Category: Stream of Consciousness

Bissette on Ditko

2012-09-10, 10:08 pm
Categories: Books, Comics, Stream of Consciousness

Bissette's got a post up today about The Creativity of Ditko, Craig Yoe's latest gorgeous, thoroughly-documented collection of Ditko's work. I picked up a used copy of The Art of Ditko a couple months ago and I share Bissette's sentiment: it's incredible, but it does have a bit of an uncomfortable undercurrent, knowing that Ditko receives no money from these volumes and wishes they didn't exist.

Bissette covers Ditko pretty regularly. In this piece he links to a couple of previous essays, one of which is a response to Bob Heer's interpretation of the famous story of Ditko using original art as a cutting board. (To summarize: Greg Theakston once told a story of seeing cut-up original artwork in Ditko's apartment and pleading with him to stop using it as a cutting-board; Ditko refused. Heer believes that Theakston is not lying but that he misinterpreted the situation -- Ditko didn't cut up the artwork himself, it was probably returned to him in that condition, and, Ditko being Ditko, he didn't correct Theakston's assumption. Bissette adds that it's very unlikely that Ditko would have been using heavy enough paper stock in those days to serve as a cutting board, and that publishers used to frequently cut up original art after they were done with it.)

And Bissette reminds us, where Yoe doesn't, that Ditko is still active and still publishing through Robin Snyder.

The work is obscure because Snyder is a small publisher and doesn't use the Internet, but Bissette makes the reasonable point that the reason Ditko only works with Snyder is that Snyder is the only publisher who ever treated him right (other than the long-defunct Charlton Comics).

Bissette's covered Snyder's catalog in the past, too; he wrote a great post last year, in the wake of the Marvel v Kirby judgement, about everything Ditko's published about his years with Marvel. He references a long run of magazine articles Ditko published, around the time the first Spider-Man movie was released, which are still available through mail order. I keep meaning to check with my local comic shop and see if they can put in an order for some of those issues -- I'd be happy to order directly from Snyder, but I also think my LCS might be interested in stocking a few extra copies -- but money's been too tight. Still, one of these days...

Update 2012-09-12: Bissette has a followup post up; go read it!

It includes a response from Craig Yoe himself; among other things he disputes the claim that Ditko is opposed to the existence of these books -- Yoe says he's been in touch with Ditko and, while he's chosen not to participate or profit, he hasn't objected to them either, and approved Paul Levitz's introduction to Creativity. (No word on whether he approved Stan Lee's introduction to Art.)

There are also some fantastically thorough posts by Rob Imes in the comments section; one is a list of recommendations for Ditko's more recent, Snyder-published work, and another is a lengthy rumination on collections like this that do not compensate the original artists.

The Turducken of Rellenos

2012-09-08, 7:29 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

Tonight, for dinner, I stuffed a roasted Hatch chile inside a roasted poblano chile, egg-battered it and crusted it in panko crumbs, then wrapped the whole thing inside a burrito.

I am not going to lie: it is possibly the most amazing dish I have ever cooked.

Maybe next time I will try beer-battering. I think it's time for a trip to Trader Joe's for some Simpler Times.

Playboy Interview

2012-09-06, 9:29 pm
Categories: Music, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, TV

Playboy Interview

This one's a downer -- it's May 1993 and Zappa is dying.

The whole thing's on Wiki Jawaka -- just the text, no titties (though the language, as you would expect, is NSFW).

Some excerpts that I think fit the Democratic Convention theme:

Was it surprising that you had fans behind the iron curtain?
Yeah, and lots of people who didn't like me -- like the secret police.

What did the secret police have against you?
In Prague, I was told that the biggest enemies of the Communist Czech state were Jimmy Carter and me. A student I met said that he was arrested by the secret police and beaten. They said they were going to beat the Zappa music out of him.

Sometimes you sound like a political candidate. How serious was your plan to run for president?
I wanted to do it. It's a bit hard to mount a campaign if you have cancer and don't feel well.

If you hadn't been ill, would you have run?
Yeah. And it's a shame. We got calls and mail throughout the election. Squadrons of volunteers called.

If you had run and won, what would President Zappa have done?
I would have started by dismantling the government. At least I would have presented the idea to the voters.

Nothing too revolutionary?
In the Beltway and places that have large federal payrolls, the idea wouldn't be too popular, but in other places people would think it's great. One strong selling point is that you could do away with federal income taxes, or at least reduce them to a point that people would have something left at the end of the week. In the end, I think people, in their enlightened self-interest, would consider voting for that.

If you dismantled the government, you'd put yourself out of a job.
No, because most reasonable people would agree that we need roads, for instance, and water you can drink and breathable air. Most people realize that there has to be some coordinated infrastructure and a national offense that is commensurate with whatever threat you feel from other countries.

National offense?
I mean -- well, what we have now is national offense. We should have national defense.

You've said that you're not a peacenik.
Human nature and human stupidity often breed violence. When violence escalates to an international confrontation, you should be able to protect yourself. On the other hand, to plan for it -- like we did throughout the Cold War -- based on badly handled intelligence estimates of the threat to our national security is just stupid. Most intelligence estimates indicated that the Soviet couldn't do shit to us, but they were ignored order to maintain the level of employment and financial activity in the defense industry.

Do you think that our recent election was irrelevant?
Yes, because America has to be completely restructured. We have to question every institution in terms of efficiency. I'm serious about abandoning the federal system.

Is there any way that it's likely to happen?
Not this week, but I wish people would at least consider it. They think, There it is, we're stuck with it, it will go on forever. It doesn't have to. The Soviet Union didn't go on forever. If you want reform, the people who've been doing a bad job have to get fired. They have to go back to the used-car lot from where they came.

Yet you've always pushed people to vote. Why bother?
Even if you don't like the candidates, there are issues that affect your life. Bond issues affect your pocketbook. That's the only real reason for voting. As far as the rest of government is concerned, forget it. The amount of overstaffing, overlapping, wasted energy and pompous pseudograndeur is science fiction. All of it is supported by this universe of political talk shows. CNN is one of the worst offenders on the planet. It maintains the fiction of the theoretical value of the thoughts and words of these inferior human specimens who manage to become Beltway insiders.

Do you want to name names?
Do we need to see John Sununu as a talk-show guy? Or, on CNBC, Gordon Liddy or Oliver North? Let's face it: Some of these people are criminals. Why do we need to be presented with them as voices of authority whose opinions are something we should even waste our time with? Why?

What do you think is behind it?
It's a whole program designed to modify behavior and modify thinking on a national level. They're happy to take the slings and arrows of the outraged minority in order to keep these voices of stupidity in your face all the time. It's all propaganda.

How planned is it?
Completely. It is the residue of the domestic-diplomacy department that Reagan established during the Irancontra days. The idea was to control the news. From that office, a guy would make phone calls and certain journalists would get fired and news stories would get changed. Then it was the obvious control of the media we saw during the Gulf war.

So you maintain that the media are no more than pawns?
The media are part of the package. You think really liberal people own those outlets? I don't. Even if they were Democrats, it wouldn't mean anything, because who can tell the difference between those two criminal classes?

it sounds as if you are as cynical as ever.
It's hard not to be.

Yet you feel it's worthwhile to raise some hell?
Pessimism and the natural instinct to raise hell are not mutually exclusive. Raising hell comes naturally to me. Still, I am not optimistic about what will happen to this country unless some radical change is made. It's going to take more than just firing a few bad guys.

It must have been strange for you when Al Gore was nominated as vice president.
They felt it was a good way to counteract the Dan Quayle-family values nonsense. But why would anybody need to counteract Dan Quayle?

They obviously didn't care about your vote -- or the vote of the people concerned about Tipper's ratings campaign.
Not necessarily. Deep in their hearts, those politicos think they're really cagey strategists. They figured they'd get a certain amount of column inches because of Tipper. It was advertising they didn't have to buy.

Downer of an ending for a downer of a theme week and a downer of an election. So it goes.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can't find a funny song to post.

Mulching is a process of inbred fertilization which employs certain decomposed organic materials -- including, but not limited to animal sediment -- to blanket an area in which vegetation is desired. The procedure enriches the soil for stimulated plant development while, at the same time, preventing erosion and decreasing the evaporation of moisture from the ground.

2012-09-06, 7:01 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

Image: A Mad Look at Birthdays
Image via Mad -- go see the rest!

Last week we celebrated the birthday of one of the late, great comics creators. Today is the birthday of one of the still-living great comics creators: Sergio Aragonés, best known as the guy who's been doing the doodles in the margins of Mad Magazine since January 1963, only missing one issue in that entire nearly-fifty-years, due to an international shipping mixup.

The guy's work is legend and his life's been amazing. I am loving the hell out of his current book at Bongo, Sergio Aragonés Funnies -- sadly, it's been delayed these past few months as he had a back injury, but I'm looking forward to its triumphant return when he's back at 100%.

Apparently by coincidence (as they don't mention his birthday), today ComicsAlliance's Duet on Solo feature highlighted the Aragonés issue, which was really a precursor to Funnies. I particularly love his autobiographical stuff, and a story in that issue called "I Killed Marty Feldman" is one of my favorites.

Here's to 75 more!

Free Lizard

2012-09-05, 8:50 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, Work

Well, this one's a first.

Today, as I was removing a computer from a box, I saw a bit of movement in the bottom corner. It appeared to be a small kind of gecko or suchlike.

This was a return from an office just a half-mile or so away, so I was confident that it was not some kind of horrible invasive species of lizard. I emptied the rest of the items from the box and took it downstairs.

It took a considerable amount of coaxing and, eventually, pushing it a little with my finger, but finally I got it out of the box and into the rocks.

Godspeed, little lizard.

Dissonance

2012-09-04, 7:09 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

So today's top news story is that Julián Castro is the keynote speaker, showing just how much the Democrats love Latinos.

Something I'm not seeing trumpeted so much in the national press: the Obama Justice Department has just stated that it will not file any charges against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

To be a liberal in this country is to exist in a perpetual state of dismay with the Democrats and horror at the Republicans. I've considered Obama to be a disappointment since four years ago, when he broke his promise to filibuster telecom immunity and then turned around and claimed he never promised to filibuster telecom immunity.

But this...I just...what the fuck, man?

I acknowledge Obama as lesser of two evils. I'm not going to cast aspersions on anyone who votes for him. But hell, my state's votes are going Romney no matter what the fuck I do and if my vote's going to be purely symbolic anyway, I'm seeing fewer and fewer reasons why it should go to Obama.

Maybe I'll vote Green again. Maybe I'll write in Carter.

I dunno, man, I just don't know.

Serenity

2012-09-03, 10:01 pm
Categories: Comics, Movies, Stream of Consciousness, TV

Watched Serenity again. Spoilers for a movie from 2005 follow.

I hadn't actually seen it the full way through since the theater in 2005 -- and that was before I'd watched the series.

It's a decent enough movie, but heavily compromised.

Because Firefly is not a show about big adventures or high stakes. It's a show about a family surviving together.

On that score, Serenity fails. Book and Inara are barely in the damn thing, and the rest of the crew not named Malcolm Reynolds don't fare much better. For a movie that revolves so heavily around River, we get precious little of her as a character -- we see her as sleeper agent, killing machine, and damaged person, but barely a shred of who she actually is. Right at the end of the movie, when Simon and Kaylee are going to bed and River's peeking down at them, not creepy but just a little curious -- that is the most fundamentally River Tam moment in the entire movie. And it's barely there. She's unrecognizable as the same River from the show -- indeed, when I started watching it, I spent most of the series wondering when she was going to start showing off her crazy ninja skills. The answer is "for about three seconds in one episode near the end."

And then there's the MacGuffin.

Speaking of things that are significant in the movie and barely even crop up in the series: the Reavers. They're in two episodes. And yet are fundamental to the plot of the movie.

And the movie revolves around a twist that, really, does not much qualify as a twist.

Was anyone in the audience even remotely surprised to learn that the Alliance created the Reavers? Because, having never watched one single episode of the series at the time, I can honestly say I wasn't.

Indeed, the single most implausible thing in this movie about space smugglers, assassins, and cartoons with subliminal messages activating sleeper agents to flip out and kill everybody is this: two Confederate soldiers are surprised by the existence of a government conspiracy.

Now, here's the thing.

Here on Earth-that-Was, there's a vocal contingent of people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job.

There's a vocal contingent of people who believe that our black President is a Secret Kenyan Muslim -- and yeah, those people are mostly from the region of the country that rebelled against the Federal Government. But they're not veterans themselves, they're people still holding a grudge a hundred and fifty years later.

Hell, the guy from Megadeth is convinced that Obama deliberately orchestrated the shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin as a conspiracy to ban guns.

So yeah, the idea that nobody in the 'verse has ever floated the idea that the Alliance created the Reavers? Never mind faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity on a ship that doesn't rotate, or the sheer number of other ships the Serenity constantly bumps into in deep space -- that's the most implausible thing about this entire mythology.

If anything, Mal and co should have been saying, "Holy shit, those crazy assholes on the Future Internet were right!"

I haven't read much of the followups, post-movie. I picked up the first issue of each of the comic miniseries and couldn't get engaged -- I find it incredibly off-putting when an artist slavishly reproduces the likenesses of actors instead of just drawing the characters.

That said, I thought Serenity: Float Out, by Patton Oswalt and Patric Reynolds, did not commit that sin and was an excellent read. And managed to give a good little send-off for Wash and a little hint of where the story goes next.

I never got around to reading Shepherd's Tale -- it's still on my to-do list; doesn't appear that it ever came out in paperback -- but I do quite like Chris Samnee. I'm told it still doesn't answer the fundamental questions about Book, which is probably for the best; one of the best bits in the movie is where Mal tells Book he'll have to tell his story someday and Book responds that no, he won't.

While Whedon's tendency to leave his biggest mysteries dangling instead of resolving them can be vexing, I think it's good storytelling instinct -- how many stories can you name where a big mystery gets resolved and it's just a disappointment? (For a recent example: that other River, on Doctor Who.)

Similarly, I picked up the first issue of the new Dollhouse miniseries because it was focused on Alpha, and -- spoiler for a TV show from 2010 follows -- the only question dangling at the end of the series that I was interested in finding out the answer to was what happened to him, what made him change. The comic, pointedly, picks up his story after he's already changed, with no explanation.

Joss Whedon, you sneaky bastard.

Maybe we really will get a reunion someday, see what happens next, with the (surviving) cast intact. Whedon's certainly got the money and cachet to do it, since Avengers. But obviously I'm not holding my breath.

Meantime, Nathan Fillion is Castle, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

(Still hoping for that Dr. Horrible sequel, though.)

Busiek and Mignola's Unfinished Final Fantasy

2012-08-30, 9:40 pm
Categories: Comics, Games, Stream of Consciousness

You know, I seriously considered just calling this post "Busiek and Mignola's Final Fantasy" and then opening with a "Before you get excited..." but ultimately decided that would have just been mean. (As it is, it's already misleading to say "Busiek and Mignola", as Mignola was just doing the covers.)

Can't remember what made me think of it -- maybe it was when I was going through my searches and saw a bunch for both busiek and final fantasy -- but I recalled that Busiek had alluded to a cancelled Final Fantasy project. Now, Kurt's been damned active over on FormSpring, so I figured I'd ask him about it -- but then I figured hey, maybe I should actually do some research first.

Didn't find much, but there was a bit of discussion about it in a CBR thread called Series that Never Saw the Light of Day -- which is also where I first heard Mignola was the cover artist, and Dell Barras (who I'm not familiar with) did the interiors.

Busiek showed up in the thread and explained a bit about the series and what happened to it: it was for Hollywood Comics, a Disney imprint that "either never got launched or was killed off almost right away".

Most interestingly, he gave a short explanation as to when this was and which Final Fantasy(s) he was adapting:

This was so long ago that when I was first assigned the project, I did a story outline, and the people at Squaresoft liked it a lot, but said, "Uh, well, this is good, but we're about to do a new version of the game, can you revise it to be about FINAL FANTASY 2 instead?"

It required a top-to-toe restart, because the characters in FINAL FANTASY are footsloggers, ordinary soldiers and adventurers, while the characters in FF2 are princes and leaders and such, which makes for a whole different kind of story.

But yes, it was based on FINAL FANTASY 2, though Dell Barras's interpretation of the Japanese designs maintained basic designs but spun it into a very, very mainstream-American style.

That'd be the American FF2, of course, AKA FF4. I'm sure it would have been fun -- and featured better dialogue than the original SNES translation of the game.

Anyhow, after finding out those tidbits, I decided to ask Kurt this:

How far along was the Final Fantasy adaptation (or adaptations, since you had to switch games partway through) before being scrapped?

His response:

The first version was a detailed outline. The second was a complete script for all four issues, I think, plus lettered art for at least one and penciled art for one more. Four nice Mignola covers, too.

Niiiice.

Wonder where all that stuff went and whether anybody has it now. All I've seen is this ad, in the above-linked CBR thread (and presumably from the FF1 period):

Image: Ad for the series

I haven't been able to find anything else, even any of the Mignola covers, which is a pity -- but hell, one more thing to add to my "things so obscure you can't find them on the Internet" list. (Course, if anybody can prove me wrong, do feel free to shoot me a link...)

(Update 2015-01-04: I now have the covers to issues #2 and #4; you can see them in the post Mignola Final Fantasy Covers. I still haven't seen #1 or #3, or any interior art.)

But via Robot Mutant here's a Joseph Dellagatta FF piece homaging Mignola, anyway:

Image: FF7, Hellboy style

Happy Birthday, Jack

2012-08-28, 7:54 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

Image: Orion and Lightray on the rocket, New Gods #6
Scan found at Glass Walking-Stick in a Google Image Search

Today would have been Jack Kirby's 95th birthday.

I think it's safe to say that he was not only the most important figure in the history of superhero comics, but the most important figure in American comics, of any genre.

And according to Mark Evanier's afterword to Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, Volume 2 (now in paperback!), he drew that page up top in an hour.

Speaking of Evanier, he posted a remembrance today, along with Steve Bissette and countless others. Heidi MacDonald has a great selection of Jack's art, plus a photo of Alan Moore towering over him.

It's also Read Comics in Public Day.

But most importantly of all:

Jack's granddaughter Jillian has started a campaign called Kirby4Heroes, a fundraiser for the Hero Intiative. I've spoken of the Hero Initiative before, but to review: it's a charity that helps support comic book creators who are down on their luck. Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of those; here are some testimonials (including some from folks who are, sadly, no longer with us):

Kirby's legacy is not only as an artist, storyteller, innovator, and Man with Big Ideas -- he worked hard to make sure his fellow creators could make a decent living. Because in the old days many of them didn't -- and, sadly, today many still don't.

Monument to Consumerism

2012-08-23, 9:02 pm
Categories: Games, Stream of Consciousness

Took Little Nephew to the mall this evening so he wouldn't go stir-crazy. Cliché as it is, it's true -- by the end of the evening we were tired and he wasn't.

Made for a decent enough shopping trip, too. I found a copy of Crackdown for $3. And then I decided to check an Arizona souvenir shop for hot sauce -- my cousin invited me to breakfast this coming Sunday. It's the anniversary of her father's passing, and he loved to have people over for Sunday breakfast.

I saw a wasabi and habanero sauce and thought, yeah, that says Uncle Jim to me.

I miss the old fella.

Out with my nephew, thinking of my uncle. I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands o' time until -- aww, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.