Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 294
Diesel and Dust
CROSSING THE NULLARBOR
I’ve made it across Australia. Or at least the inhospitable half. I’m in Adelaide at the moment, in a caravan park with spotty wifi. A hard go, but decidedly easier than last few days of driving through a(n occasionally beautiful) void.
COMIC NEWS QUICK HITS
In very late news, I heard the number BOOM! sold for. I’m bad at math, but I think that’s less than a 10th of the asking price. That’s not good for anyone. Also heard some investors are pursuing litigation because of how bad the deal was. Messy. Feels bad.
Heavy speculation IDW is now without options. Classic publishing shit, really. We got some bad financials, vendors owed money, and no clear way out. Also messy. Also feels bad. But, I should say, IDW has a really fervent gaggle of haters. People who wish the company ill-will at every turn. So it’s never clear what’s real and what’s not. Hope it stays afloat and puts out good work.
Tariffmania has hit the comicsphere. Apparently we’re all in the poorhouse now. No, not this one. I mean the poorerhouse. Everyone is scared of tariffs on Canadian goods spiking the costs of Canadian-printed comic books (all of them). My understanding of trade law is limited, but I thought there was a standing cutout for printed goods. Google’s not giving me a clear answer, and I’m not wading through Reddit. But with all the problems in the comics market, I refuse to add another one to my anxieties as I ready to launch a new title. Oh, and as I type this it looks like the tariff is not happening? Alright, whatever. I’ll revisit this when I have time hopefully never.
FAVORITE PANEL TO HIT MY INBOX THIS WEEK
Ludo is a beast.
THE INDONESIAN CONNECTION
I mentioned last newsletter that spending time in Jakarta, and picking up comics -both old and new- made me curious what the talent was like over there. An hour of scrolling through artists on Instagram and following links yielded some cool results. One of them is Pramono Estu, a gentleman with an bit of a classic advertising illustration feel to his great comics.
I hired Paramono to draw Isa, the antagonist from the upcoming GEHENNA series. Really just to see what he’d do with her. Here’s his work on my sad effort at a cover mock. I am no designer. But he’s quite an artist.
PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF, AGAIN
I urge everyone in a creative field to watch this video. It’s about game development, but that doesn’t really matter. The back-and-forth is relatable to all of us, even if we lack the self-awareness to identify ourselves as either party.
It’s a talk between two developers. The Salesman and the Artiste. You’ve got one dude who does a Youtube channel and makes all the appeals to streamers to play his games, going so far as to include in-game content aimed at specific personalities in gaming media. The other guy wants people to buy his games because of his track record and the merit of the games themselves. I’ve had these conversations a million times, and I’m the second guy each and every time.
And here I’m realizing the second guy sounds like a total bitch.
It’s funny how you never see your own failings clearly, even if you can admit them in an offhanded way, until you see those shortcomings in others.
The Artiste is right in all the ways that would matter to one’s soul. But he’s *less right* than the cornball. People SHOULD value your work for what it brings to their lives and your job is only to supply it. But the REALITY, of course, is otherwise. Ugly truth. Road to Damascus. I gotta send some emails.
NEW CORPORATE TABLETS FROM GOD
In the statement below, comic creator Tony Harris unintentionally (I’m pretty sure) does a thing I’m not sure everyone would catch.
The way he frames his grievance, Gaiman is the sole cause of his lost residuals.
This is an example of a thing that feels true, but isn’t on inspection. If Gaiman wasn’t being accused of sexual abuse, his catalog would continue to be reprinted without interruption, right? And he’s the one who may’ve done the thing. Hence, the books going outta print is his fault. Easy.
But Gaiman didn’t decide to take his books out of print. He could really use the money for attorneys at the moment. He wants those books at the printer. This was not his choice, it was the decision of corporate-owned publishers.
It feels moral to blame the accused rapist for everything. But I assure you, there’s no reason the following thoughts can’t be held simultaneously:
Gaiman is bad. [This statement should prolly include ‘if proven to be so’ because we’re still in the allegation stage of things.]
It is not fiat accompli that being a criminal makes your work go away. Go to a bookstore. Go to a library. Plenty of bad dudes on those shelves. This isn’t gravity we’re talking about. It’s corporate CYA. And even if Gaiman proves to be history’s most prolific rapist, it is NOT A GIVEN that his work be taken out of the market- IT’S A COST/BENEFIT CALCULATION BY FACELESS AMORAL ENTITIES.
This is to say, you can hate Gaiman for what he allegedly did. Pretty reasonable impulse. But it’s important not to see a corporation’s decision-making as somehow inevitable and irrefutable.
BIG NOTE: If you’re ever curious what a corporation really *means* when they pull moves like this, just ask if you can distribute these products for free. They don’t wanna be associated with them, so there’s no reason they wouldn’t relinquish their ownership, right?
CORRECT ME NEXT TIME
The readership of this newsletter is small by comparison to some but the % of weekly subscribers-to-readers per newsletter is very high. So the next time I use ‘do’ when I mean ‘due’ I would like you to be friends and correct me. Yes, I know you fear coming off annoying but don’t let me go through life wrong. Last newsletter was not to my standards.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Two foreign girls take jobs working at a remote bar that caters to miners. It’s full of men who would make any woman feel uncomfortable. And there’s no place to go. Great setup for a thriller, right? One guy who watched the documentary Hotel Coolgardie sure thought so. The Royal Hotel is not ‘based on’ but rather ‘I watched something and got an idea’ from.
The Royal Hotel is a perfectly fun suspenseful movie where characters are stranded in a strange place and a situation is spiraling out of their control. The end is obvious and dumb, but it nearly pulls it off until that last minute. And what it ‘says,’ though a little bald and on-the-nose, is highly effective.
My wife and I drove through Coolgardie this week and stopped outside the Hotel Coolgardie which has been renamed, I assume in an effort to distance itself from the documentary.
DESIGN FOLDER FIND OF THE WEEK
I would be SO anxious about covering a needle gun-thing with letters. And then I’d get anxious about covering the clipboard. Why am I am I making people work to understand what they’re looking at? But, it works. I have no idea if the bold white letters look cool to a Japanese reader, but they look cool to me. And I love a cover that acknowledges the interior. “This here is a manga, understand?”
THAT’S IT OVER HERE
Enjoy your week. Maybe text someone you’ve wanted to reconnect with but put off for a long time. We’ll be dead soon. Do for self.
I dig the rough ISA mock-up, and it certainly is a classy illustration of Her!
That GEHENNA cover fucking rules. Lot of 70s, early 80s energy. Can’t wait to buy the series.