Not to much to say, draw draw draw, work work work...


Warm up sheet from Mar 30 03

Joe

Monday funday, got 2 pages of arnold done, doodling and somemore work on Pin City. : )


Self-portrait

Have to make up my mind for what cover to use for the zine now...

...Think I’ll sleep on it.

Along with Inking my hart out to Arnold these last few weeks...


B&W inks over Goran Parlov’s pencils on the T3 comic

...I’ve been slowly getting back into working on PIN CITY. Started making some real progress these last few days after weeks of nothing really.


unfinished portion of a page from PIN CITY

The long cold bitter winter wore me to the bone, had a major funky case of SAD going till this last week when things finally warmed up for spring. I'm going to have to look into finding somewhere warm to spend my cold months in the future, don't think i can take the frozen darkness for that long anymore.

Colin Mochrie as Reporter Anthony St. George offers a public apology to America on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

We’re all really very sorry up here America…
...not in the face ok?

ha ha ha ha ha ha.....oh boy.

A response to the opening editorial of TCJ #250
”Why Team Comics is Still a Bad Idea”
by Tom Spurgeon – An excerpt of the editorial

Pro-Comics


The underlining idea of the movement, or shift in mood, that 'Team Comics' was coined to describe, is to be proud of our medium as an act of reclamation rather than allow ourselves to believe the prevailing propaganda: That it's at best a children's medium beneath the contempt of the fine arts and literature and possibly even harmful to the young mind.

And to preach a pro-comics message not just to the converted, but the outside world with no hesitation. To not flinch when the mass media gets the little things wrong as they do so often or pick up on it years too late ( “comics are not just for kids any more” - google - ), or allow ourselves to ever feel shame for being associated with comics.

Something Tom and the rest of TCJ have been saying for a dog’s age.

If Joe Q & and the other the other blustery big guns are frequently marketing clods & behave at times like wanabe dictators, this doesn't devalue the core ideal.

And if it’s true that Starose & Warbuck chose not to express critical opinions publicly much, it does not mean they don't have them necessarily.

Maybe they just chose to diplomatically not make unnecessary enemies as Joe Q does.

Top Shelf’s healthy, overwhelmingly positive relationship with a very large web community AND the mainstream comics market as well as the traditional alt con circuit and stores probably is a big part of why they did so well with their fire sale.

Oliverose & D&Q’s status with the online community is affected greatly by his general lack of substantial personal interaction with his readership online, now representing a much larger pool of potential readers than the one he courts by attending the alt cons like APE.

I know for certain he's respected by most and seen as a trailblazer, as a publisher held in the highest regard by most people aware of D&Q. But people who don't go to cons or shop in comic stores regularly likely don't have much of a face to put to the company.

Seeing as the authors he publishes are also mostly of the more privet variety online, not communicating to their audiences online but rather directly through their work or in personal signings & formal interviews, it leaves the publisher comparatively short handed in the PR & tribal status dept for those online tribes Top Shelf benefited from.

The remaining difference is likely underlined by Tom himself - Alan Moore.

It's still true that if you can't afford DC's advertising budget than you can do well by you're own interests to use the web to it's full extent for publicity.
And It helps to be publicly available online as an individual, and as such seen as part of your readerships' tribe. It has to be sincere, or at least seem to be, not something that you fake at to get in the readers pants.

The online communities, particularly ones like Warrens' forum, can be seen as Tribes. Just as those who attend cons and shop regulars can.

Top Shelf tapped into tribal allegiance either knowingly or by accident when they participated in the communities casually as well as for publicity. And gained access to not only the immediate tribe they were part of, but when they announced there plight, word was passed on to groups connected buy shared members from other communities who felt an allegiance to the publishes & authors or Top Shelf.

The Warren Ellis forum was made up of a group with a very broad interest base, the effect of advocacy on it’s members part spread like wild fire. The announcement posted there and to lesser degrees on the other major boards gave rise to a highly communicative info virus that jumped the human connections in the Internet community as well as it did the fibberoptic ones.

D&Q saw some gain from there efforts online. But as an entity or group of indiduals only known to most of the web based tribes by; Periodic Press & Hype posts in the web forum community; what personal interaction individuals may or may not have had with D&Q staff or authors in public; & personal or professional association. Their sales were built on their status & good reputation as an positive institution that needed a boost in a time of crisis by the web tribes, rather than a personal friend & neighbour who needed to raise a barn after a fire & in time for the harvest. At best not to the degree that I think Top Shelf was seen to be.

....i could be full of crap...but i don't think so...

A negative influence was a debate in the web community as to whether it was sincere on D&Q’s part, speculation as to whether it was indeed needed to the same critical degree, or was a copycat marketing ploy. This became an element of doubt tainting the waters.

The acceptance of the sincerity of Starose & Warbuck was given due to personal reputation and a documented immediate crisis. Also timing, being first to the well always helps.

Top Shelf had a tribe member’s relationship with the community; D&Q had a positive but more passive foreign one.

Information about and the needs of tribe member of the community are spread and seen to with higher priority, and aid is extended to them with less question or hesitation. A level of aid People on average are never quite so eager to give to an external foreign factor, even a friendly one. And they enjoyed a degree of tribal membership with a much broader community than D&Q does in general.

To get back to the topic, Tom charges that there is a problem with ‘team comics’, a lack of critical thinking and a kind of jingoism. I’d suggest there is not a problem as long as he’s still standing in the room. : P

He is in it, because as I said before, the movement is one TCJ helped to found in it’s treatment of the medium. And they are hardly alone; to say that there is some sorts of universal tendency in comics now to all agree with each other is in my experience untrue. There might be a few pushing the idea but we are hardly agreeing on anything in the end.
A more ornery bunch you will be hard pressed to find.

Collectively raising the bar of our mediums self esteemed does NOT necessarily imply that you cannot be critical of the work or that we all must agree on anything else other than it is in fact worth as much respect and consideration as any other medium.

Warren Ellis may have been an autocrat at times on his message board but he never suggested that wasn't the case. And in fact displayed it as a core part of his views by being very very very critical.

His mistake I think (though I don’t know if he would agree :) ) was being such a hard ass. I think it was half barroom BS, but just the same with no face to face interaction that sort of extreme persona is doomed to polarize the opinions of some people on the other side of the wires.

But I digress again

These are all can be seen as failings. But of individuals, not the core ideal.
Not once did Tom really address or find fault the core idea, only extreme expressions of it.

If Tom really thinks that’s what all the positive energy and shift in attitude is about, that unqualified support and mindless blind acceptance is what ‘team comics’ (his name for it) is all about, then yes I agree, it’s a bad idea.

But I don’t think that is what it is. That’s just a fallout shadow of it.

IMO It's not Team Comics, it's Pro-comics. Like Pro-human rights, Pro-Freedom, Pro-peace...It’s a very good idea.

That it’s built on a sense of community, at the cons, in the stores and online is even better.

It should include support for newcomers, which means holding them to a relevant critical standard, not the same one you use for an author with a substantial body of work. And I think it means supporting the effort as much as the results so that they have an atmosphere in which to learn and develop.

It means that stores should be clean and welcoming unless they wish to continue as fetish shops. That the staff be helpful and civil, because the customer is the one with the money, so they get what they WANT to buy, judgement & opinion only offered when asked, and that goes for body language and the unspoken. And when asked that the judgement & opinion is well informed.

That we not accept social status as lesser or fringe, but as an established medium with a heritage to be proud of and a future filled with potential.

That we stand up for ourselves rather than wait for acknowledgement from the media or establishment. That we control the way we are perceived and defined as a medium rather than allowing outside parties to define us. Just as Cinema, Literature and the Fine Arts has in the past.

So with all that in mind, I choose to co-opt the derogatory name Tom has slapped the Pro-comic movement with, Yay Team Comics, damn strait. And whether he agrees with me or not I think Tom is a card carting member.