Category Archives: ART
TAO OF McCLOUD
A single Q&A with Scott McCloud from a Reddit AMA
bc: Hi Scott!
I must say I find it very noble that you don’t run around the comics industry throwing copies of Reinventing Comics at people yelling “I told you so! I told you so!” Though I know you’re skeptical about your own prescience, and haven’t seemed to have embraced digital distribution very much for your own comics. How do you see the concept of Reinventing Comics 15 years later? Also, maybe enjoy this ridiculousness! A comic I made and gave to you about 10 years ago, when you were at a store signing in Delaware, during a snow storm: MUTATING COMIX
Scott McCloud: (Great op art image there! Thanks. :)
There are plenty of things that I didn’t anticipate in Reinventing Comics like the importance of crowdfunding. And some of the rosy predictions that I made, which might’ve seemed prescient in 2010, could look sadly premature by 2020 if basic safeguards like Net Neutrality are murdered in the crib.
We’re really making some great progress in other areas though. Diversity of genre, gender balance, institutional support, public perception, the literary and artistic successes of the last 15 years… Those different revolutions that I wrote about are almost all on track!
BONUS! Back in 2021, I tried to google a phrase and the only result was from me 12 years ago talking w/ Scott McCloud, of which I have zero memory :)))
REINCARCERATED PARTS BOYZ
Once upon a whatchamacallit, MC BEN and I were posted up at the parts counter at Baker Jeep Eagle, whiling the day away on the early internet, probably blasting The Pretty Tony Album, when JEFF HARRIS burst into the scene bragging about his amazing mystical powers!
In this case, he was claiming to have mastered the art of reincarnation, such that he could come back in whatever form he wished.
He’d been clinically dead once before, IIRC, though the story shifted back and forth between him being shot in the head and a car accident that sent his head crashing into the dashboard radio. In either case, he was left with an indent in the center of his forehead that gave the impression of an anti third eye, and a predisposition towards seizures. An early archetype of Blvd mythology.
He once gave me puppy dog eyes while trying to convince me to come smoke crack with him and a sex worker in the side bathroom. When I very politely declined his generous offer he pouted for the rest of the day. Then the next day he pulled a knife on me, threatening to cut me up if I ever engaged in that very same activity that the day before he begged me to indulge in. This isn’t inconsistent behavior, of course, just multidimensional characterization :)))
So when a twice born dark prophet claims to have mastered the endless cycle of death & rebirth, you might as well hear him out!
I figured I’d put him to the task of solving the central mystery of Indian Religion & Philosophy:
“What if you don’t want to come back at all?”
Without hesitation, he exclaimed: “Follow me!”
We walked out into the back lot, and he pointed down at the asphalt:
“See that right there?”
The only thing I could see was a small, insignificant pebble.
“This?” I said, holding up the little rock.
He smiled, nodded, and walked away.
I’m 99% sure he was just doing a bit, but on the other hand, I kinda maybe got his point…
BEHOLD THE SOPHIC HYDROLITH!
“You hear what you want to hear, but you believe what you know!”
– JEFF HARRIS
[WILL INSERT AUDIO OF JH’S STORY ABOUT THE FOGHAT CONCERT ONCE I FIND IT]
PUNK ROCK PROM 2002
