Demo by Brian Wood & Becky Cloonan REVIEW

Alright! I finished another TPB today! This time, I took the advice of Wizard Magazine (which isn't always wise) and it seems to have paid off. This book is a solid book which highly entertained me through about half of the stories. Half of the book was GREAT, and the other half was good. Mr. Wood is apparently a great storyteller, and he has quite a bit of an artistic flair to his writing. I appreciate the "Indie" feel that this collection has, even if the art is oftentimes sub-par. The art is not bad, and in some cases it is great. The consistency of the art, however, wavers throughout the book. This may be an attempt to vary the art styles, but to me it comes off as ill contrived. That said, art in a sequential art book should be 50% of the score, but if the art lacks but the writing is phenomenal (i.e. in DC/Vertigo's Sandman), I tend to over look the art a bit. BUT, in this case the writing also wavers a little bit as well.

ART

This seemed to be the first thing that I noticed to be distracting in the book. It starts out being heavily Manga influenced with a few hyper detailed scenes that suggested, to me a little immaturity in the art. After the first few issues, the art changes a bit to a more thick inked Indie style for one issue, then its back to Manga stuff. Then the art'll go towards Frank Miller for one issue, then back to Manga. Photostat Hyper Manga - back to Manga. Sometimes it even mixes the art a little. I understand changing the art to coincide with the story, but just doing it for three issues out of twelve seemed disjointed. All in all, the art amplified the story more than it reduced its quality, so I would have to say it was acceptable.

WRITING

This is really where the book takes the biggest hit in my opinion. Don't get me wrong - none of the book is bad by any means, its just that about half the stories are incredible, while the other half are good. The writing seemed to stray from the concept on a few stories, which was extremely distracting. The beginning guise is that these are everyday people with interesting abilities, which works extremely well when Brian Wood sticks to the concept. As a result from his straying, the book doesn't feel cohesive as a whole, and that is the biggest drawback to Demo.

THE FINAL SAY

This book is great. It realistically registers with your emotions most of the time, and even when it doesn't, its still good. It registers a healthy 8/10 on the Richard White SCALES OF JUDGEMENT! This book is a good Indie staple, but there are better Indie books out there, but when Mr. Wood gets a little more experience under his belt... Watch out!

New Audio Bio Posted

I'm tired today, so the best I could do tonight is post another Audio Bio song. Tomorrow I should have more to post, including a review of Demo by Brian Woods, as well as a rant or two about comics. I know you can't wait! For your enjoyment, here's a picture of Sir William Shakespeare. Go Figure.

Howl's Moving Castle

Watched a great movie tonight: Howl's Moving Castle! I'm not sure if it was so great because of the fact that i haven't seen a movie in a while, but I have this sneaky suspicion that it was just a great movie. This movie was chock full of all the things that make a movie great. Strong Characters, Symbolism by the boatloads, and throwbacks to the old fairy tales. Miyazaki is definitely my favorite anime director, even though I haven't yet seen all of his films. This movie is on even par with my previous Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away. I may even prefer Howl's Moving Castle to Spirited Away simply by way of proximity. I won't go into detail as to why the movie was so great, you'll have to see for yourself. I will, however, register its score on the Richard White SCALES OF JUDGEMENT: 9/10! The only reason this movie did not achieve the coveted 10/10 is due to the fact that it is anime, and by its nature leaves a little to be desired (in other words, it strange and sometimes a little disjointed). One observation that I have made about Japanese culture is that they are either: A) Extremely free with no creative restriction at all, or B) Extremely repressed and obsessed with fantasy. My vote is for B. I may have more on this train of thought later. Until then, watch Howl's Moving Castle. Even if you've seen it before!

My Audio Bio Blog started

OK. For anyone who really wants to take a look at my life, you should check out my new Blog for my Audio Biography as advertised in yesterday's blog. I'll be posting there fairly regularly as songs come to me and such on and so forth. I'll also be posting a little essay/explanation as to why this song belongs in my soundtrack. Who knows? Maybe I'll even make a physical copy as well. I want to be able to actually put up the audio files along with the lyrics and essay so that everyone can get a feel for the referenced song... I'll look into it anyway.

Here's the link!

My Audio Bio

How many times have you heard a song that takes you back to a memory of a certain person or event in your life? Have you ever been listening to music and thought, "This would definitely go on the soundtrack to my life!"? I have! I've often thought of how cool it would be to track out my life's soundtrack with a description/ essay of why the song is important. As a matter of fact, I believe that it would be a lucrative web site venture for someone who had the time and money to develop a site dedicated to making the soundtrack of your life. Imagine - design your own soundtrack! Choose from thousands of songs, purchase them, have multiple copies pressed for your family and friends, including a bio booklet explaining each song, all for low prices from the accumulation of songs! Its a gold mine I say! A Gold MINE!

But since I don't have the time, nor the money to develop this idea, I am considering creating a new blog focusing on my personal Audio Biography in a non-sequitor fashion. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll do the real thing...

I'll post here when(if) it begins...

Awake, Awake, O Zion!

At long last, I finally get to reveal my plans for the look of the next series that Kent will be doing here! As of right now, the title might be either Awake, Awake, O Zion! or it might turn into Restoration. I prefer Awake, Awake, as it allows for a more creative outlet for the series design. This message has been kicking around upstairs for a few weeks. It started out as Spiritual War but was quickly changed to Awake, Awake; and now, since the underlying theme is Restoration, it is up in the air to just name it that. Anyway, aside from Isaiah 52:1 on the design, the inspiration for the theme and imagery comes from Joel 2, and since the whole chapter is too long to post here, you should go to Bible Gateway and read the scripture, especially if you want to know about the imagery in the design. Here's to hoping this design gets approved!

Ultra: Seven Days by the Luna Bros. REVIEW

Well! Yesterday I finished another TPB by the Luna Brothers. This was their first comics work, an eight issue mini series that garnered a lot of acclaim when it was released in 2004. I thought the book was great, and I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't pick up the series when it first came out. The characterization, concept, and art really came together in this work with only a few minor setbacks.

Books with Character
I am a sucker for good characterization. This is what makes it for me in a book, novel, movie, or any other storytelling medium. Luckily, Ultra has great characterization in spades. Characters remain consistent throughout this collection and they change and grow as the series progresses. The pacing with which the story was told was excellent. It read more like a good drama than a superhero book, and that's always a welcome change.

The Concept
The concept of Ultra is unique and a no-brainer. Someone really should've thought of this before (if they have, forgive me.)! The superheroes & heroines in this story are treated more like they would be treated in real life - as celebrities. They have the tabloids, sponsors, ads, talk show circuits and even their own awards ceremony for their performances. Spot on Hollywood, baby!

The Plot Thins
Here lies my only qualm with this collection. While both the concept and characterization were awesome, the story felt very contrived. It was okay, but it felt... wrong or incomplete. The Bros. went to all this trouble to set up these believable characters in this believable world, only to make the major events... not that major. We start out very reserved, and then there is some intrigue, but that never really pays off in the way that you want it to. One could argue that the plot was not really the point in the story, and rightly so, because the focus was definitely on the vignette of Pearl Pendalosa, but the experience could have been made perfect if the plot felt as if it mattered. The plot was okay, it just wasn't up to par with the rest of the aspects of the book.

The Final Say!
While I definitely enjoyed this book in its entirety, the plot was a small misstep in my opinion, thereby earning a very respectful 8/10 on the Richard White scale of JUDGEMENT! I highly reccommend this book to anyone who enjoys comics or characterization, especially any friends that may need to relearn their love for the sequential arts. Wink wink, nudge nudge, Drew.

Such Great Heights part 2

Okay, to further solidify the notion that this is currently my favorite song, and one of my new favorite artists here are the lyrics:

I am thinking it's a sign that the freckles
in our eyes are mirror images and when
we kiss they're perfectly aligned
and I have to speculate that God himself
did make us into corresponding shapes like
puzzle pieces from the clay
and true, it may seem like a stretch, but
its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
head when you're away when I am missing you to death
when you are out there on the road for
several weeks of shows and when you scan
the radio, I hope this song will guide you home

they will see us waving from such great
heights, "come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"come down now," but we'll stay...

I tried my best to leave this all on your
machine but the persistent beat it sounded
thin upon listening and
that frankly will not fly. you will hear
the shrillest highs and lowest lows with
the windows down when this is guiding you home

they will see us waving from such great
heights, "come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"come down now," but we'll stay...

Matisyahu

Hey! You know, original music is really hard to come by. And by original I mean something that is not so original that it sucks, like some "out there" bands are. Enter Matisyahu, the Hasidic Jewish Reggae Hip Hop Rapper. Oh, yeah, that's a mouthful. He's getting so popular now that he's created his own sub genre. That's saying something! I've known about him since his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2004 and the subsequent video traversing the internet. Now, I haven't yet had the time to listen to all of his songs, but all the ones I have listened to are spectacular. He's not trying to be fake, he just combines 2 things that he loves, God and Reggae/Rap. I know that his beliefs differ from mine about Jesus, the Messiah, but his love for my God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, shines brightly through his songs. If you've never listened to any of his songs, go do so now! You owe it to yourself!

Katamari do your best!

Let it be known that I am a huge Katamari Damacy fan. I own the original and I Heart Katamari, and I plan on getting My My Katamari for the PSP this week sometime. So when Andrew sent me a link to this Katamari video, it reminded me of when we did a few videos of our own. The Coach Jerk in this video also reminded us of a time when we were in high school, talking just after school in the hallway before going home. We weren't being vulgar, not that we never were, but we weren't at the time, when A Coach Jerk of Southside High School, Coach Bright ran out of his classroom screaming at us at the top of his lungs.

"GET OUT!!" said he, "GET OUT OF HERE! TALKING LIKE A BUNCH OF TRASH CANS!"

"hahaha" said we.

One of us, I believe it was either Andrew or Jody Young said, "I didn't know trash cans could talk!" Which, of course, enfuriated proud Mr. Small Time High School Coach.

He screamed, "GETTT OOOUUUUTTTT!!!!" in this demonic sounding voice, and we retreated, laughing at him as we went.

Sadly, that was us "sticking it to the man". We were such rebels.

Enjoy this video, and remember that jerk Coach you had in high school. And if you are that jerk coach, just remember: We're all gonna laugh at you anyway.

Don't go breaking my art...

OK, here's my latest piece for this weekend's services: Matters of the Heart. We were scheduled once again to go into the Awake! Awake O, Zion! series, but last minute happenings around the church in physical and spiritual hearts prompted the changes. Usually when something happens en masse, God is communicating with you, which is why repetition is very important in matters of faith. You know "from the mouths of two or three witnesses" an' stuff. Kent had what is essentially an exhaustive "heart physical" this week and others around the church had been having heart flutters a lot, not to mention the soul (heart) issues that have come up in the last few weeks.

We didn't want to go all mamsy-pamsy valentine's day with the heart design, and since part of God's communication of this message was through physical tests, I decided to go with an enhanced X-Ray type image combined with a 3D image of an actual heart. I thought it was okay at that point, but one of the big sellers for me was screening an image of the vessels on the heart into the design. Making the M for Matters was a no-brainer of course, but I wanted that to look designed, so I conjured it up. The coup de grace was adding the LED ECG blip at the bottom of the image, which really made me happy.

What really took a while which this image was getting it to look great with our printer. Often times if you have differing contrasts and fades in a print, such as seen around the edges of an X-Ray for an example, the image can look great on screen and really poor printed out. I had to print about 8 copies from Photoshop before I was happy, and then when I took the image to our layout program, it printed much darker from it. So I had to print about 4 revisions from that until I finally got the finished look, and here it is, in all its gory glory.

Beatdownitis

Its funny how far a little encouragement will take someone.

I continually suffer from Beatdownitis. You know the disease. You've worked really hard on something and you start to actually appreciate the product of your labors. You become intertwined with the object of your toiling to such a level that you feel as though you have invested much of yourself into it, and, concurrently, if you are like me, you've invested yourself too much. This happens fairly frequently in my life, as I strive to better myself, my life, and my art.

But here is where Beatdownitis becomes inflamed. Someone comes along, usually someone you respect a great deal, and with a flippant, careless word - destroys your drive. Dismantles your ambition. Disintegrates your composure. They might not have even mentioned the specific object of your work or art and suddenly you find yourself lower than low. You hover there - inches above despair itself - desparately trying to recover the momentum that has been lost. It often takes an entire day to pick up the scattered pieces.

Part of this is addressed by Jesus in Matthew 12:33-37 when he states this:
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Of course these verses are obviously directed at the religious spirit of the Pharisees, but there is another meaning to me. It speaks also to me that we should always be careful what is in our hearts because idle words are destructive, not only to those around us, but also to our souls. Our carelessness brings out what is in our hearts, and that may be deplorable to others and more likely to God.

Check out Ephesians 4:29 - "Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers." This should speak volumes to everyone, anywhere. It is a simple verse, yet profound. How often do we transmit Beatdownitis to others? How often do we invite the disdain of God and others. How quickly we condemn ourselves!

However, there is a Guide - an all knowing voice inside every believer that, when we're tuned in, shouts direction plainly into your consciousness. It is the Holy Spirit, and he yokes our thoughts and teaches us the right things to say, if only we will listen. The Bible clearly states that the Holy Spirit is with all believers, which means that all of His gifts are open to us, one being the spirit of wisdom from which this "spiritual conscience" flows. We should open up and allow Him to show us our folly and lead us to grace...

I challenge everyone, myself included, to speak out of the charity of our hearts - to love when we could loathe; to edify when we could demolish; to enable instead of disable. Make someone's day! Make someone happy, and make God smile. Together we can eliminate Beatdownitis!

Iron & Wine

I freaking love this music! I just found out about them through the M&M commercial from the other day. I love the folk feel of all of their songs. It kinda gives you that laid back feeling. It is great music for creativity, and it has come along just at the right time when I needed some new inspiration music.

Tony the Tiger says, "THEY'RE GRRRRRREAT!"

REVIEW - Invincible Ultimate collection by Robert Kirkman

I finally finished the last book in the Amazon.com Purchase from last month. It was the largest book I purchased then, and that was part of the reason it took me so long to read it. The other part was due to the fact that the first arc in this collection was poorly paced and poorly written. That being said, after I finished with the first 6 issues or so, the story got interesting. I had made up my mind not to read another Invincible trade until I read the second half of the book. So I'll review the book in parts.

Part 1

The origin of Invincible happened to be the most generic and uninspired opening to a series I believe I have ever read. It was rushed along so that we could get into the action, and frankly, as a writer you can jump into the action without making the story feel completely disjointed. One minute Mark is a regular kid. The next he's a super hero. TA-DAAAA! That's pretty much it. The origin was bad, the art was bad, the pacing was bad, the action was bad. It was all pretty much just bad. Until I read Part 2

Part 2

Now that was a little better. It still wasn't my all time favorite, but the second half made the first awkwardness more bearable. I still don't like the whole Guardians of the Globe thing, although I understand why it was done that way. Y'see it really gets my goat when people use archetypes to add "instant character" to their creations. Why would you do that? Just flesh out the characters yourself! If you can't write the JLA for DC, then don't write them with different names for you. I could understand if it were a bit more of a parody, and there was a little bit of that, but come on! I would care more about what happened to these characters if they had no personality, rather having stolen personalities. HOWEVER, this did not affect the story really at all. It just made me a little uptight. The art was different on this arc, and it showed. It was similar in tone, but much better executed. I enjoyed the pacing on this one a bit more. It didn't feel like there were huge gaps I was supposed to fill in with my imagination. AND, there were a couple of times I laughed out loud in this arc, so THAT also is good. In short, it left me wanting a bit more which is a good thing.

The Final Say!

According to my new personal rating system, I give the Invincible Ultimate Collection volume one a 6/10. If the first arc felt as good as the second, this book would have earned a solid 8, but alas, it wasn't. As a matter of fact, if I had read the first TPB instead of getting a 13 issue collection, it would have rated a measly 4 and I would never have opened an Invincibe book again. As is, I will try Vol. 2 a chance when it comes out in a few weeks.

Such Great Heights

Have you seen that M&M commercial "kaleidoscope"? The song on that commercial was made for that spot. What a perfect song. I had to find out today what it was. Its actually on the Garden State Soundtrack and is a cover of a Postal Service song entitled "Such Great Heights" by Iron and Wine. If you like music at all, then you must listen to this song. Without Question!

Women & Menorah

I did change this week's design per Kent's instructions to portray the 7 Spirits of God as a Menorah. I just wish we had this image at the beginning of the series so we could have played off of it a little more. Once again, as most of my design stock, I got the image from istock.com and manipulated it (it was a hanukiah menorah) to accurately reflect a true menorah. From there, I added Candles and flames, but I thought that the image itself needed a little more explanation, so I replaced the candles with the 7 spirits. I left the flames burning above the words for a little more symbolism and effect. I would have loved to have begun with the series to light each spirit as we came to it, culminating with the Spirit of the Lord, but we're just now getting to theme our services correctly.

The four hebrew letters on the design are the tetragrammaton, or Yahweh. I love the way the hebrew alphabet looks, and I am currently working on a design for the back of our bulletin featuring Shalom in Hebrew. Alas, I won't post it, as it is very similar to this design...

Next week's series begins the Awake! Awake! O, Zion! series, which I am looking forward to the design! I'll post that ASAP! Enjoy!

Spiritual War

Yo! I'm back to fight the evil! I worked half a day on a design for our weekend services, the theme of which was to be based on Spiritual Warfare. Having designed a new graphic, I found that the schedule was changed and I will be spending the remainder of the afternoon working on a design for the renamed series. I will most likely use this design down the road at some point, but I thought I would post it here for your viewing enjoyment. Huzzah!

I wanted to do a take on an old WWII poster for a graphic, but I couldn't find one that wsa good enough, and I can't paint, so that went down the drain. I found the helmet on istock.com and thought that the striking image over black was pretty impactful as it was... too bad I have to give up on it now. I had just gotten into a great flow of creativity with this theme, but c'est la vie!

The new design will be Awake! Awake! O, Zion. A bit more challenging of a design, but I'm sure it'll come to me. I have a few ideas kickin' around upstairs... We'll see. I'm sure that if I design something for that, then I'll post it here as well...

Miserable.

I spent the whole of last weekend working on my aforementioned Bathroom floor problem. To top it all off, I've been sick for almost a week. I feel as though I've been beaten down. So much so that I laid out of a half a day of work today, even though I shouldn't have. I have a lot of projects that I am working on and I really needed to be there to work on them. I just couldn't though. I tried to do research, but it all just turned into me staring at the internet. I made some calls, but I felt exhausted, so I came home and went to sleep, resting for 2 or 3 more hours. I feel a little better right now, and I hope tomorrow will be a much more productive day. We'll see...

There must be something wrong with me.

I've always read comics. Growing up I always preferred Marvel comics because they had the most characters that I could relate to. This week, however, and I believe this is the first time ever, I purchased more DC books than Marvel books. Here's the list:

Okay, so I counted them. DC wins 4 to 2. It seems that DC finally gets what makes a good story. I just wish Geoff Johns was as good on Green Lantern as he is on Infinte Crisis. Anybody who reads comics and is a DC fan enjoying the moreso than normal characterizations can thank one man.

Joe Quesada. I know! He works at Marvel, but when he taunted DC, they listened. They hired Dan Didio and started working on "Marvelizing" the DCU. Oh, you might not think that's what they are doing, but it is. Suddenly, characterization is important in most DC books (except anything with Hal Jordan in it), and that's not something DC fans are used to. I'm rooting for DC, and apparently I'm supporting them financially as well.

But, Marvel is still my favorite. For now.

Hokey Smokes

Not sure why life has to be so well choreographed.

Choreographed in a hellish, tormenting way.

I have just closed on a refinancing of my property and I get a leak in my bathroom. I have decided on fixing the problem myself, therefore adding hours of torment to my already jam packed schedule. I would hire someone to do all my dirty work for me, but I had to refi because I had no money. HOPEFULLY, I won't screw it up too badly. I've already torn up all the linoleum (blechh.) and now I am prepping to replace the flooring and then tile it.

Its not so much that i'm bothered by the work involved, its just that I'm not that much of a man, really. I sit at a computer all day long, making "pretty pictures and videos." I play video games and read comic books in my spare time. I'm not that good at "manly things." As a matter of fact, the only manly thing I'm good at is rooting for Crimson Tide Football. Everything else is pretty much sissified, and yes, that is a technical term.

SO. When you have some time today, send up a prayer to my little bathroom, that it may not be permanently scarred by my ill at ease man hands. Oy Vey.

Busy.

Very Busy today! Had a long day involving many trials... My bathroom floor somehow has a leak which doesn't leak under the house, so I know at least what I'll be doing come Friday morning. Re-flooring the bathroom. YES! And for a non-man like me, that's all the excitement I can handle today. Hopefully I'll be able to post a design or two tomorrow... but don't count on it. I'm really FLOORED at home. HAHAHAhahah... meh.