Funny pages

So it's been another month with no blog posts, but then this morning I realized that I can just piggyback on someone else's brilliance and finally post something. God, why did it take me so long to catch onto this?

Anyway, I just stumbled across the web comic Medium Large, which is written (and drawn?) by Francesco Marciuliano, the writer of Sally Forth. This is the second go-round for the strip, but I didn't see the first ones. So far, I like every single strip he's posted. Not often I say that about any comic strip...most are hit or miss, even the good ones. Check it out. But maybe not in front of any kids who are old enough to read.
 

Six months already?

Writer's block? Procrastination? Ennui? Intimidation? Lack of time?

All that and so much more, I guess.

Some of the things I didn't blog in the last six month: Kindergarten, taking a Japanese class, a trip to the desert, the Bunster's first trip to the emergency room (he's fine now, after three stitches), reconnecting with my sister, and a trip to Ren Faire. Among others. I don't think the problem is a lack of material, anyway.

No promises to get back on track. If I do, then you'll know by reading (all two of you left, that is!). And if I don't, then I shouldn't have promised what I couldn't deliver.

One of the things I've been doing in the past months is trying to dig myself out of years of accumulated clutter and keepsakes. Any idea why I kept these?


Maybe I'm planning to open a museum of defunct comic book production materials? I can't really think of any good reason to keep a couple of rubber cement pick-ups and a burnisher...and yet here they are, fresh out of my desk drawer. At least I'm not putting them back.
 

Filler, aka update 'n' rant

So the graduations both went well. The Bunster's surprised me by being quite age-appropriate and kind of cool. They all wore tee-shirts, black pants/skirts/shorts, Hawaiian-style floral leis, and little "grass skirts" made of what looked like sturdy construction paper. A few songs were sung ("Each of us is a flower, growing in life's garden," in case you weren't aware), the director made a quick speech, and each child received a fake diploma tied with a ribbon. And then were were done and it was time for the bounce-house, the hot dogs, some snow cones, and a bit of cake. Not simultaneously, of course.

The Bunster's older brother G.'s graduation also went well. Although the senior class was pretty large, J. was able to spot G. from the bleachers and got some pretty good photos and video, considering the distance. They had a party afterward (which the Bunster and I also missed, alas), which was low key yet fun. So that was good.

On a completely unrelated note, I read Luann (I know, shoot me now. I also read For Better or For Worse, and Cathy, so clearly my comic strip taste is suspect to say the least.) and something really bothered me today. Which, to be honest, I should say about this strip everyday, but anyway....

Luann's brother Brad is talking about his complete ignorance in the kitchen and appears to believe that antipasti, minestrone, risotto, and "a nice chianti" are French food. Leaving aside the Silence of the Lambs reference (what, he's going to eat his girlfriend's liver?), how has he managed to get to age 20-something and not know this? Did his parents just keep taking the kids to Chuck E. Cheese even when they hit their late teens? Did they simply never take them to a restaurant at all? Who gets to early adulthood without at least one trip to an Italian restaurant? I grew up in the midwest and we all knew this stuff (admittedly I have foodie parents, but still!).

And now I'm off to Chuck E. Cheese with the Bunster for a 5 year old's birthday party. I know...setting a great example for his future. At least his favorite foods include goat cheese and sushi.
 

It's not your father's Marvel Comics anymore...

What?!! The??!

Marcus blogged recently about what Marvel's been doing to their stable of heroes, but I had no idea how bad it's gotten. Now I do.

Either they're doing a retread on the old Superman death (yeah, he's alive again, what a surprise, sure didn't see that coming a mile away, yawn) or they're actually gutting the character of Captain America and putting someone else in the tights.

Either way, what the hell are they thinking?

I know what I'm thinking. To quote Marcus, "last resort of the hack."

Good bye, Steve Rodgers. We thought we knew you.
 

Stan Drake

Don Hudson recently posted some old Power Pack stuff and mentioned that Stan Drake, an old-school strip artist, worked on PP also. I was an assistant editor on the book then and once got to visit Stan in his studio in Connecticut.

Stan did a strip for years called "The Heart of Juliet Jones" and when I visited and admired his work, he gave me a few old JJ strips. I still have 'em tucked safely away, keep meaning to frame them. Now Don's inspired me to scan one and post it:



Somewhere in my garage I have some reprint volumes of JJ, too. Such gorgeous art!
 

A Little Manga Love

Steve loaned me a weird little semi-manga called Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, by Brian Lee O'Malley, and I promised a review of it almost a month ago. Lazy much?

So here we go:

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life starts out as a teen-rocker comic full of music and angst and lots of hanging around talking. And then suddenly, halfway through the book, a character says, "No, no, it's...its just, like, this really convenient subspace highway happens to go through your head."

And then it slowly heads into truly weird territory.

Keep reading...

Don't want to spoil the story, so no plot-wrecking details. Despite this slow slide into weirdness, I still didn't see the final "concert" section of the book coming at all and sat there thinking "did I pick up some other comic and not notice?" But in a good way.

Who wouldn't love a comic where a cute slacker rock 'n' roll boy has to figure out what to do about his seventeen-year-old pseudo-girlfriend ("we haven't even held hands") so he can pursue a space-warping Amazon.ca delivery girl on rollerblades? Um, the delivery girl is on rollerblades, not the pursuit. Although that would be cool, and definitely in the spirit of this comic.

Or where finally defeating a villain lets you pick up coins, although not enough for bus fare?

And I have to love this exchange:

Scott: "You dated seven evil dudes?"
Ramona: "Not all at once!"

The artwork fits the story well, although I found the manga style took some getting used to, since I don't read a lot of manga. I don't know all the conventions, but it seems like classic manga-style to me, only with easier-to-follow storytelling. Or maybe I'm just getting better at following a fight sequence.

But the writing is the reason I enjoyed this book so much. Brian Lee O'Malley can and does suddenly switch from high-manga all-out psi-fight to goofy and sardonic and back. At one point, the characters poke fun at the conventions of a manga fight without breaking the fourth wall or acknowledging that they're in a comic book. Throughout, it manages to be tongue-in-cheek in a way that's not at all self-conscious or pretentious.

By the way, I called Scott Pilgrim a "semi-manga" because it didn't seem to follow the conventions of manga as I understand them. But then I realize that this is like calling Gunpowder Girl and the Outlaw Squaw a "semi-comic" because it doesn't have any caped superheros. And also that I might have written this so I can still say "Well, I don't really read manga." Deny everything! But read Scott Pilgrim.
 

Filler

Yes, Steve, yesterday WAS a long time ago. This from the man who left Velma Dinkley in her (almost) altogether for a whole month...

I do have a few more-up-to-date entries coming up, and two or three of them are even comic-book-related. I'm currently in love with the Fables series of trade paperbacks by Bill Willingham et al. (okay, so that's not terribly up-to-date, but bear with me); Steve loaned me a weird little semi-manga called Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, which I liked very much; and I just read the most godawful comic I've seen in years and want to warn you away from it.

Keep reading...

My mini-review of The Five Fists of Science is: "Fun basic concept, damaged by mediocre writing and utterly destroyed by some of the poorest-quality sequential art I've seen since my days as the Marvel submissions editor."

Given that my job then was to review unsolicited artwork, mostly from kids, and send nice form letters to 99% of the applicants, that's not saying much. Or maybe it's saying a lot.

Most of the names at the top of the Image comics masthead on this book are people whose work I liked and/or respected back in the day when I read a lot more comics. I have no idea how much Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders must have bribed them to publish TFFoS. Maybe they're family. Or perhaps Family.

Can't resist one little item that should go in my proper review instead of this filler blog entry:

The "heroic" fight scene on pages four, five, six, and seven took me and J about 5 minutes to piece together, since the artwork was so muddy we couldn't tell what the hell was going on. Once we did work it out, we wished we hadn't bothered. My favorite part was when the one-armed guy manages to remove his prosthetic arm from within the mutton-sleeved blouse he was wearing and bludgeon a pistol-carrying thug with it before the guy was able to run away or shoot. And the thug had a head start. That's one FAST one-armed guy. Richard Kimble wouldn't stand a chance.

I do hope Fraction and Sanders are nice guys who move past this little debacle and end up doing interesting work. Interesting in the enjoyable sense, that is, not interesting like this project. But no matter how great they may be personally, I don't have much to say about their book that isn't criticism. Sorry, guys.

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UPDATE:
Okay, still don't like TFFoS, but I'm a dork to write that Matt Fraction should "end up doing interesting work" when I loved Last Of The Independents. So maybe I'd have liked this one as well, if it had a good artist and a bit of editing. But it didn't and I don't.
 

Marvelous

If you came to this blog through the Comiculture site, you may be wondering, "Who is Sara Kocher, anyway? And what is she doing on the Comiculture web site?"

First, a bit of background...back in the mid '80s, the president of Marvel Comics was an Antioch College grad. As the story goes (and since I got this from college gossip, not from him, insert grain of salt here), he wanted to do something for the old Alma Mater. So he established an internship program for Antioch students only -- a 3-month internship which included a small stipend. There was already a Marvel internship program offered for high school and college students, but those jobs were generally unpaid. After the first Antioch intern completed his 3-month stint, the internship shifted into the Epic Comics department, then headed by Archie Goodwin. I don't recall how many interns came and went before I got the job, but I'm guessing two or three at most.

And how did I get the coveted Antioch internship at Marvel? Well, I really wanted to live in New York City. So I checked the list of jobs for any in NYC that paid enough to live on (frugally), and chose my favorite. "I read comic strips," I thought, "And this sounds like fun."

Keep reading...

I spent a few weeks reading all the comics I could get my hands on (mostly from dorm-mates) and the local comics shop loaned me a box of "returns." I was so well qualified!

FYI (if you're not a comics fan or pro):

When a newsstand comic isn't sold, it can be returned to the distributor for a credit. Rather than shipping back all those comics (paper weighs a lot), retailers just send the cover. The rest of the comic is supposed to be thrown away. But instead, these "returns" can be kept in a big ole box and loaned to college students prepping for internships who are too poor to buy a ton of comics.

So I went to New York, fell in love with comics, and dropped out of college (nearly giving my parents a heart attack). After the internship, I spent a couple of months working in a local comic shop until I found a position at Marvel, as a receptionist (my parents were just thrilled). A few months later, I was hired as an assistant editor, first for a Marvel editor and then in the Epic Department. And things were great. But after about two years at Marvel, Archie Goodwin left Epic (or, more accurately, was pushed), Epic was reorganized, and I was out of a job. I quickly discovered that comic books are pretty much the only branch of publishing where lack of a degree is no hindrance.

I went back to school, finished my degree (my parents breathed a sigh of relief), worked for years doing non-comics-related things, got married, and had kids. I still read comics, including lots of newspaper strips, but I was out of the industry. Then the guys founded Comiculture. I offered to become a proofreader and general web-monkey and they took me up on it. And here I am. My parents are so proud.
 

Beaming Up

Every now and then, one of my friends or family reminds me of my "greatest claim to fame" in the comics industry. Did I write something really groundbreaking? Not unless you consider a never-published inventory story "groundbreaking" in some way (ground fertilizing, perhaps). Do a fantastic job coloring? Um, no. I figured out after one job that coloring isn't the best career path for someone overwhelmed by the color options in a 24-pack of Crayola. Draw? Or letter? Well, if you knew me, you wouldn't ask about those. Let's just say "stick figure" and "chicken scratch" and leave it at that.

No, no, my claim to fame is that I was "cast" as a transporter room crewmember in a few issues of DC's Star Trek comic.

That's right, I really did beam them up. Or at least my alter ego did. In a mini skirt, too.

Keep reading...

And how did I become so famous? Because the writer knew me and decided to use my name, which at the time was Sara Tuchinsky. He often borrowed the names of family and friends when creating new characters and I guess my last name caught his eye as interesting. What he hadn't realized is that that the artist knew me as well. So when he saw my name in the script, he naturally drew me.

I had no idea until the bundle of comics came out (Marvel editors and their assistants at that time got a bundle of comics each week with everything published by Marvel and DC). People started coming down the hall saying "Hey, you're in Star Trek." And so I was, for several issues. I even got hypnotized once so that a weird alien-guy could try to use the transporter without being caught.

Years later, while vanity-googling, I discovered that some Star Trek fan had created a web site listing every single spaceship by serial number. He'd gathered the info from the show, books, and various other Trekkie media, but whenever he couldn't find a ship's name for a particular serial number, he'd make one up from "authentic" names he'd seen in Star Trek material. And there I was, the USS Sara Tuchinsky. I'd include a link, but the page disappeared a couple of years ago. Fame is fleeting.