Week #22 A Biographical Dictionary of Comic Books - Book

Anyone who’s ever lived with me or spent a long period of time at my house is familiar with the Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomas. It’s been in my bathroom for about 10 years.

For those of you not familiar with it. It’s a book that covers, in alphabetical order, everyone who made there life in films. These lives are covered as sort of critical biographies. There criticisms more than they are lists of facts from peoples lives. Therefore of George Lucas’ later Star Wars films he has this to say “maybe someday robots will watch them” of Michael Bay he has opens thus “In the summer of 2001 there was a story going around hollywood that Michael Bay was seriously depressed.” and ends like this “We may respect his suffering, but we know this: ours is greater. And he has millions as medicine.”

There’s positive ones as well. Some beautiful writing on Welles and even Chronenberg. But the nasty stuff is really the best.

My idea is to create the same thousand page epic but for lives made in comic books. Create a true critical analysis of comic book creators from Stan Lee to Art Spiegelman to Rob Liefeld.

Just like the film book I’d attempt to cover everyone who’s really made there life in the art form. Naturally I couldn’t get everyone but there’s easily over a thousand I could name right now who’ve made the medium what it is.

There’s already a great book by called Slings & Arrows: Comic Guide, a critical assessment of over 2500 titles. But there’s nothing out there to cover the people that made these comics.

Naturally this is a huge undertaking and also a rather expensive one. I’ve read more comic books than most people on earth but still there’s some major gaps in my reading. It would make sense to have a partner or partners but what makes the film book so good is that it’s all writen in one voice. Maybe we could get away with two distinct voices.

Week #21 More Music No One Will Ever Hear Redux - The Boxed Set

So after my last post I got an email from the esteemed Greg Travis #1; former member of German Cars Vs. American Homes and co-creator of this crazy shit: http://narrative-inscription.com/.


Greg had tried to get me to make a Mishap Boxed set a couple of years back. His idea was to make it real classy and try and pass it off as an art item. At the time I put it down to him slightly fucking with me.

When Greg emailed me again after my last post to re-assert his need for a Mishap Boxed set I got a sort of idea.

What if I combined my last two projects? Made a mishap boxed set where we entirely made up our history and identifies. Along with CD’s of all our music there would be a large full color book explaining the history of the bands, the inspiration for the songs and the bio’s of the artists; all entirely fictional.

Naturally there’d still be a pretty limited market for it. Still I really like the idea more of the compilation or boxed set as a conceptual art project then just a collection of songs. It would be even cooler if we could get people we don’t know to write the stories about us.

Week #20 - More Music No One Will Ever Hear - Album

The title is one Mishap Productions has used a few times for compilations of music made by people involved with us. Some day I’d like to put out a semi-real record under this title, a sort of retrospective of the entire mishap musical history.

It would include everything from music we made in high school to the tracks from the newest Gomorran Social Aid and Pleasure Club and Missing Teens Albums plus a few tracks from bands who’ve played the prom. I’d like to get it mastered and print a small run of it.

The ideas not really the most original or complex. Probably something that only a small group of people would be interested in but still it would make me really happy to have made it and to own a copy.

Week #19 The Music Review as Fiction

Here and there throughout my life I’ve tried my hand at music reviewing. A while back I actually did it pretty regularly for a fairly main stream blog. It occurred to me while I was reviewing that, in trying to keep my review interesting, I’d always seek some sort of context usually related to the band’s past or there “story” sometimes related to the place I perceived them as taking in the musical landscape.

I got better at reviewing but I always felt a little creatively stunted by the form. I couldn't find an original approach to it. Then it hit me; why not just make up an entirely fictitious context for the review and use that to explore the effects of the music. The idea would look something like this:

The Missing Teens- Music for Young Adults

The Missing Teens originally hail from the badlands of South Dakota where front man James Call’s family were the first to own any sort of musical instrument. The Call’s used this advantage to corner the musical world in the Northwest creating the core-core genre and guarding there monopoly on it using the most cut-thought of business practices.

The youngest and brightest of the current Call clan, James Hughes Call, splits his time evenly between living as a much loved New York impresario and acting as CEO of Core-Core InCorePorated in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The missing teens, a group James put together from the greatest musicians in the Northwest and the most promising socialites of New York City, have released there debut album with the much awaited “Music for Young Adults” a return to the families core-core roots.

The subject matter of the album spans all facets of the Core-Core magnets well documented life. From “Drive Up Hill” about James’ time working on the peace process in Sri Lanka to “Andy and Miranda” a song rumored to be about the lost weekend he spent in Morocco with Brad and Angelina.

and so on....

Hopefully I’d could get a venue with an already built in audience to start doing these. The other option would be, if someone else was interested in doing this with me, we could create a website devoted to just doing these reviews. Or maybe I could just start posting them to the Mishap Blog. Anyone got a CD they want reviewed?