Friday, October 31, 2003
Okay, so my buddy and I still have two coupons for a free McGriddle and it looks like today is the day. I drive down and get one through the drive-thru and then go inside for the other...one coupon per person per visit and all that.
I'm in my office and I've just unwrapped the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle. The first thing I notice is you can smell the maple syrup in the griddle cake.
It's not as bad I had imagined. The griddle cake isnt' as overpowering as I thought it would be and you seem to eat the bacon, egg, and cheese then get to the griddle cake...I wonder how your mouth does that, but honestly I barely taste the bacon.
Overall, not a bad breakfast sandwich, but I think I'll stick with the McBagel.
I'm in my office and I've just unwrapped the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle. The first thing I notice is you can smell the maple syrup in the griddle cake.
It's not as bad I had imagined. The griddle cake isnt' as overpowering as I thought it would be and you seem to eat the bacon, egg, and cheese then get to the griddle cake...I wonder how your mouth does that, but honestly I barely taste the bacon.
Overall, not a bad breakfast sandwich, but I think I'll stick with the McBagel.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Today I found a coupon for a free McGriddle in my mailbox at work.
I have to admit, I'm a little hesitant to try this new breakfast sandwich from Mickey D's. I like eggs, bacon, and cheese, but I'm not sure about slapping them between two griddle cakes injected with maple syrup, I prefer a nice, toasted bagel, but it's free and I'm a forrager. If the food is free I'll pretty much eat anything - I'm cheap.
So I drive down to McDonald's and order me a bacon, egg, and cheese Mc-Grid-dle - it's hard to say I notice. They hand me the bag and I walk out to my car. I'm starting to get nervous. I've got the McGriddle in a bag in my car. I've never come this close to actually EATING a McGriddle. I've heard peole talk about this and it's been mixed reviews, but personally I always gag when I think about it.
I reach in while driving to my parking spot and my hand is shaking, I don't want to pull it out. The realization that I've committed myself to eating this concoction starts setting in and I am running the type of reaction I will have through my head when I bite into this...MCGRIDDLE and I'm scared.
OH MY WORD I just touched it...feels just like the bagel breakfast sandwich, which soothes my nerves. I'm at a stop light and I begin to unwrap...
It's a bacon, egg, and cheese BAGEL! A BAGEL! I start to weep as I bite into this warm, succulent McDonald's breakfast BAGEL - just what I wanted. How did they know?
I have to admit, I'm a little hesitant to try this new breakfast sandwich from Mickey D's. I like eggs, bacon, and cheese, but I'm not sure about slapping them between two griddle cakes injected with maple syrup, I prefer a nice, toasted bagel, but it's free and I'm a forrager. If the food is free I'll pretty much eat anything - I'm cheap.
So I drive down to McDonald's and order me a bacon, egg, and cheese Mc-Grid-dle - it's hard to say I notice. They hand me the bag and I walk out to my car. I'm starting to get nervous. I've got the McGriddle in a bag in my car. I've never come this close to actually EATING a McGriddle. I've heard peole talk about this and it's been mixed reviews, but personally I always gag when I think about it.
I reach in while driving to my parking spot and my hand is shaking, I don't want to pull it out. The realization that I've committed myself to eating this concoction starts setting in and I am running the type of reaction I will have through my head when I bite into this...MCGRIDDLE and I'm scared.
OH MY WORD I just touched it...feels just like the bagel breakfast sandwich, which soothes my nerves. I'm at a stop light and I begin to unwrap...
It's a bacon, egg, and cheese BAGEL! A BAGEL! I start to weep as I bite into this warm, succulent McDonald's breakfast BAGEL - just what I wanted. How did they know?
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
MARK RICKETTS: The GrayHaven Interview
By Denny Haynes
I met Mark Ricketts at Brian Michael Bendis’ booth at Wizard World 2001. Brian was nice enough to introduce me to him. Mark showed me his upcoming Nowheresville trade from Image Comics. We found time to chat while selling Bendis’ books, freeing Brian up to talk, sign, sketch, and take pictures with his fans. I asked Mark if he’d be interested in doing an interview with GrayHaven Magazine, as his work on Nowheresville really impressed me.
DMH: So what comics did you read growing up?
MR: I was born in a small town in Arkansas where the yearly event was a duck-calling contest. The main street closed down for carnival rides, a booth where you could buy bags of fried okra, a beauty contest and a stage where local hunters were given the opportunity to show off their skills at making duck noises come from small, hand-held hooter devices. It was a really small, very strange, boring little burg. And I was a square peg, a real misfit. Comics were my only solace and so I turned to the visions of Kirby and Eisner for escapism.
DMH: So how did you get started in comics?
MR: My rock'n'roll band, like migrant workers in the Grapes of Wrath, moved from Arkansas to Chicago. We played, recorded and starved. I had to pick up illustration gigs at Playboy to keep us in cheeseburgers and guitar picks. My contact and art director was former underground cartoonist, Skip Williamson (Snappy Sammy Smoot). He encouraged me to make comics. I did just that.
It was Caliber Comics golden age. We were a rag-tag gaggle of renegade artists (Bendis, Davis, Locke, Mack, Hester, Lark, Showman and myself) searching for an audience. And then I retired. The other guys eventually moved into mainstream comics, but I wanted to be a better writer, to continue growing. I read all the books on the subject, took the McKee "Story" course, worked out my kinks and after a bit ...felt renewed. After I won the Klasky-Csupo (Rugrats, Wild Thornberries, and Duckman) scriptwriting contest, Brian Bendis encouraged me to return to comics and release Nowheresville as a graphic novel. And so, here we go again...
DMH: What are your favorite comics/characters past and present and why do you like them?
MR: My all-time favorite comic is Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta." It's such a personal, honest and original work. Alan Moore is a consummate comics storyteller. I am in awe of his talent. And that book rawks!
Love and Rockets, especially Jaime Hernandez's "Flies on the Ceiling" and "The Death of Speedy." Jaime is one of those great artist/writers that can say more with an empty panel than most prose heavy comics.
My two favorite characters are those flawed, but lovable scamps - Kyle Baker's Cowboy Wally and Frank Frazetta's Pop Bottle.
DMH: What character would you like to write?
MR: I assume you mean an established, corporate character. Well, I have a personal fondness for the Inferior Five (anyone remember those guys?) and the Metal Men, but I actually have fully realized ideas for Superman, Wyatt Wingfoot and Captain America stored away in my file cabinet. The trouble with writing established characters is that you're automatically saddled with the burden of what's gone before. This burden can also be a blessing too, I guess. You could use audience familiarity to write a complex tale without wasting any pages on establishing your protagonists history.
However, creating my own, brand-spankin' new characters is the most satisfying.
DMH: Who are your favorite creators and how did they influence you?
MR: Whenever I'm stumped I turn to the works of Alan Moore, Moebius, P. Craig Russell, Bruce Timm and Will Eisner.
DMH: Who are your favorite non-comic creators?
MR: The Coen Brothers are amazing writers. Like the late, great Preston Sturges their work is a confluence of humor, drama and tension. I am humbled by and aspire to their level of craft. Sam Shepard's writing has influenced mine. I'm fascinated by his sensitivity to human behavior. In his play "True West," two brothers push each other to the point where they exchange personalities. Brilliant writing.
DMH: How did your parents feel about your choice of occupation?
MR: They think I'm a priest. You can't imagine how hard it is to go home and keep up that pretense. I guess I'm gonna have to break down and tell them the truth some day. I refuse to hear one more confession, I can tell you that.
DMH: People are always interested in how other creators write their stories, what is your method?
MR: I get an idea. Who knows where they come from? Then I create an outline, a structure. Next, I lose myself in the story. Bang it out on the keyboard stopping only to read the dialogue out loud. I can rack up a script for a 24-page comic in about 5 hours. It takes much longer to edit the thing. Much longer.
DMH: So what is Nowheresville about?
MR: Dig this, daddy-o! A 1950s Greenwich Village beatnik seeks love and spiritual enlightenment, but instead finds himself embroiled in a mystery involving a murdered exotic dancer, a thrill-killing mobster, a hopped-up bebop jazz drummer, a ruthless Hollywood starlet and a crooked cop. This cat is on an espresso-fueled, riffs-n-stiffs, one-way trip to Nowheresville, baby!
Some call this title a "Crime cocktail with a beatnik twist" and the back of the book refers to it as "Chandler mixed with Kerouac in the bowels of bohemia. The shocking story of a generation gone wild from beat, bop and homicide." The square world agrees that beatnik-related graphic novels will corrupt young minds and lead to the defiance of the rules and conventions of a civilized society. Personally, I think I wrote a crime story set in the turbulent world of the beats and filled it with obsessive love, Buddhism and bongos.
Nowheresville was originally published by Caliber Comics and has been collected for Image, completely re-worked, revised, improved with 40 pages of new art and packaged at 192 pages in a (bite-) sized 6x9 graphic novel.
DMH: What inspired you to write Nowheresville? How'd you come up with this idea?
MR: I had a revelation when reading the passage from Steve Allen's 1955 classic "Bop Fables" where Little Red Riding Hood questions the wolf in a grandma disguise. "I don't want to sound square or anything," she says, "but you don't look like my grandmother at all. You look like some other cat." It dawned on me that this little basket carrying chick was doing some detective work (questions about big teeth, big ears, etc.) to solve a mystery. An interesting side note: William S. Burroughs' first "Beat" novel "Junky" was published by a company (Ace) known for its hard core detective novels. The marriage of crime noir and beat literature was inevitable.
DMH: What are your future plans?
MR: I have things in the works I can't talk about.http://nowheresville.com/spacejunk0.html will give you a glimpse at one very special project. Also, in the far-flung future, when I die I'd like to be buried under a headstone carved in the shape of a seal balancing a beach ball on its nose.
DMH: What would be your dream project?
MR: If I told you, I'd have to exterminate you.
DMH: What are your thoughts on the comic industry.
There's still money to be made. Not as much as in the past, but the machine is still churning. There may come a day when comics as we know them will no longer exist. But there will always be good artists and writers who want to tell stories and there will always be moneymen finding ways to make money off their efforts.
Then again, if I could look into the future I'd be answering phones alongside Miss Cleo.
DMH: Renaissance or something else?
MR: Certainly not a Renaissance. Artists and writers still need to eat, pay rent. And publishers are not eager to lose money on art and personal vision. Definitely something else. Survival of the fittest, perhaps. Survival of the hungriest?
DMH: I always like to tell people I’m interviewing to feel free to add anything about themselves that would be of interest to people. (Mark took this ball and ran.)
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE IN THE MORNING?
MR: I reflect on those people who are plotting to destroy whatever happiness I've currently claimed for myself.
DO YOU GET MOTION SICKNESS?
MR: I get sick sitting still. The room is spinning now!
ROLLER COASTERS-SCARY OR EXCITING?
MR: I firmly place my hands on my hips, whip my head to one side and heartily laugh at them.
LIKE OR HATE DANCING?
MR: Me like. No one else like when Mark dance.
PEN OR PENCIL?
MR: Blood and tears
HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE?
MR: 0.5
FUTURE SONS NAME?
MR: Karl Friedrich Heironymous Ricketts
FUTURE DAUGHTER'S NAME?
MR: Etcetera Cicada Ricketts
FAVORITE FOODS?
MR: All of them
CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?
MR: What does vanilla taste like? Anti-chocolate?
CROUTONS OR BACON BITS?
MR: Yuck poo!
DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE?
MR: Yeah, but I'm too big for my big wheels.
DO YOU SLEEP WITH STUFFED ANIMALS?
MR: What have you heard? It's a lie, I'm telling you!!! Oh God. sob. sob. Don't tell my wife!
WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
MR: A Galaxie 500 with the words "Whizzo!" emblazoned on its side. Neighborhood kids would follow me down the street screaming, "Whizzo! Whizzo!"
IF A GIRL ASKED FOR THE SHIRT OFF YOUR BACK, WOULD YOU GIVE IT?
MR: Who do I look like, Sir Walter Raleigh??? She has to take her shirt off first.
IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
MR: Eccentric Multi - Billionaire.
IF YOU DYED YOUR HAIR A DIFFERENT COLOR, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
MR: Black like it used to be when I was young and I had my whole life before me...
FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH?
MR: Good vs Evil. I have season tickets.
DMH: Living in Chicago, what is the best place to eat at?
MR: I rarely go into Chicago these days, I stay hidden in the suburbs. But many years ago, the Pusan House in Rogers Park was my favorite hangout. The owners knew me so well that they wouldn't even ask what I wanted, they'd just serve up a big steamin' bowl of Bi Bim Bop and watch me smile.
DMH: What is your favorite movie and album?
MR: My all-time favorite movie is "Touch of Evil." I also love "Sweet Smell of Success," and anything by Preston Sturges, the Coen Brothers and Terry Gilliam.
My all-time favorite album is either the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" or XTC's "Black Sea." I also love Frank Black's first two solo projects after the Pixies. And Django Reinhardt is in permanent rotation.
Current favorite movie is "The Man Who Wasn't There" and current favorite album is Cotton Mather's "The Big Picture" (import).
DMH: What’s your favorite Disney Movie?
MR: Pinocchio. But my guilty "Disney" pleasure is The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, all those wacky gadgets.
DMH: What movie are you most looking forward to watching?
MR: The Royal Tennenbaums
DMH: What is your favorite item of clothing?
MR: My glasses. Can't read without 'em. Bet you thought I wore a lucky fedora or a beany with a propeller when I write/draw. I'm not that superstitious.
DMH: Give us some bizarre facts about yourself.
MR: * I was married in Las Vegas at the Graceland Chapel with an Elvis impersonator singing "Viva Las Vegas" as my bride, wearing a red dress and carrying a black bouquet, walked down the aisle.
* I wrote and recorded a jingle ("The Bob Throb") for a soda pop "Dr. Bob's Vitamin Boost Tangerine Soda." The jingle played on Minnesota pop stations.
* While living in a house on top of a cliff, I tacked roaches on my bedroom wall along with a slip of paper to mark the day and time of their demise.
DMH: Tell us a purely Mark Ricketts story?
MR: Through a series of misadventures, I wound up becoming Art director at a strange, health related facility where I met the bowflex man, Tom Purvis, and infomercial fitness guru, Tony Little. Fitness experts from around the world came to this facility for various reasons, such as personal training certification and steroid testing for body building competitions.
One summer day, a group of tanned, overly pumped "Mr. Universe" wannabes collected in the Institute lobby. Their bladders were full and they were ready to perform. Unfortunately, the doctors that were scheduled to run that days urine test had failed to show. And sooooooo, my desperate boss offered me major cash to impersonate a doctor and watch men pee into a cup. Wearing a lab coat and toting a clipboard, I checked off boxes on the form. No concealed urine pouches. Check. Etc... Now, the best part was that I got to take the samples to Montreal for testing. There's a lot more to this story, but lets just say that going through customs cuffed to a briefcase filled with urine samples was a hoot and a half.
DMH: I remember talking with you about how you would proof Bendis’ work. Why is Brian such a bad speller and how come he can't drive?
MR: Brian doesn't have time for a spell checker or, for that matter, the internal combustion system. He does what he enjoys doing and everything else is just an obstacle. That said, do you really want a man behind the wheel of a dangerous vehicle who sees everything outside his objective as an obstacle? If you do, then you must love watching cars crash at monster truck rallies.
DMH: What is your best con story?
MR: At a San Diego con, many years ago, I was sitting at some hotel bar when William Shatner appeared to my right. I'd had a few and so my southern accent was a little more obvious when I called out to the bartender, "Jim Beam him up, Scotty!" and then winked at Shatner and said, "It's on me, Captain." It was corny and he probably thought I was a jerk, but he knew the job was dangerous when he took the gig. I, personally, have no excuse.
DMH: Be sure to preorder Mark’s Nowheresville trade in the December Previews. It’s slated for a March 2002 release. Here’s a sneak peek from the graphic novel to whet your appetite! Thanks Mark for the interview and the exclusive images!
You can find the Nowheresville website @http://nowheresville.com/
By Denny Haynes
I met Mark Ricketts at Brian Michael Bendis’ booth at Wizard World 2001. Brian was nice enough to introduce me to him. Mark showed me his upcoming Nowheresville trade from Image Comics. We found time to chat while selling Bendis’ books, freeing Brian up to talk, sign, sketch, and take pictures with his fans. I asked Mark if he’d be interested in doing an interview with GrayHaven Magazine, as his work on Nowheresville really impressed me.
DMH: So what comics did you read growing up?
MR: I was born in a small town in Arkansas where the yearly event was a duck-calling contest. The main street closed down for carnival rides, a booth where you could buy bags of fried okra, a beauty contest and a stage where local hunters were given the opportunity to show off their skills at making duck noises come from small, hand-held hooter devices. It was a really small, very strange, boring little burg. And I was a square peg, a real misfit. Comics were my only solace and so I turned to the visions of Kirby and Eisner for escapism.
DMH: So how did you get started in comics?
MR: My rock'n'roll band, like migrant workers in the Grapes of Wrath, moved from Arkansas to Chicago. We played, recorded and starved. I had to pick up illustration gigs at Playboy to keep us in cheeseburgers and guitar picks. My contact and art director was former underground cartoonist, Skip Williamson (Snappy Sammy Smoot). He encouraged me to make comics. I did just that.
It was Caliber Comics golden age. We were a rag-tag gaggle of renegade artists (Bendis, Davis, Locke, Mack, Hester, Lark, Showman and myself) searching for an audience. And then I retired. The other guys eventually moved into mainstream comics, but I wanted to be a better writer, to continue growing. I read all the books on the subject, took the McKee "Story" course, worked out my kinks and after a bit ...felt renewed. After I won the Klasky-Csupo (Rugrats, Wild Thornberries, and Duckman) scriptwriting contest, Brian Bendis encouraged me to return to comics and release Nowheresville as a graphic novel. And so, here we go again...
DMH: What are your favorite comics/characters past and present and why do you like them?
MR: My all-time favorite comic is Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta." It's such a personal, honest and original work. Alan Moore is a consummate comics storyteller. I am in awe of his talent. And that book rawks!
Love and Rockets, especially Jaime Hernandez's "Flies on the Ceiling" and "The Death of Speedy." Jaime is one of those great artist/writers that can say more with an empty panel than most prose heavy comics.
My two favorite characters are those flawed, but lovable scamps - Kyle Baker's Cowboy Wally and Frank Frazetta's Pop Bottle.
DMH: What character would you like to write?
MR: I assume you mean an established, corporate character. Well, I have a personal fondness for the Inferior Five (anyone remember those guys?) and the Metal Men, but I actually have fully realized ideas for Superman, Wyatt Wingfoot and Captain America stored away in my file cabinet. The trouble with writing established characters is that you're automatically saddled with the burden of what's gone before. This burden can also be a blessing too, I guess. You could use audience familiarity to write a complex tale without wasting any pages on establishing your protagonists history.
However, creating my own, brand-spankin' new characters is the most satisfying.
DMH: Who are your favorite creators and how did they influence you?
MR: Whenever I'm stumped I turn to the works of Alan Moore, Moebius, P. Craig Russell, Bruce Timm and Will Eisner.
DMH: Who are your favorite non-comic creators?
MR: The Coen Brothers are amazing writers. Like the late, great Preston Sturges their work is a confluence of humor, drama and tension. I am humbled by and aspire to their level of craft. Sam Shepard's writing has influenced mine. I'm fascinated by his sensitivity to human behavior. In his play "True West," two brothers push each other to the point where they exchange personalities. Brilliant writing.
DMH: How did your parents feel about your choice of occupation?
MR: They think I'm a priest. You can't imagine how hard it is to go home and keep up that pretense. I guess I'm gonna have to break down and tell them the truth some day. I refuse to hear one more confession, I can tell you that.
DMH: People are always interested in how other creators write their stories, what is your method?
MR: I get an idea. Who knows where they come from? Then I create an outline, a structure. Next, I lose myself in the story. Bang it out on the keyboard stopping only to read the dialogue out loud. I can rack up a script for a 24-page comic in about 5 hours. It takes much longer to edit the thing. Much longer.
DMH: So what is Nowheresville about?
MR: Dig this, daddy-o! A 1950s Greenwich Village beatnik seeks love and spiritual enlightenment, but instead finds himself embroiled in a mystery involving a murdered exotic dancer, a thrill-killing mobster, a hopped-up bebop jazz drummer, a ruthless Hollywood starlet and a crooked cop. This cat is on an espresso-fueled, riffs-n-stiffs, one-way trip to Nowheresville, baby!
Some call this title a "Crime cocktail with a beatnik twist" and the back of the book refers to it as "Chandler mixed with Kerouac in the bowels of bohemia. The shocking story of a generation gone wild from beat, bop and homicide." The square world agrees that beatnik-related graphic novels will corrupt young minds and lead to the defiance of the rules and conventions of a civilized society. Personally, I think I wrote a crime story set in the turbulent world of the beats and filled it with obsessive love, Buddhism and bongos.
Nowheresville was originally published by Caliber Comics and has been collected for Image, completely re-worked, revised, improved with 40 pages of new art and packaged at 192 pages in a (bite-) sized 6x9 graphic novel.
DMH: What inspired you to write Nowheresville? How'd you come up with this idea?
MR: I had a revelation when reading the passage from Steve Allen's 1955 classic "Bop Fables" where Little Red Riding Hood questions the wolf in a grandma disguise. "I don't want to sound square or anything," she says, "but you don't look like my grandmother at all. You look like some other cat." It dawned on me that this little basket carrying chick was doing some detective work (questions about big teeth, big ears, etc.) to solve a mystery. An interesting side note: William S. Burroughs' first "Beat" novel "Junky" was published by a company (Ace) known for its hard core detective novels. The marriage of crime noir and beat literature was inevitable.
DMH: What are your future plans?
MR: I have things in the works I can't talk about.
DMH: What would be your dream project?
MR: If I told you, I'd have to exterminate you.
DMH: What are your thoughts on the comic industry.
There's still money to be made. Not as much as in the past, but the machine is still churning. There may come a day when comics as we know them will no longer exist. But there will always be good artists and writers who want to tell stories and there will always be moneymen finding ways to make money off their efforts.
Then again, if I could look into the future I'd be answering phones alongside Miss Cleo.
DMH: Renaissance or something else?
MR: Certainly not a Renaissance. Artists and writers still need to eat, pay rent. And publishers are not eager to lose money on art and personal vision. Definitely something else. Survival of the fittest, perhaps. Survival of the hungriest?
DMH: I always like to tell people I’m interviewing to feel free to add anything about themselves that would be of interest to people. (Mark took this ball and ran.)
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE IN THE MORNING?
MR: I reflect on those people who are plotting to destroy whatever happiness I've currently claimed for myself.
DO YOU GET MOTION SICKNESS?
MR: I get sick sitting still. The room is spinning now!
ROLLER COASTERS-SCARY OR EXCITING?
MR: I firmly place my hands on my hips, whip my head to one side and heartily laugh at them.
LIKE OR HATE DANCING?
MR: Me like. No one else like when Mark dance.
PEN OR PENCIL?
MR: Blood and tears
HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE?
MR: 0.5
FUTURE SONS NAME?
MR: Karl Friedrich Heironymous Ricketts
FUTURE DAUGHTER'S NAME?
MR: Etcetera Cicada Ricketts
FAVORITE FOODS?
MR: All of them
CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?
MR: What does vanilla taste like? Anti-chocolate?
CROUTONS OR BACON BITS?
MR: Yuck poo!
DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE?
MR: Yeah, but I'm too big for my big wheels.
DO YOU SLEEP WITH STUFFED ANIMALS?
MR: What have you heard? It's a lie, I'm telling you!!! Oh God. sob. sob. Don't tell my wife!
WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
MR: A Galaxie 500 with the words "Whizzo!" emblazoned on its side. Neighborhood kids would follow me down the street screaming, "Whizzo! Whizzo!"
IF A GIRL ASKED FOR THE SHIRT OFF YOUR BACK, WOULD YOU GIVE IT?
MR: Who do I look like, Sir Walter Raleigh??? She has to take her shirt off first.
IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
MR: Eccentric Multi - Billionaire.
IF YOU DYED YOUR HAIR A DIFFERENT COLOR, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
MR: Black like it used to be when I was young and I had my whole life before me...
FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH?
MR: Good vs Evil. I have season tickets.
DMH: Living in Chicago, what is the best place to eat at?
MR: I rarely go into Chicago these days, I stay hidden in the suburbs. But many years ago, the Pusan House in Rogers Park was my favorite hangout. The owners knew me so well that they wouldn't even ask what I wanted, they'd just serve up a big steamin' bowl of Bi Bim Bop and watch me smile.
DMH: What is your favorite movie and album?
MR: My all-time favorite movie is "Touch of Evil." I also love "Sweet Smell of Success," and anything by Preston Sturges, the Coen Brothers and Terry Gilliam.
My all-time favorite album is either the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" or XTC's "Black Sea." I also love Frank Black's first two solo projects after the Pixies. And Django Reinhardt is in permanent rotation.
Current favorite movie is "The Man Who Wasn't There" and current favorite album is Cotton Mather's "The Big Picture" (import).
DMH: What’s your favorite Disney Movie?
MR: Pinocchio. But my guilty "Disney" pleasure is The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, all those wacky gadgets.
DMH: What movie are you most looking forward to watching?
MR: The Royal Tennenbaums
DMH: What is your favorite item of clothing?
MR: My glasses. Can't read without 'em. Bet you thought I wore a lucky fedora or a beany with a propeller when I write/draw. I'm not that superstitious.
DMH: Give us some bizarre facts about yourself.
MR: * I was married in Las Vegas at the Graceland Chapel with an Elvis impersonator singing "Viva Las Vegas" as my bride, wearing a red dress and carrying a black bouquet, walked down the aisle.
* I wrote and recorded a jingle ("The Bob Throb") for a soda pop "Dr. Bob's Vitamin Boost Tangerine Soda." The jingle played on Minnesota pop stations.
* While living in a house on top of a cliff, I tacked roaches on my bedroom wall along with a slip of paper to mark the day and time of their demise.
DMH: Tell us a purely Mark Ricketts story?
MR: Through a series of misadventures, I wound up becoming Art director at a strange, health related facility where I met the bowflex man, Tom Purvis, and infomercial fitness guru, Tony Little. Fitness experts from around the world came to this facility for various reasons, such as personal training certification and steroid testing for body building competitions.
One summer day, a group of tanned, overly pumped "Mr. Universe" wannabes collected in the Institute lobby. Their bladders were full and they were ready to perform. Unfortunately, the doctors that were scheduled to run that days urine test had failed to show. And sooooooo, my desperate boss offered me major cash to impersonate a doctor and watch men pee into a cup. Wearing a lab coat and toting a clipboard, I checked off boxes on the form. No concealed urine pouches. Check. Etc... Now, the best part was that I got to take the samples to Montreal for testing. There's a lot more to this story, but lets just say that going through customs cuffed to a briefcase filled with urine samples was a hoot and a half.
DMH: I remember talking with you about how you would proof Bendis’ work. Why is Brian such a bad speller and how come he can't drive?
MR: Brian doesn't have time for a spell checker or, for that matter, the internal combustion system. He does what he enjoys doing and everything else is just an obstacle. That said, do you really want a man behind the wheel of a dangerous vehicle who sees everything outside his objective as an obstacle? If you do, then you must love watching cars crash at monster truck rallies.
DMH: What is your best con story?
MR: At a San Diego con, many years ago, I was sitting at some hotel bar when William Shatner appeared to my right. I'd had a few and so my southern accent was a little more obvious when I called out to the bartender, "Jim Beam him up, Scotty!" and then winked at Shatner and said, "It's on me, Captain." It was corny and he probably thought I was a jerk, but he knew the job was dangerous when he took the gig. I, personally, have no excuse.
DMH: Be sure to preorder Mark’s Nowheresville trade in the December Previews. It’s slated for a March 2002 release. Here’s a sneak peek from the graphic novel to whet your appetite! Thanks Mark for the interview and the exclusive images!
You can find the Nowheresville website @
I went and saw KILL BILL, the 4th Quentin Tarantino film if you hadn't heard, on Sunday afternoon and was, and this is an understatement, IMPRESSED!
I loved Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown was okay, but the trailer for this movie gave me doubts. I wasn't too keen on the Charlie's Angels feel to the film or what I felt were regurgitated scenes from Pulp Fiction i.e. "square" and Uma coming out of the coma seemed eerily familiar to Uma coming out of an overdose, but I was wrong. This movie is amazing! The trailer was actually perfect because it didn't give the whole movie to you in a condensed version like some trailers do. I went in and was surprised. THAT says a lot. Do yourself a favor and go see this movie...I plan on seeing it again.
And now I have one more movie I'm eagerly anticipating...KILL BILL Volume 2!
I loved Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown was okay, but the trailer for this movie gave me doubts. I wasn't too keen on the Charlie's Angels feel to the film or what I felt were regurgitated scenes from Pulp Fiction i.e. "square" and Uma coming out of the coma seemed eerily familiar to Uma coming out of an overdose, but I was wrong. This movie is amazing! The trailer was actually perfect because it didn't give the whole movie to you in a condensed version like some trailers do. I went in and was surprised. THAT says a lot. Do yourself a favor and go see this movie...I plan on seeing it again.
And now I have one more movie I'm eagerly anticipating...KILL BILL Volume 2!
Thursday, October 09, 2003
There’s a ladybug on my wall.
When I was in Germany during summer vacation, I was celebrating a birthday, not sure which one, (my mom, sister, and I would go every other year during the summer when my dad was stationed on Fort Knox) I think it might have been my 12th, and we were sitting around my Oma's kitchen table and they had just brought out the cake. A ladybug landed on the table and all the attention shifted from me to this bug…so I dropped my hand on it and killed it. It didn’t go over too well needless to say; it was probably one of the most ruthless things I’ve ever done.
When I was in Germany during summer vacation, I was celebrating a birthday, not sure which one, (my mom, sister, and I would go every other year during the summer when my dad was stationed on Fort Knox) I think it might have been my 12th, and we were sitting around my Oma's kitchen table and they had just brought out the cake. A ladybug landed on the table and all the attention shifted from me to this bug…so I dropped my hand on it and killed it. It didn’t go over too well needless to say; it was probably one of the most ruthless things I’ve ever done.
