Radiant Comics

No pro football until September! I’ll have to distract myself with video games.

There is a new Yu-Gi-Oh! game out for the Nintendo DS (Spirit Caller). I might get it but I’m not sure. I have other Yu-Gi-Oh! games and the card battle genre is one that I enjoy. The genre started with Magic: The Gathering and involves picking out 40-60 cards from a vast library of different cards (1400 in the new Yu-Gi-Oh! game) and then building a deck out of them to “fight” other people and their decks. The strategy comes from deciding what tact you want to take and trying to figure out just which cards to put in your deck to stay on the winning course. Fun stuff.

The problem with these card battle video games is that collecting the virtual cards is always part of the game. That makes for a very big drawback. You are basically crippled at the beginning of the game. Your choices are few, your deck is weak, and the games you play are usually uninteresting. It takes a lot of slogging through the mire to get enough cards to build a deck that is interesting to use. I’ve played a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! and I’m not a beginner’s deck guy anymore. But that’s where a new game always starts. With a beginner’s deck.

These days I find a similar problem in a lot of different genres of video games. In most racing games you used to pick a good car and race. Now you have to pick a crappy car, race, win some races, and then upgrade your car until it’s finally okay. Only then do you get to race with a good car. The game starts out crappy by design. How crazy is that? But it’s the norm now. People even expect it.

Games used to be wide open but now you have to unlock things. Instead of giving a player a lot of choices right from the start you have to “earn” them. It even gives players a sense of satisfaction as they earn special items. Not me though. Don’t give me a watered down game that only gets good later on. I won’t stick around for later on.

I don’t mind power ups and new weapons in shooters. If the game is well done and the base weapons are good then the new weapons just add spice. You can always go back to the base weapons and have fun. The games I don’t like are the ones in which once you upgrade your weapon you never go back because the original was crappy to begin with.

I’ve quit playing a lot of games only to have someone tell me, “Well it gets good later”. I want it good now. Not later. I paid for the game and I want my choices in front of me from the beginning. I don’t want to unlock hidden character, powers, and costumes. If the game is good I’ll play it. If it’s not then the promise of a “reward” of secret game play isn’t going to keep me from turning it off. Put your best foot forward.

A game series that I have always enjoyed is SSX snowboarding. It’s exciting and fast paced with great sound and visuals. As a racing game it’s top notch. I just don’t like using the crappy snowboards at the beginning. I never bought SSX On Tour (the last one) because I didn’t want to start at the beginning again. I’ve had it with games that withhold the good stuff from me.

That’s why I’m undecided if I want the new YU-Gi-Oh! game. I know it’ll be good. But only after playing for enough hours to get interesting cards. The last Yu-Gi-Oh! game I bought sat around for six months before I felt like starting it. I played the hell out of it eventually but good from the go it is not. Like so many other games.

Bad drivers. Who doesn’t hate bad drivers? I wonder if any of them actually know they are bad drivers? I’ve heard people accused of being bad drivers but I’ve rarely heard a person declare themselves a bad driver. Maybe it’s one of those things that people have to tell you over and over before you believe it.

Here is my latest bad driver story. I was cruising up Route 17 last Friday night in some heavy traffic. The speed limit on that part of 17 is 65 mph and things were moving well. The right lane was going about 60-65 and the left lane 65-70. I’m usually a right lane driver because I don’t need to be in a hurry but that night I was in the left.

Keep in mind that there is a line of cars in front of me stretching out as far as I can see and a wall off cars to the right of me. I’m moving at the speed of traffic. Then this big old SUV pull up right behind me. I’m wishing I could pull right to get this ass off my ass but I can’t. After about a minute of tailgating this SUV starts flashing it’s brights at me. “Jerk” I think and look to see if I can pull right. There is a car immediately beside me. I mean door to door. What exactly did this SUV want me to do? Idiot driver.

So the SUV swooped into the right lane and then back into the left lane in front of me. And he stayed there. Like I said there was a line of cars in front of me stretching to the horizon. In both lanes. There was no place for this jerk to go. He stayed one car ahead of me for miles. Why was it so important for him to get ahead of me? I don’t get it.

Now repeat that same story two more times (minus the flashing headlights only the first jerk did that). Once with a big ol’ pickup truck and once with a big ol’ white van. It’s always a white van isn’t it? Then I finally made my way over to the right lane. It was a little slower but no tailgating.

There was one small measure of satisfaction. After passing me the pick up made it’s way into the right lane to disappear off an exit leaving the white van to tailgate the original SUV so badly that the SUV pulled into the right lane. At least he got a taste of his own medicine. Everyone’s got a bad driver story. I’m lucky this was a mild one.

And since I am posting this post Super Bowl my friend John insists I point out that his SB prediction of a Colts winning 27-17 was off by only two points. What an Edgar Cayce he is. If only John would point us in the direction of Atlantis.

I’m a comic book fan. No secret there. As a comic book fan there is usually some cross over with being a comic strip fan. And vice versa. Of course a fan usually prefers one format over the other, as I prefer comic books, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty of books on comic strips. Just fewer that a comic strip fan has.

As such I am familiar with most of the greats from the world of comic strips. I grew up on Peanuts and Doonsbury. I read Bloom County and The Far Side in their heydays and of course I have all of the Calvin and Hobbes books.

I even have plenty of books of strips that were before my time. Little Nemo in Slumberland, Pogo Possum, Terry and The Pirates, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Krazy Kat, Denise the Menace, and probably others that I am forgetting. Yet I have never read much Gasoline Alley.

Gasoline Alley was one of those strips I saw in the paper as a kid (the 1970’s) and read a little bit of but usually passed over. It wasn’t the usual gag a day stuff and I never quite knew what was going on. The original artist who did the strip was long since gone (it having been started in the early 1920’s) so maybe the quality had declined and that’s why I never got into it. Maybe not. I’ll have to read them someday.

Whatever the reason for not having read the strip as a kid my reason for never having read it as an adult is that it hasn’t been collected in a book. Until now. “Walt & Skeezix” (before it was named “Gasoline Alley’) volumes 1 and 2 have been published by Drawn and Quarterly Books. I got the first volume (1921-1922) for Christmas and have been reading it a bit at a time. That’s how I read all collections of newspaper strips for some reason. I never sit down and read a whole book of strips all at once. I like reading a few weeks worth at a time and then putting the book down for later. Go figure.

In all my years as a comic fan I have never read or heard too much about Gasoline Alley. Sure I knew it existed and had read a few articles about it. Even some articles that declared it one of the great strips. But I didn’t know anyone personally who was a fan of it and I know fans of just about everything. It was pretty well under the radar of my friends and I. Of course none of us had access to comic strips from the 1920’s so it’s not too surprising. So I started reading the book with no expectations.

If you follow any of the reviews of comics I have written you might notice that the ones that are my favorites are not super hero books. I grew up, like most comic book fans, reading super hero stories and while I still have an appreciation for them I generally prefer stories about normal people. I like comics about everyday life; whether ordinary or extraordinary.

I am also a history fan. I dig the past. All of the books I read that have no pictures in them are usually biographies or history. I also enjoy comics about history such as “Age of Bronze” or “Louis Riel”. That’s why I enjoy “Walt & Skeezix” (Gasoline Alley) on two levels. As a slice of life and as a slice of history.

It’s a great strip. Maybe even one of “the” greats (Peanuts, Doonsbury, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Far Side are the greats from my era). It’s kind of a gag a day strip but from before the time when the gag a day strip was completely formalized. Nowadays almost all strips are gag a day strips and they are almost all the same. Setup and delivery. The whole strip exists to support that last panel where the gag is. Everything that doesn’t immediately relate to the last panel is excised. One two three, one two three, one two three, it’s a steady beat that ends with Garfield making a joke. Every time. Relentlessly.

“Walt & Skeezix” isn’t like that. Sure there’s a joke at the end but each panel is important and exists on its own. The strip is about the world it creates. I think it has this in common with Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. There are jokes at the end of those strips too, quite funny ones, but sometimes the best stuff is in panel one or two. They are not: one two three joke, one two three joke. They are about the richness of the world they create. The maniacal Calvin creating a horrible snowman in panel one is as fun and interesting as the punch line in panel three. It exists on it’s own. No panel one in Garfield exists except to support panel three. Gag a day strips are like flights of stairs with the steps existing for no reason but to support the step below and get to the top step. Not so with “Walt & Skeezix”. Each panel is a wonder on it’s own creating a world for the reader to enter.

I’ve only read the first six months worth of strips but Gasoline Alley is the street our characters live on where the men talk and work on their cars. A short time into the book the main character, Walter, finds a baby on his doorstep who he named Skeezix. Walter is a bachelor but raises the baby on his own. Jokes ensue.

The world of gasoline Alley is filled with buddies and wives and sitters for little Skeezix. They all have advice to give, things to say, and dreams to dream. It is an interesting world both as comic strip and as history. Unlike the mythical childhood worlds of Peanuts and Calvin the world of Gasoline Alley is the same as ours. It’s kinder, gentler, and maybe a better place to be but it is our world.

As history there are some interesting things happening too. The characters and their relationship to their cars I find fascinating. Most of the fellows in the strip are gear heads. They spend their time tinkering and talking about their vehicles. This isn’t very different than gear heads of today. It’s what the cars mean to them that’s different. Today we live in a world where a car is almost a necessity. We need them to get to our jobs, the store, and to move all the goods on our highways. If cars were to disappear everybody’s lives, even if they don’t own a car, would change drastically. But this strip was made in 1921. Cars were new and almost luxury items. The cars were used to escape the everyday grind. They are our everyday grind. All of the cars in the strip are also open topped. They exist so people can go for a nice drive in the country. They can see the sunshine and the trees. A car is magic to them. And the butt of jokes. Similar jokes are still being made about cars in our time. But there is less magic now.

The characters in the strip are still relatable today even if they have gas lamps. A baby still needs a bottle and a diaper. And cries all the time. The 1920’s aren’t far enough away from our modern world that we don’t recognize it as our world but they are the beginning of modernity and as such there are some interesting differences. These differences interest me as a history fan just like the actual comic strip interests me as a comic fan. Give it a try. I recommend it.

I’m not a novice at throwing parties. I’ve put one on every summer so friends can gather and have a good time. I was involved in throwing some parties back in my college days too. A party was simpler back then. Beer and chips were all that was needed. And nobody really cared about the chips.

One of the constants of throwing a party is worrying about who is going to show up. Narrowed down more specifically the worry is, “will anyone show up?”. It’s an irrational worry because the kind of person who wouldn’t draw a single guest to their party is the kind of person who would never throw a party. So if you are wondering if anyone is going to show up to your party that just means you’re normal. Still it’s a constant theme in the mind of any host.

A host has to send out invitations to the party so people know about it. Whether by mail, e-mail, or word of mouth you have to spread the word. After that it’s a crap shoot. You’ll be able to figure out about two thirds of the people who will show up if you keep up with RSVPs and general chatter among friends but that last third is a guessing game. I’ve had people swear they were going to be there. They’d tell me they were looking forward to going every time they saw me for weeks on end (without any prompting from me) and then just not show. I find it odd and mysterious how many times this has happened because quite often the explanation is unsatisfactory; adding to the mystery.

Then there are the people who show up out of the blue. That’s always fun. It’s usually someone who I haven’t seen in a while who heard about the gathering through the grapevine. Always good to see an old friend and the more the merrier.

One party lesson that should be learned is to pay attention to those who have showed up and not to those who haven’t. Making a big deal about someone who hasn’t shown up is bad form. Make a big deal out of those who have shown up. They’ll want to come to the next party then.

This brings us to the age of the internet. I use e-mail to send out invites and have no problem getting other invites that way. But sites like Evite annoy me. Not in a pain in the ass, “gum on my shoe” kind of way. But in a general, “I can’t quite get down with it” kind of way.

I see the benefits of Evite: It’s easy for the host to keep track of who is coming and who is not (the same phenomenon as above apply though). It also allows a central site for an invited guest to check back with for time, place, and directions. Guests can also check and see if other friends have indicated they are going or not. I’m not saying that Evite isn’t useful. It just annoys me. Maybe it’s because it puts more pressure on me as a guest.

Evite is broken down into four section for the guests: yes, no, maybe, and hasn’t responded. Party hosts can even give those four sections nicknames thus putting more pressure on the invitees with their cleverness of category. But maybe I don’t want to be classified in one of those sections. I don’t want to be stuck in a box. A lot of time I don’t know if I will make it to said event weeks in advance so I’m unsure of what to check.

Plus it’s more work for me. After you click on the link in an e-mail you have to navigate through some ads and decipher whatever horridly busy layout the information is in. Then as you respond there is a place to leave a little personal message for the world to see.

Now, I’m all about being clever and pithy but my penchant for being a troublemaker is omnipresent. That little message box is a great temptation to my childish sense of humor. Yet I can’t indulge myself because I know at least half the people on the list won’t share my giggles and I take the chance that the host is one of them. I’m already in an awkward social situation where I have to be restrained for fear of offending and I’m only at the invitation stage. Too much pressure. At least with a normal RSVP by voice, mail, or e-mail I’m responding only to the host and not the public and advertisers. Less chance for me to inadvertently get into trouble.

There is just another little glimpse into being me.

I finally did it. I finally loaded iTunes up with all of the album art to accompany my MP3s. It took quite a bit of my spare time this week but done is done. I never bothered with album art before because I just didn’t care. The art was decoration and not very good decoration when displayed low res and tiny. I always looked at the song or album titles anyway so I saw no point in spending any time loading album art.

What changed my mind? It started with Cover Flow. A stand alone application that emulates visually flipping through a stack of albums. It’s cool. For all of us old timers who still remember LPs and and still like to listen to albums rather than shuffle all of the time it is a wonderfully intuitive tool. Cover Flow also has a robust auto tool for finding album art. It found about 80% of my cover art automatically. I have a pretty eclectic music collection so that’s an impressive percentage. Cover Flow also has an easy to use feature (just option click) that automatically does a Google image or Amazon search for the album art. I was able to load the rest of my album art in a relatively short amount of time. All in all the program got high marks from me.

So there I was using Cover Flow and guess what happened? Apple bought Cover Flow and integrated it into iTunes. “Cool beans”, I thought as I tried out the latest version of iTunes. But there were some problems. Of course the integrated version used iTunes’ stockpile of covers and not Cover Flow’s. If there is an easy way to use Cover Flow’s stockpile of pics I don’t know about it. Selecting an album and then navigating to the proper artwork located on my hard drive is okay for a few albums but a few hundred? No way. The auto find in iTunes only found about 20% of my album art. Too low a percentage to do me any good. In addition I’ve always found the little add on programs that find album art for iTunes too time consuming also. My MP3s come from my CDs and not the iTunes music store. Hence I’ve never had album art loaded.

The final motivating factor was this week’s iPhone introduction from Apple. I’m not much of a cell phone guy but one line by Steve Jobs caught my attention. He said it would have the best photo viewing software ever. That is what I have been waiting for. Last year I digitized all of my 35 mm negatives. Thousands of them. I spent far more time on that then I ever could loading album art. I have all the files named with who is in the photo and all in folders labeled by time and place. It’s a great system for my desktop or laptop but I’ve been wishing for a small portable photo album that I could carry all the time. I’m a dreamer. The current iPod photo and all other portable media players I’ve seen just don’t cut it. The iPhone sure seems to cut it. I don’t actually want an iPhone I want the widescreen iPod (should be cheaper) that should follow.

Watching the demo of the iPhone lead me to a conclusion. Pretty soon it will be real easy to chose digital music visually. On any device. What was once just decoration to go along with the hyperlink text will now replace the text as the primary user interface. That’s why I decided to load up all of the album artwork.

The automatic iTunes art finder seemed to work a little better when I chose individual albums rather than run it universally. I also used the stand alone Cover Flow to cut and paste from. This seemed the fastest way to do things but it still took a while. It’s a good thing I find it fun to organize things. Now I am ready for the future.