“I am helping Dave Cockrum’s widow sell Dave’s personal collection of comics–from his X-Men file copies to his Silver Age and Golden Age books. Dave was an important creator, a wonderful man, and his widow can use the money… Would you help me spread the word?” — Clifford Meth. Well, since I have met Dave and Paty Cockrum once or twice, as explained here, absolutely, I will. Go here.
***
I was reading about a group called Empire State Troopers, who were featured on the cover of Metroland, the local news/arts weekly. I’m not familiar with the group, but the members, from Saratoga Springs and the Buffalo area, commissioned a friend of theirs to come up with this declaration:
“We are the Empire State because we alone have all the makings of a great empire. Coal. Grain. Timber. Iron. Granite and Slate. Livestock. Game. Fresh Water. Our per-acre agricultural output far exceeds that of any other state. We are too far inland to be hurt by hurricanes, yet too coastal and hilly to see tornadoes of any significance. Long after the world’s oil is gone, and the deserts once again are parched, we will still have our canals, our rivers and our lakes. This is our birthright, and from all this—from the hardcore squats of mid-1990s Buffalo to the North Country metal parties in July, from the explosives, the grease fires, the dog fights and homemade tattoos—Empire State Troopers make their rock.” The part about the topography IS particularly why I do like being where I am.
***
Someone asked me last week: If twice something is double, three is triple, four is quadruple, etc., what is it for nine and ten? I had no idea. “Nonuple and decuple?” I guessed. Turns out I was right, and those terms are known as tuples; that I did not know .
***
I think the thing that bothered me most about Chris Matthews’ remarks about Hillary Clinton was how utterly wrong his bluster was. She went to 62 of 62 New York State counties and convinced conservative Republican men and women that she could bring home the bacon to her state.
***
JEOPARDY! fans: The Online Test is back! These tests are for adults 18 and over only to qualify for the regional auditions. Eligible adults must register before taking the test.
TEST DATES & TIMES
EAST COAST Tuesday, January 29th at 8PM EST
CENTRAL/MOUNTAIN Wednesday, January 30th at 8PM CST/7PM MST
PACIFIC COAST (Including Alaska and Hawaii) Thursday, January 31st at 8PM PST
Registration will close at 7:30PST on Thursday, January 31st. Visit jeopardy.com now to register, take the online test tutorial, and read through all instructions and information.
ROG
Category: comic books
Online Comics QUESTIONS
I get e-mails:
Lacking for material to write about? No, of course not. But I’d be interested in your take on this subject. Do you think Cory Doctorow is right?
The main point of the story, titled “Boom! comics’ new series available as downloads on the same day as in stores” is that “comics publishers should — at a minimum — put up downloadable comics after they disappear from the stands, so that people who are coming to the serial after it starts can catch up. The trade paperbacks help here, but usually there’s a 2-3 issue gap between the collection and the singles.”
Well, I have no idea. In my days of retailing comics (1980-88 and again in the early 1990s), the business model was very different. I do know that a customer coming in in the middle of a story was/is maddening. I do know that dealing with back issue comics was often a pain. But does the online page of back issues solve the problem?
There seems to be an overriding premise in the piece that almost everything that comes out as singles (his term) or floppies will turn up in book form eventually, which I don’t believe to be true, any more than every TV show eventually coming out on DVD.
I also don’t buy the premise that the “publisher could spend approximately $0.00 and post downloadable singles 30 days or even 60 days after they hit the stands.” To do a quality job online does not cost nothing, assuming you have to pay someone to do it. And what of the creative team? How are they getting paid for this, beyond the flat page rate? Or should it just be considered “promotional? (Shades of the AMPTP!)
I would really like to know, from comics collectors and especially retailers: does the online model stimulate new readers, and more importantly, new spenders, or are folks just reading product online for free? What is the general quality of the existing products – easy to use or not? Of readable quality or full of eyestrain? What’s the best of the current crop, and what’s a must to avoid?
***
Last weekend, the Wall Street Journal gave a plug for HowToons, an interesting site. It does have a link to a book for sale on Amazon, but I don’t know how else it makes money, if in fact it does.
ROG
Looking forward to
So what am I most anticipating in the new year?
READING
For the first time in decades, THREE comic-related items:
The Steve Ditko book.
The Jack Kirby book
The Fred Hembeck book. BTW, happy five years of blogging, Fred!
WATCHING
More movies; likely next chance, MLK Day. Likely film: Juno.
Pioneers of Television which starts TONIGHT on PBS with sitcoms (I Love Lucy; Joyce Randolph on The Honeymooners; Marlo Thomas about her father Danny’s Make Room for Daddy’ the man himself on The Andy Griffith Show; and DVD and MTM on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Football. Seriously, taping it then watching it later is SO much more efficient. Definitely some of the NFL games. Probably a bowl game or two.
The Golden Globes, just to see who actually shows up and say they support the Writers’ Strike, even as they’ll be others who’ll boycott the show altogether for the same reason.
HEARING
The new music I got in the last month, including the John Lennon Anthology. There’s more, but I’ll save it for my Top 10 album list.
VISITING
Williamsburg, VA with the family. My in-laws have as timeshare.
Visiting the BNorman Rockwell Museum, not all that far from here in Stockbridge, MA. My wife wants to see the Rockwell stuff. I really want to see LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel (through May 26, 2008), featuring Jessica Abel, Sue Coe, R. Crumb, Howard Cruse, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Brian Fies, Gerhard, Milt Gross, Marc Hempel, Niko Henrichon, Mark Kalesniko, Peter Kuper, Harvey Kurtzman, Matt Madden, Frans Masereel, Frank Miller, Terry Moore, Dave Sim, Art Spiegelman, Lynd Ward, Lauren Weinstein, Mark Wheatley, Barron Storey and others.
Seeing my friends Gerelt-Od and Soyol who used to live in Albany then returned home to Mongolia, but who’ve been in NYC the past year; I haven’t seen them in nearly a decade.
Seeing my friend Deborah, who I met in 1977 in NYC, who moved to Japan and then France, and who’ll be visiting the Western Hemisphere at some point this year. I haven’t seen her in over a quarter century.
DOING
Worrying less
Sleeping more
Drinking more water
That’s as close to New Year’s resolutions as I go.
ROG
My My, Hey Hey
| What female superhero are you???
Jean Grey You have a tendency to be the interest of many men. You’re beautiful, intelligent, extremely powerful, but also extremely caring. The perfect woman!
|
| Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests. |
“You have a tendency to be the interest of many men. You’re beautiful, intelligent, extremely powerful, but also extremely caring. The perfect woman!” Well, that IS me. And Jean Gray, a superhero I’ve actually heard of!
***
| You Are 83% Burned Out |
 You are extremely burned out. You work too hard, and you’re not getting the results you deserve. It’s time for a life change, as soon as you can manage it. You’re giving away most of your energy to something you don’t even enjoy. |
I’m reminded, of course, of that Neil Young lyric: “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” (Neil’s birthday was earlier this month.)
ROG
Second Saturday in October
That was one busy Saturday eight days ago. Some of you will understand the need (of my wife) for us to clean the house in anticipation of someone coming over to clean the house; that was the post-breakfast activity. And we were also trying out a new babysitter, Annie, to replace our old sitters Anna (who went to college) and Anne (a busy HS senior).
So the babysitter came, the housekeeper came, and I got picked up by my friend Rocco. Rocco was a kid who used to be a FantaCo customer who became a FantaCo employee in the early 1980s. We traversed over to the Elks Lodge in Troy to go to a comic book program, organized by former FantaCo customer Dave Palladino.
We went to the artists’ table and talked to three guys with a strong FantaCo connection:
John Hebert was the artist on a book I co-wrote, Sold Out and worked at a couple FantaCons, before moving on to fame and fortune. He’s getting married next year, and herein is the proof:
Fred Hembeck, who I saw for the third time this year (yay!), was doing the big reveal of an anthology of his seven books published by FantaCo, plus over 600 MORE pages, news that would soon be wildly and exuberantly cheered by the comics blogisphere. He had on hand a binder that featured the black and white version of the color cover: 
and
Bill Anderson, who I see more often than the others, worked at Fantaco, off and on, between 1984 and 1996, but even before that, embellished some of Hembeck pages, before becoming the inker extraordinaire.
Rocco and I had great conversations with them and with Fred’s daughter Julie, between her stints reading homework. She told me she likes doing these trips because it gets her out of the house and because Fred “really needs a navigator,” which even he would admit is true.
I also had some lengthy conversations with other former customers and employees. Talked at length about the late Raoul Vezina (a post for next year) and FantaCo’s founder, Tom Skulan, who has gone into a different line of work.
At some point, I returned to the artists’ table, and a couple little kids asked me to sign a Mars Attacks mini-comic that FantaCo had published. I didn’t have anything to do with it, except shipping it to distributors, and escorting its writer Mario Bruni a Capital Cities Distributor show in Madison, WI back in 1988 so we could promote it. But I signed them anyway.
I now remember why some folks find comic book people really weird, as I heard a number of stories, including Golden-Gate, some debacle involving Michael Golden and a Doctor Strange drawing. It’s interesting in a very bizarre way.
I had a surprisingly good time, though I didn’t buy anything, except for some food. Check Fred’s October 20th post for his take on the event.
Rocco dropped me home long enough to go back out to the drug store and grocery store, before a second babysitter came. We’d NEVER had two babysitters in one day, EVER, but we really wanted to go the 30th anniversary party for our friends, Paul and Mary Liz Stewart, as it turned out, at my church. After a wonderful dinner, there was a short segment of singing to and telling stories about the Stewarts, MCed by me (I learned about this at 10 a.m. that day), thus once again ruining my self-image as a shy person.
It was a good day.
ROG