Todd’s Blog

This week has been sunny and springlike, a welcome change from the snow and storms of February. Yesterday afternoon I went out with my camera to search for signs of spring. In our yard, daffodils were emerging from the fall leaves…

…and this rosebush was showing new growth. Didn’t know if it had made it through the winter, so I was glad to see it.

Down the road some naturalized crocuses were open in someone’s yard. We used to have them in ours, but they all got eaten by voles. As I walked around the neighborhood I listened for the calls of birds and frogs. It’s too early for migrating songbirds, but resident Cardinals and Tufted Titmice were singing their territorial calls. Carolina Wrens were too, but they call all year, so that’s nothing new or seasonal. No Spring Peeper frogs calling yet, but I did hear a few others, I think they were leopard frogs, but I’m not sure.

It’s a bit further than I usually walk, but I went to a place where I had once seen Skunk Cabbage one spring years ago, and sure enough, they were still there.

This woodland plant is one of the first in our area to emerge in spring from the wet, muddy streamsides and marshy spots it likes. The green shoot is the beginning of the cabbagy leaves that will spread out much more soon. The plants were already emitting a strong odor, not as unpleasant as a real skunk, but it does get your attention! I’ve never actually seen the yellow flowers that come later, I’ll have to try coming back in a few weeks to see if they’re out. In any case, when I was a boy this plant’s appearance in the woods was a sure sign of spring, and so it remains.

© David Brin.

David Brin has an impressive resume as a scientist and scholar, and could probably have stayed comfortably in those careers all his life. Instead he expanded his aspirations into writing with this first science fiction novel. I can imagine him thinking about where to place his story, something that hadn’t been done a thousand times before. His solution: a human (and alien ally) expedition into the upper layers of the sun! Brilliant idea.

“Sundiver” is the first part of the first Uplift Wars trilogy. I’ve already read the second and third ones, “Startide Rising” and “The Uplift War,” so have read them out of order. I don’t think it harmed the impact of any of the books, though this one does begin on a future Earth, and perhaps would have made some things in the later books clearer. Through backstory we learn here that an Earth expedition into deep space had encountered a vast and sometimes chaotic galactic civilization, tied together loosely by common knowledge and ancestors. Common knowledge is shared through the galactic Library, available to all sentient races, and to their “clients,” races on the verge of civilization that the older races take under their care to educate and “uplift” them to the level of full membership. Earth is a very rare “wolfling” civilization, coming to the party apparently on their own and without a sponsor, though the older galactics insist they must have had one who left them too early.

Another unusual thing about Earth is that they have, unknowingly, acquired clients of their own. Through genetic manipulation and individual training they have undertaken the uplifting of chimpanzees and dolphins, one thing that seems to qualify them for galactic citizenship. As the story opens, the protagonist, Jacob, is seen training one of the dolphins. Then he is offered a position on a research mission to Mercury, where probes are being sent into the upper layers of the sun. There, he finds out, are living beings of some unknown gaseous construction that are setting both Earth and Galactic scientists into a frenzy. Are these the fabled lost sponsors of Earth? Or something else? When Jacob gets to Mercury he is swiftly drawn into a complex intrigue involving sabotage and murder. Jacob’s own background will provide tools to help him sort out the mysteries and menaces all around him.

Brin’s first book is extremely complex and thoroughly imagined, yet exciting and very readable. It’s easy to see how his career took off in meteoric style after this book, with the second in the series winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel. This is a great read full of fascinating concepts and characters. Highly recommended.

Images © Dave Stevens estate.

In my last two reviews I talked about reprints of previously released material where the results were mixed. This one knocks it out of the park in every respect. It probably helps that the material is a lot newer, that the creator Dave Stevens was class A perfectionist whose friends all pitched in to get the best quality for this edition, and it most certainly helped that all or nearly all the art was rescanned from the originals. Then they were recolored by Laura Martin, one of the best in the business.

Here’s a panel from the 1985 Eclipse Comics trade paperback collection of the first five chapters. You can immediately see the wonderful qualities of the art, but the blacks are washed out and the colors are heavy and dull. They appear to be painted over photostats of the art, or possibly blue-line prints. There is some modeling, but it’s only really effective on the helmet.

Here’s the same panel from the new printing. The blacks are crisp and dark, and the colors are SO much better it’s like seeing the scene for the first time, or with rose-colored glasses removed. Martin’s modeling is subtle but adds depth and realistic lighting to every element. It’s a revelation.

The entire package is an art and comic lover’s delight: excellent quality materials and printing, great design work, a joy to have and read. Oh, and if your only knowledge of the story is from the movie, this is much better. Miles better. Dave was passionate about his work, and he put that passion into every panel. Great action, wonderful characters, handsome hero, stunning love interest, and at the center a rocket backpack that allows Cliff to fly like a superhero — if he can keep it away from the villains! A terrific period piece that recalls the best of the movie serials of the 1930s and 40s.

This one busts out the top of my RECOMMENDED meter — even if you already own the material in previous printings you simply must get this new edition. It’s a gem!

In 2008 I wrote a blog post about the use of dots and dashes as punctuation in comics. Here’s another focusing on punctuation that I think is unique to comics. I call them “breath marks” because they indicate a human sound caused by expelled or indrawn air with little or no vocalization, as in the examples above. There are other names, such as “crow’s feet.”

This and all comics images © DC Comics, Inc.

To get an idea of where they came from, let’s begin with the very first Batman story in DETECTIVE COMICS 27, in 1939. In the first panel, Batman is punching a villain, and in addition to the lettered sound effect, notice the lines radiating out from the impact. This is part of comics’ visual grammar. In the panel below, longer and closer together radiating lines around the two figures add visual interest to an otherwise boring image. It’s not too far a leap from these lines which spread out from a central point, call them “burst lines” and the outward spreading lines of breath marks, as a way of adding interest and emphasis.

Over in SUPERMAN #2, Fall 1939, a breathy comment is enclosed in parentheses to set it apart from the regular dialogue. This was a fairly common usage at the time, and my guess is it was already being used in newspaper comic strips, which is what comic books took their cues and style from in the early days.

Here’s another example from the Batman story in DETECTIVE COMICS 62, in 1942. Both Superman and Batman stories were being created largely by the studios of Siegel and Shuster and Bob Kane respectively, so both must have been looking at the same comic strip sources for lettering style, as well as other comics by the time of this one.

The earliest example of breath marks as we now know them that I’ve been able to find in my DC Archive Editions is this one, from a Wildcat story in ALL STAR COMICS #27, Winter of 1945. It’s not quite in a standardized form yet, there are five marks on the left and four on the right, but they radiate outward from the word in a recognizable way. Other examples are in the same issue, probably by the same letterer.

Somewhere in my DC Archives is the missing link, which I once noticed but have been unable to find again after an hour of looking: a hybrid form consisting of parentheses broken up into dots or short dashes. If anyone can find an example of that, let me know, and I’ll include it here. I think that’s the natural evolution from parentheses to breath marks. First you have broken parentheses, similar to the form of broken balloon borders used for whispering (also a breathy sound), then some letterer begins to make those marks radiate out from the word. Other letterers saw it, realized what a good idea it was, and copied it.

By the time of this early silver age Green Lantern story in SHOWCASE 23, November 1959, the breath marks were standardized to three radiating lines on each side, and so ingrained that they even appear here in a thought balloon, where no vocalization is being uttered!

When I began to make computer fonts from my hand lettering, I realized there was no place on the keyboard for breath marks, so I had to decide on one. I put them in the place of the left and right brackets, highlighted above. I’m not sure if all others who make fonts for comics lettering put them in the same place or not, but I think some do. I thought it was a safe and logical choice, as I’d never needed to use brackets in all my years of lettering comics. And if by some chance I ever did, I’d just use them from a common font like Helvetica instead of my own lettering font. Meanwhile, I’ve grown so used to using the bracket keys for breath marks, I don’t have to think about it. I sometimes wonder if people who aren’t as familiar with comics lettering who buy comics lettering fonts are ever puzzled by them, though…

The massive snow piles are almost gone from beside the driveway, the sun is out, and spring is in the air today. During the week I cleaned up the yard, picking up dozens of broken branches from the storms and raking. Today it was time to tackle the biggest job, clearing away as much as I could of the large trees that fell out by the road.

Here’s how things looked when I started. Two medium-sized pitch pines had fallen from the edge of the yard partly into the road, but had been pushed back to the shoulder by a road crew during the storm. I got to work with my trusty handsaw. The smaller of the two trees needed to be cut once, then I was able to drag it back into the woods. The larger one needed two cuts, as I found out when I couldn’t move it after the first cut. All three cuts took time, and needed several rest breaks. Yes, the best tool for this job is a chainsaw, and I have one, but I haven’t tried to start it in about 12 years, so I’m sure it’s inoperable by now. The handsaw is slow, but it gets there eventually, at least with trees of this diameter, about 6 to 8 inches.

About two hours later I was finished. My hands are sore, but I have the satisfaction of a job well done. I may not be a real lumberjack, but I did okay. Being a homeowner has lots of unexpected tasks, and this was far from the hardest. Eventually the road crew might have come back and cleared the trees off the shoulder, but I kind of enjoyed doing it myself.

I didn’t notice it at first, but a third, much larger pitch pine broke off and fell behind the others. Fortunately I don’t need to do anything with that, it’s off the shoulder in the woods, and can stay there until it rots. Good thing, it’s too big for me to tackle!

Here’s where it broke off. Pitch pines are pretty brittle, but the first blizzard, with very heavy snow and high winds, did in lots of trees in our area. The oaks seems to survive the best, having only thin branches for the snow to pile up on. The pines and cedars and hollies all took the weight, and many are down or damaged. We’re actually lucky nothing big fell on the house or the driveway.

As I walked through the kitchen this morning I caught a flash of blue-gray wings speeding through the back yard, where the feeders are, and knew it must be the hawk I’ve seen preying on the feeder birds a few times this winter. I had a look from the kittens’ room, and spotted him sitting on a broken tree behind the pond with a Goldfinch in his claws. I went quickly for the camera, and got off six pictures, of which this was the best. It’s a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, a common feeder bird predator. The plumage is mostly adult, but there are some white spots on the back, so this is probably a young bird born last year and still moulting into adult colors.

We have hawks like this one, or occasionally the larger but similar Cooper’s Hawk, trying to catch our feeder birds most winters. They often miss, and when they do succeed, it’s usually with Mourning Doves, which are larger and slower. This is the first time I’ve seen a Goldfinch taken. Some would be upset about it, but it’s nature’s way. Hawks have to eat too. This species preys on small songbirds, and feeders give them a good place to hunt. The hawk began pulling feathers off the Goldfinch to get at the flesh as I watched. Then our cat Tigger jumped up beside me, and the sharp-eyed bird caught the movement, and flew off with its lunch. Twenty minutes later the feeder birds were back eating as if nothing had happened. It’s always interesting to see nature’s struggle playing out just beyond our windows. Glad I’m on this side.

I’ve been watching Winter Olympics for decades, and I can’t recall a more enjoyable one overall, despite uncooperative weather in Vancouver. Ellen and I had talked about trying to go to the games ourselves, and ended up happy we were able to see it in the comfort of our living room instead. The figure skating was great TV throughout. We applauded the wonderful performances of Virtue and Moir of Canada and Davis and White of the U.S., gold and silver medalists. We also thought Belbin and Agosto were great, and deserved the bronze, but their time seems to have passed, at least in the judges’ eyes. At least there were no judging scandals at the ice dancing this year.

Yu-Na Kim rose to the Olympic potential we saw in her over the past year, and surpassed it, setting new scoring records and taking the gold easily in the women’s event. She was spectacular. Someday commentators will be talking about the “Kim” era with reverence, she’s that good. Mao Asada’s performance would have won gold in any other year, and Joannie Rochette showed amazing heart and courage to do so well just after the sudden death of her mother.

All the events we watched were entertaining and exciting. I loved the one with four snowboarders going over a tricky, hilly course at the same time, and the skiing was exciting, too. Oh yes, and there was apparently a classic hockey final which we didn’t watch. Even the final event, the 50K cross-country skiing marathon was pretty exciting.

The closing ceremonies, which we finally saw the last of this evening, were pretty corny, but occasionally funny and moving. Now the world moves on, and so to all those atheletes, some hoping to cash in on their new fame. I was startled to read in yesterday’s paper that Evan Lysacek will be on Dancing With the Stars starting in a few weeks. Well, knowing Ellen, we’ll be watching it, then. We saw Kristy Yamaguchi’s season on the show, and it was entertaining, though I prefer to see them on skates…

This attractive deluxe hardcover is the same size as the DC Absolute Editions, using similar high quality paper and printing. The only thing I don’t like about the package is the white paper over the cover boards and lack of dustjacket, which will probably ensure that few copies will survive in “as shipped” condition for long, unless bagged and stored. Seems a shame, as a book like this deserves to be opened and read, even left out on the coffee table.

It’s a rather odd collection by Craig Yoe. The bulk of it is reproductions of short fantasy/mystery/science fiction/horror stories from Steve Ditko’s time at Charlton Comics, both the 1950s era before his celebrated time on Marvel’s SPIDER-MAN and DOCTOR STRANGE, and after that in the late 1960s. I don’t know the legal status of this work, but it seems to be in public domain, as there are no Charlton copyright notices. And all the stories are reproduced by scanning the comics pages. Here’s an example:

Unlike the MELVIN MONSTER volume, this one has accurate and in-focus scans that capture every detail. This has its good and bad points! Charlton was always notorious for the poor quality of its paper and printing, and there are loads of flaws on nearly every page shown, particularly in the color, which is often wretched, but also in the reproduction of the art.

For instance, one story is way too light, with parts of the lettering dropping out everywhere. That could be bad scanning, but I bet it’s just the way the comic was issued. The scans have been lightened overall, removing the paper color, but I don’t see any other evidence of changes. All the original typos in the lettering are preserved, for example. While the flaws are annoying, and one could wish for a perfect world where the original art for the stories was available to use, this does give one a very accurate reading experience to what you would have had buying the original comics, which I did in a few cases. Ditko’s art was one of the things that attracted me to them, despite the awful printing.

The stories themselves aren’t all that interesting, plotwise. Most are uncredited, though a later one that has a writing credit by Nick Cuti is good. A few have mildly surprising twists, but most are average for the time. Where they do excell it’s because of Ditko’s art, and he makes the most of the threadbare stories whenever he can, adding his unique stylized figures, layouts, subjects and backgrounds that fans of his Marvel work will find familiar.

Filling out the book, between the stories, are single page examples of original Ditko artwork from Charlton, Marvel, Warren, Tower and other publishers as well as many of the Charlton comic covers. These are all in raw scan form, tanned paper, white correction paint, pasted-on logos, wrinkled and flaking paper and all. I enjoyed looking at those as much as at the stories. Then there is Stan Lee’s brief introduction praising Ditko, as he often has before, and brief but interesting comments from P. Craig Russell, John Romita and Jerry Robinson. I was puzzled about the inclusion of the latter until I read his comments: he was one of Ditko’s art school teachers!

The elephant in the room for a book like this is the absence of Ditko’s finest work in the opinion of many: those famous Marvel stories. Even the short mystery/fantasy stories he did for the pre-superheroic Marvel, usually with Stan Lee, are a lot better than most of the Charlton ones presented here. But, as a collection of Ditko work that many readers will not have seen, this is a valuable effort, and well worth your time. If nothing else, the large size and accurate look of the Charlton stories gave me the same sort of reading experience I had when finding some of them in my youth; they’re atmospheric, wacky, nostalgic and fun. Recommended!

Images © John Stanley Estate.

John Stanley is best known for his years of work on the LITTLE LULU comic, first as writer and artist, later as writer and layout man. I may have read a few of those, but if so they didn’t stick with me. Another comic he worked on did, though: NANCY AND SLUGGO, in particular some stories involving Nancy’s weird friend Oona, sort of an Addams Family character. These comics featuring MELVIN MONSTER, published in 1965, were ones I’d never seen, and being largely unfamiliar with Stanley’s work, I thought I’d give them a try. Volume 1 reprints the first three issues in a handsome oversized hardcover, larger than the original comics, and on much better quality paper.

Melvin, as it turns out, is a classic “opposites” story and setting, where everything is the opposite of what you’d expect. He’s a young boy monster living in a world of monsters. His parents, Mummy (an actual mummy) and Baddy and their pet crocodile encourage Melvin to be bad, truant and scary, but he longs to be good and go to school. Everyone either wants to punish him or make fun of him for this, and all the story elements are reversed in that way. It’s very similar to the Bizarro stories in Superman comics, which began just a few years earlier in 1958, but were popular in the early 1960s. In those stories, Bizarro wanted to do everything the opposite of Superman, and so on. Melvin’s visit to human lands in the first issue makes a double twist, as normal people expect him to act like a monster since he looks like one, and are baffled when he acts nicer and is more polite than they are.

The stories are mildly amusing, but I didn’t find much in them laugh-out-loud funny. The reversal joke gets tired pretty quickly, as I also found with the Bizarro stories. Stanley does have a much better ear for dialogue and comic timing than the writers of Bizarro, and that makes the stories work despite the one-note theme. I can’t say I’m impressed with this book, I wouldn’t call these comics classics, but they’re reasonably entertaining.

Drawn & Quarterly, or perhaps the book’s designer Seth, made some interesting choices in reproducing these old comics. Having no original art or printing film to work from, they needed to scan the old comics, page by page. Rather than try to brighten them up digitally, they’ve kept the scans very much in a raw state, and extended the old comics paper color out to the edges of the book, so the effect is like reading a vintage comic whose paper has started to tan a bit with age, and the colors remain muted, as they were on the original.

This is not a bad way to go, but I wish the scans were clearer. Everything is slightly blurry—not enough to interfere with reading enjoyment, but definitely missing the crispness of the black ink lines that would have been visible on the original comics. I think this was done on purpose to blur out the original dot screens on the colors, and perhaps they liked that look better, but I’d have preferred to see it in focus, color dots and all.

In all, I liked this but didn’t love it. If you’re already a John Stanley fan, I’m sure this book will suit you. Others may want to read a sampling before deciding. Mildly recommended.

© Sylvia Waugh, illustration © Richard Ross.

This is a book that I picked up and bought at a used bookstore on the basis of the back cover and inside front flap description of the contents, plus perhaps the interesting cover art. What I thought I was getting was a book about an eccentric family with a big secret they must keep hidden from the world. And it is that, but not the kind of secret I’d expected. As the inside flap says, “A normal family, you might think—but you would be wrong. Number 5 is home to a stunning deception that must at all costs be kept from the hostile world outside.” And whoever wrote that deserves an award; it was enough to get my wallet out!

Now, I’m going to reveal what that deception is, because I felt a bit cheated by it, so if you think you might like to find and read this book yourself, perhaps you should read no further. Turns out that all the members of this large family of all ages, from bedridden Grandfather to newborn infant are human-size dolls somehow come to life, they know not how, nor is it ever explained. They were made by the woman whose house they live in, perhaps as companions for her lonely life, but we never really find out. The life the Mennyms lead is a precarious one. Some of them can never leave the house, they’re too obviously not people. Others can manage it in the right circumstances, with the father taking odd jobs like that of a night watchman, and one daughter smart and human enough to know how to get by with large hats and sunglasses, gloves and misdirection.

Despite my initial disappointment, as reading about dolls is very far down on my list, in fact completely off it, I have to admit this book did keep my interest. The characters are quirky and eccentric, and the way they have learned to adapt to their odd life, their interactions with each other and the outside world, are pretty compelling. And when a letter arrives to tell them that the new owner of their rented house, who has never been there or met them, is coming to visit from far Australia, the family is really thrown into a panic. But that’s only one of many interesting plotlines, another is the unfinished doll suddenly uncovered in the attic, and the possibility that it, too, might be alive.

The Mennyms are as creepy as the Addams Family in their own quiet way, and yet Waugh’s writing makes them seem quite human in some ways, too. Quite a juggling act for this first-time author. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book because I’m not quite sure what to make of it myself, but if this review piques your interest, give it a try. I’m even thinking of getting the next book in the series…