May 24th, 2006
Misfit’s Mailbox
Just recently, I managed to finish working my way through a folder full of MISFIT’S JOURNEY related email that I had trouble answering right away.
There were a few respondents who wrote and told me about their online efforts. Since I liked what they’re doing, I’ve decided to go ahead and link to it:
1. Nate Bear is currently in a “post grad state of limbo” and works at a supermarket making “miserable wages”. You can check out his comic strips at his Cramped Comics site. He said in his email that he relates to the experiences described in the first MISFIT’S JOURNEY.
2. Skip Williamson is an underground comix legend and the creator of CLASS WAR COMIX. He’s known Robert Crumb, Jay Lynch, and many other notable creators. His website is here. He didn’t say anything about my comics in his email, but I’m flattered that he thought it was worth the effort to email me about his site.
3. Blake (no last name in his email) is a graduate of Macalester College (which is here in Minneapolis). He says he “throughly enjoyed” the first MJ. I’ve run into other Macalester grads who really liked the first episode too. I suspect this is because Macalester and Saint Olaf College — where I went to school — are colleges that are somewhat similar. He has a political blog called TheNextLeft.com that I’ve enjoyed reading. (Right now, it’s down, so I can’t look up his last name.)
4. Bruce-Erik Osborn didn’t send me any cool links, but I like what he said about artists who, like me, have backgrounds in physics: “There are many great artists, even filmmakers, who have a background in physics. The director of the Fred Astaire movie “Top Hat” (I forget his name), and Frank Capra (a graduate of Cal-Tech), come immediately to mind. The enquiring nature of such individuals can lead to original insights which they often find ways of affixing into a particular medium with new clarity. I would say in your case that its greatest asset IS its individuality, in several dimensions.” (Cartoonist Ted Rall, animator and filmmaker Mike Judge, and Robocop director Paul Verhoeven are three other artists I can think of who have physics backgrounds.)
Here’s a photo of a war protest I went to at Macalester College when the war in Iraq first broke out:
I knew then that Dubya’s war was a very, very bad idea. Time has proven me right, hasn’t it?
I took a couple dozen pictures of the protest actually. I’m planning on using some these photos as reference material for crowd scenes for future episodes of MISFIT’S JOURNEY. I noted in my last post some of the improvements I want to make to my 3d art. These photos are going to help me in doing just that.
That’s all for now. I’ll try to be back soon.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Thanks for the link to the Next Left, Ben. The site’s back up. My last name is Stone-Banks (but, it’s nowhere to be found on the site.) Best.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:30 am
I tried reading Nate Bear’s strip, only to have the ads on his site attempt to install a bunch of adware/spyware on the hard drive of the computer I was using (at work). I have software at home that blocks all that crap, but apparently not everyone does, so beware.
I sympathize with poor artists who use ads (e.g. Google)because they can’t afford to put their work on the web otherwise, but adware is evil.
June 25th, 2006 at 11:17 am
I can’t help but wonder if this is a problem with all Tripod sites. You can find some interesting discussions if you do a Google search for “tripod sites” spyware.
Tripod has been a very popular free hosting web service for a long time. Of course, companies like Tripod sell ads to pay for the hosting and perhaps they’re going too far. Does the same thing happen when you go to another Tripod site? Try http://amazingmontage.tripod.com/ (which is an old site Joe Zabel used to use).
If Tripod’s doing this, perhaps more people should be aware of it. What happens when you go to a free Geocities site like http://www.geocities.com/superherofood ? Is any spyware detected?
Perhaps Tripod users need to migrate to Geocities. (I’m not up on what’s happening with the free website providers these days.)
I have a spyware scanner, and it DID remove a few items after visiting Nate’s site. My McAfee software supposedly blocks spyware installation too, and it didn’t detect anything. I’ve used Spybot for quite some time and have used Ad Aware in the past, but perhaps I need to install something else on this machine.
It might be a good idea to research what was installed. Was it “Avenue A”?
June 25th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Wait a minute….he said the problem was AT WORK.
It’s certainly a good idea to be careful about which sites you visit at work for a variety of reasons.
I’ve dealt with computers in the past that will not even accept cookies.
I honestly don’t think there’s any cause for alarm for people surfing at home. People with home computers are certainly advised to have programs like Windows Defender and SpyBot and scan their machines regularly.
For the record, Tripod sites like Nate’s are causing no problems on my machine. Whatever Spybot detected had to have been installed by something else. Perhaps the various browser immunizations built into Spybot are preventing anything from happening on my computer.