Who gets to call it Art?

Freely stolen from the Sleeveface blog!

Original Art Sundays, No. 18: The World in Love, p. 16

Just posting one page this week. Narrative flow and all that.

This is the climactic moment in the confrontation with the predator.

When I show people this page in person, I get one of two reactions.

Reaction one: OOOOOOOOOO-kay then......... ( as they slowly move away....)

Reaction two: That's pretty cool.

Which pretty much sums up my response to the story at this point. I'm not sure what it's about, but I know where it's going. Much like the Nesmith line, "though my path is planned, it's not rehearsed."

Tech specs: original done on semi-gloss backing board, coated 3-ply Bristol cut to the size of a modern comic page, in grayscale brush tip marker, using an ink rather than the icky stinky stuff that markers are often loaded with.

Let's Eat!

Oh my Deity.

This is the image many people have of comic book fans. In fairness, some of us live up (or down) to it.

As such, food is a big deal to us.

Given that comics serve quite well as an instructional medium, despite many of their advocates' preferences for narrative, it seems only reasonable that comics should delve into the realm of cookbooks.

The first recipe I was aware of in a comic was in an underground, Hungry Chuck Biscuits #1.

 

This contained a recipe for a hamburger weighing close to a pound. It says something about how much things have changed in the last 40 years that we no longer see such a burger as unusual or excessive!

The next comic book recipe that jumped to my attention was on the letters/editorial page of American Flagg! #1.

I still have this book, but don't read it often, as my perspective on its cynicism and misogyny, too seldom redeemed by its Martian porn-star "hero", has changed. But I did like its Greek muse, the genetically altered talking cat, its energy, the elements of Alfred Bester's writing that it evoked, and the aforementioned recipe for Spaghetti Alpha Carbonara!

Shortly threafter, haunting Paul's Books in Madison, WI, I ran into a cookbook by Dana Crumb, illustrated by her then-husband, Robert.

A sample recipe and illustration:

It turns out that there have been cookbooks featuring comic book and comic strip characters for decades. A Peanuts cookbook or a Blondie cookbook is a viable marketing tool, a way to reinforce the status quo (a former party girl like Blondie is content to stay home and cook), and a way to get kids into cooking, if you buy into the then-prevalent notion that only kids care about or even read comics.

It's also fun.

Even DC and Marvel got into the act.

There's a recently released Manga cookbook, that supposedly shows kids Japanese cooking techniques.

 

This begins to address what I see as the problem with cookbooks, instructional manuals and technical journals in comic form. They're too didactic. Despite reading being a solitary activity, comics lend themselves to an intimacy, a familiarity with the reader. This last entry incorporates elements of that, at least in my perspective.

Comics should not talk to their readers, they should talk with us.

That's why this is the single best comic book cookbook I've ever seen.

Sorry I don't have a better cover image. I'll update when I dig out my copy. It's with my cookbooks, not my comics!

Northwest Cartoon Cookery was published in the mid-90s by Starhead Comics, a fascinating company that also did a comic book version of WWII promotional film by the US Army, Hemp For Victory. Starhead jumped head first into the 90s fray of zine publishing, and offered some wildly adventurous books along the way, many of them more enduring than much of the zine fare.

This specific book used the old saw of having cartoonists illustrate their favorite recipes. However, on the page facing each recipe, the cartoonist who contributed the recipe offered a one-page meditation on the recipe or its place in their life, or some related matter.

I made Roberta Gregory's Albondigas Soup many times. I loved that she used ground turkey instead of hamburger to avoid the layer of orange grease that so often shows up on this soup in restaurants!

And Joe Matt's recipe for Hot Dog Soup was accompanied by a hilariously depressing treatise on how he couldn't afford insurance on a cartoonist's pay, and so would probably die of gangrene, but anyway, enjoy the soup.

Comics are best when read in solitude, but at their best they give a sense of immersion in a story or a life other than the reader's. Cooking is the most fun in a busy home kitchen full of people, so long as everybody has the sense to stay out of the chef's way.

Solitude and community meet in the comic book cookbook?

Nothing so grandiose, but I can't help wondering why, when I go to my drawing board to work on a comic, I say to myself, "Okay, let's cook."

Diana joins Trosper and Ignatz

Trosper and Ignatz have met Gentle Giant. So have I.
I was in New York and CT last weekend for the annual GORGG- the Global On-Reflection Giant Gathering.
This was the 11th one. I've been to 8, I attended the events in New York; Toronto, CA; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Portland, Oregon; Evora, Portugal; Qeubec City, Quebec, Canada; and Denver, CO. I missed the ones in Wales, London and Germany for financial reasons.
I almost missed this one for the same reason. I've had fiscal difficulties of late, and have been getting some financial help from a family member. Although I bought my plane ticket months before these problems happened, I wrestled with the ethics of going at all under those conditions. do I spend money under these conditions or waste the non-refundable plane ticket?
I had a room share, which cut my hotel bill in half, and they gave us a great group rate to begin with. and I know how to eat on the cheap, even in New York.
I decided it was more wasteful to not go than to go, so I set about finding the funds I needed.
So I got busy and sold a bunch of stuff. I figured that if I raised the money for the trip by selling my belongings, especially ones I should let go of anyway, it served multiple purposes. I freed myself of stuff I no longer needed, I was able to take the trip with a clear conscience and not waste the paid-for-ages-ago plane ticket, and I rejuvenated my spirit by spending time with people who hold a special bond with me.
The music of Gentle Giant speaks to us all, almost three decades after the band ceased to exist.
This year, in addition to the special guests we've come to prize so- GG guitarist Gary Green, keyboard player and composer Kerry Minnear, and drummer Malcolm Mortimore- we got an unexpected treat. Frontman, lead singer and band founder Derek Shulman stopped by for a couple hours.
Here I am with Derek.

The camera was uncharacteristically kind to me, and Derek was quite gracious. We managed to avoid mobbing him TOO badly!

Later that night, there was a jam session with all the great players jumping in (Derek had departed by that point).

Here's some stunning footage from that night: Jamie Krutz on violin and my dear friend Paul van de Hart on guitar, playing the GG barnstormer Mobile from the classic album Free Hand!

But the shining moment was earlier in the day, as Wendy Boulding (thanks to our hardworking host Jon Roberts for helping me with Wendy's last name!) rehearsed Memories of Old Days with my roommate Glen Bourgeois sitting in on bass, and Gary Green and Alan Benjamin on guitars! My only contribution is at the end where I tell Wendy, "Nice pipes!"





Although I did go on stage with the boys in Denver two years ago, I didn't even try this year, much as I always want to. Too many really talented players. I decided to enjoy it for what it was.
Apres' jam, I joined in a very loose guitar bash that ran till almost 5 AM.
I kept coming back to the same thought I have when I talk with comics folk or when I'm with family. These are my people.
So many things come to mind when I think about this experience. Do I really have to travel halfway across the country to share this music? To share it with these people, yes.
As Leonard Cohen says,
"I came so far for beauty,
left so much behind"
Except that what I left behind here was a sense of being beat down by life. To say things have been tough this year is like calling the Chicago fire a weenie roast. I needed this.
This renews me in a way nothing else does.
I am going to do everything in my power to improve my fiscal lot so I can attend next year's gathering in Scotland with the ribald (in every sense) John Burns and his lovely wife as hosts. It's possible that John Weathers, a dear kind man and the drummer for most of GG's work, will be able to join us again. His health is poor, but Wales is not so far as all that from Scotland.
Here I am with my partner in punning crime, John Burns:

There's an old saying that you can't have too many friends. For me that's becoming "you can't have too many families". This is one that's rare and valued.

Its great to have a family of over 100 people who all know the words to the songs!

Original Art Sundays, No. 17: The World in Love, pp. 10-15

Posting a bigger chunk again this week. Next week will be a single page.
The posting of different amounts weekly is fascinating to me. It reinforces Scott McCloud's argument in Reinventing Comics that creators using the Net have more control over pacing the narrative. Even in the context of daily or weekly strips, the pacing of the individual strip is set by the creator(s), but the frequency is set by the publisher. And if you're presenting a completed work, once it leaves your hands all you can do is hope the reader paces the work as intended. This gives a different measure of control.
Ahem.
The work at hand.

 

 

 

 

 

Things I particularly like on these pages: the open framing of p. 10 and the wolf defined by shadow, which reminds me of Argent in Matt Wagner's Grendel.  I flatter myself in this respect, as Wagner's design sense has been a standard to which I aspire since I first encountered it.

The knife scene on p. 13 brings to mind a scene from near the end of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple. This is one of may favorite films, but I was not consciously aware of the influence during the execution of the page. I wanted a quick action depicted in large rapid fire panels, going for a low-motion or freeze frame effect. I may have also had the shot of the Cornithian stabbing Morpheus in the hand, from the Gaiman Sandman story A Doll's House, tickling the back of my mind, but again, not a conscious influence.

The radar silhouette effect on panel 2 of p. 15- I love this. It says so much about this character, whoever he is (did anyone notice that not one character in this story has a name? Now THAT was deliberate!) that he doesn't see who the girls are, only seeing them as things in his way. That, and there's a serene, contemplative quality to the act of hand redering repeated patterns with slight variations.

Next week: page 16.

Original Art Sundays, No. 17: The World in Love, pp. 6-9

No time for an elaborate post today, but I did want to get the next chapter up.

 

In a bind with the Aztec

I've been exploring the possibility of having some of my comics hardbound as a step towards honing my collection.
One of the titles I've been looking at is the 1980s Eclipse book Aztec Ace. Good writing, precise and ornate art, and just a smart, fun read.
Here's the Table of Contents I've worked up for the book.

Basically happy with the work. I think the text crowds the logo just a tad, and the logo masking is iffy in a couple places. But as long as it prints clean, we're golden.

And so is Ace!

ADDENDUM, A DAY LATER:

One of the comic covers is damaged and needs replacing. It will only cost a dollar or so, but I don't have time to run around for it today, so the bind is postponed yet again. Insert growling noise of frustration here!

Original Art Sundays, No. 17: The World in Love, pp. 2-5

More pages from the 24 hour challenge!
It seems to me that the pace of the story would be hurt by slower posting, so I will be be posting multiple pages for the next several weeks. This will also give me incentive to do more work!

 

Again, no image editing, just the raw files from the scans.

It's a Ms. Tree to me....

Spent part of the afternoon with my casual buddy Terry Beatty and his son Kirby. I mean really, what else would a comic artist and comic hound name his son but Kirby?
The purose of the visit, aside from interrupting Terry's work drawing the next book in The Road to Perdition series, was to get him to sign my friend James' four (!) bound volumes of The Complete Ms. Tree in four hardbound volumes.
A quick word about binding. people are starting to get into it as a way of archiving collections, and organizing the content to your liking.  You assemble the material in the order you want it bound, send it to a book bindery that specializes in such things (and there are a few), and for a reasonable fee, you get back a book made of your comics. Some just send them in. Others remove ads, reorder stories, take books apart, order custom die stamps for the books' covers, and make dustjackets for them. It's about having books you want to read instead of comics shoved in a box because there's no other practical way to store them.
Well, Terry thought I was just bringing over some old TPBs, and he was blown away.

He was so delighted that he said James almost didn't get them back! As a fellow collector, James would appreciate the sentiment.

I hope.

But that's the thing about Terry. He's one of us.

 

He invited me to take a quick look at his studio, replete with 50s mini-bar holding his computer, all the cool Harryhausen statues and Big Little Books, all the comics we both love. It's rare these days that I have this kind of in-person time with someone else who really gets comics, especially someone around the same age, so it was too much fun.

And Kirby is a trip! Great little dude!

So much has happened in the past year. I've wondered a bit if my rekindled interest in my comic archive/library/collection/mausoleum was a way to avoid facing some of it. Lord knows this binding thing has eaten some time of late.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

My rekindled passion for comics is awakening other dormant passions and disciplines. I think it's there for me, and not me for it. To me and those like me, comics are akin to Jim Morrison's description of making music, a pure expression of joy.

It's hard for some people to understand how anyone can get that excited about a stack of comic books. I get that.

They're just not one of us.

Party on, Terry and Kirby!

Happy dog time! Picture, picture! Good boy.

Time to shake off the grief of last week's events.
Here's a double header designed to make me smile: (1)the official photos of the First Family have been done (2) by Annie Leibovitz.
This is good for three reasons.
1. It keeps a human face on an administration some are inclined to demonize.
2. It gives the nation a photo of the First Pooch! I'm a cat lover, but, come on, how adorable is this guy?

3. It gives work to Annie Leibovitz. In light of her recent troubles, she could use a break.

Saying goodbye to my Muffin

I usually don't post much really personal writing, but bear with me.
My ex's daughter, Emerald Rose Foss, was killed in a car crash on Friday, October 9. As today is my ex Linda's birthday, it strikes me that it's time to write about this.
Linda was pregnant  twice during our time together, and miscarried both times. We both took it hard, but it seemed to me at the time that she wanted to be a parent more than I did.
We were together for the better part of 7 years. Our parting was complicated, hard and painful, as partings usually are.
Linda and I remained close to varying degrees after we parted, no small feat given the conditions. When she was pregnant again some years later, I was so happy for her (at least when I wasn't preoccupied with my own completely unnecessary melodrama).
I knew Emmy Rose all her life, not as much in the later years as I could have. But early on we were the best of buddies. I started calling her Muffin when she was 3 or 4. She said, "I don't like that." I told her, "well, you can call me Muffin if you want to too." So that's how it was. She was my Muffin and I was hers. I went from changing her diapers to taking baths with her and reading her to sleep.
I got a very small taste of what it was like to be a parent. Not so much that I could say I got it all, but enough to know I might have been good at it, and that it was something that would have made my life fuller.
But misgivings are of no use, except to understand.
Emmy and Linda came to my graduation from MCAD, and I was so glad to have them there.

This is after the ceremony. That's Emmy Rose in front by the center rail (what a smile!), flanked by Kim and Jenny to the left and me to the right (in the blue dress), and Linda right behind me.

Here's Emmy asking me about my work at my Senior show, again after the ceremony. This is in 1999.
It's a shame Emmy's face isn't in this picture, but I hope my smile says it all.
Eventually Linda and Emmy moved to Grand Rapids to be nearer Linda's family. I saw them when I could, but I must confess I missed many opportunities.
I had been up North to see my family for my neice's baby shower a few weeks earlier, and thought about calling on them. But I made the fatal error of thinking, "I'll do it next time."
Two weeks later, the phone call from my sister telling me about Emmy Rose's death.
I wanted to say something profound at the funeral, something deep and worthwhile. What came out was a pile of blubbering and a few kind words for Linda and her family. I don't think anyone minded, but I was embarrassed and frustrated with myself.
I had it all worked out in the car, and none of of it came out. I know, it's not about me, but it mattered to me to say what I had to say, and I blew it.
Here's what I wanted to say.
I'm trying to make sense of this. Of course, it doesn't make any sense. Like the song says, I can't shout about spiritual labels when little ones die and big ones thrive. Why should Emmy Rose suffer?
About 8 years ago, I went to a benefit lecture/ prayer service some Tibetan monks were giving. They were trying to get their brothers and sisters out of Tibet before the Chinese killed them, which sounded like a good idea. During the lecture, one of the monks talked about the elimination of suffering.
There was a Q & A. Trying to come off like a big deal intellectual, I asked the monk if the elimination of suffering was a good idea. Isn't suffering necessary to appreciate joy?
The monk said, "Yeah, maybe. But I still don't like it."
That floored me.
The Book of Job says "man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." Aside from the poetic imagery, which I really like, that means something more. We are the sparks that fly upward.
We are sparks. We are souls with bodies. We are energy wrapped in stuff.
That's all we are.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only moved. So where did the energy go when it stopped running Emmy's body, this body that was 90% smile and 10% fire?
Where does the energy go?
My money's on up there, to rejoin the larger energy we call God.
I will miss Emmy for a long long time, and try to forgive myself for missing as much of her life as I did, while embracing the time we did have together. I know it's going to be hard for Linda for a long time, and I will make more time for her if she'll let me.
So long, Muffin. You did the good work. I'll catch you on the other side.

This is taken from the facebook memorial page for Emerald Rose Foss.

Original Art Sundays, No. 16: The World in Love, p.1

As some of you know, I attended a funeral this week. I will say more about that tomorrow- I have a specific image I want to post in relation to the event, and I need to get at the scanner at work to do so.
Meanwhile, I am tickled to present the first page of this year's 24 hour comic.

This work has been in the back of my head for years, inspired by a dream  I had when I was a child, and shaped by things I picked up along the way.  No conscious plotting during the work, beyond some fly-by-night strategy on pacing. No worrying about what it meant. Just do it!

Process: I just had a loose idea of the story when I sat to work, as will become apparent in later pages.

The art is influenced by a purchase I made that day. Wet Paint had a sale booth at the 24 hour event (but only for the first couple hours). They had these wonderful ink-based grayscale markers. I wanted to see what I could get out of using values for line. Even working in this rushed atmosphere, the work feels very fresh to me. Much of my apprehension and frustration about the work not being perfect has dissipated.

No Photoshop on this one. Unless there are glaring errors to correct, I will present these pages raw.

Original art supplement: Making amends, having a heart

I feel a need to amend yesterday's post with some newer work.
Nothing against the Day for Night dude, modeled on the Mysterious Pete character in Feininger's Kin-der-Kids, but old work is old work.
I finished this piece a couple days ago. One of the local comics stores, The Source, has this playful thing where they give each artist a blank card and ask them to illustrate it. I drew the eight of hearts. Playful idea, simple execution, and it integrates my fascination with good pinup art and my loose, flowing style.
Once I had the concept, the rest was easy.

Next time I'm at The Source, I'll add it to their deck.

I'd hate to think of the guys at The Source playing without a full deck!