by Matty Boy Anderson 07.12.10

Recently, upon pressure from some acquaintances and professionals, I gave Lucifer a slobbery beejay by getting on Facebook, land of everyone's goddamn baby pictures. Two things have resulted from this uncharacteristic cyber-Faustian whoring: a) I have a direct line of communication with numerous artists and creative people whose work has inspired me for decades, and whose names I won't drop here because I don't want to be responsible for you bothering them with your "pokes" or blabber or whatever, and b) I've had to try to explain this ossifying platypus of a website to a sizable throng of New Visitors. Although this is my website, it baffles even me, but it is my duty as a 21st century comedy entertainer to break it down concisely for the people who are just joining our broadcast.

I created mikethepod.com in 1999 as an outlet for my cartoon work and humor articles. Technically, I'm a cartoonist by trade, as I've been published consistently in newspapers since 1991. Although this has mostly been cartoons of the single-panel editorial variety, I did a more traditional strip every week called Lemmings, which ran in the Georgia Guardian from 1991 to 1996. I self-published seven issues of an uncensored comic book called Drop Dead from 1993 to 1995, which was spun off from Lemmings, and was plugged not only in the legendary Factsheet Five magazine, but also in the back pages of Evan Dorkin's DORK. My strip Bands I Useta Like has been appearing monthly in Stomp & Stammer magazine since 2002. It's one of the main draws to the site apparently, which is why I make it as disgusting and vulgar as possible. It's best that the new folk get an idea/warning shot of what's in store. Speaking of which; another heavy draw that you might have seen is my Anatomy of the McNugget illustration. (How's this for disgusting? I still eat them.)

I first created Mike the Pod in 1987, when I was 14. I was creating my own 'underground comic' called Perpetual Brain Death Funnies, inspired by a copy of Anarchy Comix a friend got me from Forbidden Planet in New York, as well as the Zippy the Pinhead book Are We Having Fun Yet? and the original CRAZY magazine. I didn't have any way of making copies in junior high, so I would simply pass around pages and comics in class. Mike was a page from my comic that my high school paper's editor felt had the most potential, and so I went on to draw the strip in the paper for an unheard-of three years, co-writing it with a friend. Initially the strip had a more surrealist tone, owing to our love of Flaming Carrot comics, but eventually the cartoon-parody angle took over, reaching fruition with the self-publishing of the first Mike The Pod Comix zine in 1991. There would be three issues total by 1992, but the story of their production involves much larceny and felonious derring-do, and would be better told at length in the future. As far as I know, the first issue is in the Library of Congress, probably as part of F5's massive zine-dump. All that shit had to go somewhere.

Mike is the totem/mascot of the website, and the irreverent and oftentimes repugnant humor it represents. In the very first strip I drew that featured him, Mike is minding his own beeswax when people nearby start tossing out guesses as to what is possibly inside him. Despite his numerous proclamations that he is "just a pod", they continue. After they are finally convinced that Mike is nothing more than a pod, they stomp him to gooey death. The next strip saw Mike good as new, unharmed and unaffected by the ordeal. Originally the plan was to kill him a different way at the end of every strip, but my co-writer and I got bored with this almost instantly. I always figured the South Park twerps felt the same way, once they realized they were almost obligated to "kill Kenny" every show. (Note: My 'distaste' for South Park is kind of a 'thing' around here, as you'll soon unfortunately see. Truthfully, I haven't watched the show since the time they got sandy vaginas about Indy 4 and passed it off as a television show. The fact that I love Indy 4 is beside the point. The point is that this is a digression. Get used to them, they happen a lot around here.)

2010 is this website's 11th year. Think about how many humor sites you dug 11 years ago- if you were about such a practice at the time- that are now deader than dust. I did as much "10th Anniversary" stuff as I could bother to last year, but herein lies one of the Damning Truths, as was originally spake by the mighty Regis Philbin (I attempted to launch a "Regis cult" in 1996 called The REGISt Foundation, but it never took off): I AM ONLY ONE MAN. I try to squeeze out a Front Page Article^TM once a month; note that from what I've told you, every month I do ~30 daily editorial cartoons, a Bands I Useta Like strip, plus, since September 2009, four Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding full-page color strips. Not to mention that there's added stuff I'm leaving out that I'll talk about later. Most likely, I am the busiest cartoonist you've never heard of. And oh yeah, on top of that; I made a two-hour animated movie that came out in 2008.

John's Arm: Armageddon was the fruition of my last MAJOR project, the roots of which go all the way back to the first John's Arm animated short I created in 2001. I got the requisite network courtships that never go anywhere, but then unlike Jim Goad*, I've never been a very pleasant chap in person, and the corporate types prefer to go with an animator that can carry on a conversation without cussing or breaking things, or jabbing at their eye sockets with crooked arthritic fingers. Being that I came up in the so-called "zine revolution", my sensibilities have always skewed deep underground, something very few people see eye-to-eye with. After four John's Arm shorts and many other animations where I had to settle for sub-par audio quality to make downloading faster, I decided in 2005 to begin work on a full-length animated production featuring John's Arm. In a fit of pique and hubris, I deduced that the endeavor would take me around six months to complete. By the time I was finished in 2008, I had gone totally insane and taken everyone with me. (Observers of this period will note that it's no coincidence that I introduced absinthe to the picture at some stage of the production.)

*He isn't on Facebook, so I feel okay name-dropping him.

It's important to remember when undertaking the production of a two-hour animated cartoon solo that you will go through Hell, then someplace worse where you'll WISH you were in Hell, then many worse Hells, again. At the time I had my ladyfriend, as well as the infamous Atlanta Dark Shady Characters, to shepherd me from absolute madness, and we went on to win Best Animated Feature at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival in 2008, so it was all worth it, without even mentioning that the movie is funny as fuck. You can see clips on my YouTube channel, or if you're really feeling magnanimous, you can BUY the blasted thing for ten bucks and judge for yourself. It even features music from Tailothepup, the band I never have enough time for. Come on, you'd buy one of those stupid South Park DVDs, right? Ahem.

Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding is the first long-form project I have undertaken since creating the movie, because movies are grievously expensive to make, and I could barely make deadlines on my paying cartoons during production. Also I like to 'show off' in my work, which is a lot easier for me to do with pen and ink on Bristol than it is in rudimentary Flash animation. Every Sunday since September 6, 2009, a new CFOB color page has appeared on the site (hence the 'Sunday Funnies' section). If you're wondering why, after over 40 pages of free high-quality material, that CFOB isn't listed in the "Webcomics" page on Wikipedia with all the asinine amateur crap, it's because those assclowns PUT their names there, and I don't play that shit. I'm not gonna waste time arguing with some cranky Wiki editor that my work actually exists.

The preliminary design work on Ceaseless Fables began in March 2009; this was when I started putting the teaser pictures up. When I made the John's Arm movie, I had to keep almost all the details a secret for over two years, which is an extremely difficult way to work. You can't bounce ideas off of anyone, or gauge the reaction of your audience; everything leads up to a final two-hour window. With CFOB, I wanted to create something more malleable, which would better lend itself to the 'saga' form. Serial cartoonists of the early 20th century worked to strike a balance between creating a mythology and making stuff up as they go. When I work in fiction, even in the case of straight comedy like John's Arm, I tend to start by creating the environment and world that the characters will inhabit, and then creating and modifying the inhabitants themselves. Once I'd mapped out the Beyonding and outlined where I wanted the story to go, I got cracking on the pages. I've got maps, 120+ pages of sketches, and almost 70 inked pages. So far, if you've read all the strips, you've only seen one country (out of many). Most webcomics start with four boxes and two stupid guys with a "girl" to roll her eyes at their "zaniness". 'Tosh! These droll boys and their clever non sequiturs and video game banter. How I blindly adore them evermore,' says the wide-eyed girl character drawn by a fat virgin loser who's never managed eye contact with a breathing adult female.

Now let's talk about the site you're currently gawkin' at, and what it has to offer YOU, the discriminating connoisseur of sick humor with a healthy distaste for the mediocre.

THE MAIN PAGE
Main Page Articles appear roughly once a month, if you're lucky. If you're wondering why they don't post more often, it's because I prefer quality over quantity, and I tend to labor over articles for weeks at a time. Plus, as I've mentioned, I'm always doing a ton of other shit otherwise, AND there's stuff I'm not telling you about as well. So shut up.

Although the Main Page will often be related to what's in production, there are occasionally Full Rants. I was one of the earliest guys to Rant on the internet, regardless of whomever gets credit for it nowadays, and who really gives a fuck anyway. I set up a blog for a couple years, but because I am legally retarded when it comes to that sort of thing, I erased it accidentally, which obviously sucks. I had many great Rants in there, plus a eulogy for my friend Phil, who'd unforgettably voiced the Shining Example and Loofah-Lad in the John's Arm movie. Not to be Joe Obvious, but shit fucking sucks when your friends die. So, we make humor! For YOU! YOU MAKE LAFF, AND HA-HAVING!

Rants typically occur when something has driven me nearly out of my mind with rage and contempt. I despise Scientology, and lately I haven't been so hot on Islam either. I'm 'religiallergic'. I recently stated that I would openly celebrate the demise of Lindsay, Dina or Michael Lohan. I don't believe in marriage personally, and I don't dig on kids, largely because they drive me up the fucking walls, but also because I've seen too many folks whose work I once respected turn into dribbling pussies post-childbirth. It kills my soul a little bit more every fucking time. Think about the writers and artists you admire; now imagine them blogging about changing a shitty diaper. It's like a respect guillotine. OH MY GOD, kids shit in diapers?! Who knew! It's not like every single person alive shat in a diaper as a baby, or anything! And look, don't give me that old jazz about hating people with kids: I've known numerous parents as friends who didn't make me cringe, and Frank Zappa had four kids, and he never made you think he was a pussy.

If you complain about the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, I will debate you until you wish you hadn't brought it up. I am a 38-year-old man with a higher IQ and a bigger dick than you who likes the Prequels even more than the Original Trilogy, and it's best for both of us if you accept that and continue to move along. I look at George Lucas as someone who has put the utmost of consideration into everything he's done in the past 30 years, and if you disagree, I will physically fight you. Following that I will bore you to death with my complete defense of George Lucas as a motion picture artist and the man responsible for nearly 100% of popular culture in the world we live in. I defend midichlorians, Jar Jar Binks, Jake Lloyd, Jango Fett, Hayden Christensen in Return Of The Jedi, Greedo shooting first, everything aside from Joh Yowza (so you know I have some perspective). Contrary to what you might think, I'm not a geek, and you probably couldn't pick me out in a crowd. So don't. Even. Start.

If I get called a geek, it's over Transformers, which I've collected since 1984. You'll also likely notice that I defend director Michael Bay a lot around here, but let's be honest: the man has put more work and passion into the property than any sane director in Hollywood would have. He's a great sport, and his Transformers movies play to his strengths. There's nothing wrong with not liking Revenge of the Fallen-- lord knows, I'm not claiming it's Citizen Kane- but there's nothing wrong with LIKING it, either. Which I do, very, very much. In fact there's a certain ritual I engage in before watching the DVD, when I happen to acquire an extra-special something- but I do prefer to keep an air of some mystery, particularly since there's the off chance my site could be visited by relations. In case you're wondering, hell yes I love Skids and Mudflap, and because I live in Atlanta, odds are I would've noticed any offended black people before you'd have. Remember way back when, in the times when people would shower exaltations over a movie because it had one really cool thing in it? That's how I look at those kind of movies. Going to the movies used to be about thrills, and bite me, I like thrills. And being that I understand that CGI is a form of animation, I don't have a problem with it, as long as it's done well, and where are the best examples outside of Pixar? Star Wars and Transformers. Show me a mushroom cloud or a flying saucer that looks better than the ones seen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And YES, Indiana Jones survived the blast inside a fridge. The motherfucker rode a submarine into a secret Nazi cave once. He's not a pussy like you.

Here at Mike The Pod we enjoy the company of hamsters. There is typically an Official Hamster on retainer, and back before I broke my video camera somehow, I'd post the latest hammy footage. Hamsters are cuter and more wonderful than babies, and if you don't like them, I'll have to ask you to leave. MTP has worked out of many different spaces over the years, but there's almost always a hamster habitat with a snuffling critter in there somewhere. Former Pod hamsters have been Buddy (1997-2000), the feisty adventurer Lothar (2006-2009), and the sweet prince Olly (2009). Currently the position is held by Hugo, who can be seen at work here. He doesn't answer fan mail as quickly as Lothar did. Do not take this personally. He is very busy.

REVIEWS
You'd surmise, with the massive hork of pop-culture opinion I've just subjected you to, that I post reviews in a timely manner, owing to excess of material. You'd be wrong. I don't even remember the last review I wrote; it was probably a Transformer toy. My motivation for writing movie reviews died when there started to be more and more dedicated sites out there that did it better. It really blows when you subject yourself to an unbelievably torturous movie, grind your way through a typed review wherein you relive the pain, and then discover some other website beat you to it. Nobody seems to bother reviewing bad animated films (or if they do, they don't know what they're talking about), so you'll likely see more of those here, if I ever get around to finishing pieces on Hey Good Lookin', Rock & Rule and Starchaser: Legend of Orin. I went through a spate of aborted reviews for movies that simply broke me. It started with Gigli, then reached its nadir with the unholy Up The Academy, and also there was a movie where Billy Jack punched Jesus Christ in the face. I am not making that up. There isn't enough money, alcohol or drugs to make me continue to hurt myself like that on purpose. So robots it is.

PORTFOLIO
Browsers take note: this website is crammed to the rafters with cartoons. It can be overwhelming for first-time viewers, but the important thing is to explore and discover stuff on your own. While MTP strives to provide frequent content, the fact remains that it's better to check out the site when you've got some serious extra time to kill.

• The BANDS I USETA LIKE section has like 60 strips. They go back to 1998.
• New strips and comics usually end up on the SUNDAY FUNNIES page, on Sundays. This includes stuff that might get overlooked otherwise, like the ongoing Softballz, and old junk like Headcheese and Tiniest Restaurant In The World.
• There's a nice fat page with all the WALLPAPERS, AVATARS AND IMAGE GOODIES.
• If you're not at work, and you're curious about the formative animations I produced over the first tenth of this century, KNOCK YOURSELF OUT! The most popular by far is Moonlight Sonata, aka the one with the farting piano, which enjoyed a worldwide viral outbreak of sorts circa 2002, as did Name Your Rock Band.
• There's still more odds and ends in the seldom-updated GALLERY and moldy VAULT pages!
• My sculpture work for Art-O-Mat is on the INVISIBLE LEGENDS page. I created over 400 unique creatures with names and biographies. They are extremely coveted, so don't ask me for them. New waves will be coming one o' these days, however! Promise!

If you've made it this far, you are now more than qualified to navigate this "humor website". When I call Mike The Pod a "full-service comedy imprint", I mean that you can count on us for all your sick fun and weird cartoon needs. I'm not gonna shove ads in your face and make you regret wanting to look at some decent comics online for once. I'm not gonna pull some shit that'll make you wish you hadn't defended this site. How many times has some movie star you like disappointed you, just in the past month? Have you tried enjoying Lethal Weapon lately? Good luck with that. Mike and I take the responsibility of entertaining you very seriously, and the last thing we want to do is disappoint you. Try and find that level of commitment and passion in any high-priced celebrity entertainer. Again: good luck.

I welcome you to Mike The Pod. The most awesome site your human eyes may ever behold.

You're gonna like the way you look. I guarantee it.

-MBA