Three years ago, on January 31st of 2004, I was still employed by Novell. I also found a whole bunch of free time SOMEWHERE, and cranked out the conclusion to Book II (Schlock Mercenary: The Blackness Between) in a day. The inked buffer climbed from 37 to 42 on that day, and 42 is the highest the buffer has ever been.

Well, ALMOST ever. The buffer is at 42 today, because yesterday I scripted, pencilled, and inked my way from 34 to 43. So yeah, there’s a new record.

It’s kind of a trivial thing, though, because sometime in the next few weeks I’ll break the record AGAIN. Monday the buffer will be at 40 (there are two more strips left to ink in this batch, which I’ll be doing tomorrow), which means that by Wednesday I’ll be at 45.

As I’ve mentioned before, this year I want to add a week to the inked buffer every month. I began the year with 3 weeks in the can. It’s not even March yet, and I’ve got six weeks in the can. So yeah, this record is destined to be short-lived. I’ll lose a week here and there for convention travel, and maybe for sickness or vacations, but I’m banging out extra weeks like this last one in order to keep on track.

In other news, the colored buffer still sucks — 10 days. My OTHER goal is to get the colored buffer to within a week or two of the inked buffer this year, and that’s proving more difficult. Or at least more tedious. Sitting in front of the computer feels too much like work.

Which, by the way, I probably ought to get back to. I’ve colored four so far today, and ought to bang out a few more.

–Howard

My brother randytayler and I went to see “Ghost Rider” last night.

Lots of thoughts, but the one that sticks with me is this — the skull looked boring.

That’s right, they managed to make a flaming skull look BORING. If you look at the comics, the Ghost Rider’s skull has actual facial expressions. The animators on this film, however, decided that it should be a realistic skull — incapable of expressing anything other than “the mouth is open” without the layers of muscle and tissue atop it. Sure, it had flame, but they didn’t use that for expression other than the flame in the eyes for the Pale Stare ability, and cool, blue flames when he was being pensive and a bit more in control.

My advice to animators — BREAK THE RULES. Go ahead and allow the eye sockets to change shape for expressions. Flare those sinus cavities. Give the skull some LIFE, even though it’s traditionally a symbol of death.

There were other things wrong with the movie, but there was also a lot to like. There were couple of brilliant musical pieces whose drum-beats echoed not only the signature Harley-Davidson “potato potato potato” idling sound, but also the hoofbeats symbolic of the ghost rider of the 19th century, who rode a horse. THAT was cool to listen to in the context of the film.

If you’ve missed it on the news, there was a shooting here in Utah Monday evening. An 18-year-old with a shotgun killed five before being cornered by Ken Hammond, an off-duty police officer who kept him pinned down with fire until uniformed officers arrived. It’s not clear who fired the shot that killed Sulejmen Talovic, but the perp is dead, and lives were saved as a result.

From the CNN coverage:

Hammond’s boss, Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner, said the state Senate wants to honor him.

“Thank goodness he was there,” said Greiner, who is also a state senator. “You don’t want to ever say it’s good we were there and killed somebody, but it’s probably good someone was there.”

… and killed somebody. I’ll go ahead and say it if you won’t.

Okay, I’ll waffle a little. It’s not good that somebody HAD to be killed, but when placed in a situation where the alternative is letting a deranged punk kid slaughter innocents with a shotgun and a backpack full of ammunition, it is a good thing officers shot and killed Sulejmen Talovic.

It’s also a GREAT thing that Hammond carries his pistol with him off-duty. He probably saved another five or ten lives last night by being willing and able to take one.

I’m getting literate… I borrowed some Doctor Who DVDs from a friend, and have started watching the Tom Baker run (Doctor #4) from the beginning.

Lawks, but these special effects are bad.

Errr… SPECIAL. They’re special, that’s it. I wouldn’t want to offend any true believers.

Effects aside, I’ve found that in these first several episodes (#75 through #77 — Robot 1-4, Ark in Space 1-4, The Sontaran Experiment 1-2) the show grinds to a snoozy, boring halt when Tom Baker isn’t on-screen for more than half a minute. The man is simply amazing in this role.

At some point I’ll pick up another Doctor (including the current one — I saw part of an episode, and really liked it) but for now I’m eating jelly-babies.

And I LOVE the music. L.O.V.E LOVE. But I grew up on old-school synth-rock, and know how to play the Theremin.

–Howard