The People’s Publisher

As we close in on the completion of principal photography–er, I mean, interior artwork for Beth Dillon’s THE WEST WAS LOST #1, I thought it might be a good time to start a gallery for same. So I did. Because there’s a time to think and a time to act, and this is no time to think.

And I’m trying to link to it now, and the #*&%ing blog won’t let me! What’s up with that? But it’s there, people, I promise you. Page upon page of wonderful artwork by “Fenomenal” Frank Grau Jr., from luscious pencils to glorious paints, with a Foley rough thrown in that appears as a horizontal line across the previous image for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom. Why, you ask? I can’t even begin to fathom why. I just told you that. Pay attention, consarn it! I’m not typing this to hear my own fingers tapping, y’know.

I don’t know how the other APTN books are coming along - Julian either got too busy with Comix 101 to hold the regular editor meetings we used to have when we were young and full of vim (not the floor cleaner, the kind of vim that doesn’t kill someone who’s full of it), or he wisely decided that I was simply going to keep repeating myself over and over again and stopped telling me when they happen.

The latter rationale has much to do with why I’ve been so uncharacteristically silent lately. When I’ve got something to say, I say it, usually in the middle of saying a bunch of completely unrelated crap, so people looking for the pearls of my wisdom have to dive deep into the ocean of my verbiage and penetrate the clamshell of…uhm, my metaphors or something. But when I have nothing to say, or, more accurately, I’ve got something to say but I don’t want to get into another argument over whether North American readers are more comfortable reading left to right AGAIN, I shut up, put my nose to the grindstone and whittle it down to bloody cartilage. Because that’s the kind of guy I am: quiet, with a gaping hole in my face.

So while I continue to make my presence felt on the Z2H site by popping up in blog comments threads and spreading my malign influence, I’ve not done a lot of blogging on TWWL. There really hasn’t been a lot to blog about, come to think of it. The entire process has been so smooth that I don’t know what I’m going to do for page notes. And nobody wants to hear about how swell things are going, they want the dirt. By “nobody” I of course mean “me.” GIVE ME DIRT, PEOPLE! I COMMAND YOU!

Failing that, go read the ReBoot webcomic. Artist Diego Simone’s really starting to hit his stride over there. I’d give you a link, but THE BLOG WON’T PASTE WHAT I AM SO VERY CERTAIN I COPIED! Curse you, blog program. May you die a much-deserved and ironic death, crushed beneath the mass of the collected, unused paper diaries you replaced!

Ever upward, heroes!

A

24 students, a dozen staff, 5 days, 2 schools, and me. The result: a great week of creating and learning. I really hope this program initiated by the Government of New Brunswick and Zeros 2 Heroes takes flight. There are big plans for Comix 101 and I can see great things for it.

Here are some photos Carmel took of me with the students and teachers of George Street Middle School.

I fly away today so goodbye Freddy, hello Vancouver!

Now we’re script wrting. An eight-panel story relating the details of the students’ characters. Attention to panel descriptions, camera angles, captions, sound effects and dialogue was adhered to.

Well… a jam-packed day today. I did get jam with breakfast.

Day Three involved  writing a summary, looking at camera angles, reading and reviewing the work of others.

Another great day in Freddy. The two classes began creating characters for thei stories. I really like the fact that Devon Middle School is locating the story in the past and George Street Middle School is writing about the future. The support from all sides (students, tech, teachers, school staff) has been so positive.

Had a great day at Devon and George Street Middle Schools. We went over the history of comics, how to design a character, developing a common world, working cooperatively in groups, and using the Comix 101 website. The students are all very bright and eager to participate.

Here I am, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I’m working all week with the Ministry of Education getting graphic novels into the classroom. Matt, Seb, Ryan, Cindy, Aaron and I have worked hard the last few weeks putting together an incredible online script development site. Two lucky schools with a total of 24 students are participating.

Hmmm… I just got word that Hurricane Kyle is getting closer. Could school possibly be cancelled on account of a hurricane? Stay tuned!

I started writing a long, involved blog post about something of great interest to Z2H editors and creators earlier in the week, when I thought to myself, “Self, there are people out there who might not be terribly keen on you blogging about this particular subject. Perhaps you should check with them before you spend an additional hour polishing this particular post.”

So I e-mailed the aforementioned potentially less-than-keen folk, and sure enough, their enthusiasm for my publicly blogging on this particular topic was something else (something else other than enthusiasm.) So that was that post shot to heckuva job, brownie.

And then I realized something…


There’s so much activity going on with the blogs right now that nobody’s going to read one of my patented Epic Foley Posts, even if I had the time, energy, and permission to write one. And why should they, when they can read fine comic works like BLACK JACK O’BREEN and KNIGHTCAP: NOVEMBER’S SONG?

No reason at all.

So I tried and failed to post my rough thumbnail for a page of Beth Dillon, Myron A. Lameman, and Frank Grau, Jr.’s upcoming Z2H comic THE WEST WAS LOST. I followed this by successfully posting the pencils and inks of that same page. I take this as further evidence that computers have developed artificial intelligence at least to the point where they know they don’t like someone, and they’ve, en masse, decided they don’t like me.

Anyway. Hope you’re all enjoying the books that are up, and looking forward to the ones we’ve got coming…

Foley

Not going to write much this week, because you’ve all got more entertaining things to read than this blog, don’t you?

Yes. Yes, you do.

On top of that, I don’t actually need to write much, because much of this post was written for me, by the various creators of BLACK JACK O’BREEN and KNIGHTCAP: NOVEMBER’S SONG. If you “flip” to the back of each of these fine webcomics, you’ll find biographical blurbs for each of the involved creators. It was shortly after the books were finished that Z2H asked each of us to write a blurb for ourselves - something they surely regret and aren’t likely to ask for again.

It’s fairly easy to write about interesting fictional characters; it’s also fairly easy to write about interesting non-fictional characters. I am neither interesting nor fictional (mostly), so writing about myself is one of the harder things I’ve had to do (still beats fence painting, though.) My problem, when faced with the challenge of writing a bio for myself, is coming up with something that doesn’t reflect how utterly mundane a person I actually am. One normally lists accomplishments, but mine are few and far between. Yes, a former mayor of Red Deer’s last official act in that capacity was being hugged by me. Yes, I graduated from art college with distinction - two distinctions if you count the tablecloth with the word “HEROIC” stenciled on it as a cape. Yes, I am the real-life inspiration for the Robert Redford character in The Horse Whisperer.

Actually, that last one’s not true.

But since I hugged the mayor of Red Deer and ended a promising local political career, what have I actually done with my life that’s noteworthy? Answer: Not a lot. And because I haven’t done a lot, it’s hard to come up with a bio that anyone would be interested in reading.

Let me rephrase that: it’s hard to come up with a truthful bio that anyone would be interested in reading. In fact, it’s very easy indeed to string together a bunch of untruths into something that, while it’s complete BS, is still better than reading about how much I love my cats*. I still remember fondly the bio I wrote where I claimed my greatest goal in life was to become a female Vietnamese prostitute, and that it was only after achieving this goal at the age of fourteen that I moved into the comic-creating realm…

But I digress.

As it happens, many of the people I had the pleasure to work with on my Zeros 2 Heroes books took a similar, not-entirely serious approach to writing their bios. And we were, for the most part, ruthlessly edited by the higher-ups and made to look like decent, if bland human beings.

But as readers of this blog know, my posting philosophy is simplicity itself: if someone wrote it, I might as well post it. And so I present to you, the un-ruthlessly edited bios the various creators wrote for themselves. Because it beats writing a lengthy blog post myself.

Oh, bugger.

BLACK JACK O’BREEN writer John Michael Sullivan described himself and his comic writing endeavours thusly:

“John Sullivan is a Vancouver-based writer and journalist. He has written science fiction short stories, screenplays and magazine articles, run web sites, edited multi-million dollar government contract proposals, and given subcutaneous fluids to a cat. What the hell, why not a comic book?”

The paycheque probably isn’t as good as running websites or editing multimillion dollar contracts, for one, but let’s not go there.

Stephen Cmelak had this to say about himself:

“Stephen Cmelak is a writer-by-night, who by day poses as a mild-mannered middle-manager for a great metropolitan retail chain. In 2005, he contributed three pages to the Blank Label Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon, which raised over $28, 000 in donations for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He currently lives in Scarborough, Ontario, only two blocks from where he was born, which is somewhat akin to the thief who returns to the scene of the crime.”

BLACK JACK O’BREEN (and THE WEST WAS LOST) artist Frank Grau, Jr. - ever the energetic one - gave us a number of options:

“Frank Grau is a dude from So Cal. He likes to do art. He’s a chronic laconic.”

or:

“Frank Grau is a native of Southern California, where he illustrates and designs from his home studio. Frank is self-taught, and has been illustrating professionally for over fifteen years. His work was featured in Spectrum 10, and more recently he was commissioned by San Diego Comic Con ‘08 to illustrate the cover of their events book.”

or:

“Frank Grau is an artist who’s just lucky he even has any work these days.”

or:

“[fill in the blank]”

I quite like the last one, personally, though I’d probably have written it as “[fill in the blank with something interesting]”

KNIGHTCAP: NOVEMBER’S SONG artist John Keane sent this:

“John Keane is a cartoonist/writer/artist and disreputable Dogsbody in Ottawa, Canada.

He originally hails from Ireland where he worked for Kaveleer Productions assisting on two award-winning animated shorts and contributing as a character/production designer.

Now in Canada he has contributed work to a whole manner of places doing character design and storyboarding work, as well as the odd comic gig.
John has four arms and can draw with all of his eight hands (two hands per arm). His ambition is to create a successful TV series that features a character with four arms so he can leave the house without facing ridicule. He also has a pet aswang but keeps it well-fed so not to worry.”

Letterer Ed Brisson said:

Actually, I better check with Ed and make sure he’s cool with me posting what he said. Not that it was bad, but, you know. Better safe than sorry.

And, of course, there’s yours truly. No Vietnamese prostitutes in this one, I’m afraid. In fact, I tried my best to write it “straight” but even so I found myself having trouble taking it entirely seriously:

“In addition to being the editor of this astonishingly well-edited comic book, Andrew Foley is also the handsome, talented, and above all modest writer of comics like THE HOLIDAY MEN, PARTING WAYS, and DONE TO DEATH. His online home is AndrewFoleyWritesThings.com.”

A

(*Actually, I don’t like my cats that much. One’s so stupid it’ll someday die horribly after it forgets to breathe, and the other regularly tries to suffocate me in bed by sleeping on my face.)