gaze upon the sausage
if someone could write a plugin for my internet browser that adblocks kevin smith’s smug, eye bulgey expression on imdb when once a year, his coutenance gets plastered all over the front page, i would be forever in your debt. but i’m not holding my breath.
i think my issue, beyond his oddly inaccurate fascination with canadian culture (i’m a hoser, btw), is his adopting the mantle of the ‘ultimate fanboy’. i have no problem with fanboys, love what you love. i wish i had that reckless abandon of the things i enjoy. but in his case, being a part of it with his comic book show, he props up the industry, not just the product.
there’s an old saying, don’t watch the sausages being made. it gets it’s roots from another older saying about laws, but i always took it to mean ‘if you enjoy something, don’t look too deeply at the creation of it’. i suspect watching sausages being made isn’t as appetizing as grilling them.
i think this is true of most arts. comics especially. there’s a dark history you can feel free to ignore, but like many things, people with talent get taken advantage of by people with money, or just just a lack of shame. by then you forget how we got to where we are, and stan lee has another cameo in a movie, while the original creator of the content whiles away in poverty. this is unpleasant, and you might wish to not know it, but once you throw back the curtain, well, the sausage will always taste faintly of colon and snout. this is my origin story. ‘captain cynicism’.
i’m sure every industry has these kind of injustices but i’m not a part of them, so i don’t see it. but we still use the golden age comics as examples of cartoonishly naive goodness thwarting villians of pointlessly evil intent. so, to me, it seems extra silly that the people who produce them, would not see the hypocrisy in turning themselves into the villian of someone else’s story. then again, no one is drawing that narrative. who would publish it if they did?
i have a history of bad predictions. i once told a group of students where i was asked to do a ‘guest speaker’ thing for (that i totally botched, public speaking isn’t for everyone) that i thought mobile gaming was going to be a brand new era for independent game publishers. and it was. for a few months. and the clash of clans model took over, and clones of freemium games piled up, and my phone became just a phone again. i wonder how man solo webcomic creators thought they would storm onto the scene and take a big wet bite out of marvel’s bottom line?
i know kevin smith and stan lee and the like have a lot of fans, and i’m not trying to ruin anything for you. but maybe this explains why darker storylines with actual unfairness resonate more with me that paragons of virtue, who save the day in the nick of time. i think once you face how sucky life can be, unfairness will feel more real. and once in a while, when a character ekes out some small hard won victory, it will mean more
here’s some art.
Thank you Brian for the first critique I’ve seen in years that actually adds value to that being critiqued. And for clear distinctions about Art.
‘if you enjoy something, don’t look too deeply at the creation of it’.
No, if you enjoy something, get off your ass and make some yourself! Now, comparing legislation and sausage is unfair, because it gives sausage a bad rep. If you love sausage, you should make some yourself, and you’ll enjoy it a whole lot more! I roast coffee at home, and I recommend that everybody who loves coffee should do it. Get off your lazy ass, do some research, and do it! I’ve been doing it since, ah, 2001? 2002? and I’ve been enjoying excellent coffee for that many years. Starbucks, you know what to do with yourself. Folgers, my mechanic calls your product puke.
As for “arts,” there that which is art (i.e., action), and that which is art work, where the art has been practiced, and somebody calls the residue “art.” It’s like sprinkling flour on a dance floor, a ballet is danced, and then judging the ballet based on the footprints on the floor. I do photography, and people say it’s not art. Right, it’s not art. The art, the action, has been and gone. You see something that has been drawn with light, chemicals, and silver. It’s inanimate. It’s unchanging. The song isn’t being sung, it’s a recording. It isn’t live, it’s Memorex, and Nipper’s barking won’t affect what’s coming out of the gramophone.
If it wasn’t for the wide connectivity of the TCP-based network and its backbones, routers, etc., I’d have never found this comic. In 1990, what store would be carrying a single sheet of paper, once or twice a week? Or would we be leafing through a letter-catalog of artists? Subscribe to the artist, and once a week get a piece of paper mailed to you, hot off the mimeograph machine, folded in three, Scotch taped together and a stamp and a hand-written address. No envelope, just mail it. Save it in a manila folder.
As for the independent artist putting out a comic, Nonplayer comes to mind. Image Comics publishes it whenever Nate Simpson finishes another issue. #2 was two years ago, and #1 was six years ago. Now that is slow, but Image is fine with that. Great art, great story, and the author has a day job and a kid. No, what blows my mind is the art in Monstress. How does a single artist do that many panels of finely detailed art every month?? Her pencils and brushes must be close to the speed of sound!
Your artwork above reminds me of Age of Clay. Watercolors, and the lady just finished it after four years. Both, good art. But what sets both of yours apart from the rest is the story.
I watched the latest Thor movie. Yeah, it was an action movie. But ya know, the story could have used you on it. I sat way in the back, so my popcorn couldn’t have possibly hit the screen. I’d much rather see Black and Blue.
i meant more that if you are happy with something looking at the creation of it might give you a jaded perspective of it. people might be blissfully ignorant of what goes into things they enjoy.
but i don’t want to try to define art. it’s folly to try. i think it defies definition by the nature of it. but if you’re sure what you’re doing is perfect art, it’s a sure way of being contradicted. i’ve never seen age of clay though. i’ll have to check it out more. it’s flattering to be compared to other story driven art though, so thanks for that.
i haven’t seen the thor movie. i think the comic book blockbuster fatigue set in on me earlier than most. i just have no drive to see them. i’d be curious to see what someone might think i could have added to it. problem with big movies like that is one voice, no matter how correct will get drowned out. a black and blue adaption would be interesting, but i can’t imagine anyone even a creator could retain creative control of something like that. as a fun little exercise, and not at all cause i think i’m ‘all that’, i like to think about movies, any movie, and make a few changes in my head, to see how easily they could have been fixed. hindsight is 20/20, but you’d be surprised how often just reordering scenes, or an extra line of dialogue could have save a plot.
as always, thanks for the props, and getting in on the discussion!
Number one peeve: Thor never really behaved as a god, but as a kind of party frat boy who hadn’t been in too many fights. Hello, meet Gozer the Gozerian. “Are you gods?” “Um, no?” “Then die!” Gozer was one evil pissed-off god. Talked the talk, walked the walk. Out of bubblegum and threw lightning bolts.
Thor: Ragnarok suffered from Ragnarok not being a serious Ragnarok. I’ve been told that the first two sucked, and that this was the first one that was OK. There was a ham-handed injection of trope Monty Python humor. “This is the funny guy. You will laugh at him.” Etc.
Ragnarok is supposed to be an end-of-everything battle, with survival being a Pyhrric victory. When Marvel first did the Ragnarok story in about 1986, the issue was double-sized, no advertising, with art spreading across both pages. The movie battle itself here lasted under five or ten minutes, out of a 120+ minute movie.
A movie is a short story, an hour and a half to two hours in length. The latest Blade Runner is an excellent sequel. Nowhere in your story so far have I seen something that I would shoot for being a trope. Thor, I’d get out the Gatling gun and have fun.
So what would you bring to a script? From your writing, I don’t see tropes, I see people being people. Like what Philip K. Dick wrote, everybody has a job, comes from somewhere, and has a normal motivation for what they do. If you did a story about gods, when they battled, they’d be looking like gods, hitting like gods, and not whining like children. There would be no “discovery” trope. They are old, they know what they can do, and how to do it. No god would be tossed in an arena to fight for someone’s fun, let alone chained by mortals. When some mortal picks a fight with a god, expect the minimum damage to be like a 200 megaton nuclear device. “The gods fought, and cities were leveled, the earth was shattered, mountains rose and fell.” That sort of stuff. Nobody picks their teeth off the floor after a fight with a god, because the teeth will be dust.
well, first off, thanks for the compliment. if i use tropes, i hope it’s with a little awareness. referencing thing that that make more sense if you understand why they were tropes in the first place.
but i know what you mean about marvel and their ‘gods’. but they wrote them to be relatable, and being immortal and all powerful is just not a relatable thing. old greek mytholgy did a good job. the gods all represented human failings. ares was a coward and a bully, zues was a horndog, aphrodite was vain, and self absorbed. and even with that as a source material, whenever they do a movie with the greek gods, (i’m thinking clash of the titans, and the newer, forgettable, wrath of the titans) they’re just dudes in white robes. so, i don’t think it’s just marvel, i just don’t think we have much creativity when it comes to expressing omnipotence in movies. hell, they turned galactus into a black cloud in fantastic 4. so sad.
but what would i bring to a script? who knows? i don’t want to assume they writers didn’t do their jobs. i have a feeling that more often than not, the ‘dumbing it down’ is a note from the producers who worry people are going to get lost in something too creative.
Is that a self-portrait of you in your Captain Cynicism costume? Creepy stuff! You are always good at conveying mood, even if the mood is unspecified. Your work makes my brain activate in new and interesting ways, and I love it! I agree wholeheartedly about both Stan Lee and Kevin Smith. And Clash of Clans + Candy Crush Clones did kind of kill mobile gaming, didn’t they? I prefer SNES emulators myself. I cling to the past in ways that are probably very pathetic, but my happiness lies back in the 80’s-90’s somewhere and I won’t give it up without a fight! You don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, do you? Or at least not on the same day or something? Either way, I hope you had a great Thursday no matter what you ate!
haha, I should do me as a super hero. captain cynicism, able to shit on an idea with a single glare! thanks for the drawing appreciation. always good to hear i made a brain activate with creepiness.
I don’t know what killed mobile gaming, but I was certainly more hopeful before I heard the term ‘pay to win’. emulators for life, dawg
nah, up here in canadaville, our thanksgiving was a month ago. also, Americans might be interested to know it not the big deal here that it is there. seems as big as Xmas in the US. which is weird, given its own dark origin story. plus, me and the missus are vegetarians, but the non judgey, fun kind that eat well, so we lean into it and make a tofurkey and little potaters. but we don’t give thanks. we take them!
Totally never pegged you as a veggie! Wow! Well, I’m always interested in amazing vegetable recipes, so if you have a favorite please feel free to share!
oh yeah. i’ve been on the wagon my entire adult life. it’s really not a thing if you’ve done it long enough. i live in a big enough city now where it’s common. when i worked in a smaller town, no one could get over it.
i’ll round up a few recipes, and send em your way!