Friday, August 14, 2009

Comic Dilemma

To answer Chad Verrill, yes I submitted art to Previews and it ended up in the August issue, but it is nothing really, since it is only a very small part of the fan page,, and I threw my copy out, like any normal issue,, I'm not complaining though, they can only put it so large on the page,, the nice guy encouraged me to keep sending stuff to put in there.
Even though I always keep my expectations low of the feedback I'll get from anything I might do, I was actually surprised that I got no response at all for that drawing,, I should probably try and get a hitcounter for the blog and see if the pageviews increased by much.
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You know how I was lamenting the type of trash people buy? And you also know how I often refer to the mountain of comics I own, which I have been wanting to get rid of?
Well I have a lot of trash which I could probably make a decent lump of money from,, a lot of mainstream comics from 98-2003 and lots of other stuff I regret buying. And I always thought "Heh heh heh... I'll make some money from some sucker who wants to buy this crap",, but this week I realised that would be hypocritical of me, since I would rather no-one wasted their money. And if I did sell them, there would probably be the headache of dealing with buyers who wanted to return lots of stuff that was not in a good enough condition to their liking.
I think it would give me a lot of satisfaction to burn a lot of it ((how eco-unfriendly is that exactly?))),, it would be great if I had a camera and put it on youtube and then posted the video on comic forums of me burning all these "milestone" comics.
It really bugs me about comics that are going to be collected into graphic novels, and then the individual issues are pretty much useless unless you are in the minority of collectors who want them too. And the remaining back issue shops still stock these instead of stocking what you cant get in collected graphic novels yet, which I thought would be the obvious thing to focus on.
I'm 90% convinced I should burn these comics. What do you think?

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sell them to an exchange shop and spend the money on art books, or give them to a charity shop.
Paul

Aeron said...

The more pain in the ass but more profitable option is to ebay them. The less profitable but easier option is to find a comic shop that sells other things, art books you're into? and trade them in for store credit. You should get more out of store credit than a straight money exchange. But, the trick is to find a comic shop that sells other things you'd want to get now.

Anyway, congrats on being published in Previews, I was confused as I thought you'd published a book that was in there. But on that subject, I'm positive if you get a books worth of material together, someone will publish it and it will be well regarded by anyone with taste. The advantage of your narrative style is that you can probably put any page in any order as it all seems to play out in a dream like stream of strange visions.

Also, if you do have a solid 20 or 30 pages of material that you think would be fit for print, you might start shopping it around now. If someone agrees to publish it, it could help you focus on that and give you an incentive to get more pages done.

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

I've been very slow lately, I couldnt even put togther a small comic since I havent done enough yet. But I am quite certain that if I did manage a lot of work, I'd bring in a lot more attention.

There is no shop in my area that has enough stuff I'd like to trade it for. I have a hard time finding anything in the shops that I want,, nearly everything is on the internet now. My list of comics I want now is freaking tiny.
Dont worry, all the comics I'm going to burn are very poor ones we all dislike and I wouldnt feel right in making someone pay for them. There is a remaining 30% of those comics which are pretty good, most of which I'll give to friends or charity shops. I've still got a bunch of toys I wouldnt mind selling someday.

Thanks Paul for recommending that "Baroques" book. It is amazing.

Aeron said...

You could always cut them up and make interesting collages out of them too.

Uland said...

While I appreciate your hard-line stance against crap, I think it's a losing battle; if they don't buy your comics, they'll buy from someone else. If that's the case, why not make some money back that'll help you put stuff out into the world that is really good?
Good work might influence people, not having your bad comics available for sale will not change anything.

-I never look at Previews, but I'd love to see the page in question. Can you scan it?

Human Mollusk said...

Since you liked it back then and don't like it now, how do you know you won't like it again in ten years time?
Look at it the other way around: if you could, would you prevent your future self from destroying the stuff you cherish now?

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

I didnt want to name any names, but it was Michael Turner and lots of other similar styled comics and lots of highly hyped sensationalist Marvel Comics from 98-05,, if i started liking that stuff again, you should come and kill me, for my art would be in danger if I conisdered those influences again.

I dont really truly cherish much more than a small handful of my comics,, and the idea of me growing bored of them and getting rid of them does not bother me,, although I would hope I never got elitist enough to destroy my current favorite comics.
There may be some other things I'll lose interest in, but usually because I find a more compelling replacement for it. I like the idea that I have replaced a lot of comics with my own art.
But I try to maintain a sense of perfect fairness about everything,, recognise the good and bad in all art,, and I do believe a lot of shitty comics are created by artists who are actually capable of great things.

There is some of my own art that I regretted destroying,, my early drawings of ugly people and monster toys I made,, but I destoyed them because they did not fit in with my teenage mindset which was brainwashed by hip manga hybrids and typical Marvel/Image styles of the 90s. I've always felt they were a corrupting influence and I resent what it did to me and I wish so many young people were not seduced into that artistic possible death,, it was hard to unlearn it all. I always wonder if I could have resisted that flashy seduction. But I dont regret getting into superheroes or anything,, that is still a part of me.

With all my jadedness in comics, art and movies, my fascination with most of the same bands has not ceased, no matter how much new and exciting discoveries I make. I'm still a relative virgin in literature. I think books, fine art and music are the three things that never let you down in life, as long as you know where to look.

Anonymous said...

I think you would like this Robert...
"The Dark Domain" by Stefan Grabinski.
Paul

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

It sounds interesting and I'll put it on the list, but it may be many years before I read it. I've got roughly 40 books by the obvious((Poe, Lovecraft, RE Howard, A Blackwood, King, Barker, HB Cave, Hodgson, more)) and I've barely scratched the surface with those and I have an enormous list of horror/fantasy/scifi books to buy.

Human Mollusk said...

Do you sometimes listen to audiobooks while drawing? I do it a lot and really like it. It's not always possible, depending on how much of your consciousness you need to invest in something (like when I'm layouting it really doesn't work) but since you do a lot of heavy rendering where one can just let the subconscious mind take over I could image it would work for you.
They've got some good stuff (Poe, Hodgson, Lovecraft...) for free on librivox.org, but the readers aren't prefessionals and some of them are a bit annoying. And of course there's more professionally read stuff out there than one could ever hope to listen to.

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

I dont think I could do that. Readings vary in quality and even good readers need to be rewinded back several times if you are listening to something complex. I've heard Ray Bradbury read his own work, and he isnt very good at it,, and I heard Christopher Lee read Poe,, but most of it went right over my head,, some of Poes work needs to be read slowly because he describes things with extreme vagueness, so you dont even know what you are trying to picture. I've heard there are really good MR James readings.

Like you, I cant listen to anything in the layout process and I wasted years trying to do that,, you really need quiet to compose a drawing or a comic.

I'd prefer to keep up with the music when drawing.

Human Mollusk said...

I have the feeling that my inking actually improves when my cognitivtion distracted by an audiobook. It might slow me down a bit, but it's easier to get into a meditative flow where the lines more or less draw themselves that way. It happens anyway even without something to listen to, my thoughts just start to wander.

Human Mollusk said...

cognition is

Uland said...

I listen to a lot of podcasts while drawing. I think it works like Fufu says.
Robert- there may be a point where you'll be able to appreciate lots of different stuff without having to want to do anything like it yourself; your drawing methods will be defined enough where they wouldn't be effected too much by everything else. I think at that point you can actually glean things from those works you don't want to emulate directly that might inform your work in interesting ways.
I mean, I think guys like Clive Barker aren't reading other contemporary horror novels too much.
Just keep yourself open is all I'm getting at. Let go a little bit.

Aeron said...

Interesting that you bring that up, Fufu. I usually go on nightly walks, listening to music on the ipod. Just recently it occured to me to download some audio books to listen to while stalking the night. I wish I could listen to audio books while working on art but my mind is consumed by the process of the imagery and I'm constantly spacing out into my own dimension I guess.

I downloaded a lot of good audio book collections in the past two weeks. Some of them include...

Guillermo Del Toro's "The Strain" read by Ron Perlman.

The Road : Cormac McCarthy, a post apocalypse thriller that has a movie version coming out this fall.

L. Frank Baum - The Oz Books 1-10

The Lost World - by Arthur Conan Doyle

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS - John Carter of Mars Books 1-6 UNABRIDGED

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS - Tarzan Books 1 - 7 UNABRIDGED

All of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

HG Wells - First Men in the Moon (BBC)

Clive Barker - Mister B Gone Unabridged

Insanely Massive H.P. Lovecraft Audiobook Compilation

Roald Dahl - James and the Giant Peach

The Arabian Nights (their best-known tales)

And a selection of lectures regarding Roman/Greek mythos..

Classical Mythology: The Romans

Course Syllabus
Lecture 1 Mythological Rome

Lecture 2 The Making of Myth: How the Romans Recorded Their Mythology

Lecture 3 Greek Myths and the Romans: Cacus, Hercules, and the Greeks in Italy

Lecture 4 Arcadian Fantasies: The Fathers of the Founders

Lecture 5 Trojan Ancestors: The Myth of Aeneas

Lecture 6 Romulus and Remus

Lecture 7 The Seven Kings of Rome

Lecture 8 Etruscan Kings in Rome: Myth or History?

Lecture 9 Myths of the Republic

Lecture 10 Myths of Roman Expansion

Lecture 11 Virgil and The Aeneid (Part One)

Lecture 12 The Aeneid (Part Two)

Lecture 13 Ovid

Lecture 14 The Survival of Classical Myth

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

Sounds really cool Aeron, it does have the benefit of getting through all that reading quicker than you would.

I've always thought I was very narrow Luke,, but I've learned to reserve any judgements about most things I dont get,, I just stand back and wonder if I'll ever understand some of these things. I want it to wait awhile. In terms of music I've got too much on my plate and I hope I dont get into traditional jazz, blues and difficult strains of world music until I'm older.

Human Mollusk said...

Hehe, a lot of overlap there, Aeron. Where did you find the Oz books?

Aeron said...

The Oz books were broken down into two torrents on demonoid. The first 5 books and the last five. I've always been incredibly curious about Baum's fictional world of Oz beyond what is seen in the original film. I'm hoping it will be as fascinating as I imagine it might be. Some more audiobooks I recently acquired that might of interest to the rest of you..

Richard Matheson - Hell House

unabridged cassette rip of J.G Ballard’s ‘THE CRYSTAL WORLD’

". Trees are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Most men flee the area in terror, afraid to face what they cannot understand. But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest."

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other Tales. Unabridged and read by Michael Kitchen.

Robert Louis Stevenson - Two Short Story Collections (unabridged) Includes The Bottle Imp and Other Stories.

Human Mollusk said...

Thanks Aeron. Actually I just saw that the torrent on demonoid is just the repackaged librivox recording, which is cool because like this you don't need to isten to the intro text at the beginning of each chapter. But I hope the readers are good though. You never know with the librivox stuff. I listened to The King in Yellow by Chambers recently, and the first half was decently read but the reader of the second half I didn't like at all, which was kind of a letdown.
Speaking of OZ, you have surely seen the sequel Return to OZ, with those great shapechanging stop-motion stone creatures?
I tink they combined the stories of the second and third novel for the script. If not, check this out:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=26087709

Newman Cruise said...

having worked in a comic shop I know that most second-hand comics are worth nothing at all and we very very rarely took anything into the shop, trading for bad unwanted or very niche comics is really bad business and won`t happen. There`s very little in it for the shop in relation to the headache and work in sorting it all out. you`d be surprised at the anger this news was often met by and also at teh best suggestion I would give: ebay being the best bet to connect with as many people as possible looking for that specific thing you have. but you might still be disheartened by the amount of work and little return that you get for your efforts in posting there.
charity shop or a neice or nephew is often the best recipient for your don`t wants.