WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY
Hello, all. Hope this newsletter finds you in good repair. I just cleaned a chicken coop 20mi outside Austin. Tomorrow I fix a mailbox. I have a month before I tour again and couldn’t sit on my hands (spending money) for all that time. For the next few weeks, my life is a bit like the guys in the movie Tremors. Handyman stuff that leaves me covered in dirt.
Here’s hoping there’s no snakeoids in Hays County.
I’VE GOT A SIGNING COMING UP
Two, actually. I’ll announce them soon with all the details.
I need to spend more time with retailers. It won’t necessarily make them order something they don’t see as a winner, but perhaps it’ll make them pause on my solicit just a second longer.
I should also give a little time to readers. I feel like I do, between this newsletter and the Youtube. But it’s not the same as shaking someone’s hand and telling them you appreciate that they spend money on you.
So, some signings. With other righteous creators. It’ll be fun. More on that soon.
THIS WEEK’S HARROWING INDUSTRY NIGHTMARE
So the Eisner nominations were announced. I make an effort every year not to look. Because if I look, then I’ve gotta have an opinion. And what’s the point? If I don’t care for the picks, and I say that, I look bitter. If I think a choice is apt, and I say that, I look like I’m ass-kissing. Better to just avoid. I don’t find any value in awards myself, so I can safely leave it to the people who enjoy it.
But this year I had it slammed in my face a bit. Many people took umbrage with the fact that both recently suicide, Ed Piskor, and a woman named as a instigator of said suicide, Alex De Campi, were nominated (though not in the same category).
Some are offended by the idea this could potentially put Piskor’s family and De Campi in the same room.
I have a different perspective.
First, lemme say that putting those parties in the same convention hall sounds like something that should prolly happen. Perhaps there’s some ugly, and necessary, realities to confront in that.
Second, in principle I don’t think the ‘ugliness’ should be a consideration. If these nominations are merited, then that’s just the way the mop flops and decorum should not be a consideration.
However, nobody believes both these works are merited nominations.
I’ll leave it to you to determine which of these is a book that matters. But so you understand: there is no credible creator who thinks this is anything but a balancing act. A compromise between pressures.
Now, I should mention that few real creators put any weight into the Eisners to begin with. It’s a bit of a muffled groan every year as books no literate person could enjoy make the list.
It’s true enough that this is a DM-focused award and it’s clear that either the nominating committee don’t dare veer off that road, or truly have no contact with the SPX world. Which, frankly, is fine by me. I think separating these out for the purposes of an award is an acceptable fiction.
But even allowing for the fact that these are the commercial genre-fiction awards, there’s a narrowness that beggers belief. Which leads to the broadly-held view that these nominations are compromised. Either by the nominating committee’s limited palette (palate?) or by what amounts to a friend circle.
The Oscars were never a ‘real’ thing. It was always a means of Hollywood shaping its own narrative. But it really became shit in the Miramax era. For people under a certain age, Harvey Weinstein is just a Shrek-looking rapist. But people over that age will remember that he pioneered the full-court-press brand of Oscar lobbying. Careers were made on Oscar wins that were very clearly engineered if not entirely manufactured. It took a compromised and self-aggrandizing thing and turned it out completely. The prostitution of the award.
Now it seems nutty I should clutch pearls over nominations that regularly include BLUE BEETLE. But I think there’s some part of all sane people who want awards to be reflections of, at the very least, genuinely-held sentiments. And I’m just not buying the idea that an experienced and well-read nominating could arrive at what I’m seeing.
There’s two paths for The Eisners to walk. The institution can either correct itself or it can seek new heights of irrelevancy. There was a line in a minor Ennis book from a few years ago that I’m sure I’ll get wrong. Something to the effect of “when you make something risible, you make it dismissible.”
I think that’s worth taking under advisement. Because outside of the Twitter-facing personas of a few down-bad creators, there is no one taking this seriously.
WHEN YOU ARE DESEPERATE TO SEE YOURSELF IN PRINT
Or, in this case, see yourself in Tweets.
Cannes is going on. So, aside from the most pitiable “movies are SO back!” prayers imaginable, you’ve also got an awful lotta commentary from people who don’t make anything in life except clatter.
“The movie Substance is an affront to women. Only cishet male critics could stomach something like this.”
“Substance is a movie that says more in its runtime than all of Hollywood has said in decades. A destabilizing triumph!”
“Megalopolis is a disaster of the highest order. It’s tragic to see one of cinema’s most brilliant minds go out so sad.”
“Megalopolis is what we haven’t had in far too long. A film that from conceit to credits champions the very nature of creativity.”
It’s all such rotting bullshit.
Into every premiere, these festivals allow cloying idiots who only watch films to tweet about them. The result is worthless chatter that feels like empty marketing. It’s like putting your ear to a broken sea shell.
I OBVIOUSLY don’t think commentary is solely the province of people who create. And God knows 99% of that population has run from that responsibility anyway. But increasingly there is just this other type of commentariat… Tweeters. Those who create nothing. People who are only in our eyes and ears by virtue of the bar being lowered into the basement. The democratization of media, and by extension criticism, makes it all the equivalent of someone shaking a silverware drawer.
Shut up. I know to make zoomers pretend to care about film, we’ve gotta attach a ‘take’ to everything. And I know that the name-brand critics of yesteryear appealed to the letter-writing class of their respective newspapers by doing the same. But they sucked and now we suck.
Please, shut up.
SPEAKING OF UNNECESSARY CRITICISM
Doing a ‘girl with gun’ genre marathon this week.
I’m not entirely certain Salt qualifies. It’s more a post-Bourne espionage thriller. Some decent chase scenes, some convincing action, some unconvincing action, and a plot that requires a director’s cut.
I don’t know if any single part of it is bad. But I also don’t know that any of it sticks. It’s difficult to make Angelina Jolie a believable action star. There’s really no avoiding the fact that she’s not the type of physical presence we look for in a “kicking CIA guys in the chest” story. And there’s REALLY no convincing the audience that a change of hair style would throw law enforcement and intelligence agents off her trail. She’s a singularly beautiful woman. And I mean that literally. There are women who have similar features, but nobody who looks quite like her. So “but I have bangs now” is really not convincing subterfuge.
I think I need something with more grit for my next watch. Salt didn’t provoke me, either positively or negatively.
WE’LL BE TAKING A BREAK FROM MERELY GREAT
An artist I’ve worked with in the past hit me recently and we’re talking about putting something together.
I sent him a full issue one script. When I get stuck on existing projects I’ll often write the first issue of something unrelated to get loose again. There was one I really felt strongly about. A neo-noir near-future book with all the stuff you’d want. Crooked cops, a murder mystery, and working people who wanna knock off a bank. Told in a rhythm that would grip me as a reader.
We started to talk about how to do it right.
And then I got hit by lightning.
“Why the hell do I think anyone cares about a smartly-told, tightly-written crime story paced for six issues?”
I’ve asked the artist to hang on a second while I think of something that is larger than life and provocative. I can’t constantly beat a drum for more aggressive work and then smugly assume it doesn’t apply to me.
So I’m putting my head to work this week. I’m not coming up for air until I arrive at something that I think would grab attention from 50-yards out. I’ll worry about ‘elevating’ it after the idea has hammer punched me in the ribs.
SO LONG, FAM
Until next week. You think of some killer ideas. I’ll think of some killer ideas. Let’s get some comics into the world that deserve the only award that matters: reader excitement.
Do for self.