Joel Johnson Has Him a Blog

View image Courtesy of Matt Gallant.

See also Dan's Bad Comics, a remixed version of Wood's 22 Panels in a similar vein.

I'd seen "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work" around the net here and there for several years, always as a low-resolution scan of a copy that was clearly the product of dozens of generations of photocopies. As a comics fan and occasional artist who absorbed what little drawing skill I have by copying and tracing comics when I was a teenager, I found the juxtaposition in Wood's piece telling. Here was a working artist distilling his craft into 22 panels that could be used to teleport across the occasional creative wasteland, yet each example was dashed off with effortless skill. I live by very few maxims, but there's at least one I've found useful: Fake it 'til you make it. In Wood's piece I could see an artist who had clearly made it but hadn't forgotten the practicality of the occasional shortcut.

A few months ago my friend Felipe Li showed me yet another copy of "22 Panels," offhandedly mentioning that the original paste-up was for sale at Gotham City Art, with the dubious price of "Make Offer." The listing for the piece, now removed, read as follows:

Ask any working comic book artist who has been in the business for more than ten years about "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work", and they know of it like it was the bible. Google "Wally Wood" and "22 panels", and you get over 150 hits. It is with great pleasure that GothamCityArt.com brings this historic piece to market. Once shrouded in secrecy, Wally Wood would selectively give assistants and those close to him three 8x10 photocopies of comic panels that bore the absolute essence of drawing comic book panels. 22 images in total, they held the secret to a comic book illustrator's success, and those who learned from them benefited from the master's wisdom. The panels were gold, but were not packaged in such a way that was easily disseminated.

Years later as an Editor at Marvel, Wood's former assistant, Larry Hama, needed a tool to give direction to his would-be artists. He had two copies of the three sheets. With the help of another ex-assistant of Wally Wood's (whom he recalls may have been Paul Kirchner), Hama reassembled the "Tri-Force" of Wally Wood sheets. On the back of a Marvel art Bristol board, Hama wrote the now-famous caption "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work", and had Robbie Carosella and Elliot Brown stat down the sheets. He ran off 50 copies from the board, and handed them out to potential pencilers. Pretty soon, other editors were sending pencilers and even some old pros down the hall to get copies from him. Eventually, he had more master copies statted and gave them to other editors so they could make their own copies to pass out. The original paste-up, with Hama's original hand-lettering, was eventually tucked into an envelope and put in the back of a flatfile, where it stayed for more than a decade. Second, third, fourth, tenth and twentieth generation copies continue to be made and handed down. The artwork pictured here is the original pasteup, as well as the three 8x10 copies that were statted down to make the board. Some of the panels, which were lost through use, were restated to the original board over the years.

I made what I considered to be a low bid and it was accepted. It is now my pleasure to offer these relatively high-resolution versions of "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work" in "Unlimited Edition," scanned in from the original paste-up. The widescreen versions include the whole of the paste board, including a serendipitously open area on the left hand side of the image that makes them practical to use as desktops for your computer, despite the otherwise busy background of the rest of the piece. My scanner is not large enough to scan the entire paste board at once, so I have tried to make a reasonable effort to stitch together four separate scans, although I did not go to any great length to remove all trace of seams.

There is also a 4:3 black-and-white version, tweaked to provide a 1600 by 1200 pixel duotone that emulates the previous versions available on the internet, albeit with greater fidelity.

While I did not leave any watermark or URL on the specific image files, I would ask that you refrain from using the images for any commercial purposes without my permission. Otherwise, please disseminate as freely as you like. Part of the reason I bought the piece was to ensure that it remained available to any artists who might find it inspiring or useful.

Larry Hama, who pasted together the piece and did the lettering, was kind enough to respond to an email I had sent him after purchasing the piece. Note especially his suggestion that Wood created this piece not for others, but as a reminder to himself to not become bogged down in unproductive eddies. Hama's correspondence follows:

I worked for Wally Wood as his assistant in the early '70s, mostly on the Sally Forth and Cannon strips he did for the Overseas Weekly. I lettered the strips, ruled borders, swipe-o-graphed reference, penciled backgrounds and did all the other regular stuff as well as alternating with Woody on scripting Cannon and Sally Forth.

The "22 Panels" never existed as a collected single piece during Woody's lifetime. Another ex-Wood assistant, Paul Kirchner had saved three Xeroxed sheets of the panels that would comprise the compilation. I don't believe that Woody put the examples together as a teaching aid for his assistants, but rather as a reminder to himself. He was always trying to kick himself to put less labor into the work! He had a framed motto on the wall, "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up." He hung the sheets with the panels on the wall of his studio to constantly remind himself to stop what he called "noodling."

When I was starting out as an editor at Marvel, I found myself in the position of having to coach fledgling artists on the basics of visual storytelling, and it occurred to me that the reminder sheets would help in that regard, but three eight-by-ten pieces of paper were a bit unwieldy, so I had Robby Carosella, the Marvel photostat guy at the time, make me re-sized copies of all the panels so I could fit them all on one sheet. I over-compensated for the half-inch on the height (letter paper is actually 8 1/2 by 11) so the main body of images once pasted up came a little short. I compensated for that by hand lettering the title.

Images:
• Original Scan, 2560 x 1600 pixels
• Original Scan, 1920 x 1200 pixels
• Original Scan, 1680 x 1050 pixels
• Original Scan, 1440 x 900 pixels
• Original Scan, 1280 x 800 pixels

• 4:3 Black and White "Clean" Scan, 1600 x 1200 pixels

I like Apple's Safari web browser. I don't love it—who can love a browser?—but I prefer a few of the integration options it offers over using, say, Firefox.

So a year ago I finally gave in and bought Saft, a third-party tool that extends or adds some of the 'missing features' to Safari.

Don't make the same mistake.

First of all, the demo, should you choose to install it, will throw up a pop-up every so often after just a couple of days, with no option to deactivate it.

It has no uninstaller. I'm still not quite sure what to do with it.

Its upgrade system requires you to put in your email address and paypal transaction code, although does seem to show up in Paypal's one year history. So much for the free upgrade. Why I can't just use my email address is a mystery.

Lastly, it doesn't even add all that much functionality. Until Hao Li decides to offer a proper installer/uninstaller and a decent upgrade interface, skip it.

Take the time to read (yet another) Wired piece about Jason Calacanis, the man who had the balls to accuse me of being a "sell out" to Siemens while I was the editor of Gizmodo, but not the good graces to accuse me directly, instead taking it as an opportunity to put himself on a level with Nick Denton.

It's been almost a year since he made that post on his own Weblog (one of many personal blogs counted towards the Weblogs, Inc. claimed number of blogs), after which Jason deleted almost every response from fellow journalists defending my (and Gizmodo's) integrity.

Here's the part of the story that Calacanis left out: Siemens approached Engadget with a junket before they approached Gizmodo. Engadget refused the free flight and hotel—not because of a strong 'anti-junket' policy, but because Siemens refused to purchase a large ad buy on Engadget, as recommended by Engadget/Weblogs, Inc. so that they could hide the expenses of the flight and hotel in the money they earned from the ad buy while still claiming journalistic integrity. I know this because Siemens employees and clients told me as much after reading Calacanis's blog post about Gizmodo.

There was a good debate to be had about whether or not blog writers should accept junkets (even if they publicly and clearly disclaim the terms), but that wasn't the debate Calacanis wanted to have. Instead, he decided it would be better to attack Gizmodo for taking the junket that Engadget would only have taken with an additional ad buy—and by proxy, me.

I still haven't gotten an apology from Calacanis and I expect I never will. (I would imagine that he's been too busy rooting through his own pubic mane looking for something to fellate to realize that he actually did anything wrong.) But until that time, it's always my pleasure to see that others can see through his back-stabbing bluster and expose him for the piss-ant, ego-drunk ankle biter that he is.

I'll be at CES, Calacanis. Feel free to buy me a drink and tell me you're sorry for publicly accusing me of the very thing that Engadget tried to pull off without their readers' knowledge.

More details and pictures soon, but I just wanted to note that we raised $1656 for the Children's Hospital of Montefiore and Child's Play Charity last night. Not too shabby!

No more messing around. We've got some serious charity rocking to do. And you've got an Xbox 360 to win.

FÜNDE RAZOR: GUITAR ROCKIN' FOR THE CHILDREN

What: Drinking, Gaming, Prizes, including a chance to win Microsoft's hot new Xbox 360 console.

• Play Guitar Hero on a giant screen!

• Drink some of New England's finest beers! In cups!

• Play classic stand-up arcade games by the bushel!

• Win one of our dozens of ROFL RAFL prizes, including an Xbox 360 or a signed Game Boy by internationally-acclaimed DJ Nullsleep!

When: Starts 8PM Tuesday, December 13th, 2005. Guitar Hero Rock Off Starts at 8:30.

Where: Barcade, Brooklyn's finest over-21 classic gaming and beer drinking establishment.
388 Union Avenue, Brooklyn, New York; Between Powers and Ainslie
L train to Lorimer (Union Ave Exit) or G Train to Metropolitan

How: There ain't no cover change to rock! Show up ready to play games, drink top-quality brews, and buy tickets to win an Xbox 360 and other great prizes!

Why: We're doing it for the kids. All proceeds from the raffle and competitions go directly, 100%, no overhead to the kids of The Children's Hospital of Montefiore in the Bronx, via the Child's Play Charity.

Who: Everyone is welcome, as long as you're over 21. It is Barcade, after all.

On the web at JoelJohnson.com, ChildsPlayCharity.com, BarcadeBrooklyn.com, and Montekids.org.

Sponsors include: Microsoft, Nintendo, Kotaku.com, Brian Crecente, Noah Robischon, and Harmonix.

FÜNDE RAZOR is wholly the responsibility of Joel Johnson and not Barcade, Montefiore, or Child's Play. If something goes sideways, blame him.

RSVP is not necessary, but if you have the time, a quick email to Joel (using the information at the top of this site) would be appreciated.

We're getting together at Barcade, Brooklyn's finest beer and classic arcade game emporium, to raise money for Child's Play Charity, at 8PM on Tuesday, December 13th. It's all a bit last minute, so some details are still jelling, but we'll be raffling off lots of schwag, including a special grand prize that I hope to announce by tomorrow.

Perhaps even better than free stuff, we'll be turning up the volume stupid loud and playing round after round of drunken Guitar Hero on a twenty foot screen.

If you'll be in New York, come on by. We're not charging at the door, so you'll have extra money to buy tickets for the ROFL RAFL. (No, we won't actually call it that, although I want to badly). Update: I think I'm going to call it that.

If you have anything you'd like to donate, feel free to contact me directly. If you plan on attending, you don't have to RSVP, although a quick email wouldn't be bad just so I can have an idea of who's going to make it.

More details very, very soon.

And check out Barcade. They're hosting us for free.

Update 1: Seriously cool prize added to the RAFL today. A signed, original Game Boy from world-famous bloop DJ Nullsleep! One of a kind, because he doesn't have hands!

I live under a curse, like the serpent. For years, my hard drives have died. Some die slowly and some die quickly, but they all die at the worst possible moments. I have learned to live with this curse by keeping multiple copies of important data on both local and remote machines, as well as duplicating important things, like my music collection onto multiple drives.

Recently, while I was going through my ~100GB music collection, I noticed that I was missing files. A song here, a song there. Occasionally a whole folder. Somehow my drive had been slowing eating the data. That made me sad, like a panda. I pulled that Maxtor drive out and replaced it with a Seagate, but I'm sure the curse will strike it soon enough.

So when I read this evening on Boing Boing that MP3Tunes was offering a music 'locker' for $40 a year, I hopped on quick, like a bunny. As far as I can tell, the Locker would allow me to upload all my files—gigs and gigs—, then both stream them down at a listenable bitrate (128kbps) as well as allow me to sync them to multiple devices, including PCs.

After the positive experience I've had with Flickr, I'm totally not averse to paying someone else to manage my data. In fact, it's the great irony of the cheap storage age: now that I can afford a terabyte or more of RAIDed storage in a file server, I'd rather just pay someone a yearly fee to handle it for me. Someone wise, like the owl.

Problem is, the Oboe software that comes from MP3Tunes doesn't seem to work at all. Not only does the remote Bonjour-based streaming endlessly spool in iTunes, the Oboe Sync program pukes and tells me that I need to install iTunes 6 for it to work. I have iTunes 6. It is strong, like bull.

I sent MP3Tunes an email and despite their assurances that I would get a response in the "next three to five business days," I quickly (~10 minutes) got back a message that said they knew it was a problem and were working on a fix. They didn't answer my second question about using the service to upload all my MP3s into the Locker, then downloading them to another PC in original, full-quality form. I hope that they get their act together soon, but for now I would suggest giving them a few days to get it together, so you don't get screwed, like me.

Must Haves

• File Upload Method
• File display pruning (only show 100 most recent, etc)
• Single Password
• Upload file size limit.
• Connection limit.
• Easy install.

Should Haves

• User Auth, incl. password recovery, basic permissions, etc.
• File type verification
• Voting, up/down/offensive
• Type sorting, audio/video/text/images
• Vote/Rating Sorting (Top 100, etc)
• File comments.
• Simple installer.

Nice to Haves

• Tagging
• Friends

This morning I'm toying with Flock, a variant of the Firefox engine that integrates Flickr, del.icio.us, a feed reader, and more—like the blogging tool I'm using to post this update.

The Shelf

The Shelf is a scrapbook for interesting web content that you want to blog about later.

Example:

1. Open the Tools menu and choose Shelf.
2. Drag interesting URLs, pictures or text snippets from any web page onto the shelf.
3. Click the Blog Editor icon (that looks like a feather pen).
4. Drag items from the Shelf into your blog post.

Note:

• When you drag text snippets, Shelf items are automatically formatted as Blockquotes and citations are added.
• The Shelf is only for web content. You can't use it to upload items, or drop content from your computer onto it.

Flock

It's far from perfect, but with a little more UI polish it's going to be a neat package.

Anyone know where one can get rubber wading boots in NYC?

I almost forgot to post about this, but I'm out having a beer so consider this a stub.

There is a woman in Algiers who is taking in local dogs who needs some more kennels. I think we should get her some, as she's already sent 100+ to no-kill shelters outside ¨ [Text was trunc'd]

[Continues] of Louisiana. I don't actually have her name, as her card doesn't say it, but she's available at K9Kitten@cox.net or at (504) 442-3647. I don't know when I'll be heading down there again, but if you know anyone who can procure kennels, I'm sure she'd love the help.

Once I have some idea of my return, I'll work on trying to get something together for her.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco subsequently inked a contract with the firm after talks between FEMA and the firm broke down. Kenyon's original deal was secured by the Department of Homeland Security.

FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals [RawStory]

"Spent 4 hours scouting this morning. The director of the Red Cross - Hattiesburg turned us away. She said Microsoft had a trailer onsite for the workers to use, but not the evacuees."

Last night we got a bunch of calls from disgruntled evacuees at the Astrodome who were extremely upset at their treatment in Houston. They are saying that police are arresting them for the most minor of infractions and refusing them to do simple things like wear their shirts on their head to protect from heat (probably in fear of some sort of gang symbolism). While on the phone, other volunteers here said that they could hear "lots of people yelling in the background" this morning. There's no information about troubles there in the Houston Chronicle.

We were told by one person that they were loaded on busses to take them to sign up for new housing in Houston only to be left in a strange area while the busses left them alone. That's not the sort of mistake that should be made two weeks after the evacuation.

General unrest is to be expect at this point, but if you've been in the Astrodome in the last 24 hours, please feel free to leave a comment appraising me of the situation.

There is a huge variety of police and military presence on the ground. That's to be expected. But the large number of private security forces is disturbing, specifically those operating through Blackwater. Even leaving aside the legal and political questions of what it means to have fully-armed, American-funded mercenaries operating as security against American citizens, it should also be noted, that of all the security forces on the ground, the Blackwater 'troops' were by far the biggest dicks.

We got yelled at some by police and official-types who wanted us out of areas where they were operating. Herding media isn't really their job, but they weren't rude about it (just brusque). The Blackwater employees, on the other hand, were phenomenally unpleasant.

Jake has a lot more to add soon, I'm sure, but there's a serious question as to the authority of these mercenaries. And why they are such cocks.

I think it's amusing that Jacob continues to assert that the it smelled like death while entering the swamp. It is a swamp.

I'm standing in a morning meeting with a group of volunteers who are working to set up the medical clinic. The big topic of the morning is the story of an LPN named Bobby (who isn't here) who was apprehended by the Red Cross while providing medical relief. The Red Cross (working with armed troops from FEMA [we think]), seized Bobby's medical supplies from his truck because someone from the Red Cross decided that he was stealing the necessities—specifically, the pharmaceuticals.

Problem is, Bobby's supplies weren't from the Red Cross, but instead from private donations. Many of the pharmaceuticals were for residents in New Orleans who have a prescription, and one of the other medical volunteers is licensed to dispense prescription medicines.

Not only did the Red Cross seize the pharmaceuticals at gunpoint (while detaining Bobby somewhere until after the curfew), but they also took the remainder of Bobby's supplies, including bandages and the like.

That is the story as told by four of the local non-Red Cross medical volunteers.

Here is Jacob's take on the information.
Here is GNN's take on the same story.

Update: Anthony Lappe from Air America just recieved a call from the Red Cross media relations folks who said they were unsure why Red Cross employees would have been at a military checkpoint. They offered the possibility that the people who detained and de-supplied Bobby may have been military medical personal and not the Red Cross. More to come soon from Anthony at GNN as soon as he posts, but I just wanted to qualify the story as much as I can as it happens. Managing the rumor mill, etc.

Update 2: According to Bobby Lee Huss (the person detained), the supplies were both from the Red Cross and seized at their request.

I've been watching WWL since Sunday afternoon, via their video stream. There have been some cornball local news moments, of course, but on the whole, they've done a great job keeping the information flowing.

If New Orleans really does get washed away, perhaps it will lead to a greater public awareness of scientific warnings of natural disasters.

"Remember New Orleans? Let me talk to you about ice caps..."

Then again, as a culture, we don't seem to respond to threats before they happen. We all knew this was a possible future for New Orleans, but it's easier or cheaper just to deal with threats as they happen than to move an entire metropolis 100 miles inland (away from most of the things that define it as a city). It's just so frustrating to think about when part of the calculus includes human lives.

Get to Anne Rice's mansion quick. If anyone can make it through this storm, it's going to be the vampires.

Good luck, everybody.

I hate Christian pop culture and the media it produces. Instead of the radical non-conformity that Christ teaches—the turning over of money lenders' tables and all that—money-grubbing regurgitators slap some godly lyrics on top of twenty-year-old, sanitized music and five-year-old logo design and peddle it to those whose faith is strong enough to believe they'll ride jet-skis with Jesus after death but not strong enough to listen to Britney Spears without the fear of losing anything more precious than three-and-a-half minutes of their lives.

That's not to say it's all bad. I rather like (to use music as an example) people like Sufjan Stevens and Pedro the Lion, who seem to be artists that happen to be Christians, rather than Christians who secretly believe that art—or anything that defines the new—is a threat. But I'm a godless atheist, so what do I know? Besides how awesome marijuana is, nearly nothing.

Despite, or because of, my hatred of bad art excused by good intentions, I thought this piece by Tom Leupold on Gamespot titled, 'God games come of age,' highlighting the 4th Annual Christian Game Developers conference, to be right up my darkened, abortion-strewn alley. At the risk of spoiling it, here are some choice quotes:

"The time is short. We don't know how long it's going to be until the Lord returns," Moore said. "If we wait three years to get this game out and the trumpet sounds, it's been a great adventure for me, but it hasn't brought anybody to Christ.

They're creating games like Dance Praise, a PC version of Dance Dance Revolution that features exclusively Christian popular music.

"We're thinking of changing things because the Christians and the Jews are so underpowered," Rapczak said.

It isn't clear whether Christians would embrace a game in which a player could play as a minion of the Antichrist, and Rapczak admits there could be some resistance.

Anime-style characters roam a 3-D world, building up "faith" instead of magic power, allowing them to unleash the Finger of God or a Miracle.

The registration of similar domains to popular sites is a common, asshole tactic for those looking to profit from the hard work of others. It sucks, but whatever. The cure for it is easy: become popular enough to get high Google rank and some noteriety, so that no will mistake your 'boinkboink.net' for the real thing.

An internet friend of mine is getting doubly-screwed, however, by a site that not only has registered a very similar name, but is stealing his content, layout, and images wholesale. Check it out: his site is EverythingUSB, while the clone site is EveryUSB.com. (Poor man's nofollow.)

It's not just a question of a rip-off site covering similar products—we used to get that all the time at Gizmodo and we always thought it was something of a tribute rather than something to be frustrated by—it's a question of a site actually purporting to be the site it is stealing, down to the same 'About' information and founding date.

So underhanded! I blame Google and Adsense and the entire internet.

Dvorak is up in arms over the fact that CES won't be allowing bloggers in as press. I have my own thoughts about that, but I'm going to ignore that for now. What really stuck out to me, though, is the accompanying picture he used on his blog to go with the story. Is the forcing of bloggers to register as regular attendees really analogous to black men tied to the cells of their cage?

I'm thinking no, it's really not nearly the same thing.