Birdfight!
Cardinal trounces a gang of goldfinches, from the slowly-being-completed graphic novel Feeder Birds.
This is the very short version: the fight currently goes on for 18 panels.
What a bear does in the woods
The New Yorker is the holy grail for panel gags. Extremely talented cartoonists slave for years to get their gags into the New Yorker. They have the highest standards in the cartooning world.
And then sometimes they run mysterious items such as this:
Okay, I get that it’s the woods. It’s a grove of maple trees, with their syrup taps. I get that there is a bear in the woods. I get that the bear is holding a plate of pancakes. I get that the bear is removing some of the syrup from one of the trees for his pancakes. I understand that there is humor, somewhere, in this situation.
What I don’t get is the look on the bear’s face. The bear is glancing to his back, as though he is expecting trouble, as though he expects the tree’s owner to jump out and arrest him for stealing syrup.
I’m sorry, that’s just one angle too many. A bear with a plate of pancakes? Funny. A bear getting syrup out of a tree for his pancakes? Funny. A bear anxious about getting syrup out of a tree for his pancakes? You lost me. Why should the bear care if someone is going to catch him stealing syrup? He’s a bear. He’s even a tough bear, you can tell by the way he’s squinting, as if to say “yeah, you just try and stop me, sucka.” Maybe it’s the squinty eyes that ruins it for me. If he was looking around guiltily, I can kind of see how that would be funny. But this? I’m sorry.
Why couldn’t it just be a bear going about his business, getting syrup for his pancakes like you or I would get it out of the refridgerator? That’s pretty funny. But the element of criminal activity makes no sense. It doesn’t add to the joke, it muddies it.
MEANWHILE,
click for larger view
this cartoon would have made a good illustration for my Bourne v Long Kiss piece.
And now, some drawings of a bird flying through winter trees
From my eventually-to-be-completed graphic novel Feeder Birds.
The Spider-Man sketch
Spider-Man by Sam, age 3. This was his first-ever representational drawing.
In honor of ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
urbaniak‘s appearance today at the NYCC (with jacksonpublick , Doc Hammer and my good friend Mr. Steven Rattazzi) I here present the famous “Spider-Man” sketch, which James and I performed a couple of years ago at a similar event at MoCCA.
UPDATE: as one can see, I have finally figured out the “cut” function. Thank you ghostgecko.
The Spider-Man Sketch
DC vs DCU
Tonight’s bedtime conversation with Sam (5).
SAM. Is tomorrow a school day?
DAD. No. It’s Presidents’ Day. Do you know who the Presidents are?
SAM. Yes.
DAD. Yeah? Can you name one? Who was a President?
SAM. (patiently, as though to a dull toddler) George Washington.
DAD. Do you know what the President does?
This Sam is less clear on. Which is just as well at this embarrassing point in our nation’s history.
I start to say that if the United States is the DC Universe, you could look at George Washington as Superman, but then I realize that if I say that, the next question will be “Then who is Batman?” and I don’t have a clear answer for that.
Clearly, George Washington is Superman. He was the first, arguably the most important, debatably the best, and most importantly the “original.” But then, indeed, who is Batman? Is it Adams, contemporary of Washington and close second in defining the young nation’s ethos? Or is it, say, Lincoln, the most beloved of the presidents, the tall, dark, brooding loner president, the tortured insomniac, haunted by the deaths of his loved ones, the one who broke the rules for the sake of the greater good?
Does that make Wonder Woman Thomas Jefferson, the warrior for peace, architect of our most precious freedoms? Or is she more like Franklin Roosevelt in that regard, giving our enemies a bitter fight while generously giving our poorest and weakest a fighting chance of their own? That would make Truman Green Lantern, saving the world with his magical do-anything world-saving device.
And who would be an analog for colorless chair-warmers like Millard Fillmore and Chester Arthur? Are these men Booster Gold and Blue Beetle? Clearly Rorshach is Richard Nixon, Alan Moore practically begs us to see the parallels, but what of Kennedy, Nixon’s shining twin? Is that Ozymandius, or is he a simpler man, a purer spirit, someone like Captain Marvel? Or is he Superboy and his “best and brightest” cabinet the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st century?
And how to categorize corrupt, incompetent disasters like Grant, Harding, Hoover and Bush II? Is Reagan Plastic Man, effortlessly escaping ceaseless attack with a smile and a quip? And what about Johnson, weak on foreign policy but a genius in the domestic realm, who is that? Or William Henry Harrison, who caught pneumonia during his inaugural parade and died a month later? Or Grover Cleveland, who served, left office, then came back and served again?
Or perhaps the metaphor is imprecise, perhaps the US presidency is unlike the DCU after all — perhaps it’s more like the X-Men, where weak individuals are granted extraordinary powers and yet are still hampered by their combative attitudes toward each other and their under-developed social skills. In the X-Men you have heroes who might not turn out to be heroes after all. And vice versa.
Or maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction, perhaps the US presidents aren’t the “good guys” at all. While Bush II has so far shunned the metal mask and hooded cloak of Dr. Doom, he has certainly succeeded in turning the US into his own private Latveria. And any given Republican of the 20th century can lay claim to being the Lex Luthor of the bunch, brimming with brilliant, short-sighted schemes to make himself rich while destroying other people’s lives and property.
And, if they were given the choice, is there any serious doubt as to whether Americans would elect a comic-book character over a living, breathing human being?
My Supergirl
As a comics fan and the father of a young Supergirl-loving daughter, I have been following the recent controversy surrounding the recent appearance of Supergirl.
Recently, a meme has sprung up in response, wherein various artists have contributed their concepts toward a new vision of Kara, the last cousin of Krypton. Above is my effort.
I do not claim supremacy in the sequential arts.
You may click to see it larger.
UPDATE: Unable to leave poor enough alone, I have fiddled with the shading to make her a tad more realistically lit.
The Evil Tub of Goo
The man who started it all.
In the spring of 1940, an unidentified criminal fell into a tub of goo. From this tub of goo emerged The Joker, and the world has never been the same. Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, Solomon Grundy, Parasite, all fell victim, in one way or another, to tubs of goo. Christ, the Creeper fell into the same tub of goo as the Joker! You would have thought that having one person turn into a raving psycho would be enough for that company to stop manufacturing that particular brand of goo, but that’s corporate America for you.
(In the film Batman and Robin, even Poison Ivy falls into a tub of goo, although her comic-book counterpart did not seem to need to take it that far.)
Where would we be without tubs of goo? How many of our psychotics, mutants and monsters owe their existence to tubs of goo?
And not just villains, good guys too. Flash fell into a tub of goo too, and was struck by lightning to seal the deal. Metamorpho, Plastic Man, Swamp Thing — all goo-produced phenomena.
Over in the Marvel universe, in addition to having their own swamp thing called Man-Thing (who fell into the same tub of goo as Solomon Grundy but with vastly different effect) they actually have a tub of goo from outer space, one that will actively seek out people and jump on them, turning super-heroes bad and bad guys evil.
(It should be noted that the Marvel Universe seems to be plagued with radiation instead of tubs of goo, perhaps as a symptom of coming of age after the H-bomb testing began.)
Where is the anti tub-of-goo legislation? Or just lids, what about lids? Just put some goddamn lids on the tubs of goo, would that be so hard? Bruce Wayne needn’t have changed his life and become a fearsome creature of the night, he could have just sprung for some lids and his city would have been perfectly safe.
Artist of the day: Carlo Barberi
As I’ve noted in the past, my son Sam’s favorite TV show is Justice League Unlimited. The problem is, there are only a couple dozen episodes of Justice League Unlimited, and there are 365 days in a year. This creates a gap for Sam of Justice League Unlimited stories.
This gap is filled, somewhat, by the existence of Justice League Unlimited comics, which keep coming out even though the TV show ended its run last year. These comics, more often than not, are what I read to Sam at bedtime.
I know relatively little about the superhero comics biz, but I’m guessing that the job of “imitating the character designs of a TV show for a superhero pamphlet” is not the prime job for most comics artists. And it often shows in the sloppiness, abrasiveness and lack of coherence in these titles, which may seem like simple product to many artists and readers, but which form a vital link to another world for people like my son.
An exception, I’ve found, is Carlo Barberi, an artist I’d never heard of before buying Justice League Unlimited for my son, but who has quickly become one of my favorites. Click for larger views.
There’s something about the “plastic” qualities of the characters that matches the subject matter well, invites the reader in. It’s light, brightly lit and colorful. The poses are dynamic without being emphatic. There’s something a little “freeze-dried” about the line that makes it fun and pliable. And I like his page layouts; they have a fluidity and spareness of design that makes the action clear and lucid. Look at all that blank space; and yet it doesn’t feel “blank,” it lets the reader follow the action swiftly and easily (believe me, I’ve gotten such headaches from trying to follow the action in some comic books myself, much less trying to explain what’s going on to my son).
I love this panel of Dr. Fate in his office, the camera angle, the big blank ceiling, the magical, mystical objects floating in air, the colors, and then the humor of it being sold with Dr. Fate’s petty concerns.
Even better is this page where Blue Beetle is left on monitor duty. Bored to tears, he tries paddle-ball, trying on the other hero’s outfits (note that he’s already tried on Wonder Woman’s clothes before moving on to the Flash’s), and, finally, the purest expression of superhero boredom, googling himself. Again, the elegance and cleanliness of the designs helps sell the action. This page made me laugh out loud, even if Sam didn’t quite get all the jokes.
Speaking of action, here are two terrific pages. I love how Parasite is flinging Wonder Woman clear off the page (Barberi will often have characters’ faces disappear off-panel to create tension) and how he’s tilted the camera to make the action more chaotic. Then, at the other end of the story, the dry, unemphatic line and empty space provides an ironic counterpoint to the cataclysmic action of Steel crushing Parasite with the Daily Planet globe.
Finally, he seems to be a master at these moment-to-moment kind of exchanges. Sometimes for comic effect, sometimes for silent, understated drama, all these exchanges leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks (no small feat in this often frantic, overstated genre, believe me). Best of all (and I realize these are script issues, not drafting issues), all these beats work for character reasons — these beats arise out of conflict between personalities, not machinations of plot.
Avengers Defeat Galactus!
This was the scene early yesterday morning in Sam’s bedroom, where one of the most fearsome titans in the universe was soundly defeated by the Avengers, aided by members of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Ben Grimm stood proudly upon the stomach of the fallen giant and surveyed the scene with a calm wisdom while Iceman, Spider-Man, Logan and Bishop covered the lower half of this seemingly unbeatable foe.
The Hulk stomped out the eyes of the intergalatic plunderer and gave a triumphant roar of “Hulk smash!” while Professor Reed Richards plunged his elastic arm deep within Galactus’s ear to scramble his brains.
Among the fallen was a collection of villains formidable in their own rights, but puny mortals compared to the immense, god-like Galactus. Left to right: Sabretooth, Magneto, Dr. Doom (his gun still clutched in his cold, dead hand), Dr. Octopus and Juggernaut.
Iron Man was unable to participate in the attack on the supervillains, as he was out of scale. He had to be content with providing moral support from the headboard.