Catholic School Girl

(This is another in my Sexually Titled Posts experiment)

Every year I give up Coke for Lent. 

No I’m not Catholic.

Well, I guess I am, but I don’t go to church of believe in most of the things that it takes to be considered a “catholic.”  But whenever anyone asks me, that’s what I say.  It’s quicker than explaining what I really think.

How much do I love Coke?

This is my Coke machine:

This is my fountain Coke dispenser:

This is me gettin’ it on with a Coke bottle:

The reason I give up things is because I believe you shouldn’t have everything you want all the time.  I’ve been pretty lucky: I have a house and a wife and a dog and a job that I love and I work hours that allow me to draw a comic.  I think that sometimes you have to force yourself to appreciate the things that you have.  The best way to do that is to have them taken away.

Since I enjoy my house, my wife, my dog, and my job so much, I don’t want them taken away.  I do, however, want to be challenged to appreciate them more.  And so, I give up Coke every year.

Except this year it wasn’t that hard.  I’ve given it up every year since I was 16 and it’s always been a struggle.  In every gas station I go to, in every grocery store I’m in, I want a Coke.  But this year I don’t.  I give it up on Ash Wednesday and never looked back.  I never even had a craving.

Since Lent is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing, I’ve decided to change it up.  I traded Coke for sweets.

I never realized how much shit I eat on a daily basis.  I was hungry for dinner at 4:30 today because I normally eat my body weight in cookies and granola bars by around three o’clock.  That tides me over ‘till about 6:30 when The Wife gets home and we eat. 

I think this will be a struggle. 

Not like “dog giving up humping random dogs” hard, but still…

It’ll be tough.

Ch. 3, Page 3 Pencils

I like how the last three panels merge to make a modified cover of the last novel.

Colacitti’s a good guy.

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Expelled with Ben Stein

I’ve always liked Ben Stein.  He’s been nothing but a funny, intelligent guy in every interview I’ve ever seen with him.  Every time the man opens his mouth, he sounds like he’s getting to a predetermined point.  Maybe that’s what Expelled had me sort of surprised.

If you’ve never heard of it, Expelled is a documentary about how many scientists are being ostracized for their belief in the possibility of Intelligent Design. 

I take that back.  Most of the scientists and researchers that are interviewed don’t believe in intelligent design; they believe that the biological evidence that they’ve seen points to something other than a Darwinian accident.  So they researched things other than the Darwin model of evolution and were universally fired. 

I see what Stein is saying: let’s keep all options open until the evidence is in.  There is no real proof for or against a Creator.  But he never really comes out and says it; this is what surprised me about the movie.  Stein always comes right out and says it.

He explains the rift between Creationism and Darwinism.  He talks about how the Newtonian model of physics was replaced by Einstein’s view and how no one is really trying to change biology the way Einstein changed physics.  He talks about the logical conclusion of Creationism – everything was done by God a long time ago and all we have to do now is His will.  He also talks about the logical conclusion of Darwinism – ultimately there is no free will and nothing really matters.   But he never really comes out and explains how Intelligent Design is different. As a matter of fact, whenever anyone is interviewed, Stein seems to be skewing the viewer toward the opposite opinion.  If the interviewee is a Darwinist, Stein argues for Creationism; if the interviewee is a Creationist, Stein ridicules him with Darwinism. 

As far as I can tell, Stein’s proclaimed viewpoint is “Both Creationism and Darwinism have their downsides.”

His hidden viewpoint – the one he never says aloud but always seems to portray – is the one that he always proclaims in every interview: Be fair.  May the best man win.

It’s just that usually the best man is Ben Stein.  In Expelled, the best man is the opponent of whoever is on screen at the time. 

 

Personally, I believe in a Creator.  I believe in a Design.  Nature is too messy and raw to give us a universe so perfectly put together.  

Ch. 2, Page 2 Inked

This manga inking is fun.  I gotta make a real superhero-type comics just so I can ink like this.

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Ch. 1 / SPACE Preview

If you buy l(a at SPACE, you’ll recieve a free copy of Ch. 1 of left (a $2.75 value)!

If I have any left after SPACE I’ll sell ‘em on the website. 

I don’t think I will though.  I think I’m going to under-order. 

Oh.  That reminds me.  I gotta email the director of SPACE and ask if I can use his logo on the cover.

Ch. 2, Page 1 Inks

I like inking like Tiny Life is a manga comic.  It’s kind of fun and super-easy.

All you have to do is ink everything the same width, and then the closer things are to the reader, the thicker you should retrace them.

It really doesn’t take that long and I can see this taking place on an “assembly line.”

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Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

It’s really hard for me to find a book that I like.  The reason I read things is to inspire myself.  The only thing that really inspires me is originality.  There’s not a whole helluva lot of originality around. 

An example: when Harry Potter was first picked up by Scholastic, The Wife swore up and down that I just had to read it because it was one of the most original things she’d ever read.  I picked it up and was dumbfounded by the lack of originality in it.  The main wizard is a stereotype, as is the main witch.  The main characters are two boys and a girl (given the times, I thought one boy would be black – all Mod Squad-like), and the main villain is hiding in something called the Mirror of Desire (which, of course, is spelled backwards).  I thought the only original thing in it was the moving stairs in the castle.

Look he's on a broom! Very original.

I felt the complete opposite way when I read Journey to the Center of the Earth.  I had a vague idea of what it was about, but I still thought it was compelling the whole way through.

This might be a spoiler alert for some of you, but considering the book has been around for about 150 years, I think you can forgive me.

A man travels with his uncle and finds a vent that leads to cave that leads to an opening that leads to the center of the earth.  There’s your plot.  But there’s no stupid Dan Brown-ish things to think about.  There’s no conspiracy.  There are no other teams trying to beat them down there.  It’s simply three guys in a cave for a couple of hundred pages. 

The part I’ll always remember is reading about them falling through a hole and landing on an island in the middle of a hot sea.  There was no sun, but there was light.  There was wind.  There was air.  When it rained, the clouds contained fire that lit up the sky and flickered before it hit the raft they were on. 

That’s inventive.

I might read more by Verne.

And less by Rowling.

 

Ch. 3, Page 2

It’s supposed to be night time.  But this looks like day.

I might have to fix it.  Or have him fix it.

 

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Watchmen

To tell you the truth, I didn’t really like this book all that much the first time I read it.  I thought it was way too long, overthought, and I thought the art was chintzy.  But keep in mind, I was like 10.

A few years later, in high school, a friend reintroduced me to it. He thought it was the greatest thing since the internet, which had just become popular the previous year (it was still called the Internet.  Capital ‘I’).  But keep in mind, he was 15 and thought surprise endings were the reason to read a book (I believe O. Henry was his favorite author).  I read it again, right about the time I was starting Jed Jr. #0.  I thought it was “much better than I remember,” but still not great.  Before the year was out, by the time I was done writing my first comic story, I read Watchmen for a third time.  I was blown away.

I think the movie will have the opposite effect.

When I saw it the first time, I was impressed that they could take such a perfectly complicated story and distill it into three hours (frankly, to do it right, it should’ve been a mini-series).  The ultra-violence didn’t faze me much; the oddly drawn-out sex scene did.  The direction was beautiful; the effects were spectacular.  Even the acting (with the very notable exception of Carla Gugino) was pretty good.  But together, they just didn’t pull it off.

What I mean is, the book is so perfect because it works on a number of levels: it has an element of history, an element of comics history, an element of psychoanalysis, an element of psychosis, an element of mystery, an element of adventure, an element of politics, an element of literature, an element of entertainment, an element of irony, an element of humor… the list goes on.  Mostly, though, what makes me come back to (the novel) Watchmen again and again is how well it’s all combined.  I think what’s going to draw me away from (the movie) Watchmen is how poorly they’re put together. 

I can’t say that for sure.  I’ve only seen it once and I think it’s good enough to watch twice.  But I don’t think this is going to be a Matrix where you can watch it over and over again and see something new each time.

I think with this movie, what you see is what you get.  But that’s not all that bad, because what you see is very pretty.  

Ch. 3, Page 1

I think I’m going to start numbering them like this.  That way, I don’t have to remember what the last page was.

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