I don't know what to say about this.

Maximuscoolman · Post by **Maximuscoolman** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 5:40 am

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm

Andrick · Post by **Andrick** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 7:51 am

Call it what it is - "failed ideas". The military already has several non-lethal weapons projects which have come from such brain-storming sessions, many of which will start appearing in urban law enforcement within the next ten to twenty years.

It does jog a memory of an old movie based on the TV show "Get Smart" where the villianous organization, K.A.O.S., was threatening the world with a "nude bomb".

Candide · Post by **Candide** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 5:01 pm

Shows just how stupid and out-of-touch with both reality and history the top brass is. A "gay bomb" demoralizing troups? Didn't they ever hear about the Theban Sacred Band?

They were the final elite corp of ancient Greek military thinking. 300 men, all lovers. "Gays in the military"?! Heck, in this case, the gays were the military. The idea was that no man would drop his sword & shield and run away with his lover fighting besides him. Cowardice was, evidently, considered very unattractive. Fighting to protect someone you love probably didn't hurt motivation, either.

They were unbeatable, until Philip of Macedonia invaded the Greek city-states. Even after his son, Alexander, had made a mess of the joint Theban/Athenian forces, the Sacred Band kept fighting. All 300 died fighting, and inflicted far greater casualties on Philip's forces than their own number. (Brings whole new meaning to "militant gay".) Philip was so angry, he levelled Thebes, but so impressed, that he buried the Sacred Band, with honors.

Oddly enough, this week, I've been writing something for Allan: a description of one of my species, known as the "Ai-<<Khl>>olofa". Their military is 100% gay, because homosexual-male members of their species can't distinguish combat from foreplay. My full description better captures their alienness. Allan gets it first.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 6:01 pm

The version I heard was that they'd use it on puritanical fundamentalists. If the reason you're fighting is to uphold your worldview (featuring a God who universally condemns homosexuality) and you just had sex with your very same-sex squad leader, you're going to feel very WIERD about things.

Actually, seen in that light it's not all that bad an idea. Can I use one on the 700 Club? The RNC? Ralph Hayes?

Andrick · Post by **Andrick** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 10:07 pm

candide wrote:Shows just how stupid and out-of-touch with both reality and history the top brass is...

O.o It's an idea. An idea that was rejected. It takes one person to make an idea. It takes a consensus to approve or deny making that idea into a project. Once again, the logic one uses to arrive at a conclusion leaves me wondering how.

Candide · Post by **Candide** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 4:41 pm

Andrick wrote:Once again, the logic one uses to arrive at a conclusion leaves me wondering how.

Then, clearly you didn't read the rest of my post.

Or ignored it.

But I'm biased. I like the whole concept of the Sacred Band. I even believe that we non-breeder-boyz should start calling ourselves, "thebans", just as the gals refer to themselves as "lesbians." But that's just me.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 4:50 pm

Um, Andrick was more put off by your assertion that the folley of this idea was an indication of the -body- of military thinking in America today. And as I pointed out, homosexual activity need not be -universally- demorilizing to be effective against the right kind of foe.

So... uh.. did anyone have any comments on this week's worth of Unit Zero?

Nyamaza · Post by **Nyamaza** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 7:58 pm

Todays comic... there's something off about Arnold's eyes. In the last pannel, where he's feeling the rain, his pupils need to be... I don't know, somehow angled. As they are it looks like he's looking straight ahead, but from the top of his eyeball =0_o=

Wish I could describe the issue better, but I really don't knwo hwo to conceptualize the "right" way to do it, or even what exactly is wrong, ya know?

Andrick · Post by **Andrick** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:34 pm

I see what you're talking about Nyamaza and I know why it looks like it does. The darker border line for the hair is intersecting the line of the eye which creates an optical illusion t the point those two lines diverge, thus making the top of the eye (the part of the iris above the pupil) appear to bulge beyond the original border line.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 12:11 am

Hrr.

I'm beginning to think Scott McCloud was right about color after all!

See, in Understanding Comics, he says that color makes a comic about the shape of things. Most of the comments anyone has made about Unit Zero has been the look. Almost none of the comments made about Umlaut House were ever about its look.

Huh.

Arnold's eye is done pretty badly in this comic, although I kind of liked the last few. It's well worth noting that this first chapter is two to three notches down from my current art skill, and an eyeball I was almost proud of six months ago is a real eyesore now.

Pun not exactly intended but probably inevitable.

Nyamaza · Post by **Nyamaza** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 12:40 am

I wonder, what does he say that Black and White comics are about then? Size? Detail?

erf... I can't figure out a way to ask that without sounding... negative. It's honestly meant as a simple curious question.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:21 am

See, he goes on about comics in general for about 200 pages of -deviously- clever monologue, describing the ins and outs of the artform. It's really quite ingenious.

However, in the chapter on color (the only section of this comic-on-comics that is in color), Scott talks about the difference between color and black-and-white comics.

Scott McCloud wrote:These colors objectify their subjects. We become more aware of the physical form of objects than in black and white. A game in motion becomes a ball in air. A face showing emotion becomes a head and two hands.

...

In black and white, the ideas behind the art are communicated more directly. Meaning transcends form. Art approaches language.

In flat colors forms themselves take on more significance. The world becomes a playground of shapes and space.

And through more expressive colors, comics can become an intoxicating environment of sensations that only color can give.

What he's saying here is that color draws the eye and encourages us to think of comics in terms of the "real world", where black and white comics approach the written word by stimulating thoughts on ideas rather than on physical subjects. Scott McCloud is not so naiive as to think that this quick description is all there is to it (see his 200+ page rant, Reinventing Comics and the delectable online comic, I Can't Stop Thinking! for more detail on his thoughts on comics. I myself am exploring territory where this issue becomes much less "black and white", if you'll forgive the pun, where color becomes a language that speaks along -with- the pictures. On this subject, referring again to what is fast becoming the authoritative Bible on comics:

Scott McCloud wrote:However, while comics colors were less than expressionistic, they were fixed with a new iconic power. Because costume colors remained exactly the same, panel after panel, they came to symbolize characters in the mind of the reader.

Many see the superhero as a modern mythology. If so, this aspect of color may play a part. Symbols are the stuff of which gods are made.

Color can be every bit as -linguistic- as the lines in the comic.

(I could rant about comics all day.)

Nyamaza · Post by **Nyamaza** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 8:00 pm

maybe an odd comment on today's comic... but Alan, you did VERY good with Renald's hair. Drawing WET hair can't be easy, I haven't noticed it much before, but you managed to capture the wet semi-clumping of hair excelently. Well done.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 8:23 pm

Another art comment. -wry smile-

I was pretty pleased with Arnold's hair, here. I imagined his hair wetting down, thought about what wet hair I'd seen before looked like. I think one of my strengths as an artist is that I draw more from a sort of visceral sense of what something "feels like it should look" as opposed to using references. (Although I do that, too, especially with anatomy.) I don't draw faces by copying my expressions out of a mirror; I draw what my face -feels- like when I make these faces.

Hence, my style is a very cartoony style, even when I'm trying to be semirealistic. Even my planned "Big Comic", a story spanning centuries and filled with dark, painful stories, will be a little cartoonish, which will either work wonderfully or fail spectacularly.

Besides Arnold's hair, though, I really HATE the way the faces came out in this comic. Anatomy's bad, eyes are VERY wrong, and the face shapes are off something fierce. I'm semiproud of the non-biological elements of this page, though. The truck rushing through rain so quickly that it seems to move parallel to the drops, the back part of the truck's interior, the planet seen from space...

I wonder how many first-timers noticed that little detail.