Radiant Comics

I need a break from reality right now. It’s time for a “Friends” walkthrough again. I’m on Season 5 Episode 10 now. Just yesterday I watched Episode 9 which is a favorite of mine. That’s the one with “Mental Geller.” Crazy Ross cracks me up. Episode 10 is “The One With the Inappropriate Sister.” It first ran on December 17, 1998 and, like all episodes of “Friends,” I watched it when it aired. I never watch anything when it airs anymore. Times have changed.

Let me check my calendar. Looks like I was working at Marvel on that day. I commuted in and commuted out of NYC. It also looks like I paid to have my self published comic printed that day. Payment 1 of 2 for $493 for “Delia Charm” #2. That was the sixth and final issue that my friends and I self-published of our comic book work. That brings back memories. No onto the show.

We start in Joey and Chandlers’ apartment. Ross is crashing with them at the moment since his marriage to Emily fell apart and he lost his apartment. Ross also lost his job so he’s bored out of his mind which leads to jokes with Joey about how to pace his tasks out now that he has nowhere to be. A solid bit. Here comes the theme song. Is it me or have they sped up the song over the years?

Now we’re at the coffee shop and Phoebe will be collecting for the Salvation Army or some unnamed equivalent. Not my favorite plotline. We also get a continuation of the Rachel and Danny saga as she has been obsessed with him (a new neighbor). Monica gets tired of the fourth grade shenanigans and asks Danny out for Rachel. Again, not one of their stronger plots but it has some funny moments.

Joey’s manager, Estelle, makes an appearance. She’s a character but the scene is really short. Well under a minute and it just establishes that Joey needs an acting job.

Here is Phoebe ringing a bell and trying to get donations. She guilts Monica into giving more. Things don’t go well as a random guy makes change out of her bucket. Not the funniest bit and I don’t remember it getting any better.

Back at the boys’ apartment Joey is frustrated that he has no work so Ross encourages him to write something for him to star in. This is a solid bit. Ross makes Joey a schedule so Joey can work on some writing. We all know this won’t go well. No matter how simple Ross makes it Joey never gets interested in sitting down and writing.

Now over to the ladies’ apartment. Rachel is upset that she saw Danny with his arm around a girl on the subway. Jealous Rachel is kinda funny. At the end of the conversation Chandler has to run out of Monica’s room because Rachel doesn’t know they’re sleeping together. It’s a funny physical comedy moment.

Look. A shot of the Twin Towers. There were plenty of those in this show.

At the boys’ apartment again Joey is actually trying to write but Chandler distracts him by inventing a new game. Don’t worry, Joey will write after they play the game. Heh, heh, heh…

More Phoebe swinging the bell and collecting money stuff. The main point of this is that people aren’t very friendly. It’s not particularly amusing but there is some decent farce in there.

Ross is looking over Joey’s writing. There is not much to it except the rules to Chandler and Joeys’ new game: Fireball! Chandler shows up wearing an oven mitt and carrying a fire extinguisher to punctuate the joke. Good job. I want more Fireball! Ross doesn’t. He is disappointed.

Here come the end of Rachel and Danny’s date. They had a good time and get romantic with a kiss. Rachel finds out the woman from the subway was his sister and is relieved. Danny takes Rachel in to meet his sister. The title joke is revealed as Danny acts inappropriately close with his sister. Rachel leaves. It was a solid reveal. Probably the best part of this plot line.

At the girls’ apartment Phoebe is complaining about the people abusing her bucket. She calls upon her old persona “Street Phoebe” and goes into action. Then Rachel asks Ross and Monica if they ever wrestled so she could try to get a grip on what she should think about Danny and his sister. Then, unlike Danny and his sister’s playful wrestling, Ross and Monica wrestle for real. Collegiate style. Funny moment.

Back at the funniest plot line (where Ross is cleaning the men on the foosball table with cleaning spray) Joey can’t go to the hockey game with Chandler because he didn’t finish his writing. Chandler is not having it but loses in the end. No hockey for anyone!

Later at the coffee shop Danny and his sister are inappropriate again. The whole gang is freaked out. That was a short and funny scene.

Now it’s time for the resolution of Phoebe’s plot. The tables turn and she’s the mean one. Phoebe loses her “Job” as a bell ringing donation taker. It was inevitable.

The resolution of Rachel’s plot is up next as Danny tries to make her feel comfortable. But then his sister calls out from the bathub and Rachel is out of there.

Third resolution as Chandler confronts Ross about his treatment of Joey. Joey ends up teaching them a lesson as his writing is about them fighting. A nice skit and then one last Fireball joke. I think the Fireball jokes were the best part of this episode. The last scene is Joey trying to get Rachel and Monica to kiss by writing a scene for them. Good ending.

As I check my ratings from back in 2013 I can see I gave this episode two out of five stars. That seems about right as I didn’t like two out of three plot lines. I think I liked it a little better this time around but that could be because I was writing this walkthrough so it seemed more interesting. At best I’d give it three out of five stars but that would be average and this is probably a below average episode. I’ll stick with two stars.

Now I’ll check the uncut Friends episode site to see what was cut out of this episode for syndication. They cut one line from Joey’s crank call to Chandler in the beginning. I like that line. They cut two lines that revealed that Phoebe was getting suspicious of Chandler and Monica. No great loss but it added depth. They cut a great line of Chandler’s saying it’s 4:30 so his lunch break is over. A very self-aware joke. They cut a random Joey line about writing. They also cut Monica and Chandler’s reaction to Danny and his sister’s actions. After that nothing else. About half of the cuts I’d miss if I were watching the HD version. Plus “Friends” is more nostalgic in SD. I’ll stick with the old extended cut DVDs.

I usually don’t buy things whimsically. I don’t see something and say to myself “I have to have it.” I might if I had more money but most of the time I don’t. So I buy my regular stuff which is mostly books, comic books, and art supplies.

Just recently I was looking at a figure/sculpture I own called “Sinful Lady” by Gary Ham. I bought it back in 2009. It’s about ten inches tall and has an edition of 500. It’s a sculpture of a cartoon woman as a devil. In looking at it I realized that might be the last thing expensive I bought on a whim. By expensive I mean around $150-$200 and by whim I mean that it was nothing I needed but I just kind of wanted it. I may have bought some other whimsical purchases but I don’t remember them at the moment.

Back in 2009 I bought the first car I’ve ever bought in my life. It was a new 2009 Honda. I had saved up about half of the price of the car but had to finance the other half. That meant a $200 bill every month for five years. That is a lot of money for me and meant a $200 whimsical purchase was out of the question for five years. It’s been mostly out the question for ten years now but that’s the way life is. Except last weekend I made my first whimsical purchase in a long time.

I like movies that are about conversation and ideas. I call those movies “Talkers.” That’s because there is a lot of talking in them. There is usually not much action in such film but there is lots of dialogue. They’re also good for me to work to. I can put one on and mostly listen to it as I draw.

Whit Stilman is one of my favorite writer/directors. He makes Talkers. He hasn’t made a lot of movies over the decades but I like them all. “Metropolitan,” “In the Last Days of Disco,” “Damsels in Distress,” and especially his Amazon pilot “The Metropolitans” are all favorites of mine. I’ve watched them all many times over the years and listened to them as I worked even more.

During this era of Covid19 that we’ve been in “The Metropolitans” has been my go-to pick me up. It was a pilot for Amazon Prime that never got picked up and is only 24 minutes long but I love it. It’s the story of four expatriates living in Paris and having a night out. Lots of talking and lots of ideas being discussed. I’ve probably watched it half a dozen times in the last six months and hummed its theme song “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” by Joan Osborne countless times.

That sets us up for last weekend. I don’t remember how it got into my field of view but it turns out that Whit Stilman’s production company just started selling props from his movies on Ebay. First of all I don’t collect movie props. I have zero interest in them. But since these were from Whit Stilman movies I decided to give them a look.

I have no idea how movie props are priced but these ones were all over the place. There was some relatively cheap stuff and some expensive stuff. The first thing that caught my eye were pieces of the 35mm print of the film. One of the things I buy on Ebay are old negatives. I buy one, scan it in, and then digitally manipulate it to make my own photo. So I could do something similar with these 35mm pieces of the film they were selling. But at $75 it was way more than the usual $5 to $20 that I spent on old negatives.

Then the clothing caught my eye. They were selling some of the wardrobe from “Damsels in Distress.” I love that movie and refer to it as Whit Stilman’s “Animal House.” It doesn’t have a lot in common with National Lampoon’s sense of humor but it is about four women in college. I find it endlessly amusing. They had a few pieces of Greta Gerwig’s wardrobe for sale and they weren’t all that expensive. The dress she wore at the end of the film was the most costly one at $1000 but there was a bright yellow shirt for $150.

I think it was the color of the shirt that caught my eye and it amused me to think that I could get that and have it hang in my closet as a conversation piece. I thought about buying it but didn’t pull the trigger. I couldn’t justify it to myself. But then I saw a light tan jacket for sale. It was a jacket Greta Gerwig wore in just one short scene but it was pretty cool and got me thinking.

I tend to turn everything into an art project. As an artist that’s my nature. The yellow shirt would have just hung in my closet but a jacket is a different beast. People can easily try on a jacket. A shirt or a dress no one will ever try on whimsically. So I thought if I got the jacket I could get people to try it on and take their photo. I take photos after all.

The price on the jacket was $160 but there was also an Ebay “Make me an offer” button next to it. I decided to make an offer of $100. Ebay recommended that I offer $120 but I ignored their advice and I’m glad I did. A few hours later I got back a counter offer of $130. For a few minutes I contemplated if I should accept the offer. Ebay also tells you how many other people have put the jacket on their watch list. That number was five. Five other people who could hit the “Buy it Now” button or be making their own offers. Since it was a one of a kind item and there were not other jackets I accepted the offer and paid for the item. On a whim.

I’m thrilled with my purchase but haven’t gotten the jacket just yet. I bought it on the 11th but it says the expected delivery date isn’t until the 26th. That’s because there is a ten day handling period. That’s unusual for Ebay. Most Ebayers I’ve dealt with (including myself) get things out in two days if not the same day. Getting people their stuff quickly means happier customers. Whit Stiman’s movie company is much better at making movies than shipping stuff but that’s okay. It’ll make my whim last a little but longer.

I just finished rereading the graphic 475 page graphic novel “Clyde Fans” by the one named cartoonist Seth. It was back in 1997 that I read the first chapter of “Clyde Fans” in issue #10 Seth’s “Published Three Times a Year” comic book that was called “Palookaville.” At that time I never dreamed the story wouldn’t be finished until 2017 in issue #23 (they did not get out three issues a year). According to the author’s notes in the back of this book Seth never dreamed it would take him that long either.

It took until 2019 for the book’s publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, to get the complete “Clyde Fans” out in a single volume. A thick hardcover volume that comes in a slipcase. Despite this being one of my favorite comics of all time I didn’t buy the collected edition when it came out. Instead I took it out of the library to read. And read it then I did.

Now it’s almost two years later and I finally decided to get that volume. One of the things that made me wait so long was that I hated the die cut cover book design. There is a rectangle cut out of the center of the cover (after you take it out of its slipcover) designed to mimic a window. It looks nice enough but also makes it harder to hold the book and read it. My fingers go right through the window as I try to read. It’s annoying. But it looked like the hardcover was going out of print so I thought I’d finally buy a copy for myself.

“Clyde Fans” is one of my favorite comics but it’s not for everyone. It’s a comic that’s about life, loss, introspection, nostalgia, time, and place. And that’s among other things. If you read comics for escapist adventure this one might not be for you. But if, like me, you like the contemplation of existence and whether life has a point or not then this one might be for you.

Seth is one of my favorite cartoonists. I like his drawing a lot and I like the way he tells a story. His drawing style is stripped down and simple but in the kind of way that takes a lot of work. I know he must spend a bit of time searching for just the right line because he often manages to find it. That doesn’t happen by accident. His compositions always work and he picks and choses his panel layouts in both straight-forward and imaginative ways. Since it took him 20 years to complete his drawing style changes over the years but not so much that it doesn’t fit together well.

“Clyde Fans” is the story of two brothers. Abe and Simon. At first it seems to only be about one brother as he dominated the story and storytelling in the first part of the book but then the second brother enters the picture and we learn about him. Clyde Fans is the name of the Canadian business that was started by the father of the brothers in which they both worked at most of their lives.

They story takes place mostly in three eras. It starts in 1997 (when Seth started working on the book) with Abe being retired and telling us about his life as a salesman and businessman running Clyde Fans. He has a realist’s view of life and can see where he failed and would have been better off if he made different choices but he knows it’s pointless to worry about such things now. He gives us his wisdom and tries to be helpful as he tells his story.

The second bit of the story takes place in 1957 during “The Sales Trip.” This is when the fan business is at its height and the younger brother, Simon, decides to throw himself 100% into the family business and make a go of it. Abe sets up the trip for Simon but he doesn’t have much faith in its success. The rest of this major part of the story is all about Simon. His heart was never really in the trip in the first place and we see and contemplate his struggles with him as he fails just like he and his brother expected him to. Yes, even though Simon insisted he should take this big sales trip to really learn the business he never thought he had any chance of succeeding.

The third part of the book takes place in 1966 and also features Simon living with their deteriorating mother in the apartments above the Clyde Fans store. The business is starting to go downhill on them and Simon has been a failure since the big sales trip. He never went out on one again and has been doing his best working in the office since then. He contemplates his life with his mother and why he never seems to want to leave to comfort of the building. It’s the only place that seems real to him.

In the fourth part of the book we go to 1975 and the final days of the business. It’s mostly about Abe, Simon, their relationship, and their relationship with their parents. Their father is mostly defined by his absence as he ran out on them after getting the business up and running back in the early 1950s. No one knows what ever happened to him. Abe must have been about 25 and Simon about 20 when their father took off. It was, of course, a defining moment in their lives. Both brothers spend a lot of time alone thinking about their lives rather than talking with each other.

In the last part of the book we get Abe trying to connect with a woman from his past but not succeeding at it and they he writes it off. He’s not even sure why he tried to. We then go back to the big sales trip with Simon and visit a dreamlike state that he got caught up in. Simon ends up contemplating the fates of a lot of the people in the town that he’s in and that gets him to think about his own fate. That’s kind of what this book is all about. The fate of two brothers. Was it fate or was it their choices?

Overall this book really resonates with me. It asks big questions about life and our place in it. It doesn’t have any answers for us but there are no answers anyway. Only decisions and choices. A lot of the story is about examining our choices and how they make us end up where we end up. Or how sometimes we don’t even have a choice. Circumstance might choose for us. If that’s the sort of thing that sounds interesting to you then give “Clyde Fans” a read.

My latest Big Ink Drawing has been four years in the making. Or it was made up of four years worth of drawings. Or drawings from four years. 2018, 2019, 2020, and now 2021. It starts with the fact that I make more working drawings than I turn into finished work. Sometimes I feel like drawing with a pencil and so I make small 6×9 inch drawings. Usually I start with one of my small Inkbook drawings and then draw over that but not always.

No matter how I start my working drawing I either end up making something further out of them or they go into my unfinished drawer of drawings. Well, the drawings are finished but the pieces made from them aren’t. When I’m stuck for ideas or don’t want to draw anything new I’ll dip into the drawer and see what I can find to work with. That’s what I did this week. But I didn’t find just one drawing to work with. I found three.

My last two Big Ink Drawings were my portrait type ones. No that they were portraits of anyone specific but they had the basic formula of a head and shoulders plus an abstract background. For this one I wanted an image that had a few things in it. Images other than a portrait. I do these type of Big Ink Drawings all the time but haven’t made one in a few weeks. I was due.

The first drawing I found was the big woman on the right. The drawing is named “Somber Story” and was drawn on 11/13/2019. I liked the drawing but it was a single figure with an abstract background. I knew that I wanted more than that for the image. I made a scan of the drawing and cut the woman out of the background. When cobbling together a few drawings I always do it digitally.

The second drawing I grabbed was called “Meeting Kid.” It’s the big face in the bottom left and was drawn on 5/12/2021. It was a face embedded behind a geometric abstract design. It’s a face but the face is almost abstract itself. It has visible eyes but the rest of the face is a design. There is no nose but there is a triangle where the nose should be. There is no mouth but there are two rectangular shapes where the lips should be. Plus there are lips on the creature’s shirt. It’s a very weird face. I also used the geometric background from this drawing.

After I digitally put those two drawings together I could see that I still wasn’t finished. I needed something else. I found a drawing from 9/13/2018 called “Bank Frog.” It’s the drawing you see in the upper left of a face that’s mostly a decorated eye and a thin smile. In the original drawing there is much more of a sweeping shoulder plus there is another piece of a face whispering in it’s ear. It’s also a little amusing that if you put all three 6×9 inch drawings side by side the biggest face is this one but it’s the smallest face on the Big Ink Drawing.

After digitally cutting out the faces and figures from all three drawings I digitally composed them into what you see in the finished Big Ink Drawing. It’s really easy to compose that way because I have control over everything’s size and shape. It’s so much better than the pre-digital days when I’d have to redraw stuff over and over at different sizes. When the final composition was done I printed it out on eight pieces of 8.5×11 inch paper, taped them together, and transferred the drawing to my big 22×30 inch paper. Then I was ready to go.

The initial part pf the ink drawing was pretty easy. It was all outline. I used a straight edge and marker for all the geometric lines and a brush and ink for all the face and figure lines. I used a brand new Simply Simmons #6 Round synthetic hair brush for most of the brush work.

For some of the curved lines I’ll use both marker and brush. First I’ll use a French curve and marker but then I’ll redraw them with a brush and ink. Those are usually the big thick curved ink lines. For some reason I find it easier to follow the curve with a brush over a dark black marker line rather than a pencil line. The answer is probably obvious in that the marker line is easier to see being thicker and darker but I don’t always do this. Just sometimes on a case by case basis. But I did it a lot here.

I often work from background to foreground and that’s what I did with this piece. By that I mean that I figured out and drew all the background textures and patterns before I figured out the same for the big face and the foreground figure. I mostly used a marker and straight edge to make the background patterns and a brush and ink to make the ones on the big bottom face. This helps to separate them but it’s not written in stone.

For the big figure I worked from top to bottom as I often do. I figured out her hair first. I put some lines in the longest swooping piece that make it blend into the background but then only some little half circles on the lines of the rest of her hair so they don’t blend into the background and have a different texture than all the other lines I the piece.

The rest of the main figure was remarkably hard to figure out. In the end I went with the old saying “When in doubt black it out.” I put large areas of black onto her shirt. These are the largest areas of black in the whole piece so they stand out nicely. They pull her out of the world of the rest of the drawing and into her own world.

The very last thing I did on this drawing are the lines in the woman’s shirt. I already had the line on her neck drawn but the ones on her sleeve and stomach came last. I needed just a little bit of pattern on her. Not so much that she’d blend into the background but just enough to push those areas back in space a bit. I think it worked okay.

Usually I name a drawing a random name and if I make a Big Ink Drawing out of it the name remains the same. But since this one was made from three drawings I combined them and named this one “Somber Frog Meeting.” I imagine there are a lot of sad frogs in that boardroom.

I faced two computer challenges this weekend. One software and one hardware. I triumphed with the software but failed with the hardware. First the failure. My printer.

I was working on some Magic the Gathering altered art cards on Saturday morning. That’s where I strip the artwork off a MTG card and print new artwork on it with my Canon ip8720 inkjet printer. Except that morning, as I was printing the card, I noticed some banding in the color. That’s when the color doesn’t print solid like it should but has horizontal lines in it. That ruins the prints.

There is usually a simple solution to this problem. The printer comes with utility software that is supposed to clean the printheads and solve the problem of banding. First I printed out a test page. That is also in the printer utility software. It prints out a page of color blocks so you can see if there is banding. There was. So I ran a head cleaning cycle and printed out a test page. The banding was still there. I ran the head cleaning a second time and the same thing happened.

Running head cleaning cycles uses up ink. There is even a second head cleaning cycle called deep head cleaning that warns you that it uses up even more ink. I ran this deep cleaning cycle and still my test sheet had the same banding on it. So it was off the the internet.

Though I haven’t had to face it like this before clogged printheads on an inkjet printer is a common problem. So there is lots of advice on the web. I use my printer often so it doesn’t usually clog. Inkjet clogs normally come from not using them and the ink dries in the printhead. There are few different methods for unclogging them that I found and decided to try the least obtrusive one first.

The first method involves folding a piece of paper towel until it was about and inch and a half wide by ten inches long and then saturating the towel with Windex. I then put this long narrow paper towel underneath where the print head moves back and forth. Next I physically move the printed head over the paper towel. The towel absorbs some ink and the fumes from the Windex are supposed to unclog the printhead. You are instructed to keep it like this for hours and hours and re-wet the towel with Windex every half an hour or so. That’s what I did. From 10 AM until 3 PM. Then I made a test print and still had the same banding. Ouch.

After that I tried a second method. First I had to remove all the ink cartridges and take the printhead out of the printer. This is easy to do so that was good. Then I put about a quarter inch of warm water into a container and set the bottom of the print head in the water. After that I squirted a little bit of water (with a bottle made for eyedrops) onto the top of the print heads. I let it soak for the rest of the day and squirted water onto the printheads ever half and hour. I did this until about 10 PM when I pulled it out of the water to let it dry overnight. Sunday morning I put it back in the printer and still had the banding.

I was ready to give up right then and there but decided to try that same method but instead of using water I’d use Windex. That had to work, right? So from 8AM until 1 PM Sunday I soaked the printheads in Windex and squirted them with Windex every half an hour. I set it out to dry at 1PM and waiting until 4 PM to put it back in the printer and give it a go. It still has the same banding.

My choices now were to buy a new printhead or but a printhead cleaning kit. A new print head coast from about $40 to $80 if I want to get a refurbished or knockoff one that comes from China or $100 if I want a genuine Canon one that is here in the USA. According to the reviews on Amazon the knock off ones don’t work consistently. The cleaning kits cost $10 and are syringes with tubes on the end that force cleaning solution into the printheads. I decided to buy one of those. I haven’t got it yet but if that doesn’t work I’m going to spend $100 on a new print head. The printer costs $350 by the way.

Update: I got the printer cleaning kit and it didn’t work.

Further Update: I bought an new printhead for $90 and now my printer works again.

The second computer based problem I was wrestling with was my comic book database. About 20 years ago I made a database of my comic book collection in an app called FileMaker Pro 7. I’ve been using it ever since to keep track of what comic books I have and where they are. The problem is that FileMaker is an expensive program ($400) and I never updated it. I don’t use it except for my comic book database so you can understand why. Since it’s so old only my oldest computer can use it. That’s a problem.

I decided to see what database programs were out there that I could use on my iPad. That would be more convent. Turns out there are a few out there the most popular being an app called CLZ. The problem is that it’s a subscription model app. That means I’d have to pay them $1.50 a month (or whatever they raise their price to) or I wouldn’t have access to my own database. Plus I’d have to re-enter my 12,000 comics into the new database. No thanks.

I decided to try and use Apple’s spreadsheet program that’s called Numbers. It’s the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Excel. I have Numbers on my iPad so I tried setting up a spreadsheet with my seven database categories. It was less elegant than FileMaker Pro but it worked. The big problem was that I did not want to re-enter 12,000 comic books. That’s a huge task.

I decided to see if I could export my FileMaker database. I checked the program and found there was indeed a function to export the FileMaker info to Excel. I tried this and it crashed Filemaker. All I would get was the spinning beachball of doom. I think Filemaker Pro 7 was too old and inefficient to work well all these years later.

Filemaker Pro is actually a big time database program. It has all sorts of business applications that lots of people depend on. I decided to check if there was a demo version of it that I could use to convert my file. Turns out they’re up to Filemake Pro 19. That’s a long way from 7. But there was a demo. I loaded it up to my laptop (which Filemaker Pro 7 won’t even run on) and tried to open my comic book database. It opened it. I then tried to convert it to Excel. It took mere seconds. I then opened it in Numbers. That worked.

I was ecstatic that I now had my whole comic book database in Numbers that I could run on computers and devices going forward. Especially since I managed to get this done on the Sunday night after I failed at getting my printer to run properly. I saved the document to my iCloud and opened it up on my iPad too. So now I’m good to go with my comic book catalogue. That’s right any good database manager will tell you it’s no longer a database but that’s okay with me. A catalogue is good enough.