Never let it be said that Stan isn’t down with the kids.

#1. Grady Hendrix talks about Gerber changed comics :

But Gerber himself was trapped in a vulturelike publishing industry. A dispute with Marvel over payment terms for the artist on the Howard the Duck newspaper strip led to Gerber leaving the book, only to realize too late that his creations were all work-for-hire, property of Marvel Inc. He engaged in a protracted legal battle that was eventually settled, but the comics industry broke his spirit. When novelist Jonathan Lethem was hired by Marvel last year to revive Omega the Unknown, a series created by Gerber and collaborator Mary Skrenes, Gerber blasted the younger writer for validating the theft of his creation. Even after meeting with Lethem, he said, “I still believe that writers and artists who claim to respect the work of creators past should demonstrate that respect by leaving the work alone.”

#2. Stuart Moore remembers Gerber:

But for a brief moment, Steve’s desire to do one more Howard series coincided with Bill Jemas’s own particular form of madness. Faced with the problem of the duck’s design — a legal settlement with Disney had left us with a very specific, not terribly attractive look that had to be adhered to — Bill embraced the idea of transforming Howard into a variety of other animals. (I don’t remember now whether this was originally Bill’s or Steve’s idea.) It was Bill who suggested the first issue’s cover, depicting a pissed-off mouse under a large Howard The Duck logo, and Bill who came up with the tagline: DON’T ASK. And Steve didn’t just go along with it; he ran with it, gleefully.

#3. Last week’s remembrance by Steven Grant:

Howard’s also of the most important characters in the history of comics because Steve became the first major figure in modern comics to sue a comics company over who really owned the character. It was eventually settled without trial, leaving Marvel in control of Howard and Steve scrounging to pay off massive legal fees, and by that point Howard’s value had been gutted by its notorious movie version, which, in Hollywoodizing the Duck, missed his appeal completely. Which isn’t surprising, since Marvel, despite several attempts to revive the property, missed it as well. Howard easily survived artist changes, but if there was ever a character who functioned almost purely as an expression of his creator, it was Howard the Duck.

One for the road: Mark Evanier talks about a Burbank gathering to remember Gerber:

Not much I can say about it other than a great time was had in spite of the reason for the gathering, and I think it brought a little sense of closure to some of us. One hopes some of the anecdotes that were told will find their way to the Comments sections of this blog, hint hint.

Technorati Tags: Steve Gerber

The “tweener” generation of comics readers and creators — of which I’m one — were lucky enough to come of age in an era of comics struggling to break out of a chrysalis. Nurtured on the canny, mythic cosmic melodrama of classic Lee-Kirby-Ditko Marvel, the next generation yearned to break out to the next level, to go from the child’s colorful fairy tale to the adolescent’s poetic angst. If early Marvel was the timeless struggle to be human despite the powers and guise of a monster, the next wave was struggling to be human despite the oppressive nature of human corruption. In a country made cynical by a failed war in a rotting jungle and a president who thought nothing of personally authorizing thugs to win an election it was time to question heroes.

In comics, a generation of writers emerged for whom the greatest threats weren’t space aliens or giant lizards — it was the evil at the core of a corporation, the greed of exploitation.

As a teenager in the 70s, my own comics reading grew up in the space of several short months. I was immediately hooked by the colorful dash and humor of Spider-Man, the clean adventure of the Fantastic Four. It was all fun and exciting. My trips to the spinner rack at a local department store were a search for new adventures, a world I knew nothing of, but was quickly learning about due to footnotes and letters pages.

I had only been reading Marvel comics for a few months when I found something called Howard the Duck. It was already up to issue 9, but back in those days every issue was a jumping on point. I was a little confused because Howard was dealing with the effects of an ill-advised presidential campaign and his relationship with a beautiful woman named Beverly was already in the middle stage of mingled attraction and bickering that actual human relationships were made of. After his disastrous campaign, Howard was forced to flee to Canada and fight a giant beaver. It was full of wacky humor, clever dialog and startling, original characters. I wasn’t very experienced in the ways of comics, but about five seconds in, I knew this was something I could relate to and make my own special comic.
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From the New York Times:

J. K. Rowling blocked the Finnish publication of her latest Harry Potter novel on paper from Finland because it lacked the ecologically friendly certification she favors, Agence France-Presse reported. Her Finnish publisher, Tammi, said that Ms. Rowling insisted that it import paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as being derived from wood grown and harvested in a way that promotes sustainable forest development. Sinikka Partanen, a spokeswoman for Tammi, said the first Potter books in Finnish were printed on recycled paper. “This time it’s a more specific demand,” she said. The Finnish-language version of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is due on March 7.

Posted by Mark Coale

§ Paul Dini explains the “animation feature template”:

Your primary objective as a modern animation feature storyteller is to get the audience members emotionally charged (i.e., distracted from logic gaps and not thinking too much) so they will be ready for your big finale. This usually consists of the hero defeating the villain (almost always by some initial violent action of the villain that the hero has “cleverly” used to boomerang back on the bad guy; real heroes never being allowed to slay dragons on their own these days) and the villain falling to their death from a great height, the only acceptable way for a baddie to meet their end in a cartoon (Gaston, Frollo, the bear in “The Fox & The Hound,” Scar, the poacher in “Rescuers II”, anyone notice a trend here?). If the villain can trip over the edge while trying to get in one last cowardly stab at the hero, so much the better. The demise of the bad guy puts everyone in a good mood, so the sidekicks fire up the juke box, or strike up the band, or simply break into song, and while the hero and heroine share a modest kiss, everyone rocks out over the end credits.

By the way, when we worked at Disney we called this “Death by topple.” It is lethal to bad guys.

§Josh Neufeld talks about working with Harvey Pekar:

Way back, when I did my very first Splendor story, I got Harvey to send me reference photos of one of the other characters in the piece. But as the years went by, I just began winging it, or swiping characters and interiors from previous issues of American Splendor. The only “reference” I use now are some shots of Harvey I cobbled together from the Internet, the work of other artists, or — horrors! — popping in the DVD of the film and using that. And even though I’ve drawn many stories set in his house, I tend to be dissatisfied with what I’ve done before and usually do something different each time. In essence, every time I draw a new A.S. story, Harvey’s pad undergoes an extreme makeover (sans Ty Pennington)! The only consistencies are the books, magazines, and newspapers piled everywhere, and the general air of post-bohemian shabbiness.

§ Rediscovered hot cartoonist Frank Santoro is interviewed at Blog @ and remembers the 90s:

There was no Giant Robot. They had just started actually. APE had just started. I went to the first couple of APEs. Everything was positive, it was cool, but it was just … I got a call from Mike Richardson in ‘96. Mike Richardson at Dark Horse called me. “Loved the story. It was a great book. Let us know what you’re up to.” I felt like this was great, I have an open door whenever. Then, when I knock on their door a year and a half later with whatever I was working on, the industry was falling apart. Heroes World and all this shit with the distributors was going on. I had a conversation with Gary Groth a couple of years ago, he found a letter from me and a sample from 1998. He had never opened it until 2004. Those guys were busy worrying about whether their companies were going to survive more so than putting out new work.

§ We never remember seeing an in-depth interview with with IDW Publisher Chris Ryall before:

Well, it’s safe to say that “Transformers” outsells books like “Supermarket” or “Smoke,” but as far as attracting attention goes, I’d say that that varies on the buyer. What I mean is, to the “Smoke” or “Supermarket” buyer, those are the kinds of books we publish. They’re maybe not as likely to also be reading “Transformers” comics. People that like our horror comics probably feel the same way. So all these books attract their own types of attention, and don’t really take away from one another. I think the sheer array of books you cited above shows a nice balance, just in the types of material we make available. We used to be primarily seen as a horror publisher, but now we offer so many different types of books to different audiences. I’m really proud of that fact.

AND: § Walt and Weezie Simonson profiled
§ Watchmen extra spills guts
§ There are many interviews with Marjane Satrapi floating around. Here is one of them.

Marv Wolfman writes to tell us that HOMELAND, his graphical history of Israel, illustrated by Mario Ruiz and William J Rubin has been winning a slew of honors of late, including National Jewish Book Award, the latest in a string of honors for the book:

Homeland has previously won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for non-fiction, the USAbooknews.com adult award for history/politics and last week received a Notable Book for teenagers by the Sydney Taylor Book Award for the Association of Jewish Libraries. That means the comic-based book, actually inspired by my old History of the DC Universe book, has won non-comics acclaim for kids, teens and adults. As I say I don’t yet know the category for the National Jewish Book award but in that world this is the big one.

Marv with friend in 2007

While he’s still going strong with the recent Raven mini-series for DC and racking up the awards, Marv also recently celebrated his 40th anniversary as a professional writer. We thought it would be nice to check in and get some insights on his time in the comics business — few people have seen its inner working from such a wide perspective.
What are you working on in 2008?
I’m working on a number of different projects. I’m writing several video games but unfortunately I can’t say what they are right now. Hopefully soon. But they’re a lot of fun. More than one realizes because it forces you to rethink everything. Nothing is by rote because the stories aren’t and can’t be linear in the same way we’ve all written all our lives. Forcing you to think, forcing you to challenge yourself, forcing you out of any possible rut, is exciting and I think actually makes the work itself better. Plus, on top of that, the stories are fun to do.

I’m also scheduled to do a couple of graphic novels, but I’m not sure when they are supposed to begin. In comics, I should be working on the new Vigilante book for DC as well as a few smaller projects which haven’t been announced yet. But the five-part Raven mini-series I did last year will start coming out either in February or March. I’m also scheduled to write a novel, but again I don’t know exactly when that’s supposed to begin.

If everything happens the way they should I’ll be busy, but I’ve learned long ago that rarely happens. Life of a freelancer.

What’s the BIGGEST difference about being a freelancer now and 40 years ago?
Well, for me, I was usually on staff which means I knew exactly what my next assignments were. These days as you can tell from the above, I know what I’m supposed to do, and I’ve actually been paid for some of that, but until I’m told to start I don’t know when. But I’m absolutely thrilled that after all these years I’m still working. And even more, still loving it. Taking a few years off of comics writing actually made me love doing it more than ever. Sometimes you need to get away and recharge the batteries. Last year, 2007, was probably the busiest I’ve ever been. And that includes the year I was writing Titans, Crisis and a dozen other titles… while working on staff and doing my first animation scripts.
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Above: Illo for the MySpace page for Lynda Barry’s Writing the Unthinkable writing seminars.

Paul Pope blogs at the First Second website:

Each facet of the comics medium is important and deserves its own special consideration, but it’s the writing in comics I’m thinking about right now. I often wonder why we don’t see more literary quality in the comics being published today, why we don’t have a John Steinbeck or Robert Penn-Warren in our medium, authors who can unfold a filagreed theme across an extended storyline and touch on that ineffable shade we call “the human condition.” Where are our Sam Hamiltons, our Willie Starks, our Jack Burdens, our Cal Trasks? It may simply be that good writing is rare. It is also entirely possible that most comics creators are simply unconcerned with developing literary themes in their work, favoring instead sweeping epics of good versus evil, populating their paper worlds with colorfully costumed heroes and villans invested with very little psychological complexity or self-awareness. It may be that most people who are attracted to the medium want very little more out of life than to draw pretty pictures, tell exciting, splashy stories, and get paid for it.

The WGA strike goes on and on with no early end in sight, as everyone sticks to their trenches. Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times has the very gloomy prognosis:
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Yet another best selling author James Patterson, is setting up his own toon/graphic novelly/manga deal. Patterson has sold some 140 million books, so that is a lot of books. One deal is with Yen Press (PR in the jump) which will serialize his “Maximum Ride” YA series in their manga anthology, Yen Plus.

He’s also pacted with with Curious Pictures:

…the Gotham animation studio known for Disney’s “Little Einsteins,” is teaming with James Patterson Entertainment to produce longform animated media based on the author’s books, graphic novels and original concepts.

The pair’s first project is the film “Beer Belly and Fat Boy,” about a slacker who is secretly an assassin controlled by evil corporations. Like “300,” the pic will blend human actors with all-digital backgrounds, aiming squarely at the vidgame-and-comedy-inclined young male demo.

As interesting as all that is, the article also contains this little nugget:

[Curious] is doing animation work for a toon Michel Gondry is co-directing with his son, Paul, an up-and-coming artist.

Michel Gondry ‘toon! We are there.
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At his LJ, Greg Rucka casually mentioned he wouldn’t be upping his DC exclusive

I was in LA on personal business the last two days, and I got to spend some time with my brother and his bride, and I got to see Andrew and Xtie, and that was good for the soul, especially opposite the contortions I’ve been going through the last several weeks. I feel better. I’ve made some decisions. One of them is that I’m not renewing my exclusive with DC. Others less deserving of announcement at the moment, but of no less import to myself and my family.

This led to yet another commotion in the blogosphere. Wow, JMS and Rucka both sort of “speaking out” in two days. What happened to the happy family?

You know in this day and age — and we are NOT looking into Rucka’a mind here, just engaging in complete speculation — why would anyone with a spouse with health insurance want to be exclusive? Esp. someone in Rucka’s position. When new comics companies, some with fat bankrolls to be rapidly deplated, are springing up every month, it’s a good time to be a free agent if you have much on the ball. Of course, both Marvel and DC often allow creators to work on personal projects - an exclusive often means in practice, “Don’t work for the competition.”

Still, Rucka hasn’t been entirely silent on his discomfort with DC comics over the past year or so. Will anyone ever REALLY recover from 52?

Paging every screenwriter who is eyeing the comics medium: PLEASE READ THIS:

Do you really have to pick shots? Think hard on this one. Do you really have a good sense of what will make a good picture, or do you just feel like you’re supposed to do it because it’s your job? Because it’s not, necessarily. You can almost always tell an artist what really needs to happen in a scene, and she will have opinions on how that should all go down. And she’ll be taking composition into consideration, and balancing lots of visual elements. Can you do that? It’s not really necessary with a good artist, she’ll do it anyway. But if that isn’t a strength of yours, then don’t impose such notes on our artist.

As the writers’ strike enters day number (something like 21 or so, forgive me it’s late), folks are finding new ways to keep busy.

We saw last week that some of the Daily Show writers were doing their own show on YouTube.

Now, it’s the cast of Saturday Night Live performing on, well, Saturday night, just not on TV.

The NYTimes has an article today about the Not Ready for Prime Time performance, guest-hosted by ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and SUPERBAD star Michael Cera.

Apparently, 30 ROCK will have done the same thing by the time anyone reads this.

Best of all, proceeds from the show (tickets were being scalped like crazy) went to the show’s production staff that were affected by the strike.

Posted by Mark Coale

Variety paints a gloomy picture of the WGA strike, as talks have stalled and the vitriol level is rising:

Three months of harsh negotiating rhetoric — combined with widely differing interpretations of the contract talks — have fueled resentment on both sides. And it’s started to poison relationships in a town where connections are the coin of the realm.

“Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane touched a nerve Friday when he elicited perhaps the angriest response among the 4,000 attendees at Friday’s WGA rally at Fox Plaza. Invoking the image of the companies as schoolyard bullies, he recounted that all “Family Guy” assistants had been fired by Fox on the third day of the strike.

“Instead of negotiating, they lashed out at the little guy,” MacFarlane added. “What a classy move.”

Some fear that the strike will allow studios and networks to employ a scorched-earth approach to cut expenses and punish those who have fallen out of favor. Force majeure terms provide opt-out provisions in the event of an occurrence beyond the control of the parties. While top producers often have clauses in their deals that preclude them from being discharged under these terms, smaller producers and writers are vulnerable.

But Nikki Finke thinks there is a glimmer of hope. Let’s hope she’s right. In our ever so humble opinion, the studio heads had better hope so too. This one is different. Start with the idea that the internet is not a future profit center for the studios. That’s just hooey. But as Damon Lindelof pointed out yesterday, the stakes are high for everyone, since the delivery methods for entertainment are shifting on an almost daily basis.

Twenty percent of American homes now contain hard drives that store movies and television shows indefinitely and allows you to fast-forward through commercials. These devices will probably proliferate at a significant rate and soon, almost everyone will have them. They’ll also get smaller and smaller, rendering the box that holds them obsolete, and the rectangular screen in your living room won’t really be a television anymore, it’ll be a computer. And running into the back of that computer, the wire that delivers unto you everything you watch? It won’t be cable; it will be the Internet.

This probably sounds exciting if you’re a TV viewer, but if you’re in the business of producing these shows, it’s nothing short of terrifying. This is how vaudevillians must have felt the first time they saw a silent movie; sitting there, suddenly realizing they just became extinct: after all, who wants another soft-shoe number when you can see Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock 50 feet tall?

User created content has already made serious inroads in studio-created content, although user “managed” content may be an accurate phrase. And as writers hit the picket lines, the nets will be relying on their own “user created” content via more and more “non-scripted” “reality” shows. As the late night talk shows go dark and the once-bright spots of TV — LOST, 24 — go dark or fail to appear, viewers may find other things to occupy their time. This isn’t like hockey and baseball, where the playing field is literally the same. By the time everything gets back to normal, normal will be something no one expected.

Meanwhile, as we predicted, LA coffee shops and other places where writers once congregated have all but cleared out.

Over at the 18th Street Coffee House, a favorite of screenwriters (including some Oscar winners), a barista said the strike was a “very real concern.” Although no dramatic change was yet visible at the coffee shop, where about half a dozen screenwriters were staring into laptops, the normally laid-back vibe was slightly more tense. There was talk of the picket lines and of WGA “goons” who might be prowling around, looking to nab scabs. When Steve Waverly, a WGA screenwriter, was asked what he was working on, he said robotically: “I’m working on nothing and I will be picketing.”

As some have foretold, many screenwriters are taking this opportunity to finish up those lingering comics projects:

“As a writer, this is what you do. You have no other way to truly express yourself,” said screenwriter John Ridley, whose credits include “Undercover Brother.” “You may be able to go to cocktail parties and talk and talk and talk, but it’s not the same as writing.” Ridley counts himself lucky. Before the strike, he finished the screenplay for “L.A. Riots” for Spike Lee and now has extensive research to do for a film on the Tuskegee airmen for George Lucas, plus a series of graphic novels to begin along with minor editing on a just-completed novel. Like many writers, Ridley also is blogging online about the strike.

Speaking of blogging, you can keep up with all the strike action at various places:
John Rogers
Joe Harris
John Ridley
Ken Levine
Hollywood United
And of course, the essential Mark Evanier.

PS: Russian posters taken from this super cool site Museum of Russian Posters.

For all the writer/artist types out there, this might be a cool diversion.

A website devoted to pencils of all shapes, sizes and colors.

If you’re a striking writer, stock up on writing utensils while you have the chance.

Posted by Mark Coale

The Post That Wouldn’t Die continues to captivate the blogosphere, and many of my private conversations. My mom called to say she enjoyed it, which was nice. Eddie Campbell, ties it in with a larger thesis of conservatism breeding homogeniety in comics.

Frank Santoro author of STOREYVILLE, pipes up independently, and I would be overjoyed if his comments were substitued for mine, because he says what I was trying to say in a paragraph:

I feel like I need to be careful here because I’m not saying that I don’t like the new crafty, abstract work that was in evidence this year — I’m simply taking note that there is something new going on. And I like it. The work is beautiful. I do, however, lament the absence of strong characters in this new trend. Whether the comic is well-executed or dashed off what I notice is there isn’t much of a story or any real characters to identify with. There’s no distance, no mediator between the artist’s intention and the reader’s comprehension. I know I’m over-generalizing here. But it’s sort of like abstract painting, which I love, but often leaves me wanting more. Yet the work is usually so visually stunning that one has to hope that the craft and narrative elements will start to balance out. And, ultimately, I hold out much more hope for this approach to making alt comics than the rehashing of every Clowes, Ware, or Tomine story of the last 15 years.

I don’t mean to taint Santoro as an ally — he just happened to notice the same thing I’ve been noticing.

Of course for every person who shares the same concerns, there are the continuing grossly unhelpful over-generalizarions such as the reduction of my argument to “Chris Ware hates storytelling comics” . The worst offender is undoubtedly this guy who, shamefully, actually thinks he agrees with me . No you don’t, and just go away.

Independently, The Comics Journal crowd goes on for 14 pages over Craig Yoe’s yearly lament that “the kids can’t draw.” The Golden Age of comics truly was Roy Crane, and Craig and I probably agree on that.

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