Daylight savings has been inflicted upon us once again. Or maybe it has been removed. I never remember which. Nor do I care. This is the 21st Century. Make it go away. The only good thing out of this is that the clock in my car will now only be 14 minutes fast instead of an hour and 14 minutes.
I’m making progress in physical therapy. My right arm is getting stronger and getting better range of motion. That’s something. Sarah will be coming home tomorrow. That’s a more fun something.
The spreadsheet shows no more finished work. All my work this week has been in writing and world building and character design. I will be posting much of that over the weeks to come.
| Project | Count | Complete |
| Outland Saints (comic) | 40 pages | 12 pages |
| John Bell’s Oz Book (illustrations) | 27 illustrations | 20 illustrations |
| Mighty Nizz: Getting Dressed (comic) – 18 pages | 18 pages | 5 pages |
| Mighty Nizz: Tarot Deck (tarot deck) | 78 cards | 4 cards |
| Skookworks Webstore | 248 designs | new store in progress |
| Sunk Cost Elegy (comic) | 120 pages (tentative) | |
| The Surrilana Depths (comic) | 200 pages (tentative) | |
| Daughter of Spiders (illustrated short story series) – number of stories, word count and number of illustrations to be determined. | ||
| Colonial Cthulhu (Keeper’s and Companions Manuals) | 2 covers | DONE! |
| Observations (comic) | 8 pages | DONE! |
I needed to feel like I finished something so I spent a day doing a couple of illustrations of my favorite giant ape.
Kong has been in the public domain for awhile. Sort of. The novel, King Kong, based on the movie’s script, is in the public domain but only the novel. Someone can retell that story or write/draw their own version so long as they don’t include anything that is original to the movie or any of the other versions of the Kong story that have appeared since. The 1933 movie hits public domain in 2029.
I don’t remember when I saw the 1933 film but I know I was pretty young. It might have been my first monster movie. I’ve enjoyed other Kong movies but, for me, that first movie is THE story of King Kong. There’s an island full of dinosaurs. There’s the giant ape who gets possessive over the blonde sacrifice. There’s a bunch of sailors who get killed by Kong or the other wildlife on the island. Kong fights some dinosaurs. Kong smashes up the village to get the girl back. Kong gets knocked out, dragged to New York and put on stage. He escapes, grabs the girl, goes on a rampage and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. A bunch of biplanes riddle him with bullets and he falls off the building. And dies. It’s a tragedy. And no, Denham, it was bullets and a 1000 foot fall, not beauty, that killed the beast.
I’ve rewatched the movie more than once as an adult. I still enjoy it. The effects are of their time. Denham is a scrappy dude trying to make a buck during hard times – not the villain he (or his surrogates) is portrayed as in later versions. Anne never comes to love Kong. As a kid I could sympathize with Kong – nothing like being king of the jungle and beating up dinosaurs. I could be sad when he got killed. As an adult my sympathies expand to the humans as well. Kong kills a bunch of people. He is possessive of Anne, not loving. King Kong is a monster movie and Kong is one of the monsters.
Later films present a sympathetic Kong. A gentle Kong. A heroic Kong. I enjoy those because, honestly, I’ve never met a monster movie I didn’t somehow enjoy. Most of those Kongs survive their movies’ story. I’m glad for them. But those stories are not THE story anymore than any Frankenstein movie has been THE Frankenstein story. (Only the 1818 version is THE story.)
I’d love to do Kong comic series. It wouldn’t be THE story either. Just my version. But I have a lot of other projects to finish first.
I hope your week goes well. I hope you have the patience to be kind to the universe and it succeeds at being kind back. See you next week!
