Why audio? Why comics?
Starstruck: a Benefit for “Gentleman Gene” Colan at The Henry Miller Library, Big Sur. The original off-Broadway sci-fantasy comedy, and basis for the Elaine Lee/Michael Kaluta comic book series, presented for the first time in 25 years!
Saturday, August 15: 6:30pm reception, 7:30pm performance. $12.80 advance admission, $20.00 at the door. Silent auction! Libations! United Federation of Freedom Fighters!
Featuring Lance Roger Axt, Victoria Blaszczak, Arden Eaton, Adam “Pablo” Gonzales, David Manchel, Geoff Mutch, and Barbara Smythe, with Lance Roger Axt, Rob Eaton, and David Manchel on SFX. Your host: Steve Kane of the original community-supported KAZU.
My initial thoughts and memories are probably similar to many of yours (depending on your age)…immersing oneself in the world of rich and colorful fantasy, action and gaudy illustrations found only in the very private world of comic books. I spent much of my very minimal change (earned and begged) on them, bought at a local variety store in whose cool and dark racks one could find a wide variety of Marvel, DC and other titles.
One big event was buying a subscription to “Batman” one summer, I believe it was. I was appalled, however, to realize that they came in a paper sleeve and often had been bent or rolled in transit. No matter–my personal hero was right there in my own, privately held titles. So, for awhile, the now billion-dollar-bat was someone I really was into.
My point is really that comics fed my mind with rich ideas and characters…while living in a small town in Maine, and dreaming of becoming a great writer or scientist one day. I think comics and works of fantasy probably still fulfill those needs in people who feel lonely or unstimulated in their little burgs. And thus we are all linked by our common private experience with the comics. How many of you were insulted whenever tv or film characters who read comic books were universally portrayed as mentally weak and intellectually lame? Now they are just portrayed as sex-starved, socially clumsy geeks. What a relief.
Highevah–in later years I even got away with writing a college psychology paper on how The Fantastic Four each represented an area of the psyche.
Now, as for the audio–as a child, we had sturdy little record players that had covers that closed like little suitcases. Luckily, my parents had a wide variety of music–from jazz to comedy to musicals–and gave us a supply of “story records” to listen to. While we could tolerate the pompous orchestral “Peter and the Wolf,” what we really loved were outlandish stories of outer space, cowboys, you name it.
My younger brother, who was the one I shared them with mostly, never really recovered. He’s been a professional ventriloquist/juggler/magician/fire-eater etc etc all of his life, and became rather a celebrity in Scandinavia (see www.steveandjack.com ).
As for me, the double impact of comics, audio (and there was that momentous visit as a child to the NBC Radio Studios in NYC, where GROWN MEN made sound effects!!), theater (our parents were involved) and an early addiction to music and recording devices, and some sort of genetic gift for mimicry and expression all brewed some probably pathologic desire to create such things.
So here I am, a middle-aged man, creating “stories” with other middle-aged men and women, and luckily working with a wiiide array of talent–from producers to actors, musicians, engineers and so on. I really do get to write and perform audio as part of my living, and I owe it all to the previously described influences. Sad, but true. James Joyce I’m not…nor am I Stan Lee. But I think we each bring from our childhood influences something that will add to the cultural stew. I’m hoping mine is more than a dumpling.
