Freak Out

Ahem.

INLAND EMPIRE. ST. LOUIS, MO. TIVOLI THEATRE. SATURDAY. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE.

Seriously, anyone who's got the day off and wants to go with me to watch it, drop me a line. But I'm going. This weekend. I'm taking no damn chances.

Sometimes the world doesn't suck as much as it normally does.

I CAN'T WAKE UP!

It all started a couple of weeks ago. The unemployment check showed up two days late. Now, my finances were pretty much stretched as far as they could go, and a two day late check didn't help. Then, I looked at the check, did the math, and realized that the unemployment would almost cover my two bills that week. Which would have been swell, except, in the words of Bill Cosby, I HAVEN'T EATEN YET. This was bad news, as suddenly my plan to use every last inch of March to get things going didn't seem so feasible anymore. In fact, if I didn't do something soon, I probably wouldn't make it to the end of March. How long can the human body go without food?

So, as with every time I get my ass in trouble, I called Dad. Now, while I've been gallavanting around trying to turn TORC Press into a viable business entity, Dad's been working on turning the sawmill into a one man operation. When I called, he was almost done, and although the place was designed for one man, it actually would work even better with two. So Dad offered me my old job back.

I had three choices. 1)Scrape together any money I could and try to survive out the rest of the month while eating PB&J. 2)Accept a minimum wage job that would actually give me less than I was getting on unemployment. 3) Go back to the mill.

Take a wild guess what I did.

So, I've just spent my first week back at the mill adapting to the changes in my job. I'm rebuilding my finances. I'm tired as hell. I'm really disappointed in myself that I couldn't make anything work. I'm really disillusioned about pretty much everything right now. I'm kinda in a mental coma right now, and I'm trying really really hard not to get any more depressed.

But tomorrow is another day. I'll come out of this. I'm like the Joker. No matter how hard you try you can't kill my ass. It's just gonna take a little time.

Anyway, here's the stuff that's resulted from alla this.

1) My work on my novel, my children's book, and any of my other non-comic related work is on indefinate hiatus. No time, and right now, no energy.

2) I'm not going to Heroes Con this year. They doubled the price of tables, and they didn't bother updating the Artist Alley info until a week ago. I can't afford a table right now (I COULD HAVE BACK IN JANUARY WHEN I WANTED TO GET A TABLE). Which sucks. I liked Heroes Con. It was a good show last year. Apparently I'm not the only one who needs to work on their organizational skills.

Eh.

Gulatta!

Right.

So, awhile back I was thinking about the 07 Convention season, and more specifically, I was thinking about promo items. Obviously, my first thought was to do what I usually do, and work up a handful of little minicomics, which I could sell for 50 cents. As I was thinking about it, I thought about the Cons of doing the minis. For starters, they were small, so it was harder to draw the minis. Secondly, there wasn't enough pages to really tell a cool story. I had to get in, do something cool, and then write The End. Sure, Walt and Sped worked surprisingly well in that format, but my Clown mini-stories got repetitive real quick. Also, I always thought they looked a little shoddy. Lastly, they were a lot of work (I hand made them at Kinkos) for virtually no payoff (Each mini cost 49 cents to make and I charged 50 cents or gave them away free with purchase. In a case of SUPREME stupidity, at SPACE in 2005 I made minis that cost $1.00 per unit to make and only charged 25 cents, or gave them away with purchase. So if you've got a copy of SDF: Space Case, cherish it, cause you've got 75 cents of a moronic self publisher's money.)

At the same time that I was trying to think of a better promo item, I was toying around with an idea for an All Ages Book. The reason why I wanted to do an All Ages book was two fold. 1) It could be something I could market to younger children and the more conservative types, thus broadening my audience, and 2) I just kinda wanted to do something laid back and fun, sort of a homage to 60s comics and the old Gladstone comics. Anyway, the idea occured to me to combine the two ideas into one new one. I could make it a 12 page book, print it on cheaper paper, chuck the glossy cover, and I would have a book that was comic sized, long enough to tell a decent story, but still cheap enough to produce that I could sell it for a buck without losing my shirt. And thus, Gulatta! was born.

The concept of Gulatta! is pretty simple. The story is set in Big Town, a city populated almost exclusively by Freaks, Geeks, Monsters, and Masked Wierdos. "Normal" people are in the minority. (Sorta the opposite of the Clown's Mud Village, where CJ, Dolly, and Pengy are only a few of the oddball characters in town, while the majority of the village is populated by normal people) Big Town is divided into a number of offbeat districts (more on that in future issues). Despite its oddball populace, Big Town is a very peaceful town. Or at least it would be, if it wasn't for an evil spy organization called O.V.E.R.T. For some strange reason, the human agents of O.V.E.R.T. are continuously launching attacks on the populace of Big Town, using hi-tech gadgetry to even the odds with the supernaturally powered denizens of Big Town.

Even though it's a Black and White comic, the setting and characters of Gulatta! are very colorful and offbeat. It's an All Ages book, so there's no bloodshed or gore or cursing or sexy stuff, but there's still plenty of action and much of the usual TORC craziness. Also, there's some cool new characters introduced, such as:

Akuma Boy- A Japanese Chaos Spirit trapped in the body of an American Punk!

Mr. Dark- The Mysterious Masked Man whose Secret Identity is Everyone Else!

The Puzzelor- Who or What is the Puzzelor?

Anyway, it's 12 pages in glorious B&W for $1 plus $1 S&H. It can be ordered online at www.torcpress.com/comicshop.html or via snail mail at:

TORC Press
c/o Joseph Morris
330 S 5th St SW
Clay City, IL 62824

Odds and Whatnots

Ugh. What a week. March is always a bitch, and it looks like despite my best efforts, it looks like things are gonna go right down the crapper like it always does. Oh well, just grit your teeth and power through.

Not a lot to report today. I caught Borat. It's not bad, but not as awesome as everyone says. The deleted scenes were surprisingly good. How come no one recognized the guy? Am I the only fan of the Ali G show in America? (Incidentally, I always liked the Ali G character better than Borat, that's just me)

Uh. What else? Bro's got our latest Crudimation project up on Youtube. You can check it out on his myspace. Just head to my myspace and click "The Dr. Orphyus Project" on the Friends List. I'm too lazy to look up any links right now.

Groan.

Marvel Can Kiss My...

Captain America is dead. I'm going to type that again. Captain America is D.E.A.D. Captain America. Icon. One of a handful of pointmen for Marvel Comics. Marvel's first truly successful character. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's oldest and most enduring character. Dead. Killed by a sniper. A sniper. A bullet. No epic showdown. No two fisted slugfest on top of a nuclear missle flying at the speed of sound over the Atlantic. No supervillian. No nothing.

I'm pissed off at this, if you can't tell. I'm pissed off at sloppy writing. I'm pissed off that one of my favorite characters of all time got snuffed out in a boring way just to stir up controversy and make some sales. Is it stupid that I'm pissed off that a fictional character died when there's lots of real life tragedies happening every day that I should be pissed off about? Sure, it's stupid. But my life is fiction. I live in a stupid little town full of stupid little people who do stupid little things. Real life sucks ass, and I want as little to do with the damn thing as possible. In other words, I reserve the right to be really, really angry right now.

Marvel. Fucking Marvel. Con artists and thieves is more like it. Their list of crimes stretches on into forever. How many creators have they screwed over? How characters have they ripped off or stolen? Marvel and DC and Archie literally conspired to Murder EC Comics back in the 1950s. Then Kirby and Lee come along and build the Marvel Age of comics from scratch, but when Kirby wants his original art back so he can give it to his grandchildren, Marvel says, "Fuck you Kirby, you're gonna have to sue us if you want it back!" And how come Lee gets credit for everything? Lee MAYBE came up with SOME of the basic ideas. Hell, he had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the creation of Captain America. Or the Silver Surfer (my favorite comic book character ever) for that matter. Man I'm pissed.

And you know what's sad, is that it takes some talentless hack writer writing some stupid crappy story and killing off one my favorite characters for me to think about how crappy an organization Marvel Comics really is. Hell, DC's no better. They sued Fawcett Comics because they claimed Captain Marvel was a rip off of Superman. Anyone with a brain in their head can tell that Captain Marvel isn't anything like Superman, but DC won the lawsuit, which drove Fawcett into bankrupcy (spell?), then DC had the audacity to buy up Fawcett! Scumbags!

Anyway, this is the last straw. I'm boycotting Marvel comics and other Marvel products. At least for six months. Maybe forever. I'm not buying any DCU comics for a good long while either. I'm still down with Vertigo and Wildstorm, because at least those branches have creator ownership policies. I'm just saying, enough is enough. Enough crappy storytelling. Enough callous disregard for characterization. Enough heinous deeds.

Or, as the title says, Marvel can kiss my ass.

What's New...

Alrighty, been awhile since I've posted. Thankfully, no one reads this thing, so moving on. Here's what's going down at TORC Central.

If you haven't scored a copy yet, head over to the comic shop at www.torcpress.com/comicshop.html and order a copy of New Super Duper Fun Comix Book A. It's a big old bag of fun. Trust me.

Had a nice show in Urbana on Sunday. Made some scratch, met some cool people, and overall had a nice day. Also, there was a Chevys near the show. Fresh Mex is a-otay by me.

Scored Terry Gilliam's film "Tideland" as well this weekend. Easily Gilliam's most dangerous film to date, the film is about a young girl who grows up with a pair of drug addicted parents who end up dumping her out in the middle of nowhere. There's drug use and a couple of near pedophilic moments, so it's not for the faint of heart. Having said that, if you've got the guts, make sure to catch it. It's dark and strange and funny and hauntingly beautiful and easily the best movie Gilliam's made since "Fear and Loathing". Sorry "Brothers Grimm"...

Currently trying to brainstorm ideas for a newspaper strip, as well as my next novel (and no, I still haven't finished my current novel, but it never hurts to think ahead). The deadline on giving up my pie in the sky plans and getting a Real Job is getting closer alla the time, so I gotta keep thinking and trying to find my way into the Promised Land.

My next show is in early April in Lexington, KY.