Tagged: comics

Marc Alan Fishman: How To Lose Your (Convention) Virginity

On a recent jaunt into the social media interwebs, an old foosball buddy of mine asked that I help him discover the creepy, crazy, wacky world of comic book conventions. By proxy, I assume he also means sci-fi cons, pop culture cons, and possibly the auto show. In any event? Todd Burrows, I got your wonderfully tattoo’ed back. Consider this your introduction and survival guide all rolled up into one easy to read article. Forgive me though, this ain’t Buzzfeed, so don’t expect 10 glorious animated gifs for scrolling.

Let us assume you’re not a comic guy, but this whole comic thing is mildly intriguing to you. Perhaps a person you used to know back in high school is now a small indie publisher, and you think it’d be neat to see him again. Perhaps that publisher from time to time uses his or her friends in model reference shots, and you think that maybe you’d like to see yourself as a superhero or nefarious villain. And maybe, just maybe, you think dipping your toe into the waters of these new-fangled cons would be a good way to know if all your intrigue is just a waste of your time. I know, that’s a lot of supposition. But I digress. The question is simple: Why Go To A Comic Con?

It’s inclusive.

Since the first time I’ve stepped onto a convention floor, I’ve never once felt on the ‘outside’ of the industry. Once your badge is flung around your neck – be you a complete noob or a working professional – you’ll find most every con filled with folks in the exact same situation. In the pair of decades I have considered myself a fan, I’ve not once found a fellow con-goer not willing to lend an opinion, give a bit of backstory, or make an education recommendation on a good read. It can be daunting, no doubt, to jump in head-first to a world you think you don’t know. But lucky for you? Comics have permeated TV, movies, and pop-culture now for so long, there’s little to no chance you haven’t been introduced already without even knowing it. (more…)

Martha Thomases: Comic books make me a better person

capstone_contest-3297499I love comic books.  I have since I was five years old.  I even love comic books I don’t like. I love the way the whole of words and pictures is bigger (and better) than the parts.  I love the way that great storytellers can take a blank piece of paper (or  computer screen) and <a href=”

target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>make anything happen.

Comic books make me a better person.

This point was brought home to me this weekend, when I read this amazing story.  In case you don’t read it (and you should because, like I said, amazing), it’s about an autistic young man who found a way to articulate his feelings and communicate with other people through Walt Disney Studios animated films.

Now, I don’t know much about autism,and it is not my intention here to act like I’m any kind of expert.  However, in reading the story, I was reminded how much I learned about people from popular culture.  The kid in the story used Disney cartoons.  I liked them, too.

But it was comics that really taught me empathy.

Any fiction (and quite a bit of non-fiction) can put the reader into the head of another character, will let you see the world through her eyes.  Comics can do this, and also let you see exactly how difference another being’s experience can be.

For example, when I was a kid, I loved the Legion of Super-Heroes.  I started pretty much when the team did, with three members, two boys and a girl, all white as the driven snow.  I liked Saturn Girl, but she was not a lot like me.  I had trouble imagining what it was like to be her.  However, as I read more stories, the team got more members.  Triplicate Girl had brown hair, just like me.  Shrinking Violet was shy, just like me.

And there was Chameleon Boy, with his orange skin and his antenna.  He was funny. and cracked jokes, just like me.  Brainiac 5 had green skin, and he was so smart that sometimes he annoyed the other kids, just like I did.  I learned that I could identify with someone who didn’t look like me, whose body didn’t work the same way mine did, who came from a place way way different from Youngstown, Ohio.

Superhero comics literally taught me how to see the world through the eyes of others.  What I mean is, sometimes the artist would depict the scenes from a character’s point of view, not from the outside.  Along with captions and thought balloons, it was like being in another person’s head.

Later, when I was in Sunday School and learned about Marrano Jews, I already had some understanding of what it meant to have a secret identity.  I’d seen people who had them who were not Jewish (although most, I would later learn, had been created by Jews).  It helped me to understand other kinds of people who might feel they had to hide their differences from the mainstream.

It’s a little bit roundabout that I made the leap to understanding other humans through Durlans, Coluans and Kryptonians.  I felt what it was like to be alien from actual aliens, not from meeting people from other countries.  I felt what it was like to be different inside from the Thing in The Fantastic Four, not from knowing someone of another race or gender identity.

Does that sound condescending?  That’s not my intention.  I’m trying to explain how a five-year old, or an eight year old — and sometimes a 60 year old — needs stories (graphic and otherwise) to see the humanity in other humans.  That’s what artists do.

And I’m grateful.

Michael Davis: Who’s Sorry Now?

It’s been a while since I’ve taken someone to task with a good old fashion rant, so…

Last week I missed my ComicMix deadline.

Not that anyone noticed.

Usually when I missed a deadline it’s because of illness or stupidity.

Not that anyone cares.

I drive myself pretty hard and take on a lot of stuff and there are times when I drive myself too hard.  When those way to often moments happen I’m subject to the worst migraines and I’m unable to work.

How bad are these headaches? You know the expression; ‘I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy?’  Well I would, because I’m just that kind of bastard. If I miss a deadline because of illness a migraine is almost certain to be the reason.

I did not miss list week’s deadline because I was ill. So that leaves being stupid. (more…)

Nominate Your Faves In 2014 Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament Now!

  • News
  • March 6, 2014

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Yes, it’s that time of year again, where we take the best webcomics and put them head to head to highlight the incredible diversity of work out in the comics world, to raise money for various comics charities, and to have fun while doing it– time for the Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament!

As usual, we always think we’ve gotten a good list together of webcomics– our directory lists well over three hundred webcomics  which are already going to the nominating round– but we always seem to miss a few newcomers, or strips that have just fallen under our radar for whatever reason. So we’re asking you: what strips have we missed? Just add them below with links to the site.

Our criteria for including them in the contest are pretty simple and broad:

  • They have to be currently in production, by which we mean “has come out with at least one new installment since the new year”. Surprisingly, this knocks out a lot of comics.
  • No paywalls. You gotta be able to read it to compare and contrast.
  • No adult webcomics. We do May Mayhem for the R and X rated comics, this is for family safe material.

Here’s how to do it:

First, take a look at our Directory page.

Then, if there are any webcomics you think we should know about and add into our Mix (so to speak) add them here. If you have email and Twitter contact info for the strips, so much the better.

Add a Webcomic!

Add a Webcomic!

  • Webcomic titleURLComic EmailComic Twitter 

Get your nominations in quick, we’re closing the window at midnight Pacific Time on Friday night and starting the seeding voting on Friday. And please, share this post far and wide so we don’t miss anyone!

John Ostrander: Writing Tids and Bits

Absent any overall topic occurring to me, maybe we’ll try the ol’ shotgun approach – a bunch of writing tips with the idea that, if there’s enough of them, some should work. (My friend William J. Norris used to describe my sense of humor that way – if I just kept talking, a certain percentage of it was bound to be funny.)

Da tips.

Cast your characters. This can be short-hand for a character and can help with dialogue. Who would play your character in TV or movies or who would provide their voice if the character was animated? It doesn’t have to be a living actor; heck, it doesn’t have to be an actor at all. It can be somebody you know or knew, friend or foe or relative (the last can be a combination of the first two). It can be a politician or your boss or a co-worker. Somebody you find distinctive and whose voice is inside your head.

Using a person as the template can help you with how the character acts, who they are, how they physically express themselves. Mannerisms, habits, nervous tics can all work into the character. The cadence of how the template speaks, verbal habits, and so on can help you as you write the dialogue. It’s sometimes easier to identify these traits in others than in yourself. That gives you perspective on them.

These traits are all shorthand – you still have to do all the basic hard work of who they are, their background, and what they want but this can help, especially if you get stuck.

You/Not You. All your characters are you; all your characters are not you. You have to find the point where you and your character intersect if you’re going to write the character honestly. Every character – the good, the bad, main characters, supporting character, one line wonders – lives inside you. However, you also have to detach from them a bit. You have to have some objectivity in portraying them. Give them their own life. It’s like parents with kids; at some point, the parent has to acknowledge their kid ain’t them. The dichotomy between you/not you can be tough to master.

Make Them Turn the Page. (more…)

Dennis O’Neil: The Evolution of Religion and Mythology

Gotta get this sucker written tonight because tomorrow or the next day I may have to resume watching the snow fall and fall and fall and fall…

So: what some benevolent publisher should do (and surely benevolent publishers do exist) is to put put a book that examines the way mythology/religion have evolved quite similarly.  Both began with stories that were. by our standards, crude, with little characterization and virtually all the meaning carried by the plot.  Then, very gradually, the storytelling forms began to vary, the story content change, the narrative structure mutate…But hey!  Enough.  I’m not going to write the frigging book, at least not here and now.

If such a book were to exist, though, it might include. perhaps as an appendix, a discussion of how a certain kind of movie is evolving much as its source material evolved a half century or so earlier.  I refer, as you astute hooligans have already guessed, to superheroes.

The first superhero stories tended to be short – there were several of them in your 10-cent comic book – and the heroes were…well, they were the good guys.  The ones that beat the bad guys. Characterization, insofar as it existed, tended toward the sketchy.  All the heroes were white and waspy, and the minorities were small in number and often the kind of stereotypes that might make those of us with delicate sensibilities cringe – not because the writers and artists were bigots, but because they didn’t know better.  You could tell which heroes were which mainly by their powers: the Flash could run fast, Green Lantern had a magic ring, Hawkman had wings that enabled him to fly, et cetera, et cetera…Most of them also had double identities, also white and waspy: rich guys with no jobs, or scientists,or journalists – nary a trash collector or milkman in the lot.
The form – comic books –  soldiered on through good times and bad, growing more sophisticated year by year, and gradually those complete-in-one-issue stories were supplanted by elaborate serializations.  Genuine characterization entered those colored pages, and “adult” themes, and one morning I woke up and my benighted profession was being covered by the New York Times and taught in major universities and – ye gods! – I was respectable.

That was comics.

And movies?  I did mention movies, didn’t I?  Somewhere back there?

Well, yes I did.  But that topic might be a bit ungainly to be contained in the small bundle of verbiage remaining in the 500 words (more or less) I promised to deliver each week to Mike Gold back when ComicMix was in its birth throes.  Let’s table movies  until next week.  For now, some of you better get to the ATM because you’ll probably need to buy salt or to pay hardy young men with shovels because the weather people are predicting more of the same.  Then you can lie back, cuddle up with a mug of hot chocolate, gaze through the window at all that glistening splendor, and hope there are no power failures.

Next week: the cinema.

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REVIEW: Shazam! The Complete Series

shazamordwaycvr-e1393196245964-7607439Growing up, Saturday morning television meant cartoons and nothing but cartoons. By the 1970s, though, live-action bits crept in, starting with Christopher Glenn’s In the News interstitials on CBS along with silly things like The Banana Splits and H.R. Puffenstuff. In 1974, though, Filmation cleverly blended the two as it took the Big Red Cheese from comics to television. Shazam! debuted in the fall of 1974 with Michael Gray as Billy Batson, charged by the animated gods with their powers to fight crime in the adult body of Captain Marvel.

Last year, Warner Archive released the complete series on DVD and it is as charming as ever in its simplicity. In a mere thirty minutes, Billy and Mentor (Les Tremayne) rode the highways of California in their RV and when danger struck, the magic lightning let Bill become the hero (Jackson Bostwick). The effects were little better than when George Reeves donned the red and blue costume as Superman twenty years earlier. Both fought evil with similar solemnity and everything was put back to order by the time the end credits rolled.

Throughout the 3-disc, 28-episode collection, nary another character from the comics are used, divorcing it from the source material, which is a shame since it could have used a Dr. Sivana or animated Mr. Talky-Tawny. Also, the wizard Shazam is absent and Billy gets advice directly from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.

Bostwick was an earnest and likeable Captain Marvel and when he was replaced by John Davey, it’s fairly seamless. Gray’s Billy is easily five years too old to be a convincing youth but he’s very likeable while veteran character Tremayne does a fine job with little material.

Unfortunately the series aired from 1974-1976, a time when parent groups pressured the networks into cleaning up the level of violence the precious children were exposed to which undercut what could have been a fine kid’s action series. There’s fun stuff going on but a lot of missed opportunities as each case became a teachable moment instead of a thrilling thirty minutes of action. Still, the show was a cut above its competition which is why it is so well remembered. There’s a crossover with Isis (Joanna Cameron), who helmed a spinoff series of her own that was collected some time back and worth seeking out.

It would have been nice to have some extras but the Warner Archive program brings things to smaller audiences at the cost of no money invested in such bonuses,. We do, though, get a lovely cover from artist Jerry Ordway, who did a memorable run with the character in the 1990s.

Michael Davis: Damage Control

A sad day in comics is coming.

Sad days are in my opinion, the one thing that the comic book business knows better that any other entertainment business. Yes, other media has its share of sad days but those are usually the death of someone.

I wish (and so do you) I had a dollar every time I’ve heard some newscaster, after lowering their voice, state with deep, deep sorrow:

“It’s a sad day in Hollywood, Bart Simpson was shot and killed this morning when he smiled at a man in Florida. After the man shot the famed Simpson he told police he thought the smile was a gun. This was the latest in what has become a wave of ‘colored’ killings.  Florida’s ‘Stand your ground ruling’ accomplished what critics of the law thought it was intended for, the elimination of Black kids from the cites of Florida. Once the last Black child was eliminated, killings of other colored youth (including cartoon characters) spiked to new highs.

(more…)

REVIEW: The Dumbest Idea Ever!

The Dumbest Idea Ever!
By Jimmy Gownley
Scholastic Graphix, 236 pages, $11.99/$24.99

dumbest-idea-ever-5186035“Where do you get your ideas?”

“Write what you know.”

One stereotypical question often leads to one stereotypical answer and in this case, the results have been magical. Jimmy Gownley is best known as the creator of Amanda Rules!, an utterly charming series of stories that are well worth your attention. Here, he reveals the secret origin of the comic in a delightful coming of age story that is highly recommended.

Gownley recounts how as a teen he was fascinated by comics when he wasn’t hanging with his friends and playing basketball for his private school in Girardville, PA. The nuns at the school found his interest in reading comics unacceptable so he prepared a compelling report on the value of graphic novels which earned him an A but failed to change his teacher’s mind. And it was only after then that he discovered comic book shops, opening his mind to material beyond super-heroes.

As he entered high school, he became obsessed with comics and art, which adversely affected his grades, but did lead to his meeting Ellen Toole, who was first a friend then a first girlfriend, a woman who never doubted his potential. Finally, he decided to try his hand at his own comic, inspired by Cerebus the Aardvark. He labored over the beginning of a space fantasy and turned the pages over to his best friend, who took three weeks to read it before delivering the verdict of “meh”. When his pal suggests Jimmy create a comic about “us”, he replies with “That’s the dumbest idea ever!”

But it’s also the beginning of Amelia and a career that has brightened countless readers’ lives and made Gownley a bonifide star creator. When the first issue is completed, his parents agreed to finance it being printed and so began an odyssey that brought fame, a swelled ego, and a lot of attention from teachers, friends, and the local media. His relationship with Ellen evolves and deepens along the way and he continues to play basketball, but in the end, it’s a rough road to fame and fortune. There’s a nice Author’s Note at the end which helps clear up some of the reality behind the graphic retelling of his early years.

Gownley’s eye-pleasing art and storytelling makes this a compelling read, one that should prove inspirational to budding creators across the land. While aimed at grades 4-7, it’s a universal enough story for all ages.

Michael Davis: Steranko – Who Is He, And What Is He To You?

davis-art-140128-150x165-3842199My subtitle is the title of a great Bill Withers song, but an even greater Creative Source song. If you are of the age where you think of Twilight as a classic film, chances are you have never heard of Bill Withers, Creative Source or that song.

Pity.

I could understand not being aware of Creative Source. They were a bit off the beaten path. However any music fan not aware of Bill Withers should drop less Ecstasy and lighten up on the trance. People, Boom, Boom, Boom with an occasional auto corrected voice may be music, but a song it is not.

Whatever age you are, if you are a fan of comics you should have heard of Jim Steranko, or simply Steranko as he is better known.

A comic fan, a true fan of the medium, not aware of Steranko is akin to a history buff thinking Lincoln is only a carmaker.

I’m not about to, nor am I qualified to give a detailed overview of his work. Please, yes I’m saying please, do yourself a big favor and look him up.

As I said, I can’t even begin to cover his contributions to our industry but I will share with you what I hope is a small indication of his importance to an industry he changed forever.

In the mid to late 90s I ran Motown Animation & Filmworks, (MA) Motown is the most famous record company in the world and if you doubt that name three record companies and do so without Goggle.

Oh. I’m sorry. You’re quiet now.

MA was a film and television division of Motown that at the time Motown was owned by Polygram and both were Phillips Companies.

Phillips is a enormous corporation and anything what comes under their umbrella is protected with an army of lawyers that will crush any affront to their intellectual properties (IP), patents, products and the very saying of their name is like a lone Klan member yelling “jungle bunny” at the Black Murderer convention.

On the flip side, if you make any move while within a corporate structure that has even the smell of being problematic you could be bitch slapped.

Bitch slapped like I was when I appeared on a CNN financial news show and answered “Fine” when asked how I thought what I was doing would affect the stock price.

The show was live and after I unclipped my lapel mic – if that long – my cell rung. The booming voice of Clarence Avant, Chairman Of The Board of Motown Records told me to, “Never, ever, comment of the stock price, anywhere, anytime for any reason!”

He was not happy.

And that was just over one word.

That was a serious blunder on my part. I simply didn’t know but ignorance when you head up a key division of a major company is no excuse.

I learned fast that without first running some decisions past Business Affairs I’d run the very real risk of a very bad day.

IP was at he very heart of my core business at Motown and because of such I created a comic book division called Motown Machineworks. One of the titles was a book and character called Stealth.

As soon as the press broke on that book I got a call from a fairly well known artist. I won’t mention his name because what I’m about to say may cause him to pop some shit in my face when next we meet and I don’t need that kind of noise in my life. Hell, I’m already on probation because of the last two people who popped some shit in my face.

This creator said he had a friend who was producing a book called Stealth. I said that was a problem. He agreed. But he said the problem was mine.

I explained to him that MA owned the trademark to that character name and suggested whatever he was smoking he stop. He boldly told me that he would create a P.R. nightmare for me if we did not “Cut the kid a check.”

“So let me get this straight. I pay someone to stop you from causing Motown a public relations problem over a trademark we own.”

Yep, that’s what he meant.

“Fuck you.” I cheerfully said with a pretty good chuckle. “Tell that kid to lawyer up and I’ll make sure he knows you were the one to clue me in.”

C L I C K.

Never heard a word from him on that matter.

Even if I wanted to cave like a little bitch when I had no reason in the world to do so, the amount of time and effort dealing with this would be a needless waste of resources and resources mean money and losing money in corporate America is bad but wasting money on a non issue?

I may have been shot.

What, pry tell, does this have to do with Steranko and his importance to the comics industry? I’ll tell you.

A couple of days later I get a call from Jim Steranko.

What follows is the word for word exchange between Jim and I. This I know because I have journals going back to high school. The time of the entry is 2:20 pm. That means I did not wait to get home to write about it.

 “I’ll get to the point, I created a character called Stealth some time ago and I read recently that you are launching a book about a character with the same name. I’m sure my character predates yours and I call on you as a gentleman to step back from that name.”

“Take it. It’s yours.”

How important is Steranko to comics?

His impact in the field commands and deserves that kind of respect.

He’s that important.

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Tweaks!

 

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