Myself

Financial Shenanigans

My copy of Dune is a hardcover. It’s the first three books collected in one, and like all books that get talked about on this blog, this massive tome has a story behind it.

It was on display at Modern Book Depot, Guwahati, for as long as I could remember. Modern Book Depot was a place where popular books went not exactly to die, but to hibernate. The place smelled a little damp, if memory serves me correctly, and there was a sort of moldy feel towards the back of the shop, where the sun never shone, and piles of books lay unsold. This was one of the few bookstores that refused to add on the 10% discount that came as a godsend during the Annual Guwahati Book Fair. Sure, a part of the collection would get the discount, but those would be the dregs of literature, the John Grishams and the Robin Cooks, the Dick Francis and the who-ever-buys-this-shit copies of some random book. The ones you really wanted to buy would get a measly 5 percent, and no self-respecting book buyer would fall for that.

So, this copy of the Dune trilogy was on sale for 300 Rupees, for the longest period of time. I remembered seeing it when I was in school. In 2001, that sum of money went a long fucking way, especially for a guy who never bought first-hand books. 300 rupees was at least ten books, not three. So while I drooled over it, I never bought it. Someone bought that book for me. Two someones, both of them college seniors. Carthik was one of them, he was traveling to Guwahati that year to get acquainted with his future in-laws travel through Assam. Udatta was the other. Both of them figured that I was too much of a cheapskate to buy the book, and both of them wanted to read it too, so it turned up one morning on my table. With personalized inscriptions inside. At that time, I hated inscriptions in my books, but this one was special. Specifically what Udatta wrote. “Dear Evil Guy,” the inscription read. “Please do not sell this book.”

The reason behind this deserves a flashback-within-a-flashback, so here goes.

The year I joined college was also the year everybody seemed to figure out that owning a personal computer was the coolest thing to do on campus. Look at statistics – when we joined, our senior year had two students who owned computers on campus (one of them happened to be the illustrious Palaka Sasidhar, who then became tech advisor for everybody on campus, including college professors, and made use of his enhanced accessibility to the 64 Kbps college internet connection to download the complete Calvin and Hobbes from a pirated site, causing everyone’s emails to be backlogged for about a week as 150 MB of gifs downloaded at a glacial rate). By the time our ragging was over and the last remnants of the fresher parties had been up-chucked around the lawn, there were almost 30 people on campus with their own computers and that number increased every week. (All numbers, obviously, are pulled out of my Memory Hat. But then, it’s the spirit that counts, so bear with me, please) It got to the point where even I contemplated getting one – though the thought of spending 30,000 Rs or so on something made me feel light-headed and weak-boweled. (I hate to think what 1998-version of me will think of the art collecting bug that’s infected me, post-2005) (I did buy mine a year later, with some scholarship money)

One evening, after dinner was over, I was sitting around in my room when Udatta sauntered in, smoking a cigarette. Burugu Bhaskar, my room-mate was also inside. He was this nice, clean-cut local fellow who made sure to study after dinner, while I pored over my Stephen Kings, both of us humming along to whatever was playing on my modest tape-recorder. Probably Dil Se. I glanced at Burugu when Udatta got in, because we had exchanged words about Udatta a few days ago. Specifically, about his smoking in our room. “Hey, Chetri”, he said. “Your senior, man. Tell him to not smoke when he comes in, man.” “He is my senior”, I reparteed. “You tell him.” So when Udatta came in, Burugu and I looked at each other, and then he looked at Udatta and then he walked out of the room. Couldn’t blame him, because you didn’t really mess with the U-man and his considerable bulk even back then.

“Chetri”, Uddu began. Everybody called me Chetri back then. I hated it. “Chetri is my father’s name, goddamn it”, I would grumble. “My name’s Satyajit.” But nobody cared. I was doomed to be Chetri forever. “Chetri, what’s up?” He didn’t really say “what’s up?”, nobody did. What he really asked me was what the eff I was doing, spiced up with some choice words in Axomiya that we employed with each other, involving hair and bananas. Harmless good fun, except you had to remember not to use those words in front of your parents.

I said nothing was really up. At which Uddu asked me if I was interested in deflowering his computer. I was totally up for deflowering his computer.

Allow me to explain. The situation at this point was that you bought a computer, with the official excuse (to your parents) being that you needed it for your courses. But what really happened was that you used it for other stuff. Like renting VCDs and watching educational films. But mostly porn. And the first time you played a porn movie in your computer was when you “deflowered” it. Remember, this was the Pre-internet Age, still about a year away from when browsing would get pocket-friendly enough for us to be able to go someplace and surf the internet without blowing up a month’s allowance in one night. Porn VCDs were the only way this particular itch could be scratched. And if we were lucky, the VCD wouldn’t be scratched and we wouldn’t feel like we didn’t get our money’s worth. Obviously, nobody would really have the patience to watch the whole thing from beginning to end, but still. Uddu’s computer had come in about a week ago, and the most he had done with it was to install a bunch of shareware from Chip magazine CDs and pretend like he was having fun. Chip magazine CDs were our default source of fun those days.

We deflowered Uddu’s computer, and it cost a grand total of 23 Rs. This included auto fares of 4 Rs per person, one way, and a 15 Rs charge for the VCD. We split the money. We were happy. I bet the computer was pretty happy too. And then Uddu handed over the VCD to me and said I could go return it the next day. I would have, I totally would have, except –

I went back to my room and asked Burugu, back at his desk and intently going through his Engineering physics homework, if he wanted to watch a porn movie. He blushed, and nodded vigorously. I asked him if he knew of any friends who might want to watch a porn movie. Of course he did. I then went to visit my classmate from Goa, the first guy in our batch to own a computer of his own, bought two days after his fresher’s party. Goa always had the first fresher’s party because there was only one guy from the state, and said junior would bond with his senior the first day and both of them would declare each other cool enough to bestow the honor of being welcomed into the college fraternity without posturing and macho rituals that plagued the rest of us. Of course he was okay with us using his computer, provided he got to see it for free. He was the only one that did not need to pay for it – I charged everyone 4 Rs each, for the viewing. The room was filled with everyone from the block, about 20-odd people. Everyone was happy. With eighty rupees in my pocket, I was pretty darn happy too.

Udatta came to know about my profit-making venture a few weeks later. He tried to demand a cut, but by then, the money had been disposed of. I did tell him he was my favorite senior, and that I would let him read any of my books any time, which mollified him a bit. But I could no longer talk him into any joint financial venture without him trying to figure out exactly how I will undercut him and make a profit, and therefore, the inscription on the copy of Dune. “Please do not sell this book.”

I didn’t.

Comics, Myself

Groan

It’s been quite a day, again. The kind of day in which time seems to acquire a viscosity of its own, sucking you in, gulping you down. A day-long meeting, with multiple sub-meetings scattered in between.

The day shouldn’t over yet. Because tonight’s the night Brian K Vaughan arrives at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood for a Q&A, followed by a signing. The event is the midnight release party of Vaughan’s new comic book Saga, the previews of which show a lot of promise. Oh, and the Q&A is being conducted by Damon Lindelof, you know, the co-creator of this little-known TV series about a bunch of people on an island. I had been excited about this event for quite some time now – actually, excitement is too mild a word for what I am feeling right now. I was all set to buy issue 1 of Saga, and I was planning to get my Y The Last Man and Pride of Baghdad hardcovers signed.

But what happened was this – I came home, had my dinner, showered, got ready, and put the hardcovers in my backpack. Walked out of the apartment. And then I realized that I was too tired to consider going across town for a signing. Brian K Vaughan could wait. Saga can wait. My body needs to rest.

I feel all grown-up. I feel old. One of these is not that bad, and the other sucks. I hate being grown-up.

* * *

Despite the meetings, I did find time for some liberal credit-card abuse. Scott Dunbier, Keeper of the Artists’ Editions that I had mentioned a few days ago wrote to the comic-art mailing list about a special Wondercon edition of both the Romita Artists’ Edition, which came signed by Stan Lee and John Romita. And sketched in by John Romita as well. The Wally Wood book also has a special edition, and the ebaywhore in me howled at a metaphorical moon as I hastily pre-ordered both. The rational side (if there is any) probably whimpered for mercy somewhere in the corner of my brain. And I learnt of another pre-order today – Titan Books is coming out with an Artist Edition of its own. Back when the first Ridley Scott Alien was released, writer Archie Goodwin and artist Walt Simonson teamed up to adapt the book into its comic. It was a fairly good adaptation, considering that this was the pre-Watchmen era, Simonson’s art in particular nailing the kinetic moments of the film. I learnt that Amazon UK had it for sale at less than half of cover price, sighed to myself and ordered. Come on, it was just 22 GBP.

IDW is on a roll. Up next, after the Eisner and the Born Again editions, there’s the Groo The Wanderer Artist Edition coming out in June.

* * *

Speaking of Watchmen, you should read this transcript of a 90-minute long interview with Alan Moore. This is basically Moore’s side of the story of the Watchmen prequels that DC announced a few weeks ago. Go on, read it, it’s 8 pages long.

Are you back? You don’t have to be. I am too tired to right anything about the interview at the moment. I should probably go get some sleep.

* * *

I am not disappointed about missing the Meltdown Comics event, not at all. Because Wondercon is this weekend, and I am primed for it. Oh yeah, old age and grown-upness, you don’t scare me. Not at all.

* * *

The saddest news this week has been the news of Moebius’s passing. Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud was one of the finest artists who ever drew a comic-book, and it guts me to think that we lost him this early. His shadow looms large over a lot of memorable films of the eighties – Blade-runner, Dune, Akira, The Fifth Element, mostly for the visual design that they liberally borrowed from his works. Among the tributes and articles about him all week, here’s an archive of photographs of the master with other legendary creators. Pay close attention to the ones with Hayao Miyazaki, Osamu Tezuka, Uderzo and Hugo Pratt.

I should really sleep now.

Music

Thoughts after listening to Lucky Ali one evening

Lucky Ali is one of the few singers from the Indipop explosion of the late nineties who was genuinely talented, equipped with a distinctive voice and musical sensibility. His songs were about life, nature, journeys, and occasionally love, all of them tinged with a sort of sunny melancholy. Optimism in the middle of sadness, hope mixed with longing. Sunoh, his first album came out in 1996. The first time I saw it, I mistook it for a Rahman song. Because of the way the song was arranged – the bouncy percussion track, the strumming guitars and the unconventional nasal voice. The video had a sepia tint to it, something very different from the usual garish Anaida and Daler Mehndi videos that came our way.

It was very hard to fall in love with the rest of album that easily. The proprietor of the local music shop asked me not to buy it, much like he asked me not to buy Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Sangam when it came out, because it did not appeal to him, because he did not “get” it. Sunoh was kind of weird. Only one song had a video, for the rest of them, you had to let the tracks and the instruments seep into you you, bit by bit. The title song ‘Sunoh’ was catchy to a point, as was ‘Pyaar Ka Musafir’, but it did not stray from its theme one bit. The songs were constructed without mainstream pandering, the compositions weren’t mollycoddling the listener. A few years later, Silk Route would do something similar with their debut album Boondein, albeit in a more audience-friendly manner. But that time and year, Sunoh was one of its kind, an extraordinary debut.

Sifar, released in 1998, was Ali beating the sophomore blues by outdoing himself. I still do not understand why ‘Teri Yaadein’, the first song on the album, or ‘Mausam’, the most accessible one were not pushed out to video, instead of ‘Dekha Hai Aise Bhi’. Trust me, I love that song, but I always thought Sifar never became as popular as his first album because the video did not have the all-ages Bollywood-story appeal that ‘O Sanam’ had. I began listening to the first two albums again yesterday, and there’s no doubt that the songs on them albums were truly unlike anything Indian popular music had to offer.

If you listen closely, there’s a definite sound that binds all the songs in Sifar, a choice of arrangements that thematically links all the songs together. Notably, the unconventional use of percussion, creative guitaring and multiple wind instruments that I cannot quite put my finger on – the sound reminds me of bagpipes mixed with the oboe. Consider ‘Dil Aise Na Samjhna’, for example. Nearly no percussion, and the carnatic violin appears along with the guitar as the primary instrument; even a cello, at times. The tabla peeks in for a few seconds around 2:30, and then disappears. ‘Mil Jaan Se Kabhi’ is like Mike Oldfield-lite, the arrangements hopping from a muted tubular-bellish sound to string pads to Chinese flutes, recorders and other assorted wind instruments. The acoustic guitar and mandolin layer the main chorus, quickly seguing into by an electric guitar flourish atop a drum-roll that in turns makes way for a short piano melody (Is that really a piano? There’s an actual sliding note there). It drives me nuts trying to break down the song like this, but all these disparate sounds somehow work together without drawing too much attention to themselves. And it ends with an anguished howl backed by synth strings. Fucking awesome. Every song in Sifar has a distinct personality, a riff or a line that you can take away with you with every listening. Not many albums do that.

However, one wonders if Lucky Ali is soleley responsible for his unique sound. Part of the credit should definitely go to arranger and co-composer, his brother-in-law Mike McCleary. McCleary is based out of Australia, and he’s credited as arranger and guitarist on Sunoh, and as part of ‘The Lucky Ali Team’ on Sifar, the second album, along with lyricist Syed Aslam. His name appears on credits of songs here and there – additional arrangements on ‘Himalaya’ from AR Rahman’s Connections, a beautiful piano-only mood piece, and as producer on Rahman’s charity single ‘Pray For Me Brother’. But it’s last year’s release, an album called Classic Bollywood – Shaken Not Stirred, produced by McCleary and featuring five alternative Indian female singers on vocals that brought him some kind of formal recognition. Primarily because of the track ‘Khoya Khoya Chand’ was used in spectacular fashion in Bijoy Nambiar’s 2011 film Shaitan.

Coming back to Lucky Ali’s output post-Sifar, his output seems to have been largely Bollywoodised pap. He has taken to singing for films nearly full-time, beginning with Kaho Na Pyaar Hai in 2001. He went on to appear as the lead in Pooja Bhatt’s Sur (and singing all the songs himself) and Sanjay Gupta’s Kaante. He sang for Rahman too, both in Tamil and Hindi. He has released pop albums (presumably with McCleary in tow) almost every other year, and while you can find ear-friendly ditties and eye-candy videos accompanying said ditties, his singing has been confined to the pattern that he established in his first two albums, echoey nasal crooning that is supposed to exude sincerity and heartbreak. Barring the occasional flash of musical chutzpah, it has been 15 years of predictability. Not really a bad thing, but still feels like he did not go further than Sifar in terms of challenging audiences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqqlw6YRhv8

The last time I really liked Lucky Ali, the time when he managed to surprise me was in the track ‘Tu Kaun Hai’ , used in the film Bhopal Express, starring Kay Kay Menon and Nethra Raghuraman. He sings the song very unlike his usual style, employing a lower pitch in the main verse. This coupled with the breathy sound that punctuates the song produces a somewhat unsettling – and striking – effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RMb_LlLnIU

Myself

Da-da-da-day!

Some days you don’t know how you got there. Like yesterday. At eleven AM, I was muttering about Babylonian Locust gods that possess sincerely-written code, of dark doom-ridden fate in store for me the next few days. I was maybe about one meeting-request away from going Hulk smash all over the cubicle. Twelve hours later, I was gasping for breath and trying to lift my jaw off the floor. I had witnessed a jazz piano/guitar/drum/bass performance that scooped out every bit of tiredness from behind my eyes and re-calibrated my happiness index to a perfect ten. I was also reeling under the cumulative effect of a fulfilling dinner involving corn, ham and pineapples (pineapples?) inside a gigantic baked potato and four beers and a coffee. At a place called the Baked Potato.

Ten hours ago, I was fairly sure I would skip lunch that day. I had a late breakfast, and there seemed to be no point in going out to grab something. Maybe I would have ordered something if any of the others went out. By one o’clock, I had not only finished a large bowl of rice with some extremely spicy Thai chicken green curry, but had space (and enthusiasm) remaining to get some cookies for myself and the two gentlemen I had lunch with. One of whom happened to be my boss and the other a colleague from Germany visiting Los Angeles for a day. And that’s when the idea of going to the Baked Potato came about. As it turned out, D was a Jazz fan, and the ‘tato was a dream-destination for him ever since the eighties, when he heard his favorite band talk about performing there. Believe me, I get dream destinations. I said I would come along with him, despite the doom-and-gloom the rest of the day promised.

Somehow, between lunch and 6 PM, non-existent Babylonian locust gods were banished – as best as non-existent entities could – and happy work-endings were reached. Things fell into place, like Near from Death Note was standing behind my shoulder nudging the right jigsaw pieces. I even fired up some Bonobo to help tide me over the last hour, and surfed gracefully into something akin to feature-completeness. Headed out, with narry a worrisome sigh nor a fretful brow.

And there we were, an Indian and a German sitting among a strange mix of Chinese college kids, Japanese tourists, other suspiciously hipster-looking Jazzheads, who talked about favorite gigs and tried to identify the bands playing over the PR system as they waited for the concert to begin. D and I spoke of work, of doing things other than work, of Scandinavian pop and contemporary jazz, and music software and attending live shows. He ooh-ed and aah-ed over the posters on the wall, the collage of artistes that had played at the venue before and who he had missed. It was a genuine treat to talk to someone so obviously enthused about being at a place, get what I mean? I cradled my beer and wondered about the day, about unexpected beginnings and endings. The waitress brought a tray of steaming baked potatoes and laid them in front of the Japanese couple sitting next to us. “Sugoiiiiiiiii”, the lady exclaimed, fumbling to switch on her little camera. Sugoi indeed, I thought, and chugging the rest of my beer, I ordered another one.

And how was your day?

Comics, Panel Eulogy

On the magnificence of Artists’ editions

Just so you know, this post does not talk about movie The Artist. I talk about comics. Fair warning.

Before I talk about an Artist’s edition, allow me to explain for the sake of those who came in late, a little behind the process of a comic’s creation. Traditionally, a comic is drawn by hand, with India ink on pencils, ink that is thick, black and lends itself gloriously to the printing processes of the early twentieth century. Pages are drawn on giant boards that are bigger than the final printed size. Then comes the lettering, the word-balloons and sound effects, that would be done either directly on the page, by hand or pasted-on from photocopies done separately. There is a colorist involved as well, yes, but again, due to the limitations of the printing process, the most that colorists could do before the advent of computers was to create color “guides”, done on photocopies of the line art shrunk to publishable size. Printers would use these guides to create the final plates, but it was not necessary that every nuance of the coloring would translate to the final product.

This has substantially changed in recent times, where Photoshop and Illustrator and a variety of other lettering software have transferred a bulk of the coloring and lettering parts of the process online. Some artists even bypass the inking process by allowing their pencils to be directly scanned and enhanced on the computer. And there are artists who stick to the computer for every step of the process – the only physical artifact in that case becomes the printout.

But we talk here about the actual physical art, these boards which, once the printing is done and the comic-book is published and read, used to be treated as disposable trash. While the assembly-line nature of monthly comics has shelved creators into discrete boxes – penciller, inker, colorist, letterer – it is still safe to say that the best kind of artist is the one that does it all. One who is able to not only plan and break down a script into fluid panels on the page, bring them to life by his or her pencils, but also ink, and ink well. Because the inking process is severely underrated and much vilified. Inks not only necessary to show off the contents of the page when they are scaled down to size, but the very thickness of an inked line – its weight – can be used by an experienced inker to convey the import of the artist’s intent with minimum strokes. Less equals more. A good inker can not only ensure that the comic you hold in your hands is as true to the penciller’s vision, but he can sock you in the guts when (- if – ) you hold the board of original art in your hands and see his work up close. This is part of the reason why there is a market for original art. Strip away the nostalgia, and the money-making and the thrill of holding something that is one-of-a-kind, and what remains is the sheer joy and awe of seeing and holding something masterful.

Now fast forward to 2009, when San Diego-based company IDW began a somewhat-bold venture. They took the Rocketeer stories of creator Dave Stevens, and published a giant-sized edition of the work using Stevens’ original black and white art pages. Rather than being a generic facsimile version, this edition was stunning because it was shot in color – what it means is that you can make out textures of the page, the parts that have yellowed, pencils underneath the inks, eraser and whiteout, even coffee stains. It is not an easy task to complete this sort of project because most artists’ pages are spread out among anonymous collectors, making it difficult to track down originals. In Stevens’s case, a bulk of his pages remain with his estate, and the people involved in the project – editor Scott Dunbier, Seinfeld writer David Mandel and collector Kelvin Mao were uber-collectors of Stevens’ work themselves. The successful sell-out of The Rocketeer Artist’s Edition prompted more volumes to come out – a 10-issue selection of Walt Simonson’s run on Thor in the eighties, and a selection of John Romita’s work on Spider-man, among the superhero comic runs most celebrated for their precise, heady combo of art and story.

Wally Wood’s work was picked for the next Artist’s edition, a departure from the superhero genre of the previous volumes. (Since it’s stupid to talk about biographies when you can easily read about it on Wikipedia, here’s a handy link. )Wood was one of the old guard, in a class of his own, who cut his teeth on the legendary EC comics of the fifties. He’s not too well-known outside fandom, mostly because he worked on non-mainstream horror, science fiction and war comics, did a lot of underground stuff in the seventies, and then proceeded to kill himself in 1982. Most of his original art is still together as full stories, partly because of EC publisher Bill Gaines’ foresight and in part because original art collectors were rabid enough to want to own complete stories by him. The Wally Wood Artists’ Edition collects some of the best of Wood’s stories from the 1950s. It is even more ambitious than the other releases because it seeks to reprint pages that were drawn on “twice-up” sizes, about 14 by 20 inches. That makes it humongous, maybe the biggest book I’ve seen barring the Little Nemo and Gasoline Alley books brought out by Sunday Press.

The cover itself is gorgeous, the kind of science fiction tableau where every brush stroke, every blotch of black feels economical and yet loaded with intent. Opening it the first time gave me the sock-in-the-guts that I was talking about before. As I flip through the pages, it seems impossible not to linger, to peer at a splash of correction fluid here, at a pasted-on correction that has aged less than the panel surrounding it, making it seem whiter than the yellowing art board. You want to caress the zip-a-tone paste-ups that Wood uses to convey three-dimensionality in his backgrounds and the effects, like reflection in the water, or a pattern on a carpet. The women he draws remind me of stars of silent black-and-white cinema, a Harlow here, a Garbo there, voluptuousness of a Mae West in another. The men likewise bear the stamp of square-jawed matinee idols. But at the same time, Wood does not hesitate to coat them in grime, sweat and mud, to add a seven o’clock shadow to the craggy face of a handsome protagonist, or wrinkles and crow’s feet to a face to convey age.

The EC stories are typical science and shock-fantasy fiction of the time, eight-ten page tales book-ended between a gorgeous splash page that lay down the story’s milieu and a twist ending that is the payoff. The verbosity of the writing sometimes gets to me, the art groaning under the narrative captions and thought balloons and a profusion of dialog boxes. What is surprising is the lack of sound effects – the only obvious ones are screams. “Yaaaaaah”, goes a man in a panel from a 1948, grimacing with pain, and then ‘Eeeeyaaahhh”, as if the single scream was not enough to convey the horror of the scene. The story, by the way, is adapted from Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, EC being among the first to adapt sci-fi stories written by contemporary writers into comic-book form. You see the obvious influences of the Pulp illustrators, and the newspaper greats – Hogarth, Caniff, Foster and Raymond – in Wood’s work (to be fair, these giants cast a long shadow – take anyone from Frazetta to Williamson to Will Eisner, and you will see veins of inspiration that lurk beneath the creativity). But what stuns is the dynamic imagination that oozes from his designs of prehistoric and futuristic monsters. From the bold storytelling choices that he makes to convey something as momentous as an atomic bomb explosion or a medieval joust. The tingle of erotic excitement from a woman’s body wrapped in a sheet. The frantic urgency of a rain-soaked battlefield.

I will probably never own a definitive Wally Wood page of my own, but owning this volume kind of soothes the longing, and tells my pleasure centers to have patience. Good art is calming in its own way, and especially art of this caliber. IDW is coming up with two more volumes in the next few months, one of them being a Will Eisner collection, of the same size as the Wood book. The other is Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again. It’s hard to get them unless you pre-order, but these are books that ought to take pride of place on your shelves. Highly, highly recommend that you buy them.