MYRANT

2009-09-29T07:39:00.007-04:00

The Old Myrant Is Dead; Long Live the New Myrant!

Welcome to the archived original Myrant blog!

Though this blog was supplanted with an entirely new venue as of April of 2008, I've kept it all in reach -- with well over 800 posts, including lots of in-depth essays, articles and interviews still here to enjoy.

I'm posting this Fall 2009 update just to bring new visitors up to snuff.

I've lots of new published work out, lots of news --

First off: A reminder to all that my current (posting daily since April 2008!) website and blog, the new improved Myrant, is over here -- click this link and enjoy the view! Add the current Myrant blog and site to your daily lineup.

The new, improved Myrant features lots of material I could never post on this old Myrant venue, including artwork, sketches for sale, and lots, lots more. Go and explore!

I also have plenty of sketches and original art (published and published) for sale at all times at the ComicArtFans.com gallery (click this link).

* My latest published work is The Vermont Monster Guide -- written by my friend & New England folklorist extraordinaire Joseph A. Citro, illustrated (with over 80 new illos!) by yours truly.

Joe and I are on tour promoting The Vermont Monster Guide throughout the rest of 2009 -- here's the dedicated Vermont Monster Guide page, jam-packed with tour dates, info and links; step-by-step 'how we did it' info and artwork; photos, links and all manner of monstrous delights.

I've also posted a section dedicated to showcasing Bissette drawing demonstration videos, revealing how illustrations in the Vermont Monster Guide were inked -- another feature we couldn't ever accommodate on this original Myrant blog, now integral to the new, improved Myrant site.

Other new book projects worthy of your attention:

* The upcoming (November 2009) paperback edition of Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman (co-authored by yours truly, Hank Wagner and Christopher Golden);

* My new short story "Copper" debuts in the forthcoming anthology The New Dead (coming February 2010 from St. Martin's Press); I also did the cover art and interior color illustrations (in collaboration with Ignatz Award-winning artist Cayetano 'Cat' Garza, Jr.) in the Subterranean Press signed-and-limited hardcover limited edition of The New Dead (also coming in 2010).

* A plethora of new comics work, artwork and articles by yours truly in various Center for Cartoon Studies and Trees & Hills New England Comics collective anthologies (visit the new, improved Myrant's September 2009 posts for previews, art, info and links to buy!).

* I also have many new works being published by my good friends at Black Coat Press, with two new book series forthcoming in 2010.

If you enjoy my essays, articles and interviews here at the archived Myrant (and the new Myrant), be sure to check out my Black Coat Press book series S.R. Bissette's Blur -- currently up to five volumes (over 1200 pages!), collecting my complete writings on film, video, DVD and media. The latest volume, Blur Volume 5: Blog-O-Scope, begins the archiving in print of my finest blog essays -- this venue won't be archived forever, so pick up your set of Blur today!

Finally, I also want to bring to your attention the ever-expanding gallery of sketch art I post weekly at the new Myrant blog and site. I've been posting new sketches (most of them for sale!) at the new Myrant since January 2009, and it's grown into a mighty impressive gallery and sketchstore -- click this link and check it out.

In the meantime, also feel free to explore this archived Myrant blog.

It's still quite a record of my first extensive online experiment in writing and creating a (mostly) daily journal -- Enjoy.

2008-04-11T20:12:00.003-04:00

New Bissette Website and Blog -- and New Bissette Book in Bookstores November 2008!

Greetings, all --

My blog has moved for good to my new website.

Click on this link to access my latest posts, art and blather on comics, books, movies and whatever's on my mind at the time...

...and keep your eyes out for the November, 2008 release of my latest book project, Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, co-written with Hank Wagner and Chris Golden, coming from St. Martin's Press.

Also coming later this year: The equivalent of another book -- my fully illustrated 50,000 word essay "Teen Angels: Bratpack & Britney, Boy Commandos & Bad Girls: A Meditation on All Things Bratpack", available only in the hardcover limited edition of Bratpack by Rick Veitch, forthcoming from King Hell Press!

Now, get on over to my new blog and website, and see you there!

2008-03-23T11:33:00.003-04:00

Hey, all --

Cat has made the major change! The new blog (and site) is up and running!

From NOW ON, change your bookmark to:

this link! The new website is now the home for the blog!

Cat has busted through the first major hurdle and done the initial rehaul. More to come, but use the above link from now on!

2008-03-23T10:46:00.003-04:00

HAPPY EASTER!

That's it, Happy Easter. Have a great one, one and all.

Blog & Website Revisions --

-- are underway. Cat and I are amid the spasms of change here, bear with the results and speedbumps, please! These may toss the blog and site up in the air and send 'em crashing down now and again, but it's all soon under control and will be highly improved. Big changes coming, all for the better!

More to follow later today... as time permits.

2008-03-22T06:40:00.005-04:00

Glasses Are In, Borders and Quebecor Are -- Out?

Hmmmm, this revamped blog is a mixed blessing. Bear with me, folks, we'll smooth out the bumps and red typeface in the weeks to come.

Morning, all... links and blinks:

* Center for Cartoon Studies folks made the grade at the SPLAT comics event in Manhattan this past week, and CCSers also made The New York Times fashion pages! I always knew you were cool, CCSers, but here's cultural proof. Yep, glasses are 'in' -- and being a cartoonist with glasses puts you on the cutting edge of 2008 style.

The New York Times SPLAT slideshow "Life is a Runway: Must-Have Glasses" is here, check it out --

-- and note that slide #2 is our current CCS fellow Bak, and slide #5 is CCS pioneer class alumni Caitlin Plovnick. Looking good!

* Get The Flock outta here, before the Flock eats you! The carnivorous Pleistocenian phorusrhacid Titanis walleri -- the 'terror bird' -- got a pop culture shot in the arm with its appearance in Roland Emmerich's fun 10,000 BC (best sequence in the movie, to my mind), but Bob Smith was there before Roland.

I reviewed James Robert Smith's (aka Bob Smith to his pals) recent novel The Flock on Myrant earlier this year as one of my fave books of the year,

and artist Mark Masztal glommed on to a copy and has been posting art inspired by Bob's book on his blog. Check 'em out, and here's hoping Bob and Mark can make it happen.

* The US dollar is at a historic low, the recession Washington keeps wishing away is hitting us all at the gas pump and in the grocery stores daily. It's about to nail the writing and comics community harder than it thus far has.

Bad news for book lovers and comics creators and publishers:

"Book retailer Borders Group Inc on Thursday suspended its quarterly dividend and said it may sell itself..."

Though the chain bookstores have been behaving like corporate phorusrhacids, Borders as much as any, this will be a major blow to many who work at Borders, to book lovers whose only local access to product is via a Borders, and to publishers, authors and creators who will lose vast income in those unsold books.

These kinds of losses devastate the creative community, and the comics community is already facing a crisis from the other end of the food chain via

the troubles at Quebecor, printer of almost all of Marvel and DC's comicbooks; this from January 14, 2008 (link compliments of Rick Veitch)

when "the struggling commercial printing giant... accepted the $400 million rescue financing proposal saying it is 'in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders.'..."

Then, Rick Veitch sent me the following article as email text on January 17th of this year, saying, "...I think one of their core problems is they negotiate five year contracts with guys like DC and Marvel. Then when the dollar drops out they are screwed." And oh, has the dollar dropped out since (another gift of the Bush Presidency, dedicated to devastating the US economy for their own economic gain). Here's the January announcement:

Quebecor World fails to obtain new financing
Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:57am EST

MONTREAL, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Quebecor World Inc said on Tuesday it failed to obtain $125 million of new financing required under waivers from its banking syndicate and missed a debt payment on $400 million of notes.

The struggling commercial printer, which is working on getting bank approval for C$400 million of rescue financing from its parent, media group Quebecor Inc, and a private equity fund managed by Brookfield Asset Management, said it did not make the $19.5 million payment of interest due that was due on Tuesday on its $400 million 9.75 percent Senior Notes due 2015.

The company said the failure to obtain the $125 million of new financing or make the interest payment on the notes do not result in an immediate default on its debt.

(Reporting by Robert Melnbardis; Editing by Renato Andrade)

Now, that was written when $1 US = $1.01 Canadian; our dollar has taken a beating since then, further debilitating Quebecor's fortunes.

This past week, Quebecor was in the Canadian news again:

"The Montreal-based holding company, which was forced into creditor and bankruptcy protection after its banks rejected a rescue plan in January, warned last month that it expected to take a hit of up to $779 million resulting from the difficulties of its Quebecor World printing subsidiary."

This will have a terrible impact on the comics industry, so hang on to your hats and pay off those credit card debts ASAP, cartoonists.

* On a cheerier note,

Hey, Ma, I made it to the front page of the Brattleboro Reformer!

The photo, BTW, was clicked by my sweet, sweet wife Marjory.

Have a Super Saturday, sap-suckers --

2008-03-19T21:44:00.004-04:00

God Damn George W. Bush

Five years ago at 10:15 PM EST -- a little over ten minutes from now, five years back -- President George W. Bush got on the airwaves to announce to our nation and the world the beginning of the Iraq War.

Five years later, with just shy of 4000 US soldiers dead, over 600,000 Iraqis dead (according to John Hopkins University), countless hired mercenaries and corporate hired hands dead, countless wounded on all sides, a traumatized and ill-cared-for population of stateside vets, an over-stretched US military standing serving far longer stretches of active duty than any US military since WWI, and over 2 million war refugees -- not counting, either, the dubious numbers of 'detainees' and 'extraordinary rendition' prisoners of war who are not considered prisoners of war protected by previous US treaties or any standing international law previously recognized by prior US Presidents and administrations -- we are still at war with no end in sight.

Five years ago, I wrote on The Swamp discussion board at The Kingdom (both long defunct) that this war was wrong, and I angrily castigated those on that board who had stated their support for our going to war prior to March 19, 2003. I could not believe that anyone would want this war to happen. But many did, and many still cling to their support in the face of five years of deceit, chicanery, distortions and lies. Many heated words were exchanged then, but I didn't believe the stated reasons given by our President, Vice President or any member of his staff then. Every stated reason for then going to war has been since proven to be either a lie, a gross distortion of truth, or complete and utter fabrication. Hell, I'm just a hayseed hillbilly in Vermont, and their claims didn't hold water five years ago under what little scrutiny was possible prior to March 19, 2003. They haven't passed muster since; they've all been proven nonsensical. It was all lies.

March 19th -- another March 19th -- another day that President Bush espouses his shit without change and claims this was somehow a noble act, serving some perceived good.

God damn George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

God damn them to hell, as they've willfully damned Iraq to hell-on-Earth and damned America to unnecessary, ceaseless war.

God damn Fox News and all corporate media that supported the march to war, and have supported the lies and obfuscations and deceit of the American populace ever since. God damn Karl Rove for even conceiving Bush as a credible Presidential candidate. God damn those who rigged, tampered with or boondoggled the election process in 2000 and 2004. God damn those 18 and over who didn't vote in 2004, allowing a mere 30% of the US population to vote Bush and his hyenas back into power three years ago, thus sustaining the war effort with their inaction. And God damn me for not doing more when I could have, should have -- as if any one of us could have done anything to curb this lunacy.

2008-03-18T07:33:00.012-04:00

Compiling Taboo Tidbits
Plus: Defying Bush, Heavy Metal 2009, Grimes and Pan

A catch-up scour of the online news venues for my birth date confirmed that

House Democrats are, at last, standing up to President Bush's bullying and bullshit --

-- too late to make a difference to our collective plight, alas (or didn't you notice the Bear Stearns calamity, the first of its kinds since the Great Depression -- and what heavily-leveraged Wall Street firm is next to go?), but it's heartening to see any organized resistance from any branch of our government to the President and his cronies. It only took the House's "first secret session in a quarter-century," but still. Given the disastrous consequences of the Bush Presidency we're seeing almost daily now, one can only wonder how deep the holes we've dug ourselves into really are.

Other news: Kevin Eastman, co-directing a new animated Heavy Metal movie? Yep, you bet!

David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac, etc.) is at the helm, too, with Tim Miller producing; this from Dark Horizons scribe Garth Franklin, Variety, and thanks to Mark Masztal for bringing this to our attention. It's gotta be better than Heavy Metal 2000/F.A.K.K.2 (2000), and I was never enamored with the 1981 original, but it was what it was when it was, and that's something. We'll see if Fincher can shape something more substantial and coherent for the 21st Century HM movie... I wish 'em all luck.

Taboo 6 was the first to sell out completely; what issue will be forever gone from the SpiderBaby backstock archives next? Cover by Cru Zen.

Work on the Bissette website continues, with a shot in the arm coming from my at last purchasing a sorely-needed, brand-new computer. This will also result in a major revamp/reboot of this blog, so watch for that, too.

While awaiting the computer's arrival and set-up, I'm culling my shelves and files for Taboo tidbits of info and art I can share on my new site, and I welcome any published critical pieces or quotes about Taboo anyone might know of. It's been interesting seeing how and where, with hindsight, how comics and media scholars and historians see my humble collaborative efforts on Taboo (co-founded by John Totleben, initially sponsored and funded by Dave Sim, co-edited and co-published via SpiderBaby Grafix with my first wife Marlene O'Connor, then co-published with Tundra Publishing Ltd., concluded with Kitchen Sink Press). Those ten volumes (Taboo 1-9, Taboo Especial) indeed kicked up some dust and have a recognized legacy beyond just being the discarded cocoon for lasting works like From Hell and Lost Girls.

I recall years ago finding a fat text-only paperback book on the zine culture in a Barnes & Noble that included among its FactSheet 5 et al coverage a very complimentary writeup of Taboo in the context of the late '80s/1990s alternative zine universe; alas, the book was gone when I went back to buy it, and I've never been able to recall what the book's title was. Anyone out there have any ideas what it might have been?

In the meanwhile, I have found numerous references and complimentary writeups in various books on horror comics and genre literature that are in my home library, including non-English texts I'll be seeking translation help on. For instance, note David Kendall's kind words in Below Critical Radar: Fanzines and Alternative Comics from 1976 to Now (edited by Roger Sabin and Teal Triggs, Slab-O-Concrete, 2002? -- no copyright year listed):

Taboo 7: 'nuclear family' cover by Joe Coleman.

"...the ultimate in alternative horror comics was Taboo (founded 1988) -- independent and controversial, it proved that the genre wasn't going to slink away at the end of the twentieth century; that the ghost walk would continue. A third of its nine [sic] anthology book-sized issues were seized by Customs in the UK, Canada and New Zealand, leading to distribution problems for other issues. When comics are finally included in the cultural history of literature this form of censorship will be seen as brave publishers/artists fighting complacent outdated authority. Yet, throughout the 1990s it was simply reported as the seizure of 'obscene material,' disconnected from its artistic content. Evidently, comics are so far under the radar they're not even considered worth defending. Horror comics doubly so.... Indeed, in its long run Taboo managed to bridge the gap between pre-Code horror comics and post-Exorcist trends in the cinema..." (pp. 55-56)

There's more from David's generous assessment that I could quote, but I'll save it for the website, and welcome leads on or digital transcriptions of any other published Taboo overviews out there.

Yesterday I mentioned the planned fan site for my old Kubert School pioneer class amigo and vet Taboo contributor Rick Grimes. I should also let you know that

Taboo and Rick Grimes fan Ryan Heslin created this tasty non-profit fan site up for Pan & Robert Lelievre.

As a fellow fan of all things Danish, I quite enjoyed what I found there, and thought you might, too. I'll quote Ryan's brief, "Pan were a Danish prog/psych/blues rock band from the early 70's which featured the following musicians: Robert Lelievre (vocals, guitars), Thomas Puggaard-Müller (lead guitar), Henning Verner (piano, organ, vibes), Arne Würgler (bass, cello), Michael Puggaard-Müller (drums), and in the group's second incarnation: Jens Elbøl (bass) Torben Enghoff (sax, flute) and Nils Tuxen (steel guitar)."

Check it out, and enjoy the tunes.

2008-03-17T09:01:00.007-04:00

Trailers, Taboo, Grimes

More great trailers are up on Trailers From Hell!

Let's see, there's juicy vintage previews to John Frankenheimer's 1966 sf gem Seconds, Peter Brooks's brilliant Lord of the Flies (1963), Albert Zugsmith's definitive '50s paranoia epic Invasion USA, Don Siegel's stunning fusion of Ambrose Bierce and sexual Southern Gothic The Beguiled (1971), the body-count creative-killing subgenre wellspring Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) and the long-forgotten but still grand Spanish classic La Residencia/The House That Screamed (1970). The latter is among my personal favorites and came to mind yesterday when I finally got to see The Orphanage (2007) on the big screen, a film that carries the aesthetic of La Residencia into the 21st Century with style.

Taboo 5 cover by Jeff Jones

Taboo Backstock Waning... Don't Wait!

Here's your 2008 wake-up call that my back issue stock of Taboo is dwindling -- click on my site, and go to 'Store' for listings and current prices.

Taboo 6 (with the only published chapter in any venue of Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli's Sweeney Todd) has been out of print and sold out since late 2006, and other issues will be gone for good in 2008, so don't dawdle if you're at all interested.

Cat and I will be finally installing PayPal ordering facilities to the site by April; for now, a peek at the site for choice and pricing, an email to me via msbissette@yahoo.com and a little back-and-forth to complete your order is the procedure, but that'll be streamlined and push-button easy on the site itself soon.

This weekend, Taboo and Rick Grimes fan Ryan Heslin contacted me about Grimes's work in Taboo;

here's one of Ryan's fan sites (for musician Tymon Dogg), and he's intent upon doing the same for Rick Grimes's comics.

Will keep you posted, and overjoyed that Grimes will at last earn the long-deserved attention he and his unique comics creations deserve.

Have a manic Monday...

2008-03-12T07:48:00.004-04:00

Blink Link, Blog Blank

Window Watching: The Descendant director Philippe Spurrell.

A bit dazed by the sad news of last night (see last night's post, below), I'm still under a major workload and Marge and I are taking a brief jaunt this week, so I'll continue to post irregularly in the coming days. So, meandering a bit this morning, apologies.

With the Center for Cartoon Studies mid-semester break arriving none-to-soon next week, I'll be back on task blogging on Monday.

In the meantime, though, I've been a busy boy in ways you can enjoy today -- like, immediately:

my writeup of recent Canadian horror gem The Descendant and interview with first-time director Philippe Spurrell is here, just up online in the new issue of Offscreen.

FYI, I'll also be podcasting again with Nine Panel Nerd in the coming week -- and blogging here with more daily fidelity. The Brat Pack essay (in and of itself booklength now) is almost done, and I'll be sharing some of that with you here, too, next week.

For now, I bid you a fond adieu!

2008-03-11T23:31:00.004-04:00

Dave Stevens, 1955-2008

I just received the news that Dave Stevens, creator of The Rocketeer, passed away yesterday.

My old amigo Larry Shell emailed me the news; sobering, too, since Dave and I were born the same year. I didn't know him well, but the news is still a shock; I first met Dave back in the mid-'80s, and enjoyed a lengthy conversation comparing notes on Rondo Hatton, adventure comics and movies, and the comics industry at one of the NJ Chiller Cons in the early '90s.

Dave will be missed; Dave arguably revived adventure comics in America (at a time when Alex Toth's Bravo for Adventure was the last lonely man in a very odd and then recently defunct venue, Warren's The Rook magazine), resurrected the school of 'good girl art' with Rocketeer, and certainly reinvigorated the Betty Page phenomenon via his work. That Dave's accomplishments all grew from a back-up strip in a short-lived indy comics title (Mike Grell's Starslayer from Pacific Comics) should also be noted, as we must also regretfully note how few comics Dave actually got out there in his years on Earth: not the measure of a man or artist, mind you, just noting how much impact a relatively few pages cumulatively had.

RIP, Dave...

2008-03-11T17:17:00.014-04:00

Krenkel Kinema, GasCan Online,
Main Dane and Fallon Falls on the Blade

Emmerich channels Krenkel: 10,000 BC is OK by me!

Snuck out for two hours Sunday night to catch Roland Emmerich's prehistoric opus 10,000 BC, and I had a fine time with it. Emmerich excels at shallow but picturesque fantasy and science-fantasy; I went with no expectations (as I try to experience all media), and was delighted to find myself steeped in a panoramic Roy G. Krenkel epic.

Roy Krenkel, dreaming in paint...

I knew Roy only slightly and occasionally, but I loved the man and his work. I recall fondly sitting next to him at Creation Cons in my Kubert School years and buying up a batch of his exquisite tracing-paper/vellum pencil miniature sketches at the three conventions I sat next to him at. Roy loved ancient worlds, primal and civilized, and 10,000 BC is nothing short of a Krenkel time machine at almost every level.

From the wintery tribal tableaus to the 'head of the snake' realm of pyramids, from the saber-toothed familiar of the hero to the flightless carnivorous birds (the film's single most galvanizing action sequence) to the mighty mammoths that figure prominently in the film's first and final act, the film offers a procession of Krenkelesque setpieces, strung together by an odyssey equally evocative of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Turok Son of Stone and Apocalypto. Some might dismiss this as merely derivative of those wellsprings, but I had more fun than mere derivation would have provided.

I've always enjoyed Emmerich's films, since seeing Joey (1985) in its New World Pictures US incarnation Making Contact back in 1986 or so. Yes, even Godzilla (1998). This one is closest in tone and tenor to Stargate (1994) in my estimation, and almost as much fun. Given the context (and content) of his latest, it's necessary to note that Emmerich will never, ever be as feral or potent a filmmaker as Cornel Wilde (The Naked Prey, No Blade of Grass, Beach Red, etc.) or Mel Gibson (The Passion, Apocalypto), but he's certainly in the ranks of Don Chaffey, whose One Million Years B.C. (1967) is still the best of the genre, the Dr. Zhivago of primordial romances.

10,000 B.C. isn't as primal in intent as La Guerre du Feu/Quest for Fire (1981), tackling a far more expansive tapestry of tribal and completely imaginary cultures than Jean-Jacques Annaud's antediluvian saga (or that film's 1911 source novel by J.-H. Rosny, one of the grandfathers of this whole genre). Like all its kin (save arguably Carol and David Hughes's marvelous Missing Link, 1988), 10,000 BC is anthropologically absurd, but I didn't -- and don't -- care. In gender terms, it's the usual patriarchal hash: the two female leads are ciphers, an elder mystique and virginal bride-to-be, and the few opportunities Emmerich had to be inventive with either role remain soundly squandered. It's another boy's adventure pic, and on that level it's a gem. Emmerich plopped me into a vivid, picturesque adventure for about two hours.

I thought, and think, of Roy Krenkel, the grand old man of everything 10,000 BC revels in, and I smile.

Pizza Wizard fans unite!

Center for Cartoon Studies pioneer class alumni Sam Gaskin has kicked off his new blog, sure to be worthwhile keeping tabs on,

and reports there that Pizza Wizard #2 is nearing completion. I'm psyched and overjoyed. If you need a refresher,

this will plug you into some of Sam's headspace and comics creations.

James Kochalka has just written up Sam's Pizza Wizard for Technikart.com as a comic which "deserved wider recognition," which I'd wholeheartedly agree with. James writes, "Pizza Wizard is very much an avant garde work, without being at all stuffy or pretentious. Actually, it's entertaining and hilarious.... More than anything Pizza Wizard a vehicle for Gaskin to use as he playfully tears apart many conventions of comics... messing around with the formal elements that make up comics, stretching his wings and having fun." James adds, "a new start up publisher named Secret Acres is supposed to be releasing a book collection of his work sometime soon, under the title Fatal Faux-Pas." Now, that's news to me!

Secret Acres is already peddling some of Sam's wares, including Pizza Wizard #1 (get yours now!); I'll post news once Fatal Faux-Pas is a reality.

(BTW, here's the French website James's writeup will appear on soon -- it's not up yet, though!)

Man, I miss Sam and his work.

Here at CCS, senior Dane Martin is Sam's heir apparent (as opposed to hair, a parent) and Dane's blog is packed with Dane's one-of-a-kind art and observations. Enjoy.

Until I get my next dose of Sam, Dane's work takes me to other places I've never been, and I love it.

Fatal Faux-Pas Redux

Top U.S. military commander for the Middle East Admiral William J. Fallon resigned today "amid speculation about a rift over U.S. policy in Iran..."; Bush/Cheney toadie Defense Secretary Robert Gates accepted the resignation (it was "the right thing to do").

There goes the last reasonable man, I fear. Now, remember, President Bush refused former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation at least twice; awwww, damn it. Fallon has been described as the "lone man" opposed to President Bush's Iran policies and desire to take military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

This isn't good news, folks.

2008-03-09T10:17:00.004-04:00

The Brown Brown Grass of Home

We're arriving at the five year anniversary of the launching of the Iraq War,

and President Bush is already celebrating.

He's even singing.

I kid you not.

"As I step down from the plane
and there to meet me
is my mama and my papa,
down the lane I look
and here comes Barney,
heart of gold
and breath like honey;
Yes, you're gonna miss me,
the way you used to quiz me,
It's good to touch
the brown brown grass of home."

Reaping Free Market Fun

The 'free market' deregulation of anything in the US that anyone can possibly gouge money out of that's not nailed down has arrived at some variation on the following email arriving in many email 'in' boxes:
________

From: "service@irs.gov" Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Fiscal Activity - Tax Return
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 17:16:27 -0600
Internal Revenue Service
United States Department of the Treasury

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have
determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $129.72.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 2-6 days in order to
process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access your tax refund, please click here

Best Regards,
Tax Refund Deparment
Internal Revenue Service
© Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.
_______________

That's cut and past verbatim from my own email this AM, spelling errors intact.

Now, we just this morning -- 23 minutes ago -- finished our taxes. We're delivering it to our accountant tomorrow. But even if we had filed, we wouldn't be falling for this phishing expedition from some scumbag motherfucker parasitic suckass out there.

What I'm equally disgusted by, though, is the insidious intrusion of such scams sans any effective response. Shouldn't the IRS be on this lamprey's ass like ugly on an ape? Shouldn't there be a widely-publicized attack on this scam, with at least the option PayPal provides me for reporting immediately such a fraudulent attempt to dilly with us via falsely representing some shady entity as the IRS?

It's just another permutation of the 'free market' tolerance for such scams, from legal loan-sharking (credit card applications to youths) and fleecing (reverse mortgage scams, which is ravaging our elderly population) to pharmaceutical commercials (the new snake oil salesmen) and unregulated predatory bank and credit card interest and penalty fees.

The brown, brown grass of home...

2008-03-08T06:43:00.012-05:00

Some Bones to Pick...

Horny in Paris! Photo: Associated Press/AFP/Miguel Medina

As if it weren't a joyous enough occasion to celebrate this weekend's opening of the 21st Century's first primordial magnum opus 10,000 BC on movie screens across America on lo, this, the very week of my birthday, I must also note the news in

in Paris, where the skeleton of the 65-million-year-old Triceratops horridus is now on the auction block, the first such specimen in 11 years (remember the T. rex Sue?).

So, if anyone's looking for the appropriate gift for me, look no further. It would like mighty fine in my back yard.

Birthday girl, fellow Pisces, cartoonist extraordinaire and Center for Cartoon Studies anchor and faculty member Robyn Chapman has launched a new blog, beginning humbly here (click on this link). Check it out, stay tuned and enjoy!

And speaking of CCSers, birthdays aside just for the moment,

check out CCS pioneer class alumni Alexis Frederick-Frost's latest, now previewed on the First Second Books site.

But the best birthday gift of all will have to wait until next year, when the Bush Presidency is history. Still, mighty damage must yet be done, and rest assured he's doing it. President Bush's final year in office continues to be characterized by his ongoing attempts (and those of the hardcore Republican supporters remaining) to wriggle out of legal consequences for Bush and Cheney's extraordinary redefinitions of Presidential power, a topic being carefully kept off the table by the Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.

In terms of the ongoing maneuvers to let the phone companies off the hook for selling us all down the river post 9/11,

Stephen Colbert's 'AT&Treason' sums it up nicely.

Further tortured interpretations of US and international law also plague the shameless Presidential justifications for ignoring all standing 20th Century laws of fair treatment of prisoners and 'detainees,'

likewise in the name of national security.

Come what may on those fronts, the Bush legacy will be devastating and long-lasting, a staining beyond

the economic crater that will left behind when Bush continues to refuse to acknowledge the consequences of his disastrous Presidency: the 2007-8 Recession and likely Depression to follow.

We're already reaping the benefits of rampant deregulation and 'free market' forces the GOP has touted since octogenarian Reagan was in office, so what the hell? To quote Bush (in another context, even more foolhardily there), 'Bring it on!'

So what if your home is now worth squat, while property taxes skyrocket to staunch the regional devastation due to Bush domestic policies and tax cuts and the terminal erosion of all previous social support services and networks?

With almost 100,000 jobs cut since December 31 (and note that "450,000 people left the labor force" in the same period), gas costing three times what it cost at the pump when Bush took office, billions squandered every month on ongoing unprovoked pre-emptive war, the national deficit and debt racking up far beyond any historic record previously set, and the gap between the rich and the poor greater than its been since the Robber Barons era of a century ago, Bush is spreading the love and the wealth from sea to shining sea.

So, okay, I'll likely not even end up with this. But I can dream, can't I? Can't I?.

Yippee-ki-yi-ay, motherfuckers!

So, really, if just one of you could see your way clear to buying me that Triceratops skeleton, I reckon Marge and I just might make it through the coming Depression. Then I could really embrace extinction -- or at least climb onto those glorious skeletal shoulders and wave my hat and cry out, "Yippee-ki-yi-ay!" while my mental faculties completely disintegrate.

Barring that, I reckon I'll have to make due this year with a token gift from my old home town -- a symbolic gift, really. I'm absolutely delighted to note that Marge's and my old home town, Marlboro VT, joined neighboring Brattleboro VT this past Tuesday on Town Meeting Day

passing an article calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their horrendous abuses of power.

Now, I know it'll never happen -- I mean, after all, Bush hasn't even visited Vermont once his entire Presidency.
But that would be one hell of a birthday gift.

And on that happy note of no doubt vain but voiced rebellion, I bid you all adieu for the day.

2008-03-05T06:41:00.009-05:00

If It's Wednesday, It Must Be a Shitstorm

What is this winter weather pattern we're in? Almost every single Tuesday PM/Wednesday AM since January has brought us snow or, like today, worse -- sleet and freezing rain. A shitstorm! I love driving in the snow, but I hate driving in this crap. Nonetheless, we're going ahead with class at the Center for Cartoon Studies today; Marge is all snuzzy in bed, no school for her (200 districts in New Hampshire postponed or canceled for the day). Like most campuses, CCS's students are mostly in walking distance from the school, and however bad the roads, I can make the 15-mile drive from door to door given the time to do so (unlike previous years when I lived 90 minutes away in good weather). So, on with the show!

______

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned our many Center for Cartoon Studies guest artists, and that my old cartooning pal Howard Cruse (as in, we've been pals for years, not we're old -- just grayer and wiser) had visited CCS last month.

Well, Howard's just posted a writeup of his visit on his blog,

Loose Cruse: The Blog; "Return to White River Junction" (gee, sounds like the title to a 1950s western) is up, with pix!

The only Bananas cover I could find online this AM, from the Smurf site 'Blue Buddies'

Howard talks a bit about our history together. I've always loved his comics work, going back to Barefootz. Howard and I were indeed published by Scholastic Magazines around the same time, and at least once together, in the Bananas all-comics issue, which had a knockout color cover piece by Howard as well as stories illustrated by my fellow XQBs Rick Veitch and Tom Yeates. For Howard, this was roughly 'phase three' of his respective career, following his formative years (phase one?) and his underground comix work with Kitchen Sink Press and Denis Kitchen (Barefootz, Gay Comix, etc.). As a reader, I'd also loved seeing Howard's distinctive art and comics popping up in newsstand magazines like Fangoria (Count Fango was Howard's strip), and it was a point of pride to find one of my first pro jobs -- following my cutting-of-pro-teeth sales to Joe Kubert and Sgt. Rock and to art director John Workman at Heavy Metal magazine, both during my Kubert School years -- landing me at Scholastic at the same time Howard was doing comics for Scholastic, too.

It's on eBay for $2.99 to $74.99; it's the long lost 'monster zine' Weird Worlds!

While Howard was a regular in Bananas, I wasn't. I'm only in a couple of issues, maybe three or four. I was a regular in a different Scholastic zine, one that didn't last too long. My entry into the Scholastic freelance pool was via a one-shot horror story for Scholastic's new zine Weird Worlds. Joe Kubert brought me into his studio/office in the Baker Mansion (which has long since been the dorm for the Kubert School rather than its headquarters and main building, as it was during its first few years) and asked if I'd be willing to draw a short (three pages, if memory serves) horror story for a magazine intended for schools; I would be doing the whole art job working from a silly but fun script by Bob and Jane Stine, co-editors of the zine, and my name would not go on the job, it would be credited to The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc. Fair enough! I was still a student after all, and this was my shot at doing something different.

I was overjoyed to have the shot, and did my best on it. Part of the appeal, mind you, was drawing a horror comic for schools. During my early '60s childhood, any comics brought to school were verboten and usually confiscated, horror comics above (or beneath, in the minds of my teachers) all. So, drawing a horror story that was intended for distribution to junior high students -- sanctioned horror comics for school! -- was a hoot and a bit of karmic comeuppance I was happy to be part of.

Joe was delighted with what I did with the script, as was Scholastic. I wanted to do more. One of (many) great acts of generosity Joe extended my way was gifting me with the account with Scholastic when I graduated in the spring of 1978 from the Kubert School, and thus began my happy few years of working with Scholastic -- an account that often paid the rent and kept me working when work in comics was hard to come by.

Jovial Bob Stine aka R.L. Stine

Howard and I never met during this period, but we were both freelance cartoonists working for editor Bob Stine and art director Bob Feldgus, both among the most amiable and professional folks I ever worked for or with in my comics career. Scholastic treated me like a prince, paid well and were always a joy to work with. It seems fair to assume the same was the case for Howard; he was implied that was the case, and he did a lot of work for Scholastic, more than I. Like all good things, this passed: Weird Worlds was canceled after a few issues, and after a couple of jobs for Bananas I moved on to other things, including penciling The Saga of Swamp Thing beginning in 1983. But I always loved working with and for Bob and Bob, and I miss 'em both. I eventually collected some of my work for Scholastic for two comicbooks in the late '80s -- I'll post that info here someday, can't recall the titles now -- and did so with Scholastic's permission.

Alas, both Bananas and Weird Worlds seem to be lost in the limbo of all school zines; no comics sites acknowledge them or offer back issues for sale (none I can find, anyway), and general online searches turned up little.

Back in 1995, The New York Times ran this interview/article on Bob Stine when his Goosebumps TV series was about to debut, making mention of Bananas magazine,

but I've not found anything else online relevant.

There's a number of online sites dedicated to Stine's famous and beloved Goosebumps books series -- here's the one with the most info on Bob himself that I've turned up -- but Bananas and Weird Worlds are less than footnotes in the long shadow of Goosebumps.

As I'm able, I'll post covers, contents lists and images from my respective contributions and art to my new website, still under construction.

There's a handful of affordable back issues of Weird Worlds available today at Abebooks.com (here's the link), for those interested -- I'm in almost every issue.

One cautionary note: If you go looking on eBay, though, don't confuse the Scholastic media zine Weird Worlds with the lurid, gore-splattered Eerie Publications 1970s newsstand horror comic magazine Weird Worlds. Those are fun in their way, too, but you won't find me in there -- just my eye-tracks from reading 'em three decades+ ago.

But enough on that -- more on Howard Cruse and his comics in another post!

______

Marge and I both voted yesterday, though I'm sorry to say our town (Windsor) didn't hold it's Town Meeting yesterday (it was Monday night, which I missed, damn it; no local press in The Valley News announced it happening then, so I lost track). I've been going to my home town meetings since I was a pre-teen, and regret missing Windsor's. In any case, we voted, and the turnouts were massive.

Hilary Clinton won Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island -- to listen to/watch/read the media we (Vermont) don't matter, but:

Obama, McCain coast to victory in Vermont primary
By Wilson Ring

Associated Press Writer / March 4, 2008

MONTPELIER, Vt.—Barack Obama easily defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton to win the Vermont Democratic primary on Tuesday, tapping into a desire for change among war-weary voters for his 12th consecutive victory in primaries and caucuses.

Obama led 59 percent to 39 percent with half the state's precincts reporting.

Exit polls found that the Illinois senator cut into every part of Clinton's traditional base of supporters, including women, older voters and the working-class.

2008-03-03T06:37:00.006-05:00

Beyond the Valley of the Trailers From Hell:
Trailers From Hell Break 100; Panter Book Pending

Gotta dash -- I'm giving six graphic novel lectures in a row at Mascoma High in New Hampshire today! -- but gotta share:

Trailers from Hell, my fave online distraction/attraction, broke 100 trailers this past week! The centennial cherry was near bursting with this gem, appropriately enough:

Russ Meyer's classic 20th Century Fox extravaganza, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls!

The 100th trailer was, in fact, this gem for Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1961).

Better yet is 101:

Nicolas Roeg's immortal 1973 masterpiece Don't Look Now is today's posting,

with more jewels to follow this week: Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies (1963) on Wednesday, John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966) on Friday.

For the whole lineup of delightful previews, here's the place you wanna be.

And for you Gary Panter fans, here's the boss gorilla coming from Picture Box:

GARY PANTER

Two volumes, 688 pages, full color.

The first volume is a comprehensive monograph featuring over 1000 images of paintings, sculptures, posters, comics and drawings complemented by texts from Byron Coley, Richard Gehr, Doug Harvey, Karrie Jacobs, Mike Kelley, Richard Klein, Edwin Pouncey, and Robert Storr, as well as the longest interview to date with the artist. The second volume is a selection from Panter’s voluminous sketchbooks, where the artist’s ideas have long incubated and the site of some of his finest work. Very little of the work contained in these volumes has been published in any form. Check back for previews and more info soon.

Edited by Dan Nadel and designed by Helene Silverman.

Have a Manic Monday -- I will!

2008-03-01T09:10:00.004-05:00

You Axed For It! FM #1 For You!
Famous Monsters of Filmland #1 Limited Edition Reprint is Out Now!

I meant to post this earlier this week, in part as a followup to my Cinema 57 posts in February, in part due to the anniversary of the wintery debut of the historic Famous Monsters of Filmland #1 this past week, but Tim Lucas beat me to it.

In short,

here's the link to the Famous Monsters site order page for this limited edition reprint of a slice of horror history.

Bless him, here's Tim Lucas's Video Watchblog post, which says all I intended to say, only better. Give it a read.

Then, if you can swing the $40, give FM #1 a read. My copy's on the way.

(More Saturday posts to follow as the day wears on...)

2008-03-01T08:09:00.002-05:00

Coins of the Realm

Three inches of snow thus far, and still falling. Another winter storm.

A proper post later today, but now, my stepson Mike is just pulling into the driveway and we've got work to do in the basement (the library/writing office to be); so, until the post proper, let's

ring in the pre-election change while it's still relevant.

Stay on your feet today --

2008-02-29T06:10:00.004-05:00

I Need a Brain Washing

This morning, my brain decided to slither out me ear and go on a pre-dawn jaunt.

At least, I think that's what happened. I can't be sure. I'm just sort of working this all out, typing out loud, so to speak.

It slipped and slopped about the bedroom, leaving a glistening goo trail from my pillow across the bed clothes and down onto the floor, across the rug, and up onto my dresser. It seemed to malinger a while around the humidifier, judging by the thickness of the slug-like ooze thereabouts, then -- perhaps harangued by one of our cats -- into the bathroom. Lizzie, most likely, since she's the hunter of the pair. Tuco probably just watched, while Lizzie did all the hard work.

It looks like my brain tried to pushed the door shut, though we didn't hear a thing. Well, I mean, Marge didn't. I couldn't have, really, with my brain out and about on its own, now, could I? I reckon not.

So, anyhoot, it looks from all the scuffle evidence I've stumbled about finding with the dawn light, that either my brain made a mad -- well, as mad a dash as a brain-and-spinal-column-caterpiller-move can be a 'mad dash' -- to the other downstairs bathroom, and ended up in the catbox. Brains being such sticky things, it appears clumps of litter clung to me brain as it thrashed about, no doubt worried by the cat or cats, since the curtains are also spattered with goo and what appears to be a blue-tinged sampling of blood, and are down on the floor, splayed around the toilet and catbox.

It then looks like my cat-litter-gunked-up brain made its way rather clumsily to the kitchen, where the basket was overturned and the first open box of Girl Scout Cookies (mint) have been raided. I know that was what my brain thought it was doing, 'cause I know my brain and Girl Scout Cookies. I have no idea what my brain thought it could ingest -- I mean, sans jaws, mouth and esophagus, it just looks like it managed to sort of roll a cellophane tube of mints out of the box, mash it about and sort of grind some of the mint crumbs in with the gobbets of kitty litter, lint and dustbunnies already stuck to it, but I reckon it derived some sensation or satisfaction from the exercise. I do feel a bit minty-fresh between my sinuses, and am craving a mint cookie just now.

It also looks like my brain sat in the sink a bit, judging by the mess. Mayhaps my brain pulsed in the stainless-steel sink long enough for the cat or cats to get bored and leave it the hell alone -- I don't know.

Mind you, I can't recall any of this, really. I'm just trying to puzzle out what might have happened.

So, at some point, since I'm now awake and about, my brain must have returned to my pillow and made its way back into my skull via the ear canal. That would explain why there's clumps of mint cookie, damp dust clots, slimy strings of cat-litter infused ichor and a wet bit of cat shit and toilet paper crammed into my left ear this morning. It's really disgusting, and my head is throbbing like it was pounded with a brick. It also looks a bit like some pond-dwelling amphibian crapped on my pillow, right by my ear.

But I am also strangely euphoric and gleeful this morning, as if I'd taken my inner child for a walk or something. I await the day's offerings with excitement and as if reawakened from a long, suffocating slumber.

Lizzie just keeps staring at me, but not looking me in the eyes, sort of staring off to my left, just above my shoulder, and licking her fuzzy little lips and purring and purring and purring...

Have a Freaky Friday...

2008-02-28T07:48:00.002-05:00

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

"Even though White House computer technicians hunted high and low, an entire week's worth of e-mail from [Vice President Dick] Cheney's office was missing. The week was Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, the opening days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame."

President Nixon went down for a great deal less than this.

2008-02-27T08:00:00.010-05:00

Snow, and Comics, Old & New

10 inches of fresh snow in Windsor, VT and it's still gently coming down... a genuine Vermont/New England winter continues. But that's not what I care to share with you this morning -- it's all about comics (and animation) today!

Service Industry: The world as it is in the Bakosphere?

Center for Cartoon Studies fellow T. Edward Bak aka Bak scored in 2007 with Drawn & Quarterly's publication of Bak's graphic novel Service Industry.

Check out Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter interview with Bak, linked here.

The Last Hotel: Don't mess with Maria!

Bak's now hard at work on a new project, The Last Hotel, and he's opened the hotel for public scrutiny.

Check out

The Last Hotel: "Being for the sake of posterity an account of anecdotes, profiles, histories, artistic endeavors and engagements compiled by the staff, guests and residents of the Hotel Ticonderoga."

Here, Bak is concocting the entire Last Hotel universe, cast of characters, and metafictional ripples from the rooms, hallways, lobby and lives.

"The Hotel Ticonderoga of legend emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s when she was regarded as a premier lodging for artists, writers and activists in the city. But prior to that colorful and storied era when the famous (and infamous) called her home and she served as a cradle to the innumerable creative--and frequently incendiary--works conceived within her rooms, the Ticonderoga's legacy was already renowned...."

Check it out, and do so regularly to sample and savor Bak's current creative process via this innovative blog.

Photo: "Bak wears his sunglasses at night," October 19, 2007, by Sarah Oleksyk, at Sarah Oleksyk's Photostream.

In related CCS fellow news, our 2008-9 fellow Alec Longstreth is visiting CCS (for the umpteenth time; he's a vet) this Thursday, offering his own brand of high-octane creativity via a session with the seniors in Professional Practices class and a CCS-wide Visiting Artists chalk talk we're all looking forward to. He'll have a tough time topping Bak's January Visiting Artists presentation, but I'm sure Alec's up to the challenge. This appearance promising the smoothest transition between CCS fellows yet; we're all getting the hang of it after three years... whatever the trolls at the Comics Journal board blather.

An Insider's View of Animation in the '40s?

Maybe yes, maybe no. In any case, it's a crackling comics story!

Panel from the animation 'Crimebusters' story linked below: Script by Fleischer Brothers Studio vet Charles Biro, art by Norman Maurer, Joe Kubert's partner on many St. John comics in the early '50s and future Three Stooges management partner.

Animation and Golden Age comics devotees, take note! Thanks to CCS senior Dane Martin, there's this terrific ASIFA Hollywood link to share this AM featuring a very cool full-length comic story about animation industry intrigue and crime from the early '40s.

Savor this "Crimefighter" gem -- it's a full story! -- from Boy Comics #39, April 1942, by Charles Biro and Norman Maurer,

and enjoy!

Waddling through Wednesday, I remain your humble servant...

2008-02-26T08:47:00.005-05:00

Just a Little Off the Top...

A Morning Musical

Sweeney Todd fans: there's a face in the crowd you must hear!

Attend the Tale...

Special thanks to Larry Shell for sharing this link, and have a great Tuesday -- we've got a winter storm coming in, so I'm digging in (and no doubt out) for the duration.

"Aren't you ashamed?"

2008-02-25T06:53:00.012-05:00

Goin' South, Comin' North, The Brain That Wouldn't Die Won't Die -- Again -- and What's Up With My TCJ Sub? Again?

Oh, That Brain: Virginia Leith in her greatest role as Jan, in the pan, and Jason (credited as Herb) Evers as arrogant Dr. Bill Cortner -- what a couple. What a lab. What a movie.

Marge and I had a great trip last week to warmer American climates, visiting family during Marge's only winter break at her job. We were in Austin, Texas for a almost three days, and had a grand time with Marge's oldest son Bill (now Dovid), his wife Rivka and our two grandchildren, now 3 and 5 years old. I also caught up with my older brother; we hadn't seen each other in 22 years, and we managed to get together twice during this excursion. It was great, and we'll not let such a lapse happen again.

In my last couple of hours in Austin, I decided to check out Half-Price Books & Magazines on Lamar, and my search for a copy of Jack Jackson's last published work New Texas History Movies led me to the rare books room -- and Richard Klaw, who I hadn't spoken to or seen almost 15 years. That was a pleasant surprise, too, and a grace note from Texas in what was by far my most rewarding visit to the Lone Star state in this lifetime.

We were then off to Florida to visit my parents, now well into their 80s and still in good health. As with our time in Austin, we were blessed with great weather: lots of sunshine and moderate temperatures. By our second day in Florida, Marge relaxed -- really relaxed -- and savored the vacation time, and we had a grand time with my folks. We were able to watch the total eclipse of the moon until it was fully in Earth's shadow: then the clouds obscured the next phase, and we were off to bed.

The sweet weather held out to the end; flying home on Saturday, we missed the air travel upsets of Friday completely, and were sitting by our gate before the torrential rains hammered Tampa. Our flights went without a hitch, and unlike our Detroit airport experience going south the previous Saturday, we had ample time and an easy jaunt from gate-to-gate en route home. We arrived in Manchester NH on time and drove dry roads home Saturday night.

Ah, sweet home -- we were ready to be here, marvelous though the trip was.

__________________

I can't be the only The Comics Journal subscriber finding it increasingly difficult to assess when my subscription ends, given the new system TCJ apparently adopted a couple of years ago.

First, know I've been a steady subscriber since about 1981; I paid through the period most of my working pro peers in the industry coasted on complimentary subs, and I kept my paid sub going long after my peers gave up on TCJ, refusing to pay for subs once their comps concluded. Regardless, you'd think Fantagraphics would consider a 25+ year customer of some value, especially given the state of the industry, and at least make it easy for me to continue subscribing.

Secondly, the subcription copy envelopes themselves used to give some kind of clue: the penultimate issue in my subscription would alert me to the sub ending next issue, providing the necessary order form and pricing to promptly extend the lapsing subscription. That was a great system, giving me the needed reminder and time to re-up in time to not miss an issue.

Instead, I haven't a clue: for the second time since our move to Windsor in December 2006 -- just over a year -- I am only aware of my TCJ sub apparently ending due to a few months passing without TCJ's arrival.

Whatever the purpose or mysterious meaning of the coding now typed above my printed address on the TCJ subscription envelopes the magazine arrives in, it doesn't seem to have anything to due with the issue number ending my subscription. While doing my taxes for 2007, I note the last issue I received was TCJ #286, the November 2007 issue. I pulled it off my shelves and checked the issue and the envelope, which I'd folded and tucked into the issue as a bookmark. It only says:

193 *********************ORIGIN MIXED ADC 044 S5 P4
USPS (J&J)881 APPROVED POLY
1ST CLASS

-- and then my address. No reference to issue number or month: no 286 or 1107 (November 2007), not a clue my sub just ended.

Thankfully, my TCJ sub didn't lapse before this sweet sweet sweet Roger Langridge cover graced TCJ #284. Sigh. Fin. Fang. Foom.

Like last time, I'll call Fantagraphics today, invest a bit of money beyond the cost of subscription and the necessary time to go through the folderol of ordering the now-missed "back issues" and re-up my sub, but I'm telling ya, Fantagraphics, this is the last time.

I love TCJ, it's a great magazine and it's only improved over the past few years. You're the last standing tie to the comics industry I was once part of -- I let the rest of it go. It would be easy to let this last tie go, but I'd like to stay aboard. As a writer and a teacher, I use TCJ in my work and as a constant reference, and I've been a loyal and paying subscriber for over a quarter century. But in a rather tidy microcosm of what happened with the entire comics industry, it's become an increasingly expensive and high-maintenance process to remain a reader.

It shouldn't be this much work to subscribe. Absence of arrival shouldn't be the only clue you give me that my sub is up. I subscribe to a number of publications, from self-published fanzines to newsstand standbys, and not one of them makes it tough to keep up my sub. You only make it easier each time to forget the subscription altogether, and the more it costs in time and money to re-up and catch-up, the easier it gets to arrive at 'fuck it.'

Please, Fantagraphics, change your subscription labeling system, and restore the 'reminders' of the old system that made it so simple to just write and mail that check.

________________________

For reasons I won't go into here, thinking of Fantagraphics always makes me think of The Brain That Wouldn't Die, which brings me to today's tastiest tidbit.

One of my all-time favorite 1960s horrors is featured today

at my fave internet diversion, Trailers From Hell.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die remains an icon of its era and genre, and my ongoing work on a the definitive overview of the film and its impact got a nifty boost from this surprise Monday morning treat.

Greatest death scene in '60s cinema?: Leslie Daniels as the ill-fated, wither-armed lab ass't Kurt, who never won his Oscar despite his glorious gory demise. Wouldn't you know it, he loses his good arm.

Note, however, the usually well-informed comments of Joe Dante and his site cronies doesn't jive with my experience. The intro note to the Brain trailer says, "...numerous censor cuts for reasons of 'good taste' (as if!) have been since restored and the whole sordid farrago is now available pretty much everywhere in its full, fuzzy public domain gory, er, glory."

I was too young to see The Brain That Wouldn't Die on the big screen (I was 7 when American-International Pictures released the film), but from the moment I first saw it one Saturday afternoon on the now-long-defunct Burlington VT Channel 22 broadcast at the age of 11 or 12, Brain was uncut, its shockingly bloody final act telecast without edits.

Monster in the Closet: real-life giant Eddie Carmel immortalized in Brain's outrageous, amazing, abrupt climax. Some versions of this classic trim shots of Carmel biting a chunk out of Dr. Cortner's throat, pulling the bitten bit out of his mouth to hold it aloft and ponder the trembling shred of flesh, and (best of all) a closeup of the bloody tatter of meat hitting the lab floor -- making Brain the first American splatter movie. Take that, Herschell Gordon Lewis!

I saw the film countless times thereafter, viewed alone on late-night broadcasts and with friends on afternoon telecasts, and it was rarely cut. The original big-box Warner Bros. vhs release in the early '80s offered the most censored version I've ever seen: was this AIP's theatrical release version? So, for this diehard BTWD devotee of 40 years, the cut versions were always the exceptions, not the rule.

The Brain Will Never Die!

2008-02-24T07:00:00.004-05:00

Sunday Spametry

Hey, traveling all week with Marge and I only missed one day of posting. Not bad. We got home last night; I'll write about our travels tomorrow. A grand trip, it was.

For today, a bit of email spam poetry, by yours truly and the anonymous spammers who bless us all with their lyric verse daily -- all spellings and names included are verbatim from the spam, folks. All I discerned were the patterns, and organized them accordingly.
__________________

Tranny Campus

WorkAtHome
We need
Your help
Make 143.50 and more
per day

[Gain Up to 6+
oe
Gain up to 4+
Develop
a larger one?
Produce stronger,
rock hard
erections.]

Lands' End
No iron,
no problem:
New wrinkle-free shirts
are here!

[Darlene Coates
How to get bigger?
Lynn Hearn
Add 4 inches in lenght
Dorothy Dorsey
Produce stronger,
rock hard
erections.]

UVM Broadcast Center
ThisWeek@UVM,
Feb. 25-March 2
The Student Life!
Subscribe and you
could win an iPod

[touch]

2008-02-22T11:33:00.004-05:00

My Father's Eyes --

Brand-new pic of my son Daniel Bissette (photo compliments of Cory Bratton, posted with permission); cue the Eric Clapton song, folks.

Actually, Dan's here a-looking like Warren Oates in The Outer Limits second season episode "The Mutant" (1964). Good genes, either way. Or, uh, spawn of the not-so-good-genes of the Killers from Space (1954) aliens; a product of alien abduction after all?

Have a Frickin' Friday!

2008-02-21T18:57:00.008-05:00

Dave McKean's Prince of Stories Cover Redux

The corrected cover, again compliments of Dave McKean -- this is the final version.

Also, be sure to check this out:

My cartooning amigo (and computer guru) Cat Garza has a new interview online here, check it out!

I could tell you that I'm presently working on a new story (writing/drawing) for Cat's upcoming anthology, Secrets and Lies, but that might be secret. Or a lie.

2008-02-20T19:52:00.005-05:00

Dave McKean's Cover: Prince of Stories

Just a quickie tonight: This just in, posted here with permission of our editor at St. Martin's Press and Dave himself -- Dave McKean's glorious cover art for Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, co-authored by yours truly, Chris Golden and Hank Wagner.

Bless you, Dave!

I'm very happy, as are Chris, Hank and St. Martin's, and I hope Neil is, too.

The book is now scheduled for November, 2008 release.

2008-02-19T07:52:00.004-05:00

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things...

...well, today, anyway. For you, a few diversions to brighten your Tuesday AM. Well, except for the last one. That won't brighten anyone's Tuesday, save for bovine sadists.

Fave new blog: Rick Veitch's all-art, all-visuals blog,

which includes a 50th birthday card for amigo John Totleben (Happy Birthday, John -- yep, he made the half-century mark the rest of us passed years ago) and info and art from Heartburst, soon in stores!

Fave new paleo find that I wish I could tie into Tyrant (wrong continent): Devil Toad.

Will anyone at Marvel Comics be sharp enough to see the instant possibilities for a certain red dino hero, or are they too hung-up on making the Hulk red like N-Man?

Fave conspiracy of my lifetime, revived with what might be a few pages from a Larry Buchanan film (The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald -- go ahead, look it up!).

No wonder Buchanan switched gears to less controversial fare like Mars Needs Women and It's Alive! (1968) and remaking old AIP scripts.

Fave reminder why I don't eat beef, and how attentive our agencies are to the pending US mad cow crisis.

Not for the squeamish, folks.

Tempted on a Tuesday --

2008-02-18T07:48:00.005-05:00

Monday Morn Links, Interviews, Dreams
Bryan Talbot, Jaime Hernandez, Hydras, Martians and Oz

So, it turns out I've had time this week thus far after all to post a few posts. Still, I'll be erratic at posting the rest of the week, so let me take advantage of this early AM access while I can. Also, I wonder: how did the concert go at The Tinder Box Saturday night? Damn, wish we could have gone!

Talbot Talk

My second interview with Bryan Talbot is finally up online at the new PaneltoPanel.net, and well worth a read --

-- we're not sure why this didn't make the leap to the new site before amid PaneltoPanel's transition and recreation, but here 'tis. Bryan and I chat about The Naked Artist, his grandly entertaining 2007 book composed of 'best of' stories from fellow comics pros about the industry, the conventions, the fans and each other!

As you'll note, it's 'Part 2' of my lengthy interview with Bryan;

here's Part 1, in which Bryan's remarkable Alice in Sunderland is discussed --

-- which is a compelling, multi-level companion piece to Alan Moore's novel The Voice of Fire and other works (including portions of From Hell). Also interesting to note, now that I've revisited almost all of Neil Gaiman's works in the process of co-authoring The Prince of Stories for St. Martin's Press, how Bryan's Alice resonates with much of Neil's autobiographical and semi-autobiographical work, too, from Mr. Punch to the only published chapter of Sweeney Todd (in Taboo 7). Bryan stretches the idiom into fresh directions on almost every page; it's compulsive reading and a visual feast, required reading for any and all Alice devotees. In any case, check out Bryan's Alice in Sunderland if you haven't already, it's one of the best of 2007.

And just to round out this morning's overview of all things Talbot, here's a fresh link to my May 2, 2007 Myrant interview with Bryan about his underground UK era, illustrated with samples of his work from that period. All good reading!

PaneltoPanel Jabbers with Jaime

Jaime Hernandez fans, take note and click this link: PaneltoPanel's Jon Mathewson talks to Jaime about Love & Rockets, his influences and his work --

-- and note that Jaime has also done an exclusive bookplate for the new Love & Rockets Collection, The Education of Hopey Glass, available with Jaime's signed bookplate exclusively from PaneltoPanel.net.

What are you waiting for? Yet another reason PaneltoPanel is my fave online comics and graphic novel retailer.

Oh, wait, one more thing:

Here's one other PaneltoPanel online goodie, for your reading pleasure this AM: an excerpt from a great article on the history of Wonder Woman by Philip Crawford, librarian at the Essex High School and author of Graphic Novels 101.

I met Philip at a VT librarian's conference I spoke at in the fall of 2007, and this whets my appetite for reading more of his work.

More Bissette Dreams

Now that I've got some breathing space for a week, my brainspew/dreaming is livelier than ever. It's been vivid, intense and mucho fun -- here's a couple I awoke from with crystal clear memories of last dreams of the morning, condensed a bit so they're semi-coherent.

Marge and I are in a huge warehouse, working with a group of fellow survivors of some unspoken-of societal upheaval. Though we've kept it together and have it pretty good, manifestations of some sort of super-sized microscopic life forms are starting to erupt into our safe space. Having just exterminated one intrusion, at the cost of a few lives, we're suddenly confronted by something that looks like a tiny hydra (much like those I used to watch through my microscope, in the Duxbury pond water; translucent, multi-tentacled, like the branches at the top of a stubby tree) grown to monstrous size. I glimpse it newly-grown from a drain between two of the warehouse shelving units: it is clear like crystal, wavering its arms in the air as if tasting it for our presence. "Run!" I whisper, slamming the shoulders of the teenagers in front of me, and we bolt down the aisle alongside the shelves, and behind me the hydra tentacles are already stretching around the corner and after us. The damned thing catches Cory (black-haired kid we all like) and absorbs him; we can't do a thing, save outdistance the reach of the thing. We return armed with flame-throwers and a pouch of a chemical mixture in crystal form; with these, we succeed in sending the thing back into the drain, and topple the shelves over the opening. Marge is counseling one of the survivors of the skirmish, Cory's best friend; she calls me over, alarmed: tiny, barely visible tendrils of the hydra are wavering from the boy's nostrils, intangible but definitely there, feeding on his fear. The creatures have taken root in our imaginations, like a contagion.

Another dream:

I am at some sort of sprawling educational/shopping complex, which seems to be comprised of antique dealers shopfronts, school entryways, and a weird conglomeration of government offices and kitchens to restaurants that never open. I spot a fellow I know works at the shop I need to reach before they close today; he sees me, waves, and then runs madly to the shop, dashing through kitchens, back rooms and staff break rooms. I drop down on all fours and sort of lizard/crab walk at super-speed after him; we're both enjoying the game, but he maintains his lead ahead of me, staying just out of reach. When he arrives at his breakroom, he shuts the door and grins through the narrow vertical glass window: I can't get into the shop this way. I get back up on my feet and look around for the public entrance to the multi-dealer antique shop he works at, remembering a Wizard of Oz item I'd glimpsed last time that I wanted to pick up as a birthday gift for Donna Lucas, if the price wasn't too dear.

In searching for the entrance, I stumble into a school for 'unusual' children, nice kids ages 12 and under, their teacher an articulate fellow who seems to have Downe's Syndrome, though his speech and behavior isn't in any way compromised. His student is an 11-year-old boy with extremely course, thick hair all over his face and body, like a little werewolf. They point out the door that leads out of the school and up to an outdoors stucco stairway; at the top of the stairs is the rear entrance to the antique mall. "Hurry up, they close in ten minutes," the werewolf boy tells me. Outside, Ana Mereno [in real life, poet, comics scholar, Dartmouth professor and amazing part of CCS's support network] is huddled by the back stairs; we chat, but I begin to wonder if this is really Ana. She seems to be eager to find some comics, saying she never had any as a child. This isn't Ana -- she's read and written about comics all her life! Could this be Ana's sister? She shakes her head furtively when I ask, her eyes suddenly fearful; I don't press the point. She says she's Ana, but she clearly isn't. No problem; I'll help her find some comics in the shop.

We go in together, and find by the doorway we've just entered a huge glass-windowed dealer's cabinet that has only a few items displayed. We open it up, and I immediately find a children's album from the 1890s with some odd, strangely-colored dinosaur paintings in the back pages, but Ana hands me something cooler: a printed 1910 Wizard of Oz in the War of the Worlds, a fully-illustrated book in which the H.G. Wells martians and their war machines enter Oz. The art is wonderful -- two-color watercolor paintings and full-color lithographic art, fey and evoking an encounter between the denizens of Oz and the martians in which the Red Planet warriors are pacified by Oz. One page depicts one of the martian tripods overgrown with Oz-vines, which are blossoming. Ana has unfolded the pages in a single accordion-fold carefully draped from the display table to the floor; she is enchanted by the book, and no longer cares if we find any comics, though she only wants to look at the book, she doesn't care to own it. It's closing time, though, so I have to decide quickly if I can afford this book for Donna's birthday. In seeking a price tag, I am surprised that the book isn't in English. What language is this in? The antique shop manager who comes to us to let us know they're closing takes an interest, too, and tells us it's not any language: the book is typeset with blocks of meaningless type, slugs meant to indicate only where type will go. This is a proof of a planned book, perhaps never written or published! It's only $35, I have to pick it up for Donna. What a rarity!

Have a marvelous Monday, one and all...

2008-02-17T09:36:00.004-05:00

Ah, Our Envoy of Peace in Africa...

It's so good to wake up on a Sunday morning and know that our President is spreading the good word in Africa --

-- touting the pending renewal of his global AIDS program, while preserving the requirement that steers money into abstinence efforts.

In a country where it's believed in some quarters that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS, that's a great plan, Prez.

It'll be nice when we have a President who believes in science again.

Have a sunny Sunday.

2008-02-16T07:55:00.008-05:00

Dan and Bands at Brat's Tinderbox,
and Blasts from the Past:
The War That Time Forgot Resurrected?
Rambo Ravages and Bissette Dreams...

My, my, don't forget if you're in driving/walking distance of Brattleboro, VT that tonight's the night that my son Dan will be rocking The Tinder Box with his cronies with The MAJESTY FOREVER GLOWING MUSIC AND ART SHOW!

Here's the Tinder Box MySpace page, which will provide directions, info, and all you need to get there --

and here's my earlier Myrant writeup about the Tinder Box (scroll down a bit for text, pix and more).

So, if you're in the area tonight, rush on over to The Tinder Box on Elliott Street in downtown Brattleboro on Saturday, February 16th at 8 PM. Playing are Colin Ahern aka Flash 'C'; Jeremiah Crompton aka Jeramigo, 'Kyle Thomzo' and finally the trio of Sam Phillips, Zach Phillips and my son Daniel Bissette.

Marge and I can't make it -- we'll be away -- but if you can, by all means, go! $5 donation at the door, more if you can afford it (support the musicians, folks), all big fun for a few bucks.

_______________________

Neal Adams hasn't forgotten a single goddamned DC Comics war!

Mirage Studios amigo Mike Dooney sent me this news yesterday: "Hey, Steve-o, I've been hearing rumors that Keith Giffen was writing some kind of 'War That Time Forgot' crossover series this year....just saw this Neal Adams cover art online so I'm assuming that it's for that storyline...". Mike said more, but it's not for your eyes. But this is! (see above) Well, looks to me like it's a major crossover of every war-themed DC universe character imaginable (including Firehair, Tomahawk, Enemy Ace, etc.). Adams drew at least one story in the original Star-Spangled War Stories run of "The War That Time Forgot," and worked in some capacity on at least one Enemy Ace (inking, if memory serves, Joe Kubert's pencils), so that link alone to the original Bob Kanigher-edited-and-scripted series is sufficient to move this dino buff.

And that ain't all, folks. Consider

Roland Emmerich's latest epic 10,000 BC, which opens on my birthday, March 14th!

Yow! The War That Time Forgot and mammoth hunting cavemen on the big screen -- what more could a paleo buff ask for in the same year?

Mammoth hunters score! Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC, coming March 14th!

BTW, given the completion and delivery yesterday of The Prince of Stories, Chris Golden, Hank Wagner and my book on Neil Gaiman and his work, I can now return to completing roughs for the new Tyrant proposal in hopes of landing a home for my project with a book publisher. Wish me luck; with all this pop paleo brewing, mayhaps I can tap the zeitgeist for a Tyrant revival.

____________________

Speaking of wars -- and warriors -- that time forgot, among the many films I've seen of late I haven't had time to write up here is Rambo, which I dashed out to for a late-day matinee with some of my fellow CCSers (hey, Chuck, Denis and Alex, didn't we have fun?). I've no time this AM to write up anything proper, but I just want to let fans of rampant maniacal action pics with a dash of sentimentality to leaven the vivid carnage know that Rambo is not to be missed on the big screen.

Sylvester Stallone co-scripted, directed and stars, so this is his movie all the way. It's an amazing piece of work. Stallone milks that mug of his for all its worth. Rambo's heart is stirred at one point by a female missionary, trying to engage with the rock-hard vet to serve a greater good: Rambo reacts with a curt "Fuck the world!," then muses over the unexpected rumbles of conscience by blacksmithing metal into a nice, new machete. It's that kind of movie, folks. Now, I've no doubt Stallone is dead serious about the in-your-face-subtext (the ongoing atrocities in Burma), but the action movie template inevitably sublimates any serious aspirations under the relentless needs to feed the baser instincts. That said, Stallone, like Mel Gibson (with Apocalypto), is the heir apparent to actor-turned-director Cornel Wilde's primal throne, though Mel's got it all over Sly in crafting more potent cinematic universes. Rambo is, well, Rambo; if you can engage on its level, it's a hoot.

Of course, most folks have been put off by the film's rampant mayhem (check out this solid essay at Times Online, link compliments of Dan Archer; thanks, Dan!)

In the Times piece, Stallone is quoted as saying, “I don't think this film is horrific and bloody, because that's what war is. It's not gratuitous violence. Gratuitous violence is a guy dressed up in a fright wig with a meat cleaver, chasing teenagers around the woods for ten hours. This is war, and it's a civil war - which, as you know, is by far the most vicious of all wars.” Believe me, however earnest the political and social intent (which is genuine, and makes the outrageous spectacle aspects of this action opus all the more audacious), Rambo is a wall-to-wall bloodbath, and the CGI-enhanced mayhem is as breathlessly staged and executed as the best of Tex Avery and Sam Raimi. Whether hapless Burmese innocents or craven, hateful Burmese despots, the onscreen atrocities are eye-and-mind-blowing: humans burst like the bloodbags we are, rapid-fire 21st Century machinegun fire folds, spindles and splinters the frail meat-puppets like -- well, meat-puppets. I was helpless with laughter at the apparently sub-atomic bit of British hardware (left unexploded from a prior war) being detonated. Ah, Rambo. I had a grand time; but don't revile me. It is, after all, an exploitation movie, and they do make 'em like they used to; Stallone is still working in the grand tradition.

Exploitation movies are alive and well in America.

_________________

The Guests Bissette Forgot

With all that's been going on, I've also neglected to write about the many CCS guests we've enjoyed, including David Beronä last week and Howard Cruse this week.

David Beronä comes to CCS every year to talk about the early 20th Century graphic novels by Frans Masareel, Lynd Ward and others, and now David has a brand-new book on the subject out from Abrams, Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels.

David brought his advance copy, and it's a beaut of a book!

Here's David's homepage and site,

here's the link to the Abrams page on the book,

and this will start you getting to a copy -- don't miss this book, it's a real (and affordable) treasure.

My highest recommendation; first 'best book' of 2008!

Howard is always a treat to visit, and this is his second session with CCS -- hopefully, we'll be seeing Howard for years to come. He also delivered a stellar presentation on his personal journey as an artist, and draped every available flat surface in the classroom (except the top of my head) with original art, archival publications (including a 1960s Birmingham, Alabama Nazi newspaper, The Thunderhead), and tons of amazing eye-candy.

Howard Cruse's blog is here, and worth some time -- I'll be adding this to my permanent link list at right.

________________________

Stevie in Slumberland; Or, Rare-Bissette Fiend?

The blast from the past above arrived this week from amigo Rick Veitch: "I've scanned up a bunch of the Road Bits for Jeff Smith's self publishing blog. Here's another couple Bissette psycho-billy-classics from 1995!"

Big thanks to Rick, and have a great week, one and all -- I may or may not be able to post this week, but keep an eye out. I may only miss a day or two.

If not, see you next weekend, and have a great one.

2008-02-15T03:58:00.006-05:00

Reality Check

A friend of mine complained this week, "I don't like to read your blog. I mean, it's all monster this and comics that. Aren't you engaged with reality?" Spoken like a true Myrant non-reader. Vet Myrant readers know it just ain't so; to the annoyance of some, I regularly mix my response to hard news with the ephemeral with life. I think I do an okay job of mixing pop culture and personal musings with an ear to the rail for what's happening in the big bad beautiful world. So, anyhoot, for her sake, I offer the following on this fluffy Friday, free of any monster this or comics that.

Keep the Blind Blind, Keep the Deaf Deaf:
Bush is Shutting Down EconomicIndicators.gov

The public face the US government is putting on the current economic devastation is, as expected, pretty facile and flaccid.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress yesterday that "the central bank will act as needed to help the struggling U.S. economy, but it has to be mindful that growth should pick up later in the year," according to the report. Bernanke himself said the Fed "will be carefully evaluating incoming information bearing on the economic outlook and will act in a timely manner as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks."

That's what Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee, while what's going down under the public radar is another matter --

-- you see, the Bush Administration has announced that as of March 1st it is shutting down EconomicIndicators.gov -- winner of a Forbes “Best of the Web” awards for compiling data across government agencies and making it publicly accessible -- due to "budgetary constraints."

Check out the comments on that link, particularly 'dawurz''s ongoing list of information suppression at the behest of the Bush Administration, and special thanks to Rob Walton (Ragmop) for bringing this alarming news to our attention.

In a related economic barometer -- since insurance is draining American household income on a monthly basis, increasing exponentially while offering less and less coverage for more and more money (one of my amigos just got his family's new health insurance bill -- it's up 26% in one fell swoop, for diminished coverage), the same story year after year -- we find the increasingly suspect insurance industry under fire.

The insurance industry is now facing increasing fraud accusations and investigations; how long can this untenable situation continue to deteriorate? Check out the 'related stories' links, too, for a sobering chronology.

Hanging It Up

In the meantime, meanwhile, the standoff continues between the White House and the House of Representatives concerning extending the bill which allows our Fearful Leaders to spy on foreign phone calls and e-mails that pass through the United States. "The White House reluctantly agreed to a 15-day extension but refuses to approve any more, and has appealed to House leaders to simply approve the version approved by the Senate, which includes the legal immunity for telecom companies the president wants."

That odious immunity provision protects the lackey phone companies that helped the government in its warrantless wiretapping program conducted outside the authority of the FISA court -- retroactive immunity that the House intentionally left out, bless 'em.

Kudos to the House; the Senate rolled over like a puppy on that one, damn their collective eyes. In short, the President continues to ignore and break the laws of the land whenever it suits him and/or his policies, then go back and retroactively clean up afterwards.

The Teflon Pres wants his teflon shield retroactive (like his annual budgets that never, ever include the cost of the fucking wars we're/he's waging). Notice to the House (since the Senate remains in his pocket): "Enough is enough -- it's his final year in office, quit giving in to the Teflon Pres!"

Another 'Fuck You' to Our Troops

We can't blame this one on the Bush Administration -- note that "a bill signed by President Bush last month strengthens protections for service members and their families," but still, the reality is serving our country is destroying the family life of those who serve, and of their loved ones.

This heartbreak news item surfaced on Valentine's Day on what our volunteer army is dealing with: loss of child custody because they serve our country.

Again, the volunteer military system is in serious trouble, the erosion on all fronts taken a terrible toll on those who serve -- and the principle of an all-volunteer military.

Paying the Fed Piper

I've chosen not to blog about this up to now, even though it's very local news -- and has been since we moved to Windsor VT at the very end of December of 2006.

Ed and Elaine Brown of Plainfield, NH -- literally just across the Connecticut River from my own home -- have paid the price for their stand against the IRS, and now their property is going up for sale.

These initial auctions are sad affairs, currying the Browns's personal belongings after the very public, months-long standoff with Federal Marshalls they sustained throughout 2007. It all ended this past fall with the quiet arrest of the Browns, who are both sentenced to and serving prison time for 5 years. They still owe the federal government 2.2 million dollars: blood from stones.

How close to home was this story? As I read the news about the auctions, I recalled the Friday afternoon this past fall when our cats Tuco and Lizzie were zipping around the house, upset by a series of window-shaking explosions. It turned out we were hearing the detonation of explosives secreted around the Brown house during the standoff; the authorities were clearing the grounds. The very air shook for miles around...

Editorial aside: How do I personally feel about all this? One of my best friends in the '80s (who passed away in the mid-'90s) once took a principled anti-war stand with this wife against the IRS and government by refusing to pay taxes. He and his wife fought it until they were about to lose their home; it of course took years for them to recover, though they did, and they kept their home. He told me about that ordeal twice, once at great length, and I've never forgotten his account. Principled stands against the IRS are losing propositions, every time. The IRS has the legal clout and Federal muscle to crush any form of individual tax resistance, period. When I lived in the Wilmington/Marlboro VT area, I followed the sad tale of a couple in nearby Colrain, MA who lost their home in the '90s over similar issues (refusing to fund the Gulf War via taxes); in both cases cited in this paragraph, the stand was against war funding via taxes, a principled stand I can relate to more than the Browns and their stand: the principle of income taxes not being legal.

Look, like most of you, I had a social security number before I was conscious of it. I've been working since I was six or seven years old. I've been complying with IRS tax law since I was a working pre-teen. I've seen to it my own children had social security numbers and learned to file their taxes, and did so to their adult years. I've 'bought into' the system, if you will, but then again, I reckon I benefit daily from the roads I drive and the plows that clear the snow and every single community, state and Federal program that does service day-to-day life. It makes sense to me; I'm in, to the grave. Though I wish the taxes funding government policies and programs I loathe -- the wars, for instance -- were balanced by greater funding of the social safety nets and the arts the GOP so loathe, so be it. The pendulum will eventually swing the other way. The fictionalized version of the Reagan Presidency (among the worst of our lifetimes, bottomed out only by George W, however much the Republican base loves to lionize and rhapsodize otherwise) can only last so long, and I do believe President Bush and his cronies have done in the cycle of Republican rule for a time. In any case, I file, I pay, annually; I'm a good citizen. I don't want to lose our home, I don't care to go to jail over that.

Tuco and Lizzie have forgotten that fall Friday afternoon, but I haven't. The echoing 'booms,' the earth shaking, the shivering window panes -- the Feds prevail, as they do every time. But it was after all the Browns who set those explosive devices they detonated that afternoon. It's odd, driving through the quiet Plainfield NH township, which is one of my favorite local drives; sad to think it all went down hereabouts, know a year-long standoff happened just off Route 12A, a route Marge and I drive at least once or twice a week. Though it's indeed sad to think of the Browns losing everything and being in jail, they're still alive. The long-threatened violent showdown never came to pass. The patience and restraint of the local authorities proved wise, and the Feds followed suit. A blessing, that.

Drawing the Line: Cartoonists, Terrorists & Torture R Us

Well, now it's official: we not only do torture, President Bush insists upon his imperial right to torture --

-- while, of course, maintaining with his usual smug steadfastness that we don't torture. "The United States needs the ability to interrogate effectively, within the law, captured Al-Qaeda terrorists." Riiiiiiight.

Hitting close to home -- I am, after all, a cartoonist, too -- note that this week's big news included Tuesday's report how Danish authorities arrested three people suspected of plotting a cartoonist's assassination; the scheme was directed at 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist whose 2005 depiction of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban enraged Muslims two years ago and sparked international riots and controversy.

I read all the international news stories very, very closely, and it appears the Danes didn't utilize torture to foil this plot. Apparently, effective police action saved the day -- not torture, not military intervention, not waging war. Which brings me to

Mark Martin posting a link to the news item on his always-splendid blog, Jabberous, on February 12, saying, "This sort of thing is why I am so perplexed by Naomi Wolf, and so many of my fellow cartoonists and creatives."

But, what are you saying, Mark? I mean, exactly? You perplex me.

Intelligent Design Advocates Need Not Read Further

To the eternal question about "Which came first? The bat flying or the bat radar?," the fossil record has yielded an answer at last.

I, for one, will sleep easier tonight.

Tomorrow, dreams. The hell with reality --

Have a Freaky Friday, Flight Fans...

2008-02-14T06:15:00.010-05:00

Dan and Bands at Brat's Tinderbox,
Cinema 57 Part Three,
and Some Thoughts on
George Romero and Diary of the Dead...

My son Daniel called me from Boston earlier this week, in part to let me know about an upcoming Brattleboro, VT concert venue he'll be part of -- The MAJESTY FOREVER GLOWING MUSIC AND ART SHOW!

Here's the Tinder Box MySpace page, which will provide directions, info, and all you need to get there --

and here's my earlier Myrant writeup about the Tinder Box (scroll down a bit for text, pix and more).

So, if you're in the area this weekend, rush on over to The Tinder Box on Elliott Street in downtown Brattleboro on Saturday, February 16th at 8 PM. Playing are Colin Ahern aka Flash 'C'; Jeremiah Crompton aka Jeramigo, 'Kyle Thomzo' and finally the trio of Sam Phillips, Zach Phillips and my son Daniel Bissette.

Marge and I can't make it -- we'll be away -- but if you can, please, go! $5 donation at the door, more if you can afford it (support the musicians, folks), all big fun for a few bucks.

_______________________

Yesterday was the shits weatherwise -- a few inches of snow overnight Tuesday into Wednesday AM, light and crisp, which then turned into almost 20 hours of rain, freezing rain, sleet and slush. Marge and I had no school at either of our places of employment, so we were home. We stayed put, pretty much, too, except for shoveling/scraping/salting late afternoon so Marge could make it to her late afternoon appointment, by which time the roads weren't as hazardous.

Today, it's all glittering cement, rock-hard ice and our driveway is a steeply pitched ice rink, narrow and black-iced. I've spread salt (environmentally sound salt in 50 pound bags -- and get this, it's been dyed a light green) and the sun is already beaming, so the day's looking good.

We've already exchanged Valentine's Day gifts and had a pretty sweet evening together, once I wrapped up work on the Gaiman book. Life is good -- Happy Valentine's Day, one and all; if it's a day you'd rather not have to deal with, well, then, the hell with it. It's Thursday, is all.
__________________________

The first two images in the pages of Cinema 57 #20, the historic horror film issue, are telling: a shot from Frank Tashlin's Artists and Models (including the Bat Lady wall-size painting ostensibly credited to Bob Kane) and a Charles Addams cartoon. From the outset, the French cineaste's orientation to the horror film was more exploratory, more expansive, and far more mature than that available to the hungriest American devotee of fantasy, sf and horror. (Again, I'll humbly ask Classic Horror Film Board posters not to just cut-and-paste this info to that board; please link to this blog post, and bring some eyes here. Thanks, and hope this offers insights to the merits of this vintage magazine.)

Pierre Billard's introductory text immediately evokes Buchenwald and Hiroshima; the first article, Jean Loth's "Le Fantastique Erotique ou L'Orgasme: Qui Fait Peur" further codifies the decidedly adult orientation of this first digest dedicated solely to the genre -- for one issue, at least. Loth's essay is peppered with evocative stills, all now familiar images to devotees of the genre: the night shot of beauty and beast in a Florida lagoon from Revenge of the Creature (1955, the caption citing director Jack Arnold), 'la Belle' walking up a dark corridor lit only by hand-held wall-mounted candles in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete (1945), RKO's mockup of Kong clutching a dangling Fay Wray, both impossibly gigantized over a NYC cityscape from King Kong (1933), and Leslie Nielson embracing Ann Francis in a posed MGM shot from Forbidden Planet (1956). Not a bad four-image summary of the theme, eh?

A cropped (the right half only) of this now-iconic, then-rarely-seen artfully composed but absurdly proportioned publicity shot of King Kong appears in Cinema 57, already a mythic image of horror, power and eroticism.

It's a grand lineup. As promised, I'm listing the zine's contents today to wrap up this snapshot of a historic bit of horror movie history.

Loth's article is followed by:

* "Mephisto, Ce Martien" by Robert Benayoun, an overview of the devil in fantasy films (and more).
* "King-Kong Magicien" by Jean Boullet, which concludes with a tantalizing three-panel sequence from what appears to be one of Boullet's silhouette animations in which a Tyrannosaurus rex-like dinosaur devours the Statue of Liberty!
* "La Mise a Mort Dans le Film de Terreur" by Andre S. Labarthe, with a focus on the then-recent 3-D feature House of Wax (1954).

The giant of the snows from Georges Melies's La Conquete du Pole/Conquest of the North Pole (1912) was first seen by most American monster movie fans in 1967's An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, but Cinema 57 readers were familiar with it a decade earlier.

* A three-page, three-image piece "Les Createurs de Monstres" showing Jack Pierce applying the Frankenstein monster makeup to Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein (1939), an unidentified ("l'anonyme createur") Bud Westmore posing with six different Metaluna mutant maquettes and the mask used in This Island Earth (1957), and a perversely amusing shot from the filming of the dinosaur episode of The Animal World (1956) showing producer/director Irwin Allen behind the animation camera, pointed at the table-top set sporting a stop-motion Brontosaurus [sic] (now Apatosaurus) while a rather zonked-looking Ray Harryhausen (unidentified in the caption, but the real 'createur de monstres' on Allen's film) looks on behind Allen, looking for all the world like he was just another studio carpenter, with two other unidentified technicians in the background.
* "L'Humour Chasse les Ombres" by Armand J. Cauliez, companion piece to:
* "La Comedie Fantastique dans le Cinema Americain D'Avant-guerre" by Etienne Chaumeton, a great overview of the 1940s and early '50s comedy-fantasies like the Topper films, A Guy Named Joe, Here Comes Mister Jordan, etc.
* Ado Kyrou's "Le Merveilleux de la Realite," which I'm eager to translate and read.
* "Le Fantastique de la Realite" by Jean Thevenot, a companion article to Kyrou's.
* "Le Cinema Interplanetaire" by Remo Forlani, an analysis of sf films featuring a cool comparative shot of Kirk Alyn as Superman (from the Columbia serial) next to a Wayne Boring panel of Superman from the comicbook series and a similar panel-to-still comparison of Alex Raymond comic strip art and the Universal Flash Gordon serial (1936).
* "La Science Fiction Trahit L'avenir" by Raymond Borde, opening with a vertical still of the 'faceless' alien from Harryhausen's gem (ahem, I mean, uh, Fred Sears's) Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956).
* The most 'monster magazine' like piece in the magazine is the 24-page "Galerie des Monstres" by Pierre Philippe. This was the model for Forry and Famous Monsters of Filmland, showcasing lots of the creatures soon to lurk on the pages of Famous Monsters stateside: the Universal monsters from Frankenstein's Monster to the first mutant from Tarantula (1955), King Kong and the pteranodon (1933), Charles Laughton's Dr. Moreau from Island of Lost Souls (1935), Caligari and his shadow (1919), Charles Gamora's martian from the George Pal/Byron Haskin War of the Worlds (1954), etc.

Director Tod Browning and the cast of Freaks (1933), still shunned, unloved and essentially unknown in 1957 -- except by the editors of Cinema 57 and writer Jacques Pinturault!

* The highlight of the issue for me: Jacques Pinturault's essay on Tod Browning's Freaks (1933), written and published at a time when Freaks was still a 'lost' aberration in American (probably still road-showed by Dwain Esper or his successor under the title Nature's Mistakes) and still banned in Britain. This is the major find here, and the piece I'm most eager to translate and clear the rights to reprint -- in English, at last.
* "Catalogue du Fantastique Americain" by F. Hoda and L. Seguin, a concise 11-page capsule history of the genre in the US cinema. A curious one-page cameo piece interrupting the article spotlights Curt Siodmak's weird cheapie Bride of the Gorilla (1951).
* "Paul Leni, l'Inventeur de la Terreur," with filmography (two pages total), the first horror auteur essay.
* "Y a-t-il un Cinema Fantastique Francais?" with a four-page filmography of French fantasy/horror/sf films, accompanied by a half-page piece "Quand les Martiens Sont Japonais" citing the then-in-it-infancy Japanese sf films (remember, this was 1957!), illustrated with a shot of Gojira and Angilus/Angurus facing off in Gojira no gyakushû/Godzilla Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster (1955). With the Japanese genre a mere three or four years on at this point, one can see the editors were paying attention, no two ways about it!
* Another historic piece: Lotte H. Eisner's "Le Fantastique dans le Film Allemand," covering the silent German fantasy-horror classics.

There you have it, cover to cover coverage of Cinema 57! The Metaluna mutant adorns the back cover as well as the interior pages, the very year he appeared onscreen for the first time.

* "Helas! Le Cinema est Devenu Intelligent!" by Jean-Louis Caussou -- Melies, Ziegfeld Follies, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Tales of Hoffmann; music, dance and fantasy film.
* "Comment Peut-on Faire l'Impossible Pour Vous Satisfaire?" by Andre Martin, an expansive 10-page essay embracing current animation and the genre, including everything from Walt Disney to Karel Zeman, Ted Parmalee's UPA cartoon The Tell-Tale Heart, Robert Cannon's Gerald McBoing-Boing on the Planet Moo, and Norman McClaren's Phantasy experiments at the National Film Board of Canada; this is a terrific piece, well-illustrated article.

Two short Cinema 57 non-genre pieces follow, with a few pages of ads, but as you can see, this gem of a digest is far more ambitious and wide-ranging in its exploration of the genre than anything we'd see in the US until Castle of Frankenstein after its 10th issue, Carlos Clarens's An Illustrated History of the Horror Film (1967) and the blossoming of Photon and Cinefantastique -- and Cinema 57 is still more expansive and all-encompassing with the net it casts than anything in English until the 1970s. All in all, a historic and impressive tome!

_______________________

A number of the Center for Cartoon Studies students are eager to see George Romero's new feature, Diary of the Dead, and the Spanish film [REC] is eagerly anticipated, too. I just posted this reply to a CCS discussion board thread, since these youngsters (well, OK, they're in their twenties) are seeing it all in the context of now, as youngsters will, and this geezer felt the need to add a bit of context. I'll post my blather here intact (I don't use the format I use on Myrant typically, so bear with the capitalized film titles, please):

Since Romero is one of our great living filmmakers, and he himself calls DIARY OF THE DEAD his "running away from LAND OF THE DEAD" and his experience with Universal Studios (which he admits went much better than he feared, but still, the studio system just doesn't work for Romero), I'm eager to see it. Even Romero's least (BRUISER) are interesting films, and worth seeing.

I see where you're all coming from, but don't assume Romero's in lockstep with current fashions or fads. This whole genre -- as I note in my yammering about CLOVERFIELD at Nine Panel Nerd's podcast (link's on my blog yesterday) -- goes back to Peter Watkins and his work for BBC in the mid-60s. There's a clear lineage here, and horror movies have been part of it from Orson Welles's fake WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast in October 1938 that sent listeners screaming out of their houses believing the martians WERE coming.

There were also key underground filmmakers (Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Ed Pincus, etc.), feature films like DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (1967) and passages in Brian DePalma's early films (GREETINGS, HI MOM) that anticipate this whole current movement. DePalma's use of faked video footage was often quite funny; there's sequences in HI, MOM and GREETINGS that are still hilarious and scathing, forty years later, that absolutely anticipate this whole "new" 21st Century movement.

Though the new vein is definitely fueled by the democratization of technology via digital video media (including cell phones), the conceptual turf is at least half-a-century old; if you count home movies and amateur movies, it goes back to the 1920s and the first available 16mm cameras, boosted immeasurably by 8mm film in the 1940s-60s. But Brakhage was the first cinema diary keeper, beginning in the 1950s, and Ed Pincus formalized the genre by the 1970s -- by which point satirists like DePalma were already goofing on it.

"Shoot 'em in the head": A martial law execution of civilians in The War Game. Like Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri/The Battle of Algiers, also made in 1966, Peter Watkins's The War Game emulated newsreel techniques to make its harrowing portrait of nuclear war-ravaged Britain utterly believable.

Horror entered the fray early on: to my mind, some of Brakhage's films are genre-relevant (SIRIUS REMEMBERED, his meditation on the corpse of his dog, found in the woods near his home; THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES, a grueling but beautiful and staggering feature-length work filmed in a city morgue). Watkins was using faux-documentary techniques to recreate historical medieval warfare for CULLODEN (1965) and to make THE WAR GAME in 1966, "documenting" the nuclear bombing of the UK and the aftermath with such vivid power that BBC (which produced the film) refused to broadcast it.

"Bring Out Your Irradiated Dead!": Another stark newsreel-like image from Peter Watkins's classic The War Game (1966), a definite precursor to Night of the Living Dead and the current vein of 'you are there' digital-era horror films.

Point being, Romero is tapping a much, much richer and deeper vein than the most immediately apparent (CLOVERFIELD, [REC], MY LITTLE EYE, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE LAST BROADCAST, etc.) contemporary context.

Don't forget much of the first flesh-eating zombie movie of 'em all, Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, depended on faux-TV news broadcasts, which meshed with Romero's use of handheld cinematography and 'you are there' staging in its narrative passages to create something completely fresh in 1968. He was, at that point, building on John Frankenheimer's films (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY) incorporating news film techniques with mainstream studio filmmaking traditions -- Frankenheimer emerged from live TV drama, and in the early '60s his approach was startling and new to most viewers. Romero was taking that further, and by doing so reinventing horror cinema -- a step Frankenheimer himself had taken two years earlier with the underrated SECONDS (1966) -- so he was tapping this tree looooooooong before the current wave of filmmakers were even born.

All horror fans have heard of, and many have seen, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1981), but how about the BBC broadcast that scared a nation, Ghostwatch (shown only once -- October 31, 1992)? It's the real successor to Orson Welles's historic Halloween 1938 radio play of The War of the Worlds, and another precursor to the current wave of digital horrors.

That, for me, is the context for DIARY OF THE DEAD. I can't help it, I grew up watching these films AS THEY CAME OUT -- so I've experienced this genre as it took shape, usually seeing the films when, or close to when, they were first shown publicly. Even Watkins's horrific THE WAR GAME, which was shown by anti-nuke activist groups in the 1960s on 16mm, including a showing at my high school up in Duxbury, VT in 1970!

Off the top of my head, for anyone interested in tracing this lineage with their own home-movie festival of precursors, I'd cite Watkins's THE WAR GAME, BBC's crafty, fun GHOSTWATCH (which so terrified a gullible UK viewing audience that BBC never showed it again, so vehement was the public outcry against their 'true ghost' mockumentary broadcast), Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1981, and still a shocker, template for many that followed including BLAIR WITCH and CLOVERFIELD), and a few others.

Shameless Plug Dept.: Speaking of this whole school of 'you are there' digital horror, I did this cover art two years ago for the definitive DVD re-release of Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos's digital feature classic The Last Broadcast (1998), the film that predated (and provided the obvious template for) The Blair Witch Project (1999). My cover art was ultimately used as an inside-cover sleeve 'pinup'; a few CCS pioneer class students and I also worked up a sweet little two-color minicomic on the Jersey Devil for this DVD package, too, which is mighty cool and only available in this DVD.

You can buy your copy online from a variety of venues; check it out!

For those of you interested, here's the online trailer for Diary of the Dead,

and a Spanish trailer for [REC] -- enjoy.

__________________

OK, tomorrow is the last post of the next full week or so, more than likely, so I made this a fat one and hope to do the same tomorrow. Workload and travel require my attention be occupied elsewhere next week, so I'll likely weigh in here rarely if at all -- as promised, I'll be back to daily posts come March.

Have a great Thursday; we've got my amigo Howard Cruse coming in to speak at CCS later today, and Marge and I are looking forward with dinner with Howard tonight, so we'll be having a fine day ourselves.

You do the same...

2008-02-12T08:06:00.001-05:00

The Cloverfield Rap,

More Swamp Thing Cover Roughs

& More on the World's First (?) Monster Zine...

First, a moment of silence for the late, great Steve Gerber.

I'm sorry to hear of his passing; his comics had a great impact on this reader, and I wish the industry had treated him kinder (but I can say that about almost every comics creator, pre-1985).
______________

I've yet to make the time to complete my detailed overview of Cloverfield, which I'll eventually be posting here -- but in the meantime,

if you've the time and interest, you can listen to me blather about Cloverfield and its many precursors today -- here's the link to the Nine Panel Nerd podcast, compliments of Dave Kraus.

This the second episode of Nine Panel Nerd's overview of the film, which is fading from area theaters hereabout this week to make room for the Thursday influx of Valentine's Day fluff. Episode 11 is all me and Dave chatting about Cloverfield; as Dave ballyhoos, "In part 2 of our monster show, we sought out some help to get some perspective on the films that influenced Cloverfield. So we turned to monster expert Steve Bissette. Is the monster of Cloverfield the new Gojira (a.k.a. Godzilla) of the 21 century? Steve has a lot to say about what Cloverfield and it's creature mean and represent."

Check it out, your perfect audio coffee mate -- and enjoy.

More Swamp Thing Salad Days Cover Roughs

Also heralding from south of the border (Massachusetts, that is), Mark Masztal brought this auction to my attention, providing yet another peek at my past Swamp Thing cover process... actually, the auction misidentifies the covers these were roughs for (yep, two covers came out of these two pages of roughs, folks).

These roughs actually yielded the covers for the Alan Moore/Rick Veitch issues of Swamp Thing #55 (December 1986) and #56 (January 1987), though judging by a glance at the auction art, it looks like #56 emerged from a cover concept I might have initially proposed to editor Karen Berger for #55.

But before I get to that, the auction --

Here's the auction, if you're interested.

Good luck, if you choose to bid; there's nothing in it for me, folks.

Now, about the covers: these are two of my all-time favorites among the many covers I drew for Swamp Thing. I was feeling confident with my sense of concept, composition and moving freely from 'realistic' cover images to more abstract, design-oriented concepts that conveyed that issue's concept to the reader in symbolic terms -- and these cover roughs succinctly offer an ideal snapshot to both approaches. They also are among the few cover roughs that almost perfectly match the final covers (which I'm posting images of below), with minor tweaking of the elements for the sake of more balanced final compositions.

* The cover for ST #55 was a simple image of grieving, and one for an issue in which Alan was playing the narrative card 'is Swamp Thing really gone?' -- for the second time in his run on the series (the first was "The Nukeface Papers," Saga of the Swamp Thing #35-36, April and May, 1985, with Swamp Thing's rebirth in #37, alongside John Constantine's first full appearance, noting John Totleben and I first sneaking Sting -- soon to become John Constantine -- into the background in the final pages of #25, "Sleep of Reason"). As for #55, "Earth to Earth" was the story this issue, setting the stage for Alan and Rick's science-fiction Swamp Thing run of issues, tailor-suited to Rick's preference for sf over horror as his genre of choice. I really like the drawing for this cover -- one of the few, in my personal estimation, that works as a drawing, period -- and that's my first wife Marlene (then Nancy) O'Connor who posed for Abby, with her (Marlene's) then-long hair flowing in the breeze. She chopped it all off a few year later. Still, a good cover, I think, on all levels.

* As noted, I think the final accepted design for #56 came out of the cover roughs submitted for #55, which would have made this the easiest of all Swamp Thing cover pitches. Again, we were all playing the shell game of 'is Swamp Thing really dead?,' a game readers always recognize as a cheat -- I mean, the series would have ended, were it true, and even then, such demises are only "real" until the publisher sees a possibility of squeezing more revenue out of a defunct concept, character or title in need of revival (if only for trademark purposes).

This issue, "My Blue Heaven," was a gem, the first full-blown Moore/Veitch sf issue, a run I still think merits assessment for its unique attributes. It was also a sort-of Crisis on Infinite Earths cross-over issue, sort of, and the letters pages included Alan's own response to letters about our notorious #40, "The Curse," the female lycanthropy issue that emerged from a story suggestion by yours truly linking lycanthropy with a woman's menstrual cycles (a concept I had floated to Heavy Metal's art director John Workman years earlier -- in 1979-80 -- as part of a pitch of a fictional article on an imaginary sf writer, Curtis Slarch, that my old Kubert School classmate Rick Grimes had contributed ideas to as well; more on this later this year, here on this blog!). I really like this #56 cover, too, and it presented the most elegant use of color and basic design skills in my entire cover run.

OK, that's that, folks -- hope these Swamp Thing cover reveries are of interest to somebody out there. I never know, and if you don't say so, I'll never know....

More on the World's First Monster Magazine -- Or Is It?

Front cover of Cinema 57 #20, 'Numero Special' for July/August 1957 -- is this the world's first monster magazine? Some say 'no'!

Hooooooooooooooooooowwwwl! Part 2:

This past Saturday, February 9 (scroll down two posts), I wrote briefly about my recent purchase of a copy of Cinema 57, purported by many to be the world's first monster magazine. As a diehard collector and conniesseur of the genre and its critical writings, this long-sought after gem was a keystone in my collection, and an essential link in understanding the gradual awakening of critical writing about horror, fantasy and science fiction cinema.

Online dealer Patrick Giraud (of Versailles, France, at eBay as 'Pgmovies') is offering a copy of this mega-rare genre classic on eBay, and it's still available as of this morning -- here's the link.

My post has kicked up this discussion on the Classic Horror Film Board (thanks to Tim Lucas for bringing this to my attention), which is well worth a read, including folks like Bill Warren weighing in.

Back cover of Cinema 57 #20; its all-genre contents, from cover to cover, makes this a unique item in the evolution of genre studies in any format.

Why the interested parties don't post comments here, I'll never know. But let me use this blog to post my end of the discussion, since I started it -- and I'll ask that nobody cut and paste my comments here to the Classic Horror Film Board; please link to this blog, to bring me some new pairs of eyes, please, just as I've hopefully brought some new eyes to the board with the link provided above.

OK, first off, this is definitely a magazine -- note Tim Lucas's assertion on the discussion board that, due to its page length, this might be considered a book rather than a magazine. Nope, no such thing -- it's indeed 144 pages, plus covers, but it's digest-size, identical in format (though on much slicker paper) to most of the American sf pulp zines of that time.

The zine itself measures 7 1/8" x 5 1/4", and at 144 pages it's most definitely a magazine, not a book. I'm not sure what conceptual yardstick Tim was using when he posted that comment to the Classic Horror Film Board (and I'm not being 'snippy' here; Tim is a dear friend, I'm just clarifying the specs to reply to his point) -- I mean, the sf pulps in my collection dating from the 1920s to the 1980s are on the average 98-140 pages in length, and I have on hand here a stack of Look magazines from the 1950s-60s, and those are all 124 pages in length every single week! 144 pages for a digest-size zine was a standard format in 1957, nothing unusual in that.

Secondly, it just so happens I do have the so-called "first book" (which I believe it is) on horror films in my collection, too -- Le Fantastique au Cinema by Michel Laclos (Jean-Jacques Pauvert, editor; Societe des editions, 1958) -- which I purchased from Forrest J. Ackerman himself, at one of three conventions I attended with Tim and Donna Lucas (Tim, do you remember which show that was? It wasn't the Chillercon we were all at, it was one of the other two). Ackerman had a table (with another dealer -- Dennis Billows? I can't recall) and was selling off, according to Forry, 'doubles' and 'extras' from his collection, and having read about the Laclos book, it was one of two goodies I purchased from Forry that day. He personally told me about Cinema 57 during that conversation, a zine he had referred to elsewhere in print before that conversation; that, in any case, is what put Cinema 57 on my mental 'want list.'

I don't think I'm stating anything revelatory here, nor do I think I've mispresented anything. However, the zine is not widely known, and is still quite a rarity. A cursory glance at The Collectors Guide to Monster Magazines (by Bob Michelucci; 1977) turns up no mention, nor does a furtive pouring through the pages of its second edition The Collector's Guide to Mnster, Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Magazines (1988, Imagine Inc.) turn up a listing; Mark Sielski was seeking copies of Cinema 57 in his ad in the same book (pg. 148), but that's all I see in that tome.

It is listed in Michael W. Pierce's Monsters Among Us: Monster Magazine & Fanzine Collector's Guide 1995 (self-published, 1995; I purchased my copy from Michael personally, which he inscribed) -- on page 136 -- where Cinema 57 was priced at $300 in good condition, $400-600 in very good/fine, and $800-$1,200 in mint, making Patrick's eBay pricing incredibly fair and arguably a bargain 13 years after the price guide's publication. That listing simply notes, "This was the inspiration for Famous Monsters of Filmland."

But here's the real meat and potatoes. In the second edition of Michael's book -- Monster Magazine & Fanzine Collector's Guide #2, co-authored by John Ballentine (P&B Publishing, 2000) -- Cinema 57 has the same listing, and had only slightly increased in value (good condition copies list at $350; very fine/near mint at $1,000-1,500). Ronald V. Borst offers a more definitive statement in his introduction, "Which Monster Magazine Was Truly the World's First?" (pp. vi-vii), which remains the most comprehensive discussion of the subject to date. Borst notes, "[Famous Monsters of Filmland] Editor Forrest J. Ackerman has always maintained that the only publication that he ever saw prior to his own which was totally devoted to fantastic film coverage was Cinema 57, a French digest-sized magazine which was actually that magazine's whole issue Number 20 for July-August, 1957. Normally, this publication covered all film genres eventually doing a special number on western films as well." Borst also notes the UK one-shot Screen Chills and Macabre Stories, which based on the evidence of its contents hit British newsstands sometime in 1957 -- perhaps simultaneous to Cinema 57, though nobody knows and no definitive record has ever turned up to confirm 'which was first.' As noted on the Classic Horror Film Board, Famous Monsters of Filmland remains the first ongoing periodical monster magazine, which is true -- as Borst notes, "FM was the first professionally published magazine totally devoted to horror/sf films if only because Screen Chills also contained non-film articles (i.e., fiction by Robert Bloch) and Cinema 57 was a specialty number, hardly a 'monster magazine'..." Borst goes on to nominate the 25-50 copies printed fanzine Science Fiction Movie Review (five issues, 1938) as the first "all-movie horror/fantasy/science fiction periodical... [not] featuring fiction alongside the film articles," as the first. 'Nuff said.

Now, I've got lots of movie fan magazines, science-fiction pulps, popular science magazines and various oddball newsstand and subscription magazines from the 1920s and up that feature articles, photo-stories and even covers and cover-stories on horror, sf and fantasy films. That's another topic all together, I think, and only obfuscates the point. Points of interest, for sure, and cool items and collectibles in and of themselves, but those don't count as 'monster magazines' or genre magazines by any stretch of the definition. I also have the Curtis Harrington articles Tim mentions in my collection, along with almost all the British film magazine issues (Sight and Sound, Films & Filming foremost among them) featuring genre essays, articles and interviews (always superior to anything in US publications of the '50s and '60s, until Castle of Frankenstein's heyday) -- all crucial and of interest, but nonetheless, Cinema 57 represents the first single-issue, single-volume offering of serious genre analysis, period.

Nevertheless, content, not status, interests me above all. Without a doubt, the content of Cinema 57 #20 and Le Fantastique au Cinema offer the first adult critical assessment of the genre; the first in magazine format -- a one-shot special, yes -- the second in hardcover book form. Both are handsomely illustrated, and are a major cut above anything available until the maturation of Castle of Frankenstein on newsstands and the arrival of Carlos Clarens' marvelous An Illustrated History of the Horror Film (G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1967), which changed my life forever and marks the first English-language genre book worth reading.

More tomorrow, including a table of contents listing for Cinema 57 -- have a great Tuesday!

2008-02-11T09:04:00.000-05:00

Bat Boy: Vermonter or West Virginian?

The original World Weekly News cover from 1992 introducing Bat Boy to the world!

Since the move, I've had limited access to my collection, most of which is still in boxes. Alas, this means I've been unable to answer the question: was Bat Boy a Vermonter?

I recall at least one of the Bat Boy stories -- which I bought off the newsstands and held on to -- placing him in a cave in Vermont, somewhere outside of Rutland. However, the 'official' continuity now places Bat Boy firmly in West Virginia.

C'mon, Bat Boy experts, help me out here!

2008-02-09T09:13:00.000-05:00

The First Monster Magazine?
Plus: Cloverfield Podcast with Yours Truly, Pentagon Blues

Is this the first monster zine? Forrest J. Ackerman has long said so, and I've yet to find anything to pre-date it as a solo-genre zine. A gem!

Hooooooooooooooooooowwwlll!

Thanks to the marvelous online dealer Patrick Giraud (of Versailles, France, at ebay as 'Pgmovies'), I at last have acquired for my collection the long-cited 'first monster magazine' of all time, the French filmzine Cinema 57, and a real beauty it is, too. I'll write about it in some depth in March, but wanted to acknowledge Patrick's service -- great communication, fast ship, and as pleasant an ebay and online dealer experience as I've ever enjoyed! -- now rather than later.

Patrick has also given me access, initially through his always fascinating auction items, to a little gold mine of European treasures; I'm a very happy customer! Over the past two months, I've secured an eye-popping Druillet Quest for Fire movie poster and a clutch of delightful European movie photo-fumettis I'll be writing up in March (with page samples!).

Incredible as it may seem, Patrick now has another copy of Cinema 57 up for auction on eBay, and here's the link -- if you're at all interested, now's the time to jump on this rarity.

Patrick also has these goodies up for auction just now,

or visit his eBay store anytime to see what he's offering.

Recommended, and good luck!

___________________

Dave Kraus and I had a long chat about Cloverfield last weekend, a film I wrote about briefly here and will write about more as time permits. I've caught Cloverfield twice on the big screen, and loved it both times; it's the monster movie of the year thus far, though of course we're only just into February, so you could say I'm hedging my bet. Nevertheless, Dave caught me when the first viewing was fresh and my desire to talk about it high, so his podcast conversation with yours truly may be of interest to those of you with a similar bent.

Check out Episode 20 and (later this weekend) 21 of Nine-Panel Nerds -- the first installment offers a panel discussion, the second episode (21) some one-on-one discussion, including my input. Enjoy!

____________________

On top of the Pentagon malfeasances I discussed yesterday, there's plenty to keep an eye on, even given the ongoing shroud of secrecy President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the current Pentagon staff have obsessively nurtured and maintained since 2001 -- as obsessively as they've labored to stripmine our privacy as citizens in the selfsame name of 'national security.'

No surprise, then, that that very secrecy continues to erode the Pentagon's ability to prosecute "detainees" as the perverse miscarriages of justice continue unabated with precious little to show (save persecution) for the President's Kafkaesque sense of 'justice.'

The secrecy shrouding government files on terror suspects continues to stymie the Pentagon's effort to hold trials at Guantanamo Bay, with defense attorneys continuing to accuse the government of withholding potential evidence, making any notion of fair trial (even under military tribunal standards) impossible.

Meanwhile, the erosion of our military might under the watch of this bunch of bozos -- how did even a sliver-thin 'majority' of Americans fall for the line of shit the Republicans put out that they're the party of national security? They've done more to threaten our national security then Osama bin Laden has! -- continues to manifest.

This past week's classified Pentagon assessment concludes that "long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis."

Got that? The President's policies, and steadfast refusal to address reality, have placed us in danger while straining the military to a breakpoint -- this is gross, irresponsible mismanagement from their (and our) Commander in Chief.

It's Admiral Mike Mullen, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who completed the new risk assessment, which will be delivered to Capitol Hill later this month; given the classified status of this new document, we may or may not know more once it is delivered.

"Because he has concluded the risk is significant, his report will include a letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlining steps the Pentagon is taking to reduce it." Note, too, this isn't news: "The risk level was raised to significant last year by Mullen's predecessor, Marine Gen. Peter Pace;" when will Bush be held culpable for blatant dereliction of duty?

The Teflon President must spray himself daily with political Pam; he's the no-stick President.

2008-02-08T07:08:00.000-05:00

Swampy Roughs, All-Time Lows and Honoring Our Vets:
More Bush Era Bushwhacking of Those Who Serve

The rough for Swamp Thing #42, art by Bissette (markers, pencil, pen and ink)

Cartoonist amigo Mark Masztal brought this to my attention this morning:

Here's the link to the eBay 'Buy It Now' sale; nothing in this for me, I provide this for anyone out there interested.

It's cool to see this old rough after over 20 years, and to see one that was approved by editor Karen Berger and that John Totleben and I got to execute as that month's cover.

The seller helpfully provides a complimentary cover shot of the published Swamp Thing #42, which gives you a clear snapshot of our process from rough to finish -- so I figured it was worth sharing both with you this morning. Enjoy!

I enjoyed doing the Swamp Thing covers, and stuck with it for a good stretch of Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's run on the title after John and I moved on. In fact, I would have stayed on the entire run, were it not for DC's refusal to either slightly increase the cover rate, or allow me to have a stab at doing just one painted cover. I stepped away only after it became clear I was never going to get a shot at doing a painted cover: the dollars-and-sense of it was, painted covers paid, for a single cover, what it took me almost a full year to earn cumulatively doing the standard pen, brush and ink covers, and it just didn't make sense that the fellow who agreed to continue doing covers, month after month, was being in effect penalized for doing so.

Just one painted cover -- a gesture, in effect -- would have sufficed to keep me aboard, but no, that wasn't to be; well, okay, then. So be it. That conversation and final summary judgment was delivered mid-way through my work on the cover for #63, after the roughs and pencils were completed, but before it was inked. "Fuck it, then," I decided, and Karen went to Bill Sienkiewicz for the final inks over my pencils -- and I was done, save for my part of the pencils for Alan's final issue #64, the scripting of #78 and Annual #4, and a little work on individual panels or pages when Rick asked me to pitch in during his run. Karen and I were still on good terms, personally; it was a business decision to leave the covers, that was all, and though it was momentarily inconvenient for Karen, the money issue was crystal clear, my reasons for leaving inarguably justified. No regrets. Thereafter, the covers were by Rick when pen, brush and ink, guest cover artists (including John) when painted.

Anyhoot, that's today's blast from the past, folks.

___________

Sorry I've been off the daily blog routine; the Neil Gaiman book is in its home week-and-a-half of work, and that and my teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies have been all-consuming.

I wrapped up the final document of the complete Gaiman interview yesterday, incorporating all the followup email revisions, corrections and follow-up questions, and got it to my co-authors. I've got two more text pieces to revise, and a wee bit of work on two intro sections, then -- I'm done!

Then, I've got the massive Brat Pack piece to finish up for Rick Veitch, and that I'm eager to dive back into, along with the final polish of Blur volumes 2, 3 and 4, which I am very eager to get out ASAP.

By March 1st, I'll be back to blogging daily, or damn near daily, thereafter.

______

President George W. Bush and Congress have hit all-time lows in public polls, and it's no surprise.

The Republicans, of course, are trying to play this in their favor this election year, as if they weren't complicit in the current 'Do Nothing' Congressional term, having cynically manipulated and stymied any chance of the very slim Democratic majority to get anything done. Don't be fooled by the rhetoric: the Democrats control nothing. Bush has wielded that veto pen he never, ever used before the 2006 election, and has had to use that only when the Republicans in Congress have failed to neuter, derail or bury anything antithetical to the Bush doctrines.

Listening to the ongoing Republican dialogue in conjunction with the Presidential race has been fascinating: the meltdown is self-evident, with the current extreme right aghast reaction to Senator John McCain's front-runner status (a great relief that Mitt Romney is out of the picture, to my mind: that man is toxic) showing where the seams are bursting.

Bush has the unmitigated gall to address this meltdown, as if he weren't primarily responsible for its inevitable arrival.

"The stakes in November are high. This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance," Bush said yesterday to his usual cushy, question-nothing crowd (in this case, 'about 2,000 people attending the Conservative Political Action Conference').

Prosperity? Peace? Are you fucking joking? Are you fucking insane? Did the Conservative Political Action Conference audience actually applaud that nonsense? Are they deaf? Blind? Stupid?

Bush continued, "So with confidence in our vision and faith in our values, let us go forward, fight for victory and keep the White House in 2008."

Vision? Faith? Values? Victory? Give me a fucking break.

Bottom line: the right had their eight years of essentially unquestioned, unencumbered rule, and they and their bwah George W. Bush showed their true colors, and did so with pride. The aspects of the conservative agenda Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, Rove and their respective cronies and successors (in the case of Rummy, Wolfy and Gonzo) manifested have abundantly proven how self-destructive and horrific that agenda truly is.

The core political philosophies that drove their actions (primary among those a war waged on two fronts, one completely unprovoked and unjustified, and a disastrous series of fiscal and deregulatory policies that has devalued the dollar and precipitated economic ruin for the US) and inactions (e.g., Katrina, 'homeland security,' etc.; in short, anything requiring a strong internal gov't support system for the country) are bankrupt, and any fool still believing there's a straw to cling to no doubt also believes we 'coulda won' in Vietnam, too.

They -- Bush, Cheney, and those who serve, support and act as apologists for 'em -- discredited themselves and their own. This past week, Ann Coulter's much-clipped quote against McCain and Fox News incorporating Karl Rove into their Super Tuesday news coverage is further proof of how shameless, complicit, and utterly oblivious the core conservative coalitions are to their own meltdown. The inability of conservatives to get behind any candidate in their own primaries, and then to turn like ants on the standing survivors (go ahead, badmouth McCain and Huckabee), without for a heartbeat acknowledging they had their boy in there, they bragged and brayed and boasted and ballyhooed his every move, and thus shot their wad.

America is reeling on every front -- the wars, the economy, health-non-care, politically, culturally, you name it -- paying the piper for the eight years they imposed their ideologies on us all and inflicted them upon the globe with unmitigated arrogance and swagger.

Nowhere are the utterly despicable core philosophies of this current Administration more self-evidently corrupt than in their ongoing ill treatment of our war vets, especially the fresh-from-the-field Iraq and Afghanistan Wars vets. This latest outrage is further evidence of corruption from the top, with those down the chain of command taking the bullets (literally, in the case of the vets themselves).

Take the time to check out the original January 29th story,

re-read today's followup, and tell me this is the Rashomon situation the Army rep is now claiming this to be. BULLSHIT.

If you can, download that 'VA Document' and tell me this isn't current U.S. Army policy, and what we're seeing now is Major Backpedal at work, though today his name may be Army Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker.

Typical of this Administration, too, we're seeing those who were inside speaking out: note, "former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who co-chaired President Bush's commission on veterans' care, says the whole disability rating system is broken and needs to change."

I'll go one further: this VA document the followup on the January 29th story demonstrates this is willful, calculated breakage of the system.

Its policy: "FUCK THE VETS," it says, in bureaucrat-speak. It's the Commander in Chief, his cronies, his Pentagon once again from on high saying: "FUCK THESE VETS. FUCK THOSE WHO SERVE. Use 'em, discard 'em. They're of no further use to us. Fuck 'em."

They use them, abuse them, discard them, secret them away, hide them, bury them when they can -- in paperwork and military and government clusterfuck, when they can't get 'em under dirt. It's utterly consistent with how they've treated the dead (no photos! No images! No dead!), our own dead and those of the Iraqis and the Afghans; as I've said, it's also utterly consistent with how they've treated the "detainees."

It's further clear evidence of the most cynical policy imaginable, dishonorable and as corrupt as any such policy can be. "Don't help them fill out our convoluted paperwork. Don't help those we put into harm's way, who have returned the walking wounded, negotiate the paper minefields we've erected between them and the aid they so badly need. Fuck 'em."

This is how Bush and the Pentagon honors the troops.

Let me not mince words: I have nothing but contempt for the fuckers who (a) started these wars, (b) so cynically manipulated public perception of their reasons for going to war (every single one of which has been discredited), (c) so heartlessly launched wars with no end in sight with no strategy (Bush has demonstrated time and time again he doesn't even know what the English word 'strategy' means) for dealing with the aftermath of Rumsfeld's horribly misconceived "streamlining" of our military forces, (d) so cynically abuse our volunteer military, refusing to address the consequences of their lunatic leadership by just putting more burdens on those who do volunteer to serve, heartlessly extending tours of duty to break-the-body-and-spirit extremes, with no regard for the toll this takes on the troops, their families, our military and our country, and (e) then have the soulless capacity to refuse to bankroll the treatment of the new generation of war veterans they, themselves, have willingly spawned.

It's becoming increasingly evident that the latter is indeed a matter of policy: the 2006 and 2007 revelations of the poor conditions of many VA hospitals, the abysmal treatment (read: abuse) of vets suffering emotional and psychological consequences, and now the uncovering of documentation of U.S. Army policy to refuse aid to vets in properly filing disability claims -- what, pray tell, is the final straw?

How long will the rule of the military -- chain of command -- be ignored by the public? Orders are orders, rank and file rules; these are orders, policies, coming from the top. Period. Only ignorance of how the military functions obfuscates the reality. And -- no two ways about it -- it goes all the way to the top.

In the end, not one commanding officer was called on the carpet (e.g., found guilty) for the Abu Ghraib atrocities -- only the lowest-level grunts following orders were imprisoned.

In the end, not one upper echelon commander will fall for the ongoing revelations about how badly our vets are being served -- more 'honoring our troops' from the fuckers who brought us these pre-emptive wars and continue to daily place more of our best into harm's way.

In the end, Rumsfeld walked away still espousing his delusions and showing no shame for his contemptible actions and utter failure, and Bush will remain untouched by all this, actively passing the buck (but no bucks) to the next Commander in Chief, while working to lock his successor into treaty-formatted extensions of his present misbegotten policies.

In the end, those in power who have so ceaselessly demanded 'those responsible' for evils they perceive as evils be made to suffer and 'pay,' whatever the "collateral damage" to innocents, while dodging any and all culpability for their actions and inactions like the craven cowards they are.

In the end, any idiot who votes for a pro-war candidate, Republican or Democrat, in the coming 2008 election is complicit in these cynical, soulless policies and practices.

J'Accuse!

2008-02-04T14:32:00.001-05:00

Gaiman Cuddles!

Art: Yow! It's Bunny Cuddles, scarfing down the jam!

At precisely 2:22 AM this morning, I finished the transcription of the interview tapes from Hank Wagner and my trip out to Neil's house back in November. It's turned out quite nicely, if I may say so myself -- not least thanks to Neil's willingness to answer my many follow-up queries and fact-and-spell-checking questions via email since December.

There's not much I can share with you here, as we're saving it all for the book, Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, which will be coming from St. Martin's Press later this year. I can tell you the interview clocks in at well over 27,000 words and covers a lot of ground, both archival and fresh; it contains a lot of fresh revelations and insights, and it will be current.

One thing I can share with you today, though, is what turned up as Neil tried to find some online info and art on the British weeklies he grew up with -- particularly the children's comics he cut his eyeteeth on (literally). These were the comics wee li'l Neil loved and loved, as much as l'il Mikey Dobbs loved mayonnaise and l'il Stevie B loved dinosaurs. Mind you, Neil was also into Gilbert & Sullivan at the same tender age, so don't dis the man.

Fred White's strip Billy Brock, the wee schoolbadger, shown here with his best friends Robert Rabbit and Hector Hedgehog (from young Neil Gaiman's fave weekly Playhour, 1955-64)

Warning: If you have diabetes, or suffer from cuteophobic tendencies, you might not want to click the following links!

While Neil recalled Sooty off the top of his head during our November conversations, the other woodland animal children's comics he harbored fond fetal memories of didn't come to mind so easily. As of late last night, we were still volleying emails across the Continental US to one another, from one wintry wonderland to another. The turning point came when Neil wrote, "I just spent some time establishing that the comic was Playhour and it was (I think) "the wonderful tales of willow wood". In my memory it looks like Ron Embleton art, and terrifyingly, according to Wikipedia, it might have been..."

While Neil sought online info, I scoured my hardcover histories of British comics for information. According to Denis Gifford's venerable The British Comic Catalogue, the weekly comic Playhour was launched in May of 1955 by Amalgamated Press/Fleetway/IPC, and Gifford doesn't mention Embleton. Gifford lists artists like Peter Woolcock, Fred White, Basil Reynolds, Philip Mendoza, Harry Pettit, Hugh McNeil (or McNeill?), Fred Robinson, Cyril Price, Bert Felstead and others as the brains and hands behind features like (ready?) Prince the Wonder Dog, The Gay Gordons, Dicky & Dolly, Mimi & Marmy, Sonny & Sally, Wink & Blink, Peter Puppet in Puzzleland, and others. There is a "Willow Wood" listed in the 1957 issues, but my faves based on name alone remain Wonderful Island of Yam, Moony from the Moon, Pinky & Perky, Wizard Weezle and Num Num.

How can I resist? It's Billy the Blue Tit! (from Jack and Jill Annual Book 1957-1958, art by Harry Pettit and F. Seale)

There was a "breakaway character," or a character whose popular spilled over into other weeklies and, according to Neil and online sources, television. That was Sooty, whose first appearance in Playhour pops up in 1959-60, at least a couple of years after the finger-puppet bear was already a TV sensation for preschoolers and youngsters. Sooty already had his own title, too, so I reckon Playhour needed Sooty way more than Sooty needed Playhour! In any case, Neil turned up

this gallery of Sooty Annuals covers, gems one and all.

But then, again, it appears that it was the jam-lovin' Bunny Cuddles (drawn by Hugh McNeill -- or is it McNeil?) that had won young Neil's heart as a mere lad. He's not positive; Neil remembers the strip he loved as being in color, "although it says this strip was in B&W...," Neil wrote me, after he found

this link to Bunny Cuddles and friends -- choke!

Me, I'll stick with 'Hamster Balls.' And I'll leave it to Neil to explain that reference on his blog, when he's damned good and ready, hopefully with a link to my own blog to win me more virtual cuddly pals...

Philip Mendoza and Gordon Hutchings illustrated the adventures of Gulliver Guinea-pig, here having a cup o' volcanic-brewed tea (Playhour, 1958-65) -- and no, he doesn't have hamster balls. Not like I do -- or did!

Have a Moony from the Moon Monday!

2008-02-03T09:10:00.000-05:00

My Bushy-Haired Past

Since I'm deep in the final day of Neil Gaiman interview transcribing (and later today setting up for a final phone interview with Neil), there's no time to write this AM unless it's to further the final leg of the transcription process. So I'll leave you with this video clip bon mot, compliments of a link Diane E. Foulds sent Marge for a laugh:

this Prisoners of Gravity clip with Alan Moore and I blathering about Swamp Thing. I don't look like this any more!

Have a super Sunday --

2008-02-01T13:28:00.000-05:00

Old Man River, Sold Down Old Man River...

Within the same week of his loopy State of the Union speech (which finally I read online; how Bush can dare to say the word 'trust' any longer demonstrates either how oblivious he is, or stupid he thinks we all are), President Bush concedes our economy "is weakening and that we've got to do something about it,"

though he and the GOP refuse to deal with how their own policies (and many ongoing deregulation and 'corporate welfare' laws active since the Reagan years) have precipitated this plight.

Why should he give a fuck? One year left to go,

unprecedented Presidential signing statements

on over 1100 laws (expanding Presidential powers beyond any Constitutional parameters and encroaching on those of Congress, the courts, etc.), and a superficial proposed economic stimulus package dependent upon simply borrowing more money to swell the national deficit -- we have been collectively sold down so many rivers, it's impossible to begin to grasp the magnitude of how fucked we are.

Of course, the petro giants are soaring: Exxon Mobil posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company in history ($40.6 billion!) today, and set a new American record for the biggest quarterly profit (net income of $11.7 billion for the final quarter of 2007, beating its own previous record!)

(and second-largest petro firm Chevron reported record profits, too),

the very same week Halliburton posted quarterly net profits rising 5 percent, "helped by growth in its Eastern Hemisphere business and a lower tax rate."

Got that? A lower tax rate, while the US plunges further into massive debt waging war -- wars Halliburton also profits directly from. "The company said it had benefited from a lower tax rate as increased international profits allowed it to recognize additional foreign tax credits..." Suck it up, America.

Bully for them; for the rest of us, record national debt, record personal debts, record foreclosures and April 15th income tax deadlines mark the landscape created in large part by two decades of massive government deregulation of once-sane banking and credit practices and the Bush Administration's overhaul of personal bankruptcy laws in 2001-2002 to further favor predatory credit and banking institutions. It's hard to stomach a third year of record oil corporation profits as gas prices continue to hover between $3.00-$3.25 a gallon. The tanking economy is measurable by

American payrolls suffering their first major decline in five years.

Note among the references to current unemployment numbers still doesn't take into account those so long unemployed that they cease to register; hence, the uncounted unemployed -- an indeterminable portion of the population, until/unless new and reliable poverty statistics are compiled -- remain invisible.

Depression of another kind is hitting hard, too, as an inevitable consequence of President Bush's policies and actions. This week's staggering report concerning military suicides has made the news;

Military.com confirms the statistics, providing further links and context.

"The report also shows an increase in the number of attempted suicides and self-injuries - some 2,100 in 2007 compared to less than 1,500 the previous year and less than 500 in 2002. The total of 121 suicides last year, if all are confirmed, would be more than double the 52 reported in 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks prompted the Bush administration to launch its counter-terror war."

It's worth noting earlier Military.com reporting: here's the December 2003 report --

-- at which point Military.com noted, "The Army is concerned about the deaths. Outside experts have said the rate is alarmingly high compared with the military's average suicide rates..." --

-- and in February 2004 this was where we stood.

By 2006, Military suicides were at a horrific high,

and now it's much, much worse.

Given the Pentagon's breaking of long-standing rules concerning reasonable tours of duty, the repeated extension of those deployment periods, and the obscene lack of support for the troops and returning veterans by the very President, Vice President, Pentagon and government that launched these pre-emptive wars, it's hardly surprising.

As I've said here repeatedly, the correlation between Bush, Cheney and the Pentagon's treatment of our troops and their treatment of detainees is obvious: interminable imprisonment based on a war that is, by definition, impossible to win (e.g., a "war" on a tactic, not a nation or geographically-definable 'enemy'). How much can the human spirit withstand?

How long can we inflict this upon our own troops, as well as the countries we have invaded and occupied?

And when will the inevitability of a military draft, in the face of how irrevocably Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al have manhandled, mismanaged and damaged our military, be the wake-up call to those still complacent about all this? I dread that day, but given the ongoing madness and Bush's determination to lodge America in Iraq and Afghanistan far beyond the end of his term -- and the Republican candidates (save Ron Paul) so arrogantly brandishing the war(s) as a given and necessary path for their hoped-for Presidencies -- it indeed seems inevitable.

(Note, too, the whispers are getting louder.)

As the saying goes, "...a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves” (so said Edward R. Murrow).

But don't take my word for it;

William J. Lederer echoed Murrow in 1961,

and Judge Andrew P. Napolitano echoes Murrow today.

How baaaaaaaaahhhhd can it get?
I think we're going to find out this year.

Another Reason to Love Vermont

My home state Senator Bernie Sander's riposte to Bush's State of the Union speech is worth sharing:

The State of the Union Bush Forgot to Talk About

I listened intently to President Bush's State of the Union speech. Frankly, I had a hard time understanding what country he was talking about, what reality he was talking about. Certainly, if the "state of the union" refers to what is happening to the shrinking middle class of this country, and how we as a people are doing, the president had almost nothing to say that rang true. In fact, the speech just reminds us once again how far removed from the reality of ordinary life this president is, and how little he and his administration know about what is going on with the vast majority of Americans.

The president said that "in the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth." I wish that was true. Unfortunately, since President Bush has been in office it is important to understand that nearly five million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Amazingly, the poverty rate is higher today than it was during the last recession in 2001.Median household income for working-age Americans has declined by almost $2,500 and overall median household income has gone down by nearly $1,000. More than 8.6 million Americans have lost their health insurance. More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, including more than 10,000 in Vermont. The list of troubling economic statistics goes on.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest people in our society have not had it so good since the 1920s. Income inequality is on the rise. According to the latest figures from the IRS, the top 1 percent earned more income in 2005 than the bottom 50 percent, and the national share of income going to the wealthiest Americans is higher than at any time since 1929. Perhaps even more disturbing is the unequal distribution of wealth. According to Forbes magazine, the collective net worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans increased by $290 billion last year to $1.54 trillion. In addition, the top one percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

What are the super-wealthy doing with their money? As Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal has pointed out in his book Richistan, the super wealthy, those worth between $100 million to $1 billion, spent an average of $182,000 on wrist watches; $311,000 on automobiles; $397,000 on jewelry; and $169,000 on spa services last year alone. The middle class is shrinking, poverty is increasing, and the wealthiest Americans have not had it so good since the 1920s. That is the state of our economy.

In order to protect the interests of the sinking middle class the federal government needs a change in direction in almost every area of public policy. We must start by passing an economic stimulus package as soon as possible. A stimulus package that the House approved on Tuesday could and should be improved.

In my opinion, for an economic stimulus package to be most successful, we must do three things: 1) We must provide help to those most in need, particularly senior citizens on fixed incomes, low-income families with children and persons with disabilities. 2) We must strengthen the middle class. 3) We must put Americans back to work at good paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure: our roads, bridges, schools, homes, health centers, sewers, and other important needs.

If we pass an economic stimulus package that does not accomplish all three of these goals, we will have missed out on an important opportunity to strengthen our economy.

Here is what I believe we should do.

First, I would increase the economic stimulus package from $150 billion to $175 billion. We should reduce the business tax breaks on equipment purchases by 50 percent or roughly $25 billion. These tax breaks are referred to as bonus depreciation. It has been argued that businesses need these tax breaks to buy more equipment, but experts tell us that businesses will be buying this equipment regardless of whether these tax breaks are signed into law or not. According to Mark Zandi with Moody's, for every $1 the government provides for bonus depreciation, it would only add 27 cents to GDP. In other words, it would provide very little stimulus. If we did these two things: increase the overall economic stimulus package by $25 billion; and cut the bonus depreciation tax break by 50 percent, that would leave us with about $50 billion.

What could we do with this $50 billion? We could put Americans to work at decent paying jobs; we could help those most in need; and we could strengthen the middle class. Those are the three pillars I believe should be included in any economic stimulus package. Specifically, I believe we should provide $5 billion for an expansion of the Food Stamp program. The Congressional Budget Office and other experts have indicated that such an increase would be one of the most effective ways to stimulate the economy. For every $1.00 invested in the Food Stamp Program, we would add $1.73 to GDP. More importantly, these benefits would go to the Americans who have been hit the hardest in our economy.

We could provide $3.62 billion in home heating assistance for senior citizens on fixed incomes, low-income families with children and persons with disabilities through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The price of energy is skyrocketing. People in Vermont and all over this country are paying record prices to heat their homes this winter. In the richest country on the face of the earth, we must ensure that no-one goes cold this winter.

In addition, with unemployment rising and our infrastructure crumbling, we could address both of these concerns by providing $16 billion to repair our schools, bridges, roads, sewers, rails, ports and airports. We could also put people to work weatherizing nearly 100,000 homes; expand our health delivery system by increasing funding for Community Health Centers, and help veterans with disabilities retrofit their cars and refurbish their homes. States, localities, economists and other experts have identified thousands of projects throughout the country that could not only use this money, but spend it quickly. Last year, about 200,000 construction workers lost their jobs. We could and should put many of these Americans back to work through this economic stimulus package.

Let me give you two examples of investments we could be making that would have a tremendous economic impact on the lives of Americans. If we just provided $148 million for an expansion of Community Health Centers, that would be enough to create 227 new health centers throughout the country; provide health care services to an additional 1.4 million previously unserved Americans; lead to the creation of 15,000 new jobs, and provide a total economic benefit of $1.25 billion.For those that question the appropriateness of including an expansion of community health centers into an economic stimulus package, I would say to my colleagues that this is exactly what we did during the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan. It worked. If it worked in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, it will work today.

Another important investment that we should make is to provide at least $200 million for the Low-Income Weatherization Assistance Program. Not only could the program easily absorb this level of funding and create additional construction and retrofitting jobs, but it also would save millions of dollars for low-income people who are struggling with higher energy costs by weatherizing an additional 75,000 homes.

In 2001, I was an early backer of tax rebates. I support tax rebates for the middle class, for low-income families with children, and for persons with disabilities. I also believe that senior citizens who don't pay income taxes should be receiving this assistance as well through a bonus in their Social Security checks. But giving someone $300 or $600 or $1,200 alone will not fix the economic situations facing millions of Americans. Putting Americans to work at decent paying jobs and helping those most in need would do much more to strengthen the middle class and reduce the poverty rate than simply sending rebate checks and bonus depreciation tax breaks.

Let's pass an economic stimulus package quickly, but let's make sure we get it right. Let's help those most in need. Let's put Americans to work at good paying jobs.

He hasn't listened to anyone but his cronies for seven years; why should 2008 be in any way different? President Bush, of course, is doing quite the opposite of what Senator Sanders recommends.

And, on a far less consequently note, but of great potential consequence to online activity, I'd wager,

note that if this sale goes through, we'll be seeing some insidious internet mutations. I'll be changing my email address soon.

What, me worry?

Have a great weekend...

2008-01-31T05:52:00.000-05:00

Giving the Hairy Eyeball

Up early, unable to sleep for more than just a few hours with the eye treatment ongoing. Eight more days/nights to go... wish me luck. Read the comments on yesterday's post for an alarming possible consequence, had this gone unchecked; good luck, Jon Ayre! I don't think our both being in the AccentUK Zombies anthology caused this, but -- hmmmm, that cover -- one eye highlighted, the left eye completely rotted out of its socket. Maybe it was a self-portrait all along?

My eyes are bleary now, a situation aggravated by the endless hours typing -- but that'll soon be over, as we are at the end of the process of writing the Gaiman book. Which leads me to this tidbit:

Entitlement

As of this week, our editor at St. Martin's reports that St. Martin's has officially settled on Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman as the official title of the book Chris Golden, Hank Wagner and I are now in the home stretch of delivering. So, scratch all prior references to The Neil Gaiman Companion, and more news here once there's news to share that isn't top-secret.

Why I Love Vermont, Part Deux:
Slap of the Beefcake; Or, When Polar Opposites Collide

I don't know what's crazier, the fraction of the -26% of Americans who still support President Bush bothering to inundate Brattleboro, VT with hate calls, or the Brattleboro, VT initiative that's prompting the hate calls -- more power to 'em, I say! Arrest the Prez! -- but it all adds up to another reason I love my home state!

Mark Martin sent me this link -- the story goes national! --

-- almost to the nanosecond the same time the email from HomeyM (of Jamaica, VT) sent me this article on the same hubbub, bub, from

The Brattleboro Reformer:

Proposed indictment elicits wrath across U.S.
By Bob Audette, Reformer Staff

Tuesday, January 29

BRATTLEBORO -- Brattleboro must be full of uneducated dilettantes, ignorant liberal morons, inbred hicks, liberal appeaser wimps, the lunatic fringe, Neanderthals, limp-wristed sissies, radical leftists, hippies, losers, scumbags, nut jobs, snooty northerners, liberal hate mongers and traitorous bastards.

Those are just a handful of adjectives that have been used to describe town residents after the Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 to send a petition requesting the indictment of President George Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney to town voters for their approval or disapproval.

Since the board made its decision on Jan. 25, town offices have been inundated by e-mails, faxes and phone calls deriding the decision, the town and its Selectboard. Several staffers told the Reformer they have hung up on callers that have cursed at them because of the board's decision.

"Most of them are against the petition," said Town Clerk Annette Cappy. "They do not favor the action. You would never be able to print publicly what they've written."

"Those e-mails and calls will be taken seriously," said Acting Chief of Police Capt. Eugene Wrinn. "If we can prove a crime of disorderly conduct by use of the phone or disorderly conduct by electronic means, we will charge someone. If people are threatening or harassing the town clerk or Selectboard we will see what we can do."

If any of the language in the correspondence crosses the line into harassment or threats, it could result in federal charges, said Tom Anderson, U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont.

Using e-mail or phones to leave threatening messages is a federal offense, he said, that could result in an FBI investigation. Local police can determine if they are threatening, he said, and then forward their concerns to the FBI.

Some of the comments sent to the town manager's office might be deemed threatening by even the most impartial observer.

"If you pass the measure ... you and all members of your town must be considered 'Enemy Combatants' by me and every member of the armed forces, active duty, reserve or veteran," wrote James Stone, no location given. "If you try to undermine the respect due to the office of the president ... I will have no other choice but to defend my country. This is not a threat. It is my duty."

"Maybe the terrorists will do us all a favor and attack your town next," wrote Brent Caflisch, of Rosemount, Minn. "Our country would be much safer with several thousand dead wackjobs in Vermont. Or maybe they could just kidnap Chairwoman Audrey Garfield and board members Richard Garant and Dora Bouboulis, cut their heads off, video tape it and put it on the Internet. Now that I would like to see."

Cappy said some of the comments have her worried for the safety of the staffers in Brattleboro's Municipal Building.

"My staff has talked about it today and we are a little concerned about the response."

During its Jan. 25 meeting, Town Manager Barbara Sondag appeared to be warning the Selectboard when she asked "How many more of these things do you want Brattleboro to become famous for?"

While Sondag said she was not worried about the safety of town staffers or the town itself, she posted a comment on the town's Web site explaining the board's vote.

"Reasons given by board members voting in the affirmative centered on the belief that if a petition contained the required signatures, the voters should have the opportunity to vote on the matter," wrote Sondag. "Reasons given by board members voting on the dissent centered on the belief that articles outside the scope and authority of the town should not go before the voters of the town."

In addition, she wrote, "The Brattleboro Town Attorney has stated that the petition has no legal standing, as the town attorney has no authority to write an indictment and the town police department has no authority to attempt an arrest of the President of the United States."

The town will vote on the petition on March 4.

Not all of the e-mails were derogatory toward the town.

"Arrest Bush and Cheney?" asked Ron Healy, no address given. "You go, Brattleboro!"

"Good for you," wrote Laurence Topliffe of Iowa. "They both should spend the rest of their lives in prison or on a deserted island."

Responses to other issues before the town in the past -- including a petition to urge impeachment of Bush and Cheney and an ordinance that banned nudity in Brattleboro -- didn't reach this level, said Cappy.

"This is far outnumbering anything else," said Cappy. "I have never gotten this much e-mail except when the civil unions were passed."

Most of that correspondence, however, was in favor of the decision, she said.

2008-01-30T08:17:00.000-05:00

Eye-Yi-Yi --

Image at left: NOT my eye, but extreme blepharitis case. I'm nowhere near that bad.

Well, again with the left eye, but it's been different this time: no yellow yeasty gunky film, no hideous red. Just a week, almost two, of slight runny eye, slight bloodshot white, but being a good student of Dr. Wertham ("the injury to the eye motif") and Fulci and all things wet, orb-like and vulnerable, I go to my eye doc and go through another battery of yellow dye, pressure tests, and eyeball scrutiny.

So, it turns out I've got something incredibly common, and growing more frequent with global warming: Blepharitis.

The National Health Institute provides this handy guide,

and it's so common my eye doc had a handout to give me about it. Unguent, 10 days of treatment, and new eye hygiene thereafter, and I should be fine.

Whew. Cool it, Staphylococcus.

Have a wigged-out Wednesday; I'll be typing when I'm not teaching, and teaching when I'm not typing...

2008-01-28T06:58:00.000-05:00

Help Me Make It Through The Year...

At this time next year, we will be into the first week of a new Presidency. The presidency of George W. Bush, and the terms of the Vice (and that word in this context has never resonated so, since Spiro Agnew's resignation in disgrace) President Cheney and of Condi Rice and all Bush's cronies, will be over at last.

Has any President done so much damage to our country in our lifetimes? Not that I can recall; even President Nixon, in hindsight, seems but the first slide down the slippery slope Bush has gleefully sent us all hurdling down, seemingly impervious himself. The Teflon President.

I've listened carefully to almost every other State of the Union address from our President, but I won't be tuning in to this one, I don't think. I've no more belly for his swill, really I don't.

In the face of disastrous economic straits, he's still intent that he will "make permanent his first-term tax cuts, which are due to expire in 2010," the destination of his first term squandering of our one-time surplus; hasn't he rewarded the wealthy enough? We're back to the Robber Baron era of the late 19th Century, and Bush and Cheney (who has completely redefined the power of the Vice Presidency, as we'll be able to more fully assess after he's gone) happily helped put us here.

A review of Bush's prior State of the Union speeches is a litany of obfuscation, diversion and deception, save for his "Madam Speaker" moment (balancing Cindy Sheehan's moment).

Here's an assessment of what has happened on this swaggering President's watch; "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" says it all.

Consider how "...the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them." (Special thanks to Jean-Marc Lofficier for bringing this to my attention this weekend; well worth reading.)

Thankfully, Halliburton is riding high -- oh, what a relief, amid such economic woe! -- to quote Liberace, Cheney and his crew will be laughing all the way to the bank, as they have every day since Cheney took (never before has that word in this political context rung so true) office.

We'll see what further damage Bush, Cheney, Rice et al can inflict and exact in their final year, and hope we'll all be here after their exit.

Have a Mopey Monday, maybe...