Welcome to the first post of my blog. Hope today finds you healthy and happy. As three of my former co-workers from the Biggest Little Comic Shoppe That Could (Progressive Ruin, postmodernbarney, and the mighty Captain Corey) have blogs, I figured I would throw my hat into the ring. This here World Wide Web is a perfect place to say whatever you want and I have things I want to talk about. So, without any further delay, here is a bullet-form list of info about me, The Fleshy-headed Mutant, to you, the warm, cuddly reader:
- Sign: Scorpio
- Age: 29 (well, in about three months. Close enough. Old is old.)
- Marital Status: Engaged to a wonderful woman, who just might throw her two cents in, occasionally.
- Played guitar and sang in a few bands, but currently not interested in playing in front of people anymore.
- Topics that will be discussed here at the Treehouse: cartoons, comics and music. That's about it, but the page will probably mutate at some point. It is part of my nickname.
- Finally, the one and only time I will explain my nickname: My offline nickname really is Flesh-head or some bastardization of said nickname, like The Fleshy-headed Mutant or Fleshy. I have had long hair my whole life. Several years ago, I go really tired of dealing with it, so I shaved it all off with five or six disposable razors. We're talking Kojak-style bald. The next day, I walked into a friend's house, fully expecting a ration of insults. An old friend, Gerry, looked up and exclaimed, "It's a Fleshy-headed Mutant!", citing the movie-within-a-move the Mackenzie Brothers did in Strange Brew. From that point on, all my friends called me Flesh-head. Incidentally, I haven't been bald since. People assume too much when one is large and bald, like I am some sort of scary skinhead or something. I detest racism or bigotry in any form. Everyone should be judged on their own merits, not for the color of their skin.
OK now that that is out of the way, let's get down to business, shall we?
When I was six years old, I contracted the dreaded chicken pox. I spent about a week and a half just sick as the proverbial dog, quarantined to my grandparents' living room couch. I got to watch a bunch of cartoons, with my favorites being the old sixties-era Marvel cartoons. Spider-man, The Hulk, Captain America... I couldn't get enough of them. One day, my father came to visit and he had brought with him a few comics and digests of Spider-man and Avengers. My eyes grew wide when I saw them. He explained to me that the cartoons I loved had originated in these monthly magazines and that there was plenty more where these came from. Man, I was hooked from the get-go. There was never enough for me. The little convenience store by my house carried them at that time and I was forever bugging my mother to get me more, more, always more.
So, for that, I am forever indebted to my father. He was the first person to get me into comics. He also showed me a world outside of mainstream comics. He collected Heavy Metal and would let me have the issues when he was done. Ok Thinking back on it now, I might have been a little too young to have seen the boobs and such, but, even then, I was amazed at how different the art style was, compared with the early eighties Avengers and Spidey. It was so beautiful and foreign. I even remember being fascinated with one artist in particular: Moebius. I thought he must have been some sort of extraterrestrial. But, it did lead me to find new sources of comics, so I could get stuff that wasn't available at Circle K.
What does this have to do with today's current comics crop? Well, one of the first comics I branched out into was Savage Sword Of Conan. For one, it was magazine-format, and, even then, I knew bigger was better. Conan's stories were just what I was looking for when I was nine: violent, over-the-top, boobs... And Conan himself was just a bad-ass. The fully painted covers would just suck you in. I was hooked.
We are now six issues in on the new series of "lost" Conan stories, published by Dark Horse Comics, and I feel like a kid again. In my early teens, I discovered the Conan books and learned a new type of joy. The new comics would have made Robert E. Howard proud, I think. They have the same feel of the old Savage Swords, without feeling like you are retracing your steps. I have always been a fan of Kurt Busiek, but not a "oh my god, I must have everything!" fan, but this series may just push me over. These are stories of a young Conan, one who makes mistakes. One does see glimpses of how he will become, but this is where he learns all that. Plus, how cool is it to read about the stuff that was only hinted at in the earlier works? (an aside: It is hard to keep all this straight. Conan was older in the earlier books. He's young in the current stuff. Let's hope I don't make time collapse in on itself with all of this.)
So, I endorse this. A fine read with some spectacular art by Cary Nord. I don't know enough of his work, but methinks I should investigate. Go get it.
Oh, and would Stan Lee sue the shit out of me for signing this off with "Excelsior!"?
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