Freedom City

I so enjoyed sampling and reviewing books last year that I thought why not at least still do that, even though I can’t make it to MoCCA Art Fest. A good friend of mine will be wandering the tables looking for things for me to read and review. I gave him two rules: 1) nothing famous or by anybody famous and 2) a fifty dollar budget.

So all you folks who want a bit of exposure, my guy will be there with cash in hand to acquire your minis, your comics, your whatever. If you think my proxy is at your table, just ask him if it’s for John Ira Thomas and he’ll tell you. This is not a shill for freebies; I’m paying cash. He won’t turn anything down, but he also won’t break the bank at one table.

Last year I read everything over two long baths and offered my thoughts. Except for THE SINISTER TRUTH, which was a fair bit longer than a mini, but is well and truly a fun, frightening and informative read. I miss the BIG BOOKS from Paradox Press, especially the BIG BOOK OF CONSPIRACIES. THE SINISTER TRUTH makes a nice companion to that. Okay, that’s everything from 2010; I’ll get this stack done a lot sooner; promise.

Days remain until I hop a couple planes to sunny Orlando for the 2011 MegaCon. Carter will also be there, doing Transformer sketches if History is any judge. I’ll be reading old football novels on my Nook in an effort not to spend too much at the movie tables. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ll have a fresh but very small supply of the third part of LOST IN THE WASH with me, so whip out your dollars.

We’re trying out a credit card service, Square, that works very well. I haven’t got the swiper to work yet, but cards can be enetered manually. It’s pretty cool; the buyer signs my smartphone’s with a finger and that’s it. The customer gets a receipt with exact time and place (thanks to phone GPS) and even a picture (optional) taken at time of purchase for extra legitimacy. I did a few experiments with it and it’s very sweet. So we’ll start taking credit cards at the table; hooray!

I was sweating this weekend to keep my two episode lead with my Movie Somnambulist column at One Page Wonder when I ran into what seemd an awful barrier. I’d been circling around watching NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR for a while, but was reluctant to tackle an anthology movie. Well, I swallowed my fear and yes it is a huge problem. I did a draft review where recounting the barest plot elements took the whole space. So I divided the effort into three reviews and did them all yesterday. There was even enough room for a joke and wry observation or two. Always nice to squeeze a couple into the mix.

Anyways, now I’m way ahead. But I still put a couple future review subjects on my phone, just in case things bog down in travel. Staring at a rough-edged old movie on a phone doesn’t bother me. I’d go blind trying to watch anything with a mise-en-scene worth noting, but shouting heads and machete strikes are easily visible on it.

Now if these damn allergies would get over their 2011 coming-out party already…

I tend to doodle a lot in a classroom setting, even now. These are from a recent seminar I went to for work. It wasn’t the most enlightening experience, but at least I have these and the certificate to show for it.

…had me as a virtual guest via Skype today. 20 minutes for a club meeting reminded me of how rigorously subdivided the schoolday is. If I had bells and a schedule at home, I think the Hawkeye Football project would be done already.

Jim Calkins invited me and led the questioning. The atmosphere was fast-paced, even scrappy at times. These kids want to learn. Here is something of a re-enactment, except the questions aren’t exact and probably in the wrong order; plus I’ve had time to think about the answers now, so I probably sound a bit cooler here.

Q: What were you doing in Middle School? Comics?

Me: Yep, really bad ones. I had a whole line of modified stick figure guys battling each other. There was the guy with triangles for hands, the blobby guy, the guy whose head looked like the Seattle Seahawks logo, the guy with a tracing line all around him who could fly… but I was doing comics. I destroyed most all of them in a fit of pique when I was 13 or so, but a few escaped destruction and are around here somewhere.

Q: How do you get to do comics? What made you do comics?

Me: If anything makes me do comics, it must be genetic. I can point to no cause. You get to do comics simply by starting and not stopping.

Q: What comics did you read when you were our age?

Me: I was pretty corporate then. Justice League of America, The Avengers, Uncle Scrooge. For a guy in my age group I came to comics a little late, about 10 years old. But when that happened, I went crazy for them. In my teens I went to my first comics store (and those were pretty rare then) and couldn’t believe what I saw. Things expanded from there.

Q: (can’t exactly remember this one) How popular are graphic novels?

Me: Right now, they’re insanely popular. It wasn’t all that long ago that the American Bookseller’s Association recognized graphic novels at all. Nowadays we have companies that claim to be comics companies, put out no comics at all, and use the place like a screenplay farm.

Q: Do you have any pets?

Me: Nope, and that’s genetic for sure. I think that’s why Captain Cat looms so large in Zoo Force, because he could do me in by showing up.

Q: Not even fish?

Me: Nope, I keep things low-maintenance.

Q: How do you make your comics?

Me: (Insert my standard speech about how awesome print-on-demand is)

Q: Print-on-demand?

Me: (Insert my standard speech about how POD works). It’s an amazing technology.

Q: Can you make a lot of money in comics?

Me: If they make a movie, you bet. If they want to make a movie and don’t, kinda. If your name is Frank Miller, sure. Like a lot of creative fields, most of the money goes to just a few people. In book publishing, if you’re a mid-list author (30K in sales or so) you don’t make a lot of money. Most people who do this won’t even break even.

Q: Did anyone encourage you early on in comics?

Me: Well, it can be a bit of a stigmatizer, but I found that when people want to draw my scripts, that’s the best encouragement you can possibly have. I am flattered and amazed every time it happens.

Q: Your office looks kind of plain. We thought there might be all kinds of crazy stuff on the walls.

Me: I keep a nerdy office, mostly. If I’d thought about it enough, I would have at least done a green screen…here is the Duomo as seen from the Belvedere…. Next time I’ll have something.

Q: Where do you live?

Me: Coralville.

Q: How do you do your lettering? Is your handwriting good?

Me: Oh my no. My handwriting is terrible. We have fonts for that.

Q: Do you change much when you letter?

Me: Sometimes, yes. I rarely change major things, but I will sharpen a line if the artist has brought out something unexpected in the art. I tell the story first, then the artist does it; but I get the last word as the letterer. In NUMBERS, Sgt Dylan was originally conceived as a beardy chubby Ellery-Queen-type guy. Jeremy thought his dialogue suggested a tall beardless fellow (who resembled a figure in the Johnson County Democratic Party) and went with that. And I agreed.

…

The thing that struck me was that the one omnipresent question in such contacts ,”Where do you get your ideas from?”, did not occur. Good for them. They’ve got their ideas already. They were an enthusiastic bunch and it was (from what I could see) a perfect balance of boys and girls. That right there is reason to rejoice. I haven’t had a chance to see their work, but maybe soon Jim can show me some (hint hint).

These things are always fun. I can be my full-on goofball enthused self for a good cause and I get reminded that there are always a few people on the planet who haven’t heard all my stories yet. The class got a chance to peruse their very own copy of ZOO FORCE: We Heart Libraries as well, so they got to be more amazed when I said those are made one at a time out of a machine.

In answer to the question about validation, I should have added that getting to do stuff like this is pretty good validation too. I always say making comics is making comics—there’s no license, no permission slip, nobody you have to wait on but yourself. And this kind of audience wants and needs to hear that. I’ve seen too many people who will get around to it someday who never do. Either you’re making comics right now or you aren’t.

So graphic novel clubs and such—I am available via Skype video feed. Drop me an email and we’ll see what we can do.

Here are some random pics from my Colorado trip.

Spent the other weekend visiting family in SE Colorado. As promised, pics.
Wiley, taken from the step of my sister’s house. The rental car I got in Pueblo can be seen at right. Somehow ended up with the exact same make model and color car that Tracy has. Crazy. The shifter was supposed to be automatic, but in the “D” slot there was a + and a -. Every 20mph the engine went RRRRRRRRRRR like it was working way too hard. A thunk to the + and it settled down. There’s no clutch, but there’s this very videogame-like version of Manual. Weird.

In Lamar proper, where I lived from ages 2-15. The tan building is the old Halliburton Camp that my Dad ran while we lived there. When Halliburton transitioned from Oil Well Servicing to let’s call it Evil, a lot of these camps (yes they called them camps) were closed. The white building to the left was their cement plant. They tell me this was a trucking company for a while, and now it just sits there, framed by a Subway sign.I think this is Holly.
More big sky shots. It’s something I miss. Lubbock had it too.Out at the Lamar Cemetery. Tracy, Jessica, Jerri, and Mom. We were hunting up some tombstones for my neverending genealogy research.
They built a no-kidding coal plant INSIDE CITY LIMITS in Lamar. It hasn’t fired up yet—that’s for the courts to decide. My question is, did the city planners get new Lexuses or something? This thing is the Lamar skyline at night. It’s the tallest thing for miles. It’s just like the little contradictions I use to make cities come alive in my writing. Cities are made with bizarre compromises.