Going to Hell?
Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, the man who battled with Opie and Anthony and the creators of South Park, is now picking on producers Randy Weiner and Jeff Beacher over their new Off-Broadway show, Stairway to Hell, which performs every Friday Night at Snitch in New York City.
Donohue stated in his press release: "Men and women are dying everyday in Iraq to keep America free. It is sickening to note that some young Americans think freedom means the right to insult, degrade and abuse the sensibilities of Christians. The man behind this barbaric assault is Randy Weiner. In a sane society, he would be run out of town. Unfortunately, there are elements in our society that see him as a champion of liberty."
Says Weiner, "It saddens me that Mr. Donohue is trying to exploit the suffering of our American soldiers to further his own crusade."
Mr. Beacher is scared that Mr. Donohue’s statements might incite violence among his more radical followers against the Stairway To Hell cast and crew. Mr. Beacher has gone so far as to hire bodyguards for Weiner and the actors until any threat of violence that might be stirred up by Donohue’s press release dies down. "Weiner’s a genius; I can’t let anything happen to him because Donohue has called out his Storm Troopers. As with any form of art, we have the right to say what we want. It is called the first Amendment." Beacher believes this is not an issue of the bible vs. the first Amendment, this is about one man’s distorted interpretation of the bible to serve his own personal agenda.
Beacher concludes, "Donohue hates Stairway To Hell, which makes it a perfect show for my audience. Donohue says the show deserves to be in Hell, so I’m taking it to Vegas where it belongs!"
My wife would start to get upset about my brother living with us at this point. I know there is tension building… This suspenseful medium is fun, but at the same time frustrating — can't we do 6 pages a day ;)
6 pages a day? 6 PAGES A DAY??!?!???! My drawing arm curled up and fell off just reading such a request!Anyway – I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that all the characters are soon to be faced with some hard decisions. But also – keep in mind – Keely and Danny are not married. They are just living together in the house that still belongs to Danny and Scott's mother. So in a real sense Scott has more claim to live there than Keely does.
I was trying to imagine comics how drawing six pages a daymight be a reasonable task. Show of hands, who remembers "Tales of the Beanworld" or "Cynicalman"? Now, I'm not saying that it's reasonable to WRITE and draw six pages a day, but the simplified figures of Matt Feazel's Cynicalman and Larry Marder's Beanworld were the first I could think of even imagining drawing at that pace regularly. Matt and Larry would probably argue the point. I seriously don't know all the complexities of drawing brilliant stick figures and beans.Heck, we only asked Charles Shultz to come up with about three PANELS a day! But he's still doing it even after how many years of being dead!Who, in the comics world, is actually fast enough and prolific enough to crank out six finished pages a day? I think I read that Sergio Aragones was very fast. It's like taking on the McCloud 24 Hour Comic challenge in perpetuity.
Very good point, Russ. Design for the time available to do the work.I used to have this discussion with Dick Girodano when he was still heading up DC Comics – back when all the creative teams were missing deadlines and causing problems. Oh wait – I think that still goes on. Anyway – we were having this talk on the cusp of the change from, let us call it, Kirby-style comics, to Ross-style comics. That's for the art. And the stories were becoming more dense and character-driven – while at the same time cross-over events were popping up more and more making the job of writer harder. Essentially – all the factors involved in creating comics were taking on very time-consuming styles. And yet the schedules and the 24 hour day were not changing.In my case – I can layout about 10 pages in a day. Or I can pencil between four and six pages in the day. My inking speed is about the same – 4 to 6 pages in a day. and it is about the same for painted color. I guess if I worked on a page at a time I could complete a fully painted page each day. But not seven days a week. If I don't get a day off in there my creative output gets slower and slower. But the good news is – if I do take a day off and enjoy it – the next day back at work I can do almost two days of work! If only I could hypnotize myself into thinking every day was my first day back from a vacation! There are two major reasons that I am collaborating on the script for EZ STREET with Bob Tinnell. The first reason is that he is a fantastic writer. But the second reason is that he is a fast writer who is a big help keeping script pages coming while I'm busy drawing! So it would seem like the schedule solution would be to have a whole team of people working on a strip. But it is rare that you get an entire team that actually produces much faster than one or two people. I'm not sure why that is – but it is true.Of course the other option is to get a book like EZ STREET completely done before we start running it. Then we could post it as fast as we wanted. Bob and I have been working full tilt on EZ since October – of 2006. I currently project that I will finish it in August of this year!