Tagged: Milestone Comics

Michael Davis: The Dream Killer 3 – Know The Game!

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Please read the first two installments in the series if you have not done so.

From Dream Killer 2:

Full discloser: For two decades I was not welcome at DC.

“What did you do?” I’ve gotten that question countless times. “What did they do?” Not as many have asked, but more than a few. What’s the difference between those who ask the first question as opposed to the second?

And why and how despite being blackballed by one of the big two was I able to not only survive in the industry but thrive?

What did I do? I refused to accept unjust treatment and called attention to it often. That was my right.

What did they do? They got fed up with dealing with me. That was their right.

I haven’t any idea rather or not I’m welcome at DC Comics these days. The perception is there is a feud between Milestone and me. DC is in a deal with Milestone, so that may mean I’m not a desirable. There isn’t a feud; there is an incident.

Milestone made what no one is disputing a real dick move. Not telling me they were moving ahead with plans without me was as fucked up as can be. Now add they were supposed to be “friends.”

That is as horrible a thing. An absolutely disgusting thing.

Well, to me it is.

Except for a few brave souls, there has been not a peep of anyone giving a fuck.

That’s OK. Pity isn’t my thing. My thing is to do what’s right. I’m doing that by not creating a front page Black vs. Black lawsuit and not detailing events that go back 20 years.

Milestone is the single most important event in the history of black comics. For over two decades I’ve led a campaign to keep Milestone relevant and make sure the phenomenal history of Milestone is correct and accurate. More people are aware Milestone is not owned by DC Comics and was Denys Cowan’s idea because of me.

I’ve devoted more to that effort than the three partners combined. My struggles to create opportunities for people of color in comics also dwarfs their collective work in that area. The talent program they now tout as their own was created by me, as was the universe for their most successful character Static Shock.

All of the above is easy to verify.

All that said, Milestone, the idea is more important to African Americans kids at large than anything I’ve done. A chance for black kids to see themselves represented fairly in the media is much more significant than Michael Davis.

Character counts in this world. Some think my character is lacking because I use words like fuck, shit and nigger in my written narrative. Many believe that somehow dilutes my good character. I think those individuals should get a clue.

Here’s a hard truth about this industry. People talk the talk, but few walk the walk. When it’s time for my annual San Diego Comic-Con party, everybody’s my buddy. When there was a rumor that Milestone stole its business plan a great many of my buddies were quick to co-sign that bullshit.

When my heart lay in a broken heap two years ago over the Milestone slight, there were those who said it was my behavior that caused Milestone to do me like they did.

Really? That’s the same behavior every single partner at Milestone as well as countless others benefitted from over many years.

I write and say what I think. When I think I’ve been used like someone’s bitch, I say so. I also say something when others are prescribed the same medicine.

Milestone’s treatment of me is relevant to the black comic book industry. How we treat each other is essential to future generations When black people are good to each other which is the vast majority of the time rarely does it make the news when those uncustomary moments are demonstrated black kids see integrity and leadership when bad it’s the lead story on Fox News.

Why use my account of the Milestone story when it’s so negative?

A few reasons. As said earlier it is only negative to me but used as the example why relationships are important it’s a grand one, and in the big picture, it’s positive.

I still support those books and the company. Regardless of what they did, I’m going to do the right thing.

That brings me back to DC Comics.

Dwayne McDuffie died in 2011. I was invited to I write a piece for the Static Shock tribute issue. My last published work in a DC comic was over twenty years ago. My exile ended officially two years before in 2009 when Diane Nelson took over as president. I’d met Diane ten years before that at Warner Bros and liked her immediately and vice versa. She assured me I was welcome back at DC and I have had a meeting there since.

That’s all cool on the surface but so is thin ice. Once you fall through, it’s colder than most can stand.

Let’s recap. I have an excellent relationship with the most influential person at DC Comics. Still, I don’t know my status. That’s because of Milestone. Why? DC has a relationship with Milestone in the bullshit world of Hollywood once you reach the boss and recount your tale of wrongful woe all is right in the world.

Why don’t I just call Diane and use her to pave the way for any project I may want to do at DC?

Respect.

  1. Respect for Dan Didio and Jim Lee, comics are their lane and going to Diane is as disrespectful as I could be.
  2. Respect for Diane Nelson. Sidestepping Dan and Jim is calling them incompetent which they are far from being. Also doing so calls into question her judgment which I’d never do.
  3. Respect for myself. I couldn’t sit in a room with Jim and Dan without addressing the Milestone elephant. Why resign them or me to that drama? If I weren’t already suffering from depression, that would do the trick.

That, boys and girl, is called knowing the game. Those who don’t shouldn’t play. So despite being blackballed by one of the big two how was I able to thrive?

Alternative means of finding distribution, budget and happiness.

The vast majority of top tier creators in the industry use one option.

There are numerous more, and I’ll touch on those next time. As well I will break down what option was preferred and why for the project I’m using for this series.

I’ve been in the game for a long time. What I use as examples are not intended as a ‘how to’ to get into the comics biz. If so the series would be named ‘how to ruin your career.’

The underlying point is to look at the big picture when entering this field. I believe with every fiber of my being one should always look to do the right thing. Comics are a very very small industry and to have a real shot, it’s counterproductive working on how well you write or draw without working on your relationships skills.

Put another way, when people tell who they are and what they are about, trust but verify.

Martha Thomases: The Great Comic Book Lock-Out

There’s been a story making the rounds on the Internet among women who work in the comic book industry. It’s the first-person account by a father who takes his young children to his local comic book store and finds himself embarrassed in front of his daughter. Like the smart little cookie she is, the daughter explains to her father that there is nothing in the store for her.

This is a complaint that women in the comic book industry have been making, as a group, for at least twenty years. Neil Gaiman captured the ethos perfectly in an early issue of Sandman – which is when a lot of fanboys learned that particular point of view was out there. Still, even with all this discussion over the decades, this gentleman did not notice until he had his own daughter, and looked at his comic book store through her eyes.

Some women, reading this story, immediately suggested a few dozen comics or graphic novels that his daughter might like but which, apparently, were unknown to the salespeople at this particular store. Some women were irked that this gentleman wasn’t aware of the problem until it was his problem.

I understand both reactions, but neither is the part of the story that made me the most angry.

There seems to be a school of thought in which the only fiction available to readers is about the readers themselves. Boys can only read about boys. Girls can only read about girls. African-Americans can only read about African-Americans or, possibly, racial minorities can only read about other racial minorities. Certainly, the thinking goes, white kids are only interested in reading about other white kids.

Let me be clear. I don’t think there is some kind of committee that issues these edicts. I think it is a more subtle form of bigotry.

Here’s an example: When I worked at DC and we launched Milestone, a lot of retailers told us that they weren’t going to order the books because they didn’t have any African-American customers. There are so many errors in this kind of thinking that it made me want to tear my hair out. Here is why:

  1. Milestone comics are not created by exclusively black creators for an exclusively black audience.
  2. White readers will not find anything they don’t understand in an issue of a Milestone comic.
  3. The money that African-Americans use for goods and services is exactly the same as that used by white people. If a retailer stocks comics that might appeal to African-American customers, these African-Americans may use this money in his or her store.
  4. Most capitalists consider more customers for their goods and services to be a desirable state of affairs.

The same thinking can apply to comic books that might be appropriate for young girls and, I would argue, for young boys as well. Comics that don’t overly sexualize the female characters. And yet, in the comments section, a retailer claims that no one buys such books for more than an issue or two.

Maybe none of his regular customers buy such all-ages titles regularly. However, a look at a national best-seller list shows a wide variety, including books appropriate to an all-ages audience. Booksellers make money with these books. There is no reason any particular reader can’t.

Comics are not the only literary format with this problem. To quote from the link: “Ellen Oh tells a story of being in a bookstore in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2012, and watching a little white girl reach for The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis, a book with a black girl on the cover. Her mother takes that out of her hands and says, ‘Oh no, honey, that’s not for you.’’’ Oh recalls. This is a version of a story I heard repeatedly from the librarians, authors, and editors I interviewed.

We can’t do very much about individual narrow-minded parents. We can celebrate the fact that fiction in all media allows us to see the world through another set of eyes.

Comics do this in a way that allows us to immerse our senses with color and artwork and so much imagination that there was a time when people thought comics were just for kids. That kind of thinking started to fade away thirty years ago, and this was a good thing. It’s not a good thing to keep the kids out.

Nor anybody else.

 

Michael Davis: No Respect. No Wonder. Part 2

Part 1 of this series can be read at BleedingCool.com

static comicmixHollywood, I’m sorry. I’ve been wrong.

You’re not responsible for the overwhelming opinion the general public has of my industry being just for kids. Yes, SDCC is our house, but our house is all fucked up. We deserve to be viewed as nothing but geeks, nerds, and children. We are not ready to play at your level, not even close.

We’re selfish, shortsighted, and stupid. Not all the time, but so often we’ve become a joke to the French and Japanese comics industries. Comics, one of the few original American art forms, are recognized as such by a country whose ass we had to save and a country whose ass we nuked. Yet we’re the joke.

And we deserve to be.

As an example, in about two weeks it will be a year since I sent an email to Variant Comics. It was my tongue-in-cheek attempt to be funny while addressing an important issue. The fantastic video they produced featured wrong “created by” credits.

The response I received wasn’t exactly what I expected. They said they would correct the issue: “We have already added a correction in our next episode to explain that we missed you and Denys as additional creators.”

But they did not think I was funny:

“I have not responded (quicker) because I do my best to steer clear of rude or aggressive correspondence.”

They thought I was being a heavy-handed bastard. Not my intention, and I immediately apologized with the following:

I bear you no ill will. I was being sarcastic, and if you read my Bleeding Cool piece, you will see I underscored time and time again how much I admire what you are doing. My goal was to show how a great piece with wrong information could do some injustice, but in no way did I ever think you guys would take to heart my FB email. I “liked” your page, I took every chance I got to say just how good your stuff and site is.

Clearly you don’t remember we met some time ago, and as such I thought you would get the joke.

My bad.

Really. My bad.

On the real, I meant to do nothing but poke fun and draw attention to the credits; it was never my intention to insult (except in jest) you or your people. Please accept my apology. It pains me (really) to think my attempt at satire fell short.

If need be, I will say what I just said to you privately in public.

I have no problem with that.

Again – I’m sorry. Try as I might, sometimes I just don’t see what others do. Truth be told most times I care not. This time I do.

The Bleeding Cool article I was referring to foreshadowed possible future events and the real damage that short film could do. That article was not the only article I wrote about this over the year – there were several. Some here on ComicMix, some on Bleeding Cool, and some on my Facebook page, and yes, they were tagged.

Occasionally, I wrote another lighthearted appeal that ended when the “possible” became reality, and the damage sure as hell followed. Since then, I’ve been that Nigga.

Variant has changed nothing on the Static Shock film, and they have had a year to do it. The credits are still wrong. If they added Denys and I to the “next episode” explaining the oversight, how the fuck would anybody know? Those watching an episode of what may be a totally unrelated “History Of” may not even give a fuck.

Anyone going to the History of Static Shock video will see what I’ve asked to be rectified for over a year: the wrong credits. Nothing has changed there.

Nothing.

In that same year, plenty has changed with Static Shock.

Static’s getting a live action television show; Milestone 2.0 was announced; my mother, Jean Davis, the real life inspiration for Static’s mom Jean Hawkins, died. In death Jean (that’s what I called my mom) joins my sister, Sharon Davis, the real life inspiration for Static’s sister, Sharon Hawkins.

As I predicted, the credits cited for Static Shock when the two major media announcements were made are exactly the credits cited in Variant’s film.

I predicted this. The film was so damn good people assumed it was the official version put out by Milestone. The Static live action show and the Milestone announcements went all over the world.

The death of Static’s real life mom?

Nope. No one knew. Not even some young Static fans, cousins of mine from North Carolina who I met for the first time at my mom’s funeral. I’m not naïve enough to think my mom would have gotten a “Static” mention when she died. She wouldn’t have. But it sure would have been nice if my newfound cousins knew who she was before I met them.

Not caring about getting a creator’s credit right is just one example of the unprofessional, childish antics that are commonplace in comics. Missing deadlines, missing shipping, quitting books, taking advances and not delivering work.

Some publishers paying established talent page rates far below what they are worth while using any excuse they can to justify it. Some creators having no choice but to take pennies on the dollar. Artists and writers blackballed on someone’s personal whim regardless of what work they have produced or what they bring to the industry. Been there, had that done.

Hollywood fires and/or sues people who pull what’s routine in comics. Try pulling that missed deadline dead grandmother bullshit at DreamWorks. You’re gone. Take an advance from Disney and decide not to do the work. Rumor has it Tupac and Biggie did that. Yeah, that’s a joke, but once Disney gets done with you, you may well wish you were dead.

Hollywood does not play our games. Disney wouldn’t wait a week after the initial letter sent to you to fix some something that was wrong. Ignoring them, just like I’ve been ignored, (not a word since my apology almost 12 months ago) would just make them increase the level of legal pain they will inflict on you.

And if they think you fucked with their brand, costing them revenue? Wow. Just wow.

Despite our flaws, I love the comic book industry. I love this business even though some in the industry have not loved me back. On a few occasions some serious power players have tried killing me in the industry.

I roll like a boss; people are always trying to kill a boss. They try. I survive and grow stronger. I don’t go public when these things happen – what good would that do? Give Hollywood another thing to look at, point and say, “Look what these children do to their own kind.”

But sometimes … sometimes, there is no other choice.

I don’t want to hurt or hinder Variant in any way. I don’t want to sue or threaten to sue. They do great work, are good for the industry, and I really do like their site.

However, they have done serious damage to my brand. Repeatedly over the course of a year they have been reminded that they were doing so. I’m not alone in being ignored. Those who posted comments echoing me were treated the same.

I’d very much like them to correct the credits on their Static Shock film. I’d like the same credits that appear in every episode of Static Shock and Milestone comics, with one exception: add Christopher Priest. He was a creator and he deserves credit.

Variant, I’m asking you once again, make this right and at least in this instance prove Hollywood wrong. Static was created by Dwayne McDuffie, Derek Dingle, Denys Cowan, Christopher Priest, and Michael Davis.

Let’s show the world we know how to act in matters like this. I’m sorry to say that if no action is taken, you leave me just one option.

End, Part 2. Part 3 can be read on Bleeding Cool and ComicMix next week.

 

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