Radiant Comics

I was just reading the issue of Hogan’s Alley that I purchased a few weeks ago. In it is an article about sheet music and how comic characters were used to sell sheet music. This music was from way back in the 1850s or so through the 1930s. This got me thinking about music and how we listen to it.

In today’s world you would have a hard time escaping music. Turn on the TV and you’ll hear music in every show and commercial. Walk into a store and you will hear music playing over the store’s sound system. Go to the movies and there is music throughout. Just walking down the street you can hear music coming from passing cars. We take music for granted and our minds frequently even have to tune it out.

Recorded music changed our relationship with music entirely. If I want to hear a song, any song, I just have to turn on the radio to hear lots of music. For free. The price of a radio is cheap too. Nearly everybody in the industrialized world can hear music whenever they want. You can collect recorded songs and build a library so big that you’ll never even have time listen to it all. Our world is bursting with music.

But there was once a world where all music was live. That is where sheet music comes in. Today when you say that you own a song it means that you bought the CD or the MP3. Back before recorded music when you said you owned a song it meant that you purchased the sheet music. All those strange musical symbols on the page gave you instructions on how to make the song. Songs were “do it yourself” and the sheet music was the song.

Our whole concept of the physical manifestation of what a song is has changed. If someone was to ask you in 1889 if you had the song “Sweet Longtime” and you said yes then you’d hand him sheet music. Same question today and you’d hand over a CD or MP3.

How we listened to songs has changed a lot too. Not as in going to a performance; seeing a live band in 1848 is much like seeing one today. But in everyday listening to music. I imagine if I wanted to hear a song in 1901 I would have to go to a friend’s house who knew how to play music and ask him to play. I bet there were people who collected the latest songs and played them for their friends but I wonder if there were also people who bought sheet music just to bring to a friend and hear him play it. If I wanted to hear the latest song, and did not play music, would I be expected to purchase that song and bring it to the party? The lost etiquette of sheet music. Well, maybe someone still knows but not me.

I also wonder if more people played music back then. In the movies set in that time kids were always taking piano lessons. According to the article I was reading the piano was the instrument of choice. But how many pianos were there really? Was music making and sheet music mostly for the well off? All that old country and folk music that came out of the hills and valleys of this nation wasn’t written down as sheet music but handed down from fiddler to fiddler. Someone had to teach you a song in those parts.

I don’t know how much sheet music is sold today. Most people I know who make music play some form of pop/rock. Many of them learn by listening. You can play a recording over and over until you learn exactly how it was made. Sheet music doesn’t seem to be as necessary as it once was. Plus most people just play the stereo at a party. Someone playing live music at a gathering is rare. I wonder if there are more or less everyday musicians who entertain their friends with a song? These are the questions that sheet music brings to mind.

I come from a Christmas list family. As children we always made up our Christmas lists when that time of year came around so that everyone in our family would know what we wanted and could more easily purchase things for us. And no one had to get default presents that kids hate like socks. We didn’t get everything on our list and people were free to go off list if they desired but the list was always there as a handy tool.

Being a comic book collector, even as a kid, always left me in a bit of a bind; Christmas list wise that is. These were the days before comic shops and mail order was the only way to get old comics. Except for the Fireside Origins books, (Origins of Marvel Comics, Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, Bring On the Bad Guys etc.) all of which I got for gifts, there were no trade paperbacks. So putting comic books on my Christmas list wasn’t practical. People didn’t want to have to jump through hoops to get a comic and random ones I might have already. Subscriptions were a decent answer to this and I had quite a few subs to comics in my childhood. But subscriptions were a deferred present (though welcome) and not special like a Fireside Origins book.

I mentioned that this was before comic shops were around but when the first one opened around here (1981) it really didn’t change much via Christmas lists. My chances were still iffy that someone would go to the comic shop and track down what I wanted. Going to the comic shop was not in anyone’s usual routine and they would get stuff in the stores they normally frequent rather than venture into unknown parts. If it wasn’t in a mainstream bookstore my chances of getting it were slim. There were not many comics or trades in bookstores in those days.

Now, I want to bring you up to today. In the great trade paperback versus single comic at a time debate I come squarely down in the middle. I go to the comic shop every week and enjoy the periodical nature of comics. But if companies are going to sell trades and hardcovers cheaper than the actual comics then I am going to wait for the trades. Of course there is some small press stuff for which I buy both the comic and the trade. Gotta support the team. But for making wish lists trades are the best.

I had a birthday this last week and I have to sing the praises of the Amazon.com wish list and all of the comic book trades, hardcovers and graphic novels that they carry. I’ve been using them for quite a few years and they make ordering things I want as gifts real easy for my family. So I get a lot of cool comics now.

This year I got: Black Hole by Charles Burns, Paul Moves Out and Paul Has a Summer Job by Michel Rabagliati, Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Case of Madeleine Smith by Rick Geary, Invincible: Ultimate Collection, Vol. 2
by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, Bill Crabtree, The Mad Archives, Vol. 1, and Kamandi Archives, Volume 1 by Jack Kirby. A nice collection of stuff.

Oddly enough I’m hesitant to read them all. I so like having a whole bunch of good comics to look forward to that I don’t want to get through them so quickly. I want them to last. You can only read something for the first time once. And so many somethings is a treat.

So far I have read: Paul Has a Summer Job, it’s a coming of age story as Paul gets a job after high school as a camp counselor at a camp in the middle of the woods and learns something about life, love and fun. Good stuff that has a lot of heart.

Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Case of Madeleine Smith by Rick Geary, I like this series of books. Geary does an excellent job of transporting the reader to another time and giving us a look into a infamous murder case. Background is given, the people are introduced and the facts laid out before us. Plus some speculation. I love non-fiction and history books but the fact that this is a comic takes me to the time and place in a different way than prose does. This book is about a poisoning case in Scotland in 1855. Every book in the series is good and this is no exception.

Kamandi Archives 1, I have only read the first issue in this and it is the first time I have ever read it. I have probably read about a third of the Kamandi series so most of it will be new. The main comment I have is, “This is how a first issue should be done”. I have complained before about origin issues but this is a good one. We are introduced to many interesting concepts and characters while the story is being told in a mere 22 pages. It left me wanting to see more of Kamandi’s world. There is a reason Kirby is such a renowned storyteller and Kamandi 1 is sure proof of that.

Mad Archives 1, I have read the first two issues in here and though the humor is a little dated (just in places) the cartooning is first rate and funny is funny. I had read that these were a little bigger than the normal DC Archives but they are really quite a bit bigger. They are about an inch taller and two inches wider. I like the big size a lot. I guess it’s to fit in with the Mad Magazine size reprints.

Happiness is a whole pile of good comics to read.

I had to do it. I had to make some new “Virtual CD” playlists to enhance my enjoyment of music. I wrote back in February a piece “Lamenting the Death of the Mix Tape” that sang the praises of the lost magic of the mix tape. Now, I’m bringing it back into my sphere of music listening.

I have an iPod and I listen to most of my music on the computer so even though I still buy CDs I never listen to them in that form. I make MP3s and grove to the digital age. I have no idea when the last time I popped a CD into a CD player and cranked it up. I don’t even have a CD played hooked up to my receiver. Mix CDs were a thing of the past.

But shuffle play on an iPod or computer just does not work for me. In the context of a single musician it is fine. If I want to listen to some Tom Waits and don’t want to choose an album I will just click on his playlist and hit shuffle. But I have four hundred CDs or so encompassing a wide variety of styles. I have music ranging from the blues to rock to folk and tons in between. Hitting shuffle on that vast and varied a library does not make for a pleasurable listening experience.

First there is the problem of weak tracks. Every album, even by my favorite musicians, has weak songs. In the context of the ebb and flow of the quality of an album weak songs are okay. When listening to a CD if one of the songs that I don’t enjoy comes on maybe I don’t pay as much attention to it. It is just a slow spot on the record and I know it will pick up with the next song. No big deal. But when shuffling through a large library of songs the weak ones are in a new context. You never know what is coming up next and you could get three or four weak songs in a row. It happens often and is impossible to ignore. It can ruin the listening experience. Having to hit the skip button all of the time is not very convenient.

The second problem is fidelity. I have old blues, country, and big band stuff from the twenties through the forties. It is mostly low-fi because of the recording equipment of the time and to mix that in with hi-fi stuff from today can be quite jarring. If I am making a mix tape and that is what I am going for that is fine. But when it happens on its own it can be, well, jarring. Not to mention the volume levels on various hi and lo-fi recordings can be drastically different. Having to hit the volume button all of the time is not very convenient either.

All in all the shuffle mode on an MP3 player can be a fickle friend indeed.

So I recently made a some mix CDs for a couple of friends of mine. I haven’t done that in quite a while but is was how we used to share music. I had forgotten just how much work making one was. And it is considerably less work than it used to be. In the days of mix tapes there was physical effort. You had to pick out the tapes, records or CDs and get to the song and record it. That song had to be listened to as it was being recorded so that took time. With today’s dragging and dropping of music files there is no physical effort. Using iTunes or some such to make a mix is fairly easy. It is the thought involved that is the work. What songs should go on it? In what order? That sort of thing takes more effort than one would think. It used to be during the time spent in the physical efforts of making a tape that you could contemplate what song should be next and in what direction the tape should go. Now I just stare at the computer and think those things. Staring at the computer is never much fun. But still, the effort is worth it in the end.

I have taken to listening to the mix CDs as playlists in iTunes. I have recreated some old CDs playlists. CDs that I put together years ago are now resurrected on my iPod and have given me new listening pleasure. I’m telling you don’t stick with just what shuffle gives you.

Most of my problems with religion can be traced back to when I was a small child and no one would give me a clear answer about Noah’s ark. I went to church every week with my family but church isn’t set up so that you can get answers. The Catholic mass is all about the priest standing up on the altar and reading you stuff. Then he explains the stuff he just read to you and that is his sermon. At no time can you raise your hand in the air and say, “But last week you told us something totally different”. It is all about them telling you stuff and not about you asking.

Since I attended public school I also went to catechism classes. Once a week I would go to the local Catholic school and get instruction in the basics of Catholicism. This is how the public school kids get to make all of the necessary childhood sacraments that the Catholic school kids make. Still no one had an answer about Noah’s Ark.

I was a pretty savvy kid story telling wise. I had watched plenty of TV just like everyone else and I was a huge fan of comic books. In my youth it was Marvel Comics in particular that I liked and a big part of Marvel Comics was continuity. All continuity really means is that the stories have to make sense. They have to make sense not only in the context of the issue you are reading immediately but with last issue and an issue from a year before. So if Spider-Man has can stick to a wall in issue fifty he should still be able to stick to a wall in issue fifty two and if he can’t there should be an explanation. That’s all continuity is. Consistency. So inconsistencies were always noticed by me.

Enter Noah’s ark. What is the most basic question on any ten years old’s mind about Noah’s ark? How did he get all those animals on the boat? You know what I am talking about; two of every animal. That is a big task and knowing how big the world is, even at ten, I knew it was an impossible task. So how did he get all those animals onto the boat?

The one thing I learned growing up in the Catholic church is that it is a very authoritarian structure. No one votes on anything and proclamations are handed down from on high. As a consequence most answers are, “because I said so”. This is true for a child more than any other. No grown up wants to discuss theology with a kid and answer messy questions about the nature of God. There are plenty of messy questions about religion in general but, for me, they all start with, “How did Noah get all of those animals onto the boat”?

The most common answer given to my young self was, “God helped him”. Now we are back to continuity. If God helped him then why did he have to build the boat in the first place? Why didn’t God help Noah by building the boat in a flash with all the animals already on it?. Because building the boat was a test of faith. A test of faith? Tell Noah that there is a flood coming so he should build a giant hammock. Now that would be a test of faith. Why build the boat at all? Couldn’t God have just lifted up a hunk of land with Noah and all the animals on it and suspended it safely above the flood water. The hammock could be on that hunk of land too. If God is going to give a hand to Noah by bringing all of the animals onto the ark than why didn’t he lend a hand by putting a giant bubble over Noah and the animals to protect them. There are plenty of ways God could have lent a hand that would make a lot more sense to me. Continuity problems. Even as I kid I could see the continuity problems with plenty of stories in the bible and no adult was willing to do any more than pat me on the head and patronize me. That was on the few occasions when there was even a chance to ask questions.

Of course the truth is that Noah’s ark is a story that was made up to teach people a lesson. The lesson was that they should be good people and not bad people. No one is going to tell you this truth as a child, at least no one in my parish told me, and it made me look elsewhere for truth. If they were going to BS me about that most obvious made up story in the bible what else were they going to BS me about? No, I never got along well with the authoritarian approach to the truth. And as college semantics teacher told me,”Ask the same obvious questions that your average five year old would ask and you’ll just get labeled a troublemaker”.

Sometimes I forget I have talent. I’m an artist. I paint, I draw, I take photographs, and I even shoot a little video. Plus I know my way around a computer and the image editing programs that come with the territory. Sometimes I forget that a lot of my friends have talent. I went to art school years ago and still have many friends who went there with me. For years I worked in the offices of Marvel Comics doing production work and made many friend there. The majority of them are creative and have talent for drawing, writing and generally being interesting. I am so used to being around creative talented people that I take talent for granted and can even forget it is there. Then I check out My Space for a few minutes. Great Ceasar’s ghost! All the bad photos. The millions of digital cameras out there have not improved the general public’s photography skills. I mean B-A-D, bad, bad, bad photos. Shot badly, cropped badly, lit badly and edited badly. I find it hard to believe that the only photo a person has of himself is a tiny cropped head from a group shot photo. With red eye. And grainy. Why post that thing? Just be anonymous. We can barely tell that you are human anyway.

Anonymous I can understand. That is when someone is way too cool for a website. They want to look around but wouldn’t be caught dead during the looking. So they become Optimus Prime, Darth Vader, or Mariah Carey. Wait, maybe that really is Mariah Carey. It must be. And surely she’ll want to talk to me. I just know we’ll be best friends. Seriously she just has to get to know me. I’m a charmer.

I’m a little too old for this MySpace thing anyway. A bunch of my under thirty friends are on it but it is devoid of almost all of my over thirty (and over forty now sheesh we’re growing old) friends. I not sure what to do on MySpace anyway (besides posting a blog). I know people meet other people on the site but typing to a stranger? Somehow that is just foreign to me. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t like strangers or I don’t like typing. At least not typing for instantaneous communication. I type slow and writing is much different than speaking anyway. I’m a talker.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, this Saturday morning I tried cycling before breakfast. Holy shit that’s hard (that deserved a curse word). I prefer to cycle in the morning but usually a good couple of hours after breakfast (too close to breakfast and “sick to my stomach” sets in). I’ve seen cyclists on the road at horribly early hours and I can only assume that, due to the early hour, they hadn’t eaten yet so I gave it a try. I normally wake up fast but it is a whole different ball game waking and cycling. My normal ride takes about 45 minutes and in the beginning it was tough to concentrate and make the ol’ legs work in a coordinated fashion. I felt low on energy but that seemed to pass as I gained focus. By the end of the ride I felt alright and finished strong but I don’t feel the need to go that early again.

I checked out Clerks 2 this weekend and dug it. If you don’t like raunchy humor then stay away but if donkey show jokes are your thing head on in. Good stuff.