Oh, and one more Halloween treat for you (if you've just logged in, don't miss the long Halloween post just below!):
Here is a Bissette Big G sketch for ya, compliments of kind-hearted Bob Heer, posted with his permission.
Monday, October 31, 2005
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Top Horror Flix Pix! Halloween Interview with Top Horror Comics Creators!
First off, here's a lively Halloween read for you: Alex Ness at PopThought.com cultivated a special seasonal surprise for all of you via exclusive online interviews with yours truly along with Jamie Delano, Steve Niles, Tom Mandrake, Ben Templesmith, and Tony Isabella on horror comics and all things horrific. It's A Special Halloween Treat, no tricks, and it's just a click away atHorror Comics Considered!
The link goes live today -- Enjoy!
___
My Fave Halloween Horrors Lists! For those who feel the need for guidance in selecting tonight's lineup of video & DVD horrors, I humbly offer the following personal 'top horror film' lists.
Consider this, too, a preview of the upcoming book SR Bissette's Blur Vol. 1 from Black Coat Press which will be out in time for Christmas. The following appears in Volume 1 (the first of four collecting the complete run of my weekly New England newspaper video columns and articles, 1999-2001), which is jam-packed with other delectable companion dishes, from individual reviews to articles like these covering entire genres. More info and how to order link when the book is ready to purchase...
Without further ado:
Here's my "Creeper Sleepers" column from October 28, 1999, followed by a related column relevent to the season. The first was written for family newspapers (during the fall of The Blair Witch Project's brief reign) for the casual home reader, so forgive the 'primer' tenor and tone -- if you're a die-hard like me, you might skip the appetizer to scan down to THE TOP HORROR FILMS: S. R. BISSETTE’S BAKER’S DOZEN, which is the real meat-and-potatoes. Remember, too, these were scribed before the blossoming of DVD as the preferred home video format, and the abundance of marvelous horrors we've been blessed with since:
__
CREEPER SLEEPERS: LOW BUDGET HORRORS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD!
Since the silent era, every generation has had its own equivalent to The Blair Witch Project. Sure, The Phantom of the Opera, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Exorcist, and Jaws are terrific, but often it’s the impoverished B-movies and cheapies that crawl out of the woodwork that really raise our collective goosebumps. In hopes of inspiring a few private dusk-to-dawn gatherings in the Valley this Halloween weekend, allow me to introduce you to these “creeper sleepers” that forever changed what a horror film could be, should be, and would be. A couple of these films were made by major Hollywood studios, but most of them emerged from regional independents, eager to make their mark. These low-budget horror films captured the public’s imagination of their time and made millions, changing horror films forever. I’ve arranged the titles chronologically, to emphasize the impact these films had on each other, and marked the most significant titles with an asterisk.
* THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) This startling German silent classic was an international hit, the first cult horror movie. Eager to put the audience in the mind set of the madman telling the tale, the backdrops were constructed and painted in the manner of the expressionistic art movement, with costumes, makeup, and performance stylized to match.
NOSFERATU (1921) Another German silent, a dreamy chiller which unveiled the cinema’s first and most nightmarish Dracula (Max Schreck).
* DRACULA (1931) Though produced by an established studio (Universal), this was a major gamble that paid off, ringing in the Golden Age of horror movies. Bela Lugosi remains the archetypal European vampire: “Children of the night, what music they make...” Check out the remastered edition, featuring a new score by Philip Glass; the Spanish language version, shot back-to-back on the same sets with a different cast, is even better, sans the mythic resonance of Lugosi’s presence.
FREAKS (1932) Tod Browning’s unflinching parable of life, love, and revenge among sideshow freaks prompted patrons to faint or flee. Though MGM produced this, they disowned it, and many countries banned it outright, damning it to obscurity for decades. It was rescued and revived in the late 1960s, earning its place in horror history.
* THE CAT PEOPLE (1942) We’re talking about the black and white original, not the sexy color remake. The surprising success of this subtle low-budget Val Lewton production introduced an intelligent new approach to horror films: urban, contemporary, driven by psychological nuances, relying on the suggestive power of the unseen and teasing the audience’s collective imagination.
* THE THING (1951) Again, see the black and white original, not the John Carpenter color remake (though it’s a great film, too, and much closer to the short story that inspired both versions). This tightly crafted, claustrophobic tale of an alien visitor terrorizing a remote arctic base kicked off the entire 1950s monster cycle, introduced the first jump-out-of-your-seat moment (the Thing at the door) to modern horror films, and urged audiences to “Keep Watching the Skies!” They did, and still do.
* LES DIABOLIQUES (1955) Here we go again: see the original French version, not the dreadful Sharon Stone remake. This psychological shocker had audiences lining up around the block in every major city in the US, provoking shrieks during its horrific final act and inspiring a jealous Alfred Hitchcock to make Psycho.
* INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) Don Siegel’s paranoid sf classic about a small community supplanted by dispassionate “pod people” crept into the consciousness of a generation, tapping our xenophobia, the ongoing “red scare,” and the unspoken “soullessness” of the post-World War suburban lifestyle. Both of the color remakes are very good, but see the original first; together, they actually work as a coherent trilogy.
* THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) This was the first color Hammer Film, introducing Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee -- and an aggressive, graphic new approach to Gothic horror -- to the world. The whirlwind international success of this film and Hammer’s followup, The Horror of Dracula -- which is even better! -- sparked the horror revival of the late ‘50s and 1960s.
* I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957) starred Michael Landon as the toothy j.d. terror of the first-ever teen horror film. Despite the title, this was a great little thriller, and its record-breaking boxoffice success was a major kick-in-the-ass wake-up call to the Hollywood studios.
* PSYCHO (1960) Please, forget the color remake -- you owe it to yourself to see the Alfred Hitchcock original, which dared to assault its audience with unprecedented intensity and forever expose the potential for madness lurking in the meekest of souls. Though directed by Hitchcock, this was made without studio support in black and white for very low budget, working with the production team behind Hitchcock’s popular TV series, hence its place on this list.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1960) This color Vincent Price vehicle ushered in the popular Poe series which lasted through the 1960s, and legitimized the king of the drive-in quickies Roger Corman as one of America’s premiere directors.
CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) See the black and white original, not the color remake. This sleeper didn’t earn many playdates until its re-release in 1989, but it became a cult favorite for its genuinely spooky evocation of the dream realm, notable for its stylized photography, score, and inspiration for Night of the Living Dead.
* BLOOD FEAST (1963) Notorious Herschell Gordon Lewis shocker dared to go where no major studio would, crudely carving out brains, tongues, limbs, and its unique niche as the first true “gore” film. This widely-imitated breakthrough hit of the 1960s drive-in circuit was filmed in and around the beaches of Sarasota, Florida.
* NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) George Romero’s made-in-Pittsburgh independent bent all the rules of the genre, provoking genuine terror and forever changing horror films. It’s impossible to convey how shocking this film was in its day. See the black and white 1968 original, not the colorized version, the color remake, or the dreadful 30th Anniversary Special Edition (sporting a hideous new soundtrack and idiotic new footage). Also beware of bad bootleg editions -- the best prints on video are from Hal Roach Studio, Spotlight Video, and especially the restored Anchor Bay edition (or the definitive Elite release, on laserdisc and DVD).
* LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) Wes Craven’s first film was a drive-in and grindhouse hit, eschewing supernatural horrors for its grim depiction of the cruel murder of two teenagers en route to a rock concert and their upscale family’s brutal revenge on their killers. It’s almost impossible to see uncut, but even in truncated form, it’s a jarring downer. Craven followed this with The Hills Have Eyes (1977), which was even better, though it had nowhere near the impact of Last House. “Just Keep Repeating: It’s Only a Movie, Only a Movie, Only a Movie...”
* THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) Despite the title, this wasn’t a “gore” film; there’s a reason director Ridley Scott screened this for the cast and crew of Alien, and the Museum of Modern Art was quick to secure a print for their permanent collection. Texas student filmmakers Tobe Hooper (who went on to direct Poltergeist) and Kim Henkel’s primal grasp of cinema transformed this thin tale of young folk waylaid by a nasty hitchhiker, suspect Texas BBQ, and the most deranged family in film history into the closest approximation of a nightmare ever to kiss the screen.
SHIVERS (1975) David Cronenberg’s debut film (also on video as They Came From Within, its US theatrical release title) is still a humdinger, detailing the infestation of a Montreal highrise by infectious sexual parasites. Financed in part by the Canadian government, this had members of Parliament screaming until it became the country’s most profitable Canadian film of all time.
* ERASERHEAD (1977) David Lynch’s first film remains one of the strangest ever made, and it became a fixture of the midnight movie circuit -- though The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains the Midnight Movie sensation! An estranged father is abandoned in his sordid apartment with his loneliness, fears, sexual longings, and his illegitimate, inhuman baby; there is no way to coherently summarize this uncanny experience, the most tangibly dreamlike of all horror films.
* DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) George Romero’s ultraviolent color sequel to Night of the Living Dead was a huge hit, inspiring a new era of zombie and gore films around the world, none of which held a candle to this witty, character-driven, action-packed classic. Romero’s sadly underrated final entry in the trilogy, Day of the Dead (1986), is also a masterpiece.
* HALLOWEEN (1978) Forget the sequels: John Carpenter’s original is the best bogeyman movie ever made, streamlined only to scare you. Even if you have an aversion to “letterboxed” videos, I highly recommend you see the “Widescreen” edition, as Carpenter uses the entire stretch of the screen to say “Boo!”
PHANTASM (1979) An odd, intoxicating curio about inexplicable events in a mortuary, told with the beguiling inventiveness, vigor, and nonsensical lunacy of a preteen boy’s campfire tale. It’s Invaders From Mars (1953) for a new generation: “Booooooooooooy!”
* FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) The archetypal summer-camp-killer classic may be crude, lewd, and derivative, but this is filmed-in-New Jersey pick-up struck a real nerve in its target audience, earning a fortune and an endless franchise for Paramount.
* THE EVIL DEAD (1983) Sam Raimi’s rock ‘em, sock ‘em, knockabout nightmare debut film energized the old zombie stereotype and grossed -- and grossed out -- millions. Raimi’s sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness (now available in a new video/DVD edition featuring the original ending), are highly entertaining, too, but lack the original’s horrific go-for-break edge.
* A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) The original Wes Craven classic was and remains an original, genuinely subversive low-budget exercise in fear, introducing the now-cliche, dream-like element of “rubber reality” to the genre.
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986; unreleased until 1989) This unblinking, raw, and dead-sober Chicago indy distilled the true-life Henry Lee Lucas case history into an indelible meditation on non-supernatural evil, deromanticized and all the more terrifying for its banality and recognizable humanity. Approach with caution.
SCREAM (1996) Wes Craven strikes again, plucking a fresh nerve for a new generation and prompting a new genre revival with this sassy, self-aware revamp of the teen horror formulas.
* THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) After over three decades of increasingly explicit mayhem, this inexpensive student venture embraced the Lewton aesthetic of “less is more,” reawakening a new generation to the terrors of the unseen -- and their own imaginations.
______________
[Note: The following material was originally published in VMag #1, November 1997 (CroMag Publications, Inc.), “The Halloween Issue,” as part of a collective article entitled “The Top 5 Horror Movies: A Highly Subjective Tour of the Genre,” featuring ‘top horror film’ lists from writers Punco Godyn, G. Michael Dobbs, ‘Bill and Dana,’ Stanley Wiater, Joseph A. Citro, and yours truly. I include my list here as a companion to the above Halloween Video Views column, and to provide my definitive listing for an adult readership of what I then considered the best horror films.]
THE TOP HORROR FILMS: S. R. BISSETTE’S BAKER’S DOZEN
With almost forty years of obsessive affection for, viewing of, and studying horror movies, it’s damn near impossible to narrow my fave down to just five titles. In fact, I couldn’t do it! So, here’s my current baker’s dozen list. Bear in mind, I’d name thirteen others on a whim and depending on what day of the week it was.
1., 2., and 3.: George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1977), and DAY OF THE DEAD (1985): The ultimate apocalyptic American horror movies, one for each decade since the ‘60s. Romero is one of our finest storytellers; it’s a crime the current commercial cinema refuses to accommodate him. [Note: I would certainly add Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD, 2005, to this list today -- SRB, August, 2005]
4. James Whale’s THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935): I love the classic 1930s horrors, but this and King Kong (1933; more a monster movie than a horror movie and hence not on this list) are the jewels of the crown. Frightening, funny, fierce, heartfelt, and one of the best movies ever made, period.
5. Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1958, aka Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus): The French Grand Guignol tradition brought to the screen with breathtaking beauty, poetry, and horror.
6. Mario Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY (1960): A baroque black-and-white Gothic arabesque atmospherically photographed around the porcelain (and punctured) features of Barbara Steele. The first horror movie to really scare me -- I love it like no other.
7. Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1971): A lethal merger of Church and State conspires to knock the walls of the fortified French of Loudon to the ground with a sanctioned witch hunt against Father Grandier (Oliver Reed). A delirious adaptation of the Aldous Huxley tract, still impossible to see in this country in its original uncut form.
8. Mario Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD (1972, aka Carnage, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Last House Part 2): I can’t possibly justify this title’s presence here, other than to say it’s the greatest “body count” horror movie of them all. I rushed to see it every time it played at the drive-ins (under a variety of titles). Ravishing Bava cinematography, an ever-escalating string of truly horrific murders (much imitated in the Friday the 13th series) to gain an inheritance, and a hilarious final shot. An unsung classic!
9. Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW (1973): Roeg’s best films do not pass before our eyes, they explode and implode within the mind. Drawn from one of Daphne du Maurier’s tales, this elliptical psychic thriller never fails to profoundly engage, mesmerize, terrify, and move me.
10. Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974): On first viewing, one of the most relentless of contemporary horror films; on subsequent viewings, a brilliantly crafted pitch-black comedy, too (“Look what your brother did to the door!”).
11. David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD (1976): Evocative of Bunuel, Polanski, and Samuel Beckett, this one-of-a-kind feature edges from an oppressive urban dreamscape into one of the most tactile domestic nightmares ever committed to film. The Lady in the Radiator is disturbing, but, oh, that baby!
12. David Cronenberg’s THE BROOD (1980): Cronenberg crawls under my skin like no other filmmaker. In a perverse twist on (and indictment of) recovered memory and “inner child” therapy, “Psychoplasmics” urges its survivor patients to externalize their internal rage, culminating in tragedy and a genuinely startling climactic revelation. The monstrous titular metaphor galvanizes this harrowing portrait of a family ravaged by the cruel legacy of child abuse.
13. Lars Von Triers’ THE KINGDOM (1996): THE HAUNTING (1962), CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1963) and LADY IN WHITE (1987) top my list of best ghost movies. Lars Von Triers one-ups them all with this lengthy mini-series set in a haunted hospital that literally sent shivers up my spine. It’s also wickedly funny, which doesn’t mitigate the chills.
Those are my current favorites, but here’s the five most genuinely horrifying films that come to mind. These are not entertainments: these are repulsive, straight-from-the-gut horror movies, dead serious and absolutely no fun; recommended for diehards only.
1. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1979): Ruggero Deodato’s parable of soured Third World relations -- primitives are butchered by documentary filmmakers, the filmmakers are then in turn butchered by the outraged tribe -- is at once the summit and nadir of the notorious Italian cannibal movie cycle. The film-within-a-film structure is cleverly conceived and executed, but the mayhem is, at times, nigh on unbearable.
2. COME AND SEE (1985): An orphaned Russian child’s terrifying passage through the hellish WW2 landscape. The most horrifying war film I’ve ever seen; once seen, never forgotten, comparable to Jerzy Kosinski’s novel The Painted Bird.
3. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986): Unflinching amoral snapshot of a contemporary American monster who is excruciatingly familiar and human, a condemnation of the society that created him by failing to in any way connect with or contain him. As such, one of the most moral films of our time.
4. IN A GLASS CAGE (1989): A vicious cycle of sexual abuse entraps an iron-lung bound pedophile (who also conducted experiments on children in the Nazi concentration camps, which he continued in his South American home) when one of his victims, now a teenage boy, becomes his caretaker. Exquisitely mounted, performed, and photographed: you are afraid to watch, but cannot look away, as the debasing spiral between tortured and torturer closes its coils.
5. THE BEGOTTEN (1991): Sans any comprehensible narrative or characters, this is the ultimate nightmare movie to date. A frightful tableau of birth, death, and abandonment dissolves into a dense, dark mire of cloaked figures, writhing forms, vile textures, and unspeakable emotions. Cinema as Dionysian ritual: primal, impenetrable, unshakeable.
__
Of course, if I were writing those lists today, some things would change, including the addition of titles that simply didn't exist when I wrote these in '99, and a couple I didn't catch up with until the amazing DVD revolution -- but all in all, I stand by my pix.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, one and all!
First off, here's a lively Halloween read for you: Alex Ness at PopThought.com cultivated a special seasonal surprise for all of you via exclusive online interviews with yours truly along with Jamie Delano, Steve Niles, Tom Mandrake, Ben Templesmith, and Tony Isabella on horror comics and all things horrific. It's A Special Halloween Treat, no tricks, and it's just a click away at
The link goes live today -- Enjoy!
___
My Fave Halloween Horrors Lists! For those who feel the need for guidance in selecting tonight's lineup of video & DVD horrors, I humbly offer the following personal 'top horror film' lists.
Consider this, too, a preview of the upcoming book SR Bissette's Blur Vol. 1 from Black Coat Press which will be out in time for Christmas. The following appears in Volume 1 (the first of four collecting the complete run of my weekly New England newspaper video columns and articles, 1999-2001), which is jam-packed with other delectable companion dishes, from individual reviews to articles like these covering entire genres. More info and how to order link when the book is ready to purchase...
Without further ado:
Here's my "Creeper Sleepers" column from October 28, 1999, followed by a related column relevent to the season. The first was written for family newspapers (during the fall of The Blair Witch Project's brief reign) for the casual home reader, so forgive the 'primer' tenor and tone -- if you're a die-hard like me, you might skip the appetizer to scan down to THE TOP HORROR FILMS: S. R. BISSETTE’S BAKER’S DOZEN, which is the real meat-and-potatoes. Remember, too, these were scribed before the blossoming of DVD as the preferred home video format, and the abundance of marvelous horrors we've been blessed with since:
__
CREEPER SLEEPERS: LOW BUDGET HORRORS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD!
Since the silent era, every generation has had its own equivalent to The Blair Witch Project. Sure, The Phantom of the Opera, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Exorcist, and Jaws are terrific, but often it’s the impoverished B-movies and cheapies that crawl out of the woodwork that really raise our collective goosebumps. In hopes of inspiring a few private dusk-to-dawn gatherings in the Valley this Halloween weekend, allow me to introduce you to these “creeper sleepers” that forever changed what a horror film could be, should be, and would be. A couple of these films were made by major Hollywood studios, but most of them emerged from regional independents, eager to make their mark. These low-budget horror films captured the public’s imagination of their time and made millions, changing horror films forever. I’ve arranged the titles chronologically, to emphasize the impact these films had on each other, and marked the most significant titles with an asterisk.
* THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) This startling German silent classic was an international hit, the first cult horror movie. Eager to put the audience in the mind set of the madman telling the tale, the backdrops were constructed and painted in the manner of the expressionistic art movement, with costumes, makeup, and performance stylized to match.
NOSFERATU (1921) Another German silent, a dreamy chiller which unveiled the cinema’s first and most nightmarish Dracula (Max Schreck).
* DRACULA (1931) Though produced by an established studio (Universal), this was a major gamble that paid off, ringing in the Golden Age of horror movies. Bela Lugosi remains the archetypal European vampire: “Children of the night, what music they make...” Check out the remastered edition, featuring a new score by Philip Glass; the Spanish language version, shot back-to-back on the same sets with a different cast, is even better, sans the mythic resonance of Lugosi’s presence.
FREAKS (1932) Tod Browning’s unflinching parable of life, love, and revenge among sideshow freaks prompted patrons to faint or flee. Though MGM produced this, they disowned it, and many countries banned it outright, damning it to obscurity for decades. It was rescued and revived in the late 1960s, earning its place in horror history.
* THE CAT PEOPLE (1942) We’re talking about the black and white original, not the sexy color remake. The surprising success of this subtle low-budget Val Lewton production introduced an intelligent new approach to horror films: urban, contemporary, driven by psychological nuances, relying on the suggestive power of the unseen and teasing the audience’s collective imagination.
* THE THING (1951) Again, see the black and white original, not the John Carpenter color remake (though it’s a great film, too, and much closer to the short story that inspired both versions). This tightly crafted, claustrophobic tale of an alien visitor terrorizing a remote arctic base kicked off the entire 1950s monster cycle, introduced the first jump-out-of-your-seat moment (the Thing at the door) to modern horror films, and urged audiences to “Keep Watching the Skies!” They did, and still do.
* LES DIABOLIQUES (1955) Here we go again: see the original French version, not the dreadful Sharon Stone remake. This psychological shocker had audiences lining up around the block in every major city in the US, provoking shrieks during its horrific final act and inspiring a jealous Alfred Hitchcock to make Psycho.
* INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) Don Siegel’s paranoid sf classic about a small community supplanted by dispassionate “pod people” crept into the consciousness of a generation, tapping our xenophobia, the ongoing “red scare,” and the unspoken “soullessness” of the post-World War suburban lifestyle. Both of the color remakes are very good, but see the original first; together, they actually work as a coherent trilogy.
* THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) This was the first color Hammer Film, introducing Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee -- and an aggressive, graphic new approach to Gothic horror -- to the world. The whirlwind international success of this film and Hammer’s followup, The Horror of Dracula -- which is even better! -- sparked the horror revival of the late ‘50s and 1960s.
* I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957) starred Michael Landon as the toothy j.d. terror of the first-ever teen horror film. Despite the title, this was a great little thriller, and its record-breaking boxoffice success was a major kick-in-the-ass wake-up call to the Hollywood studios.
* PSYCHO (1960) Please, forget the color remake -- you owe it to yourself to see the Alfred Hitchcock original, which dared to assault its audience with unprecedented intensity and forever expose the potential for madness lurking in the meekest of souls. Though directed by Hitchcock, this was made without studio support in black and white for very low budget, working with the production team behind Hitchcock’s popular TV series, hence its place on this list.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1960) This color Vincent Price vehicle ushered in the popular Poe series which lasted through the 1960s, and legitimized the king of the drive-in quickies Roger Corman as one of America’s premiere directors.
CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) See the black and white original, not the color remake. This sleeper didn’t earn many playdates until its re-release in 1989, but it became a cult favorite for its genuinely spooky evocation of the dream realm, notable for its stylized photography, score, and inspiration for Night of the Living Dead.
* BLOOD FEAST (1963) Notorious Herschell Gordon Lewis shocker dared to go where no major studio would, crudely carving out brains, tongues, limbs, and its unique niche as the first true “gore” film. This widely-imitated breakthrough hit of the 1960s drive-in circuit was filmed in and around the beaches of Sarasota, Florida.
* NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) George Romero’s made-in-Pittsburgh independent bent all the rules of the genre, provoking genuine terror and forever changing horror films. It’s impossible to convey how shocking this film was in its day. See the black and white 1968 original, not the colorized version, the color remake, or the dreadful 30th Anniversary Special Edition (sporting a hideous new soundtrack and idiotic new footage). Also beware of bad bootleg editions -- the best prints on video are from Hal Roach Studio, Spotlight Video, and especially the restored Anchor Bay edition (or the definitive Elite release, on laserdisc and DVD).
* LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) Wes Craven’s first film was a drive-in and grindhouse hit, eschewing supernatural horrors for its grim depiction of the cruel murder of two teenagers en route to a rock concert and their upscale family’s brutal revenge on their killers. It’s almost impossible to see uncut, but even in truncated form, it’s a jarring downer. Craven followed this with The Hills Have Eyes (1977), which was even better, though it had nowhere near the impact of Last House. “Just Keep Repeating: It’s Only a Movie, Only a Movie, Only a Movie...”
* THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) Despite the title, this wasn’t a “gore” film; there’s a reason director Ridley Scott screened this for the cast and crew of Alien, and the Museum of Modern Art was quick to secure a print for their permanent collection. Texas student filmmakers Tobe Hooper (who went on to direct Poltergeist) and Kim Henkel’s primal grasp of cinema transformed this thin tale of young folk waylaid by a nasty hitchhiker, suspect Texas BBQ, and the most deranged family in film history into the closest approximation of a nightmare ever to kiss the screen.
SHIVERS (1975) David Cronenberg’s debut film (also on video as They Came From Within, its US theatrical release title) is still a humdinger, detailing the infestation of a Montreal highrise by infectious sexual parasites. Financed in part by the Canadian government, this had members of Parliament screaming until it became the country’s most profitable Canadian film of all time.
* ERASERHEAD (1977) David Lynch’s first film remains one of the strangest ever made, and it became a fixture of the midnight movie circuit -- though The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains the Midnight Movie sensation! An estranged father is abandoned in his sordid apartment with his loneliness, fears, sexual longings, and his illegitimate, inhuman baby; there is no way to coherently summarize this uncanny experience, the most tangibly dreamlike of all horror films.
* DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) George Romero’s ultraviolent color sequel to Night of the Living Dead was a huge hit, inspiring a new era of zombie and gore films around the world, none of which held a candle to this witty, character-driven, action-packed classic. Romero’s sadly underrated final entry in the trilogy, Day of the Dead (1986), is also a masterpiece.
* HALLOWEEN (1978) Forget the sequels: John Carpenter’s original is the best bogeyman movie ever made, streamlined only to scare you. Even if you have an aversion to “letterboxed” videos, I highly recommend you see the “Widescreen” edition, as Carpenter uses the entire stretch of the screen to say “Boo!”
PHANTASM (1979) An odd, intoxicating curio about inexplicable events in a mortuary, told with the beguiling inventiveness, vigor, and nonsensical lunacy of a preteen boy’s campfire tale. It’s Invaders From Mars (1953) for a new generation: “Booooooooooooy!”
* FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) The archetypal summer-camp-killer classic may be crude, lewd, and derivative, but this is filmed-in-New Jersey pick-up struck a real nerve in its target audience, earning a fortune and an endless franchise for Paramount.
* THE EVIL DEAD (1983) Sam Raimi’s rock ‘em, sock ‘em, knockabout nightmare debut film energized the old zombie stereotype and grossed -- and grossed out -- millions. Raimi’s sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness (now available in a new video/DVD edition featuring the original ending), are highly entertaining, too, but lack the original’s horrific go-for-break edge.
* A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) The original Wes Craven classic was and remains an original, genuinely subversive low-budget exercise in fear, introducing the now-cliche, dream-like element of “rubber reality” to the genre.
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986; unreleased until 1989) This unblinking, raw, and dead-sober Chicago indy distilled the true-life Henry Lee Lucas case history into an indelible meditation on non-supernatural evil, deromanticized and all the more terrifying for its banality and recognizable humanity. Approach with caution.
SCREAM (1996) Wes Craven strikes again, plucking a fresh nerve for a new generation and prompting a new genre revival with this sassy, self-aware revamp of the teen horror formulas.
* THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) After over three decades of increasingly explicit mayhem, this inexpensive student venture embraced the Lewton aesthetic of “less is more,” reawakening a new generation to the terrors of the unseen -- and their own imaginations.
______________
[Note: The following material was originally published in VMag #1, November 1997 (CroMag Publications, Inc.), “The Halloween Issue,” as part of a collective article entitled “The Top 5 Horror Movies: A Highly Subjective Tour of the Genre,” featuring ‘top horror film’ lists from writers Punco Godyn, G. Michael Dobbs, ‘Bill and Dana,’ Stanley Wiater, Joseph A. Citro, and yours truly. I include my list here as a companion to the above Halloween Video Views column, and to provide my definitive listing for an adult readership of what I then considered the best horror films.]
THE TOP HORROR FILMS: S. R. BISSETTE’S BAKER’S DOZEN
With almost forty years of obsessive affection for, viewing of, and studying horror movies, it’s damn near impossible to narrow my fave down to just five titles. In fact, I couldn’t do it! So, here’s my current baker’s dozen list. Bear in mind, I’d name thirteen others on a whim and depending on what day of the week it was.
1., 2., and 3.: George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1977), and DAY OF THE DEAD (1985): The ultimate apocalyptic American horror movies, one for each decade since the ‘60s. Romero is one of our finest storytellers; it’s a crime the current commercial cinema refuses to accommodate him. [Note: I would certainly add Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD, 2005, to this list today -- SRB, August, 2005]
4. James Whale’s THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935): I love the classic 1930s horrors, but this and King Kong (1933; more a monster movie than a horror movie and hence not on this list) are the jewels of the crown. Frightening, funny, fierce, heartfelt, and one of the best movies ever made, period.
5. Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1958, aka Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus): The French Grand Guignol tradition brought to the screen with breathtaking beauty, poetry, and horror.
6. Mario Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY (1960): A baroque black-and-white Gothic arabesque atmospherically photographed around the porcelain (and punctured) features of Barbara Steele. The first horror movie to really scare me -- I love it like no other.
7. Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS (1971): A lethal merger of Church and State conspires to knock the walls of the fortified French of Loudon to the ground with a sanctioned witch hunt against Father Grandier (Oliver Reed). A delirious adaptation of the Aldous Huxley tract, still impossible to see in this country in its original uncut form.
8. Mario Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD (1972, aka Carnage, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Last House Part 2): I can’t possibly justify this title’s presence here, other than to say it’s the greatest “body count” horror movie of them all. I rushed to see it every time it played at the drive-ins (under a variety of titles). Ravishing Bava cinematography, an ever-escalating string of truly horrific murders (much imitated in the Friday the 13th series) to gain an inheritance, and a hilarious final shot. An unsung classic!
9. Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW (1973): Roeg’s best films do not pass before our eyes, they explode and implode within the mind. Drawn from one of Daphne du Maurier’s tales, this elliptical psychic thriller never fails to profoundly engage, mesmerize, terrify, and move me.
10. Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974): On first viewing, one of the most relentless of contemporary horror films; on subsequent viewings, a brilliantly crafted pitch-black comedy, too (“Look what your brother did to the door!”).
11. David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD (1976): Evocative of Bunuel, Polanski, and Samuel Beckett, this one-of-a-kind feature edges from an oppressive urban dreamscape into one of the most tactile domestic nightmares ever committed to film. The Lady in the Radiator is disturbing, but, oh, that baby!
12. David Cronenberg’s THE BROOD (1980): Cronenberg crawls under my skin like no other filmmaker. In a perverse twist on (and indictment of) recovered memory and “inner child” therapy, “Psychoplasmics” urges its survivor patients to externalize their internal rage, culminating in tragedy and a genuinely startling climactic revelation. The monstrous titular metaphor galvanizes this harrowing portrait of a family ravaged by the cruel legacy of child abuse.
13. Lars Von Triers’ THE KINGDOM (1996): THE HAUNTING (1962), CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1963) and LADY IN WHITE (1987) top my list of best ghost movies. Lars Von Triers one-ups them all with this lengthy mini-series set in a haunted hospital that literally sent shivers up my spine. It’s also wickedly funny, which doesn’t mitigate the chills.
Those are my current favorites, but here’s the five most genuinely horrifying films that come to mind. These are not entertainments: these are repulsive, straight-from-the-gut horror movies, dead serious and absolutely no fun; recommended for diehards only.
1. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1979): Ruggero Deodato’s parable of soured Third World relations -- primitives are butchered by documentary filmmakers, the filmmakers are then in turn butchered by the outraged tribe -- is at once the summit and nadir of the notorious Italian cannibal movie cycle. The film-within-a-film structure is cleverly conceived and executed, but the mayhem is, at times, nigh on unbearable.
2. COME AND SEE (1985): An orphaned Russian child’s terrifying passage through the hellish WW2 landscape. The most horrifying war film I’ve ever seen; once seen, never forgotten, comparable to Jerzy Kosinski’s novel The Painted Bird.
3. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986): Unflinching amoral snapshot of a contemporary American monster who is excruciatingly familiar and human, a condemnation of the society that created him by failing to in any way connect with or contain him. As such, one of the most moral films of our time.
4. IN A GLASS CAGE (1989): A vicious cycle of sexual abuse entraps an iron-lung bound pedophile (who also conducted experiments on children in the Nazi concentration camps, which he continued in his South American home) when one of his victims, now a teenage boy, becomes his caretaker. Exquisitely mounted, performed, and photographed: you are afraid to watch, but cannot look away, as the debasing spiral between tortured and torturer closes its coils.
5. THE BEGOTTEN (1991): Sans any comprehensible narrative or characters, this is the ultimate nightmare movie to date. A frightful tableau of birth, death, and abandonment dissolves into a dense, dark mire of cloaked figures, writhing forms, vile textures, and unspeakable emotions. Cinema as Dionysian ritual: primal, impenetrable, unshakeable.
__
Of course, if I were writing those lists today, some things would change, including the addition of titles that simply didn't exist when I wrote these in '99, and a couple I didn't catch up with until the amazing DVD revolution -- but all in all, I stand by my pix.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, one and all!
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Sunday Morning, Before Dawn; Happy Almost Halloween!
A few catchup items...
* Ah, the perpetual Alan Moore question has come up once again. Exile is no fun, but this is less fun, like a curse. You know, when this sorry incident first occured, I said to my pal Rick Veitch, "This is never going to go away, and will spill into the next generation." Rick thought I was being ridiculous, but -- it doesn't go away, there's nothing I can do to remedy the situation, and now that George Khoury's excellent book on Alan is out with intros and outros by Alan's daughters Leah and Amber and Leah is actively working in comics as a writer (go, Leah!), that prediction about our own children dealing with this shit seems not at all remote. Hopefully, they'll do better than I have. My daughter Maia and son Dan are out in the world, someday they'll own my copyrights and trademarks, including the trio of 1963 characters, and I wonder when it'll spill into their lives, if it hasn't already.
(FYI, if you wonder why I've given up completely on comics conventions, this is a key reason: the question that will never go away always comes up. If I politely decline to get into it, the questioner feels I'm brushing them off; if I do politely get into it, the zealot Moore fan(s) explode(s), believing I am maliciously slighting or belittling their hero. It's a lose/lose for everyone, so I long ago bagged the con scene.)
In any case, here's the latest, which should sum this up succinctly enough for those of you wondering what the hell I'm talking about this morning:
The Query That Will Not Die
__
* On another comics front, Al Nickerson has posted the latest Creator Bill of Rights letters from Dave Sim; as time permits, I'm working through a mega-letter of my own, placing some of these issues in a historical context (Harvey Kurtzman, Joe Kubert, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, etc.). The latest isright here. For the uninitiated who are curious, the link to Al's complete Creator Bill of Rights site is forever available on my blog menu (see right).
The prior Dave Sim post has prompted much online discussion -- at last! -- as Dave generously posted the complete contents of a 2005 Vertigo contract, which was identical to the 1998 Vertigo contract I excavated from my files. My objections were identical to Dave's, save for the audit concerns -- I long ago resigned myself to the reality that DC's royalty statements are accepted fait accompli or not at all -- hence, my decision not to work with Vertigo if they would even have me (which, for a short time in '98, they seemed to; at least there was a courtship, initiated by two of their editors).
The most disappointing portion of the contract to my mind is DC/Vertigo's use of page rates as infinite open-ended options -- that is, they are not obligated to publish the work once completed and paid for, but rights do not revert to the creator(s) if they choose not to publish. This is, simply put, reprehensible, and puts lie to the "progressive" perception most of mainstream comics (the professional community and fans) have of the Vertigo line. How many unpublished completed works is DC/Vertigo sitting on -- and to what end? From more than one account I've been privvy to from professionals who attempted to reclaim their work, DC/Vertigo requires that all fees connected to a given project be reimbursed to DC/Vertigo -- all fees including payment to all participants, and (according to one account) editorial fees and publisher overhead -- before they'll "release" a property. This is contrary to all standard book publishing contracts (wherein if a publisher doesn't publish an author's contracted/completed/accepted work -- say, a novel -- all rights revert to the author after a defined and contractually agreed-upon expiration date, no strings attached), and certainly contrary to the very "options" DC/Vertigo enjoys income from on a regular basis from Hollywood. In 1998, I argued that this clause was problematic and should be revamped to reflect standard publishing practices and movie-option terms, but that effectively ended what DC/Vertigo laughingly refer to as "negotiations" -- and there it remains, in a current 2005 contract.
Anyhoot, you can access the ongoing online discussions fromHeidi McDonald's site. There, along with Heidi's initial comments (note that Heidi worked at DC/Vertigo for a time, in or around 1999), is a link to the Warren Ellis forum The Engine, which I'll provide you directly here. That will bring you to an Engine thread entitled "DC/Vertigo Contract: Dave Sim", which is well worth a read, though it's lengthy and quite extensive and features posts by Heidi Macdonald and Warren Ellis, reflecting bovine acceptance with all things DC/Vertigo (no surprise there), though Jamie Coville is the main poster (with attitude, natch). Colleen Doran weighs in with her take, which is of interest and relevent, though Dirk Deppey from The Comics Journal immediately dismisses Dave's views on the contract by getting into Dave's gender views, which allows all and sundry to laugh off the reality of the Vertigo contracts while dissing Dave for a bit, though the thread regains footing and continues invaluable conversation. I gotta say I side 100% with Dave regarding the DC/Vertigo contract and all it reflects, which is the topic here; when Colleen refers to "creator owned" Vertigo work (with Warren), I wonder what their contracts were. Nothing I've ever seen relevent to Vertigo or DC was truly creator-owned contractually, though there's lip-service paid to the concept. Given my prior sour experience with Warren Ellis and his fiefdom, I won't be posting, though I may post comments here, if they don't all fit into my next letter for Al's site.
Heidi blithely dismisses the objections Dave (and I once) raised by writing, "...because once they bought it, they don't have to publish it -- that kind of comes with the territory." Well, yes, it does come with the traditional model the industry was founded upon, but hasn't Vertigo claimed to be beyond all that?
For this old-timer, the $350-500 page rate being quoted by Dave and others as "top rate for Vertigo" earned a chuckle. Shit, we did Swamp Thing, the comic that spawned the entire fucking Vertigo line, for paltry rates: I was "raking in" $65-72 tops per page for pencils, with both Alan and John working for less than that. The pay is better these days -- but at least our work was published! Had it not, there would be no Vertigo.
When Al alerted me to all this activity back on October 24, he noted, "...three days after I posted Dave's DC contract to my website, there are 143 posts to this thread. That’s a lot, and I don't have the time to read all those posts. However, it does look like folks are talking about all this stuff. :)" Ah, yes, well, finally posting and discussing the details relevent to the "high end" of mainstream comics will have that result; the Ellis thread is now topping 233 posts.
Kudos to Dave, but kudos most of all to you, too, Al, for initiating and nurturing this ongoing discussion of a vital topic.
____
* My good amigo Jim Wheelock brings news of this week's launch of the annual Novel Writing Month, about which you can find detailshere.
Jim will be participating, as he did last year, and writes: "We just had the first L.A. kick-off party for National Novel Writing Month today... I recommend Wrimo to anyone who wants to write. I think there's a few Vermonters on board....It starts Tuesday, but folks can still sign up for a while....Chris Baty, who created Wrimo, has a book that goes with it, No Plot, No Problem, which is pretty good. The whole concept's pretty similar to the 24 hour comics -- working fast to fight your internal censor. The group support's pretty amazing, and there's a wordcount meter for every participant. At the LA area kickoff, we figured the group of us there will break a million words. I think around 5000 people finished lasy year, worldwide. A lot of bad stuff was written, but that's the point. My friend Budgie... turned me on to it last year. There are a number of schools using Wrimo, including high schools."
Excellent; thanks, Jim, and jump in, writers!
BTW, Jim's blog is fun reading, too, and provides more links (including one to a Short Story Writing marathon) you might find of interest. He's also plugged into the L.A. scene, including amazing movie marathons, festivals, etc. I know nothing about (save what Jim tells me), so some of you west coast folks might find Jim's blog useful, too. Jim is atThe Qwelogian Lodge.
_____
More later; Happy Halloween weekend!
A few catchup items...
* Ah, the perpetual Alan Moore question has come up once again. Exile is no fun, but this is less fun, like a curse. You know, when this sorry incident first occured, I said to my pal Rick Veitch, "This is never going to go away, and will spill into the next generation." Rick thought I was being ridiculous, but -- it doesn't go away, there's nothing I can do to remedy the situation, and now that George Khoury's excellent book on Alan is out with intros and outros by Alan's daughters Leah and Amber and Leah is actively working in comics as a writer (go, Leah!), that prediction about our own children dealing with this shit seems not at all remote. Hopefully, they'll do better than I have. My daughter Maia and son Dan are out in the world, someday they'll own my copyrights and trademarks, including the trio of 1963 characters, and I wonder when it'll spill into their lives, if it hasn't already.
(FYI, if you wonder why I've given up completely on comics conventions, this is a key reason: the question that will never go away always comes up. If I politely decline to get into it, the questioner feels I'm brushing them off; if I do politely get into it, the zealot Moore fan(s) explode(s), believing I am maliciously slighting or belittling their hero. It's a lose/lose for everyone, so I long ago bagged the con scene.)
In any case, here's the latest, which should sum this up succinctly enough for those of you wondering what the hell I'm talking about this morning:
__
* On another comics front, Al Nickerson has posted the latest Creator Bill of Rights letters from Dave Sim; as time permits, I'm working through a mega-letter of my own, placing some of these issues in a historical context (Harvey Kurtzman, Joe Kubert, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, etc.). The latest is
The prior Dave Sim post has prompted much online discussion -- at last! -- as Dave generously posted the complete contents of a 2005 Vertigo contract, which was identical to the 1998 Vertigo contract I excavated from my files. My objections were identical to Dave's, save for the audit concerns -- I long ago resigned myself to the reality that DC's royalty statements are accepted fait accompli or not at all -- hence, my decision not to work with Vertigo if they would even have me (which, for a short time in '98, they seemed to; at least there was a courtship, initiated by two of their editors).
The most disappointing portion of the contract to my mind is DC/Vertigo's use of page rates as infinite open-ended options -- that is, they are not obligated to publish the work once completed and paid for, but rights do not revert to the creator(s) if they choose not to publish. This is, simply put, reprehensible, and puts lie to the "progressive" perception most of mainstream comics (the professional community and fans) have of the Vertigo line. How many unpublished completed works is DC/Vertigo sitting on -- and to what end? From more than one account I've been privvy to from professionals who attempted to reclaim their work, DC/Vertigo requires that all fees connected to a given project be reimbursed to DC/Vertigo -- all fees including payment to all participants, and (according to one account) editorial fees and publisher overhead -- before they'll "release" a property. This is contrary to all standard book publishing contracts (wherein if a publisher doesn't publish an author's contracted/completed/accepted work -- say, a novel -- all rights revert to the author after a defined and contractually agreed-upon expiration date, no strings attached), and certainly contrary to the very "options" DC/Vertigo enjoys income from on a regular basis from Hollywood. In 1998, I argued that this clause was problematic and should be revamped to reflect standard publishing practices and movie-option terms, but that effectively ended what DC/Vertigo laughingly refer to as "negotiations" -- and there it remains, in a current 2005 contract.
Anyhoot, you can access the ongoing online discussions from
Heidi blithely dismisses the objections Dave (and I once) raised by writing, "...because once they bought it, they don't have to publish it -- that kind of comes with the territory." Well, yes, it does come with the traditional model the industry was founded upon, but hasn't Vertigo claimed to be beyond all that?
For this old-timer, the $350-500 page rate being quoted by Dave and others as "top rate for Vertigo" earned a chuckle. Shit, we did Swamp Thing, the comic that spawned the entire fucking Vertigo line, for paltry rates: I was "raking in" $65-72 tops per page for pencils, with both Alan and John working for less than that. The pay is better these days -- but at least our work was published! Had it not, there would be no Vertigo.
When Al alerted me to all this activity back on October 24, he noted, "...three days after I posted Dave's DC contract to my website, there are 143 posts to this thread. That’s a lot, and I don't have the time to read all those posts. However, it does look like folks are talking about all this stuff. :)" Ah, yes, well, finally posting and discussing the details relevent to the "high end" of mainstream comics will have that result; the Ellis thread is now topping 233 posts.
Kudos to Dave, but kudos most of all to you, too, Al, for initiating and nurturing this ongoing discussion of a vital topic.
____
* My good amigo Jim Wheelock brings news of this week's launch of the annual Novel Writing Month, about which you can find details
Jim will be participating, as he did last year, and writes: "We just had the first L.A. kick-off party for National Novel Writing Month today... I recommend Wrimo to anyone who wants to write. I think there's a few Vermonters on board....It starts Tuesday, but folks can still sign up for a while....Chris Baty, who created Wrimo, has a book that goes with it, No Plot, No Problem, which is pretty good. The whole concept's pretty similar to the 24 hour comics -- working fast to fight your internal censor. The group support's pretty amazing, and there's a wordcount meter for every participant. At the LA area kickoff, we figured the group of us there will break a million words. I think around 5000 people finished lasy year, worldwide. A lot of bad stuff was written, but that's the point. My friend Budgie... turned me on to it last year. There are a number of schools using Wrimo, including high schools."
Excellent; thanks, Jim, and jump in, writers!
BTW, Jim's blog is fun reading, too, and provides more links (including one to a Short Story Writing marathon) you might find of interest. He's also plugged into the L.A. scene, including amazing movie marathons, festivals, etc. I know nothing about (save what Jim tells me), so some of you west coast folks might find Jim's blog useful, too. Jim is at
_____
More later; Happy Halloween weekend!
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Sad Weekend at the Bissette Household: Sugar RIP, and Kitty Memories
It's always sad when a beloved pet passes, and yesterday at noon our lone feline queen of the house Sugar left us for good. It was a tough decision, but given her declining health, uncharacteristic behavior of the past two weeks, and sudden turn for the worse since Wednesday of this week, Marj and I bundled Sugar up just before noon for a final visit to our local vet Trudy Matt. I'd stuck pretty close to home the last two days, bringing Sugar food (which she would eat) and water (which she refused) as it became increasingly evident that she could no longer see and didn't really know where she was, other than when she was either in Marj's or my arms or laying in front of the stove. A new pattern of circling either her food dish or random areas of the main floor was indicative of either a brain lesion or a very recent stroke, Trudy told us, and that was the deciding factor.
Sugar had been with Marj and her son Mike since 1991, when she showed up in their garage, drenched by rains and flea-and-tick riddled. She adopted them, really, though she remained on the bottom of the kitty-pecking-order in the households dominated by brother-and-sister PT and Shadow. When PT and Shadow succumbed to old age last year, Sugar quickly adapted to the role of Reigning Queen of All She Surveyed, quite enjoying the solitary kitty life. Given her steadfast revulsion for any diminuitive creature entering the household -- including other cats (Mike's, and a one-visit acquaintence who made the fatal error of insisting upon her little dog coming along for the visit) and our grandson -- Marj decided after PT and Shadow's deaths that Sugar would savor what time was left to her solo, as she clearly preferred. She was a great cat, and a real beaut -- though a shit mouser. I mean, she never killed a single rodent in her life, though I once found her playing with one of Shadow's kills as if it were her own.
Though I've known (and lived with two) great dogs, cats have remained the mainstays of my life as far as household pets go -- that is, since I outgrew my amphibian-and-reptile phase. My first cat was Ymir, named after my favorite Ray Harryhausen creation (for her amazing whiskers, as well as one bit of body language that recalled Ray's distinctive stop-motion animation), and like Sugar she lived a long life; unlike Sugar, who was an indoor-only cat, Ymir was an aggressive creature of the woods and the night, habitually disappearing for a full two weeks every single October, savoring the last stretch of pre-snow weather in her own (forever mysterious) forest sojourn. Ymir had her first and only litter on my favorite jacket in my closet, and my first wife Marlene and I kept our favorite of her brood, a boisterous black male with a single white mark on his chest. Given his proclivity for knocking potted plants from wherever they sat down onto the floor, we named him Sugar Ray, and he once gleefully clawed my copy of House of Secrets (featuring the first Swamp Thing story) to punish me for punishing him. He was a little shit but we loved him; alas, he vanished one day when a surprise blizzard dumped over three feet of snow overnight just after he'd gone outside, and we never saw him again. Marlene and our kids Maia and Danny had other memorable and beloved cats -- foremost among them Fred, who loved the water, and would often join the kids in their bath and even dare a swim in our pond! -- but life in the Marlboro woods claimed them all, sad to say. Ymir outlived them all, and once saved Maia's life; she died at home, finally put to sleep on our own bed (thanks to a home visit from Trudy, bless her) when she began to suffer unexpected seizures. We buried her in our back yard, and the stone marker may be there still.
Sugar will join the remains of Shadow and PT under the red maple tree sapling growing in our front garden (a gift from Marj's sister Pat. Goodbye, Sugar. It was a privilege to know you. You loved and were loved.
It's always sad when a beloved pet passes, and yesterday at noon our lone feline queen of the house Sugar left us for good. It was a tough decision, but given her declining health, uncharacteristic behavior of the past two weeks, and sudden turn for the worse since Wednesday of this week, Marj and I bundled Sugar up just before noon for a final visit to our local vet Trudy Matt. I'd stuck pretty close to home the last two days, bringing Sugar food (which she would eat) and water (which she refused) as it became increasingly evident that she could no longer see and didn't really know where she was, other than when she was either in Marj's or my arms or laying in front of the stove. A new pattern of circling either her food dish or random areas of the main floor was indicative of either a brain lesion or a very recent stroke, Trudy told us, and that was the deciding factor.
Sugar had been with Marj and her son Mike since 1991, when she showed up in their garage, drenched by rains and flea-and-tick riddled. She adopted them, really, though she remained on the bottom of the kitty-pecking-order in the households dominated by brother-and-sister PT and Shadow. When PT and Shadow succumbed to old age last year, Sugar quickly adapted to the role of Reigning Queen of All She Surveyed, quite enjoying the solitary kitty life. Given her steadfast revulsion for any diminuitive creature entering the household -- including other cats (Mike's, and a one-visit acquaintence who made the fatal error of insisting upon her little dog coming along for the visit) and our grandson -- Marj decided after PT and Shadow's deaths that Sugar would savor what time was left to her solo, as she clearly preferred. She was a great cat, and a real beaut -- though a shit mouser. I mean, she never killed a single rodent in her life, though I once found her playing with one of Shadow's kills as if it were her own.
Though I've known (and lived with two) great dogs, cats have remained the mainstays of my life as far as household pets go -- that is, since I outgrew my amphibian-and-reptile phase. My first cat was Ymir, named after my favorite Ray Harryhausen creation (for her amazing whiskers, as well as one bit of body language that recalled Ray's distinctive stop-motion animation), and like Sugar she lived a long life; unlike Sugar, who was an indoor-only cat, Ymir was an aggressive creature of the woods and the night, habitually disappearing for a full two weeks every single October, savoring the last stretch of pre-snow weather in her own (forever mysterious) forest sojourn. Ymir had her first and only litter on my favorite jacket in my closet, and my first wife Marlene and I kept our favorite of her brood, a boisterous black male with a single white mark on his chest. Given his proclivity for knocking potted plants from wherever they sat down onto the floor, we named him Sugar Ray, and he once gleefully clawed my copy of House of Secrets (featuring the first Swamp Thing story) to punish me for punishing him. He was a little shit but we loved him; alas, he vanished one day when a surprise blizzard dumped over three feet of snow overnight just after he'd gone outside, and we never saw him again. Marlene and our kids Maia and Danny had other memorable and beloved cats -- foremost among them Fred, who loved the water, and would often join the kids in their bath and even dare a swim in our pond! -- but life in the Marlboro woods claimed them all, sad to say. Ymir outlived them all, and once saved Maia's life; she died at home, finally put to sleep on our own bed (thanks to a home visit from Trudy, bless her) when she began to suffer unexpected seizures. We buried her in our back yard, and the stone marker may be there still.
Sugar will join the remains of Shadow and PT under the red maple tree sapling growing in our front garden (a gift from Marj's sister Pat. Goodbye, Sugar. It was a privilege to know you. You loved and were loved.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Sigh...
Having utterly failed to effectively use this blog to shamelessly ballyhoo last night's presentation by yours truly at the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center, I can only plead lack of time (though I was mightily prepared for that event in and of itself) and the diversions of life & death, and leave it at that.
Lack of time kept me attached via virtual umbilical cord to the scanner for the past two days, prepping both the Museum presentation and my upcoming CCS class, all while tending to our sweet elder kitty Sugar, who is failing slowly and on her last legs. Sugar turned up in Marj's garage a little over 15 years ago, a wet, sick and homeless kitten who (with the providence some cat's demonstrate with uncanny precision) had obviously drifted into precisely the correct garage on Planet Earth, thereby bonding with Marj for life. She's the last of Marj's three cats -- the brother-and-sister tag-team of PT and Shadow succumbed to age late last and earlier this year -- and has quite enjoyed being the queen of the hacienda for the past three seasons. Alas, her behavior changes over the past two weeks has made it clear she's in her final days, and I fear today is her last. I spent all yesterday with Sugar, attending to her and spending whatever time she wished with me between bouts of scanning on our main floor, which is all Sugar is able to navigate any longer. Marj spent last night with Sugar sleeping on our pullout futon downstairs, by the gas stove that is Sugar's only other succor. It's a very sad household this morning hereabouts, though Sugar is still with us at the time of this writing.
In any case, we've worked this through as best we can -- and I did present a pretty good illustrated Halloween season talk last night on horror comics (brief condensed history), Swamp Thing and my work with John Totleben, Alan Moore and Rick Veitch, my own comics, and my life with comics, including a number of panel-by-panel "readthroughs" of a handful of my own stories (including two from my personal sketchbooks, one of which has never -- and likely never will, in my lifetime -- see print). Kudos to Colin of Keene NH and most of all Jonathan -- thanks, Ashley, for the introduction! -- who came to our computer rescue and ensured the ability of my Toshiba laptop to speak to the Museum's Toshiba projector, saving the evening for one and all. Both were rewarded with free comics, though that was paltry thanks for what would have otherwise been a pretty dire evening.
Despite my abysmal lack of self-promotion, Konstantin, Teta and Margaret at the Museum had promoted the event to the hilt, so we had a full house.
Which brings me to the biweekly poker game I missed last night. Sigh.
Only so much time in a given day... to which I must now attend. Send Sugar some lovin', and best to you all.
Having utterly failed to effectively use this blog to shamelessly ballyhoo last night's presentation by yours truly at the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center, I can only plead lack of time (though I was mightily prepared for that event in and of itself) and the diversions of life & death, and leave it at that.
Lack of time kept me attached via virtual umbilical cord to the scanner for the past two days, prepping both the Museum presentation and my upcoming CCS class, all while tending to our sweet elder kitty Sugar, who is failing slowly and on her last legs. Sugar turned up in Marj's garage a little over 15 years ago, a wet, sick and homeless kitten who (with the providence some cat's demonstrate with uncanny precision) had obviously drifted into precisely the correct garage on Planet Earth, thereby bonding with Marj for life. She's the last of Marj's three cats -- the brother-and-sister tag-team of PT and Shadow succumbed to age late last and earlier this year -- and has quite enjoyed being the queen of the hacienda for the past three seasons. Alas, her behavior changes over the past two weeks has made it clear she's in her final days, and I fear today is her last. I spent all yesterday with Sugar, attending to her and spending whatever time she wished with me between bouts of scanning on our main floor, which is all Sugar is able to navigate any longer. Marj spent last night with Sugar sleeping on our pullout futon downstairs, by the gas stove that is Sugar's only other succor. It's a very sad household this morning hereabouts, though Sugar is still with us at the time of this writing.
In any case, we've worked this through as best we can -- and I did present a pretty good illustrated Halloween season talk last night on horror comics (brief condensed history), Swamp Thing and my work with John Totleben, Alan Moore and Rick Veitch, my own comics, and my life with comics, including a number of panel-by-panel "readthroughs" of a handful of my own stories (including two from my personal sketchbooks, one of which has never -- and likely never will, in my lifetime -- see print). Kudos to Colin of Keene NH and most of all Jonathan -- thanks, Ashley, for the introduction! -- who came to our computer rescue and ensured the ability of my Toshiba laptop to speak to the Museum's Toshiba projector, saving the evening for one and all. Both were rewarded with free comics, though that was paltry thanks for what would have otherwise been a pretty dire evening.
Despite my abysmal lack of self-promotion, Konstantin, Teta and Margaret at the Museum had promoted the event to the hilt, so we had a full house.
Which brings me to the biweekly poker game I missed last night. Sigh.
Only so much time in a given day... to which I must now attend. Send Sugar some lovin', and best to you all.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Snow!
Our first snow of the season fell on Sunday morn -- about an inch or so -- but yesterday and last night brought our first real heavy, wet dumping. It's winter! I've shoveled off front and back steps this morn, and like I say -- a heavy, wet dump (fecal implications intended, despite the blissful virgin white of it all).
Fortunately, both Marj and I had our snow tires installed the day before: the Sunday snow was all the signal I needed. My drive to the Center for Cartoon Studies yesterday afternoon was the first winter drive of the season, and it was peppered with lots of vehicles off the road and one near-death experience as a crazed tractor-trailor truck towing two full loads behind sped by me, splattering so much white shit onto my windshield that I simply could not see anything for about a full minute. That's a looooooooooooong sixty seconds, especially when you have no idea what might be in front of you or bearing in toward you from the passing lane (the guy was weaving that second load a fair bit).
Surviving that encounter, about five miles later I watched as a bottled water van that had whizzed past me executed an impressive pair of complete 360-degree spins between three cars that he was attempting to pass. It was an impressive breath-stopping moment, as he spun between car #2 and #3 first, at one point completely turned around and facing car #3 before the spin continued, pulling him out of the lane and pirhouetting back into the passing lane. He then executed his second perfect 360 between cars #1 and #2, somehow executing the same manuever -- facing the front of car #2 this time -- before continuing his spin out of the line of traffic and settling, with neat precision, onto the breakdown lane without a single one of the three cars he wove between apparently losing their cool. Of course, multiple drivers/passengers may have shit their pants in the meantime, but I wasn't privvy to any odors in the driving snow and ice; it was an impressive dance move, though, and luckily there was no collision and no one was hurt.
There were multiple cars and at least two trucks completely off the road, including a pickup towing a massive trailer. All in all, the sudden toll of no snow tires + snow/slush/freezing rain = unwelcome carny rides and a few off-the-road slides for a number of folks. The ride home -- between 10-11:40 PM -- was less eventful: only two vehicles off the road, and no near-encounters with disaster.
Ah, winter has arrived.
Our first snow of the season fell on Sunday morn -- about an inch or so -- but yesterday and last night brought our first real heavy, wet dumping. It's winter! I've shoveled off front and back steps this morn, and like I say -- a heavy, wet dump (fecal implications intended, despite the blissful virgin white of it all).
Fortunately, both Marj and I had our snow tires installed the day before: the Sunday snow was all the signal I needed. My drive to the Center for Cartoon Studies yesterday afternoon was the first winter drive of the season, and it was peppered with lots of vehicles off the road and one near-death experience as a crazed tractor-trailor truck towing two full loads behind sped by me, splattering so much white shit onto my windshield that I simply could not see anything for about a full minute. That's a looooooooooooong sixty seconds, especially when you have no idea what might be in front of you or bearing in toward you from the passing lane (the guy was weaving that second load a fair bit).
Surviving that encounter, about five miles later I watched as a bottled water van that had whizzed past me executed an impressive pair of complete 360-degree spins between three cars that he was attempting to pass. It was an impressive breath-stopping moment, as he spun between car #2 and #3 first, at one point completely turned around and facing car #3 before the spin continued, pulling him out of the lane and pirhouetting back into the passing lane. He then executed his second perfect 360 between cars #1 and #2, somehow executing the same manuever -- facing the front of car #2 this time -- before continuing his spin out of the line of traffic and settling, with neat precision, onto the breakdown lane without a single one of the three cars he wove between apparently losing their cool. Of course, multiple drivers/passengers may have shit their pants in the meantime, but I wasn't privvy to any odors in the driving snow and ice; it was an impressive dance move, though, and luckily there was no collision and no one was hurt.
There were multiple cars and at least two trucks completely off the road, including a pickup towing a massive trailer. All in all, the sudden toll of no snow tires + snow/slush/freezing rain = unwelcome carny rides and a few off-the-road slides for a number of folks. The ride home -- between 10-11:40 PM -- was less eventful: only two vehicles off the road, and no near-encounters with disaster.
Ah, winter has arrived.
THURSDAY NIGHT Bissette Slide & Horror Talk at the BRATTLEBORO MUSEUM!
Info and full post to follow -- off for a morning trip, will post complete update and details this afternoon, promise!
Info and full post to follow -- off for a morning trip, will post complete update and details this afternoon, promise!
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Make Guns, Not Horror Comics & Movies...
Well, now it's official: it's safer to manufacture handguns and firearms in the U.S. of A. than it is to publish horror comics or horror DVDs. As the fast-food industry jockeys for similar state-sanctioned indemnity from legal prosecution, our Fearless Leader will soon sign into law a bill Congress passed last week that will forever shield the firearms industry from "massive crime-victim lawsuits." In the same AP release (dated October 20th), President Bush was quoted: "Our laws should punish criminals who use guns to commit crimes, not law-abiding manufacturers of lawful products."
Of course, Bush has recently allowed to expire prior bans on rapid-fire firearms that serve no useful purpose except killing human beings and profiting gun manufacturers -- "lawful products" once again. Never mind that the Brady Bill emerged from an attempted assassination of a prior President. It's all good. The NRA and gun lobbyists clearly have the Republicans in their pocket; once again, "the public good" is out of sight, out of mind.
Now, I grew up in a military and a hunting family. I live in a part of the country where most of my neighbors have firearms, and that's fine with me. I'm a deadshot with a rifle, though I choose not to have any in my home. Many families hereabouts used to pass beloved firearms down from father-to-son and daughter, but that was a problem for firearm manufacturers: the need to sell more and more firearms every year meant a culture of gun and firearm mystique and ownership had to be cultivated.
I understand (though I don't share) the fascination with firearms, and haven't a problem with those who choose to own them, fire them (in hunting or target practice), or even collect them. But the grim reality is that the firearms industry's need to increase sales exponentially year after year has resulted in bountiful harvests of death and destruction, and we as a culture suffer the consequences. The high-tech state of contemporary firearms outstrip anything that was even remotely imaginable to the writers of the Constitution or its relevent Amendment (an amendment, BTW, drafted to ensure civilian militias could counter a tyrannical government, if necessary), and it's impossible to justify the kind of rapid-fire death-spewing hardware as being necessary to any rational person unless their intention is to decimate their neighborhood. The powerful NRA and gun lobby continues to back this insane consumer frenzy of firearm ownership and mass production beyond any reason, denying all culpability -- which leads to my outrage at this latest development:
Manufacturers of firearms now enjoy greater legal protection than someone who draws or writes a horror story.
Dig, especially with populist fanatics like John Grisham fanning the flames from time to time, we continue to hear our elected officials fret more over the dire consequences of videogames than firearms, the national threat represented by, say, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (which was the target of Grisham's campaign, along with Taxi Driver) than by the manufacture and rampant sales of Magnums and Uzis (and that's the low end of the current spectrum).
Works of imagination, however confrontational or outrageous, will never, ever approach the dire threat represented by metal-sheathed high-tech bullets designed to explode internally and continue their trajectory in expansive fragments, causing the greatest possible damage on their way out of the human body.
The sales of videogames, the marketing of 'R'-rated movies, the rating of Hip-Hop music is in no way comparable to the massive advertising campaigns and seductive consumer culture firearms manufacturers have cultivated and sustained -- but note which one gets the attention of lilly-livered elected officials (like whiny Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman) time after time. Can't buck that gun lobby, Joe! Back that War in Iraq, Joe! But oooooooohhhhh, those nasty videogames. Why, some of them even have sex hidden in them!
Throughout the years I published and co-published Taboo, I knew I was forever "under the gun" of possible prosecution under the Rico Act; my tenacity and perseverence was based in part upon the fact that I didn't own a fucking thing, though the possibility of facing jail-time was pointed out to me more than once. Fortunately, Taboo attracted only the attention of various customs agents over the years, culminating in confiscations, bans, etc. which kept Taboo on the "condemned" lists in Canada, the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. However, comics shops continue to face more dire legal threats and pressures than gun shops or shows, and that's completely unjustifiable.
In publishing, I found censure a greater obstacle than censorship per se. Refusal of services was the most frequent obstacle that kept Taboo troublesome to publish: in the case of Taboo 2, I immediately lost my local production facility when the John Totleben cover prompted their decision to refuse to shoot the transparency needed. That same firm had proudly shown me gun catalogues as evidence of the quality of work they did; when I pointed out the apparent moral disconnect between having no moral qualms working on the gun catalogue, displaying firearms whose only reason for being was to discharge lethal projectiles, while Totleben's painting presented neither a threat to anyone's health or, for that matter, any form of behavior anyone could possibly imitate (unless, of course, you are a krill-bearing piranha-humanoid), the professional refused to discuss the matter any further.
It was the tip of the iceberg, initiating a series of expensive setbacks and debacles that effectively delayed the release of Taboo 2 for months and cost SpiderBaby Grafix thousands and thousands of dollars in unexpected, unplanned-for publication costs. Alan Moore's inside-back-cover From Hell painting was refused by two production firms (again, all we needed was the transparency shot for separation purposes) because the firm reps claimed it had "satanic intentions," and after an extensive search for a printer willing to handle the issue, we were screwed when the binderies refused to bind the book! One local bindery wrote a scathing letter to me, stating flatly that they would have destroyed the book if they could (they, of course, published gun catalogues). In the end, the pallettes of printed pages and covers had to be shipped from Bellows Falls, VT to Boston, MA at considerable risk and cost -- and the binding we did get, in part due to the length of time the job sat unbound, proved fragile (Taboo 2 notoriously suffers from a tablet-like binding from which the pages easily disengage).
Now, those professionals were all within their rights to refuse provision of services for moral reasons. But I continue to wonder about the moral compass that has no problem with participating in the propogation of the gun culture but balks at images or words that might offend. Characteristic, too, was the insistence that those most outraged were not censors.
Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press is clearly not as precious as the Right to Bear Arms in this country. That's the fact.
To me, though, it's simple and pragmatic:
Guns exist only to be fired.
Guns shoot bullets.
Bullets maim and kill.
Images and words do not.
That was 1989; I know for a fact we would face even greater obstacles publishing Taboo today.
Lest you think I am blowing sunshine up your ass, as Tim Lucas noted in his October 20th Video WatchBlog, similar woes delayed and fiscally impacted on this week's long-overdue US DVD release of Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust. Here's the relevent portion of the Grindhouse press release Tim quoted in full in his post:
"After fighting a difficult battle with printers over a graphic photo insert, Sage Stallone and Bob Murawski of Grindhouse Releasing have at last prevailed in their mission to bring Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST to DVD.
No less than eight different printers refused to handle the artwork for Grindhouse's 25th Anniversary Collector's Edition of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST during the final stages of the project. The company encountered further resistance from numerous binderies who likewise turned down the job of putting together the elaborate DVD package due to the inner sleeve design, which features an image of a nude woman impaled on a stake.
The stonewalling by printers caused a nerve-wracking last-minute delay in Grindhouse's production schedule, and ultimately cost the disc producers thousands of dollars in added expenses. "It was a real nightmare. We almost didn't make our street date because of these problems," says Murawski. "For a while, it seemed like nobody was going to take on the job. We had a similar problem years ago with our release of CANNIBAL FEROX, where we actually did make some changes in the artwork that we felt were appropriate. But we would never change our design to suit a printer's sensibilites. We put too much hard work into the project to back down."
The producers have faced many other obstacles bringing the DVD to market in recent months. A well-known film magazine refused to run an ad for CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, denying Grindhouse the opportunity to submit an alternate design; the same publication promptly killed a story on the movie after seeing the ad. Major retailers such as Blockbuster have passed on the DVD, citing content issues.
“With all the uncensored horror product in the marketplace, it is amazing that CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is still a lightning rod for First Amendment issues decades after it was made," says Grindhouse's head of theatrical distribution David Szulkin, who served as Associate Producer of the DVD.
All 11,111 copies of the limited edition 2-disc set had to be hand-assembled, as the "offending" artwork was printed in a different facility than the rest of the DVD box. Based on the impressive advance orders, distributor Rykodisc predicts that the entire run will sell out in record time."
(For the complete post, click"Meat is Murder.")
The message is clear:
Make Guns, Not DVDs.
__
I know, it's discouraging, in't it?
Look, if you need legal counsel, check out Batton Lash's Wolff & Byrd, which is now online. After two decades of self-publishing, Batton has just launched SUPERNATURAL LAW.COM. "In addition to their print comic book," Batton writes, "Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre now have their own online strip, every Monday and Thursday. It's all new, in color and free!"
Now, when have you ever heard of free legal counsel in such matters? We need Wolff & Byrd now more than ever before -- check it outhere.
Enjoy it and bookmark it!
__
Speaking of October 20th:
Edward Alden reports in the October 20th The Financial Times a remarkably blunt, straightforward assessment of the Bush Administration's behavior patterns and record to date from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff until January 2005.
Here's the jist of it:
Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed... In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson... said: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
"Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences."
Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.
The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.
Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.
"He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."
Among his other charges:
The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was "a concrete example" of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. "You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it."
Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was "part of the problem". Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, "she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president".
The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, "start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel".
Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush "one of the finest presidents we have ever had" understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was "not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either".
"There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today."
When my wife Marj and others expressed their confusion over Secretary of State Powell's complicity in the lies that led the US into the Iraq War, I pointed out (as Wilkerson does) that Powell was being a good soldier. The military is all about rank; President Bush is the Commander-in-Chief, and if you're in the military, you willingly fall on your sword for your superior officer, especially your Commander-in-Chief.
Of course, what remains unsaid in the ongoing keep-the-blinders-in-place coverage of the dire situation military recruiters are facing is the fact that the Commander-in-Chief is the problem.
I'm sure similar problems presented themselves in Emperor Caligula's reign.
(Thanks to HomeyM for bringing the Wilkerson news to my attention.)
Well, now it's official: it's safer to manufacture handguns and firearms in the U.S. of A. than it is to publish horror comics or horror DVDs. As the fast-food industry jockeys for similar state-sanctioned indemnity from legal prosecution, our Fearless Leader will soon sign into law a bill Congress passed last week that will forever shield the firearms industry from "massive crime-victim lawsuits." In the same AP release (dated October 20th), President Bush was quoted: "Our laws should punish criminals who use guns to commit crimes, not law-abiding manufacturers of lawful products."
Of course, Bush has recently allowed to expire prior bans on rapid-fire firearms that serve no useful purpose except killing human beings and profiting gun manufacturers -- "lawful products" once again. Never mind that the Brady Bill emerged from an attempted assassination of a prior President. It's all good. The NRA and gun lobbyists clearly have the Republicans in their pocket; once again, "the public good" is out of sight, out of mind.
Now, I grew up in a military and a hunting family. I live in a part of the country where most of my neighbors have firearms, and that's fine with me. I'm a deadshot with a rifle, though I choose not to have any in my home. Many families hereabouts used to pass beloved firearms down from father-to-son and daughter, but that was a problem for firearm manufacturers: the need to sell more and more firearms every year meant a culture of gun and firearm mystique and ownership had to be cultivated.
I understand (though I don't share) the fascination with firearms, and haven't a problem with those who choose to own them, fire them (in hunting or target practice), or even collect them. But the grim reality is that the firearms industry's need to increase sales exponentially year after year has resulted in bountiful harvests of death and destruction, and we as a culture suffer the consequences. The high-tech state of contemporary firearms outstrip anything that was even remotely imaginable to the writers of the Constitution or its relevent Amendment (an amendment, BTW, drafted to ensure civilian militias could counter a tyrannical government, if necessary), and it's impossible to justify the kind of rapid-fire death-spewing hardware as being necessary to any rational person unless their intention is to decimate their neighborhood. The powerful NRA and gun lobby continues to back this insane consumer frenzy of firearm ownership and mass production beyond any reason, denying all culpability -- which leads to my outrage at this latest development:
Manufacturers of firearms now enjoy greater legal protection than someone who draws or writes a horror story.
Dig, especially with populist fanatics like John Grisham fanning the flames from time to time, we continue to hear our elected officials fret more over the dire consequences of videogames than firearms, the national threat represented by, say, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (which was the target of Grisham's campaign, along with Taxi Driver) than by the manufacture and rampant sales of Magnums and Uzis (and that's the low end of the current spectrum).
Works of imagination, however confrontational or outrageous, will never, ever approach the dire threat represented by metal-sheathed high-tech bullets designed to explode internally and continue their trajectory in expansive fragments, causing the greatest possible damage on their way out of the human body.
The sales of videogames, the marketing of 'R'-rated movies, the rating of Hip-Hop music is in no way comparable to the massive advertising campaigns and seductive consumer culture firearms manufacturers have cultivated and sustained -- but note which one gets the attention of lilly-livered elected officials (like whiny Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman) time after time. Can't buck that gun lobby, Joe! Back that War in Iraq, Joe! But oooooooohhhhh, those nasty videogames. Why, some of them even have sex hidden in them!
Throughout the years I published and co-published Taboo, I knew I was forever "under the gun" of possible prosecution under the Rico Act; my tenacity and perseverence was based in part upon the fact that I didn't own a fucking thing, though the possibility of facing jail-time was pointed out to me more than once. Fortunately, Taboo attracted only the attention of various customs agents over the years, culminating in confiscations, bans, etc. which kept Taboo on the "condemned" lists in Canada, the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. However, comics shops continue to face more dire legal threats and pressures than gun shops or shows, and that's completely unjustifiable.
In publishing, I found censure a greater obstacle than censorship per se. Refusal of services was the most frequent obstacle that kept Taboo troublesome to publish: in the case of Taboo 2, I immediately lost my local production facility when the John Totleben cover prompted their decision to refuse to shoot the transparency needed. That same firm had proudly shown me gun catalogues as evidence of the quality of work they did; when I pointed out the apparent moral disconnect between having no moral qualms working on the gun catalogue, displaying firearms whose only reason for being was to discharge lethal projectiles, while Totleben's painting presented neither a threat to anyone's health or, for that matter, any form of behavior anyone could possibly imitate (unless, of course, you are a krill-bearing piranha-humanoid), the professional refused to discuss the matter any further.
It was the tip of the iceberg, initiating a series of expensive setbacks and debacles that effectively delayed the release of Taboo 2 for months and cost SpiderBaby Grafix thousands and thousands of dollars in unexpected, unplanned-for publication costs. Alan Moore's inside-back-cover From Hell painting was refused by two production firms (again, all we needed was the transparency shot for separation purposes) because the firm reps claimed it had "satanic intentions," and after an extensive search for a printer willing to handle the issue, we were screwed when the binderies refused to bind the book! One local bindery wrote a scathing letter to me, stating flatly that they would have destroyed the book if they could (they, of course, published gun catalogues). In the end, the pallettes of printed pages and covers had to be shipped from Bellows Falls, VT to Boston, MA at considerable risk and cost -- and the binding we did get, in part due to the length of time the job sat unbound, proved fragile (Taboo 2 notoriously suffers from a tablet-like binding from which the pages easily disengage).
Now, those professionals were all within their rights to refuse provision of services for moral reasons. But I continue to wonder about the moral compass that has no problem with participating in the propogation of the gun culture but balks at images or words that might offend. Characteristic, too, was the insistence that those most outraged were not censors.
Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press is clearly not as precious as the Right to Bear Arms in this country. That's the fact.
To me, though, it's simple and pragmatic:
Guns exist only to be fired.
Guns shoot bullets.
Bullets maim and kill.
Images and words do not.
That was 1989; I know for a fact we would face even greater obstacles publishing Taboo today.
Lest you think I am blowing sunshine up your ass, as Tim Lucas noted in his October 20th Video WatchBlog, similar woes delayed and fiscally impacted on this week's long-overdue US DVD release of Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust. Here's the relevent portion of the Grindhouse press release Tim quoted in full in his post:
"After fighting a difficult battle with printers over a graphic photo insert, Sage Stallone and Bob Murawski of Grindhouse Releasing have at last prevailed in their mission to bring Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST to DVD.
No less than eight different printers refused to handle the artwork for Grindhouse's 25th Anniversary Collector's Edition of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST during the final stages of the project. The company encountered further resistance from numerous binderies who likewise turned down the job of putting together the elaborate DVD package due to the inner sleeve design, which features an image of a nude woman impaled on a stake.
The stonewalling by printers caused a nerve-wracking last-minute delay in Grindhouse's production schedule, and ultimately cost the disc producers thousands of dollars in added expenses. "It was a real nightmare. We almost didn't make our street date because of these problems," says Murawski. "For a while, it seemed like nobody was going to take on the job. We had a similar problem years ago with our release of CANNIBAL FEROX, where we actually did make some changes in the artwork that we felt were appropriate. But we would never change our design to suit a printer's sensibilites. We put too much hard work into the project to back down."
The producers have faced many other obstacles bringing the DVD to market in recent months. A well-known film magazine refused to run an ad for CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, denying Grindhouse the opportunity to submit an alternate design; the same publication promptly killed a story on the movie after seeing the ad. Major retailers such as Blockbuster have passed on the DVD, citing content issues.
“With all the uncensored horror product in the marketplace, it is amazing that CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is still a lightning rod for First Amendment issues decades after it was made," says Grindhouse's head of theatrical distribution David Szulkin, who served as Associate Producer of the DVD.
All 11,111 copies of the limited edition 2-disc set had to be hand-assembled, as the "offending" artwork was printed in a different facility than the rest of the DVD box. Based on the impressive advance orders, distributor Rykodisc predicts that the entire run will sell out in record time."
(For the complete post, click
The message is clear:
Make Guns, Not DVDs.
__
I know, it's discouraging, in't it?
Look, if you need legal counsel, check out Batton Lash's Wolff & Byrd, which is now online. After two decades of self-publishing, Batton has just launched SUPERNATURAL LAW.COM. "In addition to their print comic book," Batton writes, "Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre now have their own online strip, every Monday and Thursday. It's all new, in color and free!"
Now, when have you ever heard of free legal counsel in such matters? We need Wolff & Byrd now more than ever before -- check it out
Enjoy it and bookmark it!
__
Speaking of October 20th:
Edward Alden reports in the October 20th The Financial Times a remarkably blunt, straightforward assessment of the Bush Administration's behavior patterns and record to date from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff until January 2005.
Here's the jist of it:
Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed... In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson... said: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
"Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences."
Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.
The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.
Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.
"He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."
Among his other charges:
The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was "a concrete example" of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. "You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it."
Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was "part of the problem". Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, "she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president".
The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, "start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel".
Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush "one of the finest presidents we have ever had" understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was "not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either".
"There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today."
When my wife Marj and others expressed their confusion over Secretary of State Powell's complicity in the lies that led the US into the Iraq War, I pointed out (as Wilkerson does) that Powell was being a good soldier. The military is all about rank; President Bush is the Commander-in-Chief, and if you're in the military, you willingly fall on your sword for your superior officer, especially your Commander-in-Chief.
Of course, what remains unsaid in the ongoing keep-the-blinders-in-place coverage of the dire situation military recruiters are facing is the fact that the Commander-in-Chief is the problem.
I'm sure similar problems presented themselves in Emperor Caligula's reign.
(Thanks to HomeyM for bringing the Wilkerson news to my attention.)
Monday, October 24, 2005
Mark Martin's New Comic is Coming!
Shameless Ballyhoo Dept.: I've been waiting for this event -- my good amigo Mark Martin has just announced the completion of the first issue(s) of his new comics series Runaway Comic!!
Though his work appears just about every month in the newsstand Nickelodeon magazine, it's been a looooong time since Mark's worked enjoyed this kind of showcase (a decade or more ago, in the pages of Montgomery Wart, Hyena, Gnatrat and the two-volume best-of-all-possible-worlds 20 Nude Dancers!, which is required reading for all cartoonists or wanna-be cartoonists). Mark also drew a recent Spongebob Squarepants book, enjoyed solo stints drawing (and sometimes writing) Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, painting the graphic novel Underwhere, and was the man behind the hilarious "Bless the Beasts" strip in my own comic series Tyrant, among many other accomplishments.
Mark also has one of the most amazing cartoonist websites on Planet Earth (I kid you not), where you can today see the preview material and art for his new Runaway Comic, which is soliciting now for its March 2006 release. Check it out, and so much more, atMark Martin's incredible website!
OK, more later today...
Shameless Ballyhoo Dept.: I've been waiting for this event -- my good amigo Mark Martin has just announced the completion of the first issue(s) of his new comics series Runaway Comic!!
Though his work appears just about every month in the newsstand Nickelodeon magazine, it's been a looooong time since Mark's worked enjoyed this kind of showcase (a decade or more ago, in the pages of Montgomery Wart, Hyena, Gnatrat and the two-volume best-of-all-possible-worlds 20 Nude Dancers!, which is required reading for all cartoonists or wanna-be cartoonists). Mark also drew a recent Spongebob Squarepants book, enjoyed solo stints drawing (and sometimes writing) Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, painting the graphic novel Underwhere, and was the man behind the hilarious "Bless the Beasts" strip in my own comic series Tyrant, among many other accomplishments.
Mark also has one of the most amazing cartoonist websites on Planet Earth (I kid you not), where you can today see the preview material and art for his new Runaway Comic, which is soliciting now for its March 2006 release. Check it out, and so much more, at
OK, more later today...
Sunday, October 23, 2005
More Sunday Musings...
* Jim Pinkoski and I are conversing on matters of science and religion, Creationism and Darwinian Evolution, and our comics work -- all via this blog's comments function. Check it out below, or clickhere.
* This just in from my dear friend Diane E. Foulds, a fellow Jan Svankmajer fan; Jan and Eva created some of the most uncanny stop-motion animation short films and features ever made, and though they aren't to everyone's taste, they are incredibly vital works nonetheless, and a huge influence on (for instance) Dave McKean's work as an artist and filmmaker. Here's what Diane sent me:
"Eva Svankmajerova: 1940 - 2005
------------------------------
The Czech Republic lost one of its finest artists this week, Eva Svankmajerova: writer, painter, and Surrealist artistic collaborator with her husband Jan on numerous mixed live-action/stop animation films including the award-winning "Little Otik" in 2000. Over forty-five years Eva and Jan Svankmajer became inseparable on the Czech arts scene. They collaborated on deeply visceral works that echoed the darkness of totalitarian life as well as life in general, hiding and subsequently revealing surfaces beneath surfaces: sexuality, corruption, hidden violence, and sporadic beauty."
For the full version, please go to
Eva Svankmajerova obit.
I'll be including some of Svankmajer's animated work in this weeks CCS film presentation, in memory of Eva. The features, Alice, Faust, and Little Otik are all available on DVD; there are also two excellent compiliation DVDs of most of the Svankmajers' animated and live-action short films, The Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer Vol. 1 and 2, from Image and KimStim. They were released in 2003; I've no idea if they're still in print, but they can still be found online from a number of sources.
* Jim Pinkoski and I are conversing on matters of science and religion, Creationism and Darwinian Evolution, and our comics work -- all via this blog's comments function. Check it out below, or click
* This just in from my dear friend Diane E. Foulds, a fellow Jan Svankmajer fan; Jan and Eva created some of the most uncanny stop-motion animation short films and features ever made, and though they aren't to everyone's taste, they are incredibly vital works nonetheless, and a huge influence on (for instance) Dave McKean's work as an artist and filmmaker. Here's what Diane sent me:
"Eva Svankmajerova: 1940 - 2005
------------------------------
The Czech Republic lost one of its finest artists this week, Eva Svankmajerova: writer, painter, and Surrealist artistic collaborator with her husband Jan on numerous mixed live-action/stop animation films including the award-winning "Little Otik" in 2000. Over forty-five years Eva and Jan Svankmajer became inseparable on the Czech arts scene. They collaborated on deeply visceral works that echoed the darkness of totalitarian life as well as life in general, hiding and subsequently revealing surfaces beneath surfaces: sexuality, corruption, hidden violence, and sporadic beauty."
For the full version, please go to
I'll be including some of Svankmajer's animated work in this weeks CCS film presentation, in memory of Eva. The features, Alice, Faust, and Little Otik are all available on DVD; there are also two excellent compiliation DVDs of most of the Svankmajers' animated and live-action short films, The Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer Vol. 1 and 2, from Image and KimStim. They were released in 2003; I've no idea if they're still in print, but they can still be found online from a number of sources.
And the Work Goes On...
Studio/office/library under construction as I write this (during a break in the action for me); heating is in place (baseboard going in after the sheetrocking is done), electricity going in now, doorframe done, etc. etc. Insulating is my gig for tonight, followed by plastic-sheeting it all afterward. Big fun, eh?
Tedious post, though. Oh, oh, called back to work -- more later!
Studio/office/library under construction as I write this (during a break in the action for me); heating is in place (baseboard going in after the sheetrocking is done), electricity going in now, doorframe done, etc. etc. Insulating is my gig for tonight, followed by plastic-sheeting it all afterward. Big fun, eh?
Tedious post, though. Oh, oh, called back to work -- more later!
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Weekend Update
* Hey, note that Jim Pinkoski himself, author/illustrator of A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs, has weighed in on this week's three-part thread/overview, below. Check it out; Jim also provides a link to his own current site, which is worth a look. I'll be responding to Jim's comments there, in the relevent comment threads.
* An email inquiry from a reader concerning the same posts asked what underground comics Jim had done. That would be Spaced; I'll correct this if my recovery of the actual comics from my collection proves otherwise, but if memory serves Spaced ran two issues, and the series was published by Bud Plant. It was a fairly imaginative sf/horror anthology, splashed with gore, nudity, and mayhem typical of later underground genre comix. Jim also self-published a comic on his own theories of finance reform sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s; I have clippings about that project (and its unfortunate consequences) in my files, but until/unless I lay hands on 'em, I'll leave this mere mention of the latter at that.
* Work on the Bissette office/computer studio/library is in momentous weekend overdrive. With the break in the rainy weather and couple of moderate, even sunny, days this past week, I wrapped up all the exterior work and touchups left to do -- some painting, repainting (second coats), and final parging/mud work and sealing -- and took the interior installation of insulation as far as I could (leaving the rest until after the heating and electrical installation is completed). The pros have been pitching in on the planned timetable, too, which is working out. Yesterday, the chunk of 2'x 3' x 8" original foundation wall blocking what is now the doorway to the new space was removed (and quite neatly, too); this morning, Mark Younger of Maple Leaf Painting & Drywall was in and we made final sheetrocking arrangements for the first week in November; in about a half-hour, Rick Fortier is coming in to install the baseboard hot water heating extensions and unit; tomorrow, my stepson Mike Bleier and his pal Chad are working on the final trim work on the outside window (weather permitting) and the interior electrical. After Halloween, the sheetrocking done, the massive shelving units will be constructed and in -- and my creative and academic life takes a turn for the better afterward with space at last to work.
* I'll post all the details this afternoon and tomorrow AM: I'll be at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center on Thursday night, Oct. 27th, giving a heavily-illustrated presentation on my comics work (with special attention to some of my horror stories, 'read' and presented complete) and a short history of horror comics. It's shaping up to be quite a nice piece, different from anything I've ever done before (though it does include elements from my expansive Journeys Into Fear slide presentation); hope to see some of you there!
OK, more later today --
* Hey, note that Jim Pinkoski himself, author/illustrator of A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs, has weighed in on this week's three-part thread/overview, below. Check it out; Jim also provides a link to his own current site, which is worth a look. I'll be responding to Jim's comments there, in the relevent comment threads.
* An email inquiry from a reader concerning the same posts asked what underground comics Jim had done. That would be Spaced; I'll correct this if my recovery of the actual comics from my collection proves otherwise, but if memory serves Spaced ran two issues, and the series was published by Bud Plant. It was a fairly imaginative sf/horror anthology, splashed with gore, nudity, and mayhem typical of later underground genre comix. Jim also self-published a comic on his own theories of finance reform sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s; I have clippings about that project (and its unfortunate consequences) in my files, but until/unless I lay hands on 'em, I'll leave this mere mention of the latter at that.
* Work on the Bissette office/computer studio/library is in momentous weekend overdrive. With the break in the rainy weather and couple of moderate, even sunny, days this past week, I wrapped up all the exterior work and touchups left to do -- some painting, repainting (second coats), and final parging/mud work and sealing -- and took the interior installation of insulation as far as I could (leaving the rest until after the heating and electrical installation is completed). The pros have been pitching in on the planned timetable, too, which is working out. Yesterday, the chunk of 2'x 3' x 8" original foundation wall blocking what is now the doorway to the new space was removed (and quite neatly, too); this morning, Mark Younger of Maple Leaf Painting & Drywall was in and we made final sheetrocking arrangements for the first week in November; in about a half-hour, Rick Fortier is coming in to install the baseboard hot water heating extensions and unit; tomorrow, my stepson Mike Bleier and his pal Chad are working on the final trim work on the outside window (weather permitting) and the interior electrical. After Halloween, the sheetrocking done, the massive shelving units will be constructed and in -- and my creative and academic life takes a turn for the better afterward with space at last to work.
* I'll post all the details this afternoon and tomorrow AM: I'll be at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center on Thursday night, Oct. 27th, giving a heavily-illustrated presentation on my comics work (with special attention to some of my horror stories, 'read' and presented complete) and a short history of horror comics. It's shaping up to be quite a nice piece, different from anything I've ever done before (though it does include elements from my expansive Journeys Into Fear slide presentation); hope to see some of you there!
OK, more later today --
Friday, October 21, 2005
Followup on EDISON'S FRANKENSTEIN, odds and ends...
Here's the latest on the EDISON FRANKENSTEIN DVD I wrote up on this blog last month, and for Video Watchdog magazine's current issue:
This just in from my fearless VW editor Tim Lucas, forwarded to me:
I recently saw your magazine at a local hobby store and its article on the 1910 Edison Frankenstein. Just to correct some misinformation, I manage a horror collectible store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and we are the current official/exclusive distributor of the DVD from Alois Detlaff/ADA Ventures, Intl.
We are still selling the DVD through our website and retail store for $25.00 which includes free shipping in the USA.
This professional dvd contains the 1910 Edison Frankenstein and a print of the 1922 Nosferatu all on one disc. You can read more information about the dvd on our websiteGraveyard Records Edison Frankenstein DVD.
Thank you for your time.
That was from Jeff (thanks, Jeff!) at Graveyard Records & Collectables, who you can write at:
4727 S. Packard Ave.
Cudahy, WI 53110
Or just clickhere.
As I say, get it while you can -- this is a tremendous opportunity.
__
The Creator Bill of Rights discussion continues, thanks to site sponsor and advocate Al Nickerson and the ongoing active participation of Cerebus creator/self-publisher Dave Sim. Give Dave's latest letter (and relevent archival materials) a close readhere.
I can confirm one of Dave's statements from my own sometimes bitter experience, and would in fact extend it to any attempt to work with other publishers on DC properties. On his most recent dealings (or, ahem, non-dealings) with DC Comics on a proposed Fables contribution (see comment from Bob, below), Dave writes:
"...Well, that was my same experience from the 1980s with Paul Levitz whose idea of negotiation was: Here’s the deal. You can sign it or not sign it. Your choice. That is, we’re "thrilled and excited" that you’re willing to capitulate to us without question. If you’re not willing to capitulate to us without question then we’re no longer "thrilled and excited" and, in fact, we’re not even "less thrilled and less excited". What we are now is "completely disinterested"..."
This has been my experience with DC since the late 1980s, beginning with a proposed (and extensively prepped, to the point of artist Keith Giffen telling me he was ready to pencil from my final completed and quite extensive story outline) Eclipso graphic novel. Most recently (just last summer), this was precisely my experience with the proposed three-novel Swamp Thing series for iBooks and the late Byron Preiss.
After committing myself to the project fully (and in fact stepping away from my dayjob of the time in part to clear my schedule for this venture), agreeing to the basic terms as they were described to me and the money (which wasn't much), working the phones to arrange for my old friend and former Saga of the Swamp Thing collaborator John Totleben to do the covers and interior illustrations, and clearing the basic story outline with my editor and the necessary clearance with DC for the characters I wished to use, the contract was emailed to me months after our planned starting date. Despite Byron's use of the term "negotiations," it soon became abundantly clear "negotiate" meant precisely what Dave says: "capitulate without question." Even my questions were studiously avoided. It was a frustrating and ultimately fruitless dance, and one I expected going in. I wish I'd been proven wrong.
In the end, I had no choice but to walk (in part due to a reluctance on the publisher's part -- iBooks, not DC -- to pay a proper advance, though the payment amount had been agreed upon from the beginning and was never an issue in and of itself); I was informed soon after by my former editor (who had since left iBooks -- which was, by the way, one of the concerns I had regarding relevent terms of the contract) that without my participation, the project was considered uncommercial, and was scrapped.
And so it goes. Anyhoot, read Dave's latest letter, and I'll be weighing in soon myself on Al's site.
___
En route home last night from seeing The Fog remake (not a candle to the original), I paid a mere $2.49 per gallon to fill up my Toyota (gas hog, it ain't). This is a full 60 cents less than we paid a month ago, despite the devastation of three hurricanes since.
What's going on? Having worked at my parent's stores all my teenage years, I know the gas stations aren't making beans off of this, and are in fact bearing the brunt of the heat. The most concise piece dropped into my lap from HomeyM, clipped from The Washington Spectator November 2005 issue:
A Washington Post investigative report recently analyzed the increase in gasoline prices, which went from $1.87 a gallon last September to $3.07 this year. Who grabbed the $1.20-a-gallon increase? The report found that gasoline taxes actually fell by two cents, and our local distributors and gas stations got less than a penny from the increase. However, the crude oil producers-- including Exxon, BP, Shell, et all-- took an additional 46 cents from our pockets.
But the big winners by far were the gasoline refiners-- which also happen to be Exxon, BP, Shell et al. Their increase was 70 cents-- a 255% increase for them in one year! In all, of the $1.20-per-gallon price hike, Big Oil-- which both produces the oil and refines it into gasoline-- made off with $1.16.
As Homey commented in his email, "Again, what kind of press do we have that reports every day to the American people, and yet the people don't know this? They think maybe the gas station is making money or something. Information everywhere, yet no one knows the facts about the most basic things that are happening to them. It is robbery in full view." Indeed -- and yes, HomeyM, our Prez and Vice-Prez (who has indeed brought new relevence to that term) are undoubtably complicit in this, even as on their watch GM and other corporations are currently fleecing health care policies while rewarding their CEOs with obscene excess.
As I've said here many times already, "the public good" isn't on this Administration's list of priorities; never has been, never will be.
Here's the latest on the EDISON FRANKENSTEIN DVD I wrote up on this blog last month, and for Video Watchdog magazine's current issue:
This just in from my fearless VW editor Tim Lucas, forwarded to me:
I recently saw your magazine at a local hobby store and its article on the 1910 Edison Frankenstein. Just to correct some misinformation, I manage a horror collectible store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and we are the current official/exclusive distributor of the DVD from Alois Detlaff/ADA Ventures, Intl.
We are still selling the DVD through our website and retail store for $25.00 which includes free shipping in the USA.
This professional dvd contains the 1910 Edison Frankenstein and a print of the 1922 Nosferatu all on one disc. You can read more information about the dvd on our website
Thank you for your time.
That was from Jeff (thanks, Jeff!) at Graveyard Records & Collectables, who you can write at:
4727 S. Packard Ave.
Cudahy, WI 53110
Or just click
As I say, get it while you can -- this is a tremendous opportunity.
__
The Creator Bill of Rights discussion continues, thanks to site sponsor and advocate Al Nickerson and the ongoing active participation of Cerebus creator/self-publisher Dave Sim. Give Dave's latest letter (and relevent archival materials) a close read
I can confirm one of Dave's statements from my own sometimes bitter experience, and would in fact extend it to any attempt to work with other publishers on DC properties. On his most recent dealings (or, ahem, non-dealings) with DC Comics on a proposed Fables contribution (see comment from Bob, below), Dave writes:
"...Well, that was my same experience from the 1980s with Paul Levitz whose idea of negotiation was: Here’s the deal. You can sign it or not sign it. Your choice. That is, we’re "thrilled and excited" that you’re willing to capitulate to us without question. If you’re not willing to capitulate to us without question then we’re no longer "thrilled and excited" and, in fact, we’re not even "less thrilled and less excited". What we are now is "completely disinterested"..."
This has been my experience with DC since the late 1980s, beginning with a proposed (and extensively prepped, to the point of artist Keith Giffen telling me he was ready to pencil from my final completed and quite extensive story outline) Eclipso graphic novel. Most recently (just last summer), this was precisely my experience with the proposed three-novel Swamp Thing series for iBooks and the late Byron Preiss.
After committing myself to the project fully (and in fact stepping away from my dayjob of the time in part to clear my schedule for this venture), agreeing to the basic terms as they were described to me and the money (which wasn't much), working the phones to arrange for my old friend and former Saga of the Swamp Thing collaborator John Totleben to do the covers and interior illustrations, and clearing the basic story outline with my editor and the necessary clearance with DC for the characters I wished to use, the contract was emailed to me months after our planned starting date. Despite Byron's use of the term "negotiations," it soon became abundantly clear "negotiate" meant precisely what Dave says: "capitulate without question." Even my questions were studiously avoided. It was a frustrating and ultimately fruitless dance, and one I expected going in. I wish I'd been proven wrong.
In the end, I had no choice but to walk (in part due to a reluctance on the publisher's part -- iBooks, not DC -- to pay a proper advance, though the payment amount had been agreed upon from the beginning and was never an issue in and of itself); I was informed soon after by my former editor (who had since left iBooks -- which was, by the way, one of the concerns I had regarding relevent terms of the contract) that without my participation, the project was considered uncommercial, and was scrapped.
And so it goes. Anyhoot, read Dave's latest letter, and I'll be weighing in soon myself on Al's site.
___
En route home last night from seeing The Fog remake (not a candle to the original), I paid a mere $2.49 per gallon to fill up my Toyota (gas hog, it ain't). This is a full 60 cents less than we paid a month ago, despite the devastation of three hurricanes since.
What's going on? Having worked at my parent's stores all my teenage years, I know the gas stations aren't making beans off of this, and are in fact bearing the brunt of the heat. The most concise piece dropped into my lap from HomeyM, clipped from The Washington Spectator November 2005 issue:
A Washington Post investigative report recently analyzed the increase in gasoline prices, which went from $1.87 a gallon last September to $3.07 this year. Who grabbed the $1.20-a-gallon increase? The report found that gasoline taxes actually fell by two cents, and our local distributors and gas stations got less than a penny from the increase. However, the crude oil producers-- including Exxon, BP, Shell, et all-- took an additional 46 cents from our pockets.
But the big winners by far were the gasoline refiners-- which also happen to be Exxon, BP, Shell et al. Their increase was 70 cents-- a 255% increase for them in one year! In all, of the $1.20-per-gallon price hike, Big Oil-- which both produces the oil and refines it into gasoline-- made off with $1.16.
As Homey commented in his email, "Again, what kind of press do we have that reports every day to the American people, and yet the people don't know this? They think maybe the gas station is making money or something. Information everywhere, yet no one knows the facts about the most basic things that are happening to them. It is robbery in full view." Indeed -- and yes, HomeyM, our Prez and Vice-Prez (who has indeed brought new relevence to that term) are undoubtably complicit in this, even as on their watch GM and other corporations are currently fleecing health care policies while rewarding their CEOs with obscene excess.
As I've said here many times already, "the public good" isn't on this Administration's list of priorities; never has been, never will be.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
In Praise of Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards
Central to the friction between fundamentalist Christians (those who consider the teaching of evolutionary theory in any form inherently heresy and a threat) and the sciences are the time-tested devices of polarization: duality, demonization, gross distortions of the opposing views, etc. What is relatively new (since the 1970s, in any case) are the attempts to remold religious doctrine into "a science" -- actually, pseudo-science at best, anti-science at worst -- as if cloaking the absolutely central basis of Christian faith somehow renders it invisible or less relevent. But we are all human, and it's a slippery slope away from debate into all-out-ideological-war when one heeds the inner voices that find it easier to ignore the core issues and engage in inflammatory rhetoric, personality clashes, and accusatory threats that have too often characterized this cultural flashpoint.
In a number of curious ways, the ongoing social arena in which the clash between Christian coalitions determined to usurp the teaching of evolution (and by proxy many relevent sciences) and educational institutions, parents, and concerned citizens determined to maintain the separation of Church and State in the schools of our nation reflects one of the central conflicts that forever marked the science of paleontology. The ways in which human nature asserts its basest instincts in the "highest" arenas -- be they churches and halls of justice, or the hallowed halls of relevent educational/scientific and/or government institions -- are forever familiar, however different the individual core issues, case histories, or inevitable tolls involved.
The personal vendetta that so profoundly fueled and disfigured the fateful infancy of paleontology itself throughout the quarter century that closed the 19th Century is always of interest. Over the past 15 years, there are a number of excellent books that have been written about the feud between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, all well worth your time and attention if you have any real interest in the subject. Thankfully, the latest entry in this curious cottage industry is arguably the most accessible of them all.
Writer/publisher Jim Ottaviani and his artistic collaborators, Big Time Attic -- Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, and Shad Petosky -- have crafted a marvelous self-contained graphic novel on the subject, and I heartedly recommend you seek out a copy ASAP. Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othneil Charles Marsh and the Gilded Age of Paleontology (Oct. 2005, G.T. Labs) sports a daunting title but stands as one of the most engaging reads of the season. Building upon the scientist biographies central to the G.T. Labs graphic novel lineup (see below for more info), Ottaviani and Cannon, Cannon & Petosky (hmmm, law firm material?) have lovingly charted the Cope/Marsh feud with a sharp eye for character in dialogue, event, and imagery.
Like the opposing sides in the Intelligent Design/Evolution firestorms of today, Cope and Marsh indulged in the most abusive kinds of public ridicule, character assassination, distortions & misrepresentations of the opposing parties views, and shameless appeals to popular assumptions, prejudices, and ignorance. They did so in the most public arenas open to them -- the science journals and newspapers (primarily The New York Herald, the premiere muckraking tabloid of its day -- and this public blood-and-thunder battle shaped their lives and those of all in their orbit in ways this graphic novel is determined to illuminate. That their personalized ideological vendetta was within the parameters of their shared devotion to science (rather than a division of religion vs. science) only intensifies the tragic repercussions: indeed, one wonders what similar turf-wars are implicit in Pinkowski's inference about the in-fighting within Creationist and Intelligent Design factions, and what stories may lay there. Thus, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards is surprisingly relevent and resonant to our own times on multiple levels, making this an essential read.
The exquisite Mark Schultz cover painting (revamping one of Charles B. Knight's most celebrated dinosaur paintings with Knight in full view) is somewhat at odds with the interior art, in which scientific versimilitude and seductive dinosaur reconstructions typical of the genre are by and large sublimated to maintain a rigorous focus on the human characters: specifically, the scruffy Cope, the affluent Marsh, and the premiere paleontological artist Charles Knight.
In fact, the weakest component of the graphic novel for some readers will be the short shrift given to the dinosaurs -- the saurians in Treasure Chest and especially Pinkowski & Riolo's dinos in A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs are more engaging renditions, if dinosaurs are what you seek in your dinosaur comics -- including some woeful delineations of Knight's paintings that figure in the narrative proper, giving readers unfamiliar with the artist's actual work the false impression that Knight's artistic chops weren't deserving of the stature the artist indeed holds as the first and still among the best of all paleontological artists. This is somewhat ironic, in that countless cartoonists and comicbook artists have blithely swiped from Knight's paintings for a century (Lloyd Ostendorf's cover for the Treasure Chest issue that opened this discussion swipes Knight's Ceratosaurus, the same painting 'borrowed' by the movie poster artists of Unknown Island, Journey to the Beginning of Time, and many others). That the first comic to ever feature Knight as a character so pitifully evokes the impeccable draughtsmanship, atmospheric immediacy, and lasting impact of Knight's work is regrettable, but it may have been a conscious decision. True to the agenda of the entire G.T. Labs' graphic novel line, the characters, the people, are the center of the drama, not per se their work -- though it is their life's work that makes them the focus of Ottiviani's expansive biographical comics.
That said, Cannon, Cannon & Petosky are skillful cartoonists, their toned work blending the strengths of (I kid you not) Jeff Smith and Chester Brown with a clean precision of line, forms, and characterization that works wonders over the stretch. When appropriate to a moment, the eyes and faces of their characters are enormously expressive, flashes of emotional life all the more affecting for the spare stoicism that defines much of the period and its people. Tellingly, when rendering animal life with fidelity and a dramatic flair will illuminate the human characters, Cannon, Cannon & Petosky rise to the occasion every time -- and yes, the artists deftly render a number of prehistoric creatures in the telling of the tale, when appropriate to the narrative's thrust. These are primarily Cope's visual imagings of the primordial world and its denizens: there's a graceful three-page+ sequence delineating what once swam in the vast oceans over what are now the badlands of the West, primary among those aquatic monster Elasmosaurus (pp. 30-33); the punchline, if you will, is the skeptical disbelief on the face of layman Smith that immediately follows ("Sure they is, Perfesser. Sure."). None can 'see' what Cope sees, save for Knight and (most bitter of ironies) Cope's arch-nemesis Marsh, though it's a character point that Marsh's smug demeanor throughout never indulges similar imaginative flights until the penultimate chapter. The Elasmosaurus interlude is echoed later Cope's truncated telling of a Native American myth concerning the slaying of the serpentine monster Uncegila (pp. 79-80; which is completed for the reader in the appendix, pp. 157-158), and again in the only fantasy sequence associated with Marsh, in which he relates the Shawnee story involving giant men who once walked the Earth and hunted the Yakwawi'ak (Mastodons). That Marsh relates the tale without believing it is central to the power of this sequence; that his 'audience' Chief Red Cloud asserts the truth of the story unexpectedly elevates the entire novel to the realm of Sergio Leone's meditations on similar mythic American roots (specifically evoking Charles Bronson's resonant line at the end of Once Upon a Time in the West).
And at the heart of this exceptional graphic novel is the artist, Charles Knight. Though Cope and Marsh are its key protagonists, Ottaviani and his artist collaborators recognized Knight as their -- hence, as readers, our -- familiar. After all, was Knight not the pioneer of precisely what the entire G.T. Labs' enterprise is dedicated to: illuminating science through art? What Ottaviani has created here, with this exceptional graphic novel, and indeed with the entire G.T. Labs' line truly follows in the mighty-hard-to-fill footsteps of artists like Knight, an honorable tradition and pantheon indeed. Ottaviani's collaborative efforts in comics and graphic novels now represent a remarkable achievement in the field, one sadly neglected by the very industry Ottaviani and his associates work within. Their previous efforts are also highly recommended: Two-Fisted Science, Dignifiying Science: Stories about Women Scientists, Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb, and Suspended in Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, and the Century He Shaped.
For more info, or to order, clickGT Labs and explore.
In any case, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards is highly recommended -- an ideal Christmas gift for budding paleontologists and dinosaur lovers of all ages. Now, if only my own Christmas is graced by a copy of G.T. Labs' Charles B. Knight: Autobiography of an Artist, winter will be instantly more bearable.
Central to the friction between fundamentalist Christians (those who consider the teaching of evolutionary theory in any form inherently heresy and a threat) and the sciences are the time-tested devices of polarization: duality, demonization, gross distortions of the opposing views, etc. What is relatively new (since the 1970s, in any case) are the attempts to remold religious doctrine into "a science" -- actually, pseudo-science at best, anti-science at worst -- as if cloaking the absolutely central basis of Christian faith somehow renders it invisible or less relevent. But we are all human, and it's a slippery slope away from debate into all-out-ideological-war when one heeds the inner voices that find it easier to ignore the core issues and engage in inflammatory rhetoric, personality clashes, and accusatory threats that have too often characterized this cultural flashpoint.
In a number of curious ways, the ongoing social arena in which the clash between Christian coalitions determined to usurp the teaching of evolution (and by proxy many relevent sciences) and educational institutions, parents, and concerned citizens determined to maintain the separation of Church and State in the schools of our nation reflects one of the central conflicts that forever marked the science of paleontology. The ways in which human nature asserts its basest instincts in the "highest" arenas -- be they churches and halls of justice, or the hallowed halls of relevent educational/scientific and/or government institions -- are forever familiar, however different the individual core issues, case histories, or inevitable tolls involved.
The personal vendetta that so profoundly fueled and disfigured the fateful infancy of paleontology itself throughout the quarter century that closed the 19th Century is always of interest. Over the past 15 years, there are a number of excellent books that have been written about the feud between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, all well worth your time and attention if you have any real interest in the subject. Thankfully, the latest entry in this curious cottage industry is arguably the most accessible of them all.
Writer/publisher Jim Ottaviani and his artistic collaborators, Big Time Attic -- Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, and Shad Petosky -- have crafted a marvelous self-contained graphic novel on the subject, and I heartedly recommend you seek out a copy ASAP. Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othneil Charles Marsh and the Gilded Age of Paleontology (Oct. 2005, G.T. Labs) sports a daunting title but stands as one of the most engaging reads of the season. Building upon the scientist biographies central to the G.T. Labs graphic novel lineup (see below for more info), Ottaviani and Cannon, Cannon & Petosky (hmmm, law firm material?) have lovingly charted the Cope/Marsh feud with a sharp eye for character in dialogue, event, and imagery.
Like the opposing sides in the Intelligent Design/Evolution firestorms of today, Cope and Marsh indulged in the most abusive kinds of public ridicule, character assassination, distortions & misrepresentations of the opposing parties views, and shameless appeals to popular assumptions, prejudices, and ignorance. They did so in the most public arenas open to them -- the science journals and newspapers (primarily The New York Herald, the premiere muckraking tabloid of its day -- and this public blood-and-thunder battle shaped their lives and those of all in their orbit in ways this graphic novel is determined to illuminate. That their personalized ideological vendetta was within the parameters of their shared devotion to science (rather than a division of religion vs. science) only intensifies the tragic repercussions: indeed, one wonders what similar turf-wars are implicit in Pinkowski's inference about the in-fighting within Creationist and Intelligent Design factions, and what stories may lay there. Thus, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards is surprisingly relevent and resonant to our own times on multiple levels, making this an essential read.
The exquisite Mark Schultz cover painting (revamping one of Charles B. Knight's most celebrated dinosaur paintings with Knight in full view) is somewhat at odds with the interior art, in which scientific versimilitude and seductive dinosaur reconstructions typical of the genre are by and large sublimated to maintain a rigorous focus on the human characters: specifically, the scruffy Cope, the affluent Marsh, and the premiere paleontological artist Charles Knight.
In fact, the weakest component of the graphic novel for some readers will be the short shrift given to the dinosaurs -- the saurians in Treasure Chest and especially Pinkowski & Riolo's dinos in A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs are more engaging renditions, if dinosaurs are what you seek in your dinosaur comics -- including some woeful delineations of Knight's paintings that figure in the narrative proper, giving readers unfamiliar with the artist's actual work the false impression that Knight's artistic chops weren't deserving of the stature the artist indeed holds as the first and still among the best of all paleontological artists. This is somewhat ironic, in that countless cartoonists and comicbook artists have blithely swiped from Knight's paintings for a century (Lloyd Ostendorf's cover for the Treasure Chest issue that opened this discussion swipes Knight's Ceratosaurus, the same painting 'borrowed' by the movie poster artists of Unknown Island, Journey to the Beginning of Time, and many others). That the first comic to ever feature Knight as a character so pitifully evokes the impeccable draughtsmanship, atmospheric immediacy, and lasting impact of Knight's work is regrettable, but it may have been a conscious decision. True to the agenda of the entire G.T. Labs' graphic novel line, the characters, the people, are the center of the drama, not per se their work -- though it is their life's work that makes them the focus of Ottiviani's expansive biographical comics.
That said, Cannon, Cannon & Petosky are skillful cartoonists, their toned work blending the strengths of (I kid you not) Jeff Smith and Chester Brown with a clean precision of line, forms, and characterization that works wonders over the stretch. When appropriate to a moment, the eyes and faces of their characters are enormously expressive, flashes of emotional life all the more affecting for the spare stoicism that defines much of the period and its people. Tellingly, when rendering animal life with fidelity and a dramatic flair will illuminate the human characters, Cannon, Cannon & Petosky rise to the occasion every time -- and yes, the artists deftly render a number of prehistoric creatures in the telling of the tale, when appropriate to the narrative's thrust. These are primarily Cope's visual imagings of the primordial world and its denizens: there's a graceful three-page+ sequence delineating what once swam in the vast oceans over what are now the badlands of the West, primary among those aquatic monster Elasmosaurus (pp. 30-33); the punchline, if you will, is the skeptical disbelief on the face of layman Smith that immediately follows ("Sure they is, Perfesser. Sure."). None can 'see' what Cope sees, save for Knight and (most bitter of ironies) Cope's arch-nemesis Marsh, though it's a character point that Marsh's smug demeanor throughout never indulges similar imaginative flights until the penultimate chapter. The Elasmosaurus interlude is echoed later Cope's truncated telling of a Native American myth concerning the slaying of the serpentine monster Uncegila (pp. 79-80; which is completed for the reader in the appendix, pp. 157-158), and again in the only fantasy sequence associated with Marsh, in which he relates the Shawnee story involving giant men who once walked the Earth and hunted the Yakwawi'ak (Mastodons). That Marsh relates the tale without believing it is central to the power of this sequence; that his 'audience' Chief Red Cloud asserts the truth of the story unexpectedly elevates the entire novel to the realm of Sergio Leone's meditations on similar mythic American roots (specifically evoking Charles Bronson's resonant line at the end of Once Upon a Time in the West).
And at the heart of this exceptional graphic novel is the artist, Charles Knight. Though Cope and Marsh are its key protagonists, Ottaviani and his artist collaborators recognized Knight as their -- hence, as readers, our -- familiar. After all, was Knight not the pioneer of precisely what the entire G.T. Labs' enterprise is dedicated to: illuminating science through art? What Ottaviani has created here, with this exceptional graphic novel, and indeed with the entire G.T. Labs' line truly follows in the mighty-hard-to-fill footsteps of artists like Knight, an honorable tradition and pantheon indeed. Ottaviani's collaborative efforts in comics and graphic novels now represent a remarkable achievement in the field, one sadly neglected by the very industry Ottaviani and his associates work within. Their previous efforts are also highly recommended: Two-Fisted Science, Dignifiying Science: Stories about Women Scientists, Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb, and Suspended in Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, and the Century He Shaped.
For more info, or to order, click
In any case, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards is highly recommended -- an ideal Christmas gift for budding paleontologists and dinosaur lovers of all ages. Now, if only my own Christmas is graced by a copy of G.T. Labs' Charles B. Knight: Autobiography of an Artist, winter will be instantly more bearable.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Part Two: Paleo Comics, Creationist/Intelligent Design comics, etc.
Read yesterday's post first, if you're just stepping into this one -- thanks.
The balancing act between "our understanding" of science and religion is indeed a tightwire walk, but the tipping point is inherent in that phrasing of "our understanding."
Basically, as all 56 pages (60, if you count the covers and inside covers) of Pinkowski's comic makes abundantly clear, "our understanding" is a loaded term that is divisive by nature: "our" is inclusive if you share the belief in God as an all-powerful being, and exclusive if you do not (or, more precisely, do not share that belief in the manner and mode of Pinkowski and his fellow Christian Creationists).
There is a conversational "common sense" devotional pragmatism at work throughout A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs that carries a seductive momentum (typical of this comics genre: it's part of what gives the Jack T. Chick tracts their curious potency). The fact that science is inherently founded upon constant questioning is immediately presented as a flaw, a chink in the armor. This is almost immediately defined (on page 6) in opposition to the absolute validity of Biblical verse, which should not be questioned.
Thus, after asserting and expanding briefly upon the notion that we as a species only "use" 10% of our brain, Pinkowski's surrogate narrator says (use of bold text and ellipses reflect the complete text as it appears):
"Now, you may have noticed that I said that this 'mindless' condition includes all of us -- so it includes me, too! So you might ask, 'Well then, what makes you think that you finally have the right answers??' And that would be a good question! And I'll answer it by first quoting this Bible verse:
"But the path of the just is as shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day"! (Proverbs 4:18) (And see Daniel 12:4!)"
In this first decisive wielding of Biblical verse, Pinkowski tips his hand: the narrator/author may not have all the answers, but the Bible does. Thus, science (herein, the sciences of paleontology, biology, geology, and the theories linked to Darwinian evolution) is suspect because it is not an absolutist belief system, whereas the Bible is unquestionably the word of God, and thus "true" in a way science never can or will be.
Thus, if you share the author's clearly devout and passionate religious beliefs, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution may seem a completely rational and reasonable dissection of those issues.
If you do not, the comic comes across as a screed -- a well-drawn, beautifully lettered, and professionally executed screed, but a screed nonetheless.
Having dealt the first blow against evolution by tapping Biblical truth, however anecdotal, the narrator continues:
"Accordingly, the longer we keep investigating the evolution-creation controversy, the more light will come to shine upon it, and we will get closer and closer to the truth! And that truth is that a master designer created everything!
One of the simple, basic principles of science is this: 'The MORE we learn, the more we admit that we DON'T know"! Yet today's evolution scientists arrogantly choose to ignore this truth -- instead they prefer to thnk they 'know it all'!"
In a nutshell, then: unquestioning devotion to a literalist reading of the Bible (specifically Genesis) is truth, and any who do not share that absolutist literalist devotion are arrogantly denying the truth.
Now, this is a profound testimonial to faith -- specifically fundamentalist Christian faith -- but it is not, by definition cannot be, and never will be science.
On page 7, the narrator continues:
"Does it really matter who's right? YES! IT DOES! This is a matter of life or death... ETERNAL life or death!! Why? Because one of these belief systems --"
(Note the rather sly insertion of the term "belief systems" -- continuing:)
"-- embraces God and salvation in Jesus Christ, and the other belief system leads to doubt, emptiness, and a GODLESS UNIVERSE!"
Thus, in a short span of four word balloons and one slippery, barely discernable use of a term that equates science and religion, the implicit falsity of the "debate" becomes explicit: this is not a matter of religion and science, it is -- in the eyes of the Christians who maintain this struggle -- a conflict of belief systems, one (their own) founded on absolute devotion to literalist Biblical truth, the other (science, in their view of "science") on a Godless belief system that is inherently threatening and necessarily demonized.
What follows is a kangaroo-court procession of increasingly nonsensical attacks upon misrepresentations of biology, various scientific disciplines, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Its a fascinating read, all the more for it's increasingly surreal deviations from any version of the Bible I've ever found or read. If mathematical attempts to enumerate how many animals could/might/did fit on Noah's Ark doesn't prompt confusion, the leaps of logic that follow ("When the animals got off the ark, God evolved changes into the animals so they could survive in this new world!") undoubtably will. Blithe redefinitions of terminology add to the confusion ("...for the rest of this book I will use the term 'evolution' to represent 'endless progression'", a caption footnoted thus: "Micro-evolution is perfectly OK! Macro-evolution is error!" Pinkowski neatly garbles, manhandles, then reconfigures and redefines into nonsense Darwinian theories by page 9). If your patience isn't tested beyond endurance by the subsequent pages of full text, in which the principles of mutation, the functions of organs, gender issues, etc. are further transmuted into battering rams against the Creationists's gross, glib misrepresentation of evolutionary theories and science, you'll arrive at increasing attempts to bring geological "evidence" of the Biblical flood to the fore.
The inconsistencies and lack of a coherent doctrine in Creationist belief is eventually acknowledged in a dizzying word balloon that neatly meshes Creationism, pseudo-science, Cryptozoology, and fundamentalist sect divisions: "Not all Creationists believe the same way in regard to 'dinosaurs' -- perhaps some dinosaurs did go onto the Ark (there have been reports of small brontosaurs [sic] living in Africa); and other Creationists believe that the dinosaurs were 'amalgamations' wherein the Antediluvians messed with the genetics of God's original animals, which was why God destroyed them all in the flood. It would be nice if all Creationists could agree on one and only one scenario -- but it probably won't happen. So maybe all we can do is focus on the 'high points,' like how evolution defies all logic and how there's tons and tons of evidence that supports the creation story that is told in the Bible's Book of Genesis!"
Sooooooo, inconsistencies in scientific disciplines are suspect and relentlessly demonized; inconsistencies of theology and Biblical interpretation are, well, uh, too bad.
The only imperical "truth" referenced time and time again herein, as with all Creationist texts, is that of the Biblical Word as truth, God as truth.
The problem is, the Book of Genesis and the Bible really don't say much about all this. Thus, an increasingly bizarre series of sects have arisen, each proferring their own interpretive scenarios that speculate about matters that are neither explicit or implicit in the Bible, nor relevent to any genuine fossil or archeological record. Thus, statements like "in reality even that one 'evolved life form' would never make it all without God's help!" and "'Cavemen' are NOT links between apes and mankind, they are DEGENERATED HUMAN BEINGS! They are 'de-evolved' imperfect human beings that were genetically damaged by the curse of sin and the pervasive effects of CELLULAR ENTROPY!" are delivered with matter-of-fact urgency, though there's no specific Biblical verse to reference such speculative claims.
Thus, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs eases further and further into faith-based science fiction of an increasingly delerious nature. It makes for neither good science or religion, but it does make for great comics by the time we reach page 36.
The cumulative weight of these arguments, absurdist as they often are, arrives at a truly staggering spectacle: Pinkowski's "Time for some FUN" sequence in which he illustrates a dinosaur attack upon Noah's Ark in three glorious double-page spreads (credited to "Pinkowski & Riolo"). Jim initially presents this as unabashed fantasy, but can't resist tipping back into Creationist rhetoric. Thus, captions like "The evil fallen angels stampede the dinosaurs toward Noah's Ark, hoping to destroy it...!" ultimately give way to "The Flood was REAL!! The flood waters drowned and killed the dinosaurs! This event is NOT a fable and NOT a 'myth'... it is a verifiable scientific FACT!"
Alas, Pinkowski lapses immediately into the nonsensical non-science emblematic of too much Creationist and Intelligent Design literature. He adds a caption to his eye-popping illustration of the Ark floating atop water peppered with shrieking saurian and dinosaurian heads that reads: "NOTE: The fossil remains of numerous dinosaurs have been found with their heads and necks arched upwards, as if in their death throes they were straining to keep their heads above water!"
Sigh.
As I observed as a mere lad, little layman child scientist-wanna-be I once was, during repeated visits to a chipmunk carcass drying on a patch of rock in Duxbury, VT, the neck muscles of drying animal bodies shrink and contort the body, pulling the neck back. This very phenomenon is indeed characteristic of some fossils that have been found intact enough to recognize the positioning of the neck and body. It is emphatically not evidence of drowning animals "straining to keep their heads above water" -- it's what the muscles and skeletal structures do when exposed to certain conditions of dessication, shrinkage, and the elements. What a curious child (in more ways than one!) observed and recognized in nature is now (completely misinterpreted) codified in the non-scientific gibberish embraced by Creationist and Intelligent Design advocates. This may not prove the interaction of dinosaurs and Noah's Ark, but it does demonstrate a woeful lack of biology studies or rudimentary grasp of forensic science, if nothing else.
As with all Creationist (and, now, Intelligent Design) literature I've read to date, Pinkowski inherently misunderstands and misrepresents what "science" is: among other things, science is an exploration process, a process of observation, experimentation and inquiry, rather than an absolutist system of belief. Observation, categorization, analysis, and a fundamental adherence to asking questions without prior assumptions of "truth" -- in fact, asking questions that may not have answers within reach, as yet -- are among the fundamentals of science. Science is not religion, much less organized religion -- hence, the ongoing conflict between the two, particularly from fundamentalist religious persons whose center is their faith.
Faith can be tested, of course, just as theories can, but that does not make the two interchangable. Religion is grounded in belief; specifically, belief in something that inherently resists imperical analysis, assessment, or proof. Belief in God, or Buddha, or Allah, or etc. is a powerful force, but that does not inversely make "belief" in a given theory -- in this case, Darwinian evolution -- by proxy a religion.
But there's the crux of the matter, in the deceptively simplistic phraseology: If belief in God is religion, and belief in a particular theory is science, doesn't that make religion a science?
As my buddy Rick Bates would say, "Why get into the argument at all?"
Well, damn it, because it still is thrust into our faces, time and time again. Here we are in the new Millennium, 80 years after the Scopes trial, still forced into the same obfuscating debates and legal battles that by their very nature avoid the real issue at hand:
Some of us accept the Bible as a literal truth; some of us do not.
Those that do insist that those of us who don't are, by definition, a threat.
Freedom of religion means freedom from religion.
For that sector of the American populace that finds that reality in and of itself heretical and threatening, I can only say you do not truly believe in freedom of religion if you cannot tolerate and support your religious beliefs, however "obvious" to you, not being foisted upon others.
Religion will never be science, and "science" founded upon religious doctrine is by definition not a science.
Still, the battle makes for some great comics.
(Continued tomorrow: Finally, real science! Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards reviewed...)
Read yesterday's post first, if you're just stepping into this one -- thanks.
The balancing act between "our understanding" of science and religion is indeed a tightwire walk, but the tipping point is inherent in that phrasing of "our understanding."
Basically, as all 56 pages (60, if you count the covers and inside covers) of Pinkowski's comic makes abundantly clear, "our understanding" is a loaded term that is divisive by nature: "our" is inclusive if you share the belief in God as an all-powerful being, and exclusive if you do not (or, more precisely, do not share that belief in the manner and mode of Pinkowski and his fellow Christian Creationists).
There is a conversational "common sense" devotional pragmatism at work throughout A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs that carries a seductive momentum (typical of this comics genre: it's part of what gives the Jack T. Chick tracts their curious potency). The fact that science is inherently founded upon constant questioning is immediately presented as a flaw, a chink in the armor. This is almost immediately defined (on page 6) in opposition to the absolute validity of Biblical verse, which should not be questioned.
Thus, after asserting and expanding briefly upon the notion that we as a species only "use" 10% of our brain, Pinkowski's surrogate narrator says (use of bold text and ellipses reflect the complete text as it appears):
"Now, you may have noticed that I said that this 'mindless' condition includes all of us -- so it includes me, too! So you might ask, 'Well then, what makes you think that you finally have the right answers??' And that would be a good question! And I'll answer it by first quoting this Bible verse:
"But the path of the just is as shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day"! (Proverbs 4:18) (And see Daniel 12:4!)"
In this first decisive wielding of Biblical verse, Pinkowski tips his hand: the narrator/author may not have all the answers, but the Bible does. Thus, science (herein, the sciences of paleontology, biology, geology, and the theories linked to Darwinian evolution) is suspect because it is not an absolutist belief system, whereas the Bible is unquestionably the word of God, and thus "true" in a way science never can or will be.
Thus, if you share the author's clearly devout and passionate religious beliefs, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution may seem a completely rational and reasonable dissection of those issues.
If you do not, the comic comes across as a screed -- a well-drawn, beautifully lettered, and professionally executed screed, but a screed nonetheless.
Having dealt the first blow against evolution by tapping Biblical truth, however anecdotal, the narrator continues:
"Accordingly, the longer we keep investigating the evolution-creation controversy, the more light will come to shine upon it, and we will get closer and closer to the truth! And that truth is that a master designer created everything!
One of the simple, basic principles of science is this: 'The MORE we learn, the more we admit that we DON'T know"! Yet today's evolution scientists arrogantly choose to ignore this truth -- instead they prefer to thnk they 'know it all'!"
In a nutshell, then: unquestioning devotion to a literalist reading of the Bible (specifically Genesis) is truth, and any who do not share that absolutist literalist devotion are arrogantly denying the truth.
Now, this is a profound testimonial to faith -- specifically fundamentalist Christian faith -- but it is not, by definition cannot be, and never will be science.
On page 7, the narrator continues:
"Does it really matter who's right? YES! IT DOES! This is a matter of life or death... ETERNAL life or death!! Why? Because one of these belief systems --"
(Note the rather sly insertion of the term "belief systems" -- continuing:)
"-- embraces God and salvation in Jesus Christ, and the other belief system leads to doubt, emptiness, and a GODLESS UNIVERSE!"
Thus, in a short span of four word balloons and one slippery, barely discernable use of a term that equates science and religion, the implicit falsity of the "debate" becomes explicit: this is not a matter of religion and science, it is -- in the eyes of the Christians who maintain this struggle -- a conflict of belief systems, one (their own) founded on absolute devotion to literalist Biblical truth, the other (science, in their view of "science") on a Godless belief system that is inherently threatening and necessarily demonized.
What follows is a kangaroo-court procession of increasingly nonsensical attacks upon misrepresentations of biology, various scientific disciplines, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Its a fascinating read, all the more for it's increasingly surreal deviations from any version of the Bible I've ever found or read. If mathematical attempts to enumerate how many animals could/might/did fit on Noah's Ark doesn't prompt confusion, the leaps of logic that follow ("When the animals got off the ark, God evolved changes into the animals so they could survive in this new world!") undoubtably will. Blithe redefinitions of terminology add to the confusion ("...for the rest of this book I will use the term 'evolution' to represent 'endless progression'", a caption footnoted thus: "Micro-evolution is perfectly OK! Macro-evolution is error!" Pinkowski neatly garbles, manhandles, then reconfigures and redefines into nonsense Darwinian theories by page 9). If your patience isn't tested beyond endurance by the subsequent pages of full text, in which the principles of mutation, the functions of organs, gender issues, etc. are further transmuted into battering rams against the Creationists's gross, glib misrepresentation of evolutionary theories and science, you'll arrive at increasing attempts to bring geological "evidence" of the Biblical flood to the fore.
The inconsistencies and lack of a coherent doctrine in Creationist belief is eventually acknowledged in a dizzying word balloon that neatly meshes Creationism, pseudo-science, Cryptozoology, and fundamentalist sect divisions: "Not all Creationists believe the same way in regard to 'dinosaurs' -- perhaps some dinosaurs did go onto the Ark (there have been reports of small brontosaurs [sic] living in Africa); and other Creationists believe that the dinosaurs were 'amalgamations' wherein the Antediluvians messed with the genetics of God's original animals, which was why God destroyed them all in the flood. It would be nice if all Creationists could agree on one and only one scenario -- but it probably won't happen. So maybe all we can do is focus on the 'high points,' like how evolution defies all logic and how there's tons and tons of evidence that supports the creation story that is told in the Bible's Book of Genesis!"
Sooooooo, inconsistencies in scientific disciplines are suspect and relentlessly demonized; inconsistencies of theology and Biblical interpretation are, well, uh, too bad.
The only imperical "truth" referenced time and time again herein, as with all Creationist texts, is that of the Biblical Word as truth, God as truth.
The problem is, the Book of Genesis and the Bible really don't say much about all this. Thus, an increasingly bizarre series of sects have arisen, each proferring their own interpretive scenarios that speculate about matters that are neither explicit or implicit in the Bible, nor relevent to any genuine fossil or archeological record. Thus, statements like "in reality even that one 'evolved life form' would never make it all without God's help!" and "'Cavemen' are NOT links between apes and mankind, they are DEGENERATED HUMAN BEINGS! They are 'de-evolved' imperfect human beings that were genetically damaged by the curse of sin and the pervasive effects of CELLULAR ENTROPY!" are delivered with matter-of-fact urgency, though there's no specific Biblical verse to reference such speculative claims.
Thus, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs eases further and further into faith-based science fiction of an increasingly delerious nature. It makes for neither good science or religion, but it does make for great comics by the time we reach page 36.
The cumulative weight of these arguments, absurdist as they often are, arrives at a truly staggering spectacle: Pinkowski's "Time for some FUN" sequence in which he illustrates a dinosaur attack upon Noah's Ark in three glorious double-page spreads (credited to "Pinkowski & Riolo"). Jim initially presents this as unabashed fantasy, but can't resist tipping back into Creationist rhetoric. Thus, captions like "The evil fallen angels stampede the dinosaurs toward Noah's Ark, hoping to destroy it...!" ultimately give way to "The Flood was REAL!! The flood waters drowned and killed the dinosaurs! This event is NOT a fable and NOT a 'myth'... it is a verifiable scientific FACT!"
Alas, Pinkowski lapses immediately into the nonsensical non-science emblematic of too much Creationist and Intelligent Design literature. He adds a caption to his eye-popping illustration of the Ark floating atop water peppered with shrieking saurian and dinosaurian heads that reads: "NOTE: The fossil remains of numerous dinosaurs have been found with their heads and necks arched upwards, as if in their death throes they were straining to keep their heads above water!"
Sigh.
As I observed as a mere lad, little layman child scientist-wanna-be I once was, during repeated visits to a chipmunk carcass drying on a patch of rock in Duxbury, VT, the neck muscles of drying animal bodies shrink and contort the body, pulling the neck back. This very phenomenon is indeed characteristic of some fossils that have been found intact enough to recognize the positioning of the neck and body. It is emphatically not evidence of drowning animals "straining to keep their heads above water" -- it's what the muscles and skeletal structures do when exposed to certain conditions of dessication, shrinkage, and the elements. What a curious child (in more ways than one!) observed and recognized in nature is now (completely misinterpreted) codified in the non-scientific gibberish embraced by Creationist and Intelligent Design advocates. This may not prove the interaction of dinosaurs and Noah's Ark, but it does demonstrate a woeful lack of biology studies or rudimentary grasp of forensic science, if nothing else.
As with all Creationist (and, now, Intelligent Design) literature I've read to date, Pinkowski inherently misunderstands and misrepresents what "science" is: among other things, science is an exploration process, a process of observation, experimentation and inquiry, rather than an absolutist system of belief. Observation, categorization, analysis, and a fundamental adherence to asking questions without prior assumptions of "truth" -- in fact, asking questions that may not have answers within reach, as yet -- are among the fundamentals of science. Science is not religion, much less organized religion -- hence, the ongoing conflict between the two, particularly from fundamentalist religious persons whose center is their faith.
Faith can be tested, of course, just as theories can, but that does not make the two interchangable. Religion is grounded in belief; specifically, belief in something that inherently resists imperical analysis, assessment, or proof. Belief in God, or Buddha, or Allah, or etc. is a powerful force, but that does not inversely make "belief" in a given theory -- in this case, Darwinian evolution -- by proxy a religion.
But there's the crux of the matter, in the deceptively simplistic phraseology: If belief in God is religion, and belief in a particular theory is science, doesn't that make religion a science?
As my buddy Rick Bates would say, "Why get into the argument at all?"
Well, damn it, because it still is thrust into our faces, time and time again. Here we are in the new Millennium, 80 years after the Scopes trial, still forced into the same obfuscating debates and legal battles that by their very nature avoid the real issue at hand:
Some of us accept the Bible as a literal truth; some of us do not.
Those that do insist that those of us who don't are, by definition, a threat.
Freedom of religion means freedom from religion.
For that sector of the American populace that finds that reality in and of itself heretical and threatening, I can only say you do not truly believe in freedom of religion if you cannot tolerate and support your religious beliefs, however "obvious" to you, not being foisted upon others.
Religion will never be science, and "science" founded upon religious doctrine is by definition not a science.
Still, the battle makes for some great comics.
(Continued tomorrow: Finally, real science! Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards reviewed...)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Intelligent Design, Creationist and Christian Dino Comics, and The Cope/Marsh Feud: Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards
Tim Viereck aka Doc Ersatz -- the man who financed my first comicbook venture! -- recently emailed me an intriguing Washington Post article by Michael Powell ("Creationists 'taking the dinosaurs back' with museum", Monday, September 26, 2005) about a soon-to-open new attraction in Petersburg, Kentucky:
The guide, a soft-spoken fellow with a scholarly aspect, walks through the halls of this handsome, half-finished museum and points to the sculpture of a young velociraptor. "We're placing this one in the hall that explains the post-Flood world,"
explains the guide. "When dinosaurs lived with man."
A reporter has a question or two about this dinosaur-man business, but Mark Looy --- the guide and a vice president at the museum --- already has walked over to the lifelike head of a T. rex, with its 3-inch teeth and carnivore's grin. "We call him our 'missionary lizard,' " Looy says. "When people realize the T. rex lived in Eden, it will lead us to a discussion of the Gospel. The T. rex once was a vegetarian, too."
This Tyrannosaurus rex as vegetarian tidbit dates back at least three decades in Creationist literature, most amusingly illustrated as 'fact' in the Creationist children's books which love to picture the formidable rex hunkering down over an outsized watermelon-like object with a bullhonker bite already out of it.
And those teeth are up to 11" and longer, Mr. Looy -- I have a casting of one on my bookshelf downstairs, and just measured it to be sure. These babies were not designed, per "evilution" or the Creator, for mushing melons, but let's not let facts get in the way.
The nation's largest museum devoted to the alternative reality that is biblical creation science is rising just outside Cincinnati. Set amid a park and 3-acre artificial lake, the 50,000-square-foot museum features animatronic dinosaurs, state-of-the-art models and graphics, and a half-dozen staff scientists. It holds that the world and the universe are but 6,000 years old and that baby dinosaurs rode in Noah's
ark.
Hmmm, I've never found that bon mot in any edition of the Bible I've ever read, and believe me, I've been looking since I was five years old.
Furthermore, if the Creation Museum participants have anything made of plastic in their homes or offices, heat with oil, or drive internal-combustion engines, they're already more dependent on geology -- true science -- than they are willing to admit. A firm belief in a 6,000-year-old planet is inherently noncompatible and thus antithetical to the oil business, y'understand.
Oh, sorry. Continuing:
The $25 million Creation Museum stands much of modern science on its head and might cause a paleontologist or three to rend their garments. Officials expect to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors when the museum opens in early 2007.
"Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we are taking the dinosaurs back," says Kenneth Ham, president of Answers in Gene
Tim Viereck aka Doc Ersatz -- the man who financed my first comicbook venture! -- recently emailed me an intriguing Washington Post article by Michael Powell ("Creationists 'taking the dinosaurs back' with museum", Monday, September 26, 2005) about a soon-to-open new attraction in Petersburg, Kentucky:
The guide, a soft-spoken fellow with a scholarly aspect, walks through the halls of this handsome, half-finished museum and points to the sculpture of a young velociraptor. "We're placing this one in the hall that explains the post-Flood world,"
explains the guide. "When dinosaurs lived with man."
A reporter has a question or two about this dinosaur-man business, but Mark Looy --- the guide and a vice president at the museum --- already has walked over to the lifelike head of a T. rex, with its 3-inch teeth and carnivore's grin. "We call him our 'missionary lizard,' " Looy says. "When people realize the T. rex lived in Eden, it will lead us to a discussion of the Gospel. The T. rex once was a vegetarian, too."
This Tyrannosaurus rex as vegetarian tidbit dates back at least three decades in Creationist literature, most amusingly illustrated as 'fact' in the Creationist children's books which love to picture the formidable rex hunkering down over an outsized watermelon-like object with a bullhonker bite already out of it.
And those teeth are up to 11" and longer, Mr. Looy -- I have a casting of one on my bookshelf downstairs, and just measured it to be sure. These babies were not designed, per "evilution" or the Creator, for mushing melons, but let's not let facts get in the way.
The nation's largest museum devoted to the alternative reality that is biblical creation science is rising just outside Cincinnati. Set amid a park and 3-acre artificial lake, the 50,000-square-foot museum features animatronic dinosaurs, state-of-the-art models and graphics, and a half-dozen staff scientists. It holds that the world and the universe are but 6,000 years old and that baby dinosaurs rode in Noah's
ark.
Hmmm, I've never found that bon mot in any edition of the Bible I've ever read, and believe me, I've been looking since I was five years old.
Furthermore, if the Creation Museum participants have anything made of plastic in their homes or offices, heat with oil, or drive internal-combustion engines, they're already more dependent on geology -- true science -- than they are willing to admit. A firm belief in a 6,000-year-old planet is inherently noncompatible and thus antithetical to the oil business, y'understand.
Oh, sorry. Continuing:
The $25 million Creation Museum stands much of modern science on its head and might cause a paleontologist or three to rend their garments. Officials expect to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors when the museum opens in early 2007.
"Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we are taking the dinosaurs back," says Kenneth Ham, president of Answers in Gene