X-Ray Spex

Will Elder Weekends: Restaurant!

2012-01-28T12:28:00.000-06:00

The first Will Elder stories I remember seeing in Mad reprints during my misspent youth were "Starchie!" and "Mole!," but the first Will Elder story -- make that panel -- that I remember being impressed -- make that astounded -- by for the sheer technique on display was this one, the opening splash from "Restaurant!" from Mad #16, Oct. 1954...

Go ahead, click on it -- because, believe me, you aren't going to get the full impact at that small size. Elder packs what I count to be almost 100 figures into that single panel, and what's more, he makes every single one of them different, clearly defined and, most importantly, funny. And that's not even counting the myriad jokes packed into the panel, from RCA Victor dog peering into the guy's mouth to the gastronintestinal mural on the wall to the surprisingly grim fortune held up by the cutout figure near the door.

In other words, this panel packs more into a single image than most comic books -- heck, most entire runs of comic books -- pack into hundreds of pages -- and it's not the only panel in the story. In fact, it's not even the only panel on the page. How Elder's arm didn't just fall off one day I'll never know.

Advance Team Tuesday: The official promotional juggernaut kicks into gear

2012-01-24T13:19:00.002-06:00

Sorry about the lack of the usual Advance Team Tuesday posting last week, but things were, shall we say, in a bit of disarray.

This week, though, I'd like to point you in the direction of the official "Advance Team" page over at Macmillan's site. Here's the synopsis of the book:

"From veteran graphic novel writer Will Pfeifer and stellar newcomer Germán Torres, a darkly comic science fiction thriller sure to grip readers!

Zack McKinley was just another twenty-something pizza delivery boy before he discovered that his pop culture idols are actually the advance team of an alien invasion.Now, encouraged and aided by his (probably insane) uncle, Zack must track them down, one by one, and kill them before the invasion can begin. But the advance team has no intention of letting Zack get in their way, and soon the authorities are hunting for a celebrity serial killer in a pizza delivery jacket.

As his life slips out of control, Zack finds only more questions. Why are the aliens here? What do they have to do with him? Is it too late to stop them before the Earth is conquered? And what if he has simply lost his mind?"

Heck, I'd buy that! You?

Books of the Year, Part 5: Are you a psychopath?

2012-01-22T20:18:00.000-06:00

I do read more than comic books, you know. In fact, one of my favorite books of 2011 was Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test," a funny, scary, fascinating look at madness in the modern world.

I love the way Ronson attacks a topic. He starts out with a question he wants to answer or an idea he wants to explore -- in this case, a strange puzzle in the form of a book that was being sent to the world's top neurologists -- and he lets the knowledge he uncovers lead him wherever it will. In "The Psychopath Test," that journey ranges from L. Ron Hubbard's old manor house to England's notorious Broadmoor psychiatric hospital to the lavish living room of "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. All those destinations -- and many, many more -- are linked by the idea of madness, specifically psychopathy, specifically the various variations of psychopathy: which ones are dangerous, which ones are "useful" and which ones are walking past us every day on the street.

Like Ronson's other books, "The Psychopath Test" is constantly surprising, with some new astonishing fact or person arriving with every turn of the page. (Wait 'til you meet ex-spy David Shayler.) The last thing I want to do is spoil any of those surprises, so all I'm going to say is you need to read this book.

OK, I'll add one more thing: I enjoyed "The Psychopath Test" so much that as soon as I was done with it, I re-read Ronson's other two books, "Them: Adventures with Extremists" and "The Men Who Stare at Goats." You really need to read those two, too.

Will Elder Weekends: Still beating the heat!

2012-01-21T12:16:00.001-06:00

Here, in honor of winter continuing to make up for lost time here in northern Illinois, are a couple more Will Elder-drawn panels from the "Hot Weather Photos" feature from way back in 1954's Mad 29.

Books of the year, Part 4: If this book were true, I'd be moving to Canada right now

2012-01-15T10:43:00.001-06:00

Seth has been mixing fact and fiction in his comic books since the early days of Palookaville, when he convinced everyone that "Kayo" was a real cartoonist in "It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken." In subsequent books like "Wimbledon Green" and "George Sprott," Seth went from a single fictional cartoonist to create entire worlds of parallel history, with TV stations, comic book publishers and other elements of pop culture that don't really exist, but seem like they almost, just barely could. And should.

"The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists" (or "The G.N.B Double C" for short) is his latest excursion into this fictional universe. Like "Wimbledon Green," it's a small hardcover and focuses on comic book history that never was (well, mostly). But like "George Sprott," it creates a complex world of its own, but one that's almost completely seen from a distance, with its best days far in the past.

The entire book is a tour of the GNB Double C building in Dominion (there were, as Seth points out, other branches) and, in a digression near the end, the vast Northern Archive Building located. The unnamed narrator (obviously Seth) takes us through the halls of the old building, pointing out galleries, lounges, ballrooms, studios and other locations, all rarely used now but once the site of decades of cartooning glory.

It's almost completely fiction (except for mentions of real cartoonists, like Canadian legend Doug Wright), but it's seductively believable. You know, for instance, that there never was a comic book called "Kao Kuk" about an Eskimo astronaut, but Seth's description -- especially the legendary issue 87, "The Death of Kao Kuk" -- is so evocative that you wish it really existed. As the story continues and the stories within the story get stranger and stranger -- "Canada Jack," the hero who walks everywhere and hangs out with Snoopy (yes, that Snoopy); "The Great Machine," a strange, foreboding art comic; and the description of Northern Archive itself, which seems almost mythical.

It's all impossible, of course, but Seth tells it all with such a sense of deadpan seriousness -- and, of course, a sense of underlying sadness -- that he makes you wish it was all real. I'd love to actually read The Great Machine, take the train through the snow to the Northern Archive, have a few drinks in The Forest Room (with its tree-like pillars) and hole up in one of the "monk-like cells" in the GNB Double C building and create a comic book. I read about a lot of fictional worlds, but there are few I've wanted to actually exist as much as the one in this book.

And, of course, being from Seth, the entire book is beautifully designed, with a gold-embossed cover and end pages filled with panels from "Kao Kuk" and "Canada Jack". There's even a model of the GNB Double C building in the opening pages, along with actual photos of the society's most prestigious awards. If you like comic books -- or if you ever did like comic books, the reality or the idea -- this book belongs on your shelf. It might not been the absolute best book of the year -- that Jaime story in Love and Rockets 4 is tough to beat -- but it was my favorite.

Will Elder Weekends: Beating the heat!

2012-01-14T13:28:00.002-06:00

In honor of the first real blast of winter to hit Illinois this year, here's a feature called "Hot Weather Photos" from Mad 29, dating way back to Sept. 1956. It's essentially just an excuse for Will Elder to strut his stuff illustration wise, with some beautiful black-and-white work spoofing the cliches of hot weather news photos. (Cliches that endure to this day, I assure you.) Here are a couple of my favorites...

Books of the Year, Part 3: Just what were the World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets, anyway?

2012-01-11T08:33:00.000-06:00

In a perfect world, Kirk Demarias' book, "Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads" would win the Pulitzer Prize. And then it would win the Nobel.

That's because Demarais answers the question we've been wondering since childhood: If you sent money to those companies that advertised in comic books, what the heck would they send you in return?

In what must have been a Herculean effort (or at least a lot of time on eBay), Demarais actually got his hands on such fabled products as the 100 Toy Soldiers, the Polaris Nuclear Sub and X-Ray Spex, and offers them up for your inspection in the pages of this book. As you might guess, they're mostly cheap junk. Those 100 Toy Soldiers that looked so amazing in the ads were flat pieces of plastic. That Polaris Nuclear Sub was a glorified box that would crumble in actual water. And, of course, those X-ray Spex were nothing but pieces of cardboard with a feather in between. Sorry.

Demarias breaks down all this chicanery into "We Imagined," "They Sent" and "Customer Satisfaction." Every so often, a product would actually live up to the hype -- the Exhaust Whistle and Bird Call worked impressively -- but it's more fun when the products are blatant, bold schemes to separate kids from their parents money. Thankfully, Demarais reprints the ad in question next to the a photo of the actual product so we can experience the thrill of the pitch and the crushing disappointment of the product all at once.

Best of all, "Mail-Order Mysteries" isn't just educational -- it's also a beautiful book. The cover and interior are cleverly designed, and there's an appendix of full-page comic book ads, with more reprinted on the endpages. And, as if you needed more reason to own it, the covers GLOW IN THE DARK. Did you hear that? They GLOW IN THE DARK. Go ahead and place your order now -- I'll be calling Sweden about that Nobel Prize.

If you like this sort of thing (and, since you're reading a blog called "X-Ray Spex," I'm going to assume that you do), be sure to check out Demarais' web site, Secret Fun Spot. And, if you have a special fondness for pranks, gags and novelties, order his other book, "Life of the Party: A Visual History of S.S. Adams, Makers of Pranks and Magic for 100 Years." It's worth a space on any pop culture shelf.

By the way, in answer to the title of this post, the World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets, featured in ads with memorable mystery man Count Dante, were mostly things like gouging someone's eyes out with your thumbs or shattering someone's spine. Now you know!

Advance Team Tuesday: Just a pizza delivery guy, out on the road

2012-01-10T10:12:00.000-06:00

Here's a page from early in "The Advance Team" showing our hero, Zack McKinley, on his nightly rounds delivering semi-warm, overpriced pizza to an unappreciative audience. He's behind the wheel of his car, cruising the mean streets of Cleveland. Not much cosmic going on here, in other words...

But if you look a little more closely, you might notice that, long before he battled the badguys of the story, those folks were part of Zack's life as far as cheaply consumed pop culture was concerned, (Click to enlarge.)

See, kids? That's called foreshadowing.

Will Elder Weekends: Pulp Fiction

2012-01-07T22:57:00.000-06:00

Here's a vintage Will Elder illustration from Mad 30, way back in Dec. 1956. For those of you keeping score, that was after Mad made the switch from comic book to magazine, and Elder's art made the switch from color to black and white. This article was titled "What's Happened to the ... Pulp Magazines" and featured Elder's takes on various pulp cliches as pictured in an article's opening spread -- adventure pulps, jungle pulps, sports pulps, western pulps and romance pulps.

Of course, the joke was that every single one was exactly the same with just a few different elements hung onto the same framework -- he-man with voluptuous woman hanging onto him facing some sort of foe. Here's my favorite of the bunch, the romance pulp -- mostly because it adds a second of Elder's great '50s women.

Books of the Year, Part 2: Exhuming childhood's mysteries with Gahan Wilson

2012-01-06T20:36:00.001-06:00

A year or so ago in this space, when I was praising the colossal National Lampoon book "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead," I bemoaned the fact that no one had collected Gahan Wilson's "Nuts" comic strips from that magazine. Well, ask and ye shall receive apparently, because the folks at Fantagraphics did just that in this snazzy little hardcover.

"Nuts," if you're not familiar with it (and really, why would you be?), was a single-page comic Wilson wrote and drew for more than 10 years for the Lampoon's "Funny Pages" section. While many of the other strips -- and the magazine itself, for that matter, specialized in jet-black humor with heavy dollops of sex and violence, "Nuts" was something else. For one thing, it had a continuing character -- a little boy who was just trying to navigate the complicated corridors of childhood. "Nuts" wasn't action-packed or boldly satirical. Just the opposite, in fact -- it was subtle and thoughtful, with what I'm guessing was a heavy autobiographical element on the part of Mr.Wilson. Each strip would take a semi-nostalgic look back at some aspect of childhood, like magic sets or libraries or school or model kits, then reflect on the fact that it was confusing or scary or disappointing or just plain strange -- or usually a combination of all of those elements.

One of the most surprising things about "Nuts" was the other thing that set it apart from the rest of the National Lampoon -- it wasn't endlessly dark or bitter-humored. It definitely wasn't a rainbows-and-sunshine hosanna to the glories of lost childhood, but it also wasn't a cruel joke on kids (or former kids). It was a lot more complex than that. Our unnamed hero did what he could to figure out the confounding world of adults, and he almost always failed at that near-impossible task, but he kept trying -- and we kept rooting for him. How could we not? You might not have grown up when Wilson did, or when the magazine was published, or when I first read these strips years ago, so the details have changed. But I'm willing to bet the emotions our hero felt remain almost exactly the same, no matter what generation is reading about him.

And, of course, Gahan Wilson's cartooning is what makes the strips special. The panels are cramped, packed with Wilson's organic linework and evocative lettering, but that just adds to the feeling that we're a little kid in the big, weird world and everything seems a bit overwhelming. Normally I like books of cartoons -- especially those done by someone with Wilson's talent -- to be big, spacious productions. But for this collection of "Nuts," the small size feels just right.

Books of the Year, Part 1: All hail Jaime!

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-06:00

I think I read fewer comic books in 2011 than I've read since the early 1980s. Chalk it up to lack of time, lack of interest (I like the concept behind DC's giant reboot, but I couldn't see myself sampling all those new books -- liked OMAC a lot, though) and lack of free boxes of comic books arriving on my doorstep. Still, there was some truly great stuff on the stands (Stands? Do they still exist?) in 2011. Like, for instance...

Just like everyone else in the world, I thought Love and Rockets New Stories #4 -- specifically Jaime Hernandez' conclusion of "The Love Bunglers" -- was more than just the best story of the year, it was one of the best comic stories I've ever read. (Yes, even better than last year's Love and Rockets masterpiece, Jaime's "Browntown" -- though it plays off that story in a brilliant way.) I've been following the exploits of Maggie and Hopey since the mid 1980s, and "The Love Bunglers" paid off all those years with an emotional impact it's hard to explain -- especially if you haven't been following the characters for that long. Everything about the story -- the pacing, the layout, the script and (of course) the art -- was dead-on perfect, but it all added up to way more than the sum of its parts. Maybe the greatest work by the greatest living cartoonist. Seriously.

And, as long as we're on the topic, the latest Love and Rockets collection, "Esperanza," was pretty spectacular, too, following Hopey into her teaching career, Ray along his obsessive romance with the woman nicknamed "Frogmouth" and Mags, dear mags, into some seriously weird territory involving Frogmouth, Doyle and Izzy. If you don't read Love and Rockets, you have no idea what or whom I'm talking about. If you do, though, you know what rich characters these people are and what rich lives they live.

Like I said, Jaime Hernandez is the greatest living cartoonist. If you want proof, read these two books.

Advance Team Tuesday: Talking on Word Balloon

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-06:00

Just before the chaos of the holidays was unleashed, I sat down via Skype with John Siuntres of Word Balloon podcast fame, to talk comics, pop culture and, of course, Jerry Lewis. (John shares the same obsession with the man that I do.) Naturally, the conversation included plenty of comments about my upcoming graphic novel "The Advance Team," which I can finally describe as "coming out this year."

You can find Word Balloon over at iTunes, or, if you want, you can click here to download or listen. As is always the case with John, I had a great time shooting the breeze about comics, old movies and other arcane topics, and I think the fun we had comes through in the podcast. Also, the same podcast includes John's discussions with Brian Michael Bendis and Sal Abbinanti. And it's free! What more could you possibly want?

Will Elder Weekends: Happy New Year -- and welcome to the future!

2012-01-01T16:19:00.000-06:00

In honor of the arrival of 2012, here's a cover rough for an illustration for a 1961 Playboy article entitled "Girls of the Slime God" by William Knowles. This was about a year before Elder and Kurtzman started "Little Annie Fanny" at the same magzine, so obviously Hef (and his art department) liked what they saw...

My source for the illo is "Chicken Fat," a great little book of (as the title says) "drawings, sketches, cartoons and doodles" by Elder that Fantagraphics published back in 2006. It includes a lot of Elder art I've never seen anywhere else, and it's available right here.

Buy even more of my comics and make me even richer: Iron Man 2.0 #12

2011-12-29T20:26:00.001-06:00

Can't believe I almost forgot this, but the final issue of Iron Man 2.0 also hit the stands this week, with the big finale of the story of "Rhodey" Rhodes and his battle with the deadly Palmer Addley contagion that could destroy America -- nay, the world. The issue features a script by yours truly (springing off a plot by Nick Spencer) with art by Carime Di Giandomenico, Andy Troy, Ariel Olivetti and Mirco Pierfederici.

It was a lot of fun to play in the fabled Marvel Universe. Hopefully I can visit again sometime soon. (In other words, send those cards and letters to the folks in charge!)

Buy my comics, make me rich: DC Comics Presents Batman 100-Page Spectacular: Blaze of Glory

2011-12-28T20:31:00.000-06:00

I'll admit it's quite a mouthful, but "DC Comics Presents Batman 100-Page Spectacular: Blaze of Glory" did indeed arrive in stores this week, and it's a comic I'm amazed to see back on the stands -- though one I'm pretty proud of, too.

The three-part story originally ran in "Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight" issues 197-199 way back in late 2005 and early 2006. It's the tale of Eric Webber, a would-be armored car thief who runs up against (a) Batman and (b) a world-class string of bad luck. Years later, with not much time left, he plans to get his revenge on our hero with a surprisingly elaborate -- and surprisingly effective -- scheme.

They say everyone has at least one Batman story in them, and this might have been mine. Though it focuses a lot on Mr. Webber, "Blaze of Glory" also has plenty of Batman, and not Batman the crazy psycho, either. You actually get to see him do a bit of detective work in these pages. Plus, there are cameo appearances from Oracle, Robin, Nightwing, Alfred, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and just about every single criminal in Batman's rogues gallery -- and yes, that includes my gal Catwoman.

But I have to admit, the real star of the show is Chris Weston, who brought the story to life artistically. Forget Webber, forget the Bat family, forget the villains and forget my script. This issue is worth the price of admission for Chris' spectacular art alone. Heck, it might be worth it for just this shot of the highway leading into Gotham with the wonderfully retro Batman billboard in the center...

By the way, to bring the page count up to the magic 100, DC included a fun story by Adam Beechen, Steve Scott and Nathan Massengill about a couple of young kids out for a night of romance in Gotham City. So if you were on the fence about buying this comic, that should push you right over. Seriously -- this one's a bargain.

Advance Team Tuesday: A sketchy end to 2011

2011-12-27T20:02:00.000-06:00

Everyone recovered from Christmas? Everyone all set for New Years? This being the least likely week of the year for an extensive, scan-intensive post on the blog, I hope you'll forgive me if I slack off and let a bit of German Torres' excellent artwork carry the day.

Here's a quartet of page roughs from "The Advance Team." They don't offer a whole lot of detailed information about the comic book -- except for that intriguing POP CULT KILLER headline on the first page -- but they do showcase the energy and ingenuity German is bringing to the book.

And just think -- this being the last Advance Team Tuesday post of 2011, the next time we meet, we'll be in the year 2012. That means, besides the Olympics and the election and the end of the world and all those other trivial news events, we'll be in the year that "The Advance Team" graphic novel hits the stands. Hallelujah!

Will Elder Weekends: Wait -- what happened to Mrs. Claus?

2011-12-24T08:53:00.000-06:00

Just in time for the big day, here -- at long last -- is the panel that got Will Elder's adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas" in Panic #1 banned in Boston. After all the craziness, all the strangeness, and all the endless gags stuffed into the panel corners, it was one prominently displayed sign that raised the ire of the city's (Catholic) population...

As you might notice, Santa has a knife and meat cleaver hanging from the back of his sleigh, and there are fishhooks on his whip. But no, it was the words "Just Divorced" on Santa's sleigh that made the comic book verboten.

I guess it was because Santa, fictional character thought he might be, is sort of a saint, and the higher-ups didn't like the fact that he'd leave poor Mrs. Claus. It's tragic when fictional characters divorce, and it's even worse when satirical depictions of fictional characters divorces, so you really can't blame them. As is usually the case, they were just thinking of the children.

Here's your annual X-ray Spex reminder to watch Letterman's annual Chirstmas show

2011-12-21T20:05:00.000-06:00

On Friday, Dec. 23, "The Late Show with David Letterman" will feature Dave's annual bundle of Christmas traditions: Jay Thomas stopping by to knock the meatball off the top of the Christmas tree with a football, the annual telling of the Lone Ranger tale (also by Thomas) and Darlene Love -- she of "A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector" fame -- performing her rendition of "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)."

It's one of the few, honest, semi-homespun traditions left on modern television, so I suggest you tune it. As goofy as it is, it always fills me with the Christmas spirit. And believe you me, Darlene Love blows the roof off the house. Here's her performance from last year...

Note: A previous version of this post had the Letterman Christmas extravaganza taking place on Thursday's show. I've check with the official sources -- aka CBS.com -- and, rest assured, it does indeed take place on Friday. Adjust your viewing accordingly.

Advance Team Tuesday: A Very Merry Christmas from Zack McKinley, hero of The Advance Team

2011-12-20T20:19:00.002-06:00

Here he is in his holiday finery, all set to celebrate the season...

Actually, that's the cover of the book, beautifully drawn by German Torres and horribly disfigured by yours truly and five minutes of bad Photoshop. I wanted to see if I could duplicate the cheap, pandering effect of those movie ads that desperately try to drum up a few more ticket sales by slapping a Santa hat on everyone in the poster, and I'm -- happy? sad? ashamed? -- to say that I think I succeeded. Please don't judge the graphic novel by this cheesy image.

By the way, if you're still doing a bit of last-minute shopping, might I suggest giving the gift that won't arrive until 2012 -- namely, a copy of "The Advance Team"? In fact, if you send me proof that you pre-ordered a copy, I'll send a genuine signed piece of paper that you can use as a bookplate -- or a bookmark, for that matter. Won't that make the holiday even more magical?

As I've said before, you can order "The Advance Team" from any number of online and actual retailers, and he's another one to put on the list -- the fine folks at DCBService.com. They're good people, do a lot for the comics world (including sponsor virtually every comics-related podcast out there) and offer great service. Here's a link to their "Advance Team" listing.

And, from all of ours to all of yours, Merry Christmas!

Will Elder Weekends: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2011-12-17T20:14:00.004-06:00

As I type this, it's one week until Christmas Eve, which means it's the perfect day for another panel from Will Elder's notorious adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas."

This panel doesn't have Santa in it, but it does depict some of the arcane wordplay of the poem in an unnervingly concrete way. I mean, there's something about the way the realistically drawn moon is just looming there that feels ominous. Elder was a great mimic, obviously, and a brilliant cartoonist, but there's something about the way his art had a texture and depth -- and, at the right times, a darkness -- that elevated him to a whole other level.

Next week: The panel that got Elder banned in Beantown!

Buy my comics, make me rich: Iron Man 2.0 #11

2011-12-14T06:04:00.004-06:00

Hitting the stands today is the second issue of my (very) brief run on Iron Man 2.0, featuring plot by Nick Spencer, script by yours truly and art by Ariel Olivetti, Here's the cover...

And, if you're interested, click here to see a few pages from the inside. All I'll say about those pages is that I've seen the crowds at O'Hare looking pretty scary, especially during the holidays, but I've never seen them actually tearing each other to pieces.

Advance Team Tuesday: Hey! We're in Previews!

2011-12-13T12:38:00.004-06:00

If you prefer to get your comic books at an actual comic book shop, grab the latest edition of Previews (the one with Batman on the cover*) and turn to page 321. Once there, you'll find this solicitation for a certain upcoming graphic novel...

Holding it open to that page, take your copy of Previews to the counter and tell the guy at the cash register you want to order a copy -- or, better yet, multiple copies -- of "The Advance Team." Then wait until March for the fun to begin.

Of course, you can also get a copy via Amazon, Barnes & Noble or dozens of other places, including any independent booksellers you might have in your area.

And thus endeth the sales pitch.

* I know they all have Batman on the cover, but I'm talking about the Dec. 2011 one with the Tony Daniels illustration.

Will Elder Weekends: Santa Claus swears like a sailor!

2011-12-11T12:05:00.004-06:00

Here's another panel from the notorious adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas" that appeared in the first issue of Panic, with art by Will Elder and text by Charles Clement Moore. The text is dead-on faithful to the original poem, but as you can see, Elder's art takes a few liberties.

Here, for instance, is Santa screaming profanities at his reindeer. Is this the panel that got the issue banned in Boston? Nope. Not quite.

That scan, by the way, comes from "Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s E.C. Comics!," an excellent book by Grant Geissman that devotes a chapter to each E.C. artist that includes bio information and plenty of samples of art, then follows each of those chapters with a full story reprinted from the printed comic book pages. Elder, obviously, is represented by "The Night Before Christmas," but you also get Joe Orlando's "Judgment Day," Johnny Craig's "Touch and Go," Wally Wood's "The Precious Years," Al Williamson's bee-yoo-ti-ful "50 Girls 50," Bernie Krigstein's "The Flying Machine" and, of course, Jack Davis' "Foul Play," the story so disturbing it knocked me for a loop when I saw a mere two panels from it as a kid.

In other words, buy this book! In fact, it would make a perfect gift, especially since it includes "The Night Before Christmas."

Next week: More Christmas merriment from the pen of Will Elder!

Advance Team Tuesday: FIGHT!

2011-12-07T15:26:00.002-06:00

Last week, we showed you a glimpse of the big bad. Now, without further ado or rambling explanation, here's a page of he and our hero, Zack McKinley, battling it out...

And where is it that they're fighting? That carpet looks awfully familiar...

Will Elder Weekends: Merry Christmas from the gang at EC Comics!

2011-12-03T16:47:00.004-06:00

Here's the final page from Will Elder's notorious adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas," featuring the gang at EC Comics wishing you and yours a very merry. This isn't the part of the story that was controversial -- we'll get to that in a couple of weeks, just in time for the big day -- but it's a fascinating look at some of the most creative comic book creators of all time, as drawn by one of the greatest cartoonists of all time...

I like how EC publisher Bill Gaines is in a wheel chair. I assume that, like SCTV chief Guy Caballero, he uses it to get respect. I also like the pills and the gun by his side. Boy, dark humor isn't a recent invention, is it?

Next week: More Christmas shenanigans!

Advance Team Tuesdays: The big, bad badguy

2011-11-29T19:23:00.005-06:00

I apologize for the no doubt jarring absence of Advance Team Tuesdays last week, but the holiday played havoc with my blogging schedule (and plus I'm lazy). But here's a brand-new installment, in which we meet the biggest of the badguys, this guy...

I'm reluctant to reveal too much about him, but suffice to say that he's the toughest, most powerful foe our hapless hero Zack McKinley has to face. Just look at that face!

In fact, just look at that face. Looks a bit like this face, doesn't it?

Pure coincidence, I assure you. Really.

Will Elder Weekends: One more Mole!

2011-11-27T10:08:00.003-06:00

Here's our last panel from the Kurtzman/Elder crime spoof "Mole," revealing the almost final fate of our antihero. (Spoiler Alert: In the story's last panel, he digs his way straight to the electric chair.) I remember thinking that the sight of his bare ass was (a) hilarious and (b) strange, because it just wasn't the sort of thing you saw in comic books back in those days -- it wasn't even really the sort of thing I remember seeing in Mad Magazine, though, admittedly, back then I was more of a Cracked Man myself. And it would be a few years before someone would slip me a copy of National Lampoon in study hall and I'd see how much cartoon nudity you could really pack into one publication.

Nice touch with the spikes on the bottom of the show, by the way. That Elder!

Next week: The Christmas countdown commences!

Buy my comics, make me rich: Iron Man 2.0 #10

2011-11-22T19:37:00.004-06:00

Haven't had one of these posts in a while, but I wanted to alert all you loyal readers of X-Ray Spex to the fact that I do, in fact, have a comic book hitting the stands Wednesday, Nov. 23.

It's the 10th issue of the Iron Man 2.0 limited series -- or, to be more specific, it's the second half of the 10th issue of the Iron Man 2.0 limited series. I was hired to pinch hit and script the last dozen pages or so, plus the final two issue in the 12-part series. (Nick Spencer and Joshua Hale Fialkov handled the rest of the writing chores.) I haven't written anything for Marvel in a long, long time, so it was a lot of fun to script Rhodey, Tony and the gang.

As always, if you read it, stop by the comments section and let me know what you thought.

Will Elder Weekends: More Mole!

2011-11-20T10:25:00.002-06:00

Here's another couple of panels from "Mole!," the Kurtzman/Elder story from MAD #2. It's not as packed with background jokes as most Elder images -- in fact, by his standards, it's fairly simple -- but it's still beautifully drawn and wonderfully strange all the same. I love the expression on the guy's face and all those guns surrounding him. Elder is justifiably considered one of the greatest mimics in comic book history -- if not the greatest -- but he was a master cartoonist in his own style, too.

Next week: Still more Mole!

Farewell, Batman

2011-11-19T12:48:00.011-06:00

The last episode of "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" aired Friday night on Cartoon Network. If you (a) don't have a kid or (b) aren't a comic book nerd, you probably didn't watch and don't care. Well, I fall into both categories.

Created to appeal to a younger audience, "Brave and the Bold" skipped the whole Dark Knight persona and returned the Silver Age Batman to the screen -- and it was great fun. On any given episode, Batman could fight Merlin with the Demon and Green Arrow, save Christmas with Red Tornado, be killed repeatedly by an omnipotent Joker, fight a red kryptonite-crazed Superman or save the world from Starro -- with the help of an obscure DC hero like Bwana Beast.

Why is Batman fighting mind-controlled dinosaurs with the help of the Creature Commandos in the War That Time Forgot? How does Batman travel to the world of Kamandi to battle Gorilla Grodd? Why is he on an alternate Earth to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by a steam-powered John Wilkes Booth cyborg? Who cares? It was so much fun that you didn't worry about it. The folks behind "Brave and the Bold" cherry picked DC comics history for co-stars and villains, coming up with characters the general public never heard of, like Ace the Bat Hound, Sportsmaster, the Gentlemen Ghost, Phantom Lady and Blockbuster for Batman to interact with.

What's more, the show used these characters better than they've been used in print. The two-part Starro story gave Bwana Beast a touching send-off where he died saving the world, honored by his fellow heroes and mourned the love of his life, Vixen (another laughing stock in print who finally got some dignity on this show). One episode focused on the Doom Patrol and replayed the final issue of the original series, where the team of arguing oddballs agreed to sacrifice their own lives to save a handful of people they didn't know. The show even added a modern twist, with people watching on TV honoring them by repeating in unison "We are all the Doom Patrol... We are all the Doom Patrol." All that and background references not only to Grant Morrison's run on the Doom Patrol comic, but extra-obscure mentions of Morrison's Flex Mentallo and even his Doom Patrol spoof, Doom Force. And Batwoman -- a 1950s character best forgotten -- was revived for a wild gender-bending adventure where she and Batman switched bodies, and Batman learned walking in heels isn't as easy as it looks. My daughter missed the "Some Like it Hot" reference at the end where the smitten villains says "Nobody's perfect," but I sure didn't.

And that's the one of the best things about the show: all those references to old comic books (and pop culture) never got in the way of the story. My daughter has never read a Batman comic book (except, of course, for the Batman: Brave and the Bold tie-in comic, which is almost as good as the cartoon), but she didn't care if she'd never heard of Kamandi or Big Barda or Plastic Man. She just knew that the cartoon was fun, it was funny and Batman always, always, always figured out a way to beat the bad guy and still seem like a nice guy.

Batman doesn't have to be grim-and-gritty to be impressive. He just has to be Batman. He's a hero, remember? Unfortunately, in comics, he more often just seems like a jerk. But not here. As Rich Sands said over at TV Guide, "The Brave and the Bold" was "the most joyful incarnation of the character since Adam West donned the cape and cowl in the 1960s." Is it any wonder my daughter loves that show, too?

Friday's finale brought back two series favorites, Aquaman and Bat Mite. Voiced by John DiMaggio (aka Bender on "Futurama"), Aquaman was arguably the breakout star of the show, always energizing an episode with his bombastic attitude. In comics, Aquaman is seen as (a) a joke or (b) someone who has to be "dark" and "grim" to prove he's no joke. On this show, he was neither. Yes, he was very funny, but he also had a real lust for life and when the chips were down, he'd always come through. I wish Aquaman could be written this well in the comics. Hell, I wish I had written him this well during my short stint on his book.

And Bat Mite was the deux ex machina of the series, the guy who used his fifth-dimensional magic to change Batman's world. On one memorable episode Bat Mite (voiced by Pee Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens) hosted three short shows starring alternate versions of his hero -- a dead-on adaptation of the Manga version of Batman from the 1960s, a hilarious Scooby-Doo parody with lame animation and guest star "Weird" Al Yankovic and, best of all, a faithful adaptation of the "Bat-Boy and Rueben" spoof by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood from the 1950s comic book version of Mad. I stared at Wood's drawings translated to animation, mouth agape in astonishment, by my daughter just laughed at the jokes. As far as she knew, this was just another Batman cartoon -- and a really funny one, at that.

On the series finale, Bat Mite decides he wants this show canceled to make room for a dark and gritty version, so he changes Batman's world to make the show jump the shark. Our hero gets a wife and cutesy daughter, uses a toy-inspired Bat Luge instead of the classic Batmobile and fights crime with an Aquaman voiced by Ted McGinley instead of John DiMaggio. Eventually, Ambush Bug -- a very obscure DC hero whose main power is that he knows he's a comic book character -- helps save the day, restoring order to Batman's world. (Ambush Bug, in one of the episode's many, many meta-jokes, is voiced by Henry Winkler himself, who of course jumped that shark as the Fonz all those years ago.)

But, in the end, the show is canceled anyway, and the final scene is a party in the Batcave. As heroes mingle in the foreground (my favorite bit was seeing Kamandi pet Ace the Bat Hound as his evolved canine friend, Dr. Canus, looked on), the giant penny and other Bat props are taken down in the background. Ambush Bug congratulates Batman, saying it was "a good run." Batman, voiced perfectly, as always, by Diedrich Bader, corrects him. "A great run." And then he turns to the camera...

"And until we meet again, boys and girls, know that wherever evil lurks in all its myriad forms, I'll be there with the hammer of justice to fight for decency and defend the innocent. Good night."

My six-year-old daughter thought it was a great episode and immediately wanted to watch it again. I did too, but I had to excuse myself for a second. I think there was something in my eye...

Advance Team Tuesday: Meet the Cast, Part 5

2011-11-15T12:24:00.004-06:00

This week, Advance Team Tuesdays return (thank the lord) and the cast of villainy continues. Our focus today is on femme fatale Abigail Apollo, one of the people (maybe....) battling our hero, Zack McKinley, for the eventual fate of planet Earth. You've already heard of her, assuming you read all the panels I post on this blog as carefully as I do...

... but here she is meeting Zack for the first time. Don't worry: In a few pages, they're trying to kill each other.

Remember, "The Advance Team" graphic novel hits the stores next spring, but you can advance order a copy now. Check with your favorite online (or actual) bookseller.

Will Elder Weekends: Mole!

2011-11-13T10:04:00.004-06:00

That's Melvin Mole from the Kurtzman/Elder story "Mole!," which originally appeared way back in Mad #2. Along with "Starchie!," it's one of the first things I ever saw by Elder, in a reprint of Mad comic book stories in one of those Mad Super Specials from the 1970s that some kid brought to class.

I'd seen comic books before, obviously, and was familiar with Mad Magazine (who wasn't?), but this was something different. There was something earthy about Elder's art, with all those shadows, hairs (especially in this story) and bric-a-brac in the corners of the panels. And, of course, this story -- and this panel in particular -- had a level of violence you just didn't see in comics. Or movies. Or anywhere else, for that matter. (Notice the tip of the cop's pinky flying off.) I know when I read it originally I knew it was supposed to be "funny," but the feeling I came away with was more one of fascination that I'd seen something unlike anything I'd ever read before. It didn't seem, somehow, like it was intended for kids -- though, of course, that made this kid all the more eager to get his hands of more of the same.

Next week: More Melvin Mole!

'Keep on Walking'

2011-11-09T20:09:00.002-06:00

Please forgive the lack of an Advance Team Tuesday post this week, but I'm cranking under the deadline of a wholly unrelated (and, I think, largely unannounced) comic book project right now, so truth is, I just didn't get a chance to post it.

In the meantime, here's a great supercut video compiled by Brian Carroll entitled "Keep on Walking" featuring nothing but characters walking away from the camera. Keep an eye out for some of my favorite movies, including "The Hudsucker Proxy," "2001," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Pulp Fiction," "Fight Club" and plenty of others. They're extra tricky to spot, because, for the most part, all you see are the backs of characters.

Keep On Walking from Brian Carroll on Vimeo.

Will Elder Weekends: Poopeye!

2011-11-04T22:15:00.003-05:00

Not only does Will Elder effortless capture the look of E.C. Segar's iconic Popeye, but in this sequence, he nails Hal Foster's Tarzan, too. (And Kurtzman, of course, uses the Foster-esque caption boxes in this section instead of the standard wood balloons of the rest of the story.)

Advance Team Tuesday, Meet the Cast, Part 4

2011-11-01T19:26:00.004-05:00

In this week's thrilling installment of "Meet the Cast," the focus falls on one Orson Arson, musician, rock star and all-around bad influence on the youth of America ... including one youth in particular.

Of course, that's just the image of Mr. Arson on a concert ticket and, as you'll discover when you read "The Advance Team," not a very current picture either. Truth is, Orson Arson isn't in the book a whole lot -- but his appearance -- along with his music -- makes quite an impact on our young hero.

Want a copy of "The Advance Team" for your very own? You'll find advance ordering info here and here. It hits the stores in March, so clear a prominent space on your bookshelf.

Happy Halloween from X-Ray Spex...

2011-10-30T07:34:00.002-05:00

... and from screen star Clara Bow, who certainly seems to be in the spirit of the season. Photo courtesy of the excellent Classic Hollywood tumblr site.

If you're in the mood for more Halloween blog posts, check out my month-long series on horror movies from October 2007. It's all right here.

Will Elder Weekends: Dragged Net!

2011-10-29T12:12:00.002-05:00

For their spoof of "Dragnet," Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder went to the well twice. The first time, the characters looked nothing like Jack Webb and Co., but the rhythms of the iconic cop show were definitely there. I'm betting it was based on the radio show.

But for the second spoof, shown above, Elder is obviously drawing Jack Webb -- albeit a goofier Jack Webb than the actual version. I've always loved these two panels, mostly for the insane glee with which Joe Friday and his partner smoke those cigarettes. Friday's face in the second panel, with four cigarettes in his mouth, one in his ear and a few in his hand, never fails to crack me up.

Advance Team Tuesday: Meet the Cast, Part 3

2011-10-25T21:35:00.003-05:00

This week's featured Advance Team cast member is tech billionaire Anthony Ames, the guy who, as our hero says, pretty much invented the future...

And sure, he seems friendly now, but as you might have guessed, that won't last for long. You might have guessed that, in fact, because you've already seen him fighting with our hero Zack in the page I posted here.

Will Elder Weekends: Woman Wonder!

2011-10-22T16:53:00.003-05:00

From Mad #10. And people thought Amazons Attack was too violent?

This is, for Will Elder, a relatively simple panel, but it's still got a surplus of jokes: the "John Hancock" signature, the blissful expressions on the dead henchmen's faces, Woman Wonder's propeller beany and, best of all, her tired, exasperated expression. All of it beautifully rendered, of course. Elder is best known for his dead-on mimicry, but his own style was top-notch. What I wouldn't give for a Will Elder original to hang on my wall.

Advance Team, er, Wednesday: Meet the Cast, Part 2

2011-10-19T19:17:00.003-05:00

Hey, gang. Sorry about the day's delay in getting this post up, but it couldn't be helped. At any rate, here's the second installment of the "Meet the Cast" series, wherein I introduce you, the potential reader of "The Advance Team" graphic novel, to the characters of the story.

This week, the tale takes an artistic bent with Anton Arvon, avant garde artist and former rock 'n' roll poster painter. Here he is having a bit of a tense moment with our hero, Zack McKinley...

You'll see more of Mr. Arvon in the book itself, which I'm sure you've advance ordered already, right? If not, feel free to click here or here and follow the links to future graphic novel nirvana. (I may be overstating things a bit with the use of the word "nirvana," but then again, I may not. The only way to be sure is to get your own copy. And yes, the sales pitch is getting more crazed as the publication date nears.)

Anton Arvon, incidentally, got his last name from this guy, whom my wife and I saw on a cruise years ago. It's funny his online bio doesn't mention the fact that he sang the theme song for "Happy Days," because believe me, he never stopped mentioning it on that cruise.

Behold! The 360-degree ball camera!

2011-10-16T11:55:00.003-05:00

Now this, this is pretty cool...

At first, I was wondering what location would be impressive enough to justify using this camera, but the truth is, any location would look impressive when see in this way.

Will Elder Weekends: Mickey Rodent!

2011-10-15T08:20:00.003-05:00

This week's installment of Will Elder weekends brings you two panels by the master -- in fact, the last two panels of "Mickey Rodent!" from Mad #19. The story itself is a typically brilliant evisceration of the Disney image written by Harvey Kurtzman and drawn by Will, but it's the ending that Will drops his dead-on mimicry of the Disney style and switches to his own darker, richer artistic technique.

And that's fitting, because let's face it -- this ending is pretty damned dark.

Advance Team Tuesday: Meet the Cast, Part 1

2011-10-11T10:48:00.006-05:00

Okay, so in the months since I've started hyping "The Advance Team" graphic novel here at X-Ray Spex, you've met our hero, Zack, and his would-be girlfriend, Vic. You've met Zack's boss, Marty, and you've caught a glimpse of some other folks in the book, too. But this week, we're going to start introducing the rest of the cast, and we're beginning with the man I like to call "Uncle Archie"...

Now, as you may or may not have guessed, (a) he's really not, strictly speaking, Zack's uncle and (b) "Archie" isn't his real name. But he plays a huge -- I'd say "central" -- role in the story, and though he looks like your average old guy, he's anything but.

By the way, this has nothing to do with Archie, but if you've been reading these posts, you might notice that it snows a lot in "The Advance Team." That's because it takes place (mostly) in Ohio and (mostly) in winter, and plus, I (mostly) like snow. Another fascinating peek behind the comic book curtain!

And remember, you can order your own advance copy of "The Advance Team" right now. Click here or here for links.

Will Elder Weekends: Gasoline Valley!

2011-10-08T08:59:00.002-05:00

There's a lot of (deserved) attention being paid to Frank King's "Gasoline Alley" these days, but seeing the original always makes me think of the Kurtzman and Elder Mad version, where King's naturalist style and aging of his characters were taken to insane extremes.

In this panel, for example, Skizziks has aged so quickly (in what seems to be the course of a single day) that his small all-American town has been turned into a futuristic Flash Gordon-esque metropolis -- all beautifully rendered by Elder, of course. Notice, for instance, how Skizziks' black coat makes him the center of attention. That was part of Elder's genius -- no matter how much he crammed his panels with jokes and asides, the focus of the image was always crystal clear.

Advance Team Tuesday BONUS: More places to place your order

2011-10-04T11:03:00.002-05:00

Of course, Amazon.com isn't the only site to order your copy of "The Advance Team."

There's also Barnes & Noble...

And Indiebound...

And plenty of others. If you've got a local bookstore, by all means support it. And as links to comic book sites come in, I'll be sharing those, too. See those categories at the bottom of this post? One of them isn't called "shameless self promotion" for nothing!

Advance Team Tuesday: Say, look what's available on Amazon...

2011-10-04T02:01:00.000-05:00

... it's only for pre-order, of course, but if you'd like a copy of that graphic novel "The Advance Team" you've been hearing so much about, get out your credit card and click here.

And you save 32 percent off the cover prize. Wotta deal. So be sure to order early -- and, of course, order often.

Will Elder Weekends: Robinson Crusoe!

2011-10-01T11:56:00.004-05:00

This week's panel comes from the Kurtzman/Elder adaptation (well, sort of) of "Robinson Crusoe!" from the thirteenth issue of Mad. I especially love how the story begins like the original (well, sort of), with our hero scavenging items from his ship (especially rum) and building "crude" shelter on the island upon which he's stuck. As you can see by the above panel, by the end of the story, crafty and resourceful Robinson has constructed a complex system of highways, a jet-powered car and a robot driver.

Of course, there's one more bit of the story, with Crusoe using the brain of Friday (who, naturally, Elder draws to look like Joe Friday of "Dragnet") to create one final item ... WOMAN! It's the perfect sick twist for a perfectly twisted tale.

Advance Team Tuesday: Special Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame Edition

2011-09-27T09:13:00.003-05:00

In honor of the announcement of this year's nominees to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, I thought I'd share a moment from my upcoming graphic novel "The Advance Team" that combines (a) rock 'n' roll and (b) the city of Cleveland.

And, because there's nothing I like more than including a scene of a youthful sniper in comic book, there's that, too. Enjoy?

"The Advance Team," as if I need to remind you, features art by German Torres, writing by me and hits stores this spring. Start saving those pennies now!

Introducing ... Will Elder weekends!

2011-09-24T18:50:00.005-05:00

As part of my continuous (and continuously failing) effort to get some content onto this blog, I'm kicking off a year-long series in honor of my all-time favorite cartoonist, Will Elder.

Huzzah! Huzzah!

Elder, one of the original artists on Harvey Kurtzman's Mad and a lifelong collaborator with Kurtzman, died in 2008, but his legacy remains secure. His work on Mad alone makes him a pop culture icon, but he also created amazing drawings (and paintings!) for Kurtzman's later magazines, including Humbug, Help and Trump. And, of course, he worked with his old friend Harvey for decades on the Playboy comic strip "Little Annie Fanny." As satire goes, it was a step down from Kurtzman's earlier efforts, but as far as the art goes, it was often among Elder's best.

So, to mark the man's recent birthday (Sept. 22 -- I can't be timely with anything on this blog, can I?), I'm going to post something by Will Elder each weekend. Many of the early pieces will be from those classic Mad comic book days, but I'm planning to cover his entire career -- and it was a long, rich (and very funny) one.

First up, a panel from my favorite Will Elder story and, I'd argue, one of the greatest pieces of pop culture satire of all time. It's from Mad #12, released way back in 1954, with script (of course) by Harvey Kurtzman. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the comic that scarred me for life (in the best possible way) when I first read it in fourth grade, "Starchie"....

Like most (all?) Elder panels, this one has a ton of stuff going on, but I especially like how Elder draws Biddy and Salonica. Not only are identical (which is the main joke of the panel) and not only are they inappropriately attractive (which keys off the wonderful seediness of the entire strip), but they're draw in a way no high school comic book girls are ever drawn -- namely with bad skin and acne... you know, just like real high school girls! It's a small thing, but it's the sort of thing that elevated Elder's art past a mere imitation. He really brought something more to the equation -- something that made the original look different (and usually fake) in comparison.

Advance Team Tuesday: A genuinely cosmic moment

2011-09-20T19:39:00.004-05:00

Here's a cosmic moment from "The Advance Team" where a mundane moment with our hero, Zack, becomes something a bit more mind-expanding...

Look familiar? It should. You've seen it before -- specifically here. But this time around, as a bonus, here's a genuinely cosmic moment. Check out this video taken from the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth at night.

It begins at the Pacific Ocean and passes over (according to the official notes) "North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon."

I really like those bursts of lightning as seen from above. Now that would be something to see.

This blog post -- and all the blog posts in the "Advance Team Tuesday" series -- are brought to you by "The Advance Team," the graphic novel Tor/Forge will be publishing in the spring, with script by yours truly and art by German Torres. Read more about it here.

Advance Team Tuesday: Five more random panels

2011-09-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

Here's another set of five panels (some of 'em grouped) to whet your appetite for the release next year of my graphic novel "The Advance Team." When it hits the stores, there will be hundreds of panels for you to peruse, all of them beautifully drawn by German Torres.

So, without further ado, here's some out-of-context violence, intrigue and romance...

Why movies still matter after 9/11

2011-09-11T10:14:00.005-05:00

I don't have anything to say about 9/11 here at X-Ray Spex, but I did devote this week's Register Star Movie Man column to that subject...

"Back in September 2001, in the first column I wrote after the Sept. 11 attacks, I struggled to form some sort of response to what had happened.

"Naturally, being the DVD reviewer — and a lifelong movie fan — I tried to tie the news of the day into the films of recent years. Here’s what I wrote 10 years ago:

I’ve seen planes crash and buildings collapse. I’ve seen terrorists strike America, and I’ve seen America strike back — hard, usually with a cigar in its mouth and a machine gun in its hand.

People die — extras mostly, or the hero’s best friend/beloved partner. Then, the hero — America — grits its teeth, grabs its gun and kills the bad guys, often with a witty remark. Everyone cheers. The credits roll. The end.

I didn’t hear any witty remarks Tuesday. Did you?

Of course you didn’t. The remarks, witty or otherwise, didn’t arrive until a few weeks later, when comedian Gilbert Gottfried joked at a Friar’s Club roast that he couldn’t get a direct flight because his plane “had to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

Read the whole column here.

My favorite Love & Rockets panel

2011-09-06T20:31:00.007-05:00

From issue 24, released sometime in late 1987. I had just fallen head over heels for the Replacements and their "Pleased to Meet Me" album, so imagine my surprise when Maggie and Daffy wound up at Ray's apartment and the radio was playing "Valentine"...

As it turns out, that was a landmark evening, kicking off the long and complicated relationship between Maggie and Ray. But all that mattered to me, back in 1987, back in college, back reading that original issue off the stand, was that two of my worlds -- comics and music -- were finally colliding. I'll never forget how surprised and happy that panel made me. Still does, in fact, even after all these years.

And it didn't hurt that the issue also happened to have my favorite Love & Rockets cover. No, strike that -- my favorite comic book cover...

In "The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death," Jaime says he started this image by drawing Terry's foot and working from there. Amazing. It's so perfectly structured, perfectly balanced between blacks and whites (or, in this case, reds) and just so damn perfectly drawn that you'd think it would take years of planning before you could even put pencil to board.

And yes, in case you were wondering, that's my original copy of the issue, big fold in the bottom corner and all. I've since acquired virtually all those Love & Rockets issues in various collections (in fact, my rereading of that story in "The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S" trade and seeing that panel above is what inspired this post), and I've gotten rid of many of the original issues. But I could never part with No. 24. Every time I saw that cover, I picked it up and paged through it, then I inevitably stumbled onto that panel, and back into the box it went.

The panel itself means a lot more surrounded by the others on the page, and the story means even more when it's read in the midst of all those other Maggie-and-Ray (and Maggie, and Ray) stories -- several years' worth of them, in fact. But for some reason, that single image, with those three characters, two word balloons and, most importantly, that curving stripe of lyrics extending across the panel, somehow that sums up everything I love about Love & Rockets ... and music, and comics, and pretty much everything. Thanks for drawing it, Jaime.

Advance Team Tuesday: Young hearts, beat free tonight

2011-09-06T00:02:00.000-05:00

I don't want you to get the idea from previous Advance Team Tuesday posts that the graphic novel "The Advance Team" is nothing but fight scenes, nasty villains and weird aliens. It's mostly that, sure, but I made sure to include a little romance, too...

That's out hero, Zack, almost sharing a tender moment with his co-worker/would-be girlfriend, Vic, when he's -- of course -- interrupted by his "uncle" Archie. All will be explained within the pages of the book, of course.

Start your Christmas shopping now

2011-09-02T08:19:00.011-05:00

In case you're worried about what to buy me for the holidays to pay me back for all this insightful (and, ahem, free) blogging, worry no more. The advertisement for the ultimate gift arrived in last Sunday's newspaper...

Yes, it's the "Thomas Kinkaid Fiber-Optic Bannerette." Not a banner -- not exactly -- but a smaller, cheesier, tackier simulation of an actual banner. And the fabled (and trademarked) "Painter of Light" doesn't just paint the light this time around, he (well, his underpaid minions) actually attached actual lights to the actual banner -- excuse me, the actual Bannerette. Let's take a closer look at that artwork, shall we?

Sorry if this image is a little dark, but I didn't want to lighten it up in Photoshop. The combination of (a) fiber optic lights, (b) a backlit computer display and (c) the majesty of the actual Painter of Light has the potential to blind us mortals, so I felt it was safer to leave well enough alone. Just bask in the beauty of Kinkaid unleashed!

As glorious as the "artwork" itself is, it's not my favorite part of the ad. That instead would be the bottom left corner...

I love, of course, the official Thomas Kinkade slogan, "Painter of Light," rendered as it is in a very, very classy font. But even better is the rainbow alert that this artwork does, in fact, use FIBER OPTIC technology. Apparently the company really, really didn't want us to miss that little fact. I wonder if I could buy a print of just that logo? (And what's in that glass? The milk of human kindness, I'll bet!)

Finally, as long as I'm discussing the great American modern artist Thomas Kinkade, I suppose this is as good a time to remind everyone that, yes, he really did urinate on a Winnie the Pooh statue back in the 1990s. It's true! Just imagine that heartwarming scene made even more magical with the addition of -- you guessed it! -- fiber optics.

It would be the merriest Christmas of them all!

Advance Team Tuesday: A bit more about the badguys

2011-08-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Here's another look at the antagonists of "The Advance Team," the graphic novel written by me and drawn by German Torres that will be hitting stores next spring.

Last week in this space, we saw a shadowy vision of the badguys. This week's image is slightly less shadowy but just as mysterious. Everything will be made clear in the future -- specifically about seven or so months in the future, when the graphic novel arrives on store shelves.

As a bonus, you can see a thrilling bit of editing in that last panel, where I decided that "PAY" was shorter than "BE PAYING." Stay tuned for more fascinating peeks behind the curtain!

MTV RIP: Power Pop 101

2011-08-28T15:16:00.004-05:00

You have to hand it to this video from The Producers -- as far as '80s power pop goes, it checks all the boxes: blazers and T-shirts, shag haircuts, bouncy (literally!) performance style, simple lyrics, lovelorn theme, crisp production, snappy drumming (just get a load of those fills) and, last but not least, a keyboard play who serves as the official group goofball -- especially when at around the minute 48 mark, he leaps out and the keyboard comes with him.

And it's all over in less than 2 1/2 minutes. What the hell else could you possibly want from a pop song?

The band's follow-up semi-hit was the following catchy little ditty, which somehow is even more a time capsule of its era than "What's He Got," even if that era is a year or so later. Notice this time around our keyboardist is already wearing his instrument when the song begins. Notice also how this is more of a storytelling video, sprinkling a few bits of business (involving a woman with the epitome of an early '80s look) in with the performance footage -- which takes place partly on a roof, of course. And both the hair and sleeves on the band have gotten shorter, better apparently, to appeal to that teen girl demo.

By the way, here's something that never works: having the hot babe in your video pretend to play the guitar.

Advance Team Tuesday: Bring on the badguys

2011-08-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

Here's another glimpse at the art of my upcoming novel "The Advance Team," excellently executed by my collaborator German Torres. This page, which comes about 1/3 of the way through the book, shows the villains of the story -- though, in keeping with the centuries-long tradition of making villains look spooky and ominous, it keeps them suitably in the shadows.

Who are they? Who are they talking about? What are they up to? All those questions and more will be answered next spring, when you pony up the dough for your own copy! (Then again, I might answer them here, too -- so keep watching this blog!)

MTV RIP: I like it here with my childhood friends

2011-08-22T06:00:00.000-05:00

Confession time: I wasn't exactly the most music savvy kid.

As a child, the only singles I remember owning were "Convoy," "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" and "The Rubberband Man." When I got slightly older, I acquired my music by taping it off the radio, which entailed setting my Emerson tape record next to my clock radio and pressing both the play and record buttons when the song finally came on -- I'd either get some DJ chatter at the beginning or miss the first few seconds, but at least I got the song. Or most of it anyway.

As far as albums (i.e. cassettes), I stuck with the basics of the era: Styx, ELO and the like. Because I had the cassette of Styx's "Paradise Theater," I missed out on the groovy way the LP had some stupid logo engraved into the record via laser (ah, the 1970s!), and though it would be years before I came back around to appreciate the operatic pop stylings of Jeff Lynne, I played the hell out of Electric Light Orchestra's "Time" cassette, mostly because of all the mind-bending sci-fi themes. As I mentioned, I was listening to (and buying) Devo in those days, but otherwise, the groups I saw on MTV inspired zoned-out, brain-dead viewing, not actual album purchases.

Until, that is, I saw the following video. Laugh if you will at its overwhelming '80s-ness, but it sounded pretty good to these ears three decades ago. It was fun, it was catchy and it had a certain dark undertone that I've always appreciated. I realize that today this song must seem like a Rubik's Cube or a pair of leg warmers, some artifact of the 1980s that feels made-up by latter-day nostalgists. But no, this song actually existed, and the album it existed on, "Business As Usual," was a colossal hit. I wasn't the only one who owned the cassette...

I still think it sounds pretty solid, and there's nothing easy about writing a catchy pop song. As far as the video itself goes, lead singer Colin Hay said in more than one interview back then that his lazy eye was just about the band's only visual gimmick, so they made the most of it.

I'm happy to say that, more than a decade later, Hay performed on one of the final episodes of the great "Larry Sanders Show," and his song provided the perfect accompaniment to one of the series' best dramatic moments, when Larry finally decides it's time to call it quits. And, as a bonus, you get to see Hay reference that lazy eye one more time...

Coming up next: Has there ever been a good song with a keytar in it? Maybe...

Rick Perry explains how abstinence education works in Texas. Oh, wait, no he doesn't.

2011-08-21T12:05:00.004-05:00

Imagine if Perry's parents had practiced abstinence...

MTV Rip: Well, how did I get here?

2011-08-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I forget how flat-out strange MTV seemed back in those early days.

It's been such a narcotizing presence for so many years that it's hard to remember back to when it was new, different and even a little bit unnerving -- at least to kids in Ohio who'd barely heard music from bands that didn't heavily rotate on the local rock station.

Sometimes, that strangeness took the form of crazy costumes, off-kilter cinematography, wacky haircuts or disturbing imagery. And sometimes, it took the form of a nerdy guy in a suit against a plain white background...

Sure, these days the Talking Heads are the epitome of safe, respected music, with a spot in the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame and the sort of sound that fits comfortably onto a soundtrack aiming for that quirky -- but not too quirky -- touch. Heck, even back in their glory days, the Talking Heads were the least threatening of the CBGB bands, lacking the cartoony danger of the Ramones, the gritty poetics of Patti Smith or the sexual tension of Blondie. A fine band, don't get me wrong, and one with some swell songs on their discography .... but nothing too weird, right?

Well, sure, maybe in the city of New York or the year of 2011. But those were both foreign countries to Niles, Ohio, circa 1981, and David Byrne -- soft-spoken singer/songwriter and beloved purveyor of world music -- just seemed creepy.

I mean, what was with that dancing? Why was he so sweaty? And what the heck was he doing with his arms? I still remember kids duplicating that chop-chop-chop motion down their forearms, never getting the rhythm quite right. But that didn't stop us from trying. Somewhere, out there, was a world we were only beginning to glimpse. It was not our beautiful house, and it was not our beautful wife -- it was something much more intriguing.

Coming up next: The eyes have it. Well, one of them anyway...

Advance Team Tuesday: More Marty! More Marty!

2011-08-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

Due to the overwhelming response to last week's post featuring Marty, the crusty pizza parlor manager who may or may not be the real hero of "The Advance Team," I'm reprinting the thrilling panel we saw last week -- this time with dialogue from the graphic novel and -- and! -- the following panel, which truly shows Marty in action.

Or at least as much action as Marty ever gets involved in. Which is to say none.

Enjoy?

This blog post -- and all the blog posts in the "Advance Team Tuesday" series -- are brought to you by "The Advance Team," the graphic novel Tor/Forge will be publishing in the spring, with script by yours truly and art by German Torres. Read more about it here.

MTV RIP: Crack that whip! Shut off that TV!

2011-08-14T14:45:00.001-05:00

It's hard to believe these days, with MTV having just turned 30, but once upon a time, it -- like rock 'n' roll and comic books before it -- was considered a dangerous influence on The Youth of America. Videos, whether they were too sexual (pretty much everything Madonna did) or violent (that Judas Priest video where the guy blows up at the end --and his pants fall down! Hilarious!) were rotting our young minds.

Of course, the ironic twist in this case was that they really were rotting our minds -- just not through any direct images of sex or violence,. Instead, they accomplished the task by feeding us hours of inane entertainment each day and hypnotizing us into wanting more ... more .... more... until someone -- usually a fed-up mom or dad -- told us to stop staring at the TV and go outside.

In my case, the parental hammer came down when my brother (three-and-a-half years my junior) and I were sitting around, staring at MTV, and the video for Devo's "Whip It" began spooling on the screen. Now, being an early '80s geek with a growing interest in offbeat pop culture, Devo was one of the few bands playing on MTV that I actually was acquainted with. I even had three of their early albums (including "Freedom of Choice," which included "Whip It"). But mom, bless her heart, had no idea what was lurking in my record collection* so when she wandered into the living room and saw this...

Devo - MTV2 120 Minutes

... she simply reached over and turned off the set, leaving me and my brother wondering what just happened.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: Watch MTV (or, in later years, Cinemax) when everyone else in the house is fast asleep. And I still like Devo.

By the way, a friend of mine had a similar thing happen to him -- but for a much funnier reason. His dad stumbled onto the video for Blotto's "Lifeguard" one day and told him he was forbidden to watch MTV because "It's too stupid."

Oh, how right he was.

* This fact would come in handy the next year when I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Dead Kennedys' classic debut album, "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables."

Buy my comics, make me rich: The Spirit #17

2011-08-10T00:01:00.002-05:00

Boy, it's been a while since I've written one of these posts...

But today, Aug. 10, you can walk into your friendly neighborhood comic book shop and purchase the new issue of DC's "The Spirit," which has a story written by yours truly and drawn by my pal (and legendary comic book artist) Craig Russell. If that's not enough to sell you on parting with your $2,99, maybe the fact that the book also includes stories by Howard Chaykin and Brian Bolland and Paul Levitz and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez will help convince you.

Really, it's a hell of an issue, and I'm damn proud to be part of it. Plus, it was a real blast to write my version of a good, old fashioned Spirit story -- in which, like many of Will Eisner's stories, the Spirit is largely a background character.

Here's the cover of the issue...

And here's a great video by my friend Wayne Harold where Craig discusses the genesis of the story, reveals how it almost didn't get published (this was filmed before that decision was made, and when Berni Wrightson was part of the lineup) and -- best of all -- shows off some of his beautiful art. Seriously people -- the panel with Craig's version of the Sistine Chapel is worth the three bucks all by itself.

As always, any comments are welcome.

Advance Team Tuesday: Meet the REAL hero of the story

2011-08-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Despite what I've been implying in previous posts, the real "breakout character" in the upcoming graphic novel "The Advance Team" might not be Zack McKinley, the pizza delivery technician who finds himself in the middle of a decades-old, full-scale alien invasion.

No, the character I think all the cool kids are going to go for is Zack's boss, Marty...

What's not to love? He's overweight, unshaven, wears stained shirts and reads sleazy magazines. What's more, without his reckless disregard for his employees' safety, odds are Zack would never get involved in his life-changing, world-saving adventure in the first place.

So let's hear it for the real hero of "The Advance Team"! Let's hear it for Marty!

MARTY!

MARTY!!

All art, of course, by German Torres, my able co-conspirator on this book. You can follow him on Twitter at @german_TR. And, while you're at it, why not follow my fine, upstanding editor, Steven Padnick at @padnick. Without him, believe me, "The Advance Team" wouldn't even exist!

MTV RIP, Part Two: Fall of the House of Nouveaux

2011-08-07T14:23:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned before, a lot of bands that appeared on MTV were a complete mystery to a kid in Niles, Ohio, and though I've expanded my musical tastes and depth of knowledge since those days, some of the bands remain a complete mystery.

Take, for instance, Classix Nouveaux. Aside from the video below and the fact that they've got an incredibly pretentious name, I know nothing about them. Sure, a simple trip to Wikipedia could probably explain everything, but be honest -- isn't the mystery of a barely remembered video much better than the reality of an actual band?

So here's the video. It played constantly back in those early MTV days and became so well known among the student body of Niles McKinley High School that one afternoon, when we were for some reason herded into the auditorium and shown Roger Corman's "Fall of the House of Usher," a classmate of mine started singing "Guilty, guilty you found me ...." at the top of his lungs when a scene in the movie slightly resembled a scene in the video.

Coming up next: The video that made my mom turn off the TV.

MTV RIP, Part One: Pat Benatar stalks you, the home viewer

2011-08-05T20:22:00.006-05:00

In honor of this being MTV's 30th birthday month (and doesn't that make all of us feel so damned old), I thought I'd put a little quick-and-easy content on this site by posting a few videos I remember back from the channel's early days.

MTV hit our little town of Niles, Ohio, sometime during my freshman year of high school, which means we got it fairly early in its global infection cycle. Back then, when every radio station for 100 miles was mired in what wasn't yet called "classic rock," the only new stuff you heard were the blanderific tunes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The glory days of AM radio were long gone, and the dial was full of Zeppelin and its warmed-over clones. The great thing about MTV in those early days wasn't so much the visual element, it was that the music was new -- and, to our rust belt ears, wonderfully weird.

If you caught any of the first hour of MTV that aired this week (on, where else, VH1 Classic), you might remember "veejay" Mark Goodman endlessly hyping the fact that MTV was, in fact, being broadcast on radio stations, meaning -- in those days before stereo TV sets -- you could tune it in and hear it in stereo. I didn't care about that, but I did sit there watching MTV with my boombox at the ready, and when a song came on the TV that I liked, I'd push "record," making my own MTV-fueled mix tape. That's how we collected music for free in the old days, kids.

By the way, to demonstrate how forward thinking I was about pop culture back then, I distinctly remember loudly proclaiming that MTV would never last for the simple reason that there weren't enough music videos to fill all those hours of programming. Pretty smart, eh?

And speaking of videos, here's one I remember seeing virtually nonstop back in those first months of zoning out in front of the set for hours. Everyone knows the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first video, right? Do you know the second? It was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run." Yes, Ms. Benatar got plenty of airplay back then, for the simple reasons that (a) she was popular (b) she was attractive, especially in that distinctly very early '80s way, and (c) she had videos. More than anything, that's what determined if a band was on MTV -- and why so many British bands we'd never heard of were suddenly on our TV screens.

But, back to Benatar. "You Better Run" was the pioneer, "Heartbreaker" was a bigger hit, and "Shadows of the Night" was more elaborate (with that goofy World War II setting), but the video I always remember was this one, which epitomizes those early videos, with all that neon, the urban setting, that crazy '80s makeup and those no-budget camera effects. Enjoy...

Coming up next: Roger Corman, a high school assembly and a forgotten band

Advance Team Tuesday: Five random panels

2011-08-02T02:00:00.000-05:00

With all the recent tributes to science fiction writers and rambling odes to electronic sci-fi games, I almost forgot the main reason for these "Advance Team Tuesday" entries -- to hype the damned graphic novel, of course.

So, in that spirit, here are five fairly random panels from the book, offered without comment, that I hope you'll find intriguing. They're taken from all over the book, from beginning to end, and most feature our hapless hero, Zack McKinley, seen at various points in his haphazard, half-assed effort to save the world...

Want to see more? Good. I'll post some more panels in this spot in the coming months, and you'll be able to buy your own copy of "The Advance Team" when Tor/Forge books publishes it in 2012.

Art, by the way, is by the talented German Torres. His website is here, and you can find more art from "The Advance Team" when you click over.

Advance Team Tuesday: The high-falutin' authors series takes a break for some distinctly low-falutin' pop culture

2011-07-26T02:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the absence of an Advance Team Tuesday post last week, but I was on vacation in Ohio, visiting family and friends.

Believe me, it was time well spent. Especially because, while rummaging through my mom's attic, I found this...

Yes, it's my old Mattel Electronics "Battlestar Galactica Space Alert" game, which I'm pretty sure I got for Christmas way, way back in 1978. I had to change the battery, of course, but the thing still works almost perfectly. It's as simple as a game can get, with a fire button and that joystick-sort-of-thing at the bottom that toggles your LED dot between the three spaces at the bottom of the screen. Other LED dots come down from above, and you have to "shoot" them, scoring more points the higher on the screen you hit them. If you take a hit in the middle space, you're done -- no extra men, no bonus rounds. Also, there's a set amount of attacks you have to endure, meaning your top score isn't going to be much more than 80 or so.

Compared to the Nintendo DS my six-year-oldi daughter was playing on the same trip, it looked crude and primitive indeed. But I still had (and have) fun playing "Space Alert," and it took me back to those days of the late 1970s when classrooms echoed with the tiny sounds of Mattel Electronics games. This one was never as popular as the all-time fave, Mattel Electronics Football, but as a science fiction geek instead of a sports geek, it's the one I preferred.

Oddly enough, I was never that big a fan of the show that "inspired" it. Sure, I watched "Battlestar Galactica," because in those pre-home video days, you took your space-based entertainment where you could get it. But I remember watching the show in a constant state of near boredom, wishing that somehow it could be "Star Wars " instead. (It's hard to believe just how much the fast-paced thrills of "Star Wars" -- which looks downright sedate and measured today -- spoiled all the ripoffs that were aimed at taking its place, along with our money). But no, it was just the same scenes of the same actors in the same hallway sets, then the same inconclusive space battles (with the same footage) between Apollo and Starbuck and the Cylons, then back to those hallways for more of ... well, you get the idea.

When "Battlestar Galactica" premiered, the "movie-length" pilot episode was so heavily hyped that, somehow, I thought it would be as good as "Star Wars" -- or at least good enough to take its place until "Star Wars" returned to theaters (as it was known to do). So, these being the pre-home video days, I convinced my dad to record the entire show on his reel-to-reel tape recorder, figuring I could then at least relive the audio thrills of the show.

I still remember how many times I listened to that tape: None. It was that boring. Even as an 11-year-old nerd, I had no desire to experience that pilot episode a second time. Watching the new episodes (hallways, space battles, repeat as necessary) was boring enough.

But at least the game was still fun. Hell, it still is.

Remember H.E.R.O.? This guy does

2011-07-16T08:59:00.004-05:00

Over at his pop culture site "It's Bloggerin' Time," Colin Bell looks back at H.E.R.O, the 22-issue series I wrote back in the mid 2000s with art by such illustrious talents as Kano, Pat Gleason, Leonard Kirk and Dale Eaglesham.

Colin talks about how the disparate storylines all tied together in the slam-bang finale, and mentions how the series' actual final issue wasn't No. 22, but instead, it was No. 11...

"Not only did Pfeifer stick the landing though, he also snuck an epilogue to the series in as issue eleven without it being apparent until you'd read the final issue. It's an audacious trick that I've never seen repeated since, and I'd love to know if it was as a result of the cancellation being announced, or if it was just stuck in there as an entertaining story that the writer managed to wring more significance out of in hindsight towards the end of the book."

To answer your question, Colin, it was originally written as an single issue story in the middle of the run, but when the end was near and I wanted to do something dramatic with the title, I figured that was the perfect solution.

Glad you enjoyed it -- and thanks for the write-up!

Advance Team Tuesday: The sci-fi authors series continues with a slightly shorter post about William Gibson

2011-07-12T08:51:00.009-05:00

I didn't discover William Gibson until college, a couple of years after his breakthrough novel, 1984's "Neuromancer," hit the shelves. So, unlike Philip Jose Farmer and Harlan Ellison, I never had that young fan's frenzy for reading every single book of his I could get my hands on (and, frankly, back then, Gibson didn't have that many books out).

But unlike Farmer and Ellison, Gibson -- a guy from another generation who was covering subjects completely different than those two -- delivered a style of slick, cool and above all modern (or at least modern-seeming) sci-fi that was just what I wanted to read at that point. I think the first time I heard Gibson's name was in a Comics Journal (there's that mag again) review of Howard Chaykin's "American Flagg," where the reviewer compared Chaykin's use of clever, slightly satirical names ("Mananacillin," "Nachtmacher") to Gibson's portrayal of a future where business and consumer interests were the driving force behind everything. Well, I loved "American Flagg" (still do, in fact), so I figured I'd better check this Gibson fellow out.

Gibson's style in his early writing was so slick and of-the-moment in the late 1980s that it feels a little bit dated these days, with all the edgy hackers and corporate assassins and neon-lit massive cities. But that's the risk you run with edgy writing -- eventually, it's going to seem a lot less edgy. It still reads well, decades later, and it's still a hell of a lot of fun. What's more, unlike almost everyone else, Gibson was able to tap into the feeling that something big was about the happen, and it had nothing to do with spaceships or aliens or jetpacks or robots. No, it had to do with those computers that were showing up on everyone's desks and the way you could connect them to a phone and use them to talk to other computers.

Gibson didn't predict cyberspace, but he did paint a picture of it that still seems, if not accurate, then startlingly evocative. Here's what "console cowboy" Case sees when he finally "jacks in," from page 52 of my Ace Books paperback edition of "Neuromancer":

"And if flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon orgami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach."

That's a nice piece of writing, there. From the telling detail of the "Mitsubish Bank of America" to the almost Lovecraftian image of the "spiral arms of military systems," it really makes the internet seem like some overwhelming force that's barely understandable by mere humans. And I guess that's sort of what it is, isn't it -- though the real internet turned out to be (a) a lot more DIY than what Case glimpses and (b) a lot sloppier and less organized.

I mean, think about it. You're reading this blog post on the exact same thing Gibson describes in this paragraph. So where are those spiral arms?

By the way, this blog post -- and all the blog posts in the "Advance Team Tuesday" series -- are brought to you by "The Advance Team," the graphic novel Tor/Forge will be publishing in the spring, with script by yours truly and art by German Torres. Read more about it here.

And pick up a copy when it hits the stores, OK? Maybe it'll be my "Neuromancer."

The best looking travel poster ever?

2011-07-10T11:29:00.006-05:00

Via Boing Boing, here's a vintage 1965 TWA travel poster celebrating all things grand and glorious about Las Vegas in its heyday.

According to the actual post over at this LiveJournal page, the artist was David Klein, who worked in the 1950s and 1960s and won awards for his TWA campaign -- well-deserved awards, I'd say. I'll bet cartoonist Darwyn Cooke is a fan of Mr. Klein's work, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Pixar boys who brought us the short "Night and Day" were familiar with this poster, too.

Click on the LiveJournal link to see more of Klein's work, along with a photo of the man himself. Not surprisingly, he looks like someone who wandered in off the set of "Mad Men" -- though, of course, he was the real thing.

Will Catwoman comic inspire Batman movie?

2011-07-07T20:29:00.010-05:00

The movie geeks over at Total Film offered up "18 Comic Book Inspirations" that they're advising writer/director Christopher Nolan to consider for Catwoman in his upcoming movie, "The Dark Night Rises."

Putting aside the fact that I'm not wild about the casting of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman (C'mon! Nolan had the perfect Catwoman right in front of him in the person of Marion Cotillard!), I can't help but agree with some of Total Film's tips. Especially this one...

And this one ...

And that's not just because they're inspired by the work Adam Hughes, David Lopez, Nachie Castro, myself and the rest of the crew did during our run on the Catwoman comic book. It's because they're damn good ideas. (Though, admittedly, adding a baby into the plot of "The Dark Knight Rises" would be a bit tricky.)

Of course, if Nolan would like to cut us a check, too, that'd be the icing on the cake...

Advance Team Tuesday: The sci-fi authors series continues with a long, rambling post about Harlan Ellison

2011-07-03T02:10:00.002-05:00

More of my rambling, self-indulgent look back at some of the science fiction writers who indirectly inspired the graphic novel "The Advance Team," which hits stores in 2012.

I remember the first time I became aware of Harlan Ellison, mostly because I had no idea who he was. It was an issue of Starlog, sometime in early 1980s, and it was in an article focused on -- of all things -- a company that made baseball caps for science fiction movies. You know, like the caps the crew of the Nostromo wore in "Alien" (a movie that I hadn't seen at that point, either.) There was a picture of Ellison wearing (a) a big grin and (b) a baseball cap that said "HARLAN ELLISON." The caption under the photo said something along the lines of "Why is this man smiling?" I didn't know -- because I didn't know who that man was.

It wasn't until I started reading The Comics Journal a bit later that I encountered Ellison in all his mid-career glory. It's strange now, considering how Ellison and Comics Journal chief Gary Groth have become mortal enemies over the last few decades, but back then, you couldn't pick up an issue of The Comics Journal without seeing Ellison's face -- and I mean literally. There was that picture of him wearing a Tazmanian Devil T-shirt, the classic arms-folded, 1970s glasses pose and even an image in an ad for something called "The Harlan Ellison Record Club" (or something like that -- it's been a few years) where you could buy audio recordings of Ellison speaking. In other words, if you were reading The Comics Journal back then, you couldn't help but be aware of Ellison.

And that interview in the issue pictured above was -- and remains -- notorious. It was the talk, of course, that inspired the lawsuit from comics writer Michael Fleischer that dragged on for years (and, by most accounts, ended the Ellison-Groth friendship), but other than that it featured Ellison taking aim at just about everyone working in comics, and everyone working out of comics, too. I didn't know who the heck Jorge Luis Borges or Hunter S. Thompson or Donald Barthleme were, but I had to admit, it was interesting reading someone who obviously loved to talk go on about people like that -- and go on (and on and on) about himself, too. He sounded like a pretty interesting guy.

So, I scouted my local used book store (the Paper Back Shack in Niles, Ohio -- still in business!) for whatever copies of Ellison's writing I could find, then haunted the shelves of the local new bookstore (Waldenbooks, not in business) for the stuff of his that was still in print. I managed to build a fairly complete collection, everything from "The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" (with the classic novella "A Boy and His Dog") to his two-part collection of TV writing, "The Glass Teat." A lot of it sailed over my head (especially all that talk about guys like Spiro Agnew in "The Glass Teat" books), but a lot of it connected, too.

I've always thought Ellison's writing holds a special appeal for young men stumbling through adolescence with a little bit of frustration, a little bit of suspicion and a little bit of smarts -- or at least enough smarts to realize the world isn't what everyone's been telling you it is. Ellison obviously loves to write -- his stories are full of wordy, elaborate and imaginative names and whirlwind flights of fancy. This is no stripped-down prose trying to be grown-up, it's like a teen who just discovered he could make up his own stories was turned loose on a typewrite. Maybe that's why I liked Ellison so much as an adolescent -- he wrote the way I would have written if I could've written that way.

Loud, fast-paced, smart-assed, profane and full of big words and bigger attitude. And, more than anything, self-obsessed. When Ellison wasn't crafting his own autobiographical books ("Memos from Purgatory") or writing fiction that obviously starred some version of him (" 'Repent, Harlequin,' Said the Ticktockman"), he was penning long intros to his short story collections (and I mean intros to each story, not just for the whole book) or writing criticism and essays that wound up being reprinted -- where else? -- in the pages of The Comics Jousnal. It was heady stuff compared to most of the other fiction (and nonfiction, for that matter) that I was reading.

Ellison always preferred the term "speculative fiction" to "science fiction" (and boy oh boy did he hate the term "sci-fi"), mostly because few of his stories revolved around any sort of "science." Even the ones set squarely in some sort of technological future, like " 'Repent, Harlequin,' said the Ticktockman" or "Along the Scenic Route" just used a bit of thrown-together science to bring the stories to life. It was the characters and the tales that were important -- not the technology. And plenty of Ellison's stories fit into the "horror" or "fantasy" categories, with no science at all. That was the real fun of picking up a collection of Ellison's short stories -- you really never knew what you were going to get.

I kept reading and re-reading Ellison through high school and much of college, but eventually, the usual other interests came along and pushed most of my science fiction reading off to the side. (I was still reading The Comics Journal, though by this time, the Ellison had moved to the "enemies" column.) But, during my senior year at Kent State, we got word that Ellison was going to speak on campus to help raise money for a memorial to the Kent State students who , were shot by the Ohio National Guard back in 1970. (Ellison dedicated his short story collection "Alone Against Tomorrow" to those four students.)

Someone was going to interview Ellison for the pre-speech story, and as an editor on the school paper, I assigned myself that task. It was a phoner, as they say, and I spent the better part of two hours sealed up in an office talking to the guy I had once considered the greatest writer of all time. As you might guess, it was a fascinating conversation, because, even more than he loves to write, Harlan Ellison loves to talk. Much of the conversation, if I remember correctly, focused on the Kent State protests and the political aspects of the shootings (always a hot topic at my alma mater), but plenty of other topics were touched upon, too. His speech a few nights later was along the same lines, with plenty of question-and-answer time and a book signing afterwards.

Though I still had (and still have) all those paperbacks from my high school days, I only had one actual Harlan Ellison hardback in my collection, so that's what I took to get signed -- a book club edition of "Dangerous Visions," the groundbreaking science fiction collection compiled and edited by Ellison that arrived on this planet in 1967, the same year I did.

And yes, I still have that book, too.

Advance Team Tuesday: A long, rambling bit about science fiction authors, Philip Jose Farmer in particular

2011-06-28T08:41:00.024-05:00

You know, even though "The Advance Team" is, at least mostly (partly?) a science fiction graphic novel, I have to confess I haven't read a whole lot of science fiction in my life.

These days, it's mostly nonfiction, and back when most teens are plowing through volumes of sci-fi*, I was either (a) on a big Stephen King kick, prompted by seeing "Christine" in the theater and having a friend tell me "the book is much better." (Spoiler alert: He was right), or (b) embarking on my never-ending mission to read every damn movie book that's ever been published, initiated (at least in part) by Stephen King's "Danse Macabre," which is still one of the best books about horror you're going to find.

(Though, and please forgive this unrelated, cranky, nerdish digression, but King is completely wrong on at least two points in "Danse Macabre": 1. "Cat People" is one of the great horror movies (scratch that -- great movies) of all time, and the fact that King can't see past the studio sets to the wonder that lies beneath is his problem, not the film's. 2. King loves "Robot Monster" but claims that Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is some sort of cheap, exploitative movie. He's got things exactly backwards. "Robot Monster" is fun, but it's a no-budget quickie cash-in directed by Phil Tucker, one of the great hacks in Hollywood history. (He directed the "Get Smart" movie "The Nude Bomb" for Pete's sake!) Ed Wood, troubled oddball that he was, struggled mightily to make his movies, which are really more like folk art than anything coming out of Hollywood proper. OK, end of digression. I really do like that book.)

Anyway, I did manage to read some science fiction during those formative years -- nothing too out of the ordinary, but I definitely had my favorites. In the next few installments of "Advance Team Tuesdays," I'll be spotlighting a few, with plenty of annoying digressions like the one above along the way.

This week, the focus falls on the late, great Philip Jose Farmer

I wrote briefly about Farmer when he died back in 2009 (see that blog entry here), and mentioned that of all the science fiction epics I never read -- Asimov's "Foundation" books, "Dune," anything else you can name -- I did devour Farmer's multi-volume "Riverworld" series, where everyone who ever lived gets reborn on a giant planet encircled by a colossal river. It was wild, goofy, off-the-wall stuff, and Farmer knew how to keep things moving at a fast clip.

Geek that I was (aka am), I preferred his obsessively geeky books devoted to proving that Tarzan and Doc Savage were actual people, and I really liked his short story "After King Kong Fell" (read it here), where he tells "the real story" of the death of the big ape, complete with cameos from Doc Savage and the Shadow and (typically for Farmer) a couple of oddball sexual angles involving Kong, Fay Wray and the twist ending of the story.

I also have to give credit for Farmer providing a backwards introduction to my love of the Beats with his short story "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod," which retold the story of Tarzan (created, of course, by Edgar Rice Burroughs) in the vernacular of William Burroughs. Get it? I didn't get it much back then, having read neither Tarzan nor William Burroughs (I didn't even know what "the nod" was), but I knew there was something about that writing style I liked. It would be years before I actually read "Naked Lunch," but looking back, I'd say Farmer captured the tone as good as anyone has.

Farmer did a lot of that sort of thing, writing short pastiches as if he were (a) another author or (b) a fictional character who happened to be a writer. Probably his most elaborate gag along these lines was "Venus on the Half Shell," a short novel supposedly written by none other than Kilgore Trout, who appears in "Breakfast of Champions," "Slaughterhouse Five" and other novels by Kurt Vonnegut. "Venus on the Half Shell" was a title mentioned in Vonnegut's book "God Bless You, Mister Rosewater," but Farmer created an entire narrative out of those five words and somehow convinced Dell to print the thing (after it ran as a two-parter in a magazine). Vonnegut was apparently not amused, especially because everyone seemed to assume that he'd written it.

It was reprinted with Farmer's name prominently displayed, but the edition you really want (assuming you like these sort of pop culture jokes -- obviously I do) is the original paperback with "Kilgore Trout" listed as the only author, complete with a photo of him (Farmer in a beard and hat) on the back cover.

Next week, here at Advance Team Tuesdays, we'll discuss another sci-fi* author from my misspent, formative years, Mr. Harlan Ellison, a man I (a) actually met one and (b) had a long conversation with. Tune in, won't you?

And in the meantime, why not start pestering your local bookseller or comic book shop owner about "The Advance Team," the Tor Forge science fiction graphic novel by artist German Torres and me that these entries are, after all, designed to hype? It doesn't hit the stores until next spring, but it's never too early to start building buzz, right?

* I only used the term "sci-fi" because I know it drives Harlan Ellison craaaaaaaazy.

Advance Team Tuesday: Telstar!

2011-06-21T02:00:00.002-05:00

This week, I thought I'd offer something a little different. Sticking with the sci-fi motif, here's a bit of music that didn't exactly inspired the graphic novel "The Advance Team" but definitely would fit right if played during a few of the more lighthearted, nonviolent moments.

It's "Telstar," the 1962 hit by the Tornadoes that was inspired by the launching of the communications satellite by the same name. It was produced, of course, by the legendary Joe Meek, and was the first song by a British band to hit the top spot on the U.S. charts, beating a certain quartet of mop tops by more than a year.

I've always liked its retro/otherwordly sound, which, much like some of the songs of Phil Spector (whom Meek was constantly compared with) manages to sound both operatic and intimate at the same time. And, unlike Spector's classic singles, it does so without any voices.

A lot of newspapers would joke about doing it, but only the New York Post would actually run this headline

2011-06-15T02:00:00.000-05:00

Offered without comment:

Advance Team Tuesdays: The rock 'n' roll thing to do

2011-06-14T09:17:00.003-05:00

Here's a glimpse at German Torres' rough for the very first page of the "Advance Team" graphic novel, which starts out, as my freshman English prof used to say, en media res, meaning right smack dab in the middle of the action.

Rock 'n' roll, a sniper rifle and our hero, front and center, still wearing that goofy pizza delivery hat. What more can we do to entice you into the story?

And one more question: Why is everyone shouting out a single number? Is it an alien code? Some sort of complex conspiracy? The mystery deepens!*

* Actually, of course, it doesn't deepen. Those are just guides for the word balloons.

Advance Team Tuesdays: A cosmic moment

2011-06-06T20:11:00.006-05:00

Here, with no set-up or explanantion offered, is a short but cosmic moment from early in "The Advance Team." All I'll say is that (a) it happens to our hero, Zack McKinley, (b) its importance isn't explained until later, and (c) German Torres did a beautiful job translating my vague ramblings into some suitably mind-bending visuals.

All will be explained next spring. Assuming, of course, you buy the book.

Advance Team Tuesday: More influences

2011-05-31T01:01:00.001-05:00

Here. in no particular order, are five things that proved to be an influence during the writing of "The Advance Team." Make of them what you will..

"Elektra Assassin" by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz

The movie "The Manchurian Candidate" (the original, not the remake)

Iggy and the Stooges

"The Illuminatus! Trilogy" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

The "Twilight Zone" episode "Will the Real Martin Please Stand Up?"

A quick look at the new season of 'Curb'

2011-05-26T06:19:00.004-05:00

Here's the trailer for the upcoming season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," featuring Jeff, Funkahuser, Leon, Susie and guest appearances by Paul F. Tompkins, Robert Smigel, Michael J. Fox and others. No sign of Cheryl, but she's coming back, right? It just wouldn't be "Curb" without Cheryl...

I can't wait until July 10.

Advance Team Tuesday: This week -- Pizza delivery action, just as you demanded it!

2011-05-24T02:13:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago in this space, I mentioned that part of The Advance Team was inspired by the fact that two of my college roommates delivered pizza for Domino's, and that led to the profession of our hero, Zack McKinley.

Well, because nobody demanded it, here's a scene of Zack delivering a pizza to a very special customer -- or could there be more to this scene than meets the eye?

Spoiler alert: There's more.

Jerry Lewis' most memorable telethon moment

2011-05-19T20:09:00.009-05:00

With the recent news that, after 45 years, Jerry Lewis will be retiring from hosting the annual Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, I felt it was only fitting to look back at what remains the telethon's greatest moment. It happened way back in 1976, involves three showbiz icons and, by all accounts, was a complete surprise to Jerry...

Advance Team Tuesday: The AWAY Team? What the heck is that?

2011-05-17T08:10:00.004-05:00

Back in the early days of its development, "The Advance Team" was called "The Away Team," before my editor, Steven Padnick, wisely suggested the change. (When you read the book, you'll see it fits the story a lot better.)

But, before we changed it, artist German Torres delivered a set of thumbnail roughs for the first several pages, and the double-page splash has the original title looming ominously over the city of Cleveland....

Nice, eh? Wait 'til you see the final version next year.

Advance Team Tuesday: A closer look at that cover

2011-05-10T02:02:00.001-05:00

Sure, you've seen this striking cover for "The Advance Team" graphic novel by artist German Torres before, but did you really look at it? (Probably not, I'm guessing, because you've only seen it on this blog). In the unlikely event that you devoted some serious study to it, here are five questions you might have...

1. What's that PX logo on our hero Zack McKinley's cap? Does it have something to do with the impending alien invasion ... or is it somehow connected to the pizza delivery profession. (If I were you, I'd be leaning towards "B.")

2. Who are those five mysterious figures reflected in his glasses? (You'll have to wait for the answer to that one.)

3. How'd he lose that tooth? Simple dentistry... or something more sinister? (Here's an ominous hint -- there's no dentist character in the comic!)

4. What's that logo on the badge on his coat? (All I can say is that it's not pizza-related.)

5. Finally, how did our hero afford such an expensive looking rifle on a mere pizza delivery person's salary? Was it the lucrative tips he rakes in (probably not) or was that rifle given to him (probably) and, if so, by whom?

For answers to these and other pressing questions, well, I guess you'll have to buy the book. That's the whole point of these Tuesday posts, you know. I thought it was pretty obvious by now.

The State of Comic Books, circa July 1967

2011-05-06T21:33:00.014-05:00

If, while awaiting my imminent arrival, my dad had wandered over to the nearest newsstand, here's what he might have seen...

... because those are some of the comic books that were on sale during July 1967, the month I made my debut on this planet. Not a bad selection, eh? Thunder Agents, Doom Patrol, Not Brand Ecch, Jerry Lewis ... and WORLD OF 1,000 OLSENS. You're not going to see that sort of variety (or, for that matter, sheer wackiness) on the shelves today.

If you'd like to know what comic books were being sold when you were born (or, actually, any other month since 1935), go to this page of Mike's Amazing World of DC and select the correct month and year. Make sure, incidentally, to pick the month they were on sale. The comics with the same cover date as your birth month were probably on sale a couple of months before.

And thanks to Tom Spurgeon's great The Comics Reporter site for hipping me to this little nostalgia machine. Thanks, Tom!

Advance Team Tuesday: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence

2011-05-03T10:14:00.005-05:00

With all that talk last week of pizza delivery and the Cleveland skyline and bad science fiction movies, you might be saying to yourself "Sure, this Advance Team graphic novel sounds great, and you can bet I'll be buying multiple copies when it arrives in stores next spring, but is there any violence within its pages?"

To that I say, didn't you see this post? And furthermore, there's this...

And, to once again prove that artist German Torres is indeed the man, here's my crude thumbnail rendition of the same page. Aren't you glad I'm only writing the book?

A tale of two 1970s trailers from the future

2011-04-30T17:09:00.005-05:00

I never realized this before, but after watching the relatively obscure trailer for "A Boy and his Dog" (1975, directed by L.Q. Jones)...

... I was for some reason reminded of this relatively well-known trailer for "A Clockwork Orange" (1971, directed by Stanley Kubrick)...

Now, obviously the trailer for "A Clockwork Orange" trailer is much better, but I have to admire the sheer balls of whoever edited that trailer for "A Boy and His Dog" to so blatantly rip off the previous work. It is a great little movie, though, and I hope this act of artistic homage brought it some small bit of much-deserved attention.

By the way, Blood, the dog in the title (and the smartest, most admirable character in the entire movie) was played by the same dog who played Tiger on "The Brady Bunch." And he was voiced by Tim Mcintire, who delivered a unforgettable performance as legendary DJ Alan Freed in the (sadly not on DVD) rock 'n' roll movie, "American Hot Wax."

Poly Styrene, RIP

2011-04-26T13:07:00.005-05:00

As I said way back in the second-ever post on this blog, the title "X-Ray Spex" has nothing to do with the band of the same name, despite the fact that early British punk is one of my favorite types of music.

Having said that, it feels wrong somehow not to acknowledge the passing of Poly Styrene (aka Marianne Elliott-Said), the lead singer of X-Ray Spex and a true punk icon. She died Monday at the age of 53 after battling cancer of the breast and spine.

So here, in tribute, is a video of Poly and her band singing their biggest hit, "Oh Bondage Up Yours!," which still rocks pretty hard, even after all these years.

Advance Team Tuesday: Influences

2011-04-26T03:01:00.001-05:00

We'll get back to printing more of German Torres' sweet, sweet art for "The Advance Team" again, I promise, but for this week's installment of the shameless self-promotion of the upcoming graphic novel, I thought I'd be extra shameless and list a few of my own influences in writing it. In no particular order...

Growing up (sort of) near Cleveland: I spent my formative years in Niles, Ohio, which is actually much closer to Youngstown than Cleveland, but I made plenty of trips there, both as a kid and as an adult, and always thought it was a fascinating place. Plus, as a kid, arguably my favorite TV show, "Houlihan and Big Chuck" (which showed monster movies every Friday), hailed from the shores of Lake Erie and made the most of its home city. And, as a bonus, Cleveland does have a surprisingly nice skyline (see above). That's the main reason I set (most of) the story there.

Having two roommates deliver pizza in college: I never delivered the stuff myself, but I went along on some rides and hung out at the local Dominos waiting for them to end their shifts. That's why I made the hero of "The Advance Team" a member of this proud profession. If there's a group of workers who need to be seen as heroes, it's the brave folks who bring you that pie in 30 minutes or less. If nothing else, I hope this graphic novels encourages everyone to be a bit less stingy with their tips. (Incidentally, that's not one of my roommates in the above photo. It's just some generic Internet guy.)

Movies where, somehow, against all odds and logic, the scrappy U.S. military manages to defeat an alien army centuries more advanced than they are: Trust me. That does not happen in this book. I promise.

Advance Team Tuesday: A quiet moment

2011-04-19T12:30:00.001-05:00

Despite all the violence in last week's advance peek at "The Advance Team" graphic novel (written by yours truly and drawn by German Torres) isn't all punches and explosions.

Here, for example, is a nice peaceful moment from midway in the book featuring Vic, our hero Zack's co-worker at Pizza Xpress (and dare I say, possibly romantic interest?)...
Tranquil, eh? I feel, by the way, I should point out that this peaceful little interlude is both preceded and followed by moments of over-the-top violence. But you could probably guess that, couldn't you?

Has Joey Ramone really been gone ten years?

2011-04-15T19:55:00.005-05:00

I can hardly believe it myself, but the lead singer of the greatest group of all time (yes, I said it) died a decade ago of lymphoma in (where else?) New York City. I came to the Ramones relatively late in the game, being aware of their presence (mostly thanks to their movie, "Rock 'N' Roll High School") and listening to their music from a distance, like, say, when it was on the radio (which, believe you me, was not often). I didn't really fall in love with the band until 1988, when the double LP "Ramones Mania" arrived, but I'm happy to say that despite the decades that have passed (and the 75 percent of the original lineup that has passed away), that love has only grown stronger over the years. So, in tribute to Joey -- along with Johnny and Dee Dee, and heck, Tommy and everyone else who has adopted the Ramone surname over the years, here's a clip of Joey's solo version of a Louis Armstrong classic.

Personally, I think Joey's version beats Satchmo's hands down, and I'm not joking. There's something about Joey's voice -- which Phil Spector, who would know, called one of the greatest in pop music -- that fits the emotion of the song perfectly. No one sang lines like "... they're really sayin'/I love you" like the skinny guy from Queens. Rest in peace, Jeff. You earned it.

'What's wrong with Anita Ekberg? At least she's ... you know...'

2011-04-13T19:18:00.007-05:00

I was listening to Kevin Pollak's interview with the great Dave Thomas today, and it reminded me of (a) the brilliance of "SCTV" and (b) the brilliance of Thomas' Bob Hope impersonation. So, in the spirit of reminding the rest of you, here's the two-part "Play it Again, Bob" sketch featuring Thomas as Hope and Rick Moranis as Woody Allen (and, in part 2, Joe Flaherty as Bing Crosby). This thing works on so many levels it's still amazing three decades later...

Advance Team Tuesday: Fight Scene!

2011-04-12T08:30:00.014-05:00

This week, in my continuing bid to shameless hype "The Advance Team" graphic novel (available at a store near you in 2012!), I'm presenting a fight scene from early in the book. The story of a pizza delivery technician and a full-scale alien invasion is just getting revved up at this point, so the fight is between our hero Zack and a group of thugs taking advantage of a (very) sudden power outtage. Here's my rough thumbnail for that page...

Here's the finished (though not lettered) art that German Torres, the artist, crafted from the script...

And, as long as we're at it, let's take a closer look at those middle eight panels, because German really knocked it out of the park with them, if you ask me...

Oh Timer, whatever happened to you and your merry, nutritious songs?

2011-04-06T19:39:00.004-05:00

Does anyone else remember this PSA from 1970s Saturday morning TV? Until I located the video on the all-powerful You Tube, I hadn't seen it in at least 30 years -- but I could still sing the song almost perfectly. Those brainwashing wizards of '70s children's TV really knew what they were doing!

This one was also part of that series, apparently sponsored in part by the American Cheese Council...

And here's one more. Bonus points for attempting to rhyme "fish, you" and "tissue"...

Advance Team Tuesday: A peek at the process

2011-04-05T03:01:00.000-05:00

This week's bit of shameless promotion of "The Advance Team," the upcoming science fiction novel written by myself and drawn by German Torres, I thought I'd show three steps in the making of a single page.

First, here's what I do first (after breaking down the plot by page, that is) -- I draw up a rough thumbnail of each page, with plenty of notes for myself that I'll use during the scripting process: dialogue suggestions, details that need to be included, elements that will be on future pages, etc. It's something I've done ever since my mini-comics days. I don't know if any other writers do thumbnails with such obsessive (yet sloppy) detail, but it works for me. Here, for example, is the thumbnail for page 42 of "The Advance Team" (though, as you might notice, it was once page 37)...

So I use that to write the script, which then gets sent off to my astute editor, Steven Padnick. After the usual round of revisions and tweaks, the script gets sent off to German, who then creates this "rough" (which is obviously much less rough than my thumbnail)...

Then, after that gets the editorial OK, German takes that framework and creates the final art, seen here in its inked version, minus the captions and dialogue...

Hopefully that gives you a pretty good idea of how we put this graphic novel together. If it doesn't reveal as much about the story itself as you might have hoped, stick around. There's plenty more to come in future weeks.

It was five years ago today...

2011-04-02T05:00:00.001-05:00

... that Amy and I were waiting in a nondescript office building somewhere in southern China when someone handed us the cutest little girl anyone had ever seen ...

She was scared, sad and had a case of the sniffles, so there were no smiles coming from her on that first day. But after a bath (admittedly a terrifying experience), some medicine and a bit of food in her belly -- plus a much delayed semi-night's sleep, her mood improved ... slightly. As long as we never, never, never took away those beads...

But it wasn't too long before she apparently realized she was stuck with us for the next 18 or so years and might as well make the best of it. Then, the smiles began...

And, aside from the usual pouting, whining and occasional temper tantrum, those smiles haven't stopped since. Here's what that scared, sad, sniffly little girl from China looks like today...

Happy five years, Allie. I know your birthday is July 6, but trust me, daughter o' mine -- April 2 is the day your mom and I will always remember.

Presenting... Advance Team Tuesdays

2011-03-29T02:00:00.004-05:00

In a bid to generate some interest for "The Advance Team," the graphic novel I have coming out next year (with artistic assistance from German Torres), I'm kicking off a weekly series here at X-Ray Spex wherein I'll offer a taste of the comic each week, with the hype (hopefully) reaching a fever pitch by early next year -- just in time for everyone to run out and buy a copy and, of course, make German and I rich, rich men.

This week, I'm offering up a bit of art of our hero, one Zack McKinley, hapless post high school grad and pizza delivery technician. As the story starts, Zack is coping with a terrible job, another winter in Cleveland and a bit of a crush on his co-worker. But, this being a science fiction graphic novel, he's about to start coping with a heck of a lot more very soon.

In this scene, he's starting to face some of those new problems -- sort of. I mean, right about now, Zack is having trouble figuring out exactly what's real and what's not -- and what's the story with that logo on his hat? It doesn't look like he's wearing corporate-approved Pizza Xpress headgear.

Next week: More about our hero

Off my shelf

2011-03-25T21:31:00.010-05:00

As a guy who can't sit for five seconds without picking up a book, I'm usually working on a few of them at the same time. And, of course, since I'm also trying to work on a few comic book projects right now -- along with the day job and the family -- I'm naturally reading more than a few. Here's what I'm paging through at the moment:

I just finished re-reading "All the President's Men" for the third or fourth time, and while it's a fascinating book, it ends rather abruptly -- and long before Nixon actually leaves office. So I decided to read Woodward and Bernstein's follow-up for the first time. It's pretty damn fascinating, too, going into wonderfully obsessive detail about the laws of impeachment and Nixon's refusal to hand over these tapes. By the way, if you're looking for a book that covers the whole Nixon era, I can't recommend Rick Pearlstein's "Nixonland" highly enough. Epic in scope and intricate in detail, it's one of the best books I've read in years.

One of my favorite directors is Guy Maddin, Winnipeg's resident cinema eccentric who delves into the days of early sound movies and comes up with some fascinating films of his own. He's also a very funny, very engaging writer and conversationalist, and this book contains interviews from his entire career. I also have another Maddin book, "Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin" by William Beard, but I haven't actually cracked the cover on that one yet.

I love comedy, and I love 20th century history, so it's no wonder I'd be reading this book by British author Ben Lewis that explores -- of all things -- the history of communism as told through its jokes and satire. I'm only a little bit into this book so far (I was, believe it or not, lured away by the siren song of Nixon and "The Final Days"), but I'm eager to continue.

Speaking of communism, it's a big part (no surprise there) of J. Hoberman's latest bit of film history. I received Hoberman's "The Dream Life" for Christmas a few years ago, and enjoyed its look at the films of the 1960s. This book, which I managed to score a review copy of, is the follow-up, but it's actually a prequel, jumping back more than a decade to study Hollywood's role in the Cold War. I checked the index and saw several pages are devoted to one of my favorite '50s films, "A Face in the Crowd," so I think I'm going to like this book a lot. (The opening section, which breathlessly describes Tinseltown's flirtation with and rejection of communism, is worth the price of admission alone.)

Finally, this is the sort of film book I can't resist for a couple of reasons. One, it explores the seedy underbelly of a country's cinema, and that's always fascinating, right? (Right!) And second, it devotes a page or so to each movie, meaning I can pick it up at any time and read as much as I want. So far, it seems to be doing in print and to Sweden what "Not Quite Hollywood" did on video to Australia -- and if you saw that movie, you know that's high praise indeed (at least from this corner of the internet).

Now it can be told: I've got a graphic novel coming out next year

2011-03-11T21:36:00.008-06:00

And this, dear friends, is the cover (words and title to come, obviously) ...

That determined-looking young man is Zack McKinley. Most of the time, he delivers pizzas. But on this very special occasion, he's delivering Earth from destruction at the hand of alien invaders. Or maybe he's delivering Earth into the hands of the alien invaders. It's hard to tell -- especially for poor Zack.

The title is "The Advance Team," and it's a decade-spanning tale of alien conquest, secret cabals, hidden messages and hand-tossed pizza. I wrote it, German Torres drew it, and Tor/Forge is publishing it. It doesn't hit the stores until March 2012, but it is finished. I'm done writing it, German's done drawing it, and, though I'm admittedly a little biased, I think it looks like one hell of a book.

If you enjoyed "Finals" or "Catwoman" or anything else I've done, I'm urging you to check out "The Advance Team." It has action, drama, romance, death, destruction, weird science, rock music, the aforementioned hand-tossed pizza and more than a few laughs. It's 160 pages long, black and white, and you'll be hearing plenty more about it in this space. I'm pretty damned excited about it, and I hope you are too.