Theodore Wiebe: Writer of articles, scripts, short stories and novels. Sometimes published, sometimes not. This is where I go to keep my stuff all together.
Since 1996 The Dudes have been infecting Calgary. Fronted by singer/songwriter Danny Vacon, The Dudes make rock and roll music that is as upbeat and tastefully poptastic as Green-Album-era Weezer; as self-aware and mortal as Pearl Jam; as fun as The Darkness. Their songs -with their catchy melodies, frequent symbol crashes and deceptively nimble guitar work- have been played across their home city and country in countless festivals, commercials (for Rogers Wireless…don’t hold it against them) and bars. Their name is worn like a badge of honour by Calgary’s music scene and, recently, Danny Vacon agreed to answer some questions in the present tense.
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Joe Harris is a writer who keeps pulling off the impossible. Every month the man delivers two totally distinct but similarly ambitious, long form narratives that both delve into themes of survival, restoration and, ultimately, hope.
First he has The Great Pacific. Co-created and co-owned with series illustrator Martin Marazzo, The Great Pacific is the story of the son of a multi-millionaire oil tycoon burning his family’s legacy of environmental exploitation to the ground by setting out to claim the great pacific garbage patch as his own sovereign -and environmentally sustainable- nation. It’s Robinson Crusoe meets WALL-E by way of The Life Aquatic. The series is alarming and inspiring in equal parts and consistently surprising in its twists and diversions. The Great Pacific is published monthly by Image Comics.
Then he veers simultaneously into our past and present with The X-Files: Season 10, Harris’ direct continuation of the massively successful television and film franchise. Released monthly by IDW Publishing, Harris’ series begins with Scully and Mulder living in peaceful seclusion before being drawn back into a dark world of conspiracy, danger and fringe science by a series of coordinated attacks on their friends and the kidnapping of their son. Co-plotted and overseen by X-Files creator/writer/director Chris Carter, Harris’ series manages to blend the intricacy of the series with the scope of the films and the enduring voices of the characters. While licensed comics are not usually good, this one truly is.
Recently, Joe Harris agreed to answer some questions in the present tense.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Bob Kane is credited as the sole creator of Batman and as such received both wealth and celebrity during his lifetime. In actuality, the character that Kane had created was a Superman knockoff who wore red tights, a domino mask and stiff wings that protruded from either side of his back. In 1938 Kane called his friend and employee, a writer named Bill Finger, and asked him to come over and review this “Bat-Man” character he was contracted to create for DC Comics. Finger came over, reviewed Kane’s work and changed everything from the colour scheme to those stiff Michelangelo-esque wings and in so doing created one of the most recognizable and profitable pieces of intellectual property that the world has ever known.
In 1989, fifteen years after Finger’s death, Bob Kane wrote, “Now that my long-time friend and collaborator is gone, I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved…I often tell my wife, if I could go back fifteen years, before he died, I would like to say ‘I’ll put your name on it now. You deserve it.’” Bill Finger died alone, destitute and unknown in 1974 at the age of 59. The final words on the chief medical examiner’s case file read, “Natural death. No history. No family.”
Today we all have a chance to begin restoring Bill Finger’s name. Marc Nobleman, pop-culture historian and author of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, agreed to discuss Bill Finger, Bob Kane and what we can do to finally bring Bill Finger’s name out of the dark.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
The DC Women Kicking Ass blog began in 2010 as a place to showcase some of the most impressive moments for women in comics. Ironically, a blog that began with a mission of pure positivity has grown to become one of the most inspiring voices of criticism in the North American comics industry. Focusing on issues of gender equality and gender representation in the male dominated world of comic books, DC Women Kicking Ass has amassed an enormous following of readers (and trolls) and is forcing genuine change upon an industry that -to quote comics godfather Stan Lee- only wants “the illusion of change.” The blog has become so successful and prominent in its cause that Sue, the founder and main contributor of DCWKA, has asked us to withhold her last name due to disturbing and uncomfortable instances of online stalking and, yes, it is utterly ridiculous that anyone could love superheroes so much that they would stalk somebody for criticizing them and somehow be completely unaware of the tragic irony held within that choice. Recently, Sue agreed to answer a few questions in the present tense.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Wally Clark is a man of many talents. As an entrepreneur he co-founded Gummy Soul, an indie hip hop label that has become one of the most exciting destinations on the Internet with a regular assortment of distinct new releases offered for free or priced at the consumer’s own discretion. As a producer he was given the master tapes to the Souls of Mischief’s classic debut 93 ‘til Infinity to dismantle and reconstruct as 93 Still, the quintessential love letter to the tones, techniques and feel of nineties hip hop. But as an MC? That’s where Wally Clark really shines.
His two albums, Lovers Lane (2012) and Sportin’ Waves (2013) mix the “Gosh! Wow!” innocence of Archie with the infectious “Dirt off your Shoulder” confidence of Jay-Z in a manner that not only makes sense but somehow seems complete. They are old and new, refreshing and familiar, mature and brash. They represent the absolute best of the things they love and seek to spread that love through a dreamscape of breezy guitars, wistful chimes, sharp horns and deeply autobiographical rhymes. Mr. Clark agreed to answer a few questions in the present tense.
Sportin’ Waves is…
Wally Clark: …a good representation of my personality.
Gummy Soul is…
Wally Clark: …a refreshing change from what you are used to.
Doo Wop is…
Wally Clark: …Innocence in song form.
Hip Hop is…
Wally Clark: …a genre based on personal style.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
As a writer and artist, Phil Hester is one of North America’s most notable cartoonists. He has worked his way from being an art student drawing small black-and-white comics for dubious publishers to being one of the most respected writers and artists in the business. He has written industry icons such as Wonder Woman and his art helped to reinvigorate the once obscure Green Arrow to the point where that character can now support his own popular television series. He has worked with talents as varied as Robert Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead) and Kevin Smith (writer/director of Clerks, Dogma and Red State) and always held his own.
This year Phil Hester was hired by IDW Publishing to charge an old industry standard, long loved by creators but always struggling in the charts, with new life. That series is called T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents and along with artist Andrea Di Vito, Hester has created an antidote to the self-destructive, violent and desperately unaware tone that has come to define superhero comics. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents is a comic that acknowledges and even revels in its silliness without ever disrespecting its characters or shortcutting its story. It’s a comic that mixes retired hockey enforcers, pissed off robot men, super science and espionage into one genuinely seamless and consistently engaging whole. In short, Hester has created a comic for people who love the language of superheroes and are looking for a place to hear that language spoken fluently with wit, humour and intelligence. Phil Hester agreed to answer a few questions in the present tense.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents is…
Phil Hester: …a team of street-level super heroes employed by the United Nations to handle all of the stuff deemed too weird for the member nations to handle on their own. The core group includes Dynamo, a former NHL enforcer turned invulnerable superman thanks to his Thunderbelt; NoMan, a brilliant, but aged scientist who uploaded his consciousness into an indestructible, often invisible android body; Lightning, a runner capable of blinding speed who is unfortunately aging at the same astonishing rate; Lug, an agent fused into an experimental armor; and Kat Kane, a brash cadet who has worked her way up to become the director of T.H.U.N.D.E.R (The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves).
Drawing comics is…
Phil Hester: …second nature to me. It seems like such a true and unfiltered way to communicate, in some ways more direct than simple prose. I’ve been doing it for around 25 years, so I must love it, right? That said, it eats up much more time than writing.
Writing comics is…
Phil Hester: …somewhere on the same continuum as drawing comics. It’s all about visual communication. I like to say that when I make comics I write with pictures and draw with words.
The first comic that somebody paid me to draw was…
Phil Hester: …You don’t really want to know this, do you? It was the immortal ‘PORT #1 from Silverwolf Comics. I was a sophomore in college when I landed the gig, so it’s pretty terrible. My art professor was like, “Oh, comics! Comics are wonderful. Do you mean something like this?” as she handed me a copy of the early RAW magazine.
“Not quite, ma’am.”
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Across Canada, bullying is a major problem and as such it has become a topic of serious discussion. However, for a practice that is so common and receiving such a great amount of attention, bullying remains a very misunderstood pattern of behaviour. Recently we had the opportunity to sit down with Lisa Dixon-Wells, the founder of bullying prevention group Dare to Care, and discuss the issue.
While part one of our series focused on the motivations and behaviours of the bullies themselves, part two focuses on the victims of bullying: who they are, want they want and how to help them.
The victims of bullies are….
Lisa: ...those who become repeated victims of aggression tend to be quiet and shy in temperament. They tend not to retaliate or make any assertive responses to the initial aggression but instead react in non-verbal ways such as crying or frustration. The bully sees this as weakness and continues to repeatedly pick on them. People who become victims typically lack friends and social support at school or the workplace and they are often not confident in their physical abilities and strength. While most victims do not do anything to provoke the victimization, there is a subgroup of victims who tend to show irritating and inappropriate social behaviour. These individuals tend to be impulsive and have poor social skills. These “provocative victims” often draw negative attention to themselves but it is not intentional or wanted. The harder they try to make friends or fit in, the more they seem to be rejected.
The victims of bullies want…
Lisa: …to be accepted and to be given the same rights as everyone else. The right to learn, the right to speak their mind, the right to friendship and the right to be themselves without being laughed at.
The victims of bullies need…
Lisa: …someone…anyone…to support them and stand up for them. They should not have to deal with bullying on their own.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Across Canada, bullying is a major problem and as such it has become a topic of serious discussion. However, for a practice that is so common and receiving such a great amount of attention, bullying remains a very misunderstood pattern of behaviour. We have previously discussed how dangerous the broad application of such a toxic label can be -you can read that piece here- but recently we had the opportunity to shift our own focus away from the act of applying the label and towards better understanding the actions and motivations behind the people who truly created the need for the term.
Lisa Dixon-Wells has been working in the school system for over twenty years. Using her personal experience in the field and a master’s degree in educational psychology, Lisa founded the Calgary-based Dare to Care program. Lisa’s program takes a holistic approach to the problem of bullying and combines professional development for teachers, seminars for parents and student workshops for the purpose of transforming a community’s silent majority into one powerful caring, active and educated unit. Since its creation, over 500 schools in western Canada have employed the Dare to Care program. Lisa agreed to answer a few questions about bullying.
Bullying is…
Lisa: …repeated and intentional harassment and attacks on others. Bullying can be perpetrated by individuals or groups and can take on many forms such as verbal, physical, social, sexual, racial, and perhaps the most prevalent of all…Cyber-bullying. Bullying is about power and should not be confused with normal peer conflict.
Bullies are…
Lisa: …not born that way. Bullying is a learned behaviour and is taught and reinforced early in childhood. The characteristics of intolerance, judgment, and a sense of entitlement are generally taught and reinforced at home by the parent or major caregiver. It is not surprising that little bullies grow up to be big bullies if we do not intervene and set consistent guidelines and consequences regarding unacceptable behaviours.
Bullies want…
Lisa: …to be in charge, to dominate and to assert with power. They are motivated to win in all situations regardless of who they hurt along the way. They tend to lack empathy and have difficulty feeling compassion.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
The Alberta Party is Alberta’s centrist political alternative. It is a party that seeks to eschew any affiliations to the political left or right and instead focus on a sort of empirical approach to governance through the rigorous collection of information and the objective analysis of hard data. It is a party that prides itself on basing its policies on confirmed facts and expert long-term projections rather than a predetermined political ideology. Greg Clark was elected to the position of party leader in September and his party will be running a full slate of candidates in 2016. Greg agreed to answer a few questions in the present tense.
Alberta is…
Greg Clark: …a place where we look out for our neighbours and where hard work is rewarded.
Alberta was…
Greg Clark: …in a position to invest in the Heritage Fund, but our window is closing.
Alberta should be…
Greg Clark: …sustainable: economically, socially and environmentally.
The oilsands are…
Greg Clark: …an important part of the energy equation for Alberta and the world.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Coming from somewhere in America, L’Orange is an artist who shrouds himself in mystery as much as he shrouds the music that he arranges, produces and composes in layers of narrative, ambiance and evocative nostalgia. In Old Soul (2011) L’Orange created a deftly structured and vaguely terrifying concept album by exclusively using sampled, mixed and freshly twisted pieces of music by Billie Holiday. In The Mad Writer (2012) he marshalled an impressive roster of underground hip hop artists to create a consistently elusive but gripping album about creativity, madness and the feeling of someone else’s yesterdays. The City Beneath the City, his upcoming album with Stik Figa, promises to continue this march towards the ineffable darkness that holds him. He agreed to answer a few questions in the present tense.
L’Orange is…
L’Orange: …dissonant.
Canada is…
L’Orange: …relatively northern.
America is…
L’Orange: …relatively northern.
America was…
L’Orange: …a fat man in a raincoat.
America ought to be…
L’Orange: …new.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Rae Spoon is already an author and musician and their latest album, My Prairie Home -a profound, expansive but always engaging collection of fourteen mesmerizing songs- is also the soundtrack to the National Film Board documentary of the same name about their life and unique relationship with the prairies. Rae took the time to sit down and answer a few questions in the present tense.
Rae Spoon is…
Rae Spoon: …a transgender musician, originally from Calgary and currently living in Montreal. They have released seven solo albums, the most recent of which,My Prairie Home, serves also as the score and soundtrack to the NFB documentary of the same name. Rae is also an author: their first book, First Spring Grass Fire, was published in September 2012, and their second book, a collaboration with Ivan E. Coyote, will be published in the spring of 2014.
Canada is…
Rae Spoon: …a country that, like most countries, is difficult to define in a succinct way. It’s very large, and the differences between regions, especially those which are quite distant from each other, make it hard to talk about Canada in a generalized way. I do think that one of the important things to talk about when we talk about Canada is its history as a colony, as well as the ongoing colonialism still present.
The best way to travel is…
Rae Spoon: …calmly. Remembering to eat and sleep make travelling all of the time a lot more sustainable, which is important if travelling is a big part of your job.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Together DJ Dan Solo and Evangelos Typist are Sanctums, an electronic duo based out of Calgary. Modern Math 001, their newest album, features six tracks that are spectral, ornate and sprawling without ever passing beyond the edge of control. These are songs that leave stains beneath your skin; that are only as dark as they are engrossing. Functioning as a unit rather than individuals, Sanctums agreed to answer a few questions in the present tense.
Sanctums is…
Sanctums: …a space of unadulterated collaboration.
Sports are…
Sanctums: …propaganda and kinetic truth.
Pets are…
Sanctums: …only as good as their masters.
Calgary is at its best when…
Sanctums: …it’s a mild twenty-two degree Celsius day and there are good people to enjoy time outside with…our winters are long…Calgarians do a good job of making the most of pleasant weather.
The problem with Calgary is…
Sanctums: …the city’s overall movement towards corporatization in nearly every aspect of social and cultural life. We have, at times, felt the draw to move further underground or even out of the city in order to maintain the independence that we feel is integral to our creative fields; so that our art cannot be swallowed by commodification and homogenized in the process.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Over the Air is a post-rock group from Swift Current, Saskatchewan. Their second album, Cold Hands, is a moving quintet of songs that slide easily from the forlorn to the cosmic to the assailably-yet-unrelentingly optimistic. Recently, the boys agreed to sit down and answer a few questions in the present tense.
Over the Air is…
Darnell Stewart: …a band from Saskatchewan. We play weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Dana Rempel: …a bunch of sweet, sweet dudes.
Eric Hayes: …theoretically, a visceral musical experience. Realistically, four guys with instruments.
Bob Moore: …four friends playing music, staying creative, and busting chops.
Music made in Saskatchewan is…
Darnell: …worthy of your time.
Dana: …diverse and thrilling, to say the least.
Eric: …fantastic (present company excluded, of course)!
Bob: …inspiring, made by a humbling collection of artists.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
When a word gets overused or misused it loses its meaning and then the best thing for it is to go away for awhile, recover and make its return after time has returned its definition to it. “Awesome” is probably our most commonly abused word casualty at this point (The Book of Awesome should really just be called The Book of Kind-of-Nice, right?), having usurped “literally,” but it is far from being the most dangerous. Our most dangerous and destructive offender has got to be something with a slight and confusing darkness to its core; something that can be misconstrued or distorted from a state of being marginally wicked into a full five-alarm emergency. Our most dangerous word casualty is the word “bully.”
As a student attending the University of Manitoba’s faculty of education I was instructed to understand the word bully to mean an intentional and intentionally repeated pattern of abuse from an individual or group directed towards another individual or group. This is an incredibly broad definition that has held true from my studies in Manitoba to my years living in Alberta. In 2008, the Alberta Teacher’s Association Communications Coordinator, Dennis Theobald, a man whose name describes my greatest fear, wrote an article for administrators that constituted bullying as being any harassment or abuse regardless of form or motivation. This is a definition that encompasses everything from gossiping to pushing skinny kids into lockers to the unspeakable acts of rape and systematic abuse that we’ve seen in Ohio and Newfoundland. As you may have noticed, some of these things are not like the others.
Click on the link at the header to finish reading this article at The Spectator Tribune.
Christopher Nolan never made a good Batman movie. Don’t get me wrong, Heath Ledger was pretty great as The Joker in The Dark Knight but almost everything else about that movie along with its sequel and predecessor is for crap. Especially the tone. That apologetic, permission-seeking faux-realistic tone. That tone that establishes Chris Nolan, a cinematic wizard with several masterpieces to his credit, as just the most recent director in a long line of directors who can’t seem the grasp the fact that Batman is simultaneously ridiculous and noble; stupid and awe inspiring; goofy and terrifying. Batman is a superhero and as such he needs to be all of those things all of the time. There was a time when Frank Miller understood that and brought several of those key components back into the world of the character. Christopher Nolan never did. He was too busy apologizing for making a superhero movie.
Batman Begins came out in 2005 to marginal acclaim and moderate success. But that was enough. After 1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman and Robin had rendered the franchise asunder in a Schumacherian plume of crotch shots and bad puns, nobody was expecting Chris Nolan’s first turn in the skates to do much more than take a lap or two around the ice and apologize to all of the people in the stands for just how bad the last two Batman movies had been. And that’s all it did. In its every move, from the casting of Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman and Michael Caine to turning the Batmobile into a tank and calling it the Tumbler to reducing the Batcave from a completely implausible underground cathedral complete with giant dinosaur models and supercomputers to just a cave with bats (although somehow Katie Holmes and Batarangs were still okay). That’s all that Christopher Nolan did: apologize. Over and over again. And then again with The Dark Knight and again with The Dark Knight Rises. Chris Nolan’s entire BatOeuvre consists of him apologizing to you for liking comic books and then asking you if you still think he’s cool. Well, he made Momento, Inception and Insomnia, so he is still cool but his Dark Knight Trilogy isn’t. It’s nothing more than a seven-hour long mea culpa...
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Without The Spectator Tribune I wouldn’t be writing. At least, not nearly as much. Here’s why:
Writing is hard to do when nobody’s reading. It’s hard to find a reason to write, to put the time and energy into creating a final product when you feel as though your work and effort is going totally unnoticed. Writers need a reason to go through the process, we need to know that our work is reaching people who love it or hate it or, probably most often, are largely indifferent to it. We don’t need any particular reaction so much as we need people to pay attention, if only for a little while.
Writing is a process that requires rejection, even when the work is being published. Anyone can write a first draft of something and then put on a jacket with some suede elbow pads, drink something in a dark brown colour and feel authorly, but real writing requires the writer to go back into that first draft and then isolate every single poor choice and mistake. It requires that the writer then give their work to an editor and have them find any embarrassing pieces that may have been missed and then to provide notes explaining exactly why those pieces are embarrassing. The only kiln writers have is rejection and that’s why we either pay people or ask our friends to thoroughly analyze our work and then reject vast swaths of it. We need that type of rejection so that we can go back and redraft our work, fix our mistakes and make something worth people’s time. Every good author in every medium does this. If you even want to be halfway good, you have to...
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Kurt Braunohler is used to doing ridiculous things because he does them all the time. He’s a comedian who works the road, hosted BUNK (an improv showcase set up as a faux gameshow) on IFC and has recently been seen sitting at Chelsea Lately’s roundtable and commenting on current events. Like you would assume, as a professional comedian Braunohler concerns himself with telling jokes and making people laugh. His motivation, however, comes from a less predictable place. It functions as part of a specific and articulated plan to improve the world through the power of absurdity and on January 23rd he took his mission to a whole new level. He started a Kickstarter to raise enough money to rent skywriter planes and write jokes in the sky with clouds.
There’s got to be something that we can learn from this...
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