If You Fancy It

Here's a review of a new book by David Hajdu. It's about the comic book scare in the 1950's, and he argues that it paved the way for rock and roll to happen in the last 50's. I haven't read it, but I think it's going on my summer list. I read a lot of another book by him called Positively 4th Street, which was really good.

The Class Mini-Comics- Out of the Fjordinary!!!!

I thought the comics I read by everyone were very well done. Thanks for not laughing me out of the room for my silly comic. Fjordinary is now my new favorite word. I was thinking about what Spencer said about having a class in the future do a series of mini-comics throughout the semester. I wouldn't take the class because I hate working with groups, but after creating this comic I would like to do more of them. I had to scrap a storyboarded, and half-finished mini comic, so that I would have a comic to turn in. I think I might be able to scrap that together, and perhaps manipulate the one I turned in. Oh, I see the Cubs are done with the rain delay, so I'll try to finish this later.

eamus catuli!

Glar!

So many problems finishing my comic. I was going to turn in two of them. One, the one I worked the hardest on, was about the anthropology surrounding area 51, and was going to be a dichotomy between government and civilian, truth versus conspiracy, abstraction versus reality. Told in two parts, the first the story of Bob Lasar, and the skywatchers surrounding the base, who would constitute reality and conspiracy, but be more believable. And the second about General Lemay, who ran SAC throughout the cold war, and was certifiably nuts. It would resent this to you, and you could choice to be believe one, and the world in the story would make sense, or all the desperate parts, and it would make no sense at all. My talents, and my time were not enough to get this finished.
NO big deal, I had a second one done. An adaptation of a Donald Bartheleme story. I was going to turn this one in last Wednesday--since it is more like a readymade--, but all last week I started getting back spasms in the morning, and migraines at night.
NO BIG DEAL. Spencer gave us until next Monday to turn it in. So I spend all weekend tidying the Don B. one up, and trying to get the Dreamland one done-the title of the area 51 comic, partly based on the book by Phil Patton.
So, I print it out last night, which I certainly could have done much earlier, since I actually had this one, the Don B. one, done a while ago. Whoops, formatting is wrong, and the pages are full paper length, not mini-comic length. So, I spent all night reformatting it, it looks pretty good. I have to stick it together and go see Spencer to get copies made. Which I was also going to do for this one last week, but was getting migraines last Friday. Oh, and my back spasms occur because I tore the muscles in between my shoulder blades when I was doing road construction when I was seventeen. Woe is me.


Also, this assignment was awesome, and really challenging. Of course I failed at it, but I still loved doing it.

The Dramatic Entrance--Revised Feelings Toward Stuck Rubber Baby, Blankets, and Grey Owl

I had been complaining in an earlier post about the corner that the story of Stuck Rubber Baby had been putting me in, and how I hate being placed in a corner, no matter who's writing it. However, I actually think the story line evolves to a point in the end where the characters have far more nuance than I'd given them credit for. And the nuance really wasn't that subtle. It has a lot to do with the flaws in human nature. And the thing I get upset about is when characters are presented with flaws, but the flaws are either enduring, or stressing the point of how they are actually really great people because of their flaws, as if the flaws we have just don't simply make us flawed people. And I think the fact the Toland is kind of an asshole throughout portions of the book is what made me reconsider my feelings about him as a character, and most of my early dislike of the book stemmed from him. It went from seeming like a book about a confused gay man living in a very rigid and strict environment--and my point earlier about being conned into feeling something for a character stemmed from this, because who doesn't sympathize for someone in that situation. There was a certain fuck you that Toland exerted on his own character, which developed throughout the book, which I liked.
Other than that, something I had been thinking about was the opening panels for a lot of the chapters, or really, the creative panel designs, which I really liked and have been trying to do with my mini-comic, although not being able to draw has really slowed the process down. I actually think it serves as a far more dramatic device than a historical device, but that doesn't discount the idea that the historical element serves to heighten the dramatic experience. Using the historical, which comes with preconceived notions that the writer doesn't need to explain, serves the openings well. As many of the convoluted pages show, there is a whole lot going on, both on the high historical abstract level, and emotional human level. And I think the only pitfall to this is that the reader may only get out of the comic what he brings in to it.
I would say that because of the way the paneling was done, and I really did like a lot of it, that I have had a renewed appreciation for Blankets, which to me is still the best artwork we have seen yet. And on a storytelling level, from writing out a mini-comic, I have a renewed appreciation for Portraits From Life, because I think that book dealt with real stories in a way that did not cheat the reader into feeling something. There was also something bout the monotony of the stories that I felt more connected to. Like he was saying this is fucking reality, and sometimes it's boring, and sometimes our most dramatic moments in life will be someone yelling us to shut up as he's driving on the freeway. And with the Grey Owl story, which I had built up in my mind before reading the book perhaps a little too much, I think the message that I took out of it, that perhaps the bullshit someone tells to make his message more believable may be ignored in order to appreciate the message, and that the life he lived was a sort of postmodern performance art, where identity is perhaps interchangeable and not an absolute.

I Should Just Wake Up And Blog

I know I haven't been as consistent with my blogging in the last few weeks as I had been before. I'm trying to wake up earlier, around 7, so that I can start the morning reading, drinking coffee, and writing on the blog. I've always that the morning was very pleasant to write during. And this becomes truer as the months warm up a bit. I get to open up the windows and listen to the light traffic that flows on Springfield Ave. After the semester ends, I think I want to turn this blog into a general reading blog, and perhaps an occasional political commentary--tis the season. Or perhaps I should just start doing that now? I don't think people really want to hear my thoughts on Wuthering Heights or Lord, Alfred Tennyson.

Oh, well.

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow."
-Theodore Roethke

Actuall, I now think this book has been far more nuanced thn I previously thought. I'll expand on this later.

Stuck Rubber Baby

I'll preface this with the fact that I do indeed like Stuck Rubber baby. However, I have a problem with the presentation of it in the beginning of the book. My problem has to with the fact that the writer gets an unfair advantage on the writer. And this is a problem that I often come across in literature that I've had to lately read, namely someone binging a gun to a knifefight. It occurs when someone starts off a book with a really woe is me, woe has been my life kind of plot. My choice with Stuck Rubber Baby seems to be: Do I like this books, or do I hate gays, blacks, and orphans? Obviously, I'm not a bigot, so my choice seems to be that I like this book--as I've already admitted. However, I don't know what I gain from reading this book, and what nuance would be expanded that I would gain benefit from reading this book. I have more to say on this, but I have to go into a class right now, so I'll put up another post later, but this was bugging me over the weekend as I was reading.

I don't know exactly what it is is, but I did not enjoy Protraits from Life as much as I thought I would. Grey Owl is a cool story that I thought would go somewhere, but instead we got a couple of dudes telling eac other obvious things like, hey, isn't that town really far north, or biographical facts which they both obviousl knew but had to repeat to each other in the form of a question, or inquiring statement, so as to let the reader know the story. It's sort of like when in a crime show the person turns to his/her partner and says, now we'll run run this to lab, and see if blah blu blah adds up. And the partner in real life would respond, I know that! We've been working together for ten years.