Vantastic

After this, I am blessedly done with cons until SPX

What can I say?  I love Vancouver like conservative governments love fucking marginalized people over.

What Just Happened

MoCCA 2011 - NYC

Stumptown 2011 - PDX

The bird a nest,
the spider a web,
man friendship.

~William Blake

I'd say ol' Bill Blake is on to something, given the past couple months of my sleep-deprived, chaotic mess of a life and the plain fact that I could not have possibly gotten through them if not for the diligent efforts of my friends. Without fail, my friends stepped up to help me not just keep my wits, but to help me thrive. Whether with getting around and housing me in a foreign land, laying out, editing, printing, and putting together books, tending to my needy kitties, helping me table at conventions, getting me around town after my car breaks down, setting up websites, sounding off my crazy ideas, getting me to or into afterparties, festivals, and so so so much more.

My comic odyssey started with an impromptu visit to the Emerald City Comicon in March, which was considerably more...diverting than I thought possible.  I had intended to just go as an attendee, but ended up something else entirely. Still sussing that one out. Perhaps in a future post. Anyway, two weeks later I went up to a Vancouver Comicon to try my hand at Steve Rolston's homemade Canadian parlor games. After another two weeks of constant scrambling, I headed out for NYC for the MoCCA Festival in early April. Any visit to NYC is a trip which I would gladly lengthen, but I had to cut my East Coast time regretfully short and get back to Portland too soon. I was required back the Saturday after MoCCA, which happened to be my birthday, to attend the first day of the Stumptown Comics Fest and the grand opening of the Samo Lives gallery, where The Matter is on permanent installation.

The week from MoCCA to Stumptown was a sleepless, bewildering juggernaut that I couldn't stop, slow, or even comprehend most of the time. Like any good show should be. Not surprisingly, the Monday after Stumptown closes up, I tailspin into a week-long illness as my body stops fighting whatever nastiness I got from the NYC subway handrails. However, since I'm a con/fest/party animal, I was rewarded by scoring free all-access wristbands to the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. I live at the epicenter of the fest, and the last two years I've been unable to go, so this was sweeter than Sweet Reward. And as usual, it was all on account of my friends. In this case, Mr. Josh Bremer, who did the Festival's website, let me use his passes.

On that note, I suppose I should end this senseless, rambling post. I wanted just to stress that I have the best friends ever.  I might gloss over the details of Emerald City and the last Vancouver Comicon, but expect posts about MoCCA, Stumptown, Samo Lives, Bridgetown, and more as time rolls along.  I'll get to the fests soon, because I have some neat pictures, but most importantly, a jam comic about lil' ol' me by, I kid you not, the finest artists at Stumptown.

Now that I'm done with all manner of fests and conventions (besides an occasional Vancouver jaunt), it's time to get cracking. The Matter no. 3 is near it's printing, though we've already printed the Issue no. 3 Teasers. We'll have an electronic version of the teaser up before the week is out, which should be concurrent with launching the Kickstarter for the issue as well. Anyway, I'll have more to say later. I'll endeavor to make it more exciting if you endeavor to make it back for it.

Thank you again, friends. You know who you are.

-=-

P.S. Sorry to get all blabby on everyone. There's been a ton of crap what done gone on since we last talked, and I had to start somewhere. My thoughts got a little bottlenecked, so forgive the 90s-era blogginess of this post.

Vancouver or Bust

Vantastic!

Somehow I'm managing to hit comic conventions in all three major NorthWest cities in a month.  Emerald City Comicon on March 6th, Vancouver Comicon on March 20th, and the Stumptown Comics Fest on April 16th.  Anyway, Vancouver the convention is much like Vancouver the city—considerably more mellow than the rest—and I'm really looking forward to getting back up there and hangin' wit the homies.

Emerald City ’11

I assume that I'll have more to say later, but for the time being, I'm too swamped to go into detail about this year's Emerald City Comicon. Suffice to say that I met a lot of really great people, and reconnected with many more. Sleep is for the weak.

Here's some pictures of cosplayers in lieu of any actual commentary. Enjoy.

2011 Winner: Cutest, Littlest Cosplayer

2011 Runner-Up: Cutest, Littlest, most Hellish

2011 Winner: Most Hellish

Moments after this picture was taken, she was bludgeoned to re-death by Lil Spock.

2011 Winner: Best Duo - Jedites

2011 Winner: Most Transgressive

2011 Winner: Judges Choice

When the computer just isn’t enough…

Suck it, Wikipedia!

Sometimes the internet just doesn't cut it, and you gotta hit the library. Time will come, though, when this is all digitized, and the only books left laying around are all hollowed-out gun or drug holders.

These are all reference for the next chapbook by Niles Taverner and Yours Truly, who you may remember from our first collaboration, Taking Off, now being reprinted for the upcoming conventions.

Ultimate Word Nerd Alert

If you geek out over history, words, and making connections, then oh please do go down the rabbit hole that is the Google Ngram Viewer. In a nutshell, it allows you to find a word or phrase's frequency of use on the printed page over a period of time.  Meaning, roughly, out of every single word printed in a given year that Google can find, how many of them were "this."  You can find that the usage of  "this" peaked in the late seventeenth century.  Badass.  Or is it bad ass?  One way to find out.

Graph A: Bad Ass vs Badass 1800-2000

Graph A reveals that first came "bad ass," around 1820.  The bastardized "badass" had an early peak around 1845 but then "bad ass" properly edged out "badass" for the next century. Both terms grew in popularity in the latter-half of the twentieth century, with "badass" being the clear current winner.

Graph B: "Bad Ass" vs. "Badass 1960-2000

Upon closer inspection of  the late twentieth century in Graph B, we find that "bad ass" reignited the usage of the term, but then much like the English-speaking world itself, was bastardized by the early 1970's.  "Badass" erupted in usage around 1990, and is in no fear of being overtaken.

It's hard to believe that at this stage the Ngram viewer is the most accurate tool in the box, but it nevertheless allows the intellectually-curious to obsess all night long—or to put it another way, it lets nerds geek the hell out.   There's plenty to tweak, such as discriminating between languages, a few different versions of English, and many more.  For example, the Brits held onto the proper "bad ass" until the early 1990s whereas Americans became "badass"  just after 1970.  Furthermore, Americans use both terms on average four times more.

The hole only goes deeper...

Want proof that fiction writes the future?  English Fiction invents the "jet pack" in the 1960s, but the term takes off mostly as the "jetpack" in the 1990s.  It took until the turn of the millennium for the term to be used in general English as much as it was used in Engligh Fiction around 1970.  (Furthermore, it would seem that the idea of the jetpack is only an American concept.  The British apparently have no use for it.)

Want to talk religion?  Clearly carrots are more motivating than sticks, as Heaven is used far more than Hell.

Things only get more interesting when you compare Heaven and Hell as proper and improper nouns, or Heaven & Hell vs heaven & hell.  During the Scientific Revolution, Heaven and hell were widely discussed, and when all was said and done, mentions of either become hard to find.  We begin to discuss Heaven again when things get bad in the nineteenth century, when it seemed that every country was going through a revolution, collapse, or revolt.  We discuss them less as the world stabilized, and are only just now picking back up the conversation.

To the aforementioned curious, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and I could literally do this for days on end.  So I'll leave you now with proof that English-speaking humans are, on average, sexist pigs.

We are inherently sexist: Boy vs Girl 1500-2000

We're generally more comfortable talking about the penis until medical literature takes off in the 1800's and the vagina is closely examined. By the 1950's we figured out what we needed to, and went back to mostly talking about guy junk.

What’s Coming

If you've been here more than once, you have no doubt noticed the infrequency of the updates. I certainly don't mean to be a stranger (especially on my own site), but when all my writing projects were slated "for future release," there was just nothing compelling me to post. And having nothing of any pertinence to say, I was hesitant to just, well, blog.

You see, I have no desire whatsoever to be a blogger. Writing blog posts stresses me out and I better express myself through fiction, anyways. But an online presence for a tech-savvy writer is practically a requisite in this day and age, and I'm no luddite by any stretch. I was born with an Apple IIc keyboard in my hands and I do not intend to go offline until I die (and in all likelihood, not even then).

So no, this site is far from abandoned, because what I've been working on is finally coming to a head. Consider the game officially afoot. I have a dozen posts in the hopper, as well as some exciting new art from my upcoming projects, so over the next few weeks I'll have lots to say here.

Now without further ado, here is my schedule of confirmed events for 2011:

March 4-6: Emerald City Comicon
(As Attendee)

March 20: Vancouver Comicon

April 9-10: MoCCA Festival, NYC

April 16-17: Stumptown Comics Fest, PDX

May 15: Vancouver Comicon

July 10: Vancouver Comicon

August 28: Comix & Stories, BC

September 10-11: Small Press Expo, D.C.

And what's the point of conventions if I don't have anything to show? These are the stories I have slated for release over the coming months:

• April 2011 - Two stories in The Matter no. 3 with Reid Psaltis and Gunther Goltz
• March/April 2011 - A new Jack Bracken/Niles Taverner chapbook
• July 2011 - A newer Jack Bracken/Niles Taverner chapbook
• August 2011 - Two or three stories in The Matter no. 4

In addition to the aforementioned pieces, I have no less than five other writing projects that I can't really talk about yet. When I can, though, expect excerpts and sketches to appear right here. There's also the redesign of the Royal Springs Entertainment Company's main site as well as the site for The Matter, and more tweaks and touches to do here. So with that I thank you for reading and beseech you to continue visiting. I've got a lot coming up, and with any hope, you'll have as much fun reading as I do writing.

“We all carry our landscapes within us.”

Bruce: “How did they get you to do this?” Norton: “You’re still The Boss, with a capital B.”

“The writing and the imagining of a world: that’s a single fingerprint.  All the writers we love, they put their fingerprints on your imagination and on your heart and your soul, and I thought, ‘I want to do that.’"

- Bruce Springstein

The Boss dropped some serious truth in an interview I heard on NPR's world-class arts & culture magazine Fresh Air.  The segment was a rebroadcast of an interview conducted by Edward Norton with Bruce Springstein at the Toronto International Film Festival.  In the interview, the two discuss the making of Springstein's fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and about The Promise, a new documentary about that album which was being screened at the Festival.

Maybe is just because I have folks from Jersey and NYC, but Bruce Springstein has been an artistic influence in my life since before I knew what those words meant.  This interview is one of those rare opportunities to hear a grandmaster artist talk about his craft, but furthermore, the album chronicles a period in America just after the seeds of everything we're going through today were planted.  Says The Boss, himself:

“There are people who have been in this recession for the past 30 years.

"I think 1960s small-town America was very Lynchian. Everything was there, but underneath, everything was rumbling.  I think what Dylan did [with Highway 61], was he took all that dark stuff that was rumbling underneath, and I think he pushed it to the surface with irony and humor, but also tremendous courage to go places where people hadn't gone previously. So when I heard that, I knew I liked that, and I was very ambitious, also...

"I was in search of a purposeful work life. I wanted to entertain. I wanted the pink Cadillac. I wanted the girls. And I also wanted what I needed most, which was a purposeful work life. That’s what we were in pursuit of.”

You and me both, brother.

A victory for hirsute men everywhere.

The Wolverine

Wolverine is a character, perhaps the character, who most exemplifies the thesis that there are no bad or worthless characters, only bad writers.  He can be, and often is, little more than a tired cliche.  (See his own movie or the majority of his comic appearances for ample proof.)  However, with someone like Greg Rucka or Grant Morrison or Joss Whedon at the helm, Wolverine is the mouthpiece for some of the greatest science fiction stories ever told.  When Batman Begins proved that movies need be no more committed to bad continuity than comics are, the possibility of a real Wolverine movie made the nerdy little kid in me squirm in his seat.

The adult in me only wondered at the writer/director dream team that could pull it off.  You'd need a team that knows the edges of human existence, that knows grit, passion, darkness, savagery and barbarism.  Wolverine is at his best when he's put through the worst.  He cannot die, only be tortured more, and so the film would need filmmakers who could dish out anguish with eloquence.  I can think of few directors who communicate darkness and passion more eloquently than Darren Aronofski, and few writers who put their characters through a more savage and gritty ringer than Christopher McQuarrie.

Requiem for a Dream and The Way of the Gun are two movies that moved me in a profound way, not only for their potent drama and story, but for their unflinching portrayal of dishonorable people put through hell.  They were brutal depictions of maladjusted characters without grace, who seem only to keep falling ever-downward toward the abyssal final scenes of their respective movies.  Aronofski and Mcquarrie treat addicts like addicts and criminals like criminals, and the result is poignant, relevant, and honest fiction.  And if you think they don't got the chops to work the baddest of the X-Men, well, McQuarrie also did script doctoring on the first two X-Men movies, the good ones, and Aronofski did The Wrestler, the movie that made Micky Rourke so tough he got onto The Expendables.

That the story should just happen to be "an adaptation of Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s classic 1982 comic book arc" is the sweetest finishing touch.  Frank Miller has gritty and dark down to an artform, and there could nary be a better starting point for this movie.  They're ditching all the previous movie cannon and telling what essentially amounts to an origin story, really.  Wolverine before the X-Men, before the adamantium, when he was still feral and angry.  This is the transition from being just a berserker, Wolverine becoming humbled by the samurai code.

I didn't mean to go on such a tear about this, I'm just really goddamn excited.  Plus, so long as they keep Hugh Jackman (who's also stoked about the project), us hairy fellas will once again have good representation.

More to Come…

I want to say that I rarely update because I've always had a difficult time with self-aggrandizement.  As a child I was a late bloomer, always short for my age, and husky enough to be conscious of it, and I'd like to argue that these relics stayed with me.  I cannot bring myself to announce every new project, every damn convention I attend, or anything else because of the greatest American fear—low self esteem.  Hence, this public journaling aspect to my writing has been problematic for me, and I rarely update.  Case closed, absolution granted.

Alternative Press Expo

Vancouver Comicon

But really, this is just a realm in which my mutant power—the ability to perform well under pressure—doesn't help.  Adaptive procrastination is an artform that I've honed all my life, in all aspects of my life, and I've generally found success from (or perhaps despite) it.  A website makes no demands or due dates, while other things in my life do, so I simply put off updating it.  But since my last posting, I've attended two amazing conventions, put out two new books, and had some stuff I'd like to share in depth that instead got relegated to my facebook wall.

I'd like to make this site more relevant than a monument to myself.  I'll still (or will, rather) make announcements of upcoming shows and rundowns of the event, talk up my new releases, share any reviews I happen to garner, and tease about my projects still underway.  I'll continue to let my writing speak for itself, and post excerpts of everything I do.  But to balance this loathed self-aggrandizement, I'll pepper in posts about whatever inspires me—stuff that I genuinely find interesting, be it a smoking baby, interesting story, or friend's upcoming release.  If it stirs me, I'll mention it.  Meanwhile, I'll be flushing out the links, updating my works section, and tweaking the layout.

But further than that, I'm just going to make an honest attempt at saying something interesting here. Over the next week I'll have quick wrap-ups of the past Vancouver Comicon and Alternative Press Expo, complete with links to the wonderful artists I met on my travels.  I'll put up my new books for order and in the works section.  I'll put up a story about what happened on my way back from California.  I'll put up what music I've been listening to.  I'll put up a funny video, then an offensive one, and then a confusing one.  I'll put up an article that will change your life.  I'll put up my self and we'll see if you put up with me.