About comics ~

When I moved from my hometown, I left all my comics behind. This is probably shocking and horrifying to those of you who collect and cherish and coddle comic books. But I was moving to a place of high humidity and anyone who appreciates truly loving their comic books knows that I did what was best for them at the time, difficult though it was for me to make that decision.

So I packed up a couple of reading copies of my favorites and said goodbye to the rest of them. I visited them at Christmas most years and that was sufficient. But then I moved up north and coming home at Christmas became impractical and I began to miss my comics. I called my brother and told him to send me some ~ just a "surprise me" variety. For a while that held me. And I bought a couple here and there and was gifted some as well, but then some dark days came: I was gravely disappointed by Garth Ennis's redux of Ghost Rider (blargh ~ why, Marvel, why???), and last summer Azzarello's Loveless was a huge bust (boo!), and then I missed my comics even more because I remembered loving them and collecting them and choosing each one for its own special self from the comic boxes at the comic store (don't fergit, people, I'm old, back then there was no internet or online ordering). I missed the yellowing tape on their crinkled baggies, their stubborn little gooey orange and white price tags: .60, .80, $1.25. I knew exactly from which store each came from by their distinct packaging and pricing and by golly, i recollect buying every single dang one of them.

All this nostalgia, coupled with returning to Comic Con after some years away, made me miss my comics even more, but it finally dawned on me: I no longer live in the land of the sweat and mung. So I called my mother and told her to send my comics "home".

This past week I received three boxes of comic books. I'm still missing part of my collection, but the bulk of it has arrived. it contained a few surprises (I had no idea I had read Hellblazer for so long), and a few cringe-worthy recollections (Midnight Sons? gaggg!). But most important, among them were cherished volumes I haven't set eyes on in quite a few years and many of which I haven't read in over two decades.

I quit collecting comics during the 1990s comics bust. Hellblazer no. 87 (1995) was the last comic I made a conscious effort to buy off the stands (if I remember correctly). Interestingly, Eddie Campbell was the artist drawing the title at the time.

My collection is very small (about 300 books) and very specialized (about 5 titles), but most of it has kept its value over the years and many particular issues have continued to grow in demand. I have no idea how much my collection is worth (haven't assessed it since the 80s boom), but I'm guessing it's probably at least $1,500 without blinking (assuming much of it is generally worthless, but a handful of books tip the scales heavily). Possibly it's worth much more. Not too shabby for something I nickeled and dimed together throughout my teenage years. But I've no intention of selling any of these precious darlings, so their worth to me is really in the joy of placing them back among my embarrassingly overflowed collection of books and ephemera.

I guess I am telling you all of this as a warning. You might have to suffer endless posts about these little darlings while I reacquaint myself.

An evening with Eddie Campbell ~

Last night I read Eddie Campbell's Black Diamond Detective Agency, which is fairly new from First Second Books (which produces some really amazing works!). I was too overwhelmed at Comic Con this year to visit Campbell (I think my brother said he was there, but I never crossed paths with his table). So alas, I did not get a signed copy, but I'm glad to have bought a copy at all. Campbell was the first "comic" artist who inspired me to think that I could actually draw (probably From Hell was one of the first graphic novels I ever saw aside from Spiegelman that had a distinctive art style that wasn't traditional superheroes. I immediately fell in love with his inks and washes and later developed a similar affinity for his watercolors. Black Diamond Detective Agency is one of only a few full-color books of his, and I love the gritty palette he's chosen for the end of the 19th century ~ it goes well with the industrial aspects of the storyline and keeps the tone somber and noirish) like a detective book should be, right?

There's problems with the script, I think. I mean, the story is good: exploding train, missing wife, framed mystery man, even a good old-fashioned chase in a gas-saturated mine. But given another twenty pages or so, some of the more crashing scene changes and bafflingly curt dialog might have flowed more smoothly. There's also some lengthy explanations at the end: wherein the villain explains all ~ very Victorian in construction so I'll give it props for the formula, but as Campbell was working from a script by C. Gaby Mitchell and perhaps either as a difficulty of editing or a limitation of space, certain information and character development feels a wee crammed up. Or it could just be that I wanted to savor the book longer (or ghoulishly wanted more 'splosions, which is always a possibility).

Nevertheless, this is a beautiful little book and I hope we'll see more like it. I tried (perhaps in a desultory fashion given my awareness of my own personal artistic limitations), to emulate this style in at least one incarnation of Reconstruction. It didn't work out. But I'm glad to be able to admire the work here ~ even if it's something I can't reproduce, it continues to inspire.

Don Robertson's Liminal Nightmare ~

Holy cow, what a book! It starts off a slow burn, but turns downright harrowing toward the end (I couldn't put it down). This is not the same old tired Civil War story recycled from a lot of other books; the characters are painfully real, and their circumstances are unlike any I've seen in any other piece of fiction about this era. You'll find no tired retread of battles, no hardtack, no endless exposition about the politics of the time, no romantic Southern apologetic, no kindly woman who takes in stray soldiers and falls in love ~ all those crummy tropes have no foothold here ~ at all: this is an end to the war that's intensely human, brutal, and appalling in its brutal humanness.

I came across this book by pure happenstance. It was mentioned somewhere that Stephen King was a fan, so I took a gamble and ordered it not knowing anything about it. Now I'll definitely be looking for some of Robertson's other books ~ it's just a pity they are all out of print and he passed away shortly after this one was published (argh!).

Not for the faint of heart, Robertson doesn't shy from the baser instincts of people trapped between wanting to die and a desperate instinct to survive. I think one of the most terrifying things about reading this is that eventually you realize that there is no mercy here: at any moment in the chaos of circumstance, anything can happen. Robertson's style takes a little adjusting to (some of his dialect choices throw you out of the story until you can get a hold on them ~ and the choice to write in a dialect when it's told from an omniscient voice that roams from one character to another is, frankly, a little bizarre. But the specificity of the characters and their compelling stories more than make up for it. This book is gritty, honest, and takes chances where I've seen so many others cop out or go ridiculously over the top.

There are only a handful of books I say I wish I had written. This one joins them.

A Venture in 1777

Let's see ~ a list of things that might make a book delightful: under 150 pages long (check), illustrations (check), George Washington (check), snow! (check), Christmas (check), Valley Forge (check!).

With a list like this, S. Weir Mitchell's A Venture in 1777 can't help but be satisfying!

Okay, so the story isn't all that much. Young Tom Markham and his twin brothers (but mostly Tom) conspire to steal an important military secret from Colonel Grimstone and relay it to Valley Forge just after Christmas. Their house is occupied by the British and they'd like very much to get rid of their unwanted guests ~ and get their father back (he is currently a prisoner of war).

Mitchell apparently enjoyed writing "historical" fiction and has a number of books set during the American Revolution and Washington's term as President. This particular little tome, he wrote for charity with the proceeds going to the Philadelphia Church Home for Children. The book isn't terribly fancy, but it does have some nice vignettes and illustrations (spot colored in cyan). The artist, unfortunately is uncredited, but you can see what nice work was done in the image below.

I have to say it was especially nice to read this simple, uplifting little story after what's been passing lately as bedtime fare. A little Mitchell is a good tonic for the ills of research. Though there is mention of the privations at Valley Forge in this book, the story is clearly written for a young audience and so the hardship and violence is kept to a minimum. That does not mean it isn't full of adventure, however, and the capture of Grimstone, especially, is a good time. I especially like Tom's sense of "fairness" in handling these matters (oh chivalry, thou art dead). Tom as a principal character is nicely restrained and his interview with Washington is the best part of the book (totally expected, of course, but also totally satisfying).

Near as I can tell, the story is entirely fictional outside of the circumstances of the war. General Washington would appear to be the only "real-life" character. I've haven't yet read any of Mitchell's Revolutionary War novels, so I don't know whether he's predisposed to adhere to much fact. His Civil War novels are certainly grounded in fact, but the historical people who appear in them generally pop in and out of scenes rather quick (much like Washington in this one).

Two amusing things about the illustration above: Tom is fifteen (nearly sixteen). In the picture he looks more like twelve! Also, do you really think Washington wore stockings at Valley Forge? Much as I like the picture, the shoes, I had to laugh at.

In memory of Angelo ~

I spent most of Sunday gnashing my teeth. the reasons why are pointless to explain (same o'crud). then I did the stupid thing of reading myself a bedtime story so depressing that it carried my mood overnight and now I am officially in the glums.

The book, Dennis Brandt's Pathway to Hell isn't spectacularly written ~ it's rather short (barely over 200 pages), and isn't exhaustive about much ~ but that made it perfect for me: no long explanations of campaigns I already know too well, no endless nattering about hardtack. instead it's a true chronicle largely in Angelo Crapsey's own words from his letters and diary, documenting in the most painful way imaginable, his slow decline into self-destructive dementia.

Crapsey's story is unique as far as books of the war go, though there's unfortunately nothing unique about what happened to him. It tells the story that Paulson's Soldier's Heart tries to tell, but doesn't.

When I think back on the origins of Reconstruction, I think i wrote it in part because this book hadn't been written. Crapsey's story is more heartbreaking than any novel anyone could ever write: a disaster that could have been avoided a hundred different ways. The circumstances of his bizarre upbringing at the hand of a religious whack-job father, his fervor for the Union, his abolitionist sentiments that sour after emancipation drags the war into a seemingly endless slaughter, the shame of his surrender and imprisonment ~ all of it horrible, horrible ~ and then to come home to the father-figure and friend he looked up to the most only to find himself rebuffed, feared, and ostracized. And finally the everyday event that led to Crapsey's end is so banal, almost ~ so utterly human in its simple cruelty. It isn't any wonder he blew his brains out. Twenty two years old.

Of course I imagined a different end once upon a time for Reconstruction which is in many ways this same story: an endless cycle of addictions, an abusive marriage, desolation, death. Even I was never so brave to actually make any of that stick, though. I had to find some hope in there somewhere. So I did.

But there was none for a lot of young boys like Crapsey. Even Howard Bahr didn't shrink from drawing us a picture in The Judas Field (which is maybe why I didn't like that book as much as I wanted to ~ it hit a nerve with me).

So yeah. I don't know why i am writing this except to wonder at the meaning of it all.

200 years ~

Tomorrow being the 200th anniversary of the man in the funny hat's birthday, I sat myself down and read something that wasn't about him getting shot (yes, it's possible to find such a book in my house, believe it or not!). This is a little book written by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews after the turn of the century called The Perfect Tribute. I believe it was originally published in 1906, but my own personal edition, a well-tanned ugly duckling, is from 1908 (and has an owner's stamp of "J. Lewis Riggles" which amuses me).

The story is not badly written, but is bad in general. It's a fictional account of Lincoln's day at Gettysburg and how insecure he feels about his pithy little speech and how no one applauds and therefore it was a complete failure. Scholars have interesting things to say about why no one applauded, but I love to read the reactions from people who actually heard the speech (which is why I really love Gettysburg Remembers President Lincoln). But this isn't a review of that book, it's a review of Andrews' fictional account, so I will leave it at her interpretation for now.

The story goes from there back to Washington where Lincoln runs headlong into a young boy in a dither over his dying brother: a Confederate prisoner who needs a will so that he can leave his property to his sweetheart and she will therefore be forced to accept it (otherwise she's too prideful). Lincoln, being a lawyer, volunteers his services and they go to the prison where he draws up the business for the bravely suffering young man. In the course of their conversation, the soldier brings up the Gettysburg speech, which is in all the papers, and he talks about how astonishing it is, blah blah blah. And of course he says that not clapping was the perfect tribute because the words were so perfect and so solemn. He talks about how he'd like to shake the President's hand, he's so dern grateful. Then the fella kicks the bucket holding Lincoln's hand, never knowing it's him.

The story works, even if it is melodrama. Its apotheosic (is that a word? I doubt it) bent is only mildly disturbing and the depiction of the two southern boys as righteous, indignant, but well-meaning is a rather dull stereotype. But in 1906 I can certainly see the appeal and I enjoyed the story despite my own prejudices.

So happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln. Enjoy your celebration year!

In which I avoid things I should be doing ~

The Smithsonian has an exhibit of the man in the funny hat's truck and deals in honor of the Obama-mama-man's inauguration. I'm going to (maybe not so delicately) avoid any discussion of why I think this is tacky, but I belong to a peculiar American minority that feels conflicted about sanctifying pseudo-martyrs. And Johnnie B., you were such a dumb cluck (I have to say it). Anyway...cool picture though! I can definitely appreciate a nice black frock.

And for the 187th time (and I mean it). I don't hate Abraham Lincoln. We've certainly had many many many worse presidents.

I wanted to launch the good ship In Pursuance this spring, but right now I'm pretty overwhelmed with other things. If I were more organized I could juggle everything a lot better. But the more I try to organize, the more I can't seem to find anything that I need. I recently acquired Lloyd Lewis' Myths after Lincoln and William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues (they followed me home!), so it's not like I've stopped thinking on the subject. If anything, I think I have a clearer angle on how I want to tell the story and I have a solid outline of the chronology. What I really need now is to get the "scholarship" part in order. And even though this is not really a story about Lincoln, I would be less than honest if I said I wasn't concerned about being fair (my biases overriding my common sense most of the time). So I want to be careful. My original intention was to avoid the issue of Lincoln & Booth altogether. They are not what the story is about. But part of me says it's absurd to think I can get away without addressing the issue. Even if it is in the Ford Theater greenroom over a game of poker. When I look at Kate Beaton's work, I think: my God, this doesn't have to be so complicated! So cross your fingers. I may get it together yet.

But today I don't have time for this. I've got an outline for a novel I'm trying to poke into some semblance of sense.

Homebound with Howard Bahr ~

Can't get my car to start this morning. Yesterday it was -17 and it cranked over okay, but today at -21, it just ain't going to happen. I'm waiting to see if, when the temp gets up to at least 0 (we're supposed to have a high of 8 today!), I can get the poor thing on the road. If not, I get to work on Saturday. Which completely screws up my anticipated 3-day weekend, but oh well, what can you do?

So while I'm trapped here and AAA is so clogged with calls that I can't even get through and I'm stuck in my house (which is about 54 degrees right now ~ 4 below what's comfortable for me, so I'm going to have to turn the heat on, God forbid), I thought maybe I would do some blogging since I've neglected it for a while (being too busy and overwhelmed with other nonsense as of late).

The last book I read in 2008 was Howard Bahr's The Black Flower. I am a huge fan of Bahr, though have read his books sparingly and over long periods (I want to make them last and I'm now down to only one, so he better write another). The Black Flower was his first novel and I remember distinctly passing it over when it first came out because I was turned off by the paperback artwork (which I did not reproduce here, though it's the edition I own). I made the lousy assumption (judged it, I confess) that the tacky exterior was indicative of a tacky interior (and my apologies to Mr. Bahr because I know the photo used on the paperback cover was his own).

Anyway, after reading The Judas Field (the cover of which appealed to me), I was so impressed with the writing, I collected all of Bahr's other books ~ and it was a treat to end the year on such a positive note. The Black Flower reads like a great first novel. There are parts of it that seem a bit disconnected from the whole as though they were written independently before the whole thing was put together ~ so it is a bit disjointed in places, but Bahr is still amazing with a turn of phrase and his occasionally long-winded metaphors are never overwrought, always worth labor of reading. His descriptions of battle and its aftermath as not so evocative of Crane, though people naturally make the comparison. But where Crane's impressions come from inside Fleming's naive observations, Bahr's impressions seem to come from inside the exhausted veteran perspective of men who've seen it all and worse and just want a cup of coffee: good, bad or indifferent. To me, it's a whole different world. Fleming doesn't want to die. Bahr's Bushrod Carter just wants to get it over with if it's got to happen. Bahr's female characters feel a little flatter to me, but I like them and can appreciate the challenge. Writing women in this era is always a battle between prissy wallflower and full-blown virago, it seems.

Bahr's story here is pretty simple: following the messy Battle of Franklin, the army lands on the doorstep of an estate that gets commandeered as a hospital (if you follow that link you can see a picture of the actual plantation house where the story takes place. Actually, there's a really cool one here). What happens next is predictable, but so well-drawn you forgive it for being cliché: yes, the whole wounded soldier/nurse thing. But here the nurse doesn't want to fall in love in spite of her emotions, and honestly, I wasn't sure how it was going to end, which made restraining myself from reading forward too quickly a real trial.

I had a lot of problems with how The Judas Field ended. It was conclusive and completely realistic, but it made me angry (sort of in that good way that a book ought to provoke ~ and then again sort of in a way that annoyed me because I couldn't see why it had to end as it did). The Black Flower is similarly conflicting, but I felt like it was clearly "right". It felt right. Hard to talk about without giving anything away here, but I don't want to spoil it.

So that's my long spiel for the morning. If you love amazingly sensory, great writing, read Bahr's work.

In a Perfect World, Every Surface is a Workspace

I was really hoping to bring in the new year with a clean workspace, but I think the picture below tells it all. On the bright side, I'm busy and enjoying the busy-ness! I'm working on a ton of projects simultaneously and don't know how long I will be able to keep juggling them, but for the time being I'm going to ride this enthusiam train to the end of the line. Today I am cleaning off my actual drawing table (which has been buried under a map of Washington D.C. for the last six months at least) to see if I can't move some my work over into the other room and alleviate a little bit of the clutter.


Yesterday I worked on Reconstruction a good deal and am excited to announce that I think I can probably start posting three times a week very soon! I've finally distilled the process into something I can knock out very quickly. The art only suffers mildly for it and I have so much more fun moving through scenes quickly. I've finished drawing the "For Katie" scene that I have been working on and I like the way it wraps up. I'm glad I started with this sort of non-sequitor as a lead-in. It really gave me a chance to experiment with the tools I'd allotted myself and to get the story rolling. If you have been occasionally checking in at WebComics Nation for the updates, you'll notice that it's not very well organized over there, but I'm hoping to work on the "official" website this month and get that up and running at the start of February. Then maybe it will be easier to follow along.

It's a new year, but I'm slow to change my habits. As usual, I'm struggling with the usual pile of nagging doubts about what I am doing with my life and talents (I suspect many of my creative friends and readers go through the annual self-assessment thing around this time of year), but I'm going to just work through it (and I hope all of you do too!). Even if there are projects on my desk that I'm not entirely in love with at the moment, I will probably love them again next week.

I've been so busy that I haven't been posting much, which is a good thing, I guess ~ but I have so many cool books and things I want to share. I hope this week I can start to catch up!

Lastly, I need to post this picture as annual proof that yes, I do have the cutest dog that ever lived. This was taken at my sister's house on Christmas, which is why he's wearing the silly ribbon with the poinsettia on it.

A Christmas book to close out the year ~

Among the many books I received for Christmas this year (and wow, I did receive many!), I wanted to share with you this beautiful picture book illustrated by P.J. Lynch. It's a telling of the classic Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Woj- ciechowski. I love the simplicity of this Christmas story: the gloomy woodcarver, the lovely young widow, the nativity figurines. And it has the import- ant elements of a really good sappy Christmas romance: lonely people who find each other are brought together by Christmas. I also love that the miracle in this one is so very ordinary, almost. No intervening angels or magic at work here ~ just the quiet interior change of an icy heart thawing out. In so many ways it's a greater miracle, I think. I don't have preferences when it comes to this sort of thing with Christmas stories, but I think I like this story all the more for being so understated.

This particular edition is exquisite. The pictures are warm and luminous and the expressions on the people's faces very real and very nuanced. I only wished that the picture of Jonathan Toomey carving Mary and the baby Jesus showed a little more glimmer in the eyes. He's described as crying in the moment that immediately proceeds this, so he just looked to me to be too dry-eyed. But that's getting really picky considering how pretty the rest of it is. This is definitely a joy to read. Nothing especially spectacular in the format to point out; just straight up fabulous in its overall content and design.

It's snowing on Sunday ~

If the condition of my desk is any indicator, I've had a pretty good weekend as far as productivity is concerned. I've really taken the pressure off myself with regard to certain specific goals. This weekend I mostly ran errands, changed a broken headlight (I'm so car-savvy), wrote Christmas cards, and worked on the annual Christmas story. This year's story is pretty silly, but I'm having lots of fun with it and I'm pretty sure it'll be done by the coming weekend (haven't decided whether I will draw pictures for it, however). I wanted to finish a draft this weekend, but I have some key conversations yet to write and there are tons of transitions missing (and it's so far a very sloppy first draft). I'm going to print it out tomorrow and maybe finish it during the week.

Otherwise, I worked on paper dolls. No particular reason except that I've been sorta sloughing off on making dolls, etc., and I'd like to have some done before the year ends since it was one of my "non-resolutions" for 2008. Interestingly (or rather, typically), I started with one set of dolls and worked on them Saturday evening, and then today decided I didn't really like them as much as I thought, so I completely redrew them and then made a third that turned out better than the previous four. Hey, I'll take it!


I didn't work on Reconstruction at all (the break I was taking last week spilled over into the weekend), but I think I'll be ready to get back to it soon. This Wednesday we wrap up all the "buffer" I had socked away, so I've got to get on it. I don't know if I have solved the problem I am having with the style, but the time away has given me some space to mull over the style changes I'm looking to make. I think they're a go, so after this week, you will probably start seeing a noticeable difference in the artwork.

And now I'm going to take some drawing stuff to curl up in bed (and my laptop so I can watch The Dark Knight for the 187th time ~ I believe in Harvey Dent!). Looks like the snowfall will nicely replace what got rained on this morning. I love waking up to a fresh white world!

Coming up: some more illustrated books and maybe actual pictures of dolls-in-progress!

'Tis the Season to Buy Books ~

Every Christmas I can't resist buying myself at least one book that's "special" in some way: something I have maybe wanted for a while, something that seemed too exorbitant to throw money at, or something just fun or interesting.

This year's Christmas purchase is goofy, but it was cheap and I won't regret owning it. It's a copy of Otto Eisenschiml's In the Shadow of Lincoln's Death.

A little background on Eisenschiml: he was a chemist who decided to be a historian, who almost single-handedly created the "conspiracy theory" hysteria surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. His research is flawed, his narratives full of speculation and confabulation, and his theories are utterly priceless. What's more, people believed them for years! Though nowadays Eisenschiml has been relegated to a position of near-infamy in Lincoln and Booth scholarship, he's impossible to ignore in the grand scheme of contextualizing America's fascination with the assassination.

My edition is from 1940 and signed in neat blue ink: "Presented for my little friend Danny Coleman with my very best wishes, Otto Eisenschiml ~ April, 1953." It has a dust jacket, albeit a little torn (nevertheless always hard to come by with a book so old). The seller also sent me a February 1960 section of Reader's Digest which features Theodore Roscoe's The Web of Conspiracy, which is just too funny.

This book is neither rare, nor particularly valuable, but I had been wanting cheap copies of Eisenschiml's works for a long while and now I have this one and Why was Lincoln Murdered (his first book, which I found this past summer). The fact that this latest addition is signed just makes it all the more delightful.


And yes, it also reminds me that I maybe want to get In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy back on my desk in some fashion for the New Year.

On the Subject of Christian Fletcher ~

Today's amazing children's book is a marvelous retelling of the harrowing story of the Bounty by Patrick O'Brien: gorgeously painted in this recent edition.

This book makes the most of both the story and the history without watering down its grimmer aspects (no, Fletcher Christian does not sail off into the sunset into a happy freedom). O'Brien, who is a biologist by early education and a naval draftsman by experience includes wonderful details from the age of sails and renders the Bounty inside and out. His attention to detail, in fact, make this fun to revisit again and again since you can overlook nice little nuances in some of his larger panoramas. There are enough dramatic sweeping scenes of the Bounty on the ocean in full sail as well as plenty of action as Christian overtakes the ship and the casts Captain Bligh adrift. I think there is the influence of The Bounty in the artwork here, but you get no objections from me on that note.

I mostly bought this book on a whim because I thought O'Brien's placement of images was really interesting and worth further investigation. He has many a "splash" page, but breaks up numerous other pages with various blocks of sequiential-like art. The narrative remains intact, but dialog is sometimes assigned to an image which helps heighten the dramatic effect (you can see a sample below). I'm considering this as a model for the Eleison series as a nice compromise between the narrative and the sequential.

I don't know, yet, whether it has any implications for Reconstruction yet. I'm still rather attached to my word balloons at the moment. As a random side note, someone once asked me whether naming my protagonist "Fletcher" was influenced by the story of the mutiny on the Bounty. Resoundingly yes.

Over the River and Through the Woods ~

This little book is just six verses of Lydia Maria Child's Thanksgiving Poem famously known by its opening line: "Over the river and through the woods". Forget for a moment that this books combines a number of my favorite things: snow, horses, holidays, and a 19th century sensibility ~ it's just a gorgeous treatment of a classic favorite. From the faux endpapers and throughout its 26 pages, the woodblock art is vivid, brightly colored, and full of wonderful little details on the journey to Grandfather's house. All along the way are wonderful vignettes of ice fishing, logging, a farrier at work, ice sailing, and more. The borders are very simple, but vary every page, which keeps it from having a static boundary and the parchment-like background lends to its overall old-tyme feel.

I had seen this book at Barnes and Noble some time back and wanted it, but couldn't justify the cost. Last weekend, however, I found it at a bargain book closeout for a couple of dollars. Having it now, I know it's worth more than I paid for it, but I'm always glad for a bargain. This book is still is print and available from Amazon.


I've been reading a lot of children's books lately, dissatisfied (as always) with my own style of work. I'll be sharing a number of the ones I have enjoyed best in the last month or thereabouts, so you can expect to see more of these while I try to slog forward toward something like inspiration. Part of my problem at the moment is that I am feeling impatient. I want things to move a lot faster in my world (not time, accomplishment). And at the moment I've been drawing the same story for over a month ~ a story which is just a tiny drop in the whole bucket. That worries me. I'm not drawing fast enough, I'm starting to get meticulous and critical about the process, which is one of the symptoms of dying enthusiasm (or causes ~ it's hard to tell). Anyway, I stared at the computer screen all day yesterday (intermittently staring at my desk between feelings of hopelessness). Today I'm going to try to do better. Just don't know exactly how yet.

December: my favorite month of the year ~

We got a dusting of snow ~ not quite enough for full coverage, but it's nicely chilly and mostly white outside. I hear it will be a mild winter, which is a huge disappointment. I am hoping the predictions are wrong (isn't the weather always contrary to what's predicted? Please?).

I have returned from the long holiday weekend and jumped right back into work, which is good. Didn't get much done yesterday having driven in from Wisconsin in the morning and putting in a half day at work, but I inked a few panels and that's better than nothing.

I've noticed that the art for Reconstruction doesn't look very sharp on PCs with low resolution. The art is optimized for Mac at 1680 x 1050. This is a technological failing on my part, and something I will have to work on as I go. Meanwhile, my apologies to all the non-Mac users out there who are seeing Reconstruction as pale and fuzzy.

We are almost ready to launch The Orchard, which is also exciting. Okay, it's running a lot late, but I guess we've all been pretty busy this autumn with other stuff.

I have also managed to clean off my computer desk and it looks pretty great (see below). My work desk is still a disaster, though. I'm not even going to bother trying to tackle it. Clearly I work better buried under a pile of paper and tools.


Unfortunately, this picture is too wide an angle to see some of the details of the very cool doo-dads I have on this desk: like the little light-up fire station (which is a recent acquisition), and some of my favorite little old books. But at least you can see that the desk is clean!

Lots of plans in the works. Just wanted to check in since I've been out of town a while. More to come soon!

Vanities ~

Yesterday, I received my issue of Paper Doll Studio in the mail (how geeky is this: I belong to the OPDAG: the Original Paper Doll Artists Guild ~ impressive, no?). Anyway, I was all prepared to be put off by the issue knowing it would be including my Edwin Booth doll. I know I tend to prepare for the worst while secretly hoping for the best, I guess, for all the good it does me. But in this case I was delighted (really, what other word is there?) to see my artwork given some prominence at the front of the issue (page 4 no less!) underneath paper doll artist giant Brenda Sneathon Mattox. And the art doesn't actually suck too much. I mean, I look at it and think: wow ~ I did a not-too-shabby job on some of the details there!
Okay, it's a small thing, but it amuses me greatly and I had a fabulously fun time painting it and submitting it and not feeling like the weight of the universe was crushing around my shoulders just to throw it out there. Clearly I need more of that in my life.
:D Anyway, I'm looking forward to painting something for the Spring issue as well. I certainly have plenty of time to get it done, whereas this one was such a last-minute struggle! If nothing else, it's nice for the exposure.

Goodbye LJ?

So I rigged my LookingLand.com journal to post to LJ last spring and then promptly fell out of using it from sheer laziness, I think. But having decided not to buy a permanent LJ account and seeing the proliferation of LJ friends who are likewise posting from Twitter, RSS feeds, and similar sorts of non-LJ arenas, I guess it's time for me to embrace my own website (for which I pay a good deal of money), and use it as my place of residence.

This means absolutely nothing to any of you since my posts will continue to appear on LJ (like this!) and I will still be able to receive comments and read my FList. In fact, I think the only difference might be that I'll be using capital letters in my posts (ach!) and might be posting more irregularly (or more frequently ~ let's see how this goes!).

Sorry to be so parenthetical today. I might end up spamming the list today as I get organized, so I apologize in advance for that as well.

Eisenschiml and Stanton ~

yesterday, i got in the mail a cheap copy of Eisenschiml's Why was Lincoln Murdered? i didn't want a paperback reprint and i didn't want to pay $20-30 for it, so i found a copy on eBay for $4 which was great. of course, it's what $4 will get you in an Eisenschiml these days. it's about as good as my copy of Weichmann's drivel, which is to say it's a readable piece of junk that's still all in one piece but wouldn't win any beauty prizes. that's about what i need. Eisenchiml is, sadly, almost relegated to the same fire-pile as Gutteridge these days, but given that it is the grandfather of all conspiracy theories, i think it's worth reading. i have a soft spot, too, for it, because i am pretty sure it's one of the first Lincoln conspiracy books i ever read (hopelessly warping my perceptions for many years, alas). as Burkhimer says in 100 Essential Lincoln Books says: Eisenschiml "is both influential and incredibly bad at the same time." what's not to love?

unfortunately, it's not in the public domain, so i can't just cannibalize it like a lot of other sources i am using. but i am considering creating a hysterical conspiracy theorist-historian character to wreck havoc in the meta-theatrical layer of the world i am trying to create (based on Eisenschiml and maybe one or two other serious fruit loops). he can hang out and play poker with Washington in Carrera.



"The past is so often unknowable
not because it is befogged now
but because it was befogged then, too,
back when it was still the present.
If we had been there listening,
we still might not have been able
to determine exactly what Stanton said.
All we know for sure is that
everyone was weeping,
and the room was full."
meanwhile, here's a great article about Czar NastyOwlFace's epitaph at Lincoln's deathbed from the New Yorker Angels and Ages: Lincoln’s language and its legacy by Adam Gopnik. this is for those of you obsessed with the sort of minutiae that makes history so bizarrely compelling indeed.

opening testimony, along with a can of worms ~

yesterday in my worried brainlessness, i worked on part of day one of the trial (skipped the biggies like Von Whosis and Richard Montgomery), and day one of the open testimony (so: May 12, 13).

i dunno what on earth i was thinking. the script for these two days alone is 120 pages. granted, i intend to cut a lot and try to tighten as much as i can, but Weichmann's endless blithering is 80 pages just by itself and much of it is very necessary unfortunately. blerg. Doster's first cross-examination of Weichmann is great [i paraphrase]: Do you know anything about this? No. Do you know anything about that? No. Do you know anything? No. and yet somehow Weichmann manages to implicate everybody without actually knowing anything. and then the mustache exchange, which is one of my favorites:

REVERDY: When he came home, as I understood you, he seemed to be feeling for something; said he had lost something. Did he not ask for the mustache?

WEICHMANN: Yes, sir: he said, "Where is my mustache?"

REVERDY: Why did you not give it to him? It was not yours. Did you suspect him at that time of intending any thing wrong?

WEICHMANN: I thought it rather queer that a Baptist preacher should use a mustache; and I did not care about having false mustaches lying around on my table.

REVERDY: What did you intend to do with it?

WEICHMANN: I did not intend to do any thing with it. I took it, and exhibited it to some of the clerks in the office the day afterwards, and was fooling with it. I put on a pair of spectacles and the mustache, and was making fun of it.

REVERDY: Your only reason for not giving it to him, when he said it was his, was, that you thought it was singular that a Baptist preacher should be fooling with a mustache?

WEICHMANN: Yes, Sir; and I did not want a false mustache about my room.

REVERDY: It would not have been about your room if you had given it to him, would it?

also on the good side, i am coming up with tactics for handling the long court scenes. Aiken, Clampitt, and Ewing are developing into quite the interesting little peanut gallery, and the more i work with Reverdy Johnson, the more i love the snit fit he throws when Harris tries to get him thrown off the counsel. while this trial is nowhere near the three-ring-circus that J. Surratt's will be in a few years, it definitely has its moments.

i'm also having fun with Hartranft (this side story is its own little saving grace). i love all the little obnoxious directional nuances going on in the background of the major drama. i may have to do a little fact-bending just to keep things from being too scattershot, but i feel very ambivalent about mucking too much with the historical side of things. it's one thing to pare down the testimony or to throw in asides from the counsel for the sake of exposition, but it feels altogether different to move time and space in a way things didn't occur. i'm working out a tenuous balance.

overall, i would say this has been a lot more work than i anticipated. i really expected to just trim from the transcript and baste in some exposition around it, but it's proving far more complicated. and i want to be fair (as fair as my biases will allow). i don't for a moment pretend that i don't feel about this trial exactly as Doster did (which is why it's through his eyes I want to tell this). every one of the prisoners on the dock is guilty of something. it's the degree to which they ought to have been punished that's arguable.

and though historians and lawyers have weighed in on the issue of jurisdiction, the question has never been settled, really. if it was, we wouldn't still be arguing about it today. so i am not interested in painting the conspirators as victims, but i do want to show that the military commission and the prosecuting judges (and by extension CzarNastyOwlFace) were all rotten to the core. the trial was a farce. anyone who says it wasn't is really kidding themselves.

today's picture is another mugshot. this is George Azerodt's cousin, Hartman Richter, who was arrested with him after the assassination. Richter spent a good spell in the Arsenal prison and Hartranft seems to have shuttled him around quite a bit and wrote numerous letters to Hancock saying: this guy's not on trial, can we take off his constraints? etc.


scores of people like Richter, Celestino (a "known" spy), Willie Jett, most everybody who worked at Ford's Theatre, for example, and all of Booth's brothers (they would have arrested his sister Asia as well, but she was too pregnant, so they put her under house arrest) were "apprehended" shortly after the assassination and held without charges (just on suspicion) for far too long for it to be Constitutionally legal. but the government gets to make up new rules in such cases, apparently.

sound familiar?

: o p

the desk of death (and sundays with dead people) ~

i have decided to quit all of my creative pursuits and just write a blog about the ever-evolving state of my desk. er, as opposed to what i seem to be currently engaged it.

i had to reconfigure the desk. the books were walling me in. they're very clingy, needy things sometimes. they make it hard to concentrate. so i turned my tv into a dictionary stand (you've probably not seen my 1893 Funk & Wagnall's dictionary ~ it's kind of immense), and moved all the books over to the table it used to occupy. this had made the dictionary crabby, but i will find it a place of honor elsewhere (just not right now).


anyway, this has alleviated the crush and made the source material easier to get a hold of (that teetering pile was just ridiculous after a week). i also put Hartranft's Letterbook into a binder (dunno what took me so long!). of course this meant punching it full of holes (that's okay, it's a lousy copy), but worse, i wound up whiling away an hour trying to read Hancock's letters. i'm getting better at it. it only takes me a few minutes to remember how to follow the stroke of the pen. bad as his handwriting is, it's consistently the same kind of bad throughout, so once you know how he writes "to the" as a one-word one blobby mess with no crossed t's, you can pretty much identify it across the board.

so yeah, that's been my morning. and just to share, i have this photo, which sold on eBay last year and which i never even bothered bidding for (as i knew it would sell for way more than i could ever hope to afford). from looking at his pictures (pretty much all of them), it's easy to see why people were scared of this guy. if all accounts didn't say what a marshmallowy underside he had, i prolly wouldn't believe it.



Hartranft in uniform seems a pretty
rare commodity. this one and another from the
same photographer of him sitting,
sold for $550 each.