Friday Roundup

Spent yesterday morning in Northampton MA with the CCS and my amigos at Mirage Studios. Yep, class trip! It was a great session, beginning with a conference room chat led by Steve Murphy touching on Mirage history, the current licensing situations, movie adaptations (flanked as he was by framed posters for the 1990s New Line trio of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle films), the animated cartoon series old & new, and much, much more.

As that wound down, I headed upstairs to let Dan Berger, Mike Dooney & Jim Lawson know the group were on their way, and all three were incredibly accomodating to all of us. When lunch break came at last, I dined with Dan, Mike & Jim (always a pleasure) and Eric Talbot was in the studio upon our return -- got to meet his new baby; what a charmer!

Given the amazing end-of-March weather we were blessed with, the drives to and from Mirage only sweetened the day.

Ah, spring.
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A jaw-dropper March 23rd news item from Norway, Maine concerning "delegates" (ahem) from the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church scheduled to descend on the March 25th funeral for native son Sgt. Corey Dan (killed in Iraq) sticks in the craw. The Baptists have apparently been targetting such funerals in states like Maine to (according to the AP news story) "...express its belief that American soldiers are being struck down by God as retribution for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality."

Huh.

And here I thought it was because of the nation's tolerance of President Bush and his neoconservative cronies in power.

So, it's not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, et al who are responsible for American soldiers dying in Iraq: it's the gay community's fault. (Never mind that gays can't serve in the military -- it's their fault.)

Good thing we've got the rampaging homophobes in Kansas to redirect rational thought away from the real cause of "American soldiers... being struck down."

These bible-thumpin' hate-mongering busybodies intent upon disrupting the funeral of a fallen Norway, Maine son (as they have in other states) funerals prompted the mobilization of local sheriff dept. and police and the superintendent of the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School to issue a 'no trespass' order against the Kansas protesters.

What absolute madness.

"Dear Westboro Baptist Church:

The only things you should worry about being stuck up your collective asses are your heads."

Oh, I'm sorry, was I being rude?

Not nearly as rude as a misdirected church's ongoing protests needlessly adding to the agonies of families who've made the ultimate sacrifice to the current US foreign policies.
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[Howdy to Tom L. -- hope your mom is feeling better!]

Ali Baba Bush'd and other early AM ramblings...

[Note: I posted the promised CineFest Part 2 last night, so if you're just checking in this morning, be sure to check out the 'next' post, which was actually last night's post. It's a lead-in of sorts to the following's opening paragraphs. So, "two, two, two blog posts in one!"]

Among the delights of the CineFest weekend was an unusual curio from 1937 that sported a couple of one-liners that prompted nervous laughs in 2006, given their new political context.

In its day, Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937) was notable as musical comedian Eddie Cantor's first effort at a new studio (Cantor had just bolted from MGM to 20th Century Fox). It was also ballyhooed as the first studio feature to satirize the FDR Administration, and sure enough, the New Deal came under pointed fire in a number of still-amusing routines and gags. Surprisingly, though, the premise -- an over-medicated Eddie Cantor (having taken "12 pills at 2" instead of the prescribed "2 pills at 12" noon) dreams of bringing democracy to Bagdad! -- resonated directly with the present US foreign policy, lending it fresh topicality undreamed of by the filmmakers.

A couple of Cantor's one-liners about democratizing Bagdad were eerily spot-on today, the central parody premise absolutely relevent (Cantor's mounting of "the first democratic election" in Bagdad, which he has rigged to ensure the reigning patriarch wins, backfires when the populace spontaneously elects a very different candidate), and one toss-off sparked a hearty round of applause (in 'race-track' announcer-style coverage of the election, deviant election results from the outlaying districts with nameplays on Vermont and Maine are dismissed as expected aberrations). These political touchstones made this one of the festival's highlights, and a film worthy of wider exposure (highly unlikely, I know) while it's inadvertant timeliness still has teeth.

As a movie, Ali Baba Goes to Town was great fun unless you're completely allergic to Cantor's energetic schtick. As might be obvious from the brief synopsis above, this was essentially an Arabian spin on Cantor's previous hit Roman Scandals, which likewise spun off the premise of Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain's classic (and already in '37 oft-adapted to film) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Cantor excelled herein, and the film was spiced with an amazing on-camera (and in-costume) number performance by Raymond Scott & His Quintet (the highlight of the flick for me, and a typically inventive Scott number; what a treat!) and a blatantly racist blackface Cantor tune (backed by top-notch black performers, including The Peters Sisters and Jeni LeGon and the Pearl Twins) entitled "Swing is Here to Sway." Of course, the entire enterprise is racist, playing off venerable stereotypes of Islamic culture that have only further degenerated as we limp, raging like a country of madmen, into the 21st Century; at least the presence of the 1924 The Sea Hawk in the CineFest lineup offered a contrasting Western fantasy of Islamic culture (in which Muslim culture is embraced as a healthy alternative to the hypocrisies of British Christian aristocracy).

Typical of CineFest, the print was stunningly crisp and sharp, and completely uncut, sporting two sequences reportedly trimmed from most re-release and TV prints (according to the program notes by Gerry Orlando): one a romantic musical number typical of the genre sung by hunky Tony Martin to lovely June Lang, the other an odd 'domestic abuse' routine in which Cantor disciplines an Arabian husband accused of beating his wives. Like other moments in the film, nervous laughter ensued -- sad, really, all this is still so relevent and timely seven decades later.
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All this comes to mind as a means of feebly addressing our ongoing horrific national reality -- because I simply haven't had the heart to write about President Bush's ridiculous press conference last week, which sickened me to the core: the reality is too grim to coherently address in an impoverished forum like this.

I listened masochistically to the entire thing, and attempted to compose a post about it the day after, but gave up -- it's no longer sustainable. How anyone can swallow his blatant self-contradictory blather (touting the purposeful "spreading of democracy" into the Middle East as policy as justified because "democracies don't wage war" with one breath, and stumping for his damned "pre-emptive war" policy as justified with his next) any longer eludes me completely. Only an idiot could believe anything this President says, if ever it was possible. The only truth he speaks is in his caricature of "the forces of evil" against us: at one point, his description of "the enemy" and their tactics perfectly summarized current US policies to a 't'! You can hear the light spark in his voice when he curls a phrase like "tentacles -- of propaganda" (the William Shatner-like pause increasingly essential to Bush blather), completely dim to how succinctly such phrasing characterizes ongoing Rove-ian politics in our contemporary American theocracy/plutocracy. Bush abhors true democracy, as his record increasingly demonstrates.

Though the nation seems increasingly awake to the utter moral bankruptcy of this Administration, we still are caught like paralyzed flies in the web of deceit, corruption, and utterly destructive life-and-money draining "pre-emptive" lunacy too far along to redress in any rational manner. A new poll announced this morning reports that 3/4 of Americans doubt "we" can "export democracy" (and, furthermore, that the Iraq War is spreading terrorism) -- which shows how great the growing gulf is between our waking American conscience and this President's continuing attempts to profer the same failed justifications and rationalizations expecting, somehow, different results: the definition of insanity.

I'm glad I lucked into hearing Elliott Spitzer's press conference in NY yesterday when it was broadcast live via radio; Spitzer called Bush "hands down, the worst President ever" on environmental and health issues. Spitzer noted having "sued the Bush Administration no less than 17 times" for their attempts to block or subvert state environmental laws. It seems at last that some political will is mobilizing against the powers-that-be in this country -- but so much damage has been done, on so many levels. We will be decades, generations, correcting and/or rectifying the damage done by Bush and his mad neo-con cabinet -- we and our children and grandchildren and their children will certainly be paying the piper for the massive debt and global havoc already racked up.

Ah, more later --

CineFest Report, Part 2

Ah, at last, a little time in the late afternoon to deliver the promised CineFest overview's second and final chapter. Apologies for the delays and distractions, folks.

CineFest is an annual retreat for diehard movie lovers, who congregate annually amid various ill end-of-winter weather (every year we drive through one mix or another of snow, sleet, or freezing rain at some leg of the journey) for a mid-March feast of never-to-be-seen elsewhere cinematic rarities from the silent and early sound era, domestic and foreign. Though the mix is typically shy of anything remotely horrific (my meat, natch) and always favors at least three or four vintage westerns, there have been some exceptions over the years. I'll forever savor seeing the US debut of the Eastman House restoration (flawed though it was) of the 1925 The Lost World on the big screen, along with past CineFest screenings of other genre and/or borderline-genre outings I feared I'd never get to see: The Student of Prague (the Conrad Veidt version -- in fact, there's been some stellar Veidt films at CineFest I'd have never seen otherwise), The Circus Queen Mystery, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Queen of Spades (years before its Anchor Bay DVD release), the occasional Lon Chaney rarity, etc.

What's wonderful about CineFest is seeing the films one has never heard of and would never have seen if it weren't for CineFest. I could go on and on about past glories, but suffice to note the gems of this March's harvest:

* The opening day's Warner Baxter vehicle Such Women Are Dangerous (Fox Film Corp., 1934) was my first fave of the festival, revolving around an affluent ladies man and pop romance novelist (Baxter, natch, in fine form) who becomes the obsessive focus of a midwest small-town fan and aspiring writer named Verne Little (Rochelle Hudson). Predating the writer-fixated psychopaths of Misery and Trance and Jessica Walter's unbalanced DJ stalker in Play Misty for Me, ingenue Little tries to ingratiate herself to Baxter, insinuating herself incrementally into his life. Trying to be a nice guy, Baxter's attempts to humor her only opens the door wider, ending in tragedy. Little ends up snuffing herself, clumsily but effectively framing Baxter for her apparent murder, culminating in the inevitable courtroom finale where none other than Irving Pichel (of Most Dangerous Game and Dracula's Daughter fame) griddles his ass on the stand and his savvy secretary (the lovely Rosemary Ames) labors to save his bacon. By and large, the Baxter films at CineFest have been great fun, and this was one of the better ones -- a lively confection with enough pathological behavior from Hudson to get me squirming and a compact script brimming with believable twists of the narrative knife (from a novel by Vera Caspery, author of the classic Laura).

* A war subgenre -- or, should I say, post-war subgenre -- that has become a staple of CineFest are post-WW1 "after the war" tearjerkers in which a young couple marry during the war, enjoy a single night to consummate their love before he is shipped back to the trenches, and she is subsequently told he is dead -- and, just after she finally falls for another, the embittered and very-much-alive (or just-barely-alive) vet returns. Heartbreak ensues. My personal favorite of the subgenre may always remain the silent Lillian Gish vehicle The White Sister (which Marj and I savored at CineFest last year), in which the 'man' the faux-war-widow falls for is none other than Jesus himself (Lillian becomes a nun, her beau returns minutes after she takes her vows -- too late!) and the melodramatic angst is given incredibly urgent geological manifestation via an outsized wall-mounted invention that tracks the rise of magma in a nearby volcano (like a barometer), conveniently erupting and sending flaming lava flows through the village at the very moment Lillian's Jesus-jilted vet hubby can stand the denial no longer. Talk about blueballs! Whew -- that classic made Guy Maddin's delirious faux-early-sound conceits seem positively rational by comparison!

All of which leads to this year's CineFest 'war widow finds out she's not a widow' WW1-set chickflick The Man from Yesterday (Paramount, 1932), which brought the archetypal heartbreak scenario to life thanks primarily to a deft script (punctuated with nicely observed details of 'fringe' characterization: the Parisian cab driver indulging the wartime marriage and honeymoon, etc.), atmospheric direction (by Berthold Viertel) and cinematography (by Karl Struss), and a stellar cast: Claudette Colbert at her finest, Clive Brook as her embittered British 'lunger' of a husband (a gas attack permanently impairs his breathing, keeping him at the cusp of death), Andy Devine as his loyal Brooklyn-born trenchwar friend, and Charles Boyer as the French military surgeon who takes the brave Colbert under his protection when he discovers she is pregnant with her (thought-to-be-dead) husband's child. Colbert & Boyer of course fall in love despite her reluctance to do so; she succumbs to his charms only upon accepting at last Brook's death -- at the very European resort harboring the recuperating Brook and Devine. I've no doubt the story was old-hat in 1932, but the cast and mise-en-scene lent it unexpected juice.

* There were a number of pleasant diversion amid the silent films that unspooled: the spry comedy Hold Your Breath (1924), in which comedienne star Dorothy Devore recreated the building-climbing comedy/suspense of the previous year's Harold Lloyd hit Safety Last; the likable Lewis (father of David O.) Selznick opus Is Life Worth Living? (1921), which answers its title "yes, if the scriptwriter is merciful enough to contrive an unlikely scheme to make one's fortune against all odds" inoffensively enough; etc. But the best of 'em all to my mind was the Leopold Jessner/Paul Leni-directed silent German feature Hintertreppe/Backstairs (1921), an excrutiatingly potent three-person drama that mounted a grueling portrait of unrequited love, dashed dreams and irrevocable loss amid a stylized but tactile urban squalor that anticipated the best work of Fassbinder and von Trier. Henny Porten and Fritz Kortner anchor the film as a housemaid and a postman -- they are the film, in fact. She labors endlessly over the interminable, repetitious house and kitchen chores of her unseen wealthy employers, though she lives in abject poverty herself. Her emotions hangs on regular if fleeting rendevous with her fiance, a worker (future director William Dieterle, making the most of little screentime), in what appears to be a chaste courtship fixed only in her mind as anything of substance; indeed, when he fails to show up for their usual doorway nighttime meeting, she fears the worst. Meanwhile, she unknowingly is the obsessive romantic focus of the dim-witted, deformed postman who sees her daily as she opens the door to accept the wealthy family's mail; this daily ritual is what the postman lives for, aching for their momentary contact to blossom into something more (echoing her own minimal contact with her nominal fiance, a relationship we see only as the briefest of exchanges). Thus, the stylized Paul Leni (future director of The Cat and the Canary, The Man Who Laughs) sets and co-direction -- the imagery dominated by the stark, narrow staircase which remains the only meeting place of the maiden and mailman until the fateful finale -- is matched by the expressionistic spareness of the Carl Mayer script (scribed by the man who wrote The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Sunrise, etc.), and the suffocating claustrophobia of the constricted emotions and confined spaces close in on the characters and the viewer with terrible finality. This mega-bummer was the most powerful film of this year's lineup, and among the best silent films I've seen in quite some time.

* Equally stunning and Hintertreppe's polar opposite in all ways was the intoxicating adventure epic The Sea Hawk (1924). As Leonard Maltin notes on his blog (see link, below -- thanks to Mike Dobbs for steering me to Leonard's post!), The Sea Hawk was indeed one of the festival's highlights, adhering to the premise of the source novel (jettisoned in the more famous Errol Flynn adaptation) of "an Englishman [who] relinquishes Christianity for Islam because he can’t abide the hypocrisy he sees all around him." The 'Sea Hawk' was played by Milton Sills, starring as the English reformed-pirate-turned-gentleman who is so badly abused by his rival, his fiancee, his brother (who betrays him to none other than Wallace Beery, to be sold into slavery; Beery's character becomes the hero's sidekick via circumstances too delightfully complex to summarize here) and the subsequent twists of fate that he indeed embraces Allah and becomes Sakr-el-Bahr: the Hawk of the Sea! This was a rousing swashbuckler and grand adventure in the style of The Count of Monte Cristo, engaging in its melodrama, surprisingly expansive in scope, and the equal of any of the Douglas Fairbanks classics (though Sills brought far greater gravity to the lead role than the boyish Fairbanks could ever have lent it). Tom Weaver rightly stated at dinner that evening that Sills must remain the only action-star in history with the first name "Milton," but it must be said he was up to the challenge of bringing every extreme of his character to vivid life, from the lion-in-autumn retired pirate of the opening act to the (apparently) ruthless Sakr-el-Bahr, a performance worthy of any in its genre.

But enough for now -- I'll write about some of the other films later this week, if time allows. Typically, Marj sees more of the CineFest annual lineup than I do (my addiction for scouring the dealer's room demands some time away from the screenings), but she surprisingly walked out of a couple this year, including the Rudolph Valentino opus The Isle of Love. Leonard Maltin stuck with the film, though, and calls the film "...one of the oddest films shown this or any year..." and "appalling...unwatchable", so I guess Marj made the right call. I was too busy sorting through stills to care at that particular point in the weekend.

For more info and insights on the films this year, pop over to

Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy --

-- if you're reading this after March 29th, scroll down to Leonard's "No End of Discoveries" post, with the CineFest 2006 booklet cover in clear view.

For more information and to sign up, click on

CineFest Lives!

-- they're always needing "new blood" at the festival, so please, don't hesitate to contact them and get yourself on the mailing list for the 2007 event. It can only continue if warm bodies with open eyes who loooooooooooooove movies keep showing up!

More later --

On Rick Veitch, Joe Schenkman, and the CCS Day Ahead; and, a Promised Link

Full day ahead at the Center for Cartoon Studies ahead, with two speaker guests today -- following up on yesterday's CCS session with vet undergrounder and Zippy the Pinhead comix & comic strip creator Bill Griffith.

Today, my ol' amigo Rick Veitch is spending the entire day with the CCS students, and we're being joined for the day by fellow underground comix vet and fellow Vermont resident Joe Schenkman (who's going to audit the class, engaging as a guest speaker later in the afternoon). Between Bill Griffith yesterday and Joe and Rick today, the students have a super-rare opportunity to engage with three living links with the historic underground comix movement of the '60s and '70s who have remained vital and productive into the 21st Century.

In scouring my comix collection and prepping for today, I was reminded of how Joe's career touchstoned surprising key highlights of the underground years. His first published comix work appeared in NY City in the seminal The East Village Other comix paper offshoot Gothic Blimp Works (#4-6, 1969). After his move to San Francisco, Schenkman drew two eight-pagers for the San Francisco Comic Book Company (Half-Ton Pickup and Schenkman's Country Hits Jamboree, 1972), popped up at the famed Berkeley Con of '73 and in Insect Fear, San Francisco Comic Book (both 1973), and the beloved raunchfest mini Felch Cumics #1 (1975). As the underground movement succumbed in the mid-70s, Joe was part of two series that effectively and definitively capstoned the comix era, both edited by the great Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelman: Short Order Comix #1 and 2 (1973) and the glorious Arcade (1975).

Joe has remained active to the present, natch, but I can't resist picking up the chronology with Rick Veitch's expansive and ongoing body of work. After drawing a continuing comix strip scripted by his famous poet/underground comix writer Tom Veitch for the University of Vermont's student paper The Vermont Cynic in the early '70s, Rick jammed with bro' Tom on the apocalyptic Two-Fisted Zombies (1973) before returning to the East Coast -- first to Vermont to engage with the birth and raising of his first son Ezra (now one hell of an artist, musician, and Vermonter himself), then to The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, Inc. to become part of its first class ever. That's where Rick and I met and bonded, friends for life; in fact, Rick led me to my first comix venue, Cliff Neal's Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories (1977-80), where we both had solo and collaborative stories published. We also jammed on our mainstream debut via a backup story in Sgt. Rock ("A Song for Saigon Sally"), though Rick did far, far more solo art for backup stories and "Battle Albums" than any other Kubert School student (1977-79).

Rick's first graphic novel was our collaboration (with writer Alan Asherman, though Rick ended up scripting much of the book) on the Heavy Metal adaptation of Steven Spielberg's 1941 (The Illustrated Story, 1979), but that just whet his appetite for the expansive and then still-new form (remember, Will Eisner's A Contract with God and Don McGregor & Paul Gulacy's Sabre had only come out about two years before). Bonding with vet comic legend writer/editor Archie Goodwin, Rick turned out an impressive procession of full-color sf comics stories for Archie's tenure on Marvel's zine Epic Illustrated, which became the venue for Rick's first serialized solo graphic novel extravaganza, "Abraxas and the Earthman" (1982-83), and Archie also guided Rick through his second and third graphic novel projects: the Marvel Graphic Novel Heartburst (1983) and Epic Comics mini-series The One (1984-86).

Since that time, Rick's prolific output never flagged. Most comics fans associate him primarily with his ongoing 1980s work on DC Comics's Saga of the Swamp Thing (1983-89), first working with writer Alan Moore and then writing & pencilling the series (#65-87) until the historic Swamp Thing #88 debacle prematurely terminated his run. Since then, Rick has continued a fruitful collaborative relationship with Alan Moore into the 1990s to the present, yielding many self-standing stories along with series like Miracleman (#9, 10, 1986-87), 1963, Supreme, Grey Shirt (for the Wildstorm/DC ABC line, 1999-present), etc.

But this short-shrifts Rick's expansive body of work, as his career's continuity from the '80s to present was actually punctuated by affiliations with cutting-edge publishers experimenting with every imaginable variation of publishing modes: Epic, Mirage, Tundra, Vertigo, and the ever-present touchstone of Rick's own self-publishing imprint King Hell. After completing "The River" for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989), Rick defined his 1990s with a mind-boggling run: graphic novels Bratpack, The Maximortal, the ongoing self-published 'dream diary' comix series (and graphic novels) Rare Bit Fiends, the bizarre sf series Technophage and scripting tenures on The Question, Aquaman, etc.

Rick's latest creation is the upcoming Vertigo graphic novel Can't Get No (2006), which stands in my mind as a potent meditation on our post 9/11 culture as well as an astoundingly succinct culmination of Rick's obsessions, themes, and accomplishments to date.

Rick is also bringing in pages of pencils from his brand-new Vertigo mini-series, which is presently on his drawing board -- more on that later, after I see it for myself.

Should be a lively afternoon -- speaking of which, I best be getting ready for my day ahead...
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I had promised to post the link to cartoonist/satirist extraordinaire Pete Von Sholly's own website, and I'm finally able to do that -- So what are you waiting for? Hop on over to

Pete Von Sholly's Website site!

It's a link I'll add to my permanent link list, in the blog menu at your right.

But that ain't all! The publisher page for Pete's latest project awaits you at

Pete Von Sholly's Extremely Weird Stories...

...more on that (and Pete's previous Morbid, Morbid Volume 2, and Sergeantstein) in future posts.
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More tomorrow... including, at last, the promised CineFest Part 2 posting.

Weekend Wanderings and Monday Musings

This past weekend, Marj and I took an impulsive trip to the north country and paid a visit to one of my old high school cronies, George Woodard, and his partner Gerianne Smart. The immmediate attraction was catching a Saturday night performance of George's semi-annual Ground Hog Opry musical comedy stage show, which was (literally) a hoot and a half and grand, great fun. An unabashed musical celebration of cornball comedy circa redneck country chestnuts like The Grand Old Opry, The Andy Griffith Show (George's Opry was, in fact, inspired by the hillbilly musician family that popped up on occasion on Andy Griffith's long-running TV series), Hee-Haw, etc., though the randy The Ground Hog Opry boasts a streak of blue humor (tastefully done) and 'blue state' political content (as such an equal-opportunity offender, scoring bulls-eyes against President 'Tush' and his cronies as well as VT's own Howard Dean, savaged in one skit for his historic campaign-trail 'scream') its wellsprings skirted or would have actively reviled. The most hilarious barbs came from Opry 'co-host' "Neal Down" (Al Boright), tag-teaming with "Roland Uphill" (George) to keep the whole evening rolling along in high, spry spirits and style.

George has been touring every year or two with the Ground Hog Opry since 1991, and this was the first Opry since 2003 to tour the upper communities of George's (and my own) home state. It's clearly a beloved institution: the show we attended was sold out before the doors open, and there literally wasn't an empty seat in the house. Among the fruits of the Opry legacy is Vermont character actor Rusty DeWees's successful regional one-man stage show and video/DVD/merchandizing phenomenon The Logger, which Rusty launched as two skits in a past Opry. George doesn't do it alone: the Opry is clearly a collaborative venture, and this year's edition boasts vet VT performers Al Boright, Adam Boyce, Allen Church, John Drury, Ramona Godfrey, Jim Pitman and Marilyn Skoglund on stage, and Peter Bruce Wilder, Gerianne Smart, Sarah-Lee Tarrat and Jan Gendreau backstage or otherwise contributing.

The weekend's surprise bonuses were many: quality time with George, Gerianne and her daughter Grace, generous screenings of rough-edit sequences from George & Gerianne's (co-writers, George directing, Gerianne producing) in-progress debut feature film The Summer of Walter Hacks, which was spellbinding and quite marvelous (the current Opry show and tour was mounted primarily to earn needed post-production dollars, in part for expensive but necessary film clips from a classic Anthony Mann western and song rights for High Noon's famous theme song). George has always scored as an actor, musician, and performer -- from the heyday of our high school stage work (we played "Barnaby and Cornelius" in Harwood Union High School's production of Hello, Dolly waayyyy back in '72) to George's many screen roles (in Ethan Frome, Timechasers, My Mother's Early Lovers, Mud Season, Nothing Like Dreaming, The Mudge Boy, etc.) -- but I admit to being honestly floored by his storytelling skills and absolute grasp of all the cinematic essentials in the footage he shared with Marj and I. George had previously screened his first short film Whatever Happened to Baby... Bear? (2004) for me, and we enjoyed his second short Johnny, Get the Christmas Tree (2005) yesterday, but both were simple filmmaking (literally film student: George shot both years ago as a film student at Burlington College) exercises, slight confections at best. The quantum leap to The Summer of Walter Hacks is staggering, and George & Gerianne's debut feature promises to be something extraordinary. Marj and I are now almost as eager as George and Gerianne to see the finished film (nobody on planet Earth is more eager than George & Gerianne to see this movie done!).

There's still a lot of work to do -- insert shots to be filmed, weeks if not months of editing and post-production, etc. -- and it's amazing to know George has accomplished all this while keeping his family's dairy farm working, day in, day out (50 cows, 25 milking at the moment). In fact, the Ground Hog Opry program thanks "performance milkers" Randi Grout, Eythan Thurston and George's younger brother Steve Woodard (who is also Waterbury Center's local animal doctor, running a vet clinic on Loomis Hill), the folks who handled farm chores the evenings George has to be on stage. Even his busiest film acting schedule has required George and his family work around the daily farm chores -- a point Ethan Frome actress Katharine Houghton chuckled over when I interviewed her years ago for my ongoing Vermont film & filmmakers book projects.

George is quite a fellow, and it's inspiring and humbling to see him keeping his creative life so vital, so alive, all while shouldering a daily workload that would embitter or break most people.
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We also took a spin up to my old haunts in Johnson, which gave Marj her first tour of the Johnson State College campus that was so central to my life (in 1974-76).

When I drove around to the parking lot below the Stearns dining hall and stopped to point out my old room in the subbasement of Governor's Hall -- the lowermost window facing the lower lot -- it was heartwarming to see whoever lives there now is a movie-freak, too: two one-sheet posters, one of which was the classic David Lynch Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me one-sheet, were taped up in the window for all the world to see. It was mighty tempting to walk up the hill, up the zig-zap cement stairs, enter that lower dorm door and knock on my old Governor's 'Subhuman' door -- but the drapes were drawn, too, and I know when we were in that room with windows covered, we were usually doing something we wouldn't have wanted some complete stranger knocking on the door to intrude upon. So, we stayed put, finished our brief driving tour of the campus, and then headed down to the downtown diner (same one I used to eat at, sans the booths me and my cronies used to sit in) for a quick bite to eat before heading off to Hyde Park for the Ground Hog Opry.

Much more I could tell, but hey, it was a great weekend.

Hope yours was as sweet or sweeter still.
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This from The Village Voice Feb. 24th article by Nat Hentoff (compliments of HomeyM) -- a reminder, if needed, of how we as a nation are treating, and have treated now for years sans arrest, due process, or access to legal representation, state-designated 'suspects' and 'detainees,' not convicted terrorists:

...Eight "detainees" now being held at Guantánamo, another extralegal U.S. prison, have told their attorneys what it was like when they were individually held, at various times between 2002 and 2004, in a secret U.S. facility for more than six weeks before being transferred to Guantánamo. That secret prison was apparently closed after the transfer. This is their story, as told in the HRW report:
"The detainees, who called the facility the 'dark prison' or 'prison of darkness,' said they were. . . shackled to rings bolted into the walls of their cells, deprived of food and drinking water. . . for days at a time . . . and kept in total darkness with load rap, heavy-metal music, or other sounds blaring for weeks at a time. . . . Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible for them to lie down or sleep."

Ethiopia-born Benyam Mohammed, who grew up in Britain, told his attorney, in English, "[At one point] I was chained to the rails [of my cell] for a fortnight. . . . The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. . . . Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off."...

If ever an American wondered how "it happened here" with the Japanese interment camps during WW2, or to "oblivious" or complacent German citizens as the Third Reich rose to power, open your fucking eyes and ears. Don't fool yourself.

It's happening here.

Here's one for you Giallo-gobblin' Taboo-Tokin' Eddie Campbell fans!

Thanks to David Gregory (and Keith S. Dias) at the Los-Angeles-based DVD firm Blue Underground, a fat package arrived this week containing many delights -- prominent among them one of three of Blue Underground's latest releases, Flavio Mogherini's previously-unreleased-in-North-America giallo The Pyjama Girl Case (1977). I'm aching to screen this, though I've seen the film once before (via a blurry dub from an foreign video release, provided by a friend back in the 1990s).

It is, in short, writer/director Mogherini's extrapolation on the infamous 1932 (or '34, depending on which of Eddie's two stories you read first) Australian "pyjama girl murder" case which my old cartoonist amigo Eddie Campbell adapted to comics as "The Pyjama Girl" (published in Taboo 1 back in '88) and "The Pyjama Girl's Big Night Out" (in Taboo 2 in '89). The case history is a fascinating, complex, and ghoulish one, which Eddie illuminated to perfection in his companion narratives, which revolved around the indelibly sad image of the pyjama girl's unidentified body on public display in a vat of formalin solution at Sydney University until the 1940s. I won't give away anything more, save to say Eddie's initial piece was one of the formative contributions to Taboo, and by Eddie's own reckoning, co-editor John Totleben and I were the first US publisher to purchase his work for publication (though due to Taboo long gestation period, Fantagraphics beat us to the punch as the first US publisher to publish Eddie's work).

Flavio Mogherini's giallo is light years away from Eddie's adaptations of the case, featuring Ray Milland as the retired detective who steeps himself in the mystery of the young woman's identity and death; Mel Ferrer, Dalila Di Lazzaro (vet of Dario Argento's Phenomena/Creepers and fave Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein/Andy Warhol's Frankenstein), Howard Ross, Michele Placido, Ramiro Oliveros and Rod Mullinar co-star. It'll be nice to finally see, given Blue Underground's always-stellar transfers, Carlo Carlini's cinematography with crystal-clarity (and in a proper widescreen transfer of its original 1977 screen ratio), and hear Riz Ortolani's score with equal or better audio clarity. Ortolani, natch, scored countless glorious classics like Mondo Cane, Africa Addio, Cannibal Holocaust, etc. -- well, OK, those are among his most depraved works (and his loveliest scores), so I'm eager to see and hear Pyjama Girl Case in its current restored form.

Why am I yammering on so about this? Well, Taboo, Campbell, and Bissette fans and completists, you need this DVD for your collection. December 12th of 2005, David Gregory at Blue Underground got in touch with me seeking info on the fabled Taboo strips (didn't know they were "fabled," didya?) and contact with Eddie Campbell, both of which I provided post haste. The end result: Eddie Campbell's two "Pyjama Girl" strips are reprinted complete in the DVD's packaging as a nifty little b&w booklet, adorned with a b&w repro of my original Taboo 1 cover painting (featuring my son Dan, deux, in his comics debut as a model, if you will) and my original Taboo intro to Eddie's first "Pyjama Girl" story, all reprinted with permission of both Eddie and I.

Thus, the legacy of Taboo continues to spill into the 21st Century...

Blue Underground is among my favorite of all DVD labels, and it was a bit of a puzzle when David asked if there were any of their DVDs I wanted or needed: I have purchased almost their entire line, from the moment their first release debuted. I urge you, one and all, to check out their online catalogue at

Blue Underground.

I can heartily recommend each and every one of their releases, if only for the exquisite care BU takes with every project: the most complete, uncut prints available anywhere in the world, the best transfers possible, the most complete extras, and the perfect packaging, each and every time.

Thanks, David, for caring, contacting, and following through -- including the comp copies. It's an honor to be a little part of just one Blue Underground release.

Seeing V

Well, I caught V for Vendetta this week, and will be posting something on it by the weekend. All in all, it's the best and (to a point) the most faithful of all the features adapted from Alan and his respective collaborative partners's works, though the final act was major deviation and letdown.

While I'm eager to discuss the film and its context, it will be tough to do so without touching upon the ongoing controversy over Alan Moore's widely-publicized stand against the film and any films based on his work. I've no desire to 'fan the flames' regarding Alan, but will find a way to discuss the film in some depth regardless.

Bottom line: Read the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd first and foremost -- it's an uncanny, totally prescient masterpiece, terrifyingly attuned to the political bankruptcy and fearmongering terrorist myths of our contemporary reality. In fact, V for Vendetta is The Prisoner for our generation: a coherent dystopian narrative that functions as both a dissection of our times, and a potential "how to deal" guidebook, if not an antitoxin.

In its finest moments, the film captures some of Alan & David's substance and grace notes, and I'm thankful for that. But it simply doesn't hold a candle to its source, which remains essential reading -- more essential than ever before.
________

I have no such reservations, however, about discussing and tooting a huge Seussian trumpet for Pete Von Sholly's latest creation! Like Mark Martin, Pete is one of the sadly unsung geniuses of comics today, to my mind. If you haven't visited Pete's astounding website as yet, you must do so and promptly (link provided below, among others of relevence this morning).

While it would be unfair of me perhaps to tease you with observations on Peter's upcoming Dark Horse Comics project Extremely Weird Stories (my personal fave page Pete peeked for me had its young, slightly pudgy protagonist awakening in his vintage Marx Brothers' dinosaur playset, complete with the 'plastic sheet' landscape underfoot), I can tell you a bit about the von Sholly invention about to hit the fan.

His upcoming creation from TwoMorrows is a surgical-strike "shock and awe" followup of sorts to the affectionate pair of '60s monster zine parodies Pete packaged a couple of years ago, Crazy Hip Groovy Go Go Way Out Monsters #1 and 2. Pete Von Sholly's latest 68-page full color (oh boy!) extravaganza Comic Book Nerd offers more of Pete's lovingly-crafted insider's lampooning of a mutant magazine phenomenon he loves (and loathes) as much (hmmm, maybe he loathes 'em more -- let's call it "harpooning") as those ol' monster zines. In Pete's own words, this upcoming parody "takes on the fan press phenomenon complete with some glancing blows at the sorry state of the mercenary, hopelessly inbred, degenerate and greedy comics industry." Yow, sounds like The Comics Have Eyes! I used the word 'mutant' earlier with intent, you see.

Whether you saw his monster zines or not, just a peek around Pete's online gallery should convince you he's the man for the job. Anyone who can so lovingly craft covers-that-never-were for comics-that-we-wish-existed (like Pete's Turok, Son of Stone and Star-Spangled War Stories "The War That Time Forgot" covers) clearly has the chops, talons and tools for taking on the current comics scene via satiric covers, ads, letters pages, and articles perfectly emulating the eleven industry mags/rags he's selected as worthy targets. Take a gander at the link(s) below, and grok those covers: Whizzer, the Comics Urinal, Ultra Ego, Comics Buyer’s Guise, Bagged Issue!, Comic Book Meatmarket, Scrawl!, Comic Book Artiste, Purviews and more. These are packaged along with "generous amounts of filler and art from his own failed projects... done with a mixture of love and bile," which has my saliva glands working overtime already. Pete says "I'm sorry if some of it may seem unfair but that's my job." Hey, someone's got to do it. I only hope it's as ravaging a savaging as the industry deserves!

Jeez, Mark Martin's Runaway Comics and now Pete's pride -- maybe "funnybooks" are getting funny again after all. It's about time.

So, what are you waiting for? Prepare your pallette and pre-order your copy when you let

PaneltoPanel Feed Your Comic Book Nerd Fix!

If you care for a bit more info and preview material, check out

TwoMorrows Preview Page for Comic Book Nerd!

Oh, and though I've misplaced the link to Pete's site, I can send you to

the Psychosaurus Site.

Enjoy Pete's faux-Turok covers, and dream away...
______

Lest you think I'm gimping out or just gumming day-old porridge this morning, check out this site (compliments of my old JSC amigo Tim Viereck) wherein the game is how good you are at cherry-picking the serial killers from the programming language inventors.

No fair that I scored high, given my studies of such things (serial killers, that is) -- how will you fare when you take the

Killer Kwiz?

My Inauspicious Return to Comics is Now on Sale!

Sometimes it takes a son or daughter to prompt a parent's life changes.

Thanks to my son Dan, my first new published comics work of the 21st Century is now available.

Last Thursday, Dan picked up the initial print run of his first photocopy zine Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits Vol. 1. It's his maiden voyage into such waters, and as such crude, rude, and eclectic -- but hey, we all start somewhere. Make no mistake, this is a rough'n'randy little b&w zine: 24 pages, composed of photos, collages, sketches (from Dan and a couple of his amigos, one of whom -- Sam, or L'il Sam around here -- did the cover), clips & quotes from misc. sources, and one of Dan's fave recipes (he's a hell of a cook). The Blind Dead figure mightily herein, too, with one of their skeletal hands popping up here and there, visually tying this loose collective together.

Dan asked me if I'd do a short comic for his zine, and I speedily completed the four-page "Kafka Kaiju Eiga", which Dan has plunked into the center of the zine. It's my first published comic narrative since 1999, and as such might be of interest and/or import to some of you. For what it's worth, it's already led to my working up two more, and those (along with at least two more by myself and comics by a couple of my own friends) will be available later this year in a modest, affordable format (to be determined).

But that's later. "Kafka Kaiju Eiga" is now. The only way you can see it is to send -- via snail-mail (Dan's not set up online) -- $5.00 US payable to Daniel Bissette and mail it to Dan at 118 High St., Apt. #1, Brattleboro, VT 05301. He will send you your signed copy of Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits via First Class Mail, and you'll have a high time with it. (If you're ordering from outside the US, I'd suggest adding at least $1.50 US to your payment.)

Postal money orders are preferable, but he'll take checks -- however, your copy won't ship until your check clears. Do not send cash. And no, you can't order via me -- this is Dan's baby. It's a learning curve, it's his zine.

For the record, thanks to Dan Barlow, Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits debuted at the Boston Zine Convention this past weekend (thanks, Dan!). As of yesterday, my son hadn't heard from Dan as yet, so I reckon my son is now awaiting his first sales report. Boom or bust, he's cool.

Dan gave me my comp copies yesterday, which I had him personalize and I then mailed to a couple friends. He signed mine, "Steve! My first print job, and I published you. Sorry the pay sucks. Yer son, Daniel." I then signed every copy Dan had (so you'll be purchasing a signed copy via mail-order), and my heart swelled with pride and a strange nostalgia -- for a moment, I recalled quite vividly the feel and smell of the first box of Abyss, my first published comics work, when confederates-in-crime Tim Viereck (who financed the printing), Steve Perry, Jack Venooker, Mark 'Sparky' Whitcomb, Dave Booz and I opened that box of hot-off-the-Johnson Press zines in Governor's Hall at Johnson State College back in the early spring of '76.

As previously mentioned, my daughter Maia Rose beat her younger bro' to the comics punch when she and two of her 8th grade friends collaborated on a photocopy comic zine entitled Phat Comics, back in (I think) 1996-97. Maia hand-colored all the covers with colored pencil, and my copy is among my treasures. Unlike Daniel's zine, Maia and her amigos did a genuine mini-comic, with Maia's distinctive drawing style of that period dominating.

Where will they go from here? Time will tell!

But whatever I do hereafter in comics that's published, you'll all have my son Dan and the students at the Center for Cartoon Studies to thank (but not blame).

They're the ones who've got me drawing again, and willing to publish.

Life goes on...
_____

A related bit of news: my son Daniel's first piece of art published by an outside publisher (other than his Dad: I ran a sketch young Daniel did of a troglodyte in Tyrant) is now in print, too, along with my own essay and accompanying cartoon illo. That would be, natch, Lucio Fulci: Poeta del Macabro (Underground Press, 2006), the Lucio Fulci commemorative book just published in far-away Italy, Fulci's native homeland. The book is primarily a collective of original Italian fumetti inspired by Fulci's films, an anthology of all-new horror comics from an eager and skilled creative pool.

An email from Smoky Man (who contributed a story of his own) at Ultrazine arrived on March 9th, announcing "Fulci book printed!" Smoky Man wrote: "Hi Steve the book is out! It's quite good, my friend..."

We're now eagerly awaiting our comp copies, and Smoky Man writes: "You can see the book at

Underground Press's website

(in Italian sorry) [No apology necessary, Smoky Man! - SRB] For order and info you can... write to ordini@underground-press.net for any details. The book's price in 8 euro (200 pges) + shipping costs. Hope this is good."

Hey, it's all good. I'll post more here once our copies arrive. In the meantime, any of you interested in ordering a copy of your own, you've now got all the info you need.

___________

[CineFest report, Part Two, to follow tomorrow...]

Back Issue interview worth reading; Mission Accomplished?

OK, some of the odds & ends of the week:

This just in from Al Nickerson of the Creator's Rights site and much inky infamy. This is relevent to my own career arc at DC, in a way; when Alan Moore, John Totleben & I were talking with DC about doing other projects outside of Saga of the Swamp Thing -- perhaps, if memory serves, in the window briefly opened when there was talk of dropping SOTST #29 when we lost the CCA Code Seal of Approval -- we proposed working together on a Demon mini-series. "Nope, sorry, guys," we were told, "that's already taken." It turned out it was Matt Wagner's mini-series that was in the works -- ah, well, more Moore DC might-have-been grist for the mill. We had our shot at the beloved (to us) Jack Kirby character in our historic SOTST run, so consider that a taste of what might-have-been, and savor what we were able to deliver.

Anyhoot, now that I've given you that context, here's Al's press release, posted here as received:
__

BACK ISSUE #15 examines "Weird Heroes" of the 1970s and 1980s. This issue of BI features Al "Ink-Boy" Nickerson’s interview with Matt Wagner where these two creators discuss Matt’s THE DEMON mini-series from 1986.

During a recent press conference, Al "Ink-Boy" Nickerson stated, "Matt Wagner’s THE DEMON was the first Demon series I’ve ever read. I loved it! And, now, twenty years later, I’ve gotten the chance to chat with the man responsible for such a wonderful comic. Who says dreams can’t happen?"

Here's the link, lancelot:

Read About the Demon!

___

This from the UK Guardian, compliments of HomeyM, worth a read and some thought on this grave third anniversary:
__

Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools ~ THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
by Greg Palast  for The Guardian  20 March 2006
__

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

         "Operation
          Iraqi
          Liberation."

OIL. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get MORE of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing TOO MUCH of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping LESS of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just LOVE it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

No so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was an Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

**********
On June 6, Penguin Dutton will release GREG PALAST'S NEW BOOK, "ARMED MADHOUSE:  DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE CLASS WAR."  Order it today -- and view his investigative reports for Harper's Magazine and BBC television's Newsnight -- at www.GregPalast.com. 

Palast returns to the pages of the Guardian today with this column. Catch his commentaries weekly.

CineFest report, Part 1

So, sneaky Pete I am, I was away at CineFest last week with my sweetie Marj. The annual gatherum of movie buffs, scholars, and diehard vet viewers in Syracuse, NY every March is an event my dear amigo G. Michael Dobbs introduced me to well over a decade ago, and I've been going ever since. This was Marj's tenth CineFest, so I reckon I've been going for at least thirteen years, maybe more.

CineFest runs four days, screening silents and pre-WW2 (nothing more recent than 1945) sound films from 9 AM every morn until about 2 AM. Every years is a different lineup, and with the sole exception of commemorative selections, every film is something otherwise unavailable (never on TV, not on vhs or DVD, and often unscreened since their original release), sometimes unique one-of-a-kind prints from around the world. The eclectic mix of short films and features always provide at least a couple of highlights per festival and usually one outstanding 'discovery' -- but that's not all that draws me to CineFest.

There's also a small but lively dealer's room, sometimes two, and year-after-year at least a handful of dependable always-show dealers (Doug Swarthout with the Berry Hill Book Shop offering an amazing selection of film-related books; Carl Hoglund with his massive inventory of lobby cards and stills -- milkcrates full of unsorted stills! -- etc.) are there, along with surprise dealers offering something fresh to CineFest. The tables of Doug and especially Carl are major destination points for me, and I can honestly say my vast stills collection wouldn't exist without Carl's annual infusion. There's always at least two or three dealers with eye-popping collectible one-sheets, and though the pricing is too dear for me (not a rip-off, mind you, just the going rate for vintage one-sheets in the 21st Century), these make for amazing galleries of one-sheets I'd otherwise never lay eyes on. So, it's all eye candy, and some of it I can sometimes afford.
_____

The surprise item of the year this time around was a hot-off-the-press book by Canadian Gordon Reid, which Gordon himself (a familiar face and voice from past genre cons) was selling at one of the first tables in the main dealer's room. The Horror, Fantasy & Sci-Fi Movie Paperback Guide is a tidy 185-pg. illustrated overview/bibliography/semi-price guide to all the paperback movie adaptations and film books (e.g., illustrated screenplays are included) of yore, including a great 20-pg. color insert reproducing the key covers. This is the first book of its kind, and one movie pb collectors (like yours truly; another collection that's going to the HUIE/Henderson State University Bissette collection this year) will have to have on their shelves.

Gordon knows his stuff and offers a generous biblio for this peculiar merchandizing/promotional publishing vein, illustrated throughout with b&w repros of covers and back covers. Only the key books are 'priced' -- that is, listed with estimated current market value, invariably offered as a span (e.g., "$5-$20") -- so this isn't useful as a price guide so much as a book guide. As such, it's an incredibly invaluable tome, and for me the value was doubled thanks to Gordon's featuring among the color cover gallery previously unseen gems like the rare Dragon novelization for The Creature from the Black Lagoon. As a maiden voyage, it's pretty definitive, though some may find fault with Gordon's inclusion of the early '60s 'fumetti' zines (Warrens' The Mole People, The Horror of Party Beach, Curse of Frankenstein/Horror of Dracula photo-comics-format adaptations, Charlton's crude 'fumetti' Black Zoo) or exclusion of borderline genre pbs (Herschell Gordon Lewis's Moonshine Mountain, mondo pbs like Africa Addio, Brutes & Savages, etc.). These are things I'm sure Gordon will revisit in a future revised & expanded edition, along with the occasional gap (e.g., the FantaCo Enterprises reprints of both Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs novelizations), but as with the earliest 'guides' to monster zines, Gordon's pioneer effort is a ground-breaker, by its very nature inviting further analysis and research in hopes of uncovering those MIA titles and curios (tough tracking the regional pb presses; note the MIAs I've listed include four published-in-Florida titles).

All in all, a necessary addition to any genre library shelf, and a must-have book for those collecting movie tie-in paperbacks. Gordon's debut of this new book was so close to its publication that he was unsure whether it was listed at the publisher's website as yet, or available on amazon.com as yet -- but here's hoping it'll be in reach for all of you soon. Knowing it may not yet be available here, I'll still offer the publisher's website link here --

Monsoon Books of Milton, Ontario

-- and provide you with the ISBN number, for search purposes: ISBN 0-9739409-0-5.

Congrats, Gordon -- great to see you, and best of luck with the new book. Recommended, one and all!
___

(More on CineFest finds and fun later today...)

Meeting Creepy Classics

Some of you may recall my article in Video Watchdog and posts last year about the Edison's Frankenstein DVD; well, the dealer I first purchased it from (at CineFest) was at CineFest again this year, and I made sure to spend some time (and money) at his table this time around.

Pennsylvania-based Ron Adams and Mike (sorry, Mike, I forget your last name just now) were the folks behind the Creepy Classics display, and momentous selection of genre DVDs it was, too. I found so many goodies that Marj was twice able to 'raid' my stash for the coming Christmas season (yep, we plan and shop well ahead) during the show -- so, I'll have to thank Ron & Mike again come the yule. Top of my selection were all the previously-unfound Mexican monster movies I could find, along with choice vintage rarities like the US That They May Live edit of Abel Gance's J'Accuse (1937) and more. It was a bountious haul, and I've days of fine viewing ahead! If I'd had the dough-ray-me to blow, I'd have purchased much more.

Ron also edits and publishes Monster Bash magazine (four issues to date, I think) and helms the annual PA Monster Bash convention, too. You can shop Ron's Creepy Classics treasures yourself online at

CreepyClassics.com

Tell him I sent you!

(More CineFest experiences to follow...)

Catching Up!

I'll be posting off and on today and tomorrow, catching up on the week's events, sights, sounds, etc., so check in now and again. Some of it may be lively, some of it may bore you shitless, but it'll all be... well, Bissette.

More later -- gotta do the email thang.

[Note on posted next day: the damnable email ate all my allotted computer time for the day, sorry! An email exchange involving a local community effort I'm involved in proved particularly time-consuming, but that's dealt with as best as I can. I'll make up for the crap posts yesterday by catching up TODAY! - SRB]

Happy Iraq War Anniversary, America!

Ah, President Bush, thumping on the trail for his war.

As the commemorative retrospectives run on the air -- radio and television, and in print -- all that is reaffirmed is that the war was launched on a foundation of lies. Hearing the chronological strings of Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Cheney, etc/'s 2001-2003 war-mongering rhetoric (the ominous "mushroom cloud" smoking gun references are particularly infuriating, as they were then) only reaffirms how completely insane this ongoing war was and is.

The Weekend End

Ah, back in the saddle and home.

Will post a proper post in the AM -- in the meantime: Phil, I fixed everything (see March 5th post), though your comment from this weekend must stay (I can't delete comments; anything posted here isn't in MY control to intercept or tamper with). Hope you can live with it, and sorry if your posting a comment caused you some distress or problems. It's a dangerous ol' blogosphere out here.

I have a ton of emails to now plough through, so y'all be patient and I should be caught up by mid-week... in the meantime, it's blogtime every day again starting tomorrow.

Have a great rest of the Sunday --

Updates and vagaries --

Delivered "Kafka Kaiju Eiga" to my son Dan, and spoke to him briefly yesterday. Looks like his zine (in which my humble four-page effort will appear) goes to press this week, and may even be on sale at the Boston Zine convention this weekend, if all goes well (yep, I rang Dan up, Dan, and he's into it! - that's a note to Dan Barlow, all). I'll post mail order info here ASAP, once my son gets it all together.

So, the day began with a rare one-sheet poster for Adolfas Mekas's 1963 underground feature Hallelujah the Hills falling into my lap (for the ongoing Vermont film book project). I've also lucked into a little goldmine of Mexican monster movie DVDs (including the rare 1933 Crying Woman) and much, much more... reckon I've got some serious screening time to clear for April!

Thanks to one and all for the birthday wishes on the comments, much appreciated. Also, please note that Colleen from the CCS has indeed posted the tabloid headlines from Tuesday -- if you haven't checked 'em out already, it's waiting for you in the Wednesday comments section, below.

I'm blogging amid travel, so signing off for today. Hopefully see you here tomorrow...

Hey, Thanks, Tim!

My longtime Bava-lovin' Watchdog-publishin' Throat Sprockets-projectin' Renfield-ravin' comrade-in-arms Tim Lucas wrote me a birthday sonnet -- and posted it online. Garsh.

Sing along with

Tim Lucas's Watchblog Birthday Poem for Bissette,

and thanks one and all! (Scroll down to the Watchblog's March 14th's post if you're seeing this after that date.)

51 is sweet.

Another Link

My Montreal contact (among many) Richard Gagnon generously sent the following link, noting I'm "being used as an example in this essay (positively, I might add)" -- click on over to

The Essay

and see what you think. Thanks, Richard...

In his online essay, writer Kevin Colden writes:

"I believe that an artist has to learn their craft, and they have an obligation to work to the best of their ability as often as possible. Many indie artists seemingly eschew learning traditional craft at all, seeking rather to experiment than to present a clear, clean story and be perceived as "boring". Similarly, many mainstream artists learn only established craft and apply it, creating overall clarity, but leading to many comics looking cookie-cutter. There is a middle ground somewhere, and I think finding that place is a noble goal indeed. Someday we'll get there, but it will take an overall strengthening of industry sales to allow us to really flex our creative muscles."

He goes on to cite the collaborative efforts of Alan Moore, myself, John Totleben, Rick Veitch and our stellar Swamp Thing colorist Tatjana Wood (one of the real masters in the day) as an example of "a masterful juxtaposition of words and pictures, neither one overpowering the other," which is of course the synthesis Alan, John, Rick, Tatjana and I worked so hard to achieve.

Thanks for the kind words, Kevin, and appreciate your recognizing and articulating our best efforts in the context of your broader point... which, by the way, succinctly addresses some of the primary factors of 21st Century comics my friend John Totleben cited in conversation last year as his reasons for leaving the industry at last.

"Hey, Mr. Guy. Where Are You, Mr. Guy?"

Welllll, it's happened again.

The daunting task of wading through days of emails (with only slow-speed dial-up as my venue) has meant my limited computer time over a hyper-busy few days kept me from the blog.

Fair warning: That'll be the case much/most of the rest of the week, too, sorry to say, but I'll get back to daily status next week.

So, just to sort of 'catch up' and provide ample reading for the coming days while I'm away, I'll do a flurry of multiple posts today, including some fave links provided by the Center for Cartoon Studies students. There's a couple of doozies!
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Publishers Weekly is interviewing me sometime this week about the coming Lost Girls complete/collected by Alan Moore and sweetheart Melinda Gebbie.

As some of you may recall, Lost Girls was launched in the pages of Taboo, remaining our one-and-only color serialized graphic novel. It was a real leap of faith from Alan & Melinda at the time, and a momentous gamble for Taboo, especially since the higher production costs for color repro only tipped Taboo further into the red. It was also a bit of a kamikaze move, since the fraying relations between Taboo and Tundra were only further ravaged by the ongoing struggle over the From Hell collected editions, which effectively deep-sixed what little momentum Taboo had maintained in the direct-sales market.

But what Alan & Melinda wanted to do was, to my mind, worth the gamble -- a truly adult graphic novel with sexual relations defining its heart, soul and being. Some argued at the time (within Tundra) that Fantagraphics' Eros line was a more suitable venue, but Alan & Melinda very specifically wanted Taboo to showcase their new creation: at the time, Alan and I were still enjoying good relations, and he and Melinda knew I'd fight to the end to maintain their complete autonomy on the series, sans censorship. This was immediately tested by the simple act of prepping Melinda's exquisite (and quite delicate) art for production: the necessary technical tasks would have to be done in the UK, as the potential for US customs seizing the pages was too high, and the delicacy of her chosen media (including pastels) were too vulnerable to damage en route, however carefully packaged.

This added enormously to the expenses connected with the production, but Tundra was willing to indulge and bankroll the necessary steps. En route, I also negotiated with Melinda reprinting one of her earliest underground comix stories -- it was vitally important, to my mind, to assert Melinda's own critical creative dynamic in the new series, and an archival showcasing one of her most potent underground solo stories seemed the ideal vehicle. Melinda was overjoyed, and we quickly saw to the necessary payment and delivery of print-ready stats, and the story was scheduled for what would have been Taboo 8. Sadly, the cumulative toll of another Moore project -- the ambitious and unfortunately now-notorious Big Numbers -- the ongoing Taboo/Tundra friction (over a multitude of matters), and finally the cumulative weight of Tundra's own mismanagement and fiscal losses brought it all to a ragged end. Taboo 7 brought the series to an abortive end, and by the time Denis Kitchen and I pulled together the loose ends of the Taboo legacy for the series closers Taboo 8 & 9, Lost Girls and its promise were no longer my concern as an editor or co-publisher.

I'm overjoyed Lost Girls is finally going to see light of day. I'll be buying my copy as soon as its available (no expected comp 'freebie' for this past-publisher; so it goes), if only to complete, as a reader, an adventure I was part of in its initial stages. We published a number of chapters of Lost Girls and I blew a nut over a truly mortifying Lost Girls TV series promo reel shown at the one-and-only "Tundra Summit" -- an event which was arguably the last straw in the strained relations between Tundra, Kevin Eastman, and yours truly.

Per usual, I highly recommend you pop over to

PaneltoPanel.net

to pre-order your Lost Girls ASAP.
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More on other subjects later in the day...

Cool Link

According to Lauren at CCS, this is

The Best Blog Ever.

It's pretty damned amusing -- check it out.

[PS: The same blogger also has

this blog

which links to his many other blogs and preferred links.]


As Lauren notes, "this guy also writes really lame christian gag cartoons which you can read at"

this link...

and she's right, they're pretty lame. Still, his other blogs are all of interest, on a number of levels.

All Hail CCS!

Yesterday's session at CCS was one of those flying leaps a teacher sometimes takes -- and it worked out fine. It was, in fact, pretty fucking cool and great fun.

A planned and eagerly-awaited guest speaker had to cancel due to an unfortunate injury to his back -- so I dumped the planned day's events and immediately constructed a "Plan B" that involved the use of a live model (we've been drawing for 90 minutes to two hours from a live model for about five weeks now as a core part of the current phase of drawing studies) in a unique way.

Fortunately, James Sturm -- our beloved Grand Omnipotent CCS Stomper & Lord of All That Flings Ink -- also called in the AM to alert me to the likely arrival of none other than Brian Walker this week, asking if I'd like to have Brian come by during class. Brian is a vet comic strip cartoonist/writer, currently best-known for his ongoing tenure on Hi & Lois, and celebrated by this particular cartoonist/instructor for his extraordinary two-volume The Comics: Before 1945/After 1945. He was utterly candid, relaxed, and comfortable with the class, answering questions posed by James and I before fielding the student's questions, packing 45 minutes with as much deceptively casual insight, information and "insider" scuttlebutt as any speaker we've enjoyed thus far (and we've had some great ones, with more to come!). Thanks, Brian!

We were joined for the first half hour by a friend's teenage son, Jamie, who was interested in scoping out the CCS and audit a bit of the class. I am always open to this, and Jamie got the ten-cent tour of the CCS facility, met most of the students, and CCS Anchor & Cartoonist Extraordinaire Robyn Chapman took the time amid a busy day to chat with Jamie and provide him with some of the school's info and literature. Here's hoping we see Jamie again -- perhaps, down the road, as a student.

Before Brian arrived, I outlined the plan for the day's sweatshop session: circulating copies of this week's World Weekly News, two volumes of the Best of the Sun (the infamous UK tabloid), and two histories of the most lurid US tabloids, we were going to recreate the sort of 'brainstorming' sessions Silver Age DC (then National Periodical) editors used to depend upon for their covers (the fertile soil from which the famed best-selling 'gorilla' covers emerged).

Breaking the class into four groups, each group was responsible for cooking up the most outrageous proposed headlines they could come up with in short order. They then had to choose their 'top' lead, the intent being to crack up the rest of their classmates (thus, a "best seller"); once our adventurous model Penelope arrived, they were then given timed sessions to pose the model as needed for their cover layout art. As each group completed their model session, they were then free to move to another part of the CCS facility and pull together their cover layouts -- all I was asking for were tight thumbnails/roughs from each group, clear enough to share with the class by the class's final half-hour. I also timed this so every group could, if they wished, have one followup modeling session with Penny to either recompose or tighten up their final roughs -- only one of the four groups needed to work with the model a second time.

For one of the covers, James Sturm joined Penny in a needed pose (in which Penny was a beaming mother, proud of her adult offspring); the cover concept hinged completely on whether or not James could or would pose, so I broke the ice and dared to ask our CCS honcho the unaskable -- and he gamefully stood tall and very, very still for a full ten minutes. Whew!

Thus, by 4:25 PM, we had four never-before-seen or imagined tabloid covers or cover leads with the needed image. They were corkers, one and all... and no, sorry, I'll leave it to the CCS students to post their respective cover copy here as comments, if they so choose. It's their property, not mine, to share!

We managed all this -- plus the scheduled student presentation (one of the requirements of my class is that every student do a ten-minute illustrated class presentation on an artist, cartoonist, or art movement) and three one-on-one student/teacher assessments (this was our first session, being at last at mid-term) -- and all on my birthday.

As I prepared to head home, I called my wife Marj and we arranged to meet at one of my fave restaurants in Brattleboro, the Thai Garden. We met right on time, shared a marvelous meal topped by a gratis dessert and round of sung "Happy Birthday" from the restaurant staff, and then headed home.

All in all, a fine day.

51 is sweet.

Big News for Gojira/Godzilla Fans (Like Me)!

This just in, and I mean just in:
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CLASSIC MEDIA BRINGS THE JAPANESE MONSTER OF MASS DESTRUCTION TO DVD WITH THE RELEASE OF THE ORIGINAL GOJIRA (aka GODZILLA)
 
The Complete, Uncut, Japanese Original Available on DVD For the First Time Ever On September 5, 2006
 
The Release is Part of a Monster DVD 2-Pack, Which Includes Both Gojira and the US Version, Godzilla: King of the Monsters
 
NEW YORK, NY (March 10, 2006) – Move over King Kong!  Godzilla is back!  On September 5, Classic Media will release the complete, uncut, Japanese original, Gojira (Godzilla), on DVD for the first time ever in the US.  

From legendary Japanese filmmaker Ishiro Honda, Gojira quickly became a monster classic.  Gojira will only be available as part of a special DVD 2-pack that also includes the re-edited US version, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, starring Raymond Burr. Both versions have been digitally remastered in HD widescreen. The Gojira/Godzilla: King of the Monsters DVD 2-pack stomps onto retail shelves late summer for $21.98 SRP. 
 
Robert Mayo, SVP of Home Video at Classic Media, said, “It’s really exciting to be able to finally bring this classic film to DVD for the American audience.  Fans have been looking forward to the release of Gojira for several years.”
 
For more information and updates closer to release date [and a peek at the trailer! - SRB], fans can log onto

Gojira/Godzilla on DVD!

 
A Monster Metaphor

Ishiro Honda’s 1954 black-and-white classic spawned a new genre called the “kaiju eiga” or, Japanese monster movie, giving way to countless sequels.  With its 50th anniversary theatrical re-release in 2004, audiences rediscovered the strong anti-nuclear message of the original Gojira film.
 
Gojira contains 40 minutes of footage that was not seen as part of the re-edited, re-dubbed Americanized Godzilla: King of Monsters. In the US version 40 minutes were cut and 20 minutes of new scenes were added, starring Raymond Burr as an American reporter.  As a result, the original tone of the movie was changed and the anti-H-Bomb message dropped. 
 
Gojira (1954)
Run Time:  98 minutes
When several ships mysteriously explode and sink off the coast of Japan, the country begins to panic.  Authorities are convinced that the unexplained activity was caused by underwater mines or volcanoes and sends officials to Odo Island to investigate. Days later, something comes ashore and destroys several neighboring houses, killing many locals.   Renowned paleontologist, Dr. Kyohei Yemane (Takashi Shimura), is called to lead a new expedition and uncovers the source of the problem – a 400-foot tall mutant dinosaur the natives call Gojira.  The Doctor insists that the monster, which was awakened from a million-year sleep by nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific, be studied not destroyed.  Gojira soon begins a rampage that threatens to destroy Japan.  Can the powerful monster be eliminated before it is too late?
 
Godzilla:  King of the Monsters (1956)
Run Time:  78 minutes
When American reporter Steve Martin, played by Raymond Burr, investigates a series of mysterious disasters off the coast of Japan, he comes face to face with an ancient creature so powerful and terrifying, it can reduce Tokyo to a smoldering graveyard.  Nuclear weapon testing resurrected this relic from the Jurassic age, and now this behemoth is stomping and smashing his way through the city.  Conventional weapons are useless against him; but scientist Dr. Serizawa has discovered a weapon that could destroy all life in the bay – including Godzilla!  But, which disaster is worse, Godzilla’s fury, or the death of Tokyo Bay?
 
About Classic Media

Classic Media owns and manages some of the world’s most recognizable family properties across all media including feature film, television, home video and consumer products. The company’s extensive library features a diverse collection of popular animated and live-action characters such as: Casper the Friendly Ghost, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Lone Ranger, Lassie, Underdog and Rocky & Bullwinkle.
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Let's hope this release sees light of day! Back in the good ol' days of laserdisc, I was a subscriber to the Criterion Director's Series. The final announced Criterion laserdiscs were Toho-sanctioned releases of Gojira and (if memory serves) Terror of MechaGodzilla -- I still have the flyer in my files -- but alas, Criterion folded its laserdisc division before those were manufactured, and that was all she wrote.

I caught the nationwide release of the original Gojira on the big screen (at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center) last year just about this time of the year, and it was a joy to behold. As countless folks and sources have noted over the years, the Honda original is a much different film from the US version we all grew up with -- somber, atmospheric, haunting, and unexpectedly potent even today (though of course the audience laughed at some of the 1955 special effects sequences, a number of Eiji Tsuburaya's illusions and compositions silenced the laughter, especially during Gojira's destruction of Tokyo).

Of course, diehard kaiju eiga fans have been circulating bootleg editions for years on vhs and DVD, but it'll be nice to have a legal edition available at last.

Per usual, I welcome any links anyone cares to post on this matter -- updates, rumors, critiques, criticisms, fears, etc.
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Emails and Updates

Heads up from emailers, alerting me to tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure feature on Alan Moore and his upset over the upcoming V for Vendetta movie, which actually looks like the best of the adaptations of all Alan's works to the big screen. From London, my UK friend Kim Newman noted it was indeed the most faithful (Kim having already seen it), but that's neither here nor there in the realm of what it is Alan's carping about.
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This just in, compliments of HomeyM: the latest evidence of the abuse of power the President's been so bully bragging about (his wiretapping of US citizens):

BUSH REGIME TRIES TO INTIMIDATE INVESTIGATIVE WEB SITE
 
[PS: Thompson has run a number of stories embarrassing to the regime, based on information from Bush administration sources]
 
DOUG THOMPSON, CAPITOL HILL BLUE - In recent weeks, the FBI has issued hundreds of "National Security Letters," directing employers, banks, credit card companies, libraries and other entities to turn over records on reporters. Under the USA Patriot Act, those who must turn over the records are also prohibited from revealing they have done so to the subject of the federal probes.
 
"The significance of this cannot be overstated," says prominent New York litigator Glenn Greenwald. "In essence, while the President sits in the White House undisturbed after proudly announcing that he has been breaking the law and will continue to do so, his slavish political appointees at the Justice Department are using