Keep Your Head Up

There is no such thing as a machine which has evolved into it's current form. Every mechanical thing which functions, does so because someone built it from parts. Someone had to design and manufacture all the parts which went in to making that machine, and in almost every case, there was a plan for the finished product. People don't build machines unless they want to see them perform some function, and there is always a specific set of functions in mind for which every machine is built.

In other words~ You may kill a rat by dropping a typewriter on it from your apartment window, but that doesn't mean that your better rat trap wasn't designed to write love letters...

Pick It Up

I'd like to interrupt the current train of thought to bring you this important message:

If your local comic shop hasn't picked up Mecha Manga Bible Heroes, there is STILL time to do so!

from now until December 15th, comic shops can order copies of Issue 1 of Mecha Manga Bible Heroes from Haven Distributors or from Enemi Entertainment. Ask your local comic shop if they get the Haven catalogue~ if they do, then Haven has already sent them a free copy to look over & they can easily order copies for you and your family & friends. If not, they can easily call Haven toll free at 1-877-428-3650 or fax in an order at 866-561-6280.

Of course, if you would rather order online, you can still go to Deepershopping.com and buy one here at a discount!

What Scares You?

Making a robot the hero of a story is, on some levels, an unsettling idea; robots, after all, are not just machines. They are machines designed to replace people.

The concept of a "robot" began as a way to express the dehumanization of workers in the industrial age. A person who used machinery to do their job in those days was forced to do repetitive and often dangerous tasks. Often, the machine was more valuable to the owner of the company than the worker... meaning it was often felt that having workers at all was almost an inconvenience.

Why not, a person might ask, simply replace the human with a machine all together? Why not build a mechanical "man" who never has to eat or sleep or complain or get paid? Watch any early movie featuring robots or read any of the pulp magazines of the day, and you'll see the robot was at best a replacement for humans in dangerous tasks and at worse a villan outright.

Like the giant monsters of Myth, the robot represented a fear.

Not the fear of the unknown, but the fear of being replaced or being no longer needed...

Fan Fiction

One of the fun things about doing comics and knowing alot of artists and writers is finding whether or not something you are doing works from a creative and even a "fanboy" sense. Sometimes, you hear about that privately~ quite often, I will get an email from a writer or two that I know about something I have done, either telling me what aspects they like or asking questions about things that didn't work for them. It's nice getting constructive comments, both positive and negative, because you can always grow from that.

Artists, on the other hand, tend to do things a little differently. Most of the time, a visual artist never tells me when they don't like something. When they do dig it, however, I usually find out because they become inspired to draw something from the work in question. All my writing career, I have done different things that end up on other people's blogs or in their sketchbooks... It's flattering, sure, but I never know about it (usually) unless I stumble across it.

Today's image is from a friend's blog- check it out here. (Please note that the copyright for Robot 13 should be C. Daniel Bradford and Thomas Hall) In any case, the intentions are good and it's a fun piece...

Kids These Days

As I mentioned yesterday, much of the symbolism behind giant monsters in mythology centers around the fear of the unknown. The question to ask, however, is what does such a creature mean to those who don't fear things which are new and different to themselves?

We live in an age where everything has opened up~ technology is there to show everything imaginable to anyone who wants to see it at whatever time they so choose. We can broadcast everything from strict journalism to complete fantasy in such a way that it's hard to distinguish one from the other. We can pull up every piece of information and data and trivial anecdote on any topic in an instant. In a world such as we live in, what "new" thing is there to fear?