Pierre Speaks: Inspiration!

One question that often comes back is;

Where do you get your inspiration?

Once you become a professional... there is one thing you learn.... if you need to wait for inspiration... go find another job.

Once you start working on a project.... there is no room for waiting around for the Muses to come and visit you.

You usually have some pretty tight deadlines that must be done “yesterday”.... so the last thing you can do is wait for some sort of inspiration.

Inspiration is for amateurs.

It may seem harsh, but it’s the truth.

Under a tight deadline, there is only one thing you can do.

You sit down at your desk/drawing table/computer and you get started, and you work, work, and work. You work until you are done... or until you hit your deadline.

As an artist, you have no choice... you must be able to sit down and be able to draw whatever the client needs on demand.

Sure some research will be needed, and some of that research might be more “inspiring” then some others. Or some projects might be more inspiring to work on then others. But in the end, you have to be able to sit down and just produce the work.

Sure sometimes you will be happy with the result, some other times you will not. But you cannot afford to wait around. You HAVE to get the work done.

John Romita JR has a great name for this. He calls it the “deadline style”.

Essentially, when you must pay the bills and the deadline for the project you are working on is just around the corner.... there is no two ways about it... you sit down at your work station and you produce the work.

There is no miracle or magic formula.
You sit down and do the work.

I know that I am somewhat repeating myself over and over.... but I often hear the same thing from aspiring creators.

Once in a while, when people find out that I draw for a living, aspiring artists will want to know how to become a professional artist, or aspiring writers will want me to draw their “great idea” of a project that they have come up with.

When I ask them to show me their portfolio or some script samples.... often the answer is the same...

“I have nothing to show, I am not really inspired right now.”

Usually, if I did not know it already, that confirms to me that what I am dealing with is an amateur... in the worst sense of the term. Depending on how well I know the person, I may just tell them that that was a very amateurish answer.

Too often, what that means is that they are just waiting for someone to take them by the hand and “help them” produce the actual work.

By “help them” what I really mean is doing the actual work for them.

Amateurs will sometimes get the germ of an idea, and stop there thinking that someone else can do the rest of the work.

They think that now that they did the hard part, they think that now that they have “created” the idea... they can let someone else put together their “brilliant idea”.

Coming up with the idea is just the tip of the iceberg. After that... the REAL work actually starts.

You sit down and you work.... work and work.

That is how you provoke inspiration.

By working.

Not by waiting around for the work to create itself out of thin air.... or by waiting for someone else to do the work for you.

Not that you cannot have a partner with whom you are creating the work. Heck Flashback universe was done from Jim and I collaborating with each other.

But what I am talking about is when someone just waits around for “divine providence” to do the work for them somehow.

It can take just a few minutes to come up with an idea. But putting that idea together (doing the research, writing various drafts of the script, designing the characters/props/locations) that can take weeks and weeks. Heck that can take months and months.

And sadly there is no time to just wait around.

I know that some will also use the white page syndrome as an excuse... but that is pretty much the same excuse as “I am not really inspired right now”.

Once as I tried to explain to someone that, you do not wait for inspiration, you provoke it. I was told by that person that she did not what to do like Van Gogh and cut off her hear in other to kick-start the creation process.

No need to go that far or to be that drastic.

A very simple trick... make a mark... any mark on your white page. A circle, an “X” or a triangle. Anything. And once you have done that... you have no more excuses. You are no longer facing a white page and can get to work.

The same thing for someone who is facing a blank Word document on the computer screen. Write something.

Anything.

And then keep on writing. And once you have done so, you are no longer facing the blank Word document and you can go back and edit what you did write.

Now if you will forgive me, I will go back and edit what I wrote for this Blog. ;)

Until next time.

Mister Crimson Vs Ace

Mister Crimson Episode 46
In which we begin the climatic battle between Mister Crimson and Ace of Spades

Read it here .:

Fawcett Universe

Interesting thing about blogs - people can comment on articles that are many months old as if they were just published, which can lead you to discover all sorts of things. This was the case with a post I had about Kid Eternity which recently elicited an interesting response from Cynthia Finnegan wherein she let me know about a connection between Kid Eternity and Captain Marvel Jr. that I was unaware of...

Actually, Freddy was a year older than the Kid, and ENB even tied in Junior's meeting Sherlock Holmes to the Kid!

Upon further research (which is this case was clicking some links) I discovered that Cynthia runs an awesome Golden Age site dedicated to Fawcett Comics called FawcettUniverse.com

Go check out her site as she has a lot of interesting stuff there!

Here's a Question: DC has made 3 (or is it 4?) attempts to revive the Marvel Family for modern readers. I'm incline to say the 70's versions were probably the closest to the mark as they enlisted CC Beck to help with that version. The Jerry Ordway Power of Shazam version ran the longest and I've heard good things about it as well. (It came out at a time when I was working in a cafeteria, and had zero cash for comics...)

However, I tend to think that Captain Marvel is a little like the Quality Heroes in that as soon as you try to put him in a modern setting, you lose something. I don't know Kieth Giffen seem to have some fun with him in the Justice League. Still, my question is this: What is the best way to revamp a Golden Age hero? What do you keep and what do your revise?

Anyway, in keeping with the Fawcett theme, I present two awesome issues of Captain Marvel today.



[ Captain Marvel 43 ]



[ Captain Marvel 44 ]

Enjoy!

- Jim

How do you protect your ideas?

Recently Marvel announced a project that I thought looked a little familiar. It's a new character written by Daniel Way called Hitman Monkey who will be appearing in Deadpool, and then as a Marvel Digital Comic.



Because I thought it seemed awful similar to something the Action Age guys had already published last year... Exterminape



Now when I first saw Hitman Monkey, I thought the two ideas were similar, but didn't say much about it because I sometimes see connections and patterns that other people don't see. (It's a blessing and a curse...)

But this week over at Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston has a post about another person working on a project called King Monkey for Zuda. In the comments thread this is spun off in that post, another poster makes the same Exterminape/Hitman Monkey connection that I did. (Albeit, this poster doesn't exactly make a favorable comparison, but people on messageboards can be douchebags sometimes...)

Anyway, this brings me to the point of my post today.

Seeing the problem of people sort of stepping on each others ideas like this makes me wonder, exactly how do you protect your idea in this day and age?

In the old days, the best way to ensure a poor man's copyright was to send yourself a script in the mail and not open the letter - the idea being that a US Postmark would hold up in court as proof that you came up with an idea first. (With the given assumption that you will then use the concept or script in a working format and not just put it in your desk drawer. If you just send yourself ideas all day, but don't actually implement them, then the poor man's copyright is worthless.)

Now, I don't really think that Hitman Monkey is really going to tread the same ground as Exterminape, but what if it did? How would one take action if you felt your ideas were being usuped by a multi-billion dollar corporation? Does a blog timestamp stand up in court as proof of first concept? Maybe this whole idea of just throwing ideas onto the internet isn't the best course of action?

I have no clue, so please feel free to tell me what you think!

Have a great weekend,

- Jim

MAKE MINE EC! Comics in the Philippines

Editors Note: Normally on Wednesdays, Pierre regales us with stories of growing up reading comics in Canada.

However, I thought it might be interesting to turn the globe a bit and get a different perspective, so today I'm presenting an article by Augusto P. Surtida, a comic book reader from the Philippines.

MAKE MINE EC! Memories of a comics aficionado from the Far East
by Augusto P. Surtida

Being a former colony of the United States, the Philippines imbibed its politics (liberal democracy), language (English), aspirations, trends, fashion, and pop culture.

Pop culture wa exemplified by Hollywood, sports, recording artists, books, paperbacks, magazines, Sunday funnies, and comic books.

The second world war disrupted all these. But when Douglas McArthur came back in 1945 to keep his promise (“I shall return”) and liberated the Philippines, the good times rolled on.

With the post-war boom, the foreign imports were back with a vengeance. As a baby boomer (born in 1947), I was also a sucker for foreign imports, particularly US print publications including comic books.

As a young child, I was already fascinated by the graphic medium called comics. I could already discern great artworks and drawings, which fueled my choice of comic books to buy and collect.

At first it was the Sunday funnies which were reprinted by local broadsheet newspapers. I always looked forward to weekends because of the comic strips: Tarzan (drawn by John Celardo), Lil Abner, Nancy, Johnny Hazard, Mandrake the Magician, Prince Valiant, The Lone Ranger, The Phantom, Terry and the Pirates, the Spirit, etc., were some of my regular fix during weekends.

The Fifties
As the fifties progressed, I turned my attention to comic books. There was a wide variety to choose from. Classics Illustrated, EC, DC, Atlas, Harvey, Dell, etc. They were sold in stores, newsstands, and kiosks on street corners that also sold US magazines: Life, Look, Saturday Evening post, Ladies Home Journal, Colliers, Argosy, Saga, National Geographic, etc. Classics Illustrated was the most expensive. They sold for 50 centavos (exchange rate then was 1 US dollar to 2 pesos).

My favorites, though were the EC publications with the titles Vault of Horror, Tales from the Crypt, Frontline Combat, Two-fisted Tales, etc. I wasn’t much on the superhero genre although I read them, too. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Plastic Man, Shazam, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Fly, etc.

My interests were westerns, horror, sci-fi, adventure war stories, and the classics. Samples of these were Lash La Rue, Tom Mix, Rocky Lane, Roy Rogers, Kid Colt Outlaw, Two-Gun Kid, Wyatt Earp, Gunsmoke Western, Billy the Kid, Sheriff of Tombstone, Outlaws of the West, Combat Kelly, and Lorna the Jungle Girl.

And of course there were the TV and movie tie-ins of Dell comics which were: Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Lone Ranger, Cheyenne, Range Rider, Tales from Wells Fargo, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Tonto, Rawhide, Maverick, Gene Autry, Rifleman, Bonanza, Wagon Train, Texas John Slaughter, Elfego Vaca, Lawman, Sugarfoot, Jake Pearson and Tales of the Texas Rangers, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Rex Allen, etc.

The other non-western titles from Dell were Tarzan, Turok, Son of Stone, Lassie, Sea Hunt, 77 Sunset Strip, Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, and Jungle Jim. From DC, I bought western titles like Hopalong Cassidy, Tomahawk, and Johnny Thunder. Thunder and Cassidy were illustrated by Gil Kane, one of my favorites then.

War titles from DC which I patronized were Our Army at War (Sgt. Rock), All American Men of War, Our Fighting Forces, G.I. Combat. I also bought the series Sea Devils from DC primarily because it was illustrated by another favorite who was Russ Heath and The Brave and Bold, featuring The Viking Prince, illustrated by Joe Kubert, also another favorite. From Atlas, I bought non-western titles like Tales to Astonish, Uncanny tales, and other similar titles.

I had almost all the titles in Classics Illustrated, including Junior Classics and their other series: The World Around Us. In addition, when EC publications morphed to Mad Comics, I continued to buy.

On to the Sixties
By this time, Atlas Publications became Marvel, but I didn’t buy those new superheroes by Stan Lee, simply because the artworks didn’t grab me. I resorted to borrowing or renting the new Marvel titles.

At DC, I bought a rare superhero title, Hawkman, because it was drawn by Joe Kubert. I continued to buy their war titles, particularly the new one by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert: Enemy Ace, using Manfred von Richtofen a.k.a. The Red Baron as template.

Other Kubert opus which I bought were Firehair, a western, but it didn’t last long. Over at Marvel, I bought Kull the Conqueror also simply it was drawn by John Severin.

By this time, my budget was strained because I was entering college and could not afford the imported titles that I used to like. Besides, some new local titles were worth considering. I am referring to the titles by CRAF Publications. CRAF was born out of the ashes of the defunct Ace Publications, which was closed down due to labor problems. Ace Publications was considered to be the premiere “komiks” publications of the Philippines then. It started in 1947 and ended in 1962. The best local artists and writers were working for Ace then.

CRAF churned out four titles every fortnight: Redondo Komix, Alcala Fight Komix, Fight Klasix, and Amado Lovers Komix. Two masters were incorporators of CRAF, Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala, considered two of the best Filipino illustrators of all time. I collected all the CRAF titles because they featured the best illustrators in the land.

By this time Classics Illustrated had ceased operation, and Gold Key (formerly Dell comics) became rare and almost disappeared. The two competing publications were Marvel and DC because of its superheroes.

By this time also, I reined in my buying of imported comics because of budget difficulties.

The Seventies and Beyond
By the early seventies, I became very selective with my purchases since CRAF Publications folded up in the late sixties. I continued buying DC, however, my choices were extremely few like Enemy Ace, Tarzan of the Apes series by Joe Kubert, and the new western series, Jonah Hex, by John Albano and Tony Zuniga. Even after Zuniga left Jonah, I continued to patronize the Series. I also bought the other DC titles that were featuring works by Filipino artists: House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Swamp Thing, Rima the Jungle Girl, etc.

At Marvel I also did the same thing, that of buying titles which featured Filipino artists such as Conan the Barbarian, and others. My attention, however, was focused now on the magazine format, black and white comics by publisher Jim Warren. I was amazed at the consistent high quality artwork and scripts being spewed by Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, and 1984. The “Spanish conquest” and “Filipino invasion” of warren magazines added to my interest. My favorite Spanish illustrators toiling for Warren were: Joe Ortiz, Esteban Maroto, Jose Gonzales, Luis Bermejo, and Auraleon. It was like an all-star list.

As if it weren’t enough, American illustrators added to the list like Berni Wrightson, Richard Corben, Frank Thorne, Wallace Wood, Russ Heath, John Severin, and Frank Frazetta. And to up the ante, Filipino masters Alex Nino, Alfredo Alcala, Nestor Redondo, Angel Laxamana, Fred Carillo, Jess Jodloman, etc. were also strutting their stuff. It was too good to be true. And then to provide competition to Warren Publications, Heavy Metal came out. It was the stateside version of the French Metal Hurlant. Moebius, Bilal Serpieri, and others were enough reason to buy the magazine. Both Warren and Heavy Metal were much more expensive than DC, Marvel, and others.

Heavy Metal, if memory serves me right, was sold at P45 – P50 pesos for a brand new copy, in legitimate bookstores and newsstands. They came cheaper if it was a used copy and came from the black market.

Warren magazines were not sold at legitimate outlets. They all came out used from the black market.

I often asked the peddlers at corner kiosks and magazine stands where they got their stuff. They told me they were either from Subic Bay in Olongapo, Zambales where the 7th Fleet of the US Navy was docked, or from Clark Air Base in Pampanga, where the US air force was cooling its heels after air strikes in Vietnam (this was the height of the Vietnam war).

The magazine peddlers got their merchandize from black market operators outside the bases. They collect all stuff thrown out by grunts of the US armed forces and sold them outside the bases. The items wound up in Manila and elsewhere.

Warren magazines sold for P25 – P35 pesos then, and depended on one’s haggling. Other than Heavy Metal, Warren, DC, and Marvel, Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, National Geographic, etc. were sold too; I even got the Pacific Stars and Stripes for free. It had an excellent comic strip section and sports pages.

But this didn’t last long. After the Vietnam war, Mount Pinatubo eruption, and the termination of the US bases agreement, the supply dried up. Warren magazines ceased existence in the early 80’s. My interest in Heavy Metal also became less when work of Moebius illustrators became few and far between.

During the 80’s, I practically stopped buying comics except for a few notable ones, like adaptation of Lone Wolf and Cub. My interest was on paperbacks by then: Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry, Mac Bolan, Death Merchant, and Casca were titles I bought.

By the 90’s, my collection was almost a trickle. I bought the Punisher series, Rivers of Blood because it was illustrated by Joe Kubert.

By the 2000’s I stopped buying entirely. Graphic novels are unaffordable at P500 pesos and above and now I have resorted to borrowing from aficionados.

But sometimes, if I get lucky, there have been a few purchases I remember at bargain bins featuring comic books by Image, Dark Horse, Topps, DC/Vertigo, and Marvel.

Among them were: 300 by Frank Miller, Sin City, also by Miller, Dracula, illustrated by Esteban Maroto, and Indiana Jones, illustrated by Leo Duranona.

Now, looking back, I realize that my generation were basically addicts for American culture during the halcyon days of the 50’s – 60’s which included pop culture and its many manifestations on trends, books, rock and roll, movies, fashion, etc. We were also partakers of the era when the US was at its height politically, economically, and culturally.

Augusto is a true-blue comics aficionado. He is retired and lives in Naga City, Camarines Sur in Southern Luzon, Philippines.

Mister Crimson Episode 45

Mister Crimson Episode 45
Wherein a familiar face returns

Read it here .:

PD Heroes In Web Comics

Today I want to spotlight two web comics that feature Public Domain Heroes.

The first is Heroes-Inc, written and illustrated by Scott Austin. His story gives us an interesting modern updating of the characters that seems to retain the spirit of the characters very well. Check out this nice bit of teaser text:

In a world where the Allies of WWII lost the war and superheroes are believed to be nothing more than pulp fiction, the world is shocked by alarming reports of super villains emerging around the globe to terrorize and wreak havoc.

Archibald Masters, The American Crusader, now an old man, sets out on a mission to find the remaining Golden Age heroes and take DNA samples from them in order to create a new generation of heroes to serve and protect the country that is so dear to his heart.

The other one to check out is Out of Print, produced by Michael Parkinson. OOP is a parody web comic that uses a lot of familiar Public Domain Heroes in some pretty funny situations.

Out of Print uses characters from the golden age of comic books that are now in the public domain. In fact the strip itself is set around a support group for superheroes that find themselves in that very situation.

Of interest to me, and probably to no one else, is how both of these web comics have a bit on their site explaining why it's okay for the creators to use the characters they are using. I wonder if they (like me) get emails from people valiantly defending the non-existent character copyrights for huge multi-national corporations?

Here is a perfect example:

Dear Flashback Universe you should remove your comics if you don't want to be sued by IDW they are the only ones who are to be printing Black Terror and you will be sued by them if you do not take your comics downs. - Andros.

Why do people feel the need to try and convince me that I'm going to burn in Copyright-Hell because I've posted a public domain issue of the GA Daredevil? Are they Alex Ross fans gone bad or something? Do they think I'm somehow depriving Alex Ross or IDW or whoever of some necessary source of income? I have to ask because they rarely want to reply when I explain how Public Domain works.

Anyway, enough of that... have a great day!

- Jim