A nearly Zen phrase, given what I'm typing about here...

No sob stories from me right now (millions of others doubtless have it worse), but I've added PayPal buttons to my 'usual' blog, The Miserable Annals of the Earth, and the home of the Red Tiger, Redline Comics. 

I'm not just begging.  There are seven novels, one novella, a military memoir, 50+ geek topic articles, 25 or so short stories, and around two dozen cartoons available from the sidebar at Miserable Annals, all by yours truly, any or all of which are available entirely free, and, you know, at least reasonably entertaining.  Whether you want hours of bemusement or just minutes, you can find something there.

Meanwhile, at Redline Comics, you have an entire original 17 page superhero comic. 

So, if you're bored, and have some time to spare in front of your monitor, and you enjoy geek pop culture stuff related to science fiction, fantasy, geek TV shows, or superhero comics, you could do far worse. 

If you find anything you like over there, it wouldn't bother me, or my wife, or my kids, if you hit the PayPal tip jar while you're there. And by all means, tell your friends.

Thanks.  And happy holidays!

...the Red Tiger lives... and dies... and lives... again!

Sometime in 1978, I believe, I created, for Russ Wiseman's art class at Holland Central High School, a comic book written and drawn by myself featuring a poorly designed character named Paul William Baker, rather melodramatically code named "Fury". Fury was a secret agent type who had been blown up by a supervillain and rebuilt with solid steel fists that could fire some sort of energy beam out of them. He rebelled against the villain, natch, becoming the villain's worst enemy (as the Late Great Jeff Webb once wryly noted, the number of villains who have stupidly created their own worst enemy by taking some stubborn heroic sort and doing something mean to him which ended up giving him superpowers is just staggering. You'd think they'd stop doing it, it never works out.)

I wanted to make the dreadful thing look as professional as possible, so I created a company name for the cover -- Redline Comics. I don't know why I called it that; it had nothing to do with the concept of things going broke, but rather, with the idea of an engine working at some kind of overdrive speed... past the red line, as it were. But that was what I had on top of the cover, instead of the Marvel Comics Group tag I was so obviously ripping off, at least, graphically.

Anyway, CODENAME: FURY (very nearly FIGHTING FISTS OF FURY, but at the last minute I, probably wisely, demurred) was an appalling thing indeed, but for some reason it impressed a classmate and fellow comics fan of mine who drew somewhat better and wrote somewhat worse than I did. And this guy, Jim Marek, proposed that we collaborate on a project together.

So, I sat down and wrote a script (literally wrote, by hand, on lined notebook paper) for a character called the Red Tiger. I had no idea what the Red Tiger looked like, but my artistic collaborator, whom I never quite got to the point of actually being friends with, took the script and drew up the first issue.

Jake (as Mr. Marek preferred to be called by his friends, and even, I guess, by me) and I went on to collaborate on one more title, REBEL, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM FROM THE FAR FLUNG FUTURE, before our partnership lapsed. I no longer have either comic, of which there was only ever one issue (literally, one issue) which I somehow wound up with. But it's worth noting that the Red Tiger, such as he is visually, was entirely the creation of James Marek. (That's not a knock. While the red trunks over tights, crimson wifebeater, and odd mask concealing much of the face but leaving the lower nose, mouth, jaw, and hair revealed was savagely iconic of the 1970s, still, it's a look I love, and I especially like the tiger stripes on the headband, gloves, boots, and belt... it lends itself to an iconic look in silhouette, rather like Batman's cape and chest symbol.)

I don't think Jake did his best work on our collaborations, and certainly my scripts were weak, to say the very least. But 30 years later (for all I know, to the day) I've finished a new version of RED TIGER #1. Alas, my only collaborator on the title's current incarnation is myself, and my artwork at the age of 47 is far, far worse than Jim Marek's was at the age of 16... and I doubt my scripting is much improved over the past 30 years, either.

But, for what it's worth, here it is. The art is horrible, the concept is stupid, and the script is... well, I can't judge my own writing, but it's probably pretty fucking bad, too. But there it is. Do with it as you will.

24 days until the holidays... I know because the Santa nutcracker on the entertainment center in our living room tells me so.

Four days ago our living room was in the throes of autumn, with lovely fall decorations everywhere -- rustic autumn leaves wrapped around wood and copper and bronze ornaments on the mantle, a huge and beautiful cornucopia my wife made herself two years ago atop one of the bookshelves, a big stuffed turkey on top of the entertainment center.  Then the most delicious  Thanksgiving dinner in my personal history (entirely prepared by my ever talented wife, with hamhanded 'assistance' from yours truly, and celebrated this year with all the kids, too) came and went (along with one of the most historic nationally televised Turkey Day pastings of the Detroit Lions ever), and we found ourselves sucked in to the dizzying Christmas whirl.  

Now, our living room, as well as both bathrooms, the kitchen, and the comic book hallway, firmly reflect the Yuletide season, and we're all exhausted from the effort... which is only 2/3s done, as weather and relative fragility due to recent sicknesses have prevented us from getting up the outside decorations as yet.

I'm targeting this weekend as a hopeful date to complete that stage.

I love this time of year; the holidays (starting with Halloween and stretching to New Years) and especially Christmas itself (from Black Friday through the Day) are always much too short and precious a time for me.  I enjoyed the Christmas month even back in my miserable bachelor days, kind of idly and in a bittersweet fashion, and now that I have a wife and kids to share them with, I find them to be generally a joyous occasion indeed, unmixed with the gut twisting loneliness they once used to instill in me.  

There's more stress to them this year, though.  Our financial circumstances are not as dire as they could be, as long as Congress keeps extending my Unemployment benefits, but the perpetual strain my continuing joblessness places on our fragile domestic economy cannot help but be somewhat corrosive to the holiday spirit around here.  It's entirely fair, of course, that my personal failures should harsh my buzz somewhat, but it kills me that it so dampens the seasonal joy for my family.

Worse, of course, is that the wisest and most knowledgeable among us all opine sagely that this is going to get worse before it gets better, and how much worse, none of them will hazard a guess.  

Will we all be trundling wheelbarrows full of nearly worthless hundred dollar bills up to the supermarket cash registers in six to eighteen months, while the wily wealthy rub their gold krugerands together and smirk knowledgeably at each other from behind their tinted, bulletproof limousine windows?   

Will I finally find work on a Federally funded works project somewhere, rebuilding a national highway infrastructure we don't need and will never use as the global oil supply continues to mercilessly deplete, and a ruined America with its broken military and worthless currency can only watch helplessly as China and Russia suck up the steadily lessening dregs of crude that continue to ooze and trickle out into the international marketplace?  

Will I have to scramble to secure a precarious position with some local warlord, or just hide out in my basement trying to keep my kids from breathing too loudly as the scavenging cannibal gangs sift through the empty boxes stacked up outside the storage room door, hoping they'll give up before they find us?

My deepest fear, of course, is the starkly realistic realization that, as older, wiser, more authoritative and infinitely wealthier heads confer on a new economic engine to drive us out of the current quagmire, their primary point of contention is, as Westinghouse once reputedly asked Tesla -- "where do we put the meter?"

I don't mind my tax dollars going towards some kind of grand mutual civilization with a built in social safety net for the worst off among us; I won't do well in a lawless anarchy where the lights don't work and the furnaces don't start up and the pipes won't pump hot water, and I truly believe that all societies are fundamentally measured by how well they take care of their weakest and most helpless members.  You can increase my taxes and I'll pay them with a smile, as long as I have a decent job and I'm sure that a good part of my payroll deduction is going to help those that need it most.

I am, however, getting sick of watching my labor, and the labor of millions like me, go to prop up the exorbitantly decadent lifestyles of multi-million and -billionaires who, when asked if they might be willing to give something back in exchange for the mountains of steadily devaluating cash they are asking for to bail out the companies they have run into the ground, respond as Ford CEO Alan Mullaly recently did -- "I think I'm OK where I am".  

These people have wrecked the world while lining their pockets, and when asked to put something back in the pot now, well, they're okay where they are.

Bleak, bleak holiday thoughts.

Best to think that America's own Magical Negro, despite a disturbing proclivity for appointing the same corporate lackeys who got us into this mess in the first place to positions of power in his own administration, will, nonetheless, somehow pass a miracle and save our happy consumer culture for another generation.

Hey, at least a Democrat won the election.

Ho ho ho.


 * * *

Postscript -- sorry, this post went to a much darker place than I intended it to when I first sat down to type it.  As Stephen King once noted, at 4 in the morning, you're either asleep or staring around yourself in utter despair, with no middle ground... the paint is off that gaudy old whore, the world, and there are no illusions left in the dark, cold gun barrel of the predawn.  

Sometimes the dark place is the only place you can find.

I thank whatever karmic dregs I have built up over the course of a mostly wasted lifetime that I somehow stumbled onto my wife and step-children, and if I were a praying man, I would mostly pray that I can somehow find a way to bring them the things they need and want in the days ahead.  I wish I had more faith in my own individual resourcefulness, but, well, if this and other past blogs of mine reflect anything, it's a complete lack of that.  

Still, things could get better.  You never know.  

It's sad that that's really as upbeat as I can be right now, but, well, there it is.

Reprinted, as always, from The Miserable Annals of the Earth.  (If you don't understand that title reference, you're probably not geeky enough to enjoy my blog, so don't bother hitting the link.)