Senseless and insensitive

Some time ago there was Helsinki comic festival and this week-end it was Turku international book fair and being nerdy geek I took part in them.
Both got my creative juices flowing once more and forced me to revise some of my previous ideas.

Including making comics in the first place.

Those outside of Finland will probably not realize exactly how closed the market is and how formulaic they are.
There are few who do publish stuff beyond genres of humor and artsy pieces of slice of life.
Year after year one can count with a single hand of fingers the science fiction, fantasy, crime, adventure, superhero or horror stories in comics.
There is no market in our local comics for any of that.

Any sane person would fold and write some trite about relationships.

Yes, Any sane person.
But then again in these situations I ask myself one question:

Unfortunately I am not bluehaired pierced hottie (I just live with one, no wait...she's never had blue hair so far...well..so far) but otherwise it helps.

Sane people are boring and insignificant.

And once the stars are right, they(sanes) are eaten or trampled.

Sane people don't prepare for zombie apocalypse or devise deathtraps.

Sanity is just a one handicap one must lose in order to have fun.

Just last night I had an apocalyptic nightmare about humanlike bears, ghosts, nymphomaniacs, murder and the occult.

It will make a great script and carve a nervous wreck from some poor illustrator.

A mind is a beautiful thing to lose.

IÄ!

The house that violence built

Today I met one of young upcoming comic artists of Finland today and we had a long discussion(ok, ok: rambling) about comics overall.
About forum's and scene and all that funky stuff.
In a way I admire his lean towards artsy and personal.
And humor.
And the fact that both of us are solely interested doing comics we would ourselves want to read.

I enjoy horror, scifi, crime, adventure basicly all of those "escapists" stories. If you want to tell me about relationships or how lonely you are I see no reason not to tell it through some hard-assed kick-your-face-in-if-you-look-at-sideways kinda way.

And now after that comment all those with only two live brain cells have stopped reading after categorizing and judging me on their own preconceptions and stereotypes as semi-fascistic violencemonger.
Good riddance to them.

You see I enjoy stuff like The Walking Dead and Locke&Key.
Both are horror, both are gruesome, neither are cheap or pandering. They dont glorify violence.
And while I like old-school adventure films(even though I know the truth about people such as "heroic" Errol Flynn) many of them or the current Disney's violence flicks are way more harmful than the R-rated movies.
Best example is Pirates of the Caribbean. It does good things too, I mean it has introduced zombies to loads of kiddies, but c'mon it has the bloodless swordfights where folks are whacked repeatedly with blades WITHOUT A SINGLE CUT.

That is dangerous.
As our western culture grows more estranged from actual life we also grow ever more unaware what violence is. the repercussions, reasons, repeats...the whole shebang.

Where I live(Finland) local comics are mainly newspaper strips aimed solely to funnybone or artistic "slice of life" comics.
We practically don't have any adventure or crime comics. Take Petri Hiltunen, P.A.Manninen, Anssi Rauhala and Jussi Piironen out of equation and then the realistical, straight-played comics are not even once in a blue moon.
And that is a very sad thing indeed.

You see if you don't talk about something or just refuse to acknowledge it...it still does not go away.
I have heard it a million times: "portrayal of violence just de-sensitizes to it and increases aggression"
Right. Sure.
there is some truth there, I admit. there is also a chance of similar truth that I am reborn god of wine too.

It's a matter of talent.
Yes, it can be violence for violences sake, utterly empty, dehumanizing trite.
If you forget it is about humans.
And it is exactly the reason I grow so bored to most slice of life stories, because they should also be about people, about humans.
because you just dont care a bit about any of them.
You should care about the characters, they should be as real as your friends, as real as you.
Or more so.

But while most of us have more in common with getting bills and going to shop etc we are pulled to acts of mayhem and murder.
Why?



because it is exeptional, vibrant, scary.
And it shows some part of people's true character.
Real self.

Yes, the same abilities come out whenever someone does something altruistic, aiding to fellow man unrequired, without any overt or covert plans of their own.
And lookee how often that happens, huh?

And there are also aestehtics.
There is something very wrong in the beauty of bloodshed, war and death.
But while many can accept grace, awe and purpose in predatory animals, eagles, lions, crocodiles, wolves we find it disturbing to see the same in men.
We know it but still we want and need to watch and not just for our curiosity.


It is a heinous thing to say there is something alluring in death and suffering, but we are social creatures.
We know that while we want to get along with everyone we cant. not with everyone and honestly, we don't want to either.
Frank Miller has lately been put down,his latest batman work was way beyond uneven and there was a movie called Spirit too, but weirdly beneath hookers with hearts of gold, hitmen, ninjas, nazis and gangsters Frank Miller has produced lasting works in comicdom.

His Daredevil, Ronin, Give me Liberty, The Dark Knight Returns are but mere pinnacle.
And his Sin city series nigh singlehandedly brought back crime and noir comics.
Without those David Lapham's Stray bullets or Brian Azzarello's and Eduardo Risso's 100 Bullets would have had no chances.
Or Scalped by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera.
Even Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips owes a debt to that direction.


See crime and horror went away, lurking into dark recesses of comicdom and were almost forgotten. Our fears were packed into spandex dreams and european BD comics or worse: something veiled under funny or "not dangerous".
The comics code sought to protect the kids but in my opinion it did anything but.

Being a male of species I have had my share of scrapes. I know firsthand how it feels to be threatened with violence, to be beaten and kicked and been shot at not to mention blunt trauma or stabs and slices.

There is no glory, just hurt, pain and fear.
None of it made me a better person.
but none of it made me worse either.

And all I have ever seen shows me that most of all that is caused two groups:by those people most loudly judging such behavior and those with low self-esteem.
the other group has "moral high ground" therefore has god-given right to opinion and forcing it to others at any point in their own mind.
And the other group is alienated already and has far more limited means to affect the world around them.
Having money and opportunities is power but as long as you dont have a pool of sharks, pet a white persian and have flunkies and henchmen no one views themselves as an aggressor.



Because violence defines us.
some of us worship it and some demonize it.
If we disavow it we are in effect making a choice between violence and non-violence thus accepting it's importance.

Tales of violence are tales of life and death.
They define also the choices we make, what respect we give to life.
They remind us of our mortality.

And as I work in construction I feel the need to add some of mine to the lot. A few more houses to be built.

the day of reckoning.

It is the last day of april.
In the off chance any lost soul stumbling upon this blog might remember I made a pact.
To create a script in april.
A story with-in one month.
Please dont tell anyone about it as I have quite obviously lost all my marbles.

I have paper booklet, a scrapbook of sorts awaiting translittering to computer. To interpret my hieroglyphs to something resembling any known human language.
It is still bound to have loads of spelling/grammar mistakes.
Yeah, I write scripts and have undiagnosed dyslexia.
Whoever says the universe doesn't have a sense of humor?

anyways...to the results!


yeah I didnt do one story in a month.
I did three.
I may have a attention deficit syndrome too I guess.
Not that there wouldn't have been plenty of stuff unfinished to finish, oh no...

but while I shant post full scripts here (Please,call me Paranoid as I really am and it is one of my favorite songs too) but in short:

A tale of Dieselpunk world in shades of a cold war burning whitehot. Meet Jenny Lane.
She is young, adventurous and in deep trouble.
You see she took over her dad's business when he was shot down over mediterranean sea.
the business? Glad you asked. Pony express for modern times. No horses though, aeroplanes.
But this time our couriergirl is hunted by spies and gangsters, aristocrats and revolutionaries.
Too bad they are up against Jenny.

But thinking up that I came up with another piece of dieselpunk/pulp tale. It's world war 2. Finland is blocked up in the north. The soviets are attacking and surrounding nations are under nazirule (yes, yes dear swedes I know you were unaligned) and left to their own devices.
but what creations they are. But are you really going to risk your nations best and brightest youth by putting them on frontlines with experimental mad science?
Of course not.
It's war now and every man counts. And those enlisting to fight for their country get their prison sentences nullified.
War is hell so who better than sinners inside the Devils machinery.

And the third is a actionhorror piece from current events.
I found it too tempting to use a public domain comic figure (apparently not public domain in US yet, but doubt regocnizion will happen, nor publishing there) in different way.
A bit of postmodern take of classisc "funny" comic creation in quite un-funny civil war in Libya leading to unspoken horros that drive men mad in of so eldritch ways...
(ok so I am HPL fanboy and a war-nerd. Deal with it)


the concepts were fun. Storylines too but now starts the hard parts: typing it down and finding the artists suiting the stories.

As Sherlock said: The Game's afoot!

Power of girls

I have written about female heroines already quite a bit. And not just in this here blog, but as in comics.
Come saturday 16th april 2011 there is once more a panel on the subject matter too and it goes roughly translated as "Supergals and the guys who wanna get beaten by them"
As I know most of the guys on the panel it's going to be quite entertaining.

yeah. Guys.

And some of you might have noticed that I am also a straight man.

And as I know that Modesty Blaise was created by men,as was Wonderwoman, Power girl, Supergirl, Catwoman, Elektra, Maggie the mechanic, Tara Chace, Promethea, Tank girl and even the women in Strangers in Paradise.

Those lucky enough to manage getting to Tähtivaeltajapäivä will get some...well most likely interesting answers.

I don't think I need to point out my view. Again.

See I stumbled on this picture, copyright by allan.williams24 in flickr



see? that there con picture has already better elements then most that hollywood has to offer.

A hot, strong independent female and cool monsters known as Predators.

Yeah, sure I know :there's "slice of life" stories too.
Oddly I think the characters they portray in that pic there would have much more interesting slices of life.

(the picture in question is also proof that the physique of female heroes is not wishful thinking on their male creators side)

To my opinion there are three maingroups that have a problem with this kind of heroines are the following:
1) the boys in my sons agegroup 7-10 years old.
The girls are icky to most of them. Give them time and this will change

2)people who dont feel that women are as capable as men.
To these there is no help. It takes a special kind of stupidity not to see beyond the gender, to the individual.
Sadly this group is protected by the same laws that apply to sane people.

and 3)false feminists.
These are the people who see repression and male chauvinism when you have a strong woman and when the woman isn't strong.
Unlike those who realize feminism as equality they have as limited view of both real world and fiction then their counterparts male chauvinists and the aforementioned group 2.
To their defense: they can re-evaluate their views given chance and persistance.

there are few reasons for this rant of mine.

one was the cracked-article about the 5 creepiest sex scenes in comics

the opening line and I quote:

If there's anyone who knows how to handle sex in a mature and tasteful way, well, it's not comic book writers

that sort of got me.

To write, to create, I feel I need to know what I am doing and why. Do I have an ulterior motive? A subversive one?

You see the dieselpunk story is advancing but there are two and because I would really like to have a female protagonist.
I dont feel ashamed to be a man. Men have caused loads of problems and while I can help in fixing existing ones the mistakes other men do and have done are theirs. Not mine.

And as I know I am ok with my sexuality. So it's not that either. But the number of bondage one stumbles on a normal search about this is baffling.


Those knowing me and my charmingly blunt bullterrier kind mentality, it cant be trying to pander to the masses.
Never understood why people would like to do something creatively just to appeal to others instead of doing stuff one themselves enjoys but isn't available.
If anyone else gets fun out of it, learns something or so on that's grand.

All these answers seemingly didn't tell me why my brain has decided that now is the time to have women, girls, grrllls and femme fatales as heroes.

One answer is there are now artists capable enough to present the fairer sex too.

And one is that I simply prefer beauty.
If there is no reason to choose a modern car in a story I choose a classic instead, the 1950s 1930's kind.
If there is a flyig machine of any kind in a story and it can be bi-plane or single prop engine or a zeppelin.
I rather use Alphonse Mucha instead of that god awful Jeff Koons.

Remember I said there were reasons, plural, to this post?
It pics like one before and this:


from Brian C Carters Fanboys dream.

Not showing them to more people would be a crime of some sort. A travesty against being geek and proud of it.

For the Empire!

So I am a Star Wars geek.
Who has a stormtrooper tattoo on his left bicep.
So I was over the moon when I heard there was a Jedi training Academy that trains Young preschoolers in the ways of force it made me smile a bit. and then came this:


Is she awesome or what?

That girl right there on the youtube clip is most likely your future dark overlady.

Also, the background study for dieselpunk story came up with her engineer corps: Mike Koehler is working on life-size, working AT-AT walker

These things regenerate my sole trust in the species, at least some of us work on keeping the world wonderfully weird and strange.

Registered Society of Hermits and Recluses

Creating comics is bit like writing: it is very lonely.
Most of it is in my case mostly sitting and writing, or reading background research(fact and fiction alike) or just being in ones thoughts.
For artists it's hours upon hours of finding referencematerial, models, pictures etc and doing sketches and trying out various angles and trying out styles of drawing painting and so on.
And like writers they train and hone their talents endlessly, finetuning and polishing stuff while doing rough drafts, going out of their comfort zone to improve their art.

But damn it's plenty of alonetime.

In worlds of art, whether graphic or writing, it is quite lonely and not just on top.

Dont get me wrong I love collaborating and the times I say the artist saves the script by his/her amazing talents making the story work it is not hype.
I know it works vice versa too, but I have been really lucky.

Yet this kind of creative work is mainly solitary. Musicians have gigs, actors have an audience but us comicsfolk? So far not so.
Our field is more personal and individual, closest I can now come up with is authors. But they have audiobooks that can be(theoreticly) enjoyed as a group too. Audiocomic might come in the future but still...

(this also shows why there is IDOLS but not Comicbook Idols. No, Stan Lee reality "who wants to be a superhero" does NOT count. Creating comics isn't all that good selling point to TV)

And it's not even a matter of fame or popularity. Humans just are social creatures.

Most of my collaborations are done by endless e-mails, phone calls and old school mails of scripts, sketches and finished pages and then we might get it published, by someone, somewhere.
At some point.

And most of the time there's just us and our passion as different con's are relatively few and far between.


So on monday I jumped once I got to Vandercon that is Jeff VanderMeer and Anne VanderMeer on a tour of Finland and europe.

They are continuing the tour and I for one loved it: the lecture, the banter.
So if you ever get a chance to meet up with them, use it.
New weird, old weird, scifi, fantasy...now I have even more ammunition of the mind regarding steampunk and squids.

And stuff.

And do chack out their websites: Jeffvandermeer.com and weird tales

Mightier than sword

actually doing background research can be harmful. Sort of anyways. See the biggest problem isn't it's arduousness, no I am not sweating my brow and spending sleepless nights due to lack of information. Ideas are very virulent. And unlike many other diseases you don't develope an immunity once you have had one. No. It gets worse. Progressively worse. I was indulging myself to land of enginegrease and zeppelins for dieselpunk and went through writers friends, characters in public domain. "Oh the hack can't cut it himself? Can't think of your own characters then?" Nope, I just don't need to invent the wheel if I want to design a car. And also so I know to scrap the idea if my new idea for a carmodel that I have named Ford isn't really all that new of an idea. But the point was I came across Dave Sim's Cerebus. You must know it. It is Conan the barbarian but in it Conan is an aardvark. It's pretty good and get this: Dave Sim has said that once he dies, Cerebus is public domain. The character is usable to any story, no copyright infringement none what-so-ever. No 70 years waiting period after his death. While Cerebus isn't Spiderman or TMNT (My son loved the Turtles few years back, I think he stil does and through his eyes, so do I nowadays) it is still cult/underground hit. And while it ran for 300 issues 1977-2004 by Dave Sim for 6 000 pages there might be still a stories to tell with the aardvark. So was my bright idea to tell a Cerebus tale? Clone a Conan clone? No. My idea was about an artist who has stories to tell about Cerebus. You know the type. He has the drive, feels how this story these visions of his would be his way to comicbook superstardom. All he needs is to use Cerebus as character, he has the pages drawn, the storyarcs plotted written and even might have a publisher for it too. But Dave Sim is alive. So he needs a hitman. Someone to kill Dave Sim so the rights for Cerebus go to public domain. Yeah. I read a piece of info, an artists gesture to fans of his creations, and subsequently went straight into vicious crimestory terrain with it. At some point I got to do it. Write the story, not assasinate Dave Sim. Because that plan is going to hell.