Todd Klein's Blog, page 258

Pulled From My Files #19: THE RIDDLER

Image © DC Comics, Inc.

Here are some sketches I produced for the DC Comics licensing department probably some time in the 1990s. I have no record of being paid for a Riddler logo, so they may well have rejected all of them. The Riddler never seemed to progress beyond the 1960s to me, so perhaps they were looking for something more modern. I kind of like the third one.

And Then I Read: THE COMPLETE PEANUTS 1989-90

Images © Peanuts Worldwide LLC.

The twentieth volume in this series finds Charles Schulz’s lines a little shakier, but his sense of comic timing unimpaired. I think I laughed more at this volume than I have at the last few. There’s just one new character, a girlfriend Charlie Brown meets at camp who decides to call him “Brownie Charles,” which is, I think, rather an improvement. Of course Charlie Brown muddles things up with her as usual. Mostly we have familiar characters and situations being mined for new humor in a way that can only be called remarkable.

Any of these volumes will delight you. There’s no real continuity, so you can start anywhere and have a fine time. The characters are deceptively simple to understand, with hidden depths that continue to surprise. If you want to read something that will make you happy, it’s hard to beat PEANUTS.

Highly recommended.

Winter Birds, Cats, Snow

Photos © Todd Klein.

Yesterday afternoon our cats Tigger and Leo were acting agitated while looking out through my sliding door at the back yard. I followed their gaze and saw an immature Cooper’s Hawk sitting on the rocks beside our small pond. It stayed there for quite a while, clearly a young bird who wanted to catch one of the songbirds coming to our feeders, but not sure how to go about it. I often wonder how many young hawks survive, they seem particularly bad at catching their prey. Probably a lot of them don’t survive.

I checked my field guide, as there were some puzzling markings, like the white spots on the back, but I eliminated anything other than Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks, and the white edges at the ends of the tail feathers confirmed it as a Cooper’s. There is a lot of variation in markings of hawks, particularly young ones.

Cooper’s Hawk from Todd Klein on Vimeo.

A short video of the bird preening.

This morning we awoke to snow, like much of the northeast. We got only a few inches, enough to be pretty, not enough to require shoveling the driveway, thankfully! The holly tree at right is heavily laden.

Out by the end of the driveway, our road has been plowed. We should be able to get out when we need to, but will stay home today. Ellen gets a snow day from work, which she’s happy about.

While I was out having a look, two songbirds flew into our garage, a Hermit Thrush, above, and a White-throated Sparrow. We had to shoo them out into the cold, and they didn’t seem anxious to go.

Out back, a flock of blackbirds was mobbing our feeders, mostly Common Grackles. Leo watched them intently. Normally I’m annoyed when they arrive, but they’re ground feeders, so probably very hungry, and they’re welcome today.

The window feeder in my studio is also busy with birds like these House Finches.

They also entertain and frustrate the cats. Here Leo is only inches from a Dark-eyed Junco sitting on the windowsill under the feeder. Today it did not flinch when he tried to scare it. Hunger wins out over skittishness!

Happy New Year!

Here’s wishing all of you the very best for 2014! Last night Ellen and I went out for a delicious sushi dinner, then spent a few hours at First Night in Ocean City, NJ enjoying some live music and comedy. This was our second time at the 20-year-old event, a family-friendly group of activities around the city, something for everyone. First we saw the Harmony Show Choir of Gloucester, NJ perform a wildly energetic non-stop 45 minute routine of dancing and singing. Great stuff, I was exhausted just watching it, and they did three such shows in three hours!

Next was Broadway By Request, where eight fine stage-musical singers perform numbers from a list of about 80 songs chosen at random by the audience. As happened when we saw them two years ago, not everyone got a solo shot due to the vagaries of requests, but every song performed was excellently done.

Finally we enjoyed the Abott and Costello show, two impersonators who do a fine recreation of the comedy duo’s vaudeville numbers, from “Niagara Falls” to “Who’s on First,” and many others I hadn’t heard before. A third fellow helped, and did his own turns as Stan Laurel and Jack Benny. Good fun.

We could have stayed until midnight and a fireworks display, but we were both tired, and I’m fighting a cold, so we were home in bed by 11 PM. Today we have no special plans, except to take it easy and enjoy the day. Hope you do, too!

And Then I Read: JUSTICE LEAGUE 24

Image © DC Comics, Inc.

When the evil version of the Justice League of America was introduced in the 29th issue of that title in 1964, it was a novelty idea, but it may well have introduced the first dystopian version of Earth in comics. On Earth 3, as it was then called, all the superhumans we know as heroes were criminals, banded together as the Crime Syndicate.

Writer Geoff Johns knows his DC history, and has been mining it for many years. His version of the Crime Syndicate is the featured menace in the “Forever Evil” storyline. This issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE focuses on Ultraman, the criminal version of Superman, now on our Earth, and wreaking havoc with his mates, but also remembering his origin, something I don’t think we’ve seen before. Then he’s terrorizing the staff of the Daily Planet, including a very young Jimmy Olsen when…SOMETHING…intervenes. Interesting read, but not interesting enough to make me want to read all of “Forever Evil.” The art by Ivan Reis and company is excellent, as always.

Recommended.

Pulled From My Files #18: RESIDENT EVIL

Images © Capcom, Inc.

“Resident Evil” is a videogame and multimedia franchise that began in 1996. Above is the logo from the original game. Some time before that, probably 1995, I was contacted about designing a logo for the property. I don’t think it was Capcom, I think it may have been a licenser interested in promoting merchandise, but I don’t recall the details. I did a number of sketches, only two survive:

Looking at them now, I’m sure this was too “comic-booky” for them, especially considering the very conservative type-based logo of the game. I suspect fans might have enjoyed something more along these lines, though.

December Beach Walk

Photos © Todd Klein.

The weather was nice today for December, in the low 50s, sunny, and no wind, so Ellen and I went for a walk on the beachfront promenade at Sea Isle City. There’s something both beautiful and melancholy about beach towns in the winter, when places like this are almost haunted by the crowds of summer.

This beach entrance shows the footprints of the residents and visitors that are present, and we saw quite a few, but they merely punctuate the landscape.

The gulls are happy, they finally have the place to themselves…but not for long. A few minutes after I took this picture a family came by with a small child who, as usual, wanted to chase the gulls.

Well, they’re used to it. Once the sun sets they can get some sleep. These are mostly or perhaps all Herring Gulls I think.

A little later we drove over to the bay side for a better view of the sunset. A few more gulls were overhead, probably heading to their roosting site.

The back bay in the last of the sunlight. Beautiful and almost silent. When it got too dark for pictures, we headed back to the mainland for dinner.

And Then I Read: WORLDS’ FINEST 16

Image © DC Comics, Inc.

Huntress and Power Girl are once again back on Earth and facing new threats, including an elusive one that has yet to be named or caught. Paul Levitz continues to entertain with his writing, but I found the art for this issue unappealing. Unlike the fairly realistic approach of the cover above, the interior art is very stylized in a way that distorts the figures so that at times they hardly seem recognizable, and at others are simply badly drawn. I suspect this is not a permanent art change, but a scheduling issue. Hope so.

Mildly recommended.

Christmas with Family and More Cookies

We’re at Ellen’s sister Ann’s for a few days, and on Christmas Eve day, we made more cookies, to add to the many varieties we already had from Ellen’s niece Ina, Ann, ourselves, and some of Ann and Dave’s friends. First up was Ann’s favorite, their Italian Pepper Cookies. “Don’t put that online,” Ann and Cristina said, “It’s a family secret!” I looked up “Italian Pepper Cookies” on Google and easily found a dozen recipes, none exactly the same, but most quite similar, so I don’t think the recipe is all that secret, but I won’t type it out here. Above, making the dough.

The dough is shaped into a log and cut in slices. Each slice is a batch.

Each batch is rolled into a rope and sliced diagonally to make the cookies.

The cookies are placed on parchment paper on baking trays, ready for the oven.

Image © Ann Smiga Greene.

I’m cheating here by showing the recipe in Ann’s hand-written cookie scrap-book, so if you really want to try it, you can copy it down, or just compare it to recipes you can find online. The predominant flavor is chocolate, the pepper is there but subtle in Ann’s version. We had some made by one of her aunts in Pennsylvania that had a lot more pepper, spicy and interesting. I liked it, but Ann doesn’t care for that much pepper. The anise extract in the sugar icing is the other predominant flavor.

Then it was time to make the Butter Cookies, we usually help decorate those. It’s a rolled dough cut with shaped cookie cutters.

Before baking, they’re decorated with paint made from egg yolks and food coloring: red, yellow and green. Blue won’t work because of the yolk color. Small candies are added by dipping your finger in egg white, then into the candies, then placing them onto the cookies. Two of the three common shaped cookies are Butter and Sugar. (The third is Gingerbread, we didn’t make those this year.) The dough looks the same, but as you might guess, there’s more butter in the Butter Cookies, more sugar in the Sugar Cookies. At Ann’s, you can easily tell the difference by the decorating style, the Butter Cookies are decorated before baking, like this, the Sugar Cookies are decorated with icing and candies after baking.

A closer look at the tray I just decorated. By the way, recipes for these are easy to fine online also.

Zach and Dave working on another tray.

Here are some of the finished baked cookies. Yum!

After all the baking was done, we sat down to an excellent dinner made mostly by Ina, the young lady in the apron at right. Lasagna, antipasta salad, meatballs, garlic bread, shrimp scampi and more. Zach, Ann, Dave, Ellen and I all enjoyed it along with Ina.

I though Ina’s antipasta was particularly creative. Good cooks in this family!

And for dessert later there was, of course, a large tray of cookies. What else?

Here’s a close look at the tray. The Pepper Cookies are at upper left, and working clockwise are Ina’s Chocolate-dipped Shortbread, our Macaroons and Butterballs, Ann’s Biscotti, some Multi-chip Cookies, our Date-nut Bars and Mocha Nut Balls, some Pizzelles, the Butter Cookies at bottom center, some homemade chocolates and toffees, and Sugar Cookies at left. Beautiful!

Christmas morning there were lots of presents to open, this is only a small part of them. Zach is ready!

More presents around the fireplace. And that small TV was soon to be replaced by a much larger new one, Dave’s big surprise for the family.

In the afternoon we went to my brother Doug’s house, where there were lots more presents to open.

As always, it was a crazy scene, with about a dozen kids and close to 30 adults gathered around to open gifts, with everyone talking loudly and exclaiming over their finds. And this was the second or third round of gifts for many of the kids!

My mom was there too, and Ellen and I enjoyed visiting with her, as always.

Here’s Doug and his handsome family: daughter Hayley, wife Lena, and sons Dylan and Charlie, in a rare moment of repose. Doug served us another fine dinner, and everyone had a great time. We’re blessed to be able to spend time with our families at Christmas. Hope your holidays were good too!

 

Watching FROZEN

Image © Disney.

I hadn’t planned on seeing this in a theater, hadn’t read anything about it, but we’re visiting Ellen’s sister Ann’s family, and they invited us to go see it. I went in with no expectations, except that it’s a Disney animated feature, and I enjoyed the film a lot. Despite the Disney name, like “Brave” it feels more Pixar than Disney, perhaps at least in part because of Pixar’s John Lassiter directing. The story is only vaguely familiar, being “inspired” by the story “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Anderson. All they’ve really taken is the idea of a powerful and heartless queen of ice and snow. The rest of the film is new, and while it is a familiar Disney approach with two princess sisters, two handsome young men, a loveable animal companion (above) and comic figure (also above), there are enough new twists and turns to make it seem fresh. The animation is wonderful, my only complaint is that the young women have the extremely large eyes of manga characters, much larger than the men, something I found tended to distract me from the storytelling. There is magnificent animation and artwork based around snow and ice, lots of action (perhaps a little too much at times, but that’s the way films are these days), a good dose of humor, and fine characters that “act” convincingly. All well done, and the film is preceded by a new Mickey Mouse cartoon short that is truly an amazing blend of the oldest Mickey cartoons and new digital animation. I won’t spoil it by explaining.

Recommended.