Click here to go all wibbly in a phone box in this week’s comic!

Click here to join in his wonderment at simple things.

Want to know why this dinosaur looks quite so embarrassed? Click here to read this week’s strip and find out!

So this year I hit the big four-oh. Society would have me believe that I can only regain the excitement and vigor of youth by buying a Harley, wearing tight jeans, loud shirts, and purchasing hair dye products. But you know what?

I can’t be bothered. Meh.

Try to catch this week’s strip without dropping a hip right here.

Please ensure to wear appropriate hazard gear at all times whilst reading this week’s strip right here.

This week’s strip was one of those times when I overheard a snippet of a conversation and a situation popped into my head. I fully expect most people to be like “wha…?”, but it worked in my GRATE BRANE when I came up with it.

I thought I would try a less time-demanding inking method – fast brushy swooshes instead of my usual OCD solid line with many overinks. I think it worked ok, although I might try a slightly thicker brush next time. Saved me a whole mess of time though, and also made inking fun again.

Apply for this week’s strip right here. No previous experience necessary.

This week, we take a look at the absolute clusterfuck that is the redesign of the Gawker Media group’s wesbites. They don’t want to be seen as blogs aymore, so have decided to rebuild them as SERIOUS NEWS OUTLETS, and in the process managed to drop site traffic and piss just about all their readers off, eventually caving into the baying crowd so much that they have cobbled together some stuff to pacify them that effectively makes the whole damn enterprise redundant in the first place. Like putting wheels on a hovercar because people just prefer wheels.

Gotta love that schadenfreude feeling. We are proud to say we are a blog, will always be a blog and will never change that.

Point and laugh at the fat websites with bad glasses right here.

I know, I know, it’s been like, a million years since the last comic strip proper. But that’s the way with us frilly-sleeved, foppish creative-types – sometimes the mojo just buggers right off. And when you aren’t able to draw, there’s not a lot you can do, sadly. If you have come back after all this time to find this, then we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, bless you.

But that is sorted now. We have a few scripts lined up and ready to go, so here’s hoping this is a return to our normal schedule. Don’t forget, there will be quickie strips during the week too, to keep you happy and floaty light!

Anyway, enough grovelling, shut up and click here to get completely lost in this week’s strip!

Sit back and relive the halcyon days with this week’s strip right here.

Wikileaks has just released video it has obtained showing the killing of fifteen unarmed civilians without provocation by two U.S. Apache helicopters in Iraq in 2007.  Wikileaks further claims this exposes a military cover-up that painted the incident as a battle with armed insurgents in which civilians were killed.

The film was taken by the crew of an Apache helicopter on July 12, 2007 over New Baghdad. Two Reuters News Agency employees, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, were out in the area, and as the film starts you can see Eldeen carrying his camera. Both were amongst the fifteen or so civilians killed, and, it seems, were the unwitting cause of the attack. More info and the film after the jump. Facebook readers, click here to see the article and the video.

The air crew misinterpret the camera as an AK47 and then further misinterpret something else carried by a different civilian – it is not clear what – as an RPG. Despite the fact that no fire was received by either of the attack helicopters – as no one was actually carrying a weapon – permission to engage was asked for and received. The two craft then proceed to deal with the perceived threat with 30mm fire. 

Saeed survives and as he tries to crawl away the air crews are heard urging him to pick up a weapon so that they can open fire on him again. As they wait, a civilian minivan arrives to pick him up – again, with no evidence of arms or threat to the aircraft – and the crew curse impatiently as they ask for permission to open fire on the van.  They eventually receive the permission.

There were two children in the van.

As ground troops arrive and take the wounded children away, the air crew are heard to remark that is “it’s their fault for bringing kids into a battle”. This was not a battle.  At no time were any shots fired at the two aircraft, nor were any weapons in play.  Throughout the film, the crews are heard to be casual and almost pissed off that permission to fire is taking so long. One is heard to laugh when an armored vehicle drives over one of the dead civilians.

There is a certain amount of leeway to be granted by the “fog of war”. You can understand the perceived threat of a crowd of people in a street where two seem to carry something that, from a helicopter,  could look like a weapon. But aren’t you supposed to have absolute certainty, or actually be fired upon before firing back?

The U.S. military initially stated that the victims died during a battle between military and enemy insurgents, and that there was “no question that coalition forces were engaged in a battle against a hostile force”. Reuters spent three years demanding the release of the film to try and verify these claims, but the U.S. military refused its release. Only now, with a leak, is it in the public domain.   The U.S. Military did eventually carry out an investigation and ruled that all was in accordance with the rules of engagement.

It takes you to a place where a very disturbing thought becomes apparent: had there not been two internationally respected journalists involved, and had Reuters not pushed for the truth, and had these just been Iraqi civilians, the “no question” statement – clearly a lie – would have never been exposed (or rather, would never even have been required). It is very easy for the troops on the ground to make mistakes and errors of judgement, and for this there is a certain amount of forgiveness. What is egregious here is how far the miltary then go to keep that quiet, and maybe just how often it happens.

Think carefully before viewing these films: you are watching a moment when, for many innocent people and the families they left behind, life simply stopped.

You can read the Wikileaks article for more information here.

UPDATE 6/4/2010:  it is now reported that an official response to the Wikileaks release and article is being planned, in light of this story being picked up by just about everybody and the mainstream media.