Speaking of Comics…

  • by Drew

Have I told you lately how awesome comics are? Seriously. It is probably the last major media outlet that is not totally owned by a handful of suits that require an absolute formula for all properties. Sure, Hollywood can occasionally make a movie worth watching, but it’s mostly the same old crap over and over again. Like mainstream radio music. It’s the same crap written by the same crappy songwriters with the same lyrical cliches being spouted by the flavor of the month singer. Yes, once in a while you hear a radio song that doesn’t make your ears bleed, but it is rare.

But in comics, there is still enough independence to allow for stories of all types. Horror, super-heroes, neo noir, coming of age college girls, retellings of fairy tales featuring scantily clad young ladies…Great stuff. There are stories for music fans, gambling fans,  monte carlo fans, anime fans, detective fiction fans…hell, even ceiling fans. Trust me. Some of the best creative writing you can find right now is in comic books. You should check it out.

e-comics

  • by Drew

Long-time friends…I mean really really long-time friends, will remember my brief foray into an attempt at comic book writing many years ago. Many many. Recently, I’ve been making notes and considering a return to the attempt. I figure what the hell, I’m a failed rock star, why not be a failed comic writer too? I’ve been reading them a ton lately, and I’ve really found my love for the medium…again. Um, re-found my love? I don’t know exactly how to say, but you get the point.

Anyway, one of the great new innovations in the world of comic books is digital comics. Yup, you can get online subscriptions and all that. Not too shabby if you are a pure reader and not so much into collecting the books and accumulating all that dead plant matter. Me…I like the dead plants. Sorry. I just like to hold ’em.

Thing is, there are apps for cellphones from the various publishers of note (and these days there are a lot of them) that allow you to read the comics on your iPhone or Droid or whatever. It’s very cool…conceptually, but WAY too small of a canvas. You need Nikon binoculars to read the text. It’s just not there yet. But maybe…soon…digi-comics will be a happening option.

You can’t make it up

  • by Drew

I was in one of the big Department stores a few weeks ago. It was Target or K-Mart or some-Mart or other. One of those places where the stay-in-bed Moms (to borrow from Arrested Development) pseudo-shop in their designer yoga pants and Ugg (as in Ugg-leeee!) boots and get all blackberry boldwith their BFFs.

There was actually a pretty cute shirt for little girls. I even considered one for my baby girl, but they had no extra-super-tiny on the rack, so I had to move on. The design was a map of the United States with each state carved out and represented by its license plate. It was a cartoonish illustration, not photographic or anything, and had a youthful and almost sweet patriotic feel. Red, white and blue? Red, white and you, Baby! Best part, the caption: American Girl.

Indeed. So sweet. How could you not love this and want one for your daughter to wear every patriotic day of every patriotic week? Of course, being the schmuck I am, I had to take a look inside. Egads, what did I find? You guessed it – Made in El Salvador. I guess now we can even outsource the American Dream to save some scratch for the Ugg boot Moms.

Rock on on, little ladies.

Bumper Faith

  • by Drew

Here’s something that’s been troubling me for a while. A couple weeks ago we went to Sam’s Club to see if there was anything we might want that would justify a membership at Sam’s Club. I mean, let’s face it the discounts just aren’t there any more, not even on the meg-ginormous packages of mac and cheese and toilet paper. Still, it is a compelling place.

In the parking lot I saw a pickup with some bumper stickers that really confused me. Actually, it was one bumper sticker and a few other visual accouterments that suggested (at least to me) that I might be very wrong about my role and the role of a creator in our little, limited, microverse.

First off, there was a huge bumper sticker that read “Jesus is the Answer.” Fair enough, I mean, they didn’t provide the question, but in your favorite Douglas Adams-y way, you can run down that little convo in your own mind. What gave rise to my confusion was the portrayal of two bathing beauty naked chicks alongside the Jesus sticker. I’m not talking art prints or even remotely tasteful presentations of the female form. These were the classic shiny metallic stickers depicting a buxom female with ample posterior, seated, with her head thrown back and her boobs pointed squarely at heaven.

Maybe the question is something like “who is your heavenly pimp?”

History

  • by Drew

The great thing about historical fiction, like that presented in the Outlander books is that a reader needn’t worry about the issues that plague us in the modern day. It’s actually pretty fascinating in the Outlander books, because the primary female character starts in the first book as a nurse from World War II who accidentally goes back in time in Scotland, and ends up a few years before the Stewart rising in the Highlands. She later returns to the modern day and becomes a doctor. then, 20 years later she heads back in time to find her true love, who is also 20 years older. It’s very sweet, really.

And when she goes back to the 1760s or so, she does so with a lot of modern medical knowledge, much of which is somewhat useless. Sure, if you want to treat Mesothelioma with a bleeding by leeches or maybe a pill made of pulverized horse droppings and spider webs, yeah…there are shops for that, but a proper pharmacy…not so much.

One of my favorite passages in the fourth book is when the Doctor, Clair, is trying to grow penicillin. She leaves out dozens of slices of bread, hoping against hope that one of them with naturally develop the mold that we know as penicillin. Of course, her greatest barrier to success is neither circumstance nor bad luck. It is a combination of vermin (rats, mice, roaches and other pests) and her nephew eating her starchy ersatz petri dishes off the kitchen counter.

Titular oops

  • by Drew

I realize that in my last post I never actually explained the title. This is a common failing of mine. Sorry. The thing is, in historical fiction from the couple decades before the Revolutionary War, there may be no need for apidexin reviews, but there was one key substance that needed serious, regular abuse. Sort of.

What was that? Well, in the Scottish portion of the books it is definitely whiskey. And since a “modern day” character in the narrative hits the Lagavulin in a passage, nodding towards the time traveler for introducing him to such spirits, I’m thinking the whiskey they hit is seriously peated, smoky and killer in flavor.

I’m listneing to the audio version of the fourth book right now, Drums of Autumn, and the crew is in the colonies, roughly a decade before the Revolutionary War. They have developed a little community thanks to some land grants, and a handful of Scottish ex-pats that survived the Highland Rising are there. Out primary character, Jamie Frazier is, among other things, running an illegal still and making some serious white lightning in the style of old school scotts whiskey. It’s illegal because of the crippling British taxes on spirits production (one of our Revolutionary inspirations, of course) and he, being a Highlander, really f-ing hates the British. More than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson combined. I’m just wondering at what point he’s going to skip out on paltry wheat and go for a corn mash, successfully inventing bourbon.

I wouldn’t even mind if that’s how it played out. I guiltily love these books so much (even knowing they would be super duper chick flicks if they were movies and Hugh Grant would end up playing the bad ass Scott) that I wouldn’t mind if this dude was actually portrayed as the inventor of Bourbon. It beats the Jim Beam/Booker Noe assertions that their family did it, after all.

Surprises

  • by Drew

I mentioned a while back that I want to do a site for my favorite comic shop, and it made me think of something. See, whenever I talk about my renewed love of comics, I get some nonsense from some people. Actually, most of my friends either think it’s cool (because many of them were into comics at some point in their youth and now miss them) or they just pretend it’s okay. After all, most people have some sort of hobby that seems weird to others. Like macrame or model ship-in-a-bottle-building, or…I don’t know, but comics are cool, so shut up.

Anyway, even though I am a new comic lover, I have to admit some stereotyping. Even I, a comic lover, expect a certain…character type in the shop. And to be straight, I don’t see it. No, the shop is not a haven for Star Trek geeks and super fatties and kids that need to be scanning the acne treatment reviews. I mean, yeah, there are some total freakazoids in the comic shop, but I would probably count myself pretty high among their ranks. Still, these comic-loving dudes have nothing, and I mean NOTHING, on the horror show that shops at Wal Mart, so there.

Crafting Grannies vs. Comic Geeks

  • by Drew

No, I’m not suggesting a superstar Family Feud grudge match…though it could be fun. Actually, I am reacting to my recent Sheep and Wool Festival visit. The S and W Festival has been going on in Rhinebeck for ages, but in recent years it has become a kind of frou frou chi chi event. Among other things, that means lots of douche bag blowhards from Manhattan.

And other places too. People travel from far away, and many of them are quite pleasant. Unfortunately, enough of the people in attendance are douche-y that it can ruin it for everyone.

The biggest problem? The number of nasty looks and behind-my-back comments about the fact that I was pushing a stroller. My little girl is seriously cute. You have to be a freaking martian bent on the destruction of Earth not to smile at her, let alone actually scowling at her. Yeah, these crafty middle aged women are nasty. So are the 20-somethings. And to boot, at least 30% of these women are themselves wider then the stroller I was pushing. Seriously.

The event setup added to the problem. There are several barn outbuildings where they had vendors and such, and these had little photocopied signs that said No strollers in barn. Next to this message was a sign that said Stroller parking. And under every stroller parking sign was 1 to 3 trash cans. And often, next to these trash cans was 1 to 3 people smoking.

Look, if you’re going to have an event that is not kid-friendly, don’t subtitle it the Family Fun Festival and advertise that it is fun for the whole family. Instead, charge admission for children rather than having it free for kids under 12. We would have just left them home and it would have been fine. Instead, we were irritated and frustrated and felt like we didn’t belong.

Now, back to the reason for my title. See, last week at Comic Con at the Javits, there were probably 3 times as many people in a much tighter and much smaller, entirely indoor space, and it was so much more pleasant. Yeah, the crowd got old and after our multiple successes in getting free comics and key autographs, we were ready to leave. We didn’t feel unwelcome or chased out…we were just ready to go. At the Sheep and Wool/Family Fun Festival, however, we felt like second class citizens smeared in non-sheep poop.

So what should you take away from this? In my opinion it is this: If given the choice between attending a massive public event primarily attended by either middle aged women who do arts and crafts or 20-somethings who live to play xbox 360 waiting for the next Jackass movie to hit DVD, go with the gamers. Every time. Every single time.

Dressed For Success

  • by Drew

At the New York Comic Con I was really digging a lot of the people who dressed up. There were way too many pudgy chicks with random anime-inspired pseudo costumes – fuzzy cat ears and mini-capes were popular. But some people really did it up. I saw a husky Scarlett who gets bonus points for dressing up because she was with a really good Snake Eyes. I saw two great Baroness costumes, and one of them was accompanied by two Cobra soldiers. I saw two good Deadpools and a number of kids dressed as Mario (yeah, Luigi’s brother). I saw zombies and a couple Hit Girls. I saw robots and ninjas and a guy dressed like a tank. There were a whole bunch of super heros, too, and some were pretty good.

After the fact, I’ve seen a great number of photos from other days of the convention, and some of the costumes were incredible. There was a Sue Storm who looked like she stepped right off a comic cover. There was a really good Thor, there was a woman who was a kickin’ Loki. And then…there’s this picture I saw of a woman in a cape. She has a sort of black leotard and a mask and a cape. I’m not sure who she’s supposed to be…no insignia or anything. She’s just 110 pounds overweight, smiling and acting super…sort of. I couldn’t quite figure it out. There was this excellent Sue Storm on the one hand, and then this enthusiastic…super chick of some sort. I’m not making fun of her. I was just confused. I guess some people are meant to dress up like hot comic book stars and some are meant for IT jobs.

Fortress of Solitude

  • by Drew

I went to the New York Comic Con this past weekend and it was so good. Got some autographs, shook some hands, took a picture in front of the Black Beauty from the upcoming Green Hornet flick with some hotties, grabbed a couple bags full of comics and had a grand old time. It was way better than most of the trade shows I’ve gone to in the past. Yeah, some of those late 90s Internet shows and Mac shows were pretty sweet. I seem to remember some bungie jumping in Boston, but that was so long ago.

Most of the shows I went to back in the day were in and around home building, automation and high-end home theater. There was some fun stuff to see there, too, though I was working at those shows. One of the most impressive shows was one the National Association of Home Builders did. There were companies that would actually go to the hall and build houses. At one show somebody even built a replica of the Simpsons house. It was pretty wild.

So that got me thinking. Maybe DC comics should have taken a page from the NAHB show. They could have checked out some steel buildings, found something ultra cool and appropriate and erected it in the middle of the Javits Center. Then they just need a guy in a red cape to call it home for the weekend and they’ve got the best booth at the show…the Booth of Steel!

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.