Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in gstyle76's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, March 28th, 2006
12:05 pm	What if Alan Moore Never Came to DC Comics Part II What if Alan Moore didn't write for DC Comics? In 1983, Alan Moore's future turned in a different direction when his Swamp Thing series wasn't picked up by DC Comics. Still wanting to do something "different", Moore became enthralled with the text-based video games coming out of the US. Games like Zork interested Moore, in the same way that comics had enthralled him in the past. Citing his interest in an interview in 2000 AD, Sierra owners Ken and Roberta Williams courted Alan Moore to work on their latest game, King's Quest. IBM approached Sierra to develop a new type of game that would showcase the new IBM PCjr. For the first time gamers controlled an on-screen character that interacted with a color, three dimensional environment. Kings Quest I: V for Vendetta is a vengeful tale of the knight dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask and his quest to overthrow the Kingdom of Daventry. You play Eve, who is both alternatively a damsel in distress and a woman to re reckoned with. The crowning feature is the torturous dungeon that Evey has to endure, in order to come out of the game alive. Moore reinvented the Fantasy genre, while at the same time revolving his plot around tough topics (the arms race, racism, nuclear waste (in the form of "magic polution", etc.). Moore displayed great depth and insight in his work, demonstrating that he was able to write on a wide range of topics and situations. Moore's games set the pace for the "Sophisticated Gaming" for years to come. The success of the original King's Quest (subsequently ported to other platforms) spurred them into creating numerous adventure game series based on the Quest theme. In the years to come Moore work would remain on the forefront of groundbreaking computer game design, sometimes creating large blockbusters and other times, failed experiments. Moore revealed openly that their main rival is television and that their aim is to rescue young people from couch potato-ism. In 1986, Moore quietly came out with "Knight's Quest III: The Watchmen", a fantasy game that redefined the video game medium, and changed the tone of fantasy literature to this very day. Watchmen's complex game provided a realistic portrayal of knights and sorcery in a magical world setting that neither understood, nor trusted them. Considered by some to be the greatest game ever produced, Moore was riding on a high. Though not winning any awards, Watchmen proved to be the standard to which gaming revolved around for years to come. However, Moore was very unhappy with the fact that he didn't own the rights to Watchmen, nor did he feel that he was receiving adequate royalties from the game that was earning quite a lot for IBM jr and Sierra Games. Furthermore, at the time there were discussions of implementing a video games ratings system, of which Moore was firmly against. In the late 80's, Moore left Sierra to work strictly for the smaller, independent game publishers. Once free of Sierra, Moore began several projects. In 1988, Moore set up his own video game publishing imprint called Mad Love Publishing. Moore began working on a video game with Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren, called Fashion Beast, though the film never came about. He also began work on Big Numbers with comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz about a small England town where you play one of 8 characters in the game that concentrates on the how a new shopping mall is going to affect a town. Though limited in success, Big Numbers proved to be another turning point in Moore's career. The next game From Hell reconstructed the Jack the Ripper murders in meticulous detail where you play a variety of characters, including Jack the Ripper. This game was banned in the US and in Canada, but garnered great acclaim in Europe and Japan for it's innovative use of perspective and game mechanics that not only recreated the atmosphere of England at the turn of the century, but also critiqued that recreation through puzzles and games inbedded within the game. The annotation game book alone was over 500 pages of detailed notes and was a best seller in Japan and Great Britain for years after. His next two games went in a similar direction with "Voices of Fire" (which presented you as a cave man in early times to Alan Moore himself in Northhampton going through a normal day) and League of Extraordinary Gentleman (which allows you to become one of 8 great literary figures trying to solve the Puzzle of the Inscruitable Asian). Both games (along with From Hell and Watchmen) were reissued in America through Will Wright's Maxis , and also shone as a beacon for how non-violent video games could be produced in America (Moore, a devout Pacifist, framed these games with alternative means of conflict resolution, resulting in more than just a "shoot 'em up" game), leading to a very fruitful partnership with both Will Wright and english luminary Douglas Adams. Currently, Moore's Mad Love Imprint morphed into America's Best Creations (ABC), under which he's once again paving new territory with several new video games: Promethea (a mythological-themed creation that teaches about magic through game-play and interaction...which also involves Alan Moore speaking on two or three of the hidden Easter Eggs in the Game), Tom Strong (a thinly-veiled Superman/Doc Savage character produced for kids that teaches about quantum mechanics and nano-machines), Top Ten (a serialized video game played online). Alan Moore currently lives in Northampton, England where he is currently developing a Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game with Douglas Adams and Will Wright called "Top Ten Heroes", a Superhero game that combines the best of Marvel and DC Comics and Hill Street Blues. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 27th, 2006
3:22 pm	What if Alan Moore Never Came to DC Comics Karen Berger visited England, wanting to recruit Alan Moore in the early 1980s, but lost Moore’s contact information and did not get a hold of him before she had to fly back to America. The British Invasion of comics and the “Postmodernizing” of the Superheroes did not occur with a British slant. Alan Moore was never in DC Comics, but comics still continued. DC struggled behind Marvel and realized that they needed a new way of creating a voice for DC that was significantly different than their competitors, but still kept the spirit of the DCUniverse. Karen Berger, upset that Alan Moore (and, by extension, a lot of the British writers/artists she met and tried to court to move to America) weren't creating comics for DC, went to the streets of New York and the New York Art Scene in order to revitalize the DC Universe. She knew that Crisis on the Infinite Earths would change everything and DC still needed a headlining book to push the charge. In New York, she met the up and coming Russell Simmons. With her business savvy, she convinced him to join DC as a headhunter for a relaunch of DC Comics in the wake of Crisis. The idea came down from Warner Brothers that they were going to axe the DC division and they needed to come up with something that would blow away Marvel's competition. In their ring, Russell Simmons had art and rap contacts to help create a new and innovative line of comics, akin to Jack Kirby's New Gods stories, where we would have comics that appealed to street culture. Because Crisis effectively ended the titles, new ideas had to be brought to the forefront. Dwayne McDuffie came on board, along with Christopher Priest and Marv Wolfman and George Perez and Run DMC and Kurtis Blow to help create a new line that aimed towards a wider demographic. Marv Wolfman already had in mind of adding a more racially diverse mix of superheroic icons into DC Comics and, combined with the street credible hip hop and graphitti artists that Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin brought to the table, recreating Superman for the 1980s. Superman was now black and had a new Supergirl that was every bit his equal and the love of his life. Wonder Woman, as revitalized by George Perez and the Ad-Rock, was a Hispanic woman revitalized by Mayan mythology in order to fight crime in Boston. Batman, rewritten by Rev Run (with input from Spike Lee) now lived in a racially divided Gotham City, a suburb of Atlanta, where Bruce Wayne grew up as a mortician's son that fought crime at night. These changes had varied responses from the fans of DC Comics. Many fans were upset that they had wholesale changed their favorite characters. Others embraced the idea, citing that they could finally relate to these revitalized icons. The "minority-fication" of characters became the staple of the DC Universe, where old icons took on new ethnicities and new backgrounds in order to fit with the new DC Universe. Unchanged titles like the New Teen Titans and the Legion of Superheroes acknowledged that within their history, and editors streamlined titles to fit a similar tone of city life that permeated DC Comics. Marvel tried to do match DC with their "New Universe" comics that focused on minorities and ethnicities, featuring ethnic superheroes with Marvel names, but their ideas fell flat when Jim Shooter was ousted by Marvel Higher ups for not being "not ethnic enough." Instead, Marvel moved their offices to California to accommodate their new editor in chief, Andre Romel Young aka Dr. Dre who had left MWA Comics (a smaller subsidiary of DC Comics who were writing Batman at the time with Denny O'Neil and the hard-hitting social commentary "Straight Out of Gotham") for California. Once in California, Marvel took the co-editor and chief, Suge Knight (who was the inspiration for Steven Grant's revitalization of vigilante named Frank Castle aka The Punisher). With Marvel on the West Coast and DC on the East Coast, bitter rivalries began with the shooting of Denny O'Neil after a Tupac Concert, and the assassination of current Superman writer Christopher Priest in Brooklyn...leading many artists and writers like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, Vanilla Ice and Dwayne McDuffie and (eventually) Dr. Dre the fold to form their own comics branch in Miami known as Image Comics. Rob Liefeld and Vanilla Ice eventually gave up on Image, after Suge Knight had "words" with the creators (and dangled Rob Liefeld from the balcony of his hotel room by his feet), but the rest of the Image boys found their new "sound and image" with groups like 2 live crew (fostering indecency charges in many Florida-based comics shops). Meanwhile, Jim Shooter and Puff Daddy started off Valiant Comics, and became a much heated rival to DC and Marvel, until their artist Kyle Baker and the Notorious BIG were gunned down outside of a signing at Big Apple Comics in New York. Today, comics are the center point of hip hop culture, becoming...effectively...the sixth element of hip hop that dictates how the rest of hip hop and rap culture should act and conduct itself. Groups today like Wu Tang Clan featuring Frank Miller, the Roots remixing old school jazz and Will Eisner, and Outkast's Kirbyverse contribute to the diversity and the spirit that is comic books, creating a diversified and experimental medium that goes beyond the original idea of words and pictures. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 6th, 2006
7:37 pm	The Florida Review is now accepting comics submissions for Fall 2006 The Florida Review is an international journal of prose and poetry, funded both by The University of Central Florida and The Florida Arts Council. For over 30 years, we've published important voices in the literary world, from National Poet Laureate Billy Collins to David Foster Wallace, as well as interviews with Mark Doty and Lorrie Moore. Last year, we have expanded our magazine to include short comics work (such as editorial cartoons, comic memoirs, and visual poetry). Currently, we are accepting new comics work for our Fall 2006 edition. I would love to invite any and all submissions to our magazine, whether you feel most comfortable with single-panel/single-page comics, silent panels, or multi-page graphic narratives. The Florida Review accepts black-and-white comics, with an ideal length of between 1 and 6 pages and we pay in contributor's copies. Published work is reduced to 6 x 9 to fit our journal. We do not publish previously-published pieces (excerpts from upcoming work could be considered, as well as work that has only been self-published or published online) and we reserve only the American first-publication rights. Upon acceptance, we ask for the work on CD, as a .tiff file, at a minimum dpi of 300. The Florida Review editorial staff prides itself on finding new literary voices and we are excited about opening new doors for emerging writers and artists who have a voice outside mainstream comics. As NewPages.com noted, "...The Florida Review is filled with outstanding writers whose names may not be recognizable but whose work is surely a sign of things to come." For additional information, visit our website at http://www.flreview.com Contact: Comics Editor Department of English PO Box 161346 University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida 32816 (407) 823-2038 E-mail: gancheta@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu Website: www.flreview.com (If you're going to post this on your Live Journal, please link to the original message) (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 20th, 2005
11:49 pm	Reality Bites Review It wasn't necesarily an "acurate portrayal", but more like a reference point. It was the first movie to have nostalgia for pop culture as a key ingrediant to the whole movie. Take this in contrast to Singles, which neither had the nostalgia factor intertwined with the movie...it was basically the TV Show 30 something, smooshed into a movie with a better soundtrack. Reality Bites is the spirit of the 90s, popular culture as a movie, in which the protagists do stupid things in order to find themselves. There is no sense of enlightenment at the end. It's just a segment, a Bite, of what the reality was. And the whole movie was formatted like that...Bites of Popular Culture that had a linear narrative, but wasn't all that together. That was emblematic of the times. We had texts like Douglas Coupland's Generation X or we had the movie Slacker or we had this coffee house scene like in Friends or we had the "cool pop" of Pulp Fiction. This was the first mainstream movie to tap that sense of nostalgia about things while the characters themselves were aware of this nostalgia. Awareness is key. This is what sparked Pulp Fiction, Friends, Clerks, and a whole host of media that came afterwards. It wasn't just the deconstruction of nostalgia, but also a revitalization of nostalgia. THe "Baby I love your way" cover, or the indy "Stay" or the nostalgic "My Sharona" are all about the spirit of independance, nostalgia, and being critical of nostalgia. Friends co-opted this idea later down the line...along with MTV's Real World and Kevin Smith's Clerks. I remember watching this movie in 1994 when it first opened. It was right before I went away to college and I could relate to Troy. He was an archetype that, propagated by Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, made sense for the time. He was a rebel by doing nothing and, coupled with Coupland's Generation X, it made sense. But Troy was still a dick. Sure you could blame his relationship to his father, or any number of failed relationships with women. He kept up a barrier and underneath it was hiding some deep well of meaning and heartfulness. He wanted Lainie but couldn't figure out how to say it or make her understand because he kept so many barriers up. But she still picked the wrong guy. Michael, for all his flaws, was at least trying to find depth. Sure he was a yuppie and he had the trappings of being a yuppie/bohemian without the sensibility that is garnered through adopting popular culture into your life instead of just using the symbols of popular culture towards some end (that's why he didn't get why Lainey was upset about what he did to her movie...he thought he made it more like the other things he saw rather than trying to construct something out of popular culture). But Michael was learning, and it made sense that he was where he was at because he learned from others quite well and tried to adopt that into himself. What I always loved about Reality Bites was that, in the end, Lainey picked the wrong guy and that's okay because she was in her 20s and just graduated and those are the decisions you make in your twenties. If this movie was shot today with everyone in their 30s, it wouldn't make any sense for her to go for Troy because Troy wouldn't be mature and he doesn't know what he wants. She'd probably go for Ben Stiller because he'd be someone who had his act together and is now trying to find out this other side of his life with another person. Troy would just be a jerk who needed to grow up. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 14th, 2005
10:01 am	Alan Moore Interview: The Craft of Writing Comics PART ONE: 09/09/02 Having been graciously invited to his Northampton abode by the World's Greatest Comics Writer, myself (Daniel Whiston) along with David Russell and Andy Fruish had a long and fascinating meeting with the Enlightened One, surrounded as we were by shelves groaning under the weight of books and comics, walls covered with mystic paraphenalia from throughout the ages, and a constant fug of smoke. Having introduced ourselves (and established that the Dictaphone was indeed working), an intense two-hour introduction to Alan's methods, opinions and writing approach followed… DW: I feel quite awkward doing this ‘cos I've never really interviewed anyone before… AM: Well I'm a doddle for interviewing ‘cos I'm completely infatuated with the sound of me own voice…you just have to say a few basic words and I'll talk for the next hour or two…you prod me if you want me to stop or change to a different subject. More at: http://www.enginecomics.co.uk/interviews/jan05/alanmoore.htm DW: The selfish motivation for me doing this is that I'm starting to try and write myself and would be really interested to get the benefit of your experience so from that point of view I'd be really interested in talking about the mechanics of the craft, and then maybe go on to talk about the higher level creative aspects in a little bit. AM: OK. DW: So maybe we could start off with the nuts and bolts…what's your approach to plotting, for example? AM: My approach to most things has been in a state of flux and has been developing over the last 25 years that I've been working at this, with regard to plotting for example. When I started out with this I was living in a state of such terror that I would get to the end of a story and not have an ending for it, or would not have at least a satisfactory ending for it, that I would plot my stories out almost to the finest detail. If I was plotting a 24-page Swamp Thing story I would have a kind of rough idea of where I wanted the story to go in my head, I would have perhaps vague ideas of what would make a good opening scene, a good closing scene, perhaps a few muddy bits in the middle. I'd then write the numbers 1 to 24 down the side of the page and I would put down a one line description of what was happening on that page. This kind of developed to the point of mania with Big Numbers . (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
3:20 pm	Extraordinary Things I think Passive Angel can do! I found this on the comicbookresources.com (Under the Lying in the Gutters Column) website and I thought of Passive Angel: >>> As with every contract, you make a call. But there have been some discussion how much people are aware of what they're signing up to. Take the "Manga Online" magazine that TokyoPop runs. As of this week, they are running "MangaPods" - basically radio drama style readings of manga chapters with voice actors, effects and music. As someone who works in radio advertising, and writes for radio, they're not as bad as the audio tracks to comics that CrossGen put out, but dear me, they're far from being anywhere of say BBC radio drama quality. And there's no reason why they couldn't be. What has transpired since is that TokyoPop did not ask for permission or solicit opinions from creators before. It's free content, but as TP creator Amy Kim Ganter states on fellow TokyoPop creators Mike Schwark and Ron Kaulfersch's message board, amidst complaints about how her characters sound, "Why didn't anyone ask the creators for feedback? I mean, why did TokyoPop hire us? Really, I'm so confused. "The mangapods have now implanted a voice onto the character before the reader is even allowed to creatively have one of their own, before the books even hit the shelves, and the voices were done in a way that doesn't reflect my intended characterization. Whether it matters to anyone or not, this makes me disappointed as an artist." <<<< I was thinking...what if people started creating comics like this...with an audio track (and sound effects and music) that went along with your comic book? Further thought got me into thinking that P.A. would be awesome at doing such a thing. She loves music, she loves to make comics that are non-traditional, and she has a dramatic background. I would love for P.A.'s brother to do a voice reading of one of her comics...if only because I would thereby purchase a vacuum cleaner from him later down the line based on his reading of P.A.'s comic book. The second thing I thought P.A. would be awesome in is creating a collectable card game. P.A. told me her idea of her comic book...but the more I research CCGs, the more I realize that it has the potential to be a very kick ass CCG, with Tarot-like graphics and a kick ass storyline that would engage and entice the reader into the plot. I've already been reading about CCGs as a storytelling medium, and I think P.A. could kick ass with such a unique take on the medium. Both of these things are high on the geek/cool meter...and I apologize if I'm overstepping my bounds as a friend and literary cheerleader...but these are the things I find cool at the moment, and for some reason, I relate coolness to my friend P.A. - G (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005
4:57 pm	George Perez and the Pieta Check out here: http://vu.morrissey-solo.com/moz/perez/homages.htm The Pieta is one of the most interesting comic book cover motifs, most popularized by George Perez in the link above. But there's another idea tied to Perez's homage: it's totally a different reaction when you see the Pieta and the Crisis 7 issue. The Crisis 7 issue look comes from a different looking piece. I think that the image comes from either the black and white Frankenstien, or the Orson Well's version of Othello. The Othello movie is especially telling, with a look of confusion and rage on Othello's face as he wanders around in delerium as he holds his wife and screams Iago's name. The Pieta is different from this scene...but similar enough to be an inspiration. The Pieta has Mary looking down upon her son, looking content and serene. The trick of the Crisis issue has that while Superman looks like Othello holding Demsdemona, the characters in the composition behind him look serene and reverent. That's what makes this composition Pieta-like, but using a different sort of emphasis: the monstrosity and elongation of Superman to show how the world is askew rather than all right. I read an interview about Phil Jimmenez, and he talked about why Superman "looks" like Superman. People point out that it is his head (which is an odd shape, round, but flat at points) and his huge neck. These are identifying traits and what makes Superman "look" like Superman. So if you look at the composition of Superman...the reaction is all on the face. His head is elongated, with tears streaming down his face, and it looks different than all the other Superman interpretations. It's not Superman content (which is how he is usually depicted) or puzzled, or anything else. This is Superman in grief. There is no Serenity or the Battle is Done sort of look like the Pieta. This is Superman enraged...where his head and his neck are so out of sorts that you would notice it even if it wasn't the focus of the composition...even if you didn't see Supergirl's dead body (this is also why the Superman/Alex Ross image on the same website is compositionally wrong...his body is proportioned, not animated, so it looks like he's just opening his mouth. The focus of the Crisis issue isn't the body of Supergirl (the Body of Christ is the focus of the Pieta, with Mary's smile acwknowledging that the body is flesh and the spirit is eternal), it's the rage of Superman. That comes from the Orson Well's Othello, where Othello grieves for being an emotional and angry soldier instead of being an emotional lover. Compare this to Chris Sprouce's interpretation of this scene in Tom Strong (on the same website). Notice how the emphasis is on the serenity of the main character and the body of of his wife. Sprouse actually brings in more of the Pieta into his piece...with Tom Strong looking serene, his lover in repose, and the characters in the background look down or look towards Tom Strong...judging him and his lover. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
2:05 pm	To all Ex-Scad People (and any professionals that might be listening) Hello Everyone, I'm looking for speakers for a round table discussion about how Video Games, Comics, and Puppetry being mature mediums (and no, we're not using the "Gosh Pow Whizbang: Comics aren't for kids anymore). We're trying to Heather Hensen (for Puppetry) and Doug French (for Video Games) I'm looking for comic book professionals and contacts to professionals that might be interested for this type of discussion. We're looking for a quick turn around for this conference, so we're looking at sometime in the busy month of December. If you know of anyone that would like to talk about this (especially any ex-SCAD teachers or SCAD teachers who vacation in Florida or if, quite possibly, anyone knows if Neil Gaiman is traveling to Florida sometime in early December), PLEASE let me know. This is going to be a very cool conference - G (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
7:12 pm	Why do Birds, Suddenly Appear...Everytime...You are Near (Review of Mirrormask) There's this point in Mirrormask where these very odd jack-in-the-boxes pop up and completely change the main character from a young woman in her pajamas to a younger goth girl with elvira hair. The soundtrack for this particular piece is a well-choreographed dance number of "Close to You" by a Bjork-style songstress. It's a weird commentary, coming from the master of goth fashion, to mock such fashions as being girl-like and child-like. But I like that it isn't an easy "dark is bad" and "light is good." It's more about a balance of light and dark. One must be a girl or reflect on being a girl in order to grow up and take responsibility for all the things grown ups take responsibility for. Something I learned from reading Sandman: Girls stories are different from "Boys" stories. If you have read Sandman, think back to "A Game of You" as a template for this type of story. There is no real "call to adventure" story, but rather a "wanting to go home." In this particular world of Mirrormask, the main character's world is in transition. There is both dark things and light things in the world she has to deal with. She is still both a child, but also a young woman who needs guidance and her home (which is, more precisely, the circus and her father and mother). As she travels through this fantasy world of her own making, she comes across a key that provides the clue to how to find her way home. She needs to accept both sides of her world. She needs to accept both sides, the light and the dark side of life, her youthful arrogance and her young adulthood, in order to face the real world. Freud would have a field day with this. Living in the Circus was telling of how much Helena needed that balance in her life. Her big fight with the mom was to have a "normal" life...but what she really wanted was an "easier" life. Her "easy life" was reflected on how abnormal her doppleganger became in the real world...someone who had an easy life and who used others in order to remain a child instead of growing into becoming an adult. What was gained was an understanding of the difficulties of living in the "real" world. For the longest time, all she ever wanted to do was live in the "real" world. But that world, like her mother points out, is a childish view of the real world (of dress up and masks and mirrors). To live in the "real" world, you have to deal with things like your mother dying or being unsure of whether or not the people you love are going to "make it." That's the struggle. You have, at the end, Helana accepting the dark and light side of life and struggling through both when her father gets the news. She isn't in control of that part of her life, but she tries to accept it like an adult would. Mirrormask is more subtle than his traditional comics work work, I have to admit. Part of the joy of Gaiman's work is dwelling oan points and going back on points that were missed because you read too fast. Movies have the problem of not allowing you access to going back to points or dwelling on words...and Gaiman is more of a wordspinner than anything else. But I really liked the subtlty of this movie and the Britishenss of the piece. I used to live in a coastal city that has seen better economic days, and this Mirrormask world is no exception. Gaiman loves using this park as a way to talk about childhood. He does it in Sandman but also in his earlier works in Miracleman where part of the story occurs in a carnival. My town, like the town Gaiman mentions, is wholly and darks at times, but underneath it's magical and beautiful. That's the neat part of Gaiman's work. That's why Goth girls all look like Gaiman's Death at some point and time, with top hats and tank tops. His stories always seem dark on the face of it, but in the end it becomes prudent for the story to become an affirmation of life and growing up by accepting the dark and the light of life. -G (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 20th, 2005
3:32 pm	Florida Review: Accepting Comic Book Submissions for internation Literature Magazine This is from my co-teacher Nate Holic. He wanted me to post this because he knew that I had comic artists/writers on my forum. Please distribute the following to any and all that might be interested. - G _____________________________ My name is Nathan Holic, a current editor at The Florida Review in Orlando, FL. The Florida Review is a national journal of prose, poetry, and comics, funded both by The University of Central Florida and The Florida Arts Council, with an international subscriber base. We're now in the process of starting a comic-lit/graphic narrative section for our journal, also, and we'd be one of--if not the--first university-published literary magazines to explore comics as a "literary genre." I would like to invite your submissions, and ask for any help that anyone could give (even if it means simply forwarding this information along to someone who might be interested). Prose and poetry can tell incredible stories, but comics--like film--have an ability to take the story one step further. How much can just a single panel, a single drawing, a single line of text, tell us about a character or about a story? If we can open up literary magazines (and universities) to comics as a literary genre, then artists and writers might have hundreds of more submission opportunities (nearly every university sponsors one). We are looking for finished comics that tell an intriguing story or set a distinct mood. The grander the imagination, the more excited we'll be. Editorial cartoons are also welcome and encouraged. In short, we love creativity, and we love to laugh. If we have success in our initial efforts, we'll likely start an annual comic contest with a cash prize. We can only accept black-and-white comics, with an ideal length of between 5 and 15 pages, and we pay in contributor's copies. Published work will be reduced to 6x9 to fit our current magazine. We do not publish previously-published pieces (excerpts from upcoming work could be considered, however), and we reserve only the first-publication rights. Upon acceptance, we ask for the work on CD, as a tif file, at a minimum dpi of 300 (this is our printer's requirements...I don't really know too much about it!). Please see http://www.flreview.com for more details about our magazine. I'm very excited about our magazine, and about the potential that a comics section can offer for emerging writers and artists, and I look forward to reading your submissions. Questions: contact nateholicucf@yahoo.com ### (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005
8:53 pm	The Beatles Retrospective Here's an entree that I really love from Gail Simone's "You All Be Sorry." It made me happy because I was pissed about today and comics: It was the dawn of the sixties, in the working class English port of Liverpool. Four talented and slightly scruffy lads are playing a dank, dark and somewhat dangerous club called the Cavern, when fate comes calling in the shape of an unlikely new fan; record store owner Brian Epstein. (Note, quotes from Mr. Epstein, who passed away in the late sixties, are from BBC archival footage.) BRIAN: Oh, when I first saw the Beatles, I was immediately struck by their charm. They had enormous personal charm and wit, and I remember being very enthused by their performance. Still, I'd come away with the strong feeling that something quite simply wasn't right. PAUL: So, we meet Brian, you know, and he had this Zodiac car, and we were all quite impressed, 'cause none of us knew anyone with a car like that. GEORGE: He invited us to tea, and we had ham sarnies on these delicate little plates, with our favorite ciggies on the side-quite the showman, was our Brian. PAUL: After the tea, he tells us John had to go. Brian Epstein was convinced that the Beatles would be, in his words, "Bigger than Elvis…", but he felt the antagonistic Lennon would be a detriment to his business plan. He had a newcomer to the Mersey music scene in mind. BRIAN: Well, the band had had other members-of course, Stuart Sutcliffe died tragically of a brain aneurysm, and Pete Best was replaced with Ringo Starr, who had been a smash in Rory Storm's group. But I really had an instinct that what the Beatles needed was something unique. PAUL: 'Course, we were sad to give John the sack, as he really had been the keenie in some ways. I heard he owns a confectionary in Soho currently. GEORGE: We could have handled things better, or been nicer, I suppose, but I think it's true, and history has shown, that the Beatles are actually Paul, George, Ringo, and the Hulk. I mean, I'm sorry for John and Pete, but I can't imagine anything coming from having had them in the group. HULK: HULK PLAYING IN LOCAL SKIFFLE GROUP THE CORVETTES-- BRIAN SAY JOIN BEATLES! HULK FURIOUS! SMASH STAGE! CRUSH BRIAN CAR! BRIAN (Laughs): Yes, I'm afraid no one was any too keen on the idea at first. But the chemistry was undeniable. Three slender young Liverpool lads and an eight-foot-tall emerald Goliath proved to be an unbeatable combination. GEORGE:At first, we were a bit skeptical, you know. His guitar skills were a bit rough. But we were knocked out by his harmonica playing. RINGO: I saw him and I went, "GAH!! F***! SAVE ME!" but we got along famously later. The Beatles with their newest member went to EMI, where they were championed by George Martin, a gifted producer who saw something unique in the boys' raw sound. GEORGE: Well, the famous story is that George Martin comes in and says, "If there's anything you boys don't like, just tell me." And I said, "Well, for a start, I don't like your tie." Then the Hulk added, "I DON'T LIKE YOUR FACE! HULK SMASH!!" This incident delayed the release of the first Beatles album, SMASH THE BEATLES, by a fortnight while producer Martin was in hospital. However, the album, driven in sales by the hits SMASH ME DO and PLEASE SMASH ME, went to number one in both Britain and America. And the Beatles never looked back. The Hulk's facile and unpredictable wordplay was constantly on radio stations everywhere. "OH, YEAH YOU, MAKE HULK ANGRY. YOU MAKE HULK SO MAD WHEN HULK SAY TO HU-U-ULK, HULK WANT TO CRUSH PUNY BANNER! HATE BANNER! ARRGHGHHG!!" RINGO: We got off the plane at the airport, and I remember we're all looking around, 'cause there's this huge crowd and all. We thought the President was coming in, or something. PAUL:But it turned out to be that they'd all come to see the Hulk fight the Abomination. GEORGE: It came out later to all be a publicity stunt by some deejay called Murray the "K." When the Hulk found out about it, he was rather non-plussed, wasn't he? HULK: HULK SMASH MURRAY THE "K!" The Beatles had arrived in America, and the American press loved every minute of it. PRESS: HOW DO FIND AMERICA? PAUL: Turn left at Greenland. HULK: HULK JUMP! FIGHT STUPID FISH MAN! PRESS: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF BEETHOVEN? RINGO: I love him, especially his poems. HULK: GRRRRAARA! HULK HATE STUPID BEETHOVEN! PRESS: WILL YOU SING FOR US? GEORGE: We need money first! HULK: ARRRAHH!! QUIT ASKING HULK STUPID QUESTIONS!!! HULK HEAD HURTS! ARRRGHGH! ARGHGHH!! Two sensational and historic appearances on the Ed Sullivan show proved what teenagers already knew. The Beatles had conquered America. In a poorly-conceived attempt to compete, many other groups of the British Invasion also recruited new members. MICK JAGGER: Right, we had this fella, this huge git covered in orange rocks, and we thought, you know, rocks, stones, it's a natural, right? Only, he can't play a stitch and he can't sing, can't dance at all…only thing about him was this blind bird he brought round. She was lovely, weren't she? PETE TOWNSHEND: Christ, don't bring that up. All right, yeah, we had Sasquatch as a "percussionist" for a while. Bloody useless, he was. I'd smash my guitar, and he'd lift an oil tanker. Audiences would boo us til we'd play f***ing TOMMY again. MICKEY DOLENZ: Oh, man, we didn't even have our own monster. We used a studio monster and Peter Tork just lip-synched to it. SMASH THE BEATLES was only the beginning. The band had a streak of number one hits that broke all known records; CAN'T BUY ME BEANS, I WANT TO HOLD YOUR CRUSHED SKULL IN MY HAND, and the bittersweet uptempo ballad, SMASH!, which revealed a sad heart beneath the Hulk's smiling surface… "When Hulk was younger, So much younger than today, He wanted beans argh arghhhh! Hate stupid soldier try to shoot Hulk ARGHH!!" But few saw this side of the Hulk. Close friend and former Beatle roadie Neil Aspinall said in a 1974 Rolling Stone interview, "That Hulk. He sure liked to smash things. He smashed me once in 1964, and then twice in 1965, but you know, he were a good bloke, bless him." The Hulk, increasingly frustrated by what he felt was the tyranny of the pop song formula, then had his vision for what would become their masterpiece. Sgt. Fury's Howlin' Commando Band. The album contained moments of shimmering studio wizardry and poetic vision, and the songs, A DAY IN THE LIFE-A FIST IN THE FACE, and WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE DEFENDERS became touchstones for a new generation of serious music criticism. PAUL: With Fury, I really felt that we'd done it. That we'd made something new. We'd all been inspired by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and this was sort of our way to stay on top. HULK: HULK HATE THREE MINUTE 1-4-5 FORMAT! HULK EARS HURT! But then, an offhand comment in yet another press conference nearly derailed the Beatles' momentum. HULK: HULK NOT AFRAID OF ANYONE! HULK BIGGER THAN JESUS! BRING JESUS HERE AND HULK WILL SMASH! A visibly angry and uncomfortable Hulk had to retract his statement later, when it became clear that his words had enraged even his most ardent fans… HULK: HULK NOT SAY HULK BETTER THAN JESUS AS PERSON OR GOD AS THING. HULK SAID IT AND IT WRONG OR TAKEN WRONG. HULK…GRRR…HULK SORRY! Events like this alienated Hulk even from his formerly steadfast bandmates. He increasingly found pleasure among the alternative art community in London and New York. Hulk was invited to a showing by an Avant-Garde artist named Yoko Ono. HULK: STUPID ART WOMAN HAVE LADDER. SAY HULK CLIMB. HULK CLIMB LADDER AND SEE SIGN SAY "YES!" HULK BLOWN AWAY BY STUPID ART WOMAN POSITIVE MESSAGE. ASK STUPID ART WOMAN MARRY HULK. The formerly solid songwriting team of Hulk/McCartney now existed in name only. The Beatles increasingly relied on studio musicians to provide backing tracks for works they'd written individually. The Hulk's joy at meeting Stupid Artist Woman was evident, but the rest of the band found themselves increasingly at odds with this new, activist, beret-wearing Hulk. GEORGE: He started bringing Yoko into the studio, and making these tape loops while stoned. He did that one, HULK SMASH #9, that was just him saying, "Hulk Smash" over and over with her havin' an orgasm in the background. PAUL: He pulled it together for ALL ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE. Lovely melody, that. But yeah, he was gone, really. He and Yoko started the Purple Pants for Peace movement. I quit paying attention after their Bag-In at Dr. Strange's house. It was the beginning of the end. A final hit record carried the Hulk/McCartney shared writing credit, GIVE PEACE A SMASH, but the writing was on the wall and the Hulk, hating both walls and writing, was enraged and smashed it. Those who loved the music of the Beatles are quick to point fingers at those they felt contributed to their breakup, but perhaps the Hulk was simply meant to be alone--Perhaps the Hulk's largest solo hit said it best: "Imagine Hulk not angry Not want to hit and fight Not want to smash the Leader No enemy in sight Imagine Puny Banner Imagine all Marines All be friends to Hulk In great big field of beans Imagine all the people Leaving Hulk alone, aha! You may say Hulk a dreamer. But Hulk not agree with that Hulk hope someday, Hulk find you. And then the Hulk will smash you flat." IMAGINE. (Comment on this)
11:14 am	I'm a Rent-head I have a confession: I love the musical RENT. I know, I know...Rent is "Cats" but with people that have AIDS instead of Felines, but there's something so heartfelt about the musical. It's Rock-Opera done in the style of Sondhiem, about the AIDS epidemic and how people must still live for those they love instead of giving up their lives and their loves for fear of hurting the people around them. It seems dated, but there's this spirit of a bohemian life that intrigues me. I remember seeing the designs and the staging as being really different than what I've seen on stage before. It was one of those moments that I realized I needed to do artistic things and live a lifestyle that reflects those artistic pursuits. I would listen to the soundtrack as I drove back and forth from UF to Fort Myers and I nearly wore out the lazer in my car. There's a sense of despairation in the voices of these actors when I original heard it. With the new soundtrack, these voices become dated if only because this is a New York before the Twin Towers fell. Bohemian lifestyle in New York means different things now, with everything politically charged. RENT is all about connections of people and trying to find those connections with others without making too many compromises. You can't go anywhere in New York without having your bag checked by police. But I still love this musical. In the face of death, there is living for the day. That's a powerful message. No day but today. It's existentialist and humanist at the same time. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 17th, 2005
3:57 pm	Beginning Manifesto: A True Comics Journal....Need Help This is the next step in comic books. A True Comics Journal of Visual Arts and Humanities. I've read the Comics Journal, on and off, for a couple of years now and I think it's time to come up with a true Comics Journal that discusses topics completely through the medium of comics. I teach a digital media course and now we're creating comic books that critique Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics through the medium of comics. This is how we need to teach visual studies. But imagine a journal that would express all of it's information through the comic form. This would be like those "Beginners Guides to Philosophy" or McSweeney's issue 13 or Sam Keith's "Epicurius" or "Blab." Comics would be the form of the content of expression rather than an object to be analyzed (although that could be there too). What would be the point of this type of journal? I could see it as a form and a forum for discussing humanities in a new way. I could see it as a completely online web journal that would be peer reviewed and ultilizing all methods available to the creator. Some people could use flash and layer their images. Some would use the "infinite palate" given to them by the comic book form. Some would use it as formalist exercises to prove their point. And this comics journal would be all about arts and humanities, so we would have it peer reviewed with scholarly articles and reviews about traditional and new media solely through the view of written and drawn comics. In any case, let me see what everyone on my list thinks about it. I put a lot of comic creators on my list for this particular reason. How would you see a comics journal for the humanities? What form would it take? Are there any examples of this elsewhere? Is this a viable option or completely unweildly? I need help with a manifesto for this idea. Any help would be most appreciative. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:05 am	Dead Like Me--TV series I love this show. Only ran for two seasons, but it is such an interesting couple of episodes. The show works with so many plots. There are five main characters that interact with eachother, with tons of guest stars. Then there is another plot with three other characters that do not interact with the five main characters at all. Then there's an office with a group of characters that do not interact with anyone but one of the main characters. It is juggled really well. The premise is great. Think of a group of "Deaths" that used to be living that go and reap the souls before people pass away. Those are the main characters. The secondary plot is a mother, father, and daughter getting over the death of the oldest daughter (one of the "Deaths") in a very humorous way. The office part is where the "young death" tries to make a living working for a temp agency. I love beautiful shows like this. It's intricate and crystaline and full of more depth than 80 % of the world. I really can't get over how well done this show is. I'm watching it now and the humor and the sadness and the love and the despair and the hope that when we pass away that there is comfort. Each character is painted with an individual brush, delicate and fine, and no one characterization gets off easy. Everyone has depth and no one is a characture. The decisions people make are costly decisions. The rewards that people recieve are peace of mind victories that seem to carry the continuity of the show further. Each episode grows the characters and it's a shame that we no longer have new stories to watch. It's a show that got canceled before it's time, which is a shame. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 15th, 2005
10:30 am	Dancing around Architecture is like Writing superhero Comic Books A review of a recent series of comic-book adventures set in (yet another) fictional version of New York City, from today's NY Times: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Architecture! By ALEXANDRA STARR FOR some comic book fans, the fictional cities of Metropolis and Gotham, home to Superman and Batman, feel as real as New York, the inspiration for both towns. Now there is another city to add to their dreamscape: the Cinderella City, the setting for the comic book series Manhattan Guardian, the latest issue of which arrives on Sept. 7. As the title of the series indicates, Cinderella City is unmistakably New York, but it is a New York that is at once more true to life and more fantastical than that of any other comic book tribute. Much of the Cinderella City looks like the New York of today: grimy subway stations, soaring buildings, busy street scenes. But Grant Morrison, the Scottish writer who created the Manhattan Guardian as part of the larger Seven Soldiers series, also laced it with architectural marvels that were proposed but never actually constructed. The first issue of Seven Soldiers, published last February, features a broad Manhattan skyline that includes a hotel that the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudí designed for New York nearly a century ago. Not far away is the so-called Rolls-Royce Building (its facade resembles a grill) that the Austrian architect Hans Hollein unsuccessfully proposed as the new headquarters for Chase Manhattan Bank in the late 1950's. And snaking around the two buildings is the Mid-Manhattan Expressway, the elevated highway long championed by New York City's powerful urban planner Robert Moses. All of these buildings, Mr. Morrison said, will reappear in other issues of the Seven Soldiers series, as will other unrealized architectural marvels. The opening panel of Manhattan Guardian's third issue, for example, featured Frank Lloyd Wright's domed futuristic complex Ellis Island Key, which the architect designed shortly before he died. Mr. Morrison, who lives in Glasgow, said by embellishing on the existing New York he was tapping into his favorite comic book power: the ability to create alternative realities. "Things as they are have never really been enough for me," he said. It was the urge to reimagine the world around him that led Mr. Morrison to conceive the series. He had just finished four years writing the X-Men when DC Comics approached him about masterminding the relaunching of Superman - about as prestigious a gig as there is in the comic-book world. But Mr. Morrison was wary. "There are limits as to what you can do with characters that have already been established," he explained. Ultimately, he agreed to write story lines for the most famous superhero in history on the condition he could also produce 30 books about long-forgotten DC Comics characters, allowing him full creative license to concoct narratives and a new city in which to stage them. Mr. Morrison said he was attracted by the fun of curating a personal version of New York, as well as the novelty of bringing DC Comics characters into the city previously dominated by its rival, Marvel. (Peter Parker was living in Queens when he was bitten there by a radioactive spider). One of the reasons Mr. Morrison decided to name his town the Cinderella City was to differentiate it from Gotham and Metropolis, which he deems "ugly stepsisters." One of the first new characters that Mr. Morrison introduced was the Manhattan Guardian, New York's first eponymous superhero. The original Guardian appeared in the 1940's; the protagonist was a beat cop who allied himself with tough local kids to punish evildoers. The title of the book reminded Morrison of the British newspaper, which, in turn, gave him the idea of a tabloid's hiring a superhero. But the publication, he quickly determined, couldn't be based on his side of the Atlantic. "A superhero with a British tabloid would promote bingo with Page 3 girls," he said. So Mr. Morrison created The Manhattan Guardian, a tabloid that employs Jake Jordan, a veteran of the New York Police Department, to protect New York from nefarious characters. The decision to line this particular New York with monuments that didn't make it past the drawing board sprang from a conversation with Paul Laffoley, a Boston-based architect. Mr. Laffoley entered the 9/11 memorial design committee with a proposal to revive the American hotel that Gaudí is said to have contemplated creating in 1908. Mr. Morrison had been an enthusiast of Gaudí since he picked up a Taschen art book of the Spaniard's work 19 years ago, and he was taken with descriptions of the proposed building, which would have stood almost as high as the Eiffel Tower, with an observatory in the shape of a sea urchin at the top. Mr. Laffoley's proposal for ground zero did not make the cut, of course, but Mr. Morrison decided to erect the building in the pages of his comic book. It dovetailed nicely with the broader theme for his city: "I want it to be a more exalted New York, where things that were dreamed of were finally brought into reality." After that, Mr. Morrison waded through academic texts to find other never-built masterpieces. His standards were high. "I chose only the things that looked most bizarre and beautiful," he explains. "I wanted them to be like a Gaudí building. He managed to create things that looked utterly improbable and fantastical, by sheer force of will." The Midtown expressway made the cut: Mr. Morrison liked how the elevated highway burrowed through buildings, reminding him of a monorail that he had ridden in Sydney that whizzed through department stores. And the concept of a building resembling a Rolls-Royce grill was intriguing. "It's the kind of thing that would become a tourist haunt, or a terrorist target," he said. "All of the buildings I've included are. They would have been icons of the city." After immersing yourself in Mr. Morrison's version of New York, it's a little hard to see the city in quite the same way. Perhaps in real life, even these extraordinary designs would have come to feel familiar, but on the page they are a striking reminder of how much one structure can matter. Whether or not you think the mid-Manhattan expressway made sense as urban planning, the image of a road bursting through a building is not one you'll soon forget. To make the fantasy city feel real, the artist Cameron Stewart realized Mr. Morrison's story lines using as much visual data as possible. During a four-day trip to New York last fall, Mr. Stewart, who lives in Toronto, spent hours in the subway, snapping photos of benches, pipes and rush-hour passengers. "It's the details that make it complete," he explained. "Most readers won't catch all of them, but if they weren't there, it wouldn't feel like a real world." Under Mr. Morrison's guidance, Mr. Stewart also added a few flourishes of his own. The Manhattan Guardian's principal nemeses, for example, are pirates who hijack New York subway trains; they wear credit card earrings and cellphone belts, a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the bounty they would have collected from 21st-century victims. And in the panel in which the Cinderella City is named Mr. Stewart sent "Pumpkin cabs" - in orange instead of the traditional yellow - zooming by on the street. In a sense, the Guardian is a valentine to a city that both Mr. Morrison and Mr. Stewart call their favorite in the world. But neither man has plans to move here. Mr. Stewart said he had toyed with the idea during his October visit, but the outcome of the presidential election a month later prompted him to shelve the plan. Mr. Morrison, meanwhile, is wary of the constant stimuli. "I'd be too high voltage," he said. "I'd never get anything done." He is putting in 13-hour days, not only redesigning Manhattan, but also working on Superman, whose 67-year-old insignia he has already changed. "A lot of mad ideas come into my head," he says with a chuckle. "I'm lucky people will pay me for them." (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 6th, 2005
8:45 pm	Well, shit...I'm Lawful Good? I Am A: Lawful Good Half-Elf Bard Ranger Alignment: Lawful Good characters are the epitome of all that is just and good. They believe in order and governments that work for the benefit of all, and generally do not mind doing direct work to further their beliefs. Race: Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves. Primary Class: Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit. Secondary Class: Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy. Deity: Oghma is the Neutral Good god of knowledge and invention. He is also known as the Binder of What is Known, and is the Patron of Bards. His followers believe that knowledge reigns supreme, and is the basis for everything else that is done. They wear white shirts and pants, with a black and gold braided vest, and a small, box-like hat. All priests of Oghma are known as Loremasters. Oghma's symbol is a scroll. Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail) (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 1st, 2005
9:50 pm	Red Rocket 7 and Capote in Kansas I'm on a weird historical kick today, with two particular comic books taking my attention. Red Rocket 7 is a science fiction/rock 'n roll book created by the wonderful Mike Allard. The fantastic elements in the comic book are grounded really well with the historical and political nature of rock 'n roll since it's inception until today. The heroic journey of the main character can be seen as the progression of rock 'n roll through the five decades of it's existence. There are some inspired choices and remarkable placement of Red Rocket 7 as he tries to find his people's sacred music. It's well worth anyone's time to hunt down. Capote in Kansas is a historical graphic novel that pretty much takes us through the journey of Truman Capote as he writes his most famous novel (and the novel that brought about the era of relevant journalism), In Cold Blood. I like this novel for the nuances and for a very nice use of Harper Lee (who I still adore even though I was made to read To Kill a Mockingbird). Both of these are challenging works. It makes you think of these comics as a space and a time, not in some nebulous "it could be happening right now" or "it could be happening in the near future." There is a specific place and a specific time to which all of the events take place. There's a sense of space and distance and texture to the world that these people inhabit because they're so close to our world in a very uncomfortable way. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
11:06 pm	Comics and Music... "Can Rock and Roll save the world" by Ida Shirley. This is one of those purchases that inspires me to do things other than work. Ida's book is all about how music and musical groups are depicted in comic books. There's some great interviews with Harvey Pekar and Alan Moore about their music journalism. There is some great bare bones stuff about how comic books incorporates pop, jazz, rap, and other music into the melage that is comic books. I mean, she even has a whole chapter on Disco-dancing Dazzler for chrissakes. And there are just some odd tid-bits that she throws in about characters that are background details that help foreground characters. Peter Parker/Spiderman loves Aretha Franklin and early soul. Captain America prefers Elvis Costello to Bruce Springsteen because Costello reminds him of Big Band crooners. Oh, and Dazzler may be a disco diva, but she really enjoys Devo and Talking heads. There is some great stuff about how comics depict music and how music is depict comics. It reminds me of all those cool "Hectic Planet" comics that got me into early Ska or how the Silver Surfer got me into Joe Satriani. It's cool to read about all of these influences back and forth. I mean Kiss alone seems to get so much miledge out of their comic book personas that it revitalizes their career every other decade. This book is worth picking up if you're a comic book historian. The book itself does not lend itself to a chronological retelling of how these stories fit together, but it has enough information to give you a sense of how a chronology would fit together. I think I'm going to nab a bit of this mentality and start talking about comics like Lester Bangs or Chuck Klosterman. It feels like the best way to get to the heart of the whole love affair with the medium that I have. Does anyone know of any comic book-related landmarks I could visit. I'm thinking of doing a whole "rock journalism on the road" sor tof thing and I'm looking for comic book-relevant places to visit (either places of famous artists, or famous places depicted in comic books), preferrably stuff in america. (Comment on this)
10:07 pm	In 2008, Kneel Before Zod Something that always makes me laugh: http://www.zod2008.com/ "In 2008, All Kneel Before Me." (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
9:39 am	Comics as Digital More Important Thoughts: Comics are the first digital artform. It requires the reader to fill in the blanks of the work. It also requires the creator to work on the design and the production to move your eye around like digial artists use sound to move your hearing from stereo sound. The term analog comes from the notion of "analogous" or "cause and effect" in which something sounds, reads, performs exactly like it would in real life. The term digital comes from "of the fingers" and rely on precise counting and numbers for communication of ideas. Comics, in their purest form use mathematics to pattern out design or to grid an area for visual information to reside in. It's the basic form of digital narrative communication. (1 Comment |Comment on this)