Issue 2 of My Web Comic: A World is Created

So, here is my third attempt at a webcomic starring Hel, the "Vampire-Necromaner-Lich-Wraith"; Rat-Cat, the Abomination; and, Carl, the Pretentious Imp-Demon. I still don't have a title for it yet.

Here's the link to my initial post, which features a description of the characters and the first two comics: My New Web Comic

I'm still experimenting with style and structure. I haven't decided on a four-panel approach or a six-panel one. Or, I might just go back and forth, as my whims take me.

And here is the third strip.

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The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass (Part 3 of 3): The Flight of Dragons

So, today is my third and final post of "The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass." This evening I conclude with reviewing The Flight of Dragons. If you're interested in my previous reviews, then here are the links!


The Hobbit (1977)
The Last Unicorn (1982)

And now--The Flight of Dragons

Of the three Rankin and Bass animation masterpieces I’ve reviewed over the past days, this is my favorite.

Unlike The Hobbit, which was a made for television movie, or, The Last Unicorn, which was released in theaters, The Flight of Dragons was released straight to video in 1982.

I find this intriguing because you would think the best of the three would have the widest public release. Not so. According to my personal opinion, it’s the other way around.

Unlike The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn, this film isn’t based on a single work. It doesn’t have a “primary text,” if you will, to accurately relate or deviate from. It’s based on other works, but it is a mixture of two: (1) the “speculative natural history” book titled Flight of Dragons (1979) by Peter Dickinson, and (2) the novel, The Dragon and the George (1976), by Gordon R. Dickson. I’m not familiar with either of these works (though I wish I was). Needless to say, the narrative of this film is unique and not one that precedes its production.

Some brief plot summary: the film concerns the adventures of a former biology student turned fantasy novelist / fantasy game maker. He creates a very “Dungeons and Dragons” type game and a world to go along with it. And, through some various magical happenings, he gets whisked away to the fantasy world he created. There he finds out that he is the champion of this world. He has to fight an evil necromancer named Ommadon (voiced by James Earl Jones). The story is filled with dragons, elves, rangers, knights, magical spells, fairies, slime worms, dreary taverns, etc..

On the level of plot, it’s very thrilling.

But the plot is not the only thing that endears me to this film. Let me just list some of the elements that make it a masterpiece.

The animation style: Rankin and Bass’s unique animation style comes through here. Slightly strange, borderline grotesque, the artistic style creates a tension between the real world elements the drawings are derived from and the abstractions the drawings are supposed to represent. Thus, there is a kind of rawness / baseness to it.

The drawings are stylized, for sure, but the nature of the stylization is such that it might even be described as a resistance to stylization. In other words, the artists strived for reality while realizing that reality was beyond the pale of animation. In other animated films, artists seem to abstain from any ambition to “realistically” represent something. And in this way you get the “four-fingered” hands of so much animation / cartoons.

The voice acting: There is some strange voice acting in this film, but it endears me to it. Particularly, the voice actor who plays the voice of the Princess character, Millisande, is quite awkward yet completely satisfying for its mystical, almost recitative quality. Also, the voice actor who relates the character of Smrgol the Dragon—James Gregory—is brilliant! He’s an old dragon, tired out by life, and the husky voice no-nonsense delivery completely communicates this. John Ritter does the voice of the main character, Peter Dickinson, and he ramps up the nerdy quality of his voice to the extreme. And, of course, James Earl Jones as the archvillain is just brilliant. He evil laughter is pure art.

The thematic content: For a kid’s film, this flick engages with some serious philosophical issues. Ultimately, this film is about the conflict between magic and science, empiricism and emotion, two fundamentally distinct ways of understanding the world. Without giving away too much of the plot, the main character becomes the avatar for reason and logic, science and math; thus, the baddies become the representatives of superstition, magic, fear, and other emotional ways of coming to terms with the world.

Spoiler alert: It’s a strange twist, but the main character’s quest ultimately preserves “the magical realm,” which is an absolute incongruity considering his way of understanding the world necessarily undermines it.

But I forgive this film this as it really begs the question, “Are our imaginations and flights of fancy, our impulses toward wonder and beautiful ignorance necessarily incompatible with the scientific endeavor? Is there something worthwhile is hearing “a god’s anger” in the thunder rather than, say, “the manifestation of a meteorological phenomenon?” Is there something lost when we “unweave” the rainbow?

The film doesn’t answer this rich question. It’s the source of its aesthetic power is that is even raises it.

Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 7)

Here is serial 7 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants. And here is a link to the full transcription, thus far, if you want to know more about the project, the source of the manuscript, or the story of the novel's genesis: Pulp Novel Project: The Rogue and the Merchants

Update: I've transcribed the second page of this 30-page manuscript. That's 28 more pages to go. Word count thus far: 2119. We're probably looking more at 32,000 words for the complete story. 

At first the two men were startled. They chittered back and forth and brandished their bronze-tipped spears menacingly. But when they saw the blood, when they beheld the powerful subtleties of the Rogue's body expressions--his posture, his manner of walking, his facial expression, his empty hands--their spears lowered. A lesser actor would probably have been skewered on the spot.

Of the two figures, the one wearing the wolf-cloak was notably reluctant, however. He leaned on his spear and stayed back as his companion moved forward, timidly, cautiously, but without obvious hostility. This one seemed to curious to see who or what had interrupted his drinking party.

Although he was sure he could not speak their tongue, the Rogue implored of them, "Please! I mean no harm! I range through this wildland with folk of the city of Tabun Stoh! We pass through this land and are in need of rest and hospitality! We have gold and other ways of paying! Trinkets! Baubles of civilization! Blankets! Steel!"

In response to these words, the figure wearing the bone-bead necklaces--the curious one, that is--revealed his surprise when his eyes grew wide. The word "steel" seemed to stir him.

He jumped back, leveled his spear at the Rogue, and shouted to his wolf-cloaked companion, "Balah! Ugot Ba-lah!"

"Ba-lah!" returned wolf-cloak, in a hissing sort of speech. He obviously did not like what the one wearing the bone-bead necklaces had suggested.

Bone-bead stamped his bare foot. He then ran off into the darkness, letting his spear clatter to the ground.

The wolf-cloaked one lingered. He approached the Rogue with his spear leveled, motioned for him to do something. An astute observer, the keen intellect of the Rogue quickly realized what the wolf-cloak wanted him to do: to sit, with his hands in clear sight. This was a routine and nearly universal protocol as far as the military was concerned; wolf-cloak was within his rights to make such a request. Feeling confident in his fighting abilities and eager to befriend wolf-cloak and his people on the merchants's behalf, the Rogue complied. He knelt down, his hands held before him. He took comfort in knowing his hilt-less dagger was stowed safely away in his belt, beneath his tunic.

Afterward, wolf-cloak knelt down next to the Rogue and whispered something to him the Rogue did not understand. When the Rogue did not relply, wolf-cloak grimaced, spit on the ground with obvious disgust, and backed away.

Was wolf-cloak threatening him? The look in his eyes was all the Rogue needed for confirmation.

New Web Comic: Introducing "Vampire-Necromaner-Lich-Wraith" Hel; Rat-Cat, the Abomination; and Carl, the Pretentious Imp

So, I'm starting a web comic that will be available on my blog. I haven't decided a name for it. But I have the cast of characters picked out. I've also drawn two inaugural comics, which can be found below. This will be semi-regular. Basically, I'll draw one on that fortuitous occasion when inspiration hits, I have the time to do it, and the stars are aligned.

Here's some background on the characters:

Hel: A "Vampire-Necromancer-Lich-Wraith" whose ambition is to become a god and create a world. His only creation, thus far, is his pet, Rat-Cat. He's not very impressed with his creation.

Rat-Cat, the Abomination: Birthed from the slime vats of his creator, the Vampire-Necromancer-Lich-Wraith Hel. Rat-Cat suffers from a faulty metabolism. Thus, he has to sleep a lot and eat a lot. In spite of this obvious shortcoming--a continuing source of embarrassment and frustration to his creator--Rat-Cat does, in his way, make up for it: he  tends to the necessities of the Inner-Sanctum of Hel; he organizes the defenses, pays the bills, stocks the pantry, and has been known to organize a vacation or two when he realizes his master and creator is just too stressed out.

Carl the Pretentious Demon-Imp: Wine connoisseur, literary critic, blogger, vegetarian chef, unpublished novelist, independent film-maker, yoga-master, collector of souls, bound-servant to Hel. You must realize: if you know a demon's name, you can control it, bend its awesome power to your will. It is no surprise, then, that most demons are therefore blessed with very difficult names, names that take days and sometimes months to enunciate. Thus, it is very irritating that Carl is named Carl. When he needs him, Hel uses him for this or that. Though Carl is also Hel's servant, Hel gets the sense that Carl is just using him for a place to crash. Hel has tried to "exorcise," or "banish," or "turn back" Carl on a couple occasions. And yet--Carl keeps showing up, stocking the fridge with macadamia oil, organic "free-range" hummus, and soy chicken.

Here's the first two comics. I assume (and hope--for their sake) I'll get better at drawing them as time rolls on:

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The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass (Part 2 of 3): The Last Unicorn

 My wife is currently in the midst of taking her qualifying exams for her Ph.D.. And so, last night, I atavistically devolved into a little child: I was relegated to our bedroom with a pot of decaf, some cookies, and a DVD copy of Rankin and Bass’s masterpiece, The Last Unicorn.

And now, having had breakfast at a local breakfast joint, Kalie’s Family Restaurant, a couple of real cups of coffee, I’m now poised and ready to continue my series, The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass.

For those of you who are interested, in my previous post, I reviewed Rankin and Bass’s animated adaption of The Hobbit. Tomorrow I’m going to review my personal favorite, the less widely known flick, The Flight of Dragons.

But first, The Last Unicorn. Be forwarned. This review is a little different. I don’t say anything about the film’s style. Thus, it is more a nostalgic remembrance/homage to it, a sentimental remembrance of the lesson I took away from it as a kid.

I’m not going to waste time summarizing the classic work this film is based on, Peter S. Beagle’s novel of the same name. It appears on many “best works of modern fantasy” lists and is widely considered to be part of the fantasy canon (right next to, say, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin). Suffice it to say this is the story of the last unicorn in the world and her attempt to bring unicorns back.

Let me be clear: this isn’t the most “macho” of movies. It’s a love story about a unicorn. When I was first introduced to this movie (around 10), I felt slightly reluctant to watch it, pressured as I was to love football, baseball, wrestling, and camping and not Atari. How I got over this feeling, came to love unicorns, is an important part of this review/homage.

I remember: when I first saw The Last Unicorn it was broadcast on television, and I was irritated by how the wizard looked: Schmendrick the Magician had teeny-tiny legs, NO BEARD, and was wearing tights! This disturbed me because as a little kid because I had a very clear idea of what wizards were supposed to look like: long gray beards, pointy hats, robes with stars and moons on them.

As I watched, however, I made this connection, came to terms with the irritation Schmendrick’s appearance caused me, and thereby glimpsed the simple yet powerful “message” of the film: “appearances” and are often deceiving.

Sure, you may think a 10 year old is too little to extrapolate “messages” or “lessons” from stories. I beg to differ. I think "sponge-minded" kids are often much more inclined to try to seek out a didactic message or “point,” if you will, in the media they consume than us "rock-minded" jaded adults. That being neither here nor there, trust me on this: I got it. The message of the film, that is. That appearances on deceiving.

In spite of the fact that Schmendrick looked like a twerpy sort of guy, he was actually a powerful magician. In spite of the fact that “Lady Amalthea” looked like a beautiful human princess, she was really a unicorn. Consider the entire sequence of Mommy Fortuna’s circus. Some summary: this witch lady has all of these animals—a lion, a snake, a monkey—bespelled to look like creatures from mythology. People fall into the trap of her illusion and believe in them. I won’t give away a cool part of the film, where one creature—who, like the others, appears to be a creature of mythology—actually is one. But, here we have it again, the message: appearances are deceiving.

Through some twist of thought I applied this lesson to the film and as a little kid I began to happily celebrate unicorns, to doodle them in my notebooks, to draw them shooting lasers out of their eyes.

My logic, though not as elegantly put, went something like this: you, sir, may think unicorns are just for girls. But, sir, they aren’t. They’re awesome. They’re a symbol for how the surface of the world is an illusion. And that there are other things, beyond what we can glimpse with our senses, that are sometimes more and sometimes less fantastical than this life.

In reality it probably went something more like this: I like unicorns, so @#$% you.

Pretty deep thoughts for a little kid. You can believe it. Or not. But take this story of my first experience with the film as a testimony to its artistic power. It was powerful enough to make a little, self-conscious, asthmatic kid afraid of being called a nerd (who is now quite happy to accept that appellation) come to love unicorns as a kind of protest.

Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 6)

Here is serial 6 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants. And here is a link to the full transcription, thus far, if you want to catch up with things: Pulp Novel Project: The Rogue and the Merchants

They were shorter than the merchants. The rogue was sure they were not of the city of Tabun-Stoh. Their round heads were shaved but stubbly. They wore no beards, and they had painted their eyes a bright red. They wore crudely worked furs. One wore a wolf's pelt that was thrown over his shoulder, and the other was wearing a collection of necklaces made of bone-beads. Both were leaning on long spears with bronze heads that came to sharp points. They were drinking something from a bladder, and passing it back and forth. Occasionally, they laughed.

The Rogue did not know what to do. If he approached they might attempt to attack him, and although he was confident in his fighting abilities, he did not know if they deserved death or not. The Rogue knew humans, though. Of these folk: he didn't speak their tongue, didn't dress in their manner, and surely did no pray to their God, and so their first reaction of him would of course be hostile. But this did not make them intrinsically his enemy. They would be behaving the same way many people would behave. He needed some way of assuring them that he meant no harm. And then the idea dawned on him.

He was not afraid of the sight of blood. He understood the sight of it moved many men, and he used this knowledge to his advantage. He opened a gash on his left arm with his blade, sighed in pain as the blood began to drip down his forearm. Afterwords, he ripped his right sleeve and smeared his face with dirt. He would pose as a wounded and destitute man. Humans, although they feared healthy and upright foreigners, tended to empathize with one of their own species (when it was at their mercy, of course, and appeared to be unable to cause them harm).

The Rogue was a skilled actor, and so, when he moved out from behind the rock and shambled forward, moaning with pain and gripping his bloodied arm, the subtleties of his expression, the manner of his posture, the tenor of his voice, the shaping of his eyes--all of these micro-messages speaking as powerfully and as intensely as any language--he was perceived by these two men laughing and sharing wine by the river as a traveler who was down on his luck.

The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass (Part 1 of 3): The Hobbit

Today I want to do something significantly less academic. I’m reviewing one of my favorite films, Rankin and Bass’s, The Hobbit. This will be the first of a series of reviews. I'm going to review two more Rankin and Bass films, which I believe are masterpieces. And so, you know which way the reviews are going to go. Think of them as less reviews and more homages. To two films I aim to celebrate in the coming weeks are Flight of Dragons (1982) and The Last Unicorn (1982).

This is a great film filled with adventure, excitement, wonder, and, believe it or not, action (it was 1977 and swordfights and stabbing giant spiders was still o.k. for wee folks).

I don’t think I need to summarize the widely known plot of The Hobbit, which is very much hewed to by this film. That’s perhaps one of the greatest characteristics of this film: its commitment to accurately relating the plot of the novel. I can’t think of any glaring revision and only one omission (spoiler: the Beorn episode before Bilbo and the dwarfs enter Mirkwood is left out).

To begin, there’s some strange quality about Rankin and Bass’s animation style. It has an authenticity, a kind of realism, that other animation styles (say, for example, Disney’s style in The Black Cauldron), completely lack. There’s a strangeness to the way certain things are drawn. For example, the wood elves. Their legs are really long. They have green skin. Their features are inhuman: wide cheek-bones, flat brows. In juxtaposition to the humans that appear in this film, they look completely different; indeed, they look like a completely different species.

The voice acting, too, is wonderful. John Huston as the voice of Gandalf is absolutely amazing. His smoky, intense voice relates a sense of wisdom and knowledge of other worlds. There’s a kind of tone to his expression, a steadiness that makes it seem as if he is reciting his dialog or expressing an incantation as opposed to merely speaking. Usually this would probably be chalked up to bad voice acting, hewing too closely to “reading the script” as opposed to “acting the script”. But, for Gandalf, it truly works.

Other memorable voices are Brother Theodore’s voice for Gollum. Brother Theodore shows up in a lot of Rankin and Bass’s productions. His strained, high accented voice, sounds exotic and otheworldly. And his screaming of, “Baggins! We hates it! Forever!” kind of creeped me out as a kid. I remember him as the assistant, Ruhk, to Mommy Fortuna in Rankin and Bass’s famous adaptation of Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn.

The music is worth mentioning. It has a very “1970s folk musicy” feel to it that I love. Many of the songs are adaptations of songs written by Tolkien (lyrics only, of course); and to this day, when I’m reading through The Hobbit, I read the lyrics with those melodies in mind.

A more subtle characteristic endears me to this film: its color palette. I don’t know if it’s just my old VHS, but there is a subdued quality to the film’s color palette. The range of colors is softer, more natural, than, say, the intense variety of a Disney film, even an early one like Snow White. I’m not going to try and explain why, but I prefer this subdued color palette. It truly creates a wonderful effect. An important character in The Hobbit is the wildland itself; and when the large natural vistas are portrayed—forests, river valleys, the desolation of Smaug—their coloring and the fine detail of their rendering makes them feel authentic.

The best compliment I can make of this film is that my wife and I, both adults, fall asleep to this film whenever we’ve had a stressful day. It’s an enduring source of comfort, a true "safety-blanket" of a movie, that, through some strange alchemy of the right style of animation, the right voice actors, and the right music, truly stirs in me a sense of wonder.