EW and The Aspiring Artist

First things first, Elk's Run is the shit:


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There was an update yesterday, in case you didn’t know. Today I’m continuing to show off the horrendous writings and drawings I made between the age of 13 and 15 by exploring my early attempts at comic art.

There was a magical time when a certain young artist inspired every thirteen year old kid to put pencil to paper and start making comics. It was a time when story was sacrificed for cool poses, where every character looked the same, had nonsensical shading and anatomy that made God wept. It was a time where any given kid, despite the handicap, could pick up a comic and say, “I can do that.” I was that kid. My handicap was the inability to draw. The year was 1992.

The year we were first blessed with YOUNGBLOOD. I remember the hype. I remember going to Mannix and buying two copies of Youngblood #1, one for saving and one for reading. I remember opening it up and saying, “Holy Fuck, I can do that.” And I remember drawing Rip-Tide, looking at it and thinking I can make an honest shot at this comic drawing thing. Wouldn’t you?


Sure she looks like Tina Turner. Sure she has a deformed arm (with deformed hand) coming out of her head. Sure her left breast is smaller than the right. Sure her left shoulder is the biggest fucking shoulder ever. Sure she had no nose and no ass and her vagina starts way too high. But fuck it, I practically light-boxed that shit from a Youngblood comic.

Here would be a good place to show-off the character designs for my own comic, but I’ll do that on Friday. For now, let’s continue to enjoy my attempts at other people’s characters. Like Venom, for instance.


Wow, look at that spittle. Ignore the fucking mongoloid head and 56-inch right bicep. That spittle is dope. That’s some McFarland spittle. And look at those teeth, the detail. Ignore the tongue that just sort of “starts”, though. And definitely ignore that 3-inch wide left elbow.

I was a big McFarland fan. I knew Liefeld’s writing sucked and I was catching on that his drawings weren’t that good. But McFarland, back then, was my fucking man. Look at all of Spider-Man’s webs! Look at the size of Spawn’s cape! The detail! Look at how many words Spider-Man is saying! And they don’t always end in exclamation points, like other writers! That must be some artsy shit! If there was any creator I wanted to be back then it was McFarland. Well, McFarland or Jim Lee, which brings me to this Gambit picture.


What the fuck was it that made every kid my age obsessed with Gambit? And shading, what made us obsessed with shading? Even better, what made us obsessed with the really, really shitty characters like Darkhawk:


I think the anatomy jokes are plaid at this point but I will say that FDR had a better chance of walking than my Darkhawk did. I loved Darkhawk. And Sleepwalker. What. The. Fuck. I swear to God, when I was a teenager Marvel comics where taking the books that housed their weakest ideas and lining the paper with acid so that when you touched it, it seeped through your skin and made you believe it was the best idea ever.

What was Darkhawk’s power? He flew and had a whip? Sheesh.

Eventually I started experimenting with color. The one picture I still have from this era is of Bloodshot:


I’m not going to lie, even now with all the hatred towards gimmicks and things like chromium covers, Barry Windsor-Smith’s cover to Bloodshot #1 is one of the most eye catching covers of all time. You can put a thousands comics on a wall and my eyes will be drawn to that Bloodshot cover.

Unfortunately, my complete lack of artistic training completely destroyed that picture and any other image that might have done Bloodshot’s weak character any justice whatsoever. .

But I thought I could draw. No school, never drew before. But a certain man inspired me to dream and God-damn it I was going to try.

The Power of Bad Writing

Updating from New York City, I’m not going to do a plug today but will instead go right into my story. I will say that I rifled through close to 2000 pictures and found some good ones including two pictures of The Coat. Question is, do I upload them now or wait until my next quarterly pictorial adventure…

Luckily for me the story I scanned in and am sharing is funny, cause I’m kind of pressed for time. Again, as a disclaimer, all of these stories were written in the 8th grade, I was thirteen years old, I’ve gotten better.

In the 8th grade, when I was thirteen years old, I thought I was one fuck of a writer. My Creative Writing teacher, Mrs. Friedman, took a shining to me and became what I consider to be my first mentor – I’ve had several since.

I would stay after class and she’d help with my writing, give me feedback. It was mainly poetry but I occasionally did short stories here and there. My mom was all psyched that I was getting into writing and, wanting to encourage it, she got me a typewriter.

It was functional – that’s about it. Nothing fancy, press a key and the letter pops up on the page. No erase key, nothing like that. I started using it to belt out my poetry, playing with format and trying to emulate e.e.cummings chaotic formatting with my rigid typewriter. I have these poems – I’ll get to them.

At the end of the eighth grade we had a final paper. It was a short story followed by an analysis of someone else’s short story. Somehow, for reasons beyond my recollection, I was apparently very anti-drugs. My “kill the crack” line from the poetry portfolio was nothing compared to this short story that I’m about to show you.

Also, at some point, I started to believe I could draw. I took an art class in the 8th grade and the one thing I remember was my teacher looking at some clouds, telling me they needed more blue, and then taking points off because my clouds were too blue. And that’s really all I remember about my artistic background going into this paper.

But, despite my minimal skills, I had no qualms with showing my artwork. I was so proud of it, in fact, that I displayed my skills on the cover of my short story paper:


Now that’s hot. A guy and a girl separated by a needle – 100% Proof blood, apparently, being poured over a desert landscape. But it gets better; let’s take a look at the Table of Contents where I promise some “Bonus Sketches”:


My art is so hot, it’s a fucking bonus. I’m not going to transcribe the story, I’ll post it here and I suggest you read it. I’ll sum it up afterwards in case you’re too lazy to read it.



Basically, it’s a touching story about a boy who was beat by his father, bullied and rejected. He meets a girl that finally understands him but she carries a crack-pipe in her purse and forces it on him. The crack gives the boy “the power of insanity”. He uses this new power to shoot the high-school bully with a shotgun, kill some girl that rejected him, and shoot and kill his father. His girlfriend then dies, because she chose “the path of the crack-head”.

And then, after the story, the money-shot. How I explain to my teacher that I only hope my story can have the power to stop one drug addiction. And if it did have that power I would publish it.

If you didn’t read the story, if the above description wasn’t enough to get you to read it then you might have “the power of insanity” as well. I was so full of myself I thought it was the best story every made that will end drug abuse if crack heads just read it.

I’ll end this with what I know you’re all waiting for. Bonus Sketches. Enjoy:


Have a good holiday.

Noel Interview, Vodou and...well...words fail me.

Bunch of images today, click any of them to enlarge.

Props to Sean Maher of the Zealot’s Lore who interviewed Elk’s Run artist Noel Tuazon and made it interesting (I usually never read interviews with comic guys because they’re usually boring).

And, while I’m in pimp mode, how about a promo for Hoarse & Buggy’s upcoming third title, Vodou, writing by Joshua Hale Fialkov and illustrated by Scott Keating (edited by me, of course). It’s sort of X-files meets The Shield and it is going to destroy you:


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I honestly have no idea where to begin.

Yesterday I was cleaning out my office when I came across my old portfolio. This is all stuff from Junior High and early, early High School. And it’s a comedy goldmine. I mean…it’s just really good stuff. It’s easily a weeks worth of stories but I couldn’t wait until Monday so I’m going to stretch it out to six days worth of stories. Technically, I should start at my short story I wrote in the 8th grade, because that was the earliest thing in the portfolio, but I like to keep Fridays really funny – so you get my 8th grade poetry portfolio – the second oldest piece within the collection and easily the funniest.

In the 8th grade I fell under the illusion that I was a really good writer. I’ll talk about my teacher (and the person I consider to be my first mentor) on Monday but I will say that I remember staying after class and looking at listings of publications that accept blind submissions, noting ones that paid – as if an 8th grader has any shot of getting published and paid for it.

Anyway, this poetry portfolio was our midterm project and came after the above mentioned short story which was the first thing that anyone besides my parents have ever said was really good (the teacher I eluded to above). My head was huge at the time I wrote these poems and it shows.

I don’t even want to give a commentary; I feel that if you read them, they speak for themselves. But I’ll go page by page for those that don’t feel like reading the original poems or don’t like cursive.

Please keep in mind I was thirteen years old when I wrote these – I’ve gotten a lot better.

Let’s start with the cover:


It’s a maze where the dead-ends are: 1) a dodo bird 2) a gun 3) a Miami Hurricanes hat and 4) a city. You may be thinking there is no-way these images have anything to do with the poems inside the portfolio. Well…let’s continue on, for now.

Below is the introductory page, a poem called “The Maze”. It’s a metaphor for choosing your path in life – how ingenious. Before I continue I want to note something. As bad as these poems are, they’re pretty much as good as anything I see written on Live Journal these days. So, you know, fuck off. Also note how I sign every poem, increasing their value. Ok, “The Maze”:


Notice that I got an A+ on this portfolio because I fucking rock. I also think it’s because my teacher was scared of me. Why? Read on, read on. It’s a window into my thirteen year old soul.

The Table of Contents:


I scanned in the “Workshop Poems”, my Shakespearean Sonnet and the “Extra Poems”. The Extra Poems thing is kind of funny. I thought my work was good enough to include “bonuses” for my teacher. Next week you’ll see the funniest bonus, in my 8th grade short story final paper I included “Bonus Sketches” (and actually called them that) – it’s the comic fan in me. I did not include the Collaborative Poems (it was basically a group poem, not as funny) nor the Edgar Allen Poe section since that was just analysis.

So, let’s move onto The Peculiar Object:


If you read it you’ll notice it was a poem about being awestruck (for no explicable reason) by a Miami Hurricanes hat. I don’t think I need to take that one any further.

The next poem is The Last Dodo, and ode to the great flightless bird:


I think, reading it now, the last dodo (according to the poem) was shot and killed and died alone but really didn’t give a fuck – he was a proud dodo (two words you never really see together).

Here’s were I get all emo. Dark Society:


Thirteen years old and I was already disgusted with people. Notice I thought people killed themselves for a quarter (as if it was a common occurrence) and I also completely ripped off “Pride and Prejudice” and thought my teacher wouldn’t notice. She may have noticed but she didn’t take off points, at least (A+, remember). Also notice how territory or honor, to me, was a justifiable excuse for homicide.

Metaphors:


I bring back the maze thing, give some insight into my parents. I get all fancy with my gun and drugs metaphor and get all Eco on your ass with my “A car is the ozone’s pesticide”. I’m the metaphor master.

Outside verse Inside, here’s where I get all introspective and shit:


I get a little clever here, get fun with it. And yes, I said that I was unbelievably handsome. You have to remember, at this point in my life I was thirteen years old but I already made out with a 16 year old, got an 18 year old to promise to wait for me while I went into the Airforce and had a current girlfriend who wasn’t mentioned yet but I was cheating on her with a 17 year old who also wasn’t mentioned yet. I was getting major fucking ass. Of course, once I hit high school, it was an awkward Greek chasing dry-spell but Junior High School was the bomb…and my sexual peak, unfortunately.

The Maze, my sonnet, the title poem:


Again, massively emo. Winding paths, dogs eating dogs and criminals tip-toeing. I was so fucking emo it hurt.

Inner Wounds was a poem I wrote about my Uncle Mike, it was one of the first things I wrote:


Not funny but I felt it made his story that I told last week more real. The poem is still bad but grounding, you get some insight into how much that fucked me up. It wasn’t my first death, my Uncle Joe was, but it was the first fucked up one. Since then I’ve had a lot of fucked up deaths – I talked about my uncle Alex who died of AIDS and my cousin Steve who died when he was eleven (and although I didn’t say the cause yet I’ll spill it now, he also died of AIDS, blood transfusion). I had another cousin die of AIDS, a second cousin, older. He was the first one in my family to get the disease and really bring it home, for me, that this shit is real. That’s my family, tragedy after tragedy. I just told you about 25% of them. It’s a bitch for a kid to deal with, and I think the above poem really highlights how it got to me. Not looking for sympathy, I dealth with this shit many times over with four different therapists.

Sorry to depress you, the last one is the funniest of the bunch; end this on a good note. Civilization:


Here I am, an eight grader, talking about rape and maiming and husbands beating wives with a “heavy, iron pan”. It might seem depressing but the last line is fucking glorious. It is THE line you would expect a kid to write:

To civilization,
I turn my back.
Down with violence,
And kill the crack.

Kill. The. Crack. Out of left field comes this anti-drug commentary with a line you would expect Nancy Reagan to say.

Kill. The. Crack.

Dude, I don’t care how much I depressed you, that shit is fucking hysterical.

Doodlebrain, Jason Sho Green and Becoming Moose

Found some people worth plugging before story time, artist that I stumbled across that are doing some really fucking cool stuff. First check out Doodlebrain, no idea what his real name is. He’s got some strong, strong sketches on his site and I need to find out what else he’s up to – his bots' sketches have a very dynamic pop. Jason Sho Green has a great style, a voice in his work that’s hard to ignore. I love the stuff he does on wood boards and for you people that like nice art on your walls he seems to sell prints at a very reasonable price. Anyway, just throwing some new finds at you.
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Back at the beginnings of this year-long experiment I talked briefly about the day I adopted my current namesake, The Moose in the Closet. As I mentioned, The Moose was born in the summer of ’96 at a barbeque to celebrate the end of high school and the last summer all of my friends will spend together.

We were grilling up some burgers, drinking some beers and listening to some music. We jacked a microphone in and I just started doing some silly-ass freestyles that were getting the people laughing. G said we should be taping this, so we got an old Memorex, popped it in and hit record. We threw the Beastie Boys’ THE IN SOUND FROM WAY OUT in the CD player and I made the introduction that will one day become the mantra of The Church of Moose.

“The Moose in the Mother-Fucking Closet is about to drop some shit. G, drop a beat, yo.”

G hits plays and I start spitting the lyrics to DOGFOOD, the very first Moose in the Closet song recorded. The song wasn’t about eating dogfood or comparing anything to dogfood. It was about chilling with the dogfood. It got some good laughs, so I decided to do another.

The second song was RAVIOLI. We threw in James Brown's (my mother fucking man) SEX MACHINE and I sang along with James.

Get on the scene, like Chef Boyardee.

It was glorious.

Make your raviolis. Raviolis don’t burn it baby. Don’t burn my raviolis. I’ll fuck your ho, I’ll fuck your ho …Get up’a! Cookin’ Raviolis. Get up’a! Cookin’ Raviolis…

After I spit RAVIOLI, The Moose had fans – it was no longer a novelty act.

We wanted to keep going but we needed refreshment. B, G and I went into B’s car to drive on over to the 7-11. My neighbor’s skanky friend wanted to join us and we told her she could as long as she agreed to flash whoever we told her to flash. She happily agreed and we let her in the car.

Well, we stopped alongside every person on the street and commanded the girl to flash them. We walked into the 7-11 and told her to flash the clerk, a customer and the camera. We would pull alongside cars, honk our horn and have the girl flash them.

The Moose turned into a fucking party in one night – I was a goddamn rock star.

Upon returning to the party I got right back up to the mic and freestyled SESAME’S TREAT: A MAN’S BIG MEAT, a homoerotic freestyle dropped over that techno song, SESAME'S TREAT (which looped the Sesame Street theme song).

Groover was cute, had a big cock, in the ass of snuff-a-luff-a-gus fucked Big Bird, bookbag, Bert and Ernie shooting jizzum, the rizzum, the izzum boogidy-boogidy-boogidy-boo. I fucked you. Yeah. What? DOGFOOD!

Lyrical. Fucking. Genius. In the immortal words of Vast Aire, “A pigeon can’t drop shit if it never flew.” And I was flying that night, entertaining the people at the barbeque, having girls flash at my beck and call and, in turn, I was dropping hot shit.

We ended the night with a disappointing attempt at a song. By then most people were gone and we were all beat, it had to be past 4AM. It was to the X-files theme song for Christ’s sake and it was just me basically talking about X-files in the same voice Sen Dog used when he dropped it for Cypress Hill.

The remaining few of us crashed after that. RJ got head from my neighbor and no-one wanted to touch the skanky friend. I was content with become an overnight sensation. It would grow. Soon I would have thirty, thirty-five fans. But the Moose will never record another album with G on the deck – instead he joins R.A.I.L. (Random Acts of Illegitimate Lyricism), with B on guitar and Jeromeo on drum machine - but that’s a story for another day.

Ray Ceasar and Killing Clapton

I’m not a big fan of digital art in comics. I guess I’m more of a traditionalist – I like my imperfect lines and occasional botched inks. Nowadays, with digital color and inks, you don’t get the traditional feel anymore but I take comfort in knowing that underneath the digital layers there are imperfect pencils. It makes me a little warm. My dislike for digital comic art is one thing; I can’t even imagine a digital painter, displaying his work in galleries, printed out from a computer. If you sell your work, the buyer is basically paying for the frame – the art itself has no value as it can be reproduced as many times as needed. And then I stumbled across Ray Ceasar’s website and I stopped thinking about tradition and sales. Go check it out, it’s something beautiful.

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After a couple of years of working in the video store I started getting relatively OK at handling my money. I was at least able to occasionally save up for special occasions. One year, November of ’94, junior year in high school, I wanted to do something extra-dope for my father. So, I got the two of us tickets to see Eric Clapton at Irving Plaza.

Irving Plaza is a small club. I was expecting them to clear out the tables and pack us in. Instead, the seated us at the tables and had waitress’ serve us drinks while Eric Clapton played a three hour long blues set, literally twenty feet away from us. To this day, that was the greatest three consecutive hours of my life.

The guy was amazing. He would just start jamming and improvising and go off on ten minute long solos. The audience would cheer and shout and he’d pause to raise his hand, nod in acknowledgement and give us a quick smile. He had a rack of guitars on stage and a story for each one; he’d switch them up almost every song.

My pops and I just sat there in awe. He was drinking his Budweiser and I was kicking back cokes as we just stared at this man that was doing a marathon set of songs for this tiny venue. This guy was a god and if I wanted to I could reach out and touch him while he was jamming “Hoocheecoochee Man”.

We left that joint high; all we could do was talk about how amazing that show was. We hopped on the train and started home, t-shirts and CDs clutched in our hands.

We couldn’t shut up, even on the train. We were just gabbing like two girls at a slumber party. We were completely oblivious to the world around us and nothing could shake us from our Clapton-induced tunnel vision.

Well, almost nothing.

A couple of Hispanic guys get on the train, looking like they just got off of work. One was holding a paper bag, one an empty bucket. The third guy was just looking around the car, seeing what was what.

In a flash the guy flips his bucket around, puts it down on the floor of the train and crouches over it. The other guy grabs a water bottle (Poland Springs – with the ridges) from out of his brown bag and pulls a hair pick from his back pocket.

They start jamming away some Latin rhythms, the one guy playing his drum like a conga while the other moves the hair pick along the water bottle. The third guy begins to belt out some lyrics.

I’m sure that if this were any other day, my father and I wouldn’t care. Hell, we might have even liked some sweet Latino explosion. I’ve been known to shake my hips from time to time; it’s a right of passage in my family.

But not today. Not right now. After sitting through three hours of Clapton to hear this on a train, this was totally ruining our high. We stared those Latino fuckers something fierce but, alas, our staring had no effect.

As the train pulled into the station the singer let out a broken English equivalent of a “Thank you” and started going around with his hat out. No-one gave that bastard any money and for the first time in my life I was happy that New Yorkers don’t give a shit, I understood the philosophy.

Those poor fuckers can really ruin your good time.

Courtney Huddleston and Celtic Idiots

Before getting into my story for the day I’d like to send a little pimp action over to Courtney Huddleston whose site I somehow stumbled onto during one of my maddened late night click-fests. This guy has some great sequentials but the samples he has up for DECOY, his book with Penny-Farthing Press, rocks my pretty nice in the pleasure spot. Nice clean lines, great inks and liberal panel breaks but not excessive panel breaks, enough to make the page look dynamic and bursting with action. Great stuff, I’ll be checking out some of his book, I suggest you do the same.

One more tease before the story, I got pages 1-17 of Elk’s Run #3 back from Keating all nicely colored – he did something beautiful. I’m not going to show them yet, we’re putting together all our press-packs and what not now, but when you see them you will most likely explode. All over your fucking monitor - blood and guts. It’s going to be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

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My friend Max was always the wild child of our group. He was the one with Mohawks and the guitars and the skateboarding beyond the Junior High School years. Junior Year in High School he put his angst on public display and became the bass player for his first band, Celtic Idiom.

Celtic Idiom was a four piece Irish freedom-fighter punk band led by this German guy that just sort of screamed melodically.

Yeah, you read that right, the lead singer for an Irish Freedom fighter punk band was German. Although, he did have blonde hair that looked red under certain lights and he was a heavy guy, I’m sure he loved his complex carbohydrates including potatoes and Guinness, he could pull off Irish.

Max couldn’t. Max was so German looking that when Jews saw him they ran away. They always had him to the back of the stage.

The drummer was just sort of white. If I remember correctly he was a mutt, sure as fuck wasn’t pure Irish.

Now the guitar player was a glorious Irish kid. You look at him and you think his name was Shamus McShamus. He was always at the front of the stage, rocking out.

One Irish member wasn’t enough to have an Irish Freedom Fighter punk band – they were more like Irish Freedom Fighter and Three Supporters. But, you know, whatever.

They weren’t the best punk band to ever play, obviously (I mean, no-one’s better than Greenday – Just kidding, Chris), but they were good for some serious moshing. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we did at their first show.

For most of us, including myself, Celtic Idioms’ fist show was the first time we heard them play. It was in some dive on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, don’t remember anything about it. The only people there were kids from Midwood High School. Celtic Idiom takes the stage and we start cheering for them. They start rocking out and we start our heads bobbing and eventually we get aggressive.

Since the place wasn’t very crowded the mosh pit was more like some weird-ass gladiator exercise. People got running starts and wailed into an unsuspecting fellow mosher from behind, knocking him face first onto the ground. Cracking people while they were on their knees. It was basically a big fucking fight in front of a stage, set to punk music.

I was in the pit as well until I notice MP stop by. This was at the begging of the school year, I haven’t seen MP yet. We flirted around towards the end of Sophomore year in our History class but she was going to Italy for the entire summer to see her family so she wanted to be commitment free.

We talked for a bit, I asked her if we were still on and she said yes. We started making out, punk rock in the background, bodies flying and I’m so sore I can hardly lift my arms. Celtic Idiom might not have inspired me to free occupied Ireland, but I got some play, and that makes the band ok in my book.

Oh, but I’m not done with Celtic Idiom yet:

After the show we all purchased their tape. I listened to it when I got home and that’s when I realized how bad they were. With tracks like 27+6=1, Hippy-crit and Cold Pizza, Warm Beer you kind of realize how all over the road they were. And when you combine it with a big German guy shouting:

Free occupied Ireland! Irish freedom fighters shout!

You know they’re destined for absolutely nothing. Eventually their guitar player left the band. You would think that, if a band called Celtic Idiom lost their only Irish guy, they would pack it in. Instead, the singer played guitar and they became a three piece.

Max’s response to this?

This is exactly how Nirvana started.

Celtic Idiom isn’t around anymore, six Irish counties are still occupied, Kurt Corbain is dead and U2 is selling iPods. Rock & Roll, baby. Rock & Roll.

Diggidy Dorks

Awesome.
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Before I start this story I would just like to point out that half-way through it, Microsoft’s spell checker fucking killed itself.

My friend Tony, the kid that came from Oklahoma City and claimed to represent the Crips (that’s right, Oklahoma was hard), had dreams that went beyond mine and David’s. Whereas David and I were perfectly content sitting on his stoop and blasting Boogie Down Productions, NWA or Heavy D, Tony wasn’t content with just listening to hip-hop – he felt we should start a rap group.

So here we were, Tony from Oklahoma City and founding member of the Brooklyn faction of the Four-Deuce Bishop Crips, David from Ecuador, left back in the first grade, his only known talent was the ability to spit out inhuman gobs of saliva and me, the white Puerto Rican that wanted to name our group “Excalibur”.

I don’t know what name we finally went with. The name didn’t matter back then; we were probably “Da Woodhull Boyz” for all I know. What mattered back then was the image; you needed something that really broke new ground, something that people would talk about for at least a month. Unfortunately, for us, we were thirteen years old and had no creative juice at this point.

Rhyme style. Das Efx was pretty cool back then. They would do this stutter-rhyme like so:

Riggidy roar!
Ziggidy Gadzuks Here I go so
Fliggedy flame on g-geronimo, yo
I biggedy burn riggedy rubber when I blabber great
I miggedy make the Wonder Twins deactivate

We decided we should stutter-rap too. But, we didn’t want to be compared to Das Efx, right? So whereas Das Efx had this “Straight from the Sewers” theme, we decided to be “Straight from the Rooftops”. All of our videos would be on rooftops. We even made a song called “Straight from the Rooftops”. We weren’t anything like Das Efx. Siggidy Sewers/Riggidy Rooftops – Appidy-Apples/Orggady-Oranges.

So we had that down and we started writing rhymes. David couldn’t rap (as in, he rapped worse than Tony and I, and we sucked) but he did one hell of a Flavor Flavimpersonation. So, David would come in between verses and say, “YEAAAAAHHHH BOOOOYYYYY!”

So, a typical song would go:

Jason
I’m stiggidy straight from the riggidy rooftops
I driggidy drink siggidy soda pop
So gividdy give me ‘nuff priggidy-prig props
Or I’ll sliggidy slap you with my fliggidy-fliggin’ flip-flops

Dave
YEEAAHHHHHH BOOOYYYYYY!

Tony
Oh, so, higgidy here I giggidy go,
You figgidy feel my fucking flow
Like jiggidy-jo, fliggidy flo-jo
The riggidy running ho

Dave
Yo, yo Jason! We just gettin’ this shit started BOOOYYYYYYYY!

We were that good. Actually, we were probably worse.

Once we had our style, theme and rhymes it came down to clothes. And here’s where it gets really bad. Kris Kross was wearing their clothes backwards. So, we decided to wear ours inside out.

Inside. Out.

As in we flipped our clothes (pants, shirts, jackets and hats) inside out and walked around Red Hook like that, rapping.

I will sell my soul to Satan in exchange for the demo tape we made.

Enjoy Some Art and Family Business

I have to share the cover of Elk’s Run #4, it is so goddamn good. Datsun Tran folks, please hire this man:


And while you’re looking at beautiful stuff – Jorge Vega and Thorsten Ebert’s THE COAT is like an ocular explosion:




And while we’re at it, fellow conspirator Jacob Warrenfeltz has been impressing the fuck out of me:


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Finishing up the week of stories about my mom’s side of the family…

After Uncle Mike died there was a whole lot of anger in my mom. She didn’t talk to Aunt Jackie, her sister, for a couple of years. At one point Nanny, who generally stays out of people’s business, called my mom and told her to “cut the shit”. Sisters shouldn’t fight for this long, that’s the way it goes.

The circumstances around them talking again were, well, more of the same and completely fucked. My mom got a phone call one day from Aunt Jackie’s husband – Aunt Jackie had a heart attack.

Three days ago.

I drove with my mom out to Staten Island and, despite how god natured and loving my momma usually is, the entire ride consisted of her saying over and over again, “That son of a bitch better not be there or I’ll throw him out of that fucking hospital window.” I said it earlier this week; you don’t want to get on my mom’s bad side. She will fuck you up.

The son of a bitch in question wasn’t there, he was from Red Hook, I’m sure he heard the stories about my mom’s thirst for blood when she gets all riled up.

My Aunt Jackie looked like shit. You can tell she had it bad. I believe she was scheduled to get a quadruple bypass. My mom’s side of the family is prone to Coronary Artery Disease. My mom has it, my Aunt Jackie has it as did Nanny. Outside of the immediate family some of the distant relatives had it as well; I even lost a cousin at 24 years old that had it (didn’t know her too well). So, with my Aunt Jackie, combine CAD with smoking and red meat and you get one fucking massive heart attack.

After a couple of minutes of crying and hugging my mom gets right down to it.

“Why wasn’t I called three days ago.” The answer wasn’t easy for her to take.

“[My husband] thought that we should keep it within the family until I got my strength back.”

Keep it within the family. I’m generally oblivious to insults, it’s like my main weakness, I never know when I’m being insulted – but when my Aunt Jackie said that even I said, “Oh snap!”

The thing is, Aunt Jackie didn’t even get what was wrong with what she said. My mom called her on it though and through clenched teeth she said, “I am family!” I honestly thought my mom was going to strangle her with the IV tube.

There is a big difference between my father’s family and my mom’s. True, they both fight a lot. And true, they usually get over it. But with my mom’s side, family is local. You have your spouse and your kids – that’s your family. Outside of that is second tier. My father’s side – You got your spouse and your kids, your brothers and sisters and their spouses and kids, your cousins and their spouses and kids and your good friends and their spouses and kids. Everything outside of that is second tier but you still treat them like first tier.

I think after being married to my father for (I believe) eighteen years at that point and getting accustomed to his family and the way it works, my Aunt Jackie’s remark was the most hurtful thing she could have said – even if she was only repeating what her husband told her.

But my mom swallowed it down, took it, and stayed around to talk to her sister for the first time in over a year.

And when we were leaving and we saw my cousin Jackie and my mom said to her, “You should have called me” and Jackie responded, “We wanted to keep it within the family at first,” my mom once again took it and hugged my cousin and told her to take care of her mother.

But when she saw the husband in the lobby, no sleep, eyes black, looking worse than my Aunt Jackie, and he came up to say hello, she didn’t even ask him anything. But she was the bigger person; she just walked right past him.

When we got to the car I tried to lighten the mood by taking a shot at the husband. My mom’s response was inspiring, in a word.

“He’ll take care of her. No matter how much of an asshole he is, he’ll do anything for her. He loves her so much.”

And that’s my mom.

WToT4 and Uncle Mike

Silver Bullet Comic’s All The Rage claims Western Tales of Terror #4 has a “Has A 'Per Un Pugno Di Dollari' Factor of Eight Out of Ten”. Follow the link for a five page preview of the story by Joshua Hale Fialkov with pencils by Mark Dos Santos and grays by Marlena Hall. Western Tales #4 will be in stores in three weeks and also features stories from Stuart Moore, Saul Colt and Jon Hook with art by Joseph Bergin III, Jason Copland and Jared Bivens. If you’re retailer didn’t order it due to a protein deficiency or a couple of missing chromosomes, drop this order form off to him today. Do it. Do it.

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Continuing the week of stories about my momma's family...

When my cousin John came back from Desert Storm he visited our house first. Him and my mom were always close and I remember answering the door and seeing him standing there in full desert fatigue, carrying a duffle bag, smile stretched across his face. He came upstairs and we shat the shit for a bit. He was a printer in the army, making propaganda pamphlets that were dropped on the Iraqis, and he gave me a whole bunch of them.

Funny story: of the twenty or so pamphlets he gave me two of them were repeated but on a heavy cardboard stock. I asked him why; apparently those were the original printing but when dropped out of planes they didn’t separate. Instead they fell to the ground like bricks, giving new meaning to the “surrender or die” propaganda philosophy.

Anyway, John wanted to call Uncle Mike almost immediately so we did. Uncle Mike came over, no idea John was home. We set up my dads video camera so that it was hooked up to the TV, streaming the feed, and aimed at John who was sitting on our couch, back towards were Uncle Mike would enter the apartment. Uncle Mike comes in, says his hellos, notices the back of John’s head, and comes in to see who’s sitting on the couch, notices the TV and freaks out.

Laughing, crying, hugging – my Uncle Mike was a big dude; a hug from him was a bear hug every time. And he was picking John off the ground and swinging him around. My Uncle Mike was the happy-go-lucky darling of the family and times like this, you catch him in his raw form; it was inspiring to see him like that. Later that day I asked him to be my sponsor for confirmation (a big deal for us catholic types). I didn’t plan on asking him but I was just caught up in the moment, Uncle Mike was a great guy and you just saw it on that day.

The next day I regretted my decision. Uncle Chris (on my pop’s side) had more money. I figured he could get me a better present or something. I asked my mom if I could change my mind and she said that there was no-way in hell. Reluctantly, I decided to stick with Uncle Mike.

We never really bonded before so he decided he wanted to take me out. We went to get White Castle first, pretty standard bonding experience, and then took his beat-up ‘ole station wagon down to Melody Lanes to do some bowling. He was trying to prove how hip he was and popped a tape into the deck that had JAMBONEY (little help here, can't find the actual name of the song or how to spell "jamboney") on it, asked me if I liked that song. I pretended to like it.

We had a good time that night and the subsequent bonding outings. Come confirmation time he showed up to the house with a big bandage over his hand. I asked him if he was hurt and he explained that he wanted to cover up his spider-tattoo since that’s the hand he needed to put on my shoulder. And that was Uncle Mike in a nutshell – awkward and always aiming to please.

Confirmation came and went and in the months that followed we got closer and closer.

That Christmas we went to my Aunt Jackie’s house. Usual good time had by all – good food, entertainment, and hijinx. As the night started coming to a close, my Aunt’s husband pulled my father to the side and told him that Uncle Mike was admitted to the hospital earlier that day. Uncle Mike loved his Budweiser and it caught up to him – his liver had failed.

My father was distraught, he told my mother. My mother instantly asked why they’re being told this now, so late at night. He told us that he thought it was best we enjoyed Christmas together without worrying, as a family. Uncle Mike would have wanted it that way.

My family piles into our car and heads back to Brooklyn without saying another word to my Aunt Jackie and her family – we actually didn’t say a word to any of them for some time after that.

By the time we get to the hospital Uncle Mike is in a coma. His girlfriend is there, alone. She was there all day with him as he slowly lost consciousness. Alone.

My Uncle Mike slipped into a coma thinking no one in the family even cared enough to come see him except for his girlfriend. Two days later he died. If we’d showed up a couple of hours earlier we would’ve been there for his last conscious thought, he would have known we cared. We never got to say goodbye.

I don’t give a fuck what you say your fear is. Sharks, buried alive, whatever. Worst fucking way to die is realizing nobody gives a shit. And that’s how my Uncle Mike died.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Over the months leading up to his death I grew so close to him. I was honored to have him as my sponsor and I know I made the right choice – Uncle Mike would have been there for me no-matter what. Rich Uncle Chris, well, he was having problems back then. Uncle Mike was just raw goodness. And one of his last conscious thoughts was undoubtedly “why doesn’t my family care.”

The man deserved better.

Progressive Ruin and Staten Island, The Eternal Ruin

Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin has become a daily stop for me – it’s fun to see the world through the eyes of, from what I can tell, a responsible comic shop owner. I could say the same about James Sime from The Isotope but I imagine seeing through his eyes is occasionally blurry, what with the Johnny Walker Blue Label, or whatever he drinks (EDIT: I was informed by Larry Young that James isn't much of a drinker, but he is much of a God). I also firmly believe that James sees everything plated in gold, because he’s a marketing genius, and that type of vision gets a bit intimidating. But I digress, today Mike shared some gems from the past about his shop, nice little stories of 1990s comic shopping. Worth checking out.

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My Aunt Jackie and her family lived out in Staten Island, an island made of kryptonite for any Brooklyn born youth. Staten Island is just ugly – the landfill, the mall, the zoo, the 9 to 1 ratio of whites to non-whites and the overpriced Verrazano Bridge that only charges you when entering Staten Island, as if trying to limit their visitors. It has no redeeming value.

But, we’d go out there at least monthly to spend some time with the family because the family sure as well wasn’t coming to Brooklyn (Staten Islanders hate Brooklyn). The trip over there was never too bad. When I was younger we’d play a game going over the Verrazano, inspired by the original Donkey Kong game, where whoever saw a Verrazano Bridge ladder (they’re sprinkled throughout) first had to shout “There he is!” in order to get a point (“he” being an imaginary Mario). My parents usually let me win but if Nanny was in the car with us none of us stood a chance, she was ruthless. So I at least had that to look forward to.

Once we got to Aunt Jackie’s house there was plenty to do. They always barbequed while the kids played in the pool. Having a pool to swim in was a dream come true for a kid from Red Hook and I usually spent the entire day in it. All we had back home was the Red Hook Pool. I have no idea what that pool is like now but back in the day it was what I imagine a pool would be like in a prison. And if I where in a prison, I would be the bitch from day one. Not the best way to spend the day.

I had an irrational fear of sharks attacking me when I was alone in Aunt Jackie’s pool, however. My plan to spend the whole day swimming was occasionally cut short because I wasn’t able to see every square inch of the pool’s floor at all times. I honestly though a portal would open up and shark would swim through and eat me. Which, I admit, was better than getting ass-raped in the Red Hook Pool; the shark attack was a risk I took from time to time.

My Aunt Jackie’s house has an interesting history. While digging for the pool they come across a tombstone that was buried in their yard for a man named John Finn. Having no idea what to do with the tombstone, they simply set it up in the corner of the yard. People would always ask who “John Finn” was and the answer would usually get them out of the pool – we all saw Poltergeist. There were stories about the house being haunted, messages written on the bathroom mirror when someone takes a steamy shower. My cousin John had “Thou Shall Not Kill” scratched several times into his doorframe, apparently like that when they moved in. He said when they try to cover it up it would always come back. All the stories seemed to be someone in the house playing a prank on someone else.

At the end of my Aunt Jackie’s block there was this little beach. No one would go swimming there, the water was way too rocky and the sand itself was a mixture of rock, sand, glass and beer bottles. But to the right of the beach was this awesome collection of huge rocks that stretched for about a quarter mile until reaching a larger beach. The rocks were great for climbing and one of them was sort of shaped like a captain’s chair and we’d use it as the centerpiece of some Star Trek role-playing. I was never the captain, unfortunately. One you cross over the rock formation you get to the bigger beach which was made of actual sand but the shore was littered with horseshoe crabs.

Around the corner was a little wooded area that the neighborhood kids took over. The cleared out a kick-ass dirt bike path and there were tree-houses scattered throughout. The wooded area was a great place for hide and seek or bottle rocket wars – we’d put bottle rockets in the holes at the bottom of waffle ball bats, light them up and shoot them at people.

They had a nice big TV, plenty of movies and video game systems. John had a computer before I did, a Commodore 64, and we’d play Goonies on it and other fine games – he also had a tarantula (which is a rite of passage for all Staten Island males) which I thought was bad ass – all I had was a cat. They had a fireplace which was absolutely mind blowing; only rich people have fireplaces. They had two bathrooms – TWO – our one bathroom is the size of most people’s closets.

Every kid had their own room. When Elizabeth was born we had to put up a false wall in my parents room so she had a place to sleep. As she grew up she started platooning between my parent’s room and my room. The day I went to college (she was seven) she moved into my room and finally had some space of her own.

They had a trash compactor. They had an attic (the John once told me had ghosts in it so I never entered). They had about fifty picture frames on the wall of their hallway that was about half the size of our apartment. They had a table in their kitchen that wasn’t the dining room table.

Aunt Jackie’s house, for me, was a place of wonders. Until this one Christmas. But that’s tomorrow’s story.

Frank Frazetta and Florida

My group, the DC Conspiracy, is having our first road trip on June 18th. We’re going to the Frazetta museum in Pennsylvania since we’re all pretty big fans of his work – it seemed like the logical trip. So we’ll be taking a few cars, driving up, taking in the artwork and meeting with Frank Frazetta for a chat.

Yeah, you heard me right. We’re meeting with Frank Frazetta. Matt Dembicki, DCC founding member and the man behind WASP comics has been working this for the past week with Mr. Frazetta’s manager, who just happens to be Mrs. Frazetta. Thank you, Matt. It’s not everyday one can score some face-time with a living legend.

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Continuing the week of stories about my mom's side of the family...

We used to drive down to Florida every other year to visit the family. By the time I got a little older Nanny joined Aunt Annamae and Uncle Auggie down there and trips to Florida were always coupled with a disappointing trip to South of the Border (yet we stopped there every time) and occasionally an excursion to Orlando to do Disney World.

Besides pre-planned breaks, my father never wanted to stop the car, making the drive down horrible. We would sometimes rest at a hotel and split the drive in half but usually he only pulled-over when he needed gas and we took care of everything during those breaks – bathroom and food. I have a vivid memory of my father yelling at me for being a baby because I wouldn’t pee in the empty water bottle.

Whereas the ride down wasn’t the most fun in the world, it was usually a great time being there. Go-karts, bowling, hanging out with my cousins and the obligatory trip to Weeki Wachi to watch the mermaids and go to the water park next door.

Cousins John and Jerry always made me feel a little more grown up than I was. I remember when they heard me curse, I said “shit”, and they just laughed about it. My cursing wasn’t bad, it was funny. I’d play their video games and watch horror movies with them and hang out with them and their friends – good times.

One summer Nanny got sick and my mom went down to help out. I tagged along, flew down with my mother. This trip was a bit different than the past trips.

There’s a moment when you realize that childhood innocence isn’t a viable excuse for stupidity anymore. For me, it was this trip to Florida.

I was playing around with a camera for the first time, learning how to shoot black and white on my pops old Pentax. I went with my cousins Auggie and Samantha down and around the neighborhood to take some shots. My cousin Auggie informed me that there was a bowling alley nearby that was recently shut down where I could get some bad-ass pictures. He was right; I got this one for instance, not bad for a 13 year-old (of course, I never really improved).

Abandoned bowling alleys on the wrong side of town isn’t the best place to wander into, however. Luckily for me, upon exiting the alley, I was confronted with the poorest excuse for thugs I’ve yet to witness.

They pulled up to the alley in an Iroc-Z, rolling four deep, thugs as white as my momma’s ass. They stepped out of the car, clothes all baggy and hats tilted to the side. The thing is - they were probably around my age – 13 years old, 14 tops. And I was a freakishly tall 13 year old and these guys were all at least a foot shorter than me. I didn’t feel intimidated at any point.

The ring leader, who was also the shortest of the bunch, wearing a Charles Barkley jersey and a Hornets hat, got right up in my grill and pointed to some graffiti on the alley wall.

“That shit right there. That means you were just trespassing on our property.”

“Sorry, didn’t realize it.” I was just trying to walk away peacefully, no beef with the humorous, cliched punks.

“Well, we’re gonna have to take your bike.” I was shocked. Even with four of these guys, they had to of known I could probably hold my own if not absolutely house them.

“You’re not taking the bike.” At this point, the ringleader grabs my bike and pulls the handlebar, I pull back. And he stumbles forward, almost falls. At this point his friend starts to say he should just let this one go. But he’s persistent, reminds me again what the graffiti means.

“Look, I’m just visiting from Brooklyn, I don’t know what your tags mean.”

“Oh, you think you’re hard because you’re from Brooklyn.” Short answer would have been yes. Long answer would have been, ‘No, I get my ass handed to me in Brooklyn. But bitches from Brooklyn will easily handle thugs from Port Ritchie any day of the fucking week.’

“Dude. You’re not taking the bike.” We stare each other down for five seconds and I get let-off with a warning. Auggie tells me that, next time, I should do what they say because all these assholes pack heat. I tell him a gun’s only good if you got the balls to fire it, playing up my hardcore Brooklyn roll I just slipped in to.

We get back to Nanny’s house and my mom is waiting outside for me. She tells me to get into the rental car; we’re going out for dinner. We go to McDonalds, by ourselves. She gets on the payphone, calls my dad. I’m in the car and my mom is crying. She gets back in the car; I ask her what’s wrong.

She tells me that everything is OK; we’re just staying in a hotel tonight. We leave town tomorrow, we’ll go to the airport straight from the hotel.

We sit in the car, neither of us saying a word but my mom is still crying. I ask her again what happened.

The family needed help. The stupid kind of help. The type of help that my mom couldn’t deliver on. Money stuff, but money for something stupid with a price-tag above my families head. So she said she couldn’t help.

And she got the business.

Talk of how she comes around flaunting her money, showing off. About how rich she was and how she can’t even help the family out when they need it.

About how she doesn’t care about the family, the biggest insult you can direct towards my mother.

As I said in previous conversations, my family sheltered me from this shit. Everything with our family was dandy and we weren’t poor. We weren’t rich but we got everything we wanted.

Truth was, I got everything I wanted and it was because my father busted his ass to shelter me from reality. But I didn’t know that.

“I don’t understand why you just can’t help them out.”

My mom couldn’t even answer. She just cried harder. We got to the hotel, she cried. I went in the pool, swam, watched some TV and went to bed. We didn’t say anything the rest of the night.

That was the moment that childhood innocence was no longer an excuse for my stupidity and I fucking realized how shitty it all really was.

Florida was never the same again.

Secrets Posted, Hot Kids and La Famiglia

A couple of quick plugs before we get to the goods. First off, someone at the Isotope boards directed me to Post Secret. What an amazing fucking art project. People send in a postcard with a secret on it that they never told anyway. Raw honesty, every single one of them heartbreaking despite how scary or funny they might be.

Also, in case anyone is interested, over at the Isotope board we are trying to prove that comic fans love books as much as comics. Today starts our first monthly book club, we’ll be reading Elmore Leonard’s THE HOT KID. If you feel like discussing it with us, go read the book; discussions will soon.
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This week is all about my mom’s side of the family – the D*Porte family. Last month I spent a week on my father’s side and you can read those stories here: La Familia, La Casa, La Invasion de Boston, La Carta, y El Funeral. Like I did during that week, I’m going to start with a rundown of the family.

My grandfather, Jackie (whom we all call Poppy), was a World War II hero. Here’s a picture of his medals that were actually recovered when his house burnt down – there were more. Poppy has a story that’s dying to be told but, unfortunately, most of it is rumor and hearsay, Poppy died when I was one years old.

He married Margaret (whom we called Nanny) after the war. Story goes; the family found out Poppy was fooling around in France while Nanny was waiting at home for him. Poppy’s father (I believe) bought an engagement ring for Nanny, told her it was from Poppy, and then sent Poppy a letter saying he’s now engaged and he better start acting like it.

He opened a bar down in Red Hook called Gabes and he became a neighborhood legend. He would always do for the people in the neighborhood – giving away a sizable portion of his money to help them out. As a result, when he died, the family wasn’t well taken care-of. But that’s the way the man was, he gave and gave and gave and never realized that he had people he needed to provide for. There’s such a thing as too good of a heart.

Annamae is their oldest daughter. She married Uncle Jerry and had two kids – John and Jerry. You will notice a “J” theme with my cousins’ names, all of the aunts and uncles swear it was unintentional.

One of my earliest memories is my family going over to my Aunt Annamae’s house at around eleven at night. They were getting out of New York, escaping in the middle of the night, and going to Florida. My family does that, they escape New York. For my father’s side my Uncle Alex went to Arizona to get cleaned up, my Aunt Sophie followed her husband to Virginia to escape a beef. My Aunt Annamae had to escape a beef and the bills. I remember sitting around while everyone was crying, my mom kept asking her why she had to leave.

They’re all still in Florida. John has a family of his own, a great wife and two incredible kids. He does some top-notch tat-work as well. John served in Desert Storm, as a printer, just like my dad. Jerry was an amazing bowler and probably could have gone pro.

The second oldest is my Aunt Jackie. She married and had three kids – John, Jackie and Jillian. Jackie and I were incredibly close growing up, up until puberty hit. Now we’re pretty close again but recent developments in the family have caused us to drift apart somewhat. There’s a fair amount of tension between my family and Aunt Jackie’s husband, a couple of incidents throughout the years and a particularly ugly one going on right now involving my parents’ house.

The next oldest was Uncle Mike. Uncle Mike was my sponsor for confirmation. He’ll be getting his own day this week, so I won’t talk too much about him now. I will say that he was one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known but he also liked his alcohol too much. He died two days after his liver failed on Christmas day. We weren’t notified until later on, one of the original points of contention alluded to with Aunt Jackie’s family, and by the time we got to the hospital he was already in a coma. Uncle Mike was never married and had no kids. His longtime girlfriend – Lorrie – was, basically, his wife.

Next up is Uncle Auggie. Uncle Auggie is an interesting story. The guy just has no luck. He’s not a bad a guy, he loves his family and he loves his kids but he’s always getting into trouble.

He had a kid, Jeanine, with his first wife. Her mother hid her from Uncle Auggie and the family and, up until two years ago, no-one in the family knew where she was. We found her recently in one of those crazy fate stories where she just happened to be in a hospital talking to somebody who knew my mom. Jeanine hangs with my family now quite often; she actually lives on Long Island (Uncle Auggie escaped to Florida before Aunt Annamae did, Jeanine was born there).

Uncle Auggie has custody of his other kids, Auggie and Samantha. Uncle Auggie, himself, is always in and out of jails and since my Nanny died, I honestly can’t say I even know where he lives now. Samantha had a child very young, I believe at 14, and Auggie is following in his father’s footsteps.

But the thing is, you talk to that guy, and you like him. He’s not a bad guy; he just never made the right decisions. The real shame – he can draw his ass off. If he was clean I would be putting his ass to work right now.

After Uncle Auggie comes my mom, Margaret, the youngest of the D*Porte kids. My mom is so unlike the rest of her family. She’s just sweet as fuck, never will hurt anyone and will do anything anyone asks. She is her father’s daughter without any doubt.

But she also has her tough side. She was dating some guy Cookie, for instance, and caught him making out with some other chick in his car. She responded by picking up a heavy, old-school garbage pail and smashing it though Cookie’s windshield – my mom will fuck you up if you get on her bad side.

So, that’s the family. It’s kind of funny, both my mom and dad where born and raised in Red Hook – my dad was the oldest son of a poor family and my mom was the youngest daughter of a well-off family. They both lost a brother; they both had sister’s that fled New York and a second brother with a shady, occasionally criminal past. Fate? I don’t believe in it but it makes for a great story.

My mother and father are the only two people on both sides of the family that still live in Red Hook. Keeping it real.

I'm gonna make you a comic shop you can't refuse

Since my story today is about comics, I’m going to skip my plug. As a primer, I will say that the book that got me hooked on comics as a kid was Infinity Gauntlet #4. Before then, I was a very casual collector, stopping by a shop occasionally, grabbing some comics off of spinners. When I saw Iron Man’s head get torn off and Thor smashed into tiny pieces and Wolverine turned to putty, I marched right to a comic shop and started a pull-list because I wasn’t going to miss shit like that again. That phase of my life only lasted a few years, however, as I left comics, became a casual reader again in Boston, left comics and am a casual read today. Thank God for trades and graphic novels.

Growing up there were five comic shops that I could have called home. The first one was METRO COMICS in Brooklyn Heights. Metro Comics was probably my favorite store but it was about two miles away and too far of hike for my weeklies. There was a comic shop on Seventh Avenue with a name that escapes me that was even farther than Metro Comics that I went too a few times in Junior High School when taking this dope forensics class at John Jay High School.

The other three comic shops were all within easy walking distance. THE DUGOUT was on Smith Street, before Smith Street was all trendy, and I really had no desire to ever go there. Most of my friends went there, however, but the guy that owned the shop overcharged for everything and focused way too much on baseball cards and collectors items. He was a prospector through and through and I’ll never forget the time I went in there and he had X-Force #1 behind the counter and marked up to five dollars the week it came out. Scumbag.

While my friends were going to The Dugout I set up shop in this place on Kane and Henry Street that I honestly don’t think even had a name. It was everything you’d expect from a comic shop. Small, a little dingy, the owner ran the place and taught karate at night. Stereotypical joint. It was nice, I loved going there for my weeklies and talking with the owner who rarely said a word but listened with that blank stare that as an adult I can tell was a sure sign of eventual suicide.

And then Mannix moved into the neighborhood. Mannix was a shop that had no name, it was a small shop with all black walls, hardly any lights, hardly any back-issues, owned by this guy whose last name was Mannix and run by Mannix’s brother (I believe), Joe. You never saw Mannix, he would occasionally enter the shop briskly and enter the back room. As a kid, Mannix was a cool shop. It was mysterious, they had arcade games, the guy who ran it was in his thirties, acted like a kid and was always eating Philly Cheese Steaks.

Rumors started spreading early, however, that the place was a mafia front. Almost every place in Carroll Gardens was at some point called a mafia front because almost every place in Carroll Gardens was run by Italians. But this place was different. When the rumors started circulating it sort of made sense to a lot of us. It was just dark. There lack of back-issues was indicative of the fact that they didn’t have any comics going into the business. Mannix himself had no clue, obviously didn’t read books and always went into the backroom. The arcade game sort of breaks the “get them in and get them out” mentality you get with a mafia front but at the same time, it helps to get them in and make them look legitimate. Especially when they had Terminator 2 Pinball.

So, we started believing the rumors. So did our parents and they became weary about us going there which basically made it an even cooler place to shop. We’d stick around longer, hoping the cop would raid the place while we were there or, if we were really lucky, we’d witness a shootout, Mannix coming out of the backroom and face to face with a Tommy Gun, his blood spraying all over the Gold-Cover Deathmate #1 Variants, falling over and pulling the shelf of Chromium Cover Bloodshot goodness with him.

Nothing cool ever happened and I can’t say I have proof they were a mafia front. The shop only lasted a year. By the time they closed down the joint on Kane and Henry closed down as well, I think the owner wanted to put more time into his karate classes. Or he killed himself, whatever. There was no way in hell I was going to go to the Dugout and have that asshole push STARTING LINEUP figures on me. So, I gave up comics for a while. Returned to them in Boston because Comicopia was close to my place, gave them up again when I moved and now, well, now I like them. Obviously. Big Planet Comics, Georgetown, in case you’re wondering.

But I’ll never find a shop as cool as Mannix again. Just picturing a bunch of mafiosa guys in the back, figuring out how many XO-Manowar #0’s they should get and how to get there hands on more Death of Superman books is, quite possibly, the very definition of a perfect image.

Next week I’m going back to the swords and devoting the week to my mom’s side of the family. It will be just like the week devoted to my pop’s side of the family except with five times the arrests, three times the heart attacks and six times the lawsuits!

H&B Blowin' Up, Baseball and Type-Herb

Got Elk’s Run 2 off to the printer, WTOT 4 is basically ready, waiting on some ads from our dear friends. Keep your eyes open for Hoarse & Buggy; we have some exciting shit going down in the next couple of months. I’m telling you though; aside from our two books we’re planning on putting out soon we have even bigger news on the horizon. I hate getting all cryptic and I wish I could say more but just stay tuned.

As far as my shit goes, I finished the baseball story and the first (of five) scripts. Still interviewing artists, went through a few people. The problem is, the artist has to know baseball and his shit has to be hot. I originally though the baseball thing wasn’t crucial but, if you can get around the language barrier, there are still a bunch of things that just get missed. The little things a fan notices. How to grip a bat, pitcher’s delivery, runner standing at the ready, batter digging in at the plate, a catcher’s hand signals…there’s just a lot of shit that makes the whole process easier with an artist that knows baseball. So, seriously, if any of you guys know someone available that can do the chores on a book like this and might be interested, hook a brother up. I know there are plenty of you out there, time to help my ass out. I’ll keep looking but leads would be super-sweet – even if you know somebody that might know somebody.

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My friend called me a “herb” yesterday.

A herb.

I haven’t been called a herb in at least a decade nor have I heard anyone call anybody else a herb. For the record, it’s herb as in the name “Herb”, not as in “herbs and spices.” That type of herb is and always will be slang for weed. The kind of herb I’m talking about is slang for dork. And it got me thinking, what other ghetto slang terms where popular in the late-80s, early 90s but just didn’t make it beyond that? With Jorge Vega’s help, we compiled a list. Now, some of these words might have first come on the scene before my time or might still be in use today. I just know that I’ve never (or rarely) heard them outside of the time period I’m talking about. This isn’t really a story, per-se, but it’s relevant to the theme of this blog. And plus, there’s a couple of stories mixed in.

Skins (n.) – Pussy. “Julio hoped to hit the skins on his date with Mita”

Jimmy hat (n.) – Condom. “Julio grabbed his jimmy hats, since Mita is a prime candidate for the H.I.V.”

I’m reminded of when Tony, Dave and I used to sit on Dave’s stoop, blasting KRS-1 on his boom box. “Jimmy” would be playing and we’d scream out “The J, the I, the M, the M, the Y, the J, the I, the M…it’s Jimmmmyyyyy! It’s Jimmmmmyyyyy!” Our neighbors would poke their heads out of the window and yell at us to turn the boom box off. They didn’t realize that:

When Jimmy releases boy it pleases
But what do you do about all these diseases?
Jimmy is Jimmy no matter what
So take care of Jimmy ‘cause you know what's up
’Cause now in winter, AIDS attacks
So run out and get your Jimmy Hats
It costs so little for a pack of three
They're Jimmy Hats for the winter attack

Knockin’ Boots (v.) – Having sex. “Once at Mita’s house, Julio began knockin’ the boots.”

Fly (adj.) – Good looking. “Mita was fly, but not as fly as Mariah Carey.”

Word life (adj.) – Correct. “Word life, you know I hit them skins.”

Gimme some dap – Slap my hand five; give me some props. “Oh shit! My man hit them skins! Gimme some dap, son!”

Mom-dukes (n.) – Mother. “Word son, them skins was tight. I gotta roll, mom-dukes is gonna be pissed.”

Mom-dukes is actually short for Mom-a-dukes, which is what I called my mom. I still do, sometimes. My boy G, on the other hand, uses Mom-dukes.

Heads (n.) – People. “But yo, Julio, you wore your jimmy hat, right? Cause at least thirty heads got up in those skins.”

Yeah Mike – A sarcastic expression of disbelief. “Thirty heads? Yeah Mike!”

Yeah Mike was a term used mainly by Beastie Boys fans, I think. It was more of a white thug thing than black/latino thug thing. Along the same lines was “Sike your mind.” Siking somebody’s mind was like the worst thing in the world. Someone would trick you and say, “Sike your mind!” and you would get so fucking upset. “Yeah, Mike! You didn’t sike my mind!”

Smells (n.) – Cologne. “I’m serious, doo. She fucked Jay-Jay cause she liked his smells.”

In Junior High I heard someone use a word that I’ve never heard used before or ever again and I think he might have been trying it out. A thug walked over to my friend, while in the locker-room, and said, “Yo, son, I’m snorkeling your smells.” My friend had no idea what the fuck the guy was talking about. The thug just sort of stared at him for a second and then said, “Your cologne, nigga! Run your fucking cologne!”

My friend gave up the cologne and the word “snorkel” was retired, I think. Even funnier was the fact that my friends’ “smells” was a bottle of fucking Old Spice. Either the kid didn’t know or he just assumed we were stupid enough to pack Polo or Drakar. Or Cool Water, that was big then too. When did that Michael Jordon cologne come out? That shit was nasty.

Fuck, man, I gotta do a comic about Junior High.

Audi-5 (adj.) – Gone; Leaving. “For real, son, I’m audi-5.”

My father bought an Audi once. I shit you not; we had this beat up ‘ole red monster of a car for a long time. When it died, my pops bought an Audi. It was used, but still, we were po’ folk. Po’ folk don’t get Audis. But he was so proud of it. It was stolen about two weeks later. I believe he followed it up with another used car and then a new Camry, when he started making some good money.

Type – This is my all time favorite fucking slang. I still use it whenever I can and people rarely believe that this was actually used back in the day. You use it before an adjective…I can only explain it with examples. “Yo, that girl is type-nasty.” “That dude was type-crazy.” You get it? “That car is type-fast.” It is by far the biggest waste of a syllable ever in the history of wasted syllables. And that’s why it’s genius. It’s the way a 1950s robot would talk. It’s just fucking perfect.

There are so many more. Maybe I’ll do a part II of this sometime. For now, feel free to add you own “words/phrases that never made it”.

Quick Plug and Walkin' On By the Birds and Bees

Don’t feel like doing a huge comic plug today, too busy banging out a baseball story. True Story, Swear To God by Tom Beland. Read it. If you like this blog I guarantee you will love that book. Honest, beautiful and just one fuck of a good story. And check out this Smoke and Guns preview over at Newsarama. Fabio Moon is dreamy and Kristen's story looks so goddamn sexy.

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My father actually asked me once, “So, do you know about the birds and the bees?”

I’ll never forget it; we were sitting in a car outside of a drug store on Court Street, waiting for my Grandpa to come out, “Walk on By” by Dionne Warwick was playing on the radio. I knew the lyrics to it because Slick Rick used them in “Mona Lisa" and I was singing it lowly to myself while playing with a G.I.Joe.

My father turns to me and says the line above, it was so After School Special, and it must have been so hard for him to do it. I was so fucking embarrassed, I just sort of mumbled a quick “yes” which prompted him to ask me if I was sure. My second “yeah” was snappier, very pre-teen angst.

“So you know about how the penis meets the vagina and makes a baby.” It’s a lot funnier when you picture my dad saying it. It’s easy to imagine him rehearsing these ultra-cheesy lines in front of a mirror, trying to keep a straight face.

I said “yeah” one last time, a bit more subdued because the truth was, I actually thought a woman got pregnant when the penis met the mouth. I never even considered the whole penis meeting the vagina thing.

The conversation then went out of control, when he started telling me about my hormones and sex and how I’ll have urges and on and on and on. And the whole time I'm sitting there waiting for my Grandpa to get the fuck out of the drugstore, sweating my balls off while having the most uncomfortable conversation of my life.

I don’t know where my father was coached on the “bird and the bees” talk, but he even told me that there was nothing wrong with masturbation. This was in the fourth grade, I think. When you’re in the fourth grade, everything was wrong with masturbation. A completely normal insult was to tell someone they masturbated. We didn’t even know what it meant but fuck that, masturbators where dirty –- no-one wanted to be a masturbator. My father even acknowledging that masturbation existed was too fucking weird for me, I felt like he was a pervert for knowing what it was.

Anyway, my grandfather finally got back to the car and I was in the back-seat, beet-red with embarrassment, having just heard my father talk about penis, vagina, urges and masturbation.

And God, we got home, and my mother tells me, “So, I understand you and your father had a little talk.” Yes, mom. We talked about how his penis met your vagina and created me, a horny little masturbator. And I’m absolutely fine talking to you about it.

I just kind of nodded and went to my room. My parents never talked about sex again until I started mentioning it, mainly when I started dating MP and I complained to them how we (at 16 years old) were mature enough to have sex but they would never leave us alone. I’m sure my parents were real comfortable during that conversation.

What goes around comes around is what I say.

Stuart Moore and Bootlegs

Quick plugs before getting down to business. First of all, while working on the WToT letters page with Josh for issue 4, I was once again reminded of how absolutely insane Stuart Moore’s career has been (Stuart has an 8-page story illustrated by Jason Copland). The guy has edited Preacher, Jonah Hex, Transmetropolitan, the early Marvel Knights’ books (Daredevil, Alias, Punisher) and now he’s writing some amazing books, such as Lonefor Dark Horse, Zendrafor Penny-Farthing Press and Giant Robot Warriors