Where I Be.
Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been working a ton this week. I don’t know if I put this on here, but I got the job I’d applied for. No, not the Xpress job, but the other one. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s at a non-profit just down the road and I work helping people finding jobs. So far, I really like it (although with me being a night-owl the 7:00 AM start time is a bit challenging).
The job is nice, but it’s just a small bit of change that seems to be happening. I don’t know, maybe it’s because of spring erupting all around me but I have spent the past week or two examining and reexamining what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and what I want to do. After much consideration I’ve decided that I really don’t like the whole peddling my writing for dollars thing.
Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy writing. I enjoy it so much that even now as you read this I am probably writing. I just, over the past year to year and a half have really hated the “freelance writer as street urchin” lifestyle: looking for entertainment and art in cities that vaguely interests me, contacting a newspaper editor in that city or town, agreeing to write about it for a price, contacting the artist in question and talking to them about it, writing about the art and sending it to an editor. The whole process seems rather trite and dumb to me right now. I think right now I want to worry about the art and artists in my own neighborhood and work with them. I don’t want to try to make money off of someone else’s creativity for the moment. I want to make money off of my own brain and mind, off of my own ideas.
Right now that means writing things for me: this blog, a comic book (hopefully something online that I’m scheming right now with a really talented artist that a sibling of an ex girlfriend introduced me to), some small bits of fiction and even some music. That’s right, music.
I’ve been playing about once or twice with my friends John Biggs and John Starling. It’s been rewarding and challenging just getting down into the music room and making a noise. The best part is that the noises aren’t like the noises I’ve made in past bands. Instead of writing three minute punk rock songs, these are rhythmic and complicated pieces of music full of dissonant guitars, funky bass, and rock solid drumming. The songs we write aren’t songs per se, but just blasts of creativity that only exist when we are playing them. I don’t know if we’ll ever play a show or record a proper song, but the music we do create is some of the most satisfying stuff that I’ve ever been a part of.
So, I know that I do one of these State of the Bugg entries every few months here, but just keep an eye on this blog. It is growing and changing along with me. I hope the few of you that read this will stay along for the ride.
Dick Giordano, 1932-2010
I just found out from a high school friend who has worked with The Hero Initiative that Dick Giordano died this morning.
For those of you not in the comic book geek sphere, Mr. Giordano was a longtime comic book artist, inker and editor. For me though, he was kind of like The Crypt Keeper for DC Comics.
As a kid, I grew up a Marvel nerd. They had bright, shiny heroes that seemed a bit more realistic than those two dimensional heroes on Super Friends that I watched on television every afternoon. Spider-Man was a real guy who lived in a city that I could find on a map (and that I dreamed of going to and writing Spider-Man’s stories when I got older). I loved and cherished my Marvel Comics that I read as a kid (in fact, the first comic book that I remember possessing was Amazing Spider-Man #193 and it sits in a frame on my wall- the only comic that I’ve enshrined) and thought DC were just bad comics.
Then, as luck would have it, I got a stack of DC comics from a yard sale. Among the copies of Jemm Son of Saturn, Legion of Super-Heroes, and Blue Devil comics were some Superman and Action Comics titles, a few issues of Batman and even some Justice League of America (the Detroit version of the League which was led by Aquaman!). The stories were mostly the continuity-rich, DC Comics that I love now, but were sort of impenetrable to my eight or nine year-old brain at the time. I do remember two things that I liked about those comics: the characters could say “damn” and that these weren’t the boring, vanilla heroes that hung out with Wendy, Marvin and Wonderdog on the Super Friends cartoon. So I decided to check out a few more of these DC Comics. Luckily, I had a guide.
In the mid-eighties Dick Giordano was the Executive Editor at DC and wrote a column that appeared in most of the monthly titles called Meanwhile…- it was sort of DC’s monthly hype machine in the years before the internet and Previews being available to anyone but retailers. In this column, Mr. Giordano often wrote about what creator was doing what series or the latest office news at DC, but he also spent a great deal of time hyping comics that were coming out soon (hence the Crypt Keeper comparison). It was there that I learned about Crisis on Infinite Earths and the John Byrne Superman reboot. Mr. Giordano had a style of hyping comics that wasn’t as manic as Marvel’s. While they were in your face and screaming that the new issue of New Mutants PROMISED TO BE THE BIGGEST ISSUE EVER, Giordano just kind of mentioned it in an aside right after saying who won the latest inter-office softball game. As a comics fan and as a nine year-old, I wasn’t used to being spoken to like an adult, and I really liked it.
So if Amazing Spider-Man #193 was my ground zero for comics in general, Dick Giordano and his Meanwhile… column was the first flickering of my comics adolescence. I discovered from him why Superman mattered. I discovered why Batman was a bad ass. I learned that history does matter in comics. I learned all of these things from Dick Giordano.
Later on, after he left DC and settled into a semi-retirement, Mr. Giordano wrote books on how to draw comics and still remained active. I always got the feeling from the guy that he loved what he did, and he did it for his entire life. I can only hope that I find that kind of happiness in my professional life one day, and that I do it with the kind of class that Giordano did it with. Who knows, maybe someone will look back upon my career and remember that when they were a nine year-old I spoke to them like they were a person with adult tastes and concerns. A lot of people want a million dollars before they die, I’d take that.
Tethered
Last night I stayed up way too late thinking about all of the things that I was going to do today. I sat in my bed with a my notebook that I usually write comic book scripts and story ideas in and made a list of things that I was planning on doing today, and began to think that today (Wednesday) was the last day this week that I could work on my writing for any sustained period of time. The weekend would be here, and with that came me trying as hard as I could to spend as much time with Jessie as I could while making the hour-long drive to work. I’m tired just thinking about it.
It was in those late hours trying to organize my day into shifts of writing that I wanted to do for money and writing that I wanted to do for myself that I realized something.
I realized that I hate my job. That’s a frightening feeling.
Is He Strong? Listen Bud, He’s Got Radioactive Blood.
First off, go read this. For those of you too lazy to click on a link, I’ll copy and paste it here for you.
Thai fireman in ‘spider-man’ rescue of autistic boy
BANGKOK (AFP) – A Thai fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony, police said Tuesday.
Teachers at a special needs school in Bangkok alerted authorities on Monday when an autistic pupil, scared of attending his first day at school, sat out on the third-floor ledge and refused to come inside, a police sergeant told AFP.
Despite teachers’ efforts to beckon the boy inside, he refused to budge until his mother mentioned her son’s love of superheroes, prompting fireman Sonchai Yoosabai to take a novel approach to the problem.
The rescuer dashed back to his fire station and made a quick change into a Spider-Man costume before returning to the boy, he said.
“I told him Spider-Man is here to rescue you, no monsters are going to attack you and I told him to walk slowly towards me as running could be dangerous,” Somchai told local television.
The young boy immediately stood up and walked into his rescuer’s arms, police said.
Somchai said he keeps the Spider-Man costume and an outfit of Japanese television character Ultraman at the station in order to liven up school fire drills.
Normally I hate heartwarming stories like this, but something about this story grabbed me. It’s probably because it’s in my dork wheelhouse, granted, but this is why super heroes matter. They give children a sense of morality, they give children a sense that in a world full of bad people who want to hurt them that there is some brightly colored person out there who is looking out for them.
I remember having nightmares as a kid and my grandma letting me stay up in the living room with her. I read Spider-Man and she read Harlequin novels. Most of the time my grandmother’s company kept me safe from whatever those dreams were, but sometimes it was Spider-Man who made me feel safe. Either were fine with me.
Until later, be good.
The King of Rock N’ Roll, Martin Luther King, Billy Jean King and the Last Son of Krypton.
Thirty One Years ago yesterday, Elvis Presley died a sad a broken man in Memphis Tennessee.
I’ve been wanting to write about Elvis for a while, but I didn’t know exactly what to say about him. I suppose like most people who weren’t alive when Elvis was alive or vital, Elvis isn’t exactly an exciting concept. More often than not, we are confronted with the sad, Vegas playing, rhinestone encrusted, fat and miserable King. Instead of the young, dangerous messenger or rockabilly that he was. I’m kind of glad that I didn’t discover Elvis until much later on in my life. I’m glad that I learned about punk rock and had that burn out inside of me before Elvis came into my world.
Punk rock promises adolescent boys a life of danger, of rejecting what has come before us, of breaking all the rules and maybe a few hearts along the way, all wrapped up in an all inclusive Lilly-white world. We are taught about these things, and about the only true path to punk nirvana is laying in a gutter somewhere begging for change to buy forties.
The problem is that before we were taught those lessons that were written on the back of a leather jacket Elvis was writing the lessons as he went. Here was a guy, and I’m not naive enough to think that he was the first to do it, who brought black culture to the mainstream. Here was a guy who the youth could grab hold of and say that he was theirs. Here was a guy that didn’t sound like the people their parents listened to. Here was a guy who reminded people that they had hips, penises and vaginas. That was Elvis.
At first, like most people who aren’t in the know, I thought of Elvis as the fat old man that he turned into. In a way we are sold that image of Elvis: the washed up, no longer relevant walking parody. In a way, he’s kind of difficult to look at. But that’s what people think of now when they think of Elvis. There’s a sadness in that picture. There’s a quiet desperation about Elvis’ final years, being suffocated by the tight white jumpsuit and the years behind him. In 1956 this man was every bit the revolutionary as many other people in the news (more on that in a few) and in 1976 he was a walking parody, playing tiny concert halls in South Dakota. His body died in 1977, but the man died sometime before, crushed by the world, cheapened by the grannies that went to his shows.
Chuck Klosterman, a writer whom I admire, said this about Elvis and the legion of follower’s he’s developed:
I walked around Graceland this morning, and it kind of made me embarrassed to be American. I have always sided with Chuck D’s original take on the King: Elvis never meant shit to me. I don’t like any of his songs except “Suspicious Minds”, his only good movie is Roustabout, and his whole career seems like a sociological experiment. But the main thing I dislike about Elvis Presley is the idea of Elvis Presley, and that idea is what keeps Graceland in business. It’s the religiosity of garbage culture; it validates the import of tabloid aesthetics, and it makes our society look stupid. Presley fanatics are worse than the dopes who still care about JFK Jr. and Princess Di. For some reason, there is a stunning number of Americans who desperately want celebrity royalty and cultural dogma, and that’s all Graceland is. Oh… and karaoke. There was also some karaoke.
In a sense, I agree with Klosterman, but at the same time, he’s so off base that it’s frightening. People don’t worship Elvis for the same reason they worship Princess Di, they worship Elvis for the same reason the worship Martin Luther King, Jr. By no means am I saying there is a direct comparison, but I am saying that they are similar social forces. King brought race to the forefront by turning a mirror onto our collective conscience and showing us how ugly the realities of segregation and institutional racism really are, while Elvis showed us that black culture wasn’t going to destroy us, that instead it could enrich us. I think people go to Graceland for the same reason we go to the Vietnam War Memorial, because it’s something that we can collectively touch and see to let us know that this thing did happen. Elvis was real. Sure, the gaudiness attracts it’s share of lowest common denominator retards, but it also attracts it’s share of people wanting to look at the velvet walls and five televisions playing at once and wonder where it all went wrong. When did that beautiful young man turn into that fat walking tragedy? How did this happen.
Also of note is that later on in that same Chapter Klosterman speaks glowingly of Jeff Buckley, so that must tell you something about his taste. Fucking idiot (just kidding, Chuck if you read this, get in touch).
If there is one person Elvis reminds me of, it’s Superman. People always forget what Superman stands for. About how Superman was an alien who came to Earth with these tremendous abilities and he did good. He didn’t do good because of his powers, and he didn’t do good because of his alien heritage, Superman did good because of how he was raised. He knew that he had to inspire people because he was stronger than they were.
Elvis was the same way. He did what he did because he was a simple, poor southern boy, raised beside of black people. He learned their culture, and showed us boring white people what we can do if we open our eyes.
Elvis inspired people, whether it was The Beatles, the Stones, Bruce Springsteen, or even your girlfriend when she blows you, Elvis’ fingerprints are all over this world.
Rest in Peace Elvis.
In memory of Elvis, here are some tunes that you should listen to.
First up are two songs from Elvis’ debut album, Elvis Presley.
Elvis Presley- My Baby Left Me
Elvis Presley- I Got a Woman
Next up is a medley of sorts from Elvis’ ’68 Comeback Special. The sound quality isn’t the best (I’m too lazy to go buy the remastered edition), but check it out. It’s Elvis in a rather loose, almost Mtv Unplugged like setting goofing around and playing guitars with some friends. You really get to hear the power of his voice in these songs.
Elvis Presley- Lawdy Miss Clawdy/ Baby, What You Want Me to Do?
Until tomorrow, be good. I’ve got some political stuff I’m writing about tomorrow. Be warned.
Grant Morrison
I’m probably going to piss off a lot of comics fans who stumble across this blog by typing the next few words, but I’ll say it anyways: Grant Morrison is as close to our generation’s Jack Kirby as we’ll get. He’s that damn good.
I’ve gone on about Kirby before, about how his action scenes seem to crackle off the page with an electricity that few artists have, about how at the age of 53 he decided that the world of Marvel Comics he created wasn’t quite the mythology that he had imagined, so he created the New Gods- a brand new mythology for the Age of Aquarius. Kirby was a bold inventor who created more concepts and ideas throughout his creative oeuvre than most companies and storytellers could possibly create in a generation. His output is staggering.
In a sense, Morrison is doing that right now. Not only is he creating his own concepts (WE3, The Invisibles) but he’s also updating concepts that most people don’t get and dragging them kicking and screaming into the modern era. But the beauty of what he’s doing is that even though he is modernizing the things around him, he manages for characters to hold onto the Silver Age of Comics sheen that made them shine so bright in the first place.
I don’t know a lot about Morrison the man, but I do know that he’s an anarchist and a chaos magician. I know that he’s responsible for some of the more mindbending things I’ve read in the last few years, and I know that he’s one of a kind. Our Jack Kirby.
As a special treat, here’s video of him speaking at Disinfocon. Check it out, he’s either batshit crazy, or utterly brilliant.
Coming tomorrow, the big entry I thought was going to happen today. Let’s just say it has a little to do with comics and a lot to do with rock n’ roll.
New Comic Book Day!
From week to week here at So Much for Tact I will be profiling the comics that I buy and love. Let’s not look at it as criticism or bitching, because we all know that the internet is rife with people needlessly bashing comics that they continue to buy, instead I look at this as another chance to find people that care about the things I care about and create some sort of community. So with that being said, sit back and relax it’s New Comic Book Day.
Secret Invasion #4: This comic continues to be decent. There are issues and points within the plot, which concerns Marvel Comics’ Skrull Race invading Earth through subjugation of some of the most powerful heroes, that are wonderful, but the problem is Bendis’ narrative is way too disjointed at times for my taste. Also Leinil Francis Yu’s art is just not my cup of tea. He’s too sketchy, too disjointed. Give me George Perez or John Romita Jr. any day of the week. I see what he’s trying to do, a Jim Lee-meets-Steve Ditko creepy vibe, but the art just doesn’t work for me. Sorry. Decent issue though, although the “holy shit” moment on the last page isn’t quite a “holy shit” moment. How many times are they going to have a crossover where Thor arriving is the turning of the tide?
Action Comics #867: I’ve never been a Superman fan, but this run is so amazingly awesome that I can’t even begin to describe it. This Brainiac story has all of the makings of a nice epic story with a horror tinged sci-fi edge to it. Geoff Johns and Gary Frank continue to be one of my favorite creative teams working today. The thing about this run that I love is that when people crap on what Superman is and say that he’s a lousy character, I can show them these comics and they’d be hooked on him. They’ve captured the 50′s wonder of the Superman comics and mixed it with John Byrne’s treatment and so far this run has all of the makings of something special.
Amazing Spider-Man #565: After the previous two issues proved for me to be the first real stutter of the “Brand New Day” relaunch, Spider-Man returns this week with a nice little beginning of a story, and Phil Jimenez’s art is beyond good. My only complaint is that these issues seem to lack the little character moments that my favorite comics have as of late. It’s j
ust Spider-Man running from action scene to action scene, endless banter and villains that don’t have time to turn into something special. The comic is still a fast, wonderfully fun little read that reminds me of what I love about Spider-Man.
The Last Defenders #5: I’m still not entirely sure about what is exactly happening in this comic. There’s been three or four teams running around calling themselves the Defenders, some sort of plot with the Son of Satan, and some Atlantean crap that I don’t understand. Not to mention the art is really wearing on me. I know The Defenders are C-Listers, but can’t they have some time in the sun with a decent artist?
Justice Society of America #17: Continuing the “Kingdom Come” sequel, this comic finds a way to get better every month. Each issue is chock full of clues about the future, callbacks to DC’s past, and a well thought out present story that never makes readers wonder about logic. Easily my favorite team book out there, and that’s saying a lot considering I’m a long time Avengers nerd. Geoff Johns is god, and buy this book.
That’s it for New Comic Book Day! this week, keep in mind that this little corner of So Much for Tact is still a work in process, and that one day it will be the well oiled machine that Project Fridays has become.
Now do me a favor and leave a comment.
Be good.
New Ideas- New Comic Book Day
Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. It’s new comic book day, the day that every new comic comes out. Because I’m having so much fun with Project Fridays, I think I’m going to try to make Wednesday my comics day.
My ultimate goal is to have theme days for every weekday here at So Much for Tact, and to pepper those with random conversation transcriptions,
personal notes, and thoughts about pets and politics.
Does anyone have anything they’d like to see more of here? Leave a reply and I’ll do my best to accommodate.
Superheroes in North Carolina
Meet Boulder, a super hero from Morganton, NC. I profiled him and interviewed his creator Christos N. Gage for the Morganton News Herald in Morganton NC.
Schaub is anything but your standard superhero. In place of the square jaw and quiet intensity to snuff out evildoers, Schaub’s rotund figure and wide-eyed eagerness to do the right thing may put Morganton on the map in the Marvel Universe – or maybe not.
You can read the story here.
When Public Service and Comic Books Collide!
What you are looking at is a work of art. Yes, I know it’s just Spider-Man, but it’s pg.6 from Amazing Fantasy #15. That’s the first appearance of Spidey. Ground Zero for all of my imagination, inspiration, and to a degree my moral code in life runs through the ink on that page. Now it has been donated to the Library of Congress.
Press Release
In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics’ “Amazing Fantasy #15″ — the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962.
This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories — also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko — for the same issue: “The Bell-Ringer,” “Man in the Mummy Case” and “There Are Martians Among Us.”
“The donation of these wonderful drawings is a treasured gift to the American people. The opportunity to see the original art behind the published stories will benefit comic-book readers as well as popular-culture scholars,” said Sara W. Duke, curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Art in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. “Looking at the drawings inspires a new appreciation for the artist’s skill and design choices and also deepens our understanding of how a superhero created to attract a teenage audience became a cultural icon with mass appeal.”
For comic-book scholars and fans, this donation is a fantasy-come-true. Those who have heard the news of the survival of these drawings and their future availability at the Library of Congress have already expressed great excitement.
The black-and-white, large-format drawings (21 x 15 inches) detail the transformation of high school bookworm Peter Parker into Spider-Man. He is bitten by a radioactive spider, discovers his new powers and develops his now well-known disguise. The first episode concludes with several of the most famous lines attached to the story of Spider-Man: “With great power there must also come great responsibility … and so a legend is born and a new name is added to the roster of those who make the world of fantasy the most exciting realm of all.”
To view a sample of these drawings, visit the Library of Congress blog at www.loc.gov/blog/?p=290.
The donor, who has asked to remain anonymous, preserved the drawings with great care before turning to the Library of Congress to ensure that the designs will be available to researchers for generations to come. In the next few weeks, the Library plans to scan the drawings for easy access on-site in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room, and the digital reference copies will also help preserve the fragile original artwork.
Appointments to view the original drawings can be requested through the Prints & Photographs Division’s “Ask a Librarian” service at www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-print.html.
The Spider-Man drawings join a premier collection of original cartoons in the Library’s Prints & Photographs Division. The collection includes more than 125,000 caricatures, comic strips, and political and social commentaries from the 1600s to the present. An ongoing program to preserve and exhibit drawings and to encourage cartoon research is sponsored by the Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swannhome.html.
Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, with more than 138 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. As the world’s largest repository of knowledge and creativity, the Library is a symbol of democracy and the principles on which this nation was founded. Today the Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site, in its 22 reading rooms on Capitol Hill, and through its award-winning Web site at www.loc.gov.
The thing that they don’t mention is what makes this art so rare. First of all, in the 60s and the early 70s there was no market for the original art, so it was thrown away. When people started collecting this stuff, most of the artists had to sue Marvel Comics to get their originals back in the 80s.
Steve Ditko, the guy who gave Spider-Man his look and drew this issue is notorious about not letting his original art get out also. In fact, the guy destroys most of his originals and doesn’t do that many sketches. He doesn’t do public appearances or interviews, either. So to have someone out of the goodness of their own heart donate this much of the original art is rather awesome.
To me, it’s sort of like someone donating sketches of the Mona Lisa. Spider-Man is that much a part of our culture.
This is a great example of someone doing something to benefit society instead of looking out for his own purse strings.
Next time I’m remotely near the Library of Congress, I’m going to go see these pages, and I’ll probably cry because I’m an asshole.
