Bryan Talbot:
Illuminating Underground Roots

A Swamp Thing factoid known to almost all British fans of the series but almost no US fans is that Chester Williams, the benevolent, likeable hippie character Alan Moore introduced to Swamp Thing, was a nod to Bryan Talbot’s most popular 1970s UK underground character, Chester P. Hackenbush. Bryan and I will get into that matter (and the life and legacy of his Chester) in a future interview, but it seemed appropo to use the blog interview format to introduce those of you unfamiliar with Bryan’s pioneering early work and the British underground scene of the ‘70s to both.

I caught Bryan just before he began his April tour of Europe and the US, and we completed this, the third in a series of interviews we’re doing together (the first two were completed for PaneltoPanel.net; see link, below). This intro will serve to introduce all our subsequent interviews, so read on, please, and meet (as best as my own blog can provide a meeting ground) Bryan Talbot.


Spawned -- uh, born February 24th, 1952 in Wigan, Lancashire in England, Bryan Talbot is among his native country’s and the world’s premiere graphic novelists. Bryan in fact created the UK’s first modern graphic novel, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (launched 1978, first collected into a single volume by Never Ltd. in 1982), an immediate contemporary of Raymond Briggs's celebrated When the Wind Blows.





But that was, in many ways, just a beginning (but not the beginning, as this interview will reveal to those of you who don't know otherwise).

Among Talbot’s other key and notable works are his comic strips (for Manchester Flash, Wired, Vogarth, Imagine, Knockabout, etc.) and contributions to 2000 AD (beginning in 1983, and including artwork for Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, etc.), Hellblazer, Sandman, Fables, the two-part “Mask” for the Batman series Legends of the Dark Knight, and many others. He collaborated with famed vet American underground comics author and poet Tom Veitch on The Nazz, and with Tom’s younger brother Rick Veitch on the first six issues of Teknophage, from a concept by Neil Gaiman; assuming the writing chores on his next Teknophage collaborative venture, Talbot scripted the six-issue miniseries Phage: Shadowdeath. Talbot’s ‘breakthrough’ graphic novel (for the US market, in any case) was the now-classic The Tale of One Bad Rat (1995), followed by his Luther Arkwright sequel Heart of Empire (1999, which also spawned a CD-Rom created by Talbot and his website maestro James Robertson, released the same year).

His most recent graphic novel is the marvelous Alice in Sunderland (2007), which

Bryan and I talked about at PaneltoPanel.net,

where you can also purchase Alice in Sunderland with an exclusive signed, limited edition bookplate (our second interview, on Bryan’s new book The Naked Artist, will be posted soon).

And that’s just the man’s comics work: Talbot has also illustrated and created covers for numerous comics, books and magazines, worked in advertising, created designs for British Aerospace, collaborated (with sf author Bob Shaw) on “Encounter with a Madman” for Granada TV’s anthology program Celebration (1981), produced concept art for the TV movie Above the World (based on a Ramsey Campbell story, 1994), and oh, so much more.

But it all begins somewhere.

It began for Bryan with an illustration in the Tolkien Society magazine (1969), a weekly comic strip (created with fellow UK cartoonist Bonk) for his college newspaper, and -- most vital of all -- with the British underground comix.

Just as a key component of the American underground comix of the ‘60s and early ‘70s emerged from the countercultural underground newspapers of the day, the British underground comix had their own roots in British underground papers like Oz and International Times (aka IT). Like their American counterparts, these were often rag-tag affairs brimming with radical political screeds, poetry, articles, photo collage, art and comics. The first British underground comic tabloid to emerge from this scene was Cyclops (four issues, 1970), founded by members of the IT staff helmed by Graham Keen, which reprinted choice cuts of the American comix and some new British work. The notorious Nasty Tales (1971-73) followed and was quickly squelched by the authorities and brought to trial; it, too, reprinted US comix along with new work by British cartoonists (Chris Welch, Edward Barker, Malcolm Livingstone). The same was true of the longest running of all British comix, the Cozmic Comics line, which was launched in 1972 (ostensibly as a life-support for Oz magazine) and lasted over twenty titles/issues, showcasing US comix alongside new work by Brian Bolland, Angus McKie, Dave Gibbons, Joe Petagno, Edward Barker, Mike Weller and others.

But even Cozmic Comics met its Waterloo, and by the mid-70s the scene seemed prematurely defunct -- until the arrival of Bryan Talbot and Brainstorm Comix (1975), the first British underground composed of entirely new and all-British creations -- the maturing work of one Bryan Talbot.

Brainstorm Comix was an unabashed psychedelic experience, published by Lee Harris, proprietor of the still-vital Portobello Road headshop Alchemy. Brainstorm Comix #1 also introduced the character of Chester P. Hackenbush -- and, with its third issue, Luther Arkwright, whose adventures proper were launched in Near Myths (reprinted -- in considerably revised and expanded form -- in Psssst! beginning in 1981). Bryan also serialized the adventures of one Frank Fazakerley, Space Ace Of The Future, in Ad Astra (1978) -- but we’re getting ahead of our story.

Let’s talk to Bryan about the underground comix scene overall, and we’ll get to Chester and Luther Arkwright next time around...

SB: When did the cartooning bug first bit you, Bryan?

BRYAN TALBOT: When I was around five years old and an uncle gave me some second-hand collections of the work of British newspaper cartoonist Giles. I couldn't understand the political jokes but I loved the drawings and the wealth of detail in them.

SB: What was your first published work -- and when, in your own mind, did something of yours see print that really had you thinking, "Now I'm on to something..."?

BT: I had a short prose story printed in the school annual when I was about fourteen. My first printed illustrations appeared in The British Tolkein Society magazine, when I was eighteen. I suppose that it was while working on my first underground comics a few years later that I realized that I could perhaps aspire to becoming a professional comic artist but I can't remember a specific moment of revelation.

SB: Between age 18 for you and your first underground creations, what did you do?

BT: A one-year foundation art course followed by a three-year graphic design course.

SB: The British underground scene is a rather murky period to Americans. I recall seeing my first UK undergrounds in a friend's collection, though precious few made it over here. What are you primary memories of how that scene started?

BT: The first UK undergrounds were, on the whole, very influenced by the American ones. In fact the two that lasted for more than an issue or two, Nasty Tales and Cozmic Comics, were filled with reprints of American strips. Both these comics were off-shoots of UK underground publications -- the International Times (IT) newspaper and Oz magazine, respectively. Towards the end of it's run (about eighteen issues) Cozmic Comics started to publish original British material by the likes of Chris Welch and Edward Barker.


SB: Would you care to chart the UK underground in terms of your own development and role therein?

BT: I came in on the tail end of UK undergrounds in 1975 with Brainstorm Comix #1. It had been about two years since the last Cozmic had appeared and the field was empty. Altogether, six issues were produced, mainly of my work but two were anthologies (including work by Hunt Emerson and Chris Welch). At about the same time, Hunt started producing low print run surrealist comics while he worked at the Birmingham Arts Lab. These got more ambitious over the next few years, increasing in size, circulation and contributors.

SB: The American underground expired, really, after the one-two punch of the 1973 Supreme Court Obscenity ruling and the outlawing of head shops, which quickly dismantled the distribution for comix. Arcade was the last, great gasp here. How did the UK underground scene evaporate?

BT: Head shops were never outlawed over here but Brainstorm was pretty well distributed anyway - even to news stands through the distribution company Moore Harness (which used to specialize in T&A mags). In 1978 I stopped doing undergrounds as such and began writing and drawing The Adventures of Luther Arkwright which was serialised in the independent "ground-level" adult SF comic magazine Near Myths. The Arts Lab's comics were never, strictly speaking, underground in that their subject matter wasn't the typical counter culture mix of sex, drugs and rock and roll that is usually associated with the genre. They, themselves, described their comics as "alternative" rather than underground. For example, they published the first UK feminist comic Heroine. They gradually stopped publishing comics at the end of the seventies, after Hunt Emerson left to go freelance. From the mid-seventies, Tony and Carol Bennett had been reprinting Gilbert Shelton's Freak Brothers and,in the early eighties, began Knockabout Comics and have since sporadically published underground and alternative comics and graphic novels, often by Hunt. By the way, my Brainstorm and other underground work was reprinted in one volume a few years ago by Alchemy, its original publisher, and is still in print.

SB: Two variations on the same question, Bryan, if you’ll indulge me. At the time, what was the single most influential British underground comic, story or creator within the scene? And, looking back, 20/20 hindsight, what would you consider today the single most influential comic, story or creator of the 1970s UK underground period?

BT: I don't think that I can really answer this as I think that the answer's Arkwright and myself! The UK underground scene was quite small compared to the US one. Both Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland started in the Brit underground but I can't really say that their work there was very influential. Whereas, Arkwright had many readers who went on to become comic pros who've affirmed the influence that Arkwright had on them, including Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis -- and even Rick Veitch, Michael Zulli -- and yourself! The 1980s Italian edition of Arkwright was also very influencial, I gather, influencing a generation of young Italian SF writers.

SB: That’s true, your Arkwright work was a real influence on me -- we’ll get into that later, promise, in the Arkwright interview!

So, there’s a sort of limbo between the demise of the underground and the rise of 2000 A.D. and what Americans experienced stateside as the British Invasion, if you will, of the late 1970s and early ‘80s. That began with the import and US collections of Judge Dredd, particularly Brian Bolland's tenure on that character, and John Bolton’s new Marvel work and, in 1983, Alan Moore’s taking over the scripting of Saga of the Swamp Thing. All we saw, here, on our own newsstands were works like So Beautiful, So Dangerous serialized in Heavy Metal; horror fans, like myself, also savored the monster magazines -- Bolton, David Lloyd, etc. in Halls of/House of Hammer, which got some US distribution, Dave Gibbons popping up in The Monster Times -- and attentive comics readers caught the eruption of Warrior, which is strictly an import here. We missed Action completely, mind you, and most missed the coming of 2000 A.D. until the Titan trade paperback collections were imported.

You remained active throughout this transitional period; there were the music zines, which few saw here, and you poured yourself into Luther Arkwright, which was at last collected in book form in 1981. Could you chat about this post-underground, pre-British Invasion period, Bryan? What was it like over there, as a creator and a reader? And what, specifically, was it like for you?

BT: I was actually making money for the first time! This is the period when I went professional. As well as working on Arkwright, I did a lot of illustration work -- airbrush paintings, rock star pinups etc, as well as the
weekly strip Scumworld in Sounds. It was a pretty exciting time. Pssst!, the experimental precursor of comic magazines such as Heartbreak Hotel, Escape and Deadline was coming out and we were all waiting for Warrior, which was a year or two in preparation and promised -- and delivered -- a lot. Meanwhile, 2000 A.D. was the cutting edge of the adventure comic. I started working for it myself in 1983.

SB: What would you consider your key works from this pre-Luther Arkwright, early career period for you?

BT: The "Chester P. Hackenbush" trilogy in Brainstorm, I suppose -- and Frank Fazakerly, Space Ace of the Future! -- a monthly one page SF spoof strip in Ad Astra magazine (the UK's answer to Omni).

SB: Thanks, Bryan, I really appreciate the time you’ve given us -- let’s chat again, and soon. Good luck and happy trails on your April tour!

Here, again, is the link to our previous interview at PaneltoPanel.net,

where you can also purchase Bryan’s new graphic novel Alice in Sunderland with an exclusive signed, limited edition bookplate;

here’s PaneltoPanel’s complete one-stop shopping selection of Talbot graphic novels currently available in the US. All are well worth owning and revisiting frequently.

Here’s Bryan’s own Alice in Sunderland site home page;

but that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

For more on Bryan’s life, times and comics, check out

James Robertson’s marvelous Official Bryan Talbot Fan Page, which is also your exclusive online source for Bryan and James’s Heart of Empire CD-ROM.

To tap into the remarkable, imaginative realms of Bryan’s seminal Luther Arkwright graphic novel(s), visit this site,

and Bryan’s Luther Arkwright web comic awaits you here.

Bryan selflessly adds,

“Check out this incredible graphic novel by Véronique Tanaka,” and so you should.

This is just the first in a series of upcoming interviews, with all kinds of folks I hope you'll find of interest: cartoonists, writers, filmmakers, jacks-of-all-trades, and many more. So -- more exclusive interviews with other folks in the coming weeks -- keep your eye on this blog, folks!

Have a great Wednesday...

Bava Bio Book of the Year?

It's too soon to say -- since it's just off to the printer this past week -- but I daresay I've not been this eager to hold a book in my hands since the announcement of Joe Kubert returning to Tor (via the Epic series), or Ray Harryhausen's first book coming out back in the 1970s.

The image Tim and Donna built this cover around is burned into my braincells, searing seven-year-old Bissette's young Catholic mind as no other movie image had or would for years.

It's hard to communicate today how potent a film like Black Sunday was in the early '60s, just after the modern horror film was born (via Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom) but before it had become the mirror of that decade that the genre became (via George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Michael Reeves's The Witchfinder General aka The Conqueror Worm). Mario Bava's black-and-white phantasmagoria spoke louder and clearer to me of matters of the soul, good and evil, and the power of light over darkness than any of the "religious" films I'd been subjected to at that tender age (at that time, Charlton Heston epics like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments were required viewing, even at age five and six).

More on Bava, and Tim's new book, in coming posts...

__________

I've just completed two new interviews with Bryan Talbot -- another for PaneltoPanel.net, and one for this blog -- which will be online soon. More info, and the Myrant interview, soon!

___________

Gotta run, be back later today...

Farewell, Rob Walton --

Rob just hit the road; I've got a lot of legwork to do on catch-up here, but it was a great three+ days and the Center for Cartoon Studies interaction was vital and worthwhile (by all reports). So, score! Safe drive home, Rob. I'll be posting pix here once the students share that with me, or post them online themselves.

I'll post later today with something of substance, I hope.

For today, I've got a recording session via phone with Lance Weiler later this morning for an upcoming live-soundtrack performance event of Lance's feature Head Trauma -- more on that later today, once I know more myself. Bryan Talbot and I are into the next phase (or two) of our interview series, this one on Bryan's book The Naked Artist -- more on that later. I'm speaking at the Westminster West Library in Westminster West, VT at 7 PM tonight -- more info on that in a bit -- which I'll be prepping for all day. Finally,we've got our plumber in the basement, installing the long-overdue pressure tank so our showers are more than a flower-watering-can's worth of water pressure.

And that's likely more than you care to know...

More later!

Bryan In Sunderland,
Mantan the Funnyman
& Monday Misc.

[Image copyright 2007 Bryan Talbot]
"Sunderland! Thirteen hundred years ago it was the greatest centre of learning in the whole of Christendom and the very cradle of English consciousness. In the time of Lewis Carroll it was the greatest shipbuilding port in the world. To this city that gave the world the electric light bulb, the stars and stripes, the millennium, the Liberty Ships and the greatest British dragon legend came Carroll in the years preceding his most famous book, Alice in Wonderland, and here are buried the roots of his surreal masterpiece. Enter the famous Edwardian palace of varieties, The Sunderland Empire, for a unique experience: an entertaining and epic meditation on myth, history and storytelling and decide for yourself -— does Sunderland really exist?"

Morning, one and all, and a fine Monday it promises to be, too.

If you're aching to read my blather, there's a healthy weekend worth of posts awaiting you below, including mucho Cine-Ketchup for those so disposed.

Better yet, though, my interview with Bryan Talbot on his new graphic novel Alice in Sunderland is at last

online on PaneltoPanel.net, and Bryan is always worth reading!

Bryan and I are still at it, with more interviews on his recent and upcoming projects underway, which are plentiful. Few Americans are aware of the span and variety of Bryan's incredible body of work -- as cartoonist, writer, etc. -- or that his career dates back to the original British underground comix scene of the early 1970s.

We'll be covering all that and more in upcoming interviews, exclusive to PaneltoPanel.net and this blog.

In any case, be sure to give this initial installment some time today -- and be sure to order your copy of Alice in Sunderland with the signed Bryan Talbot bookplate from PaneltoPanel.net,

available exclusively here.

Tell them I sent you!

But that ain't all.

I'm always reading at least two books, and lately I've been devouring my preordered copy of Michael H. Price's brand-new book Mantan the Funnyman: The Life and Times of Mantan Moreland. I highly recommend this new tome to you, too. Michael H. is an old friend, so I'm a bit prejudiced toward any and all of his projects, mind you, but this is a real honey.

Packaged with an exclusive CD showcasing some incredible Mantan recording rarities from the 1920s to the '60s, hosted by Mike himself, Mantan the Funnyman offers a comprehensive and quite exhaustive overview of the late Mantan Moreland's extraordinary life, times and career -- and whole lot more than that.

Like almost all of Mike's books, this gem is peppered with a banquet of bon mots from Mike's own life and times, offering a multitude of narrative threads: Mantan's, Mike's (growing up in Texas with a jones for all things Mantan & musical), Mantan's daughter Marcella Moreland Young, and interviews and anecdotes from Rudy Ray Moore, Bill Cosby, Moe Howard (Mantan was almost the third stooge after Curly's death!), Aaron Thibeaux 'T-Bone' Walker, Frankie Darro and too many others to name here. There's a wealth of information lovingly culled from four decades in the newspaper biz (Michael H. has been a reporter and journalist since the late '60s) that also embraces the nooks and crannies of minstrel show and vaudeville history, the Southern "chitlin'" and black stage & music circuit, the black film industry of the '20s, '30s and '40s, the various incarnations of Amos 'n' Andy, the Charlie Chan films (which Mantan featured prominently in as Birmingham Brown), the ACLU's campaign against black actors and comedians like Mantan (which derailed the great man's career from the '40s on), and much, much more.

Michael covers so much cultural and subcultural history that the book functions as a crash-course on 20th Century civil rights issues in the entertainment industry as much as biography of its titular subject. Neatly contextualized with its foreword by Gregory Kane and intro by Josh Alan Friedman, launched with Mike (and Marcella)'s views on the savage caricature of Mantan that figured prominently in Spike Lee's akimbo agitprop feature Bamboozled,

Like Mike, I became a Mantan fan for life thanks to a late-night TV broadcast of the Monogram WW2 'walking dead for the Third Reich' opus King of the Zombies (1941). Mantan's character Jefferson 'Jeff' Jackson was, to my young eyes, clearly the most pro-active character in the movie, its true hero: yes, he runs away when common sense prevails in the face of danger (which always seemed utterly pragmatic to me), but it's Jeff who uncovers the menace to civilization (a Nazi scientist cultivating an army of zombies), insists this be dealt with, and, as Mike puts it, "laughs in the face of danger... and gives the white guys plenty of jovial back-talk in protesting his second-class citizenship" (Jeff is the valet of the film's nominal hero played by Dick Purcell). Moreland's playing subverted the film's horror element completely; once the villain succeeds in enlisting Mantan into the ranks of his walking dead (apparently via hypnosis: 1940s zombies were always ambivalent about their status in terms of living or dead), he pushes over the lanky lineup of stiffs with the line, "Move over, boys -- I'm one of the gang, now," which cracked me up enough to prompt my dad to stir from my parent's bedroom and insist I watch my movie quietly -- no laughing out loud.

That proved difficult, but not as difficult as it proved to see more Mantan; I fell for Mantan's brand of comedy that evening, and always kept an eye out for his films thereafter. This was a tough task in the era of succinct TV Guide movie listings, no articles on Mantan, and no internet. Still, I lucked into a few, and was constantly surprised at the unusual (and sadly usually fleeting) Mantan appearances, right on up to his murder-victim cameo in Jack Hill's delirious Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told (1964), which I didn't see until the video explosion of the 1980s (and a taped-off-broadcast vhs copy my late amigo Bill Kelley sent me).

FYI, my other fave Mantan movie line that's zombie-specific remains "If there's anything I wouldn't want to be twice, zombies is both of 'em!" Michael H. spices his new book with an abundance of Mantanisms, many imminently quotable, but to quote 'em, you gotta read 'em.

Visit the Midnight Marquee book site and scroll down to order your copy of Mantan the Funnyman now -- it's now in print, I received my copy the last week in February, so don't hesitate!

There's also Michael H. and John Wooley's latest installment in the extraordinary book series Michael launched with the late, great George Turner back in the 1980s, Forgotten Horrors.

The first edition of the first volume, as I recall, was a full-size trade paperback published, oddly enough, by Eclipse Comics, an aberration in the Eclipse lineup to be sure, but a grand and glorious revelation for die-hard horror movie buffs like moi. Micheal H. and George later prepared at least two revised editions, and Michael H. has since considerably expanded, revised and extended that pioneer effort into a series of books with various partners (co-authors and publishers, natch). I've got 'em all in my library, proud to say, though they're still in boxes just now... the move is over, but the unpacking has yet to begin in terms of my library. Sigh.

This latest installment covers the years 1948-49, and I can't wait to see what lost treasures, curios and obscurities Mike and John have brought to light -- and also can't help salivating over what awaits us once they get to the 1950s!

Forgotten Horrors 4: Dreams That Money Can Buy is

likewise on sale at the Midnight Marquee book site, and well worth ordering ASAP.

And that's that this Monday AM, have a great one!

A Peek at the New Digs

I'm usually up by 5:30 AM -- but I was so fried from this week, and from the fourth drive up to and back from Burlington in a week, that I conked until almost 10:30 AM this morn. We drove home last night in falling and blowing snow the entire way, and I managed the drive comfortably until we were 40 miles north of White River Junction -- by then, I was just too exhausted to safely continue driving. Fortunately, Marge was wide awake and happy to take over, and we were definitely through the worst of the snow, so she drove the final stretch of I-89 and the 15 minutes of I-91 home. I barely stayed awake that final haul; had I been driving alone, I would have pulled over more than once to rub snow on my face to keep myself wide awake.

So, Marge is safely home from her trip to visit our grandchildren in Texas, and I savored our first night and (today) day together since last week.

Still, got some work done. Just wrapped up part one of the multi-chapter interview with Bryan Talbot (links to be posted here soon!), and finally have some time to post -- sorry I missed my usual AM arrival.

Photos today -- this is the shelving done thus far on our new home by David Gabriel, who (along with his brother Mike) completed this chunk of the renovations needed for my collection and library about a month ago. We're eagerly looking forward to Dave's return, as the construction of the basement library/office begins at last.

Dave and Mike did a stellar job; Dave not only fulfilled my hopes for the viewing room shelving (which, thankfully, houses all my DVDs -- finally, the library in easy reach, and in a single room!), he consistently improved upon and enhanced every aspect of the project.



Walking you around the viewing room, the first evening after Dave and Mike had finished their work on this space, you can see here the door to the room and the first bank of shelves. These extend from floor to ceiling, across the span of the interior wall and around the top of the back window --



-- which is framed on its other side by another bank of shelves.

Standing at the window, this is the view of the shelving that Dave constructed on the interior wall to the right of the window. Note the angled roofline cutting into the room; Dave's shelving perfectly follows that form, wrapping around to the inside area, and continuing alongside the door -- which is across the room from the entryway we began this room tour with.

(This door, BTW, presently opens up to the unfinished room over our garage. This will be, by summer, by writing/mailing/office space, once it's finished.)

The two doors leaning against room door are from the closet (which we'll be getting to soon enough). At this stage, the double-sliding-doors have been removed -- ostensibly for Dave and Mike's easier access to the closet work area, but these hanging doors may remain off. Time will tell.

Note, too, the small rounded corner shelving Dave created for that corner beneath the angled interior wall. This was Dave's idea, and I dig it -- it provides some shelf space for my monster figures and movie collectibles (like my drive-in speaker!), as well as one of the surround-sound speakers for the final viewing room set-up.

We've removed the two detached closet hanging doors from this shot: that's the same interior door (facing the entry door, across the room) you saw in the last photo.

This angle gives you a good view of the bank of shelving to the right of the interior door, which is the first portion I racked as I began unpacking after Dave and Mike's work was done, and I was free to begin setting up the room. All my animation collection neatly fits this space, including my beloved collection of King Kong, Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen films.

Now, this is a little difficult to describe here, but if you continue looking to the right of these shelves, there's another angled wall that cuts down into the room. That angle runs the length of the wall (which is directly opposite the window, which is visible in the first and second photos I've shown you here).

That leaves precious little space for shelving, further compromised by the heating baseboard extending across almost half the length of that end of the room.

However, Dave did make optimum use of what little wall we do have to work with beneath that angled interior wall. This shot doesn't give you as clear an orientation to the layout of the room as the previous shots do, but it's the best we could get at this time.

This floor-to-beginning-of-the-angled-wall bank of shelves on the left leads into the full floor-to-ceiling set on the immediate right, which run up alongside the narrow strip of wall on the left of the wide closet doorway.

As you can see, ample shelving space, all perfectly designed for optimum racking of DVDs, with enough clearance throughout for vhs tapes and many DVD boxed sets.

Dave's efficient use of all available space, including the areas dealing with the angle-cut of the inside wall, provides a space pleasing to the eye and useful for tucking and storing odds and ends -- including remotes, etc. -- that are coming in very handy. The warmth of the wood (which Mike polyurethaned, two coats) contrasts the blue walls perfectly, and the entire room now has an expansive warmth, thanks to the woodwork, that's really comfortable to spend time with. Nice!

I should also mention, before we get to Dave's final completion of the interior closet shelving, that this was the only room of our new home we had to paint. For the original (and only preceding) owners, this was apparently the bedroom of their two little girls. It was a truly hideous patchwork of violet and pale green walls -- perhaps color-coded for the girls? -- and clearly had to go.

Marge chose this eye-soothing hue of blue, which wasn't as oppressive as the dark blue I had chosen for our Marlboro home's basement viewing room (which never, ever provided sufficient space for the sprawl of my equipment and collection, and was hardly usable in our five years there). This worked out well, and Dave began work within two days of my completing the spackling, sanding and repaint job on the walls.

Okay, back to the photo tour of the viewing room:

This is the entryway to the closet, which also showcases the shelving Dave completed for the narrow wall extending out from the right closet doorway frame. So, what you're seeing here is a portion of the interior of the closet (with the hanging doors removed, natch) and the floor-to-ceiling shelving running up along the wall outside the closet doorway -- and on to the entry door we began this photo tour with.


Here's a tighter shot of the shelves to the right of the closet door frame.

The three display shelves to the left of the entry door were Dave's idea, too. Having seen some of my monster models, which I've nowhere to put just yet, Dave asked if I'd like space to display two or three of them in this otherwise unused space by the door frame. Like all Dave's suggestions, this was a good one, and also provides a handy shelf -- directly across the room from the rounded shelves in the opposite bend-of-the-wall, visible in the third photo above -- for another of the surround-sound speakers.

Good call, Dave -- and excellent execution!



Here's the best angle we could manage to photograph the closet interior -- again, floor-to-ceiling shelving. This was a particularly tight area for Dave and Mike to work within, but per usual, they did a fantastic job. It's perfect.

These shelves are sized not for DVDs, but for larger components of the video collection: the floor shelving is designed for laserdiscs (they all fit!), the rest for big-box videos from the early years of the 1980s video market, those glorious oversized color vids from the likes of Gorgon Video, Wizard, and the rest.

Many of the titles released on vhs in the big-box format have never been issued in other any form, and for some -- like the original Herschell Gordon Lewis and Andy Milligan vhs releases, and curios like the Spectreman series -- the boxes themselves are artifacts of a key era of exploitation cinema and video that has long passed. I treasure them as much as my poster and pressbook collection. So, at my request, Dave designed and constructed this interior closet shelving to accommodate as much of this part of the ol' collection as possible.


This was the best we could do, photographing the deep interior of the inner closet shelving. It's almost impossible to get a camera into the confines of this area with enough visibility to capture what it's like inside. It's a wide, deep closet, ideal for my needs -- and it was mighty tough for Marge to give up!

Fortunately, the rest of the house has so much quality closet space, Marge has more than enough. So, this worked out fine for me.

I can't wait to complete the set up of the viewing room, and hopefully savor it for years to come. I'm beginning the setup process this weekend, and hope to watch my first movie here by next weekend.

As you can see from this little photo tour, David Gabriel has done an extraordinary job for us.

There's still much to do, work that will carry on into the summer: an unfinished room over our garage that will become my office, mailing room and writing studio; the entire basement, which is unfinished and will become my sorely-needed library for books, magazine, comics and the collection; and Marge's screened-in back deck porch, which we'll get to once the ground thaws, dries and spring is here.

But that's a long way off just now.

Have a great weekend, one and all, and see you here as time permits...

No Time! No Time!

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

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

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

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

-- and for a CCS class trip up to

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

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


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

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

Have a great Wednesday, one and all --

Mind the Ogre

* El Laberinto del Fauno/Pan's Labyrinth: Guillermo del Toro's latest masterpiece is being ballyhooed in newspaper ads and TV spots as an out-and-out fantasy; my son Dan works at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro, VT, and reports many disgruntled folks coming out after, having expected a Jim Henson-like Labyrinth opus and endured instead a crash-course in the Spanish Civil War.

Similar responses are detailed in some of this past week's comments posted on this very blog (personally, I've long practiced the "no expectations" rule when entering a theater or popping in a disc or tape; but hey, that's me, I'm weird). Indeed, the poster evokes Tim Burton's universe, with petite Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) standing beneath the arc of the labyrinth entrance and before the iconic, ancient split tree central to the film's ravishing imagery. No doubt the studio has done a stellar job selling the film, and I can understand the expectations raised by the easy-sell procession of key fairy-tale imagery that is indeed central to the film. That's the most sympathy I can mount for the disconnect between expectation and the film itself: it's not the first time, and won't be the last, a film has been arguably mismarketed. But hey, it's gotten Pan's Labyrinth into theaters, and lots of them. All's fair in love and marketing. Getting asses into seats is all that matters to Hollywood, and the justifiable critical praise and accurate-as-far-as-it-goes promotion of the film drawn from del Toro's inspired fantasy sequences is doing its job.

Perversely, I couldn't be happier. It's an eerily precise echo of the 2002-3 selling of this fucking war we're now mired in: the public bought the fantasy, and are now disenchanted with the reality. That's precisely the tenor and feeble substance of the arguments against Pan's Labyrinth I've heard and read, and it's a remarkable microcosm of the American psyche and war. We ache only for the fantasy of conflict, the illusory glory and victory (the most destructive fantasy of all in current US history: the irrational urge for a return to Victory Culture, an impossibility in the 21st Century), we resent the grim realities.

Make no mistake, Pan's Labyrinth explores all that, and more. Like (to cite just three examples), René Clément's Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games (1952), Victor Erice's gem El Espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Bryan Talbot's top-notch graphic novel The Tale of One Bad Rat, Pan's Labyrinth explores and articulates with stunning power the fundamental necessity & function of fantasy as tool for dealing with the harshest aspects of life (in the case of the two films I've cited, war; in the context of Talbot's graphic novel, the repercussions of sexual abuse). It's no coincidence, either, these works all deal with children uprooted, orphaned and/or exiled by dire circumstances beyond their control.

In his latest film, del Toro provides a complete case history of Ofelia's plight, presented with such economy and clarity that we experience its arc with our own adult perceptions intact, even as we vicariously experience Ofelia's child's-point-of-view quite directly (including her fantasy life, sequences which are beautifully conceived and realized). As in del Toro's previous Spanish Civil War-set meditation on war and its horrors, El Espinazo del diablo/The Devil's Backbone (2001; if you haven't seen it yet, do so, immediately!), the motivations of all the adult characters are lucidly delineated without once losing the narrative focus on the child protagonist(s). This, to my mind, is among del Toro's most precious gifts as a storyteller; shame on those adults who resent del Toro's insistence on a fuller grasp of the world.

[Why do we insist on being treated like children? I'm 51 years old; I see films as an adult, I don't resent films that treat me as an adult, despite the rigorous MPAA attempts to regulate all US cinema to the level of 17-year-olds exclusively.]

On del Toro's terms -- in the context of his work to date, and the film's own terms -- Pan's Labyrinth is a masterwork.

Ofelia's odyssey (and personal apocalypse: the film is framed, perfectly, by the darkest moment of Ofelia's young life) begins with the caravan to her new home interrupted by her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) needing to stop amid a bout of 'morning sickness' (or worse; she is in ill health throughout the tale). There, in the verdant depths of the Spanish forest, Ofelia demonstrates a leap of perception that attracts the unusual attention of a most unusual walking stick (a real insect, for any of you who may doubt: these amazing insects also live in VT). This creature follows Ofelia and the car caravan to the farmhouse serving as the current battle station of Capitán Vidal (Sergi López), the man Ofelia's mother has married; she has her reasons, including her maternal dread of her daughter and soon-to-be-born son being orphaned, fears which play perfectly to Vidal's craving for an heir (Vidal carries his father's watch, which becomes a key visual touchstone in the film). Ofelia harbors nothing but loathing for Vidal, and in del Toro's first privileged view to the viewer of events Ofelia will never know of, we see how dead-on Ofelia's reading of El Capitán truly is: his casual nighttime dispatch of two innocent peasants, all to make a point to his second-in-command to not bother El Capitán with trivialities, is among the most harrowing moments in recent cinema.

Those (including comments on this blog) complaining about the lack of onscreen monsters clearly miss the point: Vidal is the monster of this fairy tale. He is del Toro's ogre, not the child-eating Pale Man that Ofelia braves in her efforts to satisfy the Faun's assigned labors. Vidal is this tale's ogre, from the casual brutality of the nighttime encounter with the father-and-son rabbit hunters to the climactic sequence in Vidal's lair. Could their be anything more fairy-tale-like in its context, imagery and strange horror than El Capitán, lit by firelight in the darkness of his headquarters, ignoring the crib in which his newborn son -- the captive infant -- cries as Vidal stitches up his face? We've seen more hamfisted evocations and fusions of fairy tales and real-world horrors (e.g., Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, The People Under the Stairs, David Lynch's Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, etc.), but del Toro consistently rises to the challenge with the skill of a Cocteau, never more than here. Vidal is the most monstrous of ogres in Ofelia's world, and hence the universe of Pan's Labyrinth, right to the fateful final confrontation between stepfather and stepdaughter in the heart of the titular labyrinth. In his utterly unnecessary and callous final action directed at his stepdaughter, Vidal proves to indeed be a monster, among the most frightening ever brought to the screen -- because we not only know men like Vidal exist, but we are dependent upon them in our own reality.

Among the film's most profound asides is the fleeting dialogue between Dr. Ferreiro (Álex Angulo) and Vidal at the moment of Vidal's decisive judgment of Ferreiro: the good doctor notes the fundamental difference between military men and the rest of mankind, and Vidal proves this truth with his immediate action. Men like Vidal question nothing, they only follow orders. This is the great, unspoken tragedy at the heart of the Spanish Civil War, the Iraq War, all wars. There's no denying the ferocity of Vidal's unswerving devotion to the cause of his superior, his 'Commander in Chief' General Franco, and this is as perversely admirable as in any soldier's devotion to duty, shading Vidal's characterization (as in all his films, all del Toro's characters are nuanced and dimensional, none more than his monsters). But are these the kind of men we want fighting in our names? Vidal isn't a two-dimensional ogre, but he is a sadistic patriarch and a brute, letting nothing stand between him and his duty (to Franco and his own illusions abouts his own father, hence the import of the shattered watch he carries) -- a 'good soldier,' indeed.

Among the many strengths of Pan's Labyrinth (as in The Devil's Backbone) is the resonant historical context: we know, in fact, men like Vidal indeed triumphed and held sway for decades during Franco's fascist rule, and thus the futility of the resistance embodied here by Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) and the forest-dwelling guerillas led by her brother. But we also know Franco's iron-fisted hold over Spain ended with Franco's death, and the blossoming of Spanish culture after that liberation, vindicating the struggle of the resistance fighters. With his ongoing meditations on what is, to most Americans, a forgotten war, del Toro continues to question primal truths about humanity and war even as he questions our own national commitment to war and the pious hypocrisy of fighting illusory wars to "spread democracy" in the wake of our shameful legacy of abandoning citizens, countries, cultures (as we did Spain in the 1940s) to the reign of fascists -- when it serves our political imperatives.

That said, it is as an original cinematic work that Pan's Labyrinth is most invaluable. In an era of interminable sequels, adaptations and remakes, a true original like this is a rare jewel indeed. The cast -- especially young Ivana Baquero, whose portrayal of Ofelia is touching beyond words -- is pitch-perfect, with special kudos to Maribel Verdú, Álex Angulo and Doug Jones, who plays both the enigmatic Faun and the horrific Pale Man. But it is del Toro's inspired, flawless direction that makes this such an alluring and engaging experience. Consider, for instance, the elegant adoption of that most archaic of sound era movie devices, the 'wipe' -- del Toro stages environment-driven 'wipes' to carry the film along, as a wall or a tree transports us effortlessly in a deeper chamber of the farmhouse, or further along into the woods, propelling us headlong into the depths of the narrative and closer, ever closer to its dark heart. Consider the richness and texture of script and characterization, the way in which even background characters evoke lives beyond the parameters of the screen: lives truly lived. Consider, too, the ease with which del Toro incorporates touches and characters from his earlier works without spoiling the tapestry of this new work: Ofelia's walking stick familiar, the first fairy of the film, is kin to the mutant cockroaches of Mimic (this character also recalled the diminutive humunculus Ray Harryhausen animated for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad), and who should be the long-lost and yearned for father of Ofelia's dreams but Federico Luppi, the beloved grandfather of Cronos and lone sympathetic father figure of the orphans in The Devil's Backbone? These are mere grace notes, but ones devotees like myself can savor.

Finally, it's amazing this film was made at all, much less that it would receive the wide release in the US it's currently enjoying. Guillermo's canny business instincts and ability to play the Hollywood game without losing his own muse has resulted in a remarkable tag-team procession of films, alternating between boxoffice-friendly genre exercises that cater to the market while stretching del Toro's storytelling chops, and those more personal films del Toro makes for himself. Thus, his exquisite debut feature Cronos (1993) spawns his first Hollywood genre exercise Mimic (1997), a badly flawed film spiced with startling moments and compelling characters; for American viewers, The Devil's Backbone was released sandwiched between Blade (2002) and Hellboy (2004), the success of the latter and spinoffs from the former making Pan's Labyrinth a bankable enterprise.

It's a smart game this cinematic fantasist is playing, keeping his balance with uncanny skill every step of the way, and it's the most Henson-like aspect of Pan's Labyrinth (after all, it was Muppet money that bankrolled gambles like The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and The Witches in Henson's lifetime). This is the game Clive Barker hoped to play with Hollywood, but couldn't manage; no slight to Clive, mind you, that del Toro has learned from the misfortunes and missteps of those who've gone before him. It's del Toro who has played such a critical backstage role in the fusion of the new Mexican cinema and Hollywood, quietly connecting-the-dots and nurturing the crossfertilization of his peers (like Alfonso Cuarón, whose Children of Men is a here-and-now companion to Pan's Labyrinth: in some theaters, you could see both films this week!) without the loss of muses that so plagues similar absorptions into the Hollywood mainstream -- as in the Hong Kong generation, to note an example in recent memory of all readers of this blog. Consider the gulf between the mishandling of John Woo, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung a decade ago with the quite remarkable facility with which filmmakers like del Toro and Cuarón have thus far handled their careers, and give del Toro and his peers their due.

If you pass up Pan's Labyrinth because of the naysayers, you're denying yourself something extraordinary. Despite the addiction of American audiences to films streamlined to never challenge and always slake (film as narcotic), art and cinema per se aren't meant to satisfy fantasies; fantasy, in and of itself, is a mirror of the world, a means of confrontation as well as escape (can any climax of any movie so perfectly embody that, as Pan's Labyrinth's final moments truly do?).

Pan's Labyrinth explores that essential aspect of fantasy -- our need for it, its primal function, and thus its relation to religion and religious belief -- with unflinching devotion, skill and vision.

I can think of no higher calling, no greater accomplishment, in theaters at this time.

____________

Bum's Rush

Speaking of war fantasies, mismarketing, and delusional thinking, check this out:


February 1, 2007
Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos
Chairman,
Norwegian Nobel Institute
Henrik Ibsens Gate 51
NO-0255
Oslo, Norway

Dear Dr. Mjos:

Landmark Legal Foundation herewith submits the name of Rush Limbaugh as an unsolicited nomination for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

We are offering this nomination for Mr. Limbaugh's nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all mankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin. We fervently believe that these are the only real cornerstones of just and lasting peace throughout the world.

Rush Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host in the United States and one of the most popular broadcasters in the world. His daily radio show is heard on more than 600 radio stations in the United States and around the world. For 18 years he has used his show to become the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today. Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law -- and it is fitting the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations.

Thank you for your thoughtful and serious consideration of this nomination. Should you require additional information, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,



Mark R. Levin
President

[SOURCE: Landmark Legal Foundation]

It's for real: see

this link for evidence of how delusional the self-proclaimed "leading conservative public interest law firm in the United States" really is.

Given only Rush's sensitive approach to the detainee torture revelations, this is a shoe-in, eh?

For 18 years, Rush has been gleefully spreading Lord Ha-Ha-like right-wing propaganda as "fact," including war-mongering, homophobia, hate speech, racism, misogyny, etc., all with his trademark patriarchal bombast. He was during an undisclosed stretch of that time under the malign influence of megadoses of pharmaceuticals (during which he railed against drug abuse and for invasive tactics involving women's medical records to curb abortion -- the latter, coincidentally, paralleled Rush's attornies attempts to bury/shelter Rush's own medical records regarding his pharmaceutical self-abuse and activities). He has been instrumental in the elevation of George W. Bush to the presidency, the initial rushes to (and popularization of) the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, a ceaseless fear fomenter for the nonsensical "War on Terror," and among the most audacious apologists for this Administration's trampling of Constitutional and civil rights (including his justifiably infamous dismissal of torture revelations as our finest simply "letting off some steam") of the past five years.

If you condone

this kind of behavior as stellar examples of contemporary American diplomacy at work, by all means, vote for Rush.

He's helped make it all possible, and palatable, even desirable, to a portion of the American public.

_____________

Have a great weekend. We're having house guests, so I'll likely not be posting -- see you Monday!