The New Mutants and my artistic misadventures up to now...

This unfinished sketch began its life as just a dull portrait of Dani Moonstar (AKA the Greatest Comic Character Ever Created) I did months ago, possibly in ArtRage Studio or Sketchbook Pro. Yesterday, feeling kind of feisty, I opened it up in Manga Studio and penciled over it and, I believe, fixed one or two things that used to bother me about it.

 For some reason, I felt a Hulk appropriate to the story and once I added the Jade Giant, obviously we needed a cringing Sam Guthrie doing a sort of Archie comics fear pose on the right. Such was my thought process at about 7pm, the end of a full day of drawing and self-directed art study which began around 630am. By the time I started coloring it, I was physically exhausted. I only got this far and decided to call it quits, but at that point I'd discovered oil painting and I played around with a digital piece I did a couple of years back of a screaming Captain Kirk being left behind in deep space by the Enterprise.

Yesterday's efforts included the writing, lettering and laying out of a story I call, "The Legend of Billy Jack versus Bruce Lee." I also drew Conan attacking Mickey Mouse, an image I've been toying with for the past month. The idea I could make the Conan figure look a bit like a John Buscema drawing wrecked me. Then I discovered my own line and had to re-draw it in a more personal way. In blue pencil just for fun.

I find I've developed some measure of precision to go along with the speed I've long had. I also have a tremendous amount of self-discipline where I can keep myself drawing for hours, minus a couple of rest breaks here and there, and push through blocks and frustrations to keep putting down lines. What I lack are basic storytelling skills and an appealing aesthetic quality. I don't have a particular "way" to draw eyes, or a characteristic approach to shadows and highlights. What I seek is a natural way of drawing, without getting hung up on ideas like "style."

 But at the same time, I want something I can reproduce consistently that looks attractive in case people might actually come to desire my art in some financially remunerative way. The way to do this is simply to do this. Then do it again. And again. Do it a million times if necessary, or even more.

I wish I had all day every day to devote to art, but I also have to do my regular day job. So for now, I'll be getting up at 5am to draw for two hours and then maybe 4 hours on a Saturday and a Sunday each as long as my wife is cool with it. I mean, she's pretty darned important to me!

Anyway, as I've no doubt mentioned here, many years ago I had this idea I could write a 48-page graphic novel or the first two issues of an ongoing series, a kind of "slice of life" thing partially inspired by the existence of Love and Rockets, Ghost World and even Peter Bagge's Hate. Visually, I wanted it to resemble classic romance comics, but with the clothes and hairstyles all up-to-date. Then I thought, "Hey, why don't you try to draw it in as close an approximation to Alex Toth's style as you can?"

 I guess I kind of had in mind Mark Schultz's first Xenozoic Tales story, titled "Xenozoic!," which he drew as an extended Wally Wood riff. Well, I quickly learned I was in no way Alex Toth or Mark Schultz. But by that time, I'd already written the whole thing. I did it Sergio Aragones-style, with the entire 48 pages thumbnailed, complete with dialogue.

 Realizing I'd set the bar impossibly high for someone whose last lengthy sequential work was a three-page Jurassic Park parody done in 1993, I decided to limit myself to just writing it and getting someone else to draw it. I typed it up in what I think is standard script format, completed the forms and documents and sent the whole mess to Dark Horse Comics, the only place taking those kinds of unsolicited submissions at the time. That it then disappeared without a trace into their slush pile and then, no doubt, into a recycling bin where it eventually became an ingredient in someone's computer desk or a Blo Pop stick (I hope the latter!) let me know my writer's skill level and commercial instincts!

Rejection is just part of aspiration.  I don't save them because I'm not sentimental and I have little or no ego, but I've since received some actual rejection letters for short stories I've written.  That's more fun that silence, and from them I gained a feeling of accomplishment.  The thing is, you can't give up.  Ever.  So even though I was in the process of changing from a low-paying graphic design career to a higher-paying English teaching one, I carried the layouts and script with me to Japan where I worked on them from time to time.  When I bought Manga Studio 5 with my new-found education riches, the first thing I did was lay out the first half as a single comic book issue and letter it, editing and fine-tuning the dialogue throughout.  Soon I'll do the other half and complete the story.  I know how it ends and how to get there.  I know what everyone says and does and why.

I drew here and there, but largely just spent my time bouncing around between my adopted hometown and Tokyo, checking out rock shows and living the life of a language mercenary.  This left little time for the kind of dedicated study of art I'm making now.  And why am I doing this?  Encouragement from a pro who sent me a message on Facebook and asked me directly why I wasn't drawing.  Why I had never gone for it.  I thought about that for while and after I had thought about it long enough, I realized I had to start drawing again on a regular basis.  I couldn't let my skills rust anymore.  I then went to work drawing every single day and recently, I've been spending longer hours at it.  I'm improving faster than I ever thought possible.  And it's been pretty fun despite smashing headfirst into the upper limits of my capabilities, which aren't as high as I'd like.

There are some hugely talented people out there who can blow my wheels off!  I mean, WOW!

Then, this past weekend, I decided that so-called graphic novel needed some new thought and a new beginning.  I came up with a kind of one-page prelude to set the scene and one of the character conflicts.  This leads into my original opening sequence but enables me to show, rather than tell, and opens up the possibility for more natural, less expository, dialogue from the two co-leads.  They're half of a quartet of characters whose adventures and misadventures drive the story.  This made me re-think another scene near the beginning that will no serve to sharpen the book's main dilemma, the one shared by all four people.

And with that, I must go teach an English conversation class.  So I'm out!

Today's Xi'an Coy Manh and a word or two about Manga Studio 5...

Oh, sorry.  From the sublime (Steve Rude) to the ridiculous (me).  This is Xi'an Coy Manh, a particular comic book character favorite of mine. As you're no doubt aware (and sick of hearing about), I've been spending hours upon hours drawing lately.  Mostly teaching myself to ink. 

What makes it easy to get lost in art is a little program known as Manga Studio 5.  It's not cheap, but when you consider the tools you get with it, it's more than worth the asking price.  Yeah, I even splurged and bought the professional level version. 

The absolute best feature is the one where you can lay down a perspective ruler and draw lines that "snap" to it.  You can do 1-, 2- and 3-point perspective.  You still have to understand the theory to make it work properly, but Manga Studio has taken a lot of tediousness out of working in perspective.  World-building is a joy.  It always was, at least in the imagining stages, but then you had to make grids or find vanishing points, which is like brick-laying or putting in a concrete carport on a steamy August day in south Georgia (both of which I helped my dad do when I was a kid).  Now you can just fiddle with some levers and away you go.  New York City in a few minutes for Spider-Man to go a-swingin' through, or some alien megalopolis worthy of those magicians over at ILM.  I recommend you do a rough sketch first, though.  That helps clarify where all those levers and points go! 

Another fun feature is the poseable figure/character creator thing.  The proportions are a little odd and the anatomy is kind of blobby and unformed.  If you make a bulky, hulky, sulky superhero with green skin and torn-up purple pants, for example, the muscle masses are not accurate at all.  So it's not going to work as a lazy person's substitute for real-world observation and study, but as a lazy person's shortcut to throwing together scenes and keeping everyone the same size relative to each other, it works excellently.  You can put 3D mannequins on your page, manipulate their poses and body parts (make massive heads, hands or feet, giants and little people) in just about any way you can think of, move a camera around to capture the angle you want, then click a 3-point perspective ruler based on your "camera angle" and draw away like a happy clown who likes to draw.

By the way, one thing it does is completely take away an artist's excuses for not including hands and feet in a drawing. No more demure hands-behind-the-back poses with conveniently placed boxes on the floor.  Put those hands into intricate Dr. Strange spell-weaving configurations and prop at least one of those feet proudly up upon that box.

Manga Studio 5 also contains several 3D environments in which you can place your people.  They're very manga-centric.  Japanese high school classroom and typical Japanese residential neighborhood, for example.  But with some clever adaptation, you can make them work for just about anyplace.  There are even some poseable manga figures to stick in there, high school kids in uniforms.  If you really want to, you could simply make up stories about them.

Finally, the most technical part.  Lettering and panel borders.  You can create word balloons and pointers, and toss your words all over the book before you ever draw a line.  This is handy, because if you place your word balloons properly, that's less panel area you have to draw, which further saves a hurried artist time.  And really, you should be planning your page layouts with the word balloons in mind for maximum readability.  And Manga Studio 5 provides some manga page layouts with pre-ruled panels, but you can use the program's tools to make your own.  I made a standard, old school three-tier, 9-panel layout I use a lot because I love the retro page design. 

In two days, I laid out the panels and did all the lettering for a full 24-page comic book, approximately one-half of a graphic novel I hope to complete someday before I die.  I started doing the actual drawings and ran into some limitations Manga Studio cannot help me with at all.  But that's not a program flaw.  That's my own problem I have to work on, and Manga Studio is helping me.

All of that sounds complicated (or exciting if you're more of an optimist, I suppose), but if you've used Painter, Sketchbook Pro, ArtRage Studio or Photoshop, it's easy to get started.  The learning curve isn't really that steep if you're not intimidated by all the menus.

But there are some frustrations involved with the program itself and not just my inability to draw up to the impossible standards I've set for myself.  The built-in drawing, painting and coloring tools-- the pens, pencils and brushes-- are okay.  Just okay.  You can do quite a lot with them, but they just don't mimic closely enough what it's like to make lines or blobs with real pencils, pens or brushes.  I find this changes my "feel" and forces me into drawing in ways that aren't natural to me.  I've never been a very skilled inker, which is why I tend to do my inks in Illustrator.  But I long for the feathered look of a classic inker rather than the overly mechanical finishes I end up doing there.

Well, an incredibly talented illustrator named Ray Frenden has solved a lot of that by producing for a modest price practically every inking tool you could ever want, from Rapidograph pens to Pigma pens to ink nibs to brushes galore.  Plus watercolor and oil painting brushes.  The other day, I bought the equivalent of thousands of dollars worth of art supplies for about 15 bucks.  Import them into Manga Studio and you've got everything you need to draw with and no excuses not to use them.

And this drawing is one of the results.  It looks as close to something I might have drawn in my sketchbook there's practically no difference and yet it took less than half the time and didn't smear.  The hand is wobbly, and I've forgotten what tool I used.  Probably a Pigma pen.  The hatched lines are definitely Pigma, as are the color areas.  Then I switched to an ink nib Frenden calls "The Natural" and did those other faces and the strange feathered areas on Xi'an's arm.

I've been having a ball playing around with Manga Studio 5 and Frenden's art tools.  I don't fear inking in Manga Studio anymore.  In fact, I can hardly wait to get home from work every day to jump in and try different things.  My skill level frustrates me, but with the handy ctrl-z function my most egregious mistakes disappear.

I mean the rendering ones.  The underlying structural problems remain.  But I'm working on those!  Maybe one day we'll see some results.

On John Buscema and learning about art...

Did you have that old How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way book with all the examples from various Marvel comics and most especially from John Buscema?  Stan Lee's text made drawing comics the Marvel way seem easy, a lark.  Buscema's super-assured drawings and those from guys like Jack Kirby and Gene Colan told a different story.  Still, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way is a nice introductory text on drawing comics with the necessary basics artists should still be using no matter how up-to-date their rendering style is.  Take your funkiest, latest stylist and give him or her a solid grounding in fundamentals of figure construction, panel composition, storytelling and layout and you'd have the post-Image artist to steal my cold, shriveled heart.

As a member of a couple of fan pages for Buscema and Kirby frequented by actual comic book-making professionals in the industry, I get intermediate to advanced lessons in comic book drawing almost every single day.  That-- and some encouragement along those lines-- has gotten me back into drawing in a major way.  I spent my Golden Week holidays off from work drawing six or more hours a day, but even before then I was putting in at least two hours after work and more on weekends.  Yesterday, I drew for about 8 hours without a break.  Then, in my punchiness, I accidentally posted some of my crap to one of those fan pages.  Luckily for me, the 12 hour time difference meant few, if any, saw it before I deleted it. 

Very embarrassing.

Sometimes I wonder when I watch some amateur singing competition on TV is the participants have ever actually heard themselves sing.  Yeah, some people can really belt a tune, but most of us are middling singers at best and some are downright tone-deaf and horrible.  And yet they seem convinced their screeching is the equivalent of Whitney Houston's voice in its prime, or at least Beyoncé's.  When I sing, I can hear that I'm sharp or flat or just can't reach that note.  Apparently, some people cannot do this and so they audition for American Idol and we get a viral video sensation on the Internet the next day.

I'm at the same level with my drawing that I am with my singing.  I can look at a drawing after I've made it and know it's inadequate.  I can even tell in what way it is.  I do a lot of my inking in Adobe Illustrator because I can get a clean, slick look and make adjustments until it looks mostly like the amazing image I had in my mind when I set out to draw it.  It never matches it exactly.  My imagination is much more talented than my actual eyes and hand.  But what I see is still amateur hour at best.  The karaoke box crooner version of what I'd like it to be.

The other day, I saw a John Buscema drawing of a pirate.  Just a single figure doing nothing more than standing there with a sword in his hand.  Buscema had inked it himself, very heavily, too.  Man, it put my best efforts to shame.  If I make a drawing with 10,000 lines, 10 of them might be as good as a Buscema line but they're covered up by the Bryan lines that aren't where they're supposed to be or lack polish or energy or skill.  Whatever it is Buscema had that I lack.

I'll be honest with you-- it was so good and made my art look so pathetic by comparison, I wanted to pull my teeth out.  I didn't know what I wanted to do.  Head back up river and pull a fade-away into the jungle again.  Only the jungle looks like John Buscema drew it, or Al Williamson and that would just be too much to bear.

"But who is crazy enough to compare himself or herself to one of the greats like John Buscema?" you ask.  "Few can ever achieve at that level.  There are hugely popular and successful artists who don't even rate sharpening Big John's pencils.  Why do that to yourself?"

It's not even the Buscema comparison.  Because yeah, you're right-- doing that is completely insane.  But think about the crappiest professional artist whose work you've ever seen in a printed comic book, and I am not even up to that level yet.  Even Larry X. Lameartist doing a monthly job on The Slipshod Costumedfools can draw circles around me.

This isn't false modesty or just some self-evisceration because I want people to feel sorry for me.  I'm telling you the way it is.  If I were a comic book editor and I saw work identical to what I'm doing now, I'd have to tell that hopeful exactly the same thing:  "You are not ready for prime time."  John Buscema drew the comic book adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus for Dell Comics before he lit up different books at Marvel and contributed his expertise to how to do it their way and even that Spartacus job-- as crude as it is compared to prime Buscema-- has that thing I don't see in my drawings.

It's frustrating.  I'm not even aiming at that kind of pro career, to blow people away as the next John Buscema.  Those kinds of dreams are for kids.  I'd just love to do a job or two at some low level whatever, or get into the illustration game.  Make a buck for myself, make a buck for someone else.  But I wonder if I've wasted a lot of developing years.  When I was a kid and I was almost as good as I am now, I felt satisfied and allowed myself to coast on raw talent.  I should have been working as hard then as I am now, but I didn't understand the necessity.  Someone-- I think it was Ken Griffey, Jr., said if you want to be a pro ballplayer (and this is true for any level of the game), you need to hit at least 500 balls a day.  I should have been doing the art equivalent of that.

Instead, I bought the Porsche 911 with the quadrophonic Blaupunkt, topped in AA ball and made the Sports Illustrated list of all-time draft busts.

Actually, I wish I had done even that much!

Well, regrets are for losers.  I made my choices and they seemed like the way to go at the time.  Looking back, if I was wrong, that's still hindsight speaking.  All I can do is do what I can now.  Draw as much as possible, study the greats and the not-so-greats, take advice from wherever I can get it and keep trying to make the next drawing better than the last.  If nothing else, I've learned to have a huge amount of respect for even the lowliest, least loved line-maker working in comics, whoever that person may be.

Anyway, don't think when I post drawings here I have the feeling I'm blowing everyone away with my powerful stuff.  I've got nothing to hide, no ego whatsoever when it comes to art these days.  I like putting it out there as ugly or clumsy as it is.  It may sound like I'm down on myself, but actually, my art amuses me.  I do think it's kind of funny.  And it's a kick knowing I'm putting these nutty images out there where they're living a life beyond whatever I intended for them.

Spidey says, "Everything is A-OK!"

Because he's a big Mercury 7/NASA fan, I guess.  This is a drawing I'm working on along with a number of other ones.  I'm on fire lately!  After drawing Spider-Man enjoying a sandwich, I felt like doing one where he's acting like he does in the comic books.  I need to fix the webbing on Spider-Man's costume, make an adjustment to his anatomy here and there and fix the perspective and add some windows and balconies and other architectural features to the background.  Then I'm going to give it a John Romita/John Buscema/Gil Kane era color job.  I'll never be skilled enough to be one of those real comic book artists, but I do feel I've upped my game quite a bit lately.  It's been fun and that's the most important thing.

Dying is easy, inking is hard.

Okay, so I told you cool cats about the Jack Kirby FB page full of Kirby-loving fans and professionals.  You're probably a member of it now, just as I am.  Over the weekend, the first big brouhaha broke out there over people posting their inked versions of Kirby originals.  Details, smetails, we don't need to rehash the details.  I don't plan to post anything I've touched there.  That's too close to "While I have a few pros on the line here, take a look at me, give me a job!" for my taste.  The Mighty Kirby Try-Out Book.  Seriously, I think for a lot of the non-pro posters, they're doing it more from love for Kirby than any sinister, ulterior motives but I can't help the little twitch I get from it.  I fully admit this is more than likely projection on my part, but I don't want anyone to get that same idea from anything I might post there, which is yet another reason to keep my art to myself when hanging out in that crowd.

But of course as an artist, I'm curious about what it felt like to ink Jack Kirby.  And with all the pencil postings there, how could I resist giving it a go?  I couldn't and I've learned a lot from spending a big chunk of my Sunday afternoon trying to ink Jack Kirby.  The first thing I learned is I stink at inking.  Whether it's over my own pencils, or those of Jack Kirby or Jack Tatum*, it doesn't matter.  I am no inker.  Which leads me to the second thing I've learned, which is people who can ink deserve our respect and gratitude for the work they do.  Inking is a difficult job.  It requires a lot of mental effort.  A lot of thoughtfulness.  Careful consideration of not just thick and thin lines but form and lighting and mood.  And reproduction.  It helps if you're familiar with pre-press.  Only in the last do I have any measure of experience and I'm rapidly forgetting all I used to know.

*The Assassin.  I doubt he ever drew a picture in his life.

Class! Class! Let's compare the live action Isis characters to their comic book counterparts...

Okay, class.  Good morning, glad to see you're all here.  We're going to do something a little different today.  That's right, Cindy, this will be on the test.  So pay attention all of you and take notes.  Let's take a look at the DC comics versions of our favorite characters from the Filmation live action TV series Isis-- also known as The Secrets of Isis-- and see how alike or different they are from the real thing.  Yes, Cindy, it will be fun.  Everyone look at the screen...

Here's Andrea Thomas in her everyday guise as a teacher:

(Mike Vosburg/Vince Colletta, Isis #3, Feb.-March 1976-77)

She is smart and pretty, Cindy, and a model teacher.  I completely agree.  And here she is in her Isis identity:

(Dick Giordano, Shazam #25, Sep.-Oct. 1976)

What's that?  How many times has she saved you, Cindy?  Amazing!  Yes, if you'd like, you can write an extra-credit essay about Isis and what she means to today's young women.  Here's Andrea Thomas's colleague Rick Mason:

(Mike Vosburg/Vince Colletta, Isis #2, Dec.-Jan. 1976-77)

Thank you, Cindy.  You're so right.  He is a dedicated teacher and his mustache is quite snappy.  Here's Dr. Barnes:

(Mike Nasser/Frank Giacoia, Isis #2 Dec.-Jan. 1976-77; Mike Vosburg/Vince Colletta, Isis #3, Feb.-March 1977)

Good question, Cindy.  We'll talk about that in just a moment.  Anyone besides Cindy have a question?  Anyone?  No?  No one has a question?  Okay, I hear some talking but no questions.  Let's hold it down and look at the screen.  I think we'll all recognize...

(Dick Giordano, Shazam #25, Sep.-Oct. 1976)

Yes, Cindy, that's you!  And no, Rennie Carol never appeared in The Mighty Isis comic.  The closest anyone came was the depiction of a character named Rennie Roberts (although I could have sworn her first name is lettered as Pennie) in the final issue.  That's also the one where the writer labels you "class president" of Larkspur High, Cindy.

Now, as to your question about why Dr. Barnes looks so different.  Compared to the main cast, the character wasn't on the show that often and some of the artists probably never saw even a single publicity photo of actor Albert Reed.

Actually, as you've noticed, none of the likenesses are exact.  They're more general than perfect caricatures.  I think Dick Giordano's take on the cast Shazam! #25 comes closest, but I have a suspicion this has something to do with licensing.  If you've read Marvel's Planet of the Apes adaptations, you'll notice at no time does George Tuska make Taylor look like Charlton Heston, nor does Alfredo Alcala give his Beneath the Planet of the Apes astronaut more than a passing resemblance to James Franciscus.  To do so would have involved other legal and financial arrangements and it just wasn't considered worth the time, effort or money.

Another good point, Cindy!  As you say, Marvel did occasionally use exact likenesses of the Star Wars actors in that title, and DC made a point of at least trying for perfect likenesses in their Star Trek titles.  Yes, even now at Dark Horse, artists draw Buffy as close to Sarah Michelle Gellar as they can.  These things depend on legal departments and the artist's hand, but sometimes licensing means "make 'em look consistent with all appearance in every medium."  Luke Skywalker looks just like Mark Hamill on every book cover, Captain Kirk is always either William Shatner or Chris Pine these days and so on and so forth.

Anyway, back to Isis.  My guess is we're looking at a similar deal here between DC and Filmation and as long as Isis had long dark hair, Rick Mason his mustache and Cindy Lee her pigtails, no one probably gave a rip.  As for Dr. Barnes, he could be anything or anyone depending on who drew him.

You're right again, Cindy.  I am just a speculating fool.  Still, that was a lot of fun, wasn't it, class?  Comparing these?  We enjoyed it, didn't we?

Class?

The Secrets of Isis Episode 15: "Dreams of Flight"

Chela Montoya dreams of flight.  She's made a neat little red glider that soars freely above Larkspur High the same way she dreams of doing.  Well, not so much above Larkspur High as above the earth itself as an astronaut.  She's quite the young aerodynamic engineer, but feels hindered by her brother Raoul, who thinks she's wasting her time.  Meanwhile, cocky Mark Dawson in his surplus army shirt with PFC chevrons on the sleeves wants everyone to know he's Larkspur's top gun, cockily declaring to a disapproving trio of Andrea Thomas, Rick Mason and Cindy Lee he plans to win the school's Aerodynamics Day.  "No lack of confidence in that boy," Thomas observes.  Then she's off to convince Raoul to let Chela enter the contest.

Raoul's struggling with a problem of his own.  He's supposed to paint a huge mural for the barrio, but he's got artist's block.  A quick talk with Thomas and then another more heartfelt one with Chela solves both her problems and his.  But that dastardly Mark just won't leave well enough alone.  Several foot chases ensue, a thrilling runaway truck misadventure with Raoul trapped in a trailer and then a tense moment where Mark, having stolen Chela's remote control airplane, finds himself hanging on for dear life above certain death with only Raoul to... WAIT!  HERE COMES ISIS!

"Dreams of Flight," which aired December 13, 1975, has a lot on its mind.  Too much.  It completely lacks focus, almost as if at some story conference the production team decided to combine two unrelated scripts about a bright young woman into airplanes and a talented artist intimidated by too large a canvas.  Maybe the first felt too slight and the second didn't present enough Isis action, so instead we get this mishmash.  It's heavy on the action, but that action is somewhat repetitive, with Raoul chasing Mark on foot not once but twice.  The first chase leads to one of the more exciting Isis rescues-- the goddess has to stop a runaway semi-truck because Raoul's gotten himself locked in the back-- but it feels kind of random.  Getting stuck in the trailer is bad enough, but then the sequence extends as the driverless truck careens down a mountain road (conveniently hugging the curves) until we've almost forgotten all about poor Chela.

I have to admit when the show established the Chela-Raoul conflict, I expected Raoul to be a macho ethnic stereotype.  Instead, he's a gentle artist who quickly sees reason and comes to understand he has to back his sister's dreams.  Even when Mark shows up and taunts him with a lot of racist insults and ignorance, Raoul takes it in stride.  He's too good natured to let this goon upset him with pure foolishness, but when Mark starts dicking around with Chela's plane, Raoul chases the coward away.  As played by Fabian Gregory, Raoul's one of the more pleasant characters on a show chock full of them.  Cynthia Avila as Chela ends up shortchanged as the show shifts its focus to the conflict between Raoul and Mark.  If only they'd allowed the story to climax at the Aeronautics Festival!

That's the episode's major flaw.  We expect Chela to prove her mettle by beating Mark fair and square in front of the entire student body, but instead we get trucks and rescues with Chala shunted aside.  She wins her victory without even being present and we never get to see her in direct competition with Mark or anyone else for that matter.  I feel like Milhouse whining, "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?"  You just don't introduce a story element that huge and then refuse to deliver.  It's the story's natural climax and logical end game for Chela's character arc, not this footchase nonsense and Mark's accident and patently phony turnaround with its dubious message-- if only people of color could save each and every bigot from almost certain death, we'd live in a more progressive world.  I do like the denouement with Raoul's mural displaying elements of Chela's dreams, from a boy playing with a model, to Chela herself swinging in a tire, a winged Aztec warrior, a paper airplane, to a bold astronaut figure.  It's actually quite a lovely creation.

And there's ol' Mark, sitting in the bushes, all covered in multicolored splotches of paint.

After all these years having her character denied a real triumph is probably no big deal to Avila.  Her career continues to this day, and she's peachy in her few scenes, ably conveying the sweetness and smarts of a young woman with big dreams.  Gregory and Hinckley didn't fare as well professionally.  This was Gregory's last credit as far as I can determine, and Hickley disappeared after a one-episode appearance on The Krofft Supershow, which gave us Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, certainly more colorful but in all other aspects inferior to Isis as far as I'm concerned.  No, I don't really care about people entering puberty with the help of Deidre Hall, thank you very much.  Krofft nostalgia is very 1990s and way too easy, like hacky jokes about Shaggy and Scooby Doo smoking pot or Smurfs having sex with Smurfette.  Cindy Lee wouldn't listen to that kind of crap and I suggest you practice mental hygiene and do the same.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  The guest actors on Isis.  Tom Williams, who has a quick scene as a helpful hobby shop owner, still does a lot of voice over work, most notably as a baby in approximately ten thousand TV shows and movies.  I guess that's his specialty.  He's also played cops and the like, which is probably to be expected of a tall middle-aged guy.  At least I hope he's still able to work.  He's in his eighties now, and his most recent credit was in 2006 as "Baby Ella" on the UPN sitcom Eve.  Guy's been in everything from Punk Brewster to The Torkelsons to Night Court to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Notes--  Larkspur High sure has a lot of science events.  They all seem to be fun as well as educational.  That's Andrea Thomas and Rick Mason for you-- the school was lucky when those two joined the faculty.  They're involved in the students' lives, knocking themselves out to make learning science enjoyable for everyone.  Any school would be thrilled to have two teachers like that!

Speaking of our teacher characters, I can't praise Joanna Cameron's performance as Thomas highly enough.  Whether she's encouraging Chela, verbally jousting with Mark, or giving Raoul a lesson in sibling support she's pitch-perfect in this episode.  Cameron easily could have headlined a prime-time TV show about a concerned and dedicated young teacher changing lives and boosting test scores even without the goddessy-superheroic trappings, and she still would have made it watchable.  There's never a sense of "Lord, I wish my career would take off and zephyr wind me out of here," just tons of charisma and complete commitment to making Thomas as believable as possible and Isis a dazzling role model.

Brian Cutler gives able support in his few scant scenes as well.

Sadly, we've come to the end of the Cindy Lee era.  She's not in this episode much, just at the beginning where she helps out with a little exposition and at the end declaring Raoul's painting to be "terrific!"  And wouldn't you know it-- she goes out the way she came in, wearing those baby blue overalls!  Sure, she starts the episode in a swinging blue miniskirt that Marcia Brady would kill to wear, but I can't think of a more fitting send-off for Cindy Lee than a last scene in those overalls.  Joanna Pang should have had them bronzed as a keepsake.  She might have if only she'd know this would be her final bow as Larkspur's perpetually cheerful factotum.

But don't worry, Isis fans.  We're going to keep on watching and commenting right through the Rennie Carol episodes.  I'm looking forward to them.  As I've noted before, I tuned into the second season of Isis only to feel let down by Cindy Lee's unexplained disappearance (that's still my only specific memory about watching this show).  I guess I just didn't like change.  Now I'm excited to figure out what Rennie Carol is all about.  Will she be as earnest and enthusiastic as Cindy Lee, or will she present a more low-key personality?  Whichever it is, she's definitely change the lead trio's chemistry.  And dietary habits.  No more deviled egg sandwiches for Rick Mason.

Here's a little something about the Kyoto International Manga Museum

According to a story appearing in the Japan Times Online, the Kyoto International Manga Museum attracts "200,000 to 300,000 visitors a year, including some 30,000 from abroad."  The museum, which opened in 2006, features a "wall of manga," called, appropriately enough, the Wall of Manga.  It's about 200 meters long and features over 50,000 comics dating back to the 1970s.  There's even a computer search kiosk available so you can locate the exact manga you want to read.  Pretty helpful if you know the one you want.  But if you're not intimidated by the sheer size of the Wall, you can approach it and choose a volume at random.  Whatever catches your eye.  Yeah, you can read the manga.  Take it off the shelf, open it up, start reading.

Since the museum's website claims about 10% of its visitors come from overseas-- bearing out the Japan Times story, I suppose-- they even have a number of international manga.  That's comic books to you and me, Russ.  The largest group is made up of Japanese comics in translation:  970 in English, 670 in Korean and a whopping 1330 in Chinese!  Also represented are German, Italian, Spanish and Catalan and "other European languages."  There are around 400 volumes of homegrown North American, European and other Asian comics, too.  I wonder if they have that one Wolverine where he had an eyepatch and used his claws on those dudes...

"Summer School" at the museum just started today, August 1st, and runs through the 26th.  I'm not out to earn my PhD in manga, but I'd love to attend some of the art instruction classes.  They're in Japanese only, naturally.  The museum accepts donations of materials, as well.  If I leave Japan again that's what I'll do with my rapidly growing comic collection-- donate it to the Kyoto International Manga Museum so people from Japan and around the world can enjoy my impeccable taste in sequential literature.

Even though I've lived in Japan off and on since before this museum opened, I have to admit I still haven't made my pilgrimage.  While I've been to Tokyo and scoured Akihabara, Shibuya, Harajuku and Ikebukuro for comics so many times I've lost count, I don't go to Kyoto very often.  Twice.  And both times I encountered cold weather and nasty rain.  Kyoto and I just haven't been able to see eye-to-eye on what constitutes a pleasant visit.  One of my good friends went to the museum, though, and he's not even a comic book reader.  Before his visit, he'd read Ghost World, and that's about it.  The museum deeply impressed him.  Then he went down the street to a local bookstore and bought some English-translated manga for himself.  Knowing my love for comics he texted me while he was doing it like some kind of pervert performing some weird and gross act we won't even begin to try to imagine and having to share it to increase his sick, disgusting pleasure, and like a similarly perverted individual I jumped right in to join him and demanded he buy the first two volumes of Ai Yazawa's Nana for me.

And that's how I became addicted.  Addicted enough I need to hit Kyoto and visit this place.  Unfortunately, I can't do it during my summer break.  I'm already committed to yet another Tokyo junket, but that's mostly for business.  My passport needs renewing!  But since I recently became engaged and my fiancee is returning to Japan in October so we can start our life together-- I know, it's sickeningly sweet-- there's more than likely a Kyoto trip for two in our near future.  Now she could give a rip about manga but she cares about me, so we'll stand in front of that Wall of Manga and maybe she'll share with me the ones she read when she was a kid.

The Onion A/V Club interviews Jack Davis!

And it's amazing how closely it echoes the talk I had with Davis many years ago when I was a graphic design student, right down to the mention of the kind of brush he uses for inking.  Well, for the most part.  He's probably answered these same questions from people like me a thousand times over the years.  We didn't get into biography all that much.  He did tell me the chain gang story and how he went from the University of Georgia to the Navy in WWII and then pounded the pavement in New York city before he broke into the comics business, and we briefly touched on his time at EC.  In the A/V Club interview he paraphrases what he told me about his feelings about today's Mad.  I asked him what it was like to work with Wally Wood.  But mostly, as an artist, I wanted to know about process and that's what I got.

Here's how I remember it:  His agent faxes him jobs and he picks and chooses the ones he wants to do, otherwise he's on his boat or playing golf.  His initial sketches start off as a "lot of scribble-scrabble" and he inks with a No. 3 Series 7 Winsor & Newton brush.  Seeing that mentioned really brought back a lot of warm memories of our phone conversation, where he was so genial and patient with my hero-worship gushing that I walked on air for two days afterward.  It remains a highlight of my checkered college career.  Somewhere among all my own crappy art files I still have the notebook where I jotted down as much of what he told me as I could.  If I'm ever back in the US, I could dig it up and read through it and try to recapture a little bit of that magic.

Jack Davis is overdue for widespread acclaim.  Not that he hasn't had accolades and praise.  The Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, the Reuben Award and the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonist Society are certainly that.

It's just he needs to be one of those names dropped alongside people like Charles Schulz and Walt Kelly (although Davis's attempt at a syndicated newspaper strip never really got off the ground), Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner and Wally Wood.  He needs to be right there in the forefront of your consciousness whenever you think of cartoonists and cartooning.

After all, he worked for EC's most infamous titles-- and interviewer Sam Adams brings up perhaps the most notorious story of them all, the Davis-illustrated "Foul Play"-- as well as for Mad magazine.  Then he did covers for Time and TV Guide, designed the characters for the Jackson Five cartoon, created movie posters and all sorts of amazing stuff.  There's a trade paperback book, now out-of-print, about the man and his art called-- appropriately enough-- The Art of Jack Davis, and it was a decent enough tribute.  Considering the man's done so many high profile jobs and associated with so many other cartooning legends in his time, he really needs something more deluxe.  Something spanning the entirety of his eclectic art career.

That Fantagraphics volume is a must-buy, but I'm thinking even at 208 pages it's a little light.  I think he needs a hardcover series collecting all of his sequential work with color plates of his magazine covers and movie posters to round it out.  Your floorboards should buckle under its weight.  If only someone published, say, a collection of some of his other humor magazine work, or if you could buy a book with some of those horrifying EC stories he drew with mixed feelings but incredible skill-- what a world that would be!  Oh well.

Jack Davis is an American treasure.

When Batgirl Discovered Art

Batgirl and the homeless guy.  This is from Batgirl #51 where Dylan Horrocks introduced the concept of Cassandra Cain shocking people by saying inappropriate things.  The story containing these moments is a two-parter in which Poison Ivy has tricked this goofball artist wannabe into helping her create a mind-controlling garden the heart of Gotham City.  It opens with your standard comic book action sequence-- Gotham police chasing some generic criminal scumbags in cars, Batgirl swoops in from some impossible angle and saves a homeless man from being run over.  It's not really integrated into the plot, so it's more just a framing device that sets up an interesting concept only to give it up in favor of a standard and somewhat stale super-villain plot.

The book's artist uses a chalk-line device to outline each panel featuring the homeless man because his thing is making lines on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk.  These frames-- reminiscent of some of the stuff the art team on Alan Moore's Swamp Thing series used to play with-- set him apart spatially and conceptually from the chase, in much the same way he's extraneous to the main story, with quick cuts from oblivious artist to the car chase, right up until Batgirl appears.  Then Batman shows up and explains to her the man is creating a map of a fantasy Gotham City, one from out of his head.  Batman sympathizes with him, describing him as "an old man who should be in the hospital," and telling Batgirl he also wishes the real city could be like the man's pretend one.

It's pretty neat thinking of Batman as being so aware of Gotham City he knows all about the psychosis of one of its street people.  There's almost an element of caring on his part.  And truly, Gotham is Batman's city.

Digression-- Batgirl sports enormous breasts during this sequence.  Later, she's shown wearing only a towel, and after that a little black dress; by this time, her breasts are a more natural proportion compared to the rest of her body.  Perhaps her costume has some sort of breast-enhancement padding.  I suppose it could be some kind of armor, but it apparently cups, lifts and separates.  It's as if Batgirl gets her armor from the Combat Goddess collection at Victoria's Secret.  It's not a superhero comic with a female protagonist if it doesn't feature at least some objectification, I suppose.  The towel scene is more than a little gratuitous-- okay, Batgirl showers after she fights crime, hooray for hygiene, but the conversation could have taken place at any point before or after she cleaned herself up.  As ridiculous as this is, I'm much more horrified by the bizarre facial construction throughout.  The rendering is so hit-or-miss, Cass's forehead also changes sizes frequently.  If this were a movie, they'd have hired six different actors to play each role.  Digression ends.

The chalk guy disappears until the end of #52, after Batgirl, Oracle and Batman defeat Poison Ivy and return Gotham City to its normal, overrun-with-crime-hellhole state.  On her way home or to fight more criminals, Batgirl swoops over the guy, and he's still at it, making his chalk map.  Batgirl, a little wiser in the ways of art, gazes down at him in passing, an ever-so-slight and enigmatic smile showing through her mask.  The Rick Leonardi art is a major improvement, more consistent with character appearance and with stronger storytelling.

What was the purpose of the chalk artist?  Was he there to contrast with Poison Ivy's "art?"  Just symbolic of a more pleasant Gotham that can never be?  Perhaps if the story had been more about Batgirl's reaction to this concept and a deeper exploration of the nature of art itself, with the Poison Ivy plot tied more into that, he might have had more of an organic fit.  More of a story-driven purpose.  As it is, he serves as a marker for another idea that really demands a more thorough investigation, rather than more super punch-outs and rope-swinging.

Can you imagine what it would be like to explain art to Cassandra Cain?  I wonder if Barbara took her to an art museum following this adventure.  I really wish that had formed the crux of the next issue.  It would have done more for her mental health and development as a well-rounded person than that time Barbara took her on a cruise, made her wear a bikini and exposed her to the male gaze like one of those parents who teach their kids to swim by tossing them into the deep end without warning.

It's not certain art would register on Cass, the purpose of it all.  Try to explain to her the concept of "art for art's sake," for example.  Much less the whole of art history.  Would she prefer abstraction to the representational, or vice versa?  As someone who can "read" people's movements, would she read the artist's intent?  Could she look at visible brushstrokes on a canvas and "see" the artist's technique, or the moment pigment hit pigment?

What would Cass's own art look like?  Would she draw something childish, yet disturbing?  Two crude stick figures, one with pointed ears and a cape and the other toting a gun, a small figure cowering between them, in response to Barbara's request to "Draw your family?"  Maybe a looming Barbara, threatening to crowd a smaller figure completely off the page.  Or would she be able to recreate the physical movements making up the art methods she saw in the museum?  Or how about action painting? 

I can see Cass getting really into Jackson Pollock.  Flicking paint on a huge canvas on the floor, pouring it, splashing it.

Something violent, something savage, paint splashed and slashed across the canvas.

Too bad we'll never get to see that.