Archive for December, 2009
While the creative teams don’t really excite me (or well anything), I like the new initiative DC is doing with this Earth One/OGN business. Finally one of the big two publicly sees the writing on the wall for the doomed floppy. At least I think they do. This was long overdue. What tone these two ‘new’ books will take is up in the air. That balloon might burst if the tone is close to Marvel’s Ultimates books. I’m curious what price point these will be at. What I don’t expect is them to take either character in drastic direction to make it palatable to new readers. (Which reaaaaaaally needs to happen to Superman. Really. I’d start with making the costume look a bit more alien and less circus performer. Okay, I’d retire Superman and run with something else.)
In an ideal scenario, they’d be works that would hit young and old and cover LCS’s to the chain bookstores. Give it some slack and see what happens in 5 years. Most likely what will happen is they wimp out like they did with the MINX line and it dies in a year. Overall, I think everyone involved in the industry needs to look forward. Not backwards. I’m looking more at the bigger companies like DC and Marvel, retailers, etc. The smaller publishers get it. It’s time to make some bold moves if everyone wants to keep the industry alive.
Through some byzantine chain of events that I can’t unravel, somehow my Moby-Dick project got mentioned on BoingBoing here.
I don’t know a whole lot about that site, although I know some of you Panel guys visit it pretty regularly. So I am thinking this is a good thing.
Honestly it’s a very strange thing though. I love working on this project, and I am having more fun on it than I have had making art in years. But it’s one thing to be able to sit in Momo and share it with good friends like you (Panel people) and another to be on, well, BoingBoing and stuff. It’s weird. I know a lot of you Panel guys are professionals having done some big time, highly visible publishing and art but for me, even a mention on BoingBoing is like a huge HUUUUUUGE spotlight suddenly being shined on my work. I’ve always felt a bit like an outsider, so this is a very strange feeling for me. Very strange.
Anyway, I did want to share my brief moment of internet fame with you all. Panel, I mean. You’ve all been very encouraging for many years, so I owe a debt of gratitude to the support and critique you’ve all given me.
Here is the most recent piece from my project, entitled Page 097: “It was now clear sunrise.” I’m glad they picked this one to post, I quite like it.
So Jess and I went to Gallery Hop on Saturday, and got our pictures taken by Chas Ray Krider over at Monkey’s Retreat. That is about the most Columbus sentence I can write that does not involve the Buckeyes.
Chas Ray is the pinup photographer responsible for Motel Fetish. You can find more of his work at MotelFetish.com, which I am not linking to because I am at work right now. He had a seedy Christmas backdrop set up, and he was doing a $5 sitting fee (which includes 72 dpi pics — prints are extra).
Oddly enough, several people had their kids there. There’s something really weird about seeing an 8-year-old girl walk past the rack where they keep the porno comics and cannabis growing guides.
Coming to a comic book store near you in February 2010:
TIME LINCOLN #1 ONE-SHOT
Written and art by Fred Perry, cover by Brian Denham.
What happens when the Great Emancipator is suddenly freed from the bonds of time to right wrongs throughout history? Taken out of time on the night of his assassination with the help of H.G. Wells’s time machine, Abraham Lincoln finds himself waging war upon the forces of evil in the past, present and future! In his last hour, he lived a lifetime!
32 pages, $3.99.
I didn’t read the whole interview, but this bit about his experience on the Iron Man movie made me laugh:
“They had no script, man,” Bridges exclaims. “They had an outline. We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn’t know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, ‘You got any ideas?’ Meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot on the stage waiting for us to come on…You’ve got the suits from Marvel in the trailer with us saying, ‘No, you wouldn’t say that,’” Bridges remembers. “You would think with a $200 million movie you’d have the shit together, but it was just the opposite. And the reason for that is because they get ahead of themselves. They have a release date before the script, ‘Oh, we’ll have the script before that time,’ and they don’t have their shit together.”
$200 million movie and they don’t have a script. Gotta’ love Hollywood.
From my upcoming one-shot “Tainted Love”. Art by Salgood Sam. Colors by indie legend Bernie Mireault.
I caught this over at Comics Related and couldn’t help but post it here. It reminds me of college psych class where we profiled egomaniacs. We watched a clip of some talk Rush Limbaugh and went through all the red flags in less than five minutes. The repeated self-referencing, large blow-ups of Limbaugh’s mug in the bag, him holding up a book by him (with his pic on the cover).
These ‘demos’ run a close second to that sorry display. In fact every clip I’ve ever seen with Busch in it, is about as bad. While I don’t fault anyone self-promoting themselves, this is pretty extreme. Who loads up their studio with huge swaths of their art in the back?
I giggled at the airbrush table. Only because he’s one of the few guys that still enjoys the torture of old school airbrushing. If I were talking to the kids about this sort of method, there are several graphics programs that do the exact same thing but more edit friendly. (Without having to peel off the numerous masks you have to lay down.) Plus you can make all the digital prints you want from the same piece. He’s got to be fast because I wouldn’t hire some clown that whips out mushy airbrush tracings off a lightbox. I digress.
Around the Ferret Press/PANEL clubhouse, we have a little game called “Moon Knight for Andy”. Well, actually, there is no clubhouse and no such game. But there should be. See, fellow PANELista Andy Bennett dislikes Moon Knight. Like, really, really dislikes the character. So we take every opportunity we get to talk about Moon Knight on this blog.
Case in point: this edition of 7 Covers not only features Moon Knight, but more specifically, it features 7 different #1 issues of various Moon Knight series.
You’re welcome, Andy.
