Why Ahsoka Tano Deserves Her Own Series.

This fan-favorite Padawan and hard-fighting veteran of The Clone Wars, (in various animated shows and The Mandalorian) is ready for her close up and deserves a show of her very own.  

Introduced as a 14-year-old apprentice to the young Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano made her impactful debut in 2008’s Clone Wars 3D-animated feature film that served as a pilot for the eventual series of the same name.  Tano’s trajectory as a supporting character may have seemed fairly predictable at first, but as her friendship with Anakin Skywalker evolved, a compelling and thoughtful persona emerged, a “rebel with a cause” of sorts. Ahsoka carried a youthful idealism with her all the way to the Star Wars “Rebels” animated episodes, eventually reuniting Ahsoka with her old master, now known as Darth Vader.  Now, 13 years after her first appearance in a series, there are several compelling reasons why Ahsoka Tano should have her own show:  She’s been everywhere: Ahsoka Tano is one of those very special characters in the Star Wars universe who tie the “old” world of the prequels and the newer world of episodes IV-VI together. Tano’s presence across varied storylines and her interactions with key iconic figures move her through the different phases of the rise and fall of the empire and across the eternal conflict between the Jedi and the Sith. Girl power: The force is very strong with this female jedi who turned away from the council, but so is the depth of her character. Tano has been a driving force in the narratives of many stories, and the fact that she debuts as a young teenage girl navigating the intricacies and intrigue of The Clone Wars makes her an important female presence in the roster of Star Wars characters.  Tano remains one of the most complicated and unpredictable characters in Star Wars: It is through her challenges and ethical conflicts that we see a dynamic view of the morality in the world of Star Wars. Through Tano’s eyes we see a world where the Jedi are far from infallible, and may in many instances be out of touch and misguided by the application of impractical ideals and principles. Ahsoka Tano leaves the Jedi order before Anakin Skywalker does!  Tano’s questioning nature: It was at first a theatrically adolescent trait (that enabled story exposition early in the animated Clone Wars) but it became a burgeoning conscience within the show. Tano’s questions are often the audience’s own questions and it is her coming to grips with the world of Star Wars that bring us into it much closer. ...and lastly, who can ever say “no” to twin light sabers? -No one who has seen Ahsoka Tano in action in The Mandalorian. Ahsoka Tano is ready for her own adventures. 

With Rosario Dawson having worn her robes most recently to passionate and energized fan reaction on The Mandalorian, the timing may be perfect for a heroine to lead the next Star Wars show. 

-SJ

Invincible Episode 8’s Staggering Importance for Animation…and for Horror

 (Warning: This article contains season 1 ending spoilers.)

Amazon’s animated production of Invincible has concluded its 8-episode first season and has already been renewed for two more seasons. All this, to the excitement of the comic book’s existing franchise fans and its new viewers.

In 2003, Invincible, the comic book, may have seemed (at first) yet another exercise in updating or taking a mature or “realistic” look at the established superhero concept. Many other comic books over the years have deconstructed the superhero world by colliding decades-old tropes with the physical, ethical and political realities that most mainstream comics always sought to avoid: (E.g. Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme, Moore’s Watchmen, Waid’s Kingdom Come, and more recently Ennis’ The Boys) -But it was Robert Kirkman’s Invincible that did so through the eyes of an adolescent. Invincible told its coming-of-age story with a harshness, accessibility and violence that seemed all too logical and obvious especially for a world with superheroes. Invincible was at its core, a series of stories about sobering disillusionment, eye-widening/gut-punching disappointments that were only slightly more terrible than the familiar and mercurial world of the American teenager. The animated series has managed to effectively build upon the source material, yet take things further, to the benefit of animation as a whole.
Episode 8 of Invincible is a landmark program in animation, for reasons that founding masters and producers of the animated medium have maintained are key to animation’s worth as an artform.

—The significance of this show, and its episode 8 in particular has to do with its ability to shock audiences in ways that previously only horror movies could manage. The challenge of animation, in regards to scaring or shocking audiences has to do with its innate artificiality. Animation, 2D animation (there are cel-shaded 3D elements in this series) is inherently an other-reality, - a flattened, stylized abstraction and as such, looks “fake” by design. For those creators who have wanted to make an animation as scary as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, or as explicitly violent and gore-laden as the opening of Saving Private Ryan, animation’s lack of verisimilitude has defeated prior efforts to scare or shock despite some incredible work in Japanese anime in recent years. Live-action horror films themselves will often fall short of the mark if the blood “looks fake” or the stunts and effect work are unconvincing. What then, do traditional animators (who will never approach the texture of reality and don’t intend to) do to affect their audiences with the proper shock required of a story like Invincible?

—In short, they must do what Robert Kirkman did in episode 8: raise the emotional stakes so that the violence that the animation illustrates evokes a shock that exceeds the actual gore and trauma depicted on screen: Episode 8 horrifies and shocks because the viewer is made to care.

Walt Disney is said to have been unconvinced of animation’s legitimacy until he saw his own production of Snow White with an audience and witnessed people crying and reacting uncontrollably to a series of flickering drawings and sounds projected on a screen – the audience reacting as they would to a movie with live actors — reacting as they would to “real” events.

Season 1 Episode 8 of Invincible and its many violent set pieces may indeed be looked upon as the moment wherein 2D animation, both enabled and limited by its inherently abstract nature, finally exercised the ability to horrify in as visceral a way as any scary movie.

CEREALSLY SUNDAY AT WORD UP

Bag o' Books Sale January 24 & 25, 2015 @wordupbooks

Word Up Community Bookshop Presents...

World War 3 Illustrated at SVA February 25 2014 at 7pm LIVE COMIC BOOK READING

LIVE COMIC BOOK READING AT SVA FEBRUARY 25th 2014 at 7PM

The Reading Went Well

Another year is blowing by, too fast for my liking. There doesn’t seem to be enough time for everything I want to do. There don’t seem to be enough hours in the day.
A common complaint for people in their 50s, 40s, 30s… common and familiar, I suppose for anyone trying to accomplish some as yet unfinished thing, or get closer to some life long goal. It’s a feeling that accelerates as the calendar’s pages diminish every year in the fall. It’s a quiet panic I feel on days when I’m already late for work, and the minute hand ticks past nine ever increasingly faster, for every minute I haven’t reached my desk, my phone and my responsibilities.

But at 43, it feels like “autumn” in my life too.

It has felt like one long “November” ever since I turned 28 years old. Every succeeding year, another filmmaker gives up, or another artist calls it quits, or another colleague tells me “It’s great that you’re still out there working.” It’s beginning to sound more and more like ingenuous condescension. It’s beginning to sound like they never believed they would get any farther than they did at the moment they quit.
I don’t like any of it, their quitting, their excuses, their rationalizations or blaming the outside world, finances or family for why they couldn’t or wouldn’t continue.
I didn’t make the choice to become an artist any more than I made the choice to become fat; the only choice I made was to work hard at it, to devote my life to the series of statements that have become my body of work, so far. Not being paid a living wage at it means I’m not a professional, but having a day job doesn’t make me an amateur.

Friday night, with what felt like a throat infection, I read and presented slides from my latest comic book story. Although this is only my 4th or 5th time doing these kinds of performances, it went off without a hitch. The crowd, mostly people familiar with my work for the past 20 years published in World War 3 Illustrated, seemed to genuinely enjoy the story, no forced art-house laughter from the bunch of them. The applause felt great. It served to remind me that although DC Comics, Vertigo and Karen Berger passed on my work yet again in 2009 (a great piece called Cabbie Baba and the 40 Thieves that I’ll get to someday) although several samples for graphic novels I have done for other writers have stalled or been outright rejected this year, although it seems that self publishing will be the only way to proceed as I feel no confidence in the current generation of editors and publishers, I have managed to create my own stories, on my own terms. In the place of a “deal” or an agent. I have no confidence in any of them anymore either after my last -first and only- agent suddenly expressed confused misgivings about my writing and abruptly quit the business. I have to remain focused on the road I’ve managed to pave without the help or support of institutions who have rejected my work.
Remaining largely anonymous, working whenever my “day job” ends, will have to suffice, and I will have to appreciate that opportunity even on the weeknights that take me long past my initial call to sleep as I toil at my drafting table on stories and images that I will have to distribute myself, if they are ever to be seen by the world they are intended to entertain and engage.

It’ll have to do.

I just wonder, -what will I tell myself when I turn 60?
-SJ

Color Posters for WW3 Issue 42

DRAFTS: Release Party and Art Show for Issue WW3 #42

8"x11" poster




5.5"x4.25" 2-sided postcard



Poster versions:

11"x17" poster

Coming November 2011

Saturday July 9th at 2pm...