Paul Chadwick's Weblog

I Knew We Missed a Bet

Not having animals in The Matrix Online.  Parodies are almost always too long, as is this, but stick it out for the leaning-back-dodging-in-bullet-time moment. 

Little House in the Nightmare

Here's a useful corrective to the myth of innocent, rural childhood:  Shane White's North Country.   Poverty, instability, sudden violence, horrendous accidents barely avoided, and an uncomfortable proximity to the process of turning mammals into meals provides more than enough emotional propulsion to send a sensitive kid to the welcoming escape of comics and cartooning.

Lucky for us, Shane White didn't run away for good.   In this book he cautiously fingers his wounds using all his skills as draughtsman, storyteller, and Photoshop artist -- this last tool used subtly and clearly to differentiate episodes, facilitate flashbacks, and otherwise serve story.

The art is clean and simple.  The nine-square-panels grid is almost consistent, the only departures used for special emphasis.  The narration is spare, with well-chosen words.  The tone is pained, yes, but also distanced and forgiving; we see somebody coming to terms with whom he and his family are, rather than a poor-me rant.

Growing up is dangerous.  The guy should be dead, run over by a truck, or shot at his friend's birthday party.  When we see Shane's father pulling him on a toboggan behind a snowmobile, we know it isn't going to end well.  Ironically, the accident leads to a yearned-for moment of affection that is worth the pain of the injury.

The observations are unique and true: the solace of the undersides of furniture, of the hard-to-reach clearing in the forest.  The weirdness of seeing your violent father execute a steer with a bullet to its head, of seeing your grandmother flirt with guys at a bar, of seeing your parents dismantle a piano to use the wood for a potato bin.

Like Crumb, cartooning saved his life, saved his sanity.  But Shane White isn't famous, yet, so this book could be overlooked.  It shouldn't be.  Get it, and  give it to people who don't read comics who want to know what the deal is with graphic novels.  It's a powerful reading experience, but clear enough to be inviting to the novice.

Oh, The Hell With It

After 45 minutes of searching for the other paint sketches of that Morpheus/Assassin cover, I give up.  I had hoped to post them all, successively, then end with the finish.  Oh, well.  To cut to the chase, here's the final:

And, regrettably truncated (redacted?), here's how it ran on the cover of Computer Gaming World (a publisher's edict; the editor and art director were apologetic, and despite my disappointment, getting the cover story for the game was a great prize):

Click images to enlarge.

A Movie Just For Me

I laughed through the tears at Dan Clowes's 4-page (!) strip in Eightball years ago, Art School Confidential.  It was just too true (even though I went to one of the saner art schools, Art Center College of Design).  Clowes had been there.  He really got it.

Now from that humble acorn a mighty oak has grown: Art School Confidential, the movie. 

I had the same reaction to the trailer, especially John Malkovich's killer last line.