Thinking about Dee Snyder

     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.

     Trying to fill in the surrounding area, can't have everyone hanging out in a featureless void.  This isn't Garfield, after all.

     The endlessly messy text is still placeholder, but I'm definitely happier with the second draft so far.  Reading the way I write, I must be hell to try and have a conversation with.  Just meandering all over the place and circling a point without ever hitting it. At least it's nearly impossible to read because of the visual mess right now.  Figuring out balloon placement is going to be a big deal for me.

     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
 

     This page has been almost unchanged since I first drew it, I really like it a lot.  Hard to dial in the dialogue though.

     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)

*Nickelback voice* IT'S BEEN A WHILE

      Now that "everything grinds to a halt for the holidays" December is over and done with, it's time to stop neglecting this.  I don't have any rambling insane theories to talk about right now, so instead how about this: have you ever tried going to a climbing gym? It's a primally satisfactory kind of exercise, my inner ape does excited backflips over it.

     Anyway, on to my ever eroding efforts.

     There's still lots of sticks and bones here in this second pass, I'm mostly focusing on trying to make everything look normal structurally.  Going to all the trouble to make a character look perfect when there's still the chance of shit getting tossed out would be a silly waste of time, not like drawing a comic about a chubby raider gang.

      AREA

      Still haven't really solidified a way of drawing anyone either.  Faces vary wildly from panel to panel, but I guess I'm starting to get proportions under control.  No wonder so many people just have an asset bank they reuse over and over.

     The three main characters are different types of horrible nerd.  The guy with the cap and huge goggles is a tech nerd, the mohawk guy is a social media nerd, and the cowboy hat guy is a book nerd.  I'm not talking cool, hip nerd either, I'm talking abrasive, socially difficult nerds.  Here the goggle man is jazzed about obscure computer parts.

     Here the mohawk guy is getting excited about being on the cutting edge of memes via this universe's equivalent of the internet, HAMNET.  Look how bad that head is in the top middle.  Getting a face to look right when they're looking upwards is reeeeeal difficult.

     Finally, cowboy nerd is excited about maps and survey data, and what is the equivalent of a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. 

    The things they all found are going to play major parts in the story of course, otherwise I'd just be wasting time here.  Also, you may have noticed what a sausage festival the story is so far.  There will be women, and they will also be certain types of horrible nerds, I just need to nail down their personalities.  I have lots of time for this, since what you're seeing now is only 2 or 3 pages from the end of the first chapter.  Other characters will be sprinkled around in chapter 2, and they'll play larger roles later.

   Well, goodbye.

The Highwayman cinematic universe

     Once again I thought I had something I could type up complaining about the wasted opportunities we keep seeing in the way people create and consume media today, but I just don't have it in me right now.  October is drifting past me in a haze, I'm dying for the cold to come back while everyone makes things with ink.
     I'm not an inktober kind of guy, since I can't really work with it at all.  If I tried to make things with ink and paper the way I do on a tablet, it would cost thousands of dollars.   The tablet lets me fuck up all day and it doesn't cost a thing besides time.
     Still, I did start off October with a new project.  I moved on to the second pass of this after finishing the first off about two months ago.  It will need another round after that, because I'm still shit at things like backgrounds and sets.  I think it does display a pretty solid improvement from where it started, though.

     I'm mostly sure you can probably click these to make them bigger, I literally never read my own blog to check afterwards.

      Don't know a lot about architecture.

      Man that guy's arm is at a weird angle, it makes him look like he's hiking his pants up or something.  That's something that'll get fixed in the next pass.

      That one is so different because I did a big edit on a few pages and moved some things around.  That guy pointing on the bottom is a bandit named RipDick, which is really stupid because it's the face of Swedish actor/wrestler Tor Johnson, who I suppose is most famous for being the big zombie guy in "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Get it? Tor Johnson, Rip Dick? Right now the face is a pretty blatant trace, I'll have to work on it.
     The good thing about putting in whatever placeholder dialogue is you look at it later and realize it's the worst possible thing, so anywhere you go from there is up.

     Well that's that.  

FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:RE[LOL]SO TRUE

  =========  
     Have you noticed what the kids are up to now? It's egregious.  I know we got a little crazy when we were younger, but it was nothing like now.  It's as if any sense of restraint has gone out the window, yeah?  I don't know where we went wrong with them,  or what could even be done.

     I mean, they never put them down, right? Everywhere they go they bring the damn things along, they can't live without.  Well, we got along fine when I was younger.  We didn't spend all our
time buried in technology.  We got out there and lived life.  We weren't rushed like they are now.  They put all this time effort into getting an upgrade, and when they finally do another model has already come out.  We used to socialize, you know? Now they're hunched over all day, squinting at
little devices and ignoring each other.

     So, take my word for it, stone axes and fire starting kits are going to be the end of us.  What will happen to discipline when you don't have to tend a fire bundle all day? How much time do you waste  "knapping" stones? Call me when you can make practical changes on the world around you, for instance killing this sabre-toothed tiger that's abou

==========
 
     That was dumb, but here on the internet, everything is dumb.  I realized it had been about 2 months since I put anything up, but there wasn't anything big pressing on me and I choked for content.  As for drawing stuff, I have greasy wheels turning in the dark, but in the meantime I've been idly doing this.  I was a lot more satisfied with it before I wrote the above.

      Gonna recycle that head

wet fart,
-

Let off some steam

      Lately, I've been thinking about the action-classic "Commando".  A movie I've watched dozens of times over, but then went several years without viewing.  It had been long enough that I went back to it, just recently, with fresh eyes.  I had always known it as king of the dumb action movies, but never fully appreciated the depth to which that's true.
     When you talk about what makes a movie entertaining, there are several measures.  Some of these are subjective, we don't all have the same tastes.  However, even if a movie falls short in those areas (acting, plot, characters, etc.), there are a few objective measures too.  Basic crew competence (camera operating, lighting), art assets (cg, matte paintings, costume design) post-production (foley, editing) and other nuts-and-bolts areas of production can elevate something that lacks otherwise.

     When a movie meets the objective criteria but not the subjective, you get a standard Summer blockbuster or average Marvel movie;  looks good, totally forgettable.
     When a movie meets the subjective but not the objective, you get into the realm of cult/b movies.  Sam Raimi, Roger Corman, people making movies that are charming as hell on a shoestring budget.

     So what happens when a movie fails both measures of quality, and is still amazing?
     I call this "The Commando Effect".

     I am completely unable to get bored of Commando.  Boom mic dips, continuity errors, cranes visible within shots, clunky dialogue, erratic characters, unimportant.  What is important is that you please don't disturb John Matrix's friend, he's dead tired.  Did you know Matrix eats Green Berets for breakfast?  Or that he can ram a car head-on into a telephone pole at 90 km/h, without being buckled in, and survive without a scratch? 

     I could probably write an extremely long essay on exactly what is going on in Commando, or any other movie this amazing.  An alternate name for this phenomenon could be "The Dolemite Effect".  What it boils down to is this;  yeah, these movies are dumb, but they're confident as fuck.  Nothing in this world is more persuasive than a confident idiot, so much so that I'm willing to believe Bennet, who spent the entirety of the movie talking about how Matrix is too dangerous to fuck with directly, could pull an unprompted 180 and decide that yes, I'm just going to knife fight this guy who just murdered 400 people.


     So anyway, speaking of objectively and subjectively bad

      I just said fuck it and went full scratchy on thumbnailing panels out.  I'm actually pretty close to finishing the first pass of the first story, this is a scene that has the beats worked out from start to finish.  Some of these went up in a previous update, but I included them here for the sake of clarity.  It starts off after the three characters have fucked up by staying up too long and drinking too much, and passing out, missing their opportunity.

      Sometimes thumbnailing just means nothing but stick figures, baby

      Coil rifles are an actual thing, but they're pretty impractical and usually not all that powerful.  I just like the idea of a home brew railgun.

      They did good for once

      That's probably still confusing and unclear to you, but at least I know what's going on.  After the thumbnailing pass, I'll probably find it  a lot easier to progress.  I'll still have to switch some things around or redo some ideas, but it won't be long before a tale of fat men failing come to life.

Bweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

A nebulous cluster of dumb-looking assholes

     But enough about politics! Hah! Do you get it? It's because politics and FAAAAARRRRRRRTT.
Here are some pictures and words.

    

     In my head, the two headed guy here talks like an old math teacher of mine.  Or at least, the exaggerated version of him that built up in my head.  All the hard and sharp edges of his syllables are rounded off, so he'd be all "Hmm yez bleez viggs my gumbuder" whenever windows 3.11 was acting up. "Yez hello I am a Zbider Robod, bay no addenjin do my boorly drawn legz".  The guy on the bottom left is maybe the uniform I would make my henchmen wear, if I got some.

     "Mild disappointment/discomfort" is my favourite emotion to portray.

    
     Maybe my least awful looking snake fellow yet.  Also maybe an accidental Homer?, ?

     I keep falling into the same trap when I try to do comic related things.  Putting too much work into something before the stuff that comes after it is conceptually finalized.  This time I tried really hard not to do that and results followed.  This first one is the page before the "aah, empty" page from the last update.  I like to be vulgar.

     This immediately follows the "aah, empty" page.  I like to say I enjoy high-concept comedy but then I turn around and everything is "the heavyset man pees, then falls over.  In the distance, a fart."

     I have no idea how to even begin organizing the approach to this, so I'm mostly just winging it. I've still got a pile of in between pages to scribble out, but I'm pretty close the the end of the first scribble pass of this (issue? episode? story? volume?).  Following the scribbles comes sketches, then lines and background.  I'd like to paint it in but that still turns up looking like garbage, see panel 1 of the "Shitty Raiders" strip I put up a year ago.

mmm bop,