from each imprint into one hybrid being. For instance, the main mystic characters from each line merged to become "Dr. StrangeFate", a name I bet took at least three seconds to think up. At least, you guys. Also it was the frontrunning title for the "Dr. Strangelove" sequel, but shockingly that never came to fruition.

To be fair, somewhere under the deep cynicism of the entire concept was the nugget of a neat idea. Unfortunately, it happened during the Image Nineties, which means -- say it with me now! -- it had to be EXTREME!!!1! Hence we got the Batman-Wolverine abomination known as Dark Claw:

It's Wolverine's helmet but with Batman scallops! It's Wolverine's claws but with Batman scallops! It's Batman's cape but with ... ok, that one stayed the same. They did take the iconic Wolverine massive hair wings and apply them to Batman's boots, so at least Logan has that much influence in the costume design department. Naturally you also have to have the ripped clothing, because MTV.

I honestly don't know what the hell is going on with that belt buckle. Did Captain America slip in here somehow? Because you could definitely deflect bullets with that thing.

The worst part of the concept is that this guy is now unkillable, no matter how bad his outfit is. And that's bad for all of us, people.

(Image and characters © DC & Marvel Comics.)

Like the kiss of death, only battier

(Characters & image ©2012, DC Comics.)

Nazgûl vs. Dementors. Who wins?

Two cowled, other-worldly menaces from the biggest movie (and book) franchises in modern history face off in this week's "Versus". Each have one foot in the material plane and the other firmly planted in something closely resembling Hell. Both give our heroes a run for their money and serve a master of evil. At some point, they've all been mistaken for curtains. So who would win in a fight?

A dementor's main power is to suck the soul from its target, which raises the first question of whether or not Nazgûl even have souls. From the reading I've done, I think they do -- they're still mortals, just with their lives stretched far beyond that of normal men by the power of the Ring. There is something for the dementors to eat, therefore.

The Nazgûl have some powerful magic of their own, of course, including their own rings of power. Would those have any effect on dementors?

I don't know, that's why I am asking you! Sound off in the comments about which of these evil henchmen would defeat the other in an all-out battle.

[polldaddy poll="6462819"]

With toy planes, a boomerang, and an epee?

Caption Contest 127

It's time for another new Caption Contest! Your challenge this week is to come up with the best replacement dialog for this comics panel (I'll make the balloon as big as it needs to be since it's so small in the actual production):

I'll pick out some as my personal favorites to highlight in a post next Monday, and then I'll choose one of those to bear the standard as the "Featured Creator of the Week" atop the right tool bar.

All entries must be left as a comment (or comments) to this post. Keep ‘em clean (appropriate for a late-night broadcast TV show), but most importantly, keep ‘em funny!

No limit to entries, but please, self-edit and only put up ones you genuinely think are good!

Character Design Challenge 97 results

We got some kick-ass entries for our last Character Design Challenge, which tasked you with coming up with heroes (or villains) whose costumes were made up of everyday clothing items instead of spandex and capes. Without further ado, here are some of my personal favorites:

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