Work in Progress

Apologies for the less than perfect quality of the saved image.  Rest assured it looks better on the screen before me.  I’ll have to work on providing at better representation of the actual work.

In the meantime, enjoy.

Or, you know, hate it and let the world know.

5.25.2013

Joe Kubert

5.22.2013

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

A Wednesday and a new page.  Always awesome.

Entirely stoked about next week’s page, Finseth returning.  He’s quickly becoming my favorite character to write.

Beautiful day here.  About to charge outside.

Frank Quitely

5.16.2013

Kent Williams

The Simpsons take on everyone’s favorite PBS melodrama… No fair pretending that you’re so manly that you couldn’t have possibly seen Donwtown Abbey.

5.15.2013

Dino Battaglia

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

The Garbageman Cometh or You’re Only as Good as Last Wednesday

Wednesday is garbage day. That means that on Tuesday evenings I haul stupidly heavy garbage cans to the end of the drive. Of late, I’ve been involved in a psychotic drive to get rid of stuff, to tear the house apart and build it back stronger, better, mightier, than ever before, and that means finding a way to dispose of heavy tree limbs and scrap wood. And that means using hatchet and axe to chop down the limbs and all manner of saws to cut down the scrap. I can only do so much of course and thus, every Tuesday evening, I drag the heavy garbage cans to the street hoping and praying that the garbage men will violently hoist them, empty them, carelessly toss the empty cans aside, and be on their way. And I hope and pray, with no good reason, that I won’t have to deal with angry garbage men complaining bitterly about the bags of destroyed drywall in the trash cans.
Not because I’m afraid. That might be better. The temptation to get into it with someone, that’s hard for me. I fight. I wish I didn’t. I wish I wouldn’t. It’s always a mistake, but I really have trouble not fighting. And my confronting angry garbage men is likely, sadly, just to lead to a group of angry men, and nothing good will come of that.
Fortunately, the garbage men dutifully hauled everything away this morning, but next Wednesday looms, and I have building supplies of which I need to rid myself.
So I have a week to worry about it all.

5.13.2013

Frontline Combat Harvey Kurtzman

5.11.2013

Richard Stark’s Parker by Darwyn Cooke

Classic. And, sadly, all too true.

A tip of the chapeau to Film Gurl.

5.10.2013

Gravity

5.9.2013

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

I can’t sleep. Some strange combination of frustration, desire to create, anger, self-disgust, and any number of other rather complicated feelings and passions, are just refusing to let me trundle off to slumberland.
So here I am awake and working. Working on reworking the first Athra graphic novel.
When I look at the old pages now, I just want to kill myself. All the mistakes, all the problems, are right there, immediately apparent. Just killing myself to get this rework done and get this out.
I’d like to add a happier note, but I’m not sure I have one at the moment. I’m just grinding here, trying to get the work done, and get the product out.

By the way, well over two hundred views, two hundred and sixty-three to be precise, yesterday. Many thanks. Does that mean there are actual readers? Working on something like Athra, I don’t know, it just feels like throwing words and images into an abyss. If you are reading, if you are staring back at me from that abyss, then, dude, many thanks. I really appreciate it.

And now, you must have seen this coming…

Little Nemo in Slunberland

5.8.2013

Richard MacDonald

5/7/2013

Ray Harryhausen 1920-2013

5.4.2013

Frederic Remington

5.2.2013

Fnally. Late. I know. I know. Wednesday is the unofficial deadline for the new page and here, once again, I find myself turning in the new page on Thursday. Miserable and angry with myself if that makes you feel any better.
In my defense, let me add that I revised the last two pages. Pages four and five are significantly different now. More black. Always more black.

Moebius

4.29.2013

Wild Pigs moving north. I understand that there are real concerns about these animals, but I have to admit I’d be beyond stoked to see one this fall during deer season.

4.28.2013

From The Washington Times, U.S. female sailor beats Dubai rapist bus driver into submission . I know we all enjoy seeing such a headline.

On the illness.

On antibiotics, actually. My wife finally pulled rank yesterday and sent me off to the doctor and the doctor sent me off to procure antibiotics. Antibiotics are, evidently, fungi and the greatly enjoy devouring bacteria. As I write, said fungi are currently at work inside me chowing down on bacteria like insurance adjustors at a buffet at lunchtime.
With any luck, I’ll soon be fighting fit, punching my own weight, and all that good nonsense.

Also, why do you have to “check” the basketball when playing basketball. I have no idea about this someone explain. Sports seem to be filled with practices, procedures, traditions, what have you, about which people are deadly serious and which, as far as I can tell, serve no practical purpose.

Seriously, I don’t get it. So let me know.

Now old fading newsprint with color pictures and words… That’s a different matter.

Kid Colt Outlaw

4.27.2013

Awesomeness from, predictably, NASA. Seriously, it’s awesome. Check it out.

NASA | SDO: Three Years of Sun in Three Minutes

4.25.2013

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

This page represents a triumph of will. I feel like like death. Worse than death. I feel like death warmed over, killed, made dead, warmed over, and killed, made dead again. I feel lousy. Angry, irrational, beginning to hallucinate lousy. Some kind of damn relapse or some kind of lapse into some new form of hell and misery.

I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, I somehow managed to slog through the miasma of suffering that is my life right now and posted this page.

Major triumph of my iron will.

Off to pass out now.

Frank Miller, Ronin

4.23.2013

Thor: The Dark World trailer UK — Official Marvel | HD

4.21.2013

Serious Chuckle

For The Stoners

For those of you out there who are really stoned. You know who you are. Or you don’t because, you know, you’re so baked.
Anyway, enjoy.

4.20.2013

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

Sick. Ill. Dying. Grouchy.

Not nearly as sick as I was, but sick of being sick, and that seems worse actually. Just can’t handle being sick anymore so I’ve decided to bash the day into submission by getting up and charging through it. That means beating the house (disaster) into submission and probably working on sculpture some.

Wish I felt better for the bashing, but these are the cards.

Dark Souls 2 – Gameplay Reveal 12 Minute Demo

El Shaddai

4.19.2013

Phil Noto

4.18.2013

Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars Filibuster – Parks and Recreation

One of the more brilliant filibusters…

A cat dressed as a shark on a Roomba chasing a duck.

4.17.2013

Sick. And not the good kind of sick where you can get out of work and feel like you’re getting away with something. Not that kind of sick. The dull, banal, relentless, not departing any time soon, settled down, and feeling really lousy sick… That’s the kind of sick I’m enjoying at the moment. I’ve spent the day just kind of fading in and out of consciousness. I’ve managed through some miracle actually to accomplish some things today. A small victory.

All right. Enough of that.

Athra, conscious, recovering from his injuries, talking with, or trying to talk with, Torvald’s daughter, who has yet to utter a word. And we don’t even know her name yet.

The story feels good right now. I feel I’ve done enough Athra now, brought in enough characters, that the story is really set to explode and take off in a number of different directions. I’m really determined not to grow complacent with Athra, really determined to send the characters hurtling through different stories and to throw everything at them.

New Superman trailer

P Craig Russell

4.16.2013

Joseph Clement Coll

The Tax Man Cameth, Or Something.

The tax man cameth and I was drawing or just not paying attention. My wife gave me some forms to sign and I did so because I know better than to ask questions.

I can never go back to those days when I printed out the forms I needed, or guessed that I needed, on 14 April, tried to do the math and arrived at two different answers, both of which seemed to be correct. I always paid the larger amount and hoped for the best.

Video from the Boston Marathon yesterday

I feel stupid trying to write about what happened. It goes without saying that it was awful, gut-wrenching, and terrifying. Your heart really goes out to all the victims, and to all those you see in the video, and all the others you don’t see, who rushed to help. Seeing the video above, it’s impossible not to feel great sympathy and sadness for the victims and a sense of pride and profound approval for everyone who came on the run to help. Best to remember that the vast majority of us side with those people and feel a profound desire to come to the aid of others at such times.

By the way, if anyone has a personal stake in this, took place in the race, attended, have friends of family who attended, I hope you and yours are well. If you’d like me to post your story here, then just contact me. I’d be glad to do so.

Shooting Population Density

Michael Wolf

Incredible photographs of Hong King by Michael Wolf. As the above image suggests, he’s preoccupied with photographing the ways large numbers of human beings, very large numbers, find to live in close proximity to one another.

4.13.2013

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metratron

4.12.2013

For the hardcore political nerds checking this page, Nate Cohn has an interesting piece on the demographic challenges facing the Republicans at the New Republic.

Quote:

The important question isn’t whether Democratic dominance is inevitable, but how the GOP must adjust and compensate for generational and demographic changes. Yes, Obama’s 3.9 point margin of victory was modest in historical terms. But the last four elections have largely re-litigated the same issues, sorting voters into two of the most ideologically coherent political coalitions in American history. The “red states” and “blue states” have withstood twelve unusually tumultuous years, from 9/11 to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to a historic financial crisis. This isn’t the post-war norm; the electoral maps of 1948, 1960, 1968, and 1976 look quite different from each other, even though all were close. Many of the fluctuations in the two party coalitions over the last twelve years can be attributed to ideological sorting, like the continuing decline of Democratic fortunes in Appalachia or Republican losses in the affluent and well-educated suburbs of Denver, Washington, and Raleigh. These changes are reinforcing divisions between the two parties, not upending them.

PTSDSurvivordaily

Great blog by Mikey Pro deal with “Combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. Excellent blog. Highly recommended. Tough and gut-wrenching and really worth checking out.

4.11.2013

Massimo Carnevale

4.10.2013

(Evil Dead) Within The Woods 1978

Prequel (as it were), to Evil Dead

Guiseppe De Nittis

The Latest Word on the Latest Page

Finally. WordPress has been a serious drag today. Then again, I don’t think you came here to read my complaints.

“…the near”. Deepening the science-fiction elements of the story here. Really looking at this becoming a major part of the storyline in the near future. And beyond stoked about the idea. Any number of surprises planned. Man, the cast is growing fast. If I think about it for a moment, there’s Torvald and his silent and as yet unnamed daughter, Lud and his as yet unnamed femme fatale, demonic, and ever so dangerous lover, Finseth, Sigurn, Hild, Athra’s two infant sons, and now Magnus.

Many combustible elements. Look for Athra to become louder, much louder, not long from now. I have the sense that we’re moving from sullen, brooding medieval noir to Armageddon.

Just so you know, you have to capitalize Armageddon or the spell checker fusses. To be fair to the spell checker, Armageddon is the name for the place where the final battle between good and evil will take place. So, you know, needs to be capitalized.

4.9.2013

Mike Allred

Elysium Trailer

4.8.2013

Carmine Infantino

4.5.2013

Flashmob Recreation of Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’.

The original painting.

Tip of the chapeau to David Frum.

4.4.2013

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

Late. Late. Late. Again, not officially late. Unofficially late. That seems worse. Seems late. Not officially late. Even though, actually, there’s no official to decide that matter, and, I imagine, you need an official to make something officially, officially late, officially early, officially whatever the case may be.

At any rate, new page. Under the deadline. Vive L’Athra.

Moving more squarely into the science-fiction realm of Athra. Major developments. Major changes. Should be a real departure from what has gone before. Let me know what you think.

David Grove

4.2.2013

Dead Space

3.31.2013

Funny because it’s terrifying.

3.28.2013

Words Used as Blunt Instruments

Late. Late. As regular readers must know by now Thursday is the official day for the new page, but the new page nearly always makes the scene of Wednesday. Officially the page isn’t late. Morally, I’m not sure. I feel guilty. Or something. I don’t really do guilt. Anyway, new page. Officially under the deadline. Unofficially late. I’m off to sulk and draw more.

Frank McCarthy

3.25.2013

Levi Hopkins

The Awesome of Scooters

3.23.2013

For all the Marvel Zombies out there and for the Marvel Zombie in all of us.

Barry Windsor-Smith

3.21.2013

Carpeaux

3.20.2013

Star Trek: In to Darkness

Bring on the bad guys. The scarred Lud and the beautiful, as yet nameless, femme fatale of Athra world grace the cover of Athra Ten.

And here’s the image with the title. Bonus.

3.19.2013

Sam Weber