Some web comics I like

There are two. One is Ferocious Introvert.

Seriously, this comic about the grilled cheese shame spiral is sublimely wonderful. Some really good stuff there.

The other one is Hark! A Vagrant. The Dracula comics made me laugh so hard, especially these two:

Day 24 of 30 - Blogger's Choice

Aw, man... Mike Wieringo passed away...

Not that Monday mornings are an inherently happy time for me, but this one is worse than most because I read that Mike Wieringo passed away.

Frankly, I didn't believe it when I first read about it. But now, the tributes are hitting the internet.

They're all depressing and sad. And they all say the same thing, like if by chanting the magic words they will somehow prove this is all some sort of sick practical joke.

He was only 44. He was a vegetarian. He exercised regularly.

I first heard about Mike Wieringo on Fanboy Radio. He impressed me so much in his interview, I sought out his website. What a nice place!

He brought happiness and joy into the world. I'll miss him and his work.

The most heartfelt words I've read so far come from his good friend and collaborator, Todd Dezago.

From Todd Dezago

my best friend, mike wieringo, died yesterday.

he was a vegetarian.
he worked out everyday.
sometimes these things just happen.

he loved comics.
he loved drawing comics.
he felt very, very fortunate to have been working in
comics.
he was very good at it.

his comics, like him, were full of life.
full of energy. full of fun and hope.

he was my best friend.

we worked together on spider-man, the x-men, tellos,
and several other projects that will now never come to
pass.
we grew up together with comics, though we were
hundreds of miles away. we enjoyed all the same things
about comics; the action, the adventure, the fun. he
was a joy to work with. we laughed all the time. all
the time.

comics were his life and he worked very hard on them.
sometimes 16 or 18 hours a day.
he loved comics and loved the people who read them.
he loved you.

he was my best friend.
he was my brother.
i will miss him more than i can say.

todd

Why I Don’t Publish Comics for a Living

There is an old joke that permeates a wide variety of professions. “How do you get a millionaire comic book creator? Give ‘em two million seed money!” I’ve also heard the joke made in reference to folk musicians, screenwriters, and Elvis impersonators.

I daydream about being a comic book publisher. However, because I do not have warehouses full of money to flush down the toilet, it will never happen. But still the daydreams still persist.

When I read Arrows of Desire, there was a section of the book where they included Michael Powell’s idea for a television anthology series where he paired different directors with different screenwriters. That section of the book started the ol’ brain churning, thinking of comic book projects I would like to coordinate/publish.

Excluding original projects (I’m saving those for another blog post), here is a list of liscenced property projects that I, as a publisher, would fund.

One Saliva Bubble – This unfilmed David Lynch/Mark Frost script could be adapted by either Jim Woodring (of Jim Woodring comics), Nicholas Gurewitch (of the Perry Bible Fellowship) or a collaboration of the two.

Ronnie Rocket – Another unfilmed David Lynch script (originally going to be his follow up to The Elephant Man), this time adapted by Duncan Fegredo. Imagine the colors.

Greed – One of the most lamentable lost films of all time. Eric von Stroheim made a ten hour film adaptation from McTeague, which was then taken from him, edited down to two hours without his permission, and then intentionally burned. So no one, except a few studio heads, every got to see the finished product before it was taken away. The complete screenplay and production notes are available, so it would be easy (and pretty nifty) to hire Jason Lutes to adapt the whole shebang into an 1,000 page comic book?

Brave New World – The classic Aldus Huxley novel should be adapted manga style by Paul Pope. Can you imagine the first chapter, describing how in the future babies are made in factories, would look like as a 100-page Paul Pope visual extravaganza? Now think of the entire book done that way.

Yes, in one blog post, I have successfully reduced your two million dollars to half of what it once was.

New York Comic Convention Finds a New Way to Advertise

I've shaken hands with at least one of these people. And, yes, if interviewed, I would sound just like this.

And so it begins...

As you may remember, I've been on Trigger Street for a few months, reviewing screenplays and yadda yadda. Out of my eight work-in-progress screenplays, I finally finished one and posted it.

Behold the wonder of Comicon Pimps.

The whole idea is that I want Christopher Guest and his crew to make a movie about comic book fans, and it doesn't look like he will do this any time soon. So I wrote a wish-fulfillment screenplay for his acting group. (For fun, see if you can figure out the actors I had in mind for the parts. Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara should be easy to spot.)

I am also fascinated with the common insult to comic book / fantasy / sci-fi fans - you just need to get laid and all your obsessions / problems will go away. This insult is patently untrue.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I have participated in all-night Dungeons and Dragons games where the wife / girlfriend of the host made it pretty clear that if the host would just kick out all of his loser D&D friends, she will be more than willing to... ah... be... um... intimate.

And EVERY TIME that happens, the host is always, "Honey, PLEASE. I'm trying to PLAY A GAME here."

A lot of humor from the script comes from the fact that given the choice to have a moment of physical pleasure and owning a Limited Edition Star Trek Collector's Plate, certain people will always go with the plate.

Love fades, but those plates will last forever, man.

It is all about how the information is presented…

I have an addiction to comic books.

Ten to fifteen years ago, I started spending on the average of $150 to $250 a month on comics. I did not see this as a problem, even in the time period where I would sometimes choose comics over the weekly pizza that would stretch out over at least four days.

Then I got married, and my wife pointed out to me that I was buying the comics three times each – once when they came out in the monthly serialized format, once again when they came out in a collected paperback version, and a third time when they came out in a slick, hardcover version. The marriage mandate was that I only could buy a comic once. And now I have a nice collection of sweet, sweet artistic-looking hard covers and a little more storage space than I had before.

I was still spending over $100 a month on these hard covers, but didn’t see that as a problem, because it wasn’t like the old days when I spend $250 a month.

Recently, I switched from swinging by the comic book store to pick up my books to having them mailed to my doorstep. And now that I see the manifests, I discovered that I get about 29 pounds of comics a month.

29 pounds.

For whatever reason, showing me the amount of money I spent on comics, or showing the amount of square footage the comics take up in the house didn’t impress me as much as the sheer weight of these books.

29 pounds.

I have a problem. For years people have been telling me that this is a problem, but it hasn’t sunk in until now. Because money is one thing but weight is something else entirely.

29 pounds.

Whoa.

Podcasts I Like: Home-Grown Podcasts

In theory, I run a podcast on this blog. I haven’t made an entry in awhile, but that doesn’t mean I’m not involved in the podcast community. Mainly, my participation is limited to listening. And sometimes, like in this and the next few blog entries entries, I list them out for the world to see.

I’ve divided my main list into categories for easy consumption. This list is comprised of my favorite home-grown podcasts. These are podcasts started by people not associated with the mass media industry. Some are more professional sounding with others, but all contain the goodness of regular people taking the power of media into their own hands.

1. Filmspotting / Reel Reviews – I love movies, and these are the two best movie podcasts out there. Filmspotting is the better of the two, primarily because it comes out on a regular basis and it is more of a conversation about current films rather than a monologue/gush about one particular film.
2. Rocketboom – This is a Monday to Friday daily video podcast starring Joanne Colan. To be completely honest, I had not even heard of it until the original hostess, Amanda Congdon, left the show in a flurry of publicity. The show is fairly random, focusing on “whatever we discovered that is neat today.” There is some techie news, some political news, some internet news, and some silly stuff (like Joanne wandering around Central Park asking people to dance a waltz with her).
3. AlterEgo / Comic Pants – These are both podcasts by a bunch of guys in a comic shop and it sounds like… like a bunch of guys hanging out in a comic shop. These podcasts are about an hour long each and are really fun for the niche market that is the uber goober crowd.
4. Winecast – Tim Elliott loves to talk about wine, and his passion inspires me to care more about wine. This podcast has a special place in my heart, because through it, I found my favorite winery – Humanitas Wines.
5. Thing a Week – Jonathan Coulton puts out a song a week, more or less. For whatever reason, I forgot to include him in my monster music blog entry. There is some really great stuff here.

Next entry – tech podcasts!