The Part Of Me That Believes in Superheroes

gleams like gold tonight. On 11/4/92 I felt like this too.

Here's to the new America. May the Warren Ellis style Uberhero look as confusing as a Kabuki Play to us real soon.

Mendel Used Pea Plants, I Use Blogs...

I've just finished cross-breeding the old CREATORS ON DEMAND blog with this blog with imperfect results. Some picture links have gone flooey on the imported stuff and apparently now I wrote the entire CREATORS ON DEMAND blog. I'll see about proper attribution now, but FYI.

We Are, In Fact, Doing Fine

There's been two kinds of posts this year, posts about books and posts about mortality. No foolin', it's been quite a year. Ian, Hanna and I lost our dads to cancer, Will had a hair-raising case of snakeyguts, and I'm sure Carter and Jeremy are looking up as they walk for a random falling piano. When these things happen, there's a natural urge to correlate bad events; that's just human nature.

But things are calming down again. We all catch ourselves forgetting about our passed loved ones for a moment, letting context shake us out of it when we decide to tell Dad about something that happened. For John Bennett, my father in law, it's mashed potatoes that take me out of the reality of a world without him. John was always in pursuit of the perfect mashed potato. I've seen him sit down at a restaurant in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and order only the side of mashed potatoes, testing each bite. We talked quite a bit about texture, taste, do you add sour cream to yours, chicken or beef gravy, all the dimensions. After that day we spoke variously about mashed potatoes, and I never fail to think of John when I sit down and find a pile of them in front of me. I suspect I will never eat them as John Thomas ever again--I will always wonder what John Bennett would say about them.

So many things make me think of my own dad that I find myself immersing in them. I watched DEADWOOD again (Dad's quickcritic quote: "The best Western anything ever."); I sit in the chair where he worked out his post-chemo shivers; I go back and vet the massive family tree I put together at his request. And I expect I'll keep doing those things.

Will has an arc of little laparoscopic scars that still itch a bit, and we were all relieved when he was back to relieving himself in a solid and cogent manner. After all the digestive concerns Dad had before, I have lost all shame in talking about pooping. It's not unlike talking about mashed potatoes, really. Will and I even went to Des Moines the weekend after he got out of the hospital; I got to drive so he could sit comfortably, and talk turned to scary stories. We spun plots about a story that will turn the idea of an energy crisis into something a bit more fantastic and immediate. Over that weekend Carter and I laid out what media we would use in each section of MAN IS VOX 3. We even moved the script around a bit, pumped it up. It was the most normal I'd felt all year. If I could do all of that while Hanna was giving me a big hug, I'd never leave.

Carter's doing well, Jeremy's back problems are behind him (ha ha), Ian is pumping out an incredible amount of pages on his new book, heck I even got a reasonably-priced large-format scanner that works like a charm. 2008 will go down as what football teams call a rebuilding year for us. I say that, but of course Carter already has an art book and a new full color 252Z adventure (both available via our online store). You can't stop the mighty Carter.

This stuff feeds into our art; you'll read about all this stuff again.

Will's Guts

It's been the kind of year where surprises are slathered in a drippy, shiny baste of worry. After losing my father and Hanna and Ian losing theirs, we're all a bit on edge when medicine is brought up at all. ("Anyone got an Advil?" "Seriously, dude. Show some respect." "Huh?") Time usually heals these things; you stack up enough experience after the event and it dilutes the impact. You go from "this is the first thing I've eaten since Dad died" to "World War Z's a pretty fun read. Dad would like it. Er...." to...well I'll let you know when I get there.

Another way to dampen the general sense of panic that everyone is but a soap bubble on the wind is to get an email from Will to the tune of:

Sooo...its been a bizarre couple of days. Saturday night I felt extremely gassy and a searing pain in my gut around 7. Then about 10pm I started puking. This went out for about 24 hours straight. Went over to my folks Sunday morning to try to feel better but my condition worsened. So when I couldn't move between bouts of projectile green vomiting, it was time to go to the ER about 8 on Sunday. They gave me an bunch of painkillers and anti-nausea drugs and did an xray and cat scan. Turns out that I had this piece of fatty tissue that had kind of wrapped around my small intestine since birth, but had never blocked things until now. No food was being digested, it was only coming back up. So they did the tube down the nose into the stomach to suck up all the greenish brown goodness and hooked me up to an IV with salt water and morphine. Don't know if any of you have had that pump tube from the nose to the stomach, but I can't even do justice to the agony in words. About a quart of more vomit came out as they inserted it inch by inch. Didn't sleep much sunday night either, but was able to get surgery pretty early in the morning. They did it labroscopically(sp?), with cameras and hooks on tubes to remove the tissue that was tangling this up. Guess the surgery only took a half an hour and was successful. I woke up but was out of it for most of monday. Phantasmagorical delirium. My buddy Geoff came by who is a doctor and was a good patient advocate and Monday Night Football watcher. The folks have also been by to hang out. Weird fever dreams and and was even talking to one of the nurses in my sleep, apparently. Something about dirt bike magazines, I vaguely remember. There are a lot of vital signs checking throughout the night so sleep is a luxury I'm still catching up on. Your guess is as good as mine. Hoping the girl I'm seeing will come by tonight as well. Today is going much better and the nose tube is out and I'm farting and pissing to beat the band. Still no #2's yet, and have potassium added to the IV cocktail, which is kind of uncomfortable going in, but on the whole I'm on the mend. About 5 scars on my belly that are healing up pretty well. I should be here at least today and tomorrow, not sure after that. It may call into question the Des Moines trip this weekend. I'm hoping I won't be too sore to drive after I get weaned of the morphine. Which reminds me, it's time for me to press the painkiller button. Aaaaaahhhh... Well, just letting you know what's been going on. Not much else to do but blab to folks and shoot up.

It's good to be reminded that people are simultaneously vulnerable and unstoppably kill-proof. My faith in humanity's resilience is restored--everybody out of the boyinthe bubbles!

John Robert Bennett 1939-2008

John Robert Bennett, father to Ian Bennett and Hanna Bennett, passed away early this morning after a long illness. John was always a source or inspiration and encouragement to all of us here at Candle Light Press. Details of his remembrance will be forthcoming; the way he lived his life, you can be certain that it will be a crowded event.

He told me that once back when he was a stringer for Rolling Stone that he got backstage at a Captain Beefheart concert to take pictures back in the day. I nearly passed out. I always knew there were volumes that could be filled with the interesting incidents of his life, but for now I'll just fill a small blog post with my appreciation for this wonderful man.

One more picture for now, the rest of the one above. John's on the left, then Hanna, me, and Ian.

Seeya later John. Thanks for dinner.

COVERED: Ed #3 and #4

ED was shutting down by the time we’d acquired these great covers for issues #3 and #4. I did a real stalker-y thing and got one of those national phone directories on cd-rom (this was pre dexonline.com, kids!) and just tapped in unique names of comics artists I liked. I got to talk to Herb Trimpe that way, which was completely amazing. If ED had made it to #5 I’d have gotten a cover from him for sure (he was busy at the time getting his art degree--true story). As it is we got a Dan Callahan And The Sand Pirates cover from Val Mayerik and a stellar-as-usual ink job from Romeo Tanghal over Carter’s rendering of The Glory Guard. Dan Callahan confronted pirates from the ancient world who popped through a portal that inverted some things for them. Dirt was like water to them, though rocks were ok to stand on; they sailed through Colorado pillaging and stealing the future bride of one Dan Callahan, a student at the Colorado School of Mines.

The Glory Guard was a WWII-set superhero piece with the attendant stories about Nazi saboteurs and blowing up Mount Rushmore. We may yet see more of these folks. Just seeing that jackass The Yankee again (yes he likes to hold up his arms in a Y when he says his name) gives me ideas.

COVERED: Ed #1 and #2

ED was technically a 3CG comic, but it was me, Carter, Jeremy, along with Will Beard. It also featured the first appearance nationally (the book was distributed via Diamond) of Zoo Force, as well as Nikki Harris. The name and the logo came from a bunch of work shirts our great friend and ED benefactor Brian McNeil gave us from his workplace. A guy named Ed ordered a bunch of new workshirts before quitting, so Brian gave them to us. We used them as a group convention uniform at that year’s Chicago Comicon to great effect. People were calling out “Ed!” on sight. ED was set to be a monthly anthology of rotating stories, with the first few covers to be rotated among the main serials.

ED #2 never made it to print, owing to an unscrupulous printer who enjoyed taking front money more than actually printing. It’s a shame, too, as Phil Hester did a swell Major Danjer And His Platoon Of Doom cover for it. By the time we were able to extract our art from this printer (his name’s Marcos Guerra and you should never ever give him money) the clock had run out for delivery to Diamond and we had to cancel the series.

The cover to ED #2 is reproduced here for the first time anywhere.