A Story of Coincidence and Chance

Did I mention that I started my class on inking last week? Ty Templeton is teaching it. I enjoyed the first class quite a bit -- the stuff that Ty was teaching was pretty interesting. One of his throw-away comments was about markers: he expects his markers to last about 1-2 pages; after that, it's not good enough. Wow. We don't get to touch crowquills until week 3.

Interestingly, this winter is the 50th anniversary of FASS, and FASS is where I first met Ty's brother, Brad Templeton (now of EFF fame). I'd never met Ty before. I bought an issue or two of Stig's Inferno in the mid-eighties, but can't say that I'm terribly familiar with much of Ty's recent work.

Just now, I was reading Ty's blog, and learned that one of the comic stores I frequented most often in the late nineties, Dragon Lady Comics, is closing. Dragon Lady is, like, a block away from where the inking class is being taught and is only a few blocks away from the former Roxton Manor.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A Haitian official says 23 people have died after a truck’s brakes failed and the vehicle crashed on one of the capital’s busiest streets.

Nadia Lochard of Haiti’s Civil Protection Office said Tuesday the incident happened on the thoroughfare of Route Delmas when the driver lost control, struck a small bus and ran onto the sidewalk.

Sixty seven other people were injured and were taken to hospitals in the area for treatment.

The press office of President Michel Martelly issued a statement saying the leader went to the site of the crash, which was in front of the national television headquarters.

— "Haiti official says 23 dead, 67 injured in truck crash on busy street", Washington Post

At the national TV headquarters. That'd be the intersection of Delmas and Delmas 33. I'm, uh, very familiar with that intersection. If the driver mounted the sidewalk, it's very easy to see how pedestrians and especially ti marchan (merchants) would be injured.

Jeff Dee has launched a coupl'a kickstarter projects aimed at recreating his old TSR art. Apparently the originals were left TSR when he left there, and someone tossed it several years later. I don't know about you, but his D&D art sticks in my mind as iconic of a certain era of RPGing.

He started with the Egyptian dieties from the old Deities and Demigods manual, then moved on to one of the adventure modules. Now he's recreating the Norse chapter from Deities and Demigods.

His finished pieces really bring back old memories.

everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
'cuz the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
and she looks me in the eye
and says "would you prefer the easy way?
no, well o.k. then
don't cry"

— Ani Difranco, "Joyful Girl"

The history is a tale of much misery, shot through with flashes of hope and bravery. Both the United States and the colonial powers in Europe were profoundly threatened by the specter of slaves who had successfully battled for their freedom; the United States didn’t even recognize Haiti for over 50 years. Still worse, France in 1825 insisted that Haiti pay compensation for the plantations taken from French owners. In case the Haitians did not agree, French warships lay offshore. The sum the French demanded was so big that a dozen years later, paying off this exorbitant ransom, and paying the interest on loans taken out for that purpose, was consuming 30 percent of Haiti’s national budget. The ruinous cycle of debt continued into the next century.

Seldom, however, can outsiders be blamed for all a country’s troubles. More disastrous than foreign interference was that Haiti’s birth was such a violent one. Democracy is a fragile, slow-growing plant to begin with, and the early Haitians had experienced none of it, not as subjects of the African kingdoms where many of them were born, not as slaves and not as soldiers under draconian military discipline for over a decade of desperate war. In Haiti’s succession of constitutions over its first hundred years, the president sometimes held his post for life, and it’s no surprise that one leader began calling himself king and another emperor.

— "Haiti’s Tragic History", The New York Times

Yeesh. I like how the article goes from pointing out that France's imposition of compensation (not just for lost property like plantations, but lost property like slaves) devastated the country's finances, to quickly suggesting that we can't really put the onus on foreign interference. Because, y'know, you just can't. That would be bad. No, it's better to point the finger at Haiti's unfamiliarity with democracy.

Look, I'll be the first to admit that Haiti's early years are troubled. But I think it's a bit rich for the New York Times to suggest that a revolution and country that brought about complete emancipation without exception is somehow oblivious of democracy compared to, say, a country that allowed a bunch of moneyed white dudes the exclusive opportunity to decide who gets to govern while slavery was still entrenched in law.

I just think it's a bit of a lie to say that the early days of the United States (or Canada) were really democratic when so many people couldn't take part in those allegedly democratic institutions (I mean, jeez, Native Canadians couldn't vote freely until 1960).

P.S. - while we're on the topic, hey France, don't you think it's time you repaid that money you stole from Haiti?

One of my continuing hobbies is toying around with public domain comics. I've talked about this before. I've been an irregular contributor to the Digital Comic Museum -- I like the idea that there's an online archive of old comics. Every once in a while, I buy an old book off of e-Bay, scan it, and upload the scanned book to DCM. Because the books have fallen out of copyright, this is totally legit.

I've also mentioned before just how racist a lot of these old comics are. The Japanese, especially, are depicted horribly but, unsurprisingly, African Americans are also badly portrayed. I've been reflecting on two things for a few days: first, I just scanned an issue of a book with a really offensive character in it, and that's got me asking soul-searching questions: "why am I helping to archive racism?" I'm sure that archivists confront similar questions all the time. Second, I was watching some commentaries on the DVDs of Justice League Unlimited, and I'm seeing Dwayne McDuffie (who died earlier this year) and getting a bit misty-eyed.

If Dwayne McDuffie had a 1940's parallel, it would be Orrin C. Evans. Evans decided, one day, that there could stand to be a comic with black heroes. Thus he created All-Negro Comics. He says in the introduction:

Dear Readers: This is the first issue of All-Negro Comics, jam-packed with fast action, African adventure, good clean humor and fantasy.

Every brush stroke and pen line in the drawings on these pages are by Negro artists. Each drawing is an original; this is, none has been published ANYWHERE before. This publication is another milestone in the splendid history of Negro journalism.

All-Negro Comics will not only give Negro artists an opportunity gainfully to use their talents, but it will glorify Negro historical achievements.

It's clear the Evans had some pretty big dreams about what the comic could become. Sadly, those dreams didn't really come to fruition. Tom Christopher writes:

All Negro Comics # 1 carries a cover date of June 1947. No information about the press run or distribution remains, but it is believed that the comic was distributed outside of the Philadelphia area.

A second issue was planned and the art completed, but when Orrin was ready to publish he found that his source for newsprint would no longer sell to him, nor would any of the other vendors he contacted. Though Orrin was unyielding in his support of integration and civil rights he was moderate in his methods of achieving these goals. He believed in the general fairness of the system he had been born into. He was not a man given to conspiratorial thinking, but his family remembers that his belief was that there was pressure being placed on the newsprint wholesalers by bigger publishers and distributors who didn't welcome any intrusions on their established territories.

Christopher's biography of Evans is interesting reading. This blurb is suggests some of his accomplishment:

His first job was on the Sportsman’s Magazine at age 17, and his first real newspaper experience was with the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest black paper in the country. From there, in the early nineteen-thirties, he decided to break the color barrier and landed a writing position on the Philadelphia Record, becoming the first black writer to cover general assignments for a mainstream white newspaper in the United States. In 1944 at the Record he wrote a series of articles about segregation in the armed services, which were read into the congressional record, and helped end the practice. He won an honorable mention in that year’s Hayword Hale Broun award, but also drew some unwelcome attention. To criticize the government during wartime, even to point out the obvious hypocrisy of segregating troops putting their lives on the line to defend a country where democracy supposedly makes all men equal was considered treasonous by some and he and his family received death threats. His daughter Hope remembers their house being protected in a 24 hour a day vigil by a congregation of Orrin’s friends, both black and white, until the threats subsided.

Another blog entry suggests that there are a few other examples of comics aimed at African American audiences:

My brief research revealed that there have been relatively few mainstream comic books published by and intended primarily for black audiences. These include Negro Romance (1950) Negro Heroes (1947 - 1948), the venereal disease educational Little Willie (1949), Fast Willie Jackson (1976 – 1977), and a line of comics published by DC Comics in the 1990s (including Blood Syndicate, Hardware, Icon, Kobalt, Shadow Cabinet and others).

Clearly, not a large canon.

Digital Comic Museum only has a few pages available of the only issue of All-Negro Comics. e-Bay currently has a copy on sale for the low, low price of USD $6,750.00. The e-Bay blurb suggests that there might be fewer than 10 copies still in existence.

I misgendered someone in the butchers, tonight. Sad trombone.

Siobhan just mentioned to me, in passing, the rumour that Stephen Harper's wife has left him for her RCMP bodyguard -- a rumour that I hadn't heard before. There doesn't seem to be any mainstream reference to this.

There are articles and blog posts about Laureen Harper's alleged lesbianism, and blog entries asking if people believe the rumour.

Other than that, you get cheesy discussion forums and the like.

I don't want to be a gossip-monger, but if this is true, I think it's important to situate against Harper's long-time anti-gay stance.

Jonah Schein (NDP-Davenport) is calling for a return to the pre-1997 funding arrangement in which the province paid half of TTC operating costs.

Service cuts and fare hikes — whether 10 cents or 15 cents — are not the appropriate answer for working people who choose greener transportation, he told the Star.

“A big part of the budget crisis at city hall has been created under this (city) administration. But a big part of it is structural, with the province,” Schein said.

His comments came the same day the TTC released a report recommending city councillors on the transit commission approve a 10-cent fare hike that would bring the cost of a token to $2.60 and return the system to 2004 service standards on 62 bus and streetcar routes. The increase would be applied to all fares except the $3 cash fare.

— The Toronto Star

As much as I despise Ford for cutting off perfectly good municipal income sources, the TTC's cash problems started with Mike Harris.

Also: w00t for more NDP MPPs!