Good Reading!

In an attempt to tidy up this site, I'm moving my Reading List stuff out of here.  I'm still doing the reading, but I don't feel it's relevant to this site any longer.  If I want to review something relevant, I may post it here, but otherwise, anyone interested in finding out what I'm reading or what I think of it can follow me on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/aimcomics.  I've updated quite a few books there that I've finished, and posted my reviews on a fair number of them as well.  

The Reading List: Hugo Award Winner "The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester

 

The first Hugo awards, the preeminent science fiction literature award, were given out in 1953, with seemingly little vision of how big they would eventually come to be.  With an odd lack of prescience, given the genre they celebrate, there were no rules laid down for the awards in subsequent years, and in fact the 1954 Worldcon skipped them altogether.

Nevertheless, in the intervening years, the Hugos have become a high water mark for science fiction.  While the winners for best novel reveal a few authors that have hardly become household names for all but the most ardent science fiction readers, generally the list of winners reads like a literary pantheon of the genre, and for good reason.  The works that have won this award have influenced not only the development of the genre, but in many cases affected the courses of literature, science and culture.  From its pulp beginnings, science fiction quickly grew into a literary exploration of our ideas of possible futures, of problem solving, and of our relationships with technology and with our own and other species.

The first Hugo award was presented to Alfred Bester for his novel "The Demolished Man".  Referring to the judicial punishment of "demolition", the destruction of memory and personality in response to major crimes, the book is an exploration of psychology couched in a police procedural.  

The novel comes ahead of a long line of imitators that continue to this day to mostly fail at recapturing its formula.  It betrays a certain influence from the noir fiction of the 40s in its use of detective tropes, but it largely remains its own thing due to its use of fantastic ideas such as "peepers", ESP talented people who are able to read minds and thereby prevent or solve crimes, and the aforementioned demolition.  

In its use of these ideas and its integration of crime fiction with science fiction, "Demolished Man" at times seemed like an early indicator of the work of Philip K. Dick, particularly works like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "Minority Report"; it is high concept work with a gritty, street-level perspective on the world in which the story exits.  Like any older work of science fiction, it has to be taken in the context of its time to avoid direct comparisons with later works that play with similar ideas.  With that in mind, it functions well as a futuristic crime novel that successfully provokes thought about the possibilities and dangers of the world it posits.

At heart, though, it is the psychology of the characters, especially the protagonist Ben Reich, that drives the story, and in that it gives the story a timeless appeal.  The same set of characters could work in almost any setting, even without the benefit of the futuristic trappings.  The story could have been told equally well by James M. Cain or John D. McDonald as a straightforward murder mystery with a few simple adjustments, and I think it may be that universality that made it deserving of the Best Novel award that year.  It is a story that appeals and intrigues even out of its context because it is about the minds of its characters, and that psychology remains unchanged regardless of time and place.

Apropos of nothing, the one line that sticks out to me most from the novel, one that I have copied into my digital commonplace book is the following:  "Make your enemies by choice, not by accident."

"The Demolished Man" is available to buy from Amazon, or you can read it for free at Archive.org

New Blog Feature: The Reading List

Readers who are paying attention will recall that this blog has been running a series of articles on the "Most Unreadable Books", where I'm slowly...oh, so slowly...working my way through a list of books considered to be the most difficult to read (at least in English). 

Since it takes so long to get through each one of those (I'm working on Infinite Jest at the time of writing, and expect to be for quite a while yet), it seemed like a good idea to break up the monotony a bit by bringing in notable works from other lists.

With that in mind, there will be an ongoing series called "The Reading List" that will cover other notable books that might be of interest to AIM Comics readers, particularly focusing on those from the ranks of winners of the Stoker Awards (horror), the Hugos (science fiction), the Edgars (mystery) and the World Fantasy Awards (fantasy, obiously), with occasional diversions into anything else I find interesting.  I think there will be enough variety in there to keep me and other readers interested. 

I will be sharing my thoughts on those books as I read them, but I welcome discussion on them or simply being told that I have missed the point of a book entirely.  Leave a comment on the posts and let me know if you agree or disagree with what I have to say; I'd enjoy hearing from you.  Literature is always best when it's shared.

Now Available: The Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit Vol. 8!

 Long overdue, but worth the wait, The Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit Vol. 8 is now available!  Gaze in wonder at the cover by Clint "Wandering Ones" Hollingsworth! See Bruno tie the knot!  Cringe shamefully under the reproachful glare of the Passive Aggressive Pirates! Tremble as the ground shakes to the marching feet of the Syndicate going to war!

All this and more awaits you in the latest collection of Ian McDonald's classic webcomic Bruno the Bandit! Available NOW in print from Amazon and in digital format from DriveThru Comics!  Get yours today!

Reading the Unreadable #8: Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet

 

By a fortunate accident, I read Genet's "Our Lady of the Flowers" directly after finishing Camus's "The Stranger" and Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago", and those directly after reading Heidegger for this reading project.  As a result, I came to it in a metaphysical state of mind, and ready to analyze the different views of incarceration presented by these authors.

Camus, being the most overtly philosophical of the bunch, uses his protagonist's prisoner status more allegorically, presenting it (at least to my eye) as further proof of the objective lack of intrinsic meaning to existence, and simultaneously the natural result of Meursault's failure to draw his own meaning from existence, falling back as he does on a kind of nihilism.  Camus, not having been a prisoner himself, was able to take a more abstract view of incarceration, using it as a vehicle to convey his ideas of absurdism without getting bogged down in the practical details.

Solzhenitsyn's work, on the other hand, draws its power from his depiction of those practical physical details.  It was his status as prisoner that drove his fame as a writer, and it was through his depictions of prison life that he made his political statement.  "Gulag Archipelago" is more prosaic in its approach and more accessible in its writing style, and it is in that approach that the reader finds the horror of the situation - that people can live and force others to live under such conditions.  Oddly, while being the least overtly philosophical of these books, in its depiction of the subjective way punishments and rewards are applied in such a system, it eventually serves to prove the same metaphysical conclusion reached by Camus - that existence does not have intrinsic meaning aside from what the individual decided to assign to it.

The expression of that subjective mapping of meaning onto existence is immediately obvious in Genet's "Our Lady of the Flowers".  By far the most poetic of these works, Genet seems to acknowledge the, at times, sordid details of existence and yet to strive for a sort of transcendence by seeing in those details a manifestation of something more sublime.  Through his controversial depictions of the life of his characters, their relationships, their actions and their crimes, Genet takes what could be considered tawdry and at times brutal events and elevates them with his language and perspective to the status of poetry.  As he says, "the artist is a God who had need of human beings."  Genet seems to recognize that god within himself the art in his characters.  The more squeamish reader might turn aside from "Our Lady of the Flowers", but in so doing would miss the opportunity that Genet provides to recognize the transcendence possible in any life simply by the fact of choosing to assign meaning to existence.

It is that idea of "choice" that forms a common philosophical thread to all three books.  Camus's Meursault fails to choose, and is condemned for it.  Solzhenitsyn, chose to see both the absurdity and horror in his situation and depict it with the eye of a naturalist.  Genet chose to assign a spiritual greatness that supersedes the immediate, through that making even an ordinary existence more bearable.  As Victor Frankl stated, "He who has a why, can bear any how."

Up next, David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest'.  This one's going to take a while.

Reading the Unreadable #7: Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

 

Anyone who's known me for a long time knows that I enjoy reading books on philosophy, both classic and modern.  Although I've studied logic and philosophy in university, I consider myself more of an enthusiastic amateur than any kind of serious student of the subject.  

My personal preference in philosophical schools has always tended towards the "can you eat it" variety, meaning the grounded sort of philosophies that can be of some practical use in daily living.  I'm aware that there are people who consider philosophy as a purely theoretical exercise, but it always seemed to me that from the classical times on down, the main thrust of the subject has been to find ways to live life better, more fully and more in harmony with the world. I have, therefore, always tended towards schools of thought ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Confucious and Lao Tzu down to Ayn Rand's Objectivism and (my current philosophical crush) Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics.  The philosophers I consider more esoteric, such as Epicurus, Nietzsche and Proust, I have read for enjoyment but without any serious expectations.

So it was that I approached Heidegger's "Being and Time" with the mindset that I have a grounding in this sort of writing and, despite it being on the list of the most difficult books to read, I thought I would navigate its content skilfully if not easily.

Hoo boy, was I wrong.

One of the most annoying things about the study of philosophy is the tendency of some thinking and authors to get caught up in semantics and ontology to the extent that the work loses any useful meaning and becomes self-absorbed to the point of being unable to express ideas clearly.  It's what led me to conclude at one point that philosophy is the most roundabout way of ending up exactly where you started.  Heidegger takes that problem to an extreme, with an absorption in a highly specific use of language that either a)almost immediately loses any practical meaning for the reader or b) is couched in a language that is understandable only to Heidegger and his two closest friends. Probably cats.

Reading "Being and Time" is an exercise in literacy and a test of patience.  Ideas and sentences recur and are reiterated in new contexts in so many ways that one is not sure if one has actually made any progress in the book, or if the publisher just reprinted early chapters later in the book. It is the literary equivalent of "The Song That Never Ends". Without the entertainment value. It is the quintessential existential work, in that by the end of it, if one endures that long, the reader questions whether anything outside the book, including the reader themselves, does, can or should exist. 

I mean, what can you say about a book that contains passages like this:

 "In understanding a context of relations, Dasein has been referred to an in-order-to in terms of an explicitly or inexplicitly grasped potentiality for being (Seinkonnen) for the sake of which it is, which can be authentic or inauthentic.  This prefigures a what-for as the possible letting something be relevant which structurally allows for relevance to something else.  Dasein is always in each case already referred in terms of a for-the-sake-of-which to the with-what of relevance.  This means that, insofar as it is, it always already lets beings be encountered as things as hand."

 Still awake?  Good.  That's from early in the book, before things get complicated. From there, it slips steadily off the linguistic rails and ends up ultimately as meaningful (for the standard reader) as the content of an ASMR video.  And just as sleep-inducing.  

If I gleaned anything useful from "Being and Time", aside from the joy of knowing that I need never pick up a copy of Heidegger again in my life, it is the origin of the the idea that 'horror is seeing something approach" that I know from William Friedkin.  I could probably find you a chapter and verse reference for this, but I think it would be more fun to let you test your own patience in attempting to read this thing.  Otherwise, the only use I can think of for this book is propping up a table leg.

Up next, "Our Lady of the Flowers" by Jean Genet.  Things can only get better from here, can't they?

New Work Published: Pocketwatch Pixie and Safyre V2: Unfinished Business

 I've been working with author David Brzezinski for several years now, ever since I did the cover for his book "Battle for Berridor".  Since then, I've done at least one cover a year for him, as well as some interior and design work.

One of the things I like about David is that he makes publishing a family affair, getting his kids to co-author books with him turning out some good stories in the process.  Children Caleb and Faith Brzezinski have co-written such books as "Safyre" and "Angelina and the Egg", all of which are worth checking out.

This year, David and family have published two books at the same time, one with Caleb and one with Faith.  I have had the honor of doing covers for both, as well as interiors for one of them.

"Pocketwatch Pixie" by David and Faith Brzezinski is a young adult tale of a girl who finds a magical pixie trapped in a pocketwatch.  A good story for readers who like a little magic with their heroism, with a strong female presence in both the authorship and the story.  The cover for this one was a bit of a stretch for me, with some inspiration by the DC "Superhero Girls" series of novels.  I also did a few black and white interiors that were fun and I hope will be charming.

"Safyre 2: Unfinished Business" by Caleb and David Brzezinski is a followup to 2013's "Explosive Origins: Safyre Book 1".  It's the ongoing story of two super-powered teens and their fight to save their home, Titanium Falls from nefarious villains.  Somehow a peanut-shaped car and a portable black hole get involved.  Look, you're just going to have to read it.

For the cover for this one, I tried to tap into some Kirby vibes to get that "comin' at ya!" feeling, with some of Kirby's trippy sense of color.  No cinematic movie grading here, darnit!

These are fun books authored by people who are just enjoying the process of writing and publishing, and aside from the fact that I worked on both of them, I can't recommend them enough...this is the kind of stuff that young people...or just the young at heart...should be reading when they're reading just for the fun of it.

Strange Days Indeed or Things to Do in the Slowpocalypse

Actually, John Lennon fibbed a bit...people did tell me there'd be days like these.  Specifically, Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells,  George Stewart, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Pat Frank and  Margaret Atwood, just to name a few of the better ones.  But perhaps I'm being hyperbolic...I don't actually think we're headed into a new dark age where mysticism and superstition rules, identity is forbidden and some plucky Randian soul will have to rediscover the lightbulb...although the romantic in me is secretly thrilled at the prospect of getting to live out Rush's "2112".

What we are headed for is, among other things, record amounts of downtime as we enable the oxymoron of "social distancing" and shelter in place in our homes, apartments and hobbit holes of choice.  The results, on an individual level, will be record amounts of boredom and ennui and an almost Asimov's Solarian level of isolation.  In short, pretty much what I've been practicing my entire life.

Like a lot of people, I'm facing a lot of "involuntary vacation" time in the coming weeks.  However, I am taking a rather stoic approach to all this and choosing to see it as an opportunity to do some of the things I've put off for too long now.  To quote Shakespeare when he channelled Marcus Aurelius in Hamlet, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Fortunately, this is the best of all apocalypses in that we at least have internet while the world crumbles around us, and with that, there's some good folks out there willing to help me amuse myself to death (thank you Neil Postman!).  Here's just a few of the things I'll be enjoying in the coming weeks, presented for the edification and delight of anyone looking for some distraction. 

First and foremost, there's the Internet Archive.  I like these guys so much that I'm a regular financial contributor to them.  They are exactly the kind of resource we need at a time like this.  There are millions of books, movies, audio files, games and programs and other material available from their website.  I'm especially fascinated by their selection of magazines (they have the entire Warren archives!), particularly their Pulp Magazine Archive, where you can read scans of everything from Weird Tales to Fangoria to Amazing Stories magazine, with lots of diverting stops along the way.  In addition to all this, they have an extensive library of books on every topic imaginable, either free to read or free to borrow through their lending library service. 
In fact, they have just announced that in response to the current situation, they are suspending all waitlists on their lending library, making sure that the necessary books are going to be available to people who are stuck at home, especially to those students who will be studying at home and will require electronic resources to do so.
For an especially apt and timely read from their lending library, may I recommend Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History"?  It's a quick read that I've found very insightful in its broad overview of human history.
Or, if you're looking for something lighter, may I recommend "Eternal Lovecraft", an entertaining anthology of Lovecraftian stories, including some that are quite amusing.
Of course, if you've more video oriented, there's a lot of gold to be found in The VHS Vault, a vast collection of digitized VHS tapes from the golden age of home video.

On a more educational note, I will be enjoying and recommending the content at Open Culture,  Similar in intent to Internet Archive, Open Culture is a more curated collection of freely available material, including courses, book, audiobooks, images and movies.  True to their name, they definitely have a more cultural bent, highlighting such things as Patrick Stewart's one-a-day Shakespeare sonnet reading, lectures from the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Margaret Atwood, and Buckminster Fuller, and films by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and John Wayne. 

Open Culture is a great resource to do a deep dive into a topic that may have interested you for a while, but that you've never had time to explore.  Personally, I've been meaning to get to the films by Andrei Tarkovsky, especially Stalker and Solaris, and I'll probably get to those this weekend.  It may also be a great time to take in some art lectures, especially the Digital Photography course available from Harvard.

For those wanting to spend more time consuming something fun to take their minds off all the bad news circulating right now, I'd also recommend the Digital Comic Museum.  It's a fantastic place to read all those wonderful comics of yesteryear that have entered the public domain.  There's work in there by some of the masters, including Eisner, Frazetta, Bob Iger and Reed Crandall, among many others.

Naturally, I'll be spending some time just vegging out with some video as well.  Aside from the offerings from Youtube, which is an attention hole like no other, there's some great genre classics available from Shout Factory, including a ton of MST3K material.  For anyone who uses Kodi, there's a legal and official Shout Factory add-on for that app that will give you access to their catalog.
Same goes for Tubi TV, which has enough B-movies and action/horror/sci-fi flicks to while away many an hour when you need to turn off the real world.
Being the horror fanatic that I am, I'll probably also be checking out the free trial from Shudder, if only to see what's available there.  I already subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime, so I probably won't want another subscription in these tightened belt times, but I am curious to see their selection.

Finally, and biggest of all for me, while I'm not working I'm going to be looking forward to....working.
I've got the strips for the next Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit.  I've got inking jobs to do and sample pages for a comic book proposal.  I've got personal projects to work on that will keep me busy for quite a while yet.
In anticipation of my income decreasing even further, I've decided to try my hand at editing other people's writing.  To that end I'm currently reading the Chicago Manual of Style to learn how to do this at something like a professional level.  I know that's probably like saying that I'm reading the dictionary, but in a weird way, I'm enjoying this book more than most fiction books I've read in the past year.  I guess I've always had a closet grammar nerd in me.  Anyway, give me a hot minute to finish this blunderbuss of a book, and I'll be ready to proofread and edit your documents into something like a publishable format.  I expect to be slow and imperfect at first, but to get better with practice, so I'm going to take my time and ramp up with some easy work.  There could be a lot of potential in work like this, and if nothing else, it will be fun (to a certain value of "fun"). 


I'm sure there's a ton more resources out there...lots of creative folks and publishers are making work freely available in response to this situation.  Feel free to leave a comment with your favorites to share them with other readers. 
Also, although it may be difficult at a time like this, don't forget that most of these services run on voluntary donations from users so if you can, give them a little bit of support.  Every little bit helps, especially at a time like this.

Stay safe.  Stay home, as much as you can.  And do what you can to make this time enjoyable.

Reading the Unreadable #6: The Female Man by Joanna Russ

To be honest, I'm not even sure why this one made the list of most challenging books.  The site I pulled this information from claims that it's due to the change in narrator and shifts in time and place, but honestly, it sounds like the compiler of this list just hadn't read much science fiction.  While the changes in viewpoint may be a bit confusing for a beginning reader, there's enough context clues to make it clear who's narrating, and the overarching themes of the book are much more important than the setting.
The work itself is a feminist examination of gender roles as seen from the perspective of characters from parallel earths, each with a vastly different cultural development.  As such, it is less rabid than, say, Thomas Berger's "Regiment of Women" but more aggressive than Octavia Butler's "Dawn".  Given that, perhaps the most challenging thing about this novel is it's approach to looking at gender norms.  Unfortunately, looking at it from the perspective of a somewhat liberal-minded reader in the 21st Century makes the ideas in this book seem somewhat dated.  While I'm sure the problems that Russ attempts to discuss here still exist in some forms, she writes from a milieu that no longer exists as such (at least not in Western society), and that makes the novel's approach less immediately relevant.  Not invalid, mind you, but rather separated from the modern context. 
To me, that's a shame, because the form of this novel is a fantastic one for an entertaining examination of a philosophical and cultural problem.  One of my favorite tropes in science fiction is the idea of the examination of modern life from the alien perspective, and Russ accomplishes that rather neatly while managing to make human beings themselves the aliens to their own world...or a form of it.  It's an approach that allows for a deep dive into the fallacies of culture and our perceptions of "how the world works".  This is a work that could stand to be updated to the modern context.  If ever there was an argument for rewriting a novel the same way we remake movies with new technology, this book is it.  Of course, I don't know that any other author could do Russ's voice justice without sounding like pastiche, and unfortunately, Ms. Russ passed away in 2011.  Perhaps a more current author like Nalo Hopkinson or N. K. Jemisin could get around to doing their own thing with this idea.  Perhaps they - or someone - already have; I haven't read enough to say for certain. 
All I know is that of all the books on this list so far, this is probably the one I would most recommend to other readers looking to expand their literary horizons a little.

Up next, "Being and Time" by Martin Heidegger.  This one promises to be a bit heavy, even for one with my philosophical bent.  According to Amazon, it's 610(!) pages, so I may see you back here by the end of the year.

Reading the Unreadable #5: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

"Gravity's Rainbow" is less a novel than it is a test of patience.  More than any other book I've read, it belongs on the "unreadable" list, just for its sheer incomprehensibility.  Reading like a less coherent American version of Umberto Eco, this book makes me think of nothing so much as the Doonesbury cartoon in which Uncle Duke (Trudeau's stand-in for Hunter S. Thompson) sobers up enough to read an article he wrote while under the influence of whatever he was taking and comments "There's words on the page, but they could mean anything."

Taken line by line, or even scene by scene, Gravity's Rainbow is understandable.  Even, at spots, enjoyable.  I see elements in there that were clearly an influence on later writers, especially on some of the work of one of my favorites, Alan Moore (see his Cinema Purgatorio for examples of what I mean).  Stylistically, Pynchon has his stuff wired tight and clearly accomplishes whatever he set out to do, a laudable goal that apparently can only be known by him and his two closest friends.

However, any attempt (at least by me) to understand this book on any kind of larger scale is bound to be met with frustration.  Looking for any kind of bigger picture or overarching theme leaves one so quickly bewildered as to create a desire to go back to the aforementioned Mr. Eco for a light read.
I can see some of the ideas that Pynchon is developing here about the military industrial complex and the people who work within it, but pinning down any point that he's trying to make about those things is as futile as nailing jello to a wall.

Because, for me, the overarching questions of Gravity's Rainbow is "Why?" Not, "why do the events in this book happen, or happen as they do?" Nor "Why is this world that Pynchon writes about such a disordered mess?" But rather, "Why should anyone want to read this book?" and also, "Why would Pynchon ever write it?"
Maybe that's philistine of me.  Certainly, Wikipedia would have me believe that there's some overall sense to this thing.  Damned if I can see it though.  I mean, I'm no dummy....I've majored in English literature and done analytical study of great works from every major culture and time period, so I kid myself that I know how to read a book...but for the life of me, I can't see anything about this book that justifies its existence as anything other than a masturbatory paean to pointless self-indulgence.  I mean, if you write a book that's only understandable to a highly specific subset of the species, with very particular knowledge of a small point in time and space, and with apparent cultural, philosophical or spiritual relevance outside its own attempt at worldbuilding, with language and structure that shifts gears mid-sentence, occasionally dipping into deliberate attempts at profanity, racism and xenophobia, are you committing literature, or just word salad?
The most surprising thing about "Gravity's Rainbow" is that by some cultural fluke, it is considered among the top 100 novels of all time, when in any rational world it should be a classic of vanity press.  Perhaps this is a fine example of work that, like the paintings of Barnett Newman, is only considered important exactly because it is incomprehensible.

I don't know, and after spending several months hacking my way through this book, I don't care to find out.  The best thing about this book, to my eye, is that I never have to open it again.

Up next, we head into more familiar territory for me with Joanna Russ's "The Female Man".  I remember enjoying her "Picnic in Paradise" when I was in high school, so maybe this one will leave a better taste in my mouth.

AIM Comics Roundup!

Time for a quick roundup of what's available where.  Consider it a cheat card for finding everything from or related to AIM Comics!

AIM Comics flagship title is The Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit, an ongoing series collecting the webcomic by Ian McDonald.  Find it in a number of places, in a number of formats, depending on your preferred method of reading...

The first two volumes are available in both print and Kindle editions through Amazon, while volumes 3-7 are available on Amazon in print only (honestly, I really don't recommend the Kindle editions; they're just not formatted correctly, and I haven't had the time to fix them).  The best way to find them all is by searching "Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit' at the Amazon storefront for your country.

All seven volumes to date are also available through our DriveThru Comics storefront.  Honestly (again), if you're into reading digitally, this is the best choice right now, as your purchase here is a DRM-free pdf that is a much better price for you than the Kindle editions from Amazon.  Perfectly portable and readable on just about any device.
If you want to save even more money, you can buy the Brutal Blade Bundle from DriveThru.  It contains all issues except the most recent one at a special discount, and is updated each time we release a new volume.

Volume 1 (only!) of Brutal Blade is also available on Comixology.  This format is very user friendly, especially with their guided view.  The rest of the volumes will be up there eventually, as soon as we can get them approved.

If you want to take your enjoyment of Bruno the Bandit to the next level, you can also pick up the Bruno the Bandit Card Game from DriveThru.  Prove yourself the best thief in Rothland by stealing the most loot in one night in this easy to learn, fun to play card game that not only gets you an exclusive card featuring art by Ian McDonald, but also gives you a code to download a free copy of Volume 1 of Brutal Blade!

 

Also available in our DriveThru store are four issues of the comic "The Journals of Simon Pariah".  Although this comic is currently cancelled, these stories are each standalone and worth a read in their own right.  In fact, one of them, issue 1A is a free issue, done as a wordless tribute to the recently deceased Steve Ditko.

Speaking of free comics, don't forget to snag a copy of our other free book, "Why Comics", containing an article of the same name written for Blueline's Sketch magazine so many years ago, as well as my first (and so far only!) attempt at a 24 hour comic. Exclusively from DriveThru Comics!

Another DriveThru exclusive for those who can't get enough of my artwork (both of you!) is my portfolio book "Believable Illusions", containing a good sampling of the work I've done for a variety of publishers, including podcasts, album covers, and other comics publishers.  You can even order this one as a hardcover book if you really want to!

Not directly related to AIM Comics, but as an ongoing project in which I am involved, there is the game Dread Streets available at the DriveThru sister site Wargame Vault.  Dread Streets is a cinematic swashbuckling game that "lets you direct a swashbuckling movie, complete with ridiculous stunts, pirates, musketeers, freaks, drinking, brawling and lots of taunting." I designed the miniatures for this one, as well as a fair amount of art for the rulebook.  

For those who like superheroic goodness, one final thing I should mention is the "Powers vs. Power" series by Robin Reed.  There's three volumes in this series (so far!) available at Smashwords, each of which is a collection of stories about a group of young superheroes.  Your humble publisher did cover art for all three volumes.




That's it, until/unless I think of something else that should be here.  But stay tuned, as there's more work on the way!  Volume 8 of Brutal Blade will be released later this year, and there's a graphic novel project and another special illustrated volume that I'm keeping under wraps for now.  Keep an eye on AIM Comics, because there's good things to come!

Reading the Unreadable #3 - The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

I remember reading The Canterbury Tales for a 2nd year English Literature class when completing my university degree.  I mean, I don't actually REMEMBER any of the book, aside from the first couplet, but I do remember the ACT of reading the book.  So I...suppose?...I'm coming to this one with a little more grounding than the previous books.

Not that that made it any easier.

Chaucer in its original Middle English is literature for those readers who find Shakespeare's language too easy.  It's got just as much romance, drama and fart jokes as any classic English work of literature, but you've got to work a little harder to pick the sense out of it.  Spelling is inconsistent at best, and pronunciation and meter are often sacrificed rather bloodily for the sake of completing a rhyme.  There's time when I'm sure Chaucer (much like his literary successor Shakespeare) just said "To Hell with it!" and made up words out of whole cloth.
As in Shakespeare's work, there is also the same gathering of story sources and inspirations to make the work an accumulation of the archetypes for centuries of stories to follow.  I imagine that this cultural aggregation into one source material goes a long way to explain the longevity of this work.  That, and the fart jokes.

The interesting thing about The Canterbury Tales is that it's actually less than half of a completed work.  Apparently the plan was to make this much longer by having more stories from other characters, and then to have at least a second story from each pilgrim on their way back from their pilgrimage.  However, in a move that, as a creator, I can completely identify with, Chaucer did not plan his time well and envisioned a work beyond the scope of the time available to him.  In the ultimate show of artistic laziness, he had the temerity to go and die before finishing the book.
So we never do get to find out who won that free meal, but we do get some good stories along the way.

I'm not sure how much the order of the stories was invented by later compilers of Chaucer's work, but in the version that I read, I get a growing sense of literary moralizing as the book progresses.  In the early stages Chaucer, like any good author, hooks his readers in with tales revolving around lust, licentiousness, the aforementioned fart jokes, and generally bad behavior.  However, later stories lean more heavily on morally instructive content, ending up with the sermon/screed that is The Parson's Tale.  Without knowing more about his motives for writing, I can't help but wonder if his intent was to create a work that would appeal to a general audience yet be religious instruction in disguise.  Sort of like inserting PSA's into an episode of Benny Hill.

Regardless, it's an amusing book, and in the end not that difficult to read.  Of course, I'm cheating a bit, having read Beowulf in Old English.  Your mileage may vary.

Up next is a novel I have actually been looking forward to, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude".  I've been wanting to dive into this book since learning of its influence on Los Bros. Hernandez's "Love and Rockets", and now I've got a good excuse to do so.

Don't forget to follow along on Twitter as I comment on my reading progress on a more or less daily basis.

Now Available: Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit Vol. 7!!!

Available at last!  Volume 7 of The Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit, collecting more great stories from the archives of Ian McDonald's popular webcomic. 

BRING ON THE LADIES! The women of Rothland take center stage in this latest volume, and they’re all ready to show Bruno who’s boss! Whether it’s former fame vampire Ella, Bruno’s cuter-than-cute daughter Delorus, the amorous Xantippa, or feisty sidekick Fiona, they all put Bruno in his place in “Bruno’s Queen”. Later, there’s the distant chimes of wedding bells as some of our “Couples” set themselves up to get hitched! Meanwhile, Bruno’s parents take a trip down a convoluted memory lane. Finally, the Mother Confuser helps Bruno find out whether Ricardo Aisa really is the good kind in “The Good Guy”. To top it all off, you get a peek behind the creative process in “Rough Strips”. Settle in for another wild ride as the women show the men how it’s done, and once again, some of the best comics on the web become some of the funniest comics in self-publishing.

Brutal Blade Vol. 7 is now available in print on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, and in digital at DriveThru Comics.  Get it now!

Reading the Unreadable - #1: Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

When I committed myself to reading the most unreadable books, I didn't foresee that I would be sorely challenged from the very outset to make it to the end of one of these things.  Never has a book filled me with the desire to give up out of such utter frustration as has "Finnegan's Wake".  However, I am nothing if not stubborn, and although it feels like it took half my life, I made it to the end.  Although I'm sure this stream of consciousness writing will resonate with me for quite some time.
I'm not going to say that I understand even a tenth of Finnegan's Wake; I don't have the nerve or the energy to support that kind of lie.
But then, I don't think understanding is what Finnegan's Wake is meant for.  This is not a story in the traditional sense, whatever else it may be.
For me, reading Finnegan's Wake was something of a Zen experience.  Koan-like, I was only able to make any kind of progress when I stopped looking for meaning.  The secret to this book is to treat it as an utterly numinous experience, read it at a normal reading pace in spite of its lack of coherence and appreciate the form, rhythm, and - at times- the sheer ludicrousness of the book.
Joyce's style famously combines stream of consciousness with a Shakespeare-like facility for inventing words and all manner of puns, spoonerisms and malapropisms into a work that seems, ultimately, to be an exercise in form.  It defies meaning while maintaining a structure that implies and promises that very meaning.  In so doing, it causes the reader to question how it is that meaning is taken from anything.  Just as a reading of Freud or Barthe can force a psychological or symbolic interpretation of nearly anything, so does Joyce's work here cause a metaphysical analysis of literary form, literature and ultimately language itself.  Like the old trick of repeating a common word until it loses all meaning, this book deconstructs the meaning of all its words in order to examine the meaning behind all words. 
Finnegan's Wake is considered a great novel, in spite of so few people having actually read it. It would be glib to say that people consider it great because they don't understand it, but in truth, it is that lack of understanding in spite of the reading that makes the novel great.
That and the fact that James Joyce took 17 years of his life to create a work of utter nonsense, of course.

Disagree with me?  I'd be happy to hear about it.  Leave a comment and tell me why I'm wrong.
Also, be sure to check out the AIM Comics Twitter feed; I've been posting thoughts on this book as I read it, and will continue to do so for the rest of the books in this series.
See you next time when I attempt Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury".  Wish me luck.

Reading the Unreadable

I have several concurrent problems that gelled together in an odd way for me.

I am a voracious reader.  To say that I read a lot is like saying that Niagara Falls is bit damp.  Thanks to e-reading apps and services like Project Gutenberg, Kindle and Archive.org, I am never without a library of books on my person, and will whip out a book at the slightest provocation, regardless of context or company.
That's not the problem.  The problem is that lately I've found a lot of my reading is rather pointless.  I tend to stick to the same genres - horror, science fiction, true crime, with a smattering of fantasy - with a slight ratio of nonfiction so I don't feel like I'm completely wasting my time.  After a while, the titles, characters and plots all sort of run together so that none of it sticks, and very little of it stands out.  I can't help but think that something that takes so much of my attention should have a little more meaning - or at least direction - behind it.
 A related problem is that I have a long list of "someday" books that I've been meaning to get to - books that I know I should read but always pass over in favor of something much easier and much more disposable and forgettable.  I've no doubt that these books will prove enlightening in some way, but always seem to be less entertaining and more difficult to process.
Less related are the problems of social media and attempting to supply content for a website/blog.  I have accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr that hardly see any use, like I've shown up for the party but have decided to just stand in the corner all night, nursing an Aquafina and admiring the wall art.  Additionally, the AIM Comics blog hardly ever sees updates any more, due to the slow production cycle of just about anything I am not being directly paid for.

So, partly inspired by the great rereads I follow on Tor.com, partly by some comments about Gravity's Rainbow heard in a recent Marc Maron podcast, and by my own lack of literary intertia, I've decided to challenge myself to read the unreadable....to conquer the important bits of my "Someday" pile by reading the books that are considered to be the most challenging to even experienced readers.  The books that everybody talks about, but no one has read, or at least not finished.  I'm going to take a run at them, provide some direction to my reading habit and broaden my literary horizons in one fell swoop.

More than just that, I'm going to commit the possibly unforgivable crime of doing this in public (gasp!).  I plan to tweet about the books as I read them, and to write up commentaries about them here as I finish them.  The idea is that the process will give a little bit of accountability to this habit I'm trying to change, and hopefully provide some interesting reading for others at the same time.

If this goes well, I might be inspired to do some of the other heavy reads I've been planning, such as the complete works of Robert E. Howard and Isaac Asimov, just to name a couple.

So if you're interested in finding out what I think of Finnegan's Wake, or Gravity's Rainbow, or a host of other "unreadable" books, be sure to follow me in (more or less) real time on Twitter, check out my posts on this site, or follow me on Facebook.  Feel free to post comments to tell me how I've missed the point of each book (I never said I was going to UNDERSTAND these books!) or how I should go back to Little Golden Books, or (less likely) how the depth of my insight has opened your eyes to new vistas of literature and inspired you to shout James Joyce's name from the rooftops.

Speaking of James Joyce, I'll be starting with "Finnegan's Wake", so we've got that to look forward to.  There may or may not be whiskey involved in the reading process.  Follow along and see if I can manage to hold it together enough to get through this exercise.