Archive for December, 2004
Daily Musings: Day 60
(full disclosure: technically, this entry is three days late as I’m post dating it on Monday. I didn’t get a chance to blog last week due to a crazy new year’s weekend)
Instead of the usual year-in-review columns and other traditional end of the year events, let me simply wish everyone a happy, safe, and productive 2005. I’m not one for new year’s resolutions, at least not in the sense of making a laundry list of items. Instead, I pick a couple of accomplishments that I’m proud of and resolve to keep at them, and try to improve on at least one other aspect of my life. Despite the usual ups and down, overall, 2004 was a good year on my end. So for the new year, the goal is to write and publish more stories, grow Ferret Press, and get back to a semi-regular exercise regimen.
Regardless of how your year was, I hope the new one is better on all counts.
Happy new year, everyone.
The Beat looks back at 2004
As reported elsewhere, Heidi MacDonald has written a very nice little “year in review” column over at The Beat. The most insightful comment, at least to me, is the following:
“Perhaps the problem with the LCS [Local Comics Shop] is what I call the “10,000 dopes syndrome.”I base the 10,000 dopes figure on the sales for POWERS when it switched from Image to Marvel. Same interior. Same creators. Same regular shipping schedule. But it sells 10,000 more of every issue.
Now you could say that Marvel has more reach in the market place. But in theory, Marvel and Image have exactly equal exposure to the LCS system. Certainly Brian Michael Bendis is a known and loved quantity.
So maybe retailers don’t even look outside the little Marvel catalog that ships with Previews? Or they know that 10,000 readers think the name Marvel is so all powerful that it automatically makes a comic good? I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, it’s bad news. Very bad news.”
Small press shoutout redux
Friend of the Ferret, Panel member, self-publisher, and all around nice guy Craig Bogart has the entire contents of his The Ineffables 24-hour comic available for your reading pleasure, on his website, for free. How’s that for small press goodness, pony boy? That’s right, I thought so. No git yer butt over there and show him some love.
Small press shoutout
Chad Lambert has an interview over at Broken Frontier for his book Point Pleasant. he also managed to plug No Dead Time. Check it out, ya’ll.
Daily Musings: Day 59
I got a big kick out of Andy’s childhood drawings posted below. Makes me wish I had some of mine. Unfortunately, all of my early drawings (up to age 12) were lost forever due to the move from Iran to the US. When your family is fleeing an oppressive regime and a war, you only pack the essentials. (Not that I’m whining, mind you. Compared to so many other displaced Iranians, we had it relatively easy. I’m just sad to have lost certain items that would have connected me with my very happy childhood.)
Besides home made comics, the other artifact of my youth lost somewhere back in Iran which I miss the most was my nearly-complete collection of all the Tintin graphic albums. In hardcover. In Persian. Man, I loved those books. I must have read and re-read each at least half a dozen times. It’s always struck me as odd how Hergé’s work isn’t all that known stateside, whereas he’s practically a household name in most other countries.
On the other hand, I do have some other geeky comics memorabilia to share with you guys. Back in the day, I used to be quite the letter hack, sending letters to my favorite comics and creators. I think about a dozen or so of them were printed in various comics letter columns. And I even got some letters back from the pros whom I had written. The one that sticks in my mind is a long, hand-written letter from Jim Lee, postmarked from Italy! I’ve got a few others too. A short missive from Tom DeFalco, during his tenure as Marvel’s Editor in Chief. I think one from Fabian Nicieza (?!). Can you tell I was a Marvel Zombie back then? 
Anyway, I’ll dig these gems up and post small portions of them here. Should be fun.
By Popular Demand
In light of the recent posting about Mike Weiringo’s childhood drawings, and not to be outdone, I have scanned my latest acquisitions. And I even found a bonus image while I was at it! I have five images in total, but didn’t want to kill the bandwidth all at once, so I’ve only posted two for now. To the best of my knowledge, these were done when I was 7 or 8 years old. So without further ado:
Spider-Man (signed by the artist)
and The Incredible Hulk, in a rare color piece from me:
Daily Musings: Day 58
As predicted, the death toll from the devastating Southeast Asia earthquake and tsunami is climbing higher and higher. As of today, it’s estimated that well over 80,000 people have lost their lives. Many millions more are without shelter, food, or medicine.
The news media has recently taken to featuring “miracle” babies who survived the disaster, and other young children who have been reunited with their family. I suppose after hearing the sobering statistics and seeing the heartbreaking pictures for the past few days, we need to see a glimmer of hope in this tragedy. On some level, though, this bothers me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for any and all survivors, especially children. It’s just that when the nightly news only devotes 6 or 7 minutes to the disaster, doing a 2 minute human interest story on a single survivor does a disservice to the life-and-death issues that demand immediate attention.
Or maybe I’m being too harsh on the media. I suppose we’re all human, after all, and there’s only so much tragedy we can endure before we need to have our faith restored by some means. Any means.
Anyway, here are some more resources for anyone able to help out with the relief effort (many links scoured from the great boingboing site)
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog features “News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.”
Apple.com is featuring links to many relief organizations on their home page, including the following:
- American Red Cross International Response Fund
- AmeriCares South Asia Earthquake Relief Fund
- Direct Relief International International Assistance Fund
- Médecins Sans Frontières International Tsunami Emergency Appeal
- Oxfam Asian Earthquake & Tsunami Fund
- Sarvodaya Relief Fund for Tsunami Tragedy
- UNICEF South Asia Tsunami Relief Efforts
Amazon.com has a donation fund going, and as of this writing it’s raised $3.3 million.
X-Books year in review
Because nobody else wanted to do it, blogger Paul O’Brien reviews all the X-Men books and spin-offs from 2004 in an 18-part tour-de-force. From Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men to Chris Claremont’s Wolverine/Witchblade. Yikes.
“Just in case there’s any lingering doubt, we’re looking here at the new New X-Men, formerly the new New Mutants. The original New X-Men is back to calling itself X-Men, and we’ll come to it later. Oh, and just to confuse matters further, the team who star in New X-Men aren’t called the New X-Men, but they are called the New Mutants, a name which they didn’t actually take on until New Mutants ended and their book was called New X-Men. They also shouldn’t be confused with the original New Mutants. These are the new New Mutants. Oh, and before someone e-mails me, yes, I know the logo says New X-Men: Academy X. And that’s how they solicited it, for one issue. But it’s officially just called New X-Men now. Confused yet?”
(via The Comics Reporter)
Check out Air America’s site full of stories that may or (largely) may not hit corporate media such as…
- A Pentagon leak that ranks global warming a bigger threat than terrorism!
- Bush still on vacation as the tsunami crisis goes on??
It’s been on for a while I know but with the dominance of Rush it’s a welcome balance. Left wing radio that you can listen to online. If you’re in Columbus it’s broadcast on 1230am radio. I would advocate listening to it in small doses while you’re driving. With the f’ed up administration you might ram in to someone.
Childhood revisited
Drop on by artist Mike Wieringo’s blog and check out the cool happenings. For the last few weeks, Mike has been posting scans of comic book characters he drew as a young kid, and then redesigning the characters and costumes with a “modern” look. It’s fantastic stuff, and something I’m sure most adults can relate to (whether you’re a comic book fan or not). I wish I still had some of the comics I drew as a kid.
Daily Musings: Day 57
Following up on my post from yesterday, I’m still having a hard time coming up with a story that I like for the Myth book. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m playing around with a few different ideas, but I’m not satisfied with any of them yet. At this point, I blame it mostly on stress (which is a topic I’ve talked about before).
I’ve actually had the last 6 days off from work. Yet between the hectic holiday stuff, the snow and ice, car troubles, power outages, projects blowing up back at work, and about half a dozen other things, I feel more tired and wound up than I would if I had been at work the whole week. Needless to say, the creativity just isn’t there. So I’m thinking it may be time to switch gears and work on something else. Maybe catch up with some administrative tasks that need to get done (update the website with info on the new Panel book, promote the Hybrid book online, send solicitation info to Cold Cut and FM, etc.) The trick is not to wait too long, though. The deadline for the book is very short and I really need to get a story together soon.
Then again, I’ve always worked best under pressure, so maybe this is a good thing. We’ll see.
Small press shout out
Check out the online comics available at Boltcity.com
This is the site of Kazu Kibuishi, editor of the Flight anthology (published through Image), and writer/artist of Daisy Kutter, from Viper Comics. Gorgeous looking stuff.
Daily Musings: Day 56
So I’ve been trying to come up with a good story for the “Myth” issue of Panel, to no avail. Writer’s block and all that.
That is, until a few hours ago when I read Neil Gaiman’s children’s book The Wolves in the Walls. And all of a sudden my mind opened up to new possibilities for a story. I started thinking along lines I hadn’t considered before. Now, that’s not to say that my writer’s block has been completely cured. I still don’t have a good story idea. But the important thing is that my mind’s been kick-started out of its cold rut. Who knows, maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning with one of those “Eureka!” moments.
So out of curiosity…for all you other writers out there, what where some of the books/movies/songs/events/etc. that got you over a bad case of writer’s block? I want specific examples.
MSNBC.com supposedly profiles Dark Horse Comics
I say supposedly because, for the most part, the article just talks about the usual “manga sales are huge” and “comics are being mined for movies” topics, instead of anything about Dark Horse. And of course there’s the usual errors in reporting:
“Other Dark Horse comics that have been adapted into movies include “Ghost World,” “The Mask” and “Road to Perdition.”
Really? I think Fantagraphics and DC might have a thing or two to say about that. But I suppose it’s only an article about, *pshhh* comic books, so it’s not like you need to check your facts.