Weather's changing/head's throbbing, and much time is being spent familiarizing myself with the new editorial process. As a result: short post.
Today's Quote of the Day come from Fantagraphics designer Jacob Covey. The post is specifically about the shortcomics of the movie poster triptych for Frank Miller's Sin City II--I mean, Will Eisner's The Spirit, but a more general comment sprung out at me as something I wish more people would recognize as VERY, VERY TRUE:
"...graphic design is a field that is currently in a position of finally being understood and valued by the mainstream culture while becoming overrun with unconsidered value for novelty and the idea that anyone with a computer is a designer..."
(via Journalista)
***
OVERHEARD AT THE COMIC SHOP
"Do you have any idea how many Star Wars geeks would shop at a place called the Darth Mall?"
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
I Have a Headache and Other Things You Need To Know
Tiina and I tend to agree on The Big Things, which is good, because living together would suck if we didn't. But there are some Little Things we don't see eye to eye on.
Like lying in bed for hours doing (what to the untrained eye might appear to be) nothing instead of getting out of bed and doing something. She thinks this is wasting time. I prefer to think of it as savouring time.
The last thing I habitually say before she leaves the house is "Drive safely."* The last thing she habitually says to me? "Have fun."
She thinks coffee isn't a vile concoction that ought to be exorcised from the face of the planet at the earliest opportunity. Actually, that's probably the biggest thing we disagree on.
I'd go on, but I've got a headache. You might've heard about it...
*I say "Drive safely" even when she's walking. If you've been in the car when she's driving, you'll probably understand why.
A
Like lying in bed for hours doing (what to the untrained eye might appear to be) nothing instead of getting out of bed and doing something. She thinks this is wasting time. I prefer to think of it as savouring time.
The last thing I habitually say before she leaves the house is "Drive safely."* The last thing she habitually says to me? "Have fun."
She thinks coffee isn't a vile concoction that ought to be exorcised from the face of the planet at the earliest opportunity. Actually, that's probably the biggest thing we disagree on.
I'd go on, but I've got a headache. You might've heard about it...
*I say "Drive safely" even when she's walking. If you've been in the car when she's driving, you'll probably understand why.
A
Monday, April 7, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Wow.
This day was not productive AT ALL.
Well, not for me. Tiina's been blazing through the final tweaks for THE HOLIDAY MEN IN THE MASSACRE MEMORIAL DAY SALE MASSACRE EXTRA-SPECIAL COLLECTIBLE BLACK AND WHITE PRINT VARIANT EDITION #1. And The Future of Comics (II) John Keane sent me eight pages of new SPOOKY KIDS roughs at 3 in the morning. And The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples is still cranking out pages for WildStorm's THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AUTHORITY: JACK HAWKSMOOR (I assume she is, anyway--given the deadline the assignment came with, she'd pretty much have to be...)
Me? I got a little bit (VERY little bit) of the outline for THE LITTLE BROTHER written, then had a flurry of back and forth e-mails with the Senior Editor and Writer of the new project I'm editing, in which I blithely claimed that a Sunday noon Skype meeting would be no problem at all. Everyone said great, I went downstairs and told Tiina, and she reminded me that I'd made a commitment to doing inventory at Happy Harbor on Sunday months ago.
Spent the rest of the day trying to set up a different meeting time sometime in the next 48 while in the clutches of a blind panic over my ####-up. Not that I think this SHOULD be a major thing, but I'm always on the edge of panic so it doesn't take much to get me going. And I'm still very new to the job and not sure how uptight they're going to be over people saying they can do a meeting and then changing their minds fifteen minutes later. I've got think such a thing is not a fabulous, great way to impress your new boss and your new client...
So, yeah. Waste of a day in what was actually a pretty good week. Spent almost all of Monday figuring out how to make the needed fix in the spec movie script; almost all of Tuesday making the necessary changes to the script; all of Wednesday--I don't think I've spent that much time writing constantly since the accident--polishing the fixes. Thursday I was at the shop, and today...well, Friday seems to be turning into my day off. It's not that working at the shop is particularly physically demanding (usually), but something about 6-8 hours there just wrecks me the next day.
Normally, I'd take some painkillers, but after I don't know how many years popping Tylenol-3's like candy, it occurred to me that there might be a causal connection between taking them and my frequently feeling exhausted in the middle of the afternoon.* So I've been not taking painkillers during the day for the last week or so, to see whether I'd be...well, not more alert, because that's just not me...but less dopey.
And I am. Unfortunately, I'm also in no little discomfort. If it's not one thing, it's another...
*That it took something like six years for me to notice a (potential) connection between taking pills and spontaneous naptime is, I'm sad to say, not an uncharacteristic lapse of perception. As The Shepherd told me a couple weeks ago, "Y'know, for a writer, your observational skills kinda suck."
A
Well, not for me. Tiina's been blazing through the final tweaks for THE HOLIDAY MEN IN THE MASSACRE MEMORIAL DAY SALE MASSACRE EXTRA-SPECIAL COLLECTIBLE BLACK AND WHITE PRINT VARIANT EDITION #1. And The Future of Comics (II) John Keane sent me eight pages of new SPOOKY KIDS roughs at 3 in the morning. And The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples is still cranking out pages for WildStorm's THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AUTHORITY: JACK HAWKSMOOR (I assume she is, anyway--given the deadline the assignment came with, she'd pretty much have to be...)
Me? I got a little bit (VERY little bit) of the outline for THE LITTLE BROTHER written, then had a flurry of back and forth e-mails with the Senior Editor and Writer of the new project I'm editing, in which I blithely claimed that a Sunday noon Skype meeting would be no problem at all. Everyone said great, I went downstairs and told Tiina, and she reminded me that I'd made a commitment to doing inventory at Happy Harbor on Sunday months ago.
Spent the rest of the day trying to set up a different meeting time sometime in the next 48 while in the clutches of a blind panic over my ####-up. Not that I think this SHOULD be a major thing, but I'm always on the edge of panic so it doesn't take much to get me going. And I'm still very new to the job and not sure how uptight they're going to be over people saying they can do a meeting and then changing their minds fifteen minutes later. I've got think such a thing is not a fabulous, great way to impress your new boss and your new client...
So, yeah. Waste of a day in what was actually a pretty good week. Spent almost all of Monday figuring out how to make the needed fix in the spec movie script; almost all of Tuesday making the necessary changes to the script; all of Wednesday--I don't think I've spent that much time writing constantly since the accident--polishing the fixes. Thursday I was at the shop, and today...well, Friday seems to be turning into my day off. It's not that working at the shop is particularly physically demanding (usually), but something about 6-8 hours there just wrecks me the next day.
Normally, I'd take some painkillers, but after I don't know how many years popping Tylenol-3's like candy, it occurred to me that there might be a causal connection between taking them and my frequently feeling exhausted in the middle of the afternoon.* So I've been not taking painkillers during the day for the last week or so, to see whether I'd be...well, not more alert, because that's just not me...but less dopey.
And I am. Unfortunately, I'm also in no little discomfort. If it's not one thing, it's another...
*That it took something like six years for me to notice a (potential) connection between taking pills and spontaneous naptime is, I'm sad to say, not an uncharacteristic lapse of perception. As The Shepherd told me a couple weeks ago, "Y'know, for a writer, your observational skills kinda suck."
A
Quote of the Day/Ramble of the Morning
"Well, that was a disappointment. The first issue of Marvel’s Secret Invasion mini-series wasn’t nearly as dreadful as I’d hoped. It’s not good by any standard I currently hold for comics, but it’s far from the stupidest thing I’ve ever read." - David Welsh
If you want to ruin your enjoyment of the vast majority of comics, the quickest way to do it is to start writing reviews for them. It's even faster than approaching them as a would-be pro. One thing I discovered writing the Skewed Perspectives reviews for the Happy Harbor site--rediscovered, actually--is that writing a negative review is much easier than writing a positive one. Why? Because the act of dissecting a given piece of work to such a degree that you can get into the details of what worked and was good requires one to approach it in an unnatural way--to examine it rather than experience it. And the deeper the examination, the more flaws you'll almost inevitably find (I assume that'd be the case even if one weren't predisposed towards dwelling on the negative, but I could be wrong.)
That's actually why I stopped writing reviews and started doing Previews picks instead--it had gotten to the point where I wasn't enjoying reading almost all the comics I was reading and I was sick of talking about stuff I wasn't enjoying. At least with Kid Drew's YOU WANT TO BUY THIS! I can focus on the positive--what at least looks good, even if it ultimately turns out not to be.
In light of all the above, it should come as no surprise that I have nothing but admiration for those reviewers who somehow manage to stay in the game (even those who don't stay in it, really. Just making the effort counts for something.) They provide an invaluable service to me--I'm fairly in the loop on what's going on in comics from all my online trawling, but it's rare that I'll actually pick up something new unless someone I respect recommended it. There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but I suspect a lot of comics, esp. those by untested creators, owe a substantial percentage of their sales to the efforts of folks like Randy Lander, Johanna Draper-Carlson, and The Savage Critics.
(David Welsh quote found via Dirk Deppey's !journalista!)
A
If you want to ruin your enjoyment of the vast majority of comics, the quickest way to do it is to start writing reviews for them. It's even faster than approaching them as a would-be pro. One thing I discovered writing the Skewed Perspectives reviews for the Happy Harbor site--rediscovered, actually--is that writing a negative review is much easier than writing a positive one. Why? Because the act of dissecting a given piece of work to such a degree that you can get into the details of what worked and was good requires one to approach it in an unnatural way--to examine it rather than experience it. And the deeper the examination, the more flaws you'll almost inevitably find (I assume that'd be the case even if one weren't predisposed towards dwelling on the negative, but I could be wrong.)
That's actually why I stopped writing reviews and started doing Previews picks instead--it had gotten to the point where I wasn't enjoying reading almost all the comics I was reading and I was sick of talking about stuff I wasn't enjoying. At least with Kid Drew's YOU WANT TO BUY THIS! I can focus on the positive--what at least looks good, even if it ultimately turns out not to be.
In light of all the above, it should come as no surprise that I have nothing but admiration for those reviewers who somehow manage to stay in the game (even those who don't stay in it, really. Just making the effort counts for something.) They provide an invaluable service to me--I'm fairly in the loop on what's going on in comics from all my online trawling, but it's rare that I'll actually pick up something new unless someone I respect recommended it. There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but I suspect a lot of comics, esp. those by untested creators, owe a substantial percentage of their sales to the efforts of folks like Randy Lander, Johanna Draper-Carlson, and The Savage Critics.
(David Welsh quote found via Dirk Deppey's !journalista!)
A
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
THE HOLIDAY MEN #1.11: Educational. Yummy.
The next to last installment of THE HOLIDAY MEN's debut adventure, THE MASSACRE MEMORIAL DAY SALE MASSACRE, is up at The Chemistry Set.
And that's no joke.
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And that's no joke.
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Boomlet!
From Hollywood reporter.com:
"Fresh faces fuel surge in deals
"Two months after the strike ended, a much-anticipated spec boomlet finally is emerging. But instead of the expected flurry of deals from such A-listers as Stephen Gaghan and Steven Zaillian, it's coming from writers with barely a credit to their name..."
I'm a fresh face! I have barely a credit to my name! Where's my deal, dammit?
This post has been brought to you by the sleep disorder insomnia, the soporific clomazepam, and the letter H.
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"Fresh faces fuel surge in deals
"Two months after the strike ended, a much-anticipated spec boomlet finally is emerging. But instead of the expected flurry of deals from such A-listers as Stephen Gaghan and Steven Zaillian, it's coming from writers with barely a credit to their name..."
I'm a fresh face! I have barely a credit to my name! Where's my deal, dammit?
This post has been brought to you by the sleep disorder insomnia, the soporific clomazepam, and the letter H.
A
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