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Full view that shit.

I recommend going to look at his site, especially if you want to see a picture of Morris Day fighting a bear. I repeat MORRIS DAY FIGHTING A FUCKING BEAR.

“Albator and Barbarella”

01. ABX - I’m a Flirt (Shoreline) [Broken Social Scene vs. R. Kelly, T.I., and T-Pain]

02. The Rentals - My Summer Girl

03. Little Boots - Stuck On Repeat

04. Primal Scream - Can’t Go Back

05. Ennio Morricone - Django

06. Hot Chip - Sensual Seduction

07. Air France - Collapsing At Your Doorstep

08. UGK w/ Outkast - International Players Anthem (I Choose You)

09. Quincy Jones - Serenata

10. Mint Royale - Singin’ In the Rain

11. The Walker Brothers - The Electrician

12. Spiritualized - Soul On Fire

Pretty fucking tired, though. The recent lag in blogging can be chalked up to me dumping all my time and energy into FD#25. It’s done by the way. And it was a whole lot darker than I expected it to be. The last ten or so pages was written with M83’s “Gone” and Spiritualized’s “Soul On Fire” on repeat, and the previous 12 pages were written (TWICE) almost exclusively to Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR. But yeah, it got real dark, and really emotional in a way I didn’t expect. And the ending might be more ambiguous than originally intended. But I’m so fucking happy I’ve got this far and the book is still surprising me.

Page count - somewhere around 550. Holy shit. Thats a novel.

Up next - #26 “Raiding the 20th Century/What Is A Spy?” - the 48pp standalone conclusion. Lots of stuff will be revealed and even more will not. In my head, #26 is gonna be my final word on the superspy genre and these characters (although the idea of doing an Elektra Assassin with one of the surviving characters has been running around my head these days). But yeah - chapter headings and double the pages and a timeline thats going to require a Phd. to write, let alone read. And the fight scene to end all fight scenes*.

Of course, I haven’t written a word down of it yet…

Anyway, I’m back blogging - though the same thing might happen again if I get hardcore over #26. Its probably inevitable. Oh yeah, and new comics today and Batman tomorrow/Friday. And I tracked down a copy of Coppola’s Youth Without Youth that I haven’t watched yet. But first things first - go download “Stuck On Repeat” by Little Boots. It’s in contention with “Soul On Fire” and “International Players Anthem” as my song of the summer and I only just heard it this morning.

*not including Bruce Lee. Or Brock Samson. I’m only human.

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Currently the unofficial FD#25 soundtrack in my head -

Breeders - Happiness is a Warm Gun.

And Primal Scream, Ladytron, Asobi Seksu, NIN, Mogwai, and a bunch of other stuff. Attempting to reconstruct the pages I lost. It sucks. I think the fight scene is a lot more vicious because of it, so there’s that. I always loved the Breeders version of this. Because they don’t change much, but completely make it their own. You can hear some Slint/Mogwai-style dynamics in there, only with Kim Deals amazing voice. It’s just raw.

There’s also this thing about the Beatles - I’ve avoided listening to the Beatles because they’re tied to a certain character in my head, and he doesn’t make an appearance until #26. But I like the idea of the Beatles seeping into the soundtrack in a distorted manner like this. End psuedointellectual bullshit.

Don’t the Breeders kick ass?

(two live versions, suckas!)

As good as Sea Change is, The Execution of All Things came out in 2002 too… and I fucking love that record.

A post at David’s about the symbolism in Kirby’s New Gods has got me thinking. And I was thinking along these lines to begin with.

(go read it and come back…)

(and while you’re at it read Marc Singer’s Arkham Asylum piece that David’s quoting)

It reminded me of something I remember reading something on There Will Be Blood that basically said “a character can’t be just a symbol”. As much as you can read Daniel Plainview as the embodiment of capitalism, at the end of the day you have to write him as a real person. Or else theres no character. The same thing applies everywhere. The specific, the obsessive minute detail is what makes a character universal.

It’s also great to have a kind of adjustable zoom and focus in fiction. In the best work, symbolism and thematic concerns can be as important as you want them to be. Venture Bros. is about failure, and the destruction of youth. Yeah, of course it is. But it’s also about Doc Venture and The Monarch and how they live out their lives - how instead of growing up they’ll spend the rest of their lives pulling this crap, to the detriment of everyone around them. Yeah, that too. But it could really be nothing but Brock Samson killing henchmen and dick jokes. It’s all there and you see as much or as little as you feel like.

If a story is good, it can stand up to this kind of highminded scrutiny, but we can also step back and see the awesome surface stuff.

The one-to-one ratio thing of Kirby’s characters interests me. I don’t necessarily think that you should look at Mr. Miracle and say he’s the god of Freedom. I think it makes more sense if you look at Kirby dividing his pantheon into good and evil gods for the modern world, then created characters he thought of as godlike. Scott Free being an escape artist might be incidental, an exciting “in” for the audience. A way to get people interested as Kirby writes his messiah story. Not that I’m sure of that, but it’s an interesting thought. Another one is that Kirby wants you to be guessing what these gods represent. He wants you to think about what modern gods would actually be. Of course, if you don’t care you can simply just wait until Orion kicks the shit out of someone. Or Jimmy Olsen does something else that will endanger the lives of millions.

Personally I like when stories are approached thematically and characters are all dealing with the same issues, not representing them. At least while I’m writing this anyway. I don’t particularly think that McNulty represents anything. Or Kaneda. Or Richard Fell. Or fucking Batman. To put it more accurately - they aren’t fixed avatars, who and what they are changes during the story. They are characters, not thematic structures.

Anyway, I’m just thinking on the page here. I was going to incorporate Hellboy 2 into this and decided against it. I want to let that simmer in my brain and maybe see it again before (and if) I talk about it in depth. I’m gonna stop now before I bring up the Umbrella Academy or GØdland again.

Just… dear god. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Guillermo I love you.

Didn’t wake up and start working like I’ve been doing, which I now know was a bad idea. Finally opened up the latest script this afternoon to find out I’ve lost the past 3 days worth of work. I’ve been working nonstop on FD #25, and last night I made a lot of headway. Finally figured the last moment for a character, which I fucking love immensely. I’ve been obsessing over dialog and fight choreography even more than usual.

And I lost 7 pages. I am fucking pissed.

So I’m not working and I’m gonna see a midnight show of Hellboy 2 and forget about it for a couple hours. And then I’m gonna rewrite and stay up for a few days and fucking finish it. Goddamn it I’m gonna fucking finish it and start #26 before the end of the week.

This is me and Jared in 10 years. Sweet Christmas. And he at least gets to be Bob Fossil.

From his blog Iron WIll. So freaking awesome.

From the eye-candy central hub that is An Eternal Thought In the Mind of Godzilla.

Now that I’m so close to finishing FD, maybe it’s time to start up me and Jared’s faux-french/ porno/space-opera/ 70s anime idea again.

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Fucking brilliant.

Hellboy 2 is gonna be really, really good. Like, I’d be excited even if I wasn’t a fan of the book, just because it’s the monster-movie equivalent of Bladerunner. Just staggering amounts of design work being done just for throwaway background detail. Its the kind of thing that immediately sells me on a movie.

Wrote 8 pages yesterday. Containing one line of dialog. Which occurs on page 5. The thing I always thought was missing from The Prisoner was fight sequences taking up half an episode. Or not.

I nearly gave myself a panic attack last night researching the submission processes at Image and Dark Horse, etc., etc. Bad idea to do instead of just working on the book, totally threw my momentum out the window. Probably could have finished another 4 pages instead of obsessing over writing a pitch at 3 AM. Of course, the panic attack might have been related to the other 90 fucking things I’ve been stressing out about lately, but that was the thing I focused on.

Did a lot of it listening to Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out and Call the Doctor interspersed with Ratatat’s Remixes vol. 2. Think today it’s time to change it up a little. Go for something a little more epic and portentous. Huge, fuckoff walls of noise kind of mood. Maybe time for ATR live @ Brixton Academy. Or something. Maybe go for something a little more melodic and less death-rattle-of-a-robot-society.

Anyway, this is me checking in. I’m attempting to finish #25/start #26 before Saturday and blogging will most likely consist of “DUDE FUCKING HELLBOY 2! GUILLERMO RULES!” at around 2 AM Thursday night and youtube clips. Don’t expect any more or less.

Oh and I didn’t talk about this weeks Venture Brothers - after a rewatch I can clearly say that Tara is probably Rusty’s sister and it’s bizarre to see someone reference the pre-Emma Peel Avengers outside of Alan Moore. I love that show so much.

Specifically Otomo, Moebius, Watchmen, Doom Patrol, Mignola, Al Columbia, and James Jean.