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.
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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
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* 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 Genesis-USA, which is building the museum. "This is a battle cry to recognize the science in the revealed truth of God."
Typical of this kind of reporting of late, science is succinctly rendered a democratic process subject to ignorance, prejudice, and opinion in its final paragraph:
Polls taken last year showed that 45 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. Only 26 percent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor.
Ah, I see -- the polls say Americans are decidedly against it.
Of course, similar poll results would have been yielded in the 1890s and early 1900s, but we've come so far since then.
Opinions aren't fact, and religious fanaticism isn't science. Hell, polls also demonstrate that the same proportion of Americans still link Saddam Hussain with the 9/11 attacks, but that still doesn't make it so. Those Saudis our Prez loves to hold hands with had a greater link with the 9/11 box-cutter massacre than Saddam or Iraq did, but let's not let facts get in the way of any dearly-held belief systems. (I'm just thankful that the number of Americans who believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago finally outstrips the number of Americans supporting President Bush's policies, but let's not go there this morning.)
All of which leads me to a brief overview of three treasures in my comics and graphic novel collection. Thanks to Bob Heer and the good folks at MyComicShop.com/Lone Star Comics, I now have in my hot little hands a copy of a comic I was handed at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Waterbury, VT at the tender age of five (almost six). Treasure Chest (of Fun & Fact) Vol. 16, No. 9 from January 5, 1961 was the only issue of that venerable published-in-Dayton-Ohio comic series that really mattered to me, though we read 'em weekly. The cover (by Lloyd Ostendorf, who also drew the cover story) is a pastoral tableau featuring a trio of dinosauria and one Pteranodon soaring overhead, a flame-and-smoke bellowing active volcano behind. "The World of Long Ago... See Page 3" is the sole caption.
The cover story is actually entitled The Grandeur of God, and aside from Ostendorf's artist credit the only writing credit reads, Prepared under the direction of Sister Mary Clare, Ph.D.. Note that Treasure Chest was most definitely a Catholic publication, which by definition puts it outside the realm of fundamentalist Christian belief systems (and thus, Creationism and Intelligent Design). The title was launched in March of 1947 by publisher George A. Pflaum of Dayton, OH; James J. Pflaum was editor in chief of the Pflaum empire at the time this particular issue was published, and that empire included Our Little Messenger, Young Catholic Messenger and Junior Catholic Messenger.
The five-page The Grandeur of God offered an illustrated overview of paleontology for young Catholic readers, like little skinhead moi. The narrative artifice is right out of an educational film: an unnamed professorial type male with a pipe is tour-guiding a class of pre-teen students through a museum exhibit. He sums up the science involved in reconstructing prehistoric life as "a sort of detective story, in which paleontological detectives play important roles and in which fossils are the clues." Appropo of the educational film template, by the first panel of page two said professorial male archetype is now showing the seated students a slide show, rendering the reader a passive recipient of found knowledge along with our pre-teen identifiers. The initial slide image of trilobites places The Grandeur of God and Ph.D.-wielding Sister Maria Clare in accord with the science circa 1960: "The trilobites lived in the seas over 450 million years ago -- The Cambrian Period." After a tidy definition of the term 'invertebrate,' our professorial archetype continues, "...about 300 million years ago -- during the Devonian Period -- the seas would have made a fisherman happy," thus profering a sly reference to the Greatest Fisherman of Them All without raising a feather.
Speaking of which, after a fleeting (but neatly drawn) five panels of primordial critters from Devonian fishes to the amphibian Eryops, the now-obsolete Brontosaurus, and a trio of pterosaurs, page four kicks off with a panel showing Archaeopteryx, mentioning the feathers and teeth and all without overtly referencing evolution.
That theory is eased toward, but never into: in panel five of page four, said professorial archetype refers to early mammals having "developed a hairy body to protect themselves from the cold," leading into a full-blown four-panel illustrated brief on horse evolution on page five, from the Eohippus ("...developed into what we know as the horse...") to the Pliocene's Pliohippus. And the term "evolution" is not used once.
The concluding professorial archetype balloons wrap this fleeting paleontology lesson into the religious fold. In the penultimate panel, he answers a question about Mammoths and Mastodons: "Why they became extinct is still something of a puzzle to scientists. They cannot put their finger on any one thing as a definite cause." Male professorial archetype concludes by looking out as us, the reader, and saying, "So you see the world that God has prepared for man is still full of surprises. There are so many things that we, and the scientists, don't know yet, but we do have God's greatest gift, a soul with the ability and will to get to know them."
Thus, this early synthesis of science and religion -- the earliest dino comic I've found that addresses the issue at all -- has no problem accomodating known paleontological science and the religious belief systems of the writer and reader. Science doesn't have to be turned on its head to accord with literalist readings of the Bible; dinosaurs existed; evolution, though never referred to as such, can be studied and scrutinized without threat to the soul.
In stark contrast, consider "A Special Publication from Amazing Facts" (a publication series whose samplings certainly justified that moniker), A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution by former-underground cartoonist Jim Pinkowski, who kindly mailed me a copy of his magazine-format comic back in the spring of 1997. Though the Jack T. Chick Christian comics and anti-evolution comic tracts and wall charts pre-date Pinkowski's comic by two decades, Jim's comic provides a handy condensation of the key points addressed in the Chick tracts with a timely late-1990s revamping of those arguments (and inventive new ones) that will suffice for this discussion.
At the time, Jim was living in Tennessee, though the Amazing Fact series was published by a three-decade old ministry out of Roseville, CA that embraced radio and television broadcasts as well as publishing books and comics. Jim sent his handiwork (he wrote and drew the comic) in response to my own project Tyrant, and revisiting the comic today one finds a compelling transition between the Creationist and Intelligent Design non-sciences. For what it's worth, let me also state that my analysis here is not meant as a personal attack upon Jim or his beliefs; as a comic, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution a well-executed piece of work, condensing almost all of the key Creationist assertions of the period and fusing those with some lively material unique (by my experience, anyway) to this comic.
The inside cover bemoans the vehicle for evolution that Jurassic Park provided as "a built-in sales pitch for 'evolution'!" I hope Jim finds some comfort in the above-quoted Washington Post poll findings; despite the enormous boxoffice grosses of all three JP films, science is still suspect.
"Life is far too complicated to have happened 'just by chance,' nor could it have 'self-propelled' itself over millions of years into the animals and living organisms that we see all around us. The truth is that a Master Designer is the Creator of everything -- God created this world, our Universe, and all the life within it. It's time to listen to the FACTS and make the right decision!"
After a glib dismissal of science per se as "our new thrill," Jim's authorial voice (augmented by a bald Charlie-Brown-patterned sweater-wearing Creationist professorial archetype who is never named, but was based on a then-prominent Christian fundamentalist archeologist; Jim also cites the writings of Robert V. Gentry in this comic) that "'Truth' takes time to be studied, researched, and proven! The trick has been to balance our understanding of science and religion."
Ah, yes, that's the trick indeed.
[To be continued tomorrow ]
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 Genesis-USA, which is building the museum. "This is a battle cry to recognize the science in the revealed truth of God."
Typical of this kind of reporting of late, science is succinctly rendered a democratic process subject to ignorance, prejudice, and opinion in its final paragraph:
Polls taken last year showed that 45 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. Only 26 percent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor.
Ah, I see -- the polls say Americans are decidedly against it.
Of course, similar poll results would have been yielded in the 1890s and early 1900s, but we've come so far since then.
Opinions aren't fact, and religious fanaticism isn't science. Hell, polls also demonstrate that the same proportion of Americans still link Saddam Hussain with the 9/11 attacks, but that still doesn't make it so. Those Saudis our Prez loves to hold hands with had a greater link with the 9/11 box-cutter massacre than Saddam or Iraq did, but let's not let facts get in the way of any dearly-held belief systems. (I'm just thankful that the number of Americans who believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago finally outstrips the number of Americans supporting President Bush's policies, but let's not go there this morning.)
All of which leads me to a brief overview of three treasures in my comics and graphic novel collection. Thanks to Bob Heer and the good folks at MyComicShop.com/Lone Star Comics, I now have in my hot little hands a copy of a comic I was handed at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Waterbury, VT at the tender age of five (almost six). Treasure Chest (of Fun & Fact) Vol. 16, No. 9 from January 5, 1961 was the only issue of that venerable published-in-Dayton-Ohio comic series that really mattered to me, though we read 'em weekly. The cover (by Lloyd Ostendorf, who also drew the cover story) is a pastoral tableau featuring a trio of dinosauria and one Pteranodon soaring overhead, a flame-and-smoke bellowing active volcano behind. "The World of Long Ago... See Page 3" is the sole caption.
The cover story is actually entitled The Grandeur of God, and aside from Ostendorf's artist credit the only writing credit reads, Prepared under the direction of Sister Mary Clare, Ph.D.. Note that Treasure Chest was most definitely a Catholic publication, which by definition puts it outside the realm of fundamentalist Christian belief systems (and thus, Creationism and Intelligent Design). The title was launched in March of 1947 by publisher George A. Pflaum of Dayton, OH; James J. Pflaum was editor in chief of the Pflaum empire at the time this particular issue was published, and that empire included Our Little Messenger, Young Catholic Messenger and Junior Catholic Messenger.
The five-page The Grandeur of God offered an illustrated overview of paleontology for young Catholic readers, like little skinhead moi. The narrative artifice is right out of an educational film: an unnamed professorial type male with a pipe is tour-guiding a class of pre-teen students through a museum exhibit. He sums up the science involved in reconstructing prehistoric life as "a sort of detective story, in which paleontological detectives play important roles and in which fossils are the clues." Appropo of the educational film template, by the first panel of page two said professorial male archetype is now showing the seated students a slide show, rendering the reader a passive recipient of found knowledge along with our pre-teen identifiers. The initial slide image of trilobites places The Grandeur of God and Ph.D.-wielding Sister Maria Clare in accord with the science circa 1960: "The trilobites lived in the seas over 450 million years ago -- The Cambrian Period." After a tidy definition of the term 'invertebrate,' our professorial archetype continues, "...about 300 million years ago -- during the Devonian Period -- the seas would have made a fisherman happy," thus profering a sly reference to the Greatest Fisherman of Them All without raising a feather.
Speaking of which, after a fleeting (but neatly drawn) five panels of primordial critters from Devonian fishes to the amphibian Eryops, the now-obsolete Brontosaurus, and a trio of pterosaurs, page four kicks off with a panel showing Archaeopteryx, mentioning the feathers and teeth and all without overtly referencing evolution.
That theory is eased toward, but never into: in panel five of page four, said professorial archetype refers to early mammals having "developed a hairy body to protect themselves from the cold," leading into a full-blown four-panel illustrated brief on horse evolution on page five, from the Eohippus ("...developed into what we know as the horse...") to the Pliocene's Pliohippus. And the term "evolution" is not used once.
The concluding professorial archetype balloons wrap this fleeting paleontology lesson into the religious fold. In the penultimate panel, he answers a question about Mammoths and Mastodons: "Why they became extinct is still something of a puzzle to scientists. They cannot put their finger on any one thing as a definite cause." Male professorial archetype concludes by looking out as us, the reader, and saying, "So you see the world that God has prepared for man is still full of surprises. There are so many things that we, and the scientists, don't know yet, but we do have God's greatest gift, a soul with the ability and will to get to know them."
Thus, this early synthesis of science and religion -- the earliest dino comic I've found that addresses the issue at all -- has no problem accomodating known paleontological science and the religious belief systems of the writer and reader. Science doesn't have to be turned on its head to accord with literalist readings of the Bible; dinosaurs existed; evolution, though never referred to as such, can be studied and scrutinized without threat to the soul.
In stark contrast, consider "A Special Publication from Amazing Facts" (a publication series whose samplings certainly justified that moniker), A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution by former-underground cartoonist Jim Pinkowski, who kindly mailed me a copy of his magazine-format comic back in the spring of 1997. Though the Jack T. Chick Christian comics and anti-evolution comic tracts and wall charts pre-date Pinkowski's comic by two decades, Jim's comic provides a handy condensation of the key points addressed in the Chick tracts with a timely late-1990s revamping of those arguments (and inventive new ones) that will suffice for this discussion.
At the time, Jim was living in Tennessee, though the Amazing Fact series was published by a three-decade old ministry out of Roseville, CA that embraced radio and television broadcasts as well as publishing books and comics. Jim sent his handiwork (he wrote and drew the comic) in response to my own project Tyrant, and revisiting the comic today one finds a compelling transition between the Creationist and Intelligent Design non-sciences. For what it's worth, let me also state that my analysis here is not meant as a personal attack upon Jim or his beliefs; as a comic, A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution a well-executed piece of work, condensing almost all of the key Creationist assertions of the period and fusing those with some lively material unique (by my experience, anyway) to this comic.
The inside cover bemoans the vehicle for evolution that Jurassic Park provided as "a built-in sales pitch for 'evolution'!" I hope Jim finds some comfort in the above-quoted Washington Post poll findings; despite the enormous boxoffice grosses of all three JP films, science is still suspect.
"Life is far too complicated to have happened 'just by chance,' nor could it have 'self-propelled' itself over millions of years into the animals and living organisms that we see all around us. The truth is that a Master Designer is the Creator of everything -- God created this world, our Universe, and all the life within it. It's time to listen to the FACTS and make the right decision!"
After a glib dismissal of science per se as "our new thrill," Jim's authorial voice (augmented by a bald Charlie-Brown-patterned sweater-wearing Creationist professorial archetype who is never named, but was based on a then-prominent Christian fundamentalist archeologist; Jim also cites the writings of Robert V. Gentry in this comic) that "'Truth' takes time to be studied, researched, and proven! The trick has been to balance our understanding of science and religion."
Ah, yes, that's the trick indeed.
[To be continued tomorrow ]
Monday, October 17, 2005
I confess to laughing out loud this morning when the radio news kept me tuned by announcing, "US Government Plans to Cut $35 Million from Programs for the Poor to Fund Hurricane Katrina Relief" -- a sick, despairing laugh, quite involuntary.
I could go on and on and on, but to what end?
For those of you despairing that no candidate to date seems a likely successor to our current President, may I humbly suggest you check outOur Best Hope and plan to vote accordingly.
I could go on and on and on, but to what end?
For those of you despairing that no candidate to date seems a likely successor to our current President, may I humbly suggest you check out
Following last night's brief post:
We were visiting Cape Cod, natch, off-season, and a rainy weekend it was, too. Nevertheless, we found plenty to do, including a visit to the Thornton Burgess Museum.
Though that modest structure and presentation (enhanced by miniature interior-wall-mounted dioramas of Burgess animal characters in action, carefully realized via three-dimensional carved wooden models from cartoonist extraordinaire Harrison Cady's original illustrations) was a bit underwhelming, a more stunning Burgess-like tableau was hidden out back.
Though it was sprinkling, I was drawn to the Museum's grounds behind the building, where the perfectly-kept lawn sloped down to the bay waters. It wasn't so much the swans visible about 100 feet from the grassy bank that attracted me as the tangle of trees and brush directly behind the Museum: there appeared to be a tangle of vines along the shore, beneath a willow -- the kind of natural formation I recall Charles Vess would move toward at a moment's notice during any exploration of any woodland area.
Sure enough, it was evocative of Vess and Arthur Rackham landscapes: the mass I had seen wasn't a tangle of vines, but the roots of an upended tree tipped away from the water, the trunk lost in the thicket of brush and overgrowth, the weatherworn tipped flatbed of the roots and angle of the fallen trunk forming a sort of forest doorway into a secreted eddy.
There, quietly sitting beneath the shelter of willow tree leaves, were two adult white swans. They were undisturbed by my appearance, and I savored a long privileged look into this shimmering, deep green hidden harbor. It was a magical moment, more Burgess than anything we'd seen that morning, though I confess I also wondered if Totoro might have been laying further within, completely hidden from sight.
I quietly gestured Marj, Mike & Mary, Mark & Jeannie over for a look. Hey, why the hesitation?
I guess from where they were standing, it looked like I was taking a whiz on sacred ground -- thankfully, they made the trip down the bank and savored the view, too.
We were visiting Cape Cod, natch, off-season, and a rainy weekend it was, too. Nevertheless, we found plenty to do, including a visit to the Thornton Burgess Museum.
Though that modest structure and presentation (enhanced by miniature interior-wall-mounted dioramas of Burgess animal characters in action, carefully realized via three-dimensional carved wooden models from cartoonist extraordinaire Harrison Cady's original illustrations) was a bit underwhelming, a more stunning Burgess-like tableau was hidden out back.
Though it was sprinkling, I was drawn to the Museum's grounds behind the building, where the perfectly-kept lawn sloped down to the bay waters. It wasn't so much the swans visible about 100 feet from the grassy bank that attracted me as the tangle of trees and brush directly behind the Museum: there appeared to be a tangle of vines along the shore, beneath a willow -- the kind of natural formation I recall Charles Vess would move toward at a moment's notice during any exploration of any woodland area.
Sure enough, it was evocative of Vess and Arthur Rackham landscapes: the mass I had seen wasn't a tangle of vines, but the roots of an upended tree tipped away from the water, the trunk lost in the thicket of brush and overgrowth, the weatherworn tipped flatbed of the roots and angle of the fallen trunk forming a sort of forest doorway into a secreted eddy.
There, quietly sitting beneath the shelter of willow tree leaves, were two adult white swans. They were undisturbed by my appearance, and I savored a long privileged look into this shimmering, deep green hidden harbor. It was a magical moment, more Burgess than anything we'd seen that morning, though I confess I also wondered if Totoro might have been laying further within, completely hidden from sight.
I quietly gestured Marj, Mike & Mary, Mark & Jeannie over for a look. Hey, why the hesitation?
I guess from where they were standing, it looked like I was taking a whiz on sacred ground -- thankfully, they made the trip down the bank and savored the view, too.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Home Agin, Home Agin, Jiggedy-Jig...
Just home with Marj from a pleasant weekend away with friends (Mike Dobbs and Mary Cassidy, Mark and Jeannie Martin). Too beat to write much, but one of the highlights was visiting a beach in Truro Marj hadn't been on for 39 years. I'll be damned, but her memory got us there this afternoon en route home... and it was just as it was then, according to she.
Windy but lovely; worth the trip.
Just home with Marj from a pleasant weekend away with friends (Mike Dobbs and Mary Cassidy, Mark and Jeannie Martin). Too beat to write much, but one of the highlights was visiting a beach in Truro Marj hadn't been on for 39 years. I'll be damned, but her memory got us there this afternoon en route home... and it was just as it was then, according to she.
Windy but lovely; worth the trip.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Old Man Flapping His Gums About Old Shit
Among the joys of the early videocassette revolution were the videos my old amigo Jack Venooker would mail me of USA Network's late-night program Night Flight. My memory is (though I can't confirm this at the time of this writing) that Night Flight slightly pre-dated MTV, but they were certainly contemporaries. Anyhoot, that's not relevent: Night Flight offered eclectic blends of music videos past (early sound era) and (circa the early 1980s) present, archival movie trailers, pre-Spike & Mike era outrageous animated shorts like JacMac and RadBoy GO! followed by a sequence from one of Russian animator Ladislas Starevich's silent or early sound stop-motion creations, and so on. It was a delightful mix which infrequently would dedicate the majority or an entirity of an evening to a single feature. This was rare, but always worth viewing.
Primary among the features I associate with Night Flight is Marius Penczner's endearingly maladroit paranoid tract I Was a Zombie for the FBI (1984), a long out-of-print and out-of-circulation curio from the Repo Man and Liquid Sky era. It's finally out on DVD from Rykodisc and Flashframe, and seen today offers a still-pretty-damned-entertaining artifact bridging 1960s "Men in Black" UFOlogy, The Blues Brothers, The X-Files and Men in Black (the crude comics series and upscale movie adaptations). In fact, I'd swear upon rescreening I Was a Zombie that the key X-Files writers/directors were acknowledging Penczner's minor cult gem amid the giddy stew of one of my fave episodes, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space": the crude clay-animation 'look' of the cyclopean alien monster glimpsed that episode's opener sure looks like kith & kin to Penczner's risible cellar-dwelling Z-beast.
And yessssss, there are zombies, but forget about Romero or Fulci: these are definitely sf hybrids of the forehead-stitched lobotomized Creature with the Atomic Brain category, refugees from some tacky Sam Katzman 1950s clunker, essential to the stew that is I Was a Zombie.
The Rykodisc release of I Was a Zombie for the FBI is a hoot and well worth picking up if you've a taste for these early-'80s revisionist genre opuses. Playing the "Joe Friday" manner of the FBI agents against the Chester Gould-like mania of alien-manipulated off-their-hinges escaped convicts The Brazzo Brothers, I Was a Zombie savors the deadpan fusion of (now, read carefully) 1970s-nostalgia-for-the-1950s, Cola Wars (I kid you not: alien infiltration of "the secret formula" for America's favorite softdrink is central to the plot), film noir hysterics, Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, and eruptions of cheesy gore and bemusing stop-motion monster effects (by Bob Friedstand). That it all hangs together is a miracle, but it does, though I can't dismiss the nostalgia factor in my enjoying this flick: had I not seen it in 1984, I must confess I'd probably be left scratching my head, wondering what this shit was all about.
Rykodisc sweetens the pot with audio commentary by director and co-writer Penczner, three 'making of' featurettes (including one highlighting the Z-beast), and a batch of deleted scenes.
The only way this could be better is if they'd added the dry-as-dirt trailor-trash alien-abduction satire (and beloved Night Flight fixture) Webb Wilder, Private Eye: The Saucer's Reign, which if memory serves was made by one Stephen Mims. God, I miss Webb Wilder.
The perfect antidote to the Brazzo Brothers, denied.
__
Last post of the weekend, sorry to say -- I'll be tied up until late in the day on Sunday. See you here then, OK?
Among the joys of the early videocassette revolution were the videos my old amigo Jack Venooker would mail me of USA Network's late-night program Night Flight. My memory is (though I can't confirm this at the time of this writing) that Night Flight slightly pre-dated MTV, but they were certainly contemporaries. Anyhoot, that's not relevent: Night Flight offered eclectic blends of music videos past (early sound era) and (circa the early 1980s) present, archival movie trailers, pre-Spike & Mike era outrageous animated shorts like JacMac and RadBoy GO! followed by a sequence from one of Russian animator Ladislas Starevich's silent or early sound stop-motion creations, and so on. It was a delightful mix which infrequently would dedicate the majority or an entirity of an evening to a single feature. This was rare, but always worth viewing.
Primary among the features I associate with Night Flight is Marius Penczner's endearingly maladroit paranoid tract I Was a Zombie for the FBI (1984), a long out-of-print and out-of-circulation curio from the Repo Man and Liquid Sky era. It's finally out on DVD from Rykodisc and Flashframe, and seen today offers a still-pretty-damned-entertaining artifact bridging 1960s "Men in Black" UFOlogy, The Blues Brothers, The X-Files and Men in Black (the crude comics series and upscale movie adaptations). In fact, I'd swear upon rescreening I Was a Zombie that the key X-Files writers/directors were acknowledging Penczner's minor cult gem amid the giddy stew of one of my fave episodes, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space": the crude clay-animation 'look' of the cyclopean alien monster glimpsed that episode's opener sure looks like kith & kin to Penczner's risible cellar-dwelling Z-beast.
And yessssss, there are zombies, but forget about Romero or Fulci: these are definitely sf hybrids of the forehead-stitched lobotomized Creature with the Atomic Brain category, refugees from some tacky Sam Katzman 1950s clunker, essential to the stew that is I Was a Zombie.
The Rykodisc release of I Was a Zombie for the FBI is a hoot and well worth picking up if you've a taste for these early-'80s revisionist genre opuses. Playing the "Joe Friday" manner of the FBI agents against the Chester Gould-like mania of alien-manipulated off-their-hinges escaped convicts The Brazzo Brothers, I Was a Zombie savors the deadpan fusion of (now, read carefully) 1970s-nostalgia-for-the-1950s, Cola Wars (I kid you not: alien infiltration of "the secret formula" for America's favorite softdrink is central to the plot), film noir hysterics, Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, and eruptions of cheesy gore and bemusing stop-motion monster effects (by Bob Friedstand). That it all hangs together is a miracle, but it does, though I can't dismiss the nostalgia factor in my enjoying this flick: had I not seen it in 1984, I must confess I'd probably be left scratching my head, wondering what this shit was all about.
Rykodisc sweetens the pot with audio commentary by director and co-writer Penczner, three 'making of' featurettes (including one highlighting the Z-beast), and a batch of deleted scenes.
The only way this could be better is if they'd added the dry-as-dirt trailor-trash alien-abduction satire (and beloved Night Flight fixture) Webb Wilder, Private Eye: The Saucer's Reign, which if memory serves was made by one Stephen Mims. God, I miss Webb Wilder.
The perfect antidote to the Brazzo Brothers, denied.
__
Last post of the weekend, sorry to say -- I'll be tied up until late in the day on Sunday. See you here then, OK?
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Huzzah! Tim Lucas Launches Video WatchBlog!
Hey, I've just added a new link on the blog menu on the right -- my long-time friend Tim Lucas launched his own long-overdue blog, The Video WatchBlog!
ClickWatchBlog and skip on down to the initial October 8th posting for Tim's introduction to this new online venture. I'm proud to say I got Tim going on this, though that wasn't my intention... just an unexpected result of my own humble efforts here.
BTW, I had a hand in two of Tim's other ventures -- I was among those who coaxed Tim and Donna into self-publishing (for which I'm sure they both bless and curse those of us who had a hand in those conversations) and, when relations with artists were becoming increasingly problematic, urged Tim to complete "Throat Sprockets" as a novel rather than a series of comics stories -- though I'm not taking credit for anything more than making suggestions. Anyhoot, I am happy to have played a part in this latest vehicle for self-expression.
I'll be reading the WatchBlog daily hereafter -- hope you will, too.
(PS: Even though Tim's DVD and film reviews will forever leave my own efforts in dim shadow, I'm still going to be posting the occasional DVD blather here nevertheless. Nature of the beast, it is...)
Hey, I've just added a new link on the blog menu on the right -- my long-time friend Tim Lucas launched his own long-overdue blog, The Video WatchBlog!
Click
BTW, I had a hand in two of Tim's other ventures -- I was among those who coaxed Tim and Donna into self-publishing (for which I'm sure they both bless and curse those of us who had a hand in those conversations) and, when relations with artists were becoming increasingly problematic, urged Tim to complete "Throat Sprockets" as a novel rather than a series of comics stories -- though I'm not taking credit for anything more than making suggestions. Anyhoot, I am happy to have played a part in this latest vehicle for self-expression.
I'll be reading the WatchBlog daily hereafter -- hope you will, too.
(PS: Even though Tim's DVD and film reviews will forever leave my own efforts in dim shadow, I'm still going to be posting the occasional DVD blather here nevertheless. Nature of the beast, it is...)
Stormy Weather, the Continuing Mouse Hacienda Holocaust, and Catch-up Posts...
As the Northeast continues to be soaked with the longest rainstorm in recent memory, it's been catch-as-catch-can for me to get onto/into the blog. My server, Sovernet, is based in Bellows Falls, VT, which may account for the difficulties I've had logging on -- just across the swollen Connecticut River in Walpole, NH, there's been some major damage due to the storm (including a bridge out), with Alstead NH suffering the most devastating of all. The latter has impacted on Marj's job to the point where she's been off all week -- the school system shut down completely for the entire district. With the escalation in rain predicted for the weekend (5 inches or more -- a little less than last weekend, but the ground is super-saturated without a break in the shift from sprinkling to heavy rain for over a week), more dire consequences are likely. Still, I'll post as I can; we're fine living up here on the Mountain of Madness, save for the ongoing rodent invasion.
Since my 'Rodent Atrocity' post earlier this week, I've snapped no less than a half-dozen more of the Cinderella bed-sharers (remember the Disney feature?). Last night's haul included a hefty mouse damn-near rat proportions, and with the noise between the walls we've had all week plaguing us not at all this morning, I reckon we might have finally bagged the matriarch or patriarch of the in-wall habitation. Still, the traps are already set for tonight, as the dreary weather continues and the critters continue to seek warm shelter. Can't blame 'em, but as my pal Dave Booz already posted, I gotta do what I gotta do.
Whether the week+ of wet weather might be considered either Biblical or Bradburyian in nature (depending on your personal orientation to these sorts of things), it is worth noting that precisely 51 years ago this week Alfred Hitchcock, his cast (including Shirley MacLaine in her debut feature film -- though Artists and Models hit theaters first), and his crew were struggling with identical weather in upstate Vermont. Hitch had chosen the region betwixt the Stowe/Morrisville area (where they all boarded) and scenic Craftsbury Common (where many of the narrative exteriors were filmed) as the ideal setting for his black comedy The Trouble With Harry, savoring the offset of the classical autumn foliage against the film's macabre murder and moveable burial/feast centerpiece -- but the damned inclimate weather shot their shooting schedule to pieces. The same leaf-stripping rains and winds we're now enduring struck, eventually sending director, cast and crew packing for the Paramount sound stages in Hollywood while fallen fall colors were carefully scooped up, crated, and shipped to California to be woven into the faux exterior sets.
With heating fuel of all kinds (including wood, which is now available primarily green at record high prices) breaking the bank for almost everyone up here, and the ongoing extremities of weather having us all preparing for the worst, the economic impact of this sour weather is sobering. Most businesses up here depend on the tourist dollars the fall colors bring; the triple whammy of soaring gas prices, ravaged post-Katrina economy belt-tightening all the way around, and this enduring storm knocking this key foliage season's dick into the dirt is further darkening an already-dire winter for everyone hereabouts. Brrrrrr...
As the Northeast continues to be soaked with the longest rainstorm in recent memory, it's been catch-as-catch-can for me to get onto/into the blog. My server, Sovernet, is based in Bellows Falls, VT, which may account for the difficulties I've had logging on -- just across the swollen Connecticut River in Walpole, NH, there's been some major damage due to the storm (including a bridge out), with Alstead NH suffering the most devastating of all. The latter has impacted on Marj's job to the point where she's been off all week -- the school system shut down completely for the entire district. With the escalation in rain predicted for the weekend (5 inches or more -- a little less than last weekend, but the ground is super-saturated without a break in the shift from sprinkling to heavy rain for over a week), more dire consequences are likely. Still, I'll post as I can; we're fine living up here on the Mountain of Madness, save for the ongoing rodent invasion.
Since my 'Rodent Atrocity' post earlier this week, I've snapped no less than a half-dozen more of the Cinderella bed-sharers (remember the Disney feature?). Last night's haul included a hefty mouse damn-near rat proportions, and with the noise between the walls we've had all week plaguing us not at all this morning, I reckon we might have finally bagged the matriarch or patriarch of the in-wall habitation. Still, the traps are already set for tonight, as the dreary weather continues and the critters continue to seek warm shelter. Can't blame 'em, but as my pal Dave Booz already posted, I gotta do what I gotta do.
Whether the week+ of wet weather might be considered either Biblical or Bradburyian in nature (depending on your personal orientation to these sorts of things), it is worth noting that precisely 51 years ago this week Alfred Hitchcock, his cast (including Shirley MacLaine in her debut feature film -- though Artists and Models hit theaters first), and his crew were struggling with identical weather in upstate Vermont. Hitch had chosen the region betwixt the Stowe/Morrisville area (where they all boarded) and scenic Craftsbury Common (where many of the narrative exteriors were filmed) as the ideal setting for his black comedy The Trouble With Harry, savoring the offset of the classical autumn foliage against the film's macabre murder and moveable burial/feast centerpiece -- but the damned inclimate weather shot their shooting schedule to pieces. The same leaf-stripping rains and winds we're now enduring struck, eventually sending director, cast and crew packing for the Paramount sound stages in Hollywood while fallen fall colors were carefully scooped up, crated, and shipped to California to be woven into the faux exterior sets.
With heating fuel of all kinds (including wood, which is now available primarily green at record high prices) breaking the bank for almost everyone up here, and the ongoing extremities of weather having us all preparing for the worst, the economic impact of this sour weather is sobering. Most businesses up here depend on the tourist dollars the fall colors bring; the triple whammy of soaring gas prices, ravaged post-Katrina economy belt-tightening all the way around, and this enduring storm knocking this key foliage season's dick into the dirt is further darkening an already-dire winter for everyone hereabouts. Brrrrrr...
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Weekend Update and Early Morning Atrocity...
Why Marj and I live on a Mountain: Saturday my amigo Mike Dobbs and I headed to Worcester MA for the Rock & Shock Show, a neat little horror and rock con where we got to meet and briefly talk to George Romero and Adrienne Barbeau, among others, and catch up with old cronies like Chris Golden, Dallas Mayer (aka Jack Ketchum), and Stan Wiater while picking up a few goodies (old pressbooks, a couple zines, and a hefty new dose of DVDs). The trip to and from Worcester was made amid the heaviest and steadiest downpour we've had since early summer; the night drive home was one of those delirious bouts of interminable hammering of rain and decreasing visibility where one is mucho thankful for the white lines on the tarmac all the way home. The short ten mile stretch on VT route 9 from the Interstate 91 exit to my door was the liveliest driving, with two foot-deep currents of water tearing across the road and a fair flash-run coming down 9 on the first climb. Still, easy drive, all in all, considering 8-to-10 inches of rain was falling.
Marj and I woke up to the news that down Guilford way was partially washed-out and nearby New Hampshire had suffered bigtime. Hinsdale, Keene, Unity and Alstead were hammered, washing out roadways and homes; at least three are dead (one in Unity, NH, and a father-and-son in Hoosick, NY, just the other side of the western VT border). Marj spent much of yesterday on the phone sorting out what she could of the damage done to the NH school district she works in (including devastated Alstead) and is into her second day off due to bridge and road washouts making the schools inaccessible.
Having spent a good chunk of 2004 researching and writing about the VT flood of 1927 (a detailed article on the surviving flood films, soon to be published in Green Mountain Cinema), the conditions were familiar: too much rain, saturated ground, nowhere for the water to go... in '27, the rains hit a little later (early November) when the ground was partially-frozen and saturated, resulting in the greatest natural disaster to hit my home state. There were subsequent floods (in 1936 and '38, both hurricane-related), but none as destructive as the 1927 flood. With those ancient images re-screening in my head, we've been scouring the newspapers and listening to local public radio, piecing together what we can of the storm's impact on our neighbors. Living as we do on a mountain, we're fine, but this may be a sign of a powerful winter to come... further climate extremes are inevitable, though as a country and culture we do nothing but fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.
Hey, I'm no better: I was off to a horror con while the rains came.
Early Morning Atrocity -- One of the facts of country living this time of year is that as the nights grow progressively cooler and the weather more extreme (rain, cold, etc.), the little critters who live outside head indoors. Since they don't pay rent and happily shit everywhere they and we eat, the hard fact of this time of year is that the mousetraps come out.
(No, our cat Sugar isn't a mouser -- never was; her sister Shadow and bro' PT were, but both Shadow and PT passed away last year at ripe old ages, leaving Sugar as the queen of the household who doesn't "do" mice -- Marj may be fretting over Martians depleting the cat population, but Sugar doesn't lift a paw to deplete the mouse population around here!)
When "Have-a-Hearts" fail (when they work, I release the little rodents deep in the woods miles from my home), it's time for the spine-snappers baited with peanut butter. We're already at the spine-snapper stage, as the "Have-a-Hearts" have only fed the little buggers with nary a capture.
This morn, as every morn this past week, I began by checking the traps. Ah, we got one -- but -- he was still alive. Though his back end was quite useless, his front end, shiny bright eyes and all, seemed confused but in no pain: he was cleaning his paws when I found him. He merely sniffed the air and seemed curious when I picked him up.
Ah, shit.
Well, out to the driveway and the cement block -- it was quick, I promise you.
Oh, ah, sorry.
Hope you already had your breakfast before you read this.
I hadn't.
If Sugar was holding up her end of the chores, I wouldn't be having to do this sort of wetwork.
Scanning, scanning, scanning... I'm finishing up prep for today's CCS class as I write this. Lost a lot of time this weekend on planned CCS prep while working with my stepson Mike Bleier on the soon-to-be computer office/library, which would have been done last November if our contractor hadn't stiffed us. So, I became a contractor-by-proxy once it became apparent by April that the fellow we'd contracted to do the job had skipped out on us; it's been a long haul, but the floor was poured in June. Since then, with my own occasional efforts and the considerable ongoing help of Mike and his friend Chad, early back-breaking efforts by my son Dan and his pal Andy, and a trio of pros (masons and Bob Anderson and his crew) when specialists were needed, we've managed to re-excavate, seal, tar, properly insulate and parge the outside of the foundation/room, repair the yard, get the interior framed, window in place, etc. Now we have a 8-inch thick 3 foot x 2 foot chunk of (now interior) concrete wall to (ahem) "remove" -- Mike and I drilled (30 holes), jackhammered, and sledgehammered late in the day Sunday, and managed to knock off about one small potato-chip bag worth of cement. Well, OK, we got a bit more off than that, and kicked up a fair amount of dust, but the wall stands. Sigh -- time to rent heavier equipment or call in a pro.
One way or another, the room will be done and shelving up by Thanksgiving; I badly need it, as my existing office/studio space is hopelessly crammed with my library on shelves, tables, and in stacks.
In the meantime, I pile through the stacks weekly and then prep for CCS class sessions on our kitchen counter, scanning, scanning, scanning... today's session, having covered pre-WW2 comic strips and the like: crash course on the pre-US-comicbook UK comics (half-penny weeklies, etc.); archetypes carried from the dime novels and pulps to comics; review of the birth of US comics books; Superman and Batman origins; and previews of the comicbook-derived movie serials. Lots of eye-candy this session, thanks to the scanner and my extensive collection and library.
Why Marj and I live on a Mountain: Saturday my amigo Mike Dobbs and I headed to Worcester MA for the Rock & Shock Show, a neat little horror and rock con where we got to meet and briefly talk to George Romero and Adrienne Barbeau, among others, and catch up with old cronies like Chris Golden, Dallas Mayer (aka Jack Ketchum), and Stan Wiater while picking up a few goodies (old pressbooks, a couple zines, and a hefty new dose of DVDs). The trip to and from Worcester was made amid the heaviest and steadiest downpour we've had since early summer; the night drive home was one of those delirious bouts of interminable hammering of rain and decreasing visibility where one is mucho thankful for the white lines on the tarmac all the way home. The short ten mile stretch on VT route 9 from the Interstate 91 exit to my door was the liveliest driving, with two foot-deep currents of water tearing across the road and a fair flash-run coming down 9 on the first climb. Still, easy drive, all in all, considering 8-to-10 inches of rain was falling.
Marj and I woke up to the news that down Guilford way was partially washed-out and nearby New Hampshire had suffered bigtime. Hinsdale, Keene, Unity and Alstead were hammered, washing out roadways and homes; at least three are dead (one in Unity, NH, and a father-and-son in Hoosick, NY, just the other side of the western VT border). Marj spent much of yesterday on the phone sorting out what she could of the damage done to the NH school district she works in (including devastated Alstead) and is into her second day off due to bridge and road washouts making the schools inaccessible.
Having spent a good chunk of 2004 researching and writing about the VT flood of 1927 (a detailed article on the surviving flood films, soon to be published in Green Mountain Cinema), the conditions were familiar: too much rain, saturated ground, nowhere for the water to go... in '27, the rains hit a little later (early November) when the ground was partially-frozen and saturated, resulting in the greatest natural disaster to hit my home state. There were subsequent floods (in 1936 and '38, both hurricane-related), but none as destructive as the 1927 flood. With those ancient images re-screening in my head, we've been scouring the newspapers and listening to local public radio, piecing together what we can of the storm's impact on our neighbors. Living as we do on a mountain, we're fine, but this may be a sign of a powerful winter to come... further climate extremes are inevitable, though as a country and culture we do nothing but fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.
Hey, I'm no better: I was off to a horror con while the rains came.
Early Morning Atrocity -- One of the facts of country living this time of year is that as the nights grow progressively cooler and the weather more extreme (rain, cold, etc.), the little critters who live outside head indoors. Since they don't pay rent and happily shit everywhere they and we eat, the hard fact of this time of year is that the mousetraps come out.
(No, our cat Sugar isn't a mouser -- never was; her sister Shadow and bro' PT were, but both Shadow and PT passed away last year at ripe old ages, leaving Sugar as the queen of the household who doesn't "do" mice -- Marj may be fretting over Martians depleting the cat population, but Sugar doesn't lift a paw to deplete the mouse population around here!)
When "Have-a-Hearts" fail (when they work, I release the little rodents deep in the woods miles from my home), it's time for the spine-snappers baited with peanut butter. We're already at the spine-snapper stage, as the "Have-a-Hearts" have only fed the little buggers with nary a capture.
This morn, as every morn this past week, I began by checking the traps. Ah, we got one -- but -- he was still alive. Though his back end was quite useless, his front end, shiny bright eyes and all, seemed confused but in no pain: he was cleaning his paws when I found him. He merely sniffed the air and seemed curious when I picked him up.
Ah, shit.
Well, out to the driveway and the cement block -- it was quick, I promise you.
Oh, ah, sorry.
Hope you already had your breakfast before you read this.
I hadn't.
If Sugar was holding up her end of the chores, I wouldn't be having to do this sort of wetwork.
Scanning, scanning, scanning... I'm finishing up prep for today's CCS class as I write this. Lost a lot of time this weekend on planned CCS prep while working with my stepson Mike Bleier on the soon-to-be computer office/library, which would have been done last November if our contractor hadn't stiffed us. So, I became a contractor-by-proxy once it became apparent by April that the fellow we'd contracted to do the job had skipped out on us; it's been a long haul, but the floor was poured in June. Since then, with my own occasional efforts and the considerable ongoing help of Mike and his friend Chad, early back-breaking efforts by my son Dan and his pal Andy, and a trio of pros (masons and Bob Anderson and his crew) when specialists were needed, we've managed to re-excavate, seal, tar, properly insulate and parge the outside of the foundation/room, repair the yard, get the interior framed, window in place, etc. Now we have a 8-inch thick 3 foot x 2 foot chunk of (now interior) concrete wall to (ahem) "remove" -- Mike and I drilled (30 holes), jackhammered, and sledgehammered late in the day Sunday, and managed to knock off about one small potato-chip bag worth of cement. Well, OK, we got a bit more off than that, and kicked up a fair amount of dust, but the wall stands. Sigh -- time to rent heavier equipment or call in a pro.
One way or another, the room will be done and shelving up by Thanksgiving; I badly need it, as my existing office/studio space is hopelessly crammed with my library on shelves, tables, and in stacks.
In the meantime, I pile through the stacks weekly and then prep for CCS class sessions on our kitchen counter, scanning, scanning, scanning... today's session, having covered pre-WW2 comic strips and the like: crash course on the pre-US-comicbook UK comics (half-penny weeklies, etc.); archetypes carried from the dime novels and pulps to comics; review of the birth of US comics books; Superman and Batman origins; and previews of the comicbook-derived movie serials. Lots of eye-candy this session, thanks to the scanner and my extensive collection and library.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Bedtime Ballyhoo-hah
I love bad titles -- bad book titles, bad movie titles, bad song titles.
Horror film lovers harbor a warm, wet spot for classics like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombie, though Bill & Coo, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, They Saved Hitler's Brain and Rat Phink A Boo-Boo hold high honors (that's the second Ray Dennis Steckler title I'm pitching this morn, mind you!). The sheer bravado of, say, The Beast With a Million Eyes deserves a salute, along with similar monikers promising unabashed, undeliverable hokum.
From Sinderella & the Golden Bra to Stop! My Ass is on Fire 11, the adult film industry has cultivated countless croppers, and there are almost as many head-slap-worthy giallo titles I feel compelled to double-check before typing 'em here for your amusement (though I have committed Sergio Martino's Your Vice Is a Closed Room and Only I Have the Key to memory, and What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing On Jennifer's Body? also comes immediately to mind).
This weekend brought beloved bad titles to mind when a nearby NH newspaper reported the self-publication of a new sf novel by a retired Lebanon, NH janitor named Phil LeMay. Phil's latest opus is Space King I and II in Outer Space, Book II, which the paper explains is "a sequel to Space King I and II in Outer Space." Ah, good one!
Someday I'm going to use a pair of titles my old jazz-musician pal James Harvey dished out (in succinct contempt for the 1950s monster movies I love), The Bag That Ate Everything and The Box That Ate Everything the Bag Ate.
Anyhoot, Marj capped this weekend revery in the wee hours. My wife Marj isn't often hilarious in the early hours of the morn, but she made an exception this morning when I asked if she'd set aside a little over an hour to watch today's Fox Movie Channel LBX broadcast of The Day Mars Invaded Earth with me (a movie I sort-of saw as an eight-year-old at a Burlington area drive-in when it was inexplicably double-billed with Disney's Miracle of the White Stallions).
She felt the need to comfort our cat Sugar by promising Sugar we wouldn't be watching (ahem) The Day Mars Raided the Cat Population.
Clink.
I love bad titles -- bad book titles, bad movie titles, bad song titles.
Horror film lovers harbor a warm, wet spot for classics like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombie, though Bill & Coo, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, They Saved Hitler's Brain and Rat Phink A Boo-Boo hold high honors (that's the second Ray Dennis Steckler title I'm pitching this morn, mind you!). The sheer bravado of, say, The Beast With a Million Eyes deserves a salute, along with similar monikers promising unabashed, undeliverable hokum.
From Sinderella & the Golden Bra to Stop! My Ass is on Fire 11, the adult film industry has cultivated countless croppers, and there are almost as many head-slap-worthy giallo titles I feel compelled to double-check before typing 'em here for your amusement (though I have committed Sergio Martino's Your Vice Is a Closed Room and Only I Have the Key to memory, and What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing On Jennifer's Body? also comes immediately to mind).
This weekend brought beloved bad titles to mind when a nearby NH newspaper reported the self-publication of a new sf novel by a retired Lebanon, NH janitor named Phil LeMay. Phil's latest opus is Space King I and II in Outer Space, Book II, which the paper explains is "a sequel to Space King I and II in Outer Space." Ah, good one!
Someday I'm going to use a pair of titles my old jazz-musician pal James Harvey dished out (in succinct contempt for the 1950s monster movies I love), The Bag That Ate Everything and The Box That Ate Everything the Bag Ate.
Anyhoot, Marj capped this weekend revery in the wee hours. My wife Marj isn't often hilarious in the early hours of the morn, but she made an exception this morning when I asked if she'd set aside a little over an hour to watch today's Fox Movie Channel LBX broadcast of The Day Mars Invaded Earth with me (a movie I sort-of saw as an eight-year-old at a Burlington area drive-in when it was inexplicably double-billed with Disney's Miracle of the White Stallions).
She felt the need to comfort our cat Sugar by promising Sugar we wouldn't be watching (ahem) The Day Mars Raided the Cat Population.
Clink.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
The Cat's Meeeeeeeeoooow! More DVDs to Savor...
A little catch-up on current DVD delights you might have missed...
* I doubt many of you horror aficionados have missed this for any reason other than shortage of $, but The Val Lewton Horror Collection from Warner Bros. is an essential addition to any and all genre libraries, at last on DVD and (per my screening of two of the titles to date) looking exquisite. Producer Lewton and his collaborative creative partners were true cinematic alchemists, turning what should have been backlot shit into pure gold. Saddled with often absurd market-tested titles by parent studio RKO, Lewton and directors/editors/collaborators Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, Mark Robson and writer DeWitt Bodeen (among others) maximized poverty-row budgets and raised hackles by tapping WW2 audience imaginations in ways they'd not been tapped before: the power of shadows, suggestion, and a what can only be called the poetry of dread inform every film in this collection. The Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, The Leopard Man, and the Boris Karloff trilogy of Isle of the Dead, Bedlam and The Body Snatcher live up to their legendary status, though the relatively unsung sui generis gems The 7th Victim, The Ghost Ship, and the heartbreaking, haunting The Curse of the Cat People are the standouts for me.
The latter in particular should put lie to the oft-repeated dogma that sequels are inherently inferior to their wellsprings: here, Lewton, Wise and Bodeen metamorphosed the studio-imposed sequel title into a vehicle for one of the most exquisite films about childhood ever made, punctuated with spectral visitations by Simone Simon as what might be either 'an imaginary friend' or a genuine spiritual familiar from the original film, and the genuine threat of adults who variously mistrust, misjudge, or harbor homicidal jealousy toward the little girl protagonist. It remains a startlingly engaging, moving experience, and is highly recommended, as is every title in this set. There's also a bonus documentary, Steve Haberman's Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy, I'm looking forward to screening -- but only after I've revisited all the Lewton marvels herein.
(One caveat for contemporary (particularly young) viewers: The Lewton films are cinematic gems, but Lewton was also a man of letters. The literary bent of his nature, and that of his creative partners in these films, manifests in the dialogue and literary allusions (as has been often mentioned, I Walked With A Zombie is indeed a variation on Jane Eyre). At times, this characteristic comes across as being somewhat arch or pretentious, particularly for neophyte audiences unaccustomed to this kind of writing. Hang with it, and take it too as a precursor to the flavor writers like Ray Bradbury and Neil Gaiman bring to their work: it doesn't always 'sing' on the screen as it does on the page, but it is a stylistic conceit that informs some of the finest genre efforts from all generations. Don't turn a deaf ear to the films for this reason: go with them, you'll be surprised how rich the ride can be.)
A funny story my pal Joe Citro loves to tell: When Joe first made the trek out to the boonies of Marlboro, VT to visit my home (where I lived with my first wife Marlene, then known as Nancy, O'Connor, and our two children Maia and Danny), our chat at the kitchen table was interrupted by Maia and Danny tapping my leg. Looking up through their blonde bangs with earnest, shimmering eyes, Maia quietly said, "Daddy, can we watch Curse of the Cat People?"
Joe almost bust a fucking gut laughing; he could not believe his ears! (FYI, it was already among their favorite films, and is indeed a great little chiller for young and old.)
* Don't pass up renting or purchasing the unrated edition of Lords of Dogtown, either, thinking it's too mainstream or a bastardization of the rousing doc Dogtown and the Z-Boys. Director Catherine Hardwicke's followup to Thirteen was a terrific theatrical experience and it's even better on DVD with its additional four minutes or so of unseen material and the extensive lineup of bonus features, including a commentary track with the original Z Boys, almost all of whom also enjoy cameos in this docudrama adaptation of their own life stories.
Lest you dis this as just a Hollywood knockup of Dogtown and the Z-Boys and thus inherently lackluster, it must be emphasized how beautifully Hardwicke and screenwriter, Z-boy, and original Dogtown director Stacy Peralta tell the story while maintaining uncanny fidelity to the Z-boy skateboarders (Peralta, Tony Alva, Jay Adams and Tony Hawk), their era, and their respective story arcs. All are given their due, speed bumps and all, with Elephant's soft-spoken John Robinson providing a quiet anchor as Peralta. The standout performance, though, is delivered by Emile Hirsch as Jay Adams, looking for all the world like Arch Hall Jr. in The Sadist but delivering a remarkable and heartfelt inhabitation of Jay Adams, who arguably survived the most extreme life changes. Hirsch has already proven himself as a young actor to watch, blending good looks and sharp intelligence with empathy, warmth, and a feral urgency in an already diverse spread of films, from the lead role in Michael Burke's harrowing backwoods coming-of-ager The Mudge Boy (not yet on DVD or video, and shot in Vermont) to playing a spoiled Senator's son who is, for all intents and purposes, George W. Bush as a youth in the Kevin Kline vehicle The Emperor's Club. From Jay's roots as the rawest and most reckless (and oddly creative) of all Z-Boys to his recognizing and refuting the exploitation awaiting them all and on to Jay's seemingly dead-end skinhead destination, Hirsch brings Jay to life; watch for Jay himself in a cameo early on as a waiter who steps on the unruly Z-Boys.
But arguably best of all here is Heath Ledger as the California surf genius (and burnout) who recognized the potential of, sponsored and 'made' the Z-Boys -- only to lose 'em once they blossomed. Ledger loses himself in the role of the Z-Boys's mentor, and delivers the kind of performance Academy Awards don't ever recognize, but should. This character's pitch-perfect narrative arc provides a parable for small-business entrepreneurs who bank on young talent only to see them snatched out-of-reach by bigger sharks once they fulfill their promise and are ready to fly. I've seen the same scenario play out in my own life time and time again in many industries and fields, just as I and my peers lived our own variations on the Z-Boys stories (in our respective path, comics); if for no other reason, this makes Lords of Dogtown necessary viewing.
More tomorrow!
A little catch-up on current DVD delights you might have missed...
* I doubt many of you horror aficionados have missed this for any reason other than shortage of $, but The Val Lewton Horror Collection from Warner Bros. is an essential addition to any and all genre libraries, at last on DVD and (per my screening of two of the titles to date) looking exquisite. Producer Lewton and his collaborative creative partners were true cinematic alchemists, turning what should have been backlot shit into pure gold. Saddled with often absurd market-tested titles by parent studio RKO, Lewton and directors/editors/collaborators Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, Mark Robson and writer DeWitt Bodeen (among others) maximized poverty-row budgets and raised hackles by tapping WW2 audience imaginations in ways they'd not been tapped before: the power of shadows, suggestion, and a what can only be called the poetry of dread inform every film in this collection. The Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, The Leopard Man, and the Boris Karloff trilogy of Isle of the Dead, Bedlam and The Body Snatcher live up to their legendary status, though the relatively unsung sui generis gems The 7th Victim, The Ghost Ship, and the heartbreaking, haunting The Curse of the Cat People are the standouts for me.
The latter in particular should put lie to the oft-repeated dogma that sequels are inherently inferior to their wellsprings: here, Lewton, Wise and Bodeen metamorphosed the studio-imposed sequel title into a vehicle for one of the most exquisite films about childhood ever made, punctuated with spectral visitations by Simone Simon as what might be either 'an imaginary friend' or a genuine spiritual familiar from the original film, and the genuine threat of adults who variously mistrust, misjudge, or harbor homicidal jealousy toward the little girl protagonist. It remains a startlingly engaging, moving experience, and is highly recommended, as is every title in this set. There's also a bonus documentary, Steve Haberman's Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy, I'm looking forward to screening -- but only after I've revisited all the Lewton marvels herein.
(One caveat for contemporary (particularly young) viewers: The Lewton films are cinematic gems, but Lewton was also a man of letters. The literary bent of his nature, and that of his creative partners in these films, manifests in the dialogue and literary allusions (as has been often mentioned, I Walked With A Zombie is indeed a variation on Jane Eyre). At times, this characteristic comes across as being somewhat arch or pretentious, particularly for neophyte audiences unaccustomed to this kind of writing. Hang with it, and take it too as a precursor to the flavor writers like Ray Bradbury and Neil Gaiman bring to their work: it doesn't always 'sing' on the screen as it does on the page, but it is a stylistic conceit that informs some of the finest genre efforts from all generations. Don't turn a deaf ear to the films for this reason: go with them, you'll be surprised how rich the ride can be.)
A funny story my pal Joe Citro loves to tell: When Joe first made the trek out to the boonies of Marlboro, VT to visit my home (where I lived with my first wife Marlene, then known as Nancy, O'Connor, and our two children Maia and Danny), our chat at the kitchen table was interrupted by Maia and Danny tapping my leg. Looking up through their blonde bangs with earnest, shimmering eyes, Maia quietly said, "Daddy, can we watch Curse of the Cat People?"
Joe almost bust a fucking gut laughing; he could not believe his ears! (FYI, it was already among their favorite films, and is indeed a great little chiller for young and old.)
* Don't pass up renting or purchasing the unrated edition of Lords of Dogtown, either, thinking it's too mainstream or a bastardization of the rousing doc Dogtown and the Z-Boys. Director Catherine Hardwicke's followup to Thirteen was a terrific theatrical experience and it's even better on DVD with its additional four minutes or so of unseen material and the extensive lineup of bonus features, including a commentary track with the original Z Boys, almost all of whom also enjoy cameos in this docudrama adaptation of their own life stories.
Lest you dis this as just a Hollywood knockup of Dogtown and the Z-Boys and thus inherently lackluster, it must be emphasized how beautifully Hardwicke and screenwriter, Z-boy, and original Dogtown director Stacy Peralta tell the story while maintaining uncanny fidelity to the Z-boy skateboarders (Peralta, Tony Alva, Jay Adams and Tony Hawk), their era, and their respective story arcs. All are given their due, speed bumps and all, with Elephant's soft-spoken John Robinson providing a quiet anchor as Peralta. The standout performance, though, is delivered by Emile Hirsch as Jay Adams, looking for all the world like Arch Hall Jr. in The Sadist but delivering a remarkable and heartfelt inhabitation of Jay Adams, who arguably survived the most extreme life changes. Hirsch has already proven himself as a young actor to watch, blending good looks and sharp intelligence with empathy, warmth, and a feral urgency in an already diverse spread of films, from the lead role in Michael Burke's harrowing backwoods coming-of-ager The Mudge Boy (not yet on DVD or video, and shot in Vermont) to playing a spoiled Senator's son who is, for all intents and purposes, George W. Bush as a youth in the Kevin Kline vehicle The Emperor's Club. From Jay's roots as the rawest and most reckless (and oddly creative) of all Z-Boys to his recognizing and refuting the exploitation awaiting them all and on to Jay's seemingly dead-end skinhead destination, Hirsch brings Jay to life; watch for Jay himself in a cameo early on as a waiter who steps on the unruly Z-Boys.
But arguably best of all here is Heath Ledger as the California surf genius (and burnout) who recognized the potential of, sponsored and 'made' the Z-Boys -- only to lose 'em once they blossomed. Ledger loses himself in the role of the Z-Boys's mentor, and delivers the kind of performance Academy Awards don't ever recognize, but should. This character's pitch-perfect narrative arc provides a parable for small-business entrepreneurs who bank on young talent only to see them snatched out-of-reach by bigger sharks once they fulfill their promise and are ready to fly. I've seen the same scenario play out in my own life time and time again in many industries and fields, just as I and my peers lived our own variations on the Z-Boys stories (in our respective path, comics); if for no other reason, this makes Lords of Dogtown necessary viewing.
More tomorrow!
Friday, October 07, 2005
Compassion, Conservatism...
com.pas.sion...n.... sympathy... to feel pity... sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy; pity
com.pas.siona.ate... adj. feeling or showing compassion; sympathizing deeply; pitying
The President's Tuesday morning Rose Garden press conference (an uncharacteristic 55 minute stretch) and subsequent "important speech" on "The War on Terror" have stuck with me all week, but not in the ways the Administration intended, I'm sure.
What is more transparent than ever before is the sheer spectacle of President Bush trying to once again come across as being aggressive and effective in the wake of the crashing failure of himself and his own Administration to respond in any consequential manner to Hurricane Katrina, and the subsequent spin of Rita (sorry, but rushing around to photo-ops and mock crocodile tears do not an effective response make; the only increased effectiveness apparent was the Admininstration's muzzling of the press their complete absence had unleashed for Katrina).
You can't bully nature or storms, and you can't bully ineffectual cronies who failed as badly as Brownie did (too little, too late), but you can bully the public -- and that's what we're seeing and hearing, my friends.
I hope I'm wrong, but the current Orange Alert in NYC comes too tidily on the heels of this week's alarmist speech: peppered with the usual factual distortions, lies, connections with 9/11, and conflation of rhetoric (comparing non-national, non-centralized religious zealots to the once-powerful national superpowers that were mobilized behind the Cold War was an unforgivable stretch) the fear-mongering has returned with a vengeance. This, of course, has nothing to do with the realities exposed by Katrina, and everything to do with Bush and his circle trying to redefine the issues and thus reestablish previously effective scare tactics necessary to maintaining lock-step compliance with their power base. In hopes of whipping down critics while whipping up plunging support for the President's performance and policies, we're instantly back to "The War on Terror" and Orange Alerts; but the grim reality of Katrina and the horrific exposure of all-too-successful Federalist policies (which have eroded and ravaged various infrastructures necessary to dealing with such disasters) in full effect are still fresh wounds.
Since Katrina isn't a definable, targetable "enemy" and cannot be made into such, it's time to redirect our collective ire and fear back "on target." Hey, there's a policy.
The disconnect between the swagger and rhetoric, the bullying cocksure aggressive posturing and pontificating, and reality -- having seen how ineffectual Bush and his own were in Katrina's thrall, heaven help us if we do suffer another terrorist attack! -- is only more apparent now. The Rose Garden press conference (a highlight of which was Bush's fantasizing about dealing with a potential avian flu epidemic with military might and quarantining of any infected populace) and "War on Terror" speech betray the impoverished imagination of a man and administration that sees only suppression, repression, and brute force as a means of dealing with any disruption of order -- their order -- and the escalating bid to concentrate power in such a way that the Commander in Chief enjoys the unquestionable Divine Right of a King.
(After all, a King needn't set aside a moment to deal with the questions of a grieving mother of a fallen son; Bush responded Tuesday to a question whether he is still a "compassionate conservative" in the affirmative, churlishly coining the word "compassion" with fresh scorn in the wake of his ignoring Cindy Sheehan's request for a minute of his time. This is neither a compassionate President or King, and that is now abundantly clear; note that Sheehan's unexpected public visibility and the subsequent galvanizing of anti-war sentiments are more the result of Bush's refusal than Sheehan's tenacity, though Bush and his circle can only resent her surfacing. A crumb, a mere crumb of compassion might have made such a difference.)
There is nothing compassionate or conservative about these power fantasies of our President, extremist and radical revisionist conceits which he is increasingly unabashed about articulating and pursuing. In the second week of post-Katrina public outrage, Bush fielded the desire to wield the military as the preferred method of dealing with natural disasters and any calamity or disorder within our borders. Of course, this would require major changes in US laws, a radical concept even the Pentagon has reacted to with some skepticism. Whether they are bristling at the principle of martial law being contrary to a functional Democracy, or not wanting to be set-up as the next 'fall guy' for this Administration's increasing refusal of any culpability for their own ruthless actions and resultant shortcomings is difficult to determine.
"The president ought to have all options -- assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant," Bush said; note the very wording echoing his pre- and post-Iraq War speeches and responses to press conference questions. Now, of course, the 'enemy' would be infected and diseased US citizens -- you and I, bunky -- which should give even the most die-hard Bush supporter pause.
I'm relieved to see, read, and hear that I was hardly alone in my alarm at Bush's savoring (yes, savoring) the thought of military-imposed quarantines and suppression of diseased citizenry (that was his only suggested means of dealing with a pandemic, with nary a thought or word of concern for those suffering -- hardly a compassionate response, is it?). The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that none other than Dr. Irwin Redlener (associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness) reacted to Bush's remarks as proposing an "extraordinarily draconian measure... the translation of this is martial law in the United States." Got that?
Redlener further noted that such measures would be unnecessary (quoting the AP article, not Redlener per se) "if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system."
Degradation of the public health system -- the legacy of "compassionate conservatism," as this Administration defines itself, at work.
con.serve... to keep, preserve... 1 to keep from being damaged, lost, or wasted; save
con.serv/a.tism... n. the principles and practices of a conservative person or party; tendency to oppose change in institutions and methods
con.ser/va.tive... 1 conserving or tending to conserve; preservative 2 tending to preserve established traditions or institutions and to resist or oppose any changes in these [conservative politics, conservative art] 3 of or characteristic of a conservative... 6 moderate; cautious; safe [a conservative estimate]...
In his Rose Garden press conference Tuesday, President Bush also stated, with that emphatic patriarchal impatience of his (speaking as if we were all idiots, beneath contempt), that the obvious solution to the current gas "crisis" (high prices at the pump in a year of record high profits for petroleum corporations) was to "build more refineries," stated with a smug piety.
Build more refineries -- not conserve our resources. Conserve, after all, is the root of Conservatism, is it not?
This President, this administration, has nothing to do with conservatism. They have conserved nothing. They have, in fact, racked up the greatest national deficit in history, while keeping the mind-boggling expenses of the Iraq war and Katrina relief off the table, as if to hide that monstrous portion of the debt and burden to our children and subsequent generations; they have, in fact, damaged, "lost," and wasted vast resources; they have never been moderate, cautious, or safe; they have plunged us as a nation into war -- by its very nature and their own definition, an inherently unwinnable "war" against a military tactic, not a nation or definable entity or force -- and squandered resources sorely needed to protect our nation from real forces of devastation; they have upended, derailed, and demolished long-standing traditions and institutions to benefit their corporate supporters and consolidate their own power.
This is a radical extremist President and Administration, incapable of compassion, in love only with power, money, and force.
Understand how profit-driven free-market forces have brought us to this empasse, in both our health care and petroleum industries.
There have been no refineries built since the 1970s because it is more profitable for the petroleum industry to maximize existing refinery output. Building new refineries would cut into profits considerably. Bush knows this -- he is, after all, an oil man -- but this allows him to pretend to have an answer that "makes sense" to the commmon US citizen. It also supports the kind of corporate-welfare "energy policies" this administration continues to propose and ram through as far as it can, strip mining public-health-protecting environmental policies (including the now-greatly-in-peril "Clean Air" regulations) that serve no public good, but allow for increasing profitability and consolidation of unquestionable corporate power for the energy industries.
Vaccines are in such low supply annually because it is not a profitable undertaking for any corporation to undertake. In fact, public health in general is in danger because free market forces simply have no initiative or imperative to engage with true public health issues -- there's no profit to be made in any sector that involves pro-actively or pre-emptively protecting a growing poverty-level populace. Had free-market forces alone been left to deal with the outbreak of Polio in the 1940s and early '50s, we'd still be dealing with that disease. That we are still in this dilemma in the wake of the Anthrax scare, five fucking years of government-led fantasizing about the apocalyptic potential of bioterrorism and/or pandemic outbreaks of killer viruses, and the Katrina disaster is ample evidence of the fact that neither President Bush nor his Administration has taken a single meaningful step toward reacting to either 9/11, media-metastasized fears of national disasters, or the subsequent real natural disasters with the "public good" or "public health" in mind.
They have not even conserved -- much less nurtured -- those programs which did effectively work in these arenas. They have, in fact, done everything in their power to undermine, starve, and strip those programs, policies, and institutions.
That was terribly apparent in the wake of Katrina. It is still terribly apparent. In his Rose Garden speech, Bush touted small business and free market forces as the greatest response to Katrina, the key to resurrecting New Orleans. The problem is, as noted in a number of stories on NPR and Marketplace this week, there is no business to be had in devastated New Orleans -- the few businesses left standing or re-opened have no cash customers, a natural consequence of such a disaster -- and the only massive amounts of money changing hands are between speculative realtors serving out-of-state interests (big business already!) and those (thankfully no longer no-bid) government contracts for rebuilding.
Which brings me back to Bush's impoverished fantasies about how he, as President and Commander-in-Chief, imagines himself handling a pandemic of avian flu. I likened it to a George Romero movie on Wednesday morning; I have to take that back. Bush hasn't the imagination to see (as Romero always does) the downside of such wielding of force in the face of contagion, disease, natural disaster. He envisions and savors only the power needed to contain, suppress, quash a stricken and terrified public.
He envisions only militaristic "Armies of Compassion" (to flaunt his own beloved terminology), missing the Orwellian reality therein. True "Armies of Compassion," President Bush, are not in it for the money or profit or kickbacks to the Carlysle Group; in a battle such as that you are fondling, true "Armies of Compassion" are armed with the science you so despise, with medicine which is not per se profitable to government-brokered pharmaceutical companies, with reason you so persistantly spurn and resent.
So, the free market having failed, the government having failed, all that's left is to bring in the military. Alas, you don't fight disease, suffering, blight, or suffering with firepower -- but you can look like one hell of a quick-response Commander-in-Chief if you are empowered to mobilize those tank divisions at the first outbreak of avian flu.
Conservation -- much less compassion -- of any form has nothing to do with this President or Administration.
In the wake of Katrina, the re-revving of the government "War on Terror" fear-mongering to rally support can only redirect our fears -- more properly, our outrage -- in the most rational, logical direction:
this President and his Administration.
com.pas.sion...n.... sympathy... to feel pity... sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy; pity
com.pas.siona.ate... adj. feeling or showing compassion; sympathizing deeply; pitying
The President's Tuesday morning Rose Garden press conference (an uncharacteristic 55 minute stretch) and subsequent "important speech" on "The War on Terror" have stuck with me all week, but not in the ways the Administration intended, I'm sure.
What is more transparent than ever before is the sheer spectacle of President Bush trying to once again come across as being aggressive and effective in the wake of the crashing failure of himself and his own Administration to respond in any consequential manner to Hurricane Katrina, and the subsequent spin of Rita (sorry, but rushing around to photo-ops and mock crocodile tears do not an effective response make; the only increased effectiveness apparent was the Admininstration's muzzling of the press their complete absence had unleashed for Katrina).
You can't bully nature or storms, and you can't bully ineffectual cronies who failed as badly as Brownie did (too little, too late), but you can bully the public -- and that's what we're seeing and hearing, my friends.
I hope I'm wrong, but the current Orange Alert in NYC comes too tidily on the heels of this week's alarmist speech: peppered with the usual factual distortions, lies, connections with 9/11, and conflation of rhetoric (comparing non-national, non-centralized religious zealots to the once-powerful national superpowers that were mobilized behind the Cold War was an unforgivable stretch) the fear-mongering has returned with a vengeance. This, of course, has nothing to do with the realities exposed by Katrina, and everything to do with Bush and his circle trying to redefine the issues and thus reestablish previously effective scare tactics necessary to maintaining lock-step compliance with their power base. In hopes of whipping down critics while whipping up plunging support for the President's performance and policies, we're instantly back to "The War on Terror" and Orange Alerts; but the grim reality of Katrina and the horrific exposure of all-too-successful Federalist policies (which have eroded and ravaged various infrastructures necessary to dealing with such disasters) in full effect are still fresh wounds.
Since Katrina isn't a definable, targetable "enemy" and cannot be made into such, it's time to redirect our collective ire and fear back "on target." Hey, there's a policy.
The disconnect between the swagger and rhetoric, the bullying cocksure aggressive posturing and pontificating, and reality -- having seen how ineffectual Bush and his own were in Katrina's thrall, heaven help us if we do suffer another terrorist attack! -- is only more apparent now. The Rose Garden press conference (a highlight of which was Bush's fantasizing about dealing with a potential avian flu epidemic with military might and quarantining of any infected populace) and "War on Terror" speech betray the impoverished imagination of a man and administration that sees only suppression, repression, and brute force as a means of dealing with any disruption of order -- their order -- and the escalating bid to concentrate power in such a way that the Commander in Chief enjoys the unquestionable Divine Right of a King.
(After all, a King needn't set aside a moment to deal with the questions of a grieving mother of a fallen son; Bush responded Tuesday to a question whether he is still a "compassionate conservative" in the affirmative, churlishly coining the word "compassion" with fresh scorn in the wake of his ignoring Cindy Sheehan's request for a minute of his time. This is neither a compassionate President or King, and that is now abundantly clear; note that Sheehan's unexpected public visibility and the subsequent galvanizing of anti-war sentiments are more the result of Bush's refusal than Sheehan's tenacity, though Bush and his circle can only resent her surfacing. A crumb, a mere crumb of compassion might have made such a difference.)
There is nothing compassionate or conservative about these power fantasies of our President, extremist and radical revisionist conceits which he is increasingly unabashed about articulating and pursuing. In the second week of post-Katrina public outrage, Bush fielded the desire to wield the military as the preferred method of dealing with natural disasters and any calamity or disorder within our borders. Of course, this would require major changes in US laws, a radical concept even the Pentagon has reacted to with some skepticism. Whether they are bristling at the principle of martial law being contrary to a functional Democracy, or not wanting to be set-up as the next 'fall guy' for this Administration's increasing refusal of any culpability for their own ruthless actions and resultant shortcomings is difficult to determine.
"The president ought to have all options -- assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant," Bush said; note the very wording echoing his pre- and post-Iraq War speeches and responses to press conference questions. Now, of course, the 'enemy' would be infected and diseased US citizens -- you and I, bunky -- which should give even the most die-hard Bush supporter pause.
I'm relieved to see, read, and hear that I was hardly alone in my alarm at Bush's savoring (yes, savoring) the thought of military-imposed quarantines and suppression of diseased citizenry (that was his only suggested means of dealing with a pandemic, with nary a thought or word of concern for those suffering -- hardly a compassionate response, is it?). The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that none other than Dr. Irwin Redlener (associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness) reacted to Bush's remarks as proposing an "extraordinarily draconian measure... the translation of this is martial law in the United States." Got that?
Redlener further noted that such measures would be unnecessary (quoting the AP article, not Redlener per se) "if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system."
Degradation of the public health system -- the legacy of "compassionate conservatism," as this Administration defines itself, at work.
con.serve... to keep, preserve... 1 to keep from being damaged, lost, or wasted; save
con.serv/a.tism... n. the principles and practices of a conservative person or party; tendency to oppose change in institutions and methods
con.ser/va.tive... 1 conserving or tending to conserve; preservative 2 tending to preserve established traditions or institutions and to resist or oppose any changes in these [conservative politics, conservative art] 3 of or characteristic of a conservative... 6 moderate; cautious; safe [a conservative estimate]...
In his Rose Garden press conference Tuesday, President Bush also stated, with that emphatic patriarchal impatience of his (speaking as if we were all idiots, beneath contempt), that the obvious solution to the current gas "crisis" (high prices at the pump in a year of record high profits for petroleum corporations) was to "build more refineries," stated with a smug piety.
Build more refineries -- not conserve our resources. Conserve, after all, is the root of Conservatism, is it not?
This President, this administration, has nothing to do with conservatism. They have conserved nothing. They have, in fact, racked up the greatest national deficit in history, while keeping the mind-boggling expenses of the Iraq war and Katrina relief off the table, as if to hide that monstrous portion of the debt and burden to our children and subsequent generations; they have, in fact, damaged, "lost," and wasted vast resources; they have never been moderate, cautious, or safe; they have plunged us as a nation into war -- by its very nature and their own definition, an inherently unwinnable "war" against a military tactic, not a nation or definable entity or force -- and squandered resources sorely needed to protect our nation from real forces of devastation; they have upended, derailed, and demolished long-standing traditions and institutions to benefit their corporate supporters and consolidate their own power.
This is a radical extremist President and Administration, incapable of compassion, in love only with power, money, and force.
Understand how profit-driven free-market forces have brought us to this empasse, in both our health care and petroleum industries.
There have been no refineries built since the 1970s because it is more profitable for the petroleum industry to maximize existing refinery output. Building new refineries would cut into profits considerably. Bush knows this -- he is, after all, an oil man -- but this allows him to pretend to have an answer that "makes sense" to the commmon US citizen. It also supports the kind of corporate-welfare "energy policies" this administration continues to propose and ram through as far as it can, strip mining public-health-protecting environmental policies (including the now-greatly-in-peril "Clean Air" regulations) that serve no public good, but allow for increasing profitability and consolidation of unquestionable corporate power for the energy industries.
Vaccines are in such low supply annually because it is not a profitable undertaking for any corporation to undertake. In fact, public health in general is in danger because free market forces simply have no initiative or imperative to engage with true public health issues -- there's no profit to be made in any sector that involves pro-actively or pre-emptively protecting a growing poverty-level populace. Had free-market forces alone been left to deal with the outbreak of Polio in the 1940s and early '50s, we'd still be dealing with that disease. That we are still in this dilemma in the wake of the Anthrax scare, five fucking years of government-led fantasizing about the apocalyptic potential of bioterrorism and/or pandemic outbreaks of killer viruses, and the Katrina disaster is ample evidence of the fact that neither President Bush nor his Administration has taken a single meaningful step toward reacting to either 9/11, media-metastasized fears of national disasters, or the subsequent real natural disasters with the "public good" or "public health" in mind.
They have not even conserved -- much less nurtured -- those programs which did effectively work in these arenas. They have, in fact, done everything in their power to undermine, starve, and strip those programs, policies, and institutions.
That was terribly apparent in the wake of Katrina. It is still terribly apparent. In his Rose Garden speech, Bush touted small business and free market forces as the greatest response to Katrina, the key to resurrecting New Orleans. The problem is, as noted in a number of stories on NPR and Marketplace this week, there is no business to be had in devastated New Orleans -- the few businesses left standing or re-opened have no cash customers, a natural consequence of such a disaster -- and the only massive amounts of money changing hands are between speculative realtors serving out-of-state interests (big business already!) and those (thankfully no longer no-bid) government contracts for rebuilding.
Which brings me back to Bush's impoverished fantasies about how he, as President and Commander-in-Chief, imagines himself handling a pandemic of avian flu. I likened it to a George Romero movie on Wednesday morning; I have to take that back. Bush hasn't the imagination to see (as Romero always does) the downside of such wielding of force in the face of contagion, disease, natural disaster. He envisions and savors only the power needed to contain, suppress, quash a stricken and terrified public.
He envisions only militaristic "Armies of Compassion" (to flaunt his own beloved terminology), missing the Orwellian reality therein. True "Armies of Compassion," President Bush, are not in it for the money or profit or kickbacks to the Carlysle Group; in a battle such as that you are fondling, true "Armies of Compassion" are armed with the science you so despise, with medicine which is not per se profitable to government-brokered pharmaceutical companies, with reason you so persistantly spurn and resent.
So, the free market having failed, the government having failed, all that's left is to bring in the military. Alas, you don't fight disease, suffering, blight, or suffering with firepower -- but you can look like one hell of a quick-response Commander-in-Chief if you are empowered to mobilize those tank divisions at the first outbreak of avian flu.
Conservation -- much less compassion -- of any form has nothing to do with this President or Administration.
In the wake of Katrina, the re-revving of the government "War on Terror" fear-mongering to rally support can only redirect our fears -- more properly, our outrage -- in the most rational, logical direction:
this President and his Administration.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Latest Bissette Books now on the Shelves...
Shameless hucksterism redux, and a quick update on my work now in bookshops, magazine racks, and/or available online:
* I landed the cover story on the latest issue of Video Watchdog -- #122, October/November 2005 -- with my writeup of the extraordinary and sadly ignored DVD release of Edison's Frankenstein from the late Alois F. Dettlaff, Sr. See my September post on the subject on this blog, but better yet pick up this issue of Video Watchdog, featuring Charlie Largent's customized color cover portrait of Charles Ogle as the first cinematic Frankenstein's Monster. Per usual, the issue is jam-packed with great articles, primary (and essential) among those Steven Lloyd's overview of the Warner Bros. DVD Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 1 (lots of great info and insights here), Bill Cooke's analysis of the new Criterion Cronenberg Videodrome, the debut of Ramsey Campbell to the VW pages with his review of Tony Earnshaw's excellent Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon, and much more.
* I have two essays on hitchhiking in the new UK book No Such Thing as a Free Ride?: A Collection of Hitchers' Tales edited by Simon Sykes and Tom Sykes (Cassell Illustrated, 2005). This highly entertaining read features a remarkably eclectic pantheon of authors (Mike Leigh, Eric Burdon, Alan Parker, Alastair Campbell, Ralph Bakshi, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Rick Wakeman, Nigel West, Tony Hawks, etc.) recalling their hitchhiking experiences, good and bad; man, I may never be published in such stellar company again! Yours truly is among both the "Good Trips and "Bad Trips" chapters, both dating from the 1970s (as I have neither hitched nor picked up hitchhikers since, the reasons for which my respective entries will fully explain).
* Well, I am amid a pretty amazing lineup in another UK-packaged (but US published) book, as luck has had it. As already recently noted on this blog, I am also among the contributing writers to Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's Horror: Another 100 Best Books (Carroll & Graf, 2005), now in US bookshops and available online. Lest any of you think I'm harboring a grudge against former chum Alan Moore, please note that my nomination for the top-100 horror novels of all time that was accepted by Jones and Newman was none other than Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's extraordinary masterpiece From Hell; Alan may have nothing more to do with me in this lifetime by his own choice, and that's a source of personal pain, but I've no professional axe to grind with the man. He's a fucking amazing writer, and Eddie's stunning decade+ collaborative effort with Alan stands tall as both a genre work and a sui generis masterwork. The essay herein sums up my feelings about From Hell, and it's gratifying to see Tim Lucas's similarly Taboo-spawned novel Throat Sprockets (1986) in this lineup, too.
* Speaking of Alan Moore, a couple of years ago I donated an essay entitled "Mr. Moore and Me" to the multi-national benefit book project Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, a UK/Italian production that has been published in English, Italian, and Spanish editions to date. With my permission, French editor Andre-Francois Ruaud just published a slightly-abridged French language translation of that essay in his new book Alan Moore: L'hypothese du Lezard: Suivi de Essais, Hommages, Appreciations & Entretiens (Les Moutons Electriques, 2005). I'm in good company once again -- Michael Moorcock, Eddie Campbell, Paul Di Fillipo, Jean-Paul Jennequin, etc. -- and for that I'm thankful. (BTW, an expanded, definitive revision of "Mr. Moore and Me" will be published in 2006 in an upcoming collection of my comics-related articles and essays, forthcoming from Black Coat Press.)
* That old chestnut "The Anatomy Lesson", the first collaborative effort of your truly, Alan Moore, John Totleben and Rick Veitch originally published way back in 1983 as Saga of the Swamp Thing #21, is back in print in the new DC/Vertigo trade paperback anthology Vertigo: First Taste (DC Comics, 2005), subtitled Six Premiere Issues from Comics' Most Provocative Imprint. Once again, my work's shoulder-to-shoulder with some amazing companions: reprints of the first issues of Y: The Last Man, 100 Bullets, Transmetropolitan, Books of Magick: Life During Wartime, and Death: The High Cost of Living. Nice collection, but the first true Vertigo debut issues -- of Sandman and Hellblazer -- are conspicuous by their absence; nothing has been more reprinted than our own "The Anatomy Lesson," so I'm curious about the decision to exclude the born-at-the-hips twins who truly launched the Vertigo imprint.
* I have a never-before-published full-page color portrait of "The Pigman of Devil's Washbowl" (of Northfield, VT) on page 99 of my dear friend Joseph A. Citro's latest book, Weird New England (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2005; an imprint of Barnes & Noble). But that's not all! My beloved wife Marj and I wave from our rolling-uphill car on page 168 (yep, that's my Toyota). My name would have also appeared on page 194, had the editors of the series not seen fit to remove all Joe's references to his traveling compadres and supplant them with the anonymous "Weird New England team" references (a move Joe heartily disapproved of, I might add); Joe and I visited the Hoosac Tunnel last spring one memorable muddy morning, and Joe's photos from that trip grace the volume. Taboo and UFO/alien abduction comics completists take note: there's also a panel (reprinted on page 82) from Jack Weiner's CGI-art for the one-shot alien abduction graphic novella The Allagash Incident by Jack Weiner and Chuck Rak (Tundra, 1992). This remarkable and sadly overlooked comic was originally commissioned by yours truly for publication in what would have been Taboo Vol. 8; when relations between SpiderBaby Grafix and Tundra badly soured early in 1992 (a year before Tundra's collapse), I stepped aside to ensure Jack and Chuck's work would see print in a timely manner under the Tundra imprint before the shit I saw heading for the fan really hit the blades. Alas, this remarkable project -- the only UFO comic written and drawn by the participants in a classic UFO case/encounter, who happened to be accomplished artists and cartoonists in their own right -- was shuffled out the door sans any promotion or support, ignored by the market, and marketed not at all to the UFO marketplace that would have embraced it. UFOlogist Raymond E. Fowler scribed the definitive case history text on this abduction/encounter, The Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention (Wild Flower Press, 1993), also recommended reading. More on this in a later blog posting, but for now, just run out and pick up a copy of Joe's Weird New England -- it's not entirely the book Joe envisioned, but it's still a real beauty!
* One of my dinosaur drawings (a modest colored pencil portrait of a Tyrannosaurus rex) graces the cover of Rivers of Time, a screenplay by Roy Thomas adapted from the book by L. Sprague de Camp (Black Coat Press, 2005). Roy's screenplay adapts and expands upon de Camp's classic 1956 short story "A Gun for Dinosaur" and his subsequent time-travel tales, and it's a lively read. It would make a great film, too -- hint, hint -- but for now, Black Coat Press's lovely package is your best shot for unreeling on your internal retinal screen the feature Thomas has conceived.
Shameless hucksterism redux, and a quick update on my work now in bookshops, magazine racks, and/or available online:
* I landed the cover story on the latest issue of Video Watchdog -- #122, October/November 2005 -- with my writeup of the extraordinary and sadly ignored DVD release of Edison's Frankenstein from the late Alois F. Dettlaff, Sr. See my September post on the subject on this blog, but better yet pick up this issue of Video Watchdog, featuring Charlie Largent's customized color cover portrait of Charles Ogle as the first cinematic Frankenstein's Monster. Per usual, the issue is jam-packed with great articles, primary (and essential) among those Steven Lloyd's overview of the Warner Bros. DVD Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 1 (lots of great info and insights here), Bill Cooke's analysis of the new Criterion Cronenberg Videodrome, the debut of Ramsey Campbell to the VW pages with his review of Tony Earnshaw's excellent Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon, and much more.
* I have two essays on hitchhiking in the new UK book No Such Thing as a Free Ride?: A Collection of Hitchers' Tales edited by Simon Sykes and Tom Sykes (Cassell Illustrated, 2005). This highly entertaining read features a remarkably eclectic pantheon of authors (Mike Leigh, Eric Burdon, Alan Parker, Alastair Campbell, Ralph Bakshi, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Rick Wakeman, Nigel West, Tony Hawks, etc.) recalling their hitchhiking experiences, good and bad; man, I may never be published in such stellar company again! Yours truly is among both the "Good Trips and "Bad Trips" chapters, both dating from the 1970s (as I have neither hitched nor picked up hitchhikers since, the reasons for which my respective entries will fully explain).
* Well, I am amid a pretty amazing lineup in another UK-packaged (but US published) book, as luck has had it. As already recently noted on this blog, I am also among the contributing writers to Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's Horror: Another 100 Best Books (Carroll & Graf, 2005), now in US bookshops and available online. Lest any of you think I'm harboring a grudge against former chum Alan Moore, please note that my nomination for the top-100 horror novels of all time that was accepted by Jones and Newman was none other than Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's extraordinary masterpiece From Hell; Alan may have nothing more to do with me in this lifetime by his own choice, and that's a source of personal pain, but I've no professional axe to grind with the man. He's a fucking amazing writer, and Eddie's stunning decade+ collaborative effort with Alan stands tall as both a genre work and a sui generis masterwork. The essay herein sums up my feelings about From Hell, and it's gratifying to see Tim Lucas's similarly Taboo-spawned novel Throat Sprockets (1986) in this lineup, too.
* Speaking of Alan Moore, a couple of years ago I donated an essay entitled "Mr. Moore and Me" to the multi-national benefit book project Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, a UK/Italian production that has been published in English, Italian, and Spanish editions to date. With my permission, French editor Andre-Francois Ruaud just published a slightly-abridged French language translation of that essay in his new book Alan Moore: L'hypothese du Lezard: Suivi de Essais, Hommages, Appreciations & Entretiens (Les Moutons Electriques, 2005). I'm in good company once again -- Michael Moorcock, Eddie Campbell, Paul Di Fillipo, Jean-Paul Jennequin, etc. -- and for that I'm thankful. (BTW, an expanded, definitive revision of "Mr. Moore and Me" will be published in 2006 in an upcoming collection of my comics-related articles and essays, forthcoming from Black Coat Press.)
* That old chestnut "The Anatomy Lesson", the first collaborative effort of your truly, Alan Moore, John Totleben and Rick Veitch originally published way back in 1983 as Saga of the Swamp Thing #21, is back in print in the new DC/Vertigo trade paperback anthology Vertigo: First Taste (DC Comics, 2005), subtitled Six Premiere Issues from Comics' Most Provocative Imprint. Once again, my work's shoulder-to-shoulder with some amazing companions: reprints of the first issues of Y: The Last Man, 100 Bullets, Transmetropolitan, Books of Magick: Life During Wartime, and Death: The High Cost of Living. Nice collection, but the first true Vertigo debut issues -- of Sandman and Hellblazer -- are conspicuous by their absence; nothing has been more reprinted than our own "The Anatomy Lesson," so I'm curious about the decision to exclude the born-at-the-hips twins who truly launched the Vertigo imprint.
* I have a never-before-published full-page color portrait of "The Pigman of Devil's Washbowl" (of Northfield, VT) on page 99 of my dear friend Joseph A. Citro's latest book, Weird New England (Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2005; an imprint of Barnes & Noble). But that's not all! My beloved wife Marj and I wave from our rolling-uphill car on page 168 (yep, that's my Toyota). My name would have also appeared on page 194, had the editors of the series not seen fit to remove all Joe's references to his traveling compadres and supplant them with the anonymous "Weird New England team" references (a move Joe heartily disapproved of, I might add); Joe and I visited the Hoosac Tunnel last spring one memorable muddy morning, and Joe's photos from that trip grace the volume. Taboo and UFO/alien abduction comics completists take note: there's also a panel (reprinted on page 82) from Jack Weiner's CGI-art for the one-shot alien abduction graphic novella The Allagash Incident by Jack Weiner and Chuck Rak (Tundra, 1992). This remarkable and sadly overlooked comic was originally commissioned by yours truly for publication in what would have been Taboo Vol. 8; when relations between SpiderBaby Grafix and Tundra badly soured early in 1992 (a year before Tundra's collapse), I stepped aside to ensure Jack and Chuck's work would see print in a timely manner under the Tundra imprint before the shit I saw heading for the fan really hit the blades. Alas, this remarkable project -- the only UFO comic written and drawn by the participants in a classic UFO case/encounter, who happened to be accomplished artists and cartoonists in their own right -- was shuffled out the door sans any promotion or support, ignored by the market, and marketed not at all to the UFO marketplace that would have embraced it. UFOlogist Raymond E. Fowler scribed the definitive case history text on this abduction/encounter, The Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention (Wild Flower Press, 1993), also recommended reading. More on this in a later blog posting, but for now, just run out and pick up a copy of Joe's Weird New England -- it's not entirely the book Joe envisioned, but it's still a real beauty!
* One of my dinosaur drawings (a modest colored pencil portrait of a Tyrannosaurus rex) graces the cover of Rivers of Time, a screenplay by Roy Thomas adapted from the book by L. Sprague de Camp (Black Coat Press, 2005). Roy's screenplay adapts and expands upon de Camp's classic 1956 short story "A Gun for Dinosaur" and his subsequent time-travel tales, and it's a lively read. It would make a great film, too -- hint, hint -- but for now, Black Coat Press's lovely package is your best shot for unreeling on your internal retinal screen the feature Thomas has conceived.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Some thoughts on CCS, Bush, and George Romero...
I've finally embraced the computer as the teaching tool it can be, and why did I fight it? After lurching through my first CCS sessions with slides, books, and handouts, Jane Wilde helped me through the learning curve using scanner and laptop and the results yesterday afternoon were a treat. The ability to scan and present comic art -- Sunday pages, dailies, and individual panels -- and project it on the screen is an ideal showcase for the medium. After 15 years of slide shows too-dependent on cover shots (evoking, via lecture, the contents within), the ability to step through narratives and/or sequences panel-by-panel after showing the full strip or page is a joy, retaining the power of the medium and its unique power.
We've now covered the first 40-50 years of the American comic strip -- as I've said to the class, this is more like skipping stones over the vast oceans of excellent work than the kind of in-depth analysis I'd like to pursue (and they crave), but time is short -- with an attempt to also touch upon the various strains and genres (from Opper to Crane, Foster to Segar). Pausing to trace the evolving art and narrative storytelling techniques of, for instance, Roy Crane to Noel Sickles to Milton Caniff (citing the classic death of Raven Sherman sequence in the Terry and the Pirates dailies), is essential, too: breaking down, within single panels, the bold simplicity and power of pen-and-brush work (and occasional use of gray tones, via zipatone dots or crayon pencil on textured board) and demonstrating how loosely-rendered patterns can evoke apparently detailed elements (backgrounds, settings, etc.) is part of the lesson plan. Moving from that to the lavish illustrative work of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, and then on to E.C.Segar's hilarious Thimble Theater and the arrival of Popeye (the same year as Tarzan and Buck Rogers!) made for a lively session, which I capped with a brief overview of regional comics (including Texas History Movies), 'lost' personal, not-for-publication cartoonists like Fred Johnson (see earlier post), and an overview of the Tijuana Bibles brought us up to the birth of the comic book per se, which we pick up with next week. We wound up our session with a brief discussion of the changes involved in adapting popular comic strips to cinema, screening the first ten minutes of Chapter Six of the Universal serial Flash Gordon and the complete Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor.
All went smoothly with only the fumbling of setting up the various viewing devices -- but once that was in place, man oh man the laptop 'slide show' function worked like a dream. I'm hooked and this allows me to really get into the comics and artists ahead of us in the class chronology!
__
While multi-tasking yesterday morn (primarily in prep for my CCS session), I listened to President Bush's entire Rose Garden press conference. There were many chills therein, aside from the President's usual repetition of oft-repeated dogma as justifications for government policies more and more Americans are questioning, his halting, Shatner-like delivery, and his complete inability to articulate anything of substance. His exhaustion and occasional ire could be clearly heard, along with the usual impatience and characteristic attitude that we should simply accept what he profers as 'facts' and 'reason' at face value: if he states and restates (with little or no variation in wording) the same emphatic assertions, that should be reason enough. This, then, should damn well be all we need to know about Harriet Miers; never mind the conflict of interest inherent in her having been Bush's consultant in choosing Supreme Court candidates, or his skirting the direct questioning of whether he and Miers ever discussed abortion rights.
But the most chilling stretch of all came with Bush's rambling response to a question about US readiness for natural disasters like Katrina. Bush entered George Romero turf as he thoughtlessly prattled on about possible avian flu epidemics and the need for prompt military response and how quarentines might be enforced, demonstrating once again the blunt paucity of empathy and imagination characteristic of this Presidency. Jesus fucking Christ, all he can think of is fleet imposition of martial law while pondering the possibility of pandemic outbreaks of deadly infections??? Amid his morbid hawkish fantasizing about mobilizing the military might he so loves to misuse, Bush's indifference to the core realities -- (a) the necessity of focusing upon public health issues in a public health disaster (e.g., medical needs, hospitalization, mobilizing health care professionals, etc.), and (b) the fact that avian flus are so virulent because (duh) they can move from bird populations to humans (I mean, uh, avian flu, Prez!), meaning quarantines of poultry, food supplies, etc. are equally relevent -- while entertaining his destructive fantasies of further Commander-in-Chief abuses of power (ya, the Marines really could quarantine that populace; how about those mobile bird populations?) was the most hideous flaunting of Presidential lunacy I'd heard since Nixon's announcement of the bombing of Laos.
Bush is already screening a high-ticket, real-life revisionist version of Romero's The Crazies in his skull, and the American public is once again the faceless losers central to his power-fantasies.
WAKE UP, AMERICA! We have a true, A-1 sociopath in the driver's seat!!!
I've finally embraced the computer as the teaching tool it can be, and why did I fight it? After lurching through my first CCS sessions with slides, books, and handouts, Jane Wilde helped me through the learning curve using scanner and laptop and the results yesterday afternoon were a treat. The ability to scan and present comic art -- Sunday pages, dailies, and individual panels -- and project it on the screen is an ideal showcase for the medium. After 15 years of slide shows too-dependent on cover shots (evoking, via lecture, the contents within), the ability to step through narratives and/or sequences panel-by-panel after showing the full strip or page is a joy, retaining the power of the medium and its unique power.
We've now covered the first 40-50 years of the American comic strip -- as I've said to the class, this is more like skipping stones over the vast oceans of excellent work than the kind of in-depth analysis I'd like to pursue (and they crave), but time is short -- with an attempt to also touch upon the various strains and genres (from Opper to Crane, Foster to Segar). Pausing to trace the evolving art and narrative storytelling techniques of, for instance, Roy Crane to Noel Sickles to Milton Caniff (citing the classic death of Raven Sherman sequence in the Terry and the Pirates dailies), is essential, too: breaking down, within single panels, the bold simplicity and power of pen-and-brush work (and occasional use of gray tones, via zipatone dots or crayon pencil on textured board) and demonstrating how loosely-rendered patterns can evoke apparently detailed elements (backgrounds, settings, etc.) is part of the lesson plan. Moving from that to the lavish illustrative work of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, and then on to E.C.Segar's hilarious Thimble Theater and the arrival of Popeye (the same year as Tarzan and Buck Rogers!) made for a lively session, which I capped with a brief overview of regional comics (including Texas History Movies), 'lost' personal, not-for-publication cartoonists like Fred Johnson (see earlier post), and an overview of the Tijuana Bibles brought us up to the birth of the comic book per se, which we pick up with next week. We wound up our session with a brief discussion of the changes involved in adapting popular comic strips to cinema, screening the first ten minutes of Chapter Six of the Universal serial Flash Gordon and the complete Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor.
All went smoothly with only the fumbling of setting up the various viewing devices -- but once that was in place, man oh man the laptop 'slide show' function worked like a dream. I'm hooked and this allows me to really get into the comics and artists ahead of us in the class chronology!
__
While multi-tasking yesterday morn (primarily in prep for my CCS session), I listened to President Bush's entire Rose Garden press conference. There were many chills therein, aside from the President's usual repetition of oft-repeated dogma as justifications for government policies more and more Americans are questioning, his halting, Shatner-like delivery, and his complete inability to articulate anything of substance. His exhaustion and occasional ire could be clearly heard, along with the usual impatience and characteristic attitude that we should simply accept what he profers as 'facts' and 'reason' at face value: if he states and restates (with little or no variation in wording) the same emphatic assertions, that should be reason enough. This, then, should damn well be all we need to know about Harriet Miers; never mind the conflict of interest inherent in her having been Bush's consultant in choosing Supreme Court candidates, or his skirting the direct questioning of whether he and Miers ever discussed abortion rights.
But the most chilling stretch of all came with Bush's rambling response to a question about US readiness for natural disasters like Katrina. Bush entered George Romero turf as he thoughtlessly prattled on about possible avian flu epidemics and the need for prompt military response and how quarentines might be enforced, demonstrating once again the blunt paucity of empathy and imagination characteristic of this Presidency. Jesus fucking Christ, all he can think of is fleet imposition of martial law while pondering the possibility of pandemic outbreaks of deadly infections??? Amid his morbid hawkish fantasizing about mobilizing the military might he so loves to misuse, Bush's indifference to the core realities -- (a) the necessity of focusing upon public health issues in a public health disaster (e.g., medical needs, hospitalization, mobilizing health care professionals, etc.), and (b) the fact that avian flus are so virulent because (duh) they can move from bird populations to humans (I mean, uh, avian flu, Prez!), meaning quarantines of poultry, food supplies, etc. are equally relevent -- while entertaining his destructive fantasies of further Commander-in-Chief abuses of power (ya, the Marines really could quarantine that populace; how about those mobile bird populations?) was the most hideous flaunting of Presidential lunacy I'd heard since Nixon's announcement of the bombing of Laos.
Bush is already screening a high-ticket, real-life revisionist version of Romero's The Crazies in his skull, and the American public is once again the faceless losers central to his power-fantasies.
WAKE UP, AMERICA! We have a true, A-1 sociopath in the driver's seat!!!
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Who the Hell is...
An overwhelming but incredibly productive and pleasant Monday kept me far, far from the keyboard, and that's fine. The day culminated in an amazing evening with family & friends -- my parents, now in their 80s, Gerhard and Rose down from Kitchener, Ontario, and Rick Veitch and Cindy down from West Townshend -- that was a one-of-a-kind gathering. Ah, life is good.
I jumped between scanning art, baking, and staining (the outside of the new addition to the house) all afternoon, and got all tasks completed. A new batch of scanning this morning should prep me for the CCS comic strip session this afternoon, but I have so much more to learn! So many great comic strips and cartoonists, so little time...
__
Who the hell is Harriet Miers?? Yesterday morning, President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to step into the shoes and robes of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Her greatest attributes seem to be (a) she is a blank slate and (b) Bush loves her.
Miers has been a Bush political appointee, campaign counsel, personal lawyer and an apparently die-hard loyalist. Brrrrr -- a chronology of Harriet Miers' career, courtesy of the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, doesn't inspire confidence:
1970—Graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School
1970-1972—Clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Joe Estes
1972-2001—Joined Texas law firm, Locke, Purnell
1985—Elected president of the Dallas Bar Association
1986-1989—Member of the State Bar board of directors
1989-1991—Elected and served one term on the Dallas City Council
1992—Elected president of the Texas State Bar
1993-1994—Worked as counsel for Bush's gubernatorial campaign
1995-2000—Appointed chairwoman of Texas Lottery Commission by Gov. George Bush
1996—Became president of Locke, Purnell, and the first woman to lead a major Texas law firm
1998—Presided over the merger of Locke, Purnell with another big Texas firm, Liddell, Sapp, Zivley, Hill & LaBoon, and became co-managing partner of the resulting megafirm, Locke Liddell & Sapp
2000—Represented Bush and Cheney in a lawsuit stemming from their dual residency in Texas while running in the Presidential primary
2001—Selected as staff secretary for President Bush
2003—Promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
2004—Selected as White House Counsel
Among her duties for Bush was legal analysis of the use of the National Guard in Iraq, which stands in my mind as one of the grossest misuses of the Guard and among the most devastating military bungles in American history. But, hey, Harriet thought it was no prob.
Not to pre-judge the judge, but at this point, anyone beneath the radar that our Prez recommends is suspect by association. With the revelations following Katrina, one would be irrational to simply accept this nomination on faith -- though this is, after all, a "faith-based" presidency. Simply put, I have no faith in any aspect or component of the Bush Administration, and those who do seem completely irrational to me.
An overwhelming but incredibly productive and pleasant Monday kept me far, far from the keyboard, and that's fine. The day culminated in an amazing evening with family & friends -- my parents, now in their 80s, Gerhard and Rose down from Kitchener, Ontario, and Rick Veitch and Cindy down from West Townshend -- that was a one-of-a-kind gathering. Ah, life is good.
I jumped between scanning art, baking, and staining (the outside of the new addition to the house) all afternoon, and got all tasks completed. A new batch of scanning this morning should prep me for the CCS comic strip session this afternoon, but I have so much more to learn! So many great comic strips and cartoonists, so little time...
__
Who the hell is Harriet Miers?? Yesterday morning, President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to step into the shoes and robes of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Her greatest attributes seem to be (a) she is a blank slate and (b) Bush loves her.
Miers has been a Bush political appointee, campaign counsel, personal lawyer and an apparently die-hard loyalist. Brrrrr -- a chronology of Harriet Miers' career, courtesy of the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, doesn't inspire confidence:
1970—Graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School
1970-1972—Clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Joe Estes
1972-2001—Joined Texas law firm, Locke, Purnell
1985—Elected president of the Dallas Bar Association
1986-1989—Member of the State Bar board of directors
1989-1991—Elected and served one term on the Dallas City Council
1992—Elected president of the Texas State Bar
1993-1994—Worked as counsel for Bush's gubernatorial campaign
1995-2000—Appointed chairwoman of Texas Lottery Commission by Gov. George Bush
1996—Became president of Locke, Purnell, and the first woman to lead a major Texas law firm
1998—Presided over the merger of Locke, Purnell with another big Texas firm, Liddell, Sapp, Zivley, Hill & LaBoon, and became co-managing partner of the resulting megafirm, Locke Liddell & Sapp
2000—Represented Bush and Cheney in a lawsuit stemming from their dual residency in Texas while running in the Presidential primary
2001—Selected as staff secretary for President Bush
2003—Promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
2004—Selected as White House Counsel
Among her duties for Bush was legal analysis of the use of the National Guard in Iraq, which stands in my mind as one of the grossest misuses of the Guard and among the most devastating military bungles in American history. But, hey, Harriet thought it was no prob.
Not to pre-judge the judge, but at this point, anyone beneath the radar that our Prez recommends is suspect by association. With the revelations following Katrina, one would be irrational to simply accept this nomination on faith -- though this is, after all, a "faith-based" presidency. Simply put, I have no faith in any aspect or component of the Bush Administration, and those who do seem completely irrational to me.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
A Luddite Scanner, Dim, But Finally Functional...
I've spent the afternoon crash-coursing on scanning art and photos, and will finally be joining the 1990s in my ability to load art online. So, a major breakthrough from a dinosaur who has resisted the technology thus far. The site is coming together, and I promise much eye candy -- old and new, long unseen and never-before-seen -- by Halloween!
__
Finished re-burning to disc the final draft of my new book Blur, Volume One this afternoon. This is the first of four volumes, collecting my complete weekly Video Views newspaper column from 1999-2001, including various articles and film-related writings from that period that appeared in other venues (e.g., Video Watchdog, VMag, etc.). Off it goes to my Black Coat Press publishing partner Jean-Marc Lofficier tomorrow, with more books to follow. News on their release dates will be posted here, once Jean-Marc receives everything and we're set to go...
___
Want to check out the real high-stakes players and connections that keep democracy in check? Pop on over to http://www.theyrule.net and play connect-the-dots. You will need Flash Player 7 to function on the site:
"A Brief Explanation
They Rule allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top companies in the US in 2004. The data was collected from their websites and SEC filings in early 2004, so it may not be completely accurate - companies merge and disappear and directors shift boards."
Site creator Josh On has constructed a pretty stunning analysis of the lay of the corporate landscape, identifying its key players and the umbilical cords they share. Josh writes, "They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations."
The illusion of a functional democracy is vital to the ongoing power the current Administration wields over the American populace; most of the world, of course, harbors no such illusions about our country. Maintaining the invisibility of this power network while sustaining the illusion of self-governance is vital; thus, our plutocracy functions with the apparent sanction of the citizens, though we have been effectively reduced to a consumer class with few real freedoms or powers left in our reach. Josh writes, "A few companies control much of the economy and oligopolies exert control in nearly every sector of the economy. The people who head up these companies swap on and off the boards from one company to another, and in and out of government committees and positions. These people run the most powerful institutions on the planet, and we have almost no say in who they are. This is not a conspiracy. They are proud to rule. And yet these connections of power are not always visible to the public eye." The prominent players in this ruling class "stand against each other in the competitive struggle for the continued accumulation of their capital, but they stand together as a family supporting their interests in perpetuating the profit system as whole. Protecting this system can require the cover of a 'legitimate' force - and this is the role that is played by the state. An understanding of this system can not be gleaned from looking at the inter-personal relations of this class alone, but rather how they stand in relation to other classes in society."
Note that They Rule is not a current, live database of board members and companies -- the players and their roles are mutable and constantly changing. Josh reportedly updates the site annually, so it remains merely an eye-opening springboard to further research and analysis, but as such it is invaluable. Amazing site, check it out, and understand where we all fit in the foodchain...
I've spent the afternoon crash-coursing on scanning art and photos, and will finally be joining the 1990s in my ability to load art online. So, a major breakthrough from a dinosaur who has resisted the technology thus far. The site is coming together, and I promise much eye candy -- old and new, long unseen and never-before-seen -- by Halloween!
__
Finished re-burning to disc the final draft of my new book Blur, Volume One this afternoon. This is the first of four volumes, collecting my complete weekly Video Views newspaper column from 1999-2001, including various articles and film-related writings from that period that appeared in other venues (e.g., Video Watchdog, VMag, etc.). Off it goes to my Black Coat Press publishing partner Jean-Marc Lofficier tomorrow, with more books to follow. News on their release dates will be posted here, once Jean-Marc receives everything and we're set to go...
___
Want to check out the real high-stakes players and connections that keep democracy in check? Pop on over to http://www.theyrule.net and play connect-the-dots. You will need Flash Player 7 to function on the site:
"A Brief Explanation
They Rule allows you to create maps of the interlocking directories of the top companies in the US in 2004. The data was collected from their websites and SEC filings in early 2004, so it may not be completely accurate - companies merge and disappear and directors shift boards."
Site creator Josh On has constructed a pretty stunning analysis of the lay of the corporate landscape, identifying its key players and the umbilical cords they share. Josh writes, "They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations."
The illusion of a functional democracy is vital to the ongoing power the current Administration wields over the American populace; most of the world, of course, harbors no such illusions about our country. Maintaining the invisibility of this power network while sustaining the illusion of self-governance is vital; thus, our plutocracy functions with the apparent sanction of the citizens, though we have been effectively reduced to a consumer class with few real freedoms or powers left in our reach. Josh writes, "A few companies control much of the economy and oligopolies exert control in nearly every sector of the economy. The people who head up these companies swap on and off the boards from one company to another, and in and out of government committees and positions. These people run the most powerful institutions on the planet, and we have almost no say in who they are. This is not a conspiracy. They are proud to rule. And yet these connections of power are not always visible to the public eye." The prominent players in this ruling class "stand against each other in the competitive struggle for the continued accumulation of their capital, but they stand together as a family supporting their interests in perpetuating the profit system as whole. Protecting this system can require the cover of a 'legitimate' force - and this is the role that is played by the state. An understanding of this system can not be gleaned from looking at the inter-personal relations of this class alone, but rather how they stand in relation to other classes in society."
Note that They Rule is not a current, live database of board members and companies -- the players and their roles are mutable and constantly changing. Josh reportedly updates the site annually, so it remains merely an eye-opening springboard to further research and analysis, but as such it is invaluable. Amazing site, check it out, and understand where we all fit in the foodchain...
Saturday, October 01, 2005
A Week of Wonders
This week has been peppered with moments-that-make-life-worth-living.
The intimate stuff you needn't know, though it's been a good week (aside from the stomach flu), but suffice to say it's been a hoot to savor Tom DeLay indicted at last (we'll see if it sticks; these fuckers seem to be made of Teflon!), the filming of a live giant squid 5000+ feet under in the North Pacific (the cephalopod fought with the camera equipment for a full four hours, leaving a still-writhing 18-foot tentacle entangled in the equipment when it at last departed!), and the reading of Mike Mignola's second (and final) chapter of the revelatory Hellboy "The Island," wherein we finally learn the origin of Hellboy's massive appendage (his HAND, I'm referring to his hand!). Well done, Mike; you're one of the few who have kept me reading comics.
Yesterday morning NY Times journalist Judith Miller was released from prison. Miller having to testify in the ongoing investigation of the outing of CIA-operative Valerie Plame is a troubling issue for a number of reasons, but Miller's almost three months in jail is historic. The NY Times cites Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby as Miller's source; can it be that Karl Rove, 'Scooter' Libby and even Dick Cheney will be forced to see through this traitorous dance in a truly public arena? When will columnist Robert Novak serve his time behind bars?
It has to be clear now to the most devoted that President Bush has done, and will do, nothing to discipline either Rove or Libby, putting lie to his own characteristic bluster and swagger after Novak revealed that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Plame was a CIA operative. This puts Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in a vital position, and he's now more essential to the survival of our democracy more than ever before; I truly hope he's going to take the core issues and players in the most confrontational manner possible, when the time is right. Thus far, Fitzgerald has played his cards close.
The utter moral bankruptcy of those in power is more obvious by the moment. It’s a form of Federalism, working in conjunction with unprecedented and largely unchecked corporate lobbying interests and entrenched representatives (most of whom now sit in control of the very agencies intended to regulate corporate interests and thus protect ‘the public good’), that has sold us all so far down the river that it’s nigh on impossible to assess just how truly fucked we are. Add the increasingly overt theocracy elevating itself (note even scoundrels like DeLay are reportedly devout Christians who have nothing but disdain for the separation of church and state) in a truly bizarre fusion of Bible-thumping and corporation-sanctioned sociopathic behavior, and it’s difficult to even sound rational in any discussion of the path we as a people, country, and culture are now on. The utter shamelessness of the government officials involved has ceased to amaze: ‘Brownie’ stood before the Republican-led initial investigation of the failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina and maintained a red-faced show of indignity and arrogance that has become utterly archetypal of this current Administration and its cronies. They are incapable of shame, and pathologically avoid responsibility or culpability on any level -- this is truly, truly sociopathic behavior, all the more terrifying when it characterizes men and women who have gravitated so ruthlessly to the highest seats of power (e.g., every component of the Bush Administration). Hmmm, this doesn’t jive with any version or reading of the Ten Commandments I was ever exposed to.
Consider the big-business interests that pushed through mortifying bankruptcy laws that are coming into effect in the wake of devastating natural disasters, the monstrous corporate welfare doled to petroleum and energy industries in the recently-passed "energy bill" that does nothing to help a single citizen or face our country's true energy needs and issues (much less address global warming, the truth of which we are living), the opportunistic Republican predation of Hurricane Katrina and Rita's wake to further ravage the very social infrastructures that were already fleeced to the detriment of all who suffered or survived those storms (and once again attack bugaboos like Amtrack and public broadcasting!), the ongoing disastrous health care and pharmaceutical circle-jerk that has (among other astounding brokering abuses) willingly removed the government's power to secure the best prices possible for drugs, the utter failure of leadership and strategy in the criminally "pre-emptive" Iraq War -- even the most fragmentary accounting is utterly mind-boggling. Any attempt to grasp its enormity and scope inevitably comes off as ranting and rambling. After the last two US Presidential elections, can we even pretend -- in the era we’re now in of electronic voting technology, unaccountable and uncountable, managed by CEOs transparently espousing which parties and candidates they actively support -- that any shred of a viable national democracy or possibility of truly fair elections survives?
Still, last week’s indictment of DeLay and the latest developments in the Plame investigation give one hope. Keep an eye on Fitzgerald’s activities. The growing evidence of widespread and blatant corruption amid Bush's circles of power -- Rove, Libby, Cheney, Frist, DeLay, etc. -- dwarfs the Watergate scandal on a daily basis. Perhaps Fitzgerald is up to the task. Here’s hoping.
It'll be interesting to see what cronyism shapes Bush's Presidential pardons on his way out the door.
___
So, being human, one seeks succor where and when one can.
Some things are worth waiting for. Sweetest of all this week’s treasures, though, has been the time I've been able to steal to drink in the enormity and emaculate artistry of Winsor McCay: Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays! edited by Peter Maresca (2005, Sunday Press). Maresca's selection of McCay color 1905-1910 Sunday pages is stunning; his editorial decisions are a delight, the text pieces punctuating the selections are worthwhile, and the color reproduction makes full use of the state-of-the-art technology available to provide the richest, closest-to-the-source reproduction of the chosen Sunday pages imaginable. But the almost overwhelming power of this new collection is due primarily due to the key decision to reproduce the Sunday pages in their full dimensions -- that's right, this tome measures over 21" x 16". It's a monster book, a thing of beauty, and an absolutely essential addition to any devoted comics library.
This first printing numbers only 5,000 copies, so despite the cost (it ain't cheap) I urge you to save, beg, borrow, or steal whatever you need to get your hands on a copy pronto. It's one of those difficult-to-shelf books, too... I mean, between my reading of the book and the rain and humidity of this week, the covers are already warping a bit, but who cares?
McCay.
Nemo.
In full color.
Full size.
Bliss.
This week has been peppered with moments-that-make-life-worth-living.
The intimate stuff you needn't know, though it's been a good week (aside from the stomach flu), but suffice to say it's been a hoot to savor Tom DeLay indicted at last (we'll see if it sticks; these fuckers seem to be made of Teflon!), the filming of a live giant squid 5000+ feet under in the North Pacific (the cephalopod fought with the camera equipment for a full four hours, leaving a still-writhing 18-foot tentacle entangled in the equipment when it at last departed!), and the reading of Mike Mignola's second (and final) chapter of the revelatory Hellboy "The Island," wherein we finally learn the origin of Hellboy's massive appendage (his HAND, I'm referring to his hand!). Well done, Mike; you're one of the few who have kept me reading comics.
Yesterday morning NY Times journalist Judith Miller was released from prison. Miller having to testify in the ongoing investigation of the outing of CIA-operative Valerie Plame is a troubling issue for a number of reasons, but Miller's almost three months in jail is historic. The NY Times cites Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby as Miller's source; can it be that Karl Rove, 'Scooter' Libby and even Dick Cheney will be forced to see through this traitorous dance in a truly public arena? When will columnist Robert Novak serve his time behind bars?
It has to be clear now to the most devoted that President Bush has done, and will do, nothing to discipline either Rove or Libby, putting lie to his own characteristic bluster and swagger after Novak revealed that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Plame was a CIA operative. This puts Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in a vital position, and he's now more essential to the survival of our democracy more than ever before; I truly hope he's going to take the core issues and players in the most confrontational manner possible, when the time is right. Thus far, Fitzgerald has played his cards close.
The utter moral bankruptcy of those in power is more obvious by the moment. It’s a form of Federalism, working in conjunction with unprecedented and largely unchecked corporate lobbying interests and entrenched representatives (most of whom now sit in control of the very agencies intended to regulate corporate interests and thus protect ‘the public good’), that has sold us all so far down the river that it’s nigh on impossible to assess just how truly fucked we are. Add the increasingly overt theocracy elevating itself (note even scoundrels like DeLay are reportedly devout Christians who have nothing but disdain for the separation of church and state) in a truly bizarre fusion of Bible-thumping and corporation-sanctioned sociopathic behavior, and it’s difficult to even sound rational in any discussion of the path we as a people, country, and culture are now on. The utter shamelessness of the government officials involved has ceased to amaze: ‘Brownie’ stood before the Republican-led initial investigation of the failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina and maintained a red-faced show of indignity and arrogance that has become utterly archetypal of this current Administration and its cronies. They are incapable of shame, and pathologically avoid responsibility or culpability on any level -- this is truly, truly sociopathic behavior, all the more terrifying when it characterizes men and women who have gravitated so ruthlessly to the highest seats of power (e.g., every component of the Bush Administration). Hmmm, this doesn’t jive with any version or reading of the Ten Commandments I was ever exposed to.
Consider the big-business interests that pushed through mortifying bankruptcy laws that are coming into effect in the wake of devastating natural disasters, the monstrous corporate welfare doled to petroleum and energy industries in the recently-passed "energy bill" that does nothing to help a single citizen or face our country's true energy needs and issues (much less address global warming, the truth of which we are living), the opportunistic Republican predation of Hurricane Katrina and Rita's wake to further ravage the very social infrastructures that were already fleeced to the detriment of all who suffered or survived those storms (and once again attack bugaboos like Amtrack and public broadcasting!), the ongoing disastrous health care and pharmaceutical circle-jerk that has (among other astounding brokering abuses) willingly removed the government's power to secure the best prices possible for drugs, the utter failure of leadership and strategy in the criminally "pre-emptive" Iraq War -- even the most fragmentary accounting is utterly mind-boggling. Any attempt to grasp its enormity and scope inevitably comes off as ranting and rambling. After the last two US Presidential elections, can we even pretend -- in the era we’re now in of electronic voting technology, unaccountable and uncountable, managed by CEOs transparently espousing which parties and candidates they actively support -- that any shred of a viable national democracy or possibility of truly fair elections survives?
Still, last week’s indictment of DeLay and the latest developments in the Plame investigation give one hope. Keep an eye on Fitzgerald’s activities. The growing evidence of widespread and blatant corruption amid Bush's circles of power -- Rove, Libby, Cheney, Frist, DeLay, etc. -- dwarfs the Watergate scandal on a daily basis. Perhaps Fitzgerald is up to the task. Here’s hoping.
It'll be interesting to see what cronyism shapes Bush's Presidential pardons on his way out the door.
___
So, being human, one seeks succor where and when one can.
Some things are worth waiting for. Sweetest of all this week’s treasures, though, has been the time I've been able to steal to drink in the enormity and emaculate artistry of Winsor McCay: Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays! edited by Peter Maresca (2005, Sunday Press). Maresca's selection of McCay color 1905-1910 Sunday pages is stunning; his editorial decisions are a delight, the text pieces punctuating the selections are worthwhile, and the color reproduction makes full use of the state-of-the-art technology available to provide the richest, closest-to-the-source reproduction of the chosen Sunday pages imaginable. But the almost overwhelming power of this new collection is due primarily due to the key decision to reproduce the Sunday pages in their full dimensions -- that's right, this tome measures over 21" x 16". It's a monster book, a thing of beauty, and an absolutely essential addition to any devoted comics library.
This first printing numbers only 5,000 copies, so despite the cost (it ain't cheap) I urge you to save, beg, borrow, or steal whatever you need to get your hands on a copy pronto. It's one of those difficult-to-shelf books, too... I mean, between my reading of the book and the rain and humidity of this week, the covers are already warping a bit, but who cares?
McCay.
Nemo.
In full color.
Full size.
Bliss.
Going into a wild weekend -- my parents are visiting, a reunion of sorts coming Monday with the arrival of Gerhard and Rose (we're planning a BBQ with Rick and Cindy Veitch and my folks to savor that evening), and much computer work to do between now and Tuesday as Jane Wilde teaches me the ins and outs of scanning, etc.. The latter is to upgrade my CCS presentations and get over the final huge hump of scanning tons of art for the new website, which I hope we'll launch later this week!
So, erratic posts for you this weekend, but I'll be here with something worthy of a read later this morn. Soon --
So, erratic posts for you this weekend, but I'll be here with something worthy of a read later this morn. Soon --
