The Penguin

This is a little touchy, so let me preface this by saying that I'm opposed to junk science...i.e., anti-vaccination adherents and so forth. Especially in the realm of medicine, junk science is irritating at best, and life-threatening at worst. I could write a whole other blog on the hows, whys and wherefores of culture, vis-a-vis junk science and belief systems. I'm fully confident in the scientific method and a science-based model of the universe - how it formed, how life evolved, the whole nine yards - the current "choose-your-own-adventure" model of science and belief among my fellow Americans has me appalled. "The centre cannot hold", and all that. We need more grounded, reality-based, reasonably skeptical humans in the world. Rather, I'm making a case for the self-fulfilling prophetic power of science fiction. The scientific community, by definition, needs to be skeptical; I'm not faulting them on that...it's just that I get so frustrated ...

I've been doing a lot of short comics stories lately - usually about 5 pages, although some are quite a bit longer. What I've realized is that certain genres are pretty tough nuts to crack, if you really want to do them right. One of the most difficult is the Time Travel story. Here's the problem: any story that involves time travel faces what I call "existential overload": if, say, an aspect of history can be changed (i.e., killing Hitler), then why not all of them? Why not a slurry of fanatical time-changers going back and changing things willy-nilly? How would this be regulated, except by a quasi-omnipotent order of "Watchers" who somehow ensure that time runs "correctly", whatever "correctly" means? Will only the time-changers know that history - and therefore existence - has been radically altered, or will everyone on earth retain their memories even when reality slips into a different mode? I ask all these questions becaus...

I'd like to write about one of my favorite places in Lansing, a sort of natural oasis in the middle of the city. Fenner isn't big; it's mainly open grassland, surrounded by mixed-growth woods; they have a nice nature center with small exhibits. I worked there for about six months back in 2012. It's the sort of local place that, without being really famous or distinguished, attracts fanatical devotees from the local populace. I'm not at the "fanatical" stage yet, but I'm still very fond of the place, and half-consider it my stomping ground. The Fenner Conservancy performed a radical "habitatectomy" of the main area within the last couple of years, converting what was once a tussocky patch of field into a shortgrass prairie, complete with all-native grasses (although it's a bit hard to tell, so you'll have to take their word for it). Surprisingly, it has improved the walk. Where once they used to mow the grass down to the nubbins an...

That's right, folks...way way back in 2010, I began work on a pretty cool webcomic called Fight or Flight, written by amazing local writer, celebrity personality, and swashbuckling swordsman David Crampton. Unfortunately I had to beg off the project two years later due to a slight case of madness (no, really ), so the project languished for nearly five years. Well, guess what? Our plucky robot friends are back in their all-new adventures! I'm still deciding how best to get back into the swing of things; I've been given a generous lead-time, so part of me wants to revamp the whole thing with CGI-type illustrations (3-D stuff, like Toy Story). The reason for this is because, while Chapter Zero looks pretty good, by Chapter One things start to look pretty tired; I was assembling the robots from 2-D bits and pieces, which gets extremely tedious. Why not create the scenes in 3-D and take screenshots instead? Naturally this will alter the look of the comic, but I think it woul...

Guess what?!! Blind Alley Comics is going to a convention. Yes, your favorite hermit-comickers are currently hitching up our big-boy pants and getting ready to brave the great Outside. Thankfully we have support from our great friend Joe Rodgers of 12-Gauge Gore, who will be bringing some bangin' t-shirts and horror merch to add class to our grungy display. I've got all the deets on Facebook, but here's the info again, just in case you haven't been bombarded enough already: Birch Run Expo Center 11600 N Beyer Rd, Birch Run, MI 48415 (989) 624-4665 October 8-9 Saturday: 10-6 Sunday: 10-5 Wait, you have plans for that weekend? A hot date? A wedding? Too bad! Drop everything, grab the camping equipment, and pitch a tent right now outside the location! That's right, once word gets out, the millions-strong Blind Alleyans (totally a thing) will flood the event like a tidal wave of marginally-acceptable humanity. Seriously, secure your place in line. Bring a m...

That's right! In our continuing frantic efforts to flood the market with our products, Blind Alley Comics is preparing for the cultural event that is Die Kätze II! Here's the cover, sans pesky words or anything... Yeah, it's gonna be a whopper...22 pages of super Lovecraftian fun, plus cats! Don't miss it! Rick Out.

Yes, comicsfans, it's almost here! Number 7 is set to debut in the middle of September. I'll have an availability list on the BAC Facebook page. Also be on the lookout...Bone Boy #4 is out; THC's #2 and #5 are going to be reprinted, so we'll have copies for those who want them. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the THC 1-5 Trade Paperback might be coming soon...! But we'll see. Oh, and don't forget...a certain coterie of conniving cats will be making their second appearance in December...more information, as to their whereabouts and the content of their diabolical schemes, is unavailable at this time...I'll keep you posted. Rick Out!

King Boletes or Porcini ( Wikimedia Commons ). Ha! The title is a red herring. It is not what you think. You were thinking, He means ingesting psychoactive mushrooms?  And the answer is...no. Not that interesting. Or maybe more interesting to different people. Who knows. I'm a wild-food nut, as anyone who knows me is rather nonplussed to discover. Even worse, I'm a bit of a mushroom fanatic. Every Spring and Fall I start getting a weird urge to walk out in the wet and buggy woods and poke around for hideous toadstools. I can't help it. Everything from Chicken-of-the-Woods to Giant Puffballs are on the menu here. The weirder, the better. This August blessed us with a tremendous amount of rain, meaning the outdoors are virtually inaccessible due to the preponderance of mosquitoes...but to a shroom-hunter, it means a bonanza. Spring is generally disappointing in Michigan; I've never had much luck morel-hunting, since they never seem to grow where they should, inst...

I'm currently serving as a reviewer for Geekorama.net , run by the awesome Kat Roets - be sure to check it out! - and I love being able to read a wide selection of independent comics, even the not-so-good ones. I also love having the chance to vent my spleen upon some poor unsuspecting comic. It can be difficult to find something to say due to the episodic nature of the medium; it's pretty much like reviewing a TV series episode-by-episode...and in some cases, reviewing half an episode at a time. But here's the question I'd like to discuss on The Rick Show  today: why review comics? As a medium, comics is just as worthy of review as film or literature; that's a moot point (at least to me). But what I'm really asking is, what am I trying to accomplish with my reviews? Why give a scathing review to something like Titan's  Penny Dreadful  - a really bad comic book treatment of a TV show - when it would be just as easy to ignore it as yet another example of ...

It's getting on toward the end of July, now, and the frantic Muppet-arm-flailing madness of the last few months has begun to dampen down a bit. The dust finally settled on my job at Capital Prime, and I'm a pantry cook now, which is nice because I don't go home with water in my shoes any more. Having settled in, I've looked around and realized it's not a terrible place to work; I'm thinking about moving up from pantry to line, if the opportunity comes, so I'll have Cooking to add to my list of skills. All in all it's a good place to work, and I can hang in there and make money. For now. Of course the frustration of not attaining some much-vaunted art job threw off its own gravitational waves in the Rick-mindverse, like the roars of a Cepheid Variable before it dims to a cinder. The thing will undoubtedly flare up again, but for now it lies cool and sullen, slowly rebuilding its collapsed nuclear infrastructure. And because that energy just doesn'...

Things have certainly been weird, but exciting. And crazy. Unbelievably crazy. If you recall in one of my posts from March , I mentioned that I'd lost my job at LCC. Automated out, as it were. Here's the sequence of events which have occurred since getting laid off: 1. I got a job at Capital Prime Steakhouse, as a dishwasher. I held this position for a month. 3. Applied for Unemployment. I was rejected. 3. I then quit the dishwashing job because I assumed I had a job back at LCC (I interviewed well). 4. I did not get the LCC job. 5. I then worked Mother's Day weekend for Capital Prime, on a contract basis. 6. I asked for, and got, my dishwashing job back. So a pretty circuitous failure, right? Not necessarily. In the two weeks I was unemployed, I managed to: 1. Publish my personal website,  rickschlaackarts.wix.com/art-design  (Yes, I know it's a clunky URL); 2. Put together several hundred dollars in art-commission work. 3. Suffered through th...

Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace My Big Book series continues. Having already chewed my way through Gravity's Rainbow,  I figured I'd better start on that other edifice of (post)modern literature, Infinite Jest.  With the experience of the former literary doorstop still heavy in my brain, I was wholly prepared to be disappointed by another hyperintellectual slog through Smugland. So imagine my surprise when Infinite Jest  turned out not only good, but in many ways transcendent. Like many postmodern works, IJ  holds a rather liberal interpretation of "plot" and "narrative"; you'll start out fairly disoriented before things coalesce into a readable form. The story follows three main characters: Hal Incandenza, tennis prodigy at Enfield Tennis Academy and son of brilliant filmmaker Jim Incandenza; Don Gately, former criminal and opioid addict, who now staffs the Ennet House halfway home; and Rémy Marathe, member of the radical Quebecois separatis...

Hello, gentle and not-so-gentle readers. Welcome to a special edition/series of The Penguin blog. Spring has sprung, with all the squeaky metal contortions that implies, and even the sullen burg of Lansing Michigan is feeling the gentle rush of rising sap. Just last night we had the first real soaker of the season, it having been an oddly dry April up till that point, and the ornamental fruit trees have begun to erupt like volcanoes of frothy, perfumed meringue. There's bunches of those weird little starlike blue flowers with the grassy leaves on some of the lawns, as well as grape hyacinths and the ever-present daffodils. And of course the new grass and emerging leaves, which have a shocking neon-green effect against the smoky tomcat background of clouds and drizzly wet streets. These are what I like to think of as "Irish Days", when the breeze is indeed like the slightly damp paw of a sleepy cat batting gently at your face, warm rain purring against the windows. This ...