Picking Apart My Process: Part II

Well, it's back to business here at Hyperbolic Attack!. It's been a week since I've really done any substantial writing on this site, and the nagging desire to write has been gnawing on the back of my brain like a little demon- berating me for my procrastination and clawing at my conscience with claws of self-doubt. I feel a burning need to write, and it's more than a common rash or an itch, swollen red, oozing, and irritated. 

Writing is an addiction. Stop writing altogether, and the absence of scratching that maddening itch will cause the bugs to start crawling under your skin in no time. Sheer circumstance has kept me from writing this week. I've been busy packing my things and moving them into a temporary storage shed which I peruse the Leader Post looking for single bedroom apartments. All the same, I'm the only one there is to blame for not keeping my notebook in the back pocket of my jeans all this week. I should have been scrawling down tiny notes to myself during brief moments of reprieve in the men's washroom at work, as per my usual habit.

The last time I wrote on the subject of writing specifically, I was infatuated with this idea of writing a 90-page illustrated novella. I'm happy to say that, more or less, that idea still excites me and I'm finally taking steps, albeit small ones, towards making that goal corporeal. What has changed since the last time I wrote about, well, writing, is the subject of my intended story. I should have known better, really, than to get so excited by a sudden burst of creativity, but it's hard not to be carried away by a new idea when inspiration strikes. Most of the ideas I plan on turning into actual pieces of writing tend to be stories that have been rolling around in my head for years, like well-weathered stones in a rock tumbler waiting to become diamonds. Hah. Well maybe not diamonds, but some sort of polished rock anyways! So, to make a long story short, the modern vs. old world romance/boy meets girl via personal ads story is probably not going to see the light of day anytime soon. Which, in the end, is probably for the best. 

The idea of authoring an illustrated story appeals to me in a big way. I'm talking CAPS LOCK BIG. Even, Italicized BIG! But when I say illustrated story: I mean that specifically. Not comics, and not their pretentious bastard cousin- the "graphic novel." I'm acutely wary of diving headfirst into the craft of comics, the medium of Sequential Art is full of it's own professionals and amateurs alike, but I've always been enthralled by books which used pictures to aid the story's within. When I was a child, I was in love with the work of English illustrator Quentin Blake, whose imaginative drawings filled the pages of Roald Dahl's children's classics. Later, as a teenager just discovering the literature that would come to dominate my early adult reading habits, the comical felt-pen sketches of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in Breakfast of Champions evoked that same sense of curious wonder and humor I saw in Blake's artistic accompaniments to Dahl's text.  Though anything I'd wind up writing will probably have more drawings in it than Breakfast of Champions of The BFG, the marriage of images and text to create a partnership beyond that of the comic book interests me greatly. Whatever shape my story takes in subject matter, I think it's fair to suggest that I'd like no less than a third of that story to be told in pictures. 

I don't think it's a coincidence that The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic work by Ogred Weary is counted among the favorites on my bookshelf.

More on my writing process soon! 

Moving!

I apologize for the lack of posts this week, but I'm currently in the process of moving. Not to a new city or anything, just to my parents place while I search for a new apartment. New posts will resume as usual later on this week. I'll probably have something to say either tomorrow or on Monday night. In the meantime, I'm currently growing a beard! I'll be tracking the process of my beard growth via daily photographs, and after a month or so I'm thinking of posting them all in sequence. It's an experiment that's neat and banal at the same time!

Anyways, I've got stuff to pack so I'd better jet!

I Heart Threadless!

For the past three years I've been a fan and supporter of Threadless' customized apparel. Sure, some of the designs often fall into the trap of being  overly cute, bland, or hipster baiting (ie: pretentious and weird for the sake of weird), but many of them are genuinely beautiful. And how can you not like having 7 new shirts from aspiring artists to choose from each and every week? Well maybe you can but I can't! I'm a hopeless t-shirt whore through and through. 

If you've never been to Threadless.com, now is definitely the time to take a look at their selection of t-shirts and related apparel. They're currently having a sale with items selling for as low as $5! I know this sounds like a cheap ass advertisement, but seriously. I know where I'm doing at least some of my Christmas shopping this season. Matter of fact, I just placed an order a few minutes ago. Stocks of Threadless shirts are always limited, and it's not often when old designs are resurrected, so if you see something you like, don't hesitate to snatch it up before it's out in your size. 

Uppercut: the Evolution of Punch-Out!

In response to Nintendo's announcement that Punch-Out! will be arriving on the Wii sometime in 2008, here's a collection of videos documenting the evolution of one of my all-time favorite video game series. Personally, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some of the classic characters from previous incarnations of Punch-Out! will return in this latest game. Bald Bull and King Hippo: I'm looking at you guys.

Let's start with the new trailer. This is the world's first glimpse at Punch-Out for the Wii, first premiered at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show:

Man, just hearing that classic theme music gets my heart-racing. 

Way before the time of the NES, there was an arcade version of Punch Out. The profile picture of Little Mac on the right side of the screen looks kinda fucked. He's a lot older than he appears in his NES incarnation, and what's with the green hair? Was Little Mac originally supposed to be Irish? Those are questions I bet not even N-master Shigeru Miyamato could answer:

Little Mac's first big fight on the NES came in the form of the critical and commercial smash hit, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!:

In order to avoid the potential controversy of publishing a boxing game starring a convicted rapist and renowned ear-biter, Nintendo quickly changed the title to just plain Punch-Out!, and subsequently removed Tyson's likeness from the game. Funny side note: Soda Popinski, the boxer seen below, was originally named Vodka Drunkenski in the Japanese version of the game: 

And last but not least, my favorite installment of the Punch-Out series- Super Punch Out! for the Super NES:

Fuck, I can't wait for Punch-Out on the Wii!

Ahem..I Finally Have Something Good to Say About Gerard Way

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite is a f&$%ing kick ass comic book!

There, I said it. 

Finally, after about a year of this hit mini-series hitting the shelves, I've come to my senses and gotten over my preconceived assumptions. It took me over a year to read the My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way's first foray into superhero comics, and I'm ashamed to say I was a fool for ever denying it. The Umbrella Academy is an unparalleled success: a truly original comic full of pulpy, delirious surrealism, bold, inventive ideas, and a visual aesthetic, courtesy of artist Gabriel Ba, which combines the spooky and silly into a surreal kaleidoscope of gothic superheroism. 

Let me take this opportunity to apologize for purposely avoiding this excellent comic because of my feelings towards My Chemical Romance.  It's no secret that I am not a fan of that particular band, their fans, or the waves of death-obsessed pop-rock imitators which have followed in their wake. However, regardless of how you might feel about My Chemical Romance, It would do The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite a huge injustice to judge it in advance because of the author's connection to anything other than this impressive comic book debut from a visionary new comic scribe. 

The plot is familiar, but it's in the telling that The Umbrella Academy stands out among the legions of team books out there. An inexplicable event occurs, and in a single moment dozens of specially gifted children are born to mothers who weren't previously pregnant. Most of the babies are either left to die or are abandoned, and in steps wealthy philanthropist Sir Reginald  Hargreeves aka The Monocle. Hargreeves announces to the world that he is training the children to "save the world, of course!" And then, nothing is heard again from the mysterious Umbrella Academy. That is, until the superpowered tykes defend Paris from an anthropomorphized Eiffel Tower on a murderous rampage. After trumping the homicidal tower, the book jumps 20 years ahead into the future as the now-estranged children gather to face the funeral of their adopted father, and a masked madman who wants to bring about the end of the world with a symphony orchestra of doom. 

Wait..come again?

Yes. This is where The Umbrella Academy gets weird. Really weird. Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol weird. In fact, Morrison writes the intro to Apocalypse Suite. Gerard Way lists the so-called "God of All Comics" as a major influence in his work, and it certainly shows. In fact the setting and title of The Umbrella Academy's first issue, "The Day The Eiffel Tower Went Berserk," is an indirect reference to the Doom Patrol story entitled, "The Painting that Ate Paris." The similarities don't stop there, but I'm not going to bore you with cross-references to a comic you probably haven't, but should, read. What about the characters? After all, what good is a superhero comic if you don't care about the colorful cast?

The Umbrella Academy is made up of the 7 children who Hargreeves adopted, and in a nod to the classic British sci-fi series The Prisoner, each of the children are numbered in order of importance. There is Number One, or Spaceboy: a man whose head was grafted onto the body of a giant ape; Kraken, a knife-fighting vigilante who can hold his breath underwater; The Rumor, who has the power to make things become true by spreading lies; Seance, a powerful medium who communicates with the dead; The Horror, who controls octopus-like tentacles; and finally The White Violin, a character who possesses no special ability until her transformation later midway through the mini-series. 

Take one look at the cover to Apocalypse Suite, and it's obvious that the art inside is going to be just as good. Artist Gabriel Ba is easily of my favorite new artists, and his work in The Umbrella Academy easily rivals his art for Matt Fraction's award-winning Casanova. Ba's work is fluid, perfectly conveying the dynamic sense of movement, melodrama, and cinematic design required by Way's script. Ba's figures are cartoonish and exaggerated, without losing any of the emotional depth or aforementioned melodrama appropriate to the story.  Granted, this is just a six-issue mini-series, with more adventures soon in the upcoming "Dallas" storyline, but for an all-too brief taste of things to come, Way and Ba inject their characters with a serious amount of pathos and generate a lot of mysteries yet to be explained and uncovered.

I could keeping going on and on about this surprisingly excellent comic book, but I'd rather you go out to your local comic book shop or bookstore and discover The Umbrella Academy's charms for yourself. 

Dogs & Water

The span of time that passes between the months of April and September will always hold a strange significance for me. Beginning in April 2004, just after my first year of university, I started going up north to spend my summers in Iqaluit, Nunavut. I'd arrive in mid-April to visit my family and work during the summer to pay off the past year's tuition fees. Then, when the school season began again in September, I'd return home to British Columbia. The end of each summer was like coming out of a strange, lucid dream that was already too steeped in memory to seem real anymore. Which brings me to Anders Nilsen's Ignatz award-winning graphic novel, "Dogs & Water."

The story, told in sparse detail with very minimal illustrations accompanying the text, is one of humanity, loneliness, and losing oneself in a search for meaning. A nameless man wanders down a lonely northern road with only a teddy bear strapped to his back to keep him company. Befriended by a pack of hungry dogs, the man and his teddy travel across a desolate northern landscape in a search for meaning. The only other characters the man comes across are either dead, dying, antagonistic, or ambivalent. They never speak a word of English, only unintelligible scribbles. There is no beginning to his journey, and no clear end in sight. The plot of the story itself, seems to be written in spite of clear beginnings and endings. As the main character says to his bear:

"You know...We're really not getting anywhere. Not that I'm complaining, I'm just...You know...Pointing it out as a fact. We haven't seen a car for about two weeks. Let alone flowers or trees or houses. It's getting colder every day. There's less and less plant life. My feet are sore. I guess. I guess. I mean, LOOK we could go on FOREVER and get NOWHERE."

This declaration is the first thing said in the book, and it clearly outlines that Dogs & Water is not going to be your typical story. There is no moral lesson. The main character doesn't learn anything about truth or the human experience. He is utterly alone. Aside from a single, solitary swimmer passing by, no one he meets speaks English. There is not a woman in sight, other than a mysterious seductress who comes to him in a dream, only to transform into a dog. It actually seems to me that his experiences themselves might entirely be the product of a dream. The man character might even be drowning, adrift at sea and experiencing the book's plot while struggling back to consciousness underneath cold Arctic waters. None of this is clearly stated, and Nilsen leaves it open to the reader to make their own interpretation. 

Nilsen perfectly captures to stark beauty and isolation of the Arctic , and for me, this is one of the book's most appealing aspects of the book. When I was in Iqaluit, I experienced some of the most realistic and intense dreams of my entire life; dreams that this book vividly reminds me of. Many authors I've read that tend to use the logic of dreams to propel a narrative forward, but take for granted that anything can happen in dream, losing any sense of seriousness in the process. Nilsen, on the other hand, uses the logic of dreams to form his narrative, and accentuate his story's themes. With art this good though, it's easy to just forget the narrative altogether and lose yourself in Nilsen's simple, evocative linework. 

If you're looking for a book to warm up to as the weather gets colder this November, Dogs & Water might not be what you need. However, if you'd like to wander into a wintry dream, then look no further than these pages. 

In case you're interested, check out my Flickr photostream here for some photos of Iqaluit, Nunavut taken in the summer of 2007.

Time Breaks Down

Delays and more delays. Sorry about this but I want to do a decent job with this already past due review of Dogs & Water, so I'm going to spend more time with the actual writing of the piece. I know this is going to puff it up and create some sort of expectation, but really it's just my bad habit of over-analyzing things taking over. In any case, the review will be posted soon. I might even do a post of The Walking Dead Vol. 8, since it ended on such a brutal and uncertain note.

Last night Vancouver rockers Bend Sinister played a fantastic set at O'Hanlons, and if you were unable to catch them live, well, you missed out. The band's set was comprised mostly of material from their latest album, Stories of Brothers, Tales of Lovers, and they were kind enough to treat longtime fans such as myself with old favorites like "Through the Broken City" and "Time Breaks Down."  I'll eventually get around to reviewing the new album once I've given it a proper listening to. In the meantime, if you've never heard the band before, check out the video above for a brief taste. 

Walking on the Moon

Every few months I am overcome by the need to play video games. My mind completely shuts out my real priorities, and becomes invaded with visions of questing through Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom. As much as I've tried to rid myself of the desire to sit around and play videogames, it can't be helped. I'm no longer the fiercely addicted gamer that I used to be, but no matter how hard I try to give up on games, they keep pulling me back towards the Tv set. So long as they aren't Japanese rpgs; I've pretty much lost my taste for those entirely. My flash in the pan obsession with gaming doesn't usually last very long, but when it hits: I can kiss my social life goodbye.

In the last few weeks there have been several types of retro games that I've been wanting to play again. Last week I took a stroll down memory lane with the Sega Genesis Collection on the PS2. This however, just added fuel to the fire, leading me to download a massive Mac compatible torrent containing each and every Sega Genesis/Master System/32x game released in the North America. There are like 600 games in that torrent! A bit overwhelming, I'll admit. And mostly I've just been playing through Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Shadow Dancer, Altered Beast, and as much as I'd hate to admit it, Micheal Jackson's Moonwalker. 

This week, I've been thinking a lot about the ultimate NES classic: Super Mario 3. Just the mention of it makes me want to wrap my thumb around a d-pad and start kicking Koopa ass from start to finish. I've also been really wanting to get a couple people together for some classic Goldeneye deathmatches on the N64. I've got extremely fond memories of playing both of these games for hours on end, all through the night, bleary eyed until the sun rises. I've been itching to get my hands on those two games and experience that part of my youth again. Just the thought of having both of those titles readily available for direct purchase and download makes buying the Wii much more appealing thanks to the Virtual Console. This relates to a recent decision of mine that I'd like to buy a Wii, a decision I've been working over in my head for some time. That being said, I won't be Wii hunting for a while, especially considering Christmas is coming soon, which makes it a terrible time to waste money on myself. There are gifts to buy and a faltering economy to support dammit! 

Anyways. I just picked Volume 8: Made To Suffer of Robert Kirkman's kick-ass zombie comic The Walking Dead from the RPL so I'm going to cut this post short and go read that. Volume 7 ended on one hell of a cliffhanger, and I've been biting my nails waiting for my copy of Vol. 8 to arrive. Vancouver prog-rockers Bend Sinister are playing for free downtown at O'Hanlons tonight and it'll be nice to see them again. It's been over a year since the last time I saw them live in Kelowna. Oh yeah, my review of Anders Nilsen's Dogs & Water should be posted by tomorrow or Sunday, so keep an eye out for that!

Drowning by default

A Minor Setback

Well, I've got some bad news and I've got some good news. First let's start with the bad: my Macbook adapter crapped out on me over the weekend. I called Applecare as soon as I was sure that it hadn't anything to do with the outlets in my apartment, and once they verified that it wasn't an issue with the battery in my laptop, they mailed me a new one. The replacement should arrive by the end of the week, I hope, but until then I'm without a constant supply of power to my Macbook, so these posts are going to be a little more sporadic than I'd like. Mostly I'm just upset because I really wanted to download an emulator this weekend and start playing the recently fan-translated rom of Mother 3, originally released only in Japan for the Gameboy Advance.

On the brighter side of things, I'm currently assisting with writing some scripts for a local television production company, which is a great opportunity that I'm happy to take advantage of, and it's for a show that I'm personally pretty excited about. The show is called InJustice, and it's a true crime series unlike any I've seen before: heavily stylized and very modern.

Over the weekend I read a graphic novel published by Drawn & Quarterly called Dogs And Water, which was written and illustrated by Anders Nilsen. I did some research and found that Dogs And Water won the prestigious Ignatz award in 2005, and with good reason: the book is a haunting examination of human isolation, dreams, and loneliness, and the book's austere, minimalist artwork is hauntingly beautiful. Despite it's relatively short length, and spartan aesthetic, it really stuck with me. I look forward to discussing it in greater detail later on this week. In the meantime, in case you're interested, you can sample some of Anders Nilsen's artwork by checking out his blog, The Monologuist. 

Caturday Catstravaganza!

These videos have been circulating on Facebook and on YouTube for a while now, but I've intended to post them here ever since I started working on this blog again. They're the work of Regina-based filmmaker Eric Hill, also known by the alias of Videoheadboy. A friend of mine since high school, Eric has been slowly but surely building an idiosyncratic body of work, composed mostly of quirky short films shot in his spare time, and starring some of Regina's local actors and assorted oddballs. I've had the pleasure of being in a couple of his short films, and had a hand in kickstarting his series of "Cat" films, each featuring a stilted, animatronic cat we bought for a few dollars at Value Village.  The Cat has since appeared in several of his short films, featured alongside semi-notables such as American Beauty's Wes Bentley, and Canadian indie rockers The Constantines. I've posted them below in order of their original release date. 

Enjoy. 

Cat Taxidermy

directed by Eric Hill

concept by Eric Hill and Christian Llewellyn Hardy
starring Christian Llewellyn Hardy

Caturday Night Lights

directed by Eric Hill

concept by Eric Hill, Christian Hardy, and Ben Bates

starring Christian Hardy and Ben Bates

Catstantine's Roadies

directed by Eric Hill

concept by Eric Hill

starring The Constantines

Note: The Wes Bentley video was removed from YouTube. Probably because it contained a soundclip from American Beauty, but mostly because Wes Bentley was drugged out of his gourd and wearing a green-screen cube on his head at a party (per our request). Either way, it was funny stuff. Maybe the most beautiful thing in the world. Ah well. 

Hammerman

This is an example of why working in a coffee shop is great. You spend your time working with friends, basically just hanging out all day, pulling espresso shots, steaming milk, pouring coffee, in other words: business as usual. Eventually, at some point during an eight hour caffeine fueled shift, casual conversations begin to go in directions you'd never expect them to.  Today, it seemed that no matter how hard we tried, Mason and I could not shake the topic of cartoons whose concepts were so outlandish we thought we'd made them up ourselves. For example: Hammerman. Remember Hammerman? I do. If you were born sometime during the eighties, I bet you do too, and that's too bad, because it's a cartoon probably best left forgotten. If the concept of a cartoon starring MC Hammer wasn't enough to jog your memory, check out the video above.

To its credit, Hammerman did manage to bring the concept of a non-tokenized black superhero (I'm looking at you Black Vulcan) to Saturday morning cartoons almost a decade before Static Shock would debut on the WB. However, that doesn't change the fact that Hammerman was little more than an attempt to cash-in on the popularity of Hammer's #1 hit single "U Can't Touch This." Is there much more to Hammerman? Not really. the whole show was basically just a shallow marketing gimmick, which is probably why the series only lasted for thirteen episodes before it's cancellation.  All in all, Hammerman ranks as one of the weirdest cartoon concepts of the late eighties, along with Disney's Gummi Bears and Pro Stars, the Saturday morning smash hit featuring the crime fighting team of Wayzne Gretzky, Micheal Jordan, and Bo Jackson. 

A post about Dexter (and not about Obama, at all)

I've been spending the last hour or so trying to locate episodes of Dexter: Season 3 online, and so far, I haven't found a single full episode. This shouldn't irritate me, but it does because last summer I was a wiz at finding streaming tv online. Now it seems like ever since my last laptop crashed in December '07, and I lost all of my handy bookmarked tabs, I've fallen completely out of the loop when it comes to finding content to filch online. Well, except for when it comes to torrents. I'm pretty well informed when it comes to finding the right bittorrent site. Problem is,  I don't have enough hard drive space to download a torrent of the entire season so far! Argh. Ah well, I guess you can't have everything. 

Serves me right too, seeing as Kate hasn't seen the show yet, and I promised we'd watch it together. It's only really out of boredom, and an inability to find anything else to do, that I wanted to watch the first episode of Season 3 without her. If nothing more than to whet my appetite for the season to come after we watch Seasons 1 & 2 together. I did however, manage to find various clips and trailers, such as the one above, and if these won't service my anticipation, then nothing will. 

I feel like I'm forgetting something..

Oh yeah! Barack Obama won the election! Man, how did Dexter take precedence over news like that? Well, it doesn't really, but I'm neither a political science major nor an American. There are lots of people whose opinions on this sort of thing actually matter, and they'll definitely have more informed things to say on the subject. But while I am on the subject of the new President, I'll say this: I, like many others, felt a collective sigh of relief today. And yeah, I'm Canadian, but I still felt a wash of relief come over me when the thought occurred to me that finally Bush's Reign of Terror was over. And that may sound corny, but it's true. 

If only the stale cloud of conservatism could be lifted from this country. We were fools for letting Harper hold onto power in Parliament, even in a minority government. Although, without proportional representation, how can the electoral system really speak for Canadians at all? If the best we can ever hope for are Liberal or Conservative governments ad infinitum, then we've all been had and our so-called Democracy is a sham.  

I still reserve my right to be a skeptic about the influence Obama will have, in America and abroad. The world has become an increasingly hellish place over the past 8 years, and it would be naive to think that the replacement of one politician, and one political party in a two-party system, could change all of that. That being said, maybe things will change. It's entirely possible that the Iraq War, as well as our armed occupation (oh sorry, I meant "our mission") in Afghanistan, will end, that the climate of fear in Fortress North America will dissipate, that our governments will begin to invest more in the green shift, and we can all look forward to a brighter and greener tomorrow. I'm just not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

Or maybe I'm just bitter because I've got the flu and I'm peeing out of my bum?

Americans & Elves

Well, it's a big day for the U.S. of A. Election Day. Will America vote in favor of the man who could be their first black President, or for another four years of conservative hegemony and imperialist foreign policy? We'll see. It's safe to say that I'm still bitter with how our election in Canada turned out, so as much as I'd like to see things change for our neighbors down below, I reserve the right to remain skeptical. 

If they do elect Obama though, it'll mean and sea change in American international relations. And seeing as Harper has directed so much of our foreign policy to agree with American interests, I think it'll be interesting to see whether or not he backpedals towards a more moderate conservatism. Either way, we're stuck with this sweater-wearing con man until either the Liberals or the NDP call another snap election. Oh, snap! 

Anywhoo.

I just returned from the library with the second volume of James Kochalka's daily sketchbook diary, American Elf. Since first discovering Kochalka's work last spring, I've been consistently enjoying every comic of his that I've been able to get my hands on, from SuperF***ers to Monkey Vs. Robot & The Crystal of Power. Since October 26, 1998, Kochalka has been drawing scenes from his daily life, depicted in small four-panel comic strips featuring himself as a magic elf boy. I'm pretty sure there are at least three collected volumes of American Elf available, and the webcomic, serialized on AmericanElf.com, has just celebrated it's 10th Anniversary. So, hurray! Hopefully he doesn't stop writing it anytime soon, because it's an excellent read, perfectly balanced between poignant tenderness, exuberant joy, cute rage, and occasional vulgarity. Okay, so that's a lot of elements to balance, but who cares, you can read it for free online! You like free things don't you? You're not weird, are you?