Radiant Comics

Next Sunday my favorite sports team of all time the New York Giants will play in the Super Bowl. I never thought the Giants would be in the big game this year. I am one of those people who thought that the Giants’ head coach, Tom Coughlin, should have been fired at the end of last year. This was his fourth year with the Giants and they have been mediocre for most of that time. Who knows if that was really his fault but when a sports team has been bad to mediocre for too long you fire the head coach. That’s how professional sports works.

Most of this year the Giants have been pretty mediocre. They have talent but they didn’t play like it for a lot of games. I watched every game and they tortured me for a lot of them. They won just enough games to make the playoffs, which is better than twenty other teams in the league, but it was still painful to watch them in most of their games. They played plenty of teams that they were better than but never blew them out. They let bad teams hang around to the end of games and the Giants barley hung on to win. They lost a bunch too. Watching them did not fill me with confidence.

At the beginning of the year I fully expected their coach to be fired by now. Through out the season I saw no evidence that would have changed that expectation. I wanted to my expectations to change. I was hoping that the Giants and Tom Coughlin would do well because they’re my team and I always want them to win. I kept waiting for them to prove me wrong all season. But their game time execution didn’t always reflect my hopes.

Then a funny thing happened. The perfect record 15-0 New England Patriots came into town for the last game of the season. The Giants and Patriots had their playoff slots sewn up and the result of the game meant nothing, standings wise, but the Giants finally played with some fire. They played like the game meant something to them. This is the kind of football I’ve been waiting for them to play for years. They finally played like a good team and not a mediocre one. Unfortunately the Patriots played like a great team and won the game 38-35 but you can’t have everything.

The next week the Giants played their first playoff game. It was against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Giants were the underdog. I expected the Giants to win this one because they have more talent than the Buccaneers. All the experts picked the Bucs but I never really understood why. Except for the fact that it was a home game for Tampa. The Giants won the game without a whole lot of trouble and it was on to Dallas.

The Dallas Cowboys had the best record in the NFC and were heavy favorites. The game was in Dallas and I didn’t expect the Giants to win but I though they had a good shot. It was a game between division rivals, which means they play each other twice a year (out of sixteen games), and know each other well. The Cowboys had already beaten the Giants twice this year but that meant nothing. Anything can happen in a game between division rivals. The Giants won in thrilling fashion. Excellent. On to Green Bay.

The Green Bay Packers and their fans were happy that the Giants beat the Cowboys. If the Cowboys had won then the Packers would have to go to Dallas to play. Since the Giants won the game was in Green Bay (they had a better record than the Giants). Every team wants home field advantage in the playoffs.

The Giants were big underdogs again but I had confidence in them. They were finally playing well and I thought Dallas was a scarier team than Green Bay. It was zero degrees Fahrenheit at game time and both teams put on a hell of a show with a Super Bowl berth at stake. The Giants pulled off the win and something I never thought would happen this year is happening. They are going to the Super Bowl. They get to play the perfect Patriots (18-0 now) again and are bigger underdogs than ever. I’d put the Giants’ chances of winning at one in three but I don’t care. I never thought they’d make it this far and I can’t wait for next week’s big game.

I didn’t mean to start cleaning things up and moving them around. It just sort of happened. I’m an organized person but not a neat freak. I’m not a slob either but cleaning isn’t my favorite thing to do. Being that my studio is in my home I have to have a lot of art supplies and computer things at my fingertips. As a result everything is out and not tucked away. I keep things as neat as possible but organized is more important. Until things reach a critical mass. That’s what was reached tonight.

Things got to a point in my place where the clutter overwhelmed the organization. That’s the time when I can’t get any more work don until I clean up. And cleaning up, this time, meant organizing some things, throwing others out, and moving stuff around. I had to try and find a new place for everything new. And the old too.

Living in a typical 60’s- 70’s suburban split level ranch I have a closet reaching under the stairs that split the levels. This is the closet of last resort. It’s an unfinished space so you really can’t store anything in there that you don’t want to smell like musty concrete and slowly deteriorate. I usually store boxes under there. Whenever I get a new piece of computer, audio, or video equipment I store the box it came in under the stairs. You never know when you are going to have to return something in its original box.

Boxes come and boxes go. I don’t pay too much attention to under the stairs but I do get rid of older boxes when I need to store new ones. I sometime temporarily store stuff under there too. Recently I had my collection of HeroClix figures under there. I used to play the game all the time on my lunch breaks when I worked in the Marvel Comics offices but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve gotten the chance to.

I put the HeroClix under the stairs but knew I wanted to store them in a better place. Even though I haven’t played the game in ages putting them under the stair was condemning them to a slow death by dampness and neglect. For some reason the HeroClix are one of the few things that make me nostalgic and I didn’t want to burry them. Yeah, the world’s a weird place.

I needed new storage containers for the HeroClix because I had them in these big open flat boxes that didn’t really fit anywhere. I decided to get some of those cheap plastic food containers that you can buy in the supermarket or big box store. I bought the entree sized ones and the were five for $2.19 Pretty cheap. I kept underestimating how many I needed but after a few weeks I had them all stored in ninety containers That’s about forty three bucks worth of containers. It does add up now. Doesn’t it? The ninety containers then sat next to the couch in my studio for three weeks.

Today my new scanner arrived and a critical mass of clutter was reached. I had to clean out under the stairs to put its box under there. After all, the box my computer came in was still under there and got that computer in the spring of 2002! I’m thinking about getting a new one this year so I might as well get rid of the old box. That and my two year old printer’s box hit the recycle bin.

The next step was to rearrange the shelves in my laundry room so I could put the HeroClix on them. Crap had to be thrown out. Boxes had to be broken down. Things had to be shuffled from place to place. Anything with an impenetrable layer of dust was chucked. It’s amazing what collects in the laundry room. I had a container full of Armor All wipes. I don’t know where they came from. They’ve been there for years. And they were just dried cloth now. Any cleaning solution had long since evaporated. Other bottles with a quarter inch of cleaning solutions in them also went.

So now all my HeroClix have been successfully stored away. They are fairly easy to access so I can indulge my nostalgia by thumbing through them any time I want. No longer are they falling apart under the stairs. But all this breaking down of cardboard boxes and gathering of styrofoam pieces have left this place in real need of a good vacuum. I don’t want to vacuum. I never meant to start cleaning up tonight.

Reading takes time let me tell you. I’ve bought a lot of hardcover comic collections lately that I haven’t yet had time to read. But I look forward to reading them. I read a book recently, I can’t remember which, that mentioned a person’s bookshelf should be filled with books they haven’t read. It’s a joy to look at a shelf full of unread books and dream of the fun of reading them. I’m enjoying looking at my shelf.

I won’t be able to get to many of those books for a while because I just started reading a big ol’ novel. It runs about 1200 pages. I’ve read plenty of big books and am not intimidated by them as some people are. After all, I enjoy reading and it is no more effort to read a big book than a small one. It just takes more time. And time passes whether we want it to or not so I may as well spend some of it reading.

The book I just started reading is Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. I’ve never read any of her books before. I am aware that she started some sort of philosophical movement and has a society dedicated to her work and philosophy but I don’t know many of the details of her school of thought. I’ve always been a little curious about it because, I believe, it’s based on reason. Reason is a favorite of mine.

I was watching Book TV last weekend (that’s when the cable channel CSPAN2, which broadcasts the US Congress during the week, shows lectures by non-fiction authors on the weekends) and they were broadcasting a bunch of people (from whatever the Ayn Rand society is named) lecturing on Rand and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of “Atlas Shrugged”. It got me interested.

The particular lectures I saw were more of a celebration of Rand than an explanation of her philosophy. It was touched on but didn’t really give me the Xs and Os of her thinking. There were a few people who explained how the book affected their lives and how it held more truth than their school experience but I never quite got a handle on what that truth was. Because of what they were saying I think it has something to do with capitalism in general and business as a heroic endeavor. People often like to imagine what they are doing is a heroic endeavor. It’s what gets us through or lives but I have a hard time thinking of a philosophy based on that. Maybe I’m way off base though. That idea was put into my head by the speakers and not the book.

Speaking of the book, I’m about a hundred and twenty pages into it and I am enjoying it so far. The back cover blurb sums it up best, “…a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller”. I’m not sure if I get the “philosophical revolution” part yet but it is full of interesting and original characters. They are all business people too. A diverse group of business people for sure and I’m not sure yet who the heroes and villains are. That makes things interesting.

We are living in age that worships business and capitalism (was it ever not so in the USA?) so maybe we’re living in a post-Rand time when a lot of her philosophies have been adopted and I don’t even notice them or maybe I’m only 120 pages into a 1200 page book and that’s why her philosophy hasn’t hit me over the head yet. Either way I’m enjoying my reading and someday I’ll let you know if I understand it all. Right now I’m just bleary eyed.

Yep, I’ve been looking at scanners again. I have plenty of scanners already. My new 11×17 scanner (it rocks), my old 8×10 scanner (it rocked for ten years but bigger is better), my Uncle’s old 8×14 scanner (which I can’t get my computer to recognize), and my 35mm slide/film scanner. I used the 35mm scanner to digitize all of my photos that I took before I entered the world of digital photography. That took a lot of time and effort but now it’s done and they are all on my new iPod Touch. Good times.

But last year I got a whole bunch of negatives of family photos from my Mom. You’d think they’d be easy to scan in since I did all of my own but they’re not. Mine were 35mm negs but my Mom shot with an old Brownie camera that used Kodak 620 film. Each negative is 2.5 x 3.5 inches. That’s much bigger than 35mm and falls into the category of medium format film.

A lot of flatbed scanners nowadays can scan film and transparencies but they don’t do a very good job of it. The focusing power and resolution of flatbeds just aren’t good enough for the relatively small size of a film negative. That’s why I bought a dedicated film scanner in the first place. They are easier to use with film and do a bang up job. But I have a consumer lever 35mm scanner (a Minolta Dimage Scan 3) and once we’re talking medium format film scanner we’re talking professional. And professional prices.

There are a couple of different companies that make (or made) medium format film scanners. The first being Nikon. They make great optics and all the reviews have been good for their scanner but it’s $2000! That’s just not going to happen for me. Plus it’s hard to find. Minolta also made made a medium format scanner. A few different models over the years but now they’ve discontinued the line. Microtek also makes a $1500 one. Also not going to happen.

Since the Minolta models were discontinued and I already had a Minolta that I liked I decided to search Ebay and see if there were any to be had. After watching for a couple of months I observed that the oldest model went for around $500. Not too bad but it used the older SCSI connecter to hook up with my computer. My old 8×10 scanner was also SCSI and I never had a problem with it but my Uncle’s old one was SCSI and I never got my computer to recognize it. I don’t want to take a $500 chance with an unreturnable scanner from Ebay.

The next Minolta model had a USB connector and went for around $800. Too expensive once again. Story of my life. The final model had a Firewire connector and was obviously the one that was in the most demand. The reviews on it were great and but the bids immediately rose to the $1500 level. I’d love to get it but, once again, it is not going to happen.

After watching prices on Ebay all through the fall I kinda gave up on the notion of a medium format film scanner. I decided to look into flatbed scanners and see if they had gotten any better at scanning film. I was on the Epson web site (my two flatbeds have been Epsons) when I discovered a something new. In the last couple of years, when I haven’t been looking, a new type of scanner was being developed. A flatbed film scanner. Not just a flatbed scanner that could could scan film as an afterthought but one designed to scan film as a primary function.

Epson’s latest model even uses some sort of liquid surface to enhance scanning. I’m not sure if I’d ever use that feature but it showed they were trying. It also cost around $750 dollars so it was still too expensive. But reading some reviews on that model eventually lead me to a less expensive ($400) Canon model. Turns out that Canon model was already old and they have an even less expensive ($200) new model. That’s a price I can’t ignore.

In all of the reviews they said that these flatbed film scanners did a good job but in no way reached the level of a dedicated film scanner. But I’ll take a good job. After all, the reviews of most flatbed scanners say they do a crappy job at film scanning. So a good job is a huge step up. And these are old family photos that I am scanning not professional images that need to be printed. For $200 I think I’m going to give the Canon a try. I’ll keep you posted.

Ahhh… the struggle of the modern comic book reader. Whether to spend money on monthly comic books or wait until they are collected in trade paperback form. Some thoughts have gone through my head on that subject lately and I’d like to get them down in pixels.

I have always liked and still do like monthly comics but my taste tends to run to the more obscure non-mainstream comics. Since I like a lot of stuff that doesn’t come out very often I pick up the comics as they appear in the shop. A lot of times I’ll even pick up the collected version of a comic I’ve been buying as it came out. I recently bought “Short Comings” by Adrian Tomine. A story I originally bought as it was being serialized in his comic “Optic Nerve”. Only an issue a year (at best) was released so it took a long time to finish the story. I don’t mind buying it twice because I want books like that to succeed and I like reading them in both forms. And let’s face it buying six comics over six years and then a collected edition isn’t really that much dough.

I can still be seen picking up an occasional Marvel or DC book but I rarely would buy both forms of their comics. Mainstream super hero books usually come out on a regular monthly schedule. If I were to buy the comics and the trade of the same story that would take up a lot of shelf space. Plus since mainstream collected trades come out so quickly after a series ends I wouldn’t want the trade as I probably just finished reading the same story. No, it’s one or the other with Marvel and DC. But which one?

For the past year or so it’s been, “Wait for the collected edition”. It was the space that ads take up that first made me decide that. A monthly Marvel or DC comic has twenty two pages of story and ten pages of ads not counting covers (one cover three ads). Some months Marvel puts eight extra ad pages in. That’s crazy. That means on the shelf that used to fit four hundred comics only three hundred fit. All for ads I don’t care about. Collected editions have no ads.

Another reason I’ve abandoned monthly mainstream books is “writing for the trade” syndrome. Marvel and DC comics used to be: open with a splash page, tell the story, and end with a cliff hanger. The reader was left wanting more. That month wait between issues was part of the comic reading experience. Their periodic nature made them exciting. Now since almost every mainstream comic is collected into a larger edition most writers don’t bother with cliff hangers and trying to keep readers comic back from month to month. They’d rather have the reader of the trade not notice the seams between issues. That’s easier with no cliffhangers. Nowadays monthly stories often just end abruptly. I may as well be a collected edition reader.

One comic that has been doing an exceptional job of getting me excited to come back month after month is “The Walking Dead”. It executes the classic splash page, story, and cliff hanger structure beautifully. It even uses a preview of the next month’s cover as a story teaser. That is something that really hasn’t been done this well before and leaves the reader with a sort of double cliff hanger as you try to suss out what is going to happen by examining next month’s cover. They are sometimes purposefully obscure or misleading. In a good way. If mainstream books were more like “The Walking Dead” I’d certainly be buying more monthlies.

The third reason that I’ve noticed affecting me lately is that comic book covers don’t matter any more. I’ve always said that a good comic book cover has three elements: good design, good drawing, and it tells a story. That last part “it tells a story” is what has always given comic books covers cachet in our society. Show anyone a comic book cover that tells a story, even a goofy 1960’s one, and they respond positively to it. That was the comic book cover’s place in our culture for decades. They told you a story with a single image. Book covers didn’t do that, nor movie posters, nor TV ads.

Comic book covers gave you a story with a single page of words and images. They communicated in a instant. They tried to hook you in. Now comic book covers just sit there. Since Marvel and DC want to now use the cover art for licensing purposes they want it to be more generic. No stories are told and often the characters are just standing there. That doesn’t really entice me to by the book. Let’s face it, if the company doesn’t care enough to put the effort into its covers why am I going to care out them. They don’t care. I don’t care. That’s one of the reasons I like the more expensive (though not really when you add up the prices of the individual comics) hard cover collection. Time and care have gone into making them look good. Sure you don’t get a classic comic book cover on it but the paper and binding is nicer and sometimes you’ll even get some good design.

Yep, it’s been only the collected editions of Marvel and DC for me. Those are the ones they seem to put the most care into so those are the ones I get. I can only count on the smaller publishers to care about actual comic books so those are the only monthlies I buy. That’s how it’s shaken out for me.