Radiant Comics

I love the medium of comics. Just like other people love film, TV, music, photography, or whatever. And just like those other means of expression there are sometimes moments so absurd that they are highly entertaining. Some people are so entertained by bad movies that they call friends over to watch them and laugh all the way through. These bad movies and bad comics are not made on purpose. They’re just made because humans are flawed and have to make decisions while tired, hungry, and underpaid. Sometimes the best one can do is not very good. But the job has to be done. This leads us to giggles.

My latest ha-ha’s came as I was reading a reprint collection of some old comics. Specifically: Essential Super-Villain Team-Up Volume 1. This is large collection of stories from the 1970’s starring Dr.Doom. It was a different type of series from your usual super-hero comic because it starred super-villains rather than the heroes. Each month Dr. Doom would feud with some other villain as each tried to take over the world. Sometimes Doom would try to make an ally out of one of the other villains but there would always be a betrayal. Sometimes there were two or three betrayals a month! This was no “anti-hero” clap trap; these guys were villains! There is some good stuff in the volume especially Astonishing Tales 1-4 which were drawn by Wally Wood. But this was the 1970’s so there is plenty of bad stuff in this volume too.

I came across this gem in Super-Villain Team-Up 1. The rocket fish. You see, Dr. Doom was trying to convince Submariner to be his ally. Or was it the other way around? Every issue they switched of on convincing or betraying each other so it is hard to keep track. Anyway, Subby flew off to his ocean home swearing to not be allied with Doom but Doom wanted to keep track of him anyway. So what does Dr. Doom do? He sends out his flying underwater spy the rocket fish.

What intrigues me the most about the rocket fish if the fact that when it gets over water the rocket drops off and it looks like a normal fish. Since Doom is a master of robotics I have to ask why he didn’t build little rockets right into the fish. Was it beyond his genius? Are these the limits of the bad doctor’s intelect? Maybe he thought Subby’s eagle eyes would be able to spot little built in rockets and give his spy away. Yet Doom didn’t worry that Submariner would notice a rocket fish flying after him. And rockets aren’t quiet.

What made Dr. Doom create his rocket fish as a two stage rocket fish? I would have created a rocket fish that didn’t have to jettison it’s rocket. For a device that was at the ready to track the Submariner back to his ocean home it really wasn’t that well thought out. I think Doom dropped the ball on this one. I think he could have come up with a much more elegant solution to his spying problem. Yes, when I run into moments this absurd as I read comics these are the goofy things that run through my head.

I thought I was done with the rocket fish after it appeared on page six of SVTU 1 and not again in the issue. It was obviously just a silly throw away plot devise so Doom could know where Subby went. Then I read SVTU 2. This is the sweet creamy icing on the cake because the rocket fish had one last plot point left in him. Let the madness continue.

The plot point the rocket fish now had to illuminate depended on the mechanical fish looking as artificial as possible! No more “looks just like a fish” rocket fish.

A bunch of underseas bad guys captured Subby and dragged him onto an island that is acting as their headquarters. As they do this Tiger Shark notices a metal floating fish. Yes, now not only does the rocket fish look robotic but it is actually floating on the surface of the water like a real dead fish. Tiger Shark picks it up and looks at it giving Dr. Doom a good idea that he has to go rescue Submariner now. The rocket fish has fulfilled it’s role as a plot device and goes to its watery grave; crushed in Tiger Shark’s hand. So what that it is a completely different rocket fish than we saw last issue. Maybe it swam so fast that its skin fell off! Maybe a shark bit it! Ahhh.. it doesn’t matter.

Those are mere details. Unimportant details in the grand scheme of bad storytelling. Until next time, keep giggling.

Some things can take a long time. A lot longer than I think. Well, not really but sometimes there is a difference between thinking that something will take a long time and the time it takes to do said thing. If that didn’t make any sense to you don’t worry it’s just that sometimes words fail me. It also might be that I’ve been working on a drawing for two days and I’m a little punchy. That drawing is the thing that’s taking a long time.

I am a great fan of simplicity in drawing. There is an elegance to it that is not easy to capture. That great difficulty of simplicity is that there is nowhere to hide. In describing something with as few lines as possible those lines have to be dead on correct or the mistake is hanging out there for all to see. The drawback to simplicity is that fewer people like it than complexity. You’ll be less loved if you’re simple. Well, maybe just your drawings.

People like to see hard work in their art. The most common insult that a person hurls at a piece of art is, “Well, I could have done that”. This insult, whether true or not, is usually aimed at a piece in which there is little hard work evident. The insult is really accusing the artist of laziness. You won’t hear that insult thrown at a work that appears to posses complexity. Even if the viewer really could have “done that” he appreciates the work involved in doing it.

The irony of this complexity versus simplicity thing is that there is often more work involved in simplicity than complexity. It is just hidden from view. There can also be bad art made in the realm of simplicity in which little work was done. So simplicity and complexity are really choices that have no direct relation to quality. It’s just that people appreciate bad complex work more than bad simple work. Paint a thousand angels on a canvas and even if the painting is not very good people will appreciate it more than just one badly painted angel.

This is all just preface to say that I have been working on a complex drawing. To me complexity is just simplicity multiplied. That’s not quite true because there are some differences. Working on a simple drawing involves constant refining and manipulating little details over and over until the final drawing looks effortless. Working on a complex drawing requires less attention to any single detail and more attention to how they hold up together. No single mark demands more importance than any other single mark. There is no making it look effortless in complexity. As a matter of fact the more effortful you make it look the better. That’s what complexity is about; making it it look hard.

I think I work on complex drawings and paintings when I want to be loved and simple ones when I’m a little more anti-social. Of course that all takes place inside my head and has little bearing on the outside world since the outside world exclusively showers me with indifference.

And now back to how long things take. The odd thing is that it’s easier to predict how long a complex piece will take. I figured the drawing I’ve been working on would take two days. Of course the actual two days are always longer that the theoretical two days but that’s reality for you. And an explanation for my first paragraph.

A simple piece can go very quickly or not. It can take hours or days. Sometimes a drawing can sit around for ages until I pick it up again and finish it. The drawing was just impossible to finish before then.

Strangely enough both simple and complex start out the same. The difference is a complex piece you just keep adding to until it is done while a simple piece you have to take away from it until it is done. Working by addition is easier than subtraction because if you take away too much you’ll have nothing left. Having nothing left is very bad.

I am glad for the chance to finish something. Never finishing anything as I am learning Flash has been killing me. And there is another little glimpse into being me.

Recently I’ve been taking some time to try to learn the web animation program called Flash. As with a lot of these big graphics programs it’s been slow going. The problem is that everything is so wide open that I’m having trouble focusing. That and I was never a fan of making animation. Minor detail.

Flash is more than an animation program because it allows for viewer interaction. A person can start and stop things, trigger new things to happen, and move things around. That’s all very interesting from an artist’s point of view. It’s the part I like. But it’s all new and there are very few guide lines on the subject. There are books and websites devoted to teaching and sharing how to do things in Flash but those are mostly for commercial type work; little animations and web banners. Those are actually not too difficult to do. Creating art in Flash is a whole different thing.

There are certain things that are easy in Flash. Moving things around. By things I mean static drawings sweeping up, down, or side to side on your screen. I call it moving things around and not animation because usually animation is a series of many drawings all slightly different to give the illusion of a character being real and raising his arms or running or some such. Taking a single drawing and moving it around is just, well, moving it around.

Animation is a lot of work. Work that I generally find boring and certainly don’t want to do in my free time. That is one of the problems I’m having in learning Flash. It lends itself to traditional animation which I’m not fond of doing. But it can do a lot of different things too. But thinking outside of tradition isn’t easy. Especially while a novice in the tradition. I get ideas but I can’t chase them down and make them work just yet.

I have stacks of drawings and paintings I can adapt for use in learning this program. But I always want to create new stuff. This is a problem too. It takes a lot of work to create images and characters to work with to learn the program. Creating my own images eats into the total length of time I have to learn Flash but the bouncing ball that they use in the books just isn’t enough for me.

I also prefer learning in a non-linear way. I can’t help but skip around the book. Learning in a straight line is the usual process. Crawl then walk then run. Addition then subtraction then multiplication then division. It makes sense. But for something that involves the creative process linear isn’t always best. Some people respond better when they have sixty four colors to choose from. Some prefer to start with eight. Flash mixes stuff best learned linearly i.e. how to move things around, sync them with sound, and make them interactive, with the creative i.e. what the hell am I going to actually make with this program? So I end up learning a few things at a time and then thinking about what I can do with them. This leads to having to create or adapt more art work which leads to new ideas and having to figure out how to implement these ideas in Flash. It’s very easy to loose focus. I’m usually a focused guy and I find this loss of focus very frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, I mentioned stacks of drawings and paintings. They are the result of this artistic life I lead. Art hasn’t brought me fame, money, women, or power but I do make things. There is some reward in that. To start something and have a finished piece at the end. Good, bad or indifferent it is something I made. I’ve been working in Flash for a couple of weeks now and nothing is really finished. That is frustrating. It’s expected, I knew this would take a while, but it’s frustrating none the less. I like making things a lot more than leaving them unfinished. Having a few unfinished things around is normal but not too many or despair of ever finishing another piece sets in.

One last thing that bugs me about learning Flash is the constant “think small” attitude. All web programs are concerned with keeping file size to a minimum so that things can be downloaded easier. It is a genuine concern and can’t be ignored but I think so much is made of it that creativity can be hampered. As I’m trying to figure out how to do something I don’t need to be distracted by reading about what I can’t do. My new motto is, “You have to think big before you think small”. A least that’s what’s been keeping me going. Hmmm… maybe I’ll go and paint for a bit.

And there is another little glimpse into what makes me me.

I have a serious need to amuse myself this evening. That’s because no one else will. Where is my court jester? Sure I’d have to put up with the whole “he’s the only one who can mock the king” bit but as long as that comes with some comical tumbling it would be worth it. Besides I’m not a king so people can mock me anyway. I get the mocking without the tumbling. What kind of crazy world is this?

I should go to the supermarket because you know what never fails to amuse me? Cage free eggs. I always pay extra to get the cage free eggs because what is funnier than a bunch of chickens running around. Just the thought makes me giggle. Heh, heh , heh. Only a bunch of cage free monkeys would be more amusing.

I had some chili tonight for super. Not my homemade chili but some stuff from a can. More specifically a box. Yes, this store bought chili comes in a vacuum packed box and is the only descent store bought chili out there. But anyway it wasn’t the chili that amused me it was the rice. I made some rice by boiling it in a bottle of beer. Plus some water. After all I needed the proper amount of liquid. I don’t even drink beer which makes it all the more amusing. I just wanted to try something new with boring old rice. It was okay. I really couldn’t taste the beer once the rice was in the chili but on its own the rice made me smile.

My Nintendo DS and Yu-Gi-Oh: Nightmare Troubadour have been amusing me lately. I’m a sucker for CCGs (Collectable Card Games) and played Magic the Gathering amongst others back in the day. But all the people I played with are far away now. So I play video game versions of CCGs. Magic TG has stayed away from video games versions but they have an online version. It doesn’t run on Macs and it costs as much for a virtual pack of cards as for a real pack. That’s a little too greedy for me. So I stay away. And they keep me away with the whole no Macs thing.

So it’s Yu-Gi-Oh for me. They keep cranking out versions of that game and they’re pretty good. The fun of CCGs is not only in playing the game but in creating a strategy to win. What you put in your forty card deck from the thousands of cards to chose from is half the fun. Good stuff, what!

Most video games have ceased to amuse me. They are so expensive for both the system and the individual games that they are bound to disappoint. It’s one level of disappointment to blow ten bucks on a bad movie but a whole other level to blow $55-$65 on a game and have it be bad. Plus there are so many more “serious” games that fun appears to have gone out of style. Only Nintendo seems intent on putting fun into their games. Plus you get to poke at the DS with a stick (it’s a touch sensitive handheld system). What’s more amusing than poking something with a stick. Heh, heh, heh…

Another thing that has been amusing me lately is DC Comic’s the Elongated Man. Not the actual comic book. Just the name. Elongated Man… heh, heh, heh… He’s a Plastic Man type character who can stretch himself into all different shapes just like Marvel’s Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four can. But come on. Elongated Man? Who came up with that name? If you asked me to name a Plastic Man type character and gave me a hundred tries I don’t think I would have ever came up with “Elongated Man”. Whoever thought that up is on a totally different wavelength. I have a book of his tales sitting on my shelf and every time I see the name I giggle.

TV hasn’t been amusing me much this season. Sure I have it on as I’m working or riding the stationary bike (it’s gotten too cold out for the road bike) but most of it is just okay. And that’s the stuff I like. Except for one show: “Bones”. That show has been amusing me this season. Much better than the endless nonsense that “Lost” has become.

So that’s my state of mind. I need some amusement. I’m thinking some “Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)” hanging out with Prince John during one of the feasts with all sorts of Hollywood lensed shenanigans going on all around us. That’s some fun. Giant turkey legs for all!

I am interrupting my regularly scheduled blog to bring you another piece on a movie. I had something else I wanted to write about but then I went and watched “The Departed”. It’s been getting rave reviews and for the first two thirds of the movie they are deserved. But the last third of the movie was jaw-droppingly bad. My mouth was literally open and I kept saying “Huh?” for the last half hour or so of the film. Dry mouth was setting in. I won’t ruin the movie for those who haven’t seen it and who might agree with all of the raves it’s getting. But here is a short recap with no plot spoilers. Just some generalities.

The basic plot of the movie is Leo DiCaprio is the undercover cop and Matt Damon is the undercover criminal. They are trying to find and do away with one and other. It’s a bit more subtle and nuanced than that but there’s the one sentence “high concept”.
The first thing that bothered me is that there was this little subplot about them liking the same girl. Leo and Matt didn’t know about each other and the girl was a psychiatrist (yes, she wrote prescriptions) who worked for the police so it was almost believable. I was willing to overlook that little bit of moviemaking conceit because the rest of the movie was excellent.

Then came the last half hour. Realism was thrown out the window and my willing suspension of disbelief came crashing down. Everybody started acting like brainless movie characters and not like the smart people they were in the first two thirds of the movie. It turned into a sit-com without the comedy. Well, the comedy was there it just wasn’t intentional. It was a sit-dram. If even one character stopped and thought about what he was doing, as they were all doing earlier in the movie, the movie could have ended half an hour sooner. Instead we have a series of coincidences, smart guys suddenly acting stupid and a key character going on vacation for two weeks. Seriously, at the climax of the movie when he is needed the most a key character, instead of sticking with the case he has built for a year, is sent on a vacation.

You know that old cop movie cliche where the cop “doesn’t play by the rules” and pisses of his captain so the cop is forced to take time of? The cop never actually take time off and works on the case “on his own time” until at the end of the movie he captures the bad guys and everything is okay. It’s the plot to “Beverly Hills Cop” and plenty of other films. In “The Departed” the cop in question actually takes the time off! That’s because if he was still on the case he would have figured out who the mole was in ten seconds. But they had a half an hour left in the movie so off he went. We don’t need him. He’s just the key to the whole investigation.

The ending was like an episode of “Three’s Company”. If someone had just said, “Lucy is the name of the dog and not a girl Jack is banging in his room” than a whole side splitting episode of misunderstanding and mirth would never have happened. Acceptable in a comedy but not in a gritty drama.

To further expand the sitcom theme I think the only way this ending would make any sense is if all of the movie actors were replaced by the characters from Seinfeld for the last half an hour. I see Kramer in the Nicholson role, Jerry in the Damon part, George as DiCaprio, and then we can fill out the rest of the cast with all the wacky people from the Seinfeld world. Puddy and Newman hanging around as cops or criminals would be amusing.

I’m going to mention “Murder by Death” for the second week in a row. At the end of that movie as Truman Capote, the villain of the piece, is telling all of the detectives that they didn’t solve the mystery correctly he comes down on them for their bad mystery novel tricks. One of the tricks he chides them for is introducing characters in the last chapter who “weren’t even in the book before”. Hence cheating all the people who were trying to figure out the mystery of ever being able to do so. I was reminded of that line when in the last ten minutes of “The Departed” a previously unseen and unmentioned character shows up, has a pivotal role, and then goes away. All in the space of two minutes! Sure maybe he was around in the background for a bit but he was unnoticed and unimportant until his nonsensical goofy actions were required. It just made me go wha?????

By the end of the movie I was ready for some zombies. Really. If at the climax of “The Departed” zombies had showed up and started eating people I think it would have made more sense. Near the end of the movie a character was opening his apartment door and I thought, “A zombie popping out right now would top this movie off just right”. Maybe in the special edition.

Oh, and by the way, there are certainly no crime scene investigators in this world because the crooked cop was just making up stories that made no sense to describe what happened when various dead bodies showed up. One look at the blood spatter and every character on CSI would say, “He’s lying”.