Friday, August 28, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 7 of 11: The Legion of Something-Heroes

[Edited 8/28/09, 10:00 pm]

Here we have yet another comic where things just went gonzo from panel one onward... what else will happen when you are confronted with a supposed superhero (or villain) wearing what appear to be oven mitts on his hands?


From brother Mark's opening panel, I went with the idea that this Hungryman guy (notice the trademarks on each hero name throughout) was sort of the spiritual counterpart to the real Legion of Super-Heroes' ridiculous but lovable Matter-Eater Lad. The idea is that he cooks constantly for the Legion rather eats everything in sight. I'm glad we didn't go with any true Legion members here, creating what could be another chapter of their Substitute Heroes wing (also a ridiculous concept -- why segregate potential, helpful heroes into a lesser subdivision? Seems like a breeding ground for villainy). We never learn the names of a couple of them... the crab guy -- who seems like a stand-in for Chameleon Boy -- and the weasel thing that constantly drools over Twin Zeppelins' breasts. I told my brothers that the weasel thing reminded me of the one that hounded Foghorn Leghorn ("Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...!" SLURP!) My favorite memory of doing this one was hearing brother Chris bust up over the names "Pail Rider" and "Twin Zeppelins." That truly warmed my heart.

Yes, you can perhaps parse from the above paragraph that I did some time as a Legion of Super-Heroes fan in the past. In fact, I still consider myself a fan, though I haven't read them since the mid-Keith Giffen days. My main experience, as it is with my brothers, is from the early, early Legion stories from Superboy, reprints of which we had around the house as kids. The Dave Cockrum run was where I learned to love them (I was chiefly in love with Shadow Lass and Princess Projectra, or rather, their lack of costumes). The cleavage that ran rampant in the more revealing costumes in Cockrum's run was perhaps why I took to naming our Twin Zeppelins heroine as if she were a new version of Duo Damsel, who also became hotter in the '70s than she had been previously (even as Triplicate Girl, a male fantasy run amok right there). However, how we got her boobs to talk, I don't know...

Here is comic #7, titled "Legion of Something-Heroes." Sequel?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 6 of 11: Thrift Store Wheelchair

I am going somewhat out of the order of creation by this point, but I have my reasons. Chiefly, I just wanted to get this comic up before the others, because we almost forgot about it when these were being scanned, and we found this one especially amusing while it was being drawn. The twist on this one is two-fold: it related to a story of which I was not aware when the comic was set up (and which I will not fully relate pending the approval of my brothers), but the boys were laughing quite a lot when it reached my hands. Obviously there was a joke that was beyond my ken at the moment, but I went with it, asking them not to tell me the whole story until my participation in the comic was concluded. The second twist is that the first panel was totally completed when I first saw it. I began writing from the second panel forward.

The major kick was how much we were all laughing over Chris beating the snot out of Mark in the comic, and of Chris bulking up to more and more Hulkian proportions with each succeeding panel. It is probably a case of "you had to be there" when I tell you how much fun this was, but you could probably say that about all of these comics, whether you find them amusing or not. We are mainly feeling a residual sense of the joy we found in creating as a team, and of being together again, much older but, as usual, still playing like the kids we have always been and always will be. Nothing better than that...

Here is comic #6, which I shall title "Thrift Store Wheelchair." Have fun...

Monday, August 24, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 5 of 11: Guppy Hunter

So, this strip was the point where we actually started to do our best to try and mess with the other guys. I still don't how or why the trio of pine trees showed up, but there they are. And I kind of love them, just like a coniferous Huey, Dewey and Louie. I also love the croc and I sorely wish the Rare Monster-Jawed Guppy hadn't, presumably, bitten it at the end, because I really wanted the character to talk. Somehow this silly strip actually worked out, and while I can't speak for my brothers, this was a huge surprise to me.

Here is comic #5, titled "Guppy Hunter" by Mark "Otis", Chris "The Eel" and Rik Tod Johnson. Enjoy...

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 4 of 11: Trick or Treat?

My brothers continued to try and goad me into drawing, but I wasn't having it. I was already having too much fun writing these comics to even entertain the thought of drawing them too. Just not ready yet.

Besides, they served me up a softball of an opening panel. How can I resist a Halloween theme? And this is the only one of the series which came out to a conclusion which more or less represented what popped into my head upon initially seeing the first picture. I suppose that this really isn't supposed to happen when games such as this are played. After all, the point should be to see what lies ahead without considering the possibilities, rather than seek to control or guide the initial story back to where you imagined at first. But I am a control freak in many ways, especially with my own words. So this outcome is not surprising at all.

The question I would pose to my brothers would be: what popped into your head early on in creating this page?

My idea at the beginning was that the guy would be gutted by the jack-o'-lantern, and I wonder how early in the process this thought occurred to either of my brothers. Perhaps we all willed this direction. To me, it was only logical course in a game that should be guided by an utter lack of logic. Did I betray the intentions of the game, or did we all?

Here is comic #4, titled "Trick or Treat?" by Mark "Otis", Chris "The Eel" and Rik Tod Johnson.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 3 of 11: F'ugly Mermaid

The third of our comics experiment definitely started things going in a direction that I preferred, feeling more like the product of an underground comic than the previous two. This also shows signs of my getting more comfortable with the new game. The truth is that this was being drawn while the first two were still unfinished, so the fact that I consider it more successful derives more from the fact that the experiment simply worked better overall here than in the rougher pair with which we began (though I love how the first two came out).

I asked Mark a couple of days later if his opening panel characters on this page were meant to impart a mermaid and three eels underwater, which is how I interpreted his drawing. He shrugged and said he was just drawing figures and didn't attach anything to it. The "mermaid" could be seen as just a hideous girl in a bikini strolling through a garden while a trio of worms protrude from the top of a flower, and if it is so, I rather like that the drawing actually works both ways. You might note that definite water elements don't actually enter the comic until after I establish that she is a mermaid.

Here is comic #3, titled "F'ugly Mermaid," drawn by Mark "Otis" Johnson and Chris "The Eel" Johnson; dialogue by me.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 2 of 11: Cranky Weather

[EDITED August 19-20, 2009] - The title of this series -- Comics on the Road to Nowhere? -- can be construed as rather mean, if you live in Idaho and know that I am referring to our road trip there at the end of July.

It's not meant to be mean towards Idaho. It's actually a slap at myself and my preconceived notions about going to places of which I know nothing. The truth is I quite enjoyed my first extended stay in my parents' new home in Idaho, found much to recommend about the place, and look forward to visiting again soon. But on the day on which this artistic adventure began, not knowing the fun and natural beauty that waited ahead of us at Craters of the Moon National Monument as we careened down the highway on a 100-degree-plus day, it seemed like we would never get there, and so the title is appropriate to my feelings. At least I attached a question mark to the end of the title to make my statement indefinite, and to show that our actions on this trip would prove the title a lie.

As the first comic page continued to be created and those of us without the page sat around waiting eagerly for our turn, brother Mark decided to start another page to have something else on which to work. As my turn came, staring at a picture of two clouds of differing attitude, without any thought as to how the story would proceed, I applied two sentences to the opening panel: "Fair amount of weather we're havin'!" and "A-yup!" Just the first things that popped into my head, but what else would clouds say to each other upon meeting? This is part of the fun of the game: sheer improvisation. The other fun in the game is not knowing where it will actually go, even though you can imagine where it might, and then seeing what will worm its way into the other participants' heads leaping off from what you had put down onto paper.

A third comic started very soon after that, and so on. Before long, we had a pile of comics slowly trading hands for the duration of the trip.

Here is comic #2, titled "Cranky Weather."

Monday, August 17, 2009

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 1 of 11: Tod's Balls

As a placeholder here on the Pylon until I get myself together long enough to actually go back to writing regularly again, I present the first of several posts which could, were I more inclined to the obvious, be entitled "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Since I do not recall ever having to create such an essay educationally, it will not happen. But this is how I did spent part of my summer vacation, which encompassed a four-day gathering of my brothers, sister-in-law and nephew in Seattle, a boys-only road trip through Oregon to my father's home in Idaho for his 70th birthday party.

Out of a brief camping trip to the Craters of the Moon National Monument (a stop that I highly recommend, and of which I did not know previously), came this: a series of comic pages mostly drawn by my brothers Otis and the Eel (Mark and Chris) and written by yours truly, at first on some very bumpy roads, then gathered around a camp table while being assaulted cutely by chipmunks, pikas and increasingly weird bugs, and finally in a severely sleep-deprived state in the dwindling light around a cramped Winnebago dining table.

The comics arose out of a surrealist game in which my brothers love to engage called Exquisite Corpse, which I have participated in before at parties chiefly in a literary sense, though I have also drawn them before. Assuredly, the game popped up again midway on our journey to Craters of the Moon, as Mark and Chris each took turns finishing halves of a folded page, in which the first artist leaves small lines trailing over onto the remaining half for the second artist to complete. The unfolded page reveals the full work of art, created by divers hands but representing an artistic whole. They played the game with both a single fold into halves and two folds into quarters.

But they wanted me to play. My current discomfort with drawing is a far cry from my old state, where I would gladly scrawl out anything despite all evidence pointing toward my having a decided lack of talent in that area. When I did draw, it came with a torrent of grand insecurity, and every line, redrawn over and over until imperfectly perfect in my mind, was suffused with the torture of my actions. And now, after years of inactivity though with a longing to pursue it once more to provide myself with an additional font of creation, I am at a standstill. I cannot force myself to draw.

And neither could my brothers. Chris especially pleaded with me to join them, but I was happy to read my book on the Air Pirates v. Disney trials and leave them to the pleasures of drawing.

But then, via a massive adaptation to the game, they got me involved. On an empty sheet of paper, with his line given an unwanted but oddly compelling flourish by the steady bump of the RV on the Idaho highway, Chris drew the opening panel to a comic page of a homely looking sad-sack buzzing a doorbell. He offered it to me to fill in a caption to the panel, but I turned him down. The comic page sat on the table for several minutes while I slowly realized what a sourpuss I was being after having an initial six great days to this trip. Finally, playing off a road sign we saw as we wandered around Oregon looking for a reasonably attainable picnic spot (we were a little lost), I filled in the opening panel, and then left a caption in the next wholly empty panel, leaving it to await its own picture to be created.

The game was afoot. Mark then picked up the next two drawings, it came back to me for a flurry of words in panels 3 & 4, back to Chris for drawings in 4 & 5, and so on. It was played without the secrecy element so necessary to true Exquisite Corpse -- no folds here -- but this game evolved, after a while, into trying to subtly influence the following panels with slight changes to your next efforts, or using them to bring a story back to that which you imagined nearer the beginning. There were more developments to come that night and over the next couple of days over how we approached the game, but more on that later.

For now, here is the first comic Mark, Chris and I created as a group, based on the sign we saw that read "TODS BALLS 400"...


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