Archive for April, 2007
The 8th annual S.P.A.C.E. convention was this weekend, and I had a great time, as always. I’ll post some thoughts later (I’m pretty wiped out right now) but I figured I’d share the three con sketches I got from three very talented artists in attendance:
Creator/Writer/Artist of the cool sci-fi comic Fabricari, Steve Harrison:
Friend of the Ferret and all-around kick-ass Cleveland area artist, John G.:
Former Columbus resident and alt comix superstar Paul Hornschemeier:
Kiss Super Special #1
The Beatles wrote pop tunes that will be remembered hundreds of years from now alongside the works of Mozart. Bob Dylan became the most influential songwriter of the 20th century. Elvis Presley brought a bastard musical form into the living rooms of middle class America. These are all noteworthy and world-changing accomplishments, but for all their achievements, none of these artists…
…ever had to fight Doctor Doom.
And Kiss still can’t get into the rock hall of fame—but maybe that gives them street cred as true Marvel superheroes.
This is another one of those books that a neighbor kid wouldn’t give up when I was young, so I could only admire it from afar. The edition I now have is a reprint circa 1995, which sadly does not have the band members’ blood added to the red ink as the original boasts on the cover. It also has a variant cover, but I’ve thrown the original at the top of this post because it’s so incredibly friggin’ cool.
I never looked inside the more recent Kiss comics; I thought their covers which sported demonic imagery missed the point entirely. Kiss’ music was all about getting laid, partying, getting laid, crashing your car, and getting laid. All spoken from the heart of hormonal adolescence, but hardly demonic. A careful listen to their music will reveal that a typical Gene Simmons bass line is a jaunty sounding thing that would be at home coming off the back of an ice cream truck. These are also the guys who, at the peak of their U2-like popularity, played a high school homecoming dance because they heard the football team really dug Kiss. They even had a pancake breakfast the following morning with the mayor and helped paint city officials’ faces. These guys weren’t remotely demonic—they were just regular guys trying to bring the rock n’ roll party to everybody, and sell anything with the word “Kiss” stamped on it along the way.
Marvel got it right in 1977, giving us a couple kids on the street, railing against the man keeping them down, until they stumble upon a gypsy mystic being attacked by a gang of hoods. The gypsy recognizes Gene and Paul as two of the “chosen ones” and throws them a box containing four magic talismans. They hide with their friends Ace and Peter in a photo booth as the thugs close in—just like that scene in the old Hulk TV show, when the rednecks throw the drifter out of view, then follow after him not realizing they’re about to get stomped. The photo booth explodes outward and the thugs fall before unleashed rock n’ roll mayhem.
Ace uses his rock n’ roll teleportation powers, but overshoots, sending himself and Peter on an adventure in space while Gene and Paul have to tangle with Mephisto. They soon reunite to face an army of evil robots and giant lips, all manipulated by Doctor Doom who will stop at nothing to get the power of the talismans our heroes now hold.
Giant lips? Thank Steve Gerber, 1978’s version of Grant Morrison. He was the guy behind Howard the Duck, and this sort of thing was par for the course for him. Alan Weiss and the Buscema brothers illustrate.
The quartet finally faces Doctor Doom, and are nearly clobbered by him until they manage to overpower him in the same fashion they overpowered all of America—by appealing to his inner child. Paul’s ability to control people’s emotions allows him to subject Doom to intense talk therapy, and we become privy to the traumatic childhood which became the roots of Doom’s life of evil (no, he didn’t listen to devil music or anything…). Gaining a grudging respect for his young adversaries, he sends them on their way as they vow to use their powers to fight evil and get laid.This week’s edition of the free Columbus alt-weekly The Other Paper has an article about SPACE and the indie comix scene in Columbus.
“This weekend’s Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo proves why Columbus has become a hub for independent comic-book creators. “
Unfortunately the article is not available online, so go grab a copy. Yours truly, as well as SPACE organizer Bob Corby and the ever-present Max Ink are featured. And our new anthology, PANEL 9 From Outer Space is given some ink as well!
Hey kids, don’t forget this Saturday’s bash in honor of the S.P.A.C.E. convention. The venue for this event is the very cool Momo2 lounge and tea house. They feature dozens of “bubble tea” drinks, plus beer, food, pool tables, karaoke, and even 4 lanes of bowling!
Head on over to the main Ferret Press site for maps, directions, and more details.
There is now a wiki for Genre Tropes, including Comic Book Tropes. It apparently started out as the TV Tropes Wiki, then branched out.
It’s mostly stuff you’re familiar with, although there may be some you’ve never put into words before. Here are entries for:
Batman Cold Open (a personal favorite)
And it includes a special entry just for Star Trek.
Saw this on Yahoo news and thought to share. It’s from the General Social Survey (GSS) at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting a couple of the entries 
“Here are the Top 10 most gratifying jobs and the percentage of subjects who said they were very satisfied with the job:
- Clergy—87 percent percent
- Firefighters—80 percent percent
- Physical therapists—78 percent percent
- Authors—74 percent
- Special education teachers—70 percent
- Teachers—69 percent
- Education administrators—68 percent
- Painters and sculptors—67 percent
- Psychologists—67 percent
- Security and financial services salespersons—65 percent
- Operating engineers—64 percent
- Office supervisors—61 percent
Here are the 10 least gratifying jobs, where few participants reported being very satisfied:
- Laborers, except construction—21 percent
- Apparel clothing salespersons—24 percent
- Handpackers and packagers—24 percent
- Food preparers—24 percent
- Roofers—25 percent
- Cashiers—25 percent
- Furniture and home-furnishing salespersons—25 percent
- Bartenders—26 percent
- Freight, stock and material handlers—26 percent
- Waiters and servers—27 percent”
Sean McGurr toughs it out and throws down on
the jam page, but protesting the whole time.
“but, i’m a writer”
Me. Drawing my fav, an octopus for a guy who
was collecting sketches on a show T-Shirt, it was
a cool way to collect autographs.
Craig Boggart – the writer/artist behind the always cool
“Ineffables” empire.
Friend of the Ferret and my long time collaborator
Chad Lambert of the Mothman stories fame.
My man Thomas Williams, who always brings
the rock. What can’t this guy do. Working on
jobs even at the show.
Andy Bennett- busy with fans hounding him for
sketches all show long. He was pretty much
glued to his seat in this pose for the day. 
we did 2 really fun jam pages that i’ll post when i
get a chance to scan them in.
This was a really fun show and especially for me, since i got to
see everybody comming in to ohio for the first time in like 2 years.
It was great to see everyone. and thanks to everybody that
stopped by the table. I really appreciate all the kind words
about my work and all the books you guys bought from my
table. Hope to see you again soon.
The first storyline of The Ineffables online comic has commenced, beginning with a running tour of Ineffables Headquarters. Thanks to Tony for the lettering job.
I hope to add 1-2 pages of this 20 (?) page story weekly. Following in the summer will be a story guest-visualized by The Ineffables Mystery Corps, otherwise known as Williams, Black, Bennett & Kish.
I’ll be quick about this..
Publisher’s Weekly has an official announcement on 24-7 vol. 2. Pretty cool, our strip is in company with the likes of Gene Ha, Adam Hughes, Ashley Wood and many more. Compiling 60 plus writers, artists and creators. Cover piece goes to Wood.
New interview with Bob Corby over at the PULSE. And yes I did log on to plug the party.
It’s hard hosting the Bankies after such distinguished hosts as Tony Goins, Tom Williams, and Dara Naraghi, but let me give it a shot. We’ll depart from the opening monologue and get right to the awards.
The Beating the Sophomore Slump award: Jesse Noble and the rest of the organizers of the Gem City Comic Con. As Andy said, “I don’t know what it is they are doing, but they are doing it right.” Another great show.
The Jericho Breaking the Walls Down award: Wright State Student Union. The temporary wall was moved aside to double the size of the small press room.
The Uncool Perv award: The loser who dumped his He-Man porn zine on the giveaway table where kids were picking it up. Next time just distribute it to those of us who want it. [UPDATE: I met Ryan Gelatin at the SPACE show and he is far from being an uncool perv. I checked out his comic and it was not He-Man porn at all. Check out his work if you have a chance.]
The Gene Siskel Memorial Movie Review award: The kid who, unasked, shared with Tom his thoughts on the Star Wars prequel. “Now the third one was almost the perfect movie.” Ouch.
The Gotta Collect Them All award: The guy who after telling Craig that his book “looked cool, but isn’t my sort of thing,” proceeded to tell him all about his Marvel Superhero toy collecting adventures.
The Wasn’t Lobot a Mute award: The guys, one book store manager in particular, who wear those stupid phones that clip to your ears. Lando’s buddy never talked. He was a lot cooler.
The Ron Popeil Spiel award: Steve Black. Perfecting a great sales technique by offering a new sketchbook exclusively at the show and reminding the consumers that he was in from San Francisco. People jumped at his beautiful book.
The Tammy Wynette Stand by Your Man award: Angie for supporting Steve in his endeavors at the show.
The Don’t Cross the Streams award: The guys in the Ghostbusters garb. They learned their lesson from last year and ditched the jump suits (which caused them to sweat a river last year) and went with T-shirts instead. Still had the proton packs though.
The Cameo of the Con award: Dan Barlow. Good of you to stop by, Dan. Good luck with school.
Feel free to post your nominations in the comments. Look for the SPACE Bankies next week.
Both of these links are via boingboing, and they deal with the art of writing. They’re very quick reads, and well worth it:
- British author M. John Harrison has a short blog entry on why “worldbuilding” in science fiction and fantasy books is usually a bad thing. “Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.”
- A LiveJournal snippet reprinting of Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on writing short stories. “3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”
Wendy forwarded this link my way. HowStuffWorks.com is a pretty nifty site that explains, well, how different stuff works. In this case, they tell you how the Batmobile from the Christopher Nolan movie was made.
“The Batmobile is real. Every single time you see the Batmobile in the movie, you are seeing a real, physical object, not a computer-generated graphic. Whether it is driving on city streets at 100 mph, landing in the Batcave or pulling up to the scene of a crime, what you’re looking at is a real car. When the Batmobile flies 30 feet through the waterfall to land in the Batcave, what’s landing is a real, 5,000-pound vehicle.And yet, the Batmobile is an illusion. Like so many other Hollywood props, the Batmobile that you see in the movie does not exist at all. “
After some fluff about the concept for the car, they get into the nitty gritty, and that’s where it gets interesting:
“For example, this car is big — it’s 9 feet 4 inches (284 cm) wide. That’s 8 inches (20 cm) wider than the typical 18-wheeler you see on the road.The car uses a 5.7-liter Chevy V-8 engine.
The rear tires are 37-inch-diameter, off-the-shelf, 4×4 mud tires called Super Swampers made by Interco.”
Etc.
It’s a fun read, in a geeky way. Especially if you’re a mechanically inclined geek.
I’ll go easy on ya this week. By the way, last week’s page was indeed by Steve Epting. Just goes to show you how far he’s come.
(click image to SHAKKKerize)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006, 4/23/2006, 5/1/2006, 5/8/2006, 5/15/2006, 5/22/2006, 5/29/2006, 6/5/2006, 6/12/2006, 6/19/2006, 6/26/2006, 7/3/2006, 7/10/2006, 7/17/2006, 7/24/2006, 7/31/2006, 8/7/2006, 8/13/2006, 8/21/2006, 8/28/2006, 9/4/2006, 9/11/2006, 9/18/2006, 9/25/2006, 10/2/2006, 10/9/2006, 10/16/2006, 10/23/2006, 10/30/2006, 11/6/2006, 11/13/2006, 11/20/2006, 11/27/2006, 12/4/2006, 12/11/2006, 12/18/2006, 12/25/2006, 1/1/2007, 1/8/2007, 1/15/2007, 1/22/2007, 1/29/2007, 2/5/2007, 2/12/2007, 2/19/2007, 2/26/2007, 3/5/2007, 3/12/2007, 3/19/2007, 3/26/2007, 4/2/2007, 4/5/2007, 4/9/2007)
Seems kinda fitting after Dara’s post on why start up publishers flounder: I meant to post about this earlier. The days of the indie monthly are numbered. Honestly, they’re probably already there. At least that’s the impression I get more and more. Chris Arrant interviews Dan Vado again about his branch off venture eyemelt.com. His eventual goal is to have the entire Slave Labor catalog available for download on the cheap. One gets the impression that you’re lucky if you move 1000 of a new title thru the DM. Either shops avoid the book altogether or it gets lost in the white noise of Previews. Downloads are an interesting model that more publishers might jump on.
The article lead me to another download site called wowio.com. Moonstone’s on there and a few indie publishers. Publishers get $.50 everytime someone downloads their book. Members pay a subscription fee and download whatever they want. One guy in the thread got his book downloaded 1000 times within a week. Hmmmmm. Could the next Bone be a monthly download to OGN model? Seems more viable than webcomic subscriptions right now.