Oh, Man - 95!

So, while i've been in retreat from the outer world, Stan "The Man" had his 95th birthday. Amazing that he still manages to find the energy for self promotion and all those fun cameos while nearing 100 years old. Joan must either be amazing or terrifying. (that's a joke, son. I done my time)

So, still crawling out of the cave, but such an occasion needs must be marked, no? But how does one choose among the many, many, books he's written over the decades?
We don't! Instead, we'll look at Stan writing about writing comics. That makes sense, right?
So, let's go way back - 70 years back, to 1947, to get a glimpse at early Stan teasing hints of the master promoter to come with an odd and amazing little booklet -

This was only a half decade after Stan Lee's first writing job (the text page for Captain America #3), but he was in a singular position at Timely/Atlas/Etc that allowed a perfect view to create this look behind the scenes of comics. While indeed a "little booklet", it does weigh in at 100 pages, but i want to run it in its entirety, so we'll break it up into 3 parts. Settle in and take a look behind the scenes in the early days of the comic industry as Stan Lee shows you the "secrets" of the craft - though much is common knowledge these many years later. Of course, what makes this book truly Odd can be seen on page 6 and the back cover - a facial hair free Stan Lee!

Join us later today for the second part, in which you get to try your hand at writing, drawing, and lettering comics!  (I checked - the TOC indicates we need exclamation points)

pages from Secrets Behind The Comics (1947)

Friday Fun & Games - Computer Edition v.01

I'm still running off kilter, and today's post will reflect that by more than mere lateness. It's not too late to go visit Friday Night Fights instead. (Though it might be too early to vote as yet)

I'm still just tossing messages in bottles out of the cave currently, but i'll be venturing out soon. Meanwhile, it is and it isn't time for

Let's journey back 33 years to 1984 and take a look at how we used to do fun & games on our computers. It was 4 years after i built my first Sinclair Z80 system, and home computers were becoming a thing. But it was still a very hands-on DIY affair in many respects, as we'll see in the second Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun Book:

If you wanted to have fun and play games on your computer, this was how it was done in those ancient days:

That might be semi-incomprehensible to modern gamers, so let us flip back a few pages and take a look at the instructional reference...

Y'know, looking back - I don't want to hear any more whining (or even whinging) about having to set up modern games to run properly on the system. We used to have to customize the code by hand!

Here's a couple more programs from the book:

For the truly curious, Basic (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) emulators still exist, and you can run the programs for yourself to see what was considered "fun" on the computer in the early days. It would be a few more years before i got involved in the industry. By that time Floppy Disks had arrived - a huge game changer, along with internal hard drives.
Imagine that - in the early days, there was no internal memory beyond the OS. You had to load whatever you wanted to do onto the system via a modem like system with the data stored as sound on a cassette tape, or type it in by hand. If you had mainframe access, you could dump a stack of punch cards.

30 years ago, computer graphics consisted of 4 colours with resolution of 300x200. One might note that means the pixels were rectangular, not square. Somehow, the original programmers didn't think that might affect simple things, like drawing a circle.

3 decades later, we live in our games, and there are people forming personal (and sexual) relations with computer generated imagery.
Damn.

How long before our game characters can look out at the player and ask "Do You Bleed?"

pages from the Marvel Super Heroes Computer Fun Book 2 (1984)

Hermiting

Despite any implications of my absence, it has been a pretty good Xmas for me. Got to spend a few hours with my elder son and received a couple of presents i very much liked - a food dehydrator and a set of professional lock pics.
Already making up a separate shopping list for the dehydrator - first up is prepping a veggie mix for soups. Then comes the jerky. Hopefully i can get some nice venison to work with. And i do a mean sweet/hot teriyaki/sriracha jerk for lesser tasting meats.

But this time of year does tend to promote withdrawal from the outer world, reinforced by the snowy weather. We're all very much alike, but very different as well, much as that goes against our society's either/or limits on thinking. (I shake my head at the inherent tragic stupidity every time i see a scene where the hero recoils vehemently at the thought of being any way like the villain. How fragile is their sense of self?)
So, anyway - While we're normally here finding some common interests in my odd digging through comics and culture, let's go the other direction today. I thought i'd ramble on a few things that make my life likely very different from yours. Perhaps, in some ways, unimaginably so.

Let's get the biggest out of the way right up front - i neither own nor use a phone. I don't believe i've handled one in this decade. After absorbing the social and connective implications, think about how often the only contact option given is by phone and you'll get a glimmer of how much that reinforces hermit isolation. It took months to acquire internet service simply because they're all geared towards people who already have phone and/or internet. Most of the walk-in offices have shuttered, and no mailing addresses are provided.

I have neither television nor radio, and the only clock is the one on the stove for timing food preparation.
Of course, i do have computer and internet, and it can tell me the time when i really want to know.

I have no vehicle, having relied on foot and public transportation since before the turn of the century. That worked quite well until the nerve damage in the feet made walking so much more interesting. These days i mostly do my Duke Ellington routine, but never no lament.

My feet suffer the indignity of shoes for about 8-12 hours per month.

I go out to eat food perhaps 2-4 times per year. (This includes fast food joints, pubs, roach coaches, greasy spoons, etc.,; not just "going out" to fancy restaurants or the like)

I typically go days without seeing another human being - frequently weeks without greater contact than a nod or passing greeting.

Here's a very simple truth about being a hermit - you better like yourself. That's with whom you're spending the most time. Fortunately, knowing oneself was an important aspect of early life lessons for me (See Babylon 5 for the importance of knowing this before asking what you want) so i get along pretty well with me. But, i can be frustrating company when the artwork output has been hobbled as it has in recent months by ongoing technical issues with the computers.. That creative energy that can't get out turns inward instead.
So now i find myself indulging in silly things like playing with clothing textures for my Skyrim game or planning out an Emmanuelle In Tamriel screen cap blog as outlets for that energy.

No - seriously...

Fresh off the boat from Cyrodiil-

...with her first view of the Great Arch, upon which Solitude, the capital city of Skyrim, was built...

A closer look at our heroine-

Think of the Adventures Into The Woods incarnation of Emmanuelle...

 ...fallen into a darker fantasy world; one torn by dragons, civil war, and slavery.

Now if i can just get Ron Jeremy to reprise his Crocs-wearing Merlin for that Men In Black hip hop musical number.
Again, seriously...

 I, um... may have rambled again.
Sorry about that.

Pics from Skyrim (this morning) and Adventures Into The Woods (2012)

Xmas Xit

Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.