thawtz on comics

Been a long life , 31, don't even know what I'm doing here...

Kinda just going with this thing day by day, that's all I can do. Sucks to be black. You always watch your back every day, always scared of getting shot every day. I never thought I'd be living like this. There you go, I'll tell you straight if you're some black punk kid and think life will be just as great later on, hell no. It's going to be constant bullshit.

How appropriate, the college I went to made us black kids read frankenstein, very clever fuckers. I didn't get why the white faculty at that school made us blacks read that book until much much later on. I just thought it was required reading. It was a joke they thought would be funny.

Waking up to the racist world from the black perspective is definitely something I never really saw coming or cared about, but it's the reality we live in. There's no denying it. What do I think or even care about how black people are viewed as animals by the world?

Why are people soooo stupid as to give validity to that idea today???

Is there an upside to this situation?

The only upside is that yeah, you then don't give a fuck and don't take life as seriously when you're black. Kinda just let stuff roll off your back a lot more. You do grow a thicker skin more than any other race can hope to understand. So I guess that's the upside, you don't let shit get to you as much as others do....

I mean, I'm a sexual person.  Race is like, on the bottom of my list of things to give a shit about. I love good looking people and marvel at them when I see human perfection in any form it comes in. I guess it's the artistic senses I have that cause this, but yeah, I look at people in that vein. Do you have a good fit physique or are you a blimp and never heard of a gym...

It's also related to my love of comics. I grew up reading and absorbing those sons of guns like candy.

Indeed, Comics truly are the perfect equivalent to cotton candy. Pure, fluffy, deliciousness.

I've not read one in eons but I recently got back into them and have to say I missed out, they're still pretty awesome.

I love the way they have no limits. They're about quick bursts of artistic expression in a singular flash moment that lingers longer than a frame of film. So you can fully take in the emotional impact of the image. That's what comics do better than everything else. Let you fucking soak the moment in. It's not just a quick blink and you miss it situation. You have control of the story. Unlike a book, you miss or skip a few sentences, you're fucked. Watching a movie, you nod off for a little while, you're fucked. But no, you can't miss the story in a comic, it's always there.

And the art is just the icing on the cake. The art, man... If it's drawn well anyway. There's always something to captivate your eye balls.

Now in this debate is it all comics and nothing else... No I love cartoons with lots of amazing dynamic comic book visuals to them... always have.

It is tough for cartoons though. They don't have the luxury of having no limits They have time bounds, there's only so much they can spend money on things to animate it properly. Action typically suffers in cartoons in favor of less heavy animation demands. But if they do get to have action, it can be glorious and often very well done.

Examples? Dammit, it's tought to say. This is where comics have a little more lattitude than movies or cartoons. Comics that i've drawn, and comics I've read can zoom in on the tiny shit and many movies have tried to emulate this same style. Matrix was the first to ever I think try to do things comic style and zoom in on punches and slow the movie down to you can grasp the art taking place. Most comic book movies don't do super close ups or slow mo but not matrix. And it was hit or miss. Sometimes it's better not to try to make a movie a comic book. Hulk being a prime example. As innovative an approach as the split screen stuff was in that movie, it failed unfortunately. It was just confusing and made no sense. Comic panels are meant to be a way for artists to add more story elements to a page, other wise they'd get it done in one page at a time. It's a way to quicken things along, it has nothing to do with style. Thankfully no movie after lee's hulk ever did the split screen shit again, they quickly abandonded it.

What movie gets comic style right? Not the american films. If you want to see comic books translated to screen in the style comics typically have, watch stephen chow's films, Of course anything by jon woo,  jackie chan's films, hell any and all asian kung fu or action movies. They get the joke on how it should be done. BIG. Comics don't care about doing things ordinary, it's all about making something plain, looks EPIC. That's the joke... That's what american comic adaptations failed to do for so long. They take comics which are epic and make them plain oat meal... It should be a bowl of fruity pebbles!!!

Sam Raimi got this. In fact, the evil dead movies are probably the best comic adaptations ever that aren't comic adaptations, but they are comic books on film, there's no denying that shit.

Are Michael Bay's movies comic book movies. Are Zack Snyder's movies comic book movies because they reek of comic book epic visuals?

No. There's a difference between making a clusterfuck of cgi shit banging together for 2 hours and making a comic book. Fact is, in the comics, you can FUCKING SEE what's happening. That's where those two fail. They don't allow you to see shit and instead hope you don't call them out on their visual laziness.

IT's just oh, explosion, vs a better made film, oh explosion in the background while a character does a badass super hero landing, flip, flying... something we can actually give a shit about....

I mean think about it... Which is more visually fun and exciting, a kid playing some video game and you watch it. Or a cinematic, well shot, amazingly choreographed series of events set to rousing music. If I have to draw an even more clear parallel, I'd say those guy's movies are like a dumbass bashing away at a keyboard mindlessly vs a true pianist who knows what the hell he's playing...

There is an art, believe it or not to doing comic book movies properlly and it must be mastered. it's not as simple as making shit blow up on screen for 2 hours...

I'm spent, I think I can go on about this subject which I'm deeply passionate about as a comic artist and comic lover since childhood, so we'll definitely be back to go deeper on this later...