Taboo art, 24 Hour news, dinosaurs, and dreams...

First off, a timely announcement for Taboo fans and art collectors:

I received an email this week from the cover artist of TABOO 6, Cruz Montoya (then signing as Cru Zen), who writes:

"I am selling a few paintings. One happens to be the painting titled "DEPRIVATION". I painted this oil on canvas in 1990. You chose the work for the cover of TABOO #6 [in] 1992.... The painting is up on ebay at the moment. Yea, I am still painting."

That was an astonishing cover painting, and one well worth picking up. The auction on ebay still has a few days left, but you should go and take a peek regardless, just to savor the imagery. Check it out at

Cru Montoya's site

or go right to ebay and place your bid:

TABOO 6 cover Deprivation

The particulars: "Original OIL on CANVAS - Painted by CRUZ 1990 - TABOO COVER Issue #6 1992 - PAINTING IS AUTHENTIC -Canvas measures 24 X 36 inches w/frame 25 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches - SIGNED ON BACK - NOTE: Cruz continued to work on this painting after the transparency was sent to SpiderBaby Grafix for reproduction (long before publication) - Minor changes appear in finished work(study images) - ...email with questions before bidding - Painting is in EXCELLENT CONDITION with Original Frame - Selling AS IS - LARGE FILE PLEASE WAIT -" ...and yes, it can take some time to load, unless you have DSL.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, go for it!
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On a more personal note, I've been having vivid dreams of late. I don't keep a record of 'em, the way my amigo Rick Veitch (Rarebit Fiends) does, but sometimes they stick. I had an amusing one this morning I thought I'd share. Tucked betwixt two winter dreams -- one involving traveling on a narrow, icy road that became a pleasurable sliding fest, and the other culminating in a spectacular, too-close-for-comfort view of a gigantic fallen oak caught in a span of power wires shuddering and splintering into pieces until it was clear of the unbroken lines (Hurricane Katrina ripping through the dream pool?)-- I had a hilarious dream early this AM involving Eddie Campbell coming to Vermont to film a Pepsi commercial he had been assigned to direct. I talked him into doing a ‘nunsploitation’ commercial that began, Ken Russell-like, with an attractive young imprisoned nun facing an unorthodox exorcism, and ended with a shot of a happy-Jesus statue clutching a can of Pepsi after the nun’s escape (thanks, somehow, to Pepsi).

It was great to see Eddie again, even if it was in the Jungian realm; it’ll be a loooong time before Marj and I are able to visit Australia.
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I've just added an active link to Dr. Michael Ryan's marvelous Paleoblog on the menu at right, and highly recommend you visit long and often. Michael was among the most energetic paleontologists who helped me through the arduous Tyrant research efforts, as he has Mark Schultz (Xenozoic Tales, aka Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) for years. Michael is now curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, posting ongoing illustrated blogs detailing his own fossil digs (lots of photos!), travels, and all things saurian, including past entries by yours truly (a history of dinosaur comics that will soon be archived on my own site, now under construction) and a link to a very engaging history of dinosaur movies. Check it out!
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And hey, speaking of dinosaurs, the Chinese dinosaurs are coming to Vermont! I can't believe it! I saw a few of these fossils close-up back in my Tyrant days, when I was an active member of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology (an adventure I'd love to re-engage with soon). But now we can all have a look at 'em, when the traveling exhibition of Chinese dinosaur fossils visits the Montshire Museum of Science starting on October 15th, 2005.

Here's the scoop: "Chinasaurs: The Great Dinosaurs of China" will be at the Montshire from October 15 through December 18. The exhibit features six full-sized skeletons originally excavated from the Gobi Desert their home, along with ossified remains of some of the creatures that lived alongside and underfoot. The exhibit includes the ever-popular Velociraptor, displays of the unusual feathered dinosaurs that have captured the imagination of us all since their discovery, and many other fossils from China's prehistoric past (including dinosaur eggs and footprints). It looks like a fantastic exhibition -- see you there, I hope! Free with Museum admission.

The Montshire Museum of Science is waiting for you mid-state at One Montshire Road, Norwich, VT 05055 (phone: 802 649-2200, Fax 802 649-3637, E-mail montshire@montshire.org), and they're open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. For online info and pix, go to:

Montshire Musuem site

Heartfelt thanks to writer and dear friend Diane E. Foulds for bringing this to my attention.
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You know, I'm told that Diane once said: "If God is supposed to be so loving, why did he create all those awful dinosaurs?"

Diane, the short answer is, He may not have. All hail the True Creator, The Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Since the ongoing struggle by devout Christians against Darwinian theory and evolution continues unabated, and since the latest offensive front spin-doctoring Creationism into “Intelligent Design” has now opened a fresh can of worms, it only seems appropriate that

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

should rear its fettucini-like head. As my cartooning bro' Tim Truman exclaimed, "At last! I have found a religion with which I am completely comfortable" (and Tim was a preacher's son, y'all, so say amen!).

There's clear scientific evidence (well, as clear as anything Creationist and "Intelligent Design" acolytes have provided) that the Church might be on to something here. I mean, look at other cultural myths: the snake-headed Medusa might have emerged from a visitation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster settling on a female worshipper's head in ancient times, and more contemporary manifestations like Toho monsters Dogora and Hedorah were clearly inspired by the Flying Spaghetti Monster's fossil record. Besides, we all know there are indeed midgets in this world.

Given the recent words of wisdom from none other than our own President, I implore you all -- really, we need to leave no child left behind in exposure to the many alternative theories and myths of creation. There are some lovely Creation stories from around the world, but few are as awe-inspiring and utterly convincing as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Why do they think they call it "Angel Hair"?

I'll leave the final word to Tim:

"May His Words and His Wisdom be taught to all young Kansas school children who are not yet of drinking age."
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A few more odds and ends:

There's an ongoing online discussion about the Creator Bill of Rights (another Scott McCloud invention!) that I've been participating in for a few months. Cartoonist Al Nickerson is the brave soul who re-opened discussion and is providing a one-stop venue for the debate, which is

here

and now among the permanent links on this blog (see right).

There's also some more 24-Hour Comic news to report:

* First, a reminder: 24-Hour Comics Day is October 7, 2006 -- not 2005. Sorry for the confusion in my last post. Thanks for the correction, Nat, who adds, "I'd prefer people not think it's sooner. We've moved the date of 24 Hour Comics Day from April (where it was this year and last) to the fall for next year, due to various logistical reasons."

* Ryan Estrada (see yesterday's post, below) writes, "The two 168 hour comics have indeed started something. Why, Bez, the individual who was to be 'going down,' has since started his 24 pages a day, every day for the rest of the year effort, and is going strong. Sure, a lot of them are quick doodles and stick figures, but it's still an incredibly awesome thing to do. But none of it would have happened if you two crazy kids hadn't started it off to begin with. And for that, I salute you." Ah, garsh, Ryan, nice of ya to say so.

* Vermont Public Radio broadcast an interview with yours truly and curator Gabriel Greenberg the week before the Brattleboro Museum event, and you can check it out

here.

* Alan David Doane has also just posted a follow-up interview with the guest curator of the Brattleboro Museum 24 Hour Comic Marathon that's worth a read, and that's over

here.

* One more permutation of the 24-Hour Comic deserves mention. This event coincidentally fell on the very weekend of the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center’s 24-Hour Challenge: actor Will Keenan’s Go-Kart Films (distributed on video & DVD by Koch;

click here for more info)

and Hoverground Studios had a major hand in Cinemasports. I held on to the press release I was emailed on Friday, August 26th, and here it is:

"Shoot your own movie in less than a day! Cinemasports is the Iron Chef of Filmmaking, where teams work feverishly to complete a movie in less than a day, that must contain a specific list of ingredients. Finished movies screen that very night. Concurrent global events often exchange movies in time for the evening screening. This is a community based, one-day filmmaking event open to all levels of filmmakers . Participation is free and open to anyone wanting to make a movie. This Saturday there will be two events happening on each side of the country - San Jose, CA & Manhattan, NY.

Here is how it works: Teams of filmmakers will get together and will be given ingredients that must be included in a 3 minute film. Each group has 10 hours to write, film, edit and complete their project...at 8pm participants and an audience will get a chance to watch each of the finished masterpieces. Whether you put together a team of your own, or want to come by yourself and be a part of the magic - this event is ready for you to participate: actors, directors, editors, writers, technicians, and anyone with an idea that really need to be turned into reality. To register for the event go

here!

If you are looking for a team or just want to touch base with other filmmakers, please visit our forum and feel free to ask for help (or just join the community)

here!

The whole thing starts the morning of Saturday, August 27th:
09:00 AM Filmmakers' Kickoff / Ingredients Announced Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park - Southern Corner at the Statue of Quezalcoatl - The Plumed Serpent Market and San Carlos Street, (near San Fernando Street)(VTA Light Rail access), San Jose, CA, 95113 USA
The films will be screened later that same evening:
08:00 PM Public screening of finished movies
MACLA - Black Box Theater
510 South First Street, San Jose, CA, 95113 USA
Tickets: $5 Participant / $10 Audience
For more details, examples of past submissions and specifics on the NYC event,
please visit:

Cinemasports

See you there!"

Did you catch the reference to "concurrent global events"??? Why, Quezalcoatl must be writhing in his ages-old sleep. I wonder if Scott McCloud knows about all this. This is astounding!
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Speaking of indy actor Will Keenan (star of Tromeo and Juliet, Operation Midnight Climax, Love God, Waiting, etc.), there’s a bit of a controversy brewing over the overt similarities between Patrick Hasson’s Waiting (2000), a feisty independent film Will starred (and ate shaving cream) in, and the trailers for an upcoming comedy entitled (ahem) Waiting..., from writer/director Rob McKittrick.

At the time of this writing, online promotion or sources (including imdb.com postings by McKittrick) deny any association with Hasson and Stefanic’s film: on August 27, 2005, McKittrick wrote, “I can assure you, it's not a ripoff of the Will Keenan film. I wrote it back in '97 (and have the writer's guild registration and copyright to prove it), a couple years before the Hasson film came out” (see

McKittrick's comments,

and check the related threads).

I never judge a creative work before I see/read/hear/experience it, but I must say the trailer immediately rang bells and had me assuming Waiting... was a remake of Waiting, until I saw not one name associated with the 2000 film in the credits. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops and plays out.

Thanks for joining me here... more later!

OK, just a little more on 24-Hour Comics and the extreme variations -- prompted by emails from some readers:

According to

this official-sounding source,

the rules are as follows:

"As originator of the challenge, Scott McCloud has established rules for a comic to qualify: It must be begun and completed within 24 consecutive hours. Only one person may be directly involved in its creation, and it must span 24 pages, or (if an infinite canvas format webcomic is being made) 100 panels."

The latter was news to me, but as I consider only life "an infinite canvas" (though that may change profoundly in the wake of the Bush years), but what the hell. Continuing:

"The creator may think about it beforehand and gather research materials and drawing tools, but cannot put anything on paper until he is ready for the 24 hours to begin. Any breaks (for food, sleep, or any other purpose) are counted as part of the 24 hours."

Relevent to this passage of the "rules," a poster named 'kc' posted the following on cartoonist Ryan Armand's blog (see below for link, in due time):

"Is it cheating if I already have a story in mind for a 24 hour comic? It feels like I'm cheating."

Well, maybe -- you'd have to consult with Scott, I guess. For the record, when I did mine, I believed not thinking about it beforehand was a prerequisite; I've no evidence of that having been a "rule," or a rule that was later revised, but that was my understanding at the time. Scott did prepare, in that he visited a library and brought home a random stack of books for inspiration. Knowing that, I reckon the "think about it beforehand and gather research materials" was and is groovy, but I'll say this:

For me, it was liberating to not prepare or "think about it beforehand." There was a clarity that arrived, and I can say for a fact that I never, ever would have manifested/channeled/created (choose your mediation flow) "A Life in Black and White" had I meditated at all upon a possible subject or focal point. In clearing my head (a rare event), something unbidden bubbled up, and amid that a fragment of half-remembered text also drifted to the fore (from Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, one of my favorite books), becoming somehow vital to the narrative destination point that presented itself.

Back to the online encyclopedia's rules:

"If the cartoonist fails to finish the comic in 24 hours, there are two courses of action suggested: stop the comic at the 24-hour mark, or continue working until all 24 pages are done. The former is known as "the Gaiman variation", after Neil Gaiman's unsuccessful attempt, and the latter is called "the Eastman variation", after Kevin Eastman's unsuccessful attempt. Scott McCloud considers both of these to be "noble failures", and he'll still list them on his site as long as he believes that the creator intended to finish the project within the specified amount of time."

Ah, noble failure; I know it well.

But at least I was a noble "success" with the 24-Hour Comic!

In seeking the most extreme variation (that was not a "noble failure" variant), the wonder of email brought this to my box this morn, as if it were the answer to my quest, courtesy of the amazing Mr. Ryan Estrada:

"My name's Ryan Estrada. I recently did a 168 Hour Comic. The reason I mention it is because the introduction to the comic is a
history of challenge comics. But not a real history, a sleep deprived crazy history full of lies. And it talks about you. You can read it..." Well,

here.

But, hey, before you jump over there, read on; it gets better.

"Recently," it turns out, was earlier this month -- just about three weeks ago. All this manic activity, in Asia and in Brattleboro, before the October 7th "24 Hour Comic Day"!

In his text intro to the Incredible 168 (actually 172) Hour Comic, Ryan writes:

"For those of you just tuning in, here's what's happening and why. In 1990, Scott McCloud invented the 24 Hour Comic. A challenge to draw a 24 page comic book in 24 hours. Many artists took the challenge, and in 2004, Nat Gertler started 24 Hour Comics Day. I was one of the thousands of people to take the challenge that day, heading up the South Korea team. Sadly, I only finished 12 pages. I decided to go into training, so I would be better off the following year. I did the first 48 Hour Comic. (If you look on the features page of my site, all of the comics with exclamation points are excerpts from the 48 hour comic). It worked out so well, I did a 72 hour comic shortly thereafter. I planned a 96 hour comic, but decided instead to go to tsunami relief in Thailand. While I was doing that, Behrooz Shahriari did a 100 hour comic, and smashed my record. This last 24 hour comic day, I succesfully finished my 24 pages. The training is complete, but now, I have a record to get back. Now, it's personal. You're going down, Bez."

Noble intentions, however base the drive ("you're going down, Bez" -- so now, it's Red Harvest in the timed-comics-marathon sweepstakes). But Ryan was in for a rude awakening; later in his profusely-illustrated blog, he writes:

"I just got an e-mail from another Ryan. Ryan Armand. He cracked a joke on Comixpedia last week that he was going to steal my thunder by doing a casually done 168 hour comic this week while I was working on this one. At least, I thought it was a joke. Apparently it wasn't. He says he finished his 168 hour comic this afternoon, after working on it a few hours a day all this week. And it's up online here. He even blogged about it... If someone is messin' with me, they're doing a real good job. And if no one is messin with me, than I say this; Ryan Armand, you are awesome. But I guess I have to keep going. I don't want to tie."

Tie? How about, you don't want to die?. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Go, Ryan!

Now, this is madness, but it's intoxicating madness, eh? You talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.

On Ryan Armand's blog -- the relevent portion is

here

-- there's some really lively strutting still in view:

“So apparently one Ryan Estrada is making a 168 hour comic... That's like a 24 hour comic, times seven. He'll be awake the whole time maybe, and it will be a feat of iron man comic making... and I think that that is just ridiculous. To show how ridiculous and simple a feat it actually is, over the same amount of time that he spends on the comic, I too will make a 168 page comic. Except I will do it very casually, while getting plenty of sleep, spending copious amounts of time arguing on the interwebs about nothing, playing cinematic soccer games on my SNES, watch a complete japanese drama series(or two?) and maybe jogging.”

What a glorious braggart, what an imperial pig! This is hilarious. And now, what was inherently a non-competitive creative challenge (one is, after all, tidily in 'competition' with oneself in Scott's original concept) has now turned into -- Iron Cartoonist! An online arena sport!

To paraphrase David Lo Pan (to be read aloud in the appropriate reedy James Wong voice), "Two 168-Hour Comics -- what can it mean?"

So, I extend my warmest respects to both Ryans -- here's hoping you've since caught up on your sleep.

And to think, all this hyper-activity happened this month.

Ryan Armand's finished product is

on this site

-- go ahead, check it out.

I just hope we don't arrive at the first escalating-competitive-extension of the 24-Hour Comic resulting in death rather than mere bravado, wild comics that wouldn't otherwise exist (sweet nectar!) and madness. It's becoming a bit like frat-party drinking binges, and too-little-sleep and too-much-caffeine (or whatever) can, after all, take a mortal toll, too.

Long before Scott invented the 24-hour comic, much less Ryan and Ryan inventing the 168-hour-comic, Gene Day did himself in via such a route (meeting Marvel deadlines while living on coffee and air). I'd hate to see it happen again in a whirlwind of competing 475-Hour-Comic marathons -- shit, losing Gene Day was bad enough. We need every standing cartoonist we can get in this dire age. And besides, Scott would forever blame himself.

For anyone interested, Ryan Estrada's full site -- which is quite an astounding record of not only his marathon comic-creation binges and psychic purges, but also his time in Asia, is

here.

"Keep on rocking, brother," indeed!

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On to other matters:

I am currently struggling with my perception of what makes a graphic novel an inherently different form, and teaching the evolution of the graphic novel (as part of my CCS ciriculum) this year.

To that end, Eddie Campbell and I have been trading some emails back-and-forth, and CCS founder (and grand cartoonist) James Sturm and I have also exchanged words a bit more emphatically; we'll see where it all ends up.

The central role of the utilitarian format of serialized periodical publication in traditional comic book form of expansive works that are conceived as (or, more to the point, evolve into) graphic novels is the most fascinating bone of contention, it seems, and one I'm relishing just now.

More on this topic on another day.