Paul Chadwick's Weblog

Captain Marvel

Being too young for his Golden Age appearances, and too old for his 70's revival, I never made a childhood connection to Captain Marvel.

My main reading about the character was via C.C. Beck's bitter rants in the Comics Journal; an artist with a lovely, simple, kid-friendly style, he hated the dynamic (hyperbolic, he'd say) approach of then-current comics. This put me off.

Too bad.  It's a great  concept: a boy, with a magic word, becomes a super-powered man. I'm not aware that the psychology of this was ever adressed directly, but it glows with Freudian light, so to speak.

Alan Moore's riff on the idea was one of his early flashes of dark genius.  It still holds up.  Oh, those raining body parts from the London sky!

The unjust DC comics lawsuit that destroyed the character for years is a stain on the legal system. But at least DC revived the character with respect and TLC.

Now Cap is 70, a Chip Kidd-designed coffe-table book is out, and Zack Smith has written a well-researched and sourced multi-part tribute/oral history over at Newsarama.  He solicited tribute drawings, and the one above is mine.  Click to enlarge.

 

Submitted for your inspection

Could Jack Kirby's super-science technology have been inspired by jet engines?  Click to enlarge.

 

 

Happy Little Trees

Dollar Bin Comics just posted an August interview with me.  Audio.

It's crisply edited, so I actually seem to make sense, without too many digressions into free-association land.  In fact, the half hour flies by.

I was amused by these two comments:

"...sounds almost exactly like James Urbaniak doing his Crumb impersonation from 'American Splendor'."

"...Paul's voice...reminds me of Bob Ross from that painting show on PBS."

 

Terrible Truth

Every parent, I presume, dreads The Talk with their kids.  I mean, of course, the one about sexuality, its hazards and joys.

But reading The Golden Theme, I was enlightened about another Talk I'd never thought about.

Every African-American child at some point has to be told the mind-blowing truth that their recent ancestors were actually owned by other people.  Slaves.

Brian MacDonald talks about his experience of this.  Of course a little kid can't possibly understand all the implications.  But Brian's mother did something very smart: she pointed out that if they were owned, they could be sold -- and families could be broken up when members were sold to various buyers.

Breaking up the family, never to see each other again, is something every little kid can get.  Heck, every kid fears it (one reason why Disney uses the scenario so much).

MacDonald writes insightfully, even movingly, on this subject.  And he makes the point slavery damages both slave and slaveholder.  As befits a book on storytelling, he makes almost all his points with stories.

And here's a darkly funny one: George Washington freed his slaves in will, effective upon the death of his wife.  He didn't want her fending for herself, I guess.

But Martha found herself surrounded by people in whose interest it was for her to die.

The morning porridge must've been a suspenseful adventure in itself.

Martha wisely freed them promptly.

 

On Second Thought

Despite my enthusiasm for the humor in the trailer for Cowboys and Aliens, this New York Times article says it plays things absolutely straight, grim and scary.

So marketers are struggling to prepare moviegoers to bring that expectation, despite that goofy title.

Seems a pity.

Commissions

I’ve been taking some commissions lately.  People often get them as gifts, I've found, like the one at left.  It's not too late for Christmas.

Here are my rates:

-Pencil 1-2 characters 8 x 11 $100.00
-Ink 1-2 characters 8 x 11 $200.00
(additional characters can be added for $100.00)

-Watercolor & pen line 1-2 characters, with background 9x12 $350.00
(Same on 11x17 watercolor paper $ 500.00)

-Cover reproductions $600 b& w or $1000 color

And if you have something special in mind, I’ll cheerfully negotiate.

The Golden Theme - review

Good news for writers.  One of my favorite deep thinkers about the storytelling craft, Brian Macdonald, has a new book out. 

It's slender, and cheap ($12.95), but packed with tips and insights and some of the most thought-provoking assertions I've come across in this field.

Story construction is a craft, not an inherent gift, and I'm a believer in  educating oneself about it. 

MacDonald's own Invisible Ink is a good place to start.  I'm also a fan of sassy Blake Snyder's recipe book, Leonard Bishop's disorganized-but-full-of-riches tome, Strunk and White's classic, and Robert McKee's perhaps overanalytical blockbuster (a friend comped me a ticket to one of his seminars, which was much more fun -- thanks again, Ken).

But The Golden Theme is something different.  It has a couple of striking theses, with an enormous amount of evidence marshalled to support them.  They are:

a) Stories are a way to impart information about how to survive.  All of them.

b) One must never lose sight of the theme that we are all basically alike in our needs and desires.

MacDonald is persuasive.  They're both appealing  to a guy who does so many wilderness survival stories and who has an aversion to "villains" -- since they so often are simply unbelievable.  I'm unsure if counterexamples exist, though.  Still mulling it.

I'll post reactions to the personal anecdotes MacDonald shares (oy, that fainting story!) and some other aspects of the book later; but bottom line, The Golden Theme is useful for those who take story-crafting seriously.