A yearlong blog experiment...
Hussle bussle busy, out the door, caffeine injected. Rubber heated and humming along craggy pavement washed in golden light. The air slicing in constant low level blustering sound as metal punches through, weaving and dodging demanding caravan truckers.
On The Road
October 17th 2012
This weekend coming up is kind of a big one for us, Wendy and I. We’re going to be celebrating our twenty year anniversary. Sort of giving ourselves the wedding we feel we never had, that we could call our own. So we’re doing it up all proper, with ceremony, fancy clothes, and a party! Its going to be quite a lot of revelry. Its astounding that its already been two decades, it just doesn’t feel that long, but yet there are waves of memories that flood my mind, showing me that there has a been lot of life lived. The oddest thing is that I actually feel somewhat nervous about the event, I find this surprising considering that we’ve already been married for such a long time. I suppose its from wanting it to come off with the right feel, as its an important event to celebrate, something that sets a foundation for the next two decades, and it all begins tomorrow, making our way to Vegas again.
Looking Forward To The Now
October 16th 2012
Another late night, another dark quiet ease settling across my brow. Tonight has been spent reminiscing over good and bad times, but in the process of rummaging through old tucked away items of what now feels like another person’s life I’ve come across piles of writings I had done long ago. Most of it forgotten, as glancing over them, briefly flipping through reams of it all surprises and confounds me as to just who I was back then. Some of it isn’t half bad, if only being a bit over zealous and clearly full of young angst didn’t get in the way. Taking in some of it I couldn’t help but nervously laugh aloud, and chuckle at some of it’s boisterous and pretentious underpinnings. The woeful and too much petulance of a young mind and heart is now slightly ludicrous from my humbly matured perspective. But yet I’m surprisingly feeling no lack of pride over these papers, as they show a fruitful desire to communicate something deeply personal, a show of imagination. A testament to a time when I was somebody else because I hadn’t yet discovered who I am. These writings kind of were a way of discovering just that. So I may decide to scour through them to find the possible hidden gems and polish them with new life. Or for a kick I should post them, warts and all, could be another interesting blog experiment next year, and something just might be learned from the process.
A Rediscovery
October 15th 2012
Blitzed! Bowled over! Overwhelmed! My oozing brain is being pulled apart like a taffy stretcher. Creatively broken for now. And all while attempting to finish off a script before the big trip we’re making. Ain’t gonna happen. Too many twists and turns and pushing it into something interesting beyond the expectations of the typical climactic ending tropes that these sorts of tales have. Trying to kill cliche while embracing it at the same time.
I’m Tired Now
October 14th 2012
Its a quarter past 2 in the AM. The final stages of uploading pages for the completed art is taking its sweet damn time to finish. I sit back and try to relax as a lazy breeze lightly drifts through the open window gently chilling my skin, the dark outside is palpable. A dog’s upset vocalizing off in the distance, persistent and random. There are vague whooshes of far highway traffic floating along the currents of the night. A rumbling of a motorcycle accelerating down a quiet road a block or two behind our house breaking the smoothness. Screeches and sirens wailing faintly. Sometimes this is my favorite time of the day, there is something captivatingly moody, even contemplative about the hours after midnight that I always find beckoning. The sounds uniquely belonging to this time and atmosphere mixing with colors rich as classical art, blues and lemon yellows contrast each other in the most exquisite illustrative manner. There is something altogether pleasant and perfect about the feel of this very hour while watching Boardwalk Empire. The details enrapturing in warm earthy tones laying with mellow cools but never drab, it always feel like a painter’s touch crafts the visuals of this evocatively written drama of another time, another world. I want to create comics that look like this and feel like this.
Easing After Midnight
October 13th 2012
Shifting and vibrating, hazing as the details move in and out of the starkness. Contrast of black and white warps and tilts in this sea of flat brightness that stretches out before me. I blink, then blink again, to no avail. I rub my eyes easily, the heat inside the lids like little fires incapable of being doused by the moisture of the irritated tissue. I rinse them, the coolness soothes as drops run down my cheeks, but yet I still cannot see. After yesterday’s monstrous illustrations, literally and figuratively, I’m operating feeling half blind. Partially from fatigue, allergens, and I what I call page blindness, this occurs to me about once a week for certain. Staring at white art board all day under good lighting can sometimes have a similar effect to being snow-blind, after a while the eyes refuse to focus properly, and after working endless days I can sometimes start off my day in this state. But I have no time for being half blind, this will not do, the schedule will not allow it, so I plow through hoping that my skills are good enough to carry me through what I can’t see. I can go back in to clean things up where needed the next day after some rest. My entire day is spent toiling through this struggle of lacking sight balanced against the ticking clock of time and crafting images. Then an aroma wafts in, something enticingly savory, my adoring wife has brought me home tandoori chicken. Now it’s time to stop.
Can Art Make You Blind?
October 12th 2012
Somewhat contorting in a spasm of manufactured punk rock and roll, the movement forever stilted, frozen in place, but yet mesmerizingly mocked fluidity. The complexion is slightly grimy, the features accurately depicted depending on the angle and the light being viewed, attempting to mimic an iconic image from a wild era of a wild man. A wiry sinewy body captured in a dance of plastic.
Iggy Pop As An Action Figure
October 11th 2012
Coiling, writhing, serpentine, ghastly, mindless. Art crunch mode has taken over all, its now everything. This is it, there is nothing more. I’m brain-dead.
Half Baked (And Not In A Good Way)
October 10th 2012
Lines. Lines that carve and divide rigid shapes into structural integrity. Architectural landscapes of rising walls and rooftops. A city in formation as it still builds within my mind, only partially realized. The side walls missing to reveal images. Stories live inside this city, some are more valid than others, while a multiple headed beast looms. It rams and it fractures, weakening the integrity, it is a harbinger of what is to come. Something ancient wishing to be written, that for now exists outside of time and rationality, it desires to consume all tales told and untold, to be the only final story remaining.
Perspectives Are Illusions
October 9th 2012
Welcome to my blog today. You know these things that I’ve been intensely doing everyday are certainly challenging to keep up, especially with the time constraints that I’m under. And as Wendy and I fast approach our twentieth wedding anniversary, time is slipping past so quickly that work has become overwhelming, due to needing to finish an issue before leaving soon. So some blogs this week may end up being crap like what you’re reading this very moment. My mind is on other things, but hopefully tomorrow will have something interesting to note. But for today, if you want something meatier than these very words I’m typing this minute, then may I suggest reading yesterday’s post, if you’ve already read that one then maybe reread it as that one actually says something important, in my humble opinion.
An Entire Paragraph Devoted To Say Nothing At All
October 8th 2012
Something happened today, and I found it disturbing. I almost never ever look at sales rankings for comics from Diamond, their top 100. But I ended up doing that today only to discover something profoundly sad. Out of that list for the month of August I found there to be only two titles that are creator owned books, and one of those has a TV show. I was floored that out of a hundred books only two, TWO, were independently owned concepts. This might sound a bit trite, arrogant, snarky, or judgmental, and some of you may slam me for it, but I find this information shocking enough that I’m rather disgusted by it, disheartened by it. And raises questions in my mind about what is expected in this industry. I mean we all say how much we want to support creativity, and push for more interesting comics, I hear it all of the time. But then it seems they’re not being bought in large numbers. This does not sit well with me. My own personal buying habits greatly include creator owned titles. Some of the best comics out there are independent! How can we not give these more support?! How can we claim to want new and innovative concepts if we don’t pay attention to them when they are right in front of us? Why is this?! If we ever truly want our industry to grow and mature, and present sophisticated concepts that attract a smart wide ranging audience, we should be embracing these new concepts on equal terms to anything provided by the major publishers. The future viability of what we love I feel depends on this. We live in a time where some superhero film pushed by the big two will make a gabillion dollars, good to hear there is such high interest, but good for whom exactly. When is it time for the creators to see this kind of support? Don’t get me wrong here, I throw cash at mainstream titles too, but I equally give cash over to creator owned titles as well. I look for good comics regardless. Some are better than others, same as in mainstream. I want to see them get the same levels of attention. Like I said, I’m a bit saddened seeing the top 100 dominated almost purely by Marvel and DC. I can’t complain too much, I mean I work for DC, but as a fan I want to see diversity succeed equally, it deserves to. Not sure what else I can say on the subject, so there ya go…
Diatribe
October 7th 2012
Thick as belted steel, scaly and plated tough, as if it were not pliable but yet with the stroke of my pen across the page I’m building it into something else. It grows and transforms. Bubbling boils, twisting stretching snaky tendrils and ghastly reptilian faces with gaping maws of jagged lacerating teeth push outward from blood oozing fleshy tight chasms. Writhing and full of pain, I imagine bones snapping, then mending suddenly, only to snap again, the process repeating over and over as horrific growth takes over. Muscles warping and ripping, pumping up into something even more brutish than what it was before. Becoming some demonic walking and drooling cancer of evil, talons as long as people are tall, feet as large as cars, eyes of piercing hellfire, breath fetid as death itself. A living myth towering over the crowds, wreaking devastation to any nearby structures as it wages war on disbelief. This is the Beast Of Babylon come home to roost and devour, its only apt for this city, this dark heart of the world.
Creating Monsters
October 6th 2012
Two days ago I was hating the cover I’d been working on, loathing it actually. But something happens along the way during the process of things, that can sometimes change my point of view on work I’m doing. There is a shift, like a blurring of moments where the horizon melts into the sky, and you can’t quite tell when they diverge, but they do so all the same. One moment you’re looking across a hazy edge, then you find yourself staring into the bright big blue, not realizing for a second that your focus has changed. This is sort what its like when I have a change in whether or not I’m okay with a piece I’m working on. One moment I’m in utter hatred for it, and then the next I’m feeling good about it, and I ‘m never quite sure when that switch happens. Certainly there are things in the piece that still bug me, but there always are those quibbles. So that sums up my experience this week while working on the cover to Batwoman 16.
Transitions
October 5th 2012
Pumped and thumping. A wicked bouncing tickle of the eardrum. Messy and dirty, oh so deliciously dirty. Like pink and green neon sex casting into a grimy wet dark alley of urban night, skirting around shadows and giving them a lick and a grope as it slides by drifting upward into a murky sky. Imagining red velvet couches and slick black leather, a growling voice with rattling tongue alive in a rumble of rock’n’roll. After the last few days of dourness, I sorely needed an adjustment. There is no better way to shake off bleak attitudes than setting a needle down on a Cramps record.
Psychobilly Hootenanny
October 4th 2012
Today, is a day where I just hate the cover I’m working on. Something about it just doesn’t sit well. And I’ve no time to rethink it, I need to have it finished and colored by Friday, and I’ve only half the drawing part done at this point. I hope I can find some way to save this piece of crap before then, to at least not frown when thinking about it anymore.
Dour Is The Word Of The Day
October 3rd 2012
The grind sets in rapidly, there is no time to take a breath. The production schedule just won’t allow it. This is what is so insidious about monthly comics, and eventually it weakens them. There is impossible demand set by parameters of a bygone era, parameters that just don’t function properly in today’s oh so hectic world. The work flow needing my direct immediate attention has me a bit blue and introverted. After such a heady experience this past weekend, time won’t let me stop to let it all settle in. I feel like it was a bubble of convergence, something from a pocket dimension that we were transported to, but now squeezed out with nothing left but fast fading embers floating past us. Staring from outside as it closes up, deflating out of existence much faster than I would like. I want to grab for one of those last drifting sparks, bottle it up, save it, to hopefully rekindle the fire.
I Need More Fuel
October 2nd 2012
After a very long, but cool last four days in the hot nevada desert, I thought I was damn tired by the end. But today makes yesterday feel quite energetic by comparison. Brain so numbed that synapses fire in slow motion, responses lagging so far behind in time it might as well still be yesterday. I am depleted to the marrow, but still managed through absolute will power to drive eight hours to reach home. I will be…
Dead To The World (For Now)
October 1st 2012
Sideshow stapling hard cash to our dear friend Jennocide, the crowd mesmerized by her enigmatic presence while roaring, yelping, and cringing. The intensity raised so high there is no where for it to go but to dissipate into sighs of release. Spilling outward everyone slowly drifts off back to the worlds they come from, with dreams of this event that most likely will creep into their subconscious for quite some time. The chaos has come to end, ragged feet pulsing and itching from the weight of it all pressing down. The last stragglers of us, weary and needing a fresh change head down to Frankie’s, the real Las Vegas. Blowing off the last residue of a crazy powerful weekend with tiki bar goodness. A perfect final end cap. Intoxication induced new word creation sending us rolling off kilter, our tired addled brains no longer able to contain any form of seriousness anymore.
The Magic Word Is Vaginja
September 30 2012
Menageries of mind melding synthesis cohesion that spurs on creation. Feeling somewhat like lets make the puppets sing and dance, lined up in a row like in a shooting gallery, while at the same time feeding from the exchange of warm endearing energies of the ebb and flow thoughtful people. The movement was something astoundingly cool, unlike anything prior that uses the term “convention”. A swishing of time into the pumping night scene. Blaring spinning nostalgic records that somehow manage to have now transcended trends sits as the backdrop to a brief conversation about the glories of The Micronauts. Standing decked out in sharp tailored red and black, shoes that in one form of light are sleek black, while in another morph into burnt red, as if they themselves can slip in and out of dual realities. Wendy stunningly in black, white, with accents of crimson, so full of life mixing into shadows of club atmosphere. I find myself pulled by unfamiliar hands into circles of crowds happily dancing, smiles bright with joy. The cap is a strangers cheek spontaneously rubbing into my face, while they state their love for my beard.
Shifting
September 29th 20
Wait, haven’t I heard this somewhere before? Somewhere in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind, memories called up from a decade ago sent forward through time and space to the here and now, to this very night? Drones and whistles and pulses through a staged neon glow as soundtrack to choreographed verbal judgement on something not truly understood, speeding down a metaphorical late night desert highway by a single idiosyncratic mind knuckle-gripping tightly to the steering wheel. Is that a hint of pretension I hear? Wait, I have heard this before. By a bushy haired bearded man, with crazy crystal blue eyes that always seem to twinkle, knowing the joke has already been had. And now we’re on repeat with someone else.
The Party Is Over And The Smarter Chap Has Long Left The Building
September 28th 2012
A silky punchy red sheen, and catching the light in a slightly illuminated way, iridescent. It feels luxurious as it glides smoothly between eager fingers enhancing it’s simplistic sharp opulence. Deep black emblazoned upon it revealing in an archaic old world style of illustration two identical naked women, symbolically representing the ideal of Lust. Numerously attempting to wrap it and tuck it somewhat nervously to find its perfect length. Its been so long since having donned this type of attire that I’ve quite forgotten how to do it up just right. And humorously it takes twenty minutes and two people to find fulfillment in a properly formed knot.
My Special New Tie
September 27th 2012
It never fails these days, whenever we have to hit the road something business oriented hits us first, something that can’t be ignored usually. So the hours before walking out the door get my stress up, trying to resolve whatever the problem may be. But with today, the situation can’t be fixed so easily, so as we make our leisurely drive down highway 99 the problem floats around in my head, loosely keeping me from taking in the atmosphere of the road. Sipping a giant mocha iced coffee, attempting keep my wits sharp and the heat away while avoiding lethal diesel freight trucks that barrel down the highway barely sticking to their own lanes like enormous mechanized demons of ill intent. Yes, we all risk our lives every time we get a in a car, but like to fool ourselves that self control will get us by. Once we make Barstow off the 15, take a break for golden crisp fries and an ice cold bottle of Coke, the good stuff bottled outside the U.S., I take a moment to answer some more emails regarding what needs attention, it eases my mind a little. Now, heading full into the desert, the orange yellow warm afternoon sun at our backs, I can meld more into the surroundings. Manitoba spinning some garagey gems, Foxboro Hot Tubs sits perfectly before moving to classic Rolling Stones as a brief soundtrack for the darkening dusk of a rich blue sky, passing little sparse towns with outlying old houses, some partially burnt out and long forgotten. The rest of the problem will have to wait now, until returning to the office.
Is It All Set Now?
September 26th 2012
Prepping for travel is always such a daunting thing, and I’m sure many can relate to that sense of frazzled slipping of mind that occurs while needing to gear up for battle with the inevitable new sights and sounds. We’re about to leave for Morrison Con, conventions are trickiest for me as I always have a dual sense of anticipation and trepidation. And it always seems to be harder to keep my mind clear enough when doing this activity half tired from work. Lugging out the travel bags from the deep shady recesses of the walk in closet always gets the cats overly curious, and they know full well what they mean, that we’ll be out of the house for a while and they get to deal with the house-sitter. They really don’t like it and get a bit edgy, wanting to get in the middle of everything. Thats the part we hate the most, is knowing we’re leaving them alone, they get separation anxiety, so we feel like we’re being bad parents when we have to go. Rummaging through the office getting portfolios in order, which can be surprisingly tedious, but I tend to get caught up going into analyzation mode while shifting art around, sadly I get lost for a bit. Loading drawing tools, paper, pencil sharpener, all neatly enough into a travel work case. Sorting and packing, making choices of clothes to bring, never want to be unsatisfied with wardrobe when traveling, but at the same time it needs to be easy. And I always feel like I’m forgetting something, triple checking every pocket for the essentials, mustn’t forget the underwear, that would be bad. But I hate that feeling that I’m going to forget something, something important, I’ve done that before. One time I forgot plane tickets to catch a flight in another city, had to turn around after forty-five minutes when it dawned on my forgetful little brain, I wasn’t popular that day. We’ve also left the garage door open, having to call a friend to close it for us, ridiculous. It’d be funny if it didn’t make us a bit paranoid. The goods stand ready by the door making that symbolic statement of imminent adventure now that I’ve managed to squeeze out a paragraph about packing. I’m sure your day just wouldn’t be complete without it.
Prep And Load
September 25th 2012
A so it begins and ends, another late night of too much to do and so not enough time. Another blog to write, this very one, with nothing really of interest in mind. Sort of a blank moment as nothing has changed, the day was much like yesterday. And thats it really. Hopefully tomorrow will bring something cool and fantastical to write about, we’ll see…
Same-O, Same-O
September 24th 2012
Now overstretched and a bit of a wretch
Pinned down with much too much to ignore
Need to stay sound as preparing for whats in store
Shouldn’t have permitted to become so overcommitted
Permit me to commit me, while I show my insanity
Time unravels work
Travels upcoming with no real perk
Only doing it for a friend
So wanting to abort, but that would rend
Support is what I send
But deep within more honest thoughts firmly stuck on imagined paraffin
I cannot wait for it all to end
I tire of stoking the waning fire
But must catch those remaining embers
To hide away, a future spark to remember
To permit me not to commit me, to save my sanity
Wary
September 23rd 2012