The Olive Branch

During last night's gathering for Train's birthday celebration, it was causually mentioned that our own MCP, aka Jayne1138, had attended a ComiCon in our own fair city. That he even had taken pictures and had numerous stories to tell the Lodge. Well, the horror of a Con aside... the Lodge was intrigued. And I felt guilty. Not because I was harbouring any remorse towards my past (because I never regret anything I've ever done, sans one incident), but because I realized that my actions might have been misinterpreted and caused one MCP to either go postal and beat Jordan one day in their cube at Pemco, or not post out of anger. Thus, the guilty feelings.


You see, MCP... besides growing up a poor black child... I am a spiritual man. And at different times in my life, I actually have been a "man of the cloth", so to speak. And I do my best to love those around me. Obviously my trash-talking persona in the Lodge isn't who I am all of the time. In real life, sure I talk trash. But none of it is meant to be taken seriously, but rather it is all meant quite tongue-in-cheek.

So please except my apology to yourself and anyone else who has taken my comments out of context and/or my editing of pictures and posts and taken offense in any way. I consider you all my friends, albeit some as virtual friends since I've only met the MCP once in person at a Russian vampire flick, and writing and finding community within this group in the Lodge brings me joy.

Can I ask one thing though? To everyone? Please re-read your writing for spelling errors & please format your pictures to keep your post looking professional. We have a pretty sweet community blog that has other readers besides ourselves (as crazy as it sounds, there are past comments to prove it) and I always believe in doing your best. Let's put out a great product, so we look good & can have something we can be proud of.

That being said, MCP. I would like to extend an olive branch to you. Writing brings me joy, and I can tell from your skill as a creative writer that it does the same for you. So please endulge us by writing about the events from this past weekend's Con and any other shitty or outstanding movie you've witness in the past couple of weeks during your hermit-like withdrawl from posts. I'm not promising to never be an ass, because we all know that isn't possible. But I am promising to stop editing posts unless specifically asked to by the writer of the post or Jimbo.

And I leave you with this... in honor of starting peace talks with TP, I will go back to my Junior High days and geek out for a minute. My Top 5 Comicbook Artists of All-time:

1. Todd McFarlane -- The detail, the extra something, McFarlane changed the way comic books were distributed, marketed and sold thanks to his record sales of comics that he'd penciled. After remaking a new Spiderman series, McFarlane created the Spawn series from his own comic book company and is now one of the richest men in America. Basically, he's the god of geeks. Plus, he is an avid sports fan, and has in recent years made sports themed figurines & also bought record baseballs via live auction. Some of my favorite stuff he penciled was the Gray Hulk comic's he was a guest artist on. For those of you not familiar with the Gray Hulk, you can read about it here.

2. Jim Lee -- Psylocke is in the image here by Jim Lee. I mentioned last night that Psylocke would be my #1 Cartoon/Comic book character I'd like to... Lee worked with the classics and managed to catapult Fantastic Four and Iron Man back into popularity. His X-Men stuff was amazing though. X-Men #1 still is the best-selling comic book of all-time with sales of 8 million copies of the first issue, although multiple purchases of variant covers illustrated by Lee accounted for part of the sales frenzy. Jim Lee is not related to Stan Lee and Jae Lee, two other prominent names in the comic book industry.

3. Marc Silvestri -- Silvestri's Wolverine stuff is by far my favorite of his. He draws women as well as than anyone though. Exquisite. In 1992, Silvestri became one of the original seven artists - along with Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane and Jim Valentino - to form the breakaway comics company Image Comics. His official site shows more of the talent the man has. Seems like kind of a prick, of course, maybe that's because he married a model & dresses like a prick.

4. Whilce Portacio -- Portacio is known for his work on The Punisher, X-Factor, Uncanny X-Men, and Stone as well as Marvel's Iron Man during the controversial Heroes Reborn storyline, among others. Portacio's Punisher stuff was epic. Big guns, bad ass attitude... who doesn't like the Punisher? Communists, that's who. Them, and guys with no balls. Although the Punisher movie was pretty lame.

5. Joe Quesada -- For centuries artists have tried to capture the human element in their work. No artist has been more successful at accomplishing this feat then Joe Quesada. Joe Quesada prints show the human emotion even when the subject has nothing to do with humans. Any object can become alive when Joe Quesada puts brush to canvas. Beautiful drawings. If any of you have the Origin's series, I'd love to borrow them. The covers alone look amazing.