Reasons For Existence

Being interviewed on a podcast, John Workman explained that during the sixties, sales of Superman were a million and a half each month, but the actual readership was about three million, six hundred thousand. Most reading material was passed around then, so an average of four people read each comic book purchased. As a kid during that time, I do remember finding comics laying around public places like the laundromat, barber shop and any other place we had to wait around at.

Which made me think about other things everyone shared before. DVR is superior to VHS tape, but you can't pass it on to someone who has missed a show, same thing with songs on your iPod. MP3 files can't be lent out like a CD. Well, they could, but it's not as convenient, and we are constantly being told it is illegal.

If you download a song or album from some of the authorized music services online, you may not be allowed to use the portable player of your choice, or even re-mix the songs you bought. The terms of agreement states that you aren't really buying the song, you are only acquiring the rights to play it.

Downloading an ebook has been the same way, you are only taking a license to a limited set of uses. There was even a case where the digital distributor deleted copies of two books off the ebook readers that customers bought and paid for.

It makes me wonder about all the common grounds we took for granted that seem to be going away. I mean, how often do you see public drinking fountains around any longer? Now we purchase it in little plastic bottles.

I got a live CD by the eighties version of King Crimson a few weeks ago, which is quite nice. It is peculiar that even though the concert was recorded at the end of 1984, the disc wasn't released until 1998. But hearing each song caused me to experience all the feelings of open horizons during college and uncertainty and excitement while serving in the Navy. It was a variety pack of emotions on 2 CDs.

Whenever I listen to a song from the past, it always transports me back to the time I first heard it. It seems to be like this for most people. Not only do you remember the song or where you were, but each feeling you experienced from the past comes rushing back as well.

At the end of the nineties a lot of my time was spent replacing music I listened to in college. Since the tapes had worn out before the eighties ended, there was a period of over ten years before I heard them again. It's not hard to remember what you did in the past, but it was a surprise to feel all the loneliness I went through in school when listening to those old albums. Every year has it's own feeling, but you never notice it until old sounds remind you.

Many cartoonists I liked were easy to follow because they stayed on a certain series for a while, but as in everything else, Alex Toth was an exception.

Once in a while he would draw a short back-up story that would show up in various comic books, or a full issue here and there. His work was well thought out with strong fluid lines and compositions that no one else ever thought of. His work always made me want to draw, it looked simple enough, but an element was missing when you tried to copy it yourself.

I was in college when I learned that he designed Space Ghost, and most of the action/adventure cartoons Hanna-Barbera did in the sixites and early seventies. Strong design work, nothing else looked like his stuff. You can see some of it here.

Sidebar: The Comic And Art Podcast just did a tribute to Mr. Toth in 2-parts, and asked several cartoonists and animators if they had a favorite story. Dirty Job, Daddy And The Pie (my favorite), and the back-up stories he did of The Fox. He even explained the entire animation process with The How And Why Of TV Cartoons. What is amazing is how much he says in so few pages.

While telling a friend about a bunch of books I ordered online, he replied with "COOL! I love getting stuff in the mail!" I do too. It is a lot more fun when you get things through the post. I wonder why?

If you feel the same way, here is a good place to get comic books.

I didn't realize how much fun it could be to only hear half the sounds of a song, until the left speaker in my car stopped working. I'm sure it is just a loose connection, but since I'm hearing things I've never noticed before, I may leave it as is for a while.

I work with a guy who always says "same ol, same ol" when asked how he is doing, maybe I should give him a ride.

This question came up when I bought a used copy of The Fifth Element: Ultimate Edition last weekend. I got the movie when it came out on VHS , then DVD when formats changed. Since DVDs (in most cases) come loaded with extra features, it isn't so bad to purchase them again. Unfortunately, the original copy of The Fifth Element had none, but the ultimate edition has two discs, the second starting with a featurette about the production designers Mezieres and Moebius, so to me it was worth buying again.

But my question is why didn't they put this out in the beginning?

The eighties saw not only the birth of the compact disc, it also saw most of us buying music we already had on vinyl records or tape. Since the format was superior I didn't mind, but it did annoy me when The Beatles finally came out on CD. It would have been easy to add the singles to the albums, such as Rain and Paperback Writer to Revolver, or Day Tripper and Drive My Car to Rubber Soul. Those albums made more than enough money in the past, they could have given us something extra, instead of putting out the same thing at full price. Of course annoyed or not, I ended up buying those as well. It seems it's the form we are paying for.

So, one copy is all you need, as long as it was done right the first time.

Last Friday I intended to pick something up on the way home from work. Since it was on my usual route it seemed easy enough, but as it is most of the time, I end up passing it and going home as usual. It's hard to break a habit.

One part of martial art training is building muscle memory by repeating movements. We did the same thing in typing class by constantly hitting the same keys until you no longer have to think about them, it just comes naturally.

So while this was on my mind TCM was showing the 1960 version of The Time Machine. I always liked the story, but thinking about the routines that made the Eloi and the Morlocks continue on as they had makes more sense now.

I have got to start changing things every once in a while.

I grew up in an area that didn't receive many outsiders, so it was amazing to hear the different accents people spoke with once I joined the Navy. An even bigger surprise was to hear everyone speaking with an accent when I came back home. I had never noticed that. We seemed so plain before.

When hearing another language, you notice certain characteristics even if you don't speak it. Japanese sounds harmonious and has a rolling quality. Korean seems to jump up and down and very aggressive. Tagalog in the Philippines sounds like a piano being played when spoken. I've always wondered what english sounds like to someone who doesn't speak it.

Earlier this year I was told that a lot of s sounds are heard when english is spoken. For some reason I thought there would be a rhythm or pounding feel to the language. The s sound never came to mind.

Of course, now that I've learned that, pretty much all I hear is sounds like s and z, and sometimes c and x. We sound like a bunch of snakes. Who knew?

Several months ago I picked up Batman Death Mask by Yoshinori Natsume. Although the four issues were printed as a standard American comic book, the insides were black and white and read right to left like they do in Japan. There are other stories like this about Batman, but it still seemed unique. Part of it was the fun of seeing a familiar character through new eyes. I really enjoyed it.



Although I did find it surprising to see a Japanese cartoonist write and draw a Batman story, since I didn't think they were familiar with the character. Then I found this book at The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, CA. It seems like I wasn't the only one who discovered Batman in 1966.



Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan reprints the strips that were written and drawn by Jiro Kuwata for the weekly boys magazine Shonen King, as well as photos of various Japanese Batman toys from that time.



These stories ran for a year in Japan, and were never translated into english. There are some production notes and a short but fantastic interview with Jiro Kuwata, but most of the book deals with the comics.



Which are fantastic, and is the reason I bought the book. Kuwata used the American comics as reference material to see what the characters wore, and how they looked, then created the stories for a Japanese audience.



Besides seeing Clayface (from the American comics), Batman faces Lord Death Man, Go Go The Magician (my favorite), Dr. Faceless, Professor Gorilla, and The Man Who Quit Being Human. The hardback version also has an incomplete story about Batman & Robin facing three robots, and eight pages of Bat-Manhua in China.

I am always hearing that you can find everything on the internet, but I have never heard of these comics. Nor had the people who put this book together, which in itself is a pretty interesting story. It is also surprising how little information there is about Jiro Kuwata online.



I wonder if kids in Japan ever wondered where Gotham City was, like I did.

Last December my daughter chose several books she wanted for Christmas at a local store. The prices were quite high, so I made a mental note to check online. Not only was everything several dollars cheaper (many were half price), but most sellers offered free shipping if you bought a certain amount. Since I had plenty of time, most of the items were purchased this way.

I've ordered stuff online since 1996, but usually for things that couldn't be found locally, like a CD I couldn't find, or an obscure movie no one remembered. Most places these days only seem to carry greatest hits or compilations. You can find anything on the internet, and now that free shipping is offered, it is a lot cheaper as well. But what gets to me is when I go into a book store now, I look at the book, then the price, then go home and buy it online.

Which is fine, but what happens if the physical stores go away? Would we end up paying the same high prices, as well as shipping from online sellers because there is no other option?

That would bite.

People are able to reach tomorrow by sleeping. So long as you are human, you sleep nearly half your life. That means, if you are to live fifty years, twenty of it is spent at rest.

Kazuo Koike

During the late seventies I read a story about a man who didn't need to sleep, and how he dealt with the boredom each night. He would continue to do the same thing until it got old, then move on to something new. Each incident got progressively worse, and at the end, he was doing something most would find unthinkable. But his only concern was what happened when he got bored with that. It wasn't a great story, but reading it always made me wonder what it would be like if it happened to me.

If you didn't need to sleep, it would be possible to hold down a steady job, and still have all the free time you did while on summer vacation from school. It wouldn't matter if you put in extra time at work, since it would still be possible to draw what you wanted for eight more hours each night. You could work out, read, watch DVDs, and have plenty of time to ponder the universe. It always sounded like the best of both worlds.

Since that time I've read other stories about people who didn't sleep, unfortunately most show them fall apart and lose their minds. Except for Tick Tock by Dean Koontz, that was fun. So after you reach tomorrow, try reading that.

Finally got to see part of the Grand Canyon this summer, and it was pretty amazing!



We started out at the South Rim, which is the national park where most people seem to visit. No matter how hard I've tried to imagine the vastness of the canyon, it was nothing compared to what actually opens up in front of you.



Deep, wide, and seems to go on forever.



My wife's sister wanted to see the West Rim as well, and was told that it was only five hours away. WHAT?! I knew it was wide, but never thought about it being so long.

277 miles long in fact.



It wasn't easy to get to, and the West Rim had been closed for twenty minutes by the time we got there. When the people in charge found out where we came from, they got a guide for us and let us in for 25% off. I'll never forget that.



The West Rim isn't part of the national park, it is on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Just make sure you don't take Buck And Doe Road as a short cut like we did.



After that really unpleasant 45 mile unpaved and unmarked drive, everyone seemed out of sorts. But seeing the West Rim, just like the South Rim made all of life's small annoyances disappear. Seeing Niagara Falls had the same effect.

I wonder what the first people who saw these places thought?

Losing contact with each other after you graduate, was discussed in one of my daughter's classes a few weeks ago. Hearing this, my own graduation came to mind, along with the statement, "this will be the last time all of you will be together." It was hard to imagine then, but in our case it turned out to be true.

Since my daughter's generation has grown up with with the internet, and uses online social networks like myspace or facebook, the same thing happening just doesn't seem possible.

It's because of those networks that I have been found, and am finding friends from both high school and college for the past couple of years. Most of the time it starts out with a barrage of messages, while we look at each other's photos and life information. All the time in between then and now quickly fades away, and we all wonder how we had ever lost touch. Then after a while it kind of stops, until someone else pops up that has just reconnected, then it starts over again.

Group dynamics are always changing, that's how life works. It doesn't matter if it is your friends from school, or any other stage in your life, people come an go.

Memories and influence remain.

I was surprised to see that gas stations in Oregon were full service, but didn't cost more than the self service stations in other states, this is the same in New Jersey as well. I had never seen self service at a station until 1974 when we were going through an oil crises. The price of gas kept going up, and stations were offering it at a slightly less cost than full service. As time went on, the service went away, but so did the discount.

The idea of getting a song or album on iTunes is something I look into from time to time, since most stores only sell new releases or greatest hits. It could be a great way to get obscure albums, or work by artists from other countries that are not on sale here. But I always end up getting the cd from Amazon.com or ebay instead. I like having a case with all the artwork, photos, and liner notes that I can hold in my hands, and in most cases, the digital file isn't any cheaper, even though there are no printing or manufacturing costs.

I don't mind paying for an intangible good or giving up a service, but not if it is the same price.

My daughter doesn't like musicals, but she does like West Side Story, and just picked it up on DVD. I like it as well, but can't get past the fact that the neighborhood everyone fought over is now a parking lot.

I wonder what would have happened had they known that.

"How do you always know what time it is when you don't wear a watch?" This was asked while I was attending college, and didn't have an answer for it at the time. You never really think about the things you do, you just do them.

Going into the Navy and living on a ship caused me to change that practice, since you had to be at your work stations and watch posts at certain times. There were no indicators of time anywhere to be seen. When I didn't wear a watch, I always took note of the time when I saw a bank sign, hallway clock, television news, even radio broadcasts. When you know that the time is strapped to your wrist, little thought is ever given to it.

It is funny that you can get by without something, then never think of doing without it once you get used to it.

Just took off from work this last week. It was spring break, and I always take it off with my daughter. Didn't go anywhere, just hung out most of the time and watched her play video games. Watched King Kong (the original) and Don - The Chase Begins Again (India) on DVD, fixed a few things around the house, and taught class all week.

Many years ago, during spring break my wife went out of town for the entire week. Friday I got off work, picked my daughter up, went home, and we started playing video games. A couple of hours later I asked "are you hungry?" She said "yeah" and I replied "me too." I was going to make something, but put it off because I was tired.

An hour later asked the same question "are you hungry?" "Yeah." "Me too." Still too tired to make anything, and was thinking about driving down the block and getting take-out. An hour after that asked the same question, got the same answer, then realized we had crackers and cheese that was already cut into little squares (lazy food), since Mom was out of town she couldn't get onto us.

As the week progressed we ended up staying up later and later. The only thing we actually did that week was train a couple of times during the day, and every night at the school. Unfortunately I was sluggish that week, had no reaction time, and lost what little timing I had. Our instructor got very aggravated with me.

At the end of the week my wife came back, put us back on schedule, starting eating proper food, and I went back to work. The next week at class I found my abilities were back into acceptable parameters (for the time). Our instructor commented on this saying "Mommy must be home."

So I guess that staying up until four in the morning playing video games and eating nothing but cheese isn't condusive for a proper life.

A friend of mine asked what it ment when turtles show up in a dream. I didn't know, but this place does.

Years ago I worked with a guy that paid very close attention to every dream he had, and even kept a dictionary on the subject by his night stand. As soon as he woke, he would look it up, then act on the results for the rest of the day. There were a few times when he told me about the dream, and then I saw the results that came later. He always used his subconscious as a warning to things he was too busy to pay attention to while awake and living his life.

It is always amazing to see how the subconscious works. There was a point in my life where the same theme kept popping up in everything I read. Novels, newspapers, comic strips, even the liner notes on record albums had bits of information that kept building a line of thought that I wasn't consciously looking for, but ended up being something that I needed to know.

I was going to say that I've never had a dream that required any action, but that isn't true. During 2004 I was overworked and had no time in my life for anything outside of my job. Never the less I continued to train in the evening. One night my instructor changed a technique I was teaching to a class of intermediate students saying that some were confused and doing it wrong. When you train in a progressive system it isn't odd to see a technique changed, there were times when he even modified them in the middle of teaching it. But when he did it this time I felt undermined, like I was teaching it wrong, right in front of everyone.

He turned the class back over to me, and I taught it the way he wanted, then when the class was over I went home silent, but angry. After three days of missed training I had a dream where I was doing that technique over and over, working on each application, and seeing how it worked. When I woke, I realized that my instructor didn't modify anything, I was teaching it wrong. I went to the school to apologize, hoping he would let me come back.

Your overworked body and exhausted mind will let you act like an fool, but your subconscious can always bring you back in line.

I didn't understand the purpose of saving mp3s to your hard drive if you couldn't hear the songs anywhere else. Of course this was during the late 90's, before most people had a cd burner, and the iPod hadn't come into being. You need to be able to listen to it on your stereo, in your car, or where ever you tend to be. Portable mp3 players changed that completely.

Reading comic books on your computer has never worked for me as well. I keep hearing about book readers like Kindle and the like, but they have a small viewing area, single page and grayscale. It doesn't seem to be open source either, which means that you can only read the books you purchase from them. But I may be wrong.

I keep hearing about XOXO which is a low cost computer that reads .pdfs, displays two pages side by side, and is in color. If something like this were to come out, and works as they say, it would make sense to download content to it like you can on an iPod. Training manuals, text books, novels, illustrated books, comics, even something you made yourself.

If that does come into being, the price of buying an intangible good should be lower than buying the actual book that had the overhead of paper cost. How cool would it be to get digital copies of old comic books for ten cents an issue!

With the ads of course.

A couple of posts ago I wondered if our kids were being overprotected, and found this study a few days later, No Fear. I've often wondered if everyone was so over protective for no reason. As I said before, my daughter has rarely left mine or my wife's sight, but for the most part it is because we are so involved in her life.

While watching Ted Coppel In China today, I found it amazing just how easy it is to get overwhelmed with news reports. It is good to be aware of what is going on, but it is just as important to be able to disconnect from everything so you can keep your mind straight. It makes you wonder how much is real, and how much of this coverage has been bloated to keep people watching when there isn't anything else going on. Drowning with information, yet starved for knowledge.