Category Archives: METAHEADCANON

JRJR vs. MR. T

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A Skeleton Key to THE DRAGON’S GIFT

While I was waiting in a super long line to get a sketch from John Romita Jr. a nice old man struck up a convo with me about comics. He asked me about my favorite characters and stories, which at the time were Spider-Man all the way. So we talked extensively about all things web-headed while the line slowly moved forward. Eventually he would shake my hand and wish me well, then he walked behind the table and sat down to start a signing session. Wait, what? Lo and behold that whole time I was talking to Jazzy Johnny himself! John Romita Sr., what a nice guy :)))

So now it’s time to get my sketch from JRJR and I requested a drawing of Wolverine, which he sketched out first in rapid pencil lines, creating a faint image of Wolverine chomping on a cigar.

As he’s drawing he keeps yelling things across the aisle.

He then switches over to a marker to ink his Wolverine sketch while his yelling across the aisle becomes more frequent and much louder. Then I notice an absolutely unmistakable voice is screaming back! It turns out I’m stuck in the middle of a shouting match between JRJR & Mr. T!

I can’t really tell if they’re joking or not! JRJR is cracking up the whole time, so probably? Maybe? IDK!

JRJR is yelling to Mr. T that actually he is the one who is a fool, contrary to popular belief, and that JRJR, in fact, pities Mr. T.
A dubious claim to be sure!

I walked away with my super awesome Wolverine sketch and not sure what to make of anything anymore :)))

Additional contextual support for THE DRAGON’S GIFT

1.) IMAGE SUCKS

My neighbor was a super big time comic book collector. One of those guys that would buy 3-5 copies of EVERYTHING that came out on a weekly basis, and boasted a comic collection of hundreds of thousands of issues, with complete collections of numerous big name titles. He also had a subscription to the Comic Buyers Guide, which in those days was printed like a newspaper and delivered bi-weekly through the mail. After he was finished with it he’d pass it along to me, and I loved it!

To a 12 year old it felt like I was getting a real look behind the curtain at the workings of the industry. Probably mostly it was advertisements and public relations, mixed in with some genuine heartfelt fandom. In any case, I loved it, esp Peter David’s “But I digress…” column.

CBG was, generally speaking, not particularly crazy about Image Comics.

Back in those days the creation of Image was defined in much different terms than it is today. These days the creation of Image is rightfully celebrated as a revolutionary victory for creators’ rights. But that wasn’t the discussion I was hearing back then, so far as I knew, Image was about writers vs. artists & style vs. substance.

The Image stance, from what I understood, was that the art was more important than the story, which I very much disagreed with! And my experience of those early Image books was, sure it looks cool, but the stories are so dumb.

At Comicfest ’93 Peter David & Todd McFarlane participated in “The Great Debate” which I didn’t attend, but assumed was in regards to this disharmony between writers and artists.

Though actually the debate was about whether Image had been treated fairly by the media.

The fact that I had no clue at the time that Image had anything to do with creators’ rights suggests maybe they were not treated fairly after all.

Maybe I was being fed bad info from a comics media with a vested interest in maintaining corporate hegemony?

Or maybe I was a kid who misread the situation?

Or maybe there actually was a genuine antagonism between some artists and some writers in the industry, which the creation of Image exacerbated?

Most likely a heady mixture of all of the above and then some!

So basically, when I said “Image sucks” I thought I was saying that I valued substance over style, but it turns out not to have been so simple :)))

2.) MY HAT

In the comic I am sporting an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, which by itself is pretty unremarkable, but at the con itself caused quite a commotion, because this event happened to coincide with the Philadelphia Phillies playing against the Atlanta Braves in the 1993 NLCS.

I came by my Braves fandom somewhat honestly, with a step brother from Georgia, and my Dad’s cable service only coming with 10 channels, 1 of them being TBS. The Braves were on TV every goddamn day and I was lured in by their winning ways. Also, at school, it was considered pretty dorky to root for the home team, and it was much preferred to have your own team.

Wearing a Braves cap at that time & place was considered treason, probably especially with the ’93 Phils being so super cool & beloved that their legend has only grown in the decades that have followed.

The Phillies would go on to beat the Braves 4 games to 2 and advance to the World Series. So the last laugh was def on me!

3.) The Comics

The original Savage Dragon mini-series, at that point in time, was pretty damn expensive. All 3 issues were def wall books at Comicmania, my local comic book shop.  All told Larsen’s gift probably cost him at least $25, which seemed like a fortune to a 12 year old in 1993.

Also, now that I think about it, this experience almost certainly led directly to this one.

PSYCHONAUT COMIX #2

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Take another candy-colored head trip through koan-fusing adaptations of psychedelic memes, both ancient & modern, in this magically curated comix collection!

Come explore the outer reaches of inner space! #FINDTHEOTHERS :)))

FREE DOWNLOAD

King Mob in Philadelphia

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An accounting of GM Magic


I met Grant Morrison briefly at a signing in Philadelphia in 2002.  I was 21, hungover, sleep deprived, and rather well in tune w/ the dune. (This being the day after the first Punk Rock Prom on Madison Drive.) I’d brought a small collection of my comix to show them, which I clutched nervously.

I was trying to think of ways to communicate quickly and clearly that I was hip to real arcane shit. My skepticism about the explanatory power of a few short words, esp. in matters zen, led me to briefly entertain the harebrained notion that the body language of a hearty *THUMBS UP* might somehow be the ticket.  As the line shuffled forward I decided the more practical approach would be to ask them if they read Robert Anton Wilson.

Along my way to the front of the line my shyness and introversion also changed my mind about showing them my comix.  Which suddenly seemed like a stupid and embarrassing thing to do.

Frank Quietly was at the signing too, parked right next to GM.  I got to him first and gave him a copy of Earth 2 to sign. While exchanging pleasantries w/ FQ I heard someone say, “Did you make these?”

I look over and Grant Morrison is happily flipping through the comix I had decided not to give them!

Mind you, I was in a few altered states at the time, but my genuine experience was/is of having no clue when/how they got those comix.

They were indeed a reader of Robert Anton Wilson, succinct encouragement for my work was offered, they signed my copy of Animal Man #26, and off I went.

Though just as I was stumbling away I heard a booming voice call “Oi!”

I turn around and GM is beaming a huge grin and pointing at the hand lettered title block on one of the comix I gave them:

“SUBURBAN LEGEND COMIX: Sort of like Alan Moore before he stopped selling drugs and read all them books”

Thence they gave me an enthusiastic *THUMBS UP*

A few months later GM opened up a short lived website for their new creator owned work, wherein I had a cringe inducing fan letter published, with the following generous response from Morrison, reproduced here in its original glowing red :)))

YOU AND YOUR KIND ARE THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS ME SLOSHING FORWARD THROUGH THE SILT OF TIME.

THERE’S ONLY ONE GENERATION. I’M GLAD TO SEE THAT IT NEVER DIES

SEE ALSO

The Great Escape

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A Skeleton Key to CAGLIOSTRO THE GREAT

Drawing Hugh Crane / Cagliostro the Great as both a prisoner and a stage magician was mostly just a straight forward attempt to visually summarize the character as depicted in RAW’s Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy.

Though as my scribbling progressed I came to notice that this imagery also held personal meaning as a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for how I was feeling with my job as a Graphic Designer & Pre-Press Tech for a direct marketing firm.

It’s a pretty brutal gig in terms of soul crushing drudgery, a pure Rushkoffian nightmare, with constant & unreasonable deadlines, always on call responsibilities, and a pandemic related reduction in staff that saw my department reduced from 4 down to just me.

Though by and large, all of the people at the company, all the way up and down the corporate ladder, are entirely lovely and brilliant people. The people are beautiful, just trapped in the ruthless system of a genuinely tough business.

For the most part the job involves working with really big brands, some of which I’m happy to work with, and others decidedly less so. The credit card companies are the toughest to rationalize, though they’re somewhat balanced out by civil rights groups and some of the better charity organizations.

When rumors began circulating that we might get work from the Trump campaign I panicked and scrapped together an emergency back up plan, just in case they were true. It would have been a reckless and messy exit, but the rationalizations have to end somewhere. The rumors turned out to be untrue, or at least the deal went unsealed.

My back up plan was sincere, but impractical, the beatings continued but morale did not improve…

On particularly bad days I would stay up late applying for jobs somewhere, anywhere else. Though TBH the pure volume of work burned me out pretty good, and with most places still shut down from the pandemic, a feeling of hopeless resignation set in.

When I drew Hugh Crane as a prisoner I was drawing this resignation.

I was trapped, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still make at least some magic, right?

2 days after I finished my drawing of CAGLIOSTRO THE GREAT – The prisoner, magician, mystic, escape artist, 2 things happened.

We received a project from Trump JR. & I got an email alert that my old teaching position was available.

I used to teach high school computer science in North Philadelphia. The job did not pay well enough to keep me afloat, which is how I ended up where I was.

Before I know what’s what, I’m being offered the same money I’m making at the current gig to return to my teaching position. How can I say no? IDK, bc I didn’t!

Just like that, I give my notice to the once inescapable prison that I’m leaving, and start a new life, closer to the heart.

Cagliostro says 10 people that know what he knows would be very formidable indeed, now I don’t know if I know what he knows, but I’ve just started my second week of teaching 500 7th-12th graders what I know, and that ain’t nothing to sneeze at!

N.B. I don’t think they necessarily mean it as a compliment nor an insult, but there is a strange consensus amongst students, across multiple years, grades and classes, that I remind them of Spider-Man / Peter Parker. They tell me this multiple times a week, not knowing that this is exactly the vibe I’ve been shooting for since I was like 8 years old. My class is a pretty easy A, bc with great power comes great responsibility :)))

PARTS UNKNOWN

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A SKELETON KEY TO GOOD OLD EARTH

Around the time this comic takes place my Mom took me to Delaware Park to meet the Ultimate Warrior, we had to wait in line for like 7 hours in sweltering heat, but it was everything to me as a kid.

(If you google the Ultimate Warrior you’re likely to find some unfortunate opinions the actor who played him expressed, none of which were a part of his character, which remains a figure of extreme mystery, hailing from Parts Unknown.)

It’s kinda funny, given the whole darn point of this comic, how much I genuinely struggled to get it done. With no hint of irony, I basically re-lived the experience of becoming hopelessly frustrated with the creative process, to the point that I actually intended to scrap the whole thing numerous times. The only thing that saved it was that since I was working digitally the files remained on my computer and every few months I would stumble across them and revisit the wreckage to see if there was anything I could salvage. This process went on for 3 years. 3 YEARS! All over 4 simple pages.

So as much as I was remembering, and trying to share, this lesson that my mom taught me, I was also having to prove that I’d actually learned it, which wasn’t as easy as I assumed it would be.

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

I like using coincidence as a creative guide, because it feels like it opens up the process to something bigger than just my conscious imagination. For example, I was either going to give my Mom a Black Sabbath or a Simon & Garfunkel t-shirt to wear, (Her 2 fav bands) and just as I was about to commit one way or the other, a Simon & Garfunkel song started playing on a TV show I had on in the background. The TV show was The Leftovers and the song was featured in an emotionally climactic/pivotal moment.

So that pretty much settled that, because all things being otherwise equal between the 2 choices, it’s fun to let synchronicity tip the scales.

Though this set off another line of thinking, because the comic was already called “GOOD OLD EARTH” with “Old Earth” being Wu Tang slang for “Mom”, but now I’m thinking do I go with a Simon & Garfunkel reference for the title? Or maybe something from Black Sabbath, in a have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too kinda way? So I begin to scour song titles and lyrics for appropriate fragments to pull for a new title, and as I’m doing so, while having no luck whatsoever, sure enough in the background The Leftovers features a Wu Tang Clan song in a completely goofy and improbable scene. I stopped my search immediately and let the title stand.

DOVE STA MEMORIA

I long ago stole RAW’s use of “Dove Sta Memoria” as my go to epitaph, as “rest in peace” irks me as being overused to the point of meaninglessness. “Where Memory Lives” seems a more profound sentiment to me. Memory being the tricky, emotional, chaotic thing it is.

My mom had a tough life, especially her last few years, and after she died there weren’t many comforting words passed around about it, except from my older brother. Though my Uncle John, her older brother, managed to get something through the emotional maelstrom. “Remember the good times,” he told me. I was irritated when he said it, because I was a jaded and traumatized 12 year old, and it felt like an easy cookie cutter thing to say. But this story is what I remembered when he said that, and it was something I held on to. It must have been difficult to try to say anything to me at all, at that time, the circumstances being what they were, let alone something helpful, so it turns out he kinda nailed it.

Autobio comics bring in another level of trickery too, because I’ve learned through experience that adapting memories into comix comes with something of a cost. The memory gets partially overwritten by the adaptation. You lose the fuzzy edges and specific inexpressible ambiguities. The memory of the event and the memory of the comic fuse together in a weird amalgam.

I first noticed this in “I was a Teenage Six Million Dollar Party Horse.” An autobio comic about my being saved from a self destructive spiral by a compassionate homeless man. When I was working on the comic I was drawing the man’s face from memory, but now if I try to remember his face I can only see the comic version.

It’s a trade off. You get to have your memory transformed into an objective and shareable medium, but also you lose some of what made it yours.

(I think The Never-ending Story 2 has a bit about this, I remember it scaring me as a kid, though I can’t quite remember the details, which seems appropriate.)

In closing, The Leftovers is a great show, and I highly recommend it :)))

TRIXINE FOREVER

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Casey Grabowski, CEO of the TRIXINE CHEMICAL CORP, is a creative genius! As a musician, artist, publisher, community organizer, and civil engineer, he’s been a vital force behind the cultural and physical infrastructure that makes our community work and grow.

I’ve seen the impossible work that he put into publishing a free and widely distributed representation of DE/Philly DIY culture, the Tric Zine, and the wonderful annual festival that it spawned, the Philly Zine Fest. Casey created a platform where unheard voices could be discovered, amplified, and celebrated. Not merely in the cacophonous echo chamber of the internet either! Casey did his building IRL.

I’ve also seen Casey be the smartest person in the room as critical decisions were made in how to prevent flooding, groundwater contamination, the collapse of Delaware’s waste disposal systems, etc, etc.

These are the kinds of things that are easy to take for granted. That young artists should have a venue to develop their talent. That toxic chemicals shouldn’t seep into our drinking water. That a community should have a vibrant culture outside of the mainstream pipeline. That your waste should be safely disposed of when you flush the toilet.

None of these things are guaranteed, they are maintained through the miraculous work of incredible forces, such as Casey Grabowski.

Speaking from personal experience, Casey was the first publisher to print and distribute my art to an audience outside of Newark, DE. He found some of the guerrilla art I’d been leaving around the University of Delaware campus and published it in the Tric Zine, much to my surprise and delight. He then invited me to join the Tric Zine in an editorial capacity, teaching me the technical/business side of self publishing along the way. Skillsets that I have been benefiting from ever since, providing me with a trade, that eventually would become my career. Also, upon finding out I was working a minimum wage job at an auto repair shop, he immediately procured me a better paying job at the engineering and architectural firm he worked at. I don’t think it even occurred to him that he was doing something “nice,” but rather to him, in his capacity as an optimizing force, he was just doing what he does.

I think it can be difficult to express gratitude for the invisible forces that support us, because to give thanks to that which we depend on, is to admit that we might one day lose those necessities. A harsh truth that gets conveniently lost in the hustle and bustle of daily life.

Pushing back against this complacency, for whatever it’s worth, I’d like to express my infinite gratitude to Casey Grabowski, and the selflessness that he embodies, may it live forever & ever, in and around us all, connecting the latest & greatest big picture dots, in better & better ways.

P.S. Just as I finished typing this all out, with almost supernatural timing, my phone lit up with the news that Casey had passed away, but I think the verbs should remain in the present tense, in honor of that unstoppable force, DOVE STA MEMORIA.

bc
1/17/19

TRIALOGUES

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I find the series of TRIALOGUES conducted between Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and Ralph Abraham endlessly fascinating. I have listened with inflamed imagination to their discussions ad infinitum, finding them thus far inexhaustibly thought provoking.

For the most complete collection (42+ hours) of their discussions I refer you to Rupert Sheldrake’s Trialogues Archive.

Though before I try to sell you on the deep cuts, let’s parade out the hits:

METAMORPHOSIS: CAST OF CHARACTERS

TRIALOGUES AT THE EDGE OF THE MILLENNIUM – June 6, 1998
Part 1: SHELDRAKE
Part 2: MCKENNA
Part 3: ABRAHAM

As perhaps one of the world’s biggest fans of this material, I dreamed the dream of getting to actively participate in the discussion, and in my own silly way, via e-mail, got to do just that.

from: Bobby Campbell weirdoverse@gmail.com
to: Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake
date: Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 1:47 PM
subject: Hello again, Ralph & Rupert!

Dear Sirs,

In regards to Morphic Resonance, and if I’m to understand Einstein
correctly that forces result from geometry, might the force that
results from the peculiar geometry of the subatomic void/plenum
provide the impetus for form et al?

with great regard,

bob campbell

———————————————————————————————

from: Ralph Abraham
to: Bobby Campbell
date: Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 6:39 PM
subject: Re: Hello again, Ralph & Rupert!

that certainly seems reasonable … however,
in the usual models for the quantum vacuum,
there is no intrinsic geometry
rather, geometry emerges from the plenum

eg, see this (if you have not already)
http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%23119.Fuzzylumps/

thanks for writing
ralph

———————————————————————————————

from: Rupert Sheldrake
to: Bobby Campbell
date: Tue, Feb 5, 2008 at 7:26 PM
subject: Re: Hello again, Ralph & Rupert!

Dear Bob,

I don’t know if I understand Einstein correctly so I can’t judge if you do. But I think if there were some simple answer like this that arose from the physics we’d probably know about it by now.

Best wishes

Rupert

Classic Sheldrake!

I’d like to note that Ralph’s link sent me down a particularly luminescent rabbit hole, the fruits of which went straight into my weirdo comic series “AGNOSIS!”

Oh! and check out: The World Wide Web and the Millennium
A talk by Terence McKenna & Ralph Abraham from August 1, 1998 which somehow remains more relevant and insightful about the internet than most contemporary media theory.

Greetings from the View Askewniverse!

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A cumulative review of Jay & Silent Bob Reboot (2019)

I had the great fortune to score a golden ticket to the first stop of the Jay & Silent Bob Reboot Roadshow in Asbury Park, NJ, close enough to the birthplace of Kevin Smith’s cinematic universe.

To say that I enjoyed the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is something of an understatement, not only did I find it to be an awesome, hilarious, and surprisingly reflective movie, but it truly and honestly changed my idea of what art can be.

Now for context, I’m a pretty big Kevin Smith fan, so you can add however many grains of salt you wish, but do please hear me out on the unique mark Smith has left on the medium of film, regardless of what you think of his message.

Being a 15 year old comic book fanboy in 1996 meant that I was on an ineluctable collision course with VHS copies of Clerks & Mallrats. These were cultural touchstones aimed straight at my forehead, and when they hit I did indeed become a bit obsessed. Enough so that I began poking around on this new communication tool called the internet, and ended up on the View Askew Message Board, where there was this whole community of people that were into this stuff too. Not only that but people who actually worked on the movies were there too, even the writer/director himself. I once asked him if he thought Warner Brothers would have let him keep all the casual swearing in his Superman Lives script, he replied that he didn’t know. A silly, almost substanceless exchange, but under the surface it was a paradigm shift of epic proportions, for the first time ever, the TV talked back to me.

Something that has become more clear with 25 years of hindsight is the folk hero nature of Kevin Smith’s appeal. He’s this suburban legend who risked all and somehow won. He escaped the soul crushing drudgery of the daily grind with his DIY outsider art. And for me, the 15 year old from Delaware, 10 minutes outside of NJ, he was the local boy making good. Not only that, but he was encouraging everyone else to make good as well.

I remember reading the script for Dogma before Chasing Amy even came out, and almost immediately starting my own script afterwards, because it seemed so fun, and accessible, and just why the hell not?

When I was 16 I tried to drive to Red Bank to go to Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash in my 72 Cutlass Supreme, with MapQuest directions printed off the internet, but I got crazy lost and ended up in NYC, a proper teenaged misadventure. I wouldn’t make it to Red Bank until 4 years later for one of the Vulgarthon Film Festivals in 2000. As the giant crowd shuffled into the theater Kevin Smith was there to greet us all with a hand shake, it was pretty cool. At the end of each film there was a Q & A session populated by cast and crew. Clerks is a good enough movie on it’s own, but to then add the experience of sitting in a room with the people who made it and ask them how they got the cat to shit on cue? Kino-Pravda!

Around this time a new facet of Silent Bob’s talents began to emerge, his gift of gab. Smith can talk a great game, as heard on his movies’ commentary tracks, the “Evening With” stand up specials, and then especially his podcasts. His unique capacity for candor make his yarn spinning especially captivating and illuminating. I don’t know if he even knows it, but the dude is basically a free art school professor, elucidating with ease how the sausage gets made, from soup to nuts. (You could go farther and fare worse than simply following Smith’s optimistic ‘fortune favors the bold’ approach to creativity.)

The podcasts he made before, during, and after the filming of Red State constitute a free master class in DIY media production, distribution, and marketing. I was so invested in the behind-the-scenes narrative of the movie that I made it my bees wax to attend the premiere at Radio City Music Hall. Again, the movie is good enough on its own, but to get to watch it within the same 4 walls as John Goodman? I enjoyed myself well enough that evening to bring it up to Kevin during a reddit AMA. Further casual points of contact with an artist who has made intimacy his currency.

All of which brings us to Asbury Park, and the first public showing of Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. A film that completely eschews the conventional wisdom that suggests Smith should be reaching beyond his audience, and instead sincerely embraces its own cult film niche, successfully recreating the halcyon joy of the Jersey Trilogy.

Basically, the movie is really fucking funny, and funny in that way where it doesn’t care it’s making jokes that most people won’t get, but you get em because you’ve been about this shit for like ever, which makes it even funnier, but the flick has a big heart too, and god damn it’s cool to see all these characters again. Pure fan service, of course, but artfully & thoughtfully so. And once again, the movie was good enough on its own, but Kevin & Jay are there, in person, telling stories, answering questions, 4 walling their own movie, coming to a theatre near you. Indie film incarnate.

My older brother, who surprised me with tickets to this event, also sprung for a meet & greet after the movie. So after the movie we queue up in a long winding line leading around to the backstage area. When I walk through the proverbial proscenium curtain Kevin convincingly greets me as if I’m an old friend – “Hey man!” – which is after all, from my perspective, true in some sense, and he immediately wraps me up in a giant hug.

“It’s good to see you!” I say. “The movie was so so good” – “You really think so?” – “Absolutely!” And then Jay’s there too! “What’s up!?”

A photographer snaps a pic of us and I sort of stumble away, because it’s kind of like meeting Santa Claus & The Easter Bunny. These cartoon characters, who are also regular people, who are also local heroes. “Hey man, don’t leave me hanging!” Kevin says with outstretched arms. He gives me another hug before I shuffle on out.

As cliche as it is, Citizen Kane is one of my very favorite movies, and I don’t think it loses anything by being an unreachable artifact of a bygone era, in fact that’s probably a large part of its appeal, but it would be tough for me to deny that Jay & Silent Bob Reboot holds more personal significance for me.

And what better thing for art to possess than great personal significance?

As our media landscape continues to slide into DIY / user generated niches, I would hope that more and more people get their own Kevin Smiths, and more and more people get to be Kevin Smiths. Art as a means of personal communication and expression seems much more significant to me than monolithic masterworks. Like R.U. Sirius says, “in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people.”

SNOOGANS :)))