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!

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.
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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!

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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.

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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...

Some New Year's Eve Thanks for 2007 Highlights...

...in my personal life, and a bit of my professional life. Just a big thank you all around to all my amigos and family; thanks for putting up with me!

Thanks, too, for Myrant readers being out there. I've no idea how many of you there are (I've yet to figure out how to get a count of hits to the blog, despite numerous efforts), but it's nice to know this venue gives me some link to the outside world and a means of writing and sharing some of my brainspew. Thanks to my many fans, especially folks like Salvo, Tom and Phil, for all your kindnesses; I am not worthy! I really appreciate the occasional care packages, fellas, and wish you all the best of the coming New Year. I'll do my best to get something new out there for ya!

For 2008, a new computer, scanner, and the construction of a proper computer work area should provide the means at last to (a) work with Cat to complete the website as I hope it will exist, and (b) share more art with you via the site and this blog. That said, here's what I'm already thankful for in 2007...

* 2007 was Marge's and my first year in our new home! We in fact completed the move one year ago this past Friday, folks, so the whole of 2007 was indeed spent nesting in our new digs.

We're both overjoyed to be in our new home, with closer proximity to our respective jobs -- burning up far less gas, mind you, and saving in every other domestic bill, too, except for property taxes (the fool Republican claims about lower taxes are premised in part on ignoring completely how all deferred spending is landing on our collective backs via regional property taxes, but don't get me going). The increased proximity to White River Junction and The Center for Cartoon Studies has been a blessing, too, and allowed me more time than ever to dedicate to the students, when required and/or requested.

This home also plugged us into high-speed internet access, which has freed up literally days, weeks, months of time -- even with the blogging! -- to dedicate to more worthwhile ventures. It now takes about 15 minutes to do what in Marlboro, VT, with no broadband access, over four hours a day to do. You do the math.


* I'm thankful beyond words for my ongoing job at The Center for Cartoon Studies. Beyond just being thankful to be a man over 50 who even has a job in 2007, I'm thankful to have a job that is meaningful, satisfying and rewarding -- a rarer commodity still in Bush-era 21st Century America!

The time with the classes, the students, the enormous confidence and trust co-founders James Sturm and Michelle Ollie demonstrate daily, the ongoing support and hard work from Robyn Chapman, Jess Abston, Sarah Stewart Taylor, Jason Lutes, Peter Money, James Kochalka, Kaori Hamura, Jon-Mikel Gates (the latter three helped me co-teach Drawing Workshop this fall semester) and one and all -- especially the students, alumni included -- it's been amazing. I savor the enormous creative boost and joy this all provides, the reunions with alumni over the past couple of weeks, the drawing and the craziness and the bullshit and the -- well, all of it. I'm thankful, and feel lucky as any man can be to have this opportunity to work with the new generations of cartoonists and creators, hopefully passing on something of what I've learned and invented over my 30 years or so since I graduated from the Joe Kubert School.

* The year is ending (to the day, with more to go!) with heavy work in the home stretch on The Neil Gaiman Companion, a book project co-authors Christopher Golden and Henry Wagner invited me in on back in October.

Thanks for inviting me in to the party, guys! Though it's been a real pressure-cooker, amid the end-of-semester workload and demands of CCS and the holidays, it's been a joy, too. Whatever the headaches, it landed me the rare opportunity to spend a little face-to-face time with my old friend Neil, and is culminating in what is shaping up to be a honey of a book -- which you'll see in stores, I think, later in 2008 from St. Martin's Press. Watch for it!

* It's been a pleasure easing back into drawing comics again, and fun seeing some of that new work popping up in print. My retirement from the US comics industry stands -- and events in 2007 did nothing but confirm the wisdom of that 1999 decision. But I've found my way to keeping busy in the medium I love most outside of any industry venues, and hope to expand upon that in 2008.

If you're happy to see this turn of events -- as I am -- special thanks is due to the following folks:

* First and foremost, my son Daniel, who once told Marge he hoped to get me back to drawing comics. Well, pat yourself on the back, son, you done good (and there was no prouder pop on Planet Earth than yours truly the night I enjoyed hearing and seeing you, Sam and Jeremy -- Mooneye -- playing at the Main Street Museum!).
* My daughter Maia Rose -- we'll get ours, done, too, my dear!
* Everyone at The Center for Cartoon Studies (see below)
* Leah Moore and John Reppion and the Komiks.dk folks; special thanks to Leah and John, I met and committed to:
* the AccentUK crew, primary among them Colin Mathieson and Dave West, who were enthusiastic and patient and attentive and ended up publishing my work (solo on the cover and interior illo) and collaborative effort with Dan, and some fine stories by CCS students/artists in May of 2007, all in the AccentUK Zombies anthology.

* The Trees & Hills Comics Group, a New England comics collective, particularly Colin Tedford and Daniel Barlow; in fact, my son Dan and I did our first published collaborative work for the 2006 Trees & Hills anthology, Trees & Hills and Friends; I had another (solo) piece in this year's first T&H anthology, too (I missed being in their second collective comic of 2007, though).

* Kudos, too, to CCS alumni Sean Morgan for being ballsy enough to ask me to collaborate on the art for the cover story in his anthology Capsule -- thanks, Sean, and it was fun!

The story turned out well, if I may say so myself, and it was also a hoot to see Sean's zombie story see print at last herein -- "He Is Risen" had been written, drawn and submitted to Zombies, but it was bumped due to its religious content. Way to push the 'taboo' button, Sean, and here's hoping we work on something new in 2008...


Invigorated by that process and the Zombies anthology as a whole, I also stepped up to the plate for a single oversized page of new work in the super-sized Sundays anthology, a true labor of cover-to-cover love a pack of inspired, perspiring CCSers created for its debut at the spring MoCCA convention in NYC. I did so with some apprehension, and considerable changing-of-horses in midstream a couple of times, but it all worked out for the best for one and all.

It was also inspiring to see everyone involved pouring so much of themselves into every aspect of the project -- though I was only an observer, really, with one page in the mix, I felt reconnected to the wellsprings of the comics community I once felt part of, the vital stuff of creation, hands-on production and working through the details, genuine self-publishing (right down to the marathon silk-screening sessions and hand-binding production line of that final week before MoCCA). The Sundays crew busted their asses on this book! Kudos to everyone involved, it was a monumental effort, beautifully conceived and executed.


Though I should have asked/pressed for another page -- I'm guilty of the sin of too-much-text to too-little-art in my humble one-pager -- I'm pleased that the encouragement of the CCS now-senior confederates in creative crime behind Sundays prompted me to re-engage with Tyrant for a time -- yep, the first new Tyrant work to see print in a decade was in Sundays!

Sure, it was bitter little pill of a page, but it was pretty funny, I think, too. More importantly, it prompted my returning to the project and prepping two versions of a proposal I'll be circulating in 2008, in hopes of landing a home in the book market for some incarnation of my pet project. Time will tell on that, but nothing will take away the shot-in-the-arm the Sundays crew provided this ol' coot.

Before summer was out, another scurvy pack of ink-slinging swine tantalized me with the thought of taking another shot at doing a western comic story, and the result was "Tenderfoot" in Dead Man's Hand (which debuted at SPX in October).

Now, I've the greatest affection and respect in the world for the rowdy-noodies who concocted and completed Dead Man's Hand -- after all, I taught 'em all most everything they know, y'could say -- but I gotta tell you right here and now, the sap-suckin' lily-livered saddle-sore slurpin' sidewinders bushwhacked me! Consarn their blasted eyes!

After a night of carousing at the local brewery Elixir's and proposing every conceivable variation on mixing cowboys and dinosaurs -- from Turok to Gwangi to thunderbirds to giant horny-toads squirtin' jet-propelled rivers of blood from their eyes -- and being increasingly slammed dick-in-the-dirt at every turn, I put pen to paper to craft an original tale with nary a saurian in sight -- not even a fossil! And I'm mighty happy with my story "Tenderfoot," mind ye.

Anyhoot, I did that only to find, upon publication, they'd let another cactus-lickin' contributor do a story with a pfucking pterodactyl in it! A no-shit flying dinosaur! Thunderbird, my ass!

Goddammit, I was hornswoggled! Boondoggled! Barn-doored and slamdunked! I'll get you suckers next time, you wait and see! It'll be Dunston comics for you, you baboon-assed monkey-humpin' simian lovers!

2008 already has me working on a swamp-monster personal project, which I'm excited about, and a story for a new CCS-community anthology proposed and helmed (or co-helmed) by our compadre Cayetano 'Cat' Garza -- watch for Secrets & Lies at MoCCA this year!

* The Bissette Coffee Zombee mugs have been a fun diversion this year, and I'm working on some new ceramic art for 2008.

No, you can't mail order 'em -- though I am gracing friends and family with their own one-of-a-kind ceramic goodies this holiday season, including some Marge and I did together (no zombies on those, though), and will continue to do so (for birthdays) throughout 2008.

These have been just fun to make, personally. As for those not created as gifts, I'm pleased to keep prices, productivity, profits and the profile low. Still, these each-one-of-a-kind painted and glazed works are happily circulating in surprising circles, and part of the fun for me is knowing

they're all finding homes via my booth at the Antiques Mall at Quechee Gorge Village on Route 4 in VT -- dealer #653, a booth jam-packed with work by yours truly and the students and faculty of The Center for Cartoon Studies, along with my ceramics originals, comics, books, DVDs (most brand new and factory-sealed, including lots of out-of-print cult gems), LPs, magazines, toys, collectibles and wackiness.

2007 record-holder for Coffee Zombee mug to have traveled the farthest! Brent just sent me "pics of the Coffee Zombee mug I picked up at the Queechee Gorge antique mall. I was passing through... and happened across the cup. More appropriately I should say I happened across your booth. It was great (albeit odd) to see your collection of the strange amongst the left overs and knick knacks from peoples past. I hope to see more next year when we head that way. Thanks for the coffee, in a round about way!" Yer welcome, Brent, and enjoy! [Photo compliments of Brent]

A fine fellow named Brent out in Newbury Park, CA holds the record for carrying a cup o' Bissette ceramic craziness the furthest from its origin point, and kudos to Brent for letting me know, too.

Marge and I have done a bunch of ceramics this fall and winter, which I'll post photos of here once we get everyone's gifts to them. Don't want to give away any secrets here... but we've both been enjoying the making of these goodies, and it's been rare fun to be doing creative work with Marge, too.

All this stuff is happening at the White River Junction-based Tip Top Pottery studio, here's the link to Amy's happening joint -- check it out.

Though I've started toying with other kinds of painting subjects -- dinosaurs are a subject I've been playing with in new works, along with my own monsters and stuff -- and plan on working on some tiles, which cartoonists like James Kochalka and others have embraced wholeheartedly as a vehicle, I'm keeping all this on the level of play, and intend to keep it that way!

Here's a Moondog (Louis T. Hardin) mug I painted for my son Dan, one of his birthday gifts this December -- the lad turned 22, and I wanted to be sure he got something special, unlike anything else on Earth...

OK, well, there's tons more I'm thankful for, too. I'm overjoyed that two of my best buds, Mike Dobbs (G. Michael Dobbs) and Tim Lucas, got their pet book projects done and published this year -- and what books they are! More on those later this week, as I try to assess the best books of the year.

I'm glad Black Coat Press and I got the first volume of S.R. Bissette's Blur out this year; volumes two, three and four are in the works, thanks to computer aide from CCS alumni (and Blur book cover designer and good friend) Jon-Mikel Gates, and it's too bad I didn't get 'em out this year as originally planned. Computer woes and the surprise involvement with The Neil Gaiman Companion derailed that scheme, but only for a short while... there's more to come in 2008, which I'll get into once we reach next year!

Which brings me to the inevitable Happy New Year, one and all.

Be safe, be happy, be warm tonight, and make it safely into 2008!

SNOWjob!

Why, yes it is --

-- and we've already got 4 inches+ of snow here at 10 AM. It's supposed to turn to shit -- excuse me, "wintery mix", meaning snow, sleet, freezing rain and heavy winds -- for its final 4-9 inches (!) later today or tonight, so Marge and I planned the whole weekend around not leaving the house once today, except to wander outside in our boots and savor the storm knowing there's a warm house and two cats to return to.

Stay warm, comfy and secure today and tonight, one and all; enjoy the snow, as best you can.

I've held off until today to post a link to the delicious ongoing "Favorite DVDs of 2007" lists Tim Lucas has been posting over at the Video Watchblog -- but here it is, because my list will be up later today!

Yep, my own "Baker's Dozen" list of favorite (not best, mind you, favorite) DVDs of the year will be online later today, exclusively at the Watchblog, along with hail and hearty Kim Newman's own picks for pix available outside of Region 1 (US) markets.

Already on the Watchblog are the 'favorite DVD' lists of fellow Video Watchdog contributors Sam and Rebecca Umland, Shane M. Dallmann, Richard Harland Smith, David Kalat, Sheldon Inkol, Bill Cooke and Jazzy John Charles, and they're all worth a read, if only to cobble together your own 'favorite,' 'must see' or 'must have' list for the New Year.

I'll be accompanying my Watchblog list with two Myrant 'Favorite DVD' lists this week: Favorite Animation DVDs of 2007, and Favorite Series DVDs of 2007 -- all I couldn't fit into my Watchblog Baker's Dozen (though I make mention of all, sneaky piker that I am).

I've earned my spot in Shadows Over New England, the upcoming book from Scott Goudsward & David Goudsward.

If I can lay hands on some of my Green Mountain Cinema files from my old computer (a dubious proposition made more possible thanks to considerable and sorely-needed aid last weekend from Jon-Mikel Gates), I'll be sending David more info on horror films made in my native state -- but in any case, keep an eye out for the spring release of their book, folks.

Which brings me to what I should be doing today -- back to the Neil Gaiman Companion project. I poured all I had into it the last two days, enjoyed an afternoon 'catch-up' phone chat with my old amigo Charles Vess yesterday, and will continue to work and chip away on my part of the book (and revision/addition/correction suggestions to the chapter co-authors Hank Wagner and Chris Golden may steer my way) today and tomorrow before engaging all cylinders with our final week of the semester at the Center for Cartoon Studies. A heady week ahead, plus -- my son Daniel's 22nd birthday!

Have a Safe Sunday, all...

Visiting Neil, Part II:
Beowulf, Artifice, War

I awoke this morning with images from Beowulf erupting in my head, always a good sign with a film that it hit me at a primal level. The primal 'winner' of November to date remains Sean Penn's excellent Into the Wild, a truly great film that kept me awake for two nights afterwards (I could not shake the movie).

Beowulf's images that bubbled up front and center, though, were odd: it's not the story, the narrative peaks, that malinger. It's the crystalline clarity of digital imagery, the microscopic fidelity to manufactured reality, that seemed to most haunt my unconsciousness: the compelling intensity of the simulcrum, the virtual humunculi, that inhabit the film. The 'big moments' aren't what thrust themselves to the fore: it's the intimate details of Beowulf's face, of the simulation of flesh, that peppered my dreams.

All cinema is artifice. It's the nature of the medium, the persistence of vision we grow up with sustaining the alchemy of light, successive images projected at a proper frames-per-second rate, and our mind's fluid sustenance of that into movement. But Beowulf is a new artifice, the latest in the CGI realm's reinvention of invented realities, and the 3D viewing experience pushed that further on an organic, animal level for me.

Digital projection (and the creation of digital images) works differently, and my mind is reacting to seeing in a new way -- I'm referring to seeing in a new way as a biological function, not a response to Beowulf's vision or aesthetic, which is secondary to how my eye/mind is reacting to a sustained new viewing experience of a wholly new nature. I cannot react to Beowulf without acknowledging this more fundamental aspect of the new reality of seeing movies on the big screen:

The magic lantern, reinvented.

More later...
_________________

I was also awakened at one point last night dreaming about the night of my draft lottery back in the early '70s, amplified horribly. I fear for the resurrection of the draft, an inevitable consequence of how badly President Bush and his cronies have manhandled, misused and stretched the volunteer military to a break-point. The dream was likely prompted in part by Marge and I seeing Dartmouth's production of Hair in the Moore Theater, in part by my ongoing fears for my son and his generation: an old mirror restored, the new reality's urgency.

My son Dan's childhood friend Chris Whitney is in Iraq now, and has been for years; that's never far from my mind. "How did we allow this to happen again?" -- we have so shafted our sons and daughters with our shared complicity in this madness.

More evidence of our military straining under the gross (I would and have said 'abusive') incompetence of our Commander in Chief continues to simmer in the news, the first news story in que on the computer this AM.

It resonates with the splinters from that mid-morning dream; the signs on the highway en route to Neil's house offered hand-painted odes to "our troops," which Neil noted yesterday has changed many times in its wording over the past years. Here, in the idyll of Neil's wonderful home and hospitality, the heart of the mid-American continent, I wake and worry for my son and for Chris and their time in manufactured hell, present (Chris) and projected (Dan), compliments of our Commander in Chief and his cabal.

Have a great Saturday; we will, I hope... Neil's making pancakes, off I go to breakfast...