Bored

Lately, I've lost all enthusiasm for RPG's. At first, I thought it was just the uglosity of the online community, or maybe internet addiction or something lame like that, so I unplugged from forums and G+. Weeks passed,games were played, internet was largely ignored.

Nope, still bored.

Prep, which has always been fun for me is now a horrible fucking chore on which I can't bring myself to spend 15 minutes. When we play, I can't wait to be done, so we can do something else. Also, it fucks with my other creative endeavors. I've already broken it to the group, but I'm not even sure I have the juice to get to my proposed close date. We had an unexpected cancellation on Sunday and I was totally fucking psyched about it. I took that as an indication that it was time to lay off.

Why am I blogging about this? I dunno, maybe somebody else feels this too and just needs a reminder that you can walk away at any time. Any time.

So long, best of luck.

Flesh Rotting Friday: Grave Robbery and more old media observations...

i was a bit taken aback to learn that this was a thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_robbery_in_the_United_Kingdom

A story about a gang of its more famous practitioners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders

An excellent radio drama from the 1940's, which sent me on my wkihunt.
http://vimeo.com/49401911

Anyway, it seems to me that American media from the first half of the 20th century contains a lot more references to history than what has come since. I also learned about Tamerlane and Bayezid I through an old Harold Lamb novella in the July 1921 issue of Adventure. You'll have to forgive my previous ignorance; my interest has traditionally tapered off after the invention of agriculture.

 

 

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Rummaging Through the internet Attic #1

As I've said before, the arrival of the ipad triggered a sea change in regards to how I use the internet. I won't bore you with my app choices for the most part, but I would like to talk about some of the stuff I've been consuming.

First lets talk about comics:

Most of what I'm looking at comes from the Marvel Unlimited service, and is not, strictly speaking free. However, when it comes to comics, I can read a fuckton in an evening, so at this point, I'm in pennies on the dollar territory, which is close enough to free for me.

The most interesting thing I've read lately is Jim Starlin's early marvel work, in the form of his runs on Captain Marvel and Warlock respectively. I liked both of these comics, and Starlin's art and writing are pretty much at their peak here.
The character arc in Captain Marvel takes a standrd hero and leaves him as a sort of messiah figure by the time things wrap up. Warlock starts as a messiah figure and ends as a sort of nutjob waiting for his own preordained death. The best stories in both collections involve Thanos, of course. He is Marvel's adversary and and Warlock's ally.
In regards to supporting characters, Rick Jones is an over emotional tool and I'm pretty sure Pip the troll is not smoking tobacco.
Read these.

The worst thing about Starlin's comics is they led me to read the Kree- Skrull War (Avengers 89-97 1972-1973). To put it as bluntly as possible: these comics suck. The only good things that can be said about them is both Sal and John Buscema bring their A game in regards to the art. Neal Adams, however, turns in a slick but soulless performance. Even given Adams shit-art, however, the real blame for the unbearable banality of these comics must be laid at the door of Roy Thomas.

Thomas, is at least in this case, the very definition of a hack. He draws out what could have been a two issue story and makes it last forever. Nothing happens in most of these issues. Nothing. I think maybe the Vision cries once.
The writing reminds me of the weaker parts of some old Republic serials in a lot of ways. But those writers had a certain amount of time to fill and very limited budgets to work with. Roy could have had the artists draw whatever he could think of, space battles, alien landscapes, ands whatever, and although there is a little bit of that stuff in there, it is all in the last issue or so and none of it really pops. Thomas, instead relies on hackneyed soap opera shit, and a long drawn out and fucking boring subplot wherein the Skrulls are impersonating a powerful american politician, who is gunning for the Avengers. You keep reading thinking something is going to happen, but every time, nothing happens instead.
Thomas is also responsible for the single worst thing about these comics. Clint Fucking Barton, AKA Hawkeye AKA Goliath (in this arc). He is a fucking horrible sexist, accusing the Wasp of "thinking with her hairdo" and a God botherer, taking time out from important conversations to remind everyone to stop and pray, and also... Thor isn't reeeeealy a god.. Okay? Clint is also a whiner. I think he may have been RT's favorite character.
Anyway, I'm begging you, do not read these comics. They are D&D movie bad.

I was going to get into radio shows, today, but that will have to wait, I've gone on long enough and I want to cook a tortilla now.

Character design

This is the current design for the partner/side-kick character from the comic thingy I'm working on. I will subject you to it once more after I ink and color it. I'm attempting to push for more depth in my work.
In other news, the final technical hurdles to making a full on comic have been overcome, so I can maybe accomplish something this year. Oh, and my friends and I are going to make some radio plays.

Nsfw, sensible armor in color

I finally figured out the basics of computer coloring last night. This is my first attempt. It's rough and I'm not happy with the palette, but it is a beginning.
In related news, I've decided to really, really focus on my drawing this year and see about taking it up a notch or two.

NSFW- Sensible Armor and some drawings.

Some you've seen, some are new; all are first time on the blog in their current form. The 'unsafe' one is at the bottom of the post.

First this is a scene from Skull. I've posted partial versions of it before, but here is the finished product.

Next here is a grey warrior, certain to be a prominent NPC in my up coming ME game, but also an illo for Jack Shear's Devilmount projct:

The atmosphere plant at Abyss Island, Caves of Empire

Another atmosphere station, this one in  the remote Magus Cave.

A map of the HPL's Dreamlands Underworld; it is where my Gothic group is right now:

And the NSFW you were promised; I give you Sensible Armor. 

[Inspiration?] Sifting through the ephemera of the 20th century with the technology of the 21st.

Before we go any further, let's get a couple of things out of the way. First, If you have a fetish for print or analog media in general, this post may not be for you. Sorry, but I have gone from being a dedicated book sniffer to the worst kind of technophile in the space of a couple of years.

Second, if you have the means, go ahead and get yourself a tablet. As with the mobile phone, the Internet, and DVD, tablets represent a technology I completely sneered at until I experienced it as a user. To make the level of my conversion clear, laptops were something I knew I'd want from the first I heard of them. I love laptops. Two days before someone gave me this fucking tablet, I was planning to upgrade mine. I have barely turned it on since, and will likely never own another.

I'll touch on the tablet thing again before the end, but the soul of the message is: get a fucking tablet.


The tablet has opened up some doors for me, and made some media I might have had access to, but otherwise ignored, very attractive indeed. This media is really fucking cheap, or absolutely free.

To begin with the cheap, allow me to suggest the MDCU, or Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited. This is a service you can buy from Marvel that gives you access to over 10k comics in their backlog. There is a ton of great stuff on there from every era in Marvel's history. I have lost entire evenings just trying to decide what to read. There are gaps here and there, but by and large, most stuff I've looked at doesn't have this problem. Have you ever wanted to read Stan and Jack's Thor, or FF, or Cap? It's all on there along with a ton of other awesome stuff, including Greg Pak's entire run on the Hulk; the Annihilation event (all of it); old Starlin Cosmic stuff, and lots of newer comics too. The scans are universally awesome. Reading this stuff on a tablet is better than reading the print versions, imo, if only because I can expand and contract panels with a touch of my finger. The MDCU costs 60$ for twelve months, or 10$ for one month. I did the full year and have already easily read many times what I spent worth of comics, and I just finished the second month. I'm looking forward to when Hickman's FF run is up in its entirety, because that is some good shit.
Anyway, you can sign up at the Marvel site: http://marvel.com/comics

Moving on, to the free: The internet archive is a wondrous thing. There is so much stuff on there it blows my mind.
Really, though what I'm into now is three things, old pulps, silent movies and radio shows. Radio shows and movies can of course be enjoyed on a variety of hardware with equal ease; pdfs of old pulp magazines, however, are a joy to behold on the tablet. You get the ads and other ephemera, like Horace Gold's essay in the very first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, wherein he discusses how the future covers of Galaxy can be counted on to be tasteful and will never embarrass you on the subway. Stuff like this helps me put the stories in the context of their time, as does seeing the crappy paper and the groovy 50's illos. In case you haven't clued in, am absolutely obsessed with context.

Here is a link: http://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1950-10

Of course, you can look at these magazines and comics on any number of devices, but the tablet is is like a book in its weight and heft, and does not require physical contortions if you want to stretch out on the bed with it- and, this is huge for me, you can adjust the font size with the twitch of a finger. A twitch of the fucking finger. Also it doesn't get hot. Ever.


I feel comfortable suggesting the ipad2' because it is what I own. If you own or have your eye on something different, that is cool too. I'm not interested in any kind of 1998 Apple vs whatever argument here; and I don't watch TV so the ads have no impact on me or my life. If they piss you off, that strikes me as your problem, not Apple's.

I'll post some reviews of some of this stuff over the next couple weeks if there is any interest. In the meantime, whatever you do, do not read the Kree-Skrull war, unless you are looking for that final nudge towards suicide.

Here are some pulp covers, all of these can be found on the archive. The Adventure has a fucking Harold Lamb novel in it! If you don't know what that means, think REH less the race science and sorcery. Go read and be free.