In Review Of: The Hunter by Cooke and Stark

There are a number of exciting works that are coming out or have just come out begging to be read, and one of the ones that was most anticipated, by me at least, was the adaption by Darwyn Cooke of the Richard Stark noir classic, The Hunter.

(Scanned here is the limited edition San Diego Hardcover, which I thought a nice enough package to splurge on while there, even though i have a history of not always keeping the jackets in the best of condition over the years.)

To brass tacks: The Hunter is an interesting adaption for a character who is exceptionally internal, leading to a tremendous amount of information needing to be communicated in the silences and the pauses, in the calm before the storm of Parker erupting on yet another individual. It is a book with a difficult protagonist to get behind in some ways, and yet terribly easy to in others. As a crook, he's the audience's bad boy identification, the life that we could lead if we all had the balls and savvy to do so, but he doesn't make it easy for the reader: very few of us, with fantasies of ripping people off and living the high life imagine taking a knife and cutting off the face of our ex-wife. its like vaccinated time travel: we don't want to travel back to the middle ages with out knowing that we can't catch the plague, and we want to live our vicarious crime fantasies in a bloodless way. Stark (and i use Westlake's nom de plume here as that is the part of him writing the book, so i feel its appropriate) isn't going to make anything simple about Parker.

Except that there is little difficult to get about the revenge plot. The devil is in the details here, we've seen revenge stories, and what sets them apart from one another, like romantic comedies, is how well all the small stuff plays out. Do we buy the details? The answer, in some places is yes, but not in all places.

Cooke's The Hunter is an admirable effort and a hell of a lot of work, but it doesn't succeed on all levels. There are moments where Cooke's monochromatic pallette is somewhat limited in its ability to convey everything that he's trying to do. An early scene between Parker and Lynn plays perfectly, Cooke moves the camera focal point around, dropping outlines around the softness of Lynn's hair without sacrificing the density of black in Parker's suit as well as his shadowed face. The strength of his physical presence is portrayed powerfully even in the small shots, as is Lynn's vulnerability. Later in the book, however, when the same scene is portrayed twice, from two different vantage points of the naked gangster leaping for his gun as Parker comes in through the window, neither of them has the clarity necessary to make the visual aspect of the scene as powerful as we want it to be, nor as powerful as the story needs it to be.

Oddly, the advertising for The Hunter is less monochromatic than the book itself. I saw the promo poster again today at my LCS, and the blacks were highlighted by reds and oranges, and I fully expected that the book itself would change colors as we went along, but no, all i got were the same muddy dark aqua tones mixed with the black. Its not that it doesn't work but its also not what i was expecting given the way that they advertised it.

I've seen Cooke taken to task on another review for not being able to play down his own "cuteness" with his character design and it is true: all the women in the book pretty much come from his own style of the adorable 50's chick, which may be a minor quibble, but it does pull us out of the graphic nature of the road weary Parker making his way across the country to get his revenge. The waitress on the cafe on page 13 is beyond cute, and I'm not sure that it was until later in the book when Parker and Wanda have their conversation that i thought that a female character broke the mold. Wanda, make no mistake is a hottie, but as the conversation progresses and Parker pushes her for information, does her mask slip and we see her other face: the calculating and scheming side. As an "actress", Wanda needs to move from the soft to the hard, and there has to be a coldness as well as an instinct for self preservation that has to show through.

The set pieces are good, and Cooke doesn't hit us over the head with the details to sell the book. If every chair is an Ames chair, then so what, most of us weren't buying funiture in the 1950's. This is a stylized look at 1962, not a literal look. Cooke's storyboard ability to make us understand the action works particularly well at the finale, when another artist might have botched getting us through the chase sequence. the action is clear and storytelling solid, something that has to happen for us to "buy" the ending.

I find the decision to drop the panel borders through the entire book interesting, just as i was reading some of Bryan Hitch's FF issues, where he does the same thing. As a formalist gesture, I'm not sure that bleeding every panel out into a loose gutter works, just as i'm not sure that you need to heavily border each panel as well. Scott McCloud must be licking his chops to put together another first person essay on the merits of borderless comics. There are moments where I want the eye to not be able to flow into the negative space between the panel, even with how careful Cooke has been with creating a lack of bad tangents through out the entire book. I think that I would want to limit the movement with the borders and bleed off others. (The short subway scene inthe book reminded me of Eisner's subway into to an old Spirit story, with the panel's being jostled back and forth like an out of control "E" train. The openness of the layouts always bothered me, as I was always terribly conscious of the ceiling, the closeness of the wall, the limits of my vision on a subway car. Anytime i draw a subway, i show the ceiling.)

Is it perfect? No. Does Cooke's version of The Hunter kick some butt? yeah, its a solid read. In trying to hit the ball out of the park, however, I think that it falls a little short, but its a hell of a lot of work, and i'll be right there to pick up the next one next year when they release it. For now, it goes on the shelf next to Steranko's Chandler and my Black Lizard crime reissues of The Thin Man and The Long Goodbye.

More Sketchbook Work From San Diego

First off, a big "Hello" to the peeps from Spain, Denmark and Singapore.

Another sketch from the sketchbook. She was cute, but I think that I "cuted" her up a bit. She was two people ahead of me in line in San Diego, and god did i have time to sketch as we were waiting for quite a while.

Still digging the Wednesday Comics. All the non-comics people that i show them to are actually impressed by the fact that there is some "there" (artwork with size and impact) there.

There, did you follow that?

Also, i'll have work at the Monsters of Webcomics exhibition at the Museum of Cartoon Art in San Francisco. Details to come.

Work in Progress: I Hate My Lines

OK, I'll let you in on a secret: at the same time that i'm pleased with The Human Hourglass coming along I've reaching a point where I've decided that I truly hate my lines. As in hating the marks that I'm making on the page.

Now, especially as this is coming from someone whose professional background was as an inker, that might sound a little strange. After all, as I define as inker, it is not as an artist per se, but more of a craftsman, someone with the tools and skill to finish off what the penciller has started and make nice for print. This is not to desparage the work that the inker does, and god knows I worked plenty hard to make my inked pages print well, but more to provide a working definition as how I see the position.

Oh yeah, back to hating my marks.

I found, as I walked around San Diego yet again, alternately marveling at the artistic ability and creative expression and total ineptitude that I saw as I walked the aisles, that i'm starting to dislike the "typical inked look" from mainstream comic books. It looks, to coin a phrase, too "comic book-y" Yes, you heard it here first on the blog-o-sphere: "comic book-y"

And I've decided to blame my tools. why, you might ask? Good question. Simply, I don't think that my favorite #1 Rafael sable is capable of producing a really different set of marks than those that I usually get from it, and so I decided to stage my own experiment with using unfamiliar tools, and see how much I'm able to change that collection of marks that I put down on paper. Any art school student will tell you that there are those days where the instructor says, "You have a broken cork, a bottle of green tempura and a crayon. In front of you is a duck that will be holding 60 second poses. Go. "

Here is a cover that I pencilled for a Carnival story that I may never actually do, yet the cover is fully pencilled and ready for ink. So I've done a few experiments with finishing the cover.

The first has been transferred to 2 ply bristol and uses india ink as a wash, along with undiluted ink as well. Koh-i-noor 3605 ink here.

I'm not sure how well it shows up, but i was getting some really weird textures from the paper in unexpected places, so that the evenness of the grey tones is terrible and I abandoned this one halfway through.








The second has me using a rather large crow quill [brand and name unidentifiable due to years of inky build up on the nib] and, as the drawing indicates, a rather large [#6 scepter gold II] synthetic sable brush in concert. And doing so very quickly.








and this one, as the drawing says, is done with two different size Sharpies and a thin Uniball pen.

So, the question is, which ones do you like? i'm going to take a few days and then come back to this for the hell of it and see what I can make out of this.

Sketchbook: Saturday Night at Comic Con

This particular comes from watching Tony, high school buddy of my good friends Gene and Cath, weave a myriad number of tall tales and larger than life stories from his days of school in the Bronx.

I had personally hit a wall after three days of Con and couldn't be counted on being civil to anyone. Which explains why I was out at 1o pm ordering yet another gin martini on a sidewalk bar where Lis Fies and I once toasted our initial shopping of Pistoleras back in 2008. So while I was out with other humans, the one that I could be counted to not snap at was my Black Mirado #2 pencil and I ended up with a number of good sketches from that night.

Welcome to the blog-o-sphere Tony.

Where to Sell Your Work & Why and the Mystery of Scott Pilgrim

Now heres a quote for ya, so good it got picked up to be the lead on Journalista today:

The fundamental takeaway was that comics retailers want publishers to drive people into comic stores. And it’s a worthwhile goal, but at the same time, it’s very much a chicken and egg thing. If I, hypothetically, as a small publisher work to build my own audience on the internet (because that’s the easiest place to do so), then what’s the impetus for me to point people anywhere but my website to buy my books?

Marvel and DC and the larger publishers all have a heavy investment in the direct market. They’ve got a vested interest in keeping driving audiences into comic stores. But when independent publishers are met with resistance and pushback and questions about audience in the direct market, there’s suddenly a dis-incentive to start with the DM.

Well, my ready answer would be that I don't want to lose ANY places, whether DM reliant or non-DM reliant, to sell my work. I want to be seen everywhere, not just some places. You never know whose eyeballs are going to latch onto your work.

Yes, the delight is that we can now interact one on one in a way with our fans that would have been impossible only 8 or 9 years ago, and that alone is worth the monthly fees to AT&T, but that it can lead to a source of revenue is the next great step. (Print on Demand is the next interesting part of the equation for the started, as it sidesteps the economy of scale that basically kept the loner out of the playing field.)

Now why we had to bring the Celestial Madonna into this I don't know, but, yes, there are some lines you shouldn't cross.

And I'll ask the question that will get me flamed: What is the big deal with Scott Pilgrim? Brandon Lee O'Malley leaves me cold. Its not bad, but I don't thinks its clever new or all that interesting. Someone please explain it to me.

The Miracleman Story Continues...

I've blogged before about the Miracleman/Marvelman saga from Warrior and Eclipse Comics, and now feel dutybound to continue when new developments arise, and one certainly did during Comic Con this year.

With marvel's announcement that they had acquired rights to the original Marvelman series, there is always a hope that Gaiman and Buckingham will get the chance to eventually continue and finish their arc that they started back during the Eclipse days. Obviously there are probably a host of legal issues to resolve but this is a step forward at least.

excerpted from Neil's blog:

Regarding Marvel's recent announcement concerning the acquisition of the rights to Marvelman -- Will you be involved in any way with the future publications and/or marketing? If so, would you and Marvel possibly consider continuing to use the name Miracleman rather than reverting to Marvelman? My personal experience with the character began in the mid-80's with the Eclipse run by Alan Moore and then you; and, regardless of the actual reasons those stories used the Miracleman name, I have always felt "Miracleman" was -- for lack of better explanation -- a classier, more appropriate, more adult designation than "Marvelman". Thanks for taking the time for this.

We'll see. And no, I think it's Marvelman, which is what it was until 1984ish when Marvel complained.

Right now I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen, and Mark Buckingham and I haven't signed anything, but I'm really hopeful that Marvel will bring Alan Moore's stories back into print, and the work I did with Mark Buckingham (Miracleman 25 was finished, ready for printing, 16 years ago. It's still in Mark Buckingham's possession, although some of the lettering balloons have gone a bit yellow.) I'm not entirely sure what Marvel's plans are for the character at this point -- obviously I'd like to finish the story I started.

slsl

San Diego Comic Com: a bit more...

Enjoyed the 1000 pages panel, even if it didn't tell you much that you already didn't know really. Ended up with this Becky Cloonan sketch in my sketchbook that I liked. It was great to see Gene Colan there as well, up and around and holding down the fort of how to improve and be consistant.

Interesting to hear different artists takes on the work ethic. Certain people were complaining that it was drudgery to have to ink that book once its already been written and pencilled, and then Bryan Talbot leaned into the mike and talked about getting up, going downstairs to his studio on the lower level of his house with a cup of coffee and working til 9pm every day because that's what you do. I think that that comment rather shut up everyone else for a while about whining about constantly checking their email and getting distracted.

The internet was completely abuzz about the Twilight fans taking over San Diego and being out of control and ruining the show for everyone. You know what? Tempest in a teapot really. No, seriously, they didn't ruin the comic convention, it is the mainstream media, picking comics over like the rotting carcass that the industry is and nibbling out the best parts. Understand, they need us, and they get us because we're desperate for the legitimacy as well as the money that they can provide. They may need to move the damn media convention to LA and let the comic fans have San Diego again. Because its not doing that elusive thing that its supposed to be doing.

Here is an interesting question: what is the most interesting thing about walking the aisles of the convention floor (in the comics section)? Answer: seeing all the interesting books that you'll never get to see anywhere else. Yes, all these artists and writers and talented folks have come all that way with boxes and boxes of books they'd like you to buy because there is never any hope in hell that their LCS will carry them, whether by dislike of alternative work, Diamond ordering and soliciting practices or orientation of the retailer. Most ocnventions are there to introduce you new products, products that they really hope you'll continue buying... except that they never will be any follow up no matter how much you like these guys. I was stunned by how good thet product was walking the Oni, First Second, and Top Shelf tables.

Thoughts of San Diego: Doctor Who, Crowds and More

Recovering from the last four days, unpacking the bags to find the new graphic novels that i'm looking forward to reading, realizing the body wash has exploded inside the bag and will be a huge mess to clean out, unpacking the art supplies. And downloading the pics from the iPhone, as there doesn't seem to be a way to upload them the same way that i'm posting remote texts to the blog.

The Doctor Who panel on Sunday was packed, and had folks queueing up overnight to get front row. I wasn't willing to go that far, but did get there around 6:50am and was about the 1000th person in line. A stellar line up, and one that got the chance to soak in all the good will of the last 4 years: Julie Gardner, Euros Lyn, Russell Davies and David Tennant. Random thoughts about the panel: Tennant is great in person, and not just a good Doctor, but a great ambassador for the series, ambassador in a way the Eccleston never would have been because its simply not in Chris' make up to be that way.

No Doctor Who movie is on the way, and while there are plenty of folks in that room who would love one, i have to say i think it would never live up the weighty baggage taht it would be saddled with. Everytime Davies tried to write the ultimate Dr. Who story, such as the Master 3 parter, it usually falls flat on its face. The final episode was like watching Horns of the Nimon: completely over the top and lacking all sorts of sense. Its usually the smaller stuff that sneaks up on you and becomes the classic. Girl in the Fireplace, School Reunion, Blink, Midnight, The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, Father's Day; these are the Davies Masterpieces that came on his watch, regardless of writers. Without Davies, this series wouldn't exist.

The Adam Hughes panel, and the Allison Sohn panel before it, were tremendously instructive. Adam is terribly funny as well as talented as an artist. The technical/shop talk in his panel was incredibly helpful to hear. Given that i've been inking Hughes pieces as part of my commissions, it was great to hear his approach to things. Why the Con put them into a room that sat about 50 people is a mystery. Bizarre situation.

I don't like Jim Lee's art. I know this is something that you're not supposed to say, but I don't. Its not bad, but it contains all those stupid little lines that pass for interesting andyet just remind me of everything that was bad about an entire decade of art. His Batman? So not my Batman.

i'm holding Detective #31, with what is, in my opinion, the most iconic cover ever. Action #1 and Detective #27 and Marvel #1 have history, yes, but this is the most interesting of them all, and immediately gives you everything you'll need to know to be totally intrigued to pick up the book. Its the only golden age book taht i've ever wanted. This CGC 7.0 copy is astonishing to look at. The corners have not even a single fold on them. i'm only holding about $120,000 worth of comics in my hands right then. Thanks Richard, from Houston's Bedrock Comics, for letting me get that close!

more tomorrow. I've got some new material to read as well, especially Grailpages, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, and some others.

Con is over, I'm looking forward to eating from my own kitchen, and walking without people bumping into every two feet. Reports begin tomorrow.

The longbox platform sounds interesting as a standarized vehicle for delivering digital comics. While they are clearly working with publishers, that still locks out the little guy. When does the little guy get in on the micro-payment revolution?

Listening to the Uclik panel for comics for the iPhone and the audience is clearly not impressed. The Uclick people and Stan are having a tough time convincing people that this is worth spending any money on.

Geektastic looks like. Published by Little, brown & co, they very smartly put together a quick sample read. I'll buy a copy tomorrow.

There is every reason to believe that the vast majority of the popular entertainment the we consume is made out of deals sealed over drinks saturday nite at comic con. Doesn't matter what bar, just that you were there.

David Lloyd is bloody brilliant and a great guy to boot.

Even panels that in the past would have drawn only 15 people a few years ago have the dreaded volunteer holding a sign to limit things. Yikes!

The decision to rebrand the "scifi" channel to "Syfy" is a horrible disaster on every level.

Just held in my hands a 7.0 copy of Detective Comics #31 which, in my opinion, is the most iconic cover ever. Thanks to Richard, owner of Bedrock Comics in Houston, for letting me hold the book. Wow.

Moderately busy in san Diego, which means that I still had walking the aisles to buy the Dr Who toys for my daughters and thier cousins. Saturday will be absolute he'll. Bought the limited edition Darwyn Cooke edition today. Nice stuff.

Sketching Schedule at San Diego

Quci reminder: I'll be sketching two times for The Cartoon Art Museum at their booth. They are at booth #1930, and I'll be sketching a little of everything on Thursday from 2-3pm and also Sunday from 2-3pm. If you're a reader and want to say "Hello", it would be great to hear from you! Please stop by!

Thursday's sketching session will be myself and Ted Naifeh, he of Death Jr. and Courtney Crumrin.

Sundays sketching will be just me, as far as I know.

In Review Of: Wednesday Comics and Who's Your Whiny Bitch?

Picked up the first two Wednesday comics and absolutely loved the format. The size and spectacle is just great and it makes the whole thing fun to look at. I love the experiment and while I'm not sure that each and every strip will be a gem, god bless 'em for trying something, ANYTHING new.

I've always found that people who have nothing to do with comics, no background in them at all, are much more impressed by the original art when they see it. I really believe that the size and spectacle of it make the achievement of producing a good piece of art much more noticeable to the average viewer. They "get" the amount of work that goes into it. That same reduction in size that the artist likes to have "tighten" up the final print version also makes it less... well, just less.

As for the stories, they will likely suffer from the compression and the need to really cliffhanger out of every tabloid page, but what the hell. Sook is doing his best Hal Foster, and Pope is just doing drugs and it looks great. My only quibble is that while I love Sean "Cheeks" Galloway and his art, the layout isn't doing him any favors.

Now for the whiny post of the week -

“Wednesday Comics is sort of becoming a bummer though. It’s just a gloomy thing to look at. Not the art — the colors are just very dark for me. The comics, some are good, some have the Teen Titans in them (!), but it’s just — I don’t know. It’s the dark thing. I guess they had no way of doing test-prints or…? It’s such a neat project, and I do like some of the strips, Azzarello and Risso working together or Joe Kubert or whoever, but: I hope they can fix that and adjust in time to save things... I do wish more people had taken a look at the classic Sunday strips, or strips at all, but that’s a pretty nerdy and cliche complaint that I feel kind of lame for even typing. “ - Abhay Kholsa

you're kidding right? Have you not looked at some of the awful, overdone, too bright coloring that we've been subjected to over the last 20 years? Do I need to harm you with the word "flexographics"? So the reproduction isn't perfect, it doesn't need to be. I have been so bombarded with such a ridiculous amount of over done coloring, where each and every abdominal muscle is given its own reflective shine that to have a flatter and frankly less blinding coloring job is just fine with me. Read the damn thing and quit griping. Especially about the Superman/Batman stuff. yeesh.

The Martini is Kicking In...

and I'm having philosophical debates with myself over going to San Diego, none of which has anything to do with the business side of it. I've blogged many times, most recently last week, over the need for the type of material that we do to be "pop" culture, with the emphasis on "pop" as in " "popular". Iron Man, treated like a second class hero by Marvel for the majority of his existence (despite being in the Avengers) has never been as "pop" as when Morton Downey Jr. played him. Dark Phoenix? The same. Famke looks great wearing the "bad".

No, this has everything to do with the fact that like a jilted college student whose favorite band has suddenly hit it big, I'm being nostalgic for the old Comic Con, with its shitty little tables and small time entrepeneurs, and I'm remembering being a poor college student and aspiring artist and sleeping on the floor of the Westgate (thanks Ron) with my leather jacket as a great blanket, and being part of marginal part of American culture.

Lets face it, we were dying. but somehow, when i was sorting through stacks of original artwork on these crappy little card tables, I was holding the original Gil Kane artwork to Iron Man #66, with Thor about to clock Tony with his hammer, and my heart simply stopped for a moment. There wasn't me trying to game some online auction by Heritage to get a piece of vintage artwork like I did 3 years ago to get a great Kirby/Ayers FF page (thanks Alaina), it was just me wishing that i had more money in my pocket to buy the damn thing. Same thing when I held the splash page to MOKF #39 i my hands and the dealers were trying to push the thing on me so that it could remain a set with the splash to MOKF #40.

The year is 1988, and I'm falling in love with comics all over again at my first visit to San Diego.

Despite living in California a decent chunk of my life, i had never made the journey down to San Diego. My family was fairly poor, and never supported my love of comics nor my desire to be an artist. They still don't, to this day, despite making a living off of being a professional artist for almost a decade in the '90's, nor have they ever even understood that what I did mattered to anyone out there. Without being Frank Miller, I can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that there have been people out there who have read and enjoyed the work that i've done, and I take that to heart every time I sit in my studio at 1am, struggling with a panel that doesn't work. Its worth it to make it work. Someone out there will care and will notice, i tell myself. And sometimes I'm right.

I'm toning page 8 for The Human Hourglass and preparing materials to take down to my 20th San Diego. Geek Prom, as my friend Lis calls it, is about to begin. Good. Let the freak flag fly. Let those of us who championed this form of entertainment get yet another sly smile at the 8 hour lines to get in and know that we were right when everyone else thought that we were idiots. Our shit is cool. Come and get it.

Sketching Schedule at San Diego Comic Con

I'll be sketching two times for The Cartoon Art Museum at their booth. They are at booth #1930, and I'll be sketching a little of everything on Thursday from 2-3pm and also Sunday from 2-3pm.

Thursday's sketching session will be myself and Ted Naifeh, he of Death Jr. and Courtney Crumrin. I love Ted's work and have never met him, so it'll be a treat to do some drawing with him.

Swing on by and pick up a cheap sketch, the money goes to a good cause. i have the feeling that we'll be knocking them out during the hour. you get additional style points if you ask for a sketch from my webcomic The Carnival. Plus, if you're a fan of the blog, please stop by and say "Hullo", which would be a treat. You never know who the hell is reading this, much less enjoying it!

And here is one of my favorite panels from The Carnival: The Human Hourglass page 9. no tones yet, but this one came out just like the thumbnail, which is always cool.

New Work: Black Cat by Rubi & Yoakum

An ink commission of the Black Cat, who I really liked as Spider-Man's girlfriend. Ah well.

Also, head on over the YoComics.net and a new page is up! Page 6 is now up for The Carnival: The Human Hourglass.

I have learned that writing, drawing and inking the pages is one thing, putting the tones on them to my satisfaction is far easier said than done. I'm already thinking of how to modify this for the future so that i can work quicker.

The Pros and Cons of the San Diego Multi-Media Con

I realize now that when i typed my last post on this that while my tongue was firmly planted in cheek as I typed that I'm not sure that this came through in the post. With the con warm-up in full swing, and already the concerns about the Twilight fans mobbing the place (taking place over in Occasional Superheroine), lets address the pros and cons of the San Diego Multi-Media Con.

While I may get annoyed at how the San Diego experience has changed (and this will be number 21 for me, so I can claim to at least have been here for a while), I think that most everyone who is whinging is forgetting the absolute ghostland that the Con was threatening to become when comics were dying and the movies hadn't yet pumped up the properties. We were, for all intents and purposes, an endangered species.

And now we have to ask ourselves: why are we pissed off about all the attention that comic characters and comic properties get in the general press? What this means, really, is that you're upset about comics as a medium not getting respect, not comics stories. What do I mean? Let me explain.

For years, for decades, we were told that comics were crap, the stories were crap, that they would rot your brain. And yet those of us who were fans of, lets say, the Claremont/Byrne X-Men knew that they were good stories. And we knew that there were good Spider-Man stories as well. And now we know that the stories are fun and do entertain people. 1 Billion dollars in receipts from those movie franchises should validate that. So if the stories were entertaining, what is it then? That comics as a vehicle can only work for superheroes? Maus, Persepolis, Blankets and a whole host of others should invalidate that arguement. So I guess that the two main reasons that you could call comics crap have been invalidated. I feel validated for all these years of loving these stupid little picture stories. You were wrong, we were right.

And now everyone is pissed that a vampire story has a huge fan base? Can we say these words again: a vampire movie is actually motivating hoardes of young people to enjoy escapiest literature and might lead them to other properties? You're upset that people actually can talk about seeing X-Men and Spider-Man and not being embarssed to admit they liked it? If I was single i'd love there are hoardes of young women who are coming to this convention and that might find other things that they didn't know existed. You're angry that these women love their property as much as you do yours.

And this is different how from all those guys who dress up as stormtroopers or Predator?

Women have always been in short supply at these conventions, and while it did give a segment of people who were beat up for being "different" in high school a place to be themselves, sadly that segment of society was usually "male", and females were part of the other group. All which made it difficult for those women who loved comics, loved the characters. I feel for them coming into the locker room. No matter that the locker room is filled with Green Lantern spandex.

I don't want to marginalized again. If we want to survive, we need to be a popular press and that includes doing things to make ourselves popular again. The mercenary businessman in says, "Their money spends the same as a true fan's money." You may not be impressed with who you sell it to, but its money. And you may just have a few more converts along the way.

New Work: Rogue by Yoakum

A new ink commission of Rogue! Loved doing the graphic on the hair.

The honest truth is, after spending time pencilling, which I'm admittedly much rustier at than inking, stressing about all the structure and negative/positive and figures etc, picking up a brush to make a pretty version when someone else has done some of the back end work is damn fun.

Random Thoughts: The San Diego Multi-Media Con

A quick Dalek sketch, as drawn by my 5 year old daughter this morning.

As july continues, I find myself wondering the same thing that I thought last year: when is some enterprising young person going to run a comic book convention in San Diego at the same time as the San Diego Comic Con? They'd have everyone already in town. they just need to rent a small hall and get flyers out.

Now, I know that it sounds like a radical idea, but really it isn't. It would help put our marginal little community back where it belongs: in the basement of some church that doesn't have air conditioning, or the back part of the convention hall that hasn't been updated since 1976. We can get our smelly little brethren all into one place and finally have those talks about girls that we've been wanting to have since there will be no girls there. You wear your old "flash gordon" T-shirt and I'll wear my "FOOM" shirt in solidarity.

We can't put the genie back in the bottle. Mainstream culture is on to us now: girls read comics, girls draw comics, and they even write them and they're not going away. There are too many copies of "Watchmen" DVDs for us to take out back and burn. They've figured out that we do escapist entertainment reasonably well and they're ready to pillage and plunder without mercy.

It makes me feel old. I've been going to these damn things since I was, as near as I can figure, 8 or 9 years old and now i'm 43 and I'm probably still seeing the same copies of Detective and All Star for same at prices that would have bought a house back in 1975. And I still like the inventiveness and the storytelling and getting transported by a good story into somewhere "else" and I realize that that is what i'm most on about these days. Getting transported.

It happens in all sorts of different places. i was about the give up on "Nana" vol 2, which just wasn't getting there for me and the very end of the book got to me. and then i put it down and read the newest TPB of Thor and really enjoyed Straczynski's story and was transported back in the Marvel Universe yet again. I get transported when I click over to the great webcomic Sin Tutulo. Its just cool. Going to San Diego both pisses me off and makes me happy. Harried as well.

Pissed off since I'm sure that very few people are transported by my work, which is what i really want to be doing: trying to give some readers the same thrill ride that i get from other's work. But i'm getting there, little bit by little bit I suppose. After struggling with my own artistic impulse for well over a decade, i suppose it will take time now to grow. Happy because I love seeing all the different and great work thats out there to experience and its pretty much all there in one spot.

New Work: Red Sonja by Batista & Yoakum

Why yes, I have been working, thanks for asking. Processing my thoughts of getting ready for the San Diego Media Con, as well as finishing the pencils for page 9 of The Carnival: The Human Hourglass and knocking out a couple of comissions. Here is a second Red Sonja piece, my favorite of the two. Pencils by Adriano Batista, inks by Yoakum.

As they say, we'll talk soon. My people will call your people and they'll do lunch.

In Review of: Let The Right One In

While I've normally kept this blog to comics only, and believe me, its been hard to do when Doctor Who or Torchwood kick out an especially good episode, but until now i've stuck to my guns. Well, I will break my promise today after watching Let The Right One In, a swedish vampire story that is so well done and on so many levels that i know I'll be thinking about it for days, if not weeks.

It is, I hate to say it, the epitome of Non-American Filmmaking (NAF): it respects your intelligence by not handing you everything on a silver platter, letting the relationships grow between the characters, and even ending in a way the could be taken in multiple directions, depending upon how you wish to read the film. It deals with all sorts of things that Hollywood would never touch: kid on kid violence, and pre-teen sexuality to name just two.

And it doesn't try to subvert the genre in a "Scream" way either. It uses vampire lore to tell a story, not to tell a vampire story. In this film, the vampire isn't the monster. Instead, it is the adults and they way they ignore the protagonist Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) that make them the biggest monsters of all. Oskar's new neighbor, Eli (Lina Leandersson), just happens to live off of blood, but she is neither the monster nor the innocent. She just is who she is. And things go from there.

I found myself incredibly impressed with the economy of storytelling in the shots on the movie, and the creative and effective way that they delivered the details of the story. While not a master class in directing, this may be my favorite vampire movie of all time. Go rent it. Now.

Wizard's Keep Corrections: Coffee and Croissants

Tim Perkins over at his blog has been chronicling the beginnings, middle and probably the end eventually of Defiant Comics from his perspective.

He also remembered to take photos, which I never did, as those days were seared into my brain. But I'm glad that he had the smarts to take snaps, so that I now have a hard copy of as well on the internet.

I've shown up in few of his posts, but figure a little more prominantly in this one. Which, of course, I have no problem with until I got to this paragraph:

When Charles, who has a wonderful Californian accent, said he was going to order a coffee and a croissant on the way in I didn’t catch what it was he was going to get. That was down to the different pronunciations though. He was going to ask for a “cresahnt”, whereas I would have asked for a “quoissahnt”.

lets set the record straight: Californians don't have accents. We're just about the blandest speakers on the planet. But, yes, I do like croissants. So for a healthy heaping dose of mid-90's comics content, go over to the Wizard's Keep blog.

In the meantime, working on a new Red Sonja piece, as well as a few others. Scans coming soon!

The LA Times Boondoggle: Girls Guide to Comic Con 2009

The LA Times, which you think would be a little more hip to how these things would be preceived, has published a "Girl's Guide to Comic Con" that is either somewhat low or fairly high on the offensive meter, depending on where you stand.

First off, LA Times, I know that you've been down to Comic Con before, and, you know what? You should know better. There have been thousands upon thousands of women who have been down to Con, and they all found better things to do than follow the lightly regarded sexism in your Entertainment article.

Secondly, in a world full of this novel thing called the internet, I find it hard to believe that there are groups of people out there that aren't hip to the idea of female fans of SF and fantasy and comics and videogames. Its not novel anymore. Then of course, the 4th estate is still busy running articles titles "Pow!Zap!Bam! Comics aren't just for kids anymore!" proving that they haven't moved beyond the 1970's. Is it really any wonder why newspapers are dying with that sort of brilliant writing?

Get it through your thick heads LA Times: Women go to movies, they read comics and fantasy and science fiction and they spend money on them. Very likely more money than men if we can believe that that much of what happens in other parts of retail hold true.

My own experience was watching the Sandman series in the 1980's turn comics demographics on their ears: women loved comics, when they were written like that. The Vertigo line was essentially a women's comic line, since women will buy horror and fantasy and it just goes to show how far off Minx was in buying material when they decided not to do a single fantasy book. Checked out any of the manga demographics or storylines? Nana is not the leading example.

Seriously, I'm literally out of breath with shock and surprise over the LA Times who you just think would know better but clearly didn't. When my wife gets angry at me for schooling my two daughters on the finer points of the Time Lords and trans dimensional engineering (You're turning her into a little geek! she says, quite rightly), I have to point out that the geeks won.

And yet, now I'm worried that the geeks who won are the ones that never got laid, never appreciated girls as equals but different equals and only celebrated the ones that basically pretended to be guys with breasts. I'm worried that these geeks never moved beyond the masturbatory fantasies of what "they would do with girls when they got them" as opposed to having actual partners in life, in sex, in pretty much anything. I'm worried that they won't recognize that Gwen in Torchwood is a more well rounded character than anything they've put up on the screen in all these damn comic book films. i'm worried that they never figured out that there are a whole host of different stories other than power fantasies out there.

The women I know become passionate lovers of characters and franchises when the stories are good. That doesn't mean that they need a token character with boobies to act as their stand in, it does mean that they expect a level of characterization and cleverness well beyond the usual crap. Yes, they will buy the tie ins, yes some of them will pick up the action figures, but then they're no different than the boys when it all comes to it. Perhaps this will galvanize the folks at Comic Con to release demographic information on attendees this year. Who are those 140,000 unique visitors that they capture each year now? Wouldn't we like to know?

Ink Work: Rod Sonja!

nuff said. Pencils by Adriano Batista.

sorry to have disappeared for a bit, but real life and lots of work going on, so, hey, blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for the last week or two!

Work In Progress: Panel 5, Page 7

Damn captions!

I guess that i have to put them in.

A fellow comic artist, (who i was going to keep nameless, but who the hell cares?) got on me for putting the captions and balloons on the artwork. I respect Bernard Chang's opinion, but I realized that i didn't like the new artwork without the story "attached". The artwork looks unfinished to me, especially when you realize that white of the balloons makes, along with the gutters, a great deal of negative space that needs to be accounted for on the page. i like to be able to balance that a much as possible, especially when the captions that i write get in the way of the layouts that i've drawn.

So yes, the artwork has the story included, and if I need to make a final revision in photoshop I will, but like an old DC or Marvel page, you can pick these up and get an experience reading them as well as looking at the pretty pictures.

Damn old skool thinking.

More ACBA scans to groove on...

A new collection of pieces from the 1973 ACBA portfolio. John Romita, Mike Royer, Jim Starlin, and Jim Steranko. of all of the them, the Starlin piece is the oddest, a mix of swampy comic characters piled on each other for no other reason that it looks silly. A drunken dare at a con?

In Review Of: the 1973 ACBA Sketchbook

The semi-legendary Academy of Comic Book Brts (ACBA) 1973 portfolio is an interesting period piece from a time when, yet again, the freelancers of the comic book world were trying to organize for better pay, return of artwork, reprint royalties, some, ANY respect from their employers. Sales from the sketchbook would generate over $3000, money that would be used to fund the Bill Everett Fund for creators suffering financial hardship.





I had bought this, and the 1975 sketchbook without knowing what the money was going to, only that I thought it was an interesting artifact from its time. I probably purchased this in the early 1980's when had had the chance to see the career arc of some of the artists represented in the portfolio.







Unlike the black and white stapled 1975 sketchbook, this one was printed in loose sheet of semi gloss paper suitable for framing if one was so inclinded to do that to a Neal Adams or early Jim Starlin piece. Not sure how many are still out there in a completed form, I thought that I'd scan a number of the pieces for those who don't have this particular artwork in their collection.

Four today, more soon!

Herge and the Museum: two bad examples

Given the flap over the newly opened Herge Museum in Belgium, you begin to wonder if Herge's heirs can do much more to turn the public off to the man's work. From the Forbidden Planet blog:

The event was considered important enough by quite a lot of international media to send reporters over. However, all excitement about the new museum quickly turned into frustration when it turned out that no photography or filming was allowed inside museum and that Fanny Rémi and Nick Rodwell, the people behind Moulinsart, didn’t feel like being interviewed. And to top it off, none of the representatives, except Joost Swarte, appeared to be able to speak any other language but French.

Fabulous public relations. Much of the media swanned off, completely pissed. I sometimes wonder if these people actually think things through before they do them. As I usually say, treat someone well, they might tell 2 people, treat them poorly and they'll tell 10.

Reminds me of taking the time, while in France last summer, of trying to track down the one page of Herge artwork, a Tintin page, hidden somewhere inside the vast, overrated collection of crap that is the Centre Georges Pompidou. it was not easy, let me tell you, amidst all the modern "art" ( and I use the word loosely) to find the page, on the fourth floor.

But then you had to see the single page of art from 16 feet away or so, as they had put the page at the end of a long inverted pyramid of black and white squares. So, lets reiterate again: a single piece of artwork of 10 x 15 inches, and not even that great a page really, is held in the middle of an escher illusion at the distance of 16 feet away.

and now I'm wondering if it wasn't the curators of the Pompidou but maybe a suggestion by the Herge people? To keep people a distance away from the precious artwork? In any case, this international comics fan, who has looked at comic artwork all over the world, would like to say that he's seen original Herge art in the flesh... but i don't think i can say that.

And, if you want a brutal satire of Tintin, in all his european colonial glory, check out The Rabbi's Cat 2. The two Rabbi's Cat volumes are maybe the best graphic novel i've read in the last year.

Page 5 for The Human Hourglass is up!

A quick update: page 5 of the first Carnival story, The Human hourglass is now up and its a doozy. You can go straight to it here, or check out the front door of Yocomics.net and read from the beginning.

Still getting the hang of the black and white tones. I'll probably keep doing them on computer, but the impulse to pull out the Coptic markers is hard to resist.

I've got a Giant Sized Man-Thing for ya baby...

Noah Berlatsky and Tucker Stone are blogging their way through the classic Man-Thing series of Adventure into Fear and Man-Thing, and given that I was reading those front and center when they were coming out, I realized that someone had to go along and blog with them on this (especially since they're doing all the scanner work so that I don't have to).

First off, they have parts 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 up already.

And lets face it, someone clearly dug through the half price trades bin at the con and picked up that Essential Man-Thing trade.

Of course, I couldn't wait to see what they said about the bizarre acid trip that is Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1. Here are the comments on Howard the Duck's first appearance:

Oddly enough, the Conan-stand-in [Korrek] seems to share my feelings, because he likes and respects him immediately as well. Considering that most of Korrek's speeches and actions so far have painted his character as an aggressive jump-first type of character, it makes Howard that much more interesting when you see him tell the barbarian to shut up. Why does Howard get to order around Conan and treat Man-Thing like a retarded golden retriever? Gerber doesn't say. He doesn't need to. Howard gets to do that stuff because he's Howard The Duck.

Now, this is the fun of revisionist history here, knowing that Howard became a media sensation, as well as getting spun off into his own book, but at the time, we were simply witnessing all weirdness that Gerber and Mayerik could come up with. Any you know what? It made as much sense as Crisis on Infinite Earths did all those years later. What is intersting is Gerber's take on the entire thing, which is to almost to admit that the insanity level would be so high that the rational being would basically have to either lose his marbles or just roll with the entire thing.

Tucker wonders why Howard is there at all. The answer is simple, as simple as Ben Grimm in the FF: someone needs to be the voice of reason and ground the whole frikkin' thing or it really does spin so far out of control that we, the reader, could really care less. Howard allows Gerber to have his cake and eat it too: all the weirdness that Gerber's right brain can come up with, his left brain can make a clever, Give me a fucking break." kinda comment, and thus the story moves.

As far as villans go, the Nether Spawn was pretty fun, even if he didn't have the snappiest lines of all time, he was rather sinister if you bought into the whole panethon that Dakimh did. Anytime i drive around California and see "Dog is my co-pilot" bumper stickers, i'm reminded of Man-Thing #1. After all these years, scary I know, but that's the way my brain works.

After basically lambasting Gerber for some real by the numbers issues of Fear, I'll be interested to see what Noah and Tucker think about the issues when Gerber finally gets his brain wrapped around the sorts of stories that he wants to use Man-Thing for. Man-Thing #5 is about where is gets good. Steve creates a level of Brechtian pathos that most comics would never even dare attempt, let alone create on page after page. The death of the clown? Either brilliant pathos or inspired lunacy depending upon your vantage point. Hard to say where they will fall.

Part of it, of course, is the art. Val Mayerik did a good job, but was always inked so roughly that it missed the mark of being anything classic. When Ploog comes on, things get better by leaps and bounds, even if they would never hit the high notes that Wrightson would hit on Swamp Thing. Brunner's Man-Thing covers hint at how devastating the creature could have been in the right hands.

Looking forward to the next post from Tucker and Noah...

Rogers Art at Diversions of a Groovy Kind

Just a quick note to show my appreciation for Ol' Groove putting up his scans of the early Marshall Rogers work on the Calculator series over at his blog, Diversions of a Groovy Kind. Marshall was unique, and an incredible talent for this medium, and I'm so sorry that he's gone well before his time. Go check out the pages and realize that they're a couple of months before he literally redefined The Batman for an entire generation.

A couple of months.

And don't forget to also go over to YoComics to read the beginning of the black and white detective story, The Carnival: The Human Hourglass, with artwork not a little inspired by Marshall's underappreciated work on Detectives Inc.

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.

Hard At Work: The Human Hourglass

My sister in law was in town and took a couple photos, one of me that proves, despite the slow pace of pages, that I'm hard at work on the first Carnival story. I think that the glass on the screen needs at bit more airbrushing....

while my youngest daughter, drawing a Cyberman on the same drawing table right next to me, looks skeptical.

Dr Strange and Clea by Craig Hamilton

Only came back from Super-Con with one piece of artwork this year, but its a doozy. Already up on the wall of the studio. Its a prelim of the a Dr. Strange piece Craig is working on, and it takes me back to the heady Englehart/Brunner days of Doc in Marvel Premiere. Great stuff back then, great stuff now.

If anything, you could argue that Steve matured the character a little too quickly really. He killed off the ancient one, had Strange go back to beginning of creation and meet God (in the form of Sise-Neg), and battle and escape Death in the silver Dagger series. Not bad in about 12 issues in all, but geez, leave the guy something to do. These days, Steve could have taken the slower path and run that to two years at least. Gaiman could have turned it into 5 years given the opportunity.

Talking about Englehart, one of the best writers in comics over the last 35 years; his novel the Point Man has been on my book shelf for almost as long, and I'm delighted to see that he will finally have a sequel coming out next year, even if it has been delayed from this year. Given that I've waited this long, I think that I can wait a few more months. It does appear that there will be a new version of the Point Man as well, so I can finally replace the image of that 1979 haircut that I've for all these years.

Keep your eyes on Steve's official site, linked above, for further progress.

Super-Con: quick hits and first impressions

Back from San Jose and just about to crash. Super-Con was richly attended by artists, so the folks that came had a great selection of folks to talk to and artwork to check out. Essentially no original art dealers, but artwork to buy from the artists themselves. The best piece belonged to my table mate, the great Craig Hamilton, who had a simply astonishing full color piece with him showing off the entire Starlinverse. It was just breathtaking, the amount of work that Craig had put in. There are many more close up shots over at Craig's Comicartfans.com gallery. Certainly plenty of the other artists agreed, and spent time coming over to check it out.

One of the best things that the Steves who run Super-Con do is to put together a good mix of established stars and new folks and to mix 'em up. Our row of tables had a healthy mix of veteran and newbie, giving the convention goer a chance to see some new material while in search of some of their favorites. I was happy to be down the row from Craig Hamilton and Mick Grey, who is always good for some killer artwork and good music talk. And it that means a few more folks who saw the new flyers for Yocomics.net, more the better. Besides being nice guys, its great to talk art with them and learn some new things.

Getting Ready: Super-Con and Yocomics.net

Just a quick post while I get the yocomics.net site ready to launch, listen to old Concrete Blonde and sip a little tequila, and get set for Super-Con this weekend. (Here is just a panel from the first story: The Carnival: The Human Hourglass)

If you're going to be in San Jose, I'll be there saturday, sketching and with some artwork to sell as well. If you read the blog and enjoy it, please stop by and let me know.

There is, of course, other art at the site to check out, some of which has been here on the blog, some that hasn't.

I'll be back tomorrow to debunk Tim Perkin's personal memoir about the early days at Defiant Comics as well. Heh heh heh.

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!

Miracleman Redux: the penultimate chapter

I've been following the Miracleman saga for some time now, both with posts in appreciation of the work that was done on the character, and interesting tidbits of news that have popped up over the years regarding the ongoing rights battle (and this one has a badass Totleben sketchbook piece with it), so here, in the interests of completeness, is one more bit, from the UK's Forbidden Planet website interview of Mr. Moore:

I mean, other than the fact that I was happy to do everything that I could to help Mick Anglo, who is the person who has always owned all of the rights to Marvelman, as far as I now understand it, that we never had the rights to do those stories, even though Mick really liked the stories that we did. We didn’t understand at the time that Mick Anglo was the sole owner of the rights. We were misled. So I’ve done everything that I can to clear all that up. I’ve said that, they talked about the possibility – what they want is money quickly, because Mick’s a very old man, he’s got a sick wife to look after, and they could use some dosh quite quickly.

I mean, I believe that the Todd McFarlane thing, his ridiculous claims to the character have now been dropped, so it can move on. I believe that they’re going to be reprinting some of my stuff, but I’m not sure of all the details, I’ve just said, “Yeah, go ahead,” and all the money from the first book, from the first printing of the book, should go to Mick Anglo. They’ve also said that what if there’s a possibility of some animated Marvelman cartoons, and I’ve said, again, “Don’t put me name on them, and give all the money to Mick Anglo.” So I hope that some of it turns up in time to do Mick some good, because he’s a great artist, you know, the British comics scene would be poorer without him, and I’m making great use of Captain Universe – oh, I’ve given it away!

Yes, Mr. Moore has created a Miracleman stand-in in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which, no doubt, will be created and handled with the same verve and delightful lack of respect that he has accorded to many of the other figures that have popped up in the League books. (Edit on 20 May 2009: I have been corrected by the interviewer below in the comments section about this, so my apologies for misreading and misreporting this.)

But what is great is that Mick Angelo being alive and being, hopefully without dispute, the sole owner of the rights is literally the only possible solution to the Gordonian Knot (howabout that for a Watchmen reference?) that the Miracleman rights had become.

Here it is: its all his. Every creator out there that worked on the series: you got your page rate, and you get no reprint rates out of the goodness of your heart and it all goes to Mick and his heirs in perpetuity. Give the man something. I want my hardcover edition of the Miracleman saga and I'll pay for it up front to give Angelo the money. Get it reprinted and out there. And if it sells well enough, see if Gaiman and Buckingham want to finish their run on the title.

This is likely the best ending to this that i could have imagined. Lets hope that it sticks. Any lawsuits by Dez Skinn and I'm going to go punch someone out.

The Direct Market Fails Yet Again

Excellent post by Tom over at The Comics Reporter regarding the disaster that is the direct market the way that it exists today.

I know that Warlord of IO is only one comic book, but a long time ago that what's the Direct Market was set up to do: give people a chance to buy the one comic book they wanted to buy... It's one thing for an evolution in the marketplace to replace a high-end delivery system with something better: more efficient, with more choices for the consumer and greater reward to the artists. But whatever gets the chance to replace a system that's this broken won't have to be anything special at all.

No, it won't. The "direct market" as we have it now is a monopoly that is continuing to serve less and less the people who were the ones that had clamored for the market in the first place. 1977, and those of us who loved comics had to travel to 4 different locations to get the next issues of the books that we loved. (In my case, the 7-11, Guasco's Market, Stop N' Go and a fourth place whose name has completely escaped me) Getting specialty shop that would actually bring in the books that we loved as well as other things that we didn't know that we would need but soon couldn't live without seemed like a dream come true.

Little did we know that the eventual ghetto-ization of comics would mean a further reduction in the number of people reading them, nor would we know that financial hi-jinks o fthe mid '90's would lead us to the disaster that we have now: a monopoly in bad financial straits giving us and the retailers that we would like to keep around less and less incentive to actively order or stock anything new or different.

Same ol', same ol'.

As Tom mentions, the idea of a specialty store seemed like a great idea, until the people ordering for that store ran into a few obstacles: namely, the conservative nature of the standard comic goer (a distinct unwillingness by a huge chunk of the audience to move beyond the comic format and type that they were used to, which creates its own problems along the way, as they grew up... and the X-Men didn't, which led to the storytelling dilemma), the conservative nature of the usual comic book store owner, and the general rattiness of the post superhero market in the 1980's.

Part of the difficulty here is the store owner needing to potentially branch out to a new audience that will come in asking for what, essentially, Borders is trying to do by mere proximity: sow the rest of the world that there are a ton of comics out there other than Marvel and DC. And your average store owner has neither the time, budget, knowhow or ability to get to that public. And Diamond, the sole survivor of the distributor wars, is doing less and less to help grow that audience.

This is part of the slow suicide of Diamond. Shrink your bloated entity of a catalog down so that the is less diversity, less reason to get new customers, less choices for shops already selling the same product to the same customers week after week. Eventually these shops will close down, as there are less and less people to keep them open. Thanks Diamond, your smart short term solutions are working as well as Phil's idea to take them out of the 7-11's. Only the fall out will be faster, because this whole process is speeding up in this economy.

And because there are a whole host of other places that people can get their comics now. The fact that you're reading is part of that revolution, since i never would have had a voice in the old media.

So quit bitching you say, what's the answer? There are no easy answers here, except that the Direct Market, or really, Diamond needs to be different. Period. And the shops that can only get their stuff from Diamond have to be unhappy with the current climate. Eventually it will have to be different, there are simply too many different places to get the comics, and too many other possible business models that can come to exist, and the minute that one of them over takes the others, it will mean more comics for the rest of us, and a lot of pain for the small businessmen in the trenches of comic retail-dom. And, as Tom predicts, the revolution won't have to be large and noisy, but it will be swift in places, so swift that it will be like the newspapers: where suddennly the reading/buying habits change all across the board and those left standing behind will wonder what happened. And you won't notice it that much until the day that Marvel jumps in.

Now, Brian Hibbs from Comics Experience has joined in with a post over at Savage Critics that discusses consumers as well as retailers and publishers in connection with the Direct Market, as well as making suggestions that Diamond might want to consider. Many of which I agree with, but, as always, whenever I get into Brian's blogging, I find something to disagree with.

CONSUMERS: Honestly, a fair chunk of the issue is your own fault -- you, collectively, have decided that you aren't as interested in buying serialized comics as you once were. That's fair enough, and I Get It -- there's more being produced than you can possibly keep up with, and the Collected Edition is (nearly) always a better package: no ads, no waiting for the Rest, typically cheaper than its components, and so on. Like I said, I Get It.

As someone who does retail as the main paycheck these days, and not comics, I can honestly have a business owner's take on this: Blaming the consumer, unless, like with newspapers, they want something for nothing, is complete bullshit. The people are your lifeblood. They have the power as a market to keep you in business or in that new tent city springing up in the parking lot of Pac Bell Park. As every business in the last 100 years has proven, you can't tell people who want a new fangled "horse-less carriage" that should stick with their horse and buggy. Those people will want their automobile and they don't want the old product. Shockingly, there are few horse and buggy dealers on the 101.

Yes, you get it. Trades have taken over. So, no, its not their fault. And, yes, if you do get it, then you get to stay in business, as opposed to closing your doors, because you're giving your patrons what they want.

How to keep the buying habit you ask? Good question. Taking a look at other media shows that they don't expect the retailer to solely market their products. Warner Brothers will actually market a new CD and not expect that the owner of Bob's records to have the budget or time to promote that one new CD in favor of the other 87 that came last week. How do people keep coming back to other stores? With different frequency is probably the right answer, even if its not the answer that you want to hear.

I blame the consumers for much of the newspaper problems, but in this case, I don't blame the consumer one bit. They've spoken and the retailers might want to listen.

Look, saying that "alternative" and "art" comics are a lost cause sounds a lot like someone giving up really. You ceertainly have more press being generated these days in the San Francisco Chronicle (someone in their Datebook section really does like comics and comic book culture) by alt comics, even if it may not drive the numbers in to your shop that X-men do. I'm not a comics retailer, and i don't access to your figures, but i refuse to believe that given the very nature of superheroes (i.e. most people outgrow them) that there can't be something more to those sales, a sense that you might continue to build another audience.

Look, Brian's comments on publishers and Diamond slimming down their catalog are right on, but the reality is is that there has to be a better way to do this. So we can all get our comics.

The Hulk by Steve Ditko circa 1964

Just a little something: the only Hulk pencils that I've ever seen by Steve Ditko, from a time, judging by the notes, when Ditko's work on Hulk #6 was going to then transition over to Tales to Astonish. No idea where this came from, but it is truly amazing to have survived all these years. Take a good look, since this piece will be going up for auction and probably never coming out once it gets into some collectors hands!

Captain America: Kirby & Yoakum for SuperCon

This is the second Kirby piece that i've inked via lightbox (the first one for the Heroes and Villians black book) and blue pencil (this one). The first i tried to do this Syd Shores thing (ala Captain America #100-103) but this time its a Frank Giacoia thing, albeit with a bit more delicacy on the brush. I suspect that Frank used a much larger sable brush than i'm using. I'd use a larger on if I was working twice up as well!

This piece could be yours if you want to win that auction for it at SuperCon in San jose in two weeks!