Behemoth

So, I'm in Wal-Mart yesterday (cause Lord knows, you gotta goes to Wallyworld), and I saw a sign that proudly stated that you could get your taxes done by Jackson-Hewitt instore. That's right, not only can you do alla your grocery, basic goods, electronic, housewares, and toy shopping at Wal-Mart, you can also get your hair cut, buy booze and cigarettes, get your eyes checked out, sign up for a cellphone plan, and now, get your taxes done. Me and Bro have a running gag about how some day, there'll be Wal-Mart housing. Frankly, I'm starting to think that sooner or later there's gonna be Wal-Mart Dome Communities where the citizens of Wal-Mart will work for Wal-Mart credit which can then be spent on all the neccessities of life that can acquired at the UberWal-Mart within the Dome. And all the Domes will be connected so you'll never have to deal with anything or anyone not affiliated with Wal-Mart. The only people who will ultimately be left out of a deal like this'll be Californians, who don't know what the fuck a Wal-Mart is.

In other news, I thoroughly recommend Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers project from DC. I think I've brought it up before, but to reiterate, it is a series of seven, four-issue nonrelated interconnecting mini-series. There's already three issues out (Seven Soldiers #1, Shining Knight #1, Manhattan Guardian #1, and Zatanna #1 will be out next week (I scored my comic shop's preview copy)). Morrison is really cutting loose with this series and unleashing lots of crazy ideas onto the page with every issue, while at the same time I'm already begin to glimpse the bigger story he's ultimately going to tell. Again, highly recommended.

Updates A-Go-Go

Over on the main site, www.torcpress.com, we've got a brand new web-comic up. I gotta admit, I had to do a little meditating to come up with an idea this week, but hey, half the fun of writer's block is getting over it. Anyway, I've decided to break with tradition, so the current webcomic is not a stand alone like usual, but is part of a series. I haven't decided how many installments the thing will go yet. We'll just wait and see. I hope you all dig it.

As a quick reiteration, I'm going on Saturday afternoon/morning to Evansville to get my SPACE promotional mini-comic printed up. Anyone who wants one needs to e-mail me their mailing info before then.

The weather's nice out today.

Enough Blues, It's Time to Rock

Ha Ha! I got the promotional mini-comic done, baby! Whew, that's one less burden to bear. Here's the rundown: "SDF: SPACE Cadet" is a 24 page Black and White mini-comic. Size-wise it's about the size of a sheet of xerox paper folded in half, so when I say mini, I mean mini. The mini features a number of brand new strips, including Cactus Joe the Clown, Walt and Sped, Frimpy, aliceislost, the Cosmic Fool, and Me and Buzby. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it's a quick, enjoyable read in my opinion. The comic is exclusive to the Columbus, Ohio SPACE convention, where I will sell it as a stand alone for (approximately) a quarter or I'll be giving it away for free with any other purchase.

So, here's a special deal that I've cooked up. I'll be taking "SPACE Cadet" to Kinko's in Evansville this Saturday to print it up. I'll be printing 50 copies for SPACE (which, it'll be a miracle if I move that many, but I'm being optimistic), and I'll be printing up some additional ones that'll go to my various friends and family members. If anyone out there in ComputerLand who reads this blog would like a free copy of "SDF: SPACE Cadet", then all you gotta do is e-mail me with your mailing info, and I'll send you a free copy just as soon as I get em printed. My e-mail address can be found in the Contact section of the main site, www.torcpress.com. This offer is only good until Saturday, April 2, 2005.

Almost There...

I wanna curl up into a ball, pull a blanket over my head, and lapse into a nice, comfy coma.

I wanna empty what little money is left in my banking account, drive to St. Louis, hole up in a cheap motel, and spend alla my money on comics, movies, and strippers.

I wanna chuck my clothes and run through Clay City in my underwear screaming "The Red Coats are coming!" until the police show up and beat me to death on general principal.

In other words, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, and as a result, my head is chockfull of stupid, self-destructive ideas right now. Thankfully, I'm too old and mature for that crap (although two years ago I definately woulda done at least the first two after a week like this). Instead, I'm relax, play some video games, watch some movies (on VHS, my DVD player's still busted), and finish my promotional comic for SPACE. Yep. Now all I gotta do is survive 3 and a half more hours of work...

The Payoff

When I'm good and dead, and the alien scientists cut what's left of me open, they'll probably remark in their strange alien language (which will probably just sound like a buncha clicks and whistles to our ears) about how it was possible for an earthling could have possibly lived so long on a diet consisting heavily of Mexican food, frozen pizza, Mt. Dew, and Chocolate.

Or, in layman's terms, I feel pretty foul this morning. But, I also feel pretty good, cause the fruits of working my ass off this weekend are as such: I'm only three pages away from getting my promotional mini-comic for SPACE done. That probably means one page tonight, and either finish it up on Thursday or Friday. I'm trying a new format on the mini-comic this time around. It'll be actual mini-comic size (very small) this time, which means when I sell em for a quarter or give em away with purchase, I won't be losing two or three dollars on every comic for a change. Yah!

In other news, here are the other movies I watched this weekend: Run, Lola, Run (excellent, kinetic German film), The Hunted (the best Samurai movie NOT made by the Japanese), Hudson Hawk (woefully underrated Bruce Willis action/comedy/heist movie), and Slapshot (the only sports movie I own, and the only reason I own it is for the over the top violencia. On another side note, the guy who played Sherrif Harry Truman on Twin Peaks also plays the Hockey Player who refuses to play dirty. Small world.).

The Gauntlet

So, everyone once in a while, a creator has to grit his teeth, and get down to the business of creating. When your buddies call up on the phone, you gotta say, "Sorry, I can't go out to eat, I gotta draw." When there's a big poker tourney the next day, and it sounds like fun, you just gotta go, Nah, I gotta draw. So, I drew and watched movies while drawing. In fact, outside of sleeping and eating, this is the first break I've taken since I got off work and did up my bills on Friday night. No contact with the outside world. No fun. No nothin'. Just comics, comics, comics.

To make matters more inhuman, my DVD player bit the dust first thing Friday night. Thankfully, I have a fat collection of VHS at my disposal. Here's the movies I've watched to date this weekend while drawing: Dumb and Dumber (Jim Carrey's never been funnier), Nurse Betty (Morgan Freeman rules!), They Live (Roddy Piper vs. Yuppy Aliens), Fargo (Pure Cohen Brilliance), Me,Myself, and Irene (more Carrey/Farrely goodness, highly underrated), and Bride of Chucky (utterly braindead fun, perfect when you're utterly braindead). I think I watched some other stuff but by brain is jell0 and I have laundry to finish.

Senseless and Random

Before we begin this morning, I keep forgetting to mention that I've got a new webcomic up on the mainsite (www.torcpress.com). It features Broken Tea Cup and makes no sense, which means it's the perfect Broken Tea Cup story.

There are certain things that I wasn't built to deal with. Numbers and paperwork are two of those things. I'm getting ready to send away for my Ohio Transient License so I can... actually I don't know if I really NEED it to sell stuff at SPACE or not. Anyway, none of it makes sense, and I'm more confused than usual.

In certain big cities (especially New York) you could go your entire life without needing a car. If you can't walk to where you need to go, you can always take the bus/cab/subway. Hell, I spent a week in LA with my cousin, and I walked and subwayed it all over Hollywood and Vine. And LA's a pretty spread out city.
On the other hand, us Countryfolk need our cars. If you wanna get anywhere and do anything, you need some mode of transport. With my crappy ass station wagon in the shop, I've had to suffer the indignity of driving around in my brother's backup truck. This marvel of modern science is so broken down that the ignition has to be started with a pair of pliers, and the turn signal won't work unless you get it in just the right spot. So last night's trip to Olney was delightfully terrifying...

Last night I dreamed I was housesitting for Burt Reynolds. The walls of his house were this giant aquarium full of exotic fish. He had coffee makers and blenders on automatic timers. I tried closing and locking his sliding patio doors, but the damn things wouldn't lock. Incidentally, Burt himself didn't show up in my dream. Isn't that just like a celebrity?

Quick Review: Samurai Shamploo

The creators of the greatest Anime TV series ever, Cowboy Bebop, have returned with an excellente new concoction. Though it lacks Bebop's sheer perfection, this new series, "Samurai Shamploo", looks to be a killer thrill ride all the same.

The premise is fairly simple, a young orphan girl sets out to find a "Samurai who smells like sunflowers". To help/protect her in her travels she has enlisted a pair of samurai. Unfortunately, the two samurai not only don't want to work for her, the also desperately want to kill each other. Yeah. Samurai #1 (it's 6am and names escape me right now) is a wild man. He lives to fight for the sheer satisfaction of bloody combat. His utterly unique fighting style looks like a blend of swordfighting, brawling, and breakdancing (that's right, you heard me). Samurai #2 is, of course, his polar opposite. He is calm, quiet, and studious, and only seeks the perfection of the blade. His fighting style is of the "one draw/one kill" school. It's like chocolate and vanilla ice cream together in the same bucket.

The introductory DVD features 4 episodes. Episode 1 has the traditional introduction to the characters and premise. Episode 2 features our crew versus a quartet of assassins. And Episodes 3 and 4 feature our group becoming briefly separated and having a string of adventures in a town run by rival Yakuza gangs.

The mood of the series is, for the most part, fairly irreverant. The fight scenes fucking kick fucking ass. The characterizations are spot on (much like Bebop, the characters only have the thinest facade of comraderie). If I'm gonna complain about anything, it's the soundtrack, which is inexplicably full of rap and hip-hop. Oh well, a minor flaw in what is otherwise one of the best Anime I've seen in quite some time.

More March Mayhem

Kharmic Payback (according to the New American Josetionary), is when something bad happens to a person as a direct result of something good happening to a person. A Monkey's Paw (also according to the Josetionary) is when you wish for something, and your wish is granted along with some horrible side effect. I'm trying to decide whether this weekend was a case of Kharmic Payback or a Monkey's Paw.

The situation was simple, I wanted to go to Evansville, IN, one of the larger population centers within a two hour drive. My goal was to go to Kinkos and experiment with the format of the Mini-comic I'll be offering at SPACE. In addition, I decided "screw the budget"; I was gonna buy some stuff. Welp, everything went according to plan, but on the ride home the heater core on my car blew, which not only made the ride home both cold but also challenging (big fog/frost problems). Now it's gonna take $300 to fix. That's one of the many reasons my blog entry on Sunday was so melancholy. Anyway, so what do you people think, Kharmic Payback (I had a good day and as I result I paid for it with a busted car) or Monkey's Paw (Screw the Budget: Okay, now I got a $300 expense).

In more important news, I got lots of stuff to review including some anime (Ninku, Samurai Shamploo), movies (The Thing, Zaitochi), and comics (Shaolin Cowboy, The Forever People). Hopefully, I can squeeze some in in the next few days.

Give Me Something to Believe In

Y'know, I was gonna do a long, bitchy rant about how angry I am with everything right now. Screw it. There's good in this world. Sometimes it's hard to see, but it's there. Maybe it's just when someone works at their job with a little extra care and attention. Maybe it's how someone will bake a good meal for people they love. Maybe it's when someone goes out of their way to help someone else. Maybe it's how this little old lady at my Church waits until everyone has been through the line before she gets her food, even though we should be serving her. We can't save the world, and half the time we can't even save each other, or even ourselves. But when we try, even just a little, that's when I can see the lights in our eyes. That's when I can see the soul and know that there's hope. Not neccessarily for a better tomorrow or a better world, or hell, even for an afterlife. No, what I see is hope that all of this, all the shit and dross, ultimately has some meaning.

Cheap and Greasy

I live in Clay City, IL, population 950 people. We have one gas station, one package liquor store, one grocery store, one tavern, one bar, and one pizza place. That's really all we need in this small a town. Welp, a new Casey's just opened, which, for those of you outside Southern Illinois, is a chain of gas stations that also sell pizza, alcohol, and a smattering of food items. In previous blogs I have expressed concern that the opening of a Casey's could prove detrimental to the fate of not only the other gas station, but also some of the town's other businesses.

Anyway, last night, I'm watching "Cowboy Bebop: the Movie" (damn the fight scene between Spike and Vincent is so freakin cool I hope I can do a fight scene that dances like that some day...) and working on the Comic. I finish the film and decide that, yep, it's food time. Check the fridge. I got crap. I have the ingrediants to make things that are edible, but no center piece (aka, no meat). Screw that, no quick Quesadillas tonight, pal. So, I resign myself to a drive to Flora (ten minutes up, shop, ten minutes back) to get some groceries. By the time I'd be done it'd probably be nine, damning any further progress on the book. But as I'm putting on my red canvas hi-tops, an idea occurs to me: Casey's just opened and they sell Cheap and Greasy Pizza by the slice. Moo-ha.

Round trip: Five Minutes. Total Cost: $2.10. Satisfaction: Infinite. Had plenty of time to watch "Lost Highway" (We've met before, haven't we?...In your house...In fact, I'm there right now...Call Me.) and work up some more pencils.

The Moral: Hypocrisy is easy when you're hungry and cheap.

Men in Suits

Before we get started, wing on over to the main site (www.torcpress.com). We've got a brand new bio in Cast section up for King Smooth. Admittedly, there's not much information on the Spook yet, but I think I did a pretty kickin drawing of the guy, and Shafe's coloring job was top notch, so check it out. On with the Rant.

I don't trust Men in Suits. I know it sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. Suits may look good, but they are extremely uncomfortable. The only people who wear Suits are people who are so obsessed with their status that they'd wear something so freakin uncomfortable on a regular basis. People who are obsessed with status are inherently materialistic, if not downright greedy people. Greedy people aren't to be trusted, cause most of em would just assume sell someone down the river than deal with people honestly. Did that make sense? It's 6am, and I'm having trouble getting my ideas out properly.

(Now, this leads to a number of arguments, such as, what about Women in Suits, or what about Preachers? Well, on the Women front, I'm too busy being attracted to care, and as for Preachers, I've been a Southern Baptist my entire life, so the one thing I know for sure is that you never trust a Preacher regardless of what he's wearing...)

The point of all of this is that this ridiculous bias can be seen in my artwork. Many of the "villians" in my comics wear suits, including most of the Ortex characters, the CellPhoneMen from Broken Tea Cup, and the Little Old Hag's bodyguards from the first King Smooth story. Waitaminute... King Smooth is wearing a suit, and he's a "good guy" right? Hmmm.... Am I going against my own bias, or am I hinting that the mysterious Mr. Smooth is a little bit more sinister than I'm letting on...

It's Nice, but It Needs More Blood

My first Xerox comic, "Pulp Horrorshow #1", has a scene on page 2 where Cactus Joe the Clown is slicing an unfortunate Ortex security guard in half, vertically. Despite how primitive (or more primitive, depending on your opinion of my current art) that scene looked, it was bloody as hell, and that was good.

Over the top violence has always been a stock in trade in my comics. It's probably a result of watching more B-Grade horror films and violent Japanese anime than any human has a right to. In fact, it was anime that got me started on the whole inordinate amount of blood thing. I remember the first time I saw "MD Giest", this one dude gets his hands cut off, and it looks like firehoses of blood are spraying out his stumps. That was an eye opener to say the least.

My comics aren't always violent (in fact, "SDF: Strange Patterns" is pretty docile compared to "Crumpled Planet"), but when violent stuff happens, I want to push it to its most ridiculous extreme. Can't say why, it's just the way we do things here at TORC Press.

Smoke

So, awhile back, I read a little news blurb about how Joe Queseda, Editor and Chief over at Marvel Comics, had made the decision that no Marvel characters would be depicted smoking in an all ages Marvel comic again. To say I had a rather adverse reaction to such a meaningless piece of news would be an understatement.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't like tobacco. Besides the obvious Lung Cancer thing, cigarettes are addictive, cause premature aging, screw up your voice (Joseph like to sing with the radio), and make you smell like butt. I don't smoke, and I don't condone or promote smoking. If I ever have kids (insert laughter here) I will do everything in my power to make sure they don't take up smoking.

Now, having said all that, smoking is a facet of life. I've had lots of friends who smoke, not mention a very large cross section of my family smokes. In the Marvel Universe (finally bringing this back to comics) there were numerous smokers, including Mr. Fantastic, the Thing, Nick Fury, J. J. Jameson, and the big gun himself, Wolverine. Were these guys promoting smoking? Hell, I never really thought so. If anything, you'd think a superhero would promote the idea of acting like a good guy way more than he'd be pushing cigs. Being a smoker was just part of their character, that's all.

So, here's my little declaration. My comics have smokers in them. My comics had smokers in them before now, and there'll be smokers after now. I'm not promoting or condoning smoking, I'm just saying, as an artist and a writer, that some people smoke. That's it. Heck, I've got one character coming up in "SDF: Perfect/Ugly" called El Gorio who will always be drawn with a big, fat, cigar sticking out of his mouth. That's just part of who this guy is. Hm, wonder if I'll win one of those Black Lung awards...

Suffering through March

Bah. March. Second lamest month of the year, after November. Everything just sucks about March. The weather, my allergies (which routinely go berzerk), movies (see my review of "Constantine" a few blogs down), and usually world and local events turn to crap. There's a few good comics out (once again, Grant Morrison's "Seven Soldiers" project comes highly recommended), but otherwise it's all boredom and boredom somemore. So, instead of complaining every day about alla this, I'm just gonna get it out of my system now, and not blog until I'm inspired again. Which will probably be Thursday after the new comics come out.

Attack of the 50 Ft Englishman

Grant Morrison is the current cutting edge in comic book writing. His book someone manage to get produce by a mainstream publisher (DC/Vertigo), and yet are completely insane. And I mean that in a good way. His latest series of mini-series, "The Filth" (microscopic Fetish Police/Garbagemen recycling the various abortions of reality), "Sea Guy" (Superheroes and Arthurian Legend mixed with Bubble Gum Pop and dumped into a Meatgrinder), WE3 (the Homeward Boundesque adventures of a Dog, Cat, and Rabbit who all just happened to be Governmentally funded Cyborg killing Machines), and Vimnarama (8 ft tall Superheroes from India) have all pushed, mashed, and flattened the envelope of what comics can do.

Morrison's latest little project is definately his most ambitious and mainstream since his infamous JLA run. It's called "Seven Soldiers". Here's the breakdown: "Seven Soldiers" is two bookend comics, with 7, four-issue mini-series between the first and last issues. Each comic is independant of its predeccessor (spell?), but at the same time if you read the entire run of 23 books, you'll be able to assemble this big ass, complex story. The book is set in the DCU and all of the characters are third and fourth rate characters, many of which I've never heard of before.

The first of the bookends, as well as the first issue of "Shining Knight" came out this week. The first "Seven Soldiers" bookend definately sets the tone. Fast, a little wierd, a little confusing, and ultra exciting. The art (and no, I forgot who the artist was) is utterly primo, and the story's already got me intrigued enough to pick up everything (course I was gonna anyway, but I digress...). "Shining Knight" is a crazed, space age take on Arthurian Legend, featuring an Army of Hi-Tech Knights of the Round battling an army of monstrous Demons in a City in the Sky. Our hero is the lacklusterly named, but still pretty cool looking, Sir Justin and his winged horse. The art is magnificent and the pace is intentionally set on super fast. Great stuff, which is cool considering I thought "Shining Knight" would be one of the weaker books.

Puzzle Pieces

As usual, it's March, and I've got too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Besides the fact that I've been screwed up because of my allergies (which has cut into my sleeptime, further screwing me up), I haven't got a start on my taxes, and I don't have anything (including hotel reservations) done for SPACE. This is not good. So, gotta get on the ball, gotta get stuff done, gotta get off my dead ass.

Gotta find something inspiring enough to warrant a more interesting blog entry.