June Contest #2 - Win a HUGE ass piece of black and white art
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We’ve almost hit the end of June. Summer’s on and the year is half up.
We’ve got our book now sitting in the July issue of Previews. You may have spotted this postage-sized image in it. It can be found in the independent comic section under Optimum Wound. Order code for your local comic shop is JUL09 1019. It’s hitting shops in early September. You can pre-order it at your comic store and soon on Amazon.
Congrats to Margo for winning our first contest a few weeks ago. Your package finally went out and you should be receiving your artwork and Rex graphic novella shortly. And now we come to our second contest in celebration of the release of Optimum Wound Volume One. This is a larger pen and ink drawing measuring 11 inches wide and 17 inches tall.
And it’s yours to win.
As the usual bonus I’ll send you a copy of Danijel Zezelj’s Rex in the package.
THE RULES
Just answer this question in the comments section.
Now that 2009 is almost half over what do you most hope to accomplish by the end of the year?
1. Leave your answer on the comment section of this blog.
2. You’re only allowed to post once. I read every comment so I’ll know.
3. Private messages or emails don’t count, it has to be posted on this blog.
4. You have to leave a comment before 11.59pm PST on Monday, June 29th, 2009 to be eligible. BEST ANSWER WINS. Then I’ll contact the winner by email and announce them publicly next Friday, July 3rd on the Contest #3 blog.
5. This contest is open to ANYONE in the world. If I have to pay shipping to South Africa or New Zealand, that’s MY problem.
Good luck everyone.
-Jay
Longbox Digital Comics, Life after Diamond and the new Whiteout Trailer
The weeks keep getting hotter and crazier.
A huge thanks goes out to Richard Caldwell and ComicNews.info for the interview that they did with me. Richard I have fun on twitter and I enjoyed trading emails back and forth with him for the past few weeks.
Comics
Zane Austin Grant over at Pop Matters has a nice piece on the history of comics conventions digging back 45 years.
Mark Ruffin investigates the continuing trend of novelists writing for comic book publishers.
Dwight MacPherson posts a quick and handy piece on his creative process and writing for Zuda comics.
Over at Robot 6, JK Parkin leads us over to artist J.H. Williams III’s Flickr stream. Beautiful work as always.
Webcomics.com continues to be a resource power house this time showing us how to use Flash to Ink your Web Comic.
D.J. Coffman writes a pretty heavy post on the future of the comics industry and comtemplates the possibility of life after Diamond.
The big news story that circulated around the net last week was regarding MySpace laying off a few hundred staff members. One of the side effects of this being that MySpace Comic Books closing up shop.
I’ve been eager as hell to get a peak at this since first hearing about it in early 2008 and finally a first look at Kevin Baker & Danijel Zezelj’s LUNA PARK.
DRAWN featured a video on Joe Lambert on making minicomics that stand out.
Sean T. Collins posted a good sized list of alternative comics creators and publishers on Twitter.
Longbox Digital Comics have finally made themselves known after three years in development. Hopefully these guys will be a viable digital solution for comics. Looks promising. Rantz is a very ambitious fellow and I have high hopes for a successful venture. Comic writer Kieron Gillen weighs in on Longbox and its’ potential.
Here’s a fantastic interview and walk down memory lane with legendary comics colorist Steve Oliff. A lot of pictures and process details are included.
Deb Aoki covers the details behind Oni Press’ 2009 Talent Search for Artists.
Artist Steve Lieber goes through his process on creating a comic page for his new series Underground.
Top Shelf Comics has been launching some of their books on the Amazon Kindle and one of the first major comic publishers to test out the digital platform.
Also at CBR Jeff Smith & Alec Longstreth converse on the Indie Way of doing comics. Very entertaining interview.
Shaenon K. Garrity presents a Half-Assed Guide to Comic Book Message Boards over at Comixology. Pretty funny stuff. I’ve personally had some new found enjoyment on the message boards but I haven’t contributed to 4 of the 5 that she reviews here.
Rich Johnston goes over a lot of the cool news that came out of Heroes Con that got glossed over on the net. I’m particularly happy about Ed Brubaker’s new Criminal series and the progress being made on the Sleeper movie.
There’s a beautiful preview of Brian Wood’s new Northlanders arc with art by Danijel Zezelj sitting over at Warren Ellis’ Whitechapel forum. Between Northlanders, Luna Park and what we’ve got cooking up (not telling yet), Danijel Zezelj fans are going to be very happy this year.
Valerie D’Orazio wrote a great post over at Comixology, You Have to Get Paid: Lessons in Freelancing. It’s a longer article and worth paying close attention to.
Art
Dig the sweet sweet illustrations of Dan Park over at Juxtapoz.
OMG Posters showcased the “Duality of Humanity 5? Art Print by Shepard Fairey and also found a really cool video of Shepard working on an original piece.
Artist / writer Rivkah debuted the First of 20 Lessons on Printing in Black & White.
Writing and Publishing
Mary Jaksch at Write to Done shows you how to put aside the digital distractions and get down to the business of writing.
Calvin Reed at Publishers Weekly gives his assessment of the new Amazon Kindle DX in his post entitled, Looks Good, Works Fine, Costs Too Much.
Here’s an oldie but a goodie from Zen Habits from back in 2007, How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers.
Social Media
Mashable listed 10 Twitter Tools to Organize Your Tweeps.
Adrian Try over at Freelance Switch gives some suggestions on how to work less hours at your job. Something I’ve recently managed to negotiate with my dayjob.
And Glen Allsop gives some useful pointers that we could all use in his article, How to Clear a Massively Crowded Inbox.
Traffikd lists out some tools and platforms that enable you to build your own social networking site.
Arnold Zafra at Search Engine Journal covers 7 new features for Google Book Search.
Jack Humphrey interviews the creators of OpenZine, a free online magazine builder. This site looks like it has some possibilities. I’ll probably experiment with it when I get a chance.
Warren Ellis linked to a letter written by musician Amanda Palmer detailing how she made $19,000 in 10 hours using Twitter. This was one of my favourite reads this week. She clearly gets her point across.
The Good Stuff
Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson on the Future of Free
And probably the second most entertaining read of the week, Kevin Smith, taking questions while baked.
3 NEW TRAILERS caught my eye.
Whiteout
New Halloween II trailer
& the new Inglorious Basterds Trailer
Hart Fisher on Marvel and the Most Controversial T-shirt in Comics History
In 1995 Hart had a few hundred “Marvel Can Suck My Cock” t-shirts made up and managed to sell them all quite fast at Comicon that year. For those of us with bad memories he discusses the feeling in the air at the time amongst the indie-comics community.
by Hart D. Fisher
The Marvel Can Suck My Cock shirts were a specific response to Marvel’s business practices. This was when Dark Horse, Caliber, First Comics, Eclipse and the other indies started taking a bite out of Marvel’s sales figures. Then Image was formed and frankly, the powers that be behind Marvel wanted to punish them (Todd, Jim and Rob) for daring to leave at the peak of their success and start their own thing. To crush the competition Marvel came up with this horrendous boondoggle (it really fucked up the industry) of a plan to wipe them from the stands, literally. A comic book store has limited wrack space. They felt that when push came to shove, a Marvel title would always win out in a fight with an Indie for shelf space. So these morons decided to push the comics off of the stand physically by weight of numbers. Marvel nearly tripled their output to push the other books off the shelves, they were looking to bury guys like me with sheer weight of numbers.
A lot of comic book stores got hurt with this move. More than a few stores bought this line of crap and ended up with boxes of sub par comics stinking up the back of those stores. But hey, Marvel got paid, what the fuck do they care? Right? At this time, Marvel was also making noise about Marvel marts and about pulling their books from all other stores. Real stupid short sighted thinking. Just like the greedy idiots that want to erode the window of when films move from the Theater into your home on DVD. If they release DVD’s of theatrical releases in a bid for a quick buck they will kill the theatrical business and when that’s gone, you’re in trouble. This happened in comics. Stores started going out of business for buying Marvel. I knew several personally that got burned. The general thinking amongst many of the indies I knew was the stores that fell for it deserved what they got. I didn’t feel this way. I felt the comic book store owner was my partner in business and without him I was fucked. Marvel did not act that way at all.
I couldn’t say “Fuck You” to the suits in any other way than publicly. I wanted to make it hurt. I wanted to humiliate them. I grew up a died in blue Make Mine Marvel! Bullpen bulletin reading maniac fan. I also felt betrayed by their practices as a fan of comics. By doing something public like this, I could steer the conversation and outrage to the business practices they were perpetrating. You don’t like the comic business the way it is today? You can thank Marvel Fucking Comics and the rest of the lemmings that followed their lead during the distribution wars. My t-shirt was my voice telling them and everyone else, I’m here for a fight and I’m not leaving these wracks quietly. It was a declaration of war. I’ve always felt that you could outspend me, but you couldn’t out think me. And these gimps certainly go tow to tow with me in the gutter.
I took their money away, all of their status, and sold out of 100 shirts in less than one day. I sold the shirt off of my back twice for double the price. Then I heard about John Romita Jr. getting tough with some of the kids that wandered around the booth with their shirts on. I mean, he was getting physically violent and verbally abusive with this one guy from Fantagraphics or Slave Labor. So I went over there and took a walk around the Marvel booth, talked to some folks I knew, and sauntered away with that loud mouth bully sulking but not saying a word to someone he can’t bully.
I fucking HATE bullies.
I sent people over to their booth after that. The Marvel guys all thought my Kill Image comic was pretty funny until the joke was on them. They threatened to sue the San Diego Comicon if they didn’t kick me out of the show and make me stop selling the shirts. My publicity stunt changed the language of the booth display contract all vendors sign now because of this. Now there is a clause in the contract that states you can be ejected from the show for doing anything that is derogatory to another publisher OR to comics as a whole. Who the fuck could possibly decide what is derogatory to the comics industry as a whole? Gee, how do you figure that out? You don’t. Now they can arbitrarily throw you out for anything they feel like coming up with. This is one of the many reasons you will not see me at the San Diego show.
The Marvel shirts stirred the scarred little boy/men that ran many of these shows. I know of many people kicked out of shows around the country for wearing their shirt. I’ve had to cover up the word Cock several times on the shirt with Duct tape to keep selling it. One time at the Wizard World Chicago show, right after they bought it out and were running it for the first time they shut me down. Told me I couldn’t sell the shirt. I said no problem. Instead I gave the t-shirt away with any copy of Rectum Errectum (the book is even more crazy than the title) I sold until I got to the head guy at the show and we came to an agreement as to how to sell the shirts and then I sent my mom around the show on foot selling shirts.
If you’re smart enough, you can always figure out a way to make yourself heard in one way or another. You have to fight for your voice. That is what I taught all of my Boneyard Thugs. The fans were fucking pissed about what Marvel was doing. Store owners were furious. They were betrayed. The shirts were embraced for years after that until I got bored doing them. This wasn’t just my voice being raised, Dianna Schutz bought about 6 shirts for her editorial staff and one for Frank Miller. Hell, if you watch Chasing Amy, the Kevin Smith flick, you can see the Marvel Can Suck My Cock on a fan at one of the comic convention scenes, a Bill the Bull shirt made it in there also.
But people were really angry about Marvel then.
June Contest #1 Win an Original Pen and Ink Drawing
We`ve finally arrived at the first contest ever held at this website.
We’re pretty stoked around here about the impending release of Optimum Wound Volume One in early September. It hits the Previews catalog on June 24th.
So we’re celebrating by holding contests all month.
This will be the first of four held in June. Every Friday we`ll be offering up prizes of escalating coolness. This week features a 11″ by 12″ pen and ink drawing. You can win this artwork by following the rules below.
It’s a drawing of my main character Starkweather from Battles Without Living Witnesses. It’s 12 inches tall and 11 inches wide (30cm x 27.5cm), India ink on acid-free paper. AND IT”S YOURS TO WIN.
As an added bonus I’ll throw in a copy of Danijel Zezelj’s Rex in the package.
THE RULES
Just answer this question in the comments section.
What have you accomplished so far in 2009 that you’re most proud of?
1. Just leave a comment on this blog, that’s it.
2. You’re only allowed to post once. I read every comment so I’ll know.
3. Private messages or emails don’t count, it has to be posted on this blog.
4. You have to leave a comment before 11.59pm PST on Monday, June 8th, 2009 to be eligible. I’ll add up the number of comments and use a random number generator to select the winner. Then I’ll contact the winner by email and announce them publicly next Friday, June 12th on the Contest #2 blog.
5. This contest is open to ANYONE in the world. If I have to pay shipping to South Africa or New Zealand, that’s MY problem.
Good luck everyone.
-Jay
Weekly Roundup: Bleeding Cool, Chuck Palahniuk and French Batman
Comics
Most of the talk in the comics blogosphere and news sites centered around Rich Johnston’s new site, BleedingCool.com. His residency and column Lying in the Gutters has come to an end at Comic Book Resources.
Warren Ellis has returned to writing a weekly column at Bleeding Cool entitled Do Anything. Looks like it’s going to be a fun ride.
Publishers Weekly had a great article on underground comix and how they transformed the landscape of American comics.
Webcomics.com has a piece on how artists should protect their backs literally. I can`t emphasize enough to artists to spend the money on a good chair. After spending hours hunched over a kitchen table drawing and then using a crappy art stool I finally broke down in the late 1990`s and dropped 500 bucks on an engineer`s chair with adjustable everything.
Laura Hudson over at Comics Alliance wonders when comics will be available on game consoles.
We also got a sneak preview of Nathan Fox’s FLUORESCENT BLACK, PART 2 - ONE WAY OUT!! Looks like killer work. And it will also make an amazing collection when all is said and done. I`ve heard Nathan`s work described as Paul Pope on steroids.
Chris Sims reviews a Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose live on twitter a page at a time. Hilarious.
Erica Friedman over at Okazu details out the Top 7 Things Every Young Artist or Writer Needs To Know. There`s some great stuff in there that even us older fellas can take to heart.
Be sure to hit up the fantastic interview with Bob Fingerman conducted by Tom Spurgeon over at the Comic Reporter.
I forgot that Bernie Wrightson had worked on the Punisher P.O.V. back in the day. Here’s an awesome cover that he did.
And finally the Comics on Handhelds: Taking Webcomics Mobile – South by Southwest podcast is now live.
Art
A creepy new Elvis poster poster from Print Mafia was featured over at OMG Posters. I want it but I think it would give me the heebie jeebies after a while. The new David D’Andrea hand-painted posters on the other hand are gorgeous.
Greg Beato over at Reason Online does a quick retrospective of Juxtapoz magazine and how they sparked a lowbrow art revolution.
LittlePixel took Classic Albums and re-imagined them as old paperback covers. Here’s the flickr set.
Take the Munsell hue test and see if you got what it takes to be a colorist.
Writing & Publishing
ChuckPalaniuk.net has details on Chuck Palahniuk’s Short Story Contest.
The Washington Street Journal posted Reinventing the Magazine; covering 5 publications That Push the Boundaries of the Print Medium.
Social Media
Glenn Gabe over at Search Engine Journal gives his take on who actually Owns Your Twitter Account.
Wired covers Scientology`s s tumultuous relationship with Wikipedia and there recent banning. B
Mashable reviews The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave. WAVE has to be making the keepers of Facebook stay up late at night as it is almost certainly a FB killer.
TechDirt asks when you can hold every song ever recorded in your pocket… Does $1/Song Still Make Sense?
The Good Stuff
100 Best Movie Lines In 200 Seconds
Twitch has an early INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Review
Batman meets Sin City, in French. Cool little trailer for a new fan film.
And finally Leo gives us 8 strategies for Clearing the Queues in Your Life.
