DAY 2

...of my unemployment, to be specific.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Yesterday my wife had the day off, so my first day unemployed I didn't really do anything because we were both sort of goofing off during the day.
And to further nit-pick, I didn't count Saturday and Sunday (even though I got laid off Friday) because, you know, the weekend. Yesterday (Monday) I would've regularly gone to work if I was still gainfully employed.
So, today I'm officially considering this my first crack at living unemployed. Got it?

I have a list of things to do today, and some of those things I've been letting slide for months. Because I'm a procrastinating bum.
So, I'm trying to update my three blogs on Blogger and set to work on doing a mini-comic, something I've always wanted to have in my portfolio/resume, but never seem to accomplish. So, that's something I'm going to work on this week. I'd love to be able to "spew it out" in a single week, but I can't seem to set boundaries on: 1) how many pages I want to do (8 minimum) or 2) what size page  I should make the comic, either standard comic book size (6.75"x10.25") or mini-comic size, which in this case is an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper folded in half (ie. 5.5" x 8.5" page).

Reasons to work at mini-comic size: The actual mini-comic size is what Jason Karns does self-published comic FUKITOR at, and I love FUKITOR. Some issues/stories are more inspired than others, but the artwork is always tremendous. Also, one of my main inspirations to do a mini-comic was because of a mini-comic that Dan Clark worked on as a kid with his friend, Adam Owen. I worked with Dan at Great Arrow Graphics from 1998-2003. Towards the end of my stint at GAG, a few of my fellow employees and myself formed a group called the Crabapple Club, with the hope of creating a comic book. These founding members were: Dan Clark, Pam Cichoki, Josh Hrizak, Will Rice and myself (Terry Kimmel). We never did put out a single issue, but I remember Dan showing me this little B&W comic book he made with Adam back when Dan was a teenager and he was heavy into the guys who created Image Comics (Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, etc.). The cover itself was black line art printed on red paper stock. Adam wrote and drew the 8 pg. book and Dan inked it. For the life of me, I CANNOT remember the name of the comic but it was about a superhero who had flamethrowers built into his suit sleeves and he burned criminals to death (with the distinctly evocative and awesome sound effect of "FREEEAWWWW!!" as the flames whooshed out of his costume's wrist tubes). Maybe superhero isn't the right word; vigilante is the more accurate word. But the dude did wear a costume and mask. His origins are vaguely suggested: a criminal element destroyed his family and his life (disfiguring him in the process in the final panel reveal--oops! Spoiler alert!) and so the reader is expecting to follow further adventures of our anti-hero as he exacts vengeance on the villains who wronged him.
I actually started writing and drawing a special edition of this comic, a so-called International Version, fueled by my viewing of Italian writer/ director Renato Polselli's DELIRIUM starring Mickey Hargitay and Rita Calderoni. I saw the DVD around the time I first saw Dan's comic, and there are two versions of the 1972 film. There's an additional sequence for U.S. audiences - a framing sequence actually - set during the Vietnam War, and in the International Version, there's more explicit and weird, lurid material. In my idea for re-doing the comic, I was going to create a whole new page (sometimes more than one in a row) that would be inserted between EACH page of the original 8 pages of the comic. These pages were supposedly "cut" from of the more explicit International Version of the mini-comic. In fact, I debated translating the dialogue into Italian or Spanish also, whatever language I'd be able to do. It was a conceptual thing!
I left GAG in 2003, four years before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's GRINDHOUSE double-feature was released, so I wasn't actually thinking and articulating in terms of "grindhouse" but essentially, that's what I was doing.

[NOTE: BTW, I "blame" the group name on Dan-- I mean, credit for the "Crabapple Club" moniker goes to Dan, ha! Meanwhile, Pam and I still meet semi-regularly in hopes of finally putting out that FIRST comic, which sounds extra pathetic since I haven't worked at GAG for TWELVE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS now. In fact, Dan is the only GAG member still working at GAG. But our new "splinter" comic book club name is the Apple Corps., in deference to the original name.]

I actually e-mailed Adam a few times asking him if he minded me doing this with his character, and I think for the most part he was fine with it, but as I continued alluding to the possibility of how over the top I might go with the additional pages I think he backed off a little. So, I may do a variation on his anti-hero but make it mine, especially since he's not following through on continuing this comic he created years ago. Actually, Adam started doing another comic, GREEN PIECE, a sci-fi comic with a lizard detective who solves interplanetary crime. I can't remember if he created the character himself, or in conjunction with writer Jason Degroot. I want to say Adam was friends with Jason, and Adam actually created GREEN PIECE, writing and drawing the comic. But I remember Adam sometimes having guest artists? Inkers? But Jason wrote a few of the comics. Well, you can check out some of these comics on Smack Jeeves webcomics hosting here. And although the last GREEN PIECE comic was posted four years ago, Jason seems to still be creating work on the site with other titles, part of his Repercussion comics line.

Alright, I've been wrestling with this damn blog post all morning and there's other crap I should be doing. So, more to come.

Stay tuned, y'all!

The Apple Corps! Issue 1: “My brain is wrestling with itself!”

I really don’t want to take a lot of time writing this post, so to catch people up, check out these links out first: The Apple Corps! Issue 0 and my FebComChall.

Yesterday we had another meeting of the AC, we being LT and I. WE have been meeting regularly ever since I first posted about our meetings. I just never followed up on it.
Anyway, during my disability leave since Dec. 14, 2009, we started meeting on Fridays during the day, because I was already off and LT happened to work only until 2:00 pm Fridays. Generally, “during the day” means earlier than 7:00 pm, which is when are meetings usually seemed to start prior to my surgery. So, we’re talking between 3:00 and 4:00. I shoot for 3:00, but usually get there late(r), LT usually beats me there, adjusting for my proclivity for tardiness, yet still waiting for me because I’m Lucifer personified when it comes to “apunctuality.” Then we usually leave around 9 pm when they close the upstairs café at Wegman’s.

Well, anyway, next week will be our last Friday “day,” since I return to work the following Monday (March 8).

Bla bla bla.

So, the last couple meetings I’ve been supposedly working on this FebComChall story.
I thought I got off to a good start last meeting, which is when LT flipped through the National Geographic magazine and I slyly picked the Kahlua ad on the back cover.
(In fact, it occurs to me now, typically, THAT particular post probably should have been “The Apple Corps! Issue 1!” Ah, well.)

I thought I moved along pretty well coming up with ideas “inspired” by that ridiculous ad (ridiculous to be used for a comic book story, that is) at that meeting, and I was pretty sure I’d have my outline finished by the end of the meeting.
That didn’t happen.
I got sidetracked by trying to get some work done on this other commitment (the CD design).
But also, part of me thought I should work on some other story, specifically a fragment of something I’ve already started.
This seems to be part of my trademark modus operandi in terms of “my most common ways of not finishing something”: either 1) jump ship from one project and work on something else I’ve started before, or 2) jump ship from one project and start on something else, but completely from scratch, and work on that.
Of course, finish none of them.

Man, I SO want to do that now.

So, this is what’s going through my head today and as a game plan for this weekend.
By the end of this weekend, I commit to a storyline AND come up with an outline for my FebComChall story.
Right now, three stories are dueling in my head.
They are:
The Kahlua ad inspired story.
A unfinished story I started years ago called “Trisa”, that LT knows about because supposedly it was something I was working on before we even splintered off to be the AC (Man..! That is so pathetic…)
A brand new story that I was wrestling with the week before last week’s AC meeting where I picked the Kahlua ad. This particular story, with the cryptic working title, “El Tiara,” was an attempt to write a story for my FebComChall. If anything, I probably should have done LAST weekend what I plan to do THIS weekend: uh… that is, what I said before—commit to a storyline AND come up with an outline for my FebComChall.
The difference being, I should never have done the National Geographic thing. I should’ve just picked one of these other two stories.
But I was so whiny at the meeting, the National Geographic Story Generator Roulette suggestion was LT’s in her effort to help me out and crack the whip, and I simply went along with it.

Hmph.

So, I have three stories dueling in my head.
Since I damn well ain’t going to have my FebComChall actually done by the end of February (uh, which is tomorrow), I’d like to at least have my story chosen and outlined before the end of February.
That will have been some real progress. For me.

Here are the story candidates and their specific pros and cons (in order of “seniority”):

1. “Trisa”
This is a sort of post-apocalyptic tale in a microcosm setting. Basically, someone has set off this nerve gas bomb at a political rally in the city. It seems like a terrorist attack, but from within our country, not foreign forces.
The drug seems to affect people by reducing them to a feral state. Obviously, there’s some 28 DAYS LATER/modern zombie-genre/THE CRAZIES vibe to this.
I imagined a research/medical/homeland security setting where a number of different people are housed: doctors, soldiers, civilians/patients.
But there are some additional secrets behind the nerve gas and what it does, behind the motivations of the terrorist attack.
I more or less know the beginning and ending of the story, but the middle needs some developing. Because I more or less have an ending for this story, this makes “Trisa” a front running story candidate for me.

2. “El Tiara”
This story just sort of came up in my head, and actually, I should say these characters just came up, because I’m actually flailing around trying to GIVE them a story.
I came up with the barest nothing of an idea for two characters some time ago, months ago. But nothing came of it.
Then, two weeks ago, while trying to commit to something for my FebComChall, I decided to try and throw something together with these two characters. As I started working on the story and dialogue, I grew to like the characters more, but seemed less successful with any sort of story for them to operate in.
If anything, what little I have reveals my totally arbitrary, absurd philosophy of plotting and character development—just keep making stuff up and think of things I want to draw and throw that in, too. See if I can somehow be 100% arbitrary AND still have it make some sense… which sounds stupid, but to be honest, I’ve recently realized that this reveals a strong philosophic approach to Life, that I find things in the world absurd, and our challenge living here is to find meaning in these absurdities, because contrarily, I also feel that Life is NOT meaningless. Really, but—huh? That’s just the way it is, baby.
I guess that’s another way of saying that I think our view of the world is so limited, that what we think is meaningful may actually be shortsighted.
Perhaps, ultimately, I may discover that Life was never absurd, but my various attempts to define meaning with my puny experience and narrow perspective on things WAS absurd.
As a sort of example of this, when Galileo’s objective studies in astronomy led him to believe the heliocentric view that the Sun (and not the Earth) was actually the center of our “universe,” this proved to be problematic for philosophers and leaders of the Church at the time who felt that the logical conclusion of their belief systems was that everything revolved around the Earth (the geocentric view, natch!).

Whatever.

Anyway, the basic elements of “El Tiara” are: romance between the protagonists, Marty and Dr. Marisol Fleming; bizarre secrets; action; horror; softcore pornography; and a malevolent metallic lifeform (an unholy rip-off hybrid of TRANSFORMERS and THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS—and my inspiration for the latter flick are posters and photos since I’ve never seen the movie. Okay! I haven’t seen the two Transformer movies either, but I basically know what Transformers are!).
The problem is I have no real story. I just like the characters.

“The Savage World of Planet Venarus!”
This is actually the working title for my “Kahlua ad” story. Yeah.
Where it stands now, it has a sort of total plotline to it, and by “total,” I mean it has a (rough) beginning, middle and end. However, my stumbling block is that the setting, a pre-historic alien world, seems to beg for more explanation for my characters and settings. So, though I only want to do a regular size comic book, like, 22 pages, this threatens to go much longer than that.
It features vampire-like creatures, shapeshifting humanoids, a sort of pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs meets Warren horror comics (Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella) meets Heavy Metal magazine.
(Meanwhile, I’m sure LT is reading this and going, “Are we still talking about the same Kahlua ad I was looking at???”)

Part of me says, go with seniority and finish “Trisa.”
Part of me likes the lunacy of what I’ve come up with for “El Tiara.”
Part of me says, stick with “The Savage World of Planet Venarus,” because it’s the most recent thing I’ve started, PLUS I started it with LT’s suggestion and she was there when I “picked” the page of the magazine she flipped, and ALSO, screw “seniority”! If this whole exercise is to FINISH something, then, I’ve already started it. Now FINISH it!
And if it turns out sucky because I’m cutting corners to get things done, the point IS to get it DONE. If I feel that strongly about its suckiness, and I can always redo certain pages for a future date.
Okay.
Also, it’s not like I don’t want to do the other stories, or that by choosing one of them, I’m throwing away the other ideas. That’s not the case. I intend to finish those, too.
So stop dawdling and finish this ONE story and start by doing the freaking outline now, jerk!

Huh.

I guess I picked my story.