Pointless Man

For the Lord! For peace! For scientific inquiry! For Plymouth Rock! For...uh...Because! Recognizing comics as a medium of nearly immediate apprehension, I am sensitive to the effect of difficult-to-read pages. It almost hurts to decipher the writing above. But such is the result of the best and quickest method I have to upload comics at present. Apy-polo-logies for the inconvenience.

It occurs to me the smaller print didn't make a good transition in the photo. It would be nice to have my scanner up and running, but that would require a working PC. Alas. The dialogue in the upper right corner is as follows: THUG: I heard he pissed off a mob boss what throwed acid in his face. Afterwards. PREACHER: Lo, he was a lost lamb, a wandering heathen, 'til the light did come unto him and cleanse him of his face. Behold the tender mercies of the Lord. SAILOR: I posit he is a primitive ancestor of man--a proto-man, if you will--decked out to appear human. He is a clever fellow, you see.

The tiny text at the bottom is about Wang Yangming , a general, governor, and neoconfucianist scholar from the Ming dynasty. He earned the nickname 'Mad Ardour' after keeping his newlywed wife waiting all night long, while he spent his honeymoon in a marathon conversation with a Taoist monk.

My apartment needs new flooring.

As a child, I had several drawing instructors.  I had a huge crush on one of them.  She was a talented cartoonist with fine arts training. Smart, cute, a no-harness and no help kind of rock climber before it was cool to go off and break your leg, she listened to early eighties metal and let me draw whatever I wanted to. I still have the sketchbook and card she made me for my birthday one year.  I pretty much hated my other art teachers. They had no interest in helping me realize my comicbook dreams. Still, I guess I did okay under them.  In 1990, a pastel of mine sold for $125. After agent and gallery fees, this netted me $75 (which, at age nine, was still a lot).  My mom reinvested the cash into my classes. I was dismayed. A few years later, I received some some of the most serendipitous advice I have ever been given. A family friend, who worked as an editor at DC Comics, looked over my sketches and suggested I avoid taking any art classes.  I was so p...

The final installment of the 'Solution', unless I decide to draw out the following ideas: -Glen Danzig in 'Heavy Metal Human Sacrifice' -Two Face in 'Homophobia' - Steve Martin, as Navin Jackson, in 'Jerks!'

A guest comic by my coworker, Lo Blanco.

God as depicted throughout the ages.  No Alanis Morissette, and, no, that isn't ironic.

Nat Turner and John Brown are both famous in the United States for having lead failed slave rebellions in the decades before the U.S. Civil War.  They have each inspired several artistic and historical works.  I read " The Confessions of Nat Turner " when I was 14, but have yet to read " John Brown's Body ". The KKK are, of course, racist dicks who Superman beat up .

Each panel originally had a caption, a feature which was scrapped in a silly attempt to bring cohesiveness to the page as a whole.  They were as follows: panel 1 - Pig fingers!  Carrot hands!  Cannot draw! panel 2 - Focus off. panel 3 - Perspective is a matter of perspective. panel 4 - What, me worry? In thinking about it, I suppose I might have impanelled these in the orange bar at the right, but it probably would've been a bit much. ... I'm not sure how wide-spread the campaign is, but in  Seattle, there are numerous billboards and bus signs which read, "Jesus is ____."  I want to play mad libs with these things, or else write in, "a day labourer."  Other acceptable answers include, "bearded," and, "featured in a Leonard Cohen song."

Part 1 of a series where every problem's solution is the same.

Chris Ware's comics are playful, well honed, much honoured, and have been highly influential over the last decade.  However, their appeal eludes me.  His drawings, design, and layouts are cold.  So, too, his bone dry humour.  Frankly, I find his work boring, in form and function.   Intellectually and as entertainment, it offers me nothing. I feel (somewhat) similarly disconnected to the music of Charles Mingus. Still, when people tell me Charlie is a genius, a fantastic band leader, and quite possibly the greatest jazz bassist ever, said persons almost always know more about jazz than I do.  I believe, in this case case I may be missing something others key into.  I believe it because it is an oft held view among people who understand the medium and its history better than I do. I don't think that's what's going on when someone tells me Chris Ware is a genius .  More often, it's like people who hardly know anything about art praising 'the Mona...

...for comicbook villains. After all, who deserves it more? - Doc Oc , in a retirement home, drives those around him nuts. Inevitably, he regains his tentacles, and breaks a hip. Convalescing, he continues to annoy those around him. - The Joker , declaring, "It's just not worth it, anymore," goes straight (but remains unhinged) and realizes his dream of being in showbiz, as a radio DJ and late-night host. Batman doesn't believe it, and wastes an hour every night watching Joker's show, refusing to admit he likes it. - Bullseye careens into a self destructive pattern that finally does him in. Everyone he's ever worked for or against tries in some way or another to talk him out of it, to no avail. Deadpool offers to make it quick and kill Bullseye himself, but is turned down. The man who can turn anything into a weapon is eventually slain by some no name punk in a foreign country, where no one knows him. - Luthor , dying an inadvertent death, has his li...

Some recommendations for those interested in something longer lasting than a graphic novel: Usagi Yojimbo - a heartfelt exploration of a society long gone by a masterful Japanese cartoonist, Stan Sakai, who has spent almost his whole life in Hawaii; deceptively simple and cartoonish on first glance, the art and storytelling share a strong sense of economy rare to comics; Sakai is an award winning letter, and his inking is some of the best in the business; 22 volumes and counting Vagabond - perhaps the best comic being published anywhere today, this manga follows the lives of Miyamoto Mushashi, wandering swordsman, and his contemporaries (with a particular interest in two of his childhood friends); the art effortlessly slips between bold brush strokes to light line work, or watercolours to black and white; the layouts and transitions from panel to panel are excellent; the fight scenes progress logically and show a surprisingly realistic understanding of both the mental and physica...

By using superheroes in titles like Wanted and Kick Ass , Millar has brought the navel gazing and Gen-X-style angst of self indulgent, pity-party indie comics to what may loosely be termed a mainstream audience. This would be pathetic enough by itself, but it gets worse. Part of his popularity is based on dismantling the superhero (or supervillain, as the case may be) as fantasy fulfilment. Nevermind that this work was done with far more aplomb (and even subtlety) well over twenty years ago by the likes of Alan Moore, Frank Miller, John Ostrander, Mike Grell, Steve Ditko, and Howard Chaykin. Millar's protagonists exist in a hyperrealistic world where they remain scrawny cry-babies at heart, no matter how good they have it. This isn't deconstruction, it's embracing all that is wrong with nerd culture. Aggrandizing petty suffering and self doubt to such heroic heights as to make martyrs of geeks everywhere reinforces the need for fantasy fulfilment. Playing into and then ...

I am tired of seeing their work in alternative comics anthologies like Mome and Best American Comics . If those guys are turning out some of the better indie and small press cartooning, then the industry is in a sorry state, but that's still no excuse for printing such tripe. A page from Hensley's Wally Gropius story, where he exhibits a complete inability to draw, and a dry, unearned sense of overburdened irony: Heatley's illustrations suck, even when he's not writing:

Sans colour artificial. Much closer to how it would have looked when I drew it in 2003 with some crappy cartridge loaded ink-brush.

Everything after that first punch is probably superfluous, but who said you had to be kind in a fight?

An anti-Kantian strip (from 2003) in direct opposition to a previous post . I have more respect for Kant's epistemological work nowadays, but still feel roughly the same about his ethics. Boo, Kantian ethics! Features the infamous Bottle of Injury and that familiar trope of the artist as God.