Home Again, Home Again

Posted on October 24, 2011 by

Home again after a great weekend in Columbus at the Mid-Ohio Con.

Being my first time at this show, I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I came away with a pretty positive reaction. The show seemed well attended on Saturday and things ran pretty smothly all weekend.

There were three personal highlights for me.

First, I was sought out to participate in an art jam that was being created for someone who couldn’t attend the show. The gentleman who approached me on this was commissioning this piece for his friend who lived in Australia. He told me that his friend had provided him with a list of attending artists who he wanted to be included and I was on the list. The focus of the work was the old character Omaha the Cat Dancer, which I was only vaugely familiar with. With included references though, I think I was able to add a decent contribution. Maybe anthro-art is my missed calling?

Second, a fan attending the show brought copies of all five Twilight Crusade comics for me to sign the covers. I was pretty sure no one had ever heard of those, let alone know I provided the cover art. It was a nice surprise.

Lastly, a woman bought a print for one of her co-workers who couldn’t attend the show. When she called her to let her know, it turns out her friend, Judy, was a fan and owned a copy of the Archeon Tarot. I was then asked if I would say hi to her on the phone, so of course I was happy to chat with her for a few minutes. That was definitely a show first.

The rest of time was spent meeting new people and hanging out with friends. As always it was great to hang out with Eric Adams, Byron Winton, Jay Fife, Terry Huddleston and Lydia Burris. Special thanks to Chris for being my show lackey on this trip, even though he did refuse to wear the booth babe outfit ;)

Mid-Ohio was the last stop on what was a very busy 2011 tour schedule. Now it’s time to bunker down for the winter and get to work on new things to show off next year. I anticipate I’ll be doing fewer shows in 2012, but wherever I end up, I look forward to seeing you there!

-Timothy

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Last Stop! Columbus, OH & Mid-Ohio Comicon

Posted on October 19, 2011 by

The last stop on the 2011 comicon tour is this weekend in Columbus Ohio. I’ve been to Columbus a few times, but never for the Mid-Ohio Con. I gather in years past this show was comparable to Heroes in Charlotte, but with Wizard taking the reins this year, there is a certain added level of excitement.

I’ll be on hand both days, set up in artist alley at table # 940.

I’ll have plenty of prints, books, CDs, postcards and tarot for sale, and even some new pieces, including some sneak peeks at recently finished work that hasn’t been posted anywhere yet.

As this will be my last show for a while, I’m really looking forward to getting to see all my fellow artists, old friends and new faces.

If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

-Timothy

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Does the New Fright Night Remake Send the Wrong Message?

Posted on September 1, 2011 by

A few days ago I saw the remake of Fright Night (1985). My first impressions were mostly positive. It was fun and balanced the line between horror and comedy much like the original. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the original was better.

For the most part, I just assumed this was a case of me being old and seeing a remake of a favorite film that I first saw when I was in high school was making me be overly critical. However, the more I tried to narrow down why I felt the original was better I kept coming back to one key difference which is really disturbing.

If you’ve not seen either film, the plot basically revolves around a typical teenage boy who discovers that a vampire has moved in next door. It’s a little like a hip version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

In the original, the main character of Charley Brewster, played by William Ragsdale, is a sympathetic geek child of the 80’s. He is passionate about his fandoms, spends his nights watching old B&W horror movies on a late night TV show called Fright Night, which is hosted by a former star of these films, Peter Vincent, played by the awesome Roddy McDowell.

This version of Charley is loyal to his friends and a good kid, who just happens to love the old school horror films like the Universal Monster series or many of the selections from Hammer Films. It’s because of his interest in these old films though, that when he tells people there’s a real monster living next door, no one believes him.

In the new film, Charley, as played by Anton Yelchin, is kind of a douche. He’s the kind of person who gives up his friends and his interests, all to get a hot girlfriend. Now, I’m all for having a hot girlfriend, but what we’re really being sold here is the idea that women will only be interested in you if you’re a shallow idiot, and anything that isn’t partying “Dude”-like behavior is somehow childish and should be abandoned if you want to “grow up.”

Now this isn’t a new message by any means, there’s a long history of the media promoting the idea that in order to become an adult it’s time to put away the toys, get a job. Live. Work. Die.

What is surprising is that this antiquated thinking would be at the heart of a movie targeted to an audience who has spent the last decade basically proving this old notion wrong every day for the last decade.

At one point in the new film, they try to give us a moment where Charley revisits his past and maybe feels some regret about giving up on his friends, but ultimately that just re-enforces how much I dislike him. It’s made even worse at the end when the hot girlfriend confesses that she knew all along he used to be a geek and that it’s what made him different and why she finds him attractive. It’s almost patronizing. She may has well have said, “you were so cute when you were a kid, but I’m glad you don’t read comics anymore.”

It’s been mentioned by many and in much better ways than I can articulate, that we are currently living in the age of the geek. It’s finally ok to be interested and passionate about fandoms. Superheroes and sci-fi rule the box office and have become a staple of television.  Being told to pack away your toys these days sounds like an old man yelling at you to turn the music down. Perhaps “if it’s too loud, you’re too old” should now be “if you’re still hiding your Boba Fett action figure in a box in your mom’s basement, you’re too old.”

The original Charley stands as one of the great classic inspirational characters which helped bring about this cultural revolution we’re experiencing today. He was just like us, a kid who loved monster movies and through him, we could see ourselves up there on the screen.

The new Charley is not one of us.

-Timothy

Posted in Film, Thoughts | 1 Comment

Gone, Gone O’ Form of Man!

Posted on July 31, 2011 by

Here’s something I did just for fun, a single panel one-shot of one of my favorite characters, DC Comics’ Etrigan the Demon.

Etrigan the Demon by Timothy Lantz

Gone, Gone O' Form of Man

I may try to make this a weekly feature, if time allows.

 

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Endless Summer

Posted on July 27, 2011 by

After the rush of spring conventions, things began to settle down a bit and my project list was pretty light. I was feeling kind of adrift, and perhaps a little bored with the routine I had fallen into, so it was time to make some changes.

Like everyone, I had always planned on getting back in shape, eating better and exercising, but ultimately fell short. I have managed to keep off the weight I lost a few years ago, but old habits and lethargy were once again settling in and I could see the downward slope from the crest of the hill.

It was time to act.

If there was one form of exercise that I ever really could say I honestly enjoyed, it was riding my bike. As a kid, and on through my teenage years, I lived to ride. Hell, it was nothing to ride my bike twenty miles, just to see an afternoon movie. Of course, a driver’s license put an end to that.

About ten years ago, I did have the idea to start riding again and bought a bike. But the neighborhood being what it was, and life happening around me, I never really got started and the bike ended up in storage pretty much unused.

This all changed about two months ago.

At the end of May, I retrieved the bike from storage and had it serviced. The next day I started riding. Now, without any real exercise on my part for the better part of two years, I needed to ease back into it. My last great attempt at getting in shape was taking up running and I followed the couch to 5K plan, which seemed like a good way to acclimate yourself to anything if you followed a similar structure.

So, I began my own “training” plan, setting distance goals and upping the distance each week until I reached my goal.

At first, I began with just a two mile ride, down the road and back. Living on something of a hill, this was harder than it seemed, but after riding it every day for the better part of two weeks, I managed to first do it without stopping in the middle, and then improve my time with each ride.

Now, my bike isn’t really a road bike, more of a hybrid with mountain bike tires, and I’ve never been comfortable sharing the road with motorized vehicles to begin with, so I figured it was time to take it off road. This turned out to be the best decision ever.

Not far from my house is the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail, so I threw my bike in the back of my car and drove over there to check it out. It’s a nice ten mile stretch between Shippensburg and Newville, and a perfect place to ride with some great scenery and gentle variations in elevation. Exactly the kind of track I was looking for.

I quickly began adding to my daily distances, 4, 6, 8 and now 10 mile rides. I’ve been averaging about 4 days a week, and in about a month and a half, I passed the 100 mile mark.

Since, my progress has kind of reached a high point. The week before I left for vacation a rode 43 miles in four days, and seem to be on target for reaching my next goal of averaging 50 miles per week.

There’s just one problem. I’ve outgrown my bike. When I bought this bike all those years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. It’s simply too small for someone of my size, and now that I’m starting to ride longer distances, it’s really beginning to hold me back. Add to this all of the innovations of the last decade and it’s clear that it’s time to upgrade, so I’ve started shopping around, with an eye to buy in the next week or two.

Now, as I’ve been riding there have been a few things which have absolutely contributed to my rediscovering a love for cycling.

Chief among these is my iPhone and the Cyclemeter app. I don’t know what I expected when I got my iPhone, having had a Blackberry prior, I just assumed it would be similar, but wow has it really changed how I do a lot of things. Cyclemeter is just awesome; it tracks routes, times, keeps records of your rides, and integrates with social media sites. Hands down, if you are even thinking of riding, you should get this app.

Now, of course having an iPhone with you on your ride can be a little unwieldy, so the next thing I needed was a way to mount the phone on the bike. I looked at lot of solutions for this, but ultimately settled on thinkBIOLOGIC’s bike mount for iPhone 4. I really liked the fact that its waterproof, having read many reviews of other mounts where people got caught in the rain and their phone was ruined, and it seemed to have a good shock resistant case that would protect it if it fell. It can be a little hard to see the screen though in bright sunlight, especially if you are wearing sunglasses and have a screen protector on your phone, but I feel the other tradeoffs are worth this little inconvenience.

Lastly, it occurred to me after about a month that my iPhone was also an iPod, and hey, I can listen to music when I ride. Having wired headphones plugged into the phone mounted on the handlebars was ridiculous however, so another solution was needed. To address this, I ended up buying Plantronics BackBeat 906 stereo Bluetooth headphones. These work great, initially I had some trouble making them work when I was carrying the phone in a belt clip holster on my ride, but once I started mounting the phone in the thinkBIOLOGIC case the performance has been flawless. (I think it was the magnet in the belt clip that was causing my phone to go into sleep mode if the phone was shaken too much.)

Now, would I have been as motivated to stick with it without these accessories? Maybe, but having the Cyclemeter data has been invaluable. I think everyone at heart likes to see improvement or have some tangible record of their efforts and this app has really motivated me to keep going.

In other news, I just returned from a week’s vacation in Jamaica.

Having waited until the last minute to make travel plans, we decided to forego our usual urban exploration type of getaway and just spend a few days relaxing in the sun on a beach somewhere. Earlier this year, I had listened to the audiobook of Ian Flemming’s Dr. No, and I guess that implanted the seed that we should go to Jamaica.

Turned out to be a fantastic idea, and I think it’s definitely a place I’d like to visit again. Perfect weather, perfect water and some of the nicest people I’ve ever encountered really made for a fantastic trip.

Now, I know this is not the usual content you’re probably expecting to see on this site, so for those who’ve managed to stick with me this long, here’s an update on what I’m currently working on.

Presently, I’m finishing up a couple of cover projects and starting the illustration for the sequel to Hard Spell.

I’m also pulling together stuff for the Chicago Comicon and the rest of my convention stops this fall. Hopefully, I’ll have a few things which I haven’t previously offered at these shows so stay tuned.

Lastly, because I’ve had a few inquiries, I’ve been exploring options for bringing my print store back online, and hope to have some things available on the website by the end of summer.

-Timothy

Posted in Cycling, Shows/Travel | Leave a comment