Radiant Comics

Damn. Some nights are just frustrating. Days too. Not in a “general life” sort of way but in a specific “the drawing I’m working on came out crappy” kind of way. Failure is not a fun thing I tell ya.

I’ve been working on a comic for a new website I want to put up. I haven’t worked on many comics in recent years and the one I’m doing now is experimental in its structure and storytelling. It’s been slow going. It doesn’t help that I don’t have exactly what I want to do, in terms of it’s presentation and integration with other web media, completely nailed down yet. I told you it was experimental. It also didn’t help that I tried to rush my own process. That never works out for me. Except sometimes I have to work fast. Changing speeds can be helpful. Knowing the difference between working faster and rushing is the tough part.

I’ve been working on this comic for a while. This is the third version of it as I’ve tried to suss out exactly what format I want to work in. Print and the web each have their own considerations especially since a normal comic is vertical and a computer screen is horizontal. That’s a fundamental difference. The web can also be much more non-linear. So I’ve worked up and drawn a half dozen pages in a couple of formats. I’ve finally decided on a horizontal size and page layout. I’ve also had to redraw each page two or three times as they story transformed.

I have been trying to get the first eight pages written and drawn all winter. I thought I finally had that done and then would be able to move on to finishing them with ink and color. After ink and color I plan to work on integrating prints, video, and paintings into them. That’ll really be a challenge.

And let’s not even mention the lettering. It’s taken me weeks to figure out what I want to do with the lettering because somehow everything I did looked bad to me. I want a lettering look different than your average web or print comic. But what exactly that look is took a while. But at least I figured that part out.

I had pages two through eight done and was working on page one (it’s been a weird process) when I thought I was there. I put together page one from a variety of drawings from previous versions. Usually at this point I had been completely redrawing the page after transforming it form an earlier version. But I got tired of doing that and though I could go to the final inks on page one without any more drawing. I was wrong.

I just finished the final inks on page one and the page is not right. It’s a failure. I should have redrawn it because even through the drawings were in a pretty finished state after being drawn for earlier different page layouts they were now in a new context. In that context they needed further work. My impatience made me miss that important fact. Context always matters.

It’s a tough feeling when you look at a bunch of work you did and realize it all has to be redone. It’s even tougher when you know that you should have realized this at the beginning of the process. It’s my own damn fault! That’s my frustration tonight.

At least I have been having some fun with the cards I’ve been making. They are playing card size and I’m going to be using them for promotion. I’ve been making some new drawings and taking some old ones and printing them out, double sided, on my printer. Then I laminate them and cut them out. I even bought a little cutter that rounds the corners of the cards. They end up looking kinda neat. I think I’ll make more of them. But first I have to redraw that damned page. I can’t look at it right now. I’ll wait until morning. Things always look better in the morning.

I finished doing my taxes today. That does not make for a fun time. It makes for a pain in my ass. I hadn’t kept up with putting my receipts into my database so I had to do year’s worth. I caught up for this year too. Now I have to send the government a check. Not a fun day all around.

I had some fun watching a few of movies this week. They were a varied bunch of films and they were all okay. I saw “Shanghai Kiss” which was an odd little love story. A twenty something year old guy who is drifting aimlessly through life meets a teenager who has a crush on him. He’s a bit of a loser and can’t figure out why this girl would like him. They’re just friends because of her age. Then the guy goes to Shanghai where a relative has died and left him a house. He decides to stay there a while and gets an age appropriate Shanghai girlfriend. Soon he decides to go back to the States to see his young hottie. Not your usual romance. It was strange, quiet, and unpredictable. I enjoyed it.

I also saw the black and white director’s cut of “Mist”. It’s yet another Steven King book adapted for the screen. Most of those aren’t very good but I liked this one. A storm sweeps through a small town and leaves this mist behind. Turns out there are monsters in the mist and a bunch of people have to hide in a grocery store and figure out what to do. Try and find help or stay put. Some cool monsters, people acting monstrous, and gruesome deaths. One of the better King adaptations that I’ve seen.

“Cherry Crush” was the third movie I watched this week. It was the weakest of the three but still okay. A prep school kid with a talent for photography gets involved with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Intrigue, introspection, and murder happens and that prep school kid has to figure out what to do. It had a kind of film noir quality to it. Not the visuals but the attitude. An okay distraction after tax day.

I don’t know what happened to my spam filters this week. A lot of spam seems to be getting through. Strangely it’s coming through in twos. Two pieces of mail from the same place with two different subjects. Or sometimes the same subject. Kind of weird. I wonder if the spammers came up with some new trick to get their stuff through. It’s been annoying. Seven hundred pieces of spam in my box today. Only about 25 of them got through the filter but that’s way more than usual.

I ordered a part for my stationary bike five weeks ago. It’s the V belt that makes the wheel go around. It takes the place of the chain on a real bike. It took them two weeks to get me the wrong part, promised to get me the right one two weeks ago, and now they promise me the right part next week. We’ll see. I’ve started getting outside on my road bike in those five weeks but it’s still cold out there and my strength and stamina aren’t anywhere near they were at the end of last fall. I always have to start small again in the springtime. All the world’s a circle.

I’m a water drinker. Right from the tap usually (don’t believe the hype of companies that want to sell you water in a bottle). For some reason I don’t like anything sweet to drink. Or anything carbonated. Usually it’s just water and occasionally milk. I was in Manhattan last week and as I was catching the bus home I was thirsty and wanted a drink. Being nowhere near a water fountain (yes they still have those) I decided to buy something to drink. I hate buying bottled water so I decided to get one of the flavored waters (aren’t all soft drinks flavored water?). I bought the Dasanti raspberry one and was surprised that I liked it. It wasn’t sweet at all and had a mild raspberry flavor. The next time I was at my local super market I checked for it. The stuff is about $3.50 and change for a six pack of bottles. Gasoline is cheaper. No wonder companies spend so much money convincing people to buy bottled water from them. I’ll stick to tap water thank you.

Now that I’ve paid last years taxes I have to start saving for a new computer. Oh, what fun. My tower is from 2002 and is a bit long in the tooth. Some really complicated Illustrator files have been testing it’s limits lately and I want to crunch some video so it’s about time for a new one. A new tower will run me about three grand. Maybe this summer I can swing it. Now you know why I don’t buy bottled water.

Speaking of buying things I need a new coat for the spring. I like a good sports coat but they aren’t cheap. Well they are if you get them off of Ebay. I got my last one there for $20. It’s adequate but not magnificent. That coat has never been a favorite of mine. I bought it on a whim when I was really broke. My favorite I wore for years and the lining is shot. I wonder if I can get that lining replaced? I’d like a nice linen coat but I’m tired of the rumpled look. I never liked that look much despite having a linen sport coat for years. Ah well, that’s what’s been going on around here.

I’ve always been a fan of the boom box. The portable stereo, radio, eight track player, cassette player, CD player, or any combination of the above depending on which era it was. I was never a home stereo guy.

As a kid/teenager I used to drag my boom box along with me to lots of places. Mainly outside around the neighborhood to listen to music on a nice summer day as we played stickball or some other game. I also brought it with me to work during my high school years when I was a dishwasher and later on an assistant cook. I used to ride my bike to work so I’d strap my boom box onto my belt by its handle and it would hang off of my hip as I pedaled. Who would have thought that you could ride a bike so easily with a boom box?

I had a variety of different boxes (box is short for boom box “Bring your box” was the phrase) over the years and I liked most of them. But the early nineties was the end of the boom box era. I think the boom box’s demise was because of two things. The Walkman type music player that you listen to with headphones took over as the way most people listened to portable music and the decline of the cassette tape.

Both things are intertwined. First off it was usually one or two people in any given group who always brought the boom box everywhere. Everyone didn’t have one. It was a commitment. If two boom boxes where some place usually the better one was listened to. Guys would take turns and swap music in and out but it was generally obvious which boom box was the best and that’s the one you went with.

It was easy to swap music in and out of the boom box with cassette tapes. They were rugged. As long as you didn’t touch the magnetic tape on the bottom you could toss them around. The weren’t precious objects. When the compact disc came along you got better music fidelity but CDs, which were said to last forever, are pretty delicate. They have to be handled correctly. Swapping them back and forth wasn’t easy as you had to be fussy and some were inevitably fussier than others. A recipe for conflict.

And it wasn’t the guys with boom boxes, the music lovers, who first adopted CDs. It was the technology lovers and the rich kids. During my junior year of college (1986-87) I had a discussion with a couple of real music fans. CD players were still expensive and few people at my school had them. These two music fans were complaining that all the rich kids had expensive new stereos with CD players. They further observed that the music was totally wasted on these kids. All of them had thousand dollars stereos and two CDs. One of which was always Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”. They both claimed they’d rather have lesser stereos and more music. One even claimed to have listened to his music through a telephone hand set that he rigged up. It was the only speaker he had at the time. He still enjoyed his music on it. That was a guy who loved his music.

If you were the boom box guy you had a lot of your music collection in the form of cassettes. Even if you made them yourself from your record collection. You didn’t want to have to switch over to a new format. That’s expensive. Plus it was over a decade before the average Joe could make his own mix CD. The boom box stuck around a little while because of the custom mix cassette tape. I saw guys on St. Marks’s Place in the Village (NYC) selling mix cassettes on the street as late as the mid 90’s. They were the last holdouts.

You can tell a product is going out of fashion because the companies that make them put less and less energy into their design and manufacture. Boxes from the early eighties were a sight to behold. All of the electronic companies had their best engineers and designers working on the boom boxes. There were some crazy nice music machines. But them all of those industrial designers moved over into the portable headphone driven CD machines. Boom boxes died. Or at least got mediocre and boring.

I listened to my music for years on my ugly, boring, crappy, Aiwa CD boom box. I never brought it anywhere since I stopped being a teenager so it’s portableness became pointless. I still don’t have a proper stereo setup. I have a receiver that a friend gave me and my speakers are from cast off boom box/shelf system stereos. That’s hooked up to my TV by I listen to most of my music on my Harmon Kardon computer speakers.

I, of course, have an iPod like everyone these days. I’ve been noticing a nice little boom box renaissance in all of the iPod compatible boom boxes that companies are making. Companies are putting their talent and technology into this new boom box type and have been making some impressive models. At least according to the reviews I’ve read. The iPod really make the world go ’round these days. I don’t have one of these boxes yet but I’m tempted. I want to relive my boom box glory days. “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen was a classic boom box song.

I’m a New York Giants fan so this was a great football season for me. Well, maybe not the whole season because the G-Men played some games that were pure torture to watch as they barely hung on to win (they lost some too) against teams that, on paper, they should have had an easier time with. But then they got hot, played well in playoffs against some good teams, and went on and beat the unbeaten Patriots to win Super Bowl 42 (screw Roman numerals which are actually Etruscan numerals). A story book season. The teams first championship since January 1991. Hooo-Rah!

I downloaded the highlights of the Super Bowl from iTunes plus I video captured ESPN’s post Super Bowl highlights show. I’ve watched them a couple of times and they do a descent job of telling the story of the game but the highlights are missing something. On some occasions the low-lights are really needed to tell the story of the game. The Giant’s final game winning drive needs the low-lights to really tell the story.

It was a low scoring Super Bowl but it was filled with excitement. Every down was packed with intensity because both teams were playing well and both teams were capable of big plays at any moment. On offense and defense. The Patriots coach, Bill Bill Belichick even made coming back from commercial after a Patriots punt exciting as he threw the red challenge flag and made the refs go to the video replay because the Patriots noticed a Giant player didn’t get off the field in time. Going into the fourth quarter the Giants were down 7-3 but then they put together a nice scoring drive to go up 10-7. The Patriots soon answered with a scoring drive and a touchdown of their own to pull ahead 14-10 with just over two minutes left in the game.

The Patriots scoring drive was a thing of beauty. A classic NFL drive where the quarterback spreads the ball around and the team marches down the field on eight to twelve yard plays. Tom Brady and the Patriots offense looked in peak form on that drive. They were unstoppable in a way that is familiar to all NFL fans as they’ve watched Joe Montana, John Elway, Brett Favre, and many other quarterbacks put together drives just like that to win games. In those kind of drives almost every play is a highlight.

In contrast the low-lights in the Giant’s game winning drive need to be seen in order to put the highlights in context. The Giant’s game winning drive was not a classic NFL thing of beauty drive. It was a chaotic, frenetic, unpredictable bit of football. Both teams were playing as hard as they could and throwing their bodies around recklessly because the game was on the line. The Patriots defense disrupted the Giants offense on a few occasions and the designed play went out the window as guys had to improvise and just play sand lot football.

Some of the low-lights: 1) On the Giants first set of downs they failed to make any yards on their first two plays and ended up have to go for it on fourth down. The game was on the line and they barely made the first down. 2) Eli Manning threw a pass that was almost intercepted. It bounced off of the defenders fingertips and if he had held on the Patriots would have won. 3) Eli Manning almost fumbled the ball away as he was tackled from behind after a short run. 4) Following the spectacular escape and catch by Manning and Tyree a second pass to Tyree bounced off of a defenders hands. Yet another potential interception that didn’t happen. Another chance for the game to end but it didn’t. 5) Finally, before Steve Smith’s catch to make a key third and eleven conversion we have the two unsuccessful plays that got them to third and eleven. I think one of them was the almost interception I just mentioned and the other a sac as Eli ran for his life.

Most of the Giant’s low-lights were dramatic and showed how hard both teams were trying to win the game. The low-lights were not the Giant’s botching plays but the Patriots making plays. It was a near thing and on a couple of plays the game was decided by inches.

It was a game winning drive for the ages but a truly unique one. Both sides were playing their hearts out. The defense was creating chaos as the offense was trying to create order. I think in most game winning drives order wins over chaos. What makes the Giant’s game winning drive so different is that order didn’t so much win over chaos as order adjusted to chaos and tried to ride the wave chaos created. It was a crazy anything could happen drive and just the highlights don’t tell the story.

By the way I watched the whole game winning drive the other day and the two minutes of game time when the Giants had the ball took about twenty minutes of real time. And that is without the commercials. That’s how long the craziness went on. long live the craziness.

Ahhh… pondering the imponderables of life. That’s my game. A past time in which I like to indulge. Today’s imponderable is, “Why do I write better at night than during the day?”. What makes that an imponderable is that I’m a morning person. Always have been. I’ve been working at home the last couple of years and I get up at 7 AM and am working by 8 AM. I get the most done in the morning. That’s when I’m the freshest. That’s when I’m the peppiest. That’s when I’m my most productive.

When I’m working on some piece of artwork I make most of my big creative decisions in the morning.That leaves the day for their execution. When I’m working on an oil painting I always mix my colors in the morning. Works best for me. The light is better and so is my concentration. The morning is when I think straight. So why is it that I write better at night?

Now certainly I don’t write better late at night. And by late at night I mean an hour before or anytime past my bedtime. I’m useless when I’m tired. My mind gets all jumbled up and nothing makes sense. But I’m not speaking of that time. The time I mean is before bedtime when the sun goes down and the world quiets down a bit. Maybe that’s the key. A little quiet.

As I’m working on the computer, easel, or drawing board I don’t like it quiet. I work by myself so I need some noise to keep me company. I usually have on movies, music, TV shows, documentaries, or the Stern show. I don’t actually watch the TV but I do listen to it. That’s why I like shows that are dialogue based rather than action based. I find it easy to concentrate on my work while listening to something. As a matter of fact the noise helps me concentrate because I find silence distracting as my mind will wander into it searching for its edges. Of course there is really not much silence here in this world. Just sounds you have to concentrate a little more to hear. And as I’m drawing in the quite I strain to hear those sounds. Ruins my focus. When I’m writing the complete opposite is true.

I need things a little quieter when I’m writing. TV, music, talking, it’s all a distraction when I’m trying to concentrate on words. I have to shut it all off or shut it all out. Writing with the TV on in a near impossibility. Things are a little quieter around here at night so maybe that’s why it’s easier to write.

Then there’s the fact that I usually work standing up. My drawing table, easel, and even my desktop computer are all at standing height. But I’ve always had trouble writing while standing. It hurts to write standing for some reason. I can’t block out the little aches and pains of the day when writing. I have to sit down. I started writing with a lot more regularity once I got this laptop back in ’04 (time flies). I can sit down with it. Night is my time for sitting so sitting during the daytime and writing is a bit strange to me. The day is my time for standing and working. It’s all so ephemeral. Who knows why these things are as they are?

So there is my pondering the imponderable for the day. I don’t know if I’m any closer to a real answer but what the hell, examining the small things in life is what gets me through. And by the way, I’m writing this in the morning as a change of pace and it sure is hard. I’ll have to look it over when the sun goes down.