Comics I Bought: July 31, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got no new comics. Slow week. So I looked around and found a couple of hardcovers to get.

Green Lantern "Will World" - (on sale for $7.50)

The Incredible Hercules "Against the World" (Just because I wanted to check it out)

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Squadron Supreme - The Pre-War Years by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank

Modern comics can be a real mess. I don't know what the creators are thinking sometimes. I read one other volume of Straczynski's Squadron Supreme a few years ago and I remember finding it interesting if flawed. This volume I just found flawed.

As with a lot of modern comics which have "decompressed" storytelling not a lot happens early on. The entire first issue (and there are only five of them in this volume) is devoted to introducing the team. Nothing else happens. Stan Lee would have introduced the team in three pages (or just the splash page) and then gotten on with the story. No here. In this story military men sit around and discuss the team until they are finally introduced on the last page of issue one. No wonder new comic book series don't last very long. They always start so slowly nowadays.

But don't worry because first thing in issue two we are treated to a five page sequence of the Squad filling out paper work. Yes, you heard me right, filling out paperwork. What thrills, what excitement, what insight into the characters as they each approach filling out paperwork differently. Who thinks super heros filling out paperwork is a good story point? Crazy.

The rest of the book was not badly done but filled with stuff I've seen a thousand times before. The Squad are super powered but not really heroes, the US government is evil, terrorists are evil, half of the Squad is evil, fictional Mid-Eastern countries are evil, rape is evil, most people in general are evil, and there is pretty much no good in the Squadron Supreme world.

Then the story just ends right in the middle. I'd say the story isn't resolved but it's more a collection of events than a story. It's a good thing I only paid six bucks for this.

In the Cards

It's been a busy week for me. Earning a living-wise that is. Except earning a living has been boring me. I've had lots to do but the mundaneness of it all is annoying. I usually find boredom irritating. So today I went back to work on my "Tourmaline Mystique" project. That's the name I came up with for my fortune telling system based on a series of forty eight cards I thought up. I've been working on it for quite a few years now but haven't picked it up for the last year or so. Sometimes these things take a while.

I'm at the point know where I have to really test it out and refine what all the cards mean as they interact. Y'know, work on their bullshit capabilities. Since I have no editor on this project (like every project I do; I'm only one person) I needed a little time between when I last worked on them and when I have to think about finalizing them. That's what my next task is: think about how to finish the book that goes with the cards and explains what they do.

The design and illustration of the cards themselves are finished. That took me a couple of years but is completely finalized. The instruction book is far from done. Design and writing-wise. I have plenty of words to go in the book but not the finished words. The first draft is there but that's it. Plus I want to add some more stories to it. That will take some doing.

I did rework the layout of the book so I can print it out easier and make a mock-up to edit. That's a step that takes some doing. I made a mock-up when I last worked on it but it proved less than effective. I made the old mock up from a spiral bound sketch book. I printed out my text and used photo corners to mount it on the left side of the page while mounting the card illustrations on the right. I figured that with photo corners I could easily pull pages out and remount new ones as I made editorial changes. It didn't work out that way.

The book I made overstuffed the spiral sketchbook because of the thickness of all those mounted pages and it never closed right. That also made it hard to handle and turn the pages. Plus my mounted pages often wouldn't stay mounted. The paper I used to print on was too thin for the photo corners and slipped out of them. I was always stuffing the printouts back into the book. This made things too difficult so I put the book down and didn't go back to it. No editing got done.

So now it's time for another try at making a mock-up of the book. I'm taking a different approach this time. I'll print on both sides of the paper and fold and staple the thing together. No, I haven't got the whole thing figured out yet but I'm on it. I wish I had some double sided ink jet coated paper. I have some double sided matte heavyweight inkjet paper but that is too heavy weight. I don't think they make double sided thin inkjet paper. I might just have to go with plain paper. The illustrations might not look so good but the text is what I need to edit. I want to edit on paper because I'm tired of looking at the screen.

Flash forward in time! Whew, yes I just finished up printing out the book I mentioned above. I made it all fit onto twelve sheets of plain paper. Each of the forty eight cards take up half of an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of letter size paper. The paper is turned horizontally so it is actually 11 x 8.5 inches. I had to make a little mock-up to figure out where to put the pages in the layout. Since I was printing on both sides of the paper I would get four cards (pages) per sheet. Page forty eight has to go on the left side of the first sheet and page one on the right. That's so when the paper is folded the pages line up in order. Hence my need for a little mock up otherwise I would never know that page thirty eight goes next to page eleven. It's a tricky little thing that I haven't done in a while.

So here's to hoping I finally get a bit more editing done on this sucker and can learn to tell the future. I'll know it all then!

Comics I Bought: July 24, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 3 new comics plus a hard cover collection and a graphic novel:

Echo - 1 (I got this off of Ebay so now I've managed to track down the first four issues)

Usagi Yojimbo - 113

Supernatural - Rising Son - 4

The New York Four - A Minx graphic novel. The new DC Comics "Manga-ish" (i.e. B&W and small 5x7 inch) imprint.

Howard The Duck Omnibus

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

World War Hulk TPB by Greg Pak and John Romita Jr.

I've been looking forward to reading "World War Hulk". I'd read and enjoyed "Planet Hulk" and this was the next book. I've only one word for it. Disappointing.

The "philosophy" of "World War Hulk" is on the level of a comic book. I hate that phrase, "on the level of a comic book". Being a comic book fan I've read a lot of comics that have sophisticated themes, ideas, and philosophies in them so using the phrase "comic book" to describe something as overly simple is an anathema to me. Plus the phrase is usually used by film critics to describe bad movies. Like movies are in any way a more sophisticated than comic books. But film critics don't know that. This book unfortunately made that phrase pop into my mind.

But back to "World War Hulk". Black Bolt, Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Strange, and Iron Man blasted the Hulk into space to get him off of the Earth. Hulk landed on a dangerous planet of monsters (see the Planet Hulk book) but now has found his way back to earth and wants his revenge. Hulk shows up in a spaceship with his new friends from Planet Hulk and gives 24 hours notice to evacuate Manhattan then he's going to kick the ass of the four who sent him into space and level the city.

What plan do all the super heroes on Earth come up with? Pretty much nothing. Black Bolt takes him on by himself as does Iron Man and Dr. Strange. Mr. Fantastic comes up with his own dumb plan that doesn't work either. It was like one of those kung fu movies where one guy takes on twenty guys but they all fight him one at a time. Everyone watching says, "fight him all at once and he can't win" but that never happens.

It's even mentioned three times early on that Dr. Strange can, with a flick of his fingers, send Hulk away to some other dimension. But he doesn't. Why not? Because Hulk would eventually find his way back and be madder says the good doctor. So what? Send him away again then. Or come up with an actual plan. Too many dumb things in this book.

And the "philosophy" part is all about who are the heroes and who are the villains in this book. Hulk thinks he's been wronged by the big four and is justified in his revenge. Tell that to all the people Hulk kills in his revenge rampage. I'm sure plenty died in the 24 hour evacuation alone. You think they could empty all the hospitals in Manhattan without losing anyone in such a short time?

Oh, and the Sentry, the only super hero who could go punch for punch with the Hulk, finally decided to join the fight at the end of the book. Imagine that. How convinient. The rest of the time he literally just sat there. Dumbness abounds. I could go on and on but I wont.

The reason I liked "Planet Hulk" is because it was fun. There is little fun to be found in "World War Hulk". Even the nice John Romita Jr. and Klaus Jansen art work couldn't save it for me.

Call of Jury Duty

This is the tale of Monday July 14, 2008 when I had to report to federal jury duty. A tale of civic duty and civic boredom. Strap your selves in for the ride of a lifetime. (Am I selling too hard? Maybe.)

A few weeks ago I was notified, by mail, that I had to report to the Federal Court House at 500 Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan at 8:30 AM. No cell phones allowed. My exemption for my 2004 county jury duty had run out. Time to head to the big city.

The first thing this meant was that I would have to be up at 5:45 AM and out of the house by 6:15 to catch a 6:39 bus to NYC. I haven't had to do that in a while. The bus put me into the Port of Authority Bus Terminal at about 7:35 and from there I had to catch the A train (cue music) downtown to the Chambers Street Station. Then a funny thing happened. It was as I arrived at the Chambers Street station that it struck me that I had no idea which direction Pearl Street and the courthouse were. That far downtown in NYC the streets don't run in a predictable grid pattern. It's the old Dutch part of town and the streets run every which way. For the first time in many years I had to ask a passerby for directions. It was really weird not knowing where I was in the city. That hasn't happened in a decade. But I made it to the courthouse by 8:15.

There were about two to three hundred of us gathered together in the Honorable Constance Baker Motley Jury Assembly Room. It's a big room with high ceilings and lots of chairs so we fit comfortably. We had to fill out a form and then, a the proper time, form two lines to hand in our form and the jury I.D. papers that were mailed to us. After we were all back in our seats we watched an orientation film about what to expect from jury duty. Having watched countless episodes of "Law and Order" I had some idea of what to expect.

Soon a judge called down and said he needed a jury. The head Jury Assembly guy got on the microphone and called out fifty five names. My name was among them. All of us had to respond with a, "Here", line up two across, march our way to the elevators, and head up to the designated floor. We were warned not to rush willy-nilly into the court room (do people really do that?). Instead we were met by the head courtroom guy who escorted us into the court.

When the judge arrived the head courtroom guy reached into what I can only describe as a bingo ball turner and pulled out names one by one to fill the twelve jurors' seats. Mine was one of the twelve names called. Juror number nine. I went up and sat in the jurors' box. Because it's a fancy new building the jurors' seats were nice and each even had a flat screen monitor in front of it. The advancement of justice.

We were introduced to the prosecution and defense teams. After that we were then given some details of the case. It would be an armed robbery trial. All twelve of us were asked some general questions (the other 43 potential jurors has to listen too) mainly about if we or any of our immediate family worked for the government or law enforcement. None of the questions had any relevance to me. Nor the other jurors.

After that all twelve of us were asked, one at a time, to state our job, marital status, and what our spouse's job was if we had one. Then it was time for the lawyers to make their first round of cuts. Each side has six "peremptory challenges" where they can get rid of a juror for no cause. This was the first round of such where the prosecution uses one and the defense two (or that may be reversed I can't remember). I didn't survive this round. I guess, "Artist, self employed, and single" wasn't what they were looking for. It was back to the Honorable Constance Baker Motley Jury Assembly Room for me.

All of this was done by about 11 AM. My time in the court room was maybe half an hour. The whole rest of the day was waiting in the assembly room and not knowing what was going to happen. When I got back to the waiting room they called out another 55 names but I was not among them. I sat there and drew in my drawing book. At noon we broke for lunch so I used a pay phone to call my friend Susan to meet for lunch. She works somewhere down there. We had some sesame noodles and dumplings out in front of the court house (and we both spilled dumpling on our pants). That was the highlight of the day.

At 1:30 it was back inside through jury entrance and the metal detector. I had to empty my pockets, take off my belt and shoes, and run all of it through the X-ray machine. I had to do the same in the morning. Such is how we live now.

Back inside the afternoon was nothing but waiting. No one knew if a judge would call down for a jury. Often the threat of a jury will make parties settle. That's part of a jury's job. To threaten with our omnipresentness. I figured that if we didn't get called by 3:30 we wouldn't get called. I couldn't imagine the judge that would try to pick a jury that late in the day. But I had no idea if that meant that we would have to come back on Tuesday. No one did. At least no one that I talked to. The unknown was what created quite a bit of anxiety in the room.

At one point I think I heard one of the people who worked in the room (there is a big raised sort of judge's bench across the front of the room that people worked behind) say that all of these people (meaning us) were gone. I wasn't sure of what I heard but I was hopeful to be released so I could catch up on my work. I'm a freelancer. If I don't do my work I don't get paid.

At around 4:00 The head Jury Assembly guy got on the microphone and told us we were no longer needed. He thanked us for our time and told us our jury duty was over. We could all go home and we didn't have to come back. Spatters of applause broke out. Tension was released in the room and smiles were everywhere. I dashed to catch the A train and make my way back home.

All in all not a bad day. I did my civic duty and got some drawing done.

Comics I Bought: July 16, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 2 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Echo - 2

Grendel: Behold the Devil - 7 of 8

Astro City The Dark Age Vol 1 - "Brothers and Other Strangers"

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Conan Volume 0 "Born on the Battlefield" by Kurt Busiek and Greg Ruth

Conan is one of those books that I've given up reading month to month. I buy the hardcover collections as they come out and this is the latest of them. It's labeled "Volume 0" because it tells the tale of Conan's youth between the ages of eight and sixteen. These are the years when he was still living with his Cimmerian clan in the mountains of their land.

I've liked the Dark Horse Comics revival of Conan in general but this is the best volume so far. It puts Conan into a context that makes him relatable. It's a very human and historical story. There is very little sorcery going on and a lot of sword. There aren't even any monsters besides the natural wild predators found out in the wild today.

Conan grows up in a fairly stable tribal society where boys learn to hunt and defend the tribe. Life is hard in the mountains, there are sometimes border skirmishes, and Aquilonia (think ancient Rome) wants to settle their land. Conan doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the clan but still he is liked and the elders tell him stories and teach him what he needs to know.

This is another one of these books where, just flipping through it, the art doesn't do much for me. It's well drawn but the color is kinda grey and bland. That all goes away with the reading. Ruth is an excellent storyteller and I was so engrossed that my "flipping through" impression melted away. It reads really well and there is detail to be found in the reading. He captured the color of the Cimmerian hills well too. That's why I never judge comic art until I read it. It's amazing how much different an impression art can make when actually reading it as opposed to flipping through the pages.

I especially liked the climax of the story. It's kinda funny because a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was a bit disappointed by the inevitable fight scene climax of Iron Fist Volume 2 but Conan Volume 0's inevitable fight scene climax was terrific. It's as well done as I've seen and ancient battle depicted.

If you're a Conan fan or a fan of comics in general pick up this volume of Conan. It was a good one.

Credit Crunchies

It's hard not using my credit card. That's been what I've been trying to do for the last month. I'm not in credit or money trouble I just want to slow down my spending for a couple of months. I had to go to the dentist in May and fork out a couple of grand for some teeth work. Not the end of the world. I had the money but I am person who keeps track of his budget pretty closely. As a freelance artist there have been plenty of times in my life where money was tight. Without a budget and discipline the worry would have killed me. I'm not a fan of worry.

I have two budgets. The cash budget and the credit card budget. The credit card budget is usually for art and computer supplies but since I buy lots of things online these days there is plenty more stuff I buy by credit card. I pay the card off every month. A "dead beat" customer as credit card companies say. I don't have to pay interest or late charges that way. They'll eat up a budget.

The cash budget is for everyday things like food, comics, bus tickets, and anything else bought at local stores. Earlier this year I noticed my credit card budget expanding while my cash one contracted. That just means I was buying more things online than in person with cash. But a credit card budget can get out of hand a lot quicker than a cash one can. For a couple months I wondered how I managed to spend so much more that I wanted to on the card.

So in order to make up for the money I paid out to the dentist I decided to not use my credit card as much for a couple of months. I increased my cash budget a bit because it's not like I'm broke I just wanted to maintain discipline with the credit card and save a few bucks in the bank. Over the month of June I managed to put only a hundred bucks on the card. That's about the amount I was aiming for but boy was it hard to not go higher. Those twenty five dollar internet purchases can add up fast.

Compounding my budgetary pressure is the fact that I need to spend about three grand on a new computer. The computer is how I make money so it has to be done and the government, through taxes, practically forces us freelancers to spend on tax deductions. But, still, three grand is three grand. I was going to get the computer in June before a part of my tooth broke off. That'll put some worry into your mind. So I have to save a little more money for the computer and I want my credit card cleared off when I plunk the three grand on it.

With the computer on my card that will make for another month of trying not to use the card. The numbers really add up quickly when you start at three thousand. The mind goes, "Eh, what's another hundred" and before you know it the bill is three thousand eight hundred bucks. That I don't want to happen.

So it's cash for me for a little while. I never say, "Eh, what's another hundred" with cash because cash is a bit more real. I have to count out and hand over the bills to someone. I have to look in my pocket to see if I have enough. I also don't carry a lot of cash so I can't spend it as impulsively. Cash is more meaningful than numbers on my credit card receipt.

I just used PayPal for some internet purchases this week. That takes the money right out of my bank account. It was all art supply stuff I needed that I still didn't want to put on the card. PayPal is less real than cash but more real than credit. Watching my cash in the bank go down means more than watching the total on the credit card go up.

I don't like to use PayPal or a debit card for expensive purchases. If something goes wrong then the store already has my money. Getting it back can be tough. A credit card company will have a much better chance of getting the money back if you call them up and tell them you were ripped off. Credit card companies don't take kindly to people taking their money. A bank won't care as much because it's not their money. It's mine.

Pulling back on the credit card tally means cutting down internet purchases, cutting a few things out, and postponing a few items on the buy list until I can budget them properly. A tough task that. But in the end it's how I like to roll.

Comics I Bought: July 10, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 2 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Age of Bronze - 27

Berlin - 16

Marvel Masterworks Tales of Suspense Volume 2

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Jack Kirby's OMAC: One Man Army Corps

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Jack Kirby's 1970's and early 1980's works are my favorites. It's not a widely held opinion but I think Jack Kirby was a better writer than Stan Lee. I've heard people make apologies for Kirby's writing but I don't know why.

That said I thoroughly enjoyed this volume that reprints issues 1-8 of Kirby's OMAC from the mid 70's. They are the only issues he did of OMAC and the story is cut off in the middle after eight issues but still it's good stuff. I have read about half of these issues before but this is the first I've read them all.

OMAC the "One Man Army Corps" takes place in the future. In a world of atomic weapons and despots it is often too dangerous to send armies in to solve a problem. So the "Global Peace Agency" created OMAC as a super soldier to take out those who would threaten the peace of the world. Buddy Blank was a normal guy until he was transformed into OMAC by "Brother Eye". Brother Eye is a satellite that feeds OMAC the power and energy he needs for missions and watches over him in general.

The frenetic pace of the book is pure Kirby. OMAC is constantly on the move going from one place to the next and tangling with one evil SOB after another. Kirby is constantly giving him new gadgets, enemies, and challenges. There is a reason writers have gone back and picked ideas out of Kirby's concepts to work on for themselves. There are just so many of them. Evil scientists, crazy suicide monsters, rich guys who can rent a city, water stealers, and plenty more.

I also like that OMAC is a hero. Anti-heros rule nowadays and I get tired of them. I never understood when people say that the villains are more interesting than the heroes. I know what makes a villain tick: greed and selfishness. That's proven everyday by people we all know. What makes a guy jump on a live grenade to save his buddies? I find that a more interesting question. I'm pretty sure I can be greedy and selfish but jump on a live grenade? That I don't think many of us know that about ourselves or anyone else. But that's another discussion.

I'm really glad that DC, Marvel, and Image have been reprinting so much of Jack Kirby's 1970's work. I always liked it but never had all of it in my collection. I probably didn't even have half of it. I still have more to get but the stuff I have is great. Don't miss out.

Note on Notebooks

It's time to replace my back pocket notebook again. I've been carrying the same one for about five years now and it's about to fall apart. Whenever I get a new one I reinforce the holes where the spirals go through the thin cardboard of the cover. The holes aren't tearing on my current notebook but the cardboard is about to disintegrate. The front and back covers are falling off and disappearing. Years of sitting on paper will do that.

I bought this fancy new back pocket notebook last winter but haven't used it at all. I'm used to the softcover 89¢ variety that we all remember from grade school. I slip it into my back pocket and don't even notice it. The new one has a much harder cover. When it's in my back pocket it's like sitting on a flat piece of wood. Who knows if it may soften up and be comfortable one day but I'll never make it to that day. What is the point of a back pocket notebook (they even call it that on the label) that isn't comfortable in the back pocket?

I have a few other small notebooks lying around the place that someone gave me once but they are useless. They are even cheaper than the 89¢ ones (I think they were three for 89¢) and are made of the cheapest possible paper. I pulled one out to see if I could reinforce the cover but the cover tore as I was handling it. It was if the cardboard was tissue paper. And the paper could be ripped out of it with the smallest amount of force. You've never seen a notebook so useless.

I am a fan of small notebooks and being an artist a fan of small sketchbooks. Big sketchbooks do nothing for me. I'd rather use individual pieces of paper if I'm going to draw big. Big sketchbooks are too bulky. Most of my sketchbooks in my college years and through my twenties were of the hard cover variety. They had a tough durable black cover that you could decorate nicely with a silver paint pen. Usually those ones were eight by ten inched but sometimes five by seven inches.

All of the years I carried one of those sketchbooks around I was never really a fan of drawing in them. I liked them well enough as objects. As "cool books". But I found them hard to draw in. Due to their being hard covers they would never lie flat enough for me. I was always holding the book flat with my left hand as I drew with my right. A clumsy method of working.

It also didn't help that I was never really a very good "sketcher". I wasn't interested in drawing from life and the scritch scratchy way of building a drawing from a sketch always frustrated me. It wasn't until I was well into my late twenties that I discovered my own way of drawing that wasn't really related to sketching. It is more related to surrealistic automatic drawing. Sketching never helped me learn drawing. Learning drawing did.

For the past nine years I've been using a hundred page five by seven inch spiral bound sketch book to draw in (yes there were a few years I didn't use a sketchbook at all). It lays flat and I fill it up with lots of little ink drawings. I always draw in ink with a thick line in that book. No scratchiness allowed. I go through about one a year. That book of drawings is where I generate all of my ideas. It is invaluable to me.

I still don't think the spiral bound notebooks are nearly as pretty as objects as the black clad hard bound ones but they sure are better for drawing in. Plus to make the spiral one more durable I made a form fitting canvas carry bag for it. I slip the sketchbook into the canvas bag and then drop that into a larger bag or carry it on its own. The canvas takes all of the abuse and leaves the book sitting pretty. And I do like pretty.

Comics I Bought: July 3, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 7 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Rasl - 1 & 2 (Jeff Smith's new series that I didn't even know was out)

Echo - 3 & 4 (Ditto for Terry Moore's new series)

Buffy Season Eight - 15

Savage Dragon - 136

Walking Dead - 50

Conan Volume 5 - "Rogues in the House and Other Stories"

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

The Immortal Iron Fist Vol 2 - "The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven" by Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, David Aja, and others

I liked volume one of Iron Fist enough to pick up volume two. There were actually a few hardcover collections I wanted that came out the same week as this one. I'll have to pick up the others in future weeks because this is the one I decided on first.

Once again we have the adventures of martial arts master Iron Fist (Danny Rand) in the mystical city of K'un-Lun (think Shangri-La). This time there is a martial arts tournament (think Mortal Combat) going on between K'un-Lun and seven other mystical cities. Oh, and a bunch of Hydra guys (think Spectre from James Bond) want to blow up K'un-Lun for revenge or some such. That's the basics of what's going on.

Once again, as in volume one, the art is terrific. The main artist is David Aja but others are used to. I think this current Iron Fist series uses multiple artists with multiple styles better than any other I've seen. Besides the Danny Rand Iron Fist story there are flashbacks to Danny's father (Wendell Rand) as a young man training in K'un-Lun and another Iron Fist (Orson Randall) who adopted Wendell Rand when he was a boy. The overlapping sets of flashbacks are all drawn by someone other than David Aja.

Usually when there is a change of artists in the middle of a story it's jarring and it takes a while to get back into the story. That's why, sometimes, the second artist will try to match the style of the first. Here there is none of that. Each artist is working in his own distinct style. But rather than being jarring it's engrossing. Being that it's only the flashbacks being done but different artists it is a great way to make the distinction and present a whole different time and place. Whoever came up with this it's a good idea and well executed.

I think I liked volume two even better than volume one. I like the sense of history it has with all the flashbacks, the curiousness of the current Iron Fist, and the goofy video game like tournament that was the backdrop to the story. The ending kind of let me down a little. Not because it was bad but because it was just a big fight. I enjoyed the journey to the fight more than the fight itself. But that might just be my quirk. Either way check out The Immortal Iron Fist Volume 2 or Volume 1 for some cool martial arts superhero action and adventure.