And Goofing Off is Half the Battle

I should be working right now. It's one of those days where I don't feel driven to do the work I'm supposed to, so I'm playing around with something else. Hopefully it'll act as a warm-up and I'll be able to draw the three other illos on my drawing table.

The guys on the always-excellent podcast Comic Pants did a program on the GI Joe comic. I was a Joe fan in the Eighties, and have mentioned how the famous silent issue of GI Joe managed to inspire my Raider series. I haven't read the book since then, and maybe it doesn't hold up, but I think it was that perfect combination of solid writing and solid storytelling that combine to make a project stronger than the whole. And Larry Hama deserves a lot of credit for wrangling a toy franchise into a darned interesting comic book, and writing something that, while it wasn't necessarily the real military, certainly felt like it. I think the big words crowd would call it verisimilitude.

My favorite character of the original set was Flash, the Laser Rifle Trooper. I dressed as him for Halloween one year, my Dad making a kick-butt costume, including a laser rifle that lit up. So, I decided to try another all-digital piece featuring Sgt. Anthony S. Gambello, and yes, I had to look that up.

And, if you get the chance, take their geektastic GI Joe Mission Challenge, where you get the opportunity to send a team of Joes to attack Cobra. Yo Joe!

Our Revels Now Are Begun!

It's time for my hand, an actual printed copy of Love and Capes #6 straight from the printer, Booster Gold and Skeets, and yet another Mocha of Victory! The books look good, I'll be taking possession of the bulk of them on Monday and they'll be shipping soon. But for now, let's revel in my done-itude! Revel I say!

You Can See Right Through Me

This is so cool. It won't be so cool to everybody, but to the right people, this is gonna be great.

I had to buy a new DVD player. My old one, a Christmas present from my brother David, finally gave up the ghost. So I started looking around for another one. I found this one. I'm sure there are others like it, but I just set mine up and I thought it was pretty cool. So why am I throwing the "cool" around? Because it's got a free hack to make it Region Free, listed right on its Amazon page.

I've got some specialized tastes in TV and movies. I love British stuff, like Doctor Who and Hustle. Both are great shows, and available on America TV and DVD. There are a few shows that I'm big fans of, or would like to be big fans of, like Life on Mars, Spaced and Jeckyll, that aren't availble in these United States. Worse yet, there are some American shows that aren't available over here at all. And, since DVDs are region-encoded, meaning that DVD players are coded for the region you live in, that becomes diffcult. A British DVD won't play in an American DVD player.

It was the Sci-Fi Channel show, and big favorite of mine, The Invisible Man that started me on this crusade. I love this series, as did a couple of friends of mine. I wanted to get the series as a present for them, but even if I could get the DVD, it wouldn't play. I looked into a bunch of solutions, and then found out about region-free DVD players that would play discs from anywhere. So now, it means that I can buy the Invisible Man DVD from Amazon.co.uk and play it over here. It doesn't help my friends, of course, but they can come over and watch it if they want. Or they could get their own.

Anyway, I'm a little stoked. It's going to take a little effort to not start strafing the Amazon.uk catalog. And, sure, shipping's a little bit of a hassle, but since The Invisible Man came out on DVD in 2004 or so, and there are still no plans to release it in the US, for the right stuff, it's worth it.

Now if only Now and Again would come out on DVD.

Space on the Shelf

I won an award today. I entered some stuff in the Apex Awards, presented by the Lake Communicators (of which I'm a proud member). My "Moscone Presentation" that I did for a client won an Award of Achievement, which is kind of like an honorable mention. Unlike previous years, I didn't rack up a shelf full of awards at the event, but the categories change a little bit and so did my business. I'm doing far more illustration and cartooning than graphic design or anything else these days, and there was no straight illustration category this year. Hopefully it'll be back next year.

Still, it's great to be recognized along with such elite and talented company. Yay, me!

Can You Dig It?

See, I knew I'd have more artwork to post.

The radio is an important part of my work environment. I work solo, like the renegade maverick loner I am, but I find that I miss human contact. Talk radio of one sort or another fills that void with me. Starting with Lanigan and Malone, I listen to a lot of talk during the day. I don't need to agree with the content, just have the host be interesting to listen to. And it creates the illusion of conversation to keep my mind engaged during the day.

One of the local radio hosts is a guy named Bob Frantz. I met him in person at a blood drive, and did the relentless self-promotion thing. He wondered if I might be able to do a caricature of him and his gang. I told him I could. I was wondering if he could relentlessly promote me. He could. It's been a good relationship so far.

Right now, the above image only appears on his web page, but there are plans afoot to have it appear in three dimensions sometime soon. I'll ley you know more about that when I can.

Groo Crew

I've mentioned before a little show called Mid-Ohio-Con. It's my favorite comic convention for a lot of reasons, but maybe the biggest reason is the people I get to meet.

I met my friend Paul D. Storrie there. It's where I met Con Daddy Roger Price. I got fondled by Virginia Hey there. It's because of MOC that I got to get on the set on Angel and design Andy Hallett and Mark Lutz's websites for a time. I got to attend Mass with Alan Davis and his wife. I've met some friends, some fans, and even a girl once or twice.

A while ago, I met Sergio Aragones, who is, hands-down, one of the coolest guys on the planet. Absurdly talented, demonically fast, and just a nice guy. He can draw and write, which makes him a double threat. And he's funny. A bunch of us were in a van being driven by Bob Ingersoll, co-writer of that Star Trek story I've mentioned a million times, and by day, a lawyer. As Bob was driving, an ambulance came up behindd us. Bob didn't get over, as it was obvious that the ambulance was going to turn before it needed to pass us. A bunch of writers in the car, and Sergio says "That's the only time I've ever seen an ambulance chase a lawyer." Damn his talent!

Sergio, or as I call him, Mr. Aragones, is doing the cover of the Mid-Ohio-Con Program Book. I got the opportunity to color his fine, frenetic work. I've been looking at Sergio's work since Mad Magazine and it's just indescribably cool that I get to work with him at all.

And, of course, you too could meet him if you head over to Mid-Ohio-Con on Thanksgiving weekend. You can meet me, too, but I'm sure that's not as much of a thrill.

The Night the Lights Went Out at 30 Rock

I really don't want to work today. Maybe it's the change in weather, or the void that is having Love and Capes done, or even the time change. But it's taking effort to be at the drawing table today. And, given that I've been lured over here to post a blog, obviously that effort is faltering.

Anyway, I'm going to create a new category here on the Thom Zahler Weblog… randomness. Every once in a while I see a link or a story I want to comment on, and I just needed a place to put such things. I won't go overboard with it, think of it as a place to vent about things.

Things like last night's Football Night in America. It's NBC's pre-game/halftime/post-game show. I watched some of it during the Cowboys/Eagles game. (The Cowboys won, which is good, as the Eagles are an evil, soulless blight on the NFL. But, Dallas is my adopted home team and the Eagles are a hated enemy, so I may be biased.) But I don't want to comment on the game. I want to comment on NBC/Universal's "Universal is Green" week which caused them to do their show in the dark!

Yeah, to show their environmentalism, they did the show in the dark. Well, except for a couple of carbon-spewing candles and three or four huge plasma screens with the sponsors' logos. Cris Collinsworth had to read his notes by a flashlight. It was one of the silliest things I've ever seen. And the stupidest. They were talking about how much of a benefit not running the lights was, while NBC's Rockefeller Center's well-lit, water wasting fountain was performing non-stop in the background.

When I saw it, I thought it was an Saturday Night Live skit. Heck, next week's SNL would probably make fun of it, except for the Writers' Strike.

Look, I've got no problems with conservation. I'm not going to get overly political, but I think most people like the idea of conserving resources. They may disagree about how much good it does, or to what lengths we should go to conserve, but the underlying principal is a good one. Hey, if you can make me a car that looks and runs the same as the one I have, but uses a third less gasoline, I can't imagine anyone, left, right or otherwise who wouldn't think that was a good thing.

I do have a problem with silly symbolism. The NFL guys doing their show in the dark just looked stupid. Do it with the lights at half-power and say how much even that little saves, donate that week's salary to some green cause, drink free trade coffee out of your NBC licensed mugs.

Instead, they gave us the symbolism of cutting their nose off to spite their face. Personally, I recommend they show much they can keep from polluting the atmosphere and the airwaves by dumping Keith Olbermann. But that's just me.

I Wish They All Could Be Celtic Women

I try to live by certain rules. Do unto others, never get involved in a land war in Asia or go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, don't interfere with a normal, living culture, and, of course, don't buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving. After all, you can't complain that Christmas decorations are almost showing up before Halloween if you participate in the madness.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. I've already bought one Christmas present (because it involved shipping, eBay, and the lives of several Bothan spies) and then I went ahead and bought another. I bought my mother tickets to see Celtic Woman. It would have been nice if they were performing closer to Christmas, but even with all my vast Councilman power, I can't change their schedule.

So we went out to dinner and then to EJ Thomas Hall, where the Celtic Women were performing. I've heard their PBS concerts and liked them a lot. In fact, PBS got me the tickets. I pledged some money in one during one of their incessant pledge drives and got what were promised to be "excellent"" tickets. They were, in fact, excellent tickets. Tenth row, just off to stage left. Not bad at all.

The concert was very good. My mom said she liked going to a show where she knew all the words. I didn't, especially since I trip on some of the Gaelic songs. With those, I could have the lyrics in front of me and not be able to follow along. But, it was a great show. All five Celtic Women did a great job, and EJ Thomas Hall is a great place to see a show. I would have bought a CD there, but I'd already done so back in LA some months back. Man, I loves me that Amoeba Music.

It was also nice to hang out with my Mom for a while. She's busy in a way that makes me look like a slacker, and is probably where I get my maximum burn lifestyle from. We talked of many things: The impending writers' strike, her job, my job, home equity loans, brothers and, of course, Ireland, where we should both be returning to next summer.

I recommend seeing The Women if they're coming into your neck of the woods. But even if they're not, that doesn't mean you can't take your Mom out.

Proof of Life

I was driving home from my morning kickboxing class and got The Call. No, not "the call that changed my destiny", you Backstreet Boys fan (if there are any of you left… but my, that's a catchy tune) but The Call to pick up my proofs for Love and Capes #6. Here's a pic of the proof, along with one of my favorite Silver Age villains, The Composite Superman. And, since he fell off the shelf when I was reaching for him, Beppo the Super Monkey.

Sliver (and not that bad Sharon Stone film)

It's been pointed out to me that I neglected Wizard World Texas in my quadumverate of holidays. (Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Jesse Jackson, you big pointer-outer-guy.) And yes, I will very much be in Big D with an armful of Love and Capes, including, God and the printer willing, copies of numero six-o. But, while I dig WizDal, it's not quite to the level of MOC or, say, Christmas. So, if it's a holiday, it's one of those government ones that close the banks and the post office, but don't involve cards or presents.

I've gone ahead and finished this year's Christmas Card. I'm providing a lovely slice of the artwork, hot off the Wacom tablet. It's enough so that you can't see what the card or the joke is, but enough to whet your appetite. Plus, it looks kinda cool, don't you think?