News

Paul’s out of town again, so I spent the better part of the day alternating between rewarding my muse and bludgeoning it to produce work. I’ve a gnatlike attention span right now, due in large part to the fact that I usually spend several hours a day on the internet, and it’s a pretty hard time staying focussed when I’m typing.
I got about 20 pages dialogued today, and most of them were pretty difficult scenes. I’m in a wierd position with this book, in that I’m working from rough script, doing the art, and then filling in the specifics of the dialogue when I letter the pages. This is proving really, really difficult for me. The method is, in large part, the traditional “Marvel Way” of making comics: Writer roughs in the script, gives it to the artist, then the artist turns over the art to the writer, who’s theoretically finished the dialogue, and then proceeds to trim or expand the verbiage as necessary to make it flow with the art.
Verdict? I don’t much like it. I worked from a pretty polished script on the first book (primarily because I had a writer at the time) and I prefer that method greatly. Problem is, I’m in this bind because I needed to see the art and feel its flow before I could tell specifically how the characters were going to react. I think, having gone through this particular thumbscrew routine one evening too many, I’m going to force myself to complete the next script (whatever it is) before I start the art on the next book.
Blargh. Off to bed.

Dialogued a few pages last night and the night before, and hope to continue with it. Dialogue is really, really hard for me. Fortunately, an old college buddy has lent his editing skills. Hooray for brevity! I hear it’s the soul of…. something.

I recently got a not-so-subtle hint from a rather influential source (no, not you, CatBoy) indicating that I need to get my rear in gear on the new book. So, in an effort to keep me honest, I’m going to be posting weekly updates here. Fear, she is a great motivator.
Current Task: Dialogging 39 pages.
Next Task: Complete difficult scene, hopefully with input from prominent scholar.
Last Week’s Achievements:Scanning and touching up 39 pages.
Current Pages Status:Cover Complete, 39 pages scanned, touched up and dialogued, 39 more pages scanned and touched up, awaiting dialogue. Total: 78 pages.

Here’s a link to my article in the Kalamazoo Gazette. It’s by the same guy that did my interview in the Ypsi Courier, only with a few things changed. There’s a nice photo in the print version, but I forgot to pick myself up a copy because I’m a giant bonehead. If there are any local Kalamazerds around, could someone grab me one?
Such a doofus.

Are you a prose writer? Do you want to be? If so, go here and read the List of Twenty Worst Literary Agencies and learn how not to get burned.

The Vault of Midnight store is moving from its current home on Liberty to a brand new location on Main street!
It’s going to be residing in the old Afterwords shop. There’re plans to use the whole downstairs as an event area, with couches and the whole nine yards. This move is a huge risk for Curtis and Liz and Steve, and everybody who knows and loves VoM should get down there and increase her pull, and help out by removing some of their stock so there’s not as much to haul down the street.
Go Vault! You guys rule. Paul and I will send swag.
New store opens JUNE FIRST. Be there!

Hey, everybody. I’m going to be appearing over at the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts this weekend, Saturday April 15th from noon to 3pm. I’ll be giving a Comics Workshop, and we’re looking for more people to attend!
For further information, please contact
Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts
314 South Park Street
Kalamazoo, Michigan 49007
269.349.7775
museum@kiarts.org
Hope to see you there!

We’re speaking as guests in Richard Rubenfeld’s graduate-level art seminar at Eastern Michigan University.
Part One 70MB
Part Two 65MB
These are big enough files that I probably won’t leave them on the server for very long. Rather than listen directly, you’ll probably want to right-click and save them to your server.
Or you can BitTorrent here:
Part One
Part Two
and the generic “see all the torrents” page is here.

Yesterday, I drove back out to EMU and spoke to Richard Rubenfeld’s grad students. It’s something I’ve done in years past, and every year, I’ve had a really great time. On this trip, though, I was joined by Scott McCloud and Jim Ottaviani, and what fun it was! It’s always a joy to work with Jim; he’s so darn smart and eloquent, I usually feel like a gibbering idiot by comparison, but he’s quite gracious and for some reason keeps agreeing to appear in public with me. Scott’s in a whole class by himself, and to say that he’s one of my real heroes is putting it rather mildly. Getting to talk with him for three hours, to a room full of artists, was an incredible experience. I had my MD player running, and so I should have most of it available as downloadable MP3s in the next day or two. I brought three discs on which to record, and the third one punked out on me, so I got about 3/4s of the talk.
We covered quite a bit of ground, and since most of the grad students had already read Scott’s book Understanding Comics, they had a pretty decent grasp of what comics were, even if only a handful of them had read comics in earnest before taking Richard’s class. This left us free to discuss comics at a more esoteric level than I usually get — since I’m frequently talking about the absolute basics of comics — this was also a treat. We compared comics to a lot of different forms of art, talked about the difference between porn and erotica, discussed the possibilites of the infinite canvas, and generally convinced a dozen people to go read more comics. It was really awesome. One guy even told me that my comic was the first one that he’d read as an adult, and one of the attendees, who was pretty skeptical of comics as an art form at the beginning of the class, came out a convert by the end, and one of the turning points for her was getting to see my book — and how different it was from the rest. That was a real thrill.
Scott, it goes without saying, was an incredibly gracious and intellectual speaker. I could literally sit at his knee and listen to him talk for hours. In many respects, he really is an Engineer, in that he is capable of taking this really really complex idea, “How Comics Work” — and distilling it down into easily comprehensible concepts. He’s made it possible to talk in concrete terms about this big, amorphous, diverse, complex (not to mention sometimes competely crazy) art form that so many of us know and love. It doesn’t really matter if you agree with all of his conclusions or personal philosophies, because the most important thing he’s done by far is start the discussion, and give us the basic terminology and tools we need to be able to discuss the subject intelligently.
At one point during dinner, Scott mentioned how geeked he was to meet his hero, James Burke (“He kissed my daughter!”), the host of the TV show “Connections,” and of course that made so much sense. James Burke was able to take these huge ideas about geography and geology and biology and a zillion other sciences and show a huge audience how they all interlocked and made the world we live in. Scott’s doing that with comics, and it’s really amazing to hear him speak.
After the lecture, Jim and Scott and I went out to dinner, and after going passed a few favorite Ypsi restaurants that were sadly closed (no DalaT or La Fiesta for us, boo!) we wound up over at the new La Shish that’s in the old Bill Knapp’s on Carpenter. Man, what a job they’ve done on that old place! It’s a really great restaurant now, completely unrecognizable from the previous chain restaurant, and you should all totally go eat there. </plug>
It was a really great time, and I got to hear about Jim’s new project idea, which is a pretty radical departure from what he’s done previously, but sounds like a phenomenal story and one that will translate incredibly well into a comic, especially in the format he’s considering. With his knack for getting talented artists to illustrate his stories, I’m certain it’ll be gorgeous. Scott filled me in on the guys behind the Flight Anthologies and Pants Press, each of which have recently cracked my head open like an egg. Amazing stuff, and you should all totally go read about them. I’ll wait. Back? OK, good. The sheer amount of talent coalescing in Portland these days is unbelievable — we’re all pretty sure there’s something in the water — and Scott had the skinny on most of them.
We then got to go have dessert at Jim’s house, delicious scones and tea and icecream served by the lovely and talented Kat, and more conversation and sound effects and other geekly delights. Such an evening. I am well and truly blessed.

A major motivating factor lately has been all the good comics I’ve been reading. I’ve spent about two hundred bucks in the last couple months on graphic novels. Collen Doran. Mark Smylie. Will Eisner. Eric Shanower. Harvey Pekar / Dean Haspiel. Guy Delisle. Those Flight anthologies. DVDs on Al Hirschfeld, Colleen Doran and American Splendor, plus the DVD of the panel I was on with Al Feldstein, Len Wein, Marie Severin and Dave Coverly.
The eye-candy has been so good, so luscious that I can hardly get my mind around it. Half the time I read stuff that good, I want to just chuck all my drawing implements down the garbage disposal, knowing that no matter how long I keep drawing, I’ll never have that level of artistic capability. And then, those damn Flight Anthologies. Beautiful strings of polished beads, each a gorgeous little experiment. And half the artists are, like, twenty.
I remember being in college, all crazy for the comics, and not being able to find any way to work them into my course of study. Tried for an independent study — twice — but the one qualified professor got horrible late-stage cancer and passed away mid-term. I was more-or-less stuck at EMU, and it was both comforting and enraging. I was a smart student; paid for my last two years entirely with scholarships, and actually even covered my room and board as well by carefully working the numbers. The professors, and my fellow students, were outstanding, but part of me still wonders what my life would have been like had I gone to RISD or SCAD or someplace arty.
I don’t know that I would have had any better of a time, though. I didn’t fit in with the Fine Ah-tists or Graphic Designers at the blue-collar school where I was — how would I have fared at an upscale art college? I’ve always considered myself more of a craftsman than a Fine Artist anyway, more focused on the process and the function of art than concepts and statements. The friends that I made in college are some of the most awesome, incredible people in the world, and I still keep in regular contact with at least two of my professors from EMU. The experience there was worthwhile — but when I see brilliant webcomickers like Spike and Dylan who are so damn talented, I wish wish wish that I’d been able to get started earlier.
I was so unfocused, trying everything from Childrens’ books to Fantasy illustration. It was all good experience, and I certainly regret none of the times or friends I made in their pursuit. But the work of those who have focussed primarily on comics from their very first art attempts — those artists are really damn incredible, and I so wish I’d been on the bus sooner. And then I saw Scott McCloud speak. Lord, what a visionary. He really, truly gets it. Watching him lecture both energized me and made me sad, for the lack of time I have to put all his brilliant ideas into motion in my own work.
I guess what I’m trying to say with this jumble of thoughts is that I’m really overwhelmed by the amount of sheer unadulterated talent in the current comics field. It’s incredible. The sheer quality of work that’s being pumped out on the web alone is staggering. And sometimes it feels, especially when I’m already down and desperately trying to cram comics into the tiny shrinking holes in my schedule, that I’ll never keep up. I’ll never be able to get up and over the bar that’s being raised on a daily basis by younger and more talented artists. I feel guilty for telling my friends that I want to stay in and make comics, that I won’t be coming to the next music session, that I’ve no time to hang out. And there’s all this brilliance around me and I am still grinding out only my second book in ten years.
But at the same time, it’s an incredible moment in history. Comics are racing toward ever greater heights, and it’s an unbelieveable feeling to be caught up in their surge. Overwhelming! Exhilirating! Scary! So much brilliance, will mine measure up? If nothing else, it’s motivation. Hyah, artist!