Red Flag Comics

More Man-Thing

2011-11-29T08:47:00.000-05:00

Another day, another tease

2011-08-09T08:36:00.002-04:00

Color test

2011-06-28T11:35:00.000-04:00

I don't think I ever posted this one (looks like I posted the scan of the pencils a while back) and it's probably been too long since I uploaded any art. My legions of fans shall not be left wanting!

This is a bit of a test (lots of stray marks and color, some areas not really developed) trying to duplicate some techniques I've seen other guys use (OK, mostly Ben Templesmith and lots of guys trying to imitate him as well). I was trying to incorporate some of that style of techniques but then I kind of went my own way with it anyway. It's mostly a failure but I'm posting so people can see some of the steps along the war to the finished product which hopefully will finally drop in the next month or so (TEASE!).

I've mostly avoided using color in my work until recently, but the ease of coloring with a Wacom tablet and Photoshop and the free color afforded by the web there's no reason to not try to do the next project in color. While this has some touches I like it's nothing like how it will actually appear. My style has changed a few times just looking at different methods and styles. The hard part is limiting yourself and that's why so much computer coloring (including this example) turns out so bad.

Daredevil

2011-06-06T23:28:00.000-04:00

Hour and a half long digital sketch w Wacom tablet in Photoshop.

A macabre gentleman

2011-05-23T16:35:00.001-04:00

Why not keep going while I'm on this posting "hot streak?

Some more art

2011-05-23T15:09:00.000-04:00

A macabre figure of mystery and mayhem

2011-04-26T07:55:00.000-04:00

Don't want to give much detail for now but this is a character study piece for an upcoming project.

Black Panther

2011-03-28T21:35:00.000-04:00

Human Torch

2011-03-28T21:27:00.000-04:00

I've been practicing my digital painting technique. Watching lots of tutorials online. You can practically go to art school for free with just YouTube. I could have saved thousands.

Photoshop had just come out when I hit college (yeah, I let myself get old somehow- kids, don't let it happen to you!) and the teachers at my school, I don't think, were prepared for how dominant it would be in art. I'm kind of glad I didn't keep going to school. I would have dropped a lot more cash and probably not been too much farther ahead. Sometimes I wonder though.

Since college I've been hunkered down in a tiny print shop letting my art skills devolve and letting things pass me by. But I've made a concerted effort lately to step my art game up. I've decided to spend the spring and early summer working on portfolio pieces to try to finally make a real effort of making more than pocket change from freelance.

I realize I've got a way to go. I feel like in my short time at art school I learned how to draw the human form a little but I never really put the rest of it together. It's time to take a critical eye to my own work and to learn from looking at the work of others as well. Time to crank out some work and just try things out, play around and see what happens, but working towards an end goal. I have it in my mind now.

So, I started with the human form in the form of the Human Torch, figured I could so some cool fire effects, play off the warm/cool colors and collage a city background to make a sample cover. I could take it further but for right now I'm planning on churning out a few dozen prospective images and then seeing which ones have the most potential to be kick ass portfolio pieces.

P.S. Which reminds me that I just added a gallery page and just threw in some pieces I'd posted on the blog. As I begin to post up the new digital pieces I will add to it and probably pull the old stuff out.

Samurai girl

2011-03-08T10:32:00.000-05:00

A female samurai with hot pink hair. Still a work in progress but figured I'd share as I'm not sure I will really try to take it any further for now.

Galactus

2011-03-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

My reimagine/redesign concept of Marvel's Galactus. In mine he is sort of the same thing as his ship which is a nanotech swarm version of the Borg.

Character study

2011-02-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

The evil doctor- you might want a second opinion!

Bookstore as comics' savior? Not so much

2010-12-27T19:54:00.002-05:00

My visit to Barnes & Noble today ended up serving to be a cautionary tale to the comics people who may still think that the direct market is a pile of crap that can be discarded because we have bookstores that will sift out the endless volumes of spandex-clad super emo warfare and only serve up wonderful graphic novels that have been reviewed by the New York Times and NPR. Hey, I think I noticed it because I was one of those people. Maybe it was just hope that outside of NYC, Chicago, LA and a handful of other cities that people could still find good comics. You know, the ones you hear about but can't find unless you go to a convention and personally take part in the industry or purchase them online with shipping costing as much as (or more than) the book itself. And just so you know, I live within 30-40 miles of 3 decent size cities with various size B&N locations.

Out of an entire half aisle of comics you already have half that are manga. Very little "literary fare" is found here from what I see. That's going to sound like a diss but I do have manga I like. Not a ton, but enough to know that like the North American comics publishers I guess it gets lost in the shuffle. It does seem like the crap to good stuff ratio is even worse than the rest of the Graphic Novel section but that's probably just because there's so much more of it (and popular titles often take up rows of space for multiple volumes while literary, artsy manga tend to be single volumes).

You wouldn't find anything from the more literary manga pubs like Ponent Mon and from Vertical I only noticed "Peepo Choo" and "7 Billion Needles" though I might have missed a few since I'm not at all familiar with their output (since I never see them in stores) Not much else here for anyone who's not already a manga fan who knows what to buy. No sign of any of the D&Q reprints of Tatsumi's work either. Some good stuff could be found here- I grabbed "Not Simple" and "Solanin" which are both from Viz as I noticed when I went to write this. It also occured to me while writing this that comic shop manga sections always seem heavier on Tokypop (because that's most of what I've bought in the past) and lighter on Viz where bookstores seem to be the opposite.

So, then the other half of the half-aisle of GNs and manga is "North American comics" for lack of a better term- and it's a really bad term because that's also where the European stuff gets put (but I'm not huge on those semantic arguments so whatever). Minus of course a shelf at the top of gaming resources and books in the Dungeons and Dragons vein. I'd say that except for two shelves the North American comics section is pretty much all DC and Marvel. And not even their better books. Sadly, most of the DC and Marvel seems to be the usual trades stocked at a comics specialty retailer. You know, whatever new company-wide event after which "nothing will ever be the same" that gets done just about every year. You know, the book where the third-rate loser villain from the 70s get "reinvented" by some hack writer as a psychopathic killer and rapes and murder a third rate superheroine. In other words, "The Killing Joke" volume 549.

So, our of those final two shelves we get one that's mostly GI Joe and Transformers books from whatever horrible fake indy/wannabe DC/Marvel publisher puts those out now days. Boom, IDW, Crossgen, Now- I can't tell them apart half the time. They pop up every ten years with the same publishing plan and fade into the back issue bins unless they get lucky and get a movie made that doesn't completely suck. Oh yeah, that reminds me: throw in some Hellboy too. Yay, Dark Horse. But basically this is the "indy" section most comic shops obligingly stock for the 1-10% of their customer base that doesn't quit looking at their copy of the "Previews" catalog after the name "Zatanna" or whatever ends the DC section and begins the "crap 99% of comic shop owners don't care about" section. I assume Marvel still is too good to be in with the rest? God, I fucking hate the comics industry...

So, anyway. Now we have one shelf, maybe another half for the odd-sized giant books, of an odd assortment of books most comics fans would recognize as "indy" comics in this bookstore. It's a catch all. You have R. Crumb's newest, "The Book of Genesis," and a fluke remainder copy of something earlier. You have several copies of Julie Wertz, a book or two from a New Yorker cartoonist trying their hand at the"graphic novel thing." However, I didn't see ONE D&Q book. ZERO from either Hernandez Brother. No Seth. No Chris Ware except for a paperback copy of the fat Jimmy Corrigan. No Acme Novelty Library volumes. No James Sturm. No Dungeon. No David B. No Eddie Campbell. No Craig Thompson. No Gary Panter. No Jason.

However, the comic strip reprint section, outside of Zits and a handful of other strip collections, is now mostly from indy comics publishers. Obviously, the Peanuts reprints really changed the dynamic there. It's awesome to see Seth's design on the John Stanley albums (that's what they look like to me) on a bookshelf. There's Tove Jansson books too. Hooraay for good comics!

I guess the success of the reprint books just made it even clearer to me: It makes me wonder if this push away from floppies and into hardcovers aimed at bookstores from companies like Fantagraphics and D&Q is really working any better than the old way? Not that they had a choice. But I'm just sayin'...

Now, I'm sure maybe they've ordered copies of L&R or Acme that have sold out. I'm sure they've had books from all the missing authors I mentioned and what we're seeing is a lot of stuff that's been hanging around because it's mostly crap that won't sell. Maybe they sell a ton of whatever indy comics GN is new and hot. But then wouldn't they have put them in one of their 3 or more aisles of clearance stuff? Speaking of which, why do you almost never see comics there? I do see comics at Bargain Books, a chain selling remaindered stuff at deep discounts, but that's mostly stuff that obviously got very much over ordered based on hype or some glaring order form error where 2 copies where made into 200 or something.

Maybe I'm frustrated knowing that I can't sell copies of my own comics while the people getting paid to find sales at "big" companies might not be doing much better. But really I'm just frustrated that I can't ever flip through good comics in person and decide to purchase them on my own. I have to investigate and special order like it's an obscene fetish only available through mail order or if I fly to a big city and attend a special meeting of my fellow freaks. I might as well be a furry.

Status Update (or: Selling Comics at Reptile Shows)

2010-11-21T19:33:00.000-05:00

Reconnected with my Red Flag Publishing partner-in-crimes against humility, James T. Hitchcock aka Biff Humble aka OB1 Shinobi. He's R.F.P.'s Editor in C.H.I.E.F. (Correctly Hustling Information, Education and Funnies). Jim also owns an exotic pet store and spends his weekends schlupping newts, hamsters and other critters and the accessories to keep them alive across the midwest. He wanted some copies of the new issue of Red Flags because I kept telling him to put up a display to test how the reptile show audience might respond to an indy horror comic. Heck, I wanted to test how ANY comic might fare outside of a comic book-only venue, where there've been stuck since news stand distribution, head shops and indy record stores died. It just so happens that we self-published our particular comic with all its limitations. It's an imperfect study which maybe will say more about the quality of our book or our salesmanship than the venue and audience.

I never understood why comics couldn't be made that appeal to other audiences outside the direct market and then marketed to them in other venues besides direct market comic books stores in strip malls behind windows covered with Magic the Gathering ads (and 10-20 bohemian shops one the coasts and a couple major Midwest cities that sell 90% of indy comics). But anyone who tries it is basically in for a one man battle against the indifference and ignorance of the world toward comics. But now more than ever it seems both possible (due to manga, webcomics, the recent GN boom and even popular superhero movies) and necessary (due to not only the Great Recession but also to the fragmenting of the market with DM shops doubling down on the Big 2 and "indy" comics now becoming slight departures from the Big 2 such as IDW and Boom Studios as opposed to Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly).

I don't know that I know yet much of anything but I did make some initial observations after attending half of one reptile show. We only sold and gave away a handful of books with a hastily made sign letting the people shopping for iguanas know about our self-published horror anthologies.

First, I couldn't help but notice the similarities and differences between a comic convention audience and reptile show attendees. Both are obviously different elements within a wide variety of "nerd culture" that would include video games, sci fi, horror movies, etc. I also didn't realize how much of the audience at a reptile show is a repeat crowd. I guess I forgot these things tend to be monthly affairs, more like a flea market than a convention. I wonder if the repeat nature of the business and the familiarity that ensues will help sales. Jim seems to have a large customer base and made a lot of contacts here. I guess we might get the same thing if I can ever afford to hit some comic conventions.

Here's some art as a thanks for listening to my musing...

All thumbs

2010-11-01T15:31:00.000-04:00

I never seem to scan any of my art and when I do I'm not even sure I pick the right stuff. But here's what I'm working on lately...

This is some rough art for a new comic I'm working on. I've been doing pencils on some layout paper from where I work. It's a small print shop which still does some paste-up (actually, to my embarrassment/horror they still do a lot of it)! They have these awesome 11x17 pages with blue line boxes for every inch and pica. I draw on the back and can just see hints of the blue lines through the paper so I can better eyeball my straight lines and try to eliminate using a straight edge. One of the pages has the main lines already inked.

On this project my goal is to just let my art be ugly and gritty- it fits the ugly nature of the story which really tries to get at the core of the decay of morality in our society (and I don't mean that in the conservative God and gays sense but in the liberals- look how the rich are fucking us all- sense). Our model is Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." One of my problems as an artist is that I try to polish the turd and draw too "clean." I get tight and attempt to draw too much like Charles Burns or Dan Clowes instead of Paul Pope or Eddie Campbell- guys who embrace their stray marks and construction lines. I need to try to draw like Gilbert Hernandez instead of Jaime Hernandez.

Buy this book while you can!

2010-10-12T22:17:00.000-04:00

The second drop from Red Flag Publishing is now being hustled in pamphlet style. Available now for a limited time exclusively at the top secret and very exclusive comics buying club known as IndyPlanet

Red Flags vol. 2 brings with it three complete and shocking tales told in an anthology of traditional comic book genres- funny animal, crime and zombies. Sure to send waves of pleasure down your spine as you witness it's forbidden contents! History, propaganda and censorship, identity and reality, religion and ignorance, perversion and faith- NOTHING is off limits! Contents may be shocking and disturbing unless you are "hip to what's up on the scene."

New takes on horror comics: RED FLAGS. Consider this your last warning!

$3.99 • 32 pages • Heavy stock • 100% satisfaction assured • No refunds

WARNING: Possession of this book may be a crime in some states,
municipalities or foreign countries (consult your legal counsel)

Beyond Thunderdome

2010-06-15T09:19:00.001-04:00

A friend asked me for some art for his pool league team which is called "Beyond Thunderdome" and wanted a picture of Mad Max in a bar fight doing great injury. Not sure how well it will show on a one color t-shirt but I obliged....

Words of wisdom

2010-06-12T15:40:00.000-04:00

"I was thinking, one of the things that can drag you down as an artist is thinking it should get easy eventually. You think I'd know this but I always suprize (sic) myself at how it is always hard work."

– Brandon Graham

Words of wisdom

2010-06-12T12:57:00.001-04:00

"I think it is about obsession. I really embrace my obsessions. I think it's important. The thing that won't go out of your mind, that's what you should make art about. It doesn't even have to make sense."

– Paul Pope (in a discussion with Dash Shaw & moderated by Robin McConnell)

A new look

2010-06-10T19:00:00.001-04:00

If you're visiting you may see some weirdness as I tired of the old look and am trying out some new ideas.

Something from my sketchbook I might not have ever posted...

Award winner

2010-06-08T17:01:00.000-04:00

The Community Papers of Michigan just honored one of my designs at their annual awards banquet. Receiving top honors in its class was this October 8, 2009 front page to the Battle Creek Shopper News...

Photo by Doug Allen of artist Joe Taken

CD design

2010-06-07T16:29:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been doing some work for Hydro-Phonic Records. The sludge and doom metal label just started up but have already put out some amazing looking vinyl works of art. Just one example...

Most of the albums so far have been re-issues. So on my end it's mostly been grunt work and consulting as bands already have art they want to use and well-established logos, but hopefully soon I'll get a chance to do more drawing and design work as the label moves into more first releases, merch and live shows. With such beautiful records and more coming quickly I've no doubt that more people will start paying attention to what Hydro-Phonic Records is doing and I'll get increased chances to create cool images and help some bands get noticed.

Here's something I worked up sort of on spec to warm up and show off what I could do...

R.I.P. Frank Frazetta

2010-05-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

It's almost too hard to pick just one image to sum up the power of Frank Frazetta, and yet they all do. Particularly what I liked about Frazetta's work was once I really started looking at it, beyond just the cool bad ass imagery that caught my eye as a youth, was how well he used color, composition and mood. Most fantasy artists never progress beyond the desire just to paint cool things. Frazetta really used warm and cool colors to create a dynamic composition, depth and a focal point that your eye keeps landing on every time you looks at the painting. Just look at that image and tell me your eye can keep from stopping on the man riding the flying creature. The subdued and cool greens and pale ochre-ish yellows on the man and the lizard are surrounded by an intense abstract lava flow of bright red, itself surrounded by a pitch black border that contains the image. Like any good artist, the more you look at a Frazetta image the more you can keep looking...

Gig poster

2010-04-25T21:13:00.000-04:00

Hydro-Phonic Records is putting on a FREE show May 14 at Mulligan's Pub in Grand Rapids, MI. Line-up includes Black Pyramid, Let the Night Roar, Balboa (MI), Bullpig and Mountain Goat. I did the poster art for it...

Albino Warrior

2010-04-13T10:22:00.000-04:00

Wanting to do a drawing with a '70s fantasy vibe, I called this piece Albino Warrior when I scanned it in, thinking I'd keep his skin white. I ended up going with a purple and yellow color scheme since I've been trying to keep a restricted palette and went with keeping his pants and the glow of the sword white. Somehow the pants ended up looking very Disco so it ended up looking pretty '70s even if not n the way I'd originally imagined.

Sensorium

2010-04-13T08:48:00.000-04:00

Digital painting

2010-02-16T11:02:00.001-05:00

I just got done doing an illustration job. It's for a book cover...

This was digitally painted (on top of a watercolor painting) and I wasn't entirely happy with the end result. In the early stages I was really psyched about how it was turning out and thought I'd end up with something solid to add to my portfolio. What began as a mostly watercolor painting with some digital effects turned into an almost all digital piece as the client made more and more requests for changes. Because the digital effects made the painting look quite realistic in places and it seemed the customer liked that, it seemed every requested change was to slowly remove the more painterly areas.

Pretty soon, I ended up with something a lot more "airbrushy" than I had wanted in the beginning, though it also opened my eyes to what I could do with the techniques I had developed in working on the piece. But it also made me like the piece less as the closer it came to "realism" the more obvious the flaws in my initial drawing were. It was also then I realized I liked digital painting but I couldn't get the effects I see in other illustrators' work. What I had hoped would end up as a solid portfolio piece now became something wanting to be more and demanding I do more work in the style before producing satisfactory results.

It helped that I've been listening to the great and inspiring Big Illustration Party Time podcast which lead me to Chris Oatley's podcast and site. At his site Chris Oatley has a set of Photoshop brush tool pre-sets. I'd downloaded a million brushes in the past but never found someone offering their list of presents so I downloaded them and found a great selection of varying brushes that produce a wide range of effects. I've also done some due diligence and started to do a better job of figuring out the brush settings in the hope that I will finally be able to buy at least a small, used Wacom tablet with the profits made from this past job.

Because I had some new toys to play with, I figured I'd hunt up an old sketch I'd been wanting to use as a basis for a painting and try out all the new brushes. I'm trying to use limited colors and keep a painterly feel. I'm not quite finished with it but thought it looked good enough at this early stage to share.

Signage

2010-01-11T13:13:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted anything for a while so I figured I'd try to post some things I'd missed. This is a sign done for a local daycare. Part of my idea in doing this was to create some iconic mascot type characters which the company now uses on shirts and other items.

Fiend

2009-11-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

An interview with Hitchcock

2009-10-27T08:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry, that's Red Flag Publishing writer extraordinaire James Hitchcock being interviewed. Who'd you think it was? Anyway, this is a short conversation but nice to see the Red Flag crew get some press. Check it out here.

The cold morning air

2009-09-11T21:16:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

Can comics be scary?

2009-08-11T10:37:00.029-04:00

I've been thinking about horror comics lately, reading them and reading about them. There's something I've wondered for a while and it's really on my mind now:

Can comics be scary?

I have never truly been scared by a comic. Wait... yes, but just once. A girl in my class (I seem to think it was either 4th or 6th grade) gave me an old copy of Marvel's Man-Thing. The story was by Steve Gerber and the art by Mike Ploog. According to this, the issue must have been No. 9 (the first cover pictured above) and was released in September, 1974.

The story as described by the Marvel wiki page:

Ezekiel and Maybelle Tork are a couple who have lived in seclusion in the swamps for years, although Maybelle believes that Zeke neglects him and favors his pet, Dawg (a dog naturally enough.) When the curious Man-Thing approaches Maybelle one day, the appearance of the muck-monster startles her enough to have a heart attack. When Zeke arrives to check out what the commotion is, he scares away the Man-Thing with his rifle. He then leaves to get a doctor, leaving his wife behind with Dawg, however she tells the Dawg to go away, having another fainting spell doing so. Dawg, joins up with Zeke (who is being observed by the Man-Thing) when suddenly, Zeke is attacked by the very trees in the swamp. The Man-Thing comes to Zeke's rescue, saving him from the killer trees, alligators, and snakes. Getting to the mainland, Z eke is suddenly attacked by the bones of people who had long died in the swamps, although the Man-Thing once more saves Zeke, it fails to save him from being harmed, when one of the zombies strangles him until he passes out. With all the corpses smashed, the Man-Thing picks up Zeke and begins carrying him the rest of the way.
This story is continued next issue...

That description ignores a red mist that floats around and brings all those things to life. However, I didn't go around being scared of red mist. That wasn't what got to me. I think what got me was Mike Ploog's depiction of the woman and the lifeless things. The woman's mouth seemed to be made of melting wax which really got to me. The other thing about the story that struck a nerve was the isolation of the couple in the swamp and the desperate man's attempts to help his wife. There was something really bittersweet in the old man's love for his wife but there's a sense of doom built up by Steve Gerber. I seem to remember the red mist arising from the woman's body which lead me to believe that she was dead. That might have been why I felt like the old man's mission was doomed, the red mist being the old woman's vengeful spirit trying to punish him for loving his dog more than his wife.

But as much as the story struck a cord with me, I can't say it truly scared me. And I've never found a story that even came as close as that issue of Man-Thing. It may not help that I was born in 1973 and just missed the '70s horror boom. I always wonder what might have been if I'd stumbled on an old EC title or an issue of Creepy.

Comics have a long tradition of horror, dating back to the fact that comics' origins in the pulp magazines. At the time, it made sense since horror movies were in their infancy and most people got their thrills and chills from radio dramas and dime novels. Those early horror comics may have been truly shocking to many. When Johnny Craig drew a severed hand it was probably as outrageous an image as most had seen in popular culture. As time passed though, movies became much more outrageous and in the rear view mirror those EC horror artists are about as shocking as those schlocky old movies with their bright red fake blood and obvious latex and prosthetic effects.

Given the plethora of movies with gruesome and realistic effects has the heyday of horror comics simply passed by without a whimper, let alone a shriek? Has culture and technology simple passed the horror comic by? Can comics truly be scary in a world with computer animated flesh and bone presenting convincing frights in high-definition HD, Blu-Ray and widescreen?

Is there something inherent in the comics medium which makes it harder or even impossible to produce the same thrills and chills as other mediums? Many writers and artists have discussed how hard the surprise reveal is to pull off in comics. Such dramatic moments almost always have to be reserved for left hand pages due to the reader being able to see both pages at once. Thus any surprises not hidden behind the page turn are susceptible to being seen as the reader's eye strays, especially if the image is larger or more provocative in any way. Obviously, this is something that doesn't apply to web comics. What other limitations are there in the comics medium that stunt the ability to create terror in the audience?

Is there something to the fact that comics are a combination of drawings and text that inhibits the creation of true frights? Horror novels may have one advantage over comics because of the way words are processed as opposed to words combined with images. Fiction is recreated completely within a reader's mind thus allowing the author the chance for the reader's own imagination to take over and fill in any blanks. A writer can paint a full picture by using the reader as the screen and stage on which to stage his horrific visions.

It's also possible a reader's brain is pulling memories and images from the subconscious and is actually triggered into being more scared because of the words acting like a trigger the way smells can recall vivid impressions of time and place.

On the other side of the equation, horror films have the advantage of using real actors, lighting and effects to create a full range of frights, from a black cat jumping out from a dark corner or a zombie's putrid flesh falling off the bone. Sound and light combine to evoke moods from mild dread to full terror to the point where there is almost no limit to what disturbing visions can be unleashed. Not to mention, the mere ability to actually create sudden and loud moments that are startling can cue all the effects of terror and help sell the horror even if the horrific images are themselves not all that unsettling. Comics seem to lack this very important and basic tool- the ability to startle. Shock and surprise are words that get applied to comics but I can't say that I truly a remember a comic being shocking or surprising.

Meanwhile, comics rely on an artist's ability to evoke mood. But the artist is limited in that a reader can see a whole page and even two at once. Can a scene be claustrophobic if each panel is seen to be surrounded by others with perhaps dozens of panels across a 2-page spread? Can a comic book create an atmosphere where a reader is afraid to turn the page for fear of what haunted visions await? Can comics create a visceral repulsion conjured by gore and guts? Too often it seems that such attempts in comics fall short, but is it a failure of the medium or its practitioners? Are comics mechanically incapable of producing real horror the way a car is incapable of flying or are comics simply not used to their full potential like an airplane taxiing on the runway, simply waiting for proper speed and for the pilot to pull back the stick?

Style likely plays a part as artists with less "realistic" styles tend to be even more limited in their ability to pull off horror. I'm a lot more creeped out reading a Nestor Redondo drawn story than I am a Sergio Aragones one. The only exception to this might be the works of a Rory Hayes or Mike Diana which seem to be almost so crude and contain such dark imagery crafted in a such a naive way that they remind one of thew works of prison artists or the mentally ill.

I'm not sure comics can be truly scary but I'm also open to the possibility that there's an untapped potential there. It's just a matter of finding the tools that work and not trying to mimic things that work in more effectively in other mediums.

Astro, part III

2009-07-27T11:15:00.006-04:00

Continuing the improvisational comic I've been creating in my sketchbook.
Previous installments (part 1 and 2, respectively) are here and here.

Where's my time machine?

2009-07-26T22:43:00.009-04:00

From Crypt of Shadows #19 (September 1975)
©Marvel Comics Group

Here's a close up:

Makes me wonder who ended up taking this class. I wish I could go back in time and study under Buscema. I've been wondering lately why there's not more of this sort of thing available. I know more and more colleges are offering course in comics but it would be interesting to just be able to take a workshop style session with a pro. This would be great for people (like me) who have some skills but other things they could work on and who could use a pro's eye to help push them in the right direction. Can't we get C.B. Cebulski to engineer something like this?

I see where Frank Santoro offered a workshop to teach his method of composition. That's something I'd like to see more of. As a matter of fact I looked into taking it since it was being offered for only $40 but I couldn't justify the cost of travel from West Michigan to NYC to take a 2-hour workshop. Matt Madden and Jessica Abel offer something like four-week sessions but then you have to be able to take a month off of work in the summer and afford to stay in New York that long. I think one-week sessions would be perfect so people like me could consider using a vacation week to get the time off and one week is long enough to learn a decent amount of stuff without being a major scheduling headache.

If anyone is interested, I bought the comic for $1 at a used bookstore. It's in rough shape and I almost balked at paying the dollar but it contains some great old Atlas comics when they were basically doing the EC style sci fi stories with the twist endings. The comic reprints "I Fought the Colossus" from Strange Tales #72 which looks like uncredited pencils from Jack Kirby, "The Hidden Martians" from Uncanny Tales #14 with art by Dick Ayers, "Earth Will Be Destroyed" from Tales of Suspense #9 with art by Steve Ditko and "He Never Reached the Ground" with uncredited art by (I'm fairly certain) Bernie Krigstein. I should research those credits since only the Ayers and Ditko stories are signed but I'm fairly good at spotting artists so I'm confident in those guesses, especially since Kirby and Krigstein drew some of the most distinctive faces in comics.

#FemmeFriday

2009-07-24T23:37:00.007-04:00

Today at work I was doodling a picture of a girl and had an idea to have a fake Twitter theme day on this blog called Femme Friday. Basically, every Friday I'll try to post a drawing of a girl. Here's the first (and probably last) effort...

This drawing was sketched lightly in blue pencil and then I went over it with a regular #2 pencil to darken it up and hide the stray lines. Then I added some contrast and cleaned up some remaining stray lines in Photoshop.

Astro, part II

2009-07-24T20:45:00.004-04:00

Astro is just a working title for a sci-fi story I've been improvising in my sketchbook. Trying to average a page a day but working on two at a time so hopefully I can post 2 pages every 2 days. Though, since I don't quite know where it's going or how I get there it may just fizzle out and this will be all I post. Also, trying not to fuss with it in "post" (i.e. Photoshop).

Astro

2009-07-21T13:58:00.004-04:00

One reason why I was excited to see the British small press comic Decadence, which I linked to in my last post, is that recently I've been toying with some SF-themed stories myself. These are the first couple of images I've bothered to scan.

Decadence is a good thing

2009-07-18T21:36:00.004-04:00

Thanks to a recent episode of Panel Borders, a podcast from England, I found out about Decadence, an English small press comics anthology featuring science fiction which, from what I've read and looked at so far, is like Fort Thunder meets Metal Hurlant. And if that isn't something that sounds good to you then I'm not going to waste anymore time talking to you!
I haven't even checked it out too much yet but what I've seen already looks amazing. Hopefully this post will not only remind me to go back and look at everything I haven't yet seen but also encourage anyone who comes here to check out these mind-blowing comics.

(Images nicked from the Decadence site- hopefully they don't mind!)

If I ever started what I finished...

2009-06-30T10:30:00.006-04:00

...maybe I'd have accomplished something and people might actually check out my blog. So, here's yet another story I've spent years working on but never completed. I got lost in the hundreds of ways I could tell the first 5-10 pages of the story and never got around to finishing it because it's more interesting for me to play with storytelling options and see how they affect the emotion of the story than it was to actually commit myself to one way of telling the story. I guess I should go in to storyboards as I seem to prefer the laying out of the story to the actual drudgery of drawing it. So, here's some roughs for when I was going to do this story as a mini-comic which for some reason I never followed up on after completing these pages.

Is there a Steve Jobs in the (comics industry) house?

2009-06-29T10:41:00.004-04:00

Heidi MacDonald's The Beat had a post today which linked to Hervé St. Louis' piece where he tried to find a "Steve Jobs" type in the comics industry:

Steve Jobs, the founder and somewhat CEO of Apple is regarded in the American technology industry as a bright mind and someone that although may not spearhead the new trends, unleashes them with style upon the masses. His input in the computing industry has made Apple Computer the darling of many and the one to beat of many challengers. In the comic book industry, is there anyone that has the same profile and profound influence that Steve Jobs has in the technology industries? Is there someone that continuously challenges every other industry player in the comic book industry, coming up with new products and new ways of being more relevant for readers, collectors and shareholders?

His list consisted of Todd McFarlane, Jim Shooter, Jesse Garza (of Viper Comics), Chris Ryall (IDW), Joe Quesada, Steve Geppi (Diamond, Gemstone), Mike Richardson (Dark Horse), and Joe Nozemack (Oni Press).

My initial thoughts:

Todd McFarlane might have deserved to be on that list 10-15 years ago but nobody cares about him anymore unless he goes back to drawing.
Jim Shooter is too into superheroes and any Steve Jobs that "rescues" comics is going to have to bring something more to the table than one more shared superhero universe.
Joe Quesada could be the guy but that might be like asking Bill Gates to be Steve Jobs since Quesada's working for "the man" and making lots of dough- though, eventually he'll get deposed and then maybe it could happen.
Steve Geppi is barely holding on and I've always had problem with the guys who owns the distribution monopoly also being a publisher- and he couldn't even keep publishing Disney comics which he loves so what would make anyone think he could start something new and make it work?
Mike Richardson is busy trying to sell properties in Hollywood as IDW takes over his market share. Also, he has zero cult of personality.
Joe Nozemack- someone from Oni? I guess I forget they even existed anymore. They do seem to have a cult audience but not one big enough to do much but barely sustain the company.
Jesse Garza- In order for Viper Comics to be copied maybe I'd have to actually see one in the store which I'm not sure has ever happened to me- if the list needed an underdog how about Chris Staros who went from making a self-published zine to publishing Alan Freaking Moore and who's company was way ahead of the curve on the OGN thing.
Chris Ryall from IDW is the best on that list since they seem to have come nowhere to a major player in 5 years without relying on any one gimmick, making it possible to ride out any fads. Once again though I don't see a crowded room full of people gasping at his every movement.

At first I was going to post that in the comments but I hadn't posted anything here in a while and figured this would make a good blog entry. Then I couldn't stop myself from saying something so this is what I posted in Heidi's comment section:

Mark Waid (Boom Studios) and Chris Staros (Top Shelf Productions) should have made that sort of a list. Rantz Hosely (editor of Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo from Image) is a creator, editor and now inventor of the Longbox project so I’d suggest him since any ‘Steve Jobs for comics’ is likely going to bring some new technical innovation that leads to new distribution channels (or improved ones, anyway). As much as I’d hate to do it, that Platinum Comics guy (Scott Rosenberg) should have been there too though I don’t think he deserves it, he should at least be in the conversation. I think I’d also have put Joey Manley (webcomicsnation.com) on there even if it’s been way too long since the new ComicSpace was announced without much to show for it- WCN and the rest of his sites likely get tons of hits and he’s often trying to find the leading edge and innovate new ways of getting comics out to more people. Scott Kurtz (PVP, webomics.com) should probably have been included.

I’d also keep at eye out for some of the people blogging or podcasting about comics as some of them may very soon branch into other avenues (I’d already be interested to see if any creators notice a podcast effect and which ones can bring measurable sales increases).

Now, that I think about it more- what about Jim Lee?

I imagine I'm still leaving off 5-10 quality names because I'm a nobody in the industry who doesn't know who some of the players behind the scenes are. I know there's a few top level editors who've had a had in the successes of various companies who have potential to be power players in the field- I just don't know who they are or can't remember their names. Also, reading St. Louis' intro paragraph I assume he's talking someone who CAN BE a Steve Jobs type in the future, not who might have been in the past and maybe I'm mis-reading that. Anyway, I thought it was interesting in a way and figured I'd share my thoughts here since The Beat's comment section often seems to get derailed and good points ignored (which seems to be a problem everywhere I go to discuss comics. Which is why I think it's funny when people wonder why comics never live up their potential- maybe it's because you get ignored unless people know who you are and think you can give them work in the industry).

3 heads

2009-05-18T17:22:00.001-04:00

An old doodle from a pile of stuff I've done at work while waiting for my scanner to warm up or email to download, etc.

Radio tower

2009-05-17T22:44:00.002-04:00

I always thought there was something about those blinking lights on radio towers. On one level they're just plain beautiful in the night sky but also that they might be tapping out some Morris Code to aliens looking to land. This is another test animation now that I found out how to make animated GIF files...

Crude animation test

2009-05-17T13:08:00.003-04:00

Playing with making animated GIFs. Right now I'm just using stuff I'd already drawn to test it out. Seeing how it works gives me ideas for more complicated and better looking stuff...

Cosmic Dawn

2009-05-11T14:38:00.001-04:00

Trying to channel Jack Kirby...

Godhead

2009-05-04T13:04:00.006-04:00

Old truck

2009-04-28T11:02:00.002-04:00

Drawn while looking at a calendar at work.

Killer on the Road

2009-04-27T16:01:00.001-04:00

Alien meets ogre

2009-04-27T13:41:00.000-04:00

Stairway

2009-04-21T10:13:00.002-04:00

When will you meet Mr. Smith?

2009-03-30T10:05:00.004-04:00

The first story I ever did in comics was a 5 page short story about a man who at first appears to be a typical hired assassin named Mr. Smith. It was originally done for a horror and noir comics contest- the winner would be published as a backup feature. A story about a murderous teddy bear won.

My art, being my first real attempt at drawing comics, is rather crude but the story by James Hitchcock is a very dark and haunting take on what it means to be trapped by fate in a situation you despise but can't seem to break free of. I had planned to add in some spotted blacks in Photoshop, being afraid to cover up the line work with a short deadline and not wanting to have to draw lost details if I didn't like the results, but I just ended up over-shading the whole thing a sort of muddy middle grey which sort of captures the moral ambivalence I suppose but didn't nearly do enough justice to Jim's awesome script. It really deserved some dense blacks to portray the bleak and grim emotional vibe of the story.

After we lost the contest we decided to not let the story go to waste and that's when we jumped into self-publishing, creating the Red Flag Publishing empire and launching our Red Flags anthology with a first issue that contained the full "Mr. Smith" story along with the first part of a longer story which has yet to be completed called "Snatched" in which an FBI agent and a reporter investigate a series of mysterious child abductions. The second issue of Red Flags was published on-line at Web Comics Nation (and can be located with the link at the top right corner of the sidebar on this page).

You can read the Mr. Smith story for free by clicking here.

How I waste time at work

2009-03-23T10:19:00.003-04:00

I work at a printing company. We often end up with scrap paper which I hoard at my desk to doodle on while the hamster wheels powering the outdated computer and servers catch up or while waiting for large emails to come through (if I try to do other activities often my computer crashes so it's better to find other ways to occupy my time). The following are just a random assortment of those doodles. OK, not totally random since I tried to pick ones where I used color...

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-16T14:57:00.003-04:00

Nothing like a drunken leprechaun...Originally drawn last year for a friend who was selling t-shirts in New Orleans during the holiday festivities. Never did get to see how it turned out...

Vikings

2009-03-09T15:42:00.001-04:00

Higher benchmarks make for better comics? BS!

2009-03-09T10:24:00.005-04:00

Dirk Deppey links to the newest Dirk Manning column at Newsarama saying Diamond's new higher benchmarks will make for better comics. Sorry, but I've got to call bullshit on that one.

I spent a couple hours yesterday combing through the dollar bins at a local comic shop. The amount of sheer crap produced by the Big 2 and the "mid-majors" is astounding. And people want to beat up on the little guys who at least have excuses for being bad- it's pretty damn hard to put out a great comic when you're doing it yourself in your spare time. The Big 2 and their little siblings have produced so much drek over the years that now sit in dusty longboxes begging for someone to buy them for a dollar or even a quarter... and no one is buying. Those longboxes aren't filled with half as many issues of self-published and small press books as they are with endless issues of some 52, numerous X-Men mini-series and spin-offs, Image imprint franchises nobody has cared about since the early 90s, or the last Big 2 crossover after which "nothing would be the same." How many issues of that "Lost Teen Titans" book did I run across yesterday? Dozens, perhaps. How many issues of long-forgotten Iron Fist or Dr. Strange mini-series did I find? Too many to count. And people expect me to think Diamond's benchmark is going to eliminate the crap?

"After all – let’s be frank, people – Previews has agreed to distribute a lot of sub-par comics for a long time... and now... those days are over."

If only this were actually true...

Shame on you, North American comics industry!

2009-03-09T09:59:00.007-04:00

Never having read any Jonah Hex comics, I'd always assumed him to be a magic character due to his name (a "hex" being a form of magical spell), and I always associated it with the non-superhero branch of DC which produced lots of mystical/horror books in the 1970s like House of Secrets, Swamp Thing, etc.

Despite my initial confusion, I began picking up the series for a couple of reasons. First, it follows the "one and done" formula which means I don't need to know 15-20 years of back story to appreciate the book unlike most mainstream comics. More importantly, the book features art by Jordi Bernet! The fact that the book doesn't sell more is yet another sad indictment of the North American comics industry. Bernet is a God whose work should guarantee top 10 sales. Another factor in buying the comics is that, probably due to the aforementioned poor sales, I can usually grab old issues in the dollar bin at a local comics shop. What could be better than buying comics by a Euro master for a dollar? Shame on you, North American comic book industry for allowing a book with art by one of comics' best artists to be on the edge where many people gossip about its chances for survival! People should quit fawning over the photo tracers and imitators and start buying this book and realizing those Wizard top 10 artists aren't fit to wash Bernet's brushes! And then go back and buy those old Torpedo volumes

I think she's dead

2009-03-06T06:21:00.008-05:00

Tried firing up the scanner earlier this week to post another drawing but it wouldn't respond. Dead. So, I had to take a pic of my sketchpad with my digital camera. It took a few tries and I still couldn't do without the flash which created a reflection on some of the ink lines which actually made them sort of hollow. So, I had to work a bit more to clean up the initial drawing.

I used a Photoshop watercolor-style brush to help keep the drawing loose and keep me from being tempted to try to fully render it. Also, I've been wanting to play around with a coloring style that's a lot looser than the more rendered stuff I've posted recently.

I just got a card at my local small town library. Looking around, I saw a nice fat tome of fashion history. I'd always wanted to research fashion periods and learn a but more about different styles so I could incorporate them into my work when needed.

The style depicted here is from the Directoire period which came after the French Revolution. A group of leading taste-makers were called the Incroyables and took to wearing more daring fashions after a period of subdued styles.

Best web site ever?

2009-02-28T10:12:00.005-05:00

Coconino World has a gallery which includes TONS of reprints from old satirical magazines/art journals like Simplicissimus and Die Muskete as well as cartoonists like Herriman, Soglow, Swinnerton, Sterrett, and artists like Caran D'Ache, Heinrich Kley and so many more. It's like I died and went to Heaven! Check it out!

Here's a sample of what you will find- images borrowed from the site which uses a Flash viewer (consider yourself warned). The following are all from the mighty Bruno Paul...

They're still coming!

2009-02-28T09:36:00.003-05:00

Another vampire.
This was originally drawn on green paper with colored pencil and graphite. Added some texture and dodged and burned some shadows and highlights as well as boosting the color (especially the red).

Sometime during the night

2009-02-24T08:49:00.005-05:00

And yeah, it could use something in that bottom left corner, probably a house where he'll find his midnight snack...

Mr. Smith

2009-02-23T20:24:00.004-05:00

So far, so... ?

2009-02-17T10:23:00.000-05:00

1. The long set up

A while back I received Mondays off from my day job due to a new schedule. Since then I've blogged a couple times about how I had planned to use the extra time to draw more and post more art to the blog. Well, as you can see, so far things are going according to plan except that I could still be doing a lot more. I'm scanning in some sketches, coloring them and posting them on the blog but I need to push even harder into the next phase which will mean working on some longer form projects like comic book pages and fully finished illustrations for my portfolio so I can get back to making some cash on the side as an illustrator.

The hard part is having so many projects I'd put off due to not having enough time to work on them. Now I have time but my head is crowded with too many ideas trying to escape at once. I tend to freeze up, thinking too much about the ramifications of what I choose to work on and beating myself up over past mistakes and lost time. It's easy to just freeze up and not get anything done once I start thinking about it too much.

2. Where I get to the heart of the matter

It's weird that just as I realize this I also ran across a news story about Oprah Winfrey's embrace of the philosophy of Eckhart Tolle. Tolle seems a typical Oprah guru, espousing a New Age philosophy of happy thoughts and fuzzy feelings. Wikipedia sums up his ideas this way:

Tolle's non-fiction bestseller The Power of Now emphasizes not being caught up in thoughts of past and future as a way of being aware of the present moment. His later book A New Earth further explores the structure of the human ego and how this acts to distract people from their present experience of the world. He asserts that it is the feeding of the human ego that is thought to be the source of inner and outer conflict...

Now, before you misunderstand, I'm not endorsing Tolle's entire philosophy since I won't even claim to understand it, knowing it only from one news story and a skim of the Wikipedia entry on him. But the journalistic short hand description in the news story I saw was that Tolle teaches people to "think less." Whether that is accurate or not is for a completely different discussion. But the idea that most people think TOO much seems laughable to me. The mass of humanity, if anything, is on the stupid side and the REAL problem is that they've never been taught to think properly (a huge problem in our democracy). But, I think he really means the hyper-critical portion of the ego is what needs to be ignored. And I think that advice is actually very good for artists, even if it's not so good for people in general.

3. Where I get completely sidetracked

One of the things I've consciously been attempting to do is to not force myself to any grueling work schedule or put an arbitrary number of the pieces of art or things I must get done on my Monday off. For one thing, one of my problems the last few years has been a lack of time off and a lack of being able to just relax and enjoy some down time. More though, I am trying not to press and let my ego damn me for not being as productive as I'd set out to be.

A major issue in my art for years has been my own internal pressure to be great. More and more, as I saw the chasm between the work I was doing and the work I aspired to do or the work I knew I could do, I became more depressed and worked even less, thus ensuring the chasm would continue to grow. My goal is to slowly shrink that gulf between what I am doing and what I can do. I am looking at how other artists worked through their blocks. One usually successful method employed by some of my favorite artists is to change art style and working method (Moebius comes to mind when he shifted from drawing the highly realistic Western strip "Lt. Blueberry" as J. Giraud to creating his highly personal sci-fi comics under his psuedonym), especially to simplify and to do work that lights your own internal spark even when others don't understand. For too long, I've killed art in the crib because of what others would possibly think. That's a luxury I can no longer afford as increasingly I grapple with depression from not doing the work I want to do, that I am capable of and that I need to do.

This reminds me of what Elizabeth Gilbert said in her presentation at the TED conference this year. She spoke of creativity and how society has created a false and damaging conception of how the artist receives their ideas. That in our embrace of Renaissance ideas and Humanism we put the creative ego at the center of the universe and put the blame on them when their creations fail. Gilbert said that the artist should be a conduit for creative forces and should not take all the blame when they fail nor get all the praise when they succeed. I think in a way what she seeks is to remove the ego from artmaking and it kind of seems like I'm being pointed in the same direction.

4. Close to wrapping it up

I think it's a frightening prospect for society to reject rationality (If it hasn't already happened- for a while, it seemed like it had). But in a way I think an artist MUST reject what is rational. It isn't rational that society would pay people to sit around all day and dream.

Now, I wondered when it would happen but finally last night my wife started giving me a hard time for having "a whole day off by myself to just sit around." Yeah, I suppose that's what it seems like to her. She'd enjoy having the day to play video games, read trashy horror novels or watch TV and knit. I also suppose if someone were watching me on secret camera it would seem like I'm just loafing around the house. Yet on the inside I'm locked in a life and death struggle. For the longest time I didn't have long stretches of time to waste thinking about such things as my art style, how best to show certain emotions through art, and all the other things you need to think about to be an artist. I was running around after a kid, working a day job and trying to keep peace in the house- I couldn't lay back and think about frivolous things when I was using my brain to figure out what to make for dinner this week so I know what to get at the grocery store while wondering how much money I can spend and still pay the other bills. Now that I've got more than 5 minutes at a time to think creatively I can feel the particles flying around and charging up, the creative spark is more than a memory and for the first time in a while, I feel creative and alive.

Now, can I make something of it or do I give in when the real-world pressures start to mount, when my wife thinks I'm just loafing around, when I need to run household errands (already today the phone has rang at least four times- twice my wife has called twice with small requests of how I use my time) instead of sitting at my desk and doing "work" that doesn't pay me (yet), etc.? Time will tell. All I know is, it doesn't do me much good to think about it obsessively as opposed to just doing the damn work and letting things sort themselves out.

Yeah, the picture was just to break up the fact that this essay is too damn long. Also, the picture is an attempt to just doodle and have fun making marks and seeing what comes out of it without wondering if the art comix people think I'm too genre or the genre crowd thinks I'm too avant-garde.

Man in space

2009-02-16T14:56:00.006-05:00

How to make it in comics?

2009-02-14T12:13:00.010-05:00

Five helpful suggestions on how to make it in the comic book business:

Blatantly imitate someone successful- why struggle to find your own voice when stealing from others is called an homage? The industry was built on stolen intellectual property so why bother inventing anything new? Comics people are all about trying to relive their childhood so anything new will just be mocked, feared, resented and hated so don't even try.
Photo reference all your art -make sure you use only porn actresses faking orgasms for the women no matter how inappropriate to character's emotion or age. Just light box some lines over the top of some blurred out photos and you have a comic!
Pick on someone more famous than you to create a flame war. Isn't this why the Internet was invented?
Make friends with people who are already successful -even if you suck people will hear your successful buddies singing your praises and assume you have talent even if you don't. No one will find out the truth until you're already famous by which time they'll be kissing your ass (following rule #4) trying to build their own career (unless they decide to follow rule #3 but your legion of ass kissing fans should provide an adequate defense). It's like a pyramid scheme for cartoonists!
Supply editors with sex/drugs/shallow praise/free drinks -bribery seems to not only be welcomed, but expected. Comics people tend to be drunks, perverts and degenerate gamblers so this is probably your best bet for success.

These handy tips seem to have worked well for others. Why not give them a try? Let us know if they work for you...

Happy belated birthday, Mr. President

2009-02-14T11:23:00.003-05:00

Manga girl

2009-02-09T15:50:00.000-05:00

Cthulu!

2009-02-09T15:48:00.003-05:00

Vampirella

2009-02-08T23:37:00.005-05:00

I had drawn this a while back, scanned it in and spent way too much time putting in color. And the color was still awful. Finally put some more time into it and sort of re-thought how I was approaching the colors. I still need another pass at the colors and details but considering where it started, it's finally starting to look nice.

Oh, and I've never even really read a Vampirella comic. It just happens to be a character I thought I could get a good pin up out of. When looking to draw spooky, disgusting or sexy she at least allows you to hit 2 out of 3!

Manga boy

2009-02-07T17:24:00.003-05:00

A while ago I found the first 2 volumes of the manga series Loveless by Yun Kouga on sale at my local comics shop. Outside of Planetes by Makoto Yukimura, Dragon Head, the works of Erica Sakurazawa and the works of Ai Yazawa I haven't really read too much manga. I tend to just sample stuff when I can find it on sale. I really liked Loveless. It had the typical fight manga set ups but the intrigue of the mysterious death of the main character's brother and his weird relationship with his brother's friend make it very interesting. I liked the art most of all. Like a lot of manga the storytelling is right in the moment and the emotion, the line is very fresh and lively and the characters are distinct and drawn with an understanding of body language and gesture.

As I was reading the volume I found myself doodling a lot of his compositions and character. This is one sample that I decided to color. It wasn't doing much for me until I decided to duplicate the flattened image layer, lay down a Gaussian Blur and then Unsharpen Mask it really hard. It added a nice roundness and warmth that wasn't there before and the image came to life a bit more since I was going to color this one using very flat color shapes. Most of my colored stuff lately has ended up way over-done with textures and brushes, probably because I'm just scanning character sketches and trying to convince you they're fully developed drawings by adding some flash to it.

Work on a day off

2009-02-03T09:40:00.005-05:00

So, as I posted last time around I now have Mondays off of the day job. I spent most of the day trying to ignore the Internet while working in Photoshop. Mostly, I scanned old drawings and worked on a couple of them, trying to improve my coloring techniques which I've never been happy with. I also worked on a logo for a friend I can't show yet and most of the drawings I worked on ended up being for the Secret Room blog (*must be 18 to enter) where I post my more adult-oriented glamour girl art and dirty drawings.

All in all my first Monday off was a good day. I tried to divide my time equally between various projects, including getting some housework done (so the wife doesn't pressure me to find a part time job- the hard part will be making sure I work enough hours the other days to keep my paychecks roughly equal to what they are now) while also working on enough art projects that I feel I actually accomplished something. I've got to make sure I actually accomplish stuff at home on my day off and don't get sucked into some on-line game or Twitter or something equally useless and time-wasting.

Then again, I can't put too much pressure on myself and expect to get 100 pages of comics drawn or something equally ridiculous. I did want to spend more time actually drawing than I ended up. I have a bad habit of playing around with too many layers and layer options and textures and backgrounds, etc. once I get a drawing into Photoshop. I end up over-working stuff that was essentially a sketch or character study.

So, my plan is to spend the first couple weeks acclimating to my new schedule, blogging a bit more and trying to come up with a plan. I have so many projects in my head that I can't possibly get to them all. The hard part will be sorting them out, figuring out which are ready to go and which need more time and planning. I plan to pick a couple projects each week to push forward and keep rotating until I have an idea where everything stands and which seem the most possible, promising, and fruitful. In the meantime, enjoy a selection of old sketchbook stuff worked to death in Photoshop trying to add color so it doesn't look so bland on the web...

Being downsized has its merits

2009-01-31T12:22:00.007-05:00

So, thanks to the horrible economy and the fact that I work in the newspaper publishing business I now find myself with a new work schedule which means I am down to a 3 1/2 day work week and might lose some money from my weekly paycheck at a time when my family can hardly pay its bills.... and I'm happy about that! I now have a 3-day weekend including a Monday where my wife will be working and my son will either be at school or daycare (where my wife works). I will have to work 11-12 hours days to make up the lost time taking Monday off so that will be a grind but I'm looking forward to it in a weird way. For the last year all my comics projects have ground to a halt because of work and life. I have a tough time coming up with ideas or sitting down drawing when also trying to listen to my son tell me about his battles in Star Wars Battlefront or my wife is talking to me about which kids in daycare wouldn't take their nap. So, I will enjoy the extra day off and the time to hopefully get off my dead arse and start producing some art!

Anyone who looks at my recent flurry of posting and compares it the archives will notice I've been trying to post more here lately, this was an effort to hit the ground running with my new schedule. I've also been posting a lot at my art blog for dirty pictures . Hopefully as I enjoy my increased time off and get more drawing done I can break out the scanner and post some more art here which is something I haven't done enough of in the past.

The piece I posted was from last year's sketchbook which I scanned and played around with in Photoshop. More to come!

The benefits of a monopoly: Free shipping!

2009-01-20T20:54:00.004-05:00

Once again I was thinking about the news that Diamond is raising their minimum sales order threshold to $2500. I'll state right now that I've never solicited a comic through Diamond, although I've looked at their web site information in the past and read everything I can about the solicitation of a comic and the act of being a "vendor" to Diamond (that's how they refer to comics publishers and artists). I started to do some more research and found this page (that's a Firefox transcript of a PDF- if that link doesn't work then here is one to the PDF) which reaffirmed my understanding that a vendor is responsible for freight costs to Diamond. By the way, that site is a great step by step numbers guide for a person looking to publish comics.

Now, I'm also fairly certain that retailers are responsible for freight from Diamond to their stores. A little research backs up that suspicion. Wouldn't you like to be the middle man dealing in a product that didn't cost you money to get to you or out to the stores? All you have to do in that situation is provide shelf space for the short time product sits in your warehouse awaiting delivery to stores. Obviously, there are other costs but the physical transport of the product is usually a prohibitive cost in doing business. Diamond outsources shipping in both directions.

According to this article by Chuck Rozanski at Mile High Comics, one of the ways Steve Geppi took control over direct market comics distribution was that he bought his own trucking company and the savings in freight costs helped gain him a competitive advantage. I can't find much else on that with my feeble attempts at using the Google. Though I did find this interesting Business Week profile from 1997 that also includes a gem about Geppi being "an unpaid adviser to Marvel since investor Carl C. Icahn took control in June." The article glances over some of Geppi's history as a comic book baron...

Geppi constructed an elaborate--and flexible--system of air and truck shippers to whisk books to retail racks nationwide. If one carrier ran into trouble, another leaped in to haul the colorful cargo. Timely delivery was a big hit with avid readers, who wait eagerly for their comics to arrive at the store every Wednesday. Publishers liked it, too. Says Paul Levitz, executive vice-president at No.2 DC Comics Inc., home of Superman and Batman: "He does an incredible job moving the product."

Diamond's advance hasn't been trouble-free. Some store owners complain that his near-monopoly has let him hike prices. And in the early '90s, publishers pumped out too many titles, leading to a glut that damaged the entire industry, particularly Marvel. Geppi got hurt when Marvel, looking to save money, decided in 1993 to distribute its own books. Overnight, Geppi lost 30% of his business. He scrambled to make up the loss via DC. By dangling attractive discounts, he expanded from handling half of its deliveries to all of them. Geppi also branched into comics-related trading cards, video games, and collectibles.

Wow. So in one article we find that Geppi gives advice to Marvel while running a business in which he cut an exclusive deal with it's main competitor? Sometimes you just have to shake your head when reading about the comics industry.

But back to the point, if Diamond's shipping costs are completely outsourced to the vendors and the vendors to which Diamond vends then Diamond hasn't been hurting through recent fuel increases. So, what could possibly be Diamond's motive for squeezing the industry for few more pieces of gold? More from that Business Week article...

Now, as an adviser to Marvel, Geppi is pushing the company to bring out new characters and freshen its mix. Marvel had pared its 200-title list to 45. Geppi feels that's going too far. And he thinks Marvel should use its clout to get special rates from printing companies for new titles, which tend to lose money. Although it's too early to tell what the impact of his counsel will be, there's little doubt that Marvel values his expertise. Geppi's free advice is hardly selfless: A robust Marvel will boost his business.

Read that last sentence again and maybe a couple more times.

Diamond gives New Year's lump of coal

2009-01-17T17:05:00.008-05:00

According to Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon, comics direct market distributor/monopoly Diamond has announced that they will end the practice of publishing their Adult Previews catalog. On the surface this seems like no big deal and just a reaction to the current economic situation. But dig a little into and it's another sign Diamond is using its marketplace position to do what it wants, when it wants without concern for anything except its own ability to milk the comic book direct market for every penny. I guess Steve Geppi's love of those old Donald Duck comics taught a couple of things courtesy of Uncle Scrooge.

I'm sure the market for adult comics in North America have tanked over the years. Once upon a time it was the naughty funny books that saved Fantagraphics from extinction and allowed some creators a way to hone their skills and make a few bucks. Since the explosion of the internet comic books as stroke material seems silly now but once upon a time it wasn't as easy as entering some key words in Google. Except for erotic manga, I think the proper term is "ero," I think the market for these books was small though obviously it was strong enough to keep Diamond printing the extra supplement until now.

Strangely, the only extra supplements of the monthly Previews catalog that Diamond publishers were the adult stuff and the stuff from Marvel which was the end of the Distributor Wars that kicked off when Marvel went exclusive with Heroes World and set off a series of dominoes that resulted in Diamond acquiring exclusive rights to everything by DC, Dark Horse, Image and anyone else of any sufficient size who saw the writing on the wall. Diamond made them sign exclusive deals with promised they'd be featured in the front of the catalog- a practice today that continues to inhibit the creative destruction and entrepenuerial spirit which have always made comics one of the most vibrant art forms. The adult catalog was the only place where smaller publishers were able to gain an equal footing with more established companies and exclusivity wasn't a big deal since none of the exclusive publishers were pron publishers.

The problem here is that Diamond is the exclusive distributor of most comics to the direct market and forces you to pay upwards of $5 every single month to see what comics you might like to buy in 3 months. Due to the fallout of the Distributor Wars which resulted in many shops going under and others being pushed to the brink, most comics shops no longer take chances of products that might not sell and are non-returnable, forcing customers with odd tastes to order their product sight unseen. The Previews catalog has been a way to find out what's coming for those customers who like product that's not a top seller.

It's been my contention for a long time that Diamond needed not less catalog, but more! Many comic shops owners don't bother to look at anything but the Marvel catalog of the exclusive publisher front half of the monthly catalog. Those that do wade into the rest of the catalog find hundreds of pages, mostly made up of collectible kitsch and licensed garbage with a few small indie publishers buried somewhere in the mess. For years, I've begged that Diamond either put the toys & collectibles or the indie publishers or both into their own catalog. Many argued it would cost them money but given that they charge money for their own catalog or they could simply choose to post it on-line I find that argument without merit.

In fact, the biggest problem here is the fact that Diamond posts a copy of their catalog order form on-line and the text-only listing of its contents without any solicitation information! Yes, its another example of how they use their monopoly to squeeze money from the industry without care or concern of the long-term health of the market. Diamond could easily post a PDF of the monthly catalog on-line or add the solicitation info to it's website but it chooses not to so it can charge you money to find out information which might help you make a decision to buy more of its product. This is a tell-take sign of an abusive monopoly.

Steve Geppi is the robber baron of comics and ending the practice of publishing the adult catalog is simply another example of this which will be ignored by most of the comics press which has long ago turned a blind eye to Diamond's abuses. Most "serious and unbiased" comics commentators will buy the excuse this is economic-based, which it may partly be. The "mainstream" comics press doesn't care because they get the comics they want without problem (and because they're scared to lose access to the big 2 publishers) and the snobby art comix crowd buys all their comics at the big city comics festivals or at the few decent comics shops and doesn't care about the 90% of the country that doesn't live near the coasts or in Chicago or a handful of cities with premium comic shops.

In other words, ho hum... just another example of why comics suck and nobody cares because it probably doesn't affect their ability to buy Secret Invasion or Kramer's Ergot.

What I hate about comics

2008-11-08T11:49:00.004-05:00

I usually try to follow comics industry news but lately I've checked out. First, it's football season and then in case you didn't hear we had a little election. So, I've spent a lot of time reading about the NFL and the GOP. For a while I was hitting the comics shop on a regular basis but quit when I realized I wasn't buying anything I really wanted.

But really what's got me down reading about comics is that lately there's some things making me sort of angry about comics. Let me vent....

I hate the fact that some big link blogs seem to always pick up on every doodle from certain artists while completely ignoring others. I saw a link today on a well-trafficked site which featured an artists new avatar which was simply a photo turned into a vector drawing (not even by the artist!) which can now be done with one click in Illustrator.

I hate that all it takes to be a "comics industry advocate" is be a female comics reader with a LiveJournal account and sexual trauma they're willing to share in public. It's a little too easy to beat up on comics for being sexist but most of the outrages offered aren't even that outrageous compared to those in the real world and so it's hard for me to take them seriously. When given a chance to be outraged between a rape of a very minor comics character or that real rape victims are charged for the evidence collection kits police use to find their attacker, I think one just seems silly. Especially when much more popular forms of entertainment are even worse in their sexism. I see it as a cheap way to fame and way to insulate one's views from criticism.

I hate the endless cliques that seem to form where it seems that anything that falls outside of a very narrow parameter is seen as being without merit. I like a lot of different styles, genres, artists and I generally just look for what's good without paying attention to whether it's cool enough for the art comix snobs or if it has enough Star Wars reference for the super spandex fan boys.

I hate that there are more great comics now than ever but you can't find them anywhere outside of a few metro area without ordering on-line. I live within an hour of at least 6 comic shops and most don't carry more than 1 or 2 titles each from Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly or Top Shelf and never carry stuff from Alternative, Buenaventura or other boutique publishers. Yet they seem willing to buy numbers of unsold comics from the Big 2.

I hate that some news sites seem to think it's new when an artist is having a fund drive in order to buy a new XBox or pay for their colonoscopy. I'm all in favor of charity but it doesn't seem to be applied evenly. Also, I'm practically a socialist but even I understand that private health insurance is available and if you are low income there may be programs like Medicaid that are available. Let's keep the charity for the people who need it.

I hate that many popular comics figures aren't even all that good. Mediocre work is championed because someone lives in New York and has lots of important friends they go drinking with on weekends. While there will always be the gadflies and socialites in any scene, comics seems overwhelmed by networkers who are famous (in comics, anyway) for being famous and haven't really done work of any significance. As long as you have the right friends you can get your foot in the door. This opens the door to many bad artists feeling their work would be more popular were it not for a conspiracy against them. Things would be better if comics were a meritocracy. Being a fun guy to hang with after a convention at the bar should get you friends, not a contract worth 6 figures.

I hate that monthly, serialized comics don't do a good job of giving you value for your money, a self-contained story that can be read on a one-off basis or even a recap so people who can't remember every little detail from something they read a month ago or don't buy every single issue can get up to speed. If comics people can't figure out to make a distinct unit of entertainment them maybe the monthly comic should just die already.

I hate that most comic artists can't draw ears to save their lives. Even the great manga artists seem to not understand the very simple structure of the human ear. Some things are hard to draw but ears are not. I know not everyone is aces with anatomy but most artists don't even try to draw ears correctly.

These are some of the things bugging me about comics lately. I know I can't change them and bitching about them will only get me accused of being jealous I'm not more successful than I am but I still had to do it anyway. I know my attitude is bad but sometimes somebody needs to give the comics industry a kick in the pants.

16 years ago

2008-08-24T22:41:00.000-04:00

"These days, it seems as though believing in even the possibility of such simple things and obvious things as basic order and unconditional justice is the product of a foolishly optimistic and laughably unrealistic mind. What the hell's happened to us, anyway?"

- Lou Stathis in Reflex magazine, 1992

Found this quote in a Vertigo comic I picked up in the dollar bin at my local shop a while back. That month's Vertigo comics had an obituary for editor Lou Stathis who died in 1997 from a brain tumor. I found it particularly relevant to things I've been thinking about recently concerning politics and science fiction. Once upon a time one could imagine the world getting better, that technology could make our lives better. Now, it seems humanity is doomed to be forever distracted by "bread and circuses" and we shall go the way of the Roman Empire, perhaps taking the planet's hospital atmosphere with us while furiously texting away on our iPhones about some viral video we just watched.

Stathis seems like one of those people I'd have loved to have met. He chose to work with many of my favorite artists and helped create some great books. Not to mention that his work in Reflex really opened my eyes to cartoonists like Kyle Baker and Dan Clowes when I was probably reading lots of X-Men.

What's up, Manchester

2008-08-16T11:39:00.003-04:00

For some reason this blog is getting a lot of hits from Manchester, England in the last few days with none of them coming from inbound links. So, just out of curiosity, what's up, Manchester? You can leave a comment or send mail to my profile name (Joe Willy) at Red Flag Publishing dot com.

Web comics are the answer

2008-08-09T08:36:00.004-04:00

In my last post, I talked about how I believed the comics industry, especially the mainstream "Big 2" publisher, should embrace the anthology as a means to deliver the monthly, serialized "floppy" comic book. Because of changing economics and industry dynamics I think the anthology is a way for the larger publishers to go back to their roots and return to the successful formula that launched their greatest creations, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and countless others.

Now I want to talk about how I think the smaller companies and independent creators need to take a harder look at web comics as their model to replace what used to be the means for unknown or underground voices to enter the comic book industry, the black and white indy comic. Although, I would also like to see more indy anthologies (and there area and have been a a lot- Mome, 24/7, Flight, Comic Book Tattoo, Drawn & Quarterly, etc.) but the problem in today's market is that distribution has devolved into a nearly mainstream-only delivery system in the majority of most direct market comics shops. Retailers, forced to place their bets on what they will sell and not get stuck having to keep (or if they do what might have a shelf life) are betting on Coke and Pepsi's big names and not stocking very deep into the distributor catalog.

In fact, in an average 6 months I shop at at least four area comic shops. A fifth I used to go to but gave up on. In the aftermath of the 90s these shops all slowly cut back on their ordering of alternative comics, even as that part of the industry developed superstars like Los Bros. Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware, Chester Brown, etc. When retailers got stuck with the bill for thousands of unsold "hot" properties, they counter-intuitively dumped the stuff that appealed to aesthetic or literary interests and firmly entrenched themselves into the fanboy collector market by placing even more chips in the basket of the Big 2.

And so I have over the years found it harder and harder to find interesting alternative work. Stores that used to get an issue of The Comics Journal, Acme Novelty Library, or Optic Nerve might now just order a couple extra copies of Punisher War Journal or Catwoman. Because of the deeper discounts from the publishers who have signed exclusive deals with Diamond, retailers have gone with the products with greater profit margin and a "reliable" customer base- the every Wednesday crowd.

Now, I see where more and more indy comics creators have gone from publishing comics to making mini-comics. Higher paper costs and printing increases have helped this along. But once upon a time a tiny publisher or sole creator could expect to publish his book on a press, have Diamond carry it and see a fair amount of orders. Now these creators are forced to go to photocopier publishing or print-on-demand (POD) and hand-sell their creations, meaning if you don't live near these creators you have almost no chance of seeing their book. While some web sites have attempted mini-comic distribution on-line they were often plagued by poor site design and interface, a lack of preview art, little to no advertising, and perhaps in the early days a reluctance for consumers to engage in e-commerce (print fetishism may be an issue here- some of us still want to touch the merchandize- to "squeeze the Charmin" as it were), not to mention high shipping costs- unless you want to order a dozen mini-comics you may be paying as much for shipping as you are for the product you are ordering.

Meanwhile, we've seen a generation emerge that has been creating web comics for several years and already produced "superstars" that make a living at their work and are getting signed to book deals from major publishers. Sadly, most of the people embracing web comics seem to be humor-based strips often aimed at youth culture niches such as gamers of fantasy-based or furry-oriented. While it's nice to see these areas flourish there is a gaping hole where the traditional indy comics crowd and aspiring mainstream creators should be. While we've seen a start very recently with projects like The Chemistry Set, Transmission-X, and Act-i-vate, I still see a lot of newer creators dumping money into print without first establishing a desire for their product, something which can be created almost free by using the internet and web comics.

This lesson was one learned the hard way. Long gone is the time when creators could create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon with a self-published black and white comic or the days where an R. Crumb could sell-sell his way from Zap #1 to a chateau in France. In fact, I'm not even sure it's still possible for a Dan Clowes to come up the way he did, starting with Llyod Llewelyn and then moving to Eightball, selling enough copies to at least keep going and progressing. I also think the fact that a lot of record stores used to carry indy comics was a boon to the industry, not only providing an alternate sales outlet by by having music fans get turned on to interesting artists that could provide cover art, helping further expand the reach of the artists and also help provide a more stable outcome. Alternative newspapers also serialized comics and bought illustration from comic artists which further made it possible to keep the young artists going and improving. A lot has changed...

Now, the best way for an artist to be seen is to put art on-line and hope it gets picked up by Boing Boing or some other outlet that bring eyeballs to a site and creates exposure for an artist. The upside is now you can be seen by millions, but the trade-off is that you are now not just competing against the artists in your city or region to get noticed but every artist in the world. While you can still make some money off print it seems harder than ye olden tyme days and I think that means artists have to be willing to make work available for free on-line- something which goes against the instincts of many people who value their creations and believe them to be of some worth. We live in a culture where people are supposed to be paid for their work, in fact that's sort of how capitalism works, yet we find ourselves in a time where there's billions of web sites with countless hours of free content available. Every artist has to compete against YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, and more.

It almost seems like some of us are doomed to have missed the boat of the black and white boom of the '80s or even the alternative comics explosion of the 90s, yet maybe aren't young enough or tech-saavy enough to take advantage of the changes of the Aughts. I can see a whole generation of younger people almost intuitively understanding the world they live in, while this thirty-something is caught between the rock of a withering print industry and the hard place of a constantly-evolving world of tech which seems to move every time I think I've grabbed it. But I still see others who haven't seem to have caught on. It amazes me how many comic book message boards I go to where some unknown author is looking for an artist for their 12-part mini-series to be printed ye olde fashioned way.

Print is still viable if you an art comix creator who wants to silk screen covers and hand sell at conventions which is great if you live on the East or West Coast and your goal to is to get printed in Kramer's Ergot. Print is still viable if you're looking to break in at Marvel or DC. But if you're one of those other people who wants to work in the middle- in that grey area between precious (sometimes pretentious) art comix and the commerical (sometimes exploitative) superhero industry, I think you're only chance of making a go of it is to put your comics on the web and try to build an audience to eventually sell books, prints and other merchandise to in order to be repaid for your work. The audience for that work is poorly served by the current state of the industry. Not that I think web comics are the perfect solution, but they are the best one we have right now.

One last note about the fact that web comics aren't the perfect solution, but the best one we have right now: A big problem I see is that the audience still wants to read stuff in print, except for the people who are actually fans of web comics- usually people following humor based comic strips since a four panel strip isn't hard on the eyes the way a 300-page graphic novel would be. Current fans of web comics expect one thing while fans of print expect another. We need more web comics portals that cater to fans of print-based comics looking to find what's new and interesting, to help those creators build an audience for their off-line work and we also need to educate the audience that the distribution and retailing arms of the industry are acting as a blockage that is preventing the next Eightball, Love and Rockets or Cerebus from being a success. At a time when comics are dominating Hollywood and boosting bookstore profit margins, it seems even harder than ever to find good comics in your comic book store.

Anthologies are the answer!

2008-08-04T22:17:00.011-04:00

I was thinking this past weekend about writing a post about some issues regarding the comics industry and then along comes Tom Spurgeon with some well-timed nuggets of wisdom that really kicked my thoughts into overdrive. While Spurgeon occasionally seems a little vague or obtuse in making his points or in his use of historical analogies (although, the fault probably lies more in my ability to understand than in his writing), I find a lot there to digest.

For one, the hard number that it takes 3500 copies to break even on a black and white comic or 4600 for a color comic is nice information to have out there in an industry where hard numbers are hard to come by and sometimes even avoided. Some comics pros even take to message board bemoaning the fact that some pesky journalists demand to see sales numbers. Thanks to Spurge for plucking that one out.

The idea of a sales threshhold “magic” number also leads one to question the “profitability” of comics that fall under that sales threshold. I guess cover price has a lot to do with it since most comics come in at $2.99 and a book priced a buck more might be able to sell less copies but make more than that minimum needed to continue publishing. The price of “talent” and overhead likely is a factor- comics that pay an inker, a letterer and a colorist (or person to do graytone- colorist doesn’t seem a good term to begin with but especially when a book lacks “color”) are probably much harder to be considered a profitable or even break even venture with so many mouths to feed from one product. An indy book created by one person for a small company could maybe continue on under the 3500 level where a book with a large creative team from a mid-level indy company might not (or, conversely, maybe the mid-level company has a lower overhead cost per-book than someone doing it on their own as a sel-publisher- an interesting thing for further future investigation). Much like a touring band (where a power trio may be able to make enough to keep going where than 9-piece orchestra has a much tougher time), a book with less people to pay can be profitable at a smaller level.

This is one reason why Vertigo takes so much heat when the monthly sales charts are discussed at Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat is that people understand that a large company like Time Warner (DC) means more overhead and higher costs, thus more copies need to be sold to keep a book going. Although a large company can also afford to swallow early losses if they think a book will pay for itself later (either in trade paperback form or through other media such as film deals and licensing). A Big 2 title selling near that 4600 mark has to be in danger of cancellation and Spurgeon makes great points that companies seem to be doing a piss poor job of finding a larger audience to sell those books to.

This gets in to the next phase of this rant and that is the catch-22 in comics where the existing audience and market often do not support new and interesting books that could represent the growth of the medium and the industry but the mythical “potential” audience isn’t interested in walking into a direct market store outside, perhaps, of a few select outlets scattered in major cities, most along the coasts.

Every comics reader with a blog seems to realize what has been labeled the “death of the floppy” but few seem to understand the larger implications of it and companies seem so beholden to the cash flow of their weekly output into the direct market that they appear unable to break free. Lots of fans have offered advice but are shot down with the usual line that they don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t understand the big picture, and if only they knew the inside super secret password then they'd see that all is fine and even if it wasn't there's nothing anyone can do about it anyway. But it’s pretty obvious to most anyone with half a brain that the big picture is the entire media landscape is shifting and things don’t look much like they did 10 years ago and in another 10 years may be even more unrecognizable. It’s apparent that the landscape has shifted and all media companies are having to evolve or die. We may be a long way off from the deaths but it’s never too soon to start the evolution.

One part of that evolution is for everyone to realize that the current method of serializing comics in monthly pamphlets is becoming more economically unsustainable. Higher paper costs, higher gas prices leading to greater shipping costs and other factors are driving up the costs of what was once a disposal “sampler” package. In the early days of comic books, the basic format was a higher page count with a variety of many stories in different genres- in other words, the Golden Age blossomed under a rather similar model (with many less pages, obviously) now employed by Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat- more bang for your buck and giving new series a chance to find an audience. With production and distribution virtually free on-line more and more people are understanding that a model that includes the web in the “first run” makes more sense* (something I will hopefully tackle in my next attack on this subject matter).

Currently the US comics market makes it’s money on monthly pamphlets that later get collected in trade paperback. The problem is that the model is redundant. It might make sense if the cheap sampler package was affordable, on cheap paper and could be easily recycled or thrown away, but due to the collector’s market that boomed in the 90s (and led to a bust, I might add) we now have what was once a trash, disposable medium printed on archival paper with prices that effectively shut most people from buying as many books as they’d like or a newcomer from sampling that first taste that might get them hooked, especially children.

The answer, it seems obvious to me, is for comics companies to go back to the model that worked in the past when paper prices were high- more pages and more stories, and definitely more genres. We see this starting to take place, and I don’t expect like some commentators do, that this change can happen overnight or that companies will ditch one reliable revenue stream
(even if it is a dwindling one) to try a whole new one. But I do notice that more and more I notice Marvel repackaging recent material into different format, this is especially true with it’s kid-friendly Marvel Adventures line where stories that originally ran in the monthly comic get reprinted along with others (including some classic early stuff from the 1960s) and puzzles, games, pin-ups, etc. in a larger magazine format (which I think are even sold at newsstand outlets or big box stores). Marvel seems willing to at least test the waters.

Now, my dream is to the Big 2 US comics companies try to publish one monthly anthology, perhaps at the end of the month, collecting all their “family” titles into one themed anthology book. Imagine all the Bat-Man titles in one “Detective Comics” anthology bringing that book full circle? Imagine one complete Avengers anthology or X-Men. Imagine an all-Vertigo anthology? Marvel is already doing as much with it’s thrice-monthly Amazing Spider-Man though still publishing three separate books- how about on the fourth week they publish one fat with those three issues in one comic for those who can wait and want it all in one chunk? Why not try it?

Does anyone in comics realize Heavy Metal has been around for as long as it has operating on a similar model? No one in comics seems to notice Mad Magazine or Nickelodeon as potential models either.

What I like about the idea is that, as I said, it brings comics full circle. One reason, besides lowering overhead, that comics flourished in the days when they were published in thicker anthology style comics is that anthologies allow for experimentation. If DC had only featured one hero in Detective would they have given Batman a chance? If Marvel didn’t have an anthology of “Adult Fantasy” would Spider-Man have gained enough audience to sustain a monthly series? Without those anthologies would names like Siegel and Shuster or Kirby or Ditko be as well known? Would those creations even exist?

Anthologies allow unknown creators to get a few pages in front of an audience to develop, grow and even experiment. Anthologies allow new ideas to be tested in the same ways big companies use test markets to try new products. Marvel threw a lot of stuff at the wall in those early days and a lot of things didn't stick, but enough did that a tiny company with a handful of employees became a dominant force in the comics industry and now in Hollywood... all because of anthologies.

The Spectre

2008-08-03T10:32:00.003-04:00

I was messing around with an old sketch of The Spectre I did a couple years ago. I had picked up issue #1 of the new DC series in the dollar bin at my local comic shop and had drawn a really fast head sketch. I'd scanned it in and never did anything with it until the other day when I was surfing through my hard drive and ran across it. I spent a little time in Photoshop, extending the body and adding some cool effects and it ending up looking kind of nice- too nice considering that the initial sketch had some real weaknesses. So, I decided to start over from a new (and hopefully better) drawing. It came out looking quite a bit different than what I'd planned as I tend to follow the "happy accident" theory of picture-making where I sort of experiment and mess around and see where the picture leads me instead of following a pre-planned formula.

This is a character I always liked even though I never really read anything with him in it. I missed the 70s supernatural superhero wave by a few years but I always saw the back issues in the comic shops and have been drawn to those characters. The Spectre is a dead cop superhero and so he provides a nice mix of three genres- crime, horror and superhero- all in one character.

Comic Con Job

2008-07-27T13:56:00.002-04:00

The first in a series of lessons for those wishing to break in to comics. Comic Con Job is a satirical look at the comics industry. I decided to start this series this weekend in honor of the San Diego Comic Con. In this first episode I make fun of Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Wood, Jhonen Vasquez, and David Mack just because I am an angry and horrible person.

Actually, since I've worked in editorial cartooning I'm just used to being able to name names and ridicule specific people to make my points, but since this is comics and everyone is so damned sensitive I figured I'd go with the oh-so not clever technique of slightly altering the names even though it's obvious who they are. I mean, I would actually like someone to hire me to draw comics some day so I can't completely burn my bridges here. And besides, I've learned that even if you don't like someone politics or public persona, chances are when you meet them they are actually a nice person so I try not to make it too personal. I'm really trying to make fun of the industry of comics, but occasionally the professionals and fans are going to take some collateral damage.

I started this series because, as someone trying to find a way in to working in the comics industry, I find most "how to break into comics" books and blog posts completely full of shit. They give you all this vague generality and talk about how nice everyone in comics is when the truth is that the industry seems to me to be made up of some of the most insecure, cliquish, vain, self-satisfied and emotionally-stunted human beings one could assemble into a large convention hall. The truth is that is that the way to break into comics is probably a combination of shameless salesmanship, endless knocking on doors and bothering people, a little bit of luck and skill, along with fellating a few of the right people. And there our story begins....

Breaking and entering.. how it started

2008-07-26T11:45:00.000-04:00

In my last post I started what is basically a series detailing my attempt to get work in comics. In that post I explained how James Hitchcock and I came to self-publish an anthology comic called "Red Flags" and assemble a second volume which we are attempting to find a publisher for (read it for free right now). In trying to keep that post from being an entire novel I sort of shorted some things I felt merited a little more discussion. What follows is an attempt to explain why we started self publishing in the first place...

Besides an earlier aborted effort, Red Flag Publishing only got started when I told Jim about a contest being held by Vipe r Comics. The company was asking for a 5-page backup story that would run in one of their crime/detective books so they were looking for something in the crime, detective or horror genres. I told Jim about it since we'd been discussing how to take a stab at comics and he agreed it sounded like something we should try.

That aborted, earlier project I referred to was a sort of Sin City graphic novel series Jim had created which he'd tried to get me to draw when we first met about 10 years ago. I've never been much into the detective genre while it's one of Jim's favorites. My interest waned (partially due to not caring much for drawing office interiors and other mundane things and also the fact that Jim was turning in page after page of script and by the time I got drawing he had probably hundreds of pages of script and I just felt a little over-whelmed when most of my life I haven't been able to draw comics of more than one page in length very often) and nothing ever came of it. Several years having passed, I now felt I was ready to actually finish some comics since I could now clearly see my life passing (hitting 30 and having a kid will do that to you) and I figured it was now or never. That 5-page story seemed like something I could actually complete.

Jim nearly instantly turned in the script for Mr. Smith. It felt right. It was a noir piece (Jim's specialty) that was also magical realism (more to my liking). He'd found a way to combine his peanut butter and my chocolate. It was a very down-beat story which probably reflected his grim thinking in the days when his marriage was crumbling. In fact, the thing that really got me set on drawing comics was realizing how good of a writer Jim was and wanting to help show other people as he was stuck editing copy for a shopping guide where the most creative he could get is in his yearly attempt to sneak in a funny headline when they hold the annual "Magic Get-Together" in Colon, Michigan ("Magicians Descend on Colon" is still my favorite).

We didn't win, but we did learn a couple quick lessons. First, the company failed to announce the winner when they said they would. It was the first of many signs that comics companies don't operate by the sale rules as most other companies (it doesn't help that people aren't exactly making millions printing and selling comic books so it's not like they have massive editorial departments). Jim and I both work in the newspaper business where you simply don't get an opportunity to blow a deadline. Being one hour late could cost the companies hundreds or thousands of dollars and we have a constant stream of jobs due that all have to fit in their alloted time on the press- being late isn't an option (even if it's "just" announcing the winner of a contest). However, in a field where books routinely ship weeks late, sometimes months and even years, this behavior seems sadly commonplace and typical. In fact, if a company is merely late then they're usually doing well by industry standards in an arena filled with shysters and sociopaths who routinely start up fly by night operations that scam consumers and creators, make quick cash and then disappear only to show up again years later to take advantage of a whole new crop of people.

When the winner was announced, one sore loser trolled the message board bad mouthing the winning entry, the editor and the company. While I obviously felt we'd created something good and the winning entry wasn't exactly my cup of tea (mostly, I felt it didn't really fit the book it was going into, while it had a very cool Dave Cooper meets Jhonen Vasquez feel, the scraggly humor-based goth art style and cuddly characters didn't exactly sit comfortably next to the main series as I saw it but it wasn't my choice to make I wouldn't dream of bad mouthing a person for simply choosing what he thought was the better choice), I could see how the artist had a lot going for him with an attractive art style solid storytelling.

If only I'd been able to match the darkness of the script maybe we'd have won. But I still have a way to go in building up my confidence in drawing comics, I can see that my lack of confidence expresses itself in the lack of boldness in the art itself- both in terms of pushing the drawing and also in the spotting of blacks. I'm so afraid to make a mistake that I'm scared to lay down the blacks, seemingly unable to commit and risk making a mistake. Still working on that though I can see how with each new page it gets better.

So, now we had 5 pages of comics that, despite losing the contest, didn't seem half bad. We'd already been discussing an idea which was starting to form into something and the annual convention in Chicago was coming up. Jim started writing script pages for what would become the fist chapter of "Snatched," a thriller about a series of child abduction and the FBI agent and reporter who slowly find out the truth.

I sent out a handful of book to reviewers and it got some nice feedback:

"For their first steps into the world of comic books, James Hitchcock and Joe Willy show a great amount of promise; a strong grasp of story and an eye toward graphic pacing. Hopefully they will continue to hone their respective skills and continue to turn out creative stories." - Tanya Crawford, Broken Frontier

"...it's pretty good for someone just starting out. The stories hang together pretty well too: the first chapter of a kidnapping story with wider implications, and a vignette about a killer-by-assignment. Not bad for the price." - Steven Grant

The main reason we ended up publishing the book was because we'd decided to hit the Chicago convention and wanted something to show other professionals, editors and publishers. Jim wouldn't be able to get anyone to read his scripts without having someone draw them and I was unlikely to get someone to take a chance on me, even if they liked my art, because I lacked proof that I could finish enough material to make a book. Artists in comics are notorious for flaking out and blowing deadline, a side effect from it being a very laborious and back-breaking endeavor which often reaps little reward, especially in a cost-benefit analysis.

So, we weren't really planning on even selling the book, simply throwing a $1 price on it just because our printer had given us a large enough break that it sounded like an easy decision to print 200 more for only about $50 extra. I've always had a hard time turning down "up selling" like when I bought my computer and an extra $100 gets you even more RAM and maybe aDVD burner it's kind of hard to turn down even when you don't really have it to spend- it seems foolish to not take advantage of such a good deal.

We even threw in a script page as a gag, since we saw it more as a business card we thought it would be cool to have an actual page of Jim's script with a fake "post it" note from him asking me to draw an extra scene despite the book being due at the printer the next day (which actually, is sort of what happened- Jim realized he needed an extra scene but by then we'd have blown the deadline and gone over our page count if I'd have actually drawn the new scene). Needless to say, most people haven't "gotten" the joke. It was yet another example of us being neither fish nor fowl- creating an ashcan/business card yet selling it to people as if it was a complete comic.

Another mistake was thinking we'd sell it for a buck and give people a deal since we knew we didn't really have a full and complete comic- one short story and a longer story which was the first chapter of a larger story which included one page of script- and anything more would leave people feeling cheated. Yet by only pricing it at a buck we disincentivized ourselves from working hard to sell it- when each sale nets you a mere .50¢, it's hard to make any money without selling lots of books. If a store only wants to take a handful on consignment are you really going to drive across town, let alone out of state, to pick up the money you made from those sales?

This leads into the many mistakes we've made along the way and lessons learned which is a good time to break this off and promise more later. Thanks for reading- more soon!

Breaking and entering... comics

2008-07-24T08:15:00.001-04:00

Almost two years ago (has it really been that long?), Red Flag Publishing published the first issue of our anthology Red Flags. We published what was basically a 20 page business card on crappy newsprint (a misunderstanding in reading the quote from a printer not used to dealing with comics and assuming they were printed on that 1940s war-rationed toilet paper) mostly to take to conventions and send to publishers as a way to introduce ourselves without seeming like rank amateurs. Every "how to break in" article or message board thread suggested actually producing something. And since Jim and I were both in the publishing business (newspapers) we figured that was simple enough. Jim's a writer and editor and I work in layout and produce graphics so we pretty much had the bases on production covered. We got them published just in time to hand quite a few out at Wizard World Chicago, we traded many people for copies of their self-published or small press books. We didn't have a table so we were limited on how many we could sell but it was a good taste of what the world of comics was like. We vowed to come back bigger, stronger, faster.

We very quickly had ourselves a second and much better issue of Red Flags. Immediately thereafter, writer extraordinare James Hitchcock began soliciting other artists to draw the products of his fertile imagination as he was writing faster than I could draw them. We also received a submission of mind-blowing comics from Slovenian creator Matjaz Bertoncelj.

We hit the Wizard World Chicago convention again, this time with a small table and what we thought was an attractive set up. The convention wasn't a spectacular success since we got stuck in one of the side aisles of Artists Alley in a sort of no-man's land (and I can see how that display wasn't as cool as maybe we thought and that guy sitting there probably scared off people). There also wasn't any big names to draw people past our set up so we could get the valuable foot traffic retail establishments seek when hunting for a location- we were the guy at the end of town near the industrial park. Plus, we still only had our first issue for sale. Our second issue was 99% done but at the show we had only some fliers I'd made- a tabloid size sheet of paper folded over with one page devoted to hyping the three stories for our next issue. We also had another flier hyping the work of Matjaz with a couple actual sample pages. I should mention that Wizard World Chicago is also a very mainstream town, despite Chicago being home to some of the best indy comics creators and retailers, and many fans just aren't interested in anything besides the spandex and cape comics from the Big 2- I even talked with one award-winning mini comics creator who flew out from the West Coast and sold less books than we had!

After the show we began posting our stories at Web Comics Nation as a way to stir up some publicity for the next book. But our press releases got ignored by the news sites we sent them to, despite Jim being a professional editor who knows how to craft a press release and despite those same sites featuring press releases of much more questionable news content or for work which is far less professional in its level of quality. We got a decent number of hits from our own efforts (the web comics aggregator sites worked very well for us) but no reviews, comments or feedback to show for it. Our plan all along had been to self-publish the second book at some point and hit the convention circuit again. Those plans fell through when our publicity efforts fell on deaf ears and then my partner Jim got busy with starting his own retail frog business, and any funds we'd have used to publish a second book dried up gas prices shot through the roof.

Finally, after much deliberation I asked Jim if it would be OK to start seeking publishers who might be interested in the stories we've produced. One of our problems has been that neither Jim or I has a published credit in the industry yet. In an industry filled with thousands of amateurs all trying to break in, it's hard to be noticed when you are just one of a faceless herd of rookies looking for a try out, especially if you aren't part of a circle of friends based in an urban center as this industry is extremely cliqueish and creators tend to bring their friends up the ladder with them, leaving less spots in the life raft for everyone else. So, we've decided that instead of peeing into the wind and continuing our self-publishing venture, that for now we'll try to entice someone else to focus on publishing so we can focus on creating (especially while Jim gets his store up and running to become the engine that funds our future publishing empire- insert maniacal laugh here).

So, long story made not quite short, last night I sent off the first submission to a publisher who produces an anthology featuring comics that kind of straddle the line between indy and mainstream. Something we've noticed in our past efforts has been that what we're doing is neither fish nor fowl in a industry where people like their niches. We're too mainstream for the indy crowd since we tend to play in genres and feature realistic art (except for Matjaz) while we're too indy for the mainstream crowd that follows name creators and tends to favor their genres untainted by things such as deeper meaning and politics. Besides, their anthology is also known for giving a break to people who go on to become something in the industry.

The only other time I've submitted any comics for publication was to Top Shelf (when they still pretty much just published their Top Shelf anthology, long before Blankets or Lost Girls) around 1999 or 2000 for which I got back a nice postcard saying that my story wasn't quite what they wanted but they'd be interested in seeing more of my work. I never got back to them and actually kind of gave up on comics for a few years. It's only now that I'm realizing how much I really want to do comics and that I'm sort of wasting my life waiting for the industry to beat down my door to beg me to come work for them.

So, hopefully this is just the first in a series of posts about my efforts to hustle my way in which ends with me getting paid to create comics. Stay tuned...

Beating up on The Beat

2008-06-24T19:12:00.000-04:00

In a post called "Things We're Sick Of," The Beat's Heidi MacDonald tries to clamp down on recent comments on her blog regarding comics industry rumor-mongering (regarding DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio). Apparently, Ms. MacDonald is sick of:

Uninformed speculation. Granted it is an interesting time in the comics industry, and a lot is happening. However, wild guesses and baseless speculation is a waste of time and prevents accurate information from getting out there. And trust me, none of us know what is going on behind closed doors at any comics company.
General shittiness. Behind every rumor is a real person. Let’s all try to remember that.

The problem here is that just days ago MacDonald was trucking in "baseless speculation" herself:

"While rumors on the floor of the con were running to Didio..."

So, from now on if the Beat posts Internet chatter or behind the scenes rumors then does that mean Heidi MacDonald is breaking her own rules? Or does it just mean the readers can't respond to it? Will the Beat no longer trade in Internet chatter and behind the scenes rumors? Or is this another example of people in the comics industry acting as they are the gatekeepers, the guardians of All That Is Good, and the rest of us are just unwashed idiots who don't know whereof we speak, unless of course we are allowed in "the club" by either getting a job in the industry or hanging out with the right people at convention after parties?

Frankly, I think comics people have extremely thin skins compared to every other single industry in the known universe. Sports writers regularly write the worst about athletes and then have to interview them in the locker room. Even small town politicians may not like the local paper but they still usually have to tolerate its presence while the rabble get to voice their opinions at public meetings and in the paper's letter columns about the job they're doing. I work at a small town newspaper and the kind of stuff that gets said about comics pros, editors and publishers is nothing compared to what gets said about your local Drain Commissioner or City Councilman. When you assume a public position you also take on the nasty fact that the public gets to comment on your job performance, even when you think they don't have a clue what they're talking about. A lot of news about the goings on in the government or corporate America are "wild guesses and baseless speculation." The way to combat rampant rumors and idle speculation is with little things often known as facts. For some reason the comics industry treats facts and the truth as if they are things to be avoided at all costs.

For some reason in comics we get this "who cares about the fans" attitude as if everyone criticizing the industry (or someone in it) was some unwashed fat tween hyped up on Monster energy drinks, bitching on Newsarama between playing Guitar Hero and checking his MySpace page. There's never an acknowledgement that a few comics readers might be thoughtful and intelligent people who may have a wealth of life experience and knowledge both about comics and the 99.99999% remaining portion of the world. I don't doubt that many comics fans are complete idiots, I've met enough of them to understand that. I guess what I want to see is something in the middle, is that too much to ask? Can't we separate the people who want to bitch and moan about the comics they buy every week from the careful observers of the industry who just want what is best?

All that said, I completely understand why Heidi said what she did. I have some experience moderating a blog that sees heated discussions and it does get tiring how some people can't seem to moderate themselves and have to say things they wouldn't say in person. But it seems that just days after trucking in gossip, The Beat is trying to act as if it had nothing to do with the exaggerated rumors of Mr. Didio's "demise" at DC and fanning the flames of the industry gossip that ended up catching the ear of a mainstream news reporter. That finally lead to a public statement that said Didio was safe in his job and now we have all the gatekeepers who passed along the gossip decrying said gossip. Heidi likes to say she's "hearing things" but then not report what those things might be, which usually means idle speculation will fill the void in The Beat's comment section and elsewhere. I think someone needs to call her on that, but since Heidi's "in the club" it probably won't happen, unless it's by someone like me who's firmly not in "the club." Team Comics rides again...

Dave's back!

2008-06-21T17:11:00.001-04:00

A while ago, my local comics shop, Apparitions, was robbed and the owner David Pirkola was shot in the attempt. The comics community stepped up to the plate when they heard what happened and that Dave, being a small business owner, did not have health insurance. Yes, America- best health care in the world if you can afford it and if you ignore all the other civilized countries (which have better outcomes while spending less and covering everyone), but I digress...

I just stopped there for the first time since the incident and happened to be there when Dave visited his shop for the first time since he got out of the hospital! He looked good considering all he'd been through. The other guys at the shop have even helped clean the place up and make it more open and hopefully safer! I don't much more than that but I wanted to let anyone know who was wondering.

By the way, don't forget to send a small donation to help Dave. In looking for the link to the iFanboy donation page, I also ran across a blog set up by the guys running Apparitions in Dave's absence which would be a good place to look for more info as well.

Whatever

2008-03-02T10:58:00.001-05:00

Look at my Man Thing!

2008-02-10T13:42:00.000-05:00

My business partner, Jim, suggested a while back I post more sketches and art. Since most of my news and opinion blogging is taking place at the official Red Flag Publishing web site, I figure this makes even more sense.

The Marvel comics character Man-Thing has a special place in my heart. Not only do I like the innuendo inherent in the name (in fact it sounds like something you'd read in one of those spam emails) but also the only comic that has ever made me terrified was an early issue of the Man-Thing series from the 1970s. A girl in my 5th grade class gave me an old beat up issue of Man-Thing where the spirit of an old woman takes the shape of a red cloud and chases after her husband and his hunting dog. For some reason it scared me shitless and I've always wished more comics were able to have that effect on me. So, here it is: Whosoever Knows Fear, Burns at the Touch of the Man-Thing!

This just in!

2008-01-20T11:20:00.000-05:00

About every month or so I take a couple minutes to search the internet for new mention of our comics to see if any of the hundreds of hours I've spent trying to get someone to notice what I'm doing has paid off. Usually it results in the same old hits but this morning I found a new review of Red Flags #1. I don't see a date for when this was posted so I don't know how long it's been up. It sorts of echoes what most people have said so far, that Jim Hitchcock's stories are compelling little yarns exploring dark terrain with twist(ed) endings in the vein of "a sort of modern Tales From the Crypt" but the art is lacking in backgrounds/depth/polish. I wish I could muster more disagreement but I agree with all my bad reviews- in fact, I would probably judge the results more harshly (if you doubt this, ask my wife or Jim). Unlike some artists, I can take a hit and hopefully people can see an improvement with my newest story, The Copy Editors.

And so it Moves

2008-01-06T00:23:00.000-05:00

At our WebComicsNation page I've just added a story by Slovenian artist Matjaz Bertoncelj. Bertoncelj is a former editor of the Stripburger comic anthology and has published numerous comics in Europe. Not too many people in North America have been lucky to read his work... until now. We proudly present to you- Malleus Maleficarum ("The Witch Hammer").

In the story, the inquisitor Lupus is schooling his rabbit apprentice on the finer points of torturing young women to extract their confessions of witchcraft. Lupus is a sadistic pervert convinced of his righteousness. I think Matjaz does an amazing job of walking the tightrope of being absurd yet brutally real, wry yet over the top, alternatively touching and wince-inducing.

I had hoped for a long time to publish a book of Bertoncelj's work through the Red Flag label and still hope to, but the market for small indy publishers is dead without first having created a reliable online audience or by having the dedication to attend every convention for a couple of years (perhaps both, actually). Deciding to first attempt the former strategy, we hope you check out this free story (maybe not even the best one to start with for various other reasons but it seemed the best introduction to the characters and the world) and hopefully somebody at Fantagraphics stumbles upon it and puts him in Mome or commissions an Ignatz book from him because I want to see more work from this guy!

We're back with MORE FREE COMICS!

2008-01-02T22:24:00.000-05:00

After an unfortunate delay, I've finally returned to posting stories that will appear in the comics anthology Red Flags at our page on Web Comics Nation. This time up it's a gruesome little tale called POV. With a twisted and troubling script from James Hitchcock and some graphic and gruesome art by James Tingley, we think our fans will enjoy this next offering.

Sometimes the difference between life and death depends on your point of view...

And stay tuned for more cool comics coming soon!

Red Flag Publishing joins Web Comics Nation!

2007-11-10T15:43:00.000-05:00

Tired of trying to break into a direct comics market struggling to sell mid-list books from the Big 2, let alone anything from the other 99% of the industry, Red Flag Publishing has made the decision to premier the content of its next publication free at Web Comics Nation. At first it was hard to give something away for free that we felt had a value, but it's harder and harder to get noticed in today's crowded comics market with hundreds of Hollywood producers, screen writers and actors lending their talents or even just their names to new products flooding an already over-crowded market filled with aspiring or semi-professionals trying to get attention and sell books.

Since the release of our first two books, we've had to struggle with the decision of what to do next. Paying for another print run wasn't going to be easy and we still had plenty of books unsold (the more you buy the cheaper they get so those extra couple of hundred books sounded like a great deal and besides, the public was going to LOVE it!). The people who read our books enjoyed it but we were having trouble getting it into the hands of the public. We really wanted to put together another edition of our anthology of new and promising comics talent, "Red Flags," and we had some amazing stories from writer James Hitchcock and some really sweet drawing from artists James Tingley, John Moore and me- at least, I hope I managed to not embarrass myself completely this time out. But we didn't want to make another tree fall in the woods with no one around to hear it. So we sat on the book and thought about our options...

Watching from a distance, we've seen more and more people find a way to break the bottle-neck of comics distribution via the World Wide Web, especially through the free entry point of increasingly popular web comics portals such as Web Comics Nation. While we're not new to online comics distribution, having already offered paid downloads of our comics at our own site for some time, this is our next concession to the realities of the marketplace- it's the difference between opening your new business on the outskirts of town or right on Main Street. Appearing at Web Comics Nation and accessing their audience and free tools, allows us to better concentrate our efforts on producing more content, instead of raising money for our next print run or trying to post on a million message board threads to draw people's eyeballs to our site.

This is actually something I'd been wanting to do for some time. At first I had to talk Jim into it, he was initially hesitant about giving something away for free and then asking them to pay for it later but after a while I wore him down and kept showing him examples of people who had successfully done it. The hard part was talking our financial backer into it- after all if we weren't losing money hand over fist then how could he hide his massive winnings from those illegal Thai cockfights he fixes? In the end, all it took were a couple dozen shots of some strange green liquor, a few lines of Bolivian snow and one young woman of questionable age in a cheerleading costume to get him to agree to the plan.

While we plan to retain our own domain name and home page and also continue to pursue print distribution, we plan to offer all the contents of what we hope will soon be the printed edition of Red Flags #2- or whatever it ends up being called- at our Web Comics Nation page. So far, the first story has been posted with more to follow soon. We hope you enjoy!

Preview

2007-09-29T18:40:00.001-04:00

Coming soon to a comic shop near you?

The future of the Comic Shop

2007-09-17T08:52:00.000-04:00

Like many comic book readers, I found my first comics on a spinner rack at a grocery store (where I would sit and read a bunch of comics while my mom shopped- a great way to keep your kid from asking for all the sugary cereal with toys in the box!) and other news stand outlets, and then migrated into specialty comic book retailers as I got older and began seeking a more consistent and dependable source for comics (not to mention variety and quality- as I began to understand the potential value in comics I no longer was willing to buy a dinged up comic with bent corners and cracked spine if I could help it).

A little history

There's no doubt that the opening of the direct market allowed the comic book industry to survive and helped comics aimed at an older audience flourish. But it also seems like a double-edged sword. As news stands quit carrying comics in favor of more expensive and higher profit items and readers moved in to specialty stores, comics quit being sold to children in spinner racks and instead were purchased by college kids in dusty basements and back rooms, the first "real" specialty stores. Later, comic shops started popping up in strip malls and more convenient and cleaner locations but the die had already been cast. Younger generations were not exposed to comics in a convenient and "safe" setting. And, as sales skewed to older fans, the books themselves were made to appeal to the core demographic. The result was a gradual and depressing toward "grim and gritty" comics and a loss of the fun and innocence of those earlier comics.

Let's be honest here, comics needed to grow up. For too long comics were seen as a medium for illiterate children, socially awkward teens and horny GIs. However, the sort of "mature" comics that bloomed in the direct market were often as juvenile as those "kiddy" comics, just with lots of sex and violence thrown in to make them "adult." However, those direct market shops also helped foster the insane amount of quality and truly mature comics we have today. Fantagraphics sold lots of issues of Love and Rockets and the early works from Dan Clowes and more next to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Elfquest. We wouldn't have cartoonists in the New York Times if not for those early direct market shops fostering the works of the post-underground artists. When federal laws cracked down on the head shops that once sold hundreds of thousands of underground comics, there had been no market for works outside the big 2 superhero comics companies, Marvel and DC.

However, as time went on, the market boomed and busted. Shops realized they could no longer carry everything being published and began to concentrate on the new speculator market that was being created by Marvel, DC and new companies like Image which threatened to usurp the dominance of the Big 2 in the marketplace. Store shelves were flooded with pre-bagged, poly-chrome garbage that sold to get-rich-quick investors who were buying comics like they were stocks, to be tucked away until a later when they were sold at full market value. But, much like Beanie Babies, these comics eventually proved worthless as millions of readers buying the same unreadable garbage collectively realized their goldmine was actually a big pile of shit they couldn't get rid of. In an instant the market crashed, stores went bankrupt and thousands of readers, feeling ripped off, left the medium.

In the aftermath, the remaining shops were forced even more to cater to the whims of the few hardy souls that remained, the hardcore nerds. The distributor wars that left Diamond the sole survivor only made matters worse as the top companies signed up to exclusive deals that helped shut out the smaller publishers from the market even more. Suddenly, the diversity and innovation of earlier days gave rise to a downward spiral of superhero decadence with company-wide crossovers filled with continuity porn that further decreased the chances of anyone outside the closed circle entering the medium.

As the direct market became increasingly hostile to smaller publishers and anything outside the One True Genre of superheroes, the alternative publishers and the rising crowd of American manga repackagers, who were no less despised and ignored in comics shops, looked to new markets. In the end, their desperation helped open the bookstore market and led to the shelves of manga and graphic novels we see in bookstores and libraries today. Finally, once again children have access to comics, but it's mostly manga and that has the superhero nerd boys crying in their Frosted Flakes.

However, the bookstore market has remained open and friendly to the superhero publishers, helped along by a Baby Boomer sense of nostalgia for the funny books of their youth and a increased awareness through Hollywood film successes with superhero properties. Finally, we're starting to see a rebirth of comics aimed for kids, mostly manga and collections from large publishing houses such as Bone or The Baby-Sitters Club and a whole new generation is being turned on to the power and thrill of comics. Each year bookstore sales grow exponentially and with it I fear that the direct market stores which once helped shelter the medium from the storms of 70s, 80s and 90s may not be long lived.

We are at a crossroads.

As readers find fat trade paperbacks and thick graphic novels in their bookstores, which are mostly well-capitalized chain stores with friendly staff and good lighting, the dank and dingy basements and strip mall outlets that once held a monopoly aren't doing so well selling those flimsy monthly pamphlets now known somewhat derisively as "floppies." Even the companies who once controlled the direct market now find it hard to sell new properties or to maintain sales on existing ones without the same sort of trickery that led to the implosion of the 90s. Variant covers have returned and there's been the creation of the "slabbed" comic which can come with an "official" guarantee of its worth which somehow is much more if you make it unreadable by encasing it permanently in a protective sphere.

The market is trying to find ways to rescue floppies- witness the "slimline" books at Image (slimline originator Warren Ellis' Fell, Casanova by Matt Fraction) that are affordable and contain material not available in the later collected editions, an idea which has also been picked up by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip with their book Criminal at Marvel's Icon imprint. However, from what I can see none of these books are setting the world on fire with their sales. Readers have now been trained to wait for the trade but publishers are still relying on the serialized monthly books to to turn a profit, or at least pay for the initial creative costs of the book.

Many are now openly wondering if the monthly, serialized comics will die out, but I have yet to hear anyone ask the same question of the stores that rely on selling them to an audience increasingly willing to wait months for the eventual collection which they will buy for a deep discount on Amazon or at their local Borders or Barnes & Noble. Direct market stores not only lose that weekly or monthly customer, they don't even end up selling the trade. How much longer can this continue before we see another round of store closings? At what point do we start to ask if the direct market stores are still needed or even wanted?

I think the direct market specialty comics shop still have a vital role to play in the industry. In much the same way that I prefer to buy music at a local indy record store or rent videos instead of relying on Netflix, I enjoy the weekly shopping experience to browse the shelves to see each Wednesday's new releases but I fear this will become a thing of the past as smaller publishers give up serializing in print for the cheaper and more accessible web. First Blockbuster and now Netflix have killed the local video rental store. Is the same thing happening to the direct market comics retailer? I fear so. So, the question is, what's next? If I had the answer I'd be starting to make Steve Geppi money.

Gaze into the crystal ball

My gut feeling is that comics shops can survive as they are for another 20 years, at least until their hard core base fans start dying off in serious numbers (given the average weight and health of comics fans maybe it's more like 10 years). For any form of comic book retail business to actually survive and flourish, my bet is they will have to start to look less like the Android's Dungeon from The Simpons and instead resemble more those chain bookstores a bit more and start skewing their business to the GNs, trade paperbacks and manga while creating a comfortable and inviting shopping atmosphere for all ages- which isn't likely to happen unless one of the big book chains decides to start a specialty comics-only chain which is also unlikely.

Chances are, outside the big cities where such a shop could survive, most of us will be sampling comics online through serialized web comics and then ordering the collected editions through Amazon or buying them at a local big box chain bookstore unless something drastic happens.

However, it's entirely possible (through perhaps not probable) that the new generation of comic readers I mentioned earlier migrates to specialty shops as they seek out material that isn't from Scholastic or Random House- after all, small publishers will always by the innovators while the gigantic book publishers will perfect their ability to gauge what will sell and forget or try to bury everything else. I also wonder if there's not a glut of sub par books coming out from these publishers and if bookstores, librarians and readers may grow increasingly wary of anything not deemed a certifiable hit (and as more of these publishers enter the field if they don't crowd out the ones who helped create the market- American history is riddled with innovators who failed because a more well-capitalized competitor came in, stole the idea and made it a success). Could the same sense of creative freedom that existed during the black and white boom of the late 70s and early 80s lead to another generation of comics talent that can't find a home in the stable of the giant publishers seeking its fortunes on the shelves of your local comics shop? Or maybe the spinner rack comes back to your local grocery store. Anything could happen... after all, this is comic books ; )

Coming soon!

2007-09-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

The Red Flag crew is in the middle of putting together another anthology which is making me really excited. The work coming in from the other guys has been far and above what I've seen from them before. I hope that my work also has been raised another notch with this new book. So, without further ado I present to you my most recent pages:

The reviews are in!

2007-09-01T18:03:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything here so I figured it would be best to catch up on old news and update with the reviews we got for our first effort in comics publishing. We got some nice reviews for our initial efforts:

Steve Saville at Silver Bullet Comics had this to say about Red Flags #1:

The narrative is well paced and shows promise. We have been invited to test the waters ... and I for one having got my feet wet am looking forward to diving in and swimming a length or two.

Professional comics writer Steven Grant gave thumbs up to Red Flags #1:

It's pretty good for someone just starting out. The stories hang together pretty well too: the first chapter of a kidnapping story with wider implications, and a vignette about a killer-by-assignment. Not bad for the price.

Broken Frontier's Tonya Crawford was also kind to Red Flags #1:
For their first steps into the world of comic books, James Hitchcock and Joe Willy show a great amount of promise; a strong grasp of story and an eye toward graphic pacing.

Steve Saville at Silver Bullet Comics was impressed with Literotica #1:
I was taken by surprise and was ultimately impressed and almost moved by the way the words worked in conjunction with the images to tell a powerful and sad story. In a Word: Unexpected