The Empty Head: New Content

I've revised and uploaded a few pages from the old site, mostly micro fiction stories like Gun Girl and A Madonna Suddenly. Not a big deal. They were never very good stories. You can find them all here.

Good News, Everybody! Dali Krab Day is almost here!

Bill Wray

The Cartoon and Comic Book art of Bill Wray whose incredible animation art on the Ren and Stimpy Show has always blown my mind.

V for Vendetta: Moore is Less

V for Vendetta is a well written and illustrated comic originally published in UK's Warrior Magazine in installments until DC Comics picked up the ball. The thing was eventually graphically-novelized, and became a huge popular success at a time when the term Graphic Novel was virtually unknown.

However, V's creator Alan Moore has refused to have anything to do with the movie version. U want linkee? High quality gallery of the original DC Comic Book covers plus a scanned piece of original art plus a huge FACTOID PAGE about Alan Moore.

Furious Boy: A Micro Fiction

Furious Boy flexed his stringy muscles valiantly but the psycho grip of his deluded collegues was unbreakable! Sweat ran down the buttons of his spine, soaking his costume. This would never do. He stared into glassy eyes and a hooded, vacant madness. The Puppetmaster's work.

So he HAS returned. Damn.

Gripping his glowing sapphire power ring he shivered, a cold anger washing through his mighty loins. This was what it meant to be a member of the Justice Patrol, he thought. To always know that the Puppetmaster was responsible for everything.

"Strontium Woman! Elastic Lad! What the hell's the matter with you?"

"Furious Boy!"

Grinning horribly they dragged him into the airlock, their bodies jerking like Spazoids as cosmic-powered muscles fought the chemical strings that bound them...

Tomorrow's Episode: Food Poisoning at Burger King.

The Gormenghast Novels

There are few things more hateful than paying 30 bucks for a paperback book, especially when you THOUGHT you were buying a beautiful sleek hardcover. Some of these things would include genocide, lack of empathy, hate, etc. Buying The Gormenghast Novels in this unwieldy, poorly-bound edition may have been the best choice, however, as the volume contains critical essays and information on the author, Mervyn Peake, a writer, poet, and illustrator whose reputation has risen considerably since his death in 1968.

The trilogy, along with the novella Boy In Darkness, tell the story of Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Groan, as he grows to manhood in the strange and isolated world of Gormenghast Castle. A lot of thoughtful people hate these novels for their plodding pace and intensely layered descriptive passages. Personally I'm finding myself enjoying them, 300 pages into the first novel, Titus Groan. Why? I think it's because Peake was successful in creating a compellingly real world for his readers. Dickensian characters, violent plots, a buttload of obsessive-compulsive behaviors, these novels will please if given a chance. Definitely a unique creation that has defied all attempts at classification, though the word "Gothic" has often been applied.

Birmingham News: Civil Rights Era Photos

Some of the hundreds of rediscovered Civil Rights era photographs have been made available online after the forgotten negatives lay for decades in a storeroom at the Birmingham News in Birmingham, Alabama.