Happy Accidents

My wife and I recently got to see “Cowboys and Aliens”, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It wasn’t as mind-blowing as I’d hoped for a movie I’d anticipated for over a year, but I thought it was pretty fun.

As usual, they showed lots of trailers. Some got me excited, some were “meh” and some were just downright perplexing. The latter was a trailer for “Battleship”, a little movie based on the popular game. Not a video game. A game game. A board game. A game with ships and pegs. Somewhere, somehow, somebody had played this game and at one point thought, “This should be a movie!” Apparently, this person also had connections in Hollywood, or someone owed him money.

It’s clear right from the get-go that the plot is pretty flimsy. Some hot actors (and Liam Neeson) are out on a battleship when this big alien ship comes out of the water and attacks. They fire back. End of trailer. Don’t get me wrong, the effects here look amazing, and maybe it will be at least a fun popcorn movie. I’m not above that. I mean hell, I still loves me some Armageddon. But what amazes me is that this is a licensed translation of an incredibly simple board game. I’m dying to know how they make any real connections to it, although there’s a hint in the trailer. At about the 1:55 mark, the alien ship actually fires what looks like “pegs” at them, embedding themselves in the hull of the ship. WOW, just like the game!!

At any rate, I had fun drawing the strip. On the second panel I’d planned on doing the blacks in ink and adding some painted stars, but I’d completely forgotten about it until I’d scanned it. So I did that part digitally. I might still go back and do it to the original piece.

Check out the Battleship trailer. The “pegs” show up at about 1:55.

 

Oh, and here’s the classic 1981 “Connect Four” commercial with the line “Pretty sneaky, sis”