#310; In which Paul asks a Question of an Eel

A few items of note today! First, I thought it might be interesting to show you how comics like today's bag o' wonderment are actually made. I do have a collection of genuine old books from the 19th century, and probably around 90% of the comics I make these days do not include any commercial clip-art at all (although sometimes I'll pull out the Dover books if I'm looking for a specific hat or chair or something). Here's me making today's comic:



Moving on to a totally different subject, it seems that the Motion Picture Association of America -- that body that assigns movie ratings and clears movie advertising for content (hence green-band and red-band trailers) -- has instituted a new, yellow-band rating specifically for Internet trailers. The idea is that yellow-band trailers are kinda racy or violent, but not quite "adults-only" -- in the MPAA's view, older teens can be allowed to see yellow-band trailers, but nobody younger. The obvious problem is, how do you enforce that? And the answer is, you don't.

Nobody expects it to be enforced. See, studios have been putting unrated trailers online for years, totally bypassing the MPAA system -- and the MPAA couldn't have that. So now they're sticking their nose onto the Internet with a wildly ineffectual measure just so they can say they're a necessary step in the advertising process. Oh, and let's not forget that they're Making Things Safe For Kids too. Gah -- it's a classic example of institutional inertia: doing things that don't need to be done, just so the people who do those things can justify the existence of their jobs.

The moral of the story is, I now have yellow-band trailer shirts available for pre-order:



Lastly -- I'm actually leaving for the New York convention on Thursday, so tomorrow (Wednesday) is the ACTUAL last day to order stuff before I'm gone for a few weeks.