i wish i had more energy to draw and plot lately i NEED to make the insane daemoverse flowisk situationship real. i need you guys to see my vision

Wild 2

Cristian Castelo is one of three rotating editors of the Freak anthologies, currently being produced in the Bay Area. I have a couple issues, there’s some promising work: A few people who clearly know how to draw but maybe haven’t found a story to tell yet, and some people with unconventional approaches where maybe I don’t know what they’re doing yet. All in all, they’re worth paying attention to, and there’s some issues that look like they feature some extremely good shit that are already out of print. (I haven’t heard of any of the artists in issue 8 before, but all the preview images look sick as hell? If you are one one of them and make your own zines please get in touch!)

Castelo has his own series called Wild, about teenage roller derby players in the 1970s southwest. I wasn’t able to score a copy of the first volume of this before they sold out, though it looked appealing. Volume 2 has a little summary of what’s come before up front. I bought a copy and liked it a lot. It’s super-appealing: Castelo’s lineart looks sorta like Paul Pope, and his color palette is all bright primary colors. Seeing this book in person, it’s printed very large, covers are I think silkscreened. It’s a pricey object, but this is basically what I want action comics to look like. Beyond Paul Pope, I know Castelo is a fan of the Last Man series with art by Bastien Vives, which got grief for its “Dragonball fight tournament plus a large-breasted hot mom” narrative, but is nonetheless home to a many perfect drawings. There’s a manga influence, but the emphasis is different in terms of how the layouts work. There’s still a western sense of narrative economy, but there’s an added emphasis on the velocity of the line drawing. The artist knows an overworked drawing can look dead, and makes decisions to avoid that fate.

Unlike with Pope and Vives, you can see where the speed trips Castelo up. The lettering is consistently more difficult to read than it should be, with certain letters in particular showing more of the line made in their making than any clear indication of what the letter is supposed to be. H’s look like 4′s, O’s aren’t always fully closed and look like U’s, etc. Similarly, the cartooning itself gets pretty visually unclear: There’s a tendency to drop faces from people in the backgrounds of a panel, which by itself would be fine, but because the sequences shift who is in focus from panel to panel, it can be hard to consistently keep a bead on where things are happening in relationship to each other, especially since the story also sets  action sequences in parallel, either going down columns of a page, or on separate pages, and the limited color palette isn’t really used to help keep track of things visually so much. It sorta tripped me up! Rereading it, I had a better understanding of what was happening, but there really is a lot happening that would basically be hard edits in a movie. From a writing perspective, it’s great how much happens, how much character detail is happening with these groups of characters within a ninety-page span. From an art perspective, it all looks great. It’s just that combined, on a first read, I found it a bit overwhelming. Missing out on volume one probably didn’t help. But this also cuts back and forth between two roller derby matches happening at the same time, one of which detours into a psychic snowy landscape, and there’s also cameramen introduced who want to be filming one of the matches but are instead at the other. It’s funny how this is not what manga would do, but also: I paid $35 for 90 pages, and I don’t feel ripped off, partly because the book insists I reread it to get a better grip on it.

(I should disclose that these editions Floss are putting out are collections of minicomics. The book I’m calling “volume 1” collected issues 1 to 3 of a series I have never seen and am not sure what the proportions are.  It seems like these minis are in 2 colors rather than 3.)

Cost and minor complaints aside, this is a cool comic I definitely think people will want. I wonder how it would look at a size closer to typical comic book dimensions.

Similarly to the Freak anthologies, there’s other artists doing little guest art pin-ups in the back that look great. Al Gofa is maybe the most high-profile of them, he has a book at Peow and is on Tumblr. Shaheen Beardsley I only know from in issue 7 of Freak, Bryce Davidson is in issue 4. Lucia Aguilar has a website I was able to find that says she works in printmaking among other forms. Jessie Garcia has too common of a name for me to track down more of her work, though I liked her drawing here a lot. Castelo also does these portraits of his characters on the inside covers in black and white I thought looked great.

Anyway, this book was printed by Floss Editions, who have copies available. There also are copies at Domino Books. I bought my copy in Philly at Partners And Son.

Home Movies #43: “Everyone's Entitled To My Opinion” | November 11, 2003 - 3:00 AM | S04E01

Home Movies is BACK! Sort of! This was actually a stealth premiere, airing on Tuesday morning at 3:00AM. This is the one where Brendon starts getting really into writing reviews for a movie review website and actually winds up getting paid for it. He’s like Lights Camera Jackson with teeth (Did LCJ have teeth in 2003? probably not). Meanwhile, Mr. Lynch is the interim principal of the school for some reason, and McGurk uses this to be bad. And thaaaat’s the frea-kin’ plooooot!!! 

I think most fans remember Home Movies season 4 as the season where the show got a little soft. In my estimation that’s probably true; season 4 does have a larger share of forgettable episodes. Also my least favorite episode is from this season. It’s the only episode of Home Movies I truly dislike, actually. We’ll get to that one eventually. This episode was pretty wonderful, though you can sense the show focusing on being a little more scripted.

Two moments stick out: A scene beginning in science class starts off with the teacher saying “wow, I didn’t expect to spend the first 25 minutes of class answering a single question!” and it cuts to Brendon looking satisfied, holding a book titled “THE WORLD’S HARDEST QUESTIONS”, and a part where Mr. Lynch does monkey bars and all of his stuff falls out of his pockets and you hear him sighing and grunting. Both of these moments seem to have scripted out the actual action happening on screen, where earlier seasons might’ve just created a largely audio-driven story, leaving all that stuff up to the animators. But those two gags seem very written in a way that would make famous rapist John K. furious.

Now, that isn’t to say that they completely abandoned letting the animators be creative. The commentary reveals that the kids’ movie wasn’t written or recorded with the idea of it being a Sopranos homage in mind. That was the work of the animators. I don’t know, maybe it’s nitpicky or a more shallow observation than I’m making it out to be. Like the monkey bars gag struck me as a gag that would be put in by the animators as an afterthought but the fact that Mr. Lynch has dialogue to support it made me think it wasn’t. What’s the fucking difference, anyway? That they put more work into the script? Big deal. This is apparently an annoyance to the creators of the show, who’ve heard this criticism over and over, and maintain that the ratio of scripting/improvising has remained pretty consistent while the show was on Adult Swim. Nonetheless, I noticed a difference. And I have to talk about SOMETHING on this blog, don’t I?

This write-up deserves to end on a less critical note: the opening scene on this one is one of my favorites. It’s the one where Brendon and Melissa are just laying in the grass talking and there’s a reveal that they’re in the middle of a game. McGurk comes over to yell at them and then winds up sitting down himself to shoot the breeze with them. Real wonderful.

MAIL BAG

Here’s the mail bag. First message is about yesterday’s Brak Show recap (which was probably bad because I forgot to do my customary editing session before it went to press):

Before you tread any further with this project, I BEG you, please watch the documentary The Problem With Sexy New Brak Show Go. It will open your eyes AND make you think for once in your (*looking up an adult swim show*) Momma Named Me Sherrif-addled life

How dare you, I’ve never watched Momma Named Me Sherrif, and I’m disgusted that there was a spin-off of Mr. Pickles (RIP Jay Johnston, who I think was in that). As for the doc, if it’s half as good as The Problem With Apu, then it’s bad

2003 Scharpling voice is freaking me out!

I used to go through Best Show archives pretty regularly, but it’s been a while. Weird to think we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of the first Best Show. I remember when ten years seemed extreme. Mortality is nasty.

Parts of Broodwich are inspired by Don Hertzfeldt. I thought a fan of classic animation would be pressed to point that out but you must be spending too much time thinking about "the twinkies" to mess that up.

I never made this connection, damn. To be honest the first time I saw Rejected I really didn’t care for it. I’ve seen more of his work and I appreciate it a lot more. I don’t know what I was so mad about. I think as a young adult I was still hyper sensitive about what I perceived to be bad “random” comedy, and almost anything that was a quick succession of little gags would always come off that way to me. Also, fuck you. I don’t care about Tiger and the Twinkies.

Would you eat a haunted hamburger provided it had your choice of toppings (nothing). Or would you be too chicken?

I am addicted to hamburgers and would probably eat it. My soul would burn in hell’s eternal flame. But what else is new

How much of the Adult Swim cast could John Wick and Bob Odenkirk kill before they were stopped? Would it be Space Ghost with his powerful rays? Would it be Frylock with his mindbending magic? Thundercleese? Oh! Do tell! We really want to know (rolleyes).

NOTE: I misread this as John Wick Bob Odenkirk, taking “John Wick” to be a descriptor for Bob’s Nobody persona. The following answer has not been changed, because I don’t want to think of a new one:

In Bob’s current state (recuperating like a bitch), I don’t think he’d get past even FREAKING MEATWAD, lol. But it’s my sincere hope that he’d last long enough to face off against the big boss: Icelandic Ultra Blue’s David Cross, finally putting an end to him once and for all. Hey everyone, it’s Bob vs. David!