Beginning today, I am writing a weekly column on comics for the Hypergeek website. It’s a nostalgic look back at the comics of yesteryear, along with other ramblings of a pop culture nature. Come check it out.
The Invisible Skein – Now in Color!!!
Art by the fabulous Amanda Hayes.
Feel free to download, save, copy, repost or distribute in any manner you choose, as long as
the titles and URL stay intact.
Health Care, The Free Market And Me
In general, I’m pretty happy with capitalism. I like the free market, I like it when people are able to make a nice living selling things that we all want to buy. I don’t even have a problem (well, at least much of one) with people who sell things that NONE of us need or want to buy. More power to them, as long as they’re not conning people out of their pensions or making bogus medical claims that keep people from seeking real treatment.
But, like I say, in general, I support capitalism.
Here comes the exception.
When a free market system for a particular service, after many years of change and practice, evolves into a system that provides no real service to the consumer and seems to exist for no other purpose than taking our money, it’s time for that system to go away. Let the government step in and take over, for our protection. That’s why it’s there, to protect us as a whole, when we can’t do it on our own.
The health insurance system is just such a mess. They have turned into nothing more than a monetary middleman, skimming profits off the top and doing everything they can to not pay for treatments when they are needed.
Greed, it seems, is a pre-existing condition.
The figures I’ve seen show that 30% of the cost of health care in this country goes to the insurance companies, for doing, essentially, nothing. Medicare, by contrast, has an overhead of 3%.
You see where this is going?
If I’m going to pay for health care (and we’re all going to pay for health care, one way or another), I’d rather do it through my taxes, with lower overhead, knowing that whatever I pay in is at least going into the actual health care system and not into the pocket of some insurance executive.
Just my two cents…
Mondays Are For Movies….
…or movie lists, more to the point. I often find myself in the mood to watch movies in groups. Sometimes I’ll spend a week watching films by a single director, or star, sometimes I group by theme.
I have decided (randomly and for the purposes of this blog) to determine these groupings at the start of the week and to share my selections with you, just in case any of my fellow compulsives out there wanted to follow suit.
This week’s theme: Period Los Angeles Crime Dramas
1. L.A. Confidential – Based on a fantastic novel by James Ellroy, and featuring great performances by Kevin Spacey & Russell Crowe, this one (like all great L.A. mysteries) is full of lies, deception and coruption.
2. The Black Dahlia – Not a masterpiece like Confidential (by any stretch of the imagination), but still a nicely atmospheric period piece based on another James Ellroy book. Don’t go looking for great acting or solid plot (cause it ain’t there), instead immerse yourself in the feel of the film and you won’t be too disappointed.
3. Hollywoodland – This is a good one. Based on the real life mystery surrounding the death of TV actor George Reeves (Superman), with Ben Affleck actually giving a great performance (in flashback) as Reeves, this one has plenty of twists and turns to go with the setting.
4. Changeling – No, not the ghost flick with George C. Scott, this one’s a twisty little drama directed by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Stracynski. Well done from every angle.
5. Chinatown – You knew this was coming, right? Directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson, this is THE definitive L.A. private eye story. With one of the best (and most quoted) final scenes in film history.
Extra Credit – Dark Blue – Although this one doesn’t fit the same period (it takes place in the 90’s, during the Rodney King riots) it sure has the feel. Lies and corruption and this time Kurt Russell’s along for the ride. Worth checking out.
Thoughts On The Skein
So, I’m working on this web comic.
And we’ve gotten through the business stuff, and the script for the first 36 page storyline is done, and the web stuff, while not finished, is well underway. And I’m looking at pages of beautiful art by Amanda and I’m facing, for the first time, the reality of words that I wrote being translated into images on paper and computer screen.
It is surreal. It is daunting. It is amazing.
To have characters that I imagined so fully realized in visual form is (if you’ll forgive the cliche) like a dream come true. To be doing work in a form that I have loved for as long as I can remember and to be working with an artist that instinctually gets what I’m looking for and manages to pull those images from my head and bring them to life in ways that are beyond what I imagined is more than I could have hoped for.
Synchronicity.
Yes, there are pretty new pictures. Go look at them.
