Radiant Comics

I like sketchbooks and I like notebooks. I haven’t bought any new ones in a while but I still have a pile of unused ones ready to go. That’s because I bought them faster than I can use them. Not an unusual situation for a fan of such books. They’re far easier to buy than to fill up.

Just the other day I was looking at a pen carrying case that I bought recently. I’ve been keeping it on the side of my drawing table and filling it with the various black markers I’ve been buying. Since I got my last vaccine shot I’ve been contemplating my art go-bag. This marker case (or one like it) will go in my art go-bag. There is one section of the case for a small sketchbook. I was about to go online and look for a sketchbook to fit it when it struck me that I should look on my shelf first. Sure enough I had one to fit it perfectly.

My most used sketchbook is my inkbook. A 5.5×8.5 inch wire bound Strathmore sketchbook. It has a hundred pages and I fill up one book a year with small ink drawings. I’m on book 22 so I always know I’m going to need one and fill one up every year. Every other sketchbook is catch as catch can. Maybe it’ll fill up with something this year or maybe it’ll hang around for a decade. Who knows?

Last year I filled up a fifty page 5×8 inch sketchbook that I got from a friend’s Bar Mitzvah with new Message Tee drawings. That one only took a month or two to fill up because I used it for that specific project that I had to get done in a timely manner. I might fill another this year that way too. We’ll see.

What brings the topic of notebooks and sketchbooks to mind today is me trying to figure out some direction for myself. At times I have no idea what art or art project I want to work on next. Not an uncommon feeling for any creative. I’ve been trying for the last few days to remedy that and today I turned to my bullet point journal for help.

I only heard about a bullet point journal at the end of 2019. The idea is that you write things down in it in the form of bullet points. Write down thoughts, ideas, random words, whatever you’ve got going on, or want to get done. Then at the end of the month you look back at the bullet points and pull out the best ones to take action on. It sounded good to me and I wanted a new little notebook anyway. So I got one.

It turns out that I don’t really need a bullet point journal because I’m good at getting things done. I was before I had the journal and I still am. But I still like it. I’ve been using the little notebook for a year and four months but I have only filled up 22 pages. And they’re 3×5 inch pages. Yet, I still like writing the occasional bullet point in it. Do you know what today’s bullet point was? “I need a plan.” It’s not an especially helpful bullet point but sometimes it’s good to write the obvious down.

After that I started to work in my “Crazy Idea Art Project” sketchbook. It’s not a sketchbook that’s about crazy idea art projects. The sketchbook itself is the crazy idea art project. Whenever I can’t get anything going I work in this book. I write in it, glue photos in it, maybe draw on the photos, and mix drawing in with the writing. It’s a sketchbook that looks good. It looks like a sketchbook from a movie that’s filled with crazy ideas. Really it’s filled with fragments of ideas when I can’t think of a plan. It’s chaos disguised as order.

As I wrote before I’m generally good at figuring out what I want to do creatively and as a consequence I don’t work in my crazy idea book a whole lot. It’s a 6×9 inch spiral bound sketchbook and I’ve filled up sixty pages in it. Thirty pages front and back. That’s about a third of the book. I date the pages and the earliest date is 5/23/2011. It’s 4/25/2021 as I write this so my crazy idea book is about to hit its tenth birthday. It might be my longest lived sketchbook that I still draw in. Abandoned ones don’t count.

All my sketchbooks are small these days. They have been for the last 20 years. In my school days in the mid 1980s and all through the 1990s I used 8.5×11 inch hardbound sketchbooks. I used to carry one with me all the time and the hardcover was nice for keeping it in good shape. I’d have it with me and use it as my friends and I hung out in dive bars in NYC. That’s tough on a sketchbook.

Back in those 1990s days I still hadn’t found my way, that I use now, to draw in sketchbooks so I didn’t fill them up very fast. That and I made mostly mediocre drawings in them. It was in the year 2000 that I discovered I liked spiral bound sketchbooks best and at the same time started doing spontaneous ink drawings. That’s how my first inkbook was born. It changed the way I work.

Since I dedicated that first 5.5×8.5 spiral bound sketchbook to be an inkbook I slowly started using individual sketchbooks for individual projects. That works best for me. When I was drawing my Oracle Deck I had a small sketchbook in which I drew pencil drawings for all the cards. That’s the only place they were drawn. At least the first draft of them. Then I scanned in the drawings and redrew them bigger and more finished. But that book is filled with only Oracle Deck pencil drawings.

I have another sketchbook filled with ink drawings but not ink drawings like the ones in my inkbook. Instead of being done with a marker they’re done with a brush and ink. Lots of ink. The pages are all warped in this book. Though I don’t think I’ve worked in that book for a while.

I have another book that I started that has only super hero faces in it. I needed to draw some faces for some sketch covers that I was drawing so I decided to dedicate a new sketchbook to it. That one only has about ten faces in it since I got bored of the whole project. That’s the way life is sometimes. What seems like a good idea turns out not to be. Then you need another new good idea. That’s what I need right now.

One of the ways I refer to making my art is “Walking the Dreamworld.” I really like images. I like coming up with images that no one has seen before. One of the ways I do that is to use a Surrealist automatic drawing method. That’s where you scribble on paper and then make a drawing out of it. It’s like finding faces in clouds. The Surrealists were big into dreams and dream like images and this is how they mined their subconscious minds for new things.

I’ve also heard Canadian Psychology Professor Jordan Peterson talk about how the roll of the artist in society is to go to places that other people don’t and bring back art from those places. He called it walking the edges of the dreamworld to let the rest of us know what’s out there. That resonated with me. I certainly like to walk the edges of the Dreamworld.

That brings me to literal dreams. I’m actually not very into my literal dreams. That’s probably because I don’t remember many of them. I’m told that’s because a person has to wake up during the dream cycle in order to remember them. Otherwise you dream, go back to a non-dreaming sleep, and then wake up with no memory of having dreamt. That’s usually me.

Listening to stories of other people’s dreams is often very boring. That’s because dreams can be long and not have a structured plot to them. We like our stories to be well told. Most dreams don’t fit that category so when some one tells us about them it gets dull quickly. That is unless we can find some meaning in the dream. That’s not always easy but the search for meaning is also what “Walking the Dreamworld” is about.

I had a dream recently about a large sculpture falling over in the wind and breaking my front studio window. I bet that dream was about my lack of preparedness. The broken window upset me and I wondered why I didn’t secure the sculpture before the storm came. By the way, I’m not a sculptor and don’t have any big sculptures that can topple and break a window. But I still quickly found the meaning of that dream.

The type of dreams that people do like to talk about are the ones we all share. Dreams of flying and such. You can find a list of archetypical dreams in any psychology text book. I know there was one in my Psychology 101 textbook back in 1984. That’s how I found out that dreaming that your teeth are crumbling is a common dream despite me never having even heard of that one before. Needless to say after finding out about it I had that dream. But I haven’t really had it since so that’s okay.

One archetypical dream that isn’t in the textbooks but I have had and have talked to other people who have the same dream is what I call “The Collector’s Dream.” It’s the same for anything anyone collects but for me it’s comic books. I’m at a garage sale or some obscure store and I find a treasure trove of comic books. As I flip through them I get excited because they’re all great issues and dirt cheap. Then something happens. They disappear. Sometimes it’s through a contrivance of the dream plot and sometimes they they disappear in my hands but either way they’re gone leaving disappointment in their wake. That’s the “Collector’s Dream.” You stumble upon the ultimate collection but can’t have it.

In the last 15 years or so I started having a recurring dream. I don’t know if it’s one other people have or not but it seems it could be. It’s about not being able to find my way home. These dreams almost always take place in New York City. That makes sense because, over the years, NYC is where I’ve mostly found myself making my way home from. I find my way to Port Authority, Penn Station, or Grand Central Terminal and take a bus or train home.

In the recurring dream I’m either walking or taking a subway to one of those three places but I never make it. I get all turned around on the streets or subway stations and everything turns into a maze as they do in dreams. It’s very frustrating but eventually it gets so unreal that I realize I’m in a dream and wake up. Not a fun dream but I wouldn’t call it a nightmare. Maybe an anxiety dream.

I’m sure not being able to find my way home has some universal meaning but I’ve never been able to find any pattern in why I dream this dream. It seems random to me and randomness makes meaning harder to come by.

I did have a dream last night that seems to have an easy meaning. I dreamt I was meeting friends to go to an art show in NYC. I met one friend at the gallery and then she had to pop out for a second. She never came back and none of my other friends ever showed up. I spent the whole dream awkwardly killing time at this art show with strangers.

That one is obviously a Covid dream. It’s about the anxiety of things getting back to normal post-Covid but never really getting back to normal. Will anyone be there after things get back to normal? That’s what the dream was dealing with.

With my last two Big Ink drawings I was particularly trying to get back to the edges of the Dreamworld. I’ve been getting one Big Ink drawing done a week and for a few weeks they were coming out like portraits. There was a big face and a background of patterns. I find my Big Ink drawings to be more dreamlike when they have more of a background space in them. A weird landscape. So for the last two I moved back to my imagery of multiple figures with hints of buildings and landscapes in them. That puts the “World” in Dreamworld.

I may not remember my dreams much and they may sometimes be filled with anxiety but I sure like walking the edges of the Dreamworld in making my art. It’s a good place to be.

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.