The Beat » Interviews

East Coast animators paid less than West Coasters

The Beat — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:30:50 +0000

Of late we’ve been much focused on the economics of creating comics as a career, and the challenges of such an undertaking. Animation is often viewed as the “money spout” for comics types—more competition, more exposure, more money. But an investigation by animation writer Amid Amidi reveals a disquieting story about East Coast animators getting paid much less than their West Coast analogs, even when employed by two branches of the same company, Titmouse Animation. In fact, in the NY office, animators are being paid $400 a week to work on Disney’s Motorcity cartoon. In LA, a similar job for the same company pays a union-scale $1,055 a week.

Amidi talks to lots of people and gets lots of explanations—and we haven’t even begun to wade through more than 300 comments—but it’s an unwelcome downward trend from 10 years ago, when animation was getting established in New York:

The question remains, however, about why there is a nearly $700 weekly gap between starting wages for Los Angeles and New York artists working on the same show. New York has the highest cost of living in the United States (Los Angeles, by comparison, is ranked ninth), yet the studio’s starting salary for workers in New York is only $20,800. That figure ranks below New York’s average starting wages for unskilled laborers like doormen ($25,680) and sanitation workers ($27,842).

It is a fact of life that New York animation artists will make less than unionized workers in Los Angeles. However, wages haven’t always been this low. Speaking with New York animation veterans, Cartoon Brew learned that a fresh out-of-school starting salary for an animation artist in 2001 at Nickelodeon was $900 and included health insurance and 401k. In 2006, a starting salary out-of-school on a cable TV series at an independent production company was $800.

Yikes. We can confirm that in NYC $20K a year will barely pay for a closet-sized berth on the Upper East Side and a few cans of cat food. Apparently, animation wages are similarly low in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, other animation centers.

Granted, this would be a lordly sum for an indie cartoonist.

PS: Commenters, please, no value judgement on why doormen should make more than animators. We’re talking the economics of one industry, not trying to prove who’s best.

Are cartoonists doomed to die poor and homeless while pirates dance on their graves?

The Beat — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:13:02 +0000

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Even as the economy shows fitful signs of flickering back to life, the comics economy, which was
“too small to fail” to really take much of a hit during the Great Recession, is still puddling along, under-capitalized, under-recognized, and with even the greatest cartoonists prone to spells of belt tightening. Comics have been traditionally immune to the effects of a recession—”cheap entertainment does well in bad times!” we’ve heard time and again—but the corollary is also true: Economic boom times rarely touch comics.

During the late ’90s and the first dot.com boom, one of the greatest eras of general prosperity in American history, comics were going through their WORST slump since the end of newsstand distribution, with sales numbers so low executives were crying over them. And then, paradoxically, comics began to do better even during the mini-recession following 9/11 and the end of the dot.com bubble.

During the recent real estate bubble/stock market boom, quite a few cartoonists bought homes that would never have been available before—and some have lost them, sadly—but most comickers we know were sticking with comics instead of going into hedge funds and condo flipping. A lot of money flooded into comics in the end of the last boom, but the tide has been slowly going out.

But now it’s gone out. And people are wondering when it will come in again.

Yesterday Tom Spurgeonwrote:

there’s a bunch of stuff out there right now on creative teams fighting and/or dissolving. It’s not something I care to link to, but you can find it pretty easily if you look around. The thing that I wanted to note is that this kind of public griping always seems to happen when comics is in a real emotionally stressful period; I think the mini-era we’re in qualifies, for sure. I think we’re past the point where people are just starting to realize that all the exciting things happening around them may not happen to them, and into a phase where people are beginning to worry that comics may have a detrimental effect on their lives.

This prompted contemplation from Johanna Draper Carlson:

As someone who chose to leave the comic field and pursue primary-job employment elsewhere, I look around at acquaintances my age who stayed in and see the things they don’t have: Health care coverage. A home (instead of a rental). A retirement account. Any kind of job security. (Not that anyone has that these days.)

I value their work and am glad they could pursue an artistic career, but I worry what might happen to them as they reach the tail end of middle age and beyond. The U.S. is not a friendly country for those who don’t have enough. Maybe my definition of “enough” is bigger than theirs, and they’re happy with it, I don’t know.

That doesn’t even consider the various mental challenges of working in an industry that often attracts … well, there’s no polite word that comes to mind. I’m fond of saying that most people in comics are broken in some way. We’re all drawn to this wacky field because it gives us something we couldn’t get elsewhere, whether escapism or validation or a feeling of community or a business where the usual rules don’t apply or room for extreme individualism or sheep to be fleeced. The flip side of that is how much comics can bring bad feelings or fallings-out or mental scars.

Both Spurgeon and Carlson are floating variations of the “Comics people are damaged people” line that you still see used here and there. This is a view of the industry that very much seems to be focused on the “bronze age” of comics that so many internet commenters view as the baseline. It’s a notion I reject: people are nutty, creators more so, but while comics for a long time definitely drew a certain kind of personality, that was more a function of the ascent of fans into the industry than a peculiarity of the words and pictures medium. When you hang around a random room of today’s young cartoonists, they aren’t any nuttier or needier than a random group of indie musicians or writers or any creative types.

Which isn’t to say that hard economic times don’t bring out everyone’s anxiety tics. There have been a few particularly harrowing comics stories of late—the death of Steve Perry, Steve Rude’s ongoing legal battles—that make everyone think “Maybe that WAS the best of times.”

Comics are an industry with no obvious safety net and dubious rewards, and that exacerbates insecurities, for sure. And right now, as a new year begins, everyone is wondering where the big payoff is coming from—or if it will never come and it’s already too late. In just the last few days, several creators have spoken out about piracy, which it’s hard not to see as one of the grinning death monkeys holding an axe to the neck of the average freelancer.

The other day Joshua Hale Fialkov spoke for many. Fialkov is the author of I, VAMPIRE for the DC reboot, TUMOR, the first graphic novel serialized on Amazon, and his ELK’S RUN was one of the first graphic novels to get picked up by a major publisher (Random House.) And he’s had it with piracy:

Well, sorry, folks, but, that’s over. SOPA or PIPA or arresting website developers is not going to change the world that we now live in. There’s no amount of threats, either legal or brow-beaterly that will change the fact that many more people are unwilling to pay for the intellectual property than those who are happy to plunk down the cash.

And, of course, the economy is horrible! And you’re un (or under) employed! And you have to see/read/listen or else. I’m sorry. That sucks. But you’re being an asshole. Stop it.

We’re all spoiled brats, myself included, but, we can’t do that anymore. We have to get over our greediness (just like we keep bitching about the bank executives doing) and put something ahead of our own (incredibly trivial) needs.

This prompted David Brothers, one of the most vigorous proponents of the digital revolution, to point out that piracy does not exist in a vacuum of competition for the one fan-one transaction ideal:

To put forth the idea that piracy on the part of consumers is “singly responsible” for anything, especially when piracy by its very nature is impossible to nail down in terms of concrete numbers and cause & effect is dishonest. Bootlegs have always existed, whether in barbershops or art galleries. They’ve been here, and they aren’t going away. Do they cause harm? Any idiot knows the answer to that question is “yes.”

But for my money, the thing that killed comic books is “everything else.” We’re living in an all-new status quo, and I keep seeing people, especially comics people, acting like piracy is the sole cause of all their ills. When no, that isn’t true, and a half glance at the world will tell you so.

I don’t even have to leave my house to be flooded with things to do. I can have food delivered, songs and movies I buy (or download, whatever) appear on my hard drive or PlayStation like magic, video games can be bought and played without ever touching a physical disc… we’re living in the future, and that’s without even going outside. Outside, I can go to the movies, check out stand-up open mics, hang out with friends, drink Starbucks, eat donuts, play board games, go to bars…

Fialkov’s helplessness in the face of piracy is widely shared among creators. Just yesterday Steve Niles and Neil Gaiman were also going at it on Twitter, kicked off by Gaiman’s retweet of indie musician Jonathon Coulton:

“Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.”

which prompted a conversation, part of which you can see below:

Niles’ original anti-piracy piece went up last October and sparked much chatter at the time.

This time out, it’s a little hard not to see Gaiman and Coulton as among the 1%ers of creators— both are in a place where they are making a far more than decent living from their creativity. Gaiman did it the old fashioned, pre internet way—writing marvelous books that touched readers and reaping lots of royalties from the results. Coulton is the avatar of the internet creator—he wrote songs and put them where people could find them until he gained his own loyal, passionate following. And a 1% income—he makes over $500,000 a year from his music.

Like most things in life, this whole discussion goes back to money. Fialkov makes a living from his writing: for over six years he’s been a full-time comics writer with a few side gigs here and there. Brothers—a voracious consumer of culture according to his blog posts—has a day job in the video game industry. I doubt either of them is in 1% territory, but they are looking at the piracy phenomenon from opposite ends of the telescope. It’s Johanna’s safety net. And it’s part of the general anxiety about making a living from your creations that seems to be sweeping the industry.

Annnnnnd along comes Faith Erin Hicks just today with a long blog post that hits all of these topics. After talking about how happy she is to be making a living from comics, she lays out the numbers—bear in mind, she’s from Canada and thus doesn’t have to worry about health insurance. Also, these are (presumably) Canadian dollars:

My income fluxes like crazy, and has since I stopped working fulltime in animation. For example, in 2010 I had my best year ever, actually making a really good income, above $30,000! I was pretty blown away. But in 2010 I also got an $8,000 grant from the Nova Scotia government to write and draw Friends With Boys. So in reality I only made about $22,000. But that was still a ton of money! I had a lot of unexpected freelance jobs in 2010, like Girl Comics for Marvel and an illustration job for the Girl Scouts of America which paid very well. These were one time only jobs and I have not had repeat work from these clients.

In 2011 I made about half what I made in 2010.

How do I survive?

Hicks’ post should be read in full. But it also skirts another issue that many people have been mostly in denial about…until now.

Hicks is a published author with FOUR books to her name, all of them delightful. She’s hardly a wanna-be. But…maybe she isn’t Neil Gaiman or Jonathan Coulton, either. Maybe a lot of people aren’t. Maybe a lot of people are never going to be.

Superstars like Gaiman and Coulton are the shining stars on the hill of content production paying off. But they are also the rare exceptions. Like Jeff Smith, Marjane Satrapi,, and Peter Laird.

We’re more than 30 years into the “creator era” of comics, and the question isn’t where is Scott Snyder now. It’s where is Don McGregor now. What is the career path? Where is the security? Is the answer really a spouse with a day job?

I don’t have any answers. I’m anxious; all my friends are anxious. Everyone would like to just sit at home and write or draw; instead we have to figure out the future right now in order to be a part of it.

Sean Murphy: You need a 5 Year Plan

The Beat — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:30:59 +0000

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UPDATE: The piece of art previously accompanying this was actaully by Rafael Albuquerque Here’s a legit piece of Murphy art: a variant cover for the upcoming Vertigo monthly Saucer Country. You may enjoy his commentary in the link.

Artist Sean G. Murphy (Joe the Barbarian) has posted a piece on his DA page called
5 Year Plan — it’s about planning for the future — something very few young cartoonists seems to have the courage to do. I recently told a talented young cartoonist “Keep doing what you love until someone pays you for it” — which is pretty basic “follow your bliss” advice. Murphy’s is a little more practical:

If I had to sum up the 5 Year Plan of newer freelancers, it would sound like this: “I’m always working on my craft and trying to get to shows. Maybe I’ll put a sketchbook together. I tweet with a lot of other artists during the day, and I kind of have this story of my own that I’d kind of like to work on someday. Then again, I also have back-end offers from writers who seem like they know what they’re doing. I don’t know yet–mostly I’m just going to hang in there and hope that Marvel or DC will take notice and offer me something good. Then I’ll have a fan base. I don’t know, but I’d like to be the next Jim Lee.”

This kind of ho-hum approach drives me crazy. The sit-around-and-wait-for-opportunity-of-comics has retarded freelancers into submission. But there are other reasons why I think this happens.

There’s much more solid practical advice in the link. Go read it — much of it applies to any vocation. Just in case you are too lazy to click on the link — in which case we’re not certain we should be helping — here are the topics, PowerPoint style:

TALENT
3 THINGS AT ONCE
WRITE
BRANDING
ATTITUDE
CONNECT THE DOTS

There’s a follow up interview with Murphy in the Daily Trojan

“Because of the nature of my work, my vocal reputation and the fact that I’m getting paid to write for myself, I think my position in comics is unusual,” Murphy said. “I owe it to people to describe what I’m seeing from where I stand. My thoughts are worth nothing unless I write them down — even if it upsets a lot of other professionals, which my blogs often do. It’s worth it for me to piss off one professional if it helps 10 students.”

The comics life: “Calendar pages fall.”

The Beat — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:00:07 +0000

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I had a shot at writing another character I’m fond of, which obviously didn’t happen or it wouldn’t be on the “disappointment” list. I was asked to pitch a story in late 2010, then asked for an outline which I sent in October, 2010. Cue crickets chirping. I follow up. Editor apologizes, says he’s swamped, will be in touch next week. Cut to calendar pages falling. Slowly, then more quickly. Days. weeks, months. I was extremely sick for the first two months of this year, flat on my back a lot and not getting a lot done. When I got better a lot of work dropped in my lap, so, I didn’t pursue this, I figured it was dead. In March I get an e-mail from the editor apologizing for not getting back to me and asking about when we could discuss the outline. I e-mail him back. Calendar pages fall, slowly, then faster. Some time later the editor calls me up to ask about a different project. Comics! Crazy!

Via Evan Dorkin’s end of year post, which in happier notes, reveals his 2012 projects — New BEASTS OF BURDEN, woot.

It slipped through the solicitation cracks, but the third Beasts of Burden story Jill Thompson and I did for Dark Horse Presents will be running in DHP #8, shipping in February. Honest and for true. Readers and retailers didn’t know this when they ordered, so, I hope those that want a copy get a copy. It’s a good story.

We’re working on a new illustration for Mad. The rough’s due Monday! I should be drawing that instead of typing this. Kind of thing I have to confront in the new year. Discipline. Focus. Wo — ooh, a kitty!

I scripted a 3-page bit for an upcoming Bongo project and am writing a 4-pg Bart Simpson story. Soon.

As announced recently, I’m doing 24 pages of Dork-style humor comics for Dark Horse Presents, starting in March with issue #10. Already finished a 2-page Milk and Cheese strip and a 6-page Murder Family strip, currently finishing up 6 pages of Fun Strips, then two Milk and Cheese one-pagers. The third batch will be Milk and Cheese and an Eltingville strip. All in color (via Sarah) for a lot of dimes.

I’m also working on something else, which I think folks will be glad to hear.

Also, the above BILL & TED collection cover.

Chris Onstad talks about his hiatus

The Beat — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:00:27 +0000

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This interview with Chris Onstad about his hiatus from ACHEWOOD could almost have come under our previous belt-tightening post.

I’d been going at pretty much full team for about nine years, and that all the comics, the blog writing… There are more blogs than comics, and I really like to do those. Prose is really what I personally enjoy. There’s a f*ckload of content out there, because I was always under the gun. Every second where I’m not writing, I’m not making enough money to live. It’s a weird job and I have no benefits, so I’ve got to make make make. And that was also peppered with the public demand the internet, which 24/7, 365 days a year. So if you take six hours off, someone’s going to be like, “What the f*ck’s the matter with this guy?” So that constant pressure, it accrued very slowly to the point where I was like, A) I think I’ve written pretty everything I know about over the course of 3,000 installments of comics or stories or other varieties of things I did. Merchandise, speeches, personalizations, paintings, freelance gigs. I was like, I don’t want to repeat anything, and I think I’m burned out. I’d be wondering if I was burned out for a very long time. When it got to the point where every night for a month I’d sit at the computer and say, “I want to be anywhere but here,” I knew it was time to take a break.

We’d be lying if we didn’t admit we’re sitting here nodding our head. There’s a lot of fantastic observation about comics and ACHEWOOD in the interview.

Cartoonists: professional belt tighteners

The Beat — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:22 +0000

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Comics are a business that is relatively insulated from the ups and downs of the economy: things are ALWAYS marginal. While there’s no doubt but that the global recession has impacted the comics industry — especially with customers dealing with price increases — quite frankly, there wasn’t a lot to cut back. There’s a good living to be made in comics, and many people do, but no one is buying a yacht — or not very many anyway. And maybe comics are a survival industry because it seems like everyone is just one or two issues away from square one.

For instance, you don’t think of Jeff Smith, creator of the beloved BONE series, as being someone who has had ups and downs, but in an interview at Tom Spurgeon, he talks about the low times:

2001 was a bad year for me. We had a lot of money troubles. I got into these rows with Dave Sim and Linda Medley, and it was very demoralizing. I forgot how close we came to going out of business. We put a bunch of money into toys — toys were really big — in 1999 and 2000. We didn’t lose any money in the long run, but it tied up a whole bunch of money for a long time… I was slowing down my output right around that time, because I was getting into the heavy parts of the story and it was hard to write. Just a lot of factors came together. I forgot how tough that was. We had to let all our employees go. We had to leave our office. I completely forgot that there was a year when Vijaya and I and Kathleen — Kathleen Glosan, our production manager — the three of us were all in my one-room studio above the garage trying to survive. Eventually we did.

But being a survivor, and being adaptable, he made it through. Here’s his account of the recovery:

We just had to tighten our belts in the hopes we could ride it out, and eventually we did. We were smarter about things. We stopped doing the toys, obviously. That was silly. We were always thinking about ways to repackage the books. Eventually we pulled it together.

Eddie Campbell, a veteran of many of the same tidal shifts that Smith has dealt with, reads the above and
has his own memories of the time after Top Shelf’s distrbutor and printer both went bankrupt:

I was never operating on the same scale as Jeff, but in 2003 we had to turn my home studio into a bedroom. The intention was to build a shed next to the house for me to work in, or for somebody to sleep in, but that looked like being too expensive, so I moved my operation onto the far end of our dinner table, a big eight foot long polished oak object. For a year or so my life consisted of going from one end of the table to the other.

While it would be nice if we were all 1%ers with vacation homes in Tuscany, there’s also something to be said for not being a fat cat: at least you don’t have so far to fall when things do go bad.

2012: Year of the artist-entrepreneur?

The Beat — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:23:30 +0000

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by Bruce Lidl

It’s end of the year roundup/predictions time again at The Beat, but one pretty safe prediction is that we will likely hear of many more creators, in all sorts of media, exploiting new distribution channels to connect directly with fans. As Michael Wolff points out at leading tech blog GigaOM, “Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so.” Citing some well known recent examples such as comedian Louis CK, author Barry Eisler and comedy podcaster Marc Maron, Wolff sees a growing trend of artists cutting out traditional middle men and presenting their work unfiltered directly to customers, and especially in the case of Louis CK, profiting handsomely from it. And Wolff doesn’t even mention a number of other recent examples of the artist as entrepreneur trend, from multi-platform musician Cee-Lo Green to the Humble Indie Bundle video game collection.

Not surprisingly, any celebration of new revenue streams for creators is rapidly met by a few standard criticisms: only already big name entertainers like Louis CK can do something like this, or conversely, only small up-and-coming artists can afford to take these kinds of risk. And fundamentally, many artists strongly feel that they should not have to become self-promoting business people just to make a living.

Of course, the idea of combining artistic and business creativity is nothing new in the comic world, something Will Eisner pioneered decades ago and creators have continued with various levels of success ever since. More recently, leading web-comics makers like Penny Arcade and PvP have made a habit of coming up with innovative revenue streams will distributing their work on-line for free. In a different vein, Kickstarter and IndieGogo funded comic books made a breakthrough in 2011 and are likely to only get more popular in 2012, while independent comic creators used every other avenue open to them to produce steady revenue, even as the direct market struggles and printing costs continue to rise.

However, the most innovative opportunities for comic creators going forward will likely be digital, as the growing proliferation of comic-friendly tablet devices continues to explode. Adding to the already remarkable success of the iPad, the Kindle Fire (and the Nook tablets as well) have really brought lower cost alternative devices to the fore, and while no official statistics are available yet for Kindle Fire sales, estimates have over 4 million Fires sold in the US since introduction in mid-November. App-based comic sales, primarily on the iOS devices, have grown considerably, with comiXology, iVerse, and Graphicly adding publishers and expanding their feature sets available to independent creators. Will we see the equivalent of an Amanda Hocking or a Louis CK success story in the comics world in 2012? If so, distribution directly to fans digitally will almost surely be a major component of it.

Must read: Publish or perish

The Beat — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:14:08 +0000

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Last year Dean Haspiel kick-started the creative juices of the new year with an essay called “Dear Content Maker” that confronted some of the excitement and uncertainties of the new horizons. Since then he’s launched a new website — Trip City — and kept juggling all the balls a creator needs to.

This year, he has a similar call to arms that surveys the current landscape called “Publish or Perish”, named after a tweet by Jimmy Palmiotti:

Frankly, pitching proposals sucks right now. What if you don’t have three books and your new idea doesn’t translate to a movie or toy? Worse, what if you do have three books and the numbers didn’t inform the zeitgeist and thrill Hollywood? Why does one thing need to yield the other in order to make a cool comic book? Because comic books don’t sell like they used to. I get it. While the internet leveled the playing field it also made everything a niche. However, the comix industry does have a strong fanbase. I’ve seen them and they are us.

Now is the perfect time for a cartoonist to manifest his or her own industry. We have the DIY tools. We have the social networks and viral know how. We have proof that crowd funding works and community is key. We have a cranky comedian like Marc Maron rise from the ashes of every bridge he ever burned and make his own rules with his WTF podcast, and popular acts like Radiohead and Louis C.K. making affordable, direct deposit products; offers no one in their right mind could refuse, and venues like Etsy and Kickstarter changing the ways we consume by supporting work with our wallets BEFORE it’s made so that it can BE made sans corporate fear and scrutiny.

More in the whole link. For those who don’t want to event or reboot, you have to make your own path.

Must Reading: Warren Ellis on 2012

The Beat — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:54:11 +0000

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Warren Ellis takes a stab at Five Predictions About The Immediate Future Of Comics. It’s brief — just go read. A couple of main ideas:

* Roll-your-own digital available to creators creates distribution opportunities and chaos

* Creators will continue to explore Kickstarter and other methods to get paid for their work

* DC and Marvel in diminishing returns.

And this classic Ellis observation:

More of this: Oni, Viz, Avatar, Boom, Archaia, Fantagraphics and a few actual publishing houses having less share in the direct market than Eaglemoss, a company that packages partwork magazines with little Marvel and DC character figurines. A less perfect illustration of what comics stores are actually interested in selling, I cannot find today.

Kibbles ‘n’ Bits, 12/23/11 interview edition

The Beat — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:00:58 +0000

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One of the best comics traditions of the holiday season is The Comics Reporter’s Holiday Interview series, which is running now. As usual, it’s an information- and insight-filled series. Thus far we have:

Art Spiegelman:

First time for any contempo comics artist, I think. Although as I found out, it’s in a venue that’s unorthodox. It’s in a bathroom on the way to the Matisse show. [Spurgeon laughs] But nevertheless, there’s a show, rather large, 400 square meters is now what it looks like it will be. I don’t even know what it is in feet [approximately 4300], but it’s large. So it can contain it. That made it all something I had to consider and deal with even though the main theme of my life is that I’ve just been hijacked. The cartoonist Art Spiegelman has died. I’ve been reincarnated as the executor of his estate. And now I hope someday to die and be reincarnated as an underground cartoonist. But I can’t quite get there yet. So that show will now happen. And I was able to work with Rina Zavagli, Lorenzo Mattotti’s wife Rina, who has a fantastic gallery in Paris. She was game to take this on. That made it possible for me to do the show. I trust her with my life, let alone my work. She had a very attractively arranged show of my work in her then brand-new gallery a year or two back.

Tom Neely, Emily Nilsson And Virginia Paine:

NEELY: He was always a little vague about any definite plans and health concerns, I think because it was so uncertain. A couple of years ago, he was beginning to look for a partner. We talked for six months or more about different possibilities. A few times we talked about merging Sparkplug and I Will Destroy You, but with me in LA and not able to help with the day-to-day stuff, it didn’t seem to make sense. He eventually found Virginia and hired her as a part time employee, but immediately made her his co-publisher, because he’s awesome like that. He searched extensively to find the right person to be his co-publisher. I think he wanted and needed a partner. I don’t think he was planning on any of this happening, and he didn’t leave any instructions for us. But I think he always wanted to remain loyal to his artists and keep their books in circulation. So, we’re really just going with our own instincts of wanting to keep Sparkplug alive. Wanting to keep Dylan’s legacy alive.

Peter Birkemoe:

Throwing our lot in with “graphic novels” as the focus of the store years ago as opposed to “pop culture,” “superheroes” and associated merchandise seems to have been a winning strategy for this past decade. I don’t know if it was motivated by market insight so much as the fact I am passionate about comics as a medium but have limited personal interest in contemporary pop culture or toys, etc. With an e-book future ahead, I’m not sure if this will continue to pay off.

Tucker Stone:

The thing is this: does it matter? What are we losing here, if DC or Marvel never publish another Watchmen? It isn’t the ’80s, it isn’t even the ’90s. The best 2011 Kirby comic is Prison Pit; it’s being published by Fantagraphics. The best long-form serials are Hellboy and 20th Century Boys; they’re being published by Dark Horse and Viz. If I met somebody tomorrow, and they told me their dream was to do a book like Watchmen for DC, I’d think they were out of their fucking mind. Look at Alan Moore, look at Jack Kirby. Look at the guys who helped this industry make more money than it’s ever made since.

And then ask yourself if you’re half as good as they were. Because those two guys got up on the cross so that no one else has to, and if you aren’t 10 times the artist they were, there’s no doubt in my mind what is going to happen next.

Ethan Rilly:

One really stupid take away lesson was I can’t draw in perfectly square panels. A lot of artists do it well, like Chester Brown and Gabrielle Bell. And the underlying principle was to increase the capacity for editing the art. I wanted to try this format where all the panels have the same dimensions, so I could do future editing like in the filmmaking process. I wanted the ability to swap panels, add new panels, or switch out a whole scene even if it began halfway down the page.

What I discovered is I can’t balance a composition inside a square panel. I don’t know why, it just isn’t natural for me. It took me dozens of finished pages to realize this. I tend to work better when I envision the page in its entirety, with varying panel sizes. Also, I discovered that editing finished art is a slippery slope. It’s dangerous. Once you begin re-drawing and expanding and shuffling sections it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important.

Holiday reading: a Charles Burns interview

The Beat — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:00:08 +0000

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Paul Gravett asks Burns about X’ed Out and more. And this is the source of that preliminary cover for THE HIVE, BTW.

31 Days of Halloween: Dracula the Unconquered

Jen Vaughn — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:15:13 +0000

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BY JEN VAUGHN – Comic writer, podcast host and serial blogger at his own website, The Invincible Super Blog, and Comics Alliance, Chris Sims sat down to have a chat with me about his upcoming Dracula comic to be fully released on Monday, October 31st, also known as Halloween. Six delicious pages are up as a preview now.

Chris: What time do you want to do this interview? Tonight or tomorrow? Let’s talk ponies.

Jen: Chris, how about now?

Chris: Continue.

Jen: Tell me about your newest comic, something about Dracula?

Chris: YES, it is called DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED written by myself; pencilled, inked and colored by Steve Downer and lettered by Josh Krach. Steve is pretty amazing, he’s worked in DC Comics and most recently, Boom Studios.

Josh Krach (pronounced Crock) is an incredibly talented guy, creator of Troop Infinity and a great artist. He’s been lettering Awesome Hospital for the last couple years. Steve did the logo (usually I con the letterers to do the logo).

Jen: What prompted you to make a Halloween comic?

Chris: It’s not actually Halloween comic. It’s the most appropriate day for the release of a comic featuring a monster or a cryptid though. Steve’s first drawings dated from February. He was busy coloring the Boom studios comic that Kurt Busiek made so I waited until both our schedules were free.

Jen: Is this the first time you and Steve have collaborated?

Chris: No, first time we’ve done something with him as an artist. We worked together on Woman of Action where he was a colorist (and made apin-up). We talked about doing a webcomic a couple years ago with an immortal character. Every story told would be in a different century to keep it from getting boring. Couldn’t figure out the angle. So Dracula seemed good for Steve, it was a natural fit.

Jen: A modern take on Orlando would have worked, right?

Chris: Yeah, I hate Orlando. I don’t think that would work. It’s sorta an English major . . .necessary.

Jen: Ha! How long is it?

Chris: It’ll be an ongoing series. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue with it as long as I want to. The first seven issues are plotted out; third one scripted. We’d go on as long as we can do it. I’ve got a lot of things I want to do. It IS Dracula in 1901. Dracula meets Houdini, goes to the Wild West, Dracula goes to China. Oh, I definitely want to do that! I really like those Hammer movies and “Dracula and the Seven Golden Vampires” (with Peter Cushing). I’d love to a tribute to that but as a much better story.

Jen: Would you say you have a thing for vampires?

Chris: Do I have a BONER for vampires? Are you putting on fake fangs, Jen? Not really, I like DRACULA, not vampires in general. I’ve thought of them a lot because of the way they work as fictional constructs. They can represent a lot of things depending on what is amplified; cannibalistic vampires, sexy vampires. I went through a common phase of going to the library and checking out books on monsters. They had these hardbound books using stills from Universal movies. I remember reading those over and over and over. I was never super into vampires specifically—I’m way more familiar with pop culture versions. You know I like unicorns, Twilight Sparkle especially.

Jen: You even picked the most Dracula of My Little Ponies.

Chris: That’s a fair assessment. Dracula is an egghead too.

Jen: Is there anyone else we might recognize in this? Anachronistic?

Chris: Varney the Vampire (1838 – published 50 years before Dracula) is the main antagonist in this series. His story created a lot of the vampire tropes: two holes in the neck, hypnotic powers. Varney was actually sympathetic. He was superseded by Dracula in popularity. Varney is much older, with a brutal physique and can’t hide his fangs. Dracula can hide it all. Here is a connection between the man who wanted to be king of the vampires and the young kid who took it all away from him, there’s a history that’s fun to play with.

Carmela shows up in the first story arc. If I could, I would put a lot of fun, famous vampires in there (like BLACKULA would be there from the start) but I don’t want to do the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I want to take characters and provide elements of them to build the story up. The way Dracula is represented in pop culture. The other vampires you see in pop culture can’t be ignored but hopefully, what they add, what we show – it won’t be annoying.

Jen: Do you see the Cuddly Lion dog costume showing up at any point? How about sexy J. Jonah Jameson?

Chris: Ah, no. But you will see at least 4 vampires and a ghost.

Jen: Do we know they are a ghost from the beginning?

Chris: It’s fairly obvious, the character is translucent and blue. I wanna play with magic, as a story telling advice. Dracula is a cryptid himself, making magic pervasive in the story. Vampires are mystical creatures and they redefine the world around them. I like to play around with the idea of places having spirits. You don’t see that too much.

Jen: Piers Anthony might have done something like that. In Castle Roogna, maybe?

Chris: Yeah, possibly.

Jen: So who is the intended audience?

Chris: It’s an All Ages book. And a lot of people think that means FOR KIDS but that is not the case. A big inspiration is Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of the most perfect movies ever filmed. There’s action, comedy, violence, you can laugh out loud and be horrified. There is nothing in Raiders of the Lost Ark that is specific to a generation; you can enjoy it at 10, 30 and 60 years of age. We’re aiming for that. A lot of people who have read DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED told me it feels like Bronze Age Marvel Comics, which has a universal feel as well. Tomb of Dracula, Conan, they share that attitude of the era. Written for an audience of teenagers but you can read it younger and older. It’s an adventure story. Our Dracula will have the tagline: adventure in the heart of horror; nothing scary the first few issues but its very much an adventure comic.

BASICALLY the audience is anyone with an internet connection. If we can get HALF the people with an internet connection, I’d consider myself a success.

Jen: There is a six page preview and full twenty-four page issue on Monday IN color and it costs?

Chris: ONE DOLLAR. I grew up reading single issues, I like graphic novels and eight page backups but that SINGLE ISSUE format is what I latched onto growing up. The twenty-four page format gives you a structure that is fun to work with. A three act story with a defined place to work. It’s totally cheating in some way, shifting every eight pages makes it much fun. That’s how I’d write Solomon Stone. It’s a fine style to work with and no room taken up by ads.

First of all, it’s digital so I can do that, not paying for print but that little extra room helps build to a better conclusion in each issue. While putting our seven issues together will have a larger arc, they will each feel like an individual adventure. My article on Stan Lee/Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four in 1964 had interconnected story arcs. Steve Englehart’s Detective Comics with Hugo Strange built on the longer stories. That’s the format that I like! It’s easier to sell a complete issue for $1 vs a digit-GN for $4.

Jen: How can I possibly purchase this comic, Chris?

Chris: Dracula will be available on our website in PDF and CBR format set up with a service via Paypal for a MERE dollar.

Jen: Depending on the success of #1, when would #2 come out?

Chris: The second issue is written. Theoretically, Steve could work on it NOVEMBER 1st but he’s busy with BOOM studios and others. Myself, I find it difficult to write for my own projects in addition to Comics Alliance and Awesome Hospital. The best we can hope for is quarterly. Obviously if 200,000 people buy it I’ll quit my day job and write Dracula comics FULL TIME. Hahaha, Steve too.

Quarterly, gosh. Steve is one of the best colorists today and that takes up a lot of his time he could be pencilng and inking. BUT when you’ve got one of the best colorists in the business, you want him to work.

Jen: Quarterlyish…1, 2, 3 – VALENTINES? Could I buy it for my valentine?

Chris: Actually issue 2 is a tale of love gone wrong… That would work, not in the way you think. I’m telling Steve that’s what we’re doing now that you’ve suggested it.

Jen: Looking at the cover art, I have to ask…Did you read a lot of Ruse before you made this? That sidekick looks familiar.

Chris: YES, that is true. She is a slight homage to Emma Bishop. I talked to Mark Waid after interviewing him for War Rocket Ajax. He was very helpful in discussing his work on Emma in Ruse who wasn’t exploitative AND wasn’t just a prop to have things explained to her. How do you do it, I had to ask him. He gave me the advice ANYONE can benefit from:

“You never have one character tell another something that they already know.”

That way you avoid reducing a character to a plot device or dumb them down. Thalia, Dracula’s sidekick, has her own motivations and reasons for being with Dracula, which you’ll see in the first issue. Obviously, the eyes will all be on Dracula. You don’t want to spend a lot of time on the sidekick but she is very much a part of the story and how she relates to Dracula, well, she changes the story by being there. It’s a completely different thing if it’s Dracula on his own, it would be Tomb of Dracula where he’s unrepentant. A side kick can see him at his lowest point and act as his conscious (for lack of a better term). Thalia’s contributing to the story in a completely different way than if it was just Dracula by himself. She’s fun to write too. She’s one of the reasons I wanted to set it back in 1901. I wanted him to have a smart sidekick, that is not genre-deep smart, not steeped in vampire knowldege like we are today.

Jen: Does she have any knowledge of vampires?

Chris: Well, she has READ Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it comes out in the 4th or 5th issue.

Jen: Is that a jaunty little hat I see on the that crow on the cover?

Chris: It is a crown…If I tell you anymore it will ruin the story. “But WHO or WHAT is it?”

Jen: Will you be sitting in your chair dressed as Dracula on Monday to watch the money roll in?

Chris: If enough money rolls in that I can run out and buy a Dracula costume, I might.

Jen: What is a must-have in your bowl for Trick-or-Treater’s?

Chris: Full size Reese’s. No need for those minis, the full are already ‘fun.’ Although it is fun to shove a handful of those minis in your maw.

Jen: Do you purposefully keep the light off to get Reese’s at the end of the night?

Chris: My porch light burned out so I HAVE to put out a jack-o-lantern. Every three years we get KILLED with kids. The other two years I’ll end up with a whole bowl of Heath bars. I don’t believe in people who get angry about giving away candy to kids without costumes or old trick-or-treaters. Are we really gonna put rules on the night where we hand out candy to masked strangers? If they say the magic phrase, they get candy. Take your rules and shove it. If you can trick or treating to my door, Jen, I’d give you candy and no matter what you dress up as I’ll say “Oh, what a lovely princess.”

Thank you to Chris Sims for his kind interview and I look forward, as do you, to Monday when I can download DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED for $1.

—

Jen Vaughn will no doubt read DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED while eating candy she ‘earned’ for creating a TARDIS costume and knocking on other adults doors. She is also a cartoonist, journalist, teacher and writes for the Schulz Library Blog.

Kibbles ‘n’ Bits, 10/20/11

The Beat — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:54:53 +0000

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The return of a beloved Beat tradition!

§ Warren Ellis on the first comic he ever loved.

§ The AV Club interviews Daniel Clowes, mostly about THE DEATH RAY:

DC: [Laughs.] The original idea for this comic was something I came up with when I was about Andy’s age, about 16 years old. I was obsessed with the Steve Ditko Spider-Man comics, and I was so moved by them that I tried to create… Well, I didn’t think of it at the time as my own version of that, I thought of it as something totally unique, but it really involved the same emotions. It was about a kid who lived with his grandfather, and his grandfather was killed, and the kid was bent on vengeance. The kid had these superpowers, and I didn’t bother to figure out how he got them, but he also had this ray-gun. I think I’ve had the fantasy of a ray-gun that could erase the world from the time I was a very little kid. Actually, there’s a dream in the comic, where Andy dreams that there’s this tree with these little berries that make everyone disappear. I used to have that dream all the time. So it felt like something absolutely essential to my conception of superheroes, and the way I felt about the world when cornered and frustrated. It came out of something really profound in me that I didn’t really understand, so I felt like I needed to go forward with both of those things.

§ The AV CLub also interviewed Kate Beaton recently:

KB: No, not at all. The things that I put up on Twitter are kind of a different animal, but they all come from the same place, which is that I just want to put things down on paper, and I tell stories best if I draw them. And they’re crude, but they’re meant to be crude. I don’t want to make a graphic novel about my family, but I do want to share these moments that are very lifelike and funny and endearing and very human, I suppose. A bit more down-to-earth than the things I normally do.

§ We’re way behind in linking to a run of Daily Cross Hatch interviews:
Dave Roman:
Part One
Part Two

Anders Nilsen
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Drew Friedman
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Tom Neely
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

§ Today’s LOCAL PAPER PROFILE looks at Archaia’s Mark Smylie with a story that could stand in for any number of people who set out to become comics publishers:

It’s a formula that’s worked since 2002, when Smylie founded Archaia as a means to publish his graphic novel, “Artesia.” He took some money he inherited when his mom passed away and set out to chase his dream of making it big in comics. He quickly learned self-publishing comes with great self-sacrifice. No matter how hard he tried to peddle his work, no matter how many conventions he schlepped to with books in tow, Smylie couldn’t stay in reader’s minds and hearts for long in an industry where new comics hit the shelves every Wednesday.

The story also includes the origin of MOUSE GUARD at Archaia via a pretty hilarious anecdote from David Petersen:

“He listed a number of publishers I could contact with his recommendations on which ones would be best for my work,” Petersen recalls. “After an hour or so, I found I forgot most of the names Mark told me, so I went back and he gave more of his time as I wrote down the info I had been so careless with before.”

§ Always innovative Alex deCampi is at it again — this time she’s offering media rights to a new project as part of the Kickstarter campaign. The project in question is ASHES, a collaboration with Jimmy Broxton.

§ Mark Evanier’s dedication to tracking down his favorite foods is pretty damned extraordinary.

Marv Wolfman: The man who invented the Crisis

The Beat — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:00:38 +0000

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Oh I thought I was done with the new 52 links…but I’m Not!!! Here is a Village Voice interview with Marv Wolfman,
which is interesting for many reasons. Because Wolfman is always a thoughtful commenter on the comics industry and its may pressures, but also because CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS –and NEW TEEN TITANS by the same Wolfman/Perez team — is to the New 52 generation OF CREATORS what Fantastic Four #1 (the 1961 one) was to so many before it. With its sweeping changes, dramatic deaths and multiple universes, it set the stage for many a crisis to come. And, famously, there was talk after CoIE of doing a line-wide issue #1 reboot. The idea lay dormant until now. But Wolfman points out that for an event to be an event it should have actual motivation:

Did you foresee the rise of crossovers megaevents when you wrote Crisis? And now that the Summer mega-crossover has become an industry staple, do you see ideas that in retrospect you would have liked to have used in Crisis, and do you see others using your motifs from Crisis in newer megaevents?
No. Crisis was created to solve a specific problem: to make the confusing DC universe accessible to new readers. I had thought it would do its job and the focus of attention would then be on the new books and not the title that changed them. But what happened was not only did the book sell incredibly well, but because I was able to develop its story and concepts over time, and not rush it into print, the book was actually quite good beyond serving its purpose. But its sales is what made everyone suddenly decide to copy the concept. Unfortunately, from what I know, most of the mega-crossovers that followed didn’t have a core reason for their existence as Crisis did. The creators did not have the time to work out their stories and they sort of rambled without purpose. In a way, Crisis spawned an entire industry of mega-events when it should have only given birth to those kinds of events where something vitally important had to be achieved. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way so these days you often here the term “event fatigue” being bandied about.

New 52 is the last arrow in the crisis quiver…or it should be. But we’ll see.

Grant Morrison: Seaguy’s my Watchmen

The Beat — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:38:23 +0000

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While everyone was quoting it at length last week, you can now read a transcript of The Mindless Ones’ epic Grant Morrison interview, in which he talked about his new book SUPERGODS, and other trifling things, like turning down the chance to write the WATCHMEN sequel, how Mark Millar destroyed his faith in human beings, and so on.

There is no way to excerpt this astral journal through one glorious madman’s mind, but here are a few choice bits;

On SEAGUY, his Aquaman-esque collab with Cameron Stewart:

Grant: No, Seaguy‘s my Watchmen, they’re all my Watchmen. He just did one and I do one a week!

For me the big breakthrough in Seaguy that only happened when I was at the end of the first book, and I realised that it was actually a story about a human life. As you know I always prefer to do stuff that’s symbolic rather than gritty and realistic. I suddenly realised that the whole notion of: you become aware of sitting across from Death, and Death says “Your move, Seaguy”. Kind of being born. And I suddenly noticed that Seaguy looked deformed and kind of foetus-like: the way Cameron [Stewart] drew him in those early issues, he’s very wan, very super-slight, but he fills up as the series goes on. I suddenly realised that the whole thing was a human life compacted into 9 issues. That’s what made it bigger for me.

The first one was almost something to make Kristen [Grant's wife] laugh. A stupid, surrealistic thing, but then it became quite meaningful to me.

On writing SUPERGODS, which is a nonfiction history of both superheroes and Morrison’s career, with a few mystical interludes thrown in.

Grant: It was just that it took a long time and I was right in the middle of Return of Bruce Wayne and Batman and these things take a long time to do, and to have a book in the middle of – it got nuts. I was having these, what they call businessmen’s breakdowns, where you would have a complete mental breakdown but it would only last ten minutes like a DMT trip and just have to come back to normal baseline and get back to work, because if you didn’t it wouldn’t get finished. It was really quite interesting, at moments I was gripping the edge of the table and staring at the screen through tears [laughs]. I’m so glad it’s over. Right now I’m doing it with this film script I’m on, so…

On meeting Leonard Nimoy:

Grant: I totally freaked out, I was at one of those My Chemical Romance backstage things and Leonard Nimoy was sitting there, and my mother had encouraged me to be like Spock when I was a kid, it fucked me up. So I was encouraged to be completely emotionless and have pointed ears. So I’m faced with the actual, real Leonard Nimoy, and I’m down on my fuckin’ knees, and he looked at me like there was something desperately wrong with me.

Props to the Mindless Ones for transcribing this interview — recording the soft-spoken heavily accented Morrison is bad enough but when it’s from a mike by a speaker phone…really guys, what WERE you thinking? Have you ever heard of Skype?

We recall an incident back just before THE INVISIBLES ended when we sat down with Morrison (then living in NYC) for an intervew, and after a few moments realized that life would be too short to ever even thinking aqbout ranscribing the tape. Instead we sat in the sun and drank wine all afternoon. A better choice all around…although that tape must be around here somewhere….