I used to make comics. I know that because strangers would look at my work and immediately share their most excruciatingly banal experiences with me:

— that time a motorised wheelchair cut in front of them in the line at the supermarket;
— when the dentist pulled the wrong tooth and they tried to get a discount;
— eating off an apple and finding half a worm in it;

every anecdote rounded of with a triumphant “You should make a comic about that!”

Then I would take my 300 pages graphic novel out of their hands, both of us knowing full well they weren’t going to buy it, and I’d smile politely, “Yeah, sure. Someday.”

“Don’t try to cheat me out of my royalties when you publish it,” they would guffaw and walk away to grant comics creator status onto their next victim.

Nowadays I make work that feels even more truly like comics to me than that almost twenty years old graphic novel. Collage-y, abstract stuff that breaks all the rules just begging to be broken. Linear narrative is ashes settling in my trails, montage stretched thin and warping in new, interesting directions.

I teach comics techniques at a university level based in my current work. I even make an infrequent podcast talking to other avantgarde artists about their work in the same field.

Still, sometimes at night my subconscious whispers the truth in my ear: Nobody ever insists I turn their inane bullshit nonevents into comics these days, and while I am a happier, more balanced person as a result of that, I guess that means I don’t make comics any longer after all.

  • 56 Posts
  • 551 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
Cake day: November 23rd, 2024
  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoDoctor Who Social Club@startrek.website•Episode Discussion | Doctor Who | 2x02 "Lux"
    2·
    11 hours ago

    the dialogue often seems just a little stilted to me

    Ah, right. Reading back now I see you were talking about the writing, not his reading of it. That probably comes from Davies’ British vocabulary, and the fact(?) that there is no American involved who could’ve given it a language checkup.

    Not even the Disney liaison bothered to comment on it apparently, and if you believe some of the online fan discourse out there, they dictate everything that goes on screen 😄

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoDeGoogle Yourself@lemmy.ml•Switch to Qwant
    2·
    11 hours ago

    As I understand, it’s no small task to build or maintain a working search index. There’s a reason it’s mostly been huge, corporate entities that take on the challenge, and why smaller search providers tend to rely on preexisting ones.

    So I applaud Qwant and Ecosia on their initiative, but also understand that it may take a while before it bears fruit.

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoDoctor Who Social Club@startrek.website•Episode Discussion | Doctor Who | 2x02 "Lux"
    2·
    11 hours ago

    I spoiler tagged this in part because between iPlayer and BBC One the show has such an incremental release schedule, and perhaps most because my watch notes were so long. I don’t want to leave a foot long first post that scares others off 😄

    I look forward to the rage of people who feel like they’ve been attacked.

    Oh, as far as I have seen Reddit Who is about to explode 😂 I thought this was a very mild, even gentle depiction of Whovians. A bonus re RTD’s recent comments on “democratising” cosplay is, now you can just wear your store bought merchandise and be one of the honest-to-canon fans.

    I hadn’t for a second thought that they might reappear later in the season. Maybe they’ll reenact the Wilderness Years in the finale, saving the Doctor from Mrs Flood’s “cancellation”. I mean, it’s not going to happen, but that would be a very meta thing to do, and in keeping with the fourth wall breaking. Also, it would totally fly over casual viewers’ heads.

    In terms of the “American” accents, I’m not a native English speaker, so a lot of that detail goes by me unnoticed. By now I know that if I can tell a specific American dialect is spoken in a TV show, it’s probably a fairly ludicrous parody to native speakers 😉

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoDoctor Who Social Club@startrek.website•Episode Discussion | Doctor Who | 2x02 "Lux"
    2·
    13 hours ago

    I have to say, to me, this is as much an instant classic as “73 yards” and “Dot and bubble”. Maybe even more so. This one warrants a rewatch or two. So bloody good!

    I don’t usually do this “immediate reaction” thing, but what the hell. This episode was quite exciting, so I’m going to nerd out.

    These are my notes as the episode went on:

    Is [the atom bomb] the pinnacle of man’s creative genius?

    • Uh, no. But a good plant for later on.

    • Nice cold open, I’m getting flashbacks to “Idiot’s lantern”, and I dont mind at all. Surely it’s intentional that the projectionist is called (Mag)Pye, right?

    • We had a TARDIS scene! Where they’re just moving ahead with character pieces from last episode! That’s a nice change of pace over last season. And did I detect a musical Amy flourish when Belinda talks about her family?

    • Will that V(ortex )indicator work as expected? I’ll reserve judgment for later episodes. Does “as expected” really involve getting out and involved in segregated Florida? Belinda just wants to gtfo, as any sane person would, given the chance.

    • Speaking of, I like how the segregation was handled with seriousness, but wasn’t turned into a hamfisted Teaching Opportunity. We have two coloured leads, they react and that’s all we need.

    • The empty theatre is chilling… especially given we have two POC who just broke a padlock to get in. Oh crap, did they just ruin the sound of tap dancing for everybody?

    • F—, the giggle…! 😬 The “gods of chaos” shtick is getting a little formulaic already, but there is more meat to this episode than to “Devil’s chord”, and as much flavour.

    • So that’s the week’s big bad woof, Lux Imperator. And their harbinger is Rock Hudson…? Okay, I’ll roll with that, but also note that of all the “gods” rattled off in “Legend of Ruby Sunday” — this one wasn’t mentioned at all.

    • “Don’t expect back story” is a terrific line coming from Mr Ring-a-ding, and it carries over to Belinda and the Doctor acquiring (emotional) depth once they’re animated.

    • The hand animation on Mr Ring-a-ding is absolutely lovely, but I think they got notes from the BBC home media department that animations of Belinda and the Doctor mustn’t at any point outshine the low budget animated reconstructions of lost episodes?

    • Again, the period racism plays in. When it turns out Lux is weaponising it against the Doctor and Belinda, it just adds to his villainy. I was shocked initially at Mrs Lowenstein switching sides like this, happy it was a deceit.

    • Oh, I LOLed when the Doctor and Belinda paused to consider the fourth wall! Rarely have I felt so literally seen by a TV show 😄 And there was a real thrill of not knowing what was going to happen next — which is even rarer.

    • “OMG, I’m on TV!” The (fictional) fans were lovely, and tragic, and clever — and they’re right, “Blink” is the best. Until, maybe, now? I hope there is a full deleted episode of them just chatting with the Doctor and Belinda.

    • And we’re back in the real world. Odd that, in an episode featuring an animated character, Linus Roache’s projectionist seems the most cartoonish? It’s really his backstory that needs fleshing out. Not much depth to him, sadly.

    • Turns out, 3D Lux has serious Five nights at Freddie’s vibes! But in the end — Fiat Lux, and he’s all flat again. But growing. There is an unspoken element here that fear and imagination has power in the dark, but I like the implication that Lux just gets diluted in all the light of the universe. I think there was a similar resolution in an '80s Fantastic four comic?

    • “Those things we said when we were really scared? They’re still true.” Another of many good lines in this episode.

    • Hello Mrs Flood! Again with the metatextual commentary? At least she wasn’t speaking to the camera this time, that would have been too much of a good thing. Oof, if “the show ends on May 24th” they better broadcast the season finale on that day, too. Otherwise it’s going to be a real short season.

    • The fans lived! And did I notice they had surnames in the credits? If so, that’s probably very intentional.

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoRed And Anarchist Black Metal@lemmy.ml•Afsky & Palestine
    2·
    15 hours ago

    Again, I lack a lot of context here. I’m not actively following the RABM scene (much less black metal scene as a whole) beyond using this community and the “sketch band” list that’s doing the rounds as sanity filters. I’m well over bands turning out to be bigoted dipshits at this point.

    I guess if I’d been invested in Afsky since he put out his LGBT+ band stickers, I’d have another impression that I might want to preserve. My sense is, like you say, he’s a BM musician — the RABM part seems more peripheral to his actual music and lyrics, and might just be the subscene that picked up on his signaling?

    But I don’t know, seeing that attempt at rhetorical sleight of hand doesn’t make me keen on checking out his music.

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoRed And Anarchist Black Metal@lemmy.ml•Afsky & Palestine
    5·
    16 hours ago

    FWIW, I know even less about the band and their politics than you seem to. On a quick search I found this (Reddit repost of a) facebook post from the guy in Afsky.

    It’s a really longwinded screed that reads to me like he didn’t at all see a problem with playing a gig in Israel, but being kicked off an antifascist show for the same reason apparently is an issue. So, that sounds very uninformed, or willingly blinkered, but the whole wall of text gives me a distinct “guys, this is really complicated actually, let me show you by complicating it” vibe.

    When somebody feels a need to wade through “what is fascism really? couldn’t we argue that being antifascist is really really intolerant and therefore actually fascist?” (paraphrasing), I think they’ve used up any benefit of doubt they may have accumulated.