12/21/06
Happy Winter Solstice! Its all down hill from here, lovers of daylight!

I found the Doctor Who tag - so now I'm gathering "Whovians" as I do other niches. There is a method to my friend gathering.

Doctor Who - it must be acknowledged - is the perfect storytelling vehicle. Perfect. As a kind of experiment, I've been watching all the episodes while working on my mural.

Let me clarify what this means, to those of you who don't know as much as you should about Doctor Who - this means I'm watching over 25 years worth of a television series, all at once. I have a great video collection - all taken from MPT (once the preeminent Doctor Who supporter in all PBSdom). I am missing only 2 story arcs (Green Death, part of Frontios).
This Christmas I hope to get "Lost In Time" which collects the bits and pieces of lost episodes (the BBC did something stupid many years ago.. and threw away tons of film to make space for crap nobody ever requested to see again... meanwhile Doctor Who is over 40 years old, and a handful of those years are gone forever... this is akin to having burnt the gospels in order to store some recipes for apple brown betty).

Watching all of this Doctor Who has been sublime. I am now fairly convinced that Doctor Who is everything. I find validation for this idea in theories of a holographic universe - everything is in everything to begin with (a dog turd could just as well be everything, in other words)... but to focus on SO MUCH content has really been a trippy experience.

The Hokey Pokey is not what its all about, Doctor Who is.

I think most Doctor Who fans would love the opportunity to have done this, most could not achieve while maintaining a "life". Not to mention how pricey the videos are - its insane. You can by the whole 2005 season (12 episodes with extras) for the same price as 4 old story arcs from the 70's - what's wrong with this picture? I digress.

One of the cool things about being an artist with a large project under way - want to study up on something? - nab all the video or audio media (you only really get to listen, for the most part, anyway) and have at it. Want to refresh your mind on the Dark Tower series... all 250 some hours of it? Want to learn Spanish (by choppy osmosis)? Just get your library materials in order and go for it. Its rather difficult, if not impossible, to have this opportunity in any office setting. Certain projects become infused with the media you indulge in.. so my mural will always have that certain "air of the Doctor" about it for me.

I've always appreciated the 'play lists' provided by some writers or artists of comics, you get more out of the read when you know more about the tune and beat, or time traveling garbage bag/bubble wrap wearing monster story listening.. as the case may be.

I tend to do this - I'll burn myself out on Doctor Who, and not watch it for a couple of years, then we'll make up. I can't afford therapy, clearly.

-Ron

12/21/06
A beef with Fables.
I'm always surprised to see any comparison between this book and Sandman. Sandman was a damn fine book. Always. It was sublime.
Fables is an attempt at fairy tale postmodern soap opera - and its never succeeded to satisfy above maybe a 7 out of 10. I know he's not a bad artist - but Mark Buckingham always comes across as a fish out of water to me, he was the inker that made sense of Chris Bachalo - when he's drawing on his own, it always reads as 'inker fill-in duty' for incomplete pencils, not as a confident illustrators job done well.
The writing on Fables is mediocre, in my opinion. The source material is rich with history - and that history isn't built upon or illuminated. The writing seems to keep pushing the book into unnecessary corners - the adversary thing is dull and cliche - and constant foreboding about the end of worlds got old a few years ago on the book.

The covers, however, are just about the best, if not THE best, in comics.
This is what led me to pick up the recent stand-alone - that fantastic Santa Claus cover. Nobody does holiday issues anymore, and I decided to bite.

I'd rate the individual issue about a 6.. certainly not anything I'd say is worth 3 and a half bucks.

Vertigo has been hemorrhaging for a long time now, I feel. There have been so many desperate attempts to have a book that compares with (often spinning out of) Sandman. I hope something better comes along. Testament is the only thing I'm reading from them anymore - and I read that book in batches, the individual issues not quite up to my wanting to ingest them as soon as they hit the rack.
What was so great about Vertigo that ended? The days when Sandman, Doom Patrol, Shade, Preacher, Invisibles, and Swampthing were all chugging along strong...

I don't see how they can revive this sub-sect of DC - their main lines have gained in sophistication, and their 'alternative' books have lost their edge as they keep trying to duplicate books that have ended.

End of beef. Don't be surprised if I delete this - because I usually end up thinking I come across as a whiner and change my mind about making it public, if possible.

-R

12/12/06
Long time fan of comics and 1995 graduate of the Kubert School with a pseudo degree in drawing.

I didn't pursue a career in comics, but have been making a living as an artist since '97.

Currently I'm painting a 75' mural of international folktales for a children's library. Lemme know if you want to see some of it.

My attitude on reading comics shifts from guilty pleasure to smug assurance that I'm on the cutting edge of pop culture.
I pick up anything that Grant Morrison has a hand in, as well as Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Peter David, Joe Kelly and Alan Moore (whenever and wherever he shows up).

Comics I'm reading these days are:
Testament (which has gotten me into Rushkoff's books),
Marvel Civil War stuff (though I'm on the fence about it at times),
Black Panther (seriously good from the start),
Amazing Spiderman,
All Star Superman (!!!),
Astonishing X-Men,
Aquaman (though I understand its about to change hands),
Batman (until GM and AK shunted off on a 4 month vacation),
X-Factor,
Castle Waiting (Linda Medley is underrated - give this book a chance),
Ultimate FF (which I get in collections),
Walking Dead (a dream come true - I also get this book in collections),
Doc Frankenstein (possibly my favorite comic currently being published - long live Burleyman Comics),
NEXTwave,
Fell,
and others I'll think of and update on soon.