New Home…

Just started to move into the new place here.  Two story townhouse in the south side of town.  Much nicer than my old place but now it is a bit of a drive to get to campus.  But now I have a nice place, with curtains my wife has picked out and sore arms and legs from carrying my books down the stairs.  Now I must sleep.

What I want for Christmas: An Essential Howard the Duck Vol. 2 (aka when black and white is better)

I would really love to see another volume of the Essential Howard the Duck.  I know that if they pushed it they would only have a hundred pages of material for the second volume, but there is an important reason for making a second volume instead of making everyone go out an buy the omnibus to get those last couple of issues (plus the magazine stories).  It is not just about the cost, it is just an important fact that the comic is so much better in black and white.

The relative merit of the Essential and DC’s Showcase series is that they are cheap at 16-20 dollars cover price, with a page count of 500 plus pages.  But there is a point in that they reprint on news print, which looks better on some of those older issues and they print in black and white – which in some cases is an improvement over the coloring in the older comics.  This is my opinion, but I think Howard the Duck looks better in black and white than the color, especially the treatments that sometimes come across in the omnibus reprinting.

Here is a comparison.  I wish I could reproduce the same page, but despite the poor scan that was the black and white I have to admit that I find the coloring a bit distracting.  The color scan is from an aged issue (notice the yellowing of the paper) but still I think in many ways the comic does translate better to black and white.

I know there is not much Steve Gerber material that was not published in the Essential, but I wish they would figure some way to get it out.  The Omnibus is a great idea.  I have the Spiderman one that reprints the first 40 or so issues plus the letter pages.  I really dig that they did that.  The art sometimes seems overcompensated in places by the coloring process and the page stock they use.  The result is that the colors look a little on the goofy side.  It also changes the whole context of reading comics.  Removing the color places the concentration on the art, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the artists style and skill.

Something I have been thinking about is what made me lose interest in comics back in 1990, 1991 or so – right before Spawn #1.  In many ways it was the mess that became of the Xmen, my favorite book back then.  The Liefeld art didn’t help.  I liked Jim Lee.  I liked Art Adams.  But Liefeld had a style that I hated.  The weird legs, small feed, long torso, lack of proportion…that and the pronounced need to give mullets to the characters really turned me off.  But the comics boom did what it did to most of us fans back then that have only rediscovered an interest through podcasts really.

The use of the newsprint also brings up an interesting aspect.  Modern comics translate well to the slick paper stock used in Omnibus and trades these days, but I think that newsprint just feels better to my eye.  The Vertigo trades usually use a form of newsprint instead of slick paper, and I think it translates very well.  The black and white thing can be hit or miss.  I have the Green Lantern Showcase, the first one, and those stories do look a little silly since everything he is supposed to be fighting is yellow.  That is saved a bit by that old golden and silver age comics habit of always (over)stating the obvious.  That Showcase also shows the problem with the translation from black and white with certain art styles.  Many of those early books were very dependent on a line style that looks very 2 dimensional when you remove the color.  In fact it looks like a cartoon strip like Peanuts, not highly detailed.  Kirby had a bit of that in the early days, but he managed to overcome it by doing more with the scenery in the panel and the layouts.  The early Green Lantern problem is that there is often very little in a panel to provide texture.  The characters lacked a depth of field that is usually found in cartoon strips in the newspaper.  Indeed, Get Fuzzy is an interesting example of a comic that conveys a depth of field in the medium that usually spends all its energy into delivering the punch line to a 3 or 4 panel joke.  Get Fuzzy does that but with dimension and perspective that comes from the talent of a humorous artist, not a humorist who can draw.

In some places the black and white treatment boils down the comic to an interesting combination of pure art and story.  The good artists from the late 1960s and 1970s look good in black and white.  The Kirby stuff in the Essential Captain America Vol. 1 and the Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 1 looks great.  The Punisher and Spiderman Essentials also look really good.  The idea was to save money, but I think it also really looks good too – with some minor exceptions such as the occasional pages that look like bad photocopies where the original art has been lost.  The Essential Hulk had some problem with that.

The newsprint and black and white combination has been very good though on the early stuff.  The black and white treatment is not for everyone, and many people will not read these “coloring books” because they are not in color.  For many superhero books this is understandable because of the real appeal of the colorful costumes.  I think some people, consciously or not, might reject the black and white art because of an association with manga – often a much villified form for comics fans who just do not like it.  Conversly, manga fans sometimes feel the same way about color comics.  There are fans who can move between the two but there seems to be an imposed wall between the two forms (enough for them to be subject to completely seperate audiences) that doesn’t really see too many people moving between the two as a general rule.

There have been some exceptions to the black and white is better arguement in my mind.  The late 1980s trades of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Darkhorse stand out in my mind.  They recieved a pretty interesting coloring process, in tune with the technology at the time.  I would note that their headband/masks were all red until later issues when Donatello picked up purple one he wore like a bandana.  These comics were before the Archie deal, which created the Turtles with colored headbands and a Turtlemobile and pizza everywhere – but they stand out in my mind what the Turtles were best:  violent, psychological and dark.  The coloring reflected that in the same way that the Archie comics colorized Eastman and Laird’s characters so that they would fit the kid friendly, fun, light-hearted world that they were aiming for.  And they did succeed.

Another black and white conversion that I don’t know about is Dr. Strange.  I haven’t read any of those essentials, but that cosmic feel might be dampened in the conversion process.  I also don’t think a black and white Watchmen would work.  It’s not so much that it would be bad, but that it would psychologically feel weird to read that story in black and white.  I have heard V for Vendetta was intended to be in black and white, but the coloring is very integrated with both of those.  That is something that really came out of the 1980s move towards that darker realism, a more integrated approach to the coloring process.  Same with Gaiman’s Sandman and the Sandman Mystery Theater stuff.  I read the second Silver Surfer Essential and there are some parts where it feels like the black and white process leaves something missing, mainly because you are left with splash pages and panel after panel of black space with little dots of white for stars and the Silver Surfer moving through it all.  I doubt if a book like Alex Ross’s Marvels would translate to black and white…but I also think that no one would be stupid enough to try and do such a move.  It would miss the whole point.

My feeling is that black and white translates well to artists who do good work with background and textures, who use depth of field with characters.  The setting can also have an impact.  Cityscapes look fine but in space it can look overwhelmed by the blacks.  The artist will also have something to do with how good it looks.  I would say that a really good artist like Kirby, Ditko or Romita looks great because losing the color lets their art stand out.  But a poor artist might be thankfully obscured by the coloring and that does alot to help their stuff be more appreciable.

Things like the Savage Sword of Conan trades that Darkhorse has been putting out were black and white originally, though printed magazine sized, and they look just fine in that form.  Walking Dead works well in black and white but the writing is so good that I think the black and white aesthetic helps to concentrate on the literary and not the cerebral parts of the story.  That’s not knocking the art – which is great.  It just makes the art serve the vision.  They also found an interesting way of making their zombies original.  Are the zombies grey or green?  Are they bloody?  By being in black and white the zombies are blanked a bit, avoiding the imposition of a clique onto the zombies.  No matter what we say, there is little that is original in the construction of a zombie visually.  All the creative aspects found in the zombie genre are found in the interpretation of subject and the construction of the narrative.  Making Walking Dead in black and white really changes the aesthetic so that you aren’t thinking about the rotting people but are concentrating on the dialog and psychology of the situation.  That is what is interesting about the book, and though I like the art I really love the story.

I would say Nixon’s Pal is another, different example.  It uses such a strong shading component that adding color to it would make the art muddy.  The way the art works in that book is that it really bridges the light and dark in a way that throwing color into the mix would just make it less evocative.

Modern stuff, using the computerized coloring process might not be too good.  I just read the Black Panther Enemy of the State trade and I think it would really look dismal in black and white.  I have been holding out on getting any of the Wolverine Essentials mainly for that reason – I just don’t know how good they would look.  The newer Xmen Essentials also have the same issue for me.  More recent Batman also seems like it might not make the translation too well – especially the Detective Comics stuff from the 1980s.  Batman was dark in his grey and blue, but in black and white I don’t know how he would standout from the shadows – there might be a flattening of perspective if you did that.

To sum up my random musing on this topic, black and white is better if you have a good artist and sufficent perspective and detail in the original art.  In some cases it can look better than the original, such as the Essential Howard the Duck.  In some cases it can flatten the art out, like the Green Lantern Showcase, and expose the two dimensional bleakness of the art without color.  In some cases the way in which the artist approaches the process – such as Silver Surfer or Detective Comics can result in a reverse was out of sorts, too much black and you really start to miss the color that comes with the comics.  Finally, the newsprint aspect just looks and feels better in alot of cases.  Pure white paper is not the best at times, and with the black and white reprints it is nice that there is a hint of grey (or even yellow once you’ve had it for awhile) to the paper so that you get a little grey with the white to keep it from looking so stark.  The newsprint helps to mellow out the contrast.

I still think they should put out something with the Howard the Duck material that wasn’t in the the first Essential and maintain the black and white process.  They probably won’t, but you can always hope.

Dead Space #5

Just finished Dead Space #5, really should have waited until I had #6 also because now I really wanna know how this will end.  Basically this was a melee issue that held most of the storyline’s climax.  It is a solid issue, interesting, but for the most part it is not any back story but the characters dealing with these horror monsters that are infecting dead flesh.  The art was good, they still have that crazy watercolor look – and the art goes well with the mood of the survival horror comic (with lots of reds).  Not very realistic, highly stylized, but I like it.

But the big news is not so much with this comic but the greater Dead Space projects getting ready to launch.  This was not only meant to be a comic but a movie and video game as well.  Some of the screen shots have shown up already.  There will also be an animated feature that will not be for the kiddies that promises to be interesting.  There is even a major feature of the game called “strategic dismemberment” – basically meaning that a bullet to the head won’t be enough for these zombie like creatures.  No, you have to start cutting off arms and legs to stop them.  That sounds interesting, and possibly quite horrible for many parents of teenagers who love this stuff.  It is a really interesting plot they are telling here and I am intrigued about how far they will go and how they will fill out the whole universe they have created here.  I hope it continues and they keep the look they have created graphically with all the other media and elements.  It really is a style that fills out the survival horror approach they are taking.  Everything is rust, blood, bad lighting and weird blues.

The podcast Slice of Sci Fi did an interview with Chuck Beaver from EA games about this total media barrage of comic, video game and animated feature.  You can link here:  http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2008/08/02/slice-of-scifi-172/.  It promises to be pretty interesting, and the story of the comic will continue in the game and film – not just a retelling.

Ihsahn deserves a grammy…

Ihsahn deserves a grammy

While I was washing everything I own because of the bedbug problem I listened to Ihsahn’s new album and decided to write something about it for my blog. Needless to say I am very impressed by his album and intend to track down the album he made in 2006. I started off writing a bit of a review of the album and I had a lot of stuff to wash and it turned into a diatribe against the music industry in general. My main thought was “man, this is so good Ihsahn deserves a grammy”. But then I realized just how impossible it would be for Ihsahn to get a grammy, or really even just onto the radio with the structures of radio control. It branched out in places to a very angry letter-to-a lot-of-editors thing about the total control that exists on what music can be heard through the media due to the controls placed by Viacom, Clear Channel and the RIAA. These especially are in place for metal music and in all reality seem aimed at limiting and containing heavy metal than acknowledging that it is something a lot of people listen to and enjoy. It might just be some bitterness, but it seemed they really do want to depress it to a level where the only public spaces it can exist outside of what it creates for itself is the narrow little bounds that are permissible: professional wrestling shows, small “ghettos” of specialty programs on for an hour or two a week and a controlled representation at the grammys. I also aired my complaints with the black metal elitist who might hate on Ihsahn because they cannot accept anything other than black metal. This is not to say that black metal fans won’t like it, I’m just firing a barrage over the bow of that particularly vocal form of black metal fan who cannot enjoy anything…well…good. There are some people out there that would look at this Ihsahn record as somehow untrue to black metal roots. That is the black metal fans that I’m raging on.

Ihsahn – angL (2008)

Ihsahn made quite a name for himself with Emperor. Now on his own he has created a very interesting sound that mirrors some of the bombast of that old Emperor epic-ness, yet contains some things audiences might not normally expect from him. This thing is really all over the place, and I mean that as a great compliment. The album is self-indulgent, but not in a Cecil Taylor kinda way where it is not something you really want to listen to but damnit you’re cool so you are gonna do it anyway. It is totally appreciable. The album explores a lot of musical territory, but you are never left wondering if this album is still metal enough for you. It is really a brave move to make an album like this, and Ihsahn deserves to be proud of what he has done here.

The biggest step that people will have to face with Ihsahn is that while he maintains continuity with Emperor, this album does not sound like more of the same. It is as much art as Emperor, in some ways more so. It has a vision that differs, yet it contains a lot of core elements. It is a step away from the black metal scene, a scene that still traps and shapes some audiences perceptions about what is tolerable in your car stereo.

While a track like the opening Misanthrope sounds like Emperor with a little more open space to carry the black metal parts, a track like Unhealer shows some very melodic verses, things that might have happened on the darkest day of George Lynch’s Dokken work, and blends that vocal melody to some truly intense metal moments. Threnody works like a bitter ballad in the beginning, but then turns to a more metal style that some listeners would expect. The lyrics maintain that bleakness married to truly defiant grace. A message of self satisfaction is still a major theme of the album. That is something that really speaks to the nature of the music.

Indeed, Ihsahn is showing a major continued theme that one felt with Emperor: that they are not doing what they do to impress anyone but themselves. That feeling is here, tight arrangements, but more latitude with what is capable. Things such as Scarab feature metal, tight clean guitar arpeggios that you might hear in prog rock, a piano break down in the middle and epic guitar and keyboard sections. All the songs feature some really inspiring instrumental breaks and guitar solos that really stand within the compositions as relevant pieces and not divergences. Ihsahn is just doing what he wants and there is not really anything that would approach commercial acceptance on the level you need to get your stuff on the Clear Channel music stations.

This album encompasses a wider experience and while I am sure that some critics are going to use that term “mature” to describe it, I think it is a mistake to think about it that way. Emperor were way mature in what they did, they were strong and highly competent musically. They honed their performances to a high degree and showed a level of skill and development that was far above the more amateurish moments of the black metal scene. This album shows a different identity than Emperor, it is less exclusive in what areas of divergence it allows itself. In that end it is still metal, but only in the most tangential ways could you claim black metal as a description. In fact, black metal has crystallized into something at this point that can describe a code of sound, image and thought that has become a parody of itself. I’ll say it: black metal is the new punk. We all remember how that one turned out. Avril Lavigne anyone?

Lest you think I am somehow against black metal let me tell you that I happen to like a lot of the big ones and the proto-black metal stuff. I like Mayhem, Venom, Bathory, Emperor, Gorgoroth, Behemoth – these are all really good bands that are doing interesting things. I am not a fan of the fascism or racist leanings in some of the music. However, I find that collector mentality that finds value only in the most obscure shittily recorded 7” record that you can only find in some specialty shop useless. Get a Peavey Special, add a shitty transistor sounding distortion pedal and tune your snare drum to sound like a coffee can. Make sure if you record discrete audio tracks you do it crappily enough so there is so much mic bleed that you can only do minimal work cleaning up the tracks. Then get the band good and drunk before they mix it and let the mix become a pissing match about whose part should be louder in the mix. Even after all of this I might hear an interesting riff or rhythmic phrase and still like it. But it is useless because if I do like it then the elitists who like it will immediately hate it. Why? Buncha contrary bastards.

I appreciate the desire to have something of your own, but really is all this crying “sell out” necessary? Fans who do that just want their favorite band to be as broke and useless as they are. On top of this the people who do this claim to be moved by the satanic message in the music. What is more satanic than getting some money for doing what you really want to do? The major obstacle to a well meaning Satanist enjoying their full potential is the recognition that “elitism” fosters a herd mentality just as surely and swiftly as any form of dominant culture. Elitism is just trying to impose a personal normative model on cultural experiences. Really forces a norm of aesthetic onto the (sub)culture experience, gets you to go with the herd while you are pretending you are somehow in opposition to it. You’re just in a different herd that’s all, you got branded by a different brand but you still have hamburger for your goal.

From a creative stand point it has a breadth that one feels in things like Mastodon’s “Blood Mountain” album. The black metal that Ihsahn has become famous for now forms a musical construction piece among many other ideas. When it comes to defining where it belongs as a collection of musical pieces in today’s market place I think that it will not gain much love from the black metal purists. In terms of were it fits with the other stuff out there I find myself stuck with the Mastodon comparison because they are one of the few bands out there right now that play metal with the kind of technical skill and demands yet really branch beyond expectation to incorporate some of that prog rock element into the work. A song like Alchemist is the missing link between Rush and Venom. The melodies on this album are really where it shines; there are not a lot of non-musical ideas. The amateurish punk ethic that got imposed on black metal is missing from this. In true Nietzsche form Ihsahn puts his skills where his philosophy is and demonstrates that cultivated skill and hard work is what makes your creative endeavors of value. The work is not operationalized by a sheer contempt for the audience. Everything is incorporated and furthers feelings and moods set up by the songs. If it has contempt for the audience it is for those who want some poorly recorded, unintelligible vocal laden, self limiting obscure record. This is not that. Emperor never was that. Ihsahn is not that. If that is what you want you might want to consider what you are going to be listening to in five years so you can realize I’m right about this because it will probably not be black metal you are listening to but whatever you use to help make friends at that point in your life.

So I gave my reasons why black metal purists will not like it. Why will the RIAA not like it? Too much balls. I mean that with only a bit of flippancy. It is true. It is true that the people who get to vote on the Metal Performance grammy are specialized in that area, but still there is too much attention paid to bands which perform something amounting to a single. That still exists in metal, as in most genres. The fact that the metal grammy is for a song and not an album just shows their inability to grasp what the form really is. Metal is not a singles medium, it is built on albums. The only time a metal fan buys a single is for the b-side, which is the only reason a metal band will put out singles. Without a released, and played, single/video a great album like this (and many others) will not be eligible for recognition. But with MTV so fucked up getting your metal video played every week on headbanger’s ball in that once a week timeslot makes you a hit. I noticed it helps if they also play your label’s commercial for the album as well – preferably 7 times in that one hour of metal content. If your video is played outside of headbanger’s ball then you are superstars. Slipknot, Mastodon and Behemoth are the only examples of bands that I have seen that have been played outside of headbangers ball. Usually this is in the middle of the night too. MTV has a basic message it sends to metal bands, if you are nice to us we might let you out of this little ghetto we built for you and let people see your video. That is how they view metal, an undesirable form which just gets in the way of their latest group of people degrading themselves for a chance at a relationship with the Basso Buffuno of Public Enemy (Basso Buffuno is an opera term for the Buffoon, a comic relief character). I got an idea, how about a reality show with a musician. A real one, not a karaoke singer. Chuck D. lectures at Stanford and you can’t put him on for a few minutes. You put Cornell West on bumper promos last month but I noticed you didn’t give him any programming. Sometimes it makes me wonder if MTV didn’t accidentally erase the videotapes of all the videos about 6 years ago and are too embarrassed to tell any one so they are shooting reality TV just cover the fact that they destroyed all their archive content. There is no music in MTV, and I don’t even want to contemplate what has happened to VH1 – I am not really sure what the hell that channel is supposed to be anymore. I almost expect to turn it on during Friday prime time and see an infomercial.

But I digress…

They keep the hard rock/metal split up that way so they have some control over what gets into selection process. This allows them to conform metal to the mass media controls that they live with instead of honoring it in the specialized form of discourse which it really exists. Metal is an album form. It always has and always will be. Radio airplay is what splits up a metal album. If we are basing the grammy off of radio then why don’t we just call it the Clear Channel Award. They own 240 or the top 250 “Modern Rock” radio stations. Modern Rock is just a glorified term for AOR (album oriented radio) – in fact most Modern Rock stations are only that part of the day, the rest of the time they are classic rock. That is the only place you will hear metal on the radio out side of those little local radio shows, usually produced by college students, which play metal for 2 hours in the middle of a Saturday night. No the RIAA seemed to allow the metal grammy because they recognized the power ballad as a legitimate form. Somewhere along the line Slipknot got a grammy and they had to recognize it.

The RIAA sure has nothing to say about the media conglomeration and monopolies on the market. But why should they? The royalties are coming in and anyway the internet will allow for more choice right? Then web radio started getting demands for royalties that are not possible for the limited revenue streams they have. While there are great sites like Metal Injection radio that make really good podcast shows full of metal there is still not the open market that was supposed to happen with the internet. The RIAA wanted to make sure that terrestrial radio could maintain its lock on the market regardless of what the people really wanted. The RIAA is doing it because people are stealing from “artists”. Chingy is not an artist. Amy Winehouse is not an artist. Coldplay are not artists. I have nothing against them, but they do not create art as much as they sing catchy choruses. That way the RIAA can pretend not to be a bunch of musical vampires that are more concerned with combating musical piracy then honoring anything that might be real “art”. Ihsahn is a real artist.

This album has real dimensions to it. That is not something you hear everyday, but it is something that I sure would like to hear everyday. In reality it should be up for a grammy, and it should win also. Let Serj Tankin wait; besides they still owe Casey Chaos for co-writing B.Y.O.B and giving him songwriting credit everywhere but the USA. Funny how that went down huh? Only in America the RIAA, watching out for the rights of artists, can award a grammy to a song which finds a co-author receiving a fifty percent credit in Europe but only a 2% credit in the USA. That shouldn’t even be legal. Considering how fucked up the industry and the RIAA are Ihsahn probably doesn’t even want a grammy