Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 230
Creator-owned exclusivity. Creator-owned primacy.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY RETINA IS DETACHING?
Hello. Hope everyone is well and had as positive a week as you could manage. My vision is degenerating, I’m sad to say, and I don’t think I’m getting outta wearing glasses. My left eye in particular is bad, man. Can’t read from my seat to my monitor. I’d hoped to dodge this particular hassle, but age comes for us all. Between this and my thinning hair, I think it’s officially time to exit the public eye or at least wear a sack over my head.
A SAD ONE TO LEAD OFF
Keith Giffen passed.
He meant a lot to a lotta readers over a lotta years. I was a fan of his most self-indulgent and expressive era. But I guess you could argue that was every era. He pursued his inspirations off of cliffs, and that’s almost always a good thing. RIP.
COMICS ARE EXCITING AS HELL
I’ve got a lotta projects in some stage of production, but only two are hitting soon. That is the long-delayed ANTIOCH trade paperback, and issues of LEADED GASOLINE about to hit stores.
ANTIOCH is, in most respects, a continuation of FRONTIERSMAN. We botched the rollout. We thought “FRONTIERSMAN had some nice issues one sales and readers enjoyed the series. Let’s roll one series into the next. Different lead character, but following the same timeline and events. This will give retailers the issue 1s they crave but allow us to tell a long story! We’re geniuses!” But as it turns out, this is just another name for SHARED UNIVERSE and we just shoulda said that instead! Don’t try to be smarter than the room.
So, rough launch. But our crowd really loved what they read. So all good. Pumped. Let’s go. However, then life said, “nah, bruh.” Marco had a death in the family, which required him to handle all those affairs, and we had to shift priorities. Painful for us, because we like to be ON TIME. But the unfinished series is now being collected and we’re excited as hell.
It’s a prison story populated by the wildest characters in comics. It goes light, it goes heavy, and it concludes with a violent cataclysm beautifully rendered by the brilliant Marco Ferrari.
I’ll ask you to pick this one up and lemme know what you think. You can certainly read it without reading FRONTIERSMAN. That was a major thing we maybe failed to communicate up front! Live and learn, brother. The book is great fun.
Also for your consideration, LEADED GASOLINE. I thought I was writing horror. Sold it to stores as horror. Then got yelled at by horror fans who previewed it because it’s more accurately described as a dark thriller. But, those same people loved it. So whatever. You will too. Lorenzo is laying down some real MOOD.
LEADED GASOLINE has been among my favorite things to write. It’s so damn direct. So damn genre. I go on and on in this newsletter about how rare it is to find a creator with a voice, and when we do it’s often shrill and annoying. LEADED GASOLINE is egoless in this respect. My voice is present, but intentionally whispering. I feel no obligation to show off. Rather, just let the characters do their thing.
WHEN IS IT BETTER TO SAY NOTHING?
For a number of years I worked in marketing. I know that would strike some of you as incongruous with my terrible promotion of my own work. But it’s true.
My responsibilities included social media management. I would tweet and post on Instagram as other people. Famous people. One of them was a deep guy. Or, rather, that’s what some people thought and was a good marketing angle. We leaned in. I would wake up early, think of something obvious but with the trappings of profundity, post it, and then watch the kind words roll in.
I saw things I wrote in two minutes while on the toilet turned into memes and quotable graphics shared across the internet.
It was discouraging in that ‘everything is worthless’ way. It’s all fake deep out here. Nothing has any meaning. And now I do not trust anything I see online.
Today I saw a tweet aimed at a minor celebrity. It was well-intentioned. A Neil Gaiman quote meant to offer some perspective in a difficult moment.
And damn if it wasn’t the same type of worthless pap I used to peddle in marketing.
I respect Gaiman. Good writer. And I only feel comfortable critiquing him in this way because he’s on such a high level it cannot hurt him. But it’s occurred to me that there is something painfully obvious about everything he says. Which is likely why some of his work is so widely read. If your message to the world is “sometimes people are just people sometimes” or some such fortune cookie nonsense, mixing homespun and new-age, it allows readers to assign it all the meaning they need.
For your wallet, definitely best to have that approachable but vague message in your work. Further points awarded if ESL students can grasp it in a single lesson. But, maybe for some of us it’s just better to write stories that say nothing other than what occurs within story. At least in that way you don’t insult anyone’s intelligence.
GHOST STORY
It’s NYCC and in principle there’s news coming outta it. So far all I’ve got is Jason Aaron is doings something Superman related. [That’s good, his time at Marvel had run its course.] Someone shit on the floor at the convention. [Not that weird, honestly.] And a buncha dudes launched a publishing venture/shared universe sorta thing called Ghost Machine.
That last one is interesting. These things happen, of course. There’s a launch every few years. Industry veterans get tired of waiting for the phone to ring, get some money behind them, and launch… something. The thing differs slightly depending on the moment and the personnel. Usually it doesn’t work because comics are a tough business, top talent can be fickle, and the quiet fact is many creators coming from a Big Two mentality actually, desperately, need editors.
But, we should all be excited for it to work.
This collection of creators is Geoff Johns, Brad Meltzer, Bryan Hitch, Jason Fabok, Peter J. Tomasi, Francis Manapul, Gary Frank, Maytal Zchut, and Lamont Magee. I know some of them and don’t know others. Nobody is a slouch, so far as I can tell.
They’re publishing through Image. Which, in my view, is smarter than launching a new company. Why fight for eyeballs for your new enterprise when you can use an existing platform WHERE YOU OWN EVERYTHING IN THE SAME WAY YOU WOULD IF YOU STARTED A NEW COMPANY?
What does Ghost Machine have over other efforts? Well, if I read it right, these creators are going exclusive to Ghost Machine. THAT could potentially matter. Particularly if Geof Johns is aggressive about recruiting other Big Two talent.
I hope guys like Millar and Johns et al start draining the Big Two of its remaining talent. Not because I want the Big Two to fail, but because we need an immediate axis shift. Creator-owned comics are already the attraction here. We just need the lights aimed in this direction.
I saw some people being dismissive. “Another company?” But, my view is this is nothing but good. For it to work, the books gotta be superlative and I hope they are. But this is a viable path. Bankable creators self-imposing exclusivity on themselves. Starve the Big Two outta any real talent and siphon readers to creator owned. Cool. And the idea of working with people you respect and want to build with is exactly what I like most in comics. So, best of luck to these dudes. Hope the books hit.
BREAKING NEWS
Woke up to MORE creator-owned exclusives coming outta NYCC. This time it’s Rick Remender locking down some of the best talent in comics. Greg Tocchini, Yanick Paquette, Daniel Acuña, JG Jones, André Lima Araújo, Paul Azaceta, Bengal, Roland Boschi, Max Fiumara, Mike Hawthorne, Francesco Mobili, and Brett Parson.
These are serious names. Feels like we’ve entered an arms race in creator-owned.
And this can only be good. None of us could afford these guys, so it’s not like Remender, Millar, etc are taking anything from us. It’s rare air. And it will put more eyes on non-corporate books.
Retailers are in a bad situation. I say it every newsletter. They need to take chances to secure their future, but they can’t survive the present if they take those chances. Big moves like this one forces their hand. Can’t ignore Yanick.
If everyone can keep on track, this is exactly what will drag us outta the market anemia we’ve been trapped in. Consolidate talent within creator-owned. Make it undeniable that anyone reading corporate comics is missing out. Make superstars and must-buy names.
What does that mean for smaller creators? Some will get boxed out, others will enjoy a rising tide. And it HAS to be better than our current moment.
PERSONAL RISK
I don’t have any prescription for Israel or Palestine. Above my pay grade, frankly. But what is within my purview is how comic pros manage their feelings.
There’s this news item around Harvard at the moment. 34 student groups issued a statement (sometimes signed directly by students and in other cases not) holding Israel solely responsible for the massacre on the border. I promise I will tie this back to comics.
This is a typical belief among groups of this type and did not shock me in any way. But it did manage to shock some powerful people in hiring positions. As a result, the students’ post-college futures at certain firms is in jeopardy. Some big dogs basically intoned, “don’t bother applying.” My understanding is one young woman had a job offer rescinded. And now, in what I consider a melodramatic move, a conservative group is driving around Cambridge with the names of the students on LED billboards.
Some are saying this is the right using the traditionally leftist apparatus of cancel culture against political enemies. I can see that.
But I also think there’s maybe a difference between off-color jokes and things you say with your full throat. People signed these statements because they believe in the sentiments therein. One would presume the students said these things BECAUSE of the risk, as that’s the only measure of someone truly meaning something. The spirit of civil disobedience. Regardless, some students are scared now and walking back their involvement. And Americans who feel powerless at the news coming outta the Middle East can instead invest themselves in a culture war news story about rich kids.
Now, back to comics. Some of my colleagues are speaking their minds on the ongoing conflict, the massacre, and the shelling that has followed. And good on them. I personally don’t have much need for their views, as I think there are better sources available. But it is certainly their right and it’s a topic that people feel passionately about on all sides. Ok. But my question is:
And what if you render yourself unemployable?
While it may be true middle-management and below have Palestinian sympathies, it may not be the case at the top. There’s a generational divide in the polling, and the upper brass at corporations tend not to be young. So, what then?
I ask because for the last few years there’s been a lotta bitching from corporate creators on the right. They believe they’ve faced political discrimination as a result of being republicans in the Trump era. Let’s take it on face value. Editorial and the managerial class are typically establishment democrats. Post-2016 there some had an identity crisis causing them to pose as progressives, but they don’t pass the sniff test. Establishment democrats find Trump revolting and by extension his supporters too. But what about the big bosses? Guys with multiple homes and money invested in fine art. That’s a different beast. Maybe they donate to both parties. Maybe they don’t care about politics broadly, but consider some political issues self-evident and not open to debate. And Israel’s right to exist is often one those matters. Those individuals may take notes on which freelancers are stridently anti-Israel.
Is this ok?
Because many were cool with it when it went the other way. “Bad people” and all that. But maybe life isn’t a comic book with universally agreed upon ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ political views. And maybe certain views get you locked outta the talent pool, no matter how ‘correct’ and regardless of your other bonafides.
It’s not what I want. Personally, I’d like loons at every stop on the political spectrum to report to work, make money, fire off whatever bullshit they want online in their off-hours, and write some fucking comic books worth reading. I just wonder if we can continue assuming our righteousness with no self-reflection.
NAKED MISMANAGEMENT
Matt Wagner appeared on Cartoonist Kayfabe. It’s a fun conversation with a creator I admire. And the biggest reveal for me is that Marvel has never asked Wagner to do any work.
I really can’t convey how insane that is. It beggers belief. Wagner’s time on SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE is top 5 best corporate comics of all time. And before anyone shoots Marvel bail and says “maybe they thought he wasn’t the right fit” I’ll ask you to consider- is the current talent the ‘right fit?’
C’mon, man. Wagner’s had a 35 year career. No one thought to reach out?
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS
That’s it for me. Hope this week treats you right. People are stressed, so be forgiving. Do for self.