Black Snow Comics

If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you’ve probably started to get a sense of what kind of person I am.  In short, I say what I think.  I don’t hold back.  I don’t do a lot of preplanning or self censoring.  I’m not cold or calculated.  I’m honest, possibly to a fault, and I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve.  If I’m mad at you, you’ll know it.

So yeah, that’s me, more or less.  So obviously that’s part of the way I write.  I like to share my frustrations with my work, but I also try to share some of my happiness and enthusiasm.  It seems I have a lot of ups and downs, or at least feel as if I do.  Sometimes, often times, the downs seem to outweigh the ups, though that is all a matter of perspective I suppose.

Let me tell you about a couple of things that occurred recently.  The other night I returned from a bachelor party and decided to check my mail.  What did I find?  Slave Labor Graphics finally decided to get off their ass and respond to my Black Snow submission from a couple months ago. Flashback about 6 years ago to me receiving a rejection letter from SLG, which was the little comic book publisher located about 10 minutes away from my house.  The letter was personalized and pretty encouraging, especially given the context.  The gist was they liked Issue 1 and Black Snow as a concept, but it wasn’t a good fit for them at the time.  Please try again some time.  Back to the present, I received a generic rejection form which coldly stated that my work (Issue 4 and possibly 3(not sure if I sent both)) was likely not up to their quality of standards.  Underneath was a check box list to tell me what specifically was wrong with my submission, that I had put a lot of work into by the way, more so than any other publishers’.  The box that was checked?  ”Need to work on the basic fundamentals of your craft: writing, drawing”  What the fuck SLG?  Don’t sugarcoat it for me, tell me what you really think!  Oh, and the letter said not to try and contact them about it because they are too busy and important to talk to me, and don’t try to submit again for a long time.  What happened in these few short years?

I don’t know.  Now I only live about 5 minutes away from them.  I never gave up, followed their original advice, and worked hard hard on my drawing; yet now they tell me I suck and I’m not good enough for them.  Now they are big shots apparently, and they can’t be bothered by a nobody like me.  Funny, last time I checked the industry was dying and had gotten considerably worse in these last 6 years, so I’m not sure how they got such big heads.  Black Snow isn’t up to the esteemed caliber as such classics as Gloom Cookie, Filler Bunny, Hsu and Chan, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, A Bag of Anteaters or Mr. Night?  Give me a break.  SLG, I’ve seen your work and it ain’t so great.

Normally this letter would have depressed me, and momentarily it did and I questioned my talent.  Then you know what I did?  I sat down and finished tackling a pretty difficult page of Black Snow.  Page 24 of Issue 6 to be specific.  It was a lot to include on one page and had one very tricky panel, a close up portrait of Brad and his brothers.  I sat down, thought about it a little, drew it, finished it, and loved it.  Nothing changed for me.  I did what I do.  I didn’t let the SLG’s extreme ignorance and lack of taste get to me, and I feel all the better for it.  I draw because I enjoy it, not to impress publishers.  Good thing too, because they don’t seem very impressed.

Something else happened today.  Andrew Miller of Something Awful e-mailed me, in response to what I wrote about him on my blog.  It was a very cordial quasi apology where he took the time to explain himself.  It was a thoughtful gesture on his part.  I appreciate it and honestly, I’m not angry about what he wrote anymore.  I haven’t been for awhile.  It’s actually funny to read it now.  So a man I once hated turned out to be a pretty decent guy, while I company I once respected turned out to be assholes.  Similarly a little over a month ago I contacted the other, new comic calling themselves Black Snow, and I was considerably angry at the time.  Actually there were two other comics using the name, one just decided to do it in Japanese.  well, the Japanese one was a jerk, but his comic really sucks and is no threat.  The other guys turned out to be really nice and changed their name to Black Winter.  It was a nice surprise.  People can be hard to read and you never really no how they’ll react I suppose.

Is there a moral or reason to any of this?  No, not really.  I told you I don’t really preplan.  If anything I guess it’s to be good to me and I’ll be good to you.  I’m not out to make enemies, but I don’t mind having them either.  So don’t fuck with me.

It has come to my attention that many people don’t know what a day camp is.  Well, luckily for you I occasionally enjoy sharing some of my vast knowledge with the educationally challenged people of the world.  A day camp is a place where parents ship their kids for the summer, but unlike a normal summer camp the kids come home every day.  It normally takes place during standard business hours, and serves as a way for parents to go to work and  not have to worry about their kids.  It’s basically a glorified baby sitting service for kids ranging in age from roughly 5 to 15.  They run on a weekly basis, often involve themes like magic, sports, God, theater or a variety of other things.  Sometimes they involve field trips, and occasionally take the kids over night.

These are usually run in urban areas and filled with kids from the suburbs.  They are supervised by young adults, primarily older teenagers and young twenties college kids, with a few older adults watching over the proceedings.  It is a very unique culture where time seems to simultaneous slow down and speed up.  Days seem to last weeks and kids form relationships at an intensely rapid pace.  Some kids go for the entire summer, while others only attend for a week or two.  Children become best friends, enemies, and dates, all within a very a very short span of time.

As I mentioned in the past, Alex and I attended a day camp together in our early teen years.  In fact we met at a YMCA adventure camp.  On a side note, I also met my wife there, and occasionally still see a couple of other old campers.  At one point Alex and I planned on working there, took part in a training program, but decided to bail out at the last minute before becoming official “leaders”.  The comic strip is our retelling of this strange period in our lives.  It’s a way of sharing this odd culture, some of our actual experiences, and a few of the crazy characters we met there.

This is an interesting article I ran across a little while ago that I thought I’d share.

Batman’s Comic Tragedy

By Lisa Schmeiser

Posted Wednesday, August 12, 2009 – 2:24pm

Iron Man 2 isn’t set to come out until next summer, but you would never have guessed that from a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly featuring Robert Downey Jr. summoning all the gravitas a man in red plastic can muster.

To be fair, EW was covering the cinematic buzz coming out of San Diego Comic-Con last month. The gathering served as a marketing vehicle for upcoming popcorn movies like Jonah Hex andIron Man 2. But when people weren’t gawking at Megan Fox (Jonah Hex) and Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2), they may have taken in a panel with comics writers. After all, Comic-Con did start as a way for comic fans to buy, sell, and discuss the objects of their passion.

But the celebrity dazzle obscured the strange reality: Movies based on comic books often turn into box-office hits, but their sources rarely see a related boost. Books regularly benefit from a bounce after their adaptation hits the big screen. But despite their ability to offer multiple post-movie stories to eager viewers, comics seldom pull in the same post-cinematic ardor. Why? And why aren’t comics publishers doing more to sell their material to moviegoers when their business has been dampened by the recession?

Take this year’s cinematic entry into the comics genre, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Despite middling reviews, the movie has grossed $365 million worldwide. When the movie came out in May, Marvel Comics title Wolverine nabbed the No. 3 and No. 5 spots on the monthly single-issue comics best-seller lists, according to Diamond Comics Distributors. It sold 170,399 issues. But by June, the title’s sales had dropped 62 percent, and there were fewer copies traded than the 86,000 sold in the month before the movie’s release. So any boost burned out fast.

Marvel’s not the only one to miss the movie moment. Rival industry titan DC Comics is home to Batman. In July 2008, The Dark Knight gave the Batman titles a boost, but it was only temporary: By the same time this year, the original series was on hiatus, thanks to DC Comics’ decision to kill off the title character. There’s a replacement series—Batman: Battle for the Cowl—but that’s a little like asking someone to embrace Rex the Wonder Dog after they’ve watched a Superman movie. The good one, with General Zod.

The daunting task of diving into a story that is already under way is one reason moviegoers stay away. Unlike the Harry Potter or Twilight books, comic publishers keep developing their franchises’ story lines as they’re shaped for the big screen. They have to—customers expect their monthly fix. Plus it’s hard—baked into their business model. Comics podcast host Brian Eison points out that Marvel’s and DC’s sales are pegged to series plotted for years at a time and often rely on readers having firsthand knowledge of the back story. Since the publishers have sunk development and marketing capital into these series, it makes no sense for them to alienate their core base by suspending or rewriting series to tie in to a movie about the same character.

However, it’s equally senseless to waste the opportunity to cultivate new users. If someone were to walk out of Wolverine and into a comic shop, they would have no idea what to read, given the character’s colorful and occasionally contradictory back stories. And a neophyte comics reader is at the mercy of the shop employee for recommendations because there are few clear entry points into decades of stories. Plus there aren’t many comics titles aimed squarely at new readers. As former DC Comics editor Valerie D’Orazio says, “I think that there should be more ‘starter’ comics for that audience; comics that don’t require a ton of back story or continuity to understand but which readers can follow and build upon in time.”

Introductory comic books might make a real difference in easing beginners into comics. When the first Iron Man movie came out in May 2008, Marvel launched a new title, Invincible Iron Man. The first issue sold 105,833 copies, something only a handful of comics titles achieves every month. The next month, sales had slid 35 percent, in a typical drop-off after the first issue. A year later, sales were holding steady in the low 50,000 range. Believe it or not, this is good news: The 50k readership is still larger than any Iron Man title before the movie. Relaunching a series in tandem with a movie brings in readers.

But there’s another obstacle to conversion: how those comics get sold. Everyone knows The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy—who was once left at the altar with the line “It’s like I’m DC Comics and you’re Marvel”—and his brand of arrested development wrapped in superciliousness. That perception clings to comic book shops and the people who work in them.

It’s unfair. As Eisen argues, many comic shop owners go out of their way to set up displays when related movies are about to come out. These small businesses don’t get a lot of tangible help from the publishers, so they can only reach as far as their small marketing budgets will allow.

Customers are as freighted by misperception as store owners. When your only exposure to “fanboys” is through depictions in popular culture like The Big Bang Theory or Saturday Night Live sketches, the idea of diving in might be intimidating. “You know how the milk people got the Dairy Council and ‘Got Milk?’ ads?” D’Orazio said. “I think the industry needs that—ads in mainstream media: ‘Got Comics?’ “

Not all American comics revolve around the exploits of people with tights, capes, and superpowers. These comics herald the next wave of comics-based movies and also offer an opportunity for moviegoers to reassess the graphic novel medium. Perhaps inspired byGhostworld‘s 58 percent profit, 30 Days of Night‘s 60 percent profit, Wanted‘s 78 percent profit,300‘s 87 percent profit, or Sin City‘s 75 percent return, studio execs are now casting about for the next nonsuperhero comic property to spin into Cineplex gold. During Comic-Con, Terry Moore’s series about photographer-cum-walking-nuke Echo garnered a six-figure deal fromHellboy and Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin. This is good news for both the comics and movie industries. For comics, cinematic precedent may open the door to more books that step outside the constraints of the tights-and-flights genre and reshape the public’s perception of a comic book. Hollywood producers, meanwhile, will still get the benefit of field-tested characters and plots—but won’t necessarily have to spend millions of dollars on special effects.

For the comics industry to take advantage of this opportunity, publishers and distributors would need to change. Publishers would have to start aggressively plotting tie-in merchandise released right before a movie’s opening weekend. Marvel’s already doing this: As Dollar Bin comic podcast co-host Adam Daughhetee noted, they released a brand-new monthly series whenIron Man came out, and reissued paperback collections of classic Iron Man comics for those readers who were suddenly in the grip of Tony Stark mania.

But Dark Horse Comics may be the model for the future. The No. 3 publisher behind DC and Marvel has quietly cultivated a three-year production deal with Universal. Its nonsuperhero comics have led to a string of box-office smashes—Hellboy, Sin City, 300. More crucially, Dark Horse is showing that adaptation flows two ways: It holds the rights to spin off comic book adaptations of movies, including Alien, Star Wars, and The Terminator, and it publishes the comics spun off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess. By adapting fan-friendly movie and TV franchises in another visual medium, Dark Horse is treating fandom like a transferable property, not a complex culture replete with rites and Wednesday-afternoon rituals.

This isn’t to say that the future of comics rests in someone writing a 60-panel adaptation ofThe Bachelorette. Comics publishers will continue to produce original work for two reasons. First, because it’s what they went into business to do. And second, it’s a cheap way to launch a multimillion-dollar movie franchise. Paying a writer, a penciler, a letterer, and a colorist to launch a comic book is comparatively cheap. Continuing to publish the book doesn’t cost much more, and the bar for “best-selling” is relatively low: Move 25,000 copies a month and you’re in the top 100 best-sellers. And continuing a comic series allows a story line to acquire the depth and richness that informs good movie adaptations. Just ask Marvel: Although its comic sales are down, it recently raised the low end of its full-year earnings forecast. The company now expects to make at least $465 million in overall revenue this year—and for that, you can thank the movies.

The relationship between comic books and movies may ultimately work for comic publishers. But the profitability of the arrangement rests on two things: whether they can recognize that movies need simple entry points—and how they craft that obvious opening into their own properties. In the movie Iron Man, Tony Stark created his own superhero origin story when he was held captive; given the creative minds working in comics today, it should be considerably less tough to find a way to make those moviegoers beg for the real origin stories.

Hope you’ve all been well. I had a nice vacation in San Diego about a week and a half ago, so that was a lot of fun.  I saw many amazing animals at the 3 big parks, and possibly even a ghost in the Whaley House.

What may be a ghost that I captured on camera at the Whaley House in Old Town, San Diego. What do you think?

So that was a great time in southern California.  Unfortunately I’ve been pretty sick lately.  I tend to have a couple of health problems, and my main one has been flaring up as of late, which isn’t good.  There are plenty of people with a lot worse health, so I can’t complain too much.

The response to my last column, and basically all my past attempts to elicit some feedback from you fans, has been underwhelming to say the least.  I thought people liked having their opinions heard.  Apparently not the apathetic crowd that my work attacks.  That’s fine though.  I’ll just continue to draw things the way I want to, do what makes me personally happy, and not worry about what anyone else thinks of it.  Hopefully everyone saw my continued work on Issue 6, and the recent Day Camps.  Ratitude!  I think Day Camp is starting to really hit its stride and find its style.  I look forward to continuing to see how it will evolve.

Over the last month or so I’ve done a lot of small enhancements throughout the website, which regular readers probably noticed.  I also did some off site promotion on Facebook and a few other websites like Smack Jeeves.  It seems like these things have payed off, as the overall traffic to the website has improved.  Even better, people are spending more time reading the comics.  Black Snow continues to do well, while Day Camp has had a very promising start.  It’s already begun to outshine our flagship title in the amount of readers!  Craziness, though I somewhat predicted that would happen.

I’m very happy so many people are now taking the time to follow my work, and hope this trend will continue.  I also hope it will start translating into some feedback, which I thrive on.  Please take the time to visit the community page and let us know your thoughts.  You can also communicate with other fans there on our forums or in one of the clubs.  Feel free to leave a comment on this post or you can e-mail me at michael@blacksnowcomic.com.  Hell, I’ll probably even e-mail you back if you aren’t too insulting!

While I was exploring some of these webcomic sites I took a look at what other people are doing, and I must say that most of it absolutely sucks!  It’s all manga and stolen 16 bit video game characters.  The video game stuff is especially repetitive and seems very prevalent.  I must have seen 50  comics featuring Sonic the hedgehog on one site alone.  People read this crap?  It takes not artistic talent to make, that’s for sure.  And what’s with all this crappy manga?  Is that all anyone knows how to draw now?  Some of what I saw was pretty good, but the bulk looked like little pre-teens doodling in their notebooks.  What I don’t think people realize is that they all lump together, and it makes the entire genre look bad.  At this point if a see any manga or anime I completely lose interest.  I won’t bother to look any deeper than the surface, because they basically all seem the same.

Alex and I went to the comic book store last week and what I saw there wasn’t much better.  It all looks the same and none of it is interesting!  What the hell happened?  No wonder the industry is floundering.  I’m not saying that what we do is some great work of fine art, but at least it’s original.  In a world of blandness the unique shall rise and rescue us all from the drudgery of another manga or boring Marvel/DC attempt to restart an ailing franchise.  Be a part of this grand revolution and join us by spreading the good word about our noble enterprise.  Don’t stand for it when you see a beloved childhood classic like Ghostbusters turned into a lame manga comic.  Don’t purchase some super hero comic because now the twist is they’re zombies or fighting in a civil war.  Together we can overcome the mediocrity that this once great industry has devolved into!  Fight the good fight and stand by our side as Black Snow Comics ushers in a new era and topples the tyranny of old!