Welcome to another edition of HALF-ASS !!

It's Friday, and I'm too lazy to continue with the evil stepfather portions of my Coatney True Life Tales of Concussion Theatre. So I am giving you yet another unseen work from the aborted www.independent-comics.com website to complement the Doc Savage piece.
This one is on Will Eisner and The Spirit:

Will resume the stepfather smackdown on Monday.

There are always lessons in life to be learned. It's taken me this long to realize, that no matter how old or young, either veteran or rank amateur, there are always going to shades of nuances left to instill on the sedulous path that one hopes to canvass. Comics can be there to help one to choose the course most wisely and a graphic novel borne from scratch by Will Eisner is the sole equivalent of handing in a master thesis to a university professor.There is not one living being on this planet who can successfully dispute that Will Eisner is the ambrosia of the comic book industry, served without appetizer.

Now, how did I walk in the door this late while class was in session ?

Chalk it up to wanting comic books to mature along with you. One day, you wake up craving something more than the offered usual unctuous bread & butter mainstream fare which has the daily requirements of a stiff cardboard diet. You have your sugar powdered and undernourished diet of grown people in crotch hugging tights, and you have your furry animals who in turn sniff those crotches, and you have those genre challenged types who buy nothing but anime, anime, anime, and anime just to see those characters expose their crotches. Independent and small press titles can still grab one's attention looking for a health food diet of diversity, but you take your chances good and bad. A series will come along, and no matter how favorably reviewed ( or not that favorably reviewed ) and will keep your heartstrings tugging along for perhaps all of eternity, or when hence said provider writer/artist/creator raises the capital to publish the next issue.

With Will Eisner, you can't go wrong- the man is a genre all to himself. As testament to the inventor of the graphic novel, my eyes have recently feasted upon the current printing of the Dreamer ( the DC Comics Will Eisner Library )and having completed it in one sitting clocking in around one hour and half, my gut reaction was as if a revelation has suddenly enveloped over me; releasing a floodgate of consonancy steadfast in the utimate plateau of storytelling. Not only is it an enlightening read of a personal account into the hardships of breaking into the comic book industry during the era of the 1940's sharing the spotlight with characters built on onerous legends such as Jack Kirby and Milton Caniff, but it sort of acts as a behind the scenes reference material on the passion and the pratfalls and of running a comic book company.

As soon as I finished reading The Dreamer, I had immediately had to have more- so I placed in a order through Diamond's Star System to obtain the entire Will Eisner library that DC has gotten the rights to keep in print including; The Building, A Life Force, Droopsie Avenue, Life On Another Planet, and Eisner's latest, A Minor Miracle. Dark Horse also has a relatively new work from Eisner entitled The Last Days in Vietnam ( printed on pulp style paper ). Now I may have all of these wonderful masterworks in my possession, but as of this writing, I haven't had the time to savor them yet.

Even as I push to the side these revamped sequential editions of serendipity ( due to lack of funds that I hope soon to rectify - hey, do you have
any idea what it cost to publish your own comic book these days ? ), I've still managed to place the mind on idle during the course of the holiday season drooling over page after page of the first three volumes of the archives commemorading the sexagenarian anniversary of the Spirit Sunday strips.

For those not in the know, The Spirit Sunday section elicited comics' first exposure to total independence and sole ownership. Eisner struck a lucky unprecented deal with The Register and Tribune Syndicate to produce a weekly eight page comic book style strip as a insert to major Sunday newspapers across the country and retained ownership and all rights to the characters - something practically unheard of in those early 1940's war torn days of fly by night sleazy syndicate strip owners who would rather crack their hackneyed slaves over the skull with a bullwhip then freely surrender the reins of their own creation to them.

With the Spirit, you got the best in adventure, romance and sheer thrills and derring-do that comics had to offer and remains even unparalleled to this day. Besides The Spirit, ( aka Denny Colt, a police detective once believed to be dead )also included are a colorful palate of supporting characters such as his bumbling assisstant Ebony, Police Commissioner Dolan, and his ever persistent daughter Ellen, who's always trying to be one of the boys. The Spirit has his fair share of worthy adversaries, although most of them were mainly rugged gangsters and con men, a few stick out of the bunch, femme fatales P'Gell and Silk Satin, The ever unseen Octopus, and Carrion with his Vulture companion.

Each week's adventure was as varied and eclectic as a comic strip could get. One week, the Spirit is out halfway around the world smashing a spy ring or a gang of saboteurs and the next he could be playing cowboy somewhere out in the high plains. Mostly the Spirit stuck around his home base of Central City kicking ass over racketeers, crimelords, witches, and masked archers. I cite the example of my old favorite Spirit adventure, The Jewel of Death ( reprinted in Volume 3 ) which I first read when I was eight years old when it was presented in Jules Feiffer's memoir The Great Comic Book Heroes. Here you have The Spirit, lurking about Damascus searching for a doctor who has the antidote for a plague sweeping over Central City. He even goes as far as seeking information in a seedy bar that is hard pressed to serve him a glass of milk. Getting roughed up by Arabian Knight rejects, dodging a massive earthquake, and being the bearer of a prophecy coming true is all in a day's work of our hero. This one sticks out from the rest of the pack for the sole reason that The Spirit is sporting white threads instead of his traditional blue ones. As seeing how DC is printing these volumes in chronological order, the following strip has him back; business as usual, protecting a reknown comic book artist from fussy gangsters.


No one can equal or parallel his style, attempting to ape it would leave one's career in tatters if one so much as steps one step close to his level of unbridled genius. He is a one man band and traveling show. He will teach you and you learn to do it your own way. It would take more than a hundred Rob Liefelds
or Todd McFarlane to reach the pinnacle at the top of their milestone game to be on equal footing

Just when you think you have everything and you just want to pack it all in and leave, here comes Eisner like gangbusters just like a consummate actor such as Al Pacino in Godfather III with something new and magical enough to pull you back in.

Spirit Archives Vol 1 - 3

FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK May 29, 2003

Continuing with 'the tales of my evil stepfather'. On second thought make that 'Evil Incarnate Stepfather Tales'.

When I last left off, My mother had remarried a bartender of whom she met while waitressing in a restaurant in Morris Plains, New Jersey and from there I was taken from a 'life of luxury' in the quiet suburbs of East Hanover to be whisked away to a developing suburb of Parsippany to grow up in a low rent apartment building.

This was not to my liking. Not in the slightest bit.

I went from having my own spacious bedroom to setting up camp on a dining room hardfloor.

In a relatively short time, I came to the conclusion that my mother had married a monster named the "ROGER" and I really had trouble adjusting to the fact that I had to answer and obey the commands of a guy who wasn't really my flesh and blood. Well, maybe at the time at 3 and a half, I didn't know the technicality, but it was a deep rooted feeling that this was a transition I immediately wanted out of. It was disturbing and what I mean by disturbing even though it was relatively easy going at the time when I was a single child, but as soon as my sister arrived (and we still lived in that drab one bedroom apartment when she entered the world) the relationship between me and the ROGER immediately began to sour.

Even though the guy went out of his way to prepare good nutritious meals and bought me the occasional toy or two- (he was even at my birthday parties and Christmases when I lived in East Hanover)- there was just a dark sinister drawback to it all. For one thing, he didn't like to see me looking at comic books and I had a tremendous love for them back when the Batman tv show craze was in full swing. That was the only thing needed for me to be kept in line was when my aunts used to watch over me. They would usually buy me those cheap plastic bagged 3 in 1 packages that were usually stuffed with the latest Batman, Superman, or Flash at the Two Guys department store. And during the time when I made the move to the new neighborhood, I accumulated quite a pile of these, even my stepfather thought it was a good idea to effect as he made sure I always had the latest Tales of Suspense or Tales to Astonish on hand because I also became a big Captain America fan by watching the cartoons on tv, but this psychology also had a reversal side to it. He would reward me with new comic books if I was good at nursery school or kindergarden- but if I had made a mess in my pants or generally pissed him off with a temper tandrum or anything that set him off when I was in the picture- he would take each book and rip it right in half right in front of me. AND. BOY. DID. THAT. PISS. ME. OFF All those Silver Age greats instantly vaporized before your eyes. This infuriated me beyond mere stability for a four or five year old, and I think not long after several of those incidents, I went so berserk I got myself kicked out of nursery school for taking a block of wood and slamming it across a kid's head. I couldn't take it anymore, I had to take it out on someone- ( and as a gentle reminder- I think it was payback time for all the times I got my face stomped on by the East Hanover Eradicators just for having all the coolest toys at the time- even though these nursery school kids weren't the original perpetrators ). Things could've cooled between the school and me, if the father of the boy whose face I smacked didn't threaten my stepfather and mother with a lawsuit and wasn't a major surgeon doing residency at the hospital of where my sister was born. So naturally I got expelled and had to wait until Kindergarten to go back to school, and from there I think both my mother and stepfather took turns in taking out the garbage with a pitstop along the way with some certain four colored periodicals to the recycling center.

There also had been some incidents concerning 'roughhousing' that I was not particularly keen on. If you think Micheal Jackson dangling a baby from a villa balcony in Germany was terrifying then- try to imagine be ing hoisted over a bridge by your feet when you're three years old ( in fact another memory pops in of him doing the exact same thing to me over a bannister at my grandfather's house- before he married my mom). I remember one evening it was us and some of his friends having gone out to dinner in Boonton, NJ and I was doing nothing but looking over some Topps' RAT PATROL trading cards and I think somewhere along the line that I was told not to chew the gum and I put the gum in my mouth anyway- and the ROGER, right in front of everyone takes me by the legs and dangles me over a small bridge over a roaring waterfall that we were walking over, all while screaming at the top of lungs until the gum fell out of my mouth. Well, the gum certainly fell out, but in addition, I also dropped the RAT PATROL cards right into the Jersey City Reservoir.

Well tomorrow, I'll divulge into my grade school years as the violence begins to further manifest.

I'm all out of fifteen minutes.

~

Coat

FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK May 28, 2003

Continuing from where I left off yesterday in my recalcitrant rant-

Anyway, reminiscening about my 'high-life' in East Hanover, N.J. After my grandfather stepped in and broke my parents apart he had my mother and me move in an apartment in Parsippany, New Jersey while he had a house build in East Hanover. Once the house was built, he had me, my mother, my two aunts, Peggy and Priscilla, and my slightly off-kilter Uncle Max (the reason I say that is story has it he once murdered a man in cold blood in self defense spurned by one of those typical love trysts- don't know the exact details- it's one of those taboo subjects at the festive holiday gatherings- only they were never really festive, but the man served his time and is still amongst the living in Northern New Jersey) move in a four bedroom two story house. I remember the house was a strange construction- there were two living rooms in it- one in the basement and the other one upstairs, adjacent to a balcony. My grandfather shared his room with my Uncle Max downstairs and I used to be pertified to go into their room because something was wrong with the foundation - the floor looked as if it was going to sink in the hellhole of the earth and I used to believe that if I stepped on that cracked tile that a hole would open up and swallow me in. Geez, I could've channel that premise to Joss Weldon telepathically when he came up with the thesis on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . The house used to be across the street from a golf course that was then made way for the construction of The new Nabisco Company when they moved their operations out here. So aside from the pleasant memories of growing up on my block with every new nifty trendy toy that made the other neighborhood kids envious with rage so much that they had stomp on my face to steal them or riding horseback on my German Shephard, Fellow, there was always the waft of the aroma of fresh processed Oreo or Nutter Butter Cookies in the morning. And incidentally, My grandfather was in the baking business himself- as he was the sole creator of the formula made for Bosco Chocolate Syrup and was a baking consultant for many supermarket bakeries all over the country for chains such as Safeway and Alpha Beta on the west coast and Foodtown on the east.
His greatest triumphs came just before he died when he sold recipes to many of the pie chain eateries such as Marie Calenders- (that's right, the chocolate and coconut creme pie recipes come from my granddad)

Usually my aunts were in charge of looking after me when they got of school as my mom went out to earn money as a waitress- They would pick me up from nursery school or something and I used to have pleasant memories of them walking around the house in their underwear. That made quite a impression on me and to this very day I still kid my aunts about it as they were the first girls I ever saw in their skivvies. My aunt Priscilla is still astounded that my memories can extend that far - for I must have been two and half years old .

That's why I have so many unpleasant memories of 'Roger', my egotistic meglomaniac stepfather.

My mom met him while on the job at the restaurant she worked in Morris Plains and while some may say that I'm over exaggerating, that many others before me have had it worse- I knew deep down I deserved better. To go from the proverbial pampered riches to rags, I'm sure the story has been heard many times over. But I think my stepfather's life at least merits a mention or made into a terribel B-movie or two. Joan Crawford, or Terry O'Quinn in those Stepfather Slasher flicks would be like fucking Ghandi compared to this sadistic fuck that I had to put up with for- jeez, (I just turned four when they married) - the next seventeen years of my life until I moved (far, far, away as possible ) to California and still ... even being three thousand miles away still has serious repercussions to this very day...

The saga continues tomorrow.......

for the fifteen minutes are up for this chapter...

~

Coat

FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK May 27, 2003


Now that the summer rerun season is upon me- I shall have to make up my vegatation hours by writing shitloads of stuff before the summer is out. I have 3 to 4 pages left in my massive rewrite of the third act of the DEPOSIT MAN & THE LAST GREAT GATE OF MORTALITY to go before I close the book on that chapter. And I think the ending will please the people who enjoyed the first two books as it ties things together and that was the problem in the delay of getting these books out - in trying on my end to have it all MAKE SOME &*#KING SENSE.

Anyway, I want to devulge in some true to life inspired wackiness and this is the theme I'm going to be exploring all week. A few tales related to my distorted upbringing caused by my evil stepfather. I've been thinking of good ol' ROGER and the thousand and one plus hells he's put me through. A recent phone call from my favorite aunt triggered off some of the same as usual unpleasant memories and I was flabbergasted to find out that now my half-sister has now, after some 35 years has finally turned on him- from what I hear, has called him an unfit grandparent to her kids that she has tucked away in Northern New Jersey. I guess they're my nieces and nephews too, but I don't want to get into it right now.

Here's the chronicle set up so far as far as my personal history will allow: My dad and mother meet while tending Nebraska University. My mom gets pregnant with me- because both parents were idiots and didn't know much about birth control in those days- but they both do the right thing and get married. My Grandfather, a big time money baking mogul gets wind of it. Forces my mom to break it off and drags my mother away to work as his personal assistant while globetrotting around the world. My Grandfather and mom make a pitstop in Canada where I was born in London, Ontario. But I'm still considered an American citizen. Don't ask me to get into the logistics.

Anyway, my dad tried to make it in New Jersey, working for my grandfather, but things don't work out and my grandfather tells my dad that he's not cut out to be my dad. My mom begins dating other guys until she settles on remarrying a lowly wage bartender named Roger. Things only get shittier from here on in:

TO BE CONTINUED

Because my fifteen minutes are up.

~

coat