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WARNING: This article contains spoilers, you have been warned.

Okay, this is a rant that I just need to get out of my system. While I knew reading reviews and/or comments on the internet is merely an exercize in frustration, sometimes you just can’t help reading them. Or in some cases a reviewer you follow just can’t let it go.

Now the Expendables is not a masterpiece but it does one thing that I consider a major requirement of any movie. It entertains. For me personally it entertained a lot. But it wasn’t just mindless violence, though the violence was entertaining mind you, there was an actual sense and story to it. The problem is that this movie has two kinds of people ranting about it. On one side you have the critics that want to hate it and thus find everything a flaw and on the other side there’s ‘woah explosions’ group that ignore the story all together. As a result, the movie and it’s story gets lost in the middle a bit.

So maybe I was looking into it a bit too much. But I like writing stories and as a result I also analyze whatever story I encounter. Now a lot people seem to believe that The Expendables is about the violence and the girl is just an excuse to do this violence. Well yes, but not for the reasons you would expect.

Every story has what they call the ‘essence’, the whole being around which the story revolved. This almost always revolves around a person. In some movies it’s more clear in other’s it’s not. Common essences are: coming of age (Karate Kid, old one), Redemption (The Shadow), Realizing ones potential (The Matrix), Finding a place to belong (every disney movie ever made). You get the idea. Even 2012 wasn’t so much about the destruction as about John Cusack realizing the value of his family and bringing that family together again.

So what then is the essence of The Expendables. Well in my interpretation it’s the following quote by Friedrich Nietsche:

“He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become one. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

This quote revolves mainly around Stallone’s character. Granted there are some minor plots in the movie involving Lundgren, Statham and the bad guys. But this being a Stallone movie, the majority revolves around him. (I think the quote is actually mentioned in the movie but I’m not sure)

At the start of the movie Lundgren goes off the deep end and they quickly recognize this and kick him off the team. But this happening sparks a personal question in Stallone, who questions what he does and his motives. This is further cemented after his recon job on the island when the woman doesn’t want to leave the island. He doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want to leave. Then Rourke tells his story about the woman he didn’t save but could have, which is also the reason Rourke doesn’t do the fighting anymore.

Stallone then decides to save ‘himself’ by going back to save the woman, who is clearly suicidal. The rest of his team just have his back. Because they are a team.

I could go on about the psyche of their bravado behaviour being a mental defence against all the violence. But you should know that. Not every action hero has to be Batman.

Oh and those that think Jet Li was being insulted for the role he got considering his ‘status’? Get over yourself. First of all his character was a spoof of himself, which was funny. Secondly, last I checked Li is a grown man perfectly capable of deciding what roles he does or doesn’t want to do. Thirdly, Lundgren has multiple martial arts titles under his belt. Considering his size, weight and skill, that’s still a hard fight even for Li.

There, that’s out of my system now. Let’s go back to what we should do with movies. Enjoy them.

So I’ve been to Paris one of the most popular and famous cities in the world. While it does have some interesting parts to see, overal I wasn’t that impressed. But people do love travel stories so here is mine. But instead of showing you boring pictures of buildings you’ve already seen a hundred times here are some sketches I made while I was there. As seen by our lovable friend Shazram. Note: This is not canon to THOM which is why I’m posting it here.

To make our lives somewhat easier we went to Paris by train. This saves the headache of having to navigate maps and driving around in a busy unkown city. On the way back we found out we could have gone slightly more direct by going through Schiphol. But on the whole it wasn’t such a problem. Our arrival at Gare Du Nord (North Station) however was a bit more confusing as we had to take the metro to our hotel.

Yeah, the metro is quite complex when you encounter it for the first time. Last year we were in Prague which only has three lines. Paris has a whole mishmash of lines going all over the place. They also list the train lines that ride in the city. So that was even more confusing. Eventually we got there, but it required several transfers and a long walk to the hotel. On the upside our hotelroom had a bathtub which we used a lot.

We quickly discovered that the water from the faucet was not drinkable. So we had to go and find a nearby supermarket that sold bottled water. Luckily this s part of life in Paris and they only cost like 75 cents for 1.5 liters. Unless you buy a bottle at a souvenir shop. Then they’re far more expensive. In total we probably went through about six or seven bottles.

The next day we went sightseeing. Thanks to special public transit cards we could go everywhere in the city without any trouble. We saw most of the common landmarks such as the Notre Dame, the Eifel tower, Moulin Rouge, etc. We never really got to the Arc de Triomph during our visit but we still saw a lot.

These were an all too common site at the Eifel tower (and various other tourist attractions). Sadly only one of these didn’t happen. Amusingly these people flee when they see the cops come buy. They have their stuff on blankets with two hoops on the outside which they grab and walk off if the cops get too close.

One of the things I noticed in Paris was the women. Being a man I take note of them wherever they are. They seemed to fall into two categories. Either they were unhealthily obese (and often these weren’t parisian) or complete and utter stick figures. But it wasn’t in a sense that it was unhealthy looking. They just all seemed to be of the Ectomorph variety. Of course Paris is one of the fashion capitals, so maybe that’s related.

We stayed at a hotel that didn’t have the option of cooking your own food. Though I’m unsure how common this is, I have heard of such hotels. We only had breakfast. This of course presented us with the challenge of sorting out dinner. Most eatingplaces nearby were stupidly expensive and even fastfood places weren’t all too cheap, or numerous. In most cases we settled with pre-made sandwiches bought at a local supermarket.

After a day of resting we went to Versaile. Homes of Louis XIV. Was quite a big and impressive place to see. It’s garden being even more massive. Though given the pretentiousness it’s no wonder the people revolted at some time.

Our last real tourist trip was to the Louvre. Which really overwhelmed me. I heard it’s big. But it isn’t until you visit that you realize just how massive it is. I took a lot of pictures of some really spectacular work. Especially considering that these artists didn’t have digital techniques at their disposal. I’ll probably do a selection later this week with pictures I took. And yeah I saw the Mona Lisa. It’s not that impressive honestly. There were paintings the size of doubledecker busses there which insane detail, this is just a small portrait.

On monday the day before we left we headed for the Eifel tower early in the hopes of avoiding a large line. There was still a large line, but we took the stairs as the line was shorted. On the second level there’s a wall which was filled with grafiti and people leaving their name.

Upon closer inspection you’ll see this:

After this we went shopping at Tati, a budgetpriced store that spans multiple buildings. Despite being budget they have nice stuff there. It’s also surrounded by other cheaper stores with nice clothes. So if you don’t want to spend a lot of money I can recommend that.

The next day we went home using experience to make our trip a lot more comfortable with the least amount of transfers required.

And that was the end of our adventure in Paris.

I wanted to experiment with charcoal. But the charcoal pencils I had were crap. So I used the regular pencils I had instead. As subject I used this picture which was made by Tancaliel posing with the shirt I designed.

It’s kinda obvious I still have a long way to go in regards of faces. Though this one was drawn rather tiny. Makes detail hard to do.

A few days ago I talked about my new comic needing a name and now I can tell you that a name has been found.

After some bouncing around and showing images to people I finally came to the name of No Tie Zone.

So where did it come from? Well I have a very deeprooted dislike for ties. So by extention so do most of the characters in my comic. It also kinda sets the tone of what sort of company it’s going to be.

Already some changes have been made in who owns the company and who fulfils what function. Added to that the comic will also feature jokes and things that are not entirely IT related.

Currently still working on ending THOM but this ending is coming closer and closer.

When I started this blog and the plans for a new comic I was confident I was going to call it The IT Comic. As it was going to be about IT, so in that sense the name makes sense. But lately I’ve been worrying just a tiny bit about it. While the name is simple and conveys what the comic is about, it also locks it in the IT scene.

Now as I stated earlier, Limitations aren’t a bad thing. But a name such as this will cause some serious limitations. As such I’ve decided that I’m going to look for a new name for the comic. One that better embodies the idea of the comic. The setting and characters are going to remain the same, though I’ve already planned some changes.

Of course the problem now is that thinking up a good and catchy name is quite challenging. So that’s something to I’ll be thinking on.

And I’m open to suggestions if you have them.

At the Stripdagen in Haarlem I picked up this gem and it’s sequel. One of the reasons I was there was to look for inspiration for a longform comic I am planning.

In this case the artwork really caught my eye. The author, Christophe Arleston, apparently have various different comic series in his name. This being a more recent one where the art is being done by Alberto Varanda. I totally dig the stylized way of drawing Varanda has.

But on top of great artwork the writing and story are surprisingly entertaining. Elixirs tells of a fantasy world that is constantly on the brink of decay. Through the use of elixirs produced by mages this decay can be countered. The story starts with a princess attending the school of magic which is situated in a neutral city. Though a portal under the city monsters invade it and start ransacking it. With the help of a not so succesful magic student, who spends most of his time chasing girls, the princess and her bodyguard manage to make their escape.

They soon find their way through strange temples and snowy mountains fighting for their survival. Big things are happening in their world and it would seem they are the ones chosen to save it.

On the one hand the story is kinda standard in terms of a group saving the world. But the characters are quite endearing and it’s rather interesting to see something other than orcs and elves these days.

The second book continues the story as they try to find their way. The secret of the Glupion (a small furry animal) that accompanies them is revealed, as are other facts about their adventure.

I’m looking forward to reading book three once it’s released and translated to Dutch. If you get a chance to pick it up I can certainly recommend it. I’m not aware of any official English translations, which is a shame.

Recently I’ve been watching the Batman cartoon from the ninetees. Which is handsdown the best Batman cartoon ever made. While watching it I noticed something interesting. Whenever Batman is up against a regular gangboss the stories are a lot better then when he’s up against an excentric foe. The obvious reason behind this is because with an excentric foe you can focus on the fantastic nature of it. But when the bad guy is just a gang boss, the writers can’t fall back on that. They have to write a compelling story.

This is kinda the same reasoning I used when deciding to stop THOM and moving on to another comic. THOM has no ‘rules’ or ‘boundaries’. Everything goes from sci-fi to fantasy. But this lack of limitations makes it very hard to write good stories. With the exception of Shazram none of the characters have had a chance to develop or grow. Too much weird stuff going on for that.

This is why I wanted to create the IT comic and deliberately set it in a real world. Though I’m still unsure about the inclusion of something fantastic. A lot of IT webcomics tend to have either an animal, artificial intelligence or other non-real thing in it. Often these are included for the toyetic nature of them. Which isn’t bad, I’m just not sure if I will include something like that.

Most likely if I were to do anything like that I’ll probably use something like dreams or such. Why? Because I want to deliberately limit myself to a real world setting. With people that ‘could’ be real. Just to challenge myself in my writing and create actual compelling characters.

One of the most important factors is drawing my characters as often as I can in all sorts of positions. So this is what I did with Jay on this page. Without using reference (which is not a recommendation) I drew Jay in as many poses as possible. Apparently there was something of interest to the left, which is why they’re all looking that way.

One thing I love about Jay is how expressive he can get with those big eyebrows. Expression being a very key feature for characters in comics.

Also the Cthulhu in the top right is just a random bonus drawing. Felt like drawing him.

Not related to the comic I’m working on, but a random doodle I made at work. An intern is in a band called Striking Justice, a punk hardcore band. Ideal music for annoying the crap out of your parents and neighbors. Not my cup of tea in terms of music, but I couldn’t help myself to make fun of name.

It was also an excersize in making a horrible pun at the expense of their name.

It’s kind of fun to draw this stuff, so maybe I’ll make more.

The House Of Madness started like most webcomics did. I created a character very much based on myself with a knack for technology and an occult counterpart based on a really good friend of mine.

Threw in the mandatory woman and another flaky character based on yet another friend. All in all with the exception of Maron, everyone in the comic was based on someone in real life. Maron was just an amalgamation of how I saw women.

The jokes and adventures were mainly a riff on movie and game tropes.

So all in a pretty standard and perhaps somewhat unoriginal webcomic. This is not to say I didn’t have a blast making this comic.

However without properly worked out characters I quickly ran myself into walls. Even when I rebooted the comic it was still pretty hard to do stories right.

As the comic progressed Shazram moved more to the forground as being the main character. Which I honestly didn’t mind. At some I even regretted having a character named after my online nickname in it. I hated it, but I couldn’t very well remove him suddenly. He was part of the dynamic between the characters.

The comic did of course grow and evolve and somewhere along the line I dropped in Chessa. She was going to be the outsider to our culture, but I never really managed to get that going or work that out properly.

Eventually the great freedom that the comic has was also it’s problem. Too much was possible and the characters weren’t really going anywhere, thus I decided to slowly end the comic.

I do not regret ever starting the comic, and it has been a blast to make. Seeing it grow was a joy and it certainly taught me a great many things about drawing and writing.

Besides, we’re not out of the woods yet. Things are only going to get more maddening.