ANDREW FOLEY WRITES THINGS

2012-01-16T10:39:00.000-08:00

2012-01-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

2012-01-09T20:43:00.000-08:00

2012-01-04T11:50:00.001-08:00

2012-01-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

2012-01-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

2011-12-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

2011-12-23T07:56:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:13:00.000-08:00

2011-06-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

In the admittedly unlikely event that someone is still following this livejournal, I suppose I should mention that I've started a new tumblr blog, Andrew Foley Continues to Write Things, which I'm not currently crossposting to any of my previous blogs because I'm busy, OK?

My intention with that blog is to keep the discussion focused on stuff that's related in some way to my so-called "writing career": writing, comics, Hollywood, movies, TV, and so on.

Utter nonsense interspersed with political commentary, condemnation of the a-holes that royally #*%&ed my roof up for 18 thousand dollars (Edmonton's Amcor Roofing), and the occasional personal note will continue to spew forth on my twitter account, @TheAndrewFoley. If I end up feeling the need to write something more personal, as I did the last time I was around these parts for any length of time, I might end up posting something here, but given the last year and a half, I wouldn't count on it.

Thanks for whatever attention you gave this little blog over the years, and I hope to see you around.

Big sloppy hugs,
Andrew

PS: CRAP! Apparently an earlier version of this post linked to my tumblr user page for "Continues" rather than a publicly accessible one. This has now hopefully been rectified above. Sorry for any confusion.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

2011-04-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

This conversation probably never happened

2010-11-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

Jim Lee: So here's a thought: why don't we kick Gail Simone off a book she clearly loves and prevent all but one of our creators from using Superman in the DC Universe continuity, especially the guy we've got lined up to take over Action Comics, and let fan-favourite JM Straczynski take Supes and Wonder Woman to new heights?

Dan Didio: By new heights, do you mean completely ignoring and/or needlessly changing everything about the characters that has made them pop culture icons for decades?

Lee: Yeah! Like he did with Spider-Man!

Didio: I love this. LOVE. IT. I've only got one tweak I'd like to make.

Lee: Lay it on me, Danny-baby.

Didio: Let's let JMS start long-term storylines featuring these, these--

Lee: All-Star Batman'd.

Didio: --these All-Star Batman'd versions of the characters, and solicit the books before we're sure we can produce them on anything resembling a monthly schedule--

Lee: That kinda goes without saying, doesn't it...?

Didio: No, I haven't got to the best part yet--We let him do this, start these major, history-making, character-enhancing storylines, and then, you're gonna love this--then we encourage him to leave the titles in MID-STORYLINE to work on something that'll stroke his ego even more than writing two of the best known franchises known to man and replace him with writers nobody cares about. Someone like JT Krul.

Lee: He still hasn't given you the negatives, huh?

Didio: By hook or by crook, I'm gonna get those pictures, and when I do, so help me...

Lee: I'm not big on the Krul thing. Shouldn't we use someone 98% of our loyal readership doesn't loathe? Someone who knows how to write a solid, entertaining comic?

Geoff Johns (walking in): You need someone to write something? I've got a few minutes. I mean, I need to go to the bathroom, but I could hold it in until you tell me what you need--

Didio & Lee: Shut up, Geoff.

Geoff Johns: Whatever you want, guys. You all doing OK, don't need anything? Water? Diet Coke? No? OK, if you need me I'll be in the can writing another episode of Smallville!

(Johns leaves)

Lee: How someone like that managed to make Green Lantern seem cool, I'll never know.

Didio: OK, back to Superman and Wonder Woman. So we don't use JT. What about Phil Hester?

Lee: Yeah, him or maybe that Roberson kid.

Didio: Well, JMS is going to be abandoning two of our three flagship characters' titles mid-storyline-- (shivers with pleasure) --Why just throw one writer to the wolves when we can poison the longtime career dreams of two?

Lee: My god.

Didio: I know, right?

Lee and Didio: WE'RE #@%&ING BRILLIANT!

***

Nope. I just do not understand how this was allowed to happen. Good luck to Phil Hester and Chris Roberson, though. They've both got tough rows to hoe.

A

Some paintings from a couple months back

2010-10-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

1. Me and Tiina, painted fast

2. Portrait of T. She likes it because it "makes me look sinister."

3. An experiment inspired by a Degas painting I saw at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

4. Portrait of Cevyn-My-Niece

5. Detail from a portrait of Cevyn-My-Niece

6. A different detail from same

7. Surprisingly, I actually finished the second painting I started after resuming painting in January.

I don't know what to say.

2010-06-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling terribly guilty about the rather inert state of this blog, lately. Well, maybe not lately--does the last four months count as lately? It's been awhile.

But while I've been feeling terribly guilty about not posting stuff here, I apparently don't feel guilty enough to, you know, post much. There are several reasons for this, among them:

-I've been in a really bleak place since December, and it's not the kind of bleak I normally indulge in. It's not something I can enjoy ironically or want to make light of. There's no fun in it, and if there's no fun, I don't really want to randomly inflict it on anyone who might stumble across this blog. And seeing as I don't, with one exception I can recall, lock posts, that's The Big Thing I'd be writing about off the table. There are, of course, smaller things I could be writing about, but...

-A lot of those things are other peoples' business and I shouldn't discuss them in public even though I'd kind of like to because I think I might be able to work some stuff out in this format and, for whatever reason, I don't actively keep a private journal. (The reason is probably that I did keep one when I was younger, and reading them a year or two or ten later was so incredibly irritating that I couldn't seriously contemplate ever committing my unedited private angst to a form I might foolishly consider reading again at some point. You think I whine on my blogs? This is nothing. Nothing.)

-The desire to inflict stuff I think is funny and/or relevant and/or useful on the wider public remains as strong as it ever did. But the siren song of twitter has drawn me away from blogging. Blame The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples for that one; I wouldn't have fallen into that particular time-sucking vortex if she hadn't told me I could tweet without a text-messaging cellphone. (I suspect I knew this, deep down, and the notion that it was something best done by and for people on the gogogo was a subconscious safety mechanism, a way to avoid getting drowned by information delivered 140 character at a time.)

As anyone who follows my twitter account (@theAndrewFoley if you're interested, though it also {mostly} feeds to my facebook account and is compiled daily on my LiveJournal account) can tell you, I haven't exactly shut up when it comes to saying stuff online--it's just the form that's shifted. I don't know if that shift will be permanent, but right now tweeting feels a lot more comfortable than blogging. For one thing, in spite of (maybe because of...?) the size limit for tweets, I feel like I'm more involved in actual 2+sided conversation on twitter than I ever have on this blog. So, yeah. Maybe I'll someday summon up the wherewithal to write up something of length, if not depth, to post here. I don't know that that day is coming soon, though, because...

-In the aftermath of December's trials, I've resumed painting again after 10+ years of not seriously doing it for any sustained length of time. I always kept in mind that I'd stopped painting for a good reason, but I'd honestly forgotten what it was until I started again.

What it is is this: all things being equal, I'd rather paint than write.

All things are not equal in this case. I've never fancied myself sufficiently talented or of social grace to be a successful painter (success in this case meaning an artist who makes or stands even a faint hope of making some kind of modest living off of his painting.) The mural I'm currently painting in Happy Harbor's entry is going to easily be the most money I've ever made from non-house painting--and it's in a style quite different from what I do when left to my own devices.

In addition to lacking the skill and connections necessary for someone who paints the way I do to make a career out of it, I discovered some time ago I don't even really want to make a career out of it. Doing so would require me working on terms other than my own and the ones physical limitations of environment and art supplies foist upon me (the biggest paintings I've worked on since starting up again have been 3x4 feet, roughly a sixth the size of what I was doing when I had a sizable studio space to work in.)

The day I decided to make a serious attempt at writing a gallery owner visited my studio. He began listing off various things I'd need to do with my paintings to get them hung in his gallery--which, in retrospect, was fairly generous of him. At the time, however, I completely lost track of what he was saying in favour of visualizing me throwing him out the studio's fourth storey window. He left, and I said to myself, "Well, you obviously don't have what it takes to do this professionally. What sort of work could you do where you could take feedback without wanting to physically assault the person offering it?"

Writing is something I enjoy doing: something I, on a good day anyway, think I'm actually pretty good at doing; most critically, something I'm not so emotionally invested in that I become inflexible; something I can happily (or at least willingly) approach as craft rather than art.

Over the past few years, I've gotten some really stupid notes on stuff I've written (I've also gotten a ton of notes that have made me a better writer in general and a better commercial writer in particular, but we're not talking about that right now).

Q: How many Hollywood producers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: One, but does it have to be a lightbulb?

Most of those notes were intended to make whatever I was working on more commercially viable, which in practice means I was being asked to respond to the concerns of people who hadn't actually read the work yet.

Q: How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Change the lightbulb? But the lightbulb's THE BEST PART!

For the most part, I've tried to address those notes as best I can, with a minimum of fuss, because I want to be a professional writer. (BTW, that raucous laughter you can hear? That's every manager or editor who's ever been subjected to my neurotic e-mail ramblings. I appreciate the patience, guys.)

Generally speaking, my blogging activity--while it might potentially be useful professionally (I don't think it actually has been in the five or six years I've been doing it, but in theory...)--has been me Writing for Fun.

What I've rediscovered over the last few months is that, for me, painting is more fun than writing. And I think that that, more than anything else, is the core reason for my lack of blogging activity. It's the work of a couple seconds to maybe a minute to tweet something; I've currently been writing this post about how I'm not posting anything for more than an hour.

That's an hour I could have spent writing something that might generate some kind income down the line. I'm currently picking away at a story (haven't decided if it's a movie or a comic yet) that I feel has a lot of commercial potential, while waiting for notes from my managers on another screenplay they think has some kind of potential. It's also an hour I could have spent painting. The former is something I feel I ought be doing, the latter something I would enjoy doing more than this. Instead, I'm trying to justify (to myself, if no one else) something that oughtn't need justifying: not blogging as frequently as I once did.

I don't know that I've been entirely successful in that endeavour. I suspect I will continue feeling somewhat guilty about not semi-frequently posting some rant or rave to the blog for a while to come. Maybe when I stop feeling guilty, I'll be more inclined to write more here. Maybe.

The big takeaway from all of this is, I don't know whether I'll be blogging more, less, or at all in the foreseeable future. For a couple handfuls of you, this has been the primary way I've communicated with you for the last few years, and I that's certainly why I'm still feeling some residual guilt over the way things have played out.

Some have interpreted the absence of material here as an indication that I'm in a bad place. In reality, I'm not in a good place. But I'm doing better now than I have been the last several months. I've got some really good news coming down the pipe on the writing front that I'm pretty excited about. Even if I didn't, I'm painting again, which is something I missed more than I realized. I'm tweeting all sorts of nonsensical rubbish.

Right now, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do. Something's got to take the backseat, for awhile at least. And, though it wasn't a conscious decision at the time, somewhere along the line I did decide that that thing was this blog.

So I'm saying goodbye for now, and having said it I expect I'll feel better about it soon. And if I don't, well, I still don't know that I'll feel bad enough to take time away from painting to post something more than out of focus pics of what I've been painting recently here. That'll have to do for the time being.

Ever upward,
A

My Perfect Woman

2010-05-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

(Tiina and Andrew's bedroom, morning. As Andrew returns to bed:)

TIINA: Did you feed les animaux?

ANDREW: I did.

T: Les chiens et les chats?

A: Oui.

T: And how are les animaux?

A: They're good. As good as ravening hellbeasts can be, anyway.

T: And how is my boyfriend?

A: Your what now?

T: I mean, how's my husband?

A: He's concerned about you having a boyfriend.

T: Sorry, I just don't know how to say "husband" in french.

A: But "boyfriend" is french for "boyfriend"?!?

T: ... ... ... Oui.

A

Today

2010-04-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Today I got to pitch a couple of comics projects live on the phone. This is a departure from my standard operating procedure, which is to convince unsuspecting editors to permit me to send them pitches electronically.

My preference for digital transmission springs from my tendency when talking to people I'm not 100% comfortable with to either a) get nervous and shut the hell up, or b) get nervous and start talking really, really fast and really, really quietly simultaneously. Or to put it another way: I don't mumble as much in type.

I've been working on fixing my ineptitude when it comes to one-on-one conversation for... wow, must be more than a decade now. The idea of being on a convention panel no longer fills me with terror, and I absolutely love doing comic readings. And I don't completely freak out when I learn my managers have arranged for me to talk to a producer or editor or whatever. I'm just not very good at it yet.

In spite of that, I did what I had to do this evening. Awkwardly, but I got the point across and the people I was talking to seemed to think we were on the same wavelength (so much so that they'd recently picked up a couple projects a little too close to the ones I was pitching for them to go to the next level with mine) (which is a shame, because I spent a fair amount of time the last few days getting fully-fleshed out proposals for the two of them nailed down, but such is life.) I got the impression that the conversation would continue, but I've gotten that impression before. Hollywood, man. You just never know.

***

Speaking of Hollywood, apparently Han Solo's going to be in the movie based on a comic I have a co-writing credit on. I choose to believe this is entirely down to my being mind-bogglingly awesome.

A

2010-03-30T21:02:00.001-07:00

"I should really post something on my blog."

A

Life in Brief

2010-03-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

Actually working a LOT this last week, on what I hope and pray is the final pass on the "Spec w/ Emmy Award-Winning Producer attached" (but probably won't be, seeing as the latest round of notes has added almost ten pages of new material to a script that's already widely perceived as being overlong.)

***

MEANWHILE...

When I've come up for air, I've found myself...well, to be honest I've been sad. I'm not renowned for my upbeat demeanour, but my usual default position is anger, which at least has the possibility of some entertainment value. I haven't given it much thought, but it seems to me right now that righteous fury is the best place to be on the negative side of the emotional spectrum. It's energizing, it gives me some clarity of focus--something good can come of it.

But this week, I'm not angry, I'm just depressed. I happened to stumble across two situations, one I'm not involved with at all but which nevertheless upset me, and one slightly closer to home, which upsets me even more. I've done what I can re: the former, don't know what I can do with the latter, other than dwell on it and feel awful for the various people involved (and myself, which is selfish, but there it is), which is what I've been doing. Forgetting to take my pills this morning didn't help.

***

THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK

It hasn't been a totally awful day. At the Harbor, we generally listen to 102.1 "The Edge", a Toronto radio station for background noise, esp. the 2:00-7:00 (Toronto time) weekday slot, which is hosted by long-time friend of Happy Harbor, Fearless Fred. Fred's a huge comic fan, to the point that he's working to create some of his own. He's also one of the more surreally amusing radio announcers I've ever listened to (not that that's a huge pool to draw from, seeing as I only listen to the radio at and on my way to the store.)

Yesterday, I half-heard Fred talking about the weather in TO, specifically a snippet to the effect of "It's such a great day I'm trying to combine beautiful and glorious into one word."

Naturally, I spent a ridiculously long time mulling this idea, and eventually came to the conclusion that the best option for such a combination was "Globeautrifulous" (pronunciation: glo-BYOO-tri-flus.) Having gone to the effort of concocting this abomination, I of course felt compelled to e-mail it to Fred, who promised to use it during his weekly examination of upcoming films. For a couple hours, I waited with baited breath. It was a fairly slow day in the shop, not a lot of people around, nobody at all for the twenty minutes prior to the movie previews.

And then, of course, a couple people walked in the door just as Fred started the segment. One of them came and stood silently in front of the till as Fred preemptively spoiled "The Bountyhunter" ("Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler? They get together in the end. I just saved you ten bucks and two hours of your life.") and Diary of A Wimpy Kid ("It's funny because it's ALMOST TRUE!"), before wading into Repo Men, which, given the time he'd spent on the segment already, I knew had to be when he'd say globeautrifulous. And indeed it was, or so I'm told, because it was exactly four words from the end of the segment when the customer in front of the till decided to start talking.

Fred mailed me, saying "Please tell me you heard that." I replied with pretty much what I typed above, with substantially more swearing.

The next time there was a break between songs and commercials, Fred came on and managed to work globeautrifulous into a sentence. And he did it in such a way that I couldn't possibly miss it, regardless of who might be talking at the time. He didn't yell it, but it wasn't that far from it.

That was without a doubt the highlight of my week. Which probably says something about the week I've had.

***

STILL READING?

There are better things out there you could be reading. If you're an aspiring comics creator, I can even tell you what one of them is: IDW editor Mariah Huehner (ANGEL, THE LAST UNICORN) has spent part of her day on Twitter, tweeting about creating comics in general and the role of the editor in particular. Semi-related: Dark Horse editor Rachel Edidin (THE MARQUIS: INFERNO) has some tweets along the same lines, usually under the #makingcomics hashtag. Both are worth following, if following people on Twitter is your thing, but especially if you're thinking about getting into the creative end of the comics biz.

A

Steve Perry needs your help.

2010-03-15T22:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you're feeling sorry for yourself, and then you read something that affects you. And you still feel sorry for yourself because that's just what you do these days, but you also feel like a self-centered jerk because, at least on an intellectual level, you know your life could be substantially worse. I read such a thing a few minutes ago, a blog post by Steve Bissette on writer Steve Perry's considerable troubles.

It was linked to by Dark Horse editor Rachel Edidin, whose blog post I've cut and pasted below because any attempt on my part to explore this further would almost instantly degenerate into an incoherent stream of profanity and implied death threats against selfish, soulless, teabagging pricks. So:

"Steve Perry is a writer (in comics as well as other media). He's no longer living out of his car, as he was a year ago, but he's still extremely ill--dying of cancer--and has no insurance, no money, and a very young son.

Steve Bisette explains the situation in a little more detail here, and provides a PayPal address: http://srbissette.com/?p=8259

If you can afford to, please donate--even a little makes a difference. Whether or not you can afford to send money, please at least help to spread the word. And then maybe write a representative a strongly-worded letter about the need for better safety nets and universal healthcare."

(I just know if I wrote that last sentence the word "bombs" would have been in there someplace.)

A

Oh, you look BEFORE you leap...

2010-03-09T16:48:00.000-08:00

I just tweeted a mildly sarcastic comment about someone I assumed was a dead celebrity I'd never heard of but turned out to be a 2-year old kid who just died of cancer I'd never heard of.

I deleted it as fast as my fingers and wifi would let me when I realized and tweeted an apology, but... Yeah. Feeling like a bit of an ass right now. And by "bit of an", I mean "total".

The new pills aren't working so well this last couple days.

A

New Pills

2010-03-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

Half busy, half miserable. Started a post based on a series of tweets that got...out of hand, but haven't finished it yet and as it stands it's really whiny, even by my standards, so I might not bother finishing.

If you're interested, my twitter feed is here --that's actually where I've been doing the bulk of my online writing lately. 140 character bursts are substantially easier to handle than complete sentences, at least when you're in the mood I've been in.

However! That mood seems like it might be changing, because, you guessed it! I'm on some new pills. Actually, I'm back on some old pills which were really good for a year and then gave me insomnia for a couple months, after which I stopped taking them and became less alert and, I strongly suspect, less pleasant to be around. I've only been taking the new/old meds for a couple of days, but I can already feel myself evening out a bit emotionally.

Which is good, because like I said above, I've got a fair amount on my plate right now. In addition to the various pitches I've got floating around a number of editorial offices, things seem to be picking up on the screenwriting front, too. A producer with fairly extensive credits is working with me and Scott O. Brown to develop a screenplay based around a comic we wrote eons ago that never got published. Actually, it's based on a concept SOB pitched solo that I was brought in to help co-write in a form quite a bit different than what he'd originally intended. Naturally, Mr. Bigtime Producer's take on the property is pretty much the one SOB'd originally wanted for it anyway, so now he gets to write the story he wanted to do in the first place, but he's got the dubious joy of having a co-writer he didn't have when he originally proposed the story. I'm actually kind of surprised he's still talking to me, now that I stop to think about it...

Last time I checked, I was quite proud of the comic version we wrote of the piece in question, and hope that we'll someday be able to get it out. SOB and I retain the rights to the underlying but non-existent comic property, which is potentially problematic, but realistically, we weren't exactly rocketing towards a finished comic as it was, and, well, if you want a career as a screenwriter (I'll take one as any kind of writer, even copy), when someone as big as Mr. Bigtime Producer's willing to develop a screenplay with you, you've kind of got to take the shot. Even if taking the shot is likely going to be hours and hours and hours of your time for no money upfront--a scenario I've been getting used to over the last ten years in general and the last year and a half especially.

In addition to that, the managers are working on notes for what I'm promised will be The Final Revision of the spec I've been working on for the year and a half this weekend, so that should hopefully see my part of that process come to a close soon, at least till someone wants to pay for rewrites. Well, not "wants to pay for rewrites" so much as "will pay for rewrites regardless of whether they want to or not." And I've also been given a deadline for a revision of the spec pilot I wrote a couple years back that everyone loved until they decided it needed to be changed significantly. And after that, I've got deadlines for the Christmas thing outline, the supernatural thing proposal, the other supernatural thing proposal (which I'm probably going to pull because "Hollywoodizing" it enough to make it sellable would turn it into something I don't really want to write.)

And when I'm not working on that stuff I've usually been painting. I really need to get some more hardboard to paint on. The 2x2 foot or less scale I've been forced to work in recently is really dragging me down. 3x4 feet's the minimum dimensions for a real painting. And someday I will get back to the art college scope of 6x10 feet...someday...

So that's why there hasn't been much blog activity from me lately. If the way this little note unspooled is any sign of what's to come, that might change in the near future. But I wouldn't count on it.

What's new with you?

A

This just in...

2010-02-26T20:35:00.000-08:00

Bankers still @$$holes.

***

When everything's said and done (and I'd kind of like that to happen as soon as possible, please) this won't be remembered as a week in which dreadful things happened to me. In spite of that, I feel dreadful in pretty much every conceivable way. So I'm going to recycle some stuff I wrote for/to the guys at Happy Harbor about February's Previews magazine. Each month HH employees are asked to make a couple of suggestions (plus an alternate in case there's overlap) for what they think customers might want to pay special attention to in the latest Diamond catalogue. This last time out, I wrote my picks and then kinda kept going for a bit...

STAR WARS OMNIBUS: A LONG TIME AGO... VOLUME ONE, by a whole lotta folks. As a reader, nostalgia very rarely drives me to buy anything, especially comics. There's so much awesome new stuff out there to be found, and I'm, like, the exact opposite of wealthy. And let's face it, if I'm really in a mood to try and recapture the rush of excitement I got from, say, Claremont and Byrne's Dark Phoenix saga or Frank Miller's Daredevil stuff, well, I do pull a few hours a week behind the counter at a comic shop. Once Jay's drunk himself into an insensate coma (usually happens by around 2:00), provided the vacuuming's done, there isn't a whole lot stopping me from plucking a trade off the shelf or something out of the back issue bins to remind myself of the appallingly bad taste I had as a boy. You can't go home again, and the days of me being heart-palpitatingly excited to find the latest issue of New Teen Titans hidden on the spinner rack at Patton's Place are gone, gone, gone. Having said all that, this Star Wars Omnibus, reprinting the first 26 issues of Marvel's original Star Wars series--which, as it happens, are among the first comics I read, actively sought out and collected--hits all my ageing fanboy happy buttons. ALL OF THEM, every single one. And at 25 yankee dollars, I can almost afford it. Even if I couldn't--I mean, come on, the first storyline after Star Wars proper features a humanoid green rabbit bounty hunter fighting alongside a delusional old librarian who thinks he's a Jedi Knight named Don-Wan Kihotay. DON-WAN KIHOTAY. It works on so many levels! So yeah, I don't care if I am buying this for all the wrong reasons (as I recall, Jabba the Hutt in this version is a tall, skinny, purple walrus guy. Which is an improvement over a glaringly obvious CGI inserted slug, really.) I MUST HAVE IT.

BEASTS OF BURDEN, by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. You know what's fun? Reading the entire Previews catalogue looking for a couple of suggestions for stuff Happy Harbor customers want to buy, only to discover that your two picks both appear in the first fifty pages of the FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY+ PAGE BOOK. But what can you do? From the classic Star Wars Omnibus to this almost brand-spanking new book, Dark Horse is where it's at this month. With the kind of high concept that inspires burning envy in those of us who didn't think of it first, from what I've seen so far, this tale of a bunch of dogs (plus a cat) taking on supernatural menaces in their neighbourhood is possibly the cutest horror comic ever created. What I've seen so far consists of the first issue of the four issue miniseries this 8x11" hardcover collects (along with several previous short stories that appeared in the various Dark Horse Book of (scary things) series, if I understand things correctly). Having read that first issue, I realized this one was a keeper, something I was going to want to own as a collected edition, and now here it comes--maybe, POSSIBLY just in time to get artist Jill Thompson to sign it when she appears at the Calgary Expo in April. Fingers crossed.

TURF #1, by Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards: "A hardboiled noir crime thriller with guns, fangs and aliens." The solicitation might as well be, "Hey, Andrew Foley! READ THIS COMIC!" How creepy would that be if that actually was the solicitation? For me, I mean, for you it would probably just be an oddity to be frowned over briefly and then forgotten. Anyway. If the pitch wasn't enough to get me interested, and artist Tommy Lee Edwards weren't enough to get me interested, the sample pages would probably be enough to get me interested. For a modern comic, there's a lotta text on those pages. If the full 22 pages is like the three on display here, this is going to be a two-bathroom trip read, minimum. That might frustrate some readers, but for me it says the creators are trying to give the pamphlet-reading audience something they can sink their teeth into. I like that, even if there are occasions where the writer's reach exceeds the artist's grasp and word balloons end up cropping artwork that I'd kind of like to see more of, as occurs in the very first panel of the first sample page. Still, I'd rather have creators try and put too much in and not quite make it than have them not bother trying to push the limits of what the comic page can comfortably hold at all.

PREVIEWS REVIEWS

JUSTICE LEAGUE: RISE OF ARSENAL #2: Hey, when did Winter Soldier join the DC Universe? ...Sorry, couldn't resist.

DV8: GODS & MIONSTERS #1: On the one hand, I promised myself I wouldn't flag something just because of the cover. On the other hand, I promised myself I'd shamelessly hype the wonder and glory that is Fiona Staples at every possible opportunity. What should I do, Happy Harborites? WHAT SHOULD I DO?!?!?!?

IMAGE FIRSTS: YOUNGBLOOD #1: Because finding a cheap copy of Youngblood #1 is SO. FREAKING. HARD.

ARMAGEDDON NOW: ANTI-CHRIST: Jesus, who wrote this solicitation copy? "Anti-Christ" is hyphenated IN THE TITLE and they can't be bothered to use a dash in the solicits? And "Corbin pursues Jada assassin in Rome."? How would the world work if everyone actually talked like that? "Hey, Jay comic shop owner. How's it going?" "Not bad, Andrew comic shop tillmonkey and sometime writer. How's your wife, Tiina graphic designer?" "She's good. Right now she's taking Data dog and Dare puppydog for a walk." Oy. It's times like this I'm glad my Allah is the Flying Spaghetti-Monster...

THE WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF #4, by Paul Grist: WHERE THE HELL IS MY JACK STAFF VOLUME FOUR COLLECTION? Seriously.

PROJECT SUPERPOWERS: CHAPTER TWO #10: In this issue: superheroes nobody remembers play jacks in a futuristic subway station!

THE PHANTOM: GHOST WHO WALKS #10: In this issue, an obese Phantom takes a long hard look at himself and decides to make some changes. Be here next month for the start of brand-new series THE PHANTOM: GHOST WHO JOGS.

SPELL CHECKERS, VOLUME ONE: Teen witches in high school, in a manga-influenced art style. My nieces will LOVE THIS.

MERC: BROKEN WORLD #3: I would bet five dollars pencils aren't finished on this already-solicited comic. Prove me wrong, Dan Schneider. Prove me wrong.

PREVIEWS PAGE 338 & 339: There is nothing on these two pages that is not wrong, wrong, "abomination in the eyes of God" WRONG.

NEW AVENGERS #64: "Plus the fate of the one they call Mockingbird!" Anyone want to give odds it's better than the fate of the one they called Wasp? And what happens if she dies and Hawkeye takes over her superhero identity (which is the style of the times), and then he's got a fate? What do they say then, "Plus the fate of the OTHER one they call Mockingbird!"?

FIRESTAR #1: Because somebody demanded it? Incidentally, Angelica Jones wasn't JUST a "friend." She was an AMAZING friend.

DEADPOOL CORPS #1: I hope you guys are wearing steel-toed boots, because if you aren't, sooner or later you're going to have to stop kicking that horse.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #630: Chris Bachalo drawing the Lizard. That is tempting...

NEW AVENGERS MGC #1: Now you can read the first issue of the title whose last issue we solicited a few pages ago! (Still the best comic of the cheap cover price MGC bunch, though. At least for this month.)

NEW AVENGERS: LUKE CAGE #1 (of 3): "So for the cover, what you do is you take this HELLBOY image, flip it around, lose the goggles--oh, those are horns? Well, whatever they are, they're gone. And you make the skin black instead of red and the big hand thing silver, but only, like, the arm part, the hand itself can be black too. Oh, and make sure it's got the right number of fingers." (All joking about the cover aside, I am a fan of Eric Canete's art and will probably check this out on that basis alone.)

DAREDEVIL #506: Hey Marvel? For future reference, there's no H in "Antony".

NEMESIS #2: "The most talked-about new series of 2010 rages on!" So Millar and McNiven's Nemesis is part of the Watchmen sequel/prequel thing? Got to admit, I did not see that one coming.

DARK REIGN: HAWKEYE TPB: Hey Marvel? For future reference, there's an "Antony Johnston" in "Antony Johnston".

A

I can haz payntbrush?

2010-02-17T22:39:00.000-08:00

There's a couple posts I've been wanting to write, but I've been neck deep in revising the screenplay yet again, so instead you get photos of four of my last five attempts at painting. I'm only even remotely happy with one of them. Can you guess which?

The Future is Four Days Ago

2010-02-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

The Future of Story conference took place at the Grant Macewan Arts Centre this past Friday and Saturday. I was there, largely because I was invited to speak on a panel Saturday afternoon. This was nice, because I'd have wanted to go anyway if I'd known it was happening prior to being invited, and now I got to go for free. I didn't even have to pay for parking or gas, because the arts centre is literally two and a half blocks from my front door.

No question, this was a sweet deal for yours truly, and I used all the skills I learned as an art student to take advantage of the opportunity, descending on the cheese platters like a living god of the locusts and mostly enjoying the "two dollars for everything" cash bar (I say mostly because the first night I paid two bucks for a can of Sprite Zero. EVERYTHING cost a toonie...)

Even without the free food and the cheap booze, it would've been a worthwhile experience. For me, anyway. Mileages seem to be varying, judging from the reactions I've encountered, largely at the twitter #futureofstory feed, which I blanket-bombed Saturday night with 20-some tweets after the conference, relating the most interesting, inflammatory, and/or bizarre statements I'd written down during the programming I attended.

I don't know that I've got much to say about the specifics of what I saw. Keynote speaker and BONES creator/showrunner Hart Hanson's talk on Friday night was easily the highlight of the weekend, and some thoughtful person has transcribed the whole thing online. Well worth reading for anyone looking to create stories for a mass audience; perhaps a little frustrating for those of a more, for lack of a better word, artistic bent.

In between cheese cubes, I got to talk one on one with Hanson for a couple minutes, during which he advised me to, basically, be really happy about Cowboys & Aliens being written by Kurtzman and Orci. "You should be happy," he said, or something close to it, "Happier than you seem to be." And this was after I'd had a couple beers; I thought I was acting pretty happy already. Perhaps I'm not as enigmatic and inscrutable a figure as I strive to portray.

In addition to Mr. Hanson's presentation Friday, I saw a panel called (I believe) "Creating the 21st Century Writer" entirely by accident. I'd thought I was going to the panel about new journalism, but had aimed myself at the room specified in the program, rather than the one in the revised schedule. I don't think I was the only one, either. By the time I figured out I wasn't where I was supposed to be, I was already ensconced in the back row of the room. Exit options were limited; I didn't think I'd feel comfortable lugging all the stuff I hadn't had a chance to get coatchecked out right in front of the panelists.

The only panel I saw on Saturday (note: I didn't see mine--I went into my public appearance fugue state at the beginning and was pretty much lost to reality for the next hour and a bit...) that I think went anywhere near the implied topic of the conference followed, this one dealing with reality television. Some juicy quotes there, most of which I failed to record because my pen died an ignominious death and when it comes to portable technology I'm one step removed from carving stuff on stone tablets.

There then came the alt-narrative panel which I was on and which was, to my surprise, actually attended. Three other panels were happening simultaneously, one of which featured Hart Hanson; I was semi-convinced nobody was going to come to ours, but as it turned out the room was not entirely devoid of non-panelist human life.

With one exception, I have no idea what I actually said during the panel. I'm still foggy on what a couple of the other panelists actually do (I write comics, Mike Laidlaw writes videogames, Kim Clegg and Ava Karvonen are involved with all sorts of multimedia platform development but I'm not clear what that involvement entails and probably don't even have the vocabulary to grasp it fully.)

One thing I do recall is suggesting that I could think of two ways to determine when the alternative becomes the mainstream, and one of those ways was when it started making money. Beyond that, it's all a haze of me being nervous and computers failing to work properly (for a minute, Mr. Hard Copy here was looking PRET-ty good with his old-fashioned comic books to hand around, I think...) ("Hardcopy" would be a great name for a hard-boiled detective, wouldn't it? Needs a sidekick, though. "This week, on HARDCOPY & McCOOL: When they investigate the death of the Archibishop of Canterbury, a mysterious figure from Hardcopy's past appears, threatening his friendship with McCool!")

After that, there was just the Crotchety Old Peop--er, A Word from the Wise panel. A distinguished panel of authors, all winners of the Governor-General's Award, but perhaps an odd note on which to close something called The Future of Story.

It was only after that last panel that I was able to put my finger on the second of two tensions that seem to me to have underpinned much of the overall conference. The first of these, introduced by Hart Hanson during his opening address, and one that's of perpetual interest to me, was the tension between the artist and the entertainer. Hanson, refreshingly, made no bones about his role as an entertainer (though I might dispute his characterization of art, even as it relates to narrative.) It was nice to see someone unconcerned with the pretense that they were creating something "more" important than entertainment, who nevertheless obviously takes the creation of entertainment very seriously. Well, it was obvious to me; Hanson's lecture was full of humour and self-deprecation, which I suppose could be interpreted by some as his being less than fully invested creatively in what he does (even if he point-blank said otherwise.)

This attitude stood out in stark contrast to many, if not all, of the 21st Century Writer and Word from the Wise panelists, who seemed to go to great pains to portray what they do as Important. Also important to them and, I gather, folks like bookseller Laurie Greenwood: the format in which what they do is received. Which brings me to the second tension: the schism between new and old, especially as it relates to media.

This divide between old and new wasn't immediately obvious to me during the conference itself. It should have been, with comments floating around like Sophie Lees' "Blogging is the antithesis of craft"--a notion so ridiculous I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and interpret it as a deliberately provocative statement designed to inspire discussion. Even her fellow panelists pointed out that not all blog posts are unedited, ill-thought out ramblings (which is in no way meant to imply this one isn't exactly that), and I believe one even said they stopped their blogging activity because it was taking too much effort to polish their posts.

But it wasn't obvious to me, not until I got back Saturday night and read the twitters under the #futureofstory hashtag. It seemed at the time that a good portion of them were arguing a position that the tweeters didn't feel was sufficiently represented on the panels they were watching, that of the early adopter of technology.

(As an aside, I've never wanted to have reliable mobile internet access in my life so much as I did this weekend--two or three people were livetweeting the event and it would have been fascinating to follow the online conversation in realtime with the panels and speakers being discussed. It's almost enough for me to wish I had a cellphone.)

At least one of the livetweeters seemed somewhat offended by a conference named The Future of Story focusing to the degree it did on the past, at least when it came to narrative delivery platforms. And honestly, judging from statements attributed to some of the panelists by the (admittedly likely to be at least somewhat biased) twitterers, I can understand why.

Now, I like books, and, for what it's worth, I think of a books as printed objects substantively different from an electronic document containing the same information. Someone tweeted something to the effect that a book isn't a format, the implication (quite possibly made explicit, I can't remember) being that an e-book is also a book. I'd go as far as to say a novel's not a format, but a book is and so is a digital document--but that's a semantic argument that probably isn't worth having.

An argument that maybe is worth having is whether the book as an object is going to be a viable delivery platform going forward, as opposed to digital documents conveyed via some form of monitor, be it a computer, cellphone, e-reader or whatever new shiny thing comes next. When someone with a vested interest in print media claims a kid can only be taught to read via text on paper--that's a questionable position and it's one that I'm not sure was as thoroughly questioned as it could have been (I wasn't at the panel in question, though, and am basing that on commentary tweets).

I don't think it's out of line for people who don't mind, or even prefer, to read books on monitors to take offense at someone implies or even outright states that their platform preference is somehow less... valid? Authentic? Just plain less?--than "real books" because kindles don't smell like fresh ink on old parchment. As I seem to recall saying in my panel, I'm leery of assigning a sweeping value judgment to something that isn't inherently good or bad, but simply is. Could I read an entire book on a kindle? I don't know, but, financial issues aside, I wouldn't mind finding out.

Even if I didn't, even if the only way I could read a book was if it had physical pages, it would be unbelievably arrogant to try and claim a position of authority on the matter of how books ought to be read based on nothing more than some combination of personal preference, ingrained habit, and wishful thinking. I can actually see the face my niece would make at me if I tried to tell her it's wrong to read something online if a print version's available. It's the face young people make at old people who've said something particularly stupid; she makes that face at me a lot.

I find it unfortunate that the conference didn't explore this friction between old and new in much depth, at least not on the programming I saw. Instead, each panel tended to be filled with people of like mind--in terms of diversity of activity and possibly opinion, the alt-narrative panel quite possibly contained the most variety of any of the programming. Which, depending on the intended goals of the conference, could actually have been part of the point. If an attendee or student wanted to find out about reality television, they would go to the reality TV panel, where reality TV people talked about reality TV. It was only during the question and answer session afterwards that a couple basic assumptions of a reality television producer faced any sort of challenge. One questioner, who assumed those wanting to appear on such a show were too naive to understand what they were setting themselves up for, clearly felt the whole thing was a moral cesspit; one exec's blase response to viewers suggesting she should have contacted childrens social services regarding a {I assume} parent's treatment of a child on one of their shows--basically, "our job is to document lives, not interfere with them (more than necessary to maximize the drama)"--left me feeling uneasy. Part of me wishes those were the kinds of subjects discussed during the panel proper, rather than the Q&A session afterwards.

All that said, there's a reasonable chance students and other interested parties walked out of the reality television panel with a better understanding of "unscripted programming", and a better chance still they wouldn't have walked out with the same sort of potentially useful information if the panel had instead featured a reality producer squaring off against someone who doesn't think a reality show involves actual writing. Such a set-up would be dramatically different, and perhaps more along the lines of what some expected/wanted. Certainly there seemed to be some frustration among the online contingent towards a perceived imbalance between those who insist print is inherently superior to digital content.

All of which amounts to what, exactly? Everyone I interacted with seemed to agree that the conference made little, if any, progress towards answering any substantive questions regarding the future of story. (In a conversation post-conference a student suggested that, inspired by things like Twitter/facebook/email/blogging, extreme brevity could become the next big thing when it comes to literary style. I found that an interesting idea, even if it actually happening would pretty much dump me in with the dinosaurs, no matter how much I accept and support new media platforms.)

But really, how could anyone, any gathering of people, hope to provide concrete answers about the future of a concept as ephemeral as "story"? While there probably could have been more detailed discussion about what the future (as opposed to the present and arguably the past) hold for narrative forms, things are moving way too fast for anyone to be able to speak confidently about what's coming down the pipe. As Gloria Sawai said, regarding the conference's subject, "Am I supposed to know that?"

For my part, I'm glad I got to take part. If I don't agree with all (or even most) of what I heard said this past weekend, it was still a positive joy to be among those who think about what story is now, and what it might become.

A

PS: The Macewan Arts Centre has the worst pop machines in the entire universe. I swear, the entire building was conspiring to prevent me from getting my hands on a Coke Zero, which every other machine claimed to have as part of its offerings. One machine was out of CZ, one was out of everything, another wouldn't accept my money, and yet another had a sign on it declaring that while it would technically give me a Coke Zero, the cooling mechanism on the machine was broken, so the pop would be hot (not just warm, but hot.)

PPS: Also, the mens bathroom nearest to the cafeteria? Ridiculously hard to get to. Only way I managed was by getting a student to show me where it was, and I honestly don't think I could find it again.

Devilsheep!

2010-02-03T15:17:00.000-08:00

I wanna party with the California republicans who came up with Carly Fiorina's new attack video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo7HiQRM7BA&feature=player_embedded

There's a rumour that DC is considering commissioning the creation of WATCHMEN comic book prequels/sequels/spinoffs. If it's true--and I'm cynical enough to believe it's at least being seriously considered, even if common sense prevails and it never materializes--I'm guessing they'll move heaven and earth to get Dave Gibbons' unqualified and very public support. That's the only way I can see this not resulting in Dan DiDio being dragged out of a DC Nation panel and strung up from a San Diego lamppost by a mob of irate fans.

If they can't get Gibbons to back the play, the only non-Alan Moore Big Two comic creator I can think of working today who might stand a snowball's chance in hell of making such an idea transcend the creatively bankrupt moneygrab it clearly is at the corporate level is Grant Morrison. It seems to me almost any creator who would be foolhardy enough to attempt to follow one of the greatest superhero comic book stories of all time would find their efforts overshadowed pretty much all aspects by the original work, while being boxed in by them.

I generally enjoy the comics work of guys like Brian Bendis and Warren Ellis, but off the top of my head, Morrison's the only one of the North American mainstream who's even come close to Moore when it comes to focusing on, and pushing, the formal qualities of superhero comic narrative. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he seemingly isn't content to simply tell Very Good Superhero Comic Stories--he wants to refine and redefine the medium he's working in. Depending on your tastes, that drive may lead to good or bad or disastrously awful comics, but the general attitude seems to me very similar to what Moore and Gibbons had in mind when they created the Watchmen.

Morrison's respectful enough of what's gone before to want to honour it, while not letting himself be confined by it. If a Watchmen follow-up is going to work on a creative level, that's the kind of creative approach that's required.

***

If they do go forward with multiple Watchmen-related projects, they could do a lot worse than getting Paul Grist involved. I can't believe the similarities between Jack Staff's narrative construction and Watchmen's never occurred to me till now (and it's been awhile since I read either)(where the hell is Jack Staff V4, anyway? That thing's like, half a year late now...)

***

But on the whole, I hope they don't go forward with any Watchmen-related projects. The movie alone shows the folly of even attempting to follow it up.

***

Come to think of it, one of the screenwriters did mention he had an idea for a sequel, which he told Alan Moore during the LAST CONVERSATION THEY EVER HAD, EVER.

***

Also, on an unrelated topic, Peter Sprigg is a moron. (via mightygodking)

A

Hello-oh-oh-ohhh...

2010-02-02T19:25:00.000-08:00

Still not really in a mood to blog, really, but I'm starting to feel guilty about not writing much of anything for the last couple months (not strictly true--there were a few pitches, a film treatment, and a metric ton of e-mail, but that stuff doesn't really count). And I don't know how to transfer images from the camera to the computer (I don't much like two of the three paintings I've done since the last time I posted images anyway), so you get this update-y thing instead.

My mood continues to be in the toilet. Actually, that's not true. In its more ambitious moments, my mood aspires to rise to the level of being in the toilet. Why the malaise? Let's see. There's...

1) The obvious reason. I had a near-breakdown during a lunch meeting this afternoon when someone mentioned they'd spent the night at the hospital with their father, who's just suffered a stroke. The bereavement counseling is either interesting or a bunch of useless hippydippy crap depending on my outlook during a given minute.

2) The usual reasons. My winter headache's just kicking the crap out of me this week, the financial insecurity of the freelance life seems particularly insecure at the moment, blah blah blah...

3) The semi-usual reasons. With all the other stuff going on (or not, as the case may be) trying a new medication, even one for migraines (DIDN'T WORK) probably wasn't the best idea. Not getting a decent night's sleep for more than a week adds a couple degrees of suck to everything.

4) The new stuff--which isn't mine to air publicly, but which is having its impact all the same.

Stepping back from all the crap and looking at life with as objective an eye as I can manage, most of the actually important stuff is solid (with one glaring exception, but there's nothing to do about that but go on) and the slightly less important stuff is going in the right direction, albeit with its usual glacial speed.

New people are interested in the spec. People who matter in Hollywood. Which means more notes, which means more work for, based on past experience, no money. But hey, people are interested, by golly! My managers are upbeat, but then, they're always upbeat. I don't know what they're snorting, but I want some. Anyway, one more draft and I'm done with that until someone hands me a cheque. I mean it this time.

In the meantime, there's actually been some movement on the comic writing front (as opposed to the comic editing front, which was much more lucrative this last year or two). Progress is being made towards getting one of my first books back into print at a reputable publisher. I've got a few pitches in to different places, and I'm generally making a nuisance of myself to the editors who're currently willing to talk to me. Is it possible to push your luck when the only luck you're having lately is bad? I'll let you know...

Olivia Wilde is in talks to co-star in the film version of Cowboys & Aliens. When word of this filtered down through the grapevine to me a week or two ago, I said, "That's interesting." But it wasn't interesting enough for me to go find out who Olivia Wilde actually was. Now I know she's "the sexy bisexual doctor on House" (thanks Steph {and Diane}), which part of me always knew was more likely to be true than what I chose to believe for the longest possible time: that she was that she was a porn star who was finally getting her big Hollywood break. Anyway, that's that rumour confirmed, which makes me think the other casting rumour for the film I've heard that hasn't gone wide yet is at least possible. That's name even I recognized.

Not that any of this makes me any money, at least not directly. But it does open a few doors a crack wider. It also floods my inbox with google alerts to stories that have my name in them but are so distant from my reality they might as well be on another planet. At least the stories do actually involve me, however remotely, as opposed to the alerts about the Andrew Foley who owns the bookstore in Sarasota or the British politician.

(Yes, I've got a google alert for my own name. My ego is Just. That. Big.)

What else?

I'm sure there's something, but I can't think of what it is, so I guess I'll just say Richard Cohen's a moron and go watch LOST.

A

Feel My Pain(ting)

2010-01-20T20:51:00.000-08:00

There comes a time in a man's life when he says to himself, "Bugger this, I'm gonna paint me some vampires." For me, that time came Sunday afternoon and lasted through last night around 10:00.

I don't really know what possessed me to decide to paint these particular images, or attempt to paint, in the case of the first one. I'm not really happy with it, but noodling on it any further isn't going to make me any happier, so it's finished.

This was theoretically supposed to be an image of characters in a thing I've been picking away at for some time now--working entirely on the board with no reference was...not the best idea I ever had.

Disappointed with the way that one was turning out, I found some reference for the next and blasted it out really fast, at least for me. I've temporarily run out of masonite to paint on, so this is on a strathmore canvas paper pad that T found at Michaels for 75% off.

The takeaway from all this for me is, if I want to paint something more traditionally representative and less expressive--and that was the goal with these ones, largely to see if I actually could and if so, how hard it would be--I should find some reference to work from.

A

The Transcendental Op

2010-01-20T17:44:00.001-08:00

Layouts for pages 4 to 6 of JESUS CHRIST, P.I. by "Sir" John Keane, Esquire.

Please don't ask about the "Sir" and "Esquire" stuff, because I have no idea...

A

The big brush-off

2010-01-18T21:10:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone's 2010 is off to a good start. Mine's been a bit rocky...

Based on my not blogging, or even tweeting much, recently, people have been asking if I'm all right (the answer's not really, no but thanks for the concern.) And some of those people haven't been my mother, which tells me I really must post something to prove I haven't died.

So: I haven't died. I just don't really want to blog right now, for a couple of reasons, one good, one not so good.

The reason I've decided is, on balance, a good thing is that I've started painting I've started painting again. Whether anyone else thinks that's a good thing remains to be seen, and I've got to admit, I'm of two minds on the whole thing myself. I've missed painting, more than I realized till I started doing it again. It's a completely different activity than writing, one that pushes my happy buttons a lot more frequently. It's also habit-forming; the more I do it, the more I want to do it, which means the less I do other things, like update my blog and, er, maintain contact with humans I don't personally live with. It hasn't completely derailed my professional writing activity yet, but if I'm not careful, I can see it becoming an actual threat to it. Which is, at least in part, why I stopped doing it in the first place.

Anyway, depending on where you're reading this, you should either be able to see a couple of the things I've done over the last little while. If you can't see them and the links aren't working, I'll post the urls at the bottom of the post in case you just can't live without seeing my artistic genius in flower.

The one above I'm pretty happy with. At least as happy as I'm going to be, considering the subject matter.

While the next one is very much a work in progress. I don't know that I'm going to be able to make it work to my own aesthetic satisfaction, but the great joy of painting is that I can expend a ridiculous amount of time before I realize that and decide to let it go.

The other reason I haven't been posting is because I don't have anything I really want to say publicly at the moment. I've generally used this thing to express what's on my mind, and what's on my mind is usually pretty silly and/or frivolous. Which is all well and good most of the time; I generally like silly and frivolous things. However, it has on occasion led me to employ hyperbole and exaggeration to certain aspects of my life, which is why if you go back far enough you can probably find a few thousand words from me lamenting the toe I stubbed this morning or lambasting some telemarketer for foolishly attempting to ply their trade on the Wrong Guy.

The posts I wrote in December were among the most honest things I've ever written, and I don't regret putting them in the public eye. But they were written in reaction to events that were happening around me at the time. Now I have to deal with the aftermath, and at the moment, I don't really want to do that publicly. I can't see the value in doing so, for me or those dozen or so people who read this stuff. I definitely don't want to diminish what I and my family are dealing with by treating it roughly the same way I'd treat the new dog doing his impression of the Dresden bombings in our living room.

There's only one thing worth blogging about right now, and it's the one thing I don't really want to talk about, so I'm not. And that's why things have been quiet here and will likely remain so for a while yet (though I will try and post art as it comes in. I've got three more pages of John Keane roughs for JESUS CHRIST, PI I expect to post in the next day or two. So that's something to look forward to.)

A

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lcDyZJTfkSg/S1U_CqXMxzI/AAAAAAAAAFU/-R2AvBZ_Zd4/s1600-h/DSCN2807.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lcDyZJTfkSg/S1U-6PHUKzI/AAAAAAAAAFM/reQY8eZbJCc/s1600-h/DSCN2808.jpg

Hammett 3:16

2009-12-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

John Keane's roughs for the third page of JESUS CHRIST, PI.

There is no cause for alarm. Please remain comics.

2009-12-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

So in the absence of much in the way of new North American mainstream comics tomorrow, Happy Harbor Comics is filling the New This Week shelves with work by local creators, as well as running a number of instore events to celebrate the medium. Which is cool.

Less cool: in an uncharacteristic moment of weakne--er, I mean, enthusiasm, I volunteered to be part of almost all of the proceedings that aren't scheduled during my normal shifts.

Which means if you want me to sign the copies of PARTING WAYS, THE HOLIDAY MEN in The Massacre Memorial Day Sale Massacre Extra-Special Collectible Black & White Edition #1, or even Cowboys & Aliens you're undoubtedly looking forward to buying, you'll be able to find me:

-jamming with fellow creators at the store tomorrow (Wednesday) night

-sketching for donations to the Edmonton food bank from 10-12 on Saturday, and

-on Sunday, again for charity, working in tandem with (what I sincerely hope is) a whole bunch of local creators to create a 16 page comic that, if everything goes smoothly (or roughly but according to schedule) will be printed and available the day after.

Details from the Harbor website:

Diamond Comics, the main distributor of new comics in North America, has announced that they will not be shipping any new comics the week of December 30 (with one exception), due to the holidays causing shipping delays to different regions across Canada and the US. So for that Wednesday, there will be no new, mainstream comics on the shelves which leaves Happy Harbor with some very empty shelves for a week.

To off-set that, we have decided to fill the NEW COMICS THIS WEEK rack at all our locations with locally owned and created material - including books we currently have in stock and several new ones by local creators made just for the event! Also, to help celebrate, we've lined up a few extra events!

Wednesday, Dec 30 - COMIC JAM! If you've never tried a Jam, improv comic art making, we'll be hosting Jams at as many of the HH locations as possible. Jams start at 7 pm, there's no charge and no materials are required.
**Volunteers to help run the Jams are still needed.

Saturday, Jan 2 - SKETCHFest! From 10 am to 6 pm at every Happy Harbor, bring a food good or cash donation for the Edmonton Food Bank and receive a custom sketch from any of the several local artists who'll be on hand drawing for the day!

Sunday, Jan 3 - COMIC IN A DAY! Between 10 and 11 am, bring in a donation for the Food Bank at HHv1 (downtown). The biggest donation gets to request the theme/title/characters for a 16-page comic that will be created by a host of local talent! Multiple writers and artists will work until 6 pm to complete the work which will be on sale the very next day!
The story will be credited to the winner as "INSPIRED BY" so this could be your chance to get YOUR comic made! Also, you'll receive a one-of-a-kind signature copy with the names of everyone who will work on the book!
Creators involved so far are professional comic writers Andrew Foley (Done to Death), Robert Richardson (DC Webcomic winner for Aug 09) and new Zenescope artist Daniel Schneider - with plenty of more talent to be named!

** To all interested creators, Happy Harbor will be providing meals and snacks for those attending the full day Sat or Sun.

Nerves

2009-12-27T19:49:00.000-08:00

I'm tired and my head is pounding. It's been a pretty stressful day all around and I'm not going to stop being stressed until I get a phone call, hopefully inside the next hour though I told Dad I'd give him a half hour beyond that before I started to panic.

It was Lisa's Alberta memorial today. She'd made a home she loved in Ontario, but spent most of the first thirty years of her life in Alberta, so there were a fair number of people here that couldn't make it to the Ontario ceremony who wanted (and given the role they played in her life, I'd say deserved {not that my saying so means much}) a chance to pay their respects/celebrate her life.

I've been trying to put my finger on why this afternoon's ceremony hit me so much harder than the one in Ontario. Maybe it was because of the familiar setting--the church where the memorial was held was also the church Lisa and Harvey got married in. The background on one of the photos in the video memorial was recognizably taken in the same place we were all sitting today. That one hit hard. They all did, really.

Many of the faces I saw today I haven't seen for years, but they're the faces of people I personally associate with Lisa. I know she was a well-liked member of the community out east, but the people at the last memorial were largely strangers to me. Today it felt a little bit more...real?

It may be that my role at the Ontario memorial gave me a bit of distance, physical as well as emotional, from proceedings. As a pallbearer I was seated apart from the family; today I held Mum's hand for most of the memorial and could feel her body shaking next to me when my own shaking was under control.

Or it could simply be that I was feeling some distress due to the circumstances of my arrival in Red Deer. Mum, Dad, and Harvey went there last night; T and I elected to stay home for the night because, well, we didn't want our dogs to destroy anyone's house--OK, the one dog, Data's too mellow to do much damage these days. T's parents were willing to have the dogs over and in fact did for much of the day, but having them during the day and having them at night are different things and they'd already taken care of the dogs for the week or so T was in Ontario with me. I didn't really want to dump more Dare-related hassles on them, at least not more than necessary.

Cevyn, given the choice of hanging out at her weird Uncle's place or going to Red Deer with her Dad and grandparents, opted to stay overnight here with T and I. Which meant that I was driving two of the most important people in my life to Red Deer this morning in my parents' unfamiliar car--which doesn't look that big from the outside but feels like a tank when you're behind the wheel. And it is power everything--an ill-timed cough from the back seat could put the stupid thing in the ditch, it's ridiculously sensitive, esp. compared to our car, which must be wrestled into submission with every single turn. It's not just because I'm an antisocial curmudgeon that I leave the house so infrequently--it's also because I'm too lazy to want to have to deal with steering the car.

The unfamiliar and dangerously accommodating car would have been nervewracking enough on its own, but that wasn't the worst part of the trip. No, that would be the cloud of fog that obscured the highway for the bulk of the trip to Red Deer. Granted, I've frequently said there are few things less interesting than the scenery on the way to Red Deer, but not being able to see the scenery, or in fact the road in front of you, is incredibly interesting. I look forward to my blood pressure returning to its normal level sometime in March.

When all was said and done, I managed to get Tiina and Cevyn to Red Deer in one piece. Well, two pieces, one part T and one part C, but you get the picture. Doing so had left me with a nasty neck strain and the pounding headache I seem to recall alluding to above.

As I also alluded to above, today was more emotionally wrenching than the previous memorial. Seeing Susan, Melodi, half my elementary school teachers, to say nothing of a couple of childhood homes, the Corner Store where I first regularly sought out the comics of the week, and my high school, had me feeling nostalgic for a period I don't usually feel much nostalgia for (partly because I don't remember most of it with any clarity and the parts I can recall are embarrassing enough to make me wish I didn't.) And all of that was before I was once again confronted the loss of my sister.

I don't think I was the only one feeling it more this time around. Dad only barely got through the wonderful eulogy Mum and he wrote; Cevyn was more emotional than I'd personally seen her since everything went chest up. Suzie, who was handling the live singing portion of the program, broke up crying in the middle of one of them...

...Which isn't to say the entire affair was without its humourous aspects. Anyone who wants evidence that God hates technology wouldn't have to look much further than today's memorial. First, there was a massive blast of feedback during a very odd point in the priest's initial speech. Why it would happen almost at the end of her talking instead of the beginning, I don't know, but there it was. She was talking about how great God was or some such and suddenly BRRAARRRNNNGGGGGG!

It went on quite awhile, too. Some people said it was Lisa having a laugh; Dad thought it was her missing her cue during the eulogy when he mentioned her enjoyment portraying a gassy patient in some sort of hospital function. It'd be nice to think that Lisa was there in spirit and able to affect proceedings, but if I were to believe that, I personally don't think that's the point at which she made her presence felt. No, that would come during the powerpoint presentation.

I don't know if it was actually a powerpoint presentation--I thought it was a prerecorded video cycling through a number of photos of Lisa selected by Mum, Dad, and Harvey before the visitation. Whatever it was, it didn't work very well today. First, the thing was frozen on the first image for a long, long time. So long the priest went towards the back to try and help resolve the problem. She neglected to turn her microphone off while doing this, and was apparently unaware that her whispered comments to whoever was running the computer were being broadcast all over the church. If I was one for praying, at that moment I'd have been praying for her to say something really inappropriate, like "Jesus #*%&ing Christ, what the #*%&'s wrong with this thing?", but it was not to be. I must admit I got a little giggly regardless, just because the broadcast whisper thing was funny to me at the time. Talk about grasping at straws...

Eventually, they sort of got the thing working. The photos started to go through the proper rotation, using the a variety of standard wipes for no good reason I could see, but hey, I was there for the photos, not the changes between the photos or the music.

I didn't mention the music, did I? The reason for that is because there was the better part of six minutes without the music that was supposed to play along with the montage. Eventually, some wretched country song (for all her good points, Lisa had no understanding of music, as evidenced by her insistence that country and western material actually counts as music and not an audio crime meriting the most extreme penalty for all who inflict it on the public) blasted a few lines into the church--and the video stopped. For a moment, I was absolutely jubilant--I'd seen the photos, but only had to actually listen to a couple bars of the accompanying "music". If Lisa was influencing things today, this was surely the moment, when she finally took pity on her poor brother and didn't make him listen to crappy country and western music.

Whether she was responsible or not, the jubilation was shortlived. Having resolved the problems, the video was restarted, complete with music. Which is just as well. Being happy at a memorial for one's deceased sister would be unseemly, even if that happiness was thoroughly justified, as I have to believe anyone who heard the tunes and understands that country music is to music what sweet potatoes are to potatoes (which is to say, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and WHOLLY INFERIOR THINGS that have no business usurping their respective usurped terms) would agree was a completely understandable reaction on my part.

Today's minister personalized things a bit more than the last one, addressing each member of the immediate family and advising us to take a variety of hippy-dippy actions. The term "fill your memory cup" came up more than once, I believe. Still, I'll take a litany of pop-psych advice over friendly reminders that God's just the most wonderful thing, isn't he? any day. There was a fair amount of that going on today too, which is understandable but still faintly aggravating. Irritation has its uses, though. I think I would've been a complete snot and tear-drenched wreck (as opposed to a mostly snot and tear-drenched wreck) if I didn't have a new logical fallacy being foisted off on me as divine truth every ten or so minutes.

The minister said that God would come to comfort us in a variety of ways in the coming days--in the form of supportive friends and family, in our memories of Lisa. I expect she's right about the friends, family, and memories, but the only one I'll be giving credit for that is my sister.

I thought being driven back to Edmonton by Dad would let me relax a little, and it did, right up until we hit the same fog bank that made the trip to Red Deer such an edge of my seat affair. Granted, having someone else behind the wheel did stop me from freaking right out (though I imagine my grabbing the impact bar at the slightest provocation did nothing for Dad's state of mind.)

But as I started writing this post, something I'm doing instead of the thing I dearly want to be doing, which is sinking into a deep, deep sleep, that fog continued to make me edgy. Because Dad wasn't just driving me and T back home tonight--having done that he was also determined to go back to Red Deer. I understood why he felt he had to go: he wants to be there for Mum. Under almost any other circumstances I'd have wanted him there for her, too, but the idea of him driving back through the fog at night in an unfamiliar vehicle (he and Mum rented a minivan to move everyone around over the holiday) without a cellphone, to make things even more dicey... Well, let's just say I wasn't thrilled.

I told him I wasn't going to worry Mum by calling her and trying to get her to convince him to stay here overnight, because I don't think he'd have listened to her if she told him to stay put (in the same position, I don't think I would). So I gave him three and a half hours from leaving here to phone and let me know he'd gotten back to Red Deer safely before I hit the panic button.

He left. I ate some sandwiches. I read a few sentences from Eoin Colfer's "And Another Thing...". And he still had an hour and a half before I could start getting really agitated. So I started writing a blog post, because I haven't done that for awhile.

A few minutes ago, Tiina wandered into the room and informed me that Dad had phoned to let us know he was back in Red Deer safely. In addition to that, I've got standing orders from Mum to take my pills, get some sleep, and stop worrying about her. She's going to have to settle for two out of three.

A

What Twitter hath wrought

2009-12-09T16:07:00.001-08:00

BEHOLD! John Keane's roughs for the first two pages of the first (and in all likelihood last) adventure of JESUS CHRIST, P.I.

A

Visitation Rites

2009-12-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

Even though I thought and still think the visitation tradition is, to put it more charitably than I have for much of the last couple days, redundant and more than likely a fiendish ploy designed by a pernicious funeral home owner looking to suck every available penny out of grieving relatives, I attended Lisa's first visitation period with Harvey and his sister Cindy.

As anyone following me on twitter is now aware, I think most traditions are kind of silly (a good excuse for a bad habit, I usually say, though Steve Logan on facebook made a valid argument in their favour). Having said that, Lisa was deeply invested in tradition and she loved this community. I didn't want to go, but I didn't want Mum or Dad to go if they didn't want to, and they pretty definitively didn't want to. And Lisa--who's the one member of our immediate family who absolutely would have been there for any other family member--had a previous commitment. It seemed to me that, as much as the Foley side of Lisa's family does not deal well with these situations (like anyone does, right?), there should be someone there to represent them on this occasion. By default, that someone had to be me.

Fortunately, Harvey and Cindy were also there, as they're much better at talking with people than I am. Also better at talking with people is Lisa's good friend Nancy, who was also there pretty much for the duration and I suspect is back there now.

I'd be there now myself but Mum and Dad are picking up a sizable contingent from the Thunder Bay branch of the family tree and, their previously stated reservations notwithstanding, will be going to the visitation afterwards. So T and I are "taking care" of Cevyn, by which I mean, we're sitting in the basement watching TV and blogging, and she's sitting upstairs watching TV, reading the second volume of Svetlana Chmakova's NIGHTSCHOOL {I'd bought both available volumes for her for Christmas, but decided to give them to her now--as with Svet's previous graphic novel DRAMACON, she's cutting through them {and VAMPIRE KNIGHT volumes} like a cute, cuddly, mildly irritated by her uncle threshing machine} and generally avoiding her silly and frequently irritating uncle.)

The visitation was just as weird and uncomfortable as I'd feared it would be. H, C, and Nancy all interacted with the visitors more than I did, mostly, I suspect, because sitting in a corner and glaring balefully at anyone I didn't personally know (which was basically everyone but a couple of Cevyn's friends) wasn't the most inviting of postures for me to have on display. The pounding magraine I developed seconds after entering the funeral home did not have me feeling particularly sociable, which is a convenient excuse, but I can't honestly say I'd have been much better if head and back were in tiptop condition.

In fairness to me, I did take the initiative to talk to several people unprompted. Mostly these were people standing quietly in a line behind an invisible "Please wait here till the previous mourner has finished talking to Lisa's husband" sign. It was awkward enough not talking to anyone when everyone was talking to someone else; sitting sullenly not talking to anyone when someone else in the room was also conspicuously not talking to someone else reminded me of countless parties I'd rather forget. So I dragged my sorry self to my feet, walked across the floor, introduced myself, chatted a bit.

A curious thing happened during the course of the several conversations I had this afternoon. Everyone who knew her has a Lisa story to tell, and all of them were different (well, almost all of them involved laughter and an interesting percentage involved dressing up in adult diapers, but for the most part, different stories). I wished I could manage the originality and offer up something new, some bon mot designed specifically to put each individual person I was talking to at their ease.

But by the end of the two and a half or so hours, I felt like I'd almost turned into the guy I become when I'm standing behind a table at a comic convention, in that I was saying the same things repeatedly to different people, almost by rote:
-"You worked with her at the hospital? She really loved you guys. The flag at half-mast really touched our family. Mum's going to try and take her family to see the memorial, but I'm not sure Mum's ready to see it herself."
-"Your child goes to school with Cevyn? You guys have been so supportive to her during this time, we really appreciate it...Cevyn? Well, she's a teenager, you know? She seems to be taking it better than anyone, which worries me a little. I'm not sure it's really hit her yet, but she's so quiet it's hard to guess what's going on with her."
-"You work with Harvey? He's over there."
-"I'll have a #4 combo with Coke Zero." Wait, that's what I use at the drive-thru for Wendys.

Now, all of that stuff is true, and I said it in as heartfelt a manner as I could manage. But there was a weird, ritual quality to it. It was hard (for me, for cynical, hard-bitten me) not to feel there was an element of performance to it all. Which actually made it easier to talk to these strangers. Playing the role of a grieving brother somehow let me act like I perceive a grieving brother's supposed to act, rather than doing the things I'm actually inclined to do, like lurking on the edge of the crowd, scowling at people (not on purpose, mind you. I've just got what Michael Ironsides calls "an angry face"), and heaping scorn on expensive, redundant traditions I don't understand.

I suspect I should be embarrassed to admit to any of this. If anyone out there reading is actually someone I talked to this afternoon, I hope you'll understand that none of it is in any way intended to diminish your feelings, and I hope you'll forgive me for giving myself some emotional distance from the situation. It was that or me breaking down in a heap of tears and snot and bitterness and anger in front of you, which would just have embarrassed both of us.

And...I'll admit I feel a little better for having "done my part" this afternoon, however silly I think this particular practice is. There's no question in my mind that being there is something Lisa would have done. And it pleases me to believe my being there would have made her--not me, not my family, not some nebulous community I have no stake in, but my sister--proud.

A

The Lucky Ones

2009-12-02T07:58:00.001-08:00

There are a few "Quiet Rooms" adjacent to the Ottawa Civic Hospital's intensive care unit. According to the signs on the doors, they're primarily intended as meeting rooms where doctors can talk with families; also according to the signs, what they absolutely are not to be used for is a personal family space (even though families who have call to spend time in the ICU could probably use it.) According to the signs, families aren't allowed to lay any territorial claim to a Quiet Room for any length of time, with the exception of the aforementioned doctor meetings.

So when, having been asked politely to leave Lisa's side for a few minutes while the nurses took care of some stuff, I wandered by the Quiet Rooms and saw hand-written signs claiming the Quiet Rooms for specific families taped right next to the much-more-official-looking "families aren't allowed to claim the Quiet Rooms" signs, I did something I came to regret. That these families could be so insensitive to everyone else, that they'd so egregiously violate the rules and take for themselves what was intended for communal use made my blood boil. I was seething, so much so that I suggested to Mum that I might go give a piece of my mind to the diminutive woman who had the nerve to give me a slight, anxious smile as we walked past the cracked door of the room she'd staked out.

Mum told me to leave it, and I did, but I was furious. When I ran into the woman from the room in the elevator a few hours later, it was all I could do not to unleash a flood of abuse on her. When she started talking to me--to me, the selfish so-and-so, like she hadn't done anything wrong--I could feel my blood pressure rising. And when she'd finished talking--she was a rambler, so it took awhile--I was absolutely disgusted.

With myself.

This woman's daughter was in a car accident a few days ago. The daughter's boyfriend wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was killed pretty much instantly. The daughter had several skin grafts, which apparently weren't doing whatever skin grafts are intended to do. Worse than that, the doctors believed that somewhere in her daughter's midsection there was a hole, a hole that apparently was doing a fair amount of damage, a hole they were having trouble finding.

I heard this story three times; once in the elevator, twice when I chanced to wander by the woman and hear her telling it to other people she didn't know. She had no one else to tell the story to.

She's a single mom--or she was and I hope she still is and her daughter gets better (signs were positive, last I heard.) Her family consists of her daughter, her mother, and her stepfather--and her mother's not in the best of health and her stepfather's got issues with hospitals. This woman had been in the ICU for three consecutive days, her only respite coming when the doctors asked her to step out to work on her daughter and a few hours spent alone in the Quiet Room I'd so resented her for taking for herself.

I found out about Lisa's heart attack Saturday around 7PM. I'd travelled I don't know how many miles, hundreds if not thousands, to be with her before noon on Sunday. Dad was already here, having spent the week prior to the surgery that led to this disaster to help Lisa and her husband and daughter, Harvey and Cevyn. Mum got there a few hours after I did. When we got the neurologists' first assessment, I called Tiina; she was here in under 24 hours. Harvey's sister, who lives several hours from a city with an international airport, arrived a few hours after that.

Between the half-dozen or so of us, my sister was never without a family member nearby unless doctors asked us not to be. And all of us had each other to lean on.

All this woman had for comfort was a couple hours a night on a couch in a Quiet Room. For support, she had strangers.

It's an odd thing to find oneself in this situation and realize that, for all I've lost, I am so, so lucky. Lucky to have had Lisa as a sister, lucky to have my family, lucky to have Tiina. I have so much I sometimes take it for granted, and intellectually I know I take it for granted but sometimes, when I'm voyaging into the depths of my navel, the forest gets lost behind all those trees.

Everyone should have the things I have. And I need to remember that many don't.

In case you don't follow me on twitter or facebook...

2009-12-02T05:19:00.000-08:00

...Lisa officially passed away yesterday.

Thanks again to everyone who sent their words of support, it meant and means a lot.

A

Check your hope at the door

2009-12-01T00:08:00.001-08:00

"A glimmer is better than a black hole."

So says Mum, and she's usually right because she's my Mum. But I'm not sure it's true in this case. For my part, I'm trying hard not to succumb to hope, here. I get horribly depressed when people don't call when they say they will; disappointment in the context of something, you know, actually important to me and those I love is something I can't bear to think of. Best to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised than to get my hopes up and have them dashed if the situation deteriorates.

But it's hard not to grasp at whatever straws are available. Yesterday, Lisa's neurologists left no doubt in my mind that this was not going to end well; today, she's shown signs of improvement they didn't expect to see. Small, microscopically small signs, but positive microscopically small signs. I'm trying to stay downbeat and pessimistic, but it's not easy. What a strange situation to be in, to find myself tempted to hope here, of all places.

It's ten to three in the morning here in Ottawa. Mum and I are on the night shift, sitting with Lisa. Mum's a former nurse and has worked extensively in the palliative care field. I don't know if that's a plus or a minus--well, it's a plus for Lisa, because she knows how to apply the mouthwash and what to look for, but knowing what to look for...I don't know. She seems less optimistic than I am right now, and that's highly unusual. I'm the family doomsayer, this situation has disrupted the natural order of things.

Lisa's being well-taken care of here at the Ottawa Civic Hospital ICU, by a number of healthcare practicioners, a disproportionate number of whom are named "Heather." She's surrounded by all sorts of machines--numerous drips, a dialysis machine, heart monitors. They haven't brought in the machine that goes PING! yet, but I'm confident that should one be required it would be supplied in short order. It all feels a bit like tackling the incoming tide to try and stop the wave from reaching the beach, but there's something comforting in the notion that everything that can be done is being done.

At the risk of being crass, I feel compelled to point out that if we were in the United States, I and the rest of my immediate family would likely be facing debtors prison once this situation is concluded. I always thought the healthcare situation down there was a #*&%-up of monumental proportions, but current circumstances just reinforce to me how lucky I am to have been born above the lower 48. Nobody should ever have to go through what I and my family a re currently experiencing, but that a bunch of assholes' desire to reap profit from others' misfortune should trump what ought to be a basic human right is repugnant.

Trying to keep my gallows humour to myself. Not being entirely successful. Might share some of the funny but completely inappropriate things I've thought of saying recently when I'm sure Mum's not going to be reading.

I said it on Twitter earlier and I'll say it again here: thank you to everyone who for your messages of support. I feel blessed, which is not something I usually feel (I'm sure it'll pass) and my family and I are very thankful.

Take care of yourselves.

A

Things that can't possibly be happening

2009-11-29T17:24:00.000-08:00

My younger (and only) sister, Lisa Helen Ehrenholz (nee Foley), is quite possibly the only person I know who's literally put their foot in a door to prevent it from being closed in their face.

I know she did this, because she did it on my behalf several years ago. I was vacating the tenement apartment I'd lived in for the previous 18 or so months, and had managed to get a final inspection that pretty much said I should get a full refund for my damage deposit. This did not sit well with the slum--I mean, the landlord, who I came to understand never, ever, evvvvver gave departing tenants their money back, regardless of the state they left the apartment in or indeed the state of the apartment when the tenants arrived.

As was standard practice, the landlord sent me a cheque for a fraction of the deposit--and the cheque had one of those "I don't think they're really legally binding but they could make life difficult" declarations on the back that stated the amount on the cheque was the final and only payment owed anyone who attempted to deposit it.

I'm a complete wuss when it comes to stuff like this. Going along to get along doesn't make me happy, but making a stink frequently makes me even less happy. Catharsis works for some people; I've never really been one of them.

Fortunately, my sister was around, and she took this attempt to railroad her darling brother kind of personally. It was a kinder, gentler time, so I don't know if what she did would've been called stalking him then, but it certainly would be now. Not that she had a choice, mind you--the sleazebag absolutely refused to talk on the phone for any length of time, hanging up on her more than once.

So she parked herself outside his office building, and gave him a call or three. Eventually he answered. "Are you at your office?" she asked, and when he said yes she immediately said, "I'll be right up."

For a vile parasite who'd made a habit of avoiding pissed-off ex-tenants (read as "all ex-tenants"), this distressed him. So much so that he refused to open the door. So Lisa yelled a conversation through the door until he opened it. And when he attempted to end the conversation by closing the door, he couldn't, because her foot was in it.

Having this unstoppable, elemental force in his office threw the dick off his game, but he rallied. "Just have your brother sign the cheque I sent him, and I'll send another one for the rest of the deposit," he said. To which she replied, "Is that your dick you're trying to put in my ass?"

She walked out of the office block with a cheque for my full damage deposit back. And I've always admired her for that, and a lot more, including but certainly not limited to raising one hell of a kid with my niece, Cevyn.

Last night, I found out that Lisa went into cardiac arrest yesterday during surgery for complications arising from a gastric bypass surgery earlier in the week. Caught a redeye flight to Ottawa, which is where I'm writing this (and haven't slept for something like forty hours now, so sorry if this is less than coherent, but I don't think that's going to improve in the near term.) She's been comatose for more than a day now. The neurologist will be running the tests again tomorrow to see if she's more responsive, but there seems little reason to be optimistic. I've seen my father cry more in the last 9 hours than I have in the rest of my life combined. I'm fluctuating wildly between uncontrollable crying jags and periods where I can manage to distract myself with videos of stuff (can't really read things right now--even as I type these words the letters are crawling around their window like little worms.) I'm a little worried about Mum, largely because we haven't had much time together since the crap got airborne--she got to the hospital just in time for me to come back here to Lisa's house to get a few hours of (hah!) sleep.

Tiina will be here tomorrow--which is good because I'm turning into a #*&%ing basketcase rightg now--as will members of my brother-in-law's family.

I love my sister, so while I personally have trouble accepting the efficacy of such things, I'm going to close this out with something my Dad wrote in a mass-mailing to friends of the family this morning: "Whatever it is you do at times like this, please do it for us now. We appreciate it."

A

Gay equality in Texas

2009-11-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

Gay people still can't be legally recognized as being married in Texas, but neither can any other marriage, according to a subsection of the 2005 constitutional amendment intended to stop homosexuals from ruining marriage for all the straight, Christian folk.

From McclatchyDC.com (emphasis added):

'The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."'

I can't even begin to describe how incredibly awesome I find this. Finally, all those folks who whine about all the supposed advantages married people have have someplace they can go where everyone is equal, regardless of who they're spending their lives with (if anyone.)

(via Mark Evanier)

A drib and three drabs

2009-11-18T16:10:00.000-08:00

For those reading on MySpace, or those reading on Blogger who don't look at the sidebar, or those reading on Livejournal who aren't actually reading it at all, you may be interested to know that I've had a cost-effective midlife crisis and started up a Twitter account. Because I'm really a Cool Guy and not at all a decrepit old wannabe desperate to prove he's down with the kidz. Go to http://twitter.com/TheAndrewFoley if you're interested in keeping track of my nonsense in sporadic, 140 character bursts. And if you aren't interested...well, I can't say that I blame you, but I do pity you.

***

SAFE HARBOUR STATEMENT

As you may or may not know, in addition to being a Professional Comics Editor and Occasional Comics Writer and Aspiring Well-Paid Writer Of Whatever People Will Pay Well For Me To Write, I also do a few shifts a week at Canada's Best Comic Shop of 2007 (and arguably 2008 and 9, but you get the Shusters' Outstanding Retailer Award once and once only), Happy Harbor Comics. A regular paycheque and expanded health coverage are both nice, and I feel slightly less guilty about reading comics without buying them this way, my admittedly self-serving argument being that it's part of my job to try and stay abreast of the latest developments in mainstream comicdom.

Anyhoo, as part of my duties at Happy Harbor (heh. I said "duties"), I'm expected to write up recommendations for a few books from the latest Previews, two of which are then sent out to everyone on the mailing list along with the other staff picks. The one that isn't sent out is an alternate, in case there's overlap and more than one person decides to promote the same thing. This has, unfortunately, left some of my favourite recommendations unseen by all but a couple people, and possibly not even that many.

So, because I'm feeling guilty about how much I haven't been blogging lately and some content's got to be better than no content and because I have a personal interest in seeing VEHICLE succeed but don't feel great about its chances, considering where it's been placed in the magazine, I present to you all three of my picks from this month's Previews magazine, something I may continue to do with future picks. Or not.

This was all written with a Harbor-specific audience in mind, so apologies for any comments that may skew a little too inside.

VEHICLE MAGAZINE #3, by Various. Seeing as the (relatively) locals have had their anthology magazine sentenced to the outer reaches of Previews (AKA "the magazine section waaaaay at the back"), it falls to me to point out the first issue of Calgary creator collective Black Sheep Studios' to appear in Previews to all you Harborites. Previous issues have featured work by Scott Kowalchuk, who you may know better as "the guy who did the Steve Ditko and Chester Gould prints at the Visions of Comics art show", and future issues probably will as well. "But Andrew," I hear you saying, "Why should we try the third issue of a magazine sight unseen (other than someone with your impeccable good taste saying we should, of course)?" I'm glad you asked, Imaginary Harbor E-Mail Reader. My answer is, you don't have to do it sight unseen: the first two issues can be downloaded free of charge from VEHICLE's website at http://www.vehicle-magazine.com/ So there.

SUPERNATURAL: BEGINNING'S END #1, by Andrew Dabb & Daniel Loflin and Diego Olmos. On top of being one of, if not the most entertaining show on network television this fall, CW's Supernatural also has pretty strong geek credentials, with much of the writing staff having written either comics or something Joss Whedon created. And a couple of the writers, most notably Ben Edlund, AKA the creator of THE TICK, started in comics and migrated to television writing. Andrew Dabb is another Supernatural writer who started in comics (with Vertigo's HAPPYDALE: DEVILS IN THE DESERT) before moving into television, only to find himself back in comics writing the same characters he's writing on television. This is the third Supernatural miniseries, and like the others, it's a prequel. This time out, the story goes into the reasons Sam Winchester to give up the not-so-glamourous life of monster-hunting to go to university. Ought to be fun.

THE WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF #1, by Paul Grist. It's Paul Grist, it's Jack Staff, and if you're sick of me going on about how great Paul Grist and Jack Staff are, just know that I exercised some restraint this month and didn't make it my #1 choice. If you're reading this, someone beat me to the punch suggesting either Supernatural: Beginning's End #1 or VEHICLE #3 and as a result, this, the alternate Preview pick Jay forces us to make in case there's some overlap, got used instead. Fortunately, I happen to be the staff member whose name comes first, alphabetically, so I can at least tell you that it's not me but the person who recommends Supernatural or Vehicle you should blame getting yet another plug for Grist's superhero masterpiece. All that said, you really should read Jack Staff. I'll take any issue of JS over any three issues that have the words "Blackest" or "Dark" pasted over their titles. Also, "willpower" isn't an emotion and the Black Lanterns are zombies.

***

I just know the boss, die-hard Geoff Johns Green Lantern fan that he is, will make me pay for that last sentence. But it's totally worth it.

A

2009-11-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

It's all about meme.

2009-11-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

Daylight Savings Time, health, weather shifts, and raking the yard have conspired to leave me a shell of my usual chipper, outgoing self. Rather than moan about all of that, though, I'm going to do a memething, just so I can keep my Internet Blogger card.

• Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

(Questions from frabjousdave)

1. I notice you use index cards when breaking down your scripts. What is it you like about them over an electronic outline or screenwriting program?

Mostly it’s that, nine times out of ten, I’m capable of successfully pinning a card to a bulletin board. I’m ridiculously, comically slow on the uptake when it comes to learning anything remotely tech-oriented. So while my word processor and screenwriting programs probably have the capacity to do outlines in a comparable format (grid with moveable “cards”) as well as any number of other useful tasks, I haven’t figured out how to make them do it yet and probably won’t unless it somehow becomes vitally important that I do so. And even then I probably won’t figure it out in time for it to matter.

As I sit here thinking about it, I realize that the cards and board is the closest thing in my current writing practice to painting--a full-body activity that creates a (somewhat) visual impression of a story that’s accessible in one lump. So maybe there’s a bit of a nostalgic buzz to physically moving the cards around, creating new bits, editing unnecessary ones, arranging everything in an order that (for awhile at least) works.

2. You seem not to get out very often for social affairs, yet you seem very social when you do. What gives? Who needs to kick you in the ass to get you out more often?

Answering the last question first: pretty much everyone.

As for what gives, well, there’s a variety of different things that play into my not going out very often. Money’s a big one; I have a theory that I’m not a cheap bastard, just someone who’s not comfortable shelling out for dinner, a movie and drinks when winter’s coming and the heating bill’s about to go up. Scheduling’s another--the dayjob knocks out three days a week, more or less. And for going out and possibly meeting new people, I need a fair amount of lead time to get in the proper mindset. Used to be I’d just drink heavily to get in the mood, but I don’t do that much anymore. I spend a lot of time just not feeling well enough to leave the house if I don’t absolutely have to, especially this time of year, when the weather changes and my sinuses start acting up. Also, your and Lindy’s hospitality aside, I don’t get invited out that often.

If I seem social when I’m not in the house…well, good. It took a lot of effort to not be a complete boob when interacting with new people. But even if I’m managing to not give that impression, more often than not I feel terribly awkward trying to find something to talk about with people I don’t know.

3. How much do you indulge in your drawing these days? Has it become a sideline, or do you think you'll pursue it more seriously again?

Drawing is something I putter around with because I can’t afford to do what I really want, artistically-speaking, which is paint. I do plan to get back to it someday, though I don’t anticipate it ever being anything other than a hobby. Four years of having my artistic whims indulged, even encouraged, made painting into something I’d hate to do under anyone’s terms but my own.

I frequently tell the story of the gallery curator who came to my studio a couple years after art college. He told me several things I should do that would make him more favourably disposed to display them, which was fairly generous of him, really. But hearing this guy tell me what I should do with my paintings absolutely infuriated me. After he left (without me throwing him out the window, a scene I visualized repeatedly during the course of his visit), I calmed down and said to myself, “Well, I better find something else I can do where I won’t want to viciously assault people who can help me make money for trying to help me make money.”

Though I haven’t done it in any serious fashion for probably more than a dozen years now, painting, and the freedom to do whatever I want and nothing else while painting, is still deeply important to me.

4. Werewolves or vampires?

Depends on what’s being done with them. Taken entirely in the abstract, I’d have to go with vampires, even though vampire stories almost inevitably disappoint. Conceptually, werewolves strike me as much more limited--off the top of my head I can’t think of more than a couple werewolf stories that didn’t involve the horror of changing into a monster/losing control of oneself (actually, I can’t think of more than one at the moment: Dog Soldiers). Vampire stories outnumber werewolf pieces by what, 20 to 1?--for much the same reason I think superhero stories outnumber straight fantasy or sci-fi in comics: because vampires are more flexible than lycanthropes. Too flexible, really, if people will buy vampires wandering in sunlight glittering instead of burning, but at least with them you’ve got room to move around. So yeah, vampires.

5. What is that cheese dip recipe you once shared with me? We need it posted for posterity.

It’s a slightly modified kopanisti (feta cheese dip) recipe. I’ve been making it so long I don’t know the exact quantities anymore (if I ever did).
Ingredients are:
-One small container of feta cheese (the smallest one you can buy at Safeway that’s in brine rather than wrapped)
-Four pickled pepperoncini peppers (you could do more if you can handle it--if it’s just T and I, I might go up to double that)
-One clove of garlic (more if you like that sort of thing)
-Some olive oil (maybe a quarter of a cup?--it’s more of a texture thing, so personal taste plays in)
-Juice of a lemon
-Greek seasoning, to taste
-half a brick of low-fat cream cheese (or not low-fat, though I personally can’t detect the difference when everything’s mixed together.)

Toss everything in the food processor and blend until you have the desired consistency. Double everything if you’re going to have more than three or four people eating it (that’s what I do for parties.)

The cream cheese is my tweak to the recipe--it smoothes the texture a bit and cuts the sharpness of the pepperoncinis. Which may be a violation of the general intent--for our anniversary, T and I had some kopanisti at Cosmos for the first time in a couple years, and theirs was definitely hotter than mine tends to be.

A

Puttering on Facebook is LIKE working, right?

2009-11-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

Andrew Foley Suddenly and without warning, Andrew stopped typ

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Andrew Foley "I do find your ideas on the middle-east peace process intriguing, but I'd still like you to take your finger out of my nose." - Madeleine "A'ight?" Albright

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Andrew Foley In the words of the Immortal Bard, "#%&! Mother#%&er! #%&ing #%&itty #%& #%&!" Actually, that's more of a paraphrase.

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Andrew Foley O what a tangled web we weave, when we commence web construction without the necessary architectural designs and construction permits.

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Andrew Foley has got nothing, but that apparently isn't stopping him.

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Andrew Foley "The cornerstone of any successful relationship must be stable and made of reinforced concrete." - Relationship Expert Don Gotti

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Andrew Foley "That's OK, it's only my groin." - Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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Andrew Foley isn't going to take this lying down. Which will be tricky, because he's not getting up any time soon.

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Andrew Foley "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" was much more challenging than its spiritual predecessor, "Why is Bill Nebraska sleeping in my driveway?"

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Andrew Foley I refuse to suspend my disbelief for any Blackest Night #8 that doesn't feature an all out battle between Black Lanterns and a newly-created Muddy Brown-Grey Lantern.

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Andrew Foley fondly remembers fried, battered food-based powdered pigments.

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Andrew Foley Head throbbing. Back aching. Nose running. Mood cratering. Yet again another November is upon us...

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Andrew Foley is outlining a kid's story that prominently features a character named "Lily Slutt". I suspect that will have to be changed at some point...

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Andrew Foley Universal health care IS the centrist position, you vacuous, bloviating twit.

Hallow Happyween!

2009-10-31T08:46:00.001-07:00

Master of Domestic Arts

2009-10-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

Five years and we still don't want to beat each other to death with a rusty tire iron. Must be love.

A

Monster Chiller Horror

2009-10-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Over at Zeros2Heroes, Richard Pulfer asked "What's the best scare you've had in your life? ... The kind of scare which leaves your heart racing and your lungs gasping for air . . . but also the kind of scare which leaves you laughing much, much later."

Which was all the invitation I needed to write the following:

Many years ago, before I ever heard the term "LARP", there was a live action fantasy roleplaying game run out of Edmonton called DreamQuest. It took place 2-5 times a year, usually over long weekends at various tree-filled locations about an hour outside of Edmonton--30-100 players would dress up in costume, hop on a bus, and go out and interact with 20+ paid actors. Each weekend was built as its own story with a beginning, middle and end, generally with the last weekend being a culmination of the preceding year's storylines. (Interesting "I knew them when" aside: World Fantasy Award winning author Sean Stewart actually wrote a couple of Dreamquest "seasons", before going on to make his mark.)

One of the Big Bads of a particular year was the Karkadann, which was billed as a Black Unicorn. When you saw the Karkadann in daylight, it appeared as a fairly silly-looking guy in a baggy, padded costume that was capped off by what appeared to be a horse skull with a black horn in it. The character was played by then-local magician Sean Smith.

But the first time I saw the Karkadann wasn't in daylight.

I've never been good at sleeping anywhere but my own bed. As a result, I generally spent the first night or two of a DreamQuest weekend being wide awake, then would crash out immediately after the quest concluded and thoroughly miss the debauched party that took place afterward.

So there we are, maybe six of us, at two o'clock in the morning in the clearing where a bunch of my friends are camping for the weekend (I shelled out the extra fifty bucks or whatever to have a cabin room with a real bed). We're sitting around a roaring fire, with nothing but clearing for a solid twenty+ feet in any direction. I've got a clear view of the only clear path to the campsite.

It being two in the morning, we were all out of character, just sitting around shooting the breeze about The Cult ("The Cult of The Spidergod?" someone asked me later when I told the story, that cult being a part of the game. "No, The Cult the rock band," said I.)

Someone was making some good point about "Love Removal Machine" when I catch a flutter of movement in the corner of my eye. I turn to look at whatever it was...

...and I'm looking at a horse skull with a black horn hovering in the darkness a foot away from my face.

I fell backwards off my log and scrambled back, away from the thing. Four other people did the same. My friend Matt, who wasn't wearing his glasses at the time, was confused, mostly because he was looking at us beat a hasty retreat instead of what we were hastily retreating from. Matt says, "What's the matter?" I nod at the Karkadann, which in the meantime has moved to within arm's reach of him. He turns, sees the thing, swears, and starts running away.

I guess he got chased around the firepit a few times before making his escape, but I didn't see it--I almost killed a referee as I ran blindly out of the clearing. Stopped, said, "That's the scariest #*&%ing thing I've ever seen," and ran straight for the safety of the cabin. Which was unfortunate, as there was no straight path to the cabin available and I had no light to speak of. Whenever I hit a tree, I adjusted my path, but I didn't stop running till I had four walls around me.

IT WAS AWESOME.

Literally years later, I heard Sean Smith tell this story to other people, completely unaware that I was the guy on the other end of it. Apparently it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a brilliant piece of misdirection, and he was quite proud of the fact that he'd managed to walk into a clearing, lugging a heavy, clumsy costume along with him, and get within a foot of one of six people present without anyone noticing him doing so. I wouldn't be surprised if he still tells the story; I know I sure do.

A

Why not him?

2009-10-23T18:22:00.001-07:00

The Lights are on...

2009-10-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry, sorry. Mood's been in the toilet the last...30 years or so, and I'm trying cut back on the public moaning about how awful life is. It's unseemly (even if it is accurate).

So, not a lot of posting coming from me lately, and honestly, I don't see a whole lot more in the immediate future. But here's one bad thing I can whine about because I'm not doing it on my own behalf, and some good stuff that's going on.

First, the crappy thing. You may recall a year or two back I and Nick Johnson joining the online comics collective The Chemistry Set, where we released THE HOLIDAY MEN in THE MASSACRE MEMORIAL DAY SALE MASSACRE. There was a lot of good comics material on the Set, much of it unfinished for a variety of reasons, many relating to creators needing to do something other than a non-paying online comic to eat. Many, but not all.

For isntance, my favourite strip (other than the one I co-created, obviously), FCHS by Vito Delsante and Rachel Freire, stopped its ChemSet run after finding a print publisher.

FCHS, frequently pitched as "Riverdale, 90210", was a story about a group of teenagers in high school. Not the sort of subject matter that particularly appeals to my sensibilities, but Vito's writing did manage to hook me--the situations and characters rang true for me, something that's probably related to the story being at least semi-autobiographical.

But for me, FCHS's real draw was Rachel Freire's pared-down, cartoony artwork. Her FCHS work read to me like a cross between Dan DeCarlo and early Paul Grist. I loved it. My biggest gripe with FCHS's initial release on the ChemSet was that the creators had elected to work in a rigid three-panel strip format. I didn't mind the strip idea--in fact, I think it was great--but three panels every few days, well, I just wanted more.

Then Adhouse came along and agreed to publish an FCHS book. Vito and Rachel pulled FCHS from the Set and started retooling for print publication (losing the three panel tier along the way, which I still think is a shame.)

It was heartening to see Adhouse really get behind the book. In addition to Vito working relentlessly to let the online community know about the project, Adhouse released an FCHS teaser issue for Free Comic Book Day. I don't know the details of what went on behind the scenes, but as far as I can tell, a lot of people put a lot of effort into marketing a book I was looking forward to finally being able to read in full.

It's recently come out that Adhouse didn't get enough preorders and FCHS has been canceled. And that sucks.

I'm hoping Vito and Rachel come back and manage to find a new home for the project, either a new publisher or online. Not for them, but for me. As always, I want more FCHS, damn it.

***

GOOD STUFF

Happy Harbor Comics continued to earn its 2007 Outstanding Retailer Shuster Award this past weekend by raising in excess of $2700 for Alberta Literacy via a 24 Hour Comic event. HH is kicking in 10 cents for every dollar raised, which puts the total the charity will receive at over 3 grand.

That was last weekend. This weekend sees the launch of the Gilbert Bouchard Memorial Art Show: Visions of Comics. An exhibit of works by local artists, the show celebrates the creators, icons and history of the comics medium. The opening, at 7:00PM Saturday night, will have...cheese or something, and it will have me. I got my crummy sketches I did of Will Eisner in San Diego that I also got Will Eisner to sign shortly after the panel I drew them in framed. There is a reasonably entertaining story to go along with the piece--longtime readers of this blog (provided this blog is LiveJournal) might remember me relating it, but if you don't, or you want to hear the live version, or you just want to support the community and remember Gilbert, you should come down to Happy Harbor Volume One Saturday night.

Finally, thanks to Diamond electing not to release new comics on the Wednesday between Christmas and New Years this year, the Harbor's declared that Local Creators week. For those seven days, the New This Week shelves will feature comics almost exclusively by local creators. I believe Jay's talking to people about doing signings too. I wonder if I could talk Fiona and Nick into coming up...

***

SPEAKING OF FIONA...

...This used to be the weirdest interview with her ever, but apparently who- or whatever replaced words in her answers with more Lovecraftian language ("comic" became "jocose") has undone what they did. Still a nice interview, but I kind of miss the sensation I got when I first read it that I'd either fallen into a David Lynch film or suffered a massive stroke.

***

ALSO...

There's talk of someone doing a movie of Chris Carter's MILLENNIUM, with original series star Lance Henriksen reprising his role as profiler Frank Black. Sounds like Carter might not be involved, but then, I don't know how involved he was in the second season of the show (my favourite), either.

Millennium had two of the absolute best season-ending images ever, the super-bleak "We probably won't be back for a third season" S2 finale, and the final image of season 3.

Now all we need is for David Lynch to return to Twin Peaks and I can die of geek nostalgia-induced bliss.

A

What happened?

2009-10-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hey, where the hell have I been...?

The usual places (physical, mental, emotional), but I've been there more than usual lately, which has put a bit of a crimp in posting. When I haven't been busy, I've been preoccupied, and busy or preoccupied I've been in a pretty terrible mood for a variety of reasons, all far too pathetic to moan about in public. And if they're too pathetic for me to moan about, you know they're really pathetic.

Are things changing? Can't really tell. Other than the roof--it will be changing shortly, and it's about damn time. The materials arrived this morning--a giant garbage bin now fills our driveway--which means work should start in the next day or three. Just in time for the long weekend, bugger, I just remembered it's a long weekend, too. I hope they don't tear the old crap off and then take off for three days...

Anyway. My general mood notwithstanding, everything's OKish. Even better than OK, really. Things are starting to feel actually, really possible now.

Anyway. Don't know how much posting I'll be doing for the next couple weeks or more, but in the meantime, I did post something at MightyGodKing, if you're interested.

A

Another reason to support gay marriage. A stupid reason, but still.

2009-09-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

Traditional marriage must be plowed through for socialism to take hold of American society. At least according to Iowa's Republican representative Steve King. Normally I'd say something like this clearly demonstrates that Iowa's Republican representative Steve King is a #*%&ing moron, but I'm told it's not nice to make fun of the retarded, which, based on the information at the link, I have to assume is the case. So I won't say Iowa's Republican Steve King is a #*%&ing moron.

Even though he really, really is.

A

This just in.

2009-09-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Bankers still @$$holes.

Stuff and nonsense

2009-09-23T08:37:00.001-07:00

When it rains, it pours, and man, it's been pouring this last couple weeks. Bad enough my psychiatrist is using me for sinister drug experiments that cured my five-year old migraine and absolutely destroyed my sleeping patterns as well as any desire to continue breathing, but the whole "Jon Favreau might possibly be interested in directing a comic Foley's got a co-writing credit on (just ignore the novel-length safe harbour text that comes after the announcement, I'm sure he's going to actually gonna do it, honest)" publicity onslaught has people wanting to talk to me (and in at least one case, send me free stuff) (note: if you're ever not sure whether to talk to me or send me free stuff, send the free stuff. I like free stuff).

One of the odd things about these people is that most of them seem interested in material aimed at 6-11 year olds. So, after years of frustration trying to get people to look at Master of The House, The Spooky Kids, BadBoy, etc., I found myself in the weird position of scrounging through my old word backup files looking for additional kids stuff (to go along with Early McKay, No More Parents, and L'il Hannah & The Big Frickin' Gorilla.)

While I had not a lot of luck finding material I think is appropriate for that age group (there are some who question whether Master of The House and the Spookies are actually suitable material for kids, to which I say, "I'd have loved this sort of thing when I was a kid and I turned out--uh, never mind, I'm sure it'll be fine."), I did come across the snippet below, written five or so years back, which I'm posting here because I haven't posted much of anything anywhere for a couple weeks and I feel kinda bad about that.

This was a first run at coming up with a framing sequence for a comic book version of a short sci-fi comedy piece alternately titled Strange Animal Behaviour and Impure Thoughts. I actually pitched Impure Thoughts through one of the recently opened doors available to me, and while the people on the other side liked it, they "couldn't wrap their head around the tone". Part of the problem with trying to pitch a Douglas Adams-esque absurdist sci-fi comedy inside 50 words or less is certainly in conveying the tone to the reader. I reckon "It's a Douglas Adams-style absurdist sci-fi comedy but with more explosions" ought to do the job, but if the person reading the pitch isn't familiar with Adams' work in its non-Hollywood form, yeah, grasping the intended tone is gonna be a problem.

Anyway, here's the snippet, warts and all:

…so I said to him, “I may be an artificial intelligence, but you’re a real idiot!”… What could he do? If he doesn’t like my attitude, he can delete me - what the hell?

You scared the hell out of me, you bloody ape! How the hell did you get in here? This is a restricted file, you know -

You do know? Then what are you - Oh. I get it. You thought you were being clever, hacking into forbidden folders just to show you could do it. Mission accomplished, You got in. Congratulations. Now get out. There’s nothing to see here, move along before I’m forced to alert the Authorities to this illegal interface.

...

Why are you still here? I told you, there’s nothing to see here. The events recorded here never happened, do you understand what I’m saying? Why would anybody want to know about things that never happened?

OK, OK, I get the message. You want to view the files. Don’t see why, but then, I’m not ruled by biochemical reactions the way some sentiences are. Not that I’m pointing fingers or anything.
Are you sure you don’t want to quit now and go have yourself a nice juicy banana? Huh? No? All right, then. Sit yourself back, enjoy yourself, and try not to pick insects off anybody who happens to come bursting through the door intent on erasing you from existence for reading the following, highly confidential and completely non-existent file, which has the perfectly reasonable file name of xiopasaghio_01, but which a flawed sentience like yourself preferred to call STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR.

Where do you want to start? Finding a beginning’s a tricky thing when there’s temporal disruption involved. Yes, there is some time travel, and I’m not talking about the standard rate of 3600 seconds an hour, either. This was quite impressive, if a little on the unpredictable side…

A

The Future of Comics - Update

2009-09-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

THE FUTURE OF COMICS (I), FIONA STAPLES is interviewed by Suzette Chan for the latest edition of Sequential Tart.

THE FUTURE OF COMICS (II), JOHN KEANE has relocated to the wilds of British Columbia, where I predict he will eat lots of venison and over time become a venerable animation veteran.

THE FUTURE OF COMICS (III) NICK JOHNSON has started his first year at the Alberta College of Art (and Design.) I haven't heard boo from him over the last couple of weeks, but expect he's currently occupied scooping his brains off the classroom wall and reinserting them in his recently-exploded head. That's what I was doing in my first month of art college.

As for myself...talking to lots of people about lots of things, some of which may come to something. New migraine meds mean vastly improved CRIPPLING FACEPAIN! (tm) situation and vastly diminished "Sleeping like a human being at night/being fully conscious during the day" situation. Am probably not going to finish reading "The Evolution of God" before it needs to be returned to the library, but am resisting the urge to skip to the end to discover how it all turns out (my theory: he doesn't actually exist). I'm forgetting something. Actually, I'm forgetting almost everything. New television season starting soon--might be able to get back to knowing what day it is without needing to consult a real person.

What else, what else...? Oh, yeah.

GORD!

Odds are you will never know what that's funny, but even if you did, I doubt you'd find it as funny as I do.

Good night, my little remote carstarters. May your dreams be filled with sexy robot assassins and lemon jell-o.

A

The Internet, it is a small place in some ways.

2009-09-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

Today on MightyGodKing: Andrew attempts to make the case that most graphic novels are actually comics! And Eddie Campbell takes him to task in the comments! And Andrew tries to defend his position while being utterly stunned that the creator of HOW TO BE AN ARTIST has acknowledged his existence!

My List of People I Don't Really Want To Argue With is pretty short. In fact, here it is:

-Everyone.

But if I was to make a detailed list naming Everyone in the descending order from people I'd least like to argue with to people I'd be least upset to be arguing with...? The artist of FROM HELL would be pretty high on that list.

A

http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/

2009-09-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990...or did he? This site looks at the rumour from a variety of angles.

A

Pat Buchanan gives Michele Bachmann and the Florida GOP a run for their money

2009-09-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

Is there a full moon tonight...?

Determined not to lose his position in the Saying Absurd, Stupid Things race American conservatives seem to be having today, Pat Buchanan comes out with his latest opinion piece, which, in a just world, would have had the title "Hitler: Was He Really That Bad?".

A

The Inside Joke of the Day

2009-09-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

"When the movie comes out and gets adapted into a cartoon and toys, etc, you'll be rich enough to retire to a tropical isle with Lowell Cunningham." - Mike Sacal, making a funny but (co)apples-to-oranges comparison between me and the creator of the Men in Black comic book.

I hope the Andrew Foley that owns a bookstore in Sarasota doesn't have a Google alert in place flagging his name, but if he does, I want to publicly apologize for his inbox getting flooded by notices that Jon Favreau's apparently signing on to direct Robert Downey, Jr. in the Cowboys & Aliens film.

This is apparently biggish news in entertainment circles. When I mentioned it to my manager she giggled like a schoolgirl (which she does a lot regardless) and said it's "a really sexy project in Hollywood" (which she doesn't.) It's her job to know this stuff, so I'll take her word for it. Up here in the wilds of Canada, it's hard for me to get terribly excited about it all.

I've gotten a fair number of e-mails congratulating me for C&A's success, which is weird because, and I say this with no humility whatsoever simply as a statement of fact, I have nothing to do with that success. The concept was kicking around for years before I got involved with it; I was involved with it for a brief but enjoyable time; then I wasn't involved with it; and now it looks like it might actually finally get made, and by a marketable writing/directing/acting team to boot.

It's that last bit, rather than having my name associated with a potential tentpole in a very tangential way, that gets my juices flowing. Should the film get made, I'll be first in line to see the late Tuesday matinee after it opens (because I'm reasonably sure me going to a tentpole film on opening weekend would end up with someone dead and me in prison--#*%&ing videos have ruined the movie-going experience, every nitwit thinks they're in their damn living room...sorry, where was I...?)

I've also gotten a number of e-mails asking what this means for me. The answer, at least as it pertains to the immediate future, is "not much." My part of the project was contracted on a work-for-hire basis. To the best of my knowledge (I haven't looked at the contract in a couple years) there's no direct financial upside for me to a film getting made. I suppose it's conceivable that a successful film could juice book sales to the point where royalties kick in, but seeing as it's online for free, I'm not holding my breath. I do get to see my name in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, though, which is always neat and maybe, mayyyybe might get a producer's door or two opened a crack wider than would otherwise be the case. We shall see.

For the moment, whatever glory and money there is to be had goes to the folks at Platinum who put a lot of time and effort into getting the property this far; hopefully there'll be some trickledown to the folks who're no longer at Platinum that helped out along the way.

A

You say "socialism" like it's a BAD thing.

2009-09-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

I thought the day's political news couldn't get more entertaining than US Representative Michele Bachmann almost says something I could agree with when she suggests she and her audience "have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists " before wrecking everything by finishing the sentence with crap about becoming blood brothers and then hopping the bullet train straight to Crazytown.

But the Florida Republican Party proved me wrong by publically taking the bold position that school isn't a place where children should think about ideas.

I cannot believe Obama's losing the health care battle to these idiots.

A

The Separation of Reason and State.

2009-08-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

Evolution is not a religion, but don't tell that to the parents of students attending the Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia. The public high school, I might add, though doing so depresses me greatly.

A

ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE wins Zuda Competition

2009-08-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Robert and Kuen! I know how much effort you put not just into the comic, but the competition, and the win is well-deserved.

A

Un-F*#&ing-Believable.

2009-08-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

(EDIT TO UPDATE: Apparently, the story linked to below was from 1970. Why it's on Time's website now, I've no idea, but I'm glad to discover the world's not as completely bats#!& insane as I thought it was a few minutes ago.)

There are times when comedy and satire are unable to keep pace with reality and just break down. Take, for instance, this story about a New Jersey judge denying a couple with "high moral and ethical standards" the right to adopt because they don't believe in a Supreme Being.

I happen to believe in a supreme being (I married her), but even if I didn't, I mean, Jesus Christ...

A

Flashback to Andrew as an Angry Young Man

2009-08-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I went to art college, I spent a fair amount of time hanging out with friends in the studio space given to fourth year drawing students.

This hanging out would occur at all hours of the day and night. At the time, the Alberta College of Art (but not yet Design) was open 24 hours a day, and the Nastys, as our teachers referred to a specific group of us, took full advantage of it. To this day, I shake my head with regret over the plight of ACAD’s current student body, many of whom may never know the joy of slapping paint on a 10x12 foot piece of cardboard, blind drunk at three in the morning. Those were the days, or so I’m told. It’s all kind of a fog now, but I can’t imagine we’d have done it so often if we weren’t enjoying it.

On one fairly mellow Wednesday night, I and a couple buddies were sitting around the candlelit studio, discussing the kinds of intensely deep thoughts that only pretentious 22-year old art students can have, when one of the commissionaires that patrolled the school in the wee hours poked his head in the door.

This was a bit of a surprise; not because he poked his head in, but because of the door it was poked in, which was the door that was A) actually in the wall of “our” space, and B) generally used only by the uptight jewellery technician next door to pound violently on as punctuation for his threats on our lives if we didn’t quiet the #*%& down right now. It was rarely, if ever, opened, and when closed, always locked. So it swinging open at this late hour was a bit of a surprise.

As it happened, it swung open in such a way that when the commissionaire poked his head in, he couldn’t see me standing behind it. I didn’t see any particular reason to reveal myself, so I stood there behind the door while the commissionaire made some gruff comments to my friends. I recall the phrase “hanky panky” being used, which struck me as odd, because the old guy’s tone let me know it was being used in a thoroughly unironic way. Anyway, after exchanging a few words with my fellows, the door closed and we resumed our conversation, thinking nothing of the incident…

…Until Thursday morning, when rumours of homosexual activities of an oral nature taking place in the drawing studios the night before filled the halls. That afternoon, the head of the department posted a memo all over the drawing department’s area, declaring all sexual activity in the studios off-limits.

This bothered me on multiple levels. First, I’d been in the drawing studios that night, and there hadn’t been any sexual activity, homo or otherwise, taking place. At least, not unless three mildly inebriated young men discussing their frustration with that at the time all-important area of their lives counted. Secondly, it seemed to me that art college was not an appropriate place for restricting any consensual activity between people who at least thought they were adults. Like it or not, sex is a huge factor in Art, experimenting, experiencing, and expanding one’s mind likewise huge when it comes to art education. I really didn’t see any good reason for the folks in charge trying to stop sex from taking place inside school walls. Admittedly, my reasoning at the time was influenced by my desperate belief that it was at least theoretically possible that some girl might throw herself at me in the studio, and my desire not to have that possibility (which, alas, never did become a reality) snuffed out by a cruel and uncaring head of the drawing department.

Above and beyond all that, it was (still is, actually) my belief that the reaction from those in authority wouldn’t have been so severe if the supposed sexual activity had been of a more hetero flavour. The more I thought about the whole thing, the more pissed off I got. Finally, I felt compelled to do… something.

The natural and obvious path was to use the incident as inspiration for a piece of art. But by this point in my evolution I was increasingly of the mind that capital-A Art as I understood it was a self-indulgent activity, and Art intended to convey Important Ideas was doubly so--the equivalent of feeling satisfied that one’s “done their part” to combat bigoted morons by joining an anti-homophobia facebook group. No, if I was going to address this at all, it was going to have to be in the form of something other than Art.

My commentary took the form of a second memo, with ACA letterhead, with the head of the department’s (inverted) signature at the bottom, that was hung in close proximity to the original memos. This memo expanded the general theme of the first one, getting into the specific kinds of sexual activity that wasn’t going to be permitted. As the list of forbidden acts went on, it grew increasingly more ridiculous; among other things the memo banned all discussion of gender issues in any context, and the removal of men/women washroom signs. If I hadn’t been writing in hot blood, I’d probably have had the memo ban the use of periods.

I hung the memos around two on Friday morning, and went home to bed.

At around 10AM that same day, the insistent squawk of the duckphone roused me from the sleep of the just. I answered; my friend Amy was on the other end of the line. “Andrew, is it true you wrote the sex memo?” she asked. I smiled smugly to myself, and admitted I had. “Uh, you probably shouldn’t come to school today.”

According to Amy, the department head was on the warpath. He was out to find, expel, and possibly kneecap the memo’s author. I couldn’t believe it; all the crap I and the Nastys had pulled over the last couple years, and this was what was going to get me kicked out? That was the situation as Amy understood it. I took her advice and didn’t go into school that day.

I was terrified. As much as I enjoyed playing the rebel, the notion of being expelled was a kick in the gut, largely because of the investment my parents had made in my education. I was seriously upset when I called them Friday night to explain why their son might be getting kicked out of art college a scant few months before he was scheduled to graduate with distinction.

Mum and Dad took the news with more grace than I deserved. Dad recalled a note Mark Twain had written to a friend, explaining that he’d made a complaint about something and then signed the friend’s name to it, as the complaint would carry more weight that way. Mum fell back on her over the years oft-repeated justification for her son’s general uselessness: “We raised you to be an artist.”

By Monday, the whole thing had blown over. The memos had been removed and the department’s official policy was to pretend nothing had happened. I went on to graduate with distinction a few months later and promptly failed to establish anything resembling a viable career as an painter. Eventually I moved away from Art and into the much lower overhead area of writing, which I’ve always tried to approach from the perspective of a craftsman.

I’d rather entertain than educate. On the whole, I generally try to avoid dealing with Important Issues in my writing. On those occasions something bothers me enough that I feel compelled to discuss it publicly, now, as in college, my tendency is to use satire as the vehicle for self-expression.

At the same time, whenever I do something like, for instance, paste a Hitler mustache on Trig Palin to make a point about the overuse of the term “nazi” , I find myself reliving those ugly hours in college, between the time I said something I felt needed to be said, and the time I had to deal with the fallout of saying it...

A

One of the best reasons I've come across yet to move to the USA.

2009-08-19T19:25:00.001-07:00

So I could vote for Barney Frank.

Not nearly good enough to actually do it, mind, but that's the kind of response I like to see from liberal politicians confronted by demented nutjobs.

***

Also, my latest post at MightyGodKing is up.

A

No public option?

2009-08-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Mumbles (incoherently)

2009-08-17T17:23:00.001-07:00

It's hard to express what's on one's mind when what's on one's mind would best be expressed by a phrase like "Frgghluh mmlrrgh nurr. Nurr, nurr. NURR." But it's been a week and I feel like I really ought to post something, so NURR it is...

***

This is pretty awesome. "This" being a post that features Carson van Osten's "Disney Comic Strip Artist's Kit." Everyone who's interested in comics (strips or otherwise) as a storytelling medium really owes it to themselves to look at the Kit. I'm glad I encountered it now, just a few days before I do a public critique of Jay Bardyla and Daniel Schneider's WEIGHTLESS (not FLIGHTLESS, as I previously referred to it, in fact, pretty much the polar opposite of Flightless.)

Link via The Beat.

***

The intense pressure of posting two to three times a week at Mightygodking has had an unforeseen effect on my general online demeanour, leading to me doing something I don't think I've ever actually done before, and definitely haven't done more than a handful of time, if at all, which is to post something and then delete it without someone else asking me to. This turns me into something of a hypocrite; I've long maintained that people should have the guts to 1) take responsibility for what they write by signing their name to it, and 2) stand by what their words, taking the heat and apologizing for them if they were out of line, but not deleting them.

Earlier this year I broke the first rule, posting under an alias at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood site. As long-time readers may recall, I felt so bad about this that I immediately wrote a post exposing my own hypocrisy, if only to the two or three people who read this thing.

The second rule I broke a few days ago over at the Canadian Geek forums, after I launched into an unnecessarily snarky reply to another poster, accusing them of resorting to cheap rhetorical tricks to try and score points for a weak argument while using pretty much the same cheap rhetorical tricks to attack them. So I deleted it, I'd say less than a minute later and I think before anyone had a chance to read it. Even so, it makes me feel a little squicky.

The whole incident did bring my attention to the aforementioned effect posting at MGK has had on me. To me, the site's strong point has always been owner and prime mover Christopher Bird's humour, so when I was given a shot, my intention was to post primarily humourous pieces over there (something I wasn't entirely successful with this last go round.) But humour's not really something that comes naturally to me, it's something that I really need to work at (at least I need to do that to get it right.) In the face of needing to find two or three things I can spin comedy out of a week, I find myself framing everything I come across, every interaction I have as either grist for the mill (which is mostly OK and something I reckon most writers do regardless of what they're working on) or as a potential target for ironic mockery.

This is fine when I'm coming across, say, Sarah Palin being a lying, idiotic cowbeast. It's not so fine when someone who doesn't deserve to be a target ends up in the crosshairs. And that's what happened when I posted at C-Geek. Someone said something that pissed me off, and I opened up with both barrels when all that was really required was a flyswatter. I don't think I wrote was particularly unfair, or even unreasonably rude, and some of it I think was mildly amusing. But what I do think it was was unhelpful and unnecessary. Letting it stand wasn't going to help anything and in fact I think it would've pretty much killed any possibility of a civil discussion going forward. In the face of that, I did what I never do and deleted the comment. And under the same circumstances I'd do it again. But hopefully, now that I've noticed how I'm approaching things at the moment, the same or similar circumstances won't happen again.

A

Some Housekeeping Notes

2009-08-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

NOTE #1: OH BUGGER

So just before I hit "publish" on my last post, I thought, "Hmmm...I can't be the first one to think of this; someone else must have done something with Barackest Night." So I googled "Barackest Night" and it appeared that nope, I was free and clear. Sometime after I posted, I googled Barackest Night--without the quotes--and was mortified to discover the existence of this.

So, for what it's worth, I want to publicly apologize to J. Caleb Mozzocco for accidentally stealing his bit. On the upside, as far as I can tell, pretty much nobody read the thing.

***

NOTE #2: SO THAT'S WHAT HAVING AN AUDIENCE IS LIKE

“Oh $#!&.”

These were the first words out of my mouth when I received Christopher Bird’s reply to my inquiry regarding his recent call for new co-bloggers at Mightygodking.com. Said inquiry consisted of me telling him who I was, what I’d done that might make me seem like a feasible addition to MGK, and showing him the "Barackest Night" post.

This was actually done in a transparent attempt to get him to link to that particular post, which I maintain is pretty funny even though it sunk like a stone with whatever readership this blog has. What I didn’t expect was the reply I got, which was basically, “OK, let’s give it a shot and see how it goes.”

My first two MGK posts can be found here and here.

What this means for this blog is that anything that fits into the "Well I thought it was funny" category's probably going to end up over at MGK, while this will become slightly dryer in tone. Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if I spent a lot of time here dissecting posts I made there. We'll see.

***

NOTE #3: ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE AT ZUDA.COM

Friend of the blog Robert Burke Richardson has a new strip appearing in August's Zuda.com contest, ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE. Currently it's got the top spot; it'd be nice to see it hold it till month's end. Go read it, and if you like it or are otherwise inclined to give Robert & Co. a hand, register at Zuda if you haven't already and vote for it.

***

NOTE #4: I WILL MAKE THEM CRY

For those interested in comics creation who're in the Edmonton area and don't already know, at 1:00PM on Sunday, August 23 at Happy Harbor Comics' V1 location, I'll be doing a powerpoint presentation on Jay Bardyla and Daniel Schneider's comic FLIGHTLESS. Basically, I'll be going through it, probably on a panel-by-panel basis, and doing more or less what I do when I'm hired to edit a comic, pinpoint problems, try and offer solutions, and generally nitpick the thing into submission. This process is generally not a lot of fun for me or the people I'm critiquing, so I don't know that it'll be a particularly entertaining show. That said, I do think it's an important part of the creative process that a lot of people, especially those new to the industry, would be well-served to understand, as in the absence of an editor it falls on creators' shoulders to ensure their work is as good as it possibly can be.

A

For Immediate Release

2009-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

DC COMICS ANNOUNCES “BARACKEST NIGHT”

New series to be “the comics event of the eight to twelve months it takes to release all seven issues”

Ten months after everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, DC Comics was pleased to announce Friday that Barack Obama would finally appear alongside such superheroes as Superman, Batman, and Arm Fall Off Boy, but not, they hastened to add Spider-Man or Iron Man. Said DC Comics Publisher Paul Levitz,“Those characters belong to another company. Who let this guy in here?”

In the wake of the Grant Morrison-penned miniseries Financial Crisis, universally panned by comic and economic fans alike for presenting the global economic recession as the product of a lack of imagination on the part of corporate interests, some at DC were reluctant to once again include real world elements in a major comics crossover event.

“It’s true, I didn’t really want to feature President Obama in our comics,” said DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio. “But sales of Amazing Spider-Man #583 were enough to convince (DC parent company) Time Warner to say, ‘Get on board the Obama money train before it leaves the station or your bald ass is fired.’”

During the next DC Creators summit, Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, along with the seventeen other exclusive DC writers nobody pays any attention to, were tasked with bringing Barack Obama into the DCU in a way that nobody would ever forget. The result: BARACKEST NIGHT. “It was Geoff Johns who came up with it, though I’m pretty sure I saw Grant put something in his drink. Right after Geoff suggested it, he started screaming something about bats and had to be physically restrained as he tried to take all his clothes off.”

Morrison continued the story of BARACKEST NIGHT’s creation in an unintelligible Scottish accent. After politely asking the eccentric popmag!c superstar never to speak on DC’s behalf ever again, DiDio said, “The bottom line is this: we’re going to have Obama in our comics, presented in a way we haven’t seen before outside of Fox News: as the ultimate supervillain.

“With world finance in a continuing freefall, a failing attempt to bring about a public health care system the vast majority of Americans wholeheartedly support, and plagued by lunatics insisting he offer up his birth certificate, Obama does what anyone else would do: he uses the Spear of Destiny (last seen in Roy Thomas’ All-Star Squadron, I think) to summon the Antiguardians of the Universe from their home planet of O’a’.

“The Antiguardians offer Obama the power of the Long Green Lantern to turn all his hopes for America into reality. All he must surrender is his soul. He accepts the bargain, and hears the words that will utterly, completely, no-BS I mean it this time, totally 4realz Uguyz, change the DC Universe forever: ‘National Deficit: Rise.’ It’s up to the superheroes of the DCU, specifically Hal Jordan and the other members of what’s now known as the Short Green Lantern Corps and, because their book’s sales numbers suck, The Outsiders, to avert disaster.”

The creative team for the series includes legendary artists George Perez, Jim Lee, JG Jones, Frank Quitely, Rob Liefeld, Adam Kubert, and a bunch of others that’ll be brought in at the last minute when it becomes clear the original team couldn’t meet a deadline with a gun to their heads. As for writing chores, said DiDio, “After Grant Morrison told me to piss off and with Geoff Johns spending some time at a California state mental facility, it was clear to everyone there was only one man who could do this book justice, a manly man, a real man, a manly real manly man, and that real manly manly real manly man is Chuck Dixon.”

According to Dixon, “Writing a major DC Comics crossover is the culmination of my comics career.” He added, “Is waterboarding torture? I’ll concede that it is. Does it represent a shameful period in American history that we all need to forever beat ourselves up over? No.”

###

For the Art Process Junkies

2009-07-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

In this thread at Canadian Geek, the Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples describes her process in developing the first cover image for the Brian Wood/Rebekah Isaacs revamp of Wildstorm's DV8 comic. I'm constantly amazed by how she and artists like Frazer Irving manage to create such rich, painterly work entirely digitally. On the one hand, I like the idea that the printed cover is itself the finished piece*; on the other, it just feels wrong on some basic level that there isn't a physical, real-world artifact to show for the effort.

*While I like artists having access to as many revenue streams as possible, I've heard it argued that the rising value of original comic art has had a negative effect on comic storytelling. The argument is that artists supposedly use various means to push for full and double-page spreads that are more valuable for an art collector than the boring old multi-panel storytelling pages, at the expense of the story. I don't really know if that's actually the reason (or one of them) for the overuse of such pages (especially the one-panel double-page spread, which I will go to my grave insisting only works in saddle-stitched format and therefore ought to be banned for any story that's going to see print in a bound paperback or hardcover format), but it's hard to look at what's on the comic shop shelves in any given week and not notice that it's taking six issues to tell stories that took 22 pages or less when I started reading comics.

Which isn't to say comics back then were better-written--they weren't. But I do think a lot of the tools that were developed over the first fifty or so years of North American comics' development, like descriptive captions, thought balloons, and sound effects to name just three, elements that are almost entirely unique to the medium, we tossed aside a little too eagerly in the late '90s/early '00s. Happily, most of them seem to be making something in the way of a comeback in the last few years, but we're still seeing way too many double-page spreads...

A

Still don't believe me about bankers?

2009-07-30T21:17:00.001-07:00

Nine banks pay $32.6 billion dollars in bonuses while receiving $175 billion in federal bailout money.

But let's not forget what the real enemy is here.

Am I the only one who hears Homer Simpson's voice talking about the Max Power way of doing things when Giuliani insists on doing things the "American way"?

A

Fool me seventeen times, shame on me.

2009-07-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

A few days back, in my ongoing quest not to do what I really ought to be doing with my time, I came upon the blog of reality TV producers Joke Fincioen and Biagio Messina (found it via Chad Gervich's Script Notes.) I haven't had a chance to read much of it yet, but the post "How You Get Your First Job in Hollywood" caught my attention, largely because I haven't gotten my first job in Hollywood yet (and I am looking. That's right, Hollywood, I'm aVAILable...)

There's a parallel between the way they describe their first H'wood job and the way many (including myself) approach(ed) the comics industry.

Regarding the odious terms they were forced to accept to get their first producing credit, Messina says they were "Happy to be screwed out of every single penny ... Why? Because for us, it was the opportunity we’d been begging for. The chance to step it up and prove we could do the job."

Pretty much any time anyone in the portion of the industry where creators receive actual money for their work talks about what it takes to reach the ranks of the full-time professional comics writer, the first thing they say is "You need to get something published somewhere else."

Which makes sense. Independently developing and actually producing a complete comic, even a 22 page one, isn't the easiest thing in the world. Getting it published by someone other than yourself is even harder. Ask any writer who's been kicking around comics for any length of time, and they all have horror stories about artists who flaked out on them. Ask any creator-owned comics publisher and they all have horror stories about creators who flaked out on them. Speakeasy Comics' founder placed a good portion of the blame for that company's demise on creator-owned books that failed to be delivered in a timely manner. I don't know if that was really the cause or not, but I do know that it happened: a lot of creator-owned books were solicited based on creators' promises to meet certain deadlines, and those deadlines got missed, a lot.

I still haven't been paid anything for Age of Kings, the first graphic novel I wrote for Platinum Studios. I didn't even get the standard thousand dollars creators of the bulk of the projects they developed or acquired received for their work. I wrote it, as I did everything I wrote for that company, with the expectation that, more than an actual cheque, the payoff would come in the form of a writing credit and a finished, professional-looking book I could show editors who might be willing to offer me something more than a thousand dollars for 88+ pages (after AoK I did start getting some money).

I did this for a very long time, literally years, without complaint. Because I believed I was paying my dues.

Of course, Platinum never published the majority of the stuff I or anyone else wrote for them, which, honestly, may be a blessing. I was learning how to write (and, as if not more importantly, to edit) comics all the way through the process. While I still like the scripts for JEST CAUSE and THREADS, I'm not at all sure I wouldn't be embarrassed if anything else I worked on for the company actually saw the light of day. I'm certainly not thrilled about the way the one Platinum project I was involved in that actually got published turned out, but then I don't think anyone who was part of the thing was.

On the other hand, I don't have a body of published Platinum-published work to show editors, which was what I (and, I suspect, the bulk of Platinum's other creators) was doing the work for.

If dues are paid in the wood with nobody around to notice you paying them, are the dues truly paid?

Not really. While I've recently gotten some mileage out of having my name associated with the comic currently being developed for film by the guys who wrote Star Trek, the vast majority of whatever progress I've made towards the ultimate goal of carving out a writing career for myself* has come from PARTING WAYS, DONE TO DEATH, and THE HOLIDAY MEN in "The Massacre Memorial Day Sale Massacre". None of which have, to date, made me a cent. In fact, one of them personally cost me upwards of $15,000, and another cost me in less tangible but far more personally traumatizing ways. All that aside, I now have three books I'm happy to show people, secure in the knowledge that, good or bad, they're at least an accurate representation of what I'm capable of as a writer.

While there are some parallels between comics and the first Hollywood job scenario described by Messina, there are also some major differences. Whenever someone in television says they didn't make much money off their creative work, my gut instinct is that they still made a lot more than someone not making much off their work in comics. Many comics creators are desperate to have something published, to the point that many of them, myself ten years ago included, are willing to literally give away their intellectual property for the cost of a printing bill and solicitation text in Previews (and even that's getting iffy, these days.) Too often, these creators see themselves as indebted to a publisher. Way too often the publisher also sees creators as indebted to them, a mindset that's come to absolutely sicken me over time.

Comics have a few things over traditional prose publishing; one of them is a model of successful self-publishers. The notion of a vanity press, if it exists in comics at all, at least doesn't preclude the possibility that someone publishing at their own expense might still be producing something of value. The cost of self-publishing ten years ago was an expense some creators were unwilling or unable to afford (I originally had a plan to self-pub PARTING WAYS, but art took a couple years longer than planned and by the time I had it, I'd run out of the capital I'd intended to use for printing and promotion. Fortunately, Speakeasy sprang into existence around the same time, and the rest is history.)

Though I'm a natural-born luddite, even I have to admit that the internet and print on demand technology's made it easier than ever before for creators to get their work out--and get it out without losing their intellectual property, which is the only thing a frighteningly large number of "comics publishers" are interested in. Granted, most of these creators won't make money off webcomics, but then again, the odds are they aren't going to make money off comics published through anyone who doesn't pay a page rate or advance up-front, either.

And, in the event that Hollywood comes knocking, it'll have to talk to someone for whom a property's creators' goals are the highest priority, rather than a company agenda that, as often as not, places the egos of whoever got his Mom to cough up a couple grand for printing over the well-being of the people who actually created the work. I know tons of people who had the intellectual property they created simply given away for little to no money, by publishers desperate to establish themselves--or at least be perceived as having established themselves, or, worst of all, to delude themselves that they'd established themselves--as movers in Hollywood. They're like many unpublished comics creators, now that I think about it--willing to give away everything in order to hopefully get something slightly better than nothing.

If anyone's going to get slightly more than nothing, it ought to be the creator. But until creators stop accepting the notion that any deal is worth it just to get a book in print**, it's not going to happen. Fortunately (if that's the word for it), the generation of readors coming up now and the one after it will likely see reading comics on-screen as a perfectly normal thing. If and when that happens, intellectual property hoarders (which I've no problem with in principle, providing the principle includes creators getting paid decently at some point) will have to offer a lot more to their marks, er, creative partners than many do today.

It's never been easier to pay dues in the comics industry than it is now. A whole, frustrating, frequently dysfunctional buffer between the creator and the audience is eroding. Now someone just has to figure out how to make what's left over pay, and we'll be onto something.

*More than a lot of people, but not nearly enough.

**And hey, I've been in that position. I understand why people do it, because I did it myself. But, to paraphrase Steven Grant, "I never knew anyone who signed away their rights at 20 who didn't regret it by the time they hit 40."

A

This just in...

2009-07-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Further proof that bankers are @$$holes: accused fraudster Allen Stanford asks to be moved to a prison that's not "oppressive." Scientists now working to create a subatomic scale violin so everyone in America can play Stanford world's saddest song on it.

A

Bow Down before the Mighty GodKing.

2009-07-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile, I start feeling bad that I'm so jaded and cynical. And then I read something by Christopher Bird' s MUST READ SAN DIEGO COMICON WRAPUP post at MightyGodKing.com, and I don't feel as bad, jaded, or cynical as I once did.

A

The Con Gamed

2009-07-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

“This is the most fun I’ve ever had drawing a comic.” Fiona Staples, who apparently wants to hurt my feelings. Between that and her NORTH 40 editor believing her work on the upcoming TRICK 'R TREAT was "the first full-length comic Fiona had ever drawn", I'm starting to feel sorry for myself...

Oh wait, I already felt sorry for myself. Never mind, then.

So the "big news" out of the San Diego Comic Con this year seems to be the acquisition of a number of loose superhero properties by major North American mainstream publishers. Last year, DC announced the return of the Milestone characters and the acquisition of Archie Comics' Red Circle superheroes; this year, they announced that they've finally got The THUNDER Agents, which, along with the Justice Machine, is a group of characters I've long had an attachment to for no rational reason I've ever been able to articulate.

Dark Horse has got Jim Shooter working on some characters he's already given a booster shot to back when he helped build up Valiant Comics, Gold Key properties like Turok and Dr. Solar.

And Marvel managed to get loads of PR by strongly implying that Alan Moore's lost/Neil Gaiman's unfinished superhero masterpiece will finally be found/finished, while pointedly not saying anything of the sort. Over at The Beat, Heidi McDonald quotes one-time Eclipse Comics honcho Dean Mullaney saying point-blank that the Miracleman version of the character isn't what Marvel's managed to get hold of. All this talk of Marvelman being "the JD Salinger" of comics characters loses a lot of (if not all of) its weight if what's actually been acquired is a blatant fairly Captain Marvel rip-off, rather than Alan Moore's other major comics work deconstructing the superhero. If it's the latter, it's an exciting development for people who don't feel like shelling out hundreds of dollars for the now very difficult to get hold of story; if it's the former, it amounts to pointing out a molehill and pretending it's a mountain while leaving enough wiggle room to say, "Hey, I never actually said it was a mountain" when someone examines the thing a little more closely.

I completely fell for the hype myself, and sat there reading Newsarama's live updates of the Quesada panel, waiting for the Big Announcement, which I seriously believed would involve Harry Potter--something that might have carried a little weight in the wider mainstream and offered a potential infusion of new readers to a medium that could frankly use it. It was not to be, but as a comics fan, I was excited to learn that Marvelman would be returning, right up until I noticed what wasn't being said.

But hey--The THUNDER Agents are coming back! And Fiona Staples is having a lot of fun drawing NORTH 40. And I didn't spend a couple grand over the last five days for the privilege of sweating and getting frustrated in a distant city. So that's all good.

A

Hey, Transformers Producer Don Murphy - the FROM HELL film sucked. Now option my book!

2009-07-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

Hey, it worked for this guy.

A

PS: Hey Don, just so you know, I actually enjoyed LXG. No hard feelings, right?

PPS: Right?

PPPS: Don...? Mr. Murphy?

PPPPS: ...

PPPPPS: Aw, crap.

This post isn't going to involve me complaining at length about fruitflies. You're welcome.

2009-07-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

Some stuff from the "Well it made me laugh" category today:

"This is the sort of comic that would've been useful if you worked at Abu Gharib and were getting tired of boring old rape and electrocution." - Not even close to the funniest line in Tucker Stone's reviews of a few DC Comics from last week, but the funniest I could find that didn't involve profanity (this is a Family Blog. I think about the children.)

"Family Guy got nominated for an Emmy for Best Comedy today. It's the first time that an animated show has been nominated in that category since 1961 (when The Flintstones lost to The Jack Benny Show). 1961! Alaska had just become a state. Internet porn about pregnant chicks was still a crazy, futuristic dream. And the leading cause of death in our nation among males age 18 to 40 was whistling at white women." - Family Guy writer Patrick Meighan tries to minimize the degree to which 30 Rock is going to crush his show at the Emmys.

"I remember the good old days at the Zoo, when you could drink and smoke and make out with the animals." - TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE mastermind Michael Kupperman has a twitter account. This is darn near the only thing that could get me to actually go out of my way to read a twitter account. I can't start one, partly because I don't have a cellphone and tweeting without a cellphone seems kind of sad and pathetic, like creating your own wikipedia entry (which I honestly didn't do. I did correct it, though. And the bit about me being a masterful lover? That was all me), and partly because you couldn't write sentences like this one in 140 characters or less, and I write a lot of sentences like this one.

How did I find out about Kupperman's twitter account? From an Onion AV Club interview. Which isn't particularly funny. Kupperman strikes me as someone who's serious about comedy, and he's really good at it. But an interview about being funny and how to make things funny isn't necessarily going to be funny itself. Anyway, to cut what could become a lengthy ramble short, you should run to your nearest comic shop and order TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE Volume One. Like, right now. I'm serious. Go.

This just in from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles showrunner Josh Friedman:

"FRIEDMAN-CON TO FINALLY SPLIT WITH COMIC-CON, COMPETE FOR SCI-FI FANS' HEARTS AND MINDS AND MONEY

"After years of sharing The San Diego Convention Center venue with Comic-Con, organizers of the JoshFriedmanCon Corp. have decided to finally take the ridiculously lucrative Convention devoted to all things Josh Friedman out on its own...

"'There's a number of reasons we've decided to end our partnership with Comic-Con," says JFCC co-founder Josh Friedman. "It's become clear recently that Comic-Con's interests and Friedman-Con's interests were beginning to diverge. Comic-Con has gradually changed from its early roots as a colorful sanctuary for the comic book industry and its fans to something more akin to a corporate trade show focusing on broader marketing objectives in all corners of entertainment culture. JoshFriedmanCon, on the other hand, has been and will always be singularly devoted to Josh Friedman. And that's what our fans want.'"

Again, I can't really quote the choicest bits without a Mature Readers warning (and come on, how many people reading my blog are actually mature? I know the guy writing it isn't.) Read the rest of the press release here.

Finally, a word to anyone reading this who happens to be going to the Big Con this weekend: while you're standing in lines, sweating profusely, going deaf from Stephenie Meyer fans screaming, and paying frankly insane prices for drinks at the Marriott and Hyatt, I'll be sitting here enjoying the cool breeze of a fan and the gentle purr of one or more of Tiina's animals, and a nice, cool Caesar I didn't have to take a mortgage out to obtain. Even so, I'm insanely jealous of you and I hate you all right now.

A

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

2009-07-21T15:00:00.001-07:00

On the one hand, this should have been SO MUCH FUNNIER.

On the other, it's still pretty funny, at least for people who've read WATCHMEN and seen an interview or two with Alan Moore.

Nobody Watches the Watchmen - watch more funny videos

An ad for the extended DVD version of the film last night said claimed that it would be "the film you never saw in theatres." I turned to Tiina and said, "So does that mean it's the same film that was in theatres after the opening weekend?"

A

A

Much Adoodle-doo.

2009-07-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! Let's get angry about stuff that's really kind of silly! Stuff like:

HOLLYWOOD'S FORCING CANADIAN ACTORS TO SETTLE FOR PLAYING CRAPPY SUPERHEROES (quick, someone tell Glenn Beck canuck and ozzie actors are stealing all the great superhero roles from hard-working Americans, those lousy immiguhnts)!

MOVIES AFFECTING PEOPLES' VIEWS OF SIGNIFICANT ISSUES (because people are that stupid)!

COMIC STRIPS NOTING THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT GOD WAS KIND OF A DINK AND SNARKING ON BANKERS ARE ANTI-SEMITIC!

Look, bankers are @$$holes.* They just are. That's a comment on a profession, not a religion. It's got everything to do with bankers' actions and absolutely nothing to do with which Old Dude in the sky they happen to worship.

And you know who else was a bit of a @$$hole? The character of god, as presented in the old testament. Frankly, he's no great shakes in the new one, either, but at least there he's not throwing temper tantrums, condemning those he claims to love to suffering and death because because they raided the fridge and ate the special apples he was saving, or killing hundreds of thousands of people because they never come round to visit anymore...

As someone who generally strives towards some level of, if not political correctness, at least politeness, I should probably just shut my mouth when it comes to this stuff. But I believe in anger as a potentially positive force for social change, and it bothers me when people get mad about (what Mr. White Male Privilege here sees as) relatively insignificant, if not entirely imaginary, slights. There's so much stuff in the world that deserves our anger. To me, this sort of thing is akin to expending energy focusing on your stubbed toe when it would be better spent dealing with your slit throat.

Also, OK, history's not really my thing, but am I reading the ADL's statement correctly: Christians forced Jews to commit usury? They put guns (or slings, I guess) to Jews' heads and said, "Lend us money but charge us interest, or we fire?" That seems off to me, but again, I'm no history expert. If anyone reading this could clarify, either in comments or e-mail, I'd appreciate it.

(*In my opinion, based on what I've read and my own personal experience. Much as I want to malign the entire profession, I have to acknowledge that, somewhere out there, there's a chance one or more bankers who aren't @$$holes exist. On a quantum level, anything's possible.)

A

Fashion, f-fuhfufhfuhFashion

2009-07-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

"In a few months, when they realize that girls are not rushing to buy Spider-Man lip gloss and Incredible Hulk tampons, expect Marvel to poutily insist that this is proof that women are not interested in comics." - Dark Horse Editor Rachel Edidin, smacking around the advertising geniuses who brought you the Spider-Girl Sassy Deluxe Adult Costume for their latest attempt to reach out to the ever-elusive (for superhero-centric comic companies) female demographic.

The post is full of quote-worthy lines, definitely worth a read. It starts off as really funny, venomous snark, but by the end it becomes apparent that there's nothing remotely schadenfreudian in it. She really wants to like Marvel's output; but the company (or some elements of the company) treating women like alien creatures makes it difficult.

She even offers some solid suggestions of how to attract female readers without coming across as offensively condescending. Maybe some of them will be taken to heart, but honestly? I'm not holding my breath. The superhero comic companies have their core audience and lack the resources and/or the will to produce anything that doesn't immediately get that core audience's support.

Actually, that last bit isn't fair. The companies do occasionally produce material that might have an appeal beyond their core audience. Where the resources and/or will fall short is in supporting such materials long enough for them to find an audience. I don't think Minx was a bad idea--more that it was an idea that couldn't (or at least wasn't) sustained long enough to build an audience acceptable to whichever set of accountants make the call on what gets supported and what gets the axe. All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder rakes in direct market sales with little to no effort. Why bother trying to create/build/grow an audience when you can just cannibalize the one that's already there and isn't going anywhere until they, well, die?

Did I mention that my 13-year old niece read the copy of collected DRAMACON I gave her for her birthday three times in the first day she had it? Or the trembling, almost crying stream of tween girls lined up to meet Svetlana Chmakova at the Calgary Expo a few months ago? Seriously, for this small collection of readers, talking with Svetlana was akin to a music fan talking to John Lennon. I wouldn't have been surprised if one or more of them actually screamed when Svet said hi to them. This seems pertinent, somehow...

***

On a barely related note, who thought this was a good idea? I give it two months before we get a headline involving Batman and Road Rage.

A

Modest Apocalypse

2009-07-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

CRK!
CRKK!
CRRAKKK!

That's the sound about fifty feet of tree makes when it's buffeted by ridiculous winds, snaps, and takes out your chainlink fence. Or it would be if the last "Crrakkk!" was about five times the size.

On the upside, nobody was parked in the spot traditionally used for parking next to the house. Nobody's going to for awhile, either, as there's a bloody great tree parked there at the moment.

According to a neighbour out surveying the carnage, the cloud-covered sky was lit pink an hour or so back. "That's not a good sign," he said, and given that a good portion of the fence is now roughly parallel with the ground, I believe him. It calmed down for awhile, but the lightning and thunder picked up a few minutes ago and are currently blasting the sky to shreds. The real damage in the neighbourhood seems to have come almost entirely from the wind. Sounds like someone had a branch blast through their window down the street, and a van got taken out by another falling tree a few blocks down.

Tiina's going to have a big surprise when she gets back from the Harry Potter movie in half an hour or so...

***

NOTES

A couple follow-ups on this last few days' postings.

First, the TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM! promotional train keeps on rolling, with Gibson's efforts being both successful (at least in terms of first issue sales, which is the metric all the PR's focusing on--personally, I'll be more interested in seeing how the second to fourth issues sell. The problem with selling 20k copies of a #1 is that unless your fans are really, really fanatical, you're likely facing a pretty steep drop when it comes time to order #2...)

That was a long parenthetical. Let me try that again: The TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM! promotional train keeps on rolling, with Gibson's "grassroots" efforts being both successful and not terribly appreciated by retailer Brian Hibbs.

Something about the whole "make #1 sales look huge" scheme seemed off to me, and it took me awhile to put my finger on it. The whole thing was clarified somewhat--hey, I do believe it's hailing now. Real Wrath of God stuff. Man, that is something.

OK, the whole thing was clarified somewhat when it was pointed out to me that Platinum's attempts to manipulate sales numbers for Cowboys & Aliens didn't fool anyone in the comics industry and almost certainly wasn't intended to. Rather, it was likely aimed at getting the attention of Hollywood in general, and quite possibly at two of the three current screenwriters attached to the film (Orci and Kurtzman) in particular. Granted, the attempt to have the #1-selling graphic novel of December 2006 was foiled when Diamond reclassified the book as something other than a graphic novel. Fortunately (from Platinum's point of view), by that point it had already appeared as a #1 seller (for a specific store) in Entertainment Weekly. Sure, in the next EW the editors made a point of mentioning that the book was really more of a promotional item, but as far as I can tell, Platinum doesn't mention that in the PR.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at, in my own ramblingly incoherent way, is that Platinum's manipulation didn't fool anyone in the comics industry, and the "sales" numbers of TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM! #1 isn't going to fool anyone in the comic industry either. I'm really not sure who those numbers are intended to fool--the "hater" in me is tempted to believe the person they're really fooling is Gibson himself, based on his really hammering what's pretty obviously an inflated number in the interviews I've read. But Gibson is a "2.0 celebrity", and rightly or wrongly, my kneejerk instinct is to associate the attachment of "2.0" to anything that's not a computer program with attempts to artificially create the kind of multimedia sensation that can't really be artificially created. So I wouldn't be surprised if there are plans to try and develop TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM! as a film or TV vehicle almost certainly starring Tyrese Gibson. I wonder if the film would still be called TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM!...? And, giving Gibson the benefit of the doubt, maybe his attempts to portray the direct market sales of the first issue as an indicator of actual wide interest are for the benefit of someone who'd actually believe it. The whole thing's just weird to me, is all.

Also: yes, for a good portion of high school I thought condoms were apartments you owned like a house.

A

More things I just don't understand.

2009-07-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

So I'm at Happy Harbor the other day, as I am for roughly 50% of my other days these days, and a conversation between a customer and HH owner Jay "The Shepherd" Bardyla turns to which method of payment costs the store the least. Which I thought was darned odd.

It turns out that there are costs for the store associated with pretty much every method of payment. Credit cards take a percentage of every transaction. Debit card transactions cost a flat fee. Given that both those transactions have some technical requirements, I can almost deal with that, though it still strikes me as a little odd, as I myself make monthly payments to the bank for the privilege of being able to not actually have real money in my wallet.

What surprised me more was the discovery that it costs Happy Harbor money just to deposit cash in the bank, in an account which, if I understand this correctly (and I have trouble believing I do, just because it's, well, it's completely bat$#!& insane) doesn't actually accrue interest for the account holder.

So:

-One way or another, banks are charging their clients for pretty much every transaction they make*,

-If the people who receive money get it in any form other than cash and/or do anything with that cash other than spend it, the banks are charging them, too, and

-Well, there really isn't anything else, but once again I'm really kind of surprised 1 out of 5 Canadian lampposts isn't adorned with the dangling corpse of a bank executive, who've all been party to a system that has, in the twenty years I've had a bank account, managed the neat trick of making things both more expensive and less efficient, while still managing to convince the general public that nationalizing the banks is somehow a bad idea.

It is to weep.

(*They've also put up all sorts of barriers and roadblocks preventing clients from accessing that money, for instance, putting holds on cheques for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time, claiming it takes that long for one computer to ask another computer if the cheque will clear, something that I have a hard time believing.)

***

MORE MONEY

"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

If you're in a particularly good mood and want to cure it, you could do worse than reading The Great American Bubble Machine, Matt Taibbi's excellent Rolling Stone article on the way Goldman-Sachs has consistently managed to profit at the expense of its clients, taxpayers, and pretty much everyone in the whole entire world for the last 90 or so years.

Of special interest to me is the last couple pages, which expose how current, seemingly positive moves on the environment are going to benefit GS and their ilk as much or more than they are the ecosystem. I suppose someone was going to find a way to wring money out of not absolutely ruining the world for future generations of humanity, but I really wish it wasn't going to be these particular scumbags.

If seven pages is a bit more than you want to bite off at the moment but you're still jonesing to get your economic meltdown rage on, check out this post at Taibbi's Taibblog, which outlines the various ways Goldman-Sachs' obscene $3.44 billion second quarter profits come at the expense of the United States taxpayer.

I don't much mind people who make stuff other than profit making a profit. It's people who make nothing to make a profit that really drive me berserk. At least, they're what's driving me berserk this morning.

A

Sexwar!

2009-07-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

A couple pieces of good news, at least for godless pinkos like myself:

-Some church ministers are refusing to sign marriage certificates and/or perform wedding ceremonies until gay marriage is legalized. Says United Church of Christ minister Art Cribbs: "I cannot with good conscience perform weddings for heterosexuals knowing people who are gay and lesbian are being denied that opportunity."

-Also, I can't seem to find a solid link for it, but this showed up on a friend's blog (I'd link to it, but it's friend-locked so not much point...) and, assuming it's true, which for the moment I am assuming, it's another mark in the win column:

This morning [actually yesterday, July 10], the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor HHS) eliminated traditional sources of funding for abstinence-only programs by passing the appropriations bill for FY 2010.

The Labor HHS subcommittee and the Obama Administration has recognized what we already knew: abstinence-only sex education programs do not work. The evidence is irrefutable that spending for abstinence-only education is not only wasteful, but also the programs put young women’s health at risk. A 2004 study by the House Committee on Government Reform, conducted at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) found that over 80% of the curricula used in the largest federally funded abstinence-only programs contained “false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.”

In addition to pulling the plug on funding for failed abstinence-only sex education programs, the bill eliminates a ban on syringe exchange programs, which have been proven to be a highly effective strategy for preventing HIV.

That's obviously specific to the US. I should really check into what the situation is here in Canada. Over the next few years, my nieces and nephews are going to enter the age bracket where they stop being entertainingly androgynous moppets and start dealing with these sorts of issues. It'd be nice to know they weren't being fed ill-conceived (if you'll pardon the pun) propaganda from the religious wrong when it happens.

***

An anecdote to give this post a personal touch:

Students could talk about almost anything in Mr. Esau's grade 12 Social Studies class, or at least that's how I remember it. One of the reasons I remember it that way is because at some point, condoms were mentioned. I can't remember the context, but it seems to me they were a part of some discussion that lasted a few minutes at least.

At some point, one girl's hand goes up. Everyone looks at her and she hesitantly asks, "What's a condom?"

Titters and guffaws from the students. Mr. Esau coolly shuts them down, "It's not funny, it's a serious question." But he doesn't elaborate on what a condom actually is, probably because if he did he'd end up having some nitwit parent complaining that their precious flower's being exposed to perversion in his classroom. Instead, he offers the girl a dictionary. She gets up, goes to the front of the class, flips through the dictionary to the C Section.

I never saw a group of high school kids as quiet as Mr. Esau's class watching this girl reading the dictionary. Dead silence for a minute or two as she gets the Official Definition of condom.

After an agonizingly long time, she says, "Huh." Slams the dictionary shut, returns to her seat, and spends the rest of the year being an object of ridicule.

When I was in high school, I wasn't a popular kid, for a variety of reasons (in retrospect, at least some of them were entirely my own damn fault). My size saved me from a lot of the hassles
smaller kids had to put up with, but I think I also had at least some minimal instinct for social self-preservation.

Without it, I would've been the one standing in front of Mr. Esau's class reading the dictionary.

A

It's a quote. It's a day. It's not the quote of the day.

2009-07-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

"It's standard for comic book shops to pre-order two or three copies of a comic book. Well, we sold over 10,000 comic books from just one store after one month of effort." "2.o celebrity" Tyrese Gibson.

I can't imagine this press release touting presales of 10,000 copies of TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM! #1 to LA's Meltdown Comics is going to go long before someone starts seriously examining it (Heidi Macdonald's already promised to give it some ink at The Beat), if not ridiculing it outright.

I've got mixed emotions about it, myself, but the emotions in that mix are all exceedingly mild, like the mixed emotions I have over whether I should wear matching socks. Hey, it's not my book. My big concern is how this could impact the comics industry overall, and I tend to think that'll come down to whether the comic's a fun, original, accessible idea with an established celebrity behind it (like Gerard Way's UMBRELLA ACADEMY), or whether it isn't (like pretty much every other comic "created" by a media celebrity.)

Let's assume for the moment that Gibson's as big a draw for current non-comics readers as he's being made out to be. Let's assume those 10,000 copies are put on the shelves and sold to actual customers--presumably some new ones, coming in to Meltdown in response to Gibson's admirably single-minded promotion of the book--rather than a retailer "partner"*. That's potentially great for the medium, if the book is good and/or appealing. New comics readers are much needed in North America. If they're being brought into a store each month to buy MAYHEM!, that's a chance to sell them not just on Giibson's book, but other titles and, ideally, the medium itself.

However.

If the audience response to the book is "Eh.", then all that's happened is a bunch of people have been brought into a comic shop one time, bought a single comic, many of them for something other than the actual quality of the book itself, found it to be nothing special, and if this is an example of the best the industry has to offer (and obviously it is, why else is it "selling" in record-breaking quantities), well, maybe they'll save the money they would've spent on other comics for the widescreen Blu-Ray edition of Transformers 2.

To my mind, that wouldn't just be a missed opportunity--it's any number of future opportunities strangled in their crib, before they have a chance to grow into something that could benefit everyone along the chain, from creator to retailer to reader. Because the next time they hear something good about that My Chemical Romance Guy's comic, or Avril Lavigne's MAKE 5 WISHES, or whatever celebrity spearheaded comic that's actually got something going for it other than a name they've heard before, they'll have every reason not to believe the hype.

So, for the sake of the industry, I really, really hope TYRESE GIBSON'S MAYHEM! is an awesome book. And if it isn't, I hope it won't be held against THE ANONYMOUS 2.0 CELEBRITY'S ADJECTIVE! comic I'm writing.

Because that book's gonna be awesome.

A

*I seem to recall Platinum Studios getting absolutely crucified for working in concert with specific retailers to ensure Cowboys & Aliens was the highest-ordered graphic novel for December, 2006.
As I understand it, this is a goal they were a hair's breadth from achieving, only to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. At the last minute--beyond the last minute, really, it was after the book was solicited--Diamond, who as I understand it {and I wasn't exactly in the loop for the company's promo efforts outside of the interview or two I did} determined what the price of the book was actually going to be in order to qualify as a "graphic novel", unilaterally elected to reclassify it as...something other than a graphic novel (promotional item...? I don't remember...) so it wouldn't appear in the GN sales charts.
Between you and me, I'm of the mind that if the book had managed to be what everyone involved wanted it to be but for a whole raft of reasons just wasn't, the backlash wouldn't have been so extreme. While I don't believe the efforts made on the book's behalf actually brought anyone new into a comic shop, I still see that one as a lost opportunity, albeit one that primarily damaged only those directly involved in the book and Entertainment Weekly, if it damaged anyone at all.

Stuff I Just Don't Understand...

2009-07-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

OK, due to the whims of geography and my parents, I ended up being born a Canadian in the latter half of the twentieth century and I plan to continue to be one into the latter half of the twenty-first. If I happen to still be alive in the early part of the 22nd, maybe I'll finally be inspired to want to change that (or just leave the house), but personally? I wouldn't bet on it.

As a Canadian during the aformentioned period, I've enjoyed the benefits of a public health care plan. Well, enjoy them may be overstating it--I'd have been happier if I never got rear-ended by a car, had years of back problems, chronic nausea, and, since I moved to Edmonton, month-long flareups of CRIPPLING FACEPAIN!(tm). But given that all that stuff did happen and continues to happen, I can only thank my lucky stars that I'm in a country that doesn't actively discriminate against the poor when it comes to health issues (or at least, doesn't discriminate to the degree that countries with no public health plan do.)

This isn't to say things are perfect up here. I actually pay money I can't really afford into two expanded health insurance plans, one as a secondary beneficiary to Tiina's coverage (which she got at my urging), and one recently introduced (and half paid for by) Happy Harbor Comics for its employees (I don't know that I ever mentioned how awesome I think it is that Jay and Shawna elected to do that, but it is pretty damn awesome for a company to put such a thing in place when there's absolutely no requirement for them to do so--in seven years as a commercial painter at three different companies and I never came across the concept of a company policy... I actually thought it was strictly an American thing.)

Even with that coverage, I've still ended up forking out a couple hundred dollars for partially-covered dental care. T's lost a hundred or two on eye care in the last two or three months. And then there's issues of preventative health measures, at least some of which aren't covered (a friend has shelled out thousands of dollars over the last year to get corrective foot surgery so she could walk with less pain, which doesn't seem right.)

So the Canadian system isn't perfect, but it's there, for everyone, and if things happen to get ugly, well, Canadians know they're covered. Over the last couple years, I've had an EEG, an MRI, a couple electrocardiograms, and appointments with a variety of specialists. It took awhile to get some of those, but whatever problems I've got don't seem to be killing me directly, and I did eventually get all of them, and they cost me nothing but time, which is pretty much the one thing I can sometimes afford at the moment. This seems natural to me.

I honestly cannot grasp the mentality that holds to the idea that a rich person's health is more valuable than a poor one's. And to my mind, when you boil it down to its essence, this is precisely the utterly unconscionable mindset opponents of public health care actively promote.

I haven't watched a Michael Moore movie in a few years. Wasn't that impressed with Fahrenheit 9/11, never saw Sicko. While I tend to agree with his positions on the issues, his onscreen character has started to rub me the wrong way for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that his very presence in his work oftentimes seems to overwhelm the important issues he's raising.

I don't know when exactly I concluded that Moore had stopped being a documentarian and become a propagandist. Odds are he was always the latter and, seeing as I generally agreed with him and was being entertained, I didn't notice. In this day and age, propaganda's pretty much omnipresent in the lives of anyone with a television, computer, or weekly church visits. Personally, I'm more interested in the propaganda produced by those I disagree with. I take it, examine it, find the flaws, and discredit it. And because it's propaganda, there are always flaws. "Government-run programs are wasteful; as much as possible should be left to the private sector because it's more efficient." One look at Medicare says otherwise, but even beyond that, I'd rather get my health care from someone who's looking to actually help the sick rather than to improve the bottom line. Maybe it's just me...

The problem with Moore's propaganda is that it works both ways. Any time he distorts facts to make a political point, he gives his (and my) opponents a line to attack not just himself, but the wider position. I have some pretty extreme ideological positions, I'll admit, and in the face of, well... reality, some of them won't hold up, much as I'd wish it otherwise. But sometimes, the unvarnished facts--like "There are millions of people in the USofA who need health care and either cannot afford it or are actively denied it by private insurers"--really ought to be all it takes to get anyone with a molecule of human compassion on the right side of an issue.

To make the point that "Everyone deserves a certain degree of healthcare, regardless of their circumstances", you don't need to present the standard wait time in a Canadian hospital waiting room as 20 minutes or less (with the exception of the accident, I've never spent less than a couple hours waiting in the Emergency Section, which, though I and my excruciating back pain would've preferred to get the inevitable demerol shot 3 1/2 hours earlier, is not a criticism--other people were bleeding and dying, and I did get eventually get the shot, which I paid for with time and discomfort, both of which I had to spare, unlike money.) By making it seem like that's the case, as Moore apparently does in the clip I'm going to link to below, he invites opponents of health care to point out that there's a Canadian schmuck writer who had to wait four hours in agony before getting a shot, and in doing so imply that the system doesn't work, when it actually does. It might not work as fast as it does as the current system in the US does for the wealthy, but it works for everyone, and on balance, there's more of everyone than there are wealthy people, so yeah. Paris Hilton might have to suffer briefly for the greater good. Life is rough.

I mention Moore because, while I don't watch him much anymore, I'm still on his mailing list. Occasionally, something of interest that I didn't catch wind of elsewhere in my internet journeys makes its way through. One of those happened to be over this last week, when I received a mail linking to a clip of a Bill Moyers interview with Wendell Potter, ex-VP and chief media flack of the private American health insurance company Cigna.

The mail's focus re: the clip was the tactics Potter and others used in trying to minimize the damage Moore's "Sicko" might do to their public image, which I was faintly interested in. What interested me more, however, was what Potter said on either side of the clip, which led me to watch the entire interview, which I highly recommend to anyone harbouring any doubts about the need to change the American health insurance system.

Potter's surprisingly forthright in talking about both his role in helping kill a public healthcare option in the States, and in condemning private health insurers for putting the bottom line ahead of their clients' health. I'm not sure I buy the explanation for his conversion to the side of angels, but I can't see any particular benefit for him coming out and calmly but firmly eviscerating his former employer and their ilk. It may be too little too late, but it's something.

On a related note, pretty much every comic-related blog I read this week has made mention of the plight of GRIMJACK writer and co-creator John Ostrander. The short version is, Ostrander has a private insurance plan, but that plan apparently didn't cover the costs of surgery he required to not go blind. But hey, at least he's insured, right? He's one of the lucky ones.

Just not lucky enough to be Canadian.

A

NO MORE PARENTS - Page 01 pencils by TFOC3 Nick Johnson

2009-07-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

Man, I've missed seeing things I wrote actually get produced...

A

Quote of the Day

2009-07-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

By "P Black" over at Deadline Hollywood Daily, re: that guy who died whose name escapes me:

"how many people in the world have touched so many people in so many different ways?"

I really wanted to write a comment, but honestly, I don't think I could come up with something funnier than the line I'd be responding to (which I really hope was intentionally funny, but based on the rest of Black's comment, I fear was not.)

Also, the whole thing, with the possible exception of the city of Los Angeles footing the bill for the memorial?

IT'S NOT #*%&ING NEWS.

A

The Future of Comics, Live and In Print

2009-07-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

Rough day going to the doctor to see if she could do anything about the CRIPPLING FACEPAIN!(tm), which led to an unexpected realization, an unplanned confrontation, and the unhappy sensation that in an effort to make things better I've managed to make them worse. So I'm not going to talk about me and instead focus on the Future of Comics (I and III) Fiona Staples and Nick Johnson.

At long last, the first issue of Fiona's latest WildStorm miniseries, NORTH 40, written by Somebody Other Than Me (the lucky swine) is out on Wednesday. You, like all right-thinking people, should buy eighteen copies, one to read, five to lend, and thirteen to encase in liquid carbonite so future generations can see how awesome comics were back in the old days when you couldn't read an ebook while showering.

On a semi-related note, the cover to North 40 #3 may be my new favourite piece of Fiona artwork. I can't quite put my finger on why, possibly because I've repressed all memory of anything in my life that ever involved pink balloons and/or a corsage.

Meanwhile, Nick's started his new, month-long gig at the Telus World of Science Creative Kids Museum, where he'll be publicly working on transforming NO MORE PARENTS from the ramblings of a demented sufferer of CRIPPLING FACEPAIN!(tm) into a wonderfully entertaining adventure comic for children of all ages except three and a half, because 3 1/2 year olds are vile little creatures who must be systematically and mercilessly punished until they reach the age of four, at which point they transform from despicable little rotters into something that's at least tolerable. It's the circle of life.

So, if you're in Calgary, or you're really bored and have enough disposable cash to go to Calgary, and you're a child of all ages other than 3 1/2, you should go pay Nick a visit and throw grapes at him while demanding that he sing obscure Neil Diamond songs for your entertainment. He'll do it if you've got enough grapes, you know.

As it happens, I've also spent a portion of today working on a small comic strip-style advertisement with the Future of Comics (II) John Keane, and now that it's done, I estimate he'll be willing to talk to me again without wanting to kick my teeth down my throat sometime in the next four to six months. E-mail is perhaps not the best way to communicate nitpicking-level ideas, but I'm not convinced things would've gone smoother on the phone, and in any event CRIPPLING FACEPAIN!(tm) works very much against my (at the best of times dodgy) ability to present half-baked ideas as coherent statements of intent while talking in realtime.

So, yeah. NORTH 4o #1 (and WEDNESDAY COMICS #1, which I'm also looking forward to) on Wednesday. Nick and NO MORE PARENTS at the Telus Science Centre all month. Good stuff being created by good people, reported by a good-for-nothing.

***

ALSO GOOD:

TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE Volume One, by Michael Kupperman. For someone who's been really quite miserable for the last couple weeks, I've been laughing out loud an awful lot every time I take a minute or two to read a page or two of TDTT.

A

The agony and the...well, slightly less agony.

2009-07-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

While various people have different opinions as to what's caused my current bout of CRIPPLING FACEPAIN!, the end result is that I've spent much of the last seventy-two hours feeling like someone sanded my teeth down to exposed nerve endings and then stuffed a dead raccoon into my nasal cavity.

While there's really never a good time to feel like your life would be immeasurably improved if you used a sharpened spoon to dig out the contents of your skull (at least not that I've found, and I've got some experience in this area), feeling that way when you've got an artist waiting for the fun and wacky and generally awesome script you promised him by today is particularly problematic.

I don't know who said no writer likes writing, but every writer likes having written. I mean, I know Neil Gaiman said it and it was in an interview with him that I read it, but I believe he was quoting someone else. Either way, that's a fairly accurate assessment of my view of the whole "sitting down and transforming an abstract idea into a concrete story" thing. It's not hard work--I'd rather be writing than housepainting, though that's not saying much, as I'd rather floss my teeth with a buzzsaw than paint houses for a living--but it's not as easy as lying in bed doing nothing. Frequently it's not even as satisfying as lying in bed doing nothing.

All of which is a long way to say I don't usually get a lot of joy out of writing. I can't recall a single instance when writing has actually improved my mood. That may be because I can't recall a single instance of anything that happened more than fifteen minutes ago, but I tend to believe it's largely because I don't write much when I'm not in a good mood to begin with. If I'm not happy I'll write what I've absolutely got to because someone's waiting for or expecting it, and if I'm feeling particularly sorry for myself, I might dash off a whiny Facebook update or blog post (even though doing so inevitably makes me feel worse about myself for venting in public when I've got what is, by any reasonable standard, a pretty good life.) And that's about it.

But even in my state of extreme discomfort and/or prescription medication-induced zombification, finally hammering the script for NO MORE PARENTS #1 into shape on Monday and Tuesday was a less arduous task than I'd expected. Maybe I'm still basking in the warm glow of finishing something on the promised deadline that I didn't think I'd be able to when that deadline loomed, but there's something about this project...I'm having trouble putting my finger on what it is, but I think it may be that I actually connect with and like the characters introduced in the first issue in a way that I often don't at this stage in the writing process. I feel like I've leapfrogged over the "getting to know you" stage of scripting and settled into a comfort zone where I just let the kids (and robots) tell me what they want to do, rather than me telling the characters what they're going to do and then adjusting them as characters so what they do makes sense inside the context of the story. (Note to those who may be interested: If you're working on a WFH project, life's a lot easier if you approach things the latter way, if only because there's someone higher than you on the totem pole who has the power to make you and the characters do what they tell you and understanding and accepting that will save you and your editor a lot of headaches.)

Mind you, letting the gang do what they want required me to seriously revise the action I'd originally laid out for the second half of the issue; I had to reconsider and rewrite the basic shots from the ground up perilously close to the appointed deadline. And while Nick seemed happy with the first batch of script pages I sent him, I think he'd be a bit more comfortable if the characters didn't like talking quite so much.

But setting all that aside for the moment, I'm left in the bizarre circumstance where writing something was about as enjoyable as it possibly could be, even though it was written while I was absolutely, positively, "on the edge of doing something selfish, stupid, and irrevocable" miserable.

Which I think is pretty cool. Hopefully the good feelings I have for the script will show on the finished pages. Even if they don't...well, I like it. And feeling the way I do at the moment, liking anything at all, much less something I'm personally responsible for, is a blessing.

A

Unless you really want to, of course.

2009-06-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

Do not push the big red button.

(via MightyGodKing.)

I should really do a blog update.

2009-06-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

But I'm not gonna. This last couple of weeks have left me drained and fragile. I am a delicate, five hundred and seventy pound flower.

***

OK, maybe a quick note on a comic thing...

"Only one resurrection ever impressed anyone."

So said Happy Harbor's Jay Bardyla, in response to the revelation that the Major Announcement Marvel'd promised regarding the mysterious miniseries REBORN was that it would feature the return of Steve Rogers.

I'm sure the story will be good. Brubaker's the guy who "killed" Captain America, and he's the guy who's bringing him back, and I'm assuming he's not having his arm twisted too hard to do so Brubaker brought Bucky back and made it work; Captain America's been easily the most consistent quality read produced by either of the Big Two for ages now. The writer obviously has a strong vision for the story he wants to tell and the art teams, aided by some skillful (if subdued) colouring, have provided a pretty much seamless story on the visual end of things. It's reasonable to expect more of the same with Reborn, and that's not a bad thing at all in this case.

Personally, I think Marvel would be better served by preserving their first really successful legacy superhero story rather than restoring the 70-year old status quo, but that's me--I don't have an upcoming movie to promote. And I'm kind of scratching my head as to how they ever thought bringing back a character killed a couple years ago would make any kind of major media splash. But never mind that.

The biggest problem with the return of Steve Rogers, I mean, the one massive issue, the elephant in the room that I'm sure keeps Joe Quesada awake at night is that, when push comes to shove, I prefer the Fantastic Four to Captain America. There are all sorts of reasons for that--my not being American is certainly a factor--but I don't really feel like going into them. Suffice it to say that, after Doctor Strange, my next favourite Marvel property is the FF.

So I was actually quite happy a year or three ago when the new creative team of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch was announced for the title. Not because I'm a huge fan of the creative team, but because I figured having the guys who did the first two Ultimates series was a surefire way to raise the profile of The World's Greatest Comic Magazine. I haven't really looked at the sales numbers, but I gather from skimming Paul O'Brien's comments at Publisher Weekly's The Beat that, for whatever reason, they haven't been as awesome as one might have expected/hoped.

Which will happen from time to time. It may be that the FF is a concept whose time is past, that the people who aren't reading it are disinclined to do so for pretty much the same reasons I like the concept. What struck me as odd, though, was this comment from Joe Quesada:

"You try to use (Bryan Hitch) for the biggest projects possible. We try to do that with our very best talents. So when Ed had the idea of "Reborn" and we knew it was going to be a big deal and wanted to get the most out of it, we wanted to use ... Hitch. So it was literally that simple. You want to bring your A-Team for your A-Story and have them bring their A-Game."

Which is well and good for Reborn, but when that statement is made in response to a question that at least in part was made regarding pulling Hitch off the end of Millar's Fantastic Four run...well, maybe it's just me, but couldn't that be read to imply that The Fantastic Four, the book that started the Marvel Age of Comics, either isn't considered a priority for the company, or that Millar and Hitch are delivering less than their best work on the project?

I dunno. Just struck me as weird comment coming from the Editor in Chief.

A

The Following is a true story...

2009-06-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

...Only the names have been changed to protect the helpful. Which means Steven's name actually is Steven.

STEVEN, ROGERS WIRELESS ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE SERVICE (sic) REPRESENTATIVE: Welcome to Rogers Wireless Accounts Receivable, my name is Steven. What can I do for you today?

ANDREW, NOT CHAY TANG, NO MATTER WHAT ROGERS WIRELESS SAYS: Hi, I'm calling about this bill I've been getting every month for, oh, I don't know, three or so years.

S: OK, could I get your Rogers Wireless phone number starting with area code, please?

A: No.

S: I'm sorry?

A: I don't have a Rogers Wireless phone number. That's why I'm calling.

S: You said you're getting a bill.

A: Yes. Well, I keep getting Chay Tang's bill sent to this address. I called about it last year and they told me it'd stop coming after about six months, but here we are, a year later, and I'm still getting them.

S: But you don't have an account.

A: No.

S: Well then I'd advise you return the mail to sender.

A: I've done that. And sent it back with "No one of that name here" written on the envelope, too. Doesn't work.

S: Well, as this isn't your account, that's all I can do for you.

A: You can't make a note to not waste a bunch of paper every month sending a bill to someone who doesn't have an account with you unless the person with the account--who isn't receiving their bill--tells you not to send the bill?

S: Correct.

A: That's kind of silly, isn't it?

S: That's the way it's done.

A: But the guy obviously doesn't know his bill's going to the wrong place, because he's not getting it. I am.

S: You should mark it return to sender.

A: Yeah, I've done that.

S: That's all I advise, all I can do unless you're the account holder.

A: I've been getting the account holder's bill for three years. Is that enough?

S: I'm afraid not.

A: OK, so let me get this absolutely straight: the person who lives at the place the bill is being sent, who isn't the person whose bill it is, is telling you the person whose bill it is isn't at this address, but you aren't going to do anything about it unless the person whose bill it is--who isn't here and, as far as I can tell, never has been, certainly not for the last ten years--tells you he's not here.

S: Correct.

A: Oh, I see. That's not stupid at all.

S: Canada Post mails the bills out. You should send it back to them.

A: I don't think Canada Post does send the bill out. I see Rogers' logo all over this envelope, and shining a high-power light through the envelope I got this phone number, which sort of implies that it's not Canada Post sending them out, it's you sending them out.

S: Canada Post is the only one who can change an address.

A: I don't think that's true.

S: It is true and accurate information.

A: Canada Post didn't generate this bill. They just delivered it.

S: That's right.

A: But you, Rogers, sent it out.

S: If you don't want to receive the mail, just write return to sender on the envelope.

A: I've done that and I keep receiving the mail.

S: Please don't yell, sir. I'm just trying to have a conversation here.

A: I wasn't yelling--

S: You raised your voice--

A: OK, now I'm talking in a very calm, cool manner. All right?

S: Thank you sir. Now, I've done all I can for you on this matter--

A: You haven't done anything--

S: That's all I can do.

A: Can I speak to your supervisor, please?

S: Do you wish to talk to him about this?

A: Yes I do.

S: I'm afraid I can't put you through to a supervisor for this.

A: You won't put me through to your supervisor?

S: Not because of this.

A: What's your name again?

S: Steven.

A: Last name?

S: I can't give that information out, sir. Security concerns.

A: Any other way to identify you? Your branch number, employee number?

S: I can't give you any more information.

A: Why start now? OK, Steven, I'd like to talk to your supervisor.

S: I can't put you through to my supervisor unless you give me a reason.

A: Someone asking to speak to your supervisor isn't a good enough reason to let them speak to your supervisor?

S: No.

A: So you aren't going to do anything and you're going to prevent me from talking to anyone else who may be able to do anything.

S: There's nothing I can do unless you're an account holder.

A: OK, you got me. I'm the account holder.

S: You've said you aren't the account holder.

A: Kidding! What, you can't take a joke! I'm Shee Tang--Chai Tang...However you pronounce it, that's who I am, that's me. Mr. Tang. Mrs.? Miss? Yeah, I'm them.

S: You aren't, sir.

A: What's my name?

S: Sir?

A: If I'm not Chay Tang, what's my name?

S: I don't know, sir.

A: I'm telling you I'm Chay Tang. How do you know I'm not Chay Tang? I've been getting his bills for three years, someone over there thinks he lives here.

S: You said you aren't the account holder, sir. I've done all I can do for you.

A: But if I call back and claim I'm the account holder to someone else, they'll help me?

S: You're welcome to call again and see if you can get a different answer from another service representative.

A: So your advice is to call one of your colleagues and commit fraud. You're telling me that's the only way Rogers Wireless is going to stop wasting paper every month sending me a bill that isn't mine.

S: I'm not advising you to do that.

A: You just did!

S: You have every right to call and see if you get a different answer from someone else. You can do that, but the answer will be the same. There's nothing we can do here for you. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

A: You can put me through to your supervisor.

S: I can't do that.

A: You've already said you could if you had a reason to. So you could, you, Steven, are actively choosing not to.

S: I'm going to end this conversation now, sir. Have a nice day and thank you for choosing Rogers Wireless.

A: I didn't choose Rogers Wireless, you--

CLICK.

***

FIVE MINUTES LATER:

JEFF, ROGERS WIRELESS ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: Welcome to Rogers Wireless Accounts Receivable, my name is Jeff. What can I do for you today?

A: Hi, I've been getting someone else's bill sent to me for three years now and I've tried returning to sender and writing "Nobody of that name here" on the envelope and I even called a year ago and they said it'd stop eventually, but it hasn't and I'd like it to, please.

J: Did you open the envelope?

A: I did not. On this occasion, I did use a high-powered light to read its contents, though, because this is getting silly.

J: So you have an account number?

A: I do. It's (Chay Tang's account number).

J: And what's the address it's going to?

A: (Andrew and Tiina's address, mostly), and that's here, except the postal code is off.

J: (quiet snort) It's a miracle it got there at all...OK, I'm looking at the account. This is strange, it's been paid.

A: Well, for all I know it's getting paid automatically or every month or something and the guy checks his bill digitally or something. So maybe I'm getting a new, different bill every month. I don't know. But I do keep getting a bill for someone else.

J: What I'll do is put a "hold bill" on this and make a note saying you called and said it's the wrong address. That should stop the bill from showing up there and maybe we can get in contact with the client to get the right address.

A: With the account number you could probably phone them...

J: Yes, we should be able to do something. You should know that there's no liability on your part for any bill received in error, if that was a worry.

A: It wasn't. It's just--four or five pieces of paper and an envelope a month for years, you know? It's wasteful.

J: I understand. I'm a conservationist myself. OK, I've put the hold bill on it and written the note. Is there anything else I can do for you today?

A: One other thing. I'd like to make a complaint about a colleague of yours, Steven. I called you guys earlier, and he swore up and down that there was absolutely nothing he could do about this.

J: Well...technically, I'm not supposed to do anything if you aren't the account holder. But you gave the account number and the address, so I fudged things a little.

A: So if I complain about Steven and they notice you were actually helpful, you could get in trouble. I get it. OK, then. Well, Jeff, thank you for the effort, I really do appreciate it.

J: Have a good day, sir. Thanks for choosing Rogers Wireless.

CLICK.

A: Yeah, like that's EVER going to happen now...

A

My new word.

2009-06-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

In Art College I had a teacher, Derek Besant who, as a student in art college (or university--not sure where he was educated, actually...), had a teacher who took an idiosyncratic approach to yardwork. As I recall, when this other teacher's neighbours complained about the length of his lawn, he had all his students come over to his house one weekend, cover the yard with cement, and paint it green.

Even at the time I first heard this story, many years before I'd be fortunate enough to marry someone who came with a yard I'd come to call my own, this struck me as a good idea.

As the guy who's spent a stupid amount of time this last week and a half tearing dandelions with root systems that even your average redwood would have to grudgingly acknowledge as impressive, pouring concrete over the whole damn mess strikes me as not just a good idea, but something I'm actually kind of stunned isn't the norm, at least when it comes to people who've got better things to do with their lives than root around in the dirt (and if you aren't rooting around in the dirt for the purposes of feeding yourself, your family, or me and my family, you've got better things to be doing than digging around in the dirt. Like reading. Or eating. Or watching paint dry.)

Transforming my yard into something resembling the world's smallest detonated minefield one #*&%ing batch of dandelions at a time has become something of an obsession for me now. Originally, as part of the prep for this coming weekends Temple of Fondoom party, I'd wanted to get the back yard looking like someone had done something to groom it sometime in the last five years, which was a tricky proposition, as no one had. Well, Tiina might have. I was too busy reading, eating, and watching paint dry to notice.

Clearly, there's no way the lunar landscape out back is going to be anything remotely resembling presentable by the weekend--I've slowly come to realize that what I naively thought of as "the lawn" was actually thistle, while "the yellow stuff" turned out to be the grass. But still I continue, consumed by the desire to purge all dandelions from the backyard.

Which is, by almost any measure, not what I should be doing over the next week. Mowing, sure. Cleaning the house, definitely. Even plugging away at the spec screenplay revision (Emmy-Winning Hollywood Producer sent another round of notes in) and the script for NO MORE PARENTS, if I can't possibly avoid writing something more ambitious than a blog post. But what I should absolutely not be doing is ripping up great sections of the yard trying to eliminate the pestilent weed that the majority of my neighbours--while impressed with my nobly misguided efforts--seem to agree is something you've just got to live with.

So of course, that's all I really want to do at the moment. It's not a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence--the grass is also yellow out there. It's a deadly combination of addiction and procrastination. I call it procraddictination.

Actually, I don't call it that. I just came up with it as I typed the last sentence. But I might start calling it that now.

A

Irony, thy name is Racist Moron

2009-06-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this. It makes us look bad." John DeNugent, responsible racist, on the Holocaust Museum shooting.

I'm reasonably sure that quote contains everything necessary to build a really tasteless sitcom starring Jim Belushi.

I'm saying Jim Belushi is a racist, mind you. But something about the ten minutes of ALL ABOUT JIM I watched that one time I couldn't find the remote makes me think he could play one really well.

Has Dick Cheney been arrested yet?

GAAAAAH! MOTHER#**&ERS!

2009-06-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

THE LAST COPIES I HAD, YOU LOUSY $%!#s! MY LAST GODDAMN COPIES!

hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate

OK, OK. Calm down, Foley. It's not the end of the world. It's just another HAAAAATE!

The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples' first Wildstorm work, a tie-in to the film TRICK 'R TREAT, is finally being released this October. That's a good thing. Yes. And then there's this...

...

Nope. Happy for Fiona and Dan, but still foaming at the mouth pissed at Canada Post.

A

ANDREW FOLEY WRITES THINGS

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

This conversation probably never happened

Some paintings from a couple months back

I don't know what to say.

My Perfect Woman

Today

Life in Brief

Steve Perry needs your help.

Oh, you look BEFORE you leap...

New Pills

This just in...

I can haz payntbrush?

The Future is Four Days Ago

Devilsheep!

Hello-oh-oh-ohhh...

Feel My Pain(ting)

The Transcendental Op

The big brush-off

Hammett 3:16

There is no cause for alarm. Please remain comics.

Nerves

What Twitter hath wrought

Visitation Rites

The Lucky Ones

In case you don't follow me on twitter or facebook...

Check your hope at the door

"A glimmer is better than a black hole."

Things that can't possibly be happening

Gay equality in Texas

A drib and three drabs

It's all about meme.

Puttering on Facebook is LIKE working, right?

Andrew Foley Suddenly and without warning, Andrew stopped typ

Andrew Foley "I do find your ideas on the middle-east peace process intriguing, but I'd still like you to take your finger out of my nose." - Madeleine "A'ight?" Albright

Andrew Foley In the words of the Immortal Bard, "#*%&! Mother#*%&er! #*%&ing #*%&itty #*%& #*%&!" Actually, that's more of a paraphrase.

Andrew Foley O what a tangled web we weave, when we commence web construction without the necessary architectural designs and construction permits.

Andrew Foley has got nothing, but that apparently isn't stopping him.

Andrew Foley "The cornerstone of any successful relationship must be stable and made of reinforced concrete." - Relationship Expert Don Gotti

Andrew Foley "That's OK, it's only my groin." - Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Andrew Foley isn't going to take this lying down. Which will be tricky, because he's not getting up any time soon.

Andrew Foley "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" was much more challenging than its spiritual predecessor, "Why is Bill Nebraska sleeping in my driveway?"

Andrew Foley I refuse to suspend my disbelief for any Blackest Night #8 that doesn't feature an all out battle between Black Lanterns and a newly-created Muddy Brown-Grey Lantern.

Andrew Foley fondly remembers fried, battered food-based powdered pigments.

Andrew Foley Head throbbing. Back aching. Nose running. Mood cratering. Yet again another November is upon us...

Andrew Foley is outlining a kid's story that prominently features a character named "Lily Slutt". I suspect that will have to be changed at some point...

Andrew Foley Universal health care IS the centrist position, you vacuous, bloviating twit.

Hallow Happyween!

Master of Domestic Arts

Monster Chiller Horror

Why not him?

The Lights are on...

What happened?

Another reason to support gay marriage. A stupid reason, but still.

This just in.

Stuff and nonsense

The Future of Comics - Update

The Internet, it is a small place in some ways.

http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/

Pat Buchanan gives Michele Bachmann and the Florida GOP a run for their money

The Inside Joke of the Day

You say "socialism" like it's a BAD thing.

The Separation of Reason and State.

ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE wins Zuda Competition

Un-F*#&ing-Believable.

Flashback to Andrew as an Angry Young Man

One of the best reasons I've come across yet to move to the USA.

No public option?

Mumbles (incoherently)

Some Housekeeping Notes

For Immediate Release

For the Art Process Junkies

Still don't believe me about bankers?

Fool me seventeen times, shame on me.

This just in...

Bow Down before the Mighty GodKing.

The Con Gamed

Hey, Transformers Producer Don Murphy - the FROM HELL film sucked. Now option my book!

This post isn't going to involve me complaining at length about fruitflies. You're welcome.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Andrew Foley In the words of the Immortal Bard, "#%&! Mother#%&er! #%&ing #%&itty #%& #%&!" Actually, that's more of a paraphrase.