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Swatting the Current Events
Apr. 19th, 2007 01:30 amHere's my take on recent events:
Todd Goldman is a tool's tool. From Lichtenstein to Thomas Kincaide to Plagarman. Artists who churn out at high volume with people who make the product, which they then come along and sign should be regarded as scum--because they always are.
Conning people into buying your turds makes you a grifter, not gifted.
VTech Shootings. Shock, a loner. The thing that gets up my ass about this is the decision to not lock down the campus based on the assumption the shooter wasn't still there. Bwuh?
Also, the YouTube VT tribute videos are excrutiatingly sincere.
It's why I don't do tribute pieces. (Although I have done them.) It's impossible not to be gushingly sentimental, and to look too much like you're trying to show how much you CARE. The tribute pieces I have done have haunted me later. It's the same reason I don't contribute to fundraising books: nightmare logistics, no guarantee of profits. eBay and PayPal are far better and transparent.
One of the most annoying things that happens when these awful events happen is how the "good old days" are brought up. I consider "the good old days" to be pretty much like Godwin's Law: as soon as you bring it up, you've lost. Not because you've compared anything to Hitler, but because you've demonstrated a breathtaking ignorance of history.
For example, a Timothy McVeigh-like creature known as Andrew Kehoe. Kehoe's farm was in foreclosure, and he blamed the foreclosure on his farm on a school tax, rather than his wife's illness, or his poor habits as a farmer.
On May 18, 1927, Kehoe killed his wife, burned her body, bombed his own farm, went to a school he'd spend a year seaming with a ton of pyrotol and a couple boxes of dynamite, watched that detonate, then set off a bomb in his car, killing himself and school superindendent Emory Huyck, and a child named Cleo Claton, who survived the school bombing.
In all, forty-four people died, most of them children.
Eighty years ago, folks. The good old days are bullshit. Every day is a good old day and a bad old day, depending on how it's going for you.
The floppy comic format is dead except for Marvel, DC, some Image and DH, and Archie. Dead, dead, dead. If you're a small or self-publisher, floppies are pissing hard up a very expensive rope.
How hard is it to get that web serialization does all the things a floppy supposedly did or does: constant exposure, stories doled out in tasty bites to keep readers interested, a loss leader for the eventual graphic novel/trade.
Web is a cheap loss leader, print is an expensive, tedious one, and the print product is thrown into a market where most of the outlets don't give a shit.
Web, people. It's cheap, it's fast, and if you're going to lose money, LOSE LESS.
Criminy. I have known this since 1995, and PROVED it in 1997 (Cathedral preview), 1998 (Clockwork preview) and 2003 (when I serialized and finished Rumble Girls:SWT on the web after ending my relationship with Image and before NBM published the trade.)
Which, BTW, predates Girl Genius going exclusively to Web for serialization.
The DC Supergirl and Catwoman figures are beautifully crafted and finished, and a perfect example of why many bitchy feminist bloggers think kryptonite is being blown up our collective asses when the Supergirl editor begs girls to read the book.
You don't want to give female readers what they want. You want to keep on doing what you've been doing: making books for boys (like yourselves--don't kid yourselves you're making books for women because you have female staffers) and expecting girls to get over themselves and stop asking for superhero books that don't embarass or demean their gender, and just read your Default Mode Boy product.
I'm waiting for someone to justify the figure's skeeziness by pointing out they're made in Japan. Yes, they are, and they faithfully reproduce the costumes DC's made official.
Damn, people at the Big Two need help. I'm ready to share my pills and a reference to a good psych unit for the good of the women who love capes.
I'd love to see a woman/women do a superhero comic in the way they'd like. You know, something like The Incredibles or Raimi's Spider-Man, which are a fantastic superhero stories and which give women someone to cheer for?
Maybe that's a job for...DIVALEA!
After I build my empire of Prickles and Rumble Girls.
Todd Goldman is a tool's tool. From Lichtenstein to Thomas Kincaide to Plagarman. Artists who churn out at high volume with people who make the product, which they then come along and sign should be regarded as scum--because they always are.
Conning people into buying your turds makes you a grifter, not gifted.
VTech Shootings. Shock, a loner. The thing that gets up my ass about this is the decision to not lock down the campus based on the assumption the shooter wasn't still there. Bwuh?
Also, the YouTube VT tribute videos are excrutiatingly sincere.
It's why I don't do tribute pieces. (Although I have done them.) It's impossible not to be gushingly sentimental, and to look too much like you're trying to show how much you CARE. The tribute pieces I have done have haunted me later. It's the same reason I don't contribute to fundraising books: nightmare logistics, no guarantee of profits. eBay and PayPal are far better and transparent.
One of the most annoying things that happens when these awful events happen is how the "good old days" are brought up. I consider "the good old days" to be pretty much like Godwin's Law: as soon as you bring it up, you've lost. Not because you've compared anything to Hitler, but because you've demonstrated a breathtaking ignorance of history.
For example, a Timothy McVeigh-like creature known as Andrew Kehoe. Kehoe's farm was in foreclosure, and he blamed the foreclosure on his farm on a school tax, rather than his wife's illness, or his poor habits as a farmer.
On May 18, 1927, Kehoe killed his wife, burned her body, bombed his own farm, went to a school he'd spend a year seaming with a ton of pyrotol and a couple boxes of dynamite, watched that detonate, then set off a bomb in his car, killing himself and school superindendent Emory Huyck, and a child named Cleo Claton, who survived the school bombing.
In all, forty-four people died, most of them children.
Eighty years ago, folks. The good old days are bullshit. Every day is a good old day and a bad old day, depending on how it's going for you.
The floppy comic format is dead except for Marvel, DC, some Image and DH, and Archie. Dead, dead, dead. If you're a small or self-publisher, floppies are pissing hard up a very expensive rope.
How hard is it to get that web serialization does all the things a floppy supposedly did or does: constant exposure, stories doled out in tasty bites to keep readers interested, a loss leader for the eventual graphic novel/trade.
Web is a cheap loss leader, print is an expensive, tedious one, and the print product is thrown into a market where most of the outlets don't give a shit.
Web, people. It's cheap, it's fast, and if you're going to lose money, LOSE LESS.
Criminy. I have known this since 1995, and PROVED it in 1997 (Cathedral preview), 1998 (Clockwork preview) and 2003 (when I serialized and finished Rumble Girls:SWT on the web after ending my relationship with Image and before NBM published the trade.)
Which, BTW, predates Girl Genius going exclusively to Web for serialization.
The DC Supergirl and Catwoman figures are beautifully crafted and finished, and a perfect example of why many bitchy feminist bloggers think kryptonite is being blown up our collective asses when the Supergirl editor begs girls to read the book.
You don't want to give female readers what they want. You want to keep on doing what you've been doing: making books for boys (like yourselves--don't kid yourselves you're making books for women because you have female staffers) and expecting girls to get over themselves and stop asking for superhero books that don't embarass or demean their gender, and just read your Default Mode Boy product.
I'm waiting for someone to justify the figure's skeeziness by pointing out they're made in Japan. Yes, they are, and they faithfully reproduce the costumes DC's made official.
Damn, people at the Big Two need help. I'm ready to share my pills and a reference to a good psych unit for the good of the women who love capes.
I'd love to see a woman/women do a superhero comic in the way they'd like. You know, something like The Incredibles or Raimi's Spider-Man, which are a fantastic superhero stories and which give women someone to cheer for?
Maybe that's a job for...DIVALEA!
After I build my empire of Prickles and Rumble Girls.
