Tag Archives: pop culture

Fangs for the Ride

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I have to tell you about this movie I just saw. It’s called V for Vengeance, and it’s about adopted sisters, two vampires and one finding a cure for vampirism. On the poster, one of the sisters is holding a crossbow, which she never does in the movie. I had put it on to have something in the background while I tinkered with my latest work of art, but Oscar set up camp on my arm, so I had to watch it.

I really enjoyed this movie. One of the sisters is armed with a stake made out of the same kind of tree the cross was made out of. They call it the Jesus Stake. She had the Jesus Stake because she called dibs when it was brought out. There is a government agency called the Federal Vampire Corps.

I don’t love this movie because it’s good. I don’t love it because it’s so bad it’s good. I love it because it tries so hard. For example, a hilarious philosophical debate about eternal life goes on between an impeccably groomed man who likes to shout and a young woman in a baby tee, and short-shorts, using words like elucidate.

The death scenes, of which there’s a spectacular one (well, more than one) near the end of the movie, are on par with Paul Reubens on the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn’t supposed to be hilarious.

The writing is not very good, but it follows the formula. The character you’re expecting to betray the good guys betrays the good guys. One of the sisters is falling for the Judas, but their romance is awkward motel sex, so you can’t really buy it. The dialogue is … fine? I guess. It’s influenced by Joss Whedon, but without the pop culture references.

Speaking of the writing, this movie has Chekov’s switchblade boot. You figure out pretty quickly when the lethal footwear will come in handy. You may not expect any twists, but they come up with an even dumber use for them that you really don’t see coming. Of course, this is used to kill the bad guy. (If you’ve seen this kind of movie before, I’m not spoiling anything.)

On the other hand, the actor who plays the lead is actually really good. Her character is a vampire who drinks too much alcohol and gazes contemplatively into the distance when she’s not killing perverts on the highway. The actor (whose name I didn’t get) portrays her with sass and joie de vivre, and she’s a real bright spot.

Most of the actors aren’t that great, but Graham Greene’s in it. The fight choreography is choppy and raw, but quite good. For budget reasons, they didn’t use their vampire powers much, but when they did, they were cool and different.

I guess what I liked about this movie is that it could have been good with a budget, even the script, the weakest part. I don’t recommend it because it isn’t good, but I had a good time.

That Crazy Witchcraft

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My ex-wife is a card-carrying witch. She fancies herself a hedge witch, which means a solitary, standing between her village and the outside world like a hedge. She taught me a lot about magic, and while I don’t believe in it (though I made every effort to), I was fascinated by the lore.

When we were together, we had been working on a book. It was her idea, but I took the characters, added some more detail, and told the story. The novel has two interludes to tell you what happened while they attended a small, Midwestern, liberal arts college like no one I know.

Something I learned about witchcraft or paganism from my ex was that witches had an affinity for one of the elements (air, fire, water, or earth), and that each of the elements has a corresponding color. I did drawings like these before ten years ago, and I wanted to update them for fun. This is most of the 2014 collection:

This is what I just did:

First, we have Jin Harima, a phonomancer, which means sound, preferably music, powers his magic.

This is Regina de Costa, the Secret Princess of the United States, run away from home.

Susan Young is a track star from Gary, Indiana. She’s not really into all this witchy stuff, but she is endlessly fascinated by Regina and will do anything she says.

And finally, Victor Huber, a farmboy and Regina’s protégé.

I haven’t really thought about them since I published their novel three years ago, but this was a nice trip down memory lane.

The Wrath of Gods

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According to a philosopher named Giambattista Vico, there are three ages of mankind. In order, they are the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of men. I wanted to use this, in reverse order as a framework for three action comics that I would create. The first would be a grounded vigilante story, the second one a straight-up superhero epic, and the third one would bring the first two together in a unified vision of mythology (i.e. all the gods we know from legend are based on the same five beings).

This guy, the hero in the second book and one of the heroes of the third, is a demi-god. He has super-strength, so he wears a metal suit (and pants because he would look ridiculous in a onesie), and he gets around by leaping (the funky boots keep him from smashing the street when he lands).

When I developed him in the late nineties, early aughts, there were no gay superheroes, and that would have made him unique. His nationality is Mexican-American, which wasn’t necessarily unique back then, but it was definitely rare.

Unfortunately, all of the writing I did with the character was lost because Newcastle kept sitting on my laptop twenty years ago. The first image I did this week, using the black, white, and red style. The second I did in 2003, when I became more sure of my skill.

An All Hallows Eve That Will Live in Infamy

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To explain to you what went wrong on Halloween night, 2003, I have to tell you about Satanicide.

If you’re an educated Satanicide fan, at some point you have had this conversation in your head: “Doesn’t –icide mean to kill? Killing Satan? They’re on God’s side? Or are they just that stupid?” You never learn the answer to that question because the band in question rocked your face off. Satanicide was a Spinal Tap style of band, i.e. comedy, but can actually rock out.

Front man, the voice, Devlin Mayhem, was played by Dale. Devlin represented hard, biker rock. His chaps even had flame-detailing on them because Dale’s girlfriend (now wife) is amazing at that kind of thing.

Aleister Cradley, played by Phil, is a glam rocker, complete with teased hair and spandex tights. Part of his joke is that he’s an f-word but doesn’t know it. In the Satanicide movie, Aleister moons over Devlin while their cover of “My Heart Will Go On” plays in the background. I thought it was funny. Other people might not. This will get me into trouble during the Halloween in question.

Satanicide goes through a lot of bassists, and their replacements are always relatives of the first one, Baron von Goaten. None of the von Goatens could speak English, and, mentally, they weren’t operating on the same world as the rest of us. Last I checked, they all wore masks to hide their Frankenstein hideousness from the world. I’m pretty sure the second Baron was my contemporary. He might have been the first. His name was Jake, and he was the sweetest guy. The von Goaten clan represents European metal, which is some weird, scary shit.

English punk was represented by Sloth Vader. One minute, he was tearing some shit up in London, and then he wakes up in a dumpster in New Jersey, so he joined a band. Griff, the English guy behind Sloth, was a big guy. He loped along like a bear. So when I tell you he routinely did stage dives on top of me, you won’t question my commitment to taking one for the band.

I first saw them because Beth invited me to a show. She did that within five minutes of meeting me, before she even asked me for my name, if I remember correctly. Since that initial concert, I don’t think I missed more than one show during my last two years in New York. Beth’s boyfriend was Dale, so we had the inside scoop. I even recommended a fragment of a song that Devlin sang at one of their concerts (“P is for pussy, that’s good enough for me!”)  

In 2003, Beth thought that it would be funny if, on Halloween, Steve and I dressed as Devlin and Aleister, respectively, and go to a Satanicide show. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but my execution was loathesome and half-assed. I wore a curly wig when Phil’s was straight. I couldn’t find exciting tights, so I wore these pants that looked like a cheetah-print pajama bottom. I wore makeup like a drag queen, thanks to Beth. Steve’s costume was on point. We were a terrible mismatch.

Right before we left Steve’s apartment to go to the bar, we had to decide if we were going to eat something for dinner or do vodka shots. We didn’t have time for both. We chose vodka shots. Later at the bar, before the concert, we did shots again, more than once. We watched the show with beers in our hands. After the show, I had a Jack and Coke.

It was in that state that I encountered Moby. That Moby. He went to high school with Beth and Steve. I called him a homophobic slur. The reason I did was because juvenile gay jokes were part of the Satanicide experience. However, this did not endear me to him. Next, I encountered Ed Helms, who was a very, very loosely defined neighbor of Dale. Ed Helms is a cool guy. On the street you will recognize him as Ed Helms, but he looks completely different than the dork that is his brand.

I sat down at the bar and ordered another drink. After I finished it, I swear there was an earthquake, and I fell off the stool. Immediately, I was escorted out of the bar. I ran into Beth and Steve outside, having a cigarette, and we all agreed to call it a night. Beth went off on her own adventure while Steve took me home and put me on his couch.

That’s where I proceeded to puke all night, like young Regan on The Exorcist. That was not the worst part. The worst part is that I tried to cover it up.

Steve missed this because he went out alone after he’d dropped me off. Later, he described himself as kind of a zombie, but one with a single-minded focus on eating a slice of Ray’s Pizza. When he arrived at the storefront, he lurched up to the counter and somehow ordered a slice, which they brought to him lickety split. As he was walking away, tasting victory in the mozzarella and sweet tomato sauce, he noticed the long line he had just cut in front of.

Beth went to sleep on the sidewalk somewhere.

I don’t know what happened to Moby.

Steve and I never spoke of how I befouled his couch.

While Beth agrees that the night was pretty horrible, she can’t stop talking about it. She treats it like it’s a warning tale for the youths.

I had a hangover for days. I didn’t quit drinking until 2007, but when I was coming up with reasons to stop, Halloween 2003 was Exhibit A.

Chuck Norris, but with Kittens instead of Guns

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I was chatting with my friend Lisa, and she said, “I want to see Chuck Norris, but with kittens instead of guns.” This was a trap, and I fell for it. Immediately, I started looking up Chuck Norris pictures, and when she Photoshopped what she had in mind (it was a terrible Photoshop), I said, “Thank you for bringing this to me instead of going to an AI.” She said, “I hate AI so much.” This was the ethical (and fun) way of entering a prompt and getting an image out of it. So here he is, Chuck Norris, but with kittens instead of guns, as well as proof I did it (thumbnail, pencils, backgrounds, paints).

I’m Sorry, Who?

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It was going to begin with an exciting pre-credits sequence, and then the title, and then a candy-striper named Andrea in 1999 New York City, looking at a patient’s chart. He’s covered in third-degree burns with a body temperature of 61 degrees Fahrenheit, but he’s not dead. Included on the chart is a note that the patient has a strange heart murmur that creates the illusion of a double-pulse. There’s just one problem: the patient in the bed is a petite, Arabic-looking woman with no burns on her whatsoever. However, when Andrea touches her, her skin is deathly cold, and she has a double-heartbeat. The only conclusion she can reach is that they are the same person. The patient wakes up, looks at her hands, and, speaking in an Irish accent, quizzes Andrea on her own appearance, particularly worried about the size of her nose. She recognizes Andrea from “that coffee house in Lincoln, Nebraska, with the on-the-nose name.” “You mean The Coffee House?” But the only remotely British person she ever met there was a dude with a buzz-cut and an awesome leather jacket. Suddenly, a monster would attack, and the woman would introduce herself as the Doctor. Later, they would head for row of porta-potties, and the Doctor leads her to a really classy, wooden one labeled “Police Box.” When Andrea enters, she sees it’s bigger in the inside than it is on the outside, and her reaction is, “Whoa. Cool outhouse.”

Thus begins “The Tyranny of Occam’s Razor,” the first of my Doctor Who fanfics. I had an overarching plot in mind, which would bring them to America more often than usual, and the monsters would be based on American folklore, including a wendigo, a herd of melonheads, and the men in black. There would be no sonic screwdriver. (As a lifelong Doctor Who fan, I kind of loathe the sonic screwdriver.) I have lot of great gags (“What did your sonic screwdriver do?” “Loosen screws, pick locks, scan things, disrupts a Cyberman’s breathing apparatus, like a regular screwdriver, I reckon.” Also, Andrea, as an American, calls them “Darleks.”) I have done tons of art of the characters, and I even made a logo. I’m going to continue to draw and paint them, but I’m not going to write it anymore.

Since I’ve been making comics or sketching full-time, I haven’t had much inspiration to write. I quit in the middle of a lesbian romance, the seventh book in my YA series, a from-the-ground-up revision of my assassin-that-doesn’t-use-guns-or-martial-arts novel, and the Nth Doctor Adventures short stories. I’ve decided I’m going to box up Who. I loved the concept, I loved my Doctor, I loved her companion, I loved the loose plots, I loved the fan service (one of the pre-credit scenes features a couple being rescued by the Eleventh Doctor, and I think I really nailed his voice), I loved coming up with descriptions of the TARDIS noise (someone driving a power drill through a bucket of fruitcake, an accordion in a dishwasher, a flock of geese flying through a cloud of helium, etc.) but the stories are not good. I made it through three-and-a-half of them, and I just ran out of steam.

I think I’m going through phases. Eight years ago, I was a voracious reader. Five years ago, I was a writer. A year ago, I was transitioning, and now I’m almost exclusively artist. I can still write, but only about a page or two at a time. (I’ve illustrated up to page 5 of MortalMan, and I only have 9 written.) I might go back to being a writer again, who knows? But while I still pull out Exile Book 7: The Unkindness of Raven, The Principles of Magnetism, or The Sass in Assassin and tinker at them, I think I’m going to leave the Nth Doctor Adventures in storage for now. Doctor Who, after Newcastle, is the love of my life, and I’m going to give them all the attention they deserve.

In the meantime, as I mentioned above, I’m going to keep illustrating the Doctor and Andrea. The Doctor is in a a necktie again, and Andrea has access to infinite outfits in the TARDIS, so she decides that, if she’s exploring the universe, she should at least wear a suit.

I’m the Exact Amount of Sexy for This Song

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So I can’t use the lyrics to “I’m too Sexy” in my book. I tried. The publisher told me it could potentially cost thousands of dollars (for fifteen words; yay capitalism!). The first version is almost perfect because it captures that moment when you realize, “I’m going to have to listen to this again.” The second version is lame, so I’m not going to do it. The third version is what I’m going with.

Original Version
Because, just as she was trying to make sense of a geometry problem, the jukebox went off. A deep voice, almost comically so, said, “I’m too sexy for my love; too sexy for my love; love’s going to leave me.” Her head slammed down onto her book. Had they seriously not updated the jukebox for ten years, but when this song came out, they thought, this was the one? This was the music they wanted everyone to associate with their family restaurant?

The What-I’m-Not-Going-to-Do Version
Because, just as she was trying to make sense of a geometry problem, the jukebox went off. A deep voice, almost comically so, said the opening lyrics to “I’m too Sexy” by Right Said Fred. Her head slammed down onto her book. Had they seriously not updated the jukebox for ten years, but when this song came out, they thought, this was the one? This was the music they wanted everyone to associate with their family restaurant?

Final Version
Because, just as she was trying to make sense of a geometry problem, the jukebox went off. An aria, with a voice as deep as the bowels of hell, heralded a first-person ballad she had come to know of a man whose sexiness exceeds the tolerance of his love, his car, his cat, your party, several cosmopolitan cities, and his shirt, the latter of which actually causes him pain. Her head slammed down on her book. Had they seriously not updated the jukebox for ten years, but when this song came out, they thought, this was the one? This was the music they wanted everyone to associate with their family restaurant? “I’m Too Sexy?” Really?

Conclusion
This whole ordeal reminds me of the original Cybermen from Doctor Who. The women who designed their costume had something like fifty dollars, so she bought a vacuum cleaner and some floodlights and constructed one of the most iconic bad guys in science fiction TV. Nowadays, if you want something onscreen, you throw millions of dollars at some keyboard jockeys, and they make it happen. Before CGI, you had to work within existing space with limits, and they did some amazing things. Think about how much better A New Hope looks like next to Rise of Skywalker. Being limited ultimately gave me a chance to describe how dumb that song is without using any of the lyrics, and the result is better than I’d originally written it.

(Special thanks to Donna Martinez who helped me brainstorm this approach. Someone, I won’t say who, has earned a space on my acknowledgements page.)

Artists’ Block, but Not Really

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The weekend Newcastle died, I redid the page of MortalMan that I’d destroyed with paint. I don’t have time on the morning of Tuesday through Thursday to work on my comic (the set-up of my work area is a real pain in the ass, and I can’t concentrate when I’m watching the clock for when I have to leave.) However, I have plenty of time to do the Three Stories in One drawings I posted this week.

Yesterday, I designed a logo for a fictional newspaper, and I roughly sketched out a panel. Today, I was able to finish the panel and do the roughs on another panel, and that’s all I have. I spent the rest of the morning drawing this.

I am afraid if I put MortalMan down, I will forget about it because that’s my M.O. But I’m really straining myself to do the little work I’ve done so far. There’s no deadline, and no one is clamoring for more pages. So I’m coming to you to ask permission: may I extend the break I started when Newcastle got sick, even though he’s not here anymore? I’ll still be drawing, just not the comic. Can I be trusted to get back to the comic on my own time?

Some feedback would be appreciated.

Walking on Down the Hall

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There’s something about Three Stories in One. Of all of my intellectual properties, of all my ideas, it has to be the dumbest. It wasn’t just my idea, though. Severian (nee Boone) was there with me in drama class, and when Ms. Lindberg told us to take out seats, we discussed how hard that would be for me, who came to school on my bike, or Boone, who took the bus, and it took off from there. Suddenly, Severian is (kind of) hooking up with Amber, the most popular girl in school, and I was racing cars in the Indy 500.

When I sat at my desk after school that day and wrote it all down, along with some of my own embellishments (there was lots of flying), I inserted Severian’s friend (who I barely liked), Luke, inspired by a Doors song I had just learned, and later in the tale, Wendy, who I’d had a crush on at the time. The storytelling was unique, in that, instead of chapter or scene breaks, each main character’s adventures were presented as a separate story, woven together with titles and “To be continueds.” Severian wrote a sequel to the collection, and we took turns writing them.

Three Stories in One became a mini-phenomenon. This was in the early nineties, so there was no internet to share it on, but it spread anyway. Severian typed it up, printed out a few copies, and they circulated, even coming into the hands of Amber herself (who I’m pretty sure was horrified, though the only hooking up Boone and Amber did was to play games like Ping-Pong). Severian and I were celebrities. In 1995, I condensed my contributions to Three Stories in One into a single collection (which can be read here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OciHzg8YdB8wyjGZNZx509v1nCvXPMIO/view) When each story fragment is put on a separate page, it came out to seventy-eight pages. In 1998, I started to teach myself how to draw, and by 2005, with four comics under my belt, I decided to illustrate Three Stories in One. I wasn’t great with faces at the time, all five of us had a distinctive look that was easy to cartoon. I made it fifty-six pages before I started making friends in the town I had just moved to and abandoned the project. However, those illustrations stuck with me, and every once in a while, I like to come back to them.

When we were kids, we talked about Three Stories in One like a pop-culture mega-hit, and I still do, even though I’m only Facebook friends with Wendy and Amber, and we don’t ever interact. The less said about Luke, the better. As for Severian, the last time I saw her was January 1, 2000, and she was presenting as Boone. She and I had a difficult relationship, as we were both mentally ill and not receiving necessary care, and she had a number of issues on top of that. After Newcastle passed away, I sat down and worked on a watercolor to take my mind off of everything. As is the case with most of my sketchbooks, I let the picture tell me what it wanted to be, and it became a dramatic drawing of Wendy. Next thing you know, I made movie posters of all the main characters.

LUKE: A total sleazebag

JEREMIAH: A miserable nerd who rides his bike everywhere

BOONE: A surprisingly cheerful and innocent goth

AMBER: The most popular and perky girl at school

WENDY: The Worst Driver in the World

I’ve made attempts to reach out to Severian, but no luck. I don’t want to do all seventy-eight pages again, but I’d love to do something smaller with these characters, and I’d love for her to writer. Though, if she chose not to, I’d completely understand. It was a difficult time in her life, and one of the main characters uses her dead name. For me, though, it was an innocent time (even though I was unhappy for at least half of it), and I’ve never written anything as bananas since.

Saving Faces

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This is a hell of a big find for me. Sixteen years ago, I wanted to do a three-to-four-panel comic strip about my sleazy reporter character, Max Fuentes. I filled out this really great chart I found on DeviantArt, mostly as an effort to draw the same face over and over again, something I’ve never been able to do. I wish I could find this challenge again.

Eventually, all of these storylines came together in the novel I entitled The Grind, as I’m a better writer than I am an artist.