Free Happens...

It's true I've been guilty of thinking I know everything. I've been told this by people who think they know everything.

My brother thinks he knows everything, and how do ya talk to someone like that? I don't.

A free Octavia update.

I think your Free-Market types and Ayn Randers think they know it all, when really they don't know a thing. This I know.

What an artist should strive for.

Didn't Ayn Randers write an advice column in Japan?

Some people should keep their advice to themselves, that's my advice.

Soda from the Seer

My bit of Philosophy today is DON'T LET ANYBODY TELL YOU EVERYTHING'S JUST "FINE". Everything is most definitely not fine, most of all--or least of all--our little backwater of comics, fantasy art and movies and cartoons and other popular culture crap.

I have some other new philosophies too, which seem to have jacked my eBay prices up a few hefty notches. Shit, it's almost like 2003 again for me over there.

Meanwhile, Sean Patty noisily self-destructs out in California. He's selling off the gifts I've given him over the years.

And Kevin Nowlan is outdone--or undone--in the perspective department by this outrageous foreign fantasy film poster.

A girl graduates from SCAD, very expensively, and her folks then ask her about job prospects. You know the rest.

Better yet, SCAM.

What's this interest in my characters alla sudden? There's two new statue kits being made of my artwork, Blood Drinker and Scarecrow Girl, plus I got a request to paint Octavia and questions about Madame Tarantula.

At the rate I'm ejecting little gems of happiness, I guess I should be "tweeting".

Outside the Balkans...

I have books that I've carried with me over half the globe, they're among the few things outside of family photographs that I place real value on. Many of them are obscure, and although they may have been printed by the thousands and some sizeable portion of that still survives, I still instinctively assume my copy is the only one in existence.

That's how an Archaeologist might see a rare fossilized skull or leg-bone. Then, if another specimen turns up, he'd go twice as berserk. That's the sort of odds no one expects to see.

Paul Green's exhaustive 250+ page volume of "Weird Westerns" in Film, TV and Comics (with intro by yours truly) hits the marketplace this month.

I've approached publishing the same way, which points up exactly what a poor businessman I am. My logic, a holdover from pre-eBay days, is that one extant copy of a book, preferably in my hands, is all that really counts. I know subconsciously that there are other copies floating around out there, but it's still a minor shock when someone brings me one to sign. I feel like saying "How'd you get that from my house?"

Hey Barry--are ya readin'? The BOU got some mega-coverage in the new "Weird Westerns" book!

There were times when to most people Music was the same thing. In the 194os Radio brought Opera, Classics and Big Band and Pop singers into every home, and people listened happily to all of it. They didn't pull the plug because the song wasn't by a "Shoegazer" or "Math Rock" band or some such idiocy.

So what changed all that, and turned something universal as Music into the mega-headed Hydra it is today? Geez, have you looked at all the various "genres" that now exist? Here's a sickening selection from just one sub-category of what used to be plain-old "Rock":

Death Metal
Alternative Metal
Progressive Metal
Black Metal
Thrash Metal
Heavy Metal
Speed Metal
Doom Metal
Power Metal
Symphonic Metal
Metalcore
Nu-Metal
Sludge Metal
Christian Metal
Stupid Metal

Yeah, I made that last one up.

Now, did all these new "genres" appear as a result of the tremendous overflowing creativity of black-t-shirted youth for whom no artistic boundaries existed, or are they all merely closely-related, i.e. inbred, cousins?

Madame Tarantula herself appears on page 141 of "Weird Westerns". YEE-HAW!

My argument is that this "Balkanization" of Popular Culture, whether it be Music, TV, Art or Film, has been powered only by Marketing. It wasn't Satan, bad parenting or Churches that spawned something as dumb as the "Metal" subgenres--it was the simple act of trying to sell something.

Even worse, consumers of this trash are convinced they made up their own minds about it.

I'd like to see more people celebrating what they have in common, the universality of their experiences via the finest creations of the human race. Instead, the fashion is now to wander forever down the imaginary, infinite back alleys of these manufactured "genres".

Hey, if someone thinks Death Metal really "speaks" to them, then what can you really say, except that "Pal, you are totally lost"?

Archaeologists of the Future may have difficulty placing "Doom Metal" into some cultural context, if they even care, but Super Clowns should be easy.

Sourness: The Hovering

If you complain about the weather, the economy, Fox News, any movie or TV show, no one raises a brow. But let one artist criticize another's work, and you get Hovering Blowhards from the Vacuum who are ready to pounce and cry "Sour Grapes".

When in doubt--CHELO ALONSO!

Lately such HBVs have visited this Blog, read every word back to start, and salivated enough to drop their steamin' loaves here. They forgot the place to do this is their own Blogs. I don't tolerate it here, not because I'm a big pussy but because then I have to respond, then they respond, and basically coz it's the Internet I don't know which direction to punch in and that's frustrating.

The pretense Internetters display is pretty ridic. Like members of a Dating Club, the common tendency is to lie about themselves. Who'll find out, anyway? Pretending to be SO civil, SO well-behaved is an unswallowable fiction to me, human nature being what it is.

She knows what you like about this Blog.

I could pretend to not be vain, egotistical, violent, prejudiced or anything else and I'd be lying. Sure, I have good traits too--I'm kind to animals and protective of women.

So how much "Sour Grapes" was there after WWII, anyway? The last election? Shakespeare? Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy?

I don't pretend I'm something I'm not, like a liar, and I don't lie about it either.

You can trust me on that.

New Monster Artists

We got a couple o' new followers recently, so welcome to you folks and howdy! How'd ya find this place, anyway? It sounds funny saying "followers", like I'm Charles Manson or something.

Ya may know about the new YOU Can Draw Monsters! book I did for Halloween, we are selling quite a few of these, and recently one faithful customer got a set for his kids, who turned in the following sterling artwork:

Excellent Monster Art by Kira D.

Another fine effort by Cade D.

It's real nice to know you're having an effect, albeit putrid, on the younger generation.

"Slim Jim" by Cade.

One guy at Fallcon denied that he could draw anything monstrous, even with my book, and suggested I retitle it YOU Probably Can't Draw Monsters!

Nice monster artwork by Bryn D.

Bwa-ha-ha!

Fallcon Leaves...

Just back from the Minnesota FALLCON, the first show I've attended in about ten years, and it was a very enjoyable event put on by the non-profit MCBA people, who sure know how to treat their guests and the public. They had nothing to do with the snow on Saturday morning.

Section of a con drawing dome for my MCBA pal John Sanborn.

Hoffman, after emerging from his troglodytic hibernation chamber, ambled haltingly upwards towards the light of the sun. Years of isolation had wilted his once-robust frame, and skin once supple and flush now seemed fragile as some centuries-old parchment...

Seriously though, it has been good to be among people again, doing drawings for 'em and peddling all these crazy books I do to market. It's exhausting but rewarding, as the feedback ya get suggests lots of potential new directions for an artist/publisher.

On a different note: a new drawing for my pal Paul Russak's Halloween and Chiller Theater edition of the Zacherley at Large newsletter.

I noticed an odd phenomena; certain items that I literally can't give away online, like Monster U. CDs or Minister Sinister and Superclowns comics, were flying off the table at Fallcon. What is it--am I misrepresenting them online? Will people absolutely not pay for music on eBay, but will in person? Is it the tactile experience of holding the thing or whut?

I also found that A LOT of ladies were buying my Newspaper Girls book. A lot more people grabbed Monster U. 9-card sets than I've ever sold since I made them.

More con art, this one for my buddy Vic Burgeson.

It all makes me wonder--maybe I've been doing things right all along and the Internet is wrong.

Our Precious Language...NOT!

This "suck" business has gotten way out of hand. It's still pretty taboo to say "f***", but "suck" is so acceptable it's everywhere. I've always thought it sounded horribly juvenile, but that's me.

Some years back I wrote a Blog entry about "suck", and basically argued that it is an anti-woman and anti-gay slur, albeit indirectly.

The main question here is "suck" what?

Although you might often hear the idiotic expression "suck ass" nowadays, I imagine it's fairly clear that "suck" applies mainly to penises, not breasts, as in suckling babies, and not to popsicles, lollipops, or other foodstuffs.

So who exactly sucks penises? And, who exactly says there's something wrong with it? Women and Gay men do, predominently, although some secretive Heterosexual sucking goes on at certain truck stops--surveys show this is merely a "release of tension" and not a direct indictment of the Republican party.

Recyclable signage made by grown-ups who should know better.

What started this whole "suck" business is a self-proclaimed "zero-waste" company called Mountain Rose Herbs. I don't see how how any human activity can be zero waste unless no one breathes or craps, but I guess the slogan sounds too good ear-wise to relinquish.

When ya get right down to it, "suck" only means one thing--fellatio.

I ain't no prude, but jeez, can't we let kids have a childhood?