30 Days of Winter Day 4: My Favoritest Retcon EVAR (yeah right)

[perletwo]

C'mon. You know the one. It scored major points in our Scans Daily Awards last year.







Jason Todd: dye-job victim. Senseless. Pointless. Gratuitous. Thanks, Grant!

1 page from Batman and Robin 5.

Comments

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[misterbug]

I'm pretty much the same - I don't touch drugs because I like my brain the way it is, but I'll have a drink with buddies or get wildly drunk with my significant other, should the situation call for it.

I recall also he admitted in an interview to dressing in drag, possibly while under the influence of hallucinogens. THERE'S some photographic negatives I'd like to see someday...

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[jlroberson]

There is one photo in TWG. He didn't do a bad job at it, but it's hard to tell because it's blurry.

As for "liking your mind the way it is," I would never question that. I used the stuff myself but have also never recommended it to anyone, and I used it independently of Morrison(only discovering him--with DP--AFTER I already was). It's something someone has to come to and decide for themselves if they're going to bother with it at all. It's a serious fucking thing, though not shrooms so much as LSD. You don't do it the way you'd smoke pot or drink beer, and I always found those who did annoying and foolish. You're not the same afterwards, and to not be prepared for that is like walking into a house on fire naked, covered in gasoline.

For me, it allowed my mind's levels to...how should I put it, decompress. Like unpacking a zip file. It helped me toss away a lot of the internal mental inhibitions I had from growing up in the South and be able to use my mind after that in more complex ways. I couldn't write or draw as I do now had it not been for that. But that is JUST ME. It affects each individual individually. I'm lucky I had no latent mental issues hiding in there, like Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett, or a number of friends I had who did it far too much and didn't consider the rule of "set & setting." They just did it for entertainment, did it too much and long after it was of any conceivable use, and today are mental cripples.

When Gary Groth interviewed Robert Crumb and he spoke about it--and he does not speak of it in totally glowing terms, but matter-of-factly--Groth remarked he never had. Crumb responded, "Don't, Gary. We need you where you are." ;)

Wow, I think this is the first time I've talked about this much.

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[misterbug]

It IS good to talk about these things. I'm no saint, myself - I have actually contemplated a dinner date with Lucy in the Sky, should I ever want to completely reinvent my writing style or explore my inner psyche without the aid of transcendental meditation, but I've had the same feelings as you express - just jumping into it without careful consideration would be damned foolish. Like most drugs, I'd prefer it be used for a REASON, not a thrill.

Luckily, Moore also jumps in to remind us with his unnamed Detective in 'V for Vendetta'. The poor bugger.

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[jlroberson]

That specific example was actually very much in mind at the time. It was things Moore had said that helped me realize to be wary. It's something you treat with respect. I made sure to find out as much as possible about it beforehand(the story of Syd Barrett, as I was a Floyd freak when younger--but, interestingly, lost interest once I actually DID drugs--was very much in mind), and it wasn't others who got me to do it. It was a totally conscious decision I made myself and deliberated over for months. The first time I did it, it was alone. I confined myself to my room and bed, and didn't so much enjoy that first time as monitor it as it happened. (I always had a scientist point of view. If not for the math, I would have been one. ;)) It was, in the strictest sense, experimentation.

Although the fact my blanket started to remind me of sand dunes was interesting. I had on A PRIVATE FUNCTION because I felt a comedy I liked and already knew would ground me. I was amused that suddenly Maggie Smith looked like a cat and Michael Palin a mouse. Not so much overtly, more like an overlay, in a Terry Gilliam style. It's hard to explain what you see because you know it's not real. It's more like you see a suggestion and your mind goes with it. An illusion, not a hallucination.

That's not to say I didn't have fun on other occasions. Usually it was with just one friend I trusted--one in particular, a number of times--and we would usually go to a beach. And mostly, we talked. A LOT. And that was neat. I remember one time on a beach in Evanston we were sitting there and suddenly we saw three beautiful girls in white swimsuits with a Budweiser logo shared between them. We thought we were finally having a visual. Turned out it was a model shoot. If you're old enough, you might remember that ad. ;) (when I finally did have a visual, it was Keith Haring figures dancing on a windowshade looking like they were made of pink Silly String, most likely an illusion created by the veins in my retina. I was so pissed because I HATED Haring's work.)

It was good for then. It would not be now. At best I'd be sitting here going, "Sheesh, there's still ten fucking hours to go?..."

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[misterbug]

On the science, you are very much speaking my language - if I had as equal a love for mechanical aspects of Biology (e.g., the electron process of photosynthesis) as I have for the romantic aspects (e.g., Darwin's correct speculation of coevolution in certain species of Moth and Orchid that he had never ever seen in their natural habitat), I'd probably not be taking Comparative Lit. right now. But I love Comparative Lit., and it in many ways loves me, so I'm none the wiser.

Gad, I love 'A Private Function', and I love the way that your trip appears to have been looking at it on a primeval level - attributing animal features to the characters based on their relationship. What madness might have happened if you'd chosen, say, 'Brazil' or 'Little Miss Sunshine' instead...

I still have recreationals on the horizon, just as I have the works of Tolstoy or the Japanese language - something I've toyed with trying, can see the benefits of, but don't have the time or inclination to commit to right now. But it's nice to get the inside scoop from someone intelligent enough to do the research, and I thank you for enlightening me on the subject so thoroughly. Kudos to you, sir.

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[jlroberson]

PS--That thing in Moore's THE COURTYARD where the guy has that flow of images when he shuts his eyes--that WOULD happen, exactly like that, though not horrific ones as they are there. When I read that I went, "Fuck, someone captured that accurately." "Hypnogogic imagery, " i found out it's called. I thought that was just my thing.

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[misterbug]

Haven't read THE COURTYARD, but it puts me in mind of those disgustingly fascinating sequences in Warren Ellis' "No Hero", in which the (protagonist?) is given a mind-and-body-altering superdrug at the end of the second issue.

The next issue begins with a man explaining that Aliester Crowley used to get people applying to work for him seriously drugged on Opium and lock them in a 'room of nightmares' depicting Heaven, Hell and Earth, so that they could experience a full religious cleansing by going through all their nightmares - and that the kid in 'No Hero' is going through the same thing, except worse.

Although writing this, that makes me think of 'The Filth' again - Morrison has said that he wanted it to be a vaccine for the mind, so that the reader could experience horror after horror of the modern world and thus be immunised from their effects. Having read the TPB years before I saw a single MB of pornography, and remained relatively sane since, with the side-effect of thinking it one of the best graphic works put out by Vertigo since "Sandman", I'm given to thinking it worked...

Also, while we're about it: I'd really like to see "Seaguy 3" soon. I want to find out what's going to happen to Seaguy going through middleage.

Re: On Moore and Morrison.

[jlroberson]

THE FILTH is one of the best things I ever saw of his, and I like best that, at the end, it's actually about compassion rather than rebellion. It seems like treatment he was giving himself.

As for NO HERO--yeah, I remember that. But Ellis is really talking about something quite different, though the effects of the stuff they use COULD be compared to really, really bad LSD. More like DMT or something mean like that, though. Opium(which I've never touched, nor anything derived from it except maybe codeine in over-the-counter medicines) in fact, seems to me, would not make you confront or understand anything so much as become comfy with it. One of the reasons it's a bad thing to do.

I have a friend who, living in Hollywood around the time River Phoenix died, smoked smack for a while--thinking it was safer that way(yeah, that really worked for River--and by the way, their fad their for it was AFTER he died, which is an example of why LA is a fucked-up place), to my horror when I visited him when I first moved to CA(northern. You couldn't pay me to live in LA). I remember joining him as he house-sat for the costume designer of CARRIE one weekend. It was a beautiful view up there, in the Hollywood Hills. He had some acid and I did it and it was nice. But he did THAT and tried to get me to, which I would not and I asked him not to, at least not with me around. I enjoyed that day overall, at least by myself. He just nodded out. I spent the rest of the day going through the house comic collection, reading RUINS and STARMAN for the first time.

Fortunately he stopped successfully a few months later after I'd made it clear I thought it was turning him into a creep. It made me sad at the time though.