Today is one of those special number days, so I thought I would celebrate.  It’s November 11th, 2011, and I post this blog entry at 11:11AM, but that’s not all.  Today is Nigel Tufnel day. He was the lead guitarist of the (fictional) rock band Spinal Tap featured in the 1984 mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap. He was played by actor Christopher Guest.  Here’s a clip explaining one of their many advantages over other bands.

To help to celebrate this momentous occasion, I started to do an illustration of one of Nigel’s signature guitar solos with the amps cranked up to ELEVEN, but then I thought that everyone else would be doing that.  So I decided to go one better (because 11 is one better than 10).

As I mentioned earlier, Nigel Tufnel was portrayed by the actor Christopher Guest.  He also portrayed the character of Count Rugen in The Princess Bride (both Spinaltap and The Princess Bride were Rob Reiner films).  A unique feature of Count Rugen was that he had SIX fingers on his right hand.  Do you know what that means?  He had ELEVEN fingers!  Here’s a quick little Photoshop image just for fun!

I’ve read Batman, Spider-Man, and X-Men comics, but I never really got into Hard Core.  I don’t have any complete sets of comics from my childhood.  I didn’t go down to the comic shop, or put every comic in a protective sleeve with a cardboard back so that it would remain in MINT condition.  I read them, but I was a lot more interested in cartoons and Atari games than I was in comics.

I got an iPod Touch in November of 2008, and I started reading comics again.  I downloaded the iVerse Media app that is now called Comics+ and there I discovered Atomic Robo.  The hook was simple, smart-mouthed Adventuring Action Scientist Robot.  The first comic of the Six part series was free, and I’ve bought them all now, digitally.  I loved the way that the iPod touch application would adapt to the reading experience.  If I was holding it vertically, I could see the whole page, but rotating it into the horizontal position would take me panel by panel.

 The company Comixology has a patented “Guided View” technology that’s pretty awesome, but I had my library in Comics+ and I couldn’t transfer it to Comixology.  There in lies one of the many problems of digital comics.  I bought it, but I really didn’t “Get” anything.

I upgraded to the iPad2 and really like the larger screen and when I updated my app on the iPad, all my comics came right in, but the Comics+ app didn’t work the same as it did on the iPod Touch.  I wasn’t able to rotate the device and get a panel by panel shot.  The term “Pan and Scan” is an apt description of my experience.  For those who may not know that term, it was used to described the process of editing a Widescreen move down to fit on our Square TVs.  You that phrase at the beginning of  the VHS tape that said “…modified to fit your screen”?  I think I lost a few of you out there on that old tech.  ANYWAYS, I was not happy with the reading experience.  THEN, I started filling up my iPad and I deleted some comics, and now it looks like I can’t get them back.

I think that Marvel has found a solution for this.  You buy the comic, and it comes with a code that you can download the digital comic at no extra cost.  The publishers are even starting to layout the panels in the comics to work better with the iPad.  So, this has been my experience with getting back into comics.  Next up I’ll tell you more about how I would improve the digital comics by becoming my own publisher.

I found out yesterday that the month of November has been renamed to Movember.  Here’s some info from the Site Movember.com.  “During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.”

There seems to be two different events for the same cause.  The “No-shave” camp is all about, well, not shaving your face, while the Movember team is all about cultivating the perfect moustache.   I thought it sounded like a good excuse to not shave for a bit and helps me feel a little more Winterly.

I’ve only grown out a beard a couple of times, so we’ll see how this goes.  Moustache season is officially opened.