The Penguin

(I suppose I should call these my, "You haven't seen [insert movie title]?!" reviews; basically all the films everyone else is nostalgic for but I never got the chance to watch). My fiancée is an avid horror fan, and had seen Rose Red  fifteen years prior; I'd only heard of it in passing. Now that I've seen it, I can say it's one of my favorite horror films - definitely in the top ten. It might not be particularly horrific, but it's definitely a spooky, effective, and thoughtful take on the old haunted house trope. Rose Red is an ABC miniseries from 2002, written by none other than Stephen King, and inspired loosely by Shirley Jackson's classic novel,  The Haunting of Hill House . Rose Red follows paranormal researcher Dr. Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis) as she assembles a team of powerful psychics to investigate the mysterious, Winchester-like mansion known as Rose Red, a rambling house infested with paranormal activity. While the mansion at first

(Ever notice how news announcers seem to say "An 'Istoric Event" instead of "A Historic Event"? Guess it's a weird relic of British pronunciation not to pronounce your Haitches and treat the first letter like a vowel...) So the world is exploding (again), a pandemic is raging, politics are happening, Antarctica's sliding into the ocean...but I'm still allowed to celebrate one small victory. On this day, June 12th, 2020, at 9:00 am EST, I paid off my student loan! This albatross was hatched back in the murky days of 2006, in that weird period after 9/11 but before the Housing Crash of Aught Eight. The economy was going gangbusters, and I'd just graduated from High School, a fresh young proto-Rick who'd rolled a natural d20 in the Ambition department but a d1 in the Clue department. Because of my talent in art (and probably some backdoor-deal machinations between Howell High School and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which I o

No, not that noxious weed. I'm talking about the near-ubiquitous iniquitous vine, the Strangler Most Foul, the chameleon-like climber that is the bane of summer camps across most of North America, Toxicodendron sp. - that is, Poison Ivy and its relatives. At left you see a my hand circa Friday, May 29th. I remember it was pretty mild the day before, as I just slapped a glove on it and went to work at the shop (they make us wear latex gloves anyway); I don't know if all the sweat and coolant from the machines had anything to do with the worsening condition or if I was doomed from the start. At any rate, those blisters would continue to balloon to alarming proportions until the largest one sat 1/2 inch above the normal skin level. The blisters began appearing on and between my fingers and even on the touch surface of my ring finger. The largest blister kept popping and refilling with whatever that yellow fluid is (I think the scientific term is "Ichor from beyond time a

My dog, Oscar, died on Monday. Actually he was my mother-in-law's dog; since she has restricted mobility, I was the one taking him for walkies. I didn't mind too much. It gave me an excuse to get outside and walk around. And it was about the only time Mom got some time alone - Oscar was attached to her at the hip. Oscar was a stubborn little thing, and a big soul. Once he formed an opinion of you, he stuck with it. Mom was his sun, moon, and stars. His favorite place in the world was stuffed between her hip and the arm of her easy chair, like a limpet, and neither God nor money could ever get him down. He filled the house, whether he was barking at the doorbell, or staring at your burger with insatiable buggy eyes, trying to teleport your food into his gullet. He liked to sit at the entrance to the kitchen as Mom whipped up his slops, front feet planted obstinately over the line, and if he thought nobody was watching he would pad in silently right behind her ankles, a

Poster for 1980 horror film, Delusion.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53838146 Apologies for the lurid visuals, I just thought it was a funny illustration, and the tagline is strangely appropriate for my post when taken out of context. This poster is for a thriller in the (SPOILER ALERT) "The main character was the killer all along but thought they weren't!!" school of B-movie horror. Unfortunately this post is less about homocidal insanity, and more about abstruse COVID-seclusion navel-gazing. To wit: how do I, as an artist, know that what I think about my art is what other people actually see? Am I deluded in my evaluation of my own talent? And, last but not least: Am I deluded in my goals as an artist? 1. Did I actually make what I thought I made? I've always lived in my head, so my connection to reality - objective reality - has always been tenuous at best. I can't count how many times I've created an image, thinking I&

I'm back, folks! With a fairly long post, no less. Since we last spoke (or you last read...or I last wrote...it's confusing), the COVID-19 crisis has impacted like a smallish asteroid, not a dinosaur-killer but definitely big enough to fuck some shit up. The US now has the highest number of infected people; Italy is in panic mode; hospitals are overflowing, people are dying, and all over the world, human beings exist in a state of low-level dread. Shopowners and distributors are staring out their windows, past the empty shelves to the deserted streets outside, wondering if and when it will all go back to normal, and if their livelihood will survive. Out here in Michigan, the governor ordered a 3-week shutdown starting March 23rd. My shop makes auto parts, so I guess we're "semi-essential workers", but since our distributors are shutting down we took a 2-week furlough (my fiancée is an "essential" gas attendant, bless her heart, so she gets to sit behin

Happy 2020!!!! Yep, still here, still making art. I haven't been posting due to recent job changes - first my print shop closed down (a different shop, not the one in Lansing), so I was scrambling to find employment; then I got a job at a factory here in Leslie, working 10 to 12 hour days. Kinda puts a crimp in the old posting schedule. Blind Alley Comics is still rolling along; currently I'm working on The Human Cannonball # 9 (best one yet!) and Joe is working on Bone Boy #8 ; we're getting ready to do a Kickstarter for Die Kätze (finally finished!) We gots all kindsa ideas and stuff...January to February is a work month(s), with the MSU Comics Forum at the end of February. As far as this blog goes, I'll post when I can, probably in chunks of shortish entries. Like this one! Rick Out.