Kevin J. Maroney, he/him

@womzilla.bsky.social

457 Followers 164 Following

A dilettante in the old sense. "We are all us."-Greg Stafford "It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting."--Stoppard

Two panels from a comic.
Panel one: Two sisters--Emily dressed in a pro wrestling costume and Evelyn in a loose top and skirt--are talking excitedly on a ramp beside a ring while a man in a suit, Buddy, sits watching them.
Caption 1: Her twin sister Evelyn was her manager and they made a great pair.
Caption 2: Buddy was smitten with Emily the moment he saw her.

Panel 2: Closer in on Buddy, who looks agitated.
Caption 1: But monsters don't know how to love.
Caption 2: They only know how to covet.

A STEPHEN UNIVERSE illustration showing Lars from after his full transformation into a pink-skinned Captain Harlock-styled space pirate. He is surrounded by the Off Colors, the misfit Crystal Gems who are the crew of the Sun Incinerator; the villainous Emerald looms behind.

Sorry I don't know who did this illustration.

Screenshot from Clues By Sam, showing I solved today's puzzle in 4m 28 (top 50%) with no errors.

A Steiff ocelot stands guarding a keepsake urn of Tim Maroney's cremated remains. Various tiggers and wombats are strewn about like tomb treasures.

Promo image for FLYING BLIND. The tag line Mild Meets Wild illustrates a shot of two people, a schlubby man (Corey Parker) in a sportcoat and tie leaning, stunned, on the woman who stunned him, a tall redhead in a strapless dress and veil-like skirt (Téa Leoni).

I haven't seen it since it came out nearly 35+ years ago; I remember it being more witty and maybe less sexist than you would assume for a loser-dates-supermodel sitcom on early FOX.

Three d&d miniature skeletons reworked into a rock power trio (two standing guitarists flanking a drummer in full kit) on a wooden display shelf. They were painted (and modded, I think?) by Greg Stafford.

A painting of 9-year-old Ruby Bridges, a black girl in a white dress and shoes. She is walking to school with books under her arm.

Surrounding her front and back are four adults in suits, escorting and protecting her. They are so much taller than she that their heads are off the top of the canvas.

On the stone wall behind her is scrawled graffiti "IGGER". A tomato hit the wall and lies broken at its base.

A fake Doctor Who title card for "The Arbitration Hearing of a Time Lord"

Cards from the card game ICE CREAM, many of which are cones.

Promo illustration for The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson. It shows a young adult woman in futuristic clothing (a body suit with a stylish cape and odd arm decorations) and a somewhat vicious robot dog.

The "Oops! All Chicago" map showing Illinois's 17 Congressional districts reapportioned so that they are all radiating out from Chicago like a solidly Democratic rainbow.

Source not known to me.

A page from a French translation of Shane Simmon's LONGSHOT COMICS. It is a grid of 80 comics panels with characters rendered as dots. A magnifying lens hovers over one panel, showing the (fake) exquisite detail in each panel.

LONGSHOT COMICS is an overlooked masterpiece, not just a formal joke. It's clever and funny and genuinely moving and show how little it actually takes to get a reader engaged with a comics page.

A list of "Personality Factors" from the "Gloranthan NPC Record Form" in GRIFFIN MOUNTAIN. This screenshot is from the 2001 "Gloranthan Classics" reprint.

Personality Factors
AGGRESSIVE ____ PASSIVE
IMPULSIVE ____ CAUTIOUS
EXTROVERT ____ INTROVERT
OPTIMISTIC ____ PESSIMISTIC
STUBBORN ____ RECEPTIVE
PHYSICAL ____ MENTAL
PATIENT ____ NERVOUS
EMOTIONAL ____ CALM
TRUSTING ____ SUSPICIOUS
LEADER ____ FOLLOWER
GREEDY ____ GENEROUS
ENERGETIC ____ LAZY
HONORABLE ____ DISHONORABLE
BRAVE ____ COWARDLY
CURIOUS ____ INCURIOUS
DEPENDABLE ____ UNRELIABLE
PIOUS ____ IRRELIGIOUS
HONEST ____ DISHONEST
CLEVER ____ DULL
HUMOROUS ____ DOUR
INNOVATIVE ____ CONSERVATIVE

Kilian Eng DVD box art for VIDEODROME. A man with a mechanical apparatus covering his head sits half-facing us, turned away from an array of televisions that display unsettling things. A disembodied (and possibly flayed) forearm and hand hold a blood-soaked gun that is merging into the hand. The muted palette and calm composition of the illustration amplify the eerie effect.

The Book of Solo Tales, part of the 40th Anniversary edition of the TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS storytelling game. 5 of the 15 stories were written by Jennell Jaquays.

The most famous photo of the Kent State Massacre. A teen woman (Mary Ann Vecchio) kneels, crying out in despair, over the face-down body of Kent State student Jeffery MIller.

The pokemon Snorelax, a large bearlike creature who is perpetually asleep. He has fangs protruding from his lower jaw and and claws on his hands and his adorable feets.

Four actors dressed as Lear and his daughters sit around a small table; another man, the play's director, sits distractedly behind them.

A musical stage lit almost entirely in purple. A man named John sits behind an electronic piano at stage front. Behind him are a man named Marty playing a drum kit, a man named Dan playing a guitar, and far to the side another man named John singing. They Might, indeed, Be Giants.

Screen shot from REPO MAN of Miller (Tracey Walter) and Otto (Emilo Estavez) talking next to a burn barrel. Miller ends a discussion by saying "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."

“I have come to die for your sins,” Jesus told a stooped figure passing him on the road.
“Then what am I to die for?” the old man asked.
Jesus took a smal] notebook from his pocket and copied the question.
“If I may have your name and address,” he said, “an answer will be sent to you.”

Panel from V FOR VENDETTA by Moore and Lloyd

V cradles Evey, who is collapsed into a fetal ball. He says, "The door of the cage is open, Evey. All that you feel is the wind from outside. Don't be afraid."

A "Toynbee Tile"--a mosaic made up of adhesive linoleum, stuck to the road (or sidewalk) in midtown Manhattan.

This one reads

TOYNBEE IDEA
MOVIE 2001
RAiSE DEAD
PLANET JUPiTER

A real resurection is easy and proven by 1st caveman's first genera tool.
Lavtile alone --> Fed // or it dies

If a deranged street preacher had a font, this would be it

Even more, [these economic and social dislocations] open up opportunities for theatrical figures who are not driven by ideas at all, let alone principles, only by an insatiable need for attention and approbation and an instinctive sense of what will capture the public’s ephemeral imagination. These are the jokers in the pack each age gives us. They have no serious ideological lineage to trace, only the wreckage of things they have corrupted or destroyed trailing behind them.

Publicity shot for 1977's short-lived science fiction parody QUARK. Richard Benjamin is seated in the middle of a crew of interstellar garbage collectors. He and two male-appearing crew are in blue worksuits; two female-appearing twins are in gold halters and short shorts; and a balding man to the far right wears a turtleneck and open jacket. A Robby-like robot stands behind them.

They are all smiling and it is cheesy in a way only low-budget 1970s sf could manage.

Screenshot of an actual Tweet from the old days of Twitter.
HELLO FELLOW HUMAN TEENS I HEARD THE COOLEST PLACE FOR US TEENS TO HANG OUT IS ＴｈｅＣｏｌｏｓｓａｌＰｉｌｌａｒｏｆＷａｓｐＥｇｇｓ LETS GO DO NOT BRING WEAPONS
--pisscop, 2011-05-09

A portrait of the Viz cartoon character Buster Gonad and His Unfeasibly Large Testicles.

He is a Don Martin-inspired cartoon man with a sizable nose, but one's attention is magnetically drawn to his scrotum, which proceed him in a wheelbarrow. Each bollock is significantly larger than his torso. The wheelbarrow squeaks from the load.

He cheerful exclaims, "Hi folks!"

A 1970s edition of the John Ciardi translation of Dante's INFERNO.

The cover to a right-wing magazine, the South German Monthly, from April 1924. It is a rough cartoon of a Great War German soldier face-down, dead on the ground with a "dagger" the size of his entire body stuck into his shoulders and neck.

The caption is "Der Dolchstoss", "the dagger stab", a potent myth within the post-War German right wing that Germany only lost the Great War because of treachery from the Far Left and the Jews.

The Dolchstoßlegende is one of the mainstays of fascism and justifies turning the instruments of war against one's own citizens who are insufficiently pro-fascist.

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, asking "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"

The three original Mystery Men (from the 1999 movie):

Hank Azaria as the Blue Rajah, dressed in a green flowered cloak over formal wear (morning wear, I think) and matching turban.

William H. Macy as The Shoveler, dressed in mining gear and multiple shovels.

Ben Stiller as Mr. Furious, dressed in a black leather jacket and biker gloves. He looks either panicked or bewildered.

Cragspider the demi-goddess. She is an enormous Gloranthan troll (a sort of horse-faced humanoid) with an even more enormous spider instead of legs. Her head is wreathed in flame as she calls fire down on an enemy temple. In the foreground, her attendants are gathering the bodies of fallen enemies, presumably for dinner; Gloranthan trolls are truly omnivorous.

Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump acknowledges the possibility. “I guess,” he says. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die."

Screenshot of Bsky "Trending" box:

1. US-Iran Relations
2. Browt
3. Pokémon
4. Pokémon
5. Letterboxd

(Browt, for reference, is a new Pokémon.)

Four Mesopotamians walking arm-in-arm, Monkees-style. From the video for "The Mesopotamians" by They Might Be Giants.

(From left to right are Gilgamesh, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Sargon.)

Watchmen 1:12:4, slightly redialoged. Rorschach faces the reader, saying
Maybe.
Or maybe someone's picking off Christopher Guest mockumentary stars

Dan Dreiberg behind him replies,
Um. Don't you think that's maybe a little PARANOID?

Watchmen 1:12:4, slightly redialoged. Rorschach faces the reader, saying
Maybe.
Or maybe someone's picking off Christopher Guest mockumentary stars

Dan Dreiberg behind him replies,
Um. Don't you think that's maybe a little PARANOID?

Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, wincing, with the caption "Oooh, I've wasted my life."

CBG is a heavy, early middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a ponytail; he has a thin van dyke. He is always shown in an ill-fitting t-shirt, though that is not obvious here.

Graph showing "Wealth of the top 0.000001% Americans (% of US National income)"

The curve starts at 1% in 1850, swells to 4% in 1910, drops below 1% by 1980. Then it climbs sharply to 4% by 2000, dips a bit, then skyrockets to 12% by 2020.

I have added the head of Ronald Reagan and a red arrow pointing just past 1980, when the curve starts climbing sharply. He's there at the beginning of everything awful in the US in my lifetime.

Justice League #100 from 1970

GOLB, attacking Ooo, in the final episode of the main series of ADVENTURE TIME.

Panel from NANCY, April 9, 2018. Nancy's teacher watching Nancy indulge in her passion for food. The dialog balloon has been deliberately clumsily redacted to read "Wow, she is going IN on that ALL YOUR SINS".

Two fancy rats. A large male--solid white except for a dark smudge on his nose--is coming toward the camera; a smaller female, white with a black "hood" covering her head and upper back, climbs up and to our left.

A page from Jack Chick and Fred Carter's immortal classic DARK DUNGEONS, redialoged.

First panel: At the RPG table
DM, behind screen: Have you seen the DMG cover for the new edition?
Short-haired player, panicked: WHAT?! It's a new edition? They swore it wasn't going to be a new edition. What about all the 5e books I bought? Are we switching? I can't learn a new edition. I already know the rules!
Pony-tailed player: And now for your final challenge as a gamer: Your RPG Changed Editions On You.

Second panel: Pony-tailed player discovers short-haired player has hanged herself in her bedroom. She wails, "NOOOO You never finished painting my minis!"

Third panel: A handwritten note: "I CAN'T GO THROUGH AN EDITION CHANGE. I'M TOO INVESTED. MARCIE"

A young black man in a poorly fitting tunic stands, staring with distress to the side. He looks hunted and haunted. The Statue of Liberty looms behind him.

Richard Corben's cover to Meat Loaf's BAT OUT OF HELL. A nearly naked, heavily muscled man leans all the way back on a motorcycle that is launching into the air like a Trident missile from a cemetery. In the background, a giant bat-demon stands atop a grave marker that looks like a church spire. Everything is reds and black. One of the most metal covers ever, for an album that is at most metal-adjacent.

Another screenshot from SLAY THE SPIRE. The Defect, the humanoid robot from the previous screenshot, lies face-down in the purple-black mist, dead, while the sickly bluegrey heart hangs unpeturbed before it. the banner "Conquered" is the only memorial to his sacrifice.

Screenshot from SLAY THE SPIRE. The Defect, a humanoid robot, has just defeated the Time Eater and 8 orbs of various colors float around his head.

Interior of a densely packed bookstore. Several chairs sit in front of a movable backboard that proclaims BOOKS ARE MAGIC.

A black and white photo of a girl in the late 1950s watching WINKY DINK AND YOU. She is sitting very close to the television, filling in a connect-the-dots monster on the screen with a marker or crayon.

(There is actually a thin transparent vinyl sheet on the tv screen to protect it from the marker. The sheet was not always used, which led to family disharmony.)

Screenshot from DOOM ][. The Spider Mastermind, a giant robotic spider with a gatling gun, faces off against the Cyberlord, a brutish minotaur with a rocket launcher, on platforms in a pit. I watch from a safe distance with my double-barrelled shotgun out.

An illustration of the 1980s Justice League member Vibe. He is a Puerto Rican man in his late teens or early 20s, wearing a garish costume in black, red, and yellow; the neckline forms a giant V that exposes most of his hairless chest. And of course he has dark sunglasses because he's cool, daddy-o.

Homer Simpson, in chains, looks at Marge Simpson, who is also in chains. He says, in meme font, "Don't blame me--I voted for Snorlax".

The film poster for HELLO, DOLLY. It is slightly psychadelic, befitting its late-1960s origin, despite being a film about the 19th century. The main image is of a cartoonish illustration of Barbra Streisand singing, in an absurdly large flowered hat, while Walter Matthau looks on appreciatively; the film's title is wrapped around the circular cameo in which they appear.

Modified version of a screenshot from OREGON TRAIL. It shows a low-resolution ox and wagon with the caption

Get in loser
We're going to
Die of dystentery