T-shirt #25: "Yes, We Cannibal"

T-shirt #25: "Yes, We Cannibal"

In my continuing series encouraging everyone to have a sense of humor, I present a clever take on Obama's "Yes, We Can" slogan from his 2008 presidential campaign.

Like many of my shirts, I buy them via the monthly Previews catalogue that I use to order my comic books from Kalamazoo's nirvana of comics: Fanfare Sports and Entertainment. Much like T-shirt #14: Occupy Sesame Street, when I spotted this shirt, I had to have it. It furthers my call to the world at large to "Lighten Up," which is advice that I try to take to heart all the time.

I hope you find it amusing, especially on this wonderful day: TAX DAY.

The analogy created by the shirt's slogan and choosing it for TAX DAY should not be lost on anyone.

To close (because this is another short entry), I want to use a quote from one of my favorite poets, Herb Scott, former professor at WMU (Herb died a few years ago, and he is missed). This quote comes from "Butcher's Dream," one of the poems in his book "Groceries."

"I always wondered, "what is the tenderest part of the human carcass?"
Then I seen some cannibal say "the palm of the hand."
A delicacy you can't find in another game.
He'd kill for the human hand.
How do you figure?
Not even a meal.
But it makes you wonder.
It makes you stare at your own hand, like a strange animal."

Okay, did I just diffuse the whole "lighten up" and "sense of humor" thing?

Off to finish my taxes...

- chris tower 1304.15 6:53
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

T-shirt#24: My Sunday Best: Cerebus

T-shirt #24: Cerebus: "He doesn't love you; he just wants all your money."

I have been saving this shirt for a Sunday, especially since I spend a lot of my time discussing the Catholic Church with my wife the recovering Catholic.

This is a shirt featuring Cerebus, the aardvark, the most famous, non-mainstream comic and comic creation in all of comic book history. The first and best real "independent" and "alternative" comic published by Dave Sim's Aardvark-Vanaheim company from 1977 to 2004.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time in the Cerebus universe. However, because of a lack of issues in the places where I was buying comics in 1977 (no direct sales specialty shops), I did not jump on the Cerebus bandwagon until late in the High Society run of the comic, around issue 47 (the run ended at issue 50). I was in college at this point, and a good friend, Mark Brager (who lived in Detroit and had access to direct sales specialty shops) recommended the comic to me. I was quickly hooked.

At this point in the long running Cerebus title, its creator, Dave Sim, had begun to divide the comic into novels, which would later be published in large collected editions resembling phone books. At the time that I started reading the series, there were no collected editions. My first real taste of the book came with the Church and State storyline collected in two volumes and consisting of issues 52-80 and 81-111 as well as the years of 1983-1988. Soon after I began reading Cerebus, the earliest issues, the sword and sorcery parodies, were collected as the Swords of Cerebus. I bought and read those issues (LOVED them), but I did not have the means to catch up on the High Society issues until Sim released issues 26-50 as the first collected volume in 1986.

I was hooked on Sim's creation from the beginning and quite enamored of this plan of his to write the life of his character in 300 issues. It seemed a huge and daunting task when he announced it in the 1980s. I cannot claim that I remained  as engaged by the stories, or by Sim himself, over the years. But I did read the ENTIRE run of the comic, even when Sim's own beliefs about gender, politics, religion, and many other things were not only unpleasant but downright offensive. (Though I do respect Sim's right to have and even proselytize those beliefs) After all, I am also a fan of Orson Scott Card, despite not agreeing with his views on sexuality. At least OSC keeps his views out of his fiction for the most part or is at least not quite as pedantic and insufferable about pandering these views as Sim became in the later years of the Cerebus novels. Though I did enjoy his essays on self-publishing, his published correspondence with Alan Moore, and his long diatribe essay on the religion of Islam, even though I disagreed with many of his ideas. Sim may be offensive, but he is an intellectual and a worthy opponent in an argument.

I tried Sim's follow up to Cerebus, a comic called Glamourpuss, but I quickly soured on Sim's heavy-handed treatment of his views on the world. Besides, the idea for the comic did not have the "legs" that the Cerebus idea had. I stopped buying it.

Criticisms of Dave Sim's views are very deftly handled on a blog called Upton Park by Andrew Rilstone, Gentleman.

I also quite like this essay on Cerebus by Andrew Hickey: "Cerebus is possibly the most daunting work in the whole history of art. This is not an exaggeration."

Still, I love the shirt. And the Church and State novel is definitely my favorite Cerebus book but also one of my favorite comic books of all time. It's one of the single best parodies on religion, especially Catholicism, ever written.

"At a time when the series was about 70% completed, celebrated comic book writer Alan Moore wrote, "Cerebus, as if I need to say so, is still to comic books what Hydrogen is to the Periodic Table'" ("Cerebus," Wikipedia, 2013).

So, I have included some great images here for your edification and amusement, including one of the best pages from the entire run of Church and State. Enjoy!!

And as always, thank you for reading my self-indulgent blog.

- chris tower 1304.14 12:00
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

T-shirt #23: Planet of the Snapes

T-shirt #23: Planet of the Snapes

Blame Facebook again. Those damn ads that target our "likes."

This time it was Teefury that pooped next to my news feed. (Yes, I know the text reads "pooped." I meant "popped," but in an edit, I saw that I had written "pooped" and liked it so much that I decided to leave it.)

The social media interwebs knew that I liked geeky stuff; however, there is no way it could have predicted this particular confluence of forces and the meaning for my family.

My step-daughter Piper's favorite character in the Harry Potter books is Severus Snape. Also, we have learned that her Dad and I share many interests, one of which is the Planet of the Apes films, which I was mad for back in the 1970s and still consider among my favorite cult phenomena.

So, enter Teefury, a web store that offers a daily T-shirt. The shirt goes on sale for 24 hours. Teefury blitzes social media, sells the shirt inexpensively, and then makes it exclusive by yanking it from the market. When I saw the "Planet of the Snapes" shirt, I knew Piper would want one. I wanted one. It was clever and amusing, and it combined two things we both loved. I ended up ordering one for my step-son Ivan, too. Now, we're a family united by "Planet of Snapes." (I would have ordered one for  Liesel if she wore more T-shirts or had read the Harry Potter books).

There's more to say about how Harry Potter saved my life and how the Planet of the Apes movies influenced  my ideas about story-telling, but those are stories for another time. This entry needs to remain short. I had to log a short one eventually. I had intended for all the posts to be short this week. And then they grew and grew. Today, I am making an effort to keep it short and sweet. Don't expect a book every day.

-chris tower - 1304.13
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

T-shirt #22: I miss FREAKANGELS

T-shirt #22: I miss FREAKANGELS

I miss FREAKANGELS. From February 15th, 2008 through August 5th 2011, with occasional skips in the schedule, Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield released a weekly episodic comic called FREAKANGELS with the publication aid of Avatar Press.

I love episodes. I LOVE the episodic narrative.

All diehard comic book fans also love the episodic narrative and are quite hooked on it. By "diehard," I mean fans who make the weekly trek to the local comic store, who have subscribed to a comics service and have comics shipped weekly, or who, these days, have subscribed to a digital service and have comics sent to their devices on a weekly basis.

Comics come out WEEKLY. Each week a set of new titles finds its way to the display racks in stores. Those of us who became hooked on comics before the direct sales, specialty comics shops became THE places to buy, remember knowing which day the comics were put out for sale and all the places where comics were sold. In those early days (when comics were 12 cents and then 15 cents... I am not so old that I bought comics for 10 cents or 5 cents), I bought my comics in liquor stores, drug stores, grocery stores, tobacco shops, book stores, and even some smart toy stores. Though most often, I bought my weekly comics in the grocery store accompanying my mother on the weekly grocery shopping trek. My allowance was based on this comics purchase: 25 cents, which bought me two comics plus tax. Unfortunately, there were more than two new titles published each week. But I made choices, and I bought many of my early titles this way, enjoying Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Batman, the Justice League, the Flash, Hawkman, The Teen Titans, and The Legion of Superheroes.


DC Comics was the first to cash in on the episodic narrative in a bigger way. In 1991, DC consolidated its Superman titles into one story. Launching a third and fourth title, and marking each comic with triangle or shield, the Superman comics became one giant story with weekly episodes rather than the stand-alone one-shots or small story arcs exclusive to each title of the previous iteration. Though many hardcore comics fans loathed the collective, intertwining story, I loved it. Finally, instead of waiting four weeks in between issues, I was able to enjoy a new episode of the ongoing Superman story every week. Later, Marvel Comics caught on to this idea and organized the same rotation for its Spider-Man comics.

Weekly is where it's at!

The addiction to the episodic narrative is not exclusive to comics. Nightly TV shows began to understand the public's hunger for long, episodic narratives in weekly installments. Many shows from HBO's narratives to those on the main networks, like Fox, have used this format to great success. But even before nightly TV caught on that viewers had long attention spans that would last a whole season, Daytime TV had been using this format in soap operas, which provided DAILY installments of a huge, sprawling narrative. Awesome! One of these, The Young and the Restless, is celebrating its fortieth year of production. FORTY YEARS OF DAILY EPISODES. This is one of the biggest, most complex and yet reliable (turn it on at 12:30 every day and there it is) episodic narratives in existence in the entertainment media of today.

Back to FREAKANGELS. Warren Ellis (who is one of my favorite writers) conceived the idea of a weekly comic that would be released in installments via the web. Already using social media, such as Twitter, to bring people to his web site, Ellis began to promote FREAKANGELS. Every Friday, he would announce via Twitter (which would feed to his web site) when the new installment of FREAKANGELS went live. Even when the series had to skip a week, Ellis kept his readership informed about the reason for the skip and when the next episode was likely to hit the Internet. I was not the only reader resending his Twitter messages and posting FREAKANGELS links on my Facebook page and other Web 2.0 media, such as Tumblr.

Every Friday, I think about how FREAKANGELS is finished, and how much I miss it. I miss the six-page chunk of story every week. I miss the characters and being part of their lives for THREE YEARS.

Though he is no longer doing a weekly narrative, Ellis has launched a new episodic comic called Scatterlands, drawn by Jason Howard. He is releasing one panel a day on his web site, though as of the writing of this blog entry, after 25 episodes, the comic is currently on hiatus.

What is FREAKANGELS? Oh, did you notice that I wrote NOTHING about its story or characters? Well, I did that on purpose. Find out for yourself. The comics are still online here: FREAKANGELS. AND they have all been collected.

SIDE NOTE: Lately, I have been enjoying an episodic narrative in a new form: a weekly serial novel, The Human Division, written by John Scalzi, being released weekly for Kindle and other e-reader devices and running 13 episodes; the final one was released on Tuesday, April 9th, 2013. I don't have a a T-shirt for Scalzi's book, but you can learn more via his blog: WHATEVER; I linked this to a specific post about the book.

-chris tower
1304.12 - 8:45
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

T-shirt #21: CONAN: Shirts you will never see on me in public

T-shirt #21: Conan

Early Buscema cover with Red Sonja!

So, the day after explaining my fixation with superhero logos, and how for years I avoided shirts with the likeness of the hero, it seemed fitting to feature another shirt with the likeness of a 1970s Marvel icon. After all, this whole blog started with Marvel's Son of Satan, one of my all time favorite characters from the 1970s, even though recent incarnations have left me altogether unimpressed.

Though I like Conan--today's featured character on today's shirt--I am unlikely to ever wear this shirt out of the house where you can see me wearing it. Okay, sure, I just took my puppy to Camp Fido. And yes, I was wearing the Conan shirt, but it was mostly hidden under another big, warm chamois shirt, so I did not really feel that my Conan shirt was on display.

As I feature new shirts each day, I will make notes of their uses. Some are only worn at home. Some are only worn as pajamas. Some are only worn for sports or exercise. Some are worn when I eat pasta or clean the kitchen because I do not care if they get permanently soiled. Conan falls into the "only at home" category.

In one sense, this category is a bit irrelevant now as I am posting pictures of myself wearing these "only at home" shirts on THE INTERNET, not exactly a private bat-cave by any means. There's nothing really wrong with the shirts with likenesses, especially this one that derives from a comic book cover (Conan #96), and I am more comfortable sporting shirts that look a bit more like something I would have worn when I was 10 or 11 years old than I used to be. But still, I keep this one to "in the house."

Possibly my favorite Buscema
Silver Surfer cover.

I bought this shirt in the last few years, inspired by learning that my wife likes Conan. For a while, she was interested in doing some Conan reading, so I loaded her up with the first three volumes of the Roy Thomas-Barry Windsor Smith Marvels, some of the books with Frazetta covers, and then we watched the movies with Schwarzenegger. Like many discoveries with Liesel, if I was not already in love with her, I would have fallen in love with her upon learning she liked Conan the Barbarian. Who wouldn't?

The Black Coast stories were among
my favorites.

I was not on the bandwagon with Marvel Comics' adaptation of Howard's stories in its Conan the Barbarian title from the start and the earliest issues lavishly illustrated by Barry Windsor Smith. I had not found the Robert E. Howard stories until after I started reading the comics. I jumped on with Conan during John Buscema's run on the comic. I already loved Buscema's art work because of his runs on The Avengers and Silver Surfer. Buscema's strong lines and sturdy figures made a strong impression on me. One of the first short stories I wrote (in fourth grade) was about Conan the Barbarian, inspired by the issues created by Roy Thomas (one of my favorite all time comics writers) and Buscema. The story also was inspired by Treasure Island, which I had read the year before as my first "adult" novel. Later, in the early 1980s, Buscema would do a run on King Conan that not only did I love, but so did my sister.

John Buscema is missed. He died in 2002 at the age of 74. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in the same year. Obviously, I could go on an on about Conan and the character's and the stories' impact on my life, but I have waxed on and waxed off enough for now.


 SIDE NOTE: One interesting thing about my Conan shirt is its label. It's not a Hanes or Fruit of the Loom. It's copyrighted by Conan Properties International LLC, and the shirt is manufactured by Mad Engine, who do some very cool shirts seen here: MAD ENGINE.

Art by Barry Windsor Smith

The label reads CONAN in big letters, which seems fitting. He should be in big letters.

- chris tower
just in his house
not in public
1304.11 - 10:06

T-shirt #20: The Flash Logo

T-shirt #20: The Flash Logo

One of the things I like best about superheroes is their logos or insignias, the symbols by which they are known.

For years, I would only buy logo T-shirts. So, you are going to see a lot of them this year (if I have enough T-shirts to do a full year). I did not like wearing shirts that depicted the faces or likenesses of heroes. Some of the images made just for shirts were too silly and not based on the actual art in the comic books. So, I bought the logo shirts.

One of my first logo T-shirts was the Flash logo. This is actually my second Flash T-shirt.

The Flash logo is one of the coolest superhero logos in all of comics. As a fan of logos, I am prepared to argue that DC comics has the better logos compared to Marvel Comics. Sure, the Fantastic Four logo is simple and basic as is Spider-Man's logo. The X-Men logo is iconic. Though not all the heroes or organizations have logos in Marvel Comics, I like the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo very much (as you will see since I own a shirt for this one), then again, I like the HYDRA logo, too. Other notable Marvel logos include Iron Fist, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, Mar-Vell (or Captain Marvel for Marvel), the Punisher, and Captain America. Maybe later this year after I have posted many of my logo shirts, I can do a comparison of logos and which are more iconic and viral.

With casual consideration, I say DC Comics' logos beat Marvel Comics' logos for cool factor, iconic status, and recognizability. Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Aquaman, Deadman, all the Legion of Superheroes logos, the Metal Men logos, the Teen Titans, and so on. Wow. Among these, Flash's logo is arguably top five. Possibly, even tied for number one as the best and coolest with the Batman logo. Thus, the Flash logo adorns my Smart Phone case. I love it.

I was inspired to select the Flash shirt for today's shirt not only because I love the Flash insignia but also because of the recent death of one of the greatest and most influential of artists who worked on the Silver Age Flash: Carmine Infantino. My friend Charles Skaggs, who writes the blog Damn Good Coffee... and Hot!, wrote an excellent post on the death of Infantino that can be read here:

 THE FLASH's Carmine Infantino Passes at 87.

My parents purchased an issue of the Flash for me as one of my earliest comic books. I am including two covers here. I am not sure which issue I owned first, but these are definitely my first two Flash comics. Given that 177 comes before 180, it's likely that the "big head" issue was my first Flash comic, though in the old days some back issues could be found lingering in racks and shelving units at the grocery store or drug store, and it's possible that I was given 180 first or both together. Flash #177 was published in 1968 when I was six years old. I received my first comic in 1966 at the age of four, but that's a story for another time.

I love the Flash because the Flash is cool. I won't render a complete biography replete with descriptions of all the characters to assume the mantle of the Flash. Those who are interested can check the Wikipedia page for the Scarlet Speedster. Wikipedia is actually quite a good source for basic information about things, especially comic book related matters. And OMG! I just found the DC WIKI DATABASE. WOW!! I am having a geek overdose.

Indulge me: A couple of things before I sign off. The Flash comics of the Silver Age, part of my formative childhood years, were super, ultra cool in part because of the clever story ideas driven by the engaging cover art, a DC trademark of the time to compete with the rise of upstart Marvel Comics. Carmine Infantino was the main artist on The Flash at the time. Various writers helmed the series: John Broome, Frank Robbins, as well as the great genius of the time: Gardner Fox (who wrote the "big head" Flash issue #177); artistic duties were assumed later by Ross Andru. In addition to Fox, one of the masterminds of DC's use of startling cover images as story hooks (the cover ideas were often created before the story and given to the creative team to generate a story to support them), the Grand Poobah of DC Comics and the main genius was Julius Schwartz. My tribute to Schwartz will wait for another time, too.




But my thanks goes out to these creators as my earliest comics experiences were shared between DC, Marvel, and Golden Key comics. I was not a one company reader. I liked them all. Heck, I liked comics. I still do.

One of the best comic covers from this era was the one for Flash #163 by the Broome/Infantino team. I had to include the picture here. In classic nerd speak: "it's awesome."

I found that I am not alone in my love of the Flash. Through the fan networks, I met Neil Southwell (tagging you, buddy), who is possibly the biggest Flash geek of all time. Hi Neil!

How could anyone not love a hero whose costume popped out of secret compartment in a ring he wore? Who could run faster than Superman? Who could vibrate through walls? Who could race backwards in time?

Barry Allen as the Flash died in DC Comics' huge crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985. I could not leave this blog entry without mentioning this fact, especially since Barry Allen stayed dead for 24 years, which may be a record in comic books for the length of a time a character has remained dead. Some of us comic fans wondered if Barry Allen would go down in history as one hero who died in combat and stayed dead. But then, DC brought him back for profit. In comics, it's all about the sales.

For me, it's all about logos on T-shirts.

-chris tower 1304.10 11:03

T-shirt #19: Love & Rockets: My new favorite shirt

T-shirt #19: Love & Rockets: My new favorite shirt

I love this shirt.

It's my new favorite shirt of the year.

One thing you should know: I am not always wearing the shirt on the day I post it to the blog. I try to match as much as possible, but due to laundry schedules and the vagaries of life and existence, I am not always wearing the shirt of the day.

Another thing you should know: I am not always wearing the shirt because I am the ultimate (or even penultimate) fan of the comic, TV show, movie, band, or whatnot on the shirt. In this case, I definitely love the shirt more than I love the comic. I LIKE the comic, but I am not agog at the thought of the comic. But I LOVE the shirt. The shirt embodies what I liked best about the famous comic by Los Bros Hernandez.

What is it, you ask?

It's a comic book. NOT the band consisting of former Bauhaus members. I know this can be confusing because the T-shirt features the image from Love and Rockets #24 with the characters rockin' out.

Who are the Hernandez brothers?

Best known for the comic book Love and Rockets, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez have become paragons of the alternative comics revolution that started in the 1980s.

Though I like Gilbert's art and stories, I do LOVE Jaime's art and stories. This shirt captures an image from the first arc of L&R stories collected in volume one. I was also very excited when Jaime did the art work for the Indigo Girls' album All That We Let In, which is one of their best and tied for my all time favorite.

I could write expnasively, go on and on about alternative comics, Los Bros Hernandez, what I love about Jaime's art and stories, and other related topics (like Fantagraphics, the company that published L&R). but today is a short entry. Hey, they cannot all be long.

Final thought: doesn't this image/shirt just ROCK HARD?

I think it does.

- chris tower 1304.09
photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower