Doug TenNapel's Blog, page 10

Making Books

It's easy to talk about making books, than to make books…and that includes me! One of the disciplines I practice when making a new graphic novel is to stay focused on the difficult things to do in story. That means I have to put my head down and work alone, even when it's not fun to put my head down and work alone.

That said, I'm working on my 14th book! Does it get any easier on the 14th go? No. It really doesn't. What does get easier is that with experience comes less mistakes and less plot holes to have to fill.

Art Clokey and Mass Media

Art Clokey would have been 90 years old today, he passed away two years ago. Art was one of the guys I modeled my own career after since he created my favorite childhood character GUMBY.

Now my most common comment I get from fans is that they were raised on Earthworm Jim. I understand that sentiment all too well. Yes, it gets old to hear that every day of the last 15 years of my life, but it's more than tolerable. Earthworm Jim or any of my other characters will always mean more to others that it will to me. Earthworm Jim is to them what Gumby is to me. Earthworm Jim doesn't bring me back to being a 6 year old again, Gumby is my transport. I remember those formica table tops, Brady Bunch on prime time TV, hearing Partridge Family songs on my little AM radio and bright colored glass ashtrays in all of our friend's houses.

That's the multiplying effect one gets with mass media. It's like launching a thousand messages in a thousand bottles without knowing who is going to be the recipient. That makes mass media a powerful tool, and like all forms of power, it can corrupt the wielder, and ought be handled with even greater responsibility.

Back to Clokey. Gumby became a mass media character, but he started as an art project called "Gumbasia". Clokey represents a new form of fine artist that came about in the age of movies, inexpensive printing and a public with a voracious appetite for entertainment. Where does the fine art end and the commercial art begin? Clokey never drew that distinction, even when selling his services to the Lutheran Church to make Davey and Goliath religious shorts…a religion that was not his own, by the way. Clokey was more an Eastern Mystic than a Lutheran.

Along with Clokey came other artists who used commercial industrialization as a mode of delivery. Jim Henson, Dr. Seuss and Peter Max used entertainment as their fine art medium. While there's no reason not to enjoy a fine oil painting in a church, now the masses get the painting delivered on their television sets and gaming systems.

To Uplift Souls

My pal Cliff Cramp's answer to the question, "What is the purpose of art?"

The artist is the first member of his own audience. Before I show anything, before I even make anything, the artwork is in my mind. Most artists work in solitude, so our work is seen by us first. Then it might go out to others, perhaps our family and friends, or our bosses if we're professional artists. Then to who-knows-where from there.

But the first sucker to taste the snake oil is the artist himself. When I see good art, I assume the artist cares enough about himself to put on a good show for his audience of one. When I see bad art I assume the artist is lying to himself first, and it only gets worse from there.

This gets me back to my first question that any artist has to answer every day he decides to make something, "Why make anything at all?" The answer is similar to our very existence, "Why am I here? What is my reason? Was is my job? What is my nature?" The answer to these and other questions are rarely, "To make a video game." because making art product never suits me as a landing place. It's pointing forward to something else. Perhaps to provide for family, to bring joy to others or to explore, but the goal is not to just paint a certain painting. There's a through line in there somewhere that pierces the long string of art and points forward to other works.

I don't know Bill Watterson, but he is a great artist and brought laughter to millions with his comic Calvin and Hobbes. He disappeared from public display of his art, but I know he's still producing art. It's his job, his identity, his nature. He can't not make art. It is likely for an audience of one, but there is an audience. When a tree falls in the forest it makes a noise, at least for that tree it does.

Come see me in Washington D.C. on World Intellectual Property Day!

I'm on a panel this Tuesday the 26th talking about making a living on creating properties: LINK

Many don't understand the legal underpinnings of what I do to make a living. I come up with something, I sell it to another party. But why can't some employer just say, "That's a good idea, I'll take it. And you're fired!"? Well, it's all because we have rights to our intellectual property, and some of the strongest description of those rights in the whole world are right here in America.

I will be signing books, participating on a panel, and having fun meeting all of the suits in DC that help fight for our intellectual property rights. Come on over!

Four Comments Written in 30 Minutes

This guy forgot to mention the Salem Witch Trials and Hitler being a Catholic:

#1

Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 8:18 pm

I agree truth doesn't evolve. But the subjects you talk about there are always exceptions to. We consume life, animals and plants to live and so do they. It's perfectly fine to murder someone in society if they threaten your life or walk in your house uninvited. Or if a person murders another person the state then murders them.

In the middle east the majority considers it acceptable to murder a wife who dishonored you in some way, or to stone a person to death if they commit adultery.

So yeah it depends on where you live and how you were raised. And it also depends on your level of education and understanding of the world around you, maybe realizing just how vast the universe is and how minuscule and insignificant their complaints against thins like sexuality and aborting fetuses are.

As more people got smarter they became more considerate it seems granted there are always more stupid people then smart people and you have to bang things into their head like "racism isn't a good mentality to have and truth is there is no 'race' genetically speaking." before they even start to process things differently and self examine themselves and seems to have a cut off point when this can happen around age 30.

craftyandy

#2

Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 8:01 pm

everything has free will. Maybe you should stop seeking answers to things no one knows the answers to and find out what is true and accepting what the human race doesn't know instead of filling in the holes with mystical beings.

craftyandy

#3

Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 7:57 pm

yeah to bad most religious people don't acknowledge it if it goes against what the bible says, they rather be willfully ignorant and arrogant in claiming they know what happens when you die and think and having faith in something is actual great when it means believing and agreeing with something as true when there is lack of evidence to even indicate it so.

craftyandy

#4

Submitted on 2011/02/09 at 7:54 pm |

Why is "thou shall not rape" not one of the ten commandments? According to the bible it was required that a non virgin girl who is raped must be married to her rapist. When did the bible say slavery was wrong? Or selling your daughter as a sex slave is wrong? Just going to pretend the old testament never happened right?

If the only truth comes from God then we will never get it. The human race found all it's knowledge on their own by asking questions, challenging the status quo and not by praying to the invisible man in the sky for the answers to just fall from the sky. The bible has been wrong on almost every scientific account and it fails as a moral guide.

People didn't need the ten commandments to realize that murdering one another is not beneficial to society.

craftyandy

Truth Doesn’t Evolve

No value is true today that wasn’t true one thousand years ago. It’s wrong to murder now, and nothing about the way the universe progresses can make murder right. If enslaving a man for the color of his skin is wrong today, then it was wrong 200 years ago and will be just as wrong 200 years from now.

True ideas originate from a different place than culture, so they are independent of fashion, history or evolution. Aristotle’s Law of Non Contradiction (A cannot be both A and not A at the same time and in the same way) wasn’t invented by Aristotle, it was revealed by him. We were operating under the Law of Non Contradiction and will always operate under this law, because like all true things, it wasn’t created by culture.

If anything, almost every true thing that has ever existed was campaigned against by various cultures throughout man’s history. Different cultures have believed that man can be enslaved because of the color of their skin or that Jews were the source of the world’s problems or that a child should be sacrificed to ward off evil spirits.

This is why I shrug when culture is at odds with some of my values. Given culture’s terrible track record at getting things right I should hope it opposes at least some of my values.

There is no attribute of culture that can keep it from changing while there is no attribute of the truth that can move it one way or another. You can’t improve on a true ideal.

Truth Doesn't Evolve

No value is true today that wasn't true one thousand years ago. It's wrong to murder now, and nothing about the way the universe progresses can make murder right. If enslaving a man for the color of his skin is wrong today, then it was wrong 200 years ago and will be just as wrong 200 years from now.

True ideas originate from a different place than culture, so they are independent of fashion, history or evolution. Aristotle's Law of Non Contradiction (A cannot be both A and not A at the same time and in the same way) wasn't invented by Aristotle, it was revealed by him. We were operating under the Law of Non Contradiction and will always operate under this law, because like all true things, it wasn't created by culture.

If anything, almost every true thing that has ever existed was campaigned against by various cultures throughout man's history. Different cultures have believed that man can be enslaved because of the color of their skin or that Jews were the source of the world's problems or that a child should be sacrificed to ward off evil spirits.

This is why I shrug when culture is at odds with some of my values. Given culture's terrible track record at getting things right I should hope it opposes at least some of my values.

There is no attribute of culture that can keep it from changing while there is no attribute of the truth that can move it one way or another. You can't improve on a true ideal.

Relativist Dictators

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger coined a phrase in 2005 that I've thought about almost every day since he gave his address in Rome, just before he became The Pope. He said that we were moving toward a "dictatorship of relativism."

The reason why that phrase struck the gong of my mind is because something wasn't adding up in all of the soft goo talk of relativism by our culture. You see, there's this idea that if you stand for nothing, then you are the open minded person on the block. You're the harmless one, because you don't take a stand on anything (other than the stand of not taking a stand on anything.)

To claim that all morals are relative to the individual sounds innocent enough. Who can deny the curb appeal of platitudes like "It may be true for you but not for me." I have to live by my truth, but I can't be considered a good boy if I project my personal, local truth onto you, your situation or your culture. That would imply not only that there are objective truths, but that I can know them…and we can't have that. Knowing the truth is bad… and we know this to be true.

But it wasn't the "relativism" part of Ratzinger's statement that struck me, it was the "dictatorship" part. It's not a word we associate with the free, minimal ethic of relativism. The relativists are the good guys, they are the opposite of moral objectivists like me. Obi-Wan said, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." It's probably a bad idea to mix logic and Lucas, but his writing would make me a Sith. The bigger problem is that if Obi-Wan was speaking with absolute certainty then he would be a Sith too.

Relativism can't leave everyone else alone, because it is just another absolute claim. It demands that everything be relative to the individual, and is no less vulnerable to the trappings of dogmas as any other philosophy. Man is the problem, and relativists are made of the same fallen stuff that makes an absolutist dictatorial. Man's nature has a dictatorial streak, so that relativism can be rammed down your throat by culture with the same gusto as Sharia Law but with even more self-righteous certitude.

Relativism isn't relativistic about itself, it's absolutist. Openness isn't open to closed systems of thought, syncretism and other relativist buzz-words are self refuting to a point of absurdity. The self proclaimed tolerant are among the most intolerant people. Scratch a pluralist and a mean absolute statement against absolutes gushes out.

America is a pluralist culture, and that should give us the first clue about what kind of totalitarian we're likely to create. The man who believes in nothing the loudest is the winner.

My favorite Relativist parable is about the three blind men feeling different parts of an elephant who describe what it's like. One man feels the face says, "An elephant has a long nose." Another feels the leg and says, "No! An elephant is like a tree trunk!" The last blind man pulls bags of money out of the elephant's bottom and says, "This elephant ate Deepak Chopra!"

The Dictatorship of Relativism always seems to know that everyone else is blind, but that his own vision about their blindness is above reproach.

Letter to Santa

My daughter will be 9 in a couple of days and her belief in Santa is at its end. She's trying hard to believe but common sense, and her younger brother Ed [(6) who saw right through Santa from the beginning] have undermined her unjustified belief.

She wrote this tender letter and left it for Santa tonight:

"Dear Santa,

This year is busy and we will have to visit (family) right after Christmas so, I would very much like to see you! If I don't come to you could you please come to me? I am upstairs and very close to the stairs. You could give me something for proof or I could see you. Goodbye!

Love, Ahmi"

Disbelief is a normal thing for a child to go through, it's a sign of growing up. I have no doubt that some day she'll be old enough to believe in Santa again. Probably right around when she has her own children.

The whole family got together and watched the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. The kids kept asking, "Dad, is this true?" I tell them that it's true in all of the important ways, and a fable in the unimportant ways.

That's Santa in my view. He's not real like my car in the driveway is real. But my car also isn't real in the way that Santa is or was. My car can't make someone jolly, but Santa's image can. As I drive down the street and see it crowded with parked cars, I don't get all happy inside. But even the tackiest plastic Santa in the front yard makes me say "HO HO HO!" I don't get to say "HO HO HO!" any other time of the year, so that's some powerful magic.

Santa is an important myth for civilization to carry on. He's like a great toy that only children get to play with. When my kids play robots and tigers I always address them as robots and tigers. What kind of mean person reminds them, "You're not a robot. You're not a tiger."

Santa's depiction has changed over the years, so in all likelihood he will evolve into a thin, non-smoking vegetarian who reminds children to recycle and that they are just evolved, meaningless molecules. Then all of the skeptics will herald him as a great figure for all children to believe in. That's when I'll write my goodbye letter to Santa.

The God Bomb

I love Christmas. That said, the presents are a bit of a burden. Who to buy for? What to buy? And all of that waste. I get presents that I don't particularly need or enjoy. But the spirit of the holiday still comes through and I love it.

God is a radical story teller. He's odd, and he should be. Given we float down a culture of poo it only makes sense that something not-of-this-culture would come off as alien, unbelievable… weird.

Christmas is the event that changed everything. God provides this great gift that is so unbelievable that it even shakes the foundations of the faithful. I think of it as The God Bomb. It's where supernature touches a starving mankind, dead in our skepticism, demanding a gift that we want but being denied that want to be given what we need. It hit the earth like a bomb, and cannot be reversed once set in motion.

The anti-Christmas crowd, the non believer and the pagan join in the celebration by acknowledging the threat of this gift. When people degrade the gift of Jesus my faith is only strengthened because it inadvertently testifies that something profound has happened. Kwanza is stupid, and you'll never hear me tell someone they shouldn't celebrate it. I say, "Kwanza all day and night! Do the Kwanza like there's no tomorrow!" For God is the God of the pagans too.

You may love Christmas trees, or as they're called among the Politically Correct "holiday trees". God is a great octopus who reaches his tentacles out and steals the holiday of the pagans, then makes it holy with the One True Holiday. The gift is so great that everyone puts lights on their houses. Everyone is a little happier when I shop at Ralphs. There are more people saying "good morning", more people buying gifts for people they don't care for and receiving cards from long alienated family members.

The story of The One coming to the fallen people is everywhere in modern film making, classic lit and pagan societies that even predated The God Bomb. But a God who is above our physical-based time tells His story throughout mankind. It is entirely possible that God came up with the idea of babies because he knew that he would send his son in the form of a baby some day. On another note, I think he also could have invented sex and marriage because he knew that one day Christ would take the church as his bride.

Oh these skeptical times. When a man talks about the simple, ancient Gospel it is considered taboo. If you think I'm unaware of how I sound, I'm not. I am, after all, a member of our culture of poo also. I could say the F word and be championed as a hero of free speech. If I announced that I was homosexual, scores of people would line up to defend my true, good position of honesty. But say the J-word and you might as well take a dump on the dinner table.

My two favorite moments in cinema are from The Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. At the end of each movie you have a man running through the streets shouting, "MERRY CHRISTMAS"! This is only appropriate. Oh sure, there's always the skeptic saying, "Look at that old fool! Scrooge has lost his mind." Or when George Bailey shouts Merry Christmas to Mr. Potter he responds, "And a Happy New Year to you, too! …In jail!" I love shouting that quote from Mr. Potter because it's so true. I have no reason to doubt that one day shouting Merry Christmas could very well put one in jail. It does offend the high law of multi-culturalism, and we really must do something about these intolerant outliers, shouting exclusivist, insensitive nonsense that is not unlike using plastic bags when shopping or smoking cigarettes instead of pot. GASP!

None of us have a completely orthodox response to God dropping the Christmas bomb on mankind. It's tough stuff to chew. Man cannot save himself, so God wraps himself in the skin and culture of a man and does not come as a statesman, celebrity or academic. He comes as a baby. The ultimate being for all time showing up as the ultimate symbol of lowness born in a cave among filthy farm animals. His mother was likely mocked as a whore because, come on, you're pregnant and didn't have sex? That's a good one. The people God called to testify were wise men from the east (aka: a bunch of pagan astrologers) and homeless shepherds whose testimony didn't even hold up in a court of law. This strange God loves low things. At the very least, it makes for a better story, and God is the world's best story-teller.

Structurally, we might be tempted to see Adam as the first act, the birth of Christ as Act two and the crucifixion as Act three. But I think of the birth of Christ as the end. The triumph was locked in place at birth. God wins, but so does man. Like any gift, we can't earn it. It's a freebie. It calls for shouting in the streets.

Every year at the San Diego Comic Convention, there is a black man with a bull horn preaching the gospel. Given the crowds, there are thousands of people in the streets, and they stand around the preacher to mock him. They come up with the most offensive things they can say about Jesus. These are my fellow comic creators. My sympathies aren't with the mockers, because I don't get my values from a culture of poo. My sympathies are with the bull-horn man, George Bailey and Scrooge.

Merry Christmas! (And a Happy New Year to you, too! …In jail!)