The Versatile Blogger

This is a post that's way past due, but I wanted to take the time to do it justice. Artist Michael Dean "MD" Jackson was kind enough to tag me with the Versatile Blogger Award and it's a special honor. I struggle all the time with how broadly focused this blog is. Most of my favorite blogs are very specific in their subject matter, even if the subject is just "comics," but I especially like extremely specific blogs like Double O Section, Shanna the She-Devil Blogger, and Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. I love those so much that I often think about narrowing Adventureblog's range to one genre or medium. If only I could pick just one that I wouldn't get bored with eventually.

I can't, so for better or worse, I'm stuck with a versatile blog. That's why I appreciate someone's creating this recognition and Mike's including me in his picks for it. I appreciate other versatile blogs too. I can't read too many of them before they become overwhelming, but I was able to pull five to mention from my follow list. I'll list them in a minute, but one of the other criteria for accepting the award is listing seven random facts about yourself. So that first:

1. My high-school job was bagging groceries and I was really good at it. As a result though, I'm overly critical (silently so, I promise) of baggers who can't make a paper bag keep its shape and mix items that shouldn't be mixed. Cold items don't go with non-cold items. Detergents don't go with food.
2. In college, I played the title role in The Sound of Music. I also ran the sound for My Fair Lady, which was an even more fun production. But that may have been because I had a minor crush on the girl playing Eliza Doolittle. Or her Georgia accent anyway. (She switched to Cockney for the play, but that wasn't nearly as attractive.)
3. You can get me to do just about anything if you ask me in a Georgia accent.
4. I can read ancient Greek, though I don't understand as much of it as I used to.
5. My first pet was a black cat we found at the garbage dump. He was only a few days old and we couldn't even tell what gender he was yet. We named him Muffit after the robotic daggit from Battlestar Galactica.
6. I was 10 years old when I wrote my first story. It was Star Wars fan fiction and I proved in not only the title, but also in a major plot element that I didn't know the difference between an "asteroid" and an "android."
7. My son has a live dragon living in his room. It's about two-feet long and bearded.

And now for the blogs I'm passing the award to. Mike says that the official rules call for fifteen recipients, but I'm following his example and only choosing five. In alphabetical order:

1. Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Brother Cal's already received this award at some point. That guy collects awards like mermaids collect swooning sailors. He deserves it though for being extremely prolific with posts on a variety of subjects ranging from the Cephalopod Menace to Selena Gomez.
2. Lady, That's My Skull: I came to Sleestak's blog thinking it was a comics blog, and with lots of posts on romance comics and space pulp heroines like Futura and Mysta of the Moon, it is. But it's also a lot more than that, including rants about the grocery store where he works and appreciations for Hayley Mills and of course The Land of the Lost.
3. Poplitiko: My friend Alex Ness started this pop culture group blog. Because it's a group blog (and because its theme is as broad as "pop culture," it has a lot of different interests. Just looking at the current page, I see a love letter to enjoying comics with your children; a linkblogging post covering superhero movies, Doctor Who, and Twecon; and Whatever the Opposite of an Ode is to Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson movies.
4. Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: Siskoid does tend to stick to geek-related topics, so he's not as all over the place as some of the other blogs I'm mentioning, but he has a broad range of interests from Star Trek to Kung Fu movies and he crosses genres and media types easily.
5. That F'ing Monkey: I've known blogger Ken O a long time from Steve Niles' message board, so his was one of the first blogs I thought of in creating this list. He's a huge fan of DC's The Flash and talks about the character often, but you'll also find regular posts about his other interests, especially games and booze.

Comics Time Machine

Mike's (no relation) Amazing World of Comics has a cool feature where you can see a cover gallery of any month/year combination you choose. Say, for example, your birth month..



You know, it may explain a lot to know that as I was being born, Tarzan was fighting an underwater triceratops.

The Person I Find Most Attractive In This World

Conveniently, I'm married to her.






This is the last item from Calvin's List. It's been fun, but I'm going to have to find something new to do on Sundays now. Or not. It might be nice to have a day off.

Somewhere I Want to Visit: Three places in Europe

Can't believe I'm almost done with Calvin's List.

There are a handful of places I want to visit before I die.

Scotland



Photo from Learn NC.

I don't know where the Mays come from. We've been in the US going back to Colonial days and no one in my family has been able to trace us back across the Atlantic. Growing up, I'd always heard that we were Welsh, but there's no hard evidence for that and I know that there are also French and German Mays. My favorite theory though is that we're Scots. There was a May sept of the MacDonald clan, so - lacking any proof to the contrary - that's who I claim.

It fits well with my mom's side of the family, anyway. Her father was a McGee and her mom was a Macoy, so there's not a lot of question about the kind of blood I inherited from her. I've never been to Europe, but when I do, there's no question either about where my first stop will be.

London



Photo from Novel Destinations.

As long as I'm in Britain, I'll have to visit the hometown of so many of my favorite literary heroes.

Paris



Photo from Willy Gommel's Third Domain Home Page.

Because I was an Anglophile for so many years, I grew up not really appreciating the French. Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Gaston Leroux changed that though and I really want to spend time in Paris visiting literary sites and eating eclairs.

Those three places are the short list. There are plenty of other spots I'd also love to see. Diane's set on Italy, for instance, and I can't imagine having a bad time there myself. I'd stick the Caribbean on here too, but that couldn't really be considered a "visit." Once I get there, no one's going to be able to make me leave.

A Drawing by Diane May

This week's item from Calvin's List simply asks for "A Drawing." It doesn't specify who the drawing should be by, but I expect it wants one from whomever's completing the list. You don't need to see my scribbles, but I didn't want to post a drawing by just anyone. I do plenty of that every week already and the idea behind going through the List is to share more personal information than I usually do.

So here's a drawing by my wife, Diane: a scene from the summer camp she went to as a kid. She does one of these every year and donates it to the camp's annual fundraiser auction.

Pictures of where I'm from: Tallahassee and Northern Florida

I had to forget about Calvin's List during the holidays, but let's dig back into it. Even though this week's item calls for just one picture, I'm going to do better than that. Once I started looking up photos of Tallahassee and North Florida, I couldn't stop. I lived there from ages 5 to 21, so it'll always be my hometown even though it's been 20 years since I've been back.

Apologies to the many blogs and websites I boosted these images from. I'm on too tight a schedule today to attribute credits.



The state capital. The old one in front is pretty much just a tourist attraction now. When they built the new, 22-story one behind it, they didn't want to tear down the historical one. I always appreciated that dedication to history.

I interned as a page during one congressional session when I was in high school. I wish I could remember more details than the maroon suit I wore and how sore my feet were at the end of each day.



Florida State University. I actually went to high school on this campus in a research school they ran. What that meant was that we would occasionally get pulled out of class to participate in research projects that the university conducted (without having to make up the work). Projects could be anything from cognitive testing to volleyball skills to letting college students measure our body fat with plastic pincers.

Every day after school my younger siblings (it was a K-12 school) and I would walk across campus to our church building on the opposite side where my mom would pick us up after she finished work. I never went to college at FSU, but I had a lot of friends who did and I attended a lot of football games. Still a Seminole fan today. And our high school graduation was in the building you see in the picture.






Publix is still the best supermarket chain I've ever patronized. I worked at one all through high school (it's not there anymore, unfortunately) and still have mad bagging skills.



Maybe it's because I grew up eating it, but Sonny's will always be my favorite barbecue place. To this day, I prefer shaved pork to pulled and it's all because of this place. They also have awesome sweet tea; second only to homemade.



It's called the Tallahassee Museum now, but in my day it was the Junior Museum. I expect that it's still fantastic though; full of nature trails, forested animal enclosures, sink holes, interactive exhibits, and a great pioneer village. I saw Son of Frankenstein there for the first time at an old school house where they would show movies as part of their summer program.



Just some Spanish moss. I miss that stuff.



Locals will laugh derisively at me for saying this, but I miss kudzu too.



Maclay Gardens. I can't tell you how many weddings I attended at this pond. It was a lot.



Wakulla Springs. I used to love going here for glass-bottom boat tours. We'd look at gators in the wild and listen to the guide tell us about how they filmed a couple of the Tarzan movies and Creature from the Black Lagoon there.



Apalachicola National Forest. We didn't visit there a lot even though a large part of my childhood was spent in a house in the woods not far from there. Our woods looked a lot like this. Maybe a little thicker. One of my favorite X-Files episodes was the one where Mulder and Scully visit Apalachicola. "I don't want to wrestle!"



The Suwanee River. Our Easter tradition was to camp in the Suwanee River State Park and canoe down the river. That's another thing I miss about North Florida: all the rivers. We have lakes in Minnesota, but canoeing them isn't the same.



Itchetucknee Springs. Yes, the water is really that blue. It was a drive to get there, but this was always my favorite summer activity. We'd swim in the springs for a bit and then ride inner tubes down the river (which begins just off camera to the right).



No one's ever asked me why I love the ocean so much, but if they did, I'd have my answer all ready.

...In with the new

I think I've figured out why I'm not feeling the Newness this year. For me, the New Year started back in November when I went back to work and Kill All Monsters! launched. But it's still a time for goal-setting, so I feel like I should be doing that even if I don't feel like doing it, if that makes sense.

Fiction-wise, the priority is to finish the Kill All Monsters! script. I'm close enough to the end now that I realize I've got some re-writing to do on the earlier stuff. Nothing that Jason and Ed have already drawn and lettered fortunately, but it's going to be more involved than just completing the current draft and typing, "The End." Lesson learned: even on a webcomic, finish the script before you launch. Frankly, had I had the completed script (instead of just a detailed outline) before we pitched to publishers, we would have had a stronger idea about what we were pitching and might have received a more enthusiastic response. That uncertainty was a casualty of also not knowing what format we were pitching: complete graphic novel or serialized mini-series. In the end, it shouldn't have mattered though. I should have had the script done either way.

I won't make that mistake with the next project, which is going to be the pirate/jungle girl story that Jessica Hickman and I want to do. As soon as I finish Kill All Monsters! it'll be on to that. Hopefully I'll be able to at least get started on it this year because there's a second - though very different - pirate story I want to do with Darla Ecklund right behind it.

On the blogging front, the goal for this year is to be more adventurous and try new things. I have no idea what that will look like, but I've settled into a comfortable niche and I need to step out of it occasionally and see what other possibilities and opportunities are waiting. I'm a planner and it's very difficult to leave this goal vague and open, but I'm going to and will consider doing so my first step towards meeting it.

Out with the old...

As I said last year, I love the week between Christmas and New Year. I love the quiet and the time to reflect on the past while planning for what's next.

I'm having a hard time feeling it this year though. I suspect that's because it's been such a strange year, full of challenges, but also victories. On a personal level, my family and I are glad to put 2010 behind us. I was unemployed for seven months (except for writing, but that doesn't pay any bills) and my wife's mom was diagnosed with cancer around the 4th of July. She was gone by the end of the summer.

On a creative level though, Jason and I finally got Kill All Monsters! out (or started anyway) and that's something that we've been working toward for a long time. There's still a lot of work to be done on it, but I'll leave that for tomorrow's post.

Looking back on my goals for 2010, I didn't achieve a lot of them. Looking for work took a lot of time (or at least I'll blame it on that) and there were a couple of comics that I wanted to start writing and never got around to. But launching Kill All Monsters! easily makes up for that. My dream for it is that as the story unfolds, it'll eventually come to mean half as much to readers as it now does to Jason and I. And where those other projects are concerned, I have done some thinking about them and have a better idea not only about what they'll be, but how quickly I can realistically write them. More on that tomorrow too, I suppose.

Robot 6 has also gone well this year. I started contributing to the weekly Food or Comics? feature and that's been a lot of fun while forcing me to stay on top of which comics are hitting stores every week. And this blog continues to be successful. By which I mean that I love doing it and interacting with you guys over pirates and jungle girls.

I also finally figured out how to use Twitter and Facebook in ways that complement this blog. Not that I'm doing it perfectly (or even well, necessarily), but at least I have a basic understanding now of the strengths and weaknesses of those communities and how they're different from a blog. That was a huge light bulb moment for me this year. I can be kind of slow sometimes.

That's enough reminiscing, I think. Tomorrow I'll talk about plans and goals for 2011, but until then have a Happy (and Safe) New Year's Eve.

A Picture From One Of The Greatest Days Of My Life

Still working on Calvin's List.



Went back and forth on this one. Wedding Day? Birth of David?

Ultimately decided on Birth of David because the three of us went through it together. Me a little less so than the other two, but I was there. Life hasn't been the same since and that's a very awesome thing.

Oh, and re: the hat: Yes, we had party hats and birthday cake with a little "0" candle on top. And we sang "Happy Birthday." Buncha saps.

GYAAAH!

The last couple of days have been nuts for a variety of reasons, some good, some involving a sick boy. Hopefully I'll be able to resume something like a normal schedule tomorrow.

Thanks for understanding.

One of My Most Prized Possessions

I had some trouble with this item from Calvin's List. Hopefully this won't make me sound self-righteous, but I don't have a lot of possessions that I prize. I use my laptop all the time and would hate if anything happened to it, but that's more about the data than the device. I have lots of little knickknacks in my office that I like, but nothing that I'd run into a fire to save. Even the comics are replaceable.

The only thing I'd really miss if it was gone is our house. Mostly for the memories (David's spent his whole life there), but also because we've put some work into it and it's a pretty cool house.

Something Embarrassing in My Room

For this next item from Calvin's List, I found this candy cane. It's not embarrassing because I have a candy cane and it's only November. I'm unashamed of my early Christmas celebrations. David and I have been watching Christmas specials for a couple of weeks now and started on the Christmas music this past weekend when we got our first snowfall. This is to the great chagrin of everyone I know, but I'm okay with that.

What's embarrassing about this particular candy cane is that it's from last Christmas and I can't explain why I've neither eaten it nor thrown it away.

Productive Member of Society and all that

I'm sorry I didn't get a Land of the Lost post up yesterday. I'm sure I mentioned at some point that I was laid off last Spring. In the interest of keeping things fun around here, I haven't talked about that whole experience (and I'm not starting now), but I'm very pleased to report that it's come to an end. The reason I didn't post yesterday was that I spent the afternoon filling out paperwork to begin a new job that I'm pretty excited about.

Land of the Lost will return next week.

Picture of Me on This Day

I apologize for cramming the whole weekend's posting schedule into Monday morning. It was a busy weekend of apple orcharding, pumpkin farming, and Spooky Joe making. It's going to be a crazy week too, but hopefully I'll be able to stay on top of things.

This post is another item from Calvin's List, by the way.

A 10-Plus-Year-Old Picture: Halloween '77

This item from Calvin's list doesn't specify, but I'm assuming it means a 10-plus-year-old picture of me.



This is from Halloween in - I'm guessing - 1977. I suppose it could've been 1978, but it wasn't any later than that. My two, younger brothers both dressed as Jawas that year.

What I remember most about that Halloween was being really sick at our church's party. Like, Puke in the Bathroom Then Crawl Under a Table and Die sick. I was already coming down with it when this was taken. I guess I also remember thinking that my mom was pretty cool for figuring out how to make a Luke Skywalker and Jawa costumes without an Official Licensed Star Wars Pattern.

And yes, that's a flashlight. We didn't have no fancy mcschmancy replica lightsabres in 1977.

A Childhood Picture (or Two)

Next item from Calvin's list:



I feel like that's cheating a bit, because I've shown that one a couple of times before, so here's another, not-quite-childhood photo from the '80s:



Ouch.

My Favourite Purchase Ever Made

Easy one.



Our house. And the various improvements we've made to it. (This picture's from about halfway through our re-siding project.)

My Favorite Memory

Continuing to work my way through Calvin's list, I've had a hard time with this item. I have a lot of favorite memories. I mean, even if I could get them narrowed down to just two: how am I going to choose between my wedding day and the birth of my son?

And even if I could somehow eliminate the wedding (which I can't), David's birth still doesn't feel like a fair choice. Why would that be a better memory than our trip with him to Disney World as an infant when he wore a cute little lion costume to Animal Kingdom? Or his first birthday when he devoured his first cake and then rolled up the paper plate and tried to eat that too? Or preschool days when I would draw his favorite dinosaur on his lunch bags? Or any of the many, many bedtime comics we've read together? Or the times we've spent playing Fossil Fighter on his DS? Or how fun it's been introducing him to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings? Why not the time I'm about to spend with him tonight; tucking him in and snuggling a bit before lights out?

The thing is, I don't choose to view life as a collection of memories where I have to pick out favorites to dwell on. This might sound cheesy (and I hope it's not preachy), but every new moment is a new memory and I'd much rather have that one be my favorite than to be nostalgic for days past. I love remembering good times, but never as much as I enjoy whatever's going on right now.

Conventions and some personal stuff...

This is too late to do anyone any good, but I still wanted to share the art from this MIX promo. The kick-off party was last night at Big Brain Comics and the Xpo itself was today. I went to both and took a lot of pictures (and bought a lot of comics), so I'll do a report for Robot 6 in the next few days.



As I've mentioned before, I struggle with how much personal information to share here (more specifically, how much you may be interested in), but the reason I didn't get this up sooner was that my wife's mom has been really sick for about a month. That's created a bunch of extra responsibilities for everyone of course. Responsibilities we've been happy to fulfill, but it's still been rough.

Anyway, Diane's mom passed on today. It's a blessing - she was ready to go - but still... She was a bright light in our lives and it's going to be very different from here on.

In better news, with MIX done, it's time to start thinking about FallCon. I'll be exhibiting there and if things go as planned, I hope to have some exciting news by then.

Where My Family is From

There are multiple ways to read this next question from Calvin's list, so I'll answer it in all three of them.



My mom and dad are both from Memphis, Tennessee. I have fond memories of visiting my grandparents there. I learned to love comics in my grandfather's barber shop and discovered New Wave music because my grandmother had MTV (we didn't). It wasn't until much much later that I began to appreciate Memphis for things like barbecue (which I took for granted growing up in the South) and Blues.



Before my siblings and I were born, my folks had moved to Florida. My dad worked for the State and we moved around a lot until I was five and we settled into Tallahassee. I lived there until I was 21, so it'll always be my hometown and Florida State will always be my football team.



But my current family, Diane and David and I, live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. My folks moved up here before I did and I joined them once I graduated university. Diane's dad was career military, but he and her mom were both from rural Minnesota, so they moved here when her dad retired. I met Diane in college and after we both graduated, she was one of the only people I knew up here, so we spent a lot of time together. Five years later we were married and five years after that David was born. I think it's kind of cool that David's growing up on the Mississippi River just like my folks did.