Colin's Comment

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

My Friday night war game was the American Revolutionary War, with myself against the rebel rabble. I isolated one wing, outflanked them in the woods with my rangers and routed a regiment of traitorous Canadians fighting on the American side, serves’em right! The American commanders conceded rather early I thought, they still had a fighting chance but their morale was shattered. The next day I slogged through a blinding blizzard (okay, it was snowing) to attend three gallery openings in one night, more out of a sense of duty to the arts than anything else. Owen and terry bought me Chinese food. I never did go to the Culture Crawl, I stayed at home shivering as the snow JUST DIDN”T STOP FALLING ALL BLOODY DAY! This is bizarre weather for B.C., sure is pretty though when you don’t have to get anywhere fast… the cold really hurt me in my back. On Monday I had to go outside to check to see if money had arrived in my bank to pay for tomorrow, fortunately it did so I went and bought oatmeal! I had my granny cart (I wonder if you can get snow tires for granny carts?) walking the streets of hard packed, icy snow… the streets are eerily quiet of people and traffic, most people choosing to stay home if they can. I’m lucky to have my power, thousands in the lower mainland lost theirs. The next day the temperature plummeted, to lows we just don’t see here. It is what I call “Tajik hat weather”.

I have a Tajik hat, you may have seen them on TV being worn by members of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, Tajik’s mostly, the ones who fought the Taliban for the yanks. It’s like a thick woollen beret with a puffy rolled up brim. I got mine at Bumbershoot in Seattle, I collect hats. My tajik hat is black and made of rough wool and it is so hot to wear I can only wear it in the coldest weather, otherwise my head overheats and the sweat blinds me. Today I wore it comfortably, along with layers of clothing, out to UBC to be poked and prodded by sharp things in the hands of nervous dental students… the only dental care I can afford… which I can’t, really. In exchange for discounted dental care I have to commit to three hour sessions in the dental chair as the students carefully and slowly examine and clean my teeth while under supervision. Although I am generally a patient patient into the third hour one is quite exhausted and not a little fed up with the whole process, wondering if a few missing teeth might not be such a bad thing after all. The good news is that it looks like I won’t be needing any drilling or root canals or anything, the bad news is that I have to go back tomorrow to finish the cleaning… when more snow is expected with perhaps freezing rain as well. As you can imagine, with the entire student body of UBC leaving their cars at home and taking the bus instead, getting out was a bit of a challenge but I made it, even picked up some bread and bagels on the way home. The 84 used to be such a nice, genteel bus, with hardly any passengers. Now leaving UBC it’s packed to the rafters and leaving people behind at the bus stop. There’s rain in the forecast so it’s possible that by this time next week the snow will be a distant memory…

Thursday, November 23, 2006

First off, I’m assuming you all went out and bought your copy of “Dork” #11? Another frantic and funny comic by one of my favourite cartoonists, Evan Dorkin, with dozens of gag strips and full of satisfyingly twisted humour… it‘s not easy being funny, ya know. If you can’t find it at your local comic store bitch at the store owner!

Also new is “American Splendour #3” written by Harvey Pekar and illustrated by a group of talented cartoonists including English “Bonzo cartoonist” Hunt Emerson and another of my favourites Rick Geary! There’s a wonderful story on the medicinal use of cats.

I’ve been getting a real kick out of the comic book series “Action Philosophers”(#7, the Ancient Greek philosophers), which takes a light hearted, humorous approach to teaching complex ideas and esoteric details which it does rather well… although even in comic form French philosophy makes no sense…

It’s been over week we’ve been under a boil water order and one of the three reservoirs that serves the lower mainland has been shut down entirely. There was an E-coli scare but everyone thinks it’s a false positive. We’re adjusting to it now, I don’t think I drank this much water before the tap water became tainted. Still raining of course, although next week it’s supposed to clear up, become sunny and really cold! That means the possibility of snow! That is freakish for Vancouver, we’re not like the rest of Canada! We can go a whole winter without snow. If it does snow it snows in January, not November! I asked my mom for new boots this Christmas, the ones I have are coming apart.

Today we were supposed to interviewing Gilbert Hernandez, Beto, on the radio show but we totally forgot its American Thanksgiving! Oops… Robin went to the station to play a “cartoonists in music” show while I begged off… I wasn’t feeling up to it really, it was cold and wet. It was one of those days you just want to sleep all day. However, I was pumped on doing the Beto interview, I just finished reading (and re-reading) a whole pile of his books and it struck me that the Hernandez’s have been around so long (indeed, I consider Love and Rockets to be the first alternative comic series) and so consistently good that we forget how good they are. Next week all going well we interview Ivan Brunetti!

Work wise I’ve been “clearing the decks’, stuff that needed doing so I could move on to other things. I finished the Zeppelin/armoured car, painted those Samurai for Dave (he picked them up last night, now he’ll send them to England to hopefully be photographed and included in a rulebook and I finished painting a regiment of 15mm Napoleonic Hungarian infantry I owed Brian. I’ve been working on the pencils for a secret project and getting back to the graphic novel, adding pages… some of the anecdotes I was trying to tell in one page were just too constrictive, needed a little more room to breathe. Tonight I spent most of the evening cleaning up, tidying around the studio, trying to get ri of the clutter. You know, “clearing the decks”.

Friday night is my war game club’s monthly meeting, Saturday openings at the JEM Gallery (The Jupiter Project) and The Parking Lot (Owen Plummer) plus all weekend long is the East Side Culture Crawl when dozens of artist work spaces are opened to the public. I just hope I don’t have to tramp through the snow and sleet!

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

You know me, normally I don’t complain about the rain, I like the rain. Me, I complain about hot weather. But right now it’s getting me down. Blame global warming (which I understand just doesn’t cause warming but more extreme weather of all kinds) for the fierce weather system that blew through southern B.C. almost a week ago now. Okay, so it wasn’t a hurricane or tornado you get in other parts of the continent but it was more powerful than we’re used to in these parts. Lashing rain and high winds, toppling trees into buildings making for spectacular television. Even here, with our building relatively sheltered by a hillside that normally doesn’t get much wind a tree snapped on the other end of the patio. Of course, it was new comics day so I had to go out. It was all rather fun but the aftermath has been less than jolly. The storm washed a lot of silt into our reservoirs, the city of Vancouver and some suburbs, about a million people, are under a boil water advisory. Usually Vancouver tap water is about the best there is, not know. You can’t drink the tap water or brush your teeth with it. Some sources say it’s safe to wash your dishes in tap water, some no. I have a pile of dirty dishes in my sink while I prevaricate. Is there any point in washing my clothes or will they just come out dirtier than they went in? So every day I fill all my pots with water, boil’em for a couple minutes, fill my juice jugs with liquid the colour of weak piss water and put them’em the fridge. Boiling may make the water safe but it still tastes of dirt and makes crappy tea. One is somewhat reluctant to cook with it. Perhaps it’s all in my mind but it’s been affecting my health drinking that turbid tap water, hurts me head.

But I continue working, pencilling the “secret” project (damn hands are hard to draw) and painting those Samurai miniatures that will hopefully go into that games Workshop Book… Samurai are tough to paint, all that lacing, but the Kingsford Miniatures look really good. Got those done. I also finished the Zeppelin/Armoured Car model, unfortunately the rotter who commissioned me to do it is in Tokyo until the end of the month! Arrgh! Need money… I am so broke right now and in a week I’m going to get my teeth looked at by a UBC dental student! I really hope there’s nothing wrong this time. I’m still waiting for my cheque from the UBC Library Rare Books section. I’m now looking for my copies of my own comics to complete their collection, I found a Skunk, still looking for Incubus #1 & #2, Big Thing #2, Big Black Thing and Buddha #1... I’ve got a lead in the U.S.A., me old publisher buddy Edd Vick, so we’ll see how it goes.

I finally broke down today and went out to buy a flat of bottled watered, it’s been long enough that the mad scramble for water at the beginning of our water crisis has abated, on the news it was sounding pretty crazy with people hoarding and scuffling over water. In many places it was impossible to find for days. Man, the bottled water does taste good! My first decent cup of tea in days! If I ration myself to two bottles a day (one for drinking, another for tea) I’ll be fine for almost a week, hopefully the tap water will be clear by then. If it doesn’t rain heavily again… never happens in Vancouver…

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Ah, where have I been…

Well, lets see… damn apples… I’ve glued everything I’m planning to glue onto armoured car zeppelin thingie and painted the base colour, dark green… I would’ve preferred a different colour (My other model for Jim Ramsey was also dark green) but the evidence is clear, green is the colour of Russian armoured cars (and airplanes for that matter) in the Civil War. Oh sure, I hear you say, it’s made up so you can do anything you want! Paint it lavender with pock-a-dots! That’s not how I do things my friend, I strive for realism! With the model grounded in fact it makes the weirdness stand out that much more vividly, as opposed to something which has no connection to reality. Besides, it’s more challenging, more fun and I have an excuse to read more!

I had a couple of “black days”. I have them occasionally… it’s sorta like a sick day. Sometimes when the state of denial I need just to get out of bed in the morning breaks down and I am left unprotected to face my fear, self-loathing and doubt. I should quite this pointless struggle and get a shitjob that gives me a steady pay cheque. I’m not dissing people who work, I’ve just known too many talented cartoonists who get a job “that won’t affect their art” and are never heard from again. Who the hell would hire me anyway? I’ve never had a proper job, done lots of volunteering, but nothing I get paid for. When I started out I accepted poverty as the price of doing my art and it hasn’t bothered me much. I’ll admit it’s getting harder as I grow older and the money and recognition I’d like and in my more grandiose moments think I might actually deserve to have remain elusive. But I’m not ready to quit, not just yet…

So I spent Sunday curled up on the couch trying to suppress my thoughts by watching stupid football and sleeping. Football helps me relax, an obnoxious, bizarre, militarised ritual… how can people take it so seriously? I just wanted to be alone to stare into the black abyss of my future, all very adolescent I know but I do not judge myself by my darkest, self-pitying moments (I know I’ve got it good, really) but by how quickly I can get back up on my feet. Felt much better on Monday…

I walked downtown in a rare period of dry (it’s been monsoon season in Vancouver). I passed a big mound of earth at a construction site, it’s black plastic tarp was loose at one end so the plastic undulated, roared and snapped furiously in the stiff wind. It was a beautiful sight, standing watching it felt like I was about to be swallowed by an gigantic black beast. I was going to meet my mum, Leslie (the bro) and his friend/nemesis Derren at the VCC for cooking student dinner. We were going to the theatre tonight, UBC student theatre, a play based on Douglas Coupland’s book “Life after God“. I was early, as usual, so I went into McLeod’s Books (nothing more serene to me than a bookstore) and who should I run into but Douglas Coupland! I knew Doug from high school art class, the Emily Carr and after but I hadn’t seen him in ages. To further the Dickensian theme of coincidence he told me he was just thinking about me, had a project he wanted me to contribute something too. Drawings of British and American soldiers War of 1812! Since I’d studied the conflict for my war games I can pretty much draw a British Napoleonic soldier in my sleep, the American I’d have to be at least drowsy. The play I thought was okay, the acting was quite good but I did wonder if they needed quite as much interpretive dance and full frontal nudity… I’m not a real prude but it does get distracting, never knowing when the actors might start whipping off their clothes at any moment. I had read “Life After God“, awhile ago now (it’s one of my favourite Coupland books), and there were bits I hadn’t recalled from the book. Doug’s work has so much of home for me . Not just Canada or Vancouver, but West Vancouver, where we all grew up scarcely aware of how lucky we were to be where we were in a troubled world. No matter where you come from, teen angst is going to get ya! We sat in front of my friends Gudrun and Mark from the new Vancouver Review, another coincidence! Leslie found a $10 bill on the floor on the floor of the VCC cafeteria so we were all happy!

Mum crashed at my place and kept me up most of the night with her snoring… she could snore for Canadian Olympic snoring team, she could. I was up early, making breakfast. We bussed downtown so she could pick up a theatre ticket half price, School for Scandal, even at half price it was beyond my budget. We went to see “The Last King of Scotland” which is worth seeing if only for the riveting performance of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin Dada, awesome and frightening. Idi Amin has a special place in my memory growing up. When I was a kid I knew about Stalin and Hitler but Idi Amin, he was a mad dictator I could watch on TV… he was real, contemporary, not a piece of history but alive in my time. The “Beatles” of madman tyrants. I knew kids in high school, Asian’s, who had fled to Canada after Amin expelled them all from Uganda. My brother in laws family, Scots, were dispossessed of their tea plantation and were forced to leave Uganda. Idi Amin killed something like 300,000 Ugandans. He was ousted in 1979 but passed away in 2003 I think it was, in exile in Saudi Arabia. I just wished that the film had more of Forest Whitaker’s Amin and less of the fictional Scottish protagonist. “Hotel Rwanda” proved you don’t need a white face to sell a movie about Africa. Has anyone made a “happy” film about Africa? “The God’s Must Be Crazy” I suppose…

We went to Hon’s in Chinatown for noodles and I then saw mum off on the bus… walked home. There was a signed copy of Louis Riel in the mail from Chester Brown, a contributors copy as I had helped Chester with his uniform reference, the envelope was in shreds but the book perfectly intact. The cat had something nasty matting her fur so I gave her a good combing. I’m listening to Joe Jackson right now, “Summer in the City”, my stinging eyes tell me my lack of sleep is catching up on me…

On Wednesday I bussed out to UBC. I’d been asked to drop by the UBC Rare Books section to sell them my comics for their collection and to bring everything! So I did, including old New Reality’s and more recent Drippytown comics I’m in. They bought everything I brought, it seems I’m an invaluable source for Vancouver comics history and as Vancouver is so much a part of my work anyway they couldn’t resist! Cheque’s in the mail… sigh… but still I’m honoured they asked me and that future scholars will have a record of my work and others. My father was a professor of history at UBC, I know the academic mind and how it works. I feel sorry for scholars of small press comics, the limited print runs, non-existent records, constant reprints, the anarchic free for all which is the very essence of small press publishing! Speaking of scholars, John bell’s book on Canadian comics history is now available:

“Dundurn Press of Toronto will be publishing my history of Canadian comics this fall. Entitled Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic-Book Universe, the book will feature a cover by Dave Cooper and a foreword by Seth. In addition to a main historical narrative, Invaders will include two in-depth studies, one on Canadian superheroes and the other on Chester Brown.”

I can’t wait to see it, apparently there’s a photo of Chester Brown and I taken by David Boswell in his studio in 1993. I’m going to try to get John Bell back on the radio for an interview on Inkstuds, the interview we did with John Bell on Onomatopoeia was a lot of fun!

Welp, gotta go, I’m painting a unit of Kingsford Miniature Samuria that will hopefully be published in a set of war game rules, very nice figures…