Tim Lucas Wants You --

-- To Know He Was Here First!

Lest anyone think Tim Lucas's comments on yesterday's blog post are in any way sour grapes or offbase, Tim indeed proposed using the very Uncle Sam zombie recruitment imagery

Leah Moore and John Reppion are using in their lively new comics series Raise the Dead

in his stellar screenplay The Gore Corps almost (or exactly) two decades ago. I know, because way back then Tim graced me with a copy of his screenplay in (I believe) its second draft.

Now, this is not a matter of plagiarism, to my mind. I can likewise vouch for the fact that Leah and John have never, ever read Tim's script , nor ever heard of it. Hence, Leah and John are blameless -- nor is Tim saying they copped it from him. He's just saying, "Hey, I came up with that 20 years ago!", and he did. It's one of those images/ideas whose time has come -- in fact, one could argue current American foreign policy, and domestic military policies (e.g., abuse of its own volunteer Army and National Guard) in particular, have made it more timely than ever, and dead-on target at that.

I read and loved Tim's screenplay before Taboo was taking shape -- a project John Totleben and I began work on in earnest in 1986, based on Dave Sim's proposition to publish anything John and I wished to do -- meaning I read Tim's script at least 20 years ago. In fact, it was reading Tim's screenplay that led to Tim and I discussing his writing something for Taboo, which survived the inauspicious first script proposal "Your Darling Pet Monkey!" -- a 'cute' idea for a decidedly 'uncute' anthology (no dis on Tim, mind you; Alan Moore's first Taboo script submission was likewise rejected for being too funny, built as it was around an agonizing slide show of a family vacation -- a very funny script, decidedly not what we were looking for given Taboo's manifesto). Tim came back with "Throat Sprockets," and the rest is history.

Alas, Tim's screenplays remain unknown quantities to the world, though thankfully Tim has shared them with me over the years. More thankfully, his most recent one seems to be attracting some welcome attention -- keep an eye on

Tim's blog for info, updates and announcements.

His sensitivity to the matter is understandable, given the number of ideas he's cooked up that have somehow made their way into produced films (it was Tim, in a proposal for a sequel to David Cronenberg's The Fly, who came up with 'The Freak Pit,' which made its way into The Fly II sans anything for Tim; there are other examples I could but won't cite, as I've probably mortified Tim enough with this post as it is). As it stands, no lesser stellar exploitation cinema talents than Larry Cohen and William Lustig graced the world with their collaborative effort Uncle Sam on July 4, 1997, thus acing Tim's unproduced script imagery a decade past my reading of The Gore Corps -- and trumping the above Raise the Dead covers by a decade, too.

Criswell Predicts: When you've got an idea that seems like a natural, by any means possible, get it out there! If you don't, someone else will.

Mind you, Tim tried like hell to get his script filmed -- it just didn't happen. Sometimes, it doesn't reach fruition, or ever get seen by the public. It's the nature of the beast, and I do mean beast.

Still, there is the sometimes inflated nature of our (completely understandable) proprietary feelings for our ideas -- published or unpublished, seen or unseen -- that can distort things, or turn the all-devouring, 'you snooze you lose' nature of the pop culture machine into a real irritant for those who find themselves personally facing these issues.

I recall a phone conversation with Frank Miller in February 1995, when his and Geof Darrow's vivid bullet-cavity-through-the-skull-framing-the-gunslinging-hero cover for their Dark Horse comics series Hardboiled had seemingly been 'borrowed' for one of the splashy deaths in Sam Raimi's then-in-theaters The Quick and the Dead. Frank wasn't amused -- but he sure didn't want to hear from me that that very gory 'gag' image had already been featured prominently in Antonio Margheriti's Apocalypse Domani (1980, released in the US theatrically in 1982, aka Cannibals in the Streets, Invasion of the Fleshhunters), and in fact was the centerpiece of the film's Japanese ad campaign.

But that was a bullet-hole-through-a-torso, not a bullet-through-a-head -- well, OK, fair enough.

Still, the bullet-hole-through-a-torso-framing-the-shooter gag had already, pre-cannibal movie setpiece, been seen worldwide in John Huston's very popular Paul Newman vehicle The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), when Newman's Judge Roy Bean blasted a bucket-sized hole clear through Stacy Keach's villainous the Original Bad Bob the Albino -- and Huston and screenplay author John Milius had arguably 'borrowed' that punchline from the identical throwaway visual gag in Ernie Kovacs's brilliant black-and-white TV series, The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952; don't take my word for it, the sketch is on the first disc in

The Best of Ernie Kovacs DVD set from White Star).

One could justifiably argue, coming full circle back to comics, that Al Capp's "Fearless Fosdick" comic strip parody -- in L'il Abner -- of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy predated Kovacs -- and Mad's -- popularization of such cartoon holes-through-human-bodies iconography, and I've no doubt something, somewhere predates that.

Still, Frank was unhappy, and might have been right -- after all, Geof Darrow's eye-popping Hardboiled cover had been one of that comic season's most iconographic images, visible in every comic shop (usually on a top shelf or visible behind the counter, with a 'mature readers only!' warning self-imposed by retailers), and that may indeed have been where Raimi 'borrowed' the image from.

Who could say? Who can say?

These unwelcome 'there goes that idea, though I had it years ago' speed bumps and indignities are part and parcel of being a writer -- and artist, for that matter. Things can be and often are worse --

Rick Veitch's sky whale imagery was unique when he started writing and drawing Abrasax and the Earthman for serialization in Epic magazine in the very early '80s --

-- but the very month his first episode saw print, two other adult-oriented newsstand comic zines featured their own 'sky whale' stories (and, after all, Astro the killer space whale in the 1965 American/Belgian animated feature Pinocchio in Outer Space/Pinocchio Dans le Space predated them all). Ditto Steve Perry, among whose unsold scripts (which I had hoped to draw) was a 1980 opus entitled "Tiny Dinosaurs," which quite directly anticipated Gremlins as much as Charlie Band's popular 1990s direct-to-video series PreHysteria. Mark Martin had a great li'l strip about a boy and his robot dog published in Nickelodeon that seemed awfully close to a certain Nickelodeon movie and TV series -- but apparently it wasn't a case of plagiarism, either, but it was a bitter pill to swallow when it all went down.

So it goes. I could go on and on -- I've got my own sob stories, sisters. But then again, a major part of my own career wouldn't exist without such a conundrum having borne fruit. I mean, Swamp Thing/Man Thing. Huh. Who thunk of it first, Gerry Conway or Len Wein? Does it matter, with Theodore Sturgeon's "It" and Airboy's The Heap predating both 1970s "things"? Sometimes, it's just the Jungian reality: when that kind of iconographic image surfaces in the collective unconsciousness, it's there for any creator to pluck and use -- and many often do, either at the same time or over a span of time.

But one doesn't need these peculiar sets of circumstances to suffer the slings and arrows too many writers endure over the course of a career. I can hear Mike Dobbs now: "Get off the cross! We need the wood!"

Then again, Mike has his own stories of this nature to share--

-- as a book author

and as a journalist --

-- so he's got his own share of wood to go around. Most of us do. James Robert Smith is a frequent reader (and poster) here, and man oh man, has he got stories, again going back two decades or more. One of the most prolific, published novelists I know (who shall remain here nameless, so as not to cause embarrassment) continues to write with amazing skill and speed, but has been hammered by editors and publishers and treated abominably -- business as usual.

Anyhoot, all of this is to say "Tim's right, folks," and I'm a witness to that, and to thereby and roundabout-ly call your attention to Bennington-based writer John Goodrich, who has just launched

a new blog, Flawed Diamonds, intended for writers, and it's well worth keeping attuned to.

John says, "I am writing about the publication process. In truth, it's partially to ameliorate the sting of
rejections, but some of you may be interested in the wonderful, free gravy train that all writers experience as they push toward publication."

Some of you may recall the multi-chapter blog essay I posted here over a year ago on my own misadventures with trying to write again for the newsstand horror zine market, and what a delicious little ego-stroke, ego-mash clusterfuck that debacle was; whatever measure of celebrity I may enjoy after three decades in comics and writing, it still doesn't shield one from savoring the same abuse up-and-coming writers endure.

And whenever a writer draws your attention to a writer's blog with such a blustery lead-in, abusing wholly invented words like "roundabout-ly," you best pay attention.

On to merrier matters...

Could It Be -- The First Dino Comics?

In accord with the above rant, I always tell my students to be immediately suspect when anyone calls anything 'the first' -- usually, some earlier precursor turns up in due course, or is already known. It could be known, sort of, but under the wraps of obscurity -- usually meaning some more potent historical 'authority' hasn't recognized the precursor as such, or preferred to 'promote' the more popular precursor.

In the realm of the understandably marginalized genre of dinosaur comics -- a most rarified breed comics historians are happy to ignore, unless your name is Don Glut -- these kinds of "firsts" are tough calls. But I think Seth may have steered me to what must be, might be, indeed the first dinosaur comics series!

More on this amazing body of work tomorrow!

No Criswell again today.

Sorry. I have no idea where, in a matter of seven hours or so, I put that book.

So, here's Ernie Kovacs again, just 'cuz.

Have a great Wednesday, one and all --

Spurtyn Devil

Here's an old Time Spirits sketch I did back in the mid-'80s that amigo and Time Spirits artist Tom Yeates excavated to run with the intro I wrote for the upcoming Image collected graphic novel edition of Steve Perry and Tom Yeates's Time Spirits. More info as we get closer to publication date!

Couldn't post yesterday due to blog oblivion, and gotta run this morning -- so, enjoy the sketch, see ya here tomorrow. We've got a big snow storm en route to us tonight, so I'm sure I'll be here tomorrow AM, unless the power and/or cable is out.

Taking Measure on a Friday

"Why, this old comic collection might indeed be bigger than my dick!"
(Photo: Joe Citro)

Catch-up and then outta here -- CCS senior Adam Staffaroni and I are off to St. Albans, VT to speak at the library at BFA UHS #48, thanks to an invite from librarian Peter Jones.

Glad I moved an hour closer to St. Albans!

Anyhoot, gotta be quick this morning, sooooo --

* Rick Veitch and his older son Ezra (younger son Kirby is still in college; "hey!" from here to both of you, Ezra and Kirby!) have a unique jam you can watch and listen to, which you

can download from here,

and I think this post scoops this link!

What is it?

Well, here's how Rick describes it, as "a podcast of me reading the text from Can't Get No, with Ezra providing the ghost soundscape behind me.... If you click on this link it brings you to a list of different podcasts available. Just click on Can't Get No for the 49 meg download."

If your computer system and online access is up to the task, go for it, folks, and enjoy!

* Remember that lovely Mario Bava boxed set I foamed-at-the-mouth about here last week?

Well, Tim Lucas has been getting lots of mixed signals from Anchor Bay about what may or may not ultimately be in that set.

Until Tim posts the final word on this matter, I refer you to his blog, and we're all waiting with bated Bava breath for what we can or can't see, come street-date for that lovely brick of Bava.


* My old crony and amigo Steve Perry is a guest at Megacon in Orlando, FL this coming Saturday, so if you're in the Orlando area, here's your chance to meet the man who co-created many characters, from Marvel's Varnae and the Epic series Timespirits, to many of the villains and supporting characters on the Thundercats (and, dare I forget, Silverhawks) cartoon programs and more.

Steve, along with Mark Whitcomb, Jack Venooker and Tim "Doc Ersatz" Viereck, convinced me back in 1976 (while we were all at Johnson State College) to pursue my dream, via applying to the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc.'s first-ever year of operation, and it was in fact Steve (with his subscription to The Comic Buyer's Guide and that paper's "Beautiful Balloons" column, announcing the opening of the JK School) who initiated that push.

We had the pleasure of working together on a number of projects, including my first-ever published comics work in Abyss, pro stories for Bizarre Adventures, Epic ("Kultz" in Epic #6, among my personal faves of anything I ever did in comics), Heavy Metal, etc., and have stayed in touch over the years, through thick and thin.

I'm happy to report I just wrote the introduction for the upcoming graphic novel collection of Steve's and fellow XQB and dear friend Tom Yeates's classic 1980s Epic miniseries Timespirits. (Steve's hoping to get Tom to Megacon next year, and emailed me a proposition to join them -- time will tell!)

So, if you're planning on visiting Megacon, look for Steve on Saturday, bring your copies of Timespirits, Bizarre Adventures, Thundercats & Silverhawks for signing, and say hello -- this is his first con in almost 20 years!

* In a followup to my Tuesday post, allow me to note that

the official Brattleboro Reformer obit for Alan Eames, who passed away this past weekend, is here (scroll down to it).

Curiously, it reads like Alan himself wrote it -- I can hear his voice quite clearly in this!

R.I.P., Alan; glad to have met you and known you a bit before your passing. Much love to his family, especially to Sheila, Elena, and most of all to Adrian and Andrew.

[A curious note: the guest book, which both I and my daughter Maia have posted to, is up until -- gulp -- my birthday. Weird, eh?]

* Vermonters have been happily

emailing this to one another all week;

I gotta give credit to actor, fellow ex-First Run Video employee and fellow native Vermonter Michael Dean for sending the link to me. Check it out!

Our representatives in the Federal government have done pretty well by us, and I've been particularly savoring

Philip Baruth reminding me regularly of why I love Senator Patrick Leahy.

Bring on the bottled water, by all means, if only to ensure I hydrate as needed during my daily visit to

The Vermont Daily Briefing.

Check it out, too.
Daily.

Have a great weekend, one and all!

Moving day: Part One

All right, enough of my political rants. You can read that everywhere, anywhere on the web, from much better informed folks than me. Here's something you can only read here:

My 19-year-old son Dan is moving out of the house this week into his first apartment. It's a big step, a big change, and one I can empathize with, for reasons we all understand.

That, coupled with the fact that I begin my faculty work with the first-class-ever at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT in about a week-and-a-half, is bringing back rich memories of this very week in my life 29 years ago. As a break
from my ranting about the grim realities of this week, I'll share some of those memories with you now.
__

During my second year at Johnson State College, a bunch of us went swimming at a spot we'd been told about, far from the campus. My friends Dave Booz and Joe Mangelynx and me wandered away from our amigos to explore the ledges above the main swimming hole. It was a gorgeous afternoon, sunny and hot, and we decided there might be some interesting spots in the waterfall-riddled ledges above the main swimming hole. So, wearing only our cutoffs and dripping wet, we found a pathway up around to the topmost set of falls, and went exploring.

We ended up stepping our way down a series of smaller pools formed by a progression of waterfalls. At one point, the only way down to the next set of falls and uppermost pool was a rotting rope tied to a narrow but sturdy tree leading down to a wide overhanging ledge. Below the ledge was a crystal-clear pool, the sunlight shimmering off its surface.

Booz, being the ballsiest in such matters, didn't think twice: he shimmied down the rope, stepped out onto the ledge, and shouted up to us, "so, what are you waiting for?"

I made the climb down second, and then Joe did the same. Joe was (and most likely still is) a strapping fellow, built like a football player, and damned if that rope didn't break when he was about to set foot on the ledge.

So, there we were: on the ledge. The rope was gone, we couldn't go back up.

The pool was below, but there was a big problem: we couldn't tell how deep it was. The sun was shining directly down into it, and we could see every one of the perfect, round stones covering its floor with incredible clarity. We could damn near count those rocks on the bottom -- that’s how crystal-clear it was.

That pool could have been six inches deep, it could have been six feet deep: we simply could not tell.

I don't recollect how long Joe and Dave and I sat up on the ledge. We perched there a loooooong time, it seemed, until our friends were shouting up from below, asking where we were. A few shouts back and forth established we were OK and would be down soon, and all the while Dave hunkered down at the edge of the ledge, staring down into that pool. We all pondered that pool until we rationalized every possible scenario: the only option was to jump, which seemed like no option at all the longer we stared at that pool.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun moved and dropped the shadow of the ledge over us, we began to shiver: it was getting cold standing on the rock, and even with the shift in light, we couldn't tell about that pool.

Was it so shallow that we'd shatter our legs hitting those stones?

If we tried to land on our seats, was it so shallow we’d smash our hips?

Was it deep enough to cushion the sizable drop into those waters?

We just...
couldn't...
tell.

It was getting later and colder.

It was Dave who finally laughed, "Well, fuck it." He gave us a grin, and made the leap.
___

I was 21 years old and moving from Johnson State College to Dover, NJ. It was a momentous move in my life -- a definitive turning point, the most radical I'd ever dared. I was diving off a ledge into a body of water I couldn't make out below or beyond; I didn't know if I was diving into a pool six inches deep or an ocean. But this was the week I made the dive, and I've never regretted it.

I'd been a student at JSC for two years, ostensibly arriving two years earlier to study art, but instead pouring most of my energies into the theater department (thanks to Richard Emerson, who was the dept. head at that time and my advisor) and running the film program at JSC. My plans to study art were immediately derailed upon my arrival due to the small size of the college and the fact that seniors, logically enough, had first pick of classes; by the
time lowly freshman Bissette got to sign up for his classes, there were only two miserly art classes open to me, so theater is was.

As it turned out, this was for the best: Emerson was a fantastic fellow and great teacher, and I worked my ass off in his technical theater studies, particularly loving the study and application of theater lighting. The McCandless Theory of lighting the stage, it turned out, was central to the color work of two of my all-time favorite artists: the cinematic Italian horror and fantasy maestro Mario Bava, and Kansas City cartoonist extraordinaire Richard Corben. Whether Bava or Corben knew of McCandless, I had and have no idea, but McCandless's theories of light, color, its meaning and techniques beautifully articulated the visual universes of Bava, Corben, and all of theater. So, my JSC theater studies ended up feeding my art in ways I wouldn't have imagined possible. By my second year at JSC, I had talked Emerson into indulging a year-long independent study of Bava's films, and talked the rather imperious head of the art department, (the late) Peter Heller, into indulging three independent studies on comics: (1) to produce three comics publications and publish them, (2) to steep myself in a full semester of anatomical studies, and (3) to write a paper on "The Comic Epic," which was a radical thing at the time.

An aside: How did that go? Well, as for (1), only one published comic was completed, Abyss #1, that ended up being my key portfolio piece when I applied to the Kubert School; as Peter Heller said when grading time came, "This is remarkable -- I never thought you'd finish even one, much less publish it. Forget about three, I knew you were overreaching. You finished one. So, good for you." I completed (2), but Peter was so depressed by the comics I chose to analyze that he dismissed that project altogether, simply acknowledging it as "completed" and moving on. This was before the term 'graphic novel' even existed, and Peter had refused to permit adapted works (like Joe Kubert's Tarzan into the blend; thus, the works I studied in that pre-graphic novel era were Enemy Ace, Kamandi (alas, New Gods had been canceled before completion, so it had been rejected by Peter as being irrelevant), Kona: Monarch of Monster Isle, and Jack Katz's just-out-of-the-starting-gate The First Kingdom. Peter couldn't stomach looking at any of them -- Charles Schultz and Pat Oliphant were the only contemporary cartoonists he had any respect for -- so that was that. As for (3), I indeed completed initial anatomical studies to Peter's satisfaction, drawing every bone in the human body from three-to-four different views (working from the science lab skeleton and a brace of anatomy books), and four different views of the full skeleton. "Good, good," Peter muttered while gritting his cigarette holder between his teeth, "now, we get you to UVM to draw from cadavers. You must learn to draw the entirety of the human body. You've got the stomach for that, yes?" Well, no -- my one session drawing from a cadaver was a bust, not due to squeamishness, but because I couldn't take my eyes off the dead man's face, wondering who he was, had been, and how his body ended up where it was. End of aside.

The decision to even apply to the Kubert School had been a major leap of faith. Peter told me from our first discussion, "Listen, little man, you're going to be competing with New York City art students to get in there, the best of the best. Look at your chin: I can see the weakness in you there, in your face. You won't be able to hack it. You need to stay put here. There's nothing for you there."

I spent that final blissful summer in Johnson, prolonging my JSC stay by tutoring at the College's summer learning program. The campus was and remains an insular, lovely spot, and it was a great way to see out my stay at JSC. That was a maturing process: I was tutoring high school students who still didn't know how to read or write, which astounded me at first. I worked in particular with two students, one a tow-headed young man who was frustrated with anything that forced him to work indoors, the other a brunette young woman with intense green eyes who grew up on a horse farm and didn't see why reading was so important, though her frustration and the toll it took on her sense of self-worth was readily apparent at the close of our first session. She was hungry to make connections, doing so often by diverting our studies: knowing I loved horror films, she regaled me with her account of a film she'd seen that spring at the drive-in, Don't Open the Window, which had made a big impression on her. I assigned her to write a synopsis of the film, and write a new ending; it was the only writing assignment she'd completed with any passion. I was accepted as a peer by the other tutors, most of whom were older than me, either seniors at Johnson or graduate students, while I was a lowly college sophomore bolting from what would have been my junior year to pursue a new adventure: entering the first-class-ever of a wholly new college in Dover, NJ, The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc.

To everyone but my closest friends at JSC (including the three who had talked me into going to the Kubert School: Jack Venoooker, Mark 'Sparky' Whitcomb, and Steve Perry), this was a crazy endeavor. In 1976, the thought of anyone, much less a hick from Duxbury and Waterbury, making a career in comics was a reckless, delusional undertaking -- I mean, comics weren't a profession, they were a hobby (to quote my old buddy James Harvey, "Art it just a hobby"). To be pursuing it at a brand-new college that wasn't even accredited, could not offer or accept grants or scholarship, and was furthermore based in (groan) New Jersey, seemed crazier still. Only Peter Heller took it seriously, but did so only to test my mettle; when I applied even after Peter stared me down and cut me down verbally, he called me into his office with an arrogant wave of the hand, pointed to the empty chair next to him, and bellowed, "You did it anyway, didn't you?" I nodded yes, and he smiled and said, "Good for you." And that was that.

My parents (who, thankfully, are still with us) were making the big move to Florida from our home in Colbyville, VT. My Dad had worked hard to convince me to stay put, to take over the family store and make Colbyville my home. I think he thought I'd settle down with Jill Chase, my high school sweetheart who lived up on Blush Hill (Jill would marry and remarry, live in Japan, and raise a daughter). I had no interest in such plans, much less staying in Colbyville.

More on that in a moment: first, I have to impress upon you the precipitous drop I was about to make from that cliff-ledge into I-didn't-know-what was made all the more perilous by the fact my parents had sold the store and home and were pulling up stakes to move to North Port, Florida.

There was, after this week 29 years ago, literally no going back. There would be nowhere to go back to.

So, my saying no to considerable pressure to take over a thriving business -- the store and our home, a living and a house -- was a big fat no, and one at the time that seem completely irrational. Give up all that -- a certain future -- to try and find a means of making ends meet in comics???. It made no sense to my father.

But I had to do it, I had to give it my all. I knew if I didn't, I might regret not taking that plunge every day of my life -- whatever it led to, I knew I had to make the leap.

When my best friend Bill Hunter was found dead in his basement two years before (an apparent suicide), I swore I would make use of the time Bill no longer had and do what I wanted to do with my life. That was making comics -- and the Joe Kubert School sure looked like a lifeline to me! My father had always expressed his disgust with my staying indoors and drawing, and my desire to make comics made no sense to a man who'd served in four branches of the US military, worked as a lineman for the Green Mountain Power Company, and went into business for himself twice: once with the Eagle Oil Company (a heating oil business based in Duxbury), and again with Bissette's Market, of which there were three incarnations. My brother had done the Bissette name proud when he joined the Air Force, but I wanted no part of it, and my need to draw and tell stories simply didn't fit Dad's worldview.

That all changed in a heartbeat: the moment my father and I met Joe Kubert. When Joe shook my Dad's hand -- that steel-crushing Kubert handshake I still love -- my world was forever altered, for the better.

(Continued tomorrow)