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Messages - blackmocco

#1
General / Re: Kevin O'Neill 1953 - 2022
08 November, 2022, 03:46:36 PM
Quote from: karlos on 08 November, 2022, 03:08:05 PM
A lovely tribute.  All this outpouring of love and respect is very moving.

I just think his style opened people's eyes (particularly budding artist-type's eyes!) to a notion that comic art and illustration didn't have to fall into this uniform, accurate style. I obviously loved Bolland's and Gibbons' artwork in 2000AD or John Byrne drawing X-Men but I sure as fuck couldn't draw like them. Their skills were beyond compare, but because of that I found their art was also quite intimidating as a result. O'Neill's artwork was like a thumbs-up for everyone who felt the same way as me - that there were no rules to follow or even better: that you could just make your own and ignore everyone else's. That's a pretty important lesson to learn and all the better if you start learning it early. It's no exaggeration to say I wouldn't have a career as an artist (that as it may be) without discovering his art. I'm going to take a wild guess I'm not alone with that.
#2
General / Re: Kevin O'Neill 1953 - 2022
08 November, 2022, 02:09:10 AM
Well, the news has just broken and with it, a little piece of my heart. My favourite artist of all time, the almighty, the irrepressible, incomparable, the one and only Kevin O'Neill has scrawled his last piece of art and left us. To say I'm gutted to hear the news is the understatement of the day. O'Neill's artwork was the greatest experience of my artistic life (such as it is). I still remember being ten years old and reading prog 224 in my neighbour Maurice Foley's house and having my brain FRIED when I reached Nemesis The Warlock for the first ever time. I ran straight to the shop to buy my own copy so I could take it home and stare at it over and over again and I can safely tell you that forty years later, I HAVE NEVER STOPPED.
This is how love affairs begin, friends. How new worlds are opened, how possibilities seem endless and less dramatically: how careers are shaped. I'll say it: there was no other artist like him. I'll put him next to Giger or Beksinski as quick as THAT. A visionary, a trailblazer, a genuine, bona-fide, balls-to-the-wall fucking genius and for me personally, an inspiration like no other. There was no other artist I wanted to draw like, no other comic I wanted to draw for from the moment I saw his art. I had never before even considered there was a career in art before I saw his work and it's with great pride I tell you that the first job I ever secured, at sixteen years of age with a year left in high school, was because the art I showed was all his fault.
The day is ruined but I'll end on a high note: I met Kevin three times in my life. Once to thank him for a commission he drew for me from my then girlfriend (a present every girlfriend since has looked at with spite in the knowledge there is no greater present to be procured), once at a signing here in LA where he told me you haven't lived until you've heard Alan Moore doing a Stewie from Family Guy impression and even better, completely randomly years later at San Diego Comic Con when I walked past him, sitting alone at a booth waiting to sign something for anyone. I almost shit myself when I saw him and spoke with him for ten golden minutes, no doubt boring him to tears and embarrassing myself by spewing forth all my love and respect in his direction.
So long, maestro. Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything...
#3
A worthy winner for a worthy man. Nice one.
#4
Off Topic / Re: The Black Dog Thread
23 October, 2021, 10:45:00 PM
I think you should move on. Seems like that choice has now been made for you anyway but engaging with these people who clearly cause you stress and angst is only going to cause you more stress and angst. They were dicks who you feel treated you badly so why even go back in there? Break the cycle. Find somewhere else to shop. Put that energy towards something good for yourself.
#5
Off Topic / Re: Science is Drokking Fantastic Because...
29 September, 2021, 03:23:46 PM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 29 September, 2021, 03:14:31 PM
Shouldn't they be depicted with feathers? Or is that only some dinosaurs? (It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that feathered dinosaurs weren't just something Pat Mills made up for the craic in Legend of Shamana.)

Turns out everyone got a little carried away with the feathers thing. Some clearly had. Some clearly hadn't.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/first-fossilized-skin-of-a-carnivorous-dino-reveals-carnotaurus-had-scaly-skin-with-no-feathers/
#6
Quote from: CrazyFoxMachine on 06 June, 2021, 07:52:53 PM
From Blackmocco / Mick Cassidy - the gallery over on our FB page will be open indefinitely to tributes so if folk have any doodles or drawings they want to contribute whenever they feel ready let us know.



Paying back all the creativity he got out into the world is going to be the work of a lifetime.

Thanks Owen. Yes, I couldn't figure out how to post an image and had to ask for help.
I'm not on here much anymore and between colonoscopies, surgery to my (of course) drawing hand and Family Guy deadlines that were piling up, I only got to this today. I didn't know Dave very well but we bantered quite a bit when I was contributing stuff to Zarjaz! over the years and I knew what a good decent and humble skin he was. Quite shaken by the news, even now a few weeks later. This isn't much but wanted to pay my respects anyway.
#7
Announcements / Re: Dave Evans, R.I.P.
09 May, 2021, 01:24:48 AM
Not on here much anymore, folks, but saw the news this morning and had to come in and pay the respects. Can't lie - I'm gutted with that. Won't pretend I knew Dave very well but we exchanged a lot of email over the years when I was contributing to Zarjaz a few times and wasn't hard to figure out from there what a decent, funny, patient and enthusiastic skin he was, even after I convinced him we should risk Uncle Pat's wrath to do a Nemesis strip, convinced him it should be twelve (!!) pages long and convinced him he should do a bigger size for a one-off summer special. Rather than telling me to eff off - as he should have - he just went for it instead, refusing my offers to help offset the larger printing costs and doing the dirty work I was too scared to do by contacting Pat to ask if it was all okay.

I think what's worth considering from all this - and as someone else has already pointed out in here - is that people can literally change other's lives with their actions and Dave was clearly one of those people. There's a long list of writers and artists who can thank him personally for giving them a place and opportunity to showcase their talents and move into the big leagues and let's not forget that no-one's buying a private island from editing and contributing to small press. Dave did all that stuff without a second thought and for no reward other than his own satisfaction and pure love of the medium. That's no small thing and it's really all I've been thinking about today since I heard the news.

All my sympathy to his family and his many, many friends. I'll be hoisting one skywards for Dave tonight and wishing him well. Take care of yourselves, folks. All we've got is each other.
#8
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
17 May, 2020, 06:26:16 PM
Quote from: Leigh S on 16 May, 2020, 10:04:12 AM
So I'm a bit confused by "Obamagate", but the jist of it appears to be Intelligence services tried to stop Russia's illegal attempts to help Trump get elected, so Obama himself was therefore interfering in the election? A bit like the Joker saying that Batman is the true villain becaue he was stopping me rob banks and we all hate banks, right?

Confusion is the idea. Essentially Flynn was being investigated before anyone ever even got elected because he's a slimy bag of shit but naturally, they're trying to twist it into "Obama was spying on my people to sabotage my presidency!" Like it needs any fucking help at this point.
#9
Off Topic / Re: Day of Chaos 2: a.Covid-19 thread.
18 March, 2020, 04:01:35 PM
Can't lie, sitting in Los Angeles I'm more concerned about people than viruses. LA is notoriously non-neighbourly. I've lived in places before for years and never gotten to know who lived next door. There's a good argument to be made that maybe this city doesn't have the greatest cross-section of humanity seeing as most of the residents are here to "make it" at any cost and genuine human interaction is kinda the opposite of that goal. (Yes, that's a gross generalisation, I know. Truthfully, the people who were born and grew up here are the only ones immune to the call of the Siren) In any case, everyone is hoarding here, a lot of the supermarkets are stripped to the bone and gun sales are booming. I'm hardly here to defend Ireland and her culture from fault but at least back home, I'd feel reasonably confident that if shit went down, people in the immediate vicinity would have my back and I'd have theirs. My mum died last October and I've been living away from home for over twenty years but I was struck by how caring and concerned all her neighbours were for her the last few years, even those of them that barely knew her. In LA, I'm not confident that kind of neighbourly concern is high on people's agendas. Ugh. Time will tell.
#10
I'm just thrilled we can continue the long-standing Trek tradition of annoying know-it-all brats who can solve a problem the rest of the cast can't by using her 24th century phone. Somebody actually got paid to write this shite.

On another note, nothing says quality writing like the showrunner having to explain what's going on via answering questions on his Instagram feed. Pathetic.
#11
Roddenberry's idea of a perfect humanity is fine and dandy but I've never gotten the impression in all the time I've watched Star Trek that just because the starship crew we're following are paragons of human virtue it means everyone else in this universe is too. Star Trek has shown us plenty of human blue collar workers and top of the food chain Starfleet staff who were knee deep in their vices. From Mudd's Women all the way up to Insurrection and I've never had a problem with that. Picard, Kirk and Janeway are captains aboard deep space exploration starships. As such, it makes sense to me they would be fashioned as idealists and more enlightened people if they're representing humanity in first contact situations. Their crews would also have been formed with that in mind. It's not a huge leap to expect that there are still unhappy and unfulfilled people living on Earth, even in a society that has supposedly dumped money for enlightenment. "There are other things men can do," says Daystrom in The Ultimate Computer but has anyone ever considered there are people in the 23rd century who have no interest in becoming a poet or an artist or a scientist? Some people don't want to, or are simply not designed to do "other things".

Greed and the lust for power is such a base human failing that eradicating it will always be something to reach for rather than a reality, even in a fictional 23rd/24th century. It's a pipe dream, and I suspect Roddenberry knew that even while creating Star Trek. He embodied it in the characters he created but knew he wouldn't have much of an opportunity for drama if these perfect humans didn't come up against their less enlightened counterparts, and not all of those counterparts are alien races.
#12
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
02 February, 2020, 01:16:43 AM
Quote from: radiator on 31 January, 2020, 05:46:55 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 31 January, 2020, 12:50:49 PM
I think a lot of Leave voters will take it as read that Brexit is "done". They didn't bother informing themselves of the inconvenient nitty-gritty at any other point during the process, so I don't think they'll start now. The Tories will certainly try to spin this as "delivering Brexit" and I'm sure their friends in the broadcast and print media will repeat this message as uncritically as everything else that comes out of the Conservative press office.

If this goes off the front page, away from the glare of constant coverage, I suspect a lot of cans will get kicked down the road and a lot of red lines will quietly go away.

Notice that Rees-Mogg has been deleting every Tweet on his timeline that claimed "no deal was better than a bad deal". The ERG doesn't have the luxury of being a protest group within the Tories any more — they own this now. It's in the Tories' interests to give the impression that this is all done and then try to steer a far less disastrous course when they think no one is looking.

I feel like it'll be the same story with Trump when he is finally out of office. Being as objective as I possibly can be, he has done very little to make the lives of his core supporters better in any tangible way - in many ways he has made them far worse with his awful tax policies, the destruction of environmental protections, the impact of his trade war of the farming community and the stripping away of healthcare.... And yet his term will inevitably be looked back on with great fondness and reverence by the majority of those who voted for him.

They don't care about his policies. They don't care about what happens to the country. They're just enjoying sticking it to anyone who doesn't agree with them. That is literally the only reason. "Take that, libtard!" There's not one rational or intelligent argument to defend him and his base has embraced that mantra. It's a pathetic cult. And yeah, he's getting another four years and then he'll put forward one of his human dud children to take over the mantle. And they'll probably win too. So, make of that what you will.
#13
Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away are beyond fantastic. The story, the craftsmanship, the art, the emotion. All beautiful. Three absolutely perfect movies. Start with them. Work your way back. You're in for a treat.
#14
Film & TV / Re: HBO Watchmen
18 January, 2020, 04:36:56 PM
And that's a wrap. Looks like Lindelof is out for a season 2, meaning most likely what we got is what we got. I'm actually okay with that, even if I also say Watchmen was my favourite show of 2019. Think I'd be as nervous about a season 2 as I was when I heard about a season 1!
#15
Film & TV / Re: Star Wars Episode IX
14 January, 2020, 03:45:52 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 14 January, 2020, 04:59:24 AM
Robert Meyer Burnett gives a detailed summary of the alleged Colin Trevorrow & Derek Connolly Episode IX script, featuring old Lucas-lore like Chewie in an X-Wing.

This script sounds as bad as what we ended up with.