Make with the clicky to see The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples' illustrations of strange beasties, for Image Comics' GUTSVILLE (written by Si Spurrier and illustrated by Frazer Irving.)
Foley
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Heroic/Wasted Efforts
On a professional level, I've found myself... easily distracted, lately.
The same can pretty much always be said for my personal life. And given the health issues I've been experiencing for the last six months in general and the last two weeks in particular, I've been inclined to give myself a pass on it.
And why not? The work that really needed to get done (stories for UP1) have been taken care of on-time without much difficulty; Avril Lavigne rejected me (it's probably the painkillers talking, but phrasing it that way makes me giggle), so June's going to be a lot easier than I'd feared/hoped; only the INCURSION rewrite for Platinum has a solid deadline to worry about. And that's in July, which shouldn't be too hard to hit. Actually, it should be a piece of cake to hit, but thinking of it that way would align the cosmos in precise manner necessary to screw it up, so I'm absolutely not saying that.
Even the project for Small Press Publisher 01 (working title: ERSATZ) is supposedly paying something prior to publication. Not much, but something. So there's an argument to be made that working on ERSATZ is not completely unjustified. In fact, that is what I ended up working on for most of last week's fifteen minutes when I wasn't feeling sorry for myself or working out what I could make for dinner that could be eaten through a straw. The three issues are broken by page now, certain portions have barebones panel descriptions in place, and the last scene's dialogue is more or less written.
In fact, outside of the two page outline that's still three pages long, the last scene is the first thing I wrote for ERSATZ. I had a vision of how the story ended, which made sense from a plot/theme point of view, but still felt wrong, for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. So I started actually writing the ending, rather than writing about the ending, letting the characters talk with each other and do what they wanted to do. They told me how the story had to play out, and that energized me so much that I went back and started breaking panels and writing snippets of dialogue for the rest of the series.
I thought I was heading into another TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE scenario, and looked forward to writing the script for all three issues over the weekend and then writing the damn two-page outline for SP1. I'd get all that out of the way, go see the dentist on Monday, feel fantastic by today, and get to work on INCURSION and the revised 40-page story outline for my remaining UP1 commitment.
And then I got blocked on the first scene. And I can't seem to get past it. I don't want to write the rest of the damn book till I get that one worked out to my satisfaction, and the more I look at it, and tweak it, and worry over it, the less satisfied I become.
Into all of this waltzes Chimaera Studios' George Singley, the guy who created TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE's eponymous hero. George is currently neck-deep in putting together the Chimaera Superhero Universe with a number of different writers and artists, myself included.
Since my work on Heroic Failure, I've tried to keep my participation in the CSU limited to frequent conversations with George regarding overall direction and promotion--for instance, my idea for Chimaera's Free Comic Book Day book seems to have been generally accepted by the Chimaera Brain Trust. I'm fairly excited about the FCBD idea, as I think it stands a chance of really kicking awareness of the CSU up a notch if (if) everyone involved steps up on a local level. We shall see.
But up till now, I've generally resisted adding things to the CSU in the way of new characters or properties, for a couple reasons. I really hope this thing works, but if it doesn't, I don't want to be so wrapped up in it that its failure takes me off my game (and, let's face it, the success record for superheroes outside the Big Four is...not promising). I don't particularly like losing control of material/characters I created for nothing up-front (I'm giving the rights up for ERSATZ, but for that I'm also getting a creative team supplied, a guarantee of publication, minimal editorial interference/as much editorial control as I want, deadlines of my own choosing, and a nominal payment prior to publication--and I'm still less-than-thrilled, but in a lot of ways, it's the price of doing business at this level of the industry. C'est la vie), even when I don't imagine the stuff has much chance of a life outside of comics. And if all of that wasn't true, there's still the fact that...
I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS STUFF RIGHT NOW.
Even without the Avril gig, I've got a few thousand dollars of writing work I should be doing, work that a leaking roof and Revenue Canada and an infected tooth tell me I need to be doing.
So, of course, George comes along and says, "Hey, got any original supertype characters you want to do a story in the CSU with?" or "Hey, the CSU could use a Canadian superhero team, wanna come up with one?"
Well, no, not really--I mean, I do have some superhero ideas I'd like to explore, but...no time. I could come up with a Canadian superteam, but...no time.
Unfortunately, my mind's been making time. And in the last 36 hours, ideas about what I could do with some superpower concepts I haven't thought about for fifteen years have been rattling around my head, eventually setting up shop inside a three or four issue faux-EC-anthology type thing called SPOOKY ACTION, the characters from THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT was temporarily retooled as a Canadian superhero team, then that was ditched in favour of a more traditional patriotic superteam composed character ideas like Unity, The Happy Couple, Colonel Chinook, and The Phantom Mountie (the last of which I'm reasonably would infringe on someone's trademark...).
I love writing superheroes, I really do. And I love reading them, when someone does something interesting with them (someday I'll be taking Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL run with me to a desert island.) Interesting, but not in violation of the tenets on which the character is built. Which makes writing long-standing icons like Superman, Batman, and Captain America a challenge few writers are up to. Myself included, I suspect.*
I look at the doomed super-universes of the early '90's and see missed opportunities galore--here were dozens of character concepts creators could have done literally anything with. The bulk chose, or were forced to, regurgitate the same tired superhero formulae of the previous thirty years, relying on collectible gimmicks rather than good or interesting or experimental storytelling to stay afloat.
"More of the same" didn't work for the smaller guys, and it seemingly stopped working for the Big Two eventually, as well. As never before, it feels as though nothing at Marvel and DC is sacred. The risks that could have been taken by those with nothing to lose in the '90's have instead been embraced by editorial regimes that, if the world made any kind of sense, would instead be striving to maintain the integrity and consistency of their trademarks--not just because there's cash to be made from having the comic versions of Spider-Man and Batman be recognizable to the audience that paid millions of dollars to see the movie versions of those characters, but because those characters should rightfully be part of the fabric of western (pop) culture.
Conventional wisdom is that non-Big Four superheroes are a dead end in the mainstream comic market as it currently stands. Chimaera and Arcana are challenging that wisdom. The success or failure of the Chimaera Superhero Universe will hinge on three elements: promotion, quality work, and an audience looking for something different than what they can get from DC, Marvel, and even Image.
I can't control the first, the last, or even the middle, outside of my own contributions to the line. I've been reluctant about getting deeply involved because if things don't work out, I don't want anyone, least of all me, looking at a failure on my part to deliver anything but the best work I'm capable of as one of the reasons for it.
I don't have time for SPOOKY ACTION. I really don't.
But I've got a feeling I'll be making some soon, if only because there's a story there that wants to be told, and it doesn't care about things like economic viability. And while I care very much about that sort of thing, at some point Spooky's going to interfere with paying work to the point where it's easier to just write the damn thing than try and fight it. And who knows, maybe the time is ripe for a new superhero universe, God knows the response George's gotten so far has been overwhelmingly (and considering some of the sources, surprisingly) positive...fingers crossed.
I blame art college for this. But then, I blame art college for most things.
Foley
(*It'd be nice to find out for sure someday, though.)
The same can pretty much always be said for my personal life. And given the health issues I've been experiencing for the last six months in general and the last two weeks in particular, I've been inclined to give myself a pass on it.
And why not? The work that really needed to get done (stories for UP1) have been taken care of on-time without much difficulty; Avril Lavigne rejected me (it's probably the painkillers talking, but phrasing it that way makes me giggle), so June's going to be a lot easier than I'd feared/hoped; only the INCURSION rewrite for Platinum has a solid deadline to worry about. And that's in July, which shouldn't be too hard to hit. Actually, it should be a piece of cake to hit, but thinking of it that way would align the cosmos in precise manner necessary to screw it up, so I'm absolutely not saying that.
Even the project for Small Press Publisher 01 (working title: ERSATZ) is supposedly paying something prior to publication. Not much, but something. So there's an argument to be made that working on ERSATZ is not completely unjustified. In fact, that is what I ended up working on for most of last week's fifteen minutes when I wasn't feeling sorry for myself or working out what I could make for dinner that could be eaten through a straw. The three issues are broken by page now, certain portions have barebones panel descriptions in place, and the last scene's dialogue is more or less written.
In fact, outside of the two page outline that's still three pages long, the last scene is the first thing I wrote for ERSATZ. I had a vision of how the story ended, which made sense from a plot/theme point of view, but still felt wrong, for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. So I started actually writing the ending, rather than writing about the ending, letting the characters talk with each other and do what they wanted to do. They told me how the story had to play out, and that energized me so much that I went back and started breaking panels and writing snippets of dialogue for the rest of the series.
I thought I was heading into another TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE scenario, and looked forward to writing the script for all three issues over the weekend and then writing the damn two-page outline for SP1. I'd get all that out of the way, go see the dentist on Monday, feel fantastic by today, and get to work on INCURSION and the revised 40-page story outline for my remaining UP1 commitment.
And then I got blocked on the first scene. And I can't seem to get past it. I don't want to write the rest of the damn book till I get that one worked out to my satisfaction, and the more I look at it, and tweak it, and worry over it, the less satisfied I become.
Into all of this waltzes Chimaera Studios' George Singley, the guy who created TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE's eponymous hero. George is currently neck-deep in putting together the Chimaera Superhero Universe with a number of different writers and artists, myself included.
Since my work on Heroic Failure, I've tried to keep my participation in the CSU limited to frequent conversations with George regarding overall direction and promotion--for instance, my idea for Chimaera's Free Comic Book Day book seems to have been generally accepted by the Chimaera Brain Trust. I'm fairly excited about the FCBD idea, as I think it stands a chance of really kicking awareness of the CSU up a notch if (if) everyone involved steps up on a local level. We shall see.
But up till now, I've generally resisted adding things to the CSU in the way of new characters or properties, for a couple reasons. I really hope this thing works, but if it doesn't, I don't want to be so wrapped up in it that its failure takes me off my game (and, let's face it, the success record for superheroes outside the Big Four is...not promising). I don't particularly like losing control of material/characters I created for nothing up-front (I'm giving the rights up for ERSATZ, but for that I'm also getting a creative team supplied, a guarantee of publication, minimal editorial interference/as much editorial control as I want, deadlines of my own choosing, and a nominal payment prior to publication--and I'm still less-than-thrilled, but in a lot of ways, it's the price of doing business at this level of the industry. C'est la vie), even when I don't imagine the stuff has much chance of a life outside of comics. And if all of that wasn't true, there's still the fact that...
I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS STUFF RIGHT NOW.
Even without the Avril gig, I've got a few thousand dollars of writing work I should be doing, work that a leaking roof and Revenue Canada and an infected tooth tell me I need to be doing.
So, of course, George comes along and says, "Hey, got any original supertype characters you want to do a story in the CSU with?" or "Hey, the CSU could use a Canadian superhero team, wanna come up with one?"
Well, no, not really--I mean, I do have some superhero ideas I'd like to explore, but...no time. I could come up with a Canadian superteam, but...no time.
Unfortunately, my mind's been making time. And in the last 36 hours, ideas about what I could do with some superpower concepts I haven't thought about for fifteen years have been rattling around my head, eventually setting up shop inside a three or four issue faux-EC-anthology type thing called SPOOKY ACTION, the characters from THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT was temporarily retooled as a Canadian superhero team, then that was ditched in favour of a more traditional patriotic superteam composed character ideas like Unity, The Happy Couple, Colonel Chinook, and The Phantom Mountie (the last of which I'm reasonably would infringe on someone's trademark...).
I love writing superheroes, I really do. And I love reading them, when someone does something interesting with them (someday I'll be taking Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL run with me to a desert island.) Interesting, but not in violation of the tenets on which the character is built. Which makes writing long-standing icons like Superman, Batman, and Captain America a challenge few writers are up to. Myself included, I suspect.*
I look at the doomed super-universes of the early '90's and see missed opportunities galore--here were dozens of character concepts creators could have done literally anything with. The bulk chose, or were forced to, regurgitate the same tired superhero formulae of the previous thirty years, relying on collectible gimmicks rather than good or interesting or experimental storytelling to stay afloat.
"More of the same" didn't work for the smaller guys, and it seemingly stopped working for the Big Two eventually, as well. As never before, it feels as though nothing at Marvel and DC is sacred. The risks that could have been taken by those with nothing to lose in the '90's have instead been embraced by editorial regimes that, if the world made any kind of sense, would instead be striving to maintain the integrity and consistency of their trademarks--not just because there's cash to be made from having the comic versions of Spider-Man and Batman be recognizable to the audience that paid millions of dollars to see the movie versions of those characters, but because those characters should rightfully be part of the fabric of western (pop) culture.
Conventional wisdom is that non-Big Four superheroes are a dead end in the mainstream comic market as it currently stands. Chimaera and Arcana are challenging that wisdom. The success or failure of the Chimaera Superhero Universe will hinge on three elements: promotion, quality work, and an audience looking for something different than what they can get from DC, Marvel, and even Image.
I can't control the first, the last, or even the middle, outside of my own contributions to the line. I've been reluctant about getting deeply involved because if things don't work out, I don't want anyone, least of all me, looking at a failure on my part to deliver anything but the best work I'm capable of as one of the reasons for it.
I don't have time for SPOOKY ACTION. I really don't.
But I've got a feeling I'll be making some soon, if only because there's a story there that wants to be told, and it doesn't care about things like economic viability. And while I care very much about that sort of thing, at some point Spooky's going to interfere with paying work to the point where it's easier to just write the damn thing than try and fight it. And who knows, maybe the time is ripe for a new superhero universe, God knows the response George's gotten so far has been overwhelmingly (and considering some of the sources, surprisingly) positive...fingers crossed.
I blame art college for this. But then, I blame art college for most things.
Foley
(*It'd be nice to find out for sure someday, though.)
Thursday, May 24, 2007
No Steps Forward Feels Like Two Steps Back
Finally got word from my manager that Paramount didn't pass on PARTING WAYS but also didn't make an offer. This means I've got a bunch of work to do for free that I might've gotten paid for, or, even better paid not to do.
Two minutes after I get that e-mail, I'm informed that She Who Must Be Impressed elected to go with someone else's story.
(If you were curious, She Who Must Be Impressed was Avril Lavigne. I got into a weird headspace a few weeks back and became incredibly superstitious about all sorts of things, including having exactly thirteen unread e-mails in my inbox at any given time and absolutely not mentioning Ms. Lavigne by name in public. As it stands, the various things that would've been jinxed by failing to live up to my completely arbitrary rules have gone the way they're going to go, and I can now return to what passes for normalcy in my life.)
So June's only going to be pretty busy, instead of insanely, stupidly busy. It's also only going to be reasonably lucrative, which isn't as good as it could've been but is a substantial improvement over my average month.
The To Do List at the moment includes:
-finishing a two-page outline of the story for Small Press Publisher A
-revising outline for fourth story for Unusual Project 1
-begin work in earnest on the rewrite of INCURSION for Platinum
-get more script for THE HOLIDAY MEN done for Nick
-get to work on Happy Harbor script
There's probably other things to do, but those are on the top of the pile.
Foley
A
Two minutes after I get that e-mail, I'm informed that She Who Must Be Impressed elected to go with someone else's story.
(If you were curious, She Who Must Be Impressed was Avril Lavigne. I got into a weird headspace a few weeks back and became incredibly superstitious about all sorts of things, including having exactly thirteen unread e-mails in my inbox at any given time and absolutely not mentioning Ms. Lavigne by name in public. As it stands, the various things that would've been jinxed by failing to live up to my completely arbitrary rules have gone the way they're going to go, and I can now return to what passes for normalcy in my life.)
So June's only going to be pretty busy, instead of insanely, stupidly busy. It's also only going to be reasonably lucrative, which isn't as good as it could've been but is a substantial improvement over my average month.
The To Do List at the moment includes:
-finishing a two-page outline of the story for Small Press Publisher A
-revising outline for fourth story for Unusual Project 1
-begin work in earnest on the rewrite of INCURSION for Platinum
-get more script for THE HOLIDAY MEN done for Nick
-get to work on Happy Harbor script
There's probably other things to do, but those are on the top of the pile.
Foley
A
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Stuff and Nonsense
Struggled through some intense physical discomfort yesterday to get the first draft of the 12-page script for UP1 done and off. That only took a week longer than it should have.
Also got some minor notes off to Nick Johnson re: THE HOLIDAY MEN, which is going to be a fun little book if I can keep on top of it.
Also worked on the outline for a new three-issue series for a small-press publisher I've never worked with before that's coming together frighteningly quickly.
Also wrote some long-overdue e-mails, one of which got an immediate and surprisingly positive response. That one was to the aforementioned publisher, requesting a specific provision to a contract that I never really thought I'd get--basically, he gets control of the multimedia rights, but only if he actually publishes the book.
Not that I thought he'd actually try and avoid publishing the book, but at this stage I'm extremely leery of signing over rights without either some sort of up-front payment or contractual assurance that I'll actually have something in print to show for my effort inside a reasonable timeframe.
Two pieces of what I consider to be some of my all-time best writing, THREADS (co-written with Scott O. Brown) and JEST CAUSE, have been locked up at Platinum for years, and may never see the light of day until the rights revert back to me/us, which is still several years down the line. And then there's the other four or five projects that originated with me that are stalled out in various stages of development, and the five or six in-house gigs also in various stages of completion, including AGE OF KINGS, which artist Russell Hossain finished drawing years ago but is nowhere to be found on Platinum's publishing schedule, and JEREMIAH: THE LAST EMPIRE, an incredibly work-intensive project which took several months out of my life for less money in total than I'd make in a month of flipping burgers.
Speaking of which, one of the good things about Platinum's unfortunate run-in with Heidi MacDonald's THE BEAT last week was the discovery that the first fourteen pages of J:TLE have been posted online at Platinum's DrunkDuck.com webcomic site. It was nice to be able to show what remains of Jeremiah's fanbase (there don't seem to be that many left, but the ones there are are hardcore) at least some of what we did. I'm vaguely hopeful the remaining 25 or so completed pages will be made available, along with at least the outline of where we were going with the story. That wouldn't do anything tangible for me, but the fans deserve that much.
Not having those books on the shelves hurts in a greater number of ways than someone who isn't a low-level comic creator aspiring to become a higher-level comic creator would probably suspect. But as I said to Platinum VP in Charge of Something-or-Other and Generally Nice Guy Dan Forcey on the phone the other day, I'm not complaining. Anyone getting into this business post-Steve Gerber/Howard the Duck has no excuse for not knowing what they may be signing away. (Hint: if the contract includes a phrase along the lines of "in all the universe, known and unknown", it's probably a fair amount.)
To be honest, up until recently, it's been my policy to simply assume 1) with each contract I'm signing away the rights to everything I'll ever create including my first-born, and 2) that I'm going to get screwed by whatever publisher I get involved with at some point. The idea is that I'll then be pleasantly surprised if the other party actually does what it claimed it would.
I haven't been pleasantly surprised all that often, to date. But, again, I'm not complaining. I am just, as they say, sayin'.
Foley
Also got some minor notes off to Nick Johnson re: THE HOLIDAY MEN, which is going to be a fun little book if I can keep on top of it.
Also worked on the outline for a new three-issue series for a small-press publisher I've never worked with before that's coming together frighteningly quickly.
Also wrote some long-overdue e-mails, one of which got an immediate and surprisingly positive response. That one was to the aforementioned publisher, requesting a specific provision to a contract that I never really thought I'd get--basically, he gets control of the multimedia rights, but only if he actually publishes the book.
Not that I thought he'd actually try and avoid publishing the book, but at this stage I'm extremely leery of signing over rights without either some sort of up-front payment or contractual assurance that I'll actually have something in print to show for my effort inside a reasonable timeframe.
Two pieces of what I consider to be some of my all-time best writing, THREADS (co-written with Scott O. Brown) and JEST CAUSE, have been locked up at Platinum for years, and may never see the light of day until the rights revert back to me/us, which is still several years down the line. And then there's the other four or five projects that originated with me that are stalled out in various stages of development, and the five or six in-house gigs also in various stages of completion, including AGE OF KINGS, which artist Russell Hossain finished drawing years ago but is nowhere to be found on Platinum's publishing schedule, and JEREMIAH: THE LAST EMPIRE, an incredibly work-intensive project which took several months out of my life for less money in total than I'd make in a month of flipping burgers.
Speaking of which, one of the good things about Platinum's unfortunate run-in with Heidi MacDonald's THE BEAT last week was the discovery that the first fourteen pages of J:TLE have been posted online at Platinum's DrunkDuck.com webcomic site. It was nice to be able to show what remains of Jeremiah's fanbase (there don't seem to be that many left, but the ones there are are hardcore) at least some of what we did. I'm vaguely hopeful the remaining 25 or so completed pages will be made available, along with at least the outline of where we were going with the story. That wouldn't do anything tangible for me, but the fans deserve that much.
Not having those books on the shelves hurts in a greater number of ways than someone who isn't a low-level comic creator aspiring to become a higher-level comic creator would probably suspect. But as I said to Platinum VP in Charge of Something-or-Other and Generally Nice Guy Dan Forcey on the phone the other day, I'm not complaining. Anyone getting into this business post-Steve Gerber/Howard the Duck has no excuse for not knowing what they may be signing away. (Hint: if the contract includes a phrase along the lines of "in all the universe, known and unknown", it's probably a fair amount.)
To be honest, up until recently, it's been my policy to simply assume 1) with each contract I'm signing away the rights to everything I'll ever create including my first-born, and 2) that I'm going to get screwed by whatever publisher I get involved with at some point. The idea is that I'll then be pleasantly surprised if the other party actually does what it claimed it would.
I haven't been pleasantly surprised all that often, to date. But, again, I'm not complaining. I am just, as they say, sayin'.
Foley
Friday, May 18, 2007
And Then, The Crunch
Did I say June was going to be a bear? Man, was I getting ahead of myself. Getting to June is going to be an ordeal in and of itself.
Last week a small press publisher asked for some brief pitches--springboards, I believe is the generally accepted term, though I've started calling them logline pitches, a title, a H'wood "X meets Y" description, fifty words or less on the story (which I generally use to establish how what I'm talking about is different from X and Y.) Slammed together six of these things during breaks on scripting stuff for UP1, sent them off.
Got a response from the publisher yesterday: "These are all REALLY good." Which was nice to hear; at this point my ego is sufficiently swelled that I'm generally reasonably confident that, at worst, I won't look completely incompetent, even if I miss the boat in terms of what people are looking for. But positive feedback is always nice.
He especially liked two, had something similar going to one of the two already, so we settled on the other. Having done this, I stopped and actually gave the thing some thought, and decided that yes, this is something I could see myself doing even if I wasn't being supplied (as I am in this case) with an artist, a publishing deal, a nominal payment on completion and a 50% stake in the property.
On that last--I've frequently railed against small press publishers whose business plan revolves around something other than, well, publishing comics. I still think it's a dodgy way to deal with things. That said, I've got to live in the real world, here. I'm not averse to sharing ownership of a property, even with someone who doesn't have the connections in other media this guy does, I'm not even averse to losing control of a property, as I will with this one. It's all a question of whether what I'm getting (or, more frequently it must be admitted, supposed to be getting) from my prospective publishing partner is enough to make it worth the loss on my part.
For an idea that wouldn't exist without this publisher's asking for ideas last week, which I'm now excited about writing this week, getting an artist I don't have to find myself, a publishing deal, a nominal payment prior to publication and 50% of the property (along with the publisher's higher-powered than my manager agent repping it in The 'Wood) is worth it. And now I've got 84 or so pages of script to get to work on, in addition to everything else.
Speaking of everything else, I also got an offer for some paid rewriting work on an old script of mine this morning. Money would be good (good as in nice to have, not sure of how many changes are required to make the judgment on whether the pay is good), but the work comes with what might be an uncomfortably impending deadline. I'm waiting for the exact details on that, because I don't want to sign up and then leave someone in the lurch, but, as I've got a terminal case of Freelancers Disease, the primary symptom of which is an inability to say no to work that pays actual money, no matter how little the money or hard the work--I suspect I'll have that added to the 12-page script I'm hoping to have a first draft of this weekend and the revision to the 15-pager for UP1 in short order.
And that's assuming She Who Must Be Impressed is unimpressed with my proposals. If that gets tossed in...well, you might not be hearing a lot from me in the near future. And that would be a good thing (for me. It'd suck for you, of course.)
And while I was typing that, the details on the rewrite have come in and I've accepted that work (the deadline really wasn't nearly as onerous as it had been made out to be) AND a difficult situation seems to finally be resolved. One nod from the lawyer and after six hard months, I'll be able to start breathing normally again.
Foley
Last week a small press publisher asked for some brief pitches--springboards, I believe is the generally accepted term, though I've started calling them logline pitches, a title, a H'wood "X meets Y" description, fifty words or less on the story (which I generally use to establish how what I'm talking about is different from X and Y.) Slammed together six of these things during breaks on scripting stuff for UP1, sent them off.
Got a response from the publisher yesterday: "These are all REALLY good." Which was nice to hear; at this point my ego is sufficiently swelled that I'm generally reasonably confident that, at worst, I won't look completely incompetent, even if I miss the boat in terms of what people are looking for. But positive feedback is always nice.
He especially liked two, had something similar going to one of the two already, so we settled on the other. Having done this, I stopped and actually gave the thing some thought, and decided that yes, this is something I could see myself doing even if I wasn't being supplied (as I am in this case) with an artist, a publishing deal, a nominal payment on completion and a 50% stake in the property.
On that last--I've frequently railed against small press publishers whose business plan revolves around something other than, well, publishing comics. I still think it's a dodgy way to deal with things. That said, I've got to live in the real world, here. I'm not averse to sharing ownership of a property, even with someone who doesn't have the connections in other media this guy does, I'm not even averse to losing control of a property, as I will with this one. It's all a question of whether what I'm getting (or, more frequently it must be admitted, supposed to be getting) from my prospective publishing partner is enough to make it worth the loss on my part.
For an idea that wouldn't exist without this publisher's asking for ideas last week, which I'm now excited about writing this week, getting an artist I don't have to find myself, a publishing deal, a nominal payment prior to publication and 50% of the property (along with the publisher's higher-powered than my manager agent repping it in The 'Wood) is worth it. And now I've got 84 or so pages of script to get to work on, in addition to everything else.
Speaking of everything else, I also got an offer for some paid rewriting work on an old script of mine this morning. Money would be good (good as in nice to have, not sure of how many changes are required to make the judgment on whether the pay is good), but the work comes with what might be an uncomfortably impending deadline. I'm waiting for the exact details on that, because I don't want to sign up and then leave someone in the lurch, but, as I've got a terminal case of Freelancers Disease, the primary symptom of which is an inability to say no to work that pays actual money, no matter how little the money or hard the work--I suspect I'll have that added to the 12-page script I'm hoping to have a first draft of this weekend and the revision to the 15-pager for UP1 in short order.
And that's assuming She Who Must Be Impressed is unimpressed with my proposals. If that gets tossed in...well, you might not be hearing a lot from me in the near future. And that would be a good thing (for me. It'd suck for you, of course.)
And while I was typing that, the details on the rewrite have come in and I've accepted that work (the deadline really wasn't nearly as onerous as it had been made out to be) AND a difficult situation seems to finally be resolved. One nod from the lawyer and after six hard months, I'll be able to start breathing normally again.
Foley
Thursday, May 17, 2007
No News is No News
Checked in re: Unusual Project 2 yesterday and was told that She Who Must Be Impressed has not made a decision yet. But I'm still in the running. If I actually snag the assignment, June's going to be a bear, with a July 1 deadline for UP2 (which is going to be of some length) and probably another forty-page story for Unusual Project 1.
Which would be good. I tend to work more effectively when I've got a deadline someone other than me has set. Especially when the someone other than me is paying the someone who is me to hit it.
Yesterday was a wash, production-wise. Lots of e-mails, lots of phone calls. Putting out a couple of fires I'd inadvertently set, getting the lay of the land on a couple different fronts (in one case, the land is looking more and more like pure quicksand.) Today's not looking much better--got more phone calls to make, and I'm still bone-weary. My day started at 4:00 AM, much to my chagrin. Still, being up that early at least lets me get some work done before the rest of the world wakes up and starts distracting me.
Am currently working on a 12-page script for UP1. It's tricky--the short comic story is not a comfortable format for me. I like dialogue too much, and having a limited amount of space really inhibits how much character you an give develop through conversation. At the same time, UP1's higher-ups have recently decided that narrative captions are more or less verboten, because they're not hip enough. That's not what they said, exactly, but that's how I read it.
Losing that tool when you need to get a decent amount of information into a short story hurts. It's why I still haven't tried to revise my 15-pager, which relied a lot on narrative captions, both aesthetically and technically. In the case of the former, it allowed me to give the story a character and tone via the voice of the captions that I fear is going to fall by the wayside now. In the case of the latter, the captions also allowed me to relay information crucial to the story without having pages of characters dealing with minutiae.
"Show, don't tell" is the North American comic book storytelling rule these days, but I'll take talking heads that are saying something interesting or well-thought out captions over a page of What Bob Did At Work Today any day.
Foley
Which would be good. I tend to work more effectively when I've got a deadline someone other than me has set. Especially when the someone other than me is paying the someone who is me to hit it.
Yesterday was a wash, production-wise. Lots of e-mails, lots of phone calls. Putting out a couple of fires I'd inadvertently set, getting the lay of the land on a couple different fronts (in one case, the land is looking more and more like pure quicksand.) Today's not looking much better--got more phone calls to make, and I'm still bone-weary. My day started at 4:00 AM, much to my chagrin. Still, being up that early at least lets me get some work done before the rest of the world wakes up and starts distracting me.
Am currently working on a 12-page script for UP1. It's tricky--the short comic story is not a comfortable format for me. I like dialogue too much, and having a limited amount of space really inhibits how much character you an give develop through conversation. At the same time, UP1's higher-ups have recently decided that narrative captions are more or less verboten, because they're not hip enough. That's not what they said, exactly, but that's how I read it.
Losing that tool when you need to get a decent amount of information into a short story hurts. It's why I still haven't tried to revise my 15-pager, which relied a lot on narrative captions, both aesthetically and technically. In the case of the former, it allowed me to give the story a character and tone via the voice of the captions that I fear is going to fall by the wayside now. In the case of the latter, the captions also allowed me to relay information crucial to the story without having pages of characters dealing with minutiae.
"Show, don't tell" is the North American comic book storytelling rule these days, but I'll take talking heads that are saying something interesting or well-thought out captions over a page of What Bob Did At Work Today any day.
Foley
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY's Thomas J. MacLean reports on Platinum Studios' comics publishing plans.
'"This is the 10th anniversary of [starting] our libraries and acquiring all the things we needed to acquire in terms of properties and building up our deals with studios and creating our film slate deal," said Rosenberg. "So maybe it's our 10th, but it's also our first as well."'
Heidi MacDonald on Platinum's relationship with its creators.
'Let’s put it this way: signing away original material as work-for-hire is right up there with sharing needles with AIDS patients, eating blowfish liver, and not wearing a seat belt in a vehicle driven by a New Jersey state trooper our own personal DO NOT DO list.'
I probably want to say something about this, but it would of necessity be a lengthy post, my headache's back, and that stuff doesn't pay the bills, so it waits, possibly for some time (which is kind of apropos, considering the subject matter, ha ha.)
I really need to learn how to do that "pingback" thing...
***
Finally wrote to Nick Johnson, after he sent a mail asking for confirmation that I'd received his sketches. His mail was much more pleasant than the spanking I deserved, considering I was an incompetent yutz on this one. Sorry, Nick. I won't say it won't happen again, because that'll basically ensure that the cosmos align in such a way that it absolutely will happen again--but I'll try to do better in the future.
Foley
'"This is the 10th anniversary of [starting] our libraries and acquiring all the things we needed to acquire in terms of properties and building up our deals with studios and creating our film slate deal," said Rosenberg. "So maybe it's our 10th, but it's also our first as well."'
Heidi MacDonald on Platinum's relationship with its creators.
'Let’s put it this way: signing away original material as work-for-hire is right up there with sharing needles with AIDS patients, eating blowfish liver, and not wearing a seat belt in a vehicle driven by a New Jersey state trooper our own personal DO NOT DO list.'
I probably want to say something about this, but it would of necessity be a lengthy post, my headache's back, and that stuff doesn't pay the bills, so it waits, possibly for some time (which is kind of apropos, considering the subject matter, ha ha.)
I really need to learn how to do that "pingback" thing...
***
Finally wrote to Nick Johnson, after he sent a mail asking for confirmation that I'd received his sketches. His mail was much more pleasant than the spanking I deserved, considering I was an incompetent yutz on this one. Sorry, Nick. I won't say it won't happen again, because that'll basically ensure that the cosmos align in such a way that it absolutely will happen again--but I'll try to do better in the future.
Foley
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