I'm starting to sound like a record skipping, a CD stuck in a recursive loop, a looped sample from iTunes, depending on what generation you're from and how you personally consume your harmonic audio input and analogies, but
Free Comic Book Day is very nearly upon us. I am excited for it for all that it portends, but even more so because it is also
International Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You). This year,
Ryan's Comics will be hosting a Star Wars after party, wish cash prizes awarded for the best costume and also...An art gallery!
There will be a number of local artists featured that evening, including my lovely wife, Loreal, and none other than yours truly. For this event, Loreal and I have been working tirelessly on some acrylic on canvas originals to be posted for view (and sale) at the store that evening. Traditional medium is definitely my wife's forte, and while I am no slouch at it, I tend to do better with digital painting (primarily because I don't favor the clean up involved with traditional media, particularly if I have to work in oils, which, fortunately this time I do not). Both Loreal and I are hoping to have two original paintings posted that evening, and I will also have some matted, framed original pencil drawings.
The painting just below is a piece I like to call,
"The Droids You're Looking For." This one is approximately 10" x 24" on a 1.5" thick heavy duty canvas, and will be available, as noted above, for viewing and sale the evening of May 4th, for the low, low price of $99.
Also to be featured, if I can get the go ahead from Ryan, will be the matted and framed pencil drawings I mentioned. Here are a couple of the ones that I have completed:
It's been a good long time since I've done any Star Wars work, and most of what I have from the old days is either lost, or not of the sort of caliber that I would be comfortable presenting to the public with the idea of obtaining objective criticism or monetary compensation. I'm a starving artist, but I do have a few scruples rattling around in the old moral cookie jar.
But just a few, which leads me to my next point.
Spider-Man.
Or, more importantly, the self proclaimed at yet to be verified (at least by me)
Superior Spider-Man.
Checking back through the archives of this blog, one will find an entry containing my thoughts and feelings regarding Marvel's wrap-up of their 50 year old
Amazing Spider-Man title run, its conclusion and subsequent re-introduction of the Spider-Man character with a new, and seemingly disastrous twist. What I'm talking about was the apparent "death" of Peter Parker while his mind (and spirit? Is that a thing?) were trapped inside the rapidly deteriorating body of Otto Octavius, aka Doctor Octopus, Doc Ock, what have you.
Anticipation for the death of Doctor Octopus had been building from as far back as issue #600, if not further, as Doc Ock recounts that litany of physical set backs, knocks to the head he had received in his various run ins with Spider-Man. Personally, I had been anticipating said death to occur in issue #700 from as far back as issue 687 or so, when Ock took a major role in the story arc. And to tell you the truth, I wasn't excited about it. It seemed predictable and something that I would buy and read more or less for the milestone it would have marked; the death of a long time Spider-Man villain, perhaps the quintessential Spider-Man villain apart from the various incarnations of the Green Goblin, who all have died and come back at some point or another. Death in comic books, really, is just a way to shake the readership tree. A few leaves, meaning readers, might fall off, but sooner or later they grow back and its still the same tree with all the same limbs. Superman died way back in 1992 but he's still around. Batman sustained a near fatal spine injury that left him crippled for the better part of a year in comic book time, but he picked himself up and got back to doing what he does best. Likewise Captain America, and even Peter Parker's dear Aunt May (
The Amazing Spider-Man #400). I think the only one that Marvel has really played for keeps was the death of Peter Parker in the
Ultimate Spider-Man run, which picked up with a completely new Spider-Man, the young Miles Morales and has, so far as I can tell, been pretty successful. And not to go too far into the rant on this, but DC did a similar number following the death of Superman in 1992 when they introduced four different versions of the character with four separate titles, including
Steel, which was later adapted into an atrocity of a film starring Shaquille O'Neal. But I digress. Anyone wanting more definitive information regarding so called "Comic Book Death," should check out this
article on Wikipedia.
So, with my all-time favorite Marvel character killed while in the body of Doctor Octopus, and his long running title seemingly at an end, I felt like I had come to the dirty end of a long term relationship. I love my wife, and would never dream of getting a divorce, but on some scale, my relationship with and to the events in
The Amazing Spider-Man #700 were probably pretty similar to what one feels when severing the ties of marriage. So it was that I decided I would not read any of the ensuing issues of Marvel's new title,
The Superior Spider-Man.
As of this moment, I still have not read any of the new Spider-Man title, but I plan to. I have purchased several of them, and have them on-hand, ready to read. And I'll tell you why. It comes down to predictability and surprise. As I have said above, I had been anticipating the death of Doctor Octopus since issue #600 back in 2009. When the title started nearing #700 and Doc Ock was scaling up, I knew it was only a matter of time before I picked up the issue where he actually croaks. And when it comes to story telling,
good storytelling, predictability is the smooch of death. Predictable stories get knocked in reviews because they are just that: Predictable. What Dan Slott did in killing my favorite hero was to take a long expected outcome and flip it on its ass. While I may not have appreciated that outcome, might even have nicknamed Mr. Slott as Damn Slott in thinking and in conversation, might even have missed some sleep over it and stared glassy eyed at the shelf at the comic book store where my beloved
Amazing Spider-Man used to rest, the conclusion I came to in the end was that Marvel had done once again what they do when they are at their best, and that is to take an idea and twist it around into something new, and hopefully marvelous.
Hopefully.
I've got a stack of
The Superior Spider-Man that I plan on reading this afternoon. This may still be terrible, but I understand the intention now, and I hope that Marvel and I can work out our differences.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and if you're in the Murrieta area on the evening of Saturday, May 4th (8PM to 11:30PM) be sure to stop by Ryan's Comics over on Madison and check out some amazing costumes and artwork. You won't be disappointed!
Yours Precipitously,
J. Schiek
