"Monster, This is Your Life"

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Finally returning to Lynda Barry's MAKING COMICS exercises (beyond my daily bastardizations of of her Attendance Cards exercise – perhaps a useful way for me to expand my brain in a decidedly expanding-challenged time. Barry's rules for this one:

"Paper, divided into six frames... each frame will take three minutes… you will be jumping around the page, drawing in this order: Frame 1, 6, 3, 4, 2, 5...

  • 1. Draw the monster as a newborn in a certain setting.

  • 5. As a kid engaged in some kind of activity

  • 3. As a disgruntled teen doing something you did as a teen

  • 4. As a young adult enjoying themselves

  • 6. middle-aged, at work

  • 2. At its funeral. It lived to be old. We can see its body in this picture."

My results:

Six panels: a snake monster as a baby on a microscope slide; as a kid playing with blocks; as a teen smoking and proferring the middle finger; as a 20-something roaming a city, smoking; as an office worker; as a body in a burning coffin.

Remind me never to use the snake-monster again: he was a pain to reproduce. Earlier (much earlier, it seems) efforts live here.

note to self

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Trying to keep this bit – for my money, the finest bit of wisdom in a book full of it – at the forefront as I navigate my own resoundingly unproductive (and maddening) creative period:

"The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you're empty... The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given – that you are not in a productive creative period – you free yourself to begin filling up again."

DETECTIVE COMICS, Vol. 1, No. 579 (Barr / Breyfogle; DC, 1987)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-) read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box08): Simple and solid bit of done-in-one entertainment heavy on the "chum"s – "chum" and Jason Todd just don't mix – and foreshadowing of a larger Two-Face plot rendered in early Breyfogle which is always a delight: there's something about a good done-in-one that triggers – in a good way – a sort of nostalgia for the narrative craftsmanship of a tight, well-done adventure that makes one crave the next issue without resorting to "to be continued" (a la the best episodes of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES – though it had its share of "TBC," but NEVER out of anything other than the needs of the story being told) or interminable crossovers and year-long "this changes everything / biggest thing ever" cataclysms.

FWIW, the "simple bit of done-in-one" was and remains, to me, the biggest missed opportunity in digital comics: entertaining toss-asides that, in their physical manifestation at least – and in the right hands, become treasures passed through time but that's a rant for another time. For now, I'll keep this one short and as entertaining as I can make it, in homage to.