Michael S. Bracco' s Atty & Max

I'm not sure when or where I picked this issue of Michael Bracco's early comic zine up. It isn't signed so I don't think I bought it at a convention, unless I dug it out of a dollar box. That seems like the best story I can come up with so I'm going with it. 

I dug this old Michael Bracco comic out of a dollar bin at Baltimore Comic-Con a few years ago. I probably meant to present it to Bracco and pretend that I am a big fan since way back, but like most of my time at cons I either didn't get to talk to him, or more likely I did talk to him but completely forgot that I had this issue in my bag. Maybe next time I see him appearing somewhere I'll try my trick again. 

Atty & Max are two minds in a single body. So this is a Odd Couple with a twist story The two, or is it one, bumble through a fairly bleak almost post-apocalyptic landscape occupied by assorted monsters and mutants. There is a general American West style to most of the sentient critters in the world.I wonder why post-apoclyptic folks choose American West style apparel, must be all the dust. 

The art in this early book is fantastic. The layouts are clean and they move the eye nicely across the page. Even in this book Bracco shows that he has a great sense of sequential art storytelling. The story in this issue doesn't grab me the same way the Birth did, but he is still young here and developing his writing.

This little xerox zine is pretty good stuff. Bracco's work is always visually enjoyable, and the writing is fair too. It's a rare combination of good art and good writing in these magazines that make me wonder why Bracco isn't more popular than he is. 

His Novo series achieved some acclaim and Adam Wreck was great too. His current web comic The Creators is great too. There was a complete collection of Atty & Max, Broken Frontiers published by Alterna but it appears to be out of print now. Bracco is of course a Baltimorean so I have a great deal of bias in my opinion of him. His stuff is in all of the comic shops I go to, so it is hard to tell how well known he is outside of the area. 

Bracco also makes some really fine tee-shirts with some great designs. His Spaghetti Kiss label? imprint? studio? has some fantastic stuff on it. Well worth checking out, and checking out regularly as he rotates the designs.  Just now I  saw an A-Z food placemat I think I need for my kiddie and some of those cute onesies too. 

Poop

This turned out to be one of my favorite finds of the Balitmore Comic Con 2014. It isn't the funniest book or the best drawn, but it is the most memorable and by far the most shareable of my purchases.

Poop Office is a Dilbert style send up of office work. It doesn't really offer anything new in terms of insight, these are the same jokes you've been reading in comic strips since Dagwood and Dithers. Poop Office just ups the ante by going right into the lowest form of comedy, potty humor.

In its own way Poop Office is really sending up the office comic strip more than the office itself. No one really likes work. Even if you love your job, you probably wouldn't like to be there all of the hours you are. Saying "work sucks" has the same equivalence as saying water is wet.

Still there is a universality in complaining about  your job, and doing it with humor, even hackneyed humor can be fun.



The real treat about Poop Office is that the creators did more than just make books, they made poop, adorable stuffed poop.

Check out Maryland local publisher Naked Grape's wide variety of comics here:

http://nakedgrapecomics.com/

And be sure to pick up a stiffed poo for your office working pals this Christmas, or just whenever.

I highly recommend Poop Office, if for no other reason than saying Poop Office is just kind of fun.





poop tee hee

RNC Protest Part III, The Republicaning

 These are the last of the RNC things I dug up, I promise. Two stickers promoting the two rallies in Tampa and St Pete. The St Pete one sounded fun, a raid march on the RNC opening cocktail party, but I am betting that was cancelled due to the storm.

The sticker is fun. The red one really stands out and makes Romney look besieged by protesters. The white one makes Romney look like a looming monster about to devour the Tampa.

The problem with the two stickers is their actual size is only 3"x 5" so the writing is small. To their credit the font and ink don't bleed too badly, and the alternating font sizes help pop the pertinent information.

 

 Here are the rest of my RNC 2012 pics, two years late. Mrs. Conservative U.S., here, not a pageant I would want to attend. Kid Rock is the guy illuminated in the yellow lights. He did a free show at the convention, which was pretty good. I'm not a huge fan, but his songs from "Devil Without A Cause" are pretty strong. Rock is also a showman, so his concerts don't disappoint. Gone were the go-go dancers in cages and bikini clad women grinding on stage, but Rock takes a turn at every instrument on the stage including the turntables.

Below is Rep. Bachmann a one time candidate in 2012 talking at "Radio Row." That is the area of the convention where radio press are all set up and interview attendees or just blather on about the convention.

No more RNC stuff, until 2016.

RNC 2012 Protests Part 2 & Recollection of the Police in Tampa.

 Thanks to the Google every photo I have taken over the past couple of years is forever preserved in the cloud tubes. Since I dug up those flyers to share I figure I would share these photos too.

The one to the left was definately taken in Perry Park on the 27th, The camera is covered in rain gear, although it did not rain much at all. The wind was pretty strong to this yankee, None of the locals seemd to mind.

 ,
 The rest of these photos were from the march route. The police at the RNC were unusually polite, at least to the media. Much more so than the cops in Charlotte would be.

They make an intimidating presence, the police, and the three conventions I have been to have all had a huge police contingent. That phalanx of bikes was really cool. I wish I had video of them moving into and out of that formation. It was pretty impressive.

This ice sculpture and the guys playing music were from another park in downtown Tampa that the protesters rallied from.

Barricades and police in St Petersburg 

One of the police groups re-hydrating in their gator. Like most people they didn't like being video'd while on their job, but they must have been well briefed by their superiors, because I had only one encounter with an officer and it went pretty smoothly.





That incident was almost inevitable. I was shooting live bump shots of the security checkpoint on the opening day of the convention. Video of the checkpoints is always touchy, although I think foolishly so. Nothing I show on video is anything couldn't be scouted in person, but I digress. The officer told me to move, and I told him I couldn't because I was live, and I couldn't move until I was cleared. I did reposition so I would be out of the path of vehicles. Of course my director asked me to go back into the street and shoot again, so I did and the officer stopped me.

I continued to shoot the checkpoint until I was cleared by my director. Once I was, I told the officer I would move along and he escorted me down the street. He told me I couldn't shoot there anymore, I told him we had permission to do so, and I might come back later. The officer asked me, actually asked me, to wait for a second while he walked off. I thought I was going to be harassed some more, at least have my footage reviewed and maybe erased.

When the officer returned he was with another cop. They exchanged a few words just out of earshot and the original guy, came back and apologized to me! He pointed to the other officer who was walking away and he said, that is my commander. He said you can shoot anything you want as long as you are not blocking vehicle traffic, sorry about the confusion.

The guy put his hand out and I shook it. He said it was the Secret Service guys who told him to tell me to move. The officer, like many of the police in Tampa that weekend, was not local. He had been brought in just for the convention. He said it was tough because the Secret Service would give orders, without much authority beyond just being SS guys, not even commanding officers themselves.

I haven't had any horrible encounters with police. Most of the time I avoid them completely, because they act like jerks who can't be bothered or like bullies, but this guy actually acted like a civil servant, in all meanings of the term.

RNC Protests

 Tampa hosted the Republican National Convention in 2012 and so it also hosted a couple of protests. The largest protest was on August 27th. The protest started in Perry Harvey Sr Park with a series of speeches and then march to the Tampa Bay Times Forum where the convention was being held.

Unfortunately for all involved Tropical Storm Isaac moved over Tampa on that Monday morning and the RNC cancelled their opening events for the day. The protest would go on despite the weather.

If I recall correctly Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, did not attend the protest. I think her flight was delayed. Many speakers took the stage at the park, I was there shooting despite the rain and wind. The marchers left and headed for the arena. I'm bad at estimating crowds so I won't guess how many there were. They were mostly peaceful, though they were boisterous.

You can check out some of the footage I shot of the march here.

Weird Street Art

Walking home from the train in mid-November I chanced to look into the vacant lot at Charles and Lafayette St and saw this large conglomeration of detritus. At first glance the debris looked odd but unassuming. The neutral shades of beige and brown blended into the landscape of the lot, so that if passing by the mass would not stand out from your peripheral vision. It would easily be mistaken as a normal wind swept collection of leaves and assorted trash. But once you gave the thing your full attention, you could not help but notice that the items were placed rather then strewn; furthermore they formed a shape.

 After intially recognizing the face formed on the ground I went in for a closer look. The majority of the outline of the shape was made up of used teabags. They were layered very neatly, giving the form some sense of permanence.

Along the chin and throat there were a series of bell shape ending in a horn. I suppose this represented the voice box.

The eye was a pile of  chestnuts, accentuated with tongue depressors or popsicle sticks.

 Behind the eye was a large array of Q-tips with their cotton ends torn off. Other material was less immediately identifiable. Various plastic clips, metal bands, and little caps that seemed familiar, as though you saw them everyday but couldn't exactly place where or how they were used.

Clearly the items had been collected over a long period of time. Then they had been placed with painstaking care. This was a well planned or at least well executed design.

I marveled at it for some time. Wondering as I looked, who made this? Where did they get all those teabags? How long has it been here without me noticing? How many others had seen this thing and wondered these same questions? How many more had walked past it? Lastly I wondered, how long until it would be destroyed?

The answer to the last question came today. Between Thursday and early this Monday morning the thing had been destroyed. Swept back or kicked apart I can't say but the shape is no longer recognizable. I don't feel sad that it was destroyed, the impermanence of it was inherent in its design and placement. Instead I feel glad to have seen it when it was there and happy to share it too.

Slamming Duke Energy

 These guys were stickers I picked up in Charlotte at a Greenpeace table, probably outside of the convention. The red "D" shape is Duke's old logo, now they use a less creepy swirling atoms logo.

I really like the design of these, very arresting. The two color scheme is clean and simple and the negative space is catching too.

Since recovering these guys from my files I'll be slapping them on my recycle bins at home. I'm sure Greenpeace would be proud of their placement.

Charlotte Video Project

 This is another flyer I definitely picked up in Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention. The Charlotte Video Project is or was a pretty neat operation. The idea was to create 100 short documentaries about the city and its culture before the DNC arrived. The videos are just the right length, less then 10 minutes for all of them, less then 5 minutes for most. They are very well produced and they accurately describe the style as "fly on the wall."

I'm not too sure this thing caught on too well, as most of the videos have fewer then 1000 views. It is a shame really since they are pretty darn good. The project did its job showing the culture of the city. They run the gambit from spoken word poetry, to latin cusine, to public opera, to local authors. The length of the videos makes the project very digestible, and the lack of commentary by the project itself lets you see the subject unobstructed by the filmmakers biases.

Brony Barn

This is real

 This flyer must have come from one of the comic shops I visited in Charlotte, NC during the DNC Convention in 2012. The Cafepress site is now gone but this Brony Barn seems to be the new location. I have little to no understanding of the Brony fandom, but I am also not curious about it either. There is a BronyCon in Baltimore, now in its third year. I have never been. Maybe this year I will truck down there and check it out. Probably though I won't.