Higgins: Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell your daughter for £50?
Doolittle: Not in a general way I wouldn’t….
Pickering: Have you no morals, man?
Doolittle: Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.

If you recognize those names, yes, the movie musical My Fair Lady is a watered down version of Shaw’s work. Very, very watered down. A hundred years ago, GBS was reveling in no holds barred, incisive cynicism in ways that make Warren Ellis seem like Bil Keane. It’s telling that My Fair Lady was only able to be made over Shaw’s dead body. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my musical theater (perhaps, as has been suggested to me in the past, entirely too much for a heterosexual male), but I understand why Shaw forbade musical adaptations of his own stuff until such time as he didn’t have to be alive to witness them.

Now before I spend this blog entirely on Shaw, let me haul myself back on my intended track, which was to talk about a couple more movies I saw recently and didn’t get around to discussing last week. First off, there was Valley of Gwangi. Many of you (if not all of you) may not understand the absolute need I had to see this movie as soon as I watched a clip of a cowboy wrestling a Pteranodon. First I had to figure out where the clip was from, and then I had to figure out where to get ahold of the film. Netflix to the rescue (although it now appears to be available in its entirety on Youtube, as well).

Valley of Gwangi lived up to my expectations. They weren’t high expectations; basically, I was good so long as I got to see Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs. There could have been more of this, but then again, I don’t know how much Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs action would have had to happen before I could truthfully say, “no more, I’m good”. The entire movie reminded me of the kind of games I would have come up with when I was eight years old and would throw together whatever random toys and playsets I had to hand, creating messy, wonderful smorgasbords of self-entertainment. Only in this case my toys would have been crafted by stop-motion animation legend Ray Harryhausen. In the final analysis, any day I get to watch a T-Rex getting lassoed is a good day.

The second film I wanted to note is the remake of The Crazies, which I caught a theatrical showing of last Tuesday. Now the original was directed by George Romero, and, shamefully perhaps, I have not seen it. What I saw last week was one of the best serious horror movies I’ve witnessed in awhile, and that’s saying something in an era where most of the better horror flicks, zombie or otherwise, seem to veer onto the humor or camp side of the equation. That might be because we’ve seen all the old tropes played out so much they’ve become jokes, but The Crazies takes those tropes and puts them to work again in a way that becomes truly compelling. It’s not going to open any eyes to new vistas of socio-political thought, but cynical ol’ me cared what the hell was happening to the characters. There are set pieces in it that will awaken all sorts of weird phobias you didn’t even know you had. I won’t spoil it, but there was one sequence involving a car wash I was trying like hell to find ludicrous, and I just couldn’t manage it. It was too awesome. Breck Eisner, the director, is currently slated to helm the Flash Gordon remake in 2012, and I can’t wait to see it. I never thought I’d say that since the 1980 movie was such a paragon of cheeseball quirkiness, but this guy’s damn good behind a camera. He delivered a horror experience I hadn’t felt since The Descent. Maybe even moreso. We’ll see how he does in the future.

So we’re almost done with the first part of Zombie Ranch. We do plan on making a print version of the 1st issue available for you to buy online. The goal is to make it as cheap as possible and I estimate that they won’t be more than $5 for a comic (shipping not included).

But I also plan on selling a limited edition 1st issue that will include sketches, art, or other items. Haven’t fully decided on what to put in there. So far we know we’ll include a signed copy of the Zombie Ranch comic and a sketch from the artist (print or original is still undecided). If you have any thoughts on what you would want in a Limited Edition Zombie Ranch 1st issue, let us know.

Mind you, this phenomenon isn’t confined solely to zombie fiction, but it’s something that really speaks “zombie story” to me. This is why I can comfortably consider a movie like 28 Days Later to be a zombie movie, regardless of whether the zombies are fast or slow, alive or dead, etc. etc. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean I don’t consider Night of the Living Dead to be a zombie movie, because that would just be silly. So I’ll delve a bit deeper and say that it’s not just the idea of the infection that makes you “one of them”, it’s that the infection makes you no longer “one of us”. It’s the people you knew and cared for turning on you, with no way to stop it from happening except by killing them in cold blood, or at least doing something very bloody to their corpse.

Now it might be pollyanna of me to declare, but in general I’ll say people don’t like the idea of killing other people or defiling their bodies. Particularly when it’s a loved one. Look at how much time and effort and expense we spend on funerals, trying to make a dead relative look as alive and intact as possible. We have huge controversies to this day about the practice of assisted suicide, even when the patient is fully aware, calm, and consenting. Now imagine trying to muster up the gumption to put a bullet in a friend’s head when they’re begging and pleading for their lives. It’s such a small bite. Can you really be sure they won’t recover? Is amputation an option? What if you’re wrong?

So now, if we come back around to Night of the Living Dead, then we have several elements of the above horrors in place regardless of the fact that infection is irrelevant to creating new zombies. We also have a good example in Ben of someone who adapts to the new situation quickly and practically, but because of that is committing acts we might think were monstrous, or at very least worthy of pause or reflection. His desensitized state by the end of the film might even serve as a foreshadowing of his own fate.

Sure, you could argue he’s shooting zombies, but in one case he most definitely shoots a human being. Where do you draw the line? As a non-zombie example, in John Carpenter’s The Thing, one character shoots another, and later the infamous blood test scene reveals the victim was human, leading another of the team to declare “… that makes you a murderer.”

Matter of fact, it’s much akin to the murky borderlines between self-defense and murder that often occurred in the Old West. Anyhow, we’ll see how the folks of the Z Ranch deal with this situation soon enough. I’ve rambled on so long on this I didn’t even get around to talking about any of the new movies I’ve seen, like Dead Snow.

Dead Snow was referred to me a few months back by a visitor to our (as yet still not so very used) forums, but it only recently popped up for Netflix viewing. After viewing it, I can safely say it’s a lot of fun. Mind, you’d have to try really hard to make a movie involving Nazi zombies unfun, and the filmmakers are obvious fans of flicks like Evil Dead and Brain Dead/Dead Alive (I’m a fan, too… an appropriate quote from the latter provided the title of this blog). There’s a flipside to the whole horror of THE BITE where it’s played for laughs, and Dead Snow indulges in not just one but two instances of it. Anyhow, maybe some might find the film a bit too meta since the characters actually talk about those films and one even wears a Brain Dead t-shirt, but whatever. Nazi zombies! Is there anything in creation as killable without guilt as Nazi zombies? It subverts just about everything I laid out in the beginning about hesitation and morality, because… man, it’s an undead Nazi, of COURSE it’s moral to grind its head into a snowmobile intake.

I saw some other flicks I want to mention, but I’ll hold off until next week. And speaking of holding off, last week I wanted to mention something but didn’t, out of respect for the sheer amount of email he was probably already receiving during a tough time. The creator of Everyday Decay announced that he is putting the comic on permanent hiatus, at least in terms of online updates. We were sad to hear of it, but Dawn and I fully respect his reasons for doing so, and the archives will still be up to inspire and entertain. Also at some point in the future, Derrick may finish the story up offline and get a publication together. If and when that happens, I know I’ll be looking out for it.

So this is about the time where I start thinking of costumes that I’ll wear to the events to come for the Summer; Labyrinth of Jareth, San Diego Comic Con, etc. I like to cosplay and that means that I have to have costumes made.

I don’t have much time to create outfits, but I’m lucky to have a friend that is a great seamstress and is going to fashion school. She is good at finding ways of making character’s costumes and is very creative in designing her own one of a kind outfits. I was part of a wedding where the bride wanted to do something a little more creative with the bridesmaids in her wedding and so we asked my friend (Raven) to help design them.

But I’m between several outfit ideas for her to make. If I could lose a ton of weight, I would dress as Tali from Mass Effect, but I’m a chunky monkey. So if you have any suggestions for a chunky 5′2″ girl, feel free to offer. But so far my only idea is something simple like Carmen Sandiego.

But if you are looking for someone to make an outfit, advice on making outfits, or just love to support students following their creative dreams go to http://sanguinethreads.theartofdawn.com. Take a look at her stuff and if you can’t afford to hire her, then give her your thoughts on her website blog and any advice to help her along her Fashion Design Major journey.

The Long Beach Comic Expo went better than anticipated. I expected a small crowd and not to sell anything but a couple of my Bits of Nothing comic. I was surprised by the amount of people and that there were a couple of people actually wanting me to sketch something for them.

There was one guy that came to our table, purchased a copy of my Bits of Nothing comic and wandered to look around the convention. This guy came back and pointed at my Punch the Fish in the Face comic and said something like “Thank you for drawing this, I’ve always wanted to do this.”

Clint looked a little confused that someone else understood my weird mind as I gave this guy a “punch the fish in the face” high 5. It’s nice to know that others also find the things in my head funny.

Long Beach Comic-Con Expo 2010!

Maybe it’s because I’m still a fresh-faced young turk as these things go (heaven knows I’m happy to have an opportunity to apply the adjective “young” to myself in anything), but I have to admit I get a thrill out of sitting behind an exhibitor table. Dawn’s always nervous because she doesn’t feel worthy of rubbing elbows with much more established, professional neighbors. Me, I think our layout looks pretty darn sweet for a second outing, and the LBCC shows are low key so far, with little in the way of the tightly regulated lines and restricted access you’d experience in San Diego. I’m not a big fan of Jim Lee, but back at the October con there were times Jim Lee was surrounded by no more than a small handful of admirers, smiling and joking as he gave out autographs.

San Diego? If Jim Lee was having a signing there’d likely be a queue, and you’d maybe get to exchange one or two sentences before being asked to move along. Although to be fair, that’s mostly for the scheduled signings hosted by DC or Marvel or whoever. If you know where to look you might be able to catch them at their own booth or table and have some quality time. Heck, I’ve had friends who had random meetings with big pros in hotel bars.

At Long Beach, and especially at this one-day Expo we were at, you didn’t have to go looking. The floor space was small, but clean and adequate for the traffic. Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy) and Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo) were just two rows over from us. Right next to us was Brian Haberlin, showing off a whole stack of artwork from a huge graphic novel he’s been working on, called Anomaly. Looking at it upside down would have been an option from where I was sitting, but I decided to sneak out and around to the fanboy side of the tables so I could get the full effect. It was that gorgeous.

I should make special mention of Tim Bradstreet as well. I’ve loved his art ever since I first ran across it in the early editions of White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade RPG, and since then he’s gone on to do very memorable images of The Punisher and John Constantine, two of my favorite characters in comics-dom. Tim was nice enough to do free sketches for myself and a friend, and besides that we talked long enough to bond over something as random as a computer game not many folk remember, called Myth: The Fallen Lords. Tim also has a very adorable tiny daughter who kept handing us sketches of her own, although I’m not quite sure what they were meant to represent.

Anyhow, it was also great to see all the folks we met in October once again (minus Amanda Conner who didn’t make it to this one), and talk to some new people as well, like Rebecca Hicks. Rebecca and her significant other have been in the webcomics business for many years now, but I was gratified that she seemed fascinated by at least the concept of Zombie Ranch (hah, wait until she reads it, then we’ll see…).

That’s enough self-deprecation out of me, though. Her own ongoing creation of the moment is called Little Vampires. There are also werewolves, frankensteins, and zombies involved, and if you desire some more light-hearted fare to pass the time, then click on over using that golden link above.

Don’t worry, we still plan to get the next page up on schedule as usual. The Expo is one day only and Long Beach isn’t all that far from our homestead; but hey, if anyone’s going and wants to stop by and say howdy, maybe I’ll tell you what happens. Or maybe not, but you can at least get a picture with our scale model Cam-Bot. I still happen to think it’s pretty neat, myself.

Besides the Expo, this week I’m all about the grass. Bluegrass, that is. You might recognize my blog title as a line from a little ditty name of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, made famous by the Charlie Daniels Band. I’m not sure if TDWDTG counts as pure bluegrass, but let’s not split hairs here: it’s close enough, and more importantly, it’s a rockin’ song. Click here if you want a listen. Not the best recording, but you’ll get the gist.

There’s something about bluegrass that gets my toes tappin’ and my hands clappin’, despite being a city slicker. Maybe it’s my Irish side, genetically hearkening back to the immigrants who developed it out of traditional Scotch-Irish-English folk music, but I think I just find it… FUN.

Yes, this is the stereotypical “hillbilly” music. This is the kind of music that you might remember from Deliverance, and so it has an unfortunate association with… *ahem* non-consensual romance. Nevermind that the perpetrators of said act actually were nowhere near the kid who plays one-half of the “Dueling Banjos” duet with one of the city folk. That duet is actually a great scene where two people from wildly different walks of life find a moment of common ground, while everyone else is fumbling around trying to communicate.

I know who the real culprits who instigated this sudden resurgence of my interest are, though, and that’s Billy Hill and the Hillbillies, otherwise known as just “The Billys”. This last weekend Dawn and I went to Disneyland, and being faithful Zombie Ranchers we figured we’d catch a show at the Golden Horseshoe Theater over in Frontierland. Dawn had seen The Billys play before, but it was my first time, and man, it might have been only about 20-30 minutes but they put on a heck of a show. You didn’t get any of that sense of forced cheerfulness other Disney park performers often exhibit: The Billys are genuinely glad to be there, and genuinely impressive to watch perform. They are FUN. And they play bluegrass, which is FUN. So the FUN is squared. And the square is danced.

I checked out their website and, to be honest, it’s not as pretty as it could be, but then again neither are The Billys. But if you have any interest in this sort of thing at all, do like I did and pick up one of their CDs. I got mine at Disneyland, but they have it at places like Amazon.com as well. Here’s hoping they’ll be fiddling around still for awhile to come.

Late edit: I completely forgot to include a bit of bluegrass styling I’ve loved for many a year. It’s a cover of a Snoop Dogg song, so as you might imagine it ain’t all Safe For Work. But if you ain’t at work (or don’t care), you best give this a listen. Gin & Juice!

Still don’t know where we’ll be set up at the Long Beach Comic Expo February 20th, but we have received confirmation that we’re still there. Keep you up to date when we get any updates/changes to Saturday.

If the writer will let me, I’ll show off a cool new drawing I’m working on for a new character in Zombie Ranch. I doubt that he’ll have that much of a problem, but right now I’m still somewhat working on it and probably will be trying to finish it up at the Long Beach Comic Con. This is a character I came up with and the writer found it to be a good idea. I swear, I have the weirdest ideas when it’s really late at night.

Spring semester starts next week, meaning that I won’t be so relaxed with when I draw the comic. Being able to concentrate on just the comic without the distractions of art projects/homework was nice. I’ll be taking a hopefully simple class and hopefully I won’t have to worry about being too overloaded.

I hate the color pink. I mean….I really hate the color pink. It’s probably because I was always a huge tomboy as a kid (wanting to play with my brother) and everyone would always think I liked girly things. Barbie, pink dresses, pink makeup sets, etc. All of them pink because pink is a girl’s color. I hated being defined as a pretty little proper girl. I wanted to play baseball, basketball, and kick peoples’ asses in Karate sparring.

So I have to bring back Chuck’s Pink Flamingo in today’s comic…it wasn’t hard to draw Suzie’s angry annoyance at the little plastic pink bird.

This comic also reminds me of when my dad planted a cactus in the driveway garden at one of my homes, right next to the roses and other pretty little flowers that my mother was growing. She hated that cactus, and I thought the bugger looked ugly, too. We did everything to that cactus: we “accidentally” ran over it with the car, “accidentally” spilled gasoline/bleach/drano on it, “forgot” to not let the dog that digs up plants get to it by opening his gate. But no matter what we did to it, it just wouldn’t die!

So I think in my mind that maybe Suzie has tried to get rid of the ugly flamingo in a similar fashion, for you see chips, cracks, and duct tape on one of it’s legs. Maybe she does things like accidentally kicking it or running the cart over it. If she really does, who knows…? Ask the writer.

“And, you know, the thing about a shark… he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be living… until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin’ and the hollerin’, they all come in and they… rip you to pieces.”

Yes, it’s true, my favorite movie is not a zombie movie. But it’s got great characters, great pacing, and every so often, someone gets eaten. What more can you ask for? I’ve loved Jaws to pieces (heh) since I was just a little tyke, and nearly 30 years later no movie has yet toppled that big, beautiful man-eating fish from its pedestal.

That said, I did dedicate myself to some new zombie viewing this week. Severed: Forest of the Dead made its way into the Netflix queue. I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest, but at first I was actually getting into it. The set-up was interesting (logging camp and eco protesters beset by the living dead), the acting seemed decent… but once the apocalypse scenario started it was all the same ol’ same ol’. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but in my opinion you really have to bring the A game if you’re going to trod over the same tired tropes of the genre. Otherwise all the jump cuts, film grain and shakycam in the world won’t save the film from getting a bit, well, dull.

You have the cowardly douchebag company man who abandons people to die, you have the ‘Apocasex Now’ scenario (female and male lead pork each other because… well, because they’re there… and they’re pretty…) … but I really started groaning when they stumbled into the makeshift survivalist compound and all its attendant cliches. Just once I’d like to see one of these where the “Alpha Male” does not attempt to rape the female lead the first time he’s alone with her, especially when it’s pretty clear no more than a few days have passed at most since everyone was isolated. At least 28 Days Later gave us a month.

The thing is, there was some potential here. There was one wonderfully ironic scene where the survivors were trying to rescue screaming eco types who had chained themselves to trees before the outbreak, and were now being set upon by the zombies of fellow tree huggers and loggers alike. That’s a moment arguably up there with the original Dawn of the Dead having a zombie hiding amongst the store mannequins, in being setting-specific and having some social commentary underlying the gore. But I could never quite figure out if the movie was being self-aware like that. For instance… and yeah, I’ve been giving lots of spoilers, but let’s face it, this isn’t The Sixth Sense… we have the following exchange of dialog after the douchebag scientist admits the company was performing genetic experiments to regenerate trees and make them grow faster:

Scientist: Only I can stop the clear-cutting of forests!

Eco-girl: You can’t stop it like this!

Well, actually eco-girl, this scenario is exactly how you can stop the clear-cutting of forests. In the better movie that could have been, the dialog would go:

Scientist: Only I can stop the clear-cutting of forests!

Eco-girl: You’re right. Once everyone’s a zombie, they won’t care about lumber anymore.

Ah well. Thus does Severed plod along to its oddly inconclusive conclusion, possibly making some point along the way. I think the point was that people are dicks, and zombies like to eat people regardless of whether they’re dicks or not. I just wish they’d found some new ways to express that.

For some time now I’ve been meaning to once again gush happily over the A World On Fire blog. Every day its proprietor, Brian, has new and exciting zombie-related entries. Oftentimes multiple entries. I know there’s plenty of zombie sites out there, but AWOF is the one I consistently find easiest to browse and cherry pick interesting movies, games, or toys to check out. I found AWOF when Brian first found and reviewed us back last October, and have been happily checking it out ever since.

Well, Brian hadn’t forgotten about us, either, and just last week he posted a new update praising what we’ve done so far. Perhaps then, my pimping his blog now will seem self serving. Perhaps. All I can say in my defense is that I’ve had AWOF on our links page for several months now. And that I enjoy being self-serving once in awhile.