PaneltoPanel is up and running!

Hey, the big news today is that John Rovnak's new online retail comics venue is up and running! Why worry about arabs running the ports? We've got John on duty with top-notch comics service!

John and his wife Michelle, twixt baby feedings and all the banalities of day-to-day living in the Green Mountain State, have been chipping away on the PaneltoPanel (hereafter referred to here as P2P -- no, it wasn't a Hamlet line!) site for months, designing and constructing, tweaking and twonking, and at last -- John wrote me yesterday to announce, "The day is finally here, PANEL TO PANEL.NET has hit the world wide web!!!!"

"After months and months of hard work, phase one of the ultimate online comics source has begun," John writes. "And please remember, that there’s a lot more to come.  More images, more reviews, more products.  Everyday more, more and more!"

Check it out, pick up that rare Visions of Frank DVD today, and please, spread the word!

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must add that I'm writing the occasional review for P2P and will be steering many of my projects (and that of friends) into the P2P lineup, sweetening the buys with illustrated signature plates and such available only through John. Why? Well, John and I go way back. I first met him at the beginning of the 1990s when he was just a pup, a mere whelp, busily managing a comics shop called Comics Route up in Manchester, VT -- but the amazing thing was, John wasn't yet out of high school! Post-high-school-graduate John quickly guided Comics Route from a fairly remoted location north of Manchester into a new locale in one of Manchester's downtown (well, as downtown as Manchester gets) shopping plazas, building it rapidly into the best New England comics shop outside of the Boston area. John reached out to creators on a regular basis, building bridges between creators and his customers, hosting many signings and gatherings (that's where I met Budd Root of Cavewoman fame among others, and fostered long-term friendships with folks I never would have otherwise done so with, including cartoonist extraordinaire Mitch Waxman of Plasma Baby infamy).

So impressed were Rick Veitch and I with all John did and continued to do that we approached John back in '94 when it was time to pull together the planned Vermont stop in the national Spirits of Independence tour. John seized the opportunity and ended up hosting one of the liveliest (and most professionally managed) of all that year's tour stops, based in Manchester's historic Equinox hotel (ah, bagpipe players on the lawn, Tyrant beer and birthday cake for one and all!). It was a remarkable weekend, and John only built upon that event for Comics Route's subsequent success.

In time, though, life pulled John further north. He sadly closed up his Manchester shop -- a sad day for all of us in VT, who'd come to depend upon Comics Route. But John didn't ditch his steady customers, maintaining a vital personalized mail-order service from then to now. I've been lucky enough to be among his customers, and my enthusiasm for the launch of P2P is based on solid experience as John's customer for many years. John's one of the best in the business by my 30+ year experience, and I don't tout his experience or professionalism lightly. Shop with confidence!

Enough of my ballyhoo. Click on

PaneltoPanel.net

and start exploring.

Librarians and educators: In part due to my early suggestion last summer, John has also constructed P2P to service your field and needs, too. This is a resource you should tap and nurture, and we (John and I) will be preparing reviews of key, recent, and upcoming works to address the needs and questions particular to school and library issues. Check it out!

OK, back to our regularly scheduled blog...
____________

It's teaching day at CCS, and I'm giving an illustrated presentation to the CCS Board of Directors tonight, so I best get to work. I'm also pitching in with the White River Junction Independent Film Festival organizing -- my key coup was mediating the inclusion of Coke Sams' brilliant 'lost' musical Existo into the programming as a midnight movie, with Coke's blessing and participation -- with a lunch meeting at 11:30 before I get into my teaching day. One of the weekend's pleasures was a long two-hour phone chat/interview with Coke -- best-known in some circles as one of the Nashville creators behind the Ernest (the late Jim Varney) phenomenon of the '80s and '90s -- which I'll be transcribing for publicity for the festival, and running full-length in an upcoming book project.

So, anyhoot, work to do, no more time to blog -- off I go!

See you tomorrow, with the promised followup to Head Trauma and background on Lance Weiler's first (collaborative) feature...

Secrets of Bissette Revealed!

Well -- some secrets of Bissette.
Not all.
Never all.

For instance, I still can't tell you about the job that earned me more than I've ever earned from writing (and more than I'm ever likely to earn again). It wasn't for publication, and it's never going to see ink in this or the next lifetime. But it was fun, and I did a bang-up job, and it's history.

Nor can I tell you about the gig I'm currently engaged with, which in fact I'm going to meet with the creator and collaborator on at noon today. Mum's the word (cue Mark Martin comment photo link to 'Mum' product placement). Later this year, maybe I can -- maybe not until 2007. But rest assured, it's sweet.

But I can now tell you about one of the top-secret gigs of 2004-2005, and provide the brand-new website link! Read on...

Back in 1999, I struck up a friendship with two savvy young filmmakers from Pennsylvania, Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos. At the time, Lance and Stefan were finding distribution inroads for their first collaborative feature The Last Broadcast (Stefan already had one feature, The Game aka The Money Game under his belt). I'll run my 1999 articles about their seminal digital feature tomorrow, if only to provide fuller context for the following info -- for now, though, suffice to say we all hit it off, and I've stayed in touch with both Lance and Stefan over the years, helping them whenever I was asked and could. For Stefan and his partner/co-producer Marianne Connor, I pitched in brainstorming promo ideas for Stefan's second solo directorial feature, The Ghosts of Edendale (the review for which I posted online here back in December).

Lance and I have maintained ongoing contact in the past seven or so years, and when Lance began pulling together the concept and script for his first solo feature, he tapped me early on to ask, "Hey, Steve, would you be up for drawing a little comic for the movie?"

Not a comic about the movie, or to promote the movie -- a comic that played a part in the movie.

This really plucked a nerve for me, and sounded like it could be fun. Given my love for comics and cinema, working up something unique for Lance's film seemed like an ideal opportunity to explore the possibilities in ways never before available to me. I said "sure!", and we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.

The more Lance shared with me about his project, the more ideas we began to bounce around between us, and come 2004, I mobilized a few days of my and my son Daniel's time and we 'dummied up' a few pages for the proposed prop comic. It was to be a faux Christian 'tract,' one of those moralizing parable comics; Lance had some definite ideas about the content and some of the specific imagery (which would resonate with imagery in the film), and Dan and I covered those bases while cooking up some new material as well. Dan copped an image from Gustave Dore's exquisite illustrated edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven (we have a first edition in the home library), adapting it to Lance's suggested scenario of a drunken fellow plagued by specters of death -- or should I say, Death -- and rendered a page in pencil that I inked. Dan also pencilled up an effective 'burning soul in hell' page I inked up, and we sent photocopies of all this (including a suggested cover image) off to Lance.

This give-and-take went through a number of permutations, amid which Lance scripted and shot the movie Head Trauma. In the meantime, I also 'scripted' the comic pages, carefully weaving into the art quotes from our family Bible and a book of New Testament "Jesus Said" quotations that were relevent to Lance's film narrative, sizing and typesetting the text to fit. I prepared a couple of 'hands-on' prop copies of the faux-comic, which the protagonist (Vince Mola, righteous Philadelphia DJ and a filmmaker in his own right with at least one feature -- Bald -- to his credit) used during the shoot. At some point in late 2004/early 2005, Lance sent me a rough working edit of the feature, and we discussed additional artwork that could be inserted into the existing footage. This was a compelling process, organically integrating the comic and creating fresh pages and panels to play a greater part in the narrative: working with Lance's work print, I froze a couple of key images and adapted them to pen-and-ink -- not literally transposing them, but capturing certain primal elements of a pose or image to plant clues in the comic art, setting up a more disturbing 'echo' of images between the film and the comic. Both Lance and I found this pretty engaging, and he was happy with the results.

At the time of this writing, I've yet to see the final edit of Head Trauma; alas, Dan and I couldn't make it to the cast & crew premiere in New York City this past October. But we'll see it soon enough. We've kept our mouths shut about our involvement as Lance worked on his plans for promotion, festival showings, and the rollout of the film theatrically -- but as of this weekend, I can share some of the fun we've been having with you.

As Jane Wilde and I pull together my under-construction website, we've already scanned images from the art Dan and I created for Head Trauma, and with Lance's permission, we'll be featuring that work in the gallery. In the meantime, though, Lance finally has something to show you.

As of this weekend, Lance wrote "the official site for Head Trauma has gone live. You'll need the flash 8 plug-in and a broadband connection to view it."

Of course, I don't have that option -- living as I do in high-speed-access deprived Marlboro, VT -- but most of you do, so click on over to

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Head Trauma (But Didn't Know It Existed)

This is just the initial site, with more art, insights, and secrets to follow. As Lance says, "More news coming soon."

And that's true for me and mine, too. Stay tuned!

A Sunday Afternoon Chat About Ink, Wash, and Totleben...

This query from Heath arrived recently, and with his permission I'll reply here, where you all can benefit from it:

Steve,
 
As I'm pouring over my issues of [Miracleman:] Olympus tonight, I was wondering...how did/does John [Totleben] get such an intricate line in his work? The line form and style seems deceptively simple, but upon trying to duplicate it, I can't. Does he use a pen, or a sable brush? The pen I was using is not a fine art pen, but lays down liquid ink rather thickly, thus I thought that perhaps the lines were rendered using a pen.

Oh, here's another lil something you can help me with, if you please...exactly what is the process of ink-wash? I saw the art in the solicits for the Roy Thomas/Dick Giordano Dracula hardcover from Marvel, but I don't understand exactly how one goes about creating an ink-wash image. Is is simply using a toothbrush or something like it to finely splatter the ink on the page, or is there a greater technique than that in using it? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and g'night...
 
Heath

Believe it or not, that intricate linework was almost second-nature to John, and from our Kubert School daze to the Swamp Thing years and a bit beyond, I got to watch John draw numerous times.

There's some voodoo folks attach, with almost mystical belief, to an artist's tools, but I have to say I've seen John work his magic with all manner of rendering implements: croquill tips, cartooning nibs (both pen, mind you), brush, magic marker, marker brushes, etc. The quality of John's line flows from his hand, heart and nature: he creates those uncannily precise patterns of lines (and, sometimes, dots) with any instrument at hand, and with an almost casual abandon by all appearances. That is, he rarely labored over the portions of drawings that one would suppose took hours and days to render. In his youth, pumped on Pepsi and cooking at the board, John inked amazingly complex-looking illustrations with a speed and ease that was disorienting (that said, John did labor over his primo work, Miracleman primary among that body of work).

John was capable of laying down rhythmic patterns of ink and line -- usually with either brush or pen, or a combination of both -- that had a real life and was never forced. Part of the fun of doing Swamp Thing with John was seeing how he'd transform directional pencil shading into such intoxicating linear patterns, preserving the directional flow of the art while lending it a grace and mesmerizing intensity undiscerable in the pencilled art. These transformations appear delicate, even mathematically precise, to the eye, but John rendered much of this with ease and assurance: there was nothing laborious about his technique or actions. It all flowed.

As for what specific tools John preferred, that changed in time and depending upon what was available. The preferred watercolor brushes we tended to favor in the 1980s (Windsor Newton Series 7) gave way to synthetic hair brushes, which John experimented with as each line of brushes emerged on the market -- always sure to tip off Rick Veitch, Tom Yeates and I and our circle to which ones he found preferable, and why. John also worked with a range of croquill and cartoonist pen nibs (the kind you dip into ink, not mechanical pens or markers) in the '80s -- alas, most of those are no longer manufactured, and as Al Williamson warned us all early in that decade, if and when we found a tip we liked, it was advisable to stock up on them in bulk, as they'd soon be gone. The preferred cartooning pen points tended to be fairly flexible -- particularly given the rigors John put them through! -- and flow of ink was critical, too.

Getting a good ink became problematic after Higgins changed their Black Magic formula: I've no idea what John prefers these days, but we used to wrestle with the (rarely satisfactory) problem of finding a decent replacement or substitute on a fairly regular basis.

Finally, John experimented constantly, and it's tough to tell what exactly you might be seeing on any given printed page. Did he get that texture with brush, pen and ink, or with some other rendering method: toothbrush, sponge, organic (as in actually pasting down lichens, molds, etc.) or inorganic (the working mechanical parts that constituted his Swamp Thing: Loving the Alien pages)? John was quite inventive at times, laying down layers of anything from painter's shellac to Elmer's Glue onto the art, letting it dry, and then drawing/painting upon or scratching/cutting/abrasively texturing the surface with ink or some other rendering substance (the sky was the limit), all to arrive at a texture he found compelling, interesting, or necessary. Really, anything went, and anything goes!

Specific to your question, Heath, some of those line patterns you find so compelling were often laid down with pen (for the finer lines), thickening gradually to the point where John which switch (seamlessly) to brush strokes, perfectly matching and then expanding the line quality of the pen portions. He was and is a master of such mixed-tool applications, and again, the flow of the lines themselves were imperative: not for their uniformity, but for their gradual variation and transmutation.

Ah, the Totleben magic! Unfortunately, almost all the reprints in all editions of John's seminal 1980s works invariably lose a good deal of his original linework, due to the diminishing returns and degradation of subtleties characteristic of shooting or scanning from photostats and/or copies rather than the originals (the DC/Vertigo Swamp Thing paperbacks are particularly sorry in this department). The original printings -- however cheesy the newsprint or paper they were printed upon -- remain the truest to John's exquisite original efforts, and are well worth seeking out.
__

As for ink wash, Heath, that's simpler stuff in one way. Wash is, simply, a dilution of ink in water: the greater the proportional quantity of ink, the denser (darker) the wash, the greater the proportional quantity of water, the lighter the wash. Thus, one can work from black to white via gradations of gray from one end of the scale to another, with remarkable control of density and effect, once one is skilled in the technique.

That is, of course, easier said than done. As anyone who works or has worked with watercolors can attest, "control" is as much a factor of one's willingness to let accidents happen and "go with the flow" (literally) as anything. Black-and-white-and-gray wash is less volatile a medium than full spectrum watercolors, but it's still a matter of playing with the tools and washes with a certain disregard for "control" that's the ticket. I just did a couple weeks of sessions at CCS on wash, urging the students to relax enough to experiment and explore the potential via lots of messy accidents and seeing what happened, where things went, without fretting over "control."

It is most often applied with brush -- as with ink or watercolor, brushes of different sizes and types yield different levels of control, from laying down wide areas of wash to delicate work with finer brushes. Other tools are applicable -- sponges, rags, toothbrushes, whatever -- once one gets the hang of it and wants to play with different textures and such. As in with the cases I mentioned with John, the sky is the limit -- I mean, I've done wash pieces using glued down shed snake skin, painted with yogurt, used spilled coffee -- but the typical tool of the trade is a watercolor brush.

Once one gains a certain comfort level via trial & error, wash can be a tremendous medium to work in. Many of our greatest single-panel gag cartoonists (e.g., The New Yorker tradition, etc.) were masters of the medium -- check out Charles Addams work sometime, if you haven't already. In comics, it's hard to beat the early Warren work by Steve Ditko for a real crash-course in the power and possibilities of working with wash: the medium transformed Ditko's art, at a time when he was also drawing his key '60s stories for Marvel and Charlton.

Then, just to confuse matters (especially since I can't post illustrations and have to rely on clumsy words to describe what's better shown and seen), there's also the matter of transparent washes vs. opaque (or more opaque) washes -- the former, washes as watercolors, the latter a more painterly approach to using graytones. But let's not go there today -- just note the two approaches exist, and are quite different in technique and effect, though they can be used quite effectively in combination with one another.

I went through a very productive dance with wash as my preferred rendering technique, from about 1979 to 1983 (with some of my Scholastic Magazines stories, Bizarre Adventures stories like "A Frog is a Frog", and the story "Kultz" for Epic). Alas, the crap printing Marvel used on Bizarre Adventures prompted me to abandon the technique -- no matter, I was soon pencilling Swamp Thing, which leads us back to the first part of your question about John's work.

Hope this answered your question!
___

Home Agin, Home Agin, Jiggedy-Jig...

I'm back to the Blogosphere after a healthy few days away. I've much to share, and here it comes, piecemeal today -- I'll post a few posts, just to catch up and bring you all up to snuff.
__

My website pro Jane Wilde and I got together a week ago to pull together the homepage graphics for the Bissette website under construction. This was a key turning point, and it's at last beginning to fall into place. Soon, my site will be up and running, with mucho art, pix, articles and fun!

Among the hinderances every step of the way -- which I've bitched about here before, and which is pending as a Marlboro Town Meeting issue -- is the fact that we poor louts here in Marlboro have no access to high-speed internet services of any kind. Thus, building this site has been a slow-mo process, as everything takes two to five times longer than it should, particularly where loading images is concerned.

One of this week's distractions was the necessary every-couple-of-months weedout of email. Being away for a few days, email always gets completely out of hand, and I spent yesterday plowing through 200+ emails. The process is extenuated enormously due to dial-up-only access; what takes seconds on my high-speed access friends' computers takes literally hours to move through. When a hog-ass banner ad comes up, the email message won't open, necessitating 'refresh' (sometimes two and three times) before the damned email letter is even visible. The system will freeze up at least once every two hours, necessitating rebooting and then cleaning up the fragmented debris from the freeze/crash -- it's an endurance test and a major waste of time.

Hence, the blog sabbatical.
___

Amid the sabbatical, I also avoided checking everyone else's blogs.

This morning, I caught up reading my friends's blogs (I'll catch up on other online fun later in the week, or not at all). Among the fine reading there was Tim Lucas's Video Watchblog, sporting an amazingly detailed review of the new Warner The Adventures of Superman: Season 2 DVD set. Worth a read, particularly for you vintage TV show and Superman buffs, and Tim's words of wisdom await you

here.

Enjoy!
________

This was posted on the blog in the past day or two, in reference to my two-part writeup a month or two back of Abel Gance's J'Accuse and Joe Dante's Homecoming episode of Masters of Horror. I've no idea if Paul will catch this followup reply here, but here's my best shot. Paul posted the following comment on 2/25:

"Hi, I've just found this page and was intrigued to know how I could get hold of a copy of the silent version of J'accuse - I've looked everywhere for it but without success! I know there was once a 148 minute version on NTSC vhs, but I have never found it - is there any way I can get a copy? Thank you! Paul"

Hmmm, you know the silent J'Accuse was available? It took me a decade to luck into a watchable bootleg (with the original French intertitles) of the silent J'Accuse, which to my knowledge never saw a legal (or, for that matter, accessible "gray market") release of any kind. The copy I have certainly isn't 148 minutes; I've never heard of the film running that length (if you see this reply, email me directly, Paul -- msbissette@yahoo.com -- and let's talk).

Gance's stunning 1937 remake, however, did enjoy a legal home video release, as noted in my two-part blog essay. That was a vhs-only release via Connoisseur Video Collection copyrighted 1991, clocking in at 125 minutes and now long out-of-print. In a full year of scouring eBay regularly for all things Gance, I've never seen a copy up for sale, nor a DVD copy of either version of J'Accuse, though 'gray market' boots of other key Gance works (like La Roue) do surface from time to time, usually from UK sources (and hence playable only on 'all region' DVD players). As I also noted in the two-parter, Sinister Cinema did offer a vhs version of the US edited version of the 1937 J'Accuse under its US roadshow title That They May Live. That may still be available from Sinister, and is worth tracking down if access to the relatively complete (it seems there are no truly complete Gance films in existence!) Connoisseur Video Collection edition.

Anyhoot, Paul, I've no idea if you'll see this reply -- if so, write me. Best of luck!
_______

Speaking of looking for curios and elusive movie-related thingies online:

One of the odd occurences of the past week that will only make sense to the more rabid collectors out there was the frustration of not being able to identify, or coax a proper identification from the eBay and Abebooks dealers of, a particular book I have been seeking for some time.

The book in question is Volume 2 of the 1985 Harvard University Press Cahiers du Cinema, which is subtitled
The 1960s: New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, and edited by Jim Hillier, who also edited the first volume in the series. I long ago picked up volumes 1 and 3 in a nearby used bookshop, and they're great collections of key Cahiers texts (Cahiers du Cinema was, for those of you who don't know, one of the seminal magazines on the medium, wellspring of the auteur theory and the springboard for the entire French "New Wave" movement of the late 1950s and '60s: Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol et al wrote for Cahiers before making films). But finding the elusive second volume has been a fool's errand.

I've ordered no less than three copies over the past year via online venues, and in every case, the dealer sends me (unfailingly) the first volume! I am refunded in each case, though I'm losing $$ with the return shipping costs. The 'stock' photo used for all online listings is of volume one, and given the constant burn of ordering what is clearly listed as volume two turning out to be the same book I've had for ten years, I have taken the precaution of asking in advance if it is indeed the second volume I'm purchasing -- but that, too, fails!

Here's this week's exchange with an eBay dealer offering "three copies" (most likely, volumes one, two and three, not three copies of the same book) of the elusive volume online. I wrote:

Item: Cahiers Du Cinema - Hillier, Jim *NEW (4613822476)
This message was sent while the listing was active.
stevebissette is a potential buyer.
Thanks for your time -- This is a THREE-VOLUME set of
books originally, and I'm wondering WHICH of the three
volumes you have for sale. Please read carefully:
I need volume 2 (CAHIERS DU CINEMA: The 1960s:
New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood,
edited by Jim Hillier) -- I already HAVE vols. 1
(CAHIERS DU CINEMA: The 1950s, pictured with your
listing) and vol. 3 (CAHIERS DU CINEMA: 1969-1972,
ed. by Nick Browne), and do NOT wish to bid/purchase
on those.
Please reply ASAP and please help me -- reliable eBay
buyer (see my rating) -- THANK YOU! Steve Bissette,
[email and phone number provided]
Respond to this question in My Messages.
Item Details
Item name: Cahiers Du Cinema - Hillier, Jim *NEW
Item number: 4613822476
End date: Mar-17-06 00:34:45 PST

Clear enough?

Here's the reply I've received, in duplicate, from the dealer in question:

From: "Regina - Movie Mars, Inc."   
To: msbissette@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Question for item #4613822476 - Cahiers Du Cinema - Hillier, Jim *NEW
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:03:01 -0500


Thank you for your interest in our item.  The auction page has all of the information that we currently have.  I have requested this information from our supplier, however they may not get back to me beofre the auction ends.  You may want to look on amazon.com for the information as they have the same supplier that we do, we are just a bit cheaper.  I would also like to mention that we have a 30-day satisfaction guarentee on all items.  We do hope that you will deicde to make a purchase from us.
 

Regina
Customer Service

Movies. Music. Madness.
www.moviemars.com

The other three dealers haven't bothered to reply at all.

Well, reckon I won't be bidding on or buying that book.

Anyone out there have any bright ideas, I'm all ears. This has been the single most frustrating online non-experience I've had -- and promises to remain such.
______________

A few Lucio Fulci book updates, from my associates in Italy:

Posted as a comment on the Fulci book blog posting from Tuesday are these links from "nuvoleonline" -- thanks, C! -- which I want to alert you to in case you don't read the comments (particularly those from past posts):

"Hi! News on the book Lucio Fulci - Poeta del macabro:
you can see some previews online

here

and

here.

Bye!
c.

And the man who invited Daniel and I to submit work to the book, Smoky Man himself, wrote me with a different link to share:

"...take a look to

Comicus

(scroll the page) there you can see some posts of the Fulci book..."

Thanks, Smoky Man!
_________

I've got about 9 inches of snow to go shovel, folks, and will be talking to Coke Sams before the morning is out...

More later today.

Nice to be back!

I Sing the Body Fulci!

Prologue: Day Trippers Prep: In Which the Author Notes: "car gassed up, check; CCS class materials in the car with directions we'll need Wednesday, check; shirts, check; socks, check --" Ad Infinitum, While Hinting at Things Unspeakable and Projects As Yet Unknowable Outside of Those In-The-Know

Marj and I are doing pretty good for our planned day-trips this week, already packed and all; I'll be away from the computer for a couple days to lose myself in and about the home state (lots of easy day trips hereabouts in VT), so this particular post is as good as it gets until Thursday, folks.

It's been a busy, at times frantic, week or so. Amid what you've read about here over the past few days, there's also been a day spent finishing up a pair of collage/painting illustrations that are designed to be used as four roughly conjoined book covers (for the upcoming S.R. Bissette's Blur tomes from Black Coat Press), considerable prep for both this week's CCS class and Wednesday's Danville High School presentation on comics and graphic novels, and a chunk of time spent writing and continuing the cataloguing of the We Are Going to Eat You! book material. And that's just some of what's happening (I've also been working with a White River Junction group pulling together a film festival for the end of April, and finally re-engaged with a board of directors I belong to dedicated to reviving a venerable eatery in downtown Brattleboro that's long been missing-in-action and quite sorely missed).

And still, so much of what I'm doing or have done is, well, secret. I mean, per instructions from "above" and such, not just because I'm being a butthead or something.

I'm scrambling over a third script for one ongoing 'secret project' that's a personal favorite (planned for a 2007 release). The second script was finished and turned in last week, and my creative partner in (and the man in charge of) this project was quite pleased with the results, for which I'm thankful. I really poured a lot of myself into the script, and it felt like it came together nicely in the final lap. I'm popping in on him next week to check out his finished pages from the script completed in 2005, and can't wait to see what that looks like.

In January, I received a phone call bringing me up-to-date on the final phase of a project I spent a lot of time on in 2004 and a bit in 2005; odd as it may sound, the success of that effort means it's all history now. Having done my part (and been handsomely compensated), I just have to let it all go and let it fade into the past, never to be spoken of again. Sigh. Ah, I've already said too much.

Last week, I got word from the man behind another 'secret project' (2004-2005) for which the promotional website launch is soon to be launched -- mere days from now! I'll at last be able to tip that hand, and you'll see some of the fruits of another venture my son Dan and I put our hand to a year or so ago. I can tell you it was comics-related, and it means some of Dan's and my artwork will be on a few big screens in the upcoming film festival season, if all goes well.

If this all seems a bit vague and maddening to you, just think how I feel about it. So much work on so many projects I can't talk about -- it's like working for the government or something.

With Criswell at last put to rest and little concrete to report from here -- here's something I've been saving up that I can at last share with you.
____________

Part the First: In Which Bissette Introduces Fulci in a Roundabout Manner.

A "teaser" preview of my essay on Lucio Fulci for the upcoming Italian book on the late, great gore-maestro. My 'Man in Milan' Smoky Man (who extended the invitation to myself and my son Daniel to contribute to the anthology) just wrote today to say the book's come together topping 200 pages (!) and he and the co-editors are expecting it'll be selling for "...cover price: 8 euro!" News and links as & when it's available at last.

So here's a tidbit from “Don’t Fulci Yourself!” Or: How I Came to Love Lucio and His Greater Grasp of a Malevolent Universe Intent on Our Ill Being" -- it's all true, and this is just a taste of what's to come. (I will eventually be revising and expanding this into a chapter for a book I'm working on that is a sort of personalized overview of the drive-in and grindhouse movie culture of the '60s and '70s, so in a way, this is a 'double' preview.) Enjoy!
_____

Part the Second: "Don't Fulci Yourself!" Excerpt/Teaser, to Tantalize and Stimulate a Desire to Read/See More.

"...Born in 1955, I’d grown up with the classic Universal horror films of the ‘30s and ‘40s unreeling on late night TV, usually trimmed for time slots and interrupted mercilessly by insipid commercials. The Hammer films of the ‘50s reached me via late night TV, too, usually cut and abbreviated, but the ‘60s Hammer horrors were part and parcel of my formative theatrical experiences, as were the beloved works of Mario Bava, whose colorful gothics and blood-spattered contemporary-set giallos stained my visions, dreams, and eventually my own artwork. By the time I was in high school and college, I was covertly booking 16mm prints of Bava’s films, and my addiction to Italian horror films was a pact with the devil sealed in time, love and devotion.

For me, Fulci was one of the many Italian horror maestros who emerged from the wake of Bava’s passing. I had experienced a few of his films as they came out on the big screen -- the first, GATES OF HELL (original title: PAURA NELLA CITTA DEI MORTI VIVENTI/CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, 1980), was caught essentially by accident during a weekend visit to my friend Jack Venooker, who lives in northern Vermont (my home state). We were such devotees of George Romero and all things horrible that we had once driven from Johnson State College the five hours to and five hours from Boston, Massachusetts to catch the first showing in New England of THE CRAZIES aka CODE NAME TRIXIE (we were not disappointed).

On impulse, Jack and I decided to catch a movie -- ANY movie -- at one of the few remaining drive-in theaters in the Burlington, VT area. A double-bill led by GATES OF HELL caught our eye thanks to the lurid visage of a rotting zombie that figured prominently in the US newspaper ad campaign, so off we went, armed with a bit of beer and a lot of marijuana.

It was a deliciously schizophrenic experience, and I imagine typical of most Americans’s experience of Fulci: GATES OF HELL delighted, repulsed, and ultimately befuddled me. The skeletal semi-Lovecraftian narrative caught my fancy, punctuated as it was by faux-Lovecraft ‘landmarks’ like the use of the village name of Dunwich (“Dulwich”?). Truer to the Lovecraft and pulp-era horror short stories I was weaned on, Fulci more tellingly evoking a subterranean hell of filthy sod, root-choked walls of dirt, and fetid walking-dead inhabitant capable of appearing and disappearing with nightmarish illogic. This stuff I loved, along with the gleeful aggression of the violence, however nonsensical its escalation. And nonsensical it was: from the sudden face-fulls of maggots to the ludicrously overblown skull-drilling of pasty-faced retard ladies man Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice in the role that first burned him into my memory banks), this was a level of unslakable blood-thirst that seemed clumsy but more relentless than even George Romero’s most aggressive excesses.

Romero, at least, wielded his eruptions of gore with narrative and thematic precision and intent. Fulci, on the other hand, seemed like a mad, rabid canine, sinking his teeth into our psychic flanks without provocation at any turn. By the time the ghostly Father Thomas appeared to the necking teen couple (Michele Soavi and Daniela Doria), illogically prompting dear lovely Daniela to cry blood and then vomit up her entire digestive tract with a strangely
impassive look on her face, my friend Jack and I were stoned to the gills. We were suitably gob-smacked by this latest turn of events, and almost choked laughing as the seemingly-interminable process ended with a sloppy slip of the final intestinal loop -- mere seconds before loverboy Michele had the back of his head torn into by a ghoul that inexplicably appeared in the back seat, ripping his fucking brain out. Whew. What was this Fulci fellow smoking? Whatever it was, we wanted some. Right then and there.

Still, the early sequence in which Christopher George tries to free premature burial victim Catriona MacColl from her coffin with a pick-axe was silly but startlingly effective; clearly, Fulci had the chops to get under our skins. But demolishing all expectations and fragmenting any coherent sense of time, place, and sequential cause-and-effect seemed to be the anarchistic agenda -- were we just too stoned, or was this loopy flick deliberately scrambling our brains with the same opaque ferocity of its damned muck-and-clay slavered zombies? Bleeding walls, showers of maggots (a fillip lifted from Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA, natch), rings of fire rippling up and down corners of darkened rooms, more skull-busting brain-ripping zombie ambushes, and so on and on and on until the pallid Father Thomas at last gets his via a gut-spilling wooden cross to the midsection and everything undead spontaneously combusts. “Man, this is one fucked-up movie,” Jack muttered with some relief, but the most bewildering split-second was yet to come: as Fulci devotees know, GATES OF HELL doesn’t so much end as it shambles to a criminally abbreviated termination point. As the nominal cipher hero and heroine (Carlo de Mejo and Ms. MacColl) wriggle from the underground chamber now peppered with the burning dead, the androgynous boy John-John (echoing President JFK’s son’s name, played here by Luca Paisner) runs toward them in a seperate shot, clearly happy and excited to see them; suddenly, Carlo and Catriona look distressed and then fearful, and to the sudden intrusion of Catriona’s shrill scream on the soundtrack, the smiling image of John-John freezes and splinters, shatters.

Horns immediately began honking: enough people in their cars presumed this was a result of a film-jam in the projector to kick up a fuss, though Jack and I knew better due to the scream and reintroduction of the ominous musical score. This wasn’t a projection error, but it was a corker of a reality-fart, and we turned to look at each other before breaking up completely and laughing our asses off. We were so delighted, disoriented, and disinterested in whatever might appear on the screen after this clusterfuck (I only remember it wasn’t a horror movie; for that, we might have stuck around) that we packed up and drove home.

Thus, I entered the cinematic universe of Lucio Fulci’s horror films. I’ve since tracked down all I could or can as they were within reach. Thankfully, two of those -- HOUSE BY THE CEMETARY (QUELLA VILLA ACCANTO AL CIMITERO, 1981) and eventually ZOMBIE (ZOMBI 2, 1979) -- I saw on the big screen, the former during its initial run in Springfield, Massachusetts mall theater, the latter among the last films I ever saw on New York City’s notorious 42nd Street. I’d avoided ZOMBIE first time around, and owe an apology to my Joe Kubert School classmate John Bisson (who went on to work professionally on makeup effects, including a stint as a designer and artist with KNB, Inc.), who first recommended I check out the film. “Steve, really, it’s like a Val Lewton film or something, there’s a real sort of poetry to it,” he implored, screening the infamous underwater zombie-vs.-white-shark sequence for me and two fellow Kuberts School vets via videocassette on his home studio TV. At the time, we all laughed, but hell, John, you were right -- though the Lewton association is a reach, I later caught ZOMBIE in a piss-and-mold reeking Deuce hardtop theater, and was overwhelmed by
the impact of the film...."
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Part the Last: In Which the Author Appeals to the Anonymous Reader, Hoping One Might Be He Whom He Seeks, Before Bailing on Said Reader for Days.

For those of you who recall the Kingdom (where my old discussion board "The Swamp" wallowed), yep, that's the same Jack Venooker of Kingdom fame and infamy. I haven't seen or heard from Jack in some time; such is life. We had some fine times, and it's been a pleasure to share one of them with you. (Drop a line sometime, Jack.)

BTW, if you're out there, John -- or if anyone can put me in touch with John Bisson -- I'd love to re-establish contact. Miss you, too!
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Epilogue: An Enigmatic and Somewhat Cryptic Parting Quotation, Implying Much But Saying Little of Direct Relevence to the Above, But of Abundant Import to Our Current State of Affairs as a People and Country.

"Tradition is democracy extended through time. Tradition means giving the vote to that most obscure of classes, our ancestors. Tradition is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are walking about." - G. K. Chesterton
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See you all again here on Thursday.

Until then, have a great couple of days...

Early Monday Morn post...

It's Marj's vaca week from her school district, so I'll be posting erratically this week as we pip around. Among the week's duties for me is my Tuesday at CCS and an early morning presentation/lecture at a high school in Danville, VT, up in the Northeast Kingdom a bit.

So, some day trips, some time away from the 'puter, that's fine with me -- but that means no daily posts this week.

So, a long and varied one for you this morning, to pick up the coming slack...
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En route home today from a marvelous birthday brunch with Mark & Jeannie Martin and Mike Dobbs & Mary Cassidy, Marj and I took the long route home off the interstate since it was such a lovely afternoon.

Cruising north on Vermont's scenic Route 100 -- it's southernmost passage, heading up from Jacksonville toward Wilmington -- we hit a light snow squall, which lent an odd, wispy patina to the sky.

About a mile and a half before Wilmington, we were startled by a brown-and-gray bolt from the right side of the road: a young adult Eastern Coyote in his prime darted in front of our car, sprinting safely to the other side of the road and through a thicket of trees. I slowed down and pulled over long enough to steal a look back at the coyote, which was now standing looking at us from a patch of snow-covered field just the other side of the thin trees and brush: God, he was a handsome devil! He was big enough that Marj thought it was a German Shepard, but it was definitely a coyote -- the healthiest coyote I've ever seen in these parts.

I don't recall coyotes up in northern Vermont during my childhood and teen years, but since returning to VT in 1979 (after my years at the Kubert School and shacking up with Veitch, Totleben & Yeates in Dover NJ for another year or so), they've been pretty omnipresent -- usually heard rather than seen. Late nights in the summer, they can sound like partying teenagers out in the woods (I kid you not), and when my first wife Marlene and I lived down Lower Dover Road here in Marlboro, we lost at least three cats to the coyote packs that frequented the forests between Marlboro, Dover, and Newfane. I was surprised a few years back to see a farmer on one of the backroads betwixt Marlboro and Brattleboro standing in broad daylight with his rifle ready, one burly dead coyote already sprawled in the bed of his beat up pickup truck; the farmer was scanning the treeline across the pasture from where he was parked by the roadside, no doubt intent on lining up another coyote in his rifle sights.

The coyote we got such a good look at today wasn't too far from human habitats: in fact, just down the road a few yards, a couple of kids were sledding at the foot of their driveway. A couple of horse farms were within a half mile of where we saw the coyote, and Wilmington was just down the road a piece. With the ground so bare of snow for February and the day such a beaut (cold -- low teens -- but crisp and clear, except for the very light snow we passed through), it was no surprise we saw so many hawks in plain sight on both legs of our trip, but that coyote was a rare treat.
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More cool comics or comics-related online reading and viewing:

* Wiseass spotlight on easy targets like The Dazzler, Dr. Bong, The Warlock and so many more will provide some amusement over at

Something Awful: The Comics Fashion Police!

(Special thanks to James Sturm for bringing this to light!)

* Speaking of James, he also steered we-at-CCS to this cool site sporting photos of fave underground comix cartoonists:

Cool Cal Cartoonists

* If you haven't been habitually reading Tim Lucas's stellar Video Watchblog (why haven't you??), let me steer you diehard comics vets who loved the old Bob Oksner DC Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope & Dobie Gillis comics as much as Tim does (and I did) over to his engaging

Strange Case of Dr. Jerry & Mr. Gillis!

BTW, it's worth noting -- since I know some of you are also horror buffs -- that during the 1950s and early '60s reign of the Comics Code in its "no monsters" heyday, it was these comics (and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen) that kept the key archetypes -- vampires, werewolves, and Frankenstein's Monster -- alive in four-color pages by playing them for laughs, which is about all the Code would permit in the wake of the EC and Pre-Code horror comics purge.

More later in the week...

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This just in via email, adding to the 'kangaroo court' aspect of the current American scene.

Between the military tribunals targeting detainees, suspected terrorists, and the few soldiers who've taken the fall for the various abuse and torture scandals, it's been hard to keep track of what passes for judgements and/or verdicts; this public tribunal, while intended to counter such perceived injustices, somehow only adds to the Kafkaesque atmosphere of the times we're living in. I'm completely aligned with their views and outrage, but this is such a curious spectacle -- I'm not sure what, if any, validity it holds for most Americans, who most likely consider it radical "mock trial" theater rather than what it intends to be. Which is the more Alice in Wonderland-like: what passes for investigations and trials from the government, or the retaliatory attempts by passionate and outraged professionals and citizens to redress the sham maneuvers the present Administration indulges? I really don't know -- both 'sides' are dead serious, and it's all increasingly infuriating, bewildering, plunging us all further down this damned rabbit hole.

I'll post this without further comment, but with links intact, in case any of you are interested in finding out more:

"Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience"
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:26:01 -0600


Bush on Trial for Crimes against Humanity
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report

Tuesday 24 January 2006

The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration

convened last weekend in New York City's Riverside Church. Martin Luther King Jr.'s portrait hangs in the foyer. Dr. King delivered his historic 1967 speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Place to Break the Silence," opposing the war and calling for the removal of all foreign troops from Vietnam, in that same church.

Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner, who delivered a keynote address to the commission of inquiry, invoked Dr. King's words from 1967: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." The following year, the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal put the US government on trial for "crimes without precedent" it was committing in Vietnam. In the tradition of the Russell tribunal, the panel of judges at the commission of inquiry heard evidence of George W. Bush's war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.

Ratner said that Bush openly and notoriously "laid the plan for coup d'état in America" with a small paragraph in his "signing statement" attached to the McCain anti-torture amendment. Bush wrote that his commander in chief power allows him to do anything he thinks is necessary, including torture, notwithstanding the amendment passed by Congress. Ratner called that a "historic, unprecedented grab for power" that spells the end of checks and balances in our government. Bush, according to Ratner, has declared that George Bush is the law.

Harry Belafonte gave the other keynote address. "When a government fails to protect justice," Belafonte declared, "it is the responsibility of the people to rise up and change the guard, change the regime." In a hoarse voice, the legendary singer charged, "Those who fail to answer that call should be charged with patriotic treason."

T r u t h o u t writer Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1961 to 1990, took the testimony of Scott Ritter, a senior United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. The allegation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was the only justification on which George W. Bush's war in Iraq was based, McGovern said. He cited statements by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice before September 11, 2001, that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs and was unable to pose even a conventional threat to his neighbors. After September 11, however, Donald Rumsfeld expressed "no doubt" that Hussein had WMDs. "A trained ape knows that," Rumsfeld said.

Ritter noted that Rumsfeld knew Iraq had disarmed and had no ongoing weapons program. By 1998, the weapons inspectors had accounted for 95 to 98 percent of Iraq's WMDs, Ritter said. "No nation had hard factual data that Iraq retained or was reconstituting WMDs," Ritter added. "No nation had those facts."

The Bush administration willfully misled the American people about Iraq's weapons programs, Ritter charged. When Dick Cheney said that Iraq was constituting its nuclear program, he "was lying," Ritter said.

From 1991 to 2003, the United States policy in Iraq was regime change, according to Ritter. The US and the United Kingdom sought to maintain the public perception that Iraq was not complying with its obligations to disarm, in order to justify regime change. The US never intended to disarm Iraq; it would have had to lift the sanctions, which were aimed at undermining Iraq's welfare, weakening the government, and facilitating regime change.

"Intelligence" in the George W. Bush administration "was being fixed around the policy of regime change," Ritter maintained. "What passes for intelligence is nothing more than politically motivated propaganda." He said, "There was no intelligence failure because the policy wasn't disarmament; it was regime change."

Another witness, David Swanson, from

afterdowningstreet.org,

detailed the Downing Street Minutes, which were prepared in March 2002 and July 2002, but were leaked to the public last spring. They disclosed that Bush was determined to go to war and was building a case to accomplish that goal. "Intelligence was being fixed around the policy," the minutes reveal. "Going to the UN was an attempt to legalize a war that had already been decided upon," Swanson testified.

Dahr Jamal, who spent 8 months in occupied Iraq as an independent journalist, also testified at the commission. He charged that the US military carried out collective punishment in Fallujah in violation of international law. Snipers engaged in targeted killings, and troops prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and prevented the wounded from receiving medical attention, violations of the Geneva Conventions.

The United States decided that the entire city of Fallujah, with more than 350,000 civilians, was "a free-fire-zone," Jamal said. In the attack on Fallujah in November 2004, between 4,000 and 6,000 civilians were killed. The US military employed illegal weapons, including cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous.

Jamal accused the media, including CNN, Fox, Judith Miller, Thomas Friedman, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh, of aiding and abetting the Bush administration's war crimes and crimes against humanity in their coverage of the US assault on Fallujah.

Another eyewitness to the occupation, journalist Jeremy Scahill, testified about the targeted killing of independent journalists by the US military. He cited the killing of an Al Jazeera reporter and the bombing of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, both on April 8, 2004. More than 100 unembedded journalists were in that hotel, and the US knew it, Scahill contended. The attack killed two cameramen.

Scahill said the Pentagon warned unembedded journalists, "Baghdad is not a safe place. You should not be there."

The Bush administration has consistently attempted to link Iraq with the September 11 attacks. Scahill observed, "There is a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. It's called Washington," he said.

Challenging the Democrats to end the war, Scahill alleged: "We can't be vegetarians between meals. A loyal opposition is not going to end this war."

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, testified before the commission. Murray charged that Uzbekistan practices torture on an industrial scale. He cited a UN investigation that concluded torture was widespread and systemic in that country. Thousands of people are tortured every year, Murray said. This includes rape with objects like broken bottles, smashing of limbs, pulling out of fingernails, and immersing people into boiling liquid.

Uzbekistan, Murray said, is a US ally in the war on terror, a member of the coalition of the willing. Murray displayed a letter on the big screen. It was from Ken Lay, former chairman of Enron, to then Texas Governor George W. Bush in April 1997. It began, "Dear George" ["Look who's boss," Murray noted], and continued, "You will be meeting with" the Uzbek ambassador to the United States to discuss Enron's $2 billion oil and gas contract.

The real reason underlying the war in Iraq, Murray testified, was oil and gas. So "they needed false intelligence from torture chambers," he said, in order to justify the war on terror. Sir Michael Wood informed Murray that the official position was that it's not illegal to get information from torture provided they do not themselves torture or direct that a specific individual be tortured.

"You can't build security on evil," Murray said. "I don't believe torture works," he concluded. "But even it if did work, I'd rather die than have anyone tortured to save my life."

I presented the testimony of Janis Karpinski, a brigadier general who was assigned to Iraq in July 2003 to oversee 17 prison facilities, including Abu Ghraib. Karpinski described how General Geoffrey Miller transferred the interrogation techniques he had instituted at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay to Abu Ghraib.

Miller was specially selected by Rumsfeld and sent to Iraq to run the interrogations operation, to work with the military intelligence personnel and teach them new and improved interrogation techniques to obtain more actionable intelligence from their interrogations.

When Miller arrived at Abu Ghraib, he said, "It's my opinion that you're treating the prisoners too well. At Guantánamo, the prisoners know that we are in charge, and they know that from the very beginning." He said, "You have to treat the prisoners like dogs, and if you think or feel differently, you've lost control."

Miller declared, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation" (referring to the techniques they used at Guantánamo Bay).

Karpinski thought Miller came with the authority of Rumsfeld because General Ricardo Sanchez, who was a 3-star, deferred to Miller, although he was only a 2-star. Even though Miller told Congress he was sent to Abu Ghraib merely in an assisting capacity, Colonel Thomas Pappas furnished Miller with a daily report detailing the results of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

Sanchez himself signed an 8-page memorandum with a laundry list of harsher interrogation techniques, including the specific use of unmuzzled dogs, Karpinski said.

Control of cellblocks 1-A and 1-B, "the hard sites," was transferred to military intelligence. Karpinski didn't learn of the torture and abuse until January 12, 2004. In fact, she never attended any of the meetings in which the progress of interrogations was discussed. Sanchez said, "We scheduled them specifically when she would not be available to attend."

When Karpinski was told about the photographs and the abuse, she prepared to hold a press conference and tell the Iraqis in Arabic that there would be a full investigation. But Sanchez warned her off. "He looked me dead in the eye and said, 'absolutely not. You are not to discuss this with anyone. And that's an order.'"

Karpinski discovered that all personnel and documents relating to the scandal had been removed from Abu Ghraib. The only thing that remained was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld. It was called, "Approval of Harsher Interrogation Techniques," and listed sleep deprivation, stress positions, playing loud music, insulting religious beliefs. In the margin, there was a note in Rumsfeld's handwriting. It said, "Make sure this happens."

Sanchez would not have implemented the techniques without the approval of Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld would not have authorized them without the approval of the vice president, Karpinski testified. "And so it filtered down, and it never filtered down to me because I wasn't even responsible for interrogations."

Ultimately, however, Karpinski and 7 low-ranking soldiers were made the scapegoats. Karpinski was demoted to colonel. "I believe the Pentagon wanted to put this into a nice little package, 7 so-called bad apples, out of control on the night shift, and a female officer. They wanted to put that in a package, tie it up in a bow, and sink it forever, to make people believe we got it under control, we solved the problem."

Karpinski also testified that American female soldiers in Iraq were assaulted or raped by male soldiers in the women's latrines, and an alarming number committed suicide. "Because the women were in fear of getting up in the darkness [to go to the latrine], they were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon," Karpinski said. "In the 100 degree heat, they were dying of dehydration in their sleep. Rather than making everyone aware - it was shocking - they told the surgeon not to brief on the details, and don't say specifically that they were women." Karpinski identified the commander who ordered that the cause of death of the women not be listed on the death certificates. It was General Sanchez, she said.

The commission heard testimony about the Bush administration's criminal responsibility for indefinite detention, rendition for torture, destruction of the global environment, attacks on global public health and reproductive rights, and actions and inactions leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina. The panel of judges will consider the testimony and release its findings.

(Read my exclusive t r u t h o u t interview with Janis Karpinski: Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration

here.)

------------

Marjorie Cohn

is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.
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A Day Without Electricity is Like a Day Without the 21st Century

With the heavy winds that hit the state yesterday, our power was knocked out for a full 25 hours. We had one of those nifty gas faux-woodstoves installed when we moved in back in 2002, so we had no probs keeping the house warm enough to ward off freezing plumbing (a semi-cozy 51 degrees), but the lack of lights sent us scurrying off to the big town of Brattleboro last night for a pleasant dinner out and a movie (Woody Allen's latest Match Point, which was also delicious).

It was too dim and drafty inside to do much other than read and tend to household tasks, from the banal day-to-days of dishes and such to long-put-off projects like finishing up picture-hanging and furniture-rearranging in the new guest room (formerly Daniel's room) on the second floor.

All in all, a blissful way to past a Friday and part of a Saturday.
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What would Dave Sim make of Robert Graves's White Goddess, I wonder? Gee, I miss the conversations Dave and I used to have; he really is (was) one of the best around for chewing the fat:

"Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its power from the moon, not from the sun. No poet can hope to understand the nature of poetry unless he has had a vision of the Naked King crucified to the lopped oak, and watched the dancers, red-eyed from the acrid smoke of the sacrificial fires, stamping out the measure of the dance, their bodies bent uncouthly forward, with a monotonous chant of: 'Kill! kill! kill!' and 'Blood! blood! blood!'" - Robert Graves, The White Goddess
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Speaking of women, the power of the moon, crucified kings and "blood, blood, blood!":

The week began with the subcommittee reports on the scandalous failure of the gov't at all levels in their individual and collective Katrina response; it ended with this bon mot from Ted Bridis of the AP:

"White House Defends Sale of Port Operations to Arab Firm"

WASHINGTON (Feb. 17) - The Bush administration on Thursday rebuffed criticism about potential security risks of a $6.8 billion sale that gives a company in the United Arab Emirates control over significant operations at six major American ports...

The world's fourth-largest ports company runs commercial operations at shipping terminals in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Four senators and three House members asked the administration on Thursday to reconsider its approval. The lawmakers contended the UAE is not consistent in its support of U.S. terrorism-fighting efforts.
"The potential threat to our country is not imagined, it is real," Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., said in a House speech.

DP World said it had received all regulatory approvals for its purchase and noted that the administration did not object.
"We intend to maintain and, where appropriate, enhance current security arrangements," the company said in a statement. "It is very much business as usual for the P&O terminals" in the United States.
Lawmakers said the UAE was an important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya by a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. They also said the UAE was one of only three countries to recognize the now-toppled Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government.

We are soooooooooooooooooo thankful Bush and Cheney were reelected to keep us all so safe and secure from all alarm...
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Well, maybe it's harder to claim we're all "safer" with Cheney, whatever your politics. With Texan millionaire Harry M. Whittington up and around at last, looking mighty bruised about the face and neck but live and kicking, and his good ol' boy Texan millionaire concern for his hunting pal Dick -- I mean, really, Dick's had a hard week, hasn't he? -- I reckon this story is played out. Still, questions persist: with all the meds our cyborg Vice President takes for his ticker and well-being, that beer (just one) he had that morning was still likely a bad idea, and the blanket tossed over this event at first and Cheney's characteristic late response (in which he still equivocated!) make for fascinating addendums to the pathology of both this Vice President and this Administration.

But my buddy Joe Citro raises the most interesting question of the week regarding this story:

What if the hunting accident had been the other way around?

I'm pretty certain we wouldn't be reading about the local sheriff being shooed away when he showed up to investigate, or apologists lamenting the nasty ol' media's attention to the shooter. In fact, I'm willing to bet this all would have played out quite, quite differently, and we wouldn't just be hearing Harry saying "accidents do and will happen" in the same context at all.

Have a great weekend...

At last, Criswell's last predictions...

Well, it's been a couple of weeks, and it's time, O my friends, to retire the Criswell excerpts. I'll leave you with a few honeys, and hope you enjoyed this bizarre flash-from-the-past as much as Criswell did.

Here's your farewell predictions -- from the past, which is after all where we all once lived -- circa 1968. Thanks for the peek into our future unlived, Criswell!

"I Predict...that Massachusetts will be known as the most tragic state in the Union due to the great area of Atlantic Ocean coast which will be the scene of many tidal waves and undersea disturbances. There will be millions of new acres in the northeastern part of America which will rise out of the sea but not without great damage to the present states in that area. I predict that Massachusetts will continue to lose a great deal of manufacturing plants to the southern states particularly in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi due to the increasingly bad winters they will have."

"I Predict... Chicago, Ill. Jan. 10, 1970: A revival of the old fashioned Dance Marathon of the 1920s for contestants over 85 will be held, sponsored by a vitamin company testing their new product!"

"I Predict... that it will be impossible for you to lie under a new medication which will be given you before you enter court to testify."

"I Predict... the the only war to be fought on American soil will be in Alaska in the late 1980's. A combine of Russian, Chinese and Korean forces will try to get a foothold on North America by bombing the U.S., then invading Alaska. That state will be virtually destroyed in the fighting."

"I Predict... that it will be entirely possible for you to master algebra, Latin, trigonometry, or even the German language within the period of a week to capture it and learn it. You will see it on the screen, you will follow the printed test, you will push push buttons for your automation examination and you will find you will retain all there is to know of the subject that you are studying. You will also be trained for the professions in this same way."

"I Predict... paste on bikinis for you girls and clamp on bikinis for you men."

"I Predict... the present method of embalming will soon be completely discarded for a new revolutionary arterial fluid which will preserve the body for a thousand years in a perfect life-like state. Your body will then be dressed in a fiberglass burial garment and encased in a fiberglass plastic casket which will outlast the elements and endure as long as time itself.
The natural enemies of the grave, insects, rodents and water will be completely conquered and it is very possible that in a thousand years your descendants from another planet might look upon your preserved life-like remains. Our body is a temple which will be preserved forever, even after all life here is gone."

"Does any one actually die? Does any one actually vanish from the earth without a trace? Psychologists tell us that this is impossible, for each and every man, woman or child leaves something of himself on earth and never, never actually vanishes into the void! Each personality leaves a memory, an impression, a good or bad deed, which is never erased, and it is handed down from generation to generation. From your own childhood, you can remember how a grandfather or great grandmother, told you about her grandmother or great grandmother, some incident that you have retold to your family many times! In Europe, there are houses and farms which have remained in the same family since William the Conqueror, trinkets which date back to the Crusades and, even in America, a young nation compared to others, has a rich heritage of Indian lore, which somehow will never die! The people, once thought dead, remain very much alive in a living legend, with far more power than when alive. An entire cult has grown up around Evita Peron, nw elected for canonization, in Argentina. Stalin, in spite of his cold desecrated body, thrown on the ash heap of Red scorn, still is vital and breathing and is carefully followed by many Russian spiritualists who seek his advice from the Nether Realms! Yes, no one actually dies and leaves nothing behind, for no matter who they are, they live in someone's memory! And YOU will too, in your incredible future!"

More Odds and Ends, Links and Dinks...

I forgot to post a link to the weekend New Hampshire Valley News article featuring quotes from James Sturm, a number of CCS students, and yours truly; consider it a companion to the NHPR program "The Exchange" I posted earlier this week. "Protests Underscore the Power of Cartoons" by Valley News Staff Writer Alex Hanson is waiting for you

here.

___

As a fan of Werner Herzog, his films, and all things Herzog, I must thank Brad Verter at Bennington College for the following link, which is heartily recommended reading:

"Be Not Afraid" - Herzog's Secret Diaries (A Satire)

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With Rob Zombie top-contender in the shock-rock-horror-star-as-filmmaker sweepstakes (clearly eclipsing the previous model, which was Dee Snider's 1998 Strangeland), we now have Marilyn Manson stepping up to the plate, ballyhooing his upcoming Phantasmagoria. Dan Barlow sent me the following link, which is an older interview with Manson about the nerves he hopes to pluck (and pockets he still needs to pick to bankroll his opus). Manson's revisionist Alice in Wonderland is his bid to "redefine the horror genre and put it back to where it once began with people like Roman Polanski," which is admirable enough -- but he'll have a hard time topping Jan Svankmajer's Alice in my book. Still, interest is piqued, and what Manson is talking about sounds like it could become a genre companion piece to gems like Dreamchild, Finding Neverland, and Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls -- check out Manson's blather in

Down the Rabbit Hole with MM.

____

Meth is beginning to pop up in New England at last, with major busts and labs uncovered in nearby Manchester, NH.

This nasty shit is cutting quite a swathe across the country -- but the current Federal budget cuts funding for investigation or regulation of this highly-addictive tooth-pulping toxic high. This is statistically targetting women more than men (perhaps because of the immediate weight-loss effects, playing into all manner of female self-image loathings and quick-result desires), and has really hammered backwoods and low-income communities from California through the Midwest. Its arrival here was inevitable, but little has been done on a Federal level to curb the spread of this multi-level devastation (from the personal damage to the environmental destruction the labs wreak to community real estate: ex-meth labs are poison palaces, either unsellable or, if sold, instantly poisoning new home buyers who are then stuck with contaminated dwellings) -- another burden for already burdened state budgets and regional police.

Steer clear of this shit. I've seen plenty of friends and folks struggle with various addictions to this and that over my half-century, but few substances are as instantly addictive as this chemical concoction is -- and few addictive substances can so quickly deep-six one's life. 'Meth Mouth' alone is nightmare material, and that's just the beginning. I'm sad to see meth enter the area; given the broad reach of heroin addiction already widespread in Vermont and New England (initially tempting as a cheaper painkiller than the prescription drugs folks can't afford), and the clumsy manner in which that epidemic has been handled in most communities, I fear the worst as meth seeps into the impoverished homes and lives of my home state. Given the reported methods of initial distribution (including 'freebies' handed out to employees to prolong waking working hours) and the rapidity with which one can become addicted, this will really hit vulnerable communities hard -- and at all age levels.

Another health-care crisis in the making, if nothing else. While Bush and gullible Americans fret over avian flu, consider this a more pressing 'here and now' pandemic.
_____

The Federal government's ongoing ignoring of the creeping catastrophic sweep of Meth should be no surprise given their lack of coherent response to the in-your-face catastrophic devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As the true scope of the Federal government's inadequate and grossly mismanaged response to that storm's swathe of destruction and toll in human misery and lives continues to emerge, it's hard to believe anyone can continue to believe Bush and his merry band of sociopaths are capable of responding to any emergency with anything but indifference and ineptitude.

The ongoing investigations (with the bipartisan House investigation report the most damning to date) on how completely botched the response to Hurricane Katrina was puts into clear, sharp perspective how completely incompetent and incapable the current Administration is on the very front they campaigned so aggressively upon: our collective safety and security.

If anything, Bush and his cronies (and I do mean cronies, as nepotism and cronyism is clearly central to the ongoing incompetence of the sitting Administration and its underlings) have only further crippled the ability of the US to respond to anything, foreseen (as Katrina was) or unforeseen.

As the ongoing revelations of incompetence, corruption and simply criminal behavior continue, it's also increasingly clear that no amount of 'truth' will peel the blinders off much of the voting US population. How can anyone -- anyone -- continue to tolerate, much less defend, those currently in power?
__________

Given the complete inability of Bush and his own to even cope with their own increasingly pathetic, destructive incompetency, it's no surprise they can't even begin to address what's really going on with our spiralling economy. They're so busy inflating false fears while pretending everything's just fine on the fronts we should be paying attention to that they simply haven't time to see to anything but protecting their own economic well-being (which they're succeeding at admirably) -- by persistently misrepresenting the realities and actively lying to the American public.

Among the most sobering of the many economic extrapolations out there is this one from Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for the Reagan administration, associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. Roberts also recently co-authored The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and he posted this analysis online on February 11th. Compare Roberts's statements to those President Bush continues to spread in chosen venues (where no one might question anything he says).

Here's some highlights, which certainly jive more with the reality visible in this part of the country than do Bush's ongoing rosy claims:

"Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.

Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.

Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health
care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.

US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job. [emphasis added]

The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.”... The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized “new economy” never appeared. ...Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. ...Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.

In five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes them over-qualified.

Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator. In the past unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs.

Unemployment benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the cycle when workers were laid off. Today the unemployment is permanent as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones.

Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. There are now hundreds of thousands of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university education.

Unless the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite of the facts, the US is experiencing a job depression. Most economists refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization. It was a win-win situation, they said.

They were wrong.

At a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited themselves. This is especially true for “free market economists” who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an example of free trade that was benefitting Americans. Where is the benefit when employment in US export industries and import-competitive industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility, free market economics is on the verge of another wipeout.

...On February 10 the Commerce Department released a record US trade deficit in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit in Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US highly dependent on foreign provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing the export capability of the US economy. It is possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.

Polls indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping up fear and hysteria about Iran. The secretary of defense is promising Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle Bush’s solution to the job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for a bankrupt country?"

Roberts finds plenty of blame to go around. He in fact lays part of this situation at the feet of failed economists and journalism: "No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private sector jobs created over the five year period is 500,000 jobs less than one year’s legal and illegal immigration! ...The economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless number while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at The New York Times simply rewrite the Bush administration’s press releases." Again, so much for the ongoing neocon myth (accepted by most of the US population) about "the liberal media."

The complete analysis can be found here:

Nuking the Economy.

It's well worth reading -- essential reading, in fact. (Special thanks to Jean-Marc Lofficier for bringing Roberts's essay to my attention.)

Shit Telling the Turd "You Stink"...

Why mince words?

The news in the US is becoming increasingly surreal.

Cheney's shooting of his millionaire hunting amigo Harry has turned into the scandal that should be kicking up over Libby's admission that his "superiors" ordered the leaking of top-secret info: it's called treason.

But, no, it's the shooting that's tipped the Washington D.C. press corps into outrage.

In response, those outraged over the hubbub over Cheney and the White House's delayed reporting of the shooting are shouting louder, arguing that Cheney and the shooting victim's privacy should be observed -- though, of course, it was the Republicans who led the relentless witch-hunt against the most private of acts of our prior President, working backwards from the desire to impeach until they found something grotty enough (blowjobs in the White House) to conflate into a national scandal.

Meanwhile, the most scandalous betrayals of the public trust I have ever seen in my lifetime simply isn't enough to provoke impeachment of the dogs in power, or even much discussion of impeachment.

And as all this is and isn't happening, the 'down-the-rabbit-hole' madness of officials like Condi Rice calling for Iran to change its ways for, word for word, doing what the current Administration has done since 9/11; of Rice urging America mount invitations to Iran scholars to come and study in the US, as if anyone even remotely linked with Iran would sensibly consider coming to the land of the "be-seized-by-the-police-and-locked-up-indefinitely-without-prosecution-just-cuz-we-say-so" -- and of Rice asking for billions to mount propaganda and information 'wars' in countries we've already demonized and angered via our (and her) aggressive pre-emptive war policies based on faulty and/ornonexistent intelligence; of investigations of tech firms like Google and Yahoo for doing in China what the current US Administration has illegally demanded from the same tech firms (and the phone company) while insisting it's entirely legal, and during the same hearings China being scourged for its human rights record as more images of our own military torture of detainees and prisoners come to light and the UN demands the US immediately shut down Guantanemo Bay and release all detainees.

I could go on, but what's the point.

The fact of the matter is, like the Danish cartoons proving to be the tipping-point 'enough is enough' humiliation for Islamic nations that have been under the thumbs of Western power since at least the post-WW1 redefinition of their national borders, the Washington DC press corps has had enough.

After five+ years of this Administration's shit, they're finally beginning to lash out. I hope they press harder -- and on more vital matters.

It's not about the shooting, any more than the ongoing protests overseas are really about the cartoons.

______________

Criswell once again --

"I Predict -- that a well-known movie actor of purest-white reputation -- a veritable All-American-Boy will be arrested in October, 1969, on a charge of White Slavery. It will be exposed that this man and several of his colleagues have kept more than thirty young 'runaway' girls in slavery in the secretly excavated basement of his Beverly Hills Mansion -- where they have performed inhuman acts of sadism on these young girls, and have seven of them."

Mum's the Word...

As was the case with Cindy Sheehan and, arguably, Hurricane Katrina, a key Administration member's refusal to engage with something they'd rather not deal with has caused the inflation of what 'might-have-been' into 'what-is' -- in this case, Vice President Dick Cheney's reportedly accidental shooting of one of his Texan millionare cronies.

Cheney is reportedly breaking his silence with Cheney-friendly Fox Network tonight. It should be interesting -- not that we can take anything he says at face value, after his ridiculing of John Kerry's hunting outfit during the last Presidential campaign, not to mention his outrageous public lies (including his reprehensible claim that he'd never met Senator Edwards during the one and only Vice Presidential campaign during that same election season).

Like most Americans, I wonder what the treatment of anyone else would have been if they'd just blasted a Texan millionaire in the face, neck and chest with birdshot. I reckon only millionaires can get away so blithely with shooting other millionaires.
_______

I love teaching in a place where a student questions my evening show of some Tex Avery cartoons with a plea for "the comparative subtleties" of Friz Freleng's works.

I love teaching in a place where I get to draw from the live model, too -- and structure lessons around studies I stupidly skirted when I was the same age as my students. It's never too late for this old dog to learn some new tricks.

I love teaching in a place where daytime conversations dance from the niceties of cat adoption capacities to potential book projects, from student anthology projects to whether Texan chili outstrips VT chili.

I love teaching at CCS, where everyone seems as happy to have me involved as I am to be involved -- other than spending time with my wife Marj and/or my own now-adult kids, I can't imagine a better way to spend part of my week.
______

I've also begun working with a local nine-year-old student whose main pleasure in life seems to be cranking out endless 'monster drawings' in a ceaseless stream of inventive variations on all imaginable forms. This kind of 'tutoring' work is something I've done in the past, but again, it's nice to be working with a school that seems as happy to have me involved as I am to be working with them.
_______

Criswell, at it again...

"I Predict... that the farsightedness of many persons in Wyoming will make them the safest persons in the atomic holocaust of 1987. They will have shelters, and after the brief but costly war, we will depend upon the many survivors who live in Wyoming to help rebuild many cities of the country."

Washing the Wash, First Swamp Thing Movie News, Fave Comics Links Pt. 1, and Criswell Returns!

While prepping today's CCS drawing session, I spent a few hours reacquainting myself with my old ink-and-wash tools: mangy brushes of all sizes, various gray-scale watercolor and/or ink mediums, my fave papers, etc. It had literally been years since I'd played with these materials -- it took me two days to find what used to be in easy arm's reach every day! -- and it all was instantly familiar, like meeting with an old friend after ages apart.

Back in 1980-1983, I fully explored painting comics via black-and-white & graytone media, completing a number of stories for venues like Scholastic Magazines (specifically Weird Worlds and Bananas), Cliff Neal's underground Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories (the title featured Wertham 'misspelled' with intent), and Marvel's short-lived newsstand zines Epic and Bizarre Adventures. While the superior printing provided by Scholastic and Epic nicely showcased my efforts, it was the crap printing on Bizarre Adventures and the turn of fortunes that landed me in the lap of pencilling Saga of the Swamp Thing that brought this phase of my career to a close. I'm excavating some of the original art from that period to bring in to class next week, and damn, it still looks pretty good. Reprinting this work would be a chore, as the discoloration of the paper and some of the collage elements would require attentive reworking via computer art tools I've no working knowledge of, but you never know. Maybe, someday...

Anyhoot, we'll be slinging the wash at CCS this week and the next two, and some new art will emerge from those exercises. Cool.
___

Al Nickerson sends me the following this morning (thank you, Al!), first news I've heard on this:

Rich Johnston's LYING IN THE GUTTERS reports...

"GREEN LIGHT- One of the writers of the Constantine screenplay has mentioned that he is working on a film version of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing stories, under the working title of "The Green." No Constantine though, dude."

Click over to

Swamp Thing movie news.

and scroll down a bit, but really, that's all Rich wrote on the subject. Any further info would be appreciated!

Though pleasant surprises can happen, traditionally we -- all of us associated with Swamp Thing -- receive nothing from any Swamp Thing media or merchandizing, even when it is based on our work. So, no Constantine-like payday is expected.

Hint to Hollywood folks involved:

You want our well wishes, drop us a line. We love movies, we love monster movies most of all; we love Swamp Thing, and we drew him for years -- reinvented him, in fact. We know Swamp Thing, particularly that version of the character, better than anyone, literally inside and out. (If we don't hear from you, good luck, bunky. If we don't hear from you, please don't come sniffing around when you're looking for sweet quotes to curry the comic fans -- and please, whatever does or doesn't happen, make it better than Man Thing. Or, uh, Return of the Swamp Thing.)
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A Valentine's Day Gift to you comics lovers out there. Time to start sharing some of my favorite comics sites I've not posted here or anywhere before. Some may be familiar to you, some may not -- check 'em out.

Favorite Comics & Comix Sites Part One

Personal fave for me, dino lover that I am, is Pete Von Sholly's delightful goldmine of curios like his

Von Sholly Turok, Son of Stone covers

-- which will have old-timers who grew up with the original Turok comics falling off their office chairs. While you're there, explore Von Sholly's entire site -- it's amazing!

The "Nuff Said!" comic creator radio interview archives

Ken Gale's famed comics radio interview show WBAI (99.5 FM, reaching New Haven, CT, East Hampton, L.I., the Pocono's of PA, Trenton and Princeton, NJ and Putnam County, NY) is also online. Ken notes in a recent email that their fund-raiser is now underway, saying, "our guests' comics, and more, will be available to WBAI members as a premium. WBAI's Membership Drive will be on and I urge every 'Nuff Said!' listener to become a member of the station. This is one of the few times getting comics is tax deductible! 'Nuff Said! needs to make a financial impression on station management! Any comic book store that becomes a member of the station will get their business mentioned on the one and only comic book-oriented radio show in New York City."

Christian Comics International

-- what a resource! An incredibly comprehensive online overview of the key cartoonists behind various Christian comics, from Jack Chick and Al Hartley to Rick Griffin and many more.

Stupid Comics

is always a lot of fun, and worth a peek. Shain and Dave's main index is

here,

along with links to their own work -- check it out!

Among the highlights in the National Lampoon archives is

Superman is a Dick

-- and he is, too. Beware of popups from this site, though, damn it.
___________

It's time again for -- Criswell to predict! Circa 1968:

I Predict... Headlines of the Future:

NEW ISLANDS RISE IN PACIFIC DUE TO UNDERSEA VOLCANO (1971)
ENGLAND LEGALIZES HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGES (1969)
LAKE MICHIGAN TO BE DRAINED FOR MUCH NEEDED LAND (1978)
FEDERAL SALES TAX VOTED (1975)
CANADA AND MEXICO JOIN UNITED STATES IN COMMON MARKET (1976)

Hey, Criswell was off by a decade or two, but he got one right!

I Predict... I'll see you here tomorrow!

Monday Morning Odds & Ends...

Well, it's happened: I was on the New Hampshire Public Radio program The Exchange, talking for about ten minutes about the Danish Mohammed cartoon controversy, the context of comics history and censorship, and a little on Taboo. There wasn't time to counter many of the points raised earlier in the program by the other guests -- including the spreading misnomer that the notorious Falwell vs. Flynt case that made it to the Supreme Court was over a cartoon (it was a rude but clearly-labelled-as-such satiric ad using photos, not cartoons) -- and a few things I was hoping to touch upon went by the wayside. Did the best I could in the few minutes I had to work with -- you can now check it out yourself at

NHPR's The Exchange.

For those interested, I'll post my thoughts (and some surprising research results) on the Danish cartoon matter later in the week, as time permits.
____

The AP online story headlines how the victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident is "very stable" -- what I want to know is, how stable is Cheney?

Of course, we've wanted to know that for a long time...

So, I was out hunting with my pal Dick Cheney...

Now I understand Cheney's war policies:

He was shooting at the other thing!

After the storm...

Well, up here in Marlboro, VT, we ended up with just shy of 7 inches of snow.

We're all shoveled out, and Marj and I painted a room that had been malingering, I touched up paint all about the house (we'd excavated and matched the exact color originally applied to our walls when we moved in back in April of 2002), and I finished and turned in the script I've been working on most of the winter (one of four; second of those four is about done, too, for later-this-week delivery). Got a chunk of work done on my sample chapters for my book projects for my agent, and also made some more headway on cataloguing the illustration material for We Are Going to Eat You. So, productive day, stuck at home in the storm.

Now to go upstairs and relax with Marj -- maybe there's something on TV? If not, we've got thousands of DVDs to choose from!

Sunday Morning Snowstorm, Odds & Ends...

It's snowing here as it is over most of the Northeast, but so far we're not getting too much (as of 7:30 AM). I'd say maybe a half-inch tops is on the ground, and the snow is fine as sand -- but falling steadily. We were planning a big birthday celebration with friends (the Dobbs and the Martins, two of whom -- I'm not telling! -- turn 50) in Massachusetts over brunch, but the inn we had reservations at called our amigos yesterday to say they'd be closed -- so, rescheduled to next Sunday. Sorry, Mark, sorry Mary; the goodies will have to wait.
___

When I made the trip last month to my friend Chris Golden's house (convening for a monthly writer's dinner Chris ringleads, which I make only occasionally; for me, it's a five-hour round trip!), his older son was on the family piano, playing -- Godzilla's marching theme. It was really quite touching, and I had Godzilla and Toho music playing in my head most of the drive home.

The man who composed that music, Akira Ifukube, died this past Wednesday, February 8, in Tokyo at age 91. As I read the news, the funereal music from the end of the original Gojira effortlessly resounded in my mind.

I've a number of CDs of Ifukube's music; they'll be getting rotation this week as I work. On its own terms, the music is invigorating, but it's impossible for me to separate it from my first experiences with each score, blasting from theater speakers at matinees, flattened into tinny dissonance from drive-in speakers hooked on my car door windows, leaning closer to the TV as I caught after-midnight broadcasts on "The Late Show" and had to keep the sound down low as to not wake the rest of the house while I strained to hear every note. Besides frequent screenings of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, there was an abundant harvest of monsters, machines and military mobilization in Rodan, The Mysterians, Atragon, Battle in Outer Space, Varan the Unbelievable, Dagora the Space Monster, Frankenstein Conquers the World, Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster, The Terror of Godzilla/Terror of MechaGodzilla, Godzilla on Monster Island, King Kong vs. Godzilla, King Kong Escapes, Monster Zero, War of the Gargantuas, Latitude Zero (big fun at the Capital Theater in Montpelier, with my high school bud Alan Finn laughing himself sick), the Majin trilogy, Yog, Monster from Space (spicing a double-bill with Return of Count Yorga at the Barre, VT Paramount Theater where brothers George and Steve Woodard and I had a high time with both), my personal fave Godzilla vs. the Thing -- and best of all, the widescreen Burlington theater experience of seeing Destroy All Monsters not once but twice in the same weekend (Saturday and Sunday matinees!).

Ifukube's scores for films I later enjoyed -- the Zatoichi films, The Burmese Harp, etc. -- were lovely, and those he composed for the 1990s Godzilla revival were essential, too, but nothing supplants the importance of those formative experiences seeing the first cycle of Toho monsters in action. Having steeped in them as a child, I had no idea it was Ifukube's music resonating in my mind as my childhood self built and smashed buildings and communities made of sand/Tinkertoys/Lincoln Logs/Flinstone blocks (choose your construction material of choice), creating my own Toho monster epics while playing.

But, of course, it was Ifukube's music that scored my play, his work becoming an essential component of my growing up. Later, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Ennio Morricone and others would assert their sounds over my formative years, but they all had to take a back seat to Ifukube.
_____

Speaking of recent deaths, I noted Al Lewis's passing last weekend.

Turns out Lewis was actually 13 years younger than the weekend obits stated! While almost every performer on Earth has lied about their age to seem younger than they are, Lewis did the opposite (according to some sources, this advanced age was traced to his bid for his definitive role as Granpa Munster: Lewis didn't want casting to know he was actually younger than Yvonne DeCarlo, already cast as Grandpa's daughter Lilly Munster).

So, he was in his 80s, not his 90s -- still, Lewis was an active huckster and barnstormer to the end.
____

It's been "Bissette on the radio" week -- as noted in Friday's post, I was on Sci Fi Saturday Night broadcasting from Manchester NH (610 AM WGIR in Manchester, 930 AM WGIN in Portsmouth, 1540 AM WGIP in Exeter) last night, and I didn't mention my blathering on WNTK out of Lebanon, NH, earlier. Brian Belanger and his cohosts were happy with what went down, enough to invite me back in March -- more on that once the date is firmed up.

Tomorrow is my 'appearance' on NHPR's morning program "The Exchange", discussing the ongoing controversy over the Danish cartoons and Islamic world's vehement reaction. Check it out tomorrow (or after)

here, click on The Exchange.

I've turned up a great little case history from 1977 directly related to the ongoing Muhammed controversy, which I'll post about here, tomorrow...
______

Redistribution of the Wealth:

In this month's Fortune, a succinct one-page article "Pensions: The Big Chill" summarizes with pragmatic bluntness the ongoing national crisis in which corporations are rather blithely freezing (at best) or simply dumping (at worst) hard-earned pension benefits. With IBM announcing their pending freeze in pensions (in 2008), the procession of similar corporate announcements took on new force: IBM is a corporate giant still doing fine, not a former giant entering or threatened with bankruptcy.

In short, workers are facing inadequate pensions at best, and nothing at worst (which is becoming frighteningly familiar news). All must necessarily begin planning for immediate backup plans they may or may not be able to afford.

All of this of course makes the current Bush schizophrenia -- "our economy is fine" speeches coupled with gross proposed budget cuts on top of Bush's ongoing insistence upon making "his tax cuts" (for the wealthy) permanent -- all the more maddening.

As the Feds are dumping social support networks left and right, corporations are either bailing in mid-bankruptcy or planning for their ongoing profitibility by forcing workers into increasing dependency on the very programs the Republicans are hacking to bloody bits.

And lest you think this has nothing to do with the ongoing neocon redistribution of wealth into the elite of the New Gilded Age, dig it:

The figure in bold blue type on Fortune's pension article on page 25 notes "16%" is the estimate percentile for "Large employers that are likely to freeze pension plans in '06" -- and across the spread, on page 24, in an unrelated "Career" byte on "Boss Envy," Fortune notes that "14.5%" is the "Amount by which CEOs' median salaries and bonuses increased in 2004."

Hey, it's gotta come out of someone's hide.

This insane parallel path of stolen pensions and budget-cutting of increasingly necessary support networks (which the corporations themselves are depending on now, a stark about-face from their tune in previous generations) is yet another disaster-in-the-making being lovingly orchestrated by our "leaders" in the White House every step of the way, with sociopathic disregard for the consequences.
_______

Criswell predicts --

I Predict... that a small town in Nebraska will produce a woman physicist in the late 1970's who will develop a theory of magnetism which overcomes gravity. Practical application of her theory will result in aircraft and space vehicles which require no sustained rocketry propulsion.

O My Friend...

Rolling blogs this weekend, posting as time permits.

But for the weekend, we open with -- Criswell Predicts!

The following is transcribed here exactly as it appears in Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000, with no close to the "geologist" quotation (huh? What geologist?), etc. I suspect that geologist quote ends somewhere between the surface of the earth bulging "ever so slightly" and the juke boxes going mute, but hey, that's just me.

Hmmm, had Criswell lived, would he have served as a science advisor in Bush's administration?

Enough! Without further ado -- Criswell predicts!

"O my Friend, as the dark seasons roll, what of your incredible future? Can our whirling, turning, churning earth last out the night? Our geologists tell us that the danger to Mother Earth lies not in the uncharted vast of outer space, but from inner-earth! Like the apple that rots at the core and explodes into a decaying mass! Like the human body when burial corrodes from within! Here is what will more than likely happen, and we quote from our geologists: "Small tidal waves will play havoc for no reason at all. The surface of the earth will bulge ever so slightly and highways will slightly buckle. Foundations will tip, and floors will slant. When you pour a cup of coffee or a glass of water, the rim will not level. Telephone coin boxes and vending machines will refuse to work. Delicate instruments will go haywire. Elevators will go out of whack. Juke boxes will be mute. Radio and tv will fail. All electric power, gas and water service will cease. And then will come the time when garbage cans roll across the street for no apparent reason. Then and only then will you realize the advanced corrosion spelling the end of our Earth. The seas will quickly fill up with a gooey mass of inner-earth rubble. Our streets and city lots, farms and deserts will bubble up like a festered boil, marking the complete collapse. Has this happened before? More than likely! And it will happen again in your incredible future!"

"On the radio, ohhhhhohhhhhhooohhhohoh, on the ray-de-ooooo --"

Hey, I'm on the radio this week -- a bunch, actually.

Heads up for tomorrow night -- Saturday, February 11th -- when Brian Belanger, David Kimball, and their co-host will be interviewing me on Sci Fi Saturday Night in Manchester NH. According to Brian, "It's a call-in format, and we can be heard on 610 AM WGIR (Manchester NH), 930 AM WGIN (Portsmouth NH) and 1540 AM WGIP (Exeter NH).  We plan on podcasting our shows in the near future and we'll let you know when that happens, so your fans can download the show whenever they'd like." So, heads up.

We'll be specifically chatting about the Center for Cartoon Studies "and the various pitfalls of the comics industry," per Brian's suggestion.

Monday morning, I'll be on The Exchange on New Hampshire Public Radio from 9:30 AM to about 9:40 AM, talking about the Danish Muhammed cartoons controversy -- that program you can tune into online (go to

NHPR

and click on the link for "The Exchange"), or tune in on 90.7 FM in southern NH/VT/northern MA, 91.3 in mid-state NH and VT.

More to come --
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Criswell!

"I Predict... Mexico City, built on a dry lake bed, surrounded by volcanoes will be a 'ghost city' by 1985. Slowly the city is sinking into the lake bed. All efforts to save it are failing. The speed of its sinking will begin to increase in 1974. Sinkage in 1968 will be about one inch. In 1969 it will be an inch and a half. In 1972 -- three inches. In 1975 -- seven inches!

The quicksand bed of the lake will compress more and more rapidly and, by government decree, the capital city of Mexico will be evacuated in 1985 -- and moved to the city of Queretaro."

The Uber Masculine, The War, and How Condi Rice Fits Into All This...

Will we ever wake up from this national nightmare? The tangled childlike impulses of "We want our mommy" and "We want to win!" lies at the core of all this.

Excerpted from an online interview with Stephen J. Ducat, author of The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity (highly recommended reading):
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BuzzFlash: On the back of your book is a graphic of the Homeland Security threat levels. There's low, then guarded, then elevated, high, and severe. Finally, the highest level is "feminine," with sparks coming out of it.

Stephen J. Ducat: Right.

BuzzFlash: This really reveals so much and connects so many dots by going a couple levels deeper and trying to figure out what's going on beneath the surface. This construct of anxious masculinity triumphing over threats from feminine forces, from dominant, smothering mothers or uppity wives, seems to explain so much about what's going on with the Republican Party. But then what do you make of someone like Condoleezza Rice in positions of power?

Stephen J. Ducat: He put a woman in a position of power to implement his policies and cushion him from information that he doesn't want to know about. And you have to keep in mind, as highly placed as Condoleezza Rice is, she is his underling. She does the bidding of the core group of neo-cons.

BuzzFlash: Is this merely a stage we're going through? Hasn't anxious masculinity been with us since the beginning of personhood? Is this due to the thirty or forty year strategy of the right wing?

Stephen J. Ducat: I think a complex combination of factors determines this. Not all cultures and all historical periods evidence this kind of femiphobia. But we're seeing a number of factors, not the least of which is a kind of backlash against feminism and the ability of the Republicans to really define the words we use. There is no greater power than the power to define. If you can determine how people use language, you really are able to determine how they think. If you can fill the word liberal with the meaning that you want it to have, which nowadays is weak, feminine, cowardly, so much so that even liberals want to run away from it, then you've won an enormous battle for control. That sort of framing, as George Lakoff calls it, the kind of linguistic hegemony achieved by the right, has accomplished a lot. Femiphobia has always been a feature of most patriarchal societies, but certain historical events have brought them into the foreground. I think the defeat of the United States in Vietnam played a major factor. I'm sure you're familiar with the term "Vietnam syndrome." I think one way of reading this malady is as a condition of wounded masculinity.

BuzzFlash: We should point out Cheney and Rumsfeld were on watch at the White House at the time that the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam.

Stephen J. Ducat: At the end of the Vietnam war, you had this giant imperial monster running away from these little guys in black pajamas. This, I think, constituted an enormous humiliation for those men in the American society that identified with a militarized nation-state. In the years thereafter, we saw a whole spate of revisionist Vietnam war films--you know, the Rambo movies, Chuck Norris movies, and so on. The plots were all virtually the same. You had these hyper-masculine, uber-menschen who weren't going to let the pencil-neck bureaucrats in Washington keep them from kicking Vietnamese ass. All the movies ignore the fact that the war itself was lost. This was an attempt on the part of the culture to try to compensate for the actual defeat. I think the lingering symptoms of the Vietnam syndrome were not a trivial factor in getting us into the current war in Iraq.
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Thanks to HomeyM for sending this to me in the first place -- coincidentally, just as I was reading Ducat's book! -- and the full interview can be found

here.

[Note after posting: this link is now active, thanks to one of our fellow blog posters.]

Also see "Shrinking Bush: S.F. psychologist argues that hyper-masculinity is undermining the American political culture" in The San Francisco Chronicle, which can be found

here.

[Note after posting: this link is now active, thanks again to info provided by one of our fellow blog comment posters.]

I highly recommend as a preparatory reading that does not involve the current Iraq War and/or gender issues, but does place everything Ducat writes and talks about, and all we are currently experiencing as a culture and nation into essential historical perspective, Tom Engelhardt's extraordinary book The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (BasicBooks/Harper Collins, NY, 1995).

Another highly recommended book that'll bend your head (particularly in understanding the kind of war we as a nation want to be engaged in, and Rumsfeld's policies and strategies in particular -- and why they are failing so badly) is Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network by James Der Derian (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2001).

Take Heart, Gamblers and Checker-players! Criswell Predicts...

"I Predict... that chance will be taken out of gambling completely for you will be able to afford a small electronic brain in your own home [by 1981]. You can feed it equations and questions and get the correct answers, the right horse, the trumps in your opponents' hands and the right number on the roulette table. I predict a contometer which will reveal how long you will live and what disease will carry you beyond to the golden shores. Your life will be laid out like a checkerboard as nights and days. It is true you will have these choices and you may make your own choice. But nevertheless, it will be laid out for you in a checkerboard fashion."

Wednesday Bacon Bits

* The outrage over the cartoons/caricatures of Muhammed continues unabated, escalating into death as well as destruction. The mysterious addition of unpublished cartoons to the initial binder(s) circulated to Egyptian Islamic officials by the catalytic Islamic group from Denmark that seems to be key to this sequence of events is the most curious aspect of this emerging story. Where did those images come from (rumored to be more provocative than the cartoons that were published), and why were they included? More research, comments to follow --

* I'm wrapping up, at long last, two scripts I've been tinkering with for some time. It's been fun working on them -- respectively, the second and third of five -- and working up my appetite for something more expansive. That'll have to wait, as I am also deep into the rewerite and expansion of my 1990 book ms. We Are Going to Eat You for publisher Harvey Fenton and FAB Press, along with the necessary cataloging of illustration material for that project. I have gathered literally hundreds of illustrations since 1988, when work began on this in-depth analysis of cannibal movies (prompted by my gut-reaction to Cannibal Holocaust, wondering "where the fuck did this come from?"), so that listing process alone has been a fairly major undertaking. Still, given Harvey's track record publishing some of the most lavishly illustrated horror film books of all time, it's worth it! This book will be a corker; it'll also be nice to have this obsession behind me, as I've held on to and been accumulating materials and research for this venture for nigh on 20 years. Soon it will be "Cannibale Addio"...

* With Carl Icahn hammering away at Time Warner -- Icahn, you might recall, actively hammered away at Marvel Comics in his bid to rally stockholders and usurp Ron Perlman in the 1990s -- I can't help but wonder if this might eventually impact upon DC Comics. In a related development, yesterday's New York Times reported the pending sale of Time Warner's book division; again, that prompts me to wonder how this might impact on DC, if at all. The value of DC's licenses and lucrative boxoffice yield and potential of DC properties for Warner Bros. film division may provide all the shelter necessary; time will tell.
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O my friends -- and we are all friends, sharing as we are yours and mine the incredible, but very near, future! -- it is time once again for that child of Indiana Criswell to spellbind us all with another of his uncanny predictions:

"I Predict... that England will solve her growing welfare problem by paying only in scrip, which will not be acceptable for hard liquor, ale or gambling and, any one spending for this, will face charges of treason against the Crown! The scrip will merely be vouchers for exact food, exact clothing and exact amount of rent!

On CCS and Sociopaths: Briefly noted...

* Off to CCS, second round of drawing sessions. More timed lessons, more drawing, more fun!

* Todd McFarlane once again defies all rational behavior, continuing to traffic in characters and properties that are not his, never were his, and which he never, ever had a hand in.

From LYING IN THE GUTTERS:

"Todd McFarlane's "Man Of Miracles" toy. That's right, ignore the logo, that's "Man of Miracles". A leather jacket can hide many a sin...."

Not this sin. Check it out at

Todd's latest crime.

* The creepiest aspect of yesterday's Senate hearings concerning Bush's illegal wiretapping program -- and there were plenty of creepy elements -- was the acceptance that this illusory "War on Terror" (it's an undeclared war on a decentralized nonentity defined by a military tactic rather than any definable borders) is a new Cold War.

Of course, the New Cold War is a Hot War, beginning as it did with the 9/11 catastrophe and escalating with US forces hammering "Shock and Awe" into the unprovoking Iraqi capital -- but the Pentagon, various news stories from last week confirm, is changing its already Orwellian vocabulary: "The War on Terror" is now being referred to in the Pentagon as "The Long War."

Specifically, during yesterday's questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, one Senator's (I don't recall who) reference to this war possibly lasting forty years -- as long as The Cold War -- was not only unquestioned, it became the new 'reality' of the rest of the hearings.

That this went down with such ease is really, really disturbing.

And, as expected, the spiralling costs of this war are once again off the proposed Federal budget. This shell game (pun intended) will break us, quite literally.

Maybe Bush really is the AntiChrist...

* One other quick observation: Gonzales was not only a cool cookie throughout: he demonstrated the ability to openly lie without skipping a heartbeat.

When confronted directly about his answer under oath (unlike yesterday; no oath was sworn in the troubling opening minutes of the session) during his confirmation hearings about a hypothetical questions about the President and illegal wiretapping, Gonzales was nonplussed. He emphatically asserted that was a hypothetical, and that the President has broken no law: hence, there is no discrepancy. Typical of this Administration, the unswerving belief that "they" are "right" in all they do asserts itself with sociopathic vigor.

Make no mistake: this is classic clinical sociopathic behavior. Sociopaths believe they are right in all that they do. They see no inherent conflict between their beliefs and their actions, however deviant from societal norms or (most relevent here) the law.

That it's characteristic of this entire current Administration, from Bush to Cheney, Rumsfeld to Rice, Gonzales to whomever, continues to terrify. "The War on Terror" begins at home in more ways than one.

Also characteristic of this Administration, Gonzales proferred 9/11 throughout, at every possible turn, with shameless causality. Of course, none of this is even momentarily convincing in light of all we've learned over the past four years about what preceded and followed 9/11, and in the context of the most recent revelations over the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina (from Homeland Security's report to the President 48 hours before Katrina hit the coast predicting breached levees, devastating flooding and massive loss of life, to the FEMA fuckups across the board: reportedly "hundreds of available trucks, boats, planes and federal officers... unused in serach and rescue efforts immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit because FEMA failed to give them missions... [and FEMA calling] off its search and rescue operations in Louisiana three days after the Aug. 29 storm because of security issues...," per Lara Jakes Jordan's Associate Press article of January 30, 2006; there's more, much more). What a spectacle.

Bottom line, it still comes down to "trust us."

No fucking way, ever again.

(That said, Republican Senator Arlen Specter concluded the session with an appropriately pointed exchange with Gonzales -- clearly, Specter is clear on the issues, however much he is engaged with the prevailing partisan dualism.)

* The White House rollout of the proposed Federal budget had one corker: "These are not cuts to Medicaid... and last year's Medicare... these are growth reductions..."

* Criswell predicts (maybe he was psychically 'seeing' where Dick Cheney's official hidey-hole is?):

"I Predict... the District of Columbia within the next fifteen years will cease to exist as the capital of the United States. The seat of government will be moved to Wichita, Kansas, in the caverns beneath the city and the surrounding counties of Wichita."

A brief note on the first day of the hearings...

The first day of Senate hearings on the President's highly suspect wiretapping program has been fascinating; it's still ongoing as I type this.

One observations: are all these Senators Americans? I can't believe some of the apologists for Bush and Gonzales's actions who are condoning this program.

This Administration has hardly proven to be trustworthy. Time and time again, they've proven otherwise.

Despite Republican Senator Arlen Specter's statement that this program violates the law, he opened this morning's session with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the president's illegal domestic spying program by refusing (declining?) to have Gonzales swear to tell the truth (!).

How many times have we seen/heard key members of this Administration decline, or not even be required to, take the oath every other American citizen has to take under similar circumstances? Very suspect. They truly are above the law.

The Washington Post has already debunked a key Bush administration claim, reporting that the program has already combed the communications of thousands of innocent Americans... and natch, Bush's White House has stonewalled. Gonzales maintains a "trust us" position tirelessly, along with refuting any attempts to questions any aspect of "operational details" for security reasons. Round and round it goes.

Riveting listening...

Goodbye, Myron...Goodbye, Grandpa...

Beloved Fleischer Brothers and Betty Boop animator Myron Waldman died this weekend. He was 97 years old, and among his extensive work as an animator were years spent bringing characters like Ko-Ko the Clown, Popeye, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Superman, Casper, Little Lulu, and many others to cinematic life; he also created Betty's dog Pudgy (which The NY Times pictured with Betty in their obit today -- without noting Myron had created the l'il pup), and two of the color Fleischer color shorts Myron directed in the '30s were nominated for Academy Awards. His wife Rosalie and sons Robert and Steve and three grandchildren survive him; Myron's funeral was yesterday.

Check out my dear friend G. Michael Dobbs's post about Myron -- who Mike knew and loved --

here.

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Also passing this weekend was comedian/actor Al Lewis, best-known as Grandpa Munster on The Munsters, though for my generation Lewis made his mark as Officer Leo Schnauzer on Car 54, Where Are You?. Lewis co-starred in both with lanky Fred Gwynne (Herman in the former, Officer Francis Muldoon in the latter), and it was his chemistry with Gwynne that defined Lewis's persona for many of us who grew up with both sitcoms.

For genre fans like myself, Lewis had other claims to fame: according to many a source (Tim Lucas, care to weigh in?), it was Lewis featured in the "racier" (now quite tame) shot-in-US murder footage spliced into The Devil's Commandment, the American release version of the historic first Italian horror movie I Vampiri (1956) from director Riccardo Freda and cinematographer and future director Mario Bava. Just as Jose Mojica Marins parlayed his Brazilian horror character Ze do Caixao/Coffin Joe into a successful bid for political office, Lewis ran for New York City Major in 1998 (at age 88!) as the Green Party candidate. Lewis didn't win (Gov. George Pataki beat him handily), nor did he win his bid to have his name printed on the election ballots as "Grandpa Al Lewis" (ironically, Marins did win his election in Brazil -- via write-in votes! -- but was disqualified from serving because most of the votes were under his fictional character's name!).

Both Myron Waldman and Al Lewis were active to their dying days, and that is what I will remember them both for. Myron was drawing, lecturing, and touring right through 2005, while Lewis kept going, too, at one point prompting Howard Stern to utilize that 'delay' button when Lewis led an appropriately foul-mouthed chant against the FCC -- now, there's a claim to fame!
__________________

Once again, O my friends, bantering from across the veils of time, from the distant realm of 1968, Criswell predicts...

"I Predict... that birth control will no longer be a major problem in the United States. Placed in the water system of the country, in every city, regardless of size, will be chemicals which will act as contraceptives on the entire populace. In addition to this, the electricity that comes into each home will have certain ionic particles that cause contraception.

Birth control will be a function of the Federal Government. If you want a child, you will have to go to the proper Federal Government Agency and get yourself a pill so that you may conceive. You will have to receive the sanction of this Government agency before you will have the right to have a child.

Birth control in any of the forms which we know today will not exist by the year 1981, when these new systems will definitely be in effect in this country and the majority of the other nations throughout the world. This, mankind will agree, is the only way to control the population explosion."

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

-- or gone in a half hour?

Here's what I wrote to Blog Support yesterday afternoon:

Hello, Blog Support folks --

No, NONE of your FAQs cover what is happening to the blog today.

I have posted on my blog FIVE TIMES today -- beginning at 6:45 AM this morning -- and in every case, the post has DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY within an hour or so, along with comments that were posted!

The last time, I posted the passages of my blog posting separately -- in case content was somehow an issue -- but they still 'vanished' within an hour.

I know the postings were visible for some period of time -- I checked from a different computer in the house -- and all were initially accepted.

I also made slight edits to the previous day's post (2/3/06) that have been accepted -- then revert to the unedited version the same time the new posts vanish.

I received two comments -- posted to the blog while my posts for today WERE visible -- [see below, bottom of this post and yesterday's surviving post, for the comments posted yesterday that vanished, and one relevent comment that followed.]

WHAT IS GOING ON???

Please respond, and advise --

Many thanks,

Steve Bissette
msbissette@yahoo.com
___

So, in the hopes today postings will stay, here's what was on my blog off-and-on yesterday, February 4th, 2006. Enjoy --

*********************************************

Jelly for the Masses

Quote for the decade:

“Obviously, no one can keep a cartoonist from doing what they want to do...”

- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on February 3’s CNN morning radio news
______

I may never need another ‘Quote of the Day’, ever.
______

Hmmm, this is my second attempt to today to post this -- it was up this morning before 6:45 AM, and was mysteriously gone a little later. Let's see what happens this time...
_______

Senator Russ Feingold on President Bush's "State of the Union" address:

I've seen some strange things in my life, but I cannot describe the feeling I had, sitting on the House floor during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, listening to the President assert that his executive power is, basically, absolute, and watching several members of Congress stand up and cheer him on.  It was surreal and disrespectful to our system of government and to the oath that as elected officials we have all sworn to uphold. Cheering? Clapping? Applause?  All for violating the law?

My favorite moment in the "State of the Union" speech our President delivered this past Tuesday was, of course, the reference to human/animal "hybrids" -- as if canine manimals were a reality, or impending reality, and somehow a dire threat to us all. One would think a President so intent on total dominion and his-will-above-all would welcome human/canine acolytes, if only for their dog-like devotion. Besides, given the controversy prompted by the use of dogs against detainees and military prisoners, domestic and foreign, a dog/human hybrid soldier would neatly solve the problem in one fell swoop: if you're a detainee in the "War on Terror" and your guard is Rowlf in uniform, what can you complain about when he takes a snap at you?

Why doesn't someone call Bush on these bizarre detours in his speeches? His last zinger was the Rose Garden musings about martial law and mobilizing the military to cordon off infected communities in the case of an avian flu outbreak. So he's gone from The Crazies to The Island of Dr. Moreau -- evolution or devolution at work?
_______

Which brings to mind this, circulating via emails, stating as its source American Radio:

This year, both Groundhog Day and the President's State of the Union Address fall on the same day. As America Radio points out...
 
"It is an ironic juxtaposition. One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."
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Muslim outrage over two of the twelve cartoons originally published by a Danish newspaper continues to spiral into public protest and violence. The obvious culture clashes are at full boil (and some not-so-obvious ones: one Islamic scholar interviewed yesterday afternoon said, "Danes don't apologize," as if it were a cultural fact; anyone able to confirm or deny this aside?), with European newspapers fanning the flames by reprinting the offending images, as they are now news.

This perverse inevitable (much like any controversy attached to an image, book, song, or film, the outrage is only increasing interest in the offending artifact, giving the offending images increased cultural cache and value, elevating them to an arena they never would have acquired had they simply been ignored) is threatening to escalate the ire and violence -- inadvertantly "confirming" for many the validity of the offensive imagery, caricaturing Islamic society (via the caricatures of Muhammad) as an inherently violent & destructive society.

Of course, Islamic popular culture is peppered with cartoons caricaturing Jews, Americans, etc. and relevent religious iconography.

One cannot have it both ways, and as usual, the pious reactions from Western politicians -- exclaiming that me must respect all religions and faiths, but freedom of speech is an absolute -- serves only to articulate the unresolvable conundrum Islamic society cannot tolerate (it is not only considered an outrage to depict Muhammad in any way, but one is required to express one's outrage, lest one be perceived to condone such caricatures or graven images).

This aspect of the modernization and globalization of Islamic society is a volatile one, and a facet perhaps impossible to find any common ground for.

Cartoonists work with images that are, by their very nature, reductive in nature: cartoons work because they effectively reduce ideas, concepts, cultures, archetypes to their simplist graphic form. As secular Western societies grapple with the ongoing friction with extremist Islamic factions that embrace destructive and self-destructive means of communication/retaliation with/against offending components of Western society -- including, as we have seen, the murder of offending artists (the filmmaker Van Gogh) -- caricature and cartoons are primary tools that will be utilized to articulate aspects of that friction.

This current spiral of anger is already prompting fresh editorial cartoons globally, and many are provocative by their very nature: the need to, in a single image, convey some perception of the controversy, thus caricaturing elements of Islamic culture in ways that might be perceived -- especially by the already righteously outraged -- as caricaturing the whole of Islamic culture.

Are cartoons weapons of mass destruction?

This is a "war" no one can "win."

All it takes is one wiseass with a pencil, pen, and printer -- and that, after all, is what most cartoonists thrive upon.

[February 5th addendum: As reported last night on the BBC radio (see HB3, I tune in to much more than just NPR), the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Syria were burned to the ground by an angry mob over this controversy. With their usual aplomb, the Bush Administration have already further bungled an already-volatile global crisis by blaming Syria for the destruction, which has done nothing but raise the heat. More on this later today or in tomorrow's post... best comparison that comes to mind: can you imagine if the outrage -- and there was considerable outrage -- over The Life of Brian, The Last Temptation of Christ, Jean-Luc Godard's Holy Mary, or The Passion (of the Christ) had reached these proportions?]
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Friend and carpenter/contractor extraordinaire Olivier Flagollet came by this morning and installed three new shelving units for my recently-completed studio/office. This will get the last of the books off the floor and up on the walls, maximizing the use of space to its final possible degree.

The organization of the library is underway -- a pretty arduous undertaking, but long overdue and most necessary -- and the remaining overstock will be split between the Center for Cartoon Studies library and the Bissette Special Collection at Henderson State University/HUIE Library. At last, at long last... by spring, this ongoing process should be complete!

[February 5th addendum: I'm well into the process, and this is glorious. At last, to have my entire graphic novel, comics, and film book library organized and within reach! There's hope, too, my vast paleontology library will eventually be rescued from the boxes in the garage -- and that might lead to all sorts of good things.]
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My amigo G. Michael Dobbs donated a fine box of magazine, comics, graphic novels, and the oversized DC Comics reprints of the ‘70s to the CCS Library this past week, too. This included a partial set of Animato magazines (which I added to from my own stash of back issues) and a complete set of Animation Planet, both zines Mike edited and wrote for, and an oddity I’d never seen, a one-shot Peter Max newsstand magazine that featured a “Mickey Mouse Meets Psychedelic Bugs Bunny-as-Peter Max” comic story illustrated by Wally Wood! The latter is an amazing artifact of its era, and fascinating bridge between the Kurtzman/Elder and Kurtzman/Wood Disney cartoon parodies of Mad fame, Wood’s infamous Disneyland double-page spread parody for Paul Krassner, and the underground comix outlaws The Air Pirates. Thanks, Mike, from everyone at CCS!

[February 5th addendum: In organizing my own library at last, I'm already turning up duplicates of numerous books that will join Mike's donation to the CCS library. All for the good...]
________

Hold on to your jellified asses! Criswell predicts:

“I Predict...that a large city in Colorado will be the victim of a strange and terrible pressure from outer space, which will cause all solids to turn into a jelly-like mass. I predict that this pressure will not affect any other part of the world but will be pinpointed at one particular city. Housewives working at home will suddenly feel the floors sway and buck underneath them. Their once sturdy furniture will slither into weird and fantastic shapes. Dishes will turn into putty, and silverware will have the texture of rubber. I predict that without warning buildings will collapse to the ground in near silence trapping thousands in the rubble. These unfortunate victims will not be cut or gashed but death will be caused by crushing and smothering. These collapsed buildings will look like masses of oddly formed rubber. Transportation in this forsaken city will be crippled for I predict automobiles, trains, cars and buses will be entirely useless. Factories will be unable to continue production. Poles supporting high tension wires will collapse. The entire population will live in terror and in fear. I predict that a state emergency will be declared and federal aid will be granted but as rescue units approach the city they will lose all semblance of solidity and will be rendered helpless. The people who attempt to escape in wild panic will be unable to move through the gummy streets. Hospitals will suffer and I predict that doctors in the midst of operating will find their surgical instruments useless for they will bend and curl. Needles will not penetrate flesh and glass will mold together. Many patients on the operating table will recover from the anesthetic without means of administering further pain killing drugs, and the results will be most unpleasant. I predict that this catastrophe will take place during the tourist season and the fun loving people in the amusement zone will suddenly find their day of pleasure turned into one of horror. A roller coaster will rise and sway throwing cars and occupants to the ground below. A ferris wheel will collapse and carry many children to untimely deaths. A penny arcade will become a dungeon of doom, a canopy of a merry-go-round will plunge down upon its most innocent riders. I predict only silence will reign where there was once laughter and gaiety. THe citizenry of this Colorado city will find themselves enveloped in a jelly-like substance that was once brick, concrete, steel, and lumber. They will be unable to escape for it will be impossible to cut through or tear this substance. Although soft and pliable it will still retain the strength and weight formerly possessed. I predict in the outskirts the conditions will not be as serious but fleeing people will find themselves mired in roadways and hardly able to move.

I predict that scientists from all over the world will be called upon to help but no one will be able to offer relief for they will not be able to conquer this terrible force, this mysterious force from outer space. Gradually, as conditions ease survivors will be evacuated but this will become a dead city and will never again be reborn. I predict this unfortunate community will be a victim of elements beyond our control and will always be remembered until the end of time. I predict the name of the city will be Denver, Colorado. The date: June 9, 1989.”
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[February 5th addendum: Later in the day yesterday, I received this from Bob in Canada, who noted this wasn't peculiar to this blog, but indeed a widespread phenomenon yesterday. I've posted it here to provide some vague conclusion to the events of yesterday, but welcome any more info anyone might have!

Please note the comments on the lone surviving blog post from yesterday -- reflecting, too, that the post for yesterday was visible here at various times of the day:]
______

From: "bob"   
To: msbissette@yahoo.com
Subject: [MYRANT] 2/04/2006 01:16:49 PM
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 14:01:58 -0800 (PST)

Steve, it looks like it's some sort of Blogger-wide problem with new posts vanishing and reappearing, nothing targetted at you. It's just happened to my Jack Kirby weblog, and I've seen a few others mention it. I'm sure it'll be fixed soon. Just remember to keep a backup of any substantial post in case it vanishes forever.
--
Posted by bob to MYRANT at 2/04/2006 01:16:49 PM
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More to follow -- I hope!

Suggested Reading -- and Fast! Arab Comic Strips

BTW, for anyone interested, I heartily suggest you immediately track down a copy online or anywhere of Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture by Allen Douglas & Fedwa Malti-Douglas (1994, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis). This is an excellent illustrated 250+ page study of the emerging (circa early 1990s) comics of all genres from the Arab world and Islamic comics, and more relevent now than ever before.

Other recommended reading:

* Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies a People by Jack G. Shaheen (2001, Olive Branch Press/Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., New York/Northampton, MA); a definitive, comprehensive and frankly astounding overview of the ongoing American pop cultural defamation of Islamic culture via the pervasive archetype of Arab villainy, with a 500-pg. annotated filmography (!!!) of such stereotypes film-by-film from A to Z. An essential work, highly recommended (shelved in my library alongside The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 by William F. Wu and Reel Jewish: A Century of Jewish Movies by Joel Samberg, and an entire bookshelf of books on Black/African/African-American culture & archetypes in the pop culture. The sword of stereotype and outrage cuts many, many ways and has countless sharp edges.)

* Followups to Arab Comic Strips well worth seeking:

- John A. Lent's article "The Horrors of Cartooning in Slim's Algeria" in International Journal of Comic Art (hereafter IJOCA) Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring/Summer 1999 (pp. 150-155); interview with cartoonist 'Slim' (Menouar Merabtene) on his work, career, and reasons for leaving Algeria to live in France due to the danger his cartooning presented to his life (he notes, "Journalists are not free in Algeria... I have risks; my Algerian journalist friends have many risks. More than 60 journalists have been killed, two or three foreign journalists, and two cartoonists..."). As with all the following articles, excellent and informative reading, providing quite a context for the current debacle.

- "Islamic "Classics Illustrated": Regendering Medieval Philosophy in a Modern Tunesian Strip" by Allen Douglas & Fedwa Malti-Douglas (pp. 98-106) and the historically relevent "The City and Housing in Turkish Cartoons" by Turgut Ceviker (pp. 127-131), both in IJOCA Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1999.
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Also, this just in from my longtime amigo and cartoonist extraordinaire Rick Veitch, to add to the brew:

"Also, I'm sure you are following the firestorm over those Danish
cartoons depicting Mohammed (a SPLASH story if ever there was one).
Found this interesting bit in The Independent that indicates there are provocateurs on both sides:"

'In the autumn, events began to move beyond Denmark, albeit unnoticed by Western media. On 14 November, there were protests in Islamabad, Pakistan. And, at some point (the timing is unclear), imams went to the Middle East to lobby leaders there, taking with them the cartoons, reportedly supplemented by far more inflammatory, but mysteriously unsourced, cartoons showing the prophet in acts of bestiality and paedophilia.'

Whew -- oh, man, this is getting increasingly convoluted. The full story Rick cites is

here.

The AMAZING DISAPPEARING BLOG...

Well, this is wild.

My blog posts -- and comments from others -- have disappeared a number of times today.

This is really bizarre. Censorship? Worm? Timid blog host? I have no idea. But my posts have been eliminated FIVE TIMES TODAY -- and the evidence is below.

If this continues, this blog will be history!
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Comments that were posted when the blog post for today was visible, and I saw, thanks to email:
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From: "Muslim"   Add to Address Book  Add Mobile Alert
To: msbissette@yahoo.com
Subject: [MYRANT] 2/04/2006 11:08:25 AM
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 11:17:04 -0800 (PST)

As Muslims we are required to respect all religions, be it people who are Christians, Jewish, Hindu e.tc.
So i’m really surprised at the pictures published in the newspaper, and also of their false nature. Maybe people should read about Prophet Muhummmad peace be upon him, and realise that he was a mercy to all mankind.
Attacking the prophet peace be upon him by drawing such pictures is attacking Muslims directly.
We dont draw pictures of other prophets like Abraham, Moses, Jesus, infact we respect them, and would never think to do such drawings.
--
Posted by Muslim to MYRANT at 2/04/2006 11:08:25 AM
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From: "HB3"   Add to Address Book  Add Mobile Alert
To: msbissette@yahoo.com
Subject: [MYRANT] 2/04/2006 11:52:09 AM
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 12:00:43 -0800 (PST)

whoa, that is weird. steve, don't know if you'll be checking this, but a few minutes ago I saw your disappearing blog. I tried to add a comment but that wasn't working. I come back now and the whole thing's gone. bizarre.
--
Posted by HB3 to MYRANT at 2/04/2006 11:52:09 AM

”The great goat song flies from the horn of Theogoetia...” plus: Frank Sees, Bush Bleats, Sheehan Shines, The Joint Chiefs Chafe, Criswell Predicts, and more.
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Quote for the day:

“Obviously, no one can keep a cartoonist from doing what they want to do...”

- Our own beloved Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on this morning’s CNN radio news!
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Among my all-time favorite comicbooks in the world is the Dell title Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, which was written by uncredited hands (Joe Gill is cited by some sources) and drawn by the one and only Sam Glanzman, whose work had an enormous influence upon my own. It was Sam’s earthy brush-and-ink work that forged

Among my personal favorite issues of Kona is #6 (April-June 1963), which plunged the white-haired Cro-Magnon caveman hero and his entourage (Dr. Dodd and family) to the ocean floor and the hidden subterranean cavern city of Pacificus. As usual, the purple prose dialogue is deliciously loopy. When first exposed to the super-science of Pacificus’s amphibious denizens (when they almost ‘disassemble’ Kona and just as quickly “reassemble” him), Dodd exclaims, “How noble! The alchemy of the year 7000! When shall our science reach the heights of this science? Compared to this, our science is a mere unevolved zero! A bug! A nothing! A nothing minus nothing!”

As always, Sam elevates the semi-nonsensical script with marvelous imagery, with the feuding races of Pacificus divided into spindle-limbed Egyptian-glyph-like beings and oppositional fish/reptilian-like humanoids, a mutant race Glanzman vividly brings to life. The dialogue becomes even loopier as these monstrous anarchists enter the fray; when sound weapons are wielded, one panel has the bestial race redundantly rant, “He blows the sacred horn of Pacificus.” “The note of his power is sounded.” “The great goat song flies from the horn of Theogoetia.” “Our sound weapons are made useless!”

After this revelatory turn of events, Kona dependably tears into the villains with his bayonet, overwhelmed by their numbers until his 20th Century buddy Dr. Dodd detonates a couple of hand grenades overhead -- which are subsequently used to blow the protective “wall of the rosy quartz”, triggering a sudden volcanic upheaval and ending the issue with a cataclysmic undersea explosion. Ah, comics in the ‘60s.

Glanzman’s Pacificus monster race bear some similarities to the principles of animal-to-man caricature outlined in Giovanni Battista della Porta’s De Humana Physiognomonia (1586) and Charles Le Brun’s Resemblances (collecting engravings originally published in the late 1600s), in which Court of Versailles artist and architect Le Brun argued the scientific theory that a man’s true character could be divined by comparing his head and facial characteristics with whichever animals he most closely resembles.

I once savored library copies of reprint editions of both books, and this week’s Center for Cartoon Studies round-table ‘design a critter’ drawing session prompted me to excavate my notes from those perusals. Maybe I can find my own copies of the reprint editions, online -- here’s hoping. If anyone has any leads, let me know, please.
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After my weekend review of the Visions of Frank DVD, some of you emailed me directly asking about where to get a copy.

Visions of Frank is available now from John Rovnak’s online site PaneltoPanel.net, for about $22.00 plus shipping. Pop over to John’s site

here.

Now, mind you, you can't process an order there as yet -- the site is still under construction -- but John’s service is active. Just check out the sample page, then pronto email John at info@paneltopanel.net and tell him I sent you.

Order with confidence; he’s been taking care of almost all my comics and graphic novel needs for over 15 years, and I’m a happy and ongoing customer.
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No surprise: the more analysis that comes to light about the health care savings plan (HSA) President Bush rolled out as part of his Tuesday night “State of the Union” speech, the more obvious it is that this plan once again benefits the rich & healthy disproportionately, and does nothing at all for those most in need of health care: the chronically sick and the working poor.

Primary and preventive care is already a disaster. According to some analysts, this program creates situtations in which deductibles and premiums for applicants -- before receiving a nickel’s worth of health care -- can and will total $12,000 combined out of pocket. One would assume we’re looking at another windfall for the insurance companies on the straining spines of overburdened, underpaid, underinsured working Americans -- but the HSAs are going to fragment the insurance market further. Ultimately, the HSAs provide tax sheltered savings programs for the wealthy while moderate-to-low income workers will struggle with skyrocketing premiums and unaffordable deductibles and premiums.

This shifts costs to consumers in a hideously illusory “free market” (like we all “shop” for health care, particularly in the case of emergencies). The further privatization of health care only increases our already enormous collective national health care costs (the highest of any industrialized nation in the world), and in fact promotes much higher out-of-pocket costs for everyone (except those earning enough to purchase the low-deductible HSA plans), with killer deductibles.

When I first learned about such HSA plans two years or so ago (as an employee still, at that time, at First Run Video), I quickly sussed out how the HSA principle worked and opted for a less-costly, more effectively health care plan thankfully available to me via my wife’s work policy. Almost no one could afford the option, which only increased deductibles prohibitively: the annual "you're going to be paying much more for much less" health insurance scramble I grew used to as an employee (mind you, this is a national issue relevent to all small businesses, not just First Run Video).

Now, a federal variation on that unworkable plan is being touted by our President, and the merry rollercoaster ride to hell is assured for more Americans in increasingly dire need of health care.
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No surprise Part 2: Cindy Sheehan’s arrest -- arrest -- for wearing an anti-war t-shirt to the Tuesday night “State of the Union” speech is an outrage, and says more about the “State of the Union” than anything Bush said, bantering as he was about “spreading freedom” while Sheehan was rushed to jail by the D.C. police.

Online, Sheehan wrote soon after, “I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether or not he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That's why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That's why I am not going to let BushCo take anything else away from me ... or you. I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to the jail while I was locked up to show their support. We have so much potential for good. There is so much good in so many people. Four hours and two jails after I was arrested, I was let out. Again, I am so upset and sore it is hard to think straight. Keep up the struggle ... I promise you, I will too.”

She “gave” her son to Bush’s war, and receives this kind of treatment.

That says it all.

Giving up the life of one’s son just isn’t enough for this leader. He hasn’t attended funerals for those fallen in this lie-based pre-emptive war of his, and he hasn’t an ounce of respect for any family of a fallen soldier -- unless they’re of use to him in his campaign to “stay the course” in this war.

Bush hasn’t a fraction of the courage he asks of our soldiers.

He cannot face this woman.

Bush espouses freedom but cannot abide it; the clear pattern of his refusal to face any but the devoted gatherings his sycophants ‘approve’ for attending any and all Bush speeches exposes his craven cowardice and blinkered isolationism (a term he tried to affix Tuesday night to anyone critical of his views, even as Sheehan was en route to jail) for what it is.

Anyone with eyes can now see Bush for what he is.

The selective screening of the Bush and Cheney crowds for every venue has been characteristic of their behavior since the beginning of the first election they were involved in, but this is a new low.

We are back in the realm of the 1960s and ‘70s repression of free speech amid growing national turmoil and anger against an unnecessary war -- only now it’s mothers of fallen warriors that are being dragged away by the powers-that-be.

Bush has successfully topped Nixon in his abuses of power; quite an accomplishment.

This Administration has no shame.

They have no right.

Bush has no shame.

Bush has no right.

Their/his lies are increasingly naked, as are their/his abuses of power and their/his undeniable contempt for the most fundamental of American freedoms.
____

No surprise Part 3:

Hey, remember how inexpensive this war was supposed to be?

Remember how Bush dismissed the only member of his Administration willing to admit how expensive this war would be?

Remember this when the federal budget is discussed later this month, once again sans any cost of the Iraq War. It’s “Enron accounting” from the President, folks: Hide the true deficit.

Oh, and remember, this all this started with box cutters -- Saudi terrorists with boxcutters, in four domestic airline planes. Boxcutters are cheap. Saudis aren’t Afghans or Iraqis. More “fuzzy math,” I reckon.
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No surprise Part 4: Dan Barlow passed along this info to me via email; thanks, Dan!:

"A Tom Toles editorial cartoon published in The Washington Post on Monday and on its Web site has drawn a very rare and very strong protest letter to the editors from all six members of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, E&P has learned."

The source of this news items is

here,

and Americablog has the cartoon

here.

Dan adds, “So, now they care about the troops? Wait, only cartoon troops...”

What is a surprise is that this controversy prompted the Rumsfeld quote I opened today’s blog with, which is already gospel in this household, a mere ten forty minutes after we heard it on Marge’s wakeup radio alarm. I never thought I’d be thanking ‘chickenhawk’ Rummy for anything, but thanks for that, Rummy!

(BTW, the Toles cartoon bears a striking resemblence to one of Greg Irons/Tom Veitch’s most notorious one-page underground comix gems, depicting a Vietnam War soldier “coming home” in similarly limbless condition, but in even worst shape: faceless, limbless, on multiple IVs. History continues to repeat itself.)
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No surprise Part 5: It could have been worse: Toles could have written “Muhammad” on the soldier.

As I’m sure you’ve heard or read by now, there were dire reports yesterday from the Gaza Strip in Gaza City concerning the outrage over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad drawn in a series of editorial cartoons by a Danish cartoonist. The ire escalating in the Islamic world prompted Palestinian gunmen to kidnap a German citizen, while protesters in Pakistan were chanting "Death to France" and "Death to Denmark."

I this whole democracy thing isn’t going down well in the Middle East; the ol’ “it’s just lines on paper” argument isn’t carrying any weight. This could get worse today and over the weekend as the outrage spreads like proverbial wildfire -- over cartoons.

Choose your poison: multiple links to the story, via AP, Reuters, AFP, Canadian Press, etc., can be found

here.

I would post the link to the cartoons, too, but I don’t want to bring the ire of Islam to Marlboro, VT.

I mean, isn’t that our President’s current justification for the war and our national strategy? “Keep it over there,” right? See, I’m a loyal American, too.
_______

And if all that isn’t lunatic enough for ya, it’s time for today’s archival Criswell prediction:

“I Predict...the only medium of exchange we will have, will be a punch card. No coins, no bills, just a punch card. No gold, no silver, just a punch card. A punch card will clear at the automation center to buy you the things you want. However, I predict if you do not have enough energy units through work you will draw nothing.”
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Did Criswell predict the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the rise of a fascistic American junta, Jihad over cartoons, the abuses of power at the hands of a burning pants-on-fire Bush, the swelling health care crisis, the election of a conservative Prime Minister in Canada?

I Predict -- you'll tune in tomorrow!

”Don’t Fulci Yourself!” sees Print in Italy, and -- “I Predict!” Amazing Criswell Back From the Dead...

Quote for the day:

”Frankly, I’m scared that something in this situation is terrifying!”

-- Charlotte Van Dine (Maria Eugenia San Martin) in K. Gordon Murray’s dub of Las Luchadoras Contra la Momia/Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1964).
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So, Judge Alito puts his first Supreme Court ruling outta the ballpark! Who needs Mexican monster movies? What a weird, wild, wonderful world we live in! Way to go, Alito!
_____

Smoky Man just sent me a scan of the cover art for the upcoming book on Lucio Fulci featuring my essay and two new pieces of Bissette art -- one by yours truly, one by my son Daniel -- and the painted cover (by an artist I’m not familiar with) looks pretty sharp. (Damn this archaic computer, this lack-of-high-speed access, this inability to post any images on this blog!)

The book is Lucio Fulci: Poeta del Macabro: Tributo a Fumetti (2006, Underground Press, Italy), edited by Claudio Calia, Massimo Perissinotto and Niccolo Storai -- though it was one of the contributors, Smoky Man, who invited myself and Daniel into the project. It’s Italian language only, but the art speaks for itself; for more info, check out

the Underground Press website,

though I don’t know if they’ve posted the cover as yet. I’ve got to print out a copy of the scan -- Dan is going to be so juiced when he sees this...
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I’ve been drawing for my own pleasure occasionally over the years, despite my utter indifference about drawing for print any longer, and am happy to report that it’s a gas to be teaching drawing at last to a group of enthusiastic students. This feels vital and alive and worthwhile.

It wasn’t so much that I was nervous, mind you, as I didn’t know if my approach would provide the desired spark. I have a lot of knowledge to pass on, and I’m eager to do so while I’m still in my prime -- lucky me, in one regard, but I’m glad it’s all going into as worthy an endeavor as the CCS. Something good will come of it all.

“Will this lead to published work in the comics arena?” I’ve already been asked, via email (responding to yesterday’s post). Don’t hold your breath.

It really doesn’t matter to me any longer; I’ve kept my hand in illustrating book projects when invitations are extended, but that never registers in the so-called comics community. Nothing outside of the CCS that’s comics-related has interested me much (or promised anything in the way of income to prompt a change of mind). So, I occasionally find myself curiously eulogized as a sort of poster boy for failure rather than someone who did a lot of work for 25 years and then made a conscious decision to get the hell out. I suppose it’s easier to eulogize and act like I’m dead than to get into anything of substance.

In his latest Comics Journal interview, my old comics associate Eddie Campbell once again uses me as a handy reference point for a form of artistic collapse or implosion, rather than withdrawal from the industry. I’ve become a career bookmark at best, at worst a tombstone. Have a pint and mind you don’t piss on the lillies, please. Ah, well, I don’t care about that shit, either: having been similarly caricatured now a couple of times by Eddie, still one of the best and a good fellow, and my perceived situation having coaxed onscreen tears from another comics associate of yore Colleen Doran, another one of the best, I guess it’s nice to be remembered at all, even if it’s for my absence rather than accomplishments. What a useless shell of ‘what I once was’ I’ve become (chuckle).

It’s odd, a bit like getting a preview of the funeral I’ll miss somewhere down the road. How many of us get to sample that while the ol’ ticker is still ticking?
_________

Working on one of my many writing projects, I excavated one of my most beloved flea market finds, Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000 (1st ed. hc in dj, xlnt cond., for just a quarter! Droke House, 1968), and thought it might be amusing to pepper a couple weeks of posts with random Criswell predictions.

For those of you who don’t know, Criswell was a fringe-Hollywood semi-celebrity. Criswell was on the radio, had a syndicated newspaper column, and occasionally popped up on Tonight with both Jack Parr and Johnny Carson. Today, though, silver-hair and silver-tongued Criswell is best known for his roles in his amigo Ed Wood’s films, from Plan Nine From Outer Space to the Wood-scripted Orgy of the Dead; he was played by Jeffrey Jones in Tim Burton’s affectionate biopic Ed Wood. Renowned for his outrageous, absurd predictions, Criswell hit psychic paydirt when he predicted Ronald Reagan would be the next governor of California -- and it happened. Criswell stumbled into a few accurate predictions, like this one (to be read with Criswell’s distinctive ham-boned oratory style resonating madly in your head):

”I Predict... that Broadway plays will soon have casts entirely in the nude and depiction of the sex act, normally or perverted, will not be unusual. This will mark a renewal of legitimate theater for it will mean that such acts may be portrayed in theater before they will be portrayed in movies. However, Broadway’s exclusive franchise shall not last long. Soon movies will follow Broadway. There will be movie houses specializing in such movies operating openly in the U.S..”

When Criswell wrote that, nudies and roughies were as explicit as movies could be, and Hair and O! Calcutta! hadn’t yet opened on stage. For once, he had it right: in the wake of a number of popular stage successes featuring live nudity and simulated intercourse, the breakthrough Deep Throat (1972) briefly legitimized hardcore sexual features, and for a time XXX features proliferated, extending the life of many a ‘nabe’ and grindhouse downtown movie theater.

But more often than not, Criswell was waaaaaaaaay off in a tubular zone: the atomic destruction of Vermont on Feb. 11, 1981; Mao Tse Tsung’s death in 1971; a catastrophic national cemetary shortage in 1980; in March of 1990, Nevada will host the “very first Interplanetary Convention... with colony citizens of Mars, Venus, Neptune and the Moon in full representation,” and so on.

It’s Criswell’s most outrageous predictions I’ll pepper you with here for the coming week. We’ll kick off and cap off with this gem, circa 1967:

”I Predict... that Oregon will be the state selected for the Federal Government’s Mental Illness Complex, the largest mental sanitariums in the world. Construction will begin in 1978. By 1980, all state mental hospitals will be abolished and all committed mental patients will be sent to the new Mental Health Complex in Oregon.”

Hmmmmm, maybe that explains Dark Horse Comics?

I Predict... I’m outta here!

Drawing Critters on the Clock and Other Musings on a Wednesday AM Warm-Up...

I think our first session of drawing exercises at the Center for Cartoon Studies went pretty well, but we'll see what the CCS students say.

Though I had a few exercises planned (the best of those to be used later, so mum's the word here), the one I settled on was a timed effort to (a) break the ice with immediate work while (b) creating a 'composite character/critter/object' from multiple references, each timed, (c) simplifying the resulting composite 'thingie' into a coherent character design, (d) sculpting a small 3-D model of the 'composite' that can be rotated in order to (e) arrive at three views of the 'composite' character/critter, thus resolving for the artist what the 'composite' looks like from all sides. I did the same exercise, presenting my results and walking through to the next stage after the initial four-reference rotation sessions (working from a batch of 1960s photo science texts I brought in -- the task was: quickly choose a single photo from a random book, choose one component of that image as a portion of a composite drawing and quickly render it in ten minutes; at the ten minute mark, one passes the book to the cartoonist on your right, getting a new book from the cartoonist on your left, and repeat -- four times, 10 minutes each).

Thus, in a little less than 2 1/2 hours, the students had completed rough 'character sheets' and step one in mastering the ability to fully realize any imagined character as a dimensional construct, drawable from any conceivable angle. A long way to go from here, but a good start. It's my goal to make each session an intensive 'play' session, too, as the element of play is a constant in cartooning.

Completely by coincidence (we didn't even have the same books cross our tables) -- no one saw each other's work in progress unless they were sitting alongside one another, and I was half-a-room away from Sean -- my resulting bird/rodent/crustacean thingie was almost identical to Sean Morgan's; only the tails and proportions differed. Weird & cool. Before going to the stage of refining our respective designs, we then looked at each other's composite critters, and the results were imaginative across the board. The next three-step refinement (refining/simplifying design; sculpting a miniature for full dimensional view; completing two more drawings of the composite from other viewpoints) was fun, too. For some, the sculpting meant completion of design -- what does this composite critter look like from the back? What's back there? -- while others demonstrated a remarkably full grasp of full-dimensional design, and that was telling.

This is an essential skill for any and all cartoonists, regardless of your drawing style. The coming weeks will build on this cumulatively, while touchstoning the rudiments of comparative anatomy en route -- all in all, though, a solid start, and a lively first go-around in our 14 weeks of drawing sessions.

More later --