Santa Contra El Estrangulador

It's Christmas time again, which means it's time for me to put together another holiday mix to annoy... er, amuse my brothers. Here's this year's track listing.

1. Richard Pryor, "Black Messiah"
2. Kate Rusby, "Here We Come A-Wassailing"
3. Tripod, "O Holy Night"
4. Elvis Presley, "The First Noel"
5. Pomplamoose (with Wade Johnston), "O Come, All Ye Faithful"
6. Sinead O'Connor, "Silent Night"
7. Futurama dialogue, "X-Mas Eve..."
8. Bob Rivers, "The Twisted Chipmunk Song"
9. Bob Rivers, "Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire"
10. Rosie Thomas, "Christmas Don't Be Late"
11. Richard Cheese, "Christmastime is Here"
12. Futurama dialogue, "Just be back by sundown..."
13. Los Straitjackets, "Here Comes Santa Claus"
14. Divide and Kreate, "Blitzkrieg Santa"
15. Nerf Herder, "Santa Has a Mullet"
16. Fountains of Wayne, "The Man in the Santa Suit"
17. Futurama dialogue, "We brought your mail...."
18. Loo and Placido, "Horny Christmas"
19. Stephen Colbert and John Legend, "Nutmeg"
20. Jeff MacDougall, "Becky, the Office Party Drunk Girl"
21. Avenue Q, "Holi-Daze"
22. The Hives and Cyndi Lauper, "A Christmas Duel"
23. Futurama dialogue, "The holiday season..."
24. Parry Gripp, "Oh No, It's Christmas"
25. Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "X-mas Time (It Sure Doesn't Feel Like It)"
26. Austin Lounge Lizards, "X-Mas Time for Visa"
27. Gary Hoey, "You're A Mean one, Mr. Grinch"
28. June Christy, "The Merriest"
29. Bing Crosby, "Mele Kalikimaka"
30. The Six Million Dollar Man, "Elves' Revolt"
31. Tracy Jordan, "It's A Jordan Christmas!"

This year's mix gets off to a slow start but it's about 50% less annoying than last year's mix. And it's got a much spiffier cover, too! There's a higher resolution of the cover art over on my DeviantArt page.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

If you are looking for some truly awful audio to torment people with this holiday season, may I recommend Six Million Dollar Man: Hear Four Exciting Christmas Adventures? It's an old storybook record from the '70s and you haven't lived until you've heard Steve Austin lay the smack down on eco-terrorists and communist elves who've teamed up to melt the north pole. All four tracks are downloadable from Joey deVilla's blog.

Tags: Christmas, drawing board

The Neighborhood of Make-Believe

I had originally intended to do another series of "What I've Been Reading" posts this weekend, but then WQED Pittsburgh decided to reassemble the original "Neighborhood of Make-Believe" set from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and open it to the general public for tours. My brother and his girlfriend were visiting from out of town and looking for something to do, so we went along. I took my camera, of course.

More images in my flickr photostream, as usual.

Tags: photography, Pittsburgh

Green Devil Face

The first time I became aware of James Edward Raggi IV was when a friend pointed me at his wonderfully bizarre Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra. I downloaded it immediately and spent hours rolling up bizarre monsters for D&D game. My only complaint? Not enough tables for the 30-sided die.

James also publishes Green Devil Face, a nifty little OSR fanzine that always contains something I can use in my games. A few months ago, he announced that he was taking submissions for Green Devil Face #4 — and for the first time, he was taking art submissions. So I decided to see what I could throw together.

The titular "Green Devil Face" is a reference to the classic first edition Tomb of Horrors, which featured a deadly trap disguised as an elaborate archway in the shape of, well, a green devil face. I wanted to create something that evoked the same sense of trouble and adventure. I came up with some doodles at PodCamp Pittsburgh, and after some refinements I wound up with the following image today.

(You can see a high-resolution version over on my deviantART page.)

I started off by scanning in my original sketch, blowing it up to an appropriate size, printing it out and then refining it on the lightbox. The pencils turned out nicely — too nicely to risk ruining them with a sloppy inking job, so I wound up doing the inking with on tracing paper with a brush pen.

The green color is actually a green ink wash I dashed off with a sumi brush and scanned in. The coloring and shadowing was done in Photohop, with a textured parchment overlay I purchased from iStockPhoto. The color ground is built up from my Bloodstayne brushes, and the logo is a font I purchased from Fonts.com months ago and haven't found a use for until now (Sinzano, IIRC).

This all came together rather quickly over the course of a few days and I'm pleasantly surprised by how nicely it turned out.

Tags: drawing board, games

Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand

at the Andy Warhol Museum through January 31

Several of the pieces on display at the Warhol proudly proclaim "repetition works." Perhaps the organizers of this exhibition should have remembered a different maxim: "familiarity breeds contempt."

Let's face it, Shepard Fairey's work is slick, glib, and shallow. I don't mean this as an insult — his chosen method if dissemination makes those qualities virtues. When the goal is to attract the attention of a passing pedestrian or motorist, simple and direct is the best approach. When Fairey's art is experienced at this level repetition does work, with comprehension and appreciation setting in as individual pieces are gradually encountered over the course of days, weeks, months, years.

But these virtues can become flaws — the problem with "Supply & Demand" is that there is too much Shepard Fairey on display. Visitors are confronted with dozens of minor variations on the same shallow themes, when one or two examples might suffice. The completism on display is laudable but it does the work a disservice by constantly drawing attention to the constant repition of the same handful of motifs with little variation of the underlying message. (Fairey does occasionally try to make his work seem deeper by passing it off as a phenomenological experiment, but frankly his manifestoes read like pomo claptrap designed to impress grant committees. Or to get the culture cops on his side when he's eventually busted for vandalism.)

Fortunately, despite these flaws Shepard Fairey is an accomplished graphic artist and approaching his work from a design perspective can be extraordinarly rewarding. His current penchant for baroque orientalism is refreshing and can reward deep study. On the other hand, if you're unable to approach the work from this perspective you may find the show somewhat lacking.

"Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand" is on display at the Andy Warhol Museum through January 31, 2010.

Tags: fine art, Pittsburgh, Shepard Fairey

Villains, United

Marvel's "Dark Reign" storyline has a few major structural problems.

First, there's the sheer inadvisability of following up a year-long storyline about heroes possibly being replaced by evil version of themselves with another year-long storyline about heroes definitely being replaced by evil versions of themselves. Yes, it helps underscore how dire a situation Marvel's heroes have found themselves in, but it also risks boring the audience and also neutering the Skrulls and Thunderbolts by overexposing their central premises.

But the bigger problem is that "Dark Reign" has effectively neutered Marvel's supervillains. Think about it — what have the Dark Avengers done to distinguish themselves from their New and Mighty counterparts? They're still fighting (other) supervillains and saving the world week in and week out. Heck, in some ways, they're actually an improvement on their predecessors. I don't see Norman Osborn throwing American citizens into an extradimensional prison without a trial. At their worst, they seem utterly concerned about containing casualties in their battles, but they don't seem to be racking them up at an unreasonable rate either.

So if the Dark Avengers and the regular Avengers are functionally equivalent, do we really care that the fake Ms. Marvel is a manipulative slut, that Spider-Man has more pills in his system than Anna Nicole Smith, or that the fake Wolverine is a former murderer (albeit one who's killed a lot fewer people than his father)? If anything, their impure motivations make these characters more interesting to read about.

Marvel seems to have belatedly realized this and is allowing a little old school villainy to emerge outside of the core Dark Reign books — the fake Ms. Marvel, for instance, gets to be gloriously evil in her own title even if she's a team player over in Dark Avengers. They've also released several mini-series showcasing their villains at their absolute worst. I'd like to discuss two of those today.

Spoilers ahoy.

Lethal Legion #1-3

Zodiac #1-3

Thing About My Baby, It Don't Matter If She's Black Or White

So, Nekra. Judging from her depiction in Lethal Legion (and the appearance of her "daughter" in Zodiac), there's no one at Marvel who remembers that she's an albino black woman and not a pale white chick. Which is amazing, because this is the only part of her origin that matters. Well, except for her parents being exposed to radiation. And teaming up with the Mandrill. But you know what I mean.

Tags: Marvel

Two Minis by Matt Wiegle

Here are two minis by cartoonist Matt Wiegle that I picked up in Toronto... god, was that really six months ago? Anyway, they're both short, 16-page comics that somehow manage to milk every last drop of humor from their simple premises. "Is It Bacon?" is a field guide to identifying bacon (which, as it turns out can be quite easily confused with a bunch of other substances). "Monsters & Condiments" is devoted to the premise that "when properly seasoned, all fiends inspire delight rather than terror."

Both comics are actually highly entertaining. The off-kilter erudition of "Is It Bacon?" and the sheer left-field absurdity of "Monsters & Condiments" are complemented by Wiegle's drawing style, which makes extensive use of hatching to help ground their high-concept underpinnings.

Is It Bacon? p. 8-9

Monsters & Condiments p. 6-7

Unfortunately, there's no denying that both minis are a bit, well, slight. They rarely stray too far from their initial premise, and while they're guaranteed to provide a few laughs they're not the sort of work that rewards serious scrutiny. They'd feel right at home in an anthology, or in a compilation of Wiegle's total works, but as individual works they can sometimes feel like a poor value for your money. Fortunately, Matt Wiegle manages to side-step the entire issue by pricing them at a mere $1.

You can get more information about Matt Wiegle at the PARTYKA web site, and order copies of the minis through the PARTYKA store (well, except for "Is It Bacon?" which is predictable sold out).

Tags: minicomics

Yet Another

Earlier this week I noticed another Shepard Fairey mural on the side of Smokin' Joe's Saloon on the South Side. When I first went hunting for murals Rob and I ate at Smokin' Joe's and completely failed to notice the mural. In addition, my office is only two blocks away from the mural which means I've been passing it every day for two months without noticing it. Frankly, that's embarassing.

"Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand, SuperTrash & Unnatural Rubber" starts tomorrow at the Warhol Museum and continues through January 31st.

Higher-resolution versions are available in my Flickr photosteram, as usual.

Tags: fine art, photography, Pittsburgh, Shepard Fairey

Walk of the Dead

This past Sunday was the annual "Walk of the Dead," where Pittsburghers of all stripes put on their best zombie finery and and march — well, shamble, really — through the Monroeville Mall (famous as setting for George Romero's landmark Dawn of the Dead). Of course, I was there to take photos of it for you at great personal risk. (Zombies can smell high-quality brains like mine from miles away.)

You can see some more photos over in my Flickr photostream and read more about the event here.

Tags: photography, Pittsburgh

Creating Webcomics

I gave a talk on "Creating Webcomics" at PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 this past weekend. (Yeah, yeah, let's make the obvious jokes about my current productivity.) If anyone's interested, you can download the presentation files by clicking the image below. I realize that this sort of presentation is practically useless without some accompanying audio. Fortunately, local startup Vivo was recording and streaming all the sessions and as soon as they're available for download I'll add a link to this post.

Tags: PCPGH4, Pittsburgh, webcomics

Vicious Red Circle

If you haven't been paying attention, late last year DC purchased (or maybe just licensed) Archie's entire line of superheroes, giving them unfettered use of the Comet, the Fly, the Hangman, the Jaguar, the Shield and the Web. Over the last few weeks DC has finally started releasing a series of Red Circle one-shots, with the idea that the best-selling characters get their own series and . There's just one problem though.

Who cares?

Let's be honest. There are only three reasons to use a pre-existing superhero in your comics.

1. You're incapable of creating a new character, or don't want to give away a trademarkable idea to a rapacious publisher.
2. The pre-existing superhero has a level of name recognition that will draw more readers than a completely new character. After all, "Batman vs. Al Qaeda" is going to sell a lot better than "American Power vs. Al Qaeda", right?
3. The pre-existing superhero has some unique attribute or characteristic that meshes nicely with the story you're trying to tell. If you've got a story to tell about immigrants having trouble adapting to their new home, might as well use Superman, right?
4. I suppose there's commerical concern as well — keeping a character's trademark alive and exploitable. Then again, if a character doesn't meet criteria #2 and #3 then keeping their trademark alive is just a waste of time and money.)

Red Circle: The Web p. 12

The Red Circle characters don't meet the second and third criteria, which are the important ones.

They've been trotted out five times now — created in the Golden Age, revived in the Silver Age as the "Mighty Crusaders," were reprinted during the Bronze Age, resurrected for "Red Circle Comics" in the Copper Age, and given a total revamp as "!mpact Comics" for the Modern Age — and each time they've been a resounding failure. The general public has never heard of them, and even die-hard comic fans are barely familiar with them.

They're also not particularly unique or compelling characters. They have boring, generic powers like flight, ray beams and superstrength. They have undeveloped personalities — quick, what's the Web's defining characteristic? (He's henpecked.) So there really aren't any decent hooks to hang a compelling story on.

Now, you might argue that this just means the Red Circle characters are just unformed lumps of clay waiting to be molded into new interesting shapes. But honstly, if you have to reinvent a character from scratch why not just create a completely new character? At least then you won't have any of the negatives associated with the existing characters (like the general perception that they're five-time losers). Then again, we might fall back to the first criteria — you're lazy, uncreative, or don't want to give away a good idea for free.

Frankly, there are only three Archie superheroes worth owning — Pureheart the Powerful, Captain Hero, and SuperTeen. But if DC wants to throw money down a hole so they can acquire a few more scrubs to kill off in their next overblown line-wide "crisis," who am i to judge?

Red Circle: The Web p. 21

Anyway, this is a general problem with American superhero comics that I've railed against before. They're so obssessed with playing it safe that they spend forever mining their history for ever-smaller nuggets of gold instead of taking a chance on new concepts and characters that engage with the modern world.

You know who doesn't have this problem? The Japanese. Sure, there's a lot of chances to find fault with the assembly-line market-research-driven pap that gets pumped out by Shonen Jump but give them credit — they know when a has run its course and has to end. The creators and the public are usually all too happy to move on to something new.

Most of the time.

Tags: Archie, DC