LEADING NEW PULP PUBLISHER LICENSES PIONEERING INDEPENDENT COMIC PUBLISHER’S CHARACTERS!
Pro Se Productions-www.prosepulp.com
Heroic Publishing- www.heroicmultiverse.com
Pro Se Productions-www.prosepulp.com
Heroic Publishing- www.heroicmultiverse.com
Pro Se Productions, a publisher of Heroic Fiction and New Pulp, announces a different sort of project for 2013 as well as adding a new artist to its already top notch team of cover creators.
This week I thought maybe I’d do a few hundred words on Superman. Instead, I find myself sitting here wishing that Superman really existed and I knew him and he owed me a favor and I had him on speed dial.
Another big blow coming. Here we go again.
I saw my first hurricane when I was on an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean. I watched gigantic waves breaking over the ship’s bow and thought, wow – this’ll make a man believe in an Almighty. It was a glorious experience and I’m glad I had it.
A couple of years ago I had dinner with old friend/colleague Annie Nocenti, who was shortly to leave to teach a film class in Haiti. She was there when Katrina decimated that eternally tormented island nation. For while, I lost touch with her and I worried. But she was okay and we’ve exchanged emails since.
Next came a trip to the Midwest and a tornado that passed about a half mile from our hotel. The next morning Marifran and I drove through the suburb she grew up in. It looked like a toy town kicked by a careless child.
Then home again and soon…our gal Hurricane Irene, the fifth costliest big wind in U.S. history. We lost two trees, one of which hit and damaged the car. It could have been worse.
And now, on a gloomy October 27, the weather folk are saying that Sandy will be worse than Irene. “Widespread devastation” – that was the phrase one forecaster used. What to do? Not much. Fill jugs and sinks with water. Put inside the stuff on the lawn. Make sure we have batteries for the radio, and canned food that can be eaten cold if necessary. And…hold on to our asses. Tuesday morning’s when the fun is expected to start. It will all be over by Wednesday; Thursday at the latest. Happy Halloween.
Enter he who isn’t – Superman. Surely a guy who can “change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel in his bare hands” can deal with a lot of feisty wind. (Though, I admit, bending steel is pretty small potatoes.) Part of the reason we invented superheroes – and, cynics might aver, deities – is that sometimes we feel helpless and sometimes we are helpless and we want…no, we need to believe that some great something who likes us, some mamadaddy who offers unconditional love, will come along to save us. Imagining such a being might be better than nothing. Believing in such a being might be even better.
Deja vu, anyone? (And yes, I know that one of the synonyms for deja vu is “boredom.”) Okay, I’ve perpetrated this kind of blather before, less than a year ago. So let me make a deal with the universe: you stop throwing monster storms at me and I’ll stop whining.
I mean, I lived the first 71 years of my life having experienced only two total hurricanes (and a couple of tornados, but maybe they shouldn’t count.) Now – two in two years? C’mon, universe!
Ah, but the universe doesn’t negotiate, does it?
Maybe Superman does.
(Editor’s note: Denny wrote this before Hurricane Sandy hit our area, and Ye Ed is ye editing it the same day. So whatever Sandy did to us… right now you know more about it than we do.)
FRIDAY: Martha Thomases, if the creek don’t rise.
Get Your Copy here!
A stroll around a comic convention is a lot different today than it used to be when it comes to experiencing original comic art which for me, as a young aspiring comic artist, was the highlight of any show. I would always immediately venture directly towards artist alley where pros and amateurs alike would form a welcoming community of comic art practitioners. To me it seemed less like an opportunity for the creators to market their work and more of a joyous reunion of folks with a common bond: The love of comics and a need to create them.
Maybe it is just a product of comic conventions no longer being the casual events they used to be, held in basement ballrooms of fading city hotels with the most sophisticated displays being a hand lettered card stock sign hung on a pipe and drape background. Professional comic artists were not viewed as the superstars they are today. They were heroes that we related to more like a favorite uncle who always new how to appeal to our inner child. Their art touched us in a personal way that established a relationship that was respected between them and their fans.
Those were the days when you did not wait in line to meet your favorite creator. At best you gathered around their table and shared as a group, listening to their stories, watching them sketch, and learning from their teachings which, though small casual tidbits of technique, were gems of insight into the magical world of creating comics.
Stacked high on their tables would be pages of original art that could be thumbed through and purchased for prices as low as ten or fifteen bucks! The opportunity to scan through those pages was a chance to stare into a window of a professional comics bullpen. Each page told a production story that was highlighted by the scents of bristol board and india ink often commingling with odors of white-out and rubber cement.
To be able to view those pages and see script notes in a corner, blue lines behind lettering, pen strokes appearing as a texture on the surface and brush strokes laying a deep wash in large shaded areas with a barely visible “x” etched in pencil beneath was a hands-on lesson in every page.
I always got a kick out of seeing revisions. Panels or words would be cut out with an x-acto and replaced with art that was cut to fit perfectly into the hole and secured from behind with a strip of masking tape. Splash pages had photostat logos pasted on leaving a trail of ever yellowing rubber cement beneath.
Every page was art, yet each was also just a mechanical, a production board from which final films would be photographed on large upright “stat” cameras. Each was a path of history, chronicling the creation of the page through the hands of the writer, penciler, letterer, inker, editor and production hand. Void of color, the line art resonated with a power of its own lending a new found appreciation for comics in black and white that would empower the independent comic publishers of the day.
It is still possible to marvel at original art at conventions but the atmosphere is so much more hurried that it is difficult to be absorbed into each piece. Those “uncles” are slowly passing away leaving a void where once was a nurturing wisdom behind the craft of each page. In its place is a new energy that is equally intoxicating, a new brand of comic artist with an entrepreneurial spirit hawking their own works.
It is thrilling to see the new, unlimited variety of comics, invigorating to see the community widening to include a wave of talented women that was always sadly lacking in that bygone era. What is missing is the original art, replaced by an ernest need to sell small print runs and assorted related merchandise or to direct readers to a growing web-comic. The art exists, but digitally, and can be panned easily on an iPad evoking a sterile creative process free of the sensory stimulators that fueled a personal romance with comic production in my formative years.
As I sit here at my keyboard, I’m suddenly realizing that I am now one of those “uncles” I came to embrace. Not that I could hold a candle to any of them but I have an opportunity to share from my experiences, as they did, only from the venue of this blog instead of a convention table. The new generation of comic creator, who creates digitally, shares too, through all kinds of forums and social networks on the internet. An aspiring comic creator no longer has to wait, as I did, for an annual comic convention to experience the knowledge of a comic pro, they can watch a tutorial on Youtube or follow a comment thread on Facebook!
Yes, I miss the sensory experience of the creative process of comics. Yes, I wonder if creators are losing an opportunity to cash in by not having physical comic art to sell. But it is not worth pining over any of my attachment to these relics while I am witnessing the future of comics as it blossoms before my eyes. The community of comic artists is no longer small and relegated to a musty convention hall. It is vast and continues to grow. It exists at our fingertips any time we wish to access it.
Today’s comic artists are creating much more than original art. They are creating the future of the medium. Support them any way you can if you love comics. Go read their web comics. Buy their print on demand books. Order their merchandise. Join them on forums and share ideas. Learn from them and teach others. We are all part of the same comics community that began in those old convention halls. Embrace that past and build the future.
Bill Cucinotta and I, here at CO2 Comics, are committed to both and are excited to be part of this growing comics community of artists with a keen eye on the future. No matter how comics are made we intend to maintain that common bond we always had with those comic creators in artist alley: The love of comics and a need to create them.
Celebrating Thirty Years of Comics History!
Gerry Giovinco
The faithful among you may recall that last week we did a backflip through time to the sixties and beheld a young journalist taking a test and being offered a comic book job that changed virtually everything about his life forever. But this same journalist, now wizened and hard of hearing and just a bit crotchety around the edges, said that no comics aptitude test exists. Eh?
That was then and this is now. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only Marvel Comics employee, past or present, to take the test. I got to know both my predecessor and my successor in the job, and neither mentioned pre-employment testing.
But people do get hired by comics companies. So – how? Darned if I know. When I sat behind an editor’s desk, I did my share of job-giving, both to hopefuls applying for staff gigs and to freelancers, and usually my choices were pretty good-to-excellent. If I had a secret, I don’t know what it was. Something to do with hunches and intuition, maybe.
But there were things I liked to see in applicants. First: simple literacy. Does this person know that the big letter goes at the beginning of the sentence and the little dot goes at the end? (Don’t laugh. Instead, ask any middle school-and-up teacher you know if all his/her pupils have this competence.) Has s/he read a book or two? Did s/he enjoy reading the book or two? Second: interest in writing (and/or editing) per se? Not just writing comics – storytelling! Until I’m proven wrong, which could happen any second now, I’ll believe that most good comics writers are writers who have a liking or aptitude (or, ideally, both) for this particular medium and if comics didn’t exist, the person would be doing poems or plays or short fiction or novels or whatever.
We’ll take a paragraph break here, mostly because I feel like doing it, and move on to third: willingness to learn. Nobody knows it all, and that includes you and me, and nobody will ever know it all, but you can know more than you do now and if you want to get good at this job, or any job, you should. (Besides, its fun to know stuff. But don’t tell the no-child-left-behind crowd.)
And finally, fourth: Does the job applicant seem to be a reasonably adult human being? Willing and able to deliver on promises? Willing to accept compromise? Able to play well with others? Respecting but not worshipping the rules, whatever they may be? Having a closetful of Brooks Brothers suits and Hermes ties?
Just joshing about that last one.
I’m tempted to add a fifth: loyalty. But that’s something you learn about someone over time and so it’s hard to detect during a job interview and anyway, my veneration of it is probably rooted in my own insecurities.
Recommended reading: Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! by Wes Nisker
FRIDAY: Martha Thomases, Neil Gaiman, and Failure
PRESS RELEASE
Pro Se Productions and Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief/Partner in Pro Se and Author of the novel YESTERYEAR, announced today that a series of stories set in the YesterYear universe Hancock created in his novel would be debuting on November 4th from iPulpFiction!
www.iPulpFiction.com is the brainchild of Keith Shaw and is a venue where short stories, both Classic and New Pulp, appear as individual tales and can be downloaded and enjoyed at extremely reasonable prices. “This,” Hancock stated, “relationship with iPulpFiction is a natural fit for Pro Se, but especially for TALES OF YESTERYEAR (the name of the series of short stories from Hancock to appear on the site). This is a chance to tell tales of the Heroic Era, the Golden Age of my cast of characters. And the fact that they will appear regularly and be extremely affordable only adds to my excitement about this partnership.”
Tales of YesterYear will feature stories from 1929-1955 in Hancock’s YESTERYEAR Universe and will add insight to events in the first novel and coming tales, but also will work as stand alone Pulp adventures. The first four stories to kick off this series are actually drawn from the novel itself, taken right from the pages of the fictional book that is the axis the story turns around. “These tales,” Hancock explained, “are a great jumping on point and that’s why they showed up in YESTERYEAR. You get the origin of the Heroes basically and some of the earliest stars in that pantheon. But many have requested even more tales from this part of the story, from this era. So don’t worry, there’ll be all new never before published stories from the fifth one on in this series as well.”
The initial story, THE FIRST YESTERYEAR, introduces the series and will be FREE and available on November 4th. Next will be MURPHY’S WAKE, probably the most popular tale of the YesterYear mythos thus far, the origin of The Night. This intriguing Pulp tale debuts on December 2nd for 50 cents! January 2nd sees the release of ONE GOOD EYE introducing yet another hero at a price of 75 cents! The fourth tale, FOR FLAG AND COUNTRY, goes live on January 27th for the fantastic price of one single quarter!
TALES OF YESTERYEAR revisits an era held dear by many Pulp fans and mixes in Hancock’s own characters with that period of history, weaving action, adventure, excitement and mystery into this familiar, yet new world of Heroes and Villains!
Pro Se Productions- www.prosepulp.com
iPulpFiction-www.iPulpFiction.com