Bimbos in Time #1 - Atop the Fourth Wall

There are so few words that could describe this comic. Here are two: "Utter. Crap."

Originally uploaded November 30th, 2009.

NOTE: The original ending song of this video, "Smoke on the Water," was removed due to a copyright claim.

RUMINATIONS: When you have to do this kind of thing for a living like I do - spending week after week looking at terrible media - you tend to forget about them because they begin to run together. There are only so many dumb comics put out by Maximum Press that all have the exact same premise and characters that actually stand apart from each other, you know?

Not so with Bimbos in Time.

No, Bimbos in Time is one of those special kinds of comics that's so horrible, so completely disconnected from reality and sense, that you will never forget it. Five years later and I can still recall looking at how much I had already scripted for just the first four pages... and then realizing how much comic there still was to go through. Spoony once made a joke in his Highlander: The Source review that fit perfectly with this kind of comic: "I'm sorry, but all I can do is just cut back to me making this shocked face because every single time it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life."

My utter confusion about it has changed a little in the intervening years. As was discovered later, it turns out Brad Jones (the Cinema Snob) actually worked (may still work, but don't recall off the top of my head) for the creator of the comic (and the Bimbos movies) on the podcast Radiodrome. Said creator was more than happy to admit that the comic and the movies he made were, for the most part, pretty much garbage and apparently he got a good laugh out of the comic review and the eventual review the Snob and I put together for the movie Bimbos B.C. (a fan had been so "kind" as to donate the film). He's admitted that the comic was, in fact, made with the express intent to make the worst comic ever. If not for the fact that I consider another comic out there to be the worst (I keep the comic's identity a secret for the eventual day it turns up on the show), it's very likely that Bimbos in Time would indeed hold that distinction.

And it's hard to pin down a single thing wrong with it - sure, there's the amateur quality to it, but lots of stuff out there has amateur art and writing while still possessing good idea and concepts, or are just at worst merely average. But Bimbos in Time has nothing like that - it's just bad jokes, zero characterization, and zero to little backstory to establish anything. Hell, even after seeing Bimbos B.C. I still don't know why the women are referred to as "bimbo warriors." Aside from being young, white, and (some) blonde, I don't see any evidence of them being promiscuous, stupid (well, legitimately stupid, not stupid like they are in the comic), or vapid in any regard, as are considered the stereotypical traits associated with "bimbos."

Subsequently, this is also the first appearance of Little Kuriboh of Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged fame on the show. We had met during a podcast once, but I was nervous and didn't want to come across as simply promoting my own show and we got into a friendly argument over Ang Lee's 2003 version of the Hulk, so I don't really count it as our first meeting. Instead, I count our first meeting as Youmacon 2009, where I met him in person and got to hang out with him and talk and stuff. We've been closer friends since then, with him kindly lending his voice to the occasional joke on the show and he let me be a shopkeeper in Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged who told a young Marik Ishtar about the "Kill Your Family" show.

Another memorable thing to me with this once was simply the grueling process of making it. This is the one episode of AT4W that I'd happily remake, though not because I was unhappy with how it was written. On the contrary - I actually thought I managed to spin crap into gold with this one, despite the agony of having to come up with new ways of saying "This is horrible" every five minutes, it turned out pretty dang well. Sometimes adversity is what's needed to get creative. No, the problem with this episode is that I filmed it while I was ILL. I don't think the comic is responsible for me being ill, of course, but just I was miserable when I filmed this and I recall having to stop once or twice just to lay on the futon, take in deep breathes for a minute or so, and then resume. And while most people probably can't tell, I can tell, so it's the only one I'd want to refilm and do a better job of it.

All in all, though, it's still one that I'll happily reference in terms of just how awful it is and compare other awful comics to.