Billy Idol - Cyberpunk (1993)

I had nothing else to talk about today so I am going with one of my favourite pet peeves with the online community.


Bad press, good karma.

When you listen to Billy Idol's Cyberpunk, you're not really tapping into a musical genre per se: Rather, you are listening to history.

It was one of few commercial rock albums of its time to rely that much on digital means of production. As such, it was panned by more traditionnal rock media as being 'less than genuine', and you'd be hard-pressed to find a mainstream take on this piece that didn't explicitly imply a well-ingrained fear that digital audio workstations with software synths would one day replace instruments and programmers would replace musicians. Being early adopters of the technology working outside of the usual electronic music sphere, Idol and his entourage were pioneers.

Nowadays, when we lay the money down to go see a cyberpunk, postcyberpunk or cyberpunk-inspired work of fiction on the big screen, we can almost always, without question, expect to hear a soundtrack of either electronic, industrial or techno music. Well, it wasn't always this way. There was a time when you could feel 'cyberpunk enough' while listening to rock, dub, jazz, rap, classical music and just about anything that made you think. It was that blessed era that allowed for a variety of styles and the avoidance of an established cliché. It was during those times that, against all (if any) expectation, an already-sucessful, blonde british pop-rock artist decided he wanted to try something different. And try he did.

1993's Cyberpunk has a little something for everyone, granted you have a diverse taste in music. You'll hear straight rock, pop, psychadelic rock, electronica, techno, televised news stories recordings, quotes from movies, gospel and even the kind of new-age relaxation recordings you put on at night to convince yourself you're a perfectly sane human being (just keep telling yourself that, chombatta). This kind of progressive, all-inclusive music collage is a great sign of wide cultural awareness. Coming from a well-known radio-rock musician, this was quite a feat. (In fact, my only personnal gripe is the near-total absence of hip-hop influence, which was already well into crossing over with rock/metal in the early 90s. But, hey, you can only ask for so much.)

As far as concept albums go, Cyberpunk doesn’t as much tell a straigt beginning-to-end story as show you a different time in a different place. It’s an open window on a near-future urban world not too different to our own, just like the books, just like the movies.

It seems to me that, sometimes, reviewers have trouble understanding that an album is more often than not much more than the sum of its parts. In this case, they miss the mark entirely. Cyberpunk attracted a flurry of media attention, oftentimes curious but, sadly, most of it negative. On both sides of the fence, came voices crying foul. The most prominent, oft-cited reason for this is what both the media and internet community interpreted as an attempt to 'cash-in' on an 'emerging trend'. Far from being exclusive to cyberculture, this response is a typical knee-jerk reaction of any cultural group meeting the next generation of enthusiasts, combined with the fear of losing the privileged position as trendsetters. Less hostile, more welcoming members, of course, offered that he was genuinely interested in the themes and ideas of cyberculture and cyberdelic aesthetics. These more compromising voices, were however, drowned out by the naysayers.

If I may offer a little insight, Billy Idol was really on to something. He may have been criticized by both the cyberpunk and rock audiences for attempting to blindly associate himself with the name 'cyberpunk', but he in fact, knowingly or not, perhaps even naïvely, landed himself in the shoes of a Sprawl character wading through a sea of uncertain, possibly dangerous neon-glowing wonders both appealing and terrifying.

Classic cyberpunk fiction often portrays young, inexperienced individuals dabbling in technologies they hardly understand, but which captivates them and is readily available. This naïve fascination often leads to wild experimentation, unexpected accidents, radical changes of personnal lifestyles and the spontaneous birth of new sub cultures. These characters may not know much, initially, but they have the means, and they try their damnedest. This promethean gift to the 'modern primitives' of the cyberpunk world is what fuels most of its science-fiction and ensures the continuous melodrama of man and machine. Analogous to this young cybergeneration, Idol stumbled upon something he liked and could become greatly excited about, despite being tech-illiterate*. Thus, he immediately found himself in a role not unlike that of our young tech-amateurs described above. As a result he is branded as both a newbie and a sellout. Tragic indeed. But you don't get more 'cyberpunk' than being in that specifically uncomfortable position.

* Just a footnote, but does anyone remember the oft-cited anecdote how William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a Hermes 2000 typewriter? Yeah, I thought I'd mention it.

Musicians let different input sources inspire them. They are not documentary writers, nor are they news reporters or ivory-tower academics. They interpret concepts through their senses, first and foremost. What-you-hear-is-what-you-get.

The same reviewers often place too much emphasis on the business aspect of an artist's body of work. How well did it do? How did fans react? Did it attract a new fanbase? Did it pay for the next album? Did it open new opportunities for the artist? The fact of the matter remains that the album was a whim, an experiment, an envy, a 10-month labour of love, not a career move. No one twisted Mr. Idol's arm and said "well Billy, here's how you tap into this market". He asked around, got some gear setup, sat down with his bandmates and got informed on how to use it creatively.

The cyberpunk genre is characterized by cultural cross-pollinisation, with new subcultures birthed at the drop of a hat, and old, obsolete ideas rapidly replaced. With this mindset, everything is possible and more traditional conventions break down. How can anyone complain about a breach of rules that do not even exist?

Thus, Idol did not embrace a musical style: he embraced an approach.

Is it a good listen? That depends on your tastes. Is it inspired? Definitely. Does it sound like anything else that came out at that time? Nope. Was it genius? Perhaps even not, but it has its controversial place in the hazy spectrum of the 90s ProTools boom, and in cyberpunk history.

Shock the system, baby.

Thursday Gear Porn Extravaganza

Once in a while, I can't help but keel over and drool all over myself in awe of a piece of equipment which has caught my attention. Introducing the sleek, sexy and flexible MKH-800 TWIN. Hubba hubba.

A lot of mics work with selectable polarity patterns, which is an indispensable tool when you have a very specific tone/application in mind. You want to hear only one side of the room? Go cardioid (and place it accordingly, yo). You want to capture dialog for film, go up-close and personnal with your talent's mouth with a hyper-cardioid mic (you know you want to). You like a good room tone to harmonize your song mix? Omni and figure-8 are your friends. And if you're feeling kind of kinky, try a MS-style setup using a mix of figure-8 and directional. Anything goes, but you're usually limited by each microphone's available patterns (most will have one or two, maybe three). And what you capture going to tape is usually limited to what you decided to leave out when you picked your polar pattern. Anything short of omnidirectionnal will necessarily cut something out and leave you to work with it.

I've worked with the regular MKH 800 in-studio and let me tell you, it's one heck of a flat mic. Except for that alpha-plus-plus gentle peak starting at 6kHz, all frequencies are born equal when passing through the 800. End-result is moderately 'brighter', but that's actually a great asset when you're recording voiceover. Everything else is just crystal clear say-it-like-it-is, nearly-uncoloured audio.

And I mean... just look at this response curve... Yum :Þ



I'll fess up to my little Sennheiser fetish, but you have to admit this stuff is teh sex.

The thing with expensive high-end mics usually is that they tend to be highly specialized (ever use a Telefunken M12 on a bass drum? So what if it can handle the SPL? How about you save it for the overheads instead, kthxbye). At this kind of price tag, you'll want to have a few justifiable reasons to own each one. But the TWIN completely destroys that notion as it offers incredible flexibility.

Instead of featuring a built-in selector, the TWIN sends a stereo signal to your DAW, then you control it by simply muting, fading, panning, inverting the phase and whatnot. This means you can re-create polar patterns AFTER recording, and still keep your unmodified signal ready to use if you ever change your mind and want to go back without having to record again. It's almost like cheating, only not. This approach allows you to fake all the known patterns in the book and everything in between...

...and all that from a single high-quality RF condenser mic.

I'm sold.

This marks a change in mentalities, really: a move to the 'real' digital era with a lot more interaction between your gear and software. You have a shorter, stockier mic without switches or buttons on the body ( = better overall capsule insulation. Sure you can call me paranoid.) that works just perfectly if you know what to do it. And it's hella forgiving to use: when you have access to just about any tweak needed software-side, the only thing left to worry about is mic placement (don't get lazy on this).

Quick! Before you lose interest!

Cute, right? If only we were so forgiving of humans when they do the same :P

I’m ready to hork up the ugly truth and say it like it is: I’m lazy.

We all are, in a way: We shy away from effort, we don’t always volunteer for everything, we procrastinate, etc… And that’s fine. Only, sometimes, it can create some inner conflict if you're in denial about it. Let's be honest for a minute.

Laziness is not a problem if you don’t have any particular ambitions, but I happen to have a lot of interests. I mean a LOT. (The capital letters and italics should hint at just how much.) If I spend a long enough period time not pursuing any of my own goals, it’s probably because I’m busy helping others with theirs. The biggest problem is that block of time between these two modes.

When that 'block' happens, I switch to auto pilot and blindly go out of my way to begin new things or to foolishly say yes to everyone else… and that usually transforms a free schedule into a Calendar from Hell.

Le Calendrier Infernal means many things:

• Firstly, events you promise to attend will conflict with each other, or if they don’t, it’ll be the time spent moving from one place to the other that will run short.
  
• Secondly, you’ll slip in and out of focus as more and more things solicit your attention.
  
• Third..ly, you’ll forget things because you were so hyped about something else.
  
• Fourth…(-ly?) you’ll begin to hate your day job for stealing all your precious precious time, and resent having to sleep at night.
  
• Lastly, anything that was already on hiatus may rear its fugly hear and come bite you in the arse, begging for attention. You may even find yourself trying to find new things to do just to avoid your earlier engagements. And then you build a precedent for ‘creative procrastination’ which, while fascinating, might be a really bad habit.

So okay I’m lazy. I only feel really 'lazy' when I have a thousand things to do and I'm not doing them. But, but but… right before I had a thousand things to do, I wasn’t really lazy yet, was I? No! I was idle. And that’s far worse!

What makes me lazy? My interests.

Wait, what? The reason for Avian’s trouble in pursuing his interests are in fact the very same interests?

Ah, but it’s the truth. I have too many interests and not enough true passions (You know, the all-encompassing kind that could destroy your couple?). Some passing interests motivate me to work on new things, some others cause me to procrastinate and abandon them. Mainly though, other people’s projects (which I almost unerringly find interesting) interfere with my personnal things, and those personnal things draw me away from my promises to others. Oh the drama! Now I know what my computer feels like when I run over 9000 applications at once.

Managing your time is almost always a question of balancing what you want and what you need.

Whew…

But after all this, even when you succeed in getting everything done (or mostly everything done), even when you know other people appreciate you and what you can offer them, you still have to hang your ego on the rack and get things back into perspective.

Here’s my main man Fred Gallagher on humility and the willingness to improve yourself:

I would never call myself an artist. I'm not. 'Artist' is a gift word. I can't recall who the poet was (I believe it was Frost) who reacted to a student who called himself a 'Poet'. Frost reacted to this by saying you can't call yourself a poet, it's a gift word - it's something that other people have to bestow upon you. The same goes for artist. And even if people say that you are an artist, you have to be at a point that you are willing to accept that term. Me? I'm not quite there yet.

So slap that moniker on someone all you want, a person has got to feel worthy of the praise he/she receives before feeling it.

Funny how some of my art teachers (thankfully not all) back in college totally disagreed with this. They offered instead that artists were born, not made, and that technical skill was only an accessory to the ‘real thing’ (which you obviously can’t develop on your own, right?). Also according to them, thinking critically about art was just another way of acquiring ‘technique’. When you put it this way, Art itself (capital A, yeah) begins to sound like this untouchable divinity. That’s dangerous. It means you can't explore it without thinking you aren't qualified to do so. It means you can’t make any progress without feeling like a hack who could never hope to rival The Greats.

Sorry to disagree, but I don’t compete with the past. I compete with me.

Speaking of the past, the ancient greeks had a word: “techne”, which they used to describe both the art and craftsmanship. To me, they are nearly indistinguishable. If you do something well enough to get hired for it or innovative enough to influence the generations to come: it’s Art. If you push the envelope, develop new techniques or if you create new concepts: it’s Art. Nuff said.

Ian McConville has dealt with similar frustrations during his college days. I can empathize.

His own teachers postulated that ideas were more important than technique. That vision lends itself well to the field of art history. It’s also useful if you’re aiming to become an art critic. But when you want to be the creator, it’s counterproductive to think in these terms. It undermines your progression because it contradicts the age-old ‘practice makes perfect’ maxim.

Art is a convoluted process, and things are never that clear-cut when you get down to it. In this whole debate, the truth is probably somewhere in between the different worldviews, but a fellow’s entitled to his opinionated opinions, right?.

Avian out.

And now for something completely different... NOT!

"One of these days I might be tempted to ressurect Sato just for the fun of drawing her"

- Me, yesterday

Look at me being all eager and stuff :P

Some things just can't leave you. I've been trying to shake off the manga influence from my drawings for some years now, but I think it's just stuck with me for so long that it's going to stay forever unless I get post-hypnotic suggestion to the contrary. Regardless of what I try to do, all my characters are going to have huge heads and eyes hehe...

Wish the pose was more dynamic. Satoshi doesn't look like she's going to throw that basketball at all, just going to hold onto it for an hour or two.

And the hands, my god the hands. I think I'm going to set my house on fire right now, thanks.

10 years of ‘hmmm… mmmaybe’

Just a little throwback to my previous ranticle on Nostalgia. I wanted to share the main webcomic ideas that germinated in my head for the past 10 years, and why they failed to materialize.

* * *

Betwen 2000-2002 ‘Phantom Reality’ was the lame working title of a little hardly-feasible hardly interesting story about Arakawa Satoshi, a young japanese martial artist in her mid-twenties and Takeshi, the guy she loves... and their unwilling involvement in the events leading to the 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway (yeah, serious business).

The Characters and story:
The hook was definitely the main character. Sato started as a random chick hastily sketched in my notebook, wearing a hakama and sporting a ponytail so ridiculously huge that you could have used it as a body pillow or a small emergency raft (She also swung a pair of nunchucks… wtf?). I let her to sit there for a while but she came back in so many of my other sketches that I gave her a name and story. She had mastered jiu-jistu, iai-jutsu, kenpo, wing chun kung-fu and aikido (yeah, I was just piling it on). Since she had dedicated much of her life to the martial arts since childhood, her studies suffered immensely. Sato was a strange gal. Highly profficient but socially awkward and withdrawn, so… bit of a geeky MMA dreamgirl.

Takeshi, was her aikido sparring opponent and the guy she was slowly warming to. He shared her interest in martial arts, but was nowhere near her level of skill. Also, he was slightly less confident and carried his own brand of social awkwardness, most of which was based on the blundering scared-of-women japanese youth stereotype. There was going to be a push-pull romantic tension until the story’s ending.

Kimi was the cute-friend-from-way-back-when who supported Sato through her studies. Think a blond-bleached ganguro but without the fake tan and ugly makeup as well as some actual smarts despite the look. She was the annoyingly-genki anime-fan with good-grades stereotype.

Miko was a singer (bit of a cross between Tarja Turunen and a generic j-pop idol) whose role in the story I had yet to decide. In fact she was just a character I thought ‘hmmm’ gotta find a way to include her… Fail. :P

Now, Takahashi Genzai was the guy who started the whole mess. He was also a martial artist (no shit!) in his late 40s, with a shadowy background in the JSDF and some unstated dirty deeds. Genzai had mob connections and was contracted by a third party to assist the Aum Shinrikyo sect in their attack. He was slowly grooming Takeshi to be his replacement if anything happened to him. His employers get a hold of Takeshi and get him involved as a means of leverage to ensure Genzai’s collaboration. Of course, Sato gets in the way before Takeshi gets seriously hurt.

Piling on useless details, PR’s plot was setup thus : Sato would lead her normal life, go to school everyday, socialize (awkwardly) with the other characters, the usual college-student rigamarole. But once in a while she would get a daydream about some serious events happening in her alternate reality, which took place in edo-era japan (hence the stupid-sounding title). Those daydreams would reveal upcoming events to her (meeting with Genzai, conflict with a dangerous religious group, stopping a friend from getting involved with them, etc..) The comic was to be laid out online-manga-style with no gag/punchline. I was really into manga at that particular time and the humor was at all not my goal. I even thought of posting them in chapters instead of single pages (which makes for a horrible business model, if you think about it).

Main inspirations :
The terrorist attack itself, chinese astrology, Rurouni Kenshin, Megatokyo, 3x3 Eyes, Jackie Chan movies, The Rock (for the poison gas) and even Metal Gear Solid.

Why it failed to happen :
It was a broken horsecart with the horses pulling in over 87 directions. That and the title was lame. The characters were hard to grok and at the same time too stereotypical to even get emotionally attached to. Sato was a tomboy, Kimi was an epic-level schoolgirl. Miko was a horrible ripoff of Priss Asagiri with little in the way of actual personnality, not to mention I hadn’t even found a use for her character. Takeshi was bland and old Genzai was…. Nah he was kind of cool… in a Mifune Toshiro kind of way… Ok I’ll shut up now… :S

But the final nail in its coffin was that it was ridicullously noobish. It was an amateurish take on a subject I hardly understood. (This was also before wikipedia got big and became a valid ressource. My research would have been facilitated with easier access to a wide variety of proper reading materials.) Truth be told, I just needed a historical event to act as a ‘timeline anchor’ that would give a sense of time and place to my story, not to forget some much needed credibility (which it obviously didn’t have on its own). But writing valid fiction about something extremely serious like a terrorist attack perpetrated by obscure groups for motives you hardly understand is a) pretentious and b) a complete lack of respect for the people directly concerned (Japanese citizens as a whole, the victims, etc etc etc….). So it just died in its infancy.

One of these days I might be tempted to ressurect Sato just for the fun of drawing her, but I wouldn’t exactly consider going ahead with this loose-thread story.

The upside :
PR gave me a host of characters designs to draw, draw, draw and draw again in the vain hopes that they would one day devellop into something potable. Additionally, the focus on martial arts and hand-to-hand combat gave me the impetus to learn how to draw aggressive characters in motion. It also turned my french, english and humanities cegep classes into doodling workshops *snicker*.

Moving on!

The chronicles of Emergalv is a fantasy world I’ve been working on since 2002 or so. It has taken many forms over the years since its original inception, but it began as a webcomic idea. And the world is gigantic. Just like PR, it started with a single sketch of a female character with cool warpaint on her face (I’m not making myself sound very serious, eh?).

The Characters and story:
I had originally planned it to be a family feud in my best tolkien-meets-shakespeare style, but I found the personnal story of the character Gresha, was more interesting. It was about her royal family’s eradication at the hands of a rival claimant to the throne, her dangerous exile to the southern lands and subsequent adoption by its people the Noerban (think Paul Atreides amongst the Fremen, only… said Fremen are all amazon-like chicks. Can anyone say ‘one-track-minded’ ?).

What was at first a simplistic revenge story evolved into a world of its own with varied cultures, political agendas, plot twists and the neverending conflicts both petty and large-scale. Early enough in the process I decided not to head down the ‘old road’ and eliminated all non-humans from the story. I thought, no elves, no dwarves, no magic, no bullshit. Not that I don’t enjoy classic tolkienesque fiction off and on, but I thought I’d create something more to my liking : A dark, gritty medieval world with some unique elements (like unexplained supernatural events that stayed unexplained) and of course some thinly-veiled references to our own History. It made for an interesting setting, and I spent more time actually writing for it than actually drawing characters.

When offered to dee-emm for an AD&D game with some of my friends (some of whom had never even tried tabletop roleplaying) I was at a loss to pick any one setting that I thought I could use well. Which left me to use what I had already written up as a test of its quality. My audience didn’t know what to expect, and they seemed to like it, so I was satisfied with that. I even found ways to throw in some NPCs that were originally supposed to be characters in the strip, like the mighty Vohanna of Clervol and the lord Ulrich the Restless (hehe).

Main inspirations :
Errant story, Emerald Winter, generic D&D, A Song of Ice and Fire, Warhammer, Morrowind and the art of Kristen ‘Merekat’ Perry, Larry Elmore and Boris Vallejo.

Why it failed to happen :
After experimenting with a few storyboards, I started feeling that, as a medium, a manga-style comic strip lended itself poorly to a world of this scope. At last, I completely scrapped the ‘comic’ idea and concentrated on the roleplaying sessions with my gaming group. When the game was left on hiatus and the group later dissolved (and my breakup with one of the players and the departure of another to Japan might have contributed, but hey, we had some fun) I left things as they were and moved on to other things. There was some significant overlap between the ‘webcomic idea’ phase and the roleplaying sessions. When the games stopped and the time came to actually get back to drawing a comic, I found my interest had shifted and I was no longer ‘in the mood’ to create a webcomic about it.

The upside :
I got a kickass series of non-generic D&D sessions out of it, as well as some awesome human cultures to use in my fiction writing. I’d say I got much further than PR. I have a lot of writing and graphics under my belt that is Emergalv material just waiting to be used (characters, timelines, maps, descriptions, etc). One day, I might just write a roleplay setting (fluff only sans gaming system) and publish it online as a PDF.

***

At some point I began writing out some scripts for a comic project called Given time and Cough Syrup. It was about a local metal band trying to get together and have some practices. Jokes would be based on looking for a band name, band disagreements, song lyrics, composition trouble, eclectic musical genres, and general metal fandom in general.

The Characters and story :
I didn’t even have a single sketch prepared, but you know what metalheads look like. :P
While the comic would have some noticeable story elements, the whole idea was to make it a gigantic farce, so no drama, no tragedy, just light humour poking fun at the things we metalheads love.

Main inspirations :
a defunct webcomic called Nova Next Exit, Metalocalypse, Questionnable Content, Nothing Nice to Say and my own love of the metal genre and experience starting punk/metal bands.

Why it failed to happen :
I felt that I would run out of joke material too soon and would need a good comic writer to help me with the humour. With only 2-3 scripts written, I didn’t really get into the project and moved on to other things before I could find someone willing.

The upside : Err… cheap laughs at 3:00 in the morning while writing my scripts?

Deux types de relations

Y’a quelques années, je travaillais chez Audio Z. Si je mets de côté un instant mes préjugés par rapport au monde de la pub, faut avouer que c’était un endroit plutôt cool où travailler. Sans parler de mes collègues de travail (en somme du monde génial), on y rencontrait toute une variété de gens venant de styles de vie différents. Des zen, des stressés, des gens bien assis sur leurs succès passés, des débutants qui étaient prêts à tout pour percer, des gens talentueux, des ‘vrais’ qui se la jouaient ‘fake’, des ‘fakes’ qui se la jouaient ‘vrai’, du monde cultivé comme des ignares, en veux-tu, en v’la. C’était de toute beauté.

Il y avait un producteur, un de nos clients réguliers, un type brillant dont le nom m’échappe malheureusement, qui parlait de différentes relations un midi et qui nous a présenté une idée qui m’est toujours restée depuis.

Il parlait de deux types de relations humaines : horizontales et verticales.

La relation horizontale, c’est un peu comme une ‘phase’. Un truc passager ou épisodique. On y entre au même ‘niveau’ qu’on en sort. On sait exactement à quoi s’attendre. Exemple : Vous avez des amis avec qui vous partagez un passe-temps. Vous les voyez presque uniquement pour ledit passe-temps et ça s’arrète là. Autre exemple: Vous avez un chum/une blonde que vous voyez les fins de semaine pour sortir. Nul besoin d’approfondir la relation. Même que ça pourrait tout ruiner.

L’horizontale ne demande pas nécessairement d’efforts. C’est facile d’y projeter son égo et de fonctionner sur un mode « a beau mentir qui vient de loin » parce que ceci ne fait que rendre l’expérience appréciable.


La relation verticale est un peu plus complèxe. C’est une relation à long terme dans laquelle on tente d’empiler les expériences et d'y trouver une progression. C’est la relation dans laquelle on grimpe les marches en espérant ne pas les débouler. Comme une maison, il faut de bonnes fondations, sans quoi, elle s’écroule au moment le moins opportun. Faut pas bruler d’étapes dans une verticale. C’est la relation dans laquelle "un et un font trois".

Les frictions peuvent desfois servir de test à savoir si la relation verticale est encore valide. Si on surmonte l’obstacle sans faire trop d’abnégation, les deux personnes grandissent ensemble. Si ça casse, la chute est douloureuse et la rémission peut être longue. Les vielles amitiés et les grandes histoires d’Amour sont des exemples parfaits de relations verticales.


Dans la vie en général, je ne suis ni partisan de l’une ou de l’autre. On vit ce qu’on doit vivre à différents moments avec différentes personnes.

Aussi me me suis-je posé la question et la réponse est venue d’elle-même : Oui, il est parfaitement possible de vivre deux types de relations avec la même personne, faire un genre de ‘transfert’ et passer d’un mode à l’autre. Mais c’est rare, tout de même. Souvent, c’est une question de savoir à quelle stade de notre vie on se trouve, et si un tel transfert est une idée saine.

Desfois, je croise des gens merveilleux que j’ai à peine le temps de connaître parce que la vie va trop vite. Mais souvent, ce qui se passe est que ces ‘prospects’ me semblent tellement génials que c’en est presque intimidant de commencer à zéro. C’est la preuve qu’ils valent la peine d’être connus. Encore faut-il être patient.

Partout on croise des gens qui voudrait bien d’une relation verticale mais arrivent seulement à former des relations horizontales. C’est une question d’attitude. Pour arriver à se rendre intéressants, beaucoup subliment leurs personnalité profonde (côté sérieux?) pour ne présenter que la pointe de l’iceberg (côté givré). Ça marche mais, c’est souvent de courte durée.

Une fois trop engagé dans un mode, on perd ses 'compétences' avec l’autre. Quand on plane trop sur les horizontales, on finit par trouver sa vie vide de sens et ses amitiés peu profondes. C’est comme dans l’expression "Quelqu’un qui est l’ami de tout le monde n’est l’ami d’aucun." À l’inverse, si on cherche partout des verticales, on se sent rejeté par les autres, alors tout ce qu’ils voudraient, c’est simplement d’avoir du plaisir avec nous sans engagement. (Et jouer les pots-de-colle, ça te change en ddddd-drama queeeeeen!)

C’est un jet de balancement. Faut choisir avec qui on intéragit, et de quelle manière.

A handful of Lifetime Classics washed down with a glass of Nostlagia

Advisory : This rant contains dangerous levels of name-dropping.

Wow... this is 2010, huh? And March already, too?

So much can change in ten years…

It may or may not have had anything to do with the ‘turn of the millenium’ but 2001 was a big change for me. It was my last year of high school, my last year in the air cadets, the year my first girlfriend and I amicably parted, my last few school band concerts playing the tympani, getting my first part-time job, putting my drums together with my father (we really had a blast building the kit from the ground up, sanding wood and installing hardware – the whole nine yards) and saving up for a new computer (my current aging Omoikane box), discovering music in droves and playing my classics Illusion of Gaia and Chrono Trigger from beginning to end (and again and again - I was really into old emulated SNES titles back then). That was when I started acquiring a wardrobe of my own chosing (my highschool years had mostly been spent in uniform). Oh, and right before beginning to college, I got myself a sweet bowler hat. God, I loved that hat.

And coffee… That’s one love story that just won’t end.

But the biggest change was my introduction to the world of webcomics.

Of course, as with everhting with me, nothing has a precise date as to ‘when it all started’. Early in 2000, I was really into drawing and I searched online for ressources, inspiration and tutorials to help me progress. This research yielded a lot of good drawing sites, but my love at the time was the now-defunct Impromanga.org. I was a big fan of the story called ‘Pennywise’, which was a stereotypical manga plot about some random pilot guy who crash-lands on some random planet entirely populated with nothing but – you guessed it – women. The beauty of Impromanga was that each story was created by one author and then passed on to other people who stood in queue to continue the story. Everyone did 4-12 pages depending on their time, creativity and gumption. It’s was like a mix of improvisational theatre and comic book, and it can lead to some pretty hilarious adventures. The best block of pages in the manga was drawn by webcomic superstar Josh Lesnick (he went as Kunislayershoujo, if I recall) who really turned the story around. Sadly, it wasn’t long before the site went down (the owner cited server costs as the main reason for the close). Soon after this little summer interlude, I lost track.

Later in the year when a friend of mine (hey, Simon, how you doing?) showed me 8bit Theatre. We were both gigantic FF1 fans back then (I still am, too) and I got a huge kick out of Brian Clevinger’s clever use of the oldschool sprites. The comic was hilarious and I read it religiously for a while.

After reading the archives and getting to the latest strip, I found that waiting for the next installment would kind of dull. If I had to turn this into a routine, I would lose interest fast. (Reading webcomic archives in long sittings is a trend that has continued for me to this day. I absorb the mood and story much better that way.) What got me out of this ‘comic blues’ was the links on 8bit Theatre that led to other webcomics. At that time, I wasn’t even aware of the existance of this burgeoning online comic scene that was just gaining momentum. Imagine my surprise when stood before the ‘holy gates of webcomica’, mouth agape eyes full of wonder about the possibilities (yeah and I still had leftover traces of acne so it can’t have been a pretty sight).

The links on 8bit led me to a bunch of sprite-based flash animation series, as well as another sprite comic called Life of Wily, and then the mighty hand-drawn webcomic RPG World, by Ian J, a humoristic take on console RPGs which I devoured with gusto. But I didn’t lose any time making new discoveries because RPG World had a bunch of links of its own. From this stepping stone, I started reading Real Life by Greg Dean, Exploitation Now by the infamous Michael Poe, Penny Arcade, and Winter, by Lemuel ‘Hot Soup’ Pew.

In turn I link-hopped a great deal. Penny Arcade showed me the path to both the legendary MacHall, by art guru Ian McConville & writer extraordinnaire Matt Boyd (now they do Three Panel Soul, which is pretty sweet too) as well as Lethal Doses, another little piece of wonder signé Hot Soup (Can anyone say 'brickshot!). Both Winter and RPG World linked me to Avalon, by Josh Philips and the venerable Polymer City Chronicles, by Chris Morrison. RPG World, ever the Keenspot nexus of links, made me curious about what became one of my all-time favourites, Wendy, where I reacquainted myself with the unique art style and absurdist humour of prolific drawster Josh Lesnick, to this day one of my favourite webcomic artists (I’m just rather sad that he’s pulled Wendy off the net - again). You should check out his other work : Cutewendy was a fun trip, and Girly is quite something, and has been running for 7 years and counting. There was also Kung Fool! by the ‘Crazy Kimchi’ man himself Hyung Sun Kim (another amazing wacko who has greatly influenced me) and I sometimes dallied with other titles like Queen of Wands, by, Aerie (Hell, I hear it even has a sequel now!), Something Positive R. K. Milholland and even Elf Life, by Carson Fire.

And then of course there was Megatokyo.



I joined up at strip #244 (Beach Landing) thanks to a link from Real Life. It was really telling in the way that the quality of Fred Gallagher’s artwork jumped at me. The first frame was just this establishing shot of tokyo harbour, with some tetrahedral shapes stacked in a kind of barricade. Then you have Dom shooting his way out of a beached container marked ‘Sega’ and meeting Ed outside (any such encounter generally entails an unavoidable mexican standdown). From that moment on, I just knew I was reading something special. The absurd-yet-believable scene was just the kind of story fix I needed.

Suspension of disbelief is a great part of that comic. MT just bursts at the seams with ‘wait… what?’ moments. You have two slacker-gamers stuck in tokyo, two japanese seiyuu (voice actresses), ninj4s, rent-a-zilla services, enough L33TSP34K to make your eyes bleed, a tokyo police force charged with scheduling and controlling disasters (also, their officers ride in mechas), violent enforcement of video game corporations’ competitive policies, robot-girls that are in fact accessories for playstation dating games, obsessive otaku (rivaling factions of them, even!), magical girls, an obscure raver/goth underground, cyberworld confrontations, intense psychological drama aaaaaand zombies… yes zombies (thought they were going to be left out? C’mon!).

It’s grandly absurd, and it somehow all fits together.

Though he worked previously as an architect, today, Megatokyo is Fred Gallagher’s bread and butter. A married man, he works from his home in Ann Harbour MI with his wife Sarah, and the father of a young boy, Jack. The comic, which still to this day appears free of charge on the main website, has brought him all over the world to appear at conventions and to university classrooms as a guest speaker on art and creation. The list goes on and clearly this is nothing so sneeze at.

Fred’s success story is only made stronger by the fact that initially, he didn’t even have the immediate desire to start an online strip, preferring to work on and off on a project of his own (Warmth). It took Rodney Caston’s insistant urging to get ideas moving and created what would later become the Megatokyo we know and love.

At the time of its inception, Megatokyo also embraced and embodied that observable transition from the common ‘joke-a-day’comic format, which focused on the punchlines of single installments, and the manga-inspired story-driven approach, which really emphasized continuity while retaining the comic relief. Even though it didn’t invent the concept (Polymer City Chronicles predates it by a long while) it was the widely-read proof to many aspiring webcomic authors that they could reconcile newspaper-funnies and deep storytelling in a very internets-like ‘hey we can make this work’ fashion. Megatokyo has, willingly or not, popularized this methodology and paved the way for a lot of people. Like many things that are great, it is more than the sum of its parts.

Webcomics differ from traditional comics in the level of interaction between authors, their collaborators and fans. Online, because of the speed of things, you can have this real sense of an evolving community. In 2004, I met Fred and Sarah at Anime Central and got my books 1-3 signed (waaaaaiiii~), which was one of the coolest moments of my decade. I cosplayed the l33t ninj4 Junpei from the comic, and met with fellow fans. If truth be told, I was never as much a die-hard fan of anime and manga as any of my college-era friends: Megatokyo was the sole motivating factor that made me attend Anime Central.

Turns out Megatokyo is turning 10 this august and I’m almost weeping with joy for Fred and Rodney. But instead of shedding tears, I think I’ll celebrate by splurging on MT merch’ and spending some time re-reading my favourite moments in the comic.



In recent years, my interest in webcomics has waxed and waned a bit, but I discovered a few good titles, like Errant Story, penned by the aforementionned elder god of all things slimy, Poe, Angels2200 by Peter Haynes (also a kiwi filmmaker, you should check out his stuff), Questionnable Content, by Jean Jacques, the on-hiatus Loserz, by Eric Schoenek, Alpha Shade, a really pro-quality story-driven comic by Chris and Joe Brudlos with a very engaging plot (I really do wish they could update more frequently) and breathtaking artwork. Hell, I even jumped on the Ctrl-Alt-Delete bandwagon, albeit belatedly. Truth is, the way things are going, we will never really run out of webcomics, which is great. As long as the internet exists, this medium will thrive.

I have my own characters that I would love to revisit. Those of you who knew the good old days of MadVladArt.cjb.net (Back when gratuitiously I posted just about everything I drew, even horrid deformed gouge-your-eyes-out oddities) might remember some of the recurring character concepts that I was so obsessed about : Arakawa Satoshi (the kickass martial artist chick and main character of a barly fleshed-out webcomic idea) and Gresha (my Ultima Online character on Teiravon, a free roleplaying shard. She helped spawn a rather complete RPG setting which I created for my college-era AD&D games and fiction writing – Yes, it’s Emergalv. You will be able to read some short stories on this site eventually). Yes, you might have noticed that I like women a lot, even though my female characters often behaved like sexy tomboys. :P

So for ten years, I’ve been juggling with the idea of starting my own stories as well. Not that I really ever acted on all that goodwill. One might say life got in the way, or I was just too lazy, or that I tried to entertain too many hobbies at once. But once in a while, I look at my old sketchpads and wonder if I could still do it. I mean, it’s not like a domain name and hosting is really expensive anymore. And it’s not like I don’t have the interest. I just keep wondering if my drawing skill is ever going to be at the level I want it to be when I start a strip.

But all in all it’s fun to reminisce. And ten years sounds like a big deal, when you think about it. Where were you ten years ago?

Now, I’m not one who lives in the past because he’s afraid to move forward, nor am I the type of guy who’ll suddenly exclaim "Oh god I feel old now" when I see younger people have fun. I tend to think that my life experience is comparable to a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up more and more as it goes.

The thing is, when you ‘move on’ with your life, you don’t necessarily disconnect from your past experiences. You always bring something of it with you to help with the journey. Some people call that « baggage » or a « ball-and-chain » in a really derogatory way. It’s like saying you didn’t really grow up. But I really can’t force myself to believe that any of that time was ever wasted. No matter what I’m up to now, it’s always going to be due in part to the things I used to do and enjoy (and may return to from time to time). Point-in-case, the last strip for MacHall, which summarizes this feeling pretty well.

Nearly ten years down the line and I am sitting in an office working in a field I had no idea back then even existed. I sit here, 25 going 26 and reminisce about my past joys and how they’ve influenced everything from that one single time a friend showed me something cool. I guess to summarize it all, you could simply say ‘what goes around comes around’.