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Colorists See the Light: Laura DePuy

Posted March 1, 2002 By Dave Thomer

Laura DePuy is the colorist for CrossGen’s Ruse as well as the art director for Sequential Tart, an outstanding webzine that focuses on comics, including but not limited to the role of women as creators and characters. She has been a staff member at Wildstorm FX and a freelance colorist, working on books like Planetary, Authority, and JLA. Warren Ellis made a point of requesting her in his initial Planetary proposal, and I’m glad he did — her work makes that excellent book shine. Now, along with writer Mark Waid, penciller Butch Guice and inker Mike Perkins, she’s bringing the Victorian-esque world of Arcadia to life in Ruse, a highly entertaining mystery series. (Check out the cover to issue 2.)

DT: What motivated you to get into coloring? What motivates you to keep doing it?

LD: I was in my junior year at college, and as a graphic design major, I was looking at a possible career in advertising, print layout pre-press and/or presswork. Not a bad gig, if you can get it. But deep down inside, I really wanted to pursue something more artsy. Getting into comic books hadn’t even occurred to me, until a friend said, “Hey, you know . . . you could do comic books!” And suddenly, a light bulb went off . . . the world of illustration and digital painting opened up to me.

In some ways, the fine art aspect is what drives me. Digital painting gives me more of a creative outlet than graphic design. Painting is a chore in humility: the more you do it, the less you realize you know, and the more you strive to understand. The same goes for digital painting. I learn something new every day, and it’s never enough.

DT: What are the skills you needed to learn to do the job well? How did you go about learning them?

LD: Someone wishing to become a colorist really should start off with an inherent talent toward art. With that raw talent in place, anything else can be taught and honed with art classes, self-study, and plenty of practice. The first and foremost skill is the ability to visually interpret objects in space: a colorist must be able to create form and depth from a two-dimensional image. A good understanding of color theory is also necessary. And finally, a colorist should have some understanding of the pencilling and inking process, as he or she is not the sole artist on a project and therefore must be able to communicate with his or her penciller and inker to achieve the correct impact. Again, however, these skills can all be taught.

DT: When you first start on a page, what are the first things that go through your mind? What are the initial creative choices you make to set the direction for the finished product?

LD: The first thing I do is consult the script and/or the penciller. I’ll get the basics down: Who are these characters? What happened on the page before? What time of day is it, and where are the light sources? And perhaps the most important question: What mood and impact do I need to convey in this page? I might also seek out reference material if there’s something I’m unfamiliar with. Once I’ve got those pieces of information, I’ll approach the page very simplistically, blocking in the basic colors and establishing a color scheme for the scene. From there, it’s all in the details.

DT: What do you think comics readers should look for when they look at a page, in terms of coloring, in order to fully appreciate the work?

LD: What a great question! There’s so much to be appreciated. First and foremost, I’d like readers to appreciate the time and effort involved. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard the phrase, “I don’t really pay attention to the coloring.” Ack! That’s like saying, “I don’t pay attention to the spices in the chili. I’m just there for the beans.” How can you NOT pay attention to the color!

Beyond that obvious request, though, I’d like to think that readers can appreciate when the coloring marries the art to the story, and describes the scene properly. Not everything is seen in “local” (natural) color. For instance, a sunset will tinge the whole world in oranges and pinks. A heavily overcast day will pull color out of the environment, leaving it gray and dull, whereas a bright sunny day will saturate the world with color. Colors aren’t “local” when viewed at night or in shadow. That’s the kind of sensitivity to scene lighting that I look for as a reader, and while I certainly don’t expect everyone to have as critical an eye as I have, I’d like to think that the everyday non-art-trained reader can appreciate the differences from one scene to another.

DT: What do you think differentiates ‘good’ from ‘bad’ coloring?

LD: See above. 🙂 All kidding aside, there are two things that separate a good colorist from the pack: one, the ability to create a mood, and two, the ability to define light sources and volume, to create depth and shadow where there was none. The first is based on color theory; the second, on visual interpretation of the black and white artwork. Beyond that is simply a difference in skill levels.

DT: What of your own works are you particularly happy with? What is it about those pieces that you like?

LD: The toughest ones are always the montage images, because there is no background, so there’s no point of reference with which to establish a space/volume relationship between the characters. I have a harder time getting those to “read” right, so when I have a successful piece, I’m quite thrilled. The covers to Stormwatch: Final Orbit and The Authority: Relentless were two of my favorites, as was the cover for JLA: Heaven’s Ladder.

Sometimes it’s a single element that makes the whole piece work. Miranda’s upper back on the cover of Ruse #2 sells that entire piece.

The fun ones are when there’s a very distinct, very harsh light source that obliterates all natural colors. The Authority #7 was a great example of that: one scene is lit entirely in yellows and greens, while the next is harsh reds and blues. It’s jarring, but it was a real lesson in dynamic lighting. That’s probably my favorite example.

DT: What do you need from your collaborators in order to do your job to the best of your ability? How well do you feel comics companies and creators have given colorists the support and respect they deserve?

LD: The best thing that I can ask for is feedback. I want the comic book to be a collaborative effort, where the penciller and inker both have an idea of what I can do in order to help them set up the page initially. Once the page is done, I like hearing back on it; I always learn something new about the penciller’s approach and thought patterns, so that I can incorporate that into the next page. If my interpretation of a scene is completely different from what they had in mind, I want to know.

Support and respect have been uphill battles — no doubt about that. But we’re gaining ground, thanks to some of the newer publishers accepting computer colorists as part of the creative staff. Prior to the advent of Photoshop, coloring was part of the production process. In some companies, that’s still how they’re interpreted. But as colorists improve their approach to both the comic and Photoshop, and creators recognize the difference between styles and colorists, and publishers realize the worth of a good colorist, our position in the comics industry improves.

DT: What impact has the CrossGen working environment had on your work? (Most CrossGen artists and writers work at the company’s Tampa studio, and extra time for artists is built into the production schedule.)

LD: I’d say the impact has been pretty noticeable. I’ve had the luxury of working very closely with other teams (Authority’s Warren Ellis/Bryan Hitch/Paul Neary and Planetary’s Ellis/John Cassaday), whom I got along with famously; but we never physically worked in the same area. Also, we fought the age-old deadline problem: for whatever reason, I would receive the script or the art late, which meant that I would have to work like crazy to meet the deadline. I was proud of the work I did, but I can only sit back and wonder how much better it would have been had I taken more time on each page.

At CrossGen, the proper amount of time was built into our schedules from day one. While I wouldn’t call our pace “leisurely,” as we (Butch, Mike, and I) work hard on every page, I’d say the schedule is much less hectic, leaving us to concentrate on doing the best work of our careers. I know it’s working for me. On top of that, the creative environment at CrossGen allows us all to experiment, to push our skills to the next level. It’s become a friendly, healthy competition among the creative staff; we’re all constantly trying to outdo each other. It’s a beautiful thing.

DT: What work by other colorists do you particularly enjoy? What appeals to you about those artists and those works?

LD: Oh wow, that’s a huge question. I feel bad naming names, because every colorist is an influence on me in some way, and I don’t want to leave anyone out.

Naturally, the CrossGen guys are great. They’re among the best in the field. And I’m not saying that because I work with them — I’ve had my eyes on these guys since they started publishing. They’re constantly experimenting with new media and styles; that’s what is really exciting about their work. I have to fight just to keep up with them!

Richard Isanove (Origins) continues to flabbergast me with his ever-changing approaches. He’s always five steps ahead of everyone. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the work from the Hi-Fi guys (New X-Men) — they’ve really stepped up to the plate and are making the Marvel books look good. I don’t know how the coloring process goes, whether it’s digital or hand-done, but Ladronn’s work (Inhumans) just blows me away. Jeromy Cox (Promethea) has the most pure palette of anyone I know. And he does pretty clouds. And then there’s Snakebite (The Red Star), who is the only colorist so far who (in my opinion) can convincingly blend 2-D coloring with 3-D rendering.

There’s a whole slew of colorists whose work affects me: Chris Ware, Brian Haberlin, Lynn Varley’s work on 300, the European painters for Metabarons and Raptors, and on and on. I really can’t name them all, and I know I’m forgetting someone major, so I’ll just stop here and say that there are far more than I can possibly name in one sitting.

Filed in Comics
        

Colorists See the Light

Posted March 1, 2002 By Dave Thomer

If you look at any comics sales chart, one thing you’ll notice is that color titles far outnumber those in black and white. This is far from an earth-shattering observation, as the same holds true of movies and television. In most cases, though, movies and TV shows are filmed in color in the first place, and when someone tries to transform a black and white film into a color one . . . well, purists get kind of nervous. Most comics start out as black-and-white pencil-and-ink, so someone has to put the color in. That someone is a colorist, an artist whose contribution to the comic is often overlooked, even as the artform of coloring itself has grown tremendously over the last decade.

Up until the late 80s and early 90s, most of the most popular color titles were printed on inexpensive newsprint, so they had the quality and durability you would expect from your local paper — namely, not too much. Inks got smeared, pages were flimsy, and sometimes the things were darn near illegible. This inevitably affected the quality of comic book color. Comics (and most other publications) are printed in a four-color process, in which four dyes are mixed together to produce all the color that you see. This is often referred to as CMYK printing, for the four dyes in question: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black; a printed page actually goes through four presses, one for each color. (If you’ve ever seen a newspaper with a color photo that looks like one of those old 3-D movies, with a ‘halo’ of one color or another, it’s because the page wasn’t lined up perfectly as it went through one of the presses.) Each pass puts a series of dots on the page, which hopefully blend together to create the variety of colors we perceive. The smaller the dots, the better the blending. In the case of those old newsprint comics, the dots were often quite noticeable, and because the paper couldn’t hold much ink, the color was often faded.

Furthermore, the colorist could never be sure that his or her work would be exactly reproduced. The colorist might use paints or markers to color a black and white copy of the line art, but that colored page would then be broken down into a set of instructions for each of the four presses by a separator. These instructions could not be very complex — the printer could fill all of a given area with a particular color, fill half of it with the color, or fill a quarter of it. Colorists and separators only had a total of 64 combinations available, so subtle gradations in tone were impossible. (In contrast, my computer monitor can display millions of different colors, and even the stripped down ‘web-safe’ palette in my web design software includes 256.) Even when comics publishers used a higher quality paper to achieve brighter, more vibrant color, they were still limited to those 64 colors. Comics color, therefore, was very flat.

Today, better paper quality and advances in scanning and reproduction mean that the colorist’s work can be transferred directly to the printing presses. Separators are not confined to the 64 combinations anymore, and those colorists who work digitally can actually prepare their own separations, ensuring greater fidelity to the colorist’s vision. Pages can hold more ink, so colors can be deeper, more saturated, and more vibrant. The flat colors that used to be the end product are now only the beginning, as colorists can enhance the artwork with highlights, shadows, subtle gradations in tones, and special effects such as lens flares. In fact, some colorists employ assistants or subcontractors called flatters to handle the initial stages of the process. (Check out this side-by-side comparison of comic colors from different periods to see the difference.)

To fully realize the potential of this technology requires a highly talented artist, whether the colorist uses ‘traditional’ paints or does the work digitally through Photoshop as many of today’s colorists do. Either way, the colorist must be keenly aware of how light interacts with the world to create our color perceptions, and translate that awareness onto the page in a way that preserves (or enhances) the visual information needed to develop the narrative while also connecting to the reader on an emotional level.

“Bad color can distract from the artwork and thus the story,” says Brandon McKinney, a penciller who uses Photoshop to add gray tones to his line art, in essence ‘coloring’ the book in black and white. (The effect can be seen in the upcoming AiT/Planet Lar graphic novels Planet of the Capes and Switchblade Honey.) “But a well colored book can be mind blowing. I think the stuff that Laura DePuy, Moose Bauman and Paul Mounts produce is gorgeous — they really know how to set a mood with their color choices and themes.”

There’s more to the color theory that colorists must grasp than I could ever hope to describe, but there are three key factors, or colormaking attributes, that must be considered. (Check out handprint, an excellent resource, for more info on color theory.) Hue is what we would call the actual basic color itself. Value is the amount of light reflected or sent to the eye by a colored object — the lightness or darkness of the color. Finally, saturation is the intensity of the color — how deep or pure we believe it to be. The artist must know how to balance these variables to create the proper effects.

“There are two things that separate a good colorist from the pack,” says Laura DePuy, colorist of CrossGen’s Ruse. “One, the ability to create a mood, and two, the ability to define light sources and volume, to create depth and shadow where there was none. The first is based on color theory; the second, on visual interpretation of the black and white artwork.”

While colorists’ achievements are impressive, the comics industry itself has not been so quick to recognize the talents and contribution of these artists. If you look at the cover of most comics today, the writer, penciller and inker are usually credited, but not the colorist (or the letterer, for that matter, but that’s a topic for another time). There are exceptions — Warren Ellis makes a point where possible to credit the colorist on his books, and CrossGen Comics credits the colorist on all its titles. But they are few and far between.

This might seem like a trivial issue, but it’s one that fundamentally shapes the way people look at comics. I admit, until I kept seeing Laura DePuy’s name on the cover of Planetary, or Caesar Rodriguez’s on Sojourn, I tended to think of colorists as an afterthought — a necessary part of the production, and capable of doing some fine work, but not really a ‘creator’ in the same way as the penciller. Looking back, I realize that’s ridiculous. Just look at this month’s cover image. As great as Bryan Hitch’s pencils are, Paul Mounts’ colors are essential to the impact of that picture. (See a side by side comparison of the two pieces.)

Unfortunately, I’m not the only person to come to such ridiculous conclusions.

“I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard the phrase, ‘I don’t really pay attention to the coloring,'” says DePuy. “Ack! That’s like saying, ‘I don’t pay attention to the spices in the chili. I’m just there for the beans.’ How can you NOT pay attention to the color!”

It’s not merely a question of credit or recognition, important as those things are. The nature of comics today is such that many artists are freelancers, working far apart and sending pages around through FedEx or swapping digital files. The vision of pencillers, inkers and colorists don’t often get the chance to fully mesh, which can lead to communication breakdowns and other problems. As the last people to touch the art, colorists are often expected to make up lost time or clean up any lingering mistakes. (The message board at Comic Colors — another nice website with tutorials and other coloring info — is full of the late-night posts of colorists trying to stay coherent long enough to meet a deadline.)

“Ever hear of the ‘we’ll fix it in post’ attitude?” asks Red Star colorist Snakebite. “Well, in comics colorists are considered ‘post.’ I’m not saying colorists are key, but we’re damn close to it. Colorists are artists and should be treated like one. Anywhere you see a penciller credit or inker, you should see a colorist.”

“Without colorists everything would be black and white . . . I’m not bitter, I’m just aggressive and tell it like it is. I see a shift of the attitude. More artists are making themselves more savvy and therefore more compassionate to our position in the creating process . . . now if we could only get the editors to see the light of day.”

For more in-depth conversations with the colorists quoted in this article, and samples of their work, check out the full Q-and-As.

Laura DePuy
Brandon McKinney
Paul Mounts
Snakebite

Filed in Comics
        

Plan About Town

Posted March 1, 2002 By Dave Thomer

A while back I was at dinner with my family, and somehow we started discussing my mother’s intention to move out of Philadelphia in a few years. I was surprised to hear each of my siblings talk about how much they love the neighborhood we grew up in (and all live in at the moment). What surprised me was that even though I don’t really recall discussing it much with them, their reasons echoed my own — the area isn’t too crowded with automobile traffic, there are fields and trees around, and many of the stores are within walking distance. This quasi-suburbia has almost accidentally lucked into many, although not all, of the features advocated by a movement called ‘new urbanism,’ a group of urban planners and community activists working in conjunction with environmental advocates and others to combat America’s decades-long push to the suburbs.

The main argument of new urbanism is that the way we have developed our cities and suburbs over the last fifty years has been horribly inefficient, costly in both financial and psychological terms. Because the things we need and the places we go are so spread out, we spend much more time driving than before, which means we spend less time in our communities forging bonds with our neighbors or establishing an emotional connection to the area. When we do stay at home, we have fewer options for what we can do, because zoning laws and the desire for lots of living space means that the critical mass of restaurants, shops and other businesses can’t form.

Of course, whether those entail actual sacrifices is to an extent up to the individual. I can’t imagine myself not living in a city; as I’ve said elsewhere, I loved the energy that came with living in New York City, and I sometimes even harbor thoughts of moving farther into Philadelphia than Pattie and I are now. But that’s me; someone else might like solitude or quiet and find city life horrible, and I’m not about to argue that. What new urbanites and anti-sprawl advocates have increasingly pointed out, however, is that physical expansion hurts us in the pocketbook. Setting up a new housing development means that the hosting municipality will have to deliver services to that development — gas, power and sewer utilities, police, fire and emergency services, trash collection, schools, and so on. The existing local population pays for those services through increased taxes, reduced services, or both, because the developers and new residents rarely, if ever, compensate a community for the new revenue demands it creates. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Public Policy
        

Misadventures in Marketing

Posted March 1, 2002 By Pattie Gillett

Ever try to convince someone that you’re not trying to cheat them? It’s not easy. A lot of times, you do it too well and only end up convincing them that you’re too much of a “smooth talker” to be trusted anyway. How’s that for a Catch-22? It’s a position I find myself in quite a bit. You see, I work in marketing. (Stop laughing.) Just last week I spent almost an hour on the phone with a customer at my credit union trying to convince him that our current auto loan rates weren’t (in his words) “some kind of bait-and-switch thing.” After forty-five minutes of reading and re-reading the terms and conditions to him, he finally believed me. However, he was quick to add, “I still don’t trust you people” before he hung up. (FYI, he really didn’t want the loan either, he just wanted someone to explain it to him, I expect to hear from him again when we run our home equity loan special next month.) I really don’t blame people one bit for not trusting marketers. They really shouldn’t, at least not when we’re trying to sell them something.

Allow me to explain. Contrary to popular belief, all marketers aren’t heartless, soulless individuals who take extreme pleasure from the suffering of others. (If you’ve read my previous piece on telephone and Internet scams, you might think I’m switching gears on you, bear with me.) Most people who work in marketing aren’t rich, present company certainly included. For the most part, we’re just trying to make enough to pay the bills and save a little – just like everyone else. Unfortunately, thanks to the way most marketing salaries are structured, how well we eat is directly linked to how well we can convince people to like us, trust us, and of course, buy what we’re selling.

Now the law of averages says that we can’t all be lucky enough to sell great products. There just aren’t enough great products in the world. Besides, why would you pay someone to sell something that sells itself? (Think about it, when was the last time that someone had to actually talk you into a box of Girl Scouts Thin Mints?) So, much like that old lawyer joke – when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when the law is on your side, argue the law; when you have neither, bang your fist on the table really loudly – marketers need to make up for the weaknesses in their products somehow. So what do we do? Just about anything. For those of us that can’t afford to pay Britney Spears to dress up in tight retro clothing and lip sync, this means downplaying the weaknesses any way we can, overemphasizing the strengths any way we can, and getting you to like us, any way we can (within legal limits, of course). The reason for that last one is simple: the more you like us, the less you’ll think about calling that other marketer out there who’s selling something better than ours.

Here’s where the trust comes in (or flies out the window, depending on your view): getting a customer to like you can have little or nothing to do with telling them the whole truth. I’ve been told that I’m a lousy marketer because I’m too “blatantly honest ” (Thanks, boss. Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.) My attitude is that the truth catches up with you eventually so it doesn’t make any sense to lie to or even mislead a customer. Not all marketers think that. In fact, most of the people who are far better at selling than I am will tell you that detaching yourself from this job is the key. If you empathize too much with your customer, you may end up believing that they don’t need your product, and what kind of marketer would you be then?

By now you’re probably thinking that I must have been recently fired from my marketing job or have just bought a lemon from a fast-talking used car salesman to disparage my profession like this. Neither is true. My impetus for writing this piece is this: lately there have been far too many examples of people putting their trust into products, people, and companies that have done very little to earn that trust. Moreover, when given that trust, these people and companies act in their own best interests anyway.

Now I’m not just talking about Enron here, although what happened there had as much to do with slick person-to-person marketing as it did with misinformation. (How many Enron employees testified that they didn’t ask many questions about the stock or the retirement plan because their trusted the executives?) How about your doctor? How much do you trust the advice he or she gives you? According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, pharmaceutical companies spent $16 billion in 2000 trying showering doctors’ offices with free meals, tickets, and promotional items. So when your doctor prescribes a brand name drug over a generic (a move that will cost you more in the long run), is he or she doing it because the brand name is genuinely better, or because he has a closet full of promotional items emblazoned with that drug’s name? You won’t know unless you ask. So many of the decisions that you theoretically have some say in end up being made by someone else who isn’t going by what you need, but what someone like me has told them, or, given them. Again, you don’t know until you start asking questions.

And asking is the key – it’s the most important thing to do when you’re face to face with people like me. We’ll be content to play the “trust me and be my friend” game all day if you let us. Instead, let us work for your trust. Ask every question you want to, even if it starts to annoy us. Really, we just want the sale and we aren’t going anywhere even if you are annoying. What do you care, anyway, you can find friends on your own, you certainly don’t need some schlub in an uncomfortable suit and a pasted-on grin to say that he or she is your friend.

Let’s face it, this is a consumer-driven culture. In recent months, we’ve been asked to prove our faith in the “American way” not by being more active citizens, but by being more active consumers (and don’t think we at TINN are not a little irked at that bit of irony). But there’s a big difference between faith and blind faith. My advice (and take it for what you think it’s worth because I do sell financial services for a living, after all): take advantage of the freedom you have to be as darn suspicious as you want to be.

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

Finnaticism

Posted March 1, 2002 By Earl Green

Rock music is rife with siblings, ranging from the Everly Brothers to Heart’s Wilson sisters to the Kemp brothers of Spandau Ballet. And then there’s the enduring, if somewhat more obscure, legacy of New Zealand’s Finn brothers, veterans of such acts as Split Enz, Crowded House and – finally – just themselves.

Neil and Tim Finn have carved out their own little niche in the pantheon of singer/songwriters, each turning out music with a very distinct character, and each gathering a loyal fan base. Tim’s music often bounces along with a wistful, whimsical flavor, but he’s also turned out some quite interesting, refreshingly un-clichèd ballads since launching his solo career. Neil’s music shows its Lennon & McCartney-inspired roots vividly, with unexpected chord changes, harmonies and experimental instrumentation aplenty; yet the younger Finn seldom turns out anything that sounds like Beatles pastiche, with literate lyrics that manage to be both heartfelt and stream-of-consciousness at the same time, and a way with angst-heavy ballads that no one else has been able to match.

Both brothers’ solo careers are almost proceeding along parallel tracks – they have nearly instant name recognition in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.K. and Europe, and yet they’ve all but stalled in gaining U.S. recognition, their latest solo releases appearing on tiny indie labels. This is surprising, given that Neil Finn was the man responsible for Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” a 1986 hit that climbed to #2 on the Billboard charts. The uninitiated might be tempted to write that off as a one-hit wonder, but the real story behind the Finn brothers stretches back 30 years – and at least as many hits. They’re just hits that American radio hasn’t taken on board. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media
        

Hitting the Links

Posted February 1, 2002 By Dave Thomer

I’ve joked in the past about the time I waste on my PC. I’m not going to say I’ve gotten any better at that, especially since I recently resumed my foolhardy quest to play all 32,000 variations of FreeCell. (I’m up to 322. Please send food.) That said, I really wouldn’t call a lot of my time online a waste. I thought it might be worthwhile to take a tour through my bookmarks and discuss some of the resources I use on the web. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Yahoo!: I use my customized Yahoo page as my home page. I can get the headlines from any number of news services, including Reuters, the AP, and ABC News, along with a weather report for Philadelphia, video and DVD release info, and scores for professional and college sports teams. I track my investment portfolio here — and boy, hasn’t that been fun the last two years! Last but not least, I can add up to three daily comic strips to the page. Right now I have Doonesbury, Fox Trot and Non Sequitur.

Philly.com: The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News have their websites here. I’m less than thrilled with the recent redesign, which seems to be consistent throughout Knight Ridder/RealCities sites. But I read my hometown papers for free on days when I don’t buy a Daily News for the subway, so I can’t argue. The last year I lived in New York, this link to home was a life saver.

Google: Search engine of the gods. Now it even has a comprehensive database of Usenet postings. I rarely bother with the Yahoo! Search feature on my home page, because it usually sends me here anyway.

TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com: I am something of a financial news junkie, and this is probably my favorite site for such info. TheStreet is primarily a straight news site, but it also has a decent personal finance section, with a lot of mutual fund-related interviews and information, plus tax tips and other information. There’s also some commentary, although the bulk of that is found on the subscription-based RealMoney. I know I have nowhere near the right psychological or intellectual profile to do the kind of stock trading that is the focus of RealMoney, but I find the window to the minds of the people that do to be fascinating. Plus, technology columnist Jim Seymour often has some nifty nuggets on personal tech.

I used to read The Motley Fool, but they made their message board subscription-based, and I decided that was money I could spend better elsewhere. Without that, there wasn’t much reason to visit the Fool, because I’ve found that their staff writers make too many mistakes and don’t really offer much in the way of useful analysis — the best stuff was contributed by the message board posters. (In fact, the Not News forums were in large part inspired by the Fool community.) I’ve also made use of the personal finance tools at Quicken.com, but I don’t spend as much time there as I used to. When I finish my Ph.D. and get a job, that’ll probably change as I have to make decisions about retirement planning, home purchasing, and so on.

CNN.com: I supplement the headlines from my home page here, and catch the occasional editorial, analysis, or review as well. It’s a good spot for breaking news, and their sports section — with writers from Sports Illustrated — is pretty good. Ah, corporate synergy at work!

ESPN.com: On the other hand, I satisfy 75% of my sports info cravings here, especially during baseball season. Columnist Rob Neyer has an almost-daily column that’s a must-read for me. Neyer is a ‘sabermetrician,’ someone who does a lot of statistical research and analysis on baseball. As a result, he tends to challenge the conventional wisdom much of the time, to the consternation of traditionalists. And you know how much I enjoy challenging tradition based on empirical research. ESPN also lured Jayson Stark away from the Philadelphia Inquirer; Stark is probably the first sportswriter I knew by name, and I’ve loved his sense of humor and the absurd since I was nine. The site does quite well with sports other than baseball, of course, and I like the irreverent humor present in their ‘Page 2‘ section.

The Digital Bits: If I want info or reviews on upcoming DVDs, I go here. End of story. (Except for the moment, because they’re changing servers.)

The Brunching Shuttlecocks: This site doesn’t update as often as I wish it did, but when it does it’s usually funny. Some very intelligent satire along with some silly but fun stuff. And I usually enjoy the Self-Made Critic‘s move reviews.

Salon: I paid for a premium membership to the site, but I admit I don’t go there as often as I probably should. They have some very nice A&E and political reporting and analysis, even if I don’t always agree with their outlook. (I find this to be more an issue with the A&E reviews than the political stuff, but that may be because I’m more selective in the political analysis I read.) I have to give the site credit for making me aware of Arianna Huffington’s latest writings; I find her current not-Republican-but-not-really-Democrat-either outlook to be rather thought provoking, and she has the guts to say when she has rethought her position on an issue.

Amazon: Not only are we an Amazon affiliate, not only are they a great resource for comparison shopping, and not only is the free-shipping-on-orders-over-99-bucks offer too good to pass up, but their Look Inside feature has been a life saver. I was doing some bibliographic research for my dissertation proposal, and none of the research databases I access through the library page at Temple University (which is itself normally quite helpful) were giving me the info I needed. I was able to look up a couple of current books in the field and read some of the opening chapters, plus check out the indexes. Very cool feature.

Comics Newsarama: One of the better daily sources for news and features on the comic book industry. For reviews, I check out Randy Lander and Don MacPherson’s The Fourth Rail and Paul O’Brien’s The X-Axis every week. For general discussion, the occasional hot tip, and hobnobbing with folks in the biz, I hang out at the Warren Ellis Forum. (Editor’s Note: Some links in this section have been altered/removed as out of date.)

The Weather Channel: Yeah, it’s wrong more often than not, it seems, but it’s still nice to get some idea of what’s on the way, and this way I don’t have to watch local TV news.

TheLogBook.com: I write for this site fairly regularly, and its webmaster Earl Green is a contributor here. So if you like anything either of us have to say, you should check it out.

Filed in Life in Practice
        

Stop Us If You’ve Seen This Before

Posted February 1, 2002 By Kevin Ott

Back in December a group of writers on the Warren Ellis Forum were bemoaning the cliched dialogue that runs through so many fiction projects. Jay Faerber said, “I just always get annoyed when I see obvious I-learned-this-by-watching-too-much-TV dialogue. Like whenever you give someone CPR, you have to say ‘Breathe, dammit!’ or ‘Don’t you die on me!'” The ever-brilliant Gail Simone joked that these complaints put a crimp in her plans to publish a DON’T YOU DIE ON ME miniseries, and soon the thread was nearly derailed by dialogue-cliches-transformed-into-titles.

Never one to leave a good idea alone, Kevin and Dave spent a morning on IM running the concept into the ground. Considering that half of these seem to have made it into the ads for We Were Soldiers, we figured we’d share the results with you.

DT: I found the book I was looking for, by the way. It was under my copy of YOU’VE NEVER FOUGHT FOR ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE NOW LIVE, DAMMIT, LIVE.

KO: Was it anywhere near NO, TAKE ME INSTEAD?

DT: No, that was on the shelf next to WE’RE ONLY GOING TO GET ONE CHANCE AT THIS.

KO: Wasn’t that the sequel to MEET YOUR NEW PARTNER?

DT: No, you’re thinking of IT’S TIME TO SHOW THESE PUNKS WE MEAN BUSINESS. Unless I’m getting that confused with I DON’T PLAY BY THE RULES.

KO: Didn’t that have a crossover with LEAVE THE GIRL OUT OF THIS, YOUR QUARREL’S WITH ME?

DT: Yeah, along with IT’S TIME WE SETTLED THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL. I ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS was a tie-in, there, I think.

KO: OK, the trilogy. The one that started with SO YOU’RE THE ONE BEHIND ALL THIS and LET’S GIVE HIM SOMETHING TO REMEMBER US BY.

DT: Yeah, none of them were as good as HE MAY BE CRAZY, BUT HE’S THE BEST DAMN DOCTOR I’VE EVER SEEN.

KO: I dunno. HERE’S YOUR AUTHORIZATION! was pretty good. But not as good as IT’S A CRAZY PLAN, BUT IT JUST MIGHT WORK.

DT: Well, really, what is? Except possibly THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR MY WHOLE LIFE.

KO: Ah, yes, by the author of YOU’RE THE BEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

DT: Part of the I NEVER KNEW I COULD FEEL THIS WAY series.

KO: My personal favorite, though, is probably SO… WE MEET AGAIN.

DT: A classic, like I HAVE PEOPLE IN THERE and HEAR THAT, FELLAS? WE’RE GOIN’ HOME.

KO: And who can forget LET’S EVEN THE SCORE? Or IT’S PUNKS LIKE YOU THAT GET GOOD SOLDIERS KILLED?

DT: I thought that was derivative of WHATEVER YOU DO, STAY WHERE YOU ARE, I’M ON MY WAY.

KO: Well, that itself was lifted almost directly from JUST BUY ME SOME TIME, I HAVE AN IDEA.

DT: Really? If anything, I thought it was inspired by I NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT HIM.

KO: It definitely shared themes with that, as well as YOU’RE MEDDLING IN FORCES YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND. Which, as you know, was a stale rehash of LET’S SPLIT UP.

DT: The follow up to I DON’T BUY ANY OF THAT NONSENSE.

KO: Wasn’t that a spinoff of WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?

DT: Either that or HOW DO I KNOW YOU’RE TELLING ME THE TRUTH, I can’t remember.

KO: No, I think that was a spinoff of SO THIS WHOLE TIME YOU’VE BEEN LYING TO ME?

KO: Or was it THAT SON OF A BITCH KILLED MY PARTNER?

DT: That wasn’t I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL I GET SOME ANSWERS?

KO: Yeah, that’s it. By the creator of WHO’S INVOLVED? I WANT NAMES. And SO YOU WERE IN ON THIS TOO, HUH?

DT: And I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN YOU’D BE WRAPPED UP IN THIS.

KO: Didn’t he share credit with someone on THIS IS WAY BIGGER THAN YOU and THIS GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP?

DT: Right, and YOU’RE IN WAY OVER YOUR HEAD ON THIS ONE.

KO: OK, so who was the co-creator? Was it the guy who did DON’T DO IT, IT’S NOT WORTH IT?

DT: No, YOU’RE IN WAY OVER YOUR HEAD was the guy that did NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE YOU AROUND HERE AGAIN.

KO: I’ve loved his work ever since THE CHIEF’S NOT GONNA LIKE THIS and IF YOU DON’T STOP THIS CRAZY SHIT, THE COMMISSIONER’S GONNA HAVE MY ASS.

DT: Ever since he broke in as a production assistant on THIS COULD BE JUST THE BREAK WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, you knew he was gonna hit big.

KO: Yeah. I think my favorite of his was SOMEDAY YOU’RE GONNA SLIP UP. AND WHEN YOU DO, I’LL BE THERE.

DT: It’s kind of sad that we’ve been at it this long, and we haven’t even mentioned SHE’S THE ONLY THING I EVER REALLY GAVE A DAMN ABOUT.

KO: Are you kidding? That was nowhere near as good as EVER SINCE SHE LEFT HIM, HE JUST HASN’T BEEN THE SAME.

DT: Well, you’re probably right, but SHE’S THE ONLY THING paved the way for EVER SINCE SHE LEFT HIM, not to mention EVERYTHING WAS FINE, UNTIL YOU CAME ALONG.

KO: Good point. Though I thought EVERYTHING WAS FINE was kind of ruined by its sequel, THEN SHE CAME ALONG, AND CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER. Though the creator redeemed himself with ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU’RE GOING TO GET US BOTH KILLED.

DT: Yeah, but that wasn’t the original creative team on THEN SHE SAME ALONG — that was the same hacks that did ONLY ONE OF US IS GETTING OUT HERE ALIVE.

KO: Those guys. I knew they were bad news ever since LOOK, KID, I GOTTA WORK WITH YOU, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I GOTTA LIKE YOU.

DT: And I’M ONLY GOING TO SAY THIS ONCE. Ugh.

KO: Well, that was Shakespeare compared to IF WE GET OUT OF THIS ALIVE, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.

DT: Which itself was a barely disguised remake of YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE.

KO: But that at least gave the star of LOOK, THAT’S ALL I KNOW, I’M TELLING YOU THE TRUTH his start.

DT: Yeah, and without that we probably never would have gotten IT’S ABOUT TIME SOMEONE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

KO: Or I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU.

DT: We might have avoided WE CAN’T GO BACK TO THE WAY THINGS USED TO BE, though.

KO: Yeah. That, and EVER SINCE THAT DAY, THINGS JUST HAVEN’T BEEN THE SAME BETWEEN US. But I did like WE’VE COME THIS FAR, AND I’M NOT ABOUT TO TURN BACK NOW.

DT: I wish the star had just stayed focused on GET OUT OF MY WAY AND LET ME SAVE THIS PATIENT.

KO: But at least he gave it his all in SO I BROKE A FEW REGULATIONS. I GOT RESULTS, DIDN’T I? Along with the girl from SHE’S GONE, AND I’LL NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF.

DT: True. And their reteaming in NOW, WE’LL NEVER KNOW was well worth it.

KO: I think something like THE TRUTH WILL DIE WITH YOU could have been well served by a pairing like that.

DT: Absolutely. The guy from COME OUT HERE AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN gave it all he had, but he just shouldn’t have been with the gal from NOTHING’S GOING TO HOLD ME BACK NOW.

KO: He was much better in LET’S FINISH THIS, RIGHT NOW, YOU AND ME. And she was pretty good in I WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING.

DT: Were either of them in WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE?

KO: No, you’re thinking of the little-known I CAN’T STAY IN THIS TOWN FOREVER.

DT: Right, right. Was that connected to ALL YOU’VE EVER DONE IS HOLD ME BACK?

KO: Well, they had the same script doctor, but I suspect you’re thinking of I’M NOT LIKE YOU, DAD, I WAS NEVER LIKE YOU.

DT: Or maybe I CAN’T BE WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE?

KO: Wait, that’s it. NOTHING WAS EVER GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU comes to mind as well.

DT: Do you have a copy of YOU? BUT I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!?

KO: No, but I’ve got I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT HER, which is by the same guy.

DT: That’s OK. I’m still trying to get through THIS ISN’T SOME KIND OF GAME.

KO: Ah, the sequel to THIS IS JUST A BIG GAME TO YOU, ISN’T IT?

DT: Is that as good as I’M JUST HERE TO GET A JOB DONE?

KO: I wouldn’t be so obsessed with it if it weren’t. But as much as it pains me to admit it, it’s really not as good as LOOK, YOU JUST STAY OUT OF MY WAY AND I’LL STAY OUT OF YOURS, GOT IT?

DT: Which was nice launch for the career of the star of YOU CALL THAT JUSTICE?

KO: A brilliant start to the YOU CALL THAT series, following up with YOU CALL THAT LOVE? and YOU CALL THAT DEMOCRACY? and of course the Australian version, YOU CALL THAT A KNIFE?

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        

Be Mused

Posted February 1, 2002 By Earl Green

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally written and published in January 1998 as part of a series. Visit theLogBook.com for part one, and then bug Earl here on the forums for the still-unpublished part three.

From time to time I’ll run into someone who asks me what I do. Simple – I write and produce promos and commercials. Scriptwriting, filmmaking, and occasionally a smidgeon of voice acting all in one. Not a bad package. Until this hypothetical someone – not entirely hypothetical, though – says “Oh, so basically, you sold out.”

You betcha.

Be prepared to hear this line of total B.S. if you plan on extending your creativity into your professional life. Trust me – you will hear it at least once.

Aside from my perhaps too-pragmatic belief that the satisfaction of a full stomach beats the romance of a bohemian freelance-artist lifestyle any day of the week, let’s get one thing out in the open, friends. And this may very well be the moment at which you decide to keep traveling down this road…or back up to take the other exit you just passed.

The moment you make the arts or the media your profession, you are being exploited.

Go back. Read it again. I’m not joking.

You are being exploited. You are allowing yourself to be exploited. It is what you do.

Think about our society. Teachers struggle to keep food on the table, their meager reward for teaching our children. Members of the military, in return for waiting for opportunities to protect our borders – opportunities which may never actually arise in their lifetimes – are lucky to break even. Police officers try to make ends meet…a paltry compensation for their profession, which may be called upon to make sure that the rest of us do not meet our end.

Where is the money in western society?

Recently, NBC renewed the Warner Bros. hour-long hospital drama ER for a staggering, history-making (and, I fear, history-breaking) $13 million an episode.

Until now, million-dollar-per-job fees have only been commanded by major film stars. Now, there’s a good chance it will become de rigeur for television actors as well.

These people aren’t being paid millions to educate your kids. They’re not leaping in front of you to keep a random bullet from kissing you. They’re not even poised for action should a hostile international power try to challenge territorial rights or common sense.

These people are sitting around, eating free catered food, smoking a lot, and pretending to be teachers, police officers, soldiers, and, yes, doctors.

In our society, despite the NEA’s gloomy prediction of what will happen without federal grants, we throw our money – liberally – in the direction of the arts. Think about how much movies and music cost. Books are rising in price. Artwork, even when reproduced for mass consumption, isn’t getting any cheaper. That’s where the money is. (Well, there is medicine and law, but this isn’t a series of essays about medicine and law, is it?) Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media
        

Disrespect Authority

Posted February 1, 2002 By Dave Thomer

“Who do you trust? And who do you serve?”

— Crusade opening credits, written by J. Michael Straczynski

One of the things I like about Straczynski, he asks good questions. In a perceived time of crisis, when our leaders make demands and requests of us, these are particularly apt. To whom do we give the moral authority to guide or dictate our actions? How much authority are we prepared to give to them? To answer these questions accurately, we need to understand ourselves and the nature of our relationship to those in authority. Unfortunately, based on a significant psychological experiment, that understanding is often lacking.

Yale professor Stanley Milgram conducted his initial experiment in the 1960s, using newspaper ads and mail solicitations to collect a group of volunteers for what he claimed was an experiment to test the effect of pain and negative reinforcement on memory. The researcher administering the test told each volunteer that there would be two subjects for each test, one ‘teacher’ and one ‘learner.’ The learner would try to memorize a set of word pairs, then attempt to match a word with its correspondent. Each time the learner got an answer wrong, the teacher would administer an electric shock, with each shock 15 volts stronger than the previous one. The two roles would be randomly assigned to the two subjects by a drawing, after which the learner was strapped into a chair to receive the shocks, and the teacher was brought into a control room with the researcher. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Philosophy
        

Flying by the (Sassy) Seat of My Pants

Posted January 1, 2002 By Dave Thomer

Last month Pattie discussed some of the things she has encountered as we anxiously and excitedly await the arrival of our impending bundle of joy/all night alarm clock.

This month, it’s my turn.

Those of you who have kids know this, but child-raising technology has advanced leaps and bounds over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As parents, you are not expected merely to love your children, feed them, clothe them, keep them from harm, and pass on your values and knowledge. Rather, you are expected to obtain a ton of items that will, allegedly, make the lives of you and your child more convenient, more fulfilling, happier, and healthier, and possibly give you whiter teeth and fuller hair, although I’m less sure about those last two.

This is not really a great situation for us, because Pattie and I are big planners. We research, cross check, cross reference, cross out, and so on until we’re cross eyed, at which point we either a) act on our brilliantly-thought-out plan or b) get thrown for a loop by some crazy, insignificant last-minute detail — I’ll let you guess which happens more often. So, once the new year rolled around and we realized we’re at about three months to go and counting, we realized it was time to roll up our sleeves and start planning.

My God.

We tried to start with the big stuff, like the crib. The good news is, cribs are very heavily regulated, because pretty much everyone recognizes that the place where an incredibly fragile baby is going to sleep ought to be just about the safest damn piece of furniture ever built, so that makes the process a little easier. However, there is no shortage of crib options, and the price of a good crib can go from $250 to $600 or even higher. You can get cribs that convert to toddler beds or even into headboards for twin beds; we hope to reuse the crib down the road, so we weren’t interested in those options. You also can get cribs that match a certain style of furniture, which means you have to decide if you’re going to one set of furniture for the nursery and then replace that when the baby grows up and gets a ‘kid’s room,’ or if you’re going to pick a furniture style from the start and add to it as the child’s needs change.

And of course there’s a whole different set of issues to consider in selecting other furniture, which isn’t quite as heavily regulated. This is where you, as the expectant parent, must dig deep into your memory for all the harebrained stunts you pulled as a child and try to imagine how your kid will try to improve upon them, and then try to select furniture that will stand up to these shenanigans. Also, while it seems like with cribs there is a wide disparity in price but relatively little in quality, the opposite seemed to hold true with the other furniture — dresser/hutch combinations all seemed to clock in at around the $1000 mark, even though some seemed very solid and others were basically pre-fab put-it-together-yourself items. What to buy, and from whom to buy it, and for how long to plan to keep it after we bought it? We had diagrams and maybe even flowcharts at this point, and eventually decided to buy a dresser and hutch that the baby will be able to keep using; we’ll add a bed and a desk down the line. This decision, of course, raised the question of whether we should buy the crib that matched the dresser.

At this point I have to give kudos to the staff at Karl’s in Philadelphia, the folks from whom we planned to order the dresser. I called up the person who’d been helping us and said, “What’s the difference between the $550 crib from the same furniture line as the dresser, and a $300 crib I can get from the local Babies R Us?” I liked this salesperson and this store a great deal, since they’re knowledgeable, they’re incredibly nice, and they have a terrific selection, and to be honest I wanted her to sell me on the $550 crib — I wanted to give her the business. She came right out and said, “Really the only difference is that the crib will match the rest of the furniture, and if that’s not important to you, go for the other crib.” Fortunately, we were able to buy a less expensive crib from Karl’s, and everyone went home happy.

Until we realized that we had only scratched the surface. Sure, the baby had a place to sleep now, but what about feeding? What about traveling? What about sheets for the crib we had just painstakingly selected? We got a couple checklists from various stores, and then put our own together and started looking for answers. We spent an hour or two just researching the first item — bottles, for crying out loud. Do we want the ones with the liners, or do we want the plain bottles? If we want the plain bottles, do we want an angled one or a straight one? If we want the liners, do we want bags or a hard plastic liner? I looked through reviews on Amazon, but for every parent who raved about a certain bottle, another claimed that it always spilled and her baby had horrible gas.

To take a break from the bottle imbroglio, I looked ahead on one of the checklists, and saw ‘Sassy Seat.’ That was the breaking point. “What the devil is a Sassy Seat?” I asked whomever I could find on Instant Messenger, none of whom were parents. “And do I need one?” As it turns out, the Sassy Seat is apparently a seat manufactured by the Sassy company, which is designed as a high chair that attaches itself to the table and allows the child to sit with everyone else, and use whatever food and other implements are within reach to transform the table into a work of modern art. I’m not sure how that brand name became a generic term, but then I’ve discovered that the baby industry is always throwing new terms at us. ‘Playpen’ is apparently no longer in vogue, having been replaced by ‘pack-n-play’ or, even better, ‘playard,’ even though an artificial structure that keeps the child in a relatively small confined space reminds me a heck of a lot more of a ‘pen’ than a ‘yard,’ but I didn’t know what a Sassy Seat was, so clearly no one wants my input on this issue. Which is just as well, because we still are trying to find a diaper bag that would not be out of place during a night on the town, which means I have to hurry up and shop for the formal burp cloths. Catch you later.

Filed in Special Order Speeches
        
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