At the beginning of 2008 I located an artist named Kelli Davis and we spent the first half of the year putting together a serious pitch for BORDER CROSSINGS. In July we both went to the San Diego Comic Con and shopped the pitch around. It received a lot of positive responses. Unfortunately, comics couldn’t provide Kelli with what she needed. So after a few months searching, I have a new partner in Andrew Sides. Our version of BORDER CROSSINGS is ready and it’s much darker and weirder than the others. When we have word on a publisher I’ll share info, but in the meantime here’s one of Andrew’s pages:
I began a second pitch over the summer, while I waited for feedback on my thesis. This book will be called PARTIAL INVASIVE and will hopefully appear as an original graphic novel in black & white. Artist Justin Markure is working together with me on the pitch package and it looks extraordinary. Here’s a glimpse of a potential cover:
I spent most of the first part of the year teaching at Georgia State, researching my thesis and preparing for my presentation of this paper in Savannah at the SSCA. Savannah was gorgeous and made me think about Georgia very differently. In April, Kelly & I went and saw Naomi Klein speak from her book The Shock Doctrine.
Lots of weddings this year! Went home to New England in May, to celebrate Ron & Jen Bilodeau’s wedding. The coast was misty and gray, and it was great to see the ocean and old friends again. Later in the month we celebrated Kris Curry’s wedding here in Georgia. It was serene and comfortable. Their friends played bluegrass and enjoyed the outdoors together. In August we drove 12+ hours to Philadelphia and went to Jan & Andy Sparks’ wedding. Andy is my oldest friend; we’ve known each other since I was 14. I was glad to be there to share that moment with him. The city was vibrant and alive.
I successfully defended my Master’s thesis at the end of June. My official graduation date was in August. You can read the 200+ page beast here if you like. It is about national identity and its reflection in the villains of Captain America. It was more fun to write than I thought it would be and I’m proud of the work I did. Someday perhaps, I’ll translate it from academic-ese into a more user friendly document.
In July, I flew to San Diego and took part in Comic Con International. The city was breezy and beautiful and I went running along the boardwalk after I settled into my hotel. There were two goals in being there. The first was to pitch BORDER CROSSINGS and meet other comics professionals. The second was to study the convention and its participants with Prof. Matthew Smith. The essay I wrote afterward considered the comic book fan and their need to be “close” to comic book creators. As I said above, the pitch went well. Did I mention how much FUN San Diego was? I also went to the zoo.
We did our usual Dragon Con weekend in September. Lauren Pettapiece came to visit and we stayed in the Marriott downtown. I saw a ridiculous amount of human flesh and was caught awkwardly alone in an elevator with this Donna Troy. I also had my picture taken with “Fuzzy Captain America” and “Steampunk Batman.” The later asked if I wanted him to 1) be my friend, or 2) kick my ass. I chose friends.
From August until early October I wallowed in a sea of job applications and weird interviews. It got scary for awhile there, being unemployed as the news continued to report on our economic self-destruction. I learned that bizarre beauty product facilities seem to be commonplace in the Atlanta design job market. I finally scored a contract job that lasted until early December. The company was in Alpharetta and I had a 45 minute to 1.5 hour commute each way every day. I also freelanced on book design and picked up a teaching job at the Art Institute of Atlanta. In December I was hired full-time to do graphic design and marketing for the Georgia State University Library. Things are much better now.
This year, together with listing all of the events of my 2008 here, I decided to make a mix of music that I felt was representative of my year. Below are explanations for each of the songs and why they’re included on the mix:
Embrace - “End of A Year”
I always think of this song toward the end of December. The Embrace album is probably one of my all time favorites. Those who knew me in college might remember that I often wore a black sweatshirt with this album’s cover art printed onto a patch sewn on the back. That poor sweatshirt was tattered and dingy by the time I retired it. I always loved Ian Mackaye’s line near the middle of the song, “It’s the end of a fucked up year. There’s another one coming. Oh shit!” 2008 had some tough moments for me: post-San Diego disappointment and 3 months of unemployment top the list. But the year is over and things are looking up. There’s another one coming
A Place To Bury Strangers - “Never Going Down”
Ben Jenkins turned me on to this band last year and I have to say I really like the raw noise of their S/T demo much better than the more processed re-release of some of these same songs. I saw them twice this year. Once in March when Josh Jones’ sister was visiting from New Hampshire and again in the autumn. Both times I closed my eyes and just let the wall of sound engulf me. It felt like swimming.
Bob Mould - “The Silence Between Us”
We saw Bob Mould only a day or two after the Place To Bury Strangers show, but I first heard this new song with Kelly when we went to the movies at the Landmark and they played it during the pre-film commercials. I always laugh at the lyric: “The lowland birds and crickets roared” and Kelly can attest that I always sing that part out-loud in the car. At the show, he seemed really happy on stage; grinning and constantly running around. Many thirty-somethings were also smiling.
Anti-Flag - “Kill the Rich”
In April I presented a paper about Anti-Flag and presidential rhetoric at the Southern States Communication Association. I received a “top paper” award, which was intimidating because I was the only grad student on the panel. The plus side was that we got a cheap vacation to Savannah out of it. I really enjoyed that city and the beaches nearby. When I was younger, my band Kid Company played several shows with Anti-Flag before they were a big deal. I remember listening to “Kill the Rich” over-and-over with Geoff Palmer and thinking how cool they were. Now, almost 15 years later the song has different meanings for me. I found it especially relevant from October to December when I was contracting for the 3rd largest corporation in the world, driving 45 minutes each way on 400, surrounded by road raging McCain supporters as NPR reported on the collapse of the American economy.
Converge - “First Light”
I think of Converge as my hometown band and whenever they come through Atlanta I go to the show. I usually get very excited for the few days preceding and then have whiplash for the few days following. They were here in May, right after my Georgia State teaching gig ended and I was in the middle of thesis writing.
World/Inferno Friendship Society - “Thumb Cinema”
World/Inferno were here in October, only a few days before Halloween (their most sacred of holidays). I read Jack Terricloth’s chap books during lunch the whole time I contracted for GE. His musings on suburban punkhood were amusing in light of my corporate surroundings. “Thumb Cinema” also reminds me of that time; driving back and forth on 400, gripping the steering wheel and constantly passing car wreckage. “Every new car you buy. It makes the poor baby Jesus cry.” This song must have been written for Atlantans.
Russian Circles - “Harper Lewis”
When I first started grad school I made an iTunes playlist of instrumental music to listen to while I slogged through 8 hours a day of Foucault, Appadurai and Laclau. Somehow, the first Russian Circles album made it to that list and I subconsciously absorbed it while studying. When I wrote my 200+ page thesis this year I spent a majority of the time listening to their latest album Station and Clint Mansell’s soundtrack to The Fountain. Most of that time I was in coffee houses around town, usually the second floor of the Peachtree Borders or the Caribou Coffees on Piedmont. There’s a part in this song where the drummer taps the ride cymbal that I just love. They played here earlier this year with Daughters. Like Place To Bury Strangers I just shut my eyes and swam.
Dalek - “Paragraphs Relentless”
When I first moved to Atlanta I was excited about the prospect of living in a city with a vibrant underground hip-hop scene. Maybe it’s my lack of knowledge, but I still haven’t been able to find where those shows happen. Catching Dalek at the Variety in April with RJD2 was the first hip-hop show I’ve been to here. The audience was primarily white and during Dalek’s set the only people dancing were two young hippie kids and a toddler. Still it was intense stuff. Oktupus went nuts behind his laptop table, pumping fists in the air to the dense beats as he created a wall of sound.
PJ Harvey - “Dear Darkness”
I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the latest PJ Harvey record when I bought it earlier this year. But this track stuck with me and gets repeated listens. This song leads into the darker part of this compilation, representing the period from August until November, when I didn’t have a stable job and things kept falling apart. Sometimes it feels lonely, but the chorus is so full and layered.
Joy Division - “Isolation”
It’s embarrassing that I didn’t really delve into Joy Division until just last year. I borrowed Kelly’s albums and was hooked. I was really excited when the Ian Curtis biopic Control came out earlier in the year, but after I saw it I was profoundly conflicted about how I felt about the band. The movie’s perspective is obviously written from that of Curtis’ widow, but I was left feeling like he was a pretentious, pouty jackass. His suicide somehow seemed selfish, like he used it to punish the people around him. At the same time, maybe he wasn’t in control of the black dogs that plagued him. In September, a few weeks after I saw Control, David Foster Wallace committed suicide. Again, it felt like a betrayal of some sort, some kind of violence done to the poor wives that found them. As I tried to understand DFW’s motivations I listened to a lot of Joy Division; weird parallelisms.
Genghis Tron - “I Won’t Come Back Alive”
It’s rare that I see a band I’ve never heard of that I am immediately taken with. Genghis Tron totally impressed me when they opened for Converge here in Atlanta this year. I listened to this track and “City on a Hill” often while running or working. This one has a creeping 1980s horror film vibe to it that I really like.
Amon Amarth - “Twilight of the Thunder God”
2008 was a year of Nordic rampage for me. I blazed through Matt Fraction’s THOR one-shot comics (all with awesome quasi-metal names like “God Sized,” “Man of War,” & “Reign of Blood;” Fraction totally gets it. Any THOR film should be a metal musical.) I started reading Lee & Kirby’s original THOR run in the bath. I also really enjoyed Brian Wood’s NORTHLANDERS. In my other life as Anung the Shaman I entered the land of Northrend in World of Warcraft’s Wrath of the Lich King. Through all of this Viking madness I was accompanied by Amon Amarth’s latest foray into Asgard. Taste Mjolnir’s bite!
Nachtmystium - “Ghosts of Grace”
Here’s yet another band Ben Jenkins got me into. He pitched this album to me over the phone this summer while I sat in the sun at Atlantic Station, trying to convince him that the Scissor Sisters were amazing. Assassins: Black Meddle,Pt. 1 is oddly both anthemic and spacey. For some reason I thought their name meant “night mystery,” which sounded like a softcore movie to me. It does not mean that. I totally want to write a comic book called NIGHT MYSTERY this year.
The Stranglers - “No More Heroes”
Late to the game on Joy Division. Late to the game with The Stranglers. I saw Sexy Beast alone in Harvard Square in 2000. That movie put The Stranglers on my radar, but I didn’t follow up until this year. They just sound like a filthy bar band full of dudes who gawk at women who look like Joan Collins. I was grunting along to “No More Heroes” a lot on the Rte. 400 demon hell ride of Fall 2008. Shakspearoes.
Jaguar Love - “Bats Over the Pacific Ocean”
Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to turn me on to new bands. But, early this autumn I walked into Criminal Records, liked the Jaguar Love cover art, saw the ex-Pretty Girls Make Graves/Blood Brothers tag and took a listen. I was instantly hooked. This song in particular made me happy. I often put it on in the mornings when I was driving up to Alpharetta, drinking Darjeeling tea out of a thermos. “I found a picture of my mother when she was just seventeen. Looking wild and glamorous.” I got to be better friends with my Mom this year. This reminds me of that.
Scissor Sisters - “Tits on the Radio”
Kelly and I sing this song in the car and say “tee-its” with faux southern accents afterward. It’s hilarious. Really. “There ain’t no tits on the radio.” Ben will love this.
Stan Bush - “Dare”
Some people will think this song is on here ironically. I tell you now it is not. I just genuinely love the soundtrack to the original Transformers movie. This song = Judd Nelson vs. Orson Welles. When Courtney Hutton found out I listened to this she said she imagined me in a Mentos commercial with this as the background music. Watch this clip for the truth. I really just want to go fishing at Lookout Mountain with a giant robot. I still watch this movie every couple of months, much to Kelly’s dismay. The dying robots, brief swearing, glam metal and the dark tone must have left an indelible impression on me as a kid.
Hot Water Music - “Free Radio Gainesville”
2008 ended for me with Hot Water Music at the Masquerade in Atlanta. On New Year’s eve in 1997, my band Kid Company played with them in Manchester, New Hampshire while they were on tour with Assuck. I’d never heard of them before, but I was instantly a fan. All through their set, a guy with two Mohawks kept whispering in my ear that he was going to kick my ass afterward. I just remember being emboldened by their music, not willing to back down. Eleven years later and here I am, watching them again at the end of a year, feeling confident from their anthems. I never owned No Division before but “Free Radio Gainesville” grabbed me at the show. It’s weird being a teacher now all these years later, listening to these lyrics that revved me up back then. “There’s an army charged, ready, armed to educate and demonstrate. To the masses, to the people left in the dark with the blinders on. No holding back to activate. Never holding back to activate in rebellion.”
Back from my first San Diego Comic Con. Back to oppressive heat and boredom.It’s odd how when I was there, in the convention center and surrounded by 120,000 people, all I wanted was a break from it. Now that I’m back, the world seems a lot less interesting now.
I met a lot of interesting artists and writers at SDCC. Kelli Davis and I will be getting Border Crossings out there in one form or another in the next few months. Thanks to everyone who was kind and genuine to us.
This week I’m working on a short article trying to explain the disconnect between comic book creators and their fans. There’s a weird tension there that I think has a lot to do with the assumption that comics fans should have a sort of peer relationship with the creators they admire. Once again, we have Stan Lee to thank for that. I witnessed many an angry or dysfunctional interaction between fans and creators in San Diego. This article will report on just a few of them.
2007 was both a productive and a sad year for me. I haven’t posted here in a long time, since the below post regarding Kezzy’s October passing. But every year I like to catalog what I’ve done with myself so I have a written inventory of my accomplishments.
Wrote a 22 page first issue for BORDER CROSSINGS, along with a pitch sheet for a five issue series and illustrated a map of the fictional island “Iamipea.”
My first comic, DUE NORTH #0 was published by UpDown Studio in Atlanta, GA. I wrote a back matter section discussing the origin of the story and laid out the cover, panels and lettering in InDesign.
Had a table at Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC with Lauren Pettapiece. We sold DUE NORTH and pitched BORDER CROSSINGS around. We also stayed in a lovely hotel and ate big breakfasts.
Submitted “A Disease of Its Own Kind” and “The Veiled Continent Revealed” to many horror, literary and science fiction magazines/journals. Received lots of rejection letters, including one telling me that “cannibalism is not appreciated.”
Finished 3 semesters and 7 classes for my M.A. in Communication. Wrote some papers about Winsor McCay’s rhetorical comics, Jimmy Carter and steampunk’s origins in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. I also taught Introduction to human Communication 4 times.
Read loads of books for classes, but particularly liked Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture, Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow and Hardt & Negri’s Multitude. For fun I read The Scar and Iron Council by China Mieville. I also got into the habit of reading trashy Forgotten Realms novels on the train to and from school everyday. I think I read like 9 of them this year.
Wrote my essay “From Black Flags to No Flags” about punk identity and its relationship with presidential rhetoric. This paper has received top division award for the Southern States Communication Association’s Popular Communication division. I will be presenting it in Savannah, GA in April of 2008.
Wrote 2 essays toward my thesis regarding Captain America villains and the genealogical mapping of national ideology. This thesis will be my major project for the first four months of 2008.
Made my April “Mix of the Month” club CD entitled “War on Earth.” This mix features Al Burian, Radiohead, Thrones, Challenger, Hrvatski, French Toast, Dillinger Four, Matmos, Mr. Lif, His Hero Is Gone, Clint Mansell, Kate Bush, Ben Davis, Aphex Twin, Ignition and Sinaloa.
Flew to Texas for my brother’s graduation. Flew to New England for Ben and Laurie DuBois’ wedding; also got to hang out with my friends for a few days. Flew to New England for Christmas and skiing on Mt. Sunapee.
Went to Cirque De Soleil, the Georgia Guidestones, the Atlanta Comic Con, the Atlanta Comics Expo, Momo-Con @ Georgia Tech (yikes), Dragon Con 2007, the Rembrandt etchings @ Oglethorpe University, the Atlanta Puppet Museum, played Frisbee golf in Smyrna, played paintball with classmates, saw Francis Ford Coppola speak @ GSU, saw Hot Fuzz preview, saw The Ten twice, Serenity screening in Atlanta.
Saw Converge in Athens, Red Sparrowes @ Drunken Unicorn, The Haunted & Dark Tranquility @ Masquerade, Rollergirls in Stone Mountain, August Burns Red, Evergreen Terrace and Casey Jones @ Masquerade, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black @ Roxy, Lifetime & The Draft @ Masquerade, Watain, Nachtmystium and Angelcorpse @ Drunken Unicorn, Captured By Robots @ The Earl, Turbonegro @ Center Stage, Jesu and Wolves In the Throne Room @ the Earl, Quadiliacha @ Drunken Unicorn, World/Inferno Friendship Society and Sage Francis @ Center Stage, Amon Amarth @ Masquerade, White Magic @ Drunken Unicorn, Chuck Ragan @ Masquerade.
My first ferret Kezzy passed away on October 19th. The post below explains the circumstances. He had a profound effect on my life and I still miss him terribly everyday. At the end of December we adopted a silver ferret named Nim and brought him into our family. Nim was abandoned and left to starve, but was taken in by a local shelter. He is adjusting to his new life here with us.
I just wanted to let you all know that my ferret Kezzy passed away today. He’s been struggling with living with a tumor for 2 months now and yesterday he took a major turn for the worse. He couldn’t walk, eat, drink or get to his pan. He had seizures last night and I stayed up with him until they passed and he could sleep again. Kelly and I had today to spend with him and then we brought him to the vet in the afternoon. He passed away very peacefully, slurping on his ferretone until he drifted away.
He was a very unique ferret and brought a lot of joy into my life; not an easy task, but the little man got the job done.
I just showed the whole LOLCats meme to my human communication class the other day, using it as an example of syntax (and why animals don’t have it). But now we have LOLthulhu, and an even better example. Like animals, elder gods and shoggoths can form word sounds, but are unable to combine them syntactically. This is why they want to conquer the world and render humanity as cosmically insignificant. The horror.
We caught a showing of Grindhouse at the GSU Cinefest theatre on Wednesday. This being my second time seeing it, I still can’t decide if Death Proof is misogynistic or a celebration of grrrl heroism. Occasional Superheroine started an interesting conversation about the topic here (way back in April, when the movie first came out). Five months later and it’s coming out on DVD with additional footage. Death Proof is begging to have a proper analytical essay written about it, but do we still care? Regardless, I found Zoe Bell and Vanessa Ferlito to be two new, engaging actresses I’d previously never seen before.
Note: Do not attempt to purchase popcorn from Cinefest after 5pm.
I’ve finally recovered and have an opportunity to post about Dragon Con. This year was the first time I’ve asked for sketches from comic book professionals and I started with two of my favorite artists. Francesco Francavilla (The Black Coat, Sorrow, 24/7) did a great piece inspired by Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” for me. David Lloyd (V For Vendetta, Hellblazer, Kickback) also did a sketch of a concept for a new character. Both were true gentlemen and I thank them for being friendly and approachable.
The numbers were definitely up this year, some reports say 60,000 people were in attendance. Kelly’s pictures from the weekend can be viewed here.
Interestingly, Carl Jung developed most of his theories of archetypes and collective unconscious because he was seeking to understand the inner mind of the mentally ill. In applying his work on myth then and how it relates to society, I think it’s fair to say that society appears to be schizophrenic. And not getting any better. He referred to this state as an inversion of dreaming, where we dream while we are awake. So much of our time is now spent in fantasy worlds of television, comics, movies and especially video games, that in a way our entrenchment there contributes to an unhealthy culture. A lot of later theorists seem to be spring boarding off of this, most noticeably Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence.
While I was reading Jung, I couldn’t help be dragged back to my own schizophrenic attachment to modern myths – specifically in comics. His collective unconscious provides an interesting theory for phenomena like telepathy. I think writing characters like Martian Manhunter or Professor X would have a great twist if they were to inhabit the roles of psychologists like Jung, Freud and even Wilhelm Reich.
Jung was interested in all kinds of esoteric cultures and rumors like alchemy and UFOs. Another interest I had was that his theories of consciousness are remarkably similar to fictional ideas expressed by H.P. Lovecraft (The Dreamlands) and Alan Moore (see Ideaspace).
To Jung, we develop and mature by activating our archetypes in a particular way. His theory seems semi-biological but he’s less interested in the origins of consciousness than its present condition. I wonder if perhaps it is encoded, not in our biology, but in our methods of communication and identity formation? The ways that signs are inscribed in culture may in fact give them this power.
“The Shadow” for Jung is an archetype of an enemy complex, one that is inherently xenoist. The Shadow comes from both our cultural indoctrination, but also our family repressions. We project onto the shadow any threats we perceive to our personal state and peace. For my work on “evil” in popular culture and its correspondence to our Othering of peoples historically, this concept is especially significant. We displace our fears as an imaginary community, onto another group of people. We can destroy them or come to terms with our Shadow and re-integrate it. This fears play out in national politics, but their traces are more obvious in our myths. For instance, Harry Truman was less likely to refer to himself as a “commie smasher” than Captain America was.
I also wonder if Jung provides an explanation for the rage expressed by fans of popular culture myths like Star Wars. When George Lucas changes the history of these myths through digital editing, in a sense he’s re-arranging the way their collective unconscious is remembered. This could cause significant psychological distress for a fan that was so attached to the Star Wars mythos that it’s narrative symbolized their own struggle with individuation.
Finally, Jung theorized that as human society progresses and becomes more complex, so too do their myths. This is because we are further away from our unconscious now that we were as “primitive” society. Myths are a kind of fantasy thinking that can alter our world view. But modern people are more direct/logical thinkers, further away from that process.
