WEAPONIZED INK

So, I’m doing a “limited Edition” minicomic thing for Wondercon. Here’s the “Script” for it…

DIE
by Rantz Hoseley
©2005-2012

There were lessons my father left with me.

Permanent.

Indelible.

Burned into my subconscious.

When I was eight years old, one of my dad’s biker friends came over to the house. They were loud and garrulous. Their boozy discussion rode the edge between cordially drunken behavior and outright shouting…

Threaded through it, an undercurrent of not-quite passive hostility that I could pick up even at that age.

For the life of me I could not tell you what he looked like. I know he was wearing a leather biker vest and the only reason I’m sure of that is because of his arms. Or, more aptly, what he had on his arms.

It was the first tattoo I’d ever seen in real life and even though it was poorly done, the inkwork irregular with edges that bled into a blue haze on his skin, I was transfixed and couldn’t stop staring at it. When dad noticed, he’d cut my observation short by saying I was acting like a ‘fag’ staring at his friend’s arm and told me to ‘get the fuck out of here.’

Retreating to the relative shelter of my room, I couldn’t stop thinking about the tat. It stuck with me so much that I started doodling in the margins of my schoolwork, creating fictional designs for imaginary tattoos that I would someday get.

Despite being a social outcast amongst my peers, my grades put me at the top of my class, so most of my ‘oddball’ behavior was overlooked.

Doesn’t like to play sports?

“Well, he’s a bookworm.”

Would rather write a 20 page story about ice-dwelling dragons when the assignment only called for a 5 page short story?

“Well, he’s creative.”

However…

One of the tattoo designs caught a teacher’s attention. And not the kind of attention you hope for.

We had handed in our writing assignment for the day and the teacher was sorting through them, grading our efforts as we were occupied in the world of multiplication tables. He suddenly stopped in the middle of paper shuffling. Frozen as if he’d discovered that someone had glued the rotting carcass of a rat to one of the pages. None of us knew what exactly was the problem, just that it was obvious that there WAS a problem. Telling us to stay in our seats and keep working, he quickly exited, leaving a classroom of perplexed 4th graders in his wake.

A short while later he returned. A sour look laminated across his face and he called my name telling me that the Principal wanted to see me. At first I was sure I heard wrong, the only time the Principal ever saw me was when I was in the office with an ice pack held to my eye to bring down “friendly” peer-induced bruising. The teacher insisted that I was wanted by the Principal.

NOW.

So, with 23 stares whispering behind me, I went to the office.

I was told to wait on the bench outside while they waited for my father to arrive. They might as well have told me that they’d be castrating me with a pair of nail clippers.

My father?! He’d deliver a backhand or belittle me for doing things he didn’t like from the comfort of home… For him to have to leave work to come to school… it had to be a horrific offense that I’d committed.

One that would likely result in the premature end of my young life.

My dad rolled like a cartoon locomotive into the office. Puffing, red-faced, smoke almost visibly pouring off his head in waves of dry ice fog. The Principal stuck his head out and asked him to come in, while motioning for me to stay seated.

The wait seemed to last an eternity… each second stretching out in that way the temporal space twists when you are anticipating the advent of something well and truly awful. The rusty chain-pulled mechanism kept clanking in my head…

“what are they talking about?”

“Am I going to get expelled?”

“What the hell did I do?!”

And, of course…

“Will anyone miss me after my father kills me and buries my body in the back yard?”

Finally, the Principal opened the door and motioned me in to his office, gesturing to an empty chair next to my father, indicating I should sit. I diligently avoided my father’s eyes, and his gaze I could feel burning into my skin like napalm splashed on hapless villagers, focusing instead on the Principal, scared and confused. Waiting to have the guillotine drop.

He cleared his throat with a rheumy cough and got right to it.

“I want to talk to you about this paper you did for Mr. Carlson’s class.. Actually the drawing you did on the paper”… I had totally forgotten I had doodled anything and could not for the life of me remember what it was that I drew.

“What exactly is this supposed to be?”
It was one of my many scribbled tattoo designs, crudely drawn in number 2 pencil… a single dice, flanked by “Flash”-style lightening bolts. Above it, the word DIE! was scrawled in block letters. Rendered with a childish attempt at making them look three-dimensional.

There’s nothing worse for anyone who creates art… be they young or old, a novice or seasoned professional… than the question, ‘what is it?”
“ummm, it’s a.. a… tattoo.”

“A tattoo?”

“Yes sir, like an anchor or eagle or something.”

“And that’s all it is?”

I felt I’d somehow crossed over at this point into some strange world where I’m painfully ignorant of the rules. As if I’d travelled to a foreign country where it’s shameful and downright offensive thing to shake hands with people and yet I had walked around glad-handing every person I encountered, unaware of this fact.

“yes sir, it…”

“Oh cut the SHIT!”

“Mr. Hoseley! We do not speak in that…”

“ Don’t be cute with me boy, Anyone can see what the hell you’re saying! That life is a gamble, and then you die?! Why the hell did you do that?! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

The Principal motioned me out of the office so he could calm my father down, evidentially convinced that I was not creating a visual plea for help, or a covert message warning everyone that I was planning on playing classroom Russian Roulette or some such nonsense.

(Even though with my old man as a parent it would be a logical train of thought…)

Shell-shocked, I wandered back to class in a daze. I realized I had indeed crossed over into a new land… a foreign territory.

I had eaten of the tree of knowledge, and my outlook was forever altered.

Poisoned.

Having had my first glimpse of allegory, nothing could ever be again seen as simply a literal representation or composed “Just because it looked cool.“

From that moment…

For good and bad…

Everything took on a deeper and somewhat more sinister aspect as I tried to decipher what hidden messages people were REALLY saying…

What their words and actions…

and art…

Really meant.

What an insane week it’s been.

I had planned on writing this yesterday, but instead my body decided that it was the “time and place” to have food poisoning. The kind of food poisoning the leaves your skin slick and dripping with a cold, chilling sweat. The kind of sick that isn’t satisfied to give you the sensation that an ogre is taking a shovel-sized grapefruit spoon, crudely, yet efficiently removing your entrails in careless and brutal scoops… forcing your to painfully eject liquid out of both ends of your body. No, that would be “easy”, and I (of course) can never have ANYTHING be easy or simple.

While wishing literally for death, hunched and shaking in the bathroom, I was lucidly aware that it felt like every hair on my arms and legs had been transformed to serrated, fibrous glass, and that my body was forcing these pin-sized crystalline saws through my skin. With my eyes shut, I was SURE that the cold, slick liquid covering my skin in such great volumes that I could hear it drip… spattering on the ceramic tile as it fell away… would be blood. It could be nothing else. No other explanation would fit, not make sense… and I was shocked to some degree when I forced open my eyes, a gummy, blurry slit, and realized, no. it’s just sweat. A lot of sweat. Shaking so hard at one point that I could not longer hold myself upright, I fell from the toilet… my head slamming against the ceramic wall of the bathtub. Normally, the impact would have been excruciating. Instead, it felt like a casual tap… someone brushing up against me as they passed on the street.

That was my life from 6am-2pm Friday. So, my chronicle of “the week that was” and the events that have unfolded like unexpected poppies during that period, was delayed.

<>

so, Thursday…

Woke up later than I had expected and/or planned, but still made it out of the house with plenty of time to “hit the marks” (read: make the meeting times scheduled), and headed out from La Jolla to the Quicksilver offices in Orange County. About an hour-to-hour-and-a-half drive depending on traffic. I had plugged my Droid Incredible into the car, and was streaming the Harlan Ellison biopic “Dreams with Sharp Teeth” on the drive up, choosing that as the ‘mood music’ for the drive…

…as an aside, any business trip I take, I have a meeting-specific-soundtrack that I choose to play while in transit. It may be music, it may be lectures or an audiobook, it may be a documentary, but that “soundtrack” is specifically chosen in order to get my “head in the game”… get my focus and mindset on the upcoming task, get the synapses thinking at top speed about the subject so that I can hit the ground at 90mph. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s ritual, nonetheless, and one I tend to stick to. The Harlan bio (which I’ve seen before, and which is very good) served for this trip.

I got up to Quicksilver 40 minutes late, and <>

So, after a couple of hours of this, and loading up a couple of boxes of the artists proofs of Comic Book Tattoo, and some Manga and Lord of the Rings collections and books for the kids, I headed out to pick up Dr. Greg Benford for the drive up to LA.

I’d met Greg about a year ago, as part of this whole exploration into the feasibility of the <> projects via Bill Patterson (who is Heinlein’s official biographer). I knew he was a professor of Physics, and that he had ‘written some Sci Fi’, but being as that a.) Physics is a completely alien world to me and b.) I haven’t read much Sci Fi since I was in High School outside of the ‘big classics’, the name didn’t ring a bell. over the last year, via emails, phone calls and in person meetings, I discovered that Greg is (to put it mildly) a “Big Deal”, having won the Nebula Award, written the first story about computer viruses in 1960, and creating “Benford’s law of Controversy” which states:
“Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available”
(which I really think is brilliant). Despite my lack of “hard Sci Fi” awareness, and my lack of Physics knowledge, Greg has become a good friend, and someone who appears to have a degree of respect for me (which just shows, you can be a genius and still be insane…)

Greg teaches at UCI, about 2 miles from the QS offices, so I swung by to pick him up, and we headed out. The drive up was enjoyable, with discussion ranging from the <> project, to our respective career histories, to the current fucked state of American politics and the morass of bureaucracy that inhibits anything truly phenomenal from being accomplished, to the trials and logistic challenges of starting and running a company where the end goal is to completely introduce something new to the world that is utterly removed from the current public experience. One example that was brought up was, when I was at Philips R & D, the producers wanted to do a MMORPG. Six YEARS before ANYONE had done ANYTHING like Ultima Online, or Everquest, or Second Life. This was the time of 4800 baud modems and paying for AOL access by the hour… and at that time, NO ONE… not the Execs, nor the Technologists, nor even myself… could wrap our heads around why ANYONE would want to do something like that!

And now, as Zynga has proven, that kind of “community integration” is a “must have”. Digital Social Interaction is core element for emerging entertainment, but less than a decade before it became a thing… most of us involved in games/software/tech couldn’t see HOW it ever WOULD be.

So, by comparison, given what we are doing with LBX2.0, or he is doing with Genetech… how much more of an uphill battle it is to communicate those concepts and ideas, and the validity of them. How much of a challenge it is for us respectively to boil that down to encapsulate the core appeal and attributes of “what it is”, while a.) Not leaving out the “important aspects” and b.) making it “simple” enough that it’s completely comprehensible by the “tourist”… the passer-by who knows not a damn thing about the subject matter.

Also, Greg published his first Sci-Fi stories around the time I was born, so he’s been involved with the authorial community for a LONG time. He was friends with Philip K Dick, and told me about the time right before he died in Santa Ana. Usually, *I* tend to be the one who’s Talky McTalkerstein, and people have to nudge me to shut up once in a while, but on the drive up with Greg, I spent more time listening, gaining a huge amount of knowledge, insight, and appreciation for the people who made up the history of Science Fiction in the late 20th century.

We had decided to “cut up La Cienega” from the 405, thinking it would be faster than going to the 405, but street work slowed us to a crawl, and as I puffed on my “Robot Cig”, Greg and I discussed how it had helped me quit smoking for over a year, as well as the flavors available. He had been given a “gift set” a while back and had never opened it, and was curious about the different styles of tobacco flavors available, since he favors the more European-style richness of cigarillos, cheroots, and the like.

Finally, after much too long of a drive, we arrived on Melrose at 5:30, which was around the time Bill Patterson was supposed to be meeting us at the Sushi restaurant. We’d picked the restraint in question because it was literally right around the corner from “Pink’s” the famous LA hot dog stand that’s been around for almost a century now. Harlan Ellison was supposed to be meeting us (as well as some others) at Pink’s around 5, then we’d walk over to Kazuyo. Having (surprisingly) found street parking, we headed over to Pink’s… but no Harlan. Traffic being a nightmare, we knew Harlan wouldn’t be making it to Pink’s prior to the event, or if he did he certainly would not have time to talk, so we chatted briefly with Michael Cassatt (a Sci Fi author who’s worked in film, TV and books) and his son for a bit, then headed over to Kazuyo where Bill was waiting for us.

Dinner was excellent, but the restaurant had made changes since the last time I’d eaten there… it was now “Kosher” which meant no shellfish… no shrimp, which was… odd. I ordered some Miso-battered whitefish in a Wasabi white sauce and some seared Ahi Sashimi, while Greg and Bill gently chided me in mocking tones for not having any Sake with them. Being as I was driving, and I drink only once or twice a year, I thought it better to forgo, and instead put up with the slight mockery. Over dinner, we discussed the <> Project. <>

Dinner complete, we hopped in my car and drove the short distance to Cinefamily for the Harlan Ellison event.

Cinefamily is an old Theatre on Fairfax dating back to the silent movie era. As such it seats maybe 100-150 people, and has some of the LEAST comfortable seats I’ve experienced in a movie theatre since I was a kid. The theatre is run as a non-profit towards the art and history of film, and has some pretty amazing films and curated film festivals that run there. Harlan’s event was streamed at http://www.cinefamily.org/blog/ for the thousands who couldn’t be there, and as we wandered up, it felt more than a little like stepping back in time… the old fashioned marquee reading LIVE TONIGHT HARLAN ELLISON as a line wove its way back from the theatre box office booth in the unusually chilly LA night. I had brought with me a copy of Comic Book Tattoo to give to Harlan as a token of appreciation for the amount of entertainment and solid head-fucking he’d given to me in his work over the years, and as we approached, we saw Harlan at the front of the theatre, in his words “working the crowd”. Greg, Bill and I approached, and after letting Harlan riff for a bit, Greg introduced me.

Harlan sized me up, immediately noticing my shirt with the yellow lightning bolt/Black Adam symbol on the front. “That’s the… anti-Captain Marvel, right?”
I grinned, ‘Yeah, Black Adam’.
Harlan grinned back, “That goes great with the one I was wearing earlier today… it was Captain Marvel from when C. C. Beck actually went and worked at DC…”
‘That was, what? Around 53-54?’
“Yeah, 54.” Harlan raised an eyebrow knowingly “He didn’t last long there”
I handed off the copy of Comic Book Tattoo to him, and his eyes got big… “What the hell?”
‘This is the anthology I edited, it got the 2009 Eisner and Harvey awards.’
“Jesus, it’s…”
‘yeah, it’s a defensive weapon as well as reading material’.
Harlan thanked me, and we talked for a bit longer before he asked me “Where’s your card, give me your card.” I told him I didn’t have any with me, but I’d have Neil email him my info if he’d like.
Instantly, Harlan of old was in the house. “email?! Jesus, do I LOOK like I use email? I’ve barely gotten past the tin cans and string!”

We talked a bit more, with Harlan handing the copy of CBT off so he wouldn’t collapse under its weight, and he noticed an inconspicuous piece of lint on the shoulder of Greg’s jacket. He flicked it away saying “My peripheral vision’s great… can’t see shit right in front of me, but I can see EVERYTHING on the periphery.”
I piped up “well, you have to if you’re gonna avoid the knives in the back…”
Harlan cocked his head and grinned at me, and chucked me gently under the chin “You, kid…” and he was off down the line to talk with more folks before the event.

The event itself was entertaining (besides the incredibly uncomfortable seats). The Q and A proceeded in a very Harlan manner… one question from Josh Olson (moderator for the night, and the writer of the film A History of Violence) would result in 8.5 digressions, covering 21 topics and taking up a minimum of 20-30 minutes. Halfway through the Q and A, Harlan announced he needed a break, and that he’d “be right back” and leaving the stage he went out the side door marked “Exit”. Josh asked Harlan’s wife Susan where he was going, and Susan said he was going to use the bathroom. Josh feigned alarm saying “The bathroom’s the other way! We’ll never see him again!”

While Harlan “Hosed down the Palm Trees in Back of the Theatre” writer Len Wein, known for co-creating the Swamp Thing and the modern X-Men came on stage for a bit. Len is a truly great guy, and while it was news to no one in attendance that comic writers “Don’t get rich off films based on their characters” when they are done for Marvel and DC, it WAS shocking to find out that he’s made more money for creating the character Lucius Fox, a brief, throwaway character in Batman, and his appearances in the batman films, than he has on ALL of the X-Men reprints combined.

A sad reality check, to be sure.

Harlan returned from his bathroom break, and they had just begun getting back up to speed with discussions and banter, when there was a commotion from the back of the theatre. A loud, short man came clambering down the aisle, jabbering fanboy mumblings and slander at Harlan, yelling that he was from “HarlanTube” at they had some great footage from Arby’s yesterday of him making a cashier cry…

…as he came into the spotlight, we saw the confirmation of what our ears clued us in to at the start, it was comedian Patton Oswalt. After some banter back and forth, Patton climbed up on stage, taking Josh Olson’s place, and you could tell that you’d better not be eating or drinking anything at any given time during the duration when Harlan started off taking a handful of Patton’s popcorn, whereupon Josh informed Patton that Harlan had just been out back pissing in the bushes, and that he had not washed his hands. Patton passed the box of popcorn over to Harlan, refusing to eat any further despite Harlan’s protests, while whining “Can someone get me a box of popcorn that DOESN’T have Ellison Pee on it PLEASE?! I am STARVING!” Harlan kept protesting that he had not contaminated the popcorn, and Patton countered with “Harlan, I am NOT eating your Nebula-winning-pee-sprinkled popcorn!” This was the kick off for an hour of this kind of back and forth, best saved for the youtube upload or DVD release, as I’ll just fuck up the timing and jokes.

A “funny” moment occurred when Harlan went into “pitch” mode to describe the limited edition copies of the Complete Glass Teat that were available for sale at the event (numbered editions were $750, Lettered editions, were $1700). As he starts describing the features… Leather bound, with slipcase… the logo and edgepapers embossed with gold leaf with archival quality vellum endpapers… I half turn to Greg, as he turns to me, both of us with one eyebrow raised… as it sounds “not unlike” the format of the copy of Comic Book Tattoo’s limited edition… which I had, not two hours prior, handed off to Harlan. He mentions it “Weighs 7 pounds” and I quietly mutter to Greg with a chuckle that “well, at least I have him beat there… CBT is 15+ pounds.”

The Talk wrapped with a Q and A, and Greg introduced me to some folks who were there in attendance, and I saw Cat Mihos and her husband… I haven’t seen them since they were married last year, and it was great to do so. Cat wrote a brilliant story of CBT, runs Neil’s Neverwear site and merch, and does PA work for a number of bands including Tool, Puscifer, Tori and Van Halen. She’s possibly the only person who has a more difficult job than I do answering the question “what do you do for a living?” I chatted with them for a bit, and Cat handed off a New Year’s gift, courtesy of the tour she’s currently working on, and off we went, into the cold LA night.

I’ve always resisted doing commissions or sketches for pay.  I felt like “Hey, if this person likes my work enough to want a sketch, I should do it for free to show my thanks” thinking that it was a bit of karmic return, and that maybe, just maybe, that person would pass along good things to others in regards to my work, and maybe one or two more people would dig my work, etc, etc.

As Bill Hicks put it “I’m just planting seeds… whether they grow?”

However, I’m in a situation where now, I need to scare up some money. Badly. And I am not about to beg for donations, especially given that EVERYONE is having a hard time of it right now.  About the time Comic Book Tattoo was being finished (the week before it went to the printer in fact) my wife was diagnosed as having an AVM.  That’s a tangle of arteries and veins in the brain that look like a cloverleaf freeway, except there are no exits.  Blood, and pressure, build up over time and the mass gets bigger with each year, as does the chance it will rupture.  The percentages, and the rate of growth is frankly, scary as hell.  So obviously, this is something we had to deal with immediately, as we are talking about her life being at stake.  There are two ways of dealing with an AVM.  One is invasive surgery, the other is a procedure called Gamma Knife surgery.  With the former, there is (depending on which statistics you believe) a 10-15% chance of fatality during the procedure, and a 30+% chance of ‘serious motor function impairment’ (see also, paralysis).  With Gamma Knife they screw bolts into your skull and fire gamma rays down the bolts at varying intensity to kill the AVM cluster and tangle.  It can take up to 3 years for the AVM to ‘die’ from the treatment, which has meant a lot of follow up CT scans, MRIs and praying to whichever gods will listen that this works.

On the plus side, it appears to be working.  The mass has, with every MRI (done every 6-9 months) shown a marked decrease in size, and the Dr. is feeling very confident that the end result will be a positive one.

On the negative side, insurance would cover 90% of a craniotomy (the invasive surgery) but only a portion of the Gamma Knife procedure. (because it’s “unproven”… meaning it costs more than they want to pay.)  Which means we have been saddled with some truly insane medical bills.  I don’t mention all this to get pity or to get ‘freebies’.  EVERYONE is having a hard time, and I know that intimately.  I just want to be clear on WHY I’m doing this now… it’s not so I can buy a new monitor, or go to a convention… it’s because I can draw, and we need money, and so… I’m doing commissions for the next couple months at least in order to get some of these medical bills off our back.

Below is the price table, and the guidelines, specifics, etc.  You can see examples of my work here:     Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you know whom you think might be interested.  Thank you.

Prices per format (all prices are for pieces 8″ x 10″)

Pencil (Blue & Black) on Marker (translucent) – $10

Pencil (Blue & Black) on Bristol (Plate Finish) – $15

Ink (Black over Blue Pencil) on Marker (translucent)  – $20

Ink (Black over Blue Pencil) on Bristol (Plate Finish) – $25

Ink & Grey Marker on Marker (translucent) – $30

Ink & Grey Marker on Bristol (Plate Finish) – $35

Tattoo Designs – Variable -  eMail with request for price

Digital Painting  – Variable -  eMail with request for price

Oil Painting  – Variable -  eMail with request for price

RULES & GUIDELINES

* While I will do nudes, but will not do pornography

* I will not do work that is racist, or demeaning of a group of people.

* If the character or scene you are requesting is obscure or not well-known, reference images are helpful and appreciated.

* All work in the Black, White and Grey categories will be payable upon completion, with an email containing a .jpg of the finished art sent prior to the exchange of monies.

* Any “specialty” work (Tat designs, color work, oversized pieces) will be paid half in advance, and half upon completion.

* PRICES ABOVE DO NOT INCLUDE SHIPPING! – I will give you the full amount due, based on a.) your location and b.) how you would like the piece shipped.

* Yes, if I am attending a convention you are attending, you can pick the piece up at said convention.

* I maintain the right to put a copy of the commission on my site, twitter, G+, etc, unless you specifically request that I do not.

* Rates listed are for “personal use commissions”.  That means you can put it up on your site, show it to friends, hang it, or even sell it, but it cannot be used for commercial purposes (to advertise or promote a product for example) without written permission.

Samples of pencil, ink, and painted work can be found here:

http://rantzclutter.tumblr.com/tagged/RantzArt

http://rantzclutter.tumblr.com/tagged/RantzArt/page/2 (Marker sketches)

http://rantzclutter.tumblr.com/tagged/RantzArt/page/3 (color & pencil)

http://rantzclutter.tumblr.com/tagged/RantzArt/page/4 (more color pencil, and digital paintings)

http://rantzclutter.tumblr.com/tagged/RantzArt/page/5

If you are interested, please drop me a line at artcom @ rantzhoseley . com

(remove the spaces. Sorry, but spammers make it necessary)

Continuing on from the discussion I started in Part I, let’s dive deeper into “what ails the comics industry”.  This has grown since the first chapter… in this part I’ll be discussing “Barriers to New Readers”.  In part III, I’ll be discussing “The Role of Content”.  While, in part IV, I’ll discuss some ideas & suggestions for possible solutions or directions.

Sidenote Preface: I am NOT going to discuss the Direct Market” vs. Digital vs. Online resellers, vs. Big Box bookstores.  THAT discussion is a whole nightmare beast unto itself and I want to keep this focused on the books themselves because, to be blunt, if the books aren’t compelling & nobody wants to read them, it isn’t going to matter where or how they get them.  First things first.

So, let’s assume that you have a potential new reader… he or she dug Big Movie based on an Ongoing Beloved Comic, and has decided that they want to get into it.  The last time they actually read a comic was in the 70s, 80s, or even 90s… they know you can by comics in a comic shop or bookstore, etc.  They have free time, and excitement in their heart, burning to read the adventures of The Hero in the form that inspired said Big Movie.   However, there are some barriers the potential new reader runs into…

Prohibitive Pricing

There’s no way to soft pedal this point… comic books, the floppy monthly or periodical forms, are idiotically expensive.  $2.99-5.99 immediately alienates the “tourist” market… the folks curious about comics, or those with an interest in seeing what they are about.  This is a discussion I have had over and over and over with people who do not buy comics, but LIKE comics, comic characters, or genre-style entertainment. (Working in videogames, film, and music for 20+ years, you meet a lot of folks like that.)  Universally, the phrase that is uttered at one point or another is “Yeah, it got too expensive, I just couldn’t afford to buy comics anymore”.

Now, I KNOW very well why comics are as expensive as they are.  Print monthly comics are NOT priced the way they are due to corporate greed.  I’d be the first one to speak up if that were the case. I saw all of the numbers for Comic Book Tattoo, and I know the costs involved in print reproduction, distribution, and retail sales, much less (if you’re a company that pays creators a page rate, or an advance against sales) monies paid to the creative team that have to be recouped.  Producing print monthly comics is a VERY prohibitive set of conditions when it comes to breaking even, much less actually making money.  That is the reality we face in a world where gas prices continue to rise, the number of outlets for monthly books decline, and there is only one distributor.  Combine that with a dwindling number of retail outlets… less than 2,000 venues in North America, and the majority of them simply cannot carry ALL of the titles released by the simple fact that they have limited shelf space and limited monthly cash they can allocate towards inventory without overextending themselves.

To put it simply, there’s very little room to move in terms of printed price point without losing your shirt in the process.  Comic Book Tattoo was a bestseller selling tens of thousands of units at a minimum cover price of $35.  The realities of the market made it such that it didn’t break even until well past a year after it was released… after winning both the Eisner AND the Harvey awards.  Every creator on the book got paid (including myself) on the “back end”, so I’m painfully, personally aware of how the market is currently stacked against bringing the cover price of books down. (Also note, 75% of CBT’s sales were in bookstores and online via resellers such as Amazon.  Now, imagine that same equation of trying to ‘break even’ with ONLY the direct market.)

In the mid 80s, when I started making comics, you “cut your teeth” and proved you “had chops” via indie/small publishers, often in anthology titles.  You’d draw a 10 page story that wasn’t your ‘dream story’ to prove you could do the work, and add published work to your resume, and you’d be kinda bummed that the title would ONLY sell 20,000 copies, and that you would ONLY make $2,000 on the back end. For drawing a 10 page story.  This was possible when you had thousands of comic shops, with  a plethora of monthly/periodical titles (quality aside).

To be clear, I’m not saying “there shouldn’t be print comics”.  I’m saying; with the current audience and consumer base we have, this industry is not sustainable, and prices are going to continue to rise.  The size of the number of habitually comic-purchasing customers has to increase, or we are going to end up having a world where monthly print comics become a thing of the past due to cover prices that alienate even the most hardcore, longstanding and dedicated fan.  To put the onus of ‘growing the market’ on the retailers is unfair at best, and too often completely removed from the realities they deal with every 30 days.  There’s a very clear and obvious way to change this, which I’ll talk about in part IV.

Focus and Frequency

Let’s assume that the odds and barriers do NOT dissuade Little Timmy from finding a comic shop and deciding that they are NOT going to go to a movie, or buy a videogame with their hard-earned $20 in monthly allowance.  (I use $20 as an example based on what I know my children’s peers at school get, in a mid-to-upper-middle-class environment in Orange County CA).  They don’t care that they will get 4-5 comics for their money, they are going to BUY COMICS, dammit!

But they’ve never bought comics before… so the idiosyncrasies of comic publishing pose another barrier.  Batman comes out once a month… but he’s also in Detective, and there’s this Batman & the Outsiders book, and Batman, Inc… “Do I need to buy all of the Batman books to understand what is going on?  If it’s all one big story why do they have it across different books?  What order am I supposed to read them in? So, if I like this Batman, Inc. book, I have to wait until next month to see what happens, or do I just buy a different book that continues the story?”.  These are all statements from 32 kids when asked “Why do you not read Batman?” after I had asked the same group if they had a.) Seen the Dark Knight movie (all hands up) b.) Liked the Dark Knight movie (again, most hands up) and c.) if they bought Batman comics after seeing the movie (NO hands up).  To be sure, this isn’t a “scientific poll”, but the answers reflect what I’ve seen over and over, and every time I do a talk on comics, or a workshop for a school, in big towns or small towns, the answers are very similar (after you get past the “I don’t know where to buy them” and “they cost too much”).

Comic Publishers put out multiple titles featuring the same characters in order to maintain the profile of the character, AND to capitalize on interest in a character (or team), making sure there is, every week, a book out featuring that character.  Putting out a half-dozen titles featuring fan-favorite characters or team on a monthly basis, with some titles tying in to each other, and some existing as their own storyline, diffuses consumer interest in the characters, AND whittles away their strength as a property.

To use a TV example, Let’s say rather than Game of Thrones being a weekly series, it was four different series, all existing in the same world and overarching storyline, but the first week of every month is “The Lannisters” the second week is “The Starks”, the third is “The Targaryens” the last week is the “Baratheons”.  It’s still the same “plot”, but the difference in that you lose much in the way of the building narrative pace, and your completely lose the ability to contrast and layer what is happening with the various factions as you play the threads off of each other.  The futility and folly of the war in the south is not apparent without knowing what the characters on The Wall are dealing with at the same time.

True, comics are different… but the entertainment audience is who you are targeting, NOT the comics audience, and this is what they expect.  Either a self-contained, focused experience (that may or may not tie in to a greater whole) ala films or novels, OR a weekly ongoing narrative that builds off of the previous narrative threads, leaving the audience (in the best examples) hungry for the next weekly installment.  Comics, with their multiple monthly titles per character(s) and team lacks that focus (the majority of the time) and all too often becomes byzantine even for those CURRENTLY reading the titles (see also, “Crossover Events”).

More to come in Part III

News that changed my life (or promises to, anyways).  On Monday, hiding in my “Spam” folder I found an email that started with the following…

“Dear Rantz Hoseley,

Congratulations, you have been selected to attend the NASA Tweetup on July 7-8 for space shuttle Atlantis’ targeted launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida! The event will provide you the opportunity to speak with shuttle technicians, engineers, astronauts, and managers, and to experience the launch of space shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station.”

My wife looked on as I stammered, and stuttered, and finally managed to get the words out… “I’m going to see the final Space Shuttle launch!”

I had entered the drawing on a lark, thinking that with thousands and thousands of entrants, there was simply no way I’d be selected.  Odds were stacked against it to a dizzying height.  I also knew that, unless I did enter, I’d forever have the regret of not taking a chance in order to see the last Shuttle launch.  To beat those odds, and be one of the 150 selected is not only an honor, it’s literally a childhood dream come true.

I’m a child of Apollo. One of my earliest clear, lucid memories is of me laying on my stomach in my grandparents’ living room, chin propped up on my hands, eyes wide as saucers as I stared at the grainy black and white TV, the horizontal band on the screen rolling past in a slow but predictable cycle.  I was watching a figure as it half-hopped, half floated, down the ladder of an impossibly rickety structure towards a crater-pocked desert that spread out under an ink-black sky. “That’s the Moon.” My Grandfather said behind me. “Those men, they are landing on the Moon”.  I looked at the metal rocket in my hand, with its rubbery plastic nose that moments ago I had been “whooshing” around with, pretending to be some space pilot, and was struck by how unreal it seemed.  There were men… on the Moon?  Right NOW?!  I remember asking to go outside so I could look up… thinking I could see them perhaps, but my Grandmother informed me it was time for bed.

It didn’t matter.  I was hooked.

I wanted to be an astronaut more than anything… growing up my life was fueled by the events of NASA… Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuex docking, the test flight atop a 747 of the Shuttle named Enterprise.  When it became obvious that I had neither the mathematical ability, nor the physical make-up to be an astronaut, a part of me mourned, while the remaining part became determined to follow the path of the creators and artists that had influenced me, and influenced so much of man’s journey into Space. Asimov, Clarke, and of course, Heinlein.

After spending over 20 years in the comic industry, and 17 years making videogames and software, that hunger and passion for Space still burns and gnaws at me.  Getting to work on Space-themed games such as Master of Orion and Star Trek only fed the fire.  In the last year, I’ve been working with the estate of a well-know SciFi author to bring his works to comics and digital narrative forms.  In the last 3 months, I’ve become a bit obsessed with the idea of doing a historical graphic novel on the development and breakthroughs of Dale Reed and the Ames Research Center in Lifting Body technology (Without which, there would never have been a Space Shuttle)…

…and now, I get to witness, up close, the final launch of the Space Shuttle Program.

I’ll be writing, and doing a lot of art & pictures related to this, because I feel an almost karmic obligation to do so, but for now… thank you NASA and all of the men and women involved throughout the history of the US Space program.  Thank you for giving a child dreams that gave his life focus and purpose.  And thank you for making a man, with 4 children of his own, feel that sense of child-like wonder again.

Godspeed STS-135.

I’ve been meaning to talk about a number of comic industry things lately, but I’ve been “letting them stew” in the back of my head for a while to make sure that a.) What I say is productive and constructive, and that b.) I say it in a way that is not construed as “LongBox Policy” (the eternal dilemma of the CEO, having opinions as an individual is often taking as a company press release) So, disclaimers & caveats aside, this is part I of III

I’ve loved comics my entire life.  As a form of entertainment, as a creative outlet, as a source of inspiration, they have fueled my life for the last 40 years.  I’ve been working professionally in comics (with some multi-year gaps) since 1988.  I’ve watched the industry change and grow.  I’ve watched trends rise and flame out.  I’ve watched friends have careers that grow from nothing to being the ‘movers and shakers’ in the business.  The 20+ years of watching this, of being in the middle of it, of experiencing both the highs and the lows of the industry gives me (I think) some perspective.  Additionally, having worked for over 15 years as an executive in the videogame and software industry for companies both big and small adds the nuance to look at the comics industry with some level of remove… to be able to see it in comparison to what other forms of entertainment (Music, Film, Videogames, etc) have gone through.  The trends and developments of the last year have me drawing some powerful conclusions that simultaneously inspire and terrify me.

So, then… the positive first.

There has never been the number of unique, powerful, skilled, and compelling authorial voices in comics as there is now.  Even in the Black and White boom of the 80s where it seemed like every day brought a new publisher, we did not come close to achieving artistically what comics is pulling off as a whole right now. For every Beanworld or Puma Blues, you had 500 titles like eXMutants, or Chemically Doused Budokan Ferrets… titles that were cheap, shitty cash grabs riding on the coattails of successful titles*. (*This is important to note, we’ll be coming back to it). In the 80s we (as an industry) shit ourselves with joy if a magazine like Rolling Stone wrote a one paragraph mention of a comic… our craving for “legitimacy”… to be seen as a valid art form and not just junk throw away crap, was the kind of desperation usually only seen in the socially inept when looking for a date. Those who strayed outside of the prescribe genres and tropes were few, and hence very noticeable examples.  Love and Rockets, Cerebus, A Distant Soil, Slutburger, Lloyd Llwellelyn, Yummy Fur, Concrete.

Now however, you have a massive number of creators producing titles and stories that could ONLY have been produced by those individuals.  Comics and graphic novels where the visual and narrative voice is distinctly theirs.  And the diversity of styles and genres… From James Stokoe to Becky Cloonan, Fabio Moon to Eric Canete, Scottie Young to James Kolchaka, and on, and on, and on… as a fan of the art form there has NEVER been a better time to really be able to find something… a subject, an art style, a form of storytelling… that resonates with YOU, and that is done WELL. (additionally, and I believe not coincidentally, comics have never been more accepted as an art form.  Fun Home receiving Time Magazine’s “Book of the Year” would have been completely impossible to conceive of back in the 80s)

So, then… the negative.

Comic sales have never, in their entire history, been this bad.  We have achieved the public acceptance and interest in comics that we worked decades for, and yet the bitter irony is that an estimated 85% of comics will just “break even” or lose money.  In the 80s, books were consistently cancelled for having circulation and sales below 50,000 units.  One writer friend spoke to me around 1989 or so about his frustration with sales on the Flash, and that if the numbers didn’t hit 75k, he had been told by his editor that he likely would not be allowed to continue writing the book. Now?  Most publishers and creators (the big two included) would do a joyous polka in the streets if half their output hit those kinds of numbers.

When we as creators, get excited that a book sells almost 10,000 copies, there is something fundamentally wrong.  This is, to put it in blunt financial terms, not a sustainable model.

Changing the current situation is a multi-faceted issue, that is actually going to take some serious efforts on the part of consumers/fans, creators, and publishers, and I’m not going to go into a 30 page outline of “How to fix comics”.  I might cover other aspects of the industry in the future, but these are just a few items and trends that have been put into stark relief recently (say the last 9 months) that I want to cover here because we as a whole need to be talking about them.  Again, this is the tip of the iceberg, and I want to REALLY stress this and be 100% clear, this is not a swipe at the “big two” or a “Superhero vs. Indie” straw man argument.  These are habits and symptoms that the industry as a whole is suffering from, and that all of us… creators, publishers, and fans, have had a part in getting to this point.

Problem 1 – Scarcity

Comics, especially collecting comics, originated out of scarcity of supply.  You couldn’t get Action #1 or X-Men #94, etc for cover price, if at all, because there was a limited number of those comics.  These days, the whole issue of scarcity of supply is a non-starter.  The comics a reader wants are generally available in either single issue or collected form.  If the reader knows about the book, has heard about the book, and wants to read the book, they can manage to do so much more easily than was possible in say the 60s, 70s, or 80s.

Scarcity, in classic supply and demand = value.  However, the comic industry as a whole seems to have forgotten that.  Not in regards to print runs, or how fast a storyline is made available in a trade or hardcover edition, but in the use of IP and characters.

When Frank Miller & Chris Claremont did their Wolverine miniseries it was an EVENT.  At the time, there was one book featuring the X-Men, and Wolverine was rapidly becoming the Mutant version of “Boba Fett”, the cool minor character that everyone instantly recognized was VERY cool.  Being that the only time readers got to see Wolverine was in the monthly X-Men book, having a miniseries focused on said character, written and drawn by two of the ‘powerhouse’ creators of the time, was something everyone looked forward to.  Combine that with the fact that the story was tight, well executed, and iconic… giving just enough info that you didn’t know, while still having many secrets untold, had fans clamoring for more.  During this period there was one Avengers book, one Green Lantern book, etc. IF you wanted to read or be involved in the narratives of those characters, those were the books you read.  You looked forward to the week out of the month that the book you followed was released.

This does occur occasionally in the modern context.  Look at Robert Kirkman’s example.  He could, with his sales and the “tourist interest” from the TV show, spin out 3 Walking Dead tie-ins, 3 ongoing series based on the characters from the Invincible Universe, but he doesn’t. He understands that having that tight single channel story path, with the rare occasion of a associated miniseries, keeps a narrative focus that keeps the ongoing series compelling… the ‘intensity’ of the Walking Dead isn’t diluted by “The Walking Dead – Europe” or “The Walking Dead – Behind the virus”.  The trend the industry currently has of taking an interesting IP, Character, or premise, and whittling hunks off to make 14 different tied in series is one of the worst things we do.  Not just because of the dilution of the story and characters for the current audience, but also in regards to…

Problem 2 – Point of Narrative Entry

There’s been talk about ‘getting new readers’ in comics for as long as I can remember, and putting aside for a minute the topic of “does the average person want to read Superhero Comics”, the comic industry consistently alienates the ‘tourist’ market in terms of narrative accessibility.  For the last 4 years, the top 10 movies have included films based on the acrobatics and shenanigans of spandex-clad heroes.  Everyone scratches their head going “why aren’t they buying the comics” or “I guess they don’t like comics” when the answer is so much simpler than that, and there is a perfect modern case study that proves… the issue isn’t “They aren’t interested in comics” the issue is an inherent inability for that “tourist” audience to clearly understand “What should I read, since I liked the movie”?

The perfect modern case study? Watchmen.

A book that has been out for over two decades, selling around 100k in the year prior to the film coming out, sold well over 1 million units in the year leading up to and following the film’s release. (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/14385.html) Watchmen, whether you like the film or not, was not a “blockbuster”.  It was not a top 10 film.  However, it had a VERY clear point of entry for people curious about it because of the film.  The trailer looked exciting, it clearly mentioned “Based on the bestselling Graphic Novel”, and seeing that, the consumer went to Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, etc.  What did they find? One book.  No mistake of getting the ‘wrong one’ or coming in “mid story”.  Now, compare that to how the numbers and performance have been for the various Batman books post-Dark Knight.  If you don’t know anything about the comic, what are you supposed to buy after seeing Green Lantern?  Thor?  Which book should you buy after the Avengers movie comes out?  Single issue comics?  Masterworks editions? The latest trade?

This is inherently a complex problem because we’re dealing with, in many cases, characters, storylines and books that go back decades.  It’s virtually impossible to have that same linear follow through that was possible with Watchmen.  Recognizing that, and that we already have an uphill battle in “audience conversion” from film or videogames (for example) to their comic book source, it seems like more than a slight bit of madness to make the battle even more difficult… to increase the degree of incline on the hill we’re currently pushing the boulder up… by adding more layers of complexity and further diffusing the clear point of focus by adding ongoing spin offs, branching titles, etc.

Having a tighter focus in terms of an IPs “line” also makes it easier for shops to recommend and “hand sell” books, or for friends to recommend them.  When you have to have a cheat sheet to keep the various storylines and interactions straight, we’ve immediately alienated potential readers.

More to follow in Part II…

Ok… so here, as they say, is the scoop. I’m “rebooting” portions of my life… such as exercising, cutting certain foods out of my diet, quitting smoking, not getting only 3 hours sleep a night OR 16 hours of sleep a day. In short, having had a couple friends die over the last year who were my age, and three more suffer massive (if not fatal) heart attacks, I’m trying to finally get some ‘balance’ in my life. Not burn the candle at both ends, not take shit personally, not assume i can do it tomorrow but at the same time not loathing myself if I do not manage to get everything done that day.

Balance.

(As my lovely wife points out, I am the master of circumlocution, so… get to the point already. *ahem*)

Part of these efforts include making time, every day, no matter how buried-stressed-overwhelmed I am to DRAW… Get the muscle memory tuned back up. I’m doing this on two fronts…

1.) The “Morning Sketch Session” – rules. a.) It has to be done before 10am. b.) It can only be done in Black, white, and grey. c.) No color allowed d.) it has to be done from photo reference, e.) it cannot take longer than 15 minutes. and f.) I have to post all of them (good, bad, or downright horrible) no later than 24 hours afterwards.

2.) The Nighttime “Genre” Session – Rules. a.) Has to be done no EARLIER than 9pm. b.) Can only be done in B & W & G (no color) c.) can take no longer than 20 minutes d.) the subject of the drawing must be from “genre” entertainment… Comics, film, TV, videogames, etc e.) I cannot CHOOSE which character and f.) I have to post all of them (good, bad, or downright horrible) no later than 24 hours afterwards.

Part of this is to establish and reprogramme myself… get patterns going/established, and by having to post every day/24 hours, it keeps me honest (in theory).

So then, why am I telling YOU this?

Rule 2e says “I cannot chose the character”. That’s where YOU come in. Post a character for me to draw here, or to my twitter account (twitter.com/rantzhoseley) and I will draw it, in the order received, with the following caveats.

(*) I will draw any comicbook based character (superhero or not. If it’s in comics, I’ll do it)

(*) Videogame characters, TV & film characters I will do at my discretion. If there is a character I can’t/won’t do, I’ll tell you I’m not going to do it and why.

(*) I will not do ANY characters from Twilight, Hentai, “Furry/Furvert”, porn, or content I would have to cover up if my daughters entered the room.

I’m going to start with doing this for 30 days straight. I’d like to make it for a full year, but that depends on YOU out there in the internet to some degree. I have a large stockpile of photo reference for the morning sketch sessions… the Genre Sessions, I need help to ensure I don’t get bored with it. Being that it’s #StarWarsDay, this is my “Help me Obi Wan” plea.

Thanks in advance, hopefully good (or at least, not sucky) art will come from it.

Why a blog?  Don’t I ramble and yabber enough via Twitter these days?  Well, there’s a couple reasons.

1.)    There are subjects that come up almost daily… answers to questions that I’m asked, thoughts on the state of the comic industry, ideas about how to Make Things Better, General Philosophy, etc… these come up, or rear their ugly head(s) and require a longer form than 140 characters.

2.)    One thing that I learned, working in the Newspaper and Magazine biz for 5 years was the truth behind the statement; “If you don’t honor the ideas by writing them down, you’ll find one day the ideas no longer come”.  It’s a variable off of Bernie Wrightson’s statement that all artists have 1,000 bad drawings that they have to get out of them before they can be a good artist.  Which is really just saying, “the more you write, the easier it gets.”  Which leads to…

3.)    For the last year, I have spent the majority of my time writing.  Business-related writing.  Contract reviews and revisions.  Proposals.  Terms Sheets.  It’s a unique skill that, like all other forms of writing, requires practice, skill and patience to get good at it.

(That said, there are times that I can feel it sucking the creative energy out of me like some form of psychic lamprey, determined to mold and alter me into a business-version of a character from a Tod Browning film.)

So, part of this is to be able to write without ‘rules’ or requirements.

For those of you not familiar with me, or what I’m like, I give fair warning that IRL I swear. A. Lot.  I’m not a politically correct individual, and I tend to think that sacred cows are best when tipped.  As a CEO, I’m forced to be a bit more… “mellow” in public writing than I am in person (as everything on the internet is eternal), but I’m sure that some might find what I say to be offensive.  So, I apologize in advance, and urge you to find something else to read if you are the type that is easily offended, or you have a chip of righteous superiority on your shoulder.  I respect everyone’s opinion (whether I agree with it or not) and love discussion, but I’m frankly too busy to waste any time arguing on the internet.  That said, feel free to ask questions if you like, and I’ll do my best to answer.

Later on, I’ll also try to get a gallery of my art up.  Ain’t gonna happen any time in the next couple months though.

I will try to update this more frequently than I’ve managed with other blogs… it helps that I feel the overwhelming urge to write lately… but there are a limited amount of hours in the day, and this is ‘low man’ in terms of priorities and responsibilities.

The name of the blog stems out of a blog/update thing I started back on Warren Ellis’ The ENGINE forum.  I think “art” (whether you’re talking music, visual, writing, etc) is one of the most powerful gifts given to us as humans.  I also think it is all-too-often horribly squandered and taken for granted.  I used to have, back in the day, a tagline that read “Make Art like it’s a Weapon from the Gods”.  I still believe that… it’s why I do what I do, and why I put up with the obstacles that arise… and think it is our responsibility to change the world in that way.  Pretentious?  Probably.  Crazy?  Most likely.  However, it’s not a belief I’m willing to ever compromise on.

So, disclaimers, background, and caveats out of the way… welcome.