wallythegreenmonster

July 26, 2013 2:29 pm i've heard things that adjusted for inflation comics cost about the same as when we were kids, however there is one GIANT variable. Back in the day, i could find $1.25 in quarters, dimes and nickels very easily. So many of my middle school years comics were bought with lose change. I can't imagine trying to grab $4 in change to buy one comic nowadays. I'll never forget skipping the school bus, to take the city bus downtown to the mom and pop drug store where i bought my first comics off the spinner racks. Then a few years later the LCS that popped up. We do miss stuff with progress but that's life. My dad used to talk about watching MLB games through holes in the fence and seeing a double feature movie with cartoon for a Quarter so each generation loses things and gains others.

July 22, 2013 1:59 pm oh yeah i like to be surprised each week. i live dangerously. haha i was talking more about the stuff that gets announced almost a year before you can hold it in your hands

July 22, 2013 1:26 pm my only "gripe" with announcements is that they spend all their hype and excitement months before the books are available, so usually i just forget about them when its time to buy. I think Image did a good job of recognizing that and getting ahead of the problem at their expo. Seems like they announce things closer to publication dates than before. I really like how Monkeybrain does things. Announcement drop and then availability now. love it.

July 19, 2013 12:06 pm That Revival cover is such a great example of cover design. All that white space that still functions as art. Less really is more in this case.

July 12, 2013 1:44 pm I think photo or hyper realism works better as covers or stand alone illustrations. Look through Art History...The Wyeths, Leyendecker, Rockwell etc and going back further to European Salon painting.....when its a single image (magazine cover or book illustration) there is room to create huge narratives through complex compositions and detail. You tend to build sequences in your mind off that one image. You study the image closer, see the 1st, 2nd and 3rd reads. They work as a moment frozen in time for examination. When done as sequential art, they are almost giving you too much information and the frozen in time thing starts to really work against its effectiveness.

July 12, 2013 12:58 pm i feel the same way. his covers can be tremendous, but i'm not as big a fan of his interior work. Everything looks frozen in time.

July 12, 2013 12:44 pm A big thing for me is the presence of the artists hand. Not only techniques, but interpretations of reality. We live in a HD age, where everything looks perfect, so when viewing any kind of illustrative art, i tend to find stylized art more interesting. Things that look obviously illustrated with pen and paint (or digital effects) tend to hold my interest more than someone who tried to imitate how a camera sees. I'd rather see abstraction, abbreviation and the artist "fingerprints" on something more than a guy who can successfully draw logos on every piece of trash in an alley, or every window ledge on a skyscraper. Its not a matter of good or bad, but more what's interesting to me. I can see anything in the world in HD clarity with google, but i can't see things in a stylized, abstracted cartoony vision. I often find that the coloring takes me out of a page of comic art. The more rendered it is, the less it holds my interest. I guess the digital tools and techniques take over and upstage everything else, which causes me to lose interest fast. I think the term "photorealism" is overused in comics. There are maybe 2 or 3 guys that push that, but for me they always fall short. I'm still aware its an illustration and not a photograph and that's my fundamental problem with pushing realism in illustration. I feel its a loosing battle from the start.

July 8, 2013 4:45 pm these types of things bring up interesting questions. Are you a "Creator" when you work on a work for hire book? Since there are so many filters to go through, is that work at the end of the day still yours? Its more of an abstract kinda thing but i wonder if a lot of the "problems" stem from the fact that the industry has moved towards the term "creator"? I think that sets up some interesting psychological dynamics and clashes within the entire power structure. Just spitballing here more than anything, but i've wondered about that stuff from time to time.

July 8, 2013 4:29 pm took less than 3 seconds via the googleplex to realize how silly that "Batman never sits" argument is. http://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/batman-secrets-of-the-batcave haha

July 1, 2013 1:47 pm Hey John and Greg, Thanks for doing this! Looking forward to the show. Question: Having worked with the big 2, indies, creator owned, webcomics and kickstarter, you seem to have worked in just about every facet of the comics industry. If you were starting out today, as a financially limited, young writer with nothing but some stories and a passion for comics, what would be your game-plan to get your work made and effectively seen by an audience?