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Things are batshit crazy over in the Archieverse

I may just have to go out and buy this.

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Thank you internet for telling me about the existence of something I had no inkling of; namely the debut of Foreskin Man, the “Intactivist” hero whose new adventures promise to be hair raising if not so very wide ranging.

I get that the way to win hearts and minds is to enlist the next generation in your cause, and on the whole I feel that there are very few good arguments for guys to be cut, but I can’t look at this site without being skeeved. Take a look at the character bios and tell me that you want to spend time with any of these people. And the sub plot of a biotech firm engaged in a conspiracy to harvest foreskins? The notion of a “Museum of Genital Integrity”? There’s such a thing as overplaying your hand.

The idea of a world where the biggest problem for a super hero to tackle is curcumcision is oddly optimistic when you think about it. Or maybe Foreskin Man is just biding his time until he can take on all forms of genital mutilation. Hopefully we’ll see some cool crossovers – I’m personally praying for one with Big Boy.

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I wish I could draw like Kate Beaton. It’s a deceptively simple, sketchy style that encompasses a whole range of facial expressions and body language. When you think about what’s going on there its two things that are not easy: having a repertoire of different ways of drawing people (including costumes and hairstyles) and knowing what emotional emphasis you want to place on a particular character in each panel. I love how effortless she makes it all look.

Of course I also wish I could write jokes like her as well. That’s pretty much just as hard.

Hark, a Vagrant! is one of the funniest things online. Check it out.

In other news, I had a day of collapse yesterday after a very busy and very fun few weeks. Thanks to friends I have some new personal adornment, and I’m diving back in to the work environment.

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Part of my office chair fell off last night. What will provide me with high tech lumbar support now?

It’s always a pleasure to see a friend teach well. So it was a good night at TES.

I’m late to the pod cast party, but now they are the soundtrack to my commute. Thanks, Thor for pointing out Bad At Sports for the art stuff. Most of what I listen to is heavily weighted towards comics and I just recently added Art & Story, which seems to me to be genuinely useful from the creator point of view.

The art and story site has a little brush inking tutorial on it which gave me a clearer understanding of comic inking than any of the dozen books I have on comic technique. Sometimes you just have to see someone else do it.

Similarly, a very nice class at TES last night. I feel bad that the increase in work responsibilities has curtailed my time with the organization, but it felt nice to be back.

The podcast thing – it’s a bit like my own privately curated radio station. I get accustomed to the personalities on particular shows, which means that I’ve been mourning the ongoing hiatus of The Buck and Bobaloo Show. Reading the blogs of the respective stars doesn’t quite make up for listening in on their cozy weekly byplay.

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Lehigh was full of beans this morning: rolling, tugging, snorting. I had an excellent cup of the coffee that D-L brought me from the Mission and had sufficient hot water for the shower. Allergies were under control on the morning walk, and I made it to work in time for my meeting. So life, as they say, is good.

I am going to have to bear down and figure out some time to work on new pieces. That goal has still been eluding me.

Again on the plus side I managed to snag a wonderful graphic memoir at MoCCA: Adam Bourret’s I’m Crazy, which my friend Tony had also recommended without me knowing. I’m going to pass on the recommendation: I don’t love all the drawing, but the writing and pacing are both beautiful, and the story is genuinely affecting. I read it in bits and pieces over the past week, and loved it.

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I went from: a quick return to MoCCA, where I saw LJ’s VernNYC, to the East Village for the gallery talk of my friend Linda Matalon. I got to meet up with Dan And Julia, and then had dinner and extravagant frozen treats with Angel and Sebastien.

It was a busy weekend. Generally feeling good – but not so very reflective. What with all my new comics and the art I saw, I’ve got the inspiration for some new work.

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Here’s how I knew I was at a comic geek event: at the door, the cashier asked me “Has anyone ever told you you look like Alan Moore?”

I knew that MoCCA’s fest was going to be chock full of delights but the first thing I did after assuring the cashier that no one had ever told me that in my life, was to beat a path to the table where lj star Liz Baillie was selling copies of her new opus “Freewheel” I was so excited about getting a copy that I forgot to look around the event for the green flyer that could have gotten me two bucks off. Oh well, if there’s anyone who deserves full price it’s Liz. I got all fanboyish when she signed my book and then turned around to see my old friend Tony right next to me. That made sense because in addition to being one of the prime movers of New York’s cigar and pipe scene, Tony makes his living by being an agent for independant comic artists. It was great to see him and he started to show me around the con, he filled me in on some good news that he’s had recently. He pointed out some books that I think I’m going to have to go back for tomorrow, because just as I predicted there was a ton of stuff for me to spend money on, and I decided that having bought a two day pass I’d take it easy on the first day and go back to scoop up stuff I really wanted tomorrow.

One thing I will say: it’s been years since I was at a comic event, and in the interim it seems like the ranks fo the independant comics world have been filled with utterly cute furry guys, so much so that I was whipping my head around every two seconds, from the books at the tables to the hot pocket bears perusing them. All in all, it was great to be out in a scene that wasn’t my usual one.

I included the above picture in case you were curious to know what collating looked like.

Oh and I saw Jess Fink!
And Dean Haspiel!
And KIM FUCKING DEITCH!!!

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Had somewhat grandiose hopes of cutting my book collection by about a third to donate to ICP’s benefit book sale. That isn’t happening, but at least I’m getting six boxes of them out of my house. And boy am I ever reminded of how many books I have on hand to read.

Messing around with a new lens for the camera – it seems a little soft to me, but at least it’s lighter to carry around. And I’ve been meeting some commitments, which feels good.

I am indeed happy to have gotten my taxes filed a couple of weeks ago, working alongside Thor. We have an annual “file together” coaching session, which always helps me emotionally. The net effect of my filing is that my tax dept should be whittled down considerably, meaning that I should be clear of it by the end of this year. Here’s the lesson: Always file your taxes, kids! At least 50% of my obligation has been penalties and interest for years that I didn’t file.

So maybe this is all spring cleaning in action. The books were just picked up (three cheers for folks who show up when they say they will, even if I’m not always one of them), so I think I’m going to take myself out to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s Art Fest for a little treat.

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Mom just swung by the office, and while I know she’ll want to kill me for posting this view of her, I have to post this, my favorite of the pictures I just shot. But here’s the thing: I’m shocked at the difference in quality between the camera I just lost, and this the backup one. The ability to handle interior light conditions is vastly different. Now given, this current camera is about four or five years old. It’s just that I can really see the difference in lens quality between it and the Lumix.

I might have to start toting around my DSLR. I’m turning into one of those photographers I always used to crack wise about.

Over on The Onion’s AV Club, I see that Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson is giving a rare interview. I may have said this before here, but I don’t really care for that strip, which provokes passionate devotion among many of my friends. Some of it is beautifully drawn, but I just never thought that the writing was much more than a few stock situations reshuffled, and I was pretty much repulsed by Calvin, who struck me as a thug in training, unredeemed by his flights of fantasy. It’s Krazy Kat, where you’re mostly being asked to root for Ignatz. But then I always hated Dennis the Menace, too. Maybe I see Calvin as exemplary of the boys that used to frighten and make me nervous as a kid: boys who delighted in smashing stuff and running around. I suppose we are meant to see him as creative, and rebellious, but I just don’t get it.

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Shoulders aching. It’s been a bumbling weekend. A little sketching got done. Things interrupted other things. Saturday’s weather was simply wretched: sloppy not snow not rain, falling so slowly that it didn’t count as sleet either. But its damp and cold penetrated everywhere, especially for under-dressed me. I finished up reading The Year’s Best Science Fiction 14, but it was probably wrong to read it all at one go. I think the editors favor a kind or story that hits very predictable marks, and by then end of the anthology I was too often anticipating the plot twists to b e able to enjoy the writing.

Lately I’ve been trying to gingerly re-approach the things that were important to me as a kid: science fiction and comics and it’s a little bit rough going with both. There’s so much out there, and as in everything else, so much of it isn’t very good. I left comic fandom in part because of fatigue over drawn out punchfests that padded stories into multi issue affairs with very little actual payoff. In trying to pick them up again I’m seeing the same thing at work.

Of course genres are only as good as their individual practitioners, and my sample has been pretty small, so I shouldn’t really leap to conclusions. Still I’m much happier reading obscure kiddie comics from the fifties than today’s superhero offerings. And learning more from the drawings, too.

The new book is Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, which is the kind of light non fiction that I love, but which always makes me faintly embarrassed, like I should know all this this stuff already, should have read the tougher science books that he is popularizing here. Truth is, it’s like a science fiction book itself, with the bones exposed: post apocalyptic, right? I’m comforted by the notion of the earth being able to continue on its way without the noisome presence of human beings, and even though artists are supposed to be in the immortality business, making things to outlast ourselves, I’m happy to contemplate the oblivion which awaits all of my works.

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