tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20363898373827834222024-03-14T11:03:08.320-07:00Watercolour HorizonsMusings of a Cartoonist and Comics ScholarMarlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-87597709042522896842016-07-05T22:12:00.000-07:002016-07-05T22:13:19.880-07:00Closing Down the Blog<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's with much consideration and no small feeling of regret that I'm typing out the last post I'll publish on this blog. This thing started out as an idea to write a travel blog back in 2012 as I was preparing for a trip that never transpired, a year abroad studying illustration in Edinburgh. It leapt to life with the calamity of the Aurora Theatre shooting, and built some traction as a place for my thoughts on comics and cultural matters, as well as periodic art school updates. And it's fallen into disuse and disrepair in the past few years as other projects and undertaking have absorbed my time and energy. It's time to retire this writing space.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thank all of you who have been regular or irregular readers over the years. Your visits to this site have registered as numbers in my analytics feed and have encouraged me in my writing with the knowledge that a few people out there care enough to check and see what I think about...stuff. It's been a great platform for a few serious rants. It's been an excellent place to pen replies to other posts I read and to engage friends of mine in discourse in a sort of internet-age analog to the Letters to the Editor pages that are disappearing with the newspaper industry. It's challenged me to research and build arguments and not fly off the cuff about things I could easily be reactionary about. I've had people let me know that things I've written here have challenged them, gotten them and people around them thinking and talking in directions they might not otherwise have taken. I think it's made me a better writer, but so far I'm the only one who's told me that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">By no means am I going to stop writing; I'm merely pulling the plug on this particular platform. Any new blog posts and artwork I produce will be published first and foremost on my professional site at <a href="http://www.ajkomics.ca/">www.ajkomics.ca</a>. Selections of what's written there will make their way over to my <i>Medium </i>profile at <a href="http://www./">www.</a></span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://medium.com/@ajkomics">medium.com/@ajkomics</a>; I haven't done anything with that platform in years, and it's worth trying out again. This website will remain here, dormant, as a lingering archive of what I've written. I'll dust off a few pieces from this archive and re-post them to both the <i>AJKomics.ca</i> blog and to <i>Medium </i>as a way of introducing a ready body of content to these new platforms and hopefully sparking some interest in what I have, and have had, to say.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRKaUdCJczLwm_SNUc8qiQF2T_lJNpt-OrscNPF_F9SeLf3JlrmLG8y6dVzEMoZ42Vdq4aELMDsSGsQff0modFGnuN2zZhQNCsiuztYeCjQEj-ti3ZfoX9KA7D2DpLOBcFqfKqdWr8Bns/s1600/Bilbo+Baggins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRKaUdCJczLwm_SNUc8qiQF2T_lJNpt-OrscNPF_F9SeLf3JlrmLG8y6dVzEMoZ42Vdq4aELMDsSGsQff0modFGnuN2zZhQNCsiuztYeCjQEj-ti3ZfoX9KA7D2DpLOBcFqfKqdWr8Bns/s400/Bilbo+Baggins.jpg" width="276" /></span></a><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that's that. I'm turning out the lights here. I bid you all a very fond farewell; I'll see ya out in the Grid.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cheers!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Asher</span></span></div>
Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-78372755867316698342015-11-01T20:22:00.000-08:002015-11-01T20:22:00.995-08:00A Few Good Eggs: Crowdfunding 'The American Bystander'I had one of those mornings today that felt like it had great narrative cohesion. You know the sort. In this instance, the feeling was brought about by an email I received from <a href="https://twitter.com/pimimond">Mimi Pond</a> at the precise moment that my order of coffee, hashbrowns, and eggs arrived.<br />
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Mimi was dropping me a line to alert me to the existence of a <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelgerber/the-american-bystander-humor-magazine">crowdfunding campaign for a new humour magazine, <i>The American Bystander</i></a>, being run on Kickstarter by <a href="http://unbouncepages.com/mikegerbercom/">Mike Gerber</a> (<i>The New Yorker, The New York Times, SNL</i>). Quite frankly, it looks great. It helps that the project is being put together by a handful of old-guard humour writers who have seen print humour rise and fall over the years and taken a good long look at what works and what doesn't. They've put together a solid-looking editorial model: no advertising impinging on their editorial freedom, a diverse crowd of established and emerging writers, and fair compensation for their contributors (none of that <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure">"We'll pay you in Exposure!" bullshit</a>). Mimi happens to be one of those contributors, and from what she tells me and what I'm reading this magazine will collect folks who have lent their voices to SNL, <i>The Simpsons</i>, <i>Monty Python</i>, <i>National Lampoon</i>, and some other chuckle-worthy corners of our culture. The campaign has 11 days left in it, and I'd love to see it hit a couple more stretch goals before it runs its course (particularly because that would include the chance to submit a cover illustration for the thing). I've pitched in a bit so that people can be funny in print; head on <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelgerber/the-american-bystander-humor-magazine">over there</a> and do the same!Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-79530047781536847352015-10-15T12:06:00.000-07:002015-10-15T12:06:19.656-07:00Why Make Prints?Last week my printmaking instructor, the inimitable <a href="http://okanaganartists.com/okanagan-artists/93-2/">Briar Craig</a>, assigned us a thinking project: namely, to come with an answer to <i>why exactly are you doing this thing? </i>As printmaking students, something we get from our friends a lot is, "So, what's the point of this...why don't you just print your art out digitally?"...which is a pretty good question. And I figured, since I'd left the blog dormant for so long (though many of you have continued to come back and read old pieces, which is really cool to see), that this was the perfect place to work out my thoughts on this and give you something new to chew on.<br />
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<i>As artists each of us will be drawn towards specific imagery, ideas, and media for personal and specific reasons. Whether you intend to be a printmaker or not each of you have chosen to study printmaking at an advanced course level and perhaps it is time to start asking yourself why you make prints. Why not make paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, digital based works or use performance? What do the media of printmaking offer you and your creative urges that the others may not? How do the media of printmaking supplement or add to whatyou may be working on in other media? How do the media of printmaking support the ideas that you have for imagery?</i></blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimuY8uMPj2H5gAuaIrvRj9uiONFeQUNHZiFx6mpjxOk9LvhSgte7QAX6p70w-epZZjnu3jdrpCn27-8W0hgM6PGzyUqjExT4sa4GTsigWv0ymsjakA9t9ySStp8GT1dsYnSjJJ5a9iRKY/s1600/09-18+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimuY8uMPj2H5gAuaIrvRj9uiONFeQUNHZiFx6mpjxOk9LvhSgte7QAX6p70w-epZZjnu3jdrpCn27-8W0hgM6PGzyUqjExT4sa4GTsigWv0ymsjakA9t9ySStp8GT1dsYnSjJJ5a9iRKY/s320/09-18+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a>Bear with me while I think "aloud" here for a bit. My medium of choice is and has always been drawing. In the past few years, the drive to draw has solidified somewhat, found direction as an invested interest in the comics form, in its theory and history, and in my own production of comics as an art object. So when it comes to printmaking, I find it reasonably easy to identify what draws me to it. A significant part of what attracts me to comics is the material nature of the form. I have a deep and abiding love for printed material. It's the reason I have shoeboxes full of minis and zines and postcards, ephemera collected from <br />
conventions and festivals. It's why I spend unreasonable amounts of money on limited edition print portfolios. It's what sends shivers down my spine when I finally hold my work in print, even if it's just a mini run off the printers in the school library.<br />
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I didn't really know where that love stemmed from until I dove into my research at Durham this past year, and realized that what draws me to print is the democratization of art and literature. There's an undeniable beauty in old manuscript illuminations, to be sure, and in print I am definitely drawn to the aesthetic of multiplicity that emerges as an edition of something is produced. But there's a restrained sort of power in producing an image or a body of text <i>en masse, </i>even on the cheapest pulp paper, and releasing it into the world in a form that a multitude of people can obtain and share, knowledge and thoughts in material form that will change hands and work its way into the strangest little corners of the world and stick there until someone else finds it, dislodges it, and sets it in motion once more.<br />
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There is, decidedly, a point where these ideas come up against the primary motivations of a Fine Arts education, a <i>gallery artist's</i> education. Most of us are shooting for a career in the White Cube, the <i>sanctum sanctorum </i> of the art world. We're creating big, bold, well-crafted, generally <i>expensive</i> pieces of original art...except that I want to make small, sometimes bold, well-crafted, <i>cheap</i> pieces of original art. Not everyone out there can afford original work, and I think that's where the democratization aspect of printmaking has taken on new life in the digital age: where these processes used to be the only way to print, they now hold arcane status as Art. These are hand-operated processes, sometimes with mechanical elements, which produce some variation in the final product. Typeface wears over time. Ink transfers to textured paper a little differently every time. The colours we mix change a bit between editions. We don't produce copies; we produce multiple originals.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggyuGmGgZZlRq1V_CsJJRFtQDu8ew_UUPar-TDbvaytws3iBBHHPtjnZmju54FJtAJgTS9BcT9l5Vf8X94EOmvpsMa_p8a3K_VNBIQ3PNcGln0oQ3ZCBJTgFjXp1FKGzGllB61pVKse7s/s1600/20151002_173517.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggyuGmGgZZlRq1V_CsJJRFtQDu8ew_UUPar-TDbvaytws3iBBHHPtjnZmju54FJtAJgTS9BcT9l5Vf8X94EOmvpsMa_p8a3K_VNBIQ3PNcGln0oQ3ZCBJTgFjXp1FKGzGllB61pVKse7s/s320/20151002_173517.jpg" width="320" /></a>So when I pull a screenprint, and later this year when I start learning lithography, letterpress, and bookbinding processes, this is what drives me. I want to make small, affordable pieces of pleasing original art that people can pick up on a whim, read, lend to a friend, put in a library, art that can go out and<br />
have a life of its own. It's the evolution of a drawing student into a cartoonist who wants people to read what he makes, and wants his touch visible in the object that the reader holds in their hands.<br />
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Or maybe I'm just a guy who's been reading too much <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction">Walter Benjamin</a>.Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-43501318387856556502015-05-19T05:41:00.000-07:002015-05-19T06:18:06.463-07:00Crowdfunding News - The Broken Frontier Comics Anthology Needs Your Support!Listen up, you mugs! I've neglected my duty to this project for far too long, and now with only four days remaining and $26,000 to go it's high time I remedied that.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tylerchintanner/broken-frontier-the-boldest-comics-anthology-in-th">Broken Frontier: The Boldest Comics Anthology in the Galaxy</a></b><br />
<i>by <a href="https://twitter.com/AWaveBlueWorld">Tyler & Wendy Chin-Tanner</a></i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That real cover shot<br />
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Every once in a while a <i>really</i> worthwhile, well-assembled, creator-owned comics project comes along, and you can tell by looking at the roster of writers and artists who have come together to make it happen that it's gonna kick some serious ass. The <i>Broken Frontier Anthology</i> is that project. Now, I may a touch biased because that roster includes some of my own friends and colleagues - like <a href="http://www.sacredandsequential.org/">Sacred & Sequential</a>'s own <a href="https://twitter.com/adlewis">A. David Lewis</a>, Canadian sensation <a href="https://twitter.com/salgood">Salgood Sam</a>, and the <a href="http://mfavisualnarrative.sva.edu/">SVA</a>'s phenomenally skilled and cordial <a href="https://twitter.com/nathanfoxy">Nathan Fox</a> - but that really just makes me all the more confident in the quality of the comics that Broken Frontier is collecting in this edition.<br />
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This anthology has come together as a collaboration between two proponents of creator-owned comics: the comics news site <a href="http://www.brokenfrontier.com/">Broken Frontier</a>, headed by editor-in-chief and writer <a href="https://twitter.com/frederikhautain">Frederik Hautain</a>, and Tyler and Wendy Chin-Tanner's publishing company <a href="http://awaveblueworld.com/the-broken-frontier-anthology-is-coming-to-kickstarter/">A Wave Blue World</a>, which has been putting out comics without sucking the life out of their cartoonists' IPs since 2005. It's a deadly team. Hautain has assembled a crew of comics makers possessed of a slew of untold stories that they've been dying to realize and offered them the means to do exactly that. All they need now is a little...push. That's where you come in.<br />
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And really, could you have asked for a more <i>gorgeous</i> volume to grace your shelves than this? <a href="https://twitter.com/RobbiRodriguez">Robbi Rodriguez</a>'s (<i>Spider Gwen</i>,<i> FBP</i>) cover for this edition is stunning, and is further complemented by a Farel Dalrymple bookplate and exclusive prints from <a href="https://twitter.com/pauljholden">PJ Holden</a> (<i>Judge Dredd</i>), <a href="http://www.robertsammelin.com/">Robert Sammelin </a>(<i class="">Cimarronin</i>,<i> Sleepy Hollow</i>), and <a href="https://twitter.com/punkrockjazz">Toby Cypress</a> (<i>Rodd Racer</i>). After that, let's not leave out names like <a href="https://twitter.com/gregpak">Greg Pak</a> (<i>Action Comics</i>), <a href="https://twitter.com/TomRaney_art">Tom Raney</a> (<i>Stormwatch</i>, <i>Avengers Academy</i>), <a href="https://twitter.com/NoahVanSciver">Noah Van Sciver</a> (<i>Blammo</i>,<i> Saint Cole</i>), <a href="https://twitter.com/thesteveorlando">Steve Orlando</a> (<i>Midnighter</i>), <a href="https://twitter.com/cullenbunn">Cullen Bunn</a> (<i>The Sixth Gun, Magneto</i>), <a href="https://twitter.com/itsthatlady">Alison Sampson</a> (<i>Genesis</i>, <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i>), and <a href="https://twitter.com/boxbrown">Box Brown</a> (<i>Andre the Giant</i>). The book promises to be packed full of stories that explore the unknown, from the edges of the universe to the wilds of Alaska in a host of genres from steampunk to sci-fi to fantasy (with Vikings!) and all the cracks in between.<br />
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Here's a look at <a href="https://twitter.com/cullenbunn">@cullenbunn</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/nathanfoxy">@nathanfoxy</a>'s story for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BFanthology?src=hash">#BFanthology</a>. Want more? Back us at <a href="http://t.co/kBoS6qP02G">http://t.co/kBoS6qP02G</a> <a href="http://t.co/cN2cIXTw8g">pic.twitter.com/cN2cIXTw8g</a></div>
— Tom Murphy (@TomMurphyBF) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomMurphyBF/status/600618713096822785">May 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzFgGhcIEsWgPFWWNE2Zz2xLCRgQ-0Qf1cKUXEGFlKgsVPrhFDCiu9x8D1KWN0LZU1aQIzeq8voAgHHbvdj3shnSGwjuaTTQcMKnldPyIk7L5CRLSopimYnPYVGUZUbQNxtvFRchhgjQ/s1600/0a673ee734d3cd85da746555dbf98a07_original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzFgGhcIEsWgPFWWNE2Zz2xLCRgQ-0Qf1cKUXEGFlKgsVPrhFDCiu9x8D1KWN0LZU1aQIzeq8voAgHHbvdj3shnSGwjuaTTQcMKnldPyIk7L5CRLSopimYnPYVGUZUbQNxtvFRchhgjQ/s200/0a673ee734d3cd85da746555dbf98a07_original.jpg" width="200" /></a> But enough of me rambling at you. Go check out the campaign at <a href="http://t.co/kBoS6qP02G">br.oken.fr/anthology</a>. Take a read through <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/05/03/the-broken-frontier-anthology-over-40-star-creators-unite-in-support-of-creator-owned-comic/"><i>Bleeding Cool</i>'s promotion of the anthology</a>. And get yourself over to <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/36evlz/we_are_the_broken_frontier_anthology_now_on/">Reddit, where the team's doing an AMA session</a> through to the campaign's close on Friday, by which point you've hopefully realized that you didn't need to eat next month anyway and backed this project all the way.<br />
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One more thought to leave you with. Something that warms the cockles of my heart is seeing anthology projects that buck up and pay their contributors properly for their work. This project seems to be doing right by its writers and artists and that, I think, is something worth putting a little cash towards.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jsqsR8bOyVk" width="420"></iframe>Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-44026825200513104122015-04-25T05:36:00.003-07:002015-04-25T05:36:39.091-07:00RANT - Jared Leto's Joker and Just How Done I Am With Fans Right NowGeek fandom is a realm of asinine inconsistency.<br />
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I am currently embroiled in a comment thread on <i><a href="http://nerdist.com/">The Nerdist</a></i>'s Facebook page discussing the ups and downs of the new <i>Call of Duty: Black Ops III</i> teaser, something I wouldn't normally give a rat's ass about except that this time they've gone full-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk">cyberpunk</a>, and I think it looks kinda rad.<br />
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The folks behind landmark cyberpunk video game series <i>Deus Ex</i>, which itself recently released at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYaQwyG9uI0">stunning new trailer for their upcoming title <i>Mankind Divided</i></a>, responded with some good-natured ribbing on Twitter.<br />
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Hey <a href="https://twitter.com/Treyarch">@Treyarch</a>, Adam Jensen says welcome on the bandwagon! The liquor bar is at the back ;)<br />
— Jonathan J-B (@Jonatchoo) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jonatchoo/status/591295016963801088">April 23, 2015</a></blockquote>
Which fans proceeded to take <i>way </i>too seriously. Facebook has erupted like a bad rash of whining fanboys convinced that Treyarch "stole" or "ripped off" the Deus Ex setting, which would be a valid argument if we knew <i>anything</i> about the new CoD game beyond the deliberately vague tonality of a teaser trailer. It doesn't <i>have</i> a setting; it has a feeling, a suggestion of ideas, direction, and mood. In other words, it suggests a genre, and like every other piece of genre fiction ever made it is guilty of a tonal resemblance. Nobody shit on <i>Interstellar </i>for ripping off the <i>Star Wars</i> setting because they're both set in space, just like no one got mad at Beethoven for ripping off Bach when he wrote "Symphony No. 9 in D Minor": "<i>Dude</i>, J.S. already wrote his "Double Violin Concerto" in that key, you can't <i>do</i> that, man!"<br />
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And as for you schmucks running around the web peddling that lachrymose "lack of originality/it's all been done before" garbage, I have news for you: we've been copying each other's work since one guy drew a buffalo on a wall and the next guy went, "Dude, I should do one like that..." There have never been any arguments for the so-called Death of Creativity that stand up to real scrutiny. You create, or you don't.<br />
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Now yesterday, <a href="http://screenrant.com/jared-leto-joker-official-image-tattoos/">something beautiful happened</a>.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
The Suicide Squad wishes you a Happy Anniversary Mr. J! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Joker75?src=hash">#Joker75</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SuicideSquad?src=hash">#SuicideSquad</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/WarnerBrosEnt">@WarnerBrosEnt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DCComics">@DCComics</a> <a href="http://t.co/LZXz0x947Q">pic.twitter.com/LZXz0x947Q</a><br />
— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/591761248859123713">April 25, 2015</a></blockquote>
Comics fans have been waiting for months to see what <a href="https://twitter.com/JaredLeto">Jared Leto</a>'s Joker would look like, teased by <a href="http://screenrant.com/jared-leto-joker-suicide-squad-weight-gain/">rumours leaked from <i>Suicide Squad</i> production</a> that he'd be losing his signature suit, that Leto was bulking up for the role, etc. And then they finally reveal their new, revolutionary, dynamic Mr. J...<i>and everyone loses their minds!</i><br />
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I have seen every inch of the spectrum of opinion spewed across Twitter since that picture came out, and none of it adds up to anything sane. The <i>same people</i> are saying in one tweet that they hate the new design, it's too different, too weird...and following it with a complaint that DC's cinematic universe is too cliche. For crying out loud, which is it??<br />
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There's not a lot more to be said on this. It's the way it's always been with the hype machine, and it's not bound to change anytime soon. And, for that matter, I'm not bound to change either; I'm always gonna be the guy sitting off in the corner, staring at my phone behind a pint and quietly foaming at the mouth while I scroll through my Twitter feed. Because it all just pisses me off: the arrogant entitlement of consumers of culture to be spoon-fed exactly what they want by their favourite media, and the vehemence with which they lash out at people who are pouring their heart and soul into a creative vision, for not creating exactly that thing they really wanted. If you want it that badly, <i>get off your ass and make it yourself!</i> You create, or your don't. It's that simple.<br />
<br />
What are we really fans of? Fans of the characters, their worlds, and their creators would support that creation, would uphold hard work and innovation and the effort that goes into bringing new design and iterations of these things into being. But we don't that. As a <i>cultural whole</i> we bitch and whine about changes that are made, about things that don't fit what <i>we </i>wanted, the way <i>we</i> thought it should be. More often than not, the way we wanted it was the Old Way, like wanting Jared Leto to be Jack Nicholson's Joker all over again. Hell of a lot of respect you've got for the actor there, folks, asking him to take a couple years out of his life to recreate someone else's performance. Shame on you. We're not fans of comics, or movies, or characters. We're fans of our own bleeding nostalgia, and we'll cheer for whoever most makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside by validating the things we love to consume.<br />
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<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-1044634772239558782015-04-22T13:11:00.000-07:002015-04-22T13:11:16.522-07:002015 Eisner Awards...The Superhero Afterlife!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Q8x2YVf1LYxTolq4UMJTFw9e80DdLnEkeW9WVcm2qK5NbC-d5OTJsnd6qX6uU-6iSLze02hwKiHDiXgl7VNLIrT4VMK4_WpEMivNEQzhJ9no_8zel2BcZLjvhThegCBJPJ5QI04PMGw/s1600/pg1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Q8x2YVf1LYxTolq4UMJTFw9e80DdLnEkeW9WVcm2qK5NbC-d5OTJsnd6qX6uU-6iSLze02hwKiHDiXgl7VNLIrT4VMK4_WpEMivNEQzhJ9no_8zel2BcZLjvhThegCBJPJ5QI04PMGw/s1600/pg1.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Superhero Afterlife (Abridged)</i>, pg. 1<br />Starring Dr. Lewis himself</td></tr>
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BREAKING NEWS - In the past couple hours the nominations for the <a href="http://www.comic-con.org/awards/2015-eisner-award-nominations">2015 Eisner Awards have been announced</a>, and among them is my friend and colleague, Sacred & Sequential's very own <i><a href="https://twitter.com/adlewis">A. David Lewis</a></i>! His <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/american-comics-literary-theory-and-religion-a-david-lewis/?K=9781137465603" style="font-style: italic;">American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife</a> has been nominated for Best Scholarly/Academic Work, and from what I've seen of the book so far it deserves every bit of that accolade. I like to think I got a unique look at this work, from a different perspective than most, when Dave asked me last year if I'd be interested in turning an abridged version of his book into a short comic. That project went up on the <i>Sacred Matters </i>blog as <a href="https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/sacredmatters/2015/02/05/superhero-afterlife-abridged/">"The Superhero Afterlife (Abridged)"</a>. I'm both immensely proud to have been part of Dave's process with this material and ridiculously excited to see the book getting the attention it deserves. Here's hoping it's a win on July 10th!<br />
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In the meantime, if you want to keep an eye on the excellent Dr. A. David Lewis and the work he's doing check out the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tylerchintanner/broken-frontier-the-boldest-comics-anthology-in-th?ref=users"><i>Broken Frontier</i> comics anthology</a>, and keep a weather eye on <a href="http://www.sacredandsequential.org/">Sacred & Sequential's website</a>. There's always crazy stuff going on over there.Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-74104310445025957262015-04-06T07:29:00.000-07:002015-04-07T02:09:14.281-07:00Crowdfunding News - Dr. Comics and The Super Villain HandbookIt's been a while since I wrote one of these posts, but this announcement last week was just the thing to pull me out of retirement: my good friend <a href="http://doctorcomics.blogspot.co.uk/">Jason "Dr. Comics" Tondro</a> is Kickstarting <i>The Super Villain Handbook</i>!!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FXZESOvqeDbakwborS4tFJo3pDKF9eUKl_MMfzdQnfgGb2bGS2gCiMNDyh-35UQIv7lzaRzvdYvyuRKgj5lorAjsuWBHeNhyw6gITTeMmhKku7yYe3nat2hlClIyJWrWdKPJrYxCl90/s1600/39a78e18d89fd0d882438eb02005ca14_original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FXZESOvqeDbakwborS4tFJo3pDKF9eUKl_MMfzdQnfgGb2bGS2gCiMNDyh-35UQIv7lzaRzvdYvyuRKgj5lorAjsuWBHeNhyw6gITTeMmhKku7yYe3nat2hlClIyJWrWdKPJrYxCl90/s1600/39a78e18d89fd0d882438eb02005ca14_original.jpg" height="201" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Every </i>table deserves a better class of criminal</td></tr>
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<b><u><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/412792115/the-super-villain-handbook">The Super Villain Handbook</a></u></b></div>
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<i>by <a href="https://twitter.com/doctorcomics">Jason Tondro</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/kroh01">Walt Robillard</a></i></div>
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Now to be fair, this isn't just the <i>Handbook</i> itself, but a juiced-up, deluxe edition of an already extant resource, enhanced by the power of crowdfunding and a ladder of stretch goals that promises to match your enthusiasm for devastating parties of tabletop superheroes with an arsenal of meticulously crafted villainous archetypes equal to the task.<br />
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Now, if you're a Munchkin and you're reading this, I apologize; <i>The Super Villain Handbook </i>might not be your kind of book. Min-maxers of the world, this will do nothing for you. As a far more <a href="http://mostunreadblogever.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/tommys-take-on-super-vthe-forillain.html">informed review blog</a> has already stated, this is not a book that will give you villains to use in your games, but rather one that will teach you how to use villains in the stories those games are telling. It's not a monster manual. Jason isn't offering a book full of plug-and-play villains that operate on an XP or party level/challenge rating system; what he's created is a book that challenges you as the GM to come to a better understanding of the story you're writing, the character development you want to prompt in your players' PCs, and then offers you insight as to what sort of antagonist might best help you achieve those goals. Rather than approach villains they way most of us Supers gamers are wont to do, by their power set, Jason has compiled this book based on the narrative role a villain plays: the crime boss trying to rule a city, the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing that the party doesn't see coming until it's too late, the power-hungry twisted genius...character roles that you'll actually find <i>feeding</i> your story, rather than leaving you scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas that fit a power you thought was kinda cool.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5lZrnpgvL0xin_hjkPEYEAxjrimVqONgStxwW6VBJzo-HtlVYSqwH-RB-oXlRwDE9Q9C2-llKxHtPtAZdH9hO3UmyFVw0BseMr5z6lcF46oD9M8srG1dL_oqozqfehKOjn4mkb-1hND4/s1600/DCU+College+Bar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5lZrnpgvL0xin_hjkPEYEAxjrimVqONgStxwW6VBJzo-HtlVYSqwH-RB-oXlRwDE9Q9C2-llKxHtPtAZdH9hO3UmyFVw0BseMr5z6lcF46oD9M8srG1dL_oqozqfehKOjn4mkb-1hND4/s1600/DCU+College+Bar.jpg" height="204" width="320" /></a>There are few folk better suited than Dr. Comics to the task of compiling such a volume. He brings to the table what few others can: an intimate and scholarly understanding of the <i>nature</i> of the comic book villain coupled with the passion of an inveterate tabletop gamer. With that experience comes a dedication to the kind of storytelling which is possible only while seated around a dimly-lit table with one's friends, wielding handfuls of dice against the forces of evil.<br />
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Possibly the coolest and most buyer-friendly aspect of this campaign is that the book <i>already exists</i>. As soon as I backed the project I received a downloadable PDF of the basic illustrated book (which looks fantastic, by the way). The campaign offers a wealth of incoming new material as stretch goals are reached. Given enough support, Jason will be adding 40 new villain archetypes which will double the size of the book (an impressive undertaking, considering how comprehensive the current volume is) and working up an edition that works with the <a href="http://superscbr.proboards.com/"><i>Supers! </i>RPG</a>; the current edition uses the <a href="http://icons-truth-justice-and-gaming.wikispaces.com/">ICONS </a>system, and I like to think that with enough support for this project we might see Dr. Comics writing similar volumes for <i><a href="https://www.peginc.com/product-category/savage-worlds/">Savage Worlds</a></i> and <i><a href="http://mutantsandmasterminds.com/">Mutants & Masterminds</a> </i>in the future. At any rate, I highly encourage you to back this! The campaign is very nearly funded with a little over three weeks left, plenty of time for us to hit those stretch goals. At the very least, <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/412792115/the-super-villain-handbook">pitch a minimum of one dollar toward the thing</a>, get the un-illustrated PDF of the book, and see if this is something you as a GM could make good use of. Remember, your table deserves a better class of criminal.<br />
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<b>UPDATE</b>: The campaign has received a swell of support in the last day thanks to you folks, and as a result they've updated their stretch goals ladder!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">To celebrate, when we reach our basic funding goal of 3,000, we will fund BOTH the ICONS Assembled and the SUPERS! Revised editions of the basic book. Keeping this in mind, we have restructured the goal chart to include a new 3,200 goal. The Super Villain Handbook will have FATE Core support from <a href="https://twitter.com/rosspayton">Ross Payton, the author of the Base Raiders Rpg</a>! Ross will handle the conversion of the basic book to FATE and should we reach our goal of 5,000, the book will Include the Deluxe Version.</span></blockquote>
Ladies and gentlemen, the FATE system is coming to the SVH!! I couldn't be more excited.</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
My new book needs your help! Check out:The Super Villain Handbook, via <a href="https://twitter.com/kickstarter">@Kickstarter</a> <a href="https://t.co/Twy3Hj74bT">https://t.co/Twy3Hj74bT</a><br />
— Jason Tondro (@doctorcomics) <a href="https://twitter.com/doctorcomics/status/582593878416576512">March 30, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-20798852471300053102015-03-27T08:06:00.000-07:002015-03-27T08:06:31.313-07:00Electricomics Market Questionnaire - Lend Your Voice!<br />Calling all comics people! Do you read, make, or sell comics? The <a href="http://electricomics.net/">Electricomics</a> project needs your voice! Take a minute to <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14jIUKgikjifUENFRRH-JM3ZzN6nAMv5AB2QtfVmVliM/viewform?c=0&w=1">run through this questionnaire</a> and chronicle some of your consumer habits: how often, for how much, and where you buy digital comics, or if you buy them at all. Your input will be furthering the goals of a <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/project/digital-rd-fund-arts">Digital R&D Fund for the Arts</a> project, jointly run between the arts company Orphans of the Storm, the technology provider Ocasta Studios, and researchers from the UCL Institute of Education and the University of Hertfordshire<br /><br />Read more on their Google Doc at: <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14jIUKgikjifUENFRRH-JM3ZzN6nAMv5AB2QtfVmVliM/viewform?c=0&w=1">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14jIUKgikjifUENFRRH-JM3ZzN6nAMv5AB2QtfVmVliM/viewform?c=0&w=1</a>Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-32958163077629272582015-03-26T13:49:00.003-07:002015-03-26T13:49:32.924-07:00Killing the Cover, What a Joke: Batgirl, Misogyny, and Everything DC's Readers Are Scared OfBy now most if not all of us have read at least one of the articles addressing <a href="https://twitter.com/rafaalbuquerque">Rafael Albequerque</a>'s recent <i>Batgirl</i> variant cover, which paid homage to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 1988 one-shot <i>The Killing Joke</i>. <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/dc-comics-cancels-batgirl-joker-variant-at-artists-request">We've read the artist's statement, and we've read DC's statement</a>. We've perused the Twitter rants and familiarized ourselves with reader outrage about a multitude of things: the scared look on the heroine's face; her position of vulnerability; her position of vulnerability in relation to a man in power. It's been <a href="http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3336393/pulling-killing-joke-batgirl-cover/">noted that this was put on a cover</a>, the quintessentially unavoidable part of a comic, the bit you can't "opt out" of when you're browsing the shelves. I only recently started reading into this matter, a little late to the party, but the arguments I encounter most often are these: the readers don't want to see their heroine in this situation; they want to see her win a battle against a villain; the cover doesn't suit the intentions of the current <i>Batgirl</i> title; and the cover references dark events in the character's pre-New 52 origins, bringing readers back to a problematic story that they shouldn't have to wrestle with.<br />
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Damn right it does. What part of "villain" are we not understanding?<br />
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<i>The Killing Joke</i> is a brilliant story. It is also absolutely, <i>fundamentally</i>, a problematic story. For those of you who haven't read it, a brief synopsis: this is the tale of Oracle's origin, in which Barbara Gordon is attacked at home by the Joker, who shoots her through the spine and strips her, leaving her naked and paralyzed on the floor while he takes pictures...pictures he later uses to psychologically torment her father, Jim. It's a classic example within the comics canon of a woman being victimized simply to provide a point of <i>pathos</i> for a male hero. Barbara suffers greatly, and is left paralyzed for life, but her ordeal is inconsequential to the story; the focus is on <i>Jim </i>as he bears witness to his daughter's trauma. People are upset because this story bothers them. <i>It should.</i> It <i>needs</i> to bother us; we need to to be bothered by it; it is brilliant because it bothers us.<br />
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Stories that don't bother us are not worth writing<br />
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But people don't look back at the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> and gripe about Sauron's unconscionable actions. We don't threaten to boycott <i>Indiana Jones</i> if it doesn't stop portraying the cruelty of Nazis on the big screen. We all accept Nazis as evil, the "bad guys", and Tolkien was writing long before the era of <i>Dexter</i> and <i>Hannibal</i>. There's something else at work here. Has a cultural paradigm where we celebrate the villain led to us asking for villains whose actions we can condone? Because that's what the people opposing this cover are asking for: a Joker who is socially conscious, a homicidal, anarchist psychopath who won't oppress women. I figure what we're admitting when we demand this cover be pulled is that we're looking for villains who won't remind us of the problems inherent in our own culture. Aliens are alright. Fascists are fine. Crazy magical forces of evil are good to go. Heaven forbid we be confronted by a villain who embodies <i>misogyny</i>, though; that's <i>way</i> too close to home, let alone a villain who we understand is acting out that oppression because he is batshit insane.<br />
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Except that's the meaning of villainy. The bad guys should be exactly that: everything wrong with the world. Everything wrong with <i>us</i>. They should make us squirm. They should be a problem for us.<br />
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The cover is also, by nature, a <i>cover</i>; it's not doing its job unless it's in your face.<i> </i>I can't help you there; that's visual culture for you. But we live in a world of trigger warnings now, and that means it's becoming ever harder to talk about these things because once someone plays the Trigger Warning card, you can't speak out against them without coming across as the insensitive asshole at the table. We've built ourselves a fortress of insecurity, a honeycomb of carefully shored-up padded rooms where we can be kept far away from the things that cause cognitive dissonance, that force us to come to terms with whatever it is we've suppressed, in order to convince ourselves that everything's gonna be alright, that we're good people.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8rkKVyeaPO8LxQuFZQ54UfoabiWf-1fxfxuK87N-pDh2N_7nkoNO5xg7v8CdepdSzOC9QDH59w7YhsN06e038QZ7JNVBr1VH7gJa23uN2peHxhSsPYgyGsGSNgBUi-4eEuhIpEjEVOu0/s1600/BG-Cv41-Joker-variant-solicitation-88c4e-31e8d-674x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8rkKVyeaPO8LxQuFZQ54UfoabiWf-1fxfxuK87N-pDh2N_7nkoNO5xg7v8CdepdSzOC9QDH59w7YhsN06e038QZ7JNVBr1VH7gJa23uN2peHxhSsPYgyGsGSNgBUi-4eEuhIpEjEVOu0/s1600/BG-Cv41-Joker-variant-solicitation-88c4e-31e8d-674x1024.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></a>Look at this cover and tell me everything's gonna be alright.<br />
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Look at this cover and tell me the heroine would be better off if she never had to confront this shit. I wish I could have you look me in the eye and tell me you want a Batgirl who confronts violent, terrifying misogyny (the reality of this world we live in) with a carefree smile on her face. That shit is <i>grim</i>. Now, there's the perfectly valid argument that this cover is tonally disjointed from the rest of the <i>Batgirl</i> title so far. I haven't been reading it, but from what I have seen of <i>Batgirl</i> floating around the internet I would say that's an accurate statement. It will be interesting to see what's actually under that cover when the issue is released; if the cover accurately represents the story within, the younger crowd of readers who have been attracted to this heroine may be in for a shock. There will undoubtedly be fallout. Fans may feel betrayed, and the hard truth is this: <i>you have no right to feel betrayed</i>. DC Comics doesn't owe you a thing, even if they <i>should </i>(I'm an idealist; I think every storyteller and artist ought to be beholden to and mindful of his/her audience, to a degree. Rafael Albuquerque has been a brilliant example of this in his concern for his fans' response to the art, taking it upon himself to enter into discussion with the editors and have the art retracted). But they don't; that's the nature of the industry. This isn't some Kickstarter campaign where your donation entitles you to a reward; it's the publishing branch of a much larger company, owned by another company, owned in turn by the world's third-largest entertainment conglomerate. Any debt of gratitude you feel DC comics owes you for reading their material is illusory and sadly misplaced.<br />
<br />
So, any backlash against this cover can't <i>really</i> be about enacting corporate change. The outraged parties got lucky this time around; they appealed to an artist inclined to take their pleas to heart, but I think what he managed to give them was their comfort. What I hear in the bulk of these arguments is a desire to get back to a utopian period in the history of superhero comics, but this cover undermines that mission. It was a time when heroes never lost their battles, when the bad guys weren't too upsetting, when a reader could open a comic and be sure that they wouldn't be confronted by anything that challenged them, made them squirm a little, made them doubt that law enforcement personnel were anything less that paragons of virtue or that the government was anything other than wholeheartedly devoted to the greater good. It was a time when comics built up hope in a reader, wrapped them a blanket of comforting narrative tropes and banality and let them know that everything would be okay. <i>That </i>is the kind of comics scene which this cover works against, and it must be pulled from the shelves and made an example of so that we can return to the golden era of...<br />
<br />
The Comics Code.<br />
<br />
Maybe you've heard of it? That asinine piece of legislature in the mid-1950s that gutted the mainstream industry, tying the hands of creators and forbidding them to write anything other than moralizing propaganda that fostered children's blind trust in the ethical authority of the state. I can't seem to shift my perspective on this cover to allow myself to see it as anything short of foreboding.<br />
<br />
Alright, let's wrap this up. I want to address a couple of other internet articles here quickly. <i>Bleeding Cool </i>posted a <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/03/18/albuquerque-was-asked-to-make-batgirl-cover-more-extreme/#.VQnqa6LWiS8.twitter">great interview with Albuquerque</a> in which the artist makes his position and his motivation for pulling the cover quite clear. He's eloquent and smart about it, which is refreshing. I can't say I agree with all of what he says, namely that, "A series aimed at the teenage female audience should not have a cover like this." Oh? Is it going to be too much for them to see one of their heroes confronted by the same oppressive, violent garbage they're going to have to deal with from men for the rest of their lives? That'd be terrible, wouldn't it? Can't have that.<br />
<br />
I'm writing this largely in response to a pair of excellent blog posts by <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamTGorham">Adam Gorham</a>. Adam wrote <a href="http://aprincelydreadful.blogspot.ca/2015/03/normal-0-false-false-false-en-ca-x-none.html">the first one</a> in response to the cover debacle, and upon reading it I pitched some raw ideas at him on Twitter, to which he responded with <a href="http://aprincelydreadful.blogspot.ca/2015/03/normal-0-false-false-false-en-ca-x-none_18.html">the second post</a>. I'm gonna pull a couple quotes from that second post, but you should go read both of them; they're short, and worth it. Adam, responding to my "what if the story <i>should </i>be a problem?" argument, says,<br />
<blockquote>
"The problem I have with that argument is TKJ isn’t about Barbara Gordon. She’s made a victim in service of a plot that focuses on the characterization of three men. Her suffering is merely a plot motivator for them to duke it out." </blockquote>
He goes on to quote another fellow, <a href="https://twitter.com/ozmodiargh">John Lewis</a>, who says much the same thing and caps it off with the observation,<br />
<blockquote>
"Which isn't to say anything about how completely tone-deaf the cover is given the current Batgirl comic, which has gone to great lengths to establish Batgirl as a strong, resourceful, positive role model for female (and male!) fans." </blockquote>
I've chewed on that for a while, so let me spit it out and say: what better way to show what a heroine like Barbara Gordon is worth and how far the industry has come than to reprise the horrors of <i>The Killing Joke</i> and have Batgirl emerge victorious <i>through her own suffering</i>. That's the story I hope to see under that cover. I'm not holding my breath or anything, but it'd be nice for a change, wouldn't it? To not pull any punches, to have the Joker enter the scene as vile and demeaning as ever, and to have this strong, resourceful role-model for the up-and-coming generation of modern women stand up to that violation, defeat it, and emerge the stronger for it. Hiding from the cover is not the answer; facing down our demons <i>is</i>.<br />
<br />
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<br />Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-25336677616143051762015-03-08T08:13:00.003-07:002015-03-08T08:13:57.867-07:00Penny for Your Thoughts - UBC's Student Elections, Money, and the End of HistoryIt doesn't take a political analyst to tell you that the average university student cares very little for campus politics.<br />
<br />
I include myself in that statement. Apart from my four years as an active member of UBCO's visual arts course union, which (in my opinion) plays an integral role in keeping the art communities of both the university and the Okanagan at large from stagnating, I've largely stayed out of student politics and had a hard time stomaching the BS generated each year come election season. To make it worse, as cartoonist for <i><a href="http://www.thephoenixnews.com/">The Phoenix News</a> </i>I've been in thick of it, tasked with critiquing the goings on in my own inkstained way. On second thought...that's been kinda fun; getting paid to take the piss out of student politicians is a good life.<br />
<br />
An article from <i><a href="http://ubyssey.ca/">The Ubyssey</a></i>, the Vancouver campus paper, caught my eye on Facebook the day before yesterday: "<a href="http://ubyssey.ca/news/presidential-candidates-discuss-student-life-tuition-increases-and-hunger-games-faceoff-at-first-debate-987/">Presidential Candidates Discuss Student Life, Tuition Increases, and <i>Hunger Games</i></a>". The photo on the article made me remember something I'd read about a joke candidate at UBC, some guy running in V's Guy Fawkes mask from Alan Moore's <i>V for Vendetta</i>, which I thought was a laugh. So I read the article.<br />
<br />
And it really pissed me off.<br />
<br />
I shared the article on Facebook, at midnight (which is <i>never </i>good idea; I get cranky around midnight), making clear my opinion that we had officially reached a point where the idea of genuine revolution is now nothing more than a student punchline. I got my first comment around twenty minutes later from a friend back in Canada: "LOL!"<br />
<br />
To which I replied:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhUoI9Wnh5wcL9R_Hke43vGpjqovzGZHm_zime8sN-sd6-7pqZ3tpX_PihjD772jnIdWEud9QTdjlW0tryEVhZAwcPYaeYcP7jcqMFJMh3alPJ2MiSfiPuLlOBBa6Hv7AnDuYxEfnUfD4/s1600/Tianasquare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhUoI9Wnh5wcL9R_Hke43vGpjqovzGZHm_zime8sN-sd6-7pqZ3tpX_PihjD772jnIdWEud9QTdjlW0tryEVhZAwcPYaeYcP7jcqMFJMh3alPJ2MiSfiPuLlOBBa6Hv7AnDuYxEfnUfD4/s1600/Tianasquare.jpg" height="263" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"LOL!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In retrospect, this may have been a little drastic, but I was <i>mad</i>. Maybe it was lingering effects of receiving my friend Leah Moore's rage when British Unity scumbag <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BritishUnity">Nick Griffin</a> started using her dad's <i>V</i> symbol in his xenophobic political campaigns. Maybe it was the cantankerous streak last weekend left in me, having spent Saturday night drinking in Glasgow with my Irish-Marxist-punk-intellectual-art lecturer buddy Dave, who has pure revolution pumping in his veins. My pal on FB tried to defuse the situation, noting that surely there's "significant distance between Tiananmen Square and a noteworthy play of fiction regarding a vivacious character" (kudos to him for "vivacious"). But I wasn't taking any shit about this; far as I was concerned, sitting in my dorm room at 1:30am and steaming mad, this was The End. Student politics was dead. <blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Noteworthy? Hardly. It's a political shit-disturber cosplaying for attention. Which sort of distance do you mean: geographical, chronological, or ideological? Just because we're no longer living in the Cold War doesn't mean we should leave those sentiments to gather dust on a shelf somewhere. It's like pulling teeth to get our generation of students to vote right now, in our own bloody student elections never mind real-world politics. The apathy is suffocating. We live in a safe, sheltered, postmodern Western world where we are told that we're training to become intellectuals of some kind, when in reality all we want is a receipt for our "education" printed on fancy paper. That makes the vast majority of us weak, ignorant, and lazy, and it's turned the platform of politics into a stage for parodying ideals of revolution from an era when a higher percentage of the student body were willing to die for an idea than we can currently get to drop a slip in a ballot box."</span></blockquote>
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<br />
Between then and now I've done a lot of reading. The morning after that exchange I had a less-than-cordial private message waiting for me, calling me on my bullshit for criticizing this harmless gag so harshly when I've not only lampooned politics in my own work but also defended the much harsher satire of publications like <i>Charlie Hebdo. </i>At the same time I came across a brilliant article on <i>AlterNet</i> about a <a href="http://www.alternet.org/education/how-activist-college-kids-are-taking-high-priests-money?akid=12855.176831.kRxLpX&rd=1&src=newsletter1032843&t=8">student organization actively challenging current academic economic thought</a> by trolling conferences and lectures with incisive questioning. I sent that back as a reply, saying that <i>this</i> is the role students need to take upon themselves: not sitting on a stage in a comic book mask making <i>Hunger Games</i> jokes, but committing themselves to real, intellectual action that addresses the flaws in contemporary social power.<br />
<br />
I woke up this morning and read Francis Fukuyama's "<a href="http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm">The End of History?</a>". I read a piece on <i>The Guardian</i> that a friend of mine shared titled "<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/08/armando-iannucci-money-at-heart-of-politics-general-election-2015?CMP=share_btn_fb">Politics Was Once About Beliefs and Society. Now It's a Worship of Money.</a>". Then I started digging through <i>The Ubyssey's </i>Alma Mater Society election material, and everything came together in a rather satisfying way.<br />
<br />
The first thing I discovered is that the fellow running as V is a wicked smart, well-articulated <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/features/viet-vu-activist-executive-student-319/">student activist named Viet Vu</a> (I shit you not) who is currently president of the Vancouver School of Economics Undergraduate Society. "Vu became president of the Economics Students Association in 2013...As president, Vu’s role is both supervisory and ambassadorial. He advises the society’s other execs on their day-to-day activities and event planning, and represents economics students in dealings with UBC and the AMS." Not, I freely admit, the guy I expected to find under that mask. Vu wrote a letter in <i>The Ubyssey</i> last October, <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/opinion/letter-vu-agm-voices-silenced-symbolic-142/">voicing his sadness at the results of the AMS's annual general meeting</a>, which ended on that occasion with a poorly-conceived vote on the matter of whether or not the society should be sanctioning student protests. UBC has been steadily increasing student fees, and action is needed; what lay undecided at the time was whether such action would officially involve the AMS. The vote went through, committing the AMS to support of student fee protests, but Vu said this was a mistaken decision. Read his letter; like I said, the guy's articulate. He cites past negotiations with the school which were successful, in which discourse and not aggressive mobilization of the student body won over and implemented change. Using AMS resources to fuel protests, he says, will do more harm than good in the long run.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The man, the mask; Viet Vu (left) and his <br />presidential alter ego (right)</td></tr>
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There are most certainly those who disagree. <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/opinion/letter-protests-ams-132/">The opposition was quick to respond to Vu's letter with one of their own</a>, penned by one of the editors at <i><a href="http://thetalon.ca/meet-the-editors-alex-mierke-zatwarnicki/">The Talon</a></i>, UBC's alternative press newspaper (they're the aggressive, activist ones). No punches were pulled. The letter confidently deploys militarist language in presenting Vu's position as defeatist."Despite what Vu and others in his stead imagine, the 'play nice' strategy isn’t about going into battle for students — it's about negotiating the terms of our surrender." After stating that UBC's negotiating process is callous and patronizing towards its students, the piece caps it all off with this:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">And for those of you who will counter that those protests should be organized on an exclusively grassroots level, consider this: if student mobilization is being orchestrated by a body independent of the AMS, why would the university negotiate with the AMS? If the AMS has no ability to stop the protests, how would they have any legitimacy in those discussions? And most importantly, if the AMS isn’t on the front lines with students fighting for accessible education, how can they claim to represent us at all? A student association that isn’t fighting with us can’t fight for us; and a student association that can’t fight for us isn’t one worth having.</span></blockquote>
Apparently there's a war on, and unless they're paying for the picket signs and bullhorns Vu and his diplomats aren't invited.<br />
<br />
UBC has a <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/ams/ams-joke-candidates373/">long and strange tradition of joke candidates</a> in their student elections, stretching back as far as the 1920s. The <i>function</i> of such a candidate is up for discussion, but I figure <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/opinion/a-vote-for-a-joke-candidate-should-be-a-vote-for-apathy492/">this article is pretty spot-on</a>: the gag runners are there as a satirical foil to cast the other candidates and the election process in a light that makes you raise an eyebrow at the whole thing. "You run a goat in an election to equate the other candidates to a goat. They have to run against a goat. They have to compete with a goat. That’s funny." Damn right that's funny. What I'm working to understand is where Vu and V fit into that tradition. Vu is also <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/news/senate-candidates-talk-mental-health-tuition-and-student-representation-about-at-first-debate-342/">running for senate</a>, and advocating for an "action-forward" senate; I can only assume the action he has in mind doesn't involved hand-painted signs and marching. Is Vu, then, running for a senate spot that he sees as being the right channel for the kind of productive discourse he believes in, while using the presidential race as the most prominent stage from which to <a href="http://ubyssey.ca/news/iamastudent-protest-housing-fees-759/">lampoon the picketers</a>? I'm very curious to see how that pans out.<br />
<br />
To wrap this up I want to touch quickly on the three other pieces of writing I encountered recently, external to the whole UBC thing. Some of you reading this may already be familiar with Fukuyama's theories about humanity having reached the "end of history", a point, he says, where we have exhausted ideological evolution. Western liberalism is it, the culmination of all our thinking which ultimately recognizes human rights, class divisions, sexism, etc. All those issues can be resolved within this framework, and all opposing systems (fascism and communism, namely) have already fallen flat. Therefore any political quibbles we have from now on will be about tweaking the system we already have in place (my first reaction was, "but that system won't work because <i>patriarchy</i>", but that's a conversation for another time). "The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands." Which jives rather well with that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/08/armando-iannucci-money-at-heart-of-politics-general-election-2015?CMP=share_btn_fb"><i>Guardian </i>article I mentioned earlier</a>, claiming that politics has forsaken the pursuit of ideological reform for good business practice, and that <a href="http://www.alternet.org/education/how-activist-college-kids-are-taking-high-priests-money?akid=12855.176831.kRxLpX&rd=1&src=newsletter1032843&t=8"><i>AlterNet</i> article about economic rabble rousers</a> stirring up new and rejected ways of thinking among the old and stale minds in the Academy.<br />
<br />
Somehow, it all comes back around to economics.<br />
<br />
So, maybe it's true. Maybe this is the end of history, and all we've got left to look forward to is a bunch of wannabe politicians whingeing about funding, student fees, and the f**king activists waving signs outside the boardroom windows. I dunno; I'm a cartoonist, not an economist. You'll find me sitting at a desk somewhere with a pen, making you all look fat for a student newspaper that doesn't have enough money to pay me that week because the funds were diverted to buy pizza for the crowd of angry hipsters camped outside the university president's office.<br />
<br />
Oh, and Mr. Vu? Stop making corny <i>Hunger Games</i> quips about fighting to the death for the new SUB; let's not mix our pop-cultural metaphors more than we absolutely have to.<br />
<br />
Cheers.<br />
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<br />Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-65861139915690053062015-02-05T15:09:00.000-08:002015-02-05T15:09:29.143-08:00"Symbols and Censors" - Comics, Semiotics, and IslamI have spent most of my day talking about comics and religion. It's been brilliant, and I am utterly exhausted.<br />
<br />
I was invited last term by one of my professors to help him deliver a lecture on Islam and media, a lecture we both knew would need to touch on Islam and cartoons but the weight of which we couldn't fully anticipate prior to the <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> tragedy. The video I'm posting is the audio and slides from the lecture I delivered earlier today in the Theology & Religion Department of Durham University, and I have to say I'm rather proud of it. My ideas for this talk came together in all the right ways, and I was able to tie my portion of the lecture seamlessly into what Prof. Davies was talking about prior to me taking the podium. It went off without a hitch (except for some projector issues near the beginning, so I apologize for the slow start; it picks up around 1:20, I promise).<br />
<br />
In this lecture I tackle first and foremost the matter of censorship, both in the lecture hall and as it pertains to depictions of Muhammad in modern media. I look at the prophet in animation and then in comics, before moving on to discuss some of the visual functions of the comics medium and connecting visual abstraction as presented by McCloud to identity as defined by religious symbols. After a brief comparison of the idea of bodily representation in Christianity and Islam I close with some thoughts on the human drive as meaning-making, cultural animals and the role of censorship as we create our history. I hope you enjoy it, hope the sound quality's alright, and I hope to hear your thoughts and questions about what I'm saying.<br />
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A couple of notes. First, I inadvertently flipped McCloud's "perceived" and "received" taxonomy. McCloud presents them as precisely the opposite of what I've presented. Something to keep in mind. Second, The 99 has nothing whatsoever to do with Marco Polo. My brain made that up and inserted it into my notes; my apologies to <a href="https://twitter.com/DrNaif">Dr. Naif</a>. In the stories, the Noor Stones do indeed travel to the Far East by the Silk Road, but not by the person I have suggested.<div>
<br /></div>
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We also had an excellent gathering of students at <a href="http://community.dur.ac.uk/butler.jcr/">Josephine Butler College</a> this evening for a "Global Voices" forum, at which I was asked to kickstart discussion around <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> and the matter of free speech. That conversation went in all kinds of interesting directions and I'm sorry to have not recorded it, but know that it <i>happened, </i>that<i> </i>young minds are actively, that we're trying to make sense of what it means to speak freely in a modern, global context. This event was particularly encouraging for me after chatting earlier with a friend about <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings">The Free Speech University Rankings</a> in the UK, in which Durham received an amber traffic light (middling grade) for a diversity and equality in which the "Definition of racial harassment includes the ‘display of offensive material’." We have a tendency, it seems, to be vague about what materials we consider offensive, while our <a href="http://www.durhamsu.com/">Students' Union</a> places no restrictions on speech. Thanks, guys. For more of my thoughts on encountering (almost) censorship of cartoons in my work at Durham, take a read of <a href="http://www.ajkomics.ca/off-the-sketchpad/january-29-2015-almost-censored">this post from January on the <i>other</i> blog</a>.</div>
Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-60842551750681788292015-01-09T02:00:00.001-08:002015-01-09T02:00:06.858-08:00Reblogged: Sacred & Sequential Statement on Charlie Hebdo News<div style="border: 0px; color: #2b2b2b; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As many of you know, I work with <a href="http://www.sacredandsequential.org/">Sacred & Sequential</a> on matters of comics and religion. Yesterday I took part as our group crafted an official response to the horrific acts of violence against the staff of <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> in Paris, an event that has whipped the internet into a fervour in defense of art, satire, and free speech. W</span>e at Sacred & Sequential sought to make it clear that, a<span style="font-family: inherit;">s important as that conversation is to both the field of journalism and the comics/cartoon medium, just as vital is recognizing the impact that this tragedy is having on religion and the religious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700;"><a href="http://www.sacredandsequential.org/2015/01/08/ss-statement-on-charlie-hebdo-news/">The following is a public statement by the Sacred and Sequential group:</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Nothing can justify the attack on the French satirical magazine </span><i style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Charlie Hebdo</i><span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> on January 7, 2015. Some of the cartoons published by the magazine were offensive and at times deemed Islamophobic, but that in no way legitimates violence. </span><i style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Charlie Hebdo</i><span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> had the right to publish what it did under the protection of free speech. Just as freedom of speech did not guarantee the victims of the attack immunity to criticism, the right to dissent does not include murder.</span></div>
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In the aftermath of yesterday’s killings, the response has been varied. New Yorkers took to Union Square to offer their support in an impromptu vigil. Cartoonists such as Sarah McIntyre and Carlos Latuff, politicians such as Barack Obama and David Cameron, and pundits across the planet have offered their support and condolences to the victims’ loved ones. Among those who have voiced their sadness and outrage are Muslim individuals and organizations from all over the world, such as the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA.</div>
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Others’ responses have been of a more combative tenor. Internationally, and on a far too familiar pattern, an imaginary “Islam,” simplistically conceived as a monolithic, murderous, West-hating, and terrorist ideology, has been blamed for the attacks. In some places, the response has not been limited to words but has spilled over into violent acts perpetrated against a number of sacred spaces and places of worship. Several French mosques and Muslim prayer halls have been subject to attacks, placing many innocent worshipers in the line of retaliatory fire for the actions of a select few.</div>
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“Islam” did not do this; adherents to a particular, marginal, and extreme interpretation of what Islam is and what it means to be a Muslim did. They do not represent the planet’s more than one billion self-identifying Muslims. Neither the Qur’an nor the traditions attributed to the Prophet of Islam uniformly oppose illustrations nor modern comics and cartooning. Moreover, wherever and however they are published, comics as a medium has no innate aversion to religion but, instead, is a fertile site of opportunity and engagement with all faiths and beliefs. We must conclude that these events cannot be attributed to Islam as a religion nor to comics as a medium. Protecting this art and its artists is just as necessary as protecting Islam and Muslims from reduction to ideological extremism.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Art by Sarah McIntyre</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">(http://www.jabberworks.co.uk/)</span></td></tr>
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Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-65565416981444233112014-12-19T06:27:00.001-08:002014-12-19T06:27:12.937-08:00Funding Friday, "Moonshot" - Comics & Crowdfunding News<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1350078939/moonshot-the-indigenous-comics-collection"><b>Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection Vol. 1</b></a><br />
Edited by Hope Nicholson<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/HopeLNicholson">Hope</a> is rapidly becoming the most cited person on this blog, which I suppose goes to show just how busy she's been this past year-and-a-bit. Having brought both <i><a href="http://brokwindsor.com/">Brok Windsor</a></i> and <i><a href="http://nelvanacomics.com/">Nelvana of the Northern Lights</a></i> back to our bookshelves, Hope is building a reputation for being the go-to person for comics Canadiana and it makes perfect sense to me that she was the one <a href="https://twitter.com/IllustratorAndy">Andy Stanleigh</a> approached to edit <i>Moonshot</i>, <a href="https://twitter.com/AHComicsInc">Alternate History Comics</a>' next cultural comics codex. Just this past year AH released another kickstarted anthology, <i><a href="http://www.jewishcomicsanthology.com/">The Jewish Comics Anthology</a></i>, edited by Jewish librarian <a href="https://twitter.com/jewishlibrarian">Steven Bergson</a>, and hinting at what may become this publisher's <i>modus operandi</i>: collecting well-curated and respectfully presented collections of cultural stories as a literary window onto worlds which we as modern readers may not entirely understand.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6WTYqO2m3jakDgHG4WYxrgFp0X7U3G6OMUHUR-E9rypbs3xuWhtICzTgLx3sECYr9VgMdOAc3eHL24jr2_RgTCgkBzd3x1pGpvSINjimDElhVPqC0O7kMpNylDEhvhEBLyZNsPmDpNE/s1600/Stephen+Gladue+-+Moonshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6WTYqO2m3jakDgHG4WYxrgFp0X7U3G6OMUHUR-E9rypbs3xuWhtICzTgLx3sECYr9VgMdOAc3eHL24jr2_RgTCgkBzd3x1pGpvSINjimDElhVPqC0O7kMpNylDEhvhEBLyZNsPmDpNE/s1600/Stephen+Gladue+-+Moonshot.jpg" height="334" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover for <i>Moonshot</i>; original painting by Cree artist Stephen Gladue</td></tr>
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For me, this respectful approach is one of the shining highlights of the <i>Moonshot</i> project. <a href="https://twitter.com/kdcallag">K.D. Callaghan</a>'s <a href="http://www.paperdroids.com/2014/12/15/canadian-comics-kickstarter-interview-moonshots-andy-stanleigh/">interview with Andy</a> for <a href="http://www.paperdroids.com/">PaperDroids.com</a> directly addresses the issue that immediately struck me as the biggest problem a project such as this faces: cultural appropriation. Andy met the question head-on.<br />
<blockquote style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<strong style="background-color: #cccccc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">One of the biggest concerns when working with Indigenous stories and culture is that of cultural appropriation. You’ve noted that any traditional stories are being printed with the permission of the elders in their respective communities—a wonderful and respectful way to deal with this issue. Were there any other concerns around appropriation with this project? If so, how did you handle them?</strong></blockquote>
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<blockquote style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;">
<strong style="background-color: #cccccc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></strong><span style="background-color: #cccccc;">There were definitely concerns about appropriation, and both Hope Nicholson and I are big comic book fans who have seen a lot of the character stereotypes out there. Even with the best of intentions, non-indigenous writers and/or artists can unwittingly cross that line from tradition to stereotype/appropriation. The way we’ve dealt with this is being extremely selective with which writers and artists we bring on board. The collection will be comprised of over 90% indigenous creators, who have all had a say in who they work with on <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">MOONSHOT</em>. As well, the non-indigenous creators involved are all experts in the field who have a massive history of work in the community behind them, and are welcomed by the indigenous creators involved.</span></blockquote>
Now, that answer made me pretty damn happy, so when I got around to reading Hope's <a href="http://sequentialpulp.ca/moonshot/">mission statement</a> for <i>Moonshot</i> (as posted by <a href="https://twitter.com/sequential_ca">Sequential</a>), it was the icing on the cake.<br />
<ol style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 1.2em auto;">
<li style="margin: 0px auto;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><strong style="margin: 0px auto;">Accuracy</strong> – No mish-mash of cultures or appropriation. (ie. If a traditional story is being relayed from a Metis culture, don’t have characters with Cherokee outfits).</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px auto;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><strong style="margin: 0px auto;">Permission</strong> – a writer brought up that some stories are not meant to be told outside of the community. When in doubt in regards to the appropriate public telling of traditional stories, I’ve asked the writer to consult with an elder if possible. Google is a great place to start with research, but must be used judiciously.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px auto;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><strong style="margin: 0px auto;">No addiction or self-harm in the stories</strong>. Not because these issues aren’t important or relevant, but when you turn on the news and that’s the only representation you see, it becomes a biased view of what everyday culture is. I know there is a greater variety of stories that can be told.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px auto;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><strong style="margin: 0px auto;">Creators</strong> – Together, the publisher and I researched and found a great variety of artists and writers that identify as indigenous. Having stories told by members of the community, and to encourage young aspiring artists/writers is very important. It’s also important to me to prove that there is no excuse for a non-indigenous writer/artist to not create a complex indigenous character, and there are a few non-indigenous creators involved in this collection.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px auto;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><strong style="margin: 0px auto;">Romanticizing</strong> – Too often a writer will see old-fashioned stereotypes and go so far in the other direction that they end up doing the exact thing they wanted to avoid. Any reference to a brave, dying culture rings to me as an untruth and stories that portray this type of depiction are not included.</span></li>
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I think the second item on the list is crucial. I'm far from being an expert on First Nations culture and one of the least comfortable people when it comes to engaging in the seemingly tenuous relationship between the North American indigenous peoples and all us other folk who came from somewhere else. But the sentiment I am most familiar with, and which coincides with what Hope mentions in her blurb, is that these stories are not <i>ours</i> to tell. I can't even begin to elaborate on what all that issue entails, and I won't try, but I'll say that it seems to me the <i>Moonshot</i> project is going about this matter in all the right ways.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwYhX2u8yeSWBbhfQxHPj98jMFwp-tg36qmX1rjM-Z4iTGZS_cbERXV1YRWKpK6yNaJ8UwRurJZ76nlbyeUQjFmjIMkuRixA9q-uuIWhRIqZwLabYz-erQfu8jJ0bMzUcYYH-RYbw23H0/s1600/Haiwai+Hou+-+Water+Spirit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwYhX2u8yeSWBbhfQxHPj98jMFwp-tg36qmX1rjM-Z4iTGZS_cbERXV1YRWKpK6yNaJ8UwRurJZ76nlbyeUQjFmjIMkuRixA9q-uuIWhRIqZwLabYz-erQfu8jJ0bMzUcYYH-RYbw23H0/s1600/Haiwai+Hou+-+Water+Spirit.jpg" height="320" width="201" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Water Spirit" - Haiwei Hou</td></tr>
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As mentioned in that fourth item on Hope's list, the project sports an impressive team of artists and writers.<br />
<a href="http://comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=1620">Claude St-Aubin</a> (R.E.B.E.L.S., Green Lantern, Captain Canuck)<div>
<a href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyVeregge">Jeffery Veregge</a> (G.I. Joe, Judge Dredd)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/StephenGladue">Stephen Gladue</a> (MOONSHOT cover artist)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/houvv">Haiwei Hou</a> (Two Brothers)</div>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122820/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm">Nicholas Burns</a> (Arctic Comics, Curse of Chucky, Super Shamou)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/Ouroboros09">Scott B. Henderson</a> (Man to Man, Tales from Big Spirit)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/JonProudstar">Jon Proudstar</a> (Tribal Force)</div>
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<a href="http://www.comicvine.com/george-freeman/4040-21781/">George Freeman</a> (Captain Canuck, Aquaman, Batman)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/MarkShainblum">Mark Shainblum</a> (Northguard, Corum: The Bull and The Spear)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/odaminowin">Elizabeth LaPensee</a> (Survivance, The Nature of Snakes, Fala)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/BuffySteMarie">Buffy Sainte-Marie</a> (Fire & Fleet & Candlelight, Coincidence & Likely Stories)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/richardvancamp">Richard Van Camp</a> (Path of the Warrior, Kiss Me Deadly)</div>
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<a href="http://ryanhunasmith.blogspot.co.uk/">Ryan Huna Smith</a> (Tribal Force)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/_DaveARobertson">David Robertson</a> (The Evolution of Alice, Stone)</div>
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<a href="http://www.mheducation.ca/school/files/2011/09/rising_above_graphic_story_by_steven_keewatin_sanderson.pdf">Steve Sanderson</a> (Darkness Calls, Journey of the Healer)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/haidamanga">Michael Yahgulanaas</a> (RED)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/sheyahshe">Michael Sheyahshe</a> (Native Americans in Comic Books, Dark Owl)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/davidjcutler">David Cutler</a> (The Northern Guard)</div>
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...and more!<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ALHeOKbogOpePyolsluTftGDVEis3pAHFCiSS1FYBhBxR2E1XZoCx3_7yqGd_BDnURkqNz8GzliT85gBNWfRhsjPjYSWq3T_48ApOs5Trpv-KbmeaQhJv1vNDzDAEvMdNAjfnzvQFgc/s1600/2885a6410b297656048d9cdb5b289a3b_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ALHeOKbogOpePyolsluTftGDVEis3pAHFCiSS1FYBhBxR2E1XZoCx3_7yqGd_BDnURkqNz8GzliT85gBNWfRhsjPjYSWq3T_48ApOs5Trpv-KbmeaQhJv1vNDzDAEvMdNAjfnzvQFgc/s1600/2885a6410b297656048d9cdb5b289a3b_large.jpg" height="198" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stamps by Jeffery Veregge</td></tr>
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The campaign is offering a slick-looking selection of backer awards, including a set of limited-run Canadian postage stamps, some artsy bookmarks (something which AH did for the Jewish anthology too, and are well worth the money), and an assortment of prints and digital options. No original art offerings have been posted yet, but there are some canvas prints for those so inclined. Great looking rewards. Oh, and you can get the book too. In case you were wondering.<br />
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Suffice it to say I'm hardly the only blogger out here chronicling cool comics crowdfunding campaigns (though I may be the only one obsessed with alliteration), and certainly not the only one following this project. There's a whole host of worthwhile interviews, ponderings, and reviews out around the web that you should take a gander at. And while you're out there exploring, read this thing on <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/coyote-2?mbid=social_twitter">First Nations creation narratives</a> that Rebecca Solnit just wrote for <i>The New Yorker</i>. It's pretty rad.<br />
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<a href="http://www.paperdroids.com/2014/12/15/canadian-comics-kickstarter-interview-moonshots-andy-stanleigh/">Paper Droids</a><br />
<a href="http://geekhardshow.com/2014/12/moonshot/">Geek Hard</a><br />
<a href="http://sequentialpulp.ca/moonshot/">Sequential</a><br />
<a href="http://comicsbeat.com/back-this-moonshot-the-indigenous-comics-collection-from-alternative-history/">The Beat</a><br />
<a href="http://www.digitaldrum.ca/post/view/id/3265">Digital Drum</a><br />
<a href="http://theystandonguard.blogspot.ca/2014/12/moonshot-indigenous-comics-collection.html">They Stand on Guard</a><br />
<a href="http://pastramination.com/2014/12/06/lets-kickstart-this-moonshot-the-indigenous-comics-collection/">Pastrami Nation</a></div>
Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-19796040902019278982014-12-16T07:57:00.001-08:002014-12-16T07:57:27.609-08:00The Hobbit - A Final Musing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now that I've got all <a href="http://watercolour-horizons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-hobbit-rant-or-there-and-back.html">that</a> out of my system, I really did enjoy the film last night. As with the previous films in this trilogy, there were characters and moments that came off flawlessly on screen. Bilbo's parting with the dwarves before the gates of Erebor had tears welling up in my eyes. It was a reminder of just how lucky this generation, and our parents', have been to see this world of our childhood brought to life by the magic that is cinema. I put my trust in John Howe and Alan Lee's <a href="http://alan-and-john.tumblr.com/">vision of Middle Earth</a> many years ago, and they have never let me down. By their design I've witnessed Tom, Bert, William squabbling over dinner in Trollshaw forest; listened to a contest of riddles in the dark; laid eyes on The Lonely Mountain across the Long Lake. And it's all been a rather profound experience. I still maintain that it would be worthwhile to re-edit the trilogy; if one were to cut out all the extraneous blockbuster-mongering action and romance, you would be left with a pretty darn accurate rendition of Tolkien's story. A lot of work for some fan out there, but if you ever pull it off let me know. I want to watch that cut.</div>
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We die-hard lovers of Tolkien's world have had to put up with some downright wrong implications in the films these past few years, fabrications made with the intention of tying Jackson's trilogies together into a cohesive franchise (because we all know Tolkien was no good at creating a unified world for his stories to exist in...right?). I think the most forced of these instances comes at the end of <i>The Battle of the Five Armies</i> when Thranduil sends Legolas off to find the Dunedain and meet/mentor a "young ranger" named "Strider". From a <a href="http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Aragorn">strictly canonical</a> point of view, this is absurd. Aragorn was ten years old at the time of the Battle of the Five Armies, being fostered by Elrond in Rivendell, and would not even come to know his true name for another ten years. He would not be known as "Strider" for five more years after that. Tolkien would shudder, I think, at the implication that Legolas and Aragorn had known each other already for nearly <i>eighty years</i> by the time the Council of Elrond brought The Fellowship together. It's unnecessary conjecture on Jackson's part; mythology is meant to have gaps, but PJ is bent on explaining them away. Leave it! It's myth.</div>
<div>
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<div>
My point in all this is more than just bandying facts and inconsistencies about, which any Tolkien-obsessed fan can (and, with the slightest provocation, will) do. The films ends with Bilbo's return to Bag End, only to discover that his life (and many spoons) as he left it is being auctioned away. He's been presumed dead, and upon his return there is much debate as to whether or not he really is who he says he is. After all, hobbits who leave The Shire on such adventures are hardly expected, or desired, to return.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif6wObDDxuqc-1-S7tzf1AbbmJSnTWLPtEre_zdY0_sAOLsViRvAGuXA-Ff8vz5TRL3AEQ_Njg0Pn-cIB6s5pPOg7tSRWn4bnbNeHyB_uKJ5VpdzUoVPuCsxFhjEk3dzW8UyvtE43FcCw/s1600/Map_of_the_Hobbit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif6wObDDxuqc-1-S7tzf1AbbmJSnTWLPtEre_zdY0_sAOLsViRvAGuXA-Ff8vz5TRL3AEQ_Njg0Pn-cIB6s5pPOg7tSRWn4bnbNeHyB_uKJ5VpdzUoVPuCsxFhjEk3dzW8UyvtE43FcCw/s1600/Map_of_the_Hobbit.jpg" height="249" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bag End (by John Howe)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 26.6666660308838px;">Indeed Bilbo found he had lost more than spoons - he had lost his reputation. It is true that for ever after he remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable. He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighbourhood to be 'queer'-except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side, but even they were not encouraged in their friendship by their elders. I am sorry to say he did not mind. He was quite content; and the sound of the kettle on his hearth was ever after more musical than it had been even in the quiet days before the Unexpected Party. His sword he hung over the mantelpiece. His coat of mail was arranged on a stand in the hall (until he lent it to a Museum). His gold and silver was largely spent in presents, both useful and extravagant - which to a certain extent accounts for the affection of his nephews and his nieces. His magic ring he kept a great secret, for he chiefly used it when unpleasant callers came. He took to writing poetry and visiting the elves; and though many shook their heads and touched their foreheads and said "Poor old Baggins!" and though few believed any of his tales, he remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.</span></blockquote>
<div>
The films does a superb job of illustrating the contrast between Bilbo and the hobbits he finds himself surrounded by upon his return. They clearly don't understand what he's been through, don't understand the weight of the name "Thorin Oakenshield" upon the contract papers he produces to prove his identity, cannot for the life of them fathom why he would have an orc helmet slung under one arm. The Shire, of course, was Tolkien's metaphorical England, the epitome of armchair-lounging, pipe-smoking, tea-drinking modern comfort. When confronted with the stuff of myth and legend, with the concept of adventure and the change in a character's spirit wrought by such trial, the hobbits simply don't <i>get</i> it. I couldn't help but watch that final scene with a wry smile on my face, for a I saw in those confused and disconcerted hobbit faces none other than Peter Jackson, who may have started out back in 2001 on a noble quest to bring us unadulterated Tolkien but who has long since lost himself in the armchair of Hollywood. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I will likely return to the movies once a year or so, watching them with friends and family on holidays, and surely watching <i>The Two Towers</i> more often than any of the others. But I will surely return to the books and the world within their pages, crafted with almost palpable love. Someday I'll read the books aloud to my kids and introduce them to that world, where little folk are capable of great things and dwarves counselled by ravens rule halls of gold beneath a mountain. And maybe, eventually, I'll let them watch the movies, if only to see if they miss Roac, son of Carc, as much as I do.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwfEU8JpILrRSNx1b4DOo2xGpfqOLBp83b0WKQsBeO7lbiGvKNQmMalCIpD6FSF7409xFjgsxMymyO6t1uhUhxBno5CiahGoftMbKi2AuY_oEJdBbzWg8u-Q93OIdmvB-0g4hjpayFMms/s1600/068-Roac-son-of-Carc-port.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwfEU8JpILrRSNx1b4DOo2xGpfqOLBp83b0WKQsBeO7lbiGvKNQmMalCIpD6FSF7409xFjgsxMymyO6t1uhUhxBno5CiahGoftMbKi2AuY_oEJdBbzWg8u-Q93OIdmvB-0g4hjpayFMms/s1600/068-Roac-son-of-Carc-port.jpg" height="320" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roac, son of Carc (by John Howe)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
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<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;">"Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!" said Bilbo.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;">"Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should not they prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;">"Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.</span></div>
</div>
Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-52859957539784900012014-12-16T06:56:00.001-08:002014-12-19T06:54:00.707-08:00The Hobbit - The Rant (or, There and Back Again...and Again...and Again)<div>
Heads up; this post may contain spoilers. As it is a commentary on a story published in 1937 to which the film in all major points adheres rather faithfully, any spoilers are, therefore, material that was extraneous to the film anyway, and really shouldn't concern you too much. Take that as you will.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So...I went and saw <i>The Battle of the Five Armies</i> last night (at least I think there were five; it got a little hard to tell at one point). A few key points from the film, before I launch into something a tad more detailed:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Legolas successfully defends his title as Lord of Physics</li>
<li>Dain II Ironfoot should be using an axe, not a hammer</li>
<li>Armoured goats?</li>
</ol>
<div>
Now, to business. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've had mixed feelings about these <i>Hobbit</i> films for some time now. When Peter Jackson announced the fracturing of the story into three separate movies I recognized the money-grab instantly, but could also see the structural sense it made to split the story in three. The trouble is, I'm so much in love with the Middle Earth that artists John Howe and Alan Lee have helped the team at Weta bring to life that it's been hard for me to take issue with it. In <i>The Battle of the Five Armies</i> , however, changes have been made to some fundamental aspects of the story, changes which I am not sure I can accept.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This movie doesn't actually cover a lot of book. It would take me perhaps an hour-and-a-half to read aloud the last six chapters in which the events of the film are told, complete with details and entire characters that simply aren't in PJ's interpretation, and yet I sat through a two-and-a-half hour film last night. Knowing this, it saddens me that certain simple yet key things were either altered or overlooked entirely (Roac son of Carc, anyone?). I must urge everyone reading this, if you have not already, read Tokien's novel. If you enjoyed the tale you've encountered (perhaps for the first time) in this trilogy of films, go find a cheap paperback copy of <i>The Hobbit</i>, curl up in an armchair for the day and lose yourself in the tale as it was ever intended to be. Yeah, I'm sentimental about it; but you'll never understand why unless you read it for yourself.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Those who have only ever seen the films, for example, will never know that Bilbo is ultimately responsible for the slaying of Smaug. For it is Bilbo who, in his banter with the dragon, discovers that Smaug the Impenetrable is not quite as impenetrable as he might think he is ("Old fool! Why there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!"<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 26.6666660308838px;">)</span>. He relates the facts of the matter to Thorin and company, a conversation overheard by...the thrush. The same thrush whose knocking upon the rocks leads Bilbo to discover the door.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;">"Drat the bird!" said Bilbo crossly. "I believe he is listening, and I don't like the look of him."</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;">"Leave him alone!" said Thorin. "The thrushes are good and friendly-this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 26.6666660308838px;">"Well, he'll have news to take to Lake-town all right, if that is what he is after," said Bilbo; "though I don't suppose there are any people left there that trouble with thrush-language."</span></blockquote>
<div>
Turn your eyes southward now, where Esgaroth is under attack. The town has seen the dragon coming, rallied, and with evacuation underway has met Smaug onslaught with a storm of arrows. A bowman named Bard is down to his last arrow, and is startled when a (nay, <i>the</i>) thrush alights on his shoulder. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
Unafraid it perched by his ear and it brought him news. Marvelling he found he could understand its tongue, for he was of the race of Dale.</div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
"Wait! Wait!" it said to him. "The moon is rising. Look for the hollow of the left breast as he flies and turns above you!" And while Bard paused in wonder it told him of tidings up in the Mountain and of all that it had heard. Then Bard drew his bow-string to his ear.</div>
</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4UPpF1nKsOfZ5aYupH6b-HCUDpZM-GvRrxRHENODOiXsyf-xQyWRBs7NeJ-GiwUPa4ybGXRJMiq1muLbS1R_V0UX58R6YamrH-fEv3YMw6EKM2ZaeEaQ4Ui2RW-u9JrbTTAxrKgBDXuA/s1600/Ricard+of+Colchester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4UPpF1nKsOfZ5aYupH6b-HCUDpZM-GvRrxRHENODOiXsyf-xQyWRBs7NeJ-GiwUPa4ybGXRJMiq1muLbS1R_V0UX58R6YamrH-fEv3YMw6EKM2ZaeEaQ4Ui2RW-u9JrbTTAxrKgBDXuA/s1600/Ricard+of+Colchester.jpg" height="320" width="206" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There's a reason my SCA heraldry is<br />
a black thrush holding an arrow.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The rest, as they say, is history. The film paints quite a different picture. Bard, the only person in the town fighting the wyrm, standing alone atop a tower with some ridiculous jury-rigged ballista (Smaug has broken his bow and is <i>talking to him...what?</i>) spots the gap in the dragon's armour all by himself. It removes Bilbo entirely from the central role for which Tolkien always intended him; this is a story about a hobbit who, intentionally or otherwise, is responsible for some incredible events (like the slaying of the last great dragon), the weight of which he does not fully understand.<br />
<br />
Let's fast-forward to Thorin's death on the screen. He is killed in a gimmicky single-combat sequence atop a frozen waterfall with an orc who was meant to be dead 142 years ago. And I don't mean "meant" in that they supposed he had died from his wounds; Tolkien writes that Azog was killed in 2799 by Dain II Ironfoot, and the Battle of the Five Armies was fought in 2941. So, yeah. Way to stick to the text, PJ. That's been bugging me for three years now. Anyway, that's not <i>really</i> the point. The point is the way it affects Thorin's character at the end of the story. We see him come back to being himself again, come bursting out of the mountain and rally the dwarven forces to him, break the goblin ranks, and then...jump on an armoured mountain that materialized from frakking nowhere and bugger off up a mountain to chase a single orc. Where he dies, and Bilbo happens to be there also (because he must warn Thorin of the other secret army, which PJ invented so that he'd have something to warn Thorin about) just in time to hear the great dwarf's last words...which are damn near identical to Boromir's last words to Aragorn in <i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i> (2001). But that's not how the story goes.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
When Gandalf saw Bilbo, he was delighted. "Baggins!" he exclaimed. "Well I never! Alive after all - I am glad! I began to wonder if even your luck would see you through! A terrible business, and it nearly was disastrous. But other news can wait. Come!" he said more gravely. "You are called for;" and leading the hobbit he took him within the tent.</div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
"Hail! Thorin," he said as he entered. "I have brought him."</div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
There indeed lay Thorin Oakenshield, wounded with many wounds, and his rent armour and notched axe were cast upon the floor. He looked up as Bilbo came beside him.</div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">
"Farewell, good thief," he said. "I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate."</div>
</blockquote>
Thorin dies not in single combat with some mythical orc but as a soldier, wounded many times by many foes as he led by example in the middle of everything. And lying, torn and bleeding on his deathbed after the battle is won, he asks for Bilbo to be brought to him so that he can make amends. It's his initiative, the summons of a king which Tolkien knew is no small matter. Jackson's obsession with nemesis, pitting Azog against Thorin and Bolg against Legolas (I'm not even gonna touch that one...except maybe once, later), has effectively robbed us of the intended destiny of Thorin Oakenshield.<br />
<br />
How great would the battle scene have been if PJ had stuck to the text? I'm frankly sick of the narrative contortions through which the script had to go to set up certain characters' deaths. Instead of<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">Thorin wielded his axe with mighty strokes, and nothing seemed to harm him. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20pt;">"To me! To me! Elves and Men! To me! O my kinsfolk!" he cried, and his voice shook like a horn in the valley.</span></blockquote>
we get a bunch of elves and dwarves cavorting through towers on mountain peaks and hanging upside-down from giant flying bats (don't ask) in a bizarre series of swashbuckling hijinks that is...ridiculous. There's no other word for it. What of Beorn? He's overlooked entirely, except for one shot where he actually gets airdropped into combat by the Eagles. And then we never see him again. To PJ, this guy's just a giant shapeshifting bear-man who offers some sick CGI opportunities. Tolkien actually had a purpose for Beorn, as he had a purpose for everything he created.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 26.6666660308838px;">In that last hour Beorn himself had appeared - no one knew how or from where. He came alone, and in bear's shape; and he seemed to have grown almost to giant-size in his wrath. The roar of his voice was like drums and guns; and he tossed wolves and goblins from his path like straws and feathers. He fell upon their rear, and broke like a clap of thunder through the ring. The dwarves were making a stand still about their lords upon a low rounded hill. Then Beorn stooped and lifted Thorin, who had fallen pierced with spears, and bore him out of the fray. Swiftly he returned and his wrath was redoubled, so that nothing could withstand him, and no weapon seemed to bite upon him. He scattered the bodyguard, and pulled down Bolg himself and crushed him.</span></blockquote>
And who wouldn't have loved to see Bolg killed by a <i>giant bear, </i>rather than...Legolas? Yeah, I went there. It bothers me.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcdPaMyCV21GdOqIoYmtCGnACjJW0E0M4xACcasJKOUUdQuKUZl8nOk9CgbUu7hs3g8lRlkMyNirrNKLiTmP2X_wE6apYqPKelz6w1x03M4zyB5Ij7UcKRRfEO_9BtuP7T92LewtxAJw/s1600/beorn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAcdPaMyCV21GdOqIoYmtCGnACjJW0E0M4xACcasJKOUUdQuKUZl8nOk9CgbUu7hs3g8lRlkMyNirrNKLiTmP2X_wE6apYqPKelz6w1x03M4zyB5Ij7UcKRRfEO_9BtuP7T92LewtxAJw/s1600/beorn.jpg" height="257" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yeah...no contest.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-75012143387111414512014-12-12T06:41:00.000-08:002014-12-12T06:45:17.073-08:00Electricomics - The ZineIn my <a href="http://watercolour-horizons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/electricomics-revelations-from-thought.html">earlier post on Electricomics</a>, in which I reported on the <a href="https://twitter.com/thoughtbubbleuk">Thought Bubble</a> panel that I'd attended, I mentioned the zine I'd picked up from the Electriccrew at their table there. The booklet's available on <a href="http://orphansofthestorm.bigcartel.com/product/limited-edition-signed-electricomics-booklet"> Alan Moore's online store</a>, but it's likely that they're nearly out of stock. I've been asked if I could share the zine digitally, so I scanned it for your reading pleasure: an introduction to the <a href="http://electricomics.net/">Electricomics</a> agenda, some wicked great art from <a href="https://twitter.com/ColleenDoran">Colleen Doran</a>, an interview by <a href="https://twitter.com/boundedspace">Alison Gazzard</a>, and a short comic about comics by <a href="https://twitter.com/merlism">Daniel Merlin Goodbrey</a>. Enjoy!<br />
<br />
<div class="issuuembed" data-configid="12419341/10540340" style="height: 450px; width: 650px;">
</div>
<script async="true" src="//e.issuu.com/embed.js" type="text/javascript"></script> (This publication can also be accessed <a href="http://issuu.com/asherj.klassen/docs/electricomics?e=12419341/10540340">here</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Trebuchet, 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.999979019165px;">?e=12419341/10540340)</span>Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-513188110170564672014-12-07T10:00:00.000-08:002014-12-07T10:00:58.709-08:00When Art Critiques Go WrongI was perusing the long-defunct "Notes" section of my Facebook account today when I unearthed this gem from a few years ago; to be precise, from the 6th of October, 2011. I recall sitting down for an art history class called "The Critical Viewer" and being informed by a classmate that Steve Jobs had died of cancer. So naturally the lecture hall was abuzz by the time the prof walked in, calmed us down, and got the class rolling. He started by throwing this photo up on the screen...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kVtUzaCw0bitOiY7SKoVjoKW-lZclfI4QYV9-ZaoaNJnqVh7UhL2qMmKz16ZtN78GVW9YWjaPqaEcYys9sY5AyLwOt5N9sNGmirffPzbsDTZtvMo4psQL4L5nCkFrGXDxV0aQWoMHcA/s1600/fry+spider+from+myconfinedspaces.com.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kVtUzaCw0bitOiY7SKoVjoKW-lZclfI4QYV9-ZaoaNJnqVh7UhL2qMmKz16ZtN78GVW9YWjaPqaEcYys9sY5AyLwOt5N9sNGmirffPzbsDTZtvMo4psQL4L5nCkFrGXDxV0aQWoMHcA/s1600/fry+spider+from+myconfinedspaces.com.jpg" height="325" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
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Our task was to form small groups and come up with supposed commonly accepted and alternate views on the meaning behind this image. The later didn't have to be feasible; we could interpret the picture however we chose. I must have been in some kinda mood that morning because I may have let this one get a little out of hand. As recorded in my Facebook note from that day (with some belated proofreading):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
"We begin with McDonald's. McDonald's is probably the most blatant, the ultimate, symbol of American consumerism and capitalist corporate business society. Now, a very large portion of corporate profits goes towards military funding; America has the world's single most potent military force, an accomplishment they have fought much opposition to achieve. Now, the McDonald's symbol on the crab-like creature is upside down in this image, and so becomes the middle initial of President Bush. George W. was born on July 6th, under the astrological sign of the crab, Cancer. Bush's invasion of the Middle East coupled with America's social values of excess have greatly impacted the Muslim world, and many conservative Islamic people refer to America as "The Great Satan", a term embodied in the horned top of the crab. Let's move on to the ketchup creature thing. There is a saying that only two things will survive a nuclear holocaust: cockroaches, and the Chinese. This cockroach form is clearly representative of China, especially in the politically-charged military context I will get to momentarily. The cockroach is red, with a distinct little yellow crescent on it, a symbol of the communist power with the ability to survive nuclear war. The other half of this military reference is the crab's shadow, which mimics the form of Sputnik and is a symbol of Soviet Russia and the Cold War arms race. Both Soviet Russia (shown to be merely a "shadow of the past") and Communist China have opposed and threatened America in its rise to power, but now they are portrayed as weak; one is a fleeting, insubstantial shadow while the other cowers beneath the powerful predatory stance of corporate America.<br /><br />Now, in case you aren't convinced of the validity of this argument, allow me to prove to you three more ways in which the crab made of french fries represents America. Firstly, it stands for corporate America, and this is where it gets creepy. Some of you may be aware that Steve Jobs, the CEO and founder of Apple Inc., died yesterday. He was head of a corporation that landed at number 35 on 2011's Fortune 500, a significant player in the American economy. Now, that crab is made of fries, and fries are made from potatoes. They are, decidedly, "French" fries, and the French term for potato is "Pomme de Terre"..."Apple of the Earth". Apple. Now like I said, Steve Jobs died today. Of cancer. Which, as I have already told you, is the sign of the crab.<br /><br />Now secondly, it stands for imperialist America. The Roman eagle, the symbol of the Legions and of the power of the Roman Empire, was adopted by America upon its constitution. The eagle was tradionally made of bronze if it were to be carried on campaign, gold for ceremonial purposes. Both of these metals are yellow or distinctly yellowish, dependent on their quality. So what in this image stands out as yellow? Well, the fries, and the three points of the "W". If you count up those points there are eight legs, two 'arms', and the three prongs of the letter, you get thirteen. There were thirteen colonies brought into Constitution in 1787, the first States of America.<br /><br />And lastly, it represents America's international efforts to remain a step ahead of all their competition. I have been calling the larger figure in this image a "crab" up until this point, but I seemed to be one of few who saw it that way in class. Most people referred to as a "spider", and it definitely can come across that way. It has eight legs, and is certainly predatory. So let us work with the spider for a bit. Spiders in many cultural muthologies are the tricksters. They are the only living creature that sets a constructed trap and lies in wait for its prey to snare itself. Out of this devious characteristic have risen legends like Anansi as well as ficticious constructions like Tolkien's Ungoliant and Shelob. The creature in the image bears all these connotations. The crab also carries a distinctly engineered skeletal feel to it's composition, and this is no acident. The Central Intelligence Agency is rumoured to have been founded by members of a secret society at Yale University called Skull and Bones, the members of which are referred to as Bonesmen. The CIA is responsible for feeding intelligence to the American military, as well as conducting operations within allied and opposing countries to plant and manipulate information. In short, the Agency sets traps, spins webs, and then waits for someone to fall in. As well, George W. Bush is a known alumni of the Bonesmen. Coincidence? Perhaps..."</blockquote>
Don't worry; I'm well aware of how inaccurate parts of that spiel are, and the blustering bravado of the young art student that saturates my words (or in Art Spiegelman's words, "the Artist as a Young %@&*!", which I was). But it's a fun bit of nostalgia to look back on and a ridiculous glimpse into my brain, and now it's <i>your </i>ridiculous glimpse into my brain.<br />
<br />
You're welcome.Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-64866311122862357452014-11-19T15:43:00.002-08:002014-11-19T15:47:08.387-08:00Electricomics - Revelations From Thought Bubble<h2 class="site-description tr_bq" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">"Not so much pushing the envelope of comicbook storytelling as folding it up to make a nice hat."</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">If you've been following the <a href="https://twitter.com/Electricomics">Electricomics </a>project at all, you've probably realized by now what a strange beast it is: hard research, solid comics theory, coding and programming, all addressing the public in the sultry and whimsical tones of every comics reader's favourite British warlock and mall santa, Alan Moore. I didn't know much of anything, really, about Electricomics until last weekend's <a href="http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/">Thought Bubble</a> comic art festival in Leeds, where I was able to attend a panel hosted by five members of the Electricrew (not my word): </span><span style="background-color: #cccccc; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mitch Jenkins, <a href="https://twitter.com/merlism">Daniel Merlin Goodbrey</a>, Leah Moore, John Reppion, and Pete Hogan. The infamous Mr. Moore himself wasn't there, as will surprise exactly none of his fans; a good portion of that infamy is the man's reputation as a recluse. What he <i>did </i>send along as a token of his involvement was 500 pre-signed "zines", stapled 14-page A5 booklets containing some gorgeous art by <a href="https://twitter.com/ColleenDoran">Colleen Doran</a>, an exclusive interview with Moore, and a new comic about digital comics written and illustrated by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey.</span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioaaCcyEfB0KHFWZKLJ8QDFfuGwOYIxPhAagQ9IXb0S4jWI_JD3O-LN3fCot6OEbarFx3k99RUxhmP39dXJ8fV-K3wU3Y3BJ9tsaKDOIUtrylcrIonY_gJs4ya1C38-3VsDAA3yHve_1M/s1600/20141117_121714.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioaaCcyEfB0KHFWZKLJ8QDFfuGwOYIxPhAagQ9IXb0S4jWI_JD3O-LN3fCot6OEbarFx3k99RUxhmP39dXJ8fV-K3wU3Y3BJ9tsaKDOIUtrylcrIonY_gJs4ya1C38-3VsDAA3yHve_1M/s1600/20141117_121714.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not a bad companion for my morning cuppa</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The panel set out to answer some unresolved questions for those in attendance about what exactly it was that Electricomics is attempting to <i>do</i>. I suspect I was one of the least informed people in the hall, having only read (so far as I can recall) <a href="http://sequart.org/magazine/44791/what-is-electricomics-an-illustration-of-comics-journalism/">this article</a> which seemed to revel in the ambiguity of the information available in the days immediately following the project's press release...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;">"almost all of the information is coming from a press release, which tells us Electricomics is “an app that is both a comic book and an easy-to-use open source toolkit,” before focusing on the app, then abruptly telling us “Electricomics will be a 32-page showcase with four very different original titles.” By the end of the press release, you can probably piece together that we’re talking about a self-published anthology that will be released</span><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 24px;"> </span><em style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">on</em><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 24px;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;">the app, also called Electricomics. Even then, we’re told that Leah Moore, Alan’s daughter, “will edit the project.” Presumably, this means the </span><em style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">comic</em><span style="background-color: #cccccc; color: #333333; line-height: 24px;"> called Electricomics, not the app — which the previous paragraph was talking about."(Sequart)</span></span></blockquote>
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So, yeah. That's what we had to work with.</div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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The biggest bit of new information to come out of the panel at Thought Bubble, or at least what stuck with me the most, is that this is <i>not</i> a commercial venture. It's an academic one. All the money for Electricomics is coming from the <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/project/digital-rd-fund-arts">Digital Research and Development Fund for the Arts</a> (something I would have known if I'd read <a href="http://electricomics.net/2014/06/explaining-electricomics/">their website</a>), and as the project's press release explains, "<span style="font-family: inherit;">As a publicly
funded research and development project, Electricomics will be free
to explore the possibilities of the comic medium, without the
constraints of the industry". Because I'm a nerd for this kind of thing, I was stoked about the scholarly possibilities for this platform when I still thought we were being told this is gonna be Alan Moore's Comixology knock-off. So I almost wept with joy when I realized that a) Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, an incredibly sharp theorist (<a href="http://e-merl.com/hypercomics">and cartoonist</a>) specializing in the mechanics of digital comics is part of their development team, and b) that because the project is grant-funded they will be producing detailed documentation of the entire process, success, problems, solutions, the whole shebang. It's going to make great reading someday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those of you picturing Alan Moore hunched over a computer workstation writing code with his beard nearly hiding the keyboard, stop it. Don't be ridiculous; that's what he has code demons for (No, seriously, a shed full of 'em. It's in the zine.). Mr. Moore may not be a wizard of the tech variety, but it seems his self-proclaimed alienation from modern forms of media has allowed to conceive this project relatively unpolluted by the endeavours that precede it. He doesn't know <a href="https://www.comixology.co.uk/">Comixology</a>, <a href="http://www.madefire.com/">Madefire</a>, or <a href="http://manga.smithmicro.com/">Manga Studio</a>. He knows comics. That's something that was made crystal clear through the course of this panel, the idea that, if you could distill from the form the Essence of Comics, then <i>that</i> would be the driving technology behind this project. That's what a couple top theorists, legendary writers (did I mention Garth Ennis?), and hotshot programmers are doing with a bundle of government money: not an exercise in visual FX, motion graphic, music, flashinglight and pretty colours, but attempting to take the narrative structural and spatial freedom of a digital workspace and make it understandable and accessible to you through...an app.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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Which is going to come to you in two parts, apparently: Electricomics and Electricosmos. The former is a creative suite, a toolset with which you can make, well, comics. We're not entirely sure yet what all the tools are going to look like, what kind of canvas you'll have to work with, but the idea is (as I understand it) if you can conceive of the idea, and it can be done as a comic, then you can make that comic here. Which leaves rather a <i>lot </i>of possibilities. Some people are getting hung up on the "page" issue; namely, if this isn't just a scan-your-physical-comic-and-make-it-digital-here deal, but a born digital creation platform with infinite canvas, then why is Moore announcing a 32-<i>page</i> comic released along with the app? The only answer I've got is...it's not that simple. There's an excellent essay posted on the Electricomics site which I highly recommend reading, co-written by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Alison Gazzard, concerned with the concept of digital "pages":</div>
<blockquote style="border: 0px; color: #2b2b2b; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: inherit;">A useful definition of the page comes from Charles Hatfield (2009), who observes that:<br />‘The “page” (or planche, as French scholars have it, a term detonating the total design unit rather than the physical page on which it is printed) functions both as sequence and as object, to be seen and read in both linear and nonlinear, holistic fashion.’ </span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="border: 0px; color: #2b2b2b; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #2b2b2b; line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: inherit;">[...]In the early stages of the Electricomics project, we’re in the process of transitioning from traditional page to digital planche. In this transition we’ve observed a tension between the comics creators, who take a holistic view of the page, and the technology partners, who are keen to deconstruct the page into separate assets and mechanics that will need to be implemented in the toolset.</span></span></blockquote>
When it comes to comics theory, <i>listen to the French</i>. And <a href="https://twitter.com/charleshatfield">Charles Hatfield</a>; he's a sharp dude. The gist of what's being said here is, let go of whatever you thought a page was, at least in a physical sense. There are going to people coming to this from webcomics backgrounds and from ink-and-paper background (like yours truly), and from what the team's saying the tools should feel natural to all of us. Knowing Daniel and the research I've seen from him in the <a href="http://watercolour-horizons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/comics-studies-stuck-happily-in.html">last month</a>, they're covering their bases over there, and we've got nothing to worry about.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0KOCV1Vgz7_9ZPPQsxgAVIxrbyZQbGqQJwpLVJxM7A_vCFM3jv4EAW3n0gsreKX7_qBqB_7o12sKorPz9Tzi2TGwwtAOF9GEzQNJBBgIxlCRCcS69PAKA4hGL8wUUeKmM6HxkBnMVAk/s1600/Badges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0KOCV1Vgz7_9ZPPQsxgAVIxrbyZQbGqQJwpLVJxM7A_vCFM3jv4EAW3n0gsreKX7_qBqB_7o12sKorPz9Tzi2TGwwtAOF9GEzQNJBBgIxlCRCcS69PAKA4hGL8wUUeKmM6HxkBnMVAk/s1600/Badges.jpg" height="320" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Join the Electricrew; pick up some badges over at <a href="http://orphansofthestorm.bigcartel.com/">Orphans of the Storm</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Now the second part of all this is Electricosmos, which is a little bit less defined even than Electricomics. It's the publication and social network platform into which the toolset feeds. You make comics in the app, and you share them out...here. In this space, which doesn't have any rules as yet, or an interface, or an idea of exactly how right to your intellectual property are going work. They're working on it, though; if there's one dude you can bet your soul on being picky about IP laws and comics, it's Moore. There's a lot of work being done, they said, around contracts, given the online collaborative nature of the space they're building. Someone asked a question about content vetting, and got a reply that said "we're working on it, we'll get back to you in seven years." Not in those exact words, but that's the sentiment: the team is treading on such unfamiliar terrain at this point that they simply can't answer questions regarding how their network of multiple millions of creator-owned online comics is going to work when they haven't put the first tool into beta yet. The release of Electricosmos to the general market is a <i>long</i> way down the road. And it may never happen. It's a research project, not a commercial enterprise; failure is an entirely viable option. As Moore states in the interview found in the zine:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="text-align: center;">We may end up creating something that isn't technically </span><span style="text-align: center;">a comic </span><span style="text-align: center;">at all but that's not a bad thing.</span></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo5MkwOzFcEVbStMiWcezdkOrrIlURsnJw0VTPAeA2XESd2lmWyTV3We479-7klS6vC07W7vbtR9lkdSIcj5Jm_PyI9ybWUYjHwAD3awDV0b8IChXII2pmBvFhowVGocJslVV4s1f42nI/s1600/20141119_233121.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo5MkwOzFcEVbStMiWcezdkOrrIlURsnJw0VTPAeA2XESd2lmWyTV3We479-7klS6vC07W7vbtR9lkdSIcj5Jm_PyI9ybWUYjHwAD3awDV0b8IChXII2pmBvFhowVGocJslVV4s1f42nI/s1600/20141119_233121.jpg" height="640" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dare I say...Nemo?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Visit the project at <a href="http://www.electricomics.net/">www.electricomics.net</a></div>
Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-6039675966202570132014-10-25T09:50:00.001-07:002014-10-25T10:25:33.762-07:00Comics Studies - Stuck Happily in TransitionIt's too damn easy to get caught up in routines of thought.<br />
<br />
We as scholars have a job, don't we? We're meant to break new ground, come up with new ways of approaching problems, and come up with new problems where nobody had considered them before. If this is so, the biggest threat to our success is falling into routine and ceasing to revolutionize our thinking. "Ossifying" as I just heard it phrased at London's <a href="https://twitter.com/transitionssymp">"Transitions" comics research symposium</a>.<br />
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Comics refuse to settle. In every iteration of the form through history they've sought to outdo themselves, climbing over each other in a race to reach untouched conceptual and technical soil. This shouldn't be surprising; it's a statement that holds true for most if not all forms of art that developed through the 20th century, be they visual or written forms. Initially driven by the pure capitalist motivation to sell, innovation in comics took a turn for the radical when the Comics Code threatened the industry with stagnation and hasn't slowed down since. So why, then, am I hearing concern voiced in the halls of Birkbeck University of London, that the bones of our field are stiffening?<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
Great straight-up polemic from Ann D'Orazio on what comics scholars do and don't study. 1/2 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/transitions5?src=hash">#transitions5</a><br />
— Jason Dittmer (@RealJDittmer) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealJDittmer/status/526028632637317120">October 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> I can't say I necessarily agree with D'Orazio. After all, in the past 7 hours I've also been recipient to a wealth of theory and analysis that has jumpstarted my interest in new directions of study and renewed my faith in the field that I'm attempting to enter. Her polemic felt oddly incongruous, claiming disciplinary stagnation in the midst of a symposium entitled "<a href="http://www.comicafestival.com/index.php/festival/festival_detail/transitions_5_comica_symposium">new directions in comics studies</a>". I do understand D'Orazio's concern. Studies of comics from a purely literary direction fall appallingly short in dealing with a text that is more than purely textual. Studies that corral comics within the traditions of Art History and expect it to play by the rules will almost inevitably end up struggling with matters of multiplex authorship and unconventional paths of influence, unless they stay strictly upon the beaten path of the accepted canon of Spiegelman and Satrapi, maybe dipping cautious toes into something like Herriman's <i>Krazy Kat</i>.<br />
<br />
These disciplines have tools to offer Comics Studies, to be sure. Literary theory is, by nature, multidisciplinary. It deals with and is applied to the literary, but it often begins elsewhere: gender theory, sociology, philosophy, aesthetics, and so on. Comics can be literary, D'Orazio states, but they are not <i>literature</i>. Neither are they art, though they are undoubtedly an art form. Art History, a field that has developed to study the creation and impact of images in a canonized tradition, is not entirely equipped to deal with the network of image, text, book, labour, reproduction process, distribution, consumption, and criticism that makes up the scope of Comics Studies (I'm sure I missed some areas; please add them in the comments). I think what D'Orazio is saying is that we can apply literary theory and aesthetic theory to comics, but we must be careful not to stop there and get comfortable. I agree. But if she's worried that we've already stopped and settled into a holding pattern of platitudes on the form I'm afraid she's sorely mistaken.<br />
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We have the advantage not only of being a young and recently institutionalized field but also of being a field with a constantly and dynamically growing body of subject matter before us. We also have the advantage of being a field rife with creators, with figures like McCloud and Horrocks both working creatively as industry cartoonists and critically as key theorists in the field. Comics-specific theory is emerging to tackle the ways the changing industry is changing the form. We're standing with our feet planted firmly on either side of a historical transition as the Age of Mechanical Reproduction gives way to the Age of Digital Reproduction. The possibilities are endless, and if <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/transitions5?src=hash">#Transitions5</a> has proven anything it's that if you fill a room with comics scholars they will all come to comics from a different direction. We're not exactly Shakespeare scholars here. There's no way we'll ever run out of material to study, unless your conception of the field begins and ends with McCay or Caniff, in which case I say to you WAKE UP! We live in an unfolding tapestry of <a href="http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/">webcomics</a>, <a href="http://hobolobo.net/">motion comics</a>, <a href="http://e-merl.com/hypercomics">hypercomics</a>, <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/08/14/dave-mckean-and-friends-at-the-pumphouse/">comics that occupy whole galleries</a>, <a href="http://elerimai.com/2014/05/24/adams-ale-my-masters-thesis-in-comics/">hand-printed comics</a>, <a href="http://spinweaveandcut.blogspot.ca/">comics dissertations</a>, <a href="http://www.archaia.com/archaia-titles/the-joyners-in-3d/">3D comics</a>, <a href="http://inkbrick.com/">poetry comics</a>, <a href="http://www.cartoonpicayune.com/">journalism comics</a>, <a href="http://xkcd.com/1354/">info comics</a>, comics with <a href="http://nightphysics.tumblr.com/">stoner-hipster bears quoting Bukowski</a>...<br />
<br />
...if we're getting bored, we're doing it wrong.Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-4495711694653502232014-10-19T09:27:00.000-07:002014-10-19T17:05:31.278-07:00Gnosticism in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", and Other Stuff (like zombies!)It's always a bit of an adventure tackling a topic you really know next to nothing about. When Canadian lit critic <a href="https://twitter.com/HeerJeet">Jeet Heer</a> fired up his Twitter essay machine yesterday and starting writing about <i>Captain America: The Winter Soldier</i> as a Gnostic fable, I knew I should respond. I also knew that I knew squat about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism">Gnosticism</a>, so basically there was a lot of of knowing about knowing about knowing going on and I figured I should write something on it. The brief essay I produced is <a href="http://www.sacredandsequential.org/2014/10/19/jeet-heer-on-the-inherent-gnosticism-of-captain-america-the-winter-soldier/">published on Sacred & Sequential's website</a>, along with all of Jeet's original thoughts on the matter. He makes some excellent points about the way the film fundamentally altered Hydra's role in the Captain America narrative, potentially even changing the nature of the narrative itself. I'm not entirely in agreement with Jeet there, but they're ideas worth discussing. Read it, give it a like, come back here and we'll talk.<br />
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In the realm of "other stuff", I've finally justified the name of this blog. If you pop on over to <a href="http://www.ajkomics.ca/">www.ajkomics.ca</a>, there is empirical proof that I am now in England and painting watercolour horizons. Or at least, <i>a</i> watercolour horizon.<br />
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And if you catch this in the next hour-and-a-half, <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1350078939/the-stranger-zombie-t-shirt">head over to Kickstarter and give AH Comics a last-ditch boost</a> in their crowdfunding for the wicked cool zombie-head t-shirt that <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamTGorham">Adam Gorham</a> designed for them. It's a rad shirt. You should buy one.Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-84038600021859159342014-09-27T05:49:00.000-07:002014-09-27T05:51:26.099-07:00Crossing the Pond: A Cartoonist AbroadThis blog is about to become, heaven forbid, exactly what it was created to be...<br />
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A travel blog.<br />
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As has been mentioned before, I started this blog anticipating a year-long trip to Scotland that never happened. During the summer of 2012, with my travel plans in limbo, the Aurora theatre shooting in Colorado happened, leading me to write <a href="http://watercolour-horizons.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/introduction-wrongly-condemned-hero.html">my first post</a>, and after that this blog became...something else. A comics, arts, and culture blog, I suppose. It did, however, retained the sappy, romanticized title given it by an art student fantasizing about watercolour sketching on the highlands. So, there's that.</div>
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Now I've come full-circle, and the year abroad is <i>actually happening</i>! I landed in Manchester on Sunday morning, and I've settled into the little northern town of Durham for a year studying medieval English literature and theology at Durham University. It's the perfect place to study, really. Not only is Durham home to a world-class literature program, but the town exudes an oldness, a tangible air of history I have never encountered before. The town is overlooked by two monolithic structures left behind by Norman builders of the 11th century: the famed Durham cathedral and castle, stone towers of rugged and imperious beauty. It's like nowhere I've ever lived before, and it's all kinds of inspiring.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Durham from the train station viewpoint</td></tr>
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While I may be writing more on here about my travels than I normally would, by no means does that mean comics will be left out of the equation. For starters, I'll still be drawing. Durham University's student newspaper (or at least, one of them), <i><a href="http://www.palatinate.org.uk/">The Palatinate</a></i>, has hired me on as editorial cartoonist for the year, so as those pieces are finished and published you'll see them appearing on my <i>other</i> blog (the one with all the art) at <a href="http://www.ajkomics.ca/">www.ajkomics.ca</a>. I finished my first cartoon for them Wednesday morning; you should be seeing updates shortly, and I'm pretty damn excited to see what the year holds in store, particularly for the political side of my work.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Life of a mobile cartoonist; given enough time, every hotel room becomes a studio</td></tr>
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Also on the calendar are visits to the <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/">British Cartoon Archive</a> housed at Canterbury's University of Kent, where I'll be interviewing head librarian Dr. Nicholas Hiley about his role in the archive's digitisation project, and to the <a href="http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/">Thought Bubble comic art festival</a> in Leeds in November. So, there will be comic news, and reviews, and likely a bit of fangirling over people I meet and things I find. Stay tuned; more from Durham coming your way shortly.</div>
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Cheers!</div>
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Asher</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My humble lodgings at Josephine Butler College. How I love it.</td></tr>
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Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-47532462301035123932014-08-23T14:46:00.001-07:002014-08-23T16:17:25.170-07:00Funding Friday: The Saturday Edition! Comics & Crowdfunding NewsHaving skipped one week of this <i>Funding Friday</i> blog (I was busy, and it was going to be hard to follow that Twitter conversation with Neil Gaiman), I am pleased to announce that <i><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/96364695/johnny-canuck-the-return-of-canadas-hero">Johnny Canuck: The Return of a Lost Golden Age Hero</a></i>, by <a href="https://twitter.com/Rachelpeabody">Rachel Richey</a>, is fully funded!<br />
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JOHNNY CANUCK IS COMING BACK TO PRINT!<br />
— Johnny Canuck (@JohnCanuck1942) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnCanuck1942/statuses/501198140746518528">August 18, 2014</a></blockquote>
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WE MADE IT! Congratulations everyone, we're bringing Johnny Canuck back!! <a href="https://t.co/bL41dxro2I">https://t.co/bL41dxro2I</a><br />
— Rachel Richey (@Rachelpeabody) <a href="https://twitter.com/Rachelpeabody/statuses/501198624437862400">August 18, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Thanks to you lot the campaign hit its goal of $23,000 four days ago, and the money hasn't stopped. Four hours ago we hit a stretch goal of $25K, ensuring that the reprinted volume will credit the names of all its backers, immortalizing you in print as someone who helped bring the Canadian Whites back to life. Rachel and Johnny have their sights set on the next goal, $30K, which will upgrade the entire print run to hardcover! This bodes well, as my hardcover <i>Nelvana </i>volume is truly a thing of beauty.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg_hAwcsnRN-NkYhlReVuHwE2XUQu8e9MmaI_cTHtFfNO7Ptbbch4210mJgWsuFW-kuGNaqhRUW8ZC_VHnwmXoNHkeMoLFT09M5PMogCm5y721QMLwqy96W7jU-pdSFd41pkMK6Vktd48/s1600/Scott+Chantler+-+Johnny+Canuck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg_hAwcsnRN-NkYhlReVuHwE2XUQu8e9MmaI_cTHtFfNO7Ptbbch4210mJgWsuFW-kuGNaqhRUW8ZC_VHnwmXoNHkeMoLFT09M5PMogCm5y721QMLwqy96W7jU-pdSFd41pkMK6Vktd48/s1600/Scott+Chantler+-+Johnny+Canuck.jpg" height="320" width="207" /></a><br />
I've also had the absolute pleasure of watching art in progress. Following <a href="https://twitter.com/scottchantler">Scott Chantler</a> on <a href="http://instagram.com/scottchantler">Instagram</a> is a treat; you can see some of his work progress from thumbnails, to pencils, to inks, and it's pretty damn cool. With the last Kickstarter update in my inbox came the news that Scott's piece of original art for the campaign is FINISHED, though sadly already scooped up. I promptly fist-pumped in the air, because <i>YES!</i> it <i>is</i> scooped up...by <i>me!</i> I could not be more excited to have this stunning piece of comics Canadiana proudly displayed on my wall.<br />
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And now, without further pumping of my own tires, and with no more ado, I present...<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/concrete-martians-part-two">Concrete Martians Part Two</a> </b><br />
by <a href="https://twitter.com/kgrachow">Keith Grachow</a> and <a href="http://www.cookcreativegroup.com/mitchrcook/">Mitch Cook</a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Those radio people, man...</td></tr>
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Let us set the stage.<br />
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October 30, 1938. It was a dark and stormy night in Concrete, WA, a fitting prelude to Halloween. Much of America was sitting around their radios, listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his famous doll, Charlie McCarthy. Anxious to skip over the musical interlude and return to the show they impatiently twiddled their dials...and found a news bulletin. It seemed innocuous at first, a discussion of weather and meteorological intricacies, until a Chicago astronomer reported observing "several explosions of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars". Then reports came in of an unidentified object crashing into a field outside Grover's Mill, NJ. Tension built, exacerbated by the thrashing winds and flashing lightning outside, culminating in a tortured declaration issued from radio speakers across America...<br />
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"WE ARE BEING INVADED BY MARS MEN!"<br />
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And then the power went out.<br />
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It was, of course, the night of Orson Welles' infamous <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)">War of the Worlds</a></i> broadcast, an ingenious radio drama adapted from H.G. Wells' novel by the same name. Tuning in late on that fateful night, the residents of Concrete missed hearing Welles' opening disclaimer. When the power quit and the phones went down, cutting them off from the rest of the country, panic set in. This is approximately where Mitch Cook and Keith Grachow's first issue of <i>Concrete Martians</i> left us back in March when the book premiered at<a href="http://emeraldcitycomicon.com/"> Emerald City Comicon</a> in Seattle, 96 miles from the story's setting. The story follows sheriff Ted "Teddy" Wilson in his struggle to maintain order as bedlam overtakes this small northwestern industry town. As the promotion video for their campaign states,<br />
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<i>See what happens when a harmless radio play conspires with mother nature to bring a small town to the edge. </i></blockquote>
The broadcast was and is an iconic moment in America's history. The nation was poised on the brink of a second world war. Hitler's Germany was a brooding force on the other side of the world, the threat of invasion heavy on the minds of the Western world. Radio was the only non-print news and entertainment source available. In print, it was a golden age of Science Fiction; pulps in the Gernsbackian tradition were in full swing, fan zines were sweeping the nation, and the first superhero had appeared earlier that year. Welles' timing was impeccable; the <i>War of the Worlds</i> broadcast was his Halloween prank on America, the equivalent "of dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, 'Boo!'" (in the words of the master dramatist himself). As the campaign page states, "The power that radio displayed in those early days of mass media showed us that, even without meaning to, the theatre of the mind can and often does wreak havoc amongst the masses." Would that we were still so new to media that we could find ourselves awash with that kind of wonder.<br />
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Sucker for nostalgia that I am (you may or may not have noticed, I don't know), this campaign is right up my alley. I thoroughly enjoy seeing projects form around historical events, finding the lesser-known facts, the neglected areas of coverage, and offering a newly crafted perspective on it. Good historical fiction, I think, ought to be both entertaining and informative, and <i>Concrete Martians</i> has pulled together a solid combination of those elements. So...fund it!<br />
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The rewards are a little steep; the lowest perk on the list sits at $20 (UPDATE! This situation has been remedied; backer rewards are now available at $5 and $10 intervals). The most interesting backer rewards, by far, are the cleverly named original art options: "Alien Andy" (<a href="https://twitter.com/IllustratorAndy">Andy Stanleigh</a>), "<a href="https://twitter.com/uncouthRooth">Mike Rooth</a> Martian Madness", and "The Crippen Crater" (Jacob Crippen), among others. I'll always advocate for buying original art; it's a superb way to support an artist's career, and it carries the distinct appeal of being something that nobody else will ever have. This campaign's got some sweet art available. Jump on it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBkNdRjpB5i833dcYHOo4e4r-LGCU2_EAobKxlFyY9ZsfsGe6Trjj201ctdbjkRPTLNWRLa9VnnNNbhsxeCI86Ky2sftXwFkK6cRGn_MXafUrDxTxd_QXfzxXa7UlnQm26vWASEVZFb9w/s1600/20140819080519-10569210_10152684860311081_462951457_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBkNdRjpB5i833dcYHOo4e4r-LGCU2_EAobKxlFyY9ZsfsGe6Trjj201ctdbjkRPTLNWRLa9VnnNNbhsxeCI86Ky2sftXwFkK6cRGn_MXafUrDxTxd_QXfzxXa7UlnQm26vWASEVZFb9w/s1600/20140819080519-10569210_10152684860311081_462951457_n.jpg" height="392" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dan Holst Soelberg's martian art</td></tr>
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Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-20647003027506885822014-08-08T16:19:00.001-07:002014-08-08T16:19:10.863-07:00"A Hope in Hell" UPDATE - Neil Himself Weighs InI asked Neil Gaiman on Twitter what his thoughts were on the aforementioned Kickstarter for a<i> Sandman</i> fan film. His response was wonderfully straightforward.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself">@neilhimself</a> a Sandman fan film Kickstarter was recently shut down by DC; I'm wondering where you stand on this, Neil <a href="http://t.co/tdL0mF8Wgh">http://t.co/tdL0mF8Wgh</a><br />
— Asher J. Klassen (@AsherJKlassen) <a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen/statuses/497865203053502464">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen">@AsherJKlassen</a> I don't own the rights to Sandman, DC does.<br />
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself/statuses/497869700018491392">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
Never one to be satisfied with a straightforward and obvious reply, I prompted him further.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself">@neilhimself</a> I understand. I suppose I was wondering what your stance as the author is on an undertaking such as this.<br />
— Asher J. Klassen (@AsherJKlassen) <a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen/statuses/497870357865713664">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen">@AsherJKlassen</a> I think Kickstartering funding for a fan film of something you don't own the rights to is a gutsy but doomed thing to do.<br />
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself/statuses/497871939885883392">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
...which is hard to argue with.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself">@neilhimself</a> Yeah, I think I have to agree. It's the wrong financial channel for that sort of homage.<br />
— Asher J. Klassen (@AsherJKlassen) <a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen/statuses/497873354796183552">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen">@AsherJKlassen</a> if you are going to make an unofficial fanfilm, make it, then ask for forgiveness. Public crowdfunding seems doomed to fail.<br />
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself/statuses/497872492439289856">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself">@neilhimself</a> thanks for your response, Neil. Glad to hear your thoughts on this :)<br />
— Asher J. Klassen (@AsherJKlassen) <a href="https://twitter.com/AsherJKlassen/statuses/497876935221866496">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
And <i>that </i>was it, the extent of my conversation with Neil. But let's end this update with a sentiment from Andre Kirkman, the director of <i>Hope in the Abyss</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself">@neilhimself</a> it was an honor to play in the world you made even if it was for just a minute.<br />
— Andre Kirkman (@AndreKirkman) <a href="https://twitter.com/AndreKirkman/statuses/497870211391819776">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
And now it's all been said.<br />
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Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-36949347415641621172014-08-08T14:43:00.000-07:002014-08-08T16:57:20.734-07:00Funding Friday, "A Hope in Hell" - Comics & Crowdfunding News<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I got a bit of a shock when I checked my inbox this morning. There was a message waiting for me that read,<br />
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Hi there,<br />
This is a message from Kickstarter Support. We're writing to inform you that a project you backed, <a href="http://email.kickstarter.com/wf/click?upn=783Zq5W9bNIyHOMXTpOavhQBUATVeC-2BEfrDCLNqDcPZQC3-2FvdlsYlTsOf3ZqVJkqFvjjlR8tqJu1VXkP3zuz0odPjhYkhkX-2Frq654BNrtFNuxI5sDjHcojyflNeweMiLqvAXVf3O8FC-2B3IdMksmFuw-3D-3D_avFtg7NQXjIy5LDNQZ4ugxkk1WRms9-2FmMCUx6N-2FVQaNwcMZMSDbz4YRHl3631-2Fdw43stGXOHDIUm-2FqPEGOLDz10-2Bs5RsHOew3LZIhy0lR-2BDMJqqCNYIIR2FZc1R4JHBU3nkdpbJ65tfCtmx3ioRS1l7Q8ad2KLxKlr7nPddDa4Q88PjFxpIQgVxdBvobz1PTDXHRY2NTU1mg4Utp23Bniw-3D-3D"><i>Hope in the Abyss (Sandman Fan Film)</i></a>, is the subject of an intellectual property dispute.</blockquote>
The message goes on to notify me that, while my pledge to the project remains active, the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1298804017/hope-in-the-abyss-sandman-fan-film">Kickstarter page itself</a> has been hidden from public view for an indeterminate period of time. This is a shame as I was hoping to share an incredible-looking fan campaign with you, and I can't seem to find a cached version of the page. It's truly a beautiful-looking project. <a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself">Neil Gaiman</a>'s <i>The</i> <i>Sandman</i> series has been well and widely loved for a couple of decades now. This film aims to follow the story set out in the<a href="http://www.comicvine.com/the-sandman-4-master-of-dreams-part-4-a-hope-in-he/4000-31071/"> title's fourth issue</a>, "A Hope in Hell", in which Dream, the titular "Sandman", journeys to Hell to retrieve a possession lost during his centuries-long imprisonment. It's a great story, maybe my favourite from <i>The Sandman</i>.<br />
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Does this Kickstarter have a hope in hell of succeeding? We can all dream! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sandman?src=hash">#Sandman</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/fanfilm?src=hash">#fanfilm</a> <a href="http://t.co/j6CgEcWe6Y">http://t.co/j6CgEcWe6Y</a><br />
— Ben Dobyns (@dobynsbc) <a href="https://twitter.com/dobynsbc/statuses/495236507549323264">August 1, 2014</a></blockquote>
<i>Hope in the Abyss</i> is being produced by <a href="https://twitter.com/dobynsbc">Ben Dobyns</a> who, along with Seattle-based production company <a href="https://twitter.com/ZombieOrpheus">Zombie Orpheus Entertainment</a>, has fan-funded some of the greatest fantasy I've ever seen (correction: ZOE, however, is not connected to the <i>Hope</i> project). The list of professionals attached to the campaign is impressive, but one stuck out for me in particular: a puppeteer from <a href="http://www.laika.com/">Laika Studios</a>. That detail alone (Dobyns' involvement aside) was enough to pique my interest. Laika is renowned for its luscious stop-motion work on the animated feature of Neil Gaiman's <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO3n67BQvh0">Coraline</a></i>, the more recent children's zombie flick <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgwSpajMw3s">Paranorman</a></i>, and the upcoming (and adorable) <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2dFVnp5K0o">Boxtrolls</a></i>. The studio has a way of telling great stories with great style, and the idea having one of their puppeteers helping bring Dream's descent into Hell to life send tingles down my spine. Standing in the way of that happening, though, is<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/dmca/hope-in-the-abyss-sandman-fan-film-submitted-by-warner-bros-ente"> this message from Warner Bros.</a>...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivkt1m68oXB38wQIRC_1dw54s_kaysI4MsmxriAd2v2vr-kPFZysjFEqO__OGGdWcrj_ZbGgicWo6aUWvXdNRh2cL-pXfedDLDb13o7bv_GC1eS-UqnJdbMl_pBNo_Wkvee4w6xvaFx-k/s1600/Screenshot+2014-08-08+13.27.43.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivkt1m68oXB38wQIRC_1dw54s_kaysI4MsmxriAd2v2vr-kPFZysjFEqO__OGGdWcrj_ZbGgicWo6aUWvXdNRh2cL-pXfedDLDb13o7bv_GC1eS-UqnJdbMl_pBNo_Wkvee4w6xvaFx-k/s1600/Screenshot+2014-08-08+13.27.43.png" height="268" width="320" /></a></div>
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...which I really want to be snarky about, but I suppose they are within their rights to do exactly this. Now, I don't know how much, if any, pull Gaiman has with his publishers and the licences they hold to his creations. But Neil, if you're reading this, I'd ask you and Amanda to put in a good word for the fans; if anyone understands the nature of crowdfunding and community coming together around art it's you guys, and I know many of us would love to see this project completed, to see a version of your world come alive through the work of people who have loved these stories for many, many years. </div>
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And now, in other news...!<br />
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<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelnicholson/brok-windsor-lost-wwii-comic-book-returns">Brok Windsor - Lost WWII Comic Book Returns!</a><br />
by <a href="https://twitter.com/hopelnicholson">Hope Nicholson</a><br />
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I shared the <i>Brok Windsor</i> campaign with you folks last week, and lo and behold you made it <i>happen</i>! The project reached its goal yesterday, officially propelling an iconic Canadian comics hero back into print. Congratulations; you guys officially rock.<br />
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Exciting news! The Kickstarter goal for Brok Windsor has been reached, thank you all!
<a href="https://t.co/hp2n98Kisr">https://t.co/hp2n98Kisr</a><br />
— Hope Nicholson (@HopeLNicholson) <a href="https://twitter.com/HopeLNicholson/statuses/497380937693691904">August 7, 2014</a></blockquote>
And if you've been having doubts about the impending awesomeness of Brok Windsor, let this assuage those misgivings<br />
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Brok Windsor doesn't really have any good archenemies. The most recognizable ones are his girlfriend's grandma, and his tailor. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nojoke?src=hash">#nojoke</a><br />
— Hope Nicholson (@HopeLNicholson) <a href="https://twitter.com/HopeLNicholson/statuses/497765582499229697">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
Yeah. It's gonna be wicked great.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiftn2RHg2ZT5_Un4wFMPGdUpxwowcih5iLovXW4__HhFlGS_8e6_Y7ykvXYk2xWJC1MSebHOWdxRjv8uuavyDsZD0UxDSZY1YQzbhK79wmRzPEyO5prle1sN87Zb7-VzTmUb3xqBabAuw/s1600/654a5e172e34642f138b9192250d923c_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiftn2RHg2ZT5_Un4wFMPGdUpxwowcih5iLovXW4__HhFlGS_8e6_Y7ykvXYk2xWJC1MSebHOWdxRjv8uuavyDsZD0UxDSZY1YQzbhK79wmRzPEyO5prle1sN87Zb7-VzTmUb3xqBabAuw/s1600/654a5e172e34642f138b9192250d923c_large.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a><br />
<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2044371926/knightstalker">Knightstalker</a><br />
by Dustin Smith<br />
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I had a friend tweet this my direction last week when I neglected to mention it in my post, so allow me to rectify that oversight. <i>Knightstalker</i> is a classic "be careful what you wish for" story set in a world where superpowers exist as a terminal disease, giving you extraordinary abilities but killing you in the process. It's one of those concepts which sounds like old hat, but which fits the superhero genre so well that it really shouldn't be avoided. Sacrifice for the sake of power is a theme that's been around a lot longer than comics, a message that echoes back through may mythologies. King Midas desired wealth, and found himself sacrificing those he loved as he slaked his thirst for gold. Odin gave his eye to receive wisdom. It's an old story told many times, but it still resonates with us. <a href="https://twitter.com/humansofny">Brandon Stanton</a>, the man in charge of the photoblog <a href="http://www.humansofnewyork.com/">Humans of New York</a>, is currently overseas documenting people and their thoughts on life...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9QTOoTiR3ez7dqpmoteeYZ_na6KqXqBXG3OaP7rlMYOdw6gOO6GLEvs7HEOzeDKrF9X7nQL1VqpfWQohNeARDmxHMD6evs4sUMXzf9V8a0fgHfxScZORzbda3cTclzxKyt2uiVzmlFcY/s1600/Screenshot+2014-08-08+14.21.03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9QTOoTiR3ez7dqpmoteeYZ_na6KqXqBXG3OaP7rlMYOdw6gOO6GLEvs7HEOzeDKrF9X7nQL1VqpfWQohNeARDmxHMD6evs4sUMXzf9V8a0fgHfxScZORzbda3cTclzxKyt2uiVzmlFcY/s1600/Screenshot+2014-08-08+14.21.03.png" height="182" width="400" /></a></div>
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...which is kinda what he does best. The man has a gift. The words he receives from people are often profound, sometimes thrilling, joyous, sometimes sad. His tweet this morning hit me between the eyes:</div>
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"I would give my soul if I could fix her brain." (Dohuk, Iraq) <a href="http://t.co/6s1v98vVsP">pic.twitter.com/6s1v98vVsP</a><br />
— Brandon Stanton (@humansofny) <a href="https://twitter.com/humansofny/statuses/497782762708140032">August 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
There will always be things we would give to fix the word around us. And this is why stories like <i>Knightstalker </i>will always be worth telling. On a purely formal note, the art looks great, really clean lines and colours, and decent page layout. It's really quite an affordable campaign to back. The rewards are small and manageable: posters, digital comics, physical copies of the books, and variant covers. The $5000 goal is easily reachable with the right interest. So, share it around. Let's see if we can get another small comic off the ground.<br />
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In closing, the campaigns I mentioned last week are still going strong. <a href="https://twitter.com/NickBertozzi">Nick Bertozzi</a>'s <i><a href="http://nickbertozzi.com/">Rubber Necker</a></i> print run was successfully funded (and I can't wait to get my comics from that!). <a href="https://twitter.com/Rachelpeabody">Rachel Richey</a>'s <i><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/96364695/johnny-canuck-the-return-of-canadas-hero">Johnny Canuck</a></i> campaign is moving steadily forward; I give it another week to reach its goal. And the <i><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1350078939/dabishops-stranger-the-128-page-zombie-comic-book">Stranger </a></i>zombie comic<i> </i>campaign from <a href="https://twitter.com/AHComicsInc">AH Comics</a> is still running...and nobody's scooped <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamTGorham">Adam Gorham</a>'s original cover art yet. It's still sitting there, mocking me.<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2036389837382783422.post-77531845661273744172014-08-01T10:39:00.000-07:002014-12-19T03:08:13.589-08:00Funding Friday - Comics & Crowdfunding News<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every Friday my Twitter feed exhibits a host of people hashtagging lists of follow-worthy people as part of the weekly internet trend "Follow Friday". I'm putting my own spin on that; today is FUNDING FRIDAY.<br />
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Well, Crowdfunding Friday, but for the sake of alliteration...</div>
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On the list today: comics, comics, comics, and, um, well yeah, it's mostly just comics. It's a wonderful thing, really. The amount of crowdfunding going into the comics industry these days is phenomenal. It builds community, closes the gap between the creator and consumer and helps each recognize the other is there. Which is important. It's something that's too damn easy to lose sight of. For me, it's provided a way for me to interact with and support people who are making things that I think are incredible. I was even recognized by someone at TCAF this year because I'd been vocal on Twitter in promoting their project, and that kinda blew my mind. So, without further ado (that was already quite a bit of ado), here are the projects on my radar this week.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8i1C3rCTO5WbB79f4MCBNjpFFc4ga5uEVxbCtd_ZNCKxsbJoKBZ7wMlBrq7t_egLKSbr204BLD-ahI22LmPud9huunmf1pP5uoy9MnfDu3Y37b1TAT6uxwWJjz0qqS2yJ6sSEfEF3X00/s1600/Brok+Windsor.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8i1C3rCTO5WbB79f4MCBNjpFFc4ga5uEVxbCtd_ZNCKxsbJoKBZ7wMlBrq7t_egLKSbr204BLD-ahI22LmPud9huunmf1pP5uoy9MnfDu3Y37b1TAT6uxwWJjz0qqS2yJ6sSEfEF3X00/s1600/Brok+Windsor.png" height="320" width="207" /></a><b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelnicholson/brok-windsor-lost-wwii-comic-book-returns">Brok Windsor - Lost WWII Comic Book Returns!</a></b></div>
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<i>by <a href="https://twitter.com/hopelnicholson">Hope Nicholson</a></i></div>
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There's a bunch of wicked exciting stuff happening in Canadian comics at the moment, and I'm bumping this to the top of the list because it's the latest release. Hope's Kickstarter went live yesterday, and support for the project is already well underway. A little bit of background: Brok Windsor is the latest in a string of Canadian Golden Age comics reprints, the initiative of historians Hope Nicholson and Rachel Richey to pull these old stories out of obscurity. Many of them have simply been unavailable to readers for some fifty years, despite being an important piece of Canada's popular culture in the 20th century. Projects like this are my favourite answer to the rants I hear against our government for cutting arts and culture funding. It's evidence that the people still care about cultivating their country's arts and reinvigorating their cultural history, even when the government seems to have abandoned such causes. Last year Hope and Rachel Kickstarted a reprint of Adrian Dingle's iconic <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelnicholson/nelvana-of-the-northern-lights-canadas-first-super"><i>Nelvana of the Northern Lights</i></a>, to enthusiastic public response. And these projects are gaining momentum online; Comics Alliance just published <a href="http://comicsalliance.com/hope-nicholson-brok-windsor-kickstarter-jon-stables-canada-golden-age/">this interview with Hope</a>, which sheds some light on the character, the matter of forgotten history, and the forward-looking goals for Canadian Golden Age comics. Hopefully, exposure like this brings more backers (like you!) on board with this project and many, many more to come.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh6qv3uJjKSWSJvzI4mIDdPlG1aco1IyZ48onyeOc3UbA8ltky8BS9p5aY93crWlpXzAJvvKpnZwTySwQjDLa08_vWClB0XO7Cc0P1thlfTPUE2a9n6X2Fn92HqJfnIAvNfMrUbSUvW8g/s1600/Johnny+Canuck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh6qv3uJjKSWSJvzI4mIDdPlG1aco1IyZ48onyeOc3UbA8ltky8BS9p5aY93crWlpXzAJvvKpnZwTySwQjDLa08_vWClB0XO7Cc0P1thlfTPUE2a9n6X2Fn92HqJfnIAvNfMrUbSUvW8g/s1600/Johnny+Canuck.jpg" height="320" width="224" /></a><b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/96364695/johnny-canuck-the-return-of-canadas-hero">Johnny Canuck: The Return of Canada's Hero</a></b></div>
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<i>by <a href="https://twitter.com/rachelpeabody">Rachel Richey</a></i></div>
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You ever watch a Vancouver Canucks game and see their mascot, that goofy-looking lumberjack in plaid, with a hockey stick in his hand and pom-pom proudly bouncing on top of his toque? That's Johnny Canuck, or one rendition of him at any rate. He used to be part of Canada's stable of action-adventure heroes back in the 1940s, along with Brok Windsor. Rachel Richey, the other half of the <i>Nelvana</i> team, is Kickstarting the printing of a <i>Johnny Canuck </i>collection which will feature an introduction written by legendary Canadian cartoonist Seth and a short biography of <i>Johnny Canuck</i> creator Leo Bachle, written by Robert Pincombe. The campaign kicked off earlier this week and is in full swing. Among the backer rewards for this project (and for the Brok Windsor campaign) is a host of original artwork by various industry giants, providing a superb opportunity for you to support classic Canadian comics <i>and</i> build a collection of comic art! Ever wanted work by <a href="https://twitter.com/theramonperez">Ramon Perez</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancisManapul">Francis Manapul</a>, or <a href="https://twitter.com/marcusto">Marcus To</a>? Go get it! I snagged the Scott Chantler piece as soon as I could, and now I'm broke. But it was worth it.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhw98qItxke9TeNW64-THYRy6af0vKiIrIXMWE_PYjOShFF_3iOURrLT6_J4r3YHLpZNb8WXtH-P_7gChtcmvjvPVkvByAeEXxh5x5XOsWxdB3x-fNuB1Dzca9Ywbzz12ur1mhMJb1DN0/s1600/Futurians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhw98qItxke9TeNW64-THYRy6af0vKiIrIXMWE_PYjOShFF_3iOURrLT6_J4r3YHLpZNb8WXtH-P_7gChtcmvjvPVkvByAeEXxh5x5XOsWxdB3x-fNuB1Dzca9Ywbzz12ur1mhMJb1DN0/s1600/Futurians.jpg" height="207" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Sunswift", campaign art by Gary Shipman</td></tr>
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<b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1626567590/dave-cockrums-futurians-return">Dave Cockrum's FUTURIANS Return</a></b></div>
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<i>by <a href="https://twitter.com/CliffordMeth">Clifford Meth</a></i></div>
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I can't look at this campaign without feeling a twinge of guilt about how little I can actually expound on it. I'd never heard the name Dave Cockrum before this gem popped up in my Twitter feed, but looking at the attention this project has garnered and the artists who have jumped on board and contributed their work to commemorate his work it's clear that he was a giant of the Bronze Age. The project achieved its financial goals a while ago, soaring past its $6000 goal and on to stratospheric heights. It looks like the final book is gonna be a blast to read, a treat for anyone who appreciates the superhero classics and misses a time when comics were free of the expectations Hollywood blockbusters have now burdened them with. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7GZJsNFapho8uirrh4oK_ETpHJpa63HeTllWe3Sj2iMZcxLXR4N9WT0D8KmCySIZTrL4gc7V5MCVozqnwY4Mird1swourc_BkMQnRsEnsoTAIJtKLmjsS4mYl0idHnDkFPHzsFHF40M/s1600/Rubber+Necker+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu7GZJsNFapho8uirrh4oK_ETpHJpa63HeTllWe3Sj2iMZcxLXR4N9WT0D8KmCySIZTrL4gc7V5MCVozqnwY4Mird1swourc_BkMQnRsEnsoTAIJtKLmjsS4mYl0idHnDkFPHzsFHF40M/s1600/Rubber+Necker+5.jpg" height="200" width="128" /></a><b><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/rubber-necker-6">Rubber Necker 6</a></b></div>
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<i>by </i><a href="https://twitter.com/NickBertozzi"><i>Nick Bertozzi</i></a></div>
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This project's a little more low-key than the previous ones. No superheroes or lumberjacks here (unless Betozzi surprises us; there could very well be lumberjacks). Just an alt cartoonist from New York pulling together printing costs for issue #6 of a snazzy looking comic. The goal is modest, and the backer rewards are nothing drastic: comics, posters, a bit of original art. The top end of the reward list, if you want to pitch $200 his way and happen to be in New York at the time, is a portfolio review, which I think is a stellar reward. Crowdfunding should build community, and Bertozzi seems to have a handle on that.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_symGVcdbGD3AtGrNyOrjuI65nZXG98dOXPmRGvfp_-KI-3Q4RzP_foYpNbi3kbdfbgvCRsaxkyZ_GunoYlMzx9MAWJ5QJByNGWtZU2nIMsqEupOE9c94H4QmHIG4OFiCchfWp__Zsbo/s1600/f83c4cb08a11e15518965c8dc87a1bbe_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_symGVcdbGD3AtGrNyOrjuI65nZXG98dOXPmRGvfp_-KI-3Q4RzP_foYpNbi3kbdfbgvCRsaxkyZ_GunoYlMzx9MAWJ5QJByNGWtZU2nIMsqEupOE9c94H4QmHIG4OFiCchfWp__Zsbo/s1600/f83c4cb08a11e15518965c8dc87a1bbe_large.jpg" height="320" width="210" /></a><b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1350078939/dabishops-stranger-the-128-page-zombie-comic-book?ref=category">D.A. Bishop's STRANGER: The 128 Page Zombie Comic Book!</a></b></div>
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<i>by <a href="https://twitter.com/AHComicsInc">Alternate History Comics Inc.</a></i></div>
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Let me preface everything else I'm going to say with this statement:</div>
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That cover is <i>BADASS</i>.</div>
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I've never read D.A. Bishop's webcomic <i><a href="http://stranger.renerd.com/">Stranger</a></i>, but I plan to remedy that shortly. This Kickstarter from Canadian publishing newcomer AH Comics Inc. looks sweet. I helped back their <a href="http://www.jewishcomicsanthology.com/"><i>Jewish Comix Anthology</i> Vol. 1</a> project a while back, a beautiful volume collecting some wonderful cultural treasures. <i>Stranger</i> looks equally promising, and decidedly less Jewish. The backer rewards are pretty cool, too: t-shirts (I'm snagging one of those), bookmarks, prints etc.<br />
However, in my opinion, the crown jewel of the rewards list is down at the $500 dollar mark: Adam Gorham's original cover art, plus the book, t-shirt, stamps, bookmarks, and a digital edition. It's still open, and damned if I'm not tempted to scoop it before the rest of you. That is a <i>gorgeous</i> piece of artwork. If any of you readers end up getting it, let me know. I'll drool on my keyboard in jealousy on your behalf.<br />
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And that's all for now, folks! Of course, there's a host of other projects out there. My tastes may not be yours (in which case you're reading the wrong blog); head on over to <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/comics?ref=category">Kickstarter's comics project page</a> and see if anything there catches your fancy. Many, many creators are looking for funding, or looking to build a following as they start out on the long road that is a career in comics. You might be the addition they need to make that happen, you never really know. That is, quite simply, the beauty of crowdfunding.</div>
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Marlinspikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02150329880131589088noreply@blogger.com1