ITEM!I was once again invited to be a guest on the SPACE Podcast, on February 12th. For those of you not in the know, SPACE is Canada’s science fiction and fantasy television network, sort of like Syfy in the states. Host Mark Askwith and I spent about 30 minutes talking about Sci-Fi manga series and what might appeal to SPACE viewers. I covered the history of Sci-Fi manga in English as best I could (including the awesome PHOENIX by Osamu Tezuka), and then recommended four contemporary series: Naoki Urasawa’s PLUTO and 20TH CENTURY BOYS, Tsutomu Nihei’s BIOMEGA (all from Viz), and the upcoming TWIN SPICA from Kou Yaginuma (Vertical) to appease the increasingly cranky Ed Chavez. Please go listen! 🙂
ITEM!Jim Rugg is having an AFRODISIAC ART CONTEST, in support of the spectacular new hardcover release of AFRODISIAC, from AdHouse Books. Basically, great an art object that features (or references?) Afrodisiac, and you could win prizes! Like that neat piece of art there!
BONUS ITEM! SAME HAT! also has news of a massive exhibit of GARO, the influential alternative Japanese manga anthology from the 60s and 70s, to take place in New York City just following MoCCA. Go check it out.
Dustin Harbin secures his spot at TCAF on the 5th floor, alone, by drawing me into a comic strip at his website. I like the illustration of me in the last panel the best but I didn’t want to spoil it.
I don’t really mention it on the blog here as much as I should, but my favourite magazine is probably GIANT ROBOT, an independently produced and funded mag out of California. I’ve been a fan for years and years now, spotting it on the newstands with a bold logo, great title, and an eye-catching photo of CK model Jenny Shimizu way, way back. #10! It’s a general-interest magazine covering art, life, and culture, but with a focus on Asian culture specifically… both here in North America and internationally. It’s well-written, informative, and a great education in all of the things you aren’t going to find just reading manga and watching anime. It’s also very current, very vital, and when it comes to art and film especially it’s like having a great inside track.
Maybe the thing I like about it the most is that it’s so personal–editors Martin and Eric have been there since the beginning. They open every issue with an editorial and a direct address to the reader that feels real and unrehearsed, unlike so many editorial notes that are perfunctory and exclamatory coming from people with a 1-year-contract, these guys have been there since day one, and each little editorial is like a window into a long distance’s friend’s life. What they’ve been up to over the past few months (had a baby! lost at softball!) and how that might tie to this issue’s stories. Even better through working at The Beguiling and visiting the San Diego Comic Con ever year, I have gotten to know Martin and Eric in person, and they’re smart, friendly dudes who love doing what they do.
GR gives me fantastic artist profiles, stories on food and food culture, even a little bit of politics… That’s great stuff. That’s not just worth paying for, it’s worth supporting directly.
In keeping with their editorial style, Martin and Eric have recorded a video asking GR readers and the general public to lend them a hand in a difficult time:
I don’t think they’ve mentioned it anywhere yet (brave face and all that), but in addition to the kinds of issues facing print these days (declining ad revenue, distribution, sales) they’ve recently been dropped from Diamond’s PREVIEWS catalogue, the only way to interact with the vast majority of comic shops who carry manga, anime and other Asian culture goods. Because of GR’s somewhat erratic publishing schedule I didn’t even notice for a little while–and I’m a fan! I’m not pointing at Diamond in particular as the culprit, just a symptom of lost ground. Print is a ‘war of inches’ right now, and if you lose enough ground on enough fronts, eventually you lose the war. This appeal is to help keep them in the fight.
Please go to http://www.giantrobot.com/donate, and you can read more about what they’re asking for, and why, and why it’s a good idea to help. In addition to just helping keep a great arts and culture magazine going, different levels of donation will net you cool stuff like prints, books, original art, subscriptions and more.
My friend Mr. Bryan Lee O’Malley auctioned off a piece of his original art, and raised $2550 for the cause. Which is awesome. I don’t have that kind of art (or that kind of scratch), so we worked it out and I can probably swing about a hundred bucks to directly support artists and work I appreciate, and it nets me a subscription which is cool. I’m hoping that some of you reading here can spare a few bucks as well, or failing that, maybe take me at my word that this is a great magazine and subscribe? Every issue I find something really great in it, and the re-read potential is high. For just $24 (or $30 CDN) you can get a year of great magazines. Failing that? Grab an issue from the newsstand, comic store, wherever you see it and check it out for yourself. And thanks for reading all of this, I don’t make public appeals like this a regular thing, but GR is worth supporting and worth saving.
The official Kanji of the Year for 2009, as chosen by The Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society? Shin, or ‘New’. Chosen for lots of different reasons, it feels like a lot the end of the last decade was on people’s minds the world over… particularly in Japan where the ruling party since WWII was swept from power! For more on the Kanji of the Year see Wikipedia.
Look, it’s a stunning photo of ME, taken by Charlie Chu, Oni’s newest employee (congrats buddy). That photo (or a crop thereof) graces an interview with me at Torontoist.com that went up earlier this week. In it I talk about comics and graphic novels and Canadian publishing and TCAF and The Beguiling and even this-here-blog. Thanks to Dave Howard for conducting the interview, and if you’ve been missing me here as of late you’ll probably get a kick out of the interview –it was taped rather than typed so I’m more off the cuff and rambly than usual.
On that note, my hosting bill came due at the end of January, and after a careful (slapdash) assessment of my finances, it looks like my advertising here at Comics212 over the last two years just barely covered my hosting here at Comics212 for the last two years. That’s the first time that’s happened, which is very nice and thanks to my many fine advertisers for that. Unfortunately, I should probably be doing a heck of a lot better after almost 8 years of blogging at roughly the same address, so more efforts to generate revenue from this site will be forthcoming. On the plus side that probably means I’ll write more…!
We launched the TCAF website last week, and I think we finally have all of the bugs worked out and the little changes I wanted made, made. We haven’t really done any official PR yet, letting people discover it on their own through word of mouth, but I imagine that’ll change next week some time. I have one really big meeting tomorrow, and then one ridiculously big meeting on Friday morning, so work time and free time is kind of eaten up by that.
In addition to being angry enough to throw a couple of finger-pointy blog entries up, I decided to forgo 5 or 6 hours sleep this week to write a review for Manga.About.Com, on my favourite release of 2010 (to date), not simple by Natsume Ono. Go check it out. It was interesting because About.com has very strict guidelines about format and length, and it’s the exact opposite of my experiences writing here at the blog… or literally anywhere I’ve freelanced. I’m going to try to keep writing reviews for the site, because I think a few harsh formating choices will make me a better writer. Thanks to Manga.About.Com Guide Deb Aoki for the opportunity.
As for Manga Milestones… #9 is International Manga, probably as typified by Yen Plus #1/Night School by Svetlana Chmakova. I can’t decide how much I want to write about this. I could literally write 2 or 3 thousand words ripping Tokyopop and ADV new assholes, but I’m not entirely sure there’s enough of a point to it. I’ve been going back and forth in my head for a few weeks, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be too busy to write it, but manga influenced comics from Korea and North America were utterly shit-on, 2000-2008. I wonder if dredging up every single way that happened is worthwhile, when the future is so much brighter for all involved now? Still working on it in my head.
Cameron Stewart does a great job on the art chores of Batman & Robin #7, out today. It’s a breath of fresh air after Phillip Tan’s unfortunate run. The letterer and editor could use a little shaping-up however, as it looks like a couple of word balloons were swapped, giving the last scene in the book a sort of “No, I’M Spartacus!” sort of quality.
“Bottom line is that if you want to break into the comic book world, or any artistic venue for that matter, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up,” – Commenter on Newsarama, ‘defending’ Bluewater by calling them “the bottom”
Bluewater Comics has an awful contract that creators sign because they’re desperate to “break into” the industry. Basically, they don’t pay you until a comic book is “profitable” and then it’s a royalty, with no advances. Which is kind of a shitty contract in the book world, but you still see it. The difference is that in this case Bluewater owns or licenses the Intellectual Property (IP) and what they’re doing is developing that IP for other-media on the backs of young freelancers, whom they never have to pay, and that moves from being a shitty contract to exploitation.
Here’s the secret about not getting paid for work: If you’re not being held to a professional standard (and the page rates in the comics industry are often criminally low, and easy-to-hit…) then you’re generally not turning in professional work. Does the poor bastard who turns out an ugly, unedited Ronald Reagan bio for Bluewater think that they’ve got “a portfolio piece”? Do they think they’re “professional” now? No, fuck no. Any self-respecting editor at any company knows that Bluewater is churning out books with very little quality control, that a “portfolio piece” from them counts for very little unless the freelancer was exceptionally talented to begin with. Talented artists: Build your portfolios for and by yourself, and not, say, by providing free artwork to companies who could pay you, but don’t want to. It’s the quality of what you produce that will decide whether you get hired or fired. The “even if we don’t pay them it’s still a portfolio piece” argument is a myth, flat-out, myth, because if you’re putting together a portfolio you put your strongest work in.
(Admittedly, it’s probably a better deal for writers, because it’s harder to ‘show’ writing samples than art samples, but I have yet to read any of their bio comics that are any good, and even if someone wrote a stunning biography of Oprah Winfrey, I have a hard time believing an editor is going to look at that and go “Shit, this person writes great trashy celeb cash-in biographies, I definitely want to see what they can do with a completely different style of writing.” Like, it could happen, but colour me unsurprised that it hasn’t yet.)
There are a number of companies that will pay freelancers to do comics, not promise to pay them if certain conditions are met, and leaving behind a long trail of dissatisfied creators claiming non-payment. My advice to aspiring talent is to find them, and realize that starting at the bottom doesn’t necessarily mean the gutter.
So the manga milestones thing is going well, eh? Those last couple entries got pretty large and took a little more out of me than I was expecting. I need an editor. But yeah, the last 3 are sketched out and I should get to them tonight and/or tomorrow, wrapping the whole thing up.
What takes not-nearly as long as writing? Why just flapping my gums. I’ve recently been an invited guest on a couple of Podcasts, where I give my opinions on things without the luxury of an edit button. So far people seem to like them!
Back in December, right around the time of the kerfuffle about comics for kids (and don’t you worry, I’ll be revisiting THAT topic soon…), Dan Vado invited me onto the SLG podcast, alongside guest Evan Dorkin. You can find the archive of that Podcast here. I had been hopped up on energy drinks AND got on late, so the whole thing crackles with nervous energy, you should love it, Evan and I try not to feel bad about talking overtop one-another for a half hour. I think I end up on the podcast about 23 minutes in.
Meanwhile, my most recent podcast appearance was this past Friday. Canada’s SPACE tv network has a weekly podcast, The SpaceCast, and SPACE producer Mark Askwith(!) invited me on to talk about the decade in comics, particularly in and around genre comics. You can find that podcast right here. I had a really good time chatting with Mark, just shooting the shit about comics and graphic novels. I’m right at the beginning of the podcast and Mark and I chat for the first 30 or 40 minutes. I picked my favourite genre comic book of the last decade (ooooh!) and just talked about the stuff that really hit in the last decade… Almost none of which overlaps with what I’ve already written here at the blog. I’m followed by an interview with James Cameron, so that’s kind of weird. Edit: Just listened to the podcast… Pretty good in general, but I flubbed the details on http://graphic.ly/. Whoops…
Oh, and just big-ups to the dude who popped by Podcast-cherry, Robin McConnell at Inkstuds. I’m pretty sure I mentioned it at the time, but Robin, Dustin Harbin from HeroesCon/Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find, and myself talked inside-baseball retail nonsense back in October.
Chris is good, but busy.
