The comics community is an interesting one, one of names, not faces, that flit in and out of our awareness with extreme rapidity. We end up discussing artists and writers and inkers as though we're on a first name basis with them, because, well, we kinda feel that after we read their work enough. How easily the names trip off of my tongue like I know these people! Loved Sam Rosen's lettering in that issue, enjoyed Bill Everett's work on that issue, or Jim Lee's on this issue. And I've met none of those people.
I can say that i worked with Bill Jaaska, but I never met Bill. Did one issue of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and that was that. Bill was doing a rather strange over-rendered pencil style that did not mesh well with my inks at the time. But that was what needed to be done so I did it. Since it was only a single issue I didn't have the editors give me his phone number so that i could call him. I turned it in, submitted my voucher and moved on to an issue Eternal Warrior.
Welcome to the disconnected world of comics. I've inked plenty of people that i've never met, and any one of them could easily be have died, alone, in a rented room like Bill did, and no one in the comics community or myself would ever know. And thats sad.
As artists, much of what we do it solitary. Many of us aren't great socially and so we retreat into the quiet shelter of our drawings. Its part of what makes us artists, being able to visualize alien worlds in our heads and bring that out on the paper. The internet has been a huge boon to us however, allowing us to communicate at 3 in the morning with people around the world via email and become more connected without having to be over connected.
Still, it took a very long time for the comics community to realize that Bill had died. The story, as it is, is in the blog here, and it makes for interesting and sad reading. While I didn't follow his career, it seems that Bill, after working on some fairly high profile gigs with Peter David on The Hulk, dropped off the radar, and stayed off the radar.
And that's pretty easy to do in comics back then. After inking Batman:Outlaws with Gulacy in 2000, I decided to stop inking professionally and do some other art, so it would have appeared that i dropped off the radar as well. But you could have found my graphic design on the web by Google, and then the blog, and then the web comic. Bill didn't do that, not that anyone can find.
And its sad. Go read. And think about all the comics that you've read and re-read, and start to wonder where some of those people are now.
Showing posts with label turok. Show all posts
Showing posts with label turok. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Ashes of Comic Shops Past
Valerie's write up on the Last Exit to Brooklyn comic shop should touch a nerve with just about any comics fan. I doubt that I was ever far enough out in Brooklyn to have touched upon the shop that she describes, but there was no shortage of bizarre comic shops in the boroughs. In fact, the very worst comic shop that I ever walked into was actually in Manhattan.
About 3 blocks from the Valiant offices in the Chelsea district, it sat on the same block as the infamous Chelsea Hotel, famous if you were a Sex Pistols fan. I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what the name was, but it sat on west 23rd st, between 7th and 8th Avenue, much of hte time its dingy signage covered by the work awnings as they renovated the Hotel next door.
While on a pretty central street, 23st ceased in the 1990s to be particularly well trafficked past 7th Ave. While the multiplex sat on the corner of 8th ave, the Krispy Creme had yet to open across the street, and the dilapidated Hotel Chelsea seemed like an embarassment: a reminder of another time when New York was broke and subways waited for yet another Bernie Goetz. People would walk by and simply not turn their heads. 8th Ave? Are you crazy? I only go there for B&H to try an talk the Hasidiam into yet another deal.
So this grimy little shop had the greatest accumulation of ill advised promotional items that I recall running accross in all my years. It would be harder to imagine more poorly placed posters for Image books that never shipped or never sold, for Marvel titles that would never be collectible, for Valiant and Acclaim comics that would never lay claim to having the "Shooter" magic touch. The carpet was a non-descript color not chosen because it would hide the accumulated dirt of a thousand unwashed fanboys, but because it had seen that sort of traffic. That is, when the carpet was covering the old floor tiles.
Long and narrow, the shop was filled with all the prerequisites: poorly organized comics in the front, a mixture of spinner racks and wooden displays against the wall, a smattering of the growing threat graphic novels (collections of other superhero crap from the 1980s, some Fantagraphics, or the latest Europorn from Milo Manara), and then rows and rows of cardboard boxes housing essentially all the issues that you didn't need to complete your collection. i never once found a single thing that I was looking for in all those damn long boxes.
Sounds like a lot of other shops doesn't it? It is just that this one did it all, and did it worst. Especially in comparison to the other shops in Manhattan, such a Cosmic Comics, that did well with half the square footage. But Cosmic didn't have the overly large and completely disinterested store owner, asshole staff, and regular crowd of hip hop bloods, street junkies or ratty neighborhood boys that would inhabit the place. While Hanleys was getting the money to go upscale over on 34th Street, this place was a time machine.
Why did I go there, you ask, if it was that bad? I have to say that I had a perverse hatred of it, and would simply go by after leaving the Valiant offices three blocks away, just so that I could dogear a few books and slum it, before I walked cross town to one of the better shops, any of the better shops, to give them my money. Just as record producers would use the legendary car test (taking the song that they had just finished in the studio and play it on the small shitty car speakers to see how the average radio listener would hear it), I wanted to see how the new comics that we were putting out, the latest issue of my Turok or the Grackle, how they would look on the stands.
That place was my lowest common denominator of comic shops. And I never once saw a female in there. Ever.
About 3 blocks from the Valiant offices in the Chelsea district, it sat on the same block as the infamous Chelsea Hotel, famous if you were a Sex Pistols fan. I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what the name was, but it sat on west 23rd st, between 7th and 8th Avenue, much of hte time its dingy signage covered by the work awnings as they renovated the Hotel next door.
While on a pretty central street, 23st ceased in the 1990s to be particularly well trafficked past 7th Ave. While the multiplex sat on the corner of 8th ave, the Krispy Creme had yet to open across the street, and the dilapidated Hotel Chelsea seemed like an embarassment: a reminder of another time when New York was broke and subways waited for yet another Bernie Goetz. People would walk by and simply not turn their heads. 8th Ave? Are you crazy? I only go there for B&H to try an talk the Hasidiam into yet another deal.
So this grimy little shop had the greatest accumulation of ill advised promotional items that I recall running accross in all my years. It would be harder to imagine more poorly placed posters for Image books that never shipped or never sold, for Marvel titles that would never be collectible, for Valiant and Acclaim comics that would never lay claim to having the "Shooter" magic touch. The carpet was a non-descript color not chosen because it would hide the accumulated dirt of a thousand unwashed fanboys, but because it had seen that sort of traffic. That is, when the carpet was covering the old floor tiles.
Long and narrow, the shop was filled with all the prerequisites: poorly organized comics in the front, a mixture of spinner racks and wooden displays against the wall, a smattering of the growing threat graphic novels (collections of other superhero crap from the 1980s, some Fantagraphics, or the latest Europorn from Milo Manara), and then rows and rows of cardboard boxes housing essentially all the issues that you didn't need to complete your collection. i never once found a single thing that I was looking for in all those damn long boxes.
Sounds like a lot of other shops doesn't it? It is just that this one did it all, and did it worst. Especially in comparison to the other shops in Manhattan, such a Cosmic Comics, that did well with half the square footage. But Cosmic didn't have the overly large and completely disinterested store owner, asshole staff, and regular crowd of hip hop bloods, street junkies or ratty neighborhood boys that would inhabit the place. While Hanleys was getting the money to go upscale over on 34th Street, this place was a time machine.
Why did I go there, you ask, if it was that bad? I have to say that I had a perverse hatred of it, and would simply go by after leaving the Valiant offices three blocks away, just so that I could dogear a few books and slum it, before I walked cross town to one of the better shops, any of the better shops, to give them my money. Just as record producers would use the legendary car test (taking the song that they had just finished in the studio and play it on the small shitty car speakers to see how the average radio listener would hear it), I wanted to see how the new comics that we were putting out, the latest issue of my Turok or the Grackle, how they would look on the stands.
That place was my lowest common denominator of comic shops. And I never once saw a female in there. Ever.
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