For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been, “Lucky Eddie.” If not for the fact that my birth certificate and social security card both say, “Edward F. Munson,” I’d believe my first name was Lucky. Not sure how it all started or who started it. As is the case with most family legends, there are always different origin stories. It gets disputed a lot; my mom said she almost lost me in the delivery room, while my dad says I fell out of a tree and didn’t have a scratch. My first lucky memory happened when I was about five years old, maybe six, and being handed one of those lotto scratch off tickets. My parents spent tons of dough on those things, looking for the quick fix. Being as curious as a five year old could be, I asked my dad if I could scratch off one of them. Even though he was frustrated, he handed me a card and a penny and said, “Knock yourself out, kid.” We…I mean, he…won $7,500. A few weeks later, he left my mom, and after the divorce, he ended up winning me, too. And that’s when I remember being called, “Lucky Eddie.”

My dad quit his job when he left home and instead of finding a new one, he’d just use some money to buy scratch offs and handed me the penny, the lucky one. That’s how he paid rent, bought me clothes and groceries, and, generally, that’s how he got by in life. When he lost the penny…man, I thought he was going to lose his mind. He quickly realized that it wasn’t the penny that was lucky; it was me. This went on for thirteen years. Once I graduated, I joined the service, where my luck kept me from getting killed at least three times in Iraq. One day, right before I was honorably discharged, I got a letter from the State Correctional Institution in Greensburg. My dad. Inmate #497896.

Once I graduated, his life hit the skids. He had to get a job and move into a cheaper apartment in Jeannette. Dollar after dollar was spent on lotto tickets. He’d gone to the Rivers Casino once or twice, but no luck. He was evicted and started living in his car. When the car broke down, he sold it for junk parts and hit the Rivers one more time. He got caught cheating and got his ass whipped but good. And even after the beating, he was still arrested. That wouldn’t be the last time he’d be in the joint either, but it was the first.

“Dad,” I said as I shook my head, “I’ve only been gone four years.”

I got set up in an apartment in Greensburg, just to be close to him when he got out. I walked into the local Sheetz and saw that the lottery was up to about 140 grand. I figured, “Why not?” I gave the clerk five bucks, rattled off a few numbers and went home. It never occurred to me that I’d win. I hadn’t been “Lucky Eddie” since June of 1999.

Five people hit that number. With my share, I hired a lawyer, a good lawyer, and got dad’s sentence reduced to time served and community service. He was home 12 weeks later. As he walked into my apartment, he set his duffel bag down, kicked his shoes off, turned to me and said, “Lucky Eddie, you gotta hit that casino.”

*****

As I entered the casino, I went over the plan. “Play the tables.” Roulette, Blackjack, maybe even Poker, but no slots. The stakes weren’t big enough. “Unless you have a big bet, you’re not going to get a big payoff.” My father’s voice, desperate, kept droning on in my head. He wasn’t with me, but every twist, every turn, no matter how loud the machines were, I could not lose his words of advice. In the past, I stayed away from big shows of my luck because they immediately got the wrong kind of attention. Dad thought I’d be taking the casino for all it was worth, but I formulated my own plan; spread the wealth. Move from game to game, table to table, and look casual. They expect you to lose money, and even to win it, but if you get up from a table, they assume it’s for a bad reason. Keep moving.

Roulette. $25 dollar table. Played $50 a spin. Played the numbers 30, 8, and the color red. Won $500. Move on.

Blackjack. $100 dollar table with a three to two payout. Played only two hands since I got blackjack on both. Bet $200 on both hands. Walked away with $1,200.

No one had noticed me yet.

Craps is where I lost track of how I was doing and how much I was making. It was easy to stay there and just throw dice. It looks random. No counting cards, no magnetic spin. As a precaution, I always had someone hand me the die, just so it didn’t look funny. There was so much excitement, I forgot the plan. Walked away with $75,000. Time to cash out.

I was getting comp offers left and right, but I had to decline. The casino wanted their money back, but I wasn’t willing to play that game. Walked out, into the night air, and took a deep breath. The stadium was lit up for a Monday night game. A lot of attention on that side of the street. As I crossed the street, I saw him, barreling through the light at 60 miles per hour, at least. Tried to brace for the impact, but there was no use.

My dad, the man who chose me in the divorce, had run me down.

Before I passed out, I could feel him going through my pockets, taking the money. He never said a word. He didn’t even say my name.

I woke up almost a year and a half later. A coma, they told me. I was lucky to be alive, they told me.

“Yeah,” I said, “Just call me Lucky Eddie.”

–Vito Delsante

Illustration by Julian Lopez

Along with TRIP CITY artists, photographers and painters like Jen Ferguson, and Seth Kushner, I will be showing and selling an original Billy Dogma piece and a limited edition of prints [see above] inspired by The Brooklyn Bridge and “The Last Romantic Antihero” at The 3rd Annual Brooklyn Bridge Birthday Celebration group art show at Brooklyn Tattoo and Urban Folk Art Gallery launching May 25th. I have never sold an original Billy Dogma piece, so this is kind of special to me.

–Dean Haspiel

[The following first appeared in Music Feed Daily, October, 2064, by Jeffrey C. Burandt 3.]

Bill Born :  ”I came up with the name ‘The Fucking Cute’”.

Johnny Profane:  ”I came up with the name ‘The Fucking Cute’”.

Dennet Flozzard:  ”Jeff definitely came up with the name ‘The Fucking Cute’.  I remember him writing it down one day at lunch.  We both thought it was really funny and cool. As soon as Jeff wrote it down, he was like, ‘That is the best band name ever.’ And you know, that’s right around when curse-words entered our vocabulary, so everything was fucking this, and bullshit that. You can’t deny it though, ‘The Fucking Cute’ is a great band name.”

Bill Born:  ”By the summer after 7th grade, we were playing shows to about 75 kids.  The southern pasture was pretty far out there, and we hadn’t got caught so far, so we thought we were cool. And you know, we tried to keep the shows as secret as we could. Everyone was worried that Jeff would get into more trouble if he was caught playing in a band. And we couldn’t be sure what would happen to the H69, although Neil agreed to claim it was his if it ever came down to it, since Neil’s progenitor had played keys for a spell with Grand Schematic Overtones. But anyway, those shows were probably the best time of my life. We’d be rocking the shed and just row after row of twitching adolescents would cascade out into the West Texas Hill Country. Everybody dancing, and jumping around, Jeff and Johnny most of all. And I swear, two-thirds of those kids couldn’t even see us performing because they couldn’t get inside. But they loved it nonetheless.  It was an amazing time. Punk rock at it’s purest.”

Janice Flange:  ”I had no idea what the boys were up to that summer. I was pretty hooked on pills back then.  Uppers to keep me going during the day, downers to put me to sleep.  I was practically in a coma by 8 p.m. every night. And security at God’s Harvest wasn’t what it is today. They were still pooling most of their resources into research and development, from what I understand.”

Dennet Flozzard:  ”I was always warning Jeff that Uncle Art would find out somehow, and then we’d all be in trouble. It was just getting too big and too loud. By then, half the sanitation workers were on the take to drive us all out there with the band’s gear, and to buy us beer and cigarettes and weed. But Jeff wouldn’t listen to me. Once more than 20 kids were showing up at the shed, Jeff had me going around collecting $5 from each person, but that didn’t stop the kids from coming. The one week it was 20, the next it was 40, then 60, 70. It just blew up. This all happened right before they had me put up the band’s site on the Overnet.”

Paul Ferverson :  ”I always keep my ear to the ground. I spend half my days uploading demos from the Overnet, and checking out band sites and member profiles. There are a billion bands out there that you will never, ever hear of. Unless of course they’re one of mine. Paul Ferverson bands do not fly under the radar.  But anyway, that’s how I discovered The Fucking Cute. The same way I always discover the next big thing: I keep my ear to the ground, and I listen to everything. That, and I’m Paul Ferverson. I know what’s cool 36 hours before your children do.”

Dennet Flozzard:  ”Well I was the site manager, so Paul Ferverson contacted me first. He said he was putting this huge festival together in Austin, and wanted The Fucking Cute to play in it. He wrote that if we performed well enough, he’d put us on as one of his acts and the band would be famous. Honestly, I  freaked out–and not in a good way. We were all going to be in detention for the rest of our lives, I thought.

Johnny Profane:  ”Oh yeah, I was totally in to it. We all were. It was like, Fuck Yeah let’s do it! Only that little turd Dennet dissented, but we were all, ‘You’re not even in the band, so fuck off.’”

Dennet Flozzard: Johnny likes to pretend I had nothing to do with the band. He doesn’t dare mention that I was the one who programmed the upgrades for the H69 TFS. I was the one—at Jeff’s behest of course—I was the one who figured out a way to make the sounds it made addictive. Sure, they got that first show because, yeah, they were good. But they were just kids playing rockstar. For better or for worse, it’s the aural virus I installed  that took them to the top of the charts.

Bill Born:  ”We went to Mr. Wa immediately. We just knew that he would understand, and we needed help getting out of God’s Harvest and to Austin.”

Duck Fu Wa:  ”Look, I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Yes, I wanted the boys to do well for themselves, and not miss out on a once in a lifetime opportunity and all that. But, in all honesty this was, one, not only my chance to get in contact with one of the biggest producers on the planet, but two, to really give it to Art Boggleman and God’s Harvest. So, I agreed to work things out with Paul, and before we knew it, The Fucking Cute were opening for Parker’s Rebellion at the 1st annual Fervor Fest in Austin, Texas. Now all we had to do was physically get them there.”

Bill Born:  ”It actually came together pretty smoothly.  Mr. Wa pretty much commuted from Austin to God’s Harvest every day anyway—it’s about an hour and half/ two hour drive. Mr. Wa said that a lot of the faculty did that then, before Cleo became the hub that it is today. He drove this huge—whattayacallit, champagne colored? I don’t know, it was this kind of silvery tan—whatever, the point is, he had this huge van for his own equipment, so transporting us along with our gear wasn’t even an issue. We just had to duck as he drove through the gate. In the meantime, Paul Ferverson called each of our house-parents and cut them a deal: they got some chump-change like $500 for “over-looking” our absence for the weekend. No big deal, really.”

Janice Flange:  ”Oh, I was happy for Jeffrey!  I thought it was very exciting! And that Paul Ferverson was so nice on the phone. I didn’t understand really why Uncle Art would have minded so much, but I didn’t say anything. I was happy to have a little extra money for the month too.”

Dennet Flozzard:  ”I wasn’t allowed to go.  Johnny kept going on about how I wasn’t even in the band, and Bill agreed that they didn’t need my help this time, or how it was just another body to worry about. I think Jeff would have still let me go, but Mr. Wa absolutely refused. He said there wasn’t room in the van and that was final. I’ve never been so hurt in my life. I remember telling myself, ‘don’t cry, don’t cry,’ because Johnny was sitting in the back window, flipping me off as they drove away. As soon as they turned the corner, I had a fit. I just remember thrashing around on the ground mostly. I didn’t cry though–just, you know, sort of rolled around, punching and kicking at the earth. Tore up my clothes and bloodied my knees. The next thing I know, I’m running to the shed where the band practiced. At some point, I started drinking our secret cache of beers; I don’t know how many.  I blacked out. It turned out one of the Mexicans found me passed out in my own vomit and took me to the infirmary. I woke up with a terrible headache, my right arm handcuffed to one of those hospital cots, and an I.V. stuck in my wrist. Uncle Art stood over me with this expression on his face like he’d just found out his wife had been cheating on him or something. He told me that they’d had to pump my stomach and that it was time for he and I to have a little talk about what was going on out at that shed.”

[End Part 4]

[Read Part 1 HERE. Read Part 2 HERE. Read Part 3 HERE]

On the first warm weekend in May, the streets were busy in Washington DC’s Dupont Circle, an artsy roundel that leads north from the White House and mall area. Loungers at Dupont’s fountain flipped through paperbacks and smoothed sun dresses a stone’s throw from several local bookshops presenting a collage of the local arts scene: poetry, painting, theatre, indie comics.

Hillyer Art Space lay at the end of a quiet avenue of old brick buildings and town-homes flanked by converted stables from the era of the carriage, but the crisp exterior melon and grey paint had transformed it into a unique and inviting venue. People drifting in seemed unaware that they were embarking on something essentially controversial: the culture crime of mixed media mash-up and genre cross-dressing as sponsored by the enablers at Barrelhouse and Big Planet Comics.

(“Cinco de Sandra” poster designed by Rachel Dougan)

As if everyone attending Sandra Beasley’s off-beat birthday bash were part of this performance “happening”, they seemed to know when it was time to get started, pulling up folding chairs with carefully balanced icy-bottled drinks in hand to collaborate in this conspiracy of genre-bending that would consist of a controlled collision of the audio, the visual, the spoken and the read.

Talk show host and assistant editor at The Huffington Post DC, Brandon Wetherbee, set the 21^st century tone by encouraging us to tweet our satirical comments at performers while appearing to listen respectfully while he directed the flow of the multimedia experience.

(Jim Dougan / Tony Mancus)

Comics writer and ACTIVATE contributor Jim Dougan was our first offender, delivering a brutal zinger of a reflective comic on the tokens of manhood honored in suburban life as illustrated by Roger Langridge. Jim immediately set a challenging tone for the techno-performance gathering by using “activated” projected panels that appeared for emphasis. He returned later with “How I Lost My S#?!  at the Apple Store,” illustrated by fellow performer Molly Lawless, recounting the slow build of consumer aggro that led to a violent, shaming outburst in an Apple Store, a shout no doubt heard around the world.

(Dean Haspiel & Jen Ferguson)

Dean Haspiel and Jen Ferguson immersed us in Dean’s “The Last Romantic Antihero” in full-panel spread with blocks of bold color, appearing almost cinematic against the projected white back wall where they took their place in the line-up. The shocking apocalyptic images of the Billy Dogma tale were particularly brought home in this venue introducing the urban hell and desert decay of literal and figurative social disconnection. Was this subversive gathering itself some form of antidote for the myopic “what about me?” of the narrative. Dean also intoned a first reading of his prose “I’d Rather Be Happy Than Right” from the Trip City Visitor’s Guide 2012 heralding the reckoning of self-knowledge often conveyed to us by others in a world where we might be a little too sure that “everything has its place,” art forms included.

Tony Mancus, established poet and publisher, charged the stage next with his bold elliptical circumnavigation of cultural allusion and internal experience in verse, suggesting the raucous descent of a rollercoaster with the requisite exhilaration of observing the world crash by before stumbling away from the near-wreck of language. He verbally painted the portrait of a modern man, excoriated the ravages of punctuation, and insisted on the predatory nature of poetry “very aware of itself.”

(Jennifer Tress / Molly Lawless)

Comics creator and graphic novelist Molly Lawless brought us “repressed memory theatre” concerning the humiliations of parental humor, also using cued sliding frames and mobile textbox commentary to plumb the Hadean depths of the “defective gene” of Boston Red Sox fans losing their faith in “miracles.” Stunning nostalgic style led us deep into the ephemera of childhood and adolescence, but shed a particular light on the conflict-generating parent-child relationship from the perspective of the reflective adult.

Writer and Huffington Post contributor Jennifer Tress reported on her younger self with a series of child-drawn slides gleaned from family archives kept by “hippie parents” who had no compunction carefully explaining the nitty gritty science of procreation to a four year old expecting a new sibling. The illustrated “sex papers” she drew at the time created a window on the visual nature of mental processes, and reinforced an ongoing theme of looking back from an altered, quizzical perspective on youthful reactions to the strange and unexpected.

Meanwhile, the irrepressible Wetherbee broke into a discussion of another “live” art as life performance, Rue Paul’s Drag Race and the virtues of loving yourself. It might have just as easily been a commentary on the meaningfully transgressive combinations of self-expression taking the stage at “Cinco de Sandra.”

(Natalie E. Illum / Sandra Beasley)

Veteran performance poet and writer Natalie E. Illum introduced the concept of “body poems” in tightly intertwined phrases with an unpredictably recursive quality, re-evaluating previous statements and undercutting their meaning into new forms. Natalie’s performance style electrified the room, springing between clipped enunciation of the “hope chest” of the body to the more flowing interleaved card-tricks of “chance,” again hinting at the impact of earlier generations on the ongoing premises of our generation.

Guest of honor, Trip City contributor, and laurelled poet Sandra Beasley, the birthday girl of 5/5 (we tried not to kill) was up last, and seemed to embody the nature of the event’s combined geography as someone with both New York and DC connections, traveling between them and all points with her “heart in a suitcase.” Sandra poked fun at our own intrinsic anachronisms from the perspectives of our future selves, and the “ridiculous” activities we perform in search of the individual “verandahs” where we hope to affirm our own “calling.” The first live reading of Beasley’s Trip City published “Hunger: (a sextina),” which had been daring in its metaphors for desire in print, was exuberantly irreverent in spoken word.

(Top: DJ P-Vo, Dean Haspiel, Jen Ferguson, Jim Dougan
Bottom: Natalie E. Illum, Sandra Beasley)

Jim Dougan, one of the event’s organizers who also has close ties to New York but resides in DC, commented afterward that he “wanted everyone who performed to have the chance to put their best foot forward and strut their stuff, and for everyone who came to be really entertained.” I watched the interaction of disparate artistic creators to the tunes of Paul Vodra, a.k.a DJ P-Vo, who provided our grounded musical subtext for the exploration of live artistic experience, and concluded that Dougan had gotten his wish. Something surprisingly unlikely and well beyond the status quo of established art genres had been achieved at “Cinco de Sandra” via the pageantry of performance; it was time to celebrate.

–Hannah Means-Shannon

Hannah Means-Shannon is a comics scholar and medievalist who has published articles on the works of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison in the International Journal of Comic Art, Studies in Comics, the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, reference books, and upcoming essay collections. She is working on her first book, as well as scholarly blog-posts for Sequart Research and Literacy Organization about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore and teaches at Georgian Court University in New Jersey.

She is @Hannah Menzies on twitter.

TRIP CITY LIVE! The Brooklyn-filtered, multimedia, literary arts salon TRIP CITY (http://TRIPCITY.net/) presents its first offline hullabaloo: Live Comix, Stories, Music, Girls, Food and Libations on Wednesday, May 30th from 8pm – 11pm at Fornino Park Slope. 254 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215-1924

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/132609150207335

Starring:

DEAN HASPIEL http://welcometotripcity.com/contributors/deanhaspiel/
SANDRA BEASLEY http://tripcity.net/contributors/sandra-beasley/
SETH KUSHNER http://tripcity.net/contributors/seth-kushner/
CHRIS MISKIEWICZ http://tripcity.net/contributors/chris-miskiewicz/
BROOKE VAN POPPELEN http://www.brookevanpoppelen.com/
AMERICANS UK http://tripcity.net/contributors/jef-uk/
JOE INFURNARI http://tripcity.net/contributors/joe-infurnari/
PLUCKY CHARMS
JAHFURRY http://tripcity.net/contributors/jeff-newelt/
KIKI VALENTINE http://kikivalentine.tumblr.com/
JOSH FRANKEL http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/cleveland/767
Q*BALL http://welcometotripcity.com/contributors/ron-scalzo/
+ Special Guests

http://TRIPCITY.net/ = free regular content including original fiction, memoir, spoken word essays, first-person pop, bite-sized noir, post-punk apocalyptic rock, cocksure comix, icon-o-classic profiles, romance & neurotica, podcasts & interviews created by a fellowship of 21st Century auteurs

Curated by and featuring exclusive content from Emmy award winning artist Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma, Bored to Death), Seth Kushner (Leaping Tall Buildings, The Brooklynites), Chris Miskiewicz (Everywhere), and Jeffrey Burandt aka Jef UK (Americans UK).

Featuring Joe Infurnari (MUSH! Sled Dogs with Issues, Marathon), Jennifer Hayden (Underwire), Nick Abadzis (Laika), Jen Ferguson (Art in Chaos), Ron Scalzo (Bald Freak Music), Sandra Beasley (Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life , I Was The Jukebox), Dan Goldman (Shooting War, Red Light Properties), Jeff Newelt (Heeb Magazine, The Pekar Project), Jonathan Vankin (The World’s Greatest Conspiracies), Amy Finkel (Furever), Kevin Colden (Fishtown), Vito Delsante (FCHS), Amanda Ferguson (HBO’s Luck), Eric Skillman (Liar’s Kiss), and The Perv Whisperer (The Perv Whisperer).

A few years ago, I was contacted by award winning writer Mat Johnson, best known for his Vertigo graphic novels Incognegro, and Dark Rain, and he recently wrote the critically acclaimed novel, Pym. Mat asked me to take part in a collaboration for a comix writing course he was teaching at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program. I was to help realize and draw a students comic book script. For sake of showing the creative process, I’ve chronicled the evolution of the original story and script between conversations I had with the writer and my final edits. It was an interesting study and lesson in what makes a story work and not work in the comic book format while respecting the authors intent.

–Dean Haspiel

***

BRANDON WHITE’S ORIGINAL SCRIPT

“Dope house doors” by Brandon White

1.1 Mid Shot

Voice Over: As a child I would race my grandfather down this street

Male dressed in a worn hooded sweatshirt with a wool hat pulled over his ears knocks on a beat up wooden door.

1.2 Close up

Voice Over: Past this Brownstone

Door is cracked open and a man’s squinted eyes are visible.

2.1 Extended View

Voice Over: I would always let him win

Male is standing in doorway of a rundown brownstone extending his hand to his female companion. It’s a gentleman like pose. He is indicating that she can go before him.

2.2 Close up

Voice Over: Because I never wanted the race to last forever

He notices her freckles as she walks by him. He thinks to himself that she looks so tired. He had never noticed how tired her face had become. She is smiling. Half of her smile is shadowed by the shadow of the door and the light of the street light.

3.1 Close up

A wrinkled ten-dollar bill is passed between two hands. One hand is the nameless males’; the other is an anonymous one.

3.2 Close up

A flame spouts from a lighter.

3.3 Close up

Smoke, shaped loosely like a crack pipe floats toward a bare ceiling light bulb.

4.1 Close up

Male’s hand is shaking.

4.2 Close up

Male’s hand stops shaking.

4.3 Mid Shot

Caption :In smaller box an image of how he imagines the female and himself walking down the sidewalk is being compared to how they must really look like.

Male laughs. His laughing breath is seen as smoke dissipating in the winter air.

5.1 Close up shot

Female
Whatchu Laughing at?

Male
God is funny.

Female
You ain’t lying on that one. As funny as you wanting to go home. Fuck was that about?

5.2 Extended shot

Male
Just broke.

Female
And had me waiting all day for that shit? Coulda been there already. Could be inside instead of this cold ass shit.

Male
Yeah.

5.3 Close up

The male’s face is visibly relaxed. He remembers walking the same sidewalk as a child. His memory is interrupted by the sound of her constant footsteps being interrupted. He can hear the hitch in her step.

5.4 Medium Shot

He leans down and cradles her body.

Male
C’mon baby. C’mon. You messing with me? Mad that I was ready to go? You know I had to get Nisi a present. C’mon baby girl, I’ll save up for next time. Both of us. Okay?

6.1 Extended Shot

Caption: Inside shot of them on the same street. They are children on the same street. She is chasing him as he runs away with her book-bag.

He is cradling her body underneath the streetlights.

***

BRANDON WHITE’S SECOND DRAFT [post conversation with Dean Haspiel]

Dope house doors

1.1 Wide Shot

Voice Over: As a child I would race my grandfather down this street on our way to church.

A Chicago winter at night. Because of street lamps, snow is visible on the bare tree branches. A man and woman(Sharon) are walking thru the snow, past one-story houses designed in the late fifties and early sixties. It’s forty years later. The man is dressed in a worn hooded sweatshirt with a wool hat pulled over his ears is walking with a woman. His hands are tucked into the pockets of the sweatshirt. The woman is a step behind him. She has on just as much clothing. A jacket, scarf and baseball cap. But whereas the man fills out his clothes, the woman is almost hidden by hers.

1.2 Mid Shot

VO: I’d always have an early lead

The view is from the door’s perspective. The man is about to knock. His beard is thick, thinning after his jaw line, a mixture of grey and black. The woman’s face is freckled. Her eyes are tired, the bags underneath her eyes fade into her freckled cheeks.

1.3 Close up

VO: But I’d always glance back at him

Door is cracked open and a man’s squinting eyes are visible.

2.1 Extended View

VO: And stop right before I crossed the finish line

Male is standing in doorway of a rundown brownstone extending his hand to his female companion. It’s a gentleman like pose. He is indicating that she can go before him.

2.2 Mid Shot

VO: Because I wanted the race to last forever

He notices her freckles as she walks by him. He thinks to himself that she looks so tired. He had never noticed how tired her face had become. She is smiling. Half of her smile is shadowed by the shadow of the door and the light of the streetlight.

2.3 Close Up

The door is closed behind them. A small amount of windblown snow has collected on it’s handle.

3.1 Close up

A wrinkled ten-dollar bill is passed between two hands. One hand is the males’s. The other is an anonymous one.

3.2 Close up

A flame spouts from a lighter.

3.3 Close up

Smoke, shaped loosely like a crack pipe floats toward a bare ceiling light bulb.

4.1 Close up

Male’s hand is shaking.

4.2 Close up

Male’s hand stops shaking.

4.3 Mid Shot

The pair back outside again. Sharon’s eyes are closed and her lips are tight, she is angry at something. The male laughs. His laughing breath is seen as smoke dissipating in the winter air. The smoke is dissipating into an image of his imagination. He imagines himself and the woman walking down the same street except that it’s summertime. The trees are full and they are a couple dressed as if they walking to church.

5.1 Mid Shot

Sharon
Whatchu Laughing at?

Male
God is funny.

Female
You ain’t lying on that one. As funny as you wanting to go home? Fuck was that about?

5.2 Close up

Male
Just broke.

Sharon
And had me waiting all day for that shit? Coulda been there already. Could still be inside instead of this cold ass shit.

Male
I’m a good uncle. Had to buy Nisi a present yesterday

5.3 Mid Shot

The pair are walking closer together than they were on their way to the dope house. They are walking stride for stride, his hand grazing her thigh. He has a smile on his face, he seems to be lost in pleasant thoughts. The bags underneath her eyes have taken over her freckled cheeks.

5.4 Close up

Her knees buckle.

6.1 Mid Shot

He had her body cradled between his arms. His legs are spread out in the snow. The snow is broken around their shape. A broken snow angel. Her right hand is on her chest.

Male
Sharon?

6.2 Close Up

Her breath rises into the cold air. It exits her mouth as a long trail of steam.

6.3 Close Up

There is no steam rising from her lips. His right index and middle fingers are resting against her lips.

6.4 Extended Shot

Inside shot of them on the same street. They are children on the same street. She is chasing him as he runs away with her book-bag.

He is cradling her body underneath the streetlights.

Male
You were so beautiful.

***

DEAN HASPIEL’S REVISION OF BRANDON WHITE’S SECOND DRAFT

Dope House Doors

PAGE ONE

1.1 A Chicago winter at night. Because of street lamps, snow is visible on the bare tree branches. A man and woman (Sharon) are walking thru the snow, past one-story houses designed in the late fifties and early sixties. It’s forty years later. The man is dressed in a worn hooded sweatshirt with a wool hat pulled over his ears is walking with a woman. His hands are tucked into the pockets of the sweatshirt. The woman is a step behind him. She has on just as much clothing; a jacket, scarf and baseball cap. But whereas the man fills out his clothes, the woman is almost hidden by hers.

DOPE HOUSE DOORS –or- SNOW ANGELS [alternative title]
Written by Brandon White
Illustrated by Dean Haspiel

CAP1 As a child I would race my grandfather down this street on our way to church.

CAP2 I’d always have an early lead.

CAP3 But, I’d always glance back at him–

1.2 The view is from the door’s perspective. The man is about to knock. His beard is thick, thinning after his jaw line, a mixture of grey and black. The woman’s face is freckled. Her eyes are tired, the bags underneath her eyes fade into her freckled cheeks.

CAP –and stop right before I crossed the finish line.

1.3 Close up – Door is cracked open and a man’s squinting eyes are visible.

CAP Because I wanted the race to last forever.

PAGE TWO

2.1 Extended View Male is standing in doorway of a rundown brownstone extending his hand to his female companion. It’s a gentleman like pose. He is indicating that she can go before him.

MAN After you, mademoiselle.

2.2 Close-up – He notices her freckles as she walks by him.

CAP Sharon.

2.3 Close-up – He thinks to himself that she looks so tired. He had never noticed how tired her face had become.

CAP I never noticed how tired her face has become.

2.4 Sharon is smiling. Half of her smile is shadowed by the shadow of the door and the light of the streetlight.

PAGE THREE

3.1 A wrinkled ten-dollar bill is passed between two hands. One hand is the male’s. The other is an anonymous one.

3.2 A flame spouts from a lighter.

3.3 Smoke, shaped loosely like a crack pipe floats toward a bare ceiling light bulb.

3.4 Male’s hand is shaking.

3.5 Male’s hand stops shaking.

PAGE FOUR [splash page]

The pair is back outside, walking away from the crack house. Sharon’s eyes are closed and her lips are tight, she is angry at something. The male laughs. His laughing breath is seen as smoke dissipating in the winter air. The smoke is dissipating into an image of his imagination. He imagines himself and the woman walking down the same street except that it’s summertime. The trees are full and they are a couple dressed as if they walking to church.

MAN Hahahahaha

PAGE FIVE

5.1 Mid Shot of Man and Sharon, walking and talking.

SHARON1 Whatchu Laughing at?

MAN God is funny.

SHARON2 You ain’t lying on that one.

5.2 close-up of Sharon, upset.

SHARON As funny as you wanting to go home? Fuck was that about?

5.3 Close up of man.

MAN Just broke.

5.4 Close-up of Sharon.

SHARON1 And, you had me waiting all day for that shit? Coulda been there already. SHARON2 Could still be inside instead of this cold ass shit.

5.5 The pair are walking closer together than they were on their way to the dope house. They are walking stride for stride, his hand grazing her thigh. He has a smile on his face; he seems to be lost in pleasant thoughts. The bags underneath her eyes have taken over her freckled cheeks.

MAN1 I’m a good uncle.

MAN2 Had to buy Nisi a present yesterday.

5.6 [inset] close-up of Sharon’s knees buckling.

PAGE SIX

6.1 Mid Shot

He has her body cradled between his arms. His legs are spread out in the snow. The snow is broken around their shape — a broken snow angel. Her right hand is on her chest.

MAN Sharon?

6.2 Close Up

Her breath rises into the cold air. It exits her mouth as a long trail of steam.

6.3 Close Up

There is no steam rising from her lips. His right index and middle fingers are resting against her lips.

6.4 split screen between past and present.

THE PAST: they are children on the same street. She is chasing him as he runs away with her book-bag. PRESENT SHOT: He is cradling her body underneath the streetlights.

MAN You were so beautiful.

The end.

I will be teaching graphic novels for an Artists-In-Residency program at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida from Oct 8 – 28th. If interested, please submit by June 8th.

http://www.atlanticcenterforthearts.org/artresprog/resschedule/oct/d_haspiel.html

There are only a few zero-cost outs from all professional deadlines, the easiest being “We’ve had a death in the family.” Far from needing a vacation — or even one more deadline-eating non-producing day away from my desk — I spoke the spell to my editor in New York that pushed my comic’s next chapter forward one week and quit Skype with a digital squelch. Behind me Lil was still in her bra, stepping into black leggings, and I realized didn’t own a black suit or even black slacks anymore; we’d jettisoned so much when we left New York, I was almost exclusively a shorts-and-tshirt motherfucker now. Lil waved it away: “that doesn’t really matter, just put on something nice, we don’t have much time.” Her parents were already out in Zona Leste [eastern zone of the city] with Oba-chan [grandma] and instructed us to take the Metrô out there so they could take us to the velorio [funeral body-viewing parlor] before the rest of “the community” began to show up and pay their respects. She seemed okay, a few tears right when we heard, but Lil’s a tough one, tougher than me most days.

The Metrô ride was quick, dropping into Vila Carrão in Zona Leste [east zone] of the city where the heart of the Okinawan community in São Paulo beats, along with most of Lil’s extended family. It’s… really quite ugly to me: mostly squat little houses with high iron gates covered in pixação of gangland code that reveals how many people live there and what route/time they come home for easy robbery. Vila Carrão isn’t the roughest part of Z.L. by a long shot, but the difference in culture and tone is Manhattan to Newark; I already stuck out like a gringo sore thumb in Liberdade, out here I was practically strobing “MUG ME MUG ME” to the passing motoboys [motorcycle couriers] and malandros [criminals]. But coming above ground, there was the Honda of the Parents waiting for us at the corner outside the station, dependable as ever. We got in and by rote I almost asked “tudo bem?” [Everything good?] before catching my tongue; my father-in-law’s dad was dead, tudo was certainly not bem today. We all solemnly shook hands and rode to the velorio in silence, parked the car in silence.

It was unnerving how much the velorio looked like my elementary school in Miami, two squat rows of rooms with a breezeway running down the middle, painted in flat colors, lit by low-cost fluorescent bulbs. There was nothing overly religious here, it felt more like a municipal building; any religious jimjams were put inside the rooms with the name of the deceased on the corkboard by the door. We found the one marked “Higa, Joshun” quickly, and he was in there already.

He looked asleep in the wooden coffin: it was open and he was sleeping in it under a see-through veil that seemed more a morbid Catholic thing than an Okinawan one. The room was full of family, tias [aunts] standing up and smoothing their skirts to kiss my cheek, but my eyes stayed on Oji-san [grandfather] maybe a little too long. I’d just sat next to him a few days before, watched him take bites out of sweet potatoes at the table with wild abandon like a disobediant toddler, shoyu [soy sauce] dotting the grey stubble on his chin that Otossan’s razor had missed. And here he was now, looking the same… but the thing that was him had gone out of it.

Lil’s elbow popped into my kidney and I turned to catch the incoming kisses on my cheek, my eyes not totally leaving Oji’s body. Lil’s older brother Tetsuo arrived with his wife soon after with several boxes of Japanese jasmine incense that he immediately set up in an urn in the corner next to the coffin, inviting everyone to light three sticks of their own.

This was my fourth funeral (two Jewish, one Southern Baptist) but my first uchinanchi one. The whole family came, the whole community came, many many faces I’d never seen before or since who regarded me with questioning who-the-fuck-is-this-gaijin-in-here eyes but politely shook my hand anyways, their faces softening when someone whispered that I was Lil’s marido de America [husband from America]. The faces kept coming. They’d stoop over the coffin and look at Oji’s peaceful face, touch his hand or cheek, quietly cry in a reserved and civilized manner. I watched Tetsuo keeping a constant vigil on the incense pot, never letting the smoke go out; when I asked him about it, he said in the ancient Ryukyu traditions they believed the incense to help anchor the spirit with the family while the body awaited its final resting place. Normally, they prefer prefer disposal by cremation, but today the crematorios were fully-booked so Oji’s body would have to interred for seven years in a crypt, after which point it will be exhumed and cremated. There were too many people around to get an explanation about this and I’d actually forgotten about it until just now. We sat there receiving community members until the sun began to set, the parking lot outside lit only by glowing orange streetlights, the night full of bird sounds, traffic sounds, creaking cicadas. By that time we’d lit the room full of candles, the guests stopped coming and it was just us family again.

All night we sat in the velorio with Oji, and with his body. I make this distinction on purpose; he wasn’t in his body anymore but he was very much there, around us, existing now inside us. I didn’t really know him but it’s something you could feel. Tetsuo and I kept the incense lit but mostly no one spoke. I got up and went for a walk at one point, remembering that there were nine other vigils, nine other families grieving over nine other dead bodies… and that this happened here every single day. Coats upon coats of psychic paint. I walked through the breezeway, peeking in on other peoples’ grief, as a white cat sat on a bench outside one of the other rooms, throwing me a dirty look before returning to licking the length of its back legs. The vibe in here was thick with spirits, worse than a hospital, worse than a funeral… the velorio was the bowl that caught the tears.

I went out the back and found a small cafeteria out front that I hadn’t noticed on the way in. I ordered a bitter café from the zombie behind the counter and sat on a creaky old stool, watched stray dogs wander into the velorio and back out into the street. The digital clock on the Brahma beer sign told me it was nearly 4am, and I craved a cigarette even though I’d quit years ago. Bird calls in the trees overhead got a little more hectic and the sky started to pinken at the horizon; I took a paper bag full of mini pães de queijo back to the fam who must’ve been starving. They nodded a quiet thanks and ate them in silence. Tetsuo tended the incense. Otossan and Okassan sat next to each other in the candlelight, staring at Oji’s body. Every family has their drama and I could feel history bleeding off my in-laws without knowing any of the context. It was enough. I took Lil’s hand and gave it a squeeze, she folded onto me like a sleepy child.

Sometime around ten, community members started arriving again, this time with more flowers and containers of food, talking in uchinaguchi I did not understand. Without anyone telling me a thing, the funeral just started happening. Oji’s body was picked up by pre-designated pallbearers, the giant wreath of flowers carried by someone else, and we left in a procession through the velorio breezeway with his body. Ahead of us, one of the other families carried their dead, that white cat following them behind them, making sure they did everything right.

The cemitério was a short walk uphill from there, a typical Brazilian graveyard full of family crypts that sat above ground in a miniature cement city of names and dates. We buried him in a short service that mostly in Japanese; it was efficient and I think Oji would’ve appreciated that, to the extent that I knew him or even about him. At the end, when the coffin had been placed inside the crypt and the cement door slid back into place, Tetsuo dumped out the remaining two boxes of unlit incense in front of the sealed crypt and set the whole pile of it aflame, making much smoke. On the top of the crypt, I spied a giant red army ant who’d had perched itself there throughout the whole service as though listening. When the burning incense became a jasmine-smoking blaze, it reared its red body up on its back four legs and wagged its antennae back at the family, maybe in pride, maybe in gratitude.

– Dan Goldman

Next time: ”PDSD: A Diagnosis”

Previously in TOUCANNUÍ:
Part 00: Intro: Dead Yorkie, a dead dog and mission statement of sorts
Part 01: A Month by the Sea, in which the journey begins in a red minivan
Part 02: Bem-Vindo, mostly airplane and airport
Part 03: Tanta Chuva, about a rainy first day in-country
Part 04: The View from São Joaquim, meet the new joint
Part 05: The Fruits of Feirinha, a greenmarket odyssey
Part 06: Ser Estrangeiro, on being a foreigner
Part 07: Nova Express, the brain’s first language level-up
Part 08: Bonito, Part I, the family Christmas trip to the wild begins
Part 09: Bonito, Part II, bacon-flavored fish & piranha soup
Part 10: Bonito, Part III [fim], river magic and bye-bye
Part 11: This Will Be Our Year, a new year, a clean slate, grandparents

I was 8.  We were all seated around the dinner table in our subterranean kitchen in Brooklyn, a rare late Friday afternoon that my parents were both home for dinner.  My Dad was a cop and often worked late shifts, but for a few years in the ‘80s, he worked a second job on Friday nights, managing a Staten Island video arcade that my grandfather owned.

In 1983, having a Dad who managed an arcade once a week was a major coup.  Dad would alternate taking my younger sister and I along for a free night of sampling every popular video game imaginable, often taking us over the Verrazano Bridge on the back of his motorcycle.  We would eat roast beef sandwiches and donuts in the back room and give out tokens to obsessed teenagers as the jukebox blasted.  Dad would give me 10 dollars’ worth of tokens and send me out into arcade bliss, Pac-Man and Punch-Out, Donkey Kong, Dragon’s Lair and Dig Dug, all night long.

It was magical, something I looked forward to all week.  It was only once that my anticipation was tempered – the night we sat around the dinner table and watched Tourist Trap.

Movies were rarely standard fare on the little black and white TV in our kitchen – when my Mom cooked on weekdays, she would always have the tube on.  It would be ABC Eyewitness News with Bill Beutel & Roger Grimsby, followed by a cavalcade of syndicated sitcoms – Three’s Company, All In The Family, WKRP In Cincinnati, Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, One Day At A Time, The Jeffersons.  By the time we all sat down to dinner, it was game show time – Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Hollywood Squares.

For whatever reason, on this infamous Friday night, it was Tourist Trap instead, a movie that I had no preconceived notions about.  My father was home and we were heading out to the arcade right after dinner.  I suppose Dad was a fan of Chuck Connors as The Rifleman, and Tourist Trap’s one and only name actor was the ex-Brooklyn Dodger making it worth watching in his eyes.  Tourist Trap came out in 1979 with a low budget and a no-name director.  In a classic blunder by the MPAA, the film is rated PG, thus making it acceptable fodder for network television.

My mother must have been distracted or apathetic that night because she would have likely not allowed her 7 and 8 year-old children to be subject to such pleasantries as a woman’s face being turned into a plaster mask, a man impaled by a flying pipe, and a hatchet to the back of Tanya Roberts’ skull.  When you watched these movies on TV, that meant commercial breaks every 15 minutes or so, and thus time to reflect upon the short nightmare you’ve just witnessed before bracing yourself for the next one.  I can recall balking at the dinner table while my parents eventually debated over why this movie was acceptable fodder for children.  I can imagine my Mom getting ticked off at my Dad, who probably laughed it off, as he usually did in these instances.

Tourist Trap borrows heavily from Carrie and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, two superior films that were released just a few years before – but it has a certain style, an aesthetic that delivers chills that scarred me for a very long time.  It’s one of those movies where all the eventual victims do everything wrong for the sake of setting up the scares.  They have car trouble and go skinny dipping, they go off alone for stupid reasons, they hear noises and ask ‘who’s there?’ instead of getting the fuck out of Dodge, they wear tight denim and sleeveless vests.  They’re just plain asking for it.

Connors is Mr. Slausen, the seemingly kindly owner of a now-closed roadside attraction featuring creepy mannequins.  One by one, the teenagers unlucky enough to get stuck at Slausen’s abandoned sideshow are picked off by a killer who appears in various creepy elaborate plaster masks.  Whether you’re 8 or 80, these masks are scary as hell, their fright factor enhanced by their lifeless eyes and eventually accompanied by a robotic distorted voice emanating behind them as the film unfolds. It’s never explained, but the masked looney uses telekinetic powers to subdue his victims and ultimately turns them into mannequins themselves.  As an 8 year-old, this did not sit well with me at all and I quickly lost my appetite for my Gorton’s Fish Sticks.

The last scene I could stomach involves the archetypical ‘pure & chaste’ girl, the sole survivor of the film, picked up by Slausen on the side of the road after being pursued by the killer.  Slausen enters one of the attractions to investigate and (of course) leaves the girl, Molly, alone outside with a shotgun.  Cue the killer’s appearance, this time looking like a psychotic Joan Collins, and Molly wisely shoots him multiple times.  As a kid, I couldn’t wrap my head around this, as the killer keeps inexplicably getting up until finally revealing that the gun is filled with blanks.  “Bang bang, you’re dead,” he teases Mollly in his robot voice.  Molly cold cocks him with the shotgun, breaking his mask and revealing the murderer to be Slausen himself.

When you’re 8, this is just impossible.  My Dad had to explain to me what ‘blanks’ were, which was not a simple task, especially with a gun kept in the house.  At this point, my Mom interjected (Mom always drew the line when guns were involved), the movie was turned off and my Dad packed his traumatized son into the car and off to the arcade for some Marble Madness and Pole Position.  Even the allure of coin-operated entertainment couldn’t shake my mood that night, and I had bad nightmares for weeks to come.

When I moved into my own place at age 23, I decided to watch Tourist Trap again – alone in the dark for the first time in 15 years in an attempt to exorcise the demons, and yet those scenes had lost only a bit of their ability to shock, proving that time may pass but neuroses can still resonate.  When watching again another decade later for this piece, I noted the offbeat, spooky score by Italian composer Pino Donaggio, incorporating odd percussion and a musical sensibility more indicative of a black comedy like Murder By Death, and the surreal, illogical and unintentionally comedic ending in which Molly drives away wild-eyed with her now-mannequin friends in tow.

Tourist Trap proves that a film doesn’t necessarily have to be a masterpiece to have the desired effect, sometimes it just has to be on at the right – or, in this case, wrong – time.  I had similar experiences with other not-so-great horror movies like Vincent Price’s House of Wax, and the fairly terrible made-for-TV flicks The Car (a shameless ripoff of Christine) and Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (which unfortunately was not about Hostess confectionery products).  Shit, even the trailer for C.H.U.D. scared me.  But those moments were fleeting while my fear of Tourist Trap persisted for years.  Sometimes a scary mask and a soundtrack featuring a wood block and a slide whistle can cause nightmares for life.

–Ron Scalzo

Follow Ron Scalzo on Twitter @BaldFreakMusic and for more of Ron at Trip City follow @tripcityarts

READ PART 1 (PSYCHO)
READ PART 2 (ALIEN)
READ PART 3 (JAWS)
READ PART 4 (PINOCCHIO)
READ PART 5 (CREEPSHOW)
READ PART 6 (THE EXORCIST)

NEXT MONTH: Walt and the gang make me wet my pants once again.

On May 2nd, BookCourt hosted a grand tour of The Stan Lee Universe published by TwoMorrows, an approachable archival work unleashing on the world some never-before seen materials from Stan Lee’s long career. Co-editor / writer/ historian Danny Fingeroth (with Roy Thomas), brought together a team of panelists to guide the audience through the thoroughfares, back-alleys, and often forgotten lanes of Lee’s vast oeuvre, as well as to introduce us to an expansive spread of characters with whom Lee’s life and work intersected. It couldn’t have been a more relevant subject as the buzz about the upcoming release of The Avengers movie was beginning to peak.

The arriving audience took their stations on this exclusively curated journey via a power-point tour through some of the book’s highlights. We began in the near-present but astonishingly far away: at the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming, in a building that looked for all the world like a space-time traveling capsule capsized on earth from another dimension. Fingeroth explained his intrepid exploration of the Stan Lee archives housed there in search of rare and never-before-transcribed materials with which to give a more complete picture of the multi-media experience that has contributed to Stan Lee’s legacy. As we were escorted visually into this capsule, it initiated our own shifts backward in time and laterally in space to the truly diverse “universe” of Stan Lee’s life in comics.

The Stan Lee Universe “experience” functioned like an elegantly tooled time machine, making episodic leaps not only in time but in dimension between differing perspectives of Stan gathered from multiple lenses, interviews, and statements from public figures and close friends. The gradual movement forward in time, while touching upon the firm ground of landmark collaborations, still preserved the haunting mysteries of lost interviews and tape-recording sessions, firing the imagination that more materials may yet be found in the clasp of the archive or scattered more widely afield.

Danny Fingeroth brought in his panelists, contributors to the historical collage of the book, to tell their own tales, rendering this tour “live.” The legendary and remarkably prolific Al Jaffee of Mad Magazine fold-in fame, re-started time for us at the beginning of Stan Lee’s career when Al, age 20, met Stan, age 18, already a comics man. Al explained that he had put himself forward for penciling work, and having fielded a “flung” manuscript, succeeded in writing, penciling, and inking a series for the satisfied and hardnosed young Lee. Jaffe’s work with Stan led him into strange territories, however, when the artist found himself in charge of the series Patsy Walker which required him to answer rather psychologically trying fan letters asking for domestic advice in the “voice” of Patsy. No wonder he soon turned to creating animal characters that could express a little verve fighting Nazis!

One of the “alleyways” we took led us through a series of oddities and rarities that gave us a remarkable tactile sense of historical experience, including family life photos, and correspondence from fandom pioneers like J.G. Bails that resulted in the first comics fan magazines. Myths can sometimes seem as unapproachable as they are impressive, but as any superhero fan knows, the details of the heroic back story humanize a character for us, no matter how meteoric their grandeur. Stan Lee emerged from these details as a larger than life, but decidedly human figure. With the documented contribution of all these “witnesses” to Stan’s life, the composite image of Lee presented may well be the best yet brought to light for Marvel fans.

Stan Lee, this tour illustrated, was a figure who often found himself at the heart of pop culture, as correspondence with film directors like Federico Fellini and Alain Resnais attest, and this led to remarkable connections in artistic fields, such as Stan’s friendship and mutually influencing relationship with the rock group Country Joe and the Fish. The band visited Stan at Marvel, and featured Marvel characters in their song “Superbird” on their first album Electric Music for Mind and Body, released by Vanguard in 1967.  Subsequently they appeared as comic character cameos for Marvel in Nick Fury: Agent of Shield #15 in 1969. Panelist and Fish member David Bennett Cohen, veteran musician of 50 years, took us on this musical “trip” through the psychedelia of the period and agreed that Stan definitely seemed more “familiar with the scene” of the Woodstock generation than his age and suburban lifestyle might have otherwise suggested. The evening’s event broke into performance when we were treated to Cohen’s rolling, evocative performance of the stellar “Superbird.”

Stan Lee Universe Contributor, comics scholar and onetime fanzine editor (now lawyer) David Kasakove took over the reigns for the last leg of our temporal shift to bring us into the formation and development of the Lee/Marvel fan-base and the central role of the “Bulletins” pages in creating not only the Marvel universe but the Stan Lee universe. Kasakove observed a clever artificiality in the “Bulletins” pages of Marvel Comics, creating the image of a “wacky” Bullpen where people had a “fantastic time writing and drawing comics.” Since most Marvel creators of the period, other than Lee himself, were free-lancers operating at a distance, this consciously created mythology may have been misleading, but it reached out to an eager audience and led to a more profound development, that of the Stan Lee “voice” in his own comics. This “voice” emerged as a commentary on Marvel’s own more fantastic elements, often “winking” at the reader.

We had come a long way in this time-machine, but we hadn’t yet reached familiar ground to disembark until we considered the massive media role that the twenty-first century Stan still plays, including his wide-ranging TV, film, and public appearances, such as playing himself on The Big Bang Theory. Our elliptical travel expelled us at another rare milestone in Stan’s career, the continuing cinema presence of the 2011 documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story. It was a timely reminder that this thrill-ride wasn’t over yet and might still hold a few surprises for those following the continuing formation of the Stan Lee universe.

We disembarked from the capsule and returned to the city from the depths of the archives to the tones of David Bennett Cohen’s rich jazz stylings, which still thrill the New York area and the wider music world. The live “experience” of the evening only brought home the fact that the book itself is a remarkable visual and textual achievement in documentation, delving into materials first-hand to bring authenticity back to Lee’s fans.  But perhaps best of all, although the audience was fortunate enough to walk in the footsteps of these explorers, this time machine of a book also runs on autopilot; you can pick it up any time you’re feeling adventurous and dive in.

–Hannah Means-Shannon

Hannah Means-Shannon is a comics scholar and medievalist who has published articles on the works of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison in the International Journal of Comic Art, Studies in Comics, the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, reference books, and upcoming essay collections. She is working on her first book, as well as scholarly blog-posts for Sequart Research and Literacy Organization about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore and teaches at Georgian Court University in New Jersey.

She is @Hannah Menzies on twitter.