Long in the Tooth

I've been off my game. That's because doing the same thing over and over again does not appeal to me. Which is why I am still trying to figure out what to do with my web comic. And I don't have it licked yet. That and I don't want it to be just a web comic. Talk about not knowing how to define a project.

I've been working on this thing forever. I've put in a lot of time on it, finished a bunch of stuff, but it's still not what I want it to be. What I want it to be is a total integration of all of my different ways of working. Painting, drawing, print making, and comics. With, maybe, a little photography in there too. You see the tall order I've set for myself.

Not all of these mediums translate into a web comic very well. Most web comics are drawings with a little color thrown on. Most web comics are about the punch line and the art is merely functional. That's because the art is the time consuming part. I have no interest in writing punch lines and how much time does anyone have to consume? So what is mine going to be about?

Most web comics are also about compromise. Usually in the form of sacrificing the quality of the drawing to get the job done. Once again, this is necessary in order to finish a strip. It takes too long to labor over a drawing for a strip. Especially one that is paying you nothing. Or less. My work is about the quality of the drawing so that's a problem when I go to make a comic. I have trouble making that compromise. I end up getting disinterested and it shows.

Then there is a problem I have with narrative storytelling. I don't want to do it. I like narrative storytelling. First act, second act, third act, and all. But whenever I set out to do some in a comic I'm completely bored by it. It's like a straight jacket.

In order to do narrative storytelling well you have to draw exactly what the story calls for. Simple enough and I used to be able to do that but my work has changed a lot since I last made comics. For the last eight years my work has been about finding images from the back of my imagination that are unusual.

I started, years ago, using a surrealist automatic drawing method to see things on a blank piece of paper that were unusual. I drew without having a preconceived notion of what I was going to draw. If the lines on the paper lead me to a chair, a face, a car, or a figure so be it. I try to pull things out of my head that no one has seen before. I'm good at it too.

Unfortunately this is the exact opposite of what it takes to draw a comic. If the narrative says, "A man walks down the street", you have to draw a man walking down the street. There's no choice. This is what I can't do anymore. I'm so used to drawing without a preconceived idea and pulling the unusual out of a piece of paper that I can't follow a preconceived narrative. Even if it's me who comes up with the narrative.

So if there is no narrative in a comic what is there? That is the question I've been wreslting with for almost a year now. So far there is no easy answer. I've walked down paths that all seemed like dead ends and have nothing finished to show for it. That's the frustrating part.

I've finished some paintings and prints during this time but even that's a little dull for me. I've used the unexpected in them to such a degree that I expect it now. I need a new unexpected. Once again you see the crazy tall order I set for myself. I do like a challenge.

Anyway, this week I set off down a new web comic path. If this is the one that will lead to success I don't know. But at least it's a path. I've been wandering in the wilderness for a lot of this summer. It's nice to be on a path.

Comics I Bought: August 27, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus two hard cover collections:

Supernatural - Rising Son - 5

Herbie Archives Volume 1

Tales From the Crypt Volume 3

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

The Ultimates Volume 2 by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch

I think I liked Ultimates Volume 2 better that Volume 1. They kind of have the same strengths and weakness but there seemed to be fewer parts that made me cringe in this volume.

The Ultimates is about the formation of The Avengers in the Ultimate universe. Mark Millar is still using the Warren Ellis "The Authority" formula in this volume. That's when you ratchet up the threat level that the heroes face issue by issue until at the end of the series the whole world is on the brink. Volume 1 was alien invasion and Volume 2 has World War 3. This is also why writers who employ this technique leave the book after a couple of story arcs. It's a tough act to follow so why not let some other writer try it.

The strengths of the Ultimates are the intrigue and ass kicking. I liked the intrigue in this book better than the first as it tackled the international implications of the USA having a team of "Persons of Mass Destruction". Some other parts of the world might get a little pissed off if the USA sent supermen into their countries to "straighten things out". Millar did a nice job of making the reader walk the line of wondering if the Ultimates were a good thing or a bad thing for the country and the world.

Bryan Hitch's art was a good as volume one. He does a nice job with the photo referenced super hero stuff. He draws a good fight scene and even has some subtly in the non fight scenes.

The flaws of the book are the same as the first volume. In the first half of the book there is no one for the Ultimates to fight so they end up fighting each other. This issue where the Ultimates take on Thor was particularly cringe inducing. While well drawn by Hitch it was the notion that Thor wears a belt that gives him his power that made me laugh. The whole fight was the Ultimates trying to take Thor's belt off of him. What? Dumb as dirt. And if I had a belt that gave me the power of Thor I might secure it with a pad lock or something.

And too many issued ended with some Ultimate or another pointing his finger and saying he was going to kick some ass. Please, we've seen that "cliff hanger" a whole lot in this series. Stop it already.

But like I said I liked this volume better than the first. So if you're in the mood for some post-modern super hero adventure check out the Ultimates Volume 2.

Retro Gaming Time!

Lately I've been wanting to play a video game. I have an XBox 360 among my systems and haven't touched it, except as a media center, for a while. The last game I played on it was "Call of Duty 3" which I played for a good long while until I tired of it. I've been looking for a new game to get but there hasn't been anything that has interested me. First off, I don't want to pay sixty bucks for a brand new game so those automatically don't interest me.

One of the good things about the XBox 360 is that you can download demos of games. It's a great feature that allows you to try out a bit of a game before you buy. Unfortunately all this has done is made me realize that I don't like any of the new games I've demoed. I just tried out the latest Madden football game and didn't like it much. Like a lot of video games these days you can't even read the in game type if you don't have an HDTV. I don't have one. There are other things I didn't like about the demo but that was most annoying.

I recently got a couple of new games for my hand held systems but haven't felt like playing on the small screen. One of them is even the latest version of one of my all time favorites: Advance Wars. It's a turn based war strategy game for the Nintendo DS and I know that I'll like it once I try it out but haven't mustered the interest to try it out.

So this week I decided to do a little retro gaming. I dug out a controller for my old Sega Dreamcast and fired it up. I don't usually keep my old systems but I kept this one around only because it is a good retro gaming console and I could dump all my old consoles.

The Dreamcast has an operating system that is based on some old version of Windows. That means that people were able to put a whole bunch of old games on a blank CD using their Windows computers and those games could be played on the Dreamcast. I've always been a Mac guy and wasn't able to do this but luckily I was in the loop years ago and someone gave me a couple of disks.

I was playing some old games from various old consoles but the ones I was enjoying the most were the oldest ones from the NES. That's Nintendo's original eight-bit system. There are all sorts of crappy games that I've never heard of on the NES but also some classics from the heyday of home video games.

I've always remember liking Super Mario Brothers 2 even though most Mario fans find it weak. It is really not even a Mario game but is a port of another Japanese game that they put the Mario characters into. In playing it again I must say that I still like it. It has some un-Mario like game mechanics but maybe that is why it stands out for me. It's not typical Mario Brothers. Of course typical Mario Brothers is still fun. I was playing Super Mario Brothers 3 for a while and enjoyed that one too.

Being a football fan I wanted to try out some Techmo football. That was the hot football game back in the late Eighties and my friends and I spent countless hours playing it. You only had four plays to choose from (three if you used the Redskins - that reverse never worked) but that never stopped us from having fun. I had some fun with it again.

The football game I had the most fun with was an even earlier one called "Ten Yard Fight!". It's pretty well forgotten now but one friend and I, who were among the first people I knew into the NES, played this game a lot. There was no NFL license, not set plays, no fancy graphics, but it was an admirable try. Capturing the game of American football in such simple terms is really tough. But I played through an entire game this week and had fun.

So that was my retro gaming experience this week. I want to find a new game to buy soon but the way things are going I'm not sure if I will. So many new games are just expensive special effects with very little game to them. But I hold out hope.

Comics I Bought: August 21, 2008

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

StormWatch: Post Human Division - 13

Rex Mundi Vol 2 - 13

Fear Agent - 23

Thunderbolts Vol 2 - "Caged Angels"

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

The Starman Omnibus Volume 1 - By James Robinson and Tony Harris

This is my first go around with Starman. Back in 1995-96 when these issues (0-16) first came out I never read even one of them. I've never read an issue from this whole series. I remember hearing some good things about this series but I haven't sampled it until now. Sometimes these things take a while.

Starman, Jack Knight, is the second generation Starman. His dad was the Golden Age Starman and now he has reluctantly taken up the cosmic rod (that's Starman's weapon). The first few issues deal with Jack being a reluctant hero as he is forced by circumstance to become one. The "reluctant hero" bit has been done to death but it's handled well here and annoyed me less than I thought it would.

Much like Spider-Man is really about Peter Parker Starman is really about Jack Knight. Jack isn't a full time super hero. He doesn't want to be. Jack goes into action when his city, Opal City, needs him. That and weird stuff finds him. That is one of the themes of the book. Jack is a collectables dealer who likes spending his time searching for odd things and old pop culture items. A lot of the book deals with the love of the past.

James Robinson says he loves history so he imbues Opal City and Starman with a sense of history. At various times we get to learn about events in Opal City's past and some of the characters who spent time there. I liked this as it gave the book a broad scope and made it's world easy to believe in.

I wasn't that familiar with Tony Harris' art until I started buying "Ex-Machina" a few years ago. In that book he photo references everything but in Starman he has yet to do that. He uses photos for some drawings and his painted covers are all photo referenced but his style was a little more conventional back in 1994. The art is nice but different from his work today.

This book is not without it's flaws. I'd mention them but they didn't take too much away from my enjoyment so I won't pick nits. This is not a conventional super hero book. So don't be looking for that here. It's not so off the wall either. Being heroic is certainly a theme but not always the main one. A lot of it is about being a human being and living in Opal City. Give it a read.

Draft Time!

My Fantasy Football league's draft has started for this year. This is our league's 16th season playing together and it's always fun. Except the draft. That's not as much fun and takes awhile.

There are ten teams in the league and back when we started we all worked together at the same company. At least the six of us who have been with the league since the very beginning did. We used to stay after work late and do a live draft on a given day. That was pretty easy. Everybody was already in one place and that's 90% of the battle.

Now we are all spread out and the ten of us are never in one place at one time. Anybody who has ever done a live draft knows how difficult it is working out everyone's schedule. At least one of the ten can't make it at any given time.

So for a few years we did an auto-draft. That is when some computer program picks your team for you. You can rank the players any way you want. If you want a certain player a whole lot then move him to the top of your list. When the computer program picks teams it takes the top player from your list (or whoever is first) then the top available player from the second person's list and so on and so on.

This was a fairly easy way to do things but not without it's problems. First off you have to know how the computer picks. On site we used broke things down by position i.e. it would make one list AFC running backs and another of NFC running backs. There were ten lists in all broken down by position and conference. This was okay because you were going to get your top pick in one of the categories. I liked this system. Unless I got my top choice in the kicker category.

But we moved to another site and that used a big master list. All the positions were jumbled together. This made it a little harder to order things and you definitely had to spend some time with the clumsy interface moving guys around or you were going to have a bad draft.

That leads us to the main problem I had with the auto-draft. At least two guys out of ten every year didn't have the time to put into making their auto-draft choices. They never got the chance to move many players around and got stuck with the default list and the default list usually sucks. It was especially bad the year that there was one big default list. Two guys out of ten were going to be unhappy with their teams from the get go and that doesn't make for a competitive league.

So for the past four or five years we've been doing an e-mail draft. It's a bit of a pain in the ass because it takes about two weeks to complete. There are seventeen rounds and we get at least a round a day done but people are busy. The first person makes his pick and e-mails it out to the league and then the second person follows and then the third and so on. Lots can go wrong with e-mail and things take a while.

To keep things moving I make up a schedule with a time of night that everyone has to make their pick by (a pick every fifteen minutes) otherwise I will be forced to pick for them. Thankfully this rarely happens because I don't want to pick for anyone. Someone can leave me a short list of players they want for their next pick and I'll grab the top one for them. That's usually easiest but I also call people who are out when it's their turn.

As much of a pain in the ass that this "slow motion" draft is to me (because I have to run it) it makes for a Fantasy Football league that's more fun than an auto-draft league. I think everyone is better at picking their own players and it makes them more involved. Competition is the key to having fun with Fantasy Football.

I've seen too many leagues spoiled by "Dead Teams". That's when a person loses interest in his team by the end of the year and doesn't even bother with it. They don't make changes in their line up anymore and whoever plays them at the end of the year has an easy win. This is unfair to the rest of the league and is annoying. I'm glad our league has all guys who play to the end even if they aren't going to make the playoffs. I think a live draft, even in slow motion, helps everyone stay involved with their team.

Though I sure will be happier when this damn draft is over.

Comics I Bought: August 14, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a two trade paperback collections:

Walking Dead - 51

Coyote - Volume 2 - TPB

Small Gods "Killing Grin" - TPB

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

Spider-Man "Brand New Day" Volume 1

It's been many years since I've read any of the Spider-Books regularly. I'd heard about the "Brand New Day" story line where they strip Spidey of his marriage and send Mary Jane packing. It all has to do with a deal with the devil or some such. This book isn't that story line but is post that story line.

This volume collects Amazing Spider-Man 546-551 plus a few other things. They've canceled all of the other Spider-Man books and Amazing Spider-Man comes out three times a month now. I didn't realize that before I read Tom Brevoort's "Spider-Man Manifesto" in the back of this book.

The silly deal with the devil stuff was just a way to make Peter Parker and Spider-Man seem young again. It's not even mentioned in this volume and I think that's a good thing. Since "Amazing" is coming out three times a month there are rotating teams of artists and writers doing story arcs.

Over all I'd have to call this relaunch of the Spider-Man franchise a success. I enjoyed this volume more than any Spider-Man stories I've read in recent years. It wasn't earth shaking or ground breaking but it was fun. And that was what the creators were trying to do. Put the fun back into Spidey.

Spider-Man is back to being the fun loving and funny hard luck hero he used to be. His luck was maybe even a little too hard for my taste especially in the first few issues. I think they went a little overboard. One example is they went to all this deal with the devil trouble to give Spidey back his secret identity (that was actually part of the deal with the devil) and the first thing that happens is that some random mugger stumbles onto his secret identity. Hard luck.

And hasn't Spidey already learned that giving a sample of his radioactive blood to super villains is a really bad idea?

So the relaunch is not perfect but still I enjoyed it. If you are looking for a little bit of fun in your super hero comics give the Spider-Man relaunch a try. I look forward to volume two.

With or Without Wires?

Dropouts have been killing me. That is my desktop computer would drop off my wireless network and wouldn't reconnect unless I restarted my machine. That is so annoying. I'm always downloading stuff and I'm always checking my e-mail since that's where my work comes from. When I can't connect to the internet things come to a stand still. I have to stop what I'm doing, close all my programs. restart, and open all my programs up again. It's just a waste of my time.

I don't know why my computer drops the connection. Reading up on the problem via the web reveals that it's a common problem that nobody really has an answer for. It could be a million things. I tried a couple of solutions and the problem went away briefly but came back. What does that mean? Who knows?

So I decided to hard wire my computer into my network. I didn't want to do this because I like the concept of wireless. If you could see the back of my computer you'd know why. It's like a rat's nest back there. I've got about fifteen devices connected to my computer and they are all are connecter by wires of various types. I actually have to label my wires. I take some tape and write the name of the device on each end of the wire. Otherwise I have no idea what I am unplugging if I have to unplug something.

Most of the devices have to be plugged in to an electrical outlet too. What a mess that is. I also have to label the power cords. I've got at least twenty five wires in the back of my computer. You can see why I didn't want to hard wire my computer to my router.

The first thing I had to get was an ethernet hub. Luckily my friend had an extra one and some spare ethernet cable. Of course the hub has to be plugged in and I had no spot for it on the surge protector. I had to juggle some things around and find an extension cord to plug in an electric clock further away but I managed eventually.

I need the hub because I already have my Xbox 360 plugged into the extra ethernet port on my router. I never got my Xbox to hook into my wireless network (and what a pain it was to try) so I never even bothered trying to get the Xbox 360 hooked up that way. After all the ethernet cable was already in place. Now two things had to be plugged into one port so a hub it was.

My friend had given me the hub a few days before but I wasn't motivated to hook it up until I was watching a TV show that was stored on my computer, playing on my TV via my Xbox 360, and it stopped playing because my computer dropped off of my network. Finally the annoyance became too much.

Of course when it comes to computers annoyance is always followed by more annoyance. I have my router mounter on the wall and I couldn't get the Xbox ethernet cord unplugged so I could plug in the hub. I tried taking the router off of it's plastic mount but broke a plastic piece off of the mount. I got the Xbox ethernet cord unplugged but couldn't put the router back on the wall. Annoying. I also couldn't find the piece of ethernet cord I needed, and knew I had, to hook up my computer. The Xbox 360 was still hooked up fine but not the computer.

Did I mention that I started this all at about 10:30 at night? Never do that. I knew better but couldn't stop myself. I had to stop and go to bed with things half finished. Sleep wouldn't come easy as my brain was still problem solving and didn't want to turn off. I was thinking about how to mount my router without using the broken wall mount. I had the idea to hang it like a wheel of cheese in a mesh bag. Since that was my best idea I decided to try and fix the wall mount.

The next day after finally falling asleep I managed to use a drill to attach a bolt where a plastic rod used to be on the mount. With that I could place my router back on the wall but it didn't hold as well as it used too. Fear of it falling made me place a strategic piece of tape on it too. I hope it holds but there is a solid chance that it will come tumbling down some day. That would annoy me but gravity gets the best of us all eventually.

So now I'm all wired in and my computer can connect to my network two different ways. I'm getting a little more download speed on the wired connection so that's good. Now I just have to decide wether to get a wireless card put into my new computer when I get it in a few weeks. I also have to decide wether to upgrade my wireless router to one of the new faster ones. After all I do like the idea of wirelessness. As long as it doesn't drop out on me. Life's a bitch. Ain't it?

Comics I Bought: August 6, 2008

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

Jack Staff - 18

Echo - 5

Buffy Season Eight - 17

Runaways "Dead End Kids"

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

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volumes One and Two

This isn't going to be a review of Kirby's Fourth World comics. They are pretty famous and have been reviewed and praised by a lot of people. I especially liked Walt Simonson's introduction to the second volume. I figure if your interest in these comics, Kirby's stuff from the early 1970's when he jumped ship at Marvel and went to work for DC, hasn't been piqued by now than nothing I say is going to make you go out and read them.

What I'm going to review is DC Comics choices in reprinting and presenting the material to us. First off these are collections of four comics: Jimmy Olsen, The Forever People, The New Gods, and Mister Miracle. Instead of choosing to publish them in four separate volumes, as the did when reprinting them in black and white a few years ago, they chose to print them together. That is, you get all four titles in chronological order as they appeared on the news stands in the 1970's. So you get an issue of Jimmy Olsen followed by and issue of The Forever People followed by The New Gods and finally Mister Miracle. Then the rotation starts over. I'm not sure if that's the exact rotation but you get the drift.

This was an interesting choice and I think it works well. The stories are all connected but in a more casual way than we are used to these days. In the 1970's each story was meant to stand on it's own yet still be able to continue from issue to issue. No thought was given to collecting issues into a trade paperback that made one big story on it's own. That wasn't invented yet.

Not having purchased these off of the newsstands I found it interesting to read them this way. I think that they make more sense like this. Not that they don't make sense if you read all of the issues of The Forever People first and then move on to another series but since they all are meant to take place in the same "universe" it is cool to read them as the universe developed. All in all I think I prefer reading them this way.

The paper these are printed on concerns me a little. DC didn't use the glossy stock of their usual hardcover archives. They uses a non glossy stock that's thinner and lighter. That in itself doesn't bother me but I don't know what kind of paper it really is. It's similar to a newsprint but not that crappy. I'd hate my fifty dollar book to turn yellow and fade in a few years like an old comic. That would really annoy me and I think there is a good chance it will happen.

But they sure are fun to read now.

Clothes Horse

I need some new clothes. Except that I don't care. Well, yes I do. It's that my no caring battles with my caring until I find some middle ground. The middle ground changes as my clothes get older and worn.

I do care how I look. I refuse to wear the official "I've given up on life" outfit of elastic waisted pants (especially sweat pants) and shapeless oversized shirts that is the official uniform of so much of America. Yet I also don't want to spend a lot of time and money on my clothes.

Years ago I simplified my wardrobe. I cut it down to a few pairs of pants and some solid colored shirts. I stopped buying my fancy vests and patterned shirts. Not that I was ever a huge patterned shirt guy but I had some. A couple of years after that I simplified even further and wore only clothes that were green or black. I have no explanation but those were the only colors I could tolerate wearing. But about a year ago I moved out of that phase and bought some blue jeans. I've added a couple of solid blue shirts and such since them too.

So I need some new clothes now except I have no ideas for what to get. My old clothes haven't quite worn out yet but they are getting there. I'm close enough to have to think about it but not close enough to have to go out and buy things. A new sports coat was the only new thing of any import that I got this spring. I do love a nice sports coat.

I wear shorts most of the summer but I hate all the shorts I have. I hate all of these long shorts that have been popular in the last twenty years. Why would want my shorts to come down below my knees? If I wanted knickers I'd buy knickers. Somehow showing your knees in a pair of shorts has become shocking to the youth of America. How the hell did that happen? And cargo shorts? Why would I need ten pockets? I have no need to carry cargo around in my shorts. I don't want more layers of material. I'm wearing shorts to keep cool. I've been wearing one pair of shorts all summer. They're too long but at least they are microfiber.

I'm awfully tired of all of my t-shirts too. They are all plain shirts because I got sick of wearing t-shirts with logos on them years ago but now I'm sick of the plain ones too. It's the summer time so it's not like there are a lot of alternatives to the t-shirt. Maybe I'll have to track down some Hawaiian shirts or some such. I don't know.

My sock situation has to be taken care of too. You see, I always wear two different color socks. When my wardrobe was all green and black so were all my socks. One green sock and one black sock. Before that I had many different color socks that I'd mix and match. There was also a period where I wore one white sock and one black sock. I even had to dye some socks green last year because I couldn't find and green socks to buy. That was the only time I dyed something (well, I did ruin something once dying it but that's another story). Right now my socks are still green and black but if I get new clothes I'll have to think of what socks to get. It's all very confusing.

I also need new shoes. No decisions on what to get there. I have short wide feet and most shoes don't fit me so I've been buying the same type of Rockports for years now. They fit me best but at $100 buck a pair are expensive. I have a black and a brown pair so that's $200 to replace them. They're not quite at that totally worn out stage so I haven't pulled the trigger on getting new ones. Spending money on shoes is boring. I hate boring.

The funny part of all this is that these days I work from home. I don't have an office to go into for everyone to see what I'm wearing that day. There's no one to impress but me. But I do need to be impressed so I may as well.