Since I was a young boy...

...I've played very little silver ball, probably mostly on ferries. I have however, read a lot of comics.

Or rather, I divorced comics for rock & roll during junior high, but I've come back baby, and good land, if The Situationists and me don't like us some comics, I dunno who do; a unique storytelling vessel with a potentially complex form and function through serialization, composition, design, collusion between text and image, iconoclasm, a quasi-filmic narrative and the whole creative production process.

And we don't wuss out 'round these here parts and call them 'graphic novels'. That's like calling Blondie or Suicide 'new wave' because punk was not nice enough.

Like punk, comics are real page turners. They have to be, with their scant life cycle - 3 panels daily, 6-10 weekly or online, 22 pages monthly. They are an active media, seeking to engage, and when really great, provoke. Some are marathon runners while others sprint, but either way this is a brisk text at play. They may be dynamic, impossible, they may perplex, they may be very close, quiet sequential offerings,

They are especially known for one thing above all, however: they can be fun.

So it is especially exciting to present a peek at Scott Marshall's love-letter-in-progress to seminal cartoonist, the late Dan DeCarlo, tentatively titled The 5 Seconds Summer Fun Special. I met Scott ages ago through fast friend and once McCartney to my Lennon, the ever debonnaire Gavin Taylor, aka Woody Nightshade, and have always felt the man (both of 'em, of course) had great taste. Scott was into cool music (ska!), theatre and even made his own comics (and since that time I've come of course to know about all kinds of other cool stuff Scott likes, too).

I've always loved Scott's clean, crisp line work, and have often found it heavily informed by the likes of DeCarlo. Needless to say, when he approached me about putting together a comic in this style as a sort of homage, built around a band prospectively called The 5 Seconds and guest starring a bevvy locals, well damn, I very nearly had to sit my ass down.

Considering the series will guest star a number of local bands over it's run, I wonder what it would take to convince Scott to render Wooden Wives as Kirby? We could arrive via Boom Tube or something, yknow, riding those waves of the mind...

You can see Scott's full page pencils sample down yonder, but you should really catch more of his work and thoughts about all that cool stuff he likes on his blog, Potzrebie.