Stop Smiling

And so another Untrue Tale comes to a crashing conclusion:

Keep Smiling page 12

Hope you managed to hang on to your happy thoughts through that one. :)

Anyhoo, now that I'm living the high-flying life of a freelancer, I'm busier than ever, so your friend and mine Gabe Stein will again be taking over the weekly writer/artist chores on Untrue Tales for the time being.

Tune in next week for part two of The Hunter!

Don't be coy. You know you were just dying to find out how things are going with Simon Trask and the gang.

So another Zuda rejection slip came in this week. This one for a short story I did with Glen Walker called Hungry. You can check out more of Glen's stuff here.

This was supposed to be the kickoff story for a horror anthology written by Gabe Ostley and myself with a bunch of rotating artists. I guess the powers-that-be decided it would be too much of a logistical hassle to deal with paperwork and contracts for a whole passel of artists and individual properties. Who can blame them?

The idea was to have a sort of cryptkeeper character called Mr. Z introduce all the stories. Gabe drew up a bunch of intro pieces for the seven stories we wrote. Here's the one for Hungry:


















And you can read the story here.

Still a few more Zuda pitches with various folks clogging the pipeline. With any luck we'll hit the jackpot with one of 'em. Plans are afoot to start cranking up the ol' promoblitz machine for the latest from Gabe, Steve Steiner and yours untruly.

Keep your eyes on the internetz!

Still Here.

Hello again.

Yeah, not much time for blogging these days. Recently found out I'm getting laid off from my design job, which paradoxically has left me with less, rather than more, time on my hands. Doing that freelance scramble.

Despite my absence from the blogosphere, Keep Smiling has been trundling along with regular updates - you can find the latest page here:

Keep Smiling page 11

Some of you might have noticed the new addition of me and Gabe Ostley's rejected Zuda pitch Iguananauts to the main page.
























We amused ourselves to no end with this one. Perhaps you may find it amusing too. You can check it out at the link below:

Iguananauts!

We've got a bunch of other stuff in the works with various constellations of Zuda folks old and new. So keep your eyes trained on the horizon (actually the Zuda site might be a more logical place to train your eyes) for more crazy crap from the Hammer gang and friends in the near future. Hopefully.

Happy days and sleepy nights, folks!

Smile On

Well, hello there.

Time for another dose of Untrue Tales:

Keep Smiling page 7

So I've been catching up with Joss Whedon's latest doomed tv venture Dollhouse.



















Now that the show's been cancelled it's finally getting pretty good. Which is just a symptom of its cancellation really since they are now free to dispense with the stupid "mission of the week" mandate and concentrate on the good stuff.

The show was pretty much doomed from the get-go by that selfsame "mission of the week" format (hereafter referred to as MOTW). I recently watched the unused pilot which fox rejected in favor of the rejiggered MOTW, and it was miles better than the one that actually aired. All the Dollhouse conspiracy stuff is pretty interesting while pretty much every MOTW episode had been a big fat yawn. A lot of which is due to some weak writing, but after watching big blocks of episodes, I'm sorry to say that the lion's share of the blame here really falls squarely on Eliza Dushku's shoulders. She's really the weak link in this show that was created specifically as a vehicle for her talents. But, gee, it turns out those talents are pretty limited. In a show where she's supposed to essentially play a different character each week, and then eventually an entirely new character amalgamated from all her different imprints, our lead actress really seems capable of three basic character modes: tough talking chick with an attitude, bubbly airhead, or wooden uptight librarian. While the other actors manage to do some amazingly varied and subtle character work (Sierra and Victor are particularly agile at slipping in and out of their different personas), the show comes screeching to a halt everytime Echo is onscreen. It's a shame really, because in the last few episodes, Echo the character has finally started to emerge as something new and interesting, but Dushku just leaves us with an empty space. Oh well. All in all, I'm kinda glad the show got cancelled since some dark animal portion of my nerdbrain compels me to watch anything that Joss Whedon puts on screen and I'd rather he move on to something more solid. I must say I'm enjoying the wind-up to the big finale. As mentioned, since it's been cancelled all the good ideas that Whedon has been saving up are now coming fast and furious rather than being parcelled out between the dead spots of a longer run. I look forward to seeing how it all wraps up. That said, I wouldn't recommend the eventual DVD collection to anybody except the hardcore Whedonites who doubtless have no need of a recommendation anyway.

Finally finished reading Joe Eszterhas' autobiography Hollywood Animal this weekend.
























This came out a few years ago and I was waiting for the paperback, but a paperback never materialized. So I bought the hardcover for 5 bucks at the Strand bookstore this summer. I love the Strand bookstore. And I love lurid tales of Hollywood excess and this delivers the dirt in big honking shovelsful. I mostly enjoyed it, even though ol' Joe himself seems like kind of an asshole. Well, not even kind of. Just really an asshole. He has a very high opinion of himself. Also, he left his wife for her best friend while on a family vacation with the kids. Nice timing, Joe. At the end of it all, after fucking half the bimbos in L.A., drinking an ocean of liquor and smoking a million cigarettes, Joe gets cancer, finds Jesus, kicks the booze and the smokes, and lives happily ever after. Which is convenient for him. A big yawn for me.

Here's a sketch of old man Joe:
























Smoke 'em if you've got 'em!

Happy 2010!

Hey whaddayasay! It's the New Year!

I been too busy slacking off and doodling and dicking around to do much blogging over the holidays, but, just the same, a couple of pages of Untrue Tales have gone up in the interim:

Keep Smiling page 5

Keep Smiling page 6

I managed to get a nice bit of work done on my oh-so-secret project the last couple of weeks, but I still found time to read a holy assload of comics and see an unholy buttpile of movies during the holiday break.

Let's start with the flickers. Like I said, I saw a bunch of stuff, but my pick of the pack comes as a bit of surprise when looking over the list: The Time Traveler's Wife with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.

I'm a sucker for time travel stories and really dug the concept for this one. Eric Bana plays a normal guy who inexplicably travels back and forth through time through no fault of his own and with no control over where or when he travels. The film is basically a love story, and tells the tale of Bana's relationship with his wife (McAdams) as he time travels in and out of her 

life at various ages. I thought it was really well done, and both Bana and McAdams act up a storm. My girl didn't think much of it, but she's not much for any kind of nutty sci-fi rigamarole. I liked this best of all the movies I saw over the holiday.

Up in the Air is the movie all the critics are crowing about these days and it's pretty darn good. Handsome devil George Clooney is a guy whose job is to fly around the country firing people and collecting precious frequent flyer miles. Then he gets saddled with a new girl who wants to switch over to firing people via video conference. Much dry humor ensues. Clooney also has an affair with another frequent flying lady. Everybody's very charming and stuff and it's well-written and shot. It's quite entertaining. You should see it. But I don't really see why it's supposed to be so spectacularly awesome. The girl didn't think much of this one either. Oh, Jason Bateman is in this one which is always a plus. Good thing too, since he's in, like, every other movie these days.

Speaking of which, Couples Retreat was another reliable giggler. Jason Bateman gets more to do in this one and he is right in his wheelhouse playing a micromanaging husband trying to fix his stagnating marriage to Veronica Mars. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau do their thing as a couple of other husbands dragged along for couple counseling with their spouses. If you like their thing, you'll find it funny here too. I do and I did. Also along for the ride are Silk Spectre and Charlotte from Sex and the City who somehow seems to have managed to stay the same age while Sarah Jessica Parker has withered into the Wicked Witch of the West. Weird. There's also a fat black guy along on the trip who I've never seen before, but he's pretty funny too. He's probably buds with Vince Vaughn or something.

What else, what else... ah, The Invention of Lying with the great Ricky Gervais was also pretty good. Not quite the uproarious laughathon I was expecting but entertaining nonetheless. Ricky plays a guy in a world where everyone tells the truth, but he discovers how to lie, thereby becoming a big ol' prophet. The fun, unexpected bit is how the whole movie turns out to be a big thumb in the eye to organized religion which is not something you see too much of in mainstream hollywood romantic comedies. And here's where the movie stumbles, 'cause it's also trying to be a romantic comedy. Here's the thing: Ricky is hung up on Jennifer Garner who isn't interested in him 'cause he's short, fat and homely. The movie makes a big deal of how shallow she is, only concerned about what kind of genetic good looks her potential mate will pass on to her children. Does she learn her lesson and discover that good looks aren't all that matter? Take a guess. The problem here is that Jennifer Garner's character doesn't have anything to offer except her good looks either. Ricky goes on and on about how sweet and nice she is, but she really isn't. All she ever talks about is how she isn't interested in him because he's short and fat. She only ever pays him any attention after he starts telling his little fibs and gets all big and important. So the lesson becomes - looks don't matter as long as you're rich and influential, then you can get the bimbo you want. Which might be a true lesson, but still. Anyways, still a fun night at the movies. Ol' Rick is always good for an uncomfortable chuckle or two. I kinda think Jason Bateman might be in this movie for a minute or so too, but my memory is, y'know, spotty.

Crap. This is getting long. Let's go for a bit shorter and sweeter. Invictus. Pretty Okay. Morgan Freeman is Nelson Mandela. Slam dunk there. Matt Damon makes a good blonde rugby guy. Good feelings all around. Ever so slightly boring.

Extract, the latest from Mike Judge, starring (whaddayaknow) Jason Bateman, got pretty blah reviews when it came out a while back. I guess it's no classic, but I found it pretty funny. Completely forgettable though. Don't really remember much about it except Kristin Wiig is also in it. Plus J. Jonah Jameson. And a beardy Ben Affleck. I remember it was funny though.

Where the Wild Things Are. Verging on awesome. The Wild Things themselves are fucking fabulous. Standout terrific voice work from James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose and Paul Dano, with nice backup from....argh, what are their names? Idi Amin, the lady from all the Christopher Guest movies who isn't the lady from Glee, and Chris Cooper. Forest Whitaker! That's Idi Amin's name. I'll remember the Chris Guest lady too any minute now. Anyway, it's great. The kid is great. If you liked this book as a kid you'll probably dig it. My girl didn't get it at all. Fantasy is not her bag, you see. Whaddayagonnado?

The Hurt Locker. Pretty fuckin' great. The three main guys are rock solid. Jesus Christ, war doesn't really look like any kind of fun at all. Even though that one guy seems to think so. He is one fucked up dude. And whose fault is that? That's for smarter motherfuckers than me to debate. Didn't even try to get the girl to see this one.

It's Complicated. Alec Baldwin is a god among men. And Meryl Streep ain't chopped liver either. I liked this movie better than Avatar which probably means I'm getting really fucking old and no doubt invalidates my opinion for anyone reading these reviews. Anyway, the cheese gets lathered on pretty thick towards the end, but Baldwin is so fucking cool I didn't even care. Steve Martin also has a funny scene or two, but dear God, what has the Stevester done to his face? Fuckin' guy looks like he walked right out of Madame Tussauds. Creepy. The girl liked this one too. But she also thought they could have shaved off quite a bit of cheese.

Just 'cause I have so much nongaymanlove love for Alec Baldwin I had to watch an old gem from back in the day: Malice. This is a thriller with skinny Alec Baldwin and pre-surgery Nicole Kidman. It is awesome. And it's been so long since I seen the original I didn't even remember the twist. Bill Pullman is in it too. Whatever happened to that guy? Alan Sorkin wrote at least part of the script and it's pretty snappy. Especially Alec Baldwin's God Complex speech. Gooood stuff.

Okay, that's about all I remember of the movies I saw, although I undoubtedly forgot one or two already. I barely retain any new memories past a few days anymore. On to comics. Got a bunch of nice trade paperback collection for Christmas.

So I finally read Final Crisis.

I thought it was pretty darn cool. Sure it didn't all completely make sense, but it was entertaining enough to make up for any rough spots. Great art, especially the Doug Mahnke/Christian Alamy stuff. I found it easy enough to follow and I'm fairly clueless about DC continuity. SPOILER ALERT: I was, however, a little confused by the death of Batman stuff. I had a vague idea he died in his own book, blown up on a boat or something, but here something else happens. END SPOILER ALERT. Oh well, whatever. 

Batman: The Cat and The Bat by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire.

Okay, this one is a pure cheesecake catfight between Batgirl and Catwoman. In one sequence they actually fight completely naked in an S & M club. I would be totally embarrassed if anyone ever caught me reading this. I'm ashamed to say I still kinda liked it. It's funny, fast-paced and Kevin Maguire's art has never been better. He should do more stuff. Stuff I can read in public without feeling like a 14 year old pervert.

The Question: the Five Books of Blood by Greg rucka and various artists.

This one is really great. I didn't pick this up when it initially came out because I vaguely recall hearing bad things about it, but after reading it I can't imagine why anyone would have a problem with this. I really dig the character of Renee Montoya. Gotham Central was one of my all-time favorite books. Very bummed it got cancelled. I love Denny O'Neill and Denys Cowan's run on The Question too. I think it was a very cool idea to have Montoya take up the mantle of the Question. I wish DC would collect just the Montoya/Question parts of 52 'cause I'd love to read that story, but I have no interest in all that other stuff around it. Anyways, this little story is a great one about Montoya/Question tracking down something called the Crime Bible and a martial arts cult that has grown up around it. Cool ass-kicking. Cool soul-searching. Very solid art from all the different artists. And Batwoman shows up too. I checked out the first issue of the Rucka/JH Williams Batwoman story in Detective Comics and that looks freakin' great too. Apparently, the Question's story is continuing as backup pieces in Detective too. I'll buy the trades when they come out. I understand Rucka is gonna get his own Batwoman book soon to continue all this stuff which is a good thing. It's kind of a pain to have to track these characters through all these different series. Just give Rucka one book whe

re he can tell all these stories so I can buy it and be happy already.

Finally, the latest trade of Scalped - High Lonesome continues the parade of awesomeness from Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera. 

This is first-rate, pitch-black crime writing with a unique perspective and a keen sense of place. Aaron's writing is razor-sharp with dialogue that rings true as a bell.  And Guera's art is crazy beautiful. The backgrounds are as alive as the characters. Even the sound effects are perfect. This is comics at their very best right here.

Okeydokes, that's it for me this time. Here's a sneek peek at a little thing I'm working on:

Hope 2010 brings good things and happy times, pardners!

Smiley Christmas

Happy Holidays!

Here's your latest page of Untrue Tales:

Keep Smiling page 4

So I ran right out and saw James Cameron's Avatar this weekend.



















Pretty disappointing, sorry to say. I'd seen the 20 minute preview a few months ago and left that feeling fairly unimpressed, but I'd been heartened by the overwhelmingly great reviews it got upon release. i really don't know that the reviewers were thinking. Sure, it's real pretty to look at, but I really had the feeling that I'd seen it all before. The plot is lifted wholesale from Dances With Wolves. You can see every plot point coming from a mile away. There's a cool chase where the hero flees from nasty CGI creatures, each one, bigger and more fearsome than the one before. But then I already saw that in Star Trek. There's a cool battle sequence with robot armor. But I already saw that in District 9. As a bonus, there's an incredibly heavy-handed Iraq-war analogy that is so groaningly obvious it loses any impact it might have had. The sci-fi metaphor thing was handled with far more subtlety in, again, District 9. The 3D was cool, but I didn't really get a sense of it being a great leap forward from Beowulf. I will say that the Navi animation was really well done, and their faces were incredibly expressive, but it doesn't really do much for me when the characters themselves are all cardboard cutouts in service of a dusty second-hand plot. Steven Lang has a nice turn as the villainous Military commander though. And Sigourney Weaver seems to have somehow stopped aging. Anyways, it was kind of a bummer. A technological achievement, I'm sure, but somewhere along the way Cameron forgot to come up with a compelling story to go along with all his cool CGI creatures. Oh well.

Read another two-dollar street-seller special this week, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins.



















I'd read recommendations of the movie based on the novel from both George Pelecanos and Ed Brubaker, a couple of writers whom I adore, so when I saw the book on the street I snatched it right up. It's a cool, fast read. Great dialogue and a nasty little plot about gun dealers and bank robbers. Not an ounce of fat on it, just lean mean and right to the point. Worth picking up if you come across a copy. Now I'll have to track down the film.

Here's a merry xmasshole for ya:

























That's it for me. Hope everybody has a good ol' holiday and a happy new year!

Keeping on Keeping Smiling

It's snowing in Oslo and another page of Untrue Tales is up:

Keep Smiling page 3

This week I read Stephen King's latest - Under The Dome.
























This is good stuff. King's best in a long while. King is my favorite author and almost never fails to be massively entertaining (except maybe for Gerald's Game, that one never really did it for me), but with Under the Dome he's working near his peak. This one's probably in my top ten favorites of King's books, up there with Desperation and The Shining although not quite scaling the delirious heights of IT, The Talisman or The Stand (my favorite book of all time). Of his recent stuff, I really liked Cell and Duma Key but Lisey's Story was a bit of a letdown as it seemed like King was treading old ground with that one. Interstingly (to me at least), I thought Lisey's Story would have been a better book if King had actually excised all the supernatural stuff which just seemed like another riff on Rose Madder (which I liked).

But back to Under the Dome; the title is right on the nose - the plot concerns a small town in Maine that is suddenly and inexplicably encased in a transparent forcefield that follows all the town's borders, cutting it off from the outside world. What follows is a spin on Lord of the Flies as the town's second selectman Big Jim Rennie manipulates the fears of the populace to conslidate power. Rennie is a great villain, truly a guy you love to hate. Terrible things happen, most of which can be laid squarely at Big Jim's feet. King does a masterful job of setting up the situation and characters like a big apocalyptic chess board and I found myself writhing on the couch in horrid anticipation as inevitable doom mvoes inexorably foreward. Lots of good folks to root for and plenty of bad guys to fear in this one. And King sure isn't getting sentimental in his later years. A lot of very bad things happen to a lot of good people here, and as per usual King makes you really care about his characters before he ruthlessly cuts them down. A really great, entertaining book.

On the movie front, against my better judgment I went ahead and saw 2012, the latest disaster spectacle from Roland Emmerich.
























As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it is magnificently stupid, but since I was expecting that going in, the ridiculousness of John Cusack outracing earthquakes and volcanoes in various limousines, buses and small planes was more entertaining than annoying. And the effects are truly spectacular. The destruction of Los Angeles was particularly breathtaking. Cusack is a pretty reliable actor and makes an engaging hero here. I'd actually say this might be Emmerich's best film as it manages to stay generally entertaining throughout the running time. Usually I find that his film's have a great set-up (the first hour of Independence Day is terrific) but collapse under massive stupidity and cliche in the second half (again Indepence Day). 2012 is pure stupid right from the beginning, so as long as you check your brain at the door and have a taste for spectacular end of the world destruction it's a grand old time at the movies.

Finally, here's a sketch from a little something I'm kicking around these days:



















Have a good one!

December Smile

Ah, December. The last month of the year. Last month of the decade even. Dang, but that time do fly....

Here's the latest page of Untrue Tales for ya:

Keep Smiling page 2

This week I read The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.























This one won the pulitzer prize not too long ago which is generally a pretty good indicator of quality. And I'd say this is a quality book, although not one that had a tremendous emotional impact on me. The title character is a grossly overweight, role-playing, sci-fi reading and writing nerd from New Jersey by way of the Dominican republic. It starts off as a story about Oscar's fruitless quest to lose his virginity but morphs into a tale of his tragic family history and their roots in the Dominican Republic under the oppressive regime of the dictator Trujillo. The stuff about life under Trujillo in the DR is pretty interesting (and pretty horrible) and Diaz has an engaging writer's voice - very casual with constant references to Marvel Comics, Tolkien and sci-fi trivia. But when it comes down to it, Oscar himself isn't all that engaging and his life ends up being something less than wondrous. I was a bit disappointed. This never really grabbed me in the same way as, say, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, or Middlesex, or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It's worth a read though, just for the insight into a place and people that I hadn't heard much about before.

On the movie front, I finally saw Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a theatre director whose life falls apart while he documents it in an ever expanding play.























This is seriously strange, deep and heavy stuff about life and the choices one makes and where they lead. Here they lead to a lot of depressing shit. Now I generally love me some Charlie Kaufmann. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my all-time favorites along with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Groovy, mind-bending films that are unlike anything else out there. This one is in the same wheelhouse, but it's much heavier and much darker and requires a lot more from the audience. More than I've got to give, really. The gist of things is, Hoffman is having problems with his wife who doesn't have much respect for him as an artist, so he decides to put on an autobiographical play about the human condition with himself and everyone he knows as characters - a cast list that constantly expands. He has a guy that plays him in the play and an actress that he has an affair with that plays herself and an assistant that he has another affair with that he then casts with another actress while the assistant has an affair with the guy that's playing Hoffman in the play. Then Hoffman gets burned out so he hires Dianne Weist to play him directing the play so he can take a break and play the cleaning woman. Also, one character gets a great deal on the house because it's on fire a little bit and lives there for years while the house burns. It's that kind of movie. I found the whole thing extremely interesting and kind of boring at the same time. I had the constant feeling that I was missing something. That big ideas were going over my head. I'm the kind of guy that mostly skates on the surface of things. I'm not all that deep and I don't really like to think too hard. After watching the movie, I had to go read a bunch of reviews to see what other people thought was going on. The reviews were pretty much equally divided into two camps - those that thought it was a brilliant masterpiece and those that thought it was a pretentious pile of shit. I can sympathize with both sides. I didn't really get the movie, but I don't think Kaufmann is just being a blowhard and disappearing up his own ass. I just think his ideas might be a bit too deep and heavy for the average bear. Me included. It just didn't work on the level I like to be entertained on. Can't really recommend this one except for serious Kaufmann aficionados who're looking for a challenge. It's a long slog and will likely make you depressed as fuck. My girl gave up after about 45 minutes. It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with next.

On a lighter note, I just read the latest Jack of Fables trade in the bath - The Big Book of War.
























I love this series. It's a fun, lightweight companion to Fables and the writers do a great job of keeping Jack likable despite the fact that he's pretty much a gigantic, self-absorbed asshat in every way. Big fun for Fables fans. If you're not reading either of these series, you're missing out. Start with Fables, and once you're hooked, move on over to Jack.

Sketchy:
























Bye for now!