Wow! It's been far too long since I've posted, but at least in this entry I'm going to give you a little "behind the scenes" feature and a piece on cultural study (okay, I'm grasping by calling it that, but it's my blog...). Right around this past Halloween I was lost in Twin Peaks. I hadn't ordered my
Netflix Q in a while and the first disc showed up much to my surprise. The pilot was enough for me to finish the first disc within the evening and order all ensuing discs as well as the prequel movie "Fire Walk With Me" and other Lynch works "Blue Velvet" and "Lost Highway" in succession. This spell of "
Peaksmania" ran til a bit after election day. "Twin Peaks" had to be the most inventive and complex mystery program in
pre-"Sopranos" television history. It had so many layers. It weaved crime, comedy, romance, and even horror into a tapestry of modern mystery that the world hadn't seen tinges of since "The Twilight Zone". It does become a bit inconsistent as the series makes its transition from the Laura Palmer arc to the one involving
Windom Earle and Cooper's Past, but for the most part, especially up until after Laura Palmer's killer is revealed it is an almost flawless work.
Special Agent Dale Cooper FBI is the series' driving force and a truly golden role model for all American males. I decided to draw him just before he takes that first sip of coffee at the Double R Diner and here he is. Directly below is the photo reference and my rough pencils. Below that is the finished product inked and toned...
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To close this one out I'm going to have to let off a little steam... Humor me and read on if you will... So, before
Straczyski & Frank's "Supreme Power" and
Seagle &
Kristiansen's "It's A Bird..." I really saw no intrigue in the character of Superman. Sure, he was a good citizen with a penchant for doing good with his seemingly limitless power, but his appeal seemed almost exclusively limited to depression-era comic historians and total simpletons whose only real opinions of the character was shaped by some vague mish-mash of media
interpretation or their own stupidity. The two works above didn't exactly change this outlook for me, but they did show me that there were interesting possibilities for the base story of the last of a dying race falling to earth and being raised as one of its own (the Superman analog "Hyperion" in "Supreme Power") and of someone with the same
ambivalence to the character I had being forced to write that character's adventures for a couple years (Writer Steven T.
Seagle in "It's A Bird")...
Now, let's flash forward to 2005 and the debut issue
Morisson and
Quitely's modern superhero masterpiece "All-Star Superman". This was the first time I had actually read the character and felt the kind of synergy between creator and icon superhero I did when I read Miller's Batman,
Bendis' Daredevil, Ennis'
Punisher, or any of
Millar's Ultimates cast... "All-Star Superman" just concluded this past summer, but a funny thing happened along the way. Somewhere in the fog of
DC's 2007 editorial redirection and subsequent resurgence the longest running title in monthly comics, Action Comics (The Flagship
Superman Book) began one of its best long-term creator runs with the help of Writer Geoff Johns and his co-plotter (and former mentor) Richard Donner (Superman I & II) as well as two exceptional artists in Eric Powell ("The Goon"), and Gary Frank ("Supreme Power"). It was during this run of golden superhero fiction where I finally granted
Supes a higher level of respect than being a post-apocalyptic punching bag for Miller's Batman in "The Dark Knight Returns". This was a character who in the right hands was legendary and so much more than a corporate trademark, tattoo fodder for
meatheads, and fake quirkiness for faking intellectuals... It's for the above stated reasons that I'm saying that
Supes (and Comic Fans) deserves better!
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Now I know what you're going to say... That sounds so elite and frivolous, but let me put it to you this way. I'm from Minnesota and growing up I loved Twins Baseball, but I don't keep up with them at all now and would never call myself a fan. Sure, I feel a little excitement and nostalgia when I think back on the Puckett and
Hrbek games at the Dome, but given my post-1992 and current disinterest in the sport and franchise I'd feel like a total fraud and enemy of the Twins if I wore their apparel despite the fact that I'd probably look
completely natural wearing a navy blue Twins cap.
That's why it burns me up inside when I see either one of the extremes below or anything that falls into their continuum. And by
continuum I mean any person who ignorantly wears comic apparel (not just Supes apparel). Superman affords me the perfect example for this criteria being fair as I really don't know that much about Superman, but I know enough to consider myself a true fan.
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So who
gets to wear comic apparel then? I'll get to that but first here's who doesn't. Those people whose opinions on the character they're sporting are not tied to a specific work in any media or a specific creator of the character's adventures. These people don't get to wear comics apparel, plain and simple. Trust me, having to give up this much ground in my moral constitution is difficult considering the fact that I just gave a ton of fake Spider-Fans and Bat-Fans immunity via recent movies (And I don't feel too guilty about that considering how good Raimi's Spider-Man & Nolan's Batman films have been thus far)...
So finally, who does get to wear comic apparel? Well, if you've read up to this point and have understood even 55% of what I've written let's just say you passed the test... Until next time, Peace!
Now Playing : Genius Playlist based on Nas's "Memory Lane"
