…a novel that had an illustration for every page was called a “Big Little Book.” Zak Smith’s personal project to create “Illustrations for Every Page of Gravity’s Rainbow“ might be considered a Big Big Big Book.

…to Dale Messick, the Brenda Starr creator and the only (then) living cartoonist to get a commemorative U.S. postage stamp, and to Debralee Scott, the love-frustrated kid sister on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

…the onetime Seattle illusttator-cartoonist known for her “Victorian Lowbrow” art and her triangle-slash logo, now has a website full of artowrk, cool ephemera for sale, and remembrances about the crazy days of old Belltown.

…the Rocklopedia Fakebandica, which claims to be the ultimate authority on fictional rock bands in movies and TV shows, doesn’t just include the obvious entries such as Spinal Tap or Jem and the Holograms. It even has the Beets (from the cartoon Doug), Lenny and the Squigtones (from Laverne & Shirley), and the notorious ’60s would-be hipster film The Phynx!

…just keeps on a-comin’. Today, we must say goodbye to Frank Kelly Freas and
Will Eisner, two of America’s greatest illustrators and graphic storytellers.

…in quite the same precise way as supposedly “wholesome entertainment” that’s actually creepy/offensive/horrific. I’m thinking right now of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, “Starving Artist Sale” mass-produced oil paintings, the old Today’s Chuckle front-page newspaper joke, Leave It to Beaver, The All-New Leave It to Beaver, and retro diners decked out in Fifties Fetishism.

Thus, I suspect I’ll love that new kiddie movie, The Polar Express.

First, it has Tom Hanks (my vote for the most overrated ham actor since Richard Burton) in not one but five roles, including Santa Claus and a ten-year-old boy.

On top of that, Hanks and the rest of the cast have been digitally transformed into hyper-realistic versions of the paintings in Chris Van Allsburg’s original book—figures that were haunting in an intentional, moody way.

The result, according to several reviewers and online essayists, is a “creepy” spectacle filled with “zombie-like,” “dead-eyed mannequins.”

And it’s in 3D at Imax theaters!

Sounds like entertainment to me.

I’ve been on a political-news fast since this morning. I’m refusing to get bitter, depressed, or frustrated.

I’ve been cleansing and renewing my mind with Looney Tunes and Doctor Who DVDs, with Comcast digital cable’s opera music channel, with the coffee-table book Playboy: The Photographs, and with the last two stories in my main man D.F. Wallace’s anthology Oblivion. And I’ve been trying to jump-start my one-month novel, to little success thus far.

Tomorrow, I’m likely to spend the day locked up with my yet-to-be-written novel. I might read only the sports and living sections of the newspaper. I’ll go out later that evening, but will instruct my schmoozing companions to stick to discussing personal and/or upbeat topics.

I’m sure that within a few days, I’ll have something to say about the national tragedies. Until then, let me remind you of a certain famous fictional political organizer, “Boss” Jim W. Gettys.

As played by future Perry Mason costar Ray Collins in Orson Welles’s film classic Citizen Kane, this “W.” is an admitted “no gentleman,” a crook and grafter. He’s the target of the egotistical-yet-populistic publisher Charles Foster Kane’s short-lived political career. (In the first draft of the screenplay, it’s clearer that Kane isn’t running for office directly against Gettys, but against Democratic and Republican candidates who are both in Gettys’s pocket.)

It ends badly. Gettys finds and exploits a scandal in Kane’s personal life. On election night, Kane’s right-hand man instructs the press-room staff at Kane’s New York Inquirer to use a pre-set front page headline, “Charles Foster Kane Defeated—FRAUD AT POLLS!.”

Kane wastes the rest of his life as a grumpy old conservative hermit, with no sense of humor and horrid artistic tastes.

Dear God, please don’t let me end up like that.

…with a little time on his or her hands has concocted a little motivational video for John & John fans, Visualize Winning.

…I’m currently watching the first Presidential debate. I’m watching it on C-SPAN (and, with a Net connection, so can you). They’ve got a split-screen shot of both candidates on at all times, with no annoying cutaways to the questioners.

Kerry and Bush are giving off the respective auras of my favorite Cartoon Network duo, I. M. Weasel and I.R. Baboon. Kerry’s articulate, level-headed, and cool. Bush is muffing his lines, darting his eyes about nervously, and turning every response into a lead-in to some pre-scripted talking point.

Of course, the op-ed pundits have warned us for the past week not to judge the debates on body language but on message content. There, too, Kerry’s mopping up Bush like just about every baseball team’s mopped up the Mariners this year.

Kerry’s giving solid responses, short and tart but packed with action proposals (or phrases that sound like action proposals). Bush reiterates past buzzwords and demographically-tested catch phrases.

Of course, the cable channels will declare Bush the “winner” of the debate, no matter what.

Today’s batch starts with the big alterna-comix emphasis at this year’s festival, which culminated in a rather rambling panel discussion among our ol’ pals Harvey Pekar, Peter Bagge, Gary Groth, Jessica Abel, and Gilbert Hernandez.

Back when I was a grunt laborer for Groth, I quickly learned that cartoonists seldom speak in the taut word-balloon language in which they write. They ramble. sometimes they get to their intended point; sometimes (particularly in the case of the beloved Mr. Pekar) they end up somewhere else entirely.

So I wasn’t surprised when the conversation wandered off topic often. Still, the panel made several cogent statements. It concluded that after many years of bitter struggle, “graphic novels” (whatever the heck that term means) have gained a foothold in the mainstream book biz. Of course, that just means there are more of those titles out there, which means a lot more chaff (repackaged superhero crap, comics written to be sold to the movies) as well as a little more wheat.

Artis the Spoonman is now also Artis the Slam Poet, ranting about five centuries of oppression against the true human spirit.

I didn’t get to a lot of the great bands that played over the four days, including Aveo, the Killers, the Girls, and Drive By Truckers. But I did enjoy the thoroughly rockin’ sets by the Witness (above) and the Turn-Ons.

My sometime alterna-journalism colleagues in Harvey Danger have re-formed, and played their first all-ages gig in five years. Sean Nelson, bless him, still looks like a journalist, but his singing voice is stronger than ever.

From the above image, I won’t have to tell you that wristbands for the nighttime stadium rock show were gone within an hour and a half on Monday. Built to Spill singer-songwriter Doug Martsch (below) sounded more Michael Stipe-like than ever.

The reunited Pixies, however, sounded just the same (marvelous) as they ever did. They played all their should-have-been-hits and then some, in a tight hour-and-a-half show. Few singers can make me so happy, singing about such bleak topics, as Mr. Black and Ms. Deal can.

One more set of these pix to come.

…was first sold, P-I cartoonist David Horsey depicted a rude businessman walking into a store and asking if there was a “WonderJock.” Well, now there is. (Viewer discretion advised.)

…”found” concrete poetry based on junk e-mail headlines? A similar premise drives “Spamusement!: Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!”

…has a remarkably serious, positive assessment of the “graphic novel” phenom.

…that there are a lot of online-only comic strips out there. Many of them can be found on this page (along with a few newspaper-based strips).

What surprised me was how so damned many of them are about video game fanatics. And the ones that aren’t specifically about gaming seem to all be about other aspects of fanboy/geek male existence.

C’mon, cartoonists! There’s a whole world off of the screen to explore!

A fellow Stranger refugee stopped me on the street the other evening. He said he still enjoyed my writing, my vocabulary, and my sense of style.

But he also said he thought I’d limited my vision by holding to a rose-colored nostalgia for “the old Seattle,” a viewpoint that’s ill-suited toward effectively discussing today’s city of high tech and hipsters.

I beg, as I do so darned often, to differ.

You can’t really know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.

The mindset that created the Century 21 Exposition, f’rinstance, is with us still. The magnificent Space Needle was built with private money on land essentially donated by the city. The publicly-funded exhibit buildings were either cheap “multipurpose” constructions (just like most local government buildings between then and the late ’90s) or repurposed older structures that weren’t that distinguished to begin with.

The old Seattle had its progressive, even radical ideas, alongside plain old fashioned racism/sexism. Some of its citizens held both types of beliefs at once. (I’m thinking of labor organizers who appealed to anti-Chinese hysteria among their flocks, and of “New Left” rabblerousers who defined “women’s liberation” as the right to give blow jobs.)

Today, Seattle loves diversity. Or rather, it loves the idea that it loves diversity; just so long as its white female children don’t have to go to the same schools as black male children.

The old Seattle had civic leaders who tirelessly struggled to have their burg seen as “world class,” but always by someone else’s standards. (Hence the ’60s campaigns to bulldoze the Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, and large swaths of the Arboretum for parking lots, office towers, and highway lanes respectively.)

In more recent years, Seattle had civic leaders who saw every problem as solvable by a construction project. That’s why we can build new libraries and arts facilities, but can’t afford to run them.

The old Seattle’s governmental gears could grind very slowly; just as they can now. It took the “foodie” restaurant revolution of the ’70s before the city legalized sidewalk cafes. Now, we need, but are less likely to get, a similar outspoken demand before the city will allow new strip clubs.

If I may switch metaphors for a moment: Leonard Maltin’s book Of Mice and Magic, an invaluable history of the early animation business, refers at one point to the Warner Bros. cartoon studio’s desire in the thirties to “keep up with Disney, and plagiarize him at the same time.” Seattle’s assorted drives over the years to become “world class,” by imitating all the things all the other would-be “world class” burgs do, have often been just as self-defeating.

Warners conquered the cartoon world when its directors and artists stopped aping Disney and started to create their own brand of humor. LIkewise, Seattle will come into its own as it develops its own ways of doing city things.

We don’t have to have a cars-only transportation plan, or sprawling McMansions devouring the countryside. We don’t have to give in to corporate job-blackmail shakedowns. We can lead, not follow.

That’s not the “old Seattle,” but it’d be a better Seattle.