Son o' the Return o' the Comic o' the Jack-O'-Lantern Undead...

My beloved and I attended the Disney Halloween Party (with awesome fireworks) last night, but a massive headache and a serious lack of sleep the last couple of days have eaten away at my time to put up a decent post about it this evening.

In lieu of such a post, I am cheating a bit for the second night in a row in this Countdown to Halloween (last night was a mere picture of a slice of my dining table full of monster toy sets, with only text in the title, so it was a real cheat). This is a comic page that was drawn on a camping trip last August by my brothers Mark and Chris, for which I provided the dialogue.

The twist here is that the comic page is absolutely improvisational, a massive derivation of the surrealist drawing game called Exquisite Corpse, where artists draw unconnected and unseen images on their own half (or quarters if there are more than two artists participating) of a folded piece of paper, and when it is revealed, the two separate images forge what is hoped to be a rather remarkable single image. We adapted it to where either I would write the dialogue (being currently uncomfortable with my art skills, unlike the olden days) in the first panel, and then one of the brothers would draw the first and then the next panel, and then I would fill in the dialogue for the art in the second panel and then start the third, and so on... or it could start with art in the first panel, dialogue in the first and second, and so it goes forward until completion. Get it? Got it. Good.

The reason I am rerunning this particular comic page is that it is entirely Halloween-based, being all pumpkin riddled and whatnot. Murderous Jack-O'-Lanterns make for delicious fun as far as I am concerned. If you want to see what I originally wrote about this comic, visit my post about it at http://cinema4pylon.blogspot.com/2009/08/comics-on-road-to-nowhere-pt-4-of-11.html. 

Enjoy!

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 11 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 3 & 4

Here's the final post of this series, featuring the other pair of "Exquisite Corpse" drawings done by my brothers Mark and Chris:


I remember my brother Chris was quite amused by the fact that with the Monster Dance Party he had drawn his image going off the page rather than into it. As a result, the drawings are going in opposite directions. Usually the practice is to carry the action towards the next possible drawing.

You will note that this final picture is different from the rest in that, instead of the paper being halved and then drawn on each opposite side, this time it was folded twice, so that there are four separate drawings, two each by my brothers:


Again, I will leave it to Br'er Mark to add his notes in the comment section. All I know is that I love these.

Thanks for the very few comments we have received on these. I hope that while most of you were not reading these posts you were out having a shitty time. We had a ball playing these games, and we were only hoping to share in the experience, and perhaps even get a couple of people to pass the game on or play with us. At least a couple of you got it.

The Cinema 4 Pylon now returns to its regularly scheduled programming...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 10 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 1 & 2

For the last two posts of this series, I am going to say very little, and let these combined drawings by my brothers Mark and Chris do most of the talking:

Pretty sweet. I love the randomness of their imagery, and how the two separate pieces play off each other in unexpected ways. I am uncertain of the order in which my brothers created all four of these pieces, so please check the comments below. I am fairly certain Mark will provide some notes on their process, and his continued memories of the experience.

Also, if you want to do your own experimenting, please see my first post in this series for instructions on how to do it, or look up "Exquisite Corpse" on Wikipedia. (You can even learn why the game is called by that name, or even how there is a reference to the game in Hedwig and the Angry Inch...)

[The final post will appear in a couple of days, and then the Cinema 4 Pylon will close the art gallery and begin its regularly scheduled movie griping again...]

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 9 of 11: "Bugs" Gone Awry, or References Only Brandon Lawrence Would Appreciate...

I suppose that having eight out of the nine comic pages we created in our road trip drawing experiment come out even halfway readable/enjoyable should be enough. That's a pretty good batting average (for the record, .889 rounded up, baseball card-style). This one, which I shall not even finish giving a complete (or even pun-filled) title out of my exhaustion and frustration with the page, just simply did not work.

Here's the strip, and then we shall discuss:


See? It's sad it didn't work out, because this was the other strip in which we involved my nephew Aerin at the beginning (see the last post). His drawings adorn the first couple of panels, and it starts off with a decent enough premise. But, things went awry with "Bugs" quickly. It just never gets any of that "oomph" going... and then I made the fatal mistake.

I slipped in one of my left-field references -- not so much arcane, but merely aged in variety -- this time to an old vaudeville routine that was popularized in different incarnations by The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello and many others, often called "Niagara Falls" or "Slowly I Turned, Inch by Inch" or other titles. Personally, I know it as "The Susquehanna Hat Company," being more up on one Bud & Lou movie version than Larry, Moe and Curly's famous one. (Bud and Lou did it several times, including a "Niagara Falls" version on TV.)

So, I worked the reference in, but there were no takers. My brother didn't pick up on it, and I couldn't help him with it, or really elaborate on it until he was done with the panels. Thus, the doom of the strip had been spelled out. I closed it desperately with another reference to the skit, and this was after about an hour or so of staring blankly at the final drawing in the last panel, longing for inspiration. But, none ever came. I resorted to a fall-back plan of little distinction, and so we had the first abject failure of our experiment.

And, since I cannot stop with the references sometimes, somewhere Chico Marx is saying "I abject!" Or, at least I wish he would...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 8 of 11: Puppet Snarkiness

There was a certain inevitability to my nephew Aerin getting involved with our surrealist comic experiments. The kid may only be eight, but he draws up a storm. There are even times when it seems like he never stops drawing. Well, when he's not reading or playing with toys or building with Legos or all the other things that kids do. (These are also all things that, admittedly, his dad and uncles also continue to do despite, or because of, their ever-increasing dotage.)

We didn't even really need to persuade him much. All you have to do, in most cases, is draw anything, and Aerin will want to draw along with you. He was more than a little distracted, though, on our road trip with his own drawings to really get involved until we had already started over a half-dozen strips. But, soon enough, there was a lull in the overall activity, and so he and I were soon starting a strip. I took what he was probably thinking as a couple of mice atop a fence to be a pair of puppets and leaped off from there. However, the dear boy lost interest in the process soon enough, and the rest of the drawings past the first three panels were completed by his dad Mark and his Uncle Chris.

I think this one actually worked out rather well, and didn't go too far astride of what was set up in the beginning. This is not necessarily a good thing when the original point is for things to get as wacky as possible. But, sometimes I like it when things work out logically despite the scenario or the looming possibility of a complete trainwreck. (You will see an example of this form of failure when I post, in a couple of days, the final strip we completed on our trip.)

Personally, I love the stances of the mice in the fourth panel, but I truly adore the way the second mouse flashes the chocolate starfish at the puppeteer in Panel #7. I wasn't expecting it at all, and I laughed like mad. And I have, as a notoriously evil puppeteer myself, always enjoyed the notion of puppets rising up to critique their own "master." This might even reflect my overall views towards authority in general, perhaps even the way that I also have to keep myself riled, even just a bit, at whatever management holds the keys to my own employ, even if I actually like most of them and have respect for their overall practices.

While I don't wish to always be the puppet that I fully recognize that I am, I at least, while filling that role, wish to be the puppet that has just enough rebellion in him to poke his oppressors in the eye when they don't expect it, and to be able to summon up just enough voice of my own to tell them they suck. And they stink. And it is very likely that I will always remain just that...

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?

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...

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...

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.

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.

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."