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Display of batteries seen at Wal-Mart.
What the batteries are saying.
Drawing by an artist who "swiped" from Mike Sekowsky.
Display of batteries seen at Wal-Mart.
What the batteries are saying.
Drawing by an artist who "swiped" from Mike Sekowsky.
Anticipating AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
May. 1st, 2015 08:58 amIt's hard for me to imagine how it could be entertaining to watch the Avengers sit around for two hours guessing how old Ultron is.
Stark and Son excavator and backhoe, at work in parking lot near Fermilab's Linac.
Thus Comes... The Advertiser!
Oct. 31st, 2014 10:34 amIn the manner of those annoying "bugs" that crop up at the bottom of TV screens to advertise programs other than the one you're trying to watch, Livejournal today has introduced an announcement. It clings to the bottom of every LJ page I try to read.
There are probably a lot of guys named Stan Lee; possibly one of them already occupies part of the namespace. Plus, impostors are everywhere. So the celebrity must choose an account name like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
therealstanlee.
I am tempted to register foretherealstanlee, but my hand is stayed because I can't think of enough schtick to make it entertaining.
There are probably a lot of guys named Stan Lee; possibly one of them already occupies part of the namespace. Plus, impostors are everywhere. So the celebrity must choose an account name like
therealstanlee.I am tempted to register for
etherealstanlee, but my hand is stayed because I can't think of enough schtick to make it entertaining.Stick-Figures Everywhere Are Celebrating
Oct. 2nd, 2013 10:07 amAsteroid 4942 has been named Munroe, after Randall Munroe, the cartoonist who draws XKCD. Here is its entry in the Small Bodies Database.
Please don't kill us all.
The first thing I did was try to figure out whether 4942 Munroe was big enough to pose a threat to Earth. I was excited to learn that, based on its albedo (brightness), it’s probably about 6-10 kilometers in diameter. That’s comparable in size to the one that killed the dinosaurs—definitely big enough to cause a mass extinction!Congratulations, Randall!
Please don't kill us all.
The Dark Secret of Chillicothe
Aug. 13th, 2013 10:00 pmThese days we have been making many trips back and forth to repair the house of my late mother-in-law. It's in the vicinity of Henry, about two hours from where we live. We go on to stay with family in Peoria, about 45 minutes beyond that.
As a consequence, we find ourselves driving, as we often have, through Chillicothe, Illinois, population 6000.
A few weeks ago, a new sign appeared.HISTORICAL SOCIETY
By the time we got where we were going, I was bursting with curiosity, but also out of range of my cellphone network. I had to wait for hours before I could google.
Sure enough, Zorro, the masked swordsman of old California, sprang from the pen of Johnston McCulley. The Chillicothe Historical Society recently became aware that McCulley grew up in their town, graduating from Chillicothe High in 1901. They've decided they ought to celebrate him. An exhibit opened earlier this summer.
I didn't know much about Zorro. His name came up in my studies of pulp fiction and comics. I had seen a few Zorro movies and a few episodes of a TV show. But I loved the idea that an ordinary-looking town could secretly be connected to a legendary swashbuckling hero.
Last week, a new sign appeared.
A life-size figure of Zorro himself now adorns Chillicothe's Fourth Street (which I think of as Route 29).
( Zorromania in Chillicothe )
The sign was designed by Peter Poplaski, a comics artist and scholar who is a thoroughly devoted Zorro enthusiast. He provided the museum with some of its memorabilia, and with an impressive portrait of McCulley which now hangs there.
Here's a video clip of Mr. Poplaski discussing how Zorro was distinct from other adventure heroes of the time (after a commercial rolls).
Read The Curse of Capistrano, the 1919 story in which McCulley introduced Zorro. Or download the book version, retitled The Mark of Zorro.
Almost immediately, Hollywood embraced the mysterious black-clad crusader. You can watch the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks and directed by Fred Niblo.
Here's a 1958 Life spread on the TV incarnation, including plenty of masked children with swords and mustaches.
Further talkies, radio shows, movie serials, extremely corny clips of Walt Disney plugging Zorro to the Mouseketeers, comics, audiobooks, and cartoons I will leave as an exercise for the googler.
So far, I have not found myself in Chillicothe on a Wednesday, a Saturday, or a Sunday between 1 and 4. Therefore I have not yet seen the McCulley exhibit.
But I will one day. I feel it is my destiny.
As a consequence, we find ourselves driving, as we often have, through Chillicothe, Illinois, population 6000.
A few weeks ago, a new sign appeared.
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1 -4 SUN WED SAT
MCCULLEY ZORRO EXHIBIT
By the time we got where we were going, I was bursting with curiosity, but also out of range of my cellphone network. I had to wait for hours before I could google.
Sure enough, Zorro, the masked swordsman of old California, sprang from the pen of Johnston McCulley. The Chillicothe Historical Society recently became aware that McCulley grew up in their town, graduating from Chillicothe High in 1901. They've decided they ought to celebrate him. An exhibit opened earlier this summer.
I didn't know much about Zorro. His name came up in my studies of pulp fiction and comics. I had seen a few Zorro movies and a few episodes of a TV show. But I loved the idea that an ordinary-looking town could secretly be connected to a legendary swashbuckling hero.
Last week, a new sign appeared.
A life-size figure of Zorro himself now adorns Chillicothe's Fourth Street (which I think of as Route 29).
( Zorromania in Chillicothe )
The sign was designed by Peter Poplaski, a comics artist and scholar who is a thoroughly devoted Zorro enthusiast. He provided the museum with some of its memorabilia, and with an impressive portrait of McCulley which now hangs there.
Here's a video clip of Mr. Poplaski discussing how Zorro was distinct from other adventure heroes of the time (after a commercial rolls).
Read The Curse of Capistrano, the 1919 story in which McCulley introduced Zorro. Or download the book version, retitled The Mark of Zorro.
Almost immediately, Hollywood embraced the mysterious black-clad crusader. You can watch the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks and directed by Fred Niblo.
Here's a 1958 Life spread on the TV incarnation, including plenty of masked children with swords and mustaches.
Further talkies, radio shows, movie serials, extremely corny clips of Walt Disney plugging Zorro to the Mouseketeers, comics, audiobooks, and cartoons I will leave as an exercise for the googler.
So far, I have not found myself in Chillicothe on a Wednesday, a Saturday, or a Sunday between 1 and 4. Therefore I have not yet seen the McCulley exhibit.
But I will one day. I feel it is my destiny.
That most British of SF comic-book heroes was created by Frank Hampson. Years ago I found a British Pathé newsreel tour of Hampson's studio, but I don't seem to have noted it here in my blog. It's terrific.
Click to visit filmclip's site
Hampson employed models, masks, and costumes in pursuit of his realistic Dan Dare style, enlisting assistants and family members to pose-- his dad became Sir Hubert.
Click to visit filmclip's site
Hampson employed models, masks, and costumes in pursuit of his realistic Dan Dare style, enlisting assistants and family members to pose-- his dad became Sir Hubert.
Finding a Dan Dare collection I had forgotten I'd bought. And reading it.
To eyeballs accustomed to American comic books, the artwork is amazing.
I liked the secret asteroid full of red-headed Space Scotsmen.
Here's an illustrated review of the book.
To eyeballs accustomed to American comic books, the artwork is amazing.
I liked the secret asteroid full of red-headed Space Scotsmen.
Here's an illustrated review of the book.
Cold War Swipesmanship
Apr. 23rd, 2013 06:12 pmRecently I contributed to a discussion on the Restricted Data blog, and decided I should expand upon it here.
Wikipedia tells us, "Swipe is a comics term that refers to the intentional copying of a cover, panel, or page from an earlier comic book or graphic novel without crediting the original artist."
Photographs can be "swiped," too. And we may expect that, in the heyday of Henry Luce's illustrated magazine Life, its superb photos and graphics might commonly have been found in any comics artist’s reference files. Let me show you an interesting example.
In Issue 1 of the 1958 revival of the war comic book Atom Age Combat, we find a feature entitled “I, SAGE…” The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, robot sentry of the Cold War skies, narrates. It’s pretty effective non-fiction.
(SAGE is interesting to students of computer science as an early example of a complex system using computers to process real-time information. Some SAGE consoles are preserved at such places as the Computer History Museum.)
Question: How many of Andreas Feininger's photos in Life‘s six-page spread in the February 11, 1957 issue, namely “Pushbutton Defense for Air War,” have been swiped by the artist drawing “I, SAGE…?”
Answer: All of them, save one.
The uncredited artist even lifts some elements, like a radar dome, from the Life diagram of SAGE prepared by Matt Greene and Jerry Cooke.
One wonders how many of the other panels in the story were also swipes from sources we have not detected.
It seem strange that the artist did not swipe J.R. Eyerman's spectacular photo of an F-102 Delta Dagger unleashing fiery missiles-- one can imagine a young George W. Bush at the controls-- given that the SAGE story includes several panels of F-102s in combat. In addition, there is a single-page profile of the F-102 later in the book.
Wikipedia tells us, "Swipe is a comics term that refers to the intentional copying of a cover, panel, or page from an earlier comic book or graphic novel without crediting the original artist."
Photographs can be "swiped," too. And we may expect that, in the heyday of Henry Luce's illustrated magazine Life, its superb photos and graphics might commonly have been found in any comics artist’s reference files. Let me show you an interesting example.
In Issue 1 of the 1958 revival of the war comic book Atom Age Combat, we find a feature entitled “I, SAGE…” The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, robot sentry of the Cold War skies, narrates. It’s pretty effective non-fiction.
(SAGE is interesting to students of computer science as an early example of a complex system using computers to process real-time information. Some SAGE consoles are preserved at such places as the Computer History Museum.)
Question: How many of Andreas Feininger's photos in Life‘s six-page spread in the February 11, 1957 issue, namely “Pushbutton Defense for Air War,” have been swiped by the artist drawing “I, SAGE…?”
Answer: All of them, save one.
The uncredited artist even lifts some elements, like a radar dome, from the Life diagram of SAGE prepared by Matt Greene and Jerry Cooke.
One wonders how many of the other panels in the story were also swipes from sources we have not detected.
It seem strange that the artist did not swipe J.R. Eyerman's spectacular photo of an F-102 Delta Dagger unleashing fiery missiles-- one can imagine a young George W. Bush at the controls-- given that the SAGE story includes several panels of F-102s in combat. In addition, there is a single-page profile of the F-102 later in the book.
Here's a puzzle for the Doctor Who scholars.
I had a kind of indirect exposure to The Doctor very, very early in the history of the show. Allow me to explain.
My dad was born in a small town in Scotland. He moved to Rochester, New York when he was about 11. By the Sixties, he was living in Detroit.
Kindly relatives in the Auld Country, when they were finished reading the Sunday tabloids, would bundle them up and mail them across the Atlantic to my grandfather in Rochester. He enjoyed reading about football and other news of Scotland.
When he was finished, Grandpa would bundle up the tabloids and mail them to my father in Detroit.
When my father was finished, I got to read them. I cared nothing for football, then or now, but I loved comic strips.
Thus I became a fan of the comics in the Sunday Post. I understand Oor Wullie still sits on his bucket every Sunday, and The Broons are still going out to the But 'n Ben. Puzzling out the Scots dialect was a challenge for my grade-school reading skills, but Li'l Abner and Pogo had prepared me to succeed.
The Sunday Mail also carried comics; I believe I first encountered Andy Capp there.
There's a memory that's bugging me. I recall that the Mail ran a comic strip, for only a few weeks, that featured a dumpy-looking scientist with unruly black hair, and strange-looking robots. I was intrigued. Eventually I came to understand that this strip was a parody of a TV show called Doctor Who, to which the papers occasionally referred, and that the robots were Daleks. I can't recall whether they were called Daleks in the strip.
Unlike, say, Supercar --to which I was addicted around this time-- Doctor Who was not one of the shows seen in the U.K. that was available on our screens in the U.S. I probably didn't see the real thing until the mid-1970s.
Wikipedia tells me that the Daleks were introduced in December of 1963, and that they became quite popular.
So: What was the parody comic strip I read in the Sunday Mail? Who drew it? When did it appear?
Surely every detail of Doctor Who, and the ephemera surrounding it, has been documented somewhere on the Web. Someone must know the answers to these questions.
I had a kind of indirect exposure to The Doctor very, very early in the history of the show. Allow me to explain.
My dad was born in a small town in Scotland. He moved to Rochester, New York when he was about 11. By the Sixties, he was living in Detroit.
Kindly relatives in the Auld Country, when they were finished reading the Sunday tabloids, would bundle them up and mail them across the Atlantic to my grandfather in Rochester. He enjoyed reading about football and other news of Scotland.
When he was finished, Grandpa would bundle up the tabloids and mail them to my father in Detroit.
When my father was finished, I got to read them. I cared nothing for football, then or now, but I loved comic strips.
Thus I became a fan of the comics in the Sunday Post. I understand Oor Wullie still sits on his bucket every Sunday, and The Broons are still going out to the But 'n Ben. Puzzling out the Scots dialect was a challenge for my grade-school reading skills, but Li'l Abner and Pogo had prepared me to succeed.
The Sunday Mail also carried comics; I believe I first encountered Andy Capp there.
There's a memory that's bugging me. I recall that the Mail ran a comic strip, for only a few weeks, that featured a dumpy-looking scientist with unruly black hair, and strange-looking robots. I was intrigued. Eventually I came to understand that this strip was a parody of a TV show called Doctor Who, to which the papers occasionally referred, and that the robots were Daleks. I can't recall whether they were called Daleks in the strip.
Unlike, say, Supercar --to which I was addicted around this time-- Doctor Who was not one of the shows seen in the U.K. that was available on our screens in the U.S. I probably didn't see the real thing until the mid-1970s.
Wikipedia tells me that the Daleks were introduced in December of 1963, and that they became quite popular.
So: What was the parody comic strip I read in the Sunday Mail? Who drew it? When did it appear?
Surely every detail of Doctor Who, and the ephemera surrounding it, has been documented somewhere on the Web. Someone must know the answers to these questions.
Rediscovering Al Capp's Shmoo
Jun. 5th, 2012 07:43 amFantastic creatures still lurk here and there, and one never knows when they will turn up.
In the June 2012 issue of Symmetry, a colorful magazine devoted to the world of particle physics, you will find my article The Shmoos of the Tevatron.
Illustration: Sandbox Studio, Chicago. Shmoo copyright Capp Enterprises, Inc. Used in Symmetry by permission.
Fans of Drink Tank will recall that this article previously appeared in that fanzine's fabulously thick 300th issue (a large 11.8 MB PDF).
In the June 2012 issue of Symmetry, a colorful magazine devoted to the world of particle physics, you will find my article The Shmoos of the Tevatron.
Particles like the top quark weren’t the only characters to appear at Fermilab’s Tevatron. A physicist waxes nostalgic as scientists prepare to celebrate the accelerator’s contributions to science, technology and society at a symposium this month.
Illustration: Sandbox Studio, Chicago. Shmoo copyright Capp Enterprises, Inc. Used in Symmetry by permission.
Fans of Drink Tank will recall that this article previously appeared in that fanzine's fabulously thick 300th issue (a large 11.8 MB PDF).
Kellogg's Best to Us
May. 29th, 2012 11:16 pmstickmaker was kind enough to point out the 28 May installment of Scott Kellogg's webcomic 21st Century Fox, a strip I had not previously seen.Mr. Kellogg portrays talking foxes aboard a spaceship. To cap off a brief discussion of orbital mechanics, they sing none other than "Home on Lagrange."
How about that? That song will be 35 years old this summer, and apparently she still has some mileage left on her.
A Simple Avengers Question
May. 28th, 2012 10:37 pmThe next movie we saw this month was The Avengers. I will try to avoid major spoilers, but if you are worried about them, don't risk reading the comments.
So a large number of [BAD GUYS] are zooming around the skies of [A RATHER LARGE U.S. CITY] and running around the streets destroying buildings and terrified people with [THEIR WEAPONS].
Iron Man is flying overhead and doing lots of damage to [BAD GUYS] with repulsor rays and tiny missiles that fly out of his shoulders.
Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow are mostly reduced to running around on the ground or hopping on top of the occasional bus. None of them can fly, they aren't protected by armor that we can see (one of them does have a shield), and their weapons seem inadequate for the scale of the threat they're facing.*
I began to wonder: Why doesn't Tony Stark make a bunch more Iron Man suits for other members of the Avengers?
It's established that he often builds new Iron Man suits, and that he's not the only guy who can operate one.
Seems like CA, H, BW and maybe others could be much more effective at fighting bad guys, even [BAD GUYS], if they had shiny metal suits.
Why not?
* Black Widow wears a number of cylinders around her wrists, but whatever their function is, we do not see it come into play during the film. There is a "suiting up" scene in which we glimpse a tracery of blue light playing across this wrist-thingy, but that's about it.
So a large number of [BAD GUYS] are zooming around the skies of [A RATHER LARGE U.S. CITY] and running around the streets destroying buildings and terrified people with [THEIR WEAPONS].
Iron Man is flying overhead and doing lots of damage to [BAD GUYS] with repulsor rays and tiny missiles that fly out of his shoulders.
Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow are mostly reduced to running around on the ground or hopping on top of the occasional bus. None of them can fly, they aren't protected by armor that we can see (one of them does have a shield), and their weapons seem inadequate for the scale of the threat they're facing.
I began to wonder: Why doesn't Tony Stark make a bunch more Iron Man suits for other members of the Avengers?
It's established that he often builds new Iron Man suits, and that he's not the only guy who can operate one.
Seems like CA, H, BW and maybe others could be much more effective at fighting bad guys, even [BAD GUYS], if they had shiny metal suits.
Why not?
You may recall that, just before Inauguration Day in 2009, I wrote about the 1964 series "Pettigrew for President" in Treasure Chest comics. (Warning: reading my linked page will SPOIL THE STAGGERING SURPISE ENDING.)
Writer Barry Reece and artist Joe Sinnott portrayed the 1976 campaign, then far in the future, to help grade-school readers in the U.S. understand the election process.
I've recently found that the Catholic University of America has improved their site with historical context and an interesting interview with Barry Reece.
Best of all, they've placed a PDF of the entire story online (download here). At last, curious scholars of comics across the Internet can read the didactic tale and thrill to the exploits of two annoying children caught up in the inner circle of Governor Pettigrew's campaign.
Writer Barry Reece and artist Joe Sinnott portrayed the 1976 campaign, then far in the future, to help grade-school readers in the U.S. understand the election process.
I've recently found that the Catholic University of America has improved their site with historical context and an interesting interview with Barry Reece.
Best of all, they've placed a PDF of the entire story online (download here). At last, curious scholars of comics across the Internet can read the didactic tale and thrill to the exploits of two annoying children caught up in the inner circle of Governor Pettigrew's campaign.
[One of a series of essays about science fiction fans I know. Written for the Windycon XXXVI program book in 2009. Kaja Foglio was also a Guest of Honor; I accepted the task of writing Phil's bio, and Alice Bentley wrote one for Kaja.]
When I first encountered Phil Foglio, he seemed to be everywhere in fandom: performing comedy with Moebius Theatre, co-publishing the fanzine Effen Essef, drawing a million cartoons for other fanzines, hanging hilarious plates (yes, I said plates) in convention art shows. Phil and Doug Rice shared an apartment at 7660 North Sheridan, not far from the lake. Every Thursday night, Chicago fans would swarm into somebody's apartment. Extremely often, it was Phil's.
It was in Phil Foglio's bathroom that I first discovered this: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is the perfect bathroom book. You can read a little, or you can read many pages. It's always interesting. He also had a copy of Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words in there. Phil loves books.
Phil had art books, of course, and we loved to pull them down and look at them, but his place was also filled with science books, history books, science fiction, fantasy, and (it will not surprise you to learn) many volumes of prose by the great humorists. It was a fine collection then, and I suppose it has grown since.
Meanwhile, he was launching a career. I saw him win the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist in 1977. I saw him do it again in 1978. One cannot eat a Hugo, but soon Phil was drawing "What's New," a monthly comic strip for The Dragon, and providing artwork to the burgeoning gaming industry. Book covers, comics, and a novel followed.
Phil took great delight in hosting poker games for writers, artists, and fellow oddballs. The stakes might have been small, but the banter was priceless. Some of the regulars were ferociously enthusiastic card players, and when their deal came, they would declare the game to be some complicated variation I never heard of-- with twos and one-eyed jacks wild-- with a name like "Cincinnati Five-Way" (perhaps I am confusing this with the chili at Steak'N'Shake). It was bewildering.
One night, in self-defense, when the cards came to me, I created "Fibonacci" (five-card stud, but five cards in a Fibonacci series beat anything, and high Fibonacci beats a low Fibonacci). This drew groans from the Serious Players, but grins from the computer geeks at the table. I lost money nevertheless.
Phil moved to New York for a few years. He returned to Chicago with a snake. He moved in with Jim Fuerstenburg.
At some point, the snake escaped. He was probably somewhere in the building, but Phil and Jim were reluctant to knock on the doors of their neighbors and say, "We lost an eight-foot boa constrictor. Have you seen him?" So they kept quiet, hoping that the snake would show himself.
And lo, it came to pass that the snake did return. Jim was alone in the apartment at the time. He coaxed the snake into a laundry basket and put a piece of plywood on top.
When Phil came home, Jim announced triumphantly, "I found your snake!"
"Really?" said Phil. "Where is he?"
"In this basket," said Jim, leading Phil to the basket.
Jim lifted the board to show Phil the snake.
Phil's face fell.
"That's not MY snake."
Later Phil told me, "For just about ten seconds, I really had him going..."
Eventually, we lost Phil to Seattle. I can't really regret that, though, because there he met Kaja. Who is truly wonderful. Elsewhere in this booklet, Alice Bentley will tell you about Kaja. Both Phil and Kaja contributed paintings to the popular card game Magic: The Gathering.
Together, in spare moments over the years, they planned and (literally) plotted a grand series of comics. As the new millennium dawned, they unleashed Girl Genius upon an unsuspecting world. How good is it? This year the Foglios added another Hugo-- the first ever for Best Graphic Story-- to their collection.
Girl Genius spinoffs include paper dolls, mugs, and radio plays. With "Othar’s Twitter," Phil and Kaja may have invented a new literary form: the novel with 140-character chapters.
They are raising two children, who believe it is completely normal for Mom and Dad to hang around the house all day long drawing comics. Phil serves as advisor to the Comics Club at school. The kids there draw their own comics. So if, at the beginning of the 22nd Century, art critics rhapsodize about the radical Seattle Movement that revolutionized comics, you'll know whom to thank.
Now Windycon has invited Phil and Kaja to return to the City of the Big Shoulders. I hope you get an opportunity to meet them this weekend.
And if you visit my house, you'll find Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable in the bathroom. I have Phil Foglio to thank for that.
[2011: (I also have Phil to thank for my favorite Livejournal icon.) The Foglios have since won another Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. That's two Hugos for Phil and two for them as a couple. No doubt their kids, Victor and Alex, are beginning to think that normal parents bring shiny rockets home from Worldcon.]
Earlier in the series: Introduction, Alice Bentley.
Phil Foglio, Artist of Genius
Bill HigginsWhen I first encountered Phil Foglio, he seemed to be everywhere in fandom: performing comedy with Moebius Theatre, co-publishing the fanzine Effen Essef, drawing a million cartoons for other fanzines, hanging hilarious plates (yes, I said plates) in convention art shows. Phil and Doug Rice shared an apartment at 7660 North Sheridan, not far from the lake. Every Thursday night, Chicago fans would swarm into somebody's apartment. Extremely often, it was Phil's.
It was in Phil Foglio's bathroom that I first discovered this: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is the perfect bathroom book. You can read a little, or you can read many pages. It's always interesting. He also had a copy of Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words in there. Phil loves books.
Phil had art books, of course, and we loved to pull them down and look at them, but his place was also filled with science books, history books, science fiction, fantasy, and (it will not surprise you to learn) many volumes of prose by the great humorists. It was a fine collection then, and I suppose it has grown since.
Meanwhile, he was launching a career. I saw him win the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist in 1977. I saw him do it again in 1978. One cannot eat a Hugo, but soon Phil was drawing "What's New," a monthly comic strip for The Dragon, and providing artwork to the burgeoning gaming industry. Book covers, comics, and a novel followed.
Phil took great delight in hosting poker games for writers, artists, and fellow oddballs. The stakes might have been small, but the banter was priceless. Some of the regulars were ferociously enthusiastic card players, and when their deal came, they would declare the game to be some complicated variation I never heard of-- with twos and one-eyed jacks wild-- with a name like "Cincinnati Five-Way" (perhaps I am confusing this with the chili at Steak'N'Shake). It was bewildering.
One night, in self-defense, when the cards came to me, I created "Fibonacci" (five-card stud, but five cards in a Fibonacci series beat anything, and high Fibonacci beats a low Fibonacci). This drew groans from the Serious Players, but grins from the computer geeks at the table. I lost money nevertheless.
Phil moved to New York for a few years. He returned to Chicago with a snake. He moved in with Jim Fuerstenburg.
At some point, the snake escaped. He was probably somewhere in the building, but Phil and Jim were reluctant to knock on the doors of their neighbors and say, "We lost an eight-foot boa constrictor. Have you seen him?" So they kept quiet, hoping that the snake would show himself.
And lo, it came to pass that the snake did return. Jim was alone in the apartment at the time. He coaxed the snake into a laundry basket and put a piece of plywood on top.
When Phil came home, Jim announced triumphantly, "I found your snake!"
"Really?" said Phil. "Where is he?"
"In this basket," said Jim, leading Phil to the basket.
Jim lifted the board to show Phil the snake.
Phil's face fell.
"That's not MY snake."
Later Phil told me, "For just about ten seconds, I really had him going..."
Eventually, we lost Phil to Seattle. I can't really regret that, though, because there he met Kaja. Who is truly wonderful. Elsewhere in this booklet, Alice Bentley will tell you about Kaja. Both Phil and Kaja contributed paintings to the popular card game Magic: The Gathering.
Together, in spare moments over the years, they planned and (literally) plotted a grand series of comics. As the new millennium dawned, they unleashed Girl Genius upon an unsuspecting world. How good is it? This year the Foglios added another Hugo-- the first ever for Best Graphic Story-- to their collection.
Girl Genius spinoffs include paper dolls, mugs, and radio plays. With "Othar’s Twitter," Phil and Kaja may have invented a new literary form: the novel with 140-character chapters.
They are raising two children, who believe it is completely normal for Mom and Dad to hang around the house all day long drawing comics. Phil serves as advisor to the Comics Club at school. The kids there draw their own comics. So if, at the beginning of the 22nd Century, art critics rhapsodize about the radical Seattle Movement that revolutionized comics, you'll know whom to thank.
Now Windycon has invited Phil and Kaja to return to the City of the Big Shoulders. I hope you get an opportunity to meet them this weekend.
And if you visit my house, you'll find Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable in the bathroom. I have Phil Foglio to thank for that.
[2011: (I also have Phil to thank for my favorite Livejournal icon.) The Foglios have since won another Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. That's two Hugos for Phil and two for them as a couple. No doubt their kids, Victor and Alex, are beginning to think that normal parents bring shiny rockets home from Worldcon.]
Earlier in the series: Introduction, Alice Bentley.
Planettom, Hero of the Time Machine
Mar. 4th, 2011 08:11 amYou may remember that, a while back, I compiled a list of, and a link to, the Time Machine series of "Donald Keith," which featured a Boy Scout patrol in possession of an abandoned time machine. The stories appeared in Boys' Life between 1959 and 1989, and were fixed-up into a couple of books.
The intrepidplanettom has picked up the bibliographic ball, and run much further down the field than I did. Behold: Synopses of all the Time Machine stories, with links to their texts. (He warns that they are full of spoilers.)
Former readers of the flagship magazine of the Boy Scouts of America may also be interested inplanettom's list of episodes of the science fiction comic strip Space Conquerors! (The exclamation point is part of the title.) Intrepid astronauts inhabited the comics pages of Boys' Life between 1952 and 1972.
My hat's off toplanettom! (The exclamation point is part of the sentence.)
The intrepid
planettom has picked up the bibliographic ball, and run much further down the field than I did. Behold: Synopses of all the Time Machine stories, with links to their texts. (He warns that they are full of spoilers.) Former readers of the flagship magazine of the Boy Scouts of America may also be interested in
planettom's list of episodes of the science fiction comic strip Space Conquerors! (The exclamation point is part of the title.) Intrepid astronauts inhabited the comics pages of Boys' Life between 1952 and 1972.My hat's off to
planettom! (The exclamation point is part of the sentence.)Loved by Many, Understood by Few
Jan. 29th, 2011 03:00 ammmcirvin and james_nicollpointed out that Governor Sarah Palin had said some notable things about President Obama's State-of-the-Union message in an interview on Fox News. So I read the Talking Points Memo entry and then I played the second half of the video interview (resolutely ignoring the obligatory commercial for Olive Garden). Sure, enough, the Governor said some dubious things about the USSR's victory in the Space Race, and how it was thereby doomed...
...and then she started talking about SPUDNUT MOMENTS.
No, really.
I wasn't expecting this.
She actually named the SPUDNUT SHOP IN RICHLAND, WASHINGTON-- one of the last surviving Spudnut Shops!
Spudnuts.
I learned about Spudnuts from Gharlane of Eddore. I spent years (sporadically) investigating a possible connection between Spudnuts and a potato-flour doughnut recipe invented by Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D.
In the middle of a Worldcon, this led me to a store run by enigmatic tattooed Cambodians on the fringes of Los Angeles.
I have also corresponded with the curator of the Spudnuts Museum. Prof. Kathryn Sherony chose her museum's motto: Loved by Many, Understood by Few. Turns out the Spudnuts founders concocted a potato-doughnut recipe with no help from the creator of the Lensmen. Too bad; it would have been nice to have an official doughnut for enthusiasts of space opera, but it was not to be.
I did not know this at the time of my visit. For the sake of my investigation, I brought back a couple of dozen Spudnuts to Worldcon. I fed some to Phil and Kaja Foglio. I wound up with a decorated bakery box depicting a potato embracing a doughnut-- imaginary packaging for space-opera-themed Spudnuts. "FROM OUTER SPACE TO YOUR FACE."
Every once in a while I pull out the greasy piece of cardboard to look at it and think, "I could get a hundred dollars for this at any comics convention in the country."
Crack investigative journalists have ascertained that Sarah Palin does indeed patronize the Spudnuts Shop on occasion. Here is a transcript of the Governor's words:
that when he so often repeated,
the Sputnik Moment
that he would aspire Americans to celebrate
and he needs to remember that
what happened back then,
with the former Communist USSR
in their victory
in that, er, race to space--
Yeah, they won,
but they also incurred so much debt
at the time
that it resulted in the inevitable collapse
of the Soviet Union.
So I listened to that Sputnik Moment talk
over and over again
and I think,
No, we don't need one of those.
You know,
what we need
is a Spudnut Moment
and here's where I'm goin' with this, Greta:
And you're a good one 'cause
you're one of the reporters
who gets out there
in the communities
find these hard-workin' people
and find solutions to the problems
that Americans face.
Well, the Spudnut Shop
in Richland, Washington:
It's a bakery,
it's a little coffee shop
that's so successful.
Sixty-some years
generation to generation
a family-owned business
not looking for government
to bail 'em out
and to make their decisions for them.
It's just hard-working,
patriotic Americans in this shop.
We need more Spudnut Moments in America
and I wish that President Obama would understand
in that heartland of America
what it is
that really results
in the solutions that we need
to get this economy back on track.
It's a shop like that!
Nice to know the Governor has a high opinion of Spudnuts. I never thought this would become a political football. There's no contradiction, really-- Spudnuts people and Sputnik people should be able to get along.
I wish Gharlane could have lived to hear this.
(I guess Sputnik people are those who learned a lot of science and math in preparation for lives in the Space Age. So I must be a Sputnik person. If I parse her remarks correctly, the Governor wants more of us to work in doughnut shops. Maybe the Cambodians are hiring.)
Coincidence? You Be the Judge!
Jun. 12th, 2010 02:41 amAfter 86 years, the final Little Orphan Annie strip will appear on Sunday.
After 39 years, the final Doctor Demento Show will be broadcast this weekend.
Not a good weekend for American institutions.
After 39 years, the final Doctor Demento Show will be broadcast this weekend.
Not a good weekend for American institutions.
Questions about Iron Man Sequel
May. 16th, 2010 10:41 pmNow that I have seen Iron Man 2: The Re-Ironing, I realize that I have a lot of questions about it. All involve spoilers.
Some of my confusion may derive from having seen it at the new Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville, Illinois. It's a cinema-restaurant where you are brought food and drink during the film. It has theme-park decor and you sit on swivel chairs or barstools at a table.
I enjoy this place but it takes some getting used to; a waitress would materialize, and ask us questions, so at several points during the movie my attention was diverted from Iron Man et al. Nor could I ask my wife what I missed, since her attention was on the waitress at those same moments.
So if you find my confusion derives from momentary inattention, please do not judge me harshly.
( SPOILERS and questions behind cut )
For some reason, the frequent mentions of Iron Man to which I have been exposed in the past few months have invariably triggered the theme from the animated Spiderman TV show in my head. This may have been reinforced by the innovative re-use of this song in the Simpsons movie a few years ago. I'm not complaining-- it would be far worse to have the theme to the Grantray-Lawrence Iron Man cartoon as an earworm. Come to think of it, all five of the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes cartoons had annoying theme songs.
Speaking of songs, I noted Richard Sherman's name in the song credits. He's half of a songwriting team heard on the soundrack of innumerable Disney movies. He turns up in Iron Man because the story revolves around a decades-old World's Fair-like theme park (for which the site of the 1964 New York World's Fair stands in, nicely) and the old fair needed a Disney-style theme.
Some of my confusion may derive from having seen it at the new Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville, Illinois. It's a cinema-restaurant where you are brought food and drink during the film. It has theme-park decor and you sit on swivel chairs or barstools at a table.
I enjoy this place but it takes some getting used to; a waitress would materialize, and ask us questions, so at several points during the movie my attention was diverted from Iron Man et al. Nor could I ask my wife what I missed, since her attention was on the waitress at those same moments.
So if you find my confusion derives from momentary inattention, please do not judge me harshly.
( SPOILERS and questions behind cut )
For some reason, the frequent mentions of Iron Man to which I have been exposed in the past few months have invariably triggered the theme from the animated Spiderman TV show in my head. This may have been reinforced by the innovative re-use of this song in the Simpsons movie a few years ago. I'm not complaining-- it would be far worse to have the theme to the Grantray-Lawrence Iron Man cartoon as an earworm. Come to think of it, all five of the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes cartoons had annoying theme songs.
Speaking of songs, I noted Richard Sherman's name in the song credits. He's half of a songwriting team heard on the soundrack of innumerable Disney movies. He turns up in Iron Man because the story revolves around a decades-old World's Fair-like theme park (for which the site of the 1964 New York World's Fair stands in, nicely) and the old fair needed a Disney-style theme.
