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Cryptomundo.com for Bigfoot, Loch Ness, and More Blog for things that go non-existant bump in the night.

Me and Keating Talk About Elk’s Run

So, Keating and I talk almost constantly while he colors Elk's Run. It's a very... interesting process to me. Anyways, I just had my first chance to see 95% of the book colored (And that's nearly 200 pages of comics, people) and I got a chance to see just how much of a genius Keating is. So, we talked, I copy and pasted, and here's what's hopefully not a boring ramble about the creative process behind Elk's Run. This contains some spoilers if you haven't read the book at all, so, be warned. SPOILERS FOR ELK'S RUN 1-4 BELOW!

josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: what's nice is that the colors that we've used through out are now just totally opressive. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: like they've come to a boil. Keating: okay Keating: so here's the thing Keating: This was my plan for the coloring of this thing. Right from the start. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: heheh. Keating: The colours have a bunch of purposes. Different lighting situations, etc. Times periods. All with different qualities. Keating: But as it gets going, what happens is that the colours start coming together. Little bits in different 'sets'. As the more and more things start happening to the town/citizens, the color spreads to them. But not the family. So, if you look at the townsfolk in the 7th issue. They're colored as a group. They've become a single entity. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: you've officially put more thought into the book than I have. Keating: And during the SPOILER DELETED, the family, especially john jr and sr become totally seperated from the background. Everything else just bcomes 'the town' Keating: So, the other characters take on more of the background color. So everything is focused on the family. Because, in the end, it's really only about them. Keating: And that's it :) haha josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: Right. Keating: And the last thing is that the colors the characters wear tie into their place in the story. Keating: So, john and john start out both wearing blue. His mother has a slightly greenish blue. Keating: As john becomes seperated from his family, he loses he jacket and takes on a grey shirt, since he doesn't belong anywhere. Keating: In the end, only the father is wearing the blue. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: yep, 10x as much thought as I have. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: the jacket thing was intentional, actually. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: it's my little Ibsen nod. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: Ibsen was obsessed with when people took off and put on clothes. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: it was a symbol of vulnerability. Keating: It's awesome. I was really happy as I read it, since I saw so much opportunity as the colorist to sort of back up what was happening in the narrative. Keating: rather than just color things as the color they are. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: i love page 10 josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: makes it that much sadder. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: which is the thing. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: it's not just sad for Jr. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: it's sad for Sr. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: He's a man out of time. Keating: Yeah. Keating: And it plays against the 'drop out' coloring that we do. Which is normally when the character seperates himself from his surroundings. But this is the town's people seperating themselves from him. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: and ultimately from the town. Keating: Yup. Keating: It's good stuff ;) josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: I've been in creative meetings all day, and have been sort of bickering about plot and semantics and things like that. It's nice to get to talk about the actual fucking craft of the book. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: and, the thing about this book, and why it works so great as a comic is that it's more than the sum total of it's parts.  I think there's magic between the three of us. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: and as we try and disect the plot and break it down into set pieces and elements, you start to realize that what makes it fly is the subtlety and the pacing. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: Honestly, that's Noel's strong point. He controls the pacing so well. josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: Despite giving you 10,000,000 extra panels to color. Keating: The pacing and he reigns in the drama, I think. Some of the scenes could be drawn very heroic and romantic. But instead he mostly draws at an even sort of level. Which, when the town starts to burn, really works. It's like a slow build. Which adds to the tension, because we expect 'big' moments but they never quite get there. Until the last pages of issue 7 josh@hoarseandbuggy.com: and you sort of realize how Jr. is really rising above the whole thing. because they have this lackluster miserablely mundane existance, and he finally steps up and does something remarkable. Keating: yeah Keating: And this is coming from a guy who absolutely hates colouring this book :) haha

The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance

I love westerns, obviously. I mean, I committed a good year of my life to Western Tales of Terror, and have been hammering away at a couple other western projects this year as well. There's something so earnest and heartfelt about even the cheesiest of western that's missing in modern cinema. The Cowboy movie is an art form unto itself. That being said, I'm not really a John Wayne kind of guy. I think he's... well... just a bad actor. That being said, there's a couple of John Wayne movies I love. True Grit is one, El Dorado another, and, then, there's The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. It's certainly one of the most traditional movies John Ford ever directed, and the performances of Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne serve to turn a story of revenge and politics into one of the most compelling coming of age stories about adults ever made. John Wayne plays the more experienced, more cynical, and for the most part drunk and abuse cowhand. Jimmy Stewart becomes his ward, of a sort. The political back drop of the territory fighting towards statehood is this great counter point to the idea of the West being tamed. It's delicate and smart, and outright compelling.   The twist, along with the bitter-sweet ending, are also some real cinematic highlights.  Just for seeing how a character can be both the winner and the loser simultaneously. So, if you want a classic black and white western, this is where to go. Well, this and High Noon, obviously.

On a side note, they must say the name Liberty Vallance several hundred times through the course of the movie. It's... very strange.

Hard Candy

David Slade is a genius.  I can't remember the last young director to so amazingly execute a film.  The shots, the editing, the acting, are all pitch perfect.  It's really a masterpiece.  The only strike against it is the subject matter, which is a turn off for a lot of people.  But, that being said, it's so expertly done, so well-crafted, that it doesn't matter what it's about.  It's a movie about 2 people who are pathological liars embroiled in a battle of wits, the equal to which we haven't seen in a LONG time.  This is classic cinema, and we're going to see a lot more of Slade in the future, if there's any justice in the world.

Mission Impossible 3

So, well... It's hard to come up with something to say that hasn't been said before about the movie. It's good, not great. It's like a higher budget episode of Alias, which in the long run, turns out to be more satisfying than most of Alias because there's an actual ending and y'know, the set pieces are brilliantly done. Tom Cruise... is distracting at best, but is nicely balanced by a lot of smaller bit roles by Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, John Rhys-Myers, and Simon Pegg. The thing that most makes the movie work though, is the performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He's spectacular.

So, look, it's not Die Hard, but nothing is anymore.

So, the big life changing stuff

I've been wrestling with how to say this stuff all week. So I figured short and sweet.

For five years, I've been dating Dina. On Tuesday night, completely out of the blue, she walked out on me. There was no real warning (although she claims that there was) and it really, really hurt me quite a bit.

For the first few days, it was a feeling of shock and abandonment, because right now, things are really tough, money's tight, and the two of us have been fighting through the rocky waters of life for so long, it just seemed impossible.

But, now that the first week of it has wrapped up, I honestly think I'm better off. I loved Dina a lot, but, she'd become a big obstacle in my life. I mean, look, within a week of her leaving, I'm already back to putting together my music which I more or less abandoned when we started dating cause it irritated her.  This has given me a laser-point focus on what's really important in life.

Plus being able to come home when I like, watch what I like, not have to race around the city to take her hither and thou... It's kind of nice. I still miss having someone warm next to me in bed, and there's pangs whenever I walk out of a movie or finish watching a tv show that we both loved and all I want to do is talk to her about it.

But, it's not to be. And, well, I'm actually okay with that.

Back in the Days of Old

Back before I was a criminally ignored comic book writer, I was a criminally ignored musician. I had a couple of moderately successful bands all the way back to high school, but, as I grew up, I chose other things over music, and honestly, I've regretted it ever since. Music was a huge part of my life from the time I was a kid. Hell, even the bulk of my writing is inspired by music. So, part of those big life changes I mentioned earlier are I'm going back to it. I'm going to start slow, and the whole idea for me, anyways, is to do something purely for love. There's not enough of that in this world. I'm goin to set up a page here on the blog for my musical history etc. In the meantime tho, I set up a myspace page with some tracks from my last recording. So, go here: www.myspace.com/joshuahalefialkov and listen away.

The Things I’d Spend Money On If I Wasn’t Poor As Shit

For Sale on Amazon.

Eesh

It's been a tremendously fucked up couple of days, and I'm running around today for a combination of meetings and Free Comic Book Day events. I'm not actually signing anywhere, just swinging by my usual haunts and saying "Hullo." Had some pretty awful personal stuff happen last week, and I'll fill everyone in (those of you who read this and don't already know, which is probably like two of you) later this weekend. I also got reviews for Hard Candy and M:I3 on the way. (The long and short of which is, if you have a choice go see Hard Candy, M:I3'll still be there next week, Hard Candy might not, and it's phenomenal.)

Alright, so, check back later this week and there'll be a couple of longish posts, in theory.

Oh, and I'll be at Earth2 around 1:30pm, if anyone wants to see me that badly. Which. I. Know. You. Do.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.

Warren Ellis Says…

From Today's Bad Signal

And I've read CASANOVA #1 by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Ba, which is a total mindfuck, Moorcock via Steranko, Nino and OUR MAN FLINT. It, Gillen & McKelvie's PHONOGRAM and probably Fialkov and Chamberlain's PUNKS are looking like the singles of the year so far.

Elk’s Run 7

Elk's Run 7

Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.

Look what I got in my mail box today. Only the colors on 8 remain before the book is done. I got tons of exciting stuff going on with the book...  none of which I can talk about. Soon though. Soon.

Match Point

As a life long Woody Allen devotee, I've let him slide. Sure, Small Time Crooks, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, Anything Else, and Melinda and Melinda are total and utter shit... but, just before those we had Sweet and Lowdown, Deconstructing Harry, Everyone Says I Love You, etc. etc. etc. So, y'know, the guys made sixty movies, is seventy years old, and has been butchered in the press for the better part of ten years now. But, you always hope that he's going to come back from it. Match Point's at least a step in the right direction. Aside from two big problems, the movies pretty excellent. The third act does a lot of good to fix what's not so good in the beginning, leaving you with a sense that the movie is much better than it actually is. The directing is incredible. The shots and editing are master classes in film making, and it shows that Woody is every bit the filmmaker his idols Fellini and Bergman are. The spare use of music, the delicate use of location and letting... it's really pretty outstanding.

Then there's the two problems.

The first is actually not so much a problem as a sticking point. Everyone points out the similarities with Crimes and Misdemeanors... Well... I'd say it teeters on the edge of being a remake, or as their known now a 'reimagining' of the movie. It's achingly similar. And while Dina, who's never seen C&M enjoyed the movie well enough, it nagged at me throughout.

Secondly, and there's no easy way to say this. Scarlett Johansson is positively atrocious. Every scene she's in the movie loses steam and chemistry, the inevitablity inherent in the story instead feels like formula all because of her less than one-note performance (a semi-tone performance?) She's gorgeous. Really, really sexy. And has the presence of a three day old Sea Bass Special at Norm's. The scene's where Rhys-Myers is 'over-come' with his desire for her become caricatures rather than eruptions of passion. And it's not just a stylistic thing. She's so out of place in the movie, and completely and utterly out-acted by everyone around her that it really, really hurts the film overall.

It's definitely the best movie Woody's made since Sweet and Lowdown, but, it doesn't capture the uniqueness nor mastery of that film by any means. Instead, you're left with a fairly successful pot-boiler with one extremely bad performance. Worth a rent, though.

A word from J-Rod

"Dear Friend, I received your card this morning and will say that I’m not afraid of the quarantine. If you can come when you said on Sat. all right. E –" That was from an actual postcard, sent on March 16th, 1909 to a Mr. Elmer Reese of Leesburg, Pennsylvania. A moment of someone’s life captured in two sentences. It was purchased at the Georgetown Flea Market in Washington DC for fifty-cents, pulled from a dusty shoebox from a guy who had a table in a dirt field, next to some lady who was selling Beanie Babies for two-dollars, three for five. This story had to be told. It deserved better.

POSTCARDS will be a 168-page hardcover anthology available early 2007 from Eximious Press, a new publishing company founded by me, Jason Rodriguez, editor for ELK’S RUN and WESTERN TALES OF TERROR. It will feature 16 stories from some of the greatest talents in comics. Every team will be using mailed postcards from the early 1900s to tell a story about the people behind them – stories about romance and war and disease and faith. Stories about our lives – based on forgotten residuals.

And there’s room left, still. We’re gearing the submissions more towards the people just starting out – looking for new, refreshing voices in the world of comics to round out the book. The submissions process for the print version is currently laid out on the production blog – in the coming months we’ll start rolling out the submission guidelines for the supplemental web-edition content. Feel free to ask any questions, I’ll answer what I can.

http://postcards.jasonrodriguez.com/

Dr. Who

My brother loved Dr. Who when he was a teenager, and being 9 years his junior, I'd sit there figuring "Well, if my big brother likes it..."  It never actually reverberated for me though.  Not the way Hitchhiker's Guide or The Young Ones did.  The new series, though, is just... wow. There's a few iffy episodes early on (the Dickens one and the Sun exploding ones aren't quite up to snuff to the stuff that follows), but the past three episodes have been some of the best Sci-Fi television this side of the Prisoner.  I think it actually puts Lost to shame.  The show gives resolution, a feeling of progress, and character development.  Lost, while the character beats, and the plotting from episode to episode is interesting, just never delivers, and, well, most likely never will.  It's the nature of the beast, and a core difference between the shows.

The Doctor is Batman.  He's Superman.  He's James Bond.  Except, they even came up with a decent enough explanation for why he's always changing actors.

Anyways, my point is that I think a lot of people are like me and have less than fond memories of the original (which, as i've been watching some aren't actually quite as bad as I remembers, and some are actually quite good), this is a totally new, totally seperate beast, and some of the best Sci-Fi currently on the TV.

Come on in… Take off your skin…

FOR SOME REASON THE OFFICIAL SITE WENT DOWN, SO ALL THE IMAGES AND SUCH ARE GONE.  OH WELL.Just got home from seeing The Black Rider at the Ahamnson Theater. For those not in the know, The Black Rider is the musical written by Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs and brought to the stage by Robert Wilson. The show was originally produced about a decade ago, and this is a revival, with Wilson still at the head.It's this Faustian folk tale done Brecht style with a heaping helping of Waitsian charm and Burroughs-y insanity (or, as I like to call it Burroughsanity) and a Murnau aesthetic The Waits Album that serves for most as their only vision of the piece is one of his classic discs, and it's a must own for fans of the later period Waits (I'd say it's second only to Bone Machine).

So, the show. Hm. It's good. It's very good. (Watch my BFA in theater go now!) The mis-en-scene is positively breath-taking. The sheer degree of stagecraft that went into making the whole thing work, is just obscenely impressive. The scene transitions happen without you noticing, the sets morph and grow, shrinking into nothing, growing from back drops, and lighting effects become three dimensional objects. It's positively transcendent.

The performers... well... in that Brechtian tradition, what the actors are doing is so stilted and stylized that very little of it is acting, so much as it is an elaborate combination of dance and vocalization. Even a quick walk across the stage is becomes an epic event. It's pretty amazing. That aside, one of the strangest biproducts of the show being written by Waits is a lot of the cast attempts to do a Waits impression especially on some of the more 'trademarked' songs. Fact is, there's only one Tom, and nobody else can even come close.

The music is absolutely the highlight. The performance is epic, I'd say the band is better than Tom's actual touring band (at least, the band he toured with on Mule Variations, which is the last time I saw him.) The vibrancy and precision of what they do is just... wow. The vocal side of things, aside from the Tom apeing mentioned above, is also pretty damn great. Lots of interesting choices and arrangements. Really, really amazing stuff.

Then, we get to the show itself. Here's the thing. There's a big flaw in the shape and structure of the piece, in part due to a strangely timed intermission (it falls nearly 2 hours into a 2 hour and 45 minute show) leaving the final act feeling very small and disconnected to the rest of the plot. In fact, when the curtain call started, it took about 4 or 5 actors before the audience figured out it was a curtain call. At the end of the day, it fails in a lot of the ways that I think a lot of Burroughs work fails. 2/3rds of the way through the plot falls by the wayside, and it becomes a bit self-indulgent. Which is a shame, because the actual set pieces are really breath-taking. Really, really breath-taking. For me, though, the combination of the extremely stylized series of vignettes that make up the final 1/3rd, and the forward story momentum of the first chunk just does not mesh. The thing is, that at the end of the day, the plot is identical to that of Brigadoon or Oklahoma, just with a darker take. And part of what makes those shows (while somewhat atrocious in their own ways) successful is the feeling of completion. I don't think the show accomplishes that. All in all, a truely unique piece of theater, and the fact that it not only got put on at one of the biggest theaters in LA, and had a pretty decent size audience is a feat and accomplishment in itself. If you're a fan of Waits, Burroughs, or giant avant garde theatrical art pieces, you'll enjoy it.

At the very least, I know that Sean Maher is jealous as fuck.

Scott Keating on Newsarama

Elk's Run Colorist and World's End Artist Gets Interviewed on Newsarama Including never before seen World's End art!

Get getting!

As the humming bird churns

I've been clocking in full time hours at the day job and fuller time hours at the writing desk, so I've been a bit absent, save for the quick posts here and there. So, here's your mega-crazy-fantastic-crazy-monkey-update.

The "WHERE THE FUCK IS ELK'S RUN?" Fan E-Mails continue, and, I, unfortunately, still can't talk about it.  We're getting everything in order now, and the announcement, as I've said repeatedly, is pending.  Keep coming here, and you'll be the first to know.

World's End is on a temporary hold, as Keating finishes up the coloring chores on Elk's Run 7 and 8 (I should have some art to show off in the next few days... maybe even something special for FCBD.)

Punks has many wheels in motion, including some pretty groovy merchandise manufacturer types expressing interest.  Kody and I are on the phone plotting and scheming literally every day, so, there ya go.

The script for what is shaping up to be the next Fialkov/Tuazon book is getting underway still, and I'm just about through with my preliminary research, so I'm sure I'll be talking about it more and more in the coming weeks.

I'm wrapping up a screenplay I've been working on for far too long already in the next week or so, that might just end up in comic book form sometime in the near future.  That's what these were for.

The Miller is being reworked a bit before I finish it up.  I've read something like 3 or 4 dozen pulps since I started it, and came to terms with some realities of structure etc. that need to be worked in before I can go any further.

Both Red Mob and The 8th (nee Ritual Homicide nee Vodou) are on hold.  Datsun Tran, artist on Red Mob, had to drop out because he just didn't have the time, and Chris Burnham, artist on the 8th had to drop out because the son of a bitch has some REALLY cool projects coming out.  The 8th, you'll remember was my mini-series about a super-natural serial killer in New Orleans that causes the city to get swallowed up by a hurricane that causes the levees to break, and the government to abandon the city.   We'd actually come up with a way to salvage the book and it's art, and take advantage of Chris and my mutual childhood years in Pittsburgh, but alas, the man is destined for bigger things.  For now. Working on a new thing with Screenwriter Gary that's been percolating for a while, and pays tribute to our mutual adoration for Coast to Coast AM.

I've got stories in about four upcoming anthologies, two westerns, one horror comedy, and one anti-romance drama.

And that's it.  Just makin' my way, the only way I know how

Recommended Read - Stranger Than Fiction

I'm a huge Palahniuk fan. Fight Club's a classic of the 90's, and Diary might just be the best book of the 00's. His ability to craft stories equal parts true to life and complete absurdity is second to none, and I really think he'll be considered one of the definitive writers of our age. And, yet, for some reason, I've stayed away from most of his non-fiction stuff. Turns out I made a big mistake. Stranger Than Fiction collects several essays, interviews, and non-fiction ramblings that Chuck had published between books, a lot of which seems to have come from the research he did for his books. There's a section about the Olympic Wrestling Tryouts that obviously was in part the inspiration for Fight Club, another about Castle Building that plays an important part in Choke, and so on. The personal remembrances that make up the last 1/5th of the book are almost all fixated on how Fight Club has changed (in some cases ruined) his life, and how the series of traumatic events that surrounded it colored the event that most of us writers dream of all of our lives.

The sheer dexterity of his prose is mind-blowing. Say what you will about his topics and narrative devices, the son of a bitch crafts a sentence like no one else on Earth. His voice rings through in every piece (even some of the more drab pieces) and it makes what for the most part would be dry New Yorker style articles ring with a relatability that's unmatched.

Just as Fight Club the book will be taught in late 20th Century Lit classes for years to come, and Fight Club the movie will be taught in Film Theory classes, Stranger Than Fiction should be taught in Journalism classes, because it's some of the most engaging, stylish, and thought provoking non-fiction I've ever read.

Link below takes you to Amazon to buy the book. Amazon.com: Stranger Than Fiction : True Stories: Books: Chuck Palahniuk

Quote of the Week

"You know, it's not always the nuns that get raped. Sometimes it's strippers that get raped." - Geraldo

Thank you Daily Show.  I think that might be the opening quote of the new comic I'm working on.