A Day of Rest...

Hope you're all having a great Sunday!

Marge is hurting this weekend, so we've laid low and close to home. Yesterday was spent with our youngest offspring -- sons Daniel and Mike! -- with Danny blowing through around noon hour with three of his buds en route to Burlington.

Mike was here from 9 AM to 10 PM working on the basement, installing lights and light switches for the new section; his wife Mary poodled over around noon and we all had a good time eating and chatting whilst I grilled up some turkey burgers on the grill. A six of Long Trail was downed to wash down the burgers and salad and a fine time was had by all. Mary and I made a run to Home Depot to pick up needed supplies, including a big batch of energy-saver bulbs, for which Mary ribbed me endlessly (they were $8+ bulbs, but man, the basement shelves are now lit in style). I took NH Route 12 back to Windsor, and on the way (once Mount Ascutney was in view) Mary told me she'd climbed the mountain -- taking the Brownsville Trail, the same one Peter Money and the CCSers and I had taken two weeks ago -- and was amazed I'd made it. She's an experienced hiker and runs and exercises daily, and she had a tough time making it up the summit; reckon I'm in better shape than I thought for an old coot!

After we got back, Mary headed home midday and then came back for supper: I cooked up a load of spaghetti to go with the leftover pizza (from Brick and Brew in Hanover, excellent pizza) and garlic bread and garlic knots. Again, big yum. Mary headed out soon after and Mike insisted upon finishing up the electrical work, wrapping the job up around 9:45 PM.

It was a productive and yet pleasant day, and great to spend so much time with our sons and with Mary.

This morn, the predicted thunderstorms never materialized on this side of the Green Mountains -- so, off to the flea market I went. Scored a few goodies at a nickel to $1 a pop, including a batch of Mark of the Devil vomit bags unlike any I've ever come across: Reggie Nalder's face had been redrawn! Weird! They were from a stash of magazine and movie paper, all from the early '70s, so these are from a New England theater of the era, not reprints by 1990s gorehounds; I had to pick up a couple of 'em for the collection. Snagged a Big Little Book for $1, too, and some choice items for Christmas gifts for our amigos.

The rest of the day I tended to Marge, who's pretty much off her feet for the weekend (not by choice), cooked up lunch, and unpacked in the basement betwixt bouts of writing upstairs on the laptop. Wrapped up work on the Gabby interviews, so those will all be up this week, as promised, and chipped away at book projects and a bit of text for the new website.

All in all, another good day. Daniel and his amigos are dropping by again tomorrow for lunch en route home from up north, so we've got that to look forward to.

Oh, and Colin and Dave, the Accent UK editors, sent me two copies of Zombies, which looks excellent. Nice package, and the repro and stories are sharp throughout; I passed one copy on to Dan, and will show the other around CCS this week. Colin and Dave shipped a fat package of comps over as well for everyone here, but they'll take some time to arrive via slow-boat-to-Boston or where ever the hell they come in.

OK, have a great Memorial Day, one and all. Sorry, I can't work up anything inspiring or infuriating to post, so disgusted and discouraged am I with the way the current President, Pentagon and Administration have so thoroughly mismanaged, abused, demoralized, ransacked and ruined the military, the National Guard, and our whole country -- and for what? They have set new lows in the treatment of vets while creating a new generation of traumatized, brain-damaged and/or maimed survivors -- ah, I'll shut up. I'm just bumming everyone out.

If you can, have a great Memorial Day. If you can't, do something to ensure someone else does.

See ya in the funnies...

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.

Old Hikers Never Die,
They Just Smell That Way

So, Peter Money and I led a valiant group of CCS students up Mount Ascutney yesterday.

Well, Peter led. Actually, Sean Morgan -- CCS senior, Brownsville local, a man who knows the mountain and was climbing like a mountain goat -- led. Peter and Sean led, joined by fellow vet woodsman and CCS senior Ross Wood Studlar and freshmen Chuck Forsman, Dane Martin, Bryan Stone and Alex (Joon-Ho) Kim. A fine time was had by all.

As the oldest poopster of the party, 52-year-old Bissette held his own, sweeping behind for at least the final third of the climb, but I kept up and I made it to the top. But man, oh man, it was a climb.

I hadn't hiked a mountain in over nine years -- I used to hike

the beloved North Duxbury landmark Camel's Hump

regularly in my youth. Even a couple of winter hikes, mind you -- I was a boy scout, and I loved hiking.

But I was in my forties when I made my last climb (Haystack in Wilmington), and I tell you, I was feeling the years yesterday. Particularly in the last mile of the 3.2 or so mile hike uphill. The equivalent hike down went much quicker and (per usual) tested a whole different set of leg and foot muscles, but it was easier on the ol' bod that the climb up. Gravity, you know.

As Dirty Harry quipped in Magnum Force, "A man's got to know his limitations." I used to climb Camel's Hump's 4,080+ feet once or twice a year and love it, but I was a much younger man then. Mount Ascutney is far shy of Camel's Hump's altitude (see below), but it sure marks my current limit -- though I fully intend to visit the peak this summer, I'll take the car up to the near-summit parking lot and walk that mile versus the 3+ miles uphill we managed yesterday. It's unlikely I'll be making the hike we made yesterday ever again in this lifetime, unless it's as ashes in an urn for my students to spread over the summit.

Peter and I planned this way back in December 2006 and this past January. It was our intention to bring the entire freshmen class on this end-of-the-year sojourn, but alas, due to a number of issues I shan't go into here, that didn't happen as we'd hoped. Still, we stuck to our staffs and those who could join us, did.

Since the state park proper is closed until May 18th -- the day before CCS graduation -- planning a day trip that involved simply driving ourselves to just shy of the summit (there's apparently a parking lot between the south peak and summit; a less-than-a-mile foot trail takes you to the summit) was impossible. So, we decided, Peter and I, to make the climb to the peak on the Brownsville Trail, and just go for it.

Who is this Peter Money cat? He teaches at CCS, and he's a poet and a good man. Check him out.

What's this Mount Ascutney thang? Rather than bore you with historical and contextual blather, here's the Wikipedia listing for the mountain,

and here's the tech-stuff at Peakbagger.com, for those into such matters.

We made the climb. It was memorable, a great, grand experience. I'll write about it in some detail later -- jeez, I not only climbed it, I came home and prepped for the coming week of CCS and drew two complete pages for James Sturm's CCS class today (the climax to a class 'round robin' 'versus' comic, which concludes with my "Baby With Adult Legs vs. Bryan Stone" final round -- Baby With Adult Legs created by Joe Lambert, Bryan Stone by -- uh, Bryan's mom, I think. And his Dad. I hope.) -- so I'm too pooped to blog much today.

I'm not sure how high up we were -- there's some confusion in the available literature on the mountain.

Ross checked his hiking guide in the drive to Peter's house to eat after we were off the mountain, and reported it was 2600 feet, rated as a 'strenuous climb' (that it was!), but I don't know about that height.

We passed the North Summit sign, marking 2600+ feet, and there was still considerable climbing after that. Since the parking lot for the park is reportedly at an elevation of 2,800 feet, I reckon we climbed at least a wee bit higher than that, whatever the hiking guide books say otherwise. I know that after the North Summit sign, we climbed for at least another half hour, and it was all climbing!

Anyhoot, we made it to the observation tower. This was originally a fire tower; the cabin was long ago removed and the whole contraption has been relocated, and the views are breathtaking, encompassing the entire landscape round Ascutney's peak. We didn't make it to Brownsville Rock, which was about another 1/4 mile northwest of the summit -- Sean told us about this (it's a hang gliding launch site), but going to and coming from the tower we passed the sign for the Rock and simply continued on our way; nobody even commented on it. Next time, eh?

If you're into going yourself some time, check out the Vt. State Parks site, with mucho links to this and that relevant to such a trek.

Here's all the trail particulars, too, for those in any way interested in reading more about the hike.

OK, enough on that -- for now. If anyone who had cameras send me pics, I'll post 'em here!

In any case, gentlemen -- Peter, Chuck, Sean, Dane, Ross, Alex, Bryan -- it was a real honor to climb that rock with all of you, and it's a day I'll savor to the end of my days. Thanks for making it happen!

Things to ponder today:

As Head Honcho Asswipe continues to dodge his own culpability for this war-funding situation, acting like the sociopathic self-centered 'no one says no to me' colostomy bag leakage he continues to come across as (if it were so damned vital, why leave it out of the federal budget every single year of these interminable wars and require seven ancillary budgets to be voted through make up for the shortfall?),

and Vice-Cyborg McQuack-Quack further aggravates what Condi already fucked up so adroitly last week ("So we blew your country and all existing infrastructures completely to shit on false pretenses -- get over it! Get up on your own damned feet and act like men instead of like you're ravaged by four years of war, still without clean water, electricity, food or any shred of civilized security! What are you, a pack of pansies?"),

let's have another reality check in assessing how completely they've only spiraled the increasingly dire fiscal situation of the average American:

"The real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers has declined steadily: they earned $27,060 in real dollars in 1979, $25,646 in 2005."

- Heather Boushey and Christian E. Weller, "What the Numbers Tell Us," in James Lardner and David A. Smith, eds., Inequality Matters (New York: 2005), p. 36.

"The 2006 round of tax cuts delivers 70 percent of its benefits to the richest 5 percent of Americans, and 6.5 percent to the bottom 80 percent."

- Clive Crook, "The Height of Inequality," Atlantic, September 2006, p. 36.

Have a Great Thursday, You Paupers!

Back in the Saddle Again...

It's amazing how completely life has changed in the past week, marking 2007 as a genuine New Year from Day One. Marge and I live in a new home, and though I'll be preoccupied with the final dregs of the move for another couple of weeks (including clean-up), we do have buyers for our Marlboro home (the closing is before the end of the month) and all is well. The great financial risk paid off, and the move that made so much logical and logistical sense, personally and in terms of social responsibility (Marge has barely gone through a half-a-tank of gas in over a week, where we used to both fill up multiple times per week; we'll be consuming far less gas once the move is truly behind us), is remapping our emotional landscape in unforeseen ways.

Windsor itself is a very cool town -- though, like all towns, it has its underbelly, which is apparent, too. We've been gravitating here now since mid-October, when our house-hunting began in earnest, and the sense of this potentially being "home" has matured into this being home in a remarkably brief interim. Windsor is nestled just north of Mount Ascutney, a lone mountain strangely apart from the Green Mountain chain here on the eastern edge of the state, and that mountain now plucks a pleasant nerve whenever I see it.

Growing up in northern VT, my formative years and teen years were landmarked by Camel's Hump, that beautiful mountain in North Duxbury that's visible from interstate 89 from a variety of views. My heart still flutters when I first see the Hump en route north, and it remains one of those geographic life anchors one never outgrows and forever finds surprisingly, profoundly moving with every encounter in an uncanny, primal way. I hiked the Hump many times each year from age 12 to 22, and knew much of the mountain well. For the first third of my life, Camel's Hump was the center of my universe, such as it was.

Since 1980, Wilmington and Marlboro have been my home -- where Marlene and I lived through our married life together, where my daughter Maia and son Daniel were born (at home) and raised and grew into adulthood -- and the mountains there (Haystack and especially Hogback) became orientation landmarks with their own gravitational pull. I lived in their orbit for a little over two decades, and hiked Haystack a number of times. Though I never grew as intimate or connected to those mountains as I did to the Hump in Duxbury, they're nevertheless sights and climbs (whether via car or foot; Route 9, which I drove daily, cuts up over Hogback, embracing a positively breathtaking 100+ mile view from the roadside) which never fail to move me.

Since the decision to move from the area really took hold this past fall, that drive moves me differently than ever before, the sights of both mountains pluck different nerves: I'm saying "goodbye" to the mountains that sheltered my family, in which I realized my life goals (in comics) and then changed my life completely, where met my new soulmate (Marge), which I shared with her as we fell in love and bonded (we used to drive to the top of one of Wilmington's back roads and watch the sun set behind Haystack), which nurtured my children until they left the mountains to move to the town and begin their own adult years.

Now, Mount Ascutney is the center of a new orbit, a new life phase. As I drive every other day from Windsor to Marlboro and back again -- down with an empty car, back with a full car -- my heart lifts a bit when I first see Ascutney just north of Springfield.

"I'm almost home!" I think, and it's true.

Almost home.

___________________

A very, very good, funny, dear man I had the rare pleasure of working with at First Run Video before my departure from that employ two years ago is on his death bed in Townshend, VT. He was diagnosed with cancer this summer, and is now in his final weeks (perhaps days), discharged from the hospital and at home with his wife. In the end, they could do nothing for him.

It's heartbreaking -- why do monsters like our Vice President live so long, do so much harm (oh, excuse me, "service for their country"), while humble, productive, responsible, forever upbeat men like this fellow die? There's no reason to or for it; that's life. That's death.

This is a real heartbreaker; I shan't say more, as it's nobody's business but his and his family's, but it's too sad and shaking not to note this morning. This has colored much of the month for me, too, and is really having a devastating impact on those I once worked closely with, daily. A prayer for my friend, please.

___________________

This just in from Molly Bode, beloved wife of Mark Bode, from away off in California. A couple of years ago, Mark and Molly moved back to the West Coast from their 1990s life in Northampton, MA (drawn there, pun intended, by the allure of the Tundra publishing experiment); their now-adult daughter Zara is still in the Northampton area, and making her own kind of music:

"Just sending out a reminder for you not to miss Zara's show THE SWEETBACK SISTERS at:

The Elevens
140 Pleasant Street Northampton
Sunday, January 14
413-586-9155

About The Sweetback Sisters:

The Sweetback Sisters, a group of pie-eyed plunkers, perform an incredible array of old time honky tonk music with sweet girl-on-girl harmonies, sure to warm the hears of any of you. The lavish and lovely voices of Zara Bode and Emily Miller plus an all-star band: Stefan Amidon on drums, West Virginian, Jesse Milnes on guitar and fiddle, Joseph "Joebass" DeJarnette on upright, and last but not least our rolling thunder himself, Ross Bellenoit who highlights the night with electric guitar riffs, mandolin and lap steel guitar.

So get your ass in gear, grab a beer and swoon while we croon the country classics.

Check out

this link

for a taste of the music."

Molly concludes:

"And somebody please videotape it and send it to me!!!!!!"

BTW, there's also a Brattleboro, VT connection: Stefan Amidon is an amazing percussionist, brother of Sam (accomplished musician on many instruments and actor) and son of the Amidons, who are a fixture of the folk music scene in Southern VT. Stefan blew me away years ago while he was still in high school and performing as part of the "Stef and Jeff" percussion duo on the stage of Brattleboro Union High School; he has since performed in a number of bands, including work with his family.

If you're in the Northampton area, check 'em out!