THE ADVENTURES OF HERMAN UTIX
Moderator: Zlatko Waterman
-
stilltrucking
- Posts: 20614
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
Dear ST:
I have a general idea ( and have written down) what critics and scriptwriters today call "the story arc"-- that is, where things are going and what will happen at the end.
I sit down with pencil and paper, sketch out roughs of my episodes ( I know the general action and already have it in my head) and then write the words, changing them where they seem insufficiently euphonious or just don't make any damned sense.
I usually work several episodes ahead of "press time."
Thanks for asking.
The trick, of course, as in any good novel ( and even in the lowly comic strip) is to make a set of characters, make them fairly believable, and then just try to "observe" what they do-- their adventures, with the inward eye. In spite of what Nabokov says, the characters DO tell YOU what to do most of the time.
Herman, Pleni, Li-Li and Biff have lots of ideas of their own that can result in adventures!
--Z
I have a general idea ( and have written down) what critics and scriptwriters today call "the story arc"-- that is, where things are going and what will happen at the end.
I sit down with pencil and paper, sketch out roughs of my episodes ( I know the general action and already have it in my head) and then write the words, changing them where they seem insufficiently euphonious or just don't make any damned sense.
I usually work several episodes ahead of "press time."
Thanks for asking.
The trick, of course, as in any good novel ( and even in the lowly comic strip) is to make a set of characters, make them fairly believable, and then just try to "observe" what they do-- their adventures, with the inward eye. In spite of what Nabokov says, the characters DO tell YOU what to do most of the time.
Herman, Pleni, Li-Li and Biff have lots of ideas of their own that can result in adventures!
--Z
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
-
stilltrucking
- Posts: 20614
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
Thank you for your comments, as always, ST.
As you can see, there are vague sci-fi ( for want of a better term in common currency) elements creeping in, to broaden the allegory. But my master is still, and always, Swift, like that other hero of mine, the unrealistic Herbert George Wells, poor boy from the lower classes and socialist aspirer for the world --writer of tracts himself.
If it hadn't been for those youthful works, the "scientific romances" as he called them, some pastiches of the venerable Frenchman Jules Verne, old HG wouldn't be in print much today. Few read MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH today, one of the best polemical novels about WWI.
( sample pasted in below-- the typesetting demons are in the original . . .)
MR. BRITLING WRITES UNTIL SUNRISE
Section 1
It was some weeks later. It was now the middle of November, and Mr.Britling, very warmly wrapped in his thick dressing-gown and his thick llama wool pyjamas, was sitting at his night desk, and working ever and again at an essay, an essay of preposterous ambitions, for the title ofit was "The Better Government of the World."Latterly he had had much sleepless misery. In the day life was tolerable, but in the night--unless he defended himself by working, the losses and cruelties of the war came and grimaced at him, insufferably.Now he would be haunted by long processions of refugees, now he would think of the dead lying stiff and twisted in a thousand dreadful attitudes. Then again he would be overwhelmed with anticipations of the frightful economic and social dissolution that might lie ahead.... Atother times he thought of wounds and the deformities of body and spirit produced by injuries. And sometimes he would think of the triumph of evil. Stupid and triumphant persons went about a world that stupidity had desolated, with swaggering gestures, with a smiling consciousness of enhanced importance, with their scornful hatred of all measured and temperate and kindly things turned now to scornful contempt. And mingling with the soil they walked on lay the dead body of Hugh, face downward. At the back of the boy's head, rimmed by blood-stiffened hair--the hair that had once been "as soft as the down of a bird"--was a big red hole. That hole was always pitilessly distinct. They stepped on him--heedlessly. They heeled the scattered stuff of his exquisite brain into the clay....From all such moods of horror Mr. Britling's circle of lamplight was his sole refuge. His work could conjure up visions, like opium visions, of a world of order and justice. Amidst the gloom of world bankruptcy he stuck to the prospectus of a braver enterprise--reckless of his chances of subscribers....
Section 2
But this night even this circle of lamplight would not hold his mind. Doubt had crept into this last fastness. He pulled the papers towards him, and turned over the portion he had planned.His purpose in the book he was beginning to write was to reason out the possible methods of government that would give a stabler, saner control to the world. He believed still in democracy, but he was realising more and more that democracy had yet to discover its method. It had to takehold of the consciences of men, it had to equip itself with still unformed organisations. Endless years of patient thinking, of experimenting, of discussion lay before mankind ere this great idea could become reality, and right, the proven right thing, could rule the earth.
( sound familiar ? This was written in 1916)
As you can see, there are vague sci-fi ( for want of a better term in common currency) elements creeping in, to broaden the allegory. But my master is still, and always, Swift, like that other hero of mine, the unrealistic Herbert George Wells, poor boy from the lower classes and socialist aspirer for the world --writer of tracts himself.
If it hadn't been for those youthful works, the "scientific romances" as he called them, some pastiches of the venerable Frenchman Jules Verne, old HG wouldn't be in print much today. Few read MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH today, one of the best polemical novels about WWI.
( sample pasted in below-- the typesetting demons are in the original . . .)
MR. BRITLING WRITES UNTIL SUNRISE
Section 1
It was some weeks later. It was now the middle of November, and Mr.Britling, very warmly wrapped in his thick dressing-gown and his thick llama wool pyjamas, was sitting at his night desk, and working ever and again at an essay, an essay of preposterous ambitions, for the title ofit was "The Better Government of the World."Latterly he had had much sleepless misery. In the day life was tolerable, but in the night--unless he defended himself by working, the losses and cruelties of the war came and grimaced at him, insufferably.Now he would be haunted by long processions of refugees, now he would think of the dead lying stiff and twisted in a thousand dreadful attitudes. Then again he would be overwhelmed with anticipations of the frightful economic and social dissolution that might lie ahead.... Atother times he thought of wounds and the deformities of body and spirit produced by injuries. And sometimes he would think of the triumph of evil. Stupid and triumphant persons went about a world that stupidity had desolated, with swaggering gestures, with a smiling consciousness of enhanced importance, with their scornful hatred of all measured and temperate and kindly things turned now to scornful contempt. And mingling with the soil they walked on lay the dead body of Hugh, face downward. At the back of the boy's head, rimmed by blood-stiffened hair--the hair that had once been "as soft as the down of a bird"--was a big red hole. That hole was always pitilessly distinct. They stepped on him--heedlessly. They heeled the scattered stuff of his exquisite brain into the clay....From all such moods of horror Mr. Britling's circle of lamplight was his sole refuge. His work could conjure up visions, like opium visions, of a world of order and justice. Amidst the gloom of world bankruptcy he stuck to the prospectus of a braver enterprise--reckless of his chances of subscribers....
Section 2
But this night even this circle of lamplight would not hold his mind. Doubt had crept into this last fastness. He pulled the papers towards him, and turned over the portion he had planned.His purpose in the book he was beginning to write was to reason out the possible methods of government that would give a stabler, saner control to the world. He believed still in democracy, but he was realising more and more that democracy had yet to discover its method. It had to takehold of the consciences of men, it had to equip itself with still unformed organisations. Endless years of patient thinking, of experimenting, of discussion lay before mankind ere this great idea could become reality, and right, the proven right thing, could rule the earth.
( sound familiar ? This was written in 1916)
-
stilltrucking
- Posts: 20614
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
...
I am all out of synch here, going to print this out and sort it out.
I will have to work it out later. Perezoso is one of the most interesting writers here I think. He is very smart. He is a graduate of Antelope Valley College. That is an inside joke that probably only he will get. Perezoso is maybe the only person here that is more vain than me. And he is right about my writing. I am only in this for the cure. A scribbling free association cure.
A public existential strip tease.
Dylan busy being born
and I am busy dying
It ain't about playing gotcha for me norman, life is too short for that, at least my life is.
I am going to stop trying to connect my three dots for a while.
Try and again when I print this out. Then I should be able to sort out my replies.
Rice says the most horrible things, for a woman she seems to be very insensitive. When she talked about Israel's bombing of Lebanon this summer as the "birth pangs of a new democracy in the middle east" it made me very sad. But I don't see what that has to do with her skin color.
I am all out of synch here, going to print this out and sort it out.
I will have to work it out later. Perezoso is one of the most interesting writers here I think. He is very smart. He is a graduate of Antelope Valley College. That is an inside joke that probably only he will get. Perezoso is maybe the only person here that is more vain than me. And he is right about my writing. I am only in this for the cure. A scribbling free association cure.
A public existential strip tease.
Dylan busy being born
and I am busy dying
It ain't about playing gotcha for me norman, life is too short for that, at least my life is.
I am going to stop trying to connect my three dots for a while.
Try and again when I print this out. Then I should be able to sort out my replies.
Rice says the most horrible things, for a woman she seems to be very insensitive. When she talked about Israel's bombing of Lebanon this summer as the "birth pangs of a new democracy in the middle east" it made me very sad. But I don't see what that has to do with her skin color.
Last edited by stilltrucking on February 13th, 2007, 8:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
On another thread we have someone making slatternly dumb remarks about your writing and thought. This person ( "Perezoso", alias Jolly Roger, alias "Totenkopf") sings, in his current choice of "pseudo" as the French call it on their Web, a little aria to the lovely bunch of thugs and murderers who put Jewish people in ovens-- that is his idea of "ideation."
I understand psychotic destructiveness. But as you have pointed out, the supreme irony is someone who was until recently relegated to a prison called "Negress" and fed apologetic breadcrumbs eventually becoming Sec'y of State.
And then muffing it horribly.
I also read the article you cite.
There are trolls and there are trolls ( see the thread "The Art of Trolling" where Doreen is currently conducting herself like a cross between Joan D'Arc and Madame Curie) . . . and some of them are in the White House.
It's ironic that you mention the 1956 sf film FORBIDDEN PLANET.
Just a few nights ago, just as I recalled in an earlier thread, my wife and I were on our nightly walk again and I used the phrase "Monsters from the Id . . ." to describe the creatures in Washington and in particular GW's cronies, minions and protectorate band.
FORBIDDEN PLANET shows Hollywood science-fiction discovering Freud. Irving Block and Allen J. Adler, authors of the original story, were both Jewish, as were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of SUPERMAN, another sf immortal.
It's time we turned out our trolls-- out into outer-space blackness, where they belong, and looked inside at our own darkness, as Joseph Conrad advised us:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_c ... onrad.html
Mr. Kurtz, also, was a master bureaucrat. Another monster from the Id.
Thanks now and always for your comments on my comic strip.
Merry Christmas, ST-- and Happy and safe Chanukah!
--Z (N)
I understand psychotic destructiveness. But as you have pointed out, the supreme irony is someone who was until recently relegated to a prison called "Negress" and fed apologetic breadcrumbs eventually becoming Sec'y of State.
And then muffing it horribly.
I also read the article you cite.
There are trolls and there are trolls ( see the thread "The Art of Trolling" where Doreen is currently conducting herself like a cross between Joan D'Arc and Madame Curie) . . . and some of them are in the White House.
It's ironic that you mention the 1956 sf film FORBIDDEN PLANET.
Just a few nights ago, just as I recalled in an earlier thread, my wife and I were on our nightly walk again and I used the phrase "Monsters from the Id . . ." to describe the creatures in Washington and in particular GW's cronies, minions and protectorate band.
FORBIDDEN PLANET shows Hollywood science-fiction discovering Freud. Irving Block and Allen J. Adler, authors of the original story, were both Jewish, as were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of SUPERMAN, another sf immortal.
It's time we turned out our trolls-- out into outer-space blackness, where they belong, and looked inside at our own darkness, as Joseph Conrad advised us:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_c ... onrad.html
Mr. Kurtz, also, was a master bureaucrat. Another monster from the Id.
Thanks now and always for your comments on my comic strip.
Merry Christmas, ST-- and Happy and safe Chanukah!
--Z (N)
-
stilltrucking
- Posts: 20614
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
...
I don't know if I can do this norman but I am working on posting back every thing I deleted here. It will keep me busy for months. RIght now I am out of sequence. Please bear with me.
Going to take me awhile to repost my deletions Norman.
I am working on it. Going to start here and work backwards. The story of my life. I am counter clockwise in this clockwise world.
Nothing personal, just my hereditary insanity. Some kind of autism I think. But I think I am a hypochondriac too.
I feel like I have defaced your work here, please delete my posts if you will. Or I will repost them the best I can.
Sorry
Speaking of the darkness within, I think of Freud and his bit about the dark sea within us. Swift and Freud go together like ham and cheese.
My monsters are beneath a trap door in Baltimore. I thought I had nailed it shut, but it popped open again.
Speaking of Orson Welles and errorists or were speaking of Orwell.
I thought you might like this. I am not much better I get Orwell and Welles mixed up. A mental short circuit.
How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history
http://www.harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDar ... 38838.html
I don't know if I can do this norman but I am working on posting back every thing I deleted here. It will keep me busy for months. RIght now I am out of sequence. Please bear with me.
Going to take me awhile to repost my deletions Norman.
I am working on it. Going to start here and work backwards. The story of my life. I am counter clockwise in this clockwise world.
Nothing personal, just my hereditary insanity. Some kind of autism I think. But I think I am a hypochondriac too.
I feel like I have defaced your work here, please delete my posts if you will. Or I will repost them the best I can.
Sorry
Speaking of the darkness within, I think of Freud and his bit about the dark sea within us. Swift and Freud go together like ham and cheese.
My monsters are beneath a trap door in Baltimore. I thought I had nailed it shut, but it popped open again.
Speaking of Orson Welles and errorists or were speaking of Orwell.
I thought you might like this. I am not much better I get Orwell and Welles mixed up. A mental short circuit.
Through a Glass, Darkly“‘Those who control the present,’” Federer continued his quotation of 1984, “‘control the past.’” He paused and stared at me to make sure I understood the equation. “Orson Welles wrote that,” he said.
How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history
http://www.harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDar ... 38838.html
Last edited by stilltrucking on February 13th, 2007, 8:16 pm, edited 8 times in total.
Terrorism... Or Perpetual Fear/Greed-based War/Militarism Against Terrorism...
Two sides of the same coin, "Errorism".
And somewhere in the middle, "We, the People", powered by
cosmic ectoplasm, forced to take ever more frequent and improbable evasive maneuvers just to live....
That's what I'm reading, at least...
Thanks for the great unfolding story, Norman.
Two sides of the same coin, "Errorism".
And somewhere in the middle, "We, the People", powered by
cosmic ectoplasm, forced to take ever more frequent and improbable evasive maneuvers just to live....
That's what I'm reading, at least...
Thanks for the great unfolding story, Norman.
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
EPISODE 13!
The story so far:
Bent on freeing their captive fellow professor, Doremus Felsteiner, from the clutches of Errorists who kidnapped him because of the treatise he published, colleagues Professor Pleni Gudinski and Herman Utix have enlisted the aid of Utix's former student, the brilliant Biff, and his marvelous airship, THE CLAW, a craft of mysterious origin.
Just as Biff is about to reveal the source of this secret plane, our heroes are attacked by a rocket-bearing helicopter operated by the minions of the holy warrior, SHURHAVA BIN HAYDN. But Biff flashes away to safety at supernatural speed. As we rejoin our rescuers, Biff is about to reveal another facet of his miraculous aero-plane . . .
( click image to enlarge)
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
The story so far:
Bent on freeing their captive fellow professor, Doremus Felsteiner, from the clutches of Errorists who kidnapped him because of the treatise he published, colleagues Professor Pleni Gudinski and Herman Utix have enlisted the aid of Utix's former student, the brilliant Biff, and his marvelous airship, THE CLAW, a craft of mysterious origin.
Just as Biff is about to reveal the source of this secret plane, our heroes are attacked by a rocket-bearing helicopter operated by the minions of the holy warrior, SHURHAVA BIN HAYDN. But Biff flashes away to safety at supernatural speed. As we rejoin our rescuers, Biff is about to reveal another facet of his miraculous aero-plane . . .
( click image to enlarge)
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
-
Doreen Peri
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14562
- Joined: July 10th, 2004, 3:30 pm
- Location: Virginia
- Contact:
As always, thank you for your comix, Z! They're amazing... great stuff!
Just stopped by to give you this link...
http://www.funnytimes.com/submissions.php
I donno if you've seen this before or not but looks like it's worth checking out.
Just stopped by to give you this link...
http://www.funnytimes.com/submissions.php
I donno if you've seen this before or not but looks like it's worth checking out.
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
-
stilltrucking
- Posts: 20614
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
-
stilltrucking
- Posts: 20614
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests