Bookworm Rom

My Book Blog.

[domromreads]

What's up it’s me Domenic, welcome to my book club where I chronicle what books I am reading (Novels, Audio and Comics)

[domromreads]

The Conan Master Post

Ok this post is a long time coming and will probably have companion posts in the future... but i started reading CONAN BOOKS!

My small stint in sword and sorcery got me hooked and now I'm trying to make a more earnest effort. I have also been a huge Frank Frazetta fan all my life, his cover art is so amazing and a huge interest for me. I imagine all the stories in these books as though they were his paintings in my mind. They are all short stories published in pulp magazines in the 20s and 30s. Which is kind of crazy- these stories are a hundred years old. The oldest books I've read for fun by far.

The guy who wrote these was MY age when he did so! And he committed suicide super early in his life (30) because the great depression hit, and he could no longer survive in writing and he just hated doing anything else. He's a Lovecraft contemporary, and actually had a long mail correspondence with him, where they bickered back and forth for years. Their ancient discord dms...

I read three stories so far they each took 2-3 hours to read

He's just SUCH a boy character like I love when guys make up a big buff unstoppable guy character and pit them against bad things. Its something I obviously do with Ike but like, characters like conan or the hulk are sooooo adorable to me. Like they were thought up by someone’s inner child for comfort and adventure and to be this metaphysical limb that they can extend to destroy things that are awful and frustrating. And the fact he sometimes get babes- yes, very cool

Robert E Howard actually really wanted to write ancient Irish warrior stories (his own culture) He loved writing historical fiction more than anything else! But they took him too long to write- if he wanted to do the proper research on them. So his solution was crazy. He MADE UP a fake, alternative history Eurasia continent and then wrote a small book cataloguing it's histories and cultures, added fantasy elements, and then set all of his stories in it… it's called the Hyborean Age. (weirdly enough, Todd Howard actually wanted to set the elder scrolls game in the Hyborean Age, but changed his mind and made his own mythos)

The first Conan story I read was called the black colossus and it's referred to as having the craziest ending of any Conan book and it sure did. It's about this princess who dreams of a black shadow overtaking her kingdom and enslaving her, so she asks her gods if there's anything she can do to stop it. and because gods are real in this setting they literally told her "go out into the street and the first person you walk into will save your kingdom" and she runs into Conan… LOL and he literally holds her up by the arm and hes like "U ARE TOO BEJEWELED AND UR HOOD IS TOO SILKEN 2 BE ON THE STREET!!!! if I listen to you I know for a FACT that this is an ambush and some shitty thieves are gonna kill me" and shes like "no no no i am actually here because my gods told me to do it!" and whats so funny is that Conan IS a barbarian and his culture has shamans so he just goes like "oh omg why didn't you say so" and just immediately believes her LOL I thought it was so funny…

Next I read the #1 most essential story, called "The Tower of the Elephant" and it was INSANE. Instead of the usual "he fights a giant snake" the circumstances of the story end up with Conan at odds with a cosmic and non literal mystery and uhh it was just so crazy. If I were to recommend any Conan story to anyone in a vacuum itd be this one, it just gets so strange.

Here is a link to the story if you would like to read it.

The last story I read is kind of cheating but I read an 80 page comic adaption of a Conan story- "Red Nails" by french artist Didier Cassegrain and it was AMAZING! All dialogue unaltered from the original story. I am not 100 percent into how Conan looks here (idk why hes wearing brown jeans LOL) it was tonally exactly what i like about these… it was about Conan searching for treasure but he ends up getting involved in a race war instead and he's like uhm this is weird.

I am currently trying to lowball some dudes on ebay for this first issue HAHA the cover art is so insanely lustful and awesome yes

Anyways this is secret art of mine but I drew him and Red Sonja. This is how he looks in my mind's eye. Your reward for reading this post

[suchaslouch]

Thoughts on bleach? ?

[domromreads]

When I was in middle school, and nobody really was into anime at all, Bleach was a big media staple, and it was my first manga ever. It really trailed off into nonsense but I was so into it. Tried to keep up with it but it kept retconning itself, characters ended up being secret special children all along, a character that was "the last of his kind" ended up learning there was actually a ton more of them + they were evil.... it was the asspull story at one point.

Society moved past bleach later and it didn't culturally endure into the 2010s. I assumed it was all over. Only Naruto would be remembered. Nowadays, Bleach is back and I am so confused. History has revised it's thoughts on the text. People are praising Orhihime, a character everybody hated on the forums.... talking about how good the ending was.... soooo much dialogue. I am just surprised. It's honestly pretty cool.

I feel like Ichigo represented something to kids, because he was the only "bad boy" at the time in popular shonen for us in the west (jojo's jotaro had yet to be brought overseas to us, and yuyu hakusho was getting too old) so it's important he's back, tbh

[domromreads]

Was sick today so I reread a lot of "Genshiken" which is about a college club of Otaku in 2002.

^ Two new freshman join- one of them is a hardcore fan who's so attractive that he's never been made fun of for what he likes, and the other is a shy, quiet one who is ashamed of his interests.

It is such a wonderful time capsule for perverted nerds in the 00s. I like the quiet moments, where the main character realizes he has finally found his tribe.

And I love the talkative moments, where character's talk at length about what they like currently in the hobby.

[domromreads]

Creating Bluey: Tales from the Art Director - Chapter 1

How a 23 year old gal from Brisbane ended up designing the world’s most popular kids show.

[cooketimm]

When I started doing the Batman Animated style, I did look at lot of his model sheets from Hanna-Barbera, and they weren’t very helpful to me. When I really started looking at them I realized that even in his simplified animation drawings some of the characters would be really stylized and cartoony, but his human being figures are just like his comic book figures. They’ve got so many subtleties to them. He didn’t exaggerate. His animation models really aren’t made for animation. Everybody may think they are, and he may have thought so, and animation historians may look back with fond memories on the Alex Toth-designed Hanna-Barbera shows, but there’s a whole lot of subtleties in those shapes. Space Ghost’s head is a tricky shape to draw. It’s not a straight-against-curve, it’s a whole lot of curves that intersect, and if you get one of them off, he doesn’t look like Space Ghost. So I don’t consider Toth a huge influence in that respect. Obviously, the overall feel of my Batman kind of has some of that Space Ghost type of feel, but it wasn’t like I had Space Ghost designs out when I did it. It was kind of like me remembering what Space Ghost felt like. I would be a better artist if I were more influenced by Alex Toth. I wish I had one-tenth of his knowledge and talent, but I don’t.

– Bruce Timm about Alex Toth’s Space Ghost

[domromreads]

Hump day motivation

[dimetrodrawn]

I have not read a single book in the Wings of Fire series. Heck I havent even bothered to look at the actual covers of the books yet. My only jumping off point is hearing an acquaintance describe said series as “Warrior Cats, but with dragons”.

Using the wisdom of pictureless descriptions and vague information on the internet, I have managed to draw what I think several of the dragon species in the series would/should look like.

[dimetrodone]

So I may have been a tad incorrect with some of my assumptions (and desires)…

[domromreads]

Hi. When I was 13 I found this on 4chan after watching just gainax ghibli and soul eater and used it to find the rest of my anime taste.

I haven't been able to find the hi-res this year but I finally did so I am chronicling it.

Now it's a time capsule, because a lot of important anime has since came out in the 2010s onward, but it's a really incredibly curated image from the internet's post-pubescent phase

static.wikia.nocookie.net/whatshouldiread/images/8/8f/List_of_Worthwhile_Anime.jpg

[domromreads]

[domromreads]

Posted my latest book haul in some discord servers and people recommended these books based on what I liked so I am just going to chronicle it here because I don't wanna forget them

King in Yellow was recommended so I could read lovecraftian stories that, y'know, weren't written by lovecraft. Fair!

Piranesi sounds the most interesting I'm kinda controlling myself not to buy it. It's about some guy trapped in an infinite labyrinth world with one other person (and that person says they are god) but it's a mystery so I guess something is up... so intriguing sounding. AND IT'S MODERN and I never read modern fantasy, but whenever I have I breeze through it because modern prose is so fun and easy to read

[domromreads]

SECONDHAND BOOK SHOPPING DAYYY and I #slayed this haul goes diabolical. Thank you Books n’ Bears in Florence Oregon your selection was amazing

I actually read a bunch of The Invisible Man last year so I might finish it (in the H.G. Wells compendium) it is public domain so you can listen to people on youtube read it for free if you are into scary invisible incel stories. Forewarning it is one of those “im from the 1800s and this is devilish!” Horror stories that feel kinda tame now but I liked it a lot

[domromreads]

Staying at Leo’s tonight so I got to read a book he was talking about in our book club chat

It’s a biography. Weng Pixin is an art student who meets an extremely helpful professor. Over time however, his advice becomes… unusual. And his musings on art and life actually start to make her feel upset, and she doesn’t know why. Slowly, she enters a cult of his making.

Have you ever met an artist that talks like this about non-artists and just makes you feel like utter shit? 😭 I HAVE! 🚩

The book is super vivid about it. This teacher is a confident, academically charged art mansplainer who uses big words, references obscure artists to make you feel out of depth, and then talks so fast you can’t challenge him.

This is actually a really common type of art person! It’s scary! If you have been to an art school, or an art discord, or talked to me when I was 19-22 (😭) you have literally had the displeasure of talking to a guy like this.

(I give myself discredit. This teacher is a frightening character. But when he’s talking about his hardcore “get good” art opinions, his toxic positivity, his snootiness- it’s easy to see yourself in him from time to time, if you were ever a cutthroat art nerd. But this guy takes it to an extreme.)

I don’t talk about this often, because I have had a pretty successful foray into the art world at large. And I think complaining takes up too much space in the arts sphere. But sometimes talking with people about art can be challenging and wear you down. So many people quit because of it, and it’s literally a silent epidemic

Like the artists circling Pixoto, some artists make up rules, and get mad at strangers for not following them.

The amount of time I have spectated others complaining about artists shilling on twitter/youtube, compared to how often those same complainers actually spend drawing, is the real crime.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was make the next power rangers. I get into art school, and a bunch of professors suddenly go “don’t worry. We will help you make REAL art, and get into REAL film fests and the like, just like Gobelins.”

I never cared like that? I was actually down to make a bunch of money making cool lego ads or whatever came my way. But suddenly, I was equal parts prideful and ashamed. Should I be scared to be a sellout? A poser? No one in my childhood friendgroup ever cared about something like that. Now that I was in art school, it mattered a lot to some people, and those people were so respected. I wanted to be respected. Even if it was only by those people!

Seeing Pixoto at her most vulnerable, running into these kinds of people, is such an essential read for anyone in their art journey who feels even slightly affected by others. I haven’t talked about the cult, because frankly, this book isn’t popular yet and I want more people to read it! Please check it out

[domromreads]

Now that it's september I figured I'd round up everything that really hit me this season. Maybe there is smth for you to read/watch here

[domromreads]

I just stayed up till 4:30 am reading this book, it was so incredibly good. (no spoiler journal)

Its about an art student who wants to get rid of her student loans, so she works 2 years in the oil fields.

My friend Leo tipped me off about this. I grew up reading Beaton's webcomics, and it was one of obama's top books the year it released, so I wanted to get to it pronto. Read till the end for something interesting>

in the Alberta oil sands, men outnumber women fifty to one- and they are all in isolation. so everyday she experiences sexual harassment and some really close calls and other stuff im not gonna talk about. im not gonna lie its not an easy read, sometimes the way men talk to her just doesnt stop, page after page and its nightmarish. its super interesting and grounding and definitely one of the best books ive read, and the picture it paints of her situation and the people there is super complex.

I actually picked it up finally because I saw an askreddit post titled "What jobs have crazy money and nobody wants to do them." and the top comments were all talking about going to the oil fields.

one of the top commentors was talking about how "men dont know how to spend the money they get there. some of them drop out of school in 6th grade, too, and spend so much on houses and vehicles and vegas trips that a year off work, they just head back to the oil fields." and theres a passage from the book where an officer literally gets mad at other workers for that behavior

last month I got coffee and there was a really rambunctious dude hitting on everyone in sight and talking about his clothing company startup.

I thought he seemed interesting enough and was genuinely curious what he was doing with a venture like that since I am interested in that line of work. turns out he was just some random dude who worked at oil fields a bunch of years and when he finished he moved right to LA and bought like three different clothing printing machines. he had no local work and no idea what he was doing. everything he showed me on his insta page was so awful. he barely even knew how to work his printers and invited me to come over and "smoke a j and figure them out," partly because he had no friends. I said id think about it (but like, no) and a few days later I got coffee there again and saw him playing with a drone

[domromreads]

Currently Reading - VERSUS by ONE

[miggsboson]

A style test for a potential comic

And some additional explorations. These two are.much rougher, but im excited by the length of time they took. I might be able to draw several pages actually :o