Comic strips before Comic books

Happy Pride Month and Happy Caribbean-American Heritage Month!

Rethinking my early influences as I create this webcomic: 

Peanuts

Beetle Bailey

Blondie 

Bringing Up Father

Hagar the Horrible

Andy Capp

Family Circus

Little Orphan Annie

Curtis

Calvin and Hobbes

Jumpstart

Boondocks 

Brenda Starr

Rex Morgan, MD

Pogo

Doonesbury

Where I'm Coming From

This list will continue...

The Foremothers Who Inspire - Part 3 of 3

                 

[Image from Biblio.com]

JIREL OF JOIRY is another SFBC purchase that introduced me to C.L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore. When we think about the Sword-&-Sorcery genre, a subgenre under Fantasy, many of us think about Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror, and even Red Sonja. However, there have been other leading women characters, and so, I found out about Jirel, a shero created to counter all those heavily-muscled loincloth-wearing men!

Science Fiction Book Club (Remember I said in the last posts never join this club? Don't say I didn't warn you) had a hardcover collection of Jirel of Joiry's hard-to-find short stories in one. I bought it, tore through it, and then let a friend borrow it who never gave it back (If you are a book lover and collector, please don't let ANYONE borrow your books) but BOY! What a dark and dim-grim fantasy series this was! And oh, so good! 

Now that I think about it, C.L. Moore's JoJ was more like Michael Moorcock's Elric of Meldibone' series. Grim, dismal, dark, ironic, and compelling. And earlier! 

It was between Jirel, Elric, and later, Sabriel (Garth Nix) that I wanted to write my own sword-and-sorcery/dark fantasy within my feline fantasy series, Tabber the Red. 

Right now, for the month of NaNoWriMo, I'm a NaNoRebel and penning a dark little fantasy tale in two short stories about a black
warlock cat and brown tabby warrior encountering a hellscape of animated trees, possessed gemstones, and dragons so ancient that landscapes form on them. 

Please tune in for more and this concludes my 'Foremothers Who Inspire' blog trilogy!

Thank you for reading!

The Foremothers Who Inspire - Part 2 of 3

Mary Stewart holds a special place in my heart. Discovering her books in my family library, her books are filled with magic and wonder. As a family if readers, there were no age limits to most books, so me at ages 8-11 reading THE CRYSTAL CAVE, Stewart's retelling of Merlin's place within the Arthurian tradition made me giddy with excitement upon initial reading. The tale about the childhood of one of literature's most iconic wizards is a tour de force in the hands of a magical storyteller. The book is part of a trilogy and I urge you to read it. Stewart has other books that take place in contemporary England but involving psychics within a clan bloodline where felines are in the family crest. TOUCH NOT THE CAT is another winner from Mary Stewart and another author I add to early childhood influences in what I read and what I write now.

Stay tune, Dear Readers, for the third and final blog post to this mini-series.

The Foremothers Who Inspire - Part 1 of 3

I purchased this short story collection from the SFBC - Science Fiction Book Club (Never ever Ever join this club!) several years ago. I must admit, I had never heard of Henderson. The Complete People Stories involves a century of human-looking aliens who land in the U.S. Southwest and try to live in isolation while developing their super abilities. When I first started reading, the stories reminded me of Ray Bradbury's work, especially his Martian Chronicles. Henderson's stories are simple slice-of-life, but with the deepening atmosphere of the southwest and the family values formed within. The People adopt a lot of our ways of life while still retaining their alieness and this just one of the kinds of SF I enjoy. No predatory alien invaders, though I read such too, but aliens that landed on our world and for reasons left in the background of the reader's mind, have to make do with what they have on earth. Please give this collection a try!

Book covers As Art Galleries

Since I'm uploading art on this blog and will upload to my DeviantArt account later this week, I wanted to talk about how book cover art has influenced and continues to influence me to this day.

I don't wish to get into a long discussion but I will split these blog posts into a mini-series by focusing simply on ONE particular science fiction series.

'The Rowan' Anne McCaffrey (pb)

During my community college days, I 'discovered' this paperback in the college bookstore.

These were the days before college/university bookstores were still owned by their schools.

Done by the artist known simply as Romas, his full name is Romas Brandt Kukalis, he has done mostly front covers mostly in the speculative fiction field. As a very young art major, book covers became my art galleries and I not only devoured the stories but also 'ingested' the covers!

Here, what I can only assume are the hardcovers:

(Hardcover version)

(Hardcover version 2)

Dynamic, huh? Still a fan of these covers. The heroine's/shero's strength of character, her superiority/insecurity complexes, the distinction of her authority, the outfit and fashion of her time period, and her potent psychic abilities seemed to radiate from the paper.
Now, why do I speak on this?

 Well... Most of my reading material have become 'classics' and therefore, in need of updating. While I can't complain that books need re-editions and updating like everything else, I'm a little troubled by a lot of contemporary cover art. Back then, different genres had different 'looks', different aesthetics. And while things weren't perfect, and plenty of speculative fictional books were given a bad rap in poor-looking artwork, book covers that didn't tell a story, there were still gems and once you looked at enough bookshelves, you began to tell, even if the book was stuck on the wrong shelf, this was a romance, this was horror, this was a thriller, this was comedy, this was memoir, fantasy, suspense, etc. Nowadays, it seems book cover art is suffering from sameness.

(Updated cover for 'The Rowan')

Take a look at the updated cover art for The Rowan now:
Nice cover. Nice art. Sigh. But I don't feel anything, and if I didn't recognize my late favorite author's name, this would be the cover to any other genre. As an emerging author who may have books published one day, I feel kind of sad that my cover won't be distinct and unique from others. Because, as a new name, I will already have obstacles to get my titles out there, and as a lifetime reader and lover of books, a bland front cover will prove to be another obstacle.

Nothing Is New But It Is All Unique

Sick and tired of hearing from fellow creatives that they must avoid creative media in order not to be influenced. We are ALL influenced by *something*.

Vincent Van Gogh collected over 400 Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) and even copied some of its elements into his work.

Art can't happen in a vacuum. It's just not possible. Even those not formally art-trained and may live in the most isolated insular and homogenous community will still create art that shows influence from many elements. 

Take for instance the profound artwork of an incredibly talented individual I saw on a Facebook art group page: his work reminded me of early protest art of 70s vinyl record covers. I pointed this out and he said explained he lived out in the bayous, hadn't gone to art school, and never received any formal training, but he immediately got what I meant of what his work reminded me.

Something inspired him. *Influenced* him to create the way he did and how he did. Though he was in a sense of the modern idea that he was isolated, he was still influenced and inspired by what was around him. By his environment, his experiences, his life. And it became something that reminded me, a total stranger, of something else entirely. Yet, he GOT what I meant.

I'm not saying we are being hacks. What I'm saying is it's okay to acknowledge and not feel ashamed to own up to one's influences. And even if one doesn't know what the influences are, do know that they are still there.

Whenever I create something: whether an illustration, a scribble, a cartoon, comic strip, short story, word list, essay, or this blog post, I like to play a game to try and recognize what inspired me or influenced that particular piece. I'm not saying to do this. I'm just weird.

It is essential to know that while there's "nothing new under the sun", what makes an art 'original' is how it's filtered and distilled by its bearer, its creator. Because we are all different, because each one of us is unique, and because we are all affected by outside and inner forces, the art will be singular, authentic, and genuine.

Paul Beatty - First American To Win Man Booker

Before one reads Paul Beatty being the first American to win the Man Booker, I want to discuss a point I noticed in the article.

That when he was giving a reading and he mentioned that one of his influences was from the Japanese and a questioner said (out loud) that they thought it weird for An American Black writer to be influenced by Japanese culture. He immediately skipped the questioner, to the next person. I don't blame him. Notice I'm mentioning Black.  

There is a reason why writers of color often feel 'stiffed' by the writing and publishing community. There is always the possibility of being hedged in. That we writers of color are incapable about writing on anyone else's experiences except our own. Yet, such questions are rarely asked of writers who are White.

Take for instance a post I wrote some time ago for this blog. I was writing about creating my official website. A White man asked me about my influences as a writer and I mentioned the Greek myths of my childhood. He thought that strange that a Black woman would be influenced by Greek culture. Something I KNOW he would not have said openly to me had I been White as him.

There's still this 'ghettoization' of Black and Brown writers and creatives that we can't possibly write from any other perspective. And yet, while many in the writing community believe some White writers are not telling diverse enough stories, there are Black and Brown writers who have been telling stories not only of their own people and cultures but injecting the cultures and ethnic backgrounds of others in their characters since forever.

It really saddens and disgusts me when I bring up this double-standard and people actually get offended! Actually, it is I who should be offended and righteously so.

The whole point of being a writer, being an artist, being any kind of creative in either the creative writing, visual, fine and performance arts is that we are surrounded by a multiflueous array of experiences and that unless we are literally under a rock, there is absolutely no way we cannot be influenced by others.

It is a disservice to believe that any human being, especially those in the creative fields, and shame on our community to think otherwise, will not take away and be inspired by other creatives whom they admire. Who ignite those 'sparks' within each of us.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/26/man-booker-prize-winner-paul-beatty-the-sellout-interview

RIP Lois Duncan

     Last week Wednesday, June 15, 2016 an important literary figure died. Her name was Lois Duncan, and she was important in my life. Writers are often asked who are the people that influenced them, and no self-respecting writer can remember all those inspiring titles or even the authors that penned them. Unfortunately, it is often when such an influential writer dies that the living, whether they also became writers or went into other professions, that we suddenly remember what such a personage did for us.

     Let me give a scenario, despite others' ideas about me, I was a poor student while in grade school. Often sickly, I would miss enough days that would put me behind certain subjects. Therefore, from 6th grade to 10th grade (with at least two summers I did well enough), I was in summer school. In 1986, I had to attend summer school (sequentially) for the first time. Because it was a private school tied in with a religious denomination, this it did not offer a summer school program, and therefore, I had to attend a middle school near the elementary school where my mom taught.

     This particular middle school was in a rough neighborhood and had some rough children. I understood the work because it was not sixth-grade but actually 4-5th level. I also did not dress as my classmates did. This wasn't my neighborhood. I didn't speak like them. My parents made sure I always had $2. My classmates hated me for this. I was bullied every day. Eventually, our class went on the prerequisite trip to the school library. I was in heaven. At this time, maybe others have noticed this, but, a lot of YA (Young Adult) novel front covers often had photographs with models posing a scene from the story, or, realistic paintings. Mostly, though, I noticed they used real people.

     Paperbacks were often on spinning racks then and the school libraries were no exception. One particular cover struck me with its blonde teen girl, sitting in an armchair with her whole body curled in it. Her unnerving stare at the reader and a ghostly image of a little girl in blue floating behind her.

From Jezebel.com 

     This looks really cool! I thought and immediately rushed to the check-out desk. I received snide remarks and under-the-breath "nerd" comments, but I didn't care.
I began to read the novel "A Gift of Magic" and was sucked in by Duncan's use of flashback, memory, and especially how her protagonist, a teenage girl with psychic abilities navigated her life. Often interested in the supernatural growing up, psychic phenomenon has often fascinated me. I credit "A Gift of Magic" for my first time reading about psychic powers. And though I have since digested other stories dealing with this subject, and perhaps, have dealt with it better, Duncan's "A Gift of Magic" was sincere, non-condescending, and a good read during a difficult moment in my childhood that I can't recommend it enough.

More of an Influence...

I read somewhere years ago that J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" was influenced by Richard Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" or "The Ring Cycle".

I'm trying to complete some graphic novel series and YA fantasy novels that I was suppose to finish long ago, but alas, life happens.

So, Lloyd Alexander's "Prydain Chronicles" (5 volumes) is now on my list of what I what to read now. I'm using online purchasing to find the editions to match what I already have.
I also have a manga series to read. I need 8 volumes to not only complete the series but to finish the books.

I'm a huge YA book reader. I oftentimes prefer the genres within Young Adult rather than the stuff written for more "mature audiences".

What I like about the "Prydain Chronicles" is there is an introduction in each volume when Mr. Alexander speaks about the series on a whole. Because the series was written during the 1960s, the books have become classics as well as the last volume having won the Newbury. He mentioned that the ancient Celtic texts of the Mabinogion (the first parts coming from the Welsh) was a heavy influence to his "Prydain" series.

Author and artist interviews always interest me because I like to get a peek inside another creative type's head. It encourages and strengthens me when I learn about what influences others and how they bring that into being.

"Firestarter" in 1983

When I saw the movie, "Firestarter", in 1983, it influenced me to the fact that little girls don't have to be portrayed as powerless in modern entertainment.
This movie changed me forever to portray sweet, innocent girls as some of the most powerful beings in my future writings and stories.