So. Damn. Funny.

"The hyphen is the source of his power."

I love this comic.

BrightShiner | October 15, 09:11 CET

LOL and the rest of the story are hilarious too. That second one...oh man I am still laughing. Good, good stuff.

jerryst3161 | October 15, 09:14 CET

I don't get it.

Invisible Green | October 15, 09:58 CET

I don't get it either....

Jona | October 15, 16:11 CET

Ha! Hadn't seen the new update yet. :-)

Vaguely related, it being a print comic--there's a character called Kaylee in the new A Nightmare on Elm Street book, of all places.

Niels | October 15, 18:33 CET

Invisible Green and Jona, feel free to be blunt whenever you don't get my near-criminal stabs at the funny, too. But take it easy on billz, he had a hard week. Now if that comic had said the baby looked looked The Hoff, they'd have had a recurring joke and would've brought much mirth to gossi's heart.


edited to say: sorry I looked twice.

[ edited by jaynelovesvera on 2006-10-15 16:39 ]

jaynelovesvera | October 15, 18:37 CET

I don't get it either :S

kurya | October 15, 21:58 CET

What is it, avant-garde?

Simon | October 15, 22:01 CET

*Puts on the pedagoggles*

It's a geek joke, really. The dad character is your stereotypical comic book obsessing, rpg playing, stalkerazzi-at-cons geek... and if you've read the backstory, you know he's someone that shouldn't have been allowed to reproduce at all, not to mention name his child without adult supervision!

I think it's scary that this sort of thing probably goes on all the time. There should be some kind of parenting oversight commitee, to prevent a kid having to drag the name *Shazam* into elementary school.

Sorry. I thought it was funny...

[edited to spell *Shazam* correctly]

[ edited by UnderTheDark on 2006-10-16 04:47 ]

UnderTheDark | October 15, 22:25 CET

Oh, seriously, that's terrible. I'd name my kid something nearly as nerdy if I didn't have my wife to restrain me.

Oh, wait, she's just as bad. We've already decided to name our first kid after a RPG character.

kishi | October 15, 22:37 CET

On a semi-related note, I heard the other day that someone had named his child ESPN - and apparently he wasn't the first one to do so! A few years ago parents in Great Britain saddled their child with the first names of all the players on their favourite football (soccer) team. What are these parents thinking???

samatwitch | October 15, 22:54 CET

Actually, I think DC may have a trademark on 'Shazam,' so you could only name a kid that if DC gets his/her soul.

Niels | October 15, 23:04 CET

Telltale:"...so you could only name a kid that if DC gets his/her soul."

See, now that I find funny.

I always wanted to name a child "Listerine Rolodex" but, luckily, we did not choose to reproduce.

QuoterGal | October 16, 01:53 CET

Very funny.

Someone was dissing Robson Green in one of the recent threads, can't remember which one. I just looked up his bio on IMDb to remind myself of the younger man/older woman moviemini-series he made with Francesca Annis quite awhile back. Do you know his given name is Robson Golightly Green? Wha? .... Did his parents have a fetish for Breakfast at Tiffany's or is this a strictly British phenomenon? No, really. Please enlighten me because name and word origins are fascinating.

[ edited by Tonya J on 2006-10-16 00:37 ]

Tonya J | October 16, 02:34 CET

I read in the paper that there's a kid somewhere here in Scotland called "Death Machine". Not really all that surprising, I can see a ned calling their kid that. Also there were a couple who called their kid Versace, but they didn't know how to pronounce it, so they were actually calling the poor kid "ver-sayss".

And a few years ago, a woman let her three year old name her new sister. So there's a kid called Lala out there somewhere... I know too much about this.

Silv | October 16, 04:17 CET

More, more, and more.

"A good name is better than precious ointment." -- Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes, 7:1

QuoterGal | October 16, 05:56 CET

We'll probably be seeing Optimus Prime in the news, once the Transformers movie comes out.

UnderTheDark | October 16, 06:46 CET

I heard someone already legally changed their name to Optimus Prime. Don't know if it's true, but that's what I heard.

Niels | October 16, 12:36 CET

Yep, Telltale and not only that but the powers that be gave him a gun. Does the Second amendment cover this ? Maybe you Yanks should amend that amendment with a special 'Transformers' clause ;).

I blame celebrities. Calling your kids Fi-Fi Trixibelle or Moon Unit Zappa used to be derided as just daft, now I think it's gradually rubbed off on the great unwashed (more and more it seems like folk can't tell by themselves if something's stupid until 'Heat' magazine lets them know either way).

(I had visions of a post-Brooklyn Beckham swathe of little baby Wokinghams or Scunthorpes after all the places those kids were conceived ;)

Tonya J, umm, that was me though for the record i've nothing particularly against Robson Green I just haven't got over the mental scarring caused by 'Robson and Jerome' ;). His middle name, BTW, is the surname of a relative (dunno if that's just a northern English/Scottish thing, my Dad for instance has his Mum's maiden surname as his middle name) and 'Robson' itself was also a relative's surname.

Saje | October 16, 13:25 CET

Oh, Saje, it's okay. Dissing can be gentle. His middle name, BTW, is the surname of a relative (dunno if that's just a northern English/Scottish thing... I thought so. I'd just never heard that before with all the British-themed books I've read or films/television I've seen, so I was quite taken aback.

That link blew up my computer so now I'm scarred by him as well.

Tonya J | October 16, 19:53 CET

Thanks for linking to this. I'm sure that Randy M. is going to have fun with the wash of new literate fans to his snarky comic. I like it, but will happily admit that it is an aquired taste. Go back to the archives and decide for yourselves if you want. Oh, and for the record, the Dad of "Shazam Wil-Wheaton..." is one of my least favorite characters in that series, and that is saying something.

Saje - it isn't "just a northern English/Scottish thing..." - my family does that too (we have roots in New England going back to colonial times). It's a way of keeping the maiden names alive. But ask my cousin Lisa about how it affected her to have the middle name of "Stevens". As a guy, I got lucky with the middle name Clark, both after my maternal grandmother's maiden name and an Uncle.

Kyrax | October 17, 02:08 CET

Kyrax: "Saje - it isn't 'just a northern English/Scottish thing...' - my family does that too (we have roots in New England going back to colonial times)."

Mine, too, and only limited structure defining how it was done, so some of us had strings of names that went on and on and on... They only added the maiden names to males' names, which was too bad -- I could have had the oddest long name.

That branch of the family can be traced back to witch accusers in Salem, Massachusetts, which is totally not cool.

QuoterGal | October 17, 03:38 CET

That branch of the family can be traced back to witch accusers in Salem, Massachusetts, which is totally not cool.

Well, then we're likely distant cousins. I can trace back to ten of the nineteen men and women executed as witches, though mostly indirectly (by marriage, or siblings of ancestors, second wives, etc.).

Kyrax | October 17, 04:31 CET

Well, hiya, cousin, if so. We were Putnams -- Ann Putnam, mother & daughter both -- the only redeeming feature of their sorry history was that Ann Jr. later offered a public apology. I believe she may have been one of the few accusers to do so.

Sorry don't bring back the dead, though, do it?

QuoterGal | October 17, 05:09 CET