A couple of things that I wanted to get down after my flight home today

People who lean their seats back in economy class deserve to be punched in the head.
___________________________________________________

I started reading Eisner/Miller on the flight and it's excellent so far. In case you don't know, the book is a transcribed conversation between comic legends Will Eisner and Frank Miller. I came across this one part where Eisner talks about colour in comics, and the passage said what I was trying to say in my last post about the colouring in Sgt. Rock: Between Hell and a Hard Place:

To me, color is intrusive. To me, color is like a major symphony orchestra playing behind Edith Piaf.

and

I believe, by and large, color has been functionally used as a marketing tool... I believe color is used essentially as a packaging device, rather than as an integral storytelling device.

The book has lots more quotes I want to discuss, but I'll get to those after I've finished the whole thing.

"I been in the lab with a pen and a pad trying to get this damn label off"

I'm down to my last few hours in Vancouver, and I haven't stopped smiling since I got here. Well, except when I got that parking ticket on Saturday; that wiped the grin off my face for a bit. As I've said many times before, when the revolution comes the meter maids are going to be the first ones up against the wall.

One of the reasons I've been so relaxed on this trip is that the day before I left Ontario I finished drawing the story that me and Des are doing for the Vicious Circle Project. Two and a half months to pencil and ink six pages officially makes me a slow ass bastard. To be fair (to myself), I almost finished in late August, when I thought the deadline was the beginning of September. When I found out that the pages needed to be in by the end of October, I started drawing and redrawing. Even now, I could have gone on reworking stuff for a few more weeks. But I remembered the words Mike Huddleston said to me at a convention: "Indiana... let it go." Well, really he said something along the lines of: you do the best you can with the time you have; don't blow your deadlines trying to draw the perfect page, just improve on the next issue. I like my first version better, though.
___________________________________________________

A quick review before I go. I read Brian Azzarello and Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock story, Between Hell and a Hard Place, on the flight here. Before we go on, though, let's examine the last part of that sentence: "on the flight here." I looked out the window on the airplane and was struck, as I always am, by what a ridiculously amazing thing human flight is. I do plenty of things in my daily life that are completely unnatural, like travelling down highways at 120kph and resisting polio, but I've gotten fairly used to that stuff. I don't imagine that I'll ever get by my awe and underlying terror over flying. Cutting through clouds, seeing entire mountain ranges from above, and travelling so fast that in five hours I cover the distance I drove in five days, and that would take five months for me to walk. What an incredible time to live in where such technology exists, and what luck to be born into a place where I can use it so casually.

Back to the comic. Azzarello writes a story that could easily have appeared in a Sgt. Rock comic of old. I was surprised given Azzarello's penchant for hard edged, gritty violence elsewhere. Some of the dialogue is clearly his, marked by the familiar Azzarello cadences and wordplays, but overall he writes a story that respects the Sgt. Rock canon instead of jarring it. However, Kubert's art is the real draw in this book. His style is a little more loose than I'm used to, but it looks good. The colouring is appropriately muted, and looks almost like watercolours, and while I like it, I almost wish the story could have been in black and white to more fully appreciate Kubert's linework.

While the book shines artwise, the plot leaves something to be desired. The story raises an interesting question- whether killing a defenseless enemy in war is murder- but never really does anything with it. The setup had great potential for exploring the justifications behind war, and how they relate to wider ideas of murder, but in the end Azzarello cops out. This story is a good read, but could have been much more.

In town for a limited engagement only

I’m in Vancouver.

A few days ago I made the ill advised decision to fly home. Ill advised because I am broke. I asked for the time off at work, and immediately afterwards found out that I’d be getting fewer shifts in the weeks upcoming because business is slow at the moment.

The next day I realized that I was overdue to take my car in to get a scheduled service done. I looked it up and saw that in addition to the base service, this one calls for my timing belt and water pump to be replaced. Add six hundred dollars. On top of that they said that my front brakes were low and the rotors needed to have rust machined off of them. Add another hundred and fifty, bringing the total to just over nine hundred dollars. Nine hundred dollars would be tough to take at any time, but after spending five hundred on airfare, and getting my shifts cut, the effect is catastrophic. Like I said, ill advised.

The service representative working out my bill told me that she’d tried to save me a few dollars where she could, but the only example she could give was that she got me my brake pads for ten dollars cheaper than usual. You know what? When you’re taking me to the cleaners for that much money, don’t tell me that you’ve done me a favour. I’d much prefer an honest statement like, “Wow, we really took it to you with a stick this time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Nine hundred dollars? I bet that hurts like a bastard, huh?”

So I’m ridiculously in debt, and I’m earning so little that I’m going to have to start eating cat food, and as we fly in over my beautiful city basking in the morning sun, none of it matters anymore because I’m home.

My mom’s making French toast for breakfast, and she just called down that it’s ready. I’ll write more later, and I’ll talk comics, I swear.

Drunk billionaire burns down home

Um. So I haven't updated in a while. Two weeks to be exact. I know that because the date of my last entry is glaring at me from the bottom of my page here. I don't even look at my site stats anymore because I'm embarrassed about the seven people who still check in daily and find the same damned headline. Sorry about that. Let us never speak of this again, and we'll jump right into the nonsense instead.
___________________________________________________

The BBC reported that the mansion used as Wayne Manor in the 1960s Batman TV show was gutted by fire, but then quickly changed the story when discovering that the neighbours' house was the one that actually burned down. That's what you get for living next to Batman, jerks; it's called collateral damage. The new BBC headline reads "Batman TV mansion escapes blaze," showing that Batman is such a BAMF that even his house is hard to kill.

I almost wish the Batman house had been the one that burned down, because I had a pithy line about life imitating art that I could have used right here. Ah well, that's another one for the vault.
___________________________________________________

Once again proving my point that scientists are just stoned nerds with too much funding for their own good, some researchers have taught dolphins to sing the old Batman theme. Poor dolphins; first they're imprisoned, then they're forced to learn clownish routines for our amusement. One of the scientists even goes so far as to say that he:

doubts that dolphins realise they are producing what people consider 'music'. "I think music is a human construct," he says. "I doubt that it has pertinence to animals..."

So they get absolutely nothing out of the deal, not even the joy of a song well sung. God damn I wish I could afford to hire those fish for our Halloween party.
___________________________________________________

And finally, this guy worked out a way to make a 1960s Batmobile out of paper. You can print out the parts and he's got instructions on how to put it together. I know you're not going to do it (lazy bastards), so I'll post photos when I finish mine.