Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

I wrote a couple of years (ouch) back about the redesign bug biting Archie comics. At the time, I had picked up an issue of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Betty & Veronica, and I bemoaned the wooden artwork, the clumsy jokes, and the general feeling that somehow, the comic had decreased in quality, although also admitting I had never been a big fan to begin with.

The other day, I was at the store when I saw the good ol’ Archie Double Digests on the shelves. I decided this was my chance to see if the smaller size made the artwork look better, so I plunked down the bucks for both an Archie and a Jughead double digest. From these two slim volumes, I learned 4 things.

It wasn’t the size, it was the crappy printing. The new double digests are crisp. Clean. Almost pristine. The line art is solid, the colors unblurred, no bleed on the page and no smearing of the ink. In other words, it’s lousy. I discovered that it may not have been the size, but the cheap printing that made me remember the artwork as being good. The old printings with reduced artwork, bleeding colors, and ink processes so helter-skelter that there was a 50-50 chance of any bold-faced word being illegible gave the comics a sort of charm. Rendered in clean lines, the by-the-book character renderings have almost nothing to give them an edgy, rough feeling.

Your children are buying reprints. It’s actually kind of ingenious. If you happened to read Archie back in the days and you have kids who are obsessed with it now, you can identify with them almost immediately. Not only are they reading a comic that looks and reads like the comics you used to read – they’re reading the exact same comics you used to read. I made this discovery suddenly as halfway through the Jughead digest, I ran across one of the few stories that I vividly remember from my childhood. In it, Mr. Weatherbee tries to improve the students’ scores by telling them to get their imaginations involved in the learning process.

My suspicions were further confirmed by a backup story in which Jughead is always “carrying around cassettes” ever since he got his “brand new video recorder.” Oh, you silly writers. Archie Comics had a brilliant plan going, and you had to ruin it all by trying to be all timely and everything.

Actually, this explains a lot of things that never quite jived back when I was actually a kid reading these. How Archie could have stylish 80’s hair in one comic and be showing off his new polyester leisure suit in the next before wearing a Kurt Cobain plaid flannel in the third. But the reprint of that first story also brought me to my third revelation.

Despite Archie Comics’ best efforts, the artwork is inconsistent. It’s an issue with any time you try to get people to adhere to a given style manual. Even if you have your artists training line by line from the original artist’s works, they’ll always wind up interpreting it in their own style. One of the reasons I knew that the comic in question was actually a reprint and not just a new version from the old script was a few key panels that had stuck in my young mind like… a very sharp, jagged thing that gets stuck easily. Not all the similes can be brilliant, people.

In this case, it was a good thing – a cartoonist who was experimenting within the confines of his style manual. There’s Jughead’s borderline psychotic expression as he proclaims that Mr. Weatherbee has inspired him, and his eery costume and makeup job as a mad scientist walking through the halls who stops to tell Mr. Weatherbee, “Today, ve are dizzecting someting. Or eez eet… zomebodee?”

In other cases, it’s not so good. In the lead story in the Archie digest, six pages are spent with Archie running around trying to get pristine winter photographs. In all of the six pages, there is only one facial expression that is not a broad, teeth-bared grin. It takes all of six pages for Archie’s mother to stand there in the final page – after having smiled the smile of the paranoid schizophrenic along with every other troubled soul in Riverdale – and finally offer a close-mouthed smile. The kind of tight-lipped simper that shows the true depth of misery in her life. Surely, she’s coming down off her diet pill high, she’s all out of the good vanilla extract, and the reality of her miserable suburban life is coming crashing down upon her without the comfort she usually gains through her intoxicant friends. A portly husband in a go-nowhere job, a vapid son whose promiscuous lifestyle will only lead to tears, freeloading neighborhood teens who raid her icebox without asking permission, and the kind of soul-crushing ennui that can only come from spending every waking moment getting her whites their brightest and avoiding those darn spots on her good glassware. Were we only to have one more page, we would see her sneaking into Archie’s room to “borrow” his model airplane glue – just to tide her over for one more day….

Sorry. I have to admit – the artwork in that story was a little bit depressing.

Finally, I learned – Yes, the writing has always been that bad. Well, maybe not always. After all, I have the feeling they’re not going back to the old Bob Montana days to get their reprints. But what I found is that the comics in general were not just suffering from hackneyed jokes – they were suffering from poor timing, as well. A lot of comics would have been funnier without the last page or panel. It reminds me of the experiment a while back in which people were making Garfield comics funnier simply by removing Garfield’s thought balloons. Here’s an experiment, guys – write a comic in which you don’t try to top your punch line with an immediate follow-up. One-two punches work well in boxing, they aren’t always as successful in writing.

It’s been a long, looong time since I did the random 10. Here’s the deal – you know what song the lyrics came from? Drop the title and the artist in the comments. Partial credit available for partial guesses.

1. “Revenge is the method – whenever steppin’, keep a weapon close.”
2. ”(Theme From) The Monkees,” by The Monkees (guessed by Carl) – “We’re the young generation, and we’ve got something to say.”
3. “I learned a lot from Gene Kelly – when it pours it makes me sing.”
4. “I asked her the same blahzay blahzay, I got her digits and gave her my 1-800 beeper number.”
5. “And when we’re alone, seems there’s nothing to say – I bring up the topic, you push it away.”
6. “I’ve seen diamonds cut through harder men.”
7. “I wear shades when it’s sunny, sometimes I rock funny, I ain’t in it for the money.”
8. “Way, way down inside, honey, you need it.”
9. “Eat more fruit, plant more trees, learn to shoot, travel overseas…”
10. “Blam blam with the blammer. Smile, nephew, you’re on Candid Camera.”

It’s always fun when the court jester gets the chance to speak directly to power in any industry.

This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee gives a presentation to the Game Developer’s Conference.

I admit it. I don’t typically tune in to the Grammy awards these days. I think the last time I tried to watch the Grammies was the year that Outkast performed Hey Ya! with Andre 3000 in a green Hollywood-Indian outfit and No Doubt performed “Hey Baby” with acrobats on trapezes. It was quite possibly the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen onstage. Not the most painful – I’ve watched a lot of amateur theatre – but definitely the ugliest. My general experience with the Grammies has been an excess of spectacle that detracts from – rather than celebrating – the music it is supposed to honor. I’ve seen numbers from them that just seemed like an experiment in how much money could be put on stage rather than any valid artistic or aesthetic statement.

So I don’t know what to make of this scene that I caught today on sci-fi blog io9. For those who would otherwise be lost, allow me to explain what you’re about to see.

This is a Grammy performance of the song “Stronger,” by Kanye West. In recording “Stronger,” Kanye West sampled from techno duo Daft Punk’s song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.” On Grammy night, however, West performed the song with Daft Punk backing him up live.

The mythology of Daft Punk [by the way – it should be noted that I love bands with mythologies] is that at 9:09 a.m. on September 9, 1999, the two were working on a track when their sampler exploded. They awakened from the blast to discover that they had been transformed into robots. Their stage act – which has never been televised before – involves the duo wearing face-obscuring, Tron-inspired robot suits as they mix their music live on touch-screen synthesizers.

And here we have my indecision. Well, first, go ahead and check out the video.

Honestly, a number like this requires spectacle because the mythology and stage show of the band is spectacle. I can’t help feeling as I watch this video, however, that the revelation of Daft Punk mixing in the background is somehow overshadowed. For most of the number, Kanye West raps in front of a bright, neon backdrop. Then as Daft Punk shift to the forefront of the song, the neon pyramid slides apart to reveal… two dark figures rimmed in very dim red light working at green touchscreens. Their outfits are literally outshone by the neon going on around them, and it isn’t until a close-up obscures everything except the performers that it becomes clear how they’re dressed and what they’re doing – and as for the audience, the touch screen is a really neat bit of truly musical spectacle – but the audience doesn’t get to see it unless they’re watching at home.

So, for once, it seems to me that the Grammies got the spectacle in the right place – it was just executed poorly.

I have to admit, however, that it did make me want to see more of Daft Punk’s live act.

Right now, a lot of people are lining up to dance on HD-DVD’s grave. It appears it’s all over except for Toshiba’s quiet, lonely sobbing. Engadget reports that, hot on the heels of Netflix ditching HD-DVD from its rental service, Best Buy is breaking its long-held neutrality in the next-gen DVD war.

Starting in early March the store will showcase Blu hardware and software on its shelves and website, and switch from its current neutral stance, to recommending Blu-ray to any customers that ask.

If you’ve voted for my video on Project Breakout – Thanks! The vote isn’t over yet, though, and you get 15 votes a day. Which, it appears, you can use on a single video if you’re so inclined. To move on to the finals, all I need is to finish in the top three for one of the weeks of the initial stage. Help get the ArtMachine on television! Vote early, vote often!

Tomorrow’s the primary in Virginia.

But if you’d like to vote today… I’m running for political pundit.

My recent political videos got somebody’s attention on MySpace, and now I’m registered in Project Breakout’s political pundit competition.

So I’d appreciate it if some of you would click the banner below and go vote for my video – and see if I can get some work ranting about politics on television.

Because Virginia actually matters in this primary season, no less a figure than Bill Clinton came to the area to speak yesterday. Honestly, I’m not fond of the things he’s been saying lately, but I still believe he was one of the greatest Presidents of the 20th century – and I can’t pass up the opportunity to see a former President speak, anyway. So I went.

The speech was in classic form. But I learned two things about how Hillary runs the lead-in to her campaign events.

First: She’s managed to reduce Bill’s bad press by leaving the personal attacks on Obama to the campaign loyal who introduce him.

Second: Really, Hillary? Journey?

Over on Thudfactor, Thud posted recently about Bigfoot. Specifically, he posted an examination of what it says about our attitudes toward inquiry when mentioning that you have sighted Bigfoot automatically discredits you.

Not that there aren’t any witnesses. It’s just none of them are credible. In his Darklore essay, Loren Coleman makes the point that part of the reason these witnesses aren’t credible is they claim to have seen Bigfoot. That’s what you would call something of a Catch-22.

Now, if I were to see something like the creature featured in the Patterson-Gimlin film, my second thought would be that I’d seen a very large ape. (My first thought would be to get the hell out.) It might cross my mind that I’d seen Bigfoot, but then I’d play the “what’s more likely” game and decide I’d seen a large ape. In that (hypothetical) instance, I’m technically a Bigfoot witness. But I don’t even believe myself, so I’m not going to do anyone any good. My skepticism prevents me from reporting a sighting.

Then I came across this little zinger from Kit O’Connell at Words Words Words (where Steven Brust, by the way, has just released his Creative Commons-licensed novel based on Joss Whedon’s Firefly as a free download) who reminds us what, exactly, the term “UFO” means.

Let’s look at that last sentence — ‘what many believe is a UFO.’ What does UFO stand for? Unidentified Flying Object. It was a thing people saw (an object), moving through the sky (flying) and no one knows what it is (unidentified).

All of which reminded me of the moment in the Democratic debates when Dennis Kucinich admitted to having seen a UFO. It doesn’t matter, of course, that Kucinich explained the meaning of “UFO” (Unidentified Flying Object, for those who came in late or are intensely dense), that America had previously elected a President who had seen a UFO, or that 14% of Americans claim to have seen a UFO as pointed out by the moderator. That one clip of him saying that he had seen a UFO – which was not even his complete answer as given – set off a storm of jokes. Cable news turned it into a gag reel on constant loop. Bloggers cracked jokes about Kucinich being picked up by ET, and FOX News’ John Gibson declared it final proof that Kucinich was crazy. In fact, that editorial relates nicely to what Thud has to say about the way we “investigate” phenomena like Bigfoot, because John Gibson specifically states:

If you’ve seen UFOs you probably shouldn’t go around calling other people nuts. If you admit to seeing a UFO, martians, space creatures, big foot and all the rest, you are by definition on the defensive against a charge of craziness.

The congressman doesn’t eat meat. Perhaps that is an explanation.

If not eating meat means you see UFO’s, that only accounts for a fraction of the sightings – 14% of Americans have seen UFO’s, while only 4% of Americans are vegetarians and only 0.2% of Americans consider themselves vegans.

But, of course, we live in a “what’s more likely” world. Expressing curiosity about what’s overhead automatically pegs you as a loon and an X-Files freak. Who needs honest, open discussion with an eye toward true investigation and the civilized exchange of ideas when you can make somebody the butt of a joke by having them utter one simple sentence? Enough about your domestic policy and your beliefs regarding America’s place in the world community, congressman Kucinich – can we get you to say something that we “normal” people can laugh you out of town over?

On a side note, John Gibson is such an out-of-touch dork he doesn’t even know that “bigfoot” is supposed to be typed as one word.

Edited to note: I originally credited the UFO entry and the Firefly novel to the same person, but Kit O’Connell pointed out that while he wrote the entry on Words Words Words, the novel was by fellow Words3 scribe Steven Brust. Thanks, Kit!