Comics I Bought: June 28, 2007

Back from a trip to the local comic shop. I picked up one comics and two trades:

Walking Dead- 38

Unlike some of my friends I am not getting bored with this comic. Sometimes when a book is consistent people get bored with it. I think people like when a book goes from good to bad to good around and around. It make them feel like there is more to get excited about. Anyway this has ben a consistently good comic.

Girls "Survival" TPB (3)

Girls "Extinction" TPB (4)

I liked the first two trades of this series so I went and bought two more.

And now for some reviews of recent stuff.

Phonogram "Rue Britannia" TPB

Those British love their music and their youthful days of going to clubs and listening to live bands. I've seen quite a few movies and read quite a few comics that deal with this setting and subject. I think it's a genre now. Nostalgia is always big in these types of stories and Phonogram is no exception.

I have always listened to music and own hundreds of CDs (plus hundreds of albums in other formats before CDs and now hundreds in mp3 form) yet I was never into going and seeing live bands. So even though this type of story is usually drenched in nostalgia I kinda miss out on the emotional resonance. But I like such tales anyway because I enjoy stories about people and their passions.

Phonogram sets itself apart from the rest of the genre by dealing with magic. Not a "we duel each other with ectoplasmic blasts" kind of magic but an "Earth Mother magic that takes place outside of a normal person's perception but still affects the world" kind of magic. In the world of Phonogram magic influences music and music influences magic. The two are tied up in this tale.

Phonogram is the story of a "Phonomancer" named David Kohl. He's as much an aging hipster as a magician and is really more about music than magic. He used to be big into mid-ninties Brit-Pop and those are the days he's nostalgic for. But his memories are being changed and he now likes bands he never did before and can't remember some others he used to like. Someone is magically messing with time and music and he wants to find out who and why. He also does not want to lose the nostalgia for his favorite bands. All the normal "is nostalgia good or bad" stuff is dealt with as he progresses on his journey.

Usually this isn't the type of magic I like to read stories about. I like my magic to have well defined rules. I find that magic stories without any rules tend to be amorphous and the magic suits whatever purpose the author wants at that moment regardless of logic or storytelling. There was some of that going on here. By that I mean there were times when I just didn't know what the author meant by all the magic mumbo jumbo. But y'know what? The ending made it for me. I really appreciate a good ending and Phonogram's pulled all the vague magic stuff together and made sense of it.

All in all I liked Phonogram. I think it might be one of those stories that gets better with the second read. So if your into comics, nostalgia, music, or magic give it a read.

Tricked by Alex Robinson

And speaking of things that get better with the second read I pulled this off my shelf this week. I am a big fan of "Box Office Poison" by Alex Robinson so when "Tricked", his second book, came out last year I immediately picked it up. And I was disappointed with it. Not that it was bad I just didn't like it as much as BOP. But I suspected my own expectations might have colored my perception of "Tricked" so I decided to reserve judgement until I could read it again sometime in the future. Welcome to the future.

Tricked is a 350 page comic with multiple running narratives. BOP was a loosely structured story that meandered and seemed to go where ever on a whim. BOP imitated life. I liked that about BOP. Tricked is very tightly structured and that took me by surprise the first time I read it. It has four running narratives:

1-A poor little rich rock star who is miserable, can't write songs anymore, and has a hard time dealing with life despite his wealth and fame.

2- A young waitress and her coworkers who are living their lives and looking for love.

3- A semi-slimey guy who works in a baseball card store and forges autographs for a living.

4- A fan of the rock star who has gone off his meds and is becoming deluded.

Each story was separate but you know they are all going to crash together in the end. There are even chapter numbers that count down. I was totally distracted by this plot structure the first time through and had a hard time paying attention to the little things as I went along because I just wanted to see the inevitable crash. The second time through I could enjoy the ride.

Most of the large cast of characters have their own journeys going on unrelated to the inevitable crash at the end. It was these journeys that were more enjoyable the second time through. I still didn't find the poor little rock star character too interesting but some of the others were and I could take my time with them.

One strange thing about this book is though it is a story that takes place in the real world and is about real life all the names of places and people are made up. Unlike Phonogram which references real music and musicians all of the names of musicians, songs, athletes, and places in Tricked were fictional. And a lot of time is spent discussing these music and athletes. I found this odd and not very effective. It took me out of the moment because although I didn't get a lot of the music references in Phonogram I knew they made sense to someone. All of the talk about sports figures and musicians in Tricked made no sense to anyone. Why was it there at all? I always found it strange. Small quibble.

I'd say the second time around is the charm for Tricked. I still like BOP better but what does that matter? Tricked stands on its own as a nice piece of work. I even recommend reading the climax first if you think you're going to be as distracted as I was by wanting to see the crash at the end. You can make your first read your second read that way.

Expert Hoaxes

I had on some program about the Shroud of Turin today. I watch a lot of such documentaries because they amuse me. I like real documentaries too but the ones about supernatural phenomenon can be especially entertaining. They tend to be comedies in my mind.

I can understand why people hate such documentaries because they're often not real documentaries content with trying to record facts (I said "trying") but pure entertainment filled with guys just plain making stuff up. Supposition piled upon supposition as the saying goes. Trying to find facts among the fiction is a game. A game of chance even.

There is one phrase I always hear from the "experts" in these supernatural documentaries. And this one was one exception. "If this is a hoax it's the greatest hoax of all time" is what these goofball talking heads always say. Experts continually underestimate the creativity of hoaxers, pranksters, and artists. Maybe it's because creativity is usually not to found among these experts so they don't expect it from anyone else. They have no understanding of creativity so it doesn't make it into their thought processes.

Two examples of experts underestimating hoaxers are: 1) In a show about crop circles that "no person or team of people could ever had made" they actually showed us the two guys (local artists) with boards and ropes making the circles. Still some experts wouldn't believe it until they were shown video of it being done. And then they said that only that circle was done by the hoaxers. The others couldn't have been. 2) I love the one I saw on the fake Hitler diaries where experts said the handwriting was genuine and there was no way anyone could fake such a large amount of handwriting. Of course they were faked by an artist and they asked him how he did it and he said that he looked at Hitler's writing and then, with practice, imitated it. He could write in Hitler's handwriting as easily as his own. He's an artist. That's what artists do. Get creative. Draw things. Pretend they're someone else.

And don't these experts watch movies? If they would watch a movie then they would know the lengths that forgers go to to fool them. Yeah, I know that movies aren't real life but they try to imitate life and one of the ways they do that is to show you what a forger would have to do to fool someone. It establishes a movies credibility. TV and movies like to show us, step by step, how someone pulls a con on someone else. You want to fake a 16th century painting? Get a canvas of the period by finding a valueless old painting and strip the paint off. At least that's what I get from the movies. Forgers, hoaxers, and movie makers are all creative people.

One of the things I laughed at in the Shroud film is when an expert in ancient fabrics said that the weave of the shroud was a specific weave from the first century and there was no way it could have been faked in the 14th century. Ha! Forgers get period stuff to make forgeries with all the time. Why do people assume hoaxers in the past were dumb? Some clever lad could have found an old piece of linen or, oh my imagine this, noticed old weaving was different then current weaving and had a piece made in the old style. But that's too clever for those poor dumb people of the 14th century. Today's experts must be right about their stupidness.

Hey, I think I just became one of the people that this kind of documentary annoys.

Comics I Bought June 20, 2007

Another Wednesday night trip to the comic shop this week. I picked up two comics and a trade:

Ex machine - 29

Rex Mundi Vol 2 - 6

Phonogram "Rue Britannia" TPB

The trade is from Image comics and I don't really know what it is about. It's in black and white and from what I gather from the back cover has to do with music and magic. I'll let you know how it is.

Episode Twenty Two of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation TPB - I've heard it said over the years that "The villain is usually more interesting than the hero". I've never agreed with this. I usually find villains dull, unbelievable, and often ineffective. They just get to chew the scenery more often than heros and that can be fun. Villains also get less face time in a hero's book so they can be more open to interpretation and a reader can read more into a villain if that reader is so inclined. Have you guessed? This book is about villains.

I found it mediocre and uninteresting. I only made it forty pages in. The Secret Six are a group of bad guys who take assignments and steal to make money. They are also at war with another bigger group of villains. All the villains seemed the same to me. They were all constantly hamming it up to establish their villainous bona fides. I didn't find a single character interesting nor was I interested in the plot. If you like stories about villains you might find something interesting here since it is not a badly crafted book but I didn't.

Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven TPB - Man these DC epic crossover stories make a mess of things. Suffice it to say that Bludhaven is a city next to Gotham (who knew?) that got hit by a chemical bomb and now is walled off and out of bounds. So now we have a government super team kicking people out of the city, some kind of evil government plot to make more super guys, the Society of Evil sending teams into the city for some reason, the Atomic Knights trying to help people get out of the city, other people outside the city walls trying to get in, one super hero outside the walls trying to go in and figure out the governments evil plan, and the Teen Titans not doing anything. And when the various groups aren't killing each other they're debating each other!

At least I made it sixty pages in this time. It was a two page debate between Firebrand and the Teen Titans over whether the Titans should actually do something that broke me.

There is some good stuff in here. The actual super hero action was well done. It was all the secret government conspiracy and debating stuff that I thought was awful. I gotta go read something good now.

Time to Think

I don't like being "too busy". I like time to think. I usually have it because time to think important to me so I make time. I'm an odd bird. Of course I can see how most people don't have time to think. Work, kids, family obligations, and general chores take up a lot of time and energy. Finding some peace and quite to focus the mind is not an easy task. Then there is the fact that most people don't want to think. They are not very good at it or find the whole thing too much work. People make their own choices. Well, when blind random chance isn't making those choices for us that is.

TV seems to be one of the biggest things to lure people away from thinking time. I get that from what I read plus what people tell me. Personally I don't find TV to be a big a distraction. That could be because I have it on a lot as I'm working at the drawing board or computer and so get my fill of the noise it makes. I'm usually listening to the TV as I work so sitting down and watching with my full attention seems like too much of a bother. I want some peace and quite to get some thinking done and the TV makes too much noise. Noise I'm tired of by the end of the day.

Despite there being the time one of the worst places to get any thinking done is on a commute. I've commuted into Manhattan many times in my life and despite it being only forty miles from my house it's about a two hour commute. That's two hours one way and two hours back. If it's raining add half an hour each way. If it's too sunny add half an hour each way. If the wind blows wrong add half an hour each way. You get the idea.

Most of my commute time is on the bus. The breakdown: 20-25 minutes to get to the bus, 5-10 minutes to wait for the bus, 75-90 minutes on the bus, 20-25 minutes to get to wherever the hell I'm working in Manhattan. That's a lot of time to maybe get some thinking done. Except you can't.

Making a long commute takes so much energy. Even if you're sitting on a bus it's fatiguing. All you can think about is how much of your life is wasted commuting. You try not to add up the hours and try not to think of all the things you could have gotten done. There is no real thinking going on. Maintaining your sanity takes up all your energy. Escape is all you are hoping for. I was only commuting three days a week and that was too much. You get almost nothing done while crammed into the seat on a packed bus. Them's the facts.

I used to get in a little early and sit in Bryant Park. I found it a very good park for thinking in. It's a pretty, sedate, and ordered park. For those of you unfamiliar with Bryant Park it's only a couple of blocks wide by nearly an avenue long. Eight acres with a three acre open green lawn in the middle. Right behind the famous NYC library with the stone lions out front. Not a huge park by Central or Prospect Park standards but nice. It has chairs, tables, and umbrellas too. I'd sit, draw, and contemplate life. It was never any fun to get up and go in to an office after that. But that's life. Gotta leave the park sometime.

Without a commute lately I've had a lot more time to think. I like that. I never could written so many blogs without time to think. You think this stuff is easy? When my time to think goes away I'm always annoyed. Of course sometimes this thinking is the most mundane type of thinking. For the past week I've been thinking a whole lot about getting a new hat. A couple of new ones actually. How's that for deep?

I need a new fitted black ball cap. That's not as easy as it sounds because I want one without a logo. The local mall used to have a store that sold such hats but, alas, no more. I've been looking at hats on the internet but I don't want to buy one I haven't seen for real or tried on. The second hat I want is a new panama straw homburg hat. I saw that on a web site. I'll have to hit a hat store next time I'm in the city. Which, by the way, is tomorrow. I have to commute in for the day. No time for thinking. I'm not even sure if they'll be time for hats.

Comics I Bought: June 14, 2007

On this week's trip to the comic shop I picked up two comics:

StormWatch Post Human Division - 8

Strangers in Paradise - 90 (The last issue of the series!)

Plus hardcover madness continues with:

Scarlet Traces: The Great Game

I bought Scarlet Traces: The Great Game as a mini-series last year and liked it a lot. So I went and got the first hardcover "Scarlet Traces" book. Now I have the second series in hardcover to match. And it was only fifteen bucks minus my discount. Good show.

Last week I bought a hardcover graphic novel called "Exit Wounds". It's author, Rutu Modan, is from Israel and that is where the story is set. The plot stars a taxi driver who is contacted by a woman. This woman tells him that among the dead in bombing is an unidentified man who may be his estranged father.

That's the plot but the book is really about our protagonist and his relationship to his father. It's not a good relationship but he begins to see things a little more through others' eyes as the book progresses. Others begin to see things though his eyes too.

I liked this book. It didn't start out that way. I found the initial, I dunno, forty pages (it's a 172 page book) clumsy and awkward. I wasn't fond of the storytelling or drawing and was having a hard time getting into it. But then it got better. Not in any dramatic way that you can notice just by flipping the pages but in a subtle way. The drawing and storytelling improved and I got absorbed into it. I think this is the author's first long comic work and that could easily explain how she got better as she went along. If she didn't do the pages in numerical order than I have no explanation for you.

There is nothing typical in our protagonist's relationship with his dad and his dad is never actually in the story. Just the wake his dad leaves in the world behind him. Our hero wanders through this wake trying to figure out is his father is dead or alive. He sees some things that confirm his opinion of his father and other things that don't. His father's character is still a bit of a mystery at the end of the book to both his son and us. This is a good thing. The story came to a satisfying emotional ending without any simplistic wrap up of our hero's father woes.

If you like real life stories check it out.

I finally got around to reading "Conan: Hall of the Dead and Other Stories". The fourth volume in the Dark Horse Conan series. No real life here as this book chronicles the adventures of Conan's youth. Conan is about 18 and living as a theif in a city. He's arrogant, brash and a lot of people don't like him. I wouldn't even call him a hero in these tales. But they're good stories.

I liked them because they're fun, rollicking, and wide open. There is an enthusiasm to these stories that was missing in Conan's final days at Marvel comics. The printing in this hardcover edition is absolutely great too.

Now I'm going to take a few moments to sing the praises of the "color artist" on these stories: Dave Stewart. It's his work that really pulls the book together and makes it work. There is no inker on the book so the colorist is finishing the pencils with his coloring. This is not easy to do because usually a penciler doesn't think about his work as finished (normally that's the inker's job). Due to the sketchiness of some of the penciled pages in this book I know it wasn't always easy to make them look "finished" but Dave Stewart's coloring succeeds in doing just that nearly all of the time. He makes it not only look finished but look good. Kudos.

So if you haven't checked out any Conan in a while this is a really nice volume to pick up.

More Ramblings

Some days I wish I had something to say. But I don't. Those are the days when flipping around the TV channels actually seems interesting.

A few web sites are really slow tonight. What the hell is that all about? It's not like every site is slow just some of my regulars. The world's a mystery.

Just went to a movie review web site to read some reviews. Unlike most people I know I have no great love for going to the movies. I don't, in any way, find it a magical experience. It's just going to sit in the dark and watch a movie with a bunch of strangers. There is also a fair chance that one of those strangers is going to annoy me. I'd just as soon watch a movie at home where I can easily turn it off if it's bad. I don't care how big the screen is. Call me crazy.

Why is it that I find Google Analytics so fascinating? No one reads my blog but people I already know and if some stranger stumbles onto it because of a search engine hit they don't actually stay to read anything. But looking at charts saying that is neat. I especially like the world map that shows which cities my few hits are coming from. Someone in Korea can easily stumble my way even if they don't care at all that they do. Wild.

I want a new hat. I'm thinking of getting a Dobbs el Dorado. I was going to look at some hats when I was in Manhattan last Thursday night but the bus ride in that was supposed to take an hour and twenty minutes (damned local) instead took two hours and ten minutes. There went my hat looking time. I need a new black fitted ball cap too. I can try the local mall for that.

I usually use Camino as my web browser. Not every script on every page works correctly in it and embedded YouTube videos make it choke after they've run but it is still a fast browser. Last week I downloaded the latest Firefox browser to give it another try. Everything worked in it fine but I found that drove me crazy because, I discovered, it's all the ads that didn't run in Camino. They ads worked in Firefox and it drove me to distraction. Going onto MySpace in Firefox was a horror. I switched back to Camino where the a lot of the ads don't run at all.

I've never been a pretzel fan. I don't hate them. I just find them bland and boring. But lately I've been enjoying some honey wheat pretzels. This made me branch out and try another pretzel variety this week. Sesame butter pretzels. These things have got to make you fat. They taste like butter. Crazy idea for a pretzel. Butter it.

I bought some 140 lb. watercolor paper the other week. Nothing odd there. But some of it was paper with a slight blue tint. I don't know what I'm going to do with that blue paper. It seemed cool so I got some. I wonder what I'll eventually use it for? Time will tell.

I watched "You, Me and Dupree". It was no where near as bad as the critics made it out to be. It was okay. I even liked it better than the way overrated "Wedding Crashers". Not that the "Wedding Crashers" was bad. I was just another uneven comedy. I think I want to watch "Made" now. I love that one. I don't know if I'd consider it the same kind of comedy as Dupree and Crashers but it's better then both of them.

I was just reading up on binding individual comics into custom hard bound volumes. It sounds cool but I'll never do it. I'm not that motivated to. Some things I only read about.

I think I'll make some kind of a wall display for my prints. I sometimes need to remind myself that I've done things. Otherwise I forget and my own past will cease to influence me. You gotta be your own influence.

Catch you later, cats. I'm going to go and read some "Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth".

Comics I bought This Week: June 6, 2007

A little bit better week at the comic shop I picked up three comics:

The Lone Ranger 6 - A nice western.

Buffy Season Eight 4- Let's see how the first story wraps up

Supernatural Origins 2 - I liked the first issue.

Plus I picked up a hardcover.

Exit Wounds" by Rutu Modan

It's published by Drawn and Quarterly. It looks good. I'll let you know how it is. I still haven't read the Conan hardcover I bought last week. Sometimes I like to let a book hang around unread for a while. It gives me something to look forward to reading.

Week Twenty One of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Manhunter "Trial by Fire" TPB - This collects issues 6-14 of the series "Manhunter"

After reviewing comics for which I only have a few parts of the whole story I'm glad to read nine issue in a row. Manhunter is a new version of an old super hero. Now Manhunter is a woman and a federal attorney working out of LA. Plus she doesn't mind killing the evil people she battles.

All in all a good series. The first story in the book mixes super heroics with courtroom drama. It doesn't have the detail of an episode of Law and Order but captures the flavor in an interesting way. The second story deals with some others who used the Manhunter name in the past and leads into DC's Omac project story line that happened a couple of years ago. That was the less satisfying part of the book but it wasn't bad.

Manhunter uses a special staff that has super powers but she doesn't know where it came from or what it can do. It surprises her with new powers every now and again. An old plotter's trick to create some mystery for sure but not used as a crutch.

Being a DC comic and collecting nine issues there are, of course, four pencilers and three inkers. But they are all competent with similar styles so the story telling doesn't suffer. The coloring is also solid and helps to unify things. Over all Manhunter is a nice effort and offers some solid super hero action.

Warren Ellis: Blackgas 1-3 - Not a DC comic but an Avatar comic this was passed on to me by a friend. I bought the first issue last year when it can out but not the other two.

Blackgas is a zombie story that takes place on a small island off of the New England coast. There is lots of gore, violence and flesh eating zombies but it left me a bit cold. There is nothing wrong with it I just found all the explosions and gunshots dull. I liked the first issue best before all the action happened as they were letting us get to know the characters. After the zombie action started the characters no longer mattered as they were just fighting for their lives as in every zombie movie you've ever seen. For zombie fans only I say.

Where's My Web Comic?

"What's the point?" That is the question I've been asking myself lately. Not about life in general (though I do ask that question about life in general, after all, I tend to be a bit philosophical) but about making comics for the world wide web. I love comics plus I'm an artist and a writer and I make comics. At least I've made comics in the past. Not as much in the last five or so years. No one payed me to make comics and I came to the inescapable conclusion that no one was ever going to pay me to make comics. So I stopped making them and concentrated more on my paintings, prints and photos. No one was paying me for those either but I find that easier to take because because in those mediums I end up with a finished something. A physical object. Art. Unless you actually print the comic you just have a stack of original comic pages that no one will ever read. Forever unfinished. A comic isn't finished until it's in a format that people can read.

So lately I've been thinking about and working on a comic for the web. That's not so odd. A lot of people are thinking about the same thing. Web comics are supposed to be the future of comics. At least according to what I read on the web. But I keep asking myself, "What's the point?".

There are a lot of problems with comics on the web. The biggest being that no one is going to pay me to make one. A few people are making money with comics on the web. Mostly through selling some ads and hawking merchandise but every cartoonist is looking for a way to make the web pay off for them and few succeed. Wow, it's just like paper comics.

A lot of people now read their favorite newspaper comics on the web but that only helps the already established guys who are already getting paid to syndicate their strips. A little extra gravy for them. A few dedicated comic strip fans search out new comics on the web but the searcher's numbers are small. Like any other web site comic sites are all about getting people to go there. Hits, baby. That's why money buying publicity wins. Most of the time. I have neither money nor publicity so how would I get hits? That's a rhetorical question.

My second problem with making a comic for the web is that the comic strip form dominates and seems to be the best fit for the web. At least for now. I find the strip form very limiting. Especially since gag a day strips are almost the only kind that exist. Even on the web. I don't want to do a gag a day strip. If I do I'll just be adding to the vast pile of mediocre strips out there. I'm just too artsy fartsy to be making a gag a day strip. I don't have that many gags in me. Most don't.

Another problem is the huge amount of work in making a comic strip. Most web comic guys I've seen have their methods streamlined so as to make a strip in the least amount of work possible. I understand this because they are not getting paid but the lack of craftsmanship is what creates the vast pile of mediocrity. It takes time to make a nice strip. I can make better use of my time expressing myself in other mediums. Writing this blog takes a fraction of the time it would take to make a single comic strip. And I can get more ideas across. So I would have to have something original to say that wouldn't work in any other medium to make a comic strip worth my creative time.

Comic strips are also relentlessly narrative. I like narrative but when I'm making a painting, print, photo, or writing a blog narrative is just one of my choices. With a strip it's almost the only choice. That cuts down on the creative options and when I am making art on my own it's all about options. So I have to see if I can explode the strip form and give myself more options. That's not easy let me tell you.

For a while I've been searching for that something to say with a strip. Despite the passing months and many hours crafting many ideas I'm not there yet. I've started, spent much time on, and rejected a lot of ideas. I almost finished my first strip but not quite. This one has a chance succeed but unless it can stand beside my other work and be just as interesting to me it will be abandoned too. It's the first one to be teetering on the edge of completeness and that's a good sign. All the others were rejected at the color stage when I just couldn't see myself tying them together into an interesting coherent whole.

Maybe this week I'll be able to pull it together. Maybe this week I'll finish the first strip. I'm still not sure yet. I also have to think about presentation and that is a whole other ball of wax. Such is the creative life.

I did finish a couple of prints last week. That's solid.