I guest blogged over on Pop Candy while our beloved matriarch takes a vacation. Go check it!

I had four jobs for our June 6 wedding: 1) Book a school bus to take guests from the hotel to the wedding site; 2) Pick out the booze; 3) Take the lead on all of the paper craft items (save the dates, invitations, etc); and 4) Purchase party favors.

The first two tasks were easy. The third was quick and fun -- I designed all of the mailings and the autograph book, got Robin to approve them, and sent them out to printers I've worked with in the past.

The fourth task, however ... what does one give for a favor? No offense, but weddings where the guests go home with a Hummel figurine knock-off filled with candy or a wine stopper etched with the bride and grooms names are, you know, a bit tired. That type of favor wasn't fitting for a wedding that had www.theawesomewedding.com as its website. There was only one favor for such a wedding, and that was a commemorative wedding comic.

Read the rest here.

Labels: comics, news

A. David Lewis was nice enough to give me a “thumbs up” on his blog even though 2008 was a bit of a major let down for me (award nominations aside, the only thing that was newly published was my road journal on DCist). It’s not like I was trying – I was hustling Postcards II to no avail, the Sam Cooke book had some wonderful pages drafted by Nate Powell but life stalled that project several times (it seems like it’s kicking back up again, though), and this “ultra-secret, ultra-cool” project I was working on got delayed twice. Now it’ll be kicking up late next year but, honestly, I’m not going to believe it until I see a check.

And now it’s 2009 and I’m working on new things. I’m doing fun stuff, not worrying as much about book deals and big publishers. The money’s drying up anyway and I have a pretty stable day job that’ll always pay me more than comics will ever pay me anyway.

I have an 8-page story with Chris Piers in DC Conspiracy’s upcoming war anthology about the first time chlorine gas was used in Ypres Salient. I’ve become obsessed with Ypres and I’m going try to get an ongoing or a web comic moving that takes place in the region.

Robin and I are cowriting an 8-page comic for our wedding. Noel Tuazon’s drawing my story and Chris Piers is drawing Robin’s. It was a fun little book to work on and it allowed Robin and me to take many a wine-fueled stroll down memory lane together.

I’m also collaborating with Dale Rawlings on a really fun webcomic. It’s Jack Chick meets video game strategy guides. We’re doing a Jack Chick/Sims comic now to see if people dig it.

And, as I said, there’s supposedly some life in Sam Cooke again. I need to hook up with my cowriter, Chris Stevens, to get the full story on that one. We’ve been playing phone tag since Sunday.

I also have a couple of pitches out with various magazines and websites. I’m trying to move away from comics a bit, honestly. I’m finding that I enjoy comics more without the stress of payment and metrics. With articles for magazines and websites, however, I need the stress and payment in order to get them done.

If I make money in comics I make money in comics. I really don’t care about the money enough to chase it, though.

Labels: comics, news

I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I've been running ever since...

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die
'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

I go to the movies and I go downtown
And somebody telling me, "Don't hang around"

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

Then I go to my brother and I say, "Brother, help me please."
And he winds up, knocking me back down on my knees

Lord, there were times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

That's a little Sam Cooke for you. Barack Obama paraphrased that song during his acceptance speech last night. There's really nothing I could add to the punditry about Barack, but I'd thought I'd say a little something about this song since I've been reading about Sam for quite some time. "A Change Is Gonna Come" was Sam's masterpiece, one of the last songs he recorded before he died. He was inspired by Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" and "These Times Are a-Changing" and realized that he should be doing something as powerful and meaningful as those songs. At the time Sam was already breaking new ground. He owned and published his own music, which was extraordinary for a black man in those days, and his cross-over appeal and sales records was unparalleled at the time. But despite all of this, despite the fact that he built an empire, he'd still look around and see that he was treating as less than human. He recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come." Bobby Womack was one of the first people to hear it and he told Sam, "It sounds like death."

Sam Cooke died a year later. The song was released post-humorously, first as a single and then on Sam's final album, Ain't That Good News. Sam never saw the song released and never saw the impact; the song became the soundtrack to the Civil Rights movement.

It's only fitting that President-elect Obama quoted from it last night. It has been a a long time coming, and the past 8 years sometimes made it feel like there was no end in sight, but out of nowhere we have Change. And Change is good.

Finally, I'd like to end this with two pages from my upcoming Sam Cooke graphic novel. I'm cowriting the book with Chris Stevens (he actually wrote this scene) and it's being illustrated by Nate Powell. I really think this scene fits the feel of this election season particularly well. It's about breaking outside of your confines and making your own opportunities. Going against the status quo. Being a Sam Cooke, or a Barack Obama:

Labels: comics, music, politics, sam_cooke

Part I - The Syllabus
Part II - A Moment in Time

Last week Chris Piers and I taught Week Three of the Writing for Comics and Graphic Novel class at the Bethesda Writer's Center. This class focused on what happens in-between comic panels (the gutters). We started with a discussion of closure and how the mind can often resolve what happens from one panel to the next provided the writer and artist give the reader enough visible cues to make the connection. We showed examples from Watchmen (below) where Alan Moore and David Gibbons effectively established scenes within a nine-panel grid by keeping at least one object consistent while moving from one panel to the next. Looking at the first page, for example, we follow the button to the foot to the man with the hose to the blood splotch to the hand on the windowsill to final shot. There's something familiar in each new panel that allows us to instantly understand where we are and where everyone is in relation to each other.




After discussing the Watchmen pages we flashed several more pages on the screen to get the students opinion on how time was being handled in each one and how the gutters were being played with in order to manipulate time. Those pages are below:








We then went into exercises that Chris Piers compiled. We started by asking students to thumbnail several short scenes borrowed from Matt Madden & Jessica Abel but instructed them to do the scenes in either three or four panels. It allowed us to discuss different ways to compress and expand on otherwise short scenes.

For the second exercise we asked the students to craft a nine-panel comic about how they got to class. This exercise allowed us to comment on how much space there is in a panel, especially for a nine-panel page, and how time between well-structured panels is often perceived as a constant for reader.

The third exercise was borrowed from Paul Hluchan. The students teamed-up into four groups and told the story of an astronaut that went to the moon and came back to the wrong planet. Once we had sixteen panels we hung them up on the wall and the students systematically removed one panel at a time while ensuring the story still made sense. As expected, the panels at the beginning of the story disappeared pretty quickly, mainly because it's always easy for the brain to intuit what happened before the story's actual start point. Seriously, if you ever need to cut something down, chances are you can just throw away the opening.

The fourth exercise was borrowed from Isaac Cates. Pretty self-explanatory, we presented Panel 1 and Panel 3 to the student and asked them to give examples of a panel two that showed moment-to-moment, subject-to-subject, action-to-action, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur transitions.

And that was it for that class. This week we're working on dialog and I put together some great little exercises for that one...I think...

Labels: comics, education

What to do with Superman?

I was killing time at the Writer's Center last night with friend and fellow teacher Chris Piers. He asked me what I'd do if DC gave me a run on Superman. It's a good question - Superman has to be the hardest character to write. He really doesn't have any flaws, he really can't be beaten, and his alter-ego lives comfortably. Superman in inherently boring, and a writer needs to write his or her ass off to make him interesting. Never-the-less, I think I came up with the Superman pitch to end all Superman pitches and I'll just throw it out there in case DC's looking for some new writers.

So...there was this other race on Krypton - one that we haven't really heard about yet. Let's call them Kryptanos. These guys were the cheap labor and political hot topics on Krypton. The rich Kryptonian whites hired them illegally to work the fields and mow the lawns. If a Kryptonian needed some help with home repairs he'd zip on down to the local drug store in his pick-up spaceship and pile a couple of Kryptanos into the back. These guys stole jobs from hard-working Kryptonian whites, even though no Kryptonian white would be caught dead doing the work the Kryptanos were doing.

Anyway, Krypton blows up and everyone's dead except for Superman...or so we thought! Turns out a handful of Kryptanos managed to escape the destruction and after lazily siestaing through space for many years they finally found themselves on Earth. Of course, the Earth's yellow sun gives them superpowers too, and thinking they can make a couple of bucks for cerveza they spend their days heroing around Metropolis as well.

Turns out the citizens of Metropolis love these guys. The Kryptanos remind Metropolis of a less "in-your-face" Carlos Mencia whereas Superman is kind of like a less "urban" Bill Cosby. Now when little Betsy's cat gets stuck in a tree she doesn't call Superman for help - she calls one of the Superhombres.

Superman is obviously livid. Metropolis is his city, after all, and these dirty Kryptanos think they can just show up and take his job? So Superman goes on this crusade to not only kick the Kryptanos off of Earth but also to put up a fence that'll keep other Kryptanos from getting in. It becomes this huge political issue with superman stoking the fires for multiple story arcs and ends with the citizens of Metropolis picking up torches and pitchforks and brutally murdering the Superhombres in their sleep. Everything goes back to normal...until the Superhebes make their way to Earth and hoard all of Metropolis's money!

Labels: comedy, comics

Today was the first day of the four-week Writing for Comics and Graphic Novels course aimed at High School students. One of my students asked where a story idea comes from. The question gave me pause for a moment but I think I put together a pretty good response that I’ll share with you all.

I started by saying that you need to realize when inspiration grabs you and be able to run with it. I gave two anecdotes…

1) I talked about the inspiration behind Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened. I was in an antique store with Robin, bored out of my mind. I was flipping through a box of postcards, admiring the illustrations, when I realized that one of the postcards was used. It was mailed in 1941 from an Army Private to his mother. He was about to be shipped off to fight in World War II. I thought, “This could be the last time this kid communicated with his mother.” The anthology was born from that thought – the fact that there are bigger stories behind the several sentences people scribbled on postcards. The anthology started that day – I reached out to several friends to see if they’d be interested in telling stories inspired by used postcards.
2) There’s a young adult book I’m writing now that’s inspired by a comment my dad jokingly made to my cousin who was five at the time. My cousin corrected my dad on a little factoid about dolphins and my dad called him a “know-it-all.” This idea popped into my head about a kid who really knew everything that there is to know about the past, present, and future. Why is he that way, how does he deal day-to-day, and what is he supposed to do? Most importantly, how do I turn him into an interesting story? That one idea morphed into this story about a kid who knew everything except for why it is he knows everything. It’s the hero’s quest, where this kid who was so bored with the world realizes there’s still knowledge out there for him to obtain.

Inspiration…it comes to us at the weirdest times. Comics’ greatest advantage is the fact that our stories are only limited by our imagination. If inspiration strikes for a story that involves war, zombies, angels, and rampaging dinosaurs you can do it in comics for the same budget as a romantic comedy. Comics allow you to nurture your most ambitious inspirations and ignore nothing.

But what if you live an uneventful life? What if you’re at the day job from 9-5, go home and make dinner, watch some television, and go to bed? What if there’s a complete lack of inspiration in your routine?

Well, the obvious answer is to make time to experience life. I can say that as a guy with no kids and I realize that “experiencing life” may be something for us folks with no serious distractions from the life we’re supposed to be experiencing. So I gave some more advice. Go to the library once a month and read every magazine you can possible read in a four-hour period.

Magazines are the perfect source of forced inspiration. They’re short, well-written pieces on a variety of topics. If something grabs you, go with it – research the topic as much as necessary to build a story around it. Here are several magazines I subscribe to in order to seek out inspiration beyond “experiencing life.”

1) American History Magazine – This is my #1 mag. It’s impossible to read an issue from cover-to-cover and not come away with several possible stories. American History Magazine is great at relating the current American environment to stories from the past. In doing so, it introducing you to figures and events from the past that are still relevant today. It’s a great way to build a story that’s buried in history yet still topical. And a story that’s buried in history yet topical is the kind of story the public loves.
2) Wired Magazine and Scientific American– If you fancy yourself a sci-fi writer, Wired and Scientific American gives you a great peek into the not-too-distant future. When you read this mag, you should think about the possible ramifications of the new technology twenty years down the line. Fancy yourself a futurist and write a story based twenty-years in the future, tied to a technology coming out in eight months. Cash!
3) US Weekly – In my defense, I don’t subscribe. Robin subscribes and she got it through some free something-or-other. But I still read the issues she leaves in the bathroom and I find it to be one of the better ways to keep in touch with the current pop culture trends. Who’s hot, who’s not, and who’s primed to cool off. You’ll be amazed how many stories can fall out of the “who’s dating who talk.”
4) Smithsonian Magazine – One of the many benefits to being a Smithsonian member. Smithsonian Magazine gives a great overview as to what’s happening in the social, geographic, and technological world right now. Again, it’s a great way to keep the writing topical; find what inspires you and grow it into a full story.

Whenever I take my own trip to the library to read magazines I tend to read the most off-beat things I could find. Seriously, I’m sitting there reading Cat Fancy and Bee Culture and Search Marketing Standard. I mainly flip through the Table of Contents to see if anything catches my eye and read the subsequent articles. It gives you a great overview of the topic, enough to let inspiration to strike you. If nothing’s doing, move on.

As far as target audiences, publishers, etc…well, that’s another topic. Right now were’ talking inspiration, and I’d love to hear any advice you all may have as to where you seek out inspiration.

Labels: comics

Earlier this week I posted the syllabus Chris Piers and I teach by at our Writing for Comics and Graphic Novel course at the Bethesda Writer’s Center. In an effort to expand on that post, and give some ideas to folks who’d like to start their own course, I’m posting the full lesson plan for Class 2.

Class 2 was all about the panel. We started with a quick run-down of all the terms and techniques that you can use when setting up a shot. We then asked the class, “What is a panel?” After several responses someone gave the exact answer I was looking for and said, “A moment in time.” That launched a discussion about the two times in comics – the time that passes in-between sequential panels (gutter-time, as I like to call it) and the inferred time that passes within the panel, usually through dialog (panel-time, as I like to call it). We talked about how writers sometimes force a disconnect between those times that could be off-putting to the reader. If a person is standing in a room and goes off on a little soliloquy the mind makes the logical connection that not much is happening visually while the words are being said. If the person is mid-punch and goes off on a little soliloquy the mind notices a disconnect between panel-time and gutter-time. We discussed how if panel time moves faster than gutter time you could find yourself with repetitious visual information for a scene (comics’ infamous “talking heads” being a good example) and if gutter time moves faster than panel time you could find yourself slowing down the action and taking the reader out of the book (although Stan Lee did build an empire while slowing down panel time considerably). We left it at that for now since we’ll be going back to dialog in class four.

We then did exercises that aimed to get the student to think visually and break scenes down to their key features. We first asked them to describe the room they were in using less than a hundred words. Some of the descriptions were very practical. They started off by saying that we were in a classroom and then listed the key features (chalkboard, piano, etc). Some of the descriptions were more robust; they set up some physical traits of the room and then set a mood, giving the artist room to maneuver. There’s really no right or wrong answer but I know that I prefer to use the latter method. It makes for a better read and it shapes the tone of the scene nicely.

For the second exercise, the students described what I looked like in less than a hundred words. We once again saw the functional descriptions and the more prose-y descriptions. In this case, I think the latter will always work better, because individuals have a personality you can never capture simply by describing their clothes, sex, height, and weight. And I also learned that I apparently look like I'm in my mid-30s, which means I'm not aging all that well.

For the third exercise we flashed pictures on the projection screen and asked folks to describe what they see as if it’s a comic panel. The idea was to pick out the key features of visually robust pictures in order to set the scene without weighing down the panel descriptions with unneeded details. The pictures we used for this exercise are below:





For the fourth exercise I flashed animated GIFs on the projection screen and asked the students how they’d represent this moving series of images in one panel. Some of the GIFs showed multiple actions but they could all be compressed into a single image with a little ingenuity. The GIFs we used are below:





For the fifth and final exercise we flashed completed pages on the screen and discussed how we’d lay it out in a comic script. Not the actual panel layout, just how we’d set the scene in the first panel’s description, describe characters as they’re introduced, and continue to pare down the amount of detail required for future panels.

And that was the end of Class 2. This Sunday is our first four-week condensed class and we’ll be doing the same exercises for the most part. Next Tuesday we focus on gutter-time in the 10-week class. I’ll post our exercises for that one next week.

Labels: comics, education

Sometime last year, the Bethesda Writer’s Center approached friend and comic creator Matt Dembicki and asked him if he would be interested in teaching an 8-week class on writing for comics and graphic novels. Matt asked me and illustrator Scott White if we’d be interested in sharing the workload with him. Matt would handle the DIY and comic history stuff, Scott would take the artists’ point of view, and I would take the actual writing and business stuff. We all agreed and came up with a syllabus.

Scott had to drop out before the class even started so we brought on Chris Piers. Our first iteration of the class was an 8-week course at the time and we probably focused too much on the business of comics and lecturing on writing for comics, not enough time exercising the students. Everyone had a semester-long assignment to come up with an 8-10 page script and we asked local artists to thumbnail the pages. Whereas I’d say the class was a success we certainly learned several ways to make it much better.

For the second iteration of the course Matt dropped out and we received a grant that guaranteed free registration for 3 high school students. We extended the course to 12-weeks and tried to include more material on the fundamentals of comics. Since we had grant money this time around, we hired some pro illustrators to 1) give genre ideas 2) give feedback and 3) provide thumbnails for scripts. We had Matt Kindt, Tom Beland, Noel Tuazon, and Jason Copland among others. Whereas we increased the amount of exercises significantly, we were asked to do more. Also, since the class was on Tuesday nights, we didn’t get any High School students. Which brings me too…

…the third and fourth iteration of the course. This time we’re doing a 10-week Tuesday night class (we have 8 students) and a 4-week Sunday afternoon class for high school students (not sure how many students we have yet). Our syllabus is primarily based around exercising and discussions.

For the 10-week course we have:

Class 1 – The Script

Introductions, a discussion on the current state of comic publishing, a discussion on the language of comics, and reviewing sample scripts from popular comic writers. In order to teach the students about iconography and how easy it is to relay ideas and objects to a reader (in case they wanted to come up with their own thumbnails or even illustrate their own minis or webcomics) we play a version of Pictionary where students have to represent what’s on their card using only rectangles, triangles, and circles.

For homework, the students have to come up with a story they wanted to work on for the semester, figure out who the target audience would be, and find examples of the art style they’d like for the book.

Class 2 – A Moment in Time

This class focuses on a single panel. We start with a discussion of the language of scripting and how to describe a scene without overwhelming an artist with details. This class is mainly exercises. We pair students up and ask them to describe their partner as if they’re a comic book character. We then ask them to describe the room they’re in as if it’s a scene in a comic book. We then present them with photos, some static, some dynamic, and some just really out there and ask them to write them up as if they’re comic panels. Then we show them a couple of quick movie clips of people walking, punching, falling, and discuss how to represent this action in a static comic panel. Finally, we work backwards from a completed page to create the script and show how information doesn’t have to be repeated. Once the tone, scenery, and characters are set you can greatly trim the level of detail that goes into each panel.

For homework, the students have to pick the location of their story segment and provide environment and character descriptions for the final comic. They also have to open up the messiest closet in their house and paint an accurate picture of it in 100-words or less.

Class 3 – Making Them Move

This panel is all about the gutters (or lack thereof) and different ways they can represent the passing of time. This class mainly looks at examples of different ways comics handle timing and has several exercises geared towards making objects move. We have students draw simple comics (like a ball dropping off of a roof) and compare their techniques. We also go back to the movies in the second class and try to represent the motions over multiple panels.

For homework we ask the students to put a couple of panels from their story together, primarily ones that represent some kind of action. We also ask the students to write a one-page complete comic story that doesn’t use any dialog or captions.

Class 4 – Talky Talk

This is the dialog class. We split it into two parts: dialog in action and talking heads. Again - lots of examples for the class from comics before going back to the movies. We’ll watch action sequences with a fair amount of dialog and block it out in comic form without losing any of the words and without stretching it out for several pages. We’ll also watch a dialog-heavy, action-light scene (probably from Rope or Glengarry Glen Ross) and block that out in comic script form. The focus will primarily be on the dialog as the sequences will be short and not complete scenes.

For homework we ask the students to write a dialog-heavy scene from their comic. We also ask the students to write a complete comic story (preferably in thumbnail form) using just dialog, as if the story is taking place in the dark.

Class 5 – Scene Building

In this class we focus on creating a complete scene in comics. We structure the class around the idea of key panels; that you want to build to these big, dynamic shots and then drop it back down again, force the reader to slow-down then speed-up repeatedly. For exercises we start with Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. We read the poem while the students pick out the key panels and then discuss their notes and compare them to three different adaptations of The Raven. We then do the same thing for the Vadar/Obi-Wan fight in Star Wars, comparing their key panels to three different adaptations of that scene.

For homework we ask the students to put together the draft of their comic scene and try to get it to us as early as possible for edits.

Class 6 – Plotting

In this class we look at the plotting across a complete story. We’ll introduce several story ideas and discuss how we’d break it down for one-shots, miniseries, OGNs, web comics, anthologies, etc. Here’s where we’ll also discuss the oh-so-important, “How to turn your 120-issue continuing series into a 3 or 4-issue miniseries.” Too often aspiring comic creators say, “It just won’t work as a mini,” without thinking about how to, you know, make it work as a mini…for now.

For homework students will write their story treatment.

Class 7 – Working with a collaborator.

This class is geared more towards lecturing and discussion. We’ll have a call-in line where comic artists can ring in and tell us stories about some of their worst collaborative experiences. In between calls we’ll talk about where and how to approach an artist, some tips for being a good collaborator, and fair agreements and negotiations.

For homework we want the students to find three artists they like and use what we taught them to draft introduction emails. They’ll be mailing these out to the artists later in the week.

Class 8 – Thumbnail Discussions

Our favorite class. This is when we get the artist thumbnails back and go over each story. Does the page look how you wanted it to look? If not, was the change for the better? If not, what did you do wrong to not convey the scene correctly?

For homework the students have to draft responses to the pages as if they were editing the thumbnails. Also, they’re asked to create a letterer’s script.

Class 9 – Pitching

We’ll go over failed and win pitches, talk about log-lines, and discuss ways to pitch our stories. We’ll also talk about what companies accept creator owned pitches and what they traditionally publish.

For homework the students will create a pitch for their projects.

Class 10 – Networking

It’s possible class 9 and 10 mesh together and class 10 becomes a question and answer day or even a genre/research class. But we will cover networking - talking about the conventions, the online opportunities, and local scenes and how to present yourself.

And that’s the class. For the high school class we essentially strip out all of the business stuff and combine classes 1-6 into 4 classes.

Labels: comics

The Small Press Expo came and went and all I have to show for it is a stack of comics. Before I get to my favorite books of the show, a couple of observations:

1) Big crowd this year. Could hardly move down the aisles at times.
2) Everyone I talked to seemed to be up from last year. It's hard, economy's slowing down, and wallets are tight but I guess a $2-mini with substance is a better buy than a $3.50 supes book that's part 1 of 6.
3) Kramer's Ergot #7...I've been pushing my library to get it even though it'll be a pain to stock and would mean they'd probably have to pass on five other graphic novels. After seeing the preview book I'm OK with passing, for now. Whereas some stories really took advantage of the 16x21 format, a good chunk of the stories seemed to just be regular 'ole comics with more panels on a page. I'm sure the book is going to be fantastic but times are rough and I wasn't wowed with what I saw.
5) I got to see the mock-up of Matt Dembicki's Trickster anthology. Gorgeous book, 24 stories, and a proposed $15 price-point. Now there's an anthology I can get behind.
4) Restaurant choices in "Bethesda North" really, really suck. This year we had a pre-Ignatz party in Plastic Farm's room complete with pizza and many cases of beer. Much better than roaming the White Flint strip-malls.

Ok comics!

Best in show seems to be Nate Powell's Swallow Me Whole. I may be a bit biased here (I'm working with Nate on a Sam Cooke graphic novel) but it's gorgeous, a fantastic read, and it did win the Ignatz for Outstanding Debut book so I'm not alone with this one.

I think outstanding design goes to Kelli Nelson's Iblis. A full-color mini with a beautiful silk screened cover and stitched with a couple of bolts.

Best value goes to SCAD's Sequential Art Anthology 2008. $5 for 200-pages of great comics - take that, manga!

Outstanding mini goes to Joshua W. Cotter's March Hare 8. Between this mini, his Project: Romantic cartoons, and Skyscraper's of the Midwest Joshua's becoming one of my favorite cartoonists in comics. Speaking of Skyscraper's of the Midwest, AdHouse had the $20 hardcover collection for sale at SPX. I was tempted to buy it even though I have all the issues. I ultimately passed because, you know, economy.

Anyway, I also got...

Asshole #2
The Pirates of Coney Island #6
Plastic Farm: Fertilizer
Plastic Farm #13
The Wonders of Science
Warrior 27 Summer '06
jobnik! Collected edition
Infandum! Ad Infinitum
Infandum! #3
Pirates of Mars
Poison the Cure #1 and #2
Pixu
Satori
The Last Island
The Abstract
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less #1 and #2
Mugged by the Gods
Discovered 2007
Blar
Fluke #6
Hell City II and Die, Pumpkin, Die ashcans

Some I paid for, some were gifted to me, some were comped to anyone who wanted one, but I'll be reading them all over the next couple of weeks.

Labels: comics, spx

Last night was the Harvey Awards, where Postcards was nominated for Best Anthology and Special Award for Excellence in Presentation. Popgun Volume 1 won best anthology and I'm just happy that Joe Keatinge was there to accept the award. The Harveys tend to host a sea of people watching proxies accept the awards they're losing because the winners never bother to show up, so it's nice to lose to someone who cared enough to be there. I pretty much expected Popgun to win - Harvey winners are determined by industry professionals and the two volumes of Popgun have stories from 85% of all comic professionals between them, it's hard to compete with that. EC Archives won for Special Award for Excellence in Presentation. I was really hoping to win that one but, if I didn't, I was more than willing to lose to Super Spy, The Annotated Northwest Passage, or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The EC Archive books are nice to have, don't get me wrong, but they seem to be pretty standard reprint books. Oh well...oh, and, a proxy accepted the award.

It's all good - I got to sit at a table with Michael Golden and Ramona Fradon, Dean Haspiel gave a wonderful little speech about seeking out and meeting the golden-age legends, Brian Michael Bendis' keynote speech was funny, Scott Kurtz's jokes were on all night, and I chatted with NYT Best-Selling author Jeff Kinney . So, on the whole, a good night.

Today I'll be at the Bethesda Writer's Center, giving a reading from Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened and manning a display on comics and graphics novels from 12-5PM. Free wine and cheese will be at the event so feel free to pass by and say hi. I will be there promoting my Writing for Comics class that begins on Tuesday.

Labels: comics, news

Last week I proposed 10 new questions polling organizations should ask the American People. In an attempt to be a nerd, I put these questions to Captain America to see how he'd respond.

1) Which candidate would you rather see cast as Catwoman in the next Batman film?

Now, now. McCain’s too respectable and Obama’s too uppity to play such an outrageous representation of female empowerment. Can I say Sarah Palin?

2) Which candidate would make a better guest judge on American Idol?

What’s that? A you tube?

3) If you were molested by your uncle as a child, which candidate would you most likely open-up to about the horrible ordeal?

I think Obama’s past as a community organizer makes him qualified to be some sort of hippy “feelings” guy. McCain would likely kill my uncle. I say McCain.

4) If all the physicists were to die tomorrow, which candidate would be better equipped to run the Large Hadron Collider?

Is that the machine Red Skull is using to destroy the world?

5) Which candidate would seem sleazier if her referred to your butthole as a poop shoot?

Obama would…ugh!

6) Which candidate would give a better bedtime reading of Shel Silverstein’s timeless classic The Giving Tree?

…

7) Which candidate is more likely for forward a chain email to 20 friends in exchange for true love and good luck?

…

8) Which candidate would give a better eulogy at your funeral?

Don’t let Tony Stark do it again. He’s a fucking faker.

9) Which candidate would make a better wing man?

I’ll take this one, Zombie Steve. Obama’s a Falcon costume away from being the best possible wing man and soldier.

10) If someone told you that a presidential candidate was beating the shit out of Spencer Pratt, would you a) assume it was John McCain, b) hope it was Barack Obama, or c) just be happy someone’s kicking the shit out of that douche?

I'd shoot him myself.

I’d eat whoever was left.

…

Labels: comics, humor

I hate sharing pitch-text with the masses before it's been accepted...but I'll show everything else.

Labels: comics, news

The 2008 election relies on one of the fundamental requirements of superhero comis: a willing suspension of disbelief. It has been a topsy-turvy cluster-fuck of an election that would never fly as nonfiction. If Grant Morrison (one of our most existential and Dadaistic writers) was to have a baby with Mark Millar (one of our most ham-fisted action-minded writers) and that baby was to grow up and become a comic writer, said baby wouldn’t even be able to write a fictional comic book storyline on par with the 2008 election. But is a willing suspension of disbelief enough to make the 2008 election a superhero comic? I think there would be several key changes to move the election to the comic world, primarily with the back stories and motivations of our main political players. For instance…

Barack Obama
The young politician with a promising future. The black son of a single parent. The ability to excite the poor and disenfranchised, the minorities and the young. Barack Obama is the living embodiment of the American Promise that inspires people to reach their full potential and love what this country could be someday.
In superhero comics, Barack Obama would be…
…the king of a fictional African Kingdom. In comics, black heroes are either reformed street thugs that stick to their neighborhoods (Luke Cage) or African royalty (Black Panther). And, in Storm’s case, she’s African royalty that became a common street thug that became a hero that became African royalty. If Obama was a comic book hero he’d have went to live with his dad in Kenya, only to find out later on that he’s the rightful heir of some secret kingdom.

John McCain
The war hero. He spent five-and-a-half years in a POW camp, undergoing endless torture, all-the-while refusing to cave to the demands of his ruthless captors. He came back to the states and thrust himself into politics, never tiring in his work for this country; he’s on a mission to reform a corrupt political system.
In superhero comics, John McCain would be…
…a super villain. It would be revealed in the third act and the presidency would not be decided by a vote, it would be decided by blood. In comics, tortured souls move on to become sympathetic villains, the kind that see the error of their ways and then sacrifice themselves to save the world from their own doomsday device. John McCain would follow the Magneto model; a concentration camp survivor who saw how evil the world could be and said, “Fuck it – I’m going to kill every last one of these mother fuckers.”

Sarah Palin
Say what you will about her politics – Sarah Palin is the first women to excite 50% of America’s white males WITHOUT being on a “Chicks With Guns”-style calendar. She’s ambitious, fast-tracked to be a power player in American politics, plays well to crowds, and electrifies audiences in a way that has made it almost impossible for Democrats to attack her.
In superhero comics, Sarah Palin would be…
…raped or murdered. I know that sounds horrible but violence against women is all-the-rage in comics. It sometimes feels like editorial sits down and says, “Hey, we need something to kick-off this big summer event – who haven’t we raped yet?” Sarah Palin could also be the bad-ass femme-fatal with two swords and a tight body suit but few characters get there without being raped, molested, or beaten to a bloody pulp by an ex-boyfriend.

Joe Biden
The longtime senator from Delaware. The champion of liberal values and ideals. The man who tries to keep politics front-and-center and often berates his opponents’ media-plays with snappy one-liners. He’s the elder statesman, the Wiseman, the person you’d rely on to do what it takes to get the job done, even if that means going against popular opinion.
In superhero comics, Joe Biden would be…
…the Canadian Prime Minister, a super villain, or an assassinated Senator. It’s hard to tell where Biden would go. If the writer were to stick to the Biden-script he’d either be a foreign politician (because there are few incorrupt American politicians in comics) or an assassinated Senator (because the incorrupt American politicians are killed in the first act).The other option would be to make him a super villain, hiding his true motives until the third act, much like McCain. The only reason I’m leaning away from this option, however, is because Biden wasn’t tortured in his younger years.

There’d be some other, minor changes, if the 2008 election took place in the superhero comics-world. Fox News would be Faux News and MSNBC would be MSDNC. Hillary Clinton would walk around kicking guys in their balls every issue and Bill would spend most of the time in his boxer shorts. Huckabee would be the leader of a cult and Mitt Romney would actually be a robot. Finally, Joe Lieberman would be a traitor to his party and commit career suicide during a nationally televised event…oh…wait…

Labels: comics, editorial, humor, politics

A quick look at a little something that could turn into a big something.



And, yeah, that's me and Scott White in a modern-day Little Orphan Annie style.

Labels: comics, news

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