End Of The Year, End of the World

Hi! Miss me?

It's been a crazy few months here at Phortress Phantasmic, mostly due to an overload of illustration work (which is a very good thing, of course, for my ability to not starve to death and those who enjoy watching me not starve to death). Things are calming down a little now, so it's time to take inventory of...stuff.

Firstly! Lemuria is back, obviously, and if you haven't been following it, it's recently featured the return of Hordo of Atlantis from the second-ever story. Plus lots of pirates. I do have every intention of colouring these strips as soon as I can find a moment to do so...

I also want to finally return to Freak U. and yes, even Night Shift; I'm going to say Freak U. will return sometime in February. Night Shift, I'm not sure about. Even Amazon Space Rangers, which is effectively dead as a comic, is sort of back in the form of a series of prints I'm working on...here's the first.

More on that later. Um, what else? I guess I'll bang out some reviews for the end of 2011 and early 2012:

Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows and Sherlock, Season 2: It's kind of weird how pop culture is suddenly Sherlock-happy, isn't it? And now apparently there's an "American Sherlock" TV show in development, which will probably just be "House meets CSI" crap. Anyway, it must hurt Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. right down in their spleen to know that their big-budget theatrical steampunk version of Sherlock Holmes is being so consistently upstaged by a BBC production starring a previously-unknown and the guy from The Office. I mean, the Downey Sherlock Holmes movies seem to make decent bank, and I actually liked the first one somewhat--putting aside the stupid action movie setpieces, the script actually captured the tone and characterizations of the stories, and avoided some of the pitfalls modern Holmes adaptations sometimes fall into (Watson isn't an idiot, the supernatural is revealed to be fraudulent). But Game of Shadows was just awful--loud, bloated, bombastic, without a trace of wit or refinement. Yes, refinement. Sherlock Holmes should be REFINED, dammit. He should also spend at least a little of his time, y'know, solving mysteries, something Ritchie apparently has no interest in whatsoever. Even worse, the movie's version of Moriarty is staggeringly bland, which seems like it's the last thing Ritchie would get wrong.

This, more than anything, is something that looks completely embarrassing when stacked up against the Stephen Moffat show, because this was the season they got to play with Moriarty, and they absolutely nailed it. The accepted wisdom on Moriarty is that there's something "everymannish" about him, as if he had no personality of his own and could blend in perfectly with the background, the better to manipulate his criminal network. The movie interprets this, as I said, as "let's make Moriarty really, really boring". The show has a very clever take, as we saw last season: first by having Moriarty "speak" using other people's voices, and then revealing him as an unsettling creature whose speech patterns seem to vibrate at random across the entire spectrum of human speech, while never once sounding natural--an obvious advantage when your archnemesis is a guy who can tell everything about you from a glance and a few words. Some people seem to have found this a little annoying, and actor Andrew Scott has toned it down a lot this season, but it's still present. Scott is creepy every second he's on screen--he knows exactly when to go over the top and when to tamp it down a little (but only a little). His over-the-topness is employed in a highly restrained manner, if that makes any sense. But then, it may be necessary to go a little over-the-top when you're sharing the screen with Benedict Cumberbatch. On the flip side, Lara Pulver plays it perfectly cool as Irene Adler, in "A Scandal in Belgravia", somehow managing to be impassive and expressive at the same time, and she too strikes sparks with Cumberbatch--if this season has an overriding flaw, it's that Martin Freeman as Watson gets pushed a little too far to the side by all the larger-than-life personalities.

In general, though, this season is better than the mostly-great first, which was weighed down by the inferior (and racist) "The Blind Banker" and a somewhat chaotic plot in "The Great Game". This seasons' weakest entry is "The Hounds of Baskerville", which is a little padded, but which still manages to get some real mileage out of pitting Sherlock against the supernatural, and develops the theme of Sherlock's increasing humanity in a smart way, by having him deal with crippling terror, something he never thought he'd have to do. "Belgravia" is probably the best single episode of the show so far (for the record--SPOILERS--my opinion is that Adler faked the whole scenario at the end for the sake of faking her death, but also to see if she could draw Sherlock out; so did in fact "win" their game in a sense, by revealing him to have feelings. That's just my interpretation, though, and if Moffat meant for it to be a straightforward "Sherlock saves the day" moment, I do think that's a misstep). And Moriarty's plan in "The Reichenbach Fall" is extremely clever, a brilliant way of upping the stakes and showing why he's a real threat to Holmes, as opposed to just a guy with a really epic scheme to take over the world.

I *am* a little skeptical that Moffat can pull off the reveal of how Holmes pulled off his triumph at the end there--Moffat's shown he's not immune to illogical deus ex machinas in Doctor Who, as the last season showed--but I'll definitely be watching. Oh hell yes.

Hmmm, that ended up taking a lot more space than I expected. OK, I guess I now have the material for a whole series of posts!

Since JUNE?!? Yikes.

And then there was the time I stopped blogging for four months.

I have to admit that my heart isn't in blogging and tweeting and all the online social stuff the way it is with producing my webcomics. (Not that I've been updating those particularly consistently either...) I often feel like I'm generating a lot of content that's sort of pointless and redundant and nothing to do with my real strengths. There are so many good, intelligent bloggers out there that it can get a little intimidating.

But by the same token, I've realized that I do spend a lot of time commenting on message board threads and whatnot, so why not just organize my thoughts elsewhere into coherent blog posts? Voila, free content.

Combine that with actually freeing up some time after a month and a half of being incredibly busy with illustration projects, and having some big projects on the boils, and I think I'm ready to do this again.

OK, so, where is we?

--I broke down and got a DeviantArt page. I still have some problems with DA, not the least of which is the name (which far too many contributors seem to take literally...part of the reason I resisted this for a long time is not wanting to get linked in any way to, say, people who draw anime furry panty shots), but it IS a good way to network and promote yourself as an artist, so what the hell. And immediately on the heels of sneering at people's sexy drawings, here's a bunch of sexy drawings I did for a local band (the somewhat less sexy cover of the album is here.) (Wait, I apologize to the band members of Disphraxia for suggesting they aren't sexy.)

--I'm on twitter, too, @prankster36 . I've always felt Twitter to be a bit of a waste of time, but again, promotional tool. Plus, I was reading an article with...I think it was Patton Oswalt, and he opened my eyes a bit, pointing out that Twitter can be a valid medium for expression, encouraging conciseness and discipline.

--I'm still cranking out reviews for Thor's Comic Column on Chud.com; over the past two months, of course, I've weighed in a bit on The New 52 (short version: it could have revolutionized comics, and instead DC decided to offer up a heapin' helping of the same-old, same-old, served with a generous dollop of sexism and a truly laughable nostalgia for the early 90s, which aren't ever coming back comics people.) In terms of comics that are actually good? G. Willow Wilson and Pablo Rivera's Mystic has been a wonderful surprise, an intelligent fantasy comic that actually manages to achieve a clever political subtext (as in, tied up with political concerns with our world, even though it's set in a fantastical universe) in an elegant and non-preachy way that you can totally ignore if you just want to read a comic that is basically Harry Potter meets Mean Girls, which is what this is. And Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba's (and Fabio Moon's, though he's not drawing this arc) awesomely mind-melting Casanova has returned with a new miniseries, Avaritia, that tops the already-exemplary work these guys were doing. I just read the first of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels, and it's obvious that Fraction is basically attempting to do one of those, except on acid (and they were pretty trippy to begin with). READ THIS COMIC, people.

--I'm planning to participate in NaNoWriMo, though not in the conventional way. For me it'll be NaNoReNoWriMo (National Not Really a Novel Writing Month). More to come.

--Also probably of interest to no one but a certain blonde Dutch lady: you are the best girlfriend ever. Love you, sweetheart. And I promise I won't grow a mustache for next month.

Here endeth the lesson. Go forth and multiply.

Detecting Phantasmic Activity in proximity to the Web

OK, I surrender. I'm twittering now. I'm sure it's the kind of thing everyone will find utterly fascinating.

Perhaps less insipid content can be found at Chud, where Thor's Comic Column lives on. (Even though that particular page doesn't list me among the contributors for some reason....) New columns go up every Friday.

I'm working on a couple of big projects, one for an ongoing client, another for a potential client (which will be really cool if it gets off the ground), and a third which is entirely personal, a gift for my sister and her new husband, who just got hitched over the weekend. In case you were wondering what's been occupying my time. It's a pair of nifty-looking Art Nouveau-ish posters, and I'll post 'em as soon as they're finished.

As for strips, as you may have noticed, a new Freak U. went up today, and I'm hopefully back on track from this point on. New Lemuria on April 4th. I'm still trying to get the backlog of strips coloured in, don't know how long that'll be, but I'm trying to get it done soonish. Possibly by the end of April, at which point I plan to unleash a marketing blitz on the web. Stay tuned.

Plans for 2011

I know, I know...bad blogger.

There's two reasons I update this thing so rarely. One is that, when I get spare time between illustration commissions and whatever "real" job I happen to be working at the time, the priority is always going to be my comics. (That's Lemuria and Freak U. for those of you just now sneaking into the theater. The latter of which just came back, a day late, and the former of which will be returning this coming Monday, for the record. Hey, I might as well kick off the new year with some shilling!) The other is that I always feel like, if I'm going to blog, I want to do transcend links and "Hey, last night's Doctor Who sure was the ROXXOR"-type posts and do a real essay-type thing with pictures and gewgaws, like my epic Tintin post. And those take time and effort that I not only can't really spare, but a level of concentration that I don't have.

But I am going to make an attempt to do some more posts this year; I've got a couple of ideas for thematically linked series of posts, one on fantasy, and one on TV shows, which will hopefully help to generate new content. I'm also hoping to do more Bollblogging, and I'll be going back to reviewing comics for a certain major movie/pop culture site after the tragic failure of out column at JoBlo.com. (More about that next week.) Looking back--and this post sort of inadvertantly turned into a retrospective on this blog, didn't it?--I'm actually pretty proud of some of the writing I've done here over the past couple of years, so I say, it's time to get a little more serious about it...

Oh, and happy 2011!

As Promised....

...you can now buy Freak U. Volume 2 in a handsome 192-page trade paperback format. By clicking on that link. Right there. Or this picture:



Go do. Need money.

Whineblogging

FFWHOOOOOOFFFF. (That was me blowing the dust off this blog.)

Well. The Toronto FanExpo has been and gone--being the thing that, together with a trip to Nepal and a new girlfriend, has been occupying my summer. So yes--I do apologize for the lack of updates, both here and at Phantasmic Tales, and I do promise to be more regular with this stuff from here on out.

How was the show? It was...a little disappointing, to be honest. For one thing, there were some serious organizational issues, which Chris Bird has already touched on, but perhaps not emphatically enough. On Saturday, one of the people at my table was unable to get back into the convention despite being an exhibitor. That had to do with the fact that they packed us into the tiny North Hall, as Bird says, and then oversold--but it was also partly due to the pointlessly strict security. Exhibitors weren't simply allowed to show their passes to get in. Oh no. They had to get their passes punched for that day, and then get their hands stamped. Like what happens when you go to a club or a theme park. And they did it with the weakest, most water- (and sweat-) soluble ink I've ever seen. My co-exhibitor Justin was particularly pissed because he'd been planning to help set up, go home and shower, and then come back.

Regular patrons who bought three-day passes had it even worse: they were forced to wear a bracelet that they couldn't take off for three days. Seriously.

All of this was simply to prevent people trading passes, which is immensely stupid, particularly in the case of exhibitors. As my other co-exhibitor Nick pointed out, ticket sales are pretty marginal compared to the amount of money they make from exhibitors. By inconveniencing and insulting everyone to stop a relatively small number of people who'd be willing to go through all the rigamarole of trading passes back and forth, they probably lost more ticket sales than they saved. Again, this is particularly moronic when it comes to exhibitors, who have to sit at the table for hours--if I can find a friend who's willing to trade off my pass, is it really an immense loss to the con if we split our time there? Exhibitors are where you make your money, FanExpo. You gain so much more by accomodating them than you do by playing Scrooge.

The annoying part is that these shenanigans cast a pall over everyone, resulting in no one being in a purchasing mood. Our sales were way, way down from last year as a result.

So yeah. Not really worth spending all summer preparing for in that respect.

There were some bright spots, though. Fellow Durham Comics Guild members Dylan, Kris and Nathan sold out of their 16-page book, Larz, which I'd printed on our newly-purchased communal printer. Which seems to work OK, and may enable us to print our own stuff from now on. I also personally sold several copies of Freak U. Volume 2 (which I'll post a link to as soon as IndyPlanet approves it, promise). What was most important and exciting, though, were the many people I met and made a real connection with, many of which might lead to possibilities or new talent for the guild. I actually met not one but two very talented sets of creators making a comic called "SpyGuy"--one of whom, Mike Kitchen, has been a mainstay of the Toronto area conventions for a while now, along with his brother Blair. There was also the amazing Steve Mannion, who is NOT a Toronto mainstay, but has a great action-hero name. What's exciting is that he came up from the same sort of situation that I and most of the Guild are coming from, and he was full of tips 'n' tricks. In addition, a LOT of other people contacted us about appearing at other shows.

So a mixed bag this year, but in the long run it may end up paying off. But the important thing is...it's over.

Miss Me?

Been super-busy. Aside from trying to keep my head above water with Lemuria and Freak U (both of which will hopefully have new printed material by this summer) I've been tackling some major illustration work which will be keeping me busy for a few weeks yet. But I am going to make an effort to blog more; I've got two big ideas for ongoing posts which I'm hoping to launch within the week.

In the meantime, I'm still contributing to and now editing the new comics review column at JoBlo.com, so if you want to read more of my golden thoughts, there's the place! We're now weekly, with a new column every Tuesday.

This Is Not An April Fool's Joke

I am now officially part of the comics reviewin' team at JoBlo.com. Which, to be clear, is only just now coming into existence. The comics review column, not JoBlo itself.

Title TBD.

Excuses, Excuses...

So Sunday afternoon I get home from a baby shower* with the coming week largely clear of obligations, professional and personal. "All right!" I think. "I can use this week to catch up and get get ahead on my webcomics!" So I sit down and pencil this week's Freak U. and Lemuria, going great guns, all fired up to keep the pace going for the next few days...and by the time evening falls, I'm feeling an ominous tickle in my throat...

Monday morning I awaken to find myself buried under a pile of bricks. On closer inspection, the bricks turn out to be mucus, and Monday turns out to be Wednesday. Possibly time travel was involved. As far as I can remember.

At any rate, the biohazard seems to have receded to the point today where I can actually accomplish something beyond turning over frequently enough not to get bedsores. (OK, I exaggerate--I was briefly online, but I wasn't up to doing much of anything that didn't involve pressing a button or two.)

I mention all this because, despite the inauspicious start, I still have a fair amount of free time this week, and I'm hoping to use it so that you guys don't have to see anymore non-updated strips. Famous last words, I know...

Just so as not to leave this post as a bunch of whinging, here's a bit of linkblogging. The website Comics Alliance has made the wise move of employing comics blogger extraordinaire Chris Sims, and he, along with main editor Laura Hudson and...other guy Caleb Goellner, have been providing the vital public service of mocking some of the more idiotic and poorly-researched coverage of comics that have been popping up in the mainstream media of late. First they took on this eye-gougingly smarmy and cliche-packed CNN article, and now they've tackled a less absurd but still fairly dumb article about Mark Millar.

Oh, and speaking of ambitious plans of my own and entertaining comics blogging, I have a rather epic post about Tintin that should be going up in the next day or two. Yeah, Tintin. Can you stand the excitement?

*It's now pretty much normal for men to go to baby showers, right? I mean, I'm aware that's not how it was done, traditionally, but that tradition seems to have existed primarily because society wanted to keep baby-rearing squarely the responsibility of the ladies, which makes it pointless and outdated. And I've been to several amongst my baby-having friends. I'm not part of some cutting-edge progressive commune (contrary to what Americans seem to think of Canada) so I have to assume this is basically normal amongst my generation now.

I Found A Way To Make A Fantasy Webcomic About Blogging. Go Me.

A new Swordi and Sorcera story begins today in Lemuria!

(At the time of writing, the comic isn't completely coloured yet. But it went up on time! I'm improving!)

A Fiery Shower of Pixels Storming the Shore of Your Eyeballs

Lemuria issue #1, all 32 pages of it (including some that aren't online), is now available for download at DriveThru Comics, in both PDF and CBZ format. The cost is a mere 75 cents...just like comics used to be back in the good old days, when there were only four colours and the paper was all yellowy and rough, the way God intended. So for those of you who've always wanted to read Lemuria while curled up around the fire with a snifter of port, you can now do so.

Also, there's a Very nice four-star review from featured reviewer Brian LeTendre, which is kind of amazing, since it went up within 8 hours of the PDF file being uploaded. Efficient!

I'm hoping to have more downloadable stuff up at that site before the year is out. Will I let you know? Oh dear heavens yes.

Hour 25

24 Hour Comics Day: it is fun.



No, I'm not the shining golden god of the minifridge, I'm the guy with the navy blue shirt and nametag on the couch.



Yes, there's a reason why my workspace is covered with Archie comics. You will see why when I post my comic.



We held our marathon in Isabella's Chocolate Cafe in scenic downtown Oshawa. The owner graciously agreed to stay open all night, which necessitated starting at 10 am instead of noon.



As it happened, though, we were all gone by 4 am. Well, I assume we were. As of 3:30, when Mike and I left, there was still one person there--that would be Tom Savage, the guy on the far right, who was also the first to finish 24 pages, and was going for 30. In fact, Tom and I may be the only ones to have actually finished 24 pages at all--I won't know for sure until we compare notes. I assume most of the others are still in bed...

But as you may have derived from the above, yes, I finished 24 pages! Technically, I didn't finish inking the whole thing, so maybe I'm jumping the gun, but still, I consider that to be a real accomplishment (last year I got up to around page 13).

The whole experience was an incredible amount of fun. 24HCD really does need to be experienced as a group, in a communal location. I suspect it would have been even more exciting if this had been the first year and we'd been part of the whole worldwide comics jam--the main 24HCD site seems to have splintered off into a whole bunch of different blogs rather than a centralized site--but still, it was a hell of an experience. I suspect this is my first and last 24 Hour Comic, but I'll happily come down to future gatherings and participate in the vibe. It really is a great celebration of comics--maybe we should change the name to "Worldwide Comics Day".

Toronto FilmFest Reviews: Jennifer's Body

This year I've purchased tickets to the entire Midnight Madness programme, which is where the cultier, nerdier, SF-ier and horror...ier films tend to be shown during TIFF. Not that this is a ghetto or anything; it tends to draw the most enthusiastic crowds, which for TIFF is saying something. Anyway, my film festival experience this year kicks off with the film I was most trepidatious about: Jennifer's Body.

It's directed by Karyn Kusama, who did "Girlfight" and "Aeon Flux" as well as some episodes of "The L Word"--a pretty dubious resume. It's written by Diablo Cody, Oscar-winning writer for Juno, who inspires love and hatred in equal measure. And it stars the Source of All Evil Who Shall Not Be Named, Megan Fox.

As a friend of mine said right before I left for the screening: "Oh, that? That's going to suck."

Well, I didn't hate it. But.

...

The movie also stars Amanda Sayfried (of Momma Mia--maybe I should include her in the "elements of the movie likely to set some people's teeth on edge") as "Needy" Lesnicky, a hopeless teenage nerd who nevertheless seems to do OK popularity-wise. That's partly because her best friend since childhood is Jennifer Check, head cheerleader and alpha bitch of Devil's Kettle high. (The town is named for a local whirlpool, which is strongly implied to be a Hellmou--I mean, a "portal to another dimension") Needy is actually the target of much of Jennifer's bitchiness, but Needy doesn't mind, because it's all friendly bitchiness. Right?

One night, the girls decide to attend a concert by a local indie-band on their way up known as Low Shoulder, sort of like Arcade Fire with less talent and a great deal more douchebaggery. Jennifer is smitten with the lead singer, Nikolai (Adam Brody--the outside of the theater was crammed with teenage girls shrieking "ADAM! ADAM!" Which is my name. Made for a surreal experience.) In fact, she's so smitten that even when the bar catches fire in the middle of their set, killing several attendees, Jennifer still dazedly goes off with Nikolai in his "rapist van" as Needy dubs it. Traumatized and abandoned, Needy heads home, but later that night Jennifer shows up beaten and bloody and half-dead, starts devouring the contents of Needy's fridge like an animal, and vomits a truly evil sludge all over Needy's floor. She even seems on the verge of hurting Needy before breaking off and disappearing.

The next morning, though, Jennifer is back and appears totally normal. Everyone else isn't, though, as the school and the town, led by science teacher Mr. Wroblewski (J. K. Simmons! His appearance got the biggest cheer of the night) enter into a protracted mourning period, whose unofficial anthem is Low Shoulder's mope-rock opus "Through the Trees", and which seems to correspond with their sudden skyrocketing to fame.

And then Jennifer starts eating boys.

The movie is very much the style of Juno overlaid on an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (which Kusama very pointedly did NOT list among her influences while presenting the movie). This leads to some surprising layers of depth to what would otherwise be a generic teen horror flick. The relationship between Needy and Jennifer rings very true and has lots of sharply observed, witty moments. It's neither a giggly feel-good fest or an over-the-top catfight, but simply a believable portrait of a toxic friendship which is nevertheless oddly comfortable, of the kind teenagers often find themselves in. As long as the movie focuses on this stuff, it's really quite good--even Megan Fox's performance is pretty solid when she's playing off Sayfried (it helps that she basically seems to be playing herself). It also helps that Cody has a huge level of sympathy for her characters--all of Jennifer's victims feel like real, sympathetic people (it's refreshing to see a jock portrayed as a human being with feelings). And Brody, the only real exception to this rule, playing an utter scumbag, nevertheless pretty much walks away with the flick.

However, in spite of the movie's many surprising strengths, it also has a lot of unsurprising weaknesses. I mentioned that Fox's performance was good in parts--but it's pretty bad in others. She gets one awesomely creepy moment that she pulls off beautifully, but otherwise all her "scary" stuff falls completely flat. Meanwhile, Cody's dialogue ping-pongs between funny and ear-rendingly cutesy. There's nothing as godawful as "honest to blog", but the movie is generally in that mode for much of its running time. I can see what Cody's trying to do, and sometimes she pulls it off--teenagers really do speak in garbled pop culture references sometimes, and when Fox accuses Sayfried's boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons, basically playing the exact same character Michael Cera did in Juno) of being jealous by saying "You're Jello, you're lime-green Jello", it does sound like something a teenager would say. But other times it fails badly at sounding like anything remotely human or even at being funny, and the cumulative effect is not fun.

The movie also makes a major, major misstep by starting at the beginning and flashing back, therefore keeping the audience about five steps of everything that's going to happen. Admittedly, it's kind of fun to see the movie go into overdrive right at the climax, and then stay at that level right through the end credits (all of which is helped by a head-spinning cameo appearance) but if you can't predict the basics of the last half of the movie's plot, you must be asleep.

Ultimately, this was the kind of campy fun that can be enjoyable at Midnight Madness, but I can't in good conscience recommend it to everyone. If anything whatsoever about "Juno" rubbed you the wrong way, "Jennifer's Body" will probably multiply that times ten. It's not without its pleasures, but they probably aren't worth it to the average horror fan who's seen all this a dozen times before. On the other hand, it is nice to see a horror movie made by women, with a female audience clearly in mind, so who knows, maybe that will be enough for a lot of people. I do predict a cult hit, if not mainstream success.

Countdown To Dark Reign of Infinite Civil Crisis on Planet Comics

So, did I pick the worst possible time to be trying my hand at a self-published book? Or the best?

First things first here: I have a print edition of "Lemuria" now available. It's black-and-white, 32 pages, and features a 13-page backup story that is not available online, and won't be anytime in the future. Bonus print-only material, see. I don't have a Ka-Blam print-on-demand link for it yet, but if you want a copy just join this Facebook group and shoot me a message--or you could email me directly using the hotmail address that's on that page (no, I'm not going to print it here--I don't want to get spammed to death!) It's $3.75 plus shipping, which I think makes it a darned good bargain.

Now, that said, this is kind of a "limited edition" thing. I really would like to put out a colour version...but I don't know how plausible that would be. I've actually submitted it to various publishers, but of course I'd be delighted to publish it myself. Which I could do, printwise at least, but...

Well. If you're reading this, you are presumably a comics person, and you, to presume further, have not been living in a tree for the last few months, so you are aware that:

--Diamond Distributors, the only major distributors in the direct market comics arena, just increased the number of sales needed to have a comic listed in their magazine, Previews, thereby making it that much harder to break into self-publishing;

--Disney just bought Marvel;

--And DC literally just the other day had a major corporate shakeup, ousting EIC Paul Levitz and restructuring themselves withint the Warner Brothers corporate behemoth, complete with the new moniker "DC Entertainment". (CUE OMINOUS MUSIC)

A further point: many people have claimed Levitz has played a major role in sustaining Diamond past the point where it might otherwise have collapsed. Certainly the fact that DC only solicits with Diamond has had a major effect on the industry. What happens next could have a major impact on Diamond, possibly killing it, and the Direct Market along with it.

Now, I've been accused of being a dewy-eyed optimist when it comes to the comics industry, though I'll admit that has a lot to do with believing things couldn't possibly get worse. However, I'm generally of the opinion that the comics industry really needed a shakeup, and that there's a lot of potential good that can come out of all this.

However, I'll also freely admit that there's just too many variables to say anything for sure, and I'm not all that knowledgeable about the nuts 'n bolts of the direct market to begin with. For that I turn to Chris Butcher, manager of The Beguiling comics store in Toronto and all-around swell fellow, who gives a lot of perspective (this was posted the day before the DC shakeup). He does seem to suggest that the direct market is something he can do without, but his is a very well-run store with a lot of varied and loyal clientele, so I don't know how representative his store would be. While contacting the many and various publishers sounds like a pain, he claims he's not losing money by doing so. Furthermore, if Diamond goes away, surely SOMETHING will appear to take its place, if only in the promotional department--maybe it'll simply be a matter of increased advertising on the part of the publishers?

I just don't know. These are pretty wild times. One thing's for sure, though: the internet is looking better and better as a medium for indie comics publishers. I'm the type who likes to do things the traditional way, but the appeal of launching a periodical of Lemuria is fading really, really fast, especially now that my advertising is starting to pay off somewhat.

And yet...the death of Diamond could potentially blow the doors off for indie publishers. There may be no gatekeepers for at least a brief period, and that may be just what's needed for a couple of plucky indie books to slip through. As Chris points out, there haven't been a lot of breakthrough indies since Diamond became a monopoly.

It's going to be chaos, and it might get ugly. But you know what the Chinese say about Crisis and Opportunity...

Bits 'n' Pieces

A couple of things. First off, anyone going to the Toronto Fan Expo this weekend, swing on by the Durham Comics Guild booth! I'll be there all weekend, hawking the colour print edition of Freak U. book one, plus the special, one-time-only black and white Lemuria comic, 32 pages long and with a backup story not available online.

For those of you who "can't make it" because you "live miles away", and other such lame excuses in scare quotes, you can always buy the Freak U. book in print right here.

I'll be posting pics and so on; keep your eyes peeled.

In completely unrelated news, this is cool. So is this (click here for that second one in a variety of formats).

The Lens Cap of My Blog Was On

OK! The first Lemuria story, "Slaves of the Demon God", is (basically) finished. I'm hoping to complete all the colouring and so on by the end of this week. Then I go full tilt into finishing the backup story for the print comic--which, for you to see, will require you to buy it! This story will be set in Lemuria, but feature a different set of characters--I guess it's a Terry Pratchett sorta thing. (Ironic, because I'm not really a huge fan of Pratchett, and I didn't set out to emulate him in any way.)

However, Swordi and Sorcera will remain the primary characters, and their new adventure will be hitting the web early next month--I'll tentatively say August 3rd, though that may change. The working title is "Entangled by the Tourist Trap".

From there on out, I'll be updating once-weekly, probably on mondays. The pattern will remain the same--Swordi and Sorcera on the web, other stories that fill out the world of Lemuria (and will cross over with the S&S stories eventually!) will be print-only. The first of these is a 13 pager about two other important characters who will also be recurring in the Lemuria stories, Hummu Stitchthrice and Hordo of Atlantis. I'll let you know when this is available to buy!

As for everything else: Freak U. will update twice-weekly when Lemuria isn't running, and downgrade to once-weekly (on Wednesdays, I think) when it is. To be honest, one of the reasons I'm a bit spotty with updating the current storyline is that I'm rehashing the script pretty heavily. I do have an outline worked out for all this, but it's amazing how much it changes and shifts when I sit down to thrash out the details in script form. For instance, there have now been several occasions when a character was meant to be killed, or turn out to be more villainous than they ended up being, but I ended up having too much affection for them and shifted the story. I've mentioned Brandina, who was going to be Smiley's first victim and ended up a major character; Mo was going to die at the end of Book One as punishment for colluding with Smiley; and most recently, we've got Ruy, who was intended as more of an antagonist (though he was always going to be conflicted and sympathetic). But you know what? I'm not Joss Whedon or Brian K. Vaughn, as much as I love those guys. Freak U. is meant to be more simply lighthearted and comedic, and I don't want to fall into what Eric Burns calls "First and Ten Syndrome" (when a formerly lighthearted strip gets really angsty and dramatic and horrible things happen to the characters). There might be room for a sweet or sad moment, but I don't want them to overwhelm the strip.

Which means less struggling with The Dark Side and more rocking out. Of course, there's also the advantage that now I get to introduce the completely ridiculous and completely AWESOME Vatican Vampire Hit Squad to be the main source of conflict, in a last minute addition to this storyline. Of course, now the Ghost of Whedon is once again looming over the proceedings. Damn you, Whedon, get out of my brain!

(For the record--at least one character has actually gotten darker and nastier than they were intended to be originally. I'll leave it to you to look over Book Two and decide who that is, though I'll reveal it pretty unambiguously at the very end of Book Two.)

Oh, and then there's poor Night Shift, my bastard spawn. I always assume it'll take less time for me than it does because it's so easy to draw...but unfortunately, it's probably hardest to write. Because I have to be funny. In four boxes. Every freaking day. But anyway, it's going to update from next week (starting July 20th) through to whenever Lemuria starts up again. That will be the pattern for a while--Lemuria takes a few weeks off, Night Shift fills the gap.

As for Critterville, I'd really really like to do more stories, but obviously it's forced to be a bit of a low priority right now. Maybe once Freak U. Book Two wraps up?

And Then There Was the Time I Failed to Recognize Oprah.

And now, a true story from TCAF, the Toronto Comics Arts Festival:

Early Sunday, the Toronto Reference Library. A cold wind blows.

Volunteers like myself are trickling in through the side door. Other potential patrons have noticed this and followed us, but the library isn't open yet, so the security guards are busily preventing non-volunteers from entering. Unfortunately, a lot of the exhibitors left their passes inside, so some of them are getting held up at the door. I notice a tall Asian guy getting stopped. I am fairly certain this is Jason Shiga, who obviously belongs inside.

I tell the grumpy security guard, "No, that guy's OK. He's one of the exhibitors." Turning to the guy, I say, "You're Jason Shiga, right?"

"No," he says, "I'm Brian Lee O'Malley."

At which point my head implodes from pure suck.

Bad enough I didn't recognize the guy on his own, since he's probably the biggest guest of the TCAF. He's only the author of this obscure, little-regarded work. But I was managing his table the day before, so I can't claim I didn't get a good look at him. Plus, you know, I apparently believe that ALL ASIAN CARTOONISTS LOOK ALIKE.

I am dumb.

But I apologized to him profusely afterwards, and he didn't seem angry about it. I got off lightly with a few roundhouse kicks and being thrown into the sun. My face got sooty.

Otherwise, TCAF was fun, despite me, y'know, working the whole time. That is, I was so busy working I didn't have much time to actually enjoy the show. There is a further paradox, I'm discovering, with this stuff: sometimes, you do something like the TCAF for promotion, and you end up so busy that you have little time to actually do the comic that you're promoting, so there's the danger that all the new people you've presumably driven to your site will see nothing new and be angry at you. But hey, this is the new, workaholic me. I did, in fact, manage to keep Lemuria going.

Speaking of which, the third page (not including cover) went up today! And so, belatedly, did the first of a new round of Night Shift! And my traffic spirals downwards! Whoo?

Standing at the Gate, my Sandals on the Wrong Feet

And a big hearty welcome to anyone who may have come here as a result of my Free Comic Book Day giveaway! I'm Adam Prosser, cartoonist, writer and improvident lackwit, who's been casually wasting his time doing cartoons on the internet for the past seven years, and has recently decided to get really serious about wasting his time doing cartoons on the internet.

To that end, I've launched Lemuria, my all-new webcomic, which, if you are here as a result of the FCBD giveaway, you've already had a chance to have a look at in black and white. This story was already drawn as my contribution to The Blitz, an anthology comic published by The Durham Comics Guild, to which I belong. I'm revamping the art and colouring it, but otherwise it's ready to roll out, as you can see. This strip will be appearing thrice-weekly, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, for the next two weeks; then it'll drop to twice-weekly, Mondays and Fridays, until the end of the storyline. I'm thinking I'll take brief hiatuses between stores, of a week or two, just so that I don't fall too far behind.

But if you're new here, you should know that I've got a lot of other stuff, too! Check out my ongoing daily strip, Night Shift, which I've been doing on and off since 2001 (and which is also returning on Monday, May 11th). Then there's Freak U., my...let's call it an online series of graphic novels, which are a comic-booky nod to all those zany frat/college hijinks movies of the past--not so much Animal House and Porky's as Encino Man, Weird Science, Teen Wolf, Zapped, Frankenstein Goes to College...you know, the ones with random SF and fantasy elements tacked on. I've already completed one OGN's worth of story, and even put it to print--you can buy the book right here. The second book is actually approaching completion, though at the time of this writing it's taking a hiatus to let me catch up with various things, and will be returning in mid-June. On top of that, I've got another comic, Critterville, which has one story so far and which I plan to produce more of by the end of the summer. It's a kid-friendly pastiche of those old funny animal cartoons, particularly the Disney comics of Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson.

If all this still isn't enough, I also have another blog called Fourth World Fridays...and Beyond. It began as a chance for me to muse on Kirby's Fourth World comics, which I am fascinated by, but I plan to return to it and do some other comics commentary. And on top of that, I do reviews for Thor's Comic Column at Chud.com (the column used to be Rack Raids, where you can still read the updates every thursday).

So, now that you're thoroughly overwhelmed, come on in and make yourself comfortable. Hang out on the Forum or post comments on the main site or even on this very blog! The wonders of technology never cease, do they?

FCBD Shenanigans

I may not have the resources of a major comic book company, but I'm pushy and persistent! As a result I've managed to take advantage of Free Comic Book Day to a small degree to promote my new comic, Lemuria, as well as Phantasmic Tales in general.

If you happen to be out in the Oshawa/Whitby area (that's in Ontario...if you didn't know that, you're, uh, probably too far away to swing by anyway) tomorrow, you can pick it up at any of the following stores:

Worlds Collide--80 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa

Klyd's--600 Grandview St. S. #2, Oshawa

Comic Book Addiction--1032 Brock St S, Whitby

And I'll be at World's Collide in person...signing autographs...or something.

I'm also going to be sneaking this little sampler onto the freebies table at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival next weekend--that's at the Toronto Reference Library. So swing by. (I'm sure I'm reeeeeally doing the TCAF a favour by throwing my mighty promotional muscle behind the event.)