Do your self a favor and pick up this month's issue of the Spirit by Darwyn Cook. This book has been nothing but good since I started reading it. It's become, for me, the dependable comic being published right now. I don't even have to flip through it to know that it is going to be exciting and hilarious.

Issue number 10 deals with a string of murders. The victims: cable news personalities. Each victim is a thinly veiled caricature of a real cable news pundit (ex. Bill O'Reilly is Wally O'Bellows; Anderson Cooper is Scooper Sanderson). The plot follows the Spirit as he tries to solve the relentless string of murders before all of our "beloved" cable news folks are pushing up daisies. There is even a brief meditation on how the world might be a better place if people were more interested in news that is reported because of its relevance to the world rather that its luridness or connection to a celebrity.

I don't want to spoil it for you so I will close by saying, again, buy this book. Then, read the back issues and Will Eisner's original run. AWESOME!!!

The great thing about wikipedia is that you can look up something (let's say toothpaste) and end up following links to something totally new and different that you weren't even aware of before (let's say Paul Pope). Now, I doubt I have ever spent any amount of time searching for info about toothpaste, but I am sure when I stumbled across Paul Pope's name it was a glorious accident. Being that I am an unabashed "true believer" what first drew me to Pope's work was the way he seemed to ape Jack Kirby and at the same time turn that style into something very fresh. Then I read 100%. Wow!!! I have never read anything so intellectually and visually stimulating. Here was a comic that was exciting to look at, tightly plotted, and exceptionally moving. I never expected to find an artist, whose worked looked this great, that could also write so well. I am, to be perfectly honest, rather jealous of Mr. Pope.
Yesterday I picked up Pulphope, Mr. Pope's new art book. After reading his essays I have learned that the only thing about Paul Pope that I have any right to be jealous of is his rigorous work ethic. Hard work, it seems, continues to be essential to great art.
Do yourself a favor and pick up this book. The art is, of course, beautiful, and the essays are some of the most insightful pieces of writing I have read in quite some time.
Oh, and read anything by Paul Pope you can get your hands on.

but all I can think about is Battle Star Galactica. I LOVE THIS SHOW!!! Not only is it the best piece of science fiction I have experienced in some time, it is also the most addictive and fascinating series I have ever watched. On top of all that it has been very inspiring.
I fancy myself a storyteller of sorts and this show has really imbued me with an excitement for telling stories. There was a period of my life during and after college where I only read non-fiction. Not only that, but it was all heavy political and theological stuff as well as some art theory and history. Theory, theory, theory. I was very disappointed with the world. I wanted to know why it was so screwed up and I believed that just having that knowledge would make me a better person. I think that I also subconsciously thought of fiction as something that was not really useful for anything except entertaining you. How silly I was.
I think the book that broke me out of this rut was THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie. This was a book about religion, myth, sex, political turmoil, and all of it communicated in such a beautifully poetic way. I fell in love with Rushdie and fell in love, again, with fiction. I remembered that old curmudgeon, Harlan Ellison, whom I had once referred to as my favorite author (of course I often got blank stares when I mentioned his name). I remembered how ENDER'S GAME made me cry. And, I remembered comics.
I believe that I have a much better appreciation for fiction and non-fiction in my life. Really, I simply love the communication of ideas in all their forms. BSG addresses everything I care about in the world and is damned entertaining to boot. Every time I watch an episode it shows me that I can make up something totally crazy and still communicate thoughts and emotions that resonate with the real world.

Well, I have to post something or what's the point of this whole live journal thing.

I recently went to the Olympic Rain Forest with my girlfriend. It was amazing. We hiked in about 6.5 miles and camped for four nights. The weather was perfect, we ate well,and there was absolute peace and quiet. I was able to reflect and enjoy being alive. Awesome.

Now I am back in the city staying up until 3 am learning about logos and fonts. Weird!

I am strange.

After reading that subject line most people will probably disregard this post believing it to be puke inducing smaltz. This is not the case, I assure you.

I AM A HUGE NERD!!! Back home I have boxes of comics and shelves of action figures. I love Sci-Fi. I read all the Star Wars novels, the Star Trek novels, Howard's Conan, and of coursemountains of X-Men. For some reason I moved away from these things after entering high school and then college. Most likely this had to do with my new found obsession which was to hook up with girls. That doesn't make me a lecher, it just makes me a guy.

Well, now I am past all that, have a wonderful girlfriend, and am slowly re-emersing myself in my former love for sci-fi. AND SHE LOVES THAT STUFF TO!!! In fact, we had a whole debate about what the hell is going on with Battle Star Galactica. Let me first say that, because I am always behind on something and haven't had cable for 6 years, I have only recently started watching this AWESOME show via DVD. My girlfried loves it just as much as I do and it is so fun to have a heated debate with her about why Roslin or Adama might be Cylons (don't ruin anything for me if you know something I don't).

Anyway just wanted to share.

I have become fascinated recently with how lazy I am.

Now, let me put this in perspective. I have a great work ethic, all of my past and present employers will attest to that. But when it comes to working for myself I am an idler supreme. My tiny little apartment is a mess. It gets cleaned up maybe once every two weeks, if that. My laundry sits in a pile. It takes me four months between haircuts.

Then there is my art. I consider myself a creator of art, a songwriter, and a musician, but damned if I stick with any one discipline for more than a week. I probably would have mastered Jazz comping if I did it every morning like I planned to instead of obsessing over it for three days and then disregarding it for an episode of Seinfeld. When will I finish my solo album (hell, when willI START it)? I have finished one comic strip in the past year and it is based on this stupid robot joke:

A robot walks into a bar. The bartender says,"Hey! We don't serve robots."
The robot replies, "You will."

Ok, I do think that is funny. I better post that one.

Anyway, I am decrying my laziness as a means of garnering sympathy, but I do find it humorous that I can appear to have accomplished so much but still be, in fact, a total slack-ass. Maybe it's just perspective.

I had never read a Romance comic in my life until this year. Strange, considering that Romance comics were created by Jack Kirby, the Alpha and Omega of this wonderful visual art form we call comics (well, maybe Eisner is a little more important,but that is a debate for another post). Sure, I own that issue of X-men where Jean and Scott tie the not, but really, that probably had more to do with me being 16 and Andy Kubert drawing all those foxy ladies in that issue. Beyond that I've only experienced Romantic dramas in the pages of Daredevil, and those always seem to end up with a lot of blood and revenge talk.

Then I picked up 100% by Paul Pope. Gah. Wow!!!!! I was in love with the art, the story, and each one of the characters. I realized that not only was I ready for more mature and emotionally interesting work, but that my favorite story telling medium was more than capable of wowing me with amazing visuals AND bringing me almost to tears by tugging at my heartstrings while never getting too sentimental.

12 Reasons Why I Love Her by Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones is a more recent example of this same wonderful kind of story. The book takes twelve vignettes from the relationship of two lovers, Gwen and Evan, and explores how they relate to each other and how they come into conflict. The vignettes are not in chronological. This means that story lacks not only a happy ending, but any ending. And, in fact, this lack of closure is what made the book resonate so strongly with me.

We've all had those relationships that we think fondly on for one moment and then groan and drop our head into our hands the next. Dating and love are nt simply bubbley sugar coated adventures full of flowers and making out (though that is part of it as well). 12 Reasons avoids those saccharine moments almost entirely and spends most of its time pitting one character against another in debates about religion, film, and gender roles in dating. But there are also the lovely meditations upon the seasons and a magical dream.

12 Reasons is a Romance, but it explores its characters as human beings having a relationship, not as a cookie cutter man and woman seeking each others perfect embrace. We care about Evan and Gwen. By the time we emerge from the fog of the non linear narrative, we feel almost as though we were part of their relationship. That's because we have all had a relationship like this one. Full of struggles between egos, disagreements over petty things, dirty jokes, and maybe a few flowers and a little making out.

I know that I am not at a point yet in my blogging where I am being read by a great number of people (or any people at all) but I want to spread the word about open mic night at Rake. We have a sort of show and tell/poetry reading open forum where people can come to read pieces or show of a work of art. It is great fun and there are some great poets. My fave was the guy last time (no I can't remember his name) who read a poem he had written about a Japanese flying turtle monster.

And, just for the hell of it, I think I will post a little poem of my own today.

The bones of the prophets
They hang from a tree
They lie in the sand
They wait
They wait

The bones of the prophets
What do they say?
Can we understand when
They speak
They speak

Your words would be so beautiful
If they were not stained with blood
Those words that come from heaven
And rise up from the mud

The bones of the prophets
Mean nothing
Without the tongues of the prophets

The bones of the prophets
Say what they want
Not what you want them to say

The bones of the prophets
They recede with time
They age
They die
They may never have been

The words of the prophets
The bones of their vision
That we have
That we hear
That we feel
That we can see

The bones of the prophets
We cannot touch
They do not speak
But let us listen
Let us listen

I have to write about this thing that never happened. It could have happened but it never did. I was there, so I know it never happened.

The bus carried me home, as it always had, in my detached haze of dreaming drowsy downtrodden dreams of what I couldashouldawoulda done had work and my need for monetary compensation not beckoned. The rain ran ragged down the windows. Stop go stop go. On off.

Al sorts of people ride the bus. Young, old; warm, gold; shy, bold. I have met artists, priests, punks, men and women, boys and girls.

And once, an angel.

The angel had raven hair, the blackness of which had not been seen since the great nothing that became everything exploded forth eons ago. She was round and fertile, as one who brings life into the world would be. She smelled of cloves and beginnings. She had dark eyes that had been open longer than there has been light to see with. Her wings (I’m sure she had them) were hidden beneath a chocolate brown coat that fit her curves and allowed the fairness of her skin to illuminate the bus.

I knew she was an angel because I had dreamed her origins.

As she boarded I found myself dozing and then floating in the desert sky. The desert over which I floated was God’s land, as all lands are.

In this land many gods had intruded upon the One to live in the Holy Ka’ba, God’s House upon the Earth. And thus came the Prophet, who had heard the secrets of the world from the angel Gibreel. It is possible that, like Jacob, he had wrestled the angel into submission for these secrets, but that is another matter. The prophet knew that these stones which lived in the house of Ibrahim, which he had built for god, were but facsimiles, manufactured, to serve the needs of man and not to glorify the true nature of the unseen creator of all that is and ever will be.

She lived in this house. And her name was Al-Lat. Her sisters were Al-Manat and Al-Uzza and they had been agents of the creator but now sat on pagan thrones, which they had not built for themselves.

We are weak you see. We feel we need things. We feel we need gods. We feel we need leaders to do the heavy lifting for us. They make the world magically better, happier, and safer.

Yet we are the ancestors of those winged seraphim who descended from on high to build the world. We are they and they became us. They built the vision of the creator and then populated it.

And the prophet knew that it was time we took charge of ourselves and realized that all were one.

He banished those who lived in God’s house (though he failed to point out that perhaps God has little need for a house). He brought God’s word to these desert people and the world (though he seemed only able to convey these words in his own tongue). He banished the daughters of God (yet referred to them as birds of Heaven).

I dreamed that I asked her what she had felt when the Prophet banished she and her sisters.

She said, “I was glad to be done with it all. They worship us and beg of us for that which we cannot give them. Nor can even the creator give them more than has already been given to them. Life is all there is. That is all we could give them. You all wanted to reach up to Heaven and all we wanted was to live and die as you do.”

And in this city, where we see the sands slide slowly down the hour glass. Where we ask what can be done and do not ask what WE can do. An angel tells me she wishes only to be one of us. To face the inevitability of death. To struggle and fail under her own power in her own world without wings or the hand of God.

She is riding the same bus as I am. We are all going to the same place. We will all exit eventually because we cannot ride forever.

In seven days I will have created nothing. I have everything to say but don’t know where to start. All of my professors tell me that the best way to start writing is merely to start. The solution is as simple as that. Well, here I am. I will start writing something.

The Decembrists are distracting me. They are playing a song on Leno. Why am I watching that? Watching TV is probably why I can’t get started. How does that song go?
“I’ve flown around the world in a plane,
I’ve settled revolutions in Spain,
The North Pole I’ve charted,
But I can’t get started with you.”
That song does refer to a woman (or a man I suppose) but it could easily refer to all of my neglected creations.

Let’s start with my comic about God and faith. Every now and then there is a sketch, some files with outlines, characterizations. A good start but how do I take it further? Sometimes I feel as though I am treating this story like homework. This story, which occurred to me in a flash of welcome inspiration, now feels like a burden I am forced to lug around until the final breathe leaves my body.
Am I ashamed of the story? I don’t think so. I am proud of it. Everyone who hears about it thinks it sounds like a great idea. Why don’t I believe them? Rather, why do I not simply write it? Perhaps that is the answer. Simply sit down and write. It seems to be working at the moment.
I think I feel most comfortable, not as a visual artist, musician, lover, or philosopher but rather as a writer of some kind. To call myself a writer seems too pretentious. I feel that I am a juggler of ideas. I think a lot. And what better way to think out loud than to write. Language gives me a way to play with ideas.
So, I will play with ideas. Yes. That is what I am going to do.