Seppuku Comics

So. I finally got the collected TPB of Chapters 1-4 of [nemesis] finished and uploaded to Lulu. I am waiting for it with explosive anticipation.

There is a bit of a problem though. The book as it stands now is about $22. Which, with shipping, means that a 108 page TPB costs almost $25. That's a lot of cash. I'm also thinking of breaking the chapters up into more regularly sized saddle stiched books, through a company like Comixpress or some such. I think I could get the price down around $7 or so, maybe. It remains to be seen how the Lulu book looks. If it's as good as I hope, there may be no need to worry about it. Although, $22 is still alot for what I'm offering.

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# posted by inkbrush : 2:34 PM  3 comments

There are two things you should learn the first evening of a martial arts class: The best way to win a fight is to avoid it, and if someone doesn’t care what happens to them it is impossible to stop them from hurting you.

The first point is the very best case for Diplomacy that can be made, so much so that the very motivations of our leaders who are itching to fight  should be called  into question.

But the second point is one that should be considered regarding all the hoo-ha surrounding the “leaks” in our defense strategy. It is impossible to completely defend yourself against people who will die to hurt you. You might be able to stop them from killing you, but you can't stop them from hurting you. A country is made up of people, we are the corpus of our homeland. To destroy a country, the people must no longer act as though they are a country. This can be achieved either by killing enough of them that the remainder become absorbed elsewhere, or it can be achieved by convincing the people of a country to give it up.

It is with this in mind that I say this about the September 11 attacks of 2001: we were hurt, but we were not killed. Our government did do a pretty good job of limiting how we could be hurt, in spite of itself. It is not possible to create a vacuum-sealed border where we maintain a perfect homeostasis with the rest of the Earth. It won't work, because there will always be a way to hurt us, so long as there is a motivation to do so.

The best way to defend against Terrorism is to stop the fight before it happens, and it is in this area that our Government has become increasingly incompetent. Diplomacy is not just a lost art in the neocon world in which we now live, it is a despised tactic by the high and the low alike. That is to say that the Bush administration is not really concerned with our safety, with our well-being, nor is it particularly sophisticated in the way in which it prefers to deal with foreign policy matters. It would be unfair to leave the Clinton Administration out of this, since they controlled the Executive branch for 8 years before Bush and his cronies got elected.

I know this sounds terrible, but it's true. It will never be possible to completely stop terrorists from hurting us as a country. All we will be able to do is make it miserable for the law abiding citizens who live here. The erosion of civil liberties will not make us safer, it will make us less American. It is our Bill of Rights which really makes us who we are as a country, and if it is destroyed then Al Qaeda has succeeded in destroying America. Remember, to kill a country, you either kill enough people, or you convince them they aren't that country anymore.

It seems that we might be doing most of the Terrorists’ work for them.

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# posted by inkbrush : 8:50 AM  1 comments

There are two things you should learn the first evening of a martial arts class: The best way to win a fight is to avoid it, and if someone doesn’t care what happens to them it is impossible to stop them from hurting you.

The first point is the very best case for Diplomacy that can be made, so much so that the very motivations of our leaders who are itching to fight  should be called  into question.

But the second point is one that should be considered regarding all the hoo-ha surrounding the “leaks” in our defense strategy. It is impossible to completely defend yourself against people who will die to hurt you. You might be able to stop them from killing you, but you can't stop them from hurting you. A country is made up of people, we are the corpus of our homeland. To destroy a country, the people must no longer act as though they are a country. This can be achieved either by killing enough of them that the remainder become absorbed elsewhere, or it can be achieved by convincing the people of a country to give it up.

It is with this in mind that I say this about the September 11 attacks of 2001: we were hurt, but we were not killed. Our government did do a pretty good job of limiting how we could be hurt, in spite of itself. It is not possible to create a vacuum-sealed border where we maintain a perfect homeostasis with the rest of the Earth. It won't work, because there will always be a way to hurt us, so long as there is a motivation to do so.

The best way to defend against Terrorism is to stop the fight before it happens, and it is in this area that our Government has become increasingly incompetent. Diplomacy is not just a lost art in the neocon world in which we now live, it is a despised tactic by the high and the low alike. That is to say that the Bush administration is not really concerned with our safety, with our well-being, nor is it particularly sophisticated in the way in which it prefers to deal with foreign policy matters. It would be unfair to leave the Clinton Administration out of this, since they controlled the Executive branch for 8 years before Bush and his cronies got elected.

I know this sounds terrible, but it's true. It will never be possible to completely stop terrorists from hurting us as a country. All we will be able to do is make it miserable for the law abiding citizens who live here. The erosion of civil liberties will not make us safer, it will make us less American. It is our Bill of Rights which really makes us who we are as a country, and if it is destroyed then Al Qaeda has succeeded in destroying America. Remember, to kill a country, you either kill enough people, or you convince them they aren't that country anymore.

It seems that we might be doing most of the Terrorists’ work for them.

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# posted by inkbrush : 8:50 AM  0 comments

I was there at midnight, amongst the faithful, when George Lucas's long awaited first installment in his prequel trilogy made its bombastic appearance in theaters. I waited in line for a few hours that day for tickets, I cheered when the opening credits began to scroll upwards, familiar yellow on black.

I didn't hate Jarjar. Honestly. I understood his necessity, or at least his perceived necessity. He was there, background for me. The real treat of Episode I was getting to finally see Jedis in full glory. Fully trained, experienced, and scary. Unstoppable. I dug Jake Lloyd as Anakin, and I was disappointed that Lloyd wasn't old enough to play Anakin in Episode II. Really. I apologized a lot for Lucas then. A lot. It was often just me or my friend Ross in the room talking about how good it was. We just had to wait and see how it all fit together. You'd see.

Then Episode II came out and I began to feel vindicated. See? Jarjar is necessary because he explains how Naboo votes for giving the War powers to President Palpatine. See? We can see the responsibility of training Anakin beginning to weigh on Obi-Wan. See? Yoda goes apey and begins to fly all over the place fighting Dooku. See? Again, I played the apologist.

And then I stayed up late to see Episode III. I was at a midnight showing, although I had worked all day, and I would be due in the next day as usual. I came. I shelled out the cash. I spent the time. I dragged my poor, aged mother to the midnight screening.

To say I was disappointed is a bit inaccurate. I was irritated, more specifically. I had apologized, and argued, and disagreed, and discussed this with friend for the last several years. For years I had supported Lucas, and what we got was Episode III.

Was there enough action? Oh yes, plenty. No need to let that pesky storytelling get in the way of our action. No sir. What about Jedi? Plenty of that, right? Okay, sure. When they weren't getting shot in the back because the Force apparently stopped working, or when they weren't acting like a bunch of hypocrites, sure. How about lightsabers, you like lightsabers, right? Who cares about lightsabers? Yeah they're cool, but they don't make a story.

All of this has been examined by people far more interested in tearing the film apart than I am. I don't care. That's what Episode III did to me. It made a die-hard, lightsaber toy waving fan put down the toys forever. I have no desire to see the prequel trilogy again any time soon, nor do I have any desire to see the original trilogy. I don't care. I've got better stuff to do. Episode III was so bad it totally ruined the entire Star Wars experience for me. I can't look at any of it without that third film and the sheer senselessness of it corrupting my enjoyment of even the Empire Strikes Back. The bastard took Bespin from me. And that hurts.

Now he's selling the original trilogy unaltered. And I have trouble really generating any entusiasm for it. I will probably get it to make my DVD collection complete, but I won't watch it often. I have no desire to do so.

Basically one word sums up my feelings as the end credits rolled:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

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# posted by inkbrush : 11:40 PM  1 comments

So. The Breakup is a wonderful couples movie. It is probably a lousy date movie, for reasons that become painfully obvious during the course of the film. However, all couples in long term relationships should watch this movie. And not just because I want Vince Vaughan and the crew he rolls with to keep making movies.  Although that is, if you ask me a very legitimate reason.

No, I will list a few of my personal reasons for finding the movie so darned good.

1) The Old 97's • The Old 97's are a quasi-rockabilly, Eagles-esque, alt country, Rawk Band. For those of you out there asking why that's a selling point, let me put it to you this way: imagine all the things you hate about this kind of music, only make it good. The Old 97's are just awesome. And the songs picked for the movie are pitch perfect. Go. Listen. You'll be glad.

2) Neither Gary (Vaughan) nor Brooke (Aniston) are completely blameless in the script. I don't think it gives anything away to say that neither character is without blame. This isn't clearly cut, it's a muddle. You know, the way relationships really are. She means one thing, he hears another, they go separate ways and one of them does something. The offending party leaves the room, and the offended retaliates. Neither side expects what the other does, nor do they understand it at all. It's great.

3) Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, Joey Lauren Adams, and Peter "You'll Shoot Your Eye Out" Billingsley.

4) A script that doesn't insult the audience. Seriously. This is a well written movie, with a well balanced script. Yes, there are funny lines, it is a romantic comedy. But there are also a lot of subtle structural elements that make sense upon reflection. It's a character piece, and the plot serves to illuminate the audience about the characters as it also frames moments when the characters have epiphanies about themselves. It's a pleasant change. This is a group of people that I trust to consistently produce good work. They're on a tear now like the original cast of SNL and the SCTV boys were in the 80's. I'm hooked.

In all, highly recommended. It's not likely to cause any intra-couple fights, but it might cause a few people to soften up a bit more towards each other.

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# posted by inkbrush : 11:13 PM  0 comments

So, I recently ran into a period where my will to work on [nemesis] was completely sapped. I would look at my stack of thumbnails for future pages and I felt... empty and uninterested. I felt like there were a million other things I could do with my time that would yield me more satisfaction and a greater sense of accomplishment than to work for even five minutes on this project of mine. It sucked. I hated it, because I love the comic, and I dearly love cartooning.

I contacted the local members of the Green Party looking for some way to get involved in local politics. (I tried the Democrats in college, and I just don't have the stomach for that kind of political work.) I found a local group of atheists who meet up and socialize/organize.

And I felt better, but I still didn't feel like working on [nemesis].

That is until I made a few changes.

First, I completely stopped reading Webcomics criticism and Comics criticism in general. I stopped listening to Digital Strips podcast, Blank Label Comics podcast, and I stopped trying to listen to Joey Manley's podcast. The results stunning, and sudden. I didn't hate my work anymore. I stopped worrying about my audience size or the quality of my writing.

While that can be considered a problem, it's not nearly as big a problem as being so flat out bummed about what the critics are lauding. See, it didn't really bother me that critics don't talk about me. It bothered me that they talked about the same few comics, or comics that I found to be not worth following at all. It bothered me that the comics that critics considered to be worthwhile were comics that I, as a dedicated cartoonist and writer, don't care about. At all. There are other gripes, but they're not worth going into, because the griping was the problem.

This was great, I felt less irritated all the time. Awesome.

But I still wasn't motivated. At least until I made another change.

I stopped checking my comics stats altogether. I know [nemesis] has readers, and I know I'm lucky to have as many faithful, interested bodies as I have now. I don't need to know how much the stats have jumped or dropped this week, this day, in the last five minutes. And it feels good to not care.

Maybe that's the trick. Since a person can't care about everything without going crazy, maybe we have to shift our bubble of apathy into area that isn't detrimental to our well being, or that allows us to get on reasonably.

Anywho, I still wasn't motivated to get started. Then I got a letter from someone asking if I was okay because [nemesis] hadn't updated. Someone I've never met in my life wrote me to ask if I was okay because he and his son liked [nemesis] and wondered where it went. Suddenly there was no inertia anymore. There was no energy to build, because it was suddenly just there. So, now I'm about a week ahead, and things are humming nicely.

Thanks to everyone who keeps reading [nemesis], despite my flaky update schedule lately.

Tis good.

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# posted by inkbrush : 12:46 PM  0 comments