I know this is a stupid topic, but I'm a stupid man so it balances out. It's also something I've talked about before, but I think I have a little more to add this time.
I don't often listen to the radio anymore, and much like with television, it feels like something from another planet. Recently, I was treated to some of the old "you've heard it a billion times and are utterly tired of it because it wasn't actually all that good in the first place" hits, "We're not gonna take it" by Twisted Sister. The song itself is a pretty straight-forward "Big Dumb Rock Anthem", which is something that gets more and more embarrassing every year. However, the video is an incredible story all by itself. I don't want to say "Here, watch it!" but in the off chance you've never seen it, or don't really remember it, maybe refresh yourself.
It starts out with the usual "parents are shitty and just don't get it" bit. The dinner table has a palpable tension, tinged with menace. The children and mother appear quietly resigned to a life of misery under what is clearly a tyrant of a father.
When we get up to the son's room, we get a full on dose of this paternal anger. At first reprimanding his son for the state of his surroundings, his anger grows at an exponential rate. We're supposed to side with the son in this situation, wondering how this man could be so irrationally angry.
That's just it though, his anger IS completely irrational. He is soon bellowing in a military style and acting out the trope of the hard-nosed Drill Sargeant, with more and more military jargon seeping into his speech. We get a brief moment of "parents not getting it" when he examines a Twisted Sister poster, then lapsing even deeper into the military fantasy. The boy's clothes are referred to as a uniform. He then questions his son's masculinity, before screaming "I CARRIED AN M-16". It's at this point the absurdity of his anger should be understood; this man served in Vietnam, and was SHATTERED by it. A decade later and he is still haunted by whatever happened to him in that ridiculous farce of a war. He, as well as his family, bears the unfathomable cost of pointless, imperialistic conquest; a psyche shattered, and a man that may have once been happy annihilated.
It is at this point the song begins, with a guitar chord startling the father so much (no doubt inducing a flashback) that he stumbles back and falls out the second story window. We're supposed to laugh about this, because dad is a dick. The boy then spins around and turns into Dee Snyder, singing about how we aren't going to take "it". This is followed by Twisted Sister invading this man's home, and heaping abuse on him, even sending him through ANOTHER second story window. As this walking, breathing avatar of Butt Metal causes enormous damage to the house, the final shot is very telling; the wife, fully aware of the demons her husband deals with, comforts him in his agony, a look of profound sadness on her face as a logo or some shit appears. Whatever this logo is, I have to assume it if a formation of F-4 Phantom fighter jets, to rub further salt into this man's psychological wounds.
So the reason I was thinking about this is pretty stupid and simple. Dee Snyder hosts, or at least used to host, some kind of radio show that Q104 would run. It was exactly what you would imagine it to be, endless streams of big hair, forgettable butt metal. Normally this is something I wouldn't give a second thought to, but in between songs he happened to say something along the lines of "Home of REAL music, not that JUSTIN BIEBER crap". Far be it from me to defend ol' Beeby Boo, in fact I can say I don't much care for his music, but god damn if a grown man in what I believe was 2015 complaining about Justin Bieber isn't the saddest fucking thing.
Also, this is just personal opinion with no research to back it up, so I may be completely wrong; for all this talk about rebelliousness and sticking it to the man, I guarantee you Snyder thinks Reagan was a fantastic president, and probably LOVES Trump too.
Well now that I've dealt with that, here's how I'm coming along with drawing stuff.
I'm on like the fourth pass or so, and once I've finished that up I'm going to work on finalizing and actually putting out the first part of this story. This first page is pretty much ready for the final pass.
I made so many large mistakes on this first chunk of the story, but correcting them would involve starting over from the top and taking forever. I think once I get this first bit done, I'll have a better idea of how to make the next part much better.
I wanted to give Hugh a little detail, because so far he's just been a drawing of a nearly nude man in an empty room, and that's just the story of my first bachelor apartment. This panel probably should have been wider and pulled out more, but that's the kind of thing I'll start getting better in the next part of the story.
So far Hugh has elements of The Humongous, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, and The Shredder.
Getting excited about tech
Getting excited about memes (having lots of trouble with that middle panel looking up)
Getting excited about booklearning
Yeah that's a joke about eating ass, it's current year
So these last 3 or 4 pages still need to be finished with regards the the current pass, but I think what I've learned so far is making the general process faster.
Well whatever who cares, continue not taking it I guess. Maybe don't take in in the context of the song from the end of The Who's "Tommy", though.
Bye Bye Bye (bye bye bye)
