Entertainment

THERE IS A POWER, naturally, to the mantra or musical refrain or repeated sequence or whatever-you-want-to-call that device of relooping recognition that bores with force into your brain. Delivered with the right delightful timing, this repetition can stoke the firing synapses like strange and weird and wonderful magic.

And so it was with “Make. Good. Art.”

Mesh that device with well-worded ideas that ring fresh and yet so universally true, and you wonder how they hadn’t occurred to you before — or at least lately. And it sticks.

And so it was with Neil Gaiman’s viral commencement speech a week ago, to the University of the Arts in Philadephia. (which says video of his address has now been viewed more than 200,000 times). As we cited yesterday, the entire talk was inspiring. Yet it was perhaps the brilliant stanzas near the midpoint — as the acclaimed author brewed an alchemy of truth and humor and effective refrain — that will resonate with the clearest powerful precision to many of those artist-graduates, as well as the lifelong artists who’ve watched.

Gaiman spent the speech sharing hard-won life lessons that he wish he’d been told of when he was of college age. And yet all those lessons — including the one ignored — seemed to stream from a single headwater.

“Make. Good. Art.”

Because this part of Gaiman’s speech is especially worth lingering over, Comic Riffs has excerpted his passage about coping with life’s brutal and sometimes comical hardships by heeding one mantra.

“Make. Good. Art.”

Gaiman also spoke of learning these lessons at various phases of his career, so these images likewise depict him at different ages and stages.

So here is our Commencement Speech excerpt, as told through Comic Riffs’ illustrations: The 14 Faces (or So) of Neil Gaiman:

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. (Illustration by MICHAEL CAVNA / 2012 Cavna's Canvas - . ) .

. (Illustration by MICHAEL CAVNA / 2012 Cavna's Canvas - .) .

. (Illustration by MICHAEL CAVNA / 2012 Cavna's Canvas - .) .

. (Illustration by MICHAEL CAVNA / 2012 Cavna's Canvas - .) .

COME COMMENCEMENT SEASON, many universities seek out the politically powerful and lofty — figures with that certain global gravitas — to step up to their leafy graduation lecterns. Mortarboards muster the call of capital-I Importance. Yet after this month, a breed of clever and inspiring figures may have just moved to the top of many a dean’s speed-dial.

Send in the creators of comics.

Two of the best commencement speakers in recent days — a claim bolstered by online reaction — have happened to be men who know how to render wisdom within a word balloon:

The acclaimed Neil Gaiman — author of adult novels and children’s books and epic graphic novels, and recipient of both the Newbery and Carnegie medals — wittily beguiled the graduating class of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. And then, the attendees’ friends. And family. Word rippled outward via social media. According to the university, as of late Thursday, his inspiring speech had been viewed more than 120,000 times since last week.

And then there was Mike Peters — the Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News, and the Reuben Award-winning creator of the strip “Mother Goose and Grimm.” He returned to his alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis — nearly a half-century after graduating from there with a fine arts degree — and was endearing and surprising, right up to a skin-tight finish, when he offered a true “reveal.”

(You can roll tape (below) to see what we’re talking about.)

Comic Riffs caught up with Gaiman and Peters (both newly minted holders of honorary doctorates) to talk about sharing their wit, their wisdom — and their ability to inspire thousands of eager twentysomethings with genuine lessons, the personal rendered into universal truths.

Send in the comics? There may be even more next year.

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ONE OF THE SEASON’S best graduation addresses was delivered by a man who, before last year, had very likely never attended one.

“I never had even been to a commencement speech until my wife [performer Amanda Palmer] gave one last year,” Gaiman tells Comic Riffs. “Maybe I attended one with one of my children [years ago], but if I did, I don’t remember it and it’s washed completely into the past.”

So the author of “American Gods” and “Coraline” and “The Sandman,” mulling and musing, worked on his speech a little at a time. ”I do what you tend to do, when you go back and forth, and write a bit of it and leave it and ... now you have these strange jumbled notes,” he tells 'Riffs.

Then the clarity began to come.

“I thought, I better give them the kind of information I wish I had had when starting out,” the British-born author tells us, as he drew upon his own creative discoveries and detours and “bitter experience.”

“It was the weird thing you discover as a writer where, if you’re trying to create a universal thing, you will fail. But if you try to create a personal thing, you sometimes find the universal that resonates with everybody.”

NEIL GAIMAN IN PHILADELPHIA:

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“I can feel what’s going on inside a piece of electronic equipment. ... It’s something between discovering and witnessing.”

— Robert Moog, pioneering inventor of self-named synthesizers

GOOGLE’S DONE IT AGAIN, devising one beautiful and tuneful time-suck.

The tech titan’s homepage today celebrates the 78th birthday of the late and electronically great Robert “Bob” Moog, who beginning in the ‘60s changed the face of popular music with his line of self-named synthesizers, introducing a cascade of new sounds eagerly embraced by some of the greatest acts of the era — and ever.

To honor “Dr. Bob,” today’s Doodle is an elegant and elaborately interactive synthesizer (as a Google Moog, you might call it a “Goog”) that promises seemingly limitless sonic possibilities.

And with this modified MiniMoog Model-D, Google has surpassed even its recordable Les Paul guitar “Doodle” from last year. Many of us remember how that drill went, as we toyed with tunes whenever we had free moments. So if you’re going to lose minutes of life and work productivity to this thing today (and so many of us are), you might as well have some idea how to play and plunk it — how to make this synth hum with that distinctive pulsating thrum.

[LES PAUL GUITAR: Google’s first great playable Doodle]

Below we go into detail about “Goog” experimentation — showing that creatively, this Doodle “goes to 11.” And as you play, the distinctive sounds may remind you of Dr. Moog’s profound influence on music. As Google notes of his groundbreaking, sound-breaking synths:

“The timbre and tones of these keyboard instruments ... would come to define a generation of music, featuring heavily in songs by the Beatles, the Doors, Steve Wonder, Kraftwerk and so many others.”

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GOES TO 11: Google’s playable Doodle is sure to yield hours of user-recorded tunes. Ryan Germick’s Doodle team and Google engineers Reinaldo Aguiar and Rui Lopes teamed to created the elaborate “MiniMoog” Doodle. (2012 used by permission of GOOGLE) .

1. HOW TO PLAY:

This interactive, playable logo — the Goog panels fittingly spell out “G-O-O-G,” the tape recorder provides the “L-E” — was “inspired by the instruments with which Moog brought musical performance into the electronic age,” writes software engineer Joey Hurst on Google’s official blog, adding that:

(a) “You can use your mouse or computer keyboard to control the mini-synthesizer’s keys and knobs to make nearly limitless sounds”; and

(b) “Keeping with the theme of 1960s music technology, we’ve patched the keyboard into a 4-track tape recorder so you can record, play back and share songs via short links or Google+. ”

But that’s just a beginning into how to play with the range of oscillators and filters, sustains and decays, envelopes and sawtooth waveforms.

Moog chief engineer Cyril Lance delves into the nuances in this video:

And the most articulate/exhaustive “how-to” I’ve found on the “Goog” comes courtesy of “synth guru” Marc Doty:

The folks over at the Bob Moog Foundation are even holding a contest and are now taking your recorded Moog Doodle tune submissions.

[NOW ON FACEBOOK: You can subscribe to Comic Riffs’ public updates by clicking HERE.]

2. HOW IT WAS BUILT:

The tech titan’s homepage logo was created by engineers Reinaldo Aguiar and Rui Lopes, who worked with the Doodle team led by Ryan Germick — a synthesis of in-house talents and techniques that made this beautiful (electronica) music possible. It impresses as Google’s most complex Doodle yet.

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As for the technical aspects, Hurst writes on the Google blog:

“Much like the musical machines Bob Moog created, this doodle was synthesized from a number of smaller components to form a unique instrument.

“When experienced with Google Chrome, sound is generated natively using the Web Audio API — a Doodle first (for other browsers the Flash plugin is used). This doodle also takes advantage of JavaScript, Closure libraries, CSS3 and tools like Google Web Fonts, the Google+ API, the Google URL Shortener and App Engine.”

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3. R EMEMBERING DR. MOOG:

Born May 23, 1934, Robert Moog grew up a thorough New York native, studying at Queens College (physics) and Columbia (electrical engineering) before getting his doctorate at Cornell — where he worked on developing his synth.

Moog’s machines rode to rose in popularity of psychedelic rock in the ’60s, but his synths were also eventually embraced by everyone from jazz musicians to prog-rockers to rappers.

Moog died in 2005, at age 71. But his sonic influence will sustain for generations.

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Comic Riffs’ TOP TEN ‘GOOGLE DOODLE’ ANIMATIONS EVER (*before today):

1. PAC-MAN: VIDEO-GAME GOOGLE

2. GOOGLE BALLS: THE MYSTERY DOODLE

3. JOHN LENNON: IMAGINE THIS DOODLE

4. MARTHA GRAHAM: THE DANCING DOODLE

5. FREDDIE MERCURY: THE MUSIC VIDEO

6. JIM HENSON: THE CLICKABLE MUPPETS

7. ART CLOKEY: THE “GUMBY DOODLE”

8. JULES VERNE: THE DEEP-SEA DOODLE

9. STANISLAW LEM: THE ANIMATED SCI-FI GAME

10. VALENTINE’S DAY: THE “COLD, COLD HEART” DOODLE

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A panel from the current monthlong storyline in the strip “Funky Winkerbean.” (FUNKY WINKERBEAN / Tom Batiuk & King Features ) .

ED. NOTE: In the wake of President Obama’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage, some readers have asked whether mainstream comics will ”evolve” in their depictions of gay couples (to invoke Obama's word). Today, three comics figures vitally engaged in this topic offer their insights.

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MARVEL COMICS today has just confirmed the wedding that was as publicly rumored in geek circles as Mark Zuckerberg’s nuptials were secret:

Northstar, Marvel’s first gay superhero, will marry his beloved Kyle in next month’s “Astonishing X-Men #51,” the publisher announced. Among fans, the mutant Canadian crimefighter’s trip to the altar had been anticipated for weeks.

The announcement of Northstar’s June wedding was formally made late Tuesday morning on ABC’s chat show “The View”; Disney is the parent company of both ABC and Marvel.

“At Marvel, we try to make our stories reflective of the world around us, in all its complexity,” Marvel’s Tom Brevoort, the project’s editor, tells Comic Riffs. “And given that so many of our heroes have made Manhattan their home, the things that affect New York City affect our characters.

“So it was only natural that when New York legalized gay marriage last year,” Brevoort continues, “our thoughts would turn towards what impact this might have on Northstar [aka Jean-Paul Beaubier] and his ongoing relationship with ... Kyle. The story grew organically from there — and the zeitgeist at this moment gives it even greater relevance.”

“Astonishing X-Men #51,” to be released June 20, is from the creative team of Marjorie Liu and Mike Perkins.

Marvel’s news lands just days after DC publisher Dan DiDio said at London’s Kapow comic convention that a major DC character will soon become “one of our most prominent gay characters,” according to industry site Bleeding Cool. (A decade ago, DC notably featured the same-sex marriage of Apollo and the Midnighter.)

These announcements from the two major publishers come, of course, in the wake of the White House’s support of same-sex marriage, as election-year politics bring the issue all the more to the fore. But they also arrive as some other mainstream comics are featuring gay marriages and couplings.

Comic Riffs spoke with three industry figures about how and why they have featured gay romance:

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Artwork from the cover of Marvel Comics "Astonishing X-Men #51." Marvel called upon the women of “The View” to make Tuesday’s announcement about Northstar’s marriage to his partner, Kyle Jinadu.” The comic’s “proposal issue” goes on sale Wednesday. (MARVEL - via REUTERS)

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TOM BATIUK, an Akron native and Kent State graduate and Medina resident, is an Ohio man through and through. So it struck particularly close to home last year when he read about a parents’ group in the southern part of his state protesting a high school’s “tolerant attitude” toward gays.

“I still go out to my old high school,” Batiuk — who was a classroom teacher before launching his syndicated comic strip “Funky Winkerbean” 40 years ago — tells Comic Riffs. “For the generation that’s there right now, this [tolerance] is less of an issue.”

Batiuk knew then that somehow, this picketing would make its way into his school-set strip, which has dealt with such non-traditional “funny page” issues as teen suicide and pregnancy, alcoholism and capital punishment. In 2008, Batiuk was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for “Lisa’s Story,” the arc in which one of “Funky’s” main characters battled breast cancer.

“I think I’ve created a space for myself” to deal with serious issues, Batiuk tells Comic Riffs. “It’s not such a big deal for myself as some other strips. It’s been incremental ... that I can grab my readers’ hand and [say]: ‘Let’s come over here.”

On the comics pages all this month, Batiuk’s response to the parents’ protest has played out among “Funky’s” characters at Westview High. Two male students sought to attend the prom together, sparking what the cartoonist characterizes as a generational showdown. King Features says the story arc concludes this week.

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