Heartless Dark: The Blog

Okay, digging deeper into this conundrum, let’s start to look at the two models that comics have today, and how they could exist in this new world we’re proposing.

First off: The Ongoing Series

We’ve all read them or do now. Uncanny  X-Men is in the 500s. Thor is in the 600s. Captain America is returning to its 600s. Action comics is well into its 800s.

800+ comics have come before what you’re reading now? Are you kidding me? How the hell am I supposed to pick up a random issue and not feel intimidated knowing that what I’m reading is a composite/continuation of decades of issues that have come before.

Great comic - but it's #858! That's a lot of baggage...

Sure, comics relaunch, but they keep coming back to the original numbering. Hurm… Ongoing series are cool because you feel part of something bigger – but, let’s be honest, of all the ongoing series – how many have tons of stand-out stories?

Name the top Spiderman stories of all time. Can you? I mean, sure, you can talk about the Venom story, the Spider-Totem, Kraven’s last hunt – little bits of stories all along, and yet, none of them are in the eschelons of comic halls of fame. It’s too hard to make a story stand out when it’s part of a greater whole. Great arcs get overshadowed by what comes after it.

Heck, Grant Morrison’s New X-Men was amazing – brimming so full of ideas, he could have (and should have) spent another 4 years exploring them to their fullest (read: biggest problem with Morrison’s writing, great ideas, poor execution (Final Crisis) – but X-Men was one of his better). But what does Marvel do the second the series ends? Send in hack writer Chuck Austen to retcon major plotlines. A few years later, we “No More Mutants” and completely obliterate any goodwill and progress Morrison made.

Grr! Frustrating.

The cycle just keeps eating itself.

So, let’s talk about solutions…

Okay, so last post I proposed a radical idea. Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out. Basically, end the universes.

Now, you scream out – “But you’re doing what you just lambasted Marvel for doing – for ending any forward movement to ongoing series!” You know what? You’re right. Also: who cares.

They’re going to do it anyways. Retcons, retelling of origins, new crossovers, resurrections left and right – they’re just spinning in circles too. So, let’s cut that ball and chain of 40 years on continuity loose and let things go crazy!

Side tangent: They had the chance to do that with the Ultimate Line. Can you imagine what Ultimate FF would have been like if Grant had gotten around to writing it? Wow. Or let Ellis loose on it from the beginning, but instead of channeling the kid-friendly schmaltz they did, let him go Planetary “The Four” style on them. Sue’s a alcohol-medicated housewife. Reed’s emotionally detached from all life, too busy in his own world, Johnny is a cokehead, Ben’s gay (I dunno, who knows). THAT would have been bold storytelling.

Back to story at hand… Jettison everything and start all over. Earlier I had referenced Television as a similar model. Let’s explore an idea that I’ve had in my head for the better part of ten years – that we’ve now started to see emerging among mainstream comics.

The Studio-style of producing comics (alternately: The 52 Equation/Brand New Day Model).

For your basic TV show you have a staff of writers who collectively work to mold the shape of the season – the stories, the character arcs, future hints, etc. The episodes are then divided up and each writer is assigned a certain amount of eps to write. Together they create the backbone, and individually they fill the beast out. There is a head writer for the show who leads everything.

Comic companies have flirted with this idea (with 52 – a DC series that ran weekly for a year with a team of writers and rotating artistic team) (and Marvel is now taking writer artist teams and rotating them through every four issues or so with their Brand New Day banner for Spiderman – now producing 3 comics a month), but let’s step it up a notch.

DC's "Step in the right direction" comic 52 (Let's not mention "Countdown")

For ongoing series, you have a large cast of characters. Even if you kill them all off, you’ll still reintroduce them. You’ll have a Superman, Spiderman, Batman, and Wolverine. But, you’d be starting fresh – free to throw off any bad stories or stale ideas and shoot for the stars.

Since these are iconic characters, you’re not going to just do a minseries. You’ll start a new ongoing series. Enter: Studio Style.

Take some of our big name writers (let’s use Brian Michael Bendis) and put them in charge – they’re the head writers for our series. Give them a writing staff of other up and coming writers who, on their own, can’t sell a title, but with some exposure and guidance from other experienced, really talented writers, will bust out (even Joss Whedon, god among writers, staffed on Roseanne before becoming “Joss”). The big names will write the big eps (most likely) while guiding the overall story. As the writers get better, they’ll progress to their own series and what not.

For art, let’s do the same thing. But build it more like the Top Cow system. Assemble an art team (think of them as the actors on Law & Order). You’ll have a great layout artist – who’s an incredible storyteller (like a Steve Dillon or Stuart Immomen), a background artist (someone who can render great detail behind the scenes to enhance and clarify the story), a figure artist – the big cheese – the headliner (the Kyra Sedgewick of the Closer). Add in some inks and a great color team and you have an artistic team that can produce high-quality books at rapid speeds.

Top Cow produces stuff like this - not bad, eh?

Like the writing staff, let’s promote movement with this plan. As the artists hone their skills, move them up – give them the spotlight. This is a whole system of cultivating new talent and then promoting that to bring in new readers and increase the overall quality.

The added benefit to this, more books faster. Series will be able to pump out 2-4 books a month (as a TV show does with their episodes). You can even structure the ongoing series as seasons – taking a three month break in between larger story arcs. Imagine the solid viewership you’ll have if you have consistent, high quality comics that come out every week. It’s much easier to keep coming back if you have to come back more (and this equals more revenue for the industry).

Okay, enough for now. But we’ll examine the other way comics are produced in our new model next time. The Creator-Owned series.

thecreator Uncategorized

Okay, getting back to a few threads I’ve planted here and here, let’s start to address this behemoth. “The Problem with Comics Today” or “The Art Form is dying fast.”

I don’t need to give a history lesson here – you most likely know it or can figure it out really quickly, but – to be brief (too late) – the majority of comic readers are not kids – teens. They’re adults. Mid-twenties (if we’re lucky) to the forties. Men (mostly). Now, the upside to this is that this is a steady base. They’re stuck for life.

Example: met a cool guy at Night-Flight the other week who stopped in to pick up his weekly stash of comics. He had Uncanny X-Men and Spiderman (among a few others). He shrugged and said he’d gotten tired of comics – of the repetitive storylines and rehashed characters – but he’d been collecting for decades, so why stop now (he was actually only 32 issues (I believe) from owning the entire run of X-Men).

That’s the feeling I’m getting with long-time readers. “Well, sh*t, we’re here, so why leave?”

Is this the malaise you want from your core audience?

I’ve loved comics and related characters since I was a kid. Some of my earliest memories were getting some comic books in my stocking for Christmas – and my collection of Super Powers Team and Secret Wars action figures. Man, I love those. As I got older, I became a collector. Then I wanted to draw them. Then I wanted to write them. Now, I’m doing both (not particularly well, but, hey, I’m doing it aren’t I). I still buy a stack every month (not to mention the endless trades from Amazon.com), and I want everyone to read comics.

But I can’t get them too.

Too much history to pick up a story. Too much money and time to get caught up in order to enjoy a series. Long-running, serialized shows on TV face this problem too – but a) TV is free, so it’s easy to sit down and figure it out and b) this is why most serialized shows don’t last too long – they don’t invite viewers, they exclude them.

So, the question becomes, how do we attract NEW readers of ALL ages (instead of the dying fanbase we now have)and not piss off the existing base?

No easy answer to that one. Robert Kirkman (the writer of the amazing Invincible) had an idea last year. Read it here.

What do you think?

In a nutshell – all the creators with a name (I’m talking to you Bendis, Morrison, Millar, Ellis, Ennis, Gaiman, et al), make your own damn books. Start something original. People will follow. Big companies – hand your titles over to new, up and coming creators and let them play with them. Don’t shackle them with years of continuity and crossovers. Let them start fresh.

Let me go one step further.

Big two – you listening?

Kill your Universes.

(insert collective screeches from Mom’s basements across America)

Give it a year – what the hell can it hurt?

Kill everything that is happening right now. Kill them. Have some big bad come and rip reality to shreds. And restart.

Original idea? Hell no. It’s been done before. But this time, don’t just do it as a stunt (as every damn crossover is every damn year) – do it as a way to GET PEOPLE TO READ COMICS. People will come. Produce some high-quality sh*t – and PEOPLE WILL STAY.

You can even get your big guns to orchestrate it.

It worked with Ultimate Spiderman. You started from the beginning with Top-Notch people and let them be great. And it worked. GREAT comic.

Notice how it didn’t work with Ultimate X-Men. Too many creators, not all top-notch, and too much “let’s do what’s already been done” rehashing of old storylines (yes, yes, USM has done this a bit too much, too – but it’s done it mostly better).

What’s the worst that could happen? You retcon it all and go back to the decades of continuity dragging you down. Your core fans will stick around.

They did before when you pulled stunts that didn’t work.

So don’t make this a stunt. Make this a concerted effort to SAVE COMICS.

Cause they’re not going to last too long at this rate.

Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?

More to come… Stay tuned…

thecreator Uncategorized

Hey Kids,

Thought I’d take a moment from waxing philosophical (or waxing my back, depending on the day) and let you know we’re online! Now, the  reason we all got into comics is because we’re not that attractive with any social skills – so what happens after being online for a few weeks? We’re asked to do an on-camera interview.

Hilarity and awkward conversation ensues.

J/k. The guys over at One Shot Presents took a few minutes of their newest episode to ask us “what’s up” and “how’s it going.” The guys are supercool and lurk around West Coast Conventions every year – so if you see them getting sh*t from Mike Mingola, say hey to them and tell them that you think Brick’s the better-looking of the two (kidding – Sofe 5 really is – but she was curiously missing from our chat – like I said, we’re not attractive and can’t talk to girls).

The video is below. I won’t tell where we’re at – cause we want you to check the whole thing and then to go One Shot’s Site and see what else they’ve cooked up. Plus, they promised us (after sleeping with them) that they’d have us back again later.

Enjoy!

One Shot Presents Episode 31

*Update: Since we moved the blog to this new server/URL, I can’t get videos to embed – sorry. Follow the link. We’ll make the architect fix this

thecreator Uncategorized

Now, Marky Mark has had a long, diverse career (from hip hop underwear model to M. Night hack Actor to loving animals on SNL), but nothing touches my heart like anisipid“inspired by real life events kinda sorta – what the hell, this is a Disney movie, so who cares,” cliched sports movie. Oh boy, does my heart swell when local boys, down on their luck, in dire straits, with loveable kids, take a chance (take a chance, take a chance (what’s that reference?)) on themselves and learn to find that inner strength that proves them a winner. God bless Rudy, er, Denzel, er, Mark Whalberg in Invincible.

Wait – what? This isn’t about that stupidfootball movie? Oh thank goodness – there’s nothing I really could care less for than “Inspirational” sports movies. Gack… Stab me in the eye.

I guess I’ll talk about Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley’s Invincible.

I grabbed the first 6 trades off the ebay the other week, a) wanting to check this series out (I’ve heard good things for years) and b) familiarize myself with Ryan Ottley’s work (I might, might, get to meet him soon – so I didn’t want to be ig’nint to his stuff). Man, am I glad that I did.

Invincible brings me back to the great world of Superhero comics. And I’m not talking about the dark, deconstructionist, post-80s Alan Moore style of Superhero comics. I’m talking about the fantastic comics from the youth that made you excited to love comics – that made you wish you had powers – when you cared about the characters and the world around them – back when you weren’t jaded.

And the best part of this comic (as I believe Ed Brubaker said in one of the intros) is that is has this sense to it while still being an excellent comics – as opposed to most childhood comics that when re-read, don’t maintain their nostalgic quality (and you remember that, hell, you were five when you read this – so you didn’t exactly have refined tastes).

Real brief overview (we’ll call that RBO from now on):

Mark Grayson is a teenager with typical problems. Grades, girls, a job, etc – but, in addition, his dad’s Superman (basically). And he knows this. Heck, he’s been waiting for his powers to manifest since he was seven years old. And, at 17, they finally do. Mark is stoked – he relishes his ability to now be a hero, flying around, stopping bank robbers. He’s welcomed by the other superheroes of the world (versions of the Teen Titans and blatant JLA ripoffs). Then the JLA is brutally murdered. Then things, like real life, start to get complicated – and the black and white of right and wrong begin to blur to a moral grey…

Invinciblereminds me why I still buy and love Ultimate Spiderman. The characters are young and fresh and funny. They experience real life and aren’t so darn weighed down by their issues. The series tackles some heavy subject material (I won’t spoil it, but trust me), but never lets it bog down the characters or momentum.

In addition to the main characters and their great dynamics and relationships, this series LOVES subplots. In every trade there is at least 5 new subplots. You’d think that would get old or implode on itself – so far, not as of yet. Kirkman managers to payoff the plots here and there, while building new ones all the time. It makes for a wicked-fun read – knowing that at any point, one of the 80 plots could come to a head.

Invincible constantly surprises. If you buy this series (and you will after this glowing recommendation), make sure to buy the first three trades – covering the first 13 issues. The comic doesn’t rush into anything, taking its time to establish its world – but once it does, hold on and be ready – it blows the top off real quick.

Kirkman is a great writer when he’s writing his own stuff (see: The Walking Dead also). His writing is worth picking this up alone. But, let’s look at Ryan Ottley for a moment…

Ottley came onto the title with issue 8 (if I’m not mistaken), picking up for co-creator Cory Walker, who was having trouble keeping on schedule. Cory has a great style and sense of design, and it was no easy feat to take over for him (Ottley was relatively unknown at the time). But, boy, Ryan knocked it out of the park. His style was close enough to Cory’s when he took over that there wasn’t a jarring change up. And he took the look Invinciblehad and has evolved it into an amazing, detailed, fluid style that is just incredible to look at. From great page designs, heart-pounding action, and incredible character detail (from expressions, to body language, to individuality) – Ottley does it all.

I’ve quickly become a HUGE fan of his stuff. Check out his blog here.

Invincible also brings up another important issue – how do we, as creators and fans, bring in kids and teenagers into comics without losing the adult readers that make up most of the market? Let’s save that for another post (very soon) and just leave with a final word on Invincible.

It’s fun. It’s creative. It’s an addictive read. It has great art. I’m dying to get caught up in the series, but as far as the first 6 trades go, my grade is a solid A.

thecreator Comic Review, Comics I Love

First: read this. Possibly the funniest thing I’ve read in weeks and weeks.

Okay, let’s be honest, I consider myself a cinephile – a movie snob – a film geek. Though there are still films on the certified celluloid shut-in list that I need to see (one of these days I’ll get around to Deer Hunter and Ordinary People), I can hold my own in a classic/great film debate. I’ll fight to the death over the Casablanca vs. Citizen Kane debate (hint: it’s Casablanca – best movie ever). I’ll talk cinematic techniques of Hitchcock. I catch all the Oscar films most years – in the theatre, thank you very much.

But I do have a weakness…

And his name is Michael Bay.

Rarely has someone whose hair is trapped in 1989 ever brought so much child-like excitement to me (besides Mart McFly) than Michael Bay.

Yes, his filmography is a hit and miss of atrocious summer blockbusters. Starting out decent and descending into Abysmal. Bad Boys. The Rock. Armageddon. Pearl Harbor. Bad Boys II. The Island. Transformers. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (yes, I didn’t even refer to is as Transformers 2).

Are any of these movies really that good? Do they have any real substance or resonance? Well, no. Not really. But, boy, I tell you what – they get me (for the most part).

The ones I love:

Armageddon. Boy, do I love this movie. I didn’t expect much from it when I first plopped it in the vcr as an unsuspecting 15 year-old. From that moment to this day I still get chills during the final scene when Harry sacrifices himself for his daughter, Ben Affleck, and the world. With Liv sitting at the Nasa multi-screen, her hand on the blank TV as she cries into the table – whew. Boy, let’s not cry get womanly – but yeah, this movie hits every note for me.

The Island. Was I the only person with no tastewho liked this movie (and, apparently, judging by the box office receipts, watched it)? How can you go wrong? Sci-Fi: check. Cool story: check. Cool effects: check. Scarlett Johanson looking hotter than she will ever look again: check. Car chases and an overuse ofslow motion cinematogrpahy: check. How did this not work? Thought it was great. Love it. Didn’y cry as hardget womanly as Armageddeon, but with no Bruce Willis, who can blame you, Michael?

Like:

The Rock. As far as a movie goes – most likely his best (but, for me, there’s no accounting for taste). Cool performances. An introduction to Bay for the world.

Transformers. Not too bad for a movie about talking robots, let’s be honest. With the source, (other than the scene where the robots hide from Sam’s parents and the one robot pisses on the dog (or something)) not too bad.

Hate:

Sorry, Michael, my love, but Pearl Harbor sucked ass. Could you have raped any more WWII veterans in two hours and forty-five minutes without an entire prison attacking a VA hospital? Good lord, what a heap of poo.

Anyways, so, yes, taste aside – why do I love Michael Bay films so much? I have can watch him films over and over again (and no, I don’t own the Critereon edition of Armageddon). Is it the slow-motion shots that always make me feel like I’m in the action? The world-is-going-to-end plots? The incredible acting? The great soundtracks (can anyone not hear “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith and not cry get womanly?)?

Shoot, I dunno…

But I’ll keep coming back for more (and rewatching my copy of Armageddon).

–the creator

thecreator Rant

So, one week in, we moved our blog from our existing url (heartlessdark.wordpress.com) to this new one (www. heartlessdark.com/blog). We did this to try and keep everything related to our site in a more central Internet location.

As with everything new, we’ll still be tweaking things here and there in order to perfect it – so bear with us, if you would be so kind.

Also, thanks so much for making our first week successful! After nearly a week of being online, we’re at the upper range of our goal for unique views. A lot of you came in from other sites – referred by Belfry Comics or AICN – which really blew us away. We’re glad you came and hope you stay!

We also want to make sure everyone is aware that there are THREE parts to the Prologue. The engine we’ve created to run the site allows us to post in five page chunks (since, for 99% percent of the time, that’s how much we’ll be posting each week), so we posted the 15 page prologue in three parts. Make sure you read all of them – you might be a bit lost as we move forward if you haven’t.

There’s three convenient ways to do this.

1) The drop down on the right on the comic. Just drop it down and select which Episode you want.

2) The Archives section – it’s pretty cool. Just check it out.

3) At the bottom of each page is an arrow that when you move your mouse over it, it says “Next Episode.” Click that.

Each way works. We’ll see you all back tomorrow for the first installment of Book One.

Things get rolling from here.

Trust us.

We know where this is going…

thecreator Uncategorized