Yeah, I could see how that would piss you off.  Kind of like J.K. Rowling won't allow Harry Potter to be licensed for comics, since comics are a bastard medium and not REAL literature.  'Cause pre-teen fantasy is such a serious genre, right?  It makes my blood boil - but I still love the movies!

Aaaaand here's where I get banned from the boards:

Nickleback
G'N'F'N'R
Darwyn Cooke (although, really, he's pretty well liked I think)
Will Smith
Keanu Reeves
Megan Fox (again, I don't think I'll hear any argument from people)
Star Trek (any and all of it - I've even read a pile of the novels and some of those fanfilms and they were ok)
Indiana Jones (yes, including Crystal Skull, I thought it was a ROMP! and I love the Young Indy Chronicles too.)
Ed Brubaker - I'm falling more and more in love with his writing with every issue of Cap.
Mike Perkins - I think The Stand will totally be his lifetime achievement.  Just awesome.
oh yeah, Stephen King.  I've never read anything by him that I didn't like.

I guess that's enough for now...

Ok,, I realise this thread is entitled "Fuck Twilight", but if it bothers you so much, just don't watch it!  I did see it, and while the female lead is about the weakest character ever depicted on film, some of the Vampire stuff was fun, and the story actually hangs together surprisingly well.  I guess it's fine to vent, but seriously, it would probably be the same if those who disliked Superheroes saw our reaction to the first Spider-man trailer or whatever and said, "What a bunch of fucking nerds".  I think we have to let everyone have their fandom, or we really run the risk of becoming assholes.

Just my 2 cents.

it's gotta be tom fowler.

Too true, too true.  Seriously though, he's a big softie, deep down.

How ya doin' Tom?

I stumbled across this today - strange transmissions from an "alien sentient computer" - I think it'll be interesting to see what, if anything, develops from this:
http://chronalmatrix.blogspot.com/
Apparently, it's also broadcasting on twitter, as well:
http://twitter.com/ChronalMatrix
Check it out!

Shawn

Ok, here goes.  Please don't hate me for these.  Also, I didn't read all the questions that came before, so if these are doubled up, so be it.

1) What's the obsession with getting your comics custom bound... do you only custom bind print runs that haven't been collected?  If not, why not just buy the collection?  If so, aren't you worried about destroying the value of your books? (Personally I don't care if I have books that are worth anything, so I'd custom bind a run of Arak: Son of Thunder, since I don't believe it's available as a collection...  but I'm curious where you guys are coming from).

2) Related to the above - you had a guy ask previously what he should do with the runs of books he had that also bought in collection. I believe on the show, the suggestion was to custom bind them (thereby having two sets, I guess). My suggestion would be to give them away for Hallowe'en.  Do you ever do this, give away comics on Hallowe'en?  If so, how do you determine which books to give away and if not, why not?

Ok, enough with the craziness.  Great show, and I'll be listening to find out what you have to say!

Those are some crazy old school fanzine covers!  Love'em!!

I wonder if Walking Dead is considered a b&w book in terms of production costs?

Just because I know they use a lot of gray-toning on that book, so it's not just reproducing line art... there's still a lot of work that goes into giving that book 3 dimensions through the selection of grays. I don't know if that costs a lot less to reproduce, either.

Very curious now, does anyone know the answer?

It certainly wouldn't cost anymore to print - you're still only using one ink, so you don't have to run it through three more times.

As far as greytoning versus full up colour, it is a lot less labour intesive to grey tone than to work in full colour.  Well, for me, anyway.

Does it's apeal come from its amalgamation of so many different things: Manga style, Video games, western comics, pop culture. Stir in big pot and sprinkle in the most common problem younger folks have: What do with you life? Bake and make pretty and you get Scott Pilgrim.

I think also hit at a time when "Original English Manga" was still new and all these N. American teens reading Japanese imports were looking for something that stylistically echoed what they were into, but spoke more to their own culture.  Of course, it's completely different than nearly everything else out there, so that may have factored in too.

Let's not forget Mr. Robert Kirkman. Walking Dead is, unquestionably, the most successful "indie" book of the last decade and it's B&W.

So it CAN be done. But the trick is convincing an artist who is already having trouble making a financial go of it in the creator-owned space to forge ahead in what he knows are a low odds payoff.

Tell him he won't have to share his split with a colourist.

Lots of reasons I struggle with the Terry Moore mention [or Dave Sim or Jeff Smith]. Thing is, these guys were inspired to self publish at a time when self publishing was THE SHIT. TMNT had all three of these guys saying, "why  not me?" and 80s B&W comics were actually hot, rather than considered a lower cost alternative. Let's remember that most of these guys, and many other B&W books that have long since come and gone, were charging PREMIUM pricing to the typical Big 2 fare in the 80s. The only difference between Sim, Moore and Smith from the rest was perseverance and quality [two pretty big honking ways to differentiate onself I would think].

Hard to convince someone that B&W is the spot nowadays b/c this new generation of indie creators wasn't inspired by B&W comics. What I mean is they weren't walking into the stores and seeing B&W books on the shelves doing well and being THE MOST BUZZED books in the business.

Not to mention that it's almost become institutionalized to believe that you can make money in comics, so you have guys doing POD or working on the back-end all the time (I should talk!).  So people go in with a field of dreams mentality and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!  Guys like Sim, Eastman, Laird, Moore and Smith were looking at a solid business plan (and working in a different market) and saying, "how can I make money at this?"

That's why Seeley is such a smart cookie, 'cause even though he SAYS he'd keep drawing Hack/Slash out of a cardboard box (and I believe him) he's also looking at the best way to make some money from the property.

Plus, at this point in his career, Terry Moore is a name brand, something that I'm sure ensures him a certain level of sales regardless of the format in which he chooses to work. Terry Moore fans are going to buy his stuff, color or no color, same with Sim and Jeff Smith. They're pretty much the few exceptions to the B&W rule.

Again, the B&W "rule" really only applies to the DM.  So, books like Echo probably do a lot better in bookstores than in the LCS.  It's like a weird reverse snobbery "Oh yeah, I love Brubaker and Phillips, but only when they do Daredevil or Cap."  It's a really weird mindset to me.

And then there's webcomics...  but that's probably a whole other discussion...

Welcome to the board, Shawn!

Gotta burst your overgeneralizing comment, though... I've been reading comics for 35 years (!), and get all my books via DCBS, and read more than superhero books (although I read plenty of them, too), but I likes me some color.  I like color television and photographs, too.  I do enjoy reading those old Savage Sword of Conan b/w books out of nostolgia, but I can't get into the Marvel Essential line essentially because of lack of color. I'd prefer comics go back to the exact same production value that they were back in the '60s-'70s and show me the price point for that (paper, 4-color, etc.) before jumping to b/w as an industry.

Too true, I did generalize.  What I should have said is that the Direct Market tends to favour colour, so that crowd is the opne that colour matters too.  It's probably no co-incidence that they also favour superheroes.  And also, just because I'm pointing out realities (ie. that the bookstore market tends to support BOTH black and white and colour) doesn't make it an indictment of colour comics.  Far from it.  I love my comics in colour OR black and white.

I like that analogy.

Ironically, some of the "minor league" indie comics are produced by the same creators that make "major league" comics!

Jim

I agree.  If you take Q&C for example, (which I haven't read, but I hear good things) these are some of the same creators that put out top notch work for DC and Marvel every month.  So why are they being overlooked?  Is it because it's black and white?  Or is it because of something else?

Another way to put it - what was the last full-colour NON SUPERHERO series to crack the top 100?

In January:
10 - BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #21
22 - DARK TOWER TREACHERY #5 (OF 6)
28 - STAND CAPTAIN TRIPS #5 (OF 5)
47 - ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #16
50 - GI JOE #1
70 - STAR WARS LEGACY #32 FIGHT ANOTHER DAY PART 1 OF 2
78 - WALKING DEAD #57 (MR)
82 - HELLBOY WILD HUNT #2 (OF
83 - UMBRELLA ACADEMY DALLAS #3 (OF 6)
84 - FABLES #80 (MR)
90 - CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #7
94 - SANDMAN DREAM HUNTERS #3 (OF 4) (MR)
100 - STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF OLD REPUBLIC #37 PROPHET MOTIVE PART 2
 
So, about 87% of books sold in the direct market are full colour superhero stories.  Because that is what the fans want - remember, you're voting with your wallet.  Also, 7 of the 13 books on the top 100 that aren't superheros are licences of incredibly popular properties outside of comics.  You've got Umbrella Academy, which is written by a Rock Star (!) who brings his legion of fans into the comic stores and Hellboy, which is, well, Hellboy.  That's a success story one of two (Walking Dead, being the other) which are really the exceptions that prove the rule.

By comparison, Bookstore sales, which show about 89% of the titles to be NON-superhero.  I don't know how many are actually black and white, but with the amount of Naruto showing up on there, I'd guess at least 50%.

So, that's what I meant by the guys going into the LCS are the only ones who actively dislike B&W comics.  I didn't mean to over-generalize, but the numbers don't lie...

Just a quick comment on b&w vs. colour - the only fans who care about colour are the superhero fans going to the LCS.  It's not news that there are hordes of people reading manga in bookstores or "alt" comics who don't care if it's in colour, as long as it's good.

Just my 2 cents.  Thanks.

Thanks, it gave me a chuckle to draw it.

We haven't officially launched yet, but we have a Facebook group with some more teaser art available (and a little backstory too):

the Vol Ranik group on Facebook!

Check it out!

Also, I'll be posting pretty well everywhere when we launch, so stay tuned.

I'm starting up a new webcomic and I thought I'd sneak you all a peek:

I hope it fits in here - if not, click it to check it on flickr!

Re: Scott Pilgrim -

I was a little sad to hear you guys dismiss the book as kids lit - Chris I'm the same age as you and I enjoyed the hell out of it!  I think it probably does appeal more to the sillier side (it has that peculiar "video game logic" going for it), but I think there is something there for someone, regardless of age, who enjoys a light, fun read.

Love the show, just listening it to it now, keep it up!

(also, re:Catholic Church - Chris, you're right on!!)

Shawn Richter

Hey guys - I really enjoy the show, and I'm happy to be here.  I'm a comic artist based in Northern Ontario, Canada and I hope to spend some time here on the boards.  I haven't been spending too much time online over the last couple of years, but am meaning to change that.

I'm just listening to the latest episode right now (#44) and am thinking about picking up the Hercules trades, based on Vince's excitement about the title...
 
Alright, back to drawing.  See you soon.

Blue Skies,
Shawn Richter