Extraordinary Gentlemen: Blurs, Black Coats, Muckmen, Shadows, Doctors, Phantoms, Fantomas and White (House) Lies

News on the home front blurs into a wider topic I've meant to post about all week. Thanks to today's conjunction of events, I can do both...

It's been a loooong time coming, but this week finally arrived at the delivery to Black Coat Press of my latest book project, Volume 1 of the four-volume archival book series S.R. Bissette's Blur. Each volume clocks in over 250 pages, reprinting my complete "Video Views" column from 1999-2001, the critical first step in my scheme to get all my professional writing archived and into print.

Here's the link to the section on the Blur book series on Black Coat Press's website, which will tell you all you need to know; cover art will be posted soon.

Black Coat Press co-founder and co-publisher (and longtime friend) Jean-Marc Lofficier turned the final document around in mere hours, and I'm presently seeing through the final proofreading of the book. I'm doing this as CCS graduate and amigo Jon-Mikel Gates works up the final cover design for all four volumes from two painting/collages I completed last year for the project; the first volume's cover will be turned in to Black Coat by the weekend's close. As noted, this is just step one in an expansive agenda to get all my writing, fiction and non-fiction, into definitive collected editions... followed by, with luck, my comics work. Wish me luck, but better yet, if you're a fan of my work, please, buy these books to ensure the viability of this project!

Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier have cultivated Black Coat Press into an impressive and unprecedented imprint. With the considerable creative alliances Jean-Marc and Randy have cultivated over the years, Black Coat Press has emerged as a one-stop venue for a lot of fine work. Prominent among the work thus far published are the first English-language translations of vintage French and Belgian pulp heroes and characters of the 19th and early 20th Century, precursors to many beloved pulp characters and concepts that emerged from America's pulp golden age.

If you're a fan of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Shadow, Doc Savage, Edgar Rice Burroughs and their kith and kin, the Black Coat library is a wealth of previously unmined riches!

Black Coat Press's website and catalogue, brimming with some fantastic new books, await you at this link, and it's all well worth a look and some purchases.

Consider, for instance, just one of the imprint's brand-new releases,

The Nyctalope vs. Lucifer by Jean de La Hire, translated and adapted by Brian Stableford with an afterword by Jean-Marc Lofficier, which is now available sporting a snazzy Denis Rodier cover (showcased above, by today's post headline).

Author Jean de La Hire introduced Leo Saint-Clair, alias the Nyctalope, in 1911 amid a torrent of his ongoing adventure serials; like most pulp author, La Hire was incredibly prolific. Nyctalope wields uncanny heightened senses, including night vision and hypnotic powers; he's an early incarnation of the super-cyborg archetype (via his artificial heart, an attribute revealed later in the hero's adventures). Nyctalope was pitted against a formidable rogue's gallery of villains (Oxus, Lucifer, Leonid Zattan, Titania, Belzebuth and Gorillard) for over three decades. Thus, according to Jean-Marc and Stableford, Jean de La Hire "created a template that was later adopted by such pulp heroes as Doc Savage... before providing the core mythology of American comic books."

Black Coat Press's new edition and translation of La Hire's 1921 adventure features the second appearance of Nyctalope's nemesis Baron Glô von Warteck aka Lucifer, Lord of Castle Shwarzrock in the Black Forest. The clash pitches hypnotic powers against hypnotic powers, with Lucifer's mesmerizing abilities dangerously amplified by the sf "teledynamo" device, with which Lucifer intends to -- hahahahahaha! -- enslave the world! This anticipates countless pulp and Golden Age superhero comics adventures; as Jean-Marc notes, "Just as Steve Rogers, Captain America, is the incarnation of the Stars and Stripes, Leo Saint-Clair, a.k.a. the Nyctalope, stood for the ideals of Colonial France between two world wars..." -- true enough.

How can the uninitiated get a handle on all this? Clocking in at over 300 pages (and 150-300 illustrations) per volume, the essential Black Coat Press purchases to begin with are

Jean-Marc and Randy's definitive Shadowmen: Heroes and Villains of French Pulp Fiction

and Shadowmen 2: Heroes and Villains of French Comics.

Shadowmen's first volume covers many familiar names and faces -- Arsène Lupin, The Count of Monte-Cristo, Fantômas, The Phantom of the Opéra, Judex, Robur, Captain Nemo -- but it also serves as an ideal introduction to the likes of Antinéa the Queen of Atlantis, Belphégor, The Mysterious Dr. Cornelius, Doctor Omega, Fascinax, The Black Coats, Harry Dickson, Monsieur Lecoq, The Nyctalope, Rocambole, Rodolphe, Rouletabille, Sâr Dubnotal and Les Vampires. The second volume expands the pantheon, with concise overviews of Zig & Puce, The Blue Hawk, The Pioneers of Hope, Fantax and Black Boy, Durga Rani Queen of the Jungle, Fulguros, Prince Kaza the Martian, Tom X, Salvator, Satanax, Stany Beulé, Arabelle the Last Mermaid, The Conquerors of Space, Monsieur Choc, Bibi Fricotin, Jacques Flash, Super Boy, Alain Landier, Zembla, Tenebrax, The Castaways in Time, Titan, Jodelle, Luc Orient, Submerman, Olympio and Vincent Larcher, Wampus and The Other, Thorkael, The Time Brigade, Tiriel, Kabur, Felina, Photonik, Mikros and Epsilon, Phenix, none other than Frankenstein's Monster and the classic la bande dessinee icons Barbarella and Druillet's Lone Sloane. Whew!

If you need more convincing, consider this recommendation from the late, great Will Eisner, and enter this exciting new (to almost all Americans) pop culture realm ASAP.

Thankfully, Jean-Marc has also created a stellar website celebrating this amazing heritage; click this link now to tap the "Cool French Comics" site, and bookmark it for repeated visits and use.

For instance, check out the overview of The Nyctalope/Léo Saint-Clair, and see if this doesn't whet your appetite for the real McCoy via Black Coat Press's new release.

And that, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg...

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Making the Black Coat Press volumes even more timely this summer of 2007 is the recent launch of The Shadow and Doc Savage reprint volumes, thanks to former vet comics colorist Anthony Tollin's

double-novel new editions, jam-packed with articles, essays and illustrations to sweeten these already-sweet pulp revivals.

Anthony was a key member of the original '1963' comics creative team, having colored the entire series, and it's great to see him enjoying a new career arc and great success via these lovely reprint volumes.

As you can see via the links just provided, the catalogue has grown to an impressive lineup of multiple Shadow and Doc Savage reprint volumes in short order, boasting the original pulp covers (many shot from the original paintings!) and, in the case of Doc Savage, handsome reprints of James Bama's iconic Bantam Books Doc Savage cover paintings, reportedly with the blessing of Bama himself.

Anthony knows his stuff, too, and he has surrounded himself with like-minded and equally scholarly writers, researchers and aficianados. Like Jean-Marc, Anthony has crammed every volume and the website with tons of information, retrospectives, analysis, images and trivia -- and some essential reading.

Check out Kirk Kimball (aka Robby Reed)'s excellent "How Doc Savage Inspired the Fantastic Four" essay, which persuasively makes its case for the Lester Dent pulp classic feeding the revered Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Marvel superhero team.

We're in a fertile moment in pop cultural archiving and research, and between Jean-Marc's imprint and creative partners and Anthony's new line of reprints and impressive stable of contributors, it's pulp heaven in 2007. Enjoy!

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This is long overdue: If you're a fan of my Saga of the Swamp Thing years, and the entire Swamp Thing legacy and all that the work Alan Moore, John Totleben, Rick Veitch and I spawned via the Vertigo line and John Constantine: Hellblazer in particular, you need to bookmark Rich Handley's amazing website and resource,

Roots of the Swamp Thing: The universe of Swamp Thing, The Un-Men and John Constantine: Hellblazer.

Rich has created a remarkable one-stop showcase here packed with insights, imagery and the rich history of Swamp Thing and his universe. I've only started spelunking the caverns of Rich's site, but Rich just got in touch with me yesterday via email, so look for future collaborative undertakings.

I'll be posting the link on the permanent menu at left, and linking to/from my own website's "Green Man" section in August. But don't wait until then to explore all that Rich has archived, posted and researched -- it's a stunning site!

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Well, it's taken mere hours for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's Tuesday lunacy to unravel, and the spectacle of the Bush Administration's blatant contempt for any shred of Constitutional checks and balances on their power becomes more Pere Ubu Roi.

The fact that it's our Attorney General who will have to serve contempt of Congress charges against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President George Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers -- should the House vote to follow through on yesterday's decision of the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee -- only further launches this into the realm of madness.

Whatever Tony Snow says (the arrogance and loathing every facet of this White House harbors for the will of the people absolutely seethes from their pores), it's President Bush and Vice President Cheney who have rigorously fanned these flames into a mounting Constitutional crisis.

President Bush has openly stated he won't permit any prosecutions to proceed based on possible contempt charges --

-- in and of itself, a show of utter contempt, coming as it does on the heels of his commute of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence.

How much lower can he, they sink? We're finding out.

That the recent U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruling on former CIA operative Valerie Plame's lawsuit eliminated one of the last courtroom remnants of the leak scandal,

prompting Bush's shameless dismissal of it all as having "run its course... Now we're going to move on" further demonstrates his and his Administration's egomaniacal sense of invincibility and absolute disdain for any semblance of due process.

Treason averted -- they've successfully betrayed our nation on so many levels, with such blatant transparency, it's completely impossible to keep track of any longer. Benedict Arnold, you were a piker!

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I'll be posting erratically at best next week, so fair warning. We've got a lot going on, and logging on to the computer daily just won't be an option until I get out the other side of July and into the first weekend in August.

Have a great Thursday, one and all...

Moore/Bissette/Totleben Swamp Thing on Jeopardy!?

Just got a call from CCSers Chris Warren and Morgan Pielli -- apparently, the "DC Comics" category of round one (before the 7:15 mark, when Marge and I tuned in after Chris called -- at which point "DC Comics" meant political comedians) concluded with a question about our run on Swamp Thing, and featured a splash page by yours truly and John Totleben!

And Elizabeth Chasalow, CCS graduate, just posted this on the CCS discussion board:

" ALSO also, we [Elizabeth and Jacob Jarvela] were just watching Jeopardy, and in a "DC Comics" category, the $1000 question popped up with a picture of Swamp Thing! They had to name the character. Ha!"

Cool. Hope my Ma and Pa saw it!

That's all I know -- just noting it for y'all. Now, there's a Swamp Thing trivia question -- Swamp Thing on Jeopardy, Memorial Day, 2007, 7 PM!

Imagine That Newt is Orange...

...and then click over to

Bob McLeod's Rough Stuff site to read about this vintage Bissette/Totleben collaboration, our first painted Swamp Thing cover art.

Then, at your local comics shop or via

this link, pick up a copy immediately of Rough Stuff #4, featuring the interview with John Totleben and pencils section by yours truly.

George Khoury's interview with John is truly excellent reading, and (per usual for Rough Stuff) illustrated with some jaw-droppingly gorgeous reproductions of John's pencils for covers, story pages, pinups, concept drawings, etc. John's recollections about our Swamp Thing days are, also per usual, dead on the money right -- though I'll post some comments (in the way of additional info, in part since George asks John about my end of things more than once) later this week, as time permits. In any case, get your hands on Rough Stuff #4, and pronto!

I'm speaking in Stowe, VT tonight at 5:30 at

The Helen Day Art Center; here's the particulars.

Maybe see one or two of you there? I'm working all this morning there at the art center with three groups of regional high school students (11th and 12th Grade) drawing comics -- fun, fun, fun! I dig these sessions, and some pretty lively comics come about as a result.

Ya, I know, it's late notice. Heck, I've barely had time to post anything this week, and this bull run (between CCS workload and WRIF final prep) will continue thus into Friday. As time permits, though, I'll try to catch up.

The Virginia Tech rampage is the fresh national horror; but this has had me wincing over the past week:

One thing to keep in mind as you hear/read the increasingly bilious crap pouring out of President Bush's mouth this week: You know, if President Bush would just finance his war the way every other President in US history tends to -- within his annual budget -- instead of keeping it "off the table" with his bullshit sideline funding via emergency spending measures, he wouldn't have gotten himself into this dilemma. He alone is responsible for this, however much he stridently says otherwise. He is refusing to "fund the troops."

The Congress is, at last, holding him and the Pentagon accountable (literally) for this war funding, and it's Bush's strategic burying/sidelining of the real cost of the war that led to this present showdown. The pork is a false issue -- the real issue is Bush, Cheney, et al set up this situation by never honestly funding this war, thus falsely cooking the annual books. It's Bush's own fucking fault -- however much he blisters the Democratic Party with his mounting rhetoric (and it was Republican votes that landed much of the pork attached to the war bill, BTW, so don't buy into that line of crap, either).

OK, there's other stuff to get into.

More later this week!

No Time! No Time!

Wednesday AM and no time -- so, feeble post today. Sorry.

Today's post title is true, but prompted too by the ongoing interview I'm amid with Bryan Talbot, whose new graphic novel Alice in Sunderland is soon to appear. More on that later -- when this white rabbit has time.

I've been working my way through notes on some of my old Swamp Thing pencils for the upcoming issue of Rough Stuff magazine ("S&M for Comics Pencillers"), prepping today and tomorrow's lectures for CCS, etc., all while making room for two trips north -- one today for

the Vermont cartoonists's panel in Burlington at the Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts -- all the info is here!

-- and for a CCS class trip up to

Stowe to visit the Helen Day Art Center and the "Fine Toon" VT cartooning show.

Whew; don't be surprised if I'm absent from here for a day or two, but I'll try to ensure that doesn't happen.


Followup on an email query from 'anonymous': Alex Toth was indeed vetted by Heavy Metal art director John Workman to do 1941: The Illustrated Story. For more info, check out the TwoMorrow's zine Alter Ego #63, December 2006, edited as ever by Roy Thomas; it's Roy's Toth tribute issue, and John Workman's article "1941 And All That: Why the Graphic Novel Version of Steven Spielberg's 1979 Film Was Not Drawn by Alex Toth" (pp. 47-50) says it all.

John, bless him, says the final published book was "brilliantly done by the young and wildly exuberant team of Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette," and notes the graphic novel did make a profit, which was news to me. FYI, Spielberg loathed what we'd done -- I still have a copy of his extremely negative letter to the HM folks in my files, which I reprinted in the letters page of SpiderBaby Comix -- but hey, maybe it's because we saw the truth about 1941 and laid it all out on the page for all to see!

Have a great Wednesday, one and all --

Swamp Thing Shit

Ya, I know, I'm supposed to be en route to Middlebury. Due to the first winter storm of the winter, we powwowed last night and rescheduled my guest lecture visit to a kinder day of the week, weather-wise. Marge is much appreciative, and thanks, Cole (Odell, Middlebury College comics class instructor extraordinaire), for being flexible.

Having ensured Marge sleeps in this morning (she's off from work today), allow me to indulge my nightmares for the pinch-hit blog post for this Martin Luthor King's Day I expected not to be posting...

For those who don't note the comments on this blog, Bob Heer has been posting links from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin,

steering me to Mike's postings on the worst of all the early 1990s Swamp Thing merchandizing crap.

I have all this mind-boggling drizzle in my own collection -- now, and forever, housed for all to see at

the Stephen R. Bissette Collection at HUIE Library and Henderson State University.

Special Collections librarian and amazing HUIE Goddess Lea Ann Alexander in fact had the HUIE Library glass display cases brimming with this insane Swamp Thing pop debris back in November of 2005, when Marge and I made our pilgrimage out there for the opening of the Collection.

We've got those photos... around... here... somewhere, but until we can unpack them and I can post them, I'll give you my personal choice of the lamest Swamp Thing merchandise ever (using photos from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin,

which I urge you to visit if you want to see more!)

Special thanks, then, to Bob Heer for navigating me there, and to Mike Sterling ("The Most Dangerous Man Alive Since 1969" -- only in California) for harboring such loopy delights online.

Now, Bob maintains that this admittedly crap Swampy item is the single most absurd of all the Swamp Thing merchandizing to date, and he's got a point. It is singularly bizarre; here's what Mike Sterling had to say about his eBay acquisition:

"This piece of merchandise boldly tells you, the consumer, just what exactly you're getting. "I'M CHALK!" exclaims the package, and by God, chalk is exactly what you get. Chalk carved in the general likeness of Swamp Thing and colored green, perhaps, but that, my friends, is Washable, Dustless chalk in its purest form. According to the back of the package, some of the suggested uses for Swamp Thing chalk are "Do Your Homework," "Play Games," and "Draw Funny Pictures" - yes, Swamp Thing chalk can cover the full spectrum of life. Also, according to the package, the Swamp Thing chalk "works great on chalk boards" which must come as great relief to someone.

Okay, seriously, I'm sure the "I'M CHALK!" legend on the front is some kind of warning that this item isn't candy, just in case having "CHALK" in orange letters on the front, and having pictures of kids drawing things with chalk on the back, weren't clue enough."

(Image and quote from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, Monday, September 20, 2004 post; scroll down to read the original Sterling post.)

In the same September 20th, 2004 posting, Mike also unveiled the likewise silly-ass Swamp Thing Bop Bag -- also high on the "What the fuck?" list of Swampy merchandise -- but at least one can cite 1960s movie monster bop bags as precursors, thus reducing the absurdity component of the Swampy bop bag to near nil.

As the attentive comics and Swamp Thing fans likely can make out from Mike's posted photo, here, the artist of note on these merchandizing miracles was none other than Alfredo Alcala -- or, I should say, those are definitely Alfredo's inks, perhaps working over some uncredited penciller. You may recall that it was John Totleben who first suggested Alfredo as the best fill-in inker on Saga of the Swamp Thing (during the tag-team collaborative effort editor Karen Berger orchestrated on the title around the buildup to Alan Moore's ambitious Swamp Thing Annual #2 script, "Down Amongst the Dead Men," which necessitated some fancy footwork on SOTST #30 and #31 to buy me time to pencil the Annual without a break: it was double-page-count, natch, and we were starting behind the deadline eightball -- where we'd been, like, forever). Anyhoot, it was John T who suggested Alfredo as the best alternative to his own inks, an astute call given John's and Alfredo's shared roots in Franklin Booth's pen-and-ink aesthetic. This was so that Rick Veitch and John could collaborate on #30 while I pencilled (the tightest pencils of my career) for Alfredo to ink on #31, allowing John and I to collaborate on the Annual (with a couple of pages of pencil assist from Rick Veitch). So that's how Alfredo was brought into the fold -- leading, ultimately, to his becoming the regular inker on Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing run (as penciller with Alan scripting, and later with Rick writing and pencilling), culminating in these ST merchandizing monstrosities.

A long road to China, indeed.



Well, OK, so now you know Bob Heer's choice of most absurd Swamp Thing merchandizing item ever. Though Mike Sterling doesn't indulge such nominations, he does bring special personal history to this gem, which also rank pretty high in my personal choice for most absurd Swamp Thing merchandizing ever -- the Swamp Thing Pencil Sharpeners!

I have 'em all -- again, now in the HUIE Library Bissette Collection archives (thank God, I didn't have to move them again!) -- and there are indeed three different designs, as shown on the back of the packaging (below). Mike's original post reads:

"This is one of the very first things I'd ever bought on eBay, over six years ago now. In fact, I think this may be the very item that inspired me to get an eBay account in the first place. Let me distract you from that highly embarrassing and very sad bit of personal information and draw your attention to the ballyhooing of "ACTION! Movable arms" blurbed on the package. While, yes, the arms do appear to move, I would have had a hard time attributing any kind of exciting "action" to that. Maybe you could pretend to move his arms around as if he were writhing in pain as you jab a pencil into his hip...."

Now, I have no such history. I bought these damnable things at local toy stores (in Keene, NH and down in Massachusetts) as they surfaced in the blow-out sale bins. I've been harboring these in my archives for nigh on 13 years now. Thankfully, I didn't have to suffer the public humiliation of bidding for them on eBay! That might have prompted a Heidi MacDonald column or something, Bissette bidding on Swamp Thing shit on eBay. No, I just put up with my kids saying, "Dad, why are you buying that? It's not for me, is it?", with relief beaming from their wet little eyes (brown for Maia, baby blue for Danny, like his Poppa) when I told them it was for (choke) me. "Oh, good," they said.

My misguided affection for these pencil sharpeners, though, lies in the fact that you're using a tiny Swamp Thing idol to further carve/maim a wood product already mechanically sculpted from ravaged trees -- a pencil, natch -- thus using a replica of DC's protector of the trees, the Plant Elemental incarnate, to, like, sharpen pencils. Among tree-huggers, this isn't only misapplication of a false idol, it's ideologically abhorrent in the extreme on so many levels, one can't comprehend them all. And that, I love.

(Images and quote from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, Monday, September 20, 2004 post; scroll down to read the original complete Sterling post.)

But for me, the nadir of the Plant Elemental's false idols, the ultimate absurdity of all the 1992 Swamp Thing merchandizing, the most perverse and brain-wrenching of all these misbegotten horrors, that-which-should-never-have-been-made, much less worn and adorned, are these little wonders:

AGH! SWAMP THING SLIPPERS!

Beastie booties for wee feet! Yep, they're bright green fuzzy kid's slippers with the dumbest little bright green hollow plastic Swampy heads imaginable perched (well, actually, glued) atop the isky-li'l toes of the tots who tottered around in 'em.



Of course, licensed merchandizing isn't licensed merchandizing until you've slapped the official registered trademark logo on the damned things, so there 'tis, Swamp Thing, on the sides of the slippers, adding elegance and grace to these hideous mass-production nightmares.

That's it, the point at which I concede that those who once held all rights, save comics rights, to Swamp Thing did their utmost to exploit every conceivable niche market abomination the human mind could concoct.

The slippers, the slippers -- Marge catches me some nights, muttering that in my sleep as I lay, slavering and glistening with cold sweat, in the grip of some dreadful recollection of what once lurked in my own home.
The slippers! IT WAS THE DAMNED SLIPPERS!

(Images from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, Saturday, January 13, 2007 post.)

And that, my friends, is all I can stomach of that.

Again, all this -- and more! -- is forever sheltered and selectively showcased in

the Bissette Collection at HUIE Library/ Henderson State University.

Thankfully, this is only a tiny fraction of the collection, which houses much more interesting and invaluable things, including Alan Moore scripts, Bissette art, and all manner of matter from my 30+ years in comics.

But oh, baby, those slippers!

Powwows, Printing Plates &
Prep for Bush's Craving for Victory

Awoke to the news of America's attack on Somalia -- oh, excuse me,

the air strikes against "Terror Targets" in Somalia --

-- "terror targets" reportedly responsible for the 1998 bombings of two East Africa-based U.S. Embassies. Ah, pressing "targets."

What the fuck???

When I heard this, I felt like I did when I was a lowly high school student and President Nixon interrupted the evening TV broadcast to announce his bombing of Cambodia -- like, "Oh, no, he's completely out of control. No one is going to stop this insanity."

This reminds us, natch, that President Clinton took far, far more heat from the right and from the US population for the 18 troops killed in Somalia in the 1990s than Bush has taken for the 3000+ US troops and estimated 500,000+ Iraqis killed thus far in this unprovoked lunatic binge in the Middle East (not to mention the uncounted contracted corporate employees killed, and countless wounded, maimed and traumautized on all sides).

[Note: HomeyM of Jamaica, VT brings to my attention this anonymous post from iBrattleboro.com: "So we are now at about $500,000,000,000 (500 billion) in cost for the Iraq invasion. We have killed about 500,000 Iraqis. So, we have spent about $1,000,000 (1 million) for each Iraqi man, woman and child we have killed." True enough, though the White House refutes any body count figures proffered for civilian casualties. Now that Bush's spending decisions face the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis, we're finally hearing some plain English in the Land of Nod: "How can you ever expect to get a balanced budget if you're spending $100 billion a year on Iraq borrowing the money to do it, if you're giving $50 billion a year in tax cuts to people who make over a million bucks a year and paying for that with borrowed money?"]

This Somalia air strike is of course uncannily timed to precede President Bush's Wednesday State of the Nation speech about the Iraq War, for which we've been primed to expect a troop surge or escalation (neither term, reportedly, favored in the White House). "Stay the course," he promises to stubbornly assert, claiming this is somehow a new strategy (given the fact he's proven he doesn't know a tactic from strategy), but, now, like, LOUDER, I reckon.

The atavistic craving for "victory" this President maintains, despite the nation's clear loathing for this war, means this air strike provides a taste of "victory" to whet his/our appetites (his will never be slaked), even as the National Intelligence Estimates for the Iraq War (last delivered in 2004) are delayed yet again.

No sense letting reality get in the way of Wednesday's bombast.

For anyone who thought getting Rumsfeld out of the picture might have evidenced sanity at last, today's air strike should nix that misapprehension.

I evoked Hitler's bunker mentality two days ago; we may be seeing it manifesting already; "No hope for good new from Iraq prior to the big speech? Nail those sumbitches from 1998, that'll rally everyone 'round the Prez."

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On other, far less volatile fronts:

The Trees & Hills Comics Group

has lined up some events for the coming weeks, and here's the lowdown, compliments of Colin Tedford:

Wed. 1/10 (6pm) - Cartoonists' Schmooze at Amherst Coffee (details below). Socialize w/ other creators. (Amherst, MA)

Sat. 1/20 (12-5pm) - Trees & Hills Drawing Party. Come socialize & draw at T&H cofounder Dan Barlow's apartment! More info: barlowdaniel@gmail.com (Brattleboro, VT)

Tue. 1/23 - Western MA Comic Art Guild meets at Modern Myths. Topics: more productivity and fun. More info: Hector at hero2five67@aol.com. (Northampton, MA)

Wed. 1/24 (6pm?) - "Trees & Hills And Friends" release event at Modern Myths [which is, BTW, the area's best comic shop, bar none - SRB]. If you are in the anthology, come sit with us and potentially enjoy some adulation, or at least join in a jam comic! If you're not in it, come say hi! (Northampton, MA)

Wed. 1/31 Release event for the Cartoon Art Guild's "Psychosis" anthology at Modern Myths. (Northampton, MA)

Thu. 2/1 Hourly Comics Day. Draw a journal comic for each hour of the day! More info:

here.

(geographically dispersed - but maybe we should set up some evening get-togethers?)

Happy comic-making!

About that upcoming Amherst powwow, here's some more particulars:

"Wednesday, 10 January, is the date for our next Schmooze -- hope you guys can make it!

It'll be at 6pm at Amherst Coffee, a combination café-bar in downtown Amherst. Coffee, tea, sodas, wine, and whisky are available. Menu, as far as I can tell, is pretty much just pastry, so if you want something more substantial for supper, I suggest that you /not/ arrive hungry.

Amherst Coffee (256-8987) is at 28 Amity Street, in the Amherst Cinema Building. If you are coming via Route 9, when you get to the Common, go north one longish block on South Pleasant Street, and turn west at the first traffic light; that is Amity Street, which at that intersection is opposite (somewhat off-kilter) from Main Street. The Amherst Cinema Building will be on your left, roughly across the street from the Jones Public Library.

I'll be going on foot, as I live a half-mile away, and since many PVTA bus routes (www.pvta.org) go through Amherst Center, some of you may be able to make it by public transport. Drivers will have to find
parking, which I explain below.

There is a very small parking lot adjoining the Amherst Cinema building, with metered parking. There is also metered parking along that first block or so of Amity Street, and along both sides of South Pleasant, as well as along North Pleasant (as Pleasant extends north); but the North Pleasant spaces fill up quickly, and some of the spots are short-term "loading zones." Also, there are somewhat larger parking lots on the Common itself, also with metered parking, and along Boltwood Ave on the other side of the Common from South Pleasant. Metered parking extends eastward on Main Street for on both sides for a couple of blocks, and on
the north side an additional long block near the Evergreens (Emily Dickinson's brother's house). There's a little bit of parking behind the CVS on North Pleasant (accessible by a driveway right next to CVS), but much of it is reserved for CVS customers.

But the hidden gem of parking in downtown Amherst is the Boltwood Walk lot behind Amherst Chinese Food, accessible on the north side of Main Street; in addition to aboveground parking, there is a ramp that goes to an underground parking area. Both aboveground and underground parking in this lot is paid for by tickets that can be purchased from a vending machine, and should be placed on your dashboard. This lot is also accessible from Kellogg Street, but you have to turn in /after/ Rao's Coffee, not before -- there's a tiny lot, even smaller than the one near Amherst Cinema, on Kellogg just /before/ Rao's, but I wouldn't have my heart set on finding a space in it; you're better off in the Boltwood Walk lot/garage. BTW, the pillars in the Boltwood garage are painted with colorful designs which you might enjoy.

Everybody please say farewell to Michael Finger, who was at our first Schmooze at the Dirty Truth last month, but won't be able to make our next one as he'll be flying to Texas for his new job. He did a great
job of starting up the comics creators' meetings at Modern Myths, and he'll be missed. Scott Sheaffer is taking over the reins of that group, and we'll be going to a monthly format, the better to accommodate the
expected monthly meetings of the New England chapter of Comics Artists Group (CAG), of which Hector Rodriguez is the Mass. liaison.

See you next Wednesday,
E. J. Barnes"

OK, that's that -- hope some of you can make it.

____________________

And finally, as promised -- printing plates!

In the realm of comic art collectors, the printing plate -- the actual metal (and later, in the mid-'70s, plastic) plate used to print the comics -- have become curios and collectibles in and of themselves. I have a couple plates in my own collection, but thanks to Mark Martin (contact point) and collector Angson -- who shot the photos from his own collection of the Saga of the Swamp Thing 1980s rarities displayed here -- Angson and I can share a few of these with you today. (Thanks to Angson for granting permission to run these images here today.)

The cover plate above and below (the second shot shows the full cover plate spread, front and back covers -- back covers naturally being ads) are from Saga of the Swamp Thing #24, the last issue to feature a Tom Yeates cover (Tom was the original artist on the 1980s series), and the first to share my byline, though I can't recall what, exactly, I did on the cover.

If memory serves, I simply worked up a rough cover concept, including chainsaw, from which Tom did the final pencils and inks; I know I didn't have a hand penciling, as that Swamp Thing is Tom's baby, not my overgrown moss-and-vine tangled saladman. (BTW, that's Angson's hand, bunkie!)



Angson also sent along these shots of cover plates from later Saga of the Swamp Thing issues I did do the covers for -- the first by John Totleben and I, under new editor Karen Berger's helm, for SOTST #25 -- shown solo, and then paired with its back cover ad (and Angson's hand):



Note that these cover plates represent the drawn and printed images in reverse -- and the fascinating conversion of those images (lines, tones and colors) into sculpted forms that serve to configure ink to paper as they must be printed.

These are in and of themselves compelling objects and mutant forms of comics art, hence their allure. These are among the oddest 'original art' artifacts to be found, especially for anyone interested in printing and the technical 'behind the scenes' elements of how comics are created and printed.




And finally, the cover plate for the much later Swamp Thing #53, John Totleben's knockout solo art issue (and a giant-annual page count, at that) fulfilling his long-harbored desire to do his own Batman vs. Swamp Thing opus. Here's my penciled-and-inked front cover image, all on its lonesome, rendered as print plate:



And the full front-and-back cover spread printing plate, below, sans that hand from beyond! Dig it, without that hand, the plate's curved nature is more evident in this photo. Because these plates were designed to fit over a roller (the printing press roller), they all bend; you can see here, without Angson holding down the plate, the way the light hits the curved surface. These can be tough to store or display as a result, a minor issue if you're into 'em.

This cover was a particular favorite of mine, rendered all the more unusual when inverted for printing purposes.

Remember, too, that each cover and page had more than one printing plate -- these all appear to be the black plate (black linework/tones) -- for four-color printing (black, red, blue, yellow, in plain English). I've never seen individual color plates, that I know of, though I'm sure they're out there. Those would feature even more bizarre abstractions of the cover imagery, though that's neither here nor there:





I'll eventually post these alongside the cover images themselves, as I'm sure these simply look like bizarre abstract images to many of you. But, alas, no scanner set up here in the Windsor digs as yet, so -- enjoy Angson's curious collectibles in their naked state, unaccompanied by their companion printed images. Maybe I can remedy and revisit this soon!

_________________

OK, I gotta run. Contractor is coming -- the room's painted, I've moved and covered everything I can to maximize Dave's work space and access -- plumber is hopefully going to show (every faucet in the house needs attention), and I've got a big Center for Cartoon Studies 4 PM faculty meeting to prep for.

Enough of this high-speed access junkie-fix -- I'm outta here!

Have a great Tuesday, one and all!

I'll write more later today, but suffice to say now it's hard to grasp the enormity of the devastation in Louisiana -- a part of the country I've twice had the pleasure of exploring, including a trip through Houma researching Swamp Thing in '84 -- and the crippling blow that's been dealt by the raw forces of nature. It's been a long time since New England saw anything close -- the flood of 1927 (which I studied at length last year, including viewings of all the extant film footage), the hurricanes of 1936 and especially 1938 -- but we never saw anything like Katrina. New Orleans has essentially been swept from the face of the planet (though reports from the French Quarter indicate that venerable core of the city stands intact), and our leaders are busily downplaying the economic consequences with the same indifference they've downplayed the reality of the wars they've so blithely squandered a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives on. No joke: as a nation, we should have been saving for "a rainy day," eh?

On the home front, my 19-year-old son Dan called home last night with the heartbreaking news one of his friends had died in an apparent drowning accident. Dan's home with me now, and we're going out for some lunch soon; it has shaken him and his circle to the core.

Just two weeks ago, he was at a farewell party for a friend he's known since age three who was leaving for Iraq; I never thought I'd see my son going through these kinds of things, but here we are.

Here we all are, in so many ways.

The warnings from awake economists during Bush's first three months in office that we would be seeing increasing poverty and Dickensian destitution on a growing scale are manifesting in all corners of our country, Vermont included.

On the most mundane level, it's coming home. Driving the eight or so miles to Brattleboro yesterday, I passed our local store at 1 PM and regular gas was $2.59; I decided to fill up on the way home. When I returned at 2:30 PM, regular had gone up to $2.85. A station in town was closed with "NO MORE GAS" signs up and their pumps blocked off; in a heartbeat, I remembered scenes of the 'even/odd' license plate lines in New Jersey in the late 1970s, the fistfights among people waiting in lines for hours, even days, the closed gas stations one would pass in search of somewhere to fill up.

We haven't learned a fucking thing, have we?