Stumptown was super great and I am super fried. I’ll be writing up a piece on the festival this week for the Daily Crosshatch, as well as, I’m sure, some extra blogging here. But for now, I leave you with this little gem. Not too awkward, right? Sorry, Comic-Con.
Indie comics favorite John Isaacson and Henry Chamberlain at Newsarama both listed Nine Gallons on their Tops of 2009 lists. Chamberlain even called it “brilliant”! Whaaaat!?
I think I’ll publish a second issue even though I swore I’d never do another legal-sized comic again (those things are expensive). This is causing some awkward rewriting but I think it’ll be worth it, as it’s more of the ethics and conflict chapter after the introduction. However! There won’t be a third issue, mainly because the first and second issues are taking a lot of things out of order and a third issue wouldn’t make any sense. Pro tip: don’t ever write slice-of-life comics with delicate, overwrought bell-curve narratives that sorely depend on delicate, overwrought senses of timing without clearly rendered chapter endings and then try to chop them up into self-publishable chunks. (Chances are you haven’t and won’t have this problem but just thought I’d share.) So I’m aiming for #2 to be done for Stumptown if not the Anarchist Book Fair in March! And if no one wants to publish the book then the continuation of the Great Recession into 2010 will have to be enough real-life first-person awful shit for you, I’m sorry.
Also, if you’ve ordered a copy of #1, I’m reprinting a new crop with a new hand-watercolored cover next week, along with a new This is What Concerns Me. I know I’ve been leading you on with promises of new comics these past weeks but they’re happening, they just haven’t become acquainted with my scanner just yet… Yet!
So I didn’t get the Xeric grant to publish Nine Gallons as the 96-page paperback book I’d like to. I’m not sure how I feel about the Kickstarter business plan (especially since I’ve already got a Spot.Us project in the works, and one should only have so many hats on the ground) — so I was wondering what my readers might suggest for a next step? Would you like to see the second chapter of Nine Gallons as a minicomic? (The story is kind of disjointed so this would require some storytelling finesse that I’m not sure I have.) Would you prefer to see the whole book by the end of 2010? And if the latter, um, know anyone with about $2500 they’d be willing to part with to publish it?
This seems like kind of an odd public request, but this book takes on some pretty odd subject matter, and I’d really like to get some feedback as to how salable it may or may not be. And FYI, spoiler alert, I don’t draw myself nude or in underwear at any point in the rest of the book, so take that fact into consideration in your answer.
And then I shall reward you all with some new downer This is What Concerns Mes!
A week and a half after its debut and the glittery halo has faded a bit on McSweeney’s 320-page full-color San Francisco Panorama newspaper. While most have been quick to point out how lush and lovely the thing is, Choire Sicha at the Awl breaks down the actual logistics of such a project — and with some devastating results on the financial (read: reality) side of things. Basically? Even when charging $16 and paying writers 12 cents per word or less, McSweeney’s more or less breaks even on the paper, in the event that they pay their in-house staffers less than minimum wage. Still, and this is what continues to baffle me, the common reaction is: So? It’s pretty! (The color infographics, that is — not the future of journalism, ha-ha!) So thank god for this commenter.
Sure, when you gather a bunch of amazingly talented people and don’t pay them and charge a premium price you will have a great product. Don’t you think we already know that? The challenge is to produce a product with a variety of talent and employees that need to eat. And need medical insurance. Also, you have to get advertisers. And subscriptions.
Dave KNOWS that it is almost impossible and that’s why he ain’t gonna do it. It’s easy to have all the most talented people working for no pay and then saying “look at me look what we made why can’t you be like us?”
Yes, why can’t you? Where’s your trust fund, little reporter?
For their part, D. Eggers’ public comments lately have been considerably more humble than they were back in June, when he announced the project. Plus I think it’s interesting that McSweeney’s started off calling the Panorama a “prototype” and lately refers to it more often as an “experiment” — more forgiving of these sorts of problems, and with no expectation of a follow-up.
You might know that for the last few months I’ve been hard at work on a big article for a big-ish publisher. This week I found out how much that publisher is going to be paying me… So, to make a long story short, I’m selling originals! All the pages from my minicomics are up for grabs (though some are less Photoshopped than others), as are the Israel diary comics originals (two to a page, or I can cut them down). Or if anyone wanted to commission something, I’d be more than happy to do that too. Get in touch for pricing, but I assure you that I’m pretty cheap. I’ll be posting a full list of pages available and prices soon on the Storefront page.
Also of note: Nine Gallons is temporarily sold out. Though I said I wouldn’t, I’m going to do a second run within the next couple weeks. These ones will still cost $5, but I’ll be painting each cover by hand. Yes, this is totally insane, but I can’t really afford to do another run with the color covers and I don’t want to just go black and white, so there you have it. You can still order them now and I’ll send them out as soon as I’ve got ‘em. If you just can’t wait, I think Microcosm still has a few of the old ones available. (And hey, while you’re over there, feel free to leave a nice comment about me! Or a mean one, whatever, measure it in inches and all that.)
Last three diary comics, plus a few deleted scenes are coming up within the next few days.
Doree Shafrir wrote an interesting take on discrepancies between male and female wages over at Jezebel. She takes into consideration a lot of the outside factors often ignored in the 77-cents-on-the-dollar figure that’s normally thrown around in this debate, normalizing for different career choices and the like — though it turns out “there’s still a five percent wage gap for male and female college graduates, even after controlling for things like age, race and ethnicity, region, marital status, children, occupation, industry, and hours worked, according to testimony given in April to the United States Joint Economic Committee.”
Doree concludes that this is because women are less likely than men to negotiate their salaries, and I think she’s right to a certain degree. I know I was really freaked out by the prospect at first, and I’ve always been more willing and perhaps able to negotiate in jobs that I didn’t want as much as the ones I did.
But the thing is, I think Doree is ignoring the sociology behind negotiations. This argument presumes that women would be able to win those arguments were they even to bring it up; given she led with Peggy Olsen from Mad Men being snubbed when asking for a raise, this seems pretty funny to me. Women are not rewarded for being aggressive or going after what they want, and I’ve certainly gotten a toned-down Don Drapering myself sometimes when asking to be paid a fair wage for my work. I think it’s important to encourage women to negotiate, but it’s unfair to put all the blame on them for not asking when there’s still the matter of someone — usually a man — with the real power.
Then again, more men have hired me than women, so fuck if I know what’s going on here, but it probably has something to do with my breasts.
For the person who found this blog by searching “don’t understand the ape temporary seller’s permit thing” — it’s really easy, but sort of a pain. To sell anything in California, you have to have a permit and pay the state an exorbitant rate of sales tax on everything you sell (that you report). You can apply and receive the permit in person at any Board of Equalization office in the state, or send away for it in the mail. Then you have several weeks to pay the tax to the state.
Which reminds me that I owe mine from Zine Fest… Gotta keep those coffers full for the fat cats!
I wrote up my thoughts on the SF Zine Fest for the Daily Cross Hatch, an internet repository of indie comics news and reviews. Feel free to disagree with me if you think it’s a good and logical idea to pay $400 for a table at a convention where you’ll likely not even make that money back in sales — I’d love to hear your reasoning! (And if it’s “networking,” please show your work on the page next to your answer.)
Also, look forward to a neat series of interviews with cartoonists whose talent to press ratio is far higher than a lot of the cartoonists you read about.
First, an apology: turns out I’m about as good with this Website as I am with my personal life. I’m currently in the midst of moving, but when I’m finished I’ll have loads of new stuff up here that doesn’t require me understanding anything about Cascading Code (i.e. new comics and paintings).
For now, though: a recent Google search that resulted in some time spent on this very blog reminded me of the terrifying prescience of Nathan Barley. Twitter doesn’t acknowledge NB as the inspiration behind their name, and maybe I’m giving a little too much credit here taste-wise, but it seems obvious to me. Then again, teens don’t tweet so perhaps it’s just some fun with the synchronicity of the collective unconscious. Either way, if you’re not familiar, let me bring you up to speed.
I suggest clicking through to the similar videos, especially if you think Vice Magazine is fucking absurd, and also if you enjoy tiny hats. Well fucking Jackson.
Previously: thinking is rubbish and rubbish isn’t cool