Wafflin' Wednesday

Random sharing of online oddities for you this morning... I'm midweek in my CCS teaching schedule and in Neil Gaiman book land every other available minute, so I'm just not in a blogging frame of mind this AM. Still, here's something or three to spark your day, if you're so disposed.

21st Century Goona-Goona

Battle at Kruger: "I can't stop watching it. I'm obsessed with these water buffaloes protecting their baby. Warning: If you're freaked out by wild animals attacking each other, you might not like this." - Sarah Stewart Taylor

Ever since the early 1900s, filmmakers amateur and professional have been cranking cameras to catch unique moments in the lives and deaths of wildlife from around the globe. The more exotic the animals, the more savage the action, the wider the audience. They used to call these 'goona-goona' films in the wake of the 1930 shot-in-Bali curio Goona Goona, and whether they were distributed by major studios (Dark Rapture, etc.) or roadshowed out of the back seat of huckster's cars (Ingagi, most elusive and once the most successful of all goona-goona), the animal action would back asses into seats. Well, OK, the native nudity helped. The Walt Disney True-Life Adventures, the 1970s wildlife features from Sunn International, cable TV Shark Week and Animal Planet and Fox TV fare like When Animals Attack are all part of this venerable tradition, and here's the most recent slice of

21st Century goona-goona to kiss my eyes, and this'll have you jumping out of your seat.

Thanks to fellow CCS instructor and vet mystery novelist Sarah Stewart Taylor for that link!

Say What -- ??

"Oh you gain flesh": CCS senior Penina Gal posted this incredible link, the most hilarious subtitling job imaginable on a familiar artifact of American pop culture,

and funny stuff whether you're an Arrested Development fan or not (I'm not). Fans of Hong Kong and Asian films have savored decades of insane subtitles, and we all have our personal favorites, but this case history beats 'em all!

Bissette Art on Ebay

I've held off posting ebay links for the various slices of my past that have popped up in the past few months -- they're not my auctions -- but here's a blast from the past you might wish to bid on if you get this in time (the auction ends later today). This is of interest, perhaps, as it's one of my rare wash comics works from the early 1980s, and one of my few Marvel Comics gigs I'm still pretty much proud of (except for a couple of really rushed pages -- brrrrrrrr, there's a couple of stinkers in this otherwise solid piece of work). Plus, it's going for cheap, so give it a look --

This vintage Bissette page (scripted by Steve Perry) from the Marvel Comics Bizarre Adventures story "The Blood Bequest" could find a new home today --

-- thanks to Mark for sending the link along this AM.

This particular page was completed with an assist from Rick Veitch (look like Veitch laid it out and likely pencilled the first panel), who lettered the entire story. This is also one of a handful of pages in this story directly referencing the Marv Wolfman/Neal Adams origin of Dracula story from Marvel's Dracula Lives! black-and-white zine. This was the last Marvel gig I completed before John Totleben and I began work on Saga of the Swamp Thing, and my last wash comics creation for any publisher except Scholastic: the shoddy, inconsistent quality of printing in those days destroyed the work that went into these pages.

OK, better blogging tomorrow, promise.

Have a woolly Wednesday, one and all...

The Tim Viereck aka Doc Ersatz Interview,
Chapter the Second:
Johnson State College Daze

With the preliminaries of Doc's life and times now established (see yesterday's interview post), we can now launch into Doc's and my respective and shared experiences at

Johnson State College in Johnson, VT (which is still as vital as ever, per its current link, here).

Map: Where we were: Johnson, VT

We were at JSC between 1974 and 1976, a mere three years after the construction of JSC's stunning Dibden Theater, which was at the time a state-of-the-art, 'tunable' (there was a working baffle system in the walls that allowed for the tuning of the entire theater!) space. When we were part of it, Richard Emerson was the theater's Technical Director; Dick was also my advisor and mentor at JSC, about which I'll write at a later date.

JSC also had a remarkable art program at the time, which Doc and I also discuss in this installment. (Note: The opinions expressed herein are solely our own, and should be taken as such.)

I should also introduce our compadre Jack Venooker, whom Doc mentions; Jack was at JSC at the time, too, heralding from Bennington, VT, so Doc and Jack knew one another outside of their JSC experience. Jack was instrumental (along with Steve Perry, Mark 'Sparky' Whitcomb, Doc, and all my Governor's Hall 'Subhuman' amigos) in encouraging me to seriously pursue drawing comics professionally, eventually getting out of JSC to attend the first-ever year of studies at the Joe Kubert School. So, big hellos and perpetual thank yous to Jack, Sparky, Steve, the surviving Subhumans and everyone else we mention herein.

OK, that's enough context, I think!

So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Doc Ersatz, Part Two --
______________________

SB: Doc, what led to you attending Johnson State College (which is where we met)?

DOC: Well Steve, it was like this. I applied to three colleges initially: University of Denver (I'd been in Denver at an impressionable age, and it was right near all those fine Rocky Mountains), University of Alaska (born in AK, and I had a very cool uncle and aunt living in Fairbanks with kids, associated with the U) and Johnson State. My dad badly wanted me to go to his alma mater Dartmouth, but with my shoddy grades it would have taken some serious string pulling, and the whole deal just seemed pretty damn serious and, you know, academic and shit. U of A rejected me (those shoddy grades!), DU and JSC accepted, so I went as far as I could go from home - DU. A year there cured me of cities and big universities, and I spent a year working and bumming around, visiting other friends who'd dropped out after that first year, traveling all over the country with a buddy from my DU dorm.

After that trip, I ended up working for a construction company finishing an elementary school addition in Bennington (my dad used to be principal of that same school, and I'd done an outside project there during high school through the DUO program). One day, I found myself standing in an unfinished cinder-block classroom, rubbing the mortar grooves between the blocks with a broken piece of concrete to prep them for painting when a foreman stuck his head in and yelled "You guys better go a hell of a lot faster than that if you want to stay working for this company!", and I had a sort of epiphany: I don't have to be doing this shit! I have three more years of college promised to me; it's time to pick up on my free tumblers (to quote the Checkered Demon). Someplace cheap (don't want to rashly waste the old man's money), with a good view and nearby skiing... Yes! I'm already in at JSC. So I quit the construction biz, worked some more agrarian jobs until winter, went back to school mid-year and never, as they say, looked back.

SB: You were very active in JSC's lively theater scene, and in the '70s, Dibden Stage was a real state-of-the-art college theater space. What and who pulled you into that space?


DOC: Boy, that's hard to say. I did some theater club stuff, but I guess it may have been that mad bearded dwarf dynamo Dick Emerson (my favorite quote: "I don't care if you're stoned running a show, as long as you're straight when you're learning the cues. If it goes in straight, it'll come out stoned."), because as far as course work goes, I started in the technical end. Lots of characters involved in those days - Speedelstein [Stephen Edelstein], artist in residence, with his MGA's (still restoring and driving them to this day), Ken and Becka Culp-Smith in Dance (I loved lighting dance).

SB: Ya, I did, too. Ken and Becka were amazing, a real spiritual center for that whole era. What were the highlights, for you, of those JSC years in terms of theater and your own art?

DOC: One of the most memorable moments in Dibden Auditorium was working my way to a seat in the middle of a packed house when Jack Venooker's gravelly voiced boomed out, I mean BOOMED OUT! over the PA system "DOC! YOUR MOTHER SUCKS COCKS IN HELL!!!". O priceless memories of youth...

But as for performance, I guess Beckett's End Game with Scott Sampietro, and my own version of his Act Without Words #1, for which I used a stereo tape of the stage directions in lieu of actually building all those elaborate props (thank you Bob Hoyle, Mr. Rorer 714 of South Boston for that idea and the encouragement to run with it), were the most memorable. Obysseus was certainly special - I wish I had one of those damn 3 color 3 x 4 foot silk-screened posters I did for one of those - but Christ, memorable? There's that other guy Scott who got back in touch after all these years and chatted about Obysseus and all the stuff we'd done together and I couldn't even really place him! OK, a fair amount of organic mood enhancements were available in those days, as you may or may not recall, Steve, and I for one availed when I could.

Here's a classic memory from those days, my friend: someone asked me, "Why the hell do we keep getting all these spaghetti westerns as Student Movies? Christ! Why don't we ever get normal movies? That's just so weird!" The answer, of course, was that one Stephen R. Bissette was in charge of film procurement, and he happened to be doing, as an independent study, a retrospective of Mario Bava...

"Photo of Bentley Science Building at Johnson State College. September 2004"; photo source: Wikipedia. That's the Sterling Mountains behind Bentley, home of the Bentley B-Flicks, 1975-76

SB: ...which my faculty mentor Dick Emerson was overseeing! Actually, the spaghetti westerns were the Sergio Leone films, which we always showed in Techniscope on the big Dibden screen; the Bava movies were the anchor of my Bentley B-Flicks weekend movie programming, and those were the spaghetti horror films. But, ya, I kept everyone on their toes. I’m going to post my JSC movie programming list online, it was pretty amazing in retrospect: complete Sergio Leone, Mario Bava and Nicolas Roeg retrospectives, double bills like The Point and Yellow Submarine, Once Upon a Time in the West with 2001: A Space Odyssey, lots of film noir and ‘50s crime films, Anthony Mann westerns, Carnival of Souls, Women in Love, The New York Erotic Film Festival, and so on. Do you remember when someone started a chainsaw up in Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- we were one of the first colleges in the US to screen that on 16mm -- or when the non-violence class chained the theater doors shut in protest of our showing Paul Bartel’s Private Parts on Halloween?

Beloved Bava image: Barbara Steele, Black Sunday (1960)

DOC: Sergio Leone -- of course. How could I forget? Easy. Those Bentley B-flicks were fun. I remember sitting in there in the afternoon, blowing a couple of bowls of kief and laughing my ass off. Ah, ye olde college days!

I do remember the chainsaw - that was pretty wild! The film stopped, the lights came up, and there was nothing but a cloud of blue smoke in the air! Those side exits were handy, eh? I also remember going with three friends, one of whom swore he would watch all the way through; he didn't -- I finished the movie alone, and laughing (though I admit I didn't start out that way -- the real chainsaw broke spell of silly horror.)

SB: “Silly horror”? Phaw! Now, about the art department --

DOC: As for all the art I did (I really was more of an Art student than Theater), nothing was that memorable compared to the characters involved: Peter Heller was a treasure, but Peter Heller arguing philosophy of art with Cyndi Lauper in evening drawing class was truly priceless, a memory for life.

Cyndi Lauper, post-JSC years; Time after Time

SB: Ah, yes, Cyndi Lauper. She’s one of our fellow classmates who went on to fame and fortune -- people often don’t believe me when I mention she was at JSC. I remember her as one of the more flamboyant art and dance people... any other memories of Cyndi you harbor?

DOC: Well, I had a huge crush on her, but I was too shy to approach her. I don't remember her doing dance, but she was doing voice and music. She was smart and funny and cute (and had big tits), and I loved her eclectic thrift-store fashions too. I got up my nerve to ask her to dance one night in the Student Union, but the band quit for the night as I made my way over towards her. Ah well. I coulda been another Hulk Hogan...

SB: The beauty of the theater department -- which I ended up in via default, because the art classes had no room for freshmen, and then I found the art studies so hostile to my goals -- was we did so much creative work there. I found it much more fulfilling than the art studies, except for my independent studies with Peter Heller. Let's see, your and Scott's production of End Game had that giant skull-as-apartment-complex set, and Obysseus was memorable in many ways... didn't you cook up that show?

"Silly horror": The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

DOC: No, Obysseus was there before me. I kept it going for a couple of years; I have no idea if it survived after we left. There was a Hispanic poet whose name eludes me; I believe he founded it. A very nice guy - I remember doing some tech work for a show of his, and he gave everyone involved a red rose after the show.

SB: I learned more about color from my technical theater studies and hands-on work with Dick Emerson and John Mabry than I learned in the art classes. Any other fond theater memories? We used to work with Socrates (whose last name I don’t recall) and Edelstein, and I got along great with Dick Emerson, Mabry, and loved Ken and Becka, too. We had some amazing shows come in to Dibden: Bread & Puppet, Mummenshanz, Daniel Nagrin, The Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe -- it was a heady time!

DOC: Socrates Jost, aka Socko. He and I had a great gig as roadies for the Vermont Symphony. Sometimes we would be on the road, hauling music stands and lights around in a van. Once there was a big concert at the Flynn in Burlington, and the sound shell they were planning to use behind the orchestra wouldn't fit in the van. Maestro Guigi was upset; he thought the sound would be too dead, so I convinced him to raise the back curtain and expose the brick wall in the back, artfully strewn with steam radiators, some horizontal, some vertical. With the orchestra all dressed in their formal black and white backed up with that curious industrial backdrop it really did look cool. Other times we might get paid for perhaps eight hours of rehearsal time, most of which we sat around Dibden watching the Maestro fine tune the pieces, which I found fascinating. Guigi was a tiny guy from South America; he stood on a box behind the podium and was very temperamental. I can still hear him shouting "Faster, faster! Three times faster! Six times faster! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

JSC campus, June 2005; photo source: 'Sublime CDs' blog post, "A Day in Vermont," June 22, 2005.

SB: Let’s talk about the art studies at Johnson: there was Peter Heller, who was the chair of the art department, and a tough instructor; Norm [sic] Battdorf, who taught sculpture; and the office door I remember well, Dyke & Hole: Walter Dyke and Dan Hole, who were complete opposites. Walter was an Ahab-like (in appearance) drawing instructor, who I recall actually drawing over your drawings in life drawing, and Dan was the youngest of the art instructors. I liked him, but I got into serious verbal frays with him over the legitimacy of comics as a course of study. He’d bring in pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, arguing its inherent legitimacy and superiority to comics, which he considered an invalid medium -- not art -- and I’d go nuts because they were pirating comics images wholesale. What was your experience at JSC as an artist?

DOC: I did print making with Dan Hole. He was a nice guy, but not a big inspiration. Walter Dyke (and he insisted it be pronounced "Dick", perhaps because he was one) was, well there you have it. He had zero respect for students, as far as I could tell. When taking drawing for upper level credit, he would still insist that we draw his certain way. My strongest memory of him is him saying "You must draw it like this! And then do something busy around the articulations!" Bizarre - the antithesis of how I wanted to learn at that point. It became more clear when he had an exhibit in the Dibden gallery - that's all he did! Gesture drawings, with "something busy around the articulations"... Another experience was the selection of a new Art History teacher, do you remember that?

One student from each class was elected to be on the selection committee - what a crock! We all liked the woman who was holding the position temporarily, but it soon became obvious that the plan was to hire a snotty woman whose husband was already hired for some other position. We were all opposed, we argued, it got to be end of term and we were about to leave for the summer with no decision reached, and the Dyke himself said, in his most pompous-ass manner, "I'm sure you'll all trust us to make the best decision in this matter..." Oh yeah. Venooker was on that committee - you can imagine. We got up and walked out in disgust.

Peter Heller was the Art Department. Without him, it would have been something of a waste of time, I think. Artist, philosopher, provocateur... he was a brilliant and important guy.

SB: Peter ended up the be-all and end-all at JSC art studies for me; he taught me everything I came away with, really, and was a demanding task master. We put together an intensive independent studies program for me my second year. He hammered anatomical studies into me; I drew every bone in the human body, from six different views, over a six month period. I hated it, but I sure learned it! Peter was amazing, just amazing -- he made it all worthwhile.

Doc gesture drawing/print; note the utter lack of "something busy around the articulations..."

DOC: That's the thing in a small place like Johnson. There are brilliant people who are there for much the same reasons as you are: the beautiful setting, the fine under-utilized facilities, the countryside full of interesting and inexpensive places to live (but hopefully not too much of the sheer laziness that motivated me, but yes, you find that too). You have to go where the good people are - Heller, Addison Merrick in English, Dick Emerson, and others, regardless of what they're teaching.

By the way, it was John Battdorf, not Norm.

SB: Oh, of course, sorry. Brain fart.

DOC: Another good guy; I took one class with him, where I pretty much fucked off but actually learned many useful things: Plastics and Mold-Making. I've used that skill in actual paying work over the years, and it should be said that I worked for Dick Emerson's company about 15 years later too, with John Mabry and Joel Krasnov.

____________________________

...and we'll leave it at that for a while, folks. Doc and I are continuing the interview, and I'll post future chapters down the road a piece, most likely picking up the narrative thread in July, after MoCCA.

The best is yet to come! We'll be getting into our Johnson State College days a little more, Doc's funding of my first-ever comic publishing experience with Abyss #1 (1976), and much, much more: Doc's stint at the Dino DeLaurentiis studio in North Carolina, David Lynch and Blue Velvet, working with Douglas Trumbull, etc. It'll be worthwhile reading, I promise.

Have a great Sunday, and see you here tomorrow...

"Why the hell do we keep getting all these spaghetti westerns...?"
Beloved Leone imagery: Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)

Tim Lucas Wants You --

-- To Know He Was Here First!

Lest anyone think Tim Lucas's comments on yesterday's blog post are in any way sour grapes or offbase, Tim indeed proposed using the very Uncle Sam zombie recruitment imagery

Leah Moore and John Reppion are using in their lively new comics series Raise the Dead

in his stellar screenplay The Gore Corps almost (or exactly) two decades ago. I know, because way back then Tim graced me with a copy of his screenplay in (I believe) its second draft.

Now, this is not a matter of plagiarism, to my mind. I can likewise vouch for the fact that Leah and John have never, ever read Tim's script , nor ever heard of it. Hence, Leah and John are blameless -- nor is Tim saying they copped it from him. He's just saying, "Hey, I came up with that 20 years ago!", and he did. It's one of those images/ideas whose time has come -- in fact, one could argue current American foreign policy, and domestic military policies (e.g., abuse of its own volunteer Army and National Guard) in particular, have made it more timely than ever, and dead-on target at that.

I read and loved Tim's screenplay before Taboo was taking shape -- a project John Totleben and I began work on in earnest in 1986, based on Dave Sim's proposition to publish anything John and I wished to do -- meaning I read Tim's script at least 20 years ago. In fact, it was reading Tim's screenplay that led to Tim and I discussing his writing something for Taboo, which survived the inauspicious first script proposal "Your Darling Pet Monkey!" -- a 'cute' idea for a decidedly 'uncute' anthology (no dis on Tim, mind you; Alan Moore's first Taboo script submission was likewise rejected for being too funny, built as it was around an agonizing slide show of a family vacation -- a very funny script, decidedly not what we were looking for given Taboo's manifesto). Tim came back with "Throat Sprockets," and the rest is history.

Alas, Tim's screenplays remain unknown quantities to the world, though thankfully Tim has shared them with me over the years. More thankfully, his most recent one seems to be attracting some welcome attention -- keep an eye on

Tim's blog for info, updates and announcements.

His sensitivity to the matter is understandable, given the number of ideas he's cooked up that have somehow made their way into produced films (it was Tim, in a proposal for a sequel to David Cronenberg's The Fly, who came up with 'The Freak Pit,' which made its way into The Fly II sans anything for Tim; there are other examples I could but won't cite, as I've probably mortified Tim enough with this post as it is). As it stands, no lesser stellar exploitation cinema talents than Larry Cohen and William Lustig graced the world with their collaborative effort Uncle Sam on July 4, 1997, thus acing Tim's unproduced script imagery a decade past my reading of The Gore Corps -- and trumping the above Raise the Dead covers by a decade, too.

Criswell Predicts: When you've got an idea that seems like a natural, by any means possible, get it out there! If you don't, someone else will.

Mind you, Tim tried like hell to get his script filmed -- it just didn't happen. Sometimes, it doesn't reach fruition, or ever get seen by the public. It's the nature of the beast, and I do mean beast.

Still, there is the sometimes inflated nature of our (completely understandable) proprietary feelings for our ideas -- published or unpublished, seen or unseen -- that can distort things, or turn the all-devouring, 'you snooze you lose' nature of the pop culture machine into a real irritant for those who find themselves personally facing these issues.

I recall a phone conversation with Frank Miller in February 1995, when his and Geof Darrow's vivid bullet-cavity-through-the-skull-framing-the-gunslinging-hero cover for their Dark Horse comics series Hardboiled had seemingly been 'borrowed' for one of the splashy deaths in Sam Raimi's then-in-theaters The Quick and the Dead. Frank wasn't amused -- but he sure didn't want to hear from me that that very gory 'gag' image had already been featured prominently in Antonio Margheriti's Apocalypse Domani (1980, released in the US theatrically in 1982, aka Cannibals in the Streets, Invasion of the Fleshhunters), and in fact was the centerpiece of the film's Japanese ad campaign.

But that was a bullet-hole-through-a-torso, not a bullet-through-a-head -- well, OK, fair enough.

Still, the bullet-hole-through-a-torso-framing-the-shooter gag had already, pre-cannibal movie setpiece, been seen worldwide in John Huston's very popular Paul Newman vehicle The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), when Newman's Judge Roy Bean blasted a bucket-sized hole clear through Stacy Keach's villainous the Original Bad Bob the Albino -- and Huston and screenplay author John Milius had arguably 'borrowed' that punchline from the identical throwaway visual gag in Ernie Kovacs's brilliant black-and-white TV series, The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952; don't take my word for it, the sketch is on the first disc in

The Best of Ernie Kovacs DVD set from White Star).

One could justifiably argue, coming full circle back to comics, that Al Capp's "Fearless Fosdick" comic strip parody -- in L'il Abner -- of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy predated Kovacs -- and Mad's -- popularization of such cartoon holes-through-human-bodies iconography, and I've no doubt something, somewhere predates that.

Still, Frank was unhappy, and might have been right -- after all, Geof Darrow's eye-popping Hardboiled cover had been one of that comic season's most iconographic images, visible in every comic shop (usually on a top shelf or visible behind the counter, with a 'mature readers only!' warning self-imposed by retailers), and that may indeed have been where Raimi 'borrowed' the image from.

Who could say? Who can say?

These unwelcome 'there goes that idea, though I had it years ago' speed bumps and indignities are part and parcel of being a writer -- and artist, for that matter. Things can be and often are worse --

Rick Veitch's sky whale imagery was unique when he started writing and drawing Abrasax and the Earthman for serialization in Epic magazine in the very early '80s --

-- but the very month his first episode saw print, two other adult-oriented newsstand comic zines featured their own 'sky whale' stories (and, after all, Astro the killer space whale in the 1965 American/Belgian animated feature Pinocchio in Outer Space/Pinocchio Dans le Space predated them all). Ditto Steve Perry, among whose unsold scripts (which I had hoped to draw) was a 1980 opus entitled "Tiny Dinosaurs," which quite directly anticipated Gremlins as much as Charlie Band's popular 1990s direct-to-video series PreHysteria. Mark Martin had a great li'l strip about a boy and his robot dog published in Nickelodeon that seemed awfully close to a certain Nickelodeon movie and TV series -- but apparently it wasn't a case of plagiarism, either, but it was a bitter pill to swallow when it all went down.

So it goes. I could go on and on -- I've got my own sob stories, sisters. But then again, a major part of my own career wouldn't exist without such a conundrum having borne fruit. I mean, Swamp Thing/Man Thing. Huh. Who thunk of it first, Gerry Conway or Len Wein? Does it matter, with Theodore Sturgeon's "It" and Airboy's The Heap predating both 1970s "things"? Sometimes, it's just the Jungian reality: when that kind of iconographic image surfaces in the collective unconsciousness, it's there for any creator to pluck and use -- and many often do, either at the same time or over a span of time.

But one doesn't need these peculiar sets of circumstances to suffer the slings and arrows too many writers endure over the course of a career. I can hear Mike Dobbs now: "Get off the cross! We need the wood!"

Then again, Mike has his own stories of this nature to share--

-- as a book author

and as a journalist --

-- so he's got his own share of wood to go around. Most of us do. James Robert Smith is a frequent reader (and poster) here, and man oh man, has he got stories, again going back two decades or more. One of the most prolific, published novelists I know (who shall remain here nameless, so as not to cause embarrassment) continues to write with amazing skill and speed, but has been hammered by editors and publishers and treated abominably -- business as usual.

Anyhoot, all of this is to say "Tim's right, folks," and I'm a witness to that, and to thereby and roundabout-ly call your attention to Bennington-based writer John Goodrich, who has just launched

a new blog, Flawed Diamonds, intended for writers, and it's well worth keeping attuned to.

John says, "I am writing about the publication process. In truth, it's partially to ameliorate the sting of
rejections, but some of you may be interested in the wonderful, free gravy train that all writers experience as they push toward publication."

Some of you may recall the multi-chapter blog essay I posted here over a year ago on my own misadventures with trying to write again for the newsstand horror zine market, and what a delicious little ego-stroke, ego-mash clusterfuck that debacle was; whatever measure of celebrity I may enjoy after three decades in comics and writing, it still doesn't shield one from savoring the same abuse up-and-coming writers endure.

And whenever a writer draws your attention to a writer's blog with such a blustery lead-in, abusing wholly invented words like "roundabout-ly," you best pay attention.

On to merrier matters...

Could It Be -- The First Dino Comics?

In accord with the above rant, I always tell my students to be immediately suspect when anyone calls anything 'the first' -- usually, some earlier precursor turns up in due course, or is already known. It could be known, sort of, but under the wraps of obscurity -- usually meaning some more potent historical 'authority' hasn't recognized the precursor as such, or preferred to 'promote' the more popular precursor.

In the realm of the understandably marginalized genre of dinosaur comics -- a most rarified breed comics historians are happy to ignore, unless your name is Don Glut -- these kinds of "firsts" are tough calls. But I think Seth may have steered me to what must be, might be, indeed the first dinosaur comics series!

More on this amazing body of work tomorrow!

No Criswell again today.

Sorry. I have no idea where, in a matter of seven hours or so, I put that book.

So, here's Ernie Kovacs again, just 'cuz.

Have a great Wednesday, one and all --

Spurtyn Devil

Here's an old Time Spirits sketch I did back in the mid-'80s that amigo and Time Spirits artist Tom Yeates excavated to run with the intro I wrote for the upcoming Image collected graphic novel edition of Steve Perry and Tom Yeates's Time Spirits. More info as we get closer to publication date!

Couldn't post yesterday due to blog oblivion, and gotta run this morning -- so, enjoy the sketch, see ya here tomorrow. We've got a big snow storm en route to us tonight, so I'm sure I'll be here tomorrow AM, unless the power and/or cable is out.

Taking Measure on a Friday

"Why, this old comic collection might indeed be bigger than my dick!"
(Photo: Joe Citro)

Catch-up and then outta here -- CCS senior Adam Staffaroni and I are off to St. Albans, VT to speak at the library at BFA UHS #48, thanks to an invite from librarian Peter Jones.

Glad I moved an hour closer to St. Albans!

Anyhoot, gotta be quick this morning, sooooo --

* Rick Veitch and his older son Ezra (younger son Kirby is still in college; "hey!" from here to both of you, Ezra and Kirby!) have a unique jam you can watch and listen to, which you

can download from here,

and I think this post scoops this link!

What is it?

Well, here's how Rick describes it, as "a podcast of me reading the text from Can't Get No, with Ezra providing the ghost soundscape behind me.... If you click on this link it brings you to a list of different podcasts available. Just click on Can't Get No for the 49 meg download."

If your computer system and online access is up to the task, go for it, folks, and enjoy!

* Remember that lovely Mario Bava boxed set I foamed-at-the-mouth about here last week?

Well, Tim Lucas has been getting lots of mixed signals from Anchor Bay about what may or may not ultimately be in that set.

Until Tim posts the final word on this matter, I refer you to his blog, and we're all waiting with bated Bava breath for what we can or can't see, come street-date for that lovely brick of Bava.


* My old crony and amigo Steve Perry is a guest at Megacon in Orlando, FL this coming Saturday, so if you're in the Orlando area, here's your chance to meet the man who co-created many characters, from Marvel's Varnae and the Epic series Timespirits, to many of the villains and supporting characters on the Thundercats (and, dare I forget, Silverhawks) cartoon programs and more.

Steve, along with Mark Whitcomb, Jack Venooker and Tim "Doc Ersatz" Viereck, convinced me back in 1976 (while we were all at Johnson State College) to pursue my dream, via applying to the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc.'s first-ever year of operation, and it was in fact Steve (with his subscription to The Comic Buyer's Guide and that paper's "Beautiful Balloons" column, announcing the opening of the JK School) who initiated that push.

We had the pleasure of working together on a number of projects, including my first-ever published comics work in Abyss, pro stories for Bizarre Adventures, Epic ("Kultz" in Epic #6, among my personal faves of anything I ever did in comics), Heavy Metal, etc., and have stayed in touch over the years, through thick and thin.

I'm happy to report I just wrote the introduction for the upcoming graphic novel collection of Steve's and fellow XQB and dear friend Tom Yeates's classic 1980s Epic miniseries Timespirits. (Steve's hoping to get Tom to Megacon next year, and emailed me a proposition to join them -- time will tell!)

So, if you're planning on visiting Megacon, look for Steve on Saturday, bring your copies of Timespirits, Bizarre Adventures, Thundercats & Silverhawks for signing, and say hello -- this is his first con in almost 20 years!

* In a followup to my Tuesday post, allow me to note that

the official Brattleboro Reformer obit for Alan Eames, who passed away this past weekend, is here (scroll down to it).

Curiously, it reads like Alan himself wrote it -- I can hear his voice quite clearly in this!

R.I.P., Alan; glad to have met you and known you a bit before your passing. Much love to his family, especially to Sheila, Elena, and most of all to Adrian and Andrew.

[A curious note: the guest book, which both I and my daughter Maia have posted to, is up until -- gulp -- my birthday. Weird, eh?]

* Vermonters have been happily

emailing this to one another all week;

I gotta give credit to actor, fellow ex-First Run Video employee and fellow native Vermonter Michael Dean for sending the link to me. Check it out!

Our representatives in the Federal government have done pretty well by us, and I've been particularly savoring

Philip Baruth reminding me regularly of why I love Senator Patrick Leahy.

Bring on the bottled water, by all means, if only to ensure I hydrate as needed during my daily visit to

The Vermont Daily Briefing.

Check it out, too.
Daily.

Have a great weekend, one and all!

WANTED:
A New Home for This Vampire!

Plus: Wild Doings Tonight in Utah!
Sip & Sup Salt Lake Surprises!
Be There or Be Unloved!

And: Jesus Saves! Scores!

Weekend Update:
No Politics Today, Promise

As I continue to labor, like some bloated pregnant collector ready to pop like a tick, toward passing my massive tons of shit -- a massive library of films, books, comics, magazines, and all manner of collectibles and invaluables -- out of the 50+-mile-birth canal that yawns, gaping, across half of my native state, it's sweet to know there's some kindred souls who understand this lunacy.

Thankfully, the Center for Cartoon Studies is full of such kindred souls -- many of whom have helped Marge and I through this momentous move.

In celebration of that fact, I wish to bring your attention to just one of these kindred spirits this morning, and the amazing event he has a hand in over in his own home state, Utah.

Take it away, Blair --

* Blair C. Sterrett is among this year's Center for Cartoon Studies freshmen class, and we bonded early on over our genetic predisposition to weird shit, and our attitudes toward archiving and pack-ratting. Blair is smarter than creaky ol' Bissette, though, in that he has collaborated on an archival collective with a plan that has long-term goals (with public access) as an integral part of its operation. This may free Blair in the long term from the kind of massive move Bissette is currently overwhelmed with, schlepping a half-century of pop cultural debris from one locale to another.

Back in his home state of Utah over the CCS winter break, Blair has been a busy fellow. He and his cronies are, today, January 13th, hosting a momentous multi-media event entitled "Excavations."

The particulars can be found over here,

amid the miracles of The Lost Media Archive website,

and has received some local press (Blair says, "We were just interviewed today by the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper"), but here's the overview Blair and his fellow Lost Media Archive fellow Tyrone Davies provided me via email and his posting on our beloved CCS board:

The Lost Media Archive announces it’s first event of 2007…

EXCAVATIONS:
An exhibition of unearthed films, videos, records, and other forgotten media.

On January 13th, starting at 7:00 pm, the Lost Media Archive will host a FREE multimedia film and audio event at the No Brow Coffee and Tea Company (315 E. 300 S. Salt Lake City).

What is the Lost Media Archive?
-------------
The Lost Media Archive is a Utah-based collection of mondo/kitch/cult/ephemeral/experimental/historical/
obsolete/forgotten/unearthed audio-visual and textual documents. LMA is also a resource for those who cling to bygone media formats. When possible, the LMA maintains equipment and media for use by recordists and filmmakers. The LMA was founded by Blair Sterrett and works together with loaf-i productions and the Free Form Film Festival to arrange screenings, viewings, and concerts. The LMA also promotes and initiates the creation of new and unusual films, albums, performative projects, and book events.

What will be shown?
LMA founders Blair Sterrett and Tyrone Davies will exhibit numerous works on 8mm film, 16mm film, video, and frame-by-frame filmstrip, as well as audio recordings and rare books. The evening’s events will include screenings of many delightfully bizarre films and also demonstrate some of the benefits of “obsolete” media formats. What’s more, the two founders will describe how the public can become members of this archive and make personal use of the Lost Media collection.

For more information visit

lost media’s temporary website,

or visit

freeformfilm.org,

or contact Tyrone Davies at tyrone@loaf-i.com

Blair adds, "Here's a list of some of the machines and formats that we will have on exhibit:"

Machines:
Wire Recorder
Wax Cylinder
Windup Victrola
Reel to Reel
8-Track
Frame by Frame Filmstrip Projectors
Portable Turntable
16mm Projectors
8 mm Projectors
Super 8 Projectors
Slide Projectors
Portable foldout Slide Projector Theater
U-matic Tape Deck
6 rpm record player for the blind
Micro-Film Projector
Stereo-scopic Viewer
Fisher Price Movie Viewer
and more...

Formats:
Reel To Reel
Wire
Accoustic (Pre-electric) 78
Electric 78
Edison Records
Recordio Discs
Flexi-Disc
Paper Records
Cardboard Records
Metal Records
Resin and Metal Records
Glass Records
Mini - 78
45 rpm
33 1/3 rpm
6 rpm
8-Track
Beta
VHS
U-matic Video
Large VHS for Broadcasting
Frame by Frame Film Strips
Slides
8 mm
Super 8
16 mm
33 mm
Cassette
Mini – Cassette
Laser Disc
Mini – DVD
Regular DVD
and other stuff I can't describe

If I were in Utah, I'd be there.

BTW, Blair also noted this week, "Wow! Canyon Crest Elementary School in Provo is giving us a huge donation of film strips today!" So if you've got some pop cultural debris in need of a new home, you now know where to go. Don't send it to me; I've got enough!

* The multi-talented Mr. Sterrett also plays music (including sweet saw, with which he briefly serenaded the CCS auction back in December), and

his band "The Nourishment" just released a new MP3 EP for all to hear place on their IPods -- right here: The Nourishment, "Shareholders' Annual Stock Report 2003."

Enjoy. Blair notes, "It's funny because when this was recorded back in 2003, it was to help explain why nothing had come out from us since 2001. Thus, the 1st track blaming our manager. Sigh, now at last this lost EP sees the light of day in 2007."

And that ain't all. Earlier this week, one of Blair's collection rarities made an appearance on

365 Days 2007; check out "365 Days #9" listing (Antonio Eugenio Martinez - Puno De Tierra/Volver Volver) for that mp3 treat!

Judging just from the sampling Blair has shared with CCS classmates and yours truly over the past semester, his record collection is extraordinary, ripe with oddities and curios.

_______________________

* Amid a week punctuated with wonders -- including a VT contact out-of-the-blue with vital information on A Vermont Romance (1915), one of the first feature films ever made in the Green Mountain State and among the elusive research plums for my still-in-progress Green Mountain Cinema book series project -- was this gem from the one and only Jamie Meyers, aka Reverend Jay, who I was lucky to come to know via his formative years in Brattleboro and our time working together at First Run Video waaaaaaaaay back in the '90s (remember the '90s?).

As out-of-the-blue as the surprise A Vermont Romance info (from another source, mind you), James surfaced unexpectedly and sent me

"Jesus Saves! ...Rebound Gretzky! He scores!!!,"

noting:

"I'm not sure what to say about this. I think it just speaks for itself.



You've got to figure that Jesus is always the first one picked when choosing teams right?

I mean you've gotta figure he's good for a whole bunch of goals/
touchdowns/
RBIs.

How about the kid tackling Jesus? I would think he's gotta be good to take down the almighty.

And what if Jesus is one of the team captains? How would you feel if you don't get picked to be on his team? That's gotta sting."



The Rev found the Jesus statue website via

this blog,

and thus all credit due has been given its due.

______________________

* As the attentive of you may have already noticed, my ol' Massachusetts cartooning crony Mark M. (man of mystery, and not Mark Martin) already noted on January 9th amid the comments for this very blog,

"Holy Crap! Someone's selling Varnae the Vampire!,"

referring to the original art for the back cover of Bizarre Adventures #33 magazine that I painted back in 1982 to accompany Steve Perry and my Dracula story, "The Blood Bequest," which indeed introduced Varnae the Vampire as a new and original twist for Dracula's origin in terms of the Marvel Universe. Varnae was our contribution to the Marvel Universe, crafted with love but under Marvel's rigorous work-for-hire terms, and Varnae has since been elevated to the official pantheon. Cool; too bad we never get any credit for that, but hey, we knew the rules going in, having fought to preserve a 'thank you' nod to Marv Wolfman and Neal Adams on the credit scroll for "The Blood Bequest" which Marvel editorial vindictively removed (they were mucho pissed at Marv at the time).

Yep, Varnae -- ahem, I mean, The Primal Vampire -- is indeed for sale, and here's your shot at purchasing a primo Bissette original painting, suitable for framing and scaring the shit out of your household.



Now, there's a history to this piece not discussed at the online eBay auction site (and one error in fact: this never, ever appeared in Taboo. It did, however, enjoy a reprint in The Year in Fear calender G. Michael Dobbs created, I illustrated, Mark Martin art directed and Tundra published back in '91).

I'll not go into all of it, but among the tidbits I will share this weekend:

* This art was originally published by Marvel in a slightly different version, rendering Steve Perry's and my original conception of Varnae. However, Marvel's archaic methodology of returning original artwork circa 1982, amid the hubbub over their refusal to return Jack Kirby's original art, was the blind alley, ass-backward mail-order form we lowly artists received from Marvel prior to receiving our original art. The form, a photocopy of which is still in my files, stated that the artist acknowledged the art still and forever belonged to Marvel Comics, along with all rights, in perpetuity, like, forever, man. And that if you signed the release, and mailed it back to Marvel, you might, maybe, get your art back (if you did not sign the form, no artwork; no tikky, no washy).

Signing the form (as I knew the rules by then; there's a reason I did very, very little work for Marvel Comics in my career), I was pleasured about a month or two later with a package containing "The Blood Bequest" original art, including the Bizarre Adventures #33 back cover painting -- with a fucking hole the size of a quarter punched through the dead center of the painting and the double-page spread splash page. I kid you not. (The only worst treatment my original art ever suffered via a publisher -- other than the outright theft of Saga of the Swamp Thing pages, covers and pinup art from the DC offices -- was via Eclipse Comics, who similarly mangled pages of "Scraps," one of my personal fave stories I retain my copyright to. Sigh.)

Now, I took the time to not only repair said quarter-sized hole inexplicably rammed through my art, but I also redid major portions of the back cover painting, changing it significantly so that it was no longer Varnae -- the Marvel Varnae -- and was now a slightly new painting, another variation on the primal vampire archetype Steve and I had conceived.

So, that's what this painting is -- that's what saw print in The Year in Fear calender, and that's the original now on sale.

* A friend begged me to sell him this painting back in '88 or so, and I reluctantly did. A couple of years later, he was going through some tough times, and chose to put the painting out for sale at a horror convention we both attended; thus, the Primal Vampire at some point found a new home. I've no idea what the route this painting went through might have been, but it somehow ended up with Texas-based Heritage Auctions about three years ago, and my Texas bud and fanzine maestro and cartoonist extraordinaire Jeff Smith (not, as he hastens to add, "the Jeff Smith," of Bone fame) let me know it was going up for online auction.

Alas, that auction didn't find a buyer for the piece, which prompted me to abandon any and all plans to sell my own original art via online auction venues, if at all or ever, period.

* Thus, the fate of this painting determined the fate of all my artwork: it stays with me and in the family, bunky, save for those precious few times I'm contacted by serious buyers. I haven't deviated from that decision. In the past decade, there's been only two buyers I've sold to among my circle of friends and associates, and one sale to a stranger that was worth the trouble -- being the last time I sold a page of original art back in the late 1990s. This went to a serious fan and buyer (who, coincidentally, was a writer and on the creative staff for Seinfeld). The price was dear, the sale was worth making, I shared the income with my kids, and I knew the art went to someone who dearly wanted the piece.

So, here's the deal: This is a rare opportunity, for anyone who cares. You've got until January 18th to

bid on this Bissette original art, right here.

I've got no stake in this, get nothing for or from it -- but would like to see The Primal Vampire in a new home. I got a new home this year for Christmas, my Primal Vampire deserves a new home.

Whoever buys/wins this art, and contacts me at msbissette@yahoo.com, I will send you a signature card you can frame with the art, personalized to you (or, if it's to be a gift to someone else, signed to that gift recipient), which can be framed with the art.

(Now to get to those sketches (now paintings) I still owe some very patient people... who have been waiting a decade for their sketches/paintings...)

__________________

Have a great weekend!