This is a guest post by Bill Whitcomb

Dr. Mortal

Dr. Mortal was an elderly, but brilliant mad scientist who lived outside the city with Marlene, his attractive young niece. Marlene discovers her uncle is creating monsters such as his Super Automaton, Man-Ape, and the Infra-Red Monster.

Again with the Comics: Dr. Mortal.

711

One thing’s for sure — no other had the same occupation as this one. He roamed the underworld by night, in search of villains to bring in, like a good superhero should. But in the daytime, he hung around the jail where he was a convicted inmate.

Toonopedia: 711

International Catalog of Superheros: 711

(Click to see full size)

Madame Fatal

Madame Fatal is notable for being a male superhero who dressed up as an elderly woman and as such is the first cross-dressing comics hero. The original incarnation of the more famous cross-dressing character, Red Tornado, later that year, would become the first cross-dressing heroine.

Wikipedia: Madame Fatal

Again with the Comics: Madame Fatal

Paul McGuigan, director of Gangster No 1, Lucky Number Slevin and the upcoming Sherlock Holmes TV series by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, has confirmed for LiveForFilms that he will be indeed working on a new TV series for BBC Scotland, written by Grant Morrison and starring polymath Stephen Fry. Bleeding Cool reported on this possibility previously, and McGuigan says that currently Morrison has written a treatment.

Read More – Bleeding Cool: Paul McGuigan, Grant Morrison, Stephen Fry In New BBC Thriller

(via Cat Vincent)

Above: a still from Serial Experiments Lain

I’ve been thinking recently about Grant Morrison’s “hypersigil” concept, but considering as not an occult/magical practice, but as as a cybernetic phenomena.*

It started as a conversation between my friends Nabil Maynard and Amber Case on Twitter on the subject of Serial Experiments Lain (which I haven’t seen). Amber said:

There were a ton of parallels between that show and my life, especially now, where my online presence affects offline interactions. [1]

My online presence actually creates who I am. It’s a machine that produces my identity and exists outside of me. [2]

Read the rest of this entry »

Was Alan Moore on Oceanic flight 815? It was either him, or someone deliberately meant to look like him (note the rings!). I noticed this guy and commented on him while watching the season premiere (“LA X”), but didn’t think much of it. That is, until I was the above screencap from Bleeding Cool.

What are the chances it was actually him? Well, Moore appeared on The Simpsons and recently name dropped the Sopranos in an interview, so we know he’s not totally adverse to American television.

See also: Alan Moore’s influence on LOST.

So here’s a question/ observation – Ozymandias is based on David Bowie, right?

Maybe slight explanation – after going on a Bob Dylan binge at the end of 2008, and it really threw Watchmen into a new light for me. Watchmen is two creators in dialog with Dylan’s work – it’s as much an element of the piece as the Charlton characters. Aside from being littered with references to Highway 61 Revisited and Bring It All Back Home, the tone of the book owes almost everything to “Desolation Row”, all sickly mocking the apocalypse as it breathes down your neck and nervously cackling as the fires start across the street. Watchmen’s treatment of Dylan’s influence is a lot like the relationship between the Velvet Underground and The Sprawl Trilogy, less an influence but a dialog. So why wouldn’t the villain of the piece be David Bowie?

Read More – Supervillain: Stray Thought

RAB’s comment is key.

(via Blustr)

Arthur Magazine editor Jay Babcock has re-published his 2004 interview with Alexandro Jodorowsky from LA Weekly:

I don’t suffer to write it. But when I need to write a new series, a new album, for three days I do nothing. The only thing I can do is to see movies, see television, read . . . Because I am as if paralyzed! Suddenly, [with relief] the idea comes. I say thank you, because I am grateful. I am really grateful because I received the idea. But I don’t construct the idea. I am not a constructor. I receive the idea.

Q: Where do you think it comes from?

The unconscious. It comes directly from the unconscious. I think the unconscious is a very, very enormous universe, no? And when you open the doors to the unconscious, you start to receive. Sometimes you see a terrible vision of yourself: desires you don’t want to have, ideas you detest, feelings that hurt you. When you open the door, you can see yourself in a very weird way, like a bad trip on LSD. You can have that. You have all the hell, and paradise, no? You need to have the courage to open the doors.

Arthur: In the Heart of the Universe

Defunct tabloid Weekly World News was once the home of disinformation as well as deranged characters like Bat Boy, Ph.D. Ape and more. Now that the publication has invaded comics, unhinged patriots like columnist Ed Anger may never be the same.

“Ed just wants this country to return to a more simple, innocent time, like when Indians were put down by disease-spreading white invaders who then forced the survivors to adopt a Christian God,” writer Chris Ryall told Wired.com ahead of the IDW comic’s Wednesday debut. “So maybe Ed’s not an asshole so much as he just has bad timing. Not too long ago, he could have been president.”

But as one sees in Wired.com’s collection of exclusive panels below, invented personality Ed Anger is outdone by another presidential individual by the name of Bat Boy, the original Weekly World News tabloid’s most popular character.

Wired: Led by Bat Boy, Weekly World News Deranges Comics

Wired also has preview pages at the above link.

Interview is here.

Reactions to a few things:

There is a particular line I remember from The Sopranos where I think Tony Soprano says, “There are only two businesses that are recession-proof. There are certain elements of the entertainment industry, and this thing of ours”

I’m surprised that Moore watched the Sopranos, but it further confirms my thesis that television is the new cinema.

Where comics are starting to score heavily is in the documentary approach. People are starting to tell coherent stories that are autobiographical or documentary comics dealing with a particular situation. There has been a heartening surge of those, and they are largely coming from outside the comics industry. The comics industry, meanwhile, seems to be going down the tubes, as far as I can see. And it’s largely their own fault, that they did not embrace change heartily enough, that they didn’t have any new ideas, that they didn’t have a clue.

I think this is a little too pessimistic, but maybe that’s because I live in Portland and when I think of the comics industry I think of Floating World and The Stumptown Comics Festival and stuff. On the other hand, the only ongoing series I’m currently reading is the documentary series Reich.

would like to think that in our present time, not just in comics but in almost every form of the arts, I think that creative expression is within the reach of more people that it ever has been. Now, that is not to say that there are more people with something to say than there ever have been before. But I would like to see a situation where people finally got fed up with celebrity culture. Where people started this great democratic process in the arts where more and more people were just producing individually according to their own wants or needs.

This, on the other hand, is far too optimistic.

On the subject of writing an opera with the Gorillaz (previously mentioned here):

Well, that is a bit premature. We were having talks, but it was much too early to be talking about it. It got onto a website and then it went all over the place and got incredibly inflated. There’s a possibility of us working together on a project, but it wouldn’t be for a long, long time. But they are hopefully going to be doing something for Dodgem Logic’s third issue. And we’ve got some other fine people lined up for the future.

Consider this a correction.

Oh yes, Alan Moore as manga schoolgirl. The images are from a new Alan Moore fan-book manga (dojinshi) by Ryusuke Hamamoto. Best bit? Probably the Alan Moore schoolgirl opening her locker and finding Glycon, the Roman hand puppet god that Moore took as his own personal god following his “coming out” as a magician.

Forbidden Planet: You’ve never seen Alan Moore looking like this before…

More pics here

(via Cat Vincent)

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that Ditko sees himself as a real-life “Howard Roark,” Rand’s fictional architect in The Fountainhead, a man who refuses to compromise his vision. Rand’s influence was even more obvious in his right wing vigilante character Mr A, who would throw someone off a building for disagreeing with him. His work became didactic, shrill, hectoring and far-right his influence waned. Mr. A was like Bill O’Reilly as a superhero. What teenager wants to be yelled at by a moralistic superhero? In the opinion of many, his work degenerated into fascistic rhetoric and lunacy from the late 60s onwards.

There have been almost no interviews, ever, with Steve Ditko. While really not a hermit or a recluse, he’s an intensely private person and refuses all interviews, although there are stories of him speaking to a fan ballsy enough to ring his doorbell, but always standing in the doorway, never inviting them in to his studio. In his recent BBC documentary In Search of Steve Ditko, otaku British talkshow host Jonathan Ross tracked Ditko down in New York City and called the artist on the telephone. Ditko politely refused his request for an on camera interview. But when Ross (and Neil Gaiman) showed up on his doorstep, he did in fact entertain them, although not on camera.

Dangerous Minds: Searching for Steve Ditko

See:

Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko (Buy it on Amazon)

In search of Steve Ditko documentary on YouTube

I first heard about this documentary from Trevor a couple years ago, but I haven’t watched it yet.

Now that the comics industry has overtaken film, its outstanding writers are starting to step up to the biopic bar. Subversive brainiac Grant Morrison is up next, with a dedicated documentary due in time for next year’s Comic-Con International.

“He has an uncanny ability to tell stories that are both accessible and progressively avant-garde,” explained indie director Patrick Meaney, whose untitled Grant Morrison documentary, previewed in the exclusive clips above and below, will analyze the writer’s storied run for Marvel and DC Comics on standout titles like The Invisibles, X-Men and Final Crisis as well as more esoteric series like The Filth and Flex Mentallo.

Wired: Grant Morrison documentary due by next year’s Comic-Con International

Pretty good web comic.

Virus Comics: not an insult

(via Autumn)

Mustard interviews Alan Moore about his new magazine Dodgem Logic and he reveals that he is doing the libretto for their next opera and they will hopefully be contributing a few pages to the magazine:

Then the issue after that we’ve hopefully got Gorillaz onboard. They came down to Northampton last week because we’re planning for me to do the libretto on their next opera project. Being an opportunist, I of course asked them if they’d be prepared to contribute some pages to Dodgem Logic. Rather than just doing an interview with them, I thought it would be interesting to hand over a few pages for them to curate.

Mustard: Alan Moore talks Dodgem Logic

(via 24 Bit via Joe Matheny)

Update: Moore now says this has been overblown.

Underground comic artist Robert Crumb has recently joined the ranks of the perennial heretics known as the Gnostics. According to an Agence France-Presse report, Crumb admitted he was a Gnostic during a press conference for the international launch of ‘The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb’. This announcement, along with his new book, reveals for the first time the theological leanings of an important cult figure. Crumb is best known for his ‘Fritz the Cat’ and ‘American Splendor’ comics.

“The Bible is not the word of God. It’s the words of men,” he said at the press conference in Paris. “I take it all as myth from start to finish.” This attitude was echoed by the ancient Gnostics, who saw Holy Scripture as a tool of dominance from oppressive religious institutions and embraced mythology as a vehicle for spiritual liberation.

Examiner: Cult Cartoonist Robert Crumb reveals he is a Gnostic

(via Wade)

A couple people have expressed skepticism about Crumb’s Gnosticism based on the article linked, and the article that article cites. Here is an interview with Crumb in Vanity Fair where he says very clearly that he is a Gnostic:

I would call myself a Gnostic. Which means, I’m interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things. A Gnostic is somebody seeking knowledge of that aspect of reality. That’s more of an Eastern idea, like Buddhism.

More light is shed on his spiritual beliefs in this interview.

r crumb illustrated genesis

It’s true what they say. Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Especially when those pictures are drawn by Robert Crumb.

And especially when those words come from the Bible. [...]

Of course I’ve read Genesis. More than once. It’s been a little while since I’ve read the whole thing all the way through, but it’s not like it’s unfamiliar. But there’s something about seeing the story fleshed out in images to make some of its more striking narrative turns leap out and grab your brain by the root. There’s nothing quite like seeing the two different creation stories enacted on the page to make you go, “Hey! That’s right! Two completely different creation stories!” There’s nothing quite like seeing Lot offer his daughters to be gang-raped to make you recoil in shock and moral horror. There’s nothing quite like seeing the crazed dread and burning determination in Abraham’s eyes as he prepares the sacrifice of his own son to make you feel the enormity of this act. Reading these stories in words conveys the ideas; seeing them in images conveys the visceral impact. It makes it all seem vividly, immediately, humanly real. [...]

And so, when it came to illustrating the freakier and more unsettling aspects of the narrative, he pulled no punches. The multiple marriages, the concubines, the brutal wars, the enslavements, Jacob extorting Esau out of his birthright, Abraham lying to the Pharaoh and saying that his wife was his sister, Noah’s Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and screwing him, the deliberate deception and massacre of an entire town, Joseph taking advantage of famine and drought to seize the wealth of an entire region… it’s all here, fleshed out in blood and sweat and tears, in vivid, unforgettable, often nightmarish detail. It’s really hard to see all that, and still see this book as a divinely inspired guide to living an ethical life. It’s really hard to see all that, and see this book as anything other than a story of survival and conquest in a brutal and bloody period of human history.

Alternet: An Atheist’s Review of the Book of Genesis Illustrated by a Legendary Comics Artist

(via Paul)

Buy on Amazon.

Miracleman/MarvelMan is going to be release by, ironically Marvel Comics. I wrote about the complicated IP mess of MM here (so I need not rewrite it here). The “irony” is “Marvel” legally sued to prevent Alan Moore’s “Marvelman” from being released in the United States because of trademark issues. The result? It was released as “Miracleman” and Moore has never worked for Marvel Comics since (given his godlike status as a comic book author, their BIG loss). Moore sees the comedic irony in Marvel Comics publishing the book and he has no problem with it. Moore won’t take a penny of profits from the reprint, will not let his name be associated with it, and is happy that the bulk of the royalties is going to Marvelman’s original British creator, now in his 90s with a sickly wife.

Positive Liberty: Kimota: The Holy Grail of Comics is Coming

(Thanks Bill!)

The Faust story is a retelling of the Simon Magus story, but instead of being set at the birth of Christianity, this is at the birth of Lutheran Protestantism, nearly fifteen hundred years later. Here we’ve worked out the tangled web of Georgius Sabellicus Faust, the child molester and fountain of necromancy as he styled himself, Johannes Faust, who was the completely blameless doctor of divinity at Heidelberg University, who was known as the demigod of Heidelberg, and we’ve worked out how these two got mixed up together by people who were just confused by all these Fausts and that even Georgius Sabellicus Faust, in the first reference to him, he refers to himself as “Faustus Secundus,” and we were looking at this, and I said, “But that makes ‘Faust Second,’ and this is the first Faust that we’ve ever heard referred to” — he’s refered to by Johannes Trithemius — so we thought, “Who was Faust the first, then?” And Steve looked up in his Latin dictionary, and the word “faustus” means “fortunate, lucky, prosperous, auspicious,” so it would have been a great generic name for a sort of generic folkloric magician, like we might say, “Oh, he was a bit of a Merlin,” and they were saying, “He’s a bit of a Faust, he’s a lucky man,” with an implication that his luck comes from magical means, like Prospero was a good name for a magician. This is a Latin word, that is presumably, there must have been a Faust in folklore before any of these other jokers got in on the act. That’s just in one page of The Book of Magic, because we’re only giving one page to each of the lives of the great enchanters that we’re including. [...]

We also found out that Paracelsus invented modern medicine. This was quite interesting. We found out he was the first person to say that epilepsy was an illness rather than a madness. He was the person who pioneered the use of anesthetics and antibiotics. He was the first person to say that disease originated from outside the body and that illness came from agencies outside the body, which is the beginning of disease theory. He invented homeopathy, and he was a magician.

It points out how much of our culture, all of it, the science, the medicine, the art, has seemingly sprung up from a hardcore magical basis. That most of the people, like Isaac Newton who was an alchemist, who ideas were based on those of John Dee, who was a flat-out necromancer, and even Einstein, his ideas were very much influenced by theosophy, which was the product of the fantastic 19th century fraud, that inspired fraud of Madame Blavatsky. So it’s interesting, much of the culture that surrounds us comes out of magic, pure and simply. That was something I suspected for a long time, but doing the research for this book, that is something which is becoming more and more evident, and we are gathering the evidence for that point of view with every new aspect of it we research.

Previews: Alan Moore interview

You can compare Paracelsus’s Alphabet of the Magi and Dee and Kelley’s Enochian alphabet at Omniglot:

Alphabet of the Magi

Enochian alphabet

I’m intrigued by Moore’s claim about Theosophy influencing Einstein. Anyone know anything about it?

The Pekar Project

Probably the earliest depiction of a communication device resembling a laptop has been discovered in an ancient Flash Gordon comics by Mende Petreski of Prilep, Macedonia.

Browsing through his comics collection, Mr. Petreski stumbled upon a panel in Politikin Zabavnik weekly published June 14, 1974, featuring the forces of Ming the Merciless using a device which looks a lot like a laptop to talk to their leader.

Science Fiction Observer: First “Laptop” Discovered in Flash Gordon Comics

(via Disinfo)

A new collection of the haunting, nightmare inducing work of Fletcher Hanks (the artist R. Crumb calls “one twisted dude”) is now available:

“You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!” is the companion to the Eisner Award winning, “I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!”. Together the two books comprise The Complete Works of Fletcher Hanks, the Super Wizard of the Inkwell who worked for three years in the earliest days of the comic book industry, created 51 stories and then disappeared.

Volume I includes a 15 page comics story by Paul Karasik explaining Hanks’ haunted past.

Volume II includes a prose introduction putting the work in historical context.

Official Site

Buy it on Amazon

Previous coverage of Fletcher Hanks with lots of links

(Thanks to Bill for the heads up!)

Aside from physical capital, economies must take advantage of their human capital to grow. But even with metahumans this is a tricky proposition. In an earlier post Mark discussed the potential benefits of having mutants performing tasks such as construction if they ever took a break from blowing stuff up. However, looking at economic development through the lens of the Solow model I feel that these mutants may ultimately prove unable to increase long-run living standards. Any effect that Magneto may have on productivity will only temporarily move the economy to a higher steady-state output per person (y/n). With his death the economy will move back to where it was (and probably experience some unpleasant distortions during the transition). The reason is that Magneto is essentially no different than a tractor or any other piece of capital equipment. He ages, depreciates and eventually dies. More importantly however, is the basic result of the Solow model: sustained growth in y/n can only be achieved if there is concurrent growth in our stock of knowledge and technology, something Magneto cannot contribute to. Without technological change, the economy will eventually reach a steady-state level of y/n and all growth will cease. Even so, the Marvel universe does have one ace in the hole, and he’s got a big green head!

That’s from the post Alien Technology and Economic Growth: Lessons from Solow from Eco-Comics, a blog dedicated to studying the economics of comic book universes.

(Thanks MathPunk)

There do seem to be different rules involved when it comes to death and the island. It reminds me of both Donnie Darko and The Invisibles. In Donnie Darko dying in the time loop allowed someone to step out of regular time as Frank the Bunny does. From this new position he is able to effect events. Similar effects are in play in The Invisibles comic series by Grant Morrison.

Hatch 23: Lost and the Supercontext

Occulted Watchmen: The True Fate of ‘Hooded Justice’ & ‘Captain Metropolis’ is a paper by James Gifford, originally published in 1999. The paper presents a theory that both Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis did not die (as is alluded to in the supplementary material presented with Watchmen), but are alive and well in 1985, and further that they appear together in a panel in Chapter I: At Midnight, All the Agents.

Watchmen Wiki: The Fate of Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis

Still on the tip of DIY art, Neko sends his debut episode from the 2009 Emerald City ComiCon. Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole, Sounds of Your Name, Walkie Talkie) talks about his start in comics, dressing up as oppressed breakfast cereal characters in his former band Soophie Nun Squad, and why Indiana is such a racist state (and more).

G. Willow Wilson (Air, Vixen: Return of the Lion, Cairo) is asked about the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl, flight, symbols, dreams… and how they all relate to her work.

Corey “The Rey” Lewis (Sharknife, Peng!) vigorously discusses his online roots, his online comics par excellence Seedless (updated every Wednesday) and Rival Schools (finished), and where his ideas come from. And the burning question: when will we see him draw a comic by Warren Ellis?

Camilla D’Errico (Nightmares & Fairy Tales, BURN, The Fallen) teases us with a little info about her upcoming project with Grant Morrison (which has, since this was recorded, changed to “The New Bible“). Much gushing, of course, follows. Also discussed: her project with Avril Lavigne, the upcoming videogame she’s working on, the upcoming books, her blasphamous Jesus comic book in high school, her love of manga… and why she hasn’t read Final Crisis yet! Featuring the music of Divorce Chord (Nate Powell’s current band) and The Secret Meeting… plus, some sekrit songs that you may or may not recognize.

And if that wasn’t enough… Lyxzén Suicide tells a joke, “Spider-Man” is asked a very important question, “Stan Lee” says something very NSFW, and more high weirdness.

The GSpot- Live from the Past: Emerald City ComiCon

I’m missing David Mack at Floating World tonight for Bogville. Sometimes Portland is so awesome it sucks.

WHO: David Mack
WHAT: Art exhibit, slide show discussion, Q&A with the artist
WHEN: Thursday, April 2nd, 6-10pm
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave #101

JASON LEIVIAN: Kabuki: The Alchemy talks about a new beginning. Everything that came before (Volumes 1-6) was childhood. Maybe one way of putting it, when I was younger there was a developmental stage where I immersed myself in books and ideas that I was interested in. But then at some point there was a breakthrough and things got crazy. It’s like it all became real and my life became some science fiction novel. When I was younger read things in books, but now my life is these things. What was metaphor, now seems like platonic truth, even realer than this reality, which seems like maya by comparison. Let’s talk about the spiritual journey of David Mack as it’s expressed through your art. In Kabuki you see the work as a self fulfilling prophecy. Can you discuss that a bit?

DAVID MACK: I think I understand what you are describing. What you focus on has a tendency to change you, affect you. When you are passionate about something and active in working on it, it can seem like you hit a point when your real life seems to operate on dream-logic: You think it and then it materializes.

Creating on a regular basis is a great practice for that. It clues you in, trains you, to realize how malleable the material world is – that you can have an immediate effect on it based on your thoughts and actions. When you write or draw everyday, you start with a blank, and then you make something- an idea suddenly exists in the three dimensional material world. Just by writing it down, drawing it, you take this thing that only existed in your head, and then suddenly it exists in three dimensional physical reality. Practicing that everyday, starts to reveal to you that things work that way. You experience that transition everyday and it becomes larger than the page or the work you are doing. It has a ripple effect in people that experience your work and their response to it.

Suddenly you realize you have not just created one story, or one work, or a body of work, but you’ve created your own career, and your own life, as your self portrait, and your contexts for your life, and your work has become your passport to a variety of worlds. And there is a point when the dream you were dreaming, and then dared to enact in reality, has become completely real and you live it everyday. And other people can even share it with you.

That is a great lesson to learn. Because once you learn it, you can go about living it very consciously. As consciously as you would craft your work on the page, you realize you are crafting it off the page as well.

Full Story: Arthur