I am completely jealous of British alt-pornstar Holly D’s badass Batman sleeve.

And in related news:

She also posts this kind of goofy stuff on her deviantart page.

I think that what we’ve got here is the end of the comic book superhero genre for the time being. I was wondering how long that wave was going to roll, and I think we’re witnessing the breaking of that wave and from here on out it’s just the roll back.

After my rage filled ranting about Harry Knowels’ refusal to see Wolverine because he wasn’t invited to the screening, I was worried about actually watching the movie with an open mind. Part of me wanted very badly to like the movie, more so than I already did, just to spite Harry. Not that he’d read this, but just as a counter balance to disprove Harry’s incredibly petty and pathetic tantrum.

But I think I managed to keep a relatively open mind, and here’s what I thought.

It was alright. It certainly wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horribly bad either. It was just pretty okay. It was far better than much of the comic book movies that have been made in the past, and it wasn’t nearly as good as some of the other ones. It was a very middle of the road, entertaining movie with some noticeable problems.

Jackman, as always, was highly entertaining as Wolverine. Aside from being a likable, charismatic (and devastatingly attractive) actor, he also perfectly embodies what I want in a movie version of Wolverine. He’s nailed it since the beginning and he continues to nail it. I have no problem with his performance or his contribution to the movie as an actor. He just IS Wolverine.

The movie was highly entertaining, on a very base level. The fights were fun, the movie moves at a decent pace and most of the actors did their jobs quite well. There were a few people in there who were a little out of place (Will I. Am or whatever that dude’s name is, springs to mind) but overall, I had no complaints in that department. Liev Schreiber was a good villain as Victor Creed/Sabertooth. The performances were all perfectly acceptable. Some better than others.

I should say, for the record, I honestly couldn’t give two shits about “staying true to the comics”. I’m familiar with the comics, and I know Wolverine’s back story, but really, I’m not so arrogant that I demand movies be made to fit my preconceived notion of what they’re supposed to be. The way I see it, movies are movies and comics are comics. They’re completely different mediums and the way they tell stories is completely different. It’s ridiculous to ask or expect a film to constrain itself to boundaries established in another medium. That being said, I do ask that if they’re going to make it their own (which I would hope that they do) then they should justify those deviations from the source material. Basically, make it work. To change things simply for the sake of changing them seems silly to me, if they worked already. But if they need to make changes to the story or characters to allow them to fit better into the reality of the movie, then please, change it.

So when I see fanboys pissing and moaning because they dicked around with Wolverine’s back story, I just want to choke a bitch. Especially when you consider that Wolverine didn’t even HAVE a back story until a few years ago. That was the big mystery for like, thirty years: what’s Wolverine’s story? Well, a few years ago Marvel comics finally spelled out his history and how he became Wolverine and what his relationship to Sabertooth was. That just happened fairly recently. And it was somewhat anticlimactic if you ask me. I read that Wolverine Origin series and when it was over it just felt like “Okay, sure. Whatever”.

So whoopty fucking shit if they changed it around a little. Who cares?!

Yes, they simplified and added and subtracted from it. Yes, a lot of it was (to my knowledge) made up for the movie. Good. I’m glad they did that. The Wolverine in the movies is a different character than the Wolverine in the comic books. It’s not like he’s a real guy or a  historical figure. It’s not like they’re doing a movie about FDR or something. He’s fictional, and hundreds of writers have contributed to his story over the years. Many of whom have contradicted each other. There’s no “set in stone” Wolverine story that has to be honored like some kind of bible.

Anyway.

All of THAT being said, the story WAS pretty damned hokey and sloppy. And a good bit of it felt fairly forced. And it definitely fell a bit into the problem that so many other comic book based movie franchises fall into. Which is trying to cram as many character cameos into the movie as possible. Luckily, it wasn’t nearly as offensive as it was in the later part of the 90s Batman movies, or the third X-Men movie. The characters at least had a reason to be there. And what also worked is that many of the characters I didn’t even know. I have no idea who Will I. Am was supposed to be. And Charlie from Lost. Bolt? Who the fuck is Bolt? So it’s not like I was there wishing that we had more of these secondary (or third…dary…) characters, because honestly they were just warm bodies. They were there to fill out this team that Wolverine and Sabertooth were a part of.

There were some characters in there that I was familiar with though, and some of them worked and some of them didn’t. I thought they handled Blob fairly well, which surprised me, because from watching the trailer I was certain he was going to be one of the things that dragged this movie down. But he served his purpose well (even though there was a fairly ridiculous boxing scene between Blob and Wolverine that made very little sense) and he was played well (by that asshole freighter guy from Lost that killed Alex).

One character that really seemed out of place and just stuck in there to appease fanboys was Gambit.

I’ve never liked Gambit. Never. Since the beginning. He showed up around the time I really started getting into comic books seriously. I always saw him as too smartassed and sassy. He seemed like what people thought comic book fans wanted to see. And apparently they were right, because he’s hugely popular. But it never worked for me. To me, Gambit was the X-Men equivalent of Poochie the Dog on The Simpsons.

I felt like he was trying just a little too hard.

And I felt the same way about him in the movie. He was out of place, served no real purpose, and seemed to only be there because someone thought the kids would think he was cool. It’s not that I wanted his character to be more crucial to the story line or more relevant. I just didn’t want him to be completely irrelevant.

In a way, Wolverine goes through the movie kind of like if Forest Gump were in the Marvel Universe. He’s meeting all of these key X-Men characters as he goes about his quest to find and kill Sabertooth. It’s a little silly, and I wish they’d been content to just tell a Wolverine story rather than trying to fit half of the X-Men universe into it as well.

But whatever. They needed characters to do things in the movie, and I guess it makes sense to use characters that are already established than simply making up new ones.

Another major bit of contention people have with this movie in regards to other non-Wolverine characters is Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool.

Again, like Gambit, I never really gave a shit about Deadpool. I think I’ve maybe read one comic book ever that featured him. I remember when he came out, and I checked him out and felt like he was just kind of a cross between Spider-Man and the Punisher. He was a smartassed, wise cracking mercenary. Whatever.

I’m not hating on Deadpool, I’m just saying that I have nothing invested in his movie success, as far as the character goes. What I am invested in though, is Ryan Reynolds. I like Ryan Reynolds, and I especially like him in that kind of role. Deadpool is a perfect match for him, and I think that if he were given the chance, he could pull of an entire Deadpool solo movie.

So I can definitely sympathize with the fanboy sobbing and raging that’s been going on in regards to the way his character was handled in the movie. Fortunately, there’s a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s thanks to two of the three “alternate” after credit endings.

You see, they filmed three different short clips to play at the end of the Wolverine movie, each one on a different print of the movie. So depending on which theater you go see the movie, you’ll get one of three possible alternate clips, provided you stay for the end of the credits. All three provide a glimmer of hope for an interesting sequel, depending on how well this movie does.

Without spoiling TOO much, two of the three clips should make the sobbing Deadpool fanboys cork their cry-holes. One in particular, more than others. There IS hope, and it’s not as bad as it could have been. There’s a little bit of justification there and even more hope for a Deadpool solo movie.

And what little we saw of Ryan Reynolds Deadpool was plenty entertaining, and leaves me wanting to see that Deadpool solo movie.

But anyway, back to Wolverine.

One of the real problems with the movie was that it seemed to be arguing with itself about who the movie was actually for. You can tell that there was some serious push and pull action going on when it came to whether or not it was going to have an R, PG-13 or PG rating. And ultimately, there was enough savage violence and swearing and other adult stuff that they should have just gone for it and done an R rated movie. I mean, you can’t have Sabertooth almost rape a chick in one scene, and then go through the entire movie with Wolverine stabbing people and no blood coming out. That was distracting. We’ve got Wolverine running people through with his claws left and right, and no blood.

One of the many things I really loved about X-Men 2 was this one shot when Wolverine was flashing back to when he escaped from the Weapon X facility, and he’s standing there with his claws sticking out of his hands and he’s screaming like “WTF IS THIS SHIT?!” and there’s all of this blood running down his arms. It was a badass shot and it completely encapsulated the horror of what had been done to him. Unfortunately, a lot of that impact was lost when they showed essentially a twenty minute long version of that one shot, and there wasn’t that shocking, disturbing, confused horror of “what’s happening to me!?”. It needed that blood and that screaming fear. That, to me, is the core of Wolverine. He’s lost and he’s confused and he’s angry about what’s happened to him.

So yeah, no blood. In fact, the only time I can remember seeing ANY blood in the movie was in a shot where it wasn’t actually coming out of a person, but out of a hospital blood bag.

It seems very silly to me to have a movie that features all of this killing and disturbing shit and grown up themes, but then at the same time it’s trying to be a kids movie as well.

One of the things that worked about the first two X-Men movies was that they managed to find that perfect middle ground between a kids movie and an adult movie. It was a kids movie that was enjoyable for adults, and it was an adult movie that was enjoyable for kids.

This movie didn’t achieve that at all. This movie was constantly at battle with itself. It was a tug-of-war between a kids movie and an adult movie, and that didn’t really work. It can’t work. Because you end up potentially losing both audiences. If adults are watching it, enjoying it as an adult movie, and then all of a sudden Wolverine is boxing The Blob for no reason other than it’s funny to watch, that’s a turn off. If kids are watching it and enjoying themselves and suddenly Sabertooth is in Vietnam and throwing a crying woman onto a bed, clearly about to rape her, parents aren’t going to be too happy about that.

So I really wish they could have sorted that shit out before they started filming.

I’m hoping that that’s what some of these “reshoots” were that went on right before the movie was released. I’m also hoping that there’s going to be some kind of “unrated” directors cut. Usually I hate that shit. I really hate it. I hate it when every horror movie and raunchy comedy has to have a “TOO EXTREME FOR THREATERS!!!” unrated version. It’s all marketing and it’s all bullshit. But this is one of those rare cases when I actually do want to see whatever they cut out to make it a PG-13 movie.

My last two complaints about the movie aren’t particularly major, but they’re definitely there.

The first is that, for some reason, these X-Men movies seem to want to put their villain bases on historical monuments and places. I don’t get that. I remember watching the first X-Men movie and asking myself “Why the fuck are they fighting on the Statue of Liberty?” It’s kind of silly. One time I could forgive. The second time, in X-Men 3, the villain base was on Alcatraz. That was just obnoxious. And Magneto moved the Golden Gate Bridge so he could just walk over to Alcatraz. Jesus Christ that was stupid. Now, in the Wolverine movie, the villain base is Three Mile Island, and again, like Forest Gump, we’ve got Wolverine and his villains responsible for the nuclear meltdown that occurred there in the late seventies. That was goofy.

The other thing, and a little more major, were the special effects. They were just god-awful in parts. I don’t know if it was a budget thing or what, but Jesus, it was distracting at times. Especially Wolverine’s claws. I don’t know what happened, but there were scenes where I felt like I was watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit. They were so cartoony and fake looking. I seem to remember, in the first three movies, Hugh Jackman wore prosthetic claws that they digitally melded with his knuckles. Those looked good. These things looked like cartoons floating around his hands.

And some of the green screen shots were absolutely abysmal. Really, really bad work. I wish I knew what happened there, because it was embarrassing. I’m going to make a guess and say that when all of the bad set reports about people fighting and disagreeing while filming the movie came out, and it started getting such negative buzz, that maybe the studio pulled back and cut funding for the effects. I gotta hope it was something like that. Because I’d hate to think that what we got was the best they could come up with. It was pathetic.

Then again, looking on Wikipedia, X-3 had 90 million more dollars in their budget. X-3 had a $210 million budget and Wolverine had $120 million. That’s a pretty sizable difference. So I guess I can’t give them too much shit.

When it’s all said and done though, honestly, it’s a fun movie. That’s all it really is. And that’s okay.

My buddy Andrew pointed out that he thinks people are setting it to The Dark Knight standards, and that’s not really fair. It’s not that kind of movie.

I think something that people need to understand is the difference between styles here. Really, it comes down to the difference between Marvel Comics (X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man) and DC Comics (Batman and Superman). DC comic writers seem to really want you to intellectualize their stories and characters. DC comics are much more philosophical. So when The Dark Knight is this dark, in-depth meditation on the nature of evil in humanity, it makes sense. And it’s great. Marvel comics never ask for that much. Marvel comic book stories tend to be much more social. They’re about how people deal with each other. DC comics are introspective and self exploratory. Marvel comics are extroverted and deal with how people interact with people. That’s why X-Men is about racism and prejudice and Superman is about alienation and fitting in. That’s why Tony Stark is an alcoholic womanizer and Bruce Wayne is a psychopath tormented by personal guilt and vengeance. Marvel deals with how people are affected by the world around them and how they affect the world around them. DC comics are about how people FEEL about themselves and the world.

Which is why when you watch The Dark Knight, you get a story about about insanity and personal codes of ethics and morals. And when you watch X-Men it’s about fighting the government and Hitler-esque fascist groups. So no, they’re not the same. They’re completely different kinds of stories, with completely different standards.

When held to the standards established by other recent Marvel movies, I’d say X-Men Origins: Wolverine falls somewhere just below the first X-Men movie and the first Spider-Man movie, but a good deal above the third in both of those series. Like in the first X-Men movie, there were some very silly, out of place characters and some story issues and some cheesy special effects. But it was no where near as bad as the abomination that was the third X-Men movie. It wasn’t a mess of studio meddling and attempts to please everyone (while eventually pleasing no one). It was a decent action movie that had some flaws, but over all delivered on what it promised to deliver.

One thing that I think is kind of silly and isn’t a problem for me, but makes me chuckle is that Sabertooth was IN the first X-Men movie. He was played by Tyler Mane and was pretty damned ridiculous.

They’re just kind of strolling past that little fact, whistling and hoping nobody remembers. It’s like someone might say

“Hey, wasn’t Saberto-“

WHAT?

“I was saying that in the first X-Men movie, Saber-”

WHAT?! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

“I SAID THAT TYLER MANE PLAYED SAB-” 

SORRY STILL CAN’T HEAR YOU!

“He looked completely dif-”

LA DA DEE DEE DA! I’M NOT LISTENING!

“GODAMNIT!”

It’s just kind of funny.

I think that people might have forgotten that the first X-Men movie WAS pretty silly. I’m inclined to say that the Wolverine movie was at least almost as good, if not better, than that movie. It’s not nearly as good as X-2, but I think it’s somewhere between the first one and the second in terms of quality over all.

I really hope they do another one, and I hope they do that Deadpool movie. It was certainly worth seeing, and it was worth spending money on. I’m frustrated with the bad press it’s getting. While it has problems, it’s not nearly as bad as people are painting it.

So I’ve decided to ditch the line drawing all together. I’m just going to go ahead and do the thing as a full on digital painting. As I started coloring in her left (our right) glove and playing with that, and then detailing the scars across the right side (her left) of her torso, I realized that the line drawing was ultimately taking away from what could be a better picture.

So yeah, I’ve just been working with the color layer exclusively. I still have the line drawing layer on the picture (though it’s hidden now) to use as a guide, but by the time it’s finished, the line drawing will be completely gone.

I think I’ve figured out what I’m going to do with the suspenders and her pants. I only JUST (like, five minutes ago) started on the suspenders, but at least I know what I’m doing now and how it should (theoretically) look.

As you can see I haven’t touched her face at all since I ditched the line drawing, so it looks pretty goofy at the moment. I’ll work my way up, since when I started I worked my way down. I’m really looking forward to getting up to her face, though it’s going to be a challenge. Mostly I’m looking forward to putting the details into that Glasgow Smile.

I’m undecided on the Joker pin. Part of me wants just that little bit more to tie her in with the whole Batman universe. But then part of me thinks it’s too much. Too busy. We’ll see if I leave it on there or not. It’s there for now, but I’ll probably end up either moving it or taking it off completely.

But now I have to go to sleep because I told Sandra that I’d try to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, and 3am is fast approaching and I’m pretty sure 3am is not reasonable.

Anyway, sorry for bombarding these works in progress lately. I like to have them for my own reference, and this seems like a good way to keep track of what I’m doing. I’m really digging how this picture is coming together. Especially since it was something that I just kind of started doing without really intending on putting much work into it. Here we are, like, a couple weeks later and I’m still working on it. I think it’s going to be killer when it’s done.

If you’re interested, for comparesson sake, here’s the previous non-line drawing color version of the picture.

Okay, so I did some more work on the coloring. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do for her suspenders, if anything at all.

And, just because I’m thinking about another direction, here’s what it looks like when I take off the line drawing layer.

I’m beginning to wonder, now that I’ve put a lot more work into the coloring than I intended to (initially, I was just going to do some kind of basic watercolorish comic book style coloring) I’m thinking that maybe I’ll ditch the line drawing all together and just do it as a full color digital painting style thing.

I’m also not sure about the hip tattoo. I felt like I needed to bring a little more of the diamond theme into it, because that’s such a big part of Harley Quinn’s look. But I dunno.

She’s kind of soft looking too, but I’m okay with that. The look of her body is based on the model in the original photo, and I don’t really want to try and improve on her body. I figure that if I’m doing a more realistic style version of Harley, then I should use a real person’s body.

And just because I feel like it, here’s a collection of all of the WIPs so far.

I’m hoping that by bringing down the white from her face further onto her chest and dicking around with the scar on her neck that I’ve been able to somewhat address the “flesh sweater” thing that some of you pointed out in the last WIP. I hope so anyway.

Anyway, lemme know what you think.

The poor guy… I swear.

So The Spirit flopped miserably. It’s apparently completely atrocious and unwatchably bad. I believe it. I haven’t watched it yet, but I believe it. When Robert Rodriguez, with all the good intentions in the world, called Frank Miller his “co-director” on the Sin City movie, he damned him for all time. With his act of kinship and respect, Rodriguez managed to convince Frank Miller that he actually IS a real director. But what he didn’t do was give him the rest of the tools needed to direct a movie. There’s more to it than simply story boarding and green screens.

In the medium of comic books, Frank Miller is almost untouchable as a writer. Or he was anyway. I don’t know what’s happened to him over the last ten years or so, but whatever. My point is that that the man knows how to pace stories and develop characters for comic books. Unfortunately, movies are a completely different and unique medium with an entirely different set of rules and guidelines. The skills it takes to write and illustrate a comic book are totally different than the skills needed to write characters, pace the story and direct actors in a film.

Poor delusional Frank Miller.

I remember when they first announced he was going to do The Spirit. I was hopeful, but also concerned. It would appear (I can’t say for sure, because again, I didn’t watch it) that the worst possible scenario played out. Frank got in WAY over his head. I doubt it was an ego thing… I mean, yeah, he’s a legend in the field of comic books, but I don’t get the impression that he thinks he’s king shit of the universe. But I think he somehow convinced himself (with the help of his “co-director” from Sin City) that he had the chops to fly solo with his own movie. Unfortunately that flight went right into the side of a mountain and exploded.

And really, what did he expect? Honestly? That he would go into making another movie ONLY using the tools he gathered while standing around on the Sin City set? Did he think that the public wants to see another movie done in exactly the same style as Sin City?

Sin City was awesome for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons was the visual style Rodriguez used. It was interesting to watch and captured the atmosphere of the comics perfectly. It was great for THAT movie. Variations on that might be interesting to watch in other movies. Like 300 for instance. 300 was fun to watch, partially because of it’s visual style, which was very similar to Sin City. Similar but different enough to stay interesting. If they’d done 300 exactly like Sin City, then it would have been boring and pointless.

Which I think was one of the reasons no one went to see The Spirit. I know that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t go. It just looked… tired. I don’t want to see another movie aping Sin City’s style. The only reason Sin City worked was because it (very precariously) balanced many different elements, one of which was that unique style. But that style wouldn’t have been enough on it’s own to make Sin City work. And it certainly wouldn’t be enough to make any other movie work.

That’s why I didn’t watch The Spirit. That and because everyone whose seen it says it absurdly bad.

Which sucks especially since I’m relatively sure he managed to drag down any possibility for that supposed Sin City sequel that was in the works. Remember back when they were talking about how Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie were going to be in it? Yeah… we’ll see. I doubt it’s going to happen at all. Mickey Rourke has recently said that he’s not particularly interested in coming back as Marv. I haven’t heard word one from Robert Rodriguez about it. All I’ve heard from him are all of the different ways he’s trying to come up with movies he can remake for his goofy looking, home wrecking girlfriend to star in.

The only person I’ve heard say anything remotely indicating movement on Sin City 2 is… of course, poor, poor, delusional Frank Miller. Go figure.

And honestly, I can’t see them going forward on a sequel to Sin City without Mickey Rourke. Which is also a shame, because honestly… fuck Mickey Rourke. I’ve never liked that fucking guy. He was good as Marv, but whether or not he reprises that role isn’t a deal breaker for me. Get Clancy Brown or Ron Perlman in there to do the same fucking job. Probably better.

But yeah… I’m sure other people are far more attached to Rourke than I am. I just don’t see Sin City 2 happening without him.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Who knows?

Frank is supposedly in line to direct a new Buck Rogers movie. We’ll see.

But between Robert Rodriguez’ apparently decent into pathetic girlfriend placating movie remaking and Frank Miller’s complete and utter failure at making a movie on his own… it doesn’t look good for Sin City 2.

The really sad thing is that this has happened to Frank Miller before. Sort of.

Many, many years ago Frank was asked to write a sequel to Robocop. He did, and (from what I hear) he apparently did quite a decent job of it. People have said that Miller’s original draft of the Robocop 2 script was kickass. But studios, being what they are, they took his script and chopped it up and added characters and took characters out and blended story elements and changed everything around until it was barely recognizable as Frank Miller’s original Robocop 2 story. And the movie that ended up being filmed was horribly stupid. But it still said right at the beginning of the movie “WRITTEN BY FRANK MILLER”. It was a big deal. I remember being excited for it, because I knew who Frank Miller was and I was very hopeful that he’d turn out a decent Robocop story. It didn’t work out that way. Hell, Frank was even IN the movie. He played a small role. But yeah, Robocop 2 was retarded.

After that, Frank Miller was done with Hollywood. Much like his angry, cynical, smelly, derelict hobo looking peer Alan Moore, he shunned Hollywood and the movie making industry. In the once rare interviews he did around the time, the hurt and betrayal he felt was painfully obvious. He was done with Hollywood forever. They’d burned him bad and he wasn’t about to let it happen again. That’s why Robert Rodriguez had to practically stalk him to get him involved with Sin City. Unlike Alan Moore (who is just hateful and unpleasant) Frank seemed genuinely heartbroken about his relationship with Hollywood. I get the impression he’s a pretty damaged guy to begin with. He probably has major rejection issues. I think that’s why 95% of the women characters in his stories are either heartless, sexless bitches or prostitutes in need of saving. Or both.

But I don’t want Frank Miller to disappear from Hollywood. I don’t want this Spirit thing to completely devastate and destroy him, like the Robocop 2 thing did. I can’t really see how a failure of this magnitude COULDN’T devastate and destroy him (it certainly would me) but I hope it doesn’t. What I want is for Frank Miller to go and do the legwork it takes to learn the craft of filmmaking. Chitchatting with Robert Rodriguez on the set of Sin City is a great start, but it isn’t enough. I hope Frank is solid enough to realize his mistakes with The Spirit, but humble (and determined) enough to go back and learn from what he did wrong. He needs to take some film classes. Take some screen writing classes. I think that he took Robert Rodriguez’ laid back style for granted. I don’t think that he realized that Robert earned that style through years and years of low budget film making. You can’t just jump into a big budget action movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson without any kind of experience. Life isn’t that easy. Even when you’re one of the greatest comic book writers/artists of all time.

Did a little more work on the Harley Quinn picture. Started playing around with the color more. I think I’m getting closer to done with the line art part of the drawing. There’s still a fair bit more work to go on her gloves, hat and hair. And whatever I decide to do with her pants. I haven’t figured that one out yet. I’m going to do something else with the suspenders as well. What I’ve got on there right now is just kind of something I threw on there really quick.

I figured that since I was going with the self mutilation thing, I may as well take it a step further and do the diamond shape as scarification rather than a tattoo. I wasn’t entirely sure how to do a convincing tattoo anyway without it just looking like I drew the shape on with a sharpie.

I’ve been playing around with the color a fair bit more. I think I’ll be able to take what was in there and “paint” on top of that and get what I need from it. I kept finding myself focusing on certain aspects of the color even though I told myself I wouldn’t. Initially I just wanted to throw SOME color in there so I had an idea of what I wanted to do. But I kept getting to involved with actually coloring in parts of it the way I wanted it to actually look. So I may as well just take it from there and keep going. No sense starting over when I’ve already got some of what I want.

I still haven’t decided what I want to do with the background. What’s in there right now is just a basic Photoshop “stain glass” filter. I need to come up with something else though. I might even just do a solid color like I had before. I dunno. Haven’t decided yet.

I keep almost taking in her waste a bit, just so she looks a little more unrealistic and comic booky. But then I don’t. I figure that if I’m drawing based on a photograph, I should really use the physical dimensions of the model. I mean, I am going for more of a realistic looking picture rather than a overtly comic bookish picture.

Oh, and if you’re ever looking for reference pictures on self mutilation, blood play and scarification, be wary of Google Image Search. Very wary. There are things are there that are far beyond what I was looking for.

worked on this for just a little bit tonight. Posting all of these “Work in progress” pictures is really more for my own reference later. I just like to keep a record of how projects look at various stages. And it keeps me working on it.

Click for bigness if you’re interested.

Here it is with the basic place holder colors in. When I actually do the coloring, I’ll do it properly. This is just so I have an idea of what it might look like.

RE: This post

Worked a bit more on that Harley Quinn picture.

Click for a bigger version.

I also threw in some color. More just for my reference later. The actual color job won’t really look like this. I just wanted to see how the black line drawing looked over SOME kind of color. So I just kind of did this really quick. Looking at it smaller now, I’m going to change where her gloves end. And I’m probably going to take out her eyebrow piercing. I just drew it because the chick in the original picture had it. Though I do kind of dig the lip and the nose.

I figure she airbrushes the black over her eyes like Daryl Hannah in Bladerunner.

Sandra’s up at her grandma’s with her family. I’m at home alone, drifting from one present to another.

One of the things Sandra got me for Christmas that I opened early (because I ended up running into Futureshop to pick it up, since it was on sale that day) was a new Wacom tablet. I think I’m going to have to take it back and get another one though because the eraser doesn’t work.

Anyway, I’m killing time at home and started working on this in photoshop.

Which will ultimately be a newish take on the Batman character Harley Quinn. Obviously inspired fairly heavily from the Dark Knight version of The Joker. I typically don’t use black and white to actually “ink” anything that I’m drawing in photoshop. I generally go for more of a painting style approach, but I figure that since this was a comic book character (though, originally cartoon character if you want to nitpick) I should take a more Tim Bradstreet approach.

Plus, Sandra bought me the Brian Azzarello/Lee Bermejo Joker graphic novel which has a similar kind of gritty, demented approach to The Joker that’s very inline with the Dark Knight interpretation.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve flipped through the pages and taken a look at the style and it’s very much like the movie. I don’t know which came first, but I’m gonna assume that this book was inspired by the movie rather than the other way around. Either way, it got me wanting to do something like this.

I figure I’ll lay down a fairly intricate black and white drawing with line shading and bold outlines and then paint the colors on a layer under it in photoshop.

I really liked the scarification on The Joker’s face in the movie and I think that was a pretty interesting interpretation of the character. Doing away with (apparently at least) the whole “You dropped me in a vat of chemicals and now I hate you because that was such a dick movie Batman” aspect. Leaving the audience to assume that he either did it to himself or someone did it to him.

Either way, I think it works even better in the context of Harley Quinn. I mean, she’s the ultimate abused girlfriend. The idea that SHE either did this to herself to prove her love and admiration to The Joker… or, even worse, he did it to her to prove his ownership. Whichever way you look at it, it works in the context of the story.

That’s one of the things that’s so fascinating about Harley Quinn, and by extension The Joker himself. She was his psychiatrist. She started off in a position of power over The Joker and ultimately, he took that from her in the most extreme way. Or she gave it to him. If The Joker is the ultimate bad guy, then Harley Quinn is the ultimate doomed woman who can’t help but love bad guys. By the time she became “Harley Quinn” she was so far gone whatever power she ever had that she’s completely lost in this abusive, demented relationship with a man whose only emotional relationship with her consists of abuse and control.

It’s funny how Harley has become this kind of “powerful woman” character in the Batman universe, teaming up in almost homoerotic side stories with Poison Ivy. Because Harley Quinn is about as far from a “powerful woman” as you’re going to get in the comic book universe. They treat her like she’s this Mallory Knox kind of character who is somehow partnered with The Joker to pull off these intricate, entertaining crimes. That they’re on equal ground. But that’s not really true to her character at all. Without The Joker she’s nothing. Or, even more boring, without The Joker, she’s healthy and functional. But he’s managed to break her down so far that she can’t exist without him. Her entire emotional and mental structure is based on this need to please a man who only wants to keep her under his thumb.

It’s true that she is capable of holding her own, within the context of doing his bidding. She is a smart, capable woman. But she’s not strong. She’s incredibly weak and dependant. But not because he’s a man, or even THE man, but because he’s so fucking BAD. She’s beyond “He’s bad but I can fix him and make him love me” and into just getting off on how bad he is. That’s what I love about Harley Quinn. If she believed she was going to fix him and make him love her, then she’d be boring. But no… she just wants to watch him be evil.

And that’s hot. Abusive wife syndrome (which, I don’t know if that’ s actually a syndrome, but that’s what I’m going to cal it) isn’t an attractive quality in a character… but a character who gets off (I’m reading a little more into a children’s cartoon that I maybe should but whatever) on watching someone physically and emotionally hurt other people is both interesting and sexy. In a fictional character. In real life, not so much. But when we’re talking fantasy, that’s pretty hot.

It’s a shame that Heath had to die. There was talk (and, like so much talk around these Batman movies, I imagine it’s bullshit) that they were planning on possibly doing another movie that featured The Joker, this time focusing on his trial. It was (supposedly) going to have The Joker conducting all of these terrible things from his cell in Arkham Asylum, ala Charles Manson during his trial. THAT would have been the perfect context for bringing Harley Quinn into the movies. Can you imagine if they’d managed to have Heath in as The Joker, in Arkham, and had cast Michelle Williams as Harley Quinn?

That would have blown my mind. Of course, the history between the two would have made it that much more twisted and awesome.

But now we’ll never know.

Anyway, if you’re interested, this is the picture I’m using as reference for the Harley Quinn drawing.

And yes, she’ll probably be topless in my drawing as well. But I haven’t decided for sure yet. I’m going to draw gloves on her and probably some kind of hat with the pointy jester things and bells. If you could see more of her arms, I was going to have the diamond pattern tattooed on her. I may still work that in there. I was stuck between a few different poses from the same set of pictures.

I also liked this one, but I didn’t think you could see enough of her face to get the scarification across.

And I like being able to see her stomach. I’m thinking about doing something with that.

So… a couple more casting rumors for the new Wolverine solo movie.

Apparently, according to Ain’t it Cool, it’s going to have both Gambit and Deadpool.

The guy playing Gambit is some dude from Friday Night Lights named Taylor Kitsch.

The other rumor is that Deadpool is going to show up. And that he’s going to be played by Ryan Reynolds.

And last, but not to be the least, it’s looking like the young William Stryker (played by Brian Cox in X-Men 2) will be played by Michael C. Hall, who is best known from his work in Six Feet Under and the awesome show Dexter.

They’ll be (apparently) joining the already cast Hugh Jackman (naturally) as Wolverine and Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth.

I’m pretty ambivalent about Gambit. If I cared about the character more, I’d probably be all like “NO WAY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!” and insisting that Harry Connick Jr play Gambit. Or Josh Holloway from Lost. But honestly, I’ve never liked Gambit. He’s a total throw away, garbage character. He’s a wannabe Wolverine that was invented when there just wasn’t enough Wolverine to go around.

I’m somewhat excited about Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. Not because I like Deadpool (never really got into him) but because Ryan Reynolds has been going on about wanting to play Deadpool in a movie for years and years (since before Blade 3 at least) and since I’ve got a minor man-crush on Ryan Reynolds, I just want him to be happy.

I’m much more excited about Liav Schreiber playing Sabertooth. I wish he’d played him in the first movie, since Tyler Mane was just kind of like… a wrestler with silly eyebrows when he played Sabertooth.

I’m hoping this Wolverine movie is good. Hugh Jackman was, by far, the most awesome thing about the X-Men movies and Wolverine is a pretty awesome character.

::edit::

Michael C. Hall is not playing William Stryker. Danny Huston is. Lame.

Danny Huston will be fine, but I dig Michael C. Hall.

So I haven’t said much about how I feel about this.

For some reason it’s hit me particularly hard. I don’t know why. It’s weird.

I’m generally not overly invested in my celebrities. If someone I really respect or love dies, it bums me out. I was bummed when Mr. Rogers died. I was bummed when Joey Ramone died. And when Stanley Kubrick died. But those were all heroes of mine. They were people I looked up to and emulated.

A couple of weeks ago Brad Renfro died. I remember Sandra telling me on the phone. I was like "Pfft. So? Fuck Brad Renfro." I didn’t really care. He was a junkie and an actor I didn’t particularly like. Whatever.

So then I find out that Heath Ledger died and precedent indicates that I shouldn’t have particularly cared. I’ve never been interested in Heath Ledger. I’ve only ever seen him in one movie (Brothers Grimm) and that movies wasn’t particularly good. I certainly didn’t have anything against the guy, but I didn’t particularly like him either. Up until recently, I had pretty much no opinion about him.

By "up until recently" I mean that I had no opinion about him before I saw the trailer for The Dark Knight.

I remember when it was announced that he was going to play The Joker and I was skeptical . I was skeptical but I also trusted Christopher Nolan and the people who made Batman Begins. I trusted their vision and if they thought this Heath kid was capable of doing The Joker justice, then I was willing to give them (and him) the benefit of the doubt.

I should explain something.

As a child and young man I was a fan of comic books. I’d go so far to say that I was obsessive about comic books. It comes with being a socially awkward child (and teenager and adult) and I was no exception. Like most comic book fans, I had my favorites. I liked The X-Men and Wolverine and Spider-Man. I generally leaned towards the slightly more real world, capeless Marvel comics. I wasn’t particularly into Superman or The Flash or The Green Lantern or the other DC characters.

But then there was The Joker.

The Joker was (is) my all time favorite literary character. Not just comic book character, but favorite fictional character of all time. He beats out R.P. McMurphy from Cuckoo’s Nest and Willy Wonka and Raul Duke and Kilgore Trout. I won’t go into why I loved The Joker so much. I’ve covered that before. If you wanna read why I love The Joker so much, read this entry.

Needless to say, it was going to take a lot to live up to my desire for the ultimate Joker cinematic experience.

So yeah, I was skeptical. I saw the same preview pictures everyone else did, and gobbled them up like the juicy little marketing tidbits they were.

I began to get excited. It looked to me like there might be a chance for this one.

Then there was the first trailer. The teaser with just his voice. It was weird. My first reaction was negative, just because it was so… different. When Mark Hamill did the voice of The Joker on Batman the Animated Series (which was, in the opinion of many a comic book fan, myself included, the definitive interpretation Joker) his voice was such a defining part of his character. It was the element that was missing from the comics, and Mark Hamill somehow managed to perfectly embody not only everything that was great about The Joker we knew from the comics, but all of the other aspects of his character that had never really been considered before.

So it was a weird choice to introduce Heath Ledger’s Joker with only his voice. Like I said, my first reaction to it was negative. Not that I disliked it, I just didn’t know what to make of it. To me, he almost sounded like Jack Nicholson playing The Joker in Tim Burton’s first Batman film. Specifically, Jack in the scene where he’s impersonating Jack Palance’s spit sucking, clenched teeth voice and saying "Because Bob… you’re my number one… guy!"

But after I’d watched the trailer again. And again (and again and again) it started to grow on me. I started to get even more excited. I could hear more going on in his voice than just the jarring non-Mark Hamill-ness of it and the similarity to that one line of dialog from Nicholson. I actually listened to what he was saying, and while it wasn’t much, there was certainly a desperate insanity to it that gave me chills.

That was nothing compared to the exhilaration I felt watching the second trailer.

A lot of people freaked out when it was announced that Heath Ledger was playing The Joker. It was a fan backlash I hadn’t seen since Tom Cruise was cast as Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. Nerds and geeks everywhere were getting up in to an unwashed, trench coat fury in the basements of parents everywhere, furiously posting their displeasure on message boards everywhere. As with Cruise and Lestat (before Tom Cruise’s abilities as an actor were overcast by his apparent retardation and lack of sanity ) I had faith. I believed that the people in charge of creating the film in question were capable of delivering. Tom Cruise was amazing as Lestat, and judging from that second trailer, Heath Ledger appears to have embodied The Joker in ways I doubted were possible.

In the maybe forty seconds I saw of Heath as The Joker, I saw things that made my heart swell with psychopathic Joker love. I went from hoping for a great Joker movie to a mind numbing, orgasmic need to SEE THIS MOVIE. The joy I felt in seeing what was certainly going to be, if not the definitive, at least a fucking brilliant realization of my favorite fictional character.

And I was proud. It seems silly, but I was proud of Heath Ledger. While people were pissing and moaning about this pretty boy Brokeback actor playing The Joker, I had faith that he could do it. And, with that trailer, it looked as though he really DID do it, and it made me proud.

The next year was pretty much laid out for me, movie wise. Sure, there were movies I was looking forward to. But nothing compared to the excitement I felt about seeing The Dark Knight. For me, Batman Begins was as good a Batman Year One movie as we were ever going to get. It had it’s minor flaws (the biggest of which was that goofy title… though it wasn’t as bad as the title Batman Forever, which sounds like a name they’d give Batman The Musical: On Ice, starring Clay Aikin as The Joker and Elton John as Batman) but it exceeded anything I’d ever hoped for in a Batman film. With this trailer, it looked as though The Dark Knight (a much better title) was gearing up to be as good a Batman/Joker movie possible. And pretty much my entire summer centered around the release of this movie.

I was comfortable with that. I was happy. Totally content and at comfortable with letting my excitement build. I knew that by the time a couple weeks before the release rolled around, I’d be on the verge of losing my mind excited. I was looking forward to going into that theater and feeling my heart jump into my throat the first time The Joker stepped on screen.

Then everything changed.

I’d be lying if I said that the first thing I thought when I heard that Heath Ledger had died wasn’t "Goddamnit, I hope this doesn’t fuck up Batman." That was my first thought. My second thought was "Jesus, Terry Gillium can’t catch a fucking break!" and then I thought "What a tragedy. He was a year younger than me and he had a baby. What a tragedy." Which was then followed by the thought "God fucking damn it, this IS going to fuck up Batman!"

It’s callus and selfish, but it’s true.

As time went on and I thought about it more and more, I became sadder and sadder. Something about it was really sitting wrong with me. It shouldn’t have. It went beyond just the possibility that they might push The Dark Knight back into next year.

I really started to think about who Heath Ledger was.

First and foremost, he was my age. We’re both at the age where you’re expected to start defining who you’re going to be for the rest of your life. Brad Pitt was 30 when he blew me away as Early Grayce in Kalifornia and suddenly went from being another pretty face to a real, respectable actor. When he "grew up." Johnny Depp was 30 when he played Giblert Grape and proved that he was not only devastatingly attractive, but also an extremely talented and worthy actor. It seems that actors need to hit that 30 year mark before they’re really taken seriously. Even when a young actor puts in an amazing performance, it seems that they’re still something of a novelty until they’re 30. Look at Leonardo Dicaprio. Before Gangs of New York, he was still the kid in the Tiger Beat posters. As much as he tried to shake the image, it took Martin Scorsese to launch him into adulthood as an actor. To me, that was the performance that solidified him as a real actor. Sure, he was great in Gilbert Grape, but I still thought of him as a kid, like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, never sure if he was actually going to became a "real" actor. Sure, there was Titanic and Romeo and Juliet and The Basketball Diaries, but even then he was still just that kid from Growing Pains.

Leo was 28 when he did Gangs of New York. Heath was a few months shy of 29 when he died, and I believe that his performance as The Joker was going to be the one that convinced people (or, at least, me) that he was a real actor. Not just a celebrity or a pretty face, but an honest to God respectable working actor. Someone I could see making movies for years to come. Good movies. Solid movies. He’d done his time as a pretty boy. He never fell into the ego trap that seems to have swallowed up Toby Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal and most of his peers. You never got the feeling that Heath thought he was hot shit or overly important. He seemed content to show up, do his job, and go home at the end of the day, happy he was doing what he loved. Even though I wasn’t watching his movies (not out of any conscious effort, it just never worked out that way) I respected the way he conducted himself both as an actor and as a celebrity. He seemed like he tried acting as a passion and a job and wasn’t particularly interested in playing the part of a celebrity. But he wasn’t a prick about it. He didn’t throw tantrums when people took his photo and he didn’t make a big production out of his personal demons. Yes, he apparently went through a period of drug addiction. But I never knew about it until his death, and that’s how it should be. I don’t want to know that actors and musicians are drug addicts. I respect his discretion. He didn’t let the drama in his personal life bleed into his work.

The fact that he was on the verge of becoming that respectable, adult "real" actor when he died is really heartbreaking. The fact that we’re in the same age group (I’m a year and a few months older) makes it that much harder to digest. Here’s a guy who is on pretty much the exact trajectory that I long to be on. A guy who really made it. He made it on his terms and was just about to get the recognition as a creative force to be reckoned with in the film industry. I believe that was part of the reason I was so excited for his performance as The Joker. I wanted desperately for him to succeed because it made me feel good that a guy who was my peer (age wise) was going to really make it and become a respectable artist. Someone who was so good that he actually scared Michael Caine with his performance. He was going to get to that point that he could really do whatever he wanted because people believed in him. Beyond just being admired, but really respected. I so desperately want that for myself and it made me feel good to see someone at least in some ways on my level make it.

The circumstances of his death are confusing and hard to pinpoint. On one hand, I’m glad he didn’t commit suicide or die because he was a drug addict. I’m glad that they didn’t find any illegal drugs in his house or in his system. Part of me is glad at least. I’m glad that he was able to go out with some dignity and without scandal. In his life, he conducted himself with discretion and humbly, and I’m glad that he was able to carry that through in his death as well, even if reporters and paparazzi swarm around his coffin (and Michelle Williams and their baby girl for Christ’s sake) like vultures.

On the other hand, it might have been easier to be able to just write him off as another sad, dead junkie like poor Brad Renfro. I wouldn’t have to feel this bad if he’d just offed himself or pulled a River Phoenix and partied himself to death. But the fact that he died because of a bad mix of completely legitimate cold medications and insomnia drugs is just fucking tragic. It’s really tragic. He died at the threshold of his career and life because of a stupid fucking accident. That’s what really kills me. It’s just so stupid and fluky. It’s one of those things where you think that God must just reach down and pluck random people off the earth for His entertainment.

That’s what makes this tragic.

Going to see The Dark Knight is going to be a totally different experience than it was meant to be. What was once mind blowing excitement is now sad. I’m still excited, but it’s laced with sadness now. Because I know that this is going to be THE Joker movie that I’ve wanted all my life, and I know that from this point on, Heath Ledger is going to be the definitive cinematic Joker. Jack Nicholson was never really The Joker. Jack Nicholson was just Jack Nicholson with silly make up on, pretending to be Bugs Bunny. Heath’s performance of The Joker is going to be the one that perfectly marries the Joker I’ve always known and loved with the full potential of motion pictures. And then he broke the mold. There’s no bar raising because no one is going to be able to play The Joker again. This is going to be it for The Joker’s foray in movies. No one would dare try and do it again. From here on out, Heath Ledger is the only person who can play The Joker and now even he can’t do it again.

And maybe that’s better. Obviously I’d much rather he were alive and well and moving onto a long career and a happy life. But because The Joker is such a near and dear character to me, maybe the fact that he’s going to get this one amazing performance and then that’s it, possibly forever. It’s almost beautiful in a morbid and tragic way.

This is all assuming that his performance is as good as I believe it’s going to be. And I really do believe it will. I have to. Not just because I’ve wanted this Joker performance for so long, but because it will at least put something beautiful on top of this otherwise completely tragic death. At least we’ll have that swan song.

Currently Listening To: R.E.M. – The Great Beyond

I did something I vowed never to do again last night. I did an “inventory” shift at Cockbuster. Worked till 3:30 in the morning scanning every rental in the building. Well, me and two other guys. It sucked ass, though didn’t suck as much as the last one. I only agreed to show up if Chad (my boss) promised that he’d never, ever schedule me for another one. The last time I told him that I wasn’t going to do it again, but apparently he didn’t take me seriously. So I made him promise.

My snail is dead, I think. Or dying. I had a Golden Mystery Snail in my aquarium and this morning I found him floating at the top of the water. It’s hard to tell if he’s dead or not because he’s inside his shell, which is where he is a lot of the time. I pulled him out and dropped him into the filter to see if he grabbed on. I went for a shit and when I came back he was kind of just a little bit stuck to the front of the filter with his little snail foot and he had a big snail dookie hanging out of his snail butthole. I dropped him back into the tank and he’s just floating there. I had to assume that he must be still alive, but I don’t get why he’s floating. He must be really close to dead. Either way, I’ll see if he changes any over the course of the day. If he’s still floating at the top of the tank by this evening, I’ll flush him.

I was going to go to the movies today. There was at least three movies at the “good” theater that I wanted to see. I got movie gift certificates for Christmas from Sandra’s parents, so I was all set to go. But no, everything I wanted to see is gone and has been replaced by a bunch of bullshit I don’t want to see. Same as it ever was I guess.

I vaguely remember Lyndsey calling me, I think to see if I wanted to go see Sweeny Todd. I was dead asleep and I don’t really remember the conversation except that it happened. I hope I wasn’t rude or anything.

Let me get up on the soap box for a brief moment and give a big shout out to The Main Man, Stan Lee, on his EIGHTY FIFTH birthday.

Stan Lee is one of those guys who is in a league of their own as far as my heroes go. He’s up with guys like Jim Henson and Hugh Hefner and Fred Rogers and Walt Disney. Guys who essentially created entirely new ways to entertain people. Sure, I know comic books existed before Stan Lee… but Stan made them fun and, along with a few key people (like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) created some of the most iconic characters and stories in American culture. And almost even more importantly, I love Stan Lee because he is passionate about what he does. You never see an interview with him or read an editorial where he come across as anything less than completely enthralled with who he is and what he does. I love that. I love that quality in people. Some would consider what he does (and has done for some fifty years or so) childish or not socially relevant, but Stan doesn’t care. Nor do I. Stan does what he does for people who love it as much as he does. People who are willing to allow that kid inside them to run around the yard with a bath towel tied around their neck like a cape. As ironic as it sounds to say it, sometimes comic books aren’t just for adults. Comic books don’t always have to be John Constantine fighting demons both literal and personal and it doesn’t always have to be sociopolitical metaphorical mice dealing with sociopolitical cat nazis or emo teenage girls or ethereal concepts masquerading as cartoons. Sometimes comic books are just good guys in colorful uniforms with sweet powers fighting evil. Sure, the adult in you can read all kinds of litarary and political overtones, but at it’s heart, comic books are for kids of all ages. Stan Lee is the perfect spokesperson for that element of our culture. He’s smart enough to understand the adult perspective people can put on these funny books, but he’s also enough of a kid to make sure you have fun while you read his creations. He’s the fucking Man.

So yes, happy birthday Stan Lee. ‘Nuff Said.

Currently Listening: Ramones – Judy is A Punk

So… I went on a big rant about how I wasn’t going to watch trailers any more and wasn’t going to look at promotional material anymore and how I wasn’t going to let the Hollywood Machine dictate what movies I wanted to see and bla bla bla.

But apparently I was lying because I just watched the new, Joker filled, trailer for The Dark Knight and about lost my shit.

I can’t wait! Fuck!

The trailer is here:

It’s fucking crazy and brought a tear to my eye, being the massive Joker fan that I am.

New posters are… these:

Click here to watch

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am for this movie. A while back I posted a test shot of Rorschach’s costume that Snyder snuck into a trailer for 300. That just exploded my fanboy pants.

Now, I haven’t seen 300 yet, but I friggin LOVED the Dawn of the Dead remake, and by all accounts, 300 rocks pretty hard. I haven’t seen it yet because, well, frankly, it doesn’t really interest me that much. I’ve never been really big for movies about sweaty guys with swords yelling and running and stabbing stuff. It’s just not my thing. But it IS a Frank Miller joint and Frank seems pretty pleased with it so I’m more than confident in Zack’s ability to bring one of the greatest comic book stories ever to the screen.

He talks a bit about casting in the interview, though he doesn’t really reveal anything… just that Gerard Butler has a part in the movie. I do know that Ron Perlman said in an interview a little while back that he was being considered for the part of The Comedian. Whether or not that works out, I don’t know.

I’m… okay… with that. It doesn’t spank my ass or anything, but it’s okay. I don’t have the weird fanboy freak out love for Ron Perlman that so many other people seem to have. I like him, but I don’t think he’s anything particularly special. Just kind of another strange looking character actor. But whatever.

Who would I cast?

Good question. I’m glad you asked.

Here we go:

Rorschach – William H. Macy. This is a done deal as far as I’m concerned. The man is perfect for the role.

Night Owl – John Cusack. Sure, why not? Middle aged, getting pudgy. Can be somewhat intense, but still has that element of slight nerdiness to him.

Doctor Manhattan – If he’d do it, I’d get Brad Pitt.

The Comedian – Mel Gibson. Now, before you flip out and think I’m crazy… think about this: He needs this part. There’s no getting around that he’s a good actor. Prior to his apparently going insane, Mel would have been perfect for the part. Funny but with that edge of insanity, eventually tipping over into down right cruelty. Now, personally, I don’t have any hard feelings towards Mel. I think he fucked up royally, and I think he was appropriately spanked for it. Now I think it’s time to lick wounds and move on. He needs to do an A-list movie… but he shouldn’t carry the movie. He needs to play an interesting but secondary character. Remind people why they liked Mel in the first place.

Not that the Comedian is a likable character… but the right actor in the part could make for a respectable performance. And I think Mel is fully capable of doing that.

Ozymandias – Val Kilmer. Is there anyone really qualified to play a prissy, pretty, ego maniacal bastard than Val Kilmer? I really don’t think so.

It’s been a while since I last read Watchmen. Weirdly enough, I found it when I was going through my books looking for a completely unrelated book and set it aside for later reading. I may or may not get to reading it again.

Anyway, I’m going to get back to writing.

Before I go…

Here’s another interview with him from Suicide Girls. It’s mostly about 300, but the section about Watchmen is pretty interesting. I especially liked this quote:

The thing about Watchmen is that I’m looking to make a movie that looks more like Taxi Driver than Dick Tracy [laughs]. People bring that up to me “Is it like Dick Tracy?” because that’s colorful. Watchmen as a printed medium references comic books itself. It goes “Look, I’m a comic book” and you read it, you’re like “You’re fucking blowing my mind!” But that’s what it tries to do, it draws you in by being a comic book. I think my responsibility is to draw the audience in by saying “Look I’m just a movie” and then you get in there and it fucks you up. That’s my hope anyway. It is a weird movie. When you see the trailer and you go “Okay that looks like Richard Nixon. Dude that blue guy is in fucking Vietnam, what is this?”

a few days ago I posted a thing showing the first image of The Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four movie sequel.

Well, now the trailer for said movie is online.

The trailer is one a different breed of commercial that is kind of nice to see. Rather than doing a traditional trailer, they’ve taken one scene from the movie and used it as the trailer. In this case, a scene where Reed Richards and Sue Storm are getting married, they see The Silver Surfer cruising around on his cosmic surf board and Reed sends Johnny Storm up to investigate.

They did this with The Devil Wears Prada as well. They just used the scene where she first shows up for the job interview and left it at that.

I actually really dig this trend, and I hope they keep it up. I’m pretty sick of how they’ve been doing trailers. Typically, what you end up with is a chaotic, fairly meaningless mash of half-second clips jammed together. They generally don’t really tell you anything about the movie, leaving you not really even sure what you just saw. Or they go the other extreme and give you the entire story crammed into two minutes, leaving you with no reason to actually go see the movie.

What I like about these “one scene” trailers is that while you don’t really get a sense of the story necessarily, you do get an idea of the style and direction of the movie. It gives you a taste of the actual movie rather than some marketing editors interpretation of the movie crammed into a couple of minutes. It’s kind of like when a writer will publish one chapter of the book he’s working on or fixing to release. Stephen King does this a lot. It lets you know what kind of a book it is, and gives you a little of where it’s going, but leaves you wanting to see how the rest of the book turns out.

I remember seeing the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada and I was actually impressed that they went this route. They didn’t just excise all of the sappiest parts and mash those together hoping to entice the girlies into seeing it. They gave you a scene to show that there was a little more going on with the movie than just a typical chick flick. Using a scene from the movie they were able to both give it a little integrity, showing that a single scene can stand alone as interesting enough, and it also gave you a much better feeling of the tone and style of the movie, establishing pretty well who the main characters were and what they were doing in the movie.

That was enough to get me to actually go see it with Sandra without bitching about it.

This kind of did the opposite for the Fantastic Four sequel. While I respect the fact that they did the commercial in this style, it actually did a great job of showing me what I needed to know about the movie, which is that I don’t particularly want to see it.

They had their chance to do a sweet Silver Surfer vs Fantastic Four movie. Now that they’ve established the shittiness of the Fantastic Four in movie form, I don’t particularly want to see the Silver Surfer in that shitty environment.

It doesn’t help that I don’t really LIKE the Silver Surfer. I like the idea of the Silver Surfer, but as a character, he usually falls flat.  I’ve only ever liked him in the context of his first story, showing up to investigate Earth, checking to see if it would be a delicious planet for Galactus to eat.

But it’s too late for that now.

And watching the trailer, I feel my fears about the effects used to bring the Surfer about are justified.

Watching the trailer, all I could think to myself was how much better it would look if they’d actually just made him CGI instead of a guy in a rubber suit. They used computers to make his skin all shiny and chromey, but it’s still a guy in a suit in front of a green screen.

I’ve heard people argue that it’s refreshing to see them going back to practical special effects in movies… and I can agree with that to a degree. But in this case, I don’t really think that applies.

Here’s why: They’re already using piles of CG imagery even in this scene. Johnny Storm is obviously an entirely CG character. The city scape looks computer generated, and certainly the outerspace shots are. If you’re going to create a CG environment, why not just go ahead and go with the most obvious choice for CG effects? To me, it’s asinine to make The Silver Surfer practical when you’re already doing all kinds of CG effects. To me, that’s like if they did The Hobbit exactly like they did Lord of the Rings, with all kinds of CG monsters and Gollum in CG and all of the landscapes and battle sequences CG, but then when it came to the dragon, just having a dude in a suit like Godzilla.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is the end result. How you get there doesn’t matter to me, just so long as you do your best to make the best movie you can make, using the tools at your disposal. If that means using CG to make a better looking Silver Surfer, then please, use CG. If they can make a photo realistic Spider-Man swinging through the New York City sky line, then they can damned well make a kick ass Silver Surfer the same way, probably even easier. What they’ve got here is a guy who looks like an old school effect, while being cute, doesn’t make for the best possible end result.

a few days ago I posted a thing showing the first image of The Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four movie sequel.

Well, now the trailer for said movie is online.

The trailer is one a different breed of commercial that is kind of nice to see. Rather than doing a traditional trailer, they’ve taken one scene from the movie and used it as the trailer. In this case, a scene where Reed Richards and Sue Storm are getting married, they see The Silver Surfer cruising around on his cosmic surf board and Reed sends Johnny Storm up to investigate.

They did this with The Devil Wears Prada as well. They just used the scene where she first shows up for the job interview and left it at that.

I actually really dig this trend, and I hope they keep it up. I’m pretty sick of how they’ve been doing trailers. Typically, what you end up with is a chaotic, fairly meaningless mash of half-second clips jammed together. They generally don’t really tell you anything about the movie, leaving you not really even sure what you just saw. Or they go the other extreme and give you the entire story crammed into two minutes, leaving you with no reason to actually go see the movie.

What I like about these “one scene” trailers is that while you don’t really get a sense of the story necessarily, you do get an idea of the style and direction of the movie. It gives you a taste of the actual movie rather than some marketing editors interpretation of the movie crammed into a couple of minutes. It’s kind of like when a writer will publish one chapter of the book he’s working on or fixing to release. Stephen King does this a lot. It lets you know what kind of a book it is, and gives you a little of where it’s going, but leaves you wanting to see how the rest of the book turns out.

I remember seeing the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada and I was actually impressed that they went this route. They didn’t just excise all of the sappiest parts and mash those together hoping to entice the girlies into seeing it. They gave you a scene to show that there was a little more going on with the movie than just a typical chick flick. Using a scene from the movie they were able to both give it a little integrity, showing that a single scene can stand alone as interesting enough, and it also gave you a much better feeling of the tone and style of the movie, establishing pretty well who the main characters were and what they were doing in the movie.

That was enough to get me to actually go see it with Sandra without bitching about it.

This kind of did the opposite for the Fantastic Four sequel. While I respect the fact that they did the commercial in this style, it actually did a great job of showing me what I needed to know about the movie, which is that I don’t particularly want to see it.

They had their chance to do a sweet Silver Surfer vs Fantastic Four movie. Now that they’ve established the shittiness of the Fantastic Four in movie form, I don’t particularly want to see the Silver Surfer in that shitty environment.

It doesn’t help that I don’t really LIKE the Silver Surfer. I like the idea of the Silver Surfer, but as a character, he usually falls flat.  I’ve only ever liked him in the context of his first story, showing up to investigate Earth, checking to see if it would be a delicious planet for Galactus to eat.

But it’s too late for that now.

And watching the trailer, I feel my fears about the effects used to bring the Surfer about are justified.

Watching the trailer, all I could think to myself was how much better it would look if they’d actually just made him CGI instead of a guy in a rubber suit. They used computers to make his skin all shiny and chromey, but it’s still a guy in a suit in front of a green screen.

I’ve heard people argue that it’s refreshing to see them going back to practical special effects in movies… and I can agree with that to a degree. But in this case, I don’t really think that applies.

Here’s why: They’re already using piles of CG imagery even in this scene. Johnny Storm is obviously an entirely CG character. The city scape looks computer generated, and certainly the outerspace shots are. If you’re going to create a CG environment, why not just go ahead and go with the most obvious choice for CG effects? To me, it’s asinine to make The Silver Surfer practical when you’re already doing all kinds of CG effects. To me, that’s like if they did The Hobbit exactly like they did Lord of the Rings, with all kinds of CG monsters and Gollum in CG and all of the landscapes and battle sequences CG, but then when it came to the dragon, just having a dude in a suit like Godzilla.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is the end result. How you get there doesn’t matter to me, just so long as you do your best to make the best movie you can make, using the tools at your disposal. If that means using CG to make a better looking Silver Surfer, then please, use CG. If they can make a photo realistic Spider-Man swinging through the New York City sky line, then they can damned well make a kick ass Silver Surfer the same way, probably even easier. What they’ve got here is a guy who looks like an old school effect, while being cute, doesn’t make for the best possible end result.

So Sandra and I were watching Miami Ink tonight. The episode focused Ami getting his (my fucking DREAM car) 72 Cuda worked on. There was a substory about Kat tattooing a friend of hers.

I told Sandra that even though she got fat, I’d still do Kat Von D, and she’d just have to deal with that. I’m not even gonna put her on “the list” because I don’t really count her as a celebrity, even though I guess she is. Sorry Sandra, but it’s just one of those things.

In other news:

Here’s the Silver Surfer in the new Fantastic Four sequel.

For some ridiculous reason they’re doing it as a guy in a suit rather than doing him CG.

I remember when they first announced the FF movie and I was pretty solidly against it. I was proven right as well, because it appeared to have failed in all the ways I said it would. What I proposed was that rather than doing a Dr. Doom story line, which could only come off as silly in the context of a movie, they should do the coming of Galactus and The Silver Surfer, because that’s a much cooler and cinematic story. That’s what they’re doing now, because someone obviously listened to me. Unfortunately, it’s too late. They’ve already got their lame cast and have established their entirely weak interpretation of the comic books, and putting such a bad ass storyline into that world can only fail .

In other other news:

Here’s an important pie chart that will blow your mind.

current music: The Doors-Touch Me

so I just woke up.

I got nothing really to say.

Okay, that’s not true, I’ve got tons to say but I don’t really have the energy to write it all out.

The Joker.

Okay, so we know that The Joker has been cast in the sequel to Batman Begins. Heath Ledger is playing The Joker. My initial gut reaction is “OMG NO” because, well… The Joker is my all time favorite comic book character, and really… who the fuck is Heath Ledger? Everything I know about him can be summed up by his photograph. He looks like a male model.

That being said, I haven’t seen him in much of anything. I saw The Brothers Grim, and he was fine in that, but he didn’t really do a lot. I can’t really judge his abilities based on one performance in a mediocre and flawed film.

In his favor, he’s got two things going for him as far as I can tell. #1. Terry Gilliam trusted his abilities enough to cast him in The Brothers Grim and #2. The people who made Batman Begins trusted his abilities enough to cast him as The Joker.

I didn’t see his audition and I don’t know a whole lot about him, so I’m gonna try and trust that these people know what they’re doing.

“The Fans” (myself included) were gunning for Crispin Glover. Hell, Crispin Glover was gunning for Crispin Glover.

But that is apparently not to be, which is kind of a shame.

Though, when I really think about it, I don’t know if Glover has the acting chops to pull it off. I’m sure he could be wickedly scary and funny as The Joker, but I don’t know if he could really pull off a well rounded character or not, or if he’d just be more of a cartoony monster.

Here’s the question though… how are they going to approach this?

Ledger has said that he’s approaching The Joker more along the lines of Alex from A Clockwork Orange. That’s very interesting to me. It says, to me, that they’re on the right track.

I was never happy with Jack Nicholson in the Tim Burton Batman movie. To me, it felt like Nicholson was picking up a paycheck. He put on the goofy makeup and did his Jack Nicholson thing, but he always just felt like Jack wearing make up. I never got the impression that he particularly cared WHAT he was saying or who he was playing.

The other problem with Nicholson as The Joker was the story they gave him to work with. They decided that before The Joker became The Joker, he was a mob thug. This automatically took away any real defining characteristics and made him cartoon from the get go. He’s suddenly a comic book cliche. Another bad guy wearing a black shirt that says “GOON” across the front in block white letters. There was no sympathy for the character because he started off as a bad guy who just got badder. That’s not interesting. It doesn’t make for a good story, and it certainly doesn’t make for a good Batman villain.

The Joker deserves better than that.

Here’s the thing about The Joker: He’s essentially Batman gone wrong. That’s important. The Joker represents the direction Batman COULD have taken, had he gone just a little crazier than he went.

For those who don’t know, the definitive Joker origin comes from the brilliant comic writer Alan Moore, in the story The Killing Joke. It’s a retelling of the original Joker origin. In it, we find out that The Joker was a failed stand up comic who was unable to support his family through his craft. He tried and tried but could never quite put food on the table being a comedian. Desperate to make ends me, he takes on a job doing a small task for the mob. All he has to do is take these two thieves through a chemical plant that he used to work at (and therefor knows his way around) so they can rob the place. He tries to back out of the job at the last minute (after finding out that his pregnant wife has been accidentally killed) but the criminals won’t let him.

Once inside, the robbery goes terrible wrong and they’re confronted by Batman. In an attempt to escape, The Joker jumps into a vat of chemicals and is washed out to the river, only to find that his skin and hair have all been discolored (white, red and green) which pushes him over the edge into insanity.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, if I were to do The Joker story in a new Batman movie, I’d probably go with some variation of this story.

One thing that would need to be addressed is exactly WHY The Joker has his constant insane grin that is his trademark. Burton’s Batman movie through in a flimsy explanation (probably to try and explain the ridiculous latex exaggeration they had glued on Nicholson’s face) saying that he had been hit in the face with broken glass and that the nerves in his face had been completely severed, leaving him incapable of NOT smiling. Hence the famous scene where Nicholson smashes the mirror in the back ally surgeon’s office.

That’s one way to look at it. Unfortunately for Burton, it left a major hole in his story (IE, if the chemicals in the vat only make your skin white and your hair green, then why did make the victims of The Joker’s poisoning with the same chemicals have the same ghastly grin) and it also took even more away from The Joker’s insanity, which is the most important part of his character.

The Joker shouldn’t constantly grin because he’s disfigured… he should constantly grin because he’s that fucking crazy.

The key element of The Joker’s story is it’s correlation to Batman’s story. Both men went crazy after the death of their families. The difference between the two is that The Joker went just a little bit crazier. Batman’s insanity manifests in his vigilante vengeance. He beats up petty crooks (and costumed villains) to make him feel better about his parents being murdered. The Joker takes it a step further and hurts anyone who happens to cross his path, and he doesn’t presume to atatch it to any particular purpose, even though he is where he is because of the death of his wife and unborn child. In this way, Batman and The Joker are almost the same person. The difference is that Batman feels as though he’s doing something good for the world and The Joker simply doesn’t care.

Nicholson’s Joker was a sociopath who felt was producing great art by disfiguring the public in his own image. This is a very Joker thing to do, but it was approached from an angle that I don’t agree with. The Joker in Burton’s Batman was a sadistic monster who got off on hurting people. He was obsessed with death and suffering. There was a very creepy scene where he’s kidnapped Vicki Vale (a photographer and the film’s female lead) and is explaining that what he’s interested in is “The skulls… the bodies… you give it all such a glow! I don’t know if it’s art, but I like it!”

I don’t know. I’m not really into it. It seems to me that we’re missing something important here.

Here’s the thing. The Joker is not a serial killer. He’s not a sadist. He doesn’t get off on hurting people. He’s a sociopath, not a sadist. He does what he does because he finds it entertaining. It’s fun for him. It’s not a sick compulsion that needs to be fed but a demented cure for boredom. He’s having fun. The Joker isn’t Ted Bundy or Ed Gein. He’s something more evil. He’s someone who hurts people for fun. He’s not feeding some sort of sick sexual desire and he’s doesn’t go home and cry and hurt himself when he’s all alone. He simply doesn’t care. He does what he does without any empathy or understanding and he doesn’t care. Even the worst serial killers have moments where they question what they’ve done. I have the feeling that The Joker would barely remember what he’s done, muchless feel bad about it.

::later::

I went to work and now I’m back. I should finish up this post.

I think my fascination with The Joker stems from a general interest that I have in the evil that human beings do and why they do it. I’ve always been interested in that. When I was younger it manifested in a somewhat sick hero worship of Charles Manson. That was a passing phase, but the interest has always remained. There was a time when I could discuss the details of the Tate/LaBianca murders and exactly why I believed that Charles Manson was not directly responsible for those deaths. As an adult, I am comfortable with admitting that I was slightly misguided and that Charles Manson is an evil fucker, though still very interesting. Recently I became very interested in Ted Bundy, though not to the degree that I obsessed about Manson. My interest in Bundy had a lot more to do with the way his image and story clashed with the typical serial killer model.

That’s something that’s been a thread through my life, and I doubt it will ever stop being there. I’m certainly not ashamed or embarrassed about it, though it’s not something I bring up casually.

It all comes back to a fascination with evil. Not just evil in a broad Good/Evil way, but in that way that enables human beings to do terrible, terrible things without guilt or remorse. And without a feeling of responsibility. Ted Bundy and Charles Manson ascertained through out their trials and lives that they were simply victims of circumstance, even though mountains of evidence proved that they were 100% guilty of their crimes.

That’s interesting to me.

And I believe that’s why I love The Joker so much. Unlike the majority of comic book villains, The Joker doesn’t do what he does out of greed or a lust for power or a rivalry with a superhero. The Joker does what he does because he’s a sick bastard.

If The Joker were a real person in the real world, he’d be the most interesting and entertaining murder in modern times.

That’s how he should be approached in a Batman movie. He should be approached with respect for what he is in the context of the world he exists in.

Batman Begins worked so well because Christopher Nolan and David Goyer were able to successfully put Batman in a real world setting. Sure, it was comic booky in it’s way, but it was the most realistic approach to a comic book superhero I’ve ever seen on film. While Burton’s films attempted to create a cartoony and comic book style world for Batman to exist in on screen, Nolan and Goyer put Batman in the context of OUR world. That’s why it’s essential that they approach The Joker not as a flamboyant goof but as he would be interpreted in our world: a serial killer. He may not be exactly that, but that’s what he’d be classified as if he existed in our world.

A serial killer, yes, but a very special kind of killer. He fits into that rare breed of killers who are cocky and comfortable with what they are. He fits in with Ted Bundy in that way. Not in the nature of his crimes (IE, he’s not raping and dismembering people) but in the way he carries himself. He has to believe that he’s untouchable. He has to believe that he’s god and everyone else is on some level below them, incapable of thinking for themselves or comprehending the way he works. The Joker isn’t a David Berkowitz (The Son of Sam) or Jeffrey Dahmer. He’s not tortured. He’s not someone who could have possibly been saved through medication and therapy. The Joker, like Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, is a completely new breed of human being. He’s someone who is incapable of relating to other humans on his own level. He’s someone who can’t be touched or understood by logical thinking people. The Joker is someone who exists on his own playing field, and the people around him are simply sheep ready for slaughter. And he, like Bundy and Manson, is quite simply a monster.

And no one is that kind of monster in his world.

Except Batman.

That’s the key to The Joker’s involvement in a Batman story. He can relate to Batman in some way. Because Batman is also a monster. Batman is also a sociopath. Batman sees the world in black and white. He sees people as either evil, and in need of punishment, or as weak and in need of protection. He doesn’t relate to anyone. Even though he may not believe it himself, Batman doesn’t truly care for anyone except himself. He can’t. He’s too far gone. Bruce Wayne doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a reoccurring theme in the Batman universe that Bruce Wayne is the mask that Batman puts on, not the other way around. Bruce Wayne is who Batman pretends to be in order to exist.

The Joker is Batman’s mirror. That’s why they work so well together. That’s why the best Batman comics are Joker stories. Batman and The Joker understand each other, even though Batman may not be willing to admit it.

That’s why they’ll never kill each other. The Joker will never kill Batman intentionally. He’ll torture him and put him through the worst possible tests and challenges, but he’ll never kill him. He can’t kill Batman. Killing Batman would be like killing himself. And, of course, Batman will never kill the Joker. At least in a good Batman story. That’s one of the things I hated about Burton’s Batman movie. Batman killed the Joker. He not only killed him, but he murdered him. Not only is that something that Batman would never do to anyone, it’s something he especially wouldn’t ever do to The Joker. He needs The Joker. They need each other. They’re almost like twins. One is evil and one is good, but they both share the same genetic structure and they’re identical.

So what do you do with The Joker in the next Batman movie?

Of course I’m nervous about Heath Ledger. I can’t help that. I do like the fact that they could both be about the same age. I think that’s important.

A while back I put forth the completely unusable and downright silly idea of actually having Christian Bale play both Batman AND The Joker. Even I wouldn’t have the balls to try and pull that off, but I think that if someone WERE able to do that, it would be fucking awesome. I’m hopeful that they’ll subscribe to at least some of my interpretation of The Joker and his place in the Batman storyline. I believe that they have a pretty similar understanding of what makes Batman interesting, and I hope that carries through with their telling of The Joker’s tale.

Early on, there was talk of Michael Keaton playing The Joker. That would be incredibly interesting, though not my ideal choice. It would be interesting simply because of the fact that Keaton played Batman in the Burton movies. That would very nicely pull the idea that Batman and The Joker are almost the same guy into the mix. I don’t believe that Keaton would quite fit the bill as far as the actual task of playing the character goes. I think he would have probably done something very similar to what Jack Nicholson did, but it was a nice thought anyway.

Now, the question is: How would I do it?

I’ve talked in the past about the Batman script I partially wrote (and recently found in a box in the closet and haven’t scanned yet, or even reread) back when I was naive about how the movie industry works. What I wrote was about 45 pages of an Arkham Asylum adaptation. I was around seventeen or eighteen at the time. My vision for that film included, for some reason, a primarily British cast. I pictured Gary Oldman as Batman (funny considering that Oldman ended up playing James Gordon in Batman Begins) and, at times, David Bowie as The Joker. I even pictured them with their British accents intact. At the time, I felt comfortable with the idea that Gotham City wasn’t necessarily in America, or any other specific place.

In retrospect, there are aspects of it that just seem silly now, and aspects of it that I really like. When I was writing the script, (ten years ago or so) Gary Oldman was at just the right age that he probably could have done a decent job as Batman. He’s a little old for it now, as is Bowie.

If I were to do it now, I actually probably would still do the Arkham Asylum story. It’s a great story and it’s primary theme is what interests me most about Batman. It’s basically about the fact that Batman is just as insane as the people he locks away in the asylum.

There are a number of actors I could see playing The Joker. I think Adrian Brody would do a fine job. I think Josh Lucas could pull it off nicely as well. He’s got a certain intensity in his eyes and a mania bubbling under the surface that I can appreciate.

Now I’m getting sleepy and must go to bed. I’m pretty sure that a lot of this post is rambling nonsense. I’m also fairly sure that I’ve repeated myself a few times and that I’ve even contradicted myself as far as saying that The Joker isn’t like Ted Bundy and then going on to explain why he IS like Ted Bundy. Whatever, it’s all good.

Complete run of Cherry Poptart comics

They’re stupid, not particularly funny and not particularly sexy, but there’s something I fucking love about Cherry Poptart comics. Maybe it’s the audacity of turning the style Archie Comics into porn. I don’t know. Either way, it’s a fucking crime that these things are illegal in Canada.

I hate not having money to buy myself shit I don’t need. WHY CAN’T I BE RICH?

If there’s anyone on earth that needs to be rich more than me, then… like… fuck them. I don’t think I fully knew where I was going with that line, but I think you get the jist of what I was trying to say.