WAR OF THE TAXMAN…

Well we picked up our tax papers the other day from the accountant and got the wonderful news, he says sarcastically, that we would have to pay additional taxes this year of a significant amount. We were quite shocked at this because our income was only slightly more than the previous year. The previous year we had overpaid and got a reimbursement. So we figured it would break even this year after all the quarter payments had been made. Nope. We pay. We thought this rather peculiar because our income was only slightly better in 2007. We went and looked at the tax brackets online and were quite pissed at what we found. As it turns out, we barely bumped into the next tax bracket, one of the middle class ones. So we moved from lower middle class to middle middle class. The next up would be upper middle class. So here is the rub. We literally have to pay 10% ADDITIONAL tax over what we paid the year before because of that little bump up. And it turns out that it is the ONLY bracket that increases the amount of tax by that much. If we had made it to the upper middle class the increase would not have been 20% but only 13% additional tax. And if we had made it even farther than that the percentage would be even less of an increase exponentially. So in essence the actual middle class get chopped heavily by the taxman more than any other category. Which leads to the title of this section. I had seen something not too long ago on one of political shows we watch about there being war waged on the middle class by the government in terms of the financial aspects of our country. This entails everything from affordable insurance to taxes. Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining about our financial status. It could be far worse. We do pretty well. However the poor in our country are treated terribly in many ways. So the plight of the middle class pales in comparison on lot of levels. But after discovering that huge difference in the tax system percentages it causes one to pause and consider what actually is going on here. It is absolutely ridiculous to me that if you reach the upper levels of our society the exponential increase percentages in taxes get really small. Proving that the more money you have the better you are treated by the government. What boggles my mind, and I have yet to determine, is what the gain would be, to get such an increase of 10% when moved up slightly into a higher bracket is beyond me. What is the point of that other than just to keep the middle class down a bit and what purpose would that serve? The amount of money we would need to make to reach the next level in the tax system is literally almost $80,000 more to reach the upper middle class. So by bumping up just a little bit we moved into a bracket that raises the taxes an additional 10%. We are paying the same percentage of tax that someone who makes $79,000 more than we do. Doesn’t make much sense. So in essence after paying taxes this year we actually will have LESS money in our pocket than if I hadn’t had an increase in income. Bizarre. I can only imagine what it must feel like for someone who lives in poverty and then suddenly finds themselves making enough money to be considered middle class.

(and now for something fun) DOOMSDAY…

The movie. Went saw this today. Read many reviews from various sources before going. It seemed that people either hated it or loved it. I ended up in the loved it camp. I think some might not be getting what they are seeing. Is it an unabashed literal homage to post apocalyptic movies from the 70’s and 80’s such as Road Warrior or Escape From New York? Absolutely yes! But it doesn’t do it in a way that makes you feel the director is rehashing that stuff. It feels like he was truly wanting to make a movie that harkened to those absurd ideas. Now when I say absurd I mean it in the best possible sense. A lot of scenes in this film are truly over the top absurd and laugh out loud funny. But not funny because it’s absurd but funny because you/we are sort of in on the joke but without making us feel like we are watching a parody. A fine line to walk but this film does it beautifully. The entire car battle sequence is just amazingly entertaining in a very sadistically brutally funny way because it’s absurd in the most fun sense of the word. There is even a blatant product placement scene that is just laugh out funny. It plays as if the film makers know that since they have to have product placement to help pay for the movie that they’re gonna make you laugh about it. So if you are a fan of those previously mentioned films, and others of that older generation of B movie fun, I highly recommend this movie. It was obviously made with love for this genre. So ignore the nay sayers out there, who most likely like to piss in other people’s frosted flakes.

part three.

of the interview here.

Part one of a 3 part interview can be found here.

A MESSY HOUSE…

I haven’t been able to work or blog for a bit due to having lots of work and repairs done around the house. We’ve been living with contractors for about the last 3 weeks. I had planned on working through it all but things didn’t quite work out the way they were in my feeble brain. We had to put a new roof on the house because of it’s age and we were having leaking problems. The leaking caused damage to both bathrooms and therefore they needed major repairs done. Yay. Anyway, $15,000 dollars later and having total chaos around here I’m finally getting back on track.

I’m starting work on the second issue of the “unnamed” project and finally finishing up my one off issue of Jonah Hex. Oh, and look for something involving an ambushed bug.

MASTER OF HORROR…

No, this is not a reference to the poorly executed tv series of the same name. I’m referring to horror comics master Junji Ito. I’ve just recently completed reading the 3 volume set that dark horse had published. As to be expected they were truly haunting works. The first 2 volumes dealt with his Tomie stories. Truly creepy. In fine Japanese tradition they were about obsessive behaviors and usually ended up with the horrific death of Tomie. She is this girl who keeps coming back to life in one bizarre circumstance after another of men murdering her in very violent ways. But it quickly becomes much more complicated than pure fantasy of men having power over women, which is what the author wants you think you are reading at first. That you are reading a misogynist male powertrip. But in essence it really is an exploration in the power of survival in the guise of an unknown demonic or alien entity in the form of a girl that uses obsession to provoke one to dismember her in garish ways. You see this is how she multiplies. Her individual dismembered body parts slowly become multiple versions of herself. One of the interesting things though is in one story is that the separate versions of herself are compelled to kill each other as well. As to say that she must continually struggle to become the most evolved version. Strongest of the fittest. What is fascinating is that you would think that the murderous rampage images would be the most horrific. Though they may be horrific, the most shocking and truly creepy, make your skin crawl, images come from the scenes with her regenerations. Mr. Ito may be trying to say that formation of life is messy and icky. The other thing about Junji Ito’s work, as in other Japanese horror, he doesn’t try to explain the technical reasons for what is happening. You just have accept what you are seeing. I think this lack of explanation found in Japanese horror is what truly makes it scary and thought provoking. It is very chillingly compelling when compared to American horror, where most of it explains everything to such a degree that it takes any of “thrill” out it. In my opinion, good, truly scary horror, is when something is completely unknown, unexplainable. It touches on a more primal fear. My only complaint is that the Tomie stories don’t form a single narrative larger story much like his other works I’ve read.

Volume 3 focuses on his short stories. Some of them are okay but others are truly amazing.

Other Junji Ito works I recommend that are available in english are Gyo and my personal favorite, Uzumaki.

MUSIC…

Perversely playing with my ipod with obsessive fervor.

Her name is Brooke Devine and she put some batman art pages on hold sometime ago but i have misplaced her contact info. I know its probably a long shot but if any other collectors reading this blog know her, could you be so kind as to see if she would email me through this website? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

As some of you have already discovered, the official store is now open as of sometime sunday evening. For now we are presenting a large number of original pages and concept work and tidbits like that. Also the sketchbooks are available in there as well. In the future we will be adding some limited specialty items such as signed comics sets and tpbs as well a some other goodies. At some point we will be adding a very few sketched edition hardcovers too. In the meantime enjoy looking at what is in there. Feel free to email us with any questions.

A certain someone for whom this website belongs to and is very giddy at the moment as he writes this blog has this thing over at the ComicsNexus that he wants to share with all of you…and the award goes to…__________

GALLERY…

The uploading process has begun for the gallery. It all is sort of random to what is going up. So this round as with the subsequent uploads will not be in any particular order. Hopefully that doesn’t annoy anyone. This time around there is all kinds of stuff. Some batman, some promethea, con sketch commissions. and various other things. I think I may have added at least 50 new images. My goal is to create something that people can come back to time and time again. To come to the gallery and view things at your leisure. I know most online artist galleries aren’t going to be as large as this as time goes by and hopefully you will come to enjoy the vastness of it as it progresses. I wish to show multiple versions of things that went through major or minor changes as the work was completed or as changes needed to be done based on editorial notes as work progressed. I’m showing these sorts of things to promote thoughts on design and process. Particularly with cover images and their relation to the logo work I had done. I know some of this will be a bit redundant but I want to create an online documentation of various aspects of every image I produce. I hope, even with the redundancy, you will find merit in this notion of a full on compendium of my work as it develops over time. Anyway, enjoy the new images for this round of uploads.

THINGS YOU SHOULD SEE…

Robotika by my friend Alex Sheikman has started up it’s second series from archaia press. Samurai sci-fi with a bit of surreal attitude. I contributed a pin-up to the first series and wanted to point you in the direction of his new material at…

Tabloia is another ongoing project from another friend, Chris Wisnia. Very fun and wild retro-cool-monster-driven stuff. I also have contributed a pin-up for his publication as well. Please explore his crazy worlds at…

These guys need support for their unique vision of independent comics. Find them, buy them, enjoy them.

We have fixed some of the bugs in the gallery. So you should be able to view things without error messages. There are still a few things we need to adjust, but at least it is viewable now. Our esteemed webmaster has set it up so you can navigate through the images using a control slideshow motif that is rather nice or you can go directly to flickr to view images from there. Hopefully next week I will be adding a lot more images to the gallery in one fell swoop. My goal for this gallery is for it to keep growing and sort of be a giant digital compendium of my work. Please enjoy.