The Week

Jan26
by on 26 January 2018

This week school was back in session and an artistic dry spell came to a close. Here are the things that have grabbed my attention this week.

LISTENING

Source: compiled elements from Marvel and Comicsverse

One thing that I hope has become clear on this site and at the site for my podcast, A Podcast [ , ] For All Intents and Purposes, is that I think way too hard about things like comic books, video games, and other things. However, what I hope is also clear is that this line of critical thought comes from my academic background––it’s how I was taught and, more importantly, how I learned to think about texts be they two hundred year old poems or the latest episode of Doctor Who. The last thing that I hope is clear, with those two other points in mind, is that even though I think too hard about this stuff and try to extract deeper meaning from it, I also don’t put things like comics and video games on a pedestal. In the end, I realize they are pop culture artifacts and, as such, are meant to be disposable and, superficially at least, entertainment. That’s why I don’t really care about the same things that a lot of nerdy brethren care about, such as continuity (with comics) and cutting-edge technological achievements (as with video games). I find a lot of that to be more about posturing and gate-keeping than actually having discussions about these things. However, that does not exclude the possibility of these works from saying more than their intent. Indeed, we’ve seen creators put more intent into their works and many of those have risen above the rest.

That being said, I also like to see other people have academic conversations about these things and the website Comicsverse has really rung my bell in that regard. It doesn’t hurt that the founder and CEO is a big X-Men fan and, therefore, a lot of the talk on the site (both in their written articles and podcasts) have focused on that franchise, of which I have not hidden my own appreciation.

With the next main X-Men movie being titled X-Men: Dark Phoenix, it references the most famous story of the franchise, now called “The Dark Phoenix Saga” which was a story written by Chris Claremont and co-plotted and penciled by John Byrne (with inks by Terry Austin) in The Uncanny X-Men. The story was told over nine months in 1980 between issues #129-138 that shows the rise and fall of one of the team’s founding members, Jean Grey. The plot takes an interesting arc as it follows Grey from being the weakest member of the team to being, unequivocally, the most powerful and having to deal with the consequences of that power. Despite using characters that wear tights and shoot lasers from their eyes and , it’s a subtle and patient story, one that rewards with re-readings.

The story is the favorite of Comicsverse as well, having originally devoted three episodes (over an hour long each) to covering it (and it’s followups in the comic’s continuity) and now hitting it again but with a specific lens over the course of two hours. It’s a panel-based format and I loved every second of it. The Comicsverse crew always provide thoughtful commentary and analysis and, even when I don’t agree with their take or points of view, I appreciate the work they put into these conversations to the point that I ashamedly try to chime in while walking the dog and listening.

WATCHING

source: Amazon

  • The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

In truth, my wife and I finished watching this Amazon show a few weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a wonderful period piece that hilariously (and touchingly) deals with wonderful, pertinent themes such as rejection, creativity, and self-doubt, not to mention the autonomy of women in the 1950s. What’s also interesting about the show is how it brings in history to work with the themes (and plot). Part of the plot of the show is about a woman who decides, in the late 1950s, to become a stand-up comedian (or comedienne, I guess), and her style is much more personal and expressive than the mere one-liners and character work that were popular at the time, instead looking forward at what comedy would become. To that end, the real-life controversial comedian, Lenny Bruce, becomes an interesting character in the show, helping the eponymous Mrs. Maisel on her way without her even knowing it (at first).

Shows about performance tend to struggle under the weight of their promise. What I mean by that is that plenty of movies and tv shows are based around the idea of the protagonist being gifted at what they do, but when it comes time for the audience to actually see the performance, it’s underwhelming. Though it’s my own opinion––and a rather unqualified one at that––The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel actually holds up to its promise. While the comedy it presents in itself is not revolutionary, when considering it within the historical context of the narrative, it makes sense, especially if you have a working knowledge of stand-up history. Even with my tangential working knowledge of the development of stand-up comedy, the comedy of Mrs. Maisel worked very well, though it is but a small part of the overall story of the show, which is the actual draw.

For a show, the best I can say about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is that it is wholly well-rounded. It delivers on a variety of fronts that always kept me guessing and wanting more and I’m excited it has a second season on the way.

LONG JOHN UPDATE

I mentioned last week how I was stuck on a two-page spread. It was a conundrum that, when presented with the final product, can be underwhelming. I run the risk of “spoiling” to much by sharing the page, so I’ll share a slightly abstracted version which I shared on my Instagram account. What help me up is that it is a scene that answers, in flashback, a lot of questions asked in volume 1 and 2 of Long John, and I wanted to make sure I chose the absolute right images to flash back to. I’m still not convinced I made all the right choices––I even for the first time––made some slight edits (not artistically, just structurally) in Photoshop to make it a more accurate read, but I think I got there.

More than anything, as the end of Chapter 3 approaches, I realize how much bringing this to a close can be messed up if treated with a cavalier attitude. As mentioned before, Chapter 3 brings the first “arc” of Long John to a close, so it needs to be not only satisfactory, but it needs to be satisfying as well. Though I agonize over dialogue––and will continue to do so––bringing the visuals of Chapter 3 to a satisfying conclusion has been agonizing, but one that is proving to be well worth it in the long run (as stated earlier, I tend to overthink this stuff, so gridlock should be expected). So, this week, I bring you––from slightly different angles––a “before” followed by an “after.”

Before.

After.

It looks like the content of this book will be about 35 pages, 36 if you count what I call the “white page” that ends every chapter––the singular image that kind of puts a bow on the story of the issue.

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The Week

Jan19
by on 19 January 2018

With this being the final week before school starts up again, my time has been divided between prepping for the coming classes and getting as much drawing done as possible to finish up Chapter 3. Because of that, I’ve remained pretty unplugged from the world around me.

LISTENING:

Source: Anti- Records

  • Case/Lang/Veirs by Case/Lang/Veirs(Neko Case, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs)

As you will soon be able to tell, my musical tastes swing wildly and often between the intense and the bucolic. The type of music I listen to often depends on what I’m doing while listening. This ends up being more nuanced than merely stating activities like “walking the dog” or “drawing” or “hanging out.” Since I’ve been stalled on a page, the intense, loud music of heavy metal or rock actually comes off as grating, raising my stress more than calming it. Last week, I wrote about one balm, the music of Pallbearer (and bands like them). While still, technically, heavy metal, its slower, droning, and distorted guitars were offset by the melodic vocals and generally open air sound, which really speaks to a peacefulness rather than rage as is commonly associated with the genre. However, as I waded deeper into the weeds of artistic stagnation, the dire tone of bands like Pallbearer or Dawnbringer (my personal favorite) tended to add weight to the travel instead of taking it off.

Neko Case is one of my wife’s favorite musicians. Period. Case is an alt-country badass with the same no-care attitude as someone like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. She does what she wants in the way she wants to do it and, quite often, the result is a pleasant listen. In 2016, Case teamed up with two fellow musicians, k.d. lang and Laura Veirs, and made an album so sublime that the first song, “Atomic Number,” actually took my breath away the first time I heard it. It hit me in the pit of my stomach, churning within me a feeling that couldn’t be placed. Did I want to be sad? Happy? Happy-sad? Joyous? All of these things, kind of. It was, plainly, just hitting the spot. Even on repeat listens for over a year, the song is at a particular frequency that lines up with the one in my head, creating a sense of existential chill, but almost on a spiritual level. There are a few songs like that which I’ve collected over the years, ones that strike a chord in me (pardon the pun) which really evens me out for the few minutes while they play, leaving me with a sort of existential hum in my head that puts a spring in my step and a twinkle in my eye.

The benefit of Case/lang/Veirs is that there are a few songs on the album that do that to me, but that first song is the rare exception that rings my core all the way through its play time. It was a much needed bandage, even if I still struggled with the page in front of me. I don’t expect this song or album to have the same effect on anyone reading this, but I’m sure you have your songs that do that for you, the one’s that just make you feel; this is one of those for me and I was glad I had it.

SOCIALIZING

It was the rare occasion that I went out this week, meeting up with my former comic collaborator, Eben Burgoon, at New Helvetia Brewing Co. to see what its weekly get-together, “Comic Books and Craft Brews” (aka CB^2), was all about. Organized by Eben, he had large-scale print outs of pages from the comic he is currently writing, B-Squad, in black and white and brought markers to allow attendees to color them. Not really knowing what to expect, I took a sketchbook and a pencil down there, but soon after arriving just used the paper on the table to let the mind wander while talking to Eben and meeting some new people.

Eben and I stopped making our comic, Eben07, back in 2013, but I’ve been drawing those characters ever since I was about 15 or 16, so they’re easy to summon when the need arises. Since the comic was a humor-action comic, they usually come out when I am drawing around a joke; such was the case at this week’s gathering:

Eben07 & Ninja Dan––secret agent janitors who also appear whenever toilet humor is present.

Abel, the ostensible antagonist of the comic and immortal curmudgeon.

It was also fun just to just work with graphite. When comicking, I stick to the waxy struggle of blue lead and don’t really work with traditional lead very often anymore (due to its ease of smearing), but it’s fun to see what I can do, especially with these old characters filtered through whatever lens that is my current style. It was fun, but I’m more eager to get back to Long John.

LONG JOHN UPDATE

The two-page spread stall-out really knocked me down, and even though I’m not quite standing again yet, I am definitely in the process of standing up. I go into the new semester with a few pages left to draw of “Making Smoke,” and I’m confident I’ll be able to get them––and the book––done.

Sneak peek of a panel from Chapter 3, “Making Smoke.” Pencils: D. Bethel, Inks: Josh Tobey.

As I said in the Chapter 3 cover reveal video, “Making Smoke” has been a wild time in terms of creativity. The highlight, undoubtedly, was when Josh Tobey was down visiting from Oregon this summer and I was complaining about some pages I had to ink that were basically landscapes. I was scared to draw them mostly because I knew it would be a situation of them looking better in my head than they would on the page. I could draw landscapes fine, but rendering them convincingly––and, more importantly, interestingly––in ink was way out of my comfort zone.

To these complaints, Josh replied, “Man, that’s the fun stuff. I hate drawing and inking people doing things.”

“Really?” I asked, completely shocked at his distaste for my favorite things to draw and ink. Laughing at the seeming synergy of our artistic tastes, I threw out, as a joke, “Well, I should just have you ink these landscape panels and we’d both be happy.”

“Are they drawn?”

“What? Yeah. I mean, they’re loose, but they’re on the page,” I said.

Josh put his thumb to his chin, which he often does when seriously pondering. “I’ll do it.”

I laughed. He didn’t.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Hell, yes. Put pages in front of me and I’ll ink them,” he said.

I’ve been doing this long enough to never let an opportunity go stale, so I ran upstairs and got the pages and, because of that, I have two pages of Chapter 3 inked by Josh Tobey and they’re gorgeous. There are even a few panels where we are both inking. It was a liberating and energizing experience and I could even see a project where we do that on every page in the future could be a serious possibility.

Until next week, that was The Week.

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The Week

Jan12
by on 12 January 2018

This week was a busy one marked by the hitting of a solid and sturdy wall by the end. So, most of this week’s media revolves around getting out of a funk (or wallowing in it). With that in mind, with all that has been going on (the most of which––is that a saying?––has been prepping for the new semester of school), this week is going to be rather light fare.

LISTENING

Heartless by Pallbearer. Source: Profound Lore Records

  • Heartless by Pallbearer

It’s no secret (though it’s often a surprise) that I’m a heavy metal fan. My brief brush with internet fame due to my art getting shared by Twisted Sister all but solidified that for the world. However, as much as I love Twisted, when it comes to heavy metal for my general listening pleasure (and I’m burned out on Twisted Sister), my tastes run much darker or, to use the parlance of the genre, doomier (I made that word up, but I’m an English teacher, so it’s legal). Actually, my tastes are very specific. I like grungy, chunky guitars but melodic vocals. I like slower metal but not droning repetition. It’s an aesthetic established by my love for Dawnbringer who not only checks all of those boxes but they established the boxes in the first place.

I actually found Pallbearer through a guitar magazine (I’m a guitar nerd, too) and loved what I heard on their newest album, Heartless. When it comes to this type of music––Dawnbringer included, to an extent––the importance to me is less the lyrics and content of the songs but more of the overall tone everything creates. Pallbearer’s album creates a sound that is a mixture of heaviness (the instruments) and wist (the vocals) that keep it from being a complete wallow in teen angst and more a tour through a set of emotions I experience a lot while drawing: utter despair and mournful hope.

LONG JOHN UPDATE

On Wednesday, the cover for Chapter 3, “Making Smoke” was unveiled on the website, along with a bit of behind-the-scenes information.

*crosses fingers*

This week, I really started feeling the weight that comes with the knowledge that the end of the chapter is right around the corner. With that, a negative aspect of my creative process really came to light (causing the dreaded “wall” mentioned at the beginning). In my writing classes, we spend some time talking about a thing called “writer’s block”, a phenomenon most of us have experienced but ignore its actual cause. We tend to define writer’s block as a state where ideas are lacking, where we’ve drawn a blank or our ideas are blocked by unknown plaque.

In response to this, I have my students read a wonderful article by Donald Murray called “Write Before Writing,” in which he discusses writer’s block actually being a result not of obstruction but of exhaustion. We can’t write because our brains are tired doing the same old thing, our go-to processes that “always” work…until they don’t. In most cases, it can be solved by simply trying something different––whether a different tactic or simply doing your normal thing but in a different place.

Knowing this, whenever I hit my wall I know what I have  to do (something different), but it doesn’t stop the anxiety, which is my oldest and fiercest enemy, an enemy I have no defense against. I often make the joke that I’m an artist that hates drawing. A more accurate way to say it would be that I’m an artist who is scared to draw. Every time I sit down to draw a page, I freeze. Even when I have the page thumbnailed out and I know exactly what to do––there’s still that hesitation, that fear.

This double-page spread has sat blank on my desk for two days.

I always push through it and I know that this anxiety will always creep up at the start of a page, but that never helps. To this point, I have drawn almost 400 pages of comics over my 10 years of comicking, almost 100 pages of Long John at this point, and there are no Long John pages that I think are bad, but still––even with all that work behind me––I still get scared. It will pass, but the feeling never leaves and, as the end of chapter 3 quickly approaches, may even get worse. But I’ll get there. I know that much.

In other news, Long John, Volume 2 will be back in stock shortly, so expect a bundle of volumes 1 & 2 to go up on the store post haste and at affordable prices.

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