More Karen, More Babblin'

Ah, Monday again. Oof.

So here's another page of Untrue Tales:

Karen Comes Clean page 9

So I had a fairly lazy weekend laying around reading comics and watching movies.

I went ahead and read Asterios Polyp as I was threatening to do last week.























It was pretty great, I admit. Books like these make me feel slightly dumb though. Kinda like the main character makes everybody he meets feel. I think there's more to this book than my intellectual laziness can handle. There's all sorts of symbolism and shit that requires a level of thinking that's slightly beyond my reach. Mazzucchelli once again takes his art to a new level of cartoony abstraction, but it's all very much in service to his theme and his story. It certainly works in the context of what he's doing. There's humor here. There's heartbreak. There's examination of the Big Questions. I suspect that this book is Art with a capital A. It's not a difficult read though. There's plenty to enjoy and admire right there on the surface. And probably a whole lot more in the subtext if one cares to delve deeper. Not me though. I generally stick to the shallows.

Reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what it'd be like if Mazz had drawn it in his more figurative style from back in the day. Mostly, I think it wouldn't have worked as well. The abstraction and caricature is pretty key to the whole package. Interesting stuff. This is something I'll no doubt return to quite a few times for rereading and examination.

Personally, I look to comics for more escapist entertainment than dissection of big issues. My all-time favorites tend to be the genre stuff. Superheroes. Crime. Horror. I like a thrill. I like a pretty picture. Is Asterios Polyp a better book than Batman Year One? Probably. But Mazz's Batman and Daredevil stuff will always be closer to my heart.

Still Asterios Polyp is well worth reading. Monday morning is probably not the optimal time to be considering its larger merits. I'm actually not precisely awake yet.

On the flip side, I also read my newly purchased collection of All-Star Batman and Robin having previously picked these up as singles.
























I kinda thought these would read better as a collection, but they really don't. This is a really weird book. I still kinda like it, but I find myself continually scratching my head about what Miller's up to here. The whole tone of the book is bizarre with the constant repetitive captions and extremely over-the-top dialogue. Plenty of odd moments that pull you out of the story. For instance, why is Black Canary tending bar in her full-on Black Canary outfit, including mask? Pretty pictures by Jim Lee, but the art suffers from occasional stiffness upon closer examination. Oh well. It's still intriguing enough to keep me reading, but this thing doesn't even approach the craft of Year One.

So in conclusion, Asterios Polyp is better than All-Star Batman and Robin. I know. It's a shocker.

Moving on, the most fun I had all weekend was at District 9.
























I won't go on too much about it here, since so much has been written about it elsewhere, but suffice it to say it lives up to the hype. Best science fiction film in ten years. Maybe the best since Blade Runner. I loved it.

After watching it, I was inspired to go back and watch the mother of modern sci-fi movies, Alien.























Boy, does it hold up well. Hard to believe it came out in 1979. It really doesn't seem dated at all. Watching it, I tried to remember what it was like watching it for the first time. That must've been some scary shit. There really hadn't been anything like it before. Weird to see Sigourney Weaver looking so crazy young even though she was already 30 at the time. Looks more like 19. All the acting and dialogue is first rate here. What a fucking classic.

I had so much fun rewatching Alien that I kept right on going and checked out Aliens too. Fun to notice that Cameron opens the film with the final shot of Ripley in the suspended animation capsule from the original. This movie is still all kinds of great too. Some clunky dialogue among the marines but it's all overshadowed by the sheer narcotic awesomeness of Bill Paxton's line-readings. That dude is the MVP of the movie. It's all good though. Interesting to notice all the touchstones that Cameron revisits from the first film, covering all the bases but giving everything a new twist and ramping up the stakes. These two movies really have become the template for all the (must be) hundreds of creature feature flicks where a monster picks off a ragtag bunch of characters one by one.

Fun stuff. Now go see District 9 if you haven't yet. It's almost as good as the first two Alien flicks.

I think I'll go watch Blade Runner again now...

Ooops, almost forgot! Here's a sketch:























Bye now!

Frank Miller Doesn't Like Me

First things first - a new Untrue Tales page is up:

Karen Comes Clean page 8

So I just got back from a perfectly lovely trip to New York City. Had a nice meeting with the Zuda guys, drank a few beers with two-thirds of Team Hammer and the Timony twins and half of their better halves.

Plus I came home with a stack of books as long as my arm.

One such book is EISNER/MILLER, a fascinating conversation with two of the giants in the comic book field, Frank Miller and Will Eisner.























Highly recommended reading for anyone fooling around in the comic biz or really anyone just interested in some of the thinking behind two giants of the industry. I read it on the plane ride home.

Anybody whose spent any time reading my stuff is probably aware that I'm a pretty huge Miller fan. His work has had tremendous influence on my own noodlings here on the fringes of the comic book world. Reading the book, I was a kind of surprised by what comes across as Miller's contempt for the superhero readership (of which I count myself a card-carrying member). One really gets the feeling that he regards the majority of superhero fans as a collection of whiners who can't stand the idea of anyone messing with their childhood icons.

He seems to be mostly referring to the reception that The Dark Knight Strikes Again received as not being as good as The Dark Knight Returns because it wasn't just the same old thing over again.
























I'm more in the camp that thinks the problem with DKSA wasn't that it was different, just that it wasn't as good. I think it really suffered from the computer coloring and the fact that the ending didn't make much sense (to me at least). The original Dark Knight was successful in large part because it was completely different from the Batman comics of the time. It completely changed the way Batman was perceived and presented from that point on. The sequel was just sort of... odd. I still find it fascinating though, even if only as a failed experiment. Every so often I read it again, just to see if my opinion will change. Upon repeated readings, mostly what bothers me is the color. I don't really know if it's the case or not, but it seems like Lynn Varley was just learning how to use the computer as a coloring tool and DKSA was a test case. It looks like somebody just fumbling around with Photoshop filters. Ah well, this is an old argument for everybody so I won't keep rehashing it any longer here. I think I'll go read it again.

That's my fascination with Miller. I'll even read the things I don't like over and over in the hope that I missed something the first few times.

I have been enjoying All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. It took a few issues for me to get into it. At first it really seemed like Miller had completely lost his mind. But if you just sit back and go with the crazy it's a pretty fun book. In the context of his comments in EISNER/MILLER it seems pretty obvious that ASBRBW is just Miller enjoying himself by poking superhero fanboys with a sharp stick while enticing them with the carrot of Jim Lee's art. I like it though. I think the parody works better with Lee's traditional superhero artwork rather than Miller's own increasingly simplified cartooning.


















That brings up another interesting thing that Miller talks about in the book - how he's become more interested in simplified cartoonish images rather than the kind of Neal Adams-inspired illustrative linework that marked his earlier work.

I rather miss the more detailed stuff. For my tastes, Miller's art reached it's pinnacle in the first Sin City book where it balanced on the edge of intricate linework and abstraction.
























Since then, it's evolved more and more into broad simplification and has lost some of the beauty of the linework without really gaining that much energy.

























I kind of feel the same way about David Mazucchelli's stuff. He is probably my all-time favorite artist and I think he reached his absolute peak right around Batman Year One and Big Man from Rubber Blanket - that perfect balance between detail and abstraction.






















For me, City of Glass tipped a bit too far over into simplification.






















This is all completely subjective personal taste of course. And Asterios Polyp is in that fat stack of books I brought home with me, so maybe I'll think that's just as brilliant as everybody else does.

I should mention, that I am a big fan of the more cartoony and stylized artwork in many cases. Kyle Baker is a big hero of mine and I absolutely adore his cartooning.
























Darwyn Cooke is another favorite.




















His work took a little time to grow on me, but I love it more every time I look at it.

I find the question of balance between detail and simplification, between realistic and cartoony images extremely interesting. In my own artwork, I find it more difficult to draw in a cartoony style and achieve a result that I'm happy with. I'm striving for (and mostly failing to achieve so far) more of an economy of line. It seems like this is something that a lot of artists move toward as their individual drawing styles evolve. At first glance it might seem like a time-saver - less detail equals less drawing - but the more I get into it, the more I appreciate the aesthetics of a spare line rather than a million hatches and squiggly details. It's that balance, that fine balance that the best artists achieve. At this point, I've got a long way to go. But I'm having fun getting there.

Okay, there's my ruminations on EISNER/MILLER and some of the stuff it made me think about. Mostly though, it just makes me feel like DRAWING.

Have a heckuva week.

Karen Don't Come

Sorry, Untrue Believers!

I'm out and about and slacking right on off in an international jet-set way, so no new page this week, I'm afraid.

Go watch the awesome Jean-Claude Van Damme movie JCVD instead. The Muscles from Brussels should make all his movies in French from now on. Apparently he could act all along. Just not in English.

New page next week. Promise!

This is not Karen...

... but you can find Karen on the latest page of Karen Comes Clean!

Page 7

Enjoy the last day of August!

What Comes Around

Karen! That's what!

Karen Comes Clean page 6

And a lidda bit o' sketch action for ya on this fine Monday morn:


















Been a good weekend. Did a little writing. Did a little layouting. Ate some fine food. Drank some good beer. And all sorts of stuff is starting to come together nicely.

Also, started watching that show In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne. Good stuff so far. Lots of characters that need a good old-fashioned smack in the kisser. And of course, I have a certain fondness for folks named Gabe.

Have it good!

Still Coming

It's Monday again, so it's time for the latest page of Untrue Tales:

Karen Comes Clean page 5


And here's a simple sketch:

























So this weekend I culminated a journey that began in 1982 when I was a merely a wee lad. I finally finished playing Ultima 9, the final game in the Ultima series.
























These were my favorite games when I was a kid and I have fond memories of banging through Ultima 1 through 4 on my old Apple II+. These were Dungeons and Dragons-style roleplaying games where you played a hero called the Avatar and wandered around a fantasy world called Britannia (well, Sosaria first, Britannia later) with a group of warrior/wizard companions fighting orcs and various other nasty D&D type beasties. I sure did love 'em.

But time moved on and I didn't play much videogames as a teenager and I never even had another computer until about 1996 when my wife finally bought one for school. At the time, I told her I had no interest in a computer and would probably never use it. Duh.

But lo and behold, I was browsing through the Virgin Megastore and came across Ultima 8. So I picked it up on a whim thinking I'd spend a few hours revisiting my childhood fantasy world. Well, I was blown away by this new game. It was miles ahead of the last game I'd played over a decade before. So then I picked up a collection of the entire Ultima Series up to that point and played through the whole shamoley again - 1 through 7. Ultima 7 was just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen. There was an entire world to get lost in. I was hooked.

So then, Ultima 9 came out. But it didn't work on my computer. I couldn't really justify an upgrade to play one dumb computer game so that was that. When it finally came time to get a new computer, I wound up with a mac and unfortunately the Ultima series stopped being mac compatible after the first 4 or 5 games. So I was shit out of luck.

Until last year, when my wife came home with an old laptop PC she bought at work for 100 bucks. At last, I could finally complete my quest.

So now I've been playing Ultima 9 off and on for a few months (I don't really have much time for videogames). It's a great game. The thing is like ten years old, but it holds up pretty well against what little I've seen of the current stuff. An entire seamless world that you can run around in without load screens or anything. And I mean an ENTIRE fully rendered round world that you can sail a ship on from pole to pole. And last night, I finished the game. So now I'm done. The world of Britannia is saved at last and somewhere an eleven year old me is happy as a clam.

Now I'm gonna play Fallout 3.

Geek out.

Karen Comes Again

Hi folks!

I'm back and so is Untrue Tales. Check out the latest page:

Karen Comes Clean page 4

So I had a perfectly lurvely time lounging around on the stony sands of Grekenland. Nothing to do but drink beer, eat tzatziki and read books.

Read four really good ones:
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill























Hill is the son of Stephen King, one of my all-time favorites, though you wouldn't know it from the book cover. Seems ol' Joe is making his own way which is to be applauded. However, I gotta say the kid writes just like his old man. Heart-Shaped Box is horror in classic King tradition and reads like it could have been written by King himself. Way I see it, that's all good. I can't get enough of creepy thrillers. This one's got well-drawn characters and a terrific villain. It even kicks off with an Alan Moore quote. Looking forward to more from Joe Hill. I heard somewhere he's got a comic book out too...

Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh was the next book I read.


















Highly entertaining, kinda disposable novel about Hollywood cops. Fast-paced, light, with a bunch of engaging good and bad guys. Nothing memorable, but a fine beach read.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane was the best of the bunch.
























A truly epic novel centering around the Boston Police strike of 1917 and thereabouts. Labor unions, racism, romance, anti-communist witch hunts, riots, bone-crushing violence and Babe Ruth. What's not to love? This book reminded me of nothing less than The Godfather. It's that epic. Martin Scorcese will probably make a movie out of it. I just hope he doesn't cast DiCaprio as the hero, who's supposed to be a 6 foot-four barrel-chested Irishman. But he probably will. Anyway, this one's not to be missed.

Finally, One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson is the sequel to her celebrated Case Studies mystery centering on the character of Jackson Brodie.























This one's set in Edinburgh and is kicked off by an incident of Road Rage that sets all the quirky characters spinning onto their intersecting paths. Hugely funny and intricately plotted. Another keeper.

So that's what I did on my vacation. Hope ya'll had a good summer too!

Oh yeah, here's a sketch:
























Toodles!