Poor Mojo's Newswire

trevorhale asked: When you have an idea for a long form story (comic-wise) where do you usually start? I'm thinking along the lines of Transmet or Planetary, I guess. What's your process for getting from raw idea to that finished first issue? I’m answering this one mostly because I hope other people read it too. The answer is, I’m afraid, staggeringly useless for you, Trevor, because for me it’s: just bloody do it. Too many people think there’s a process list or magic trick for this sort of thing, and there’s not. Write and revise and write. Isolate the things you want to write about and the things you want to say and, really, just bloody well write them down. Screenwriting courses and creative writing guides have given people the idea that there’s a miraculous cheat sheet for doing any kind of commercial writing, and it’s bullshit. The idea works or it doesn’t. You’re either good or you’re not. And if you’re not, keep writing until you are. That’s it. I would be a fine motivational coach, if only I had a steady stream of innocent bystanders to punch in the face to emphasise points. I think there’s potential there, though. “He told me to fuck off and just write something! And then he ATE A BABY! It was SO COOL! Right up to the point where he choked on the umbilical cord.”

Another time, Jack took a call. A voice on the other end said, ‘There are three of us down here in the lobby. We want to see the guy who does this disgusting comic book and show him what real Nazis would do to his Captain America’. To the horror of others in the office, Kirby rolled up his sleeves and headed downstairs. The callers, however, were gone by the time he arrived. — Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comic

. . . Here's what you really need to understand to get my core rage and frustration about how this is unfolding: Direct Market comic book retailers are DC's customers. Even though Diamond is the one who facilitates the pulling and packing of books, I do not buy DC comics from Diamond -- Diamond is "merely" the sales agent in the transaction. I am the customer, I am the retailer. I had, perhaps foolishly, assumed that this essential relationship would largely be continued, and that the "mechanism" of I-am-the-retailer, DC-is-the-publisher, let's-all-make-some-money with an agent or broker doing the facilitating would continue, swapping Diamond's role for comiXology. Oh, no. Nonononononononono. The deal with comiXology is a complete inversion of how the business currently works. comixOlogy is the retailer, and the DM retailers are just -- hmm, what's the best analogy? An introduction service, I guess is the one? Only, matchmakers and headhunters? They often make hundreds of dollars per client. We're being offered 15 cents, on the low-end. I'm saddened by this. Look, I'm not precisely a fool (even if I do foolish things once in a while!), and I recognize that at the end of a day you can't trust corporations. You can trust individual people who work for corporations, and you can trust those people to have something reasonably close to your interests in mind when they make policies. But I'm just saddened that we've come so quickly to this: pretty much the opposite of anything that was ever discussed, and the polar opposite of any relationship that DC has ever had with Direct Market retailers. And presented in a fashion meant to convince us this is actually good for us. . . .