Fear Of A Black Mask

I go to the local comic-con every year.  Have since the very first one (sadly, this is the first one my oldest nephew will not be attending since he was five years old*).  And some years we dress up, some years we don't.

This year is one of the former.

My cousin's three kids basically choose which year it'll be, and this year, they wanted everyone to dress up as DC Comics characters.

My first idea was an ambitious one: I wanted to be Bizarro Superman (Me Am Bizarro).  But even if I figured out a way to turn the S backward on a Superman costume, I had no idea how to do the face (I always think of Bizarro as the angular "Superfriends" version, though there are much easier-to-put-off iterations, including the one who's just an ugly Superman.

Next I thought of Red Hood, the "evil" version of Jason Todd**, a cool design, which I figured would entail a dark shirt, dark pants, a leather jacket and somehow, his helmet.

Hmmm, that helmet.  I think I'd have to buy an expensive one, or get someone to 3-D print it (which might also be expensive).  And how does one breathe in a "hood" like that?

Even easier would be the classic, Golden Age version, which would require a black suit or tuxedo, a red cape . . . and a red plastic helmet.

Oh.  How on earth would I pull that off?  And if I did manage to figure it out (maybe taking some kind of bowl or helmet and putting clear red plastic around it), how hard would it be to see out of?

Lastly, I thought about Black Mask, who is, or was, a childhood "friend" of Bruce Wayne's, whose parents dropped him on his head as an infant, and resented them so much he burned down his family mansion, killing his parents and inheriting their cosmetics company.  As you do.  

Oh, and apparently, he was inept enough to release product that disfigured the faces of several women who used his makeup.  And that was BEFORE he was struck by lightning and started wearing a skull mask around leading his own team of criminals.  I was only vaguely familiar with the character, never having read a comic with him in it, or having seen the movie with the repellent title where he was played by Ewan McGregor.

Anyway, I went out looking for a white suit and, failing that, grabbed a light-colored suit that I figured I could use over a black shirt.  I then ordered a nice skull mask on eBay, which was quite a bargain, figuring I could paint it black.  Within a couple of days of ordering it, the tracking number said it had been delivered . . . to Ohio.  I don't live in Ohio, so I contacted the seller, who said that the shipment had been damaged, but not to worry, another one was on order from Japan.

I told him I needed it by a certain day, and he assured me it would only be ten days--if I would wait, he would give me a 20% refund.  I checked this guy's feedback, to see if he was a scammer, and literally nobody else complained of a similar problem, so I let it go.

After twelve days, it hadn't arrived, and I waited two more, then contacted him to say it had been more than ten days, even not counting weekends.  He told me it was here, but had been held up in Customs, but if I'd give him just a little while more, he'd send me two instead of one.  So I waited.

And waited.  And--insert Maytag repairman image here--waited.

I told him I needed it immediately, and he said, "Two more days.  It will arrive in two days."

Three days after that, I went to cancel the transaction and discovered that . . . because it had been marked as "Delivered" weeks before, I could no longer claim that it hadn't arrived.  Huh.

Anyway, at the last minute (not literally, but a day before) I went to Walmart and got a replacement skull mask.  Not nearly as good, but it would do in a pinch.

As it was getting dark, I grabbed a can and spray-painted it black, then left it overnight to dry.  I also found a black balaclava (if I'm using that word in the non-racist sense) to put over my head, since this was just a face mask, and it worked alright . . . but was better after I got a piece of felt and Sharpie-ed it black, then taped it over the nose hole.  

Not perfect, but fine for what it was.

Unfortunately, that meant I was inhaling the smell of spray-paint the whole day, but that would still have been a problem with the more expensive 360 degree skull mask.  I touched up the teeth with dark gray, and it looks fine.  If I had it to do over again, I'd have painted it with acrylic paints and a brush, but live and learn.

In the end, our group was Two-Face, Batwoman, Robin, Black Mask, and Lex Luthor:

I was only recognized by one or two people (which is about how it was when I went as General Zod), but my costume looked fine, and it was neat that our whole group was dressed up together.***  My youngest nephew looked great in his costume, and enjoyed wearing it.  And my cousin's oldest was already talking about what we'd wear to the NEXT con, so there's that.

My cousin lent me an Airsoft gun, which worked better than the Nerf gun I was going to spray black.

*I didn't get him a ticket, worrying that he would have a job this September (he graduated high school in May).  Well, he doesn't have a job, and due to that, doesn't have any money (well, not a ton anyway).  But his big sticking point was not wanting to stand in line with me outside the building--something that's been a tradition for years, going to the end of a line so long it's on a different block and waiting for our turn to go inside.  I'll miss him.

**Please don't correct me if I'm wrong--this shtuff changes in DC Comics more than Courteney Cox's hair in the Scream movies.

***My cousin's youngest daughter didn't end up being able to go, despite having bought a Supergirl costume, and while that's really too bad, there's no reason she couldn't be Supergirl next year.  Or, if she doesn't want to, I could go as Bizarro Supergirl, since I looked, and she's just a zombiefied version of her usual self.

Rish Outcast 317: In Security 7

Rish talks about some experiences with the homeless and homelessness itself, friendship with his boss, bionic implants, going to the library on his day off, and how working as a security guard has changed him.

Also, Supergirl.

If you wish to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you wish to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Spin Securely" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 307: Like Stamp-Collecting

After going to two different comic-related sales, Rish talks about comic books, and a chilling prediction someone made.

Also, Fake Sean knows a special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Likes Damp Collecting" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 294: The Baleful

In lieu of a Christmas story this year, Rish shares his holiday-adjacent story "The Baleful." No apologies, though.

As always, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

And of course, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.  They're three shows ahead!

Logo by Gino "The Toenailful" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 230: Step-Dads & Adopted Fathers

 Marshal Latham joins Rish in talking about the depiction of step- and adopted parents.

To Download the Step-Episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, Step-Click HERE.

Step-Logo by Gino "Wicked Stepbrother" Moretto.

Blog 4/29 - 5/1

 4/29

Wow, I've come to the library five days in a row.  The people who work here must think I haven't got a life.  Pretty perceptive, the people here.

Comic artist Neal Adams died today at eighty.  He was an excellent Batman artist in the Seventies, worked on the X-men at the end of its run (when the art really got good), and was the artist on Green Arrow when it was revealed "My ward Speedy is a junkie!!!"  

He was very active at conventions, and I wish I had spoken to him more before he died (but he was before my time reading comics, and I was never much of a DC guy to begin with).  He was a co-creator of Ra's Al Ghul, Man-Bat, and was responsible for bringing the Joker and Two-Face into their modern, twisted versions (from the lighter, sillier Silver Age incarnations).

On the "Balms & Sears" front, I got to the part in the story I started writing in 2018 or '19 where a character says "faggot" and Alec's friend Chase (who is in the closet) tries to talk him out of using that word.  It's a difficult scene, because in my day, we used that word all the time, and the student that uses it doesn't mean it as hate speech, just as a casual angry word.  I'm not sure we live in a world where a character can say that and not seem villainous, you know?  And it makes me wonder if I'm a villain if I use it in my story, regardless of context.*

4/30

This marks six days in a row at the library.  But I don't know if today counts.  I was anxious to record a bit for a future podcast, so I took my microphone with me on the drive, and then I wanted to say more, so I just sat in the car with the windows closed for twenty minutes recording, despite the library closing in half an hour. 

When I finally came in, I had sweated through my shirt, which is pretty embarrassing.  But hey, maybe people just thought I didn't know how to work a drinking fountain.

The book now sits at 35,691 words.  But of course, only 34,000 of those are actual story.  To my horror, as I was typing this, I realized I had not emailed myself the work-in-progress.  I'd be logged out in two minutes (although they've screwed me twice before on that, logging me out before the timer reached zero).  I didn't do a great deal of writing today, but any loss is a pain, you know?

Gosh, I wish I were a better writer, and successful at it.  But it's something I love to do, so that's a huge point in its favor.

5/1

It's a new month, with a chance to start again, and get things done.  I wrote and/or exercised every day but one in April.  We'll see if I can do better in May.

May is a cool month.  Well, I'm a fan.

I mostly drove around, talking to Big Anklevich and podcasting today.  Guess all I can say about that is, Buh!

*Like that listener of my podcast that said I was basically a white supremacist for saying the n-word in somebody else's screenplay years ago.

August Sweeps - Day 570

Well, the sun is starting to set (a full hour earlier than it did in June, if I had to guess), and I'm done with my writing here at the library.  I blogged, answered a couple of emails, and did try to write, but mostly I just sweated (not sure what's wrong with me, but my hands are sticking to the keyboard--maybe the air conditioning went out in this place) and surfed the net.

I discovered this website called Quora the other day, where people ask public questions and experts (or just regular Joes) can get on there and answer them.  I've read at least a hundred of them over the past week, wasting hours that I could've been doing something else.  But I find it interesting, similar to the message boards and bulletin boards I've frequented since discovering the internet in 1995.

A great many of the Q&As on Quora are political in nature, and those seem to be the ones that are always "suggested" to me.  I've tried to stick to the Star Wars and Marvel Comics subjects, but the great majority of the Star Wars ones seem to be questions about the Prequel era or anti-Disney, and the even greater majority of the Marvel ones are "Who would win in a fight between Captain America and Red Guardian?" or worse, "Who would win in a fight between Thanos and Shazam?" (I HATE it when people mix Marvel and DC, or ask Star Wars versus Star Trek questions.  Maybe that's just me, but it's something I've always despised)

And I guess I can go into why.  The thing is, it's something very juvenile, that boys like to think about, and the comic creators learned early on that the only thing that comic fans enjoy more than seeing a hero take on a bad guy is seeing that hero take on another hero.  So, they come up with various ways to have the heroes duke it out with each other, most lazily (and most often) because of a misunderstanding.  And who will win largely depends on whose book this fight is occurring in.  But just as important is, who does the writer want to win?  A writer can come up with any B.S. reason the character he's rooting for can win a fight with the other guy, even if it's something as ridiculous as Punisher fighting Spider-man or Captain America fighting Wolverine.**

I refuse to answer--or even look at--questions like that, because the answer is, "Whoever Stan Lee says would win," or "Go outside and talk to another person, just for a few minutes," both of which are correct answers.

I have posted one question myself (in the DC Comics section), asking "What does Lex Luthor think of Amanda Waller? Does he admire her, fear her, loathe her, or consider her an ally?"  I asked this because I'm a fan of the Luthor character (I realize he's been written a dozen different ways by a hundred different writers over the years), and wondered, after seeing SUICIDE SQUAD 2 (what I'll be calling it from this point on), what the famous DC villain would think of Waller.  I honestly didn't know if he would like her or despise her.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In August: 2576

Push-ups Today: 70
Push-ups In August: 3010

Words Today: 684
Words In August: 16,930

*The best example I can come up with is the Superman/Spider-man team-up book in the mid-Seventies, where they contrived a strength-boosting ray to hit Spider-man with so that he'd be as powerful as Superman, at least as far as strength goes, and the fight wasn't over in a single page.  Even worse, though, is when they'll have Batman (who is a regular, unaugmented human being) fighting Superman (or Wonder Woman, or Solomon Grundy, or Darkseid), who is essentially a god.  That fight, despite how much I love Batman, should be over in a single panel.

July Sweeps - Day 520

This was a nice, lazy day, with not a great deal of work (I left that for the end of the day) and nothing to ship (no post on federal holidays).  I don't know if I'll manage today.  I just don't feel like writing.  Big deal, I know, but I got the cover art back from Big today for "Waffle Iron Man," and I made it a priority to get the story published (it was a goal for April, May, and June, I believe).  In trying to figure out the main character's name, I discovered that the text file on my computer was incomplete for some reason, once again having reverted to an earlier draft, or the program crashing before I could incorporate the final changes on the pass I did when recording the audio version.

Luckily, I had that audio version all edited (though I discovered two mistakes in reviewing it), and I was able to sit down and listen to it, typing in all the gaps in the final draft.  That ended up taking a crazy long time, though, partly because I found even more things I wanted to change, but realized they would only be in the text version (since the audio was recorded--and edited--months ago).

Oh, and here's the cover art, with text by Big Anklevich, that I ended up going with:

Finally, I've achieved one of those niggling goals that I was too lazy to tackle.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 522

I thought about cover art for the next Lara Demming story, "Made Just For You," which isn't quite ready to go, but ought to be soon.  I had a mock-up I had created back in March, that sucks quite a bit, but also shows what I had in mind:

I knew then--and still do--exactly what I wanted: a mushroom, very much like the one I used in the first story's art*, as a Christmas ornament on a tree.  And barring that, any mushroom ornament, if such a thing existed.

I found several that I liked, but none that I loved.  What do you think of these?

Then I got it into my head that, if not an ornament, I could maybe use a mushroom snowglobe (there is a reference to a snowglobe in the story early on).  I found three different photos of the same snowglobe, all of which were fine, but I'd much rather they had been blue mushrooms.

This I did instead of writing today, and I dunno, it doesn't really bother me.  

I also found this excellent shot of a blue shroom, in what appears to be a much more fatalistic image for a story:

So, I have utterly failed with the writing today.  So far, I only have "Lara" typed, which is only one word (I did a couple of rewritten lines earlier, but I forgot to do a word count for them, so I don't think they count at all).  

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In July: 559

There was some sad news out of Hollywood today.  Famed director Richard Donner passed away, at the venerable age of 91.  

Donner was one of my favorite directors, responsible for THE OMEN, the LETHAL WEAPON series, THE GOONIES, MAVERICK (1994), several classic "Twilight Zone" episodes, and as director of one and a half Superman films, was responsible for the best comic book movie of all time, at least until 2008.

I had the chance, in 2001, to meet Donner, at a signing for the DVD release of SUPERMAN (1978) at a laser disc store in Burbank.  But I was working on the series "Boston Public" at the time, playing a graduating high school student, complete with cap and gown.  As the day went on (and on, and on), I started to worry we would not be wrapped in time to get all the way up from the Torrance high school we were shooting at to Burbank.  And indeed, the shoot went long, which meant a check for the overtime, but also that I missed the signing entirely.

Luckily, Donner (and his wife Lauren) did a signing a couple of years later to promote the release of TIMELINE, and I bought a VIP ticket for that, to ensure that I'd actually get to meet him.  I got him to sign my copy of SUPERMAN, and shake his hand, and that was nice (since I had always regretted missing the 2001 signing, even though it was fun to graduate from school again).

Big and I saw Donner again in 2006, when he was at San Diego Comic-Con, promoting his director's edition of SUPERMAN II (which was a sort of precursor to this year's unbelievably expensive Snyder Cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE, except that they spent very little money on it).    Donner was one of the great directors, and I will always be saddened that the Superman franchise was taken away from him, especially as he and Tom Mankiewicz had said they'd be happy to make Superman movies for the rest of their lives (Donner once said he'd told Warner Brothers he'd be willing to do ten films for them, as long as they gave him creative freedom to do what he wanted--and that's a real loss). 

Words Today: 618
Words In July: 4471

*It's blue, but I had forgotten that it was actually a yellow shroom that I MADE blue, and not 100% successfully.  In my mind, there would be a blue mushroom on the art for every one of the "Lara and the Witch" stories.

March Sweeps - Day 404

So, I finished editing my story "Waffle Iron Man."  The plan has always been to run it on the podcast, but to have Gino Moretto on from the future, since he was there for the inception of the idea (when it was about Siren Head), and was interested in telling me about a Kiwi urban legend.  I'll make it a goal to get that episode (or episodes, probably two, since the story is more than an hour) recorded by April.

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In March: 1082

I wanted to remind you to go HERE to support me on Patreon.  They get the occasional exclusive episode, and the other episodes they get early.  For example, the episode that drops for you on Sunday was put out for Patreon supporters on December 6th. 

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 1118

Back on Tuesday night, my cousin and I watched the first episode of the new Superman series on the CW, called "Superman and Lois."  It was pretty good.  

After the show, I talked his ear off about the Man of Steel, and it turns out I'm much more passionate about Superman than even I would've guessed. 

At one point, I said, there needs to be a rule set at DC and Warner Brothers, where they ask anybody who is in the running to write, direct, star in, or produce a Superman movie, cartoon, TV series, or comic book, "Do you think Superman is boring?"  And if they say yes, as SO many comic fans and creative people seem to believe, you shake their hand and thank them for their time, letting them know your secretary can validate their parking on the way out.

Superman is only boring to the most limited of people, those who could pigeonhole other superheroes to their most basic, myopic one word descriptions that miss the point completely, like "Spider-man is a geek, Daredevil is a lawyer, Wolverine is short, Black Widow is Russian, Spawn is a black guy, Captain America is old, Batman is crazy, Deadpool talks a lot, Wonder Woman is tall."  While all of those things may be true, they hardly encapsulate the characters they describe.  

Superman is many things.  He's a hero, a symbol, an example, a policeman, an unknown, a savior, an alien, a soldier, a leader, an immigrant, an All-American, a sex symbol, a loner, a Boy Scout, a threat, a philosophy, a god.  He's also Clark Kent, and all that entails (journalist, husband, thinker, bumbler, investigator, coward, everyman, friend).  There's a dozen different angles a writer can look at him, a dozen different ways he can be portrayed.

Yes, he's unbelievably overpowered, but any one of those powers can be interesting if well told.  But also, he's not omnipotent, and how does he deal with the knowledge that eighteen climbers in Tibet plummeted to their death because he was in Missouri putting out an oil fire?*  And there's always that thing of, what happens if the bullet bounces off of Superman and hits Perry White, or what happens if Jimmy Olsen boasts that Superman's his best pal in front of the wrong person?

Gosh, I could blog all day about Superman, how while he's not my favorite superhero, he's the greatest, most recognizable of them all, and he deserves to have his stories told by people who respect the character.  By people who love him.

I wonder if my cousin would even want to keep watching "Superman & Lois," if it means I stretch every episode out to two-plus hours.

Words Today: 1028
Words In March: 10,106

*My cousin often told me about a "Justice League" episode where Batman is incapacitated, so Kal-El volunteers to put on the Batman costume and patrol the streets of Gotham City in his place, and this lit up my imagination with the thought of: for one night out of the year, there were no murders in Batman's hometown, no rapes, no muggings, no drug overdoses, no domestic abuse cases, no one got hit by a car or fell from a fire escape or was run over by a subway car.  How glorious, no?
BUT Superman then considers that eleven people died in Albuquerque, nine in Baton Rouge, nineteen in Saskatoon, thirty-eight in Chongking, seventy-three in Anuradhapura . . . and three back home in Metropolis, because Superman was spending all his time in Gotham.  And he feels guilty about it, just as he always does any time someone suffers because Superman can't be in all places at once. 
That's what heroes do, apparently.