Mark

Prologue: Calla Bryn Sturgis by Stephen King : A preview of the highly anticipated forthcoming volume of King’s Dark Tower series. An interesting entry; its plot is higly reminiscent of Kurosawa’s classic film, Seven Samurai, though I’ve yet to figure out if that’s a good thing. In his words, King is “hoping to press on to the very end and publish the remaining volumes all at the same time. That probably means three books, one of them fairly short and one of the other two quite long.” This strikes me as joyous news, but I can’t help feeling apprehension – for I’ve never known King to end his stories all that well (just look at the ending to The Waste Lands). However, if the new novels continue the successive exponential increase in quality and intelligence that the first four have established (especially in the last volume, Wizard and Glass), we’ll certainly be in for a treat. Only time and Ka will tell. Ka like a wind…

A Diagnosis of the Disease by William T. Vollmann : An interesting article about the woes of humanity, and how best to set things right (through art). A bit remeniscent of Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, Vollman puts forth some good rules on how to write with a sense of purpose. He also touches on people’s tendency to treat the symptoms instead of the actual causes. As a country we have become reactionary to specific events, but not wide trends, blaming miniscule influences for major catastrophies. Does anyone really think something like Columbine happens solely because of the music two kids listened to? Its something I’ve been noticing a lot lately, and it really suprises me how pervasive the idea is. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to pick up one of Vollman’s books, but its pretty low down in the book queue and my spare time is dwindling, so it probably won’t happen anytime soon. I hear he’s a… strange… fellow.

The Man Behind the Aardvark: Dave Sim created an influential and prolific comic book series called Cerebus the Aardvark. “When I started Cerebus in 1977, uppermost in my mind was the thought that i wanted to produce 300 issues if a comic book series the way i thought it should be done; as one continuous story documenting the ups and downs of a character’s life.” Few comic book series ever reach the 300-issue mark, and those that do are usually backed by big publishers, star big-name superheroes, and are written and drawn by scores of different artists over the years. Cerebus, a black & white comic, is written, penciled and inked by Sim (with some help from a friend named Gerhard). Its also self-published, giving him complete control over his creation. In the past few decades, the character of Cerebus has gone from being a barbarian to a politician to a pope. During one story arc, Cerebus became a supporting character; in fact, nearly a year went by in which the title character didn’t appear in his own comic book! These are the sort of things you can do when you have publishing freedom and 300 issues with which to tell a story.

Say what you will about the man’s thoughts or philosophy (he’s regarded as somewhat of an infamous misogynist), but you have to admire the man’s initiative, dedication and resolve. He hasn’t reached the crucial 300th issue just yet (the series is planned to end sometime in 2004), but the final story arc has begun and shows no signs of slowing down.