Khatru 53

http://www.shastrix.com/khatru/index.php 

Not much to say on this one.

The new comics I've read since coming back from CA are:

Looking for Group - A fantasy comic about a group of "heroes" rampaging through a fantasy video game world. Think 8-Bit Theater meets Order of the Stick.

Girls with Slingshots - Basically, think Questionable Content with a talking cactus instead of a little talking robot.

Blip - Um. Not sure what this can be compared to. Demonology 101 maybe?

Hark! A Vagrant! - It's Dresden Codak, but for obscure history instead of obscure transhumanist thinkings.

Pretty sure that's it. My favorite so far is Girls with Slingshots, due to its similarity to QC. Next is either Hark or Looking for Group. Blip is ok, but there's a deeper story that the author keeps dodging around.

Khatru 52 Up!

http://www.shastrix.com/khatru/index.php?comic=75

Not much to say about this comic. The only thing I did differently from the previous one was eliminate the black lines around the eyes. It looked good when I was zoomed up close, but when I looked at the whole thing I wasn't sure I liked the effect. What do you think, denizens of the internet?

On the "Best of" front, I wrote a little bit of the Movies one last night whilst cooking dinner, so that one'll be next. It might end up being too long for one post, so I might separate them. They do seem to be getting longer, don't they?

Khatru 51 Posted to Shastrix

Most of the comments I have for this one are in the Artist's Comment spot under the comic. I really liked the new production techniques I used here, but I feel a little sad for the poor box of colored pencils that'll likely waste away inside their dejected and ignored pencil carrier. Not to mention the sadness of the pencil sharpener, and the specially purchased (on clearance months ago) ink pens I used to use. Maybe I'll use them all for special occasions. (Don't tell them otherwise).

Maybe this weekend I'll continue my "Best of 2009" series, although I've been focusing on art more than words lately. But that's only fair, since the two weeks prior to this were spent writing blog posts and short stories. Another problem is that I was planning to do a "Most Disappointing Music" post, but upon further reflection, at least two of the albums I marked for disappointment have grown on me. I might not end up doing that one, but there's still Best Movies and Best Books to go.

Edit: I'm also marvelling at the fact that it's 32 degrees outside, raining, and I still hear people running around (larking about) outside. I suppose if they want to get pneumonia or one of the flus, running around in January at Midnight is the best way to go about it.

3D Modeling is Cool

Feast your eyes on how Khatru's House 4 is supposed to look!

One of the people I follow on Twitter is El Goonish Shive creator Dan Shive. Last week while I was on vacation, he Tweeted that he was fiddling around with a program called Google SketchUp, which he hoped would make creating background layouts easier.

Today, while on break from my job hunt, I decided to check it out for myself, since one of the problems I have with drawing Khatru is that I'm rubbish at drawing things from any realistic perspective. The tilt of the floor behind my characters always makes it look like they're walking down a really steep hill. So I figured that this program might help.

And it shall! The above picture was created in about an hour (not counting the 20 minutes or so it took to figure out how to use the program and the ...other time it took to work out the mathematics of the rooms' dimensions). Ok, so maybe it took me longer than an hour. But if my plan succeeds, I'll have a perfect system for referencing the backgrounds. It's an investment towards straight lines and non-non-Euclidian geometry.

I'm very excited!

Khatru 50

http://www.shastrix.com/khatru/index.php?comic=73

Wow. I didn't realize I was already at 50 comics. I should have done something to commemorate it, but since it's so late, I figured a regular comic was the best option.

There's not much to say about the making of this one. For the next comic, I'm going to try something a little bit different. I've been watching the drawing broadcasts of Jeph Jacques (Creator of the legendary comic Questionable Content). Seeing how he draws it gives me an idea at how to do mine.

I'm going to draw Khatru 51 in pencil (regular, average pencil), then scan it directly, without inking it. Then, I'll make the background layer transparent, and use my electric pen dealie to trace the pencil and delete the pencil layer afterwards. Hopefully, this will speed up comic production. I'm not good enough with the pen yet to draw Khatru completely digitally; this is the compromise I came up with. While I'm tracing, I'll also be training myself on the pen, and I might someday be able to cut the pens and pencils out entirely. Even though drawing with pencil is way more fun than digitally drawing things.

KT Reviews: "Ferngully's Revenge," or "Avatar"

Holy cats!

I admit, starting this review with a terrible, yet descriptive, pun might not have been the best choice. That being said, I could have started with: "Avatar bulldozed my expectations!" or "Boy, some humans are absolute raving monsters, aren't they?"

I went into the theater not expecting to particularly like Avatar. The Spoony One produced a video review of it that completely colored my expectations of it. Among other things, Spoony talked about the similarities between Avatar's plot and the plot of about three other movies (Disney's Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves and Ferngully), and I didn't think I would get anything out of such a preachy-sounding movie.

I looked up the movie on Wikipedia and TV Tropes after I watched Spoony's review and read a little about the plot and the film's development. I simply could not believe that after over ten years of conceptualizing the universe and making the film, Cameron couldn't come up with a better name for the McGuffin than 'unobtanium.' Really? There were a couple of other things I had trouble accepting, but they were the same things everyone else did (completely CGI characters, obvious themes, etc).

I did end up really enjoying this movie. My girlfriend convinced me to go see it in 3D, which I'm grateful for. The 3D created an immersive experience - the little bits of leaf and ember floating through the foreground made it seem more authentic. It also gave a sense of scale to the big bad action scenes, which otherwise would have been just flashy CGI battles, like in the Lord of the Rings or The Matrix.

I realized midway through that I didn't particularly care that the story wasn't entirely original. On the walk home, I realized that James Cameron does his best work when the audience knows how the story's probably going to end. Look at his film list: Titanic - the boat sinks and hundreds die; Aliens - going by the first film, everyone buy Sigourney Weaver will end up dead (some day I'll watch Aliens and see if this prediction is correct); T2: Judgment Day - Most of the characters know how their lives are supposed to turn out, and the trick is finding the right way to survive long enough to achieve the things they're supposed to. This approach to film making works because the audience doesn't have to worry about understanding the framework the story has to follow. If they know everyone's going to die, they'll be entertained at exactly how they all die, in which circumstances and with what mindset.

I would definitely recommend seeing Avatar on the big screen, before it comes out on DVD/BlueRay (unless you're desperate to see the supposed Na'vi sex scene (shudder)). Seeing this movie is an experience more than it is a simple passive viewing. You won't feel the same awe and/or wonder when you see the scenery of Pandora on your 17" laptop screen, or your 15" TV. You need to be able to see every inch of screen you can in order to appreciate the spectacle. On the small screen, Avatar will be nothing more than the sum of its tropes. On the big screen (and in 3D, if you want to go that route. Which I recommend), it's magnificent.

Best TV Viewed in 2009

Here is my list of the best TV I watched in 2009. Note that most of the shows weren't created or broadcast in 2009, but 2009 was the year I first saw them. "Father Ted" would have been on this list, but I started watching it in 2006 or 2007, so it's disqualified. Sorry, Fathers.

5. The Middleman (2008)
The Middleman: People want to believe reality's normal. The ones who don't are freaks and no one believes them anyway.

The Middleman is what happens when TV execs make a competent, live-action TV adaptation of a comic book property. Poor examples include Blade the Series (2006) and Mutant X (2001-2004). The characters are all interesting, the special effects are good for the network (ABC Family) and the writing is superb.

Wendy Watson (better known to her friends Lucy and Noser as "Dub-Dub") is a struggling artist working a series of unfulfilling temp jobs (just like you or me, amirite?) Her situation at the beginning of the series is that of the nameless receptionist character that always ends up as the casualty of the comic's hero or villain. However, Dub-Dub surprises the hero, The Middleman, with her calm under ludicrous amounts of pressure, her snarky attitude, and her Genre Savvy.

The Middleman is a solid, dependable Silver Age comic book hero. He replaces all his swears with colorful epithets ("Eyes without a face! Polydichloric uthenol, you fool! Do you have any idea what you've done?!"), drinks hearty nutritious milk and tends to think through the dangerous situations he constantly finds himself in rather than shooting first and asking questions later. He's assisted by Ida, a shape shifting android stuck on the cranky school-marm setting, and they work for the Organization Too Secret to Know About. He fights super-crime, from madmen mind controlling apes, to puppet versions of famous vampire warlords. And he's picked Dub-Dub as his new assistant.

This show was just plain fun to watch. However, it does take a little bit of genre savvy on the viewer's part to understand what the characters are referencing, but as long as you've consumed some sort of popular culture in the past 40 years, you should be fine. Unfortunately, like so many of the shows my friend Chris/Sancho/Topher introduced me to, The Middleman didn't make it past its first season. But it's still worth watching the 12 episodes for their blend of delightful (and family friendly) writing and slick production. There are supposedly also a couple of graphic novels out there that the show was based on, but I haven't found any of them. Sad face.

4. Castle (2009-present; OK, so there two of these entries were from this year) 
Beckett: We have procedure. Protocol. 
Castle: Yeah, and you always come to a complete stop at a red light and you never fudge your taxes. Tell me something: do you ever have any fun? Let your hair down? Drop your top? A little "cops gone wild"? 
Beckett: You do know that I'm wearing a gun?

It's "Murder, She Wrote" with Captain Mal Reynolds. The fact that something Nathan Fillion acted in (and that Joss Whedon had no part of) made it past its first season is a testament to the curse befalling Whedonverse productions. This curse can only be broken by more Dr. Horrible. ARE YOU RECIEVING ME, MR. WHEDON?

Anyway, Richard Castle (Fillion) is a thriller-writer who decides to kill off his blockbuster character. He soon finds a new muse when NYPD homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) brings him in to help with a case - someone is playing out murders from Castle's old books. A few calls to the mayor later, and Rick is able to tag along with Beckett, using his storytelling skills and tidbits of info he picked up doing research to help solve cases.

Obviously, Castle can't compete with the CSI's or the Law & Order-style police procedurals, so it spices up the gumbo with amazing chemistry between Fillion and Katic, and a snarky secondary cast (Beckett's other partners Javier Esposito and Kevin Ryan, as well as Castle's daughter Alexis and his live-in mother Martha). I wouldn't recommend watching more than one or two episodes at a time, because you start to be able to predict who's lying to whom and to guess who the real suspects are. As Agatha Christie said in Doctor Who (4x07 - "The Unicorn and the Wasp"): "The thrill is in the chase, never in the catch."

3. Invader Zim (2001-2002) 
Dib: You picked the wrong planet to land on, Zim! 
Zim: Wait a minute! What planet is this? 
Dib: Earth. 
Zim: Nope, this is the right planet.

If you like absolutely off the wall humor, you've probably already heard of this wonderful cartoon. My friend Colleen from high school was nuts for Invader Zim - she would sing us "The Doom Song" before our AP Biology tests for good luck - and it took me almost five years to clue myself in. 

Zim is an invader (duh) who's sent to Earth because he annoys his society's leaders and because he almost destroyed their civilization once before. Zim sees himself as an underappreciated genius and concocts dozens of outlandish plans to conquer the Earth. He's opposed by his own incompetence, his clinically insane robot helper GIR (arguably the show's breakout hit) and by conspiracy-theorist Earthling Dib. Unsurprisingly, nothing ever goes quite right for Zim.

The thing I really liked about Invader Zim (besides the animation, the imaginative stories and the crazy-awesome opening theme [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-tgGwKZeko]) was the world creator Jhonen Vasquez made. It's a pseudo-cyberpunk dystopia where adults are either bitter crones or mad scientist superheroes and most of the children sport obvious lobotomy scars. The population wanders through their lives in such a stupor that it's questionable they would even notice or care if Zim succeeded in conquering the world. 

2. Doctor Who 2009 Specials/Torchwood: Children of Earth 
Carmen: No, but you be careful, because your song is ending, sir. 
The Doctor: [visibly unnerved] What do you mean? 
Carmen: It is returning, it is returning through the dark. And then Doctor... oh, but then... he will knock four times.

Gwen: All those times in history where there was no sign of him... I wanted to know why not. But I don't need to ask anymore. I know the answer now: Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame. 

This year marked the end of David Tennant's run as the venerable Doctor. It also marked the end of the original run of Torchwood (the made-for-adults spin-off) because they'd have to work pretty hard to make a series out of the characters left alive and on Earth at the conclusion.

The 3-5 Doctor Who specials (depending on if you count the previous year's Christmas Special and if you chop The End of Time in two) saw The Doctor journeying on his own for a lot longer than we've ever seen him. Let's just say the solitude didn't end up agreeing with him very well.

Tennant was the Doctor fans of the modern series knew best, serving from 2006 to 2009. He's the best known Doctor of the modern generation (unless you've seen the show's original run from 1963-1989). It took me a long time to warm up to him, clinging as I was to Christopher Eccleston (The Ninth Doctor). Ten was always a little too shouty for my taste, but I always come around to people when they regularly wear trench coats.

A lot of the fans had trouble with Torchwood: Children of Earth, mostly because of the perceived Executive Meddling (the story goes that BBC 1, on which the specials were airing, objected to the [SPOILER] relationship between Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones, so they decided Ianto should leave the show dramatically. And permanently.) They were also upset by the actions Jack had to take to save the world from the alien menace (Moral Event Horizon). The specials also ended in a way that the Torchwood organization would need to be rebuilt from the ground up, operated by a new cast of characters (SPOILERS: two members were dead before the specials started, another died during Children of Earth, Jack left the planet, and Gwen's pregnant). 

If it wasn't for the immense changes both these series went through by the end of their runs, these would be sharing the number 1 spot. All in all, though, they were both very satisfactory TV experiences. The effects were great, as was the writing, and you felt like there was something at stake, as if you weren't watching it on TV. That sort of emotional resonance is really rare today.

1. Spaced (1999-2001) 
Daisy: You're up early. 
Tim: Oh, I haven't been to bed. Me and Mike met up with these two Scottish guys in the pub and they gave us all this cheap speed. 
Daisy: Oh Tim, that's so tacky. 
Tim: Yeah I know, but y'know they were so nice... I think if we'd said no they'd have got offended and beaten us to death with a pool cue.

The best piece of TV I watched in 2009 was the two-season run of the British sitcom Spaced. The reason I liked it so much was because the characters are the people of my generation (more or less). Post-college, pre-meaningful career (in fact, fearing they'll ever have a career), I saw my friends' and my futures broadcast 10 years ago on the BBC.

Simon Pegg plays Tim Bisley, an aspiring comic book artist. He and Jessica Hynes' Daisy Steiner (an aspiring journalist) lie to their future landlady, who placed an ad in the paper for a professional married couple's flat. Tim's friend Mike (an aspiring soldier) and Daisy's friend Twist (an aspiring fashionista) and insane/passionate artist Brian round out the cast, with Marsha the landlady popping in and out with a glass (or more frequently, a bottle) of wine in her hand. Their lives are as wacky and surreal as I wish mine was.

Beyond the sociological predictions I saw in the show, what's most interesting is that Pegg, Hynes and Edgar Wright (the director) basically took what would have been a really interesting webcomic idea and turned it into a cult classic TV show. Actually, that might be a way to extend the property's life, since another season is somewhat unlikely. Hmm, let me get Simon Pegg on the phone, I've got an idea for him.....

I hope you enjoyed reading about my favorite TV of 2009. Hopefully, you'll enjoy these shows as much as I have.

Khatru is now on TV Tropes

Khatru is now on TV Tropes.

Come and see what I've been doing all afternoon. Well, this and laundry.

Best Books Read in 2009

Since circumstances prevented my original plan for them, the Best of 2009 series will become the January Feature. A note: These aren't the best books written in 2009, but rather the best books I read in 2009. I don't think any of them were written in 2009, to be honest. So, without further ado, the Best Books of 2009.

5. American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
"I gotta return my videotapes, I've gotta return my videotapes."

      American Psycho is Ellis' third book, and it's easily his most disturbing. Patrick Bateman is your typical mid-1980's Wall Street executive, loaded with cash and drugs and awash in a sea of meaningless relationships. Or is he a serial killer? Does he make it all up as a way to mentally stimulate himself? If he's not making it up, why can't he get anybody to notice?

I found this book's treatment of the problems of maintaining one's identity facinating. In our daily lives, everything people know about us comes from what we tell them. We in general, and Bateman in particular, are the ultimate unreliable narrators. Bateman is able to project a veneer of normality so well that his friends and coworkers don't suspect that he's secretly either A) a psychotic murderer, or B) a psychotic who spends most of his time imagining committing murder.

I definitely recommend this book, but only if you can stomach the more graphic bits. Learn the lesson from me, and don't read it while trying to eat lunch. Bad plan.

4. A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
"I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth..."

This book is a memoir wrapped in science fiction. Dick has said that everything portrayed in this book, he'd witnessed during his years living with street people and taking amphetamines. It's the second book on this list to tackle the problem of identity.

Federal agent Fred poses as drug addict Bob Arctor in order to infiltrate the lifestyle and expose dealers of the highly addictive, psychoactive drug called Substance D. During this work, Fred/Arctor becomes addicted to D, which has the side-effect of splitting his brain into two parts. The consequence is that, when Fred is assigned to focus his investigation on Arctor, he forgets that the two are the same person. Eventually, Fred's bosses figure out that Fred and Bob are the same, pull him off the case (in which Arctor was never the real target anyway), and put Fred in rehab.

One of the interesting themes of the book is the question of who's truly in control of one's actions. A major twist at the end of the book completely undermines all of Fred/Arctor's actions and decisions throughout the book. It turns out that he was never the master of his destiny, that an outside source used him for its own end. This was a great book, and I look forward to seeing the movie version.

3. Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile
"I'm Congressman Charlie Wilson, and they're fixing to give me an award in there."

  The fabric of American society changed drastically after September 11, 2001, but I don't think many Americans understand how the people who crashed those planes came to know how to plan that sort of operation. Many think terrorism just sprang up so that Fox News and CNN had something to report on after the Soviet Union fell. They might know that the Soviets tried to invade Afghanistan in the 1970's, but they probably don't know how deep the CIA and Congressman Charlie Wilson were in the funding, training and weapons development for the mujahideen. This book shows just how dirty their hands got.


This book made me realize just how much power a determined politician can wield and how much of an impact they can have on the world. It's kind of scary. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to try and understand how our world became what it is today.

2. Public Enemies, by Bryan Burrough
"Each would emerge into public view as easily recognized, media friendly icons: The family of kidnappers, the fugitive lovers, the charismatic escape artist, the psychotic killer, the misunderstood country boy."

This book was just cool. It tells the stories of the rises and falls of the major players of the 1930s Crime Wave. The tales of the era's most notorious gangsters are meticulously researched and presented chronologically. Prior to reading it, I had no idea that Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger operated at the same time. There's a good balance between showing the romance of the gangster's lives and showing the cost and stress it leveled at them. All but one of them, Al Karpis of the Barker Gang, ended up dead.

This is my favorite kind of non-fiction book. It focuses on one period of time and one group of people and shows how they live and the effect they had on America. Without the kidnappings, bank robberies and massacres these people committed, there wouldn't be much of an F.B.I. today. In Burrough's depiction of the societal conditions that created these characters, I can envision a new crop of criminal folk heroes, especially if the economy keeps getting worse.

1. Here, There and Everywhere, by Geoff Emerick

This is the best book I read in 2009. Like Public Enemies, it focused on a sliver of our culture, one that affected millions of people. The Beatles might be the greatest, certainly the most influential, rock band of the 20th century.

Uniquely, Emerick focuses on the band's music more than he relates amusing drug anecdotes (a problem I found when I read Richard Cole's "Stairway to Heaven," the biography of Led Zeppelin that didn't make this list for just that reason).

Similar to a DVD director's commentary, Here, There and Everywhere talks about how the Beatles' songs were made, what techniques Emerick and Beatles' producer George Martin used to create the band's dynamic sound. He also gives an interesting perspective on the band's breakup - attributing it more to the pressures of being with the same people for so long, doing the same things, and the various philosophies that influenced each member's vision of what direction the band's music should take.

All of the books on this list are definitely worth reading. Hope you enjoy them, if you read them; and I hope you enjoyed reading this.


Khatru update: I may have lost track of pages I've scanned, but I think the next one is ready to start coloring and texting. It will be up some time this week. As for the website, I still need to figure out if I can post to the school's server remotely, or if I need to go ahead and find external hosting (which I'll need to do eventually anyway since you can only keep files on the school server for six months). I'll let everyone know when I get it all figured out. Until then, you can continue to find new pages of Khatru at Shastrix, as well as here on the blog.