Category: Interviews

Thomas Scioli on Gødland, Day Jobs and Joe Casey

godland-200-4055403Over at The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has been conducting a great series of weekly interviews that, for no good reason whatsoever, I’ve been neglecting to point out here on ComicMix. It’s time to change that.

His most recent interview, with Gødland co-creator and artist Thomas Scioli, was a real gem. Much like Spurgeon, I’m not very familiar with Scioli himself, but I’ve enjoyed the way he’s channeled Jack Kirby in Gødland ever since I came across the first issue. However, despite the critical praise the series received, Casey and Scioli recently announced that Gødland would end with issue #36.

Spurgeon has a frank chat with the award-winning artist about Gødland, the reasons behind its cancellation, the collaborative process and what he has planned for the future.

Here, Scioli discusses one of the conditions that led to the series’ termination:

The collections did a lot better than the single issues. The first collection was far and away the most successful book. Most of my earnings from this series are from that single volume. Before this series came out, I had a lot of assumptions about what would sell, and I was pretty much wrong. I thought that there was more of a hunger for this type of material. I know this is the kind of comic I’d like to see more of. Maybe my expectations were too high, though. I mean it is the most successful thing I’ve ever been involved in. We sold a lot of comics, relatively speaking, but the number you need to consistently sell to really make a go of it is awfully high.

The main frustration is that I wish there was more room for us. It’s crowded out there. I kept hearing from people who couldn’t get a certain issue because their store sold out of it, or they ordered it but it never showed up at their store. Hearing that kind of thing makes me crazy.

Head over to The Comics Reporter for the full interview, and be sure to check back there every Sunday for more of Spurgeon’s interviews.

Interview: Jeffrey Rowland on TopatoCo and ‘Overcompensating’

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Jeffrey Rowland, the creator behind popular webcomics Wigu and OverCompensating, has a new, full-time job these days — and it just might make him one of the most important people to watch in the world of webcomics.

Late last year, Rowland officially expanded TopatoCo, the online store where he sold shirts, stickers and other merchandise related to his webcomics, bringing several other popular webcomics’ stores under the TopatoCo banner and consolidating their merchandise operations. By doing so, fans of many of the most popular webcomics are now able to mix and match their orders among different creators’ designs, and TopatoCo has evolved from a basement business to a staffed, international operation Rowland runs out of an office building in Easthampton, MA.

According to Wikipedia, Rowland "can be considered one of the small number of professional webcartoonists, as running Overcompensating and Wigu, in addition to his merchandise company TopatoCo, is his full time job and source of income."

I spoke with Rowland about the growth of TopatoCo and the first few months of becoming a webcomic merchandising hub, as well as the status of his own webcomics, OverCompensating and Wigu. From the lure of running off to Mexico on a motorcycle to the Snakes on A Plane experience, Rowland shares his thoughts on making a living in the world of webcomics.

COMICMIX: You sound busy, Jeff. What’s going on at TopatoCo HQ today?

JEFFREY ROWLAND: Well, I’m just trying to get a handle on this whole business arrangement here.

CMix: Yeah, it sounds like you’re pretty deep into it these days…

JR: Well, the way we were doing it before was, everyone had their own individual sites up. Dinosaur Comics would have its little store, and then [Dinosaur creator Ryan North] would collect the orders throughout the week and send them to us in a file once a week or so. It wasn’t that bad, because everyone was doing a pretty good amount of business, but when I put them all together… Well, all of a sudden, it just exploded. It was bigger than I thought it was going to be. I think we’ve been up for about a month now, and we’re over 2000 products sold. Over 1000 transactions. Basically, it’s just two of us here working – sometimes three. I have one full-time employee — she’s "Tallahassee" in OverCompensating.

(more…)

On This Day: Ned Buntline, Dime Novelist

Edward Zane Carroll Judson was born on March 20, 1886 in Stamford, Delaware County, New York. He ran away from home as a boy and took to the sea, taking on the name Ned Buntline, which he would use for the rest of his life—a “buntline” is the rope at the bottom of a square sail.

Buntline stayed at sea several years, fighting in the Seminole Wars and achieving the rank of midshipman, before retiring and creating various eastern newspapers, including Ned Buntline’s Own. While in Fort McPherson on a lecture tour, Buntline crossed paths with Wild Bill Hickock and tried to interview him for a dime novel. Hickock refused and ordered Buntline out of town at gunpoint. Instead, the reporter located Hickock’s friend William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and decided to write about him instead.

The Buffalo Bill Cody-King of the Border Men dime novel series was an enormous success and Buntline followed it with a play, Scouts of the Prairie, which opened in Chicago in December 1872. The two men had severe differences of opinion and temperament, however. As a result, the show closed in June of the following year, and Buntline and Cody went their separate ways.

Buntline continued to write dime novels, but none matched his earlier success—he was close to penniless by the time he died of congestive heart failure in 1886.

Matt Fraction on ‘Thor: Ages of Thunder’ and ‘The Order’

Newsarama has posted an interview with Matt Fraction about Thor: Ages of Thunder, his upcoming peek at the war-torn history of Marvel’s Norse Gods.

Newsarama: Matt, what’s Ages of Thunder about, and how does it tie into the Thor mythos?

Matt Fraction: It’s a Thor graphic novel, told in parts, that plugs the pure Stan-and-Jack interpretation of Thor and the Asgardians into the Norse myth cycle. It sort of exists outside of any current incarnation of Thor – one of my favorite things about the Norse myths is that it’s cyclical; that Ragnarok has survivors and the stories begin again.

So we’re using that as a motivation to look at Thor and his pantheon throughout various different eras of Ragnanroks, with various different visual interpretations. Each time they’re living through these insane and colossal stories that build on top of one another, each chapter presenting us with another way of seeing Asgard as it rages towards its inevitable destruction and rebirth.

Ultimately, these stories present to us with the reasons why Odin saw fit to curse Thor with the humanity of Donald Blake, and who he becomes because of it. That’s the uniting thread that, no matter what apocalypse he’s skyrocketing towards, Thor had this flaw, and this ultimate redemption because of it, told in giant, divine terms. It was danced around back in Thor#159, if you want to get all continuity-guy on it; Ages of Thunder is a kind of explicit play-by-play, where Thor’s lack of humility triggers all of these wonderful, horrible things.

Along with making a passing comparison of Thor to Wu Tang Clan, Fraction shows off a few pieces of art from the series and also weighs in on the "real" reasons his series The Order is coming to an end with issue #10.

Thor: Ages of Thunder hits shelves April 30, 2008.

 

Mahalo Daily Interviews Stan Lee

I have often been told that Stan Lee is the easiest interview subject in the world. You put him on stage or on camera, do a quick introduction and then stand back and let him talk.

Mahalo Daily featured an interview with Stan Lee today. One of the highlights? Stan Lee explaining how the first X-Men movie could have made twice what it did if they had given him a speaking role.

Of course, the Mahalo team has to be thrilled with Lee’s endorsement of Mahalo after the credits at the end of the video.

The Secret is out

I’ve been rooting for Pulp Secret to flourish ever since their executive producer, my old college friend David Levin, first gushed to me about it.  And in the short time they’ve been around the site has branched out from their 5-minute video news segments to a weekly talk and interview show to David making good on his vow to give away items in his prized comic book collection on a regular basis.

But for me, there was still something missing.  And some of it had to do with me not being able to tell the three young white male self-amused hosts apart.  I’m sure they’re nice guys and all, but it was (as the Brits say) much of a muchness.

Now finally, with webcast #18, the video news segments have a female face.

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She’s Ana Hurka-Robles, a director and writer from NYC who’s been behind the camera until now.  Says AHR, "I’m part of a small crew that produces the episodes, so I get a chance to direct, shoot, write, research, and edit. I know that film degree would come in handy some day!"  (I think someone else may have "edited" her name up there.)  You can catch her on-screen debut here, at about 3:45 into the webcast, but she narrates capsule reviews in webisodes 10 and 15 as well.

Thanks, David & co., for expanding PS to include the other half of the population!

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