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Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison MBE (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is known for its nonlinear narratives, humanist philosophy and countercultural leanings. Morrison has written extensively for the American comic book publisher DC Comics, penning lengthy runs on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Action Comics, and Green Lantern as well as the graphic novels Arkham Asylum, JLA: Earth 2, and Wonder Woman: Earth One, the meta-series Seven Soldiers and The Multiversity, the mini-series DC One Million and Final Crisis, both of which served as centrepieces for the eponymous company-wide crossover storylines, and the maxi-series All-Star Superman. Morrison's best known DC work is the seven-year Batman storyline which started in the Batman ongoing series and continued through Final Crisis, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and two volumes of Batman Incorporated. They also co-created the DC character Damian Wayne.

Morrison's creator-owned work, the bulk of which was published through DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, includes Flex Mentallo and We3 with Scottish artist Frank Quitely, Seaguy with artist Cameron Stewart, The Filth with Chris Weston, and the three-volume series The Invisibles. At Marvel, Morrison wrote a three-year run on New X-Men and created Marvel Boy for the publisher's Marvel Knights imprint.

Between 2016 and 2018, Morrison served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Heavy Metal magazine.

Morrison's work has drawn critical acclaim. They have won numerous awards, including Eisner, Harvey, and Inkpot awards. In 2012, Morrison was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to film and literature.

Early life
Grant Morrison was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1960. They were educated at Allan Glen's School where their first portfolio of art was rejected by their careers guidance teacher, who encouraged them to work in a bank. Their first published works were Gideon Stargrave strips for Near Myths in 1978 (when they were about 17), one of the first British alternative comics. Their work appeared in four of the five issues of Near Myths and they were suitably encouraged to find more comic work. This included a weekly comic strip, Captain Clyde, an unemployed superhero based in Glasgow, for The Govan Press, a local newspaper, plus various issues of DC Thomson's Starblazer, the science fiction counterpart to that company's Commando title.

1980s
Morrison spent much of the early 1980s touring and recording with their band The Mixers, occasionally writing Starblazer for D. C. Thomson and contributing to various UK indie titles. In 1982, Morrison submitted a proposal involving the Justice League of America and Jack Kirby's New Gods entitled Second Coming to DC Comics, but it was not commissioned. After writing The Liberators for Dez Skinn's Warrior in 1985, Morrison started work for Marvel UK the following year. There they wrote comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, the final one a collaboration with a then-teenage Bryan Hitch, as well as a run on the Zoids strip in Spider-Man and Zoids. 1986 also saw publication of Morrison's first of several two- or three-page Future Shocks for 2000 AD.

Morrison's first continuing serial began in 2000 AD in 1987, when they and Steve Yeowell created Zenith.

Morrison's work on Zenith brought them to the attention of DC Comics, who asked Morrison to work for them. They accepted Morrison's proposals for Animal Man, a little-known character from DC's past whose most notable recent appearance was a cameo in the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series, and for a 48-page Batman one-shot that would eventually become Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

Animal Man put Morrison in line with the "British Invasion" of American comics, along with such writers as Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano, and Alan Moore, who had launched the "invasion" with his work on Swamp Thing.

After impressing with Animal Man, Morrison was asked to take over Doom Patrol, starting their surreal take on the superhero genre with issue No. 19 in 1989. Morrison's Doom Patrol introduced concepts such as dadaism and the writings of Jorge Luis Borges into the first several issues. DC published Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth in 1989 as a 128-page graphic novel painted by Dave McKean. Comics historian Les Daniels observed in 1995 that "Arkham Asylum was an unprecedented success, selling 182,166 copies in hardcover and another 85,047 in paperback."

While working for DC Comics in America, Morrison kept contributing to British indie titles, writing St. Swithin's Day for Trident Comics. St. Swithin's Day's anti-Margaret Thatcher themes proved controversial, provoking a small tabloid press reaction and a complaint from Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Teddy Taylor. The controversy continued with the publication of The New Adventures of Hitler in Scottish music and lifestyle magazine Cut in 1989, due to its use of Adolf Hitler as its lead character. The strip, unfinished when Cut folded, was reprinted and completed in Fleetway's 2000 AD spin-off title Crisis.

Two plays staged by Oxygen House at the Edinburgh Fringe had scripts by Morrison. Red King Rising (1989) concerned an imagined relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. The other, Depravity (1990) concerned the British occultist Aleister Crowley. The plays won between them a Fringe First Award, the Independent Theatre Award for 1989 and the Evening Standard Award for New Drama.

1990s
Morrison returned to Batman with the "Gothic" story arc in issues 6–10 of the Batman title Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. The early 1990s saw Morrison revamping Kid Eternity for DC with artist Duncan Fegredo, and Dan Dare, with artist Rian Hughes. Morrison coloured Dare's bright future with Thatcherism in Fleetway's Revolver.

In 1991 Morrison wrote Bible John-A Forensic Meditation for Fleetway's Crisis, based on an analysis of possible motivations for the crimes of the serial killer Bible John. Covering similar themes to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, the work utilised cut-up techniques, a Ouija board and collage rather than conventional panels to tell the story.

In 1993 Morrison, fellow Glaswegian comic writer Mark Millar and John Smith were asked to reinvigorate 2000 AD for an eight-week run called "The Summer Offensive". Morrison wrote Judge Dredd and Really and Truly, and co-wrote the controversial Big Dave with Millar.

DC Comics launched its Vertigo imprint in 1993, publishing several of Morrison's creator-owned projects, such as the steampunk mini-series Sebastian O and the graphic novel The Mystery Play. 1995 saw the release of Kill Your Boyfriend, with artist Philip Bond, originally published as a Vertigo Voices one-shot. In 1996 Morrison wrote Flex Mentallo, a Doom Patrol spin-off with art by Frank Quitely, and returned briefly to DC Universe superheroics with the short-lived Aztek, co-written with Mark Millar.

In 1996, Morrison was given the Justice League of America to revamp as JLA, a comic book that gathered the "Big Seven" superheroes of the DC universe into one team. This run was hugely popular and returned the title to best-selling status. Morrison wrote several issues of The Flash with Mark Millar, as well as DC's crossover event of 1998, the four-issue mini-series DC One Million, in addition to plotting many of the multiple crossovers.

With the three volumes of the creator-owned The Invisibles, Morrison started their largest and possibly most important work. The Invisibles combined political, pop- and sub-cultural references. Tapping into pre-millennial tension, the work was influenced by the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley and William Burroughs, and Morrison's practice of chaos magic in Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. In 1998 Morrison published the prose piece "I'm A Policeman" in Sarah Champion's millennial short story collection Disco 2000; though no explicit connection to The Invisibles is made, there are strong thematic links between the two works. At DisinfoCon in 1999, Morrison said that much of the content in The Invisibles was information given to them by aliens that abducted them in Kathmandu, who told them to spread this information to the world via a comic book. They later clarified that the experience they labelled as the "Alien Abduction Experience in Kathmandu" had nothing to do with aliens or abduction, but that there was an experience that they had in Kathmandu that The Invisibles is an attempt to explain. The title was not a huge commercial hit to start with. (Morrison actually asked their readers to participate in a "wankathon" while concentrating on a magical symbol, or sigil, in an effort to boost sales). When the title was relaunched with volume two, the characters relocated to America. Volume three appeared with issue numbers counting down, signalling an intention to conclude the series with the turn of the new millennium in 2000. Due to the title shipping late, its final issue did not ship until April 2000.

The 1999 film The Matrix has numerous elements which have been attributed by critics to the influence of Morrison's The Invisibles. Morrison was immediately struck by the similarities to their own work upon first seeing the film.

2000s
In 2000, Morrison's graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 was released with art by Frank Quitely. It was Morrison's last mainstream work for DC for a while, as they moved to Marvel Comics. While at Marvel, Morrison wrote the six-part Marvel Boy series, and Fantastic Four: 1234, their take on another major superhero team. In July 2001, they began writing the main X-Men title, renamed New X-Men for their run, with Quitely providing much of the art. Again, Morrison's revamping of a major superhero team proved to be a commercial success, with the title jumping to the No. 1 sales spot and established Morrison as the kind of creator whose name on a title would guarantee sales. Their penultimate arc "Planet X" depicted the villain Magneto infiltrating and defeating the X-Men in the guise of new character Xorn and developing an addiction to the power-enhancing drug "Kick".

In 2002, Morrison launched their next creator-owned project at Vertigo: The Filth, drawn by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine, a 13-part mini-series. That same year, Morrison sold the screenplay Sleepless Knights to DreamWorks with Guillermo del Toro attached to direct. Around the same time, Morrison was working on the script for the sequel to the Marvel Boy mini-series, but the project ultimately failed to materialize. In 2004, Vertigo published three Morrison mini-series. Seaguy, We3, and Vimanarama. Morrison returned to the JLA with the first story in a new anthology series, JLA Classified.

In 2005 Morrison wrote Seven Soldiers, which featured the Manhattan Guardian, Mister Miracle, Klarion the Witch Boy, Bulleteer, Frankenstein, Zatanna and Shining Knight. The series consists of seven interlinked four-issue mini-series with two "bookend" volumes – 30 issues in all. Dan DiDio, the editorial vice president of DC Comics, was impressed with Morrison's ideas for revitalising many of DC's redundant characters. Giving them the unofficial title of "revamp guy", DiDio asked them to assist in sorting out the DC Universe in the wake of the Infinite Crisis. Morrison was one of the writers on 52, a year-long weekly comic book series that started in May 2006 and concluded in May 2007.

Starting in November 2005, DC published All-Star Superman, a twelve-issue story arc by Morrison and Frank Quitely. Not so much a revamp or reboot of Superman, the series presents an out-of-continuity "iconic" Superman for new readers. All-Star Superman won the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2006, the Best Continuing Series Eisner Award in 2007 and several Eagle Awards in the UK. It won three Harvey Awards in 2008 and the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series in 2009. In the same year, Morrison and Quitely worked on pop star Robbie Williams' album Intensive Care, providing intricate Tarot card designs for the packaging and cover of the CD.

Morrison provided outline story and script work for two video games, Battlestar Galactica (2003) and Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005), both by Vivendi Universal. In 2006, New Line Cinema optioned We3 as a film project with Morrison attached as screenwriter. The following year, Morrison wrote the adaptation of the video game Area 51 home console game for Paramount in development with CFP Productions producing.

In 2006 Morrison was voted as the No. 2 favourite comic book writer of all time by Comic Book Resources. That same year, Morrison began writing Batman for DC with issue No. 655, reintroducing the character of Damian Wayne and signalling the beginning of a seven-year-long run on the character across multiple titles. They wrote relaunches of The Authority and Wildcats, with the art of Gene Ha and Jim Lee respectively, for DC's Wildstorm imprint. WildC.A.T.S. went on hiatus after one issue, The Authority was discontinued after two. The scheduling of The Authority conflicted with 52 and Morrison was unhappy with the reviews: "And then I saw the reviews on issue one and I just thought 'fuck this'.". It eventually concluded without Morrison's involvement in Keith Giffen's The Authority: The Lost Year.

At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, DC Comics announced that Morrison would write Final Crisis, a seven-issue mini-series slated to appear in 2008 with J. G. Jones handling the art. Morrison announced that 2008 would see publication of the follow-up to 2004's Seaguy called Seaguy 2: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, the second part of a planned three part series.

At the 2008 New York Comic Con, Morrison announced they would be working with Virgin Comics to produce "webisodes" (short animated stories) based on the Mahābhārata; it would not be a direct translation but, "Like the Beatles took Indian music and tried to make psychedelic sounds... I'm trying to convert Indian storytelling to a western style for people raised on movies, comics, and video games." In August 2009, Morrison and Frank Quitely launched the Batman and Robin series.

2010s
Batman No. 700 (Aug. 2010) saw the return of Morrison to the title and a collaboration with an art team that consisted of Tony Daniel, Frank Quitely, Andy Kubert, and David Finch. The separate stories tied together to illustrate that the legacy of Batman is unending, and will survive into the future. At San Diego Comic-Con International 2010 it was announced that Grant Morrison would be leaving Batman and Robin with No. 16 and launching a new series entitled Batman Incorporated with revolving artists starting with Yanick Paquette. A more team-oriented Batman book inspired by the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series, Batman Incorporated builds on Morrison's work dating back to "Batman and Son" and Final Crisis, with Bruce Wayne creating an international Batman franchise all over the world. The series suffered from slow scheduling and was ended after eight issues while the DC Universe was rebooted in 2011; to bridge the gap a prestige book was released that featured two issues together along with a synopsis that recapped the story so far. In mid-2012, a second volume of the comic was launched with Chris Burnham on artwork, scheduled for 12 issues. Morrison left the Batman titles in 2013. They killed the Damian Wayne character in Batman Incorporated No. 8 (April 2013) and their final issue was No. 13 (Sept. 2013).

Morrison returned to creator-owned work in 2010 with the eight issue Vertigo series Joe the Barbarian, launched in January with artist Sean Murphy. Originally a six issue series, Morrison felt that the story would benefit from an extra two issues. The titular Joe is a diabetic young boy who begins to hallucinate a fantasy world populated with his toys and other fantasy characters when he stops taking his medication.

Following the closure of Virgin Comics, Dynamite Entertainment and Liquid Comics announced a partnership to publish a hardcover of illustrated scripts of Grant Morrison's Mahābhārata-based, animated project 18 Days with illustrations by artist Mukesh Singh, that was released in August 2010. They are the subject of a feature-length documentary titled Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. The documentary features extensive interviews with Morrison as well as a number of comic artists, editors and professionals they have worked closely with. Talking with Gods was produced by Sequart Organization and was released in 2010 at the San Diego Comic Con.

Another 2010 project was Bonnyroad, a science fiction television series pitched by Morrison to the BBC Morrison pitched with director Paul McGuigan and Stephen Fry.

In June 2011, as part of DC Comics' massive revamp of its entire superhero line, Morrison was announced as the writer on the new Action Comics No. 1, teaming with artist Rags Morales, marking Morrison's return to the Superman character after the end of All Star Superman.

In July 2011, Morrison's analysis of superheroes, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, was published by Random House Spiegel & Grau in the United States and Jonathan Cape in the UK.

Morrison has written a screenplay for a film entitled Sinatoro. In 2011 they worked on the screenplay Dinosaurs vs Aliens  for Sam Worthington's production company, Full Clip Production, and said they planned to work with them again on a screenplay based on the 2000 AD story "Rogue Trooper".

Morrison was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to film and literature.

In September 2012, Morrison published their first ever Image Comics creator-owned work: Happy! with Darick Robertson. In the same month, MorrisonCon was held at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino (Las Vegas). This small-scale convention, curated by Morrison, featured a number of comics industry guests, including Robert Kirkman, Darick Robertson, Jason Aaron, Jim Lee, Gerard Way, Jonathan Hickman, Frank Quitely, J. H. Williams III, and Chris Burnham.

In September 2014, as part of Legendary Comics' big foray into the industry, Morrison launched another key creator-owned book: Annihilator with Frazer Iving. A six-issue mini-series, Annihilator was informed by the writings of Thomas Ligotti, and other nihilistic philosophers, and played with the idea of the satanic archetype. A work of cosmic horror, it stars a monstrous Hollywood screenwriter named Ray Spass in his attempts to finish the script for the next tentpole blockbuster, while coming into contact with the character he's writing about: the diabolical Max Nomax, The Devil himself.

In February 2015, Morrison's second Image project ever launched in the creator-owned title Nameless, with frequent collaborator Chris Burnham. A tale of apocalyptic cosmic horror, Nameless sought to approach the genre from a new lens, with different influences, rather than lean to its iconic founder H.P Lovecraft, drawing on everything from the Tarot to The Qlippoth.

In November 2015, Morrison began their biggest creator-owned project of the decade, collaborating with BOOM! Studios for the very first time to do Klaus with Dan Mora and Ed Dukeshire. Set around revamping Santa Claus as a sprawling superhero saga, it's proven to be Morrison's longest creator-owned work, one they've returned to every year since to do a story in.

Morrison's The Multiversity project for DC was published in 2014 and 2015. A metaseries of nine one-shots set in some of the 52 worlds in the DC Multiverse, it included the main Multiversity title which involves the return of President Calvin Ellis, the black Superman from Earth 23 originally seen in Action Comics vol. 2 No. 9, which was the framing for the whole series. Other issues include The Society of Super-Heroes a pulp version of the DC characters; The Just – set on a world of celebrity youngsters; Pax Americana, drawn by Frank Quitely, Thunder World – a Captain Marvel book; the Multiversity Guidebook; Mastermen – which includes a fascist version of the Justice League. and Ultra Comics.

In 2016, Morrison became editor-in-chief of the comics anthology Heavy Metal. Their involvement lasted until 2018. During the period, they penned such strips as Industria, The Rise and Fall of Empires, both with frequent collaborator and old friend Rian Hughes. Other strips included The Smile of the Absent Cat with artist Gerhard, as well as Mythopia, Beachhead, Option 3, Nihilophilia, Ten Sounds That Represent a Kind of Person: A Historical Parody, The House of Heart's Desire, and Beyond the Word and the Fool, with many others. Morrison also penned several editorials for the magazine during this period, whilst writing occasional prose stories for Ahoy Comics backup features.

In 2017, Morrison co-created the Syfy TV series Happy!, which starred Christopher Meloni and Patton Oswalt. It commenced its second season in 2019.

In November 2018, Morrison and artist Liam Sharp launched a new Green Lantern comic entitled The Green Lantern for DC Comics. Following the success of the first season of The Green Lantern, a second season was announced, to be published in 2020 but beforehand there was a Blackstars mini-series dealing with the ending of Season One, launched in November 2019.

2020s
"Season Two" of Morrison's Green Lantern series with Liam Sharp began in 2020 and completed in March 2021 alongside the release of their third and final volume of the Wonder Woman: Earth One series.

Morrison co-created and worked as a writer and producer on the 2020 TV series Brave New World for the Peacock Streaming Service, having developed it for adaptation.

In early 2021, it was announced that a new comic called Proctor Valley Road would be released, developed by Morrison in partnership with NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal's UCP, a division of Universal Studio Group, will also adapt the series for television. The first issue was published by Boom! Studios in March 2021.

In March 2021 it was announced that Morrison would write a four issue series entitled Superman and The Authority, illustrated by Mikel Janin, to be published by DC in late 2021.

In a 2022 newsletter, Morrison revealed they had pitched ideas for Series 8 of Doctor Who to series showrunner Steven Moffat. These included a story featuring a child version of the Doctor, as well as a new potential villain. None were commissioned, though the BBC offered to buy the rights to Morrison's villains. (The latter declined). Later that year, Morrison published Luda, their debut prose novel.

Personal life
In a 2011 interview, Morrison stated that they and their wife Kristan had no children. When asked if they regretted this, Morrison replied, "Slightly but I don't know. Every time I think of it I think of the reality of it. I really like kids and I get on with them and it's that aspect of it but I see people with actual kids. The trauma and the trouble. And if I'm worried that my cat is sick it's the thought of everyday worrying about a kid would be even more hellish."

Morrison uses singular they pronouns. In a 2020 interview with Mondo2000, Morrison mentioned that they "had been non-binary, cross-dressing, 'gender queer'", from the age of 10 years old but didn't have the vocabulary to describe how they felt at the time. Speaking later of the article, Morrison said that they hated being perceived as only recently coming out: "I'm 62 years old—I had my sexuality shit figured out a long time ago!" Morrison later said they rejected labels and that "I can't live in a box. I'm going to let down anyone who sticks a label on me. It will drop off quite naturally." They later wrote that though they do not use the label non-binary, they acknowledge that, depending on the definition, "perhaps the shoe fits after all".

They also wrote that while they never requested they/them pronouns, they have come to prefer them. However, they do not mind being referred to with he/him pronouns.

Awards

 * Inkpot Award
 * Order of the British Empire (MBE)

Appearances as a comics character
Grant Morrison first appeared as a comics character in cameos in Animal Man Nos. 11 and 14. They made a full appearance at the end of issue No. 25 in 1990, and spent most of issue No. 26 in a lengthy conversation with the comic's title character. The character appeared the next year in Suicide Squad No. 58, written by John Ostrander, as a character named Writer who was one of several minor characters killed in one of the series' trademark suicide missions.

They were depicted in an issue of Simpsons Comics, fighting with fellow X-Men writer Mark Millar.

In Morrison's 2005–2006 Seven Soldiers miniseries and its tie-ins, Morrison appears as the renegade member of eight "reality engineers" and transforms into Silver Age character Zor, then back into a character resembling Morrison in a magician's costume, though with dark hair and a beard. After the renegade's defeat, Morrison, wearing a DC Comics-logo tie clip, becomes the narrator for the final chapter.

The miniseries Tales of the Unexpected features Morrison along with their 52 co-writers Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid.

In Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier, Morrison was the physical model for Captain Cold.

Acting
Morrison also appeared as themself in the ninth episode of the fourth season of Titans, entitled “Dude, Where’s My Gar?”

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MLA

MLA may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

 * M.L.A. (1957 film), an Indian Telugu-language film by K. B. Tilak
 * MLA (2018 Kannada film), an Indian film by Mourya Manjunath
 * MLA (2018 Telugu film), an Indian film by Upendra Madhav
 * Muv-Luv Alternative

Business

 * Mandated Lead Arranger, a bank in charge of organizing a syndicated loan
 * McKenna Long & Aldridge, a United States-based international law and public policy firm

Government and politics

 * Member of the Legislative Assembly, a politician serving in a legislature, in many countries
 * Member of the Legislative Assembly (India)
 * Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)

Organizations

 * Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association
 * Master Locksmiths Association, United Kingdom
 * Meat and Livestock Australia, Australian not-for-profit organisation of red meat producers
 * Modern Language Association, United States of America
 * MLA Handbook, published by the association, replacing MLA Style Manual

Library organizations

 * Maine Library Association, professional association for librarians in Maine
 * Maryland Library Association, professional association for librarians in Maryland
 * Massachusetts Library Association, professional association for librarians in Massachusetts
 * Medical Library Association, United States
 * Michigan Library Association, professional association for librarians in Michigan
 * Minnesota Library Association, professional association for librarians in Minnesota
 * Mississippi Library Association, professional association for librarians in Mississippi
 * Montana Library Association, professional association for librarians in Montana
 * Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, United Kingdom
 * Music Library Association, United States

Professions and degrees

 * Master of Landscape Architecture, a professional qualification
 * Master of Liberal Arts, a master's degree
 * Medical Laboratory Assistant, an assistant to a biomedical scientist

Other

 * Malaysia, ITU country code
 * Malta International Airport, IATA airport code
 * Mercury Laser Altimeter, an instrument on MESSENGER space probe
 * Methyllycaconitine, a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist
 * Mobile Location Analytics, a type of customer intelligence
 * Montessori Lyceum Amsterdam, a school in Amsterdam, Netherlands
 * Mutual legal assistance treaty, an agreement between two countries for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public laws or criminal laws
 * Tamambo language, ISO 639 language code
 * Micro lens array, see as well Holographic optical element, Light field camera

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Emergency ward (disambiguation)

Emergency ward normally refers to the emergency department of a hospital.

It may also refer to:
 * Emergency Ward (album), an album
 * Emergency Ward (film), a film
 * Emergency – Ward 10, a British TV series

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Crossing the floor

In some parliamentary systems (e.g., in Canada and the United Kingdom), politicians are said to cross the floor if they formally change their political affiliation to a political party different from the one they were initially elected under. In Australia though, this term simply refers to Members of Parliament (MPs) who dissent from the party line and vote against the express instructions of the party whip while retaining membership in their political party (at least for the time being).

Voting against party lines may lead to consequences such as losing a position (e.g., as minister or a portfolio critic) or being ejected from the party caucus. While these practices are legally permissible in most countries, crossing the floor can lead to controversy and media attention. Some countries like Malaysia, India, the Maldives and Bangladesh have laws that remove a member from parliament due to floor-crossing.

Etymology
The term originates from the British House of Commons, which is configured with the Government and Opposition facing each other on rows of benches. In consequence, MPs who switch from the governing party to one in opposition (or vice versa) also change which side of the chamber on which they sit. A notable example of this is Winston Churchill, who crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904, later crossing back in 1924. The term has passed into general use in other Westminster parliamentary democracies even if many of these countries have semicircular or horseshoe-shaped debating chambers.

The Australia meaning on the other hand arises from the way divisions—roll call votes—are conducted. In Australian chambers, members move to the government benches (on the presiding officer's right) to vote in favor of a motion, and the opposition benches (on the presiding officer's left) to vote against a motion. Therefore, an MP who crosses the floor is on the opposite side of the chamber from the rest of their party, and on government motions frequently on the opposite side of the chamber than they normally sit.

In Nigeria, the term "crossing the carpet" or "carpet crossing" is used. In India, a similar expression is "Aaya Ram Gaya Ram", referring to political floor-crossing.

Changing parties
In the United Kingdom and Canada, crossing the floor means leaving one's party entirely and joining another caucus. For example, leaving an opposition party to support the government (or vice versa), leaving or being expelled from the party one ran with at election and sitting as a clear independent, or even leaving one opposition party to join another. In both countries, the term carries only this meaning, not simply voting against the party line on a bill.

In April 2006, then-premier of Manitoba Gary Doer of the New Democratic Party of Manitoba proposed banning crossing the floor in the Manitoba legislature in response to "the concern some voters have expressed over the high-profile defections of three federal MPs from their parties in just over two years". The resulting legislation, which amended the provincial Legislative Assembly Act, mandated that members of the legislature who quit (or are expelled from) their political party had to serve out the remainder of their term as independents. However in 2018, the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Pallister repealed the bill.

An extraordinary example occurred in Alberta, Canada, in December 2014 by Danielle Smith, the Leader of the Official Opposition. She and eight of her MLAs, all of the Wildrose Party, crossed the floor together to join the governing Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta. In 2019, eleven British MPs defected from the Conservative and Labour parties to form the Change UK party. In September 2019, the governing Conservative party lost its working majority when Phillip Lee MP defected to the Liberal Democrats during the first speech of new prime minister Boris Johnson. On 19 January 2022, Christian Wakeford, Conservative MP for Bury South, crossed the floor to the Labour benches.

Voting against party lines
In some countries, the phrase "crossing the floor" describes members of a government party or parties who defect by voting with the opposition against some piece of government-sponsored legislation. Political parties commonly allow their members a free vote on some matters of personal conscience. In Australia, one of the major parties, the Australian Labor Party requires its members to pledge their support for the collective decisions of the caucus, which theoretically prohibits them from "crossing the floor" in this sense; however, in practice, some Labor members disregard this pledge, despite the disciplinary action which may result. Among other parties, crossing the floor is rare, although then Senator Barnaby Joyce of the National Party of Australia crossed the floor 28 times. Tasmanian Senator Sir Reg Wright voted against his own party, the Liberal Party of Australia, on 150 occasions, which has been claimed as a record for this form of crossing the floor in the Australian Parliament.

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The Gun Club

The Gun Club were an American post-punk band from Los Angeles that existed from 1979 to 1996. Created and led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce, they were notable as one of the first bands in the punk rock subculture to incorporate influences from blues, rockabilly, and country music. The Gun Club has been called a "tribal psychobilly blues" band, as well as initiators of the punk blues sound cowpunk – "He (Pierce) took Robert Johnson and pre-war acoustic blues and 'punkified' it. Up until then bands were drawing on Iggy & The Stooges and the New York Dolls but he took it back so much further for inspiration."

Early days (1979–1980)
The Gun Club were formed by Jeffrey Lee Pierce (guitar and vocals) with friend, chief of the Ramones fan club and fellow music enthusiast Brian Tristan, also known as Kid Congo Powers. Pierce was the former head of the Blondie fan club in Los Angeles and previously a member of the Red Lights, the E-Types, the Individuals, Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions, and the Cyclones.

The Gun Club's precursor band, The Creeping Ritual, formed in late 1979. Along with Pierce (lead vocals and guitar), the first lineup consisted of Brian Tristan (lead guitar); Don Snowden (bass), who was at the time a music critic for the Los Angeles Times; and Brad Dunning (drums), now a prominent designer and writer. In April 1980, they changed their name to "The Gun Club" on a suggestion by Pierce's roommate, Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris. Kid Congo commented that the early Gun Club incarnation were "too arty for rock people, far too rock for arty people, too cuckoo for the blues crowd and too American for punk". Snowden and Dunning departed in June 1980, replaced by two ex-members of the Bags, Rob Ritter and Terry Graham, respectively. Ritter was temporarily replaced on bass by Anna Statman for two months in the fall of 1980. Kid Congo Powers then left, on amicable terms, to join The Cramps in November 1980 and was replaced by lead and slide guitarist Ward Dotson (ex-Der Stab) who had initially hoped to join The Cramps. During this period, the Gun Club often opened for X, the Bags, Circle Jerks and the Blasters.

Fire of Love and Miami (1981–1982)
Securing a record deal with Ruby Records, a division of Slash, the group released their debut album, Fire of Love, on August 31, 1981. The album was produced by Tito Larriva (of the Plugz) and Chris D. (frontman of the Flesh Eaters). Critic Stevo Olende wrote that the "album's lyrical imagery is plundered from voodoo, '50s EC Comics and the blues", while Thom Jurek of AllMusic noted that "nobody has heard music like this before or since". Fire of Love sold well and received strong reviews upon release. Billy Persons of the Weirdos temporarily replaced Ritter for several shows in late 1981.

In April 1982, the Gun Club signed to Blondie guitarist Chris Stein's Animal Records, a subsidiary of Chrysalis Records. The band temporarily relocated to New York City to record their follow-up album, 1982's Miami. This album featured not only Stein as producer, but Blondie's Debbie Harry singing backup vocals on several tracks. Ritter left in June 1982 to concentrate on his other band, 45 Grave, and changed his name to Rob Graves. Before leaving, Ritter taught the bass parts to his former Bags bandmate Patricia Morrison (also ex-Legal Weapon) and trained her as his replacement. For their West Coast shows in August 1982, Annie Ungar was added as a second guitarist. Upon the release of Miami on September 20, 1982, the album received good reviews but has been criticized for Stein's thin production. Due to increasingly frequent arguments, Pierce dismissed Graham and Dotson in December 1982.

The Las Vegas Story and first breakup (1983–1985)
In January 1983, Graham and Dotson were replaced by guitarist Jim Duckworth (formerly of Tav Falco's Panther Burns) and drummer Dee Pop (formerly of the New York band Bush Tetras). A spare recording session, originally booked for another band, led to the impromptu recording of the Death Party EP with bassist Jimmy Joe Uliana quickly filling in for Morrison and Linda 'Texacala' Jones on backing vocals. Released April 13, 1983, by Animal, it was the only recording of the short-lived lineup featuring Duckworth and Pop. During this time Pierce refrained from playing guitar, focusing solely on singing. After eight months Graham returned, replacing Pop, and on the eve of the October 1983 Australian tour, both Duckworth and Graham quit, refusing to board the plane. Arriving minus half the band, Pierce recruited drummer Billy Pommer Jr. and guitarist Spencer P. Jones from support act the Johnnys to fill in on the tour, while former member Powers also flew over to play guitar. When they returned to the US in November, Graham resumed his place on drums.

Pierce returned to guitar playing during this lineup, and both he and Powers are credited with guitar on their third album, The Las Vegas Story (the Blasters' Dave Alvin also played lead guitar on a handful of tracks). Released on June 25, 1984, this album marked a significant change for the band; it represented a shift away from the punk rock of Fire of Love and Miami and a step towards a more polished alternative rock sound. After US gigs supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees, in September the band embarked on a European tour in support of the album, but after five weeks Graham again departed after a gig in Paris. The band carried on and he was replaced with former roadie Peter Kablean, known as Desi Desperate, despite having no rehearsal. The Gun Club broke up in January 1985, Pierce remaining in London with then-girlfriend Romi Mori, who he had met during the final December 10–11 shows at Dingwalls, London.

After the breakup, Powers, Morrison and Desperate formed a band called Fur Bible (Morrison later joined the Sisters of Mercy and the Damned), while Pierce embarked on a solo career. Pierce assembled a band, the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Quartet, consisting of former members of the Cure and Roxy Music, and released Wildweed in 1985. He organized a new band to tour in support of the album, including Mori on guitar and Nick Sanderson of Clock DVA on drums.

Reformation (1986–1994)
After a short stint doing spoken word performances, Pierce decided to reform a new version of the band in October 1986. Powers, who had also been recruited into Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at this time, resumed his place at guitar, with Mori switching to bass and Sanderson retaining his spot on drums. This lineup of the Gun Club recorded a handful of albums, including Mother Juno, released October 19, 1987, on Red Rhino Records. This album, produced by Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins, was a successful comeback, garnering a positive critical reception. After the release of Nick Cave's album The Good Son, Powers departed from the Bad Seeds in May 1990 to focus more on the Gun Club.

The band's fifth studio effort, Pastoral Hide and Seek, which Pierce produced himself, was released October 1, 1990, on the Fire label. Sanderson departed in December 1990 to focus on his other project, World of Twist. Desperate rejoined to record the Divinity album, released in August 1991 on New Rose Records, but the band were inactive during the remainder of that year as Pierce was hospitalized during his travels in India and Vietnam. Pierce also recorded with Cypress Grove.

Simon Fish, who had previously played with Pierce on one of his solo albums, joined the band in March 1992. At the conclusion of a European tour in May 1992, Powers left the band to focus on his other project, Congo Norvell. In February 1993, the band reconvened as a trio of Pierce, Mori and the returning Sanderson, to record the Lucky Jim album. For their spring 1993 European tour, they were joined by guitarist Rainer Lingk of Die Haut. Lucky Jim was released September 20, 1993, by Triple X Records, and Robert Marche (formerly of Subway Sect and JoBoxers) joined on guitar in October.

In May 1994, Mori and Pierce split up, and she and Sanderson left the Gun Club (Mori and Sanderson formed Freeheat in 1999 with Jim Reid and Ben Lurie of the Jesus and Mary Chain). Sanderson and Marche formed Earl Brutus. In the fall of 1994, Pierce put together a new lineup featuring Marche, bassist Efe and the returning Fish, lasting until November.

Final days (1995–1996)
An increasingly ill Pierce put together a penultimate Gun Club lineup for two shows in Los Angeles in August and September 1995, including guitarists Powers and Mike Martt (ex-Tex & the Horseheads), and the Wayne Kramer rhythm section of bassist Randy Bradbury and drummer Brock Avery. The final lineup of the Gun Club, with bassist Elizabeth Montague replacing Bradbury (who was touring with Pennywise), played only one show, the band's last, at The Palace in Hollywood on December 18, 1995.

On March 25, 1996, Pierce was found unconscious at his father's home in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was hospitalized and remained in a coma until his death from a brain hemorrhage on March 31, effectively ending the Gun Club.

Legacy
The White Stripes played "For the Love of Ivy" and "Jack on Fire" (both from Fire of Love) at live shows. That band's vocalist and guitarist, Jack White, said, "'Sex Beat', 'She's Like Heroin to Me', and 'For the Love of Ivy'...why are these songs not taught in schools?"

Swedish punk and rock singer-songwriter Joakim Thåström has referenced The Gun Club and Pierce in several songs, including "Ingen sjunger blues som Jeffrey Lee Pierce", "Samarkanda" and "Beväpna dig med vingar".

Singer Mark Lanegan included Miami among his favorite recordings, and covered Pierce's "Carry Home" on his 1999 album of cover songs, I'll Take Care of You.

Canadian rock band Japandroids included "For The Love of Ivy" on their sophomore album Celebration Rock. Brian King (vocalist/guitarist) said "the magnitude of discovering The Gun Club cannot be understated."

Former members

 * Jeffrey Lee Pierce – vocals, guitar (1979–1996); died 1996
 * Kid Congo Powers – guitar (1979–1980, 1983–1996)
 * Don Snowden – bass guitar
 * Brad Dunning – drums (1979–1980)
 * Terry Graham – drums
 * Rob Ritter – bass guitar (1980–1982); died 1990
 * Anna Statman – bass guitar
 * Ward Dotson – guitar (1980–1982)
 * Billy Persons – drums
 * Annie Ungar – drums
 * Patricia Morrison – bass guitar (1982–1984)
 * Jim Duckworth – guitar (1983)
 * Dee Pop – drums (1983)
 * Jimmy Joe Uliana – bass guitar (1983)
 * Desi Desperate – drums
 * Romi Mori – bass guitar (1987–1994)
 * Derek Thompson – drums
 * Nick Sanderson – drums (1987–1996); died 2008
 * Simon Fish – drums (1994)
 * Rainer Lingk – guitar
 * Robert Marche – guitar
 * Efe – bass guitar (1994)
 * Mike Martt – guitar; died 2023
 * Randy Bradbury – bass guitar (1995)
 * Brock Avery – drums (1995)
 * Elizabeth Montague – bass guitar
 * Nigel Preston – drums (1991); died 1992

Studio albums

 * Fire of Love (1981, Ruby Records/Slash Records)
 * Miami (1982, Animal Records)
 * The Las Vegas Story (1984, Animal Records/Chrysalis Records)
 * Mother Juno (1987, Red Rhino Records)
 * Pastoral Hide and Seek (1990, Fire Records (UK), The Orchard Music (on behalf of Blixa Sounds); BMI – Broadcast Music Inc.)
 * Divinity (1991, New Rose Records)
 * Lucky Jim (1993, Triple X Records)

Singles and EPs

 * "Ghost on the Highway"/"Sex Beat" 7" single (1982, Beggars Banquet Records)
 * "Fire of Love" 7" single (1982, Animal Records)
 * Death Party 12" EP (1983, Animal Records)
 * Sex Beat 81 7" single (1986, Lolita)
 * "Breaking Hands" 7"/12" single (1988, Red Rhino Records)
 * "Sex Beat" CD single (1989, New Rose Records)
 * "The Great Divide" 7"/12" single (1990, New Rose Records)
 * "Pastoral, Hide & Seek (The Lost Song)" 7"/CD single (1991, New Rose Records)
 * "Cry to Me" 7" single (1993, Sympathy for the Record Industry)
 * "Walkin' With the Beast" 7" single (2004, Sympathy for the Record Industry)

Live albums

 * The Birth the Death the Ghost (1983, ABC Records; recorded 1980)
 * Sex Beat 81 (1984, Lolita; recorded 1981)
 * Love Supreme (1985, Offense Records; recorded 1982)
 * Danse Kalinda Boom – Live in Pandora's Box  (1985, Megadisc; recorded 1984)
 * Death Party (1987, Revenge Records; recorded 1981–1982)
 * Ahmed's Wild Dream (1992, Solid Records; recorded 1992)
 * Live in Europe (1993, Triple X Records; recorded 1992)
 * Larger Than Live! (2008, Last Call Records; recorded 1990)
 * Destroy the Country (2014, Cleopatra Records; recorded 1983)
 * Moonlight Motel  (2014, Cleopatra Records; recorded 1983–1984)

Compilation albums

 * Two Sides of the Beast (1985, Dojo Records)
 * In Exile (1992, Triple X Records)
 * Early Warning (1997, Sympathy for the Record Industry)
 * Pastoral Hide & Seek/Divinity (1997, 2.13.61 Records)
 * Da Blood Done Signed My Name (2007, Castle Communications)
 * The Life and Times of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club box set (2008, Retro Deluxe)
 * Mother Berlin (2014, Bang! Records)
 * In My Room (2017, Bang! Records)

Compilation appearances

 * "Devil in the Woods" on Keats Rides a Harley (1981, Happy Squid Records)
 * "Jack on Fire" on Rockabilly Psychosis and the Garage Disease (1984, Big Beat Records)
 * "Sex Beat" on Slash: The Early Sessions (1984, Slash Records)

Live videos

 * Live at the Hacienda VHS (1994, Visionary Communications/Jettisoundz; recorded 1983)
 * Preaching the Blues VHS (1995, Visionary Communications/Jettisoundz; recorded 1984)
 * Live at the Hacienda 1983/84  DVD (2006, Cherry Red Films; recorded 1983–1984)
 * Fire of Love DVD (2007, Cherry Red Films; recorded 1983/1985)

title: The Gun Club


text:
George A. Romero

George Andrew Romero Jr. (February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was an American-Canadian film director, writer, editor and actor. His Night of the Living Dead series of films about a zombie apocalypse began with the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) and is considered a major contributor to the image of the zombie in modern culture. Other films in the series include Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).

Romero later revived his attachment to the sub-genre with Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2009), his final film. Aside from this series, his works include The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988), The Dark Half (1993), and Bruiser (2000). He also created and executive-produced the television series Tales from the Darkside from 1983 to 1988. Romero is often described as an influential pioneer of the horror film genre and has been called the "Father of the Zombie Film" and an "icon".

Early life
Romero was born on February 4, 1940, in the New York City borough of the Bronx, the son of Anne Romero (Dvorsky) and George M. Romero, a commercial artist. His mother was Lithuanian, and his father was from Spain but had immigrated to Cuba as a child. His father has been reported as being born in A Coruña, with his family coming from the Galician town of Neda, although Romero once described his father as of Castilian descent.

Raised in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, he would frequently ride the subway into Manhattan to rent film reels to view at his house. He was one of only two people who repeatedly rented the opera-based film The Tales of Hoffmann, the other was future director Martin Scorsese. Romero attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

1960s
After graduating from college in 1960, Romero began his career shooting short films and TV commercials. One of his early commercial films was a segment for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in which Fred Rogers underwent a tonsillectomy. With nine friends, including screenwriter John A. Russo, Romero formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s. This is the production company that produced Night of the Living Dead (1968). Directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo, the movie became a cult classic and a defining moment for modern horror cinema.

Among the inspiration for Romero's filmmaking, as told to Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was the British film, The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), from the Powell and Pressburger team.

It was the filmmaking, the fantasy, the fact that it was a fantasy and it had a few frightening, sort of bizarre things in it. It was everything. It was really a movie for me, and it gave me an early appreciation for the power of visual media—the fact that you could experiment with it. He was doing all his tricks in-camera, and they were sort of obvious. That made me feel that, gee, maybe I could figure this medium out. It was transparent, but it worked.

1970s and 1980s
The three films that Romero created that followed Night of the Living Dead: There's Always Vanilla (1971), Jack's Wife / Season of the Witch (1972) and The Crazies (1973) were not as well received as Night of the Living Dead or some of his later work. The Crazies, dealing with a bio spill that induces an epidemic of homicidal madness, and the critically acclaimed arthouse success Martin (1978), a film that deals with the vampire myth, were the two well-known films from this period.

Romero returned to the zombie genre in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead. Shot on a budget of $1.5 million, the film earned over $55 million internationally and was later named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly in 2003. He made the third entry in his "Dead Series" with Day of the Dead in 1985.

Between these two films, Romero shot Knightriders (1981), another festival favorite about a group of modern-day jousters who reenact tournaments on motorcycles, and Creepshow (1982), written by Stephen King, an anthology of tongue-in-cheek tales modeled after 1950s horror comics. The cult-classic success of Creepshow led to the creation of Romero's Tales from the Darkside, a horror anthology television series that aired from 1983 to 1988. As the decade drew to a close, Romero directed Monkey Shines (1988), about a service animal.

1990s
Romero updated his original screenplay and executive-produced the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead directed by Tom Savini for Columbia/TriStar. Savini is also responsible for the makeup and special effects in many of Romero's films including Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines.

The early nineties also featured directorial efforts Two Evil Eyes (a.k.a. "Due occhi Diabolici", 1990), an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in collaboration with Dario Argento and The Dark Half (1993) from a novel written by Stephen King. In 1991, he made a cameo appearance in Jonathan Demme's Academy Award-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as one of Hannibal Lecter's jailers

In 1994, Romero shot a short film, Jacaranda Joe, about people running into a community of Bigfoot. Filmed at Valencia College in Florida, it was the first film that Romero shot entirely outside of Pittsburgh.

In 1998, Romero produced and directed an unaired pilot about Professional wrestling entitled Iron City Asskickers. It was eventually released on DVD and VHS in 2021.

In 1998, he directed a live-action commercial promoting the video game Resident Evil 2 in Los Angeles. The 30-second advertisement featured the game's two main characters, Leon S. Kennedy (portrayed by actor Brad Renfro) and Claire Redfield (Adrienne Frantz), fighting a horde of zombies while in Raccoon City's police station. The project was obvious territory for Romero, the Resident Evil series has been heavily influenced by the "Dead Series." The commercial was popular and was shown in the weeks before the game's actual release, although a contract dispute prevented it from being shown outside Japan. Capcom was so impressed with Romero's work, it was strongly indicated that Romero would direct the first Resident Evil film. He declined at first — "I don't wanna make another film with zombies in it, and I couldn't make a movie based on something that ain't mine" — although in later years, he reconsidered and wrote a script for the first movie. It was eventually rejected in favor of Paul W. S. Anderson's version.

In the mid 1990s, he wrote a script for a film adaptation of the first original Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House. It was eventually rejected altogether, although Romero's screenplay is kept archived by The University of Pittsburgh.

2000s
2000 saw the release of Bruiser, about a man whose face becomes a blank mask. Universal Studios produced and released a 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, with which Romero was not involved. Later that year, Romero kicked off the DC Comics title Toe Tags with a six-issue miniseries titled The Death of Death. Based on an unused script that Romero had written for his "Dead Series", the comic miniseries concerns Damien, an intelligent zombie who remembers his former life, struggling to find his identity as he battles armies of both the living and the dead. Typical of a Romero zombie tale, the miniseries includes ample supply of both gore and social commentary (dealing particularly here with corporate greed and terrorism — ideas he would also explore in his next film in the series, Land of the Dead). Romero has stated that the miniseries is set in the same kind of world as his Dead films, but featured other locales besides Pittsburgh, where the majority of his films take place.

In 2000, Romero directed a Misfits music video, the only one he's ever directed, for the song Scream! The Misfits also appeared in Bruiser, performing the songs "Bruiser" and "Fiend Without a Face."

Romero, who lived in Toronto, directed a fourth Dead movie in that city, Land of the Dead, released in 2005. The movie's working title was "Dead Reckoning." Actors Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, and John Leguizamo starred and the film was released by Universal Pictures (who released the Dawn of the Dead remake the year before). The film received generally positive reviews.

Romero collaborated with the game company Hip Interactive to create a game called City of the Dead, but the project was canceled midway due to the company's financial problems.

In June 2006, Romero began his next project, called Zombisodes. Broadcast on the Internet, it is a combination of a series of "Making of" shorts and story expansion detailing the work behind the 2007 film George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead. Shooting began in Toronto in July 2006.

In August 2006, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Romero signed on to write and direct George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, which follows a group of college students filming a horror movie who proceed to film the events that follow when the dead rise.

After a limited theatrical release, Diary of the Dead was released on DVD by Dimension Extreme on May 20, 2008, and later to Blu-ray on October 21, 2008. Shooting began in Toronto in September 2008 on Romero's Survival of the Dead (2009). The film was initially reported to be a direct sequel to Diary of the Dead, but the film features only Alan van Sprang, who appeared briefly as a rogue National Guard officer, reprising his role from the previous film, and did not retain the first-person camerawork of Diary of the Dead. The film centers on two feuding families taking very different approaches in dealing with the living dead on a small coastal island. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Prior to the May 28, 2010, theatrical release in the United States, Survival of the Dead was made available to video on demand and was aired as a special one-night showing on May 26, 2010, on HDNet.

Some critics have seen social commentary in much of Romero's work. They view Night of the Living Dead as a film made in reaction to the turbulent 1960s, Dawn of the Dead as a satire on consumerism, Day of the Dead as a study of the conflict between science and the military, Land of the Dead as an examination of class conflict, Diary of the Dead as a film made in reaction to the "emerging media" and Survival of the Dead as a study on war and conflict.

2010s
In 2010, Romero stated that he had plans for two more "Dead" movies which would be connected to Diary of the Dead and they would be made depending on how successful Survival of the Dead was. Romero, however, said that his next project would not involve zombies and he was going for the scare factor, but offered no further details.

Romero made an appearance in the second downloadable map pack called "Escalation" for the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops. He appears as himself in the zombies map "Call of the Dead" as a non-playable enemy character. Romero is featured alongside actors Sarah Michelle Gellar, Danny Trejo, Michael Rooker, and Robert Englund, all of the four being playable characters. He is portrayed as a powerful "boss" zombie armed with a movie studio light.

In 2012, Romero returned to video games recording his voice for "Zombie Squash" as the lead villain, Dr. B. E. Vil. "Zombie Squash HD Free" game was released by ACW Games for the iPad in November 2012.

In 2014, Marvel Comics began releasing Empire of the Dead, a 15-issue miniseries written by Romero. The series is broken up into three acts, five issues each, and features not only zombies but also vampires.

A prequel comic book series based on Romero's unproduced zombie film idea Road of the Dead was announced by IDW in July 2018. The 3-part mini-series was released in December 2018.

In April 2021, it was announced that Romero's unproduced film treatment for "Twilight of the Dead" was put back into development under the supervision of Suzanne Romero, with co-writer Paolo Zelati finishing the script. Suzanne told The Hollywood Reporter, "This is the film he wanted to make. And while someone else will carry the torch as the director, it is very much a George A. Romero film." In August 2023, the film was announced to start production in fall 2023 once the current SAG-AFTRA strike comes to an end. A month later, it was announced that the film would be directed by Brad Anderson.

Personal life
Romero was married three times. He married his first wife, Nancy, in 1971. They divorced in 1978. They had one child together, Cameron, who later became a filmmaker.

Romero met his second wife, actress Christine Forrest, on the set of Season of the Witch (1973), and they married in 1981. She had bit parts in most of his films. They had two children together, Andrew and Tina Romero. The couple divorced in 2010 after three decades of marriage.

Romero met Suzanne Desrocher while filming Land of the Dead (2005), and they married in September 2011 at Martha's Vineyard and lived in Toronto. He acquired Canadian citizenship in 2009, becoming a dual Canada-U.S. citizen.

Death
On July 16, 2017, Romero died following a "brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer", according to a statement by his longtime producing partner, Peter Grunwald. Romero died while listening to the score of one of his favorite films, The Quiet Man (1952), with his wife, Suzanne Desrocher Romero, and daughter from his second marriage, Tina Romero, at his side.

Influences
Romero ranked his top ten films of all time for the 2002 Sight & Sound Greatest Films Poll. They are The Brothers Karamazov, Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove, High Noon, King Solomon's Mines, North by Northwest (a film on which a teenaged Romero worked as a gofer), The Quiet Man, Repulsion, Touch of Evil and The Tales of Hoffmann. Romero listed the films in alphabetical order, with special placement given to Michael Powell's The Tales of Hoffmann, which he cites as "my favorite film of all time, the movie that made me want to make movies."

Awards and nominations
On October 27, 2009, Romero was honored with the Mastermind Award at Spike TV's Scream 2009. The tribute was presented by longtime Romero fan Quentin Tarantino, who stated in his speech that the "A" in George A. Romero stood for "A Fucking Genius."

Legacy
Regarded as the "Godfather of the Dead", as well as the "Father of the Modern Movie Zombie", critic Owen Gleiberman said of Romero that he was "a maestro of zombie terror who created the ultimate horror-movie metaphor" and remarked that "the real metaphor isn't only about Vietnam, or capitalism, or even disease, or anything else that you can stuff into a fortune cookie. It's about something more basic but ethereal, something that you can sense without putting it into words: the hidden aggression we all feel deep down, as the price of too much civilization."

In 2010, writer and actor Mark Gatiss interviewed Romero for his BBC documentary series A History of Horror, in which he appears in the third episode. Los Angeles Times. Romero's influence, and that of Night of the Living Dead, is widely seen among numerous filmmakers and artists, in particular those who have worked in the zombie subgenre, including comics writer Robert Kirkman, novelist Seth Grahame-Smith, and filmmakers John Carpenter,  Edgar Wright and Jack Thomas Smith.

The season eight premiere episode "Mercy" of the zombie-based show The Walking Dead, the first to air after Romero's death, dedicated the episode to Romero; showrunner Scott M. Gimple said that the show "owes a great debt" to Romero for his impact on popular culture.

In October 2017, the video game Dying Light included a mural of George A. Romero near one of the many in-game safehouses.

In May 2019, the University of Pittsburgh announced it had acquired George Romero's archives and that a multimedia exhibit be created and open to the public in the university's Hillman Library.

In September 2019, the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Zombies map "Tag der Toten" pays homage to Romero by including his pair of glasses that the player can interact with, each character giving remorse for his passing. The map is a re-imagining of the Call of Duty: Black Ops map "Call of the Dead", which Romero made an appearance on. The name of the map is German for Day of the Dead, which is a reference to Romero's movie of the same name.

The George A. Romero Non-Profit Foundation
The George A. Romero Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Romero's legacy. Founded in 2018 by Romero's wife Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, the Foundation's mission is to advance the causes for which George Romero was a champion – creativity within the horror genre and independent filmmaking in general – as well as preserving and documenting the history of the genre in all forms and contributing to its future by encouraging new generations of filmmakers, artists, and creators.

Forewords written by Romero

 * 1) Bizarro! by Tom Savini (foreword), 1984. ISBN 0517553198
 * 2) Book of the Dead edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector (foreword), 1989.
 * 3) ZOMBIES! An Illustrated History of the Undead Foreword by George A. Romero.
 * 4) The Extraordinary Adventures of Dog Mendonça and Pizzaboy II – Apocalipse by Filipe Melo and Juan Cavia (foreword), 2011.

title: George A. Romero


text:
MinGW

MinGW ("Minimalist GNU for Windows"), formerly mingw32, is a free and open source software development environment to create Microsoft Windows applications.

MinGW includes a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Binutils for Windows (assembler, linker, archive manager), a set of freely distributable Windows specific header files and static import libraries which enable the use of the Windows API, a Windows native build of the GNU Project's GNU Debugger, and miscellaneous utilities.

MinGW does not rely on third-party C runtime dynamic-link library (DLL) files, and because the runtime libraries are not distributed using the GNU General Public License (GPL), it is not necessary to distribute the source code with the programs produced, unless a GPL library is used elsewhere in the program.

MinGW can be run either on the native Microsoft Windows platform, cross-hosted on Linux (or other Unix), or "cross-native" on Cygwin. Although programs produced under MinGW are 32-bit executables, they can be used both in 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows.

The development of the MinGW project has been forked with the creation in 2005–2008 of an alternative project called Mingw-w64.

History
MinGW was originally called mingw32 ("Minimalist GNU for W32"), following the GNU convention whereby Windows is shortened as "W32". The numbers were dropped in order to avoid the implication that it would be limited to producing 32-bit binaries. Colin Peters authored the initial release in 1998, consisting only of a Cygwin port of GCC. Jan-Jaap van der Heijden created a Windows-native port of GCC and added binutils and make. Mumit Khan later took over development, adding more Windows-specific features to the package, including the Windows system headers by Anders Norlander. In 2000, the project was moved to SourceForge in order to solicit more assistance from the community and centralize its development.

MinGW was selected as Project of the Month at SourceForge for September 2005.

MSYS (a contraction of "Minimal System") was introduced as a Bourne shell command line interpreter system with the aim of better interoperability with native Windows software.

In 2018, following a disagreement with SourceForge about the administration of its mailing lists, MinGW migrated to OSDN.

Fork
In 2007, a fork of the original MinGW called Mingw-w64 appeared in order to provide support for 64 bits and new APIs. It has since then gained widespread use and distribution. MSYS2 ("minimal system 2") is a software distribution and a development platform for Microsoft Windows, based on Mingw-w64 and Cygwin, that helps to deploy code from the Unix world on Windows.

Programming language support
Most languages supported by GCC are supported on the MinGW port as well. These include C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, and Ada. The GCC runtime libraries are used (libstdc++ for C++, libgfortran for Fortran, etc.).

MinGW links by default to the Windows OS component library MSVCRT, which is the C library that Visual C++ version 6.0 linked to (the initial target was CRTDLL), which was released in 1998 and therefore does not include support for C99 features, or even all of C89. While targeting MSVCRT yields programs that require no additional runtime redistributables to be installed, the lack of support for C99 has caused porting problems, particularly where printf-style conversion specifiers are concerned. These issues have been partially mitigated by the implementation of a C99 compatibility library, libmingwex, but the extensive work required is far from complete and may never be fully realized. Mingw-w64 has resolved these issues, and provides fully POSIX compliant printf functionality.

Link compatibility
Binaries (executables or DLLs) generated with different C++ compilers (like MinGW and Visual Studio) are in general not link compatible. However, compiled C code is link compatible.

Components
The MinGW project maintains and distributes a number of different core components and supplementary packages, including various ports of the GNU toolchain, such as GCC and binutils, translated into equivalent packages. These utilities can be used from the Windows command line or integrated into an IDE. Packages may be installed using the command line via mingw-get.

MinGW supports dynamic libraries named according to the  and   conventions, as well as static libraries following the   naming convention common on Unix and Unix-like systems.

In addition, a component of MinGW known as MSYS (minimal system) provides Windows ports of a lightweight Unix-like shell environment including rxvt and a selection of POSIX tools sufficient to enable autoconf scripts to run, but it does not provide a C compiler or a case-sensitive file system.

mingwPORTs are user contributed additions to the MinGW software collection. Rather than providing these "add-ons" as precompiled binary packages, they are supplied in the form of interactive Bourne shell scripts, which guide the end user through the process of automatically downloading and patching original source code, then building and installing it. Users who wish to build any application from a mingwPORT must first install both MinGW and MSYS.

The implementation of Windows system headers and static import libraries are released under a permissive license, while the GNU ports are provided under the GNU General Public License. Binary downloads of both the complete MSYS package and individual MinGW GNU utilities are available from the MinGW site.

Comparison with Cygwin
Although both Cygwin and MinGW can be used to port Unix software to Windows, they have different approaches: Cygwin aims to provide a complete POSIX layer comprising a full implementation of all major Unix system calls and libraries. Compatibility is considered a higher priority than performance. On the other hand, MinGW's priorities are simplicity and performance. As such, it does not provide certain POSIX APIs which cannot easily be implemented using the Windows API, such as,   and. Applications written using a cross-platform library that has itself been ported to MinGW, such as SDL, wxWidgets, Qt, or GTK, will usually compile as easily in MinGW as they would in Cygwin.

Windows programs written with Cygwin run on top of a copylefted compatibility DLL that must be distributed with the program, unless statically linked. If dynamically linked, the program must also provide information on where to obtain Cygwin source. MinGW does not require a compatibility layer, since MinGW-based programs are compiled with direct calls to Windows APIs.

The combination of MinGW and MSYS provides a small, self-contained environment that can be loaded onto removable media without leaving entries in the registry or files on the computer.

It is also possible to cross-compile Windows applications with MinGW-GCC under POSIX systems. This means that developers do not need a Windows installation with MSYS to compile software that will run on Windows with or without Cygwin.

title: MinGW


text:
Robinson projection

The Robinson projection is a map projection of a world map that shows the entire world at once. It was specifically created in an attempt to find a good compromise to the problem of readily showing the whole globe as a flat image.

The Robinson projection was devised by Arthur H. Robinson in 1963 in response to an appeal from the Rand McNally company, which has used the projection in general-purpose world maps since that time. Robinson published details of the projection's construction in 1974. The National Geographic Society (NGS) began using the Robinson projection for general-purpose world maps in 1988, replacing the Van der Grinten projection. In 1998, NGS abandoned the Robinson projection for that use in favor of the Winkel tripel projection, as the latter "reduces the distortion of land masses as they near the poles".

Strengths and weaknesses
The Robinson projection is neither equal-area nor conformal, abandoning both for a compromise. The creator felt that this produced a better overall view than could be achieved by adhering to either. The meridians curve gently, avoiding extremes, but thereby stretch the poles into long lines instead of leaving them as points.

Hence, distortion close to the poles is severe, but quickly declines to moderate levels moving away from them. The straight parallels imply severe angular distortion at the high latitudes toward the outer edges of the map – a fault inherent in any pseudocylindrical projection. However, at the time it was developed, the projection effectively met Rand McNally's goal to produce appealing depictions of the entire world.

"I decided to go about it backwards. … I started with a kind of artistic approach. I visualized the best-looking shapes and sizes. I worked with the variables until it got to the point where, if I changed one of them, it didn't get any better. Then I figured out the mathematical formula to produce that effect. Most mapmakers start with the mathematics."

- 1988 New York Times article

Formulation
The projection is defined by the table:

The table is indexed by latitude at 5-degree intervals; intermediate values are calculated using interpolation. Robinson did not specify any particular interpolation method, but it is reported that others used either Aitken interpolation (with polynomials of unknown degrees) or cubic splines while analyzing area deformation on the Robinson projection. The X column is the ratio of the length of the parallel to the length of the equator; the Y column can be multiplied by 0.2536 to obtain the ratio of the distance of that parallel from the equator to the length of the equator.

Coordinates of points on a map are computed as follows:

$$ \begin{align} x &= 0.8487 \, R X (\lambda - \lambda_0), \\ y &= 1.3523 \, R Y, \end{align} $$ where R is the radius of the globe at the scale of the map, λ is the longitude of the point to plot, and λ0 is the central meridian chosen for the map (both λ and λ0 are expressed in radians).

Simple consequences of these formulas are:
 * With x computed as a constant multiplier to the meridian across the entire parallel, meridians of longitude are thus equally spaced along the parallel.
 * With y having no dependency on longitude, parallels are straight horizontal lines.

Applications
The Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook uses the Robinson projection in its political and physical world maps.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recommends using the Robinson projection for mapping the whole world.

title: Robinson projection


text:
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is a 1982 teen musical drama film about three teenage girls, played by Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Marin Kanter, who start a punk band. The film also features acting roles by real-life punk musicians including Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, Paul Simonon from the Clash, and Vince Welnick and Fee Waybill from the Tubes.

The Stains are depicted suffering the derision of male audiences and peers, but their dedication—and the fiery public persona of lead singer Corinne Burns—gains them a strong female fan base that ultimately eclipses their antagonists. The last scene is a triumphant MTV-style professional music video, which indicates the band finally achieved rock stardom.

Director Lou Adler and screenwriter Nancy Dowd (aided by Caroline Coon) disagreed starkly on the film's finale, and it was put on hold for two years until it was capped by Adler with the music video. Although it failed to make any commercial headway with its initial release in late 1982, the film became a cult favorite on 1980s cable television, particularly the late-night series Night Flight. Its reputation grew, and it is considered an influence on the riot grrl movement.

Plot
Corinne Burns is a 17-year-old girl whose mother has recently died from lung cancer. Working in a fast food restaurant to help support herself and her younger sister, Corinne is interviewed by a local television station for a story about her town's dwindling economy amidst the early 1980s recession. During the interview, Corinne becomes angry and belligerent towards the reporter, eventually lashing out at her overbearing and condescending boss and getting fired. The segment resonates with the station's teenage viewers, who see Corinne as a kindred spirit. The station does a follow-up interview, which primarily consists of Corinne acting flippant and making sarcastic remarks to the journalist. However, she does manage to slip in a plug for her garage band "The Stains", which consists of her, her sister Tracy, and their cousin Jessica.

Emboldened by appearing on television, Corinne attends a concert put on by small-time promoter Lawnboy, featuring the washed-up metal band the Metal Corpses and their opening act, an up-and-coming punk band called the Looters. Eager to end hostilities between the jaded Metal Corpses and the hedonistic Looters, Lawnboy signs the Stains without having heard them perform. Corinne and the Stains join the tour, witnessing firsthand the bands' animosity towards one another, largely the result of the conflict between the aging Lou, the frontman for the Metal Corpses, and Billy, the Looters' volatile lead singer.

At their first show, the Stains prove to be completely inept as a band: Neither Jessica nor Tracy can play instruments, and Corinne sings in an off-key monotone. The audience reacts angrily, prompting Corinne to lash out at them for a variety of real and perceived faults. After the show, the Metal Corpses' guitar player Jerry has fatally overdosed in the bathroom, and the band leaves the tour. Lawnboy makes the Looters the new headliners with the Stains as their opening act. A dissatisfied Billy asks Lawnboy to replace the Stains as soon as possible.

At their next show, Corinne debuts a new, more extreme punk look, with hair dyed to resemble a skunk and a see-through blouse worn over a pair of bikini briefs. Announcing that she "never puts out", she goes on another tirade, grabbing more media attention. While male journalists focus on Corinne's antisocial attitude and the band's lack of talent, female journalists understand Corinne's rants as calls for female empowerment and hail the Stains as a new voice of feminism. Soon the Stains become a national sensation, with girls all over the country emulating Corinne in every way possible, from dyeing their hair to running away from home.

During a tour stop at a motel, Billy attempts to seduce Corinne by sharing his feelings about the band and his alleged private shame of illiteracy. Over the course of their conversation, Billy recites the lyrics to a song, "Join the Professionals" which sums up his most personal feelings about the state of the world. At their next stop, the band is met by Lawnboy's agent, Dave Robell, with the intended replacement act for the Stains (Black Randy and the Metrosquad). Although Billy tells Corinne that he only wanted her replaced early on in the tour, Corinne lashes out at him, and at the Stains' next show, they play a cover version of Billy's song, which skyrockets the band to even further stardom. With Robell's encouragement, Corinne signs a new contract, cutting Lawnboy out of any royalties and making the Stains the new headliners of the tour.

At the next show, Billy delivers a speech to the crowd about how the Stains have betrayed their "never put out" mantra by becoming corporate sell outs. When the Stains come onstage, the fans riot, and Corinne is attacked by a girl with a tube of hair dye. The tour becomes a financial disaster and Robell cancels the Stains' contract. Corinne responds by threatening him with a bottle opener and taking the money he's been withholding from her; Corinne then gives the money to Lawnboy as an apology.

The next morning, Corinne appears on television, where a belligerent male journalist chastises her for having been a poor role model to her fans. Billy apologizes for ruining Corinne's career and asks her to come back as the Looters' opening act. Corinne refuses; as she wanders the streets, she overhears a radio broadcast identifying the Stains' first song as a hit record. Some time in the future, the Stains make their MTV debut, having become a successful act on Lawnboy's new record label.

Cast
The film features several punk rock musicians in acting roles: Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, Paul Simonon from the Clash, and Vince Welnick and Fee Waybill from the Tubes. Los Angeles punk rocker Black Randy from Black Randy and the Metrosquad makes an appearance as himself and as "Mexican Randy".

Musician Barry Ford, formerly of the reggae band Merger, plays the promoter nicknamed Lawnboy. Ford composed the majority of the soundtrack including the title song "All Washed Up", which features Jones, Cook, and Simonon. The song "Join the Professionals" was written and previously recorded by Jones and Cook's post-Pistols band, the Professionals.

The complete cast includes:
 * Diane Lane as Corinne Burns
 * Laura Dern as Jessica McNeil
 * Marin Kanter as Tracy Burns
 * Christine Lahti as Aunt Linda
 * Janet Wright as Aunt Linda's friend Brenda
 * Peter Donat as Harley Dennis
 * David Clennon as Dave Robell, the agent
 * Barry Ford as Lawnboy
 * Ray Winstone as Billy, vocalist for The Looters
 * Paul Simonon as Johnny, bassist for The Looters
 * Steve Jones as Steve, guitarist for The Looters
 * Paul Cook as Danny, drummer for The Looters
 * Fee Waybill as Lou Corpse, vocalist for The Metal Corpses
 * Vince Welnick as Jerry Jervey, guitarist for The Metal Corpses

There are also brief appearances by Elizabeth Daily as a hotel maid, and Brent Spiner.

Production
The original project had the working title All Washed Up. Once underway, the film was directed by music business tycoon Lou Adler for Paramount Pictures. The script was written by Nancy Dowd, who had won the Best Screenplay Academy Award for Coming Home. The movie was produced by Joe Roth, who would later become chairman of Walt Disney Studios.

In the mid-1970s, Caroline Coon was working as a Melody Maker music journalist and had earned a reputation as an early proponent of punk rock. Dowd, who was interested in writing a script about the new movement, contacted her and made an exploratory visit to London. Coon told Dowd that feminism was "the next big thing to come in punk rock", and the two began collaborating on the storyline to a film.

On his KLOS radio show in 2018, Steve Jones talked with Fee Waybill about how filming began in the winter of 1980 in Vancouver, Canada. Waybill recalled a scene that required Ray Winstone to hit him in the eye—which he did, accidentally, at full force. With his eye visibly swelling, Waybill completed the scene and it was kept in the final cut of the film.

Adler and Dowd had competing visions for the film right from the start. It was the ending, however, that caused them to collide. The original storyline was supposed to end with girls across the UK proudly emulating the Stains, but Coon says this inspirational concept was "muted by its male director". Tensions rose as Adler demanded a rewrite, and ultimately Coon and Dowd walked off the set for good. Dowd removed her name from the script, and is credited under the pseudonym "Rob Morton" in the final cut. The film was shelved without an ending for two years, until Adler tacked on an exuberant Stains music video that gave the impression that the band had achieved stardom. The film fared poorly among test audiences and did not get a general release.

Release
The film was screened in a tiny number of theaters in October 1982, and earned a box office gross just over US$25,000. Eventually the film made its way to cable television. Night Flight, the weekend counter-culture programming block on USA Network (of which Paramount was a partial owner), began regularly airing the film, and it found an audience. Off the positive reception of the airings, subdistributor Films Inc. licensed the film from Paramount, and it eventually made its way to the art house circuit.

The film's next theatrical engagements included showings at Film Forum in New York City on Wednesday, March 6, 1985, in Chicago in April 1985, in Atlanta and Los Angeles in July 1985, and at the Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia from Friday, August 23 to Saturday, August 24, 1985. The film continues to have screenings in various theaters through the present day.

Rhino Home Video released a DVD on September 16, 2008. The disc featured bonus commentary tracks, one from Adler and a second with both Lane and Dern together. A Blu-Ray edition was released in Australia in 2022 by ViaVision/Imprint.

Reception
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains holds a rating of 64% from 11 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Influence
Although it was a little-known obscurity for many years, it has developed a cult film status that continues to grow. Repertory screenings of the film, once a rarity, have grown more frequent in recent years.

The film predated the riot grrl scene of the 1990s, and among its early fans were members of Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. Other fans of the film include writer/podcaster Jake Fogelnest, and underground filmmaker Sarah Jacobson, as well as musician/actress Kate Nash, who revealed in a web interview that she dyed her hair to match Corinne's. In 2000, Jacobson directed, with Sam Green, a short documentary on the film for the IFC television show Split Screen.


text:
Tobi Vail

Tobi Celeste Vail (born July 20, 1969) is an American independent musician, music critic and feminist activist from Olympia, Washington. She was a central figure in the riot grrl scene—she coined the spelling of "grrl"—and she started the zine Jigsaw. A drummer, guitarist and singer, she was a founding member of the band Bikini Kill. Vail has collaborated in several other bands figuring in the Olympia music scene. Vail writes for eMusic.

Early life
Tobi Celeste Vail was born in Auburn, Washington, to teenage parents. Both her grandfather and her father were drummers. When she was young her parents moved the family to rural Naselle, Washington, where her father worked in a youth detention center. The family moved to Olympia, Washington, where Vail attended high school. The first concert she went to on her own was a Wipers show in 1984. In 1988, Vail left Washington to live in Eugene, Oregon. After a year, she returned to Olympia.

While still in high school, Vail volunteered at KAOS (FM), the campus radio station at The Evergreen State College. At KAOS, Vail was exposed to a wide variety of independent music. She served off and on as a disc jockey from age 15 to 21.

Early bands
One of Vail's first bands was the Go Team, a punk project started with Calvin Johnson in 1985. The group released several cassettes and nine singles on the independent label K Records, mostly on the 7" vinyl format. Billy "Billy Boredom" Karren was one of the rotating musicians who played with the Go Team, and it was in this band that he and Vail played together for the first time. The band toured the West Coast in 1987 as a two-piece, then added Karren for two U.S. tours, both in 1989. After the Go Team disbanded, Vail played in various project bands and made a record as the drummer for Some Velvet Sidewalk; she toured with Some Velvet Sidewalk during early 1990. Since the beginning of her teens, Vail had tried to form an all-female band to "rule the world and change how people view music and politics", including a group named Doris.

Bikini Kill
In October 1990, Vail and Evergreen State College classmates Kathi Wilcox and Kathleen Hanna determined to form a band, which they named Bikini Kill. Vail played drums and on some songs she sang. Through early 1991, Hanna and Wilcox swapped bass player and lead singer duties halfway through the set, and Wilcox also played guitar. After trying out a lot of female lead guitar players, none of whom seemed to fit, the band finally asked Karren to join as he was already known to Vail and a familiar figure in the Olympia music scene.

Soon after the band formed, they started a zine called Bikini Kill to promote the band and describe the band's social and political views. Hanna, Vail and Wilcox contributed articles to the zine. In Bikini Kill #1, Vail commented on the punk music scene and its overemphasis on males. She wrote about the "Yoko factor": the time when a male musician tells his girlfriend that she should not break up the band (comparing Yoko Ono's influence on the breakup of the Beatles) and that the girlfriend would never be as important to him as his band. Through the Bikini Kill zine and publicity for the band, Vail voiced her belief that the world would change for the better if the number of girls joining bands increased until it was equal to the number of boys.

Bikini Kill performed at the International Pop Underground Convention in August 1991, and Vail and Hanna each performed separately on "Girl Night".

Despite frequent mainstream media misrepresentation and serious violence at shows, they continued for several years and today are largely credited (along with Bratmobile) with starting riot grrrl, a movement that merged do it yourself (DIY) punk culture with feminism. The band Bikini Kill tried to reclaim feminism for the punk scene in an attempt to disrupt its male bias. The band fought against male aggression at their shows. Largely because of Hanna's leadership, Bikini Kill encouraged girls to stand at the front of the stage for solidarity as well as for protection from male aggression. Vail and the other members of Bikini Kill encouraged girls to start their own bands. The general idea that girls should create their own independent culture grew rapidly in popularity through a largely underground network of similar-feeling fans, artists, musicians and writers, and soon regular meetings started taking place, usually in punk houses like Positive Force. By the summer of 1991, the riot grrrl movement had coalesced, with Bikini Kill moving to Washington, D.C., for a year.

In February 2016, Vail issued a YouTube takedown request after a pro-Hillary Clinton video utilizing the Bikini Kill song "Rebel Girl" began to go viral.

The Frumpies
In 1992, while still involved with Bikini Kill, Tobi started The Frumpies in Washington, D.C., with Bikini Kill bandmates Wilcox and Karren, and also with Molly Neuman of Bratmobile and the PeeChees, and later Michelle Mae. The Frumpies were distinctly less overtly political in nature than either Bikini Kill or Bratmobile, with a different sound. The band toured the U.S. with Huggy Bear in 1993 and they toured Italy with noise rock band Dada Swing in 2000.

In 1993, Vail started Bumpidee, a low-cost method for unsigned bands to increase their listener base, using the distribution of cassette recordings of their songs. This was another embodiment of Vail's strong DIY principle. The name Bumpidee was chosen in honor of the children's television show Bumpity. One of the Bumpidee bands was Worst Case Scenario which included Justin Trosper and Brandt Sandeno—these two musicians found success in the band Unwound, retaining the DIY ethic from their Bumpidee exposure.

Spider and the Webs
In mid-2004, Vail founded the band Spider and the Webs, with James Maeda on guitar and Chris Sutton on drums and bass. Vail sings and plays guitar, and she trades drumming roles with Sutton. Spider and the Webs played Ladyfest in 2005 in Olympia, and Vail spoke about the riot grrrl movement at other Ladyfest conferences held in Brighton and Madrid in October 2005, during a Spider and the Webs European tour. The band produced an EP in October 2006 on K Records: Frozen Roses, following a split EP with Partyline on Bristol, UK's Local Kid records. A (cassette) album was eventually released in 2015, also available as a download.

gSp
Vail then formed "supergroup" girlSperm—also styled as gSp—with Layla Gibbon and Marissa Magic. gSp released their first album in 2017, receiving praise from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and the New York Times.

Other projects
Vail ran the mail order department at Kill Rock Stars from 1998 to 2011, after working there part-time from 1992 to 1997. In addition to blogging through her Jigsaw website, Vail also posts as "Tabitha Says" on Tumblr, beginning in August 2008.

With her sister Maggie, Vail joined Alison Wolfe, Cat Power, and members of Sleater-Kinney to organize the first Ladyfest in 2000, a music, activism, and arts conference held in Olympia. The Vail sisters played the festival in a band named Frenchie and the German Girls. In keeping with Vail's DIY ethic, the Ladyfest founders turned the Ladyfest brand over to the public domain so that others could freely organize similar festivals.

From 2006 to 2008, Vail drummed with the Old Haunts, including on their final album, Poisonous Times. Vail has performed several solo shows, including one in Barcelona at Primera Persona in March 2012.

Writing
In 1989, Vail published the first issue of her feminist zine Jigsaw. When she published the zine, Vail was working at an Olympia sandwich shop with Kathi Wilcox who remembers being impressed by Vail's focus on "girls in bands, specifically," including an aggressive emphasis on feminist issues. While Kathleen Hanna was touring with Viva Knievel, she came upon a copy of Jigsaw #2, finding resonance in Vail's "Boxes", a five-page article about gender. Hanna wrote to Vail and submitted musician interviews to be published in Jigsaw while Hanna was on tour; this was the beginning of their collaboration. In Jigsaw, Vail wrote about "angry grrls", combining the word girls with the powerful growl of grr. Vail's third issue, published in 1991 after she spent time in Washington D.C., was subtitled "angry grrrl zine". Vail soon became dismayed with the male-slanted media coverage of the riot grrrl scene. Janice Radway notes that her copy of Jigsaw #4, also published in 1991, has many instances of the printed word "grrrl", but each one has been crossed out, "presumably by Vail, as a protest against the popularity of the term."

The final issue of the printed version of Jigsaw was published in 1999. In 2001, Vail began an online blog named Bumpidee. Vail used the Bumpidee site to publish Jigsaw #8 in the spring and summer of 2003, including writings by Alan Licht and Becca Albee. She moved the Jigsaw blog to its own domain in September 2008. In mid-2013, Jigsaw issues from the 1990s were archived at Harvard University as a research resource along with 20,000 other countercultural zines.

Vail started working as a freelance writer after graduating from the Evergreen State College in 2009. Her work has been published by NPR, Artforum, The Believer, Punk Planet and Maximum Rock-N-Roll. She currently writes a monthly column for eMusic and was recently published by The Feminist Press in the anthologies Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer for Freedom and The Riot Grrrl Collection. Hanna commented upon Vail's song "Free Pussy Riot", written in support of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot after three members were arrested in March 2012. The Punk Singer, a 2013 documentary about Hanna, includes footage from three archival interviews with Vail. The film also includes archival footage of several Bikini Kill performances.

Personal life
Vail met Kurt Cobain when she was hanging around with Melvins in 1986. Cobain played guitar on one of the Go Team songs. Vail and Cobain briefly dated beginning in July 1990. The two discussed the possibility of starting a music project, and recorded a few songs together. Some of these songs ended up being Nirvana tracks. Referring to the Teen Spirit deodorant brand that Vail once used, Kathleen Hanna wrote "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit" with a sharpie on the wall of Cobain's bedroom. Cobain, unaware of the deodorant brand, saw a deeper meaning in the phrase, and wrote the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Cobain and Vail soon split but remained friends.

Vail's relationship with Tim Armstrong inspired him to write the Rancid song "Olympia, WA" from the album ...And Out Come the Wolves.

title: Tobi Vail