Tekno, Defiant, Broadway: the Comic Book Shellgame

James Vance is chronicling his Brilliant Career at Tekno Comics over at his blog, and it should be required reading for everyone at the same time as Tim Perkins early days at Defiant Comics. Welcome to the 1990's my friends, or practically any other era where the dreams fly high, the money seems like it could actually come in, and the sales look like they might actually happen.

We creative types always fall for it. We're prone to it by virtue of creating fantasies in our heads for everyone else to read and live. And we keep thinking that, at some point, we might live one too.

I read Vance's columns and had a horrible amount of deja vu, listening to the editorial nit-picking that would ruin his Gaiman-bibled comic. I worked under Ed Polgardy at Defiant, and, sadly, Ed got himself into the same position at Tekno that he had at Defiant. He only knew one way to produce the comics, it didn't work the first time, and there was very little reason to assume it would work the second time. Training under Shooter was not the best thing that could have happened to him. Ed's boss at Defiant, Deborah Purcell knew next to nothing about creating good comics. Her background in editing may have qualified her for working with words, but there was nothing in her resume that would show that she could understand, nurture and comment correctly on the unique verbal/visual mix that is comics. Her later replacement, Pauline Weiss, came from an entirely different background, but Pauline knew, in her DNA, what could make good comics better, or fix crappy ones. Its a unique talent.

I vividly recall a meeting with JG Jones, Jim Shooter and Joe James in the Defiant era that would define the sort of "this will put you in your place" get together that you would have: I was asked to drop by the office for them to criticize the one line on the interior of the mouth of a character's face that was on a nine-panel grid page. Seriously. I'm sure the Joe knew it was a ridiculous meeting, but he had to go in with a straight face and critique it.

The worst phrase in corporate America is "value added", because it assumes that everyone has a valid opinion. And they don't. I hire someone to fix my sink, my comments, no matter how well intentioned, are not "value added". I'm not a plumber. And any number of editors and money men and financers and backers and girlfriends of publishers and wives of editors can have an opinion, but all they will likely do it ruin things worst than they already are. Your book may be crap, but now its committee crap, which is clearly worse crap.

I will eagerly follow Vance's next post, so that we can all follow the trail of failure and its lurid smell. And once again I will say, given all the talented people that I"ve met in the comics world, and the good will and the desire to do work that isn't crap, why does it all turn to shit every time we turn around? Read all the creative type's blogs and you'll see that the blame seems to fall squarely on the editorial shoulders, but its not that simple and you and I know it. I do know that if any of the editors have a blog that addresses their time in the comic world I would love to read it. Might balance things out just a little bit.

Getting Into The Business: Defiant Comics and The Commune

I've blogged a couple times over what it was like to finally get accepted into the world of being a comic professional, (just search my blog with "defiant"), and primarily to see if i could capture the sense of wonder and accomplishment that came with finally "making it" past the velvet rope. Now, my old friend Tim Perkins has started to do the same thing, and it is, of course, very interesting to read from his perspective. Worth a read, as he goes into more detail than I have done in my particular case, but his is rather more interesting as he was an Englishman coming to America for the first time, so there is an extra sense of "fish out of water" in the telling.

Pop on over if you get the chance!

Also, the underground instant classic horror film The Commune (reviews here and here)is showing opening night at Dances With Film in LA. For a solid dose of Wicker Man type horror, you need to get your butt over to the theatre to see this one. Those with sharp eyes will see my artwork for Pistoleras in the background of one scene, which will be pretty cool to see. This, however, is a badass film that is scarier in a far deeper way that another maniac running through the woods with a saw/drill/disc sander. Go check it out!

The Shooter Story: Beginning, Middle and End

Just a week or two after I make the comment on Jim Shooter's assertion that comic book storytelling should be done a certain way because "Its always someone's first comic." then this quyote shows up on the Comic Journal's Journalista site (as well as the Comic Book Guy site) :

"The art in comics is generally better than ever, the writing is often clever and glib, but in spite of that, far too many comics are utterly unreadable. Even hardcore fans find many comics daunting to follow! The craft of storytelling is all but lost. A who's who of industry big shots have privately agreed with me when we've discussed exactly this subject, but it's a tough problem to fix, given the often huge egos of the creators, general creative anarchy and lack of trained editorial people".

And he's right. I'm not going to argue with him on the main part of his message. However, I will make the case that there were plenty of hard as hell to follow '70's comics as well, when we had exceptionally talented editors and writers like Marv Wolfman overseeing the biz. The quextion is, what is a readable comic? Isn't a comic that a 7 year old can understand different from a comic that a 25 year old can understand? How about a literate, educatated woman of 38 who simply hasn't grown up with comic?

My focus group on comics generally comprises my almost-7 year old daughter, who is a voracious reader, and my wife, with a Masters in Journalism, who didn't grow up in a comic book world like many of us did. I keep a spinner rack in the TV room at home loaded with everything from '60's Marvel to Dodson's Wonder Woman and Cooke's New Frontier. And I've found poor storytelling in every era, regardless of editor, but obviously, different things jumped out at the 7 year old versus the 38 year old.

The panel to panel transitions on the modern Wonder Woman comic are clearer to the 7 year old than some of the transitions in the 60's and '70's, with their greater degree of story compression, as they depend on the captions to make certain elements of the story clear. Not fully understanding the vocabulary, she needs a greater degree of visual communication to make this work, and I'm not certain that Jim allow this degree of latitude with most of his artists. Certainly, Marvel in the 80's had the superstars who could experiment (it seemed like every issue Moon Knight was a Sienkiewicz experiment) regardless of the failure rate, and everyone else, who were ruled by an iron editorial hand. Perhaps if there is someone to who helped create the superstar system, it may have been Jim. Miller got to do what he wanted. Daredevil was either Frank's or Rogers, and as we saw, editorial went with Frank. As many times as I've seen Frank interviewed on the subject, I'm not sure I've ever run across a Roger McKenzie interview where he addresses it.

Having been around the comics for so long now, I see head editors that were editorial assistants or interns when i was inking books 10 years ago. If there is anything that comics doesn't have, its any sort of organized training system that addresses the twin disciplines that our medium encompasses, and that may be a huge failing point with comics direction. Some editors become traffic directors simply, some stamp their view point so strongly on the books that they may as well be a modern Mort Weisinger. Many fall in the middle, caught and pulled in many different directions, by the prevailing marketing conditions, the overall corporate direction, the whims of the writer or artist, the latest company crossover (Counting Down to the Crisis on Infinite Hulks), the modern editor might long for days of simply getting the writer and artist on the same page and turning out a nice monthly book. It can't be easy.

It will be fascinating to see if Jim's Legion harkens back to the '60's DC, '70's Marvel or 90's Defiant. Especially with editorial changes that pretty much everyone in comics is predicting will happen to at the DC offices.

When is Original Art not what it appears?

Danny boy continues his great writings about the original art fandango that exists with the published version, or the credits on the published version not being what they appear. I love reading this stuff, of course, the behind the scenes being fascinating to me.

I recall all the different pages of the Good Guys #1 that we went through, including the notorious page 8, notorious to me at least. Here is the story: Defiant contacted me to a sample page of inks before I had ever broken into the industry and sent out a xerox of page 8, pencilled by Grey. A pretty good copy too, by the way, and I set about to light boxing it and inking it on 1 ply vellum, a killer paper that strathmore no longer makes. they specifically told me to keep it very clean. so I did. I then fed ex'ed it to NY and waited to hear. Of course 4 days later I got a call telling me that it was too "clean" and not what they wanted. I fully admit, I was crushed, and proceeded to tear the damn thing into pieces. I knew that the work was good, and was enraged that nothing was ever going to let me get my big break.

Here's where it gets interesting. Of course, two weeks later, they call me back to tell me that the veteran inker they ended up sending the first batch of pages to ruined them and they wanted me. But, since I was new and in California, I would have to come out and work under their eyes at the offices in New York. So they fly me out there and I see that they have only photocopies of the pencils of the first 8, but they aren't the nice photocopies, they're ghostly white. And they say, "Well, at least, we have your good version of page 8."

Page 8 was, I stress again, shredded. Shredded into the types of pieces that only truly righteous anger can lead one to making.

So I end up re-inking, via lightbox, the first 7 pages, and then using the poor xerox and my own xerox of page 8 to recreate page 8.

So what happens? They end up cutting up the xeroxes and condensing pages 1-8 into pages 1-6 and just glue the xeroxed panels onto bristol anyway.

And that's just the first quarter of the book.

Scans to come.

RIP Dave Cockrum

I've waited a few days to get the chance to post this, but I wanted to say a few things about Dave Cockrum, and those things do not include any tirades against Marvel for not taking care of him until recently.

Personal story, enter at your own risk: My second or third day in New York, and in the comics industry as a whole, I was working at the Defiant offices on W36th St., when in comes Dave Cockrum, who proceeds to sit at the drawing board next to mine and look over recently inked pages of his Defiant work: Plasm: Home for the Holidays. Dave, wearing splints on both wrists for carpal tunnel, was clearly not in the very best of health, but was jovial, cordial, just plain fun to talk with.

His one complaint on the Plasm pages: that they had taken the tail off of Nightcrawler in the background of a panel. "He's my character, my trademark." Dave explained to Jim Shooter, "I always draw him into my work somewhere." The inker had taken the tail out, worried about copyright violation. Jim agreed with Dave saying, "he won't be colored exactly the same, I'm not worried about it." "Do we have to send this back to the inker?" Dave asked.

"There's an inker sitting there with a brush in his hand,"says Jim, looking at me. I quickly touch up the artwork and put the tail back in. And I'm thinking, HOW GODDAMN COOL IS THIS??

Somewhere out there is the original art for the cover which i had the pleasure of working on, art that eventually was used as the back cover. I really wish that I had gotten that artwork back.

Dave was a huge Star Trek fan, and entertained everyone in the office with his fluent Klingon and i got the chance to sit there and talk to him about Marvel and the different covers that he worked on that i remembered. He was a great guy, and I have a fond memory of that day getting the chance to sit and work and talk with a guy that somehow never quite became the legend that he should have become for his body of work. It was day 3 of being a peer rather than chatting over the table at a convention. It still makes me smile.

So there you go, just a small memory from the long ago year of 1993, but one that I hold on to. Rest in peace Dave, you go well remembered by so many of us.

I will get this out of the way: after getting a picture of just how bad comics were in trouble in '76 and '77 from guys like Chuck Rozanski, we perhaps should note that the All New, All Different X-Men changed the entire industry, and created the last Great Marvel Property. think about it: everything else that we really see as a Marvel Icon comes from Lee/Kirby or Lee/Ditko (and I don't have to go into the listing of any of those names, do I?) except the modern X-Men. For them, get down on your knees and worship Wein, Wolfman, Cockrum, Claremont, Byrne and Austin. The six of them may be the reason that you can continue to buy comics today.