Original Art Sundays No. 126: Tranny Towers, Ch. 28

One more from a tearsheet. As always, click on the strip to see it larger.

This cleaned up fairly well, but will still need a rescan once I dig the originals out of the vault, as it were.
Notes on this chapter: decent action, adequate backgrounds, straight-up 2 x 3 classic panel layout, useful for action and humor pages (though for some reason, a 2 x 4 layout works better with most comedy stories). I seldom write action-heavy stories, and I wanted to push myself a bit in that area, as you'll see next week.
I think the Art Deco typeface in the banner is from a public domain book of Deco faces. I do love hand rendering mastheads!
The title "Let's You and Him Fight" is my favorite Wimpy line from Popeye. I also like, "I would gladly have you over for a duck dinner. You bring the ducks."
The line about "all glitter and no go" in the last panel is from Mike Baron's Badger no. 1.
There are 35 strips in the series, plus a few appearances in political strips from TransSisters and TNT News magazines in the early 90s. So we have about 7 weeks until the basic strip is completely posted. I'll save the editorial strips for the book, and I have an undrawn script somewhere that was intended as a collaboration with Katherine Collins (creator of Neil the Horse) before she fell off the radar. So there will be some bonus material in the book. More on that later. I have this habit of planning a lot and doing a fraction of it. I know, I'm the only creative person to have that problem...
Next week: the street fight.

RIP Ray Bradbury: a comic book memory

As most of you have heard, we lost Ray Bradbury yesterday. He was 91. It's a good run.

Anyone versed in science fiction, fantasy and horror knows his work. Many of us (like me) begin with it.
I found a copy of R is for Rocket in my grade school library. Coupled with the short story The Man in a Boy's Life SF anthology I got somewhere, I developed a fascination with his sensitivity and use of language, even if I didn't fully understand it at age 8.
But as I did with Lord of the Rings and The Stars My Destination, I kept coming back to the work(s), finding new treats and possibilities every time.
My favorite works of his remain unchanged over the last ten years or so: his screenplay for John Huston's Moby Dick, the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, and some of his SF poetry.

THEY HAVE NOT SEEN THE STARS

They have not seen the stars,
Not one, not one
Of all the creatures on this world
In all the ages since the sands
First touched the wind,
Not one, not one,
No beast of all the beasts has stood
On meadowland or plain or hill
And known the thrill of looking at those fires.
Our soul admires what they,
Oh, they, have never known.
Five billion years have flown
In turnings of the spheres,
But not once in all those years
Has lion, dog, or bird that sweeps the air
Looked there, oh, look. Looked there.
Ah, God, the stars. Oh, look, there!

It is as if all time had never been,
Nor Universe or Sun or Moon
Or simple morning light.
Those beasts, their tragedy was mute and blind,
And so remains. Our sight?
Yes, ours? to know now what we are.

But think of it, then choose. Now, which?
Born to raw Earth, inhabiting a scene,
And all of it no sooner viewed, erased,
As if these miracles had never been?
Vast circlings of sounding fire and frost,
And all when focused, what? as quickly lost?

Or us, in fragile flesh, with God's new eyes
That lift and comprehend and search the skies?
We watch the seasons drifting in the lunar tide
And know the years, remembering what's died. 
 But what I'd really like to talk about is his work in comics.
This is not intended to be exhaustive. It's a retrospective of my experience of the man's work.

The story of his bemused chiding of EC publisher Max Gaines and editor Al Feldstein is pretty common knowledge. My first exposure to these stories, given the lack of reprints in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was in the form of a couple Ballantine paperback collections of the EC stories, Tomorrow Midnight and The Autumn People. Both had Frazetta covers. 
In 1978,  when Russ Cochran's EC Reprint series of slip-cased hardcover editions began to come out, I had a subscription. In devouring the supporting material, I learned of the infamous letter to EC, politely chiding them for neglecting to pay his royalties on a story of his that they'd actually lifted!
The upshot, of course, was that he agreed to further adaptations. One of these, The Flying Man, contains eloquent art by one of my personal favorites, Bernard Krigstein.
I'm sure I read other Bradbury adaptations in comics over the years, but the next one that triggers in my memory is a poem on Viking Lander I that was included in Mike Frederich's "ground level" comic experiment, Star Reach, issue 6. The idea behind the "ground level" movement was that comics could take the energy and freedom of the undergrounds and temper it with more, ahem, lucid storytelling of overground, or mainstream comics. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. The issue containing the Bradbury poem was particularly strong overall, incorporating a delightfully aggressive and melancholy Elric story by old Madison acquaintance Steven Grant and illustrator Bob Gould. The Bradbury poem in that issue was framed by an Alex Nino illustration, enhancing my burgeoning fascination with Fillipino comic artists.
Bradbury slipped in and out of my radar over the ensuing years. I was fascinated by the film adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes, despite the depiction of  rolling hills in Illinois!

The next comic book work involving Bradbury that I remember reading was the 1985 adaptation of Frost and Fire, part of a series of ambitious graphic novel SF adaptations of classic SF(and some noteworthy newer works, like Arthur Byron Cover's Space Clusters, again illustrated by Alex Nino!). Frost and Fire was illustrated by veteran inker Klaus Janson, most celebrated at the time for his  work with Frank Miller on Miller's initial Daredevil run. It's a successful collaboration, seamless in most places. The Bill Sienkiewicz cover art is well suited to the tone of the story.
Following that, there were the Topps adaptations of Bradbury's work. Topps was a short-lived but ambitious 1990s comic book publisher, an extension of  the Topps bubblegum card company. As you might expect from that, most of their line consisted of licensed properties, including The Lone Ranger, The X-Files and Xena. I recall two series, Ray Bradbury Comics (collected as multiple volumes of The Ray Bradbury Chronicles), a serialized version of The Martian Chronicles, and a one-shot of The Illustrated Man. As an anthology, the latter was uneven but usually worthwhile. I recall a particularly sensitive collaboration with P. Craig Russell on the story The Visitor. I've gushed over Russell's work in the past. Suffice to say that despite some printing issues, the work is worth searching out.
Those are my memories of Ray Bradbury's work in comics. I know it's far from a comprehensive list of comic book work , if such a thing exists.
 And it's not intended to be complete.There must be a Bradbury comic book bibliography, but I've not found one. I note with some sadness that there's no Bradbury entry at Lambiek, a site I've come to regard as a source of record on comic matters.
I did have one last comic book related Bradbury encounter. My colleague Dana Andrews and I were haunting the dealer's floor, down by Artist's Alley at SDCC a few years ago.  We heard a loud shout behind us- "Make way, make way! Make way for Ray Bradbury!" His honor guard forming a snowplow wedge, Ray Bradbury was wheeled by us, generating spontaneous applause as he passed. I gave him a smile, which I remember him returning. No way of knowing if that smile came from his head or my wishful thinking, but he did have a reputation as having a bit of an eye for the ladies.
Sad to think there will never be another Ray Bradbury story, barring printings of works already scheduled, if such there be. But like his peers, the other humanists of SF (Sturgeon, Simak, and Kress come to mind in this context), I think the line the fictional version of Twain uttered in an episode of ST: TNG comes to mind: "All I am is in my books."
His eloquence shows in this classic scene. Goodbye, Grand Master of Science Fiction.

And then the son saves him, and then he saves his son, and they live to the happy ending.

Original Art Sundays No. 125: Tranny Towers, Chapter 27

After midnight, so technically Sunday. Here we go.
The next chapter:

Another scan from a tearsheet. I need to rescan this from the original as well. The Moire' pattern on the title comes from Zipatone that was not properly put into the printer's file on their end- I gave them clean copy- and it reappears in the environments in panels three and five.
So many plot devices are, if not cliche', standards in queer and TS comics: bashing, being outed, suicide. I managed to include most of them in Tranny Towers, but I hope there was a freshness to them, or at least my own spin.
Cutesy notes: the business named Ruby's Slippers is a pretty obvious OZ reference, also an indirect nod to my home town of Grand Rapids, MN, from whence hails Judy Garland. The neighboring business, Pelican Parts, is just a bit of silliness.
The passenger in the threatening vehicle is inspired by a former assistant manager from my movie theater days, who screamed homophobic and transphobic insults and threats at me so loud that the Rocky Horror audience inside the theater was silenced. Of course, he had just been fired for doing a lousy job, but still...
The extreme tailfins on the car are obviously 1950s inspired.
Overall, I think this was a pretty successful page.
Next: Chapter 28.

Original Art Sundays No. 124: Tranny Towers, Ch. 26

Once more into the breach with the next chapter!

Another tearsheet scan. This one definitely needs to be rescanned from the original art. There are dropouts in the bar in the bottom left panel, and the big text in the center tier is actually 50% gray outlined in black.
Plot notes: this is the point where the Agnes Nixon axiom comes into play. The strip is fundamentally a soap opera, and Nixon, who created some of the best (including the sorely missed Ryan's Hope), once noted that soap opera plotting consists  of people doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
There's also some wish fulfillment here. This is how part of me wishes I would have behaved in a similar situation. Though it accomplishes nothing, telling off someone who's humiliated you in that singular way (not having the courage to let you know what's going on and making you find out the hard way) does have a bitter satisfaction, however Pyrrhic and short-lived the victory.
Simply put, it's one of those times when you REALLY want to tell someone off, though you know it will do no good at all, just for your own pride.
Swipe file notes: the title is properly credited to Howard Cruse, whose gentle wit inspires me. The masthead text is copied freehand from a book of Art Deco typefaces (a Dover book, I think). The line "dishonorable and gutless" comes from the powerful film Cutter's Way.
Next: Chapter 27, the street fight.

Original Art Sundays No. 123: Tranny Towers, p.25

Posting a tad late, technically Monday.
Got in from MNCBA exhausted, slept on the couch for five hours after getting in (!), but our table raised close to $500 for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, not counting monies raised at the art auction. Yay volunteering! Yay free speech! More about this later this week.
Right now, it's time to post the next chapter of Tranny Towers.

Again scanned from a tearsheet. Some dropouts in this one, notably the lines on the pole.
Quirky little things to notice: Rick's last name is O'Shay, a nod to the classic Western comic strip by Stan Lynde. Tigger is on drums!
This was foreshadowed by the poster on the wall in the phone conversation chapter ("Duke Ellingtoon") which set the stage, so to speak, for Rick as a jazz man.
Brings to mind Marge's lines in the early Simpsons episode: "Lisa, stay away from that jazzman!" (then speaking to Bleeding Gums Murphy) "Nothing personal, I just have  deep fear of the unknown."
Ahem.
Back to the page.
The rendering of the bar doesn't stand up to scrutiny very well, but it's a plausible environment. Had real fun drawing the jazz combo and the design-y hipster poster on the phone pole. I didn't notice till after I saw it in print that I just plain forgot to put cars on the street!
The panel break intruding on the stage between the second and third tiers on the left is a little disconcerting once you notice it, but it scans fairly well.
As regards the narrative,  the climactic moment is the instant of pure dread in a doomed relationship, where you realize that the object of your desire not only does not reciprocate your affection, but offers it to another. In Dena's case, this pain is exacerbated by her competition being cisgendered, or as we used to say, a genetic female.
As the tag line indicates, the magazine skipped a week for Christmas.
Thanks for holding out a few extra hours, and we'll be back next week with the next chapter.

Original Art Sundays no. 122: Tranny Towers, p. 24

I'm going to finish posting these all before moving on to something else. Putting Tranny Towers to bed will feel good, and it will be nice to give my faithful readers (if such there be) some continuity after a long and shoddy period of irregular output.
The strips we're getting into now come after the book submitted for the Xeric Grant, so they have not been reprinted since their original appearance. Please note that we are currently in the final grant cycle for comics!
This is scanned from a tear-sheet in Lavender magazine, known at the time as Lavender Lifestyles. I've done some light cleanup and re-sized the scan. I will rescan from the original before going to press, but this scan provides an unexpected opportunity to discuss a related issue (see below).

This page sets up what turned out to be the final two story arcs, with Dena's love life as the first story, and Trina's relationship coming next.
I like the masthead quite a bit, and there's a fair amount of story for such an introspective page.
As always, still a bit of work to do here, but it will serve until we go to press, yes?
Logistics issues: the dual-column narrative is not as effective as I hoped. I'll add a white divider down the meridian pre-press. The text needs re-lettering, particularly on the crowded central panel of column two. My font of choice for this remains Clean Cut Kid, purchased last year during the font sale at Comicraft for cheap. I like their stuff, but even on sale, it's usually a tad rich for my blood.
The other issue I alluded to above relates to the original printing of these strips.
Here's a full page scan of the original tear-sheet. I've blurred out the ads, but left the neighboring strip, The Wet Ones, which I rather liked, intact.

This is actually a  bit of an improvement from past print runs. The early strips ran at 1/4 of a printed page, roughly 8 1/2" x 11", so the strip occupied a space of roughly 2 3/4"  x 4 3/4 ". Around this time, the magazine was giving a full page to Alison Bechel's Dykes to Watch Out For. Now, I love Alison's work, always have, but come on. The other strips are crammed in like this?
Around this time I began asking for increased space. About six strips later, they increased my allotted space, but reformatted the strip without my knowledge or consent. After finally getting to talk in person with the designer, we settled on a new format that ran for the balance of the strip. That format begins about eight strips from now.
For purposes of completeness, I will show the reformatted strips along with their originals when we get to them.
Next Sunday: Tranny Towers, chapter 25.

Original Art Sundays No. 121: A Private Myth, p. 24

Finally.
I've been wrestling with this page for a month now.
Here's why. Take a look at the page rough.

Working up the rough, I was never happy with the first panel. I wanted the page to move through a lot of action very quickly, beginning with the moment to which this has been building.
I tried the slap from several angles and was happy with none. It just didn't work!
Her reaction was never quite powerful enough, there was no indication of the emotions of the aggressor. It was all too static.
But I didn't realize that.
I got hung up on getting the physical dynamics of the slap right.
I like looking to other artists and comic creators for suggestion and inspiration. It's an excuse to use my collection as a swipe file.
But there are very few slaps in comics, much to my surprise.
I looked at some 40s crime stuff, my copy of Romance Without Tears, and some superhero stuff. Lots of slugfests, even some planets being tossed about, but not slaps.
In frustration, I started re-reading Strangers in Paradise to take my mind off the problem.
And there it was.
But I still couldn't make it quite work.
That's when I  realized, as my Dad used to say, I was putting the ac-CENT on the wrong syl-LA-ble.
The crucial thing wasn't the technical accuracy of the slap, but the slap itself.
It's a big moment, and I had it crammed into a corner.
So worrying less about detail, I turned the Bristol over and drew the final.

Better. Not perfect, but better.
The energy comes through, and the poses and expressions are, if not spot on, plausible. As David Chelsea observed in his book on perspective in comic art, it gives a sense of where things are, physically and emotionally.
This was an emotionally difficult page, but since it's been almost two decades since I endured something similar, it was a tad easier this time than it was as a story element in an earlier Tranny Towers strip.
This is also the first full splash page I've used in this story. Since it's such a key moment, I think that's apropos.
My classes end Tuesday night, my final grades are due at the Records office next Monday. I have  a bit more time to work on my storytelling, though the deadline for the next volume of the Comic Encyclopedia looms large.
Long and short, new art next week.
And as I tell my students, thank you for your time and indulgence.

Original Art Sundays no. 120: oddment: photography

Well, the next page of A Private Myth is done. No time to scan today, but will be spending the day at work tomorrow and will make time then.  So next week we're good to go.
Every time this issue comes up, I wrestle with the practicality of a home scanner. It's more a space consideration than anything else.
Meanwhile, I'd like to share a photograph from The Old Days. You know, film.

This is the man I almost married (there but for the grace of the Deity and all that), standing by a stone bison near an insurance office down by the Walker Art Center. All are gone now for various reasons. I do miss the bison.
The sun washes it out, but he's wearing an Omaha the Cat Dancer button.
While I originally took this for the subject matter, I find the variety of textures compelling. The composition is a little on the nose, but it serves.
I find the wide variety of angles in this seemingly simple composition fascinating.  The textures are equally intriguing in a subtle way. Stone, glass, carved stone, varying fabrics, leather, hair, skin, branches- this thing is all about the texture.
I resisted the temptation to try to correct this image. I find more is lost than gained in that process at times, especially when working with varied textures. Not to say it can't be done, but there's something to say for letting the original speak for itself.
Again, despite having worked with some high end equipment and taught digital photography several times, I still find the nuances of film and laboratory much more satisfying than digital.  But times change, and our choices remain to adapt or to die aesthetically.
Next: the next page of A Private Myth, for real, on Sunday, May 6, the first day of the last week of class.

Original Art Sundays no. 119: The Pirate Alphabet

The next page of A Private Myth is still giving me fits, but I think I know what's wrong now.
Meanwhile, rather than keep readers waiting indefinitely, here are some images from yet another uncompleted project.
I was working on an alphabet book based on pirates, more than a decade before the Pirates of the Caribbean films (which I rather enjoy). The book used the framework of a couple young girls gleefully talking about pirates.
Here are a couple of the pieces, done in watercolor technique using colored inks and dyes.

This piece was about Privateers, the licensed pirates of the British and Spanish crowns.
The colors are a bit off, and my control of background around people and objects was a bit lacking- still hadn't mastered masking!
And the foreground figure is a bit stiff, and the color of his coat is too close to the background sky.
So it goes.

This piece, which I much prefer, is an illustration for a page devoted to women pirates, who span all nationalities. I particularly like the one in white with the blue kerchief.
I love the subdued tones, and the interplay of inks and paper texture pleases me.
I went out of my way to get the weaponry and boats right, but I suspect I made some errors despite my best efforts.
This is another one of those "I'll go back and finish it some day" projects.  Such a big pile of those!
Then again, it may have been rendered unnecessary. The market may be glutted with pirate stuff now. More's the pity, as the relative percentage of good pirate stuff to total pirate stuff is rather low. Still, I did like the last Pirates of the Caribbean film, the one loosely based on Tim Powers' novel On Stranger Tides, even if it didn't clean up the loose plot threads from the previous film in the series.
Next week: something....

One for Felix

Haven't posted for a while. But April 20 is my other birthday. 23 years ago today I had my final gender reassignment surgery.
Some well-meaning friends don't get it that I want to celebrate this day, in my own quiet way. After all, it's done now, why live in the past?
Well, in the first place, hushing it up implies lying about the past, and I think lying about who you were is the same thing as lying about who you are. Mind, I'm not going to stand in the middle of a biker bar and shout it out, nor am I going to ramble incessantly about it like a silly schoolgirl. But no more shame, not of who I was, not of who I am.
Second, the people who tell me to keep mum about my past sometimes seem more ashamed of it than I am. Paradoxically, many of them are people who've outed me to others to show off how open-minded they are to have me as a friend (sorry, but my private life is not your trophy), or people who know my business but have never had the decency to discuss it with me directly. Maybe they have their own stuff to deal with, but I try to be there for the hard stuff for my friends, and I hope for the same from them. It disappoints me when that reciprocation is missing.
If I sound a little bitter about some of that, we have a bingo, please hold your cards.
But as frustrating as all that can be, if someone else has a problem with my life, that's just what it is: their problem. It's up to them to solve it.
This day also gives me pause to remember all the things I've done in those years.
The bad comes from trusting the wrong people and not trusting myself: an abusive relationship, bad financial decisions, too hesitant to act in advancing my career.
The good comes from taking chances related to knowing I'm worth taking a chance on: randomly recording original music, published articles, a newspaper strip, self-published comics, a technical college diploma, a BFA, a Master's, and a twelve- year (so far) teaching career.
I'm still fighting to stay motivated on my own work. What creative person doesn't share that fight? But I learn from watching others who simply do the work, without conceit or complaint.
The first of these I observed during these years was a teacher who shared my original birthday, Felix Ampah.

Photo used for MTC Catalog dedicated to Felix

I first encountered this bright smile and dark voice in a Drawing and Painting course at Minneapolis Community & Technical College.  I'd had surgery less than three months prior to starting the Commercial Art program there, and was still quite unsteady on my feet, in every sense. But it would be disingenuous to say Felix made me feel at home, since he had that effect on everyone.
We began talking about comic art as he taught me basic techniques, later built on in Airbrush and Portfolio classes. Even when we were not in his classes, we sought him out for advice on art and career, and we looked to the way he conducted himself as an example of what an artist could do with his/her own life.
We didn't know how rich that life was until later.
I bragged about having seen Hendrix, and that really got Felix going. He was a huge hendrix fan, studying his guitar technique and lyrics scrupulously. When Felix talked to me about learning to play Hendrix licks on homemade guitars in Ghana, I had no idea that he was actually a Ghanan prince, and got special permission from his father to study art in the States.

Felix and his wife Sylvia

Life isn't a contest and there's enough to go around, as long as people are willing to share and trust. But I still find myself in awe of what people are willing to give up to get the lives they want, and how happy they often are with those choices.
Felix maintained his joy teaching in a place where some of the teachers seemed rather unhappy with their lots in life. In time, his successful career as a painter led him to open his own gallery, Ampah Gallery.

A Felix painting, reminiscent of Reginald Marsh

I was driving a different route home from teaching one February night when I noticed the sign for Ampah Gallery. Thinking that it might be "our Felix", as we called him, I made a mental note of stopping by during regular hours.
But I was too late. A couple weeks later, I saw his obituary in Insight, a local paper dedicated to news of the Black community.
I did stop in a couple weeks later, to look about and sign the guest book in Felix's memory in thanks for all he'd given me.
Felix's critiques bordered on Zen but were always eminently practical. Every now and then some overly regimented student would gripe about his criticisms not being specific enough, but the rest of us got it. He was giving us room to explore, and pointing in the right direction. Only the best teachers can pull that off.
He also taught adjunct at U of MN, and has had a scholarship in design named for him at MTC.
I miss him on my other birthday, Feb. 19. As I mentioned, it was his day too.
I hope this inspires me rather than intimidating. Looking at the scope of the accomplishments of others contributes greatly to a sense of inadequacy, which immobilizes creativity.
But I also remember Felix working at a dozen different projects- posters, prints, lesson plans, inventions (!), a pilot for an unproduced PBS series on airbrushing (screened in class for fun). He just kept working.
That's the challenge, and the only way to do it is to do it.
As Steve Rude once said, hey, what else you got to do with your life?

The Lone Ranger: A Brief Media History and A Caution

The new page of A Private Myth is giving me fits, and I have a massive deadline tomorrow. So art on the back burner again for the (brief) moment, but never completely off the stove, to torture the metaphor.
I'd like to chat briefly about something else.
The first images of the forthcoming Lone Ranger film are out.

I don't think a logo redesign was necessary....

This on-again, off-again project has the potential to do everything for the Lone Ranger that the other recent film did for his grand-nephew, The Green Hornet. Caught a couple minutes of that this morning by accident, and it is every bit as painful as I feared.
You all knew the Green Hornet and The Lone Ranger were related, right? The Hornet is Britt Reid and the Ranger is his grand-uncle, John Reid.
Ahem. Be that as it may.
This is what the Lone Ranger and Tonto looked like in the original comics. This page is from a bit later, but the style is largely the same, if a bit more refined.

This is what they looked like in the classic 50s and 60s TV series.

Note that Tonto is played by a Native American, one Jay Silverheels. While there are jingoistic aspects to the characterization, Tonto is written and played as smart and honorable.

This is their appearance in the 1966 cartoon.
Note that there's a consistency in costume and overall appearance of the characters. Again, Tonto is presented as secondary but equal in skill to the Lone Ranger. This is as it should be, since the Lone Ranger would not have lived or become the hero he is without the intercession of Tonto.
John Reid was left for dead by a band of raiders. He was the sole survivor, the lone ranger to live, hence the name. Reid was orphaned in the attack. Among those killed were his father and brother, also Texas Rangers.
Tonto restored Reid's physical health, trained him in fighting and survival techniques, mended his spirit and gave his new life direction beyond vengeance.
The model of orphaned masked vigilante has numerous precedents. Batman and Zorro come readily to mind.
The character of the Lone Ranger predates Batman, who is also preceded by Zorro. The chronology is as follows.
Zorro debuted in Johnston McCulley's 1919 pulp novel The Curse of Capistrano.
The Lone Ranger began in a 1933 radio show written by Fran Striker.
Batman  was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. He first appeared in Detective Comics no. 27, cover dated May 1939.

The Lone Ranger has appeared in other series and films, most notably the 1981 Legend of the Lone Ranger, starring Kilton Spilsbury and Micheal Horse. Despite some minor modifications, the film was largely successful in its treatment of the characters. Again, Tonto is played by a Native American.
This film's flaws were twofold. Spilsbury's voice was too squeaky to do the character full justice, though he did the job admirably despite that limitation. The big obstacle to this film came off screen, when TV actor Clayton Moore was enjoined from playing his old character publicly in promotional events. He had been playing the Ranger for supermarket openings and events at malls, both as a source of revenue and to keep the Ranger's ideals alive. The studio's action against him left the film with a black eye- kind of a shame, as it's a fairly good film.
The character was largely dormant for a time. Topps Comics (an offshoot of the bubblegum card company) did a fairly good Lone Ranger title in the 1990s, and the Cary Bates/ Russ Heath comic strip from 1981 -1984 remains a largely unsung watermark for the character.

The current Lone Ranger comic from Dyamite Entertainment is superb. While the original 25 issue run is slightly better than the current storyline, both boast a nice balance of character driven story and action. The original artist, Sergio Cariello, was a perfect fit for the book.

And now the forthcoming Disney film, currently scheduled for 2013.

Really?
I know it's unfair to judge an unseen film from one still and a bit of publicity, but come on.
Really?
A black suit and Johnny Depp in whiteface? I know they wanted some name recognition and Depp has long been eager for this project, but are there no Native American actors who could play the role?
This look, coupled with the news that the film is being given a supernatural bent (abandoning the studio's original "vision" of The Lone Ranger as a camp comedy) does indeed give me pause.
Just do the character justice.
He's a noble, plausible character. There's no need to make his story a joke or a magic show. Let the Lone Ranger's nobility shine through.
For a change, I'd like to see a major studio take a chance on doing a superhero right. There are plenty of good bits in some recent Marvel films, and in some of the DC stuff, but as this and The Green Hornet demonstrate, there's still a tendency to misunderstand or ridicule the concept of someone taking off on his own to right wrongs.
Consider the Lone Ranger's Code. These are not platitudes to ridicule, they are words to live by:
"I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one.
That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
That God put the firewood there but that every man must gather and light it himself.
In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.
That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
That 'This government, of the people, by the people and for the people' shall live always.
That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
That sooner or later ... somewhere ... somehow ... we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
In my Creator, my country, my fellow man."

Original Art Sundays No. 119: video: Melanie interview

I was blessed to see Melanie Safka perform live this evening.
I cannot tell you how delightful it was. Her self-deprecating humor, couple with her spiritual strength and an incredibly strong voice and her son Bo's virtuoso guitar (and bowed guitar!) playing made for a highlight of my concert going life.
I shot videos of three songs. While the lighting on them was atrocious, I will be posting them soon anyway.
After the show, I chatted with her very briefly about art and music as businesses, about Isle of Wight, and about Jimi Hendrix.
I posted my little interview to YouTube with no editing and quick titles.






Next week, a new page of A Private Myth.

Original Art Sundays No. 118: Tranny Towers, p. 23

Here we are, completing the first storyline of this work.
At last.
The summary next to the masthead should bring you up to speed, if you don't recall the previous chapter.

As noted in past posts, some of my attitudes about trans subjects have shifted since I first completed this work. However, the key to this particular strip is optimism.
The optimism I felt when I created this has taken quite a pummeling in the ensuing years, but it keeps coming back. I'm reminded of a chapter title from a book used in marriage counseling: behind every "I do" lurks a "can I"?
Well, all you have to do is say yes more often than you say no to the question. Sooner or later, most of the time, you succeed. However, it's worth remembering the words of Professor Kingsfield in The Paper Chase: it is possible to do nothing wrong and still lose.
Lately I always feel as if a new chapter is starting for me. It's more draining than it used to be, but still holds promise and gives me life.
Lots of other stories here, including the back story of Athena's suicide attempt, which will probably never be told now. The next story begins with the plaintive cry of the straight girl: "Why doesn't he call?"
I'm mostly happy with this one, though like most of these, I think I'll reletter it digitall before going to press. I think it's a clean introduction to some characters whose stories ended much too soon.
If I keep posting one per month, it will take me another year and a half to post all these. I might alter my rotation a tad, and get them up sooner.
Next, however, an oddment.