Congrats, Lauren!

CCS Grad Online Animation Now Editors Choice on Slate.com

Hey, dig it: CCS pioneer class graduate Lauren O'Connell (whose thesis project/comic Strays was a real gem and heartbreaker) completed

the illustrations for a bit of animation for an amigo, animated by her friend for this site, which you can view by clicking on this link (careful -- I couldn't load it on my home computer, but screened it at CCS's higher-end systems. If you can safely access it -- Enjoy!)

The animation, entitled "Help, I Hate My Boyfriend's Dog" is a treat.

And this morning at about 1:35 AM, Lauren posted the news that "the video was picked as the editors choice for on slate.com!"

For some reason, its appearance on Slate.com (scroll down to the mid-screen pic "Slate V: Dear Prudence: The Dog" today) plays fine on my system, so

here's the direct link to Slate V -- Lauren and friend's "Dear Prudence: The Dog" is in the "Also at Slate" menu at the right. Enjoy!

Congrats to you and your friend, Lauren, and way to knock one out of the park!

Tuesday Post-MoCCA Post

I'm hosting an impromptu post-MoCCA CCS BBQ at Hacienda Bissettios this afternoon, so I'll know more soon, but I figured it was fair to share with y'all what little I've heard about the CCS experience in the Big Apple this past weekend.

Post-MoCCA reports are trickling in. Concerning the anthology Sundays (which, appropriately enough, sold out midday on Sunday), proud poppa James Sturm wrote, "...I was only there Saturday and from what I saw Sundays was certainly one of the 'Buzz books' of the show. I had folks taking it out of their bags and asking me, 'have you seen this yet?'"

Sundays co-creator/co-editor Chuck Forsman writes, "...I think I speak for everyone in saying the show went incredibly well. I know at the Sundays table we were doing steady business all weekend except towards the end of Sunday after we sold out of Sundays. We did sell a lot of other books too. Our work has only just begun. Since we are all out of Sundays we gotta make more! so you may see us doing it again this week...."

This workload includes my standing order for 100 copies to sell via my website, which may not happen until later in the summer due to ye Sundays editors busy summer schedules and travel. Hey, these folks have lives, you know!

Chuck continues, "I don't want to speak for One Percent Press, but from where I was sitting, it seemed like they had an awesome show as well." One Percent Press, natch, is JP Coovert and friends's venue (see JP's interview here, last week).

Hopefully, we'll hear from more CCSers soon about their MoCCA experience.

You'll hear more later from me on who-knows-what tomorrow. Have a great Tuesday, one and all...

CCS News & Graduation Pix

Some week-after-graduation Center for Cartoon Studies news, links and pix:

* CCS will be at MoCCA this year once again (I won't; my convention days/daze be over). Lots of amazing comics this year from both classes, and a great chance to meet a number of CCS's best, brightest and most mobile. The CCS table will be B5, a prime location near the front door of the first room.

* CCS graduation pix are popping up online at last! The one heading this blog post was clicked by Joe Lambert, catching a sweet view of the CCS graduating class and faculty pose (that's me in the way back, to the right, third cat with the hat). For better shots of yours truly in a monkey suit and, far more important, shots of the event, Mutts creator and graduation keynote speaker Patrick McDonnell, and much more, you'll be relieved to know

Joe just posted some great graduation photos here, along with the two pages he and James Sturm created as the cover to the first CCS graduation 'facebook,'

and Joe posted more pix here. Enjoy!

* The local newspaper coverage was sweet.

Valley News staff writer Sonia Scherr's coverage is here, offering accurate assessments of the speeches offered by Patrick McDonnell and senior Ross Wood Studlar, for those interested.

* My old Brattleboro amigo, Rutland Herald reporter, and Trees & Hills Comic Group co-founder Daniel Barlow popped up at the graduation, too, and Dan, Cat and I enjoyed a chat over some beer after the Saturday festivities were over.

Here's Dan's excellent article in The Rutland Herald on the graduation (which sports one bit of misinformation: I met James Sturm looooong before the Bennington College summit; that is, however, where James and I first seriously discussed my teaching at CCS), and

you might want to check out The Rutland Herald's opinion column on the CCS graduation, too.

* The online comics interview site Indie Spinner Rack has posted their second CCS program,

the interview with James Sturm, and it's a great one -- check it out, here!

(And, on the odd chance you missed prior posts, here's the link to my interview with Indie Spinner Rack.)

That's what I've got this morning.

Have a great Wednesday, one and all...

Morning, all --

The Center for Cartoon Studies graduation is today.

Here's the talk I'm giving the students and their families this morning;
I'm counting on all of them being too busy to have time to read my blog before heading out to the morning brunch, where they'll be subjected to this -- surely, once is enough
(but at least enjoying some of White River's finest dining at the Tip-Top Cafe).

This one's dedicated to a few folks:

To my daughter Maia and my son Daniel;
to James and Michelle;
and to the great Joe Kubert,
for making dreams come true, and showing me the path.

Enjoy -- and have a great weekend.
_____________________

I’m going to direct my talk today to the parents as much as the graduates and fellow CCSers, so please, bear with me.

All we have are our stories.

When I was a kid, growing up in northern VT, there were things we took for granted:

America was the greatest nation in the world -- General Motors made the best cars -- Chrysler, Pan-Am and TWA and Howard Johnson would be around forever, and -- stories and comic books were kid stuff.

Comicbooks were for us KIDS, not for grown-ups.

It was tough being the only kid in Duxbury, VT who wanted to draw comic books for a living.

My next-door neighbor, Mitch Casey, was a couple of years older than me; he was the first person I ever saw draw a comic book -- tiny home-made, stapled pamphlets, made by folding 8 1/2 x 11 paper over, drawing the comic page by page on each side, and selling them for milk money at school.

Mitch taught me to draw comics, but as he got older, he abandoned our collaborative comic-creating efforts -- girls and sports were more interesting.

I kept drawing.

I kept making up stories.

My father, a military man who served in four branches of the service and worked hard all his life, blue-collar through and through, had a tough time with this.

Drawing never seemed a very manly thing to do, and how was his son ever going to earn a living doing something so silly? My older brother and younger sister volunteered for the military -- that made perfect sense to my father -- but I kept drawing, against all opposition and odds and attempts to steer me to more adult concerns, and this never, ever made sense to him.

In 1968, when I was thirteen, it just didn’t make sense to want to draw comic books all one’s adult life. I might as well have said I wanted to live on one of the moons of Saturn.

In 1968, if I wanted to try and turn a friend on to what I considered the best in comics, the best I could do was loan him or her a stack of worn comicbooks, saying, “These really are great!” Nine times out of ten, these would be superhero comics -- most likely Marvel superhero comics -- and these were still easily dismissed as ephemeral, childish things.

In 1968, there were no comic BOOKS, the term ‘graphic novel’ didn’t even exist yet. TIN TIN was still relatively unknown in America, and the only evidence of manga in America were Saturday morning TV shows like ASTRO BOY, adapted from Osamu Tezuka’s classic MIGHTY ATOM manga series (though we didn’t know that).

In 1968, when the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and great futurist and science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke joined to make the ultimate sf film, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, they populated their future with artifacts and trademarks of the American corporations certain to survive into the 21st Century: Pan-Am, Howard Johnson, and so on.

Like I said, we knew in our heart of hearts those American business icons would last forever.

A lot has changed.

Every single American corporation that appeared in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY no longer exists.

Chrysler no longer makes the best cars in the world -- in fact, they haven’t done so in decades. Chrysler is effectively no more, as of this past week; a shadow of its former self, a clutch of corporate assets to be sold off piecemeal by its current German owner.

But comic books are still alive and well. Comic books have been the wellspring of most of our summer blockbuster movies, habitually breaking opening weekend boxoffice records and now one of America’s major export successes.

In fact, America’s #1 export is no longer tangible goods -- steel, cars, manufactured goods -- but STORIES. Stories are the 21st Century’s coin of the realm, of the world.

Stories, characters, imaginary concepts, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES: movies, TV programming, music, novels, comicbooks and graphic novels. Many of America’s most lucrative exports derived from intellectual properties are adaptations of comic books and graphic novels, primary among them movie adaptations.

Comic books have grown up -- not only are there adult comics, but comic BOOKS -- GRAPHIC NOVELS -- have, for the first time in history, as of this past winter, eclipsed comicbooks in gross dollar sales. They are now in every book store, a known quantity, a desirable commodity.

This was unimaginable, a pipe dream, in 1968. But a generation dreamed -- the Will Eisners, Harvey Kurtzmans Jack Kirbys and Joe Kuberts of the world -- and dreams can come true.

But every generation has to MAKE their own dreams come true.

Every generation has to tell their stories to the next, TEACH the next, so that they can tell their stories -- so that they can dream, and realize their dreams.

A lot has changed.

For me, life changed when I attended the first comics college in North America, the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc. in Dover, New Jersey. I went in the fall of 1976, a little over 30 years ago; I was a member of the first class, ever.

For me, life changed when my father, diehard blue-collar military veteran that he was and still is, met the founder of that school, Joe Kubert -- a man’s man, a military vet, and a hard worker who raised a large family (five kids!) on what he’d earned drawing comic books -- and suddenly, what I’d wanted to do all my life made SENSE to my father. It WAS possible. It WAS -- well, OK.

I owe so much to Joe, and to his school, to my Kubert School classmates and everyone who was there. It was a dream of Joe’s to pass on all he and his generation knows to US -- and what a gift it was, and remains.

It is perhaps the greatest gift I’ve ever received, since my parents gave me life itself. Joe and his peers told us their stories, and taught us to tell our own. Thank you, Joe.

I was already publishing my first work -- earning my first paychecks -- before I finished my first year in that two-year program. I graduated from North America’s first-ever cartooning college in the spring of 1978. I was entering the comics industry in a time of great turmoil and collapse, but my peers and I made our way into the industry, bit by bit, drawing by drawing, story by story, job by job, and by the 1980s we were part of a generation that changed comics. We made our mark, as best we could. We earned livings and raised families.

My God, my daughter graduated from high school in that once-faraway future year -- 2001!

My son graduated from high school four years later.

Who would have thought, in 2001, I would even have a daughter? A son?

And that I would be able to raise them both on what I earned telling my stories and drawing comic books?

A lot has changed.

I told my stories, and those I shared with creators I was lucky enough to work with; I made my mark in comics for three decades, and thought it was time to move on.

But my work wasn’t done -- it was important to tell my stories and pass on all I know to the next generation.

How, then, could I resist the invitation, from James Sturm and Michelle Ollie, to teach the first-ever class at North America’s only other cartooning college?

Well, I couldn’t resist. And here we all are, today.

We have our stories, one and all.

It has been my great privilege to teach, draw with, and get to know your children -- now adults, all -- the pioneer, first-ever class at the SECOND comics college in North America, the Center for Cartoon Studies. It has been a great, grand adventure for all of us, and no other class will experience what THEY have experienced, accomplish what THEY have accomplished.

They have stories they alone know, and can tell.

Many of them have already shared their stories, their art. They have self-published, here, many comics. Many of them have already earned their first paychecks as cartoonists and illustrators, and have completed or launched work on their first graphic novels.

They are part of the first American generation to grow up without any negative baggage attached to comic books. They are the first American generation to grow up with ADULT comics, GRAPHIC NOVELS, a part of their landscape, a reality rather than a dream.

They know there is nothing silly about telling stories. They value stories, the greatest American commodity today.

They are part of the first American generation in which intangibles -- stories, characters, ideas, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES -- are America’s #1 export, the fuel that drives the engines of pop culture, and they -- these students, these graduates -- are FULL OF IDEAS.

They have stories, and will make and tell many more. They know HOW TO PUT THEM DOWN ON PAPER, into digital space and the world, they have the necessary knowledge and tools to make their way in the world.

What they have, today, is worth more than Chrysler and Pan-Am and Howard Johnson, worth more than American cars or steel. In the 21st Century, stories are worth more than all that.

Your faith in them, their art, their stories -- in their dreams -- is commendable and wonderful.

They are entering as uncertain and difficult a world as any prior generation has. That’s scary, yes, but they are armed with their own unique stories and skills, their own unique visions and voices, and with the community they have formed here, with one another.

They are better prepared for the 21st Century than any of we who grew up in the 20th Century -- believe in them, because they believe in themselves -- and they are RIGHT to.

It’s THEIR world now. They have stories to tell. I want to see, hear, read them all.

It has been an honor to teach you, to know you, to work with you, to draw with you, to see you here, today, with your families. I look forward to knowing you, drawing with you, reading YOUR stories, YOUR comics and graphic novels, for years to come -- for the rest of my life.

May you know one another, love one another, dream and draw and change the world together, from this day forward. May you read one another’s comics for the rest of your lives, and teach all you know to the next generation.

YOU are the first graduating class of the Center for Cartoon Studies, and we applaud you.

And to Think it All Started Here...

Yep, that's James Sturm and I moving his studio across the street to what was, in the summer of 2005, the new Center for Cartoon Studies building. Hard to believe it's been two years, but here we are -- the first graduating class, about to graduate -- tomorrow.

It's been a heady, at times heavy week at the Center for Cartoon Studies. We've completed the senior thesis review sessions, and I'm savoring a little breather between that intense block of work (the prep in particular, though I loved reading and re-reading the thesis projects -- pretty stunning group of cartoonists going out into the big, bad world this Saturday!). Tomorrow is graduation, and I've got a little work to do to prep for that.

The intensity has been in part revolving around the mounting finality of this transitional period. It's been sad to say goodbye to some folks, and that will accelerate tomorrow, as many of the folks who have been absolutely central to our day-to-day lives together are leaving after commencement to their respective family homes. I had lunch with Rich Tommaso yesterday; Rich has become a great friend, we've bonded over a number of shared interests and Rich was an invaluable part of the Drawing Workshop I helmed for the Freshmen class this spring. Rich and graduate Caitlin Plovnick are moving to Brooklyn on Sunday, and I sure am going to miss them. Of course, we'll all keep in touch, and be seeing each other in the years to come, but the reality of the community of the past two years going through inevitable, here-and-now change that necessarily revolves around the departure of so many key community members is a real roller-coaster ride.

That said, part of the transition, too, is the evidence of the new incoming freshman class of 2009 -- CCS discussion board posts from incoming fall students has been ongoing all month, and soon we'll see a new community arrive, merging with the standing CCS community and bringing all the excitement, change and transformation that implies.

Ah, CCS; I'm now part of a college community, and all that entails. I love it.

______________

I saw Paul Verhoeven's new film Zwartboek/Black Book last night, and I can't recommend it highly enough. This is Verhoeven's best film in years, and a genuine return to form -- what The Pianist was for Roman Polanski, Zwartboek/Black Book is for Verhoeven.

For fellow Verhoeven fans (Steve Perry, take heed!), it's absolutely critical to note that this film isn't just his return to his Dutch roots, but also reunites Verhoven and writer Gerard Soeteman, who was absolutely central to Verhoeven's often brilliant pre-Hollywood body of work. In fact, Soeteman was Verhoeven's primary collaborative partner in the whole of the director's pre-Hollywood career arc, scripting and co-scripting what remain Verhoeven's best films, beginning with Verhoeven's debut feature Wat zien ik/Business Is Business (1971) and blossoming with Turks fruit/Turkish Delight (1973) and Keetje Tippel (1975), which in many ways provides a blueprint for Zwartboek, as did Soeteman/Verhoeven's breakthrough international hit Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange (1977). Zwartboek is almost a perfect fusion of Keetje Tippel and Soldaat van Oranje, chronicling as it does the often harrowing experiences of a Dutch Jewish woman (Carice van Houten, giving a powerhouse performance) struggling to survive WW2 in Holland, and the convoluted tangle of loyalty, deceit, devotion and corruption that entails.

Soeteman and Verhoeven built upon the success of Soldaat van Oranje with the excellent Spetters (1980), the marvelously delirious De Vierde Man/The Fourth Man (1983, which also introduced actor Thom Hoffman to international audiences; Hoffman features prominently in Black Book), and concluded this ripe collaborative streak with Flesh+Blood (1985, aka The Rose and the Sword), which sadly led to an acrimonious split of the team as Verhoeven rushed to Hollywood and launched that phase of his career by directing an episode of HBO's The Hitchhiker ("Last Scene," 1986) and the classic Robocop (1987).

That Soeteman and Verhoeven are back together is something to celebrate; that they are also hard at work at a second 21st Century collaborative effort, Azazel, is tremendous news, and promises Verhoeven may at last be free of the restraints Hollywood placed on his creative life (his last American film, Hollow Man, 2000, was derivative and disappointing at best). As already noted, this new work also reunites Verhoeven with Dutch actors from his classic Soeteman era: Thom Hoffman (who was Herman, the central object of desire in De Vierde Man), Derek de Lint (Alex in Soldaat van Oranje), Dolf de Vries (Turks fruit, Jack in Soldaat van Oranje, Dr. de Vries in De Vierde Man), etc. are familiar faces to Verhoeven fans, and it's exciting to see the chemistry onscreen anew.

All this makes Black Book the theatrical sleeper of 2007 thus far. Don't miss Zwartboek/Black Book if it's playing near you, and I'll post a review proper next week when I start squirting those overdue Cine-Ketchup packets all over the keyboard. It stands, along with Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others and El Laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth, as the best film I've seen thus far this year.

_______________

Sorceror's Apprentice: Bush, Gonzales (NY Times photo)

Speaking of "loyalty, deceit, devotion and corruption," in real life,

this week's Congressional testimony yesterday of James B. Comey, former Deputy Attorney General under John Ashcroft, was a real jaw-dropper

and demonstrates the monstrous extremes that the Bush White House pursued to carry out its illegal, secret spying program against the people of the United States. I'm no Ashcroft fan, mind you, but it's startling to see how vast the ethical gulf between Ashcroft's reign and Gonzales's dynasty in the Justice Department really is, and how far we've fallen.

If you're clueless on this, it's time to catch up ("...an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source...") --

-- there's no more damning evidence of the corruption rampant in the Justice Department, and how irresponsibly current Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's behavior has been (and how fiercely he has exercised and exercises his loyalty to his President, placing that above US law and our Constitution).

Bye, bye, Wolfowitz (if you have the computer/high-speed access, also check out the two 'related videos' on the left menu bar at the Yahoo News site, particularly President Bush's gobsmacked incredulity); hello whatever next uber-corrupt crony President Bush appoints --

-- and we wonder (like children) why American credibility is so shot in the eyes of the world.

Have a great Friday, one and all...

Top o' the World to You...

Monday Musings

There's a little more on the Ascutney climb to share with you all this morning, largely thanks to the arrival of photos from the trip itself and scans (compliments of CCS no-longer-just-a-freshmen Bryan Stone) of the two pages I drew between 3:30 and 5 AM the morning after. A little explanation is in order, though, before you get a peek at those two pages.

Here's Bryan's photo of the whole CCS hiking party last Wednesday atop the fire tower on Mount Ascutney -- from left to right, Chuck Forsman, Ross Wood Studlar, Dane Martin, Alex Kim, Sean Morgan, Peter Money and yours truly -- since he snapped the photo, Bryan is absent from this shot.

However, I know Peter and Sean took some photos up there, too, so hopefully we'll have a complimentary shot featuring Bryan up on the blog before the week is out.

As you can see from these two photos, it was a grand and glorious day weather-wise. Bryan posted his pix online, and

you can see them all here, followed by more photos from the CCS Montreal trip (including more Drawn & Quarterly office shots).

Now, like I said, a little explanation is in order this morning.

You see, the following two pages of Bissette comics art are the concluding two pages of an epic battle James Sturm orchestrated and conducted in his CCS cartooning class two or so weeks ago. I only know it as Fight Comics -- no direct correlation to the Fight Comics of the Golden Age, that I know of -- and it looked to me (correct me if I'm wrong, CCSers) like every member of the freshmen class created a character for the brawl, and via some arcane democratic or tyrannical system I'm not privy to, an order was voted upon, raffled, designated or divined for each artist and their respective character to have a one-to-two page face-off, with the winner of each match then going on to the next match, until by process of creative collaborative elimination only two characters were left.

In the end, James asked me if I'd draw the concluding page(s) -- in essence, end the battle, conclude the climax, decide the winner and hence get James off the hook if anyone was unhappy with the resolution (note: "It's Bissette's fault!" has now entered a new era of relevance and validity for a whole new generation). It was also, of course, an honor, but also a duty. A duty to CCS, and to James, and to all who ply the inky trade. My Captain called, and I must answer. My Commander-in-Chief beckoned, and I obeyed. The orders were given, the sails were set, the die was cast, the shit hit the fan.

I was handed a stack of odd-sized photocopies, and instructed to resolve the seemingly unresolvable, pitching a character named "Bryan Stone" -- shown in the character design sheet lifting his glasses and blasting deadly light rays from his eyes, like Cyclops in the X-Men -- against a character both adorable and ungainly, the 'Baby With Adult Legs.' The kid sure is cute, but man, those hairy adult male legs just put you right off your Maypo, bunky.

[Photo: The real Bryan Stone and Joe Lambert; photo by Becca Lambert.]

Now, Bryan Stone, as you may have determined this late in this morning's post, is a real guy.

He's an adorable guy, in fact, just as sweet-natured, benevolent, kind, attentive and mild-mannered as any person I've ever met (and a heckuva cartoonist, too). Bryan Stone was created by -- well, his parents. The real Bryan Stone, that is.

However, the deadly-eye-ray-blasting Bryan Stone was created by

JP Coovert,

also one hell of a cartoonist and a fellow no-longer-just-a-freshman at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Baby With Adult Legs was created by

Joe Lambert,

another motherfucker of a cartoonist and no-longer-just-a-freshman CCSer.

[Photo: The real JP Coovert, photo by Joe Lambert.]

So, this is what James handed to me. The fate of two comics characters just out of the incubator, barely in the world more than a week but already battle-tested and toughened by ink-and-paper warfare -- babes in the woods, yes (literally, in the case of Baby With Adult Legs), but already trench-war-hardened vets.

But it was not just their fate I held in my hands, but that of their creators -- cuddly Joe Lambert and huggable JP Coovert -- and, damn it, that of the real, flesh-and-blood Bryan Stone! A man's man, cruelly thrust (by JP) into a world of panels, pages, pus, puke and panic!

How would I resolve this conundrum without inflicting undue (due is OK) agony on any one, maybe two of these virginal young cartoonists, aching to pop their inky cherries against the calloused rubber condom wall of the real world?

How would I end this senseless violence, this epochal combat, without letting down one or more of these budding geniuses, who are so eager to spew their creative juices into the collective womb of our open, festering brainpans?

How could I condone the sadistic, no doubt visually glorious murder of either Bryan Stone, death-ray-eye-conduit though he be, or Baby With Adult Legs, the toddler on ten pins, the Titan Tyke, the spittle-flecked sprinter?

How?

How?

How?

Now, there's one other player in this drama -- he-who-must-never-be-forgotten by we who ply the inky trade here at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and most of all not to be overlooked by we who teach the inky trade at CCS.

And that, my friends, is Inky Solomon.

What can I possibly say about CCS's spiritual leader, the legendary cartoonist and teacher Inky Solomon, that has not been said before (and better) by others?

Though the pen-and-ink Inky has been delineated (and co-created, in his way) by James Sturm and Seth, legendary cartoonists in their own right, Inky Solomon has nestled into the souls of all who dwell at CCS.

He has swept away the pine needles and softened the stone floors of our hearts, carefully prepared the kindling we all harbor and built a warming little fire in our bellies, fueling the comics jones we share until it erupts into raging bonfires of creative life! Inky is our Dolemite, making of us all Human Tornadoes; he is our beatific Buddha, our jazzy Jesus, our infinite Inky!

So, troubled though I was by the task placed within my hands, stern though the Sturm mission was now yolking my sturdy shoulders, fragile be the lives laid in my sweaty palms, frightful the soul-crushing potential of any misstep I might take, I turned to our own CCSolomon, Inky -- the Inky within.

I consulted my inner Inky, the calm core of peace and tranquility that a half-century of life cartooning has coalesced, and determined the following:

1. I would not 'decide' anything. Life would decide.

2. If Joe Lambert showed up Wednesday morning for the Mount Ascutney hike, Baby With Adult Legs would win.

3. If either JP (creator of Bryan Stone, comics character) or Bryan Stone (comics character incarnate) showed up Wednesday morning for the hike, Bryan Stone would win.

4. If either Joe and JP, or Joe and Bryan, showed up, the battle would win (in typical comicbook fashion) in a draw -- a draw, with neither winning nor losing, but both ending up in a happy, wonderful, heavenly place, except there would be no My Little Ponies there (surely, a circle of hell is inhabited by those little bastards).

5. If none of the trio showed up, both characters would die horrible, agonizing, extremely graphic and terribly grueling deaths.

Thus it was decided; thus Wednesday morning came and went, and thus this was the fateful conclusion I wrote, drew and lettered Thursday morning, as the sun rose and the new day began:

Note: Joe Lambert and James Sturm are already working on scanning the complete Fight Comic and posting it in some form online soon. I'll keep you posted (pun intended), and I'm as eager as any of you to see/read it all!

PS: This is the final week of the Spring semester here at the Center for Cartoon Studies -- a fateful week for us all. Graduation is this coming Saturday, our first graduation ever. We've already had some heartbreak, some tears and fond farewells as some of our number move on into their summers or into their lives, away from CCS and White River Junction and this growing creative community; we're already into the momentous evaluation of the senior final thesis projects, with two full days ahead of 9 AM to 5 PM one-on-one assessments. It's a heady week here -- send your best to the CCS students, those with us, those departed; those moving into their new lives in the real world, those moving into their second year; those coming new to the fold and experience this coming fall.

We're at a crossroads and the shifting of a new axis as definitive, new and unexplored as that we encountered at the very beginning of the school's existence in September of 2005.

Wish us all luck, please.

Here's to CCS, one and all!

May Inky be with you all -- have a great Monday!

PPS: My old friend Neil Gaiman has posted some lovely photos and a few comments about this past weekend's historic wedding of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie

here, so enjoy.

Nice to know they're wed at last, and much love to both, where ever they are.

Inkslingers, Assemble!

Compliments of curator Idoline Duke of

the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, VT

comes this tasty portrait from

this past Wednesday's VT cartoonists gatherum in Burlington.

From left to right, back row: Jeff Danziger, James Kochalka, and yours truly; front row: Harry Bliss, Ed Koren, James Sturm. A fine time was had by all, and the dinner afterworks (at the Pacific Rim eatery) was delish and great fun.
_______________

Zombies Bios

Here's the lineup of fellow American cartoonists I appear alongside in the upcoming Accent UK Zombies anthology. More info & images as May -- and the anthology's publication -- approaches!

Daniel Bissette is a native Vermonter (b 1985) and has been drawing, writing and making music of one kind or another (drums, guitar, etc.) all life. His art appears in an Italian book on Lucio Fulci, onscreen in Lance Weiler's new feature film Head Trauma, on its companion alternative soundtrack CD Cursed, and his first self-published zine was Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits (2006). He lives in Brattleboro, VT, DJs for the local radio station, and he and his dad Steve jammed on a piece for the mini-comic Trees & Hills and Friends before re-teaming for this anthology.

Chuck Forsman currently attends The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont where he researches how to sleep less and draw more. Visit

http://mcbuck.wordpress.com.

Jaci June is a student of the Center for Cartoon Studies, and a former resident of southern California. Comix for Jaci are what brains are for zombies: vital sustenance.

Sean Morgan: Born a cowboy, raised a Creole, forever a Yankee. There's no button Mr. Morgan won't push. His artwork (including the monster cover/splash) graces the “Jersey Devil” minicomic packaged with the Heretic DVD release of The Last Broadcast.

Bob Oxman was born in Ohio and raised in New Hampshire where he discovered his three loves: comic books, skateboarding, and beer. Bob started drawing comics in math class using graphing paper. At the University of California Santa Barbara, Bob and Mark Smith cofounded the Comic Book Creator’s Co-op, creating comics published in both campus newspapers and teaching a popular colloquium on graphic novels during their senior year. After college, Bob drifted through a series of uninspiring occupations (temping at a gel implants corporation, working for an insurance company, etc.), eventually moving back home to NH to attend classes at The Center for Cartoon Studies. Bob is currently hard at work on Smuttynose, a macabre retelling of the infamous Smuttynose Island, Maine axe murders of 1873, and he brews several fine beers featuring comic labels, as he works professionally in art crime prevention at the Hood Museum of Art for Dartmouth College.

Against his wishes, Morgan Pielli was born in Connecticut. Here he began creating comics of dubious quality from the tender age of seven. At age twelve his cartoons began appearing in the school newspaper; and the tragic course he had set was clear. But in an unexpected moment of weakness, Morgan decided that a classical art education was needed. After four years of painting pictures of squares bigger than his head, Morgan physically pried a BFA from the cold unfeeling hands of Bard College president Leon Botstein. Dr. Botstein shook his fist and cursed Morgan, vowing to someday have his revenge.Currently Morgan resides in Vermont where he attends the Center for Cartoon Studies. His cartoons “The Dancing Paperclip of Tormented Souls” and “Morgan's Guide to a Fruitful Life” are read by several people world-wide and enjoyed by nearly as many. Morgan's work can be found at

http://morganpielli.rated-arr.net

if you're into that sort of thing.

Jeremiah Piersol is a 2002 graduate of Art Center of College of Design, Pasadena , California (Bachelors of Fine Art). He is currently studying cartooning at The Center for Cartoon Studies, White River Junction, VT. His past endeavors including interning at the The Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA, and volunteer work at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA. and The Water Street Rescue Mission, Lancaster, PA; he was born in Lancaster. Jeremiah’s interests include Art in all forms, comics, quantum physics, paranormal research, post-modern theory, and popular culture.

Denis St. John (b 1981) heralds from most of the United States (California, New Orleans, Washington D.C., the Midwest, etc.). Denis was a local children’s show host in Indiana and co-host for a midnight horror show, often playing the creature for the creature feature, alongside the very real and cranky Dr. Calamari. Denis is currently a student at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, and is trying to move on with his life after the glamour of children’s show host fame has faded.

B.C. Sterrett was born and raised in Ogden, Utah. His ongoing comic strip "The Sweetest of Dreams" has been published by Young American Comics, in entertainment rags like Melting Music and The Salt Shaker, and various other school papers, zines, and newsletters. He acts as founder and current director of the Lost Media Archive Museum and Library, salvaging and saving forgotten and obsolete media formats. Previous host of the long running "Oddity Rock Radio Show" on KWCR, he and has produced and hosted various broadcasts of rare and unusual music throughout the years (i.e. "Outsider Music" on live365.com). He is currently a student at The Center For Cartoon Studies, in White River Junction, VT. Contact: bcsterrett@gmail.com

_________

BTW, speaking of Blair and his creative and archival endeavors, the January 13th Lost Media Archive Museum and Library event I noted

in my January 13th post on this blog (scroll down to that day's posting, just below the glowering Varnae art) yielded photos by Blair's friend Janean Parker,

which are posted online here -- check 'em out!

Check it all out, please, and savor the beauty of it all.

Have a Great Saturday, One & All!

Road Trip!

Last night's roadtrip with James Sturm to Burlington was a great one. The panel at the Firehouse Gallery wasn't heavily attended, but there were more asses in the seats in the audience than on the panel, which is all that matters sometimes. Those who were there really wanted to be there, and a good time was had by all.

I'll tell ya about it tomorrow, when time is on my side.

Today, though, it ain't -- off to teach my two sessions, road trip (my fourth trip north a-way up VT Interstate 89 this week) with the CCS students to the Helen Day Art Center to savor the VT cartoonists exhibition, dinner on Montpelier for all (on CCS's ticket, thankfully), then I drive north again to pick up Marge at the Burlington Airport after the students head home. She's been away all week, visiting our grandchildren in Texas -- then, barring air flight delays, the long drive home (again) from Burlington to home, sweet home.

So, tomorrow, compadres, I'll write something of substance tomorrow. Today, I'm up, out and running! Have a great Thursday -- or at least an OK one...

VT Cartoonists Descend on Burlington, Wednesday Night, 2/21!


As promised, a follow up on this week's activities.

Yo, big time in the big town (Vermont's only city!) this week -- Wednesday, to be exact!

James Sturm and I are off to Burlington on the afternoon of February 21st for the Cartoonist’s Panel and Informal Public Cartoon/Comic Critique Session. The evening event will be moderated by James Sturm, Director of the Center for Cartoon Studies and cartoonist/graphic novelist; panelists will include Harry Bliss, Jeff Danziger, Ed Koren and yours truly.

The panel discussion is during the dinner hour, 5:30 pm – 7 pm, followed by an informal public critique session from 7–7:30pm. All this for just $5 at the door; we'll be in the Lorraine B. Good Room at the Firehouse Center.

This will be a special evening, so be there --

all the particulars are here, at the Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts site,

-- see you up on the second floor at 135 Church Street, next to City Hall in Burlington, VT, 05401.

Contact info:

Phone: 802-865-7166

Contact: Melinda Johns
mjohns@ci.burlington.vt.us

Directions: The Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts is located in downtown Burlington next to City Hall on the Church Street Marketplace,

and here's a map for those of you not familiar with Burlington who are planning to come!

For further information, please contact Idoline Duke, 802-253-8538, Director of Exhibitions, Helen Day Art Center --

for more info, including the poop on the current Fine Toon: The Art of Vermont Cartoonists exhibit at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, click here!

Upcoming events linked to the exhibit (including my April 17th lecture at the gallery) are cited here.

More info tomorrow!

Time Didn't Permit...

...me to post again yesterday. However, that's for the best, as I kept Mark so preoccupied, meaning he had less time to obsess over whatever bile Bill O'Reilly (the Morton Downey Jr. of the 21st Century!) is spilling these days. What a putz (Bill, not Mark).

Yesterday turned out to be a pretty intense day at the Center for Cartoon Studies, though all good. I was nowhere near a computer until, uh, now.

Anyhoot, CCS: Glad to be at last into the new semester, it's all open sailing ahead! The biggest treat of the day was the afternoon session with my amigo and fellow VT cartoonist Skip Morrow, whose two hours with the students proved most engaging and illuminating. Skip was a bit frustrated that he didn't get to everything he'd hoped to cover, but still, an excellent and comprehensive kick-off for the semester's impressive lineup of visiting artists -- thanks, Skip! For those of you interested, click on over to

Skip's website,

and enjoy.



Skip and I will also be at tonight's opening at

the Helen Day Art Center site,

from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. This follows up on last year's Brattleboro Museum exhibition of Vermont cartoonists for a more expansive gallery showing of Green Mountain cartoonists's work via "Fine Toon: The Art of Vermont Cartoonists," curated by the charming Idoline Duke. She scoured the state and has pulled together originals by yours truly, Skip, Alison Bechdel, Harry Bliss, Jeff Danziger, Gareth Hinds, James Kochalka, Edward Koren, Hal Mayforth, Frank Miller, Tim Newcomb, and my old buddy Rick Veitch and fellow inky compadre James Sturm.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the gallery has brought together. This is, bar none, the most extensive and comprehensive collection of Vermont cartooning in any gallery to date, and as such worthy of notice. Stowe's a great town to visit any time of year -- this should provide some of you a destination worth the trip.

Tonight's event is just the beginning; the show runs from January 26th through March 31st, and spills over a bit into my scheduled April 17th presentation on VT comics and graphic novels (more on that later). Anyhoot, for more info and a complete schedule, click

here,

or contact: Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, Vermont; phone: 802-253-6131.

Alas, no time as yet to get into Pan's Labyrinth; I'll get to that this weekend. Got a full day ahead, including breakfast with my son Dan -- so, later, gators!

PS: Mark, I haven't followed the Vermont case O'Reilly has made into a national hubbub. I read a bit about it last year in our local papers, but not enough to knowledgeably comment on it, much less get into the substance of it. All I know is a judge was more lenient than O'Reilly, torture-loving right-wing hate-mongering fuckhead he is, thinks the judge should have been. In the dreams of O'Reilly fans everywhere, they'd prefer to see O'Reilly on the bench, no doubt, doling out true American justice -- which would be fine in that (a) we wouldn't have to stomach his presence in the pop culture "journalism" landscape if he were a judge, 'cuz none of us would have heard of (much less from) him if he were a judge instead of a media screed monkey -- unless, that is, (b) you were the poor sonuvabitch who found themselves facing Judge O'Reilly. The man is an insufferable braggart and a bully. 'Nuff said!

CCS Musings: Week Two

The sense of community is palpable; I felt it as soon as I walked into the CCS/Colodny building (an hour before my class begins -- always a little early these days). James Sturm was sitting across from the entryway, visible through the main floor classroom, talking to the attentive gathering -- "Hey, Steve!", he called over, and I waved to him and all with a clear view of the doorway. James looked and sounded relaxed, clear, open; quite a contrast to our first week, when everything seemed claustrophobically overwhelming.

(Man, does this bring back memories of my first month at the Kubert School... but I won't bore you with that old-man-dribble today.)

As my amigos know, I have a tendency to over-prepare and become compulsively fascinated with the nuances and details. Of course, that's where the stories are -- "the devil's in the details," some say, but devil that I am, that's also where the meat and potatoes reside. I've been working hard at narrowing the focus of the comics studies class since winter, first intent on the goalpost of turning in a comprehensive syllabus back in March, thereafter targeting what, exactly, I could convey to the students in a mere fourteen sessions of 2 1/2 hours each.

Inevitably, material worthy of attention has to succumb to the editing process. I have marvelous resources for presentations on and discussion of the Bayoux Tapestry, illuminated Medieval manuscripts, the 15th and 16th Century Dances of Death (primarily Hans Holbein the Younger's 1538 edition and 1491/1500 The Danse Macabre of Women), etc., but something had to give.

Week One instead focused on the Japanese ghost scrolls (with a quick follow-through to manga and anime, showing a few examples of that culture's 17th and 18th Century intermediary works -- this improvised after Michelle Ollie mentioned to me that Christine hoped to show anime to her fellow students in later weeks), Mixtec codices (primarily the Cordex Nuttall, with a peek at the incomprehensible but exquisite Codex Borgia), Bosch triptyches, the European broadsheets (primarily the 'crime and punishment' broadsheets), Hogarth, Goya, and capping with a 'preview' of the comic strips to come via a presentation on Winsor McCay's work in comics and animation.

Of course, one of the first questions I was hit with: Why had I passed over the Bayeux Tapestry?

Bingo!

You do what you can, and what there's time for.

I've also tried to turn liabilities into strengths: for instance, I'm not yet versed in either scanning or powerpoint presentations (a learning curve I'm working on in hopes of debuting power-point next week), and my available stash of slides are genre-specific (selected and shot for my Journeys Into Fear horror comics history presentation). So this week's session -- covering relevent 19th Century landmarks, the origins of the American comic strip, transitional stages in bound comics (from Toppfer's 1830s 'picture-stories' to the first bound comic strip collections), and the birth of the comic book format -- became a hands-on, 'show and tell' session, with me placing as many hard copies of books and comics pages in their hands as the timeframe would accomodate. In a way, it's too bad I will be versed in powerpoint for next year, but realistically these old books couldn't handle annual handling... still, it was very cool to be able to place the books themselves in the students' hands.

As any comic reader knows, reading is as much a tactile sensory experience as it is visual: the feel, weight, smell of the books and pages are essential to the experience, a reality increasing reliance on digital presentations eschews. Touch is as essential to the drawing/creative process as thought and visual engagement with the work at hand, and that can be fueled and enhanced by hands-on contact with the published work of their precursors and those-who-walked-these-paths-before. Though they would only be able to spend a few minutes at best scanning the books, it was still hands-on, and I think that's vital.

Soooooo, I kept the slide show to a minimum (about ten slides) and instead platformed the class session around hands-on scrutiny of relevent books throughout the lecture. The new layout of the classroom -- a U-shaped looping of desks, with the open area naturally facing the instructor's lair (and slide/projection screen) -- meant my determination to find two samples of each key publishing landmark was worthwhile: I could hand each row a copy of the relevent publication to look at and pass down, looping back up to my end of the room.

This required a quick trip south into Massachusetts to powwow for lunch with one of my best friends in the world, G. Michael Dobbs aka Mike Dobbs. Mike and I had hoped to get together in any case -- Mike had his own agenda, wanting to bounce around ideas relevent to his current book project -- and the timing was solid for either this week's or next week's class. Mike has been teaching at the college level for years (he has far, far more experience than I!), and he came to our lunch meeting armed for bear, much to the benefit of my CCS class.

Between Mike's collection and my own, the students were able to check out a lot of goodies as we skipped like stones over water, touching on as many of the key 19th and early 20th Century comics landmarks as possible. My handouts put a quick overview of Rudolphe Toppfer's works into their hands (with a more expansive handout accessible for them to copy if they wished, and James came in to offer access to Comic Art #3's excellent illustrated article on Toppfer), along with two samples of Outcault's seminal Yellow Kid (October 1897 single panel and multi-panel offerings) and a photo of the first comics-derived movie star: Opper's Happy Hooligan as played by Vitagraph co-founder J. Stuart Blackton, circa 1897.

Better yet, I had two copies of contemporary reprints of Wilhelm Busch's works (Max & Moritz, 1862-5, and a later lesser-known work The Adventures of a Bachelor from the 1870s); three dramatic examples of the Life-spawned books from 1905-1911 (two of Uncle Sam creator James Montgomery Flagg's pint-sized satiric hardcovers and one of Charles-Dana Gibson's gloriously oversized pen-and-ink collections); examples of the two dominant comic strip collection book formats from the early 1900s (Fisher's Mutt and Jeff, McManus's Bringing Up Father); the Penguin reprint of Frans Masereel's Passionate Journey; three of Milt Gross's jazz-era gems (first editions and reprints); and much more.

Mike had thoughtfully offered, and suggested I include, examples of the late 1960s underground newspaper comix and comix inserts, including an original Air Pirates, which was indeed invaluable and instantly caught everyone's interest. These kinds of connect-the-dots-across-decades not only lend greater urgency to the earlier works that are the primary focus of a lecture like yesterday's -- it gives me an opportunity to touch upon how the pioneering work of prior generations may fuel the students' own work, an assertion that carries a bit more weight when one can spotlight (however briefly) a phenomenal cartoonist like Bobby London adapting the styles, kinetics and aesthetics of Segar and Herriman for his own work, and his own generation (thanks again, Mike!). I also steered them all to the strongest comic strips collections in the CCS library, and urged them to make time to sit down with the books and read some of the strips. Losing yourself in these marvelous early works is essential, and that's the best opportunity presently available here.

All in all, I think it was a good session. Now to get to work on next week's session... covering the whole of post-1919 comic strip history in 2 1/2 hours.

Hey, James, want to crash the party long enough to sing the praises of Roy Crane?
_____

If you don't check the comments posted on earlier blog posts, allow me to bring to your attention a significant followup to my Monday post on regional comics.

This from one of the participants in the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center 24-Hour Comics Marathon of August, a gent who also teaches comics in Keene: Marek Bennett, who is an active member in the (hyper-)active Keene Comics Group (who had already sponsored their own 24-Hour Comics session a couple months before the Brattleboro event -- and most of 'em came to that one, too!).

Steve --
Amazing synchronicity! On this very day (September 19th 2005), my new weekly comics series launched in the Keene (NH) Sentinel. It's called Monadnock History Comics, and will be archived at my website,

here.

I'm aiming it towards teachers, and developing some curriculum to guide students in creating their own local history comics; I'll just post this announcement and let the project's website explain itself.
-- Marek

Thanks, Marek, and I for one will be visiting your site often!

Marek's Monadnock History Comics are the relevent portion of the website, and I urge you to check 'em out

here.

History in the making, and a timely contemporary of the celebrated Texas History Movies I referred to on Monday.
____

Yesterday afternoon, Robyn Chapman broke out fragile copies of an Alaskan newspaper her grandmother had edited throughout the 1960s and '70s. The paper serviced a tiny community a-way up North, and Robyn's grandmother had graced every issue with a regular page-two comic strip of her own creation. It was crude but effectively delineated, and judging from the look of it (the labored look of some panels, thickness of the line, and pasted-in typed word balloon text) guessed that Robyn's grandmama had been working at times with those stubborn mimeo stencils of yore -- a sort of carbon-like non-paper that had to be cut into with metal tools, which stymied any but the most simplified and labored illustration efforts. I used to work with those damned things in my elementary and junior-high school years (1960s), which jived with the dates on a couple of the newspapers Robyn was showing us... my heart goes out to her grandmother!

Anyhoot, another cool example of regionalized comic strips, and a subject ripe for further research. Certain film archive and academic circles have embraced the preservation and study of home movies (16mm, 8mm, and Super 8) of prior generations, and this equitable turf in the comics medium is equally worthy of scrutiny and preservation.

A Post about My Day One Teaching at CCS, with No Kittens or Devil Tomatoes in It

You know, vet blogger Neil Gaiman posts all kinds of neat stuff, including "name the kitten" contests and "what to do with my Demon Tomato" and such. Here, you just get gnat-boy-Bissette. Well, until a kitten stumbles to our door or tomatoes we don't grow sprout horns, this is what you get.
_______

Day One at CCS: My first class at the Center for Cartoon Studies has now come and gone, and I reckon it went pretty well, though you'll have to ask the students themselves. When Rick Veitch and I got together for a bit Monday afternoon (I was picking up copies of MaxiMortal for the class -- required reading along with Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow), he asked, "are the students doing imitations of you guys yet?" At Kubert School, we all had our teachers down in the first week or two (with the exception of Hy Eisman, whom no one could mock as well as Hy himself did). You gotta have a sense of humor in this biz!

As I entered the classroom, James Sturm was leaving for the day, bag slung over his shoulder and clearly exhausted. He quietly said, "I forgot how exhausting teaching could be," and was gone. I intended to ask if he wanted to have supper in town, but so much for that!

(Note to self #1: Whatever James looks like as I enter the classroom is a fair approximation of how I will feel three hours later. Observe and plan accordingly. PS: Pack a return-home meal easily devoured in the car; discourage yogurt or oatmeal, even if still teaching after all my teeth have fallen out.)

Though there will be two massive assignments at the halfway point and end post of my 14-week class, I made it clear from minute one the only requirement for a passing grade in my class is to show up. I've got the final session (3:30 PM to 6 PM) of the most jam-packed day in the CCS schedule, so I see myself as an instructor in that I will share as much information and visual stimuli as possible while covering the history of comics in 14 sessions, and as a showman in that it's my job to keep everyone awake long enough to absorb the shit I'm tossing at the fan (heh heh, savor that metaphor, oh Constant Reader). Henderson State University professor Randy Duncan put me in my place earlier this year when he explained to me that he can cover the history of comics in, like, ten minutes. Ya, well, so what, Randy? I can summarize Moby Dick in one short sentence, too. So I'm grand-standing at 14 weeks; still, it's a lot of ground to cover, and we managed to skate from the 12th Century to 1912 and only go over schedule about twenty minutes yesterday. However, because I didn't circulate a variation on Randy's handy-dandy class questionnaire, it took until 6 PM to discover at least some of my students had never, ever heard of Winsor McCay, which I cleverly inundated them with nevertheless.

(Note to self #2: Bring more Winsor McCay.)

I made the mistake of loading and unloading my car before class with over a dozen boxes of materials for the CCS -- two boxes of books from Rick Veitch (Rick donated slightly-damaged copies of the BratPack collected to the students, too), a box of Comics Journals duplicates from my collection, and tons of stuff from the CBLDF. Thus, I was a somewhat stinky, sweaty 50-year-old cartoonist presenting myself to my class Day One, wearing my now-stinky, somewhat sweaty gekko t-shirt.

(Note to self #3: Always pack a change of shirt for CCS; maybe a change of shorts and/or Depends, too. You never know if a moose will wander onto 91 en route to CCS and cause one to shit oneself, if one survives the car wreck. Better yet, don't pack and unpack a full carload prior to teaching on Mondays.)

Furthermore, it took longer than anticipated to prepare all the handout materials. As I mentioned to everyone from the get-go, covering the history of the medium in 14 weeks means we cover breadth of material with little depth -- unfortunate, but that's the reality. I will be annexing every session with abundant handouts (yesterday I provided two chapters on decoding Mayan and Mixtec Codices; a cherry-picked selection of early American single-panel comics from the 1700s to 1860s; a handout originally prepared for my Journeys Into Fear horror comics lecture, featuring a sampling of J.G. Posada's work and two complete full-page Winsor McCay Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend strips; and photocopies of my 1975 independent comics studies proposals to Johnson State College, just to show that I had been in my student's shoes 30 years ago, before the term "graphic novel" even existed). Now, I had either prepared myself, or left last week with Robyn Chapman, most of the material, leaving only the two chapters on codices to copy, and arriving an hour early to see to completing those two handouts. Alas, I had not reckoned with the inevitable non-cooperative stapler and length of one of the chapters. Robyn saved the day, and I managed to clear the stapler of backed-up-bend-staples without ripping open any of my fingers.

(Note to self #4: Bring my Bullhonker Stapler next week, and never, ever present oneself to class bleeding like a stuck pig. Sweating is bad enough. PS: Be sure to ask Michelle or Robyn where CCS First Aid kit is, in case, despite all precautions, I do rip my hands to pieces fucking with the goddamnedmonkeyfelchingmotherfuckershitass stapler.)

All in all, the first session went pretty well. Ever the showman, I consciously incorporated some video clips into the presentation, the best of which were undoubtably the McCay animations. The clip from Carl Dreyer's Vampyr (1931), however, should be avoided at all costs in the future (I should, however, find some method of using it during future trips to the dentist; Dreyer works better than novocaine any day of the week).
Though I've got to be careful not to use video too often -- animation is not comics, nor did I present it as such -- it is occasionally of great value. The fact that some of the students were unfamiliar with McCay and his body of work definitely meant the inclusion of Little Nemo (1911), Gertie the Dinosaur (1914 -- not 1912, as many sources erroneously state) and The Pet (1921) was worthwhile.

(Note to Self #5: Avoid silent movie clips, as students will be unable to stay awake sans soundtrack. PS: Bring rubber bands to fire at students drifting to sleep during sadistically-selected silent film clips in future.)

Well, I could ramble on, as I did in class, but you get the idea. Listen, you should have been there. If you'd just shown up, you'd have an 'A' for the day!

This first CCS group is pretty amazing, and I'm eager to work with them beyond just the comics history sessions (excuse me, the class is actually entitled "Survey of the Drawn Story"). I'd like to be able to associate more than just names with faces: I've yet to see anyone's art, and that's something I hope to rectify soon enough.

_______

Oops -- reckon that wasn't James Kochalka's dad I met on Saturday. Relative? Friend of James' Dad? I don't know -- the man spoke softly, and it was noisy in the CCS beehive. Anyhoot, a correction, and this from James hisself:

"I read on your blog that someone at the CCS grand opening introduced themselves to you as James Kochalka's father, Jim. My father's name is not Jim, and my father was not at the opening. Either you mistyped, misheard, or someone played a little joke on you I think! He is a "gent wearing glasses" though, that much is true. If you had been able to attend the opening at the Brattleboro museum, you would have definitely met my father for real.... I don't fault you for missing the opening at all, although it would have been fun to have you there. You probably would like my dad if you ever get to meet him. He's 87 and very friendly and open and even goofy. He was making up poems off the top of his head for Peter Money!"

Thanks for letting me know, James. Well, that cinches it -- besides, the fellow I spoke to told me he was 53 (at the time, the math struck me as odd, I must say -- but hey, some Vermonters do have their first children at age 15). Hmmm, the mystery remains. My apologies to James and to whoever it was I met -- my mistake. James added:

"P.S. I taught the first class today and we're off to a good start! Very exciting."

It is, indeed (on both counts)!

[Postscript: It was CCS student Jacob Jarvela's father; I've revised the original post to note that fact. Sorry!]
_____

This just in from Al Nickerson: "Remembering The Creator's Bill of Rights and the discussion of creator’s rights continues with a letter from Erik Larsen (thanks, Erik). Erik addresses Dave Sim's letter concerning The Creator's Bill of Rights and the Neil Gaiman vs. Todd McFarlane feud..."

Yes, it does,

right here.

Erik addresses Dave, ignores mere-gnat-Bissette completely, and opens succinctly with, "Heck, I’ve never read the darned thing." Erik concludes his first paragraph with, "At the end of the day, the Creators’ Bill of Rights real value may come from simply spelling things out in a form people can understand and utilize in their negotiations with a potential client," which is what I've said from the start, so I'll take this as reaching some consensus, even if Erik has never read the darned thing and clearly doesn't care to talk to me.

I'll only further mention that Erik and Dave sidestep the Gaiman/McFarlane issues as they did first time around, agreeing to dis the all-female jury and how unfair to Todd they were in their judgement, and that's that. (C'mon, everyone, all together now! "Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh -- poor, poor Todd McFarlane.")

Which brings me back to Neil's devil-horned tomato.