So, once again, I end up making a mini-movie strip for you guys. This time starring, well, you should be able to guess who:
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So get this. I get to work and be friends with a lot of people that I admire. They have skills that impress me and they do things that I am a fan of. It is the best feeling in the world, watching friends be awesome and build and do amazing things.

To that end I wanna introduce you to one of those people. I should do this more often, I know. But I get busy and forgetful and end up failing. Still! I will do this one.

Attila Adorjany is an artist. You can find him at 600 pound gorilla where he blogs and does comics and draws and…

He does live draws you can tune in and watch! He does all this stuff and recently he even asked for some help. Here’s an amazing artist who wants your help getting out there. He earns the chance with every piece he draws. It’s awesome to watch.

Anyway, you can go here to read his talk about asking for help.

He also does commissions. Are they dirt cheap? Of course not. Are they worth it? I’m saving some pennies up now, man.

So seriously, go check him out, read his stuff, look at his art and become a fan. Because, hey, awesome is awesome, right?

I just got possibly the best spam ever. At first I was going to simply delete it but then I realized it was written, obviously, by a Nigerian scammer with Tourette’s trying to raise Cthulhu. And that makes me want to reply to him, kinda. Below is his email in its entirety:

To: adampknave
From: [name removed in case of Cthulhu]
Subject: Long fucktime uajagoz

Dear fuck you asshole,

Uofej nyetiferyh unyid iityoveu I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $47,500,000.00 (forty seven million, five hundred thousand United States dollars) into your accounts. Ieheb uajogozoo ojor iboreu yoas umynagojo.

Yqiseloz naepy. We are now ready to transfer the fund overseas and that is where you come in. It is important to inform you that as civil servants, we are forbidden to operate a foreign account; that is why we require your assistance. Loujypeyx vyhoyi ydoz uuck you! Shit fuck peaqejo uvuzue feliyazile yjima yqaeopoha ivapuet ylyusuzofe aratucyt ziqealoocu.

Cock pussy bastard iijyuh oside yuosy ytupyfe aryn apav relyojaz aniwyh. The transfer is risk free on both sides. Bastard shit licker. Alternatively we will furnish you with the text of what to type into your letter-headed paper, qukopueah izor akodosylu qatoyuke along with a breakdown explaining, comprehensively motherfucker what we require of you. The business will take us thirty (30) working days to accomplish.

Please reply shit urgently.

Some nights my brain wakes me up. I mean I sleep badly and tend to wake up a bunch of times every night, regardless, but on certain, random, nights my brain wakes me up with a bit of a shout. You see, it went ahead and wrote a story for me.

I don’t mean I had some foggy loose dream-story that didn’t work out. I mean I will wake up with exacting, detailed stories or associated items, that work and are a bunch of fun. I tend to then, quickly, call D.J. Kirkbride and tell him, because so far, for reasons I don’t know, they’ve also been comic related.

The first pass of one of our stories was sleep written like that. I woke up about 4am and knew I had to get this shit down. That it might suck in the morning, but something was just right about it. So I got up and jotted down detail after detail and suddenly had most of a beat pass for a script. So I mailed it to D.J. and then went back to bed.

When he got back to me with it, having fleshed it out and all, I had forgotten I had written it.

A few weeks ago D.J. and I discussed working up a cover idea for a pitch we’re knee deep in. And we both agreed to think about it and I went to bed and then I woke up, about 2ish, and called him in a hurry. I could see the cover, exactly. He wasn’t there so I left a half-asleep, rambly to all fuck message for him, describing the cover in detail. That cover has been done and we all love it.

Last night I went to bed a bit early due to just sheer exhaustion. And then I woke up. A pitch idea was in my head. Not fully, but the bones were there. Something D.J. and I can shape into a full pitch. But I just woke up with it and grabbed the phone.

I do wonder if D.J. has started to dread having his phone ring past 1am EST. Because it means that, once he sees it’s me, he has to know he is in for half-asleep, excited, rambling. He still answers the phone, so I guess it isn’t too bad, but he is also braver than I am.

Really though, it kinda annoys me. I love getting good, solid ideas out of my brain. I truly do. And I know how lucky I am. But I also kinda want to be awake more often when it happens. Prose ideas come to me when I’m awake. Comic ideas are about 60/40 awake/asleep and slipping. There is part of me that just doesn’t like the idea that comic ideas happen when I’m not looking.

On the other hand it would mean that I could justify naps are working, right? Hmmm… maybe there’s something to this, after all.

We’re going to start this off with one of the most obvious characters we could possibly use. Often hailed as the first superhero, Superman is easily in the top ten recognizable trademarks on the planet. So what is it about him?

Put simply: He’s the best of us. Stripping away everything else, at his deepest core, Superman represents the humanity, the heart, that can change the world. He’s what we could be if only we never backed down. If we did what we knew was right, listened and were willing to change our minds, and generally acted from the heart after carefully and honestly weighing options, even if we disagreed with them.

Now, you can say Superman is a Moses story (it was never Jesus, honest, though yes in the movies and such they have tried to switch it to a Jesus analogy) what with the baby being sent down the river (the galaxy) by his parents and so on. Sure. But really, Superman hits a different angle I don’t see discussed as often. He represents what we could be as adults.

Most comic readers were kids, remember. Many of them on the cusp of adulthood. And Superman is one of the ultimate adults. He represents the power of adulthood, in obvious ways, with his super-abilities. But even more so in his actions. For him, growing up, taking on the responsibility of adulthood is not something to be done lightly. It is a responsibility that never goes away. You have to protect the world, your fellow man and you have to care.

He’s the best of us, and worst of all he knows it. It makes him sad. Because, of course, Superman wants us all to be at his level. He feels the lack, that we can’t share with him the power and joy that come from being so heart-driven, so compassionate and strong.

Which is why, really, he has to be not-human. By making superman an alien you can have your cake and eat it too. He can be the best of us, that shining example for everyone but as the ultimate outsider he is also not tied to any one place or mindset. It allows for a more universal adoption of the character. Now that isn’t always necessary, nor is it always the best way to get there. But in this case it works. Because you want a Superman who is cut off, making due, the best he can be and yet even then he will never fully be 100% human, not in his own head. He can’t be. He is the last of his kind. No matter how much he is accepted, he can’t forget, himself.

And once you can see him in the light of being the best of us you start to understand his villains. Luthor, for example, hates Superman. He hates him more than anything. But he doesn’t hate him because superman is the most powerful thing, or that his power reduces ordinary humans to uselessness in comparison. No, Luthor hates him because he can’t feel the same level of compassion, and he is so smart he understands his flaw and sees how it stops him. So he redirects and takes that self-hatred, that knowing flaw, out on an external force that, he also knows, will always forgive him and understand him. They’re tied, those two.

Braniac is another easy villain that has come back into prominence in the last decade. As a robot, he has, classically, no feelings. Making him Superman’s true opposite. The power without the compassion. The force without love guiding it. Also, he’s a robot. Robots are cool.

Superman is everything we could be, if we felt deep enough and trusted in ourselves and one another enough. He can save you with a kind word as well as stopping bullets. You can do the same, he tells us. You can all do the same.

Recommended reading: Here is a short list of graphic novels that represent great Superman stories:

All Star Superman, Vol. 1 and All Star Superman, Vol. 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly.

DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke

Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid and Leninil Yu

Previously on Core Concepts: The Start!

So I’ve decided I want to do a series of essays all about comics. I do. But I don’t want to get bogged down in discussing the boring minutiae of things. It doesn’t matter that Green Lantern was once an insurance adjustor, and then was a travelling toy salesman (he was also a trucker for a while). Rather, I want to discuss the core concepts of these characters. What they represent, places you can find it to read and the bigger, deeper, building blocks that make these things work even now.

I don’t know how often I’ll get to do it, I’ll try for at least weekly. But I hope you’ll find them interesting and not something you’ve necessarily seen before. At times I will even try to have other folk chime in and give thoughts on things.

Anyway, to start, I had a list of characters in mind. PLEASE in the comments give me other ideas. Some of them I have no interest in doing, but that would be rare. Anyway, here’s the batch I’m currently looking at, not in the order I’ll eventually do them:

Batman (along with both the first Robin and current one and original Batgirl)

Superman

Legion of Super-Heroes

The Flash

Green Lantern

Dazzler

Captain America

Iron Man

Thor

The Fantastic Four vs. The Challengers of the Unknown

A while back (about a year) I posted an entry about how you can build a career writing and being a creative type of person and at the end I summed it all up with a big ol’ list. I’m gonna forego the whole rambly part of the post and put the list up again, with updates and such. Here then is what you need to do (generally) if you want to write/create in a serious fashion:

• Do the work.
  • Write every day, even just a bit.
  • Deconstruct stories you love and learn from them.
  • Read every type of book, comic and non-fiction you can,
  • Listen to as much music as you can.
  • Watch movies and TV.
  • Anything with story at all is part of your job.
  • Not that you have to read/watch/hear it all, but be open to it.
• Act like a professional.
  • Don’t demand things from others, only yourself.
  • Be prompt.
  • Hit deadlines.
  • Don’t start fights for no reason.
  • When you make a mistake own it and apologize. Don’t lie and hide it.
  • When in confrontation, remain calm, screaming never helps.
  • Never make an empty statement. If you say “If X then I’ll do Y!” for good or bad, if X you better do Y.
  • The above applies twice as much to any sort of threat.
  • Try not to make threats, it always backfires
• Think like a businessperson.
  • Advertise yourself.
  • Take smart chances.
  • Don’t push without thinking, push with aim and timing.
  • Don’t be a douche.
  • Remember the only person to care about your career is you.
  • Don’t be shy, but don’t be annoying. Find balance.
• Help everyone as you would like to be helped.
  • Be kind.
  • Offer your help, with no catches.
  • Follow through, every time.
  • Be honest.
  • Do the right thing, even if people don’t do it for you.
  • Never forget the guy at the bottom probably used to be you. Remember how you wished you were treated, then. Exactly.
• Do whatever work you can.
  • There is no work beneath you.
  • Do whatever it is you are doing to the best of your ability.
  • Use every job as a way to show your strength.
  • Use every job as a way to work on a weakness.
  • Start at the bottom and be grateful for getting there.
  • Enjoy the work for what it is.

Si a few weeks ago I was at a friend’s birthday thing and met a friend of his named Simon. Simon and I hit it off and spent most of the night laughing and drinking. Somewhere in there Simon suggested I come down to watch “the football” as he calls it. I suppose I should mention Simon is rather British.

So today I got up fuckearly for a Sunday and headed down to the East Village to watch a soccerfootball game. I got there a bit after 10, which was when the game started and opened the door.

Now, I live in New York. I’m used to rush hour trains. I’ve seen film and pictures of people crammed onto trains in Tokyo, as well. I’m fairly sure we all have.

For example

This place made all of that seem spacious. It took me at least 5 minutes to force myself to the middle of the bar. Then I got stuck. People wanted to go by, either way, they would grab onto part of my jacket and pull themselves by. You couldn’t move, really. All you could do was watch some soccerfootball. Manchester United vs. Aston Villa to be exact. Now in a space that crowded you start to worry about jostling and shoving and people who are drinking becoming a bit of a bother. Not here. Nope. Everyone was polite and happy. Fans from both sides, mind you. No one boo’d the other side, really. No, it was just a madhouse of die hard fans.

What killed me was the number of people drinking. Plastic cups, glasses and bottles. People moving around as best they could and yet I never saw anyone spill a drop. I didn’t get a drink because I couldn’t really move my arms and I just knew I would be the schmuck to drop a pint on someone else’s head and start the giant immobile bar fight. So, you know, no thanks.

The chants never stopped, the cheering, clapping, scream of “Oh come the fuck ON then!” and so on, were perfectly, gloriously, relentless. I was never truly a hockey fan until I saw my first game with a bunch of die hard hockey nuts. This is the same thing. There’s a certain (claustrophobic) joy to it all. Mmm mob mentalities first thing on a Sunday.

Actually to mention the claustrophobic bits, you know I am not bad in tight places. I am usually fairly calm. There were, today, a few times though when I had this thought of “What if I need to move, at all, ever?” and had to shake it off. SoccerFootball – not for the claustrophobic at all. Kee-ripes.

Anyway. During half-time I found Simon and ended up at the other side of the bar where there was enough space to actually move my arms! Not much, but I could move them! It makes an incredible difference. So we watched the second half, with Simon occasionally going “See, then, this is the football.” I explained to some other folk there I kinda-knew that I had watched soccerfootball before, I just didn’t follow it and I had never followed it into this place before.

Eventually, as these things, must, the game ended. Around noon I found myself outside, blinking. Felt like about 5 or 6pm. There’s nothing like letting that type of mob grab you and carry you away sometimes. three or four hundred people in a space clearly meant for two hundred all cheering and having a go of it just makes whatever it is your watching so much better. I had to bail and get some stuff done But as I left Simon grinned and gave me one last:

“Well, that was the football, huh?”

Yeah. It was.

Last night at Jim Hanley’s Universe we had a Popgun 4 release event. A bunch of us showed up. Not all at once, mind you but still. For now a photo of us after everyone had arrived:

(In order L-R: Vito Delsante, Elizabeth Purvis, me, Frank Stockton, Jeff Powell,
Joe Flood, Nick Tapalansky, Maximo Lorenzo, Jason Ibarra)

Anyway, at first things were slow. Deadly slow. To the theme of “Hey, man, you’re holding up the line,” being laughingly said at the one and only guy who was there. Yeah. But that’s the thing. The bunch of us are not exactly the most serious bunch you’ll ever meet. I worried a bit at first. That I was somehow letting these guys down, things were moving too slow and they had all shown up and… but no. Everyone was relaxed and easy (Nick is always easy…) and it was all right. We took things in stride.

Christ, if you ever get time to hang out with Nick, for example, I highly recommend it. There’s a reason he’s also known as “America’s Feisty Sweetheart.” Actually I’m not sure about that last part, but he told me it was true. Nick also calls me Julie, though, so what do I know?

Moving right along… people started to show up and get their free print. Jason was awesome enough to make 11×17 thick stock prints of the two page spread (sans lettering) from the story he did with DJ and I:

Yup, everyone got one of those free. And then they worked their way down that table and each one of us stopped talking, texting and otherwise being foolish long enough to thank them and sign the book. It was fun seeing so many people come up and pick the book up and flip through it and marvel at it. It’s a 512 page brick of amazing comics. You get stopped into a minor bit of awe when you first flip through it. I know I did when I first put my hands on it, and I co-edited the blasted thing.

It got later and we got rowdier. Dan Masso and Patricia (I hope she doesn’t kill me, I can’t find her last name in my memory banks right now) showed,. A bunch of us went from the store to a bar nearby where we sat and drank and talked for longer than we had sat and signed in the first place.

As Joe said at some point “I love that a bunch of comic people are sitting talking about food and cats and not comics” and he had a point. We weren’t there because we were networking, and making contacts, and all of that. We were hanging out because we honestly deeply enjoyed each other’s company. I wish everyone had been able to join us – another time.

It brings home what Popgun is for me. It’s a party. Yes it is a crushing fuckton of work a lot of the times. I won’t deny that. But the people who contribute to it are great people who love making comics and are interesting, fun, folks. They make doing that work worth it.

At the end of the day Popgun 4 sold out at Hanley’s. D.J. ran a similar (but I hear bigger – they had music and food and drink at the party itself) event at Metldown Comics in LA. They sold out, too. Aw, yeah, Popgun.

So Attila was telling me about something and he included a bit that sparked something else in my head and so now I present to you the hit T.V. find of the day week month year decade – CSI: Metallica

Starring:
Detective James Hetfield – Lead Vocals / Rhythm Guitar / Forensic Anthropology
Detective Lars Ulrich – Drums / Criminalistics
Detective Kirk Hammett – Lead Guitar / Vocals / Digital Forensics
Detective Robert Trujillo – Bass / Vocals / Forensic Entomology

Hetfield: All right boys, what’ve we got?

Ulrich: I think it was illegal downloaders, man.
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