Facehugs For Everyone!

It's nice to finally have a way to introduce kids to the horrors of alien lifeforms. (Facehugs For Everyone by Joebot)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Inappropriate Little Golden Books
It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin
Alien Vs. Pooh

You Will Never Find A More Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

Wow, I really need to pause that scene of the Mos Eisley Catina again, I never realized how many familiar aliens (prawns, Alf, Zoidburg, E.T., etc), ghosts (Beetlejuice) and oddities (flying monkeys) were in the background. Guess I was too busy watching Han Solo shoot first! (Mos Eisley Cantina by Andy MacDonald)

Previously on Popped Culture...
May The Futurama Be With You
The Dukes of Mos Eisley
Cantina Road

The Last Mythological Supper

Mickey Mouse betrays Christ in Cam Rackam's Now Accepting All Major Credit Cards, a commissioned painting from M Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold. It's quite the band of motley disciples, featuring L-R: A unicorn, leprechaun, the Headless Horseman, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, Jesus, an alien, the Easter Bummy, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Death and a jackalope. (Thanks Cam)

Previously on Popped Culture...

Suddenly Last Supper

Even More Last Suppers

Toy Story: Aliens

In Andy's room no one can hear you scream... (Cowboys and Aliens by Andy J. Hunter)

Previously on Popped Culture...

Midnight Cowboy Toy Story

The Wizard of Toy Story

The Good, The Bad And The Woody

Indiana Jones And The Morning Paper

Even retired, Indiana Jones had to feed his adrenaline addiction. Still, it's got a better plot than the Crystal Skull. (Link via Geek-Art, source unkown)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Nuke The Fridge
Pop Culture Character Alignment
How Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Should Have Ended

The Picture Of Dorian's Grey

The latest re-imagining of classic literature, in the vein of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Says author Chip Zdarsky: "Listen, I’m not going to lie to you. I really need some of this old-book-meets-whatever money."


Previously on Popped Culture...
Jane Austen’s Fight Club
Space Invader Autopsy
Law & Order: Gary Busey

Extra Terrestrial Joyride

Once Elliott and E.T made their famous appearance before the full moon everyone wanted a photo-op. (Extra Terrestrials by Glen Brogan)

Previously on Popped Culture...
All Work And No Reese's Pieces Makes E.T. A Dull Boy
Checkmate In Four Moves, Predator
Alien Last Supper 

All Work And No Reese's Pieces Makes E.T. A Dull Boy

Here's Extra-terrestrial! Yup, E.T. is back and this time, it's personal. (Shining Finger by Joao Lauro Fonte via TeeFury)

Previously on Popped Culture...
I Pity The Fool Who Doesn't Phone Home
In Space No One Can Hear You Phone Home
And Now I Have A Heart

Alien Vs. Pooh

It All Began With A Discovery In The 100 Acre Wood

With Predictable Results

Help Would Be Needed

The bear with very little bear mistakes an alien pod for a honey pot and goes home with a facehugger. Oh bother! A.A. Milne's bear meets H.R. Giger's parasites in Giant Hamburger's Alien vs. Pooh. The above is only a small, small part of an increasingly odd comic. (Link via The Zeray Gazette)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Apocalypse Pooh
Calvin and Hobbes and Pooh Bear, Oh My!
In Space No One Can Hear You Phone Home

Alien Last Supper

Alien Last Supper, from artist Tim Kelly's Similar Alien series. "Have you ever looked at the people around you and wondered what planet they are from? Have you ever felt like you are not like everyone else? Are you unique?"

Well, I'm pretty sure I'm not.

Previously on Popped Culture...
Suddenly Last Supper
The Last Smurf
Team Avatar: Pandora Police

Big Cartoon Hunter

If you've got to shoot things, it might as well be Hello Kitty. Hey, why not throw in a unicorn, Bugs Bunny, Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, Minnie, Pinocchio, a witch and a couple of aliens. Strange bone structure in the ears though, I always thought they would have been cartilage. Or maybe these were mascots. In that case, shoot them twice.  (Photos by Riccardo Bagnoli for a teen clothes ad campaign; link via Nerdcore by way of The Zeary Gazette)

Previously on Popped Culture...
I Love You, You Love Me...
Anatomy Of A Gummi Bear
If Cartoons Were Real

In Case Of Cliche Emergencies

Every home should be equipped like this, because I've seen a lot of movies and attacks by witches, zombies, dinosaurs, vampires, aliens and the like happen way more often than you'd imagine. Better safe than sorry. (From webcomic Geist Panik, via fandeb)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Velma The Vampire Hunter
THIS Is How The World Ends
Space Invader Autopsy

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo

Dueling Banjos, of course! Now we know why aliens are always turning cows inside out and picking up dudes in pickup trucks. They're kin! Aliens, they just never stop surprising you. (Link via Miss Cellania)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Space Invader Autopsy
Checkmate In Four Moves, Predator
Invaders! Possibly From Space!

Space Invader Autopsy

And here I thought they were ships. My bad. Alien Autopsy, from Threadless designer Chris Rowson.

So what's with all the Space Invader (and Pac-Man and Super Mario for that matter) references lately? Is my generation really getting that nostalgic? I suppose I shouldn't ask that without a solid look back at my postings.

Previously on Popped Culture...
Single Female Lawyer Arriving Soon At Omicron Persei 8
Checkmate In Four Moves, Predator
My Little Pony Madness

Single Female Lawyer Arriving Soon At Omicron Persei 8

Leela: They're going to destroy the entire Earth if they don't see some stupid TV show about some bimbo lawyer?
Fry: It's crazy! How could they even know about a show from a thousand years ago?
Farnsworth: Well, Omicron Persei 8 is about a thousand light years away. So the electro-magnetic waves would just recently have gotten there. You see--
Fry: Magic. Got it.

From Abstruse Goose, via everyone

Previously on Popped Culture...
Worry About The Replicants, Not The Apes
Extinct, Endangered, Resurrected
Who/What To Worship?

Space Defenders

So does that mean the aliens from Space Invaders were actually retaking their home planet? That we were the invaders? This t-shirt just blew my mind. From the incomparable Glennz.

Speaking of Space Invaders, game designer Shinobi is reworking the game using a scene from Raiders of the Lost Arcade, part of Futurama's Anthology of Interest II episode, including Rush's Tom Sawyer as the soundtrack, of course.


And speaking of Futurama, it has been confirmed that FOX is reviving the series with an order of 26 episodes for 2010! Good news indeed.

Previously on Popped Culture...
Sweet Zombie Jesus, Futurama Lives!
Watcharama: Who watches the Futuramen?
Obsoletely Fabulous

Checkmate In Four Moves, Predator

Can't an Alien and a Predator just get along? The image, along with the duo playing pool and tetherball, were created by a New Zealand ad agency for the Sky TV network, for an airing of Alien vs. Predator. I suspect the ad was better than the film.

Previously on Popped Culture...
My Little Pony Madness
Time For A Commercial Break
Sex, Latex and Videotape

My Little Pony Madness

In the 1980s my sister was obsessed with My Little Pony. They were candy-coloured, sparkly and everything a teenage boy wanted nothing to do with. Some people have decided to do something about this. Tiffany, this is for you...

My Little Alien: I knew there was something wrong with My Little Pony, I just didn't know it would come bursting through my chest cavity. This, and several more are from Mari Kasurinen, who has a Flickr page, a Deviant Art site and a website devoted to her custom toy creations.

My Little Edward Scissorhands: A misunderstood My Little Pony with razor-sharp blades for hooves. Marvelous! It even looks like Johnny Depp!


My Little Buckbeak: Nothing really horrifying about this custom My Little Pony, in fact the Buckbeak was a friendly to Harry Potter. I just loved the look.

My Little Han Solo: Had carbonite freezing been available in my teen years, this is how all of my sisters Ponies would have ended up.

My Little Boba Fett: If you have My Little Han Solo, you naturally have to have My Little Boba Fett. Now no more of this before George Lucas gets any ideas.

My Little Borg: If the Borg were to assimilate everything then it follows that they would assimilate My Little Pony as well. But it would be there undoing...

My Little Cthulhu: H.P. Lovecraft's embodiment of extreme horror, terror and evil, Cthulhu is a perfect candidate for a My Little Pony mod.


My Little Worf: Comes with his own bat'leth. I think Klingons would secretly love My Little Pony, just like they love prune juice — because they are both so terrible.


My Little Master Chief: The Chief isn't quite as imposing as a pony, but I'd happily stick a few plasma grenades on him, just to see what happens.


My Little Trojan Horse: Ah, the Classical Studies education pays off once more. How could the Trojan's resist bringing in something so cute? Which makes me wonder about Trojan condoms — oh sure, it's clever, there's something hidden inside! But when it gets out (and it does) it will slaughter you and burn everything you have to the ground. Hmm, guess that's why I'm not in advertising.

And for good measure, Robot Chicken's Apocalypse Ponies: Pestilence Pony, War Pony, Famine Pony, and Death Pony.

The Marketing Campaign Is Out There

In a summer season crowded with super heroes and big-budget blow 'em ups, how does a long-lost franchise break through the marketing clutter? No, not Indiana Jones — is there anyone who doesn't know that's coming out? (Plus it has a Cannes premiere, for whatever reason.) And I'm not talking about Sex and City, which has every media outlet indulging in all the fashion and relationship brouhaha that swirls around it.

I speak instead of intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who have long since faded from our TV screens. While the show went off the air in 2002, for many fans it ended two years previously when David Duchovney started curtailing his appearances. I had been an avid fan but lost interest with the convoluted, going-nowhere mythology, and once Mulder was gone I transferred my allegiances to a young Sydney Bristow. I never even saw the finale. A movie came out, which I recall had something to do with bees, and is now mostly referenced as a cautionary tale for Lost on how not to wrap up a series.

With so much baggage — and indifference — The X-Files has embarked upon a brilliant stealth marketing campaign to get people talking about extraterrestrials again, with the aid of some very heavy hitters.

First the Vatican weighed in, out of nowhere, professing a belief in aliens. "In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists," said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.

"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.

This from a church who didn't get around to admitting that Galileo was right about the earth revolving around the sun until 1992.

Then on the same day Britain's Ministry of Defense released their files on UFO sightings, dating back to the 1970s, with more to come. The ministry said it compiled the reports solely to determine whether enemy aircraft had infiltrated British airspace. "The Ministry of Defense has no other interest or role regarding UFO matters and does not consider questions regarding the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial life-forms," it said Wednesday.

A coincidence, as easily explained as weather balloons reflecting city lights, or evidence of viral marketing is out there? It's a conspiracy I want to believe.