Sorry, No 90s for You Today

I started writing about Joe Kelly's Deadpool, and then it turned out I have an awful lot to say about Joe Kelly's Deadpool. This is a comic that was really important to me at the time, real defining stuff, and so I didn't want to rush it. So next week, get ready for a hell of a lot of words about pre-four-books-a-month Deadpool.

In the meantime, have you been checking out Josh's sketchblog? In keeping with the 90s theme of my recent posts, his blog is like a box of chocolates, in that it is heart shaped, has a lot of little paper wrappers around everything, and contains a good deal of nougat. No, wait, actually, it's that you never quite know what you're going to get, from a particularly menacing drawing of Galactus, domestic interludes of a humorous nature, a Breaking Bad-inspired redesign of Mister Sinister, and often pictures of dogs of various sorts.

There are also bits of art from the comic we do together that gives this blog its name (although the name of the comic, at least, is changing). This is quite a technological terror he's constructed, and I find a real elegance in this simple conversational panel. We may have more stuff to pass along as well. (Josh, you still have the keys to this blog, right? You should crosspost the Earp/TWWWH stuff on here, it's only right. Also, I need to call and/or e-mail you soon, but Monday there's a movie theatre here playing some sort of digitally remastered Back to the Future on the big screen, so my brother and I will obviously be unavoidably detained that evening.)

Great Marvel Comics of the Late 1990s: Schedule Change

So the introduction had dates and topics, remember? I hadn't really given much thought to the order the posts would go in; I thought they were modular, but now I've decided to kick off the series with Untold Tales of Spider-Man. It seems like a pretty useful (and pretty obvious, in retrospect) starting point for talking about the fusion of retro and modern present in most of the comics I'm going to highlight, and it's probably the best introduction to Kurt Busiek (who writes two other books on this list) and how exactly his superhero writing works.

So...theoretically, there's nothing stopping the rest of the posts from going in the original order, but I don't want to commit and then have to write another post like this in two weeks if it comes up, so let's just say

a.) there will be a new entry every Monday through November 8th, and
b.) it will be about one of the books on the original list.

See you Monday for our trip baaaaaack to the niiiiiineties! Queue up your Fiona Apple CDs and set your VCR for Must See TV. I am, no joke, wearing a flannel shirt over a T-shirt today.

On Seinfeld

Hey dudes. Yes, still alive.

Haven’t been around here much. Part of it is having a baby – which is not only time taking care of a baby, but of course, savoring the baby. I mean to write some posts, but then it’s like, “Well, should I spend an hour or two writing some kind of gripey thing about comics or should I watch my brand new son wave his arms about and look at things out the window?” Having essentially dedicated the first twenty-five years of my life to triviality, it is a strange time indeed to have something decidedly non-trivial drop into your lap (and, subsequently, poop in it).

But when he is asleep, as he is now, that part of me that wants to write about things that are unimportant to the majority of people but are terribly important to me wakes up.

So, I don’t really have time to write something, sit on it, think it over on a drive to work, edit it, and finally post it two days later like I used to. But what the hell, we are only blogging here. Let’s just talk about some things, and if I say something stupid or at best not very well thought out, then we’ll just talk about that next then, okay? Stimulating conversation is more interesting anyway.

Anyway: I promised like a month or two ago I’d do this thing about Bronze Age Spider-Man, which has been pretty much done for some time but I wasn’t totally happy with it, but I’ll just post that baby sometime next week anyway and be done with it. Also - tell your friends! – I am doing a “Good Marvel Comics Really Did Exist in the Late 90s, Although Admittedly in Somewhat Small Quantities” post for realsies, and that is something I think is terribly important. Look for that soon, in addition to – could it be? – an actual Adventures of Wyatt Earp in 2999-related update, because you may recall, there is a comic that I write that gives this blog its name.

Also a mystery writing project in the works, but I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up too much in case it sucks. It might suck, I won't really know until it's out there, will I?

But tonight: I want to write about television, and write quickly.

I borrowed the first three seasons of Seinfeld on DVD from my brother, because I’ve been reading the AV Club’s recaps on them, and it’s been years since I watched what was once my favorite show that I knew top to bottom, quotes and trivia and behind the scenes factoids (I was, it may distress you to know, that kid in middle school). I also borrowed the first two seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which I have never watched, but Zach recently got into it and has been really digging it.

Watching Seinfeld up to 20 years later…those intensely observational first episodes don’t strike one as so bewildering as they did the NBC executives and test audiences when they first came out. It’s obvious that they shouldn’t, because of Seinfeld’s tremendous influence on the pop-culture landscape. You can have two guys talking about Superman or cereal or poorly positioned shirt buttons in any TV show or movie and nobody questions it. It’s not important anymore if Seinfeld’s a “show about nothing” because now anything can be about nothing, and in 2010 I have a blog where I talk about communists of the Marvel Universe.

So we’ll look at the other part of the Seinfeld pop-culture narrative, which is that the show supposedly has unlikable characters.

This has never rung true to me, and watching It’s Always Sunny has helped point it out, because there you have some genuinely unlikable characters. Like, reprehensible. Selling liquor to minors and pretending to have cancer to get a girl and going to pro/anti-abortion rallies for the sole purpose of meeting chicks. They’re bad people who do outrageous things, so when bad things happen to them we don’t feel bad. I’m quite enjoying the show.

But that’s not what Seinfeld is. Not really. If George was really a monster he wouldn't care if he got that busboy fired. A truly reprehensible Jerry wouldn't worry about the "pony remark" and whether it contributed to his aged relative's death. The key to why Seinfeld resonates is because the show vocalizes ugly things that we’re all secretly thinking but don’t say. The character of George doesn’t work if we despise him; we have to identify with him on some level, even if it's remote. Of course, that’s not to say that we’d all be exactly George Costanza if we weren’t keeping ourselves in check, but he does magnify that part of ourselves that can be petty, can be shallow, is jealous and angry and all that other stuff. George Costanza is a potential us…

You know what, actually? Maybe I’m making a dumb comparison I’ll regret later, but George is kind of The Hulk, isn’t he?

Anyway, at the same time, Seinfeld is a comedy of manners. The It’s Always Sunny gang doesn’t care what anybody thinks of them, but the Seinfeld gang does – the petty side just usually wins out, that’s all.

And because we care what people think about us too, the narrative develops that the Seinfeld gang is “unlikable,” and it seems a bit like denial. Whenever the characters do become genuinely unlikable, as in the series finale and a few other later season episodes, it feels wrong. We’re not supposed to be judging from a position of moral superiority, as we are for It’s Always Sunny, it’s really more of a “There but for the grace of God…” thing, isn’t it?

You want an example? "The Switch," in which Jerry isn't getting along with his girlfriend, but thinks he might like to date her roommate. If you or I found ourselves in this situation, I think most people, if we're being totally honest, would consider that possibility, at least for a second. We in all probability wouldn't act on it, and it's hard to argue that it isn't good that we don't, but there is a tiny element of, "If only..." Seinfeld, at its best, simply removes the "If only..." and runs with it (but also usually reinforces the societal norms, because no real lasting good ever comes from any of it, and most often it actively blows up in their faces).

So what I think makes Seinfeld still relevant and interesting and funny today is how honest it is about how ugly it is. If you will permit a moment of pretentious self-indulgence, I would even venture that Seinfeld is an influence on my own writing. To be able to risk characters being perceived as unlikable in the pursuit of touching something inside of us that we (quite rightly) deny. We can say that the Seinfeld gang is unlikable only if we admit that everyone is unlikable, at least in theory.

I don’t know, I think this Seinfeld thing is gonna be a hit, but nobody’s going to be sure why…

A Short Story What I Wrote (Justin Pollock's Debut)

I have written a short story (and by "short," I mean, "less than 500 words") that's been put up here: http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/justin-pollock/the-skeletons-request/

You will notice it's credited to "Justin Pollock." A few years back I became concerned about the marketability of the name "Zyduck." I mean, that's the end of the alphabet; any book I would actually be able to get published would get jammed in the lower-right-hand corner of any bookshelf - awful visibility. So I went through a couple of pen names. My first choice was "Justin Pierce" for no particular reason at all, but it turns out there is a late skateboarder/actor of some note by that name already. Justin Leonard (Leonard being one my grandfathers) is a famous golfter. My middle name is Paul, so I tried working with that, but there are a couple of Justin Pauls out there already.

Eventually I settled on Pollock as a last name; it's got the "Paul" sound in it, and I like that "ock" at the end, which also sort of retains the "ock/uck" sound in my last name (my wife's too, actually - Poles, the both of us). It sounds nice if you say it if your voice is raspy when you have a cold, as I do now. It sounds like some kind of weird tribute to Jackson Pollock, which it isn't, but I like that one might think it was, for some reason. Best of all, though, though it's not a totally bizarre name by any means, there are not terribly many Justin Pollocks out there - a Google search for it has my story on the first page already, actually, not too shabby.

All of this is to assure Pillock that I did not try to usurp his online identity with a clumsy typographical error.

Anyway, the story itself - I've been writing horror for going on a year and a half. Had to take a break from writing the novel during the recent move, and then lost all my momentum. So I've been writing shorter pieces (I've got three stories just about ready to go out to a couple of publications, hopefully for actual money) to get working again. Then I found MicroHorror.com, which is a neat idea - all the stories have to be under 666 words (you get it ... you get it ...). I decided to write something as an experiment - I think that short form works well for horror, and the super-short word count frees you up to write something loose and quick and send it off without too much laborious self-editing and second guessing. The story I've written here is a little different in style and language (overegged, a bit) than the other stuff I've got in the hopper, but I thought I'd take advantage of what I viewed as a chance for experimentation to write an "old-timey" horror story.

More to come, possibly.

Posting may become less frequent, although it's only temporary

A couple things. For one, I am having what appears to be a battery issue with my laptop. At least I hope it's just a battery problem; if not, when I take my lappy in tomorrow to get it looked at, they may need to take it away from me for a bit.

Also, I will be starting a new job soon. It will be first-shift (you would be surprised to learn how excited I am about that prospect, or perhaps you would not), so there will probably be less of me writing responses and comments on this or other blogs at one in the morning. However, the wifey and I will be undertaking a move, possibly around the end of September/beginning of October.

Both of these things together mean there may be less posting for a few weeks. Perhaps a quick one or two over at MGK, but not one of the usual weekly big honkin' analysis pieces. Work on the I Should Write SEVEN SOLDIERS "challenge" continues when I find the time, and there is a new one up about Bride of Frankenstein. I think I like this one even better than Shining Knight, and I can only say that if a DC editor were to read it it and did not request to see at least a writing sample based on the pitch, just out of curiosity if nothing else, I don't know that said editor and I could ever possibly see eye to eye on anything.

Relevant Reviews: How To Make Webcomics and Comic Book Lettering

As I've mentioned before, we're trying to transition The Adventures of Wyatt Earp in 2999 from "unusually formatted book nobody wants to take a chance on" to "webcomic that's ideally composed for widescreen monitors and won't cost anyone anything to read."

In addition, I'd like to try my hand at lettering the strip. For one, I've always been fascinated with comic book lettering (but never quite had the patience or penmanship to do it by hand). But it would also divide up the actual manhours of work a little more evenly between Josh and me, and I could even redialogue at the last step in the process so's I could expand, contract, or move around dialogue as the art demands.

However, I hadn't the wherewithall to do either of those things yet, so I took my Borders giftcard and bought me some how-to books.

How To Make Webcomics ($12.95) is written by Brad Guigar of Evil, Inc., Scott Kurtz of PvP, Kris Straub of Starslip, and Dave Kellett of Sheldon. These are all popular webcomics, and I believe each of those strips is able to financially support its creator as a full-time job (which is not where my head is at right now, obviously, but it's good to know).

What's nice about the book is that they assume you can already draw, and while there's chapters on writing and character, this isn't Creative Writing 101. This book assumes you can basically put a comic together, which is fine and dandy because we already have (although I always enjoy hearing people talk about the craft and process of writing, even if the book focuses, understandably, on gag-a-day comic strips rather than something like Wyatt).

The book is mostly focused on what I needed to know about doing webcomics, which is basically everything else -- technical/business aspects like website design, advertising (from both sides), monetizing, branding and buliding, where to secure hosting and a domain name and how much you should expect to pay for them, and so on. There's also chapters for things that are still a ways off in the future (i.e. merchandising, and there's a really great chapter on putting together a book), but are still good to be thinking about now.

One thing I appreciated is that they tell you how to start out, but also how to expand and improve once the comic is established. They tell you how to run a startup, and how it's different than running an institution like Penny Arcade, and everything in between. They recommend product-on-demand services like CafePress when you're dipping your toes into merchandising, but suggest abandoning that as soon as it's feasible because the profit potential is so low. Forgive me if this is obvious, but I was entirely clueless about this sort of thing.

Because the book has four authors, they take turns doing individual chapters, but chime in with their thoughts and contradictions during. They're all chummy, so there's no rabid disagreements, but they lay out a bunch of different options and suggest you pick the one that works best for you. It really drives home that there's more than one way to do this.

I got the book because it was highly recommended, and I was not disappointed.

Comic Book Lettering the Comicraft Way by Richard Starkings and John "JG" Roshell ($9.95) is a little more of a letdown, though. They take you through very basic tutorials and a few short essays on lettering theory and method. There's a very nice bit about how word balloons should flow to draw the eye around the page.

To be honest, though, this book is really padded. There's two original short stories in it (one by Jeph Loeb and Ian Churchill, and one by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen) that show you examples of Comicraft lettering in practice, but I mean, I read comics. I have hundreds around the house, many of them actually lettered by Comicraft, that I could use as reference. I'd have preferred more step-by-step instruction. Frankly, since Starkings writes a monthly comic with the characters used in the examples, it all just comes off like advertising to me.

It's a useful book, all right, and I don't regret the purchase. I just wish Starkings & Co. had put together a definitive book on the art and craft of lettering instead of a 64-page book of "tips and tricks" with ads for fonts and comics.

Also: This is a character who appears on the cover of the book as she is drawn by Brian Bolland...

...and that same character as drawn on the inside by Ian Churchill.

Bolland draws characters with character, while Churchill is a little unclear as to how pants and boobs work.

Wyatt Update Feb. ’09: The Internet Will Save Us All

Hey, look! Actual content related to the topic that gives this blog its name!

The reason we haven’t been posting many updates is … well, because there hasn’t been a lot of progress lately on The Adventures of Wyatt Earp in 2999.

I don’t mean, however, that work on the comic itself isn’t coming along. Josh is still producing pages. I chain him to a drawing board and keep a watchful eye over him whilst sipping lazily from some sort of rum-based drink that comes in a coconut half-shell, periodically shouting vague orders like “Ink harder!” and “More pizzazz!”

But enough time has passed since our original submission to say that at this point, we’re probably not going to be picked up by a publisher.

The widescreen/landscape format has always been a sticky wicket, as I’ve mentioned before. I’m not claiming that’s the only reason the book hasn’t been picked up (although I am claiming the only reason I am not a starter in the NBA is because I'm 5-foot-9), but it’s an irregular format for printing, and all the retailers we’ve talked to hate landscape books from a business standpoint because they don’t stand up well on a standard comic rack. If you’re a comic book publisher and there’s thirty other submissions by similarly unproven commodities in your inbox, I imagine it’s real easy to say “no” straight off the bat to the one that’s going to give you some trouble.

And that was before the recession/depression/whatever you want to call it.

Josh and I both read about Diamond upping its minimum orders, and you might have too. There’s talk (although I don’t know how accurate it really is) that the Previews catalog is basically going to be cut in half. Unfortunately, this will probably not mean fewer catgirl statues from Japan where you can take the skirt off and maybe the bikini top too, but will rather result in fewer small-press books getting distributed. So self-publishing is not looking good, although with the hellacious costs involved in printing and distributing your own comic, it did not look totally awesome to begin with.

But wait! I heard a rumor that some creators are putting comics up on the internet! Is this true? If only there was some portmanteau for comics which can be read on the Web! Netpanels? Interzines?

Yeah, Josh and I are planning to jump on the webcomics bandwagon. We’ve already got the “pilot” story up on Comic Space and Webcomics Nation, but I’m talking about a serious, formal effort here -- our own website, a professional layout and interface, archives, a regular schedule, everything. Now I’m a guy who loves print comics, and it was a real thrill to actually be able to hold a comic we made in our hands and give them to people. But considering that the technology is readily available, there’s a proven market for it, and that producing a regular webcomic costs a small fraction of what printing up a single book does, it is damn attractive. True, it doesn’t bring in any money in and of itself, but I read something (I forget where) where a webcomic creator said something to the effect of “Nobody was buying my comic anyway, but at least this way people were reading it.” Too true, person whose name I forget!

And that horizontal format? Somewhere over the last couple years everyone started making widescreen computer monitors, and I have only just caught on that this is very much to the benefit of viewing our comic online. One page filling the screen, with no scrolling down like you have to for traditional vertically oriented comic books.

Also, the format of the individual stories is particularly conducive to web reading. I don’t really like webcomics that tell an extended narrative but only put up maybe one page a week. Unless you’re really pacing the narrative to work as standalone “units,” I find it’s unsatisfying. If you read one page a week and it’s this one, it’s going to be a disappointment -- it’s atmospheric and beautifully drawn and works really well in context with the other pages, but on its own it’s just three panels of some mountains and grass and a crashed spaceship.

Comics like Warren Ellis’ FreakAngels, on the other hand, put up “episodes” of several pages a week. Hey, after the pilot, our comic is structured into four-page episodes! It is as though we planned it like this all along. Of course, weekly’s probably not an option on our schedules unless we win the lottery, but perhaps biweekly or monthly. I feel like a longer wait is acceptable as long as when you do finally get new content, it’s a complete story.

This isn’t going to happen right away, because we don't want to be those guys who put up a half-assed webcomic for three weeks and then give up. I’m researching the “how to” of webcomics (good lord, they even have books that tell you how to do it!), and I’ll have to get webhosting, and probably find/hire somebody to design a modest but decent-looking site. This will also give Josh some lead time so at some point we can get on a regular schedule.

I am long-winded and have taken enough of your time with this update. Perhaps we’ll chat again about this soon. If anyone has any advice or suggestions, by all means leave us a comment.

Thanks, y’all.