Blog 2 and I never drink (white) wine

Ladies! gentlemen! Boys and girls!
The old daft luddite tries to be hip.
See the sadness! Witness the witless in sorrowful attempt to follow the times as they pass his fossilic existence!
Amusement values of assured technological failure for all ages!

Yeah. I have a tumblr account.
Very hip, blogish, but immensely more anti-social.
Full of pics and people if not by actual age then at least by their heart who are at least twice younger than me.

Ok.

So at least 27 times younger than me. Hope you are happy now.

any ways...as I am known of my imagination it is: curtvilescomic.tumblr.com

And I have no idea how to use it yet. grand ain't it?

And more fun to follow: remember my rant on werewolf superiority?
I know, for a guy promoting tolerance I am such a speciest hatemonger when it comes to vampires.
and what a surprise something in that venue is coming up by yours truly and scifi/comicartist Marko Keränen

He can suavely go from HCscifi to horror and his black and white art fits the 4 page story of Otava.

Otava is a finnish superhero, or was.
You see in a previous heated battle of finnish superheroes against rogue giant russian superwarmechas he got thrown very high up.
The thing is flight isn't one of his powers.
or landing.
So he is paraplegic these days.
And most of finnish superheroes are AWOL /on a mission while teens and young adults go missing.

There is foul play and wornout, cripple hero.
Teaser page from Otava Musta peili (black mirror)


to the non-finnish speaking audience, yes in panel three in the caption box it says "Corpses. It's a vampire."

This will be out by fall of this I think, with some other stuff

and next time it's either more comics, babes, monsters, dieselpunk or something else.
And I really detest white wine.

Let slip the Werewolves of war.

Once more I am a day closer to death then I was yesterday.
And happy about it.

I consider myself gladly damned by the old chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

And to prove it I jump from yesterdays much deserved praise for women to the other end of my inspiration: Horror. those of you expecting Twilight-type trite a) please go away and b) learn to read, I said Horror. As in :something scary.

While as of lately I have been introduced to US band My Chemical Romance (in spades) I can honestly say that Teenagers don't scare the living sh*t out me.
Nor vampires.

To me it's always been a mystery why vampires have been so popular.

Dracula's fine with all it's insidious little snipes at aristocracy, society, religion and of course sex and diseases.
If you are a horror fan (even if you aren't) these are given.
But I never got why settle for secondrate if you can have something better? Monarchy's all nice but while democracies and republics are less pompous we guys actually get stuff done. Empire has a nice ring to it, but then most of those are either ruined or mere shallow shades of their glory days.

Vampires and their fans are telling us that it's because vampires are in deepcore of horror: sex AND death.

Nope, sorry.
Nice sales pitch but I don't bite.

Sure you have the gothic chic, good looking aesthetics I'll give you that.

But see I am a goth too.

No, not in the way how it's seen now.
Not the stylized androgynous thingie of today that swears to Joy division.

The original goths.
The ones that sacked the roman empire.

See those barbarians were scary and had a real grasp of life. They were much closer to the true beast.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls...the Werewolf.

See? now THAT is real face of our primal fears. That is raw sexuality and source of nightmares considering one's mortality.

Yes, I heard you in the back row...very quaint and ironic the "*cough* vampires can turn to wolves and smoke*cough*"quip.

Righty.

Sorry to rain on your parade but the dentally challenged guys have more deficiences than advantages, in pop culture and the original folklore:

-sunlight burns, either just bit beyond the carrot tan or far beyond TexMex BBQ rib
-cant cross running water (considering the number of real cities on riverbanks..)
-cant enter buildings unless invited, "no second date for you, mope as much as you want!"
-stopped by garlic. My guess is no-one has (yet) tried plain pizza herb. Probably works too.
-decapitation and a stake though heart. Wow,the first of these that makes any sense

and, oh...

-stopped by religious symbols. This cracks me up on so many levels.

Holy water and crosses are commonly used shenanigans but why stop there?
Just think of David's star-shaped shurikens and since christian faith has common ground not only with judaism but islam too it explains why there are no eco-vampires: if green is a holy color...(and also explains why one of best vampires in comics, Cassidy from Preacher, is so rare: being irish)

So yes, the vampires can turn to wolves or to smoke.
As a defense mechanism under the three F's rule against werewolves.

The smoke gives Flee a chance via intangibility as does wolf-form.
Turning into a wolf makes Fight a bit more of a sane tone, if not utterly desperate one, as far as options go.
The third F ... well being the polar opposite of FIGHT the turning into wolf is the fangy kinds last ditch "pleaseohplease dont hurt me" choice.
(and turning to smoke is a one try in avoiding that exact fate)
Not the dumbest move the vampires can make.

Those in the know might point out that I have actually written about vampires, in comics as well as in the sequal of sort's to Run Monster, run ( a tale I wrote to Comicmonsters.com ,a great site for any fan of horrorcomics or the genre)in it's the Britain set romp Bloody high stakes.

In that as well as in my comics work they are mostly cannonfodder.
To me the vampire isn't an archetype.
It's more of a stock bad guy that is easy to use since everyone knows it and no-one gives a toss if you do something heinous to them.
A bit like the nazis.
They too had awesome clothes design by Hugo Boss, made very little sense and also had their asses handed to them.

But as I lately read Run Monster run again in order to see if I could turn it into a comicscript and in the process I also read the still unfinished Bloody high stakes.
So, I wrote this story with creatures that I don't give a rodents bottom about? But not about the real deal?
Now, let's add that to my list.
A werewolf story.
That is going to be fun.

After all, life is short and one has to make choices: cats or dogs (DOGS), Doors or Mötorhead (Jim Morrison is dead, Lemmy Rocks) prancing glowing jedi-ripoffs with quasireligious BS=Twilight or Horror (ok, so this defies the multiple in multiple choice. as if there was an option..)

Besides, the werewolf is proud sly daddy to the best monsters of them all: the unstoppable Jason Vorhees, the harrowing bogeyman Michael Myers are the modern slasher offspring of the werewolf .
Hailing back from viking berserkers in their bear- and wolfskins.
The duality of werewolf ancestry is seen in the many glorious versions of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.

Those of you who thought that Jason and Halloween's main man are sole descentants of the beast... in the lineage of every slasher and serial killer from far too real Jack the Ripper to Dexter or that nice Bates-boy running his motel, there rises the shape of the wolf.
The roar and howl taints even pages of seemingly safe and spandexy atomic age superhero comics. The gamma radiation might have changed the furcoat to green muscles but the reason HULK of Marvel comics is tattooed on my leg is that he is also one of the members in the pack.

We humans are basicly are still (and will be )primitive. We are scared of the dark.

We should be.
Bad Moon is rising.

The wolves are coming.

research and dementation

Post three: this blog needs pics.
seriously.
I mean a comicthemed blog with no pictures?
Bad idea.



much better.
See what I did there? I continued the previous themes of monkey mayhem and made this seem more readable.
And without picture of a naked female, despite the fact that this is internet.

But lets continue the bad ideas.
Unlike in real life where there are bad ideas abundance( invading Russia in wintertime, teasing predatory animals, dating, marriage, picking a fight with motor cycle clubs etc) in comics there is no such thing as a bad idea.
there is only poor execution.
No, not the capital punishment kind, but as being boring.

It's the same as with books and movies: you can have all the elements necessary to craft a grabbing interest of a reader/watcher but every now and then no matter how promising the subject matter it just fails.

Consider Zombie strippers, a hilarious movie starring Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund. Cheesy horror movie that revels in gratituous self-irony.
and think that Zombies!Zombies!Zombies! a.k.a. Strippers VS Zombies has exactly the same premise but is one of most brainnumbingly stupid and vapid bad movies.
So bad it is stinking bad.

it is as always how much heart one is willing to put in the thing.
And I am growing to like the comic piece discussed previously.
I love monsters and I like action and mixing those with gallows humor is most definately my thing.

But..I also have rampant imagination and hunger for stories. Both are fact that every now and then make me think that I have un-diagnosed case of ADD.
As today I thought once more about Vampires.
Yeah.
Those over-used monsters that have suffered at hands of Anne Rice and Twilight most effectively de-fanging them.

I am a werewolf kinda guy.
They represent duality, savagery, grace, primal insticts and sexuality in ways I feel the vampire as a monster just cannot reach.
But there is allure in the figure of the vampire.
And while there are loads of vampire comics out there only few are readable: 30 days of night, Impaler, some of Buffyverse, Life sucks, Boy vampire and Bonelli's Dampyr and stories in Dylan Dog.

these are a minority on stuff trying to cash in on the popularity the vampire is now revelling in.
And they do the mistake of target marketing this for women/girls.
Making comics geared to women is a great thing.
Underestimating their intelligence and what they want to read is terrible.

The vampire is a romantic figure but not in cheesy way.
Romance in vampirism is so much more than Megan Ryan romcom with sunlight allergy and dental props.

I am developing something along lines of doomed love but also in separately the spiritual and sociological aspects of vampirism.
One thing was reading about Survivalist movement.
Yes, the apocalypse awaiting armed up to the teeth people. they werent such then and arent mainly so now either.
At first they dropped out of society, built their bunkers but get this: they built excess bunkers & survival huts.
Why?
So they dont have to fight anyone: if you want shelter, food so on instead of having take it by force you can get it free and be indebted to ones offering the chance.

Now take the concept and add vampirism.
Shake well and put it to bake.
I think it has not been handled that way. At least not enough.

Bad ideas #2:

Yeah, Zombies.
the pic was on comicforum I attend at alarming rate and I talked with guys that a)draw penciled version inspired by Left 4 dead b) inked said piece and c) colored it.
And they were interested doing a zombie comic too.
The penciler and I have something at work too, but it is a long and wholely different process.

Zombies are the new (and old) black. I sing the high praise of The Walking dead by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore/Charlie Adlard/Rathburn to anyone willing to listen.
But I dont want to copy that.

Zombies are great source of horror tales; sociological, personal, gory, subtle the list just goes on and on.
Now with Zombies there is a problem: too many ideas.

Survivor tale is given but I want to do one with real folklore too. And one with main character as zombie. And scientific one. And hard-boiled detective story set in zombie underworld.
And a lovestory. and another one where BOTH are zombies.


but for those I need artists.
Unfortunately I plan to later on show my own sketches here.
You will understand then.

next week we will take a tuor in the world of spandexclad heroes and villains. BWAHAHAHA! or to quote the two great minds of our time:
"What shall we do today brain?"
"the same we do every night, try to take over the world..."