Radiant Comics

Lately I’ve been watching the TV show “Friends”. It’s a show that I watched every week when it was on first run TV but I never watched it in syndication or in repeats. About five years ago I did run the whole series as I worked. I hesitate to say I “watched” it then because I really just listened to it as I was working. It didn’t get my whole attention but I enjoyed it as I remember.

So I’ve only seen the episodes twice at most and the last time was half a decade ago. That makes is fairly fresh to me as opposed to my favorite shows that I’ve seen many times. “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” comes to mind as a favorite whose episodes I have watched at least three times a piece already. “Austin Stories” is a short lived series with only twelve episodes but I’ve seen those twelve at least a half dozen times since the show ran in 1997. I’ve seen all the episodes of “Lovejoy” a few times too. And though I haven’t watched it in years I used to watch “Seinfeld” in syndication all the time. “Friends” never qualified as a favorite by those standards but I liked it.

I was interested to see how “Friends” held up after all this time. I just finished watching the third season so this isn’t an analysis of the whole series but the show was on my mind tonight so I thought I’d write something down. What made it get on my mind was the fact that I thought the show had finally gotten good in the middle of season three.

I didn’t think the first two seasons of “Friends” were terrible or anything but I would describe them as too “Sit-commy” for my taste. I could see a lot of the jokes coming from a mile away. Not all of them, like on many sitcoms I don’t like, but probably about a third of the jokes were hammy sitcom jokes. There were good ones but plenty of cringe worthy jokes too.

So what changed? I mean besides the writers and actors doing a better job because they have some experience with the characters under their belts? That seems fairly obvious and is the overall driver of quality but I’m referring to a specific creative difference. I think that difference is the character of Ross (David Schwimmer) changing and getting wackier.

For the first two seasons Ross was the character who was level headed and couldn’t do much wrong. He wasn’t the funny one (Chandler), he wasn’t the dumb one (Joey), he wasn’t the spoiled one (Rachel), he wasn’t the neurotic one (Monica), and he wasn’t the flakey one (Phoebe). He was the boring one who things happened to. His wife turning out to be gay and having an unplanned child with her. Situations happened to him. He was his situation.

With the middle of season three Ross’ character starts to change. He starts to do wacky and unpredictable things. I remember at the end of the series that some people were complaining that Ross was too wacky and no longer realistic but I also remember him becoming my favorite character after being my least favorite one. I like wacky. Of course not having seen the series in ages I had forgotten that Ross’ character gets funnier as time passes.

Before seeing Ross’ change I was contemplating not watching the rest of the seasons. I kept watching only because I had nothing else I wanted to watch that would allow me to zone out and relax (I’m really better at doing stuff than relaxing) for twenty minutes or so (my attention span for TV is short) every now and again. But now that the show has stopped being too sit-commy for me I’m going to keep watching. I’m even a little excited to see the upcoming seasons now that I remember why I liked the show. It might not be a favorite but it’s a good laugh.

I am not a person who’s very motivated by nostalgia. I’m subject to it, like anyone else, but it’s not something I seek to embrace. I can even be a little wary of it because if I have a nice childhood memory of some book, TV show, movie, or comic book then I don’t want to ruin it. Sometimes seeing something through adult eyes can spoil a childhood memory of it. It’s not any kind of grand fear it’s just that sometimes I say to myself, “I’m not sure if that will hold up”.

For some people every entertainment from their childhood holds up. These are the people who embrace nostalgia. One look at a favorite toy and they are right back there. Ten years old, not a care in the world, and having a grand old time. It even makes me a little envious at times. They sure look like they’re having fun with this whole nostalgia thing.

At least that beats the depressive nostalgics. I don’t think I know any people like that anymore. They are people who only seem to enjoy themselves when reminiscing about something. The present and future hold no joy for them but the past does. Maybe I’m not old enough yet to know a lot of people like that. That type of feeling could arrive with a more advanced age.

I did just watch a movie called “Kicking and Screaming” (not the Will Ferrell kids’ soccer team one of the same name except with an ampersand) that was very much about nostalgia. At least for one of the characters. The movie was about a group of guys who were graduating from college and had no idea what they were supposed to do next. It’s one of those navel gazing, talkative movies that is about conversation and character interaction rather than plot or action. I have a soft spot for such films. As long as they’re good.

Anyway, one of the characters was highly into nostalgia. It was the main thing that kept him going but it also paralyzed him. He was nostalgic for conversations he had yesterday and was getting prepared to be nostalgic for conversations he was speaking in at the moment. It was tough for him to get anything done but the crossword puzzle. I found him an odd character but also oddly familiar.

I bring up the subject of nostalgia because of one book I just bought. “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century the Complete Newspaper Sundays: Volume One 1930-1933”. First off, we are living in a Golden Age of comic strip collections. In the last five years or so (I’ll actually start the age with Fantagraphics’ 2004 “Complete Peanuts” book) a lot of classic, not so classic, and nearly forgotten but good comic strips from the last hundred years have been published in nice hard bound editions. I’ve been able to see and own a lot of comic strips that I have only been able to read about for most of my life. Buck Rogers being one of them.

This is the very first Buck Rogers book I have ever owned or read. As famous as it is I’ve never read it before. The strip did end the year I turned one so it’s easy to see why I never read it. Before now, and this Golden Age that I mention, old comic strip reprints were mainly the realm of hard core comic strip fans. The books were few and far between and not as mass market as they are today. It was tough to even get word they existed.

Even today these books are hardly in the mainstream publics’ eye but the internet puts them on the radar of most comic book and comic strip fans who are out there. “Buck Rogers” was one that I wasn’t even planning on buying until I got to flip through it at my local comic shop. I was captivated but the sheer amount of imagination in the drawing. It’s not one of the great illustrative strips but it is full of life.

“How does this all tie in with nostalgia?”, you ask. That ties in to another question. What kind of nostalgia is it that makes you nostalgic for a time and place you were never at? Because that’s what this book was doing to me. The intro describes ten year old kids, in the days before TV and the internet, delighting in spreading out the Sunday funnies on the floor and reading this week’s episode.

That’s a description I have read before so it was nothing new to me but in reading these strips I was feeling that I was a ten year old in the 1930’s reading these. I was not only transported to the wonderful future world of the 25th Century but also to the past world of the 20th Century. And the trip to the past, a past not my own, was a bit nostalgic.

Thus I began my contemplation of nostalgia. And if there is a word for being nostalgic for a time you never knew. I bet if there is one it’s in French. They have great phrases for all sorts of ideas like that. Look up “L’esprit de l’escalier”. It’s one of my favorites.

Today’s mundane tale is about a trip to the local mall. It usually doesn’t get more dull than that. But first we start with the fact that I have a new four gig compact flash card. I’ve always liked photographing street scenes in NYC and last year I finally got into using the “Motor drive” function on my camera. That means instead of taking one picture of a scene I’m taking two or three in rapid succession. This, of course, fills up a memory card two or three times faster.

In preparation for such a shoot I went out to the mall to see if I could get a compact flash card locally and pay cash for it. I like to use cash. It helps me budget a little easier. As expected they were way too expensive at the mall. I dropped around twelve bucks on it online and they were going for about thirty at the mall in a couple of different stores. That’s a significant difference.

Another thing I also noticed was that Best Buy had the prices jacked up on some camera batteries. Camera batteries tend to be expensive as small form factor digital cameras use proprietary batteries but I have noticed that in the last five years or so battery prices have dropped from around fifty to around thirty dollars a piece. I saw a few camera batteries in Best Buy at around fifty bucks. I’m not sure why as I just glanced at them and maybe those ones are the same price online but it made me suspicious. The cameras all seemed to be priced competitively so I could be mistaken about the battery prices being high. Well, fifty bucks for a battery is too high no matter what.

I rarely go to the mall these days. First off it’s one of those giant malls, the Palisades Center in Nyack NY, that’s it’s own small town. It’s tough to get in and get out of it quickly. Mostly because of the miles of ring roads and huge parking lot. I tend to go at off peak times but still it’s a chore to drive around the place. Plus a lot people drive like maniacs in a parking lot. It’s like there are no rules anymore and it’s Thunderdome. Not an environment in which I find it pleasant to drive.

It’s also weird that I can’t really tell you what the Palisades Center looks like from the outside. It’s huge and there is no place to back up to and look at the mall as an architectural whole. I have no mental picture of it as a building. Just pieces of a building. Somewhere in the mall they have a big display that features an illustration of the whole building. The first time I saw the illustration I said to myself, “Ah ha, that’s what the place looks like”. I’ve lost track of where that illustration is now. Like I said it’s a big place. It’s just as well anyway because there is no real architecture to speak of. The mall is a collection of boxes strung together.

There is not much I want at a mall. Most of the stuff I tend to be into in life is fairly obscure, not very mainstream, and won’t be found at a mall. I used to go to the video games store all the time at the older Nanuet Mall but the store closed and I’ve grown less interested in gaming. I also used to go to the record store but they don’t really exist anymore. I stopped going in the mid 90’s anyway when CD’s started going for twenty bucks a piece. A bit too expensive for me. Of course it ended up that the record companies were price fixing (at least they settled the suit while admitting no wrongdoing). I used to hit the book store too but Amazon replaced that. I get most of my books at the comic shop anyway.

I ended up going to the mall just to get out of the house for a bit. The compact flash card was just an excuse. Don’t get me wrong, I would have bought it there if it were cheap enough but I knew odds were that it wouldn’t be. I stumbled around for about half an hour looking at a bunch of stuff I had no interest in with no money to buy before I got bored with it all and left. Even when I’m just looking to get out of the house the mall isn’t much of a place to go.

There was almost a little bit too much excitement on the trip home. As I was driving on the Palisades parkway and almost hit a small deer. It was about 6:30 PM and there was a lot of traffic on the road. I was heading north and was about at Exit 10. Up ahead, on the side of the road, in the tall grass, I saw a small deer and he looked like he wanted to cross the highway. He dashed out onto the road and then towards me. I had to brake from about 60 mph down to about 30 mph. I just missed him as he cut across in front of me and made it to the other side.

It was only then that I noticed the cars behind me. There was no accident as the car right behind me had room to brake but the car behind him had to swerve to the right into the merge lane. At least I think he did. It was only then that I realized that I could have been hit from behind and was glad I wasn’t. I like to drive with many car lengths in front of me but not everyone does and it was a crowded road that evening.

So that’s a trip to the local shopping mall. Hardly exciting but what the heck. Most of life isn’t.

A teacher of mine once said that all artists have a scale. That means that some artists are comfortable making large works, some comfortable making small works, and some at whatever size in between. I’ve generally agreed with that statement. I tend to be more comfortable working larger than smaller. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t start out small. I do. I make small sketches or drawings that are referred to as thumbnails in artist lingo. I guess they are supposed to be small like the nail on your thumb.

Thumbnail sketches usually aren’t much to look at. They are just about throwing ideas down on paper quickly to give the artist and idea if he is going in the right direction. Some artist’s thumbnail drawings can be pretty interesting to look at. Usually that would be an artist who’s scale is small. Someone who is used to, and likes to, work small is naturally going to be able to make prettier small drawings. Even if that drawing is just a thumbnail.

As I was going to bed the other night an idea popped into my head. This doesn’t happen too often and when it does I usually write it down because ideas can slip away in the night without me even knowing it. Many a time I’ve been lazy and thought to myself that there was no reason to write anything down. I’ll do that in the morning. When morning comes I have no memory of what the idea was. Just the memory of having an idea. That can be frustrating.

For some reason I didn’t write this idea down. Maybe because it wasn’t really even an idea. It was just an image in my head. The image of old 1950’s science fiction comic book covers that take place in the loneliness of deep space with that cold, harsh, no atmosphere look that photos of the men on the moon have. I don’t remember any specific comic book cover like that existing but I wanted to make one. I’ve made a series of comic book covers to comics that never existed and this would add to that series.

A couple of days later, with that vision of cold space still in my head, I started doing some thumbnails of covers. Little drawings. Only about two by three inches. Usually such small drawings of mine are not much to look at but these ones were coming out nice. Not just as thumbnails but actually as interesting little drawings. That’s not usual for me so it was a bit of a surprise. But now I have the task of making an interesting little drawing into an interesting big one. Not always an easy task.

A lot of time a small quick drawing has more life to it than a finished piece. The process of working on a piece of art can drain what made it interesting out of it. That is something artists everywhere have struggled with. You can work on a piece and then at some point ask yourself what happened. When you look back at the sketch you can see the life in it that interested you but in the drawing it’s gone. Something got squashed and it isn’t easy to figure out what.

“So why not just stick with the sketch you like so much and call that your art”, you ask? Because usually there is a ton of things wrong with the sketch but I’m not concerned with them because I plan on fixing them in the drawing. It’s that life, that action, that raw idea that I want. Not the quickly drawn and not thought out bad renderings of faces, hands, and bodies.

I was thinking of all of this as I looked at the thumbnail drawings I made. I liked them. But I had no idea how to make them into finished covers that I would like. It was a different type of drawing than I usually do. As I looked at them I could see that I was using more shape than line. That was unusual for me and hard to translate up because it’s easy to use shape when the drawing is small but harder as the drawing gets bigger. That just has to do with the scale of the pencil or pen I’m using. I can make a shape that takes up a good portion on the thumbnail with a couple of strokes but when the drawing is full size that same pen mark becomes tiny.

I analyzed the drawing a bit more and came up with something that helped me. Usually my drawing is all about “Finding the line”. Discovering the shape of things and defining that shape with the correct line. These little drawings had a lot of “Not finding the line” in them. Sometimes I defined the shape distinctly and sometimes I didn’t. That “Didn’t” part, when in the correct amount, is what added the eerie life to the little drawings.

So now I have to try and duplicate that on a larger scale. I already know that, at any time, I can find the line but now I have to see if I can not find the line too. I’m not really sure if I can do it but I’ll let you know.

Sometimes it’s the little things about life, that will soon be forgotten because of their trivial nature, that hold my interest the most. That’s what’s on my mind tonight. A couple of things of no consequence in this big old world of ours but things that, none the less, I find interesting even if in a fleeting fashion. The first starts like this.

I have a bunch of battery chargers that I use. Mainly it’s three of them though. A single charger for all my double A and triple A batteries, a charger for my pocket sized camera, and a charger for my larger camera. The camera ones are a pain to store because each is basically a small plastic box (4″x3″x2″ or so) with a three foot electrical cord attached to it. The cord is heavier than the box so if I set the box on a shelf the weight of the cord will drag it off. Not even, “Can drag it off” but, “Will drag it off”. It’s inevitable. Plus all the cords get tangled up.

All that is not quite my small observational point. My point is actually dust. When using a charger I plug it into an out of the way electric outlet. It has to be an out of the way on or it would probably already be in use. The one I happen to use also has my alarm clock plugged into it. Since the alarm clock never needs to be unplugged and the battery chargers always need to be unplugged I’m always a little nervous about unplugging the wrong one. One simple observation keeps me from doing just that. The alarm clock plug has a coating of dust on it. And I keep it on there. Clean one: unplug. Dusty one: don’t unplug. How is that for a system?

My second little observation this evening is also about my alarm clock. It is one of those things that got to be real old without me noticing it. It is about twenty six years old now. I bought it when I went off to college. I already had a similar alarm clock that I left at home. It’s your basic red LED alarm clock from the early Eighties. It shows me the time, beeps when I want it too, and has a snooze button that I never use. That’s all it does. No radio. No weather station. No ambient noise generator. All it does is wake me up. I’m one of those people who is usually up before the alarm but it wakes me up when I’m not.

I’ve always wanted to replace my alarm clock. Everyone I know seems to have a fancier one. I have this strange alarm clock envy because other people seem to put a lot more thought into their alarm clocks than I do. It’s like I’m missing out on something. But, of course, I’m not. Every time I think about replacing my alarm clock I come to the same conclusion. I don’t want to. I want my alarm clock to do one thing. Wake me up at the appointed time. I want to turn it on and turn it off. That’s it. I don’t want to fiddle with it.

When a person’s alarm clock fails them it usually comes down to user error. A fancy alarm clock with all sorts of radios and such comes with all sorts of switches. Toggle the wrong one and you’re sleeping in that morning. “My alarm somehow got switched off”, is a normal excuse. Like alarms switch themselves off. If an alarm clock has too many uses it easy to throw the wrong switch. On. Off. That’s all I need.

“My alarm broke”, is the other excuse I’ve heard many times. How the heck to you break an alarm clock? Mine has been going fine for twenty six years. It sits there on the shelf all day doing nothing so it can’t break. With a fancy radio/alarm clock a person is always messing with it. Music on. Music off. Plenty of opportunity for something to break. I’ve had lots of music players break in the time that I’ve had one alarm clock. Don’t mix the two machines. It’s like mixing a photocopier with a car. It just makes the car less reliable.

Dust as a marker and alarm clocks. Two mundane things that don’t get much examination in this world. But sometimes I like to write about the mundane. It’s the only way it might get remembered. Or not. Even I don’t remember a lot of the stuff I’ve written about on this blog over the years. But that is the purpose of writing things down. So I don’t have to remember everything.