Please Drink Responsibly

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There is something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like Dickens, but even they allow that A Tale of Two Cities has one of the greatest openings in the English language. The Great Gatsby opens well too, and is also one of the rarest of rarities: a spot on perfect movie. AMC has a collection of films called “Essentials,” films from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that everyone should know. They are part of the collective vocabulary. They are required for cultural literacy. In literature there’s the Five Foot Shelf. In music, it’s Synchronicity and The White Album, South Pacific and Into the Woods. If you seek out what’s good in many fields, you feed your imagination and will be a better artist for it.

That’s the positive side. The flip side is also true. Imagine a professional athlete that ate nothing but Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Would any of us be surprised if this guy failed to win the New York marathon? For that matter, would any of us be surprised if he failed to finish and fell down dead at Mile 18? No, of course not. Because this guy who uses his body to do what he does has been pouring poison into it.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a composer, a creative in any field, then your imagination is the bread and butter machine. Since you’re also a human being, it is the most magical and sacred part of you. That alone is a good enough reason not to flood it with poisons, but I’m talking about something beyond just being human. I am talking about being a creative. The imagination is what stretches beyond the literal and mundane and the goings on in your digestive tract. It is what connects with something higher and better, and channels a little piece of the infinite when you make something that wasn’t there before. If you pollute it with garbage, the result will be the artistic version of that wheezing pathetic “athlete” gasping his way through the race.

No, I do not read comics anymore. It’s more than not giving DC even $2.95 worth of encouragement for something that is truly bad, it is declining to live on a toxic waste dump. It is refusing to take poison into my imagination. Not only is it bad for me, it’s going to be bad for anything I write.

You are what you eat. And drink. We’ve all seen the creative output of the drunk drivers out there, professional and amateur. It’s time for those of us who are not three sheets to the wind to start staging some interventions.

But let’s return to the Best of Times, because there is a new artist to welcome to the Fan Art Gallery, and she’s certainly kept her imagination fueled with the best of raw materials. Check out the beautiful work of Anya Uribe, an absolute master of feminine curves, color and form.

The Virtual Visitor Center is decked out for the holidays. In Second Life, as in Cattitude, as in Real Life, Cartier wraps itself up in a bow for Christmas. More information on the Cat-Tales website, or residents may teleport directly to the Visitor Center.

Random Equinox even has an update for his spinoff fic: Don't Fear the Z.  And as if that wasn't enough, we had two lovely developments over the Thanksgiving break: The Macy's parade was good enough to open with Aviator Snoopy, providing yet another opportunity for the slow-witted to realize that the inspiration for the Catwoman abomination--the virtual SIGNATURE of the new direction that failed to grasp anything that defined Catwoman and got absolutely everything wrong--was, in fact, based on a cartoon dog. How symbolic do you want it? They didn't understand anything at all about Selina, right down to the CAT in Catwoman. A symmetry such as makes the angels weep, if it wasn't so effing sad. And, finally, the forum's running gag of Batman's Black Friday Protocol finally has some artwork:

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

( . )( . )

I’m pretty sure the most popular entry in this blog is the one from late April: Women Lacking Complexity—For SCIENCE! about blogger Jen McCreight’s initiative Boob Quake.  Wow, who would have thought it?  The most popular blog was about tits. 

Yes, there are two big issues looming when it comes to women and comics.  Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical flourish, there are two.  Let’s deal with the D-cups first, because there is a reason they go on the cover.  Men like breasts.  A couple months ago, Warner Bros posted screencaps to Arkham City, the sequel to the Arkham Asylum computer game. 

The gullible souls who bought into the Brubaker/Cooke scam and continue to think flat-chested and short hair are the hallmarks of a dynamic empowered woman started frothing at the mouth:  Look at those breasts!  How can it be!  It is the goggle-whore costume we have all been trained to defend as practical no matter how nonsensical the word is as applied to any costume in any comic including the one this displaced.  It is black and not purple, she has no long flowing hair cascading luxuriously out the back of her cowl, how can she have breasts that can be seen without special lenses?!  It does not compute.  The horror, the horror!  How dare they defame the good name of Catwoman by giving her a figure men will enjoy looking at!

I really had hoped the Iranian cleric that started the whole Boob Quake thing would have woken those silly women up.  Because if you buy into the idea that boobs are bad and there is something wrong with men who like them, then you’re standing with Fahas Ahardtime Acceptinghalfthehumanrace-majad.  That doesn’t strike me as very enlightened or feminist, ladies, but hey, you don’t see the problem with the whore either, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. 

For those who aren’t irrevocably committed to the doctrine of Men Suck, let’s briefly revisit why the male of the species like the breasts.  I’m sorry Notting Hill fans, there is a reason and it’s not “because they’re stupid.”  It’s because we’re primates.  For a long, long, long, long time, the male approaching a female for mating purposes is looking at a rump.  Now fast forward a few million years.  We're all walking upright. What in the general vicinity of the new eyelevel looks like that? There’s nothing perverse about it.  Men notice cleavage.  Put it on the cover, they’ll notice your cover.  That’s not an automatic sale, but it gets their attention.  What you do then is up to you.

Which brings us to the second issue when it comes to women in comics: who they are as opposed to how they look.  Let’s start with a quote from a creative writing forum, which was sent to me after the recent blog on Fridging:

“As it was explained to me by a comics professional years ago at a convention panel on the topic, the vast majority of comic writers are men who simply don't understand women. Since they don't understand women (and earn more by churning out stories as quickly as possible), they save time by reducing women to cliched roles as either the girlfriend or the victim.”

I include the elaborate provenance – that this is something told to a reader in a con/panel situation—because there is always the possibility that it is simply not true.  That it was given in the context of “Look, we don’t serve up all these rapes and murders because we’re sad little trolls who can only feel like men by bringing down women.”  If that was the tone of the panel, then this could have been presented as a simple expedient.  Rather than debating if there is any palpable difference between murder of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis and the murder of Duncan in the Scottish play, the above quote diffuses the situation quickly without controversy by playing into the widely held preconception of comics writers as arrested adolescents.

The irony is if that's true and not an invented excuse, it’s completely unacceptable.  Women are 53% of the population.  You can’t be a professional writer in any medium and “simply not understand” half the human race.  You’re going to embarrass yourself, embarrass the idiots who hired you, and you’re going to fail—over and over and over.  So let’s cut these guys a break and reveal the key to writing women that both men and women in the audience will love.  Then everybody can do it and that removes "I don't understand lumpy people" as an excuse.  The following has been said elsewhere, but never as well as by the late Harold Ashman:

“In every classic musical, one of the first three songs belongs to the heroine.  She comes downstage, often sits on a convenient planter or bale of hay, and sings about what she wants from her life.  And the audience falls in love with her… and they spend the next three acts rooting for her to get it.”

It is, honest to god, that simple.  And that complex.  Start with what she wants.  If Cattitude succeeds where others have failed, it is because it is grounded in what Catwoman wants from stealing: a restoration of the love and safety she felt as a child, which she came to associate with the wealth and comfort she knew in her parents’ home.  I cannot accept that the ability to pee standing up somehow short-circuits the ability to understand that simple human motivation.  What we want is seldom a function of gender.  The best art and jewel thief in the world comes from privilege and not poverty because the root associations make sense.  If any man wants to step up and explain what in his anatomy would screw with anything that shampoo simple, I would be fascinated to hear it. 

Food, shelter, love, freedom, a sense of self-worth.  None of them have anything to do with reproductive plumbing.  If you “simply don’t’ understand” women, then you simply don’t understand people and if that’s the case, you have no business writing at all. 

Now, if you don’t get a particular subset, join the club.  Twilight fans, the gals who take the Sex and the City bus tour, the Real Housewives of anywhere… Don’t ask me, fellas, I’m as confused as you are.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Fat is Flavor

Chef Josh Grinker recently blogged a list of “Things Chefs Don’t Want You To Know.” The explanation for #1 (There is butter in everything) began like this:

In every culinary school in America, they hammer home the same three-word mantra to students day after day, year after year, until it’s like a little voice in your brain that guides virtually every culinary decision you will make for the rest of your career: 'Fat is Flavor.'

Now, this isn’t a cooking blog, and if there are any nutrition proselytizers out there who want to make the case for their fat-free, salt-free, gluten free, lentil and tofu roulade being just as tasty as a deep dish with pepperoni and sausage from Giordano's, they can lump it. Because there are two key elements in Grinker’s statement which are the gateway to serial success or—in DC Comics’s case—serial failure.

First of all, the three little words are true. I could spend a day perusing the Good Eats clips on youtube for Mr. Science-style demonstrations explaining that reality molecule-by-molecule, but again, this is not a cooking blog. The point is, regardless of what you say on the convention floor, no matter what you put in the press release or tell the columnist from IGN, and no matter what would be convenient for you personally or professionally, no matter what creates a political pain in the ass for you personally or professionally, the bedrock principle on which you base your decisions has to be TRUE. One example off the top of my head: readers like the theme rogues. You can accept that and build your one year arc around Croc, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Joker, Harley Quinn, Riddler, and Two-Face and be on your way to the hit of the decade, or you can reject it, stage a parade of faceless mobsters and serial killers, and then grouse that grumble that you’re never as popular as that other guy.

Assembling the list of wrong ideas DC has about life, the universe, and everything would be a daunting task, and not necessarily a productive one. Because the second key in Grinker’s statement is that repetition of the founding principle(s) until it becomes an instinct. There are some major figures out there who are so consistently wrong in everything they say and do, they’ve definitely got the instinct mechanism working, it’s just based on faulty base principles.
From "Bruce Wayne is the mask" to the fallacy of Millerism, they have core ideas, those ideas just happen to be wrong. But there are others who have no little voice leading them in any direction. They go from mediocre to pretty good to clinically insane, from really bad to slightly above average to “oh hell, the syphilis got to their brain.” That is the mark of a writer, editor, or manager who is stumbling blind. They have no root principles, so every choice brings them back to square one. They’re a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel, and whatever gusts hit them last will determine where they go next.

Look, things do change in this world. One of the major reasons the Titanic went down is because everything Captain Smith knew was wrong. It was based on based on 30 years of experience, but on that ship on that voyage in those waters: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here’s the catch: other things do NOT change. There is a reason the term is bedrock principles. Some things simply are, they are constants, they do not alter. “You know how you cook a great steak? You slather it in butter, throw it on the grill, paint it with more butter.” Because fat is flavor. The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.

Find the true bedrock principles, repeat them until they become a little voice in the back of your mind shaping every decision you make, and you might just rock the world. Insist that fat isn’t flavor… well, enjoy your empty restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Cat-Tales kitchens are bustling these days. Electron 29: Chapter 4 is out. Compilations of Books 1 through 4 are out in ebook formats for Kindle, Sony, Nook, iPhone/iPad/iPod, and pretty much everything as well as new print-ready pdf editions. Individual Tales 1 through 50 are also available, and several have new covers showcased here, here, and here. The last ten tales (through #60) will be out - both individually and as the Book 5 Compilation - in time for Christmas. New installments of both spinoffs: Capes & Bats by Wanders Nowhere and Don’t Fear the Z by Random Equinox are in the pipeline and may actually be out by the time you read this, and an amazing new artist is soon to debut in the Fan Art Gallery. And oh yes, Batcatfever will kill me if I don't mention that the forums have been quietly devouring the latest snippets from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

This past weekend saw the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and while I enjoyed it tremendously, what really struck me enough to blog about was the post-rally press conference with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Listen to Stewart’s description of “the hardest thing to pull off” and if you have time, go on to part two and listen to how many times the word “joy” comes up.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Press Conference - The Hardest Thing to Pull Off
www.comedycentral.com
Rally to Restore Sainty and/or Fear The Daily Show The Colbert Report

(Link to Press Conference for those who cannot see the embedded video.)

Bob Fosse used to say “Without Joy, the work is meaningless.” Anyone who is familiar with the man’s work knows he didn’t mean happy-happy joy-joy, carousel horses and candyfloss. Fosse’s work was dark enough to satisfy the lost generation of comics readers that came of age under Miller, but it never left you feeling you needed a shower. Because of that Joy. However dark it got, the work came from the good place. It came from that higher, spiritual thing inside all human beings that artists use to connect with something greater when they create. It did not come from a damaged soul trying to make up for its deficiencies. That shit never lasts. It can make a splash for a moment, but then it fades because it lacks that indefinable Quality, that mystic thing that endures. Whatever that thing is, it comes from the part of us that is better, not worse. It comes from what makes us alive. It comes from what makes it GOOD to be alive. It comes from Joy.

So today’s big question for the 4-color comic crowd – the ones still reading DC’s monthly output but more importantly to the ones writing and drawing them – is this: Are you having fun yet?

I would like to draw attention to two Bat-groups who certainly are:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold have not only embraced the lip twitch, they have committed Pink Batman, Singing Joker, and Bat-Mite riffing on Mxyzlptk. What’s more, they make it work. Something most of us would have thought impossible, because Batman is such serious fucking business. But no, time after time, week after week, these guys have lifted the layers and layers of dark and gritty godawfulness that have been accumulating since the first crisis, and they have restored that magical joy-thing inside all characters and stories that endure.

Club Batman. This is a group in Spain which is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of Bat-art expositions that will simply blow your mind. From Aparo to Breyfogle, these guys know how to relish what’s good, how to savor and celebrate the character they love. In short, they know how to be fans and rather than fanboys. Feliz Aniversario, Club Batman. Here’s to 20 more years.

And me? Well, I’ll be honest, there’s more frustration than joy when I can’t eek out a blog entry. I resist the idea of blurting out a list of stuff that’s going on if I can’t make it interesting, and making it interesting takes a fair amount of time away from getting the stuff DONE. It’s like the Captain Obvious observation that if you’re constantly tweeting and updating your Facebook profile, you’re not actually doing anything except tweeting and updating your Facebook profile. So this will be brief, and if it’s not that interesting, that is the reason why.

Ebooks are now available for the individual tales up through Book 4, as well as newer higher quality pdfs for those readers who prefer the feel of actual paper in their fingers. The compilations—both ebooks and pdfs—are up on the website for Books 1 and 2. 3 and 4 will be along soon. They’re in the pipeline, I just need a few hours sans interruptions. Heh. Heheh. HAHAHHAHAHAAAA! Now that’s comedy. (Seriously though, maybe this weekend.)

Chapter 4 of the latest tale,  Electron 29, is also nearly ready for release. About 98% there, I’d say. Also waiting patiently for its turn at a ride on the unicorn (read: an hour of my uninterrupted, undistracted freetime).

In the meantime, there is a new spinoff to enjoy. Random Equinox has begun Don’t Fear the Z, examining the events of Don’t Fear the Joker from the POV of our favorite band of ex-henchmen lair-builders.

In SL, I’ve begun interviews for a virtual assistant and some voice talent, which in the long run should mean more free time to focus on the writing, but short term… woof, not so much.

So that’s the Cat-Tales catch-up. There are 2 or 3 things/people I’m waiting for in order for other things to move forward. In the meantime, I’d like to borrow a cup of Joy if anyone can spare it.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.