Creative People Need Breaks

It's a well known fact that most American companies give drastically fewer days off per year than European ones tend to. And, in theory, I get it. More days working means more work gets done. And we Americans (well, some of us anyway) love to run ourselves into the ground with our all-important work. But you know what--that's messed up.

I've been working as a comics editor, writer, and teacher for almost 10 years now, and you know what? I've got a couple of regrets. Don't get me wrong, I'm very well aware that I'm in a field that I love and I enjoy the work I do that provides for my family--and I completely understand how important that is and how lucky it makes me, so I'm not complaining--no sir, not by any stretch. Okay, that said, onto my regret (I'm only going to hit one here tonight)...

I regret not slowing down more often. Every time I take a vacation, I come back refreshed, wanting to work and brimming with new ideas from storylines to ways to market comics, to pricing strategies and so on.

And I'm guilty of doing this to myself. I have my staff job, I run Comics Experience and I write. So, I can't blame anyone else for my working habits.

Lately, I've been spending too much time working on comics. I've got a new baby at home, and I don't feel like I'm even beginning to get to know him yet. So this weekend, I decided to put all comics related things on the back-burner. Figure some things out, refocus when I dive back in tomorrow morning.

You know what I did today though? I held my infant son and rocked him to sleep for an hour and a half this morning. Then I played with Cale, my older son, rough-housing a bit, before the whole family piled in a car to drop my wife off at a baby shower. She took Oliver (the new one, if you're having trouble keeping track) with her. So Cale and I went down to Mission Bay--a nearby park on the water--and biked together for five miles, stopping at playgrounds along the way to play games. After that, we went home and played outside with some neighbor friends. I got some more Oliver holding time in and we sat down for dinner. After dinner, Cale and I made a fort, played some more indoor games, and then he and I decided to have a sleep-over in his room. He's now konked out right next to me.

Then I started thinking--tired as I am--about going into the office tomorrow--and what I plan to do with Comics Experience over the next month or so. I spent the whole day NOT thinking about comics--only focusing on having fun with my two kids and wife. And the end result is that I have a million new ideas about COMICS.

My plea to employers everywhere is this: wise up. Give more vacation time. More Paid Time Off. Give a half day here and there. But let your employees recharge their batteries often. You'll get better, more innovative work out of them every single time.

Okay, got to put the computer away now before Cale wakes up!

But tomorrow, I'm starting to take two weeks off to refresh my batteries.

Goodnight!

Andy

4 Workshop Guests That Will Blow Your Mind In March!

As many of you know, The CE Creators Workshop is the best place to get honest information, advice, and insight from professional creators. And March just proves again that we've achieved that goal! Check out these four outstanding guests and how you could interact with them in March!

1. JASON AARON -- best known for writing SCALPED and WOLVERINE joins the online and live Book Club on Tuesday, March 8th to discuss his book SCALPED vol. 1. This is the only chance you may ever get to read and then discuss a seminal work by a great creator. The session lasts two hours with a direct Q&A with Mr. Aaron!

This is an opportunity open only to CE Creators Workshop members! Can't make the meeting, don't worry. Each meeting is recorded with a secure link that only members can access for one month after the meeting. These "fire side" chats are the most informal and honest way to talk with the industry's most respected creators. Join the Workshop Today so you can attend!

2. JIM CHEUNG -- artist supreme and co-creator of YOUNG AVENGERS and AVENGERS: CHILDREN'S CURSADE will be reviewing the winning portfolio of this month's Artist pick from a Workshop member! Cheung has done incredible work over the last 15 years in comics and is easily one of the industry's top talents. This is a rare opportunity for sure!

This is an opportunity open only to CE Creators Workshop members! Jim does not often do reviews by his own admission. He's laid back and doesn't always feel comfortable. That makes this opportunity that much cooler! Jim's a rare talent who can tell one heck of a story, make it look intensely cool, and create a blockbuster hit while doing it! Join the Workshop Today so you can attend!

3. WIL MOSS -- DC Comics editor working with Matt Idelson on SUPERMAN as well as several of his own projects has agreed to review this month's script winner from our March challenges! He'll be giving a review of the story that gets posted back for all to learn from. Again, a rare opportunity to get your work in front of an honest to god DC Comics staffer!

This opportunity is open only to Workshop members. Wil has is an up and coming editor at DC today. He's the perfect kind of guy to want to get your work in front of. He's smart, knows his comics, knows story, and has a genuine interest in helping young or new creators improve their craft! Join the Workshop Today so you can attend!

4. DIAMOND DISTRIBUTORS -- A representative from Diamond Distributors will join us for our live, online Workshop session held on March 22nd. We're going to get the low-down on what it is Diamond does exactly, how to get into the exclusive PREVIEWS catalog as well as de-mystifying all other question surrounding getting your comic out to your audience in the best way possible! Another rare opportunity! Join the Workshop Today so you can attend!

The Creators Workshop is RED HOT in March! Sign up today!

Click here to read more about the Creators Workshop! And Sign up with just one easy click!

Dwayne McDuffie

I was shocked this afternoon to find out that Dwayne died today. Apparently, from complications to surgery. I don't need to know the reason why he died, just that he did. Dwayne and I were friends and this was unexpected and frightening. Last week, another friend of mine, Perry Moore, died. He was the producer of the NARNIA movies. I was also surprised by that. I didn't know Perry as well as I knew Dwayne but the combination is really messing with my mind.

Does this have something to do with comics? I'm not sure, other than both men loved comics. While Perry didn't write any comics, he was a huge supporter of them in Hollywood. Dwayne, on the other hand wrote many comics--including some of my favorites in recent years with his run on JLA, and his run on Fantastic Four. He's just a great writer. He wrote a ton of animation that I loved. His episodes on JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED are largely responsible for my much renewed interest in DC Comics. I still don't understand why the comic doesn't capture the spirit of those characters as well as that cartoon did.

I honestly don't have anything profound to say, but I can't concentrate on writing anything else. Dwayne was great. Great at writing and great for comics. I've been thinking all day about the STAR TREK pitch he worked on for me when I briefly edited the STAR TREK line at IDW. It would have really turned some heads had we been allowed to do it. But we couldn't get it to work for all parties involved. And I was sad about that at the time and I'm twice as sad about it today.

If you haven't had a chance to read his work, do yourself a HUGE favor and go read some of it. He's a great talent for the medium and there are a great many of us that will miss him and his work.

Here's hoping that tomorrow brings some brighter news.

Andy

5 Easy Tips to Improving Your Storyelling (For Artists)

Let's cut to the chase. You can be an awesome draftsman, but if you can't tell a story, then you're just not going to cut it (this has been true since about 1997). So, five easy ways to improve your storytelling if you're an artist are:

1. Always start a scene with an establishing shot. I don't care if the script doesn't call for one--you're responsible for the visual storytelling and continuity. Unless there is a STORY REASON not to have one, start with one. For drama, you can start with an extreme closeup in panel 1, but then you should immediately establish the scene in panel 2.

Establishing shots tell us WHERE we are exactly--sometimes you establish a skyline in one panel and then a particular building in the next or a particular room, perhaps. They tell us WHO is present and where everyone is located in relation to one another. And they often tell us WHEN the scene takes place--either time of day or a particular time period if the work is a period piece.

2. When creating your characters for a story give each one a distinct feature that is different from the rest. Whenever possible, give them all different silhouettes so they can easily be identified by your reader even from a distance. You want a great example of this: look at the original X-Men by Kirby. Each of the five members had a different silhouette and a different distinctive feature. You want a second example, look at the X-Men from Giant-Sized X-Men #1--new team, and new distinct features for all the characters.

On the Kirby X-Men, you've got a guy with wings, a guy made out of ice, a guy shaped like a gorilla, a guy with a weird red visor and a woman with red hair. All have distinct traits so that even when they're wearing matching uniforms, telling them apart is EASY. Now look at the cover again but clack out the shapes. If those were just black silhouettes, you'd still know the guy with the wings is Angel, the guy shaped like snow man is Ice Man and so on. It's amazing how brilliant Kirby really was. Heck, even Magneto, the villain of the piece has a cool helmet that stands out in the shadows as well.

3. Comprise your panels of squares and rectangles only. And leave a healthy gutter space between them. Easily being able to separate one panel from the next makes for a much easier and more enjoyable reading experience.

The point here is that many new readers (and vets like me who are lazy) just want to read a story. And when panel layouts get tricky, they can get very confusing. Even if reading order still works, often oddly shaped panels will lead to reading errors because the balloon order gets thrown off. Just avoid these pitfalls by only using oddly shaped panels when there is a STORY REASON to do so. And even then, don't do it every time.

4. Now take those squares and rectangles and place them all on invisible tiers (break your page into thirds, typically). All panels on tier one should sit exactly on the same imaginary line. And they should all be the same height and with equal distance between them (or width of gutter, if you prefer that term). Then on the next tier, the same principles apply. Rarely will you need more than three tiers.

Look at both the page above from WATCHMEN and the page below, also from WATCHMEN (because Dave Gibbons is perhaps the most under-rated comic artist of all time--and he's highly regarded as one of the best!). Simple rectangle and square panels. Three tier system. Notice that you intuitively know what panels come in what order. You also have no trouble reading the word balloons and captions in the correct order. It's all right there because of the clean and simple layout.

5. Knock off all that popping out of the panel nonsense. Every time you pop a character's head or blaster, or sword, or leg, or wagon, or whatever our of a panel, you're distracting your reader from what is INSIDE the panel. Keep it simple. Keep it contained.

The greatest comic book of all time (some will tell you) is WATCHMEN and in all of its 12 over-sized issues Gibbons NEVER breaks out of the panel. The entire story is confined to within those panel borders. He never lets the reader break any barrier. While there is much of his work to marvel at, he never intentionally draws attention to how good he is, and that just makes him that much better.

Follow these five steps on your next page and watch how easy it is to read. Watch how clean and professional your pages become--overnight.

Hope it helps. Now go sign up for the Comics Experience art class! :)

Andy

Students Publish Another Anthology!

The last Comics Experience writing class has gently published it's anthology book called More Tales From the Comics Experience. They have self publishers the material and that means they've accomplished probably the hardest task in all of comics.

Some people look at self publishing as what someone does when no publisher will pick up the work. Not at all true. While, sure, that does happen, in the case of these writers and artists, they never submitted the work for publication. That wasn't what this was about. This was about learning how to--and thereby gaining the confidence--to publish their own work.

You see, when a publishers accepts your work, all of a sudden, you've got a lot less to do. When you self publish, you're the project manager, your the editor, your the marketing department, the publisher, your printing it, shipping manager, and the retailer all in one. The is simply no other way to get the kind of experience and understanding of the comics industry than self publishing. So when I say tuner is nothing tougher, I mean it!

But enough about how hard it is to self publish. Let s get to the point. The content. The writers of this anthology all entered my class at different levels and all had different goals. Their goals are still their own. The course is designed to help writers get to the core of his or her idea and then teaches a methodology to help them break it down and execute it professionally and to full effect. Then I throw a big complication in the mix. They have to do it in just five pages. Now THAT is hard!

Jamie, Matt, Brian, TDR, Vaughn, Alex, Jim, and Greg all pulled together compelling and entertaining stories and found extremely talented artists to work with on them. This is a major achievement. You've got it all in here, too. Science fiction set in space, westerns, horror, the whole bit! If you like comics and you want to see a bunch of creators who have earned their comic book, check it out.

And if you want to support such independent creators, please order yourself a copy right here!

Andy

The Good Books: A God Somewhere

In my ongoing process to talk about great books that you may have missed and to talk about making comics or how to learn to write comics or learn to draw comics, I'm tackling some really good work in these "The Good Books" posts. Today's is A GOD SOMEWHERE and it's written by John Arcudi and illustrated by Peter Snejbejerg. It was released last year (2010) by Wildstorm.

The book itself has an intriguing cover that implies a contemplative approach to a dark super hero tale. It also implies that this is going to have some horrific bits in it. From a cover construction stand point, I think this one picture says everything the publisher would want a customer to read into it. Take a look. I think it's fantastic.

I haven't followed Peter Snejbjerg's (something I now plan to remedy) work over the last few years, but I have kept an eye on John Arcudi. Arcudi has written steadily for the last 10 or so years in the comics industry and has turned out some really brilliant work and has, in my opinion, never received the kind of credit he deserves for his creative talents. If you're not familiar with his work, I'm not surprised. But the fact is, you should be.

A GOD SOMEWHERE is my favorite thing that I've read of his. The concept is simple. An ordinary human who is much like many of us. Not a bad guy at all, but certainly flawed, is imbued with strange and wondrous powers. Only in this world, he's the only one who has them.

The journey that Eric undergoes through the course of the book is not an unfamiliar one. Unlike the super heroes in other comics, he doesn't instantly get imbued with a strict and unshakable moral code. He remains one of us. And as his power grows, it distances him from the rest of us.

I found myself thinking about celebrities in our own society. So rich, so powerful, so scrutinized, and surrounded with timid people, that they slowly lose touch with who they once were. I don't think Tom Cruise started his career off as the kind of guy who would jump up and down on Oprah's couch. Nor was Charlie Sheen likely the ego-maniac that we've come to see of late. These are the results of someone never hearing the word no or always being able to change it if he does. I'm over simplifying just to illustrate Eric's journey.

His journey is one of disconnect. As he becomes more powerful, more guarded, and more influential, he slowly loses touch with his own humanity. And begins to suffer delusions that he may be a god. It sounds, as I write this, like an over-the-top blockbuster, but the thing about this book that makes it so good is that it remains grounded at all times.

Arcudi's script keeps us focused on real people as much as the almost all-powerful Eric. His script does not hamstring the evolving character with super hero tropes about morality or justice. It's about a guy who becomes a god and what that does to the guy's mind.

A fascinating read. Highly recommended.

Andy

Killing Characters - how to do it right

There's been a lot of talk around the industry about killing characters off and what that means and how to do it right and that it doesn't matter because they always come back anyway... And those opinions just keep coming. In the wake of January's issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, and in April when my own G.I. JOE: COBRA CIVIL WAR kicks off with a couple of deaths, it seemed like a good time to discuss death in comics.

Every time a major character dies, there are those who claim it's just a publicity stunt. Now, there's a tricky bit there. Because, you're probably right in so far that it IS A PUBLICITY stunt. We will publicize a major character's death. It's the "just" part that isn't always accurate. The "just" implies two things: the first is that the character isn't really dead. Sometimes true, sometimes not. The second is that there is no other consideration in the minds of the publishers, creators, or editors when deciding whether or not to kill a character or not.

The fact is we ALWAYS consider other things. Here is a quick list that I run through when deciding whether or not a character to get bite the big one in one of the comics I edit:

1. Do the circumstances leading up to the characters demise make logical sense?

2. Is the death within the character as established--in other words, does he do something stupid to get killed because the plot demands it or does his death make sense for the character? Snake Eyes doesn't dive in front of bullets for no reason. He always has a way out, so it'd have to be a spectacular trap to get him. Not so true for say... Bazooka.

3. Do we get any new story opportunities from the character's death?

4. Do they outweigh the potential story opportunities that exist while keeping the character alive?

5. Is there a plan to bring the character back some how? Either he didn't really die or resurrection from the dead? Are their story opportunities here as well?

In TRANSFORMERS, I cleared killing off Ironhide--a mainstay of the cast for 25 years--because we had a plan to bring him back that we thought was really unique and would create tension amongst cast members. The Autobots (the good guys) were just too agreeable with each other--too chummy. I wanted something to cause some tension and this would do it.

Ironhide dying would also get us some attention in the media and wake up some readers who had left over the years and maybe bring some back in to see what was going on. We've gotten a lot of mileage out of Ironhide's death now in that book.

I also was the guy that signed off on killing Quasar during Marvel's original ANNIHILATION event. Again, Quasar died in large part to wake folks up and let them know this war was real. It wasn't going to end with a bunch of big heroes standing around combining their massive powers to solve the problem. That's not how things work in the real world, and that's not how they're going to work in Marvel's cosmic arena anymore (well, at the time).

Quasar's death had the intended effects. We did it primarily for the publicity of it. We also built in a way for him to return when we wanted that to happen, if we wanted it to happen.

In G.I. JOE, unlike in TRANSFORMERS or Marvel books, I can keep characters dead. Once we kill them, there's no returning from the dead. They can go missing, and they can cheat death, but this reflects our world in a different way. It's also about soldiers and so there are different rules that apply. So now that we're going to be killing off a few Joes coming up, they're not coming back in a mass resurrection BLACKEST NIGHT style.

So, to sum up, and I don't think I'm saying anything unique here, a death just for the publicity isn't a great thing. But if there's story to be had to come from that death, I think it makes a lot of sense. I'm not caught up on my FANTASTIC FOUR comics just yet, but I'm reasonably confident that the recent death of a founding member of that team will open up some very interesting story possibilities in that book. I'm reading it because I heard about the death. It's not the death itself that interested me, but more what comes after--what do we as readers get out of it. And if it's something new, different, or emotionally charged, I'm really going to enjoy it.

Andy