So my mom calls me, waking me from a dead sleep, just to ask me how I'm enjoying MY day. It takes a map, an act of Congress, and two Divine Interventions before just why she calls it my day clicks into place. "Oh, 06/06/06. That's right. Ha ha, Mother. Ha ha."
I've oft times thought that if the police ever caught me on a roof top with a sniper rifle, I'd be saying "SHE made me do it! SHE DID!"
Point of trivia: At one point my high school's address was 666. Oh beloved Marian Catholic High School. How much better you must be without me.
Back on subject, whatever that was. After deciding that I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon (my sleeping schedule's ducked up beyond belief and needed fixing anyways), I went surfing the web. And I discovered that today at Wikipedia Krazy Kat has her entry as the entry of the day.
The comic Krazy Kat is about, as described by the entry,
I've oft times thought that if the police ever caught me on a roof top with a sniper rifle, I'd be saying "SHE made me do it! SHE DID!"
Point of trivia: At one point my high school's address was 666. Oh beloved Marian Catholic High School. How much better you must be without me.
Back on subject, whatever that was. After deciding that I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon (my sleeping schedule's ducked up beyond belief and needed fixing anyways), I went surfing the web. And I discovered that today at Wikipedia Krazy Kat has her entry as the entry of the day.
The comic Krazy Kat is about, as described by the entry,
...the relationship triangle between its title character, a carefree and innocent cat of indeterminate gender (but often referred to in prose as female), her antagonist Ignatz Mouse, and the protective police-dog Officer Bull Pupp. Krazy nurses an unrequited love for the mouse, but Ignatz despises her and constantly schemes to throw a brick at her head; for unknown reasons, Krazy takes this as a sign of affection. Officer Pupp, as Coconino County's administrator of law and order, makes it his unwavering mission to interfere with Ignatz's brick-tossing plans and lock the mouse in the county jail
I wonder just how many people looked at that entry on the front page and asked, "Who?"
And look who the comic inspired. You'd think there's be something, some retrospective, just because of some of those names.
Maybe I missed it.
There's a lot of comics like Krazy Kat out there. Like Little Nemo, say. Especially Nemo. Look at that art! Why isn't that being republished? Why aren't there movies and cartoon series about that?
I know, I know. Nemo had a movie. I even played the videogame, as I recall. But where is the movie now?
What are kids getting these days? Ed, Edd, n Eddy? Pokémon? I'm sure they have their merits (well, not the Eds. God, no.) but come on! Little Nemo kills them both with a half a frame.
I'm talking ever so elitist, as if my childhood was steeped in the Katzenjammer Kids and such (longest running comic ever. How often have you heard of it?) It really wasn't. I knew of Krazy Kat and Nemo because of my research into the field of the Fantastic. I've read maybe a handful of strips, most of which are at Wiki. In fact, I gorged myself on Smurfs, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and the bijillion crap Scooby Doo remakes, clones, copies, and parodies. I watched ever Spider-man cartoon I could, every Hulk, every Superhero.
None of them compare.
But this wasn't meant to be the sort of rant that begrudges mispent youth, or spoiling the youth of others by denying them access to wondrous fights of fancy.
Instead, let me ask you something. How often of late have you heard people talking about, say Dennis Wheatley? Or James Hilton? Big names, once. Can't say that they deserved it, as I haven't read word one, but big names.
All but forgotten.
It's what people forget, when seeking fame. How short it is? I bet I could name drop H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe and have a better chance of someone knowing what I was talking about. Neither one a critical or financial success in their time.
Wonder if Stephen King will still be as big twenty years after he's gone.
Countless names of writers who have work or who are working now in the field of the Fantastic who no one has ever heard of. Some waiting to be discovered. Some deserving oblivion.
Makes you a bit humble, really. And, perhaps, a bit eager to set out and see who you can find.
I dream of fame and fortune, of cheering crowds, but I know that if it even comes, it'll never last. I'm no Dickens, no Shakespeare. If I influence one person to write, I'll be moderately happy.
But I'm still going to try. And maybe I'll make it, for a time, then fade away. So little lasts. So little stays.
Not even the Mark of the Beast, it seems. I'm glad Mom caught me when I was half awake, or I might have spoilt her fun by mentioning that the Dread Number is no longer 666. It's 616...
And look who the comic inspired. You'd think there's be something, some retrospective, just because of some of those names.
Maybe I missed it.
There's a lot of comics like Krazy Kat out there. Like Little Nemo, say. Especially Nemo. Look at that art! Why isn't that being republished? Why aren't there movies and cartoon series about that?
I know, I know. Nemo had a movie. I even played the videogame, as I recall. But where is the movie now?
What are kids getting these days? Ed, Edd, n Eddy? Pokémon? I'm sure they have their merits (well, not the Eds. God, no.) but come on! Little Nemo kills them both with a half a frame.
I'm talking ever so elitist, as if my childhood was steeped in the Katzenjammer Kids and such (longest running comic ever. How often have you heard of it?) It really wasn't. I knew of Krazy Kat and Nemo because of my research into the field of the Fantastic. I've read maybe a handful of strips, most of which are at Wiki. In fact, I gorged myself on Smurfs, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and the bijillion crap Scooby Doo remakes, clones, copies, and parodies. I watched ever Spider-man cartoon I could, every Hulk, every Superhero.
None of them compare.
But this wasn't meant to be the sort of rant that begrudges mispent youth, or spoiling the youth of others by denying them access to wondrous fights of fancy.
Instead, let me ask you something. How often of late have you heard people talking about, say Dennis Wheatley? Or James Hilton? Big names, once. Can't say that they deserved it, as I haven't read word one, but big names.
All but forgotten.
It's what people forget, when seeking fame. How short it is? I bet I could name drop H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe and have a better chance of someone knowing what I was talking about. Neither one a critical or financial success in their time.
Wonder if Stephen King will still be as big twenty years after he's gone.
Countless names of writers who have work or who are working now in the field of the Fantastic who no one has ever heard of. Some waiting to be discovered. Some deserving oblivion.
Makes you a bit humble, really. And, perhaps, a bit eager to set out and see who you can find.
I dream of fame and fortune, of cheering crowds, but I know that if it even comes, it'll never last. I'm no Dickens, no Shakespeare. If I influence one person to write, I'll be moderately happy.
But I'm still going to try. And maybe I'll make it, for a time, then fade away. So little lasts. So little stays.
Not even the Mark of the Beast, it seems. I'm glad Mom caught me when I was half awake, or I might have spoilt her fun by mentioning that the Dread Number is no longer 666. It's 616...
2 comments:
We all want to make our mark on the world; as Stephen Crane (in an older entry) might have written: "A man said to the blogsphere, 'Sir, I post!' 'Yes,' said the blogsphere, 'but that fact doesn't mean I have to comment.'"
I have read Wheatly, though I don't remember it. Haven't read Hilton, but did see Lost Horizon, and Goodbye Mr. Chips isn't entirely lost...
The stuff that matters endures in large, and the other stuff is still there. But the stuff that isn't "there" is still there, waiting to be found. Shakespeare was lost for a long time before the Romantic rediscovered him; but he was never entirely gone.
Humans are an accumulatory species; we still prize Dickens, though he was pretty much a pop guy in his time. Sheridan LeFanu, though, is the horror fiction equivalent of Krazy Kat. Still there if you seek him out (along with Wheatly and Hilton) and still worth seeking out. Older and more forgotten folk are being put back in print (for the obscure scholar, if no one else). There's always a college disertation to be written, after all.
I, too, worry about how future generations will look upon my (ha ha ha cough) works, until I remember that no one looks upon them now. There is a need to adjust the focus, so that the depth of field is closer.
Whatever that means.
The various on-line sources posting public domain works. such as Project Gutenberg, is quite the boon, too, in rediscovering old gems.
On Le Fanu: He really had something, didn't he? Carmilla, Mr. Justice Harbottle... All good.
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