A friend and I saw Thor last night…uhh…I really don’t know where to go from there, so I’ll let Roger Ebert’s review speak for me.

Thor is not a good movie.  As a Thor movie, it’s all right.  As a comic book movie it’s quite bad.  As a movie it’s a massive disappointment.  But Roger Ebert’s comments are so in line with my own, I thought I’d approach this differently and focus on Jane Foster.

Thor is a meathead, and this movie plays this aspect of his character up.  Sure, his character growth takes place in a blink of an eye and with little to no reason, but that’s what the movie is.  It’s a movie about and for “dudes” who don’t really want to think much but opt for beer and a good UFC fight (and there’s nothing wrong with that).  Possibly dudes who listen to Neu Metal, I don’t know.  And Natalie Portman’s portrayal of Jane Foster goes in line with what meatheaded gentledudes are looking for.  She’s wooden, infatuated with Thor the instant she runs him down, and offers little to no reason for us to believe that she’s a astrophysicist.  An astrophysicist!  Those people are smart!  They use words like astrophysicist!  I’m sure most of them don’t spend their days trying not to make ripples.  She’s a scientist.  Most scientists want nothing more than to understand and look at the world around them logically and with a clinical eye.  Instead, this Jane Foster recognizes that there’s something weird going on in New Mexico, but that dude with the muscles is far more interesting than an Einstein Rosen Bridge.  She’s also more interested in a cuddly puppy than turning the physics world on it’s head.

But here’s the question, was Jane Foster in the comics the same?  Was she a foil, seemingly in the books for the sake of providing an uninspired love interest and pair of tits for the readers to look at?  No.  No, she wasn’t.  Based on what I remember of the comics, Jane Foster (sure she was a nurse or doctor in the comics but that’s beside the point) was bright and full of purpose.  She wasn’t used by Stan Lee simply to move the plot along.  She was a character in the story.  Interacting with other characters instead of brushing her wispy hair out of her face and smiling like a moron.  In fact, in recent years, she’s done a lot to suggest that she’s much stronger than she was.

So, this leaves us wondering how to judge a movie based on a piece of fiction.  Thor’s universe is entirely based on the comics.  Characters are taken straight from the comic and plastered on the screen.  But not Jane Foster.  Kenneth Branagh turned Jane into the most vapid and pointless character in the movie.  A foil to keep the plot going (poorly).  Even Kat Dennings, whose character Darcy was so pointless she didn’t even need a last name, seemed more likable and purposeful than Jane.  And it brings me again to the point of this rambling thing: was Jane Foster always vapid and pointless or turned into this for the movie?  Was she so unimportant to Kenneth Branagh that he thought it best to have her sit in a child’s seat?  Those questions are fine, but they don’t strike at the biggest problem in comics that have been presented on the screen: Are women in comics anything more than T&A?  In the case of this movie, yes, but, oddly enough, not in the case of the books.  What an odd little turnaround we’ve experienced, huh?

After months of no updates to Hancomic.com, I’ve added some new materials and changed the lay-out a bit.

Why is this worth a blog post?  Because I made the changes myself and I’m proud.  Is there something wrong with that?  Too bad, I did it.

1. My brother-in-law (Glenn) is writing and drawing his own blog now called Custom Mustache.  It is hilarious.
2. My posts aren’t showing up on Facebook for some reason, and I’ll be spending the night trying to uncover why that is.
3. Having an HD television with HD channels never seemed like such a big deal while I lived with my parents, but now that we have it in our apartment…I’m addicted.  Portlandia and the two new Onion News shows, I’ve diluted myself into thinking, look so much sharper and purposeful in HD.  That makes sense, right?

It has, indeed, been over two months since my last blog post, and there’s a good reason for that.  Laziness.  Laziness and being massively busy with several things all at the same time.

As a matter of fact, in a two week span I found and started a new job, found and bought a new car, found and moved into a new apartment, and my wife found and started a new job.  That was a two week period, even though most of it took place in the first week with carry over into the second.  Since then, we’ve been working, decorating, and driving around Denver; this town I’m not at all familiar with yet.  It’s been a lot to deal with, but that’s life, huh?

On the writing front, I’m now a copywriter at the American Humane Association.  Reading up on child and animal neglect and abuse and synthesizing it into a heart-wrenching and visceral thing.  Hopefully a heart-wrenching and visceral thing that will land us more donations, but that’s neither here nor there.

There have also been meetings with possible investors, advise-givers, and artists in hopes that one of the many projects I have floating around in my brain ether is produced.  At this point, it feels like a lot of impasses all at once, but it’s those difficult roadblocks that provide the fortitude to keep going.  So, that’s where I’m at.  Waiting for things to happen, nagging people to get things to happen, and continuing to write.  Seems to be the way of most, if not all, writers, so at least I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Coinciding this all this is an unassailable feeling that we want to go back to Seoul.  We miss Korea, the people, the subway, and the bussle.  We miss our friends and the connections we made. But, at the same time, we recognize that we’re here, with a new car and 12-month lease that will anchor us at least for a little while.  There’s still that hope though, that in a year we’ll be back on Line 2 to Gangnam for dinner or the 730 bus on our way to the outskirts of Itaewon to visit Faysal and Misun or walking through the crowds at Dongdaemun to buy a new sweater or shirt.  It’s so odd to thing that people all around me equate owning a car to independence, while I feel that riding the subway gave me the most freedom.  I could write, listen to podcasts, and watch people’s interactions with each other without fear that I might drive off the road.  That’s liberation.  Not having to care.  And I guess that’s where I want to be professionally, too.  Focus on what I love even if I’m working on a project that doesn’t matter to me.  There’s freedom in the confirmation, there’s freedom in being swaddled by my laptop’s keyboard and wikipedia research and Final Draft.

Today, I’m a copywriter and learning a lot, but tomorrow I’ll be writing for me.  I live for those days.

Hope you’re all doing well.  Sorry again for the delay.  Hopefully I’ll write more now that I’m in front of a computer all day long (I just spit at my Acer monitor and IBM Thinkpad).  In the mean time, think about your path and ride it.  After all, if it weren’t for that positive thinking, I wouldn’t have written a book and I wouldn’t be able to hone my craft by writing copy all day long.

The times they are a becoming more like those other times but not quite.  I’ll explain…

Our year in Seoul has come to an end and we’re back in the US of A, Chicago to be exact, and visiting my family.  Since arriving my sister and brother-in-law has given birth to their first child (a son), Lindsay and I have been massively jetlaggy, my computer has been replaced with a much nicer MacBook Pro, we have smartphones, we’ve eaten at Chipotle, and noted several times that everywhere we go things look “fat”.  That’s no necessarily a knock on anything but a note that in Seoul, the streets, cars, and people were exceptionally fit.  There aren’t large swathes of land to bound about in, not many all-you-can-eat buffets, and cars are suited for the compact city life.

Aside from all that, we’re attempting to remove the blisters of reverse culture shock, something many people don’t believe exists (it does), and catch up with people, places, and things.  It’s been nice so far.  Playing with my sister’s dog Winni, copious sleeping, and not wearing coats in the surprisingly warm November days.

Soon we’ll fly out to Denver to visit Lindsay’s family and await signals and signs and perhaps a punch to the neck lettings us know where we need to be next.  Applying for jobs and grad school along the way, we’re observing that this return has been incredibly positive.  Family visits, weather, fat people, it’s all coming up aces.  We’re sad to be away from our loving friends in Seoul but happy to be with family in friends here in the US and preparing ourselves for our next adventure/stage in life.

It all feels positive thought.  Positive and full of deep, relaxing breathes.  More to come as time permits.

It’s unabashed, unrelenting, and mixing with my brain, this lull. So I bought some limeade.  I’m hoping it’s bitter bite will awaken my inner something or rather.

As it stands, some things have happened and others have not.  To be more obtuse, the world still turns.  Or to put it a different way, I’ve spent the last 8 months on a single project: ‘Han’.  Now, ‘Han’ began as a graphic novel concept and ended as a webcomic.  Most recently I’m pretty sure I mentioned that ‘Han’ was on a rather permanent hiatus and now I can’t get the damn thing out of my head.  That’s to say that while I should be branching off, considering and planning and skeletoning new stories or projects my mind comes right back to ‘Han’.

I started going at it from different angles.  Maybe I could create more this…  If this character were this then there would need to be other characters to counterbalance it an…  You get the idea.  The problem is that ‘Han’, right now, isn’t being worked on, with the exception of over-and-over in my brain.

Many of you are reading this saying, “no,” you’d say, “Don’t give up on ‘Han’.  There has to be a way,” and there might be. I’ve been trying to create something more accessible and perhaps more inclined toward solid, professional backing but it’s been slow moving.  Like the expanding universe, slow.  Or plate tectonics.  And that’s boring.  Also to say “it’s not allowing me to work on other ideas because my brain (the river that it is) delta’s right back to ‘Han’,” the bastard.  On the plus side, however, this new angle, this new way of looking at ‘Han’ is supremely exciting and might be much of what’s keeping my mind on it.  It’s a chance to do something really fun/awesome/more culturally significant than slap bracelets.  Damn, I broke my string of earth-based metaphors

To bring things back to earth and that’s how, in a hackneyed way, I bring it back, I’d like to mention that I have a box of Reading With Pictures books sitting in our apartment.  We’ve successfully sold/given way (mostly) around a third of them. We’ve sent emails out to friends and family about the many places the anthology has been mentioned/I have been mentioned (horn successfully tooted) including the super cool article in the Korea Herald about ‘Han’ titled U.S. graphic novelist explores han: experiences it in the process (this may not actually be the title).  There’s something rewarding about being mentioned as a graphic novelist even if my graphic novel never got off the ground.

Well, I guess that’s all the rambling madness I have in me for now.  Thank you for your continued love and patronage, your continued visits to this site as well as ‘Han’, and for purchasing the ‘Reading With Pictures Anthology’.  That is to say, if you haven’t bought the book you should be ashamed of yourself and be cast out amongst the reeds.

Nothing but love!  Bye for now.

Neigh on 10 years ago someone decided scams needed to take the next logical step.  After messages were carefully crafted, those first scam emails were disseminated.  The minute the first person opened their inbox and saw that offer from the “Deposed Leader of Nigeria”, those scammers started making money.

Since then, scammers have tried new ways of luring stupid people into their binary clutches.  They’ve tried credit card fraud, data-mining bots, and “get rich quick” promises.  To put it simply, they’ve evolved.

This morning, I received a blast from the past.  A scam email so sneaky it made it by gmail’s careful spam filters yet so bad as to remind me of those good ol’ days of “I cannot lay claim to this money unless I transfer it out”.  Riddled with it’s “mutual benefit”…I give you General Arnold Quaninoo:

Title: “I do kindly wait on your reply for the investment.”
Body:

Dear Sir/Madam

With warm heart I write you this mail in respect of my intention of investing my mineral resources in your care as my trustee to oversee the investment due to my political affiliation with the united nation as former peace keep.

I am General Arnold Quainoo seeking your advice of investing the above mention investment in your care due to trust and confident that I have build in you for the mutual benefit of the investment and our children. I need your undivided attention as to what my proposal is about.

Kindly notify me of your interest in order to proceed with the investment for what it with stand for. In respect of the investment mention above, with your interest to this investment, I shall offer you a negotiable percentage endorse by signatures for feature reference.

I kindly wait on your reply for our mutual benefit.

Best Regards:

General Arnold Quainoo
Email: gen.arnoldquainoo@gmail.com

What’s great about this is that General Arnold Quainoo is an actual person.  You can put him into google and find articles, websites, and videos of the good General addressing issues in Liberia.  But, obviously, he wouldn’t have a gmail account starting with his title of “gen”.

5 points for creativity, -3 for grammar and punctuation, and -2 for originality.  Sorry, General.  Evolution’s much harder then we all thought.

I find myself in a dip.  A mounts lapse into a chasm that, to my mind, promises to swallow me whole forever.  This is preposterous, mind you, as in a few hours or tomorrow I’ll be out of this lull and off to the races, working on my script again.  But there needs to be something said of this dip.  A voice lent to those doldrums low moments that plague so many of us.  And here’s that.

Lately I’ve been reading American Lion by Jon Meacham and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  – this is after I finished Slaughterhouse V for the first time.  My immediate reactions so far are “brilliant” and “whoa” or even interrupting my wife to tell her something that I’ve just read.  These are the normal reactions when reading something that touches you, something that effects you either positively or not.  Their high points in your reading but they ironically lead to low points for me.

What I mean to say is that reading something great should be a motivation but it’s not always.  At times I’ll read something staggering and want nothing more then to write something in that same vein, hoping to stagger the population or something, Mark Twain might say, to shake people from their stupor; that’s not a quote, just an observation and suggestion of what Mark Twain might say.  But therein, as Admiral Ackbar in his infinite online video iterations, will tell you is a trap.  Because writing something with the soul purpose of knocking someone on their ass or shaking off the societal strains put on by the overbearing and misguided words of some megalomaniac man is a trap.  It really can’t be done.  Sure, creative writing teachers have been saying for years to “write with intention” but it doesn’t always work.  If you’re like me, all too often those intentions and purposes derail the story.  Making a well plotted piece a true “piece”.

But that’s not all!  This same derailment can come from  comments both positive or negative.  Hell, someone could shower praise upon you, fill your heart with such happiness that those tasks you were loathe for in the past turn  enjoyable.  It won’t stop there though!  You go home, a skip in your step as you ignore the intermittent rain that has annoyed you for the last week or the fact that you forgot your umbrella.  Then things start to get real.  You read over the review too many times.  You’ve sent it to everyone in your address book in hopes that they’ll share in your glowing moment until there’s a thought that “what if I can’t live up to it?”  What happens then?  I’ll tell you, everything stops.  You’re crippled by a moment that should have been glorious and provided you with enough boast-fuel for the next month has turned into a sprained brain.

To sum this up, there’s no way to tell whether you’re reading will effect you for better or worse.  You can portend that a novel, newspaper article, or trip to the market will actually bring positive results and help you plow through a particularly difficult section of your book, script, short story, whatever.  But that doesn’t mean you should fear those activities.  On the contrary.  I know I offered up some truly incredible points here but the fact is, they’ll only effect you for a short time.  At the top I mentioned that my current funk will probably only last a few hours or the rest of the day, perhaps someone reading this will have moments where they’re unable to hit the keys for months on end.  But think about it, you’re being effected by something.  You’re letting it control your mind, your thinking, your life instead of breast stroke you forward.  Doesn’t that boggle the mind?  Doesn’t it just make you angry at how your mind has decided to process that moment or nugget of information?  Stupid brain.  What the hell?!

The key is, I’ve found, to harness your stupid brain and use those lull-filled moments to get you further than you thought.  After all, what’s a better motivation than being annoyed with yourself?  I don’t think there is anything.

So, get out there and get some writing done.  Don’t let your brain win, let your brain win!  Also, read this awesome review of the ‘Reading With Pictures Anthology’, including some very nice things said about yours truly.

You can’t derail me brain, moment, or book!  Hancomic.com

A weekend that began with a rally in Washington, D.C. on one of the most important days in U.S. history continues with a report out of Japan of growing anti-foreign protests.  Here are my thoughts:

The growing anti-foreign sentiment doesn’t just dwell in the US. We deal with it here in Korea and now issues in Japan are starting to receive more of the world’s eye. And it doesn’t end there either as all countries have groups that – fearing losing their identity, country, and culture – have lashed out in one way or another.

But, this does seem to be proof that the world has changed substantially and we’re now taking notice. The world is no longer what it once was and everyone is afraid and looking at the past. The problem with doing so, however, is the rose colored glasses people often wear while thinking about the past.

If the Japanese protestors decide to act against Chinese or Korean students, especially children, the world will not only cry foul, they’ll wonder if this is a step backward for Japan. For such a beautiful country they have a fractured culture and a history that all of Asia still remembers.

P.S. – After more thought, I’d like to point out that signs and placards that read “The Volunteer Corps Against Lawless Koreans” or “Expel barbarians” (examples from the Japanese rallies) sound remarkably similar to the diatribes of former Japanese military and political rallies before the 1910 annexation of Korea by the Japanese.  It is clear that whereas before Japan seemed to feel powerful and strong, both militarily and economically as well as in their national psychology, as their nation began their drive to take over Asia, now Japan has no actual military and their economy has struggled and their job-less rates have remained on the decline for the last 30 years while Korea and China have grown and flourished.  Their frustration is a direct parallel to what has happened in the U.S. those people who have been in power since the Declaration of Independence feel they no longer have the ability to do what they once did.

Maybe this is a race issue, maybe it’s a psychological issue.  Either way, the results have been negative, angry, and will lead to violence.

This was reported earlier today (well, today in Korea, I guess it would last night for those in North America) and I began following and collecting as much information as possible.  Why?  Because during Dylan Covey’s physical he was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes.  Now, for a lot of people this really isn’t important news.  Covey was expected to be a solid pitcher and the Brewers were looking forward to adding a good arm to a minor league system that isn’t chalk full of many, but what’s far more important to me was that he picked his health over several million dollars.