Tagged: Glenn Hauman

Mindy Newell: Stuffing Ourselves

Newell Art 131202I may have been a nice Jewish girl, but my family loved Christmas time. It started at Thanksgiving, when we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and watched Santa on his sleigh welcome the holiday season to New York. We lived on a block trisected by three streets, and in the middle of this triangle was an island. On this island was a tall, beautiful spruce fir. Every year after Thanksgiving all us neighbors went out and had a block party and the fathers hung lights on the tree, making it into our own private tannenbaum.

Every year my mom took my brother, two of our friends and me into the city on Christmas Eve. We skated at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center and then went across the street to watch the movie (I particularly remember Father Goose, with Cary Grant and Leslie Caron) and the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall, which always included the nativity scene with camels and elephants and horses and donkeys walking across the stage and the angels singing O Holy Night and Adestes Fideles (Come, All Ye Faithful) and ending with the Rockettes performing the “March Of The Wooden Soldiers,” complete with the high kick line.

Sometimes when we came out of the theater it was snowing, and we would walk with flakes falling on our shoulders and our hats and feeling the magic of the night down Fifth Avenue to look at the Christmas windows of Saks and Lord & Taylor, which were always amazing, animated dioramas and for which there were always lines and lines of families enjoying the night, too. And then we’d get home and my mother and father would tuck us into bed and hang up our Santa stockings and my brother and I would go to sleep with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

And it all started with Thanksgiving, when we stuffed ourselves on turkey and brisket and family and friends and love.

That was once upon a time.

“I think commercialism helps Christmas and I think that the more capitalism we can inject into the Christmas holiday the more spiritual I feel about it ”

Craig Ferguson

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

“Money’s scarce

Times are hard

Here’s your fucking

Xmas card”

Phyllis Diller

“Thanksgiving openings are the new normal.”

Jose Pagliery, Money, CNN.com, November 30, 2013

Here’s a list of chain stores that were open on Thanksgiving: Wal•Mart. Target. Best Buy. Sears. Staples. J.C. Penney. Macy’s. Toy R Us. Old Navy. Kohl’s. Lord & Taylor. Michael’s. Express. Dick’s Sporting Goods. Abercrombie & Fitch. K-Mart. And most of the larger shopping malls.

I am disgusted.

I thought it would stop after the 2008 death of Jdimytai Damour. Remember him? As the New York Times reported on November 29 of that year, “Mr. Damour, 34, who was known to his friends as Jimbo, or Jdidread because of his dreadlocks, got his job at Wal•Mart through Labor Now, an agency for temporary workers. He had been trying to hold back a crush of shoppers pressing against the store’s sliding-glass double doors, the authorities said. Just before the store’s scheduled 5 a.m. opening, they said, the doors shattered under the weight of the crowd. Mr. Damour was thrown to the floor and trampled

Wal•Mart was fined only $7,000 by the Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA), the branch of the Labor Department responsible for employee health and safety. And, according to the Huffington Post, they are still fighting that charge – “For a company with sales of $466 billion last fiscal year, the $7,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration represents little more than a single store’s rounding error. Wal•Mart would have vastly outspent that sum simply in legal fees devoted to fighting the penalty. But the world’s largest retailer is less concerned with the monetary fine than with the broader implications of the case. A negative ruling could compel Wal-Mart and other retail companies like it to take additional safety precautions for workers or face new liabilities.”

And you wonder why I’m disgusted?

But surprisingly, at least to me, I discovered – after doing a little research on the web – that Wal•Mart, the most succesful “Big Box” store, did not start this atrocity. It was K-Mart, which has opened its doors to Turkey Day shoppers since 1991. Of course many supermarkets and grocery stores have always been open on Thanksgiving, at least for a few hours, to the “Thank God’s!” of all the cooks who find themselves suddenly short on stuffing or cranberry sauce or coffee or any of the numerous condiments used when preparing the big bird. I can remember making a few runs to Shop-Rite and Shelley’s for my mom over the years, and those memories are further back than 22 years. And of course I’m aware of the importance of Thanksgiving weekend to the year’s bottom line being in the black instead of the red for retailers.

But I’m still disgusted.

And I am sure that next year even more stores will be open.

Just so we can stuff ourselves on Thanksgiving.

TUESDAY MORNING: Glenn Hauman

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Mike Gold: San Diego Be Damned!

Gold Art 130717Way back on August 26, 2010, Futurama gave us a look at the San Diego Comic-Con that will be held one thousand years later. Of course, everything about San Diego grew during the ensuing millennium – except for the San Diego Convention center. Oh, and the number of comics-related guests was reduced… to one.

Fittingly, that one was Sergio Aragones. I have no doubt that somebody will still be uncovering unpublished Aragones art in 3010.

More than a quarter of a million people pay to attend the annual SDCC. Yes, they have a registered trademark on the word “Comic-Con,” but since that term had been in common usage long before they applied for the mark, and is still being used by other shows across America, in my opinion this is theft. As a former promoter of a “Comicon” – the Chicago Comicon, from 1976 through 1985 – I will gladly testify on behalf of anybody who chooses to challenge this mark.

The show is supposed to be about comic books. It is a non-profit show, and it is a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) organization. Its mission statement is: “Comic-Con International: San Diego is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artforms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.”

This is a boldfaced lie. SDCC – I refuse to call it Comic-Con – has very, very little to do with comics. “Related popular artforms,” maybe, but that’s so nondescript it could cover flip books and porn. SDCC is about Hollywood. It’s about movies and movie producers. It’s about television and cable television networks. It’s about DVDs and Blu-Rays and phony mass-produced Hollywood collectibles and aging former celebrities desperately and sadly trying to be remembered. It is barely about “the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.”

All those people, along with the press, the guests, the celebrities, and the exhibitors, occupy a building built to safely house a fraction their number. How the fire department certifies them is beyond me. Sardines would feel crowded on that convention floor, and if you suffer a heart attack or a stroke while there you had better have filed a will.

It comes as no surprise that I do not go to SDCC any longer. It’s not just because the hotels and the restaurants massively jack up their prices during the show, it’s not because of the crowds, it’s not because of the lack of sufficient plumbing and it’s not even because the San Diego Comic Con has precious little to do with comic books.

It’s because the next time some clown slaps me in the face with his backpack, I am going to take said backpack and shove it up his ass while loudly singing the Super Chicken theme song.

Not that we won’t be well-represented at the convention. ComicMixers in attendance will include Michael Davis (who will hate me for writing this column), Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, Marty Pasko, Sara Raasch, and Emily S. Whitten. I’m not certain about Denny O’Neil and Bob Greenberger. The rest of us are staying put… although Martha Thomases will be travelling over 6,000 miles in order to stay put. That’s a neat trick.

So feel free to approach any of these folks – most of us don’t bite, unless you’re wearing a backpack – and tell ‘em what you like about ComicMix and what you don’t like and what you’d like to see. Ask about ComicMix Pro Services, but do your homework: click on that big ol’ button up there at the top of this page.

But there’s another reason I’m staying out east this week. Those of us staying behind in New York City?

We’re changing the locks!

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Martin Pasko

 

 

Marc Alan Fishman: The Real Samurnauts – From Fans to Friends to Family

Fishman Art 130615Forgive me folks. Today’s column is going to be a sappy, crappy, and sweeter than caramel drenched hot fudge balls dipped in rock candy. Consider this my spoiler alert: there’s absolutely no snark in today’s column. There’s only the happy tale of how a pair of acquaintances became so much more to me and to my Unshaven brethren.

The only thing truly standing in my way of bringing the noise and the funk to my half of every Samurnaut book were real life models. I make no bones about my abilities: I draw from life. A blank paper to me is less an invitation to showcase a spindly Spider-Man or healthy Hulk. I was trained to draw what I see, and sadly my mind is far too left brained to maintain an image well enough to reproduce from grey-matter to hand. But I digress.

When it came time to shoot The Samurnauts, I opted to reach out to those whose faces I wasn’t so acclimated to. That, and I honestly didn’t want my immediate family and friends traipsing around as superheroes. My call-to-action was met (largely) by members of a local(ish) comedy troupe I had opened for on a handful of occasions. Oh yeah. I should totally mention: for a hot minute I considered pursuing stand-up comedy. Don’t look it up on YouTube. Seriously. Don’t type “Marc Fishman Stand-Up.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you. OK? OK. Where was I?

Oh yes. Six members of “Big Dog Eat Child” were kind enough to lend their faces to The Samurnauts. With said Big Dogs I was granted a set of models built for emotion and staging. Putting a nerf gun into their capable hands and shouting “be heroic” showed their natural talent to contort and twist into brand new people. Amongst them, Erik Anderson and his wife Cherise (not of the troupe, but equally interested in helping out when our initial model had to cancel) stood out as being very much into becoming superheroes. After a fun afternoon of digital photography, Nerf wars, and prancing about… I made a last-minute offer to my new models. “If you are ever curious as to how this will turn out, feel free to look me up on Skype.”

It could not have been maybe a week or two later that my computer buzzed at me. Erik and Cherise, in the heart of the weekend (when most everyone is enjoying not having to make comic books), wanted to check in. And there they stayed glued to their screen watching me build a comic book from roughs to inks to colors to lettering. Over the course of the weeks that it took, they stayed up on Skype night after night watching the construction. Suddenly I was no longer making a comic alone in my basement… I was drawing for an audience. An audience willing to literally stay up with me until they couldn’t stay awake. As they would later tell me… I was better than HBO.

When the first issue of Samurnauts came hot off the press, Erik and Cherise were at the convention with bells on. Not happy enough to simply see a final copy of their issue, they were determined instead to see Unshaven Comics succeed. They grabbed a handful of business cards and took to the show floor to spread the word. A husband-wife guerrilla marketing team… doing the job we figured would not be gifted to us for many many years of convention-trenching. Oh how wrong we were.

Over the years (which I can’t even believe is how long we’ve been doing this…), Erik and Cherise have become less friends of Unshaven Comics, more family. Every convention, literally every convention we have attended since The Samurnauts was a thing, they have been in tow. We launched a Kickstarter to turn Erik into a cosplayer. And when it succeeded, soon our Blue Samurnaut was showing up in every costume-round up album across the mid-west. And this past weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, both Erik and Cherise stood behind tables pitching our wares at Heroes Con in lieu of our own Kyle Gnepper (who was deservedly enjoying a vacation gifted to him by his non-comic-book-making day job). They did it without being asked. They did it because they love our book. They did it because they want to see us succeed.

There’s that gem of a lyric… “I get by with a little help from my friends…” And never before would I have found it to be so profound. Unshaven Comics is substantially lucky to have a plethora of amazing friends out there in the industry. We’d be remiss not to thank Mike Gold, Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, and the whole lot of ComicMix‘ers for the continuing success we’ve achieved in the five years we’ve seriously pursued our dream. Erik and Cherise engrained themselves into our studio and company without asking for anything more than the promise of continued hero-dom. A price we still feel guilty for today.

I know those of us who make comic books have many reasons to be cranky, snarky, angry, or bitter. But here I sit in awe of two people who Skype’d in with me once because they loved the idea of being heroes to the world… and ended up instead being mine.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

Mike Gold: Heroes Con And The Big ComicMix Reveals!

Gold Art 130605Would you like to meet ComicMix writers and staffers Martha Thomases, Marc Alan Fishman, Robert Greenberger, Adriane Nash, Glenn Hauman, and me?

Why? Geez, get a life.

All seriousness aside, the Heroes Convention in Charlotte North Carolina is one of the few large conventions that is actually still about comics. As people who memorize my columns know all too well (when they’re not wandering about Times Square mumbling to themselves), I dislike those huge shows that call themselves comic book shows or, worse, comic cons yet are nothing more than mass media B-list star feeding frenzies. Not that those shows don’t have their place; they do. Just don’t call them comic book shows unless they are actually about comic books.

You know, like the Heroes Convention in Charlotte North Carolina… this very weekend, from Friday, June 7 through Sunday, June 9, at the Charlotte Convention Center, 501 S. College Street.

It’s also a damn good show, well-run by a seasoned staff under the direction of show founder and all-around swell guy Shelton Drum.

Here’s your reward for making it this far into my column: on Saturday at 1:30 pm in

Room 207CD, ComicMix is going to have a panel called “Your Comics Your Way.” We will be making several major (honest) announcements regarding this here ComicMix thing, including the first public reveal of our new ComicMixPro Services!

Wow!

Just go there. You’ll have a swell time. Seriously swell. Tell ‘em Groucho sent you. Maybe they’ll give you a DeSoto.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: The Big Booth 1105 Crossover

imagesIt was fated to happen. ComicMix is participating in our very first crossover.

This coming weekend – as in Friday, Saturday and Sunday – ComicMix will once again be appearing at the C2E2 comics and pop culture convention at Chicago’s McCormick Place, on the scenic downtown shore Lake Michigan near the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Natural History Museum, and that formerly beautiful football (and, next March, hockey) stadium Soldier (sic) Field – before that hideous flying saucer landed on top of it.

More prestigious still, we ComicMixers will be teaming up with our good buddies at Unshaven Comics. This means the “good” Marc Alan Fishman will be appearing at the same booth as the “evil” Marc Alan Fishman. And if they inadvertently touch… well, let’s just say people will stop bitching about Mrs. O’Leary’s improperly defamed cow.

Representing ComicMix: Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, either the good or the evil Marc Alan Fishman (I can never tell which one is which) and yours fairly truly. We will be making two – count ‘em two ­– major announcements at the show, each of which will be promptly detailed in this slice of the etherverse. I won’t tip our collective hand, but I will say this: the second of these announcements will reveal what “CMPS” stands for. I mean this in the acronymical sense, and not in any ethical sense. Certainly not.

We’ll be at booth 1105 in case you didn’t read the headline, and you should because the editor-in-chief spends a lot of time obsessing over them. We eagerly await the opportunity to meet you. Unless you’re rude or insulting; then, we eagerly await the opportunity to let out our pent-up convention aggression. In my case, well, I’ve been going to comic book conventions for 45 years now. But I also used to be among the crowd that founded and ran the amazingly perfect Chicago Comicon, so I know this won’t be an issue.

Truth be told, I like Chicago conventions that are actually held within the city limits. There’s a bunch of reasons for this: the fans are amazingly friendly, the food is unbelievable, the city is everything great that New York City says it is but isn’t and can never be, and – most important – the Fire Marshal, for some odd reason, actually enforces the fire laws at massive conglomerations of humans and paper goods.

Holy Odin’s Eyehole, I’m gotta get it from insecure New Yorkers, aren’t I? Well, as you read this I’m already in Chicago (meetings, meetings, meetings; all at amazing restaurants) so I can only respond in person on the convention floor. Please re-read the sentence above about rude or insulting people and my 45 years of pent-up convention aggression.

We’re gonna have us a swell time. And to take tongue out of cheek for a rare moment, I hope you-all can share those swell times with us.

I hope to see you this weekend.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: Me MoCCA Mike

Gold Art 130417

Well, it’s convention season once again. This statement doesn’t mean as much as it used to, when there actually was a convention “season.” Now it pretty much runs from the beginning of spring (Glenn was at WonderCon and will be posting his pictures sometime before next year’s show) and ends the following March at San Francisco’s MegaCon… give or take.

My schedule includes Chicago’s C2E2 next week, maybe Heroes in Charlotte in June, San Diego in hell, Baltimore in August and New York in October, held each year at the only spot in all Manhattan that is inaccessible to humanity. For me, it started last week at one of my favorites, New York’s Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, a.k.a. MoCCA Fest.

Being in our back yard, ComicMix was well represented: Vinnie Bartilucci, Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, and Mike and Kai Raub. Traditionally, Martha Thomases is in attendance but this year the she was in Japan at the time and the commute would have been a bitch.

I enjoy MoCCA because there it covers the widest spectrum of self-published, small-published, and web-published “independent” comics. If your thrills are limited to capes and masks from the Big Two, this event would either bore you… or transform you, opening your eyes to all sorts of really interesting stuff people do with our coveted medium. So if you’re into comics, it’s certainly worth a try.

If you could bottle the enthusiasm in the room, you’d have enough energy to replace Chernobyl. By and large, these people aren’t getting rich, although some make a living and others would like to eventually. They’re there out of their love for the comics art medium and to employ our unique storytelling concepts to communicate their stories. Each time I’m there, and I think I’ve been to eight or nine of their shows, I come away renewed and rejuvenated. So up yours, Ras Al Ghul.

Despite the quantity of behatted hipsters, this isn’t necessarily a young person’s show. Fantagraphics, perhaps the leading bookstore publisher of these sorts of efforts, was well-represented, as was Abrams and other staid outfits. While trying not to be overly creepy in my contacts with the younger folk, I also hung out with fellow geriatrics including Craig Yoe, Denis Kitchen, J.J. Sedelmaier, and Paul Levitz.

It comes as absolutely no surprise that of all the shows I attend, MoCCA routinely attracts more women per capita. Well, having made that statement I might have just put the kibosh on that, so let me say there isn’t as much semi-naked cosplay as I see at capes shows. I suspect that this is because the show is all about your desire to express yourself and tell your own story and not so much about who was the Avenger villain who crossed over into Amazing Spider-Man #214. (No, no; don’t Google that – I pulled it out of my ass.)

A high-point was when Vinnie, Glenn, Adriane, Mike, Kai and I semi-inadvertently all wound up at the Popeye’s Fried Chicken across from the venue. There was a point when ComicMix had actually taken over the joint. I’m glad to say that we didn’t spontaneously burst out in rousing song – MoCCA isn’t a science-fiction convention.

As it turns out, this column is sort of a crossover. My friend and fellow columnist Denny O’Neil was also there, and he will be waxing poetic about his MoCCA experience tomorrow, same-Bat-Time, same-Bat-Channel.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: The Lenticular Corridor

Gold Art 130403Well, this is fun.

As I type these words – 20 hours prior to posting – ComicMix is in the following situation. Glenn Hauman is about to board a plane taking him from WonderCon to San Francisco to Newark, New Jersey. We should see him sometime late next year. Martha Thomases and Arthur Tebbel are wandering around Japan hoping the whole North Korea is-gonna-nuke-us thing is a joke. Bob Greenberger is somewhere vaguely north of the White House staring at boxes and wondering how he got so old so fast. Adriane Nash is floating around North Haven Connecticut holding a candle. Vinnie Bartilucci is in Who Heaven studying the 50th anniversary show read-through photos pixel by pixel. Marc Alan Fishman is trying to come up with a way to spend more time with his son Bennett without having to go to Japan. Some of the above are planning on this weekend’s MoCCA Arts Fest.

That leaves me here at ComicMix Central. Always a dangerous thing.

And then my iMac started acting up.

Oy.

I’ve had more than 29 years of experience with all things Macintosh, so I should be able to fix things while Wizardboy Hauman is on the Left Coast. And, while I’m at it, I should be able to shoot down flying monkeys with my psionic death rays.

Turns out that psionic death rays thing might have been easier to pull off. I’ve spent 24 hour doing PRAM zaps and SMC resets, swapping cables, connecting and disconnecting USB cables (2.0 and 3.0), connecting and disconnecting USB devices, fussing with Bluetooth and WiFi, blowing off sundry start-up apps and rebooting like a cobbler on meth. And I still get five copies of the “You’ve got a USB device that’s draining too much power, asshole” error messages cascading across my screen on the average of every 20 seconds.

OK. Every once in a while computers, cars, and human beings break down and I’m way, way past my due. When Adriane isn’t wandering around New Haven county, we’ve got a zillion machines here including iPads and iBooks and iBalls. Unfortunately, Adriane is wandering around New Haven county with some of the above equipment, so I can’t boot my machine as a target disk.

Which means, in English, that I can’t do squat until I’ve fixed it. I’ve got to post Michael Davis’s Tuesday afternoon column (this wouldn’t have been a problem if I got the column on time, as opposed to just past midnight Monday morning; Michael’s got an excuse and it’ll probably be next week’s column) and I’ve got to write and post my column and do all kinds of other important stuff. I can do a lot of this on my iPad and I have, but in order to edit art and post properly, I need that iMac.

And then, literally 55 minutes before Michael’s column is to go up, I find it. Well, maybe not “it” but something that, if disabled, seems to cure about 90% of the problem. That’ll do… and maybe that other 10% will disappear when I reboot.

Or maybe the iMac will go Nagasaki on me: that’s how computers, cars and human beings tell us they want to be replaced.

But at least I’ve got a column out of it.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Marc Alan Fishman: The Top Five Best and Worst Of 2012

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, my ComicMixers! I hope you all had a merry Christmas, a sassy Chanukah, and grumpy Festivus if you were so inclined. So, with Father Time about to hit the retcon button on our daily calendars… I thought it would be apropos to reflect a bit on those amazing and terrible things that made my year. Please note: this isn’t ALL about comic books; you’ve been warned.

Because I like to start on a dour note… here’s The Worst!

5. Avengers Vs. X-Men Vs. My Sanity: Simply put, this stands up as yet-another-example of what makes me hate the mainstream comics business. No matter how many times they lather us up with “we’ve got the best talent on this”, “this will change everything”, and “you won’t believe what happens!”, they always end up the same. Bloated, predictable, and unending. Every Marvel event since the dawn of Brian Michael Bendis has finished up in deeper doo-doo than when they began. His boner for “shades of grey” is unnerving. We get it; making our favorite characters wail on one another is why we buy comics. But, hey… guess what? It isn’t. I’d much prefer a well thought out story that ends instead of a non-stop soap opera.

4. The 2012 Election: Not the result, mind you, but the unending nature of it all. For what felt like nearly the entire year, we were privy to 24 hours a day coverage of not only our POTUS but everyone vying for his seat. It brought out the worst in the candidates and the politically charged masses along for the ride. In the worst case, certain louder-than-usual politico-creators became so unnerving I was forced to hide them from my feeds. First world problems? You bet. But no less annoying on my life and times this year.

3. Wizard World Conventions: The movie definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So Wizard World changes the guard on high. They attempt to make sweeping changes on the floors of their traveling circus, making D-List celebs the premier attraction. They continue to maintain the second highest per-show cost for visiting artists. In short? They continue to drive away the very thing that started them out so very long ago: comics and the people who make them. While my li’l studio always sells well at these abominations… rarely are we joined in celebration at the end of the cons. Hence, my finger of shame this year.

2. Green Lantern: Another finger of shame… a ring finger! Geoff Johns has taken Grant Morrison’s Five-Year Plan model and Michael Bay’ed it to death. As I’ve been forced to note several times this year, the continual event fatigue on the entire line –which shouldn’t even be a line – is too much to bear. And while the majority of 2012 was spent with Sinestro and his gal Friday Jordan traipsing around the universe righting wrongs… this Rise of the Third Army is the emerald icing on a sheet cake of excess. Too many McGuffins, too many predictable plots, and a brand-new Lantern who thus far is more a caricature of “not-a-terrorist” than a fleshed-out legacy ring-slinger. One I’ll happily predict will last in prominence half as long as the last not-ready-for-prime-time-player, Kyle “Costume Change” Rayner.

1. Comics News Coverage: Well it finally caught up to us too, didn’t it? CNN begat CNN, and from them spawned the 24-hour news cycle that has extended to comics. Between Newsarama, Bleeding Cool, Comic Book Resources, and others (hold your tongue for a second, please) all looking for an audience… We’re left scouring trash-bins and date books in order to report anything about our beloved industry. I waive the white flag. And now to those who think I hold this very site on the fire? Nay. ComicMix is about writers expressing their opinions, and that’s enough for me to remove us from said blaze. Simply put, the news is important, but the environment we’ve built to report and sustain it is sickening. Marvel, DC, and the like can’t sneeze without us finding out about it… and then creating a backlash over it before the press releases have hit an inbox. Enough is ‘nuff said.

And now… The Best:

5. The Dark Knight Rises: Three cheers for Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus. Yeah, I know… The Avengers was more fun. But it wasn’t close to TDKR’s level of sophistication. Neither movie was flawless, but Batman kept me on the edge of my seat pretty much the whole way through. The depiction of Bane was as good as it will ever be – menacing, big picture villainous thinking, and an actual brain amidst the brawn. But Bane wasn’t what made the movie. Bale’s Wayne was nuanced, angsty without being annoying, and above all else… visibly human. Nolan, in spite of Frank Miller and Grant Morrison showed that you don’t have to depict the God-Damned Batman to show the world a fantastic caped-crusader. Add in a brilliant turn for Selina Kyle, and it added up to one of my favorite flicks of the year. I would have put Django Unchained in this spot, but I haven’t seen it yet.

4. Marvel Now: If you read my reviews over at Michael Davis World (and I know you do…), then you’d know just how much I’m loving the House of Mouse these days. Fantastic Four / FF is proving thus far to balance the whimsy the series used to be known for with mature overtones. Iron Man, while nowhere near as good as Fraction’s run, is still entertaining. Superior Spider-Man has me legitimately interested in the wall-crawler again. Mike Gold has tried several times to recommend Captain America to me. My Unshaven Cohort is reading an X-Men book for the first time ever. And Avengers? Epic as I’d ever want it to be. Marvel looked at DC’s retcon-reboot-whatever, and opted instead to play it safe. Frankly, it’s proven to me that it was the right thing to do. Sales spikes or not. By choosing not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Marvel is stealing me away one book at a time

3. The Baltimore Comic-Con: Unshaven Comics took the 13-hour drive to the East Coast, and boy howdy was it ever worth it. We sold an incredible amount of books. We rubbed elbows with industry giants at the Harvey Awards. We got to hand our book to Phil LaMarr. We had dinner with Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, Glenn Hauman, and Emily Whitten. And at that dinner? We had crab cakes as big as softballs. Frankly? It was a weekend of a lifetime. Such that we’ve already registered and purchased our table for 2013. It’s the most comic-book-centered convention we’ve been privy too. Charm City? Color me charmed.

2. Unshaven Comics’ Sales: Hate to get all self-promotional here, but screw it. Unshaven Comics had a simple goal. With no distribution, no investors, and nothing more than our blood-sweat-n-tears… we wanted to sell 1000 books over the course of a year. After attending a dozen shows, and doing our best work ever? We sold 1406. We made amazing connections, saw fans actually seek us out at shows, and gained over 300 Facebook fans without purchasing an ad or doing anything more than hustle. By hook or crook, we’re making the smallest impact known to man on the comic book industry. But I’ll be damned—it may actually be working. All it’s done is fuel our fire for 2013. 1,667 books moved next year will mean we see the shores of San Diego in 2014. Beards on.

1. Bennett Reed Fishman: Simply put, no other moment, comic book or otherwise, is worth a hill of beans in my world. On January 27th, 2012, I became a father. Ever since, every single thing I’ve done has been for the betterment of his life. Having been an ego-centered bearded ne’er-do-well for far too long, suddenly became moot. In his eyes and smile, the world around me means nothing. And when at 5:30 every day he stops whatever he’s doing, and smiles ear to ear when Batman: The Animated Series comes on? It tells me this kid is my kid. And my worldview is 100% different. Sorry, comics. You never stood a chance.

Happy New Year to all of you who read my articles week in and week out. May 2013 prove to be a safe, prosperous, and amazing year for you all.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Mindy Newell: Sandy’s Back In Jersey, Without Springsteen

Ms. Newell lives, works and writes from New Jersey. Sadly, as of this typing she’s only living in New Jersey, and she’s doing so without power. Ergo, no computer. Ergo, no column.

It looks like Mindy wins the race. Gold, Hauman, and Ostrander got their power back fairly early; Thomases got hers back Saturday morning. We haven’t heard from O’Neil or Whitten, but we’re assuming they’re electrically viable. Fishman didn’t lose power but he did get 20 foot waves off of Lake Michigan, which, actually, is amazing. Davis didn’t lose power but he doesn’t know that right now.

Hope you’re doing swell. And the creek don’t rise.

Marc Alan Fishman: Everything We Do, We Do It For You

Thank you, Bryan Adams. See? More than one good thing has come out of Canada that isn’t Wolverine related. Add that to the Barenaked Ladies, good maple syrup, and Mike Meyers’ middle career, and you’ve got one great country! But I digress. I want to come back to a topic I’ve droned on about several times: the continuing story of Unshaven Comics by way of an increasing number of convention appearances.

This past weekend we had a delightful time at what we’d consider to be the best single day convention in the Midwest – the Kokomo Con, in mid-Indiana. And it was here, amidst the moderately sized crowd of fans making their way around the convention center we were privy to my favorite part of being in this business – fans. In the five or so years I’ve been toiling over scripts, pages, websites, and social media groups, nothing has felt better than having someone walk towards our table with an ear to ear smile. “Hey! You guys! I remember you from last year. Got anything new?” Heck, even typing that makes me a little giddy.

For some of the more legendary folks here with whom I share column space, it must be a far different feeling. To be clear, I don’t know if Dennis, John, Mike, or Michael have ever been on the side of the table as Unshaven has. I know they’ve obviously all had booths or artist alley tables, mind you. But I’d be remiss to guess if they ever were the ones chasing the tables, instead of being offered them. For Unshaven, the way into the industry is by hook or crook. We’ve got fiction to hawk, damnit. And for the time being? We’re not established. Our fans are few, but mighty. For a Dennis O’Neil or John Ostrander… they merely plop themselves into a chair and let the masses come to them, and rightfully so. In contrast, Unshaven Comics has cut its teeth with a generation of comic fans I dare say are more finicky, diverse, and uneasy to please repeatedly.

The show runner at Kokomo stopped by our table several times to make sure we were doing well. We were happy to relate every time that we were pleased as punch. By the end of the day, we’d increased our book sales by 20% over the year before. And given that attendance was slightly down from the year prior? This was an even more reassuring notion for our wee little team. To that effort, he quickly quipped “You guys could make a panel for artists to tell them how to be successful at cons!” Truth be told? I’ve detailed our crazy tactics before in my previous con-centric articles. What we do isn’t hard. It’s a bit shameless. But then again, our model for business was Stan Lee, and he certainly has made a living (or two) by never denying his inner huckster.

My greater point here though is this: Beyond any salesmanship we may employ at our table, beyond any marketing and networking we do, beyond any artistic fan-service we whore ourselves out for, what makes us successful comes down to one common denominator: a quality product that connects with fans. If we made bad books, no amount of smiling and pitching would show us increasing sales 10-20% every time we return to a convention. With the blistering amount of competition there is in artist alleys around the country, it’s a badge of pride when someone comes back time and again to see you. Especially when it’s with money-in-hand.

Thanks largely to my day job, I’ve been privy to a ton of extra-curricular reading (non-comic reading, boo) about start-ups. After careful consideration, it’s become obvious to me that my own studio is in fact just that. As a slow moving startup, we’ve done everything to keep costs down, while testing our product in the market. In layman terms? We don’t pay ourselves for the all the time we dedicate to making the books, we stay at cheap hotels, and only pay for dinner when Mark Wheatley, Mike Gold, John Ostrander or Glenn Hauman  say to. And with each subsequent release, we’ve managed our risk by truly listening to our fans. After our first book (horror) and our second (rated R super-hero fare), we tried the all ages genre. And, as you read a week or two ago, the fans responded happily. And now, after several one-shots, we’re dipping our toes into mini-series waters.

And if the fans continue to be happy, return in droves, and help define a following for our beardly wares, we just might end up going whole-hog and doing an on-going series. We do what we do because of the fans. When they react positively to what we put on the page, it tells us that we share a bond not only in collective fandom… but it cements to us that our commitment to craft leads to more than a single purchase and lament.

It leads to a relationship between a fan and a creator. It leads to us one day being invited to the convention instead of chasing after it. And rest assured, no matter how we come to the con, we’ll continue to do what we always do – earning one fan at a time, until the convention hall closes.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander’s Alphas!