A snidbit taken from his blog--
"I'm dying every fucking second. I have no studio. I have no "people". Sharknife Co. Ltd. (tm) is all one guy. It takes a shit ass load of energy and intelligence to construct an entire universe for this shit!!! I'm not complaining!!! I FUCKING LOVE TO DO IT. But without instant success, piles of royalty checks or some kind of media tie-in deal, the OGN format is amazingly hard for a young BASICALLY "freelance" artist to commit to."I've been thinking about the same thing too, if you read my entry about the benefit a monthly anthology would be for all these post-manga-ogn creators. When I was drawing ECR volume 1, it was amazing to finish but jumping into volume 2 I knew something wasn't right.
The whole format of the OGN-- 150 someodd page books with no previous solitication in smaller form-- is totally backwards and I think we're going to see a lot of artists (myself included) trading in the longer format for monthly or quarterly books.
Again, this is where an anthology would fit in but I don't know who in their right mind would want to organize something like that. "Hearding Cats" indeed! I'm curious to see how the Yen Press anthology does, Chris Arrant has an interview with Kurt Hassler up on Newsarama where they mention that the anthology will be monthly, and maybe starting in late 2008. I'm really curious to see how it does. I'll be buying it for Svet's new comic Nightschool!
Kind of along these lines also, I'm getting pretty sick of having my book shelved with the manga, and being marketed as manga, and having manga written as the genre of the book, I dunno. I guess I just feel like my stuff doesn't fit in with the rest of the manga and could potentially do better if it was marketed differently at least in the direct market. I also wish it was printed bigger. And monthly. And I want a pony. Maybe when the movie comes out ha ha ha! XD
SPEAKING OF MOVIES... I don't know how many people know yet, but East Coast Rising was optioned for an animated movie! How exciting, huh? I can't say much yet but I have my fingers crossed. I've had two near-misses with Hollywood, maybe third time will be a charm? Right now the step is "find a director." It's pretty cool to think about anyway. Now whenever I listen to a song I always think "This would make a good theme song" ha ha! Good times. More info on this later. Don't hold your breath, these things take time. A whole lotta precious time.
I'm also almost finished scanning and formatting "Minis," my mini comic comic. It's 160 pages and 6x9. I'm shooting for a matte cover with spot varnish. Spare no expense. This will be out for Mocca and for sale on my site or something. It will be available online. I'll probably have a special deal for retailers or something. I want to go to Ikea and pick up some big bookshelf with tons of space so I can organize all my books and stuff!!!! Ikea!!! You are so far away and I don't have a car and your shipping is expensive!!! But Nature will find a way!!!
13 comments:
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you live in NYC...the alleys are littered with free furniture...a little paint...a little uring b-gone and you're set....think positive....and i know the feeling about working independantly..i've been working on this doc for almost a year.....and it will be another six months before anything is ready to show...and i have another doc i am working on that won't be done till next summer at the earliest....keep rockin though...no using bandits of the acoustic revolution....their in my rat patrol doc...
I'm happy to say that while my comics shop has a manga shelf, my comics guy puts ECR with the indie stuff away from the manga.
Hi Becky,
On a recent trip to Borders to pick up "East Coast Rising," I found it shelved with the manga, alpha by title. Oddly, Eric Wight's "My Dead Girlfriend" was tucked in with the Yanqui GNs, alpha by author. I'm not sure that spot will help Wight's sales since the Western GN section is organized haphazardly by publisher or author or title (which means if you're Warren Ellis, your trades are scattered across the entire span of the shelves). I'm not sure that Borders could make it any more complicated to find a given book, particularly since they generally display only one or two copies of each.
I'm with you that comics are comics and that shelving your stuff with the manga is like shelving the Beatles in the skiffle section of the record store. But retailers don't seem to have a clue how to present material that isn't manga. It's sad, and it's not exactly rocket science.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to v.2 of "East Coast" and to the "Minis" collection wherever they might be shelved. Quality cannot be constrained by shelf space!
FYI - I'd recommend steering clear of the big, boxy Ikea shelves (like the 6'x 6' monsters). They're not structurally sound and tend to accordian (especially if your floors aren't level). You'll end up reinforcing the monster with lots of strategically placed elbow brackets.
Cheers,
Bill
yo,
Congrats on optioning ECR! Be wary of these hollywood types though. I've had my fare share of people trying to sweet talk me. And at one point had someone writing a script adaptation of my book. Things went awry and luckily I was able to squash it. before it got out of hand. Did you get optioned through a deal with TokyoPop, or was it all on your own? (if you don't mind me axxing. ;) )
I must totally agree with you and Rey about the long format book thing. I had a OGN slated to be published that was going to be near 200pages. Halfway through I just burned the hell out! I mean the HELL out. I essentially quite making comics, and technically have yet to return to it full time.
That's probably going to change this summer... fingers crossed!
Congrats on The East Coast Rising deal!
dude, what's up Becky? aside from seein' your books in forbidden planet its been a million years since i bumped into you. I still love your work, finish reforming the comic industry so that i can learn to draw a graphic novel and sell some copies. Hurry up.
I'm all for serialized anthologies if the price is low. The problem with the industry right now is that people view monthly books as collectibles, therefore they have to be high quality, therefore, they're expensive. The way the industry is now, it's more cost effective for consumers to buy graphic novels. I'm hoping that Yen Press succeeds, so maybe other publishers will follow.
As a creator, I would love for people to be able to read my stuff every month (kind of a moot point right now, anyway, since I'm not published, professionally, at least). (Except, realistically, it would probably be 2 months for me, since I'm the slowest artist in the world, and a control freak.) But I wouldn't want kids to be choosing between buying my comic or lunch at school.
I think I'm pretty much torn on the issue. I can see why comics should be serialized, but I can also see why people would want to put out graphic novels. Prose novels aren't released as individual chapters before the whole book goes to print, so why should comics be different. They have pictures, but they're still literature.
And manga as a genre is retarded. I've bitched so much about this by now, and you know how I feel on the issue, so I don't need to go into detail. Although I do love bringing it up. hee hee.
By the way, it's Kurt Hassler, not Ken. XD
Becky... I should prolly call you. But three days in a row with no sleep and my book is done, it feels like I broke out of prison!!!
I hope things go smoothly with ECR movie stuff, I wanna see that film! =D It's ironic that your book got optioned for film and it's the one that TP doesn't seem to know how to sell to people (really is it that hard? Pirates and cool people?). I'm with you. I don't want to be published by anyone that calls my stuff "manga" ever again. But I still want to do a graphic novel, but just because the project demands it (reman). I have another story that would probably fare better serialized. I guess there's positives and negatives to both, but working on S&S2 with a team of people for the last leg of the race was a total blast. I want all my comics to be made that way from now on, it's faster, it looks better, and it's way more fun. Much less stress on one pair of shoulders and you can be social again. It's awesome.
Holy, shoot! A movie would be awesome!!
The problems with anthologies for me are all related to coordinating a bunch of people into one deadline. doing that monthly would be insane.
But I'm always thinking of smaller anthologies that could work. Like two or three stories (okay, maybe even four) per issue, with a small group of people involved.
I think one of the wonderful things about Love and Rockets is just that. I can read chapters and short stories from all hernandez brothers in each issue and, later on, one comple story is collected in a better paper and nice cover stock. But i think somehow all their stories have something in common, and that helps to give each book a face, an identity.
I totally bought a 14 year old mini van named Roland Shipe just to haul art shit, and shit from the dump. (yes from). I would say I'd help you out so I'd have an excuse to bug you like how puddy from siendfield bugged jackson publik while wearing his blue rubber THE TICK suit (jackson wrote for the tick live action show), And somehow got to play Brock Samson because Publik remembered him.
But I live live ten minutes from hanover and as I recall you live way further than that.
I used my van powers today to make my not so local comic retailer embarassed he didn't have KING CITY, even though I'm not even sure it's been RELEASED. (I'm pumped)
And lastly and with much ado, Although DOOM could probably beat psycho mantis in an arm wrestleing competition, I think mantis might be cooler. Granted, I just vaugly remember the fantastic four saturday morning cartoon from about ten years ago. I think these villains work on different levels. DOOM's all bone crushing world domination americana and mantis is all creapy japanese crazee.
They are building an Ikea over here in Portland (okay so I'm not exactly in Portland but close enough). Maybe you really should consider that west coast move.
congrats on the eisner nod becky, just saw it on comicsreporter a couple minutes ago :)
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