"I couldn't wait for success so I decided to go ahead without it."
Described as, The most famous person no one has ever heard of, Mark A. Lester is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in numerous alternative and small press books, magazines and newspapers as well as on line.
I had to go do the whole tux-fitting thing yesterday. I also needed to get a new suit. It was a little uncomfortable. The tux shop had a difficult time finding a suit my size. They almost grabbed something from the "kid's" section. I know that it can be difficult to find some clothes "off the rack" but I figured that a Tux Shop would have a bigger selection and be better prepared for the arrival of "freaks". LOL Thankfully, they eventually got me fit and I'm lookin' quite sharp now.
I mean, that WAS the whole point, right. Me looking sharp. It's funny but I never realized what a bother being thin can be. It just never occured to me. It's almost impossible to find "small" sizes (I guess everyone loves that baggy-look) and even then the small sizes are often a bit too big. Who knew? It wouldn't be a bother so much if I actually "felt" thin or sumthin'. Now shoes? Shoes are no problem. Maybe I should start going around in just shoes? Maybe not.
I have a headache and I'm bone tired. I really don't know why, I just am. I've so much to do that being tired really gets in the way of being productive(ish). Oh. Well. By this time next week I should have scaled this mountain and be sliding down the other side. That is if I don't crash and burn instead. Both are an equal possiblity.
If you aren't a part of WOWIO already you need to get going and join up. Free books available immediately. What's not to love? DO IT!
If you aren't already clued in, take a peek and join NOW! WOWIO allows you to support your favorite artists and writer and do it free of charge. Very, very cool.
Look for all of Five Star Comics' new books to be available FREE on WOWIO as well as in print.
This is the final color version of the artwork for PULP #1. I wanted a piece that showed immediately the proper amount of horror, sci-fi, spiritual/supernatural, crazy-insanity-coolness of the story. (IMHO) Did I accomplish that goal? I hope so, but I sure did try.
Boy could I use a break from life for a while. Funerals, weddings, financial meetings, jury duty, deadlines and the high(er) cost of living. Shoot! It's driving me batty. I remember those peaceful days of two months ago when I could just live my quiet little life, doin' "my thing" and bein' happy doing it. Weeelll. Not now and not for a little while yet, but I cannot wait!
I did get lent to me a copy of the first season of my favorite "superhero show". As a kid I loved this character and thought he far surpassed Superman in the super-man category. (Truthfully, I still do.) Surprisingly, so far I haven't seen my childhood memories crushed as is usually the case. Let's be honest and admit that most of our youthful memories just don't age all that well.
Now, it's true that I'm only on episode three (Not including the three TV movies) so I can be pretty sure that by season three or four the show will start getting painfully campy, but so far so good.
I feel as if my train went off track several weeks ago and has been riding along the bumpy ground next to the rails looking for a place to hop back on. (Did that make even the tiniest bit of sense?)
Soon. Soon. Soon. Until then ... "Steve Austin. Astronaut. A man barely alive ..."
It has come to my attention certain legislation, referred to as "Orphan Works", is making it's way through Washington. If you would, please take time to investigate this matter, let others know and provide your thoughts.
It is a sickening concept that goes far beyond effecting simply the works of artists and creators. With this legislation they are picking away at the very fabric of freedom. Were the "Orphan Works" legislation to pass we could easily reach the point where future generations would not even understand what the term "freedom" once meant.
It is not such a stretch to imagine a time when our thoughts, ideas and minds would no longer be our own. A freedom far more basic that any other. Above and beyond simply artists, musicians and other creators, every single person living should be, not only outraged, but terrified at what threats are coming so very, very close.
It is not simply our "creations" at risk, but our very right to "be".
I've been given the opportunity to be a part of a charity comic book anthology. I'll be doing the art chores on someone else's story. A bit of a different road than I usually take but I'm pleased to be able to be a part of sumthin' doin' sumthin' good in this nasty ol' world o' ours.
It also looks like I'll git to do sum spot illos for an upcoming prose book and since I am such a giant fan of reading, I'm pleased. (Notice the pleased look on my face.)
There are a few other opportunities here and there but I resist the urge to talk just to talk. Can't get ahead of things and some things I'm not allowed to talk about. At least not yet.
See, the thing is I usually work for myself and I hate to commit myself to anything unless I'm sure that I can deliver the goods and that the goods will be worth the delivery.
I'm weird like that.
As far as my personal "stuff". It's still coming. Unfortunately, I had some serious "issues" arise that have taken up a ton of my time and put most everything else on the back burner. Still cookin' but cookin' a bit slower than I'd anticipated. I know. I know. I'm taking forever but just hold on. I want to make sure that when I finally "get there", I'm "there" to stay this time.
In the first decade after World War II, Americans were terrified. First there was the Communist threat. Then the UFO menace. And then came the comic-book scare.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, more than 20 states and dozens of cities passed laws regulating "objectionable" comic books. Children were encouraged to turn in their comics, which were burned in public bonfires - a chilling reminder of Nazi Germany. A clerk was arrested for selling a copy of "Crime Does Not Pay" to a teen-ager. And so on.
David Hajdu documents this era in his new book, "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; $26). He's covering ground familiar to any fan of comics history or postwar American culture. Hajdu simply amasses more facts than any previous attempt at chronicling this sad time. Despite a few errors - Dick Tracy made his debut in 1931, not 1929 - the book is worth reading.
Comic books were created in the 1930s by young writers and artists who tended to see themselves as outsiders. The field attracted Jews, Italians, blacks, Asians and women - people marginalized in mainstream society. Many of them were children of immigrants; virtually all came from working-class backgrounds.
In the late '40s, superheroes lost popularity. Readers preferred new genres such as crime, horror and romance. Some of these comics went beyond the level of violence and sexual suggestiveness allowed in movies of the time. The only real equivalent was the tough-guy prose of Mickey Spillane - a former comic-book writer. Comics also drew more female readers than before or since. Sales reached an all-time peak in the early '50s.
It didn't take long for institutions like the Catholic Church, the American Legion and PTAs to declare comic books a threat to Our American Way of Life. As artist Al Williamson said, 1953 was "a bad time to be weird." This was before "On the Road." Rock 'n' roll was still called rhythm and blues, and few middle-class white adults knew it existed. Unless you lived in Greenwich Village and hung out in jazz clubs and coffee houses, Bohemia was an alien concept.
Hajdu argues that comics drove an early wedge between the tastes of young people and their parents. The cycle is repeated whenever a new form of expression upsets the older generations: TV, rock music, the New Hollywood films of the late '60s and '70s, hip-hop, video games, MySpace and YouTube.
The years before Elvis and Chuck Berry may have seemed bleak, but for one thin dime - the price of a comic book - you could escape into the "subversive" world of EC Comics. EC exposed racism, police corruption and phony patriotism. Its war comics - influenced by the country's ambivalent attitude toward the Korean War - depicted GIs not as conquering supermen, but as jittery kids. The one surviving EC comic, "Mad," ridiculed every authority figure under the sun.
Unfortunately, EC also produced some of the bloodiest crime and horror comics. This drew the attention of police departments, prosecutors and editorial writers - not to mention a psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham, whose book "Seduction of the Innocent" blamed comic books for juvenile delinquency. At a 1954 Senate hearing, Tennessee's Estes Kefauver eviscerated EC publisher William Gaines.
The panicked industry adopted a repressive Comics Code, and EC was soon out of business - except for "Mad," which bypassed the Code by converting to a black and white magazine.
Although a Tennessee senator was linked to the comics crackdown, Hajdu doesn't mention any city in Tennessee that passed, or even proposed, laws banning or restricting comic-book sales. Kefauver wasn't in charge of the committee on juvenile delinquency, anyway; that "honor" went to Robert Hendrickson, Republican from New Jersey.
It's easy to over-romanticize the pre-Code era and EC in particular. EC had the best art of the '50s, but aside from Harvey Kurtzman's scripts for "Mad" and the war comics, its writing was far from great. Comics critic Douglas Wolk has pointed out that for every brilliant story like "Master Race" (one of the first acknowledgements of the Holocaust in pop culture), EC published "half a dozen dumb gross-outs."
Hajdu's conclusion, backed by an interview with underground cartoonist-crank Robert Crumb, is that creativity in comic books died with EC. I can't go along with that. Stan Lee's Marvel Comics, at least in the '60s and early '70s, matched EC for talent and ambition. There is too much current emphasis on superheroes, but a medium that has produced "Watchmen," "Sandman," "Persepolis," "Maus," "American Splendor" and "Ghost World" can't be dismissed as creatively bankrupt.
If you have the money, you can seek out the "EC Archives." These deluxe hardcover reprints cost $50 per volume - a price that will presumably prevent a new generation of children from reading them and becoming "corrupted."
